Author's Notes
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
Hey, is it just me or is the new story alarm going off? That's a-right, it is!
Ozpin pays a bit more attention, and 2 lives are changed forever. Blake Belladonna and Jaune Arc, Beacon's pair of frauds, have nothing but each other and their weapons when they are kicked from the academy before school even begins. Now penniless and hopeless, their only option is to unite and form a team of freelance hunters. Together, they will do missions and shit.
Be sure to give it the old check-out-arino. It's my longest story yet, and it's a fun one more focused on adventuring and friendship than on saving the world or going through trauma (so basically, it's a good cooldown from Origin Story).
Happy rats, and don't do crime!
Chapter 3 – Ruby and Winter
Ruby was in the bunk bed they'd stacked on top of Yang's when the rest of the team got back. Blossom Artemis was stowed away in a safe hiding spot (she never left it somewhere obvious when she was going to go to sleep), but she wouldn't need it. If Weiss did decide to draw out the issue about Winter's death, Ruby herself would be enough to stay safe.
I can't lose the maiden powers. If they try to kill me, I'll do whatever it takes – be that run away or stand my ground and fight. In other words, if Yang fights, or if she doesn't.
The tension in Ruby's body was clear, and Yang, who came in first, held up her hands in surrender. "Cool it, sis. We talked to the prof."
Huh. Ruby had told them to, but she hadn't actually been expecting this whole thing to resolve itself like that.
"So, we're good?" Ruby asked, cautious. She'd left the window open, not as a threat but just in case.
Yang swallowed. "She…explained just how bad these people were. No details, but what we were told was enough to give us a picture of why you did what you needed to do."
"You weren't at fault," Weiss said abruptly, her eyes red. "I realize that now. You and Winter might've fought, but it wasn't because of anything you chose or did. If I want someone to blame, I'll blame Cinder."
"She told you about Cinder?" Ruby asked.
Pyrrha nodded. "Miss Goodwitch decided that, in order to help us properly realize just how dangerous this whole new world was, we needed to know how close they came to bringing down an academy. Lionheart…he nearly brought Mistral down."
Ruby guessed that it may have had something to do with Cinder mysteriously going missing, and Goodwitch realizing that she would've eventually had to reveal something, so nothing secret was truly lost by putting up Cinder as a scapegoat.
As for Lionheart, he'd killed himself in a prison cell shortly after the investigation had begun and he'd been taken into custody, apparently out of shame. Ruby was unsure if Goodwitch was actually being genuine when she'd told Ruby, or if it was supposed to be a euphemism for him being silently executed by the other headmasters. She hadn't been winking slily or slipping Ruby any little signs when she'd informed her, but it just seemed so unlikely that a loose end tied itself up so easily.
She wasn't the only one to have her suspicions. The meme 'That, and Lionheart didn't kill himself' had already been trending on KnowYourRemnantMeme for the past few days.
"They were the worst people on the planet," Ruby said, agreeing with what Pyrrha had stated. "They brought down entire villages, and not for any reason – sometimes just as test subjects, or to tie up loose ends."
"Goodwitch helped me understand that although you may have held the knife, or scythe in this case, they were forcing you to use it," Weiss explained. "You wouldn't have done it if you had any other choice."
"Exactly," Ruby said. "I tried to run a bunch of times, but I was already weakened from another fight earlier. I also tried to talk her down, but she didn't believe me because of my cover."
Weiss nodded. "You're sorry?" she asked, expecting confirmation.
A jolt of fear shot down Ruby's spine, and some instinct within her commanded her to go on the defensive. "I-It was self-defense, and I…I had to."
"But…you regret it?"
"I regret that she attacked me, and that this whole thing happened in the first place. But if you're trying to get me to say I should've just let her kill me, then I'm not –"
Weiss held up a hand, also frowning. "Never mind. I…I shouldn't have asked."
Her face said that she did mind, and the woman's decision to announce her intent to go for a short walk also suggested that she minded, but Ruby could do nothing to help her.
Lying and putting on a happy face (or in this case, a falsely sorry one) might solve the immediate problem, but Ruby had spent too long putting on faces. Now that she was back in Beacon, she could finally be herself without having to watch every action or expression and ensure it matched with the cover story she'd carefully crafted, and the honesty was too intoxicating to go back on.
"Sis," Yang groaned.
"Did you want me to say I wanted to die? It would've been an obvious lie! That probably would've upset her more."
"Ruby, I don't think she actually cares what the particular sequences of events were that led to the end of Winter's life," said Pyrrha. "It's more that you don't seem awfully bothered by it. You don't show your remorse outwardly, and that makes it look like you don't care that Winter's gone, or worse, that you're happy about it."
