Disclaimer: Own nothing. Don't seek to gain any profits from this. Just borrowing my favourite characters for some fun.

10: The Green Glade II

The most difficult concepts are understood simply.

Ruby Rose was never one to back down from a challenge. That is why, even as she fell on the ground for the umpteenth time, she picked herself back up again, not the least bit bothered by her soiled pajamas or the slight tear in her oversized tank top. Absently, she rubbed her first against her nose as she eyed him. The scene must have been funny, she thought. For standing opposite her, Ozpin looked absolutely serene. He was clad in dark trousers, and the top few buttons of his plain white collared shirt were left open to reveal an elegant green scarf covering his neck, whose colour matched that of the cufflinks on his wrists. One of his hands rested casually on the head of his cane.

It was mudblood against blueblood, red uncontained aggression against poised green calm.

The flawed pawn versus the perfect king.

She had to be his undoing.

After all that had transpired last night, the shift of atmosphere between them was palpable. She hardly knew if it was for better or worse, but something of the resistance inside of her – something she did not even know she held for so long – had given way to some measure of pliability. So when she found herself in bed in the morning when she well knew that her feet had not carried her there, she did not let herself get rattled or angry.

She accepted it.

Without resistance.

She finally put a generous smearing of the strawberry marmalade he set in front of her every day on her toast. Then, before he could leave, she stopped him in his tracks with a request for training, which he did not deny.

And now, here they stood, three hours later, and the sheer gap between their power could not be more evident. The task he had allotted her was simple enough – all she had to do was land a single clean hit on him – and so far she had failed in the worst way possible. She could not even near him, let alone touch him. She had tried every tactic in her book, up to and including splitting her attacks and amping up her speed as she circled him to hem him into a vortex.

But every single time, she could not tell exactly when he moved.

To add insult to injury, he did not thwart her movements with any attack of his own; he just deftly used her own momentum against herself, every single time, leading to many undignified crashes and falls. She didn't even understand at this point how it was possible for him to be physically so much faster than her without leaving any impact on the environment for her to observe or follow.

She missed Crescent Rose dearly.

Without it, her deficit in speed was only more pronounced, and her attacks far too direct, making them rather trivial to dodge for someone of Ozpin's calibre. "You're spent," he informed her neutrally.

Previously, her stubbornness would have gotten in the way of her agreeing with such a thing, but she only nodded. However, it was also true that she was not quite done. "One last round?" She looked into his liquid brown eyes.

"Why not."

No sooner had he mouthed the words did she start moving again, a whirlwind in the silent forest, her mind focused despite her tiredness. She kept a vague sense for Ozpin's aura that she had become used to by now, but apart from that, this time she did not look at him. She did not care about where he stood, or when he decided to move when she launched an attack. She split herself into ruses with great ease, and then changed her trajectory mid-attack with great fluidity – it was all part of her plan after all – and this time, she found herself within arm's length of him.

She moved her fist to catch his face – or shoulder, body, anything – but he moved at the last moment, and this time she was able to follow the physical movement that resulted in his evasion with her eyes. The moment seemed locked in time, a moment where she had been so close she could almost taste it.

Then, she lost her balance once more and clumsily fell face first into the ground.

"Ughhh…" she rubbed her head.

He was beside her quickly, all long strides, and gave her his impeccable hand which she took gratefully. "That was good," he commented as she got up with his help and dusted herself off.

She shook her head. "Just dumb luck," she replied, shrugging it off.

He raised an elegant brow, looking down at her small frame. "I don't think so."

"No, I – uh," she pushed her bangs away from her forehead. "I don't mean it like that. The strategy was okay, the execution though…" she trailed off.

"Oh? Do elaborate?" He started walking, and she fell into step beside him.

"I get it," she said seriously, eyes narrowing in concentration, looking straight ahead, but replaying images from today's training in her head. "It's not about when you move. It's about where you move."

"Ah, so you instinctively tried to predict where I would be, Miss Rose?"

She nodded her assent. "Yup, and I tried to be there beforehand – wasn't too off. Which is why it was dumb luck."

"The theory is sound, if I may," he said after a pause. "But there's more to it," he added with a mysterious smile.

They reached the house, and Ruby shook her head, almost smiling as she looked up at him. She found that she could never quite get over their difference in height. "It's unfair as is, I don't think you telling me your secrets would make much of a difference at this point," she told him before they showed themselves inside.

Always the gentleman, he stepped in after her.

"You're right, it would not," he clicked the door shut. "But knowing your own definitely will, Ruby."

