The ad is surprisingly gaudy.

Things like these usually don't show up in Faunus-friendly newspapers, but to be fair, Blake doesn't spend a lot of her free time scouring the classifieds to know this as an absolute fact. She usually reads the obituaries of deceased Faunus while simultaneously trying to ignore advertisements for recent White Fang recruitment meetings. She'd been present at all of them, of course. She doesn't need to be reminded anymore of it.

But this ad on the sixth page of Feral Fliers - Blake considers cancelling her subscription once in a while just because of the name - is eye-catching for all the wrong reasons. The font is loopy and twisted to the point of illegible, embellished with lopsided flowers and vines. At the bottom of the quarter-page ad, a hastily sketched pair of luminous eyes hang like twin moons.

Ruby Rose - Spiritual Scryer and Vision Channeler

Ruby Rose was born with a caul: now let it be a gift to you. Her silver eyes will see your past, your present, your future, and everything far beyond. Repair the shattered and reunite the disconnected; align your vibrances and chakras to prime living conditions. Set yourself to pasture in the spiritual world of Aura and Semblance like you've never known before. Let Ruby Rose guide you through your visions and help you interpret them firsthand.

Below that, a phone number is written in print, bordered with a few more strings of clumsy graphite flowers.

Before Blake can dwell any longer about the pure absurdity of the blurb - what the hell is a caul anyways - her Scroll buzzes impatiently on the kitchen counter. She already knows that it's Adam. His teeth have been itching these days, and he's gone prickly while waiting for a new kill. Blake stares at her Scroll for a long moment before the screen lights up again, this time with far more punctuated intent.

She slides forward onto her elbows, groaning.

The solitary click of fingernails against front teeth do nothing to soothe her tension; in fact, it only does more to agitate. She wills herself to take deep breaths, inhaling the scent of sweat-tinged skin and limp hair that's already lost the scent of shampoo. Her body feels unfamiliar whenever she gets ready to kill someone. It's like stepping out of her skin and putting on a different one that she's outgrown so long ago.

It's almost like playing God in a society that's left religion behind centuries ago. She's not important enough to shear off branches of someone else's family tree.

The gloves come off first, like they always do.

The soft leather's already gone cold; Vale's pressing towards the edge of winter already, and wind chill slips in between the spaces between her thin fingers when she walks into her apartment. Adam had invited her to celebrate their success tonight at the local dive, but she turned down the offer. She's just… too tired to function these days.

He'll probably get shit faced and slip into that place of madness in his head that she's grown to hate. She'll probably pass out on the ground with her knees curled up to her chest, wheezing out the exhausted ends of a panic attack.

Blake's body's giving out on her, but she's going to keep living until it pulls her apart. She lights a fire quickly, striking the match with her teeth. A quiet, tentative breath leaves her lips, and she presses her forehead against the mantle of the fireplace, shivering when warmth licks up her spine, steepling from the inside of her stomach and starts to spread upwards and outwards.

Blake crumples the gloves into her clenched fists, unflinching when red blood slicks up her fingers, dyeing the flimsy divots of her fingerprints into thin, painted arcs. She stands slowly, steeling her nerves, and tosses the gloves behind her shoulder without a second thought.

The scent of burning leather and flimsy fabric lining is unpleasant and heady. Blake leaves her living room behind to wander into the kitchen. She pauses, sparing a glance towards the abandoned newspaper on the counter. Against her better judgement, she drags it closer to her and retrieves her phone from the pocket of her coat. It's more of a magnetic pull rather than a real willingness to call the number, so she picks up her phone and tries to see past the smeared blood on the screen of her Scroll.

In hindsight, calling a fortune teller at 10:45 on a weeknight isn't the most plausible idea, but Blake always stays a bit off kilter after a kill. It scares her how long it takes for her to recalibrate these days. She'd rather have the vomiting and swimming head than the unfailing numbness that breaks her down from the inside out. Adam bounces back quicker than ever these days. She thought she'd be just like him when she was younger, but now that she's older, she can't help but see how startlingly different they are.

By the third ring without an answer, a wave of common sense washes over Blake like a parting veil, and then she's suddenly not too sure if anyone on the other end of the phone will pick up so late. She's just about to hang up when the dial tone stops drilling a relentless hole into her head.

"Ruby Rose's, how can I help you?"

