Ruby stared at the picture.
Blurry-ass Roman, or some other ginger who looked like a bowler hat, a white trench coat, and a cane. If this actually turned out to be Penny, Ruby would need to get glasses, which was a little fucked up because she had giant bird-eyes for a reason. Ruby sighed.
Her phone vibrated in her hands as the 6AM ' n' alarm buzzed— for her teammates, since she was still hard-wired for 4:10 AM on the dot. She jumped, her reaction delayed by another however-many hours of no sleep. She felt the need clawing at her brain, the need to sleep, but every time she closed her eyes she felt someone in the room with her. It was torture. She wanted to sleep, but even more powerful was her want to know.
August 31
[21:01 dust till dawn - CCnet Search]
[21:03 maps dust til dawn - CCnet Search]
[21:06 airship public near me - CCnet Search]
[21:20 gv carry laws - CCnet Search]
[21:24 hunter carry laws gv - CCnet Search]
[21:26 are hunters in training legally hunters - CCnet Search]
[21:27 GrimmAttorney Covers: Your Rights as a Sovereign Agent/Hunter - VidNET]
[22:09 maps dust til dawn - CCnet Search]
[22:13 gv orage pt airline - CCnet Search]
[22:35 mapd dust til dawn - CCnet Search]
[22:36 mapd dust til dawn walk - CCnet Search]
[22:39 lofi postmetal grind dark antihero broodcore slow reverb mix - CCnet Search]
[22:39 Broodcore Antihero Songs To Skulk Silently In The Night To 3 HOURS SLOWVERB EDIT DARK POSTMETAL MIX - VidNET]
[22:53 is it illegal to climb rooftop - CCnet Search]
[22:55 max sentence for trespassing - CCnet Search]
[22:56 faunus max sentence for trespassing vale - CCnet Search]
[23:01 Then they came for the Faunus PhilosoPunctae - VidNET]
[23:40 death penalty age vale - CCnet Search]
[23:44 legal immunity huntress in training beacon vale - CCnet Search]
She stared at the picture that Sun had sent her like glaring at it would unravel the mystery.
September 1
[1:39 fourth archivism - CCnet Search]
[1:49 Lavis Tréhou: The Last Living Cult, an Exploration of the Formless Temple of the Fourth Archivist]
[2:59 fourth arch vale - CCnet Search]
[3:00 4arch greater vale - CCnet Search]
She'd tried to box up the maelstrom in her brain just for a moment of shut-eye.
[3:13 cant sleep - CCnet Search]
[3:14 10 Ways To Get To Sleep - Netcast Weekly]
She'd tried to sleep. She really had.
[3:21 insomnia - CCnet Search]
[3:24 insomnia hallucinations - CCnet Search]
[3:26 audio hallucinations - CCnet Search]
[3:26 stop audio hallucinations - CCnet Search]
[3:27 Insomnolent Psychosis - Shrink Up Online Pshychiatry]
[3:28 FOREST SOUNDS FOR SLEEP 10 HOURS CALMING ENERGY NATURE LEAVES RUSTLING WIND TREES FOREST - VidNET]
[3:31 forest sounds no birds - CCnet Search]
[3:31 calming authentic nature sounds no birds - VidNET]
[3:36 forest sounds no birds - CCnet Search]
[3:37 The Sounds of Nature (forests beaches no chirping no animals) / 10 hour relaxation sounds - VidNET]
[3:40 audio hallucinations - CCnet Search]
She'd even fallen back on an old classic.
[3:52 Your Playlists - Dskjcky]
[3:52 readingmix2 - Dskjcky]
[3:53 lllcomp - CCnet Search]
[3:53 Home - TriLexicoCompendium]
[3:54 Tag Search - TriLexicoCompendium]
[3:55 f/f coalbirds Savris Colburn/Colette Dusang hurt/comfort angst slow burn - TriLexicoCompendium]
[4:01 Amber-Hearted Fates, Chapter 1 - TriLexicoCompendium]
[5:39 Amber-Hearted Fates, Chapter 14 - TriLexicoCompendium]
How well that'd worked out for her. She'd ended up just as tired, only now her eyes were sore from reading for so long. Giving up, Ruby had returned to that picture: Roman Torchwick, standing at a Fourth rally like he was on the lineup of speakers.
rubrtubr: sun u up?
Ruby watched the message send. She waited.
