Ruby had just lost a friend.
Even after everything that happened during Amity, the death, chaos, and destruction... That was what stuck to the forefront of her mind.
What was the use of a semblance like hers if it couldn't be fast enough to save the people she cared about?
There was a moment years ago that Ruby couldn't help but remember, during a dark night after visiting her mother's grave. Uncle Qrow had been drinking more than usual, and had turned to look at her, expression somber and serious.
"See, that's the thing squirt..." Qrow slurred, turning over the flask in his hand as he spoke. "This line of business... it's a hard one. If it's not your body, it's your soul. Or it's someone else's." He shook his head. "Either way, you're always losing something. That's what you're signing up for when you become a Huntress. Losing people."
He eyed Ruby for a second, the tearstains drying across her face.
"Eventually, you just start to hope that the people dying aren't the people that're close to you."
Pain lanced through Ruby, dragging her out of unconsciousness. The journey was slow, minutes passing before she managed to open her eyes, the back of her head lancing in the pain of a low, throbbing headache. Another pain told her that one of her legs was injured, and moving it confirmed this, a gasp escaping her lips.
All the information came quickly, almost as fast as the panic that surfaced as Ruby realized that even though she had opened her eyes she couldn't see.
She reached up to touch her eyes, feeling fabric wrapped around her eyes, cutting off her vision. She went to remove it before an unfamiliar voice spoke up, causing her to freeze.
"You shouldn't mess with that yet."
The voice was raspy, almost like a woman's version of her uncle's, but worse, as if the person had just smoked a pack of cigarettes before speaking. "It looked like you were bleeding from your eyes. I did the best I could, but I wouldn't recommend taking it off yet."
"W-who are you?" Ruby asked, her voice cracking a little.
Instead of an answer, she heard the movement of a branch cracking in the distance, causing Ruby's fingers to twitch. Where was Crescent Rose?
"Do you know what happened to you?" The voice was gruff, closed off.
"W-what? What're you talking about?"
Again, nothing.
Before Ruby could speak again, she felt something sharp tickle the underside of her chin.
"What. Happened?"
Ruby tried to press herself a little deeper into whatever she was sitting against.
"I... don't know. Exactly. The last thing I remember was—was fighting someone. Everything else is a blur."
"Who were you fighting?"
"A woman." Ruby felt a surge of bravery. "Why?"
Unsurprisingly, there was no answer, except for the relief when the blade was removed, scraping her neck a little. Quiet shuffling led Ruby to believe that the woman had moved away from her. The sound of her voice in the distance reinforced the assumption.
"We need to move soon. I don't know if there's any Grimm here, but I don't want us sitting around and finding out."
"Where are we?" Ruby tried to ask again, trying to lift herself off of the ground before realizing that her leg was NOT going to support her weight as she dropped unceremoniously back down onto the ground, letting out a small curse as she did so. Touching her leg tenderly, she tried to feel the extent of the damage.
"Your leg is broken." The woman volunteered the information disinterestedly, "I did my best to splint it up, but you're going to be without it until we find some hint of civilization."
"Hm." Ruby grunted, doing her best to stand before she felt the woman come back around, supporting enough of her weight to limp forward a few steps. "So, I'm guessing we're not in in Beacon. Or Vale." A safe enough guess. The brief sounds birds against the gentle breeze gave her another clue, along with the wooden texture that she could feel with her unsupported hand. "Emerald Forest?"
There was a grunt from the other woman.
"How did I get here?"
Trying to remember what happened after Cinder killed Pyrrha was impossible, but it didn't seem likely that Ruby had been carried away from the scene. And to end up in the forests of all places? This didn't make any sense.
A call for motion dragged her away from that train of thought, causing her to cry out in pain as the woman tugged her in an unexpected angle, causing her to use her broken leg to support herself briefly.
"Who ARE are you?" Ruby asked, gasping as she attempted to recover her breath.
