Archive of Our Own

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The screen of Ruby’s scroll was absolutely getting scratched from the way she was spinning it around on the bartop with her fingertip, her lips pursed slightly in frustration as she took a sip from her bourbon and glared at the wall. She swallowed the burn without a twitch, having gotten used to far worse over the past few years, and wiggled her glass to the barman with a pleading smile.

He finished up where he was handing over the drinks of a few other event attendees at the other end of the bar, and hurried over to her, grabbing the same bottle Ruby had been consistently drinking from and popping the lid before he reached her.

Thankfully, he didn’t say anything. Bartenders were fluent in every kind of frown and smile that a person was capable of, they didn’t need to ask, so he simply looked apologetic as he dropped an ice cube in the glass and gave it back to her.

Ruby immediately took another sip, and sighed, before nodding in thanks and going back to spinning her scroll on the bartop.

It only managed a few more twirls before another finger went down onto it to hold it steady, robotic and painted yellow, and Ruby raised an eyebrow to where Yang had appeared next to her.

Much like Ruby, she was wearing some of her nicest clothes; an expensive shirt and vest that had been freshly altered to her broad shoulders and towering height. Somehow, even though the war was over and she was creeping closer to thirty, Yang had grown even taller over the past twelve months.

Yang’s makeup was subtle, and her hair was brushed back, but she wasn’t going to suddenly start pretending to be someone she wasn’t. Not for the people who knew her best in all the world, and when all the paintings and the two sculptures of her had captured her perfectly in her leathers, combat boots, and rolled-up sleeves.

The hotel bar was quiet enough that Yang didn’t have to speak particularly loudly to be heard, raising an eyebrow and leaning against the counter, completely relaxed and socially sated.

“How many are you on now?”

Ruby offered the glass for Yang to take a sip, and then took her own after Yang nodded in approval of her choice. “Three, I think. Where’s Blake?”

“Oh, she’s over talking with Goodwitch. That woman refuses to age, I swear.” Yang gestured with her head to where her wife, dressed in a resplendent purple dress reminiscent of the one she’d worn to the Vytal Dance ten years ago, was talking with the now retired headmistress of Beacon Academy. “She looks good. Happy.”

“Well I’d certainly hope your wife was happy.” Ruby snorted, hiding her grin against her glass, and it grew larger when Yang took the bait and laughed.

“I’m talking about Goodwitch, dumbass.” Raising two fingers to the barman and pointing at Ruby’s glass, Yang winked at him with a smile that immediately faded upon looking down at where Ruby was spinning her scroll again. “...no luck? Anything?”

The movement stopped as soon as Ruby realised she’d been doing it again, and she locked away the habit by shoving her scroll into the pocket of her trousers. It was strange to be wearing proper pants again, the days she wore them were only two or three times a year, and the feeling of constraint around her thighs and calves felt weird.

Normally she lived in her combat skirts, but she’d made an exception for tonight. She’d bought her shirt and trousers just for the anniversary, and she’d likely never wear them again, but after skipping the last several events it felt like the right thing to do.

Everyone only remembered her for the red dress she’d worn on this night ten years ago, but she’d grown up since then. And after everything, they deserved to know at least that much. That since she was moving forward in a thousand different ways, it meant they could too.

Ruby drummed her fingers on her thigh, and shook her head, frustration rearing its ugly head in her gut and making her scowl as she took another deep gulp from her drink and hissed while she swallowed.

“She’s not coming. Yang, she’s still on goddamn Anima.”

The news had Yang’s eyes narrow, and she ground her jaw for a moment in a mirror of Ruby’s own frustration, but she wasn’t hurt or pissed off in quite the same way. But it still hurt for one of her once most important friends to not even pop in.

“Ten years ago was the first time she died. You’d think Penny would be willing to make a thing of it.” Yang swirled her own drink and took a sip, looking down into the surface of it and thinning her lips. “...so what did you two fight about this time?”

Ruby shot Yang a glare, but she also couldn’t exactly refute the question or deny it. Instead she scowled deeper and placed her elbow on the bartop to rest her face in the palm of her hand for a moment.

“Oh I don’t even remember. Absolutely nothing, as per usual. But if she didn’t even leave, it means-”

“She’s not cancelling last minute. She was never going to come at all.” Yang finished for her, and sighed.

The sound of laughter across the room had them both look over at where Blake was covering her lips while she giggled, and Glynda was smiling happily at having managed to make one of her most subdued students laugh.

Plenty of other people looked over at the sound, still surprised by the lightness that was in Blake now, and Ruby caught onlookers smiling gently at the sight of it.

Ruby could predict that Yang had noticed as well, and she waited for Yang to make the same comment she made every year, except the number was growing larger.

“Ten years and everything we went through, and they’re still surprised she changed. But then again, she still surprises me sometimes too.” Yang hummed happily as she caught her wife’s eye and winked, with Blake pursing her lips in a subtle blown kiss and winking back.

Ruby had mouthed the words along with Yang saying them, and she grinned when Yang noticed and shoved her on the shoulder. But unlike when they were younger and it would have sent her sprawling, now she did little more than sway on her feet.

When Blake shifted her attention from Yang to her and mouthed ‘Everything okay?’, Ruby raised an eyebrow and pointedly took a sip from her glass. Blake winced apologetically, but she didn’t look surprised, instead mouthing ‘I’m sorry’ and turning back to her conversation.

The sisters were quiet for a moment as they both looked around the bar, Ruby’s eyes lingering on the door leading through to the main event hall where a majority of the people were.

Being the ten year anniversary of the Fall, the organisers had known that it would be the busiest one, and had wisely planned accordingly by booking out one of the largest hotels in Vale. And it had still been pretty packed in the opening hours of it.

It seemed that every survivor imaginable had made the trip from all four corners of Remnant, and others who had been affected by the war had arrived in droves for the remembrance ceremony as well.

And, just as she’d expected, the entire day and most of the evening for Ruby had just been a steady procession of her being approached and either thanked for her service or timidly asked questions for closure.

After years of absence from any of the celebrations other than sending along letters for Yang to read out as speeches, Ruby had known that it would be the right thing to do to attend the tenth. She’d braced for it, prepared for it as best as she could, and yet she’d still ended up at the bar after the sun had set, and most people had either had their turn with her or picked up the vibe that she wanted to be left alone for a while.

Just a few drinks to recharge, and then she’d go back into the main hall and mingle. Then she could probably justify another ten years of not attending and instead simply noting the night with a drink with the rest of RNJR.

The Fall wasn’t a night that Jaune, Nora, and Ren celebrated.

They were here tonight, but only because it was the tenth, and also out of solidarity with Ruby. Back next year the four of them would go back to their usual tradition of a quiet drink in Pyrrha’s hometown of Argus, and a bouquet of red flowers at her statue.

Ruby jumped when someone next to her cleared her throat shyly, and she looked over at where a younger woman had approached her with a timid smile and something earnest and gentle in her eyes.

She couldn’t have been more than twenty-one. A kid.

“Umm…Miss Rose?”

Immediately turning to give the woman her full attention, Ruby smiled welcomingly and nodded. “Hey there. Having a good time?”

“Yeah! Yeah. Whole family is here.” The woman gestured over to where a group of three were across the room, and the woman who was clearly her mother was poorly pretending not to be watching. “We just…wanted to tell you that your speech was really nice. And to thank you.”

Ruby softened her smile and shook her head gently. It always felt like something, when the youngsters thanked her. And the girl’s accent was Vale, with a tint of Mistral. Meaning she’d grown up in Vale but had spent a few of her developmental years in Anima.

A refugee. And if she was so young, that meant one thing.

“You don’t have to thank me. You were here when it happened?” Ruby sighed sympathetically when the girl nodded. “How old were you?”

“Twelve. We were up in the arena. When…it started.” The woman looked away for a moment, her hands going into the pockets of her trousers. 

But she shook off her melancholy with a speed and self-acceptance that had Ruby’s chest spark warm and proud.

The younger ones were so goddamn strong. Even though they’d spent the past eight years in a time of true peace, the scars of the world falling apart when they were children were carried. But most of them had let it make them kind.

Ruby quickly flicked her gaze up and down the girl, and catalogued the muscle underneath her clothes, and the slight shine in her brown eyes of her aura awakened and dwelling just beneath the surface.

She smiled wider.

“You’re a Huntress, aren’t you?”

The woman blinked in surprise, and then immediately blushed shyly, before sucking up her courage and offering her hand.

“Carmine, of Team CRML.”

“It’s great to meet you, Carmine. Freshly graduated?” After releasing Carmine’s hand, Ruby leant back slightly so that Carmine could reach over and shake Yang’s hand as well, the girl completely unphased by Yang’s prosthetic and instead being almost reverent about it.

Everything about team RWBY had become strangely renowned, in the years after the war. It was like history was cataloguing all their individual traits and idiosyncrasies and painting them large. So as Carmine shook the most famous prosthetic in the world, of the most famous hand-to-hand combatant in history, she looked at Yang in absolute awe.

Yang beamed at her with a level of radiance that had Carmine turn bright red, and squeezed the girl’s hand.

“Oh I know those calluses, we’ve got ourselves a puncher, sis.” Yang released Carmine’s hand and raised a challenging eyebrow, smirking.

The blast of Yang’s smile and Ruby’s kind eyes had Carmine instantly relax, nervousness and tension leaving her shoulders, and she smiled with a nod at both statements.

“Yeah! New Mantle Academy, a few months ago. We’re still in New Mantle for now, helping with the last of the snow caves.” Carmine didn’t notice how Ruby’s expression briefly faltered, instead her attention still mostly on Yang. “And…yeah. I saw you, at the Fall. Helping to evacuate the East Courtyard. The way you moved. I wanted to be just like you.”

Yang’s eyes sparkled when she heard it, and she made a show of punching her fist into the palm of her hand. After pausing for a moment in consideration, Yang’s eyes narrowed playfully and she raised an eyebrow.

“You in Vale for another day or two before you fly home? Staying near Beacon?”

The words were soaked in challenge, and Carmine’s entire face lit up even as her face turned red once more, and she nodded eagerly. The very idea of sparring against Yang Xiao-Long herself was enough that she was shaking in excitement, and she mimicked Yang by punching her own palm with a grin.

“I’m here for three, for family, but the rest of my team fly home in two. They gave us a dorm in hall six.”

Both Ruby and Yang’s eyebrows shot up at the number, and they looked at each other with a wide grin, before Yang looked over to the other side of the room and beckoned Blake over. 

Somehow, somehow, Blake always knew when Yang wanted her attention, and noticed her immediately. She seemed to practically materialise next to them, curling around Yang from behind and fixing Carmine with a gentle smile. She didn’t need to ask in order to know what was happening, it wasn’t the first time that night and it wouldn’t be the last. But clearly Carmine had caught her wife’s and sister-in-law’s interest.

“What’s up, babe?”

“First of all, allow me to introduce Carmine, leader of Team CRML.” Yang gestured to Carmine with a flourish, as if she was the most important person in the room, and Blake immediately smiled wider and offered Carmine her hand. “Guess what? They’re staying in hall six.”

Blake raised a playful eyebrow as she shook a stunned and shy Carmine’s hand, and smirked amusedly. “Oh really? Second floor?”

“F-first. Dorm twelve.” Carmine looked between the three of them in confusion for a moment, before her eyes bloomed in understanding and widened. “Wait, which one were you guys?”

The shock and curiosity in Carmine’s expression had Blake smile and Yang laugh, so Ruby took up the answer after quickly taking another sip of her drink. 

“Shoot. We were in eighteen. So close, yet so far.” Ruby grinned happily when Carmine made a show of pouting in disappointment, and tilted her head. “Is the rest of your team here?”

Carmine nodded, waving a hand in the direction of the main hall, and a thought seemed to occur to her that had her immediately look at Blake with a shy smile.

“Actually, I’m sorry if it’s a bother Professor Belladonna, but I think my partner would really like to meet you. She, well…You’ve been really important to her.” Carmine brushed some of her hair back over her ear shyly, and her smile widened when Blake immediately nodded and straightened up from where she’d been wrapped around Yang.

Blake had a knowing smile on her lips as she put a supportive hand on Carmine’s back to be ready to follow towards the main hall. “She’s a faunus?”

“Yes ma’am. She heard your speech, in Kuo Kuana. That's why she started training.” Carmine blushed at the guiding hand, and followed the prompt to start walking, but not before giving Ruby a massive smile. “Thank you for letting me say hi, Miss Rose. And thank you for everything.”

Ruby shook her head with a smile and waved, replying just before Carmine would be out of earshot. “Please don’t thank me. Not when you would have done the exact same thing. See you out in the wilds!”

While Blake and Carmine headed towards the main hall, Blake smiling kindly and listening to Carmine ramble off a bit more, Yang finished her drink with a large gulp and nudged Ruby on the shoulder affectionately.

“...you’re good with them, you know.”

The compliment simply got a shrug in response, Ruby’s smile genuine and soft as she turned back to the bar and began to drum her fingers gently. Most of her frustration had been washed away, instead replaced with a warm glow she knew was pride. 

But not in herself, instead in all the others.

“Are you really going to spar with her? She’d love it. You’d make her year.” Ruby smiled at Yang hopefully, and then beamed wider when Yang scoffed with a nod, as if it was obvious. “Good. Let’s just hope you haven’t gotten rusty.”

Yang laughed at the familiar jab, and rolled her eyes with a smirk as she wrapped an arm around Ruby’s shoulders and pulled her in for a quick hug.

“Not a chance. I could still take you.” Yang wilted underneath the blunt stare that Ruby gave her, and when Ruby raised an eyebrow she rolled her eyes again and grinned. “Maybe. Probably.”

The comment that Ruby was going to make, which would have absolutely earned her a hair ruffle or a flick on the side of her head, was cut off when her scroll began to vibrate in her pocket.

Immediately going rigid, Ruby’s heart pounded in her chest to prepare to flood her with adrenaline for the fight as she grabbed it from her pocket and looked at the name. She wasn’t surprised that it was Penny’s number. It had been long enough since their argument that Penny had certainly analysed it and had plenty more to say.

But Ruby had no interest in picking up where they’d left off. So, even though she hated doing it, she put her scroll on the bartop to let it ring out without answering or rejecting it.

Yang watched the scroll sadly for a few moments, her brows dipped in a frown, and rubbed Ruby on the back before stepping back from the bar. She could feel the way Ruby’s entire energy changed, as doors slammed back into place and her good mood was immediately soured.

