Interlude: Pyrrha

Pyrrha sat in the lotus position, eyes closed, doing her best to ignore both Weiss' griping and Jaune's attempts at calming the girl.

She'd realized part way through the discussion that it was making her unhappy, and had decided to meditate instead.

Her two companions didn't sound particularly happy, either. All of them were tired, and stressed. It would be best to sleep, and resume this conversation in the morning - or, better yet, never to resume it at all, with the way it frayed people's emotions.

Pyrrha wasn't sure how to tell them this in a way they would understand. She had come to realize that people outside Mistral looked at the world very differently.

Pyrrha noticed her mind was wandering, and brought it back to her breathing. She breathed in, slowly, feeling her chest expand until it pressed against her armor. She breathed out, just as slowly, feeling her whole body relax.

In, then out.

She felt her usual smile returning to her face.

Her semblance tickled slightly, and she turned her attention to it in an instant. There was a chunk of metal approaching her at high speed, just at the edge of her range.

It was approaching too fast, her semblance complained. And the forces on it were strange. That wasn't how metal was supposed to behave.

She felt a sudden pressure, as her semblance fought with whatever was acting on the metal, asserting that no, it would prefer metal be subject to ordinary physics, thank you very much, at least until she decided otherwise. The pressure increased rapidly, then evaporated in an instant, her semblance overpowering what she now realized must be Ruby's time dilation.

Her semblance might be narrow, but within its sphere of influence, it was absolute.

As soon as Ruby was dumped into normal time, Pyrrha's semblance asserted itself, her senses slipping into every ounce of metal the young girl carried. Pyrrha could feel the girl's Scythe trailing behind her as she ran, the grommets on her corset being pushed in and out rapidly from heavy breathing-

Pyrrha jumped up, Milo already unfolding in her hand, and ran toward the bend in the cave that led to the entrance. "Something's wrong!" she shouted, voice reverberating off the walls.

Weiss and Jaune barely had time to look up, and then she was around the bend, still tracking them with her semblance as they processed what was happening and found their feet.

Around the corner, she could see Ruby barreling toward them, something like terror in her eyes.

There was a bone-jarring SLAM, as though another mountain had toppled over onto theirs. The ground shook, and hairline fractures opened in the walls and ceiling of the cave with a series of sharp cracks.

Ruby was thrown off her feet. Pyrrha steadied herself with her semblance, pushing on her armor to keep her balance as the floor tried to throw her over. She leaped through the air toward Ruby, as much to hide the fact she wasn't standing normally as to cover the distance faster.

She landed just as the shaking subsided, reaching down and grabbing Ruby's arm. She pulled on her own bracer a little with her semblance, easily hauling the young girl to her feet.

Ruby looked shaken. Her eyes were wide, showing too much white.

Weiss finally arrived on a glyph, rapier in hand, and Jaune rounded the bend a second later, just as Ruby was starting to speak.

"We need to get into the caves," she said, breathless.

"Ruby, what's going on?" Pyrrha asked.

"Grimm. We need to get into the caves."

"We can't go into the caves," Weiss said. "That earthquake was massive. An aftershock might bring the whole mountain down on our heads."

"We'll have to fight through them," Pyrrha said, nodding.

"No!" Ruby practically screamed at them. "We need to-"

There was another impact - weaker, just enough to jostle the four of them - and then the mouth of the cave exploded inward.

~o~O~o~O~o~

Ruby kept her feet this time, spinning to look at the cave mouth. Dust and shards of rock washed over her, pinging off her aura, and she got her first good look at the ancient Nevermore.

Just its head dwarfed the Ursa she'd fought earlier. It could barely fit the front half of its beak through the entrance. Its eyes were far above the top of the cave, but the sickly red light from them streamed through the cracks of the shattered mountainside, bathing everything in an otherworldly crimson.

The beak was beautiful in a way that turned her stomach. Intricate lattices of bone wound down from the creature's mask to wrap it in hundreds of sharp blades, arranged almost artistically, eventually twining together into a single wickedly pointed beak.

The creature moved unnaturally, with sharp jerky movements too fast for its size, its beak carving effortless gashes in the rock. Neck muscles larger than Ruby strained, and the entrance to the cave cracked open like a clam, the beak forcing itself a good ten feet further in.