"I need to make an appointment," Blake says, no prelude or hello or anything polite or cursory. It's more of an avalanche of noises than an actual sentence. Tactless, tactless, she's always been clumsy.

"You don't beat around the bush, do you?" The girl on the other end asks, with the hint of a laugh in her voice. She's distractingly and devastatingly chirpy, which is about the last thing that Blake needs filtering through her ears right now.

A rustling of papers and pens comes across flimsy thin and staticky through the phone receiver. "We've got a few openings two days from now. Noon or 4:30 in the afternoon, it looks like. Is this your first time pursuing personal visions? If that's the case, then I'd personally go for the noon appointment. There's plenty more time to chat with Ruby about all of the stuff that comes up in your visions…"

Blake watches the gloves disintegrate into ash and embers in her hearth.

"Noon then." Blake says blankly. Her head's starting to ache.

The girl giggles and clicks the top of a ball-point pen. It might as well be a pistol churning a bullet into place.

"Aaaaaall right!" She's on the same level of chipper as a cheerleader, Blake thinks sadly. "We've got you penciled in for noon on Thursday. We're an hour away from Vale, kind of at the base of the mountains. Exit Coin and then five minutes off the turnpike. If you get lost, just look for a sign with a pair of silver eyes. Have a good night!"

The girl hangs up first, not even waiting for a goodbye. Blake's grateful for brevity.

Blake sets her phone down and spreads her bloodied fingertips against the granite countertop. She presses her cheek down, trying not to shiver when the chilled marble meets her skin. Her eyes shutter closed, and she silently begs her body to let her sleep. Just to sleep, just to chase dreams.

Blake isn't all that fond of alleys. So it's pretty fitting that this clairvoyant or medium or psychic priestess or whatever has her brick-and-mortar established down the narrowest backstreet that Blake's ever seen. The buildings are practically slanting diagonally towards each other, inclined rooftops connected by barely visible strings of laundry line.

Blake looks down the street with undisguised disdain. Alleys are usually where someone gets jumped or goes to jump someone else. She has a Damascus steel knife strapped to the inside of her boot, but to be truthful, she doesn't feel like sinking that hilt-deep into anyone's ribcage right now. Not after last night.

In all honesty, Blake has no idea where she is, but the village that she's wandering around is of an adequate size and isn't as deserted as she thought it would be. There's a natural source of water running through the area, freshwater and clear from the mountains, and the homes in the area are established and spread on large land plots. It's not a ghost town, which helps her relax a little.

Against her better judgement, she shoves her hands into the pockets of her jacket, tucks her chin close to her collar, and hurries down the uneven road before stopping under a sign swinging in the wind. She looks up and squints into half-covered sun. Someone's painted the same silver eyes that she saw in the newspaper onto splintery, weathered wood and tacked it up onto rickety screws. The sign hangs parallel to a walkway cobbled together with shattered pieces of clay pottery.

The place isn't a shop or a store, but rather a squat, shambling house that looks more like a shrine to yellow paint and windchimes than an proper place for living. The front lawn sprawls over with potted cacti and flowering succulents and tangled weeds and a stacked tower of pottery about to topple over. The front door of the house dangles off of rusted hinges, and the flyscreen's abandoned on the porch with all of its wire and woven strands frayed and moth-chewed. Blake approaches slowly, making sure all of her weight is balanced evenly on the groaning deck.

She peers in and walks in on light feet.

Inside, the home is shadowed and shuttered, and it's only mildly uncomfortable when her eyes start adjusting to the dimness. She can see the dust motes swirling in angular sunlight now, the soft looking couches and throw blankets that have been shoved haphazardly into one half of the cramped room. There's a narrow counter built against the side of the left wall, brightly painted driftwood boards cluttered over with small trinkets and miniature bronze statues of pagan goddesses and saints. Blake brushes her fingers against the cracked wood of the desk and takes a deep breath of the air.

Warmed sage and cold air, faint mold, and the watery, iron smell of rusted metal.

She looks over the counter, notes a cardigan draped across the back of an empty chair, leading Blake to believe that an employee's abandoned their post by the door to grab lunch. She hasn't eaten anything all day; nerves have kept her from even thinking about food. Her stomach is in tangled knots, and it's all she can do to keep her hands from mirroring her insides.

