Work Text:
When Ruby and the others returned to Remnant, they hadn't expected the amount of change that greeted them. The tension in the city of Vacuo was high, but the tension among the friends they'd left behind was even higher. Ren and Nora had to take turns hugging Jaune once he was back, as if Nora couldn't stand the thought of touching the dark haired man. Emerald hung towards the back of the group, not really meeting anyone's eyes, not looking pleased to see any of them. To be fair, she'd only just joined them before RWBY and Jaune fell into the void.
It was Uncle Qrow who folded Ruby into her first hug. For once, he didn't smell like alcohol. Just sand and some kind of cheap after shave. She suspected the clover pin on his jacket had something to do with that, but she would wait to bring it up until he was ready.
That was one of the things she'd learned in the Ever After. You can bottle up your problems, but they won't go away. They'll only sit and fester and twist your insides until you don't recognize yourself anymore. She would talk to him about it, but it could wait just a bit.
When Qrow turned to pull Yang in next, Ruby looked past him to find Oscar waiting patiently. He was smiling as if he hadn't been worried about them at all. As if he knew they'd be back. But there was a strange heaviness in his posture, a weight behind his eyes. Neither had been there when she'd left. He didn't lean heavily on his cane, but the fact that he was leaning on it at all was telling. Ruby approached him slowly, like she would a wild animal and not a boy she'd become pretty close friends with before falling out of the world.
“Welcome back,” Oscar greeted her, tone even and calm. He opened his mouth to say more, but fell silent when Ruby took another step to close the distance between them. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her cheek brushing against his ear. She felt him go completely still, muscles rigid and tense, until he forced himself to relax and hug her back.
“I'm home,” she told him quietly.
His face pressed into her shoulder, a light tremor running through him.
She didn't ask if he was okay. Didn't ask if something had happened while they were gone. Didn't ask how far along the merge with Ozpin was. She just held him for a beat longer, just until everyone started to filter inside. Only when they were the last ones left did she pull away, feeling her heart ache at the way he snapped to attention once he was free. That smile from before slid back over his face and he gestured towards the door before heading inside.
The amount of time that had passed since they'd fallen into the Ever After was shocking. It had only felt like a few days to Ruby. A week at most. Yet apparently they'd been missing for months. When they were told about the memorial and asked if they wanted to see it, Ruby took a hard pass. The idea of seeing her name on a list of those they'd “lost” just dredged up memories of a fight, a fall, and an impossible choice. When Ren tried to hand her a tea cup, Ruby folded her hands together so he couldn't see them trembling.
Oscar didn't have as active a role in the goings on in Vacuo or Shade as Ruby had thought he would. He mostly seemed to drift around the edges with Emerald for a shadow. At least she knew that if she wanted to find him, he was most likely in the Shade Academy library.
“Haven't you, like, read all of these already?” Ruby asked, finger skimming over the book spines.
He chuckled low and quiet. “Not quite. They would have to stop publishing books for a few decades for me to find time to read every book ever written.”
She hummed and dropped down onto the window sill. Her shadow stretched, long and distorted, across the floor. It fell across the table Oscar was sitting at, casting the book he was reading and part of his arms in shadow. But the light coming through the window lit up his profile. Dark hair, cut shorter now than when she'd seen it last, hazel green eyes with a hint of gold glinting in the sunlight. They were so similar and yet so different from Ozpin's bottle green. He was so similar and yet so different from Ozpin.
The way he carried himself these days was very reminiscent of Ozpin. The tilt of his head, the little self-deprecating grin, those were all very Ozpin. But the look of concentration on his face, the way his brows drew together as he read, the way his lips moved ever so slightly like he was reading the pages aloud, that was Oscar. Or maybe it was another incarnation coming through in his mannerisms. She wished she'd known him before the merge. Wished she had known him well enough to pick out what was uniquely him.
Still, who among them hadn't changed.
Ruby's friends all still expected her to be loud, aggressive, and impulsive, but she just wasn't anymore. It wasn't exhaustion - though, she was tired. She'd just been through too much. Learned the weight of silence, learned the importance of waiting.
Oscar looked up as she tucked into the chair opposite him, a confused smile pulling at his lips.
Ruby just rested her chin on her crossed arms on the table top and closed her eyes.
After a moment, she heard him let out a soft breath and then turn another page. This Oscar liked books. Whether he'd liked them before or not, he did now, and that was all that mattered.
The first time Ruby realized something was wrong was also the first time she formally met the headmaster of Shade Academy, Professor Theodore. “Professor, this is Team RWBY. Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang. They've been instrumental in the fight against Salem so far.”
