Chapter Text
No matter what Ruby does, she can’t use her silver eye powers.
It’s been several weeks now since Cinder and Neo attacked her. Several weeks since her aura fizzled and shattered under their relentless attacks and the searing pain of a blade split up through her eye. Several weeks since she woke up in an Atlas hospital, Blake watching worried from behind Yang as her sister sobbed softly into her hands, and Weiss’ expression contorted between furious and relived and anxious.
Now, she stands in the tundra surrounding Atlas, her team’s weapons raised and firing upon the Grimm they’ve drawn as she stands uselessly behind them, the cold wind biting at her barely recovered aura.
She lifts a tentative finger to her eye–the one that’s not concealed by an eyepatch, the one that’s still there–and wipes away the tear forming in the corner, wishing that argent instead spilled from it rather than this.
She’s tried it all: she’s thought of life, like Maria had told her, and the drive to protect it. She’s pictured the delight of seeing Penny alive in Mantle, marvelous and resplendent against the shattered moon and the specked northern sky. She’s pictured the looks of joy on her friends’ faces upon being given their licences by Ironwood, stretching grins and gleeful bouncing. She’s pictured the smug delight on Weiss’ face as she watched her father lose the council election so spectacularly, and the sheer bliss her sister showed when Blake and her kissed for the first time.
It should be enough, and there’s something that stops it from being enough. It feels like a wall is between her thoughts and her eye, like she can’t picture what she wants to well enough. Or maybe it’s between her thoughts and her heart, and whenever she wants to feel love and joy and happiness she only feels familiar blackness choking it out, blocking it from her chest and corrupting her thoughts with dispassion.
One final shot from Ember Celica rings out against the sharp tundra weather, and when its sound faded from her ears the rest of her team turns to her. Ruby almost can’t stand the expressions they wear, but she knows their concern is genuine.
Blake frowns sadly as she sheathes her weapon. “So, did it work?” she asks, and they all know the answer but someone has to break the unease.
Ruby shakes her head. “I just can’t do it, guys. I’m sorry.”
“Ruby, you have nothing to be sorry about,” Yang says firmly, though her tone somehow remains gentle. “You’ll get it eventually, you just need time to heal.”
“I don’t have time to heal, Yang!” Ruby grumbles. She curls her fingers into her palms and takes a heavy step forward. “Cinder and Neo are still out there, and Salem could attack Atlas any day now, and I’m supposed to just wait until this–” she emphasizes her statement by pointing at her missing eye, “–gets magically better?”
Weiss steps forward to meet her, hands raised carefully in front of her. “I’m sure that’s not what Yang meant–”
“Why don’t you try having the weight of the world on your shoulders?”
There’s an immediate stillness around them, as if the life of the tundra suddenly stops and the winds cease their howling. Even the patches of fog from her teammates’ stunned breaths seem to hesitate the moment they pass their lips, and her own tears freeze to her skin like ice sealing her eyelids together.
The weight of her own words hit her instantly like a blow to the chest, and she collapses under that weight in tears broken by harsh sniffles and desperate hisses for air.
Immediately, Yang is kneeling in front of her, cradling her as she softly hushes her and skates her thumbs along her arms. Ruby’s not a kid anymore, but even now against the frigid ground and shattering from the impact of her own voice, of such severe words coming from her own mouth, she falls into her sister’s hold and lets herself be small.
Blake and Weiss soon circle and kneel around her, too, Blake quietly watching with a sympathetic and understanding look in her eyes and Weiss running her fingers through Ruby’s hair.
Finally, she manages to speak through her sniffles. “What if I don’t get better?” She lifts her head for a moment to meet her sister’s eyes, and the look she’s given makes her heart clench, makes her tear up even more as anxiety settles in her chest. “What if I am broken?”
Yang holds her shoulder in her metal palm and gives her a reassuring squeeze; she can feel the cold steel through the fabric of her cloak, and against the heat of her panic it’s comforting to know she’s not alone.
“You’re not broken,” Yang tells her confidently, holding back her own tears. “You will get better.”
“How do you know?”
Weiss rests her hand against the back of Ruby’s head, and she sinks into her soft touch. “We’ll help you get better. Whatever we can do, we’ll do it.”
There’s another hand on her shoulder, and she looks to Blake who’s moved to Yang’s side. She mimics the gentle circuit of Yang’s thumb on her shoulder and offers her a kind smile. “We promise,” she says.
Ruby nods, and she cracks a sheepish but sincere smirk, and when the tears come back to her eye she lets herself be held by her family.