#he's mad because he can taste the radioactivity. it tastes like pennies :(

[rabbithaver]

Shadow is having a bad time at the Elephant's Foot on the Chernobyl tour :(

[ruffsficstuffplace]

The Keeper of the Grove (Part 78)

For the etherite the cell was made of, the others in the control room could only guess at what had happened in the dreamscape as they all came to.

But a look at Weiss would easily tell you it wasn’t good.

She clutched her head, groaning in pain, tears suddenly welling up in her eyes as she was caught between the disconnect of what state she had left dreamscape in—a crying, sobbing mess—versus the state her real body was in—calm as can be.

Ruby rose up from the cushion beside her; she shook her head, before she wiped her moist eyes with her sleeve. She looked at Weiss, frowned, and reached out to her.

“Weiss…?”

Weiss slapped her hand away in a panic.

Ruby winced and pulled it back, ice beginning to seep into her skin.

Winter raised her head, her suit’s systems just finished rebooting; she saw Ruby nursing her hand, the frost and the ice pouring from all around Weiss as she scrambled back up on her feet and stepped away from Ruby.

“Weiss…? What’s going on?!”

Ruby ignored her. “Weiss… you believe me, right?” she asked as she slowly, carefully walked after her.

Weiss turned tail and fled, more frost pouring from her whole body, thin sheets of ice forming and spreading out from her feet; she ran into a wall with her palms out, an inch thick layer of ice exploded all over the surface, almost trapping her hands.

Her whole body began to shake. “Abner… take me out of here…!”

Qrow finally came to shook his head, reeling from the dreamer’s honey and the Soul Eater fight beside. He looked at the scene in front of him, at the ice that was the etherite was just keeping from spreading. “The hell did I miss now...?”

“Weiss!” Ruby called out, tears welling in her eyes. “You believe me, don’t you…?!”

Weiss looked at her, saw the hurt, the confusion, the fear on her face. “I… I don’t know, Ruby…!” she cried.

Ruby reached out for her again. “Weiss, please--!”

“I SAID I DON’T KNOW!”

Ruby yelped and jumped back as a wall of icicles erupted around Weiss, the sharp tips dangerously close to her piercing her.

Weiss’ eyes widened in horror, she looked down at her hands, and the rest of body, her skin covered in frost and ice.

Then, a rip in reality opened up beneath her, the world rushing past as she fell through it, back onto the teleporter in the control room.

They all yelped and jumped well back as frost began to pour out Weiss’ body, ice spread out on the floor. She ran past them and out to the halls, freezing the walls, the carpets, and the paintings as she did, her eyes stinging as she felt hot tears pouring down her cheeks, her skin prickling as they froze near instantly.

Weiss slipped on a patch of her own ice, instinctively threw her arms out in front of her; the soft, luxurious carpet turned into another inch thick layer of ice, her palms slid out, and her chin hit the floor.

Crack!

She cried out and whimpered as she curled up into a ball, eyes squeezed and frozen shut, shivering and holding her hands to her chin, feeling the pain ebb away as her nerves went numb from the cold.

She didn’t resist when she felt Penny’s hands wrap around her, warmth seeping into her body as she carried her off to the infirmary.

Because her gauntlet couldn’t hold back her magic anymore, and Abner had to take it back to his Foundry to study and upgrade it, Weiss had to be put inside one of his other, less fortified containment units for dangerous and/or highly radioactive specimens.

He had spared sheets and pillows from the guest rooms to line the floors, and for some semblance of privacy built a curtain in front of the barrier that separated her from the rest of the lab, but there was no making it feel like anything other than what it was:

A prison cell.

She sat on a pillow with her knees pulled to her chest, an enchanted blanket wrapped around her and keeping most of her warm. Her jaw still ached, but the Fae bandage wrapped around it constantly supplied a steady flow of pain-killers as it helped accelerate the healing process.

Her comm-crystal had been removed for fear of permanently damaging it, leaving her with no communication with the world outside, or a means of telling the time. Abner had offered to put up a tablet on a stand between the barrier and the curtain, queue up plenty of entertainment holos, but Weiss told him not to.

She was sure her magic would ice the barrier over and make it impossible to see out, anyway.

She didn’t know how long she stayed there, how long it took for her magic to finally calm down and give the air-vent’s defrosting mechanisms a break, how long she sat in a corner of that frozen prison, indifferent to the frost nipping at the soles of her feet and her butt.

But she did know her seclusion was nothing compared to the aching pain she felt in her chest.

There was a knocking on the barrier. There was a part in the curtains outside, the light from the halls flashed on the ice inside and blinded Weiss for a moment. She was prepared to scowl and make her displeasure clear, until she noticed that exactly the ice was so thick it was nearly impossible to see out.

She could see a familiar silhouette and a pair of reindeer horns, however.

“Weiss...?” Ruby asked, her voice muffled and faint. “Are you okay in there…?”

Weiss looked down at her feet, at the blankets and pillows she was sitting on.

