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A loud “Good morning, Rose Squad!” jolts Ruby out of her sleep, making her nearly fall off her bunk; she flails and unleashes a wild burst of wind before she regains control of her powers and just dangles from the edge instead. The rest of her team groans and shifts in their bunks while Ruby looks around for the source, only to find Penny standing in front of their door, fully uniformed and bright-eyed, looking directly at Ruby.
Ruby drops slowly from her bed, whirling around in midair. “Hey, Penny!” Ruby says, any irritation at the rude awakening vanishing upon seeing Penny’s carefree smile. “What are you doing here?”
Weiss looks at the clock and groans in dismay. “Seriously? On a holiday?” she grumbles from the top bunk across the room, throwing the covers over her head. Yang and Blake are still stirring below her, blinking sleep out of their eyes.
“Oh — I’m sorry,” Penny says, looking at the floor. “I assumed you’d be awake by now.”
“Everybody’s supposed to have the day off, Penny,” Yang informs her with a yawn. “And we just got back from the field, too.”
“I…” Penny frowns, wringing her hand. “Oh...”
“Pfft, Penny, it’s fine, they’ll all conk out in a minute anyway — unless you have a reason they shouldn’t?” Ruby asks, raising her brows at Penny.
“Perhaps not,” Penny says sheepishly. “Yang told me that today was your birthday, and I came to see what you wanted!”
“Oh, yeah!” Yang says with a chuckle. “That explains everything.” She rolls over and nestles her face into Blake’s shoulder.
“I...didn’t think about it?” Ruby says with a shrug, smiling helplessly at Penny. “We’ve been so busy since initiations, with everything going on and our first mission and all — I just wanted to get back home.”
“Can you two morning people go somewhere else?” Weiss asks menacingly, her narrowed eye poking above the nest of covers she’s buried herself in.
Ruby rolls her eyes. “C’mon, Penny,” she says, taking Penny’s hand and stepping out into the hall. “We should chat and catch up anyway. Let’s get breakfast!”
“I didn’t mean to disrupt your squad,” Penny says as they head through the barracks. “I was simply...excited. I’ve never gotten anyone a birthday gift before, and I have my own money now!”
“No, no, don’t worry,” Ruby reassures her. “They’re all just tired and lazy since we got back to Citadel at like, midnight last night. Also, they might blame me for it.”
“Hm? Why?” Penny asks, cocking her head as Ruby pushes open the door to get back out onto the Primal Core campus.
Ruby sighs. “I knew we weren’t far; we could see the Citadel itself, after all. It was right around sunset, so I said we shouldn’t bother setting up our tents and just push on. They were all really grumpy when we finally got to the gates.” She shrugs. “But hey, I’m the leader — what I say goes, and I said I didn’t want to sleep on the ground again.”
Penny frowns. “Sleeping sounds like quite an ordeal. How do you manage it every day, out on the road?”
“That’s what I think!” Ruby cries, throwing her hands in the air and sending a gust of wind at the mess hall door in the process, nearly smacking some poor cadet in the face. “Anyway,” she continues as she steps through the open door, “What’ve you been up to, oh new Guardian-in-training? How’re things in Citadel these days?”
“Just the same as before. We haven’t been able to find any sign of Spellweaver Watts since the attack,” Penny says, her frown deepening as Ruby steps into the line for food. “And he did something to that teleportation circle he set up — Winter can’t find the spell he used, so we can’t activate it and figure out where it went in the first place.”
“Weiss really hated that,” Ruby says with a laugh. “She wants that spell so badly. Getting Core forces out to the borders would be way faster if we could set a few more of those up.”
“That’s what Chloe thinks, too,” Penny muses. “She’s been teaching me about how she runs the Core’s day-to-day, between combat training and telling me all the intel we have on Salem. But — how did Rose Squad’s first mission go? Did anything unexpected happen?”
“No, and thank the heavens for that!” Ruby says with a relieved sigh, not really looking as she starts to pile her plate with food. “Totally routine. We were down in the southeast, helping a coven set up road-wards to one of the desert druid tribes. Pretty low corruption activity — we didn’t even get to fight anything big. Weiss whined about the heat the whole time, but I thought the wind was worse.”
“How strange,” Penny murmurs as they sit down. “After our first two weeks knowing each other, the last two months feel really peaceful. But I know Roman and whoever he was working with are still out there, even if Neo’s dead.”
“Well, I’m just happy we have that,” Ruby says, picking at her plate — why did she grab broccoli? She hates broccoli! — before suddenly remembering why Penny came in the first place. “Oh, yeah! You came to talk about my birthday, right?”
