151

Black Rose Blooms SilverCyberQueen_Jolyn

Chapter 151

Chapter Text

"Happy Birthday!"

"Eeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!"

Ruby shrieked happily as the lights to the room flicked on and revealed her family and friends and a whole bunch of confetti as Yang pulled a party popper and unleashed a shower of the brightly colored bits raining down over everything. "You guys!!! AAaaaaaaa! I knew you guys were getting excited about something but I had no idea it was this!"

"It was very painful hiding this from you for the past few days, wishing star, but seeing you happy makes it all worth it," Penny giggled, kissing Ruby's cheek as they entered Team RWBYP's dorm where the surprise party was taking place. There was cake, a truly ungodly amount of cookies, a whole stack of presents, and of course- all of her favorite people in the world! Plus Professor Goodwitch and Oscar!

And… there was even Team JNPR's shrine carefully set in the back of the room right near their (pre-made and special ordered) bunk beds. That… that brought a bit of a tear to Ruby's eye when she noticed it.

"This is the best birthday ever," Ruby smiled, brushing her hair back as she looked around, taking in the grinning faces of pretty much everyone in her life- her dad Tai, her uncle Qrow, Cinder, Yang, Emerald, Neo, Mercury, Zwei, Weiss, and Blake all clustered around as she stood there for a moment and just… breathed it all in. Professor Goodwitch and Oscar, meanwhile, stood in the back by the door to the dorm room's kitchenette while Penny was still there at her side. "I- it'd be better if Team JNPR was here, but… thank you. Thank you all so much … I'm so happy…"

"Anything for you, baby sis," Yang grinned happily, walking over and enveloping Ruby in a hug- joined immediately after by Penny, Cinder, Uncle Qrow, and Dad. "You deserve something nice after spending a whole year stuck inside a rock, y'know? Figured… figured with everything going on right now, might as well have something worth being excited for, right?"

"Heh, took the words right out of my mouth, little dragon," Tai chuckled, squeezing his kids tight and flaring his Aura enough to let everyone feel the summer warmth of his soul. "Happy birthday, little rose. How's it feel being seventeen?"

Ruby snorted, burying her face into Yang's shoulder with a little noise of some unidentifiable emotion- happy, but also melancholic in a way. "Like I'm still sixteen, just taller now."

"Well, you're still my baby no matter what," Tai laughed, all of them continuing the hug for another moment before finally breaking off as Professor Goodwitch finally came out of the dorm's kitchenette with an utterly ridiculous stack of pizza boxes. 

And it was then and there that the party truly started- in every way, it was the party of Ruby's dreams. There was food, dancing, music, her friends and family… it felt special in a way that her other birthdays largely hadn't . 

She'd spent so many birthdays alone with just Dad, Yang, and Uncle Qrow, spent a long time without anyone else, and even Cinder didn't really help fill in the spots when she learned how other kids had dozens of friends to go to their parties. Maybe now it wasn't dozens of friends, maybe it wasn't a party so big the entire block got involved, but… Ruby was content.

She sang karaoke, won and lost a bunch of games, pinned the tail on the Deathstalker, opened presents, took pictures, wore a funny hat, ate a bunch of cake, pigged out on cookies, ate way more pizza than was probably reasonable, watched movies with everyone, listened to Professor Goodwitch's stories about her Mom and… Yang's Mom… and Uncle Qrow and Dad (both of whom looked really awkward when she mentioned the skirt incident), popped a bunch of balloons, made a pillow fort, got into a pillow fight, made smores by breathing fire and ate them in the kitchen, chewed on a bunch of giant beef bones, ate at least thirty pounds of raw, fresh, bloody steak, helped dad grill outside on their dorm's balcony, ate regular steak with her friends and family, cuddled with Penny, hugged Penny, danced with Penny, made out with her beloved extra special super amazing girlfriend (still Penny) while drunk on the sheer high of emotions that surrounded her and filled the room with a ridiculous amount of rose petals, and then-

Then it was over.

There they were, Ruby and Penny, sitting on the couch out in the common room while everyone else had gone to bed after helping clean up.

