Work Text:
Day 11
Infected 2,311
Dead 9,488
Missing 411
Suicides 804
Ruby coughed behind her mask as she made her way through what remained of Patch. The air was thick with disease, and the scream of the damned, and dying.
A group of soldiers formed a line, aiming at cowering civilians as a man with a flamethrower tank on his back burned them alive one at a time.
She didn’t stop. She couldn’t. Too many were lost, and would be lost if she spared even another moment here.
Even as she heard the crack of a rifle from behind her, she continued on her way. She stumbled over the remains of one of the walls, and took a shortcut toward the cathedral on the edge of town. That was where she needed to be.
She stumbled over a loose patch of rocks, remains of the former wall, and fell, her lantern falling from her grip, and onto the dirt ahead of her.
She grunted as she felt her lungs burn with effort, the sickness in the air was suffocating even through her mask.
A familiar, delicate dark hand picked up the lantern, and righted it before stepping away.
“Maria?” Ruby asked as she pushed herself to her knees, and winced at the state of her gloves. The plague was so potent they were starting to fall apart at the seams. Within the hour, this pair would be useless beyond kindling.
“Aye, cub,” the woman said, her voice warm, although the rags she was covered in said…nothing good.
“No. NONONO!” Ruby cried out. “Not you too!”
Maria coughed, the hand coming away dark, and bloody. “I’m afraid it came for me,” she said with a small smile even as blood coated her lips. “I thought I might find you on your way to see them. A final glimpse from afar.”
Ruby’s hand hit the ground at that. “I know how to make the cure!”
For one brief moment, Maria’s face depicted shock, and hope so real, and open it was almost heartbreaking, but it was gone, locked behind a mask of indifference so quickly she almost was sure she’d imagined it.
“I think we both know if that were the case then…” she trailed off as she took another step away, and gestured toward the dying town.
“No, stop!” Ruby cried out, hand reaching out to her.
Shockingly her friend did so, although whether it was from the order, or the coughing fit that wracked her body she didn’t know, or care.
“Come with me. To see Weiss!”
Maria shook her head. They both knew she would never be allowed anywhere near the general, or Weiss in her state. The inquisitor…friend, their…it was too much to think of now, but the point was that Maria would be shot dead before she even got into the cathedral square. It was a minor miracle she hadn’t been killed already.
The risk she’d taken just coming here was immense on its own. The looters, the soldiers, the others who were just as ill.
“Do you still have it?” Maria asked.
“Wh-”
“Do you still have it,” Maria carefully enunciated.
“I always have it.” Ruby assured her.
“That’s good,” Maria said with a soft sigh. “Take care of each other will you?”
Then she was gone, turning to run far faster than she should have in such a mess as Ruby scrambled to her feet in a vain attempt to follow her, that was doomed before it began.
Her mind supplied her with what she already knew. In Maria’s state, that sort of exertion, the sickness coursing through her veins?
She ignored the burning in her eyes, and turned away from the theater, and toward the Cathedral.
She, and Weiss could go back after this was over. Find Maria, and scold her for being so reckless. It had to be possible. IT HAD TO BE.
Her lantern was held aloft, another match struck, and used to keep it burning, to help clear a way for her.
Despite the hour, the plague was so thick in the air it appeared to be dark as night. The sounds of screaming continued to echo from all around her as she pushed onward, the paths she’d known as a child to some extent, but had relearned the town's unique design over the last two weeks guiding her through every shortcut she could imagine.
A group of Faunus, none of them appearing to be the slightest bit concerned with doing so, watched from the bridge railing as several soldiers shot a few in rags that tried to flee.
Some on the ground were in too much agony to even do that as the men slowly ‘cleaned up’ the town, or tried to. Plenty of soldiers in uniforms dotted the ground, some had clearly been killed by the townsfolk, others had bullets in them indicating that there was likely some division amongst the ranks, and the rumors of desertion were true.
The plague had clearly been hard at work in the army as well.
For a brief moment, she was tempted to replace her cloth mask with one of the soldier’s gas masks, but time was short, and she needed to get to Ironwood, to Weiss.
The soldiers at the entrance to the cathedral carefully checked her over for obvious signs of infection, but did allow her entry as she ignored the others who tried to speak with her, eyeing her single remaining glove, the other having fallen from her hand as she passed into Cathedral Square.
Too many who wanted their own pleas heard, or wanted to blame her for being unable to stop things. That she wasn’t her father’s daughter after all, and much besides.
