Ruby pulled her cheek aside, groaning as she observed the noticeable gap in the back of her mouth. She probed the area with a finger and immediately regretted it.

"It could certainly be worse," Blake remarked. "At least you moved up."

Ruby moved the piece of polished metal over her whole face, catching her sister and Blake in the reflection. They both stood behind her, the former wearing a conflicted scowl while the latter seemed to be expressing genuine, if mild, concern. They were in a much nicer room than last night, paid for at Yang's insistence and from her own coin purse, which was considerably fatter than Ruby had expected.

She stared deeply into the metal mirror, eyes roving over her entire face. Her eyebrow scar was still bright red since Dove had reopened it, and the second breaking of her nose had left behind a visible offset. The ear-to-nose cut had healed a little better, but the repeated strain of her Aura made it only slightly pinker than her split brow. She looked down at her right wrist and grimaced at the wound across her forearm. Her motor control had thankfully returned since she woke up here, but it was another scar to add to the pile. She wondered how she would look by the end of this.

Yang, judging by her pensive scowl, seemed to be sharing that thought. "Ruby," she started, voice unsure. "I'm not sure if this is… smart."

Ruby whirled on her sister. "Huh? But you—"

"I know, I know!" Her hands came up defensively, "I just… he could've killed you. And it looks like he wanted to! What did you do?"

Ruby threw her arms up in defeat. "How am I supposed to know!"

"Well, you did cut someone's arm off." Blake pointed out, casually gesturing as she leaned into the corner.

Ruby growled. "That wasn't my fault! He was going to kill you!"

Blake shrugged. "I'm used to it, I would've been fine."

"Fine?" Ruby scoffed. "You couldn't even stand back up!"

Amber eyes narrowed at the girl, but no refutation followed.

"And that other guy was killing people in the first round, like it was nothing!" Ruby added with a gesture imitating the man's murderous pollax.

Yang jumped in with a raised hand. "Well he is covered head-to-toe in plate, while you," she gestured to her uncloaked sister, clad only in a linen shirt that came down to mid-thigh, "wear a cloak, at most."

Ruby looked between her sister and Blake with a frown. "I have vambraces."

"Had," Blake corrected with a snort. "Now you're down to one."

Ruby's hands balled into fists. "Okay, so what if I don't have any armor! I just won't—"

The simultaneous eyebrow-raise and head-tilt from both Yang and Blake interrupted her. "You won't what?" Yang sarcastically probed.

"Get hit?" Blake asked in perfect tandem, as if they had planned this conversation.

"So what do you want me to do, huh?" Ruby asked, frustrated. "Should I just quit?"

Yang opened her mouth, but Blake pounced first. "Of course not! Just… you know, be safe!"

Ruby pursed her lips. "And how do I do that?"

Blake's gaze deferred to Yang, who seemed conflicted. After a moment of thought, she slowly approached her sister and clasped her shoulders, casting a dismissive nod towards Blake. The fay raised an eyebrow, then shrugged and left.

When she closed the door behind her, Yang sighed. "You don't have to do this, Ruby. We can go back home, I'm sure dad will be happy to see you."

Ruby looked at her sister, features twisting with betrayal. "Happy to see me? Happy? He'll be furious!"

Yang shook her head. "He would've found you himself if he were angry. He sent me because he was too afraid you would just run."

"I wouldn't run!" Ruby shouted, shrugging her sister's hands off her shoulders.

Yang backed up, arms folding over her chest as she cast the smith a doubtful look. "Then what is this whole thing about? You ran away from home, Ruby."

Ruby recoiled as if the words had physically struck her. "I'm not running," she insisted, seething through her teeth, "I have to prove myself."

"Prove what, Ruby? What do you have to prove to him?"

"That I can take it!" She yelled, eyes screwing shut as her fists clenched at her sides. "I can do it! I can be like you!"

Yang gave her a pitying look that only made Ruby angrier. "You don't have to hurt yourself to prove that you're strong. We already know that."

"Do we?" Ruby stomped up to her sister, poking her chest. "Then why won't he let me hunt? Why won't he train me?"

"You're too young," Yang stated.

Ruby's face twisted as she relived the argument with her father. "I'm just as old as you were!"

"You're the best smit—"

Ruby growled and pushed her sister, making the older girl gasp in surprise. "I don't care! I don't want to spend the rest of my life at a damn forge! I want to be like mom! I want to make a name for myself, be someone that other people look up to!"

Yang stared at her sister, words lodging in her throat. She watched the anger slowly seep away from Ruby's silver eyes, replaced by a carnal desperation.