"Into the caves!" Jaune shouted, echoing her earlier words. "We can't fight that."

The creature opened its beak, inhaling, and Ruby felt herself drawn toward it, the air whipping at her cloak like a sail. She slammed Crescent Rose's blade into the ground, holding herself in place, and Pyrrha let go of her to grab Jaune before he tumbled into the creature's maw.

Then it was exhaling, the force far greater, and Ruby was pressed hard against Crescent Rose's shaft. A sound reverberated in the tunnels, sibilant at first, then droning, then buzzing.

That was odd, a small part of her mind noticed.

It almost sounded like...

Almost...

Ruby's mind slammed into a brick wall and broke into a million pieces. It was slow, too deep, and utterly wrong, but...

The creature was speaking?

"Sssssuuuummmm..." it said.

The voice in the back of her head, which she vaguely realized had been screaming this entire time, redoubled its efforts. It's wrong! It's wrong! It mustn't speak!

"...eeeeerrrrr..."

Ruby bared her teeth. She could feel herself breathing too hard, chest heaving up and down.

"...eeeeennnnnndddddssss..."

"Ruby!" a voice yelled behind her. She barely heard it.

She knew she couldn't kill it, she knew that. It was too big. But maybe that could be to her advantage? If she could cut her way inside it, maybe it couldn't reach her?

"...tttthhhheeeee..."

Her semblance was still down, but the abomination didn't seem like it could get deeper into the cave. She could wait.

"...fffffaaaaalllll..."

"Ruby!" the voice practically screamed at her. She shook her head, ignoring it. She didn't have enough dust on her to hurt something this size. She'd have to carve it up by hand. She could strike at it with her semblance, then retreat into the caves, over and over and over, wear it down, over days or months or years.

"...bbbbbbbeeeeeeee..."

A hand grabbed her arm. She tried to pull free, not even looking back, but whoever had grabbed her was strong, and then she was being yanked away from the Grimm, barely managing to hold on to Crescent Rose.

"...gggggiiiiinnnnssss..."

The voice hardly diminished in volume, even as she was dragged around the cave's bend at a dead run.

As soon as it was out of her sight, her head started to clear. She looked over to see Pyrrha, face expressionless, pulling her toward Jaune and Weiss. It felt more like her arm had been tied to a freight train than like she was being pulled; there was no give at all, no break in Pyrrha's stride.

The sounds behind them rose, to something between a moan and a shriek, and then the ground began to shake again.

Ruby started to run in earnest, until she was matching Pyrrha's pace. Weiss and Jaune joined them, Jaune pointing his scroll ahead of them to light the way as they plunged into the darkness.

"Weiss!" she said. "We need to get away from that thing. Use your glyphs."

"I can only take one," Weiss said.

Ruby's foot caught on the uneven cave floor, and she stumbled, Pyrrha hauling her back to her feet before she could hit the ground.

"Take Pyrrha," Ruby panted. "I can't use my semblance when she's nearby. When my semblance triggers, I'll take Jaune."

"No," Pyrrha said. "We should stick together."

"Not this again!" Weiss said.

The sound rose in pitch, and the shaking grew stronger.

Jaune was thrown to the ground, but Pyrrha grabbed him too, pulling both of them along without any apparent effort.

Far behind her, Ruby could hear the unmistakable sound of rock collapsing. There was no way that thing was big enough to topple a mountain, Ruby reassured herself. They just needed to get deeper.

"I think..." Pyrrha began.

"We're going to die in a cave-in while you think," Weiss said, voice rising to a screech. "Come with me or I'm going myself."

"Pyrrha," Jaune grunted between heavy breaths, "go with her."

Pyrrha hesitated one final time, then let go of their arms. A second later glyphs appeared under her and Weiss, catapulting both of them down the tunnel.

Ruby pushed forward, gritting her teeth. All she could do now was hope her semblance came up in time.

~o~O~o~O~o~

Jaune was heavy, but that didn't pose much of a problem. Once Ruby got him in the air, gravity acted on him at its normal slow pace, and she could just push him down the tunnel like a balloon.

