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Her team is dead.
A distant, hysterical voice says that she’s already joined them. This has to be hell. This cannot be the life that is said to be worth living.
Weiss stares at the space where Blake and Ruby were not even a moment ago. The shape of their bodies are still burned into her eyes from where they dissipated in a flash of gold, their horrified eyes meeting hers sure to be forever ingrained in her memory for the rest of this cruel life she is forced to live without them. They didn’t even scream.
What was the last thing they said to her? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t want to know, because knowing meant that they were gone, that she won’t hear their voices or laughter or soft breaths while they slept-
A crueler, foreign thought;
I will never see them again.
She tears her eyes from the empty void. She hears Penny somewhere behind her screaming at Cinder, her voice barely recognizable from the anger and grief coating it. The ground beneath her knees shakes with the thunderous footsteps of the innocent. The edge looks so kind.
But then.
She sees Gambol. Still wedged in the side of the bridge from where Blake had thrown it like she had a thousand times before, except this time it didn’t save her.
It was the last thing she had of them.
She grabs it with shaking hands, nicking herself on the blade before assuming the position first Winter then Ruby drilled into her in case she ever needed to use a gun. Phantom hands guide her grip and find her target.
She pulls the trigger. Once, twice, three times. She doesn’t know how many bullets are left in the chamber. She can’t bring herself to care. She’s already accepted she’s not making it out of this fight. There’s a certainty in her chest that is telling her she is going to die, a tether pulling her towards her missing parts.
“Get back!” Her voice bursts out of her without warning, shocking even herself. This isn’t happening. None of this is real. This is happening to someone else. Someone else is getting hit by searing flame and nearly thrown off the edge, someone else is clutching Gambol and Myrtenaster like it’s the world’s only hope.
“It figures that a Schnee would be the last one standing, letting all her friends die first.”
She wants to retaliate, to do something that Winter would surely scold her for and her team would remind her not to be so reckless out of her love for them, but none of them were here, and right now she wants Cinder to die more than anything in this forsaken world. But the flame is coming towards her face and she only brings her arm up and screams out of what’s left of her residual self-preservation, not born out of any true will to survive. She just wants it to stop.
Someone blocks the blast, and for a moment she thinks that it’s Ruby or Blake or Yang coming back from the dead to pull her to her feet, squeeze her hand, and tell her not to be so careless.
But it’s Penny, her swords blocking first the flames then Weiss herself from further attack. Weiss wants to stay down and curl in a ball until it’s all over and it’s safe to come out. She thinks she’ll never feel safe again.
But Penny is literally putting herself in the line of fire and she loves Penny and doesn’t want her to get hurt. Penny is newly human, newly fragile, and she can’t be used to that yet. She has to protect her. She can’t let anyone else die.
So she stands up. She clutches both blades and grounds her feet, seeing Jaune disappear through the portal and Nora land beside her out of the corner of her eye.
(Later, she will learn that Nora blamed herself. That she probably will continue to blame herself for the rest of her life, even after their return. Because she didn’t want Jaune to go against Cinder after Haven, she sent him to Vacuo and by doing so doomed Penny to a painful death. She will learn that Jaune blames himself too, that he will never forget the way his heart dropped when he saw Winter return with a power that wasn’t hers and Nora screaming that they were gone. She’ll tell him how it happened so fast, how there was so much blood, and he confesses that he doesn’t think he would have been able to do anything, had it been him.
But that world was not this one. Penny’s blood was forever stained on Weiss’s hands. Her blade was forever haunted.)
There’s no time to think about whatever plan is being enacted or why no one has come back through the portal. The three of them are still standing. That has to be enough.
But it never is, is it?
There’s so much blood.
Weiss loved red, she loved how it reminded her of her partner, of freedom and courage.
Right now, she’s never hated it more.
She falls to Penny’s side, hands anxiously hovering for a second too long before she puts pressure on the wounds with both hands, pressing so hard she’d be worried if Penny could breathe if she didn’t have bigger things to worry about. Blood stains her gloves and seeps through the thick fabric and warms her fingers. She wants to be sick.
