There was a long silence over the road. Ruby stood before her, towering with her sheer presence of coldness. The silver eyes— ones which had shone warm enough to melt through Weiss' heart— were now voids of ice and steel. Ruby had become a hole in the world. Her newfound absence was enough to suck the words, the feelings, the thoughts from Weiss' being, dragging them into endless depths. The smith emanated silence.

Weiss was helpless, frozen at her paramour's abrupt shift. The glass vial sat patiently in her hand, and astonishingly did not shatter from Ruby's immense, ceaseless pressure. Weiss forgot how to move. She forgot how to breathe. She forgot how to do anything but stare at her love and wait.

In a small, animalistic part of her mind— one which had suddenly been forced into overdrive— Weiss wondered what she would do. Would she drop the vial or drink it? Would she have time? Would she be able to uncork the vial, down its contents, and draw her saber before Ruby could get her hands around her throat? Could she simply lunge forward and grab the girl's face, or did she love Ruby too much to turn her into ice? Could she even outpace Ruby? Or should Weiss just let it happen? She did deserve it, after all.

But then Ruby blinked, her pupils bloomed a little, and the grey ice of her eyes gradually became a thawing spring. Her voice came out cautiously, as if she'd just remembered how to speak. "What do you mean?"

Thin, croaking noises squeaked out of Weiss' throat as she tried and failed to recover her voice. She'd become so lost in Ruby's transformation and un-transformation that her bodily presence had been forgotten, so she didn't notice the vial of sap slowly rolling out of her palm until Ruby leaned forward to catch it, saving the precious tube before its deliciousness could be wasted upon the flagstone. She held the vial up, tilted it, and watched the contents crawl from end to end.

Weiss caught her own hands twitching towards the vial, and fisted them down to her sides before she could start reaching. She tried to speak normally, but her sap was in someone else's hands, so her voice was stuttering and desperate. "Th-th-that's… it. The… I… I drank it— my teeth."

Ruby cocked her head. "What? What're you saying?" She leaned close— too close— staring so wide into Weiss' eyes that it seemed like she was intent on smashing their corneae together. "Are you okay? I can barely see your pupils."

Weiss caught her teeth chattering and clenched her jaw shut. She tried so hard not to look down at the vial in Ruby's hand, but she was weak, and her eyes ended up clawing that way themselves. "Sap," she said, harrowed. "S-special sap, full of dust— power."

Her hands seized the smith's, their movement unbidden, but Ruby clenched her fingers shut around the vial before Weiss could snatch it. She pried at Ruby's firm digits, wedged under them, pulled and pulled, but Ruby's one-handed grip was magnitudes stronger than what Weiss could manage with two. Another one of her strong hands pushed Weiss back by the shoulder. "Hey, stop acting like that!" Ruby commanded. "You're being weird!"

"I need it back," Weiss said, her voice suddenly sure because she was saying the one thing she could be completely certain of. "Just let me— it's mine."

Yang appeared as if from thin air— no, Weiss had just been overly focused on her sap in Ruby's hands, everything else simply disappeared. Now she had both sisters towering over her, staring down, eyes wide, too close, looking at what was hers. Judging her— she could see it in the way those purple eyes glared down, waiting for her to slip, begging to exercise the bludgeon of her tongue. Ruby, too, though she was certainly the most hurtful in the way she stared. Weiss had seen the girl's utmost faith, and now she felt the scorn.

"Didn't you get this from that fay?" Ruby asked innocently,luring Weiss in with the sweetness of her voice, the promise of her love. "Why're you so obsessed? And what's this got to do with my uncle?"

Yang looked between Weiss and her sister. "What're you two talking about? Did something happen to Qrow?"

Weiss regretted ever listening to that sword. She couldn't do it— she couldn't do anything while her sap was being held hostage. It wasn't even the stuff itself she craved; she just needed to have it all back in her rightful possession. She was the only one who could be tainted by the power. She was the only one who could know. Not Ruby. Never Ruby.

"What?" Ruby leaned her ear to Weiss. "Never me? Never me what?"

Weiss locked up. She never should've started this— she was in too deep, now, as if dipping a toe into the beach had opened the world beneath her. She couldn't move, not to steal the sap, not to take Ruby's hands, nor fall to her knees and beg for help— she couldn't even tell Ruby to wait or that she needed space. That was it— what she desperately needed, above all things in this moment: space. She needed to take a step back and have a few deep breaths. That was the rational thought, that she could do this with space and patience, but thinking rationally was like spitting on a wildfire now. She was beyond the point of correcting her course.

'Stop shutting me out,' Aulus said into her mind, jolting her, 'let me explain it to them!'

Weiss hadn't even noticed she was, but she couldn't stop. She couldn't start, either. She was paralyzed. "P-p-please," she managed to chitter, "the vial, it's mine, please."

Yang opened her mouth, but Ruby stepped in first. She laid a hand on Weiss' shoulder (crook and cane, why was she so clammy?) and spoke with long, soft breaths. "Weiss, you're scaring me. Whatever happened with Qrow, I'm sure you'll have a good explanation, but you're acting crazy."

