"Have you ever waited for a coin flip? Not the result, the flip itself.

Of course, the result is what you're truly after. But that build up to the flip, to the moment the coin enters the air and begins to tumble. That impatience, the longing, the hunger for whatever the result will be. Heads or tails, it matters not; why haven't they flipped the coin yet?

If only I could. If only I could flip the coin and be done with it; see the result and be at peace.

How long must I wait?

No matter... I've already waited longer than anyone has waited for anything... I can wait a little longer."

Oscar Pine

Rose looked uncomfortable, to say the least. It was quite a strange sight; Oscar, his aunt, his uncle, all of them sitting around a table wearing simple brown clothes, the drab kind of thing you would wear when you knew it would be getting dirty. All of them, staring at Rose, who was looking down at her plate of food. It wasn't hard to see that her own plate was stacked higher than the others, Oscar's aunt had made sure she would get her fill. Her attire made her stick out even more, that pure red cloak that seemed to ignore light hid black and red finely made clothing underneath. This whole situation was so strange, if Oscar didn't know any better, he'd say they were hosting royalty.

Of course, he did know better... And they might actually be hosting royalty. "She said her kids names are Argus and Summer..." The same names as the prince and princess of Vale. While still just a theory, Oscar was inclined to believe it. Not just because it was his own theory, but also because the timeline made perfect sense. After all, the queen consort of Vale had disappeared fifty years ago - according to what his grandmother had said - and that was around the same time that Rose appeared.

After all, it only made sense that Rose was the one that had been patrolling the border all these years. "I can't believe the Red Harbinger is in our house..." His uncle spoke with awe, his eyes practically gleaming as he looked up and down Rose. Only when her gaze flicked to his did he look away; he was amazed, but didn't want to make her feel uncomfortable.

"I've only heard that name a few times... I should've figured people would call me something like that." Rose didn't seem too impressed with the title, but there was no getting rid of it now. Oscar had grown up hearing about it; an entire generation had. She was a living legend, one that was sitting barely a metre away from him. "Personally, I thought everyone was just going to call me by my Title..." Taking a bite of some bread, Rose stabbed some of the meat on her plate with her fork before raising it to her mouth. "The Rose Dragon."

Thinking while she ate, Oscar couldn't help but eagerly smile now that his theory was confirmed. "So, you're really the queen consort of Vale?"

His aunt and uncle paused momentarily as they looked at Rose, waiting with dread for her answer. "I guess I'm over it..." She mumbled after eating some of the meat. Looking up at them all, she realised they awaited her answer and said, "I was. But after being apart for so long, the marriage between myself and the queen has become void."

"I thought the queen consort's name was Ruby?" His aunt was joining in on the questions now.

After a moment's silence, Rose looked down at her food with a nostalgic expression. A gentle smile on her face as she said, "It's been a long time since I've heard that name... Now that I think about it..." Taking another moment, she closed her eyes before opening and continuing. "For some... complicated... reasons, I couldn't be called 'Ruby' anymore. Couldn't remain in the city, either."

Asking the obvious question, Oscar said, "Can you now?"

Frowning, Rose muttered, "Not yet." Before returning to eating. They could all tell she was done talking about it, and so they ate in silence. Oscar kept glancing at her, however. His curiosity was ablaze, his mind a wonder of questions. What had life been like for her? What was a Dragon capable of? The longer that dinner went on, the more he thought about it, and the more he wanted so desperately to know the answers. But now wasn't the time to ask, so he would be patient for as long as he could.

Rose barely managed to finish her plate before she was done. Oscar's aunt had been over the moon with Rose's compliments, insisting that she was actually mediocre at best when it came to cooking. Of course, Oscar and his uncle knew that she was actually amazing at it; his aunt had once been a personal chef. Her talents were no doubt wasted on this farm.

His uncle's own talents weren't exactly made the best use of here, either. The man was practically a Wizard when it came to Enchantments and Rituals. When Oscar mentioned that, Rose was curious enough to ask about it, so, his uncle had shown her some of his little projects. His personal favourite had been a little gadget that automatically sharpened his knives for him. It was pretty much useless, given that you could just buy Magic knives that wouldn't dull, but Rose seemed plenty impressed by it.

