Ruby opened her eyes slowly. She didn't recognize her surroundings. They were too peaceful. She was standing in what seemed to be a city park. There were trees, benches, wide swaths of green grass. In the distance was a bubbling creek with a small bridge stretching across it. Above her the sun was shining in a blue, blue sky. It was just so damn peaceful, the exact opposite of the place she had just been standing. There were no corpses, no broken trees and rocks, no slowly dissolving black masses. There was just… calm. And silence.

Well, it was silent until Yang showed up. Ruby had about one second to fully comprehend what was happening before she was tackled to the ground by the laughing blonde barbarian.

"Pinned ya!" Yang crowed, earning a glare from her sister, who proceeded to squirm out of from her.

"Yang, why do you always do that?" She complained loudly as she got to her feet.

"Do what? Hug my baby sis? I do it because I looooovee yooouuuu!" Yang tried to grab the younger girl again, but Ruby sprinted away before she could.

"Good lord, what are you two idiots doing now?" Lilac and silver eyes turned to spot a certain white-haired heiress and an ebony-haired cat Faunus a short distance away. Yang beamed, and made to pounce on her other teammates, but they were too quick for her, and she landed flat on her face.

"Aw, why you gotta be like that?" Yang whined, putting on her best pout.

"Excuse us for not wanting to get crushed under a big, blonde moron," Weiss retorted, but she was grinning as she did.

"But I'm a cute moron!" Yang protested. Ruby thought she might be aiming at the wrong point.

"No one's arguing that," Blake said with a smirk. "But you being cute won't stop our lungs being flattened and our clothes being ruined."

Yang scoffed. "Pssh, our clothes are already ruined!"

She wasn't wrong. The rips, dirt, and blood that had accumulated on their persons during the battle had not disappeared. They were all a big mess, actually. Being tackled into the grass really couldn't make things much worse.

"And I don't think flat lungs will be a problem for us anymore," Ruby said quietly, catching the attention of the other three. They looked somewhat surprised, but then Weiss thought about it for a moment.

"I guess you're right," she finally said. "It can't be a coincidence that we're all here right now, talking to each other."

"No, I don't think we had any miracles today," Blake added, crossing her arms over her chest. "Makes me wonder what this place is though."

"Well…" Ruby contemplated it. "I've never been big with religion really, but our Mom used to tell us stories about life and death. She said that there were three plains of existence: the world of the living, the world of the dead, and an in between world. She called it limbo, and said it was a bridge between the other two."

"That's an interesting bedtime story." Blake's sarcasm was soft, meaning no harm. Ruby didn't take any. Her words made sense. This did all feel a little incomplete, as if they weren't quite where they were supposed to be yet. "I think you're right. This definitely isn't the battlefield. I don't see us, or anything, anywhere. But it still feels… like we're missing something, you know?" The other three women nodded.

"So… I guess that's it then," Yang said.

"Even if we could somehow go back, it's unlikely that our bodies endured the explosion intact," Weiss said logically.

There was silence for a moment, but then Yang shrugged. "That's cool, I guess."

"Don't have any earthly regrets?" Blake said with a teasing smile. Yang grinned right back.

"Nope!" She crowed enthusiastically. "Not after kicking that much ass! I was a beast!"

"Your punches were certainly sloppy enough to be like an animal's," Weiss said. "I swear, I thought those Ursas were going to die from disappointment every time you almost hit them."

"Hey," Yang fired back. "At least I didn't let a pack of Beowolves break through my oh so special glyphs and cross into our territory."

The heiress huffed, hands on her hips. "That was a miscalculation at worst!"

"A miscalculation, huh?" Blake chimed in. She and Ruby were standing next to each other, snickering. "Is that what you're going with?"

"You're one to talk, Miss Gets-My-Sword-Stuck-In-A-Deathstalker's-Skull-Cap!"

Blake blushed, not having a good comeback for that. Ruby patted her on the shoulder. "It's okay, guys. We won. That's all that matters."

"We did," Weiss agreed with a warm smile. "I don't have any regrets either. All things considered, I'm actually kind of happy."

"Me too," Ruby said softly, gazing at her team. "We stopped the invasion. JNPR and CFVY will be able to handle the rest. That's all I really wanted, when I set off the explosion."

"Our fearless leader," Yang cheered, rubbing Ruby's head, earning an indignant squawk. "Facing Death and taking a thousand Grimm down with her!"

"Yang, you're messing up my hair even more!" The blonde only laughed, but let her little sister go.

"I guess you could say you were," she pulled out her broken Aviators and put them on her face, "the bomb out there."

Weiss and Blake found themselves laughing despite themselves. They must have taken one too many hits to the head before they died to finally find one of the blonde brute's horrific puns to be funny. Eventually, pun or no pun, they were all laughing together, laughing like a bunch of silly idiots and not caring at all about it.

Yang tossed an arm around Weiss's shoulder. Ruby wiggled an arm around the heiress's waist. Blake, meanwhile, hugged Ruby from the side, intertwining her fingers with Yang's as she did so. If you had asked the four of them years ago, they never would have described dying to be like this. They never expected to be this cheerful about the whole thing, to be sure, and they never expected to still be together after the fact. They were very grateful for it though.

"I guess we should probably get going now," Blake said, looking off in the distance. The other three followed her gaze to the creek, and the little bridge that spanned it. They could no longer see the other side of the park. Instead, there was nothing but bright, warm light on the other side of the stream. The way forward.

"I guess so," Ruby said. She released Weiss's waist in favor of taking her hand. The others followed suit, gripping each other's hands and interlocking their fingers. The young leader smiled, pleased. "Together then?"

Her teammates nodded. "Together," they echoed in unison. They faced the stream in the distance, and started to walk toward the bridge. They walked not as individuals, not as separate entities, but as one cohesive whole. A band of friends. A family. A team.

They held tight to each other, and didn't let go for even a moment when they crossed the bridge and stepped into the blinding light.