Just a lil sickfic set in v6, right after they arrive in Argus. Enjoy!
Getting sick always sucks. Getting sick in an unfamiliar place sucks even worse.
As far as she can tell, the rest of the house is quiet and still. Ruby fervently hopes that she didn't wake anyone up in her mad dash to the bathroom. Leaning over the sink, she rinses out her mouth and cups some water on her face before turning off the water and straightening up.
The face that greets her in the mirror makes her wince. Her eyes have dark smudges under them and her skin is pale and splotchy, and she's visibly shivering. Ruby takes several deep breaths and tries to will away the shaking, trying to convince herself that it's not as bad as it looks. It's probably just something she ate, or her stomach is unsettled from a bad dream. She'll feel better in the morning, after she gets some more sleep.
There's no way she's actually sick. She doesn't have time to be sick. They've got to find a way to get to Atlas to protect the Lamp of Knowledge, plus they haven't even told the others about what Jinn had told them, and Ozpin's strange behavior. Her friends need her to be at her best so they can figure things out.
Switching off the bathroom light, Ruby makes her way back down the hall to the room she's been sharing with her teammates. She carefully shuts the door behind her and collapses into the bed next to Yang. None of her friends seem to have noticed her absence or her return, so Ruby allows herself a sigh of relief as she pulls the blankets up to her chin.
Things will look better in the morning.
Things don't look better in the morning. Ruby wakes up feeling like she hasn't slept at all, and her appetite is nonexistent, even as she forces herself to eat some of the food that Jaune's sister makes for them. The last thing she wants is to seem like she's ungrateful for everything that she and her wife have done for them.
By the time they return from arguing with the people guarding the base, her head is pounding angrily and all Ruby wants to do is go collapse in bed and sleep for several days. But obviously she can't do that, there's no time to be laying around. They need to figure out how they're going to make the crossing over to Atlas, plus they still need to figure out how to break the news about what Jinn told them after they've already run into a setback today.
No matter how gentle they are about what they saw in the Lamp, the results aren't going to be pretty. They've already had to deal with the fallout once, and Ruby doubts that it's going to be any prettier the second time around. If only she try to think of the best way to do this without her head feeling like it's going to explode.
"Ruby." A voice calling her name finally manages to pierce through the haze of misery that's fallen over her. "Hey, are you even listening?"
That's Weiss' voice. And she sounds impatient, like she's been trying to get Ruby's attention for a while now. Which means that Ruby definitely needs to say something in response. Unfortunately, her brain is refusing to make sense of anything Weiss is saying.
"Sorry, what?" Ruby tries to respond, her voice coming out hoarser than she expects, the words slurring a bit. She shakes her head to try to clear it, which only makes her headache worse, clears her throat and tries again. "Sorry, what were you saying?"
"I was saying," Weiss trails off, frowning at Ruby. "Ruby? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Ruby replies almost automatically, trying to wave off Weiss' concern.
"Ruby, you're crying," Blake points out, her eyes dark with worry.
"What? No I'm not." Upon bringing it hand up to wipe her face, Ruby realizes that she is, in fact, crying. "Huh?"
"And you're burning up." Before Ruby even notices that her sister has gotten up, Yang is pressing a hand to her forehead. She tries to pull away but her sister's strong grip holds her in place effortlessly. "And you're shaking, and you look like that time an entire bag of flour exploded in your face, when you were trying to make a cake for my birthday."
"Why didn't you tell us you were sick?" Blake chimes in.
It's becoming more difficult to gather her thoughts. "We don't have time to just sit around and rest," Ruby points out, because obviously, duh, they don't. "We need to find a way to get to Atlas, and we need to tell the others about what Jinn said."
To emphasize her point, Ruby pushes herself to her feet, to prove that she's just fine, thank you very much. Or at least, she attempts to. Her balance is way off and her knees buckle under her weight, threatening to send her crashing face-first into the coffee table.
As always, Yang catches her, preventing her from knocking herself out via table to the head. (Although with the way her head is pounding, that might actually be an improvement.) "Yeah, I think you're going to have to sit this one out, Rubes," her sister tells her, half-steering, half-carrying her towards the stairs. "We're not completely useless without you, you know. We'll handle things until you're feeling better."
Thank you for reading! Please leave a review if you liked it.