Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The night sky over seems darker than normal, the light from the broken moon failing to penetrate as far through the inky blackness. Salem and her army hang in the sky like a physical manifestation of the despair that they intend to bring to Remnant, blotting out light and hope in favor of fear and darkness.

Ruby shakes her head and forces herself to tear her gaze away from the window of the airship. It’s not making her feel any better, and she doesn’t have time to be moping like this. Not when so much danger is literally looming overhead. Not when they have so much to do. And she doesn’t even have a clue where they should start.

Qrow is missing, and they haven’t been able to get in contact with him. He could be in danger. He might need their help.

Mantle is in danger, both from the Grimm and from the loss of the heating system. And now the people of Mantle have been abandoned by Atlas and Ironwood.

Salem and her army are a visible looming threat on the horizon.

And, of course, they still need to warn the rest of Remnant about the danger that they’re all in. After all, Salem isn’t just going to stop with Atlas, once she’s done here, she’ll just move on to the rest of the world.

To think that only a few hours ago, it had seemed like everything was going to work out.

It would be much easier to come up with a plan if her head would stop pounding.

The headache had started during their earlier encounter with Salem as a painful throbbing behind her eyes, and it had only worsened during the fight with the AceOps and the use of her silver eyes on Cinder. Finding that Penny was okay and reuniting with the others had been enough of a relief that she had been able to push the pain aside for a bit, but now, left with her thoughts, it’s back with a vengeance.

She’d love nothing more than to just close her eyes for a bit and sleep until her head stops hurting and she’s able to successfully shove the thoughts of what happened to her mother to the back of her mind where they belong, but she doesn’t have time for that. She’s the leader, after all. It’s her job to find a way out of this for all of them. Even if it seems impossible.

So, instead of taking a nap and hoping that everything is miraculously better when she wakes up, Ruby takes a step away from the window and starts pacing back and forth, back and forth. The motion does nothing for her headache, but it does help to shake away some of the exhaustion clinging to her like the spiderwebs they’d had to get rid of when they’d first moved into their dorm room at Beacon. She hadn’t known that Weiss’ voice could get that high-pitched and squeaky.

The memory brings a fleeting smile to her face. Swallowing the sudden lump in her throat, Ruby banishes the memory and forces herself to think about their current problems instead.

Ironwood. Step. Salem. Step step. Cinder. Step. How do we warn the rest of— “Oof!” she squeaks out, as her path is suddenly interrupted by a solid obstacle. Glancing up, she spies blonde hair and lilac eyes. “Sorry Yang!”

“Ruby.” Her sister looks her up and down, her face creased by a concerned frown. “You okay?”

“Of course!” Ruby reassures her, trying for her usual reassuring grin. “Just got lost in thought, wasn’t looking where I was going. Sorry about that!” She giggles. Surely Yang won’t be able to resist teasing her for that, some joke about not being able to think and walk at the same time. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” The frown doesn’t leave Yang’s face. If anything, she just seems even more worried. “Ruby?” she says gently, reaching out a hand slowly. “You’re crying.”

Right before Yang’s hand can reach her face, Ruby brings her own hand to her cheek—she’s startled when her fingers come away wet. “Huh?” But she wasn’t . . . She doesn’t remember . . .

“Ruby,” Yang says again, in that same gentle, patient tone, as if she’s trying to calm a spooked Zwei during a thunderstorm. “Why don’t you sit down for a minute?”

“What? No! I’m fine, I must have just—” Here she freezes, the words sticking in her throat as she desperately tries to come up with an excuse. She knows that there isn’t one. Yang won’t stop now until she gets to the bottom of this. “I—”

“Yeah, no,” Yang snorts, shaking her head. “You look like you’re about to throw up or pass out or maybe both. You’re not fine. You need to sit down, and then we’re going to have a little chat.” She carefully takes the hand that Ruby is holding up to her face and gently clasps it in both of her own. The warmth against her skin in the cold airship is almost enough to make her give in. “Come on.”