Blake peers at the back of the house, leaning forward onto her toes. There's an open door at the end of the long entrance hallway, silhouetted by a few cold strands of grey-gold light.

She walks, steps tentative, waiting to hear the carpet crunch under the heavy treads of her boots rather than rush forward without care. As she gets closer to the door, sunlight tapers faster, cutting diagonal strips along the ground. Blake stands in the doorway, furrowing her eyebrows and blinking into the bright light, more than slightly confused at the scene before her.

She's standing at the threshold of the home's backyard, staring outwards into a natural oasis. There's a larger assortment of flora back here, garden plots overflowing with actual flowers that survive on more than sunlight and sparse drops of water. Dark blossoms of columbine edge the thick bunches and thickets of honeysuckle that look a little late on their tending. A perfectly circular pond lies at the farthest end of the backyard, and there at the perimeter, a young woman crouches, gazing pensively into the water.

Half of her slight frame slants so far forward that she could fall into the water if she leaned forward any further. She has the stature of a sickly child, what with her thin, brittle limbs playing substitute for blossoming hips and breasts. Pale lace wraps like a bind from her collar to knee, the fabric fraying in some spots more than others. Burnished silver rings cluster and catch in the light from where they sit on her thin fingers.

She seems completely oblivious to Blake's presence.

The girl sits even further forward, balancing perfectly on the tips of her bare toes, and sinks her fingers into the water. The pond reacts mercurially, responds to her touch by sending forceful ripples from its silver tipped borders with renewed vigor. Blake walks closer to make sure the light isn't playing tricks on her, and watches in rapturous silence. It's akin to observing a small phenomenon, an inverted tsunami.

The water surges forward, threatening to splash onto the backwater rocks with its sheer force, before stopping to gently kiss the tops of pale knuckles.

"Do you always walk that quietly?"

It takes Blake a moment to realize that the other woman's actually addressing her, not speaking to her own mirror image.

"Or is that your instinct telling you that you need to be careful?"

The second question has a thread of amusement woven into it, careful and deliberate enough that Blake knows it's intentional. Ruby Rose withdraws her hand from the pool of water so that she can face her visitor, and an overwhelming feeling of unease commandeers the Faunus's nerves.

Her infamous eyes aren't just silver - they practically lack pupils. Needle thin points of black are the only counterpoints to otherwise crystalline irises, and even then, they're barely noticeable. The corneas are slightly off-white, only light enough to differentiate the choroid from its neighbor. Her eyes seem to be swallowing light instead of reflecting it.

Uncertainty rises in Blake's sternum like waves.

Her gaze is distractingly, terrifyingly blank.

One of Blake's greatest advantages lies in her ability to read people like a hand of cards, but Ruby is impossible to decipher. She's about as telling as a statue, and even those are created with a purpose to convey. Ruby seems to have been formed without a story to tell. It makes sense, though. Perhaps she was made to tell other people's stories instead of her own. Her body language reads lax and at ease, whereas Blake can feel her own shoulders creeping up towards her ears in a primal show of defensive posturing.

Ruby looks her up and down once. There's no discernible reaction or a trace of one on her face, but maybe it's because the motion is practiced, clinical - more of an assessment than a judgement. Blake hopes so, at least.

"I think it's the latter," Ruby says softly, answering her own posed question. Her voice is as soft and reedy as pan pipes, and her words sink in with delay before hitting like a shiver - all at once. It's all childlike wonder and withheld humor when she decides to talk. Her hand is still dripping pond water onto the dirt banks, creating small floods in mounds of soil.

Blake swallows roughly and forces out a stilted reply.

"Is it rude of me to say both?" The whole thing comes out drier than she intends, which happens too often to be coincidental, but Ruby's reaction is anything but affronted. In fact, it's quite the opposite of what Blake expects from her.

Ruby laughs.

She has a laugh like a gunshot - there's no time between clicking her chambers into place and firing - and her aim is true. Honest to God, Blake feels the sound hit her square in the chest. It's not a sound, but a tangible sensation that's all at once dizzying and off putting and disconcerting.