It probably hurt, as gentle as she tried to be, but he'd be fine, as long as his aura held up.

They finally caught up with Weiss and Pyrrha, who had stopped for them at a fork in the tunnel. The shaking was barely noticeable down here, and they could no longer hear the Nevermore's horrible voice.

Weiss was pacing in front of the fork, hands clasped behind her, caught mid-stride from the time dilation. The only light came from Pyrrha's scroll, and now Jaune's. Between the strange echoes and the long shadows, the entire scene had an eerie, ominous quality.

As soon as Ruby got close enough to Pyrrha to fall back into normal time, Weiss rounded on her.

"What was that?" Weiss asked, striding right up to her. "What did you do?"

Ruby cringed back. She wasn't ready for this.

"Give her space," Jaune said.

"She overheard us," Pyrrha interjected, calmly.

The world seemed to pause for a moment.

"I have good senses," Pyrrha continued. "Ruby started to come down the tunnel while we were talking, paused, and left. The Nevermore attacked shortly after. She must have overheard us."

"And you didn't mention this?" Weiss asked.

"I didn't think she was close enough to hear. Although maybe we should consider whether it was right to have such a conversation at all, if we were worried she would overhear it."

Everyone was looking at her. Ruby's stomach clenched, and she felt herself fold inward, shrinking.

What was she supposed to say to that? What was she supposed to do?

"Ruby..." Jaune said. She turned to look at him. His brow was wrinkled, eyebrows drawn together, somewhere between worried and guilty.

"Oh, she does not get sympathy for this," Weiss said. "This is exactly what I was worried about! You say one wrong thing, one tiny wrong thing, and oh no, she's upset, now a Nevermore the size of...of...so big I don't even know how big it was, a Nevermore that big, shows up because this emotionally incontinent child-"

"Weiss," Jaune said, a little forcefully. "You aren't helping."

Ruby stared down at her boots, holding her breath, barely moving. She didn't want to look at anyone.

"Oh, and of course, I'm the bad guy again," Weiss said. "She collapses a mountain on top of us, but oh, Weiss was rude afterward, how could she. I'm sorry, Ruby, I can't believe I would do that to you. Let me try again: would you please, pretty please with sugar on top, if it isn't too much trouble, maybe possibly develop the basic emotional maturity to hear someone criticize you without endangering all of our lives?"

"Weiss," Jaune said again.

"All I'm asking is for-"

"Weiss," Jaune said, grabbing her shoulders. "You aren't helping. Help."

Weiss was breathing hard through her nose, nostrils flared. For a second Ruby thought she was going to hit him. Instead, she got control of herself, clenching her eyes shut.

When she opened them, Weiss' face was blank, anger replaced with something cold. "I'm sorry," she said, voice stiff. "You're right. That wasn't helpful."

Jaune let go of her, and Weiss stepped back, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"This is the third time in two days I have severely underestimated the harm my words would cause. Putting aside for the moment the question of fault, or what should happen, it's clear that what needs to happen right now is that I need to exercise better control."

She looked around between the three of them, face blank. "In my estimation, this merits extreme measures. For the rest of initiation, I will refrain from making negative comments of any kind. Please hold me to this. I will be relying on the three of you to recognize and prevent bad decisions in the meantime."

Finally, she turned to Ruby. Ruby looked away, not wanting to make eye contact with that blank mask. "Ruby, after initiation, we will need to have a long discussion, but this isn't the time or the place. Let's put it behind us for now and try to work together. I'm sorry for my part in putting all of us in danger."

Ruby nodded, still staring at her feet. "I'm sorry too," she said in a small voice.

Weiss's face softened at that, just a touch, and then she turned away, looking down the two passages in front of them.

She checked the cartridges on her rapier, frowning a little. "I've used a little more than half my air dust. We should try to preserve the rest for emergencies. I'll explore the left tunnel on foot. One of you can explore the right, we'll meet back here in an hour and decide which way to go. Is that acceptable?"

"Do you want someone to go with you?" Jaune asked.

"I'll be fine."

And with that, Weiss started walking down the lefthand tunnel, not looking back.