"Making something like this as a Human is no small feat... I would know." The exact meaning behind that was lost on Oscar, but his uncle beamed at the praise regardless. Afterwards, she had discussed the upgrades she made to the turrets with him. "They can run off of any kind of Dust now, so I would suggest ordering Ice Dust instead of Fire." Despite not spending much of her time in civilisation, Rose still somehow seemed to know which Dust was the cheapest kind.

That night, after Oscar had helped clean up and all three of them insisted Rose not help, it was time for bed. Well, Rose wanted to sleep, so it just felt like the polite thing to do for all of them to do the same. The issue followed of course that they lacked a spare bedroom.

The solution? "You can use my bed." Oscar was more than willing to lend his bed for the night. Not only was it something a gentleman would do, but she had saved all of their lives today! Even if it was something as small as this, he wanted to repay her. Though, when they actually got to his room so he could move some things around for her, she sat on the floor instead, leaning against the wall. "Um... What are you-"

"I'm not gonna take your bed, Oscar." She gave him a half smirk, half smile. "You've had a bigger day than I have. This was actually a nice change of pace for me... Kind of fun, I guess." Rose seemed unsure about her words, but Oscar kind of understood. "I'll sleep here." On the floor!?

"Ah, if you're insisting on letting me use my bed, why not use the couch-"

She cut him off. "You're scared, right?" He didn't have a response to that. "A Grimm came at you today, the most dangerous kind, too. If I were a Human, I'd be terrified." As she spoke, her eyes seemed to be looking into the distance, like she was remembering something. "I'll stay here tonight. That way, you know you're safe." The argument was over before it even began, she had already wrapped her cloak around herself a bit like a blanket.

Complaints and denials died as simple thoughts, no matter what Oscar wanted to say, he couldn't form anything into words. She was right, of course... Even if he hated it. Today, he had experienced the most terrifying thing he had ever seen. The image of that Grimm's teeth in its wide maw was still burned into his brain; no doubt it would remain there for a long time.

So, simply nodding as his answer, he turned the light off and got into his bed, glancing at Rose again at her spot across the room on the floor. Before he turned over to go to sleep, however, she pulled something from her belt. Oscar couldn't see exactly what it was, but after a moment, the room lit up with a gentle blue glow as a floating brain made of solid blue appeared in front of Rose. He stared at it with wide eyes, mouth agape in wonder.

"What is that?" He leaned off the edge of his bed so far he risked falling off.

Glancing at him, Rose smiled gently. "It's called the Mind Wraith... It's... Well, at this point, I guess you could call it my life's work." Pinching her fingers in the air, when she pulled them apart, the image of the brain zoomed in on a point inside. It zoomed so far that Oscar could see that the brain was actually made up of an uncountable number of blue lights. "Each of these is a-..." Glancing at him, Rose seemed to change her mind and continued, "-Part of my brain. Every single one of these dots is something incredibly important to who I am." Moving her hand, the zoomed in brain seemed to shift where it was focused on. "All the lights are meant to be blue... But, when I began, they were all orange. Some of them still are."

"How many?" By now, he had crawled off the bed and across the floor, getting closer on his hands and knees as he stared at the lights.

Smiling at him for a moment, Rose looked at the lights and waved her hand some more. The lights shifted and moved, the image of the brain rapidly zooming to different parts. "I have no clue. I'm easily over ninety-nine percent done... But that could still leave thousands left." They sat there for a while, Oscar watching the lights move as Rose searched for an orange light. By the time she found one, Oscar's eyes were heavy and his body weak. Reaching up, Rose gently pressed it with her finger, and it changed to blue like the surrounding ones.

"There isn't an easier way to find them...?" He spoke slowly, yawning halfway through.