“Right!” Penny confirms, smiling again. “I have the day off too — Chloe says she’s going to Oracle Caulfield’s place for their annual Magister’s Day party, which is apparently an all-day engagement, so she said I ‘had the run of the place’. I think she was joking,” Penny says with a twist of her lip, “...but I told Dawn she could take over, just in case. I don’t think I’m even close to ready to take her place. So...what do you want?”
“Hmm...” Ruby ponders, taking a bite of her meal to give herself time. After swallowing, she says, “I don’t have anything I really need, I guess? But — but it’d be awesome to spend the day together!” Penny beams at that, and Ruby feels a strange rush of heat to her cheeks. “Uh, I mean, if you—”
“Of course!” Penny says, reaching across the table to take Ruby’s hand. Their powers link, and Ruby can feel the excited vibrations in Penny’s clay form. “I was hoping you’d say that! We can go out on the town, I’ll pay for everything! I was thinking we could maybe stop by a bookshop, then the theatre, then maybe Giallo’s for lunch, then —”
Ruby laughs. “You could’ve just told me you wanted to hang, Penny!”
“I didn’t want to be rude!”
“You’re never rude,” Ruby says, slumping forward and putting her chin in her hand. “I think it’s a great gift idea. What’re we doing for the Ghost Walk, though?”
“The Ghost Walk?” Penny asks, tilting her head curiously.
“Wait — wait, wait, wait!” Ruby’s eyes widen. “You don’t know?”
Penny shakes her head. “Remember, I technically haven’t been alive for a whole year yet. I know a lot of things, like how to talk and all that, but...specifics are muddy sometimes, unless someone teaches me.” She looks at the floor, rubbing the back of her neck. “It makes me wonder if I’m really fit to be the Guardian, if I’ve barely lived in this world since I was created…”
“You’ve got so much time to live, Penny,” Ruby assures her, placing her hand on Penny’s. “Don’t worry about that! Besides…” she grins. “Since you don’t know, I get to introduce you. If you had any ideas for the evening, just go ahead and wipe them off the schedule — I know what we’re doing for the Walk!”
As Ruby and Penny exit the theatre for the third time that day (Penny’s love of plays continues to be utterly adorable), Ruby looks up to the sky. The sun’s low, and the time is just right — so before Penny can start talking about what they just saw, Ruby takes her hand and sends the two of them skyward, her power alone holding them aloft until Penny realizes she has to levitate herself as well.
“Ruby?” Penny asks, as Ruby scans the streets below them. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for a baker,” Ruby replies, narrowing her eyes. She lets out a triumphant ‘ha!’, and points at a shop below. “There! C’mon.”
The two of them swoop back down to street level, stopping in front of a squat building sandwiched between apartment complexes. “I’ll pay for it this time,” Ruby says, stepping inside and going up to the counter, where a heavyset man is counting coins. He looks up at their approach.
“Well, hey there, soldiers!” he says with a smile. “Thought I already closed the shop, but I can do somethin’ for ya before the Walk. What’re you after?”
“Two Ghost Bags, please!” Ruby requests, bouncing on her heels. “I would’ve picked them up earlier, but I just got back from the field.”
“Ah, of course. I got a few left, was gonna give the rest out myself.” The baker ducks his head under the counter and brings up two brown paper bags, setting them up as Ruby digs her coinpurse out of her uniform. “These are mostly cookies,” he admits as Ruby hands over her money. “But, hey, they’re sweets, huh?”
“Wha — who’d object to cookies?!” Ruby asks incredulously.
The baker shrugs. “Some people say they get picky ones at the door once in a while.” As he hands Ruby their bags, he adds, “Happy Magister’s Day, girls.”
“Thanks, you too!” Ruby grabs Penny and takes her outside, stuffing the bag into her grasp. Penny looks down and frowns.
“Thank you, Ruby, but you know I don’t eat,” she says, lifting the bag to eye level. “I suppose I —”
“Shshsh!” Ruby insists, pulling her down the street towards the seawall at the edge of the city. “C’mon, you don’t wanna miss the sunset!”
Penny looks confused, but follows Ruby well enough until they find the stairs to the seawall, passing by the guard outpost on the way with a friendly wave. Once they reach the top, Ruby checks the sun, and sees that it’s just about to pass behind the horizon of the Opaque Sea.
Perfect.
“All right, Penny, come and sit over here,” she says, dangling her legs over the city-facing side of the wall, looking directly at the bright white tower that gives the city its name. “You’re gonna wanna see this.”
