There was something about Florabel when she was dead. Something beautifully floral. She was a wilted rose, leaking her last pathetic rivulets of color over the knuckles of her nemesis: crimson on white. The knife twixt her ribs was the girl's only thorn— given, not grown— its joint of blade and body no longer pulsing red with Ruby's final, piteous heartbeats.
Her face had not been one of shock— she had grabbed Weiss' wrist and driven the blade in herself, there was no surprise to be had on her part— but one of relief. Weiss had watched the lines of pain on her face slacker. She had watched her jaw relax. She had watched her lips, parted and stained, come back together until they nearly touched. Her whole face had become slack. Even in the moments where Weiss had obsessively watched the bird sleep, there had been a tension to her countenance.
And her eyes… wide, bright, spearing through her nemesis… she had watched the lids relax, the lines disappear, then, finally, the glow had died. The undead girl who was Weiss and Ruby had finally been exorcized, and the crucible of death had left behind that selfsame girl who had put Weiss to sleep when they met. The raven's first victory. It had shackled her to Weiss. Now, her loss has freed her.
Had she ever known this calm? The last rush from a brain seeking only to comfort its beloved body? That final, chemical embrace from mind to flesh?
Ruby's features, so long and sharp, so neighboring to human, were finally graced with peace. Her skin was still warm to Weiss' touch. Still soft. Still pale, yet paler at the red fingerprints the Fourth placed upon her cheek. Her lips, supple 'neath Weiss' thumb, more blood streaking from her touch— she knew why the girl grinned so thinly: because when she smiled full, her lips would crease around her nose, making the shape crooked and rather like a beak. She must have hated that, so little did she smile true, but Weiss ached dearly to see that beaked smile freely cherished— no longer burdened by Beacon, by the fighting, by the heart and the lungs binding her here.
She wanted those lips to part at full, to bend in the middle the way they so rarely— so beautifully— did. She wanted the girl to show the world her smoke-stained teeth without reproach, even if Weiss could never see it. She just wanted Ruby to be okay. She wanted her to be happy. With herself.
And she seemed happy now. She seemed like she wasn't a Huntress at all. She seemed like her parents were normal, like she was in a normal college, like she had normal friends. Like, as Weiss gently pressed her thumbs up against the corners of Ruby's lips, the smile wouldn't fall as soon as they were gone.
But it did. And she was a beautiful, dead-faced corpse-girl once more. Weiss brushed a lock of hair away from the cheek it had been crusted to with blood. Her hand remained on the girl. Her eyes could not move away.
Had she ever been so…
"Sister!"
Weiss jerked back, hand flying to mouth as if to confirm she had lips, she could feel them, therefore the feeling that had just been against them was Ruby's own bloodied mouth. When her hand pulled back, the evidence was red on Weiss' skin. Ruby had kissed her. Ruby insofar as Ruby's corpse, 'kissed her' insofar as Weiss had passionately kissed a corpse.
She had the dignity to be ashamed— not for kissing the dead girl, no, Ruby's was a beautiful corpse that could not just lie there unkissed, but instead for kissing a very dead girl directly in view of her brother. Her brother who had also just witnessed a murder. Her brother who, unfortunately for him, had only ever known this iceberg's tip.
She sighed, wiping her bloodied mouth on her bloodied sleeve. She said in Mantell, "Grow up or look away, Whitley. Your sister is an idiot, and she is a monster, and she is about to do something you should not see if you can not accept that."
She did not turn to the boy. "What will you do?" he asked, also in Mantell. "And what do you mean?"
Weiss sighed. "Please look away. Your sister is… I am about to make a big fucking bigos."
"W-what? How so?"
Weiss sat back on her haunches, drawing the knife from Ruby's ribs with a slow and wet sucking sound. As much as she wanted to keep pretending the dead girl was a happy girl, the evidence was quite clear that it was an indecent indulgence of which poor Shitley did not deserve to bear witness. And she was, after all, already missing Florabel's terrible, ugly voice.
"Whitley, look. Away."
She turned to make sure he did, and he had.
Now, how to partake?
Already suspecting, Weiss Schnee did lay her tongue over her partner's knife, indiscriminately lathering her taste buds with the blood of dead Florabel. The cold cellar air had already rendered the vitae cool, which was an unpleasant way of taking such a metallic and natural taste, but Weiss dutifully cleaned the knife— for Florabel, of course. To do the girl right by trying the thing she knew would not work. Perhaps, she told herself had been her logic, if I did it, it would somehow work.
