Ruby was on the floor, face down, without any comforting barrier between herself and the hard, red wood. Her back really hurt after so many days of just lying there, but she couldn't find the energy to rise.
Keekero was busy tending what pigs remained unexploded, Benedicta was trying to hide the fact she was spying on Ruby, the brothers were away as usual, and Mirta had invited Yang out to hunt.
So Ruby just laid there. Breathing. In and out. Tired, too tired to sleep, exhaustion weighing down on her soul. Today felt particularly bad, so far, she didn't think she could get up if she tried.
Useless. Just useless.
For all that talk of making a 'distraction', she actually had thought she could take Pyrrha on. Some part of her still believed so, stubbornly blaming her loss on the inhuman feat of flexibility that cracked her head on that baton, but the logical part of her brain knew that it simply wasn't meant to be.
Unfortunately, the logical part of her brain imparted no comfort as to how useless she was— the truth hurts, after all. Stuck here, trapped in her own body, no weapon… all she had to be thankful for was that she could see properly now— the swelling around her eye had finally shrunk down.
Ruby groaned. She had to bite hard on her lip to keep the sobs in.
She'd lost her cleaver. She'd lost her hammer. All her weapons left to rust in that forest. What was she supposed to do now? Menace the Knight Captain to death? And that's assuming she ever got better— no one had told her whether Aura exhaustion this severe had any permanent effects, or if it coming back was even a certainty. Yang hadn't talked to her much lately. She'd been too busy repaying the care this family had extended, just under some blind assumption that she had to.
Internally, the smith chided herself. They were greatly indebted to these kind people. She shouldn't be bitter about that, she should be thankful. She'd exploded their pig, after all, repaying them was the least they could do. She had no right to complain, she was just taking out her frustration at her own uselessness.
Of course, they wouldn't be indebted if she'd just been a good girl and listened to her father. Laying there, soulless, she'd never felt less worthy in her life. Tai was right. She wasn't ready for all this, but her hubris had caught her in its web all the same. Now she was being pursued by some inhuman aberration and wanted across her own country, if not the world. Stuck in some unfamiliar realm, weaponless, friendless, soulless.
Ruby smacked her forehead into the floor, shaking loose the tears that had been welling in her eyes. "Sh-shit…" she mumbled. Yang always said cursing made her feel better. "Shepherd's… fuck…"
Ruby groaned. Blake did it better, she just wasn't made for swearing like the fay was. Even now, after everything, the words still felt foreign to her lips. She groaned and flipped onto her back.
Her eyes caught Benedicta scurrying back around the corner of her room. Ruby left her gaze there, knowing the girl would peek around in a few moments.
She did, and let out a little squeak when she was caught. It was cute.
With nothing else to occupy it, her mind idly wandered. Had Pyrrha ever been like that? Cute? She must have been, her human form had to come from somewhere; whatever-she-was-now didn't say it created her. Maybe she'd ask next time they saw each other— being distractingly obtuse seemed to be the only way to actually unnerve that creature.
Ruby let herself chuckle a little. Those jokes were really good.
But now she was stuck here, staring at the ceiling, no Aura, no cleaver, no Weiss. Nothing to anchor her mind, to keep it from blasting her with every stray thought, every repressed worry, every unspoken regret.
Her inner voice latched onto one particular worry, one that had been nagging at the back of her mind for a while, now. Weiss' deal with Blake was bad, especially as things were now. She didn't know if Pyrrha could find them, but she certainly didn't want to get caught between freeing Binders and having their heads freed from their necks. Having lost to that monster twice now, she found her old morals cracking under that choice.
She'd run. She would, without a second thought, leave others to face a plight worse than she could ever imagine, so long as it meant she wouldn't have to die to the Knight Captain.
Ruby's gut twisted— when did she become a coward? Was one bad defeat all it took to shake her world, just like one troubling fact had been enough to shake her budding relationship with Weiss?
She itched to get up, to move her feet, to fight. She needed to be ready. There was no way they'd get a happily-ever-after without a lot of fighting, especially since they'd scrambled to the Shimmer. She may not know what politics and monsters lie in this realm, but she was certain that it wouldn't let them go easily.
She thought of her cleaver. Her poor cleaver. Sitting out in the forest, the wet forest, getting wet, getting dirty, and— under the Watcher's own gaze— rusting. How long had she spent on it? How much time had she spent scrapping, casting, forging, failing, repeating, only for it to rust away in the mud of the gods-forsaken Emerald Forest?
And her hammer. Meeting much the same fate, she imagined.
And her dagger, the iron one; her first gift from her uncle. Sure, it was little more than a peasant's iron rondel, but she loved it all the same. It'd given her her first win against Yang, after all, far exceeding its humble appearance.
And now it was sinking in the muck, handle broken, iron rusting. Like everything else.
Ruby felt like she was rusting. She'd spent so many hours lazing around, unable to lift the depressing exhaustion off her shoulders. It dulled her every aspect, but especially her spirit. She felt like mold. Decaying. Disgusting. Useless. She just wanted to lay down and wither, crumble into her component parts and join her weapons in the dirt.
