Reciprocity

by sigruned

Summary:

It was the first, but far from last time he'd trace the slump of her shoulders and think, 'This isn't fair.'

(Oz wasn't concerned then, but Oscar knows by way of emotional bleed he feels like he should have been.)

Ruby and Oscar, finding their accord.

Chapter 1: Stepping Stones

Notes:

♪ I Can't Save the World If I'm Not Happy (Reimagined) - Eliza Grace

At some point in time, Oscar thought he had a line in the sand. Some kind of hard stop, a failsafe, a parachute he could pull before this little adventure got out of hand.

He thought he knew it when he left home, when he stumbled haplessly through Mistral in search of a dingy-but-not-too-dingy dive bar, when he stepped up to the door of a stranger's summer home and saw his first real life Huntsmen. They're younger than he'd expected, and all the more intimidating for it.

He has to reassess when he sees silver eyes for the first time, pulled low with resignation at the sight of her uncle stumbling through the door to slosh lazily over the sofa. It was the first, but far from last time he'd trace the slump of her shoulders and think, 'This isn't fair.'

(Oz wasn't concerned then, but Oscar knows by way of emotional bleed he feels like he should have been.)

“Who... are you?" Ruby tiptoes over recognition to ask. It's a simple thing, but Oscar will never forget it.

 

---

 

They derail a train, and the tableau is thus:

Train cars upturned like used tin cans, discarded and half buried in snow. Cargo scattered about, the varied crates and luggage dotting the powdery landscape like gumdrops on a gingerbread house. Shorn trees, scratches, and the occasional scorch mark the only evidence of their battle in absence of slain Grimm. All of Oscar’s friends ready to feed him to the wolves, while Oz spins platitudes through his teeth.

Ruby, set apart at the center of it all, relic clutched to her chest and wilting before his eyes.

“So all those times you talked about having faith in humanity, that was just for everyone else?”

Her voice is thin as a mourner's veil. Oscar is surprised he even catches it given the absolute discord in his head at the moment.

Despite outward appearances Ozpin is in a panic, has been ever since he saw the lamp in Ruby's hands. Not since he realized it was missing, which is a distinction that sets off alarm bells. He’s reeling, trying to keep track of the conversation going on outside while also pushing at the frayed edges of Ozpin's partition in his mind.

They didn’t start that way. In the beginning, their dividing line was jarringly crisp and just as ironclad. A riddle part of Oscar had the sense, even that early, he should know the answer to but couldn't recall. Ozpin would drip feed him information through the partition as needed and obfuscated the rest. A practical measure to avoid overwhelming him, Oz said, and he’d had little frame of reference to call it a lie at the time.

But Oscar has been more than patient with secrets in his own head, he thinks. If Oz intends to keep them? Well, Oscar makes sure he’s fighting that war on two fronts.

A paper screen underwater only stays structurally sound for so long. Memory always seeps like ice melt around and under and through, despite what either of them want. It never mattered how dormant or assertive each of them was at any given time. It certainly didn’t hold against Oscar’s concerted efforts to break through. He’s only just made himself a crack in the door, but immediately he’s hit with a flood of scattered thoughts and loose recollection.

(They'd had a conversation about her once, back at the house in Mistral. More like Oscar took a scolding really as Oz laid out all the ways Oscar's infatuation with Ruby was likely ill advised. Nevermind his personal discomfort at the idea, given she was one of his students.

"It's important to recognize when you like how you feel around someone, more than you like that person for who they are," Oz told him sagely. Oscar was still fighting the impulse to answer everything verbally, and so with the others in earshot, he said nothing. They left it at that, the proverbial boulder in their zen garden.

Oscar was an astute boy, in Oz’s own words. He trusted that if Oscar didn’t understand now, he would in time.

The things Oz didn't say bothered him, though. It's not like incarnations hadn't had relationships. He'd seen enough memory at this point to know. No, from his new vantage point behind the curtain, Oscar could see the true problem was who had caught his attention.

In all his years and forms, none of Oz's partners after Salem had ever been within his inner circle. Never close enough to throw a wrench in his carefully crafted machinations. Likewise never so valuable a piece on the board he couldn't bear to put them in play.

And silver eyes were valuable. Silver eyes were a rare and precious asset they couldn't afford to leave unused.

'Spare yourself the heartbreak' had likely been Oz's deeper message, under other rationale he'd given about timing or professional propriety.

But this is why he and Oz did not, might not ever, see eye to eye on Ruby Rose. There is a real part of him willing to topple the entire house of cards for her, if he had to.)

He finds what he's looking for. It's only a name, but it's enough.

So when Ozpin takes a step, tries to approach Ruby? Oscar knows where his line is.

 

---

 

Ruby likes to think that she'd taken the idea well when Oscar and Oz had laid out their situation.

Back at the house in Mistral she'd started cataloging details just for this reason. It seemed like the least she could do for two people stuck in one body like the inverse of identical twins. Or something. It made sense to her, anyway, and just felt polite besides. Not that the others didn’t try, but there's always that moment when he enters a room or joins a conversation where the atmosphere pulls taught. Some instinctive response to the unfamiliar while they decide who they're looking at.

If you paid enough attention it wasn’t all that hard to tell, in her opinion. Oscar slouched where Oz stood straight. Oz’s presence in a room commanded it, and Oscar tended to hover at the fringes. One schooled his features still while the other's eyes wandered.

(There’s a time she catches him staring at her after training, everyone gathered out on the pavilion either to partake or escape their Brothers-forsaken guest house for a little while. Ruby doesn't notice Nora has approached until she's asking if it bothers her, voice low and laced thick with implications.

"Any of us will back you up if he's making you uncomfortable.”

No one had ever accused Nora of subtlety, but this time Ruby didn't quite follow her meaning, blinking back at her owlishly.

"I don't mind," she'd said, "It just makes it easier to tell them apart.”)

Ruby watches them now, so out of sync every muscle in Oscar's body strains to stand still, and her skin crawls.

She should be angrier, she thinks. Her old mentor has been using her new friend to lie to them all. Some part of her is, but it's flickering dim with the wind and mostly she just finds her own disappointment exhausting.

He collapses and she waits, watches. Looking for tells. They’re always easiest to catch when he looks her in the eyes. She doesn’t flinch when it’s someone else who meets her gaze.

Ozpin has nothing left but desperation, she thinks. But she saw how much effort it had taken for Oscar to keep control for so brief a time, fears what that might have cost him. Her next move is obvious.

Oscar had given her the keys to the kingdom, so to speak. She wasn’t about to waste them.

 

---

 

It’s only later that she finally deflates. When Qrow tells her not to lie to him, that they're better than that. Not because she doesn't believe what she's saying, but because she wants to guarantee it to him and can't.

(She does believe it, and despite the terror of what they'd just learned, she can't help but feel a little vindicated in that. The solution to the problem is right there, even if it comes hard packed and wrapped thrice over in duct tape. Unite humanity, save Oscar in the process. Done deal.)

The Long Memory sits between their hands, metal growing warm. She wants him to take it, hopes he does, even if he can't take her words to heart. ‘This is yours now,’ she thinks. He's trained with it, fought with it, has as much right to it as any of his past lives do. If he– Oscar, all on his own– weren't worthy of the weapon in their hands, he never would have made it to them in Mistral to begin with.

(But life isn’t a fairytale , some leaden part of her shoots back, He fell into this mess where you jumped. All you want is someone to take down with you, so you don't have to fail alone.)

Oscar says nothing. Ruby imagines him giving up here and her stomach twists.

But eventually he takes the cane, practically snatching it from her fingers. The phantom warmth of his gloved hand lingers momentarily, the cold stealing more of it away by the second. He’s all drooping lines and puppy dog eyes, but at least he’s still moving forward.

Ruby holds on to that, lets it feed what little of her own spark is left.

 

---

 

When Oscar left the house in the wake of JNR's understandable anger at what they'd all learned from Jinn, he was almost certain it would be to buy another train ticket right back the way they'd come. He'd go home, write Ozpin off as the bad dream he'd first thought he was, and apologize to his aunt until the end of time for leaving.

Oscar thought about the paltry explanation he'd left her in his letter before running away, too ashamed to even leave her with a convincing lie. His face flushes with fresh anger.

Oscar had a life of his own, people he knew and cared for outside the scope of Oz's timeless war. Who was he to rip him away from all of that then leave Oscar to deal with the brunt of his consequences? He could still feel the weight behind Jaune's shove, the sincere disgust and mistrust as he questioned who was looking out from Oscar's eyes. And why shouldn't he?

("The fact that you're preoccupied with the possibility speaks to our continued distinction more than anything." Ozpin had elaborated one of the many, many times Oscar had wondered that himself. The train ride to Mistral was as long as it was boring. Leaving him nowhere else to be but in his own head.

"That sounds just like what someone who wants to steal my body would say."

Ozpin just chuckled, relaxing into the partition of Oscar's mind he'd taken up residency in like an old cat to its favorite armchair. This did nothing to ease his nerves, but he knew no amount of obstinate suspicion changed facts. Oz had won this battle as soon as Oscar had boarded the train.

"Will I even notice?" He asked some time later, quiet, with so many miles behind them at this point, "Would I even know to be afraid anymore, when the time comes?"

Oscar could sense him hesitate, deliberating how best to respond. It was answer enough.)

With their old exchange in mind, he pressed against that part of his mind now.

Nothing. Oz had to be there still, but it was like someone had walled off an entire room in his head, the boundary obvious, but seamless. After their internal struggle in the snow and train wreckage, he supposed he wouldn't trust himself with a mere locked door, either.

Only his own intuition to rely on now. With not a one of his friends able to fully trust his thoughts and actions as his own. They'd only taken him in because he was host to Ozpin. Now that they didn't want him, what use was keeping around a half-trained farmhand?

One thought kept him from actually making it to the train station, instead wandering circles through the market square. Ruby's words in the wake of the truth trailed him as surely as the distrust, as if tethering him here.

“You’re your own person,” she had said, placing The Long Memory back in his hands like it belonged there. He'd resented it a little at the time, in the mix with so much other negativity. Who was she to decide that? How could she be so sure? Now, he was realizing how much he'd grown accustomed to the contrast between himself and Oz, used it to stay grounded in a way. Maybe now that it was gone, it meant she was right? He wouldn't be forced to shoulder the burden of so many past lives after all?

He was his own person for now, but who was Oscar Pine, truly? He wasn't Oz, but he didn't feel quite like the same boy who had left his little farm in the middle of nowhere anymore, either. That realization was the end of his tether, sweeping out any remaining intentions towards a train ticket out of this mess and dragging him to a halt in the street.

Oscar’s eyes skim across the shops that line the square for lack of focus, but catch on one. A Huntsmen’s outfitter, standing prophetically among the bars and boutiques.

All he did know, as surely as he could feel the flagstones through his worn work boots, is that he didn't want to be someone who abandoned his friends when they needed all the help they could get. Especially not a friend who believed in him more than he did himself.

 

---

 

Oscar isn’t too proud to admit he doesn’t know what love is.

He’s been told stories of his parents and how they’d loved him, their smiling faces a calming constant on the fireplace mantle while growing up. He had his Aunt, the only true mother he'd ever known, and the bruise on his heart left by how he'd run away probably wouldn't be so sore now if he hadn't known her love beforehand. The same kind of love that causes Qrow to grab Ruby by the arm as she marches out to meet Cordovin head on, gives it weight when he lets her go.

Oz put in just enough of an appearance to guide him through a crash landing. He supposes that was out of a kind of love, too. The cynic in him wants to say it was out of self preservation, but unfortunately he knows better than anyone that was not the truth. Information comes to him like canary song through curtains, muffled and unbidden. Ozpin is a lot of things, but he has always, always cared deeply for the kids under his tutelage.

(A shame he also sent them to war.)

Oscar doesn't know what true love is, at least, but thinks of meeting Ruby back in Mistral, her nervous laugh and disarming smile. Over time she had learned the difference between him and Oz with all the patience and precision of a lace weaver. His chest had felt all full and helium-light once he’d realized it, that one small gesture worming into his brain and carving out a permanent place for her there. Come what may she'd earned it, because she's the most selfless person he's ever met. Because she tells him he's braver than he thinks. He's not sure if she's right, but she means it, and the least he can do is meet her halfway.

Still, he's young, but not that naive. Porcelain-fine features and some encouraging words do not true love make.

He watches her stand her ground. So small next to Cordovin's oversized toy, but stalwart as iron, steady as steel.

He can't know if they'd have what keeps Ren and Nora together through thick and thin, drives the undercurrent of tension between Blake and Yang. Something as profound as Ozma and Salem, that when it broke it took the world with it.

So he's adrift somewhere in between like and love, too young to really know what love is yet, sure. But Ruby dives headlong into the mouth of a cannon, all ferocity and rose petals. He thinks he might be learning from the shock of fear that sets his spine on edge.

He also has the realization, stuck reaching out to her from behind the treeline, that Ruby does not need him.

It doesn't hurt, just hangs clear and extant in the space between his outstretched hand and where she'd stood. He’s still certain he’s where he needs to be for his own good, the good of his friends, the world even. But this is what she did when faced with a problem. She’d abandon safety, stand alone if she had to. Face it head on and fight to solve it even if it kills her.

It didn't matter how truly she believed Oscar was his own person when neither of them could know how much sand he had left in his hourglass. What kind of cruelty would it be to ask for reciprocity?

 

---

 

"You're going to wear a hole through the floor if you don't stop." Weiss' voice cuts through Ruby’s own footsteps, a metronome on the metal floor of the airship.

When the others had told them Oscar had opted to stay behind, it had started as a little itch. Just a barely perceptible buildup of static electricity beneath her skin as Jaune speculated he'd gone to try and reason with Ironwood alone. 

That shouldn't have worried her as much as it did. General Ironwood had insisted on spending as much time with Oscar as possible. He'd been part of Ozpin's inner circle. There wasn't any reason to think he wouldn't be safe with the General, even if he didn’t get a warm welcome thanks to the arrest warrant now out on all their heads.

She hadn't thought he'd abandon Mantle either, though.

That undercurrent of static only grew into a live wire the further they went in pursuit of his scroll signal. It hadn't even been that long of a trip, just following the blip down, down, down towards the crater.

"I'm sorry, Weiss," but Ruby continued, picking up pace in fact, "I just can't believe this went so wrong so fast! If Oscar went to see Ironwood in Atlas, then why are we going so far down? What if he's not even here and we just find his scroll? Then what? He’s trained so hard since we first met him, but it was on us to protect him until he caught up, and now look at what’s happened–"

"Ruby,” her name sounds like a command coming from Weiss, now on her feet herself and in between Ruby and another lap around the confining ship’s cabin. The sudden obstruction makes Ruby jump as if she’s been struck, but it does successfully stop her in her tracks.

Despite the ice in her voice, Weiss’ expression is all concern. Never a good combo.

"You know you can tell me anything, right? Even if it seems silly to talk about right now?"

"Of course I do, what does that have to do with–"

"You didn't have to be the one to track down Oscar."

Weiss eases her into a seat while resting one hand on her shoulder, the most amiable of shackles. Ruby buzzes with the need to be in motion and only manages to make it to the edge of the hard, dry-cracked pleather seat.

"You didn't either."

"I'm here because we're partners and if there's trouble you'll have backup. You practically shoved Jaune to the ground, you were in such a hurry to volunteer."

“Jaune will be fine, he didn’t actually fall over,” she thinks, anyway. Ruby hadn’t exactly spared a glance behind her to be sure, “Are you trying to tell me I should apologize? Because we can worry about that after we find the end of Oscar’s scroll trace. I think Jaune will understand if we find him hurt, or what if his scroll got stolen? We’ll have to interview the village, work backward from clues to figure out where he really is, or…”

Weiss is still looking at her with that inscrutable heiress stare, the one that leaves her feeling dumb every time she’s hit with it. Still, Weiss doesn’t seem totally unsympathetic, but Ruby has no idea what response she’s fishing for this time.

"I can tell you're worried about him, but let’s take this one step at a time, okay?"

Ruby sighs, slow and heavy, "I know. It's just..."

(It's just running full tilt through the service halls at Amity Arena only to hit her knees with bone-bruising force. Penny's aperture eyes and arterial wires rendered on the arena screens in blood-curdling detail. An arrow striking home in Pyrrha's chest, barbed end erupting through the flesh of her back, igniting from the inside out and consuming until there's nothing left.

It's simply inadequacy. Smoky, viscous, and equally bitter. Ruby sways with the ship's cabin and tries not to think about who will pay the price for it this time.)

"...I don't know what it is.”

Ruby isn’t sure what she gets from that, but Weiss, to her credit, softens.

"No one blames you, you know. I don't, and I doubt Oscar would either."

"Thanks Weiss. I hope you're right."

Weiss rolls her eyes, "I know I am. Have you seen how he looks at you?"

“What do you mean?"

"What do I mean? What do you mean?” Weiss chokes out over a few false starts, “You've definitely caught him staring more than once at this point. Do I have to spell it out?"

She doesn't have a response for that because anything she can think of to say automatically feels like a lie. Weiss' absurd offense does start to tease apart the sticky knot she'd tied herself up in, though. A sheepish smile stretches her face, feels almost genuine.

The ship lurches through the lull in conversation. Maria informs them they're in the vicinity of the signal and Ruby is right back on her feet again, this time straight towards the ship bay doors.

Below, among the ragged crater colony locals, is a brush of green.

It isn't until they get him onboard that the lightning coiled in her limbs finally calms to a pleasant hum. Relief soothes her fried nerves like a balm and Ruby doesn’t care enough to question why, just lends a commiserative ear as Oscar recounts his harrowing meeting with the General.

And if her brief conversation with Weiss went unfinished? Well, Ruby didn’t see why she should be first to pick it back up.

Notes:

I had some thoughts, which became vignettes, which snowballed into whatever this is. Hopefully you enjoy coming with me while I stitch this together.

Chapter 2: Wayward

Notes:

♪ 1121 - Halsey

'So this is when the other shoe drops’ Oscar thinks as soon as the first bit of whipped up sand meets his eyes.

They'd been counting on support from Shade academy, Grimm all but inevitable with this many frightened people forced from their homes and on to the opposite end of the world in mere minutes. The sandstorm, and subsequent intermittent communication, was about as much of a worst case scenario as they could have gotten.

It’s just the four of them against an oncoming horde. Oscar takes up a stance, and there is no room to consider anything but which Grimm to fight and what civilians he can keep out of the fray. There’s a seemingly endless amount of each.

Winter Schnee, not Penny, emerges through the portal radiant and airborne. Savior and harbinger both. 

(Like an understudy pulled into the spotlight at the eleventh hour. There’s a story there, and suddenly Oscar is dreading the moment she’s got time to tell it.)

She couldn’t be everywhere at once, but hopefully the strength of the maiden powers would get their collective heads above water.

It didn't stop him from grabbing her by the arm as soon as she was in reach and nothing was actively trying to kill him. Oscar has never known Weiss’ sister to be anything but composed, militantly put together even when executing a coup against her superior officer. But when their eyes meet he sees uncharacteristically raw emotion, half a second's worth of shock-rage-denial-grief passing between them in a look.

He feels a muscle tense in his jaw as meaning washes over him. It’s the last possibility he wants to consider, but the absence of the portal's glow is a beacon.

Winter shakes off his grip, and he doesn't try to hold her there.

 

---

 

Passing of time became measured in interruptions. Emergency meetings with Headmaster Theodore, crises in the refugee camp, and eventually delegations to organize from the other two kingdoms. There was just so much to do when you dropped thousands of refugees on a city's doorstep all at once. Nevermind ones with such a fraught political history as they had with Vacuo.

There are nights he stays up to some ungodly hour because he knows it's the only time he'II find for himself. He settles in on the suggestion of a balcony he's claimed in the upper tiers of the academy, pulls out his scroll and props it up by his feet. Hits rewind.

“Uhm. Hi. My name is Ruby Rose. I’m a Huntress, and if we’ve done everything right? Then I’m talking to all of Remnant right now…”

Sometimes he can’t look away, a sharp kind of loneliness swelling in his chest until there’s no space left to breathe. Other times he steals glances like a timid thief, ashamed of the doubt that’s reflected by his little ritual. Either way, the wound stays raw. He's never sure if hope or despondency salts it more.

In the end it doesn’t matter. He wasn’t there. Ruby fell. Oscar revolves around that fact on a broken axis and tries his hardest not to imagine the what ifs.

