#something about ruby and what makes a hero and what constitutes a sacrifice | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

moonsandstar-s · 7 years

Text

The Final Warning - Chapter XXIX

Chapter XXIX - The Aftermath

Summary: As the year draws to a close, peace has finally dawned. The time for unity has arrived. In the Vytal festival, it is time for heroes to rise, bringing glory to their kingdoms. But as autumn dies, the first winds of winter blow over Remnant, chilling the hearts of the people; breathing doubt into their souls. Long-buried secrets will triumph, and every action will have a consequence. Ruby must reconcile herself with her own fate. Weiss struggles to escape her legacy. Blake cannot erase memories. Yang’s search leads her into more peril than ever— but none of them can outrun fate. Shadows turn on shadows, and bonds shatter as they are tested to the limit. For in dividing them, they will fall and burn; at the eye of the storm, no peace lasts forever. In the end and beginning of time, there is a place where the sun never rises, and the dead delight to teach the living. A great danger is rising from the darkness. It’s time to take sides. The final warning is coming. The first chill of winter is the most deadly; it is the chill that kills more than any other. The first betrayal is the most damaging; it is the act that shatters bonds of love and trust, crushing even the strongest heart, tearing teams apart. AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/7745314/chapters/22506284 Yang

For the next three days, she lay there. Every inch of her body was numb, the dark tide of icy grief washing over her every second. She was drowning, but she didn’t even have the energy to pull herself to the surface; it felt easier to just swim down.

Because what was the point any more? What was the point of trying, if all you got was pain? She had tried— she had tried so hard, and she had poured all of her soul into the trying, so much so that now, she was empty, completely devoid of any spirit. She had tried to find her mother, and failed. She had tried to win the tournament, and failed. She had tried to save Blake, and failed. And all of those failures had resulted in someone else getting hurt— her sister, the world, herself, Blake. She had nothing left to give, no scrap of spirit, and she felt almost like a corpse as she laid there, with no thoughts, no dreams to haunt her head, except the unshakable image of Blake’s face as she had seen it last: amber eyes terrified, her mouth shaping Yang’s name, and then utter darkness.

Suddenly, a loud popping sound shot through the room, like a gun going off. She jerked her head up as the window creaked, snapped inward, and a large mass of teenage boy and monkey tail tumbled through and landed in a groaning heap on the floor.

It was Sun.

“Jesus,” he said, lifting his head to glare at her, his tail flicking side to side in mock-irritation. “You couldn’t have laid down a pillow or something to break my fall?”

“I thought you were in Patch waiting for an airship to take you home!” She snapped, drawing the covers up around her as he hauled himself to his feet, groaning and checking his extremities. “Why the hell are you here?”

“Easy, easy!” He held up two hands. “I’m here to check up on you. And I’m glad I did. You look like death. And it smells like heartbreak in here.” He squinted at her. “Wait a second, is that the shirt you were wearing like, a week ago when I dropped you off here?”

“I haven’t had much energy to do the laundry what with everything that’s been going on, idiot,” she said, wiggling her bandaged arm stump at him with a scowl. He let out a sniff, and she kicked the covers off and rolled onto her stomach, glaring at him through a tangle of dirty hair. “You do realizes that this technically constitutes ‘breaking and entering’?”

“No breaking here,” he said, ever-chipper. “I just unlatched the window.” Then he blinked as her words registered. “What do you mean ‘everything that’s been going on’?”

“Ruby’s gone, or hadn’t you heard?” She ground her teeth together. “Jaune, Nora, and Ren came by and picked her up and they’re off to Haven, or whatever. Looking for answers, I suppose.”

His eyes widened. his mouth forming an ‘o’ shape. “Wow,” he said faintly. “That’s, uh… that’s pretty hardcore of her. I guess… I can understand that. Cinder wasn’t from Haven… but it’s the only place she’d find answers, huh? It’s her only lead.”

“You’ve still got to explain why you decided to climb into my room,” she told him, tipping her head to the side. “I like you and all, Sun, but we were never best friends, and if my own sister ran off on me, I doubt anyone would stay, let alone a boy who happened to be friends with the girl who abandoned me.” Bitterness was thick in her voice. “You saw Blake after I passed out, didn’t you? Is that why you’re here?”

