Can a Heart Be Turned to Stone?

"Weiss?" Ruby's voice cracked, pain resonating through the words. Her attention snapped to her teammate, arrow buried in her chest, blood leaking from the wound. Silver eyes clouded by pain, even as she managed a shaky smile. "Are you okay?"

"You dolt." Weiss barely remembered moving, just that, she was suddenly kneeling beside Ruby. It was just like the younger girl, worrying about other people instead of herself. Weiss would begrudgingly admit that he knowledge of medical practices and injuries wasn't good, but Ruby's injury seemed…bad.

Then Ruby was screaming, her body engulfed in a brilliant yellow-orange glow, stretching from the freshly beheaded Cinder to Weiss's partner. As the glow faded, Ruby's eyes slid back into focus, soft whimpers slipping past her lips.

"Ruby?" What had that light been? Based on how loud Ruby had screamed it must have been incredibly painful, Weiss had seen her break limbs in accidents with her Semblance, and shrug it off, leaving the Schnee heiress with the horrible conclusion that in less than a handful of seconds, Ruby had been subject to possibly the most excruciating experience of her life.

"Weiss?" Blood was more clearly staining Ruby's chest now, the fabric of her shirt shimmering with the liquid. "Can you…" She started coughing, rolling sideways, slowly trying to stand up. Kneeling beside her teammate, Weiss slung one of Ruby's arms over her shoulders, supporting most of the younger girl's weight as they stood. Settling her grip on Myrtenaster, Weiss glanced towards Ruby, wondering just what her teammate had in mind. They couldn't go far with that kind of injury.

Fortunately, Ruby had gotten quite good at interpreting Weiss's expressions, and pointed shakily to the elevator, sporting a melted hole in the dead center. Privately, Weiss wasn't sure it would move, but at the very least, it would give Ruby something to lean against. Those first steps were shaking, Ruby's breath coming in ragged gasps. By the time they'd limped the dozen fee to the shattered metal box, Ruby had grown even paler.

"Where now?" Keep calm. Panic wouldn't achieve anything, Weiss knew, even though she could feel the small wad of it in her chest building.

Ruby coughed, wincing in pain. "Bottom?" In was more of a question that a statement, but Weiss figured it was better than nothing. Leaning off of Weiss's shoulder, Ruby managed to support her entire weight on her scythe, as Weiss cast her mind about for the best way to move the elevator.

Pyrrha had no doubt used her Semblance, and Dust only knew what Cinder had done to create the hole in the center. Weiss had no such abilities, and really, her only option was something she had never tested before. In observing Ruby's Gravity Dust rounds, Weiss had been attempting to replicate the feat in her glyphs, without a great deal of success. Still, she was running out of options, and it would have to do. Dropping to one knee, she willed the symbol, a sort of stone gray, to flare above her head, pouring Aura into. With a muffled groan, the car began to move, sliding downwards.

After that, there wasn't as much work required. Just keeping their speed steady, to prevent knocking Ruby down. A few times, Weiss had to reposition her glyph, usually to keep them from speeding up too much. Unfortunately, she wasn't aware how far down to go, and the impact with the eventual ground was harder than intended.

Releasing the glyph, Weiss's collapsed forwards, gasping for breath, bits of darkness pushing into the corners of her vision, a sure sign she had pushed her body beyond any reasonable limit. Taking a deep breath, Weiss forced herself upright. Everything hurt, but she didn't have time to be hurting. Her best friend was hurt, bleeding from an arrow to the chest, and that concern superseded any others.

Or, she had previously had an arrow to the chest. When Weiss turned her attention back to Ruby, she had to hide the visible shook, at the lack of an arrow in her partner's chest. A small patch of bloody skin was visible through the ripped fabric, but the arrow itself seemed to be missing. Bits of fire flickered around the fingers of Ruby's right hand, now pressed to her chest. Their eyes met.

Both girls knew a lie when they saw one, even as they both gave the same unspoken answer to the question in each other's gaze. Pushing herself upright, rapier acting as a crude crutch, Weiss allowed caught Ruby's weight across her shoulders, and they started walking again.

They only made it a few stepped before Ruby was almost falling over, her skin a ghostly pallor. Weiss could only conclude that, whatever she'd done to heal herself, it had only healed the surface injury not the rest. A burst of fear shot down Weiss's limbs.

"Sorry…" Ruby's words were barely a whisper, audible only as a result of the oppressive silence in the…vault, room, wherever they were. The only other noises were footsteps, and the thump of Ruby using her massive weapon as a crutch from the other side. "...Just...down there." Questions flashed around Weiss's head, but a single look at Ruby silenced them. There wasn't time for questions, they could wait for when Ruby was okay.

"Hold still a minute." With Ruby's life possibly hanging in the balance, and not very many better options, Weiss swept Ruby up in to a poor imitation of a bridal carry, almost braining herself with Ruby's scythe.

