We Fight As One
The world was white and featureless.
Ruby looked around, turning in place until she had completed a full revolution. Nope, there was nothing here, nothing at all. Just white, featureless nothing. A void; no, not a void, not really. It looked like it at first, but Ruby was mistaken in that; if it was a void, if it was really nothing, then she’d be able to see for miles around, as far as her eyes could see. Instead, she could hardly see anything at all. Everything was covered up with mist, blocking her view. Was she in Sunset’s mind? This hadn’t happened to her the last time she’d been here.
Maybe she was dead? No, it couldn’t be that, because… well, Sunset would never do that, no matter how far gone she was.
Maybe I missed her hand and fell off the tower.
No, that can’t be it either, because I felt something.
So what’s going on here, and why is it different from last time?
“Sunset?” Ruby called. “Sunset, can you hear me? Are you there?”
There was no answer but the sound of sobbing. Sobbing, somewhere in the fog.
“Sunset?” Ruby called again, and as she called, she pushed her way through the fog in the direction of the sobbing sound. The milky white mist that obscured this otherwise blank space parted before her, revealing a doorway. A Beacon doorway; what was more, a doorway into one of the dorm rooms. This particular doorway sat in front of her, disconnected from any wall, just free standing, a door sat down amidst nothingness.
Ruby frowned at it and walked around onto the other side of the door; her footsteps, as she moved, had no echo, just as the mist left no trace of water droplets on her skin or clothes. She didn’t feel cold at all, although she probably would have done if she’d been out in the fog. It was as though she wasn’t really here at all… or as though there was no real ‘here’ for her to be.
Ruby tried not to think about that as she walked around the door; there was nothing there, not even the other side of the door. Rather, the door seemed to flip around as she circled it so that it was once more presenting its front, or its external side, to her.
Ruby’s frown deepened, but as she completed her circumference of the Beacon door, she saw a sight that made that frown disappear from her face, even as her mouth formed an astonished O and a gasp escaped her lips. Another door had appeared in front of her, perhaps ten feet away from the first door that reminded her so much of Beacon Academy.
This other door that now faced her was not a Beacon door. It was a door she knew ever better than that.
It was the doorway to home, to the wooden cabin that her Dad had built to raise his family.
“What is going on here?” Ruby murmured.
“Yes, it is rather surprising, isn’t it?”
“Gah!” Ruby cried out, hopping backwards away from the sudden intrusion of another voice into this otherwise lonely space. “Professor Ozpin?”
Professor Ozpin smiled genially down upon her as he emerged from out of the mist. “I’m afraid not, Miss Rose, although I’m sure that, if I truly were myself – or some new version of myself – I would tell you how very glad I am to see you again.”
“But… if you’re not Professor Ozpin,” Ruby murmured, “then who are you? What is this place?”
“This place, as you have surmised, Miss Rose, is nowhere,” Professor Ozpin explained without as yet explaining anything. “It is what you might call a link.”
“A link,” Ruby murmured. “You mean, like between my mind and Sunset’s mind?”
Professor Ozpin nodded approvingly. “Precisely, Miss Rose.”
“But how?” Ruby asked. “I touched Sunset, but… this didn’t happen the last time that she used her semblance on me.”
“Semblances can evolve,” Professor Ozpin replied. “Or it is possible that your magic interfered in the operation of Miss Shimmer’s semblance.”
“How?”
Professor Ozpin chuckled. “My dear Miss Rose, I’m not really here. I am a creation of your thoughts amalgamated with those of Miss Shimmer; I have this form only because you both associate it with wisdom, which is a great compliment but does not make me wise. I know nothing more than the two of you, and my powers are the limits of your joint ability to conjecture. I have my guesses, which are really your guesses, but I cannot say if they are right.”
“Can you tell me if I’m right?” Ruby asked. “This door is Sunset, isn’t it?” she said, pointing to the Beacon door beside her. “And the other door is me.”
