Sisterly Squabble
“Yang—”
“Go away, Ruby, I’m not in the mood,” Yang said, her tone a surly one.
She was sitting on the roof of the dorm room, looking out across the campus, and from there, farther off, across Vale itself. Close by, the Emerald Tower loomed, its green lights shining brightly like a … well, like a Beacon. The lights of Vale glimmered down below, like diamonds, or stars that had fallen to the ground. She couldn’t make them out very clearly, though, not like she could the lights of the tower.
She could make out the lights of the Atlesian cruisers as well, she had to admit, blinking red and green as they glided in their stately fashion through the air, patrolling over Vale — and over Beacon too — like big black whales attended on by scores of little fish.
But again and again, as she sat on the roof, Yang’s eyes were drawn to the big green lights of the Emerald Tower. She wondered if Professor Ozpin was still up there, in his office at the top of the tower. Working away, not necessarily in running the school, but in devising ways to stop or hinder Salem, to keep Vale and humanity safe.
To throw Team SAPR into battle again.
Yang sat on the roof with her knees up and her arms wrapped around her legs, and she paid no attention whatsoever to the person standing in the doorway behind her.
“Yang,” Ruby repeated. “Come on, can’t we at least talk about this?”
“Oh, now you want to talk about this?” Yang demanded. “Well maybe I don’t, not anymore.” Not right now, anyway. She would talk to Ruby, eventually; she would forgive Ruby, because of course she would — she was her little sister, and she loved her — but … but she was allowed to be upset about this for just a little bit!
It wasn’t like they were little kids anymore and Yang couldn’t get upset with Ruby because she was all that Ruby had. If Ruby was old enough to attend Beacon, then she was old enough to deal with the fact that her big sister didn’t want to talk right now, wasn’t ready to forgive her just yet.
“I wanted to tell you!” Ruby cried. “But Professor Ozpin made me promise not to say anything—”
Despite herself, Yang looked around over her shoulder at Ruby. “First of all, that didn’t stop Sunset from telling me, and second of all, that’s not the point! You don’t even get why I’m upset, do you?”
Ruby walked towards her, until she was no longer standing behind Yang but beside her, looking down upon her seated sister. She played with her hands, lacing her fingers together and then unlacing them, clasping and unclasping them. “It … it’s because I didn’t tell you, isn’t it?”
“About Salem and all the rest?” Yang asked. “No. No, that’s not it. If that were all it was, if that were the only thing that you hadn’t said, then … I wouldn’t be happy about it; I wouldn’t be happy that I had to hear it from Sunset Shimmer, but I wouldn’t be mad about it either. I mean I wasn’t mad. I’ve known for a while, and you never knew because … because it wasn’t a big deal. I got it. You were told a secret, and you were asked not to share it … not even with me.”
“Yang—”
“That’s on Professor Ozpin, not you,” Yang said quickly, before Ruby could say anything. “He’s the one who didn’t trust me, not you.” She paused for a moment. “I’m mad about … everything else.”
“About Mom,” Ruby murmured.
“Yes, about Mom,” Yang said. “It’s bad enough that you went to talk to Professor Ozpin to get special details about her that we didn’t know without me—”
“Professor Ozpin didn’t know that—”
“I know that he didn’t want me to know about Salem, but what does that have to do with Mom?” Yang demanded. “He could have told you that stuff about Mom getting almost mugged on her first night in Vale without mentioning Salem at all; I bet there’s loads of stuff he could have told us both that didn’t require me to know his secrets, and he could have talked around the secrets if he’d wanted to. And if he didn’t think of that, you should have.” She paused for a moment. “Do you think that she was just your mom?”
“What?” Ruby cried. “No! Why would you even ask me something like that?”
“Because of the way that you didn’t think that I might want to hear about Mom, too?” Yang suggested sharply. “Because of the way that you didn’t tell me anything that the professor told you, you didn’t even tell me that you’d met with him? And do you know what the worst part is? I have listened to you complaining about exactly this from your team! How Sunset treats you like a kid, how Pyrrha doesn’t trust you, how neither of them treat you like an equal, how the two of them get together and make decisions about you, for you, without telling you; I’ve listened to you talk about how much it sucks, and I agree, it does suck, but then, when you get the chance, you turn around and do the exact same thing to me! That’s the part that really gets to me: you know how annoying this is, how much it hurts, but you did it anyway!”
