A/N: Sorry for the delay with this one guys. I just got really busy again and such. Anyway, enjoy!

Nightmares

Ruby's eyes snapped open as she bolted upright in bed. Blood pumped in her ears, and she drew deep, rasping breaths. Her eyes darted every which direction, trying to discern any recognizable shape from the surrounding darkness. The familiar environment of her dorm room began to resolve itself, and Ruby realized where she was. Her breathing slowed as she leaned forward, burying her face in her hands.

Shudders wracked her body as Ruby recalled the nightmares that had awoken her for the second night in a row. She fought back a sob as the images of her teammates and friends lying broken and bloodied filled her mind. They had begged her for help, and she hadn't been able to do anything but watch them suffer and die. She bit her lip as tears formed in her eyes. It had been years since she had had an attack this bad.

She turned toward her sister's bed, instinctively reaching out a hand toward her calming presence, as she had so many times when she was younger. A cry for help, for comfort was halfway up her throat whenever she thought better of it. She couldn't bother Yang with this right now. They all had too much on their minds. If she let her sister know about the nightmare, then Yang would do nothing but fret about her, and that distraction could cost her her life. Ruby resolutely refused to do anything that could endanger her sister or her teammates.

And so she swallowed her fears, forced her trembling to subside, and laid back down.

She found she couldn't return to sleep though. Her eyelids were stained crimson from the nightmares. Every time she shut her eyes, horrific scenes played out in her mind. She tossed and turned, but every different position just seemed to bring a new slew of terror. It didn't take long before she decided that she needed to clear her head.

Ruby threw her covers back silently, scooted to the edge of the bed, and dropped soundlessly to the floor. She took care to be as quiet as possible as she pulled on a pair of crimson pajama pants and an over-sized black hoodie with red lining. Her team needed their sleep, and just because she couldn't get hers didn't mean they shouldn't get theirs. She slid her feet into her slippers, and noiselessly slipped out the door, patting her pocket to make sure she had her scroll before firmly latching it behind her. She didn't want to pull a Jaune and get locked out of her room.

The sixteen year old set out, meandering aimlessly through Beacon's many corridors. Ruby had no real destination in mind. She took turns at random, not really paying attention to where she was headed. Her thoughts were consumed by the nightmares that had plagued her. They made her face some all-too realistic fears. This situation was bad. If things went poorly, if she wasn't up to the task of leading everyone through this, then everyone she loved would die.

A shiver traveled down Ruby's spine and she hugged herself. She had been trying her hardest to stay as optimistic as she could in the face of the overwhelming odds that they were up against, but the nightmares were getting to her. She was beginning to crack. The weight of everyone's lives was too much for her to handle; she was just a teenager. How could she possibly deal with this? She was beginning to understand how her mother must have felt all those years ago, making her final stand against such an insurmountable challenge.

She almost smiled as she realized she was doing exactly what her mother had done too. Shouldering all of the responsibility by herself. Ruby knew it was a stupid thing to do, and she knew that it was hypocritical to bury her feelings when she had been telling Weiss to do exactly the opposite just that day, but she couldn't help it. She couldn't let them know just how helpless she was beginning to feel. They needed a strong, optimistic leader who could give them hope and guide them through this, not some nightmare-ridden, terrified husk of a girl. If she let them know what she was truly thinking, then the tenuous string of hope that they clung to would snap. She couldn't let that happen.

She couldn't let those nightmares become reality.

Ruby was so engrossed in her thoughts, that she didn't notice the person stepping from the doorway in front of her. Until she ran smack into them, that is.

She bounced off of the surprisingly sturdy individual, and tumbled toward the floor with a small grunt of surprise. Part way down, a hand clamped tightly around her wrist, preventing her from making it all the way. The person pulled her back to her feet.

"Are you alright?" He asked simply but not unkindly, and Ruby glanced up at the sound of his voice.

"Ren?"