"Please, Yang, please let me do this," she tearily begged, surging forward to grip her sister's arms.

Though they were swimming in tears, those silver irises burned with a fire Yang knew all too well. Equal parts hurt and unsure, she averted her gaze. "Just…" she sighed. "Please don't get hurt anymore. I'll give you my breastplate and my helmet. They probably won't fit, but they'll keep you from getting killed and keep your face pretty."

Ruby waved her concerns away with an unbothered scoff. "Yeah, with my face as it is now, this will probably be my only chance to get wed."

Yang just stared in response, making the atmosphere extremely stuffy when she didn't laugh at her joke. She stepped into Ruby's space with a seriousness the smith had never seen before, then took her face in her hands, leaning close to match her gaze. Curiosity burned behind her lilac irises.

"Uh, Yang?" Ruby's voice lilted with concern as her gaze drifted everywhere but sister's.

Yang moved her head around, inspecting her from various angles before resetting her, then stepping back with a small, proud smile. "I suppose the young lady Schnee wouldn't be the worst to find yourself wed to. She'd be lucky, if anything. I imagine those scars will come out quite dashing."

Ruby's eyebrows darted up her forehead, then came back down into a confused furrow. "T-that was a joke."

Yang hummed, unbothered. "I wouldn't judge, you know, I've found plenty of widows with a… spare bed, if you understand my meaning. Certainly beats paying for rooms like these, especially after a long hunt in a new town." She let out a long sigh, eyes closing as she looked to be reliving a memory.

Ruby stared, understanding nothing. "W-huh? What are you saying?"

Yang's eyes snapped back open, lilac gaze affixing her sister with disbelief. "You don't…" she drifted off, thinking back to something. "That Knight— Penny, I think her name was— she was… you know, right?"

Ruby's confusion doubled. "What does Penny have to do with this?"

Yang pinched the bridge of her nose. Had she really spent so much time away from her own sister? Had they exchanged so little of life outside of their training? "Ruby, she fancied you."

Ruby reeled, head shaking instinctively. "What?"

"Obnoxiously so, I might add."

Ruby threw her hands up, as if she could wave the conversation away. "That's not— we're not— she's a girl, Yang!" She finished with a heated whisper.

"Well…" Yang wiggled her hands, shoulders high. "Knights don't really work like that, but regardless, that means nothing."

"Nothing?" Ruby shouted incredulously. "How… but…"

"Has dad not… talked to you? About any of this?" Yang's head tilted at her sister, bewildered.

Ruby slowly shook her head.

"Watcher's eyes," Yang swore under her breath. "Do you like boys, Ruby?"

Ruby wanted to answer immediately, to shout a confident 'yes' to her sister, but she found herself caught in her head. Did she? She supposed she might like Jaune, but… she wasn't sure. She wasn't sure of anything. She didn't even know what it was like to like anybody. "I don't know?"

Yang pursed her lips. "You don't know if you like boys? What about Jaune?"

Ruby felt her stomach knot up, and not in the way it did around Blake or Penny. More in a guilty way. "I… I don't know what that's even like. What am I supposed to feel?"

Yang closed her eyes and nodded, a pensive look wrinkling her brow. She seemed to be deep in thought. "You should… you should feel… scared. Or anxious."

Ruby recoiled. "I thought this was supposed to be a good thing!"

Yang's hands came up, imploring patience from her sister. "It is a good thing, but it's also a scary thing. You're scared that the person will feel the same about you, and that you'll have to have a long talk about something dangerous. You're scared they don't feel the same about you, and you'll have worked so hard for nothing. You're anxious about starting something new, anxious about somebody taking them before you get a chance. You want to be seen. You want them watching your every move." She opened her eyes once more, her lilac gaze meeting her sister's with a sage confidence that Ruby had never seen before. "Knight, boy, girl, it doesn't matter in the end. What matters is that you lived as you want."

Ruby watched her sister in awe. Silently, she vowed they would talk more when they got home— outside of training. Yang was considerably wiser than her fists let on.

"That's why I'm a Huntress." Yang's eyes suddenly turned sullen and dropped to the floor before she lowered herself into the room's sole wooden chair. She stared at her hands for a long moment, then continued in a much quieter, much less confident tone. "I… I know I'm… pretty. Or beautiful. Whatever. I know. But I just don't care. And as much as I hate my mother, there is one thing that she did to inspire me. She left."

Ruby cocked her head and gave her sister a worried look, but wouldn't dare interrupt her when she was talking about Raven— she knew so little about her sister's mother, she'd left when Ruby was barely old enough to babble.