The feeling combined with those transparent eyes, the subtle twist of lips that's both amused and cautious at the same time, has Blake halfway to her knees in sheer confusion. Who is this girl? She only just notices that there's a chain of amaranth flowers spread along Ruby's collar, covering the stretch of skin that's been left bare by the harsh, unforgiving neckline of her dress. The blossoms are the exact same shade of red as her hair. It looks effortless somehow, unorchestrated and natural, and she only realizes that she's been standing there silently for a good few minutes, staring, when Ruby clears her throat.

"I'd ask if you're alright, but it's pretty clear that you're not. And you seem like the kind of person who doesn't have time for stupid questions." She reaches for an array of crystals at her side, twists her fingers in quiet contemplation before choosing a raw Dust stone, clouded over with unrefined power. The center color shifts, hungrily searching for an Aura source to latch onto. As soon as the core of the stone turns scarlet, Ruby sets it on the surface of the water.

Blake sucks back a surprised breath between clenched teeth. Ruby Rose became more of an enigma by the growing minute.

The Dust crystal that Ruby had had in her hand hadn't been purified, she was sure of it. It was a scientific truth that the less filtered Dust was, the more powerful the propellent became. Added energy ranged from a bit more kickback to hunting rifles to fully mobilizing nuclear bombs.

The one that Ruby had been holding could probably fuel Remnant's entire armada without any complaints.

"Come sit down," Ruby says, cutting her eyes across Blake for a moment before turning to watch the crystal travel the pond. It hasn't sunk somehow. Instead, it floats along like a small boat, collecting errant strands of Aura and Semblance that have bled into the water, most likely from previous sessions that Ruby's conducted. With the same air of unaffected transcendence, Blake doesn't know. She walks to the pond's edge, folds her legs under her and bows her head like she used to when she met with the White Fang elders.

They're gone now. All gone. Just her and Adam, princes of something that's unraveling out of control too fast for them to handle. She tries not to choke out a nervous laugh by default and urges the thought away.

Ruby stays silent, albeit watchful of her pond.

"What's your name?"

"Blake," She answers immediately. "I'm Blake."

Ruby smiles appreciatively and falls back into her pious silence.

Faded colors soak into the peaks of the crystal, until the water is clear of any trace of magic once more. The air smells different, harsher and clearer like tea tree oil. Ruby slips her hand back into the water, coaxing the Dust back to her. Obediently, the water bends to her will, warping into sun-warmed puddles, until the clouded stone returns to rest in the palm of her hand. Ruby blots it free of water with the hem of her dress and sets it back onto the leather mat next to her.

"Why are you here, Blake?" Ruby asks. Blake sits at her left, so Ruby has to tilt her head to make eye contact with her, which only makes Blake hope that she'd just forgo the trouble and look away. A fall of dyed hair criss crosses across Ruby's eye. It doesn't help soften the unnatural quality of her features, only makes her right eye appear bloodstained.

"Isn't that your job? To tell me why I'm here?" Blake asks. The joke is weak and poorly delivered, and this time, humor is lost in the air. Ruby frowns slightly.

"I'm a scryer, Blake, not a god." Ruby's voice clips against Blake's front lobe. The pond ripples in front of her, and Blake wonders for a moment if it's possible to feel reprimanded by a body of water. "What's troubling you?" She peers into Blake's eyes like they're her only source of truth, sifting through them for her answers.

To her own disdain, Blake averts her eyes, submits like a coward to stare down at her hand sinking into the pond bank's soil. It's chilled and gritty against her fingertips, already bunching in clumps beneath her nails. The slight annoyance is more tolerable than having Ruby read her like an open book.

Another hair trigger laugh - Blake feels this one in her stomach, and the sensation is still palpable through the shame and embarrassment heating her veins an uncomfortable temperature.

"I guess I can only hope that the visions will be nice and tell me, since you don't want to cooperate." Ruby says, her tone desultory. "The pond is a conduit for your visions. Think of it as me looking into a mirror image of your mind." Ruby smiles knowingly when Blake furrows her brows, trying to understand her without letting her slight fear betray her. She turns to face the water once more, before gesturing Blake to do the same.

For reasons unknown to even her, Blake obliges without contest. "Close your eyes." Warm fingers settle at the space between her shoulder blades, firm and insistent, urging her to hunch even further forward. "Breathe deep." Ruby says, a hint of a giggle hidden in her words. She's found amusement in ordering around the Faunus girl in front of her, which says a lot about her, at least. Blake's breath wavers when Ruby's touch disappears from her skin, replaced by the ghost of steady pressure.

