Ruby remembered Beacon. The spires that reached to the heavens, the sweeping architecture like open arms to greet the students. She remembered Jaune barfing. She remembered running into Weiss, then promptly exploding in front of her. She remembered their initiation, when she and Weiss had locked eyes and set their fate as partners in stone. She remembered riding that Nevermore— dust, that'd been a bad idea. She remembered the dance… well, she remembered Weiss at the dance. She'd stared at her and Neptune, stomach twisting into knots with feelings she thought she had sworn off for good.
She remembered the train. She would never forget it— her first taste of the horrors to come. It seemed so small, now.
She remembered the Vytal Tournament. Being matched against JNPR in the first round— could she be blamed for expecting an easy break? She remembered the relieved sigh when she saw their match pop up on the board. Then, the sheer humiliation as Team JNPR mopped the floor with them. She criedon Weiss' shoulder that night— she'd never been so disappointed in herself.
She remembered summer break. The calls from Weiss, building her scope with Penny, texts from Weiss, sparring with Qrow, more texts from Weiss. Even when they weren't in school, she found a way to occupy Ruby's mind at all times.
And it was over before they knew it. Then they were back at school. Weiss had shorter hair and sexy pants. Ozpin gave a speech that made her briefly reconsider being a Huntress. Qrow became a professor. Weiss cut her. Weiss kissed her scars. Ruby cut her arm off. Ruby risked her life with an extremely risky and impossibly painful Aura transfer, intertwining their very souls in a ritual that saved Weiss— even though Ruby was the very reason her life needed to be saved.
Then Weiss took her on a date. After that, things fell apart.
Weiss was more affected than she'd let on. She couldn't even look Ruby in the eyes without having a full breakdown. Weiss avoided her for an agonizing while, only making Ruby's smitten heart grow fonder; until the day Ruby decided to tell her that no matter how much Weiss avoided her, she'd always care for her. They talked in the library after class. Things were going well.
Their school exploded. Ruby lost an eye. They escaped.
They kissed. "I'll try," Weiss had said, "for you."
Then Adam took her.
Her eye throbbed.
"Ruby?" The rebel, the unscathed— Ruby needed a smoke. "She's waking up!"
She was on a gurney. She'd left her arm and legs in Atlas. Adam straddled her, talon inching towards her remaining eye. Penny's warm hands gently held the sides of her head, fighting away the cold of the Atlesian winter. Her presence melted and melded, surged forward, rocketed back, her mind tossed around, chewed up, and spit out. Everything flinched. Her eye throbbed.
She floated in a sea of black emptiness, her mother's face looming over her, consoling her, beckoning her. Her hands stretched towards Summer, only for a hollow scarlet beacon to cast its awful light over her face, revealing the bloody gash across her left eye. A voice rose from the light's direction, the same voice that had spoken through Adam's mouth. It called to her with sensuous, matronly tones.
"You look just like your mother."
Ruby's mind inverted— skull twisted— being shifted. She stood alone, rose-headed staff in her shaking hands. She swung it back and forth, desperate, exhausted, then stumbled forward as a trio of gashes ripped across her back. She blindly swung backwards, only for the backs of her legs to turn red as invisible claws ripped through. Ruby could feel her screaming.
Her throat opened. Her cry became a bloody gurgle.
Her eye pulsed— she felt her body mold and stretch, her being pulled apart and crushed back together in the cargo hold of a Bullhead. The chill of being mostly naked in the airship was rather uncomfortable, so she took to prying off the lid off a nearby crate, certain that her clothes would be stashed within.
Ruby didn't quite parse the contents of the first crate. After all, who expected to find explosives in a box that their shirt was supposed to be in? She dropped the lid and rushed to lift up the next one. More explosives. Crap.
She broke into the cockpit and scuffled with the captain, managing to wrestle him into the bay. Ruby locked the door behind her, bracing herself against it.
"Keep an eye on her Aura, Lux, I see it fluctuating on the monitor."