Something in his gaze shadowed and he looked away. “I— yeah. I… I saw her before she vanished.”

“Before she ran away,” Yang corrected him flatly.

“That’s not what happened.” His face tautened in anger, and his hands balled into fists. “Don’t call her a coward in front of me. You have no clue what she did after you blacked out, do you? And you didn’t want to know, remember? I tried to tell you, that night on the ship.”

She let out a heavy, harsh exhale. “So maybe I made a mistake, shutting you up that night. I should have listened, I guess, but what does it matter? They told me she left. You told me she left. That’s all I know because no one’s been telling me a goddamned thing!”

Sun's eyes were angry. "Nobody told you what she did? Only what she didn't do?"

Mutely, Yang nodded.

"Those prejudiced idiots—” He broke off, throwing himself down across from her. "Okay. Fine. I'll tell you." He leaned forward, hands clasped, white where the bone strained against skin. "She did this. She threw herself, wounded terribly, in front of that White Fang member to shield you from death. Blake killed Adam because he hurt you. She killed a man who was stronger than the both of you combined, a man who she loved once with all her heart, a man who she could barely look in the eye, but she found the strength to do it after he’d threatened you. Then, Blake carried you, bleeding and unconscious, out of there. I saw her lay you down and scream for help. She didn't stop until Sage came and gave you a tourniquet. She almost blacked out after he finished healing you up; she collapsed, there was blood everywhere, and she wasn’t moving. I… I almost thought it was too late. Her Aura was totally drained, and Sage almost passed out, expending all his energy to keep her alive. I about had a heart attack, but all she could do was ask about you, to make sure you would survive. I wanted to get you both on a hospital airship, fly you back to Vale, but she talked to me. She told me that it was all her fault. ’She’ll never recover anyways, not when it’s my fault.’ That I didn’t know what happened, what you sacrificed, what you did for her… and then she said she didn’t belong there. Not if all she did was bring pain.

“We talked to Weiss and her father— total dick about everything, but that’s to be expected, huh?— and she seemed like she’d be okay there for a bit, and she talked to Weiss right before her father took her away… and then Blake left, but the way…” He swallowed, apparently summoning up his will. “The way she looked and what she did isn’t something I’ll ever forget. She murdered the leader of the White Fang to save your life. She chose you. Her eyes… I’ve never seen them so haunted, not even when she was working herself to the bone before the dance.” His voice rose in volume, jarring to her ears as he bristled at her. She had never seen Sun livid before, but he was right now. “Blake did all that for you— she saved your life and I don't think she would have done the same for herself, even— and you have the nerve to call her, to my face, a coward?"

Yang looked away, and Sun's voice gentled. "Yang, believe me, I get it. I know how much it hurts. She left you. She left me, too. But she loves you. There's no way she doesn’t— not after what I saw that night. You know how much Adam hurt her. She's scarred inside and out. The fact that she not only stood up to him, but raised her sword against him for not only you, but for the sake of Beacon itself... and she killed him. She killed him to save your life. Don’t you get that?” Sun flicked his tail around, lightly switching the side of her wrist. “She killed someone she once loved, who once was everything to her, just to save your life.”

Yang looked away. Adam’s face filled her mind. Once, he had not been her demon— only a half-remembered shadow from Blake’s past. But now, she knew, she would never stop seeing his face in her own nightmares, would never forget what he had done to her. She and Blake shared a demon, one that was dead, and Yang couldn’t decide if it scared or infuriated her.

“Don’t let that sacrifice be in vain, Yang,” Sun said softly, before he shook his head. "Anyway, what will you do now?"

Yang stood up, looking out the window, unable to face the gentle pressure of his gray eyes on her, pleading with her to make a decision. The dark shadow of a raven's wing swept over the setting sun, black over blood. Night was coming on fast, the stars blotted out by clouds thick with the promise of snow.

Raven left the ones she loved, didn't she? She gave up on them. She gave up on herself.

I won't be my mother.

Yang felt tears silently sliding down her face, pooling as they fell, and the floorboards creaked as Sun came to stand beside her, his tail flicking agitatedly from side to side. "I should have died," Yang whispered. "I would have died. But she gave everything up for me. She was running out of time, but she still gave it up for me. If I… I would have never been able to do it, Sun. I never would have been able to kill someone I loved once. No matter how much they hurt me, or someone else. I’d always remember the past and what they once were. But she did it because she wanted me to stay alive above everything, no matter what the cost was… she wanted to keep me alive.”