“Weiss?” Ruby knocked on the barrier again. “You asleep in there? ‘Cause if you are, I’ll just wait a while and leave...”

Weiss sighed, watching her frozen breath linger in the air. “What are you doing here, Ruby?” she asked.

“I wanted to ask if you’re okay. Abner says the vitals scanners say you are, but I just wanted to make sure...”

Weiss scowled. “I almost killed you, I’ve just learned that everyone being so supportive of me and my relationship with you was because it’s vital for us to make more miniature clones of you for this ongoing 1,000 year old clean-up job of the huge, realm-threatening disaster zone that is the Viridian Valley, and I almost hurt several of my friends and damaged a good chunk of Abner’s lab because I can’t control my powers, so now I’m stuck in another prison cell until he can upgrade my gauntlet.

“What do you think…?”

Ruby paused. “… Was that the, uh, retori… rhetora… did you actually want me to answer that question or…?” she trailed off.

“...”

“… I’ll just assume you were doing that… look, Weiss: I’m not mad, alright? I’m not surprised you freaked out like that. Most of the Keeper’s mates and especially the ones that didn’t work out also freaked out.

“Dad freaked out really bad, and it was a pretty big reason he decided to try a relationship with Aunt Raven instead.”

Weiss sighed. “Is that how the Council always tried to find mates for Keepers, Ruby? You keep them in the Bastion, give them enough time to get attached, before you reveal the secret to them when they’re high on hormones and least likely to say ‘No thanks, I’ll go see what my other options are’...?”

“Well, no, that’s not how it works. Like, at all.”

Weiss scowled. “Then how does it work, Ruby? Please, enlighten me! Expand my knowledge of how forces beyond my control and the authority figures in my life are once more emotionally terrorizing and manipulating me for their own self-serving purposes!”

“… I’m sorry, what was that you just sad…?”

“TELL ME HOW OTHER PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO FUCK ME OVER THIS TIME, YOU DOLT!”

“Oh! Well, the Council doesn’t actually do any of the picking; it’s not like, you know, every time we capture a human and don’t try to release them back ASAP, there’s this committee that goes and tests how badass or how powerful they are, and think to themselves, ‘Oh, it looks like this human/hybrid will probably make a Keeper baby!’

“The Keepers and their mates just kind of… you know... happen!”

“How so ‘happen’…?”

“Did you know that dad met mom at the Eve of the Ether fair at Candela, way, WAAAY back…?”

“He told me, yes.”

“And did he tell you about how he was trying to break the record for a test-your-strength game?”

“Yes. I’m assuming that’s why she made her move: she saw the numbers, thought this was a very strong human, right...?”

Ruby paused, before she laughed, and laughed hard, so much Weiss could hear her horns banging against the barrier when she doubled over.

Weiss scowled. “What’s so funny?!”

Ruby laughed for a few more seconds, before she stopped. “Weiss… he didn’t tell you what he looked like then, did he?”

Weiss paused. “… He wasn’t always that strong...?”

“You look at a ‘Then’ and ‘Now’ photo of him, you’d think that ‘Now’ was just ‘Then’s’ bigger, stronger, buffer older brother than the same person after a few years!

“He was a poor kid from Valentino, Weiss; most of his meals were nutriblocks and vita drinks, and he fueled his strength training with protein paste—the batches that they were giving away or throwing out because they came came out tasting even funnier than usual.”

Weiss winced, remembering the awful taste of nutriblocks when she’d made the ill-fated decision to try one so many years ago.

“The only exercise he got was lifting boxes for the people that couldn’t afford drones and were willing to break the law and pay poor kids way below minimum wage, getting into fights with others, and filling up old bottles with water for dumbbells.

“He did win a lot of his fights, but that was only because he could last long enough for the other guys to get so tired he could push them really hard and they’d still fall flat on their asses!”

Weiss blinked. “So why did he make that bet…?”

“Because he was desperate, and the guy at the test-your-strength game was a dick who was sure he couldn’t break the record. He didn’t even come close his first and second try, and it looked like he was about to fail at his third and his last, too…”

“So what did he do?”

“He stalled. Tried to psyche himself up, prayed to Piper, did some last-minute push-ups. None of these actually helped, but it did waste enough time that Aunt Raven got fed up and told him to get on with it already—mom REALLY wanted to try to break the record, too, and Uncle Qrow REALLY wanted that beer she promised him.

“Dad was about to do it, then, he got the idea to give them his last shot, said he’d pay for their own game if they couldn’t break it either.”

“Which he couldn’t, because he had bet his last Urochs...” Weiss muttered.

Ruby nodded. “Oh yeah! He was hoping that Uncle Qrow would do it, but the guy running the Test-Your-Strength game caught onto him so he gave the hammer to the person he thought was even less likely to break the record than dad.”

Weiss smiled. “Which would be Summer, a Keeper of the Grove.”