Again, there was no answer, except for another insistent tug to make sure that Ruby kept moving. She grit her teeth at that. Fine.
Resigning herself to no answers any time soon, Ruby focused on trying her best to keep up with the pace that the other woman was pushing onto her, knowing that the sooner the two of them moved to a safer place, the sooner Ruby could focus and try to wrangle any answers out of the other person.
Ruby realized very quickly that being blindfolded meant that keeping time was impossible.
By the time they stopped, Ruby wasn't sure if an hour or four had passed. The only thing she knew was that they hadn't moved in a straight line, the other woman spoke very little, and that trying to walk any for any amount of time while having a broken leg was exhausting.
After being set down against another tree, Ruby tried her best to regain her breath, wiping some sweat away from her forehead.
Recovering took longer than she expected, several minutes passing before Ruby dared to speak again. This time, she approached the conversation in a different direction.
"Thank you. For patching me up. And bringing me with you. I should've said that at the beginning. Sorry." Ruby paused, hoping for a response. "Is there any way that you can tell me ANYTHING at all? Please?"
Ruby sat there, waiting.
Finally, she could hear a nearly imperceptible sigh come from the woman. "I'm not sure either. I... think I was in the same situation that you were in." There was a wracking series of coughs, making Ruby flinch at the sudden noise, the voice sounding more faded when the woman spoke up again. "I don't remember much of what happened. Just a lot of pain, then waking up in the woods. You were there as well. I was hoping that you had some answers, actually."
Fingers touched her cheeks, causing Ruby's shoulders to tense up a little.
"I'm going to take off the blindfold now," The other woman rasped, waiting for Ruby to give a tiny nod before she removed it.
It was like someone had taken two ice picks and hammered them into Ruby's skull. The influx of sudden light was more than just disorienting, it was debilitating. Her hand shot out, grabbing the woman's shoulder. Without a word, the blindfold slid back into place, bringing with it a minimal amount of relief.
Time ticked past before Ruby felt well enough to speak, her voice strangled.
"Okay. Maybe—maybe not yet." She let out a shaky breath. "Sorry."
Another grunt.
Ruby leaned against the tree trunk, the back of her head touching the bark. Emotions swirled in an almost noxious concoction around her, settling into the base of her stomach as she did her best to try and order her thoughts.
Okay.
First things first, Ruby needed to figure out what was going on with her companion of circumstance. She might only be fifteen, but Ruby wasn't stupid. She was a Huntress-in-training, a girl who had fought against criminals and Grimm alike. She could do this.
She could get to the bottom of this. She started with an easy question.
"How hurt are you?"
Silence. Okay.
Ruby continued.
"Do you know where we are?"
Again, nothing.
"Where are we headed?"
There was rustling, but not much else.
Fine.
"You don't remember anything, do you? Whatever happened... you can't tell me because you don't have any idea." Ruby found confidence as she continued talking. "It's not that you don't remember what happened during the fight, you don't remember anything that happened at all."
The following silence was different than the others, Ruby could feel it. She could feel sweat form on her shoulders, her neck getting a little hot. She was helpless against the other woman. It wouldn't take much to convince the woman to cut her losses at this point and leave Ruby to the wilderness.
The thought pushed Ruby to remove the bandage wrapping her eyes again, gritting her teeth at the return of the headache. No pain, no gain, she supposed. She needed to know what was happening.
Her heart started to go into overdrive as her vision slowly filled out, like a camera going in and out of focus and never quite getting it.
It didn't take much to see who was standing on the other side of her though.
A monster.
A killer.
Her friends' killer.
Cinder.
Ruby's fingers twitched again, desperate to find Crescent Rose somewhere, anywhere.
Cinder Fall, the orchestrator of the fall of Beacon, the Breach, the reason so many people were dead, stood in front of Ruby.
And she was broken.
