13

Black Rose Blooms SilverCyberQueen_JolyneChapter 13

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The house was… almost eerie with Cinder gone.

Ruby didn't like it. 

She sighed, pursing her lips as she sat on one of the barstools in the kitchen, ears perked and tail slowly swishing behind her as she tried in vain to hear the sounds of her oldest sister spending way too much time getting ready in the bathroom, tried in vain to hear the sounds of Neo and Cinder being gross together, tried in vain to sense any trace of her beloved oldest sister's presence in their home.

Ugh.

It sucked being so much younger than everyone else. Yang was going to try out for Beacon next year too, Uncle Qrow had been recalled to Beacon as a secondary combat teacher, and her dad had work. And where did that leave Ruby?

Sitting alone at home while Yang was out on a class trip in Vale, unable to go out herself because even after a decade of living with her condition, it was still deemed too dangerous for her to actually go alone- not because anyone in her family thought she couldn't control herself, but because ever since she'd turned fourteen she'd occasionally get… flashes. Whispers. Visions of… something . Someone. Someone very, very far away but somehow far closer than anyone else could be. Someone pale and terrifying, and who was powerful enough that whoever they were… 

Uncle Qrow and Dad were scared of them. They didn't even say the person's name , but ever since then, Ruby'd basically been stuck home- not allowed to seriously go out unless she was in the company of someone else, regardless of how well she could handle herself in a fight.

At first she wanted to say it was unfair, but…. Was it really?

Ruby was special, and she already got weird looks from people no matter how normal she tried to be. It wasn't her gothic outfit that was the problem per se, but… well. She was a girl with ears and a tail, both of which were very real and very functional, in a world where almost every faunus had only one trait, and a vanishingly rare percentage had two or more. She was also a girl that wore grimm bone plates and had a glowing eyed grimm mask stuck to the side of her face like a particularly large and unwieldy hair clip.

Honestly, she could have probably shifted those details away, but it was… achingly difficult to try and hide all of her grimm traits. She could barely handle hiding her ears or tail- the lack of sensory input always messed with her something fierce, and the bone plates just felt so natural to form on her body that she often didn't even notice if one sprouted out of her arm or chest and turned into natural spires of teeth and bone.

She kinda just had to deal with the looks, and the few times she'd been approached she always answered as honestly as she could- She was a huntress in training, and she wore the colors and bone plates of a grimm in memory of some of her hunts. It was almost true, too. The Beowolf mask was a persistent reminder of that night in the woods with Yang when they were children. The bones and ribs and teeth and other plates were borrowed from the various grimm she "ate" while hunting- mostly Beowolves because Patch had an endless supply, but also Boarbatusks, Creeps, Nevermores, Ursas, Goliaths, Centinels, Sphinxes, Griffons, King Taijitus, so on and so forth. 

Ruby huffed a little, idly stretching out her arm and splitting it into a tightly controlled mass of expanding tendrils to retrieve the carton of chocolate milk from the fridge, pouring herself a cup and grumbling slightly as she nursed the cup in her hands- trying to treat it as if she was a mysterious cool Huntress lady brooding in a bar instead of being an objectively adorable Huntress in training who hadn't even gone to school since she was four sipping chocolate milk at the kitchen counter in her home. 

She missed Yang.

She missed Cinder.

She…

Sure, they weren't too far away. Vale was barely a day trip away from Patch. She could fly there if she was willing to risk setting off some of the grimm sensors lining the walls. Or swim there and pretend like she'd stowed away on a ship. Or actually stow away on a ship and use her natural authority as a weirdly strong grimm to drive others away and- well. There were a lot of ways for her to get to Vale, but… that wasn't the point.

It- she…

She'd never had to deal with the house being so empty before. Ruby… had always come home to a full house. Taiyang making dinner after long hunts, Uncle Qrow doing his best to help out (and usually failing, but not making things worse now that his Semblance was just… gone), Yang playing with Zwei, Cinder watching with that cool, elegant, refined look she always had. For someone who'd been treated so poorly by the upper class, she sure could emulate their coolness and elegance to a tee.