Tonight he keeps his eyes on her, only half listening. He knows most of her speech by heart at this point.

"Guess you were right," Oscar mumbles out into the dark, practically a whisper. He isn’t worried about being heard. "I shouldn't have gotten so attached."

"Oscar, I..."

Remorse floods him from the corner of his mind where he imagines Oz to be. He's getting worse at keeping Oscar out of his head. Either that or he can't anymore, not as easily as he used to.

(Which isn’t a good sign for Oscar's own integrity of identity either. He should be more concerned by that, probably, but the realization hits him with all the raging energy of a still pond.)

Part of him sincerely wishes he could muster more sympathy, but there are just so many choices he knows Oz has made, so many he’s witnessed Oz make across incarnations. Remorse was rarely enough to stop him.

"I'm sorry," Oz finishes anyway, "It never gets any easier, no matter how many lifetimes you have."

"I know," he says, and means it.

Oscar speaks with many people in the course of a day, hears their wants and listens to their needs. The stories have many twists and variations, but the beginning is always the same: they’d come at the call of a Huntress, and when they arrived they found a martyr. All he can do is wear red on his shoulders and hope he lives up to the role she’d left behind.

(He doesn’t think he does, but of course he can’t. She was one of a kind.)

Ruby's voice fills the air, compressed through the scroll's dreadfully inadequate speaker. They both listen, silent as saints deserve, and when the recording is through he picks up the scroll. Hits rewind.

 

---

 

Glynda Goodwitch arrives with the Vale contingent and wastes no time in finding him. 

Oscar himself only spoke to her briefly, his aunt’s lessons in manners quickly making an appearance in the face of her tacit professionality. She thanked him for his courtesy, returning it in kind, but makes it clear who she really intends to speak with.

That conversation drags on well into the night as Oz brings Glynda up to speed. Might even be the longest he's spent in the backseat of his own body since the Argus Limited. Surely she’d had most of this information relayed to her by other means by now, but Professor Goodwich gives him her attention as if she were hearing it all for the first time. An express interest not just in the facts, but Ozpin’s perspective of them belied by her severe demeanor.

They wound their way through contingency plans, the long tale that had eventually brought them to Vacuo, and what might be done about reclaiming Beacon. They even spoke about him, for a little while. Longer than he would have thought given how curtly she’d introduced herself.

(“And what about the boy, Oscar? Do you think he’s ready?”

Oscar, from where he sat in his own mental waiting room, perked up as she finally made another mention of him. Her question is pointed, but the wording is too vague. What did she mean, ‘ready?’ The truth of Salem was out in the open now, and he was more familiar with Oz’s internalities than anyone else at this point.

“It never completes quite the same way twice, Glynda.”

“Is that what you told him, too?” she says, lip curling a bit over the words.

Oz, for all his usual poise, lets the accusation simmer out into the silence. A bad habit whenever he knows words can’t cover the cost of what he’s taken.)

She'd left the room stone-faced but watery-eyed, once everything was said and done. Oscar doesn't think they were supposed to notice. Oz must understand the gravity of the display better than Oscar, though. An overwhelming wave of guilt pushes him to the fore.

 

---

 

Headmaster Theodore and General Ironwood couldn't be more different, Oscar decides. Where Ironwood seemed hard pressed to separate him from Oz, Theodore took to his switching identities more seamlessly than anyone else since Ruby had all those months ago in Mistral.

Theo is more inclined to throw him in the general student pool at Shade than train him personally, as Ironwood had insisted on. Oscar is surprised to find he's got some excitement for his first real taste of combat school, but Oz's and his own obligations keep pulling him in multiple directions at once. His schedule and the general state of upheaval make him too erratic to commit to a team assignment, so the experience isn't quite as authentic as he'd hoped. In any case Shade bore little resemblance to Beacon if team CFVY, with whom he's newly acquainted, is right in their retelling.

Velvet invites him to one of their 'Beacon Brigade' meetings. While he thanks her for the inclusion, his first thought is that he shouldn’t go. He’d never set foot in Vale, let alone Beacon, and something about attending group therapy named for its fall feels invasive.

He's the odd one out here, always has been. Even Emerald, who helped instigate the event, at least had first hand memories of the chaos which ripped the campus apart.

(What he does have: Pyrrha's quiet "yes" from within the pod, her screams cut off by shattering glass. A vague and vain hope that she and Jaune could find their way to safety. Fire fire fire all encompassing despite his best defense.)

Oscar ends up going anyway, if only to better understand.

The group has grown considerably since it started, Velvet tells him, with the addition of Atlas Academy evacuees. They've got a little under two dozen in attendance today but she opens the meeting undaunted. Oscar fleetingly imagines she'd make a good instructor one day, if she wanted, but the thought is gone just as quick.

Stories start to spin around the circle. There's more discussion about the fall of Atlas than anything, with Beacon not so fresh a tragedy anymore. But their root causes are the same, as everyone now knows thanks to Ruby. He hears mention of her once or twice as the discussion goes on, and he hates that she'll never know how many lives she's touched, the flagging souls she galvanized, with that one act of bare honesty.

Eventually Velvet calls on him, and he's caught off guard.

"I- I wasn't there. Not for Beacon, and I was one of the first through to Vacuo when the portals opened, so..." he swallows thickly, feeling oddly alone, "I'm just happy to listen, really."

“Fair enough,” Velvet nods, tipping her head as if to let him in on a little secret, "But absence can leave its own mark, don’t you think? Even if you weren't there, it can still affect you through your connections to others."

Most people present at the meeting were not privy to his "passenger," but Oscar picked up her implication clearly enough. She's infectiously earnest. He can see why Coco considered her the heart of their team.

"I guess I do remember feeling… helpless. Not because I needed saving, but because others needed it and I couldn't reach them."

He expects his imagined recollection of the bridge battle with Cinder, cobbled together from the statements of the survivors, but instead what surfaces is a memory.

(He's walking through a nondescript hallway with... a plate of cookies, of all things?

The click- clack of his polished shoes followed by the tip of his cane on the floor beat out a steadying rhythm. There was no need to hurry, not yet at least. And with any luck, his little peace offering would smooth over any hurt feelings for the delay as he gathered his wits.

Pastry may not so easily sway his Assistant Headmaster, however, but that was a rift to mend another time. While an enthusiastic Huntress-in-training may chafe against Glynda’s more buttoned up nature, he trusted she was more than a capable chaperone. The report he'd gotten matched what he'd heard of the girl through Qrow, at least. And after tonight’s altercation, he could put off this conversation no longer.

Deja vu was an old, reliable friend to him at this point. Yet even he is a little unprepared for the weight of it when he sees Ruby Rose for the first time. Briefly, they're chatting in his office and not the local Security Corps station, a cloak of white over her shoulders instead of red.

"Do you know who I am?”

"You're Professor Ozpin. You're the Headmaster at Beacon."

“And you want to attend my school?”

“More than anything.”

Silently, he prays forgiveness from Summer's memory for what he’s about to do. He knows all too well this is not what she would have wanted for her daughter.

If only honoring the dead could stop current events escalating beyond his control. He hoped his suspicions were unfounded, but if the incident tonight was any indication, it was best for all involved if Miss Rose was somewhere they could better guide her hand.)

"Oscar?"

He doesn't know how long he'd trailed off, but even registering Velvet's voice, he can't dislodge the jagged knot of emotions stuck in his throat. Grief tangles with blame and Oscar suffocates at the center, unable to pull them apart.

All the while Oz is stagnant, the niche he occupies in Oscar's head quiet as the grave and horrifyingly still.

The wellspring of emotion brings Oscar to his feet. He barely registers the plethora of concerned looks around him, but finally settles on Velvet again.

He thinks she's asking if he's okay? But it sounds like she's underwater and all he knows for sure is that he can't deal with this here.

"I- I'm sorry. I should go," Oscar chokes out, and leaves without waiting for a response.

No one who was there the night of the dust shop robbery knew it, but that moment had been an inflection point. Oscar curses his hindsight. He needs to move, to find somewhere he can be alone and scrape through his memory. To try and remember which of them held responsibility for everything that came after.

 

---

 

His sixteenth birthday comes and goes. Oscar is only aware of what day it is because Nora and Ren throw him a surprise party, Emerald in tow looking for all the world like she'd rather be anywhere else. To this day he still has no idea how they learned the date.

He smiles at the small, lopsided cake he's presented with, thanks all his friends for coming, and sucks in air through his teeth whenever no one is looking. The crowd is small but the party is still too much, too much, and he hates that he feels the six absences more keenly than anything else.

 

---

 

It was odd to look back sometimes at how indignant he'd felt at the start of this journey, at the first signs of another presence in his mind. Especially now, sitting on the back burner in his own head once again while Ozpin hashes out details about city resource allocation.

Anything actually of interest to Oscar had come and gone a while ago, all that was left to talk about were the logistics surrounding all the goals they’d manage to agree on earlier. Not that Oscar didn't like to be involved in those discussions too, but only one of them had any experience with civic services.

If he could have been tapping his foot, he would have been. As it was, Oz's professional posture and calm were starting to feel like a prison.

Oscar kept control most of the time, or tried to anyway. As plenty of Ozpin's old contemporaries liked to remind him, they weren't merged yet. He supposed he should be thankful they were making the distinction at all. Not everyone gave him the consideration.

As irritating as the dismissal could be, it wasn't primarily what put Oscar on edge whenever he wasn't at the helm. It was the question of if he'd even get control back at all.

The first few times he'd been forced back were obvious and deliberate on Oz's part: fighting Hazel at Haven for him, the entire conflict over the Relic of Knowledge. The most recent hadn't been under such duress. He'd taken over briefly to chime in on a meeting as mundane as this one, with full intention to step back when they were done… Except he couldn't.

That had been one of the most distressing episodes. The whiplash of drowning in his own head, then abruptly breaking the surface over an hour later sent him into an outright panic attack. He still owed Emerald for easing him down from that one.

(She’d brought him to his room, he realized only after he’d gotten a grasp on his breathing. Emerald had him in a loose hug, one hand resting feather-light atop his head and the other simply keeping him upright where they sat.

Once he was steady, she released him as if she’d been holding a slug the entire time, eyes wary.

“I don’t know what is going on with you, but tell anyone about this and you’re dead.”

Emerald had a habit of walking back her displays of affection, but after working with her for so long he’d come to realize it was from a place of uncertainty rather than distaste. It had started to become kind of endearing, really.

He manages a smile for her, albeit a weak one, wishing he knew what was going on with him, too.

“Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”)

Neither he nor Oz could explain it. And it wasn't the only oddity either.

Oz had, in exchange for all the face-time that the political contingents demanded, started taking what Oscar thought of as 'naps.’ It was about as dead to the world as he could get without totally disappearing like he had in the past, but it did significantly ease the feeling of someone hovering just over his shoulder that had become a constant in his life.

Oscar enjoyed the quiet. He'd have the floor all to himself, so to speak. Then he’d head to a meeting, or maybe join a conversation he’d expect the old wizard to take an interest in. And nothing. Still and silent, just as he had been at the Beacon Brigade meeting.

Maybe this is the reality of the merge, he thinks. Not Oscar being overwritten by Oz, but just a slow, torturous march towards indistinction.

What's worse is Oz couldn't recall any of it.

"Something on your mind?" echoes through his head. They're walking, having left the meeting without Oscar ever noticing.

“Do you really have to ask?" comes out more sarcastic than he'd intended, maybe, but the question couldn't have been more obviously a distraction.

Oscar gets the mental equivalent of a hum in response. "I'd say you're under no obligation to share, but..." they both know that would be a lie.

He really hates how many of their conversations start like this. Oscar sighs, feeling more than hearing it.

"You really don't remember what I’m talking about?"

"I'm afraid not," he says, disquiet, voice wavering gently in a way Oscar figures only he could catch.

"But you still haven't told me if it's normal? If any of this can be considered normal."

"Each reincarnation process has its quirks," He's slipped into his 'Professor' voice, which is interesting in and of itself. Oscar used to think he sounded like this all the time. "As unique as the individuals into which I reincarnate. I'm not immune to influences from your psyche as well, Oscar, and you've had considerably less time to acclimate to the circumstances than others. Perhaps we're simply seeing the manifestations of that now?"

(There was more that he didn't say, didn't have to say, couldn't hide. The curtain between them only grew more drafty and moth-eaten and it surprised him how many worries they shared. Or thought they shared, at least, because chief among them was which thoughts they could comfortably call their own anymore.

If they traveled back in time and met Ozma– the true, original Ozma untouched by time and tragedy– would he recognise himself in who they had become?)

"That sounds as likely as anything else," Oscar bites off with a healthy dose of resignation.

For a moment, Oscar is reminded of that first conversation with Professor Goodwitch. The disdain she’d expressed when discussing the merge was mild by most standards, but by hers? It had been palpable. Was this what she’d meant when she’d asked if he was ready?

The thought floats through their shared consciousness, but Oz blessedly doesn’t comment on it.

This line of inquiry isn't going anywhere and doesn't change anything, Oscar thinks. He's not even sure why he brought it up.

They've got nothing but the sound of footsteps between them, and Oscar debates whether or not he can get away with hiding for a little while on his hidden balcony before someone else needs Oz for something.

"If you don't mind me asking," and Oscar pulls his full attention back, because he's not used to hearing that much trepidation from Oz, "I thought you would have been more pleased by the idea of my disappearance?"

'Because in Atlas you wished I'd stayed gone,' hangs off the end of that question precariously.

"It's not like I hate you," Oscar mutters. He never did, really, but he finds he just can't summon the same animosity that had driven him to say that all those months ago. These days he feels like he's at the bottom of a well most of the time, in control or not. "Besides, you said yourself it doesn't stop or slow down the merge at all."

"That I did."

How would he feel if Oz disappeared again? After the train crash he'd been running from the consequences of lying to them all, a group of people who had given up so much all on faith that Oz had a plan. What they were experiencing now was different. It wasn't purposeful, Oz was at the mercy of the divine magic forcing them together as much as Oscar was.

All this time he’d feared being consumed, irrevocably molded into his image with no control over which cracks and crevices transferred onto his life. Not once since he'd heard the wizard in his head for the first time had Oscar considered he might consume more of Oz than the other way around. The idea drifts through his mind like seaweed, so acrid and briny he can almost taste it.

Oscar slows to a stop in the middle of the hallway and– wait.

"When did you give me control?"

"...I don't believe I did."

Groaning, Oscar lets his face fall into his hands. One more weird merge magic thing to add to the list.

So he hears more than sees it as Nora comes barrelling around the corner, dragging a frazzled Emerald behind her. That isn't that unusual, but this time Ren is hot on their heels. Ren doesn't rush anywhere unless it's important. They each skid to a stop just short of colliding with him head on.

"Woah, guys! What's going on?" There had been a lot of fights breaking out lately where the refugee camp met the city limits. It must have been a bad one if they were all rushing out for a call.

"Nora, you nearly pulled my arm out of the socket, will you let go already–"

"Oscar!" Nora shouts over Emerald complaining, but does let go of her arm to instead come down full force on his shoulders, "Have you looked at your scroll?"

She's shaking him every which way and he can't help but warble a bit. "No, I've been in a meeting all morning. What happened?"

"Either the worst practical joke ever, or a miracle," Ren says, measured, but the look on his face tells him Ren’s holding out for the latter.

Oscar feels like a soda can ready to burst by the time Nora releases him. "Check it! You'II want to see this for yourself."

Notes:

This kinda just became the Merge Thoughts™ chapter but it's important for later I promise

Chapter 3: Second Nature

Notes:

♪ Sacrifices - The Natural Synthetic

They manage to borrow a couple of ATVs through a haggling process that Oscar barely follows. Security wasn't light these days where they could afford the manpower, but whatever odd jobs Ren and Nora had been picking up lately must have endeared them to the city guard. Not that they wouldn't have to explain the impromptu requisition to Rumpole in person later. It's a fleeting thought in the face of what they were heading towards.

Five Aura signatures. Ragged, stable and barely in range.

The trip passes by slow and dreamlike. He rides with Emerald driving silently, half paying attention to Nora’s nervous chatter which he can’t make out over the sound of the engines anyway. More than that, he spends the ride simply managing his expectations. Easier said than done when he can feel Oz’s own hopes bubbling over and contaminating his thoughts.

Oscar hears them before he sees them. Thinks his mind may be playing tricks, an indulgence of wishful thinking. But the ATV carries them over one last dune, lurching under it’s own momentum, and there they are.

The world seems to go silent as he takes in the five familiar faces, planted in this random patch of desert like flowers in a secret oasis. Oscar nearly asks if it’s a mirage, but Nora is already up and away with Ren right behind her. They gather all the ghosts up into a noisy, bone-crushing hug.

He cautiously levers himself off of the ATV, watching the spectacle, but doesn’t take a step further. Nora has moved on to squishing Jaune's face in her hands until he looks like a fish and plucks at the new white streaks in his hair. Oscar is sure this is hilarious. Probably. Assuming it's real.

Meanwhile, he sees Weiss catch sight of him first, as Ren releases her from a much more reasonable hug. She throws a questioning look just past him— at him, maybe? He can’t be sure. Something lags behind in his head, a loose wire on an open circuit.

Even Oz feels muffled to him, his intent to speak momentarily consuming his thoughts. Maybe it’s waiting for whatever he has to say that keeps him from noticing the obvious shove.

Oscar pitches forward, barely catching himself in time to avoid landing face first in the sand. Someone laughs. Time is forced to run back at it’s regular pace. He finally registers the sun bearing down on his scalp, sand that's incomprehensibly worked its way into his boots already, and Emerald smirking at him unabashedly.

"What was that for?" he asks, painfully aware of how petulant he sounds.

"They're your friends, dummy. Go say hi."

One day maybe she'll realize they could be her friends, too. But he's hardly behaving any better, hanging back and watching like some kind of stranger.

(He should say something, he thinks. What’s the right thing to say when your dead best friends turn up alive and well out in the desert? Something poignant, surely. Heartfelt, delivered with a sincere smile. He might remember how to form the expression still.

Ozpin had been the wordsmith, not Oscar. Yet all that experience is water through a sieve right when he needs it.)

There’s a beat while he gathers himself. All he can croak out is, “Hope we didn’t keep you waiting.”

Ruby laughs, again. It had been her laughing when Emerald pushed him, he realizes. The smile on her face is so wide it practically threatens to escape.

Oscar stills and breathes deep. He thinks the image of her, alive, eyes glazed with tears but brilliant under the sun, might be permanently etching itself on his brain.

Clearly unaware of his internal slowdown, Ruby takes matters into her own hands and lunges. He barely gets his footing in time to keep them upright, made more difficult by the air she’s squeezing out of his lungs. None of that matters though, because as soon as she’s within reach he finds he’s clutching her back with equal fervor.

Now he has to admit this isn't a dream because something in him shifts. As if gravity were righting itself.

Ruby laughs in his ear while he presses his face into her sun-warmed cloak. Oscar can't remember the last time he felt more himself than right now.

 

---

 

At first, Ruby doesn’t notice Oscar at all, so swept up as she is in one of Nora’s legendary bear-hugs.

She spots him before he spots her, if only because he’s too busy pinwheeling to keep himself out of the sand. It’s hard to contain her snicker. Especially since Emerald seems totally immune to his complaints.

When he finally looks at her, though, she feels a shift. A chill running through her thoroughly, despite the heat radiating off the sands.

(The inherent rumble of something click-snap-slicing in her head like Crescent Rose unfolding. For the briefest of moments his eyes look dun, but she blinks away unshed tears and it's gone.)

Oscar hasn’t taken his eyes off of her but hasn’t moved, either. She takes him in, new combat gear, maybe a little taller than she remembers. The way he stands apart from the group like a lost satellite, carefully assessing them in kind. That part is easily fixed, she thinks, as she grins and gets ready to test his balance for the second time.

Once she’s got her arms around him she barely remembers the chill at all. Ruby can’t help but laugh, just a little too loud, too forced to her own ears.

 

---

 

Ruby quickly realizes just about everyone heeded her call to come to Vacuo, bringing with them more work and more ways than she thought possible to retell the same story.

Each time it gets tailored a bit for whomever wants to hear it: a bit of whimsy for Blake's parents, timeworn reminiscence from Jaune to JNPR, unfiltered and disjointed for the rest of their friends.

(A hushed, private vivisection of herself to her family. Ruby has left too much compressed for too long to describe that conversation as anything else.)

