Ruby mindlessly dragged a freshly-bought honestone across her iron cleaver, whetting it. The blade hummed in appreciation, satiating her need for background noise as she fell deeper into thought. Her eyes remained in the stands across from her, boring a hole in the seat the young lady Schnee would take. Her foot tapped incessantly.

"I got the roster," Yang called as she approached, breaking Ruby's concentration and making the smith jump. "Woah, didn't mean to scare you. Are you alright?"

Ruby nodded silently. Her face and wrist still harbored a dull, throbbing soreness due to her injuries, but she had been through worse. She wedged a thumb in the open arm-hole of her breastplate, pushing it up and out to relieve the developing irritation of poorly-fit armor.

"Sorry," Yang mumbled as she opened the roster. "Chafing is better than dying."

Ruby hummed in response. With practiced ease, she placed her cleaver back in her lap and clasped its leather sheath around it, then returned her stone to its pouch.

Yang leaned forward, lilac irises holding a mote of concern. "You okay? I know we talked about some serious things yesterday."

Ruby sighed. "I… I don't know," she admitted, "I just want to get this fight over with."

Yang cracked a smile and wiggled her eyebrows. "Eager to meet your future betrothed?"

Ruby flushed brightly, throwing her gaze to the floor. "N-no! It's… not like that. I just… I mean…" Her whole body sagged, deflated. "I don't know."

Yang's playfulness turned sympathetic. She wrapped an arm over her sister's shoulders, pulling her close as she sighed. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have dropped so much on you in one night. Learning about love is scary enough in itself, but also laying the burden of my abandonment on your shoulders? Too much. I'm sorry, Ruby."

Ruby sighed, leaning into her sister's warmth against the chill morning. Still, she couldn't meet her eyes. "I don't even know who she really is, Yang. She's pretty, I think, but I… don't care? I really just want to win the tournament," she chuckled ruefully. "I probably won't even see her— going in there would be… a risk."

Yang cocked her head, brow raising at her sibling.

Ruby stood her cleaver up between her legs and rested her chin on the end of its hilt. "We're girls, Yang, and nothing is going to change that," she stated with a sigh. "I doubt the Schnees would be happy to find their youngest daughter out gallivanting with another girl. If they're doing this for suitors, that means they want children."

Yang shrugged. "Magic can do all kinds of weird things."

Ruby shot her a deadpan look, making the Huntress raise her hands in surrender. Ruby stared off behind her sister, where she could see a tall figure in a dandelion cloak watching them. Blake. A light blush came over her cheeks as she looked away. "I-I think I'm… okay with being alone. I'm much too rough to wed now, but I could find joy in being a Huntress. And even if that doesn't work out, I am the best smith in Patch. With some Huntress money, I could get my own forge in Vale."

Yang's brows rose, eyes widening at her sister. "That's… quite the plan, Ruby."

The smith shrugged in reply. "It's the smart thing to do, and no part of it includes 'the shackling power of love'," she quoted with her fingers in the air. "I'll be free enough."

Yang stared. Did… did her little sister have a better plan in life than she did? She'd just planned on living hunt-to-hunt, and it netted her fair coin so far, but now it felt… childish. How much longer would she live like a storybook hero? Caught in her own thoughts, she remained silent.

Yang's attention was grabbed again when her sister moved, taking Yang's helmet into her hands. Ruby stared into the visor. It was a close helm, meaning it had a static bevor that came up from the chin like a long prism, then sharply plateaued at the visor's horizontal slit, giving it a beak-like appearance. Ruby raised the helmet overhead, then draped the drooping cloth out over her breastplate. They had checked the helmet's fit the night before, discovering that it would pinch and wobble insecurely without a buffer. Yang smartly remedied that with the purchase of a couple cowls, which were subsequently layered together and stuffed into the helmet itself. Altogether, they fit well enough to protect her most vital areas, though they pressed on her collar and limited her vision.

Ruby turned to her sister, half-heartedly gesturing over herself. "How do I look?"

"Like your armor doesn't fit you," Yang said with a snort. "Here, this'll help."