Ruby sighed, flopping over and resting her head in Penny's soft, warm lap as she stared up at the ceiling and felt the last of the lingering high of positive emotions slowly dissipate in favor of something calmer, cooler. More cozy and intimate in the low firelight- they had a fireplace now, how cool was that? 

"Today was… really good," Ruby murmured, purring happily as Penny started scritching at her ears and playing with her hair with one hand, the other coming down and scratching Ruby delicately under her chin. "The best since I woke up, I think. I mean… wow… just… wow ."

"It was amazing to be part of your birthday experience, wishing star," Penny nodded, humming softly as her charging cable pulsed with soft green light, the long cord connecting her to the nearest wall outlet while she sat there on the couch. "You seemed so happy- and a bit dizzy after a while… and your hands wandered quite a lot while we were kissing."

"Aha… did they? Sorry, I was… a lot of positive emotions at once make me a little high now, I think… maybe it was always like that, but it's more pronounced now," Ruby giggled, blushing slightly as she twiddled her fingers together. "Um… was it bad?"

Penny blinked, then shook her head. "By all means, not at all! I enjoy that you like holding onto me so much, though I do not think your father or Uncle appreciated seeing you grab my thighs and lift me up like that… they seemed somewhat distressed…"

"Ah… um… yeah. I think I'm starting to understand what Yang and Cinder meant by having a lot of hormones now," Ruby grimaced, clearing her throat and feeling quite awkward. "I mean, I figured I wouldn't since I'm almost entirely grimm but I guess I'm more human than I thought. More of… both, I guess. I don't think I really ever explained everything that happened while I was… in that crystal. I'm… it was really weird, half forgotten now… I remember… near the end there were a lot of leaves…"

"Leaves, wishing star?" Penny asked curiously, furrowing her brow in confusion. "What kind of leaves?"

"... That's the thing. I'm not sure. While I was dreaming, I kept dreaming of leaves, like there was a tree calling for me in that big forest of brambles, but I kept getting lost on the way. I kept… there was a lot I was going through, and… I'm gonna be honest, I think it was, genuinely, a really overt metaphor for accepting my own nature as something between creation and destruction," Ruby continued speaking, shrugging a bit as she lifted her hand and formed the image of a spiky leaf- almost like a maple tree, but… not quite. The memory in her head was hazy, but she'd known that the leaves were… rainbow colored? They swirled with some kind of unimaginable energy, and although the leaf in her hand was pitch black… she still remembered seeing that giant, great tree looming large over the entirety of the mysterious forest of brambles she dreamed about. "I don't know- it felt… well. I've never really had dreams, y'know? It didn't feel like a dream, though. It felt like… it felt like a scene straight out of The Girl Who Fell Through The World , but… from the perspective of one of the creatures. It really felt like something important was happening, but I had no idea what it was, just that it was there and I had a goal. That tree though…."

"What was it like, wishing star?" Penny asked, not at all understanding what Ruby was talking about but wanting to hear more of it anyway- from what she figured, Ruby had undergone some kind of intensely spiritual process and… been more or less trapped in something that might have been a figure of her own imagination, or it might not have been. "Can you describe it for me?"

"It was like… a baobab tree, like the ones on the other half of Sanus or even in Menagerie or southern Mistral. It was so, so big that it towered over everything, to the point that I bet you could have seen it anywhere in the world. It felt… warm. Inviting. As though it was calling out to me to make a change. But the leaves it sent- I couldn't follow them because I needed to accept myself first- or… maybe the way I followed its leaves was by accepting myself and growing past the whole… thing where I suppressed all my anger and tried to never let myself be scary ," Ruby murmured, her grimm matter continuing to shift around as the leaf in her hand shifted into a 2d representation of that massive tree, the image itself carrying some kind of mysterious aura that drew in her eyes even though it was nowhere near the real thing. "I think… No, it sounds stupid but…"

"But?" Penny asked, tilting her head slowly.

Ruby huffed quietly, swallowing a bit as she finished her thought. "... I think that tree is… somehow… kinda… my grandma."

"... What?"