The poor girl's eye was completely deflated, and her Aura had likely been too traumatically depleted to heal it. Even if it hadn't, eye injuries were rare to recover from— Aura could only do so much for such a complicated organ. Ruby sighed, then began the enucleation. She started with a 360-degree conjunctival peritomy to remove the corneal border. Ruby gently grabbed the thin layer and, once the limbus was fully out of the way, gently pulled apart the episcleral tissue. She then began the tedious (but necessary) process identifying, isolating, and securing each of the rectus muscles, before transecting them one-by-one with her scissors. She leaned over the girl to get a better look.
Ruby fell forward, the grip on her cloak yanking her down as she planted her hands on either side of her partner's head. She hung over Weiss, panting. Her lips tingled, her heart was beating out of her chest, and the bond was dancing. She'd finally done it. All the work, all the uncertainty, all the pain, it paid off. No more ups-and-downs, no more jerking around. She leaned down to capture Weiss' lips again, only for the dirt under her palms to give, sink, and break away. The sky sucked Weiss out from under her, leaving her behind. Alone.
"Aura flux— hands off!" Lux shouted, ever vigilant.
Ruby quickly pulled away from the girl, watching with dread as her Aura surged. She watched sparks fly around the cut muscles, threatening to undo their work and possibly reconstruct the eye even worse than before.
Thankfully, Ruby knew that Lux was excellent at her job. "Administering suppressants," the anesthesiologist announced.
Ruby sighed as the patient's Aura settled back into impotence, and only continued the enucleation when she got the nod from Lux. Fearing another surge, she cut as quickly as she could. After freeing the globe from the ocular muscles and confirming the useless organ's free rotation, she lifted it from the socket, exposing the thin cord of red that connected the eye to her brain. "Optic nerve," she muttered, then strummed it with her scissors. The thing was loose— way too much for any kind of proper connection. With a quick snip of her scissors, she severed it.
Her eye throbbed. She reached for Weiss, but the hallway stretched forever.
Falling, falling.
"Weiss!" She screamed, bolting straight up. The world spun around her, her stomach twisted, and bile surged. She turned to spew on the floor rather than on herself, only for a bucket to suddenly appear in front of her. She desperately gripped it and emptied her stomach. When her heaving stopped, she turned to whatever messiah provided her with the precious receptacle.
It was Yang. Her lilac eyes matched her gentle smile. She held a wide tablet in her hands, which she flipped up to show her sister.
'We're at dad's', the tablet read in simple typeface, 'he carried you in lol'.
Ruby blinked. With a quick glance cast about the room, she confirmed her sister's statement. She was in the bedroom they shared, wearing a thin hospital gown. She slowly reached up to her face.
Yang's movement caught her eye before she could touch her face. The blonde tapped on the tablet, then showed it to Ruby. 'They took out your eye,' it read, 'you've been asleep for three days'.
"Th-three… days?" Ruby rasped, throat incredibly dry.
Yang's cheerful expression dropped briefly, just long enough for Ruby to see past the unworried facade. She tapped away for another second, then flipped her words up again. '2 days in Atlas + most of today. doc said to bring u back if u started dying lol'.
Ruby opened her mouth to ask for water, but a knowing nod from her sister directed her to the cup at her bedside. She snatched it quickly, draining its blessed contents so fast it made her cough. When she finished sputtering, she faced Yang again. "Where's Blake?" She asked, only slightly less hoarse.
Yang's false smile disappeared for good this time, replaced with a scowl and the briefest flash of red in her eyes. She held a finger up to her tablet, pointing to the fourth word in her last statement: 'Atlas'.
Ruby cocked her head. "Atlas? Why?"
Yang's jaw visibly flexed as she angrily tapped on her tablet, then jerked it up to show her sister. 'Racist assholes', she wrote, 'they wouldn't let her leave'.
Ruby frowned in sympathy, but couldn't find any genuine anger to share with her sister. She should be enraged, she knew, she should be crying and screaming until her throat bled after everything that's happened, but she just couldn't find the feelings inside her. They were all buried alive, their desperate cries muffled under a heavy blanket of bone-wracking fatigue. "Where's dad?" She found herself asking.