Jaune and Pyrrha exchanged some sort of look, and without a word Pyrrha headed down the righthand tunnel, Milo still unsheathed in her hand. She clapped Ruby on the shoulder as she walked by, making her flinch a little.

It took a surprisingly long time for their footsteps to fade, but eventually it was just her and Jaune, standing in silence.

"Huh," Jaune said. "I guess sound carries a long way down here."

Ruby covered her face with her hands, leaning back against the cave wall and sliding down to a sitting position. Something sharp was digging into her tailbone, but she couldn't really muster the energy to care.

She heard Jaune walk over, sitting down beside her. His leg bumped hers as he sat, but then he scooted over a bit, giving her room.

She scrunched her eyes, feeling her throat tighten. She wasn't going to let herself cry. If she did, that would be it, it would be over. Whatever respect she could one day salvage from this whole mess would be gone, and whenever Jaune thought of her, all he'd be able to think about was the little girl crying in the dark cave while other people looked for a way out.

"You look like you could use a hug," Jaune said.

It was just about the worst thing he could have said. If he'd gone off and gotten a PhD in psychology, done extensive interviews with everyone she'd ever known, and written his thesis on exactly the worst possible thing to say to her at this moment, that might well have been it.

Ruby scrunched her eyes tighter, pulling her knees up to her face to press against the back of her hands. She wasn't going to cry. She could manage that, at least.

"...no thanks." she whispered, once she trusted her voice. Jaune didn't respond.

They sat like that for a while. Jaune switched off the flashlight from his scroll at one point, the world darkening behind the wall of her hands.

"I never said thank you," he said, out of nowhere.

Ruby's mind stumbled on that for a second. "Thank you" for what?

"For trying to save me this morning," he clarified, as if reading her mind. "Weiss told me what happened at the cliffs. She told me what happened afterward, too. Tracking me down all day to make sure I was alright."

There was another period of silence, like he was waiting for her to speak.

"'Thank you' doesn't really cover it. I'd be dead right now if you and Pyrrha hadn't come after me. We just met, practically, and you've already saved my life."

"Pyrrha saved your life," Ruby said quietly.

"She told me afterward that most of the Grimm stayed behind when she ran. I'm guessing that was you?"

After a moment, Ruby nodded into her knees, before realizing he probably couldn't see. "Yeah," she said, still quiet.

"So you can see why I'm feeling like a real grade-A jerk right now. You save my life, I don't even say thanks, and now..."

Jaune trailed off.

"I'm fine," Ruby said in a tight voice, wishing she sounded any other way. "Really."

"Oh, of course you're fine," Jaune said. "You're going to sit there quietly until Weiss and Pyrrha come back, then tell us you came up with some plan to get out of here, find your sister, swing by the temple on the way to collect those pesky relics, and maybe get bumped ahead another year or two just for kicks.

"But I'm sitting here feeling like a jerk. Maybe you could throw me a bone or something?"

It wasn't a particularly good joke, but the stress of the situation made it work somehow. Ruby hiccuped out a small laugh.

"There we go. That makes me feel a little better."

Another laugh forced its way out, more forceful this time. Ruby clamped down on it, worried it might turn into something else.

She looked up from her hands, finally, over to where Jaune was. Her eyes were maybe a little damp, but she definitely wasn't crying.

Instead of Jaune, all she saw was blackness. Oh right. It was dark.

She fumbled for her scroll and flicked on the flashlight, wincing a little from the sudden brightness. Jaune was sitting barely a foot away, staring at her. He squinted in the light, looking a little bewildered.

Once Jaune realized she was looking at him, he contorted his face into the worst imitation of a pout she'd ever seen, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms.

She couldn't help but smile, just a little bit. She punched him lightly in the arm.

"Ow," he said, rubbing the spot with an offended look.

"Come on," she said. "You look ridiculous."

Jaune gave up on the act, smiling back at her, looking surprisingly relaxed for the situation.

"Well," he said, "if we're being serious..."

The smile fell off Ruby's face, and she turned back to her knees, hugging them close. She didn't cover her face again, though, and the tears didn't feel like they were just about to break through any more.

