Chapter Text
Following everything in the Ever After, it had been extremely difficult for Ruby to fall asleep, tossing and turning through the night, her mind racing through everything she’d said to her teammates and everything she’d done and regretting all of it. They hadn’t mentioned it to her, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t talked about it.
Ruby had laid still enough that they’d believed her asleep, tired from the events of the past few days–she was, so so tired, but she still could not sleep–and they’d begun to talk in hushed tones about things they thought she wouldn’t understand. She could feel their eyes on her, watching carefully for any sign of movement as they talked about depression and about the signs of it, about keeping a very close eye on her, and trying their hardest to not let her hurt herself. They’d used the word “again”, but Ruby couldn’t agree with its usage any less.
What she’d done had been what had saved her from her spiral. Drinking the tea had let her speak with the Blacksmith, who had shown her what she needed to see. She was better now, didn’t they know that? A part of her was ecstatic that her friends cared about her and wanted to make sure, but another part of her didn’t enjoy the idea of being carefully watched, and questioned and prodded if she seemed in the least bit “off” to them.
They’d drifted off to sleep around an hour after that. Ruby was familiar enough with her teammates to know the sounds of their sleep. Yang, of course, snored like a freight train that was covered in chainsaws, Blake would let out the occasional soft purr, assuming she was comfortable enough–and how she could be comfortable in the Vacuo heat while laying next to the space heater that was Yang, Ruby would never understand–and Weiss had somehow mastered the art of snoring gracefully.
Most people would’ve been driven into madness by these sounds combined–especially Yang’s snoring–but Ruby found it rather soothing, and it wasn’t long before she herself drifted off to sleep.
She jolted back awake, feeling rather sick and hot in her bed. Her teammates could no longer be heard. Slowly, she climbed out of bed, noticing that while it was still dark, the other beds were empty. Had they left her behind? Her stomach twisted in knots, both from the thought of being forgotten and because of her mystery illness. She trudged towards the bathroom, quietly pushing the door open and flipping on the light. Her eyes burned and she flinched away, scratching her eyebrow with the palm of her hand.
Ruby turned on the faucet and collected a pool of water in her hands, splashing it onto her face and letting her hands slowly slide down. She caught sight of herself in the mirror and nearly jumped out of her skin. Her face was horribly disfigured, white lines running all over it, covering her left eye and parts of nose and spreading up into her hairline. Bits of flesh were missing from her chin, and what parts of her face were recognizable were covered in thin scars. Black tears rolled down her cheek, and neck, soon covering her entire body in a black sludge. She was becoming a hound . Ruby eyed Crescent Rose, leaning against the wall next to the sink, and she quickly picked it up, chambering a round and turning the weapon so that she was looking down the barrel. Six pounds of pressure later and a loud shot sounded out.
Ruby awoke with a start. Her heart was racing and her breathing was shallow. It came to her in a moment that it had just been a dream, and slowly, she calmed any outward signs of her strife. Most of them anyway. Her hands were still shaking quite aggressively and she was still covered in sweat. One of those things, she supposed she could blame on the heat, but she wasn’t sure if her teammates would buy it.
She glanced over to their beds. Good, they were all still asleep. Ruby slowly crawled out of bed, padding softly to the bathroom, being sure to close the door behind her before she turned on the light. She certainly didn’t want to chance waking anyone and having to explain that she was up because of a nightmare. What she’d done in the nightmare would be enough to ensure she had a chaperone everywhere she went–including the bathroom–for the next several weeks, and that was not a concept she enjoyed in the least bit.
Ruby approached the mirror with trepidation this time, scared to view her reflection. Her eyes shot to the space next to the sink, then to the mirror. A wave of relief washed over her when she didn’t see anything abnormal about the face staring back at her and she felt ridiculous for ever having been worried in the first place.
The girl was startled yet again by the sound of her scroll’s ringtone screaming out into the dorm. Embarrassed that she forgot to silence the device, Ruby scrambled out of the bathroom and quickly answered it, offering a rushed apology to her groggy teammates before stepping out into the hallway and putting the scroll to her ear.
“Ruby, are you okay?!” Her uncle’s voice was panicked and out of breath. He sounded like he was running. Did he have a nightmare alarm on her or something?