Oh, that's right, it was 6 in the morning. Even if he was awake, he was probably getting ready for whatever he did throughout the day. She had no business texting him so early— in fact, she needed to start getting ready; weekend or not, she had to make up for the study she missed because of her hand.
monkeking: suh dude im never down bro B)
"Shoot," Ruby cursed, now having to juggle between getting ready and texting Sun while he was on the hook. She used her shitty hand to strip and her good hand to text.
rubrtubr: did u get any more pcs
rubrtubr: pics
Ruby, in her sleepless clumsiness and attempting to blind-dress herself one-handed, nicked the hem of her skirt with a claw, creating a rip that she'd be fiddling with all day. She huffed. Her phone buzzed.
monkeking: aha u kno i do bra
rubrtubr: istfg if you send me an ab pic
monkeking: [ Attachment - Download - 11.1 MB]
rubrtubr: GOD FUCKING DAMNIT
rubrtubr: WHY IS IT SO HIGH DEF
monkeking: lmao aha jk bru ik ur 'not into it' aha jk jk
rubrtubr: ?
monkeking: i dont have more pics of th erally tho
monkeking: i had to bolt bra
monkeking: they were on my shit dud
monkeking: i almost died bruhj
Ruby blindly fumbled through the dresser, grabbing socks that she was pretty sure didn't match, but she was too busy typing to care.
rubrtubr: srsly? Nothinh? No info? No addresss,
rubrtubr: ?
Ruby whipped the jacket out, planning to tie it on when both her hands were free again.
monkeking: uh
monkeking: it was in the uh
monkeking: fug dud idk a warehouse bruh
monkeking: wherever tf warehouses are
monkeking: no wait it was the dockyards I remembered how bad it smelled
monkeking: str8 saltwater ass
rubrtubr: ah yes the *one* dockyard in the entire kingdom of greater vale /s
monkeking: fug u bra im thinking ok
monkeking: fkn uh
rubrtubr: do u have your location on?
Ruby grabbed a shirt and slipped it over her head, putting it on backwards like an idiot judging by how tight it was. She huffed, ignoring it as she proceeded to agonizingly escort Sun through the process of tracking his own movements via the memory of his phone's positioning system.
monkeking: hol shit dud ru a hacker bra
monkeking: howtf did u know htis
rubrtubr: u don't wanna know
'Ruby Rose! You will tell me exactly where you went tonight— you will show me.'
'Then look up how!'
'Loretta's? You went to Loretta's? Ruby! Oh my god, have you been drinking?'
'No! No you may fucking not! I don't—'
'Don't interrupt me! You did not feel normal, you felt drunk! That's why you weren't ticcing, because you were making yourself all kinds of vulnerable instead!'
'What if one of those boys got his hands on you, huh?'
'I know you don't! They wouldn't care!'
'Then you're the one ending up with an assault charge! And with those claws? You can barely stand straight, you think you can keep yourself from killing someone with those things?'
'Show me where you've been, Ruby! Figure it out!'
monkeking: [ LocationData - Download - 1.4 KB]
rubrtubr: sick. thx sun.
monkeking: no problem dud sry for creeching lastnight bruh
Ruby didn't respond. She just slipped her phone in her skirt pocket (only thing Beacon was real for), then tied her jacket around her waist. Without any further prep, Ruby left for—
Her hand froze on the doorknob.
Sleepless, occasionally hearing/seeing things, not at all mentally okay, Ruby was still disappointed in herself. Who the hell forgets their bra?
Ruby shambled back over to the dresser drawer she'd left half-open and pulled off her shirt. She reached in, not even bothering to open the drawer again— she didn't care which one she got, she just wanted to get to class— as her fingers fumbled through fabric, eventually finding…
"The hell?"
Ruby opened the drawer.
Her hand was on a bra— bralette, actually— one that was small, padded, and made with tasteful white lace. It was not Ruby's. Ruby searched the drawer, only to find it empty save for some wild, mismatched socks, the bralette, and a book.
Ruby had already taken out the uniform, but any normal person would have something left in here, even if they'd packed up for a mission. There was only one person Ruby knew who had basically no clothes beside that and one outfit.
Which meant Ruby was wearing Weiss' stuff.
Ruby looked at the book. It was a shitty little spiral-bound notepad— about as big as her hand— with black cardboard covers. She could feel in her soul what it was, which meant she could also feel how much her soul hated it when Ruby plucked it from the drawer and slipped it in her pocket for later, the weight of it feeling like solid guilt. Ruby closed the drawer and put on her own bra.
The shirt on the bed was Weiss' patched-up long sleeve, so she must've taken the uniform shirt on the mission with her. Ruby went over and picked it up. She looked at it. She squinted.