“Please, call me Theo, Oscar. It's been months now.” The professor clapped Oscar on the shoulder.
Everyone else saw the apologetic smile and heard the laugh both men shared. But Ruby saw the way Oscar's grip on his cane tightened, the flint in his eyes. Watching, calculating. It didn't take a genius to figure out why. After Lionheart and Ironwood, Oscar was just waiting for Theodore to fall from grace too. Waiting for him to reveal that he'd been secretly feeding Salem information for months. That he was the one allowing Tyrian and Mercury to run amok in his city.
Ruby couldn't exactly blame him. She hadn't known Lionheart for long, but Ironwood's betrayal had hurt her too. It wasn't hard to understand Oscar's desire to keep his distance. That stopped at calling the professor Theo, though. Because unlike Ozpin and the incarnations before them, Oscar had chosen bold faced honesty. Not honesty given freely, he still held some cards close to his chest, and he never mentioned anything about the merge or his past memories if he could help it. But where Ozpin would have kept his soldiers in the dark, Oscar made sure his people had all the information they needed to make informed decisions.
Because reincarnations or no, Oscar was just one person.
This was driven home when Ruby found him one night, real late. He had climbed out a window and was perched on a small ledge. It was barely wide enough. One foot was propped up on the edge while the other dangled, swinging lazily through empty air.
“You're not sleeping?” Ruby asked, leaning out the window to speak to him but not joining him on his perch in case he wanted to be alone.
He startled at the sound of her voice, looking at her before he could think better of it.
The sight of tears in his eyes made Ruby's chest feel as though someone had punched all of the air out of it. “Oscar-”
Turning away from her, he quickly scrubbed at his face with the back of his sleeve. Only then did Oscar look at her again, hazel green eyes still a bit watery. He forced a smile, gestured for her to move so he could climb back inside.
Ruby watched him carefully as he slipped down to stand in front of her, his feet noiselessly touching the stone floor. But he didn't stay to chat, didn't ask her to repeat her question, he just nodded his head at her again and left. No hesitation.
She considered grabbing his wrist to make him stay or following him to coax him into telling her what was wrong. Instead she pulled out her scroll and sent him a single message.
You don't have to go through it alone.
She couldn't tell if he read it, but he didn't come back. Eventually, her own feet carried her to bed. But even as she laid there, staring at the crackled ceiling of the dorm room, she kept replaying it in her head. The tears in his eyes, glistening on his lashes. There had been no tear tracks on his face, no indication that the tears had fallen. It still made her chest ache painfully. She didn't want Oscar crying alone, hidden on ledges and in nooks just out of sight.
Ruby should have hugged him the second he'd climbed back in through the window. But she hadn't been sure if her touch would be welcomed - wanted. Tomorrow, as soon as she saw him, no matter what he was doing, she would hug him then. Hold him tight until she'd squeezed all of the air from his lungs and he protested and laughed for her to let him go.
Oscar never even gave her a chance. When he saw her the next day, he smiled politely and then promptly walked in the opposite direction.
Over the course of the next several days, Oscar avoided Ruby. Sometimes he was just busy, but other times he would go out of his way to prevent crossing paths with her. She could feel the distance yawning open between them like a chasm with each passing day.
And that smile never left his face. That painful tug of his lips that said he was fine.
Ruby knew why he was avoiding her. She didn't have to ask, though she would given the chance. Over and over again, she would ask until he answered. But she knew. She'd seen too much. The trust between them had always been about external factors. About the war. About the relics and the Maidens and Salem. Yet he didn't trust her, or any of them, to tell them what was going on inside him.
And the reason for that? Well, that was why she cornered him. Or kidnapped him, she supposed.
He was leaving the library when Ruby's petal burst tore around the corner. She scooped him up, drawing him into her Semblance, and then twisted and shot through an open window. Oscar didn't yelp or yell as she deposited them both on a ledge of the pyramid that made up Shade Academy, he just stumbled back from her and threw up his hands. “Ruby?”
She didn't apologize, just grabbed his hands to anchor him and prevent him from teetering off the ledge. “You've been avoiding me,” she said. Not questioning. Not asking why. He didn't even deny it, but his eyes flicked away from her face and his hands fidgeted against hers. Like he wanted to pull away but couldn't. Which wasn't true, because her grip on him wasn't tight. If he really wanted to pull free, he could.
Ruby tugged him closer, letting go of one of his hands to touch the side of his face. She felt him go very still at the contact. No more fidgeting. No more nervous energy. Just a focus that drew his eyes back to hers.