“I’ll leave you be. Remember, group breakfast tomorrow.”

The only response she got was a hum, because there was no way Ruby would forget, and Yang sighed and pressed a quick kiss to the top of her sister’s head. Ruby hummed fondly in response to the touch, which was a good sign, so Yang squeezed her shoulder one last time as she stepped away to head back into the main hall and assist Blake in flustering Team CRML.

As the clock on the wall behind the bar struck the hour, Ruby sighed and crossed her arms on the bartop, resting her chin on it to let her thoughts take her away while she had some free time to do it.

It had been a very strange eight years since the war had ended. Salem was gone, the relics were destroyed, the pits of darkness were dry which meant no more Grimm, and so the entire world was tilted on a brand new axis it was trying to get used to.

There were only so many pockets of grimm left out in the wilds, but the remaining academies were still churning out huntsman teams to track them down. Eventually, whether in a year or a century, grimm would be an absolutely extinct species.

Only then would there be a true aura of peace, and Ruby would be able to let out the breath she’d been partially holding in her lungs for a decade, ever since Penny’s first body had been ripped apart by a friend.

Ten years since the Fall, eight years since the end, and Crescent Rose had a thousand new dents and replaced parts. Ruby knew she had fresh scars every time a member of her old team ever saw her, but none of them were enough to cripple her.

As the low level grimm were wiped out, the older and smarter grimm were getting better at hiding, which meant the teams had to seek them out. Older, smarter, larger, and far more dangerous, they were still a grave threat.

There had been more than just one drake out in the dark wilds of the world. And other beasts capable of far worse had been hiding, biding their time, only to be hunted down.

But Team RNJR had been up to the challenge, so far.

Ruby glanced over her shoulder at the main hall, and her thoughts went to Carmine for a brief moment. There were new generations of fresh hunters every year, young and healthier and not as tired. Ones who still got good nights of sleep instead of waking from nightmares.

It was why Yang had felt things were safe enough to retire to be a full-time mother for now, and why Blake had mostly hung up Gambol Shroud to become a teacher. They both spoke about getting back to things once their daughter was old enough, but domesticity suited them both so utterly that Ruby knew they were lying, and she loved their happiness too much to call them out on it.

Blake and Yang deserved peace, after everything. Ruby had never seen anyone look at anything the way Yang looked at their little girl, and Blake had taken to teaching with flawless perfection.

And as for their fourth member…

Ruby’s fingers dug into the bartop, scratching the wood, and she shook her head to slam that train of thought shut. But not fast enough. The feeling still chewed into her chest and began poking pins one by one.

It had been five years since she’d last seen Weiss in person, when Weiss had walked down the aisle in a dress that looked like it had been stitched out of pure snow onto her form. Ruby had been exactly where she was meant to be, smiling brightly and watching at Weiss’s side.

But that had been five years ago.

The last time she’d heard Weiss’s voice had been about a year ago. A phone call, casual and empty.

Well, it had been a year ago, until a familiar vocal pitch of fury had Ruby jolt up from where she’d been almost completely collapsed on the bar in her dejection, and her head whipped in the direction of one of the side doors leading out to the hotel foyer.

“We agreed we would be on each other’s side! And civil! I can’t believe you.”

The doors to the bar flew open, and Ruby’s eyes widened at the image as Weiss Schnee stormed inside, clearly livid beyond all comprehension with how her blue eyes were practically glowing with her barely restrained aura.

Instead of being in one of her usual business suits that were standard for her these days, Weiss was in a blue and white dress that was utterly and deliberately reminiscent of the combat dress she’d worn at the end of the war.

It wasn’t the same dress, that one had been torn and scorched beyond saving at the battle of Shade, but it was an eloquent and flawless tribute to the iconic outfit that was in every painting of her.

Weiss had her hair up in one of her old braids as well, though good grief her hair was far longer now, fighting against the braid with all of its might, and Ruby sucked in a breath at the sight of the snowflake tiara keeping it controlled.

That was something she hadn’t seen Weiss wear since it had fallen from her head during the fight with Salem. It had cracked in half, the embedded gems scattering across the obsidian and sand.

But there it was, repaired and in perfect place, shining sapphires catching the light.

It was her first glimpse of Weiss the entire night, and she’d seen everyone from the old days at least once. Which meant Weiss had just arrived, very late and equally furious.

Ruby was frozen still as Weiss stormed inside, but her heart plummeted into her chest when Neptune appeared behind her less than a moment later, taking large strides to try and catch up with her.

“It’s not a big deal! What’s even the problem?”

The way that Weiss somehow went from storming forward to immediately pivoting on her heel and standing rigidly still was familiar enough that Ruby winced, but she didn’t say anything or interrupt. Instead she took another sip of her drink and held the glass anxiously as she watched.

Weiss narrowed her eyes, her lips in a thin and hurt line, as she clenched her fists down by her sides.

“First we’re late because you weren’t at the hotel, instead I had to go through the indignity of picking you up from her one. And that meant we missed our flight.” Weiss spat out, gritting her teeth. Her fists were trembling by her side, her left one concerningly close to the hilt of where Myrtenaster was in a flawless silver sheath. “And then, and then, five minutes here. That was all it took. That was all it took for you to…to…to slink off! Did you even say hello to Blake or Yang after missing their speeches, before chasing tail?! I doubt it, since I haven’t spoken to them yet either!”

The insinuations, especially in regards to Neptune of all people, had Ruby suck in a breath and her eyes widened as something in her chest cracked and went still.

She took another slow sip of her glass, almost empty, and she didn’t take her eyes off the fight even as she raised a finger for a refill. The bartender did it rapidly, because there was no doubt he recognised Weiss just as he recognised Ruby, and he watched Ruby warily for a moment to see if she was going to do anything to intervene or do damage control.

They were standing next to each other in their sculptures at Haven for a reason.

But despite how they’d been carved into marble all those years ago, Ruby didn’t shift from her position as she watched Weiss and Neptune step in close to each other. The attention of the entire bar was on them as Neptune’s eyes narrowed in frustration and Weiss hissed something at him.

The sheer level of anger in Weiss’s body had Weiss trembling, but what had Ruby tense the most was the shining in the corner of her sky blue eyes. Weiss was on the edge of crying, swallowing it up and holding it back as best as she could.

And Neptune simply looked offended and frustrated, completely indifferent to the sadness and hurt of the woman who Ruby had watched him put a ring on.

Five years ago, anyway.

Ruby’s grip on her glass tightened with as much restraint as she could manage, and she felt it start to give under her grip, threatening to crack. So she forced her fingers to relax and stretch out at the exact moment Weiss spun on her heel and stormed away from her husband.

Neptune watched her go silently, looking to every outsider as if he had just been offended and was the wronged party, before harrumphing and going back through the door they had come through.

The rest of the bar was completely silent for a long and tense moment as they stared at where Weiss was trembling in the centre of the room, her fists by her sides as she tried to calm herself down. Eventually she gave up on doing it on her own, and marched up to the bar.

There was a glass of scotch waiting for her before she even reached it, and she sucked it down in a shot before simply pointing to the bottle and glaring at the bartender until he relented and handed it over.

It was only then, as Weiss swallowed her second shot of scotch, that she even noticed the other people nursing their drinks.

Including Ruby, who was watching her quietly, completely tense and uncertain.

Weiss’s eyes widened in shock as she noticed her, blinking as if trying to wake up, and she quickly catalogued Ruby’s change in appearance.

No wonder she hadn’t recognised her right away, Ruby was a very different woman to the one that had been at her wedding five years ago. Her dark hair was longer, tied back in a ponytail, and her pale skin was now tanned from long years in the desert. There was no cloak either, simply a shirt and neat trousers.

They stared at each other silently, neither of them sure what to say or whether to move, until Ruby shuffled aside so there was room next to her between the two stools she was standing between. The silent invitation was casual, Ruby making it clear in the movement that she wasn’t bothered whether or not Weiss took up the offer.

But she did, picking up her bottle of scotch and stepping around the bar to settle in next to Ruby, placing her glass down next to Ruby’s with a dull thunk.

Ruby looked at her with a small smile, and kept her voice quiet.

“Hi, Weiss.”

Weiss raised her glass to her lips and tipped it back slowly, her eye contact unbreaking the entire movement, and she placed the glass down and folded her hands together on the bartop.

“Hello Ruby. You look well.”

“Thanks. So do you.” Ruby internally flinched at the slight frost in Weiss’s tone, and instead glanced up at the tiara. “Is that the same-”

“Yes. I got it repaired a few years ago.” Weiss interrupted bluntly, tilting her head and reaching back so she could tap a single spire on the snowflake that had a sapphire missing. “I never quite found them all, despite tedious efforts.”

Ruby’s eyebrows raised, and she leant back in surprise. “You dug through the sand to find them?”

“Of course. It was a tedious effort. Doing it on my own. But almost a complete success by the time the fresh sandstorms came in and reset all my efforts.” Readjusting and turning back to the bar, Weiss took another sip of her drink and refilled it from the bottle, looking straight ahead. “How have you been? Where have you been?”

The frost wasn’t a total surprise, but it still hurt to be on the other side of it. There had been a time the shield of ice had helped protect Ruby whenever Weiss refused to let someone talk down to her, but now it was being held up against her.

But it wasn’t completely her fault.

“Fine. Just working. We’ve been working through the Vale tunnels.” Ruby looked down at the bartop, and began tracing circles onto the surface with her fingertips.

All she got in response was a hum of acknowledgement, as Weiss continued staring straight ahead and sipping from her glass. She knew that Ruby would crack first, she always did and that was never going to change, and once again she was right. Ruby sighed and scratched the bartop lightly.

“So, what was all of that about? What’s going on there?”

Weiss let out a barking laugh, cold and cruel and hurt beyond anything else, and when she looked over at Ruby her eyes were ice. But Ruby knew those eyes, she could see the hues in the cold, and Weiss was simply…hurt.

“It’s complicated, or so he says. Divorced bachelorhood suits him, now that he doesn’t need to work a day for the rest of his life and can pursue other interests. And he can race to see how many promises he can break before he hits thirty.” Weiss scoffed and shrugged, her eyes flicking in the direction that Neptune had vanished.

She raised an eyebrow when Ruby blanched in surprise.

Ruby’s mouth dropped open at everything Weiss had just spat out, each part of it hitting her like a physical impact.

“Wait, divorced?!”

The laugh that Weiss let out was so frosty it should have produced hail, and she shook her head in hurt disbelief and went back to her drink, closing her eyes to hide the cracks in them as she swallowed.

“You are out of the loop.” Weiss said the words quietly, bitter and cold. “But yes. I’m surprised Yang didn’t tell you. But then again, maybe she optimistically assumed you’d spoken to me.”

Ruby scowled at the jab, having expected it from the beginning, but it still bit in deep and hurt enough that she sculled the last of her drink and turned to lean on her side and give Weiss her complete attention. She narrowed her eyes.

“I’ve been in Vale’s reception zone for five months, and my scroll didn’t exactly ring with your number either. My arms are both fine, by the way.”

The words had Weiss’s eyes flick down to Ruby’s shoulders and sleeves, and Ruby caught the way Weiss’s eyes widened slightly when she saw the lumps and rods of the two arm braces hidden underneath the fabric of her shirt.

Every beat of the silence was tense and painful, both of them loathing it but neither of them were sure what to do about it, until Weiss asked softly and quietly.

“What happened?”

Ruby sighed and went to signal the bartender, only to hesitate, and the pause gave Weiss the opening to wordlessly slide her scotch bottle between them to share. The offer got her a nod from Ruby, who poured herself a finger and took it like a shot before answering by unbuttoning her cuff and rolling up one of her dark red sleeves to show the brace.

The scars from the creep’s jaws were going to stick around, jagged and harsh, but the crunched bone was healing nicely. It had healed well enough that she was able to wear the braces and fight again, she just had to be careful and had to prefer long range for a little while.

When Weiss leaned closer to take a proper look, Ruby let her and distracted herself by taking another drink and sighing. The alcohol was building up enough in her system that her aura was starting to fail to purge it, which meant she might actually be able to get tipsy or drunk soon.

Which was a massive relief, considering new circumstances.

“Just a slip. It happens. They’re healing, that’s what matters.” Ruby pulled her sleeve back down once Weiss had taken a proper look, and gave Weiss a sad look. “...what happened with Neptune?”

Weiss clicked her tongue as she took a drink, and closed her eyes to compose her thoughts for a few moments.

It was strange being back around Ruby. In all honesty, she hadn’t actually expected Ruby to even show up. Ruby almost never appeared at the ceremonies and events, she sent in her speeches by letter for Yang to read out. She never appeared for festivals, or monument unveilings, or anything.

The worst that Weiss had expected would be to humiliate herself in front of Yang and Blake, by missing not just her own speech but both of theirs as well. But this was far, far worse. Because instead, Ruby was right in front of her, dressed in fine clothes, her hair perfect and brushed back, and her silver eyes sharp and bright.

But she was covered in enough new scars that Weiss could barely count them just from her quick glances.

Ruby just…had never come home from the war.

Well, except for once.

“The short version? He didn’t surprise anybody. One affair turned into three, turned into five, turned into…” Weiss trailed off, closing her eyes and pinching her nose with a frustrated sigh when she thought about it. “It was humiliating. The tabloids had material for months every time some new woman came forward. But the worst part really was that nobody from our school days seemed to be surprised.”

Ruby took a slow sip from her drink in response, nodding slowly, but every movement was tight and tense as she tried to keep her temper in check. But Neptune had never made controlling her temper easy, especially after the war. Back in Beacon he’d just been a dorky nuisance.

Then again, back in Beacon, things had been very, very different. Ruby had been young and unaware, Penny had been pretty and kind, and Weiss had been her best friend, and that title came with limitations.

Ones that had held for a few years, at least.

The moment that Weiss had called her while she’d been out in the wilderness, battering through shoddy scroll reception to give her the news that Neptune had proposed, Ruby had felt like her limbs had been severed, as paranoia and concern went into her nerves and settled like an infection.

But there was nothing she could have said or spoken up about. She’d lost best friend privileges when she’d vanished into the trees to hunt grimm while Weiss instead decided to hang up Myrtenaster and go politician.

New Mantle needed leadership as it tried to rebuild, any settlement on Solitas needed a strong and experienced hand, and Weiss knew how to wrangle councils and unions into working towards a common goal. She knew how to be the opposite of her father, and the blossoming city had needed her.