Ruby frowned intensely, just in case anyone watching thought she was happy to be putting her partner's shirt on— which she wasn't. Why not just put her own shirt on? Because she'd already taken this one out, obviously. The boulder was rolling. She physically couldn't push it back uphill, she had to wear Weiss' shirt. It is what it is. Plus, Weiss wore her stuff, so it was normal, even though Weiss had literally nothing else to wear.
So Ruby was wearing her partner's shirt, what of it? So what if she stood there and could feel how much smaller Weiss was. So what if she could feel all the places where she'd gored her, where Weiss had sewn in itchy little cloth patches. So what if she could tug the neck of it up and have perfectly normal thoughts about how it smelled— which was definitely like detergent and not like Weiss, and it's not like she knew that smell anyways, and even she did it was it was just a Faunus thing, even if Ruby didn't have any olfactory traits; nobody else would even get it, nobody else would understand, it wasn't like she was holed up alone and scared and stressed and her hand and she couldn't fucking sleep, or anything— so what if she missed her partner? So what if she missed her nemesis? So what if she missed Weiss and her stupid smell (like garbage and theft) and her stupid voice (like knives and tinnitus) and her stupid lips (like kissing a blender). God forbid she had someone who, if nothing else, was pretty fucking reliable. At least Weiss' evil was, like, normal. Not scary and snakey and poison-y, Weiss just wanted to hurt her really bad and Ruby wanted to hurt her really bad too.
And to think Ruby always imagined she'd be a lone-wolf type. It seemed cool.
Now she wanted nothing more than someone. She wanted Blake; she wanted Blake to be here and be all hot so Ruby could look at her and be attracted and not feel bad when she looked so good in her stupid hoodie and her stupid cargo shorts. She wanted Pyrrha to see her breaking down and pull her off somewhere and kiss her and hug her and kiss her again. She could like-like them, she could be romantic with them, she could have feelings for them and that would be normal and not confusing or scary.
She wanted a hug. Ruby wanted a hug so bad. She wanted someone to squeeze her. She wanted Yang's strong, assuring arms around her, holding her safely.
(she wanted Weiss to hold her and say she was the only one who could hurt her)
SHE WANTED TO SLEEP
"Miss Rose!"
A loud crack in front of Ruby's face made her cry out, recoiling so viciously that her chair tipped back and dumped her ass-over-teakettle, her idiot bird-legs twitching uselessly in the air as she thumped to the varnished wood floor, body curled at an awkward angle between her own lecture desk and the one close behind her. Port's short ass had to push himself up on her desk to look down at her, his bushy brows raised and lips drawn in a regretful grimace.
"Er, apologies Miss Rose—"
"Branwen-Rose," Ruby's voice creaked, coming out like a fire drill on wet wood. "Sorry."
"Right, Miss Branwen-Rose, erm, please don't sleep in my class, especially not if you're here to make up," he gave her another long, searching look. "Though… nevermind. Could someone— oh, thank you Mis—"
Ruby was drawn up by strong arms, her head lolling back against her savior as she hoped to see Pyrrha—
"Hey," Jaune said softly, dragging her up and plopping her back in her seat. "You look awful."
Ruby tried not to make her disappointment too obvious. "Jaune? Why're you here?"
"Studying," he answered simply, taking a seat next to her as he raised his hand, getting the professor's attention again. "Uh, Port! I'm gonna take her notes in case she falls asleep."
Port waved him off, continuing into his bombastic lecture without pause.
Ruby slumped in her chair, a little smile crawling over her face as she let herself relax. "Thanks, Jaune, yer… yer'a good one."
He blushed, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. "Aha, thanks. You good?"
"No," she mumbled honestly. "Haven't slept in… twenty-four times three?"
Jaune blinked. "You're kidding."
"Sixty-two!" Ruby decided.
"Carry the one, dude," Jaune reminded her, looking extremely concerned now. "You haven't slept in seventy-two hours?"
Ruby deflated, her body slumping in her chair in a way that let her feel how pointlessly hard her heart was beating. "Shi… oot."
Jaune started something, opening his mouth to choke out a single breathy syllable before he clapped his jaw shut. Blushing, he looked around, then reached under Ruby's chair and yanked one of the legs, pulling her closer. He lifted his arm a little. "Here, dude," he whispered, his face burning red despite his stoic look. "Put your head in my lap, or just lean on me or whatever."