"I was thinking," he said. "When we were figuring out where to look for the temple, you insisted we list out everything we knew, just the facts, not trying to analyze them right away. It reminded me a lot of what Weiss did, by the river, when she was trying to fix the...what did she call it, the group social dynamic? She just said exactly what happened, from her perspective, and how it made her feel. No analysis, no judgement. I thought it worked really well."

Ruby pulled her knees a little tighter as she thought about Weiss.

"You two have a lot in common, actually," Jaune continued. "You come from very different places, but there's a lot of shared ground."

"And I was just thinking, you know, if it worked twice..."

Ruby sighed.

"I mean," Jaune said, "if you don't want to talk about it, that's totally fine. But if you do want to talk about it, I want to listen. Plus, you know, we have nothing to do for the next half hour."

There was another break in the conversation. Ruby fiddled with her scroll, watching the light play over the cave wall, casting long shadows when she aimed it down the tunnel behind them.

"I don't even know," Ruby said quietly.

"You don't even know?"

"I just, um. It's hard to sort everything out. There are so many things that are wrong, and they all sort of run together and muddle."

"Hm. Well, what's the first thing that's wrong?"

"The first?"

"Sure. What was the first thing that went wrong."

Ruby's face darkened a little.

"Yang. We're never going to meet up with her now. Worse, she's out there with that thing. If she saw the fire and headed toward it, or if she was just heading to the temple on her own..."

Jaune nodded, not saying anything.

"And then Weiss," Ruby said. "She thinks I'm some kind of freak, and that I'm being rude or domineering or something. I don't...it's just so frustrating. What did I even do wrong? Why didn't she just tell me what she wanted me to do? I'd just do it! I always just do it."

"Figuring out what people want can be hard," Jaune said.

"I'm sure it's a huge problem for you," Ruby said, with more than a little bitterness in her voice.

Jaune didn't respond. After a second, Ruby kept talking.

"And Pyrrha. She's too nice to say anything, but she thinks I'm, I don't even know, selfishly pursuing my own goals or something. Which maybe I am. But it's my sister. I can't just not look for her."

"I don't think anyone with a sibling can blame you for that," Jaune said. "I think I told you I have seven sisters? If one of them were in those woods, I wouldn't let anything stop me from finding her."

Ruby's stomach tightened, the off-hand comment reminding her of what Jaune had said at the end of the conversation. My youngest sister is...well, Ruby reminds me a lot of her. She can be difficult at times, and you need a little bit of patience, but-

"Ah," Jaune said after a pause. "I guess I'm next, after Weiss and Pyrrha?"

"You think I'm difficult," Ruby said, the words spilling out. "You need to be patient with me. Even right now. I hate it. I'm not a child. I can take care of myself, I don't need someone to sit around and pat me on the head and comfort me when something bad happens, while everyone else-"

Ruby was interrupted by Jaune laughing, a deep belly laugh erupting out of nowhere and echoing through the cave.

She looked up, too shocked to be offended. He was bent over, his chest heaving as he tried to get himself under control.

"Sorry," he said, gasping for air. "Sorry. I don't - wow. I guess it's really true, nobody ever sees us the way we see ourselves."

"What do you mean?" she asked, not sure if he was laughing at her, or, or at what.

Jaune straightened up, taking a second to get the smile off his face. He looked her in the eyes, and Ruby fidgeted a bit, resisting the urge to look away. "Ruby," he said, "the fact that you even worry about that-"

He broke off, gathering his thoughts.

"Ruby, do you have any idea what it's like talking to you? I can barely keep up with you to begin with, and then your semblance goes off, and you have all these thoughts to catch me up on, then just as I'm starting to get my feet, bam it goes off again.

"I haven't seen you fight yet, but you're apparently intense enough it scared Weiss, and you're confident enough you were out hunting in this forest alone before we'd even been given sleeping bags.

"And that's not even getting into the details of your semblance. I don't know exactly how long it lasts, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that you've spent more years hunting than the rest of us combined, if you count the time dilation.

"But anyway, where I'm going with this is that when I look at you, I don't see a child. I see this crazy prodigy with a tricked-out combat scythe, and I think, 'man, I hope she's around in case something happens.'"

Ruby looked away, and she could feel her cheeks heating up. Her hands found the hem of her skirt and started to fiddle with it.