Every muscle in Blake's body strains, tensile and sturdy with stress. Her nerves are strung as high and wide as telephone wires, crackling with what seems like an excess of conductive energy. She feels ready to burn. Unsurprisingly, Ruby notices that she's pulled about as taut as wrenched rope. Her laugh comes again, softer this time, but the pitch of it doesn't affect the impact it has on Blake.

"Relax, Blake."

Obedience has never been one of Blake's strong suit, but Ruby's encroaching Aura wills her to borrow the calm that she already has an excess of. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Blake forces herself to let out as many full body exhales as she can handle. Ruby hums her muted approval, a soft purr muffled through slightly parted teeth.

"The visions will come and go as they please, Blake. The first one will hit you like a freight train, so try and be prepared. And if it seems unbearable, just remember that your visions are going through me first. It's most likely worse for me than it is for you." Ruby giggles at her own small joke. Her voice is a welcome salve to the prickling anxiousness sparking along the backs of Blake's hands. She sounds slightly distracted, a bit far away and predisposed.

Blake nods reluctantly, but in all honesty, she has no idea what she's gotten herself into, or if she even wants to be here right now. A tinkering of bottles and herbs interrupts the stream of consciousness litany that she's reciting in her head. Try not to hyperventilate, keep breathing, you're alright, you're alright, you're alright. Ruby murmurs, more of an assurance to herself than anything directed towards Blake.

"All right..."

Blake braces her fingers in the soft dirt, readying herself. Questions, doubts, skepticism all flood her mind. Before she can voice any of them with a side of poorly delivered and unwanted sarcasm - she's literally just about to open her mouth - her head spins as it has never had before. It's like the world is halving itself in her mind, or like the aftermath of the worst uppercut she's been on the receiving end of, or like a grenade that's been set off near the hollow points of her skull. The feeling is so violent and turbulent that she jolts backwards, keeled over with her back pressed into the cold ground.

For a moment, Blake has absolutely no idea what her name is or where she is; her world is one simple thing that overwhelms and drowns.

Red floods the backs of her eyelids, and everything in her ears narrows into a single channel, zeroing in on one point of clarity. Ruby's voice starts out tinny, but slowly starts to overpower the rush of static in Blake's ears. She can feel her limbs seizing, and the ragged breaths that she's gasping for don't even feel like they're registering in her body.

"Red - lust, power, war. There's something inside of you battling for dominance over someone or something else. There's too much of this in your life, Blake. Too much war, it seems like." The vision is nothing else but a color so aggressive that it makes anger pool and loosen deep into her veins. It shouldn't relax her, but it does. Rage is second nature to her, after all.

The shade of red shifts and miniaturizes into a condensed pool of blood, left long enough in the sun that it's starting to coagulate and gummy on a wood slatted floor. The sweet heavy scent of blood makes Blake's mouth water, even though it disgusts her how savage her primal reaction has to be. The whole experience is a memory that feels tampered with. It's too vivid and lush to be real, she reminds herself.

It's not real, it's not real, it's not real.

"... How many people have you killed, Blake?"

The vision doesn't allow any more long seconds for Blake to catch up, no allotted time left to even answer Ruby's question. The blood now sits at the feet of three snarling monstresses, teeth pulled back so dramatically that their jowls froth and foam over with rabid spit. They hold court over a faceless corpse, licking their teeth slick and red.

The women's profiles, their ragged wings, and gory scrabbled feathers are all too familiar, copy and paste characters that Blake remembers from her childhood storybooks. She searches ravenously, trying to remember their names. Clutching at the tail end of memories isn't something that Blake's very familiar with.

"Of monsters all, most monstrous this; no greater wrath." Ruby murmurs. Of course she quotes Virgil, Blake thinks irritably. "Harpies." Six yellow eyes glint in response, the macabre bones of their faces stretching into thin, hungry smiles. "A deadly storm. Harpies are the sickness in your life, your divine retribution, your mark of Cain." Steel-sharp talons curve downwards with rapacious intent. "The singular curse that you can't run from."

Blake hisses through her teeth, trying to will the image away faster. They are bloodied, mouths painted with the stain of battle, and it's more than obvious that they're out for the kill. And then, somehow, in the strange way these visions tend to change, the cruel curl of the harpies' hair turns into the weeping crown of a lilac sprig, pinned without honor to a black lapel.