Professor Ozpin nodded. “Indeed so, Miss Rose.”
“And if I go through my door, will I wake up?”
“I really can’t say, Miss Rose; only you can answer that.”
“Me?” Ruby cried. “How am I supposed to know how this works?”
“Surely you know why you are here?” Professor Ozpin asked.
“I need to talk to Sunset,” Ruby replied. “Before she makes a terrible mistake.”
Once more, she heard the sobbing sound, the sound that seemed now to be coming from everywhere and yet at the same time from nowhere.
It was coming from behind the door, Ruby was sure of it.
“Thank you, Professor,” Ruby said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“No, I haven’t, Miss Rose.”
“No, you haven’t,” Ruby admitted. “But thank you anyway.”
She grabbed the handle of the Beacon door, Sunset’s door, and pushed it open.
She walked through the open doorway and into a dorm room: their dorm room, laid just like it had been for their abortive year at school.
Ruby’s attention was not on the room, the décor, or the decorations, however; it was upon Sunset Shimmer, who sat on her bed with her knees up and her arms wrapped around her legs. Her ears drooped down into her hair, and her tail hung listlessly off the bed.
Her eyes were closed. She hadn’t seen Ruby come in; it didn’t seem as though she’d heard it either.
Did I do this? Is this my fault?
Has she wept all this while?
“Sunset?” Ruby said, speaking louder than she would have liked to make sure that Sunset noticed her.
Sunset opened her eyes. Her cheeks were stained with tears, and more of them welled up in her eyes. “Ruby,” she whispered. “What are you…?” She sighed. “My semblance.”
“You must have thought something was up when you ended up here, right?”
“I was just too glad to give it much thought,” Sunset admitted. “I… I know that what I’m about to do is terrible, but… but I can’t stop myself.”
“Yes,” Ruby said, “you can.”
“No, I can’t.”
“You just said that there’s no such thing as ‘can’t’ for you,” Ruby reasoned. “And you’re right; think of all the things that you’ve already done that other people thought were impossible. You brought Amber back, you saved Cinder-”
“I was focussed then,” Sunset said. “It’s too strong now, Ruby, my… I’ve lost control. My anger, my desire for freedom, they’re too strong.”
“Freedom,” Ruby whispered. “Freedom from me.” She phrased it as a statement, not a question.
Sunset blinked and bowed her head for a moment as she wiped away her tears on the sleeve of her jacket. “Dawn told me you were dead. I… I thought I’d lost you.”
“I did lose you, sort of,” Ruby said. “They made me forget about you. They made all of us forget you.”
“Did you feel better off?”
“Sunset, don’t,” Ruby said. “Please, just… don’t. Don’t ask me that.”
“You can say yes, if you want,” Sunset urged. “I won’t mind.”
That was a lie, or at least Ruby thought it was, but at the same time, she didn’t think that now was the best time to argue the point. “Nothing made sense without you, Sunset,” she said. “Not for Cinder, certainly not for me. Not for any of us. I… I’m sorry, Sunset; I treated you badly and-”
“And you were right,” Sunset interrupted her. “What I did was-”
“Wrong,” Ruby said. “But I treated it like it was unforgivable. And that was wrong of me. Do you… do you think that you can forgive me for that?”
Sunset got up off her bed. She turned away from Ruby, facing the wall, looking out towards the window. “I’ll never have the strength to kill you, Ruby. I could tell you that I understand you, that I think you’re right, that I’ll make the choice that you’d want me to make next time, but that’s not true. I’ll never be that person. I’ll never be able to condemn you to death for the greater good.”
“I’m not asking you to kill me,” Ruby said. “I’m asking you to let me die alongside you. Can you do that?”
Sunset was silent for a moment. “I fear not,” she whispered, and for a moment, Ruby felt anger welling up inside of her, anger not only towards Sunset but towards Yang too, for throwing her over the wall before the battle was joined, anger towards all of the big sisters or would-be sisters who though that they could – that they ought to – take responsibility for her, treat her like a child, deny her choices, the very choices that they grabbed hold of so eagerly. She bit her tongue and forced herself to calm down, reminded herself that she wasn’t here to fight with Sunset. Besides, before she could say anything, Sunset had spoken again. “But… but I can try, if that will make you happy.”