There were too many things she wanted to say, so she said none of them.

"I don't want Weiss to be scared of me," she said instead.

"She'll come around."

How do you know? she could ask. You've known her for less than two days. Jaune would probably laugh.

But she had one more thing she wanted to get off her chest.

"The Grimm..." she said.

"Don't even mention that one," Jaune said. "That wasn't your fault. The way you felt wasn't your fault, and even if it was, something that size being nearby certainly wasn't your fault. It's not like your feelings summoned a nevermore older than Vale into existence."

Ruby felt the creeping dread in her stomach again. He wasn't mentioning the worst part.

You couldn't run from the Grimm. You could avoid them, or they could avoid you, but once they'd decided to kill you, they never gave up.

She wasn't sure about the others, but she at least would see the creature again. It might search for her at Beacon tomorrow. It might ambush her in the forest next month. If it was truly ancient, it might bide its time longer, for years or decades. But eventually it would come for her.

It said a lot about how bad the situation was, that an ancient nevermore coming to kill her one day wasn't even her largest concern.

"It's not even that," Ruby said. "It's..."

She didn't want to refer to the creature as speaking. That was one of her rules. Don't humanize them. You didn't kill Grimm, you destroyed them, ended them, hacked them to pieces.

By definition, Grimm didn't speak.

"It's the words it made," she said.

Jaune nodded. "Summer ends, the fall begins."

Ruby shuddered.

"It is the end of summer," Jaune mused. "And Fall is next. Although I don't know why a Grimm would care much about the time of year."

"Don't joke," Ruby said.

Jaune looked over at her face. "Sorry."

"It's OK. But I think this whole thing was my fault, actually. I think it wanted me to hear that."

"You specifically?"

Ruby nodded. "I don't really like to talk about this, so don't repeat it to anyone, but, um, my mother died when I was young. She was a huntress, and, well, you know. Her name was Summer."

"...oh." Jaune said. "That's..."

"I hope I'm wrong," Ruby said.

"I do too. Because if you aren't, that's...oh, wow..."

Ruby knew what he meant. There were so many implications it was impossible to process them all. She'd have to ask one of her professors, or maybe the headmaster.

She was starting to feel a little more like herself.

Even putting aise the nevermore, things still weren't great. Weiss would be back soon, and she'd have to deal with that.

They were also trapped underground, she reminded herself. Oh, and they still needed to actually pass initiation.

Things weren't great, but they felt manageable.

She took a deep breath, lifting her arms over her head and stretching.

She looked over at Jaune, who raised his eyebrows, and a thought came into her head.

Oh, what the hell. Things couldn't exactly get more awkward.

"Um...Jaune?" she asked. Fortunately, she was already blushing from earlier. "Is that hug still on the table?"

~o~O~o~O~o~

After getting a hug, Ruby didn't really want to let go. It took a little bit of doing, but they found a comfortable position where she didn't have to. Jaune was leaned up against the cave wall, while Ruby snuggled her head into the soft section of hoodie under his breast plate.

It was nice to get a long hug. Yang always hugged too tight, and never for all that long.

Ruby frowned, thinking about her sister.

"Jaune?" she asked.

"Yeah?"

"What's your sister like?"

"Which one?"

"The one I remind you of."

Jaune laughed. "Don't think about it too much, Ruby. You remind me of her, but you're different in a lot of ways, too."

"But what's she like?"

"Hm. Well, she really likes hugs, for one thing."

Ruby craned her head up to look at Jaune, arching an eyebrow.

"I'm not kidding," he said. "I was the only one younger than her, so I got the brunt of it. She'd just walk up and hug me sometimes, with no warning."

"Wait. She's older than you?"

"Yeah. All my sisters are older than me, but she's the youngest. We're a little over a year apart, so we were pretty close growing up."

Ruby turned her face back into Jaune's stomach. Right, he'd mentioned yesterday that he was the youngest.

Jaune thought she was like his older sister?

"Tell me more," Ruby said.

"Hm. Let's see. She could be very particular about the strangest things. In the winter, she used to open the window so she could sleep with like ten blankets. Nobody could get her to stop, and it drove my dad nuts.