How familiar.

"A cutting of lilac - early death and mourning." Ruby pauses. "Your parents."

It's not a question.

Blake clamps her bottom lip between her teeth, digging hard enough that she can feel the soft flesh of her mouth giving way to her teeth. She screws her eyes shut. They'd left behind a faulty legacy when they died. God knew that if her parents were around, she'd be different. Everything would be different.

Or maybe everything would be the same. Maybe Blake was the one who always changed. Maybe no one could save her in the end.

Ruby giggles, the sound warped and faulty through the connection between them.

"I can see them." She says, almost incredulously. A feeling in Blake's chest flounders and seizes for an anchor. A full, billowing emotion starts up in her ribs. She wants to see them, press her hands to their cheeks and tell them everything that she should have said. She misses them in twisting torrents, her mother, strong and vain, her father, flawed but fearless. She is both the worst and best of them, as any child is.

"You were so young when they passed." Ruby says sadly.

The way these visions change is starting to muddle with Blake's mind, because the way a lamenting curve of lilac can change to a golden sun without looking like it's straight out of an LSD trip is baffling to her. The star glows brilliantine and eye-searingly bright light into a colorless universe. "The sun symbolizes passion and lifeblood, it's when you're standing still while everyone else is moving. Your purpose and plan is up in the air right now."

Blake's starting to ease into the ebb and flow of the visions now, but as soon as the sun fades away and returns in the black wide eye of a wolf pup, she tries to drag herself out of the comfort zone. Ruby coos at the animal, but the affectionate noise tapers off when she realizes that the wolf is both caged and injured, eyes downcast and forlorn. Dark fur is matted over with spilt blood from lost battles, teeth bared tetchily, but it's simply too tired to look intimidating.

"Well, that's pretty blatant," Ruby quips, her voice dripping with calculated sarcasm. "The Runt of the White Fang." How did she know? Ruby tests the phrase around in her mouth, tasting all of the protruding corners and edges. "Is that you, Blake?" Blake's skin stings suddenly. "Your own kind don't even accept you. You're... alone."

The wolf pup whines high and weeping, and closes its eyes in pain.

"Please…" Blake croaks. She doesn't even know what she's asking for, but it's not this. Her words sound so unfamiliar and raggedy now, dry and raspy and caked over with fog and thickness. Looking at the animal in front of her wrenches her insides, keeps her heart in her throat and feels it itch there. "Please - " Ruby's voice is lost in the tepid air between them, but somehow, Blake knows that she's suddenly frantic. There's panic, a pure drowning feeling that arrives in blinding waves, and then her eyes are rolling back into her head and there's no one to beg her freedom from.

There's a soft melody of porcelain against glass playing when Blake comes to.

She's spread out on a couch in an unfamiliar room, and Ruby's across the room, clinking teacups together. They're looped through her delicate little pinky fingers like treasures, and she's fiddling with the saucers, tracing the edges in concentric circles with her fingernails. There's a small kettle sitting atop a plugged in burner, and steam whistles noisily from the top of its small nozzle.

"You're back," Ruby hums into the soft air. Blake wonders how she knows; Ruby has her back fully turned, and she has her hands busy with a metal tin of loose leaf tea now, completely distracted. "I thought you were never going to wake up." Something with that caliber of creepy shouldn't sound as sweet as it does, but Ruby makes it semi saccharine.

"How long was I out?" Blake asks carefully, swinging her feet onto the carpet and groaning when white light floods her eyesight in painful, bright spots. She cradles her head in her interlocked fingers, blinking until the color fades from her eyes.

"An hour, maybe two? I'm not good with time." Ruby shrugs flippantly, pouring hot water into the small cups. "But I can say that I've made a paying customer pass out now." Blake tries not to feel too embarrassed. Ruby turns with two mismatched teacups with patterned saucers in her hands. "First time for everything, right?"

Blake accepts the offered cup. She watches as Ruby perches on an easy chair in front of her. She doesn't sit fully, just nests like a bird on her haunches with her white dress fluttering around her knees.