The green-clad teenager's eyes widened in mild surprise. "Ruby? What are you still doing up? I thought you went to bed hours ago." He caught himself whenever he realized he hadn't actually confirmed if she was fine. "I'm sorry, I wasn't watching coming out of the door. Are you okay?"

She waved him off weakly. "I'm fine. Takes a lot more than that to bring me down." Ren's eyes narrowed slightly. There was something off about the tone in her voice. She was forcing herself. Something was bothering her. "What are you still doing awake?"

He motioned towards the room he had come from. "I was helping with treatment for some of the injured. Is everything alright, Ruby?" he asked quietly, and her breath hitched.

Ruby looked away, unable to meet the concern in his eyes. "Everything's fine. I just couldn't sleep is all. Thought I'd go for a walk."

"Then why are you trembling?" His hand was still loosely holding her wrist.

She closed her eyes and bit her lip, cursing her body for giving her away. She kept her eyes glued firmly to the floor. "I'm fine, Ren." She turned to go. "I should really try and get some sleep. Good night." She tried to walk away, but a gentle but firm tug on her wrist spun her right back around to face him.

"Ruby, what's wrong?"

"Nothing's-"

"Ruby," he admonished. "I know you well enough to know that you're not alright. Something's up. What's going on?"

She looked up at him, and Ren saw with a start that her eyes shined with unshed tears. Never in the year plus that he had known the scythe wielder, never had he seen her so distraught. He had never seen her cry, had never even seen her come close. He had told himself that it was simply because she was too strong for that, but now, seeing the expression on her face, he wondered if it wasn't something else entirely. Maybe she just hid it too well. His chest clenched painfully at the thought.

"C'mon," he said gently, tightening his grip on her wrist and pulling her lightly along behind him as he started off down the corridor.

"Where are we going?" Ruby mumbled, not bothering to put up a fight. She didn't have the energy for it, and besides, she was curious.

He shot her a small smile that would normally make her insides squirm. "You'll see." He continued to lead her about Beacon's hallways for another few minutes before they arrived at their destination. A large bay window in a secluded hallway on the sixth floor of one of the central buildings. In the daytime, almost the entire sprawling campus of Beacon could be seen from the window, and it was a perfect place to watch sunsets by. She knew this because they had done so on several different occasions.

She let a small smile pull at her mouth. "The study window," she commented quietly, resting her free hand on the window seat.

Ren nodded, and promptly folded himself cross-legged on the cushioned surface. They had discovered it during their second study session evening. Ruby had wanted to avoid the library, claiming it was 'too stuffy' and dragged Ren around the school looking for a new place for them to do their work. They had happened upon the window entirely by chance, and had quickly discovered it was perfect. It was out of the way, so they weren't likely to be disturbed, and it had a fantastic view, which never failed to make Ruby smile. The window seat was sufficiently cushioned, and being set in an alcove that was about five by seven feet, there was more than enough room for the both of them to spread out and still be comfortable.

Thereafter, it had become their 'study window' and they had come back here for every single study session ever since, stopping by the library beforehand if they needed any extra research material.

Ruby slumped down against the wall opposite Ren, stretching her legs out in front of her.

"So what's wrong?"

Ruby bit her lip and looked to the side, out over the green-tinged rooftops of Beacon. She wanted to talk about it, to get this out of her mind and off of her chest. She was torn between trying to hold everything in for everyone's sake and letting it all out for her own. She glanced back to Ren where waited patiently, watching her with kind eyes. If it had been anybody else, she would have clammed up immediately and not spoken a word. But it was Ren, and Ren had an inexplicable ability to worm his way past her defenses. He could somehow take her anxiety or her worries and softly put them to rest. He didn't dispel them, just quieted them down, showed her that they weren't really much to be concerned with in the first place.

"I…" Ruby swallowed, deciding to just do it. "I had a nightmare." Ren sensed that she was going to continue, so he remained silent. He had hoped the bringing her to this place would put her mind at ease enough to talk about it, and it seems it had. "Well…nightmares. Plural. I couldn't get back to sleep. I kept seeing…seeing…" A wave of anxiety washed over her, and her voice failed her.