Meaningless platitudes are falling from her lips, you’re okay, you’re alright, it’s gonna be okay i promise just hold on. It’s not helping. If words saved people then she would have saved herself from Atlas when she was no older than six, she would have stopped Beacon from falling and the world from ending three times over and Salem from living any longer. Words save no one. She can’t either. There’s so much blood. Where’s-
“Jaune!” Her throat hurts. She screams louder, whipping her head around only to see no one left but her and a dying girl and Nora as the only thing standing in-between Cinder killing them all. Nora’s crying. She meets her eyes briefly when her hammer is locked with Cinder’s sword. She’s never seen her look so hopeless.
“Jaune!!” Where is he, he saved her life once, he has to save Penny, she can’t die, not again, not when there’s no coming back this time and-
Penny places her hand over Weiss’s. She barely hears her whisper.
“There’s no time.” Weiss stares at her, broken sobs coming so fast she’s lightheaded. “There’s no time to save me.”
Weiss shakes her head. Presses harder.
“No, no, there has to be another way, alright? We always find a way. We always,” her voice breaks. She lifts her hands off of the wounds and wraps her right arm around Penny and hugs her to her chest, her left hand holding onto Penny’s.
No one is coming to save them.
Penny is dying in her arms.
(If she weren’t a Schnee, maybe she’d have a different Semblance. One that could heal and protect and save. But she was a Schnee. That’s what always damned her.)
She takes in her friend. Her freckles, her curly red hair, the light in her eyes so bright even now. How she smiled at her so softly when she knew where she was going.
“Weiss, I need you to…” She trails off. Blinks hard, forcing herself to focus. Being human is so exhausting. Dying is even harder.
“Anything, Penny.”
Penny doesn’t answer. She holds onto Weiss’s hand, pulls it gently to… Myrtenaster.
Her blood runs cold. No. No. She’d give her friends the world. She’d give them anything. Anything but this.
“Penny, please…”
She just smiles sadly.
“She can’t get the Staff…and the power.” Weiss knows she’s right. She hates that she’s right. She shouldn’t have to be right. Nothing about this is right. “Let me choose this one thing.”
There is nothing but love in her eyes. Nothing but forgiveness, nothing but courage.
“Trust me.”
Weiss knew that as a Huntress, she would have to make hard decisions. She would have to fight for the good of all, not just a few. She had to do what was best for the world. It was so easy in theory, but had the people who preached it ever had to face something like this? She had known the statistics when she signed up for this job. She remembers looking at her class in the auditorium after they’d been sworn in and knowing that half of them wouldn’t make it to thirty. She knew that none of them had a choice. Being a Huntsman was in their very blood. It was the one thing that they could never hope to fight.
Weiss knows that by killing Penny, she’d likely choose Winter to be the next Maiden. She’d bind her sister to the destiny she was groomed for and put a target on her back bigger than the burden of being a Schnee ever was.
Weiss knows that by killing Penny, she’d be robbing a father of his daughter.
Weiss knows that there isn’t a right or wrong choice to make. But Penny - sweet, kind, loving, precious Penny is asking her to kill her. And she finds that she can’t deny her the humanity of choice.
(Weiss knows the quickest, most merciful ways to kill.)
So she blinks away her tears to make room for more. She unsheaths Myrtenaster from her belt, feels Penny’s hand weakly clasp over hers on the hilt, and points it to her friend’s heart. Penny’s smiling. She’s still smiling and looking at Weiss with so much love that it threatens to break her.
She could tell her a million things now - that she was a hero, that she would see them all again, that she would be remembered by the world and become one with the stars she loved so much.
Instead she told her this.
“You were loved. You are loved. So much.”
“I loved you all too. I don’t think I could ever stop.”
And wasn’t that the truth of it all? Penny loved the world with all that she was. She loved the night sky and the blinding sun, her friend’s hugs and laughs, stray dogs on the street and every child she saved. The world didn’t always love her back. The world was never as kind.
Weiss presses her forehead to Penny’s, angles the blade, and looks at her friend one last time in life. Penny nods.
Weiss once thought the hardest thing she would ever have to do is run. Minutes ago, she’d thought it would be her team falling out of her reach. Now, she thinks this is it. This is as much pain as a human being can possibly take.
Penny’s hand is warm over hers as the rapier plunges through her heart, her human heart, her beating and loving heart. She’s still smiling. She gasps, and it sounds so similar to her breathless laughter that she is reminded of kinder yesterdays as her fingers fall off the blade and her eyes see right past her.
Fight for the good of all, not just a few.
One person is not worth millions.