For a town actively dying the inside of the cathedral was clear of bodies, alive, or dead. It was silent…like a tomb.
“Weiss,” Ruby spoke softly, choosing to come to her side first.
Tired blue eyes raised to meet her own, a very faint corner of her lips quirked up, as if that was all she could manage.
She looked as if she’d aged decades in only a few days, even though her inquisitors uniform was as impeccable as always. As if not even the plague could ever make her less than presentable.
“Weiss?”
Weiss focused on her, and her eyes focused, sharpened, and the inquisitor was back.
“Report, Rose.”
“I have a cure. I can make it. I just need-” she said before Weiss slammed a hand down on the table.
“That’s not enough,” she said, voice hard, before she repeated it, softly this time. “Damn it all.”
“Weiss…”
“I’m to be executed,” she supplied crisply as her eyes very briefly flicked toward the General. “For failing in my duties to save the town.”
“No one saved the town! You can’t control this. It’s an act of nature it’s-”
“Unacceptable either way,” Weiss said with a sigh. “I told you both earlier, didn’t I?”
“That you couldn’t read us,” Ruby said at once, knowing what she meant.
Weiss nodded as she sat back in her seat heavily. “So trust me when I say that I already know the sentence, even if it hasn’t been given yet. I won’t be leaving this town alive,” she said simply, as if the matter was as easy as crossing out a line in a ledger, and not her own life.
“We can leave. Take a train, hide on one, something!’ Ruby begged as for one brief moment Weiss looked torn before she smiled sadly.
“I’m afraid they’re all watched by the general’s supporters. If you had asked me a few days ago perhaps…but now…” her eyes widened slightly. “I see, she’s…”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Ruby said, not willing to imagine any other situation.
Weiss did her the kindness of ignoring the truth, very much against her normal manner of speaking. “Despite everything…I feel as though I’ve lived more, good, and bad, these last few days, than all the time I was in the inquisition,” Weiss said softly.
Ruby went to speak with her, opened her mouth, but Weiss was frozen in place, cast in shadow, and Ruby knew nothing she said would reach her now.
She turned to the general. General Ironwood. An incredibly popular general, although why he’d been deployed so far abroad when the war raged she hadn’t the slightest idea. He’d come with trainloads of guns, soldiers, supplies, and was ‘determined’ to ‘set things right’. As if the plague could be fought with bullets.
“Rose,” he barked as she approached, and looked up from his map. “What progress?”
“I can make the cure,” she said as he raised an eyebrow at her. “I just need you to not bombard the town.”
“Do you have the cure with you? Can you make more on demand?” he asked, pressing her without ceasing as he took a drag from his cigarette.
“I just need-”
He shook his head before she could finish. “If you had a train car full of it ready to hand out, and could make more, then I might, have considered leaving it standing. But as is? The city is dead,” he said as his wrist twisted, and the cigarette was smushed into the table until it too died like the town around it.
She opened her mouth to argue, about the plague, what she could do, Weiss, but he too was cast in shadow as something akin to a stage light appeared, and a man dressed more like a schoolteacher, or a playwright stood, leaning on a cane.
He had white hair, and a pair of spectacles as he smiled at the scene as if nothing was unexpected, or out of place.
The idea that he could smile at such a state of affairs left her confused as he addressed her.
“How was that? Not bad for a second take, or was it twentieth? I do so lose track,” he muttered.
“What do you mean?” Ruby asked as she struggled to understand the man she was sure she’d met before.
“The play of course. It went so very well for you this time, didn’t it?” he asked, and if Ruby hadn’t sensed he was being sincere she’d have tried to slug him for his dismissing the death of her friends, and family.
“It went terribly.”
“If you say so," he agreed with a shrug. "You did survive though, so that’s something at least,” he said as he looked around, the cathedral full of more people cast in shadows.
She tried not to look as an extra figure joined Weiss. One she’d just had return her lantern within the hour.
More appeared at the edges of her vision, friends, family, those she’d failed, and had let down. All staring, judging her.
The room shrank, her breathing hitched, and she felt sweat dot her forehead. “I can do better!” Ruby said.
“Can you?” the man asked, seeming to be genuinely curious, and not mocking. “Think you can save everything? Solve the mystery? Wrap everything up in a little bow? It’s certainly a tall task.”
“I know I can,” Ruby yelled, as she forced her eyes to not flick over to the side, where they sat, or to the balcony, or elsewhere.