"You kept seeing everyone dead, didn't you?" Ren asked quietly. It was the only thing he could think of that could possibly upset her this much.

She nodded, the motion freeing a single tear to slide down her cheek. She wiped it away quickly. "You were all gone. Beacon was destroyed," her voice cracked.

"Ruby." She looked at him. He continued firmly, "You know that's not going to happen, right? Everyone here is more than capable. We're going to get through this." He gave her the most reassuring smile he could, and she tried to reply in kind, but it was watery and didn't reach her eyes. "We've got you leading us, so how could we not?"

Her face dropped at those words, and Ren berated himself internally. He was trying to help relieve her stresses, not remind her of her burden. Her eyes wandered back out the window. "But what if I mess up?" she asked in a tiny voice.

"You're not going to mess up, Ruby. You've been doing a fantastic job so far."

"I don't think Professor Port and our eleven dead classmates would agree with that."

Ren's eyes narrowed. "You can't blame yourself for their deaths, Ruby. There was nothing you could have done. You weren't even here-"

She cut him off flatly, "Exactly."

"Ruby," he admonished. "That line of thinking is flawed and you know it. There is nothing more you could have done for them. If you guys hadn't shown up when you did then there would have been even more causalities, me included." Ren reached forward and laid a hand on her knee. "We're going to get through this, but you have to stay positive."

She was silent, her head hung low, hair covering her eyes. "How can you say that?"

He withdrew his hand a little in surprise. "What?"

"How can you say that we'll get through this with such certainty?" She looked up, meeting his gaze, and Ren suppressed the instinct to flinch. Her silver eyes were fierce, burning with such a mix of anger and pain that Ren swore he could feel it. "I've seen what happens to the outmatched side in this situation, Ren," she hissed. "I've lived it."

His brow furrowed. This wasn't the Ruby he knew. She was entirely different right now. Bitter and pessimistic, the exact opposite of her usual self. "You…lived it?"

All the fight seemed to leave her at once, and she slumped further down the wall. She looked so small and broken that Ren had to hold himself back from pulling her into his arms. There was a silence between them that the young man was hesitant to break. He didn't want to upset her again, despite his burning curiosity. This was a side of Ruby that he, and perhaps everybody else as well, had never seen, never even imagined existed.

She had always been solid, energetic, and light-spirited. The first to laugh and last to stop. He had never believed she could look as she did now. He felt something in his stomach twist painfully as Ruby shuddered.

When next she spoke, it was in a voice so quiet Ren had so strain to hear her. "My mother…" she drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, burying her face in between them. "I've never told you about my mother, have I?"

"No, neither you nor Yang have ever really mentioned her."

Ruby shook her head slightly. "I don't mean our mother. I mean my mother." Ren raised his eyebrows as Ruby lifted her head to look at him. "Yang and I aren't full-blooded sisters. It's never made a difference to us, but we had didn't have the same mother. I lived alone with mine for the first six years of my life." Ren listened intently. This was the first time he had ever heard anything of Ruby's past. In all of their study sessions, it had been a topic that she had skillfully managed to avoid.

"It was a nice little village, nestled on the northern edge of a huge forest. Secluded enough that we didn't have to worry about any of the annoyances of the cities. Ashwood, it was called. Not a very original name, but there were a lot of Ashwood trees in the forest, and the founders were simple people."

"I've never heard of it."

"That's because it was in Vacuo."

"You grew up in Vacuo?"

"Only until I was six."

"What happened then?"

Ruby somehow managed to curl up even further into herself. "The village was attacked."

"Bandits?"

Another shake of the head. "Beowolves. The largest pack ever seen in Vacuo. Mom and I were eating dinner whenever we heard the first screams." Ruby's eyes lost focus, and Ren could tell she was lost in memories. "Mom ran outside to see what was going on, and came back in with this…this look in her eye. I can't describe it, but it terrified me. She very calmly told me to go pack some stuff as quick as I could. That we were leaving." She was gripping her sweatshirt so hard her knuckles were turning white. "So I threw some belongings in a bag while mom grabbed her weapon. She had been a Huntress, one of the best in her class at Beacon.