The people who said that had never known Penny Polendina. They had never had to cradle their friend while killing them, didn’t have to feel their own forged blade tear through skin and bone and tissue and soul. Didn’t hear her last breath and feel her throat tear as she screamed when she pulled her rapier from her chest.
There is no time to mourn.
There is Cinder screaming in her face as she barely manages to block with her bloody blade only for it to be cleaved in two, there is Nora staring, horrified, at Penny’s body, there is Winter using Penny’s powers to buy them what little time is allotted. Then Nora’s dragging her away as she reaches for Penny’s body, desperate to hold onto anything that’s left, even if it’s cold and lifeless, Nora trying to shield her from Cinder’s blast, Nora’s scream as she slips from her grasp, Winter’s roar and desperate eyes as her fingers barely miss her own.
There is darkness.
There is death.
And despite it all, there is comfort in the fall.
Weiss wakes up with the taste of blood in her mouth and an aching head. Her face is puffy from the telltale effects of a heavy cry and her throat is sore. Her gloves feel stiff.
For a moment, a blissful, cruel moment, she doesn’t remember what happened.
She sits up and scans her surroundings. She seems to be in a forest, one unlike anything she’s aware of on Remnant. It almost looks like something straight out of a fairytale. A piece of hair falls into her face. Her braid must have come undone. She raises a hand to brush it back and freezes.
Her gloves are stained with blood.
Penny’s blood.
She doesn’t even know she’s screaming until something, someone, breaks through the noise. They reach out to her, and Weiss has enough presence of mind to flinch away, now screaming distinct words as opposed to incoherent agony. The stranger speaks, louder this time, clearer.
“Weiss, it’s me, it’s Blake.”
Blake. That’s right. Blake fell. Blake died. Ruby died. Yang died. Penny died. Weiss died. They were dead.
“We’re not dead, Weiss, I don’t know where the others are but we’re alive, we’ll find them, we’re okay.”
Weiss shook her head frantically. Blake moves to take her hands, then gasps.
“Weiss, are you hurt?” She shakes her head. “Whose blood is this?” Silence.
Blake hesitates. Weiss knows she’s going to ask the question she’s been dreading. She doesn’t know if she can say it out loud, speak it so that it’s real, let alone tell Yang and Ruby later. Ruby. Gods, this will break her. She cries harder.
“Weiss…what happened after we fell?”
Her breath shudders in her lungs. She opens her mouth to speak but nothing comes out. It only makes her cry harder. Blake pulls her close, cradling her head in one hand just like Yang does, and whispers soft reassurances. Weiss only shakes her head.
“Penny…”
Blake stops for just a second before she resumes rocking her back and forth. In just one word, she thinks Blake already knows.
“No one came back to help. No one came back, why didn’t they-” She goes cold, her words stop in her throat.
“People enter from Atlas and Mantle on one side…and leave on the other side, with a one way ticket to Vacuo.”
One way ticket to Vacuo.
One way.
Penny died because of her blade. Because of her carelessness.
“-eiss? Weiss, you’re scaring me, what’s wrong?” Weiss shakes her head. Blake’s hands rise up to frame her face, eyes frantic. “Weiss, look at me. Look at me.”
Weiss does. Blake’s face is blurry through her tears, but she thinks Blake is crying too. Blake wipes away a few tears only for more to take their place. Weiss watches her steel herself to ask.
“Weiss, is Penny…”
She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to. Blake hugs her again, and this time Weiss can feel her cries against her own.
After an hour or so, they finally get moving. Every step feels like lead to Weiss. Her entire being is so heavy. But by some small miracle in the recent vast atrocities, it doesn’t take long for them to find Yang and Ruby together. They embrace, together again, and Weiss breathes it in like it’s something sacred. They’re still here. This part of them, at least, is still whole.
They’re all tearing up, the events of the past few days catching up to them, but Yang and Ruby realize something is up with Weiss when she doesn’t move to pull away from the group hug when they do. Yang tilts her head up, asking what’s wrong, Ruby grabs her arm, and Blake’s ears turn down. She gives her an encouraging nod.
“It all happened so fast. You were gone and I was alone and no one could come back through the portal to help. Cinder…Cinder hurt Penny. Badly. There was so much blood. And I was calling for Jaune, but he couldn’t get back through. She…” She pauses, struggling to speak through heaving sobs. She looks at Ruby. “She begged me. She wanted to choose. I tried to make it kind. I told her she was loved.”
