Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

‘The tree gives what you need, and takes what you don’t’

Those were the words of the Blacksmith in her forge, as she urged the black-haired girl through the flames.

But Ruby stood in the orange glow of the fire, feet rooted to the floor, as she stared transfixed by the way in which the clockwork woman fed the fire with logs from the tree itself.

The girl in question hesitated, the pang of pain shooting from her calves and back- product of her final fight with Neo- made her walk in a rather awkward and stunted way.

The rest of her team, in various degrees of injury and exhaustion, had already gone through the fire, as well as a newly Ascended Jaune with a fresh out of the forge Juniper resting in his old scabbard for Crocea Mors.

Yang and Blake had gone in hand in hand, a reassuring smile plastered on her older sister’s face, although strained and broken. Blake’s own smile was more subdued, the sting of Ruby’s words had left a minuscule scar, that although was bound to heal, barbs were still there to be picked out.

Weiss had taken a confused and weakened Jaune, back to his original age, hurt and trauma still in his eyes, but he was able to see with clarity now. She had shouldered Jaune’s weight as he struggled to amble out of the forge and into the flames, “See you on the other side”, she had said to her partner before disappearing. There were no smiles nor grimaces, and was by far the most reassuring way she could have said to Ruby in that moment.

But still Ruby stood paralyzed, Little’s paws gently tapping her cheek reassuringly.

‘The fire will heal you’, the Blacksmith had insisted, her voice sending a shiver down Ruby’s back.

Badum.

“Change is always scary but staying the same is something scarier altogether: bo-ring!”, exclaimed the Cat nestled in her arms, tail swishing back and forth as they itched to know what was beyond the fire. The Cat’s curiosity had grown to an all time high after being welcomed back to the tree, and even if they had no prior recollection of the things they had done, their heart still remembered and ached.

Badum.

Ruby turned nervously to the Blacksmith, a question in the tip of her tongue.

“The fire will take you where you need to go. It is not what you want, but what you need”, the Blacksmith said in her monotone voice, seemingly glancing at the Curious Cat as they shrunk under her metallic gaze.

“Meowch!”, the Cat cried as it wiggled about, “I am not sorry for getting mixed up in your job, though”, they said to the Blacksmith, their voice holding a nonexistent sentiment of sincere apology. 

“The Alchemist you sidelined long ago is back. Be forever grateful these girls prompted his Ascension back to his original role”, the Blacksmith commented with a reproaching lilt to her voice.

In a fit of childish pettiness, the Cat’s upper body floated to a vase with a pretty snowdrop arrangement, and batted at it with unrepentant glee before marching on their two front legs back to the rest of his body. “There!”, they exclaimed with satisfaction.

Ruby rolled her eyes, before observing the way the broken pieces of porcelain intermingled with the flowers strewn in the puddle of water on the floor.

Flashes of the prior events flitted about her mind, the darkest moments in her life framed by the sheer nonsense of the Ever After, somehow fitting the folly of Neo’s attempts at murdering the scythe wielder.

A huntress only killed Grimm.

What would that make her, then?

Ruby shook her head, “What about Neo?”, her voice cracked at the end, remembering the smirk the Illusionist had given her, even as her eyes dulled out of cognizance.

“The Queen of Hearts will stay in her domain. She will cause her usual mischief, as her heart is wont to do, but she won’t harm anyone like she did before becoming an Afterean”, the Blacksmith said in an offhandedly tone.

Ruby nodded, still unsure and a little bit peeved at the fact that somewhere out there in the Ever After, an Ascended Neo stood over legions of Aftereans, silently decreeing their beheading if they ever beat her at croquet.

“Well? Will you cross the burning bridge to your world, or will you let me whisper to your heart?”, snapped the Curious Cat, their body elongating like a slinky as they wrapped themselves around her shoulders like a scarf.

Ruby shook her head at the Cat, and with one last look behind her shoulder, she bid goodbye to the Blacksmith and crossed the fire to destinations unknown.

While she walked through the wall of flames, Ruby took note of a few things.

The first was the sudden dead weight in her arms, solid and pointy.

The second was the fiery breeze that blew past her uncovered shoulders.

And the third, as she stood out of a fireplace of all things, was the sheer chaos that surrounded her as she felt her world spin off quilter multiple times as soon as her boots left the brick of the fireplace.

It all happened too quickly for her to later recall the events herself, but the fact was that…

An invisible force pushed Ruby into the nearest object, which so happened to be a bookcase. A flurry of rain and wind buffeted Ruby in the face harshly, nearly robbing her of her own breath.

The room buckled up and down, the entire structure of the building she was in heaved and creaked as loud turrets of wind whistled past her ears, and as her body hit the wooden furniture, the back of her skull was hit with something hard.

She buckled down on her knees and hands, the metallic clatter of something rolling around noisily around the spinning living room she had been transported to.

“RUBY!”, Yang screamed as she uselessly reached out to her sister, her own body pinned to the walls of the room as the room shook and spun out of control.

Blake clung to the blonde huntress’ side with one arm as she tried rearing Weiss back from the ceiling using Gambol Shroud’s ribbon.

Through her quickly dotting sight, Ruby was able to see Jaune pinned to one of the room’s corner as he retched into a decorative vase, looking mostly fine in his otherwise green pallor.

Ruby let herself be corralled into the bookcase by the speeding force of the spinning room, realizing that she had not seen the Cat nor Little anywhere.

“Little!”, her voice sounded hoarse and strange in her own throat, the desperation to find her small friend gripped her heart.

‘They must have fallen off my hood with all of this…happening’, Ruby thought as she fought against the tiny pinpricks of black threatening to overtake her entire field of vision.

With all of the shaking and wretched winds howling into their faces, Ruby’s only guess was that the tree had somehow felt that they needed to be transported to a living room in the middle of a tornado.

The room shook intensely then, apparently losing altitude if she were to judge by the myriad of trinkets floating up instead of rolling around like they had been a moment ago.

A squeak coming from the silver-eyed girl’s right was all she needed to launch herself to the flailing mouse hanging on a lamp’s shade with the last remaining energy she had as she used her semblance.

In the split second between securing Little between her palms, and the room stilling with a deafening silence, a shock of white and golden energy streamed into the room through the shattered windows, carrying with it a sonic boom that sounded like a maniacal screech intermingled with her own anguished screams as the rest of the team cried out in terror with her.

The speed at which the entire building they were in was falling must have been extreme, and Ruby went from being suspended in midair, to be flung face first into the ceiling, narrowly missing the pointed tips of the ceiling lamp by an inch.

The fall seemed to go on eternally, the golden light of the explosion still streaming through the windows, although it was just beginning to fade by the time Ruby realized how fast Little’s heart was hammering as they clung to her collarbones.

Finally, the entire room seemed to right itself up, and with a resounding crack and splatter, gravity pulled Ruby roughly into the carpeted floor of the living room.

Through all of this ordeal, as she fell back to the floor, Ruby only asked herself, ‘But where in the world is that darned Cat?!’.

The world seemed to answer the silver-eyed huntress as the air was knocked out of her lungs once her back slammed into the floor by means of a heavy, circular object impacting Ruby right in the middle of her forehead, finally bathing her world in darkness.

“-up! Please!”, a broken wail pierced the pitch black darkness of unconsciousness.

The sounds around her were muffled and distorted, but beat by beat she was able to pick sounds apart.

The first thing she became aware of was the lack of spinning or turbulence.

“-air, back up. Urg-let me try-“, Ruby felt something sharp dig into her back as her legs were hoisted up.

The second, hurried footsteps around her beaten body, hands checking her pulse, a flickering ear tickling her nose.

“-did she have to…a corset of all things! …choking hazard!”, suddenly, the tightness in her chest decreased as Ruby felt slender fingers untie the strings to her corset.

Ruby took a deep breath hungrily, finally aware of the deep ache in her ribs and lower back as air filled her lungs.

“There she goes!”, Yang’s voice rang with a tone of relief.

The silver-eyed huntress opened her eyes blearily, blinking multiple times until the wrecked room and her teammates came into focus.

“What…?”, Ruby’s voice was a mere whisper, more concussed and dizzier than she had been since her misadventures began.

Yang helped Ruby to lean on her, basically draping her little sister across her lap, “The tree took us to a house, I think, and as soon as you stepped out of the fireplace, we got picked up by a… hurricane?”, Yang explained, trailing off as she looked at Weiss for clarification.

The white-haired huntress shrugged, “I only know that even though Jaune has lived thirty years worth of trauma, he’s still our Vomit Boy”, she commented, nodding to the now young Jaune.

The teen in question only sneered at the ex-heiress, patting Ruby’s legs with his palms, “I think this should be enough to get her circulation going, right?”, he asked Yang, deciding to not engage Weiss in her teasing.

Ruby lolled her head left, finding Blake kneeling by her side, her cupped hands holding a very scared Little that cowered into the faunus’ neck.

