A Fine Pair

He was perfectly still. Head back, eyes shut, hands folded in his lap.

With Yang's departure, an almost eerie silence had once more fallen over the garden. The only noise was the gentle rustle as a breeze ran through the hedges and bare branches of the trees. The sun had gone down, and with it any trace of warmth; the temperature was rapidly dropping off. Not that Ren noticed. Regulating his body heat using Aura was something he had mastered when he was a child. He never had to worry about anything like hypothermia or freezing to death. At least not while he had Aura.

The world was getting darker around him as the light slowly drained from the sky. The glow of the city beneath got brighter and brighter in contrast, as if challenging the very night, something Ren knew was entirely pointless. Darkness could only be staved off for so long. Eventually, inevitably, everything would succumb to it.

Speaking of darkness…

"I know you're there," he said softly. For a moment the world was still, and anyone who had witnessed it would have thought he was just muttering to himself. However, a second later the shadows in the center of the copse behind him coalesced into a solid form, and out stepped Blake Belladonna.

"I never took you for a hypocrite, Ren," she said as she slid around the bench and into the vacated seat beside him. He glanced at her briefly from the corner of his eyes. He didn't need to speak for her to get the message, and gold irises narrowed at him. "You know exactly what I'm talking about. That whole 'lone avenger' bit."

Ren's mouth was a thin line, magenta eyes still glued to the horizon. "Valhalla was already planning to take over the Xiong's territory. All I did was make sure the transfer was more…permanent. Besides," he voice grew low, and Blake could detect what sounded almost like a slight growl in the back of his throat, "I wasn't alone."

"All you did?" The faunus scoffed. "You know as well as I do that you did far more than that. You destroyed them, Ren. You annihilated them entirely, and then exposed all their dirty secrets for the world to see. And you dragged Nora along with you, Ren." The Huntsman flinched. "She didn't want to. You may as well have been alone. Especially after you-"

He cut her off, voice hard. "This coming from the woman who single-handedly dismantled the White Fang." Blake closed her mouth and leaned back. "You could have at least taken your team."

The faunus glanced away, unable to hold the gaze of those burning magenta orbs. "It wasn't their fight," she defended weakly. They both knew that that wasn't true, especially in Weiss' case.

"Now who's the hypocrite?"

Her gilded gaze slid back to find him watching her. "I guess we both are," she responded quietly. A breeze picked up, tousling their hair as silence fell between them.

"That last part…" Ren didn't look at her. He sensed where this was going, and he wasn't sure he'd be able to talk if he was watching her. "About letting go," she continued. "That…wasn't meant just for Yang, was it?" The only indication he gave her that he had heard her was a slight inclination of his head. She was quiet for a moment, as if considering her next words. "You're still searching, aren't you?"

The Huntress watched as her friend visibly deflated, his shoulders slumping and head hanging. "Yes," he breathed. If she hadn't been a faunus, Blake would have had difficulty understanding him, his voice was so soft. Ren raised his head back up as a deep sigh escaped his lungs. "I will probably search for the rest of my life, Blake. Any less would be an insult to her. A proper burial is the least I can do to repay what I owe." His eyes found her, and Blake saw a maelstrom of emotions running through their orchid depths. And then they were back on the horizon. "At least," he continued tiredly, "that's what I'd like to say.

"The truth of it is I still haven't come to terms with it yet. Ruby's dead. She's gone. I can't find her body because it was incinerated. But there's some part of me, somewhere, that can't accept that. If she's gone, then what was the point of any of this? Why did we suffer through the Siege? What did we accomplish? We lost so many friends, and we've watched even more fall apart or drift away. We've made so many mistakes." Blake noticed his hand twitch as he said that word. "If I can't even find her body, can't even give her a proper burial, then we've gained absolutely nothing from any of this."

"Ren…"

"It's pathetic, isn't it?" His voice was bitter and miserable. "Everyone else dealt with it. Yang ran, Weiss threw herself into her job, you became Beacon's top operative. You all accepted Ruby's death as reality and moved on, in your own ways. But me? I'm still hung up on finding a body that doesn't exist. Of all of us, I'm the one that can't face reality."

She regarded him in silence. This was a side of Ren she knew very few were privy to. The only person she knew who had heard him talk like this was probably Nora. Most people assumed the quiet young man was just stoic and collected, and that was that. But behind his calm mask and brooding exterior, Ren hid a mountain of pain and guilt the eclipsed perhaps all of theirs. She very rarely got glimpses at it, but every time she did it sent her reeling. Blake was aware that the only reason he talked to her at all about this sort of thing was that she was the only one who had known about the bond between he and Ruby before her death. He hadn't told anyone else, and she didn't think he was likely too anytime soon.