Storytime and defensive planning aside, coming home to Remnant felt akin to slipping on some well-worn gloves. Like the almost-week it had been for her was the reality and not the year it really had been. She was glad for familiarity it brought to her life when, not all that long ago, so much seemed to be crumbling in her over-optimistic hands. Uncle Qrow stayed on the wagon for once, the Happy Huntresses were doing what they did best, and Team CVFY had been working hard for their new home academy while Team RWBY was MIA. She’d go as far as to say it felt like the Beacon days, sometimes.

Just a lot sandier and sweatier. If Vacuo was ever anything, it would always be that.

Team RWBY takes on missions, helps in the refugee camp, sometimes together and sometimes apart, always voraciously picking up slack wherever they can. Making up for lost time, as she thinks of it.

Luckily today was ‘together’ and them some. All their friends, Team CFVY, Team SSSN, the Schnees and Uncle Qrow. Numerous others she doesn't know. Enough generosity to leave her heart feeling sticky-soft like new skin, old wounds healing but yet to harden.

(Not where, but when they were needed most.)

The supply shipment just in from Vale was considerable, a towering stack of boxes Ruby hesitated to sneeze next to for fear of toppling the pile. She never was the most graceful and that's just fine, thank you very much, but she does prefer not getting crushed under a crate of sundries if she can help it.

Between Yang, Nora, and Yatsuhashi, the heavy lifting seems handled anyway.

Weiss and Blake have quickly become pretty integral liaisons for the Atlas and new White Fang factions. Between those two knowing where everything should go and all their friends showing up to lend a hand, all Ruby has to do is let herself be directed. Put this box here, sort that stuff out there. "Careful Ruby, it’s fragile," and so on.

The crate stack gets a little less precarious, and Ruby spends a little more time people-watching as she goes.

Yang and Nora have taken a break from moving crates and are on the verge of an arm wrestling match again, for instance. Blake is enlisted to herd Sun into doing some real work, though by the jovial smile on her face it seems like catching up might be higher priority at the moment. Ren speaks with Emerald, voices too low for Ruby to hear, while they wrap up finished bundles. Members of Team CFVY mill in between it all, encouragements at the ready as they top up everyone’s supplies. A picturesque little ecosystem contained within a warehouse.

The company reminds her a bit of the Vytal festival. The fun parts with colorful tents and food stalls where you could catch your breath between a match. Not— well. The rest that came after. So that's why Oscar stands out, looking like a shadow slipped in among string lights.

The comparison only comes to her once she's made it halfway to him, as if his comparative malaise had drawn her in passively. Noticing doesn't change her trajectory, though.

She's watching him closely as she approaches. It could simply be Ozpin in one of his contemplative moods for all she knows. She finds herself searching for an inquisitive gaze and his usual reserved posture anyway. In fairness, it had been getting less so as he'd trained, built his experience. But he hadn't defaulted to the same prim mannerisms of Ozpin yet, either. She'd been collecting each new trait he developed with his growing confidence like a magpie, meticulous and proud.

But when she arrives he’s stilled in his work, leaving her precious little to go on.

"Oh, hey Ruby," he smiles softly at her, eyes crinkling just so. She lets go of a breath and returns with a smile of her own.

"How's it going Oscar?"

His gaze drifts away from her and into the sea of supplies again, their friends antics and soft chatter rolling over them like a blanket, "It's… good? Better than that even. Not sure I've ever seen a group so excited to be opening boxes.”

He says it with a light chuckle, but it’s betrayed by the distance he’s put between himself and the others. Spending his time on the sidelines again like out in the desert.

“So why are you just watching from over here?”

There’s a pause, and it’s obvious he didn’t think she’d ask. Like he doesn’t know her at all.

“I hadn’t noticed I was, honestly.”

“Well, in that case,” Ruby starts definitively, picking up one of the many unopened boxes that surrounded them and getting to work wrestling the tape off, “Consider yourself accompanied.”

“Wait— Ruby we have box cutters, you don’t have to rip it like that!”

So what if she played up her fumbling to get a reaction out of him? She takes the proffered implement with a quiet thanks and gets back to work for real, nudging him to do the same.

“I bet you’ve already done this like a million times, I barely know where anything is supposed to go.”

“It’s not that hard to figure out. And many hands make quick work, as they say.”

They’re quiet for a little while, focused on the packaging before them, but Ruby doesn’t forget what brought her over here in the first place.

“So, you never answered my question.”

“Right,” he trails, “You’re not the first one to point it out.”

The longer she’s here the more hesitancy seems to wrap itself around his words. She has the urge to pick at it until the edges are smooth, until he’s relaxed with her like she remembers. But that’s kind of a silly thought, isn’t it? Picking hesitation out of his voice like the tape off the boxes in her hands.

“It’s okay if you really want to be left alone. I mean I’ve been gone for what, a whole year? Everyone’s been so welcoming it’s easy to forget how much has actually changed.”

“It’s not that,” he says stumblingly, “You’re plenty welcome.”

“But…?”

“You don’t need to feel responsible for me,” he says like he’s dropping a weight, “I don’t want to keep you from your team, your old friends…”

“Oscar, you’re also my friend.”

And what happened to him these past months, that something so obvious would cause his face to lock up like it does? She can practically see as her statement gums up the gears in his head.

(She should give him all the time he needs to work it out. Impatient anxiety roils within her instead, like little electric hummingbirds living where her lungs should be. This is not a reaction she ever imagined she’d get to that. Not from him.)

“I sound ridiculous, don’t I?” he sighs.

Ruby scoffs, not unkindly, “Yeah, but it’s alright. What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t remind you every now and then?”

He doesn’t reply, but internally she cheers as she sees a smile stretch back across his face. Progress.

“And hey,” she starts in a rush, trying her best to keep hold of his brightening mood, “If you want even more reminding how about we set up a sparring match sometime? Just like the Mistral days.”

“Sure, so long as you don’t hit me square in the face again?”

“No promises!” Ruby laughs, “Even better, we should try weapons sparring. After a whole year of practice, I bet you could totally hold your own against Crescent Rose.”

They lapse into silence and keep sorting dry goods from perishables. Assemble little bundles of soaps, toothbrushes, and all the other personal care items someone would need to stay feeling a little human in the face of mass displacement. Get into a hushed competition stacking canned goods, going higher whenever it seems like the other isn’t looking. It certainly is not Ruby’s tower that falls first, knocking them both over and ruining all the sorting they’d done. Despite the setback, they’re laughing so hard they have to lean on each other to stay upright.

As the two of them regather their supplies, Oscar says, “You know this is the closest I’ve ever been to Beacon?”

“I don’t know if that’s saying much when we’re on the other end of the continent—“

“No, I mean this,” he says, gesturing out to all their friends among the supply crates, “The people, the joking around. Even though Salem is hanging over all our heads, it seems like everyone is picking up where they left off. Like nothing changed.”

The sun is beginning to bend low and there’s more kits built than boxes remaining, other volunteers carting them away as quickly as they’re made. The job won’t last much longer. Ruby slows in her own work, watching how the setting sunlight draws harsh shadows across his face.

“It has changed,” she insists, turning her attention to him fully, “You’ve helped change it, Oscar, and that’s a good thing. I would love to have met you earlier, but do you know we’ve been friends now for longer than I ever spent at Beacon?”

She watches him process her words, those electric hummingbirds in her chest winding themselves up tighter.

“…I hadn’t realized,” is all he says. What really soothes her is the release of tension in his shoulders, the unfurrowing of his brow. He’s watching her earnestly in a way she hasn’t seen since before the crisis in Atlas, “Only so many excuses for feeling out of place, I guess.”

She hopes ridding him of one is for the better. Wants to find all the others and pull them up by the root, let something kinder grow in their place. She wants it so bad her breath catches.

Just because that’s what friends do. Obviously.

 

---

 

Ruby decides very quickly a career in politics isn’t for her.

She usually had to be at these meetings just for the photo-op. A chance for some paper pusher to say they’d met her, then take the advice she provided ‘under consideration.’ Said diplomatically and not at all condescending, of course. What kind of Huntress spends her time penned in by appointments and timetables, anyway? The only one who had it worse was Oscar, in her opinion, because most of the time they weren't even his appointments.

She doesn’t know how he’s survived it this long, catching Oscar’s eyes across the table. He looks about as enthusiastic as Zwei right before a bath with the overhead lights drawing dark circles under his eyes. It was, at least, one of the few opportunities she had to spend time with him since volunteering to unpack the supply drop. Even if it was all suffering in silence.

And that’s the thing. Other parts of coming home had felt natural. It hadn’t been quite the same with him. First the desert, then the supply drop, each time they were around each other she found him skirting the entire endeavor like some kind of ghost, never quite there until someone gave him permission to join in. She’d gotten some easy smiles out of him surely enough, but each one is a puzzle. A land mine she has to dig up and disarm before claiming her prize.

Her thoughts slip to a stop. Since when had his smiles become prizes?

(Since she watched his blood drain slow like honey across the floor. Since she’d pulled back the mask on the Hound and realized there were fates worse than death waiting for her. Before even then, wind whistling through the trees and train wreckage, if she’s being honest with herself. Which she’s not.)

Anyway.

The whole song and dance is a hair’s breadth from becoming habit, and that more than anything sticks like candy in her teeth. After enduring their third or fourth civic-military-consultation-whatever, she can’t take it anymore.

Ruby hangs back just outside the meeting room as Oz speaks to someone one on one. Briefly, or so he’d intended. Everyone else has long filtered out of the conference room and down the halls by the time he exits. She’s leaning against the wall deliberately casual, meeting his eyes for a blink.

He blinks back owlishly, “Uh… Ruby?”

She’s sure it’s Oscar and relaxes, “Ugh, I thought that would never end! Do these people not get tired of hearing themselves talk?”

“If we could fight off Salem with bureaucratic double-speak then we’d have already won.”

“No kidding,” It certainly seemed endless enough to drown out an immortal witch, if they only knew how to weaponize it, “Was that your last one for the day?”

Oscar grimaces, “It better have been, I don’t know how much more I can take.”

“So in that case,” Ruby starts, a little sing-song, “You trust me, right?”

“Of course, but why—“

She shushes him, casting her eyes down the hallway one more time to make sure they’re alone. Instead of answering, she grabs his wrist and runs the opposite direction. Away from the conference rooms, away from the school corridors. Away from anyone else, hopefully, because Ruby has a mystery to solve and doesn’t need the interruption.

They come to a stop on one of Shade’s verandas, nestled somewhere in the middle tiers of the building. If Atlas academy had been a compound, then Shade academy was palatial. In a literal sense, she supposed, as the building was probably repurposed from the monarchy days. Idly she wonders if the affairs conducted by the royal councils of the day were any more interesting than what she and Oscar just sat through. Probably not, but it’s fun to imagine.

“Ruby, what is going on?”

She rounds on him, a bit theatrically, “We need to talk.”

“And we had to run halfway across Shade for it?”

Maybe she does feel a little bad, watching him catch his breath and feeling suddenly grateful he hadn’t broken her grip while she was dragging him at a dead sprint. Now that they’re alone, Ruby is pretty sure the dark circles under his eyes weren’t just a trick of the light.

All the more reason to press her issue while she could, “I can’t believe you just let them brush you off back there!”

“I didn’t just let them—“

“You did, Oscar. Even though pushing for more Huntsmen in the rotation was obviously the only sensible solution to the patrol problem.”

Oz wasn’t in control for all of the meeting, not even most of it. By her understanding, Oz took over on a more or less strictly necessary basis. It was a training thing, Oscar told her once, trying to prepare him for the realities of leadership later down the line.

The delegates always looked at him with that probing expression people got when they couldn’t decide if it was him or Ozpin speaking. Apparently coming down on Oscar’s side was enough to discount his idea entirely. Or at least argue about it for the better part of an hour. His defense for the proposition went conspicuously absent.

“Is it that surprising? If Oz could be there without me I wouldn’t have been invited at all.”

“But you were there and you’ve already got more field experience than any first year academy student ever gets. They should be giving you more credit.”

The excuses were always so reasonable. He wasn’t licensed, hadn’t completed even a year of combat school. But he’d made it this far without those things, hadn’t he? Ruby couldn’t understand why that didn’t count for something.

“It’s all Oz to them, Ruby,” he bites out again, “And can you really blame anyone? You know his memories are the only reason I picked up my skills as quickly as I did.”

“That is not the only reason. So you got a head start from Oz, you also trained hard for weeks while he was missing in action.”

“But Oz going missing didn’t change anything. I’m still on track to merge with him, just like before.”

He looks away, and Ruby feels a little spike of fear. This is teetering dangerously close to a real argument, if she trusts the bitterness seeping from his words.

But this is what she’d been looking for, wasn’t it? The thorn in his paw the same as it ever was. The one she desperately wanted to pluck free, clean the wound, wrap it up to heal, and let him go after. Easier said than done when the thorn was a whole briar, twined around his literal soul vise-tight.

She remembers her certainty after Jinn revealed the truth, how easily he could be saved if they just kept on their current path. Kept moving forward.

(Revelation had rendered the wilderness around Argus a liminal space, left them to look at the world through new, fractured eyes. Maybe this is the truth she’d missed in his hesitation to take back his cane: ‘forward’ isn’t necessarily a straight line.)

Ruby opens her mouth to apologize, smooth it out, start over, but doesn’t get the chance. Someone rounds the corner and, catching sight of the two of them, begins to jog over. It’s no one they know, just a page by the looks of it. He’s wheezing by the time he gets to them and already pulling Oscar’s attention away. Ruby crosses her arms. She’s out of time.

“Ah, I’ve been looking all over for you Mr… Ozpin?”

“Oscar,” She answers for him, terse.

Oscar eyes her warily before looking back to the page, “Right, that’s me. Someone is asking for Oz, though?”

“Y-yes?” the page says, confusion plain on his face, but he doesn’t comment, “Delegate Moreau needed some additional clarification on the contract structure you began discussing earlier. I was sent to escort you.”

Oscar sighs, slumping with the weight of it, “Can we talk about this later, Ruby?”

“Of course, whenever you want.”

“As soon as I can, promise.”

Oscar looks like he might be about to say something else, but doesn’t, his expression somewhere partway to a frown.

Here they are again, making plans they can’t commit to.

They still hadn’t gotten around to their sparring match, either, and not for lack of trying. Keeping the peace was thankless work in a lot of ways, and most of the time? Ruby didn’t need it. There is real value in helping others for the sake of it. She’s always believed in that. She knows Oscar believes in it too, or he never would have taken The Long Memory from her what feels like a lifetime ago.

For now, Oscar is Oz’s host. If ferrying around an immortal wizard in his head is how he can help, then that’s how he’ll help.

(But her resentment does flare, just a little bit. A rage in miniature compared to the seething tide which ultimately brought her to despair and The Tree. It's far from the first time she's seen him forced into a compromise and thought 'this isn't fair.')

Oz is probably already in control, she thinks as she watches them walk away. Ruby stays silent, her apology dying unformed in her throat.

 

---

 

The transmission from Amity Arena lured an unprecedented number of Huntsmen to Vacuo, the altruistic and opportunistic both. So much upheaval in so small an area meant guaranteed mission contracts, and Team RWBY wasn’t exempt.

This one started out as a good old fashioned search and destroy. The wastes outside the city were deadlier than ever thanks to the attracted Grimm. Their part was easy: go in and thin them out. It's mindless, numbing work, but Ruby revels in it after the boring complexity of organizing a war effort. She figures they're about three quarters of the way through the sector and down the same amount of Aura when the distress signal comes in. Responding was never in question, just how long they could last.

Weiss and Blake hadn’t needed to be told when they saw an opening to escort the largest group of people to safety, leaving her and Yang to contend with the remaining Grimm. Ruby would never complain, but her muscles burned with every Grimm cut down, fatigue settling into her bones.

(Stacked odds and running on fumes. Anyone else might start to worry right about now, but Ruby heaves her weapon again, admires the arc of the swing, the flash of the blade. She could swear her blood sings with the exertion.

A different part of her, quiet and languorous, wishes there was anywhere else she'd rather be.)

"Ruby, we've got stragglers!" Yang shouts between shots, only sparing a moment to gesture further down the canyon.

This canyon was a popular trade route owing to the shade provided by the high walls and, in normal times, relatively clear route through the wastes just by following the main path. A few mounted turrets to discourage any airborne Grimm, and you were fine. But times were far from normal. Winding crags and enclosed offshoots could easily become a death trap if enough Grimm followed in on foot. That's likely what happened to this water supply caravan, Ruby surmises, their cargo now spilled and soaking into the dry creek bed.

She looks to where Yang had pointed. Expects to see Grimm— and she does, three Jackalopes closing in around an overturned truck— but what spurs her forward are the two remaining civilians, trapped by their own choice of hiding spot.

"Hey Yang,” Ruby starts, her next move already forming in her head, “Do you think I could win a race against those three?"

"What?"

"I'll lead them further down the canyon. Once we're gone, get those people out of here!"

"Ruby, wait, we can do it together—"

But Ruby is already off, zipping towards the three Jackalopes with her Semblance. She rematerializes right in the biggest one’s face, popping the Grimm on the nose with a concussive shot. Using the momentum, she propels herself further down the canyon and away from the civilians.

The one she hit whines out in response, all three turning to face her in an eerie pantomime.

"That's right you giant ugly furballs, come and get me!"

Yang shouts again, something Ruby can’t quite hear over the sounds of her sister’s ongoing melee. She has their attention now, though, the Jackalopes already priming their powerful legs to give chase. Ruby grins and runs with another flash of petals, happy to lead the dance.

They run, Ruby leading them on a merry chase but she realizes all too quickly that her plans began and ended here. When she can spare a glance behind her, she spends it examining the biggest of the three Grimm. It's stature, the more intricate antlers, and the way it commanded the smaller two even made her wonder if it wasn't a new variant of savanna Grimm she wasn't familiar with.

Better to pick off the smaller two first, she decides.

Ruby sets her pace carefully, letting the overgrown rabbits stay just on her heels, but away from her back. One well placed strike from those antlers could shatter what little Aura reserves she has left.

Using her Semblance to provide a boost, Ruby hops up to plant her feet against the canyon wall and spins off to face her pursuers. In just as fluid a motion she folds Crescent Rose into rifle mode. When the petals clear, she’s already aiming down sights and pulling the trigger.

The shot rings out like a thunderclap against the stone. Her target stumbles to the ground, a gaping wound leaking black ash where one of its knees should be.

One down already, or as good as. She only has half a second to celebrate, letting out a whoop as she watches it disappear behind a bend.

Ruby leads her remaining two pursuers further down the canyon pass until reaching a fork. Maneuverability would be better down the right hand path, but from the debriefings she and her team have on the area, she knows that way will only lead back out into the desert and closer to villages the water caravan had probably been trying to reach. She veers hard left with little deliberation.

While Ruby wouldn’t call herself claustrophobic, the sandstone walls seem to close in on her. Swinging a scythe that’s longer than she is tall gets a little difficult without room to move. The width of the path isn’t totally inoperable, but she’ll have to be precise.

Behind her, the enraged Grimm are still keeping up, forced single file due to the narrowing of the passage. She can work with that.

The smaller of the two Jackalopes is in the lead. Ruby jukes to the side and lets it start to pass her by. Then, she twists Crescent Rose just so until the blade covers the width of the passage. The Jackalope hardly has time to stop before guillotining itself. She doesn’t cut all the way through, but it’s close enough.

Two down.

She isn’t so lucky with the largest, however. As the smaller plumes smoke from it’s neck and dissolves, the larger learns from it’s friend’s mistake. Leaping higher than Ruby would have thought possible for something it’s size, the big one easily clears her hasty trap and turns to stare her down from the other side of the canyon.

With their positions now reversed, Ruby is left with a choice. She could run back the way she came and keep the Grimm on her heels, but that risks either the Grimm deciding the nearby villages make easier prey, or just returning it to the original scene of it’s crime. Unhelpful either way.

Or, she could end this here. The Jackalope is sat low to the ground now, giant rear legs coiled tight and ready to spring loose at any second. Returning it’s stare, Ruby suddenly feels a bit like a character in one of those old fashioned films her dad watches sometimes: first to draw wins.

As if hearing her thought, the Jackalope barrels forward like one of her rifle rounds, attempting to run her through on it’s nightmarish antlers. Instinct has her firing Crescent Rose for some upward momentum. Only once she’s in the air does she think to take advantage of the game of leapfrog and land on it’s back.

