Home is Where the Soul Rests

(A/N: This story was my r/RWBY August MonCon entry and WINNER of said writing contest. The theme was "A New Beginning" and had to include at least one member of team RWBY. I hope you enjoy, and God bless)

Dawn broke above Mt. Glenn casting away the darkness and bringing new light to the Kingdom of Vale. Limping and dragging their feet through a war torn field covered in craters and bullet casings was a hooded figure with a tattered red cape following not far behind. She walked leaning on her sniper-scythe just to keep herself upright, and defiantly climbed a gentle hill where a large oak tree grew.

She collapsed against the base of the tree in a sitting position, her left hand resting where her black waist cincher had been stained dark red. Despite her blurry vision she could easily follow the trail of crimson to the sizable puddle not far from the evaporating carcass of a large beast. She tried channeling what little aura she had remaining but despite her decade as a huntress she still wasn't much better at aura manipulation than she was as an underage, inexperienced freshman all those years ago.

Absently her other hand played with the many rips and tears in her flesh that represented too many close calls to count.

"Never again," Ruby rasped, looking up at the radiant sky that thanks to her the local villagers would be able to enjoy for at least another day. The heavens were set ablaze in a fiery, golden light and she half expected to see her sister rocketing over the mountaintops any moment now. Not that she'd be able to actually see it of course...

With a sigh she glanced down at the padded boots that had been a gift for her birthday, but narrowing her eyes she noted the bits of charred flesh and bloodstained rose patterned socks poking through her burned rubber soles.

She had broken her promise to Yang, again, and pushed her semblance and her mother's inheritance too far past her body's breaking point all in the name of accomplishing her mission and protecting a few dozen strangers who didn't even know anyone was there for them. If this was indeed her final mission as a huntress however she had wanted it to be her finest moment and to go out on her terms, not have it taken away from her like what happened to her sister.

Her dull colored eyes closed and she bowed her head, drifting in and out of consciousness as she asked anyone listening to give her strength and perhaps a sign. When her heavy eyelids reopened she half expected to finally see the world in vivid color again but was only met with disappointment by everything still being blurry and in a washed out gray just like her once silver eyes. As for a sign all she got was a broken body and a sniper-scythe too damaged to fold back up properly but still holding itself together out of sheer stubbornness.

"Sorry I couldn't keep up, Crescent," Ruby apologized, caressing the snipe-scythe stained by a black tar-like substance. "I know you wanna keep killing Grimm, but I think that Goliath was my last..."

She smiled at her sweetheart with her crimson aura still shimmering and pulsating around its nicked and gouged blade.

"Oh don't give me that," her voice rose, becoming less haggard and more high-pitched. "If you weren't so big and bulky I could've fit a silencer on you and we wouldn't have had to deal with the thirty foot tall bloodthirsty elephant!"

Crescent Rose remained silent.

"No, I'm not calling you fat! You're just big boned is all." A smile tugged on her lip and she laid the weapon in her lap, running her hands through the metallic threads that had once been solid steel as if they were human hair. "We can still kill the occasional Beowolf back on Patch, alright? But that's it!"

Again the sniper-scythe didn't respond.

"Alright fine! The occasional Beowolf pack and I'll shoot any Nevermores I see. Deal?"

She must've gotten the answer she was hoping for as Ruby closed her eyes imagining not for the first time what retirement would be like. She had spent the better part of her life dreaming of becoming a huntress, but for the past year or so all she dreamed about was what she would do when it was over, even going so far as to fulfill her four year mission quota in just two.

For seemingly her entire life Ruby had been considered young, usually too young for the life she wanted to lead, but while the world she protected still considered her young and still with the rest of her life ahead of her, the twenty-nine-year-old huntress felt every mission in her decade long career as well as her four years of training, not to mention all of her and her team's playful fights that were often more violent than her encounters with Alphas.