Feeling a bit woozy, Ruby wriggled her legs from Jaune’s arms and let her sister and Weiss help her up.

As soon as she was up, Little perked up from Blake’s caring hands and leaped towards Ruby.

Instantly, the field mouse made themselves at home right into Ruby’s cape, snuggling down contentedly.

“Alright”, Ruby said after a beat of silence, “Let’s get this over with. Hope the tree is as helpful as advertised by the Blacksmith”, she said with a tired sigh, motioning to the front door that had miraculously stayed attached to the wooden frame of the cracked and splintered walls.

Weiss took the lead and Jaune guarded the rear, while Yang and Blake flaked Ruby’s side as she hobbled to the door. As soon as she was close enough to the door, Weiss picked up a slight crunching of gravel coming from the other side.

The white-haired huntress raised her hand in alarm, her ears trying to define the sounds coming from the other side, readying Myrtenaster to strike with her glyphs as soon as she was able to push the door open.

Weiss did not have to push too hard on the door to open, a gentle touch was all it took for the blasted thing to fall from its hinges with a muted pop, sending dust and debris flying all over the place.

Weiss held her stance, looking over her shoulder at the rest of her team as they too prepared to launch their attacks to whoever was waiting for them.

As the dust was finally beginning to settle, Weiss was able to see a figure with a broadsword lunging at her.

Thick metal clashed with Myrtenaster’s blade as Weiss pushed with her weapon against their attacker, preparing a glyph to clear the doorway for her teammates to escape.

Just as white nevermore feathers rain on her foe, a wall of ice dust forms around the person.

Weiss halted her attack, standing still as the wall of ice shimmered before dissipating in a shower of dust.

The broadsword user let out a bitter laugh, brandishing his weapon as he stalked low and ready to attack at any moment, “Should have known Salem would create make-believe copies of my family to catch me off guard”, he growled in defiance.

Weiss relaxed her stance, her eyes blown wide at the apparition, “Why-How? Who gave you permission to use Grandfather’s sword?”, she spat out the first thing that came into her mind, her feet planted firmly to the floor.

The person behind the wall was just as slack jawed and tense, the ornate broadsword cluttering to the ground as a deafening silence enveloped the group.

“Weiss?”, the person said with a gasp, his voice sounded familiar yet so very alien to Weiss. His clear blue eyes shimmered as tears threatened to fall, and with a sob, the person threw himself to Weiss’ arms, “It’s you!”, he cried out.

Weiss hugged the teenager with all her strength, finally after so many days of swallowing her own tears, she was able to heave and cry like she wanted.

After what felt like an eternity, the white-haired huntress separated herself from her brother and looked at him up and down, noticing the scuff marks in his clothes, and the bleeding gnashes along his face, “Whitley”, she began, looking up at the scared blue eyes of her little brother, “Why are you so tall?!”, Weiss exclaimed, utterly confused.

Whitley paused, his mouth forming a perfect ‘o’ as he stared at the rest of his sister’s team and Jaune, “You look…”, he took a step closer to them without letting go of his sister, “You look exactly how I remembered seeing you for the last time during the Fall”, he said in bafflement.

“Wait,”, Blake called out, moving in tandem with Yang as they helped a battered Ruby to hobble closer to the exit, “It’s been two weeks, maybe three for us since Atlas”, the dark-haired huntress said as Whitley led his sister and her team out of the wreckage.

Yang nodded, “Yeah. And it looks like you either had a magic leg surgery to stop being so twerpy, or-“, she waited for Jaune to leave the building first, judging the precarious porch steps in front of them.

“Oh, gods.”, Jaune muttered in abject horror, his hand going to scratch at a beard that he did not have anymore, “We time traveled.”, he let out with a hoarse and bitter laugh, clambering noisily into a destroyed street with mounds of sand and concrete piled randomly along the upturned pavement and upside down houses.

Ruby shielded her eyes against the glare of the sun, still not quite out of the building yet, and felt a gale of hot and humid air fly past her legs.

“We must be in Vacuo”, the silver-eyed teen surmised, quietly taking in what had previously been a shopping district, now looking like someone had taken all the buildings, alongside the pavement and pipes, and flipped them all over like a pancake.

“Oh gods,”, Blake breathed through her teeth, “Where’s everyone?”

Just then, frantic flapping of wings sounded over the valley of destroyed houses and buildings.

A pigeon and a very small bird flew to where they had gathered in the street, circling wildly overhead, their calls sounding louder by the minute as a two bird cacophony, before they swooped down in a flurry of feathers.

The returning huntresses and hunter were blinded by two flashes, pink and green light drowning even the sun, while Whitley barely closed his eyes in annoyance.

Jaune had barely any time to register the two pair of arms clinging to him, turning his head this way and that, checking his pulse, making sure he was alive, before being hugged and manhandled to every inch of his life.

An overexcited Nora had taken Jaune prisoner in her arms, the lightning scars flashed briefly in her enthusiasm as the huntress nearly broke the blonde’s diaphragm in half with her embrace.

Ren’s arms on the other side were firmly planted around Jaune’s middle, the black-haired hunter had latched onto his long-lost friend and had no intention of letting go.

“You’re finally home”, came Ren’s relieved voice among Nora’s unintelligible yells of excitement.

That had been enough for Jaune to crumble, his knees folding over as he felt the air leave his lungs and the strength that the Tree had given him before coming back to Remnant let him open the floodgates of emotions he had repressed for over thirty years.

From the spot the reunited members of Team JNR hugged each other, Ren looked up to where Ruby stood with Blake and Yang supporting her weight. Ren and Nora had outgrown them physically, Ruby noticed, as the red-head looked stronger, her face a little bit more angular and striking even from the distance. Ren seemed to have grown a few inches taller, his usually serene face had matured, but just like Nora, he had an air of sadness and restlessness that he did not have before Atlas fell.

As Ruby stood under the building’s porch, observing her friends in front of her, Ren’s pink irises pierced her silver eyes, seemingly scrutinizing every inch of her soul.

Then, he shook his head, his lips forming a small smile as he unwound one of his arms from Jaune’s torso, and lifted it to where Ruby, Yang and Blake were. An invitation.

Yang grinned through tears, and practically lifted Ruby off the ground to meet Ren, Jaune and Nora on the ground, all six of them making way for the multitudinous pile of huntresses and hunters.

“Wait!”, squeaked Weiss from the side as she dragged her brother with her, “I want in on the hug too!”, she reproached her friends before wiggling into the center of the hug, planting herself firmly between Nora and Ruby.

In that moment, Ruby had felt like all the strife she had gone through, the chism in her heart that the Tree had begun to heal, it had all happened a long time ago, and that the arms around her, cradling her and crying out her name, the love of her friends, her family, everything, her reward for enduring the Ever After and its lessons.

It was also that moment the building they had just exited from decided to collapse on it entirety, caving in like a rock had been thrown into a stack of cards.

A gust of dust and sand enveloped the group, severely impairing their vision as they huddled together.

A frigid breeze flittered past them, “Vacuo Military approaching, stand by!”, a firm voice called from above.

Whitley jumped into action, activating a weak glyph with pulsating light, “Zone has been secured! It is safe to touch down!”, he called out as he waved his arm to the voice.

The air grew colder and dry as the whirl of sand and dust around them stalled until it dissipated, revealing a slim figure marching through the wrecked streets.

Whitley looked up with beaming eyes, “She’s alive!”.

The figure halted, zeroing on the pile of former Beacon students still hugging each other in a pile before gliding closer, an incredulous expression on her face.

Weiss popped her head out of the pile for a moment before disentangling herself, “That would be enough for now”, she commented as she patted her ruined battle garb, an embarrassed yet elated blush leaving her face pink, only noticing the person standing in front of her, gawking like she had been a two-headed evermore.

Two pair of blue eyes peered at each other, drinking in all the details of the other in wonder.

Weiss looked up and down at her older sister, noticing how long her hair had been grown out to be arranged in a single, thick braid that fell over Winter’s left shoulder.

“Goodness, Winter. I didn’t know I had to die, allegedly, for you to begin honoring me by copying my style. Amazing.”, Weiss commented, somehow able to make light of the situation.

Winter’s only response was a choked sob, as she kept staring with wide blue eyes at her little sister.

Weiss’ eyes softened, “I’m here”, she said as she came closer to Winter, opening her arms as an invitation, “I know you don’t do hugs, but-“, her words were cut short as the taller woman finally came close and embraced her, gently like she was but a ephemeral snowflake, like she had done when Weiss had been born.

“You.”, was all Winter was able to utter, still in shock.

Weiss hugged her sister back, only separating a bit to pull Whitley in despite his protests.

Nora and Ren hauled Jaune to his feet, as the red-head poked the blond’s face, “What in the hell happened to all of you!”

Blake helped Ruby to her feet, “What happened here? To you?! You all look so…”, she trailed off, noticing the hard lines of Nora’s usually beaming and happy face, the tired eyes of Ren. They looked so much more mature.

