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Ever since Weiss was little, she only had one weakness that she always made certain no one else knew about it. It was an embarrassing little thing, but she her father would tolerate no weaknesses, so she had kept it hidden, keeping it to herself. She just couldn’t handle crowds of people.
She had grown up in a house that despite being huge and full of people, she was constantly alone. The various servants of the house tended to avoid her as much as they could get away with, and she almost never saw her father, so it had taken her a while to actually discover she had this weakness.
She had been attending a ball that her father was hosting, and when several of the guests began crowding around her, she realized that she felt almost like she was stuffed full, she had difficultly breathing, and had a need to remove herself from the presence of the people around her.
She had done so, hiding herself in one of the less populated areas, and had thought to herself that it might have simply been the company of people she was with, but when she had moved to a different group, she had quickly been closer to the center, and she felt the same feeling as before.
She quickly excused herself and quietly hid herself again in the least populated corner she could find, and stayed there until one of her father’s servants had finally tracker her down and taken her to bed.
She had kept the feeling herself, because she knew that anything she told the servants of the house, or anyone truly, would eventually make itself known to her father, and she would not face the man if he thought she had any weaknesses. So she kept it to herself for most of her life, not telling a soul, even after she had left the house she had lived in for most of her life, for it would never be home to her, to go train at Beacon and become a Huntress.
As she had become a part of team RWBY and actually become friends with the rest of her team members, in the back of her mind, she knew that she should probably tell her new friends about her weakness, but a part of her continued to fear that somehow telling them would eventually lead to her father learning of it, and she still refused to allow that to happen.
Then, one day, her partner and team leader, Ruby Rose, had presented a small bouquet of roses to hear and asked her to become her girlfriend, and Weiss realized, that she actually had feelings for the girl, she had agreed, but she still had the nagging feeling that she needed to tell her, now especially. However, she never felt that she could find a good moment to tell the girl about the subject anymore. They went on a date almost every other Friday, and when they weren’t going on a date, the two had either been training, studying, sleeping, or in classes. It felt almost like there was no time for them to eat, much less for Weiss to talk with Ruby about something she had done her best to hide from the rest of the world for most of her life.
Then, everything hit the fan.
Weiss and Ruby had taken a trip to Vale for their usual date night, and were on their way to one of the bigger restaurants in the city, Weiss had found she could never remember the name of the place, despite it being the sort of place she would have eaten at back in Atlas almost regularly.
She and Ruby had been casually walking in the direction of the place, when they had reached a huge crowd that was taking up the entirety of the street. It always surprised Weiss to see a large crowd of any kind in Vale, she knew that there were people within the city of course, but so much of the time it just didn’t seem as if there were enough of them on the streets, when compared to Atlas, for these kinds of crowds to happen, and yet, here was one now.
“Come on Weiss, we’ll be late for our reservations if we try to go through a different street,” Ruby said calmly as she tried to pull Weiss through the chaos with her.
“That wouldn’t have happened if we had left when I suggested,” Weiss said, following behind the girl, despite the fact that she knew she shouldn’t. She should insist that they go on a different street anyway, or maybe just go somewhere else entirely. But the look on Ruby’s face when she had told Weiss where they going, the image of her joy entered her mind now, and she sighed in defeat as she was finally tugged into the mass of people.
She moved quickly, doing her best to remain calm, thinking to herself, You haven’t had to deal with this for years, not since your father’s last ball when you were fifteen, you’ll be fine Weiss, you’ll be fine. But, Ruby’s hand suddenly lost hers, though they both continued forward, and suddenly, Weiss’s anxiety flared up. She stopped for a moment, closing her eyes and doing her best to ignore all of the people pushing and pulling and doing their best to get into whatever store it was that they were trying to get into.
None of them attempted to grab at her, but she could feel all of them around her, and she could feel a panic welling up inside of her. Her hand twitched to where she had a small knife she had hidden, because though she and Ruby had agreed on their second or third date that they wouldn’t bring their weapons along with them, but Weiss refused to go anywhere without some kind of weapon on her person, she had to be able to defend herself.
Her hand brushed over the sleeve that was hiding the weapon, and a thought flashed itself before she knew it. It’s not the end of the world if one of them were to die, it would definitely give you the space you need right now, wouldn’t it? She had no intention on following through with the thought, but the fact that it had gone through her mind was not a good sign.
She forced the thought away and tried to force herself to calm down, when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Weiss opened her eyes to see Ruby standing in front of her, looking at her with concern all over her face. Before Weiss could do or say anything, Ruby quickly maneuvered the two of them, so that Weiss was in the front, and Ruby was right behind her, so close that Weiss could feel the other girl’s breath of her neck, and both of her hands were holding her close on Weiss’s waist.
They gently moved through the crowd, Weiss feeling far less like she was going to suffocate with the familiar girl’s presence, and they made it through the crowd without incident. When they made it out of the crowd, Ruby quickly steered them so that they were in an unoccupied ally, and she wrapped herself around Weiss, who finally allowed the tears she had been holding back to let themselves out.
They streamed down her face and she just stood there, letting the sobs work their way through her body. When she was finally to the point that she was just sniffling and a few hiccups every now and again, Ruby gently pulled her to the wall, and got her to sit down next to her, leaning quietly against it.
Ruby still had one arm wrapped around her and asked, “Are you ok now?”
Weiss nodded, not trusting herself to speak right now.
Ruby sighed, but not in a sad or disappointed way, it seemed to be indicating her relief. She gently rubbed Weiss’s arm and asked, “Do you want to talk about what’s wrong? You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I won’t put any pressure on you to tell me something you don’t want to.”
Weiss sat there for a little bit, she knew that Ruby was still offering her to keep her secret, and she knew that Ruby wasn’t liable to bring this up again unless something like this happened again, but she also knew that Ruby had every right to know, both as her girlfriend and her leader.
“I have an anxiety of large crowds. I can handle myself around small groups, like of our friends, and actually, if its a group of people I feel like I know fairly well, I’m fine. But being surrounded like I was by people I don’t or hardly know, it just builds up until I feel like I can’t breathe, and I have to get out of there as fast as I can. I know that I should have told you sooner but-“
“No,” Ruby interrupted.
“No?”
“No. You never had to tell me anything you didn’t feel comfortable with. I know I push you sometimes to do stuff I know you’re not always the most happy about, but I will never push you to the point that you’re not comfortable. If I ever do, I really expect you to just tell me ok. So you never had to tell me sooner, you just had to tell me whenever you felt the most able to tell me. I guarantee that this wasn’t how you wanted to tell me what you just did, but the situation made it happen, so I’m sorry, but I really care about you Weiss, so if you don’t feel ok telling or doing something with me, all you ever have to do is tell me, alright?”
Weiss was dumbstruck, she had never had someone tell her something that made her swell the way that Ruby just had, and Weiss pulled Ruby in for a hug and said, “I’m going to kiss you now.” Ruby grinned, and they both brushed their lips against the other, and gently kissed each other. Weiss nearly melted into the other girl’s arms just at them kissing each other. Ruby gently pulled her head back, but rested her forehead on Weiss’s and asked quietly, “Do you want to go to our reservation, or do you want to go back to the room? Because I’m good with either.”
Weiss laughed a little and said, “Let’s just go back to Beacon.”
Ruby gave her a huge smile and said, “Great! But let’s take a different route back this time.”
Weiss merely nodded an agreement.