“Yeah, I’m fine. What’s going on?” She said, glancing either way down the hallway. It was just her out here.
“You’re at the dorms?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I don’t have time to explain, but you have to get out of there! Now! ” Qrow was shouting. Ruby could count on one hand the amount of times Qrow had ever shouted at her. Almost every time, her safety had been in question. So, there wasn’t a moment of hesitation before she stepped back into the dorm, flipping the lights on. Her teammates groaned.
“Get up,” Ruby told them. She marched over to the closet and began pulling her things out, pinning the scroll to her ear with her shoulder. “We’ll be right there, Uncle Qrow. Where–?”
The closet suddenly exploded, sending bricks and wood and drywall scattering. Ruby was thrown back a few feet as well, hitting the side of her bed with her back. Inertia launched her scroll from her grasp.
“What the hell?!” Yang was on her feet in a moment, and Ruby watched another one of Salem’s hounds lumber through the hole in that wall that used to be their closet. This one seemed to be more human than the last one, with broader shoulders and straighter legs. It appeared to be twice the size of Hazel, who Ruby already thought was bigger than anyone had any right to be.
Ruby immediately recognized that the monster was headed straight for her, and that the explosion of the closet had launched her weapon to the floor in front of her. She clambered for it, barely wrapping her fingers around it before the hound kicked her in the chin. Ruby felt herself go airborne for a moment before she painfully collided with her sister, sandwiching the blonde between herself and the wall.
The shock and sleep had finally disappeared from Weiss and Blake, who immediately jumped into action. Weiss conjured a glyph that trapped the beast in place while Blake leapt into the air to kick it back. It didn’t seem to care much for Weiss’ semblance, breaking free of it almost immediately and grabbing Blake’s ankle, tossing the faunas through the hole from which it had come.
Weiss made to conjure another glyph, but the hound swiped her away and into the wall, producing a cloud of drywall.
Ruby and Yang quickly separated as soon as they realized that their teammates couldn’t protect them at the moment. Yang scrambled to reattach her prosthetic while Ruby transformed her beloved weapon from its compact form to its gun form. There wasn’t enough room in the dorm for her to completely unfurl her scythe and properly fight back, so fifty caliber rounds would have to do for now.
It sidestepped her first shot, and her second missed. Her hands were still shaking from the nightmare and now doubly so from fear of this monstrosity, but she still somehow managed to land the third shot, impacting the creature’s head. She cheered internally for only a moment before she realized that she hadn’t done a single thing to slow it down. It was too close now, reaching out for her with a clawed hand. Reaching for her throat .
Ruby activated her semblance and dashed away, hoping to lead it into the hallway, or at least away from her teammates, but she hadn’t even made it more than a foot before she felt something grab her and redirect the momentum of her semblance to force her to crash into the wall. With how fast she’d been going, however, this caused her to crash through the wall. The defiant part of her admitted that even in the monster’s attempt to stop her from getting outside, she’d still managed it, but the rest of her was screaming ‘ it grabbed me out of my semblance. It shouldn’t be able to do that! ’
Ignoring both of those parts of her, she focused on the task at hand; she needed to get this thing outside. Her scythe wasn’t great for tight spaces like this, and she needed to give her teammates time to gather their weapons and join her. Ruby began to run further down the hallway, only glancing back when she heard the door to the dorm explode behind her. The hound was most certainly after her, as it didn’t seem to be paying a moment’s attention to her team.
She fired a round behind her at the beast, opting to conserve as much ammo as she could. After that shot, she only had eight more, and she did not have a spare magazine on her, only being in a tank top and gym shorts at the moment.
“Come on, ugly!” Ruby shouted back, swinging her head back around as the door to the exit approached. She glanced back again, seeing the hound walking–not running–quickly towards her, its massive legs allowing it to move almost as quick as Ruby was while she was in a full sprint. She shuddered to think about how fast this thing would be if it ran.
Either way, the creature was gaining on her and she’d never make it outside if she kept running straight for the exit. Deciding that a deviation from her current path was her best course of action, Ruby quickly turned and shoulder charged the closest door to her. It flew open, and she found the dorm she’d entered thankfully empty.
