“Hey, uh, Jaune? I, um. This is, uh… I’m sorry for yelling at you back in the Ever After, and I—…I get it if, um. If you don’t think I should know. Is… Penny… is she mad at me, for, um… for not being good enough?”
They’re in Vacuo, it doesn’t feel real. Jaune is setting on an honest to gods mattress for the first time in decades, and it doesn’t feel real. Pyrrha keeps chuckling at his amazed expression, he can feel her over his shoulder.
There’s a knock on the door and Jaune jumps. His hand is on his sword and he’s halfway across the room before Penny floats through the wall beside the door, looking troubled. And Jaune’s heart sinks. He knows who’s going to be on the other side
Ever since Ruby landed in the Ever After, Penny has only briefly left her side, and only to visit her father.
“Jaune? Can…” Ruby’s voice, muffled, trails off. “Can I come in?” He glances at Penny, who nods reassuringly, and opens the door
Gods has Ruby always looked so small?
“Hey Ruby,” he says, sheathing his sword. They stare at each other for a moment before Jaune steps aside and Ruby sidles past him. She’s quiet in a way that reminds him of tea cups and shattered silver eyes, and it scares him.
He sits on the bed and she sits next to him, a careful distance away. “You doing okay?” he asks.
She shrugs. “Are you?” she asks.
He shrugs.
The silence drags on, awkward and stifling, broken only by Penny humming quietly. She didn’t flinch when he drew his weapon, but HE did. Gods, half of it is still sticking out of her chest and she didn’t even flinch.
“Hey, uh, Jaune? I, um. This is, uh…” Ruby’s voice gets more quiet by the word, and she won’t meet his eyes. “I’m sorry for yelling at you back in the Ever After, and I-”
Jaune is spouting apologies of his own before she’s even done talking. Pyrrha has to shush him multiple times before he realizes that he cut Ruby off.
“It’s okay but …I get it if, um. If you don’t think I should know.” Ruby shrinks in on herself. Her hands are tangled in her cape “Is… Penny… is she mad at me, for, um… for not being good enough?”
Penny, of course, immediately starts yelling reassurances, and Jaune winces at the volume of the echoey words. Ruby must take his reaction as confirmation though, because she sniffles and stands. “Right. Right I’m- im sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. I’ll just…”
“Wait! Wait no, Ruby, no she doesn’t!” Jaune says frantically, waving his hands. “Or she’s not! She’s not mad at you. She could never be mad at you.” He’s just passing on Penny’s words, but even if he wasn’t he’d know that they’re true. Even he isn’t stupid enough not to see how much the former-android cares about Ruby
“Ruby, it wasn’t your fault, you did everything you could. You are the most…” Jaune can’t find the words. “You are the most enough anyone could be. Penny isn’t mad at you, because come on, she’s Penny.” Ruby chuckles weakly, and he takes it as a win.
“But mostly she’s not mad because you were MORE than good enough. You got us all to Vacuo, you got EVERYONE to Vacuo. You gave all of us the strength to follow you. She…” Jaune glances up at Penny. “She wants you to know that not only is she not mad, but that she’s so SO proud. Being just you has always been more than enough.”
At this Ruby does actually start crying, and he panics for a second because shit he messed everything up again. Next he’s gonna get slammed into a wall and left to pick up the pieces, he just knows it.
Over her shoulder Penny is trying to hold Ruby’s shaking form, but she can’t make contact, and Jaune has to look away. That’s his fault, he did that. He’s the reason Penny will never be able to hug her friend again, why Ruby will never be able to be comforted by her friend again.
“Stop that…” Pyrrha’s staticky reprimand whispers. “It’s not your fault.”
It is, it is. But since it’s his fault, it’s also his responsibility to make up for it.
“Ruby can I… Can I hug you?” Jaune asks, his arms held out tentatively. It’s all the invitation his best friend needs, choking out a sob and diving at him with enough force to send them both to the ground.
And that’s what breaks Jaune, and soon enough he’s crying and sobbing into her hair while her cries are muffled against his chest.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to, I didn’t mean it, I’m so sorry.” Their apologies melt together, meaningless and meaningful in equal measure.