“I know you have a lot going on inside that head of yours,” Ruby started, lightly brushing her thumb over his temple. “You don't have to let me in on all of it if you don't want to. You don't have to let me in on any of it if you don't want to. But I don't like watching you carry it all on your own. I can see you hurting and I want to help, but I can't if you don't let me in. Avoiding me is just going to make it worse. You know that don't you?”
Oscar was shaking his head now, not to pull away from her, just to fend off her words. “It's not that simple-”
“So don't make it simple!” Ruby insisted. “Just talk to me.”
“I can't!” Oscar did try to pull away then, but Ruby tightened her grip on him, tugged him even closer. Behind him, the sky started to turn the pinks and purples of twilight. “I can’t,” he repeated more softly, eyes closing as he leaned into her hand instead. “It's all such a mess inside my head. I know I'm not the one who was betrayed and hurt and heartbroken, but it feels like mine. And in a way, it kind of is mine now because their memories are my memories. Letting people get close? It-it scares me. I don't know if I can go through all of that again. So, yes. I did avoid you. Like I’ve been avoiding Theo,” he winced at the slip of the tongue, “and Qrow, and Raven, and Winter. All of them. But especially you, Ruby.” His eyes opened and he swayed towards her, drawn in by something she couldn't see. “Do you know my earliest memory of you?”
Ruby nodded slowly. “The house in Mistral. When you came home with Uncle Qrow.”
“No,” he breathed. “It's of that dark interrogation room when I- Ozpin-” he flinched again, glanced away and then back. He stared into her eyes, searching for something. She didn't know what it was, couldn't fathom what it was he needed from her. But he must have found it, because he opened his mouth and continued, “when I met you for the first time. Do you understand the power your eyes have on people? Not the power of silver eyed warriors. Something uniquely yours. You make people feel seen. You make people want to open up to you. I want to open up to you. And that's terrifying because… because I won't be able to handle it if you leave me too.”
She understood now why he said it wasn't simple. It wasn't. She couldn't just make it better with words. Couldn't just tell him that she wouldn't leave him. He'd probably heard that a million times before from people with more experience, stronger convictions, better intentions. A million words ran through her head, trying and discarding each and every single one until they were all gone.
Because there were no words. You couldn't make someone trust you.
But she also couldn't walk away, not when there was a pain in his eyes so raw it made her chest hurt. Ruby's voice shook a bit when she finally did speak. “It's okay,” she started, soft and pained. Oscar's eyes flicked across her face, ever searching. “You don't have to trust me.”
The words gave him pause, made him pull back slightly. His mouth opened. Closed.
“But I'll be here.” She kept going, words falling out like they'd always been there. Like she'd been thinking of them for days and was finally getting to say them, nevermind that she'd had no idea she'd be having this conversation. “Again and again. Day after day. And even if you never trust me, I'll still be here, Oscar. I'll still drag you up onto ledges and rooftops and make you tell me everything you can't bear to say. I don't know the future. Maybe there's a day when we're separated. But there will never be a day that I'll abandon you or turn my back. Because you are so good. It's not about following you into war. I'm not your soldier. It's about you. All of you. Even the parts that are twisting your mind into knots.”
Ruby let her forehead fall against his, listening to his breath stutter. “That pain in your heart is real. That heartbreak is real. Let me give you the space to mend from it all.”
He was quiet, hazel eyes large and fearful and so close. “Okay.”
Closing the last bit of distance between them, Ruby kissed him softly. So soft it was barely even there. She hadn't been planning to kiss him. Hadn't planned a speech that sounded like a confession. But it felt right. Even as he stiffened for a second. She could almost hear the war waging inside of his own mind. She expected him to pull back, to tell her the whole thing was a mistake.
But he surprised her. Again.
Oscar finally relaxed, and sighed against her mouth as he pressed in closer.
They stayed like that for a long moment, breathing each other in, until the light finally faded and someone inside called, “Hey, has anyone seen Ruby or Oscar?”
Ruby finally pulled back and stepped towards the window, putting distance between them until only their hands remained attached. Oscar didn't follow right away, hesitating. She let her fingers slip through his, taking another step back so they weren't touching any longer. “You can run from me again,” she offered. “But I'm faster and I will catch you.”
Maybe it was her words. Or maybe it was the way she turned to go inside. But she heard him hiccup, and then he was catching her hand in his, his freckled cheeks a little pink. “Can we go together?”
“Always,” Ruby said, without hesitation, and pulled him towards the window.