"What are you going to do?" He asked her again.

A crazy, half-formed idea was beginning to spin into her mind, forming from the glimmerings of hope. It was the sort of idea that the old Yang would have had: something that was absolutely insane, but a plan that pulled through on sheer guts and determination, unable to fail because she simply would not let it. It was the spark of inspiration that the new Yang hadn’t felt in a long, long time, and she reached for it hesitantly, as if reaching out towards an open flame. Fire had never scared her before, but now, she knew to be cautious. Knew how it could hurt her, if left unchecked. The out-of-control inferno had hurt her once, but she couldn’t let that happen again. ”I have a motorcycle around the back of the house,” she said slowly. “Here are the keys. Can you bring it around to the front?"

Sun looked surprised, but he nodded, taking the keys and padding silently out of the room. / / /

Sun

He hadn’t admitted it to Yang, but when he had tumbled into the room and seen her face, he’d gotten a bad scare— one of the worst he’d had in a long, long time. Sure, he’d joked about her looking like death, but damned if there wasn’t a kernel of truth in his words. She was so thin, so tired-looking, in a way he had never seen her before, in a way he’d never expected, or wanted to see her. Yang was always, always the happy one— the one who chased optimism, who joked and laughed and made things okay. To see her this broken, this damaged— he began to understand her anger at Blake, just a little bit. What right did she have— did anyone have, really?— to break someone else so thoroughly?

He had only chased after Blake in the first place because the sight of a Faunus in Vale— a relatively conservative place— had made him more comfortable. It had been a mistake to stowaway and get there earlier than his team. He didn’t know how close he would get to Team RWBY as result of his actions. And Yang— he had thought she was an idiot at first, one who was just going along with the flow, kind of like him. But she wasn’t; she was the pillar of her team, the smart one, the strongest. And seeing her this way was scary. She was none of those things now. All the time he had thought she would heal here, at Patch, even though Blake had broken her heart...

He had learned the truth too late.

Though she was lying in her bed, Sun could see the bags under her eyes and the shadows chasing each other within them, and he’d been willing to bet that she hadn’t gotten any real sleep at all since the Fall of Beacon. Snatches of rest here and there, sure, but definitely not a single wink of true sleep. She looked slightly less miserable after he’d left the room, but the haunted look was still on her face, and he knew she was a slave to her own fears in a way the old Yang never would have been.

God, she used to think she was invincible, like nothing could really hurt her that badly, and now... it hurts to see her this way. I saw her scared after she and Blake had their first fight, and she came to me, but that… that was nothing compared to this fear she has. She’s more than bent, she’s broken.

Why did Blake leave? That's what I don't get, no matter how much I try to understand it... Blake loved her a lot, she really did, everyone could see it... why run? Why flee? I understand that she must have been scared out of her wits, and that she believed she was dangerous to Yang, but why? The danger had passed by then, after she killed Adam, there was nothing to threaten her, so why...?

Or was she scared of something else entirely?

As he was submerged in thought, he nearly ran headfirst into a man as he rounded the corner. He withdrew with an apology, looking up; it was Yang's father, he guessed. He could see her in him— the brightness of his hair, stubborn set of his jaw, the shape of his face.

He seemed surprised to see Sun in his house. To his credit, he did not immediately lunge for a bat to swing at him— a reaction Sun was wholeheartedly used to, with his background as a part-time thief. He looked at him in confusion, before his expression cleared with recognition. “Wait a moment, I recognize you. Sun, right? You dropped Yang off here after… after the Fall… but we didn’t talk at all; you left right away. You're one of my daughter's friends, I think… how did you get in the house?”

"Yeah, I am. Well, Yang's, at least. I haven't talked to Ruby much— I’m sorry that she left, by the way, and if I run into her out there, I’ll try to help her out. And I, um, your windows were unlatched, but I figured Yang might not want me to be knocking at her door with how she’s been feeling, so…”

"I see." He frowned down at Sun's outfit. “So were you invited here by her? She never mentioned anything of the sort to me.”