She imagined it, pictured her hollow shell of a body, the soul that once filled it, shattering like glass. Its pieces flew across the dirt, away from the world but nonetheless at its mercy. She could feel the earth piling around her, the cold, wet loam burying her body, a shallow grave for a shallow existence.
But… it was nice. Pressed on all sides by the cool promise of Remnant's reclamation, the absorption of her being into the realm itself. As it was, with no soul, there would be no pasture for her, so she got to revel in post-death all on her own, her eyes closing as she fell into the experience like a dream.
Her mind hadn't slowed, her thoughts hadn't eased, but her body was locked like a corpse, drowning her in the mental riptide. But she let it. She let them in, tired of fighting against them, of flailing against the current only to drown.
She should be scared, should be bolting up and hacking the imaginary water out of her lungs, but she wasn't. Here, where the flowing depths battered her ears and breached the cracks of her hollow soul, she felt no fear, because there wasn't any reason to be afraid. There was no worrying for victory or loss, because she'd already accepted defeat, she had let go, she had embraced the promise of the Chasm, she had broken bones, lost teeth, taken nails.
Compared to everything else, what was the well of her soul? Sure, it had run dry, but so had she. Dry of blood and life and fear, and still she lived. Perhaps it was her fate, some contract unknowingly signed between the gods. A plaything of destiny, a ragdoll for forces on high. And if they wanted that for her… then so be it.
So long as she lived. So long as she could crawl from the waters, battered by the waves and the jagged rocks, so long as she could force the water out and force the air in.
People die everyday, Red. You've already lost everything, so why do you care?
Ruby had never been one to talk to herself, but she supposed now was as good a time as any. Without a soul in her shell, the voice echoed twice as loud, but it just rolled over her, washing over her state of bone-deep calm.
Ruby scoffed. When hearing it semi-externally, she realized how childish of a supposition it was. Really, what had she lost? Her sister was okay, Weiss and Blake were probably fine, and her uncle had been through worse. Her weapons were… weapons. Steel and iron, just the same as anyone else's. Sure, losing her cleaver hurt, but she could always forge another. Her family was alive, Weiss and Blake were alive, all for the cost of some scrap she melted together and sharpened when she was fourteen. Honestly, it was a little offensive— Weiss was worth way more than that.
And her soul was dead, but… so what? She could walk, she couldspeak, she could live, it would just be a massive pain, but her body was used to pain. Perhaps, dead calm and hollow, floating in the cloudy sea of her own mind, she…
She didn't really care anymore about proving herself. She'd taken it all, and she came out living; she didn't need her father's respect to see that. Life was hers to take.
Besides, if she just rusted away, she wouldn't get to kiss Weiss again.
Ruby twitched, eyes snapping open. Her fingertips tingled. Her chest started to dance. Something shot up her throat.
A whip-crack hum shot across her body, alighting her nerves like a shock from the heavens. She immediately surged to her feet, the edges of her form morphing into petals and enhancing even the tiniest movements. The little red pads burst from her body, coating the wooden flooring until their scent permeated the room.
The torrent of worries ground to a halt in her mind, finally slowing enough that she could grab their little necks and stuff them into bottles— stashed away in the back of her head, for now, since there were more important things to worry about. Things like being alive, things like moving, things like bursting out of the door and shouting up at whatever weird, stupid fish-thing hovered past the sky. Ruby tore across the prairie, pushing the limits of her Aura's sudden resurgence as she carved across the thick red fields, her momentum dragging enough wind to bend the grass around her swirling path.
What she usually called a blink lasted forminutes— ages compared to her second-long bursts—before she finally felt the tap of her soul start to thin once more. With a freshly cleared mind and no desperation of combat, she gradually bled her speed until she came to something she could safely roll out of, unlike the violent tumbles that she'd been forced to bear as of late. The tall grasses, too thick for her to simply fall through, cushioned the rest of her landing; they bent against her, half-propping her up so she could stare at the strange sky.
Ruby sighed, blowing all the pain of the last few days into the air. If almost-dying ended up feeling this good every time, she might be tempted to do it more often.
She snorted. Definitely not.
A/N:fun lil chappywappy, ruby finally caught a break. im so proud
anyway, uh... man. man man man. ive been writing summer stuff for like a week straight now. like 25k words in three chapters, so far. its fucking awesome, summer is AWFUL. just wretched, in the best kind of way. such a fun backstory, and writing/researching rome is super fun, fay worldbuilding is absolutely joyous. theres even a little teutoberg forest reference, kinda. and MAN is summer a cool ass legate. idek if theres a point to what im writing, its just trying to hammer something solid for rubys mom, but god damn is it fun. makes me want to just flip it into an original works, since all the names are already different. ruby gets the talk, many of them, finally confronting her whole flat earther thing lol... which is super ironic, considering her grandpa... oh man. oh man oh man. i really hope this is what i stick with, cuz GOD i wanna post it so bad, im even thinking of just slapping it down as a side oneshot just to put it out. i even put excerpts of it on my tumblr, for anyone who wants to get potentially spoiled lol.
sorry for big a/n lol. see yall next time.