Ruby scoffed at that. Winter's death had torn Ruby apart and nearly destroyed her at the time. It was only with the timely appearance of Qrow that she'd managed to pull through.
"May I speak with you in private?" Pyrrha asked Ruby, glancing at her partner Blake for some reason.
Ruby shrugged and followed her out the door.
Pyrrha Nikos was a world-renowned fighter, and Ruby knew that if anyone on Team Exuberance were to stand a chance against her, it would be Pyrrha. Thinning out her aura, she prepared herself to have to start conserving it in case this became a fight, and in case that fight became a duel of stamina.
"I wanted to explain to you in person just what happened on our team when Winter died."
Ruby said okay, not willing to let her defenses drop. She would happily talk to Pyrrha, but she wasn't going to choose to be a fool.
"On Team Exuberance…well, some teams are just four people who group up during initiation, but we chose not to be like that. We have a lot in common. All four of us are girls, and we all became huntresses for roughly similar reasons, and we've all had slightly tough times with our parents or our home situations, so we've come to be quite a close-knit time, you see."
Ruby nodded. "Yeah. Yang and Blake are even a thing."
"Exac…oh. How did you…?"
Ruby didn't answer. "About Winter."
Pyrrha blinked. "Yes, of course. As I was saying, we're all close, but when Weiss' sister went missing, we didn't get it at first. We were sorry for her, but she mourned for several months."
"Okay."
"We all gave her space, but after a certain point, we thought it was becoming something unhealthy: delving too deep into grief, shutting out the world, not being willing to move on and leave her negative experiences behind."
Wow. Ruby couldn't imagine something like that happening. That would just be, like, crazy.
"It wasn't until Weiss explained her home life a little bit more to us that we began to understand. Back in Atlas, her father was just on the border of physically abusive and almost certainly mentally abusive. She had a drunkard for a mother, a little brother who cared not for her well-being or happiness, and a manor full of servants who saw her as a boss and never a person. She had no friends, as her father homeschooled her, and he regularly swapped out her tutor to prevent her from getting attached to anyone. Winter was the only person for most of her youth who was definitively on Weiss' side and not bearing some ulterior motives for it."
Ruby kind of understood – Yang was her most important person in the world. But then again, she had family outside of that, and she had friends from school (emphasis on the past tense in that scenario). If Ruby had lost all of them at once…
"The worst part was that her sister didn't abruptly disappear or something. Weiss hadn't heard from her in a while, and then one day, she was informed that Winter had never returned from her shore leave when it expired. Then, a Specialist from Atlas, the commander of some unit called the Ace-Ops, contacted the Schnee family directly. He told them that…that when Winter had left, she'd implied she might be doing some private hunting unrelated to the military, and that it might not be something she returned from."
Ruby was pretty sure she knew the guy – Mr. Lucky Charms, who led her into a trap in the Ultramarine Base rather than serving her fire ants at the casino. Winter, in her final moments, had ranted and raved about avenging the deaths that Ruby…the deaths that Tyrian had caused there.
"Weiss never knew conclusively that her sister died. It was just waning hope, each day claiming more and more, until at one point we all just woke up and realized that Weiss' sister wasn't coming back. The hope was long dead when you got here, but you're a living reminder of that long period of suffering for Weiss."
"So what, I'm just supposed to leave?" Ruby asked incredulously. "Because I can't think of any other way to not pick at that scab if I do so by existing…wait, that isn't true."
Pyrrha was taken aback at Ruby's sudden turn around. "I wasn't asking you to…w-what are you talking about?"
"I have an idea," Ruby said. "This'll won't take more than an hour…hey, do you by any chance have a box? A really sturdy one?"
"N-No," Pyrrha said. "What do you need a –"
"Never mind; I can just carry what I need using the mag…using the thing. Imma be right back."
Ruby was only gone for a short time, and she was moving so fast that literally nothing else in the world could catch up to her, so there was little danger of being sniped by Salem while she was out. Plus, it was on the same continent (even if she passed over some water to get there quicker).
Mount Serathusa looked no smaller than last time she'd been, but Ruby felt a whole lot bigger. She briefly considered visiting Lìxià's homestead just to see if the heart of palms were still growing but opted against it. After all, she'd promise Pyrrha she'd be back home soon.
Ruby suddenly smiled. That might've been the first time she thought of Beacon as home. It was certainly the first time she'd thought of anything other than Evernight as home in a while.