The faunus reached out and gently rested her hand on his shoulder. "You really cared for her, didn't you?"

The emptiness that echoed through his response made her chest clench in empathy. "I don't think I even realized how much until she was gone. And now I can't even honor her memory." He clenched his fists and bowed his head. "Fuck," he hissed.

"If it helps at all, I think you're doing a better job of honoring her than I am," Blake offered, removing her hand. He looked up at her, asking a silent question. It was Blake's turn to slump in her seat as her thoughts once more rallied against her. "I couldn't even keep the team together. I couldn't even protect her sister, my partner."

"Blake, that's not-"

"Don't you dare tell me it's not my responsibility," she growled, and he closed his mouth. Her voice shook as she continued. "How could it not be? I was the only one who kept it together after the attack. Weiss became a wreck and Yang entirely shut down. It had to be me. Every single day since Ruby's death, I have tried my hardest to be like her. To be kind and understanding and empathetic. I have tried to reach out, to keep everyone together and bear everyone's burdens. But I couldn't even do that, and Yang vanished. After that, I had to sit by and watch everyone fall apart, one by one."

She took a deep breath and turned her eyes to the few stars visible through Atlas' light pollution. "Every step of the way I tried to do what Ruby would have done. She would have been able to stop Yang from leaving and prevent Weiss from nearly killing herself from overworking. She could have helped Pyrrha when she wouldn't let anyone else, could have stopped Jaune's doubt." Blake looked at him. "She could have saved you." Ren's stomach folded in on itself and he broke eye contact with the faunus. "But I couldn't do any of that. I failed her as completely as I could." A humorless chuckle escaped her throat. "Even now, I can't help my own partner." She clenched her fists and grit her teeth. "Instead, somebody else has to do it for me."

Ren once more folded his hands in his lap before looking at her again. "You're too focused on the things you couldn't accomplish, rather than the things you have, Blake."

"What do you mean?"

"From my perspective, you have nothing to feel ashamed of. You have done everything in the scope of your abilities, and then some." Blake narrowed her eyes at him, but didn't interrupt. "Yes, you weren't able to prevent Yang from leaving. But you brought her back. And yes, Weiss endangered her health, but you set her straight and have been by her side ever since. You helped give Velvet a new home, a new life after her old one was torn to shreds. You destroyed an errant organization that threatened the world. And you have been relentlessly pursuing those who turned our lives into what they now are." He shifted, gently resting a hand on her shoulder. "You never gave up in situations where anyone else would have, and sometimes did. You may think you're nothing like her, but you're more like Ruby than you realize. She would be very, very proud of you."

There was silence as Blake processed those words. Then she carefully reached up and removed Ren's hand from her shoulder. "And what about you, Ren?" His brow scrunched in confusion. "What would she think of what's become of you?" The Huntsman looked away, unable to hold the faunus' gaze as memories of Ruby flooded his head. "What would she think of the fact that you don't talk to anyone anymore? That you hold everything inside, and never let anyone in? You offer us these words of comfort and advice, but what about you? Have you ever offered them to yourself?"

A voice echoed in his head, sending pain skittering across his temples and down his spine.

Your guns are so cool! How do you get them to fit inside your sleeves like that?

I really like your eyes!

You should smile more, Ren!

He looked at her, magenta irises glowing in the dark almost as brightly as her golden ones. "Have you?" he whispered.

Blake sighed and ducked her face. "So it looks like we're back to square one then."

"Hypocrites."

"What a fine pair of them we make."

"Boss!"

Roman groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn't really want to deal with any of the peons right now. All he really wanted to do was kick back with a good Vacuon cigar and a glass of Mistralian scotch. Maybe read a bit, or call up Neo and a few others for a round or two of poker. But no, he had to plan their next operation. His time schedule had been getting tighter and tighter with each run-in with his pursuers. He could tell his employers were getting anxious, especially after the tracking device incident. Nobody had ever gotten this close to them before. They wanted them dealt with, but since Roman refused to fight them (he wasn't idiot, he knew who they were and what they were capable of), they insisted he move up the time for the next step.

"Boss!"

Which wouldn't have been too big of an issue if those annoying Beacon operatives hadn't destroyed his forward staging base on Patch. Seriously, did they not realize just how much that inconvenienced him? Now he had to launch an operation from Atlas in a city where he had no foothold. Oh yeah, this was going to go great.

"Boss!"

Things might also be better is he wasn't stuck with stupid-

"Boss!"

-incompetent-

"Boss!"