Yang's visible anger eased slightly and she stood, hand held out. Ruby promptly took it, shoulder stinging as her sister helped her up, then led them both downstairs. Ruby's entire body prickled with the reverberation of each step.
They found Tai reclined on the couch, teetering on the edge of sleep with a beer nearly slipping from his hand. He caught them just before his eyes could slip closed, jolting him awake and nearly sending his drink can flying. He shot to his feet to help Ruby down the stairs. She didn't really need the help.
"Are you okay?" Tai fretted. "I've got some leftovers I can heat up; it's nothing special, but it's edible."
Ruby looked her father in the eyes. She felt she should probably be wrapping her arms around his neck and sobbing into his collar, but the drive didn't come to her. Nothing got past the tired fog in her brain, save for a grim thought: is this how he felt when Summer died?
Ignorant of her desire to do nothing besides curl up and sleep into eternity, her stomach loudly growled. Tai let out a tiny smile.
Ruby barely had any attention to spare, and only half-recognized that she had already sat down when a freshly microwaved plate of spaghetti landed before her, alongside a half-empty glass of milk. A part inside of her scoffed. She'd done enough growing.
Ruby numbly shoveled forkfuls of spaghetti into her mouth, ignoring that it was still too hot to eat. If anything, the intense burning of her mouth was a pleasant sensation, at least compared to the all-encompassing numbness. As such, she continued forcing the tasteless, scorching food into her gullet. The others watched over their plates, concerned glances passing between them as the silence pressed on the room.
Yang had only just started eating when Ruby stood, plate empty. "Excuse me," she found herself saying, the words feeling foreign as they vibrated her throat. Her feet quietly plodded across the floor as soon as the request left her mouth— she hadn't intended on waiting for permission, and quickly retreated upstairs in search of her room.
She quickly found herself wandering the empty hall, leaving the hushed voice of her father behind. She eventually came before a wooden door, adorned with colorful 'KEEP OUT', 'HAZARDOUS MATERIAL INSIDE', and 'ENGINEER AT WORK' stickers. Her room, not the one she shared with Yang— her study; a guest room she'd refurbished for her own purposes, one with enough space and privacy to work on her advanced scope.
The one she had broken. The one that hadn't saved them. The one that, when the gauntlet was thrown, did nothing to save her, her weapon, or Weiss. She reached a hand out to the knob, not noticing how badly it was shaking.
Ruby silently opened the door, nearly shutting it on Zwei when he slipped through the crack.
The room was just as she had left it in August, just over a month ago. Her eye combed over the interior. Posters of her favorite metal bands, engineering pages torn from magazines, her own blueprints, sketches, and designs for weapons, armor, and even a Dust-powered hand mixer— her very first engineering project from Signal. Everything was slapped across the walls with deliberate recklessness, overlapping to form a once-pleasant kind of orchestrated chaos.
Her gaze landed on her desk, drawn to a small red shape— a tube; one whose intimate familiarity became clear as she approached. It was her old scope, for her old, broken scythe. It was nothing more than a paperweight now, holding down a leather-bound book. She found her hands reaching to it unbidden, brushing the useless scope aside. It loudly clattered to the floor.
Her hands rested around the edges of the book, the object shaking in her hands as she lifted it. It was her summer journal, meant to compile the events of her previous year of schooling. She habitually lifted the book to her nose, taking a deep breath. The leather smelled… like nothing. She sighed.
Ruby collapsed into her desk chair, staring down at the book in her hands. She pulled the cover away from the paper, then numbly flipped past the page that marked the book's ownership. Messy handwriting, barely contained to the lined paper's intended horizontal pathways, greeted her.
'June 2nd, PF1114:
Hey Diary, I'm back! A whole school year, and so much to tell!
