Chapter Text
Weiss didn’t claim to know the space the quiet girl occupied. Not like Yang would, or as Blake had tried to. Even if the latter’s attempt was small, middling, minuscule in every way that had really mattered in the end–she could at least claim she had tried.
She had known her as a leader and a comrade, albeit the former had started out oh so begrudgingly. There was a time, in those early days, when she had sought nothing else but to dismiss her entirely. So quiet, yet so fluid. What should have been a mark in the background was instead a sunspot. To be good was to be quiet, to make yourself invisible, to not speak when your words were unwelcome.
This was a constant, just like looking into a mirror. Yet, there the girl was, spitting on everything she had come to accept as an inevitability.
Where meekness should have resided, there was whimsy. When her silence should have cradled the dark, it harboured a sunspot, so warm and exuberant. A lack of words destined to bring ridicule, yet she was quicker. Quick to prove, quick to fight, quick to defend. Dependable in every manner of the word.
Strong, in every way that Weiss was not.
She should have hated her for it.
Should have hated her for taking the position that should have been hers, should have felt anger for the way she moved with purpose, should have felt a tidal wave of sorrow for the ridicule that she was now sure to receive.
But she hadn’t.
Rather, more accurately, it had come and gone. It was harder to quantify it now, when she was so far away from it on so many scales. When so much had happened and even more time had passed. If there was one thing she could trust, it was her own memory. Still, if she had been asked to describe the feelings, she would have hesitated, even for just a moment.
Not so simple as washing over her like water from a showerhead, nor was it akin to being drowned. If she had to give it a description, she would have found an excellent match in the tides. It came and went, waning and waxing as it saw fit. Rising on occasions that she couldn’t understand–that she couldn’t even begin to understand, even though she wished to, and dissipated on others. In those quiet moments, where there had almost been… something. An unnamable thing, one she’d yet to experience, and now that she was gone: one she might never learn at all.
Weiss had many regrets, more pertaining to her family than she could begin to count. More, even, to the people she had left in the aftermath.
She remembers the stories after it all had ended, after she’d dragged herself off and the fires had begun to die. Of the streaks of blue and red that flitted back and forth, of a red cloak and a burning blade. She’d heard of the storms, of the woman in robes that had come forth and torn the sky asunder, that had set her own time when civilians had been running out of it. Of so much power contained in such a lethal frame, yet mixed with kindness in waves that nobody could explain with words.
There’d been no doubt in her mind after that, none at all, when it came to who was fighting and why.
She could remember a night, a quiet one, where something had nearly become more, and where two girls had done nothing but share the stars above them. She could remember feelings that weren’t her own, flitting about, and while it had confused her then, she couldn’t think to question it now.
She remembered thoughts of freedom, of things that only one could do.
How unfair, she would often hum to herself nowadays. How unfair it was to stack all the odds on a single person's shoulders. Temples weren’t built on a pillar; they were based on a foundation of bedrock, and Weiss knew more than most how such faulty beginnings could lead to disaster.
She’d had so much time to think about it, after all.
In fact, she’d done almost nothing except think about all of this.
Until today.
She isn’t sure what wakes her from her nightmares, not at first.
Not until she hears the shouting.
She’s up and out of bed before she can even think of what she’s really doing. Her feet carrying her faster than her mind can catch up, and by the time she reaches the source of it all, standing just beyond her the front door of her home, she only finds herself more confused.
Because there, standing beside a woman much taller and more fearsome than her out appearances would lead one to believe, was Ruby Rose.
It’s this revelation that makes it hard for Weiss to notice her father at the mercy of the nameless woman, at least at first.
“–I already told you,” Her father hissed, his limbs shaking as he was forced to his knees by an invisible force. “This won’t go unpunished.”
“And I told you to watch where I set the price of freedom,” Gruffly, the woman snarled. Her features pulled taut as the scar upon her face. One hand held firmly in front of her, palm splayed downward, and the other held at her side. “So, I’ll ask again. You’re keeping a girl here against her will: where is she?”
“What I do with my daughter is none of your business–”
“I have known ones like you,” The woman sneered, flecks of gold dancing in her ethereally blue eyes for just a moment, only to be washed away with her next breath. "Slavers in all forms, seen men and women who do nothing but use others for their benefit. A system that feeds into nothing but itself.”
She takes a step forward, and for a brief, haunting moment, Weiss thinks that her father is going to die here.
It doesn’t scare her like she thinks it should.
“I left it alone once, in my own home,” Tense, her palm constricts ever so slightly. “I won’t be doing the same thing again.”
And then he drops to the ground like a weighted sack, eyes rolling into the back of his head before he can even strike the floor. Weiss’s jaw drops, her mouth opening and closing in equal measure, all kinds of words passing her by, but none come to her aid.
“He’s gonna have a killer headache when he wakes up,” The woman says without turning, as if reading her mind to address her. “But he will wake up.”
The woman turns to her, and the feeling that washes over her is indescribable. She sees wings where there could be none, not on a human. Wings that fold into themselves over and over again, hiding all manner of teeth. An unending sea of something, something darker than pitch, scored into the air like it had somehow been inscribed upon it. Her breath is taken away, fear in the seat of power. Wings turn to viscera, viscera turns to claws, and claws turn back to humanity. It’s like the world had been split from head to toe, peeled back like a tin can to reveal what truly lay in the spaces between, only to then be sealed back up in too tight of skin. Too small a vessel, too fragile a star to hold its own brilliance.
But the fear was gone as quickly as it came, and it was only then that she could realize her brief panic had gone with it. The woman, now smiling just as mischievously as her charge, exudes nothing but her own humanity, a hard clamp now pushed down on her own power–nay, the simple weight of her presence. The way she walked and moved, just slightly more fluid than Ruby’s own grace, was otherworldly, but no longer a danger.
She no longer felt like she was facing a god that had donned human flesh like a coat, but a woman. A powerful one, fashioning a mantle from the stars, no doubt, but a woman nonetheless.
“Sorry if I scared you,” Chucklingly nervously, rubbing at the back of her head, the woman gestures behind her. “My student and I came a long way so she could ask you a question, if you’d still be willing?”
She couldn't even nod her head, as it was still swimming, but Ruby approached her with nothing but a haughty smile and her own feeling of warmth. Without waiting for confirmation or the passage of time. They’d both done enough of that, both had enough of waiting for something to perfectly fall into place. So, here and now, eyes met and a gloved hand held out, she knew the question without the words.
It is only fair, then, that with the clasping of their hands, her answer shall be just as resolute.
And if the Force sang when their hands were clasped, well, then none of the Jedi would think to tell.