He hummed, and spun the cane around in his hands as he considered her. “I suppose it’s certainly possible that you could manage it. There are an infinite number of universes after all.”
“So let me,” Ruby said, one hand on her chest as she swung the other in front of her to plead her case.
“I suppose I could,” he said as if truly considering the idea, even as his fingers never stopped passing the cane between them.
She held her tongue, knowing that interrupting him now would not get her what she wanted.
He came to a stop, and clapped his hands as everything faded away but the two of them, even the sounds of screaming from outside had stopped as he looked toward her.
“We can reset the play, the actors, try to give it another take,” he said as Ruby reached out a hand toward him, which he backed away from.
“However, this is it. And there are deaths you will not be able to prevent. Some are marked by fate.”
“What?” Ruby asked, her heart flicking to the side where nothing remained, unable to bear it.
The man only smiled at that. “I do want you to do your best, so yes. While the marked are doomed I will give you one chance,” he said holding up a single finger.
“If you do well enough? I think I can let you have one of them, the one you want, perhaps? We’ll see. They’re more interesting alive anyway,” he decided after a moment as he held out his hand.
Ruby wasted no time reaching toward his hand as he grabbed hold, his strength at odds for his appearance as her hand felt as if he’d broken it with the barest grip as he pulled her toward himself.
“One last piece of advice?” he offered as he pulled her toward him. “Try not to die. It’ll really mess with the fabric of reality. Make things far worse for everyone in the long run.”
Ruby opened her mouth to question him before he negligently tossed her backward, and the world went black as he yelled for stagehands.
Ruby felt herself fall to the floor, and groaned as she groggily looked around. Her mind caught up with her as her dream faded.
A train car. She’d used some, most, of her meager savings to secure transport back home. It was more accurate to say she’d bribed the conductor, hence her being given a small bedroll tucked away in the back of a boxcar full of empty crates, and supply boxes.
Her thumb rubbed over the letter from her father as the noises of the train passed by her. She hadn’t heard from him in so long. Not since he’d sent her away from Patch. Away from home to study medicine at school.
She could have learned from him, and yet he’d said it was ‘needed’. The letter had found her later than it should have. What that said about the postal service, or the war that was going on, and how it was impacting it she very much didn’t think about.
Her world was full of enough horrors imagined that she didn’t need the real ones to haunt her.
Looking at the letter once more didn’t change anything. There was nothing more to glean that she hadn’t already by now.
Ruby, my wonderful daughter,
The hour of my death grows near. I must warn you that I had to participate in some mysterious and, as my experience suggests, unfortunate events...
Therefore, if you choose to reject my inheritance... I will understand your choice... Please make haste if you choose to do so.
Do not let our family die out. The town needs you. The Faunus need you. Everyone needs you. I know that after your mother's...passing you held me responsible. That...well what's done is done. I can explain it to you.
Everything with nothing left out. There is a reason you needed to become a surgeon, a reason for everything. Please, I pray thee return.
Your loving father,
Taiyang Xiao Long
It was direct, and to the point. A plea, order really, for her to return home. Something about it was different though. Her father was not one prone to fits of melancholy, preferring to treat everything as a glass half full sort of situation.
Of course she might have returned sooner if not for…To say their relationship was strained was an incredible understatement. If she didn’t truly believe something horrible was on the horizon she’d have ignored it.
The paper was the same boring parchment he used for everything from prescriptions, to notices, to even what he wrapped his bread in.
Aside from the letter he’d only sent one other thing. A small pouch wi- she jumped hearing a loud crash, and saw a coffin in the train car had fallen off the stack of luggage to the ground.
She eased backward, not wanting to share the small box car with a corpse if at all possible, but strangely enough, a hand reached out, and an amused looking man poked his head out of the box.
“Nearly to Patch?” he asked in amusement golden eyes almost glowing in the light of the room.
Ruby shook her head, the short black hair that had grown only slightly longer, swaying as she did so.
“Soon perhaps,” he said in amusement as he climbed out, closed the lid, and sat down on it. “What brings you back, little one?” he asked in sing song.
“My father,” she said simply, unsure what to make of him. After a moment too long she realized he was waiting for her to speak. “Yourself?”
“A grand coincidence marked by fate I’m sure, for I also seek your father, although I admit I’m curious how I’ll be received since I have other business in the town," he confided with an amused smile.
“You’re ill?” Ruby asked in concern.
