Work Text:
They find him just outside of Mantle, still bent over Clover’s body.
He doesn’t answer when Ruby calls out to him, doesn’t try to comfort her when she stumbles back at the sight of Clover’s wound: gaping and deep, staining the ice around them salmon-colored.
There’s a story somewhere in these pieces, Ruby thinks, glancing at the still-smoking crash Blake and Weiss are picking through and the fresh footprints leading into the city. Her uncle’s weapon is lying in the snow a distance away, covered in congealed blood. When she reaches to pick it up, she feels gummy liquid press into her palm, and she almost throws the thing back down again before her nerves steel, and she redoubles her grip.
“Uncle Qrow?” She holds the scythe out like a peace offering, waiting for him to take it - for him to look at her and let her know that even if nothing seems okay now, at least they’re together. At least they made it.
He doesn’t move.
She hears stilted footsteps behind her, and Yang stops at her side. Ruby knows there's something wrong, even as she sinks to her knees next to their uncle. Yang’s standing stiffer than an Atlesian soldier, and from this angle, Ruby can see that her fists are clenched. When they first touched down on their stolen airship, Yang had run out with her. But then they got close enough to see the bent of Qrow’s head, the shaking curve of his spine, and she froze in place, letting Ruby rush up by herself.
She’s moving now, but her entire stance is off, like she’s preparing for a fight. Ruby scans the area for quick perimeter check, but there’s no one here but them, no threat except the utter wrongness of their uncle’s silence, the way she can’t even tell that he knows they’re there.
“Qrow,” Yang says, and the word comes out so sharp, she may as well have yelled it. “Look at me.”
Ruby glances at him hopefully, though she doesn’t know why she’s expecting a different response just because Yang’s initiating it. But her sister’s always been her hero, been able to survive and accomplish what she could not. Ruby stares at Qrow and wills him to listen to Yang, to brush off their worries - to do anything other than kneel there like neither sky nor earth could move him.
“Damn it!” Yang grabs his shoulder, twisting him around with force. “Look at me.”
When Yang and Ruby were smaller and attending Signal, their teachers used to tell fairy tales with tiny marionette dolls, fragile little things that only the best kids were allowed to play with after the show was over. Ruby has always been clumsier than most, especially back then, and she had missed with the scissors she wanted to use to fix the doll’s hair, the sharp blade slicing through all of its strings instead. The memory hasn’t surfaced in years, but she remembers thinking that the puppets weren’t very realistic. Who even moves like that, head rolling back listlessly, torso crumbling forwards over their own limbs?
Qrow does.
~
Yang carries him to the ship.
He goes easily enough, but the sight of their uncle’s fingers slipping from Clover’s with the same amount of lifelessness isn’t something that's going to escape Ruby’s nightmares for a long time.
Yang tucks him into the back corner, her movements gentle even as her expression sets into a hard line. Ruby unbuckles her cloak at her throat and pulls it up to his chin, smoothing the fabric down around his body. He doesn’t seem physically hurt. Jaune double-checked and declared that aside from a few scrapes that his recovering aura would quickly take care of, Qrow seemed fine in every way.
He still hasn’t looked at her.
“We should be careful,” she says quietly. Everything feels quiet now, in the aftermath of it all. “He could still go into shock.”
“I think he is in shock,” Blake responds, her arm wrapped tightly around Yang’s waist. “I know Jaune said he's fine, but he needs a proper hospital.”
“Well, that’s not exactly something we can give him right now, is it?” Yang snaps.
Blake turns to look at her, eyes large and wounded, and doesn’t say anything. Some of the tension bleeds out of Yang’s shoulders, and her face instantly clouds with regret.
“I didn’t-” She swallows. “I’m sorry. You’re trying to help.”
Blake moves her hand up through Yang’s hair, pulling her head onto her shoulder. “You don’t have to apologize,” she says. “I know.”