She envisioned herself back on Patch living in a cozy cottage just like the one she grew up in, picking strawberries and sitting on the front porch with Zwei living out his final years napping on her lap. Weiss had always said that being raised in the Xiao Long household and later living in the team RWBY dorm room must've taken years off the comfort corgi's too-short life but being surrounded by all that love and powerful aura his entire life seemed to have had the opposite effect as Zwei was still as spry and energetic as ever despite pushing twenty-three.

The longer Ruby thought about a quiet life in the snowy mountains the more her foot began to twitch however, almost as if already restless. She reassured herself that it wouldn't be so bad, and that all of her teammates had adjusted to civilian life.

Weiss, her partner and best friend forever, had retired after only her first tour but had stepped into a world Ruby found much more terrifying than facing down living nightmares. She was now the CEO of her family's company and was committed to restoring the Schnee Dust Company to its former glory, but despite being the richest and arguably most powerful woman on Remnant she still made time for her partner and took her to the premier of every new DSNY movie, even going so far as to perform a private concert just for her of their favorite songs back at their penthouse.

Blake just like Weiss had also retired after her first huntress tour to pursue something Ruby even more admirable. She was now the chieftess of Menagerie's largest city, Kuo Kuana, the same port city she had once wandered aimlessly in the streets of hungry and alone, and was taking great strides to make sure no faunus ever had to grow up the same way she did. She was even working alongside the CEO of the Schnee Dust Company, something no human or faunus ever thought they'd see again after the War of Maidens, to build Menagerie their very own CCT Tower so that the faunus homeland would no longer be cut off from the rest of the world. There was even serious talk of the once lawless territory being officially recognized as 'The Southernmost Kingdom of Menagerie', and as Ruby understood it there was only one name anyone was seriously considering to be its first ever prime minister.

Then there was her big sister, in her mind the greatest huntress to ever live. Yang had been forced to retire before the end of her second tour when she finally met a Grimm tougher and meaner than herself. She'd received the highest honors a huntress could receive, and Ruby had been there to dig the medals out of her hospital room's trash can. For months all her sister did was wish that she'd died in that awful battle, gone out with dignity like too many friends and family, and only stopped trying to finish the job herself when she met the man that made her feel alive again. Together they had the most beautiful little girl anyone had ever seen with a second on her way, and Ruby could think of no better person to take up the mantle of 'SuperMom'. Her big sis had been doing it practically all her life after all.

They were all incredible, every single one of them, and despite the fact that she was arguably the most accomplished and decorated huntress of the past century, Ruby couldn't help still admiring and looking up to her teammates just as she did when she was a silly fifteen-year-old girl.

Ruby lifted her hand from her stomach and saw the bleeding had finally slowed but the pain still hadn't subsided. With an unsteady hand she reached into her now mostly empty ammo belt and fished around with numb fingers until she found a plastic baggie filled with homemade chocolate chip cookies baked for her by SuperMom before she set out on her final adventure.

"I could be a baker," she said dreamily, as though it had been staring her in the face all this time. She took bite of a cookie thinking it over, narrowly missing her fingers before licking them clean.

Her head felt both heavy and as though it were floating up to the burnt orange sky, and in the clouds she found a face she had not seen since her final day in Patchwork. She smiled and dropped her cookies atop Crescent Rose and wrapped herself comfortably in the old cloak before closing her eyes.

"I'll see you soon, Mom. I'm coming home..."

(A/N: Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed. I've actually had this story in mind for quite awhile now, and it's personally how I like to picture Ruby's story as a huntress coming to an end. It's entirely up to you however if this story takes place in the same universe as "The Petals Scatter Now", "The Patchwork Prodigy" and/or any of my other stories, and whether Ruby is merely resting her eyes when she promises to see her mother again either back at her gravestone or in Heaven is entirely up to you. All credit goes to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who has blessed me abundantly with this story as He has blessed me with every one of you. Thank you, and God bless)