Ruby pulled her closed hand back from Weiss' now-weak fingers, but slowly opened her palm for Weiss to see. The vial in her hand, even just the sight of it, was like water in a desert. Weiss stared, barely keeping her hands still.

"I really don't want to give this to you," Ruby softly admitted. "I don't know what it is, and it's not good for you— clearly— but I can't let you be like… this."

That word, the way she said it, along with the look Ruby flicked up and down her paramour's body, made Weiss feel disgusted. She could not stand being in her skin— her translucent, clammy, wretched skin— she wanted to tear herself free, or otherwise scrape her flesh into sterile nothing if it meant Ruby would never look at her like that again. She itched; her scalp, her eyes, her face, her tongue; from collarbone to fingertip, from breast to heel, she itched like she'd never itched before.

But then Ruby set that vial in her hands, gently closed Weiss' fingers around them, kissed her knuckles, and all of the suffering faded into naught. The look changed from Ruby's face— not a scrutinizing glare over Weiss's scraggly figure, but a gaze brimming with concern. And to think that Weiss, even with an addled mind, had the gall to make that girl's love wretched.

"Craven," Weiss whispered to herself. When Ruby recoiled with mild confusion, Weiss fervently scrambled to say, "N-no, no! Not you! No… I mean… nevermind."

Ruby raised a brow, saying nothing. Weiss, with a cautionary glance at the… less gentle of the sisters, presented the vial once more. This time, she held it securely in both hands.

"This is sap," Weiss explained slowly, carefully, leashing the words tight in her throat lest they become frantic. "From the forest, the trees. It's full of dust, and drinking it can fill both stomach and Aura, but it has… other effects."

Ruby nodded patiently. Yang rolled her wrist less patiently.

Weiss shuffled. She rubbed her arms as a chill breeze pricked her skin. "We were starving in there," she threw an anxious glance at the roadside Forever Fall, "myself, Blake, and the Huntsman. Days of nothing but… wine."

She shivered, and Yang paled a little. Ruby frowned with concern, but nodded.

"Blake said it could sustain us," Weiss elaborated, briefly raising her sap vial before she stuffed it back in her pouch. "She didn't want us to take it, but…"

Weiss looked away and sighed around her teeth. Breathing through new teeth— fangs, no less— felt odd. Ruby put a hand on her shoulder, and she was kind enough to say nothing about Weiss' shaking.

Weiss took Ruby's hand and pressed it to her cheek, then pushed it back towards its owner. She continued, "We didn't have a choice, so Qrow fed it to us both— neither of us could stand. It was… gods, it was like all the best foods I've ever had, and just as filling."

"Wait, wait, so you know where the others are?" Yang asked, her foot pointedly tapping.

"Not now, Yang," Ruby commanded, cutting in with a sharply raised hand. She nodded to her paramour. "Please continue."

Weiss gulped. Yang was grinding her jaw in her direction, as if she wanted to break the disgraced heiress between her teeth. "Well, it had some, er… effects—"

Ruby raised a querying hand, interrupting her. When Weiss graced her with a nod, she asked, "What effects?"

The duelist took a sharp breath through her nose. "Hallucinations."

Yang and Ruby simultaneously cocked their heads. Weiss remembered she was traveling with idiots. Well, an idiot,and that idiot's lovely sister who just wasn't very worldly.

"Seeing things that aren't real," Weiss explained, taking a little satisfaction at the dawning looks of comprehension upon the sisters' faces. "Visions, essentially."

"What'd you see?" Ruby asked.

Weiss bit her cheeks, then yelped as her fangs pierced them, drawing blood that leaked from the corners of her mouth. This made Ruby and Yang extremely concerned. "N-nothing," Weiss lied terribly, hindered by the shaking in her voice and body, plus the fact she had to spit blood out of her mouth until her Aura healed the bites. "Nothing pertinent."

Yang snorted. "Sure, princess, even the Shepherd can see you're lying."

Weiss clutched her arms tight, digging her nails into the pallid flesh. "I— I can't, that's—"

'Tell her,' Aulus bafflingly suggested. 'Tell Yang.'

Tell Yang? Did he want Weiss to die?

'Then tell Ruby.'

No— she couldn't.

'Exactly. Yang's good at heart, I can tell. Can hear it in her voice.'

What a crock.

Aulus blew a frustrated huffinto her mind. 'Look, princess, you've been mashing faces with this woman's younger sister, and doing it right in front of her; I sincerely doubt she likes you very much, and that'll only get worse if you don't show her some trust."

What a lovely way to get immolated.

'You want to marry that girl, don't you?"

Weiss almost swallowed her tongue.

'Need the family blessing first.'

Weiss had a hundred objections rolling inside her, but they collided in her chest simultaneously— all feelings and half-arguments, nothing she could support with better words than 'I don't wanna'. So, instead of making a worse fool of herself, Weiss grabbed Yang's wrist and tugged.

"I need to borrow your sister," Weiss stated, her words veiled.

Ruby reeled, her eyes jumping between the two. "What? Why?"

"Trust me, Ruby," Weiss begged. "Please."

A long silver look passed over Weiss, worried, but Ruby set it aside with a shrug. "Okay," Ruby obliged, saying the best thing Weiss could possibly hear from her. "I trust you."