She intends to try and drive it headfirst into the canyon wall, daze it long enough to finish it off, but the Jackalope doesn’t move without a fight. While she’s able to twist it around and away from the main path, it’s not long before the thrashing starts in earnest. It throws itself to and fro, bashing itself and by extension Ruby against the canyon walls. She can’t afford the focus to try and drive it any specific direction, instead contorting herself to avoid getting crushed between the Grimm and the sandstone. While she’s still on her unwilling steed, it’s only barely.

Knowing her hold won’t last, she brings her scythe forward with a growl. A last ditch effort to catch it around the neck.

In it’s rage, the Jackalope ducks just in time. Ruby pulls the trigger and recoil sends her flying, the scythe blade cutting through one of its dagger-like antlers instead. In the same moment, excessive strain makes itself apparent in her sore hands. She loses her grip on the Jackalope and Crescent Rose both.

Midair, Ruby only just tucks into a roll before she hits hard packed dirt. The impact threatens to shake her ribs apart, or at least feels like it could.

The Jackalope shakes one more time and trains its eyes on her. She swears if the thing could talk, right about now is when it would say this just got personal.

It leaps forward to swipe at her again, and Ruby is already cursing her luck as she leaps out of the way and straight into a dead end. She’s between a rock and a hard place literally, the canyon wall now pressing into her back.

The Jackalope can clearly see her mistake, too. Instead of moving in again for a quick swipe or bite, it backs up and moves into a familiar low stance, head bowed, remaining antler pointing straight at her. Time seems to slow as Ruby processes what’s about to happen.

Her odds aren’t great. Her scroll’s low Aura warning sounds like a high whine at this point, close as she is to breaking it. The sandstone walls scrape against her on all sides, and her lungs feel like they’re about to pop after so much running and fighting without reprieve. Even worse, she sees Crescent Rose lying in the dirt just past the Jackalope, well out of her reach.

But the Jackalope’s severed antler is a mere few feet away.

The plan comes together in the scant few seconds she has to make it. Beacon initiation was so long ago as to feel like a fever dream, but it’s that experience she leans into now. Yang will probably kill her for this, if it works. But it worked for JNPR against the Deathstalker. She and Penny pulled it off with even bigger Grimm than that in Atlas.

The Jackalope springs forward. There’s no time or space to dodge, so Ruby doesn’t try. Instead she shoots straight into the Jackalope’s path, buying precious seconds with her Semblance, to grab the severed antler. Raises it up, sharp end forward, and braces for impact. Hopes her positioning is accurate as she lets the Jackalope’s momentum do most of the work for her.

For half a second her vision goes white, skull slamming back against the canyon wall.

Blinking spots out of her eyes, she finds herself eye to eye with the Jackalope. And it truly was just a singular eye. The pointed end of her improvised weapon currently occupied the Jackalope’s other eye socket, exiting through the back of it’s skull. A stark white monument to her victory.

She holds her breath as she waits, watching it twitch once, twice. Then still. All the air comes out of her lungs in a rush once it starts to dissolve. The weird black ash picked up and carried away on a silent breeze. Internally, she can’t help but thank the Brothers, the Blacksmith, the Tree, whoever else might be watching, that her gambit paid off.

Ruby lifts herself out of the dirt and presses a hand to her side, wincing at the pressure and fingers coming away wet. The red coating her fingertips blurs like watercolor. Or maybe that’s just her vision.

(Adrenaline does funny things to perception of pain. In that moment, Ruby would swear that she felt fine. That her Aura hadn’t been broken as soundly as two of her ribs. That the Grimm’s jagged antler didn’t split her skin, leaving a sickening bloodstain for her sister to find her in after.

She’s aware of it all happening, sure. But that awareness feels immaterial. Practically secondhand.)

She doesn’t make it any further before her body betrays her, limbs going to jelly and exhaustion claiming her senses at last.

Notes:

Alright look even I feel cheap ending it there but if I didn't the chapter word count was going to get unwieldy.

Thanks so much for everyone's patience and comments! I have been reading them all and I really appreciate that anyone took the time to leave one.

Chapter 4: Desperate Truths

Notes:

♪ Bury Me - Friday Pilots Club

The beginning, a blur. A sweet waltz echoing through your head sets tempo for the sway which rocks you to sleep. The steps you take one after the other. Keeping your dance in time with the music takes care. You can feel the tiles slick with something under your feet, but you’re unsure what.

A ballroom, lit by candlelight. Marble tiles, carved wood paneling, gilded sconces. Every detail of the room displays a level of wealth only gathered across generations. Other couples circle around you in a routine of polished shoes and swirling skirts, honed by a lifetime at court. They might as well be faceless dolls, so intent you are on your partner. A pale hand snakes from the sleeve of her gown, mourning black as the rest of her wardrobe, to rest daintily in yours.

“Do you miss it?” Salem asks, each whispered word sharpening your senses. You pull her closer for the sake of it, try not to cling as if she’s your raft in a storm.

“Miss what?”

“Who you were.”

There is a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth, well contained, but you’ve been together too long now for decorum to fool you.

“I am myself,” you say, yet the words taste like cotton as they cross your tongue.

Salem must find them distasteful as well, her brow furrowing. She raises her gaze to the vaulted ceiling and you follow on instinct. Yet the spectacular mural you know is painted there never comes into focus.

As you try to find the details in the image, her grip on your hand tightens.

“You can tell me, love. Whatever eats away at you, we can figure it out. Together.”

She looks back to you, so sad your chest aches. The desire to comfort her is overwhelming, but all you do is set your jaw and smile.

“There is a long road ahead of us, isn’t there?”

“A worthless journey, if we do not choose it for ourselves.”

The conviction in her voice rattles, coming down like lightning.

(“Where you seek comfort, you will only find pain,” thunders behind. She cannot be trusted, you know this. But the heart yearns, threatening to escape the prison of your ribs and find home in her embrace once more.)

“What if I choose wrong?” you whisper, startling yourself with the vulnerability.

“By whose measure?” She cradles your cheek. The touch is featherlight, but feels strong enough to shatter. “Have we truly become so different you’d damn the world just to escape me?”

“You don’t know what you ask—“

“I do. You would as well, if only you were not so ill-suited to honesty.”

A violin note goes sour. The song’s key shifts, but neither of you lose the waltz. As comfortable moving together through discord as you ever were in harmony. Salem consumes your vision now, garnet eyes seemingly aglow of their own accord.

Beautiful, as many dangerous creatures are.

“What do you want, Ozma?”

It’s blood, you realize. The floor is painted red with it and you know more will spill before you can give Salem her answer.

 

---

 

And Oscar wakes.

Rather, Oz wakes and pulls Oscar alert with him, sucking in air like a man drowning. In a show of kindness, Oscar does his best to extend his own calm over him. It’s far from the first time one of them has flooded their shared subconscious with nightmares, though usually their positions are reversed.

Oscar is no stranger to Oz’s memories infiltrating his sleep, and it’s in that knowledge he knows the conversation wasn’t real. If the bloody floor wasn’t enough of a clue, the entire ballroom had never existed in the castle he and Salem shared together. That was a relic from the Valean court, half formed as it was.

Just a dream. As if that did anything to make it less distressing.

They sit like that for a while, the only sound their slowly evening breath in the light of the rising sun.

“Better?” Oscar asks.

“Yes, thank you,” Oz says out loud, only underscoring how the dream-exchange had shaken him.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I’m quite alright,” Oz says, liar that he is, “but thank you for asking. You have enough on your mind without an old man’s frivolous regrets to weigh them down further.”

(It’s a bad habit they’ve fallen into over these past months. Going back and forth, conversing so considerately about one another’s feelings as if they weren’t steeped in each other’s emotions constantly. Oscar appreciates Oz’s willingness to draw a line, but inevitability keeps forcing them to move it.)

“Speaking of which,” Oz begins, having gathered himself enough to return to an internal exchange, “You never did visit the infirmary yesterday.”

Oscar realizes his mistake far too late. This sham conversation goes both ways, after all.

“I— well. I had classes.”

“You don’t have any today, however.”

A few seconds pass, but he can’t hide the stab of tension that arises from the insinuation.

It’s not like he didn’t want to go. He did, quite a bit actually, but couldn’t be sure it was for the best. Oscar had come to terms with his fate a long time ago now, but had Ruby? The way she sought him out since they’d returned from the desert throws him off balance, puts uncomfortable pressure on his convictions. Unearths feelings better left smothered, like some kind of treasure hunter looking for time capsules.

Seeing her bruised and battered when Yang brought her back in from the field was bad enough. He simply didn’t know if he had it in him to seek her out in kind.

The whole issue stayed conveniently out of mind, so long as she was still unconscious.

“This avoidance is unbecoming of you, Oscar,” Oz scolds. He feels his mouth tug into a frown not his own, “Miss Rose would be happy to see you. Of that, I have no doubt.”

“She isn’t even awake yet.”

“As far as we’re aware. And there’s no way to find out if we don’t check on her recovery, is there?”

Oscar can’t help but feel a twinge of suspicion. Wondering at his nerves was one thing, but this insistence felt like a hazardous reversal.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were encouraging me,” Oscar says thinly.

“Why would I not encourage you to see your friends, Oscar?”

“Because they’re going to be your students more than my friends.”

That telltale silence again. It would probably have looked considerate to anyone else, but Oscar doesn’t get that luxury. He feels Oz go through the mental equivalent of shuffling index cards for a few drawn out seconds.

“Be that as it may,” Oz finally starts, “Perhaps I was too hasty in the past, placing your friendships secondary to your training.”

Oscar wants to sigh, throw his head in his hands, do something to express the disappointment that overcomes him. But they aren’t really his hands at the moment, “Can you just… not finish that thought? Please?”

“I’m sorry,” Oz says, shedding their pretense, “but on our current course, we can’t rule out the possibility of fulfilling the terms of the curse—“

“No. That’s just the same cruel trick you pulled on Glinda,” Oscar bites back, “And I won’t let you string them along the same way.”

He’d meant the words to be sharp, but he’s surprised how easily they find their mark. A stab of fresh regret through the heart, Oscar pinned right in the middle.

Oz breathes deeply, steadying them both.

“I suppose there’s nothing else I can do but apologize.”

“Maybe,” Oscar replies, softer, “But I’m not the one you need to apologize to this time.”

And in the aftershock of the regret, Oscar feels just a little bit of pride. Not to do with Oz’s own actions, but for him. It catches him off guard, so much so that he loses track of time. Longer than he’s comfortable with, in fact, finding that Oz has gotten them out of bed, cleaned up and dressed for the day by the time he returns. He’s midway through leaving the room, pausing as he feels Oscar come back to awareness.

“I tried to hand back the reins, as it were,” Oz says, “but the curse had its own whims.”

“So where are you going?” Oscar asks, still slightly dazed.

“The better question would be, ‘where am I taking you?’” and Oscar immediately dislikes the mischievous lilt in his voice.

“Oz, please, I’ll go see her when she’s awake. Don’t just show up like this—“

“I will leave Miss Rose to her rest until we're able to exchange places, rest assured. However I see no sense in delaying. Consider this time saved.”

Oscar would actually consider it meddling, but what else did Oz do best, after all?

His nerves flare, recalling those lonely evenings spent listening to what he’d thought was her final words to the world, the self indulgence it reflected.

“It was not self indulgent, Oscar. There’s no need to hold yourself to my standard,” Oz says, almost sad, “Not yet, at least.”

 

---

 

Yang’s fiery voice filters through the room, muffled by something. Probably just the door, but Ruby doesn’t see what with her eyes closed. The way her head is pounding she’s in no hurry to open them, embracing the black behind her eyelids a little while longer as she comes to consciousness.

“No need to shout, Miss Xiao-Long. As I understand it, her recovery is practically guaranteed—“

“Look, all I’m saying is the last thing she needs is any more of your ‘advice.’ Just stay quiet until Oscar swaps in and—“

Something interrupts them, probably a passerby. The next bits of the conversation are too quiet for her to catch.

“Wow, they can really yell, huh?” Jaune says right next to her, cutting through the remaining fog of sleep.

More comes to her attention then: a stiff blanket folded over her legs, the vague smell of antiseptic. Tingling Aura working its way through her whole body, concentrated on her left side.

“You’ve got that right,” Ruby mumbles, cracking her dry eyes just a hair. Jaune’s hands stutter where they hover over her broken ribs.

“You’re awake!”

“Barely.”

He turns his attention to the door as if he should open it, but doesn’t move, stuck at her side while his Semblance does its work.

“You’ve been out since yesterday,” he says instead, “We were all worried.”

“Oh,” Ruby croaks, “Thanks for patching me up, then.”

She blinks some of the sleep-crust from her eyes and tries to push upright. A bad idea, she immediately discovers as her bones cry out in protest.

“Don’t try to move,” Jaune says as she eases herself back down, “You’re probably gonna be sore for a while still.”

The door opens before she can reply, a dour looking Yang followed by who she assumes is Ozpin, if she’s reading the set of his shoulders right. Whatever Yang had been about to say to him never makes it out, Ruby watching as her sister’s attention pivots entirely to her.

“Ruby—“

“Looks like I won the race, huh?” she grins, breaking the stunned silence.

Yang is at Ruby’s side in a flash, tears gathering in her thick lashes.

“That’s the second time you left me alone to worry, you jerk.”

“I… I’m sorry,” Ruby says, feeling a step behind, “I was so focused on getting everyone out, I just took the first option I saw.”

(It’s not a lie, not really. Not when her instincts had been screaming at her to run, to fight, to save them, Ruby, you know you can. Despite the apology, despite the tears, despite the surely heated conversation they’d have later, she doesn’t regret what she did.

She should, maybe, but she doesn’t.)

After a negligible moment to rake an arm over her face, Yang plasters on a smile.

“Anyway, now that you’re awake, what can we do for you? Doc says you’re on bed rest for the next few days.”

“Food!” Ruby says, pushing as much cheer into her voice as possible, “I feel like I haven’t eaten in a week.”

It’s unmistakable the second Jaune disengages his Aura. The amplification recedes to leave her sore, as promised, and even a little cold.

“Lunch sounds like a great idea!” he says, “We can bring something back and keep you company.”

“I’d love that.”

Yang eyes her hesitantly, “You sure you’ll be okay by yourself, Ruby?”

“I don’t mind staying behind with her,” Oz cuts in.

“I didn’t ask you—“

“Give him a break, Yang. What do you think he’s going to do, talk me to death?”

Yang looks like she’s worried he’ll do exactly that, but sighs and uncrosses her arms anyway.

“No need to worry, Miss Xiao Long, I’ll be on my best behavior.”

“You’d better,” Yang says sourly, the door all but slamming shut behind her.

With the others gone, Oz moves to take the now vacant stool by her bedside.

“It is truly good to see you awake and amongst the living again, Miss Rose. You gave us quite the scare.”

She nods, eager to change the subject, “What about the traders?”

“Most likely bankrupt after losing their cargo, but alive and well. All thanks to your timely intervention.”

Ruby settles back against the pillow, soaks in the ache of her half-healed ribs with a satisfied breath.

“Worth it, then.”

Oz scrutinizes her for a moment, just a touch longer than would be considered comfortable. Some vague, unreadable pity evident in his eyes.

(Oscar’s eyes, her brain supplies. Maybe that’s the reason she feels frustration rise within her so rapidly, so indignantly.

She knows better than to blame him for Oz’s failings, though, and redirects.)

“Professor, not that I mind talking with you, but where’s Oscar?”

“That is what I wanted to discuss while I had the opportunity to do so uninterrupted.”

“What do you mean?”

“Miss Rose, there are aspects of Oscar and I’s condition that have become… unpredictable. I had every intention of allowing Oscar control once I’d ensured he’d finally be paying you a visit, however I haven’t heard from him since arriving.”

“So, he’s—“

Fear creeps up her neck like frost, bitingly sharp, seizing her as suddenly as a bear trap. You’re too late too late too late, ringing in her head like a siren, derailing all other thought.

“Nothing so dire,” Oz says quickly, “I have been on the opposite end of this phenomenon myself and resurfacing can be disorienting. Before we continue I felt it only fair to give you a warning, should he reemerge while we speak.”

Ruby forces herself to release the breath she’d been holding. Manages a small ‘oh’ in response.

“His temporary absence,” he says, “does allow me to broach a rather sensitive topic, however. You’ve noticed Oscar’s self imposed isolation, or have I judged wrongly?”

She dislikes the implication that this is a secret, something he’d only tell her without anyone else or their opinions around to interrupt. But she understands him well enough: this is not something he can say with Oscar present, and he doesn’t know how long he has.

“If that’s what you want to call it. I’m not sure what’s going on with him lately.”

Oz nods, confirming what she’d suspected.

“His outlook began to shift after you were lost in the evacuation. Loss is inevitable, and I hoped I had more time to prepare him for it. Nothing about this incarnation has been typical, however. I should have known better than to put it off.”

Ruby bristles, hearing Oscar reduced to an incarnation. Meanwhile, Oz fidgets under her gaze in an uncharacteristically ‘Oscar’ way, and she has to grit her teeth.

“In short,” he continues, “I believe it’s given him some undue impressions about his place in all of this.”

“Like what?”

He pauses, eyes askance as if he’d find the words he needs within the weave of her blanket.

“There is a fine line between acceptance and resignation, Miss Rose. Under our unique circumstances, being on the wrong side of that line seems to produce tangible consequences.”

“It gets ‘unpredictable?’”

“Precisely.”

So Oscar’s mindset was affecting the merge in ways even Oz couldn’t understand. Of course she’d do anything for her friend if he was hurting. How helpful that it would also stabilize the curse, if she did. Once, she’d been so certain if she could just keep going, then everything would work itself out. Unite Remnant, save Oscar in the process. They were closer to that goal than ever, yet now she has to wonder if it’s done much to help Oscar at all.

Ruby’s skin prickles at the thought.

Oz must read her trepidation as reticence, because he continues with a tremor, “To be clear, I am not asking for any clandestine action, merely an understanding of my concerns.”

“Then why not tell the others? Or talk to him yourself?”

“I have tried the direct approach, but I fear I haven’t yet rebuilt the necessary goodwill to be heeded. As for the others, well… at risk of breaching confidence, I have reason to believe you would find the most success of anyone.”

She wants to shake him down for more information like a soda machine that stole her change. Despite what he says, this does feel clandestine, and she has no idea why her and not someone else. But it’s hard to question why if it’s all for protecting Oscar’s privacy. Is it fair of her to ask he push those boundaries more than he already has?

“Okay,” she acquiesces, “So what do you need me to do?”

“Nothing you aren’t already. I simply wanted to emphasize how much he needs you to be a friend to him now, Ruby. I hope that’s not too much to ask.”

“O-of course not.”

(He says it like a secret, low and even. If her face feels warm, she’s surely imagining it.)

The conversation lightens from there: Oscar’s progress in classes, current events she’d missed. Yang and Jaune soon return with lunch. Ruby watches as Yang casts a narrow-eyed look over them both, but it’s obvious who she intends to scrutinize.

“I hope you stayed out of trouble.”

“We kept our conversation to little more than the weather, as promised,” Oz lies. Ruby can’t be bothered to correct him, her brain still muddied by hunger and waning painkillers. It would only invite a new bout of yelling anyway, she reasons. Whatever argument they were having could be finished on their own time and not over her sickbed, preferably.

Sustenance and company eases the ache in her ribs, makes it a little more distant, a little less suffocating. But in it’s place, just below the surface, what Oz had told her begins to gnaw. An old parasite given newly sharpened teeth.

 

---

 

The doctors give Ruby a thorough explanation of her injuries later: a few fractures, Aura exhaustion, a little blood loss. She’s lucky not to have punctured a lung, they say. With Jaune’s help, a healing process which usually takes weeks has been reduced to a matter of days. Only a few more and she’d be discharged, although with a strict limitation on strenuous activity.

Jaune came by every day, whenever he could spare a moment to speed up her healing and chase out the silence. Ruby isn’t sure if he was always this much of a chatterbox, but if he wasn’t before, she imagines the years of isolation in the Ever After have something to do with it.

Not that she can say she’s paid attention to everything he’s said. As much as she’d love to listen to him recount his last patrol route of the week, Aura exhaustion was no joke. Every bit of energy she had seemed to go towards healing wounds or replenishing her stores. Jaune had the good sense not to pepper her with too many questions whenever her eyes start to slip shut, but errant thoughts keep her from the depths of true sleep.

