Chapter Text
It's a little late. Ruby usually doesn't stay up this late, because she's a Responsible Girl. But it's Mommy's night off, and Ruby wants to spend time with her. She'll stay up late to hang out with people she likes.
Ideally, though, hanging out would involve all members being awake.
"Mommy, Mommy, this is a plot episode," Ruby shakes the adult who was, nominally, holding her. 'Nominally' means 'in name only', and once you're asleep, it's harder to hold people, because your arms go limp. Ruby adjusts the arm around her back, to snuggle up closer.
“W-wah? I'm awake,” Mommy mumbles. She wakes up, nominally.
She wipes her drool on her doctors coat. Ruby pulls her left hand into her sleeve and helps Mommy clean her face. Mommy smiles at her (!).
"Mommy, this is a plot episode..."
"Yeah, I'm paying attention. The big robots learned that the rounds robots were, something, I think..."
A good girl wouldn't doubt or contradict her Mommy, so Ruby doesn't.
"Also, you said you wanted to talk with Taiyang when he got back from Spain?"
"Wh~ yeah...."
"He's been here for ten minutes."
Mommy awakes then, for reals. She sits up, suddenly. Ruby is jostled. "Huh- Tai-tai! You're here!"
Taiyang waves, awkwardly, from the other couch.
Mommy squints. "And you didn't say anything?"
Ruby thinks that it's good that Taiyang doesn't mention that they tried, when he came in.
"Well, Ruby and I took the opportunity to catch up, real quick."
"That's good," Mommy says, "Your flight went well?"
"Yeah."
"You get the contract?"
"Yeah, actually-"
"So Taiyang,” Mommy says, "You may notice that Raven's staying with us, indefinitely,” she says.
“I- I told her that it'd be up to you-"
"So you're okay with her being here." Mommy asks, though it doesn't sound like a question.
Taiyang makes a smile. "Ummmm. Yes?
"Ok," Mommy says, "Why?"
"S-she seems like she's changed, and it does look like she wants to help Yang..."
Mommy's satisfied with that answer. They go back to watching TV, and Ruby discusses some of the backstory with Taiyang.
Later, during a filler episode, Ruby musters up the courage to go see Raven in her room. She climbs out under Mommy's arm, and Mommy doesn't notice. Taiyang agrees to cover for her.
Since she's always wearing a hoodie, Ruby doesn't have to change to go outside, and Raven parked right next to the walkway, so Its a shirt walk, but Ruby put on her slippers to reduce the probability of stepping in a rock, or similar uncomfortable foot related situations.
Ruby opens the front door and walks towards the door to Raven's room. She knocks on the back of the van. It clangs, deeply.
"Come in!" says Raven.
Since Ruby's a Big Girl- where 'big' means 'mature and responsible and partaking in the relevant parts of adulthood', she doesn't have to have someone open doors for her. However, she's not quite a big girl- where big means 'having width, girth, or length ' but even still, she can open car doors by herself. Eventually. So she does.
Raven is upside-down, in her underwears, partially falling off of a seat in the side of the van. It resembles a couch, which means 'a place where you watch TV with people you like'. Raven has a guitar, and she's strumming it.
Ruby inhales and puts on her imperious face. Imperious means 'powerful and imposing'.
“Hello, Raven,” Ruby states. She puts her hands behind her back and stands up ramrod straight. Here, 'ramrod' means 'intimidating.'
Raven twists into an upright position. “Hey Ruby, It's good to see yo-"
“Please do not get too familiar, Raven. I am here on business."
Raven covers her mouth with her fingertips. “Oh, are you?"
“You are patronizing me, Raven.”
"Am I?" Raven continues to patronize her. Ruby furrows her brow to show disapproval.
“I shall remind you, Raven, that Mommy likes me best.”
“I- “ Raven's face falls. Haha, victory! “Are you threatening me, Ruby?”
"I am simply stating facts, Raven. I encourage you to take them into consideration before you speak, Raven."
Raven sits up straight. "Of course. I don't want to hurt your feelings, in any way. You're as much my daughter as Yang is-"
“Spare me the white lies, Raven,”
“I-"
Raven sighs. Then she closes her eyes and smiles. "Very well. I won't pretend I don't like Yang best."
Ruby nods. "Personally, I love that Yang has a Mommy in her life, now. I bear you no ill will."
"Well, that doesn't mean I don't care about you at all." Raven looks to her guitar and strums a g major arpeggio. "So what can I help you with?"
"I came because of things within your expertise and which I require, and would like to negotiate for your services. One of which is throwing parties-"
Raven looks up and smirks. "You want me to throw a party?"
"Yes. An adult party."
Ravens mouth opens and she looks embarrassed.
"A garden party."
"A gar- oh! Yes. That is the kind of parties adults throw. What's the occasion?"
Ruby's voice only wavers for only a moment. "Since we're being so honest, I wanted a venue to show off all my friends to someone special-"
"Oh! Your favorite babysitter," Raven says.
Ruby's reaction betrays her, though she says nothing.
Raven smiles. It's annoying. "Of course. To repay the favor. And 'cause I love you."
Ruby lets that one slide. Just this once.
Raven cogitates. 'Cogitate' means 'taps her chin and tries to think as best she can'.
"You know, yeah. Yeah. I'm totally on board. This will be good." Raven stops cogitating. "Yeah. Anything else?"
Now it's Ruby's turn to cogitate.
"Can you teach me guitar?"
Raven looks at the guitar in her lap, and at a smaller guitar in the pile of miscellaneous possessions in her room. "Um. I don't know. I don't know if Yang would appreciate me teaching you something she won't be able to do...."
"That is a valid consideration. I withdraw my request."
"Yeah, sorry. Anything else?"