Nora shook her head, “You don’t even look a day older than the last time we saw you guys…” she mused.

Ren appraised them all, “It’s been eighteen months, Jaune…Ruby…Yang…Blake…Weiss…”, he said their names slowly, like he had to reacquaint with the sound of calling out to them.

Jaune shook his head, still in tears, “For them it must have been a couple weird days at most. Me? I spent thirty years on that damned island, then died, and then brought back”, he said hugging himself.

Just then, a gasp sounded behind them.

Blake’s ears flicked to the sound, recognizing immediately who it was.

An impossibly older Ghira and Kali, along with Ilia and Sun, were rooted to the floor, paralyzed and numb.

“Please, please, don’t be a trick”, pleaded Ghira.

Immediately, Blake ran towards her parents, hugging them with all her worth.

Ghira engulfed both his wife and daughter in a bearhug, easily sweeping them both off their feet. The little family laughed, and as soon as Blake was put back on the ground, Ilia and Sun went in for the hug.

After asking her what had happened, and noticing her parents and friends looking older, Blake looked back to Yang, a silent conversation between them. Blake took her mother’s arm, gently guiding her to where Yang was.

As she was doing this, Yang looked at her sister, “Can you handle being choked to death with Nora’s love without me?”,

Ruby dried her tears, letting Nora hold onto her, “Yeah, go meet the in-laws, I’ll be fine”, she said with a weak smile, remembering the way she had lashed out at Yang just days before.

Nora and Ren looked at Yang, then at Blake, back to Jaune and then Ruby.

“Did they-“, Ren asked in shock, activating his semblance.

“We missed it?!”, Nora whisper-yelled into Jaune’s ear.

Ruby couldn’t help it. She rolled her eyes. Just then, an impressed whistle.

“Roll your eyes more and I might think you’re one of Neo’s illusions”, a rustle of wings made Ruby turn away from JNR (who were now bickering), and as she came to a broken slab by the door’s threshold, she found a crouching Emerald checking out something in the landing of the building intently.

Emerald turned from the slab, unfurling herself from her crouch. She had longer hair, and her expression seemed more open, a stark juxtaposition to Ruby’s own frown.

“Heh”, was all Emerald said, looking her up and down, “You… look a mess. I dig the whole…window look”, she teased.  

“Oh, shove it, Emerald”, Ruby snapped back with an eyeroll.

“You grew a spine, good for you”, Emerald shot back with a smirk.  

“Why aren’t you surprised like the rest of them? Haven’t we been dead to you for…?”, she tried calculating.

Emerald gave her a smirk, kicking some dark glass from the wreckage. “Let’s say that there was only one person truly convinced that none of you had kicked the bucket, and as things would have it, I believe his word”.

Ruby hummed in contemplation, “Huh?”.

Emerald smirked in an all-knowing, shit-eating way. Instead she asked, “So… Neo?”, she trailed off as Ruby’s eyes darkened, her lips set into a grim line.

“Neutralized”, Ruby simply said. 

A beat of silence enveloped both young women.

“Damn. Alright, I’ll just go check on something. Don’t move.”, Emerald said, and as naturally and nonchalantly as she could, leaped upwards. In the surprise, Ruby blinked and where she last saw Emerald, a magpie flapped its wings before shooting to the sky where it circled around the perimeter.

Ruby wanted to say that the time she spent in the EA taught her enough about the nonsense of the world, and that such transformation did not faze her much, but it was so unexpected and random, that she just stared dumbly at the bird circling and cawing in the sky.

From there, she saw short bursts of golden light, like discs, raining from an undiscernible spot in the sky.

As the golden discs came closer, Ruby was able to distinguish that a person was jumping from disk to disk like it was a staircase.  

As the figure comes closer, it stopped by Magpie Emerald, then turned to where Ruby was rooted to the spot running on the air, as small platforms of golden light formed under his feet.

“Ruby!?”, the person called out in glee, his voice both familiar in tone but foreign in pitch to Ruby’s ears.

The teen jumped from the golden glyph and scurries over unsteady feet, landing just a few ways from her.

With her heartbeat throbbing in her ears, she noticed the constellation of freckles on dark, sun-kissed skin, a fuller, more mature version of the face Neo had used to hurt her.

Oscar, in turn, stood taller and unafraid to occupy space, with wide golden and green eyes staring reverently down at her.

He finally ran up to her, chortling in ecstasy, “I knew it! I knew you were alive!”

But as he came closer, a foot away from her, he stopped dead on his tracks, just about to hug her. Pausing to gauge in Ruby’s expression.

It broke his heart.

She had this haunted look in her face, like she had just woken up from a nightmare; her pupils frozen in fear and her breaths coming in too fast for comfort.

He took a minuscule step forward, “Ruby? It’s me, Oscar”

Numb, she didn’t even acknowledge his statement, and reached out with her hand to his chest, where a dark red color stained his white shirt.

She let her digits sink in the torn and red fabric, staining her own fingers in the blood and bringing it close to herself, her eyes searching for the gaping wound.

With a sudden drop in his excitement, Oscar noticed her actions, and looks down to where she had touched him, “What?”,  he pat himself, just to sigh. “It’s not mine, its-it’s a long story”, he sighed as he combed his fingers through his windswept hair. But Ruby is still looked shellshocked.

Oscar stepped into her space, only for her to step back in fear, “Ruby…what happened? Please, tell me what’s wrong. How can I-“,

He couldn’t finish his  sentence because Ruby tackled him, hugging him with all her might, gripping the piece of clothing just over his heart, and bawled like she had never done in her life.

His hands hover around her at first, but he decided to hug her shoulders, butting his chin on top of her head, and so begins to tear up too.

Ruby had begun to shake as she cried and keened, letting Oscar hold onto her, like he was trying to hold the pieces she had glued by herself, together.

The young wizard turned to Yang in alarm, “what happened?”, he asked with his eyes,  to which Weiss shook her head somberly and mouthed “later”.

After a while, her cries subside, and she separates a bit from him, “Are you real?”, she asked in earnest curiosity, to which Oscar looked at her with a confused expression before flicking her nose.

“Did that feel real?”

Ruby couldn’t help it, she laughed in between her tears, making her team members look at her with widened eyes.

On the other side, JNR are looking at all of this and Jaune is like “Oh no”, and Nora says “Oh yeah. This one spent this entire time trying to convince us that you guys were alive.”, Ren pipes up, “Don’t think it will take them as long as those other two, though”.

Ruby sniffled once, and separated from Oscar while he held onto her forearms in a loose grip from where she could back away or come closer if she wanted to.

She shifted from foot to foot, wincing lightly when she felt her ankle flare up in pain in protest. Noticing this, he scanned her over for further injuries in worry, suddenly blushing bright red.

He quickly averted his eyes to the sky, almost imploringly, and cleared his throat,  “You look cold”, he said in the middle of the desert town, “Here”, he muttered, still not able to look at her in the eye, as he took off his green and wine red jacket, throwing it over her shoulders and quickly doing the first clasp so that it fell around her shoulders like a cape.

Ruby raised her brow, “Oookay…”, She looked around, “Where are we?”, she could see a bunch of destroyed houses and buildings, but that told her nothing. “It looks like a hurricane swept through here”

Oscar made an apologetic face, “We are in the outskirts of Shade Academy, this was the business district. It’s a long story,”, he scratched his head, furrowing his brows as he got his thoughts in order, “But long story short: Salem attacked us again; we had been holding her off for a while after getting the Staff back a year ago. Winter and Raven took on Cinder, while Em, Ren, Nora and I entered the Monstra. Got attacked by Tyrian, Mercury defected to our side, and …”, he touches the blood on his shirt, “We made sure he's never a threat ever again”, he said somberly.

Ruby blinked hard as Emerald rematerialized by them again, “Then we fought…some experiments of Salem, got separated from Os. Next thing we know, Oscar did his wizard magic thing, combined his semblance and his magic and nuked Salem”, the green haired woman mimicked an explosion with her hands.

Ruby was speechless, her mouth hanging comically open. “You unlocked your semblance?! What is-wait, hold on”, she stopped herself mid rant, “Where’s Cinder?”, her question was met with hums of curiosity from her team and Jaune, who at this point had come in closer to listen to Oscar’s and Emerald’s summary of the events.

Winter stepped in, “You all came back from this building right?”, she asked pointing to what was left of the porch.

The homecoming hunters nodded.

Winter shook her head, “Then I have to thank all of you, because while we were fighting Cinder, she had called forth the elements and threatened to raze the entire town. The house you came in, by some ridiculous stroke of luck,”, Winter rolled her eyes as she shook her head in disbelief, “-appeared out of nowhere, whipped right at her, and well…” she trailed off, toeing the tip of her combat boot over thick shards of glass littering the broken up pavement, which now that Ruby thought about it, looked like twisted over legs.