"To popping cherries," Ruby raises her teacup and tips it in Blake's general direction. Blake accepts the toast with a grunt. The tea is scalding, and easily burns away a layer of skin on her tongue. The pain grounds her, so she savors the feeling. Ruby stares at her, blinking owlishly before drinking her tea. When she surfaces, she sets her teacup back onto the chipped saucer, licking away stray drops from the edges of her pursed mouth.

"Your visions are the worst I've ever experienced, Blake."

It's not what Blake wants to talk about, but Ruby's body language reads adamant. She's leaning forward and her neck's tipped down into a cradle. Blake runs a hand through her hair.

"That doesn't surprise me," She mumbles, bending her head to warm her face against the steam of the tea. Ruby makes a quiet, displeased noise at the back of her throat.

"You're too hard on yourself. I wish you'd lay off." Ruby laments. She sounds like she's addressing a friend, rather than a Faunus who's passed out in her place of business.

"You don't know anything about me." Blake snaps. "You don't know if I deserve to be kind to myself." She forces herself to hold Ruby's fixated, interested eyes and sets her jaw. "And I don't."

Ruby rolls her eyes.

"I should have known you had a taste for the melodramatics. By the way, after you passed out, our mental connection stayed stable for a few more minutes. I hope you don't mind that I went through the last of your visions without you." She finishes off her tea and sets the cup on the arm of her chair. "Too repetitive, if you ask me. Suffering, pain, death, angsty monologuing after getting tangled up in White Fang business, etcetera, etcetera… "

Blake tenses and grinds her teeth.

"You didn't have my permission to do that." She says, a hint of stolid steel cutting clear through her words. Ruby angles her head downwards and gazes at Blake through dark strands of hair. A soft smile graces the corners of her lips.

"That's not what you're mad about, is it, Blake?" She asks. "No, you're mad about the fact that I know more about you than you'd prefer. What's it like being so closed off to the world? Seems lonely. No, it probably is lonely. You live alone, I'm sure of it. And Adam, is that his name? You're going to end up killing him out of exasperation if you don't leave him behind - "

"Don't say his name." Blake snaps. Ruby raises her brows. She takes a steadying breath. "You… don't know me. You don't know who I am, or what I've done, or who I've hurt. And if you did, then you'd know just how wrong you are."

Ruby throws back her head and giggles.

"Blake Belladonna, I hate to break it to you, but you're not as complex as you think you are. You're an orphan, a murderer, a de facto commanding officer of the White Fang, and maybe a future alcoholic in recovery, if you try hard enough. There's nothing else to it, really." Ruby pauses. "You know, Blake, I think you and I are rather similar."

"You and I have nothing in common." Blake spits out. Her fingers are twitching for something to hold onto, and her patience is running thin as it already is.

"I'd say that on first sight, sure. But I think we're both chasing things that are out of reach." Ruby tilts her head. "You've got your freedom, and I'm chasing my dead mother through Aura traces and the last remains of her memories."

Blake sits up, stunned into silence.

"Weren't expecting that, were you?" Ruby's delivery is too light for something too heavy. Blake glances down at her lips, and finally realizes why she's so creeped out by the other girl's smile: it's been practiced so many times that it looks identical every time. Her eyes never warm with real affection.

Blake's apprehension isn't something that can be brushed off like a gnat now. There's nothing but real fear now. Ruby lifts her shoulders and drops them back down, nonchalant and casual. "Suffering is subjective. You think your pain is the worst there is in the world, because it's the only kind that you've ever experienced. I've felt it at all, or at least, most of it."

"Are you saying that my grief is unwarranted?" Blake demands, her tone cold. Ruby shakes her head, lips pursed with a bud of frustration starting to take root.

"Of course that's not what I'm saying." She's managed to stay perfectly even and level-headed through this interaction, which only adds to the frustration that's bubbling at the base of Blake's knuckles. She needs to feel opposing force against her fingers before she fucking loses it. "I guess what I am saying is that… the more that you dwell on it, the bigger the wound gets. Just ease off and try to see it from an objective point of view. You've got a full life ahead of you."

"And you don't?"

Ruby's smile turns secretive and pleased, like she knows something that Blake doesn't. She probably does.

"You really don't know anything about magic, do you?" Ruby huffs out a laugh and watches her feet from where they dangle a good three inches above the carpet, even though she's sitting on the edge of the armchair. She's a china doll waiting to be broken and rearranged. "Clairvoyants have about a quarter of the lifespan of a normal human - even Faunus. Our Aura connections run dry in twenty years and then we're vegetables in wheelchairs, or at least until someone puts us down."