Ruby has no intentions of giving in that easily. She tries to tug her hand out of Yang’s grip but her sister holds firm. “We don’t have time for any of that. We need to figure out what to do about Ironwood and Salem and—”

“And we will, but not right now. If we ran into Salem right now, what would you do? Puke on her?”

Bracing herself, Ruby prepares to keep arguing, even if sitting down sounds really good right about now. But before she can even get a word out, her knees buckle, and the only thing that prevents her from smacking her face against the floor of the airship is her sister’s quick reflexes. Head spinning, all she can do is breathe as her sister arranges them so that they’re sitting against the wall, Ruby slumped against Yang.

When her vision finally clears, she glances around the airship to see if anyone noticed. Apparently not. Everyone is still sitting in their own little groups, talking quietly among themselves. Ruby lets out a little sigh of relief. The last thing she wants is more people fussing over her.

“So,” Yang says casually, wrapping an arm around Ruby’s shoulders. “You ready to drop the act and tell me what’s wrong?”

Ruby grits her teeth as her head throbs with a particularly strong stab of pain. She buries her face in her sister’s shoulder, hoping that by blocking out the light some of the pain will go away. “My head hurts,” she mumbles, voice barely audible. “Really bad.”

Yang is silent for a long moment, and when she finally speaks again Ruby can hear the frown in her voice. “Did you hit your head during the fight, or is it a weird glowy-eyes thing?”

Normally Ruby would giggle at the “glowy-eyes thing,” but right now she’s tired and in pain and just wants it all to stop. “I think it’s the eyes thing. It started after we talked to Salem.”

Yang tenses at the mention of Salem, and Ruby tries to gather herself enough to say something encouraging. Before she can ever open her mouth, though, she feels Yang shift and the sound of a zipper being undone. “Yang?” She startles when she feels something pressed into her hands. “What?”

She forces herself to sit up, wincing and squinting at the bottle of water that she’s now holding. “Yang? What should we do?”

“You’re going to take these,” her sister says, holding out a couple of pills. “And sleep for a few hours.”

Ruby pushes her hand away, shaking her head. It makes the room tilt and her stomach feel queasy, but she ignores it, swallowing hard. “No, I mean about Ironwood and Salem and everything. We don’t have time for me to take a nap, we need to focus—”

“You’re not going to be any good to anyone if you run yourself into the ground like this,” Yang says firmly, looking her square in the eye. “And you’re not the only one who can strategize. The rest of us will put our heads together and try to come up with something. We’ll wake you up if something happens. Please, Ruby.”

She holds out the pills again, and this time Ruby reluctantly takes them. She wants to argue, but her head is foggy with pain and the warmth from her sister’s aura is making sleep impossible to resist. Fumbling with the water bottle, she unscrews the cap and swallows the pills with a large gulp.

“Good. And you should drink some more of that, it’ll make you feel better,” Yang says, shifting so that she’s sitting with her legs stretched out in front of her. Ruby rolls her eyes but obeys, finishing the bottle in a few large sips. Wow. She didn’t think that she was that thirsty.

She sets the bottle aside and Yang nudges her until she’s laying with her head on her lap. Yang runs her fingers through her hair and Ruby lets out a tiny sigh at the gentle touch. “G’night, Yang,” she mumbles.

“Sleep well, little sis.”

Chapter Text

For all her protests, Ruby passes out hard with her head on Yang's lap, drooling slightly and snoring the way she does when she's exhausted or hurting or both. Clearly her sister really needed this. Yang is surprised that she managed to hold out this long.

She runs a hand through Ruby's short hair, gently pushing it off her forehead. Her sister leans into the touch with a soft sigh. Yang isn't sure how long this little moment of peace will last, but she's hoping to keep the others off Ruby's back long enough for her sister to get enough rest.

Speaking of which . . .

"Hey, Ruby!" Jaune calls over to her, much too loud in the silent airship.

"Shhh," Yang mouths, putting a finger to her lips and shooting him a firm glare.

Jaune looks confused, but obediently lowers his voice, stepping closer in order to hear her better. "What are you—oh," he cuts himself off when he notices Ruby. "Is now really the best time to be taking a nap? We need to be figuring out what we should do next."