Yang reached over and pulled the girl's hood over the helmet, the umber cloth more than accommodating for the armor's size. When she pulled the cloak back over Ruby's front, she couldn't even see the poorly fit armor beneath, and the hood being up gave her a mysterious, intimidating look.

"Wow, yeah," Yang marveled, proud of her handiwork. "That's much better."

Ruby tried to look down at herself, then huffed when she saw nothing but her peaked bevor. "I hate this."

Yang rolled her eyes. "It's really not that bad. Just keep yourself facing your opponent, and don't get knocked down."

Ruby groaned. "You make it sound so easy."

"You get used to it," Yang replied with a shrug.

Ruby sighed and pulled her visor up, opening her view enough to be slightly less claustrophobic. She kept watch across the stands again, as if Weiss would magically appear in her seat if she weren't looking. And after everything she'd seen, that didn't seem too unreasonable.

"Hmm, the roster says you'll be fighting in triples today." Yang mused as she read through the list. "Odd. Do they want the final fight to be a triple as well?"

Ruby cocked her head at her sister— or she would've, if there weren't a helmet in the way. "You can read?"

Yang shrugged. "Short things like lists and hunt posters— how else would I get work? It's just the long things I have a problem with. The letters tend to trade places when they're too close together, like in books and such."

Ruby frowned. Long or short, she couldn't make heads or tails of the infernal glyphs. They just didn't make sense to her, the way those things look is not what words are like, and Tai had never been a great teacher. Her heart sank. She wondered if her mother would have been able to teach her.

"Loyal Imperial citizens of the grand city of Vale! Show respect as we are once again graced with the presence of this event's organizers and our fine city's sworn protectors: House Schnee!"

Ruby jumped at the announcer's boisterous voice, her eyes immediately flying to the trio of palanquins and locking on the rearmost of them. Weiss Schnee was in there. Anxiety rose in her chest. She didn't know how to feel.

"It looks like you're fighting against Alis-ta-ir Vaw…ks?" Yang said, breaking Ruby's attention away from the arriving nobility as she pressed close beside her, roster held out for both to see. Her pronunciations followed her finger, each noise from her mouth apparently assigned to one or more of the indecipherable black glyphs. "And Nep-tun— no, Nep-tune Vas… woah. Vas-il…as? Ias? Vas-il-ias. Vasilias."

Ruby felt a small smile turn her lips, alongside a loosening of the anxious knots in her chest. Yang didn't judge her, she just went right to showing her. Even if it didn't help Ruby understand, it made her feel much better.

So, Neptune. She surmised that he was the blue-haired boy, the one his friend called 'Nep.' Perhaps this Alistair was that friend, though she had no way of figuring that out herself.

"There she is," Yang commented, drawing Ruby's eyes back up to the stands, where the palanquins were set down. Jacques came out first, adorned with his usual garb of big, fancy clothes that swallowed him up. His wife followed, looking like a porcelain doll in a navy dress. Then came Weiss.

Ruby felt her breath hitch, her heart pumping hard against her chest. She didn't care, she really didn't. It wasn't right— they were both girls, and nothing Yang said could convince her that anybody would be okay with that. Not that it mattered if they did— she didn't care, anyways. Weiss was just an important noble with money she's never worked for. She provided the means for Ruby to acquire her freedom. That was it. Her eyes were just stuck on her because of that bright blue, objectively beautiful dress, and it wasn't weird the way her gaze lingered on her neck— that pearl-studded lattice was beautiful! She could be—

Weiss was staring at her.

Ruby immediately shrank into herself, face turning hot as those icy irises— strikingly visible even from a distance— bored into her. She watched the young lady's shoulders drop, ever so slightly, and she was sure that there was not a ghost of a smile gentling her regal features— no, not regal, she had a normal face! Ruby itched to smack some sense into herself, but the damn helmet was in the way.

A chuckle beside her drew the smith's boiling silver glare. Yang smirked at her sister, mouth hidden by the back of her hand.

"Shut up," Ruby hissed, turning away.

Yang sighed. "'I don't really care'," she mockingly quoted, self-satisfaction brimming through her voice.

With one swift move, Ruby extracted the whetstone from her pouch and chucked it at her sister's head.

AN: yes i did take inspiration from the ds3 fallen knight set, thank you very much