There's thoughtful quiet, and then it's broken.

"You're even more cursed than I am," Blake says incredulously. She barks out a harsh laugh, all sharp edges and mean humor. Ruby just smiles wider, eyes turning up at the edges.

"It's all subjective," She says slowly, indulgently, and sits back in her chair.

Blake frowns and finishes off her tea, trying to avoid the chase of Ruby's eyes on hers. She feels small and insignificant here, under the expanse of silver eyes.

"Would you kill me, Blake?"

That warrants a split-second response, a full body reaction.

Blake looks up and meets Ruby's eyes.

"Not right now, of course." Ruby hurries to recover her lapse in wording, a bit flummoxed by her own foolishness. She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear and knocks her feet together, showing the first signs of nervousness.

"I've had to talk to my family about what'll happen to me later on. I'm eighteen now. My doctor thinks I have four more years left, and that's if I'm lucky. And they've told me that they'd take care of me - they've always told me that as soon as I forgot who they were, that they'd - " Ruby coughs wetly and wipes at her cheeks, flushed pink. "But they can't, and I know it."

She looks up, and her eyes glint with desperation.

"Do you think that you could do it?" She sounds small and thin. Blake's heard all the pleads before, to be spared, to be given sweet mercy, but she's never had someone ask her to kill them before. "I'm sorry," Ruby pushes her head into her hands. "I'm so sorry. Forget I ever said anything, please."

"I'll do it."

"What?"

Blake presses her lips together and nods once, firm and assured. "I'll do it. You deserve to know that you'll be taken care of." Ruby gasps in disbelief, and then her face opens up and brightens, real and true. It's pure giddy joy etched into every line of her face, and she looks infinitely younger than she really is. It's endearing, really, it is, and for a fleeting moment, it makes Blake realize why people fall in love.

"Do you mean it?" She asks in hushed wonder, fingers pressed to her mouth.

"I do." Blake cracks a small smile. "Four years, you said?"

Ruby nods, palms still cupping her cheeks. She's awestruck; at a loss for words.

Blake reasons with herself. Four years is a long time. Endless, in the way that years are when you're trying to plan ahead. But it's plenty of time for Ruby to live the rest of her life as best as she can. It's plenty of time for Blake to wrap up loose ends. She could leave the White Fang, try to clear her name, and maybe Ruby could be the last death on her hands. Maybe she doesn't have to end this way.

"You have my word."

Ruby giggles, but this time, Blake actually gets to feel the sound leave her chest because the smaller woman's flung herself onto the couch and wrapped her in a bone-crushing hug. The vibration of her laughter seeps straight from Ruby's bones into hers. She smells like clover honey and sweet baby's breath. She hugs tight, she hugs like she's never going to let go. For a split second, Blake doesn't want to be.

"You don't know what it means to me," Ruby whispers, her voice reverent and tremulous. "You'll never know what this means to me," The arms looped around Blake's neck squeeze with an insistence that's undeniable and frantic and scrabbling for sustenance.

Blake's more focused on trying to return this hug without looking like she's never been hugged in her entire life. She settles for wrapping her arms loosely around Ruby's wasp waist and tries not to let her limbs stiffen up instinctually. "I don't think I will," She replies honestly.

It's the most truthful thing that's come out of her mouth in a long time.

Blake leaves the yellow house with her hands shoved into her pockets and her chin tucked into her collar, the exact same way that she arrived. But there's this thing kindling in her chest now, and it reminds her of that feeling when you're not sure if you're about to burst into laughter or tears. She doesn't know what it is, but it feels damn important. It feels monstrous and melancholic all at the same time.

It feels like it could eat her alive if she ignored it for too long.

Blake has this unshakeable feeling that she's left lot of things behind in that house with rickety porch boards, shed five layers under the diligent watch of crystal eyes. She's cut ties to things that she's spent too long dragging around. But in some ways, there's this feeling that she's started something back there too. Something more important than herself.

There's the familiar feeling of loss ringing through her, clear and true, but there's warmth and safety scaring it away and luring it back for a second dance. Blake smiles through starry eyes, half of her mouth upending on itself. She hasn't felt the weight of a future on her shoulders in a long time.