But it did not. When distanced from the body as a whole, the spirit was nonadherent to its cells.
She took another look at Whitley, who now covered himself with Ruby's hood— likely to prevent himself even seeing accidentally, so deterred by the cacophony of slurping Weiss had doubtless unleashed upon the knife.
Weiss shuffled to the girl's right. Casually, she bent down and licked the last remnants of still-wet blood from Ruby's cut cheek. Blood, as she already suspected, was nowhere near a sufficient conduit. She would have to quit stalling and eat. Weiss sat back again.
Thighs or buttocks were probably optimal— meaty, fewer things to get in the way, easier to hide the scar that would come with this act— but Weiss could hear the constant jeering ('Eat my ass— oh wait, you did! Ha!') sure to come with it. Furthermore, she would have to divorce Florabel quite a bit from her thick winter clothes, which was just a pace too far with Whitley in the same room.
A feather, perhaps? But there was no promise it had enough connection, nor did Weiss really know if they were alive like flesh or dead like hair. Nor did she think she could eat and swallow one, honestly. The texture… if she was going to eat Ruby, she would need to refrain from gagging it all back up.
She certainly would not be eating any of Ruby's face, even if the idea did make her brain grind to a brief (if poignant) halt. The forearms had too many important things to risk the permanent damage her thumb's stump now boasted. Weiss considered a piece of her upper arm, but that meat would be tough, the wound would be large, and it would never be hidden.
Not that any of it mattered. The considerations were yet more stalling. She knew what she would get, she knew what she had to get— for Florabel's sake, if not her own. Even if it hampered her life, even if she could never hide it, the girl would always be obsessed with evening things out. This was, unfortunately, a favor.
Gently, Weiss cupped the dead right hand in her own. Her fingers caressed the soft skin of the wrist. Her thumbs drifted lightly over the back, tracing the tendons. She combed through the feathers of the forearm— just as Ruby always wanted her to (she was terrible at hiding it)- drifting down to hold the elbow in one palm. Her other hand took the corpse's like a lascivious prince greeting a damsel: daintily, four fingers tucked against palm, thumb out— only now she would not be laying a friendly kiss of salutation on those fingers. Instead, she wrapped her lips around the thumb, slowly taking the flesh's last fading warmth into her mouth.
The skin was salted iron on her tongue. It was not body-hot anymore, but it had yet fallen to lukewarmth. The pad of Ruby's thumb was a rough thing. She felt its callus scraping down to the base of her tongue.
Weiss slowly closed her jaw, testing the firmness of her partner's hand. The concept was, at first, untenable in her mind— eating Florabel, at least in a context that was neither spiritual nor sexual— but Ruby had done it. Even if she had been addled by adrenaline, panic, misunderstanding, and desperation, the girl had taken Weiss between her molars and severed soul from flesh.
Weiss was no better than Ruby. But this also meant Ruby was absolutely not better than her.
She bit. There was blood, then resistance: a subconscious mind that had not yet agreed to the task, pulling taut the reins of her jaw muscles. Weiss grunted, shaking her head, and ground her jaw hard against her partner.
The skin was rent, blood still slightly warm flooding Weiss' mouth. She had to jerk her head back to tear meat and gristle from bone. The taste was metallic, thick, such a sharp tang that any other hint of humanity was drowned beneath— a hard, warm grape, one that burst and flooded the tongue.
How must she look? If Whitley was looking, what would he see? The blood, surely, even Weiss could feel it leaking down the sides of her mouth. But could he see her teeth? When Weiss adjusted the wrist, more amicably fitting the joint of thumb and palm into her mouth, could the bone be seen? Not that it would be for long either way— Weiss took it like her jaw was a guillotine, and the resistance was less than she could have ever imagined. The bone simply snapped in her mouth, and just like that, the digit was free.
Weiss chewed it.
Her teeth broke through the carrion a vulture, the creamy grit of bone and marrow making Weiss grunt. There was so much in a thumb. So much blood, so much meat, so much gristle, so much bone. She tried to swallow and gagged, forced to chew and chew and chew until there was a chunky slurry of dead girl in her mouth. She forced it down again.
She felt it drop into her stomach. It burned.
