//------------------------------//
// Confrontation Conversation (Rewritten) 
// Story: SAPR 
// by Scipio Smith 
//------------------------------//


Confrontation Conversation


Ruby was asleep. Or unconscious, it was hard to say which was more appropriate right now. If she was asleep, it was a sleep from which she could not be roused, as though she were waiting for a prince to kiss her awake. 
And they had none of those. 
That Ruby looked peaceful, almost serene, was something to be thankful for at least. Wherever she was, whyever she couldn’t or wouldn’t wake, she didn’t seem to be in any pain or distress.
The little dog, Zwei, was also sleeping – a true sleep, this time, one from which he could wake up at any time he chose – he presently was curled up on Ruby’s chest, nuzzling her pale cheek with his face, rising and falling with Ruby’s gentle breathing. 
Sunset hovered over Ruby’s bed, standing over her, casting a shadow over her and the dog that rested on top of her. She had never enjoyed feeling powerless, and that wasn’t something that was changing now. 
Your mother’s diary talked about the exhaustion of using her powers, but this? She never said that it put her into a coma. 
If it had… if it had, you probably would have wanted to go ahead and try for it anyway, wouldn’t you? Because that’s just who you are.
Too noble by more than half.
Sunset looked down at her hand. She had removed the finger from her wedding glove: she could now see the skin of her ring finger, while the silken finger of the glove flopped limply down. She had thought about trying to use her semblance on Ruby to try and… well, the fact that she couldn’t properly articulate what it was that she thought that her semblance might be able to do for Ruby was the reason why she hadn’t done it yet. It might – and that was a big ‘might’ – show Sunset where Ruby’s mind was right now, but that wouldn’t help to wake her up. It was for that reason that she pulled the finger of the glove back on.
She would have to trust, as they would all have to trust, that this wasn’t permanent, that Ruby would wake up in her own time, when she was ready to come back to them. 
Yang sat on the other side of Ruby’s bed, holding onto Ruby’s hand with both of her own. A look of melancholy which verged on misery haunted her face. 
Pyrrha stood at the foot of the bed wearing a grave look; in the way that she stood and the look on her face, one might almost have thought that she was still at Sky’s funeral, save that she had changed out of her mourning dress. Jaune sat in the other seat, opposite Yang, his hands fidgeting upon his knees, as though he couldn’t think of what to do with them. Blake stood against the wall between two of the empty beds in this four-bed room, her arms folded across her chest, a dark look upon her face that had nothing to do with her black hair as her golden eyes were fixed upon Ruby. 
Sunset both was and wasn’t sure why Blake looked like that; yes, she’d been through a lot in Mountain Glenn, but then, they’d all been through a lot in Mountain Glenn. Perhaps it was the death of Adam or the death of all the rest of the White Fang – most of them, at least – down in the tunnel between Mountain Glenn and Vale that were eating away at her. 
Ordinarily, Sunset would have tried to help her. She had tried, she thought that she had tried, to help Blake with her problems, to help her with what was troubling her, just to help Blake find herself, her place in the world, to help Blake the way that Pyrrha and Ruby and Jaune had helped Sunset. It hadn’t seemed to work out quite so well. 
Ordinarily, Sunset would have kept trying regardless, but right now… after what had happened on the train, Sunset didn’t think she was the right person to be trying to help Blake through this particular issue. 
Better that she focus on Ruby, until Ruby woke up. 
Unless she decided that it was better that she slip away before Ruby woke up. 
Either way, she wasn’t in much of a position to help Blake right now. 
“Is Ruby going to be okay?” Jaune asked plaintively.
“I’m sure so,” Pyrrha said softly.
“You don’t know that,” Yang said, her voice choked. “You can’t be sure.”
Pyrrha glanced away. “No,” she admitted. “No, I can’t.”
“She’ll wake up,” Sunset asserted. She has to.
“But you don’t know that she will,” Yang repeated, with more force than before.
Sunset frowned. “No,” she admitted, “I guess I don’t.” She turned away from Yang and from Ruby. She crossed the ward, passing Pyrrha who looked at her but said nothing, as she went to stand beside Blake. 
A sigh escaped from Sunset’s lips. 
Blake glanced at her but said nothing. Sunset found herself almost grateful for that fact. 