Ruby sighed again, grumbling softly and only perking up a little as Zwei hopped into her lap- still reminiscing about the good old days before Cinder went off to Beacon. The way that she was such an earnest learner who crammed so much learning into her brief stay with their family that she'd managed to get into Beacon at nineteen despite her heavily delayed start. The way that Cinder was, even if she was somewhat distant, always committed to being about the best sister she could manage. The way that Cinder did her best to teach Ruby how to use a bow while running at top speed- Ruby never could match Cinder's accuracy with a bow, but she outdid her big sis several times over with a sniper rifle so that was okay. .50 bmg solved most problems, and if it didn't… well. There was a reason why Crescent Rose's maximum caliber was what they used for autocannons.

"Man… I miss Cinder," Ruby huffed, petting Zwei idly and kicking her feet in discontent, her tail swishing behind her and ruffling the thick material of her cloak as she looked around. In the distance, there were three clocks all ticking in perfect unison (she'd made sure of that when she was twelve), and it grated on her nerves slightly- normally at this time of day she'd be deep in a comic book or a video game or training her scythe forms but…

Cinder had been gone just a week, and even though she'd called and texted the family group chat regularly, it wasn't the same.

Ruby sighed, staring at the ceiling then, shifting from the stools by the kitchen island to the couch in the living room in a long, slow, amorphous motion that Yang would have called lazy for not just walking. 

Team CMNE (Carmine) had existed for… about five days now. Lucky for Cinder, Neo, Emerald, and Mercury- though, to hear tell of it, Mercury was still kind of pissed that their team name wasn't something stupid or something vulgar- like using the "Black" part of his name to make CBNE (Carbine) or rearranging the order of letters entirely into CMEN. No explanation needed for that one.

Ruby wished she coulda been there to see just how chaotic her older sister, her two "cousins", and her sister's girlfriend could be when they were all shoved together into a single room for, potentially, the next four years. Truly, the amount of pranks would be legendary- hell, the amount of stuff Cinder and Neo did to each other (not like that! Not like that!) while they were still living in the house was chaotic enough… Ruby honestly would be surprised if Beacon was even still standing in three years when she was old enough to go.

Speaking of…

Ruby hummed, looking at the stack of forms and papers that were sitting on the coffee table, tilting her head slightly as she peeked a little closer. Dad and Uncle Qrow had talked about her maybe attending Signal the next few years so she could get used to a social setting again… Hmm…

That could be fun. Or disastrous, depending on how things went. Maybe she'd be the weird grimm girl, maybe people would be nice? Who knew- people were complicated and weird and things could change at the drop of a hat no matter how much Ruby tried to help out or be nice. Even with Cinder and Yang, years of puppy cuddles and blankie cocoons hadn't managed to get rid of those seeds of worry and self doubt and fear buried in their hearts- and trust her, she'd tried . Either way… Ruby hummed, taking in the notice of acceptance that was laid out on the table. Soon, she'd be at Signal, just like Yang- though, Yang was going to graduate at the end of the next school year, and Ruby was going to be shoved straight into a fifth year curriculum without even knowing if she could keep up- even with Yang's help and reading ahead on some subjects…

Bleh.

Ruby sighed, slumping back onto the couch and holding Zwei to her chest as she stared up at the ceiling, her cloak oozing and billowing over the living room until it looked like an endless shroud of red and black, writhing and fluttering in an unseen wind as though it were alive. 

"Bleh…. I miss Cinder. I miss Yang… I wish I could go to Beacon with them instead of staying on Patch…" Ruby muttered to herself, then shook her head as she curled up around Zwei as though the dog was a throw pillow. "That'd be nice…"

[Because he's theoretically mentioned in the chapter, here's Mercury!]

[And, for good measure, all of Team CMNE (Carmine)! If Mercury calls them CMEN, just kick him in the nads to shut him up]

Notes:

oh Ruby...

Be careful what you wish for