Ruby’s face slackens in grievous understanding.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Ruby turns pale, and Yang barely catches her before she hits the ground.
Blake holds Weiss as she cries. Night falls, and Ruby’s still out in Yang’s lap, and she’s been still so long that Blake and Yang must think she’s fallen asleep.
Blake’s voice is a soft rumble from where Weiss’s head is held to her chest. “How will we ever be okay again?”
Weiss hears Yang sniff. It’s a moment before she responds. “I don’t know. But we have to be strong. I have to be strong.”
Weiss feels Blake tense. Sigh. “You know you don’t always have to be the strong one.”
Yang doesn’t answer for a long while.
Blake’s grip tightens on Weiss, and she says so softly Weiss wants to cry again, “You fell, Yang. If Weiss didn’t hold me back, I would have jumped after you.”
“Blake…”
“You love us. And we love you. But please, don’t die for us if you can help it. Don’t throw your life away so quickly. We can’t,” Weiss feels a tear drop on her head. “We can’t lose anyone else.”
Yang must be clenching her prosthetic fist. Weiss can hear the gears shift. It’s been through a lot in the past few days with little time for repairs and upkeep. Ruby would be jumping at the chance to tinker with it in any other situation. This was all so wrong.
“Okay.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
They’re quiet for so long that Weiss almost really falls asleep, when Yang breaks the silence.
“I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“It doesn’t feel real. None of this does.”
“...Do you think they’ll be okay?”
“Not anytime soon. But someday.”
“Do you think we’ll be okay?”
“I think we’ll be some version of it, one day.”
That’s all they can give each other. A small hope that someday the pain will scar over. It’s not perfect, it’s not promised. Penny is dead and nothing can change that. They don’t know where they are and Weiss thinks she’ll always be able to feel the blood on her hands.
But Blake is holding her tight. Yang is next to them with Ruby in her lap. Her team will watch over them until the suns rise.
For the first time in four hellish days, Weiss allows herself to fall asleep.
She wakes up after what she guesses has been a few hours. Blake and Yang are whispering and freeze when she stirs.
“Did we wake you?”
Weiss shakes her head and smiles weakly at Blake. Her head hurts from all the crying. She doesn’t think she’s cried this much in her entire life. “No. Have you both been up all night?”
They nod in unison. Weiss sighs, stretches. She maneuvers herself out of where she’d fallen in Blake’s lap during her sleep and gently shoves her towards Yang to lean on.
“You two sleep. I’ll keep watch for a bit.” They open their mouths, and she cuts them off. “Nope. No arguments. Go to bed.”
And after a few, near-unbearable minutes of the two trying to get comfy on each other while blushing and stammering, they do. Weiss decides to busy herself with her scroll for a while. She freezes when she sees her lockscreen.
Qrow had taken the picture. It was in an empty teacher’s lounge in Atlas Academy after a long day of missions. Oscar had baked them cookies while they were gone to surprise them with when they returned, and they crashed on the couch together in a truly magnificent feat of human will. Penny had joined them, and while the others had slept, she had stayed awake, perfectly content. The picture showed them all fast asleep on the couch, barring Jaune who was halfway falling to the floor, and Penny watching them all with a soft smile, her eyes faintly glowing in the dark.
It had only been a few months ago. It seemed like lifetimes.
They could never sleep that soundly again.
They could never go back to what was.
Everything was forever tainted.
Something rustles behind her. Weiss turns on instinct even though her mind recognizes the familiar noise of Ruby waking from a deep sleep. The switch between her behavior at Beacon and everything after had been jarring. At Beacon, Ruby woke them all in the morning with unending enthusiasm. When they found each other again, so much had changed. Her hair was longer, her eyes looked haunted, she picked at her nails in constant anxiety. She never wanted to wake up in the mornings. It had fallen to Weiss to wake her partner up in the mornings, and though she always eventually succeeded in getting her out of bed, it took no small effort. It hurt Weiss a little more each day. Ruby used to be so excited to wake up in the morning and live another day. Now, she would stay in bed all day if they let her just to escape the burdens she took on as her own.
Weiss watches as Ruby stirs awake. A thousand different expressions cross her face before she even opens her eyes. When she opens them to meet Weiss’s own, she knows that she remembers their harsh reality. She shoots her a sad smile.
She might hate her. She might never want to talk to her again. She’ll think that she was right in their first days at Beacon. She’ll be alive, but she’ll lose her too.