To sum things up, I'm officially a Huntress-in-training! I'm on a team with a bunch of other first-years, though they're all older than me. RWBY's the name, and Ruby is the leader! Me! Can you believe it? And yes, it is confusing— hey, we're RWBY, I'm Ruby, are you talking to me? No? Just mentioning my team name? Ha ha! That's so funny, especially when it happens almost every day at regular intervals! Hahaha!
Ruby pursed her lips. It really wasn't funny. Tired of her meandering, her beleaguered eye read on.
Anyways, I'm on a team with my sister— how lucky is that? She's the Y, obviously. There's also this really cool Faunus named Blake, she's the B. And the W is none other than Weiss Schnee, super rich heiress to the Schnee Dust Company. Wild, huh? And she's even my partner!
She was mean to me for a long time, though. I mean, I did blow her (and myself) up when we first met— but it was a total accident!
Anyway, she was really mean to me for a while, but I'm a super awesome partner so she couldn't hate me forever! I think she stopped after all the bad stuff with the train, cuz she's been helping me study ever since. And when I gave her that dagger for her birthday? That was the friggin cherry on top! Besties ever since!
But, uh… I dunno. It's really weird, but, like, Weiss? Oh man. She's— crap I'm literally blushing while I'm writing this, just thinking about her! I don't know! She's just… beautiful! Her hair, her eyes, the way she talks, the way she fights, it's all freaking beautiful! That's why I made that dagger… I was hoping she would get that I maybe kind of like her. I mean, who makes a whole freaking dagger for someone that's just their friend?
And I know she was super mean to me and she might've been kind of, uh… racist… but it's just her messed up family boiled her friggin heart! I can't really blame her, especially now— she used to avoid me like the plague but now we hug and hold hands and lean on each other and stuff. But I guess that's all, like, friend stuff, right?
Ruby let out a grim snort. Yeah. Friend stuff.
Man, I really am a dolt. I'm supposed to be writing about my school year (which was totally full of crazy stuff!), but here I am gushing over my partner friend hot friend partner.
A wet splotch appeared on the paper under her, and she quickly turned the page to hide it from herself, but what she saw made her breath hitch. It was a sketch, amateurish in skill but recognizable nonetheless. A poorly-rendered Weiss was on the page, Myrtenaster sketched alongside her with a tiny heart next to her head.
Ruby stared at the drawing. She could hear the muffled reverberations of Yang and Tai downstairs. A long snout nudged her arm, desperate for pets that would never come. Ruby couldn't move— her gaze remained frozen to the page.
Her eye throbbed.
The book fell to the floor, dropped by Ruby's shaking hands. She stared down at the fallen journal, eye violently pulsing— she can't, not now,not again— she scrambled to her feet, the rolling chair thrust out as she pressed her palm against her throbbing eye— please not now! She just got back, not right now please!
Her eye throbbed, uncaring. Her hand disappeared, the room fell away. She felt heat.
Her hammer struck the white-hot metal, molding it slightly. She struck it again, the beautiful clang complimenting the wild percussion that blasted in her headphones. Ruby quickly leaned to the side and took a handful of inert Dust, sprinkling it onto the hot metal. She let the reaction simmer into the steel— she had to make it right, for Weiss. She had put all of her feelings into this dagger— everything.
She presented Weiss with a long black box, bound with a festively patterned red-and-white ribbon. Ruby had picked it deliberately, hopeful that it would be an unsubtle message.
"It's not Peaceday," Weiss remarked, cautiously eyeing the package.
"Nope!" Confirmed Ruby, her giddy voice slightly shaken by the erratic bundle of nerves in her chest. She really needed this to go well, and every second that Weiss didn't spend admiring her gift was one that chipped away at her willpower.
Weiss raised an eyebrow. "So… what is this?"
The lethal equivalent of a love letter— "Just take it, ya dolt."
Weiss crossed her arms with a haughty harrumph. "That's my thing, you can't—"
"Please, just open the box," Ruby begged. "You're gonna like it, I promise."