With the maiden powers, the climb that had once taken her such a long time was accomplished in no time. Ruby merely flew up the face of the mountain, scanning the terrain for the familiar sight of the site where she and Winter had fought. It took her a grand total of three minutes or so to locate it.
It ended up taking about an hour and fifteen minutes in the end, but she'd gotten back to Beacon in under an hour, so she'd kept her promise to Pyrrha. It didn't really matter, but if Goodwitch had done all this effort to protect Ruby, staying out after curfew would've just seemed rude.
The hallways, stairwells, and doorframes of the Beacon dormitory were difficult to navigate with her precious and quite ungainly cargo, which was where the missing time went, but it was all worth it.
She deserves to finally banish the ghost of her sister that's been looming over her since I told her how Winter died. This is closure for Weiss.
And for me too, I guess.
Ruby couldn't deny that Winter had changed her. Taking a life like that had heralded Ruby's descent into whatever temporary state of insanity had ruled her life for the duration of her time as Salem's maiden. Bringing Winter's remains and her twin sabers back to someone who could lay them to rest properly would be a way to return home and right one of her original wrongs.
Winter had remained exactly where Ruby had left her, in exactly the same pose. Mount Serathusa was an inhospitable barren mountain riddled with furious sandstorms and bearing little to no water or food, so scavengers tended to stay far away. The body itself was little more than a skeleton and some shriveled biological matter at this point, so Ruby had encased it in a stone coffin she'd formed using the maiden powers and carried it back to Beacon.
Before kicking the door with her boot (she couldn't knock since her hands were full – levitating the rocks required one finger to touch them), Ruby paused.
The memory of Winter's last moments was a shameful one for Ruby, full of self-gratifying desperation to not be judged by the rage-filled eyes of the woman she'd just killed. Saying a little speech now seemed just as empty, since it would be for Ruby's own benefit and wouldn't mean a wink to Winter's spirit, but…
I ought to say at least something. It feels disrespectful not to, somehow.
"Hey, uh, Winter."
Great start, Ruby.
"I…I'm bringing you home. Not to Atlas, but to your sister; from what Pyrrha said, it sounds like she really mattered to you, and I think you'd want her to be the one that sees you off. A-And I brought your swords."
Ruby looked down at the twin sabers in her other hand. Had things gone differently, had Ruby missed her shot, these swords might've been stained with her blood.
"You nearly killed me. And I did kill you. I want to say sorry, but it would be a lie, and there's no point in trying to lie when I'm the only person listening. I just…I can't. I don't feel sorry, and I'm not sure why that is.
"Sure, you tried to kill me, but that doesn't sound like something I'd hold against you. It's hard to parse my own emotions anymore, so I mostly just have to remember how I used to feel in similar situations and apply those. I hate Salem's people for what they did, but that was hurting innocents. You…You only hurt someone who you thought was guilty.
"I used to be terrified of you, you know. You were probably a damn decent huntress, weren't you? When men under your command died, you hunted me to the ends of Remnant, scaled the side of a mountain that me and the guys barely could, fought me with everything you had. I should idolize you for your devotion to justice. I just don't, for some reason."
Ruby moved her entire hand forward, resting the palm and fingers against the warm rocks of Vacuo.
"Would the world have been better if you'd killed me? Probably not. Cinder would've just claimed the maiden powers on Salem's orders and used them for evil. The whole world would've suffered. But you had no way of knowing that. You were just the poor gal who was at Ultramarine on the wrong day and had the misfortune of not being strong enough to…"
Winter hadn't been strong enough.
That was it.
"I think I just figured it out, Winter. It all began when I killed you. Qrow appeared, the maidens started swirling in front of me, more and more people kept dying. You were the first person I killed, and everything spiraled downwards from there. I think the reason I was so upset with you was that I resented you for not stopping me. If you had killed me, the world would've suffered, but I wouldn't have had to. I'm blaming you for how broken I am on the inside when you had nothing to do with that. You tried your best. You were a damn decent huntress – I'm sure of that, no 'probablies.' I was just a little bit better. In the end, what I became is no one's fault but my own. This one's on me. So, I guess, what I'm trying to say is…I'm sorry."
Sorry for killing Winter. Sorry for hating Winter. Sorry for leaving Winter behind for so long.
Ruby set the coffin down on the floor, laid the twin swords across it in a nice little X-shaped cross, and knocked on Team Exuberance's door.
Author's Notes
It's some closure, I guess, over Ruby's first kill. Not over her other ones, but she has to start at the beginning.
Pyrrha is certainly having her moments...I think her chapter may be next!
Happy rats, and don't do crime!