So, with a sad look to the other three, Weiss had taken Myrtenaster from its sheath and hung it up on the wall in her office, above her desk for all of her guests to see whenever they arrived to meet with her.

A reminder of who she was. The journey she’d taken. The war she’d fought. And the decisions she’d made for the good of everyone else, afterwards.

Ruby hadn’t been proud of her reaction when she’d watched Weiss hang up her sword. Everything in her body had been trembling, her hands by her sides shaking so violently she’d shoved them into her pockets.

The next grimm she found, later that night and out in the frigid cold of the Solitas ice fields, had suffered some venting. The hurt and anger and grief inside of her chest had certainly served to lure the monsters out of their hiding places.

And then it was over. Blake and Yang returned to Vale and soon Blake was pregnant, Weiss settled in New Mantle and got a job bickering with Robyn Hill even though they agreed on nearly everything, but Ruby had kept doing her job. Until everything else had slipped out of her fingers.

It wasn’t entirely her fault.

But that wasn’t the point right now.

“I’m sorry, Weiss. I didn’t even see in the tabloids, I…I don’t exactly see any where I spend my time.” Ruby spoke softly, nursing her drink, and she sighed when Weiss shook her head indifferently. “Are you okay?”

Weiss scoffed, the sound so unchanged since she was seventeen that Ruby’s chest sparked at the familiarity of it, and shrugged with a single shoulder. A mannerism she’d picked up from Ruby herself a long time ago.

“It’s been a few months. We agreed to be civil and present a united front when at formal events. At least, the formal events we would both be expected to attend. But the only restrictions that man is guided by, are his frustrations of a done-up belt buckle.” Weiss raised an eyebrow in amusement when Ruby barked out a surprised laugh.

The comment had Ruby choke on her drink slightly as she laughed, and she had to clear her throat by pounding on her chest for a moment, matching Weiss’s smirk with one of her own and shaking her head in surprise that Weiss Schnee of all people would toe that sort of line.

But the mirth faded from both of them after a moment, and Ruby bit her lip and shuffled uncomfortably and guiltily. Before she had the chance to say anything, Weiss called her out bluntly with a raised eyebrow and her lips in a thin line.

“You aren’t surprised either.”

Ruby sighed in frustration, and shook her head slowly, wincing apologetically when she met Weiss’s impassive eyes. When Weiss raised her eyebrow higher, prodding her for more than just a gesture, Ruby properly sat down on one of the bar stools so she could slump on the bartop properly and try to organise her thoughts.

“I don’t know the guy Neptune became after the war, I didn’t have the time to get to know him.” Ruby ignored when Weiss hummed in sharp-edged agreement, but her insides winced at the sting. “But…no, I don’t know if I’m surprised. But I’m certainly disgusted. What a shithead."

The other of Weiss’s eyebrows shot up, both of them going up in surprise at the vehemence that snuck into Ruby’s otherwise dejected tone. There was something very different.

In response to it, Weiss simply looked over at her and managed a playful smirk.

“Swear jar, Ruby Rose. You’ve been spending too much time with Nora.”

Ruby laughed and stuck out her tongue at her, causing Weiss to roll her eyes, and for a brief moment they were both teenagers again and bickering in their dorm. For a brief moment, they were in Vacuo teasing each other to keep their moods up even as the dark clouds grew closer.

For a brief moment, Ruby had never left, and Weiss had never quit.

It faded as quickly as it flashed in, both of them immediately looking down at their glasses and tensing, Weiss thinning her lips while Ruby bit down on her tongue.

The moment vanished as fast as a bolt of lightning, but the memories of it all lingered like the roll of its thunder, enough that Weiss closed her eyes for a moment. It didn’t help, instead it simply helped her pick up the scent of rose petals.

Meanwhile Ruby took a drink and huffed.

“Either way, that’s…I’m sorry. You don’t deserve that.”

Weiss gave her a sad smile, resigned and accepting, and barely managed a shrug before a familiar fatigue swept over her. The entire situation made her so angry it circled around to exhaustion, draining her of all energy except for the flames of fury if she let it drag on for too long.

She needed a distraction, so she grasped for one.

“Where’s Penny? Is she inside? I haven’t seen her.”

The moment that Penny’s name escaped her mouth, Weiss watched as Ruby locked off and her eyes dulled. Ruby looked down at the counter as her hand dropped to ghost along her scroll in her pocket, and she shook her head slowly.

“She’s not coming.”

“...I see. Why’s that?”

“Working.” Ruby snorted, the sound betraying the false emptiness of the word. But Weiss deserved more than that, especially after talking about Neptune. So Ruby sighed. “...we broke up. A couple of weeks ago. And we’re still in that phase of having trouble being in the same room, y’know?”

Weiss frowned as Ruby forced a helpless shrug, and she gazed quietly and sadly at the look on Ruby’s face. Her sympathy overmatched her surprise enough that thankfully none of it appeared on her face.

It hadn’t been long after Salem had been defeated that Weiss had caught Ruby leaving Penny’s room of a morning for the first time, both of them bumping into each other in the hall of the house they’d all been temporarily staying in together while in Vacuo.

The first emotion over Ruby’s face had been embarrassment, followed by a guilt that Weiss still didn’t understand. But the main expression on Ruby’s face had been apology. A flurry of feelings that Weiss still didn’t understand why Ruby had shown, even after years of turning it around in her head and watching it over and over again. 

There’d been nothing to say. Nobody was really surprised, Weiss perhaps least of all. Instead all she’d been able to manage was an amused laugh, a congratulatory peck on Ruby’s cheek, and then vanishing out of the house and into the streets as quickly as she could manage.

Weiss didn’t even have a plan for the day. She just needed to not be there. So she went to Neptune’s. It wasn't the first time, and history showed that it wouldn’t be the last.

And apparently that first morning had started something that lasted eight years. So Weiss nodded slowly and nudged the bottle of scotch further in Ruby’s direction.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Are…you okay?”

Ruby shook her head immediately, the movement slow and slightly tipsy as her aura finally began to fail to fight off the poison in the alcohol, and she managed a sad smile in Weiss’s direction.

“I knew it was gonna happen, Weiss. I saw it coming a year ago. But we were hunting together and working together, so I just…”

“You let it continue. Hanging onto it for as long as possible.” Weiss nodded in understanding. Her own aura wasn’t as large as Ruby’s, and she was drinking far faster, so she was already relaxed enough to hum. “Was it all worth it, then?”

The question had Ruby perk up, and she tilted her head in curiosity at the sheer level of weight in Weiss’s tone. “Was what worth it?”

“Leaving. Going with RNJR. Going with Penny.” Weiss shrugged as she listed them all, turning to face Ruby entirely as she asked.

She wasn’t trying to be mean or cruel, but she watched Ruby go tense all the same. But when Ruby’s eyes went dark, something close to a shiver went through her body and had her fingers twitch.

Ruby’s eyes narrowed, and she ground her jaw for a moment.

“Yes. What about you? After all,” Ruby growled low in her throat as her eyes flicked down to where Myrtenaster was in a ceremonial sheath and not a combat one. “You left first.”

Weiss closed her eyes as the words hit her, the impact crunching her chest, and she immediately looked away. She nodded slowly after digesting for a moment, and Ruby watched it wash over her.

“I deserved that. But I did what I had to do. My people needed me.”

“I know that, Weiss. But Salem had just died, reconstruction had barely begun, and the grimm were going to tear all those efforts apart. And they did. Until we got to them.” Ruby pressed a hand into the bartop hard enough the wood creaked, her fingers digging into it, and her dark look turned pained when Weiss finally opened her eyes and looked at her again. “Maybe…maybe I needed you too. Maybe I didn’t want to be alone after I’d made a promise to a god.”

As Ruby touched on the line that none of them had ever crossed, Weiss went still and her eyes widened just at the fact Ruby had brought it up. There wasn’t a single minute of that day that wasn’t imprinted onto all of their memories forever, carved into the core of them with daggers of fire dust.

The rest of team RWBY, the rest of the entire alliance, had only been able to watch from a distance as Ruby had stared down two gods and refused to blink.

Her cloak fluttering behind her in the dry desert winds, her face streaked with fresh blood and her hair stuck in all directions, the edge of Crescent Rose dripping black from a wound Salem wouldn’t ever regenerate from again.

And those eyes, those bright silver eyes, had stared into the black voids of a dark god’s, and refused to blink.

Nobody knew what they said to each other. Ruby had never told, and every time it had been brought up she had either gone silent or left the room entirely. Always with the same burdened shadow in her eyes.

The same shadow she was staring at Weiss with, her lips in a pained line and her brows brought in tight.

Weiss let out a slow sigh, sympathetic and gentle, and she folded her hands on her lap and tapped her thumbs together as she thought. She frowned sadly and bit her lip. “...if you needed me, then why didn’t you come to New Mantle with me?”

“Like I said; we had work to do. Why didn’t you ask to come with us? Even if just for a little while.” Ruby replied just as quietly, her head dropping as she thought about the could-have-been that had kept her awake far too many nights.

Weiss’s mouth dropped open for a moment as she went to give the first answer that came to mind, but she bit it back and tried to swallow it, turning away and looking down at the bartop. But Ruby wasn’t going to let her off that easily, and she felt when Ruby stared at her.

They’d once made a promise of honesty, and Weiss wasn’t as trivial with promises as Neptune was. So, scowling and looking up at the roof for a moment in preparation, she sucked in a breath and gave her impulse answer.

“Because you didn’t seem to have a place for me. You had Jaune, Ren, and Nora. And perhaps most importantly of all, you had Penny. You didn’t need anything I could offer. But New Mantle did.”

Ruby stared at her silently, eyes narrow but her face otherwise blank as she processed the answer and picked it apart, and her lips gradually tightened further and further. She took a slow gulp from her glass, finishing off the dregs left in it, and pushed it across the counter to signal to the bartender that she was done.

Without a word, Ruby stood and left, shoving her hands into her pockets as she headed out to the foyer.

And Weiss was left with a choice that she had been forced to make before;

She’d been at yet another formal function a few months after the end of the war, and she hadn’t yet hung up her sword. So she was at her best, her fiercest, and Ruby had been right in her eyeline the entire event, next to Penny and talking with some guests. 

Weiss knew that their backpacks were already packed, and ready to leave with the rest of RNJR for their first expedition the next morning.

Already having been Weiss’s boyfriend for a couple of months, Neptune had looked incredibly handsome in his suit, and fighting his own frontier of the war in Vacuo had done wonders to temper his ego and sharpen his edge.

The mentions of constructing New Mantle had already begun, Weiss’s name already thrown into the mix for who should sit on the new committee to oversee everything. Yet, her own backpack was half-filled in her room. Indecision locking it in limbo.

That had been when Neptune had asked her if they were going to New Mantle together, to try and build something.

Weiss had looked across the room at where Ruby and Penny were giggling quietly, and met Ruby’s eye. Somehow, through some telepathic bond that only war and absolute trust could form, Ruby had known from a single glance what was happening, and what Neptune was asking.

What the cost was going to be.

The moment Penny had then taken Ruby’s hand, completely oblivious, Weiss had given Neptune a beaming smile and said yes. And she had meant it too. Because there was something with him, and it was worth trying for.

The next morning, RNJR and Penny were gone, and it would be three years before Weiss would look at Ruby and, for the briefest flicker, despite it being one of the most important days of her life, question her choice.

Ruby was storming out of the hotel foyer, Weiss could still hear the thumps of her footsteps, and she made her decision with a final gulp of the last of her scotch and then dashing from her stool.

By the time she caught up to Ruby, the other girl was waiting at the elevators, and she scowled when Weiss grabbed her wrist to try and stop her.

“Ruby! What?! I know that was the wrong thing to think at the time, it passed and I snapped out of it, so please-”

“Is that really what you think?! About Penny of all people?! That she was somehow some…some…” Ruby growled and pulled her hand from Weiss’s grip, her fists clenched and trembling by her sides. “Some sort of replacement for you?! How could she be, when you were both ‘so different’ to me? What about me was yours that then became hers, huh? What did she replace you in, exactly?!”

There was no attempt to hide the subtext in the demands for answers, not really, and each one was like a punch to Weiss’s gut as Ruby called her out with a level of fury that had her trembling in front of Weiss’s eyes.

There weren’t many things that Team RWBY had silently agreed never to speak about or broach with each other. Most of them that existed were important ones. Some were far more trivial.

But Ruby stared Weiss down in anger, and all but dared Weiss to challenge her about the unspoken undertone the two of them had locked away and left to age and die without acknowledgement.

The elevator doors opened, and Ruby immediately stormed inside, tapping her keycard and hitting the button for the floor her room was on. When Weiss recovered from her shock and quickly squeezed inside as well, Ruby simply stared up at the roof and huffed, before jumping in surprise when Weiss slammed the emergency stop button and the elevator ground to a halt.

Locked between floors and trapping them both in the same space, Ruby blinked in surprise at the aggression as Weiss took control of the situation and perfectly stopped her from getting away. Instead Weiss glared at her harshly, tears beading in the corners of her eyes as she stared Ruby down.

“I don’t know! But I let you go anyway. Because you were happy, and I had work to do. I had a home to rebuild, a potential future with Neptune that did come to pass since we’d been together for a little while by that point, and I had people to help.” Weiss looked away as a single tear escaped her eye and trailed down her cheek. But her anger reignited, and she glared again. “You should have stayed, Ruby. We needed you. Do you have any idea how much faster things could have been done with your voice there with me? You and I were partners. We once said that was the most important thing of all. But suddenly it wasn’t compelling enough for you. Why didn’t you stay?”

The enclosed space of the elevator was tight enough they could perfectly see every emotion in each other’s eyes, and Weiss watched as hurt, guilt, and determination flashed through Ruby’s silver gaze. Her determination to save the world had been there since she was sixteen, and now it was saving the world one grimm at a time.

Ruby saved the world, Weiss rebuilt it. That was what their partnership had splintered into.

But then Weiss watched desperation wash through Ruby’s entire expression, the girl’s body deflating under the pressure of it, and Ruby pulled her hands from her pockets again so she could suck in a breath with a pained scowl.

“The answer to that question, is inside the answer of one of my own.”

Weiss scoffed at the theatrics and narrowed her eyes. She knew she was pushing Ruby’s buttons, she could see the frustration and anger building. Ruby didn’t like being pushed to be emotionally honest, she never had. 

“Then please, go ahead and ask.”