“It wasn’t your fault, you didn’t mean to, it’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here.” Reassurances from both of them, each the only one who can truly understand what the other is going through
He feels like some kind of poison is being drawn from a wound decades left unattended.
He’s not sure how long they sit there, the literal ghosts of their past whispering and cooing calming words to the broken leaders.
“You are more than enough, Ruby. You’re my best freaking friend, I don’t know what I’d do without you. You are SO much more than enough.” Jaune’s voice is broken, croaky with tears and emotion. He doesn’t know who he’s trying to convince, her or himself. “I can’t lose you again.”
He feels Ruby nod against his chest. “It wasn’t your fault. You’re my best friend, I could never be mad at you. It wasn’t your fault.” Her words are fierce, exhausted, insistent, and he chokes out a sob. Ruby is trying to convince herself as much as him. Gods they really are the same, aren’t they?
“We really are messed up, aren’t we?”
Ruby chuckles, and nods against his chest. “Yeah. Proper Hunters and everything, now.” She sounds bitter, and Jaune’s arms tighten around her.
“Yeah. Yeah I guess we are.”
“Does this… does this get better?”
Decades alone being burned alive by his own guilt, going half-mad with fear. “I’ll let you know when I find out.”
Ruby laughs again, and wipes at her eyes. “I’ll do the same.”
And on the floor of a Vacuo dorm room, two broken leaders begin to heal.
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Okay so, first of all:
Hunters of Justice (RWBY/DC): Brainiac destroys Remnant and bottles the cities as the inciting incident, leading to Teams RWBY and JNPR arriving on DC Earth via Boomtube and having to train to prepare for Round 2. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor is up to his own schemes with the Creatures of Grimm, which were ALSO brought to Earth, alongside their spawning pools. AO3 link here.
Light and Song: by @mwpriddypinkie, AU where Weiss is blind and Ruby is mute. Only covers Volume 1, sadly, but it's still a good read. AO3 link here.
Describing the Series Via References: By the same author as Light and Song. Partway through Volume 1, Team RWBY receives a tablet holding the list of memes chronicled by TV Tropes, but without the notes that provide context. Just as hilarious as that premise implies, but has a LOT more dramatic and serious moments than you'd expect. AO3 link here.
BlazBlue Alternative: Remnant (RWBY/BlazBlue): I actually beta read for this, and my friend writes this. The basic premise is that the world of RWBY and BlazBlue are blended here, resulting in some pretty interesting changes on both halves of the crossover. Some slight differences in canon ships, and we follow twelve protagonists instead of four. AO3 link here.
Boldores and Boomsticks (RWBY/Pokemon): Fair warning, Yang is kinda flanderized into a dumb bruiser here. Aside from that, this fic is actually pretty good, as it involves Team RWBY stumbling into the Pokemon world via Ultra Wormhole. Not found on AO3, but the link is here.
Those are all the main ones I can think of at the moment.
Also, I know that all but two are crossovers, but that's just because I read a lot of crossover fics.
Those sound fun and honestly the meme one is fucking fantastic of an idea
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From a fanfic project, names for various kinds of weapons in the Matoran Universe. [San: Accurate. i/ai: toward. Hi: Object.] Sanai: Precise Direction; Sanehi: Ranged Device, Launcher (mechanical, like a bow or a Zamor launcher). Add a prefix for various types of ranged weapon; Kasanehi: Energy Ranged Device, Blaster. Kasanehix: Greater Energy Ranged Device, Cannon. Posanehi: Reliable Ranged Device, Rifle. Fesanehi: Inventive Ranged Device, Revolver.
Very cool! I like these, and the use of san as a base is very inventive.
This got me thinking about how I might render something like a ranged weapon in current Matoric:
I'd use the marker ka_a "to, toward" combined with either ro "unit, thing" or the third person pronoun a(h)i to yield either karoa or ka'aia, the latter of which would probably reduce to kaia, both meaning roughly "toward thing" or "toward it". Adding sa(n) "narrow, precise" as a modifier yields sakaroa or sakaia "precise(ly) toward thing".
Then again, another option--perhaps simpler--is to just use lutu "launcher"! :p
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