“Oh, a doctor now aren’t you?” he asked with a crooked smile, sidestepping her question. “An…emshen was it?”
Ruby narrowed her eyes slightly, but nodded.
“And yet,” he teased. “Do you know the lines?”
Ruby stared not bothering to answer as he pulled out a small cup. “Dice?” he asked. “Pass the time? Ask questions to know a fellow traveler?”
“I go first,” Ruby said as she took a seat across from him.
He shook the cup in his hand, and let the pair of dice fall to the floor of the car. A five, and three.
“Ah, that explains it,” he said, as if the dice had already told him everything he needed to know before speaking with her.
“First to three?” Ruby asked as she took the cup and he nodded merrily.
“Excited to be back?” the man asked as Ruby shook her head, and pointed to herself.
“Of course, of course,” he acquiesced as she picked up the dice after staring at them for a moment.
“Why are you going, really?” she asked as she began to shake the cup.
“I’m a rag, and bones man,” he answered with a grin. “I collect dead things. Things others might not see much use in. Sh-I do,” he corrected himself. “A broken safety pin, the crushed remains of a pill bottle, and the like.”
“Well, I’ll certainly remember to bring any I find your way,” she promised easily as she let the dice fall. Three.
“Bad luck,” he observed as he scooped the dice back up. “Do you remember the traditions?” he asked in amusement.
“Some,” Ruby admitted as he rolled an eleven. Of course.
“The good ones?” he asked as a follow up that she didn’t chide him for. Her answer was hardly satisfying as it was.
“My father sent me a small bag with trinkets,” she said as she gestured behind her. “And my scalpels. Not a lot, but some.”
“I have to say,” he said as he handed the cup over to her. “I have been all over this miserable ball of dirt, but the citizens of Patch are some of the more delightfully strange ones.”
“Trade is an expression of self, of what you think your neighbor is worth,” Ruby said, pulling out a small walnut from the bag behind her. “Of what they think of you, and your own worth. If they trust you enough to honor your value, and you in return.”
On its own, the walnut wasn’t anything special, but to some child it would be a delicious snack. Perhaps they’d give her information, nothing, a piece of chalk, or any other number of things. Even the adults bartered. Coin was used, but trading, bartering was vital as part of the culture, and had been since its inception.
A ten. She rolled her eyes as he took the cup back with a nod, and plucked the dice in an economical motion.
“What will you do with the dead things?” Ruby asked as he placed the dice into the cup, and shook.
“Each one tells a story, an illness defeated, a battle lost, a wound inflicted, and I like to collect them. Trade in them. I find the collection worthy in its own way,” he said simply as he frowned seeing a four on his dice.
Ruby grabbed the cup, and took the two dice as she waited on his question.
“The taboo,” he said after a moment. “On cutting, or breaking skin with blade. Is it still enforced?”
“As far as I know? Harshly,” Ruby said as she let the dice fall. Five. Finally a win. She handed the cup over, and continued. “Even accidental cuts are frowned upon, and you’re expected to make sure no one sees it. Menkhu’s are the only ones allowed. Like my father,” she said as he shook the cup.
“I’ve always wondered why,” the man said as he shook the cup after depositing his dice into it. “It’s fascinating.”
“The human body is sacred. They believe it comes from Mother Boddho. That we all do, and that cutting it, is cutting her, and thus sacrilege. The same reason there are no basements, or cellars in town. Digging into the earth is cutting into the mother.”
He nodded at that, and made to ask another question as Ruby raised an eyebrow, and he relented.
“What is your name? Your real name,” she asked as he blinked, and stopped shaking the cup for a moment.
“It has been quite some time since any thought to ask me,” he admitted as he slowly began to shake the cup again.
“I wish to know,” Ruby said simply as he nodded.
“So you do,” he agreed as he let the dice fall to the floor of the car they were traveling in. Seven.
Ruby took the dice after making sure he saw them, and reached a hand for the cup.
He placed it in her hand, his eyes considering her for once, as if something had been pulled from over his eyes, and he could see her properly for the first time.
“Ah, silver eyes,” he said softly as he peered more closely at her. Ruby bore it stoically. She was used to it from her time at the capital, the eye color garnered her a large amount of attention from most. It hinted at...well it didn't matter.
“I see. I understand now,” he said gently with a nod. “Your win,” he said simply taking the dice, and putting them back in the cup. “I look forward to seeing if your string of luck continues.”