"She's exhausted, let her sleep," Yang replies. She glances down at her sister, but Ruby barely stirs at Jaune's voice, just turns her head slightly until her nose is against Yang's thigh and huffs quietly. "Might as well get some rest while we can. The rest of us can come up with a plan in the meantime."

They're all exhausted, but given that Ruby had been about to keel over earlier, she probably needs to sleep the most.

"I guess that works," Jaune says, not looking entirely convinced. Then, "So what should we do next?"

Yang runs a hand through her hair with a sigh. With the way that Jaune is looking at her, she's starting to understand the weight of the constant pressure that Ruby must feel. She hates it. "Let's see," she says, thinking through the (very long) list of their problems at the moment and trying to pick one that's relatively easy to solve. "Do we have any idea what happened to Qrow?"

"No," Jaune sighs, shaking his head. "Last anyone heard from him and Robyn, they had Tyrian is custody and were heading back to Atlas. No one's heard from them since. And we haven't been able to track down his scroll signal."

Well then. Option one is a bust. Qrow is either in Atlas custody right now (not good), or he's been taken by Tyrian back to Salem (very not good). Or maybe he crashed and landed somewhere in the tundra. Whatever happened, it's probably not good, and they have no way of knowing where they should start looking for him or if he's okay. Yang tries not to assume the worst; her uncle is a fighter, after all, and he won't go down easily. They'll just have to trust him to get out of whatever situation he's in until they can find him.

"What about Oscar?" Yang asks, after pausing to think for a moment. "Have you guys heard from him since he ran off?"

"We haven't heard anything from him, but I guess I could try looking up his location again," Jaune says, fiddling with his scroll. "Last time it didn't show him anywhere but maybe this time—aha!" He turns the screen so Yang can see it better. She leans over to look, careful not to dislodge Ruby from her lap. "His aura is really low for some reason, but at least we know where he is now. How'd he end up down in Mantle?"

Yang squints at the screen. She doesn't recognize the location, but at least it's a start. "No idea. Why don't you show those coordinates to Maria and we'll go find him?"

Jaune nods, standing up and heading towards the front of the airship.

Boom. They've got a plan. Maybe it's only a short-term plan, but it works for now. If they can just keep taking things one step at a time, they might just be able to get themselves out of this crazy situation.

Of course, it ends up taking them almost two hours to get to the location on Jaune's scroll, because of course they happened to be heading in the exact opposite direction of where Oscar is. Plus, their newly fugitive status means that they need to take extra care to avoid being noticed by the other Atlas airships.

If only they could turn the ship invisible, that would be helpful.

Yang finds herself dozing off over the course of the journey, head lolling against the wall she's sitting against. As the airship begins to make its descent, Ruby finally begins to stir. She blinks sleepily, silver eyes drifting up to Yang's face, before abruptly jerking upright. "Sleep well?" Yang asks, for once not teasing.

Her sister looks better for the rest. She still looks tired and pale, but she's not squinting or crying anymore, so that's a good sign. Napping must have helped her headache. "Where are we going?"

"Jaune managed to track down Oscar on his scroll, so we're heading to pick him. We're heading to Dr. Polendina's clinic after, to come up with an actual plan."

"Good thinking, Yang," Ruby says with a small smile. She pushes herself cautiously to her feet, attempting to smooth down her hair and make herself presentable—and yawns widely. "I guess I needed some sleep."

When Ruby suggests the plan to make sure that Amity is launched and reestablish global communications, Yang is torn. A part of her—a large part of her, really—wants to stay down in Mantle and help the citizens that have been abandoned by Atlas.

But when Ruby looks at her anxiously for support, still looking exhausted and too pale despite her best attempts at seeming confident, Yang falters. She remembers her sister from the night before, a sobbing mess of grief and pain after Salem got in her head and whatever that weird jellyfish-looking Grimm did to her. Yang can't abandon her sister now. Family should stick together.

"Sounds like a plan, sis." Ruby smiles gratefully at her. "I'll follow your lead."