Weiss braces herself for the worst and tells herself to embrace it. Because this is what she deserves. At least she had the privilege and honor to call Ruby Rose her friend for a few, glorious years. At least she got to call her hers, if only for a little while.
Ruby sits up slowly, her eyes never once leaving Weiss’s. When she speaks, it breaks Weiss’s heart into even smaller pieces.
“Weiss.”
It comes out in a whisper. Her voice is raspy and raw from grief. It breaks halfway through. It sounds nothing like she’s ever heard from Ruby. But she’s talking to her. That might just make it the most beautiful sound she’s ever heard.
Weiss holds her arms out in a silent invitation. Ruby comes forward to lean into her embrace. They stay like that for a while in the familiarity, Weiss gently swaying them back and forth, humming a wordless melody. She doesn’t mention her shirt getting wet from tears or Ruby’s soft cries. She just holds her like she’s done a thousand times before and would die to do a thousand times again.
“Weiss?”
She hums.
“What did she say? At the end?”
Weiss has never heard Ruby sound this broken. She wants to go back to simpler days and shake her younger self, yell at her to treasure what is had because she has no idea of what is to come. She wants to close her eyes and imagine the warmth of the rising suns is from only one, and she is gently waking in her bunk at Beacon. Pyrrha is just across the hall. Penny is meeting them for lunch. Nothing hurts. Nothing bleeds.
She opens her eyes to the foreign world and she has never been further from home. She swallows the grief in her throat.
“She said that she loved us all. That she didn’t think she could ever stop.”
Ruby’s shoulders shake with the force of her cries.
“She was the best of us all.”
“She was.”
There is so much more to say. About how much they loved her, about how she never quite knew her own strength, about her laugh that was always louder than anyone else’s, about her never-ending fascination with the mundane. But they have the rest of their lives to remember her.
The whole world will know her name. Maybe it already does.
But for now, they clutch it close to their chests. They remember her as only a select few truly did - not as a fearless hero, or a scapegoat, or a puppet, but as a human being they were lucky enough to love and hold, if only for a little while.
It’s not enough. It’s everything.
They aren’t okay. They won’t be any time soon. A part of them would never heal. Weiss swears she can still feel the blood on her hands even though they’ve been scrubbed raw. But the pain meant she had once been here. Grief is eternal when our bodies are not.
They stay like that until Yang and Blake wake and the suns are high in the sky.
She knows this isn’t real. She knows this isn’t really her.
But everything in her is screaming at the sight of her younger self standing before her. She knew nothing. She was so lucky. She didn’t know just how much it could hurt. Both of her homes still stood. All her friends were still alive.
“The Schnee name. Why bother anymore? What does it even stand for now?” Her past self smiles and gestures to Myrtenaster. “A bunch of killers.”
Weiss grabs the hilt instinctively, like she’s assessing a threat. Her hands feel slick and warm and red.
“Instead, you could be a nobody. Could you imagine? Not even a single bit of baggage on your shoulders or blood on your hands. Isn’t that what you want? To be free?”
Somedays, she does. Somedays she wakes up and wants nothing more than to give up and let somebody else fight. But she knows she never will. She knows it’s in her blood. She knows that she loves her team and the world too much to ever put down her blade.
Some might call her a killer. But she knows Penny would want her to call it mercy. Loyalty. Love.
So she draws her rapier and points it at the false ghost.
“I don’t know who you think you are, but let me tell you who I am. I am the granddaughter of a hero and a child of a villain. I am a citizen of a fallen Kingdom and an heir to nothing. The blood on my hands is a testament to my love. I will not be defined by my name because I will be the one to define it. I am Weiss Schnee. And I am a Huntress.”
Weiss doesn’t think she’ll ever let go of Ruby again.
She blinks, and she sees Ruby’s blank eyes as she drinks her poison and falls beyond her reach. She sees Ruby’s bright eyes at Beacon. She sees where it all went wrong. She sees her partner break over and over again until there is nothing left for her to give.
But the fight is over for now, and Ruby is back, and Weiss is still holding onto her long after the others have let go. Though Yang is still looking at her like she can’t quite believe she’s real. Weiss understands. They take care of Neo and move to go home, when Weiss tugs on Ruby’s arm, holding her back. Blake and Yang wait for them up ahead.
Weiss takes Ruby’s hands and meets her eyes. She has to look up to meet them. When did she get taller? Where did the time go?