A pregnant pause ensued.

Weiss cleared her throat, “Are you telling me-“,

“Did we crush her to death with a house?” Yang finished, shock coloring her features. Blake just covered her mouth with her hands, unable to form words.

Oscar approached the porch, and with a flick of his wrist, golden light surrounded the concrete slab, revealing what looked like a twisted up body made of dark and thick glass.

Jaune swallowed down bile that rose in his throat.

“It could also be a decoy… I find it hard to believe that a building of all things offed her”, Winter commented as she steered clear of Jaune in case he did throw up.

Suddenly, what looked like Cinder’s Grimm arm began squiggling, breaking away from the crystal encasing it.

It was more liquid than solid, and it began dragging itself toward Emerald like a leech. But before it could reach her, Oscar swung at it with his weapon, not the Long Memory, but a double axe with a long handle, its blade glowing bright gold. The grimm arm seized before it sizzled out of existence. Ruby admired the weapon with widened eyes before Oscar folded it and secured it to his back.

Emerald shrugged, “Ding-dong, the bitch is dead”, she said with a sort of complicated expression in her face.

Nora stepped over to Emerald, “How can we be sure?”

Emerald just sighed, and turned to the rest of the team, “I have a really bad feeling about this”, she said as her eyes glowed a warm orange, magic flaring out like a halo.

Winter shook her head ruefully, “Emerald, I am really, really sorry.”, she said solemnly, as both maidens shared a look of utter hopelessness between them as they considered their burden and curse.

“Em, I’m-“, Oscar began after a moment, a guilty expression on his face.

Emerald slapped him over on the head with a roll of her eyes, “Don’t. This is more my fault than yours. If I hadn’t helped Cinder take it from Amber…”, she sighed as she thought about the choices that led her to that moment, “Of course Cinder would try to get back at me in her last moments. What an utter asshat”, she said kicking one of Cinder’s crystallized feet in reproach.

Ruby looked around the grief stricken group, noticing with surprise how Nora and Ren leaned over Emerald, laying a comforting hand each on her shoulders, as Winter gave the former thief a small smile. Oscar seemed at ease in between the three of them, looking more and more like a team, and not just strangers forced to battle together.

The silver-eyed teen glanced around her, growing concerned as clouds darkened and swirl, just the way ponderstorms used to form in the Ever after. The similarity sent a shiver down Ruby’s back.

She turned to Oscar to voice her concerns, but before she could say anything, a voice behind them interrupted her train of thought.

“I think it’s best if we move this conversation back to the Academy”, they all turned to look at a tall man, wearing a stormy blue cape, silver combat boots, a blue and white checkered vest and red fighting gloves adorned with dust crystals.

The man looked at the returned huntresses and hunter with confused look on his face.

He faced Ruby with stormy grey eyes, “I hope there is a good reason all of you are back from the grave, Little Rose”, then he turned to Oscar and Emerald, giving them a curt nod, “If there’s nobody to rescue in here, I’d say we scram before the big one comes back”, he said before knocking his heels together three times.

A yellow brick slab appeared right in front of the man, “Let’s get outta here”, he said motioning to the Belladonnas, “You first”, he nodded his head at them. Ruby watched in amazement as Ghira and Kali separated from their daughter reluctantly before stepping into the yellow slab, and disappearing completely.

Blake ran to the spot where they disappeared, “Mom! Dad!”, she screamed in anguish.

Sun came up to her, bumping his shoulder with hers, “Relax, that’s the Prof’s own Semblance. That little piece of road took them to the Academy. They are all safe” he explained, “Here, look”.

Then he too stepped into the yellow brick and disappeared as well. After a moment, his arm appeared right over the slab, and waved wildly before disappearing once again.

“You saw him, go on. I have to be the last one to come through to close it”, the man in blue urged.

Weiss looked at him in distrust, “And you are?”, she asked crossing her arms over her chest.

The man let out a belly laugh before turning to Winter, “The Schnee genes are really something! She’s just like you!”

Winter just rolled her eyes, while Whitley nudged his sister, “That’s Professor Theodore Gale, Shade’s Headmaster”, he whispered. At that, the returning huntresses and hunter all relaxed their stances.

Ren and Nora both turned to Jaune with reassuring smiles, “Let’s go together, right Ren?”, Nora said as her partner nodded.

Team JNR held hands, and after Jaune tapped the yellow brick slab with the toe of his boots deeming the thing ‘safe’, they crossed.

Ilia smiled at Blake reassuringly, her eyes darting to Yang as she measured her up in her mind. Silently, the chameleon faunus went in.

“C’mon, it’s not as bad as being sucked by transport tubes”, Whitley teased Weiss, prompting a nudge in the ribs from both sisters.

“Follow me”, Winter said over her shoulder, positioning herself between her siblings before leading their entrance.

“Can’t believe all we’ve done today is crossing over portals”, Weiss said with a small smile dedicated to Ruby, “Once again, I’ll see you on the other side”, she said with a wink.

Only Yang, Blake, Oscar, Emerald, Theodore and Ruby were left in the increasingly dark and windy street.

Yang went over to her sister, sending a grateful look to Oscar, and hugs her. “Let’s go Rubes. I think we are a little bit tired from everything, right?”, she said consolingly.

Ruby nodded, but then jerked up, patting her shoulder and pockets, “Wait, wait. Where’s Little?!”, both Yang and Blake looked at Ruby in horror.

“They’re not with you?”, Yang asked worried, eyes darting back to the building the Tree had sent them in.

“But they’re usually with you!”, Blake said when Ruby whirled around to her sister and team mate.

Oscar looked at the three of them in concern, “Little? Did you bring someone back with you?”, the huntresses only answer was running to the wreckage, turning concrete and wood over and calling out for this ‘Little.’

Oscar sighed, turning to Theodore, “I’m sorry, could you maybe…?”, the teen pointed at the yellow brick slab with his nose.

The Headmaster nodded, “Alright, but Emerald should better make it back. Can’t have a maiden out in the open for too long now.”

With that, Emerald said goodbye for the moment, just before going into the yellow brick road, she paused and ruffled his hair affectionately, “I’ll tell Ren to get dinner going”

Oscar joined the huntresses in the search for Little, without knowing who or what Little was supposed to be.

They turned over wood and concrete, crouching low and lifting debris left and right before a feeble voice carried over by the wind under the rubble.

“Ruby!”, a small voice called out from their right and the four of them scrambled to where the voice had come from.

 Oscar channeled his semblance to make the light tangible around the debris, but Ruby threw herself to the concrete and began to dig desperately, Oscar following suit in his confusion.

Soon, she upturned a wooden crate and after wiggling about, cupped her hands around a little mouse trying to haul a big iron coronet from the rubble.

Ruby exhaled in relief, gently grabbing the mouse while Oscar looked on completely baffled.

After holding the mouse close to her heart, she presented her cupped hands over to the young wizard, “Oscar, this is Little!”

Confused, he opened his palm, laying his fingers over Ruby’s to let the small rodent onto his hand while he sent questioning looks to Yang and Blake, “I see you got a… new pet?”, he trailed off in a question.

He almost dropped the mouse when the little thing bit him in the thumb.

“I’m Ruby’s FRIEND! Not her PET!”, they cried out before turning to Ruby indignantly, “That was not nice, Ruby, tell him that’s not nice to assume I’m a pet”, The Mouse complained.

Stunned, Oscar fumbled with his words, offering his pointer finger to Little, “Uh… I’m sorry?”

Little was about to answer him when Blake asked , “Oh, what did you find here, Little?” , she asked, grabbing the coronet from the ground.

Immediately, Oscar jolted as if he had been electrocuted, his expression turning grim. “That thing reeks of ancient magic”

Blake and Yang shared a contemplative look, then glanced at the coronet in Blake’s hands, “We were supposed to have more company coming back to Remnant, but I think the Cat did not make it like we thought they would have”, the black haired faunus explained.

“The Blacksmith did say that the Cat would go back to their original form once we crossed the portal”, Yang commented.

Oscar’s expression soured the more he looked at the coronet, “That’s… something I did not think I’d ever see”, he stood up with a stony expression in his face. “Let’s get to Shade, quickly. If this is what I think it is, then it’s better we don’t give Salem time to pick up on its magic register”, he offered his hand to Ruby, helping her up. From the intertwined hands, Little jumped from Oscar, back to Ruby, clambering to the top of her head.

With that, the happy and sweet expression Oscar had given her minutes prior, was broken, and Ruby had a feeling that much like herself, Oscar had changed a lot.

Shade at night was colder than one would assume, given that the Sanus Desert was one of the inhospitable biomes Remnant had.

Despite feeling like her bones were made of lead, the tiredness she finally let seep into her very being was not enough to let her fall asleep.

She turned on her side, facing Weiss’ sleeping figure in the bed across from hers, and counted the times her dear friend’s chest rose and sunk with each breath until she found herself counting backwards.