"Weiss!" Neither of them could really muster up the energy to blush at the situation, her from blood loss, Wiess from utter exhaustion.

"This is faster." That and Weiss wasn't about to let her best friend and partner die. She had been attempting to ignore whatever had happened to Pyrrha, but…well, it wasn't as though she wasn't aware. "And this way you can maybe explain what is going on."

"I…I don't know." She was whispering, pausing every so often between the words to wince in pain. "It's like…there's all sorts of stuff in my head now? Most of it doesn't make much sense… Cinder was...a Maiden? Whatever that means? And Pyrrha was supposed to be one, except Cinder killed someone named Amber…I don't get it..." A painful sounding cough. "That's what the orange glowey thing was."

What? None of this made any sense at all, but Weiss filed it under problems to solve later, as she took in the area of the hallway ahead. A massive swath of stone was seared black, bits of soot clinging to the walls, and pieces of ash still settling to the floor. At the center of the destruction, was a substantially less destroyed circle, surrounding a seared corpse. The smell of burned flesh hadn't lingered, for which Weiss was grateful.

"Cinder…" Ruby mumbled, her head lolling against Weiss's shoulder, eyes sliding more and more out of focus with every step. Weiss shivered unconsciously. Cinder had caused this much damage? How powerful had Cinder been? How powerful was Ruby to have fought Cinder?

Looking beyond the destruction, Weiss frowned. Some kind of apparatus, emblazoned with the symbol of the Atlas Military, which didn't really help Weiss to determine what it's use was. Two pods, which reminded her of something she'd seen in a discussion of cryostasis. The pod in the left had its cover shattered, an arrow buried in the glass, and via that, the chest of a girl. On the right, a second pod, it's lid unblemished and open. Ruby tried to lift her head from Weiss's shoulder, straining for a few moments, before giving up, and letting her check rest on her partner's shoulder once again.

"There." If these Maidens, which Ruby apparently was, has such amazing powers, Weiss wasn't sure why Ruby was in such a bad state, but considering the state of her best friend, asking was not a priority, getting Ruby better was. The small girl was barely able to speak, but she did seem to have some kind of plan… or so Weiss hoped.

Limping to the side of the pod, Weiss set Ruby down at gently as possible. Without anything to support Ruby's head, it lolled to the side, eyes opening and closing slowly, barely focused.

"Green button." Shaking, her hands rose, unclipping her cloak. For a while, she held it over her chest, breath coming heavier and heavier. Then, in a burst of strength, she threw the red cloak over Weiss's shoulders, before collapsing against her. "Take care of Yang and Blake, okay?" It took a while for her to make all the words happen, slurring and rasping as they were.

Weiss could feel the tears on her neck, her arms wrapped around Ruby. She was painfully aware of the other girl shaking, as she leaned down, carefully not to disturb the cloak about her shoulders. Standing upright once more, Weiss's heart continued to race, she might not have known much about anything medicine related, but she knew more than enough to know this was beyond bad.

With a click, the pod sealed, leaving Weiss to stare down at the closed eyes of her best friend, and a pulsating green button on the center console. This wasn't the time for misgivings or questions. This was a matter of Ruby's life of death. Weiss hit the button with perhaps more force than was strictly required.

There was a soft click, machinery whirred to life. Weiss returned her attention to the pod, hand coming to rest on the glass, as if she could will Ruby better, or whatever the machine was doing to work faster.

Ruby's eyes were closed, and motion of her chest barely visible, no matter how hard Weiss stared. Slowly, the surface of the glass began to cool, nothing uncomfortable, but more than enough for Weiss to notice. As the temperature fell further, Ruby's eyes snapped open, for a second, burning that same brilliant silver that they had atop the tower. Her hand came pressing against the glass, lips moving. It was only a sparse few words, but Weiss etched them into her memory, lips parting to reply, when Ruby's hand fell away from the glass, striking the hard bottom of the pod with an audible thump.

Knees giving way, Weiss Schnee slid to the ground, her slight form engulfed by Ruby's cloak, cheek resting on the glass. Soundlessly tears began to fall, rolling down her checks, and freezing against the surface of the glass.

-One More Star-

Weiss shook her head, hand pressed against the surface, as though willing Ruby's to lift up and meet her own. A thin line of blood trailed down her arm, settling over the back of her hand. Shaking her head, the Schnee heiress took another breath. Ruby would be okay. Ruby had to be okay.

The green button clicked as she pressed it. Machinery hissed to life.

There was a distinct sense of having been in this position before, for Weiss, barely holding her tired body upright, waiting, on bated breath for something she barely could explain at the time. Just forced to implicitly trust her teammate.

"Please be okay." It was a hoarse whisper, almost willing it. She'd lost so much…too much. Yang…Blake… probably everyone else by this point. Losing Ruby too…she couldn't.

It took longer for the machine to undo its work, leaving Weiss to lean against it, unable to watch the changes happen, Ruby's cloak pulled tightly about her shoulders. As it always did the relatively light cloth seemed like a leaden weight about her shoulders.