-idiots like-

"Perry!" Roman seethed as he stood from his seat, green eyes narrowed dangerously at the bespectacled faunus standing across his desk from him. Perry's mouth fell open a little in surprise, and he stood there gaping at the red-haired criminal. "Perry, buddy," Roman snapped his fingers in front of the faunus' face, "focus."

Perry started. "Y-Yes, boss!"

Another stretch of silence followed, before Torchwick rolled his one visible eye. "So," he drawled, "what was it you wanted to tell me?"

"Oh!" Roman couldn't believe this man had survived for five years now, let alone managed to stay under his command the entire time. If there was a god, he was clearly a sick, twisted bastard. Perry reached into his pocket and removed his scroll, fumbling it and dropping it to the floor in the process.

"Careful, idiot!" Roman hissed. "Do you know how expensive phantom scrolls are?"

"S-Sorry," Perry stuttered, bending over to scoop up the small tablet. 'Phantom scroll' was just a fancy term for a scroll that left no traces. One could use them to attain access like a normal scroll, but it would leave behind no record nor identity of the person who used it. They were highly illegal, and their black market price reflected that quite heavily. How the organization Roman worked for managed to afford one for every person in its employ was beyond him. "Here."

The faunus slid his scroll across the desk, and Roman snatched it up. He sent a final glare Perry's direction before he focused on the information being displayed on the surface before him. As he read, dread nestled heavily in his gut. Three of their bases stationed around Atlas had been raided earlier that afternoon. He was aware of that. The APF had claimed responsibility. They had put away dozens of his men that had been taken out at the sites, and reclaimed a sizeable quantity of stolen Dust. Roman hadn't given it much thought, figuring that they had just gotten lucky. He had expected some sort of response from the authorities after that bomb he had set off, anyway. Besides, he had already had the majority of the Dust from all of the fringe bases moved. The computers were encrypted, and set to wipe themselves clean should any unauthorized persons try and access their information, which the cops surely would.

All in all, he was far from worried about it.

What he was looking at now, though, told him a different story. The drives from the computers in the bases had a failsafe installed on them. For any reason, should they attempt to wipe themselves blank and fail to do so, whether through software or hardware fault or some sort of outside prevention, they sent out a brief alert signal. On the scroll in his hands, three of these signals were displayed in angry red text.

This was ridiculous. All three of the stolen drives were reporting unauthorized access, and they had all had their safety measures deactivated. This wasn't right, and it did not bode well for him. One, he could have passed off as an unfortunate software or hardware bug that disabled the device. He may have been able to even stomach two of them. But all three? No, there was no way. Someone was cracking into the drives, someone with an advanced enough program to disarm the failsafe before it could activate.

There was only one group of people in Atlas who could possibly have had something like that.

"Schnee," Roman sneered. It hadn't been the cops at all that had raided his bases. It had been the Schnees. His mind whirred a million miles a minute, questions and answers arising left and right. Why are the Schnees after me? I've avoided hitting anything SDC related for that very reason! Did I assault the SDC without realizing it? No, I verified the ownership of every shop and convoy my men have robbed. Then why? What did I-

His thoughts froze as he remembered the Beacon operative and her companion, the ones who had cornered him in Ashfall. Suddenly it all made sense. Ice Queen… It was her. It wasn't the SDC, or the Schnees, it was just her, just Weiss Schnee. She had partnered back up with her old teammates and together they were still trying to hunt him down. He had been hoping the bomb had been enough to put an end to that issue, but clearly, they were more resilient than he gave them credit for.

He looked back to his scroll while Perry danced nervously from foot to foot in front of him. The faunus jumped in surprise when a low chuckle sounded in Roman's throat. It would take a few days for their computer to finish encrypting the information on those hard drives, and when it did, Roman already knew exactly what it would find. And since he knew that, he could scheme around it.

His superiors wanted him to deal with the interlopers?

That was just fine with him. He had been starting to get rather sick of their interference himself.

A/N: So here we are, my friends! Ch. 21! Little shorter than usual, I know, but I felt this was the best place to cut this one

Anyway, what did you all think? Writing the emo-off between Blake and Ren was kinda fun, I'm not gonna lie, hahah. Though a lot of that dialogue was on the spot, so I hope it came out alright.

For those you jonesing for a bit of Roman love, here you are!

Little more info about the in between time too. Finally found out what happened to the WF, and surprise, the Xiongs went very much the same way.

Anyway, drop me a review, a PM, whatever. Until next time, thank you and I love all of you!

edit: Kudos to anyone who caught the Eight to One reference, and double kudos if you know who Perry is (actual canon character)

2nd edit: So I fucked up. Gary was actually supposed to be Perry, and every instance of his name has now been replaced with the proper one. my bad