The hearty meal she had received upon entering Shade Academy had done very little to soothe her, instead feeling like her stomach was filled with stones and the air she breathed, damp and humid, was a river waiting for her to dip her toes into it.

She had finally done it.

Her friends found a way back home against all odds.

But she understood now, what Luis would have felt once he came back to the real world. The deep longing and loneliness, the creeping certainty of returning to a world that had learnt to move on.

Life on Remnant went on, despite Salem’s attacks and vicious meddling.

Ruby let out a dark chuckle, ‘I should be thankful that I fell with my team. This must be hard on Jaune…’, she thought drily.

The blond hunter had watched on in abject dread how Emerald had enmeshed into his team. Her involvement in Pyrrha’s death seemingly forgiven in the only way atonement could be granted for people like them, that fought impossible monsters and unending wars.

‘The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb’, was something Ruby had heard Professor Port say during one of his long and winding lectures.

She had observed Jaune be manhandled by Nora endlessly, while Ren had planted himself by his side, and while it should have been enough, she noticed when Jaune’s mask cracked every time his teammates shared a gesture with Emerald. How Oscar, who Jaune had basically adopted as his little brother, was so comfortable with Emerald, letting her bonk his head and hug his shoulders.

A vacuum had been created the moment Jaune fell, and like life tends to do, it found a way around loss.

Ruby turned to her other side, facing the open window and the splattering of stars and clouds in the night sky. The sounds of cicadas in Vacuo was so very different from the ones in Patch.

Back home, the sounds of cicadas would lull her to sleep in the hot nights of summer.

She wondered how her father would take the news of their coming back, visibly unchanged, but battered just as they were by time. Just in different ways.

When Yang had asked about her father and uncle, Theodore had been cryptic and evasive. He cared, that much was clear to her, but how bad did their ‘death’ was on what remained of their little family?

Communications were shot ever since the Second Fall, and what she understood from the few words spoken by Theodore was that Qrow and Taiyang were at Beacon, assisting Glynda however they could.

“Urgh!”, Ruby growled under her breath, mindful of her sleeping friend, and ran her hands across her scalp. She needed to talk to someone. Hopefully someone who was not asleep.

The teen turned to her bedside table and peered down at the open drawer she had filled with a pillow and her cape as a makeshift bed for Little, but the field mouse was not snuggled within.

Ruby sighed, knowing that as tiny as Little was, they were also quite curious and tended to wander off on their own.

Careful to not wake up Weiss (an impossible feat since the white-haired huntress had knocked out as soon as her perfect head had touched a real pillow), Ruby snuck out of the room, shivering as the cold clay tile sent a tendril of cold all the way from her soles to her head.

Theodore had placed the returned huntresses and hunter in the faculty wing of the Academy, the de facto living spaces for the huntresses and hunters directly involved in defeating Salem, something a much younger Ruby would have been elated about, but now after all that she has seen and lived, understood as a measure to ensure the safety of the handful of people who knew the secret of Ozma.

Ruby had zero doubts that Rumpole had ears and eyes in every hallway of the Academy, after all, Theodore did not last this long without a healthy dose of paranoia and incessant double checking.

The winding hallways of Shade Academy were confusing, Ruby thought. She had done up and down, and walked through doors, but still she hadn’t reached any common rooms or the kitchens (she was a bit peckish).

Despite the unfamiliar place, Ruby let her bare feet guide her through the hallways, the newly developed instinct she had been given by the Tree told her that she would arrive where she needed to go.

In her wandering, Ruby remembered the debriefing they had all been subjected to as soon as supper had finished.

As soon as Whitley and Oscar put away the last of the dishes, Theodore placed an ornate iron coronet in the middle of the dinning table.

“Care to inform us about this thing?”, the Headmaster inquired, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked at Oscar with narrowed eyes.

The teen leaned back in his chair, tilting his head to the ceiling lamp and closed his eyes in contemplation as he sifted through tightly wound memories and personas deep inside his soul.

After a moment he sat straighter, glancing at the expectant group of huntresses and hunters and let out a deep breath.

“How much do any of you know about the King of Vale?”, he had asked in a tranquil tone, as if he was just sitting down to discuss fairytales.

Theodore’s blank expression caused Oscar to frown.

“Long, long ago, King Zoroaster of Vale had been known as an indecisive king…”

The crown had been given to the King as a gift by a retired grand vizier. The stories said that the crown had magical properties, letting him see different scenarios. One could say that it was a Relic of ancient magics and a time where miracles were as commonplace as the air we breath today. The King, in his folly, had abused of its power and was driven mad by the crown.

When the King tried looking for the vizier that had gifted him such horrendous thing, the man simply vanished.

The man had been a fantastic inventor, but the time secluded in his laboratory had dulled his heart and loosened his mind.  

“So the King of Vale had the Relic of Choice?”, asked Blake with her hand raised.

Oscar shook his head, “The truth is, like always, much more complicated than that”.

The truth behind the King’s madness was not exactly the Crown. But rather, the internal conflict within his soul. King Zoroaster had been unfortunate enough to be the next body that Ozma would inhabit, which to his utter misery, had been the vizier that gifted him the crown.

The man had been an incredible inventor, but had gone absolutely mad, and had died as a result of an experiment gone wrong. Thus, the King had woken up as the next Oz, and immediately began using the Crown to see the path that led to Salem’s defeat.

But it all was for nothing, for the Crown could only present the possibilities that one person could have, not two at the same time. In time, the King grew frail and ill. It had been a simple courtesan, his future wife, in the end, who was able to use the crown, and helped both Zoroaster Ozma accept each other.

At the end, they merged and the quarrels to gain control and will of their shared body quieted down.

“That does not explain how it ended up in the Ever After”, Jaune commented after a pause.

“Yes, I know. But you gotta understand. That Crown is not the same as this Coronet”, Oscar said slowly. A silence ensued as his words sunk in.

“You gotta be shitting me”, Yang breathed out, “The Crown from the story was never the Relic of Choice”

Ruby’s eyes widened, the dots. “The King had a Crown of Possibilities. But they were not choices. The Cat,”, she pointed at the coronet, “The Cat gives you… ‘a little bit of his heart’ to manipulate others”.

Oscar nodded, “The Coronet of Choice gives their user the capability to completely bypass the willpower of whoever is around them”

“But if the crown from the stories is not the same crown, what happened?”, Weiss inquired, her brows knitted in concentration.

Oscar looked to the light, his eyes glazed over as he poured over the shared memories in his soul. He stared imploringly at the ceiling, closing his fists tightly, and muttered unintelligibly.

Finally, he looked to the party, “They are not happy I’m sharing this with you all, but I’m tired, we are tired of lying. Some of us at least, we want to tell the truth. I am sorry for what I am about to reveal.”, he said, a few angry tears escaping his eyes, as he dabbed at them furiously, “Please, don’t hate me”, he hung his head, hiding his face for a moment before taking a big, shaky breath, “What I’m able to recall, one of the wizards’ … incarnations, the Drunkard, he tried ending it all.”, he answered to the shocked faces of those present,

“It had been centuries, millennia even, since they had been fighting Salem. So, he lost all hope, said, ‘damn it all’, and thus gathered all the Relics, and called forth the Brothers”, he let his words sink in.

“But here we are, aren’t we?”, Ruby murmured, feeling cold and numb.

Oscar nodded, “Indeed we are. When the Dunkard finally joined the relics, something became apparent. Nobody came. No destruction of humanity, of the world. Not even so much as a whisper. It dawned upon us all at that time, that the Brothers had given Ozma an impossible task, and the only way to communicate with them was a phony, broken link. That night, the cycle of the wizard began anew. And again, and again. Until one of the hosts was strong enough to hold all of that anger and sadness in, reign it in”

Oscar swallowed bile, “The lamp he hid away after asking time and time again for the Brothers, but not even Jinn knew the answer. Even she was abandoned! Tried asking Ambrosious to make a portal to the Brothers, but that led to an endless loop of entering on one side of the portal, and out of the other side, still on Remnant. Tried razing the world, but when he unsheathed the sword to get rid of existence, the blade broke. It was all impossible. A joke. A very sick, sick joke. Stuck on this world, until the end of time, paying the price for naturally dying!”, Oscar’s voice broke, still he pressed on. “The crown, the original crown at least, was Choice. But it did not give you the power to see alternative versions of the future, nor was it counsel. Choice is a… misnomer for it. It is Will. Whoever wore the Crown would reign, would convince others to do their bidding. It was, naturally, the Brother of Darkness’ very own gift. And so, he used it. For a while, he saw peace, the Grimm sightings went down so much, towns, cities, humanity thrived. But that peace angered Salem even more, she thought it would have been time to call on the Gods. So, she razed the world, in the years of peace she had been bidding her time, multiplying her legions of Grimm. And so, the Wizard decided to ask Ambrosious for a favor. ‘Build me a portal, to the most recondite, forgotten of places, where neither humans nor the Brothers would go’. It was a door full of stars, and so the Wizard chucked the Crown far, far away from Remnant, sick of his misuse of the damned thing. For he realized that the gifts entrusted to him were toys to keep him busy, while the Gods forgot all about Remnant, and whatever other worlds they had created”, Oscar faced every person in the room, staring at him with shock in their eyes. “The Gods have abandoned us, and I’m never going to rest, I’ll just die one day, and curse some other poor soul to the same fate”, he cried in anger, “The Wizards, Ozma, they are all so freaking pissed off at me right now”, he laughed ruefully, “But I’m Oscar Pine, and I am here alive. Not them. It’s my turn now. And I choose to tell the truth they have been hiding, even from some of us!”