Weiss’s sneer immediately vanished when Ruby stepped in close, and she took a step back by instinct, backing into the wall of the elevator as Ruby thinned her lips and stared her down.

But the anger in Ruby’s eyes melted into sadness, with regret and lost chances wrapping around the burning lead of them with cold chains and dragging them down into darker depths. She closed her eyes and sighed, her shoulders slumping.

When she opened them again, they were completely clear. Vulnerable and frustrated in a cocktail that had Weiss freeze in her breathing.

Ruby asked it so simply;

“Why didn’t you just ask me out, Weiss? You could have, at any time.” At the way Weiss simply blinked at her stupidly, caught by surprise and unprepared, Ruby let out a sigh. But it came out more as a growl, and she thinned her lips. “We were side by side for years. I was yours every single day and night. I was right there.”

Weiss didn’t even stop to formally acknowledge the forbidden territory they had gotten into. The strange territory that somewhere along the line they had agreed didn’t exist, lest it ruin everything to acknowledge it. But she was too frustrated, too hurt, and far, far too desperate to care anymore.

So she snarled back with every ounce of edge she had, and crossed the line to join Ruby in the unmapped territory on the other side of it, narrowing her eyes angrily. “You could have asked me, too! But then Penny made moon eyes at you once we got to Atlas, and-”

“After two years! I shared a dorm with you for a year, I thought of you every day in Mistral, I cried myself to sleep from joy the night you got to Haven, and then you and I travelled two continents with just us!” Ruby ran her hands through her hair frustratedly, grabbing fistfuls of the back of it in an old habit, but which partially undid her short ponytail. She roughly yanked it free to fix it, but her hands were quivering too much from nerves and anger. “Also, for your information, Penny didn’t make any advances towards me in Atlas until she had analysed our team dynamic and deduced that it was safe to because there was nothing for her to complicate. And secondarily for your information, I didn’t fuck Penny until you’d already started spending nights with Neptune in Vacuo!”

The air in the elevator was growing warmer as their agitation rose and their breaths came in frustrated, rapid, and angry, with Ruby trying to fix up her hair while Weiss’s hands tightened on the handrail behind her until they trembled from the pressure.

Weiss shook her head slowly, her voice low as she processed.

“Swear jar.” Weiss winced when Ruby rolled her eyes and rejected the olive branch, and she sighed and looked away.

The silence dragged on as Ruby calmed down, eventually managing to fix up her ponytail and stumble a few steps back to collapse against the far wall of the elevator, supporting her weight on the handrail behind her and sighing. She looked away.

“...I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from. Why it all of a sudden matters now. But it’s not like we didn’t mess it all up anyway.”

Weiss nodded slowly, her lips thin and her eyes off in thought. In a steady movement, composed and thoughtful, she stood from the handrail she had been leaning against to flip the emergency stop and let the elevator keep climbing floors again.

But then it was her turn, and she braced her shoulders while making sure to stare at the closed doors and not where Ruby was off to her side.

“You could have asked me too, Ruby. I didn’t go to Haven to save the world. I went there for you.” Weiss’s hand unconsciously went to the scar on her hip from where Cinder’s spear had gone straight through her. It didn’t hurt anymore, but it was a blemish all the same. “I agreed to return to Atlas because you said it was right. I watched my home fall into the sea, watched you kill yourself in a fairy tale, and had your back when you stared down two gods. If you really think there was ever a second I wasn’t yours, then you’re a bigger dolt than I have ever thought.”

Weiss sighed at the next part, pinching the bridge of her nose and rubbing her eyes as her mind went back to the months of desert sands and the sort of sun and heat you couldn’t hide from. And all the other darkness that had been there on its own.

“ Yes, I found comfort in Neptune. Then it turned into something more, and I don’t regret it even despite the pig he became. But there’s a reason I kept returning to our house, after those nights. But then Penny asked you, and Neptune asked me, and the future became what it did.”

She shrugged and folded her hands behind her back, drumming them together restlessly as the elevator slowly climbed floors. There wasn’t a single sound from Ruby, and Weiss could see out of the corner of her eye that Ruby was simply staring at her, dumbfounded and lost.

Ruby had no response to it, she just stared at where Weiss was deliberately not making eye contact with her. The shimmering in her blue eyes was wet, but the set of her jaw was tight, composure rigidly in place.

The elevator was two levels away from Ruby’s room when there was a flutter of rose petals and it ground to a halt again, a finger on the emergency stop toggle as Ruby looked down at the floor. The sudden jolt caught Weiss by surprise and she stumbled for a moment before catching her balance, then looked up at Ruby with a concerned frown.

Ruby didn’t speak straight away, her finger lingering on the button, and her eyebrows low in thought as she considered everything. She slowly shook her head, overwhelmed and exhausted, and looked over at Weiss with a defeated smile.

“Ten years since the Fall. Since we stopped being Beacon students. And I’m still a dolt, and you’re still difficult.” Ruby smiled slightly wider when Weiss scoffed but otherwise had no rebuttal, and she let her finger fall from the button and turned to face Weiss properly. “The more things change…”

There wasn’t any need to finish the phrase, though Weiss slightly mouthed it to herself anyway as she stared back into Ruby’s gaze. Both of them gave hurt smiles, the corners wavering slightly, and the past ten years slipped through them slowly like the current of a river. Ruby stepped over and leant on the same railing as Weiss, close enough their shoulders were brushing, and let her head fall back against the wall.

Both of them took a moment to bask in the absolute silence and privacy of the elevator, locked in a capsule away from the rest of the world. They wouldn’t have long, eventually hotel management would notice the elevator and either restart it on their end or send someone to investigate it, but for another minute or so they had peace and quiet.

It was eventually Weiss who broke the quiet, her voice soft.

“Have things stayed the same?”

Ruby looked down at the ground and crossed her arms over her chest, and let out a quiet scoff. “Well, I guess not. Considering that’s only the second time since the Emerald Forest where I’ve raised my voice at you.”

But Weiss didn’t laugh or let it be just a joke, and when Ruby looked over at her she blinked at just how intently Weiss was staring at her and studying her. The absolute seriousness in Weiss’s eyes had Ruby immediately stop bouncing her foot, and she leant away slightly in concern.

“...what is it?”

“I mean it, Ruby. Have things stayed the same? Are you and I really going to be where we were ten years ago? Beacon fell, we went to war, we travelled dimensions, argued with gods, but now we’re right back here?” Weiss sighed as she looked down at the ground, her grip tightening on the handrail, and she shook her head slowly as more hooks kept digging into her mind. “I haven’t seen you for five years. You had become the most important person in the world to me, but now we’re back to arguing like we did right back at the beginning.”

Ruby snorted and shook her head before Weiss had even finished speaking, crossing her arms tighter over her chest and shuffling uncomfortably when Weiss looked over at her with the most pleading expression Ruby had ever seen.

It wasn’t fair for things to have become this, after everything they’d gone through and everything they’d done. The people they’d had to become, far too young and far too roughly.

But things had started changing before the Fall, day by day in that small dorm room, and every combat class. They both knew it. They both remembered. Just like they both remembered ignoring it, for all the reasons that made sense to them as kids, and then different ones that had made sense as soldiers.

The elevator rumbled as the emergency stop was timed out and overridden, and neither of them moved as it finished moving to the floor of Ruby’s suite and the doors slid open with a well-maintained silence.

After glancing at each other for a moment, Ruby gestured loosely and tiredly with her head for Weiss to follow her if she wanted to, before stepping out into the quiet hall close to the top of the massive hotel.

She’d initially protested when the event organisers had insisted on giving her one of the major suites without charging her a single lien for it, but Yang and Blake had simply shrugged with resigned smiles, the same benefit extended to them just as it always was.

And for the tenth anniversary, the organisers had gone all out on the expenses, so Ruby’s suite was intimidatingly massive as she tagged her card and opened the door. She wordlessly stepped aside for Weiss to enter first, and flicked on the lights as she followed and closed the door behind them.

Once they were in true privacy, Weiss relaxed further, and she looked around at the small signs that Ruby had already made the space her own; a robe hung up over the back of an armchair, the maintenance tools of Crescent Rose open and organised on the dining table, and she spied the recognisable red cloak folded neatly on the couch.

Weiss looked over at Ruby with a small smile. “How long have you been here? Are you staying long?”

“We got in two days ago, for a pretty well-timed hunt into the Emerald Forest that happened to line up pretty perfectly, timing wise.” Ruby gestured to where Crescent Rose was resting on the dining table, partially disassembled and most of the parts polished and oiled. “There was originally meant to be another trip today, but the day festival started at like, dawn this morning, and I had to open the whole thing. Then I stuck around. So, catching up on that hunt in a couple of days.”

Even though Ruby didn’t sound particularly excited about having to do it, standing at a microphone in front of thousands of people in the courtyard outside of the Beacon Tower Memorial, Weiss still sighed apologetically and looked down guiltily.

“I’m sorry that I missed that. I don’t tend to go to the day activities. And normally Glynda opens the day with the same speech every year. I didn’t know you’d…” Weiss shook her head, her voice lodging in her throat sad. “You don’t come to these things. I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me.”

Ruby watched quietly as Weiss stepped over to the couch and reached down to pick up her folded cloak, her partner holding the fabric in her fingers delicately, as if it might fall apart just from being touched.

It was still the exact same cloak she’d worn since emerging from the tree. A cloak quite literally built out of the intent and ambition of her soul. Stitched by an eldritch god, out of a material loomed from her sense of purpose.

No matter what it had gone through in the years since the Ever After, it had never torn, burned, or frayed. It was still the perfect shade of red, not a speck of mud or stain of blood.

While she let Weiss silently go around the room looking at everything and lost in thought, Ruby quietly went over to the dining table and began the practised process of reassembling Crescent Rose. She could finish polishing and true maintenance before leaving Vale, it had just been something to do to vent her anxiety before her speech that morning.

But before she could get to her tools, she glanced over at the sound of a blade being drawn from its sheath, and watched as Weiss delicately drew Myrtenaster and placed the intricate rapier down on the table.

Ruby didn’t need to look at it for more than a few seconds in order to know that it was in the exact same condition it had been when Weiss had hung it up eight years ago, retiring it. Nothing about it had been altered or replaced. But that also meant the faint blemishes from the final battle were still stained into the Atlesian steel.

When Weiss stepped back in permission, Ruby carefully picked the blade up to study it closer.

Even to this day, she was the only person that Weiss would ever allow to study her weapon, and to hold it so closely and almost intimately. Just like she was willing to believe that she was still the only other person who Ruby had allowed to fire Crescent Rose, all those years ago in an urgent moment of battle.

Ruby turned away from the table so she could swing Myrtenaster in a careful slash, measuring the familiar balance, and she put it at rest by her side and looked over at where Weiss was watching.

“You haven’t used it at all? In eight years?”

“A few formal duels with some New Mantle students who may have felt they had something to prove, and there was one grimm incursion six years ago that I dealt with. But…no, not outside of that.” Weiss raised the palm of her hand and allowed a small white glyph to materialise and spin, the familiar hum of it making Ruby’s heart freeze as a thousand distant memories went through her. 

Weiss smiled as she watched Ruby stare at the glyph, and let it dissipate, turning her attention to where Crescent Rose was folded on the table, and she reached down to run her fingers lightly across the dark red metal. She traced the faint lines of repaired dents. And she knew the stories of plenty of them.

“The next time you’re near the city, you should swing by the academy.” Weiss immediately raised a hand placatingly when Ruby froze at the idea, and gave her a reassuring smile. “It doesn’t have to be a big event. Even just popping your head into a combat class would do so, so much.”

Ruby frowned gently as she thought over it, drumming her grip on Myrtenaster, and she stepped over quietly, raising the tip of the blade to slowly and gently slide it into Weiss’s sheath on her belt herself.

It was a strangely intimate act, Weiss’s eyes widening as Ruby stood close enough in front of her to slide her sword into her belt, and she jumped slightly at the telltale click of the blade sliding all the way in.

They were close enough that Weiss had to tilt her head up slightly, and she gave Ruby a sad look, her voice quiet and soft. “...why are you so against people being inspired by you?”

Ruby’s hand lingered on Myrtenaster’s hilt, and it felt like the equivalent of resting her hand on Weiss’s waist directly, a thought and sensation that had her own chest twist even as Weiss’s words stabbed into it. But she didn’t drop her hand, instead trailing her fingers along the metal and leather.

Her eyes were downcast for a moment as she worded her answer, and she gave a small and tired smile.

“I don’t mind it. It just feels strange to encourage it. If they keep thinking I’m some sort of legend or something, they’ll stop thinking they can do all the same things that we did. But they can.” Ruby’s mind went back to Carmine’s smiling face, the determination in the fresh graduate’s eyes, and she chuckled fondly with a proud smile. “And a lot of them will. I prefer them knowing I’m out there doing my best. Because, maybe it’ll help them want to come out and do it too.”

Weiss frowned softly as she thought over Ruby’s explanation, and briefly looked away. People didn’t treat her with quite the level of reverence that Ruby was given, but they did turn to her for leadership and inspiration. Every time she swung through New Mantle Academy on formal business, it was treated as a big moment.

Fresh graduates challenged her to duels often, and the statue of her in the New Mantle Academy central courtyard had captured her exact appearance just before the battle of Shade. There was a large painting of her in the largest of the galleries in Haven.

She was memorialised.

But, the most inspiring thing she’d done since the war had been the grimm incursion six years ago, when the border defences had failed. She hadn’t hesitated before storming out into the snow fields to deal with the problem before the horde even reached the city.

It had felt just like the old days, returning to her with flawless muscle memory and instinct. And after she’d left, plenty of the New Mantle students had chosen to follow her out and take the fight to the darkness.

The next initiation for the academy, there’d been almost double the new applicants than the previous years.

Weiss nodded slowly as she understood, and she smiled at Ruby gently and proudly.

“You’re right. As always, you’re right. But…” Weiss chuckled as she hesitantly stepped closer, and when Ruby didn’t retreat she took the risk of laying her head on Ruby’s shoulder. “...it would be nice to see you.”

There was only a moment of pause before she felt Ruby’s arms wrap around her and pull her in close, and she sighed as tension left her shoulders and back. She wrapped her arms around Ruby’s neck and hugged in close, closing her eyes and letting Ruby bundle her up with a gradually increasing tightness.