Weiss looked her up and down with a suspicious glare, but took the gift regardless. She slowly lifted the lid away from the black prism, barely getting a single peek before she slammed it shut once more. "What the hell is this?" Weiss hissed, eyes darting up and down the hallway as she searched for onlookers. "How much did you spend on this?"
Ruby deviously giggled, whispering. "I saved a ton from my stipend. Please don't tell Goodwitch."
"Don't say that!" Weiss surged forward to slap a palm over her partner's mouth, making the girl blush as she dragged them into a more secluded alcove. "You're gonna be in huge trouble!"
Ruby shrugged, but the hand over her lips prevented her from replying. When it finally moved, it revealed her careless smile. "Eh, I'm not worried. It is part of our equipment, after all."
"Equipment?" Weiss blinked, a confused frown pulling her lips. "Ruby, you can't write a commission off as equipment— that's tax evasion! I think."
Ruby rolled her eyes and nudged the box again. "Take a closer look at it."
Weiss opened her mouth to object, but Ruby cut her off.
"Just look, please? You'll understand."
Weiss stared, internally debating as her partner's puppy-dog eyes gradually wore her mental fortitude away. After a long moment and another cautious glance over her shoulder, she growled, then threw the lid off.
Her first reaction had been to shut the weapon away again, but now that she got a better look, she realized the grave mistake she had made. It was a true work of art— a beautiful main gauche, complete with a shining white cup hilt and a blue-ish leather grip, topped by a sparkling silver blade. She'd seen many a dueling dagger in her day, but never one that twinkled.
"Happy birthday, Weiss," came a voice from in front of her, startling her out of her trance. Ruby was staring at her with a dusting of red across her cheeks. "I, uh… I made it for you."
"R-Ruby, you can't, this is… this is too much! I—"
Ruby waved her off. "You're worth it."
Weiss' shoulders bunched up as the words froze her, heat climbing across her face. She watched Ruby realize what she had said in real-time, marked by the intensification of her own reddening cheeks. They stayed like that for a long moment, cerulean locked to silver.
"M-maybe you should try it out?" Ruby chuckled nervously. "I just kinda winged this one, I don't really know how much you need a free hand—"
A pair of arms wrapped around Ruby's neck, the box they'd been holding left to fall as Weiss hugged her partner tight. "It's perfect, Ruby," the arms squeezed again, pulling Ruby even closer to the girl of her dreams. "Thank you. Thank you so much."
With a heaving gasp, Ruby fell back into herself, knees pressed to her chest as she tightly gripped herself. Sobs wracked her body, tears pouring from a singular, pulsing eye. "Please," she begged herself, each scrap of her being quickly falling away . "Pleasestop, pl—"
Ruby tapped her scroll, jumping the character on her screen over an incoming obstacle. The Huntress' Sprint game had her entire attention span wound in its tight grip, the infinity scroller demanding that she conquer her last high score— one which she was rapidly encroaching upon. She tapped again, and again, then dragged her character down. She dared to let her gaze dart to the corner— just two more jumps and she'd—
Her scroll buzzed, making the girl jolt as her partner's picture filled the screen. She watched with dread as the game under the notification continued, hurling her character into a wall and ending her race to the high score. Before she could mourn the loss of her streak, she realized that Weiss was calling her!
Ruby scrambled up to a sitting position on her bed, hovering over the 'accept call' button. She knew she'd asked Weiss to call, but she didn't think it would be this quickly— it hadn't even been a week since they got home! She quickly pushed her hair back, using what little of a reflection she could see in her screen to check her teeth and face for any scraps of food. Satisfied, she accepted the call. "Uh, hey, Weiss, what's—"
Ruby heard sobbing over the line as her partner's video feed loaded. When Weiss finally appeared onscreen, she looked a complete mess. Her hair was thrown out of its usual ponytail, splaying messily past her shoulders and disappearing beyond the border of the screen. Her face, too, was in a state. Her eyes were red and puffed, with black lines of mascara running down her cheeks and lipstick smudged above her lips.
