One month ago:

Blake pushed the thin wooden door open and stepped through briskly, a grimace crossing her face ever so slightly. She didn't like this place at all. The small tavern was filled with oily and smelly inhabitants, all seated at small round tables scattered throughout the space. The roof hung low so it always felt cramped when she walked, and the lighting was a dim yellow, casting an eerie tinge on everything. It didn't scare her - being a huntress meant she very seldom felt fear any longer - but it did nothing but offend her nose and make her feel like she wanted to take a shower.

Most of those around her were dressed in ratty old hoodies and ripped jeans, drinking heavy whiskies from large mugs and smelled as if they had been doing so for hours despite the fact that it was hardly noon. There were streaks of dirt on the floor, and occasionally she would step on a sticky spot where liquor had been recently spilled.

There was, however, one element of the tavern that stuck out oddly. A tall blonde woman with shining gold hair was sitting at the bar, and though her back was slouched, she was wearing a dirty tank-top, and her hair was disheveled, she held an elegant beauty dissimilar to everything else in the bar. Most of the creatures that inhabited this place had gotten the worst hands life could deal and had never bothered to fight it, but this one woman looked like an angel; she belonged at the top of the world, but had fallen to the pits to skulk with the devils.

Blake walked up to the counter, doing her best to be inconspicuous. She could empathize with these people; she had not been born in the most favourable of positions, but she had risen to the top through hard work and perseverance, where they had let themselves be beaten by the world. She sat down next to the blonde, and held two fingers out to the bar tender.

"Slummin' it again?" Yang asked, not removing her eyes from the glass in front of her. It was a grimy thing, a foggy film coated the inside and a sickly yellow fluid filled it. "Been a while."

"You still insist on coming here." Blake answered as the bartender set her own drink down with a heavy thud. Yang shrugged.

"Once a party girl, always a party girl."

"Fun party, nice friends." Yang gave a nonchalant shrug and smiled.

"They aren't such bad people."

"They aren't such good people either."

"Guess you'd be the expert there." Yang raised the glass, winked at Blake, and downed its contents with one gulp. Blake remembered when the woman would grimace at that. There was no longer any reaction. She took a sip of her own, fighting down a responsive gag.

"You're not going hunting today, are you?" She asked, concerned. Yang shook her head.

"Bad night last night." Yang said with another shrug, her voice never losing its faux enthusiasm. "Didn't get much sleep."

"Drugs, sex and alcohol tend to do that to you the next morning." Blake hoped that the sadness in her voice didn't show too much. They had fought enough. Blake just enjoyed the brief moments they got to spend together now, as distant and unattached as they might have been. Yang gave a gruff laugh.

"Yeah, something like that. Never get a headache if you just keep going though."

"Right," Blake said through a thin smile. She no longer knew how to talk to Yang. She often wondered why she still made the trip down to this pig-stie every week - though that routine had slipped as of late. Once a week had turned into every two weeks, then once a month, then longer still. But still she came. She couldn't help but wonder if she was hoping that someday she would walk in and the girl from three years ago would be waiting for her. Buoyant, happy, joyous…

Yang could still be like that sometimes. It seldom happened, but every once in awhile Blake would see a spark in her old partner's eye and a mischievous grin on her face. It was rare, and hardly lasted more than a second or two before fading, but Blake would give anything in the world to see it for an infinitesimally small time. The last time Yang had been Yang was at Jaune and Pyrrha's wedding. Blake wasn't sure what it was about the setting - maybe that everyone there was celebrating new lives and could briefly forget their old ones, or that they all shared her pain - but whatever it was, Yang had actually had fun. Not this masked misery hidden behind smiles that never touched her eyes, but actual, genuine fun.

That gave Blake hope.

But hope was dangerous, and every day Blake feared more and more that it was unfounded and that she was chasing the ghost of the woman she once knew. Hope was the precursor of pain.

"I could really use your help on this hunt."

"Please, you're Atlas' top huntress right now! You can handle it. We wouldn't want the citizens questioning their hero, would we?"

"You say that as if helping people is a bad thing."

"Helping people is fine. But being the hero-" Yang's voice quavered for a moment. Her smile dropped, just for a second, but Blake didn't miss it. Blake never missed it, and every single time it felt like someone was squeezing her chest when she saw it. "That was always Ruby. Be the best there was so that the people would never have to be scared. She could give them hope."

"She would want us to do that in her stead."

"What she wants hardly matters anymore." Yang looked down at her glass, recently refilled. Blake winced as the blonde picked it up, swirled its contents around, then downed it again.