Visiting hours are a revolving door of well-wishers, but Oscar had only come to see her once, the day she’d woken up. He rose to the forefront as abrupt and disoriented as Oz warned her he would. She’d reached out to calm him, just barely able to brush her fingertips over his clenched fists. They needed little convincing to unfurl, giving up their tension to her light touch, but he’d spent the rest of the visit looking like a snared rabbit after. Kept his distance and made conversation tepidly. The very picture of politeness. She hated it.

Ruby knew she wasn’t always the most patient person in the world, but she tried to be patient with him. Guiltily, she had to admit that patience was running thin. The curse weighed heavy on him as it always had, she knew. So something else had to have changed. She inevitably picked at it whenever she was left alone, memory fraying under her fixation. Determined to find meaning she must have missed from between the threads of their conversations.

Suddenly she hisses, pain twanging across her middle as some sensitive bit of sinew re-knits itself.

“I can’t take this anymore!”

To his credit, Jaune doesn’t jump, “Hey, you’re through the worst of it now. Just a little longer and you’ll be out of here before you know it.”

“Not that,” she says, losing her bite to the soothing flood of boosted Aura, “I mean, yes I’m tired of this hospital bed. But that’s not the problem right now.”

“Uh, I don’t follow.”

Ruby worries her bottom lip, but the indecision is brief. They’re all his friends, right? What harm is there in asking for help?

“Ozpin asked me to do something, last time he was here.”

“I thought you two only talked about the weather?”

She sets him with a flat stare, “Come on, Jaune. When has Ozpin ever just talked about the weather?”

“…Fair point,” he nods, “What did he want?”

“He’s worried about Oscar.”

She watches his reaction closely, but all she finds is a new furrow wedged in his brow.

“Is he okay? I mean, kind of a bad sign when the guy who literally lives in your head says you need help, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” Ruby sighs, “I could already tell he’s been off since we got back. It’s like he’d rather be anywhere else when we’re together, but won’t leave.”

“He has always been a bit of a wallflower…”

“Not like this. Oz decided to come to me about it because he thinks I have the best shot at getting through to him. But how do I do that when he takes any excuse to avoid us?”

She trails off, losing steam. Her anxiety feels more like a collar than a flock of fluttering birds at this point.

Jaune doesn’t reply right away, a thoughtful silence settling over them both.

“Look at it this way,” he says, sounding more like the Rusted Knight than the Jaune she knew, “Waiting all that time for you and the others to wash up on the beach wasn’t easy, but I was able to do it. You know why?”

“Because you knew we’d show up eventually.”

He nods, “I had that certainty, for better or worse. May even be why I made so many mistakes,” And now he’s wincing, looking just as pained as she’d felt a moment ago, “That kept me going for decades, Ruby. Imagine how Oscar felt over an entire year, thinking we were never coming back?”

(She doesn’t have to imagine. She remembers a flare of outrage, striking blindly, hitting her mark and missing it all at once. The split second of pure loss before she could recall reality. It wasn’t real, she knows, but he keeps bleeding out behind her eyelids anyway.)

“He doesn’t have to live like that anymore,” She says, tugging at her own fingers, “He’s pretending he doesn’t matter to anyone and it hurts, Jaune.”

“So what did Oz ask you to do about it?”

“Nothing I haven’t already tried. I just don’t know if it’s…“

Enough hangs in her open mouth, but she knows better, and swallows it back like bile.

He stops looking at her then, vacillating back to the awkward boy she’s familiar with. The air in the room has grown heavy and all they can do is sit with it for a while. Let it lighten before continuing.

Ruby almost doesn’t. The question she wants to ask next feels a little too brazen, paints more of a picture than she wants to see. But, eventually, she decides she can’t afford not to.

“If— if it were Pyrrha,” Ruby starts, barely above a whisper, “What would you do?”

Jaune’s head jerks up at Pyrrha’s name, and Ruby notes how his eyes widen and breath stops. It’s a low blow. She almost takes it back, but he doesn’t let her.

“Just talk to him honestly, Ruby,” he says, “While you still can.”

 

---

 

There’s something comforting about a quiet broken only by your own choice.

The training dummy subject to Oscar’s less than gentle attentions has seen better days. Its leather torso shows the worst of it, battered soft but dry and cracking from sun exposure. He’s chosen to come here at sundown, partly because it’s a rare moment he’s afforded from the stuttering defense talks, and partly to spare himself an equally harsh beating from the sun.

Ozpin, likewise, had granted him some time alone, dozing in his mental niche like a well fed cat. Neither had to say anything, Oscar’s churning thoughts clear enough across the faultline of their minds. By the time they reached Shade’s training grounds the old wizard had respectfully slipped into sleep. Oscar barely noticed until he was already gone.

Considerate. But a little bit overkill for what was, essentially, homework.

Oscar places a pointed strike dead center on the training dummy’s chest, allowing muscle memory to do most of the work for him.

Upheaval created endless need to control the Grimm activity, endless excuses to keep putting his friends in danger. All while he’d sat within Shade’s sturdy walls, not for his own sake but that of his passenger’s. No one dared put him too far afield anymore, lest he venture too close to Salem’s reach again. Not that anyone knew where that began or ended.

The longer time wore on, the more he thought that Salem’s strategy was just to drive everyone mad with paranoia. Ozpin might have been no stranger to a protracted shadow war, but the powers that be across Remnant were starting to question what they were still doing here. It frustrated him to no end, watching the coalition start to fracture, unable to do anything about it. Which left the refugees stuck in the middle wondering when the goodwill would finally run out.

In the meantime, they’d begun leaning back into Ozpin’s old peacetime strategy for lack of any other options. Throwing Huntsmen at any Grimm activity that could be connected to Salem, however tenuously.

Backsliding, that’s the word he wants. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission when it came to collateral damage.

Another strike, this time straight to the training dummy’s burlap head.

“Wow, I wouldn’t want to be that guy.”

“Ruby!” and he must be picking something up in training because his stance doesn’t falter all that much, “Uh, how long exactly were you standing there?”

She smiles back, “Not long. I lied and said I had another appointment to get to. Made it way easier to slip out of my meeting early.”

“But what are you doing here?”

“Ren told me when you come out here to practice. I just thought, maybe, it’d be better with a partner?”

She’s nervous, words trailing like beads on a string. It takes him longer than he’d like to admit to recall their half formed plans. He’d promised her a sparring match, and it looked like she was here to collect.

While still leaving him an out, he realizes, when he wasn’t even the one who needed it. Belatedly, he takes her in. Crescent Rose sheathed on her hip, weight still canting to her uninjured side.

They’d only released her from the infirmary yesterday.

“Are you sure that’s the best idea?” he says, unthinking.

She’d put a lot of effort into that smile, so much so he almost regrets making it fall. Her lips twist into not quite a frown, the expression still impetuous and coy. That might be enough to reassure anyone else, but they’ve traveled together too long for it to fool him.

“Come on, Oscar. I know you were in meetings all day, too. You can’t tell me you don’t have some frustration to blow off.”

The sloped walls of the training grounds suddenly feel too close, too open all at once. The timing is all wrong, he thinks, not entirely sure what for.

For once there is no convenient interruption, no lingering obligation. The edge of the sky is already shimmering violet, early rising stars competing with the sunset. Maybe someone will come looking, maybe they won’t. But Ruby writes a novel in gestures. Folding and unfolding her arms over her chest, tucking her hair behind her ear only to brush it free and start again. Never quite looking him in the eye.

All the questions he wants to ask clog his throat, digging in with claws altogether too sharp. The casual veneer of the conversation is obvious, so thin that one wrong word could send them both tumbling.

She shouldn’t be here with her injuries still healing. He shouldn’t take so long to tell her no.

(He borrows Oz’s memory of her, pale and tired. ‘Worth it’ whispered as a horrifying affirmation. Anyone else would have turned her down and told her to rest. Instead, she came to him.

It’s an honor. It’s a terror. It’s a selfish misstep waiting to happen. But that’s the corner she’s backed him into. Who is he to deny her?)

Oscar answers by wandering to the other end of the ring and settling into a stance.

“You’ll tell me if it’s too much?”

“Of course,” she says. It’s not a lie if she believes it, but Oscar remains skeptical. All the more reason to be on guard, to show her trust wasn’t misplaced.

She smiles again, genuinely this time, and he ignores his heart fluttering in response. Ruby takes up her own stance across from him, all the complex mechanisms of Crescent Rose activating to bring the blade to bear.

 

---

 

Ruby dodges the next flurry of attacks with only seconds to spare.

On the last, she twists to bring up Crescent Rose, his cane skidding off her weapon’s hilt instead of hitting home on her solar plexus. Barely healed ribs protest the motion, but Ruby doesn’t let it slow her down. She is but a knife to the whetstone, after all. The pain reminds her she’s still sharp.

Even in the thick of the match, her chest warms with pride to see how much Oscar has progressed since Atlas. He’s gotten faster, for one. A lot faster if the next strike he’s winding up is anything to go by.

Oscar is fast, but so is she, and they find a rhythm trading blows. The clack and clang of weapons colliding the only drum beat they need, but the second she notices feels like a note gone sour. Her balance is off, her side too tender for her usual acrobatics. Yet the match is still even. Openings any sane opponent would take go ignored. His participation is calm, calculated. Tactical, even, avoiding the glaring weakness of her ribs.

Crescent Rose cuts off his next attempted strike in wide arc. Then, in a move she’s fairly certain he’s borrowed from her, he spins out of his dodge to catch her with a blow to the shoulder before she can reset her stance. Her scroll rings out with a warning tone, shattering the illusion of playtime as she realizes how low her Aura has actually gotten.

Oscar gasps at the noise, as if chipping away at her Aura wasn’t the whole point.

Ruby ignores his reaction, too eager to sweep herself back up in adrenaline and aching ribs. Getting out of his reach is a priority now, and she uses the momentum of reversing from her swing to toss herself back, catching him on the side with Crescent Rose’s broad side as she does.

Oscar yelps, his scroll following with the same warning sound. Ruby lets out a quick, triumphant laugh in the few seconds it takes Oscar to reorient.

“Oh, you think that’s funny?” he asks, grinning, “Well what do you think of this?”

There’s less than a second to commend his instincts before he rushes in to press the advantage. She sidesteps his jabs one-two-three at a time, whirling around to counter–

(When her wild swing makes contact. Raking through skin-sinews-organs with ease. On the other side Crescent Rose drips red, sharp and proud. She hears the blood dribbling on the floor before she sees it, tapping out seconds through the eternity it takes to register what her rebellion has wrought.

The silence of betrayal, her name on an exhale, then nothing. Only her hopes cooling on the floor.)

Ruby jerks, Crescent Rose halting mid-swipe.

Oscar’s final overhanded strike lands. Her scroll rings out once again as her Aura finally dips past the victory threshold they’d set.

It isn’t painful the way it should be, her remaining Aura spent muffling physical damage and pain receptors both. The finishing blow is an afterthought, really, her own shock enough to send her sprawling. Like she’s gone temporarily numb, unable to raise a hand against him even to catch herself.

She just needs a minute. So long as she keeps her head down she can get her breathing in order and she won’t have to see—

“Ruby, are you okay?” Oscar calls out, unimpeded by blood bubbling up his throat.

She is okay. Will be. Everything is fine, she knows— knows how to make it fine if it’s not. But no one else will unless she can get her mouth working again. Bringing her eyes up to his feels akin to ripping them off a glue trap.

The final slanting rays of sunlight catch like fire on the gold flecks in his eyes, ground her enough to breathe.

“Yeah,” she rasps out, slow and creaky, “Yeah I am. Good job, Oscar.”

Ruby forces herself to make the initial overture, reaching out and grabbing his offered hand. He takes the cue and lifts her to her feet, silence stretching the moment to it’s breaking point.

They both know that overhead strike was foolhardy, in any other circumstance. He’d over extended. She should have had him dead to rights.

“You didn’t need to do that, you know,” Oscar all but murmurs.

“Do what?”

“…Throw the match.”

No sadness, no resentment, just stated as fact. He might as well have stabbed her.

“But I didn’t—“

“It’s alright Ruby, I had fun anyway.”

His expression softens and she recoils at the pity. The audacity of it. As if he’s worked out some unspoken rule of the bout and she’s just now catching up.

Whatever unease she’d felt is set alight by a slow, smoldering kind of anger.

He’s already turning to leave. She’s watching him go. Say something, she thinks, but the words she needs float just outside her grasp. Her hand darts out to grab him, then, unwilling to let him go before she finds them.

“Ruby,” he starts, handling her name with an infuriating delicacy, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Am I okay? How are you okay with this, Oscar?”

“There’s nothing wrong with losing now and then.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

“Did you think humoring me would make me feel better?” she asks, words billowing from her mouth like smoke, “Let me toss you around for a bit and then go back to avoiding everyone?”

“I am not avoiding—“

“You are. I always have to track you down, or drag you along, and I don’t understand why, Oscar. If you didn’t want me here then fine, but don’t tell me you’re doing this for my sake.”

“Of course this is for your sake, Ruby,” he snaps, “You aren’t supposed to be fighting at all while you’re healing. I trusted you to know your limits, but look what happened.”

“You don’t know what happened.”

“Then tell me, because either you let me win or you admit you were never well enough to spar in the first place.”

Her hands curl into fists, the bite of her nails all that keeps her level. How did she explain it? That stutter-stop of her heart, weakened grip, tension wound through every limb and pulling her to the ground. Her palms are already sweating at the thought.

“Maybe I’m not okay,” she says, concession the easier option in the end, “But you aren’t either, Oscar. And I’m not the only one who’s noticed.”

“Don’t listen to Oz. I know what he told you, but I promise it’s better this way.”

“I’m not just talking about Oz,” she counters, “And even if I were, I think he’s right to be concerned. None of this is like you.”

“Yeah, well. It’s not always easy to tell what is like me, these days.”

“Then let’s try to figure it out,” Ruby says tremulously, “What if there’s another way to stop the curse? Something we could try to slow it down, or somewhere we could go—”

“And waste everyone’s time on the chance it might slow it down?” he spits, throwing his arms wide as if to physically toss the words at her, “The coalition is already showing cracks, the refugee situation gets worse by the day, and who knows when Salem will decide to come in and take advantage of all the chaos! Would you really go chasing after some cure, if it even exists, with all that on the line?”

And what is she to say to that? Shame forces her to look away, closes her throat. He isn’t wrong, but the injustice of it burns all the same, leaves her skin hot and eyes misty. Ruby tenses her already closed fists, not caring if her nails draw blood.

Whatever Oscar sees, he must take as confirmation.

“You think I enjoy this,” he continues, gentler now, “Knowing everything I do to help just puts me one step closer to disappearing? Maybe we save Remnant in time to save me too, but the sooner we stop pretending this will solve itself, the easier it’ll be when the time comes.”

He sounds just patronizing enough she’s able to meet his eyes again, “So that’s it? We give up and wait for the worst?”

“I’m not giving up. Anything I can do in the time I have left, I will. But I definitely don’t want to spend it arguing over this.”

“Then what do you want, Oscar?”

He starts to answer, breath hitching, mouth hooked open by indecision. It’s too much, too heavy, this almost-answer now weighing down on them both. She holds his gaze like a lifeline, reluctance and longing piercing through his eyes for her to see. His tells are easiest to catch when he looks her in the eyes, after all.

In the back of her mind knocks loose a half-finished conversation permeated by the hum of ship’s engines.

‘Have you seen the way he looks at you?’

(Ruby wasn’t stupid. She could put a name to the feelings that brewed in her chest any time she wanted, if she paid them enough mind to. Not like she lacked for distractions. The attack on Haven, the Atlas blockade, struggling to save Mantle, trudging through the aftermath. Of course an ill timed crush was insignificant next to the responsibility she already carried, copious and staggering.

But that’s the thing about needles in haystacks. They sting just as well when you find them again.)

Frustration sizzles on her tongue like a burning coal. Nothing she can say feels strong enough to put it out.

So rather than try, she throws out her hands with a growl, grabs him by the lapels of his stupid coat. Lets the conversation crash to a halt as she pulls him into her space and…

Ruby doesn’t actually know what to do with him, now that she has him here. Thoughts tumble one over the other as the retaining wall of her adrenaline ebbs. They’re close enough to share breath, and the proximity leaves her unexpectedly scathed. Surely he can see her desperate truth brought this close? Impossible that he’d miss how her fingers shake, make his escape and tell her how selfish she is. Like he should.

Yet he stays, wide-eyed and at her mercy.

There is no way to know how long she spends searching his face, once, twice, and over again. All on the hope that maybe, if she looks long enough, she can bore her way into his head. Pluck the answers straight from his skull and save them both the torment.

That’s not how it works, though. The moment snaps under its own weight, and she shoves him away.

“Fine. Keep it to yourself,” she says, brittle, and leaves him alone at their impasse.

Notes:

have I earned that angst tag yet

ETA: now with fanart!

Chapter 5: Impasse

Notes:

♪ The Great Escape - EarlyRise

The arena is quiet save for the sound of Ruby’s footsteps, interrupted briefly while she kneels and gathers Crescent Rose. A door, somewhere distant, slams shut with a stark finality.

‘It’s getting dark,’ Oscar thinks dimly, ‘Time to go inside.’

Yet he feels no impulse to move, as if he’s bound to the spot. His mind straining to make sense of what just happened.

Oz’s awareness seeps in as Oscar replays the argument, still trying to disentangle something meaningful from his own emotional clutter. He could hide it, if he wanted. Oz slept through the entire exchange, and that did make obfuscating information from each other a little easier. Even if it was never guaranteed.

Oscar doesn’t mull it over for long, deciding to leave the memory in the open. Not because he has any real desire for Oz’s advice, but because he simply cannot imagine how he’d explain this to anyone else.

He expects a lecture, maybe, for allowing her so close or agreeing to spar so soon after her discharge. An admonishment for his failure to deescalate, rising to meet Ruby’s provocation with his own. Or would it be as baffling to him as it is to Oscar? The silence drags on and all he can do is wait.

“…Oh dear,” Oz sighs, sounding every bit like the belabored headmaster he once was.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Get inside, Oscar. There’s no reason to discuss it here.”

This doesn’t dislodge his thoughts entirely. Oscar stays one more moment to take in the view of the stars afforded by the open arena. Breathes one long, deep breath and exhales the tension before leaving. The path to his quarters has never felt longer.

“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what a precarious position you’re now in,” Oz says as they make their way through empty corridors. He has the nerve to sound amused.

“I don’t have any idea what position I’m in, actually. Yang and I both told you to leave her alone. You just couldn’t help yourself, could you?”

Oscar feels his hackles rise, a defensive response not his own. “If you think a lack of intercession on my part would have prevented this, you haven’t been paying attention. On that point, I thought Miss Rose made herself quite clear.”

(Trying to pick over what was said in the argument leads him to its ending all over again. Her bright eyes and quick reflexes, mouth barely parted as she realized what she’d done. How close she’d brought him. His own foibles cut off by the space they’d crossed, no room for them in the scant inches that remained.

For all her outrage, she’d been trembling.

He has no way to divine Ruby’s intent, if any, their emotions churning and raw. But there he’d been, all his conviction crumbling in her hands. It scares him to know whatever answers she demanded of him in that moment, he would have given without question.)

Oscar feels more than hears Oz clear his throat, drawing his attention back to the present.

“What did you expect would happen?” he snipes back, “That she’d talk me off the ledge or whatever, and we’d stop losing control at random?”

“I expected you to be honest with her, yet you faltered at the last second.”

Oz’s reproach is caustic, but undeniably sincere. Oscar almost trips on it as he takes the stairs up towards the dormitory wing of the academy.

“Seems a little counterproductive to me. Wasn’t the entire point learning how to manage loss?”

“The two of you weren’t as emotionally entangled then as you are now, I’d wager,” Oz counters, “Did you feel any less for her, when there was a chance she’d never come back?”

The answer is instant. An echo of wavering hope. Burnt out remains of longing and lament. Oscar grits his teeth, powerless to stop it from washing over them both.

His strides grow a little longer, a little heavier. The open hallways suddenly feel all too exposed.