Clutching her bag, Penny nods, though she looks increasingly concerned. Ruby nudges her with her shoulder. “Don’t look so worried! It’s really cool, and I didn’t want to spoil it for you. Can’t believe Chloe didn’t tell you, honestly.”
“We’ve been very busy,” Penny says, her shoulders relaxing slightly. “I’m sure it merely slipped her mind. She really treats me like anyone else, even though I’m a golem… for good and bad, I suppose.”
“...It’s hard to think of you as a golem sometimes,” Ruby admits quietly. “For me, at least, I always just think of you as a really cool girl.”
Penny smiles softly at that, and Ruby finds her eyes drawn to Penny’s. There are little things about Penny that look different from other people, and her eyes are one of them. Penny once told her that her permanent glamour is because she’s got all the gems that were used to create her as a part of her body, and she swears sometimes that Penny’s eyes shine like emeralds — precious things, the light refracting through her irises in the most intriguing way.
A pulse of magic ripples through the air, breaking Ruby’s concentration, and she blushes as she realizes she’s been staring. A hum rises in the quiet, and she looks towards the Citadel, shuffling closer to Penny as the last sunlight leaves the city and the blue streetlamps wink into existence. A thin, teal fog rises from the earth, and jets of blue energy shoot up the side of the Citadel, forming into a growing mass of light that hangs above it like a second moon. Penny gasps as the beacon suddenly flares to life, bathing the city in its otherworldly glow, a ball of bright blue flame above the Citadel.
“The stories say that the Citadel used to always look like this,” Ruby says softly. “It shone for days and days and days, weeks and years, drawing people out of the Wilds to see it and learn the art of witchcraft. Leading everyone who saw it to safety, a new life after the Fall.”
The mist below them swirls and rises further, a full story tall now, just barely translucent. Figures start to wisp into shape within it, silhouettes of human beings beginning their walk through the capital.
“The ghosts come every year on Magister’s Day,” Ruby explains as Penny stares wide-eyed at the scene below. “If they knock on your door, you have to give them food. It’s polite.”
“Wow,” Penny breathes. “Do they...I mean…”
“They never talk,” Ruby says, shaking her head. “And people say there’s always the same number, but nobody can agree on how many there are. Some people say there’s just thirteen — but that’s obviously not right, there’s too many. Other people say seventy-seven, or a hundred and one. I think they’re just guessin’, cuz they fade in and out of that mist all night, so people throw the most magic-sounding numbers at it.”
Penny giggles. “Well, I suppose you could count if you went into the air…”
Ruby elbows her with a grin. “Nobody’s got that vision that good, Penny! Unless…?” she trails off contemplatively. “Can you do it?”
Penny shakes her head. “I can see a lot from here, but once I start counting, I lose track, and — oh, there goes one!” she cries, pointing into the city. Ruby squints to see what she’s looking at, and just barely glimpses one of the figures stepping back from someone’s doorway, something solid in hand. As she watches, the mist thickens around it, and when it returns to being see-through, there’s no sign of the ghost or their treat. “Wow,” Penny breathes out in awe, swinging her legs back and forth. “Thank you, Ruby. This is — wow. Do we know where they come from?”
“Just old stories,” Ruby says, sneaking a hand into her bag and taking one of the ghosts’ cookies for herself. “They say Ozma — the first Magister — he and his people disappeared before the Citadel was first lit. When people first came here, they just found the tower, and spoke to the gods in the chamber on the ground floor to learn about him and the bargain he’d struck to link the heavens and the earth. No one knows what happened to them. The gods told different stories, and now they only speak to shapers, and only when they’re making new spells.”
As Ruby munches down on her cookie, Penny hums under her breath. “Is it strange, that that sounds...familiar? And yet, not…”
“You said your soul was on Earth once before, right?” Ruby asks, wiping her mouth. “Maybe you knew all about this, once upon a time, before you were pulled back here from the in-between.”
Penny nods. “I suppose that makes sense… Oh, look!”
Ruby looks to where Penny’s pointing again, and there is indeed a ghost coming up the seawall stairs, slowly and deliberately taking each step. The two of them watch quietly as the spirit crests the top of the wall, sweeping its head back and forth as though admiring the view. It seems to spot them after a time, and starts heading over to them, its footfalls silent on the stone. Ruby and Penny get up as it approaches — Ruby takes another cookie from the bag before setting it down, while Penny mimics Ruby’s actions.