Seized by an unfamiliar urge to button up his shirt, Sun gave a sheepish grin, scratching his head. "Ah... I, er, came to visit her. Patch is nice and all— don’t get me wrong!— but it’s not really my scene, you know? I like the tranquil-forest-setting as much as the next guy, but I’m a desert sort of person at heart. Exploring was cool, but kind of boring, and if I brought Yang back, I figure I owe her a check-up, at least. She wasn’t too frightened by me popping in. At least, I hope so.” He flushed as he realized he was babbling.

"Well, you'll find her in her room, son, not out here." Was it Sun's imagination, or did he sound amused? Thoroughly annoyed, he tried a different approach.

"Yes, sir. She, uh, asked me to bring her cycle round front..." His voice sounded pathetically feeble, and he cursed himself. “Sorry. We talked some stuff out; she’s… not healed, yet, but she’s a great deal better than she was a couple hours ago, and now… I think she’s got an idea. She's very determined. It's a better sight to see than her sadness, at least."

“You’re not telling me everything. She's leaving, isn't she?" Those words, especially the last four, seemed to be wistful and heartbroken in a way that made Sun feel curious, and Taiyang didn't seem to be seeing him at all; his expression was distant, looking at some faraway past. "Chasing after her sister and—”

"Her partner." Somehow, the prospect of hearing Blake's name out of this man's mouth— no doubt he would say it in that disgusted, edged tone, especially after Blake had abandoned his daughter—made him cringe. "I'm gonna help her. Figure I'm obligated to, and all that. It's the right thing to do. I owe her."

"Better to have someone with her alone, then, I suppose." He shook his head. “I’ve learned I can’t stop my daughter… and after what happened, I don’t want to. Go on, then. I'll go have a word with her."

"Of course," he murmured. "Thanks, Mr. Xiao Long."

“Good luck, child." His eyes grew dark. "You’ll need it.”

/ / /

Yang

“Sun tells me you’re leaving, Yang.”

“Of course he did.” Crouched on her knees, Yang let out a sigh, closing her eyes as she heard Tai come into the room with his heavy tread and circle around to her front. She had been fumbling to tie the lace on her combat boots, and her father leaned down in front of her and finished the knot where she couldn’t, his hands inexplicably gentle as he looked up at her in sorrow. “I… I think I am, Dad.”

“What happened?” he asked. “You’ve been… I’ve been scared, seeing how badly off you were the last week. What changed your mind?”

“I did,” she said. “I changed it myself.”

“It wasn’t the letter from Blake? Or Sun talking you into it?”

“Partly, sure,” she said, tying back her hair and frowning at the floorboards, “but it’s more than that. The letter helped me understand that Blake never left because she wanted to… she left because she felt she had to. It doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven her, or anything… but now, at least, I have to know why. And Sun helped me understand too, in a way. I need to find out why she fled. Because no matter what I lost at the Fall, I can’t let it change me forever, or turn me into someone who’s bitter and pessimistic. I’ve got to find out why she had to go, why she felt the way she did, or I’ll never make peace with it. I’ll always be wondering why. And I've done that - Dad, I've done that my whole life. I can't do it anymore or I'll go mad.”

“You think I’ll let you go off like your sister, and you’re right,” he informed her, sitting back on his heels and regarding her thoughtfully. “Technically, yes, I can keep you here… but I’m not going to.”

She goggled at him. “Really? I would’ve thought…”

“That I don’t trust you? That I don’t think you can do this?” He smiled, but it was full of misery. “I know how strong you are. I raised you. I know you can do whatever you set your mind to… but I don’t want you paying another price so great that it almost kills you. You have to do it, though; I know that now. Find her, Yang. Find them both. I lost my team because of my mistakes, and theirs… I don’t want to see that happen to you, too. No one deserves that.” He held out his arms. “Come here, then.”

She stared at him for a moment, shocked, before going into his embrace, and he held her close, stroking her hair and whispering as she swallowed, fighting back a wave of tears.

“You’ve always had a habit of biting off more than you can chew, and trying to save everyone, rushing into danger heedless of the cost you might have to pay, with only the mind of saving others and not yourself…” Yang flinched, her arm giving a phantom echo of pain. “Ruby ran off because she thought it was her responsibility, her duty as a Huntress and daughter of Summer,” he continued, “and because of what Qrow said, that she had to save everyone… and now, you are doing the same.” He stroked her hair, holding her in his strong arms like she was still a little six-year-old again, when the worst thing that could hurt her was a scraped knee or a careless word. “Yang, promise me this: play the hero if you must, but don’t force me to bury my daughter.”