However much he wants to blame Oz’s involvement for this, he couldn’t discount the sheer physicality evoked by Ruby’s feelings. She even admitted she wasn’t okay, and he’d been so focused on the absurdity of a cure he hadn’t bothered to ask why. The haze of his bewilderment begins to recede, leaving a pit of guilt to settle in his stomach. How had he not seen it before? The way she’d tumbled to the ground so violently at the end of the match, barely able to look at him.

She was terrified, but of what?

Oscar stills at the door to his rooms, realizing he has no idea where to begin looking for an answer.

“I am confident you’ll find a way forward,” Oz offers. Oscar is a spring wound tight by now, little patience remaining for Oz’s vaguely paternal encouragement. Still, he recognizes the vulnerability on display. “I can suggest, perhaps, to learn from my mistakes.”

(The memories flicker by. Pale lips pulling into a coy smile, her quiet voice commanding his attention. Red eyes blown wide by betrayal. Even then, she offered him a way out. A way home.

But to take it would be to lose everything. He’d simply not been ready.)

Oscar all but collapses into bed that night, but he stays awake a little while longer. Sifting through the argument again until it’s nearly nonsense. When sleep finally finds him, it’s fitful, Ruby’s words lingering in his dreams.

 

---

 

It wasn’t often Ruby had the pleasure of visiting the very peak of Shade academy.

The views were spectacular, but considering she and Blake were on their way up for a mission briefing, it’s unlikely they’d have much time to take in the scenery. A summons from Headmaster Theodore wasn’t unusual, per se, but whenever it happened Ruby knew to brace herself for something a little out of the ordinary.

Much like Ozpin and Glynda’s working relationship at Beacon, Ruby found Professor Rumpole to be at the head of the chain most of the time. Handling the red tape and details while the Headmaster painted the broad strokes. She’d have expected them to stay on the same page, at least, but when they arrive Theodore looks at them like an alarm’s gone off. Rumpole doesn’t even look up, just scowls at whatever new bit of bad news is probably on her scroll.

Ozpin, on the other hand, isn’t phased in the slightest. Positioned left of Theodore’s desk, he leans over to gesture at a document she can’t see.

Ruby stops short after a few paces into the room. Did he come last minute, she wonders? Would she have even been able to get out of so private a meeting, had she known?

Her timetables for the last week have been a mess, canceling plans and reorganizing her schedule around him. The coward’s way out, some would say. But until she figured out how to tell Oscar ‘sorry for manhandling you during our argument because I can’t get a grip on myself,’ she would be sticking to her strategy.

The problem, she found as the week wore on, was her newfound struggle to remain stoic in the face of well meaning questions. And oh, there were many. Still, she’d told no one about their fight, the sparring match or the argument. And ‘It’s complicated’ would only hold her friends at bay for so long.

Oz doesn’t seem to have noticed her yet. Maybe it’s not too late to beg off and have Blake bring her a copy of the briefing later? The second the thought crosses her mind, she realizes Blake’s already looking at her. Through her, more like, the question in her gaze pinning Ruby to the spot.

“Ah, Miss Rose, Miss Belladonna. Right on time.”

Definitely too late for escape.

“Is this everyone?” Blake asks, while Ruby silently prays for the floor to swallow her whole. Oscar had continued to be reclusive in the days since, so she doubted he’d told anyone about their fight, either. But had he hidden it from Ozpin as well?

(Could he, anymore?)

At least if Ozpin did know, it was unlikely for him to comment on it here. She allows herself one steadying breath before pushing further into the room. Ruby does her best to pretend his presence didn’t affect her. As if she hadn’t telegraphed her panic to the entire room already.

The only indication she gets is in the split second Oz looks up from the desk, throwing her a censorious look. She thinks that’s what it is, anyway. He backs down too quick for her to be sure, consummately professional as he taps out a few commands on a scroll.

“I don’t intend to keep you long,” he starts, and Ruby is thankful for the distraction as her own scroll chimes to notify her of the document transfer, “You’ll only have the remainder of the evening to prepare, as we’re dispatching you first thing tomorrow morning.”

The details were sparse, but straightforward. Reconnaissance, in an old Dust mine outside of town. No direct orders to engage, however in the event of enemy contact they were to prioritize escape with their lives and any information collected.

“An old Dust mine known for Grimm activity, but it’s not a search and destroy?” Blake asks, “What exactly do you expect us to find down there?”

“Nothing, we hope,” Rumpole says, “Every abandoned mine in Vacuo is known for Grimm activity. Villagers are usually content to mind their business and hope the Grimm return the favor. But now they’re reporting sinkholes, localized quakes, oddly shifting sands and the like. Seismic data confirmed the rest.”

“So something is digging around down there that wasn’t before.”

“Precisely. While it could be within normal scope…”

“We can’t take the chance that Salem isn’t sniffing around for a way under the walls.”

Ozpin nods, “Your aims will be twofold: first, to gauge the level of Grimm activity so we can properly assign a search and destroy mission at a later time. Second, verify if there is a pattern to the digging. We know all too well the ways Salem can exploit even the smallest crack in our defense.”

Ruby presses her arms to her sides, still skimming the details on her scroll. This is her first mission since her injury. Simple, straightforward. Not much opportunity to stick her neck out, probably by design. But the team roster gives her pause.

“Lie Ren is still out on patrol. We’ll be passing along a copy of the briefing as soon as he returns,” Rumpole says, “And Oscar, I trust, will have access to any information with Ozpin present.”

“He is aware, yes,” Oz says. Did she imagine his eyes flicking in her direction? Or was the pensive look twisting his features not meant for her? “Though I’m still not convinced it’s necessary. Are you sure sending him is the best course of action, Rumpole?”

“I like it about at much as you do,” she scowls, “But we’re stretched thin enough on Huntsmen as it is, especially ones who would know what to look for. Do you really trust knowledge of enemy movements with just anyone?”

“Such traps have been laid with less appealing bait,” Ozpin says, but Ruby doesn’t miss his stare, lost somewhere in the middle distance. Oscar is getting his opinion on the record, too, that’s for sure.

“Let the boy pass or fail on his own merits,” Rumpole says, sounding exactly like the harsh taskmaster she’d heard so much about, “He knows the stakes better than some of my other students, I’ll give him that much.”

“It’ll be good for the boy,” Theodore cuts in, breaking his silence after all this time, “Should be easy compared to some of the escapades you had before now.”

“That’s exactly my worry,” Oz says as he turns to Theodore, “If we’re right about what we might find, this could escalate quicker than anyone expects.”

“But he can handle it,” Ruby blurts out, nearly jumping at the sound of her own voice.

Headmaster Theodore’s office was not small, but all the eyes suddenly on her makes it a cage. She looks between everyone, sparing a little longer to take in Ozpin’s concern. Only because, for a moment, she can’t be sure which of them is looking out through Oscar’s eyes.

(A shiver rakes up her spine. Ozpin had reassured her, back in the infirmary, that their situation wasn’t yet so dire. Now, Ruby thinks she might have to respectfully disagree.)

“He can do it,” She says again, painstakingly steady, “Headmaster Theodore is right, Professor. You know even better than I do, if Oscar can help, he’d want to go.”

Oscar never once shied away from the responsibilities he’d chosen. Ruby always admired him for that. Sometimes it meant playing second fiddle to Ozpin. Other times it means taking risks, whether that was traveling alone across Mistral or holding out within the belly of the beast itself.

‘Maybe we’ll save Remnant in time to save me too,’ he’d told her. Well, they certainly weren’t going to meet their deadline if everyone didn’t do what they could.

Ozpin’s eyes lose focus, not really notable unless you knew what you were seeing. He considers each of them in turn. Ruby takes this as a win, an indication he’s not totally closed off to the idea.

They settle back on her, eventually, heavy and appraising.

“You’re sure you’re willing to place him so close to danger again?”

Ruby grimaces, just long enough to suppress a blush. Hard to miss how Ozpin said him, not us, but she doesn’t back down for a second.

“It’s not about what I want.”

“And besides,” Blake chimes in, “He won’t be alone.”

“We’ve assigned Lie Ren to this mission for a reason,” Rumpole adds, all business, “His skill in cloaking others from the Grimm is impressive. So long as the four of you stick together, this should be simple for Huntsmen with your track record.”

Ruby watches Oz closely. His gaze goes unfocused again, before he comes back looking a little more chastised, a lot more resigned. He opens his mouth to speak, only for Headmaster Theodore to clap his hands down on the desk.

“Sounds like it’s settled then,” Theodore says as he stands, “Now go give the briefing a thorough look, get some rest. You’re going to need it for the mines.”

Ruby makes use of the dismissal quickly, confidence peeling away like veneer. There are eyes on her back the entire way to the door. She doesn’t have the heart to stay and find out whose.

 

---

 

The desert air is cool when they leave the confines of the academy, stalk past the walls and spill out into the increasingly haphazard collection of tents which make up the city outskirts. Just as well that they’re leaving before most folk are even awake, Oscar thinks. Everyone had developed a bit of a reputation, some of them more than others. It could make navigating large public spaces a bit precarious any other time of day.

Rising early wasn’t difficult for him, not after a childhood made up of chores around the farm. But today, Oscar found himself pressing his fingers to his temples, the wan morning sunlight already enough to tax his eyes.

His teammates weren’t faring any better. Ren had surprised him the most in that regard, up and moving as he’d been told but with a distinct sluggishness he wouldn’t usually ascribe to his friend. Blake and Ruby weren’t a whole lot better, the two of them trailing a short ways behind as they moved through improvised streets and out into Vacuo’s unforgiving sands.

He’s glad someone else from team RWBY was assigned to this mission. As much as he wants to fall back and help Ruby get her morning wits about her, it doesn’t feel right. Not after how much he’d invested in the current distance between them, and certainly not with the lingering tumult of their last real conversation. Even after supporting him in front of the Headmaster and his right hand, she’d fled his presence with impressive speed the second she was allowed. As he’d wanted, he supposes.

“Hanging in there?”

Oscar bites back a yelp when, ever catlike, Blake is suddenly next to him and dispelling any hope of making it through the day unnoticed. He doesn’t like how his friends have made a habit of sneaking up on him.

“Yeah, everything’s fine. I’ve always been an early riser.”

Blake nods along. “True, but I think we both know I’m not just talking about getting up early.”

“Am I that easy to read?”

“Not really,” Blake says, “It’s why I’m asking.”

“Oh, uhm…“

He’s hesitant to spurn her concern, but altogether uncomfortable with where this conversation could go. He doesn’t know Blake as well as he’d like. They’d bonded a bit over a shared love of literature, but that hardly gave him the confidence to navigate her questions if they got a touch too personal.

“I’m not going to pretend everything is fine,” he goes on to say, “But it’s not anything worse than usual.”

That wasn’t a lie, technically. She hadn’t asked him about Ruby. Why his glances were fleeting, the real reason she trailed so far behind. Oscar imagines trying to explain and feels like his mouth is filled with tar.

Blake is being polite about it, he can tell, but her expression says she’s unconvinced.

“Okay. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to…”

“But?”

“…It may be better if you do. This doesn’t have to be worse than usual to become a liability.”

Oscar nearly stumbles. That was the truth of what they were walking into, wasn’t it? The dark, confined spaces of an abandoned Dust mine. Rife with Grimm who might find the sour string of tension between him and Ruby a little more than appetizing.

“Do you think I should have stayed behind?”

Blake considers him for a while and he bears the discomfort. Already bracing for her judgment, her doubt, her disappointment.

(His friends were good, kind people who only wanted the best for him. He knows this, but with every passing adventure he watches a legend unfold before his eyes. Would he ever stop feeling like a stray they happened to pick up along the way?)

“Do you?” She finally asks, the corner of her mouth tipping back up into a smirk, “Because I think if you believe in yourself half as much as Ruby does, you’re probably fine.”

His first instinct is to deny it, face heating in an instant. Back in Theodore’s office, the very idea of going on this mission felt draining. Something he could do because they had no one more suitable on hand. Hadn’t he argued as much to Oz during the briefing? But to admit that would be to undermine all the faith Ruby had put in him, unprompted and undeserved.

Or—and this is where Blake had so deftly trapped him—he could accept he simply wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t up to the task.

“I didn’t come just because Ruby thought I should, if that’s what you’re saying.”

“I’m not, but I’m glad you didn’t,” she says, nudging his shoulder, “Ruby isn’t the only one who believes in you, you know.”

“Thanks,” He has to look away, unsure of what to do with such praise.

He appreciates Blake’s comfort with silence, nothing but the sound of gravel crunching under their feet for a precious moment. But then she casts her gaze backwards. Oscar doesn’t have to follow to know who she’s looking at.

“Headmaster Theodore and Professor Rumpole didn’t notice when they put this mission together, but the rest of us…” and he can only assume she means all their friends. He briefly looks back as well, trying to gauge how easily they could be overheard.

Ruby still takes up the rear at a slow and sleepy pace, letting out a yawn as if on cue.

“Go ahead, ask.”

“What is going on between you two?”

“I thought I knew, but I don’t,” he starts, startled by how the words rush out of his mouth, “We fought. I was probably too harsh on her. And now she doesn’t want to talk to me, I guess.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Why else would she be lagging so far behind? Aside from getting up before sunrise, I mean.”

(‘I promise it’s better this way,’ he’d told her.

He doesn’t miss Ruby smiling at him across the table whenever a meeting runs on too long. Or the uncanny sense she had for finding him whenever his mood dipped especially low. And he definitely didn’t take the support she’d shown him during the mission briefing and gather it up like a miser. So greedy for her approval even beyond the gulf he’d built between them.

What did it matter if he self-inflicted the heartbreak Oz warned him of so long ago? Any burden he placed on himself was temporary. This way, he knows she’s strong enough to forget him, if she has to.)

Blake pauses again. Long enough for Oscar to wonder if she was done with the conversation, context now achieved. Yet the silence is anything but empty.

“I tried running once, too, you know? At the time, it felt like I had no other choice. Like I carried a poison inside me, and the only way I could save my friends from it was to get as far away as possible.”

Oscar still remembers all the stories he’d heard about the last wayward member of team RWBY, during their time in the Mistral guest house. Ruby’s glowing praise and Weiss’ fond respect. The trigger-tense void where Yang had left the room.

“You don’t have to bring that up again for my sake,” Oscar says, harried, “I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

“Maybe you aren’t running away physically,” she says, more patient with him than he feels he deserves, “but sometimes it’s like you think you’re already gone, Oscar. Does pushing everyone away make it easier for us, or for you?”

She cuts to the core of the issue so cleanly Oscar could swear he’s bleeding, the way it makes his chest ache.

“It’s okay if you don’t know. All I’m asking is for you to think about it,” she smiles, then, “We’re all here for you, Ruby included. Don’t shut her out. It won’t protect her, trust me.”

“Thanks, Blake. I’ll… keep that in mind.”

“Thank Yang. She’s the one who wanted me to check in on you. Ruby has something bothering her, too, and she won’t talk to us about it…” Blake says, her smile growing mischievous, “Honestly, I think Yang just doesn’t know if she should be upset with you or Oz.”

Oscar chokes back a gasp, blood icing over in panic. Yang’s temper was not one you wanted to be on the wrong side of: he’d had a front row seat every time she’d ever taken Oz to task for his ways, after all.

It must show on his face because Blake laughs, breaking the tension like a hammer through glass.

“Don’t worry, I’ll put in a good word for you,” She says fondly, ruffling his hair. A juvenile sense of embarrassment makes him look back one more time, hoping no one else witnessed the affection he’d been given.

Ruby has caught up more than he’d expected, only about five or six paces behind them now. For a second their eyes meet, and her sad little smile warps with surprise.

She rushes past them both in a quick burst of petals, cutting him off well before Oscar even imagines what he could say.

 

---

 

He sits behind Ren on one of the two ATVs they’d been granted. Ren doesn’t look back once, but like with Blake earlier, the silence isn’t uncomfortable. Even before Ren’s Semblance evolution, Oscar always thought he had a sharp sense for how others’ felt. The drive gave him a good excuse to respectfully leave Oscar alone to think.

As much as he’d wanted to let his thoughts swirl within the rises and dips of the mesas on the horizon, he instead spends most of the ride shielding his eyes from the sun’s accosting rays. Still, in between the little bursts of pressure building behind his eyes, he wonders what colors Ren would see if he did look back at him with his Semblance.

They make it to the mine just after noon and Oscar is glad for it. Partly to escape the sun, and partly to get his mind on to more productive matters. Maybe the shade of the Dust mine could provide some relief for both. It opens up before them like a great axe wound in the earth. These deep fissures were rarer in Solitas but by far the best for Dust mining, he recalls Weiss explaining from some point in the past. Crystal formations the size of small towns could be found growing on the walls, and the open ceiling let them grow as big and tall as they liked.

This one must have been well and truly depleted, then. The cave’s walls are nothing but pockmarked sandstone, all trace of the sparkling natural wonder scraped clean long ago.

They go down by way of a rickety metal service stairwell, every other step causing it to groan and echo through the chasm menacingly. Hulks of abandoned mining equipment sit at the bottom and cast odd shadows on the walls. Their metal carcasses left to rot once the largest dust deposits ran out.

Not that such a minor detail would deter the mining companies, oh no.

“We’ll have to go further in,” Blake says before anyone can even turn on their lights. She gestures towards a tunnel entrance that looks like little more than a void in the wall.

This is where the biggest of the formation’s crystals would have been once upon a time, Oscar imagines as they approach the tunnel entrance. After all the Dust had been harvested from the walls, the miners would have begun to dig outward. Wherever the largest pillars of crystal grew, equally strong roots could be found in the rock if one was determined enough to dig for it. Or greedy enough, as it were.

And this is why, decades after the strike had run dry, Oscar and his friends had to down here and survey the Grimm in residence. Agents of Salem or not, Centinels loved to nest in old mineshafts where half the digging had been done for them. If they were tunneling close enough for the city’s seismic detection to pick them up, they’d need to be dealt with sooner or later.

Without the old stairwell’s complaints, it’s a disturbingly quiet trek. The man made cave is no taller or wider than needed, forcing them single file down the path. Blake is at the front, navigating with her superior night vision, and they all maintain a point of contact so Ren can cloak them from the rear. Oscar tries not to grip Blake’s shoulder too tightly as they go, the warmth of Ruby’s hand all but branding his back.

Oscar can’t say how long they spend wandering in search of the Centinel nest they know is down here somewhere. It’s the third, maybe the fourth tunnel intersection they come to when Blake stops them all, uncertainty written across her face.

“Do you think we found it?” Ruby asks, her eyes roving over the multiple new paths open before them. Oscar says nothing and grazes the wall, rubbing residual grit between his fingers. All the right signs are there: sloped floors, circuitous cuts and divots in the walls. Most tellingly, the intersecting paths are suspiciously irregular compared to every other juncture they’d come to thus far.

“We’re on the right track, I think,” Oscar says, hushed, matching the quiet that surrounds them all.

He keeps watch on his scroll’s compass and directs them one way or the other as need arises, whichever path takes them closer to the city. Most of the time it’s his best guess. The tunnels twist and turn under the desert in a fashion Oscar supposes is generally towards town. If it’s an attempt to catch them unawares from below, it seems like a pretty inefficient one to him.

No need to voice that thought to his team yet, though, tense as everyone already is. Ren’s Semblance is vital, allowing them to counterbalance their nerves under such claustrophobic conditions. Minutes pass by silently, no one willing to miss the sound of shifting rock or churning sand.

“Be on your guard,” Oz warns, even the internal dialogue at a whisper, “These Grimm can take your feet out from under you in an instant.”

“You don’t need to tell me twice,” Oscar thinks back, feeling a little more emboldened inside his own head.

“I know, but all the same…” It’s not usual for Oz to leave his thoughts unfinished, but Oscar intuits his concern well enough.

It’s all fine until the gray wash of Ren’s cloak begins to flicker. Oscar looks back for the first time in who knows how long to see Ren, eyes shut in concentration and navigating purely by his hold on Ruby’s hood.

“Just a little further,” Blake entreats, “The tunnel widens out up ahead.”

‘Widens’ turns out to be an understatement as they make their way into the largest tunnel juncture yet. Oscar, adjusted to the relative darkness of the mine, has to shield his eyes against the few tiny rays of sunlight that eke their way through the ceiling. A cluster of rocks is suspended by sheer tension against the walls of the shaft above. Not bored out by man or Grimm, the cavern they find themselves in now was most likely formed by sinkhole.