It stops in front of Ruby, then gently takes the cookie from her grasp, the touch of its glowing fingers leaving behind pins and needles on Ruby’s skin. It nods approvingly, and the treat vanishes with a flash of turquoise light. It turns to Penny, but when it touches her hand to take the food, it suddenly freezes in place.
“Oh! Are you all right?” Penny asks. The spirit withdraws its hand, and Penny’s face falls. “Is...is it not good enough, or—”
The ghost shakes its head vigorously, then steps closer to Penny. She backs away, eyes wide, her heel just on the edge of the wall. The ghost reaches out again, taking Penny’s free hand. “Woah,” Ruby murmurs, watching Penny stare into the space where the ghost’s eyes should be. Penny remains frozen, even as the ghost draws its hand up to her shoulder and pats her twice. Then, the ghost steps away, looks into the city below... and leaps from the wall, dissolving as it reaches the mists.
“Penny?” Ruby asks cautiously, stepping up to her. Penny drops her cookie and it falls to pieces as it hits the floor beneath them. Penny blinks rapidly, and Ruby notices something falling down her face —
Oh.
She’s crying.
Or… well, her closest equivalent, clay flowing like water from her eyes and pooling at her chin. “Penny!” Ruby exclaims, rushing forward to hug her. “What — What happened?”
“I...don’t know,” Penny murmurs, touching her hand to her face and coming away with mud on her hand. “I...he touched me and I just...there was this feeling that I lost something — someone — a...very long time ago.” She sniffs. “I’m… crying? Is that bad?”
“No, no, of course not!” Ruby says, pulling back and taking Penny’s hands. She feels different this time, as their link establishes. The solid core of clay that Ruby remembers is shifting, changing, thrown about like sand in a windstorm. “Are you all right?”
“I can’t explain,” Penny says shakily, taking one hand and wiping her face again, the smear of mud looking so strange against her glamour-skin. “I don’t...is this a dream? Is this what dreaming feels like?”
“What are you talking about, Penny?” Ruby asks urgently. “No one’s dreaming. I’m right here!”
“But something’s not right!” Penny insists frantically. “Something — I don’t — Am I… actually real? Am I really a girl, or a golem, or am I something else, believing a lie?”
“Oh, Penny… of course you’re a girl,” Ruby says softly. “You’re right here with me, okay? I — I have no idea what just happened, but —” She cuts herself off as she realizes that the mist from below is rising up towards them. “Penny, come on!” she exclaims, pulling Penny back from the edge into the center of the seawall.
Penny starts and turns to see the climbing mist, a single column distinct from the rest of the fog; it hits the top of the wall and flows out across it, rolling over their feet as they gape. Ghosts swirl into existence — more than Ruby can keep track of — lining the wall with their bodies, fading in and out of each other. They crowd around Penny, forcing Ruby away with the strange and unpleasant feeling of touching them, laying their hands on her shoulders and taking her hands in their own.
Ruby and Penny are both frozen, Ruby staring at Penny as she begins to silently weep again. “I knew them,” she says, her eyes shining, refracting light in the strangest geometric pattern. “I knew you all,” she whispers, looking at the ghosts. As Ruby watches, the glamour starts to fade from Penny’s body, her beautiful freckled skin turning to dull clay, her brilliant orange hair solidifying into a lump of earth. “No — no I don’t — should I —”
“Penny!” Ruby cries, forcing her way inside of one of the ghosts surrounding Penny despite the harsh sting across her skin. It steps back as if in shock, letting her through.
“Perhaps I should go,” Penny whispers. “Back to you. So I can remember…” Her right hand, held by another spirit, begins to crumble into powder, from the fingers up.
“No!” Ruby shouts. Penny looks up suddenly, her eyes glowing an utterly gorgeous and utterly otherworldly green. The ghosts surrounding them all start, as if seeing Ruby for the first time. Ruby puts her hands on Penny’s shoulders, and the ghosts step back, watching them, even as Penny’s glamour continues to fade. “No, no, no — Penny, please,” Ruby begs, feeling tears sting at her eyes. “I don’t understand what — what’s happening to you, but please, please don’t go!”
“I…” Penny’s face twists in confusion. “I — I don’t know who I am, what — what I am, Ruby, I don’t belong here.”
“Yes, you do!” Ruby argues, glancing back at the spirits, who waver unspeaking behind them. “Penny — Penny, you belong here, you belong with me, I know you do!”
“How?” Penny asks, a quiet desperation in her voice. “Maybe I was never meant to be.”