The entire room was submerged in a deep silence before all hell broke loose.

The memory of the resounding crack of Oscar’s ribs snapped Ruby back to reality. After Oscar’s words, everything happened in a blur.

There was shouting, Ren was straining over using his semblance to drown out the negative emotions pouring from the room. Nora had broken down in gasping heaving sobs, while Jaune sat there shellshocked, so still that he did not blink at all.

A fight between Ghira and Theodore had ensued. The headmaster’s stormy eyes were wild with fright and fury, shouting awful things towards Oscar who just sat there in the middle of it all, taking the insults like he deserved them.

Somehow, Theodore broke loose from Ghira’s hold, and the next thing she knew, Oscar had doubled over, gasping in pain as tears ran down his cheeks.

Rumpole was only able to drag Theodore away because the man had frozen up when he realized what he had done, guilt flooding his countenance as he let himself be dragged away by the short woman.

A frigid breeze stopped Ruby on her tracks.

She had walked to the Academy’s observatory, a balcony on the Academy’s tallest building, overlooking the city of Shade.

Covering the city was a dome of sheer light, usually imperceptible during the day, but during the night it gave the illusion that a gossamer, transparent fabric of light covered the sky. Sitting on the balcony with his legs hanging about was Oscar. Little was sitting on top of his head, while the Crown was by his side. Ruby peeked from the doorway.

“Cheshire”, Oscar called out. The Crown shimmered, and blue and purple haze emerged from the relic. From it, the Curious Cat appeared.

The Cat looked around, before zeroing on Oscar. “Oh. It’s you.”

Oscar nodded, “Sort of”, he shrugged.

The Cat looked him up and down, “You look way younger than last time”

Oscar offered them a sort of smile, “It’s actually been a rather indeterminate amount of time”

The Cat floated over his head, settling into a tight circle of cat floating a foot off of Oscar’s head.

“You were a King. And now, you are a Little Prince”, the Cat commented offhandedly.

Oscar laughed bitterly, “I feel more like a convict if you ask me. This time, I was born in a barn”

 A silence followed, before the Cat broke it again, “I may have forgotten the fact that you threw me away, like garbage, but my heart remembered. It always does”, the Cat said with a pout.

Oscar looked up to the cat floating over his head, a sincere look of sadness crossing over his features, “I am truly sorry the King did that to you”

“Oh, but you are the King too”

Oscar considered the words of the Cat. “Cheshire, I don’t think I would have done that to you”.

The Cat flicked his tail, “Then you wouldn’t be carrying so many wizards, if you were any different than the King. Humans, given the circumstances, would act the same way. It is your flaw.”

Oscar looked back to the city, pensive, “Fair. I could be throwing you to the Ever After right now, though. But do you see me calling forth Ambrosious?”, the teen wizard said with a frown.

The Cat laughed, and stretched out their bum, before licking their paw, “You are soooo funny, Little Prince. Of course you won’t. You need him to maintain this magic forcefield that keeps the witch away from you all”, they said as their fangs flashed in a menacing smile.

They both quieted down.

Oscar tapped his fingers on the railing, “I heard you made Ruby’s life a living hell in the Ever After”.

Cheshire yawned, showing their fangs and tongue, “I guess I did”, the Cat said with a lazy tone.

Oscar replied with exasperation, “That was very cruel of you, Cheshire. From what the King remembers, you did not like to be used like that”

The Cat shrugged, “I had forgotten who I was. But my heart had all of that… muck in there from before. It was all it knew, and its hunger for knowledge. I missed Jinn, and I didn’t even know it. Can you blame me? Choice without Knowledge? That’s a tragedy waiting to be written. Besides, Ruby Rose Ascended quite right, and it was all thanks to me”

At that moment Little piped up, “The bottom line is that you hurt someone that didn’t even hurt you, Curious Cat”

The Cat rolled their eyes, and scoffed, “There you go, Little Prince and Little Guide”, their ears swiveled, “And Little Red as well”, the Cat’s head did a complete 180° turn, staring right where Ruby was hiding, giving the girl a near heart attack, “Come out and play, Little Red. I know you’re peeping and dropping eaves!”, they said in a sing-song voice, before dropping their gleeful expression to one of hatred, “I was already leaving anyway”, they said in a flat tone. And with that, Cheshire jumped straight to the Crown and disappeared.

Oscar and Ruby looked at each other with widened eyes. The awkward moment was broken by Little running up to the huntress and climbing up to her neck, hugging her chin with their body. “Hi! Wanna sit with us? I was going to tell Oscar here about our adventures back in the Ever After!”, they exclaimed.

Both teens sat, and listened to Little excitedly retell their misadventures in the Ever After, of course, with their own twist and perspective.

Oscar would interrupt and ask something, only for Ruby to clear his questions. After Little had finished telling the story, Oscar gently petted Little with the tip of his finger. “Thank you for giving me your side of the story, Little. I will treasure it”, he said, locking eyes with Ruby, his gaze softening to something Ruby couldn’t quite place.

Ruby bit her lips, her fingers playing with a loose thread in her Shade Academy pajamas, “Can I ask you something?”, she blurted out after a moment.

Oscar nodded at her, before turning his gaze to the night sky, “Ask and I shall answer”, he said, feeling some kind of fear running through his veins.

Ruby looked at his profile, comparing the Oscar that she knew and the one sitting next to her.

She hadn’t realized it at first when she saw him again, but he had stopped using the bandages around his throat. She could see why, as faded claw marks made their way from his Adam’s apple (did he use to have that as well?) all around to his right shoulder. She looked down, to his rolled sleeves and freckled forearms, that he had forgone the use of gloves as well.

“Uh, is it okay-um. Can I ask why you used gloves in the first place? Or?”, Oscar turned to her, blinking in stunned silence.

He looked down to his hands, and turned them this way and that, before answering Ruby, “I used to handle farming tools with wooden handles, sometimes I’d get splinters stuck on my fingers”, he said in a surprised tone, “I guess I stopped using them after settling in here, because it’s so stupid hot and balmy in here. I just got tired of having sticky hands all the time.”, he said with awe in his voice.

“Oh.”, Ruby squeaked out. “I guess that makes sense”

Oscar looked at her curiously, “I thought you’d ask me something else”

Ruby nodded, before turning her body completely towards him, and fixing him with a scrutinizing look.

“How old are you now?”

“Turned seventeen a few months back”

“Oh! We are the same age now!”

He laughed, “Yeah, I guess we are.”

“Oh! I saw you used a new weapon. Can you tell me about it?”

Oscar let out a chortle, “That’s so you! Of course, you’d ask about my weapon. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”, he said with a wink, prompting Ruby to feel heat travel to her cheeks.

“You noticed? I haven’t even used her yet!”, she exclaimed with surprise.

Oscar nodded enthusiastically, “Of course! You carry it differently, it even looks different when its folded up”, he explained, a pensive look on his face as he tapped his fingers to his lips. The motion distracted Ruby, although the reason why, eluded her.

Ruby reached to her back, only to grab a handful of forest green pajamas.

“Oh, drat!”, the silver-eyed girl mentally hit herself over on the head. She had forgotten Rose Equinox by the door of the room she shared with Weiss.

Oscar waved his hands awkwardly, “Ah, don’t worry about it then!”, he said, watching as the twisted frown on her face slipped into a smile a bit, “You can tell me a bit about her now. Maybe…tomorrow let her be acquainted with my very own?”, he asked, the corners of his lips turning up a bit, his voice gaining a teasing lilt.

Even after the strenuous circumstances around Rose Equinox, the offer did bring a smile on Ruby’s face.

Satisfied with his attentive response, Ruby launched herself on the story of how she forged Rose Equinox from bits of Crescent Rose and other materials she got from trading a happy memory, a dream from her childhood and a kiss.

“A kiss?”, Oscar repeated with a chortle, “How do you trade in a kiss for bits and bobs of metal?”

Ruby shrugged noncommittally, a pinched look coming across her face, “Well, the Ever After has a weird economic model and-“, she began but Little decided to wake up from their nap on Oscar’s head with an excited squeal.