Ren settles down on the silty ground, head falling into his hands. “I’m okay,” he says before anyone has a chance to ask, “Should be ready to go again in a few minutes.”

He hardly has to grant them permission for a chance to rest their legs. Ren has done the lion’s share of the work so far keeping them all under stealth, but miles of sandstone and darkness have eroded Oscar’s sense of time. For all he knows, they’ve been wandering around down here forever.

As much as he wants to, Oscar can’t join his friends under the weak sunbeams. His eyes never quite adjust to the light, filtered as it is, and he just breaks out into a cold sweat for his efforts. Admitting defeat, he wanders over to the mouth of a tunnel entrance on the far side of the cave. Being back in the dark helps, but not anywhere near as much as he’d hoped.

“Be honest with me,” Oscar starts in his head, searching for some distraction from the vise pressing in on his skull, “What do you really think we’ll find down here?”

“I know as much as you do.”

“Then why did it have to be us?” Oscar bites back, “Ren’s Semblance helps, but Ruby only just got clearance to go on missions again. Centinels are a handful for most Huntsmen on a good day.”

“I promise I have no ulterior motives for my part in arranging this mission, Oscar. If anything, I’m happy suspicion of Salem’s activity made this such a priority. It’s one less nest of Grimm that could crawl up under the refugees’ feet.”

Oscar takes a moment to roll that excuse around, vexation prickling across his skin all the while. But he can’t feel the lie in it, edges perfectly smooth. An impressive reversal on Oz’s part, all things considered.

“You still shouldn’t have included Ruby in this.”

(Memory follows the words without his permission: Crescent Rose escaping her fingers, his cane making contact. Fear binding him so tightly he thought his heart skipped a beat as she crumpled to the ground.)

“It wasn’t up to me,” Oz counters, “Our forces are stretched thin, and plenty of Huntsmen have begun to move on to more lucrative and less difficult contracts elsewhere. Most importantly, no one forced her to accept.”

“Would anyone have needed to?”

“Oscar, If I didn’t know better,” and he should, better than anyone, “I’d call you overprotective.”

He scoffs, “As if she needs me for protection.”

If Oz says anything in response Oscar doesn’t catch it, distracted by a blur of red in his peripheral vision. He meets more resistance than usual wringing his awareness back to the outside world. When he does, it leaves him dreadfully lightheaded.

Apprehension pulls Ruby’s posture upright, and likewise it has his back straightening in an instant. Her steps are cautious, bringing her forward the way you would approach a wild animal. Oscar has no idea if it’s supposed to be for his benefit or hers.

“I— um. You’ve been over here a while. Ren thinks he’ll be ready to get moving again soon, so…”

“Oh. Right.”

How asinine. She’s probably asking how he’s feeling, too, but silence has already settled on them like a lead blanket. Ruby doesn’t pursue it, just rolls back on her heels, hands clasped behind her back.

“…Were you talking to the professor?”

“Yeah. Just… I don’t know. Checking if this was worth it.”

He hadn’t meant to say it so sharply, but the words carve their way out before he can think better of them. Ruby’s face twists first in confusion, then recognition—

But he’s spared giving an explanation as an ear-shattering screech fills the tunnel. Bits of dirt and rock shake loose onto their heads like hail. It’s the only other warning they get before the ground between them erupts.

Oscar’s instincts take over, tipping him into a dodge before he can think. It still isn’t fast enough. His balance is too compromised. Just as the Centinel’s pincers would have closed around his neck, Ruby is there shoving him against the wall and out of danger.

Gunshots are already going off across the cave as Blake and Ren both open fire while they’ve still got the advantage of range. Each one feels like a battering ram against his skull. If he wasn’t sure before, he realizes now what a burden he’s going to be in this fight.

Was it because of the Centinels, or had the room always been spinning?

“Oscar? Oscar, look at me,” Ruby grips his shoulders and it’s all that keeps him steady, “Are you okay?”

He blinks, trying to get her face back in focus. Screws his eyes shut when that becomes too laborious.

“I’m fine.”

He knows she doesn’t have time to do anything but take him at his word, the tunnel junction now a writhing mass of legs and pincers. She’s already unsheathed Crescent Rose by the time he’s answered.

As soon as the blade unfolds, Ruby swings with tactical precision. One of the Centinel heads goes rolling, trailing ash as it tumbles across the ground. Oscar braces himself against the wall with one hand and extends The Long Memory with the other. Sucking in a deep breath through his teeth, he lets the stale tunnel air bring him back to his senses. He’ll need them if he doesn’t want to be a complete liar.

Another Grimm is already crawling up to take the place of the one Ruby killed, and Oscar lets loose two quick jabs to cover the gap. The Grimm recoils, its white carapace cracked and draining smoke, but it’s still able to skitter up and around the mouth of the tunnel. A well aimed gunshot from across the cave puts it out of its misery.

For all the good it does. There’s dozens of them clogging the sinkhole junction now, crawling over the floor and across the walls. Every time another one burrows its way out, a little more gravel showers from the ceiling. Salem’s influence or otherwise, they operate so singlemindedly Oscar isn’t sure how they’re meant to escape them all.

Then there’s a solid thunk overhead and the clatter of more pebbles. Following the noise, he expects more Grimm, but instead sees Blake’s weapon solidly lodged into the suspended stone above. At the end of the carbide ribbon Blake pulls with all her might, while Ren lays down cover fire.

Without a word spoken, Oscar sees the plan coming together.

Ruby must as well, because she partially collapses Crescent Rose to back further into the mouth of the tunnel. But fending off the Grimm is more of a struggle in the narrowed space. Oscar does his best to assist her, despite his head aching like an open sore.

The whole chaotic encounter couldn’t take more than a minute. It still feels like an age before Blake’s efforts pay off, a mass of stone finally dropping upon the savage swarm.

Notes:

Please let me know if you spot any weird formatting or whatever, getting this chapter out of scrivener was a struggle

Chapter 6: No Sweeter Future

Notes:

♪ Two Steps Apart - Reliqa

Dust—the regular grainy kind—and Grimm ash clog the air as everyone gets their bearings. Ruby hacks dirt out of her mouth and tries not to retch as it coats her tongue.

The junction they’d been standing in mere moments ago is gone, filled in by a rockslide twice as high as Ruby is tall.

“Blake! Ren! Are you alright?”

Ruby presses an ear against the rock and prays her calls can be heard through the obstruction. She hears two more gunshots, the scrape of steel, and a cut off insectoid scream before anyone answers.

“More or less!” Ren yells. She thinks she might spot the glint of his eye through a crevice in the rocks. “What about you guys?”

For an irrational, moment Ruby wonders if Oscar has disappeared in the few minutes she’d turned away. That he’d left her here alone, or was otherwise lost to the tunnels beckoning grimly behind. But no, he’s right where she last saw him. The Long Memory sits loosely in his grip as he leans back against the stone wall, pinching the bridge of his nose with his other hand.

“We’re fine,” Ruby calls back, “But I don’t think we’re getting out of here the same way we came in.”

There’s the sound of rummaging, further clatter of rocks tumbling one over the other. Ruby picks up on what they’re doing quickly enough, and moves what stones she can on this side of the cave in. There’s no telling how long they work, but for all their effort the pile of stone stays unyielding.

“It would take forever to move all this by hand,” Ren calls back, “Do you think there’s a way around?”

“Possibly,” Oscar interjects, “The Grimm-dug tunnels and the mine intersect all over the place. We should be able to find a route that connects back out into the ravine. Eventually.”

He doesn’t sound hopeful, though there’s no way to tell whether that’s due to their odds or the migraine he’s clearly fighting to study the map on his scroll screen.

Ren’s fuchsia eye is replaced by a gold one. “Don’t worry about us. We can backtrack and go get help if it comes to it,” Blake says, “Just be careful over there. That probably wasn’t the last of the Grimm.”

“We will. Try to stay in touch, okay?”

Blake and Ren’s muffled footsteps trail away, and then they’re alone. Ruby wraps her arms around herself, as if they could ward off the mounting disquiet filling the narrow space.

Oscar looks haggard, but he’s upright and still examining the mine map. He holds it up to her, their position marked by a little pulsing red dot outside the map’s drawn boundaries. Evidence the tunnel they’re now in was dug out by the Grimm. She tries not to shudder at the other, washed out blue dot for Blake and Ren already labeled NO CONNECTION thanks to all the stone between them.

“We’d better get going,” he intones, “Are you okay with me navigating?”

“Sure, but you seem…”

(Like he’s lost a week’s worth of sleep in the past few minutes. Like he’s been taken apart and put together again not quite right. Like a shadow, put simply. Ruby worries he’ll dissolve the second they see the sun again.)

“…like you could use a break.”

“If it’s all the same to you? I’d rather take a break once we’re out of this mine.”

In such a tight space Oscar has the greater maneuverability, should they encounter more Grimm. By that metric she doesn’t have much reason to tell him no. More importantly, whatever unspoken professional truce they now had felt dangerously fragile. She can’t tell if his dour mood stems from the ambush, the headache, or her. All of the above, probably, but she forces herself not to think about it for now. The results could be disastrous without Ren around to mask the fallout.

So she gestures down the tunnel, letting him take the lead.

Ruby keeps Crescent Rose collapsed into rifle-mode as they walk. The passages aren’t always wide enough for the full form of her weapon, and again she’s reminded of the winding crag she’d nearly met her end in on her last mission. Except the tunnels seem to go on endlessly, dark and silent save for the gravel crunching under their boots.

Her mind races, scrabbling for any other thing to think about.

“Back before the Grimm attacked… what did you mean when you said you were checking to see if this was ‘worth it?’”

Ruby winces the second the words leave her mouth. So much for professionalism.

Oscar says nothing, doesn’t stop or sigh give any indication he’s heard her other than a slight turn of his head that she only catches thanks to the harsh cast of light from his scroll.

“Nothing,” he exhales more than says, “But I think I understand a little better why Qrow decked me outside Argus, now.”

“He shouldn’t have.” Ruby had made a point to call him out on it later, when he wasn’t drowning in his cups.

Oscar only hums in response. A small, noncommittal sound nearly eaten up by the darkness ahead of them. She has his attention now, but already feels the delicate threads slipping from her fingers.

“I get it, too,” she says, “But you didn’t deserve it.”

“How can you be sure?” he scoffs, but the words sound rote.

“Because you’re your own person, Oscar. I believed it then and I believe it now.”

He whirls around to face her without warning.

“Just because you say something doesn’t make it true, Ruby. Be reasonable.”

Ruby halts mid-step, shrinking away from Oscar’s sudden reproach. She doubts he meant to fire it at her like an arrow, but it lands all the same. Reminiscent of being gored all over again. The scroll light washes out his face, makes his own features look like approximations of themselves. She’s sure, from his vantage point, she looks similar.

Eventually the hard lines of his expression melt, and he sighs.

“I’m sorry. My head is killing me right now and I… Never mind. We should probably just keep moving.”

Ruby doesn’t say anything, opting for a return to silence over embarrassing herself again. She takes her steps measuredly, imagining every maudlin thought crushed underfoot, and restricts herself to frowning at his retreating back.

 

---

 

Ruby doesn’t know how long they spend meandering their way through the dark and doesn’t bother to keep track. Oscar navigates. They make their way by the blue light of his scroll and try not to jump at every pebble that rumbles off the walls. No clamoring Grimm emerge from the stone, but Ruby can’t shake the feeling they’re being followed.

So emerging from the tunnels unscathed comes as a bit of a surprise, the sand-riddled floor of the ravine finally opening up before them. There’s no light to shield her eyes against, not this far down. When Ruby looks up she sees the sky reddening over their heads like a gash, the view narrowed by the depth of the chasm walls.

Oscar stops once they’re out in the open again. Ruby nearly runs into him, distracted by all the open space now at their disposal. The feeling of being followed has only intensified with every new angle of attack.

“Still can’t connect to the others,” he sighs.

“Are we the ones too far down to connect?” she murmurs back. For whatever reason, the quiet blanketing the mine feels like their best defense against another ambush.

He puts away the scroll pensively. “Only one way to find out.”

Nothing looks familiar to her, but Oscar walks with purpose and Ruby is still willing to follow. She grips Crescent Rose a little tighter, trigger finger ready to pull at a moment’s notice. Yet no Grimm come to greet them as they walk further along the ravine floor, working their way to another set of wiry metal service stairs.

Whether they’re the same ones they’d used to come down here earlier, Ruby can’t say for sure. If they aren’t the same ones, they look to be in equally abysmal condition.

Seemingly undaunted, Oscar takes the first step. The second. Metal groans on the third and echoes through the chasm like a raid siren. He stops to brace himself on the rickety railing, but Ruby sees no sign of the structure giving way just yet.

She doesn’t get the chance to ask him if he’s feeling okay this time. The second the sound of the weak metal subsides, one Centinel erupts from the rock wall between them and another from the ground a few feet behind.

Ruby’s paranoia pays off. She’s already whipping around to fire, landing a headshot on the Grimm at her back. At the same time, she hears the staccato beat of cane meeting carapace before ending on a thunderous crack. She doesn’t wait to start running up the steps, meeting Oscar’s eyes through a haze of ash. Stone continues to crack along the walls and Ruby is more aware than ever of the flimsy bolts and braces keeping the stairs aloft. How many steps they still need to take before they reach safety.

“Go!” Ruby yells, as if either of them needed any encouragement. Crescent Rose unfurls fully and from there the ascent becomes a haze of chittering legs, plumes of Grimm-smoke, and the drumbeat of their feet on the metal stairs.

These things are smarter than she’d ever given them credit for. They don’t just go for direct attacks, but bash themselves against the stair supports and nip at their legs in an attempt to throw them off balance. Most of the time it doesn’t succeed, but it does serve to slow them down. For each Centinel that she cuts off of their retreat, two more seem to come through the walls.

All the while, the metal walkway continues to creak ominously. Ruby takes stairs two at a time when she can.

Despite their unstable footing, Oscar’s headache concerns her more. There’s as many Grimm in their way going up as chasing them from behind, and he’s kept the way clear so far. If she didn’t know better, she wouldn’t suspect anything amiss. But she does. Already she’s running though the mental math of how much further they have to go, whether or not a Petal Burst could close the gap.

Ruby cuts down another Centinel just in time to see Oscar’s foot hook on the next stair. He pitches forward, catches himself, but the impact causes the failing stairs to shift.

“It’s not far now,” Ruby says, panting. She reaches out to help him to his feet. For a split second, he’s dead weight in her arms, and Ruby feels her heart bottom out.

Just as quickly, it passes. Oscar hauls himself upright, eyes unfocused, and they resume the climb.

The sky is now less a cleft of light over their heads than a wide ribbon of sunset red. A finish line, if only they can cross it. Ruby can’t let her focus waver for a second, cleaving through the Centinels whenever they pop up.

But something has to give.

Below, where the supports for the stairs are bolted into the stone, a Centinel wraps itself around them and squeezes. They crumple and rend. The entire structure tilts violently. Ruby winds an arm around the guardrail out of instinct, for all the good it would do should the stairs come completely unmoored.

In the time it takes her to get her bearings, another Centinel crawls out of an existing hole in the wall and whips itself at them like a flail. Ruby swings her scythe one-handed, but her footing isn’t sound. The swing goes wide and the stairs fall a few feet further in return.

Oscar—poor, bewildered Oscar still unsteady on his feet—hardly sees it coming. The Grimm’s carapace makes contact with his temple uncontested. He stumbles back, bashing the railing as he does. It proves to be more abuse than the old service stair can take.

Metal shrieks, loosening from the stone like a splinter from flesh and Oscar tumbles away with it. Ruby’s chest goes cold, lungs, heart, and all.

(She can envision what’s about to happen before it does. Oscar swallowed up by the dark. The sickening quiet before his body breaks on the ground below. Blood sinking into the sand, one shuddering exhale. It’s alright, Ruby, I had fun anyway—)

Ruby reaches for him over the side of the railing but he’s already gone, well past where her desperate cry can reach.

 

---

 

Oscar is well acquainted with the black behind his eyes by now.

“Oscar? Oscar can you hear me?”

He can, though Oz sounds as if he’s calling to him from a mile underwater. Awareness becomes fickle whenever he’s forced into this back room of his own mind. Most of his senses are lost to him, but the curse still lets through the abominable headache he’s been battling all day. Because of course it would.

“The blow to the head you just took hasn’t helped matters either, I’m sure.”

“Thanks, Oz,” Ah, there’s his voice. “What would I do without you here to point out the obvious?”

It’s a good sign, and Oz brightens in spite of his sarcasm. Not in a way Oscar can see, but they have little need for visuals in a space like this. Oscar tends to think of it as their faultline. The gossamer thin veil that keeps one of them distinct from the other. Barely so, at this point.

In giving it form, he regains his vision anyway. Magic now ripples gently between them like lake water, viewed from below the surface. His own reflection looks back to him with eyes that are not his own. Oscar recoils from the veil on instinct.

“You know it’s not my choice,” Oz says with Oscar’s face, Oscar’s voice.

“If you chose this it would be so much worse,” Oscar shudders.

Everything in the real world happened so fast, he had a hard time parsing what was true and what wasn’t. Ruby. The Centinels. All the climbing, then the falling—

“I can see you forming the thought already, and no, we are not dead. Though you may be if you cannot wake soon.”

“You mean you haven’t taken control?”

“I can’t,” Oz says, and Oscar immediately knows the truth of it. Yet the curse is insistent, pulling them closer and closer until he meets his Oz-reflection at the water’s surface.

Oscar doesn’t allow it to draw him any further and looks away. Tries to push off the veil’s surface, to search for a way back to reality. Resisting the pull is second nature after so long, but the curse is determined to punish him for his efforts. The migraine sharpens further, until everything has gone white and left him to choke on the pain.

“Easy, easy! You know we can’t force the curse to act as we wish.”

“I know,” Oscar bites back, refusing to meet his gaze “But one of us has to wake up.”

“You misunderstand me, Oscar. You’re still in control, for now. And I believe we have a little time to work this out.”

“You’re willing to bet our lives on that?”

“You don’t need me to take over,” Oz says, obnoxiously steady, “There’s nothing I can do in this situation you can’t do as well.”

This has always been a counterbalancing act: he and Oz sharing space on the head of a pin. Yet he knows, bone-deep, it’s that same balance which keeps him asleep, prevents Oz from reaching out himself.

He realizes this with mounting panic he cannot hide. It’s not just their wellbeing at stake, after all. Ruby is out there alone with at least a dozen Grimm ready to throw her down a thousand foot drop should they get the chance. Would she need his help to fend them off? She’s good, but even she might struggle to clear the path up and cover her back at the same time. Oscar’s fingers twitch, reaching for a weapon that’s no longer at hand.

Whatever the odds, he still believes she’d make it out. Exactly how she made it out of her last mission: bruised, bleeding and alone with his literal dead weight. The idea tastes sour, makes him feel small.

It also isn’t enough.

Ruby doesn’t need him. He’s known this as long as he’s known the depth of his feelings for her. Perhaps that fact stung more than he’s ever been willing to admit, but it’s a well-scarred wound by now. The curse has found its anchor in a fresher cut.

‘Does pushing everyone away make it easier for us, or for you?’

What did he get from refusing to face himself in the mirror? When had he lost the heart to even look?

Haltingly, Oscar raises his eyes back to the veil. Oz hasn’t moved, ever-patient.

Looking over his own image, Oz’s countenance has etched it with every quirk and line that could be drawn by a multitude of lifetimes. Failures, triumphs, sorrow and laughter and drudgery. Too gnarled a mask to fit over the youthful slope of his cheeks, yet he sees it there all the same. No room left for anything of himself under the impression of all that time.

A perfect refraction.

He doesn’t know how he’d answer Blake’s question, not yet. But Oscar presses his palm to the veil, considers the magic as it sparks and glows under his touch. He could grasp it, save himself and Ruby in an instant if he chose. The temptation is awful and he pulls away, knowing exactly what that bargain would entail.

Oz smiles at this, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Do you see something that scares you, Oscar?”

He’s so calm, like he already knows the answer. He probably does.

“What’s the point of asking a question like that, here?”

“Because I want you to have the choice to respond.”

Oz says this with such gravity it buffets him like an ocean current, thought and feeling made tangible. Lies cannot exist in a place like this, not anymore. The real question is, which truth does he use?