Time and again she had wondered if she should ask the others for help. She and Yang had moved to Atlas to get away from Vale after it had happened, so they didn't see much of what was happening to Yang. Whenever they visited, Yang would be energetic and charming, but after they left she would be reduced once again to a hollow husk with a joker's smile. Even Blake seldom saw it. Half an hour or so once a week, and she had gone months without seeing the blonde. She could hardly be sure if what she was seeing was how Yang truly was or not. The horrifying possibility was that what Blake saw now, this broken angel, was the dressed up version… It horrified her.

She doubted Yang minded either way, whether she showed up or not, but there was always a twinge of guilt in her stomach when she didn't. Yang was keeping up, doing as many jobs as she had to to pay the bills and keep her head above water, but there was no change. She wasn't really living, she was just staying alive.

"Yang, it's going to be a long hunt. I might not see you for a while."

"That's okay. Maybe you shouldn't come back after."

Blake stared, her heart skipping a beat.

"Yang?" She asked dumbly, trying to register the words. They hurt more than she wanted to admit, like the one phrase was crushing her innards into a black hole.

"Look, do you want to know why I moved to Atlas?" Blake didn't answer. She didn't know if it was the alcohol or something serious that was making Yang talk, but Blake had a feeling she should hold her tongue. "It's not because there's too many memories in Vale. Those followed me anyways. I have nightmares all the time and-"

Yang broke off, taking a shaky breath. Blake wanted to reach forward and comfort her with a touch, but knew it would be a bad idea.

"I moved here because I needed to get away from everything I knew. There's too many connections in Vale. But here, I haven't heard from Weiss in years. I don't know how she or Jaune or anyone else is doing. As far as I know, they're all alive and well and happy. But if something happened to any of them, and I was in Vale, I'd hear about it. Out here, I never have to know."

"You see Jaune and Pyrrha every once in awhile."

"Yeah, once a year. When I go to see their graves." Yang picked the glass up and stared Blake in the eye. "This? This is literally a tuesday for me Blake. I know the way you look at me when I'm here, but imagine, if this is what I'm like now, what would I be like when I force myself to go see the ceremonial rock that doesn't even hold my sister's body because there wasn't enough of her left to bury?" Yang's eyes smoldered as she looked at Blake, the slightest hint of red invaded the otherwise beautiful lavender.

Blake just stared, one of her ears twitching involuntarily. She could believe what she was hearing far too easily. "That wouldn't change whether or not they were okay though. You're just living a lie." Yang shrugged nonchalantly.

"I can't go through that again Blake. Do you know what it's like when you don't come for a week? A month? I can't help but worry and wonder if you're..." Yang struggled to get the last word out, but Blake knew the pain that came with that. She knew why Yang couldn't say it. "So don't come back next time." The blonde finished, her voice wobbling uncertainly.

"I won't die Yang, I wouldn't-"

"What? Leave me?" Crimson sparks flashed through her eyes as Yang slammed her fist on the ground. Blake felt her fists curl. "You won't die? Won't get ripped apart by a nest of Deathstalkers? Won't get skewered on their dust-damned tails? How can you promise me that?"

Blake tried to meet Yang's gaze, but she couldn't. There was no guarantee; that was part of the job. She might die.

"You can't live like this." Blake practically begged. "You're disgracing everything you stood for." Yang just let out a low chuckle.

"What in the hell makes you think I want to live?" Blake's breath caught in her chest. Freezing ice grasped her lungs, making her incapable of moving but wanting to gasp. This couldn't be happening.

"Yang," She whispered hoarsely. "I can't lose you,"

"You should leave."

"Yang, don't do thi-"

"Please go." Yang's head was bowed, like something had defeated her and she was awaiting an execution. When she looked up, there was no trace of red. Nothing so strong as anger. It was just two cracked chips of amethyst.

Blake didn't want to. The last thing she wanted to do was leave her ex-partner's side. But maybe who she was talking to wasn't her ex-partner. Maybe this wasn't Yang. Maybe the nightmares - what had happened - were too much, and to survive, she had had to change. Fragment in a way, lose the parts of her that made her Yang. Lose the joy, lose the love, and lose the hope...

And the question remained: Had the grief left anything behind?

This was why hope was dangerous, she decided. It was what Blake had feared for so long but hadn't let herself believe. What she was hearing now though, it couldn't be argued… Yang was gone.

And she would never be coming back.

"O-" Blake broke off, almost choking on the words. Her vision blurred from brimming tears, and she felt a catch in her throat so strong she could hardly speak around it. But she forced herself to. "Okay." She managed, her voice hoarse and raspy.

She stood, pushing the stool behind her out of the way and storming off, not thinking about what had just happened. Something clattered to the ground behind her, but Blake couldn't bring herself to look back. She brought her fist up to her mouth, biting down on her own soft flesh hard, trying to overwhelm the screaming agony in her mind with physical.