Ruby stares down at her hands. Maria and Oscar were piloting the ship to Vacuo. She made the call, back when they fled Atlas. She doesn’t know if it was the right one, but there’s nowhere else for them to go. All that was left of the Winter Maiden was a few strands of hair and torn fabric. The power hadn’t gone to Cinder, who had disappeared the second she got her hands on the Staff. It hadn’t even gone to Winter, who they left in Mantle, exhausted and frustrated but still blessedly alive. She refused Weiss’s offer to join them, determined to find General Ironwood, who went missing in action halfway through the fight and hasn’t turned up since.
Ruby had hoped that maybe Penny would come with them, so that if nothing else, they could leave Atlas with one more person than they came with. But she only smiled sadly at Ruby, crushing her in a hug that Ruby can still feel as an ache deep in her ribs, and said that even though they lost, she was still the Protector of Mantle. She had to stay. Pietro couldn’t rebuild an entire city by himself, after all.
So in a way, they were back to square one. Eight kids on a ship with one surprisingly competent old lady and an uncle that she was losing more of by the day.
“This sucks,” Yang says, her voice tight.
Weiss almost snorts, her arms crossed tightly around her chest. She still looks shaken. There’s a tremble to the rise of her shoulders that she can’t quite hide, no matter how much she postures. According to Blake’s whispered words, Weiss had been the one to stumble over Robyn’s body. Her aura must’ve been decimated by the crash, and without any protection, the cold of Solitas likely killed her in minutes. Weiss hasn’t spoken since they reboarded, but Ruby notes with relief that some of the color is coming back to her cheeks - as much coloring as a Schnee can have, that is.
Nora shifts from where she’s asleep at Ren’s side. Jaune is leaning on Ren’s other shoulder, likely worn out by all the healing he’s done in the past twelve hours. Only Ren still has his eyes open, and his hands seem gentle where they touch his teammates, moving in slow, circular strokes.
“We all made it,” Ruby says, but her voice sounds hollow even to her own ears. “That has to mean something. We were lucky to be able to get out of there together. Live and fight another day, you know?”
Yang’s metal hand clenches against her pant leg. “Sometimes I wonder if the people who don’t make it out are the real lucky ones. In this goddamn hellscape, being the only survivors makes me feel like we’re some of the unluckiest sons of bitches in all of Remnant.”
“Yang.” Ruby stands, feeling her eyes blaze with the sudden rush of anger that lit her chest. Her eyes, her stupid eyes. Even when it mattered most, she couldn’t get them to work. “Don’t say that. Not around him.”
Yang loosens herself from Blake’s hold, pushing forward until she’s towering over Ruby. “Say what?” Her words rub against each other like pieces of chalk. “That we’re unlucky? That it’s the furthest thing from a damn blessing we have to keep going, moving forward on this impossible journey?” She jabs a finger in Qrow’s direction, face twisting with an awful fury. “He can’t even hear me, Ruby! He’s not even there. And as far as we know, he’s not ever coming back.”
“Shut up!” Ruby thinks she’s crying, something hot and wet sliding down her cheeks. “Don’t say that, don’t ever say that.”
Yang falters. One of her hand lifts slightly, bent towards Ruby, and then falls again. She turns away, running her fingers shakily through her wild hair.
“Okay,” Yang says. “Okay.” Her shoulders steel visibly, and she lets herself face Ruby again. “What should we do?”
Ruby glances around the ship. Yang’s looking at her, and so is Blake and Weiss. Even Ren meets her eyes, his presence as calm and steadying as always.
She bends down at her uncle’s side, reaching under her cloak until she finds his hand, squeezing it as hard as she can. He doesn’t squeeze back, but his empty gaze does shift, and if she hopes hard enough, she can almost make herself believe he’s looking at her too.
Ruby doesn’t exactly know what Clover Ebi meant to her uncle beyond those weeks of too-long glances and ill-timed flirting. She only knows that it’s been the happiest she’s ever seen him, and even though Clover is gone, she has to believe that he’ll be able to smile like that again.
“We do what we do best,” Ruby says. “We keep going. And we never stop trying to do what’s right.”
Yang takes a breath, her expression unflinching. She nods once. “Okay, Ruby.” Outside of the airship, the empty sky stretches out before them. “We’re with you.”