“'Happy' isn’t the right word,” Ruby murmured.
“Isn’t it?” Sunset asked.
“What do you mean?” Ruby demanded. “Do you think I want to die?”
“Don’t you?”
Ruby’s mouth opened, but no words emerged. She wasn’t sure what she was meant to say to that, she wasn’t sure what she could say to that because the truth was… the truth was that Sunset wasn’t wrong. She’d agreed to die at the hands of Sunsprite, she’d done nothing to defend herself against Tyrian, she’d rushed towards danger when she heard the explosion coming from above… the loss of her memories had momentarily lifted her out of her despond – and there was no way she was going to mention that to Sunset – but then, Sunsprite’s betrayal and that of the Queen had shaken her so badly that there was nothing left. All her armour had been stripped away, all her resolve ground down to nothing.
“I thought that I was all alone,” she whispered. “But I’m not alone. I’ve never been alone.”
Sunset took a few moments before she replied. Her tail twitched. Her brow furrowed. “I’m not your sister, Ruby; I never was. I… I was a fool to forget that.”
“Were you?” Ruby asked.
“Wasn’t I?”
“Sunset,” Ruby said. “Why didn’t you stop the train?”
“This again?”
“Please,” Ruby begged. “This will be the last time, I promise. Why didn’t you stop the train?”
Sunset was silent for a moment. Tears welled up in her eyes once more. When she spoke, her voice was deeper, and she coughed as though she had phlegm in her throat. “Because I loved you too much to lose you,” she confessed. “Ruby, I… I wish that you could look through my eyes and see yourself the way that I see you. Coming to Beacon wasn’t the best decision I ever made; stopping at a late night dust shop was. My… my whole life changed on the night that I met you. I was lost, I was lost and alone, and I didn’t know where I was going or why I was going there. Going to Beacon… I was like a general leading his army into the wilderness just because I was at my wits’ end for anything else to do. But then, you… you came into my life in a blur of rose petals, and you… you showed me the way. Your kindness, your courage, your… you are my light of hope, Ruby Rose. You showed me the way. That’s why I didn’t stop the train. Because I couldn’t bear the thought of that light being snuffed out.” She frowned. “But I snuffed it out anyway, didn’t I?”
Ruby was quiet, but she nodded her head. Sunset already knew the answer, so why deny it?
“I’m sorry,” Sunset murmured. “I’m so, so sorry, Ruby. I just… I’ve made so many mistakes. Of which, forgetting that you weren’t my sister-”
“Wasn’t one of them,” Ruby declared, cutting Sunset off before she could finish.
Sunset stopped. Her eyes widened a little. Her mouth hung open. Her tail twitched once again. “Ruby,” she began, “what are you-?”
“Why do you think,” Ruby began, “that it hurt me so much to find out what you did? Jaune and Pyrrha, Team Rosepetal, even Blake, they were all able to forgive you, but not me. I was the only one who couldn’t let it go, the only one who couldn’t forget what you did or forgive you for it. I was… I was the one who felt hurt the most, why?”
Sunset hesitated. “Because you’re so good and noble.”
“Because I loved you, and you betrayed me!” Ruby cried. “Do you know what I saw when I looked at you? Do you know what you’d see if you looked through my eyes? You’d see a rock, you’d see someone who was always there for me, whether it was shielding me from the sight of perverts in the locker room to giving me my mother’s words, singing me to sleep, comforting me about Jaune, fighting alongside me… you were always there. Always there for me. No matter what was going on, no matter whether it was something serious or something small, I always knew that I could count on you. Until… until I found out that I couldn’t. Until the day you told the truth about what happened in that tunnel, I thought that… that you were someone who would never hurt me or let me down. And then I found out that that wasn’t true, and I… if you forgot that you weren’t my sister, then I forgot too. I loved you, and so I couldn’t forgive you.” Now it was Ruby’s turn to pause, to hesitate. “That was a mistake, not allowing you to make mistakes just because I’d forgotten that you could.”