“I need you to know that I am sorry.”
Ruby goes to interject, but Weiss stops her with a finger on her lips. “No. I’m sorry. I’m your partner and I didn’t know you felt this bad. I was so caught up in Atlas and…and Penny, and that’s no excuse. I know how much you put on your shoulders and I know how much you loved her.”
Weiss squeezes her hands. “So let me reinforce what I told you that first day at Beacon. I am going to be the best teammate you can have. The best partner. And if I’m not, tell me. I am here to help carry the burden with you. I am here because I love you, and by your side is where I’m always going to be.”
Ruby sniffs and pulls Weiss into a backbreaking hug. Weiss hugs her back just as strongly.
“I love you, Ruby. So much.”
“I love you too.”
Remnant is standing together. There’s warships and people from every kingdom and hope so palpable in it all. It makes Weiss want to cry again even though it seems that’s all she’s been doing these past few days.
She does cry, though, when they reunite with the others. Ruby and Yang are swept into a desperate hug from Qrow. Weiss and Blake are bombarded with hugs from Nora and Jaune and Ren and Nora and ever Emerald pats them on the arm with a wide grin.
They learn a lot of things. That the world thought they were dead, that they were gone for three months, and in that time, they’d assembled an army. It was only a matter of time before they launched what would hopefully be their first attack to end the war once and for all.
They have memorials. The sight of it shocks them. There’s one for all of them, but once the news breaks out that they’re alive, they’ll probably scrap it for materials. It’s a true testament to the impact of their sacrifice that it had been built anyways. They find Weiss’s family there, and Weiss pretends that she doesn’t see the messages they were scrubbing off, Don’t come back, Schnee scum, Killer, and squeezes her eyes shut as she hugs her sister and mother and brother.
(Later, she will learn that her family and JNORE would scrub the messages away whenever they popped up. The thought of them loving and defending her even in death makes her cry.)
Ruby’s, in contrast, is nearly covered in flowers and messages. Her image is painted on a nearby wall, the caption REMEMBER HER MESSAGE framing it proudly. Yang nudges her proudly as Ruby takes it in with silent, awed tears. The sight warms Weiss’s heart. Her partner deserves all of it and more. She can only hope that this love and loyalty remains after they learn she’s alive. It’s one thing to love a martyr, it’s another to love them when they’re alive.
Weiss has to sit down when she sees Penny’s memorial. She barely registers Ruby sitting down next to her as they take it in. It’s beautiful. Someone’s painted her image above her name and there’s stars and constellations surrounding her. Her smile is as bright as it was in life, and her eyes are shining still. There’s pictures of her with children, animals, them.
They stay there for a long time, well after the sun sets and the stars are twinkling above. People come and go, but the core eight of them stay. They talk about anything, about everything. They talk like Penny’s still there, they talk like they’ll never get a chance again. They talk about their favorite memories of her, point out her favorite constellations, laugh until they cry. Penny loved the stars, so they do too. It’s beautiful and tragic wrapped into one.
A lot of tears are shed that night. It’s shrouded in grief, but lit by love.
Weiss never wants this night to end. She wants to stay here surrounded by her team, huddled for warmth in the cold Vacuan night, and laugh and cry and exist together forevermore. She wants to bottle this moment and drink it on the worst nights. This much love terrifies her. It can’t last forever. Someday, everyone she loves will be gone. She will have to survive grief time and time again.
But is loving not a haunting? Is being human not a wake? Weiss loves them so much it hurts. She loves them more than she once thought she could ever love anything or anyone. She never wants to live in a world without them in it, and for a few, torturous minutes, she was sure she was living it. She wants to tell them let me die first, i cannot live without you again, the pain would destroy me. I cannot live beside your revenant.
But perhaps loving someone means to mourn them even when they’re right next to you. It’s a sacrifice. It’s a treasure.
Penny taught her that.
This is why they fight. To hold each other tight until they’re ripped away, and to laugh at their graves like they’re laughing beside them. To know that love and grief are bound in the same longevity.
Ruby gasps. Weiss turns to her, and follows her gaze to see a single firefly dancing around them all. Ruby outstretches her finger, and it lands. Ruby stares at it, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Hey, Penny.”
Weiss feels something inside of her break free and take flight.
She smiles. Love and grief and joy all wrapped into one.
The firefly moves from Ruby’s finger to her own, and her hands finally feel clean.