Chapter Text
Ruby Rose is haunted. She thinks she always has been.
From the moment she opened her eyes, the ghosts of the legacy she was born into breathed down her tiny neck and whispered for her mother to leave her in hopes it would protect her. It didn’t. Because here she was, seventeen and a supposed savior wrapped into one, and she has lost so many people that she thinks she lost herself somewhere along the way.
But she can’t break. Not when she’s the one thing holding this team together, not when no one will follow her if she falls from her best. She has to be stone. She has to be steel. She can’t be flesh and blood because it’s vulnerable and it only gets you killed.
Just like Penny.
Keep it together.
She’s not entirely sure when they started walking or what Weiss means when she gestures to a smiling Blake and Yang. She’s not entirely sure this is real. But then Weiss is stopping and says how the plan didn’t work - her plan, this was your fault, she has no home to go back to and it’s all your fault a kingdom is gone and it’s all your fault penny is gone and it’s - and her mouth is moving on autopilot spouting words of encouragement and hope that she stopped believing at the top of that tower. She says them and Weiss takes it warily, scanning her face, and she braces herself for her to look too close and cause her to fall apart. She turns around before Weiss can find what she’s looking for.
“Despite everything. Despite us.”
Weiss’s words are quickly becoming yet another ghost to haunt her. She walks faster to the head of the group, nudging Little every so often to remind them to lead the way and distract herself from the red in Weiss’s earrings and dress and gloves. The symbols of loyalty to her leader, her partner, who didn’t deserve everything that Weiss Schnee was. She’d promised to be the best partner back at Beacon. They both had. But how could she fight by Ruby’s side when she was struggling to stand?
How could anyone fight beside her when she was red? Red like her cape made in her mother’s image but was only stained with the blood she spilled for a daughter that would follow in her damned footsteps. Red like Pyrrha’s hair blowing across her face, her scared, young face as she took her last breaths. Red like wrong, like roses she left in her wake every time she tried to save someone but wasn’t fast enough.
They’re saying this place is a fairytale.
A few years ago, maybe even months, she might have been quick to believe it. Accept it, even. But the world isn’t a fairytale, and if it is, it’s not a kind one. Good people die and bad people live forever. Hope is losing and hate is growing. Some people try to make it better, but what difference does it truly make?
Ruby knows Alyx’s story well. She just doesn’t like to remember it. Summer had read it to her and Yang before she left like it was history, and history should be learned from. She had read with such passion and emotion, tears forming in her eyes and clouding her voice when Alyx made it to the Tree, changed from her journey and never the same again.
Ruby had asked her why she always cried at the end, once. Summer had told her it was bittersweet. That it reminded her of someone she once knew.
She understands now.
Like mother, like daughter.
She’d heard her voice when she woke up. She was screaming for her.
(…Had she died thinking she’d see Ruby on the other side?)
She’d woken up thinking that she’d see her again once they made it out of wherever this was, that she’d hear her voice again calling her name, this time in joy and relief. But now all she was left with was an echo. It rang in her ears like a bell toll, deafening every voice as she ran for the sword.
“You don’t have enough, do you?”
It hurt. Once upon a time, she’d have had enough hope to fill the jar until it overflowed and still have a surplus left over. But Penny was dead. Ruby thinks it fitting that hope died with her.
But still, she clutches to the blade, silent sobs wracking her body, gripping it until she felt it sting. And it’s real. She was real. Here’s proof. Here’s a reminder. Here’s a legacy.
Ruby smiles. It’s brief and fleeting, lifelike, like a flame. But it’s not forced.
“I couldn’t explain why, but I…I was drawn to it.”
And isn’t that how it always had been with Penny. From the start, Ruby had been drawn to her. She found herself in her orbit and never wanted to leave. She shone so brightly, to others it might burn, but to her it lit the way.
Her firefly.
“Blake. What did Alyx do next?”
Blake confirmed her recollection of the story. Birthday party, game, a lesson about haughtiness and pride.
“We want to go to the birthday party.” Her gaze never left Penny’s blade. She knew what she had to do, what she had to give up. Just one more moment with it to memorize how it feels and looks and weighs in her hands. How Penny’s hands had felt in her own that first time they met -
No. Don’t think about that. Not now. Not ever. She’s gone. She’s dead. You will never see her again.
“We want to go to the birthday party.” She stood, blade in hand.
The soldier fumbled. “That’s where we’re taking you! As prisoners! For stealing royal property.”
She stopped in front of the soldiers (plastic soldiers and pawns, a voice taunted from lifetimes ago) and beheld the blade high.
“What if I offered you something better.” They’d never know the weight of this weapon. They’d never know how it felt like she was sawing off a part of herself and throwing it away. They’d never know just how Penny Polendina made life worth living. But she could try.
She could try to say goodbye. She’d never been to a funeral before, not for anyone close. There’d never been a body to bury. Just a memory. But now she had a blade. It would have to do.
“The weapon of a true warrior. Not just a powerful warrior. The most powerful to ever live. She was touched by magic. And she gave her life for thousands. She took a message of hope to the stars. And she saw the world through better eyes.”
She pushed back the burn in her throat and ignored how her voice faltered.
“Take us to the royal birthday, and allow us to present this most precious gift.”
She watched them go, her back to her team as she attempted to compose herself.
“Ruby?” She turned to Blake. “Are you sure about this?”
She didn’t ask if she was okay - they all knew the answer to that. She wanted to say she wasn’t sure about any of this, hadn’t been for a long time, that she didn’t remember what it was like to trust herself. She wanted to say that Penny had said all those things about her in her own eulogy, that it was Penny that looked at her as if she had hung the stars and was touched by something greater and could see the world for the good it was. She wanted to say that a part of her was gone and she was never getting it back.
“We might not know exactly what’s going on,” she said instead, “But for whatever reason, this place is putting us on a similar path as a book we all read as kids.” The words were bitter in her mouth. She hadn’t been a kid. Not for a long time.
“So I say we follow it. And stop pretending we know what we’re doing.”
Make me live your fairytale. Make me a pawn in every world. Make me play a game we have no chance of winning.
Ruby’s already given one eulogy.
Who says she can’t give her own?