Activating her semblance once more, Ruby bashed through the window and floated down to the ground, spinning on her feet to face where she knew her pursuer would be coming from and expanding her weapon into its scythe form. The plaza that Shade’s dorm buildings surrounded wasn’t massive by any stretch of the imagination, but it was large enough that Ruby had enough clearance to swing her scythe without hitting it on any walls.
The window on third floor Ruby had come from suddenly exploded, sending bricks careening down towards her. She instinctively covered her face to shield from the debris, wishing in the next moment that she hadn’t. The ground shook and the hound was on her in that moment. Ruby slashed Crescent Rose at the monster, staggering it ever so slightly. If anything, she felt like she’d just made it angrier, because in the next moment, it swatted her scythe out of her hands and latched its fingers around her throat. Ruby gasped as she felt her feet leave the ground, trying in vain to provide air to her starving lungs. She clawed at the beast’s massive hand, wanting so desperately to breathe.
She could feel her aura bowing underneath the hound’s strength, and she wondered if this was how she died. No , she thought, Salem wants me alive. She wasn’t sure if that thought was more or less terrifying.
“ Kill… the… girl !” The monster growled. Ruby felt its grip tighten on her throat, and she began to more desperately swat at its hand, punching and elbowing now.
“Get away from her!” A shotgun blast sounded out at Yang’s request. The hound flinched at the attack, growling and tossing Ruby haphazardly at the nearest building. Her aura took the brunt of the impact as Ruby passed through the brick wall and collided painfully with a bookshelf. She was pretty sure that her aura had broken when she hit the wall, because her back protested loudly with pain and she could taste blood in her mouth. Her left shoulder felt very dislocated at the moment as well and her head throbbed.
Her vision swam and for a moment she felt as though she was about to pass out, but she fought the inclination to rest and forced herself to her feet. Her ribs were screaming with pain, as was just about every other part of her body. Someone wrapped a gentle arm around her and assisted her to her feet. Ruby glanced with a shuddering breath to see her faunas teammate helping to coax her along.
Distantly, Ruby could hear the sounds of her other teammates attempting to fend off the hound, knowing full well that it was too powerful for them. She hoped that it would be satisfied with knocking them out of the fight and not killing them, but she couldn’t see the battle. Blake was leading her further into the dorm building, likely to the back way out. A big part of her didn’t want to abandon Weiss and Yang, but she also knew she was in no condition to fight.
The building above them shook, and for a moment Ruby thought it was coming down on top of her. That would be very much like Salem; drop a building on Ruby just to get rid of the minor inconvenience that she had been. Instead, the ceiling split open and the hound landed in front of the red and black members of Team RWBY. Ruby couldn’t help the scream that left her throat, but she wasn’t sure if it came from a place of terror, or from the fact that she violently jostled her injuries when the sudden appearance of the monster made her jump.
The beast swiped a massive claw at Ruby, but Blake was in front of her before it could strike, using both the sheath and blade of Gambol Shroud to hold back the attack.
“ Run !” She shouted, her voice strained from the effort of holding back such strength.
Ruby wasn’t sure where she should run to, considering for a moment running to the safety of her other teammates, but thought better of it. She didn’t want to lead this thing back to them and put them in further danger. So, instead, she limped past the hound as fast as she could, trying to run down the long hallway and to the back door.
Her bare feet were protesting from all the running and stepping over and on rubble and debris. She was sure she’d stepped on something sharp at some point with the pain that shot up her leg, but she pushed on.
She was just a couple feet away from the exit when she heard Blake cry out. The creature roared, and Ruby knew its attention was back on her. She hoped Blake was okay, but the only thing she could do now was try to lead this thing away from her friends. Almost diving for the handle, Ruby only felt momentary relief, as when she tried to push the door open, it didn’t budge. Something was holding it shut.
The Hound’s heavy footsteps sounded behind her, getting closer and closer, and when Ruby turned to inspect her options, she saw that it was bearing down on her, running full tilt at her. Ruby gasped and turned back to the door, pushing down the handle and bashing her injured shoulder against it. She had no choice but to ignore the blinding pain; there was no time to switch shoulders. Each time, she threw herself harder against the door, but the beast was getting closer. It was just a few feet away now.