“Does this… does this feel like a victory to anyone?” Jaune asked. “Does anyone feel like we won?”
Sunset didn’t answer, because the personal answer was ‘no.’ Whatever Rainbow Dash might have to say on the subject, this did not feel like a victory. This felt… this felt like a defeat, if only a personal one. 
Pyrrha’s voice came slowly at first. “We… we are alive,” she pointed out. “Ruby is alive, and as concerned as we are for her condition, we should not lose sight of the fact that she yet lives.” She turned her head a little to look at Yang as she said that. “She will wake, and return to us. There are far worse fates that could have befallen her, or any of us. We live, and Vale lives too.”
“People died,” Jaune replied, sending a dagger through Sunset’s soul. 
“And many more did not,” Pyrrha insisted. “How many more people might have perished if the Breach had caught the city’s defenders unawares, if General Ironwood had not been alerted, if the nearby districts hadn’t been evacuated? We could have been looking at the greatest catastrophe to befall Vale since Mountain Glenn fell.” She took pause for a moment. “I do not mean to dismiss Sky’s loss, or any of those others who perished; I have no doubt that their friends and loved ones miss them as much as Lyra and Bon Bon miss Sky. But the city was saved, and while we did not save it single-handedly through our efforts, without us, there would not have been the warning that enabled the city to be saved. We should take pride in that.”
“Do you take pride in that?” Sunset asked softly.
Pyrrha looked at Sunset over her shoulder. She pursed her lips together momentarily before she replied, “I have but one regret in all of this: that I was not able to defeat Cinder Fall, and either bring her to justice or…”
Sunset’s brow furrowed a little. “Or?”
Pyrrha took a deep breath. “Or deliver her to the justice of the heavens.”
The frown remained on Sunset’s face, but her tongue was stilled. With only Jaune and Blake as witnesses, Sunset might have been willing to thrash it out with Pyrrha on the subject; it might be said to be in bad taste to argue at Ruby’s bedside, but Sunset and Pyrrha never really did argue, they were so close in outlook – and Pyrrha so unfailingly polite and good-natured… at least when she wasn’t threatening to kill Cinder – that any points of disagreement between them ended up being very… sororal, one might say.
But it would be hard to get into the meat of it with Yang around. Ruby had not, in the end, told her sister about Salem, or any of the things that everyone else in the room knew but her. And since that knowledge was pretty germane to the discussion, it would be hard to talk around them. 
And besides, right now… Sunset wasn’t sure she was in the right frame of mind to mount a defence of Cinder Fall at the moment. Cinder had, after all, convinced Sunset to blow the Breach, causing the deaths of Sky Lark and five other people. Sunset… Sunset hated her for that. Or at least, she thought she probably ought to hate Cinder for that. Perhaps a true huntress would swear vengeance upon Cinder, the same way that a true huntress would have condemned their friends to death. 
If so, that would be two strikes against Sunset, because she didn’t really hate Cinder for what she’d done. She felt as though she was coming close to hating herself, but she did not hate Cinder. For Cinder, she felt… she couldn’t even really blame Cinder, for all that Cinder’s words had been pouring into her ear at the time. They had been pouring through an open door, after all; Cinder’s words would not have affected Ruby, only someone like Sunset who was susceptible to them. 
It would be too easy to blame Cinder for this. By blaming herself instead, Sunset could continue to… to what? What did she want out of Cinder? What did she think was going to happen to Cinder? Why did the idea of Cinder perishing at Pyrrha’s hands arouse such distaste and fear in her?
“What about the cost?” asked Blake softly. 
Pyrrha hesitated. “Do you mean Ruby and Penny, or do you mean the White Fang?” she asked in a voice as quiet as Blake’s own.
“It doesn’t matter,” Blake replied. “Forget I asked.”
Pyrrha glanced downward. “I am… not one to cheerlead,” she said, “but we are not without things to be proud of in our performance on this mission. If we fell short of our expectations of ourselves… that suggests that our expectations were too great, our egos not yet curbed by experience.”
“Perhaps,” Sunset murmured. 
She was probably right – at least as far as she, Jaune and Ruby were concerned. They had nothing to be ashamed of. As for herself… Sunset knew better. 