“No, no,” Ruby repeats, sobs working their way into her words. “Penny…”
“How do you know?”
“I just — I…” Ruby can’t speak anymore, the lump in her throat is too big, and even Penny’s eyes are starting to dull, and she can’t let that happen, she can’t bear to see this, and she doesn’t know how to tell Penny that she must stay, that Ruby needs her, she doesn’t know why but she needs her, and —
Ruby embraces her, Penny’s body losing integrity even as she tries to hold her together. “Please don’t go,” Ruby whispers, looking at Penny’s face. “Please.”
And suddenly, in that desperate moment, Ruby knows how to tell her.
She takes Penny’s clay lips between her own, kissing her as hard as she can manage, so she knows — knows how important it is that Penny stays here, stays being Penny, and not whoever she was before.
She tastes of cold earth and seaspray, at first. Ruby pulls back and closes her eyes (they hurt so much), tears falling freely down her face. She doesn’t know how it all went so wrong.
But then — then Penny’s right hand reaches up, and takes Ruby’s chin, and — it’s whole again. When Ruby opens her eyes again, she sees Penny as she’s supposed to be, her lips pink and inviting, her eyes shining bright as the sun. “Ruby?” Penny asks carefully, blinking rapidly. “Ruby, I — what just — “
Ruby kisses her again, and this time, she’s warm.
When they pull apart, Penny’s smiling, so widely. “Oh,” Penny breathes. “Oh.”
“Are you staying?” Ruby asks, sniffling.
“Where would I go?” Penny asks, and Ruby almost laughs. Penny looks up, past her, at the spirits watching them. She steps forward, though Ruby tries to pull her back. “I’ll be okay,” Penny promises, breaking out of Ruby’s hold and taking one of the ghosts’ hands.
“I am well, old friend,” she tells it. “Do not worry for me. I am...I am happy, now. I know where I belong. I came across because I wanted to, and I will return...when it is time.” The ghost nods at her, and all its fellows wisp away into the fog. The ghost turns to Ruby and offers her a hand. Carefully, wiping away spare tears, Ruby approaches it and takes its hand. It still feels strange, but...the ghost simply shakes her hand once, and then, just like its friends, it is gone, and the mist recedes back into the streets below.
Ruby tackles Penny into another hug, and for a moment, they are quiet, Penny idly rubbing Ruby’s back. “What was all that?” Ruby finally asks as they separate, her heart still pounding in her chest, only just beginning to slow.
“I’m... not sure,” Penny says, looking over the city. “But...I felt something — something at the edge of myself. Memories I lost when the goddess of death pulled my soul from the realm between. I was here, and I walked among the streets, and I watched them grow, year after year. But…” She gulps. “I couldn’t remember who I was, or why I was in this body, with you. I felt the pull to return to — to my people. Whoever they are. There was a promise that I’d remember, if I did.” She turns to Ruby, and smiles. “But you reminded me there’s a lot of nice things about being alive.”
Ruby laughs wetly, sniffing and wiping her eyes again. “I...so...kissing you was all right?”
“Yes!” Penny cries, and suddenly Ruby’s wrapped up in her arms, hoisted into the air. “Yes!” she repeats, and then she kisses Ruby again. “Oh, Ruby,” she sighs as she lets Ruby down, still holding her around the waist. “Thank you so much.”
“I was so scared,” Ruby admits, putting her head on Penny’s chest. “You’ll stay just for me?”
“Yes,” Penny confirms. “And...and I am training to become the Guardian,” she adds, stepping back from Ruby and walking to the edge of the seawall again, looking over Citadel. “I will protect this place, one day. I’ll protect you, and the people who live here, in this world or in the in-between. I am…” She sighs. “I am so happy to be alive, Ruby,” she says, looking over her shoulder with the most lovely look on her face, a bliss that leaves Ruby weak in the knees. “I have another chance to — to love, and help people, and experience everything you’ve shown me!”
Ruby walks up beside her and lays her head on her shoulder. “That’s all I wanted for you.”
“...And that’s all I need.”
The two of them sit down once more, exhausted and rattled, but coming back to themselves.
They watch the rest of the Ghost Walk together, and when the witching hour strikes and the beacon atop Citadel snuffs out, they fly home, hand-in-hand, their offerings abandoned atop the wall. Wisps of light watch them as they go, but Penny ignores them all for the girl by her side.
When they touch down outside the barracks, Penny does one last thing before they separate, before Ruby has to undergo the ordeal of sleeping once more. She kisses Ruby’s forehead and whispers, “Happy birthday, Ruby Rose.”