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(Ruby PoV)
Jaune had taken to horseback riding like he had everything else in his life and I sighed a little as I watched him navigate the creature around a bend. He had his eyes on another storm as we made our way up into the mountains, where Jaune suspected the monster hid.
He was so focused on the storm, he hardly noticed how easily he led the horse around. Tomorrow, when we got started again, he would have to pretend to remember how.
The goofball.
I followed, leading my own stead up and towards where I'd just lost sight of him.
"You all right, Rubes," his voice came from around the curve. He was tuned into me, it would seem. I wasn't sure if I was broadcasting or if it was just part of how good he was that he could feel something like that with his aura.
Or maybe he just was paying attention and heard me.
"Just thinking." The stable and dependable sound of the hooves against the ground was a bit of a metronomic comfort to me. A bit like something mechanical. After a while the horse and the movement and the sound felt like a part of me.
"You've been quiet for a bit, is all." I knew that if I wanted, I could just leave things like that. But I did want to talk. Was that so wrong?
"You tryin' to say I'm not usually quiet?" I challenged. "You tryin' to say I'm chatty?"
He came back into view and I had to see his smirk. "Yeah. A little."
"Butt." He deserved it, too. I pouted at him as best as I could and watched red rise his neck with private glee. It wasn't fair how easy it was to talk to him sometimes. When Yang abandoned me for her friends at Beacon I never would have thought I'd run into someone like Jaune.
"You don't talk about your family much." I wanted to know more about him. He knew about my family, which was sweet. Maybe I should, too. And I was curious about it a little. Curious about him. "Is there any reason for that?" I eventually managed. We shared emotions but I wanted to know about his history, too.
Blame a girl.
It was slow progress with Jaune, but I'd sort of known that would be the case from the start. The start being Beacon, of course, that day we'd first met. The fact that Jaune had seemed just as nervous as I had that day had immediately calmed me down enough to talk to him.
"I sort of told you a bit…" he trailed.
"The sisters." I agreed. "But your parents. What are they all like?"
"They were… well…" I watched him struggle with himself and how he wanted to phrase it for me. "I told you I had to steal the sword and break into Beacon to get in, right? My parents never thought I could make it as a huntsman."
Yikes. Okay, how do I crack this egg?
Jaune seemed to be mulling the same thing over. Still, despite how personal the subject was he didn't seem hesitant about sharing it with me. He was just picking his words right.
Jaune was like that, it made him easier to talk to than most guys. Too easy, really.
It wasn't like I hadn't talked to guys. They really weren't so different from girls, afterall. Not that I'd been super great at talking to them, either. My first attempts at conversing with Weiss and Blake had been so flat that I found myself cringing a little thinking about it even in the saddle.
Me and Weiss had eventually figured things out. It had taken time and effort in a lot of ways like what I was doing with Jaune now, but it was different. A different kind of casual, and a different kind of ease.
Weiss didn't give me sigh for sigh like Jaune did and she never reflected my blushes.
He was cute like that.
Anyways, Weiss, Yang, and even Blake had quickly dismissed him. It wasn't their fault really. Jaune hadn't looked like much. It was easy for other people to write Jaune off, but I'd seen what he really was. Or if not what he was, then I'd seen what he could be, and I wasn't the only one either.
Pyrrha had obviously seen it, too.
Gosh, I didn't like to think about Pyrrha much. Or Penny a whole lot either. That was awful of me, really. Wasn't it? Thinking of either one made me sad and to be honest thinking about Pyrrha stirred a bunch of awful feelings that I was unsure of how to deal with at all.
Sweet little Ruby Rose jealous of her dead friend?
It made me a little sick to my stomach. If Pyrrha had lived would she and Jaune have shared this ride? Would I have stood a chance against her? Would I have even realized how much I cared about him if this hadn't happened and he hadn't come with me to Anima?
It wasn't fair to anyone to think like that, though. It wasn't fair to Pyrrha who would want the best for Jaune, maybe that wasn't me, maybe it was. I thought it was. I could be a little biased, but I thought he was smiling more.
It was just that I never got to see Pyrrha smile more or give me her blessing or whatever. I was certain she would have given it to me. I was certain she would laugh about it, too. I would certainly have liked it, though.
But if she was alive to give it to me, she wouldn't need to because she would be with Jaune.
It wasn't fair to Jaune who deserved the chance to move on. Lingering on what could have been with Pyrrha had only dragged Jaune into this awful depression. When Pyrrha had first died Jaune had been so empty and had so little energy all the time.
He didn't even have the energy to make fun of himself, which, trust me, I am working on. At least he was doing a little of that again.
Yay?
Last of all it wasn't fair to me either because I loved him, too.
At the end of the day was I supposed to not love him because she loved him and was gone now? If everyone did that the world would be the most lonely and bleak place.
"My parents and I aren't close at all," he decided.
"Were they mean to you?" A bit of a loaded question but I had to know. I rode up beside him. The road was wide enough for us to ride side by side again. "Like Weiss' parents?"
He just shook his head. "Not really, but they weren't around much either."
This was bad. Um… "I'm sure they loved you."
"I wished they would have loved me differently." He confessed, biting his cheek.
"And your sisters?" Well if his parents weren't there, then did he at least have somebody?
"They were all a lot younger than me." He just shrugged. "I mean like five years, at least."
That wasn't a lot now, per se. But it would have been when he was younger. That sort of implied he wasn't that close to any of them.
"Ah." I wasn't sure how to handle that, really. I was close to mine after all. A lot of what I did had to do with my family if only because it seemed like my family was somehow personally responsible for the last few decades of Remnant's history.
Of course, I couldn't share that with Jaune because I didn't know either. Uncle Qrow hadn't been clear on that.
"Well did you have friends back home?" Anybody at all?
"Not really, and not much of a home either." Jaune struggled. "Like I said. If you hadn't asked me to come with you here, then I'm not sure where I would have gone. You, Nora, and Ren are all I really have."
"What about the rest of your friends from Beacon? Like my team." He just kind of shook his head.
"I'm with as much of your team at once as I can be, now." He grinned.
Right.
"And if I had the choice, I think I would rather be alone with you." He gave me this confident grin. I recognized it as a little like the one he sometimes pressed against my lips.
"Uh…" I thought for a desperate moment, I couldn't let him distract me with that. "You know CFVY, right?"
He shook his head and chuckled a little. "Ruby, it's fine."
"It's not alright. I don't want…" I don't want you to have been lonely? "Ugh… never mind." I sat in silence for a minute and felt Jaune try and work up the courage to ask me what I meant. I wasn't really sure what I meant so I moved on. "Should we stop and set up a camp?"
He'd been watching his scroll with the regularity he usually had when he was trying to be mindful of the time and make sure that we'd be safe for the night. It was an easy way to distract him. "I'm that obvious, huh."
"Just to me," I grinned. He scouted a place to stay and dismounted in front of me. We both knew he didn't need to, but he still helped me down off my horse. He was a gentleman like that.
As he tried to swing me down to the ground, I put my arms around his neck and kissed him.
"Maybe tonight will be the night we figure out what your semblance does!"
He laughed to himself without smiling. He was doing it again, he thought I couldn't hear him, making fun of himself, but I could.
He thought that because his semblance was weak now it would always be.
The goofball.
I knew that Jaune's semblance was going to be something special the moment I saw the soft glow, a deep blue, like his eyes, rather than his usual golden aura. The soft light flared as he killed the Grimm, and he didn't even notice it.
I knew it would be when the use wasn't immediately obvious.
I knew it was special because it didn't seem to do anything at all.
It was just Jaune.
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-WG