The door into the ward slid open with a hiss that attracted the attention of Sunset and everyone else in the room too. Rainbow Dash stood in the doorway, still wearing her Atlas uniform. 
She looked at Ruby, her chest rising and falling beneath the blanket and the dog.
“How is she?” Rainbow asked quietly.
“She’s… stable, but as you see,” Pyrrha murmured, “she hasn’t woken up yet.”
“And they don’t know when she will?” Rainbow said as she stepped into the room. Sunset appreciated that she had said when, not if. The door slid closed behind her.
“No,” Pyrrha admitted. She glanced at Ruby, and then down at her feet before she looked back up at Rainbow. “How’s Penny?”
“She’s… but she’ll be okay.” Rainbow glanced at Yang, who – much as she was the only person in the room not to know about Salem, was also the only one who didn’t know that Penny was a robot. “She’ll be okay, but she needs to go home for treatment. So we’re shipping out for Atlas; we won’t see you guys for a while.”
“When are you leaving?” Pyrrha asked.
“In a couple of days,” Rainbow said. “We’re flying back on the Hope, escorting a civilian liner.”
“I see,” Pyrrha said softly. She hesitated for a moment. “Could I see her, before you go?”
Rainbow smiled. “Sure,” she said. “Penny would like that. In fact, I was going to mention it if you didn’t; she’s asked after you.” Rainbow glanced at Sunset. “More surprisingly, she asked after you, too.”
Sunset’s eyebrows. “She asked after me?”
“Yep.”
I thought she couldn’t talk yet. And even if she can talk, why does she want to talk to me? It wasn’t as though they were close. As far as Sunset could recall, they had had one interaction that wasn’t simply as part of the wider group, one single instance when they had spoken directly to-
“But I’m not human, am I?”
“Do you want to hear a secret, Penny? Neither am I.”
Oh. Right. Yes. That. 
Sunset’s ears drooped. “I… I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”
“Sunset?” Pyrrha murmured in surprise.
Rainbow’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t argue the point. Sunset would have been grateful for that, except that she suspected that there would be arguing of the point to come, just a little later down the line.  
Right now, however, Rainbow looked down at the sleeping Ruby. “What she did there was something else.”
“What it did to her was something else too,” Yang muttered.
Rainbow glanced at her. “Sure. I guess. But… she’ll wake up. She’s too tough not to.” She turned away. “Anyway, I came to let you know we’d be leaving and to say goodbye ‘cause we won’t see you now until just before the festival, probably.” She nodded to Jaune. “Take care, Jaune.”
“Thanks,” he said. “You too.”
Rainbow grinned. “I thought I might try taking care of other people instead.” 
She looked back at Ruby, and her boots squeaked on the floor as she stood to attention and swept her hand up to her brow in a textbook perfect salute. Rainbow held the gesture for a moment, then brought her hand back down again and wheeled – with more squeaking of boots – to face Blake. 
She marched across the room until the two of them were face to face. 
“Blake,” Rainbow said. “Applejack and Fluttershy are flying back to Atlas as well, aboard the civilian skyliner that the Hope is escorting to Atlas. If… if you wanted to say goodbye.”
Blake nodded. “I will; thank you for letting me know.” She blinked. “I’m a little surprised they’re not flying back on the Hope where you can keep an eye on them.”
Rainbow let out a snorting chuckle. “It did cross my mind, but I won’t be far away. And… maybe it would be a borderline case for Applejack, but it would be hard to get a berth for a civilian aboard a man of war; there isn’t a lot of space. Plus, the rooms are more comfortable on a skyliner, and I think they deserve that.”
Blake nodded. “I suppose you’re right.” She hesitated. “Rainbow-”
“Blake,” Rainbow cut her off, “your agreement with Atlas, in which we agreed to, well, to keep you out of jail, was that you would help us until the threat of the White Fang had been dealt with. I’ve spoken to the General, and he agreed with me that we can call the threat of the White Fang dealt with.”
Sunset’s eyebrows rose. Is she-?
Blake blinked rapidly. “What… what are you saying?”
“The White Fang bet the farm on this,” Rainbow declared. “All the robberies, all the dust, all the weapons, it was all building up to this. And they blew it. They used up all the dust, they used up all or most of the weapons they stole from us, and they lost most of their manpower. They had their shot, and now they’re done. The power of the White Fang is broken here in Vale; this will take them years to recover from materially, and that’s without mentioning how bad they made themselves look by letting grimm loose in the city. They’re done.”
