A/N: Hey look! I can write about characters that aren't Oscar or Ozpin! Hah! That said, this is very much in the same vein as most of my other RWBY fics—short, introspective, and built on a strong foundation of over-analysis. It's a look at what might have been going through Ruby's mind after Pomp and Circumstance (V7C4).

Drop a comment if you're so inclined; feedback is always appreciated. I hope you enjoy!

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Earning her Huntress license was supposed to be the proudest moment of her life. But all Ruby can think as she sits in the Colosseum stands and turns the hard-light card in her hands is, like this? This is how it happens?

It makes her feel a little better that her teammates are similarly subdued. It's like Yang says; licensure is strangely trivial now. They're fighting to literally save the world; earning the legal permission to do so is kind of a weird afterthought. Like, what, were they going to stop fighting if they stayed as students? No. Team RWBY has had their brief flirtation with giving up, laying down and dying. Never again.

Being official just feels off, somehow. It's been so long since there was any structure underlying their efforts. Now they have more structure than they've ever had, Atlas's militarised Huntsmen following a tighter set of regulations and expectations than Ruby had ever known at Beacon.

...And that's part of the problem, too. Ruby Rose is now an Atlesian Huntress. Seeing her license change from student to full-fledged Huntress was a dream come true; even if she no longer took the same joy in it as she might have once, the pride is still strong, and she's sure she'll fall in love with her calling all over again once she's past this first hurdle. But watching the crossed axes and laurels of Vale fizzle into pixels that resolve into Atlas's cogwheel-and-staff motif hurt in a way she didn't expect. Place of Issue: Atlas, her license reads. Just like that, the last tangible proof of her time as a student of Beacon Academy, something she'd been so proud of, is gone. There'd been a sort of unofficial rivalry between Atlas and Beacon, each school having been touted as the greatest Huntsman Academy at one point or another. A born-and-bred citizen of Vale, Ruby could tell anyone willing to listen exactly why Beacon was clearly the crown jewel of the four. But Atlas Academy has won that title by default now, and it grates on the vestigial remains of Ruby's school pride even as it chills her to think of the Fall, of the crumbling ruins of the great Academy where she should be just over halfway through her sophomore year, fretting over nothing more important than upcoming end-of-term exams and the hurry-up crack of Disciplinarian against Professor Goodwitch's palm.

She wonders suddenly if Oscar's absence is intentional on General Ironwood's part, given his still-untarnished respect for the late Headmaster of Beacon and his hope of retrieving him from the depths of Oscar's mind. If on some level it feels awkward to Ironwood to make Ozpin's students his own Huntsmen, like he's overstepping some invisible line of not-quite-sovereignty in deciding to forgo the rest of their schooling and usher them into his employ. She suspects Ironwood feels awkward about a lot of things he acts confident about; she can relate. She also suspects Professor Ozpin really wouldn't be happy about this, if he were aware. He'd been adamant to the last that they hadn't had enough training, and even as it stings to remember just how unready he felt his former students to be, Ruby isn't certain she can entirely disagree.

Oscar is also someone she can relate to, lately more than ever. Ever since Ruby took Qrow to task in Argus, people are looking to her, following her lead. Ozpin's shadow falls heavy on them both, and it's not fair. His leadership is, ironically enough, the best example she has to follow. In light of recent events, she's been trying not to follow it too closely. She's not sure she's succeeding.

"Oz only trusted himself with the whole truth," Qrow says when she voices her concerns. Aloud, Ruby agrees, and she lets herself be comforted. It's a nice feeling, and she hasn't had enough of it lately. Inside, she wonders if maybe the person Ozpin trusted least of all was himself.

"A badge and a burden," she recites quietly, tucking her license away and returning her attention to the party below.

It's a little hard being back in Amity Colosseum, actually. Penny died here—in the exact spot where the android in question is now standing, Ruby realises with a jolt, alive and well and beaming with a very human happiness, but pain and grief don't just disappear; Ruby's year of mourning isn't retroactively undone. The Fall of Beacon began here. Pyrrha's fate was sealed here.

Ruby's whole life ended here.

Now, after a frantic year of upheaval and uncertainty, it's beginning anew, and she doesn't know what to feel. Happy, proud; scared, confused. Everything's finding its place in a framework approximating normalcy, Huntsman teams doing Huntsman work off a mission board, going to sleep in the same bed every night with a reasonable certainty of what the next day will hold, and yet everything's so different. Weiss is finally free of her father, no matter what cruel stunts the spiteful jerk tries to pull, like that dig about her mother's condition. Yang's missing most of an arm, Blake's missing most of her hair, and Ruby thinks the two of them are like, a thing now or something? Ditto Ren and Nora, foregone conclusion though it had been, and Jaune has come into his own at last, capable with Aura and weapon alike, developing his Semblance in leaps and bounds.