While she answered, he was rubbing his eyes. "It has to be manual. It's not actually the device doing it... Rather, it's my own Magic. The device is just a looking glass; a telescope. A way for me to see the parts that need fixing. Trust me, I looked for a very long time... This was the best I could do." It still frustrated her; Oscar could see it on her face. "It's the only way."

"But... What's it actually do?" He couldn't believe he hadn't asked yet.

Sighing gently, Rose said, "There's something wrong with my mind... Something very, very wrong with my mind. I need to fix it. While this cloak does it's best to keep it at bay-" She ruffled part of the cloak for a moment, "It doesn't actually fix anything. I needed a way to fix my mind, to remove all the contamination... But, the more I looked, the more I realised that was impossible. So, instead... I had to solve it in a different way." Oscar was nodding along as she spoke, he had rubbed his eyes so much now they hurt for a different reason. "I'm not actually erasing the contamination... Instead, I'm making my brain immune to influence. The contamination is still there, but my brain won't be affected by it anymore."

A creative solution, even he knew it. "So, how will you know when you're done?"

Reaching a hand up, Rose gently grabbed the clasp on her cloak. Her hand began to shake violently for a moment, her skin rippling and rumbling with a strange pulse. It looked like she was going to throw up before she quickly let it go. Taking a minute to breath, she explained, "When I can take this cloak off; that's when I'm done."

Rose?

She smiled gently. It was rather cute, seeing him pass out like that while they were talking. Rose didn't want to get up, so she used her vines to gently put him in his bed and pull the blankets up over him. Maybe it was weird of her, but she did enjoy getting to be a mum again... Even in such small and minor ways. Looking at the image of her mind again, she began to search some more. By the time she found another orange light, the first light of dawn was creeping through the bedroom window. Rose squished the orange light and put the Mind Wraith back on her belt.

Transforming, she wrapped her wings around herself and shot a burst of the Snooze Lily into her own face. Sleep took her quickly, and she welcomed the silence of dreamless rest.

It didn't take her long to wake up, she hadn't used a very powerful dosage. By the time she did, Oscar was already awake. He was staring at her from his bed, no doubt in awe of her transformation. Unlike a long time ago, Rose didn't need to use her half form anymore. She had used Magic so frequently that her Mastery Form had come to her roughly five years ago. Now, she could access the full power of the Rose Dragon while retaining a humanoid shape, a boon that made her even more powerful. Now, when she transformed, she only received wings, horns, slitted eyes, and a patch of scales around her forearms.

Turning to her base form again as she got up, Rose was barely downstairs before Oscar's aunt was insisting that she stay for longer. Normally, Rose would deny that... However, there was a few days till they were due for another Dragon Grimm through the border... And now that she thought about it, her work wasn't necessary anymore anyway. There were turrets around every village, farm, and town... Vale was safe.

She didn't have that bloodthirst for Dragons anymore, either.

"It wouldn't hurt to stay a while..." Still, her days were filled with work. Not work on the farm, of course; work with the Mind Wraith.

With the pressure of hunting the Dragon Grimm and finding food every day taken off of her, Rose could work like never before. She spent hours and hours scouring through her mind, finding those pesky orange lights that were so very rare now. Days went by in a blur, time sped by without a moment's hesitation. Every day, she worked, every night, she stayed up till the sun greeted her working. It was actually quite nostalgic... Working like this.

"It's the Dragon Formula all over again..." It made her smile, thinking back to those times. The days with Penny, the fun games they would play. The days getting close to Yang and Blake again after her inferiority complex had pushed them apart... And most importantly, the days with Weiss. Thinking back, she could easily picture every time Weiss looked at her... Every time she just knew they were falling in love. Rose remembered the flirting, the nervous words, the rush to try and accomplish her goal even faster so they could be together.

She remembered the day it all came to fruition, the day she had arrived with just seconds to spare. Rose remembered seeing Weiss in that dress, she remembered blocking Winter and Pyrrha's blades - one more successfully than the other - and speaking with the confidence only Pride could give her.

But... She also remembered the days that came after. The life she had lived as Ruby, what little of it there was...

