Ruby,

By now, I can only imagine where you are, what you're doing.

I think about it, now and then. I imagine you, reuniting with all those that had lost you. A kind, warm hug with Yang, a friendly embrace, perhaps less boisterous, but just as meaningful, with Blake. Jaune and Pyrrha, sharing the memories of their wedding with you over a cup of tea. I hope you are all happier.

Part of me wishes I could be there with you, though I think you would hate me were I there. How could you not?

Perhaps you hate me more for not being there. I would understand. I left you once, and now again. It seems to be part of who I am, a fundamental part of my being: no matter what I do, I envenom those I love.

I wish it were not so… but here I have little choice anymore.

Maybe you've been to Coco's Cafe. If you have not, I might suggest it.

All these things I imagine, all these words I write… but at the end of it all, I have but one hope.

That you are happy.

It is why this must be my final letter. If you listen to one thing I have to say Ruby, let it be this:

You will not be happy until you let go of your past.

I can avow the truth of this, even if I cannot accept it and live with it through practice. Perhaps that is why, for all those years, I seemed to live in a fog. I could not erase you from my mind, no matter how hard I tried. Through drink, distraction, or despise, I could never free myself from you.

I didn't want to accept it, you see? I thought that perhaps, if I held onto you, you may never really be gone. That if I remembered you, part of you might live on through me. It was foolish and arrogant. We cannot change the past, Ruby. There are some things that the world dictates, and we must follow its course. I could never accept that.

But you could. No matter what the world threw at you, you would take it in stride, chin held high.

I think that is what I loved most about you Ruby. I saw in you a purity that I had missed. I know not what took it from me, or if I never had it to begin, but I saw it in you. I was not envious, I was glad just for the moments where I could be near it, near you.

Should I have been given the opportunity again, knowing what I know now, I never would have given that up.

Learn from my life, Ruby. Learn that you cannot have both the past and the future. You must choose. I only hope you make the choice I could never bring myself to.

Which is why, despite my selfish desire to imagine us communing, through time and space, through the words written here, I must cease. It is part and partial to this deal I had made. I have not limitless time, nor do any of us. And so, this is my final farewell.

I linger too long on these words. I want to recount to you each moment, in case you have forgotten them. But of course, as I have written these letters, I have come to realize I cannot do so. I would simply be asking you to stay with me, here in the past. I would recount you tales aplenty, with no motivation but the selfish desire to imagine it would do you good to have those memories.

Perhaps it would be best if you never remembered. Perhaps it would be best if you forgot me. I know it would. So if you have not remembered as of yet, I shall not remind you. I shall not cling desperately to the idea of a future we shall never have.

For once, I shall do what is best for you, Rose, and not that which brings me the fantasm of momentary relief.

And so, to bring your mind to rest, I shall tell you but one more tale. A conclusion to our tale, the end of mine, the beginning of yours.

It is the story how I met a man with no name.

Or, more accurately, how he found me.

It was not strange, you see, for people I had never met to contact me. It came with the position to which I had been appointed, that which I had sacrificed our love to attain. The damndest deal I have made, despite the treachery of deception inherent to my post.

So when I received a message from an unknown number, I thought little of it. Were it important, my secretary would have informed me of its coming. Thence, I nearly deleted it. But, for one name mentioned therein, I held onto it. He had asked if I wished to know of Ruby Rose.

I was rabid in my questioning. Who was he? What did he know? I never imagined what he would eventually offer. But I needed more, I needed to know of what had happened to you. I still believed that the more I knew of you, the more I could preserve you. The more I could keep you alive, in the depths of my heart and the corners of my mind.

I think grief and love are one and the same, Ruby. I think they are a madness, necessary to our survival, a madness which had possessed me for a long time. When finally confronted with it, it spilled from me, unrelenting.

I waited days. Weeks. My pain was reignited anew. The grief I had known with your passing had been revived, fresh as the day you were taken from this world. It tore me apart, all over again. My world sundered anew.

Finally he answered.

He told me who he was was of little import. What mattered is what he was. A broker of sorts, one of knowledge.

And should I wish to learn from him, I had but to travel to Vale and meet with him. He gave me a date, and a place.

At the time, I was dubious. He had asked me to meet him at a club of lust, a place you would be ashamed to find me. A place I was ashamed to find myself. Perhaps this was a ruse, a deception to capture images of me for the media. Ruin the image of me to the public eye. I cared not. Damned be my post, damned be my reputation. I had not cared for those things in a long time. So I went.