Thirty seconds. Ruby, twirling about a small horde of Grimm, Crescent Rose moving in a literal blur.

Forty-five seconds: The mess that resulted from what passed for Team RWBY studying.

One minute: A weight pressed against her shoulder, Ruby having passed out twenty minutes into whatever movie they'd decided to watch, or Yang had decided they'd watch, over the objections of the rest.

Ninety seconds. She was crying, vaguely aware of the tears spilling onto her bloodstained clothes.

Something clicked above her head. Weiss scrambled back to her feet, spinning about.

Coughing, ragged breathing.

"Weiss?" Her name cracked, and eyes blinked open. For a moment, Weiss felt her chest clench. Ruby's eyes were slightly out of focus, just as they had been, although they weren't half as bleary as months ago when Weiss had last seen her. Straining to smile, Ruby sat up, slowly. "What happened?"

Weiss's smile was shaky, held together by sheer force of will and emotional exhaustion. She didn't even know what to say, words could really explain everything that had happened in just the last hour…never mind months. Instead, she threw herself at her teammate, arms wrapping around Ruby's thin frame, and for the first time since they'd last seen each other, Weiss Schnee broke down completely, letting all the emotional weight that had bene bottling up come free.

It was evident from the beginning Ruby didn't understand what was happening, her arms wrapping back around Weiss, holding the other girl as she cried. As tears slowly ran out, and the shaking that had grasped Weiss subsided, the older girl stepped back a bit, managing a bit more solid of a smile.

Silence stretched on between them as Weiss couldn't bring herself to say the words required, and Ruby not knowing what to say.

Just when Weiss thought she might have found the right words, Ruby winced, one of her hands snapping to rest over her chest, a hacking cough slipping out.

Before Weiss's eyes, her teammate, best friend, seemed to wilt. A moment before, Ruby had barley appeared alive, yet over the course of fifteen seconds, she slumped, shoulders collapsing inwards. Eyes half closing, face scrunching up with obvious pain. Vague orange flames coalesced about her fingertips before sputtering back out.

"Ruby?" Weiss found herself supporting Ruby's entire weight. "Ruby!"

"Weiss?" Thin amounts of silver tracked, back and forth, sloughing over Weiss a few times before centering themselves again. "I'm really cold…" It as a strain to hear the words despite the short distance between them. "I…Weiss?"

"Yes?" Panicking flooded Weiss, reality slowly catching up with her.

"I…" Ruby stumbled over whatever words she wanted to say, slumping forwards onto Weiss's chest once again.

"Ruby?" Terror shot down Weiss's limbs, as a soft orange glow began to suffuse Ruby Rose. "Ruby!"

Fire. The sensation was one of fire. Pain, as well, but the pain was moot. Weiss had felt enough pain, of enough kinds, for the pain to be only a footnote, a last, spiteful hurrah. Her skin glowed, brighter and brighter, as Ruby in turn shone softer and softer.

Knowledge, fragmented bits of other people, hammering at the inside of her skull. Cinder Fall, high pitched insane laughter snuffed out by a blade she never saw. Amber: Held down, power ripped from her, a form of agony so blistering it beggared description, even in this muted third-hand fashion. Dozens of others, snippets so swift that they flashed in and out of focus before she even understood them at all.

Ruby. Sadness, whirling sadness, combined with a low lingering pain, and, somehow, an acceptance. As the flames bled out of Weiss's bones, they were replaced by something else, a softer warmth now, pulsing with a feeling that she had known, had ignored, had pushed away, yet accepted somewhere deep down. Ruby Rose, slumped, unmoving in her arms, yet, she was there, lips curled into a sad little smile, eyes sparkling with moonlit tears. Her lips formed words, words that were forever burned in Weiss's consciousness.

Weiss Schnee screamed.

-One More Star-

She emerged from the Vault, not even knowing where she was walking. Steps fell, nothing graceful, grudging, plodding movements, her legs weight down by intangibles. A soft breeze fluttered the red cloak wrapped around her shoulders, it's tails flicking her heels, the hood, pressing against her checks.

Something clattered in the ruins. Pale fingers flexed, arctic fire snapped upwards. A death scream, then, silence.

Softly, tears plipped against the stonework. High above, stars twinkled.

AN: I am a monster. A fucking monster. For anyone curious, that ending bit? That's what this story was inspired by. The entire point…if I can call it that, of this story, is to psychological destroy Weiss. Because I hate myself, or something like that.

I was gonna just stop right there, but Weiss dragged me kicking and screaming back…and so there is in fact one more chapter. Not sure what one would expect…but onwards ho.

Notes at time of posting: ...Goddamnit. This has been sitting finished for long enough, it's about bloody time I posted it. If there are any major errors, I'll fix them as soon as possible, I'm without my laptop, and this computer is a pain in the ass (and I refuse to use google docs for anything on principle).