"Apparently the insulation wasn't as good on the internal walls, so it was making the whole house colder. He eventually just gave up and redid the walls on her room to be like the outer ones. She had to sleep on the couch for a week while he did the renovations."

Ruby giggled. "Redid the walls?"

"Oh, yeah. My dad built the whole house himself. He was a hunter, but he was only gone about half the time, and he liked to keep busy. It was the frontier, so we didn't have much, but there was plenty of land and wood. After a decade or two it was less of a house and more of a sprawling mess, but we all had our own rooms, and it was a lot of fun to run around in as a kid."

"Mm. My dad's a hunter, too, but he mostly does boring dad stuff with his free time."

"That sounds about right. It was just the three of you, I guess?"

Ruby tightened her grip a little.

"Yeah," she said. "My uncle Qrow came by sometimes to help out, but he was pretty busy. Sometimes they'd both be gone, and it was just me and Yang."

There was a bit of a pause, both of them thinking their own thoughts.

"Oh!" Jaune said. "I forgot the big one. She loves cooking."

"Cooking?"

"Yeah. It was the darndest thing. My dad used to do all the cooking - which meant a lot of leftovers, incidentally - and she loved to just sit on the counter and watch him do it, before she could even talk. My mom figured out that she could get her to be quiet by handing her a scroll with a cooking show on it, and after that there was no turning back.

"It was kind of a problem for a while, actually. She started trying to help in the kitchen when she was, I dunno, six or something? But my dad would always shoo her away. He didn't mean any harm by it, he was just like that. One day she woke up early and tried to make breakfast for everyone, but she burned herself real bad on the pan, and mom freaked out.

"It all got sorted out though. My mom told dad he had to let her help, and he did. By the time she was ten she was cooking alone when he was gone, and by twelve he was mostly helping. It was amazing, she was this tiny little kid - she had to stand on a stepstool to use the stove safely - but she would make all these incredible things. On the weekends she'd spend all day on it. You'd go down in the morning, and something would already be marinating.

"It was fun to watch her grow up into it, too. She went through a period where it was almost like it didn't matter whether anyone liked her food. She'd cook up this elaborate meal, take a bunch of pictures of it, and then serve it to us almost as an afterthought. Then a year later, it totally flipped. Every night she'd go around the table and make everyone say how much they liked every dish, and she'd write it all down. She has a stack of notebooks in one corner of her room, won't let anyone else touch 'em."

Wow. That hit a little close to home.

"Anyway, she was very particular about everything. Things had to be exactly where she wanted them in the cupboards. Dinner was at 8:30 sharp, every night. She only trusted my dad and my oldest sister to set the table, not even my mom. It was kind of strange, but I think it was really good for her.

"It was a little ironic, actually, because she always hated family dinner as a kid. You had to drag her to the table, and she'd just sit there fidgeting the whole time. But as soon as she was the one putting it on, she was having a ball. She'd be popping in and out of the kitchen, asking people if they needed anything, laughing..."

Jaune trailed off.

Ruby thought about prodding him again, but maybe she was being nosy? Or maybe she was supposed to reciprocate and share a memory of her own?

Oh, wait. She could hear footsteps echoing up from one of the forks in the path. She hadn't been able to hear over Jaune's voice, but apparently he'd noticed.

Had it really been that long already?

Jaune shifted under her, like he was considering standing, but before she could parse that and release her grip, Weiss's head popped into view.

Ruby realized, suddenly, what the situation looked like. She let go of Jaune instantly, standing up and brushing nonexistent dust off of her skirt.

Weiss stopped, an unreadable look on her face. "You cannot be serious," she said, her voice sounding oddly strained. "In what bizarre universe-"

Weiss bit off the rest of her sentence, pinching the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes.

She opened them again a moment later, and when she spoke her tone was more normal. "I've finished exploring the passage," she said. "It descends for about a mile, where it intersects a dense network of ppcaves. I found nothing else of interest."

Nobody said anything for a bit.

"Good...good work," Jaune finally managed, sounding a little flustered.

Ruby dropped her head to her hands, groaning.

~o~O~o~O~o~

Author's Notes:

* Thanks to Appliciousness for beta.

* The next update will be on Sunday.