Oscar is afraid of a lot of things. Afraid for the refugees, afraid for his friends. Afraid of uncertainty because he’s come to know it as the most bloodless form of torture, able to conjure a million more splintering fears in its place. He’s afraid for Ruby in a myriad of ways. More afraid for her than he has any right to be, surely.

“I’m afraid that I won’t make it,” Oscar whispers, “But I’m more afraid of what it’ll cost if I do.”

Because the truth is, he’s also afraid for Oz. His companion, his parasite, sometimes-mentor and almost-friend. The man has made more mistakes and told more lies than can fit in a lifetime. At his most spiteful, Oscar only wants him to survive because he knows how well those choices haunt him. But then, that’s how Oz has lived this entire time, isn’t it? Burdened by a task he never wanted and couldn’t lay down.

Do either of them deserve to live more than the other?

“I’m afraid if I take control, I won’t be able to give it back,” Oz responds in kind, more open and truthful than Oscar might have ever heard him be. “So I leave the choice to you.”

“I can’t direct the curse any more than you, Oz.”

“I know. But whatever we’re doing, it seems to be working. Can’t you tell?”

As he says it, Oscar can. Like finally relaxing his shoulders, stiff from a long day in the fields.

Oz looks down at his hands. Oscar is reminded of the many hours of training he’s put in, how the old callouses from farm work began to soften, the Long Memory building new ones in their place. He’d formed hands meant for a Huntsman, a hero. Not a farm boy who had no idea what the world was like beyond his own pasture.

“You don’t need to be afraid for me, Oscar. I’ve been a god, a king, a hermit, almost every other kind of man you can imagine in between.” Oz presses those hands against the veil, now, resolute. “But I don’t know if I could be anyone like you.”

Oscar searches his face for a moment, even though the truth in his words is plain for him here. All latent emotion and unspoken intent.

“You don’t mean—“

“I can’t promise anything. Which may be for the best, as I imagine my promises aren’t worth much anymore. But if it’s ever within my power to keep you whole, Oscar, I will pay the price. Whatever it may be.”

(He’s right, he can’t promise anything because he doesn’t know anything. They thrash and flail against this tightening noose, manage an armistice with fumbling precision and the curse only sinks its teeth in deeper. Oz cannot hide how this torments him. He looks vacant, cornered. The way Ruby had during their match.

But just this once, maybe his good intentions are enough.)

Oscar’s throat closes, overwhelmed by Oz’s sincerity. This is a gift, even if it’s offered as reparation. He doesn’t know how to find the words to accept. Luckily, he doesn’t have to.

He said he fears for Ruby out there fighting all alone, but thinking of her is always a special kind of traitorous. She makes him wonder about the future, such a far away and nebulous thing. He might be afraid of what that looks like most of all.

And it’s how he knows he can’t cede control. Not here, not like this.

“Good,” Oz says, already growing blurry and faded. The waves on the veil have settled into stillness. Now a true mirror instead of troubled waters.

Oscar wakes, and sunlight greets him without pain.

 

---

 

The second Oscar goes over the railing, Ruby lets go. Her own section of the service stair isn’t going to last much longer either, she reasons. Or would, if she spared any thought for her actions. The reality is it’s the most natural thing in the world for her to kick off of the failing stairway and follow him down. Her Semblance will get them the rest of the way there, she’s sure of it.

If she can catch him in time, that is.

Wind rushes in her ears, whips dry and biting against her eyes, but she doesn’t dare close them. As if losing sight of Oscar’s falling form would allow him to escape further from her reach. Ruby knows her Semblance well. Falling too far might take them outside even her well tested limits, but she can worry about that problem when she gets to it.

Panicking now won’t help either of them, so she blocks it out as best she can. The descent becomes a colorless blur, seconds ticking by impossibly slow.

Then, mercifully, her fingers find purchase on the edge of his boot. It’s enough contact for her Semblance to sweep him up, and the two of them rise from the mine in a flurry of red and green.

They go tumbling gracelessly across the sunbaked dirt, Ruby tucking herself into a roll to minimize the impact. Behind them, she can still hear the clamorous clicking of the Centinels and their many legs bubbling up from the chasm, but doesn’t see any sign of them following out of the mine. This does nothing to lessen her trembling, stretching out the time it takes for her to rise onto hands and knees, then onto her feet.

‘That was too close,’ she thinks, as she looks around to try and find Oscar. He’s sprawled a few feet away, limbs lying haphazardly, no sign of movement to be seen. Ruby hadn’t realized he was unconscious, the force of the landing not even enough to wake him. Or was it the cause?

It doesn’t matter. She stumbles into a sprint, slides back down to the ground at his side, and rolls him over so he doesn’t wake to a face full of sand. He doesn’t seem to be all that worse for wear, but the steady rise and fall of his chest is meager comfort given the magic she sees sparking under his eyelids.

“Oh no. No no no no, not now—”

She taps the side of his face a few times. A poor imitation of the slap she’d likely need to rouse him, but she can’t bring herself to add to his catalog of bruises right now.

“Oscar? Oscar, come on. We made it out, now we just have to find Ren and Blake…”

But he doesn’t move, doesn’t wake. Ruby sits with his sleeping form at a loss for what to do, and feels her own breathing grow shallow. Her extremities go cold despite the heat, knuckles stiffening and her ribs rattling thanks to an involuntary shiver. Ruby has never felt more useless.

(But she has felt equally so. At Amity Arena. Atop Beacon tower. No amount of prodigal talent or mythical power will help her fix this now.

For a moment she can’t help but recall Salem—golden haired, glassy eyed, kneeling inconsolable before an empty bedside—and thinks she might understand. If only a little.)

In the end, she doesn’t have to do anything. The magic calms of its own volition. He wakes as if he’d merely settled down in the sand for a nap. Ruby sucks down a sharp gasp, so stunned by the reversal she thinks she might’ve forgotten how to breathe.

Oscar pushes up on his elbows wobbily, eyes crinkling at the corners as he takes her in and readjusts to the light. But she sees Oscar there in the clarity of his gaze, his whole head haloed by the setting sun.

“Ruby? What happened—“

Slowly, the strings pulling her upright ease. Air falls out of her lungs in broken laughter and she tips forward until her head meets his chest. A few tears slip free from her eyes to soak his shirt until she stops them by biting down on the inside of her cheek. To no avail, because when she feels Oscar’s gloved hand come to rest atop her head they start flowing all over again.

“You fell,” she eventually ekes out.

“Right. But we made it out…?”

“Yeah. I caught you.”

“How?”

“Oh, you know,” Ruby sniffles, “Just had to jump down after you, used a quick Petal Burst, and now here we are.”

She wants it to sound irreverent. Heroic. Like it was nothing. Her laughter has dissolved into hiccups and the occasional sob at this point, completely undermining the whole thing.

“You what?” he asks, shifting sharply, “Do you have any idea how badly that could have gone for both of us? What if we weren’t close enough to the top?”

“Then I guess I could have gone back down instead.” Back down. Where the Centinels were swarming and ready to eat them alive. Brilliant plan. “Do you think there was any chance I’d leave you behind?”

There’s a pause as he settles onto his back again, wincing. She imagines he’s as sore as she is, now that they’ve slowed down enough to feel their aches and pains. But she can’t bring herself to move, even though leaning on him like this must add to his discomfort.

“…Of course not,” he sighs, “You always try to save everyone.”

The words wash over her like ice water. She knows she wasn’t thinking of ‘everyone’ when she made that jump.

Once he’d asked her how she could be okay with all of this. The answer was simply that she had to be. She was supposed to be the best of them, all unwavering will and unflinching resolve. No matter how tough things got, no matter what had to be done, Ruby Rose would keep moving forward! Who else would they lose if she didn’t put the world before herself?

But here and now, Oscar presses his gloved fingers comfortingly into her scalp, his even breaths and fluttering heartbeat unmistakable this close. Ruby is amazed how small the world can become in a mere moment.

Then shame comes creeping up her neck, selfish selfish selfish an ever skittering litany across her mind. Self-reproach burns under her skin. Yet it doesn’t hurt like it usually does, tempered by this newfound fear.

“I’m sorry,” she says, almost sure he hadn’t heard her for how long he takes to reply.

“For what?”

“For the argument. For not explaining…“

“Ruby, it’s okay. You don’t owe me anything—“

“But I might have lost the chance to tell you,” she says, pulling back to look at him. “Be honest, Oscar. How hard was it to get back control this time?”

He can’t seem to find his words, pressing his lips into a thin line instead. Harder than it should have been, if Ruby were to hazard a guess.

“I’m sorry,” she reiterates. Solidly, this time. “I shouldn’t have asked to spar so soon, it wasn’t fair to you. I just wanted…”

A distraction? An excuse? What had been the point? It was an abysmal attempt at drawing Oscar out of his shell, she could see in hindsight. Hearkening to the bygone days of training in hand to hand, both of them so woefully bad at it they might as well have been play-fighting. The war and the merge and all the other crises that came later not yet anything beyond abstraction.

“I wanted to pretend everything was fine.”

He searches her face, perhaps still a little dazed. Ruby has to look away, the last of her vulnerability now exhausted.

He’d been there when she and her team recounted their journey through the Ever After, but she knows what she told him and what she didn’t. The full story was a privilege afforded to very few. She thinks about recounting it all again and it’s like her lungs are threatening to collapse.

But Oscar watches her as she freezes, ever patient despite the amount of nonsense she’d just hurled at him. Where he found such a wellspring, she had no idea.

Nothing had been quite right between them since she’d gotten home. If today had taught her anything, she’d wasted too much of his dwindling time acting like it wasn’t. Did she really have time to keep this a secret too?

Ruby barely gets her mouth open again before she hears their names, faint but clear in the distance. She and Oscar both swivel their heads, until they see their teammates waving them down on the horizon.

 

---

 

By the time they make it back to Shade the sun has gone down and the temperature with it, offering some relief from the heat.

The mission was technically a success. The four of them escaped, as ordered, and were fairly sure they could rule out any of Salem’s influence over the Centinel nest. Someone would have to come back to clear out the rest of the nasty creatures at some point, but no one had much incentive to try and brave the mines again overnight.

Oscar drifts through the ride out of the desert and their walk to Shade. Someone takes note of their return and schedules a meeting with Headmaster Theodore at a more godly hour the next morning, but Oscar doesn’t pay it much mind. Not for lack of energy, though he’s sure he looks as exhausted as he feels. Instead he watches Ruby pull on her hood and slip away from the group with a stealthy ease that would make Blake proud.

So, despite his sore limbs and lingering eye strain, he follows her though the halls of the academy instead of seeking refuge in his bed.

He’s not sure if she’s noticed him or not. If she has, she doesn’t show it. They wind their way around corridors and up stairwells, but he doesn’t call out for fear of waking… someone. Not many call the uppermost tiers of the former palace home, but Oscar doesn’t want to risk alerting anyone. Moonlight spills over windowframes and through archways, leaving quiet shadows in which they can travel undetected. Making any sound beyond that of their footsteps feels almost sacrilegious this time of night.

Ruby turns left, the ends of her cloak disappearing around the corner. He’s lost sight of her, but this is a corridor Oscar knows well.

Just another quick turn, a hop over the banister, and there’s the ledge that barely qualifies as a balcony. The same place he’d spent so many sleepless hours with his scroll.

“Thought you might follow me,” Ruby says. She settles down on the stone floor, knees tucked up under her chin.

“I hope that’s okay?”

He says it like it’s a question, but his waning strength is already pulling him down to her level. She gives him a smile and a nod, but her eyes won’t settle anywhere near him.

“It’s fine. I probably shouldn’t put this off anyway.”

Oscar doesn’t have it in him to pretend they’d not been on the precipice of a conversation back in the desert, but he wishes he did. Ruby hasn’t said a word and looks worn out from it already. The deep breath she takes does little to minimize it, but at least that seems to help her look him in the eye.

“I know the whole Ever After story got kind of confusing, sometimes. I’m about to make it more complicated, but I wasn’t trying to keep secrets, I promise. It’s just… kind of hard to talk about.”

“Don’t force yourself if you don’t want to—“

“It’s okay, Oscar. Really.”

When Ruby first recounted her time in the Ever After, he’d taken note when she quickened her way through the tale. Skipping over what he’d thought, at the time, were unnecessary periods of travel or discussion. It was easy to fill in the blanks and assume she’d taken some time apart to clear her head, and reappeared at the most opportune moment. Living up to the heroic impression she’d left behind on Remnant.

She’d skimmed over the encounter with Neo during the fall, her conflict with Jaune at his lowest merely a ‘disagreement’ about what to do next. The path she’d taken from the flooded village to the final encounter at the Tree constituting more of an outline than a story. Oscar wasn’t one to press for personal details if they weren’t pertinent or freely offered, so he never asked. Ruby offered them more than freely now, in all their deleterious glory.

That Neopolitan would use his image against her so was unconscionable, but to do it twice? He expects the shock, pulling his jaw slack and setting his thoughts racing in time with her words. The anger is something else. Something unfamiliar and feral he has to tie down before finding his voice again.

Which he has time to do, because she just keeps going. She tells him everything this time. About poor Little, and the cat’s betrayal. About the deep, gnawing hole she allowed to swallow her up, the Blacksmith, the Tree. No details spared, even when speaking them clearly cuts her to ribbons.

Her mother is seemingly the step too far. “She lied—“ all that breaks through the cage of her mouth before she quiets.

(Over the course of her story, Oz merely retreats. Voluntarily reducing his presence to a murky simmer. Oscar lets him go without a fight.

Oz has lived a very long time and seen some horrors no one should have to see. There's few things left in the world that can make him flinch, but this seems to be one.)

“…and you pretty much know the rest.”

She’s pulled into herself completely, arms wrapped around her knees, shivering now and again. Oscar knows it’s not because of the weather, the sunbaked wall behind them still radiating heat all these hours after dusk. He gives himself the excuse anyway, laying an arm around her shoulders in a half-hug he’d find scandalous were he more awake to scold himself for it. Ruby leans into his offered embrace before he can ever second guess.

“Who else have you told?”

“My team. Jaune. Raven and Uncle Qrow know what they need to.”

So she hadn’t been bearing this alone, at least.

Back in the desert, she said she wanted to pretend everything was fine. It makes more sense to him now, knowing what grisly scenes had been lurking in the back of her mind. And he had the gall to keep her at arms length all the while.

“I guess I just don’t understand… why me?”

Her eyes are wide and mirror-bright when she blinks back at him, “What?”

“Why would Neo— I mean—“ It’s hard to look at her suddenly, his face warming by degrees. Now wasn’t the time to be presumptuous. “She could have used Weiss, your sister…”

She looks ensnared by the question. Oscar combs over her features, hoping to figure out why, but that only seems to make it worse.

“The same reason you won’t tell me what you want, I guess… I’m really sorry for shoving you around at the end of that fight, by the way.”

That last part comes out in a rush. Embarrassment colors her face, but something else lurks in her nervous gaze, too.

“Ruby, it’s okay. I—“ A thought crystallizes for him, then, “I know that story must have been tough to get through, but I have to ask… what do you want for yourself, after all this is over?”

“I…”

There’s a heavy moment before she answers. She’s already emotionally stripped raw, but he hopes it doesn’t scare her away from the truth.

“I don’t know,” She drops the confession like a weight, but at the same time he feels her settle further against him. “I don’t want to die. Of course I don’t. But then I think about Penny, Pyrrha… Everyone we’ve lost gave up their entire lives just so we could keep fighting. Were their sacrifices even worth it, if I’m not willing to do the same?”

She looks at him, earnest and hollow eyed. He doesn’t have a good answer for her. Wonders how often she’s seen him look just like this.

“You’ve got so much more to offer the world than martyrdom, Ruby.”

“And what about you?”

“What about me?”

She turns to face him fully, “Whenever you aren’t avoiding your friends, you’re off working yourself to the bone. Or letting Oz do it for you. How is that not the same thing?”

“No matter what I do, I don’t see how the curse lets me survive this,” he says, and takes care to do so evenly, “I haven’t in a long time. It’s not as if I want to disappear, but we know so little about how the curse works. Even if I don’t disappear, maybe it’s at Oz’s expense. Or what if we can’t reverse it, and we’re just stuck like this…”

He’s spiraling. He knows he is and for a second he thinks this might have finally driven her off.

Ruby remains inscrutable but, for whatever it’s worth, she stays pressed snugly against him. He’s not sure why that fact stands out. It’s far too late to take back the gesture now. Not that he really wanted to. So long as she was comfortable.

“You know, I’m here if you ever want to talk about it.”

“Thanks, Ruby, but you have enough problems.”

She nudges him, “Why don’t you let me decide if it’s a problem?”

“Because I know you won’t say no,” he counters, “You’re already jumping in front of charging Jackalopes for random strangers. What more would you be willing to do if I asked for help with this?”

“Well too bad, because I’ve already decided I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“You shouldn’t have to—“

“I don’t care if I have to, Oscar. You’re too important for me to lose!”

The words hit him like the crack of a whip, and he’s stunned silent. So is Ruby, by all measures, now clasping her hands over her mouth.

“I— I mean. I’m going to help because I want to— wait. This isn’t coming out right at all…” She clams up again, her face somehow growing redder than it was to begin with. But for all her embarrassment, she still hasn’t moved away from him.

(Maybe he wasn’t as presumptuous as he thought.)

“You’re allowed to want things, Ruby.”

She huffs, “So are you.”

And that’s all this comes down to, isn’t it? They’ve been dancing around the point this entire time, but it really isn’t so complicated as they want to believe. How they get there is one thing, but what does denying themselves a future accomplish? Oscar still isn’t convinced he’ll live to see his, but Ruby deserves a happily ever after as much as any of them, whatever form that takes.

“What can I do to help you stop being so reckless on missions?”

“How do I convince you we’re going to break the curse?”

They hold each other’s eyes, neither one willing to back off the pyres they’ve built for themselves.

Ruby blinks first, breaking out into a peal of giggles. The sound is mirthless and sweetly-sharp to his ears.

“Look at us," she says, “What are we so afraid of?”

Deciding who you’ll die for is easy, as it turns out. But deciding who you’ll live for?

“I don’t know,” he says, unable to hold back his own hollow laughter. It isn’t a lie, but it’s also not quite the truth. Not yet. “Do you think the world would end if we just figured it out later?”

“Will you stay with me long enough to find out?”

She isn’t laughing anymore. Oscar's response sticks in his throat, cloying and suppressive.

His first impulse is to keep his secrets, deny her the honesty she wants as he had in the sparring ring. But he’s exhausted. He almost died today, might lose himself any day so long as the God of Light’s curse had him under its yoke. Would it really be so horrible to make a promise he’s not sure he can keep?

Ruby likes to insist he’s braver than he thinks, that he’s his own person. Insists that she’s going to save him even without the first clue how. Saying something doesn’t make it true, but she means it every time.

The least he can do is meet her halfway.

“…Yeah, I will.”

She smiles then, the sliver flash of her eyes putting the moon to shame, and he knows he made the right choice. Oscar indulges and holds her a little tighter.

“That goes for you too, you know,” he says, “Do you have any idea how it felt seeing you come back from your last mission the way you did?”

“After today? I think I do.”

He replays the day’s events in his head, the story she’d told him. He supposes she would, at that.

They sit silently together for a minute, an hour. Oscar doesn’t keep track and doesn’t want to. Stars glimmer over their heads, no sign of sunrise in sight. At some point Ruby’s head tips onto his shoulder, some point later and he lets himself do the same. She must be fighting sleep as hard as he is, neither one of them willing to let the moment expire.

They’ve cut themselves to the quick enough for one day. Might as well take respite where they can.

Maybe they save Remnant in time to save him too. Maybe they reach the end of this wild journey and go find their mythical futures. Together or apart, it’s too soon to tell and too terrifying to know. They’ve made it to the edge of the map, now. Sooner or later they’ll have to fend off what monsters reside there and, if they’re lucky, venture forth into the unknown that lies beyond.

But not right now. Right now they can just be two kids up past curfew, keeping each other company in the hallowed hours between midnight and sunrise.

Notes:

Can y'all believe I originally thought this would top out at 9k words? lol. lmao, even.

I'd like to thank everyone for reading and commending and kudos-ing. Fanfic isn't my usual wheelhouse and I wrote this for exactly me, but it's been thrilling to see how many of you have also enjoyed it <3

If you managed to miss it somehow, here is another link to the beautiful artwork by Chaikachi depicting the end of ch. 4, and here is a link to all the songs from the chapter headings should you be interested.