And Ruby? Well, Ruby's got questions about her own Semblance now, and about her eyes, and her role, and her plans and her feelings and her self—

Ruby knows she's changed. Grown older. Sometimes she feels the weight of her time since the Fall pressing on her so heavily she could cry. But mostly...mostly she doesn't feel any different from the clueless girl in that dim interrogation room more than a year and a half ago, except her stomach is full of cake instead of cookies and she's got much bigger problems than the late Roman Torchwick, whose gruesome demise she might stop seeing in her nightmares one of these days. 'Eaten alive by Grimm' is somewhere near the top of the list of ways Ruby really doesn't want to die; even the man who'd helped destroy her second home didn't deserve that, however darkly ironic it might have been.

She envies her past self sometimes. Past-Ruby wanted to be a badass scythe-wielder like her uncle, a brave and selfless Huntress like her mother, a just-plain-good person like her father, a stylish lady warrior like Professor Goodwitch, an inspiring leader like Professor Ozpin. Present-Ruby just wants to be Ruby, and isn't sure who Future-Ruby is going to need to be.

She looks down at Weiss and Penny, wondering if either of them realises they're mimicking Winter's posture. If Jaune knows he adopts Pyrrha's guard stance when he fights. If Qrow's aware of the volumes spoken by his choice of tidy new waistcoat and the patterns on his rolled-up sleeves, nearly identical to those on the Long Memory's handle, the cane's clockwork window echoed in the design of Qrow's own weapon. Seeing his tattered cape, she touches the edge of her own cloak and smiles a little.

Brothers know it's tempting to just let General Ironwood take the lead against Salem, and Ruby does intend to follow his plan as long as it seems like the best option available. But the one thing she knows she can't do is stop leading. She doesn't know who she can trust, but she knows she needs to trust herself, because once she does that, trusting others becomes an easy choice. She trusts how she feels about her team, about Jaune and Ren and Nora, about Qrow and Oscar. She didn't choose to trust Maria, exactly, but the veteran Huntress has certainly proven worthy over their short time together, and Ruby's certain she'll resurface again before their time in Atlas is done. She wants desperately to trust Penny the way Penny once trusted her with her greatest secret.

She doesn't want to be Ozpin, driven by paranoia to manipulate even the closest and most devoted of allies rather than trusting in their loyalty.

(She doesn't want to be Ozpin, broken and weeping in the snow, sharing another person's mind and still more alone than she can imagine.)

Ruby wants to be Ruby, and Ruby is a leader. A badge she wears constantly. A daunting responsibility she still hasn't had nearly enough time to think about how to uphold. And time is now very officially up. She takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment, and lets it out. Her hands are still, not trembling. Her heart is beating slow and steady. She can do this. She has to do this. She will do this.

The youngest Huntress in Remnant gets to her feet with a smile, tugs at her Aura, and dives over the railing to the Colosseum floor in a mad swirl of rose petals.

"Oh my gosh! I just realised we had all that cake and no one brought any milk!" she declares indignantly.

"I see your priorities remain in perfect order," Weiss drawls, rolling her eyes.

Penny raises her hand, index finger extended skyward, features set in absolute seriousness. "She's right! I shall procure milk immediately!"

"That seems unnecessary," Winter begins, an uncharacteristically perplexed expression creeping over her face—but Penny is already gone in a burst of green light, rocketing skyward, and slowly, Winter rotates to face Ruby instead.

"You do realise you've just sent a military-grade android on a grocery run?" she asks coolly and yep, Weiss had definitely picked that tone up from her older sister; Ruby ducks her head instinctively, touching her pointer fingers together.

"...Oops?"

Yang bursts out laughing, Blake hiding a smile behind her hand, and Ruby feels a little more of that terrible weight slip from her shoulders. She can, must, and will do this. It doesn't matter if she can't do it alone, because she doesn't have to. So she won't.

Ruby wraps Weiss in an impulsive hug that makes her partner startle, squeaking in undignified surprise that redoubles Yang's laughter and finally has Blake breaking down to join her.

No, Ruby doesn't know much at all for certain, but she does know one thing Ozpin got right—the one path he laid that she's willing to follow to the very end, even if she's going to do it her own way.

Her team.