The last time they’d hugged had been right before her wedding, when she’d already been in her dress. It had needed to be a careful hug so that her makeup and hair had stayed flawless, but Ruby had been a brat and pressed a kiss to her cheek anyway. So Weiss had returned the favour, and left a faint red mark of lipstick on Ruby’s face that she’d tried and failed to entirely rub off.

Five years without one of Ruby’s famous hugs that even Blake had started seeking out when she wanted or needed them. But Weiss swallowed a lump in her throat when she felt Ruby’s fingers go to her hair. Because that was one thing that was part of their hugs, and nobody else’s.

Ruby sighed as she ran her fingers through Weiss’s thick and luscious hair, disrupting the intricacy of the braid but not caring in the slightest. She could just help Weiss fix it up later, just like she used to.

She could feel in her fingers that she still knew all of Weiss’s favourite braids, including the one she was currently in, and she chuckled at how the strands parted under her touch.

“God, it’s gotten so long, Weiss.”

“It has. I haven’t cut it more than just tidying split ends since Shade.” Laughing quietly, Weiss nuzzled further into the touch as Ruby continued stroking it, but she pulled back just enough she could look up into Ruby’s eyes shyly. “Does it look okay? There have been… mixed opinions.”

The way she said it made it clear just who had been against it, and Ruby rolled her eyes in judgement of his poor taste. She had always been in awe of Weiss’s hair, and she made it clear as she dug her fingers into the snowy strands to lavish attention onto in the perfect way that made Weiss smile and melt.

“It looks beautiful.” Ruby smiled gently, before blinking when Weiss pinked slightly even as she smiled up at her happily. “It suits you. It always did.”

Weiss beamed up at her happily, but she felt her own face was warm, and she looked away to hide her cheeks. She sighed at herself in frustration, and closed her eyes for a moment to calm down.

Without thinking about it, her own arms that had wrapped around Ruby’s neck had given her the perfect angle to stroke Ruby’s ponytail with her own fingertips, and she began to play with it, along with the small and sensitive hairs at the base of Ruby’s neck.

Ruby shivered under the touch with an appreciative hum, and she pulled Weiss back into the hug. “I feel like you need this. So, come here.”

The tightening of the hug was immediately reciprocated with force, Weiss clinging onto her and burying her face into Ruby’s neck. Even though Ruby had grown a few inches taller, Weiss’s heels kept her at the perfect height for their embrace to be just like the thousands they had shared before.

“I feel like you need this too. It’s certainly been a while.” Weiss chuckled against Ruby’s neck, taking a deep breath of the comforting scent of roses, and she smiled when Ruby shivered at the feeling. “...it’s been five years.”

Ruby nodded gently, trying not to dislodge Weiss’s head, and sighed sadly as she closed her own eyes. “Yep, so you keep mentioning. I’m…not sorry for it. I had to work.”

“So did I, so I’m not either. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t hate it. It doesn’t mean I’m not…angry.” Weiss frowned even as she kept the hug tight, the pain stinging in her chest as an echo went through the empty halls of the past five years. “We were partners. You were everything to me. You knew that. Even though we never…”

She didn’t have the courage to say it and bring it up, instead trailing off shamefully and running away from it.

But Ruby didn’t judge her or push, instead continuing to stroke her hair, which was thoroughly unbraided by now, and Weiss didn’t care in the slightest.

Maybe before she left Ruby would sit behind her on the couch and redo it for her, just like she used to. Another of the quiet and private moments between the two of them that they’d held sacred without ever admitting that they did.

There had been a lot of those.

The first time Neptune had tried to help her with a braid, towards the end of their time in Vacuo and before he’d asked her to come with him to New Mantle, his touch had been rough and unpleasant. He hadn’t tried again very often in the years since, leaving Weiss to do it alone.

Meanwhile the last time Ruby had done her hair had been for her wedding. They’d sat silently as Ruby had done it with a delicate frown on her face, Weiss able to stare at her expression through the mirror she’d been sitting in front of.

It had struck her at the time that Ruby had clearly been conflicted, something twisting and turning inside of her chest. At the time she’d forced herself to ignore it, refusing to let anything potentially dampen her day, and she knew Ruby would either talk about it when she was ready or resolve it with her own genius.

But years later, sitting at her desk in her office and waiting for Ruby’s rare call for her birthday, she’d finally figured out what the expression had been;

The exact same one Weiss herself had given in the briefest flash before her smile, when she’d caught Ruby outside of Penny’s room for the first time just after dawn.

Weiss pulled back from the hug once her chest ached too much to be able to handle, her thoughts a foggy and blurred storm as the past years rolled around inside of her mind like thunderclouds.

“...you were thinking about it at my wedding, weren’t you?”

She wasn’t surprised when Ruby went completely rigid, her fingers freezing in Weiss’s hair as a ripple of tension went through every single part of her body and turned her into a statue.

They were dodging around it. That forbidden and unacknowledged ‘it’ that had chased them since the Fall, supposed to die like an unattended candle but instead constantly finding new fuel to burn.

It hadn’t been allowed, they’d both known that. It had been a silent decision from them both.

But eight years was long enough for it to never be mentioned at all. And they hadn’t looked each other in the eye for half a decade. Ruby spent all her time out in the wilds hunting monsters. What if it wasn’t just another half a decade, next time? What if it was never at all?

There had been plenty of periods during the silence that Weiss had feared that Ruby had died, only to feel waves of relief when news of Ruby’s work would arrive in the city. The girl persisted in reinforcing her legend, while also keeping Weiss reassured and at peace.

Even though the distance and silence hurt more than anything she’d ever felt.

Ruby managed to suck in a shaky breath at Weiss’s words. She knew the difference between when Weiss was genuinely asking a question, and when she knew the answer but just wanted to hear it, and the undertone to Weiss’s voice had a wash of ice go through every inch of Ruby’s skin.

It wasn’t fair for them to do this now. Not after all this time. Not after Weiss had left, and after she had vanished.

Weiss was right earlier; they’d made their choices, and the future had been what it had become.

But Ruby opened her eyes and flicked them over to the massive window of her hotel suite, and gazed at the preserved ruins of Beacon Tower. They hadn’t repaired it to its original state after reclaiming Vale, instead the tower had been kept broken, but the insides reinforced enough that people could climb the winding stairs up to the fractured roof.

It stood as a memorial for what had happened. The only major modification to the broken rooftop had been the construction of a pillar carved with all the names of the students who had died.

There was a similar memorial at Shade Academy, in remembrance for the Shade students who had perished in the defence of Vacuo, along with students from Beacon who had gone to Shade after surviving the Fall only to die.

And another was erected at New Mantle Academy to commemorate and honour the students from Atlas who had honourably and selflessly stayed behind to fight Grimm and buy more time instead of going through the portal.

The day that the memorial in New Mantle had been opened, had been one of the last times Ruby had seen Weiss in those first three years. Weiss had given the speech, poised and perfect. It had felt more appropriate for Weiss to be the one to open it, considering it was to memorialise her countrymen and the fall of her homeland.

So Ruby had been right at her side, close enough they shared body heat and Weiss could draw in extra courage from Ruby’s presence as she spoke with a voice that only briefly wavered.

After the sheet had been pulled from the slate, Weiss had hugged Ruby so tightly that they both should have crunched. Everybody had watched as they’d grasped each other, Weiss hiding her tears in Ruby’s neck.

The knowing look that Yang and Blake had given them had been strangely heartbreaking. Blake had always looked at them in that way, after Vacuo. As if she was watching something that was dying but she wanted to live, a campfire going out when it was meant to push back against the cold.

Ruby wasn’t stupid, and she hadn’t been naive anymore by then. She was just grateful beyond belief that Blake and Yang had never said anything, and instead let Ruby and Weiss make their own choices and give away their own hearts to whomever they choose. And they’d chosen paths that had led them away.

Leading right to here.

“...this isn’t fair, Weiss. Why does this matter now? It’s been eight years since it could have.”

Weiss pulled back from the hug properly, taking a step away, and her eyes flashed hurt. “You’re the one who brought it up. You’re the one who’s breaking the promise. We never said it out loud, but…we promised.”

“I know. I know. I’m sorry.” Still looking out at the tower, Ruby sighed and rubbed both of her hands over her face, sliding them up and through her hair to brush it back. “I’m sorry.”

The moment of weakness was enough for Weiss to push, so she did, sharpening her eyes into a glare and clenching her hands into fists by her sides. “So answer the question. Did you almost mention it?”

Ruby’s head shot around, the focus of her stare shifting from the tower to where Weiss was glaring at her, and she glared right back as her silver eyes sparkled in frustration. Insecurity left her posture as she straightened up, towering over Weiss with her new height.

“Didn’t you almost say it the first morning I slept with Penny?”

“I asked you first.” Weiss shot back, unintimidated by Ruby’s height, and she took another step forward to prove it.

Ruby scoffed harshly, her temperature rising as her frustration grew. But Weiss was determined to push, and it wasn’t fair. So even as her anger grew as they entered the only forbidden territory that had ever been between them, Ruby kept her voice as controlled as possible as she shot back.

“That’s childish, Weiss. And well, you almost cracked first!”

The memory of that morning had stuck with Weiss ever since, she revisited it every couple of days, and she’d never acknowledge that, yes, she did know why it had stuck with her.

But anger kills denial with a slit throat, so as angry tears beaded in the corners of her eyes, Weiss raised her voice, the pitch rising with it, as she poked Ruby in the chest. “Of course I felt it! Of course it hurt! It’s natural for it to hurt! But you loved her!”

“Then of course I wanted to!” If Ruby had been calmer, she would have slapped a hand over her mouth, but instead she drew the blades of it inside of her chest and slashed with them. Her heart was hammering so loud in her ears that she could barely hear her own words. “Of course I almost said it! But it was your damn wedding.”

The confession had Weiss blink and stumble for a moment, she clearly hadn’t been expecting Ruby to actually admit to it. Her heart twisted in a full circle in her chest, crunching her lungs, and she let out as steady a breath as she could manage. But her voice quivered with pent up frustration. Pent up something.

“Yes, awful timing, but what would you have said??”

Ruby shook her head violently, refusing to budge on that one last front. She’d locked it away when she’d been in front of that mirror and Weiss had been the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, and she could keep it locked away now. No, Weiss would budge first.

“What about you in Vacuo?!”

Ground began to give, the pressure of eight years, of ten years, slamming against crumbling castle doors. Weiss roughly brushed an escaping tear from her eye and cheek, smudging her perfectly applied makeup.

“It doesn’t matter. You and I agreed that it would never matter.” Weiss hissed, poking Ruby in the chest again, before stepping away angrily and clenching her fists by her sides so tightly that her palms rippled with aura to keep out her sharp nails. “ I wanted you to be happy! And Penny made you happy!”

“You made me happy!”

“Not in the way she did.” Weiss threw her head back violently, her hair whipping, and her voice was a brutal snarl as she shot her rage up to the roof for a moment. “ Never in the way she did.”

Ruby huffed heavily. Every part of her body was tingling from the adrenaline as hot blood roared through her body. The door was open, the territory was under her boots, and there was no going back now. “Because you never asked to! Instead you went to Neptune.”

“You never asked either!” Weiss was shouting now, her voice pitched high and hurt as she looked at Ruby again with wild blue eyes.

“You said so yourself earlier that you went to Neptune for comfort. That was what you wanted.” Snapping harshly, Ruby couldn’t decide whether to shove her hands into her pockets or cross them over her chest. So instead they trembled in limbo as she ripped her soul open. “Well, I didn’t want just comfort during everything that happened, and definitely not after.”

“What did you want? Tell me.” Weiss stormed over again, pushing close enough that Ruby’s retreat had the back of her knees hit the dining table. But Weiss got even closer, staring up at her imploringly even as frustration had her eyes red and crying. “Finally please just tell me. Say it.”

They were both breathing heavily as they stared at each other, Ruby trembling in place while Weiss pressed against her to trap her in her own anger. They glared into each other’s eyes, Ruby scrambling for her shields, while Weiss had reached the end of her patience.

But they’d promised. They’d had work to do. And it wasn’t for them. For some reason, some reason they’d never given themselves or each other, that door had been closed. And if promises meant anything, it would stay that way.

So Ruby shook her head, trembling as her blood pounded hot. “What does it matter anymore? It’s been eight years.”

Weiss growled furiously up at her, eyes narrow and lips curled into a frustrated and desperate snarl.

Eight years. Ruby said the words like they weighed a ton, as if reaching it was a Sisyphean accomplishment and burden.

But it wasn’t eight years, and they both knew it. It had been ten.

Only if they’d ever admitted to themselves that the Vytal dance could have been so much better if one of them had realised early. If they hadn’t just been children at the start of a war.

The more things change…

Weiss sucked in a breath furiously, holding it for a few moments as she took Ruby’s challenge, and snarled out the correction.

“Ten. It's been ten since it first began to matter to me. I'll share the blame for the first few, but damn you for the last five. Damn you to hell for running away from it. From us. From me!"

Before Ruby could come up with an equally angry retort, Weiss grabbed the collar of Ruby’s shirt tightly, her knuckles white, and her stare unbreaking from Ruby’s as she waited the duration of a heartbeat. She knew how fast Ruby’s reflexes were, and if she rejected it she would turn into petals in Weiss’s hands.

But a heartbeat passed and all Ruby did was glare at her, challenging and angry and trying to come up with a rebuttal that would help her bleed what they were both feeling. But Weiss responded by rising to it and pulling Ruby in by her collar to crash their mouths together roughly and messily.

It was violent enough their auras sparked along their lips as Ruby’s teeth collided with Weiss’s top lip, but all the crackle did was feel like static electricity as Ruby’s hands went to Weiss’s hair and brutally wrapped it up to grab. The painful sting had Weiss hiss and growl into Ruby’s mouth as she sought out her tongue, and she growled louder when Ruby responded.

She pushed against Ruby harder, closing every inch of distance between them, and the dining table rocked behind them under the force. Ruby twisted her fistful of Weiss’s hair to jerk her chin upward, taking control of the kiss as she pressed down and held Weiss’s head obediently in place.

But Weiss’s hands were hers to ravage with, and they were already going for the buttons of Ruby’s shirt without any patience. She had the dexterity to pop the buttons neatly if she wanted to, but she didn’t, instead ripping them carelessly so she could get to the skin of Ruby’s torso.

The aggression and desperation in the action had Ruby snarl into Weiss’s mouth, the vibration rippling along Weiss’s tongue in a way that made her purr out of pleasure, and Ruby punished her for all of it by spinning them around.