No, no, no…

She brushed a tear out of her eye before it could fall of its own accord.

Not her...

She ripped the door open and whipped it closed behind her, slumping against the brick wall that framed the entrance. It felt like there were a thousand voices in her mind, screeching at her, like a million shards of broken glass were cutting her insides, like a white hot iron stake was being shoved through her chest-

Nononononono…

She screamed into her curled up legs, feeling her throat give out and as her voice cracked. She didn't stop though. She kept screaming, silently, everything inside her compressing, crushing, draining-

NONONONONO…

She ran out of breath and her body reflexively inhaled. She choked on the breath, coughed it out, sucked in another frantically, hyperventilating.

She looked to the sky, almost as though posing it an impossible question. Her stomach was drowning, her heart beat against thorns. She didn't want to lose Yang. Not like this. Not so suddenly and not from a drunken stupor. She didn't want to lose the partner she had had. Someone she trusted, cared for, loved for so long…

But Yang was already gone.

So Blake just cried for the second friend she had lost three years ago, but had only just now come to realize had died.

Ruby brushed her hair to the side as she looked over the sleek marble desk at the holographic projection of the receptionist.

"And your name?" The lady asked, smiling widely.

"Um, Ruby Rose." She brushed her hair to the side again as she heard the sound of the projection tapping away at a screen thousands of miles away.

"Alrighty, and what company are you with?" Ruby looked at her dumbly for a second before recovering.

"Um, I'm not."

"Sorry?"

"I'm not with a company. Um, this is more of a personal type call thingy." The projection paused her tapping and pursed her lips. A moment later her eyes flicked up to meet Ruby's.

"And you don't have her personal number?" The tone was doubtful, almost accusatory.

"It's… Been awhile since I've seen her."

"Right, and how do you know Ms. Schnee again?"

"We were teammates at Beacon." The receptionist looked at her for a moment, dubiously. Ruby was beginning to feel butterflies in her stomach. This wasn't going the way she had planned.

"I'm sorry, but I know Ms. Xiao Long and Ms. Belladonna, and they were Weiss' teammates."

"There are four members of each Beacon team." The projection just shut her eyes calmly for a moment.

"Is this a joke?" She said as her eyes opened again.

"What? No!" Ruby exclaimed waving her arms in front of her.

"Ms. Schnee's fourth teammate di-"

"No, I know, I-" Ruby broke off, taking a breath. "It's a long story." The projection didn't seem convinced.

"I'm sorry," She didn't sound it. "But this doesn't sound like urgent business affairs. I can't put you through to Ms. Schnee."

"Please! This is important." Ruby could feel that cold void beginning to claw its way back into her stomach. She needed to see Weiss again. She needed to know what was happening. She needed to remember.

"Ma'am, please exit the premise or I'll have to call security."

"Wait! Fine, don't patch me through, but can I at least leave a message?"

"Miss Rose, I canno-"

"Please, trust me. She needs to hear this." The receptionist paused, then gave a heavy sigh. Ruby smiled, feeling little bubbles of joy begin to dance around her stomach. "Just tell her that I forgive her and that it was my fault. Say that I'd just like to see her again, and I don't care about the rest of it all." Ruby wondered if she was being too vague, but figured that Weiss would understand. There were a few taps of the keyboard and Ruby watched the receptionist's lips ghost over the words as she typed.

"I'll forward this to Ms. Schnee when it is appropriate." The receptionist turned her attention back to Ruby with a forced smile. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"No, thank you so much!" Ruby couldn't wipe the grin off her face as she turned away and began walking towards the door.

The pit in her stomach was pushed aside, the grinding and pain in her chest settled into a light and slightly elevated rhythm. The fear, anxiety, pain, all of it drifted away for a moment with one simple truth.

She was going to see Weiss again.

For the first time since coming back from the dead, Ruby felt alive.

A few thousand miles away a receptionist sat at her desk looking at the message tapped on the screen in front of her. It was ridiculously vague, short, and delivered by someone who was visibly far too young to be Weiss' teammate. That said, Miss Schnee had always been adamant that those at Beacon were always to be able to reach her.

There was a soft ping as an email was delivered into her dropbox. She looked at it, skimmed the contents, and then began typing a reply. It was a trivial e-mail, a notification of the completion of a transaction, but it was nonetheless necessary. She thanked the client for the notification, then returned to look at the note she had typed up.