"Holy crap, Weiss! Are you okay?" Ruby exclaimed, pulling the screen closer to her face.
Weiss sobbed, her video feed shaking. "I— I just fucking got here! And it's already—" she interrupted herself with a trembling gasp for air, pulling an already-drenched handkerchief up to her nose and blowing hard. The room around her was dark and empty, but muffled noises were audible across the feed.
"Where are you?" Ruby asked, concern dripping from her voice.
Weiss' sobbing continued. "I-I-I'm at a… a fucking party, a ball. I ha-haven't even unpacked my f-fucking things!" She wailed into her sleeve, muffling the cry. "And h-he wanted me to fucking sing!"
Ruby watched her partner break down in a way she'd never seen before. She noticed, too, that a fading red mark adorned her cheek.
"What the fuck!" Weiss sobbed, voice sharpening with anger. "I didn't even know the fucking song! I just got back! I fucked it up so bad!"
"I-I'm sure it wasn't that bad, Weiss," Ruby tried to placate, unsure of what else she could say to ease her partner. "You have an amazing voice."
"I-it was so bad!" Her voice hitched, its edge of anger gaining a different quality— one of disappointment. "I just blanked and… and he started screaming at me! And I tried to stand my ground, b-but he fucking hit me!"
Ruby gasped. What kind of father—
"He fucking slapped me!" Weiss shouted, this time through grit teeth.
Ruby opened her mouth to offer some kind of comfort, but Weiss kept talking.
"And I just let him," she added ruefully, self-hatred clear in her tone. "I'm supposed to be a H-huntress. And I just fucking let him!"
Ruby watched her partner's hand come up in a fist, then angrily batter her own forehead. "Weiss—"
"Such a fucking coward," Weiss seethed, clobbering herself with each word. When she next looked into the camera, it was like she had forgotten Ruby was even there. She watched Weiss' lips pull into a sneer, disgusted at herself. "I-I'm sorry, Ruby, I shouldn't have called you…"
"Woah, Weiss, stop!" Ruby begged.
Weiss visibly bit back tears and shook her head, then began reaching for the scroll. "I'm sorry… I've really got to—"
"No!" Ruby shouted, gripping her scroll tight as she affixed her partner with the best commanding look she could muster. "Don't you dare!"
Weiss averted her eyes, conflict clear in her swimming irises. "N-no, you really don't need—"
"I am your leader, Weiss! And as your leader, I order you to stop hitting yourself and talk to me!" Ruby stared her down, trying her best to hide her desperation with a commanding tone.
Weiss frowned, but the hand that was about to hang up the call dropped back to her side. Her shoulders sagged, deflated. She sniffled. "I'm sorry."
Ruby's grip softened around the device, and she sighed. "It's okay," she promised. "You're going to be okay…"
Consciousness ripped Ruby back into her own writhing, twitching body. She bit down on her sleeve, muffling her cries. With her palm pressed hard against her only eye, she could feel its haunting pulsation. She tried to brace herself, but nothing could prepare her for the shattering.
Ruby stood by herself, half-naked and alone. The silent dorm pressed against her like lips on her scars.
Her Aura surged across her splayed hands, bursting the barrier and flooding into Weiss' bleeding body. White-hot fire flooded her veins, searing weblike patterns into her skin as the pain crawled up her fingers, up her arms, burning lines wrapping around her throat. She bit down on her screams.
She expected a slap, but the rough kiss was even more painful, and considerably more unexpected. Her lip split again. Iron spread over her tongue.
For the second time, Weiss had kissed her scars. This time, though, she wouldn't let the opportunity slip through her fingers. She eagerly grabbed the heiress' face, and pressed their lips together.