His words hit Ruby like smelling salts, making her reel as a rejection bolted—
"I-I know," Jaune rushed to whisper, raising his hands. "Look, Ruby, I do like you, but you wear a pretty bright jersey."
Ruby blinked hard, too tired to comprehend synecdoche. "Wha…"
"You stare at Pyrrha and Blake like Nora does, dude, and she's been trying to form a JNPR polycule since day one. We all know which team you're batting for."
"S-sorry," Ruby apologized for some reason, eliciting a shrug from Jaune. "If ya were a Jane, I would."
"Psh, sure," he responded, rolling his eyes. "But I'm not. So, uh, sleep on me. Platonically. I guess."
Ruby gave him a long look, but he returned one that seemed honest enough (at least to her tired eyes). She really felt like she could trust Jaune. He had a good face, sorta like Yang, as if Uncle Tai had managed to seduce another woman out of wedlock. Ruby blinked at him.
"Jaune," she mumbled slowly, scooting her chair so she could get a more even position as she leaned into his warm, jacket-covered shoulder. "Yer… yer'ma friend. Good friend. I'll… givyou my… numb…er."
He snorted, but gave her head a little pat that didn't even feel condescending. "Yup. Twist the knife, whydontcha."
Ruby giggled drowsily, her lids fluttering shut. The musky, invigorating smell of juniper clashed with familiarity against the gritty, metallic scent of Dust, and Ruby couldn't even tell if it was just another hallucination or not. Seeking more of it, she buried her face in Jaune, only to find spicy cardamom and cinnamon. She flinched back and the juniper-scented Dust returned, wafting up from… a hallucination, because her addled mind was definitely fucking with her by saying it was coming from her shirt.
She nuzzled back into Jaune, and the way she guiltily pulled her own neckline up closer to her nose was probably also a hallucination. "Sor…ry," she mumbled, her mouth saying something like: "I like… girls… Pyrrha…"
"Price?" Jaune repeated. "Who's Price?"
Ruby fell asleep.
Jaune stuck with her all day, even after he did all the makeup classes he needed, doing the same thing in every room: pulling Ruby next to him, holding his shoulder out for her, and taking notes. It was sweet. Super sweet. Honestly the sweetest thing anyone had done for her since the airship landed, so she couldn't help but wish that Jaune was Jane. Or, like, Joan. It seemed like she'd really have a shot, if that were the case, but alas…
Ruby dreamed about Jane. Or Joan. She was short, for some reason, with bleached-out hair that hung over her left eye. Her hair was longer than Jaune's, falling on front of her shoulders to contrast her… hoodie…
Ruby dreamt about Pyrrha instead. Pyrrha with her strong arms and white robes and bronze cuirass. Pyrrha with the world's most incredible smile. Pyrrha with Ruby over her shoulders or in her grasp. Pyrrha with an eye of blazing, stellar b—
Ruby dreamt of Blake. Blake's notebook— Blake's diary— that she had in her pocket, weighing her down like it was made of osmium. How Blake would react if she caught her reading it. How Blake would feel if she found her partner greedily sifting through all her secrets.
Ruby dreamt of The Formless Temple of the Fourth Archivist. She dreamt of being in it just like Lavis Tréhou, wandering between the cobble-walled halls and over the stonewashed concrete floor. It smelled like candle wax and incense. It smelled like books. It smelled like copper.
She was in the prayer hall, right where Lavis had stood. A preacher— wearing scarlet robes trimmed whiter than snow— swung their arms and made hymns, chanting with an invisible choir in the same Atlessian language that Ruby didn't understand, but she remembered what the captions had translated for her:
[KNOW HIM, KNOW THAT SINNER]; [KNOW WHAT THE ARCH ON HIGH HATH DELIVERED]; [KNOW THAT SINNER BY THE WAY HE PRAYS]; [KNOW THAT SINNER LIVE ON NUMBERED DAYS]; [KNOW HIM, KNOW THAT SINNER]
Ruby didn't particularly like it. The choir was eerily discordant, but the head speaker was downright operatic, the latter keening the melody like a Siren while the former belied the truth of its intent. The pews were packed with red-wimpled heads, all worshippers with their arms raised high, their backs and shoulders rising as they silently sang along. Ruby grabbed one.
They turned— she turned— looking at Ruby with two, four, eight baleful eyes of blue and silver and undulating, milky white. Ruby tried to back away, but she went forward instead, directly to her, lowering to that voiceless, mouthless, pale blank slate of a face. She put her lips on cold white skin where the mouth should be, her kiss like a key that made the mouthless face split across from ear to ear, hinging open, cherubic white hands crawling from the gaping red throat as the jaw unhinged. The hands punched through Ruby's lips and grabbed her by the molars, dragging her into the untoothed maw until it enclosed her face in lightless, pulsing red, and her whole body squirmed in relief at the promise of vacancy within.