Late that evening, Ruby was absently washing the dishes after a snack. Absently, because her mind was elsewhere altogether. She worried her lower lip as she cycled over the day's events. Her speed had always been her most potent strength, and she had discovered today that it did not amount to much. So lost in her thoughts was she that she did not notice that the water was almost about to overflow from the sink.

Right then, an arm reached around her small frame, a hand dunked into the water, displacing some of it to spill out and Ruby yelped, unable to contain her startle reflex. The plate she was scrubbing involuntarily fell from her hands, but another arm circled from behind her to catch it.

"A lot on your mind?" Ozpin's voice rumbled from behind her, as he removed both his arms from around her, setting down the plate on the side. The water gushed down the pipe, making a vortex due to the suction. The relatively short teen observed the movement, transfixed, taking a few calming breaths as she did so.

She took a step back, and found herself against someone warm and solid.

Reassuring.

The taller male hadn't moved, and seemed to have no inclination to do so even now. She could count his breaths from the soft rise and fall of his otherwise flat stomach. Unwittingly, she leaned a bit of her weight against him, before moving forward the slightest bit once more to continue her task of washing the dishes. Eventually, Ozpin, although otherwise unmoving, set his arms on either side of her and she observed the movement through the corner of her eyes.

His sleeves were rolled up.

The paleness of his skin was that much evident up close, and she could also trace the paths of a few intricate blue veins. She didn't need to feel his aura to know that he was unreasonably strong. Seeing something so simply human about him – his skin and the veins which doubtless carried blood which was red like roses underneath all the porcelain – paradoxically made him seem more infallible rather than within reach. Him being real, living and breathing, possibly quite capable of bleeding – just like her – made his feats that much more unbelievable.

"How do you do it? How can you move so fast? Is it your semblance?"

Her tone was quiet, but honestly curious.

She felt him chuckle. "That took a while," he said in reference to her delayed response time. One of his arms reached around her once more, and his other hand came to rest on one of her shoulders. He leaned down. In front of her, his long fingers drenched themselves in the water flowing from the tap, the water turning into tiny waterfalls as it passed through the sieve that was his outstretched palm.

Behind her, his abiding presence kept her comfortably warm, almost in a cocoon.

"Well, little one, what do you see?"

She decided to be simple about it. "Water," she told him. "Water flowing through your fingers."

"Mmm," the sound of his voice seeped into her back. "Or, perhaps," he stated, "my fingers pass through the water."

"It's a matter of perspective," she nodded. "It can be neither…"

"…or both." He finished for her.

Her brows furrowed. "So movement – speed, can be both about distance and time?"

If she could see his face, she would find a tell-tale smile resting on his usually stoic features. "Or it can be about neither."

"So you can – somehow, sort of, see it both ways all the times… the rules are not straight for you, they're bent?" She was thinking out loud at this point.

"They're fluid."

"You shape them?"

"When you put water in a container, does the container give it shape, or does it take the shape of the container?"

She sighed. "So it's all the same concept. It's all the same. You can't separate it, but you use the one you please."

"You don't have to." He paused. "Discrimination is just a normal state of the mind."

"Except that…" she trailed off.

"That's the power of the silver eyes," he whispered, a deep lilt to his voice that sent a slight shiver through her spine. "They see all equally."

"You think I can see it?"

He removed his hand from under the running water, and let his cold, wet, blunt fingers brush her cheek lightly, softly before removing himself from her proximity. She didn't flinch.

"I know you will."

And with that, he left, once again leaving her with more questions than answers. But for the first time, she did not find herself feeling unpleasant at the prospect. She felt at ease, a kind of flow within her that wasn't unlike the water that they had just spoken of. But she also felt the wilder freedom of wind, and the stronger foundation of earth underneath. It all seemed to come together naturally, and she understood that these were not things that she could learn by finding or thinking.

She just had to realize them.

Realize who she truly was and embrace it.

Her eyes drifted shut as soon as her head hit the pillow, and for the first time she did not sleep with steely resolve or idyllic hopes, to achieve or to become. Rather she had within her a deep acceptance of the red stains inside of her, and of the tranquil water that would wash over them, diluting them, yet at the same time, making the water itself turn red.

And so if she knew that red was the colour of roses, of love, then in the same breath she also accepted that red was the colour of blood.

The concept was the same, and she could accept that.

Her last thoughts were of how, in such a case, black too melded with white to paint reality in shades of grey, and it was then for the first time that she felt a very different connection with the man whose home she currently shared, a connection which demanded that she truly understand the grey which defined him.

He wasn't good or bad.

He was neither.

And he was both.

A/N: I shall shut up and not make any more false promises; just know that I love you all and look forward to every single one of your reviews. What I can promise you though, is that no matter the time that passes between updates, ODAM is a ship that will not sink! That is, I won't ever abandon it. :)