"What do you mean, dad's missing?" Worry makes Yang's tone sharp.
"I mean that he's missing." If Ruby is put off at all by her sister's sudden harshness, she doesn't show it, her eyes dark and serious as she meets Yang's gaze. "I haven't heard anything from him in a few weeks. Sometimes I know that he gets busy and I won't hear back from him for a few days, but to go this long without so much as text—something's wrong, I can feel it."
"Why didn't you tell me about this sooner?" Yang bursts out, fear masking itself as anger.
"I tried." Ruby arches an eyebrow at her sister. "You weren't answering my texts. Or my calls. Or the email I sent you." She pauses to take a sip of her coffee. "I even tried messaging you on facebook but you didn't respond to that, either. I suppose it was a bit of a long shot."
"It's been a busy week," Yang says defensively. There's no accusation in her sister's voice, and her expression is unreadable, but Yang still finds herself flushing a bit. She's glad that Blake has left the room "to give them some privacy" (Yang is willing to bet that she wanted to go back to bed), or otherwise her girlfriend would probably scold her for ignoring her sister like that. "Since when do you have a facebook?" she asks, eager to talk about something that won't make her feel guilty.
It's not like she's been avoiding Ruby on purpose, really. It's just that Yang tries her best to forget the horrors of their childhood, the things that lurk in the shadows that no one else sees, and Ruby makes it difficult to do that. It's not Ruby's fault, necessarily, but that doesn't help the sense of dread that Yang feels whenever her sister tries to reach out to her.
Maybe it's selfish of her, but Ruby hasn't ever complained about it. Besides, Ruby had their dad. It isn't like her sister is completely on her own.
"It's good for keeping up with hunting contacts," Ruby explains with a shrug. "But yeah, you wouldn't answer me no matter how I tried to contact you, so I came here."
"And you had to show up in the middle of the night?"
"Hey, I could've just let myself in," Ruby says with a smirk. "I'd meant to get here earlier but traffic was worse than I expected."
"I haven't heard anything from dad in over a month." Yang hadn't thought much of it. It wasn't unusual for her dad to not be in touch for a while. "And the last time you heard from him was—"
"Three weeks ago," Ruby cuts in. "And no one else has heard from him either. I talked to Uncle Qrow, and Pyrrha and Jaune at the roadhouse. None of them have heard anything from him in months."
"Yeah, but Dad's not very social," Yang points out, trying not to freak out too much. "Maybe he's just really absorbed in whatever hunt he's working on."
"Maybe," Ruby replies, biting her lip. "But I don't know. Something doesn't feel right about this."
Ruby's always had a good sense for this kind of thing. It's why she's so good at hunting creatures of the supernatural world—and why she's so bad at fitting into the normal life that Yang is trying to build. "So what's your plan?"
"Well, I tried tracking his phone, but no dice." Ruby sighs. "He's either turned it off or ditched it or he's using a burner that I don't know about. So I'm going old school."
"Coordinates?" Yang guesses. Their dad had always hammered the importance of being able to navigate using coordinates into them when they were growing up, even with all of the new technology that was available.
"Yep." Ruby holds up her phone, displaying a text message from their dad containing a set of coordinates. The last message she'd received from him, it looks like. "Look at you, thinking like a huntress. I guess you're not so rusty after all." She smiles slightly, before turning more serious again. "Anyway, I figured I'd head over there in the morning. Looks like it's only a few hours' drive from here."
"Well, that seems pretty straightforward," Yang says tiredly, rubbing at her eyes. "Keep me updated on what's going on with dad, okay?"
Their dad is probably fine, she tells herself. He probably just got absorbed in whatever his latest hunt was, let his phone die, and once he's done he'll probably call them back like nothing happened.
"Yang, I came here because I need your help," Ruby interrupts her attempts to reassure herself. "I want you to come with me."
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