Weiss didn’t resist when Ruby picked her up and slammed her down onto the table, a hand around her throat shoving her back so she was prone, and she wrapped her legs around Ruby’s waist to keep her close as Ruby kissed her again.

Fabric tore as the hand that wasn’t wrapped around her throat reached down to pull up the skirt of her dress and free her thighs, Ruby completely indifferent to her dignity, and Weiss responded by raising her hips to make it easier, while also pulling Ruby closer with her legs.

The rest of Ruby’s shirt gave way, buttons popping and clattering to the tabletop and the floorboards, and Weiss’s hands were on her skin immediately.

Ruby was so fucking angry as she ripped Weiss’s dress to just get the damn thing up her legs so she could dig her nails into Weiss’s perfect thigh, sending sparks of aura that kept her from leaving scratch marks.

She broke off the kiss, leaving a lewd line between their swollen lips, and looked down into Weiss’s blown dark eyes.

“Retract your aura.”

There wasn’t any hesitation on Weiss’s part, she didn’t even visibly tense as her skin rippled light blue for a moment as she disengaged her aura from protecting her body. And she didn’t need to say anything in order for Ruby to immediately do the same with a shimmer of red.

The moment they were both vulnerable, that they were both fragile, they hurt each other as they kissed again.

Ruby’s nails scratched red lines into Weiss’s thighs as she shoved her legs further apart, and Weiss bit Ruby’s bottom lip hard enough she tasted iron on her tongue. With the skirt of her dress utterly loose and in tatters, Weiss had the freedom to roll her hips up in a way that had Ruby tense when she felt it.

But she didn’t let it throw her off, didn’t let it interrupt, instead she slid the remains of her shirt down her arms and let it drop to the floor, before pulling Weiss up roughly with a grip of her hair and then reaching behind her to get to the zipper of her dress.

It came down easily, the quality perfect, and the fabric came loose on Weiss’s shoulders as she attacked Ruby’s belt. But she paused for long enough she could pull down her dress from her torso and down to her waist.

A rough shove to Ruby’s chest to send her back a step, and Weiss slid up from the table so she could push the dress down the rest of the way and step out of it, before flicking her hair over her shoulder and allowing Ruby to stare at her with wide and hungry eyes.

White and dark blue lingerie covered Weiss’s skin with silken lines, tall stockings kept up with silver clasps in the shapes of snowflakes, and with her body still petite the fabric smoothed out the delicate and powerful curves of her lean form.

The lines of her abs were left clear, but her waist was hugged by silk and straps, drawing attention down to her thighs. Weiss had always caught Ruby staring at her legs, they were one of her best features, and she smirked with blazing eyes when Ruby stared at the white stockings hugging her muscular thighs.

Cupping her modest chest and feigning modesty, Weiss twisted her hips to give Ruby a proper view, spinning slowly and teasingly, and fixed her with a smoulder filled with so much pent up frustration and the desire for broken promises that Ruby almost crumpled.

Ruby’s hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of hair again, and pulled her into another kiss, her other hand going straight for one of Weiss’s lingerie clad breasts. It had Weiss moan gently into her mouth, sensitive and burning, and she pulled Ruby’s belt entirely off and then ripped the buttons of her trousers.

They were down Ruby’s legs in seconds, and Ruby struggled to push them off over her shoes, which she then unlaced and kicked off into the corner of the room.

Skin bare and just in her underwear, Ruby shivered when Weiss was all over her, and she took the eight years of punishment willingly as Weiss broke off the kiss so she could lick down Ruby’s jaw and latch onto her neck.

Ruby moaned as her mind rippled with aroused fog as Weiss sucked a black mark, and she scooped Weiss up easily and carried her down the small hall.

The door to the bedroom flew open from a powerful kick, and she practically slammed Weiss down onto the bed.

The impact and bounce dislodged Weiss from her neck, and she looked up at Ruby with a stare that showed the blood pounding hot. She didn’t break eye contact as she grabbed Ruby’s wrist and pulled it between her legs so Ruby could feel how hot she was, how eager, and she smiled in razor-edged satisfaction when Ruby shivered at the signs.

But any thought of having control vanished from Weiss when Ruby immediately stuck two of her fingers into her own mouth to wet them, and then slid her hand down the waistband of the fragile panties of Weiss’s lingerie.

There wasn’t any love or signs of anything soft, only eight years of frustration, jealous resentment, and lost opportunities, as Ruby slid her fingers down Weiss’s burning slit and slid them inside in the one powerful motion.

Her thumb was immediately teasing her clit as her fingers curled up inside of Weiss’s cunt, and Weiss threw her head back with a moan as she realised a rather grave miscalculation on her part;

Ruby had spent eight years fucking another woman and learning. Meanwhile Weiss had very much not.

So she was at Ruby’s mercy entirely as she was fucked, still dressed in lingerie and simply just taken, her hands scratching lines down Ruby’s bare back as Ruby had one hand wrapped around her throat to hold her in place while the other wrist twisted in powerful, rough motions.

It wasn’t a rapid and brutal fingerfucking, instead each stroke was aimed, powerful, and the rhythm was slow but constant. Each twist of her fingers inside of Weiss’s soaked and desperate cunt timed perfectly enough to send Weiss into the electric fog of pleasure just as she would be returning from it.

The heartbeat of being fucked, in and out, built and then teased, and it was clearly not something Weiss was used to.

“I always daydreamed that you were a moaner, with that voice of yours.” Ruby growled into Weiss’s ear, latching onto her earlobe for a moment until Weiss whimpered, and she sped up in her fucking and increased the rhythmic pressure of her pad on the hood of Weiss’s clit. “I can hear you biting them back, even now. Why so shy? This is what you wanted.”

Weiss cracked, moaning loudly at the rough as Ruby sped up, fucking her hard enough that the bed rocked but she wasn’t able to shift due to the grip Ruby had on her throat. She felt the unique sensation of her nails breaking the skin of Ruby’s back, and she almost apologised, but Ruby simply moaned and laughed drunkenly.

So Weiss did it again, mastering the pressure needed to put dark red lines on Ruby’s back, and opened her lips in a choked request for a kiss, which Ruby happily obliged with. She moaned into Ruby’s mouth quietly, but her ability to consciously scratch and tease began to fade as her cunt and core began to grow hotter.

The twitching started, a light quiver, a tremble on the edge of her mind like a cresting wave. Thoughts faded, drawn out into the tide. The first signs of a tsunami.

And Ruby felt it too in how Weiss tightened around her fingers, growing even slicker and eager, and she sighed eagerly into Weiss’s mouth. The temptation to speed up and pound Weiss over the edge was agonisingly powerful, but she resisted it, instead maintaining the constant rhythm of powerful thrusts of her fingers.

Weiss spasmed in her touch, pressing up into the grip on her throat, and her eyes shot open when Ruby’s grip tightened for a moment and her breath was strangled off slightly. But instead of fear, instead a fog swept over her thoughts like a blanket, and her eyes fluttered shut when Ruby released the pressure just enough the fog went over her body in a unique wave.

Her thighs were trembling, and she wanted Ruby to just fuck her and get her over the crest, but Ruby avoided the grinding of her hips masterfully, instead able to keep that steady, powerful, agonising rhythm.

Closer. Stronger. Brighter. The tsunami blocked out the sun. Closer. God, fuck, she was so soaked, if she got any wetter she’d drip down Ruby’s wrist onto the blankets. The bra over her chest was almost agonising on her sensitive nipples, sending lightning with every heavy breath.

Grinding. Wanting. Please Ruby, please speed up. I can’t. I can’t.

Please fuck me, I’m sorry for eight years. I’m sorry.

When Ruby smiled against her lips, the expression more gentle and sincere than anything else, Weiss’s eyes widened when she realised she’d whined the last part out loud. Ruby nipped her bottom lip for a moment, and whispered into the kiss.

“I’m sorry too. Now cum.” Ruby smiled against her lips again. Each thrust was strong, plunging deep into Weiss’s cunt and then curling up, finding that spot and then retreating from it. “Cum for me.”

The tsunami hit, and Weiss died. Or at least it felt like she did, for the briefest moment. The most miniscule and momentary pause of an absolute lack of sensation, and then it crashed into her.

True to Ruby’s prediction, made nine years ago in her bunk when her fingers had slid down under the waistband of her pyjamas; Weiss was a screamer.

The kiss broke off roughly as Weiss threw her head back and cried out, every muscle quivering. It was violent and painful and everything and Ruby didn’t fucking stop. Every moment of Weiss’s body exploding and twisting, Ruby kept going, fucking her through it and dragging it out surely to the point it became almost painful.

But Weiss took it up until her body had no tension left to make, and she went entirely limp.

The moment she did, Ruby slowly pulled her fingers out of her, and then took advantage of Weiss’s limp and panting exhaustion to undo the clasps of Weiss’s underwear and garters with quick fingers, and immediately pull them down her legs.

Revealed to her sight, Weiss’s cunt was glistening and soaked, swollen in the most beautiful way, and Ruby dropped to her knees with a heavy thump like a pilgrim before an altar. She wrapped her arms around Weiss’s still trembling thighs and pulled her close to the edge of the bed.

Weiss barely had time to register what was happening before Ruby’s tongue slid up her slit, and over the electric shock of it she heard Ruby moan at her taste. And that did just as much as the sensation did, as her hands shot to Ruby’s hair and grabbed onto it eagerly.

But Ruby didn’t need much encouragement before she slid her tongue along Weiss’s cunt again, her eyes rolling back slightly at the taste of Weiss’s arousal, and she selfishly took another taste without any precision. Weiss moaned at the feeling regardless, but Ruby hadn’t even started trying yet.

Then she did, her entire focus sharpening, the rest of the world vanishing except for the feel and taste of Weiss under her tongue, and the flesh of her powerful thighs under her nails. She greedily shoved her tongue into Weiss’s cunt, and moaned almost as loudly as Weiss did. But she wasn’t a messy amateur, so her silver eyes sparkled as she dragged her tongue up and out, teasing the tip along Weiss’s slit until it reached her clit, and then twirled it in the slightest teasing pressure.

Weiss’s grip on her hair tightened as she gasped up at the ceiling, her hips bucking up slightly, and she knew from how Ruby chuckled that she was in trouble. Sensitive and swollen from just coming, slick and desperate, she was utterly at Ruby’s mercy as Ruby unleashed hell onto her.

Every muscle in her trembled as Ruby dug her nails into her thighs while worshipping her cunt with her tongue, pressed in so desperately close that she was often unable to breathe, but it didn’t seem to bother her as long as she was able to just fucking soak her face in Weiss’s arousal.

It dripped down her chin mixed with her own drool as she twirled her tongue around Weiss’s clit again after another stroke, and she growled in encouragement when Weiss cried out her name for the first time.

“Oh god, Ruby!”

Then it was Ruby’s turn to be in trouble. Because she really, really liked how that sounded. So, eyes darkening behind her eyelids and her tongue twisting and eager, she did everything she could to wrench her name out of Weiss’s throat again.

Every moment of Ruby’s tongue plunging perfectly into her cunt and dragging the flat along her slit, triggering every nerve and applying every pressure, had Weiss’s eyes back in her head as she ground her hips and practically fucked Ruby’s face with as much movement as Ruby let her.

It built again, but Ruby didn’t tease it out of her this time. There was no careful and steady rhythm to edge her, to let it build and crest. No, this was a fuck as Ruby practically tasted Weiss’s orgasm approaching. She slid a hand around Weiss’s thigh to delicately use her fingers to part Weiss’s cunt to give her a better angle, and smirked to herself before attaching her lips softly around Weiss’s swollen clit and pressing the tip of her tongue directly onto the hyper sensitive bud.

Before Weiss was even finished crying out, Ruby slid two fingers back into her cunt, and pressed the flat of her tongue against the top of Weiss’s slit, and thrusted in and upwards.

Weiss went rigid, eyes widening, and her ears rang for a moment in stasis, until Ruby did it again. And then fucked her like that. Constant pounding with her fingers, her tongue relentless on her clit but always knowing exactly when to back off just before it would start to hurt.

No dignity, no true precision, just fucking her. And it had tears dripping down the corners of Weiss’s cheeks as it built inside of her.

But unlike the first, which had drawn upwards and towered over her in the sky before crashing down, this one burnt through her like electrified gel underneath her skin. It began as a tingle in her fingers and toes, a squirming in her chest, pulsing like a heartbeat.

She felt hot, and when Ruby added a third finger she cried out a sob as she suddenly felt absolutely fucking full. Over and over, Ruby’s fingers slid smoothly into her cunt, and she was soaked and eager enough that she could hear it over the sound of her own whines and whimpers.

Weiss’s hands scrambled between Ruby’s hair and grasping onto the sheets, twisting and writhing as Ruby relentlessly pressed deeper, fucked harder, tasted greedier. It built like a storm, the roaring rain she knew would be broken with lightning even as every inch soaked under the torrent.

And then it hit, the thunder loud enough to shatter stone, and Weiss screamed soundlessly as she arched up as if possessed. In a way, she felt like she was, her entire existence narrowing down to the feeling of Ruby as she came hard.

And Ruby won.

“Fuck, Ruby! Please!”

Weiss squeaked when she was roughly flipped over before she even had time to recover her breath or sanity from the orgasm still rippling through her sentience, her soul glowing and soaked, and she gasped in surprise when Ruby’s weight was suddenly pressing down on her.

Leaning over Weiss and using her stronger weight to hold her down onto the bed, Ruby pressed a gentle kiss to the back of her neck, before thrusting her fingers into Weiss’s cunt from the new angle and pressing her body weight down at the same time.

Every pound of body weight went behind Ruby’s waist and hips and helped her press her fingers deeper into Weiss’s sensitive and overwhelmed body than they had been yet, and Weiss grasped at the sheets desperately as Ruby began to fuck her again, unapologetic and without a pause.

The sheer weight and pressure behind each roll of Ruby’s hips and curl of her wrist had Weiss choking on her own tongue, and it felt truly like Ruby was fucking her from behind, an imitation that had Weiss gurgling uselessly and her hands going limp on the sheets.

It didn’t take long for another orgasm to wrench out of her, fucked rough and relentless with the new pressure on her entire body, and she was pulled over the edge of it when Ruby bit down into her shoulder from behind and growled through her teeth.

“Fuck, you feel so good, Weiss.”