The woman who had delivered the message was nervous, ancy, young, and very unprofessional. She could ill imagine her boss associating with someone of that sort. It didn't make much sense. Besides, the number of people who tried to contact the new co-CEO of the SDC from her past that merely went to school with her a few grades removed or some such nonsense was extraordinarily high. Part of her training had been to learn to weed out these sorts, and ensure that only vital information was passed on to her boss. For the most part, that meant the most important business deals. On top of which, Miss Schnee had been oddly unresponsive lately, which made her even more reluctant to bother her boss.

Another ping rang through the air as a new email reached her. The receptionist sighed heavily. This message was obviously just an attempt to reach her employer without any foundational reason. Miss Schnee did not have the time for such shenaniganry, and frankly, neither did she. She deleted the message, then clicked on her email to reply to the next message.

Yang stared at her scroll. The message on it was short, and yet it elicited more feeling in her than anything else in the past three years of her fucked up life. Alcohol numbed her, drugs that were meant to perk her up often only contributed to the void, her nights spent in others' company often felt lonelier than those nights where she sat alone in her apartment, staring at blank walls or the flickering tips of flames in her fireplace. But this text on her screen, four short lines of text, and suddenly Yang's insides were burning. Her stomach roiled and her hands shook.

"You need to come to Vale.

It's about Ruby.

I'll explain when you arrive.

-Pyrrha"

Yang stood, feeling something unfamiliar- or at least long forgotten - stirring deep inside her. These were the sorts of emotions that only a corpse could bring forth, the kind that spoke to abandonment, fear, and above all else, anger. If there was new information about how Ruby had died, that meant there might have been someone responsible. There might have been some sick, twisted agenda behind her sister's death. And if there was, Yang would burn it to ashes and spread those ashes on the wind. She would burn it into an empty husk. She wanted revenge.

And it terrified her.

To go from feeling nothing, being completely numb, to having this maelstrom of wicked, sharp urges and feelings stabbing through her was completely terrifying. To the side of her sat a small kit, holding a small plastic bag wherein sat a small pile of pills. She had bought them with two possible purposes in mind. They were a small taste of oblivion, and on those night where Yang found herself kicking and screaming, one of them would put her into a numb sleep, dreamless, carefree… She could forget the world for hours. Of course, the second she woke, it was all the same. And that was the second purpose. She was wondering if maybe it was better to embrace oblivion rather than to cautiously sip away at it.

They would get rid of the feeling.

Yang took a step sideways, reaching down to the bag, but something stilled her arm. If she did this, if she took even just one, it would mean she was giving up on Ruby. She was giving up on the last person she had allowed to mean anything to her. She had thought it was safe, dead bodies don't really change much, and so the pain couldn't get any worse.

She picked up the little package and looked at it for a moment, then put it back down. She walked around her bed to her closet, pulling it open. There wasn't much in it, a bright yellow dress from Jaune and Pyrrha's wedding, two sleeveless dark leather shirts and matching pants for hunting, and then a week's worth of casual clothing. Hanging on the door was the dark sword and accompanying dust pistol she had taken to using in her hunts. Everything she owned, she could pack up at a moment's notice.

There were two items in the closet, though, that had not been touched for years. Yang reached into the back corner of the cramped closet and pulled out a small metal box with an emblem engraved on the top - a flaming heart. She brushed the fine layer of dust off the top, taking a heavy breath. She popped the latch on the side of the box and slid the lid off, exposing two gleaming gold wristlets. Any other weapon might have been tarnished or rusted after so much disuse, but these still gleamed brightly, even in the dim lighting of her apartment. They were made with the help of one of the best weaponsmiths Vale had ever seen, after all.

Yang unclasped them and fitted them around her wrists, latching them into place. They fit her perfectly, feeling more familiar than anything Yang had known in a long time. She pumped her right arm, the bits of her weapon sliding effortlessly out into the extended gauntlet that had once served her. She slid back the latch to see it fully loaded from when she had last removed it with the express intention of donning it again the following day. Odd, she thought, how quickly her resolve to continue on had dissolved so fast.

A small smile graced her face as she collapsed Ember Celica back into its original form.

Then she looked into the closet once more, at the other box therein. It was larger than the one she had just taken out. Perhaps a foot and a half long by one high made of an obsidian black metal. There was another engraving on that one.

The head of a rose, the tips of whose petals turned into flame. Ruby's symbol.

I'm sorry for the release time of this chapter and its quality... It's a transition chapter, so I never expected it to be poetic or beautiful, but still... not my favourite yet. That said, some vital scenes are coming up in the next few chapters and I'm really excited to write them and I think you'll all enjoy them! I know there wasn't much Ruby in this chapter, but someone may or may not be getting another letter soon...

Past that, hope you enjoyed. As per usual, thoughts, comments criticisms ect... are welcome! Please let me know what you think!

'Till next time,

-Unjax