"Well," Ruby says, "can you help me cook something?"
Glynda rubbed her face on her desk. It was the free period before lunch, she was kind of tired, even though she hadn't babysat the previous night, and she was kind of done with homework. Surrounding her were other students, not doing homework, most of them unimportant enough that Glynda only knew their first names. Junior and Adam where chatting to Roman, who, ever since he had been cast as the British Singer in their school's production of Cabaret, used that as an excuse to wear a top-hat and twirl a cane around. He also was sitting on his desk, which had always been a habit of his even before this semester's casting decisions. Cinder was nearby, checking something on her phone, an unlit cigarette in the corner of her mouth.
Ozpin was having some sort of philosophical discussion with their two other friends, Bart and Peter (who were important enough that Glynda did know their last names, but that was weird to call them that, right? {Ozpin's was a whole different deal})
Then, at some point, the class representative walked in. Amber something. “Package for you, Glynda,” she said, and she handed Glynda a box, wrapped with a relatively fancy polka-dot patterned handkerchief and set with a large red bow.
Glynda looked up slightly. “What?"
“It was instructed to be delivered right before lunch time. So. Here you go."
Glynda adjusted her glasses. Someone sent her a gift? What? Who would do that? And why?
Then Amber turned to the class delinquent, a frown on her face. “Cinder-"
“'s not lit,” Cinder said, tapping the cigarette in her mouth. "Just a compulsion, ya know?"
Amber sighed, but she didn't say anything else before she left.
In the meantime, Glynda opened the box. There was a bag of cookies and a ben-to tin. Once she opened the tin, she imagined that the contents glowed.
And, apparently, everyone else in the room imagined it glowed too, because when Glynda looked up, her desk was surrounded by her friends and a bunch of people unimportant enough that she only knew their first names.
“Woah,” Junior said, “That's pretty intricate."
“Did you get a boyfriend or something?” Adam asked. "One who loves you enough to send you lunch?"
Cinder grabbed an envelope that Glynda just realized had come with the package. “Not unless 'Ruby' is a boys name now.”
“Oh Glynda,” Roman smirked insufferably, “I always knew you played for the right team. Cinder and I had a pool going-"
“It's not like that!” Glynda protested. At the edge of the group, Ozpin smirked.
“Then you won't mind if I read this for you?” Cinder said.
"Give that back Cinder, you rascal!" Glynda yelled.
Cinder cackled as she weaved between desks.
Bart lowered his center of gravity and spread his arms out, to intercept. Cinder feinted right, and Bart jumped right, and Cinder spun and stepped over the defeated student. "Psyche!" Cinder yelled.
Ozpin and Peter then managed to surround Cinder, so the delinquent tossed the envelope to her ally with the highest ground, which was Roman, because he had jumped onto a desk. He caught the envelope and posed.
Port tried to shake Roman off the desk by jostling it, but theater kids had a balance bonus when standing on furniture, so Roman maintained position until he could hand the letter off to Junior-
Who immediately got tackled by Peter.
The letter landed on the ground. Ozpin was closest to it but then-
Adam flung his sketchbook into the air. He touched his finger to his brow and intoned the name of his special move, and duplicate white envelopes fluttered down, landing all around the real letter. Ozpin picked up decoy envelopes for just long enough for Cinder to leapfrog over him and grab the correct one.
A piece of chalk exploded in front of Cinder, because by this point, Glynda had made it to the black board to a handful of chalk, and having A's in all your classes gave you affinity with school supplies. "Give it up Cinder. Your team's incapacitated."
Adam raised a hand, but Ozpin then made Glynda's statement true.
"Why Glynders, you forget the most effective move in the delinquent's skillset," Cinder said. She then just opened the envelope. "It's called 'Cheating'."
Glynda's mouth popped open and she reached out, but not in time for Cinder's faction to group up in a defensive formation around her.
“'Dearest Glynda,'” Cinder began, her voice an exaggerated southern drawl, “'I hope my gift of lunch and cookies has reached you. I truly hope you like it. Additionally, it is my honor to cordially invite ya to a formal soiree tomorrow afternoon-"
"oooh, that's definitely some sort of significant other."
"What a sultry side, our beloved Glynda sought to hide from us."
"It's not like that!" Glynda said. Her cheeks felt hot. She managed to walk up and snatch the letter out of Cinder's hand, "and mind your own business!"
Glynda walked back to her desk, her eyes closed and her glasses starting to fog up.
After she sat down, Glynda looked over the invitation for real, silently. A garden party? That sounded really fun, actually.
But she would have to wait to fantasize about it until all these people who weren't important enough for her to know their last names weren't looking at her.
The lunch looked really good, though. It'd been a while since Glynda had had sushi.
"Also," Glynda said, "I was going to share these cookies, but then you all invaded my privacy."
Cinder, Junior, Adam, and Roman burst into fits of apologies with varying levels of whinyness.
"Alright, fine," Glynda said, "Since I'm so kindhearted, you can have one cookie-"
The four of them leaned forward and started babbling platitudes.
"-to share."
Glynda handed Cinder a single cookie.
Cinder blinked at the cookie, then glanced at her friends, and then she laughed, nervously.
And then they turned into some sort of cartoonish dogpile, because selfishness was a quality of evil.
Glynda closed her eyes and enjoyed her cookies.
OMAKE
"Can you teach me to play the guitar?" Ruby asks.
"Eh," Raven shrugs, "why not? Did you have a song you wanted to learn?
Ruby smiles. "Ooooh, can you teach me 'Stacy's Mom'?"
Raven blinks. "I'm going to say 'nooooooooo'."
"Then, how about 'Mrs Robinson'?"
"Nuh-uh."
Ruby cogitates. "The 'Winnie the Pooh' theme song?"
"That one, no problem."