Weiss’s mouth opened drunkenly as her eyes stared unseeing at the far wall, but she didn’t have time to gurgle out the words ‘swear jar’ before Ruby’s fingers were in her mouth to cut her off. Easily predicted, so easily predicted, and Weiss couldn’t help but love it as she sucked on Ruby’s fingers while Ruby’s other hand plunged her cunt with her entire weight behind it.

There was such a thing as too much, and Weiss reached it with a choking scream around Ruby’s fingers on her tongue as she felt herself start to drip down her thighs, and she sobbed for release 

Ruby gave it, a few final rough thrusts into her did the trick, and Weiss barely heard Ruby laugh almost nastily when she came once more. But the energy for violence was gone, her body simply went limp, soaked with sweat and her thighs trembling and slick with streaks down to the sheets, and some even reaching the carpet.

As soon as Weiss was broken, limp and staring into nothing, Ruby stopped in her steady grinding and slid her fingers out, sticking them into her own mouth to suck off as much of Weiss’s arousal as she could. Her face was still sticky with it, and it was a feeling she loved as she stood and released Weiss from her weight.

Instead she reached behind herself and undid her own bra, and then pushed her own panties down and off to kick into the corner of the room. Now entirely naked, she slithered onto the bed next to Weiss. Laying on her side, Ruby tucked an arm up to rest her head on it smugly, and looked down into Weiss’s barely seeing eyes.

Weiss’s breathing was heavy and desperate as her body craved oxygen and relaxation, every muscle sore and beaten. It felt like she’d been fighting in the war again, her body ravaged and her mind shattered like stones through stained glass.

But she was able to see Ruby laying next to her, gloriously naked and smiling so fucking smugly that Weiss rippled back to awareness. A hand shot out and grabbed the back of Ruby’s head, and Weiss pulled her into a messy and desperate kiss. She could taste herself on Ruby’s tongue, and it made her whine in shame from how her cunt twitched from it.

Somehow finding the strength, Weiss swung a leg over Ruby and straddled her, and with shaking hands reached behind herself to undo the intricate straps of her lingerie and pull it free.

Finally just as naked as Ruby was, Weiss wriggled down so she was at the perfect angle to kiss Ruby deeply as she ran her fingers down Ruby’s ribs and hips, tracing the muscles and scars with lustful reverence.

When Weiss’s hands began to trace her thighs, Ruby broke off the kiss gently to raise a playful eyebrow up at her. “Have you ever actually been with a woman, Weiss?”

“It’s been quite a few years.” Weiss whispered with a smirk of her own as she shuffled down further, her fingers teasing the insides of Ruby’s thighs, and she smirked wider at the tremor. “But I’m sure I’ll pick it up again.”

Ruby raised her eyebrow higher in challenge, before biting her bottom lip and rolling her hips, thrusting up in invitation, and her hands went to Weiss’s waist to dig in her nails and pull Weiss to match her grind.

The desperation in Ruby’s grind had Weiss grunt happily, her eyes hooded and her lips ticking up into a daring smile. She took the challenge, she always would, and finally slid her fingers across Ruby’s slit.

The ceiling fan was spinning slowly enough that Ruby was able to watch one of the blades as it moved, tracking it with her gaze lazily with her hands tucked behind her head and the covers around her waist.

Her skin was still slick with drying sweat, her hair messy and spiky on the pillow, but she found it comfortable instead of annoying as she stared up at the roof.

Next to her, Weiss had the sheets pulled up over her chest, surprisingly modest after everything that had just happened. But her own hair, long and white as snow, was tangled and wild, and it gave her something to do with her hands as she slowly straightened it out.

Neither of them spoke at first, both of them staring up at the roof thinking over everything that had just happened, backtracking the evening in their minds. But then, slowly and hesitantly, they both backtracked further.

Their minds walked the same journey, but from different roads, seeing it all from their own sides as they mentally walked through the days of the war.

Everything that had happened to them, somewhere along the way. The fight against Salem, the months spent trudging through the wilds, the battles and the mysteries and every hard truth revealed to them that had been a sledgehammer to their identities. All of the team had changed during the war, coming out warped and bruised, and only Blake and Yang had come out with any sort of semblance of normalcy.

Salem had been destroyed, and the other three members of the team had watched in awed silence as Ruby had stared down two gods as she held the four relics in her hands. Ruby, little Ruby Rose with her fluttering cape and once bright smile, had glared them both down as she had made her case.

There had been no begging, no pleading for mercy or understanding, and they’d all seen how that had surprised the gods the most. Ruby, sweet little Ruby Rose, had spoken to them as if they were equals. As if a lowly human was just as important as them.

Because Ruby had become a child of the Ever After as well, passing through the tree and coming out different just like the gods had. She had seen those flickering lights of souls, and felt what it meant to cradle Potential in her hands.

Weiss had been struck into silence as she’d watched and listened as Ruby tossed the four relics to the God Of Light’s feet as if they were garage sale trinkets. And when the God Of Darkness had stepped forward, Yang had trembled in the urge to step in the way, but Ruby hadn’t even flinched.

Ruby had never told anyone what the God Of Darkness whispered to her. The quiet negotiation was done in glared murmurs as the four relics turned to dust and washed away.

All the world knew was the final words Ruby had said, firm and strong for everyone to hear and carry through the rest of time;

“We don’t need you anymore. But thanks for the offer.”

It had rippled over the planet like a shockwave in whispers and memoirs over the next few years. The last words said in the war against darkness hadn’t been a declaration of worthiness, or a beseechment for forgiveness.

Instead it had been one girl, who had gone through hell and come out the other side with scars so deep they were within her bone marrow. And she had given the brothers a smile and a shrug, aloof and confident.

With a glance at each other and then a nod, the brothers were gone, fading away and leaving Remnant intact but also leaving it for good.

Just like her words with the God Of Darkness, Ruby had never told anyone the final thing the God Of Light had said to her in a low murmur. But whatever it was, she had smiled and nodded upon hearing it. And then he was gone.

The months after that had made the world unrecognisable. And the team of four girls had become unrecognisable alongside it.

Yang and Blake had settled into domesticity with such an ease it was like the aura of it was a tailored coat for them both. But, in a strange way, it had meant the death of the team that had saved the world. The lovers had moved to Menagerie for a time, the other two naturally hadn’t gone with them, not wanting to intrude.

And that was that.

Three years later, Ruby had returned from her travels to attend Weiss’s wedding with Penny, still hand in hand, before vanishing into the wilds once more and leaving the other three in their new lives.

The girl who had stared down two gods after slaying and sealing a demon, was now staring up at the roof naked next to her, and Weiss closed her eyes with as silent a sigh as she could manage as her thoughts slowly returned to the present.

It had been a long few years without the rest of her team. Yang and Blake had their daughter now, and Yang had all but retired to be a full time mother in the way that her own mothers hadn’t managed to be. Ruby had been with the rest of Team RNJR and Penny alongside, and they spent their time wiping out the last pockets of Grimm. Though Penny had parted ways with them now.

Meanwhile Weiss had been with Neptune, done her work with New Mantle, and even though she wore Myrtenaster on her hip for special events she hadn’t drawn it for a fight that wasn’t a training spar in six years. It didn’t have the same signs of wear that Crescent Rose did.

She didn’t have the same signs of wear that Ruby did. Instead she had her own.

Ruby could see them out of the corner of her eye, written all over Weiss’s face. She had heard them in her sighs and moans and the whispers of her name. Weiss had moaned her name like it was something sacred, something returned.

But it had never been hers to whisper.

So, returning to the present and aware of the soreness in her muscles, Ruby lazily turned her head to look at where Weiss was already staring at her in thought. She bit her lip with a frown as she asked the most important question she’d asked since her conversation with the gods;

“...why didn’t we do this before? Back then.”

Weiss sighed, her mind washing with all the times she’d felt herself be curious.

The first moment had been during a training spar at Beacon where Ruby had beaten her, sweaty and muscles bulged and a large smile on her face.

Then seeing her again at their reunion at Haven.

Or craving comfort in the house they didn’t know was haunted by Apathy at the time.

The hardest moment to resist had been when Ruby had emerged from the tree. Weiss had never wanted to kiss someone badly as she had in that moment, wanting to run her hands over Ruby and study every inch and treasure that it was her once more.

But it had never been. Because it wasn’t what she was meant to do.

The two of them weren’t like Blake and Yang, their duty and destinies were what mattered more than anything else. The road ahead.

Ruby walked with her grip on her scythe with the same determination that Yang walked holding Blake’s hand. And Weiss’s determination and focus had been inside of her chest and behind her eyes, holding her upright with her chin raised.

It was a strange thing, how saving the world had made everything too late. Ruby and Penny had already latched onto each other, and Weiss had been drawn to Neptune, and that was that.

The first three years of phone calls, letters, and sometimes lunches whenever Ruby was hunting near New Mantle. Then a beaming smile and hug from Ruby at her wedding. Ruby had actually worn a dress and heels for it, and the compliment and seriousness of that had made Weiss blush.

And then, as if some sort of punishment, five years of absolutely nothing. No lunches. The weekly phone calls had turned to monthly, then once a year for birthdays, and then nothing at all.

“I will be the best teammate you will ever have.” had died like an apple on a dead branch the moment that The Team hadn’t been needed anymore.

“Team RWBY won’t leave your side for a second, I promise.” had melted like ash once Weiss no longer needed someone to watch her back.

Weiss sighed again as the years of nothing scratched talons along her skin, tracing the scratch marks from Ruby’s passion and threatening to sour them. But she refused to let them, instead placing her own fingers on the marks along her ribs and tracing them, feeling the sensitive sting and basking in it.

She shook her head slowly, her eyes never leaving Ruby’s.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Ruby blinked in confusion, keeping her voice at the quiet murmur they had seemingly decided on. “It wasn’t exactly a crime not to want me.”

“Even if it was, that wasn’t a crime I am guilty of.” Weiss rolled onto her back properly and looked up at the roof, unable and unwilling to acknowledge the way Ruby’s eyes widened and her eyebrows shot up. “But you loved Penny, and I loved Neptune, and we had just saved the world.”

Ruby snorted, unable to refute the last part and the responsibilities that had come after. The chaos of that first year of reconstruction and adjusting to a new world had robbed her of any moments of peace.

But there was something Weiss wasn’t getting. And there wasn’t much point in keeping that one last promise, after what had just happened.

“Weiss, I loved you first. And I loved you so much that I thought it was going to kill me. Don’t pretend you didn’t know it.” Ruby bit her lip hard enough she tasted iron, and closed her eyes. But she still heard and felt Weiss go completely rigid next to her. The lump in her throat didn’t matter, only the truth did. “But then everything changed, yeah. The world changed. We changed. And Penny made me happier than I thought I’d be able to feel, and I saw the way you looked at Neptune. I loved you so much that your happiness meant everything to me. I loved you so much that I was willing to be happy as well, since you wanted me to be.”

The sheets rustled as Weiss slowly turned onto her side to stare at Ruby properly, but Ruby kept her eyes closed. She didn’t want to know what expression was on Weiss’s face, but she could hear her slow and deep breathing. In through her nose, out through her mouth in slow exhales.

It meant Weiss was processing smoothly. No panic. No anger. Just thought, and consideration. Which was a good sign.

Then Weiss’s breath caught in her throat, a quiet sound as she braced with a decision made, and Ruby clenched her eyes shut slightly tighter and waited for the sound of Weiss pushing the sheets down to leave.

But she didn’t, instead the mattress dipped slightly as Weiss moved closer and raised herself up.

A pair of impossibly soft lips touched Ruby’s yet again, pressing gently, and she responded instantly. It was the softest kiss they’d shared yet, free of lust but filled to the brim with something that had Ruby’s fingers tingling and Weiss humming happily against her lips.

The kiss ended slowly, gradually breaking off and finishing with Weiss pressing a kiss to the corner of Ruby’s lips and raising herself up more comfortably so she could look down into Ruby’s eyes once she finally opened them again.

Weiss slowly stroked some of Ruby’s hair off her face, neatening it casually, just like she used to years ago without even noticing she had started doing it. But this time it was deliberate, her stare and the certainty in her touch made that clear.

Her gaze was soft as she looked down into Ruby’s eyes, and her voice was equally as gentle.

“It was never easy to be in love with you. You were everything the world needed, and so nothing I could ever deserve. But I loved you regardless, one of the bravest things I ever did.” Weiss bit her lip when Ruby’s eyes widened, and gave a single slow shake of her head to stop her from interrupting. “I don’t regret my work over the past eight years. Everything I’ve accomplished. But there are times I wonder how things would be different if I’d gone with you. If I’d been brave too.”

Ruby laughed quietly even though the first part stung, but she knew it was fair. Everything during those years had been tangled webs and barbed razor wire wrapped around every inch of progress.

The wires had been so sharp it threatened to slit her throat if she ever turned her head to look over her shoulder at where the others had been forced to follow a few steps behind.

“Well, the Grimm are almost gone now. So, a bit of a missed window. But, I think about it too. Except the opposite. Obviously.” Ruby shrugged, her face falling, and she let her head sink entirely back into the pillow as she looked up at the roof and lazily tracked the fan with her eyes again. “They didn’t need us to help. But we went anyway. It was Penny’s third chance at life, and she wanted to spend it doing things. And as for RNJR, I think…I think they were scared to stop. Stopping would mean things catching up to them. Catching up to us.”

Weiss reached to stroke Ruby’s hair gently with a small frown. “I am sorry about Penny. But I hope things with the rest of RNJR have been good. That they’re healing too.”

“They are. This might…be our last expedition though. Nora and Ren are talking about settling.” Ruby nodded gently, peacefully looking up at Weiss’s face. But there was sadness in her eyes as well, the preemptive grief of an ending soon to come. A hard truth out in the air. “Jaune wants to go station at Argus full time for a while, to help train his nephew, and also because-”

“Pyrrha. Even after all this time?” Weiss tilted her head slightly as she looked down at, her eyes sad, and she smiled sympathetically when Ruby gave a slow and deep nod.

“He’s always going to love her and want to honour her. So, one more trip to the ice caves, and then we’re probably done.” Ruby bit her lip as she said it out loud, putting it into the air for someone else instead of just something the four of them had discussed over campfires in passing.

There was a pause as Weiss raised her eyebrows, the white lines of them slowly climbing, and her smile twitched strangely as she tilted her head in the other direction. “The ice caves, you say? Those are right by New Mantle.”