“It was a pretty big mistake,” Sunset allowed.
“That doesn’t mean that it didn’t deserve to be forgiven,” Ruby replied. A mischievous smile sprouted on her face. “Hint hint.”
Sunset’s face cracked into a smile as a chuckle escaped from her.
Ruby found herself smiling too, in spite of everything that happened. “Sunset, in spite of everything, in spite of all that you’ve been through… I think that you can still be a great huntress if you want to be. You can still do amazing things. Much more amazing than you can do as some kind of she-demon.” She held out one small, pale hand towards Sunset. “So, what do you say?”
Sunset looked at her hand, and then her eyes flickered back up to Ruby’s face. “I can change, Ruby,” she said. “I can try to change. I can be better than I was before. But you have to as well.”
“What?” Ruby gasped. “What do you mean?”
“Why are you so eager to die, Ruby?” Sunset asked.
“I…” Ruby found that her mouth had dried up, and the words along with it. She couldn’t just deny it; Sunset… Sunset knew her better than that. That was the downside of having someone who had been by her side throughout everything that she’d been through: there was nowhere to hide and no way to just deny it. “Because a huntress who isn’t willing to lay down their life-”
“Doesn’t deserve the name of huntress, but you’re positively eager to lay down your life,” Sunset declared, her voice hardening. “You don’t accept the possibility of death, you embrace it; from yourself, from the people around you, why?”
“You know why!” Ruby shouted. “Mom sacrificed herself to protect the world; how can I do less?”
“Do you really believe that?” Sunset demanded. “Do you really believe that your mother didn’t fight like hell to come back to you every single time?”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“Because that would mean that she failed!” Ruby shouted, the words flying out of her mouth before she could stop them. Her hands flew to her mouth, and then she froze, still and silent, wishing that she could take them back… and at the same time wishing that she could not.
“Because that would mean that she failed,” she repeated, softer now. “Like you failed. And it was… pretending was easier than forgiving her, for not coming back, for abandoning us.”
Sunset looked into Ruby’s eyes. “Forgiving our mothers can be hard.”
Ruby blinked. She found that tears were coming to her own eyes now. “So can forgiving our sisters, it seems like.”
Sunset sniggered. “Yeah, seems like, doesn’t it?” She knelt down in front of Ruby and held out her hand. “I’ll tell you what: I swear, upon our bond as partners and as so much more to one another, that I will never again break the oaths of a Beacon huntress the way I did. I have not said the words, and most likely never will, but my might will uphold the weak from this day forth. I will throw my body into the breach if it is necessary. And I will…” Sunset’s body shuddered, as if she were struggling with some great pain. “I will let you do the same, standing beside me. Live or die, we fight as one. But, and this is important, you have to be a little circumspect with this generosity and stop seeing every little fight as a chance to martyr yourself.”
Ruby didn’t reply straight away. From Sunset, this was… this was all that she could have hoped for. More than that, in fact. Sunset so disdained the notion of sacrifice, the idea of giving anyone’s life in trade for anybody else’s life, the most she had been willing to concede before was to say that she would find a way to save everyone without having to make trade-offs.
And to be honest, she probably would. She was Sunset Shimmer, after all, and she had a habit of making the impossible possible. If anyone could save everyone, or find a way in which everyone might be saved, then it was Sunset. And yet, here she was, conceding that that might not be possible, that there might come an occasion in which they had to give their lives for others, and that… that was not nothing. From Sunset, that was quite an admission indeed.
One that she had been willing to make, for Ruby.
Sunset wasn’t perfect. Far from it. But then, Ruby wasn’t perfect either, and yet, Sunset had found it in herself to love her in spite of her imperfections.