“Ooh! I know, I know!”, the field mouse exclaimed as they clambered down from Oscar’s head and jumped on Ruby’s shoulder, “I was there, actually! And! It was not just a simple kiss!”, Little exclaimed as they prodded Ruby’s reddening cheeks.

“Wait, Little-!”, she said in a slight panic brought from embarrassment.

“Hush, I’m trying to say the story of how you sold the prospect of your first kiss!”

Ruby held her blushing face in her palms, mumbling incoherently as Oscar laughed properly for the first time in weeks.

“No, no, I know it sounds weird but the Ever After-“, she tried explaining, only to be interrupted by Little once again.

“So, she just had to imagine what her first kiss would be like, because those are super rare and special back home, and trade it to the Blacksmith”, Little recounted with a gleeful expression, apparently oblivious of their friend’s look of complete embarrassment.

“Look, everything’s a bit wonky over there. They even use hugs as coin. Hell, the first time I had to do one of those trades I didn’t even have enough hope to fill a jar!”, she explained in one breath, her voice getting higher and higher with each syllable.

Her last sentence brought Oscar to a sudden halt in his giggling, a deeply concerned expression pulling his lips down.

“Ruby?”, he reached out, “If it bothers you, we can talk about something else, you don’t have to tell me if it hurts you.”, Oscar said as he took her hand in his, gently squeezing it, “But know that I’m always going to lend an ear. Or a shoulder to cry on. Now that you-that you’re all back, I mean, we can be a team again”, the hazel eyed teen fought back a nagging flush coming from his neck, “And teammates tell each other things, and I know we are going to work around those things that bother us. It’s gonna take a bit of time”

Ruby nodded, clutching his hand like a lifeline, “Right back at ya. You can also tell me things, I know you carry a heavy burden, but you don’t have to do it on your own. I’m here too; I want you to know that I got your back”

The two teens smiled at each other bashfully.

“Neat”, Oscar nodded, a sideways smile making its way to his lips, “That’s- yeah, neat”, his ears felt hot.

Ruby giggled wetly, “Neat?”, she asked with a raised eyebrow.

Oscar just laughed, scratching his neck as he averted his gaze elsewhere.

Feeling levity, Ruby leaned in with the beginnings of a grin, “So. What’s about that cool double axe I saw earlier today?”

Oscar shot her a toothy grin, “Let me present you to Sun Feather, or well, I like to call it Sol”, he said with a bit of fanfare as he took out his weapon,  “Modeled it after some tools we used on our farm back home. It’s a double axe as you can see,” Oscar showed her the golden blade and flipped it so that the handle was visible to her, “Took some classes at the forge with Theodore, and made these designs myself”, he pointed out the vine and rose motif on the handle.

He blushed a bit before continuing, “It can also function as a shotgun. Here”, he demonstrated by pressing a concealed button, causing the machete to fold. Now, the weapon presented itself as a bladed shotgun, the blade still visible under the barrel. “Shotguns we used at the farm as well, nothing special. Just to get rid of small Grimm or other animals that went after our sheep”, he said, passing the weapon off o Ruby, who inspected it with her critical eye.

After she finished inspecting it and playing with the mechanism that would change the weapon into a machete or bladed shotgun, she gave it back with a small bow of her head. “It is very well done, Oscar”, she said impressed, “I saw you still got the Long Memory, so is this because…”, she trailed off.

Oscar took his weapon back with a gentleness in his eyes as he caressed the engraved motifs in the handle, “I made Sol in the months that followed the Fall of Atlas. Until now, the Merge had been going quite slow, even slower than other times. But during one of Salem’s attacks-Tyrian tried to get the Sword. It… Obviously did not work-, anyways”, he carded his fingers through his loose curls, a nervous tick that Ruby had begun to notice more and more prominently when Oscar seemed uneasy.

“It was during that time that I unlocked my semblance. And that was all it took for the Merge to speed up. Apparently, the magic of the wizards, and my own semblance cancel each other out. So, while it was dormant, it really was holding off the Merge. But I was in a bad spot, really bad, almost died. Which is not good, because the cycle would start again and I had zero clue what I was doing as a wizard. Still don’t know. But. Something snapped within me, my semblance was unlocked and that helped us push back Salem a few months on her plans”, Oscar sighed, his throat constricting with a sob, “Since then, it was a ticking time bomb. I could feel it, something changing in me. Memories that were not mine, voices apart from Ozpin’s. It was a cacophony, a living hell I had to endure for months. Something or another brought me to the forge, and that space where I just… hit hot metal over and over and polished and sharpened and soldered. Those were the times I felt most like myself, there was just me, the metal and silence from the other wizards. I poured all I had left of me, my hopes, my dreams, my own feelings; all into this blade”, he said with emotion in his voice, as he once more presented the blade to Ruby, who just pressed her fingertips to the cold metal.

“I can feel all of that you poured in here”, she said firmly.

Oscar nodded, “Thank you”, he said with a small smile. He turned back to the cityscape, watching the flickering lights of the houses and streetlamps below, “The Merge happened at the end, of course. But… I don’t know how to explain it. One morning I could wake up to a thousand voices inside of me, a sort of bubbling under my skin, like my blood was boiling. The other. It was nothing. Faint voices sometimes, or like today, where everyone was yelling at me to shut up”, he shook his head, “It felt lonely. Infinitely sad, hopeless. Empty and bursting at the seams. I feel like myself in some aspects, but also sometimes I also don’t even know myself. I wonder sometimes if this is what growing up feels like”

Ruby was silent for a while, taking it all in little by little.

Finally she spoke, “I think I understand you now, more than ever”

Both sat there for a moment, contemplating the sky above.

After a moment, Ruby turned to Oscar, “So, more updates! What’s your semblance?”, she asked with a smile. “Remember I told you that when you finally unlock your semblance, we would all be jealous? I’m sure its one of the coolest semblances if it fought so hard against the wizards”

At this, Oscar blushed profusely, suddenly swinging his legs and hitting his heels to the walls of the balcony he was sitting at.

“Alright.”, he simply said as he raised his left hand and with his finger poked the air around them, as if he were popping bubbles.

In time, specks of golden light emerged, illuminating the space between them.

Ruby widened her eyes at the display, seeing the light bubble and float up and up, like fireflies.

Emboldened by her reaction, Oscar swiped his fingers around, creating ribbons of light that squiggled and floated away with the breeze.

One in particular bumped into Ruby’s nose before scattering like little bubbles, causing her to laugh.

“Can you make other forms? Is that what you were using when you walked on those glyphs?”, she asked.

Oscar nodded, “If I use my magic and my semblance, I can make more tangible forms, and yes, those glyphs. I was inspired by Weiss’ and Winter’s semblance. I tried making that with my own, and they worked!”, he said excitedly.

“Oh! Show me, show me!”, she enthused, while Little clapped their tiny paws at the display.

Oscar’s response was to pinch the air around him, and taking his pinched thumb and middle finger close to his lips, blew. As soon as the air hit his fingers, petals and butterflies made of golden light streamed out.  

As if they were truly alive, the butterflies flounced and fluttered their wings around both teens. A few even going as far as fighting for their rightful place, perched on the tip of Ruby’s nose.

For the first time in a long time, Ruby closed her lids and tilted her head back, feeling true laughter bubbling out of her throat.

Oscar couldn’t help it if he took the opportunity to drink in an image he had long since given up the hope of seeing. He could feel it in his heart, how it sung and soared watching this brave and simple soul laugh amongst the light.

‘Maybe one day I will tell her how exactly I found my semblance’, he thought distractedly as he tried to etch this moment in his soul, so that he would never forget come what may.

Oscar let the gilded butterflies and flowers fade after some time, noticing the late (or early) hour in his scroll.

He stood up and stretched his legs, “Although it’s been the most fun I’ve had in a while, I think we should go to bed soon if we want to be semi-functional during the day”, he offered his hand down to her.

Ruby groaned and reluctantly let him haul her to her feet, “Don’t think I’m gonna sleep at all. I’m too wired, even if I’m pooped. It’s been at least two weeks since Atlas for me, and all we’ve been doing is running from one crazy event to another, increasingly murderous event”, she explained with a sort of grimace.

Oscar stared at their joined hands with a blank look on his face for a moment, before he blinked hard and gazed at Ruby’s silver eyes.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. I should be in bed, completely conked out, but I’m just too… awake, you know?”, he said before gently pulling on her hand as he walked towards the door.

“Oscar? What are…?”, she asked swinging their joint hands back and forth.

Oscar looked at her behind his shoulder, “Do you know how to go to the kitchen from here?”, he asked as they went down a set of stairs.

“I don’t even know how I got in this side of campus”, she said with a laugh, letting Oscar pull her along the hallways. “What are we doing in the kitchen anyway?”

“Oh, I know of a home remedy that will make anyone fall asleep in two shakes of a lamb’s tail”, he said with a boyish smirk that threatened Ruby’s own grasp with gravity. ‘Gosh, I missed his weird farm puns’, she thought as she looked tenderly at his back.