I did not understand why he asked me to meet him where he did, not at the time. I think perhaps I understand now. It was how he saw me… just like the patrons of that club. Grubbing, lustful.

If he thought that, I minded not.

I was there for one thing; the information he had promised me. Kindly, he delivered it.

I will not tell you all he revealed. I worry of the memories it will bring back to you. I hope you never have to experience what you lived through once. I would not inflict it on you a second time. Those final moments of your life…

I'm sorry Ruby.

I cannot say it enough. I cannot convey the despair or loathing I feel for myself… I condemned you to that fate. Had I only been there, perhaps we could have avoided all of this…

Or perhaps I merely would have been there beside you.

At times, I wonder if I'd have preferred that.

I've thought of artificially meeting that end more than once. Without you…

Death does not seem like such a horrible end.

Some days, I stand on the balcony outside my office. I look down, the ground so far away it doesn't seem real. Some days I want to let the wind take me, so I can follow you where you've gone. I grip the railing so tight my knuckles go white and my hands numb. My heart skitters and hops, and I can see it so clearly.

It would not take much. Just a simple nudge, and I would fall.

I would join you.

I have no illusions of an afterlife. I do not believe such a thing exists. I have no imaginations that we would be together, at last, forever in the beyond. I know what I would be racing towards. Oblivion.

And endless void with no end, no beginning. One moment I would be there, the next, I would be gone.

Yet, I find a poetic measure in it. For what I have done to you… for all the pain and misery. Is it not my just end?

It is a kindest too good for my twisted soul. Such an abrupt end to my pain. Perhaps a few seconds of fear, and then bliss.

And so I would think. In the days before this all began, I was coming close. There is a lake near where I live… I would imagine drifting off peacefully beneath the waves, my body never to be found. Of course, death is no such thing. I know my body would flail against my mind, an eternal struggle as my corpse burned for air. Perhaps a stone then, to bring me to the deepest depths, into the blackest portions of the water, where when the panic eventually won, coward that I am, there would be no chance of salvation. A decision to damn myself, taken before my revocation of conviction.

That seemed far more suiting. My lungs, limbs, on fire as I finally perished from this ill-begotten world. That was a far more suiting and poetic end for me.

But… perhaps that is my cowardice. Wanting to remove myself from the pain of your departure. Join you, destroy what is left in the shell of my mind and body. It is the darkest part of me, it is the depths I never speak of.

The only person, I think, I may have confided in, was you.

So I am.

I am… ashamed of these thoughts, my Rose. Only the knowledge that it is not what you would want keeps me on the ground, most days. Those fleeting moments, I am reminded of the love you gave me, and what I would be wasting were I to throw it away.

Perhaps it is too much of me to ask you to hear these words. I felt you should know who I was, before our brief moments, transmitted by these words, come to an end. I want you to know there was little left of me, I want you to understand why I had to do what I did.

It is not a kind explanation. I do not expect your forgiveness. If you should hate me, for my thoughts or my actions, I grant you no ill will. If you hate me, I ask only that you try to understand.

Because when finally I met the man with no name, he had but one question.

He asked me what I was willing to give.

I told him the truth. I would do anything.

And I would, my Rose. For you. I would give myself or the world a thousand times. I cared not for it before we met, and only through you did I come to know the beauty of this place, a beauty that has slipped from my mind, clouded by a dark mist that has clung to me for years now.

It seems to me that when you left, a hole opened inside of me. A hole through which the beauty and love you instilled in me has slowly seeped, devoured by the fog, until I remain naught but a wisp, a phantom of what I once was.

So if you hate me, do so with all your heart.

Just ensure it keeps beating.

Live for us both, what memories you have left of us. Live for me, my Rose. For what I could have been, what you may wish had been, but never was, and never could be.

I love you, Rose. With the little heart that I have left.

And this is goodbye, forever.

I love you...

-Weiss Schnee

A/n

I told you I would finish this story.

I'll be damned if I thought it would take this long.

I don't know if any of you will still be reading this… If you are I must say first and foremost that I am sorry. This should have concluded a long time ago, but I allowed myself the luxury of not forging on when it seemed difficult to continue.

If you are reading this, though, thank you for staying with me. I know this story hasn't been easy to read for some, and I know how hard it must be to wait so long for anything to come of it.

Especially when we're so close.

I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope I have started out again on the right foot. I'd be eager to hear your feelings, your thoughts.

But I don't think I'm exactly in the position to ask right now.

Until the next update, thanks for reading.

Cheers,

Unjax