“I love you, Dad,” she whispered, voice muffled against the rough material of his vest. “But I’m scared. So, so scared.”

/ / /

Sun walked in after her father departed the room, looking windblown and slightly pleased. “I’ve never revved up a motorcycle before,” he said. “That was fun. I almost wrecked your mailbox, though. I don’t think your dad will be too happy about the state of the lawn.”

Yang smiled weakly, before it fell away, replaced by a worried frown. “Sun, I… I need to get to the airship port, if I’m going to get anywhere… and I can’t drive there on my own. Not with one arm.”

“I’ll drive you there, don’t worry about that, okay?” He gave her a half-smile, weary at the edges. She noticed the dark circles under his eyes, how his fingernails were ragged and bloody, bitten down the quick. Sun's kinetic, ceaseless energy suddenly seemed very fake, and exhausted shadows chased each other through his expression. “I owe you that much at least.”

“You’ve changed,” Yang commented as he walked over and dropped the keys into her outstretched palm, not looking at the bandaged stump of her right arm with poorly-hidden pity or judgement as so many others had, and would. “I used to think you were just an annoying Vacuo boy who only wanted to get into Blake’s pants and had no regard for others, but… you’re a good person, Sun. I… what makes you want to help me?"

He stared up at the ceiling, as if seeing into some distant past. “There was a time when I had feelings for Blake, sure,” he said, “but I think the Fall of Beacon changed us. In ways we haven’t admitted to ourselves yet, in ways we’re only beginning to comprehend. That’s okay, but we can’t let it change us forever.”

She let out a quiet breath. “I guess so.”

“Are you all packed up?” He frowned, looking at the duffel bag she’d slung over her shoulder. “Never mind; I see that you are. In that case, are you ready to ditch this place?”

“I need to write a letter to my father,” Yang said. “I can’t… I can’t tell it to him face-to-face, everything I want to say to him, everything I need to explain…” Then she wiggled her arm; she was dominant in her right-hand, and her left hand was all she had left. “But I can’t write it myself.”

“Just say the word,” Sun said eagerly, using his tail to pop open the latch on her drawer, rummaging around inside for a pen and paper. “I’m the next Shakespeare in the literary world. Just ask my professors.” Then, he let out a yelp and flung out something past his shoulder that went flying and hit the shaded window with a smack. “Jesus, clean up your pigsty, Xiao Long! I didn’t need to see that.”

She scowled irritably as she saw it was an unraveling camisole. “It’s a bra, Sun, not a severed head.”

“Whatever,” he said crossly. “I’m the one that goes around with my breasts uncovered, not you.”

She snorted. “You tell yourself that next time you walk by and approximately zero girls start drooling over your bare chest.”

“That hurts, Yang. That really hurts.” He flung himself down in the chair, having successfully located a paper and pen. “What do you want me to write to him?”

She sat down next to him, on the edge of the bed, relaying the words as they came into her mind, and Sun wrote them down, only interrupting to bid her to pause for a moment as he caught up, or to ask how to spell something, and for that, she was grateful.

“Okay,” he said after a long minute once she’d finished talking, setting down the pen and wiggling his hand. “Gosh, that’s a lot to write. I’ve never written that much before outside of a school essay. Want me to read it over, see if it sounds good?”

She nodded, and clearing his throat, he began.

“Dear Dad,

By the time you read this, I’ll be really far away— I’ll be on a mission of my own, and I’ll be safe. Trust me on that. I’m sorry for leaving you by yourself, and I’m sorry for making the past week filled with so much pain, for both of us. I know you know I’m leaving, but I want you to understand why I’ve left… and I don’t want you to come after me. It’s my choice to do this, and to do it alone; I know I can handle it. If I could handle losing all I have and still survive, I can handle this.