Her dress was in tatters, strips torn off, her heels missing. There were deep furrows poking out of the makeshift bandages that covered part of her face, wrapping over one of her eyes, one side of her lips drawn back in a permanent, dry grimace. Her hair was in a similar mess, parts of it burned close, and whatever was left hanging limply across her face. She breathed in short gasping breaths, her uncovered eye trained on the younger girl. And her arm...
Ruby swallowed, partly to prevent herself from throwing up, and partly to cover the scream that threatened to break through.
Cinder took a step back, her gaze wary, her functional hand dragging a long, burnt shaft of a weapon along with it, turning her body defensively. The movement brought Ruby's hazy vision into brief focus, her beating heart raising in tempo as she spotted Crescent Rose strapped across the back of Cinder's body.
The makeshift staff creaked as Cinder let go of it, moving her good hand to grab Crescent Rose, pulling it free from its restraints. Ruby only had a second to contemplate action, knowing that her next move could spell the end of her life.
Her semblance was useless with the broken leg, and without a weapon that she could use, there wasn't much more Ruby could do except lift her chin up defiantly, baring her teeth in what hoped was an expression of resolute defiance.
Which turned into confusion as her rightful weapon was thrown towards her, the familiar weight of Crescent Rose knocking the wind out of her lungs before she could wrap her arms around it protectively, not being able to react as Cinder moved deceptively fast, the ruined spear ringing out as it was wrenched from the ground and propelled inches away from Ruby's face.]
The two stood there, faces inches apart, both breathing shallowly as neither moved.
"Perhaps I am your enemy, girl." Cinder rasped. "But we are in the middle of nowhere, with no supplies. Our scrolls are not working, and we are both injured. You may not like me, but unless you want us both to die, the best choice is to work together until we make it out of this." The weapon, Pyrrha's javelin, Ruby realized, creaked ominously as Cinder leaned against it. "Otherwise, our only other option is to just try and kill each other now. Spare ourselves the trouble of dying slowly later."
In her fifteen years on Remnant, there had never been a time where she could say that she hated someone. There were people that she disliked, sure. Back when she was in Signal, there were a few kids that would bully her. Roman had slowly been rising on her list of disliked people, but he never made it into the hated territory before he was eaten by that Gryphon.
Hatred was an unfamiliar feeling for Ruby.
She hated Cinder.
She couldn't understand the woman. Why work to destroy a bastion of humanity, send one of the four kingdoms into disarray? There was no rhyme or reason for what she had done, but she had done it.
And more importantly, Cinder had murdered two of her friends.
Justice, Ruby decided, would need to be dealt.
But Cinder was also right.
The murderer wouldn't go down without a fight, and even if Ruby managed to apprehend or kill her, there's no telling what kind of damage Ruby would sustain from that. Ruby wasn't suicidal.
No, fighting now wouldn't benefit anyone.
Ruby dipped her chin an inch in agreement, eyes never leaving Cinder's.
Fine.
She would survive through this with the other woman.
Then Pyrrha and Penny would have their justice.
Cinder nodded back, leaning back to heave Mylo out of the trunk. "I'm glad that we were able to come to an agreement." Peering up at the sky and the dwindling sunlight, Cinder continued. "We should continue moving. Will you be able to use that?" Cinder pointed at Crescent Rose.
Standing up was a challenge, and shifting her weapon was more difficult than she would've liked. Crescent Rose was almost always perfectly maintained, and the sound of grinding as she turned into a sniper made Ruby's heart ache. Nevertheless, it was another thing to keep on the backburner for now.
Popping out the magazine, Ruby checked to see how much ammo she had left in her weapon, not able to hide her wince.
"How much do you have left?" Cinder asked.
Ruby's eyes flickered up to Cinder's, lips pursing. There was a hard click as Ruby loaded the mag back into Crescent Rose as she responded.
"Not enough."
Cinder's eye narrowed briefly before she nodded. "Fine. We'll have to hope that nothing catches us off guard while we're in this state then."
"Let's go."