But there was a twinkle in that dark tunnel of the trachea, and it shot all the way up until Ruby's world was engulfed in white. She blinked the blinding incandescence away, cringing from it like a cave-dweller until some soft-rough hand grabbed her arm and yanked her into the light, pulling her close, twirling her and laughing without a care in the world. When the blindness left Ruby, she saw who held her.
Weiss had her, one arm guiding her hip while the other held her hand. She was jumping, bouncing, frolicking, her face alight with a joy that didn't seem real on her face— and her face, her unblemished face, without scars or pores or sweat or anger— she was perfect. Her eyes were two blazing crucibles, two infernal cobalt stars that burned with an innocent happiness so stark it couldn't be a human emotion. Weiss giggled in her face. Her smile rose all the way to her eyes and it crinkled them, her nose and brows scrunching up and furrowing with mirth as well. Weiss danced Ruby around in bounding circles, her long white hair flowing and billowing in her face, making Weiss laugh even harder as she had to blow strands out of her mouth.
She wore a dress that told Ruby it'd been white before, along with a flower crown that said the same. Only now the dress was red, and the pure, hueless tulips curled tight before violently gutting themselves, flaying their thick petals alive just for her, their innocent flesh splitting, exsanguinating red-over-white until the pink turned into a hateful, seething, unalloyed scarlet like rose blooms or exit wounds.
But it was beautiful, and it was for her, and Weiss smiled. She kissed Ruby on the lips— just a peck— then looked her in the eyes and kissed her again, sighing out air that Ruby greedily inhaled, the warmth of it driving to her skull like a fog. Weiss missed her step in the dance but Ruby caught her without even breaking their kiss, drawing her tight against her body. Weiss groaned in turn, her hands landing on Ruby's biceps, nails making tingly gooseflesh break out as they trailed over her skin, scraping the sensitive interior of her elbow before drifting to the forearm and…
Weiss ran her fingers through the forest of pinions, slipping the spines of Ruby's feathers between her soft, slender digits before gently stroking up. Ruby made a light noise of relief into Weiss' mouth; it felt just as good as having someone else brush her hair, only now there was an added tingle of lustful gratification, and she melted in anticipation as Weiss' fingers drifted down the spines again.
Weiss separated from Ruby, getting just enough space to show that her lips were swollen and red, parted, panting, her eyes burning hot enough to melt silver. She smiled that blinding, impossible smile again. She leaned closer, her parted lips hovering just above Ruby's as if to drink whatever sounds would pass from them.
Weiss ripped the feathers out. She drank her fill of sound.
Ruby screamed into her mouth, bucking and seizing, but Weiss was atop her now, straddling her hips as she ripped at both arms in a frenzy, plucking and chucking pinions with childlike glee. Ruby thrashed. Her arms were held down at her sides— more Weisses, watching with half-lidded eyes and heated cheeks as Ruby was violently defeathered— but her legs were free, so Ruby's reverse-jointed ankle kicked, ripping her claws so deep into Weiss' back that her middle talon played the notches of her spine like a rhythm-stick.
Weiss arched back, crying out, and Ruby bucked her hips and shoulders up with the new space afforded, slipping her arms out of their pale-fingered shackles so she could reach up, grab Weiss by the neck, and reverse their positions. The other Weisses tried to intervene, but Ruby's black claws flashed out before she could even think about it, severing windpipes and sending them where they belonged.
And just like that, Ruby was atop Weiss, straddling her hips, thumbs on her trachea.
"Die," she thought she said, or "I hate you," or "I'll kill you," or something else that was three awful words, and Weiss said one of those things too, and Ruby dove down to kiss her while she pressed her thumbs in. She breathed Weiss' last breath. It smelled like cardamom.
"Ruby," Jaune whispered, nudging his friend awake. "Ruby, c'mon, dude."
Ruby mumbled sleep out of her mouth. "Ghurbwhua?"
"Yeah, bud, 'ghurbwhua'. C'mon, let's get you some lunch."
"Whatimeisit?"
Jaune checked his phone. "About two. You good? You were twitching a lot and breathing really hard."
Ruby yawned, rubbing crust out of her eyes. "Hell yeah, I'm good. That was the best sleep of my life."