“Cinder-”
“You didn’t agree to help us get Cinder,” Rainbow said. “You agreed to come and work with us to stop whatever the White Fang were planning. And we did, and you were a part of that.” She took a deep breath. “Atlas isn’t perfect, but it keeps its word. Or at least, the military does. The General does. I do.” Her voice became hoarse as she said, “You’re free, Blake. You’re not bound to me, or Atlas, any longer.”
Blake stared up into Rainbow’s magenta eyes. “Free? Is that…” she glanced at Ruby, sleeping in bed, and her gaze dropped. “Free. Right.”
“That’s right, you’re not… you don’t have to… I won’t… you’re free, like I said. You’re not bound to us any more, you don’t have to have another thing to do with any of us,” Rainbow conceded. “Oh, except for one thing: General Ironwood would like to see you. One last debriefing.”
“Of course,” Blake sighed. “I suppose that that… is about as much as I should have expected.” She held out her hand. “Goodbye, Rainbow Dash.”
Rainbow took Blake’s head, and shook it firmly. “Blake, I… meeting you, I... I hope you’re happy.” She looked awkward, her body tense and shifting uncomfortably, and when she looked at and spoke to Sunset the relief in her voice was palpable. “Hey, Sunset, can I talk to you for a second? In private?”
Sunset raised one eyebrow, even as she gestured towards the door. “Sure.”
They both stepped out of the ward, the door hissing closed behind them, and stood for a moment in the corridor outside. It wasn’t exactly private; there was a nurse’s station not far away with a nurse at it. Rainbow took the lead, making Sunset trail behind her down the corridor until they came to a pair of vending machines – a free dispenser of tea and coffee, and a brightly lit provider of canned drinks that you had to pay for – standing idle and unattended, with nobody in sight in either direction. 
Rainbow gestured to the machines. “You want something?”
Sunset glanced at the bright green can machine. “No.”
“Suit yourself,” Rainbow said, tapping a couple of the buttons on the free tea and coffee machine to get a cardboard cup filled with something hot and brown and otherwise indeterminate. Rainbow took a sip from it and licked her upper lip when she was done. “So, why don’t you want to go and see Penny?”
“Why are you acting so weird around Blake?”
“That’s not what we’re talking about.”
“Maybe we should talk about it,” Sunset replied. “You’ve been clinging on Blake like a… a really clingy thing this entire time and now all of a sudden you’re throwing her away-”
“Nobody’s throwing Blake away.”
“You could only be throwing Blake more away if you told her to have a nice life!” Sunset snapped.
“You were the one who told me to-”
“I wanted you to be a better team leader, not a jackass!”
Rainbow was silent for a moment. “I’m doing what’s best for Blake,” she said. “I’m… I’m putting her ahead of myself and Atlas. I thought you’d be glad.”
“Well… I’m not,” Sunset muttered.
“And I’m not happy you don’t want to talk to Penny,” Rainbow replied. “At least I have my reasons, do you?”
“Does it matter?” Sunset asked. She took a step forward. “I mean, it isn’t like she can talk back at the moment, right?”
“Actually, she can… sort of,” Rainbow muttered. “She’s plugged into… you’ll see for yourself when you come and see her.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Sunset said.
“I do; I think it might cheer you up a little,” Rainbow said. She glanced at the nurse, who didn’t seem to be paying much attention. She also glanced at the storage closet not far away. “Do you want to go somewhere more private?”
“Do we need to go somewhere more private?”
Rainbow glanced this way and that. She drank, and then stepped a little closer to Sunset until they were almost touching. 
“Okay, we might need to go somewhere private where this is going,” Sunset said.
“Shut up,” Rainbow replied. She looked down at Sunset. “So…” She looked away. “So what’s this about you not being human?”
“Well, I am a faunus.”
“You know what I mean!”
“And you know what I’ve got,” Sunset said. “Did it never occur to you that I might be… from somewhere else?”
“No,” Rainbow said immediately. “That would be…” She trailed off. “So it’s true, then?”
Sunset nodded. “It’s true.”
“Right,” Rainbow murmured weakly. “So are you going to tell me-?”
