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It’s too late- she's too late. She's too late . She's never too late when it comes to Ruby; a beat, a minute. If they had just arrived a minute earlier, everything would've been okay. Ruby wouldn't have-
Too late, too late.
I've always got your back, sis.
The castle is crumbling, closing in, Jaune is yelling something indistinguishable she can't even begin to comprehend. Her ears are ringing, eyes hazy, and she doesn't know how to work her legs. Blake is talking into her ear, murmuring repeatedly, but Yang feels like her head's under water. She stares and stares and stares .
She can only hear her own breathing, how heavy it is, how rapidly it increases. Her knees buckle, Blake tightens her grip.
"Yang," she's saying over and over. "Yang, we have to go."
Too late. She's dead. Ruby is dead.
Yang whimpers. It's the first thing she hears and she doesn't like it. She can't leave. She can't .
I go wherever Ruby goes.
She's not sure she blinks, eyes burning from the effort, or maybe she's blinking too slowly that her brain forgets the small intervals between her gaze at the floor. Everything is so excruciatingly deafening, her vision is blurry, Neo and whatever is inside her bounding out of the room.
Blake's voice is getting louder, Yang still can't understand a word she's saying. Her blood roars in her ears, she registers a muffled cry as she collapses onto her knees, Blake struggling to hold on. (It might've been from her, she doesn't know. She doesn't know, she doesn't know, she didn't know, she didn't know, she swears she didn't -)
"Yang, please ," Blake tries to cup her cheeks, and it's the first real feeling she's had since the moment they step foot in this room. She jerks back, shaking her head back and forth, her eyes meet Blake's, finding silent tears running down her cheeks.
Yang thinks her own face is dry, but she can't feel anything in her body, so she's not sure. She opens her mouth to say something, anything, to ask Blake what had happened, where Ruby was, even though deep down inside, she knew.
(She doesn't know what the tea did, but the tree meant death, ascension, and Ruby looked her dead in the eye with a grim expression, no light in her eyes, and drank it anyway. Ruby wanted to… she wanted to-)
A sob escapes involuntarily, and Blake catches her as she lurches forward. "Shh, I know. I know, Yang."
No, she doesn't. Yang doesn't even know.
Nothing is going to keep me from my sister.
Nothing… more like a small argument that festered from exhaustion and agitation. Nothing except time. Nothing except Yang not noticing, not realizing to what extent it ran. Nothing, except Ruby herself.
"We have to go," Blake repeats, lifting her face for their eyes to meet. Blake inhales sharply at whatever she finds. "I promise we'll find her. This place is going to collapse."
Let it , Yang wants to say, let it collapse on top of us. Of me.
"She's gone," Yang finds her voice, she doesn't even know if it comes out. "She's dead ."
"No," Blake shakes her head immediately, frantically. Weiss comes into view next, says something to Blake. Yang is staring ahead. (She can't comprehend anything. She can’t -) "No, she's not. She's at the tree. We'll go there."
"She wanted this," Yang croaks. "She wanted to…"
Die. She wanted to die. So, she did.
I've always got your back, sis!
What a fucking joke that was.
Too late. Always too late.
Blake says nothing, like perhaps she knows no matter what she says there's no different angle to look at this from. Ruby had given up. Ruby had ended her life, in front of them all. Looking straight at her.
Your fault.
"Blake," Weiss says in warning, and the floor shakes almost immediately. Blake falls next to her in the chaos, the walls crumbling and the world orbiting. She hears the creaking and groaning as the walls shift and buckle. The cracks start to appear, dust and debris fall from the ceiling, making it hard to see or breathe.
As the panic attack sets, Yang's breathing becomes shallow and rapid. Her heart beats so fast it feels like it's going to burst out of her chest. Sweat pours down her face, and her hands start to shake uncontrollably. Her thoughts race- she feels like she's losing control- can't focus on anything except the fear and nausea taking over her body.
Ruby's dead.
She was never coming back. Yang had failed her- Yang had broken her promise to Summer, Yang hadn't done everything she could- raising her, staying by her side, taking all the fatal hits meant for her. Ruby wasn’t happy… and Yang didn’t think it ran as deeply as it did.
Wherever Ruby goes, I go.
How… how would she have known? Ruby always came to her with a problem, homework- bullies- news- general sadness or excitement… Since when did Ruby push it all away? Push her away?
You should’ve known. It’s your fault.
She couldn’t have… Ruby had only blown up an hour ago… she couldn't have known.
(She could have. She could… if only she’d paid attention more. She let her guard down, allowed herself some reprieve- happiness- tranquility for the first time since she lost her arm. Maybe that was the mistake.)