Flora—
The burn exploded into the back of her left hand, then her bottom ribs, the sole of her right foot, the tip of her tongue, the sense zipping between random points beneath her skin, spreading something like spiced, snappy apples. It surged up behind her eyes— the eyes in her eyes, her skull— silver-blue— a heavy feeling of cold mercury that flooded all the cavities of her cranium— licking a metal post in winter. The frozen sense fell from her sinuses to her tongue, a heavy waterfall, floral and rosy and stabbing her tongue and teeth, filling the holes with salt or sugar. Her mouth felt dry, yet overly salivated— something like a thick film making all the liquid slide around her mouth without soaking— was it really doing that? Or did it just feel like it?
Her hands itched. Her eyes itched. Her eyes. Her eye.
KNOWEST THEE WHAT FACE THOU MAKEST FOR MURDER
I'm so sorr—
'TIS SEVERELY ENTRANCING— VERILY, OUR NEXT BOUT OF CARNALISM SHALT LEAVE THEE ATOP THE MEDLEY
She blinked. She could see both her lids— not see, rather, because of them— but that didn't suddenly make her cool with having a loud, horny bird in her brain. Even if she belonged there.
I'm already tired of this. Let's get your ass back in your ass.
THOU COULDST LEAVE ME HERE
She dropped the bleeding hand, her lips pursing.
You've got a family. I'm not taking you away from them, not without some way to corroborate that this funky little friend-feast was specifically requested. Your mom would kill me otherwise.
HA
VERILY
SAY, WHYFOR WOULDST MY MOTHER NOT APPEAR FOR OUR BOUT
She opened her mouth— er, her mind-mouth— then (mentally) clapped it shut. Something about that did eat at her. Both of her. It gnawed at her. It chewed her. Something was wrong— the body in her body was too much, too much for her own, and that wasn't even because her legs were too short. It was something else. Something bad, badbadbad.
"Sister? Is it over?"
Her body tensed, fingers clenching unbidden. Her eyes— four, or two? Six?— felt like they were bleeding. Her ears rang.
"Just— j-just a sec, Whitler—" she was trembling from the inside out, from the outside in; body pressing on soul, soul pressing on body— she was a star battling its own collapse, falling up the alpha ladder, skin outside clenching down on the furious energy within. What the fuck is an alpha ladder? "This— didst thou feel— pained— when thou wert—"
"Sh—shutup, talk—ing— it's fucking me—" she grunted, trying to force her jaw to stay shut. It wouldn't. "Nay, thou— thou need'st— uphold thy jabber, lest thou— shite— lose thy—"
"Weiss?"
"Silence, Shitley!" she roared, then smacked herself. "Do not call him— thou wert the one— no, it was you!" She hit herself again, harder than she meant, and she was pretty sure the "Ow!" was mutual. "You bitch— whyfor didst thou— no, it was you, fuckass!"
EXTRICATE ME FROM THY VESSEL
THIS IS NOT RIGHT
You just want me to kiss you.
She smacked herself again, this time meaning it, because she was right— wrong, too. She scrambled for the dead girl she'd eaten. She dove down, but hesitated the moment she saw the lips.
SECOND'S BLESSINGS
I AM UGLY
'Second's blessings,' so fucking cringe.
BE SILENT AND LAY THY LIPS—
She crashed her lips into the corpse's mouth, colliding so hard she felt the bottom split. She gripped the back of the corpse's head, bringing it closer, deepening the kiss— that was probably how it worked, it had nothing to do with the intense, blue-balling angst she and Florabel had been trudging through. She kissed her until her soul moved. She kissed her until everything felt normal. She kissed Ruby until Ruby woke up and kissed her back and she could apologize and they could keep making out and Weiss would call her her girlfriend. She kissed the stupid fucking bird until…
Why the fuck am I still thinking like this?
UH
MAYHAP THOU SHOULDST TRY TONGUE
She tried tongue, which was extremely weird when the other tongue was unresponsive and starting to get cold.
This isn't—
Then a hand fisted into her shirt, and the tongue worked against hers, slickening itself with saliva and surging back to good, wet, human heat. And she was kissing Ruby again. Ruby was kissing her. Her lips had lips on them, and she could feel it so much even if she was touchy as fuck. She couldn't help but make an indulgent, embarrassing noise. Opening her eyes, she found silver glaring through her.
Omigod you're so intense.
THAT IS NOT ME