After walking for what felt like an eternity of going up and down stairs, turning left and right, somehow reminding Ruby of the time she escaped the Red Prince’s castle, they finally made it to the kitchen.

Oscar let go of Ruby’s hand upon entering the kitchen, and turned on his heel with his arms stretched out, “Welcome to my favorite place on campus!”, he said with a fake curtsey.

Ruby curtsied back at him playfully, before sitting herself on the counter, watching as Oscar took milk, honey and cinnamon sticks out of the pantry with a spring on his step.

“Whenever I’m not training or volunteering down at the camps, I’m making the food we eat”, he said as he poured the milk and turned on the heat to low.

“Even Professor Theodore?”, she asked with a small voice, remembering the earlier scene when the headmaster landed a punch square on his cheek.

At this, Oscar’s mood deflated a bit. He resorted to slowly whisk the milk while he thought.

“I like to think that the punch was mostly directed at Ozpin. If anything, most stuff directed at me has been because of- you know”, he said after a while before breaking a cinnamon stick in half. “I’m just… trying to deal with this mess the best I can. Can’t blame a person for being frustrated at their ‘closest’ friend, only to realize that he tricked you into an impossible task. In all honesty, I think this is the first time any of Ozma’s ‘circle’ has come so close to the truth. I’d say its blown spectacularly bad because Ozpin’s own personality was already a bit…”, Oscar made a noncommittal noise at the back of his throat, throwing in the cinnamon sticks and resuming his stirring.

Ruby was silent for a moment, focusing instead on timing her swinging legs with Oscar’s stirring.

Finally, she voiced her concerns, “How does it work then? The Merge, that is. Are you making warm milk instead of chocolate milk because…”, she tightly closed her eyes, feeling the bitter words forming in her mouth, “-because you want to make a statement? Of how you’re not- you know. Him?”

If Oscar was bothered by the question, or worse, hurt, he did not show it. Instead, he kept on stirring slowly, before turning to face Ruby.

The open expression of hopefulness caught Ruby off guard, “I’m making milk and honey because the first time my aunt made it for me was when my father’s remains were brought home”, Ruby widened her eyes, her stare softening at Oscar’s words, “Don’t get me wrong, I like hot cocoa like any other person, but chocolate is a known stimulant. And… food is how I take care of people”, he said with a light shrug.

Ruby averted her gaze, looking at her bare feet, dirty from stepping on the clay tiles of Shade Academy all night. “Sorry if I crossed any lines…”, she trailed off, picking out the cracks on the kitchen tiles.

“You show me yours, and I show you mine, right?”, he answered back. “I may have a hive of angsty wizards and a crazy suicidal witch on my heels, but I’m still Oscar Pine after all”

Ruby nodded, “You’re still Oscar who is seventeen, who likes cooking, and has sticky hands”

Oscar pouted as he wiped his palms against the fabric of his pants, “Did my hands sweat too much?”

The silver-eyed girl scrunched her eyes in a thoughtful manner, before pinching her pointer and thumb close but not touching. “Just a little bit”

Oscar’s retort was interrupted by the burning smell of milk.

Both teens scrambled to the stove, turning down the heat (“That’s the wrong burner!”, “Wait wait, where are your mittens-where do you keep them?!”), before looking at the mess of milk on the iron stovetop.

“Gotta clean this before Ren knows”, Oscar groaned.

Thinking quickly, Ruby grabbed a rag from the sink. “How about you serve the milk and I clean this mess?”

Oscar nodded, grabbing the jar of honey and two mugs on his way, “Right”.

After cleaning the mess and procuring two mugs and a shot glass (for Little) with cinnamon milk and honey, Oscar led Ruby to the reading area by the kitchen.

“This is where I like to take my naps. This couch has been here longer than Theodore, but its really comfy”, he said as he sat and bounced a bit to show Ruby how comfortable the couch was.

Ruby set the shot glass with milk on the table for Little before depositing said mouse on the table carefully so as to not rouse them.

She nursed her cup of milk silently with Oscar, adjusting her eyes to the low light that the corner lamp casted on the otherwise dark room.

“I don’t know if the cat or anyone told you yet”, Ruby found herself breaking the companionable silence they had been immersed in, “But I sort of died. Well. Rather… I tried to take my life”, she paused when she felt Oscar tense up. “There’s this thing called Ascension, back in the Ever After. We didn’t know at the time what it was, was it death? A rebirth? We only knew we had to drink tea from the leaves of this big sentient Tree for it to happen.”, she said in a small voice, “I couldn’t look at Crescent Rose anymore. Every time I did, I would see the same images from the day we fell. And Neo… she taunted me, tortured me with images of the people most important to me. I… was forced to do something awful, even if it was to an illusion, it broke me. So, in that moment I just knew I didn’t want to be myself anymore. And so, I drank the tea. Down to the last drop”, she said slowly, as if she were tasting the words for the first time out of her mouth.

Oscar inched his hand to hers, and tapped the top of her palm lightly, as if asking permission.

Ruby intertwined her fingers with his without so much of a thought, relishing on feeling tethered as she did so.

“Ascension happens when an Afterean has fulfilled their role, and they are ready to be something else. They change their exterior, but their hearts, they stay the same. For humans is the opposite. I was changed from the inside when I confronted my shadows… but also when I met-when I met myself. Not what I was supposed to be. Just. Me”, she explained as she peered down to the bits of froth floating in her mug.

Oscar was really quiet for a moment, processing what Ruby had just said to him with a heaviness in his heart that sunk to his stomach.

“Thank you for confiding in me. I… had no idea. I could tell something big had happened to you during your time in the Ever After, but I had no idea of the magnitude. I can’t imagine what you saw”

Ruby turned to look at him fully, noticing how the greens and the golds of his irises combined, and how his skin was darker and more freckled from countless hours under the Sanus’ Sun. She realized how his hair had grown into a shaggy curly mess, and how comfortable he was under his skin. ‘Will I feel like that again? How long will it take me to reach him?’

After a while, Ruby added, “I killed Neo. The Cat had possessed her, and I thought I was fighting one of her copies, or the illusions the Cat made her do. But I think they underestimated me. That was while I was Ascending. I think that botched the whole thing, didn’t it? It should have fixed me, but it reassembled something in me that I don’t know and now I’m crying about everything. How did that help me in any way?”, she asked self-deprecatingly as a tear ran down her cheek.

Oscar was hit by the inexorable weight of her grief, ‘she is not hiding herself like before. She… is an open book now’. The young wizard shook his head, “If anything, it worked. Back in Mistral you wouldn’t even accept that you were struggling. Sadness is a step forward to acceptance, to be alright.” He bit his lip, thoughtful, “One of the reasons I can’t sleep tonight is that… I killed Tyrian with Mercury today”, Oscar confessed, “He… there was no way of saving him. He was just… Ruby, some people are just rotten inside, you know? With Hazel… or even Lionheart, I could tell that if the circumstances had been right, if Ozpin had paid attention to conciliation, instead of just pressing on, maybe they could have been spared. Tyrian fully knew Salem intended to destroy the world, and he was so sick and twisted that he still laughed and mocked me as he took his dying breaths”, Oscar shivered in disgust, “I was only able to do it because Mercury was there and because Tyrian didn’t think I’d be able to do such thing. It was Sol’s blade that did it.”

Ruby nodded, “It was Rose Equinox that did it too”, she added.

The teens finished their cinnamon honey milk slowly, even if the liquid had gone cold.

At some point Ruby breathed in deeply, before letting out the air slowly as she relaxed her shoulders. She let her body fall languidly against the plush couch, the piece of furniture seemingly enveloping warmly.

“Oh…”, she drawled half asleep. “Try doing that”, Ruby nudged Oscar in the ribs lightly.

He copied her, this time letting his head fall on top of her head.

“Yeah, you’re right. Feels nice to finally rest my head on something”, his joke was punctuated by a stifled yawn.

“Just because you’re taller than me for a few inches doesn’t mean I’m staying this short. Just you watch, I’m still a growing girl”, she retorted, slotting closer to his side, her head lolled to the side on his shoulder.

Oscar’s laughter jostled her, “Ruby, I think this is as tall as you get”

The teen in question flared her nose, “Excuse me, as you were witness of tonight, I drink milk!”, she nudged his ribs a bit more in between gasping laughs.

“Can’t you take the ‘Taller than Weiss Schnee’ prize and call it a day?”, his voice came muffled as he squished his cheek against the crown of her head.

Ruby giggled before a yawn overtook her, “Gosh, remind me to tell you about the time Yang, Blake and Weiss shrunk to like six inches”, she said settling back on the couch.

Oscar hummed his affirmation, his eyelids feeling heavier by the second, “Ruby, I think I’m gonna fall asleep”

A soft snore was all he got back from her.