Rose remembered days spent in pain. She remembered Rory, she remembered the Vytal Festival and Carmine... She remembered Emerald's betrayal, the war... and the last memory.

Then, after that, she remembered the rest of her life, the majority of her life. All of it, spent trying to protect a family she didn't even know anymore. To accomplish what? To become Ruby again, to go back to them... To reach a home that wasn't hers anymore, to see her kids that were adults now, to find a woman that was no longer her wife?

"What have I spent my life doing...?" What had any of it been for? Rose was confident that given the chance, she would make all the same decisions... Actually... Baring one thing. "I would have waited." Blake had been on her way. Two Dragons would have been too much for Carmine to handle, she would have lost to them both. All Rose had to do was nothing in that moment... Yet, she had failed to do even that. "For what... Power? The chance to protect my kids in exchange for never knowing them?" The only real thing she had accomplished with her decision was killing Tock. That was the only difference she had made that otherwise couldn't have been.

Even as she thought that, Crescent Rose was folded on her back... But she didn't care. She would trade it for a life with her family without a second thought. Rose was nothing but a monster, a creature to keep them safe from a distance... But she was jealous; she wanted that life! If Rose couldn't exchange this power for her family, then she would instead be greedy. She would use one to get the other.

Who cares if she had spent her life pining after things rather than having them? All she cared about now was chasing after what she wanted. She wanted, needed, her family. Even if her life had been a waste, even if they moved on, even if she had been dead to them for fifty years. "Don't I deserve that at least...? Haven't I done enough...?"

"... When do I get to go home...?"

It was on a particularly rough day that she finally felt like cracking. It was raining, she was sitting at the table with the Mind Wraith working away as usual... But... It had been two whole days since she'd found an orange light. At first, that had made her ecstatic! She had immediately tried to take the cloak off only for it to reject her as usual. With her hopes crushed, she had gone back to work only for hours to pass with no results to show from it all. A mind was too big a place, searching the whole thing for the last lights was practically impossible.

She had never tried to count them... But... "At the very least... Billions..." And yet she expected to find one out of all of those? It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack the size of Vale.

Finally, she needed a break. Sitting here not getting anything done wouldn't help. Ironically, she needed a fresh mind to continue working. "I may as well check around the kingdom... See if those turrets have worked or not." Admittedly, it had been a bit irresponsible of her to just abandon her mission to let the turrets do it instead. "While I'm out there... I may as well upgrade one in each group I find. That way, they can see the improvements and copy them to the rest." The hose clogging was the major thing that needed fixing in all the others.

After telling Oscar and his family that she was leaving, Rose was stopped when Oscar asked something strange. "You're going to work, right? Leave the Mind Wraith with me."

"Wha-?"

"I can look while you do other stuff! That way, there's no wasted time." He seemed so bright and eager to help... Well, Rose couldn't see the harm. It was literally impossible for him to use it for anything but looking for the lights... And the only thing that could break it was strapped to her back... All she had to do was hook it up to some Dust so it kept its power while she was away.

After thinking it over for a bit, she agreed. Worst case scenario, he would just disappoint her.

Flying over Vale was quick, it always was. She zipped from town to town, all the while appreciating how nice it felt to fly again. Rose didn't mind relaxing, but her brain felt like mush after going so hard on the Mind Wraith for two weeks straight. "It's nowhere near as interesting as working on The Dragon Formula." Rose went to every town in Vale, every farm, every village, every fortress. It was quick work, she would duck in, either too quick for anyone to notice or too intimidating for anyone to do anything about, then upgrade one turret and leave.

It took a while, two days, actually. The hardest part was finding the stuff she needed to upgrade them all. The only detour she took was stopping to check in the Emerald Forest near Glenfall. Arriving at a familiar clearing, she was amazed by the fact that it hadn't changed at all in such a long time. This was where she had killed Tock, and much to her approval, she found no signs of any of Salem's forces. "Guess they got the message with just her." Most of her corpse was missing. Of course, what remained by now was only a skeleton, but the only thing she found was a single foot of all things.