“No.”
“Right,” Rainbow repeated. She gestured at the room they had left. “The others, do they-?”
“Yes.”
Rainbow snorted. “I guess I know where we stand then,” she muttered, a quick smile crossing her face. The smile faded. “So… this place you come from… are you going back there?”
“No,” Sunset said instantly. “No, I’m not.” I don’t deserve to go back.
“Good,” Rainbow said. “You’re staying here.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well, where else are you going to go?” Rainbow demanded.
“I don’t know,” Sunset admitted.
“Then stay,” Rainbow urged. “Stay here, stay with them. They need you.”
“They don’t need me.”
“Who’s going to be leader if you walk off into the wilderness and become a hermit?”
Sunset raised one inquisitive eyebrow.
“You just admitted you’ve got no ideas; I had to come up with something.”
Sunset sighed. “Pyrrha,” she said. “She’ll take over.”
Rainbow shook her head. “Pyrrha’s a bad choice.”
“Oh, because you’re such an expert on what makes a good team leader,” Sunset said acidly.
Rainbow ignored that. “Pyrrha,” she said. “Pyrrha’s great, but she… she wouldn’t take care of the others the way that you do.”
“What makes you say that?” Sunset asked.
“Because she hasn’t taken care of them, you have,” Rainbow pointed out. “I… I haven’t always appreciated how you chose to do it, but you’ve always tried, and it… it seems to work out for you, and for them. You’ve kept them safe, and happy.”
“At what cost?”
Rainbow frowned. “You know as well as I do that if we had made all the right moves down in Mountain Glenn – by which I mean pulling out of the railyard once we rescued Applejack and falling back to join Professor Goodwitch on The Bus – then that wouldn’t have saved Sky or the others.”
“You know what I mean.”
“What I think is that the reason you don’t want to talk to Penny is that you don’t think you deserve nice things,” Rainbow declared. “Which is also the only reason you’re thinking about leaving, because there are no actual good reasons for it. What do you think is going to happen if you quit? Do you think the missions are going to stop? Even if he lets you out, do you think that Ozpin is going to stop sending Pyrrha, Jaune, and Ruby out like he sent us out to Mountain Glenn? If you want someone to blame for what happened, then how about you blame the person who decided that it was a good idea to send two first-year student teams on a mission-critical recon assignment?”
“Which we volunteered for.”
“We’re kids,” Rainbow said. “We’re allowed to make dumb choices. Our superiors are supposed to be a check against that, not enable it.” She finished off her coffee and tossed the cup into the green recycling bin. “I asked the General, before we left, why this mission was going to us and not some real Specialists. He told me that Ozpin didn’t like Specialists; he preferred to trust students. If you want to blame someone for the mistakes of this mission, how about the person who thought that was a good idea? Do you remember when we told the others about what we’d heard up in the tower? About… you know.”
Sunset nodded. “I remember.”
“Pyrrha said that we had reached the end of vanity,” Rainbow reminded her. “But that wasn’t really true, not in that garage. If it had been, then we wouldn’t have volunteered for Mountain Glenn. That’s where we reached the end of vanity. We shouldn’t have been there, and that’s what my report will say to the General.” She paused. “My point is… you walking away won’t bring anyone back from the dead, but it might just mean that the next memorial service is for Pyrrha.”
Sunset scowled. “That’s a little below the belt, don’t you think?”
“No such thing as below the belt if it works,” Rainbow said. “You should talk to Penny. She’d really appreciate it, and I think that you’d enjoy it too once you did it. You and Pyrrha could go together.” She paused. “Just don’t do that thing where you start talking weird like you’re doing old-time theatre. You realise you’re the only two people who can understand each other when you talk like that, right?”
Sunset rolled her eyes. “I’m surprised you’re not worried I’ll be a bad influence on her.”
“I’m not sure that it’s possible to be a bad influence on Penny,” Rainbow replied. “She’s too much of a good influence on everyone around her. Please go and see her; she’ll be hurt if you don’t. She won’t understand why.”
That was unfortunately true. Sunset pouted. She didn’t want to upset Penny, and if Penny wanted to see her, then… “Fine.”
Rainbow smiled and clapped her on the shoulder. “Thanks,” she said. “Thank you. You won’t regret it.”