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The tender, maddening sound of the waves against the shore of another world is the only thing here that might drown out shrill sobs - but they don’t. They’re not loud enough. They’re...calm. Tranquil. At peace.
And Ruby hates them for it. Because how could they be; how could anything dare to be at peace, anything exist in any form but flaming, furious uproar at the injustice held tight in her arms? If it meant something - anything - she would stop those waves entirely, turn the shore into an everlasting grieving silence; she’d find a way, whatever it took, if she could do anything for her.
Oh, she could tear the sky down - she could bring all of Remnant above crashing through itself to fall on this plane. She could do anything for her, if she’d had the chance. But she didn’t.
And it’s all too late now - too late for her fairytale ending - her real girl, who fell through the world.
Ruby pulls at one sleeve, tearing it off at the shoulder, so that her hand can let the clumped sand in a clenched fist sprinkle to the side, collapsing like a shattered hourglass - and what else could speak so clearly of stolen time? - and run fingers through tousled locks of perfect honeyed hair. She pushes her forehead down against hers, dark red bangs intertwining with the brightest colour in the world. (In this world. Remnant will never have it again, Ruby knows that.)
Searing tears trickle down the path from silver eyes to ice-cold freckled cheeks, and down further as Ruby shakes, eventually onto the hand still caressing the back of her neck. She sets Penny down onto the beach, and buries her head against the soft fabric of her bow, beating her fists into the sand, dousing the flaming drops wetting her hand into the earth. And she knows well that without a tree to water, these drops from her eyes will raise the waves to swallow this island whole - she could cry enough for it, and more.
Penny! I -- I thought you --
It was a cruel joke. All of it.
And we...kinda wanna keep her around longer than that…!
Just like he said; exactly what you ask for. She got what she asked for, after all. A little longer. A moment of eternity.
Each time I rebuild Penny, it...takes a little more.
That had startled Ruby, back then - terrified her. It’s when she’d understood again - how hard she had to try, to keep her friend safe. To keep her friend at all. But...at least he could have made the choice. His soul or his daughter..
‘You took that away from him,’ she would scream at herself, if she could only muster the strength to silence those choking sobs - for even a moment.
If only she’d never made that plan. Ruby would have taken Penny back to Remnant - come hell or high water - and Pietro could have saved her. Or if she’d never sent her off to Amity, for fear of hurt befalling her; if she’d been focusing instead of growling at Harriet like a stupid puppy, so they could never have ripped one of her swords from her frame; if she’d been faster to the facility, so Winter could have had the harrowing responsibility of Atlas, instead of the Protector of Mantle being crushed by the weight of the world.
If she’d never come to Atlas to get her involved in her childish risks.
If she’d figured out everything about Emerald Sustrai - everything Velvet made so obvious - just a bit sooner.
Or if she’d never met Penny. Never called her friend.
Never gone to Beacon.
Ruby supposes Cinder has the power now, as she claws at sand, breaking atop her beloved, fingers more demented than those of a writhing Grimm arm could ever be - that’s hers, and Penny’s, humanity, and that beautiful, irrational will of theirs, the very same thing that made Penny turn back from salvation to try and save her friends. The very same thing that killed her.
Oh, what could ever have killed Penny but kindness, that festered inside her like a virus? And what could kill Ruby but love, the bitter scythe that cuts her heart into pink ribbons?
And Cinder had the Staff.
She’s won, Ruby knows, looking up through a soaking blur behind her eyelashes to the night sky, searching for the star that the Fall Maiden must have wished upon for a beautiful world to bend to her vile whims.
-
One star shoots across the horizon; a green rocket that seems to fly rather than fall, revel in its freedom to move instead of hurtling hopelessly in cosmic flame. It’s beautiful.
Maybe it’s a message from the departed.
But Ruby’s face has already buried itself back into the cushioning curls of Penny Polendina, and she never sees it whizz by.
-
If Cinder’s won, then…
Never gone to Beacon?
No. Ruby might have bumped into the girl with the most splendid soul she’s ever known some other way; a visit to Vale with Dad to see how Yang’s first year at Beacon was going, maybe.
But maybe if…
And you…
Maybe she…
Should have never been born.
She finds her voice for Penny, at long last.
She says sorry a hundred times in the moonlight - if this solid round orb can be called a moon.
For the third time, she looks into eyes that were once verdant, eyes that brought to mind wide open fields, and roses, and skipping down the hill with hands locked inseparably, and sees the dull shade of dried coolant - of death, for her.
For the first time, she takes Penny’s hand in her own, and finds it stained with the crimson of her cape; of course the colour she brought to her life was red. How else could it have ended?
And for a time that will never come, Ruby still never tells her how dearly she loves her. How all Ruby had ever wanted for Penny was a happy ending, but how all she’d ever wanted from Penny was her shimmering soul at her side. How much she hates herself for letting the two commingle, for nothing could ever have come of such selfishness but this outcome.
How her hair against the whites of the tundra is like the golden sunset over her mother’s grave, when the birds came.
How, no, hugs didn’t always make her feel this warm inside - only hugs with you, Penny.
How she always wanted to know the beauty of sparkling salmon nail polish on the scraped hands that stopped the truck.
How she’d never let her go again. Not this time.
It’s the third life she’s tried to say it all in. But it’s impossible. Ruby’s knees give out into the soft sand, and her strength collapses onto the friend she’s failed. If there was anything she could do… If there was just something… But Jinn showed Ruby too well. How impossible it is.
Ruby has never understood the witch better than now; understood how she could take all this bitter, sweltering rage and direct it at the gods, rail against the heavens until they granted her one more moment before taking her sunshine too soon.
And she has never understood so well how there’s nothing she can ever do.
…But… There is one, she supposes. Exactly one, and nothing more.
Ruby decides then, that she’s taking Penny back. Whether she has to climb to the highest branch of the looming tree with the truest Maiden she’s ever known wrapped in her cape and burst into petals as far as the stars above - she has to.
She wouldn’t fail the Polendinas in death as she had in life; Pietro deserves a place to grieve, and Penny deserves the world to know. She doesn’t deserve this. She deserves a grave, with flowers, and a headstone she’ll carve herself with Crescent Rose if she can ever find it, detailing how the Protector of Remnant had been such a shining beacon.
And as for what Ruby Rose deserves…?
Well, what she deserves is coming either way, isn’t it? She’s always been guided, moulded, pushed...to follow in Mom’s footsteps.
So she’ll just...play her part when it comes for her. The part of every other Huntsman in history. That’s what he said, isn’t it? ‘Maybe she’ll make a wolf out of Little Red,’ she tries to joke with herself, utterly bleakly.
Just like they all want - Neo, Cinder, Salem.
Just like Ruby does.
She almost tells Penny Polendina’s corpse that she loves her again. But her body never mattered. It’s her soul that Ruby loves, and her soul…
It’s somewhere else now. Forever.