Ruby nodded as she reached around Weiss casually and stretched her arms up to the ceiling, specifically to crack her knuckles for the feeling of relief. When a soft hand took her own as she lowered it, and gave a brief squeeze, she looked up at Weiss in a jolt of surprise, and Weiss smiled and squeezed again.

“Well, when you pass through…come and see me. I’ll clear my schedule for some lunches. Just like the old days. Please.”

Ruby smiled, her thumb stroking the back of Weiss’s soft hand. It felt so familiar, but she knew her own hands were slightly coarser than they had been back the last time they’d held hands. But they still slotted together perfectly, Weiss still knew the perfect tension to squeeze for it to calm her the most, and Ruby still knew how to make Weiss sigh with a stroke of her thumb.

So, Ruby pulled Weiss’s hand down to her chest to cradle it, while Weiss continued stroking her hair with the fingers of her free hand.

“Sounds good. Might have to be dinner though. Hunts are during the day.”

“Dinners I can do quite easily, considering I have my home to myself these days.” Weiss laughed, putting levity into the harsh reality of it, and Ruby snorted with a smile of her own at it. But then Weiss sobered, and she frowned. “But what are you going to do once the expedition is over and the others retire?”

That was the million lien question, and Ruby still didn’t have an answer, which became evident with how she stared past Weiss up at the roof blankly and helplessly. She licked her lips with the tip of her tongue to wet them, and shook her head.

“I don’t know.”

Weiss looked at her with a scrutinising expression as she took in the lost fog in Ruby’s eyes at the very idea of putting together a future that wasn’t just one fight after another.

The war was nearly over, and Ruby would finally be able to put down her scythe and rest. There was a younger generation, inspired by Ruby, ready and out there taking up the burden with a fervour that Ruby was too traumatised and tired to maintain for much longer.

Plenty of their generation were still out fighting, and would be huntsmen and huntresses for the rest of their lives, long into old age. But none of them had gone through what Ruby and their team had, and Weiss saw and felt the difference.

Some such as teams ABRN and CFVY were going to be fighting until they were either fifty or the grimm were extinct, but Weiss could tell just by looking at Ruby that her team leader didn’t have that in her. She’d seen too much, and carried even more.

Ruby shrugged at Weiss with raised eyebrows of her own, the corner of her mouth ticking up into a sincere and soft smile. “It’s okay, y’know. Ultimately. You’ve been good for New Mantle. They couldn’t have done it without you. I’m…sorry, that I said all that, earlier. In the elevator.”

The praise had Weiss smile, then thinning her lips in resignation as she nodded again. “Just as your work clearing the grimm has allowed expansion in the first place. It wouldn’t have been as fast if you hadn’t been out there. I’m sorry too.”

The apology was easily accepted, Ruby reaching up and brushing some of Weiss’s hair back over her ear, and she smiled gently and kept her voice even gentler as she basked in looking up at Weiss’s face.

“When do you have to go back?”

Weiss frowned for a moment, tilting her head and thinking about it, before smiling and shrugging casually. “I don’t have any meetings for another few days. I was going to take some time off after tonight, to catch up with people.”

“There’s a massive breakfast tomorrow with all the veterans, and everyone wants a drink or a lunch or something with me. So I guess I’m staying a few more days too.” Ruby smiled brightly when Weiss beamed down at her happily, and she raised an eyebrow and pointedly looked around the bedroom. “At least the hotel said the room is mine for as long as I want it.”

A dark blush immediately rushed over Weiss’s face and neck at Ruby's insinuation, and she turned away shyly, clearing her throat. It was like she suddenly remembered how they’d gotten into the bedroom in the first place, and she shuffled under the sheets as if to remind herself she was naked and sore.

But she didn’t refute the unspoken offer, despite her embarrassment, instead she smiled at Ruby again and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek. “I haven’t unpacked yet, so I suppose I can bring my bags here.”

Ruby nodded relaxedly and raised an arm, an invitation that Weiss happily accepted by laying back down and snuggling in close so she could rest her head on Ruby’s shoulder. She carefully avoided the arm brace as best she could as she snuggled into position, and as soon as she was comfortable she pressed another kiss to Ruby’s jaw.

They were content to quietly doze for a while, both of them lost in slow and harmless thought as they held each other, Weiss half-asleep and humming happily whenever Ruby pressed a kiss to her forehead.

It felt like the most natural thing in the world. They’d only ever shared a bed out of necessity or because of nightmares, but it had of course never been anything like this. Yet here they were, and it was as if they’d been doing it for ten years with how perfectly Ruby pulled Weiss in close, and how Weiss knew exactly where Ruby’s cheek would be for a kiss even with her eyes closed.

There was a flash of light outside of the window that had both of them opening a single eye, Weiss grumbling displeased at being disturbed, and Ruby reached over to pull the curtain aside so they could look out over the impressive view.

Despite the late hour, the entire city was still awake and swarming with activity, and it would likely last until past dawn. It had been ten years since the city had been lost, and so everyone intended on celebrating the reclamation of it with all of their fervour.

Even if it meant releasing illegal fireworks from the roof of an office block.

But Ruby simply laughed quietly as she watched the rockets whistle up into the air and explode, pulling Weiss in close and adjusting so Weiss could lay on her and still have a good view.

They watched quietly and sleepily as the rowdy trespassers set off rocket after rocket, decorating the sky, and as it illuminated the towering spires and flags of Beacon Academy in the distance it gave Ruby an idea.

“You know, Yang’s got a spar against a new team leader tomorrow. And there’s a girl on that team who idolises Blake, so there’s a chance she’ll participate too…” Ruby kept her voice light, but Weiss wasn’t fooled for a second, already raising an amused eyebrow at what Ruby was considering. “So, if you’re staying a bit longer, maybe we can both go too. One more fight as the four of us before we’re all done.”

Weiss frowned at Ruby’s wording, and with a gentle sigh she shook her head and pressed a soft kiss to Ruby’s lips before speaking, starting off with their foreheads pressed together before pulling back to look at her properly.

“We’ll never be done. That’s not how it works. It will always be the four of us. We will always be team RWBY.” Weiss said it so firmly that Ruby blinked, and she smiled at her team leader and partner with a fierce light in her eyes. “Even if Blake and Yang stay retired and get their life of peace, it will always be you and me. Three years, five years, eight, twenty, I’m always here, and I’ll always be yours. And let’s be honest, if there’s ever a fight, there will always be RWBY if people need us. It doesn’t just stop.”

The fireworks outside fizzled out, returning the room mostly to darkness but for the lights shining up from the streets below, but Weiss was still clear enough to stare at as Ruby shuffled up and rested her back against the headboard. Even despite the earnestness on Weiss’s face, Ruby couldn’t help but frown and look down sadly.

She wanted that to be true. Yang and Blake had both expressed a similar sentiment in the past, about how the moment they’re needed they wouldn’t hesitate.

But they were parents now. Blake was a Beacon professor, and Yang had every intention of finding a safer vocation to fill her days with, something to do with her hands to keep them busy and the work satisfying, once their daughter was old enough that Yang felt she could return to work. They had decided lives of being there for the next generations, now that their own had done their part and done their best.

Blake sharpened Gambol Shroud once a week, and Yang kept Ember Celica oiled and flawless, and clearly Weiss had been looking after Myrtenaster.

But all the same, Ruby had scars they didn’t, now. Had seen hells that they hadn’t been there for. Yet if Weiss was right in her rage earlier, justified and hurt, then all Ruby would have needed to do was ask.

Mulling over it and feeling a spark of hope blossom in her chest, Ruby smiled wetly as her heart pulsed, and she let Weiss delicately wipe her eyes as she choked out a laugh. “I hope so. I’d hate for the three of you to get lazy. Maybe you should come pick up the slack and help us finish up.”

Weiss laughed gently and rolled her eyes as she finished wiping away Ruby’s tears, and she pressed a soft kiss to Ruby’s cheek, then scoffed haughtily and dramatically flicked some of her hair over her shoulder.

“I’m sure I could still send you to the ground, Ruby Rose. Maybe we should give that a test tomorrow. We’ll apparently be in the arena already.”

The thought of fighting Weiss again had Ruby beam, and even if Weiss was joking she winked with a happy giggle. “You’re on. Second time getting you on your back in twenty-four hours? How can I say no.”

Weiss was mortified at the blush that rushed over her face from Ruby’s wink, but before Ruby could tease her about it she simply raised an eyebrow and bravely ran her eyes up and down every inch of Ruby’s revealed skin.

“And what makes you think it will only be the second? The night is still young.”

With Ruby appropriately silenced with her own stammer and blush, Weiss smiled victoriously as her eyes went to the window and out over the view. The entire city was lit up, and a part of why was to show how every single district had been reclaimed and rebuilt.

The whole city was theirs again, and with very few grimm left in this part of Vale it would certainly never again be lost. So the lights reached the sky, bathing the world’s largest city, and illuminating the spire of Beacon Tower in the distance.

Weiss stared across the city at the tower, her lips in a thin line, as her mind went to the memorial stone she’d spent hours at. She knew almost every name engraved onto the surface, just as she did with all the other memorials too.

But everything had started here.

And though the war had ended in the sands of Vacuo, the main monuments of the war had been carved and placed here in Vale. Including the main painting commemorating the efforts of their team, and everything they’d all done.

It was a massive piece, hanging in one of the main halls of the Academy. She wasn’t much of an art snob, but even she knew it was masterful. When it had been revealed, and she’d seen herself and Ruby painted next to each other, captured glorious and victorious, something had sparked in her chest, a light that she had promised to ignore. A light that had never extinguished.

So, staring across at the tower in the dark calm of the night, ten years after everything had gone wrong, Weiss tentatively reached down and took Ruby’s hand.

“...when you four are dispersed and settled, you should come to New Mantle. I want you to come to New Mantle. Even just for a few months.” Weiss spoke quietly, her eyes already closed and expecting rejection. But she had to ask, and it felt best to get it out of the way before she spent the next few days getting her hopes up only to be left alone for ten more years. “There are still grimm in the snow caves, if that’s enough incentive. I’ll even join you on hunts if you want, when I have time. Just…come to New Mantle. And stay with me. Even if just selfishly for me.”

Ruby looked over at her with wide eyes, but the rest of her expression was totally relaxed and calm, that gentle smile still on her lips that had been there since the fireworks had begun. She thought for a moment, and looked down with a quiet laugh, shy and lost.

Then, gently, she squeezed Weiss’s hand, and looked at her with a raised eyebrow and a soft smile.

“If it really is the last hunt, you could always come with us. After all, the faster it’s wrapped up, the faster we get to whatever life comes after. I’m sure the rest of RNJR wouldn’t complain.” Ruby raised her eyebrows pointedly and shuffled closer, raising the back of Weiss’s hand to her lips and pecking it. She rested her lips against it for a moment and sighed as she thought. Maybe it was time. “...reckon Yang and Blake would want to come and lend a hand too? Get it done quickly, and also take a holiday in New Mantle to show our goddaughter a new city at the same time?”

Weiss hummed happily and nodded, no doubt in her mind what her teammates’ answers would be if they asked. “Always one more RWBY mission, I suppose. But…what then?”

It had been a very, very long five years. An agonising eight. And an utterly confusing ten.

The first time Ruby had ever considered a flash of it had been when she’d been trying to think of someone to invite to the Vytal dance, and only one person had appealed to her mind. Weiss would have said yes, and it had taken too many years for Ruby to realise it and let it crack her chest.

She was a Huntress, and she always would be. There would always be work to do, always someone to keep safe, a next generation to guide, a new world to place the brickwork for. But there wouldn’t always be a war.

The sun was rising after the long, long dark. And Ruby knew it.

Maybe her work wasn’t done quite yet, but the world was big enough again for other risks to be taken other than just ones that could result in life or death. She snorted quietly at that, before quickly squeezing Weiss’s hand to calm the insecure and worried look that flashed over Weiss’s face when she thought that was the answer.

Instead Ruby pressed another kiss to the back of her hand, and looked over at her with a small grin. “Depends. You’re not gonna just fuck me for a few months and then go back to Neptune when he says he misses you, right?”

Weiss stared at her incredulously for a few moments, spluttering helplessly and her eyes widening in outrage at the very idea, before she simply mewled in frustration and pulled Ruby in for a deep kiss, wrapping her arms around her neck and sighing in joy when Ruby kissed her back.

Smiling, she whispered against Ruby’s lips.

“Swear jar. And you’re a dolt.”

Ruby laughed, the sound vibrating pleasantly on Weiss’s lips and in her chest as Ruby shuffled and wrapped an arm around her to pull her in closer, and she broke off the kiss just enough to give Weiss a playful smirk.

“We’re gonna have to keep one of those on the kitchen counter. I’ve been travelling with Nora for eight years.”

In response, Weiss simply raised an eyebrow and scrunched up the corner of her mouth teasingly. “Already adding things to my home, are we? Mighty presumptuous.”

Ruby pressed a light kiss to the scrunched corner of Weiss’s mouth, succeeding in getting a blush, and she sucked up every drop of courage she’d ever used in her entire life. She reached down into the depths of herself that she had used to save the world, holding it in her hands and trying to keep her voice calm and confident as she whispered.

“Yeah yeah, you love me.”

Weiss laughed, a lightness in it that turned to giddiness, shaking her body until she was cupping Ruby’s face in her hands and smiling through her giggles, matching Ruby’s beaming smile with one of her own, and she rolled her eyes as dramatically as she could manage through her mirth.

“Yes, yes I do. And you’re very lucky for that.”

“I know.” Her eyes bright and sincere, Ruby shuffled so she could pull Weiss in again and bundle her up, and she could feel Weiss’s smile against her neck even once she could no longer see it. She smiled gently and pressed a kiss to the top of Weiss’s head. “And I love you too.”

There was a long pause, and Ruby could feel Weiss’s breaths coming in deep and slow, meaning she was processing what she’d just heard and mulling over it in her mind, turning it around and studying it.

Another smile touched Weiss’s lips, and she nuzzled into Ruby’s neck further.

“I know. I always knew.”

Outside the window, another firework detonated, and bathed the spire of Beacon Tower in white and green, and Ruby and Weiss watched quietly as more began to fire off yet again. Ten years ago, Ruby might have been out there participating, and Weiss would have been scolding her.

Always participating. Always doing. Ten years of rushing around, doing everything the world needed, finding the joy and peace in every place they could.

But, staring out of the window and holding each other close, no longer anything left unsaid, they simply got to watch. And after everything they’d gone through and done, it was everything they had earned and deserved.

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