He stood up, and climbed back into the coffin.
“Your name,” she insisted as his hand reached for the lid.
He blinked then. “Ah, of course. Callows. Tyrian Callows, Ruby Rose,” he said with a grin as the coffin lid slid back into place.
Ruby shook her head at that. What a strange travel companion.
The following days passed in a similar fashion. She’d look at the letter, look at the pouch she’d been sent with it, and look through it. Nothing changed, only an increased sense of urgency was all she gained. The pouch of ‘treasures’ remained in her care, and the bread, and bottles of water that had been sealed with a cork were used.
Remembering her training, she kept hold of them for the time being, and took out her journal. Writing, drawing. They had become things she’d done to keep her mind sane, when the thoughts took her where she’d rather not dwell.
Maps of the town were sketched from memory. Some of it might have changed, but she’d update it if needed.
More importantly was a section past that. Lists of those in the town she remembered, and their importance, or how her father had taught her.
The layers of the town, much as the layers of the body. Bones, Nerves, Blood.
Blood, the closest. Friends, dear friends, family, those you loved. Zürkh.
Medrel. The nerves. Those of importance among the normal citizens, but not in a position of power officially. The owners of the towns abattoir, it’s only real source of trade with the outside world. The Marigolds. They had the money, and got their own brand of respect, or at least obedience with it.
Bones. The ones people followed because they were strong enough to enforce their ideas, or had power vested in them by the people. The foreman. He was- she tore her thoughts from them for the moment as she finished a quick portrait, and turned back to the blood section.
Her old friends. She lightly put a finger on the page, careful not to smudge as she did so. Did they understand why she’d had to leave? Why she hadn’t come back?
She let her head fall back into the container behind her. She had sent letters, but had they arrived? Did they think she’d abandoned them?
She was almost ready to nod off when the train lurched to a stop, and she tumbled to the floor, her journal clattering to the ground as she struggled to find equilibrium.
“Careful now,” Tyrian said with an amused smile, the man sitting up from inside the coffin. Strangely, Ruby hadn’t seen him much in the last few days of travel. She truly had no idea if he spent all his time sleeping in a coffin, or not, but he was offering her the journal back so she proffered a smile, and a walnut, the appropriate token for such a gesture.
“I’m a rag, and bones man,” he reminded her gently before his smile dropped, and he tilted he head. “I suspect you’ll have more need of it than I.”
“Why did you travel in a coffin?” Ruby asked as she took the book, and strapped it to her belt to avoid losing it as she gathered her belongings, as meager as they were, to depart the train.
“Why ever not?” he asked sounding confused as to why you'd travel any other way. “You can get in a lot of places with a coffin,” he said with a giggle.
Ruby leaned over to grab an errant pocket watch, a broken one, but the metal was still good, and her father had included it so she assumed it would be important regardless.
By the time she’d straightened, Tyrian was gone, and the door to the car was open, but only slightly.
It was dark still, with only pale stripes of moonlight to illuminate the car, to at least some degree as she straightened up. She did a final check over her belongings, book secured, pouch tied up, and ready, meager coins accounted for…LANTERN!
She looked around, and let out a sound of relief as she removed it from a hook on the wall, and attached it to her belt.
With a nod to herself, she grabbed the partially opened door, and pulled. The creaking she ignored as the metal groaned in protest at being forced to move, but she was determined, and in no time, had more than enough room to squeeze out, with the door only having lost a few flecks of paint in the process.
A glance at the sky indicated that while it was still dark, the faint, very faint, glow over the mountains said sunlight was coming, at least sooner rather than later.
She dropped down to the ground, and shook her legs to try, and rid herself of any lingering weakness.
The fact that she’d run out of any real food didn’t help, but she also knew she needed to save what was in the pouch. She hadn’t lied to Tyrian, trading was the very lifeblood of the town.
“That you, Rose?” a voice called from behind her as she turned only to get a wooden board to the face for her troubles.
Stars exploded across her vision as she stumbled backward, pain filling her mind as she struggled to retain her balance.
She thrust a hand into her pouch, and pulled out one of her medical scalpels as she barely managed to keep her feet under her, and licked her lips nervously as she eyed the three men coming toward her.
Well, this wasn’t the homecoming she’d expected. She narrowed her eyes, and growled as she straightened up. She hadn’t come all this way to die here, before setting a foot in the town proper!
Day 1
Infected 0
Missing 0
Dead 3