Ruby's back arched as consciousness surged into her like an electric shock. She bit hard into her arm to halt the pained scream that followed— she was still there, images flashing behind her eyes, her eye, her eyes. The memories brushed against her scarred hands, the warmth of Weiss'face in her palms, their tingling lips moving against one another in perfect harmony, taunting her. She clung to the feeling— the last joy in a barren sea of pain. She let it hold her, desperately hoping that she was still there, that everything else had just been a dream. Her hands found her own face, begging for—
Her fingers ran over a gnarled line. She traced it up to the patch over her left eye— dread. Ruby looked at her hands. They were shaking. She clenched them tight, but that didn't stop them. It was real. Her eye was gone. Her school was gone. Her weapon was gone. She'd kissed Weiss. Weiss was gone.
Ruby's breaths became fast and shallow. Her fists clenched, released— fingers twitching, hands flapping— clench, release, clench, release— inhale, air flooding her chest too fast, too fast— exhale, shuddering breaths hitching before sucking in more air uncontrollably. Her chest shook and twitched, heaving up and down, hyperventilating. Muscles flexed, her abdomen tightening as she tried to force used air from her lungs, shoulders and biceps contracting as she wrapped her arms around herself, gripping tight like she could force her body to hold itself together.
Useless half-words shakily tumbled out of her mouth, broken by hard breaths— they couldn't come together, she couldn't come together. Nothing could. Her head felt full to bursting, to breaking, to cracking open and spraying free all the things that crammed themselves between every fold of her grey matter— the dread, the pain, the rage, the memories that were and weren't hers, the images that unceasingly flashed in her mind with perfect clarity. She sobbed and choked, fingers tightening to her palms hard enough to make them bleed, then bashing those bloody palms into her head time and time again, desperately seeking something real, something on her flesh that made her know that she wouldn't shatter into petals and blow away.
A presence settled on the floor beside her, making her yelp and scramble away in a panic. Her heart slammed against her chest— she was too vulnerable— someone could come at any time— did Adam find her? Already? They had only just made the cleari—
It was Zwei. He stared at her with dumb, beady eyes. It was Zwei, just Zwei. She looked around. She was in her room, in her home. Not a dorm, not a Bullhead, her room. The room she'd moved everything into, just to get some privacy while she and Penny worked on her scope.
Zwei tried to nudge himself under her, but she pushed him away. She needed the pain— deserved it. She had let Weiss go!If she hadn't let her jump in front, if she'd let herself be taken by Adam, or if she'd just moved away from the open sides of the Manta— there were so many things she should've done, and if she'd just taken a moment to think, Weiss would still be with her!
It was her fault. Herfaultthat Weiss was gone, stolen by Adam. Probably dead.
Zwei forced himself under her trembling arms, worming his body into her tight embrace. Ruby's chest heaved with anxious, unceasing breaths. Their gazes met. He licked her face.
Ruby collapsed into her pet, sobbing into his dark fur while he nuzzled her collar. She stayed like that for what felt like hours, and pulling away from him revealed the wet spot her tears had created, along with the tether of snot between them. She wiped it away with a quiet apology, body still racked with small trembles, before standing. Ruby took a deep, unsteady breath.
Silver turned to crimson. She would find him— scour Remnant if she had to. She would find Adam.
But first, she needed a weapon.
AN: hey, im back with the sequel to darkening horizons. been sitting on this one for a HOT ASS MINUTE, lemme tell ya. takes a long time to edit these chapters, especially with how dense they are. lotsa words, lotsa characters, lotsa shit to work out y'know? dw tho, ive got like 6 of these bad boys stacked up, ready to post once theyre edited.
poor rubes, huh? jeez. i feel bad tbh, and this isnt even the worst. least shell get a new weapon and a cool eyepatch out of it. eventually lol. for now, shes gotta get some shit figured out.
oh and all my KotWR lovers, dont worry, im not abandoning it for this lol. i wanted to finish it before i started posting these, but i just could wait any longer. probably gonna post 2 chapters of that this weekend. so yeah, dont fret. Knights is usually hella easy to write so im not leaving it unfinished.
in case it wasnt obvious, this is a SEQUEL to my other work, Darkening Horizons, but you might be able to read this without it? really wouldnt recommend it, but if youre reading this youve kinda already spoiled the whole thing lol. sorry about that. anyway, thanks for reading