"As disgraceful as it was to leave, I understand why she did it. She was free as a Huntress. Once she got that royal decree, nothing could hold her down, no border, no debt, no beast— nothing, save for one." The words came so easily, with such clarity that she must have been waiting to get them off her chest, begging forsomeone to listen. "Love."

"Love?" Ruby blurted.

"It's the ultimate force, Ruby. It's romantic and silly, but it's true. Love is the strongest thing on Remnant, and that's terrifying. You can look at a person and dedicate yourself to their being for nothing more than a passing fancy, and they don't even have to share that feeling!" Yang raised her voice like she had been personally offended.

Ruby stared, not quite understanding what her sister was getting at, but listening raptly nonetheless.

"Raven loved me, and that scared her. Love is the world's greatest force, that also makes it the strongest shackle." Yang's head dropped low. She took a deep breath. "Not long before she left, she took me somewhere, held my hand and led me deep in the forests of Patch. When we were deep enough, she looked me in the eyes and told me that she didn't love me, and that she was going to leave me in that forest to die, that way she wouldn't have to kill me herself."

Ruby gasped, eyes wide. How had she never heard this before?

Yang mirthlessly chuckled to herself. "I knew she was lying. I saw it in her eyes; she loved me more than anything in the world, and she'd only taken me there because she didn't have the strength to do the job herself."

Ruby watched her tear up before she hid her face. She reached out to comfort her, but Yang stopped her. The Huntress shook her head and took another deep, shaky breath.

"That's what inspired me. Maybe not at the time, but I got older. The more I learned of the world— the more I learned of what's expected of me, especially as a lady— the more I understood why she did it. Raven had basked in the freedom of being a Huntress for so long, she didn't even know what it was like to be shackled until the chains were already around her." Yang faced her sister with pleading eyes, surprising her. "Don't you understand? She had the strength to abandon her love, to preserve her freedom!"

Ruby looked at her like she'd grown a second head. That was not where Ruby had thought she'd be going with this. "She left you to die in a forest," she stated.

Yang shrugged and looked away. "Oh, please, I ended up fine. I think she knew that would give me the fire I needed, like some lust for vengeance, at least until I understood."

"So… you're not mad at her?"

Yang scoffed, waving her sister's concerns away. "Of course not! She did what she had to do to stay free. I respect it."

Ruby blinked. She'd never known Yang to be this… philosophical, nor had she known Yang to be the kind of person that didn't hold a grudge. She wanted to dismiss it as them not spending enough time away from training together, but then she caught the tremble in her sister's fist, the way it was clenched, and the ghostly white knuckles on each finger. "Yang…"

Ruby watched her clam up, a barely-audible mumble escaping her mouth. "I understand," Yang insisted, hissing like she had to pass her words through grit teeth. "I'm a Huntress."

Ruby reached for her sister, and this time she wasn't batted away. Yang yanked her in for a crushing embrace. Ruby yelped.

"I love you, Ruby," the words pushed past Yang's lips with force. "Dad loves you too— that's why we're scared. We don't want you to get hurt."

Ruby opened her mouth to speak, but Yang clapped a hand over it.

"Let me finish!" She demanded. "We don't want you to get hurt, but I want you to be free to choose for yourself. Dad could never understand, but I do."

Ruby felt gracious tears pooling in her eyes, but her rush to embrace Yang was stopped by her strong arms, keeping her at bay. Ruby pouted.

"But, you are not allowed to die, do you understand me?" Yang commanded, her eyes hard as they bored into Ruby's. "If you die, I will pry you out of the Shepherd's flock with my own hands, then poke the Watcher's eyes out so he can't stop me from shoving your idiot soul back into your idiot body, then you will be grounded in the forge until I see ten times as many nails as you made for Jaune's ship. Is that clear?"

"Y-yes, ma'am!" Ruby stammered, hand flying over her chest in a salute.

Yang held her stern look for a few more moments before letting it melt into a smile. "Great," she sighed, eyes briefly shutting before opening with a new, playful spark. "So how about that fay, Blake? Pretty hot, huh?"

Ruby opened her mouth to spew denial, but another voice filled the room instead.

"You guys know I can hear you, right?"

Yang and Ruby turned, finding that same fay lass poking her head through the door. She entered the rest of the way, brow raised at the two as her arms crossed over her chest. She was talking to them both, but her accusatory gaze was focused mainly on the Huntress.

The sisters blushed, stumbling over each other with apologies and excuses.

Blake rolled her eyes and shut them up with a wave of her hand. "Please, humans aren't my thing, anyways."

AN: i have no clue how this got so long, but im pretty happy with it so nbd i guess