Finally, Ruby threw herself as hard as she possibly could, and the door began to move with a loud, metal creak. She continued to slowly push the door until it was open just enough for her to slip through, into the stairwell.
Ruby could see the exit now, the metal door promising safety where she knew there would be none. Once she stepped out there, she’d be more vulnerable than ever, but she had to lead this thing away, or at the very least not go down without a fight.
She dashed towards the exit, wincing away as the pipe that had been blocking the door sprayed her with dust. She glanced momentarily at the fallen pipe, realizing in that instant that she needed very badly to get out of that stairwell before the monster bashed the wall down. Ruby bolted for the exit, barely having gotten the door open before the wall behind her was demolished. The creature roared again, and Ruby felt heat prick at the back of her neck as she was launched forward.
Ruby landed on her chest just a few feet away from the now burning building, gasping for breath. She rolled herself onto her back and sincerely prayed that the ignition of the dust had killed the beast, especially with how close it was. She knew better than to have hopes like that, especially if she’d been fortunate enough–and not that much further from the blast–to survive.
Heavy footsteps sounded out, and Ruby lifted her head. Sure enough, the Hound was slowly walking from the fire, flames covering just about every inch of its body. Its face was mostly exposed now, showing Ruby one silver eye and a painful looking grimace. The top right portion of the creature’s face was still covered in the black ooze that made up the creatures of Grimm, and there was no hair on the top of its head. Whether that was due to the person inside being bald, or them having lost their hair in the transformation, Ruby didn’t want to think about. She was fairly certain that its lips and nose had been removed in the transformation, however, as its gums were exposed all the way past the space where a nose shaped hole sat.
“Hey, fugly!” A voice shouted out as a wall of ice rose between Ruby and the Hound.
Her head whipped to her right to see whoever had stolen the beast’s attention to be greeted by the sight of her father and uncle, standing on either side of a floating Winter.
The ice wall shattered, sending shards of the sharp element flying towards Ruby. She yelped and her skin stung as it scratched and stabbed her, but the pieces were too small to cause anything more than small cuts. Ruby clambered backwards on her elbows, her feet scratching to find purchase on the ground and push her further away from the beast.
Harbinger flew into Ruby’s vision, slicing The Hound’s reaching claw off and shielding her from any further attacks. Ice shards flew down from the sky, stabbing into the creature’s skin and making it roar angrily. The roar was abruptly cut off by Taiyang’s fist colliding with its jaw.
“Grab your daughter and go!” Winter shouted.
Qrow swiped at the monster again before adopting a defensive stance and standing between his niece and the monster that wanted to hurt her.
“No offense,” Taiyang shot back, kicking at the hound’s knee and causing the joint to bend backwards, “but this thing hurt my girls! I’m gonna break every bone in its Goddamn body!”
Ruby fought the pain to stand, bones aching and burning by the time she got to her hands and knees. Carefully, she brought her left leg forward, her toes catching on the pavement and allowing her to begin to stand straight up. Her struggle was made for nothing the moment she put weight on her right leg. Ruby cried out and fell back to the ground.
“Tai,” Qrow chastised, dodging a swipe from the hound’s one remaining hand. The other was slowly growing back, but it wouldn’t be a problem for the moment. “Ruby’s leg is broken .” The girl’s father seemed to pause at that, giving a worried look over at his daughter.
The image of her writhing on the ground in pain seemed to be all he needed to compel him to run to his daughter’s aid. Taiyang scooped her into his arms in a moment, careful not to jostle any of her injuries. She felt so small in his arms. She always had, but this was the only time it felt wrong. The last time he’d held her like this was when Beacon fell, and she’d felt heavier then.
Ruby shook in his arms, but whether that was from terror, pain, or the chill that surrounded the area whenever Winter used her maiden powers, he didn’t know, but he did his best to hold her close and keep her warm as he began to flee.
“I got ya, Rubes,” Tai tried to reassure her and do his job as her father. “You’re gonna be just fine.”
Ruby gave no reaction to his words, and he glanced down at her. Her eyes were shut and her cheek was pressed against his chest, jostling slightly with each step.
“Rubes?” Still, no reaction. Taiyang cursed under his breath; she’d passed out. He worried that it was from shock and not her body shutting down from the intense pain, and he found his pace quickening.