We went outside, and it was just chaos. There was fire everywhere, and I saw Beowolves running down villagers, people I knew, and tearing them apart. My mom protected us and anybody else she could reach, and we made our way through the village, to the stables. There were carts there, and people had already started loading them up for evacuation. But if they had any chance of actually getting away, then someone needed to stay behind and hold off the Grimm. And my mother knew that." Tears were flowing openly down her face, and her voice shook as she continued.

"I climbed on one of the wagons, and turned to look at mom, and she had the saddest expression I'd ever seen. I had this horrible feeling, and I reached out for her. She smiled and stepped forward, kissed me on the forehead and told me she loved me. She wrapped her cloak about me and told me to keep it close, and then she was gone. She disappeared into the smoke and I never saw her again." Ruby wiped at her eyes and sniffed. "Found out years later that they only ever managed to recover a few pieces of her body. The rest had been devoured. Some Grimm still managed to catch up with the caravan as we ran, and we lost about half of those that had escaped. Only a few of us made it out alive."

Ren's mind was reeling. He didn't know what to say. What could he say? It was no wonder Ruby was feeling the way she was feeling. This situation was probably the single greatest reminder of the most painful event in her life. Honestly, he couldn't believe that she wasn't like this all the time. Experiencing a horror like that so young. This threw a whole new light on the red-cloaked girl he thought he had known, and he realized that he may never even begin to fathom the depths of her strength. She bounced back from something that would have destroyed most people, and she still saw the world in a better light than most.

"It's all just so similar," Ruby said, voice cracking, after a minute of silence. "I can't help but wonder if this whole thing isn't just as hopeless as my mom's fight."

Ren chewed his cheek in thought. He had to consider his words carefully if he hoped to help Ruby through this.

Finally, with a sigh, he said, "I'm a bastard."

Ruby looked at him in surprise, the sudden change in topic completely throwing her off. "Um...what?"

He chuckled and unfolded his legs outward. "I'm a bastard," he repeated. Her expression now showed nothing but pure confusion. "Have you ever heard of the Hua clan?" She shook her head mutely. "Didn't really expect you to. It's a pretty influential clan that originates over in Mistral, on the western coast of Vytal."

"I know where Mistral is."

"Just making sure, since Weiss seems to think you never paid attention in Geography." She huffed, and Ren smiled. A little bit of the Ruby he knew was showing through. "I was born a bastard child to that clan. My father was one of the clan heads and had an extra-marital affair with my mother, a servant of the clan. Of course, when he discovered my mother was pregnant with me, she was fired and forced out." He fought to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but it was hard. Anger boiled in his stomach at the thought of how his mother had been treated.

"My father never once came to check up on her. He didn't care. He wanted the whole thing swept under the rug and forgotten. Only a few other members of the clan even knew about it, and they were all of a like mind. Keep it quiet so that no dishonor would be brought on the mighty Hua family. My mother came here and stayed with a friend's family. The Valkyries."

"You mean...?"

Ren nodded. "My mother was good friends with Mr. Valkyrie, Nora's father. He offered her a place to stay until she got her feet back underneath of her. Unfortunately, that...never happened." He took a deep breath. "She died giving birth to me. Her body had always been weak, and I guess the strain of childbirth was too much for it to handle. My father didn't even come to her funeral," he spat, glaring holes into his lap. He felt a something rest on his knee, and he looked up to find a hand there. Ruby had crossed part of the distance between them and was giving him an understanding, sympathetic look.

His heart rate accelerated a little, but he ignored it. Now was not the time. He swallowed. "Anyway, Nora's father decided to adopt me. He barely even consulted my actual father, since he had already made it abundantly clear how little he cared about me. Mr. Valkyrie never once tried to hide from me that I was adopted or what had happened to my mother. Whenever he felt I was old enough, he sat me down and explained everything to me clearly. It was a shock, to say the least, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't take it poorly.