After the two days were over, Rose arrived back at the farm at early morning. She was quiet going through the front door; she hoped that they wouldn't mind her just inviting herself in like this. Heading upstairs, she went to check on Oscar first. It had been a little stressful, not having the familiar weight of the Mind Wraith on her hip; getting it back was her first priority. Not that she didn't trust Oscar with it.

Peeking through the crack in his door, Rose was surprised to see him still awake. He was sat crossed legged in his pyjamas on the floor, eyes staring at the floating blue mind in front of him. He waved his hand every once in a while to move the view. Rose watched for a bit, she actually smiled, happy to see how much work he had apparently been putting into this.

But she didn't know the half of it.

Scrolling with his hand, they were both surprised when he found an orange light. "Yes!" He yelled with his hands up, "Another one!"

"Another one-?" Rose announced her presence with a question, but before Oscar could jump in surprise, something else grabbed his attention.

"OSCAR! SHUT UP!" She had never heard his uncle yell like that... Honestly it even made her jump a bit. The yell had come from their bedroom down the hall. For his voice to boom like that... Well, Rose was worried about the man's lungs now.

Shaking her head with a chuckle, Rose walked into Oscar's room and sat next to him. "What do you mean, 'another one'?"

Smiling triumphantly, he reached next to him and grabbed a piece of paper from the ground. Showing it to her, Rose was surprised when she saw a drawing of a brain... A bad one, but a drawing nonetheless. There were four orange dots drawn on random spots in the brain. "I marked down where I found them. I can't actually pop them myself." Rose had forgotten about that part.

With this last light he had found, that made five. While impressed, Rose was a bit sceptical. "Even with your drawing, are you sure you can find them again?" Reaching in, she tapped the light that was currently showing on the Mind Wraith.

"Yeah!" He announced confidently. "Watch." Wiping his hand across it, he kept glancing back at the drawing as he moved the hologram. To Rose's surprise, he led it straight to another orange light. After a moment's pause, Rose reached in and tapped it, changing it to blue.

"He's better at finding these than I am..." He scrolled it to another, and she tapped it too. "Still only Human, too..." Another one. "I wonder if he had help... Like from his aunt and uncle..."

"Annnd, here. Last one I found." Oscar yawned gently as he scrolled the Mind Wraith to the fifth orange light he had found.

Smiling brightly, Rose was amazed. In two days, he had helped her by a huge amount. Obviously, she still had no clue how many were left, but this was genuinely amazing. "Oscar... I don't know what to-" She reached in as she spoke, but when her finger touched the last one... She froze.

This one... It was different. When she changed it to blue, it was different. She could tell, she could instantly tell. "Rose?" Oscar asked nervously, but his voice sounded distant to her.

What was going on? There was something missing... A piece lacking from the equation. She had just lost something. Rose had just lost something. "Think... What changed...?" It was a constant, something that had been ongoing for ages had just stopped. Like a sound you had heard for so long its presence vanished from your mind, only for you to be made aware of the sudden lack of it when it stopped.

She must have sat there for a minute straight... Till she finally arrived at the answer.

It wasn't a sound, but it was a presence. Not a voice, but something similar. A thought, a goal, a compulsion... "Protect Ruby Schnee's family..." It had disappeared, that command was no longer being enforced. But why? Had the cloak failed? Had it turned off? That was impossible! "No, there's no way. This must be something else... Maybe... Maybe if I became immune to it somehow-"

The cloak worked by controlling her Dragon's Pride. But that was still an ability. It wasn't her mind; it was something else altering it.

It had been decades in the making... But her mind was finally immune to those effects.

That orange light... Those five...

"They were the last..." She whispered in disbelief.

"What!?" Oscar beamed with a giant smile. "Are you serious!? Rose, I'm so happy for you!"

Tears welled in her eyes. Words flittered across her tongue, words she had been wanting to speak for fifty years.

But not like this, not as who she was.

"Rose...? No..." Reaching up to her neck, for the first time in fifty years, her hand didn't waver as she unclipped the cloak.

Ruby Rose

"... That's not my name."