And Sunset, outside of her most egotistical moments which were probably not meant to be taken seriously, had never claimed to be perfect. Ruby had never claimed to be perfect either, but it seemed that she’d allowed people to think she was… and she’d kind of acted that way too, talking down – or at least thinking down – to others as though she alone knew what a true huntress was and they were all letting her down for falling short of that ideal.
But what was that ideal, really? Not even a memory; rather, the replacement for memories that she didn’t have, a creed cobbled together out of a refusal to accept that her mother might have been flawed.
When it’s our flaws that make us work, in the end.
I have been far too proud, for far too long, and hurt the person who means the most to me because of it.
She wouldn’t let anyone else die to save herself… but that didn’t mean she needed to give her life for nothing either.
Ruby placed her hand in Sunset’s palm. “I promise,” she said.
Sunset smiled, her fingers closing around Ruby’s hand as she pulled her into an embrace. “I’ve missed having you on my side, Ruby Rose.”
Ruby wrapped her free arm around Sunset. “I’ve missed you, too,” she whispered. “Let’s not fight again, okay?”
Sunset shook her head, her hair tickling Ruby’s face. “Live or die, we fight as one.”
“Live or die, we fight as one,” Ruby agreed.
“Live or die,” they said in unison. “We fight as one!”
The dorm room was consumed with white light, blinding light, light that consumed everything until Ruby could see nothing at all, feel nothing, hear nothing.
Until she felt the last flecks of rain from the dying storm pitter-pattering against her cheek.
Until she felt Sunset’s jacket clenched in her fist once more, Sunset’s hair tickling her nose.
She opened her eyes. She was still embracing Sunset, not in the dorm room now but atop the ruined Tower of the Sun, with the dark clouds clearing away to reveal the shattered moon above.
And Cinder watching them, a fond look upon her face.
I guess Sunset isn’t the only one I owe an apology too.
Sunset, too, opened her eyes. She was herself again, no demon now, her skin returned from raw, flayed red to its normal colour, her hair proper hair that only looked like fire instead of being fire, her wings disappeared, her clothes returned. The rings of gold, silver, and iron still gleamed upon her fingers, but as Sunset pulled away from Ruby, they began to glow, brighter and brighter, until they were illuminating the top of the tower, a beacon of light that blazed out across Freeport, and as they glowed, the rings dissolved, turning to dust before Ruby’s eyes, fading into nothingness.
Sunset clenched her hand into a fist, a ragged breath escaping her. “Ruby,” she said, “I-”
“Nope,” Ruby said, smiling at her. “You don’t have to apologise any more. It’s over now. It’s done. We don’t need to mention it again.”
Sunset bowed her head. “Thank you.”
“You don’t need to say that either,” Ruby said.
Sunset looked up at her. “I’m glad to have you back, Ruby Rose.”
“I’m glad to have you back too, Sunset Shimmer.”
Sunset chuckled. “We should probably think about what we do next,” she admitted. “We’re in a bit of a-”
The sound of a horn-call split the air, a horn blowing once, twice, three times in rapid succession from the hills that surrounded Freeport. The thrice wound horn – three blasts, for the coming of the grimm – echoed down from the hills to the town, allowed to fade for a few moments into silence before its alarm was swiftly taken up by the ringing of the bells, chiming across Freeport, spreading the warning of the monsters without and calling the city to arms.
“The grimm!” Ruby cried. “Tyrian! The Sun Queen was right; they are going to destroy Freeport; maybe-”
“Ruby!” Sunset cried sharply. “What did you just promise me?”
Ruby looked into Sunset’s eyes, sharp and stern. “I… I know,” she stammered. “I just… we have to fight, for Freeport, in spite of what the Sun Queen did. We have to fight.”
“And we will,” Sunset promised. “Together.” She laid her hands on Ruby’s shoulders. “Live or die, we fight as one.”
Ruby nodded gravely. “Live or die, we fight as one.”