"Help me get her up," Blake turns around for a split second and Yang's veins tighten, threatening to burst out of her skin. The only thing grounding her to reality is Blake's familiarity, her expression, her eyes, her body. Blake looks back when she hears the panicked choked inhale.
She's suddenly being lifted up. Weiss slings one of her arms across her shoulder, and even in her disassociation she can tell Weiss is shaking like a leaf.
Like a leaf…
“The leaf,” Yang gasps out as Blake hoists her forward and up, arm across her other shoulder. “We need the leaf.”
She looks back at the floor, nothing but branches and emptiness. No sign that anyone had even been there. But Ruby had… Ruby had . There was no tea in sight, no leaf to be seen, no Ruby.
“It’s not there,” Blake says slowly, continuing to carry half of her weight and helping her climb out through the hole in the wall. “There’s nothing there.”
Ruby is there. Ruby used the leaf.
“We need to rendezvous,” Weiss says from her right. Yang groggily turns her head, finds Weiss with similar tears burning in her eyes, face devoid of any emotion but shock. “We need to go back to Jaune’s.”
“Yeah,” Blake nods, always the first to get her head on straight. “He’ll meet us there.”
Yang shakes her head, finally regaining some sense in her muscles; she removes the arm around Blake. “We need to go find Ruby.”
Ruby’s dead.
“We will,” Blake says pleadingly, like she knows everything Yang is thinking. “Yang, I swear we will. But we need a plan first.”
She huffs, reaching her free hand over to wipe at her eyes- beginning to grow obscured from the newfound tears that finally decided to make an appearance. “We need to find a leaf.”
Weiss tightens her grip. Yang hadn’t even realized how far away they had gotten from the castle, back into the jungle they’d gone. “And what? Eat it?” Her voice is strained and harsh, cracked and urging.
“ Yes ,” Yang presses. “It’ll… it’ll take us to her.”
Nothing is going to keep me from my sister.
“It’ll kill us.”
Yang pauses. Weiss blinks, shaking her head and turning away, tucking her head into her arm and muffling a cry. The tree wasn’t death… it wasn’t. (And if it was- Yang would follow her, she would, she would -)
Ruby is dead. She looked at you and did it. She looked at you and thought you didn’t care anymore.
Yang whimpers, hands clutching at her head and fingers digging into her forehead. Her baby sister, the little girl she had taken care of her entire life. Her everything, the reason she goes on everyday… She could have done more to prevent it, could’ve made different choices that would have led to a different outcome. It was Yang's responsibility to protect her, and she failed. She replays that moment in her head over and over, wondering what she should have done differently- run into the room and knock the cup from her hand rather than just watch , wondering what a second difference would have made. Wondering if she was just better, Ruby would still be here.
“I.. I didn’t mean-”
The tree would kill them. Ruby was dead… and it was what she had wanted.
Yang doesn’t remember what happens next. Her eyes droop, ears ring, and she falls.
(And falls, and falls. Like she had when she fell into the void, when she took the hit for Ruby- and what good that had done.)
-
When she wakes up, it’s slow. It’s not a bolt or a jerk- not even a sound or movement. She awakes with a headache and a dull throb- her head pillowed on something soft. A hand runs through her hair. She keeps her eyes closed.
“I told you not to trust that cat,” she hears someone say.
Something beneath her head shifts and Blake’s voice rings out next. “Where are they now?”
Yang bristles; the hand on her head halts. A beat, and she registers the voice as Jaune’s. “I lost them. They’re fast… faster than usual.”
Blake sighs. “We’ll figure it out. First, we need to-”
“Find Ruby,” Weiss interjects quickly. “We have to find a way to go to the tree.”
“Yeah,” vulnerability finally seeps its way into her voice. Yang knows the mask she’s trying to put on, to be the level-headed person in this situation, no matter her own feelings. Yang can’t even lift her head long enough to be there for her. “No matter what it takes.”
She can’t be there for anyone. She wasn’t there for Ruby. Too late. It wasn’t a dream. Ruby is dead.
She feels another sob build up in her lungs and she tucks her head further into Blake’s lap to muffle it. Weiss suddenly stops speaking, Blake’s hand moves away before leaning down to wrap her body around Yang’s shaking shoulders.
“I’m here,” she says reassuringly, voice soft and fragile. “I’m here, Yang.”
I want Ruby. Please. I need her. I love her. I need her to know that- please-
She cries and cries and cries. Blake holds her through it all.
Ruby isn’t coming back.
(I’m sorry, mom. I’m so, so sorry.)