She could feel Ruby smile, despite the ice still covering the glass. “Mom broke the machine. The guy was in such shock, he gave them the money without a second thought, and by the time he snapped out of it dad was already buying Uncle Qrow that beer he really wanted at a bar ten blocks away.”

Weiss chuckled, before she paused. “… Why did she help him…?”

“Because, she saw that he was someone in need, and that she could help him out. Plus, she could get a free chance at the Test-Your-Strength game, so it wasn’t like she wasn’t getting what she wanted in the first place!

“You know, kind of like that night when you first went into the Valley, except I was looking for a way to stop even more of these expeditions without having to kill anyone.”

Weiss frowned. “So that’s what I was... a means to protect the Valley.”

“And someone that didn’t deserve to get roped into this messy business! I knew just from the chatter on the comms that you weren’t some foreman or a rich tycoon who wanted to oversee their latest project in person…

“… You were just a girl like me, probably out looking for adventure and excitement.”

Weiss looked down. “… I was actually trying to escape my father... find a new life somewhere else, where I could be free to decide what I wanted to do, without someone else trying to control me, dictate how I was supposed to live my life.

“I thought I’d found that here in the Valley… but in hindsight, I probably should have known better.”

There was silence on the other end for a long while.

“… You don’t have to be my girlfriend, you know? We could… you know… break up. It’s… it’s not like you’re the only badass human or mostly human hybrid in the realm, right…? Besides, what was that saying you humans have? About when you love someone…?”

“’If you love someone, let them go. If they come back to you, they’re yours. If they don’t, they never were.’”

“… Yeah. That, thanks...” Ruby paused. “… I guess… I guess this is my letting you go, Weiss. And whatever happens—whatever you do—I’ll… well I’ll try to be fine with it, like mom was with dad...”

Weiss felt tears well in her eyes. “Why…?”

“Because I love you, Weiss. And that’s what you do you love someone, right...?”

“No!” Weiss shouted, pouring down her cheeks. “Why do you love me, you dolt?! What do you even see in me?! Haven’t I already proven to you several times over that I am a literal ticking time bomb of emotions and personal issues waiting explode and possibly kill you with my freaky ice magic?!”

Weiss sobbed, her voice trembling as she whispered, “Why…?”

There was only the quiet, almost unnoticeable hum of the air vent for a long while.

“… You have that something, Weiss—what wasn’t there with all the others. I don’t know what that something is, or if it’s a bunch of somethings… but I just know that you have it.”

Weiss sniffed, stared at the silhouette of Ruby standing outside her cell, before hung her head, wrapped her blanket around it.

“… I need to go, Weiss...” Ruby muttered. “It’s late, I’m tired, and the hunts are going to start again soon since the red alert’s over and we definitely won’t be having a Soul Eater attack until the start of the Flood, at least...”

“So soon...?”

Ruby nodded. “We can’t stay at home, watch the news, and panic for weeks or months like you humans do, Weiss. Besides, it’s not like we Fae don’t have our very lives threatened every day...”

Weiss sighed. “I suppose so...”

“Do you want me to stay for longer?”

Weiss thought about it. “No. You go get some sleep, Ruby—the last two nights have been crazy...”

“Okay. I will. Good night, Weiss...”

“… Good night, Ruby.”

Silence. Ruby didn’t move.

“Hey Weiss…?”

“… Yes…?”

“Do you still love me…?”

“I… I don’t know, Ruby. I don’t know if I can love you, knowing I’m going to be part of… whatever this Valley actually is, whatever’s lurking in it that makes all of us—human or Fae—need you Keepers around.”

“… Do you want to try…?”

“...”

“You can sleep with dad at the cabins, and I’m sure Yang won’t mind switching places with you. We could go on dates together—you know, go out to eat together, watch some holos, or we could just make-out for a while, if that’s what you’d like!”

Weiss blushed. “… Ask me again in the morning, Ruby… it’s… it’s been a really long night...”

“Okay. I understand. No rush, alright? I’ll wait for however long it takes.”

Weiss frowned. “That’s a bold claim to make, Ruby.”

Ruby chuckled. “Dad dated Aunt Raven for several years, had Yang, then went through an ugly divorce before he changed his mind about becoming a Keeper’s mate. Waiting for the people we love to figure things out and become okay with the idea of a relationship with a Keeper is nothing new to any of us, stretching right back to Gabija.”

Weiss frowned. “And if I decide not to try, and if I find I’m happy with someone else, or if I do and we don’t work out?”

“Then we ‘never were,’ and I should go find someone else! That was what mom did, after dad told her he was going to become Aunt Raven’s mate as she was for sure pregnant with Yang.”

“...”

“So, is there anything I can do for you before I leave? For real, this time.”

Weiss thought about it. “No, nothing, thanks.”

“Okay. Goodbye, Weiss.”

Weiss peered out of her blankets, watched Ruby’s silhouette walk away to the side and out the exit of the specimen containment wing.

She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, even with the aching pain in her chest having grown worse in the meanwhile...