“I’m heading off on my own for a number of reasons, but Dad—if there’s one aspect in which you and I are exactly alike, it’s that we’ll both stop at nothing to make sure those we love are safe. I know you think I’m just heading after Blake… but there’s a lot more to it than that. I’ve got to put my team back together again. And that’s what I’m doing. I’m going to make sure those I love have me by their sides. I love you, but I know you can cope without me, because I have faith in you, as my father. I know you’re strong. But I don’t think my team is quite so strong yet, that we can be splintered and still remain standing alone and apart. So I’m going to bring us back together again.

“You said, a long time ago, that I burned. It’s my semblance. I burn both inside and out. And after what happened in the past weeks, I was extinguished, in a way. But it’s not like that anymore. I have a balance now. It’s a choice: to abandon everything I’ve come to know at Beacon, or to make an effort to keep it. I’ve got to choose the latter, or I’d never forgive myself, and probably never stop wondering, too.

“And as for the past week and my moping about, well, it won’t do any good to pretend I haven’t lost a lot. You never would tell me about Mom, and I, in turn, almost got killed trying to find out more about her. Blake didn’t tell me why she felt she had to run away, and she, in turn, has lost my trust. Weiss didn’t cut her ties to her family, and she, in turn, is now roped back into being with them again. It’s like a balance, and all our actions trigger another event to happen. My actions to run away on a mission are part of making the balance equal. I owe my team. You know about debts, too. Your team is broken, and I can’t let the same thing happen to mine. My team and yours are awfully similar: RWBY and STRQ, two colors. Both with siblings, both with two who love each other… and just as your team met a tragic ending, mine is heading down the same path. But I’m not letting that happen. Team RWBY will survive, I swear that, at least.

“It comes to this: should I be selfish and mourn over something so minor, when so much has been lost, or should I pick up my feet and keep moving? A Huntress would put her family and the wellbeing of her kingdom above whatever personal loss she suffered. And I am a Huntress, just like you said when I was a kid. So I’m doing what’s right, in a way. It’s time for me to put my loss behind me… and keep moving forward. If Ruby, my baby sister, can come back from having her entire world flipped upside-down in a matter of minutes, then I am able to do the same. I can’t expect her to do something so hard if I can’t— or won’t— do it myself.”

“Thank you for being there for me and Ruby in the last week.”

“Yes,” she said once he had finished. “Yeah, that sounds… it sounds good, I think.”

“I’ll drop it in the mailbox on the way out of here, then,” he said, rising from the chair, and as he did so, the reality of the situation sank in, making Yang recoil with a sudden, terrible fear. Was she really leaving the safety of Patch on a journey that was almost guaranteed to fail? She couldn’t even put on her own clothes properly, let alone fight, if she got into trouble. There was so much danger out there, and she barely had a plan, let alone any idea of what would happen. And when had she become so scared?

“Yang?” he said, looking worried as she shrank back, breathing shallowly. “What’s wrong?”

“Sun,” she croaked, looking up at him. “Are you really— are you really going to do this? It’s not your job, to come with me, to do any of this…” You’re drowning, you’re sinking, you’re crazy, and it’s not his responsibility to pull you back up.

But he nodded, to her surprise. “Yeah. Of course I’ll come. I meant what I said; you’re not alone, okay? I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

Yang looked away, not quite trusting herself to speak again, and Sun lightly touched her shoulder, his brows knitting together in concern.

“Yang… everything’s going to be fine, alright? I know it might seem impossible now… and maybe it will for a long time. But things will get better eventually… maybe not today, or tomorrow, or the day after that… but one day, you’ll be fine. It doesn’t matter how. I promise.” His voice was full of conviction, the same conviction she had held once, when she had talked to Blake— the girl who had held her fragile heart in her hands and crushed it— who still held it, if she was being honest. But he was here, and he hadn’t left, not like the rest. He wasn’t here on Blake’s terms, he was here because he cared— he cared enough to make sure she was healing. She looked at him, and he gave her a smile, and a little bit of the emptiness that had been holding a hollow space in her heart, ever since Blake had left and the Bond had shut down, filled up again.

She nodded, rising up off her bed, and he helped her walk out of the room, propping her up. And when he caught her when she stumbled, she felt that for the moment, she might be capable of holding her head above the water.

#RWBY #Sun Wukong #Yang Xiao Long #Taiyang Xiao Long #RWBY V3 #Sunnybees #Bumbleby #the final warning #my writing

9 notes · View notes