I went on for years with that knowledge weighing on me, and it tempered me. It skewed my thoughts and views of the world in a very negative way. How could anyone do to someone what my father did to my mother. I became very...jaded with a world from a young age." Ruby's hand was still on his knee, and she was watching him intently. "Eventually I did some research into the Hua clan, and found that they specialized in Aura manipulation. I began to experiment and quickly found out that I had a natural talent for it. Mr. Valkyrie noticed that and used his connections to get someone from the clan to come teach me."

"Must have been some serious connections," Ruby noted softly.

"Well, he is a mob boss."

"I...I'm sorry, he's a what?"

Ren smirked. "Nora's father is the head of the Valhalla group. They're not quite as criminally inclined as other organizations, like the Xiongs, but still."

He watched as a range of emotions danced across Ruby's face, confusion, skepticism, realization, and finally amusement. She giggled lightly, but it quickly built into a full-blown laugh that had her on her back and clutching her sides in mirth.

"Oh my god," she managed to say in between gasps of breaths as she rolled from side to side. "Oh my god it makes so much sense now! That's why her first solution is always to break the legs! Oh my god that is perfect!"

He smiled as her laughing began to wind down. He was glad that she seemed to be regaining herself. Eventually she settled down enough to sit back up. Her eyes were a little brighter now, and she sat a little straighter. She giggled once more, covering her mouth with a hand. "I'm sorry, please continue."

Ren shook his head. "No need to apologize. There wasn't much else to tell, honestly. The reason I'm skilled enough to be here today is because of that instructor. And as much as I hate the Hua clan and my father for what they did to my mother, it is also in part to my relation to them that I am here. What I'm trying to say is, no matter how awful, or hopeless in this case, the situation may seem, we can also take something from it, bolster ourselves and push on." He reached forward and rested his hand gently on Ruby's. She flinched slightly in surprise, but didn't pull away, silver eyes snapping to meet magenta ones.

"I never realized that I could look at it that way until I met you. I always just viewed it as something awful and unforgivable. And it is, but now I realize that it's also something that I grew from, something that I benefited from, in a way. I have you to thank for that." He looked away from her intense gaze, out the window. "I guess, just...don't lose heart, Ruby. We'll get through this, all of us, together. And we'll take something from it."

He was met with silence, but he couldn't bring himself to look at her. That was the most he had ever reveled about himself to anyone except Nora. His past was something he had always kept to himself, partially because it was no one's business, and partially because he was still coming to terms with it himself. He figured if anyone deserved to know, though, it was the girl who had helped him do just that, even if she wasn't aware she had done so.

Ren's reverie was interrupted when he heard Ruby move, and a weight suddenly pressed into his chest. He looked down in surprise, but found his field of vision blocked by red-tinged hair. There was no possible way she didn't feel his heartbeat pounding through her back.

"R-Ruby?" She was sitting in between his legs and leaning back against his chest.

"Just for a bit," she murmured. "Can we just stay like this for a bit?"

He exhaled, calming himself, before nodding against her hair. "Sure."

"Thank you. And thanks for...everything else."

"You're welcome," he said simply. She sounded much more like herself, and he knew that she'd be alright.

Her head was turned toward the windows, and he did the same. Together they watched the eerie green light dance across the night sky, each taking comfort in the other's presence.

A/N: So, what did we all think? A little bit of Crimson Dragon to round out the chapter. As I've said before, I'm trying to make the whole Ren/Ruby thing believable, and I'd really like to know if you guys think I'm doing a good job of that, so please drop me a review!

Also, please be sure to let me know what you think of Ruby and Ren's backstories. I was quite happy with them, myself. Ruby's still got a bit more that we'll learn about later

Anyway, second longest chapter to date! Woots! I love you all, please review!

PS - Don't worry, and intense, frantic hopelessness IS coming back, I'm just setting everything up first. Prepare yourselves