Ruby was silent for a moment. She wasn’t looking at Yang any more; if she couldn’t meet Yang’s eyes, then … then good. She shouldn’t be able to meet Yang’s eyes after what she’d done.
And yet, at the same time, Yang couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been too harsh with Ruby here. After all, it wasn’t … well, it was absolutely one hundred percent Ruby’s fault, but at the same time … Professor Ozpin had put her in a difficult position.
But being put in a difficult position didn’t mean that Ruby hadn’t had a choice in the matter. She had. She could have fought for Yang; she could have remembered how it felt to be left in the dark and to have decisions made over your head.
She could have cared about her sister.
“I’m sorry,” Ruby murmured.
“Sorry that you got caught?”
“No,” Ruby insisted. “I’m sorry, I … I didn’t think—”
“Didn’t think what, that I’d want to know?” Yang demanded.
“I … I don’t know. I’m just sorry,” Ruby said, in a voice that was soft and quiet.
Yang was silent for a moment, and then for a moment more. She looked away from Ruby, her gaze once more rising to the green lights of the tower.
You sure know how to make our lives complicated, Professor.
“I’m sure you are,” Yang murmured. “But I … I need some time to myself. I’m not ready to … goodnight, Ruby.”
“You don’t … you don’t want to hear about Mom?” Ruby asked.
“Not right now,” Yang said, a slight sigh in her voice. At some point — probably at the same point when she really and truly accepted Ruby’s apology — she would tell Ruby about what Professor Goodwitch had had to share about Summer Rose, and in turn, Ruby could tell her what she had found out from Professor Ozpin.
But they weren’t there yet. Yang wasn’t there yet. She needed some time to … to be angry about this, because she had a right to be!
She was allowed to want some time for herself.
Nevertheless, the look on Ruby’s face, the way she bowed her head, the way her lower lip trembled, all of the things that Yang could see out of the corner of her eye, nearly broke her, and it took an immense exercise of will to keep from saying anything, from calling out as Ruby turned away and walked away, disappearing through the doorway and into the dorm rooms.
Yang sighed and buried her head in her hands.
Yes, Mom, I know she’s upset; I could see that for myself.
Yeah, I know I’m being just as bad as she is, but there’s a difference, okay? The difference is that I’m going to tell her everything; I just don’t feel like it right now.
Yes, that’s a difference; she wouldn’t have told me anything if Raven hadn’t shown up.
No, I don’t know when I’ll tell her, but I will; I promise.
I wish I could have been your daughter.
But that was not to be. There was no changing who you were born to, no escaping it. Her mother, as much as she might wish it otherwise, as much as she might deny the fact, was not Summer Rose.
Her mother was Raven Branwen, the bandit.
Her mother was a killer, her mother was a thief, her mother took what she wanted and hurt — killed — anyone who got in her way. Her mother had come to Beacon to learn not how to defend people but how to get better at the whole ‘kill anyone who gets in our way’ part.
Her mother was a stain on the world, and Yang was her daughter.
Hers, not Summer Rose’s. Ruby was Summer Rose’s daughter; that was why she got to find out about her from Professor Ozpin, that was why she was allowed into the headmaster’s confidence, the keeper of his secrets, his warrior in this secret war. While she, the bandit’s daughter, was cast out, condemned to wait in the wings, to stand outside the circle of trust.
On the outside, looking in.
Looking in and wishing she were someone other than she was.
This is probably what I deserve, huh, Mom? It’s what I get for wanting to know? I guess I should have been happy to have had a mother like you and not gone chasing after someone else I only knew from a picture?
I should have been happy to have had you, if only for a little bit.
“Hey, you okay?”
Yang looked up, blinking; Sun Wukong stood over her, smiling, but in a friendly way, not a ‘how can you be so happy when I’m miserable, I hate the sight of you’ jealousy-inducing kind of way.
“Sun?” Yang murmured. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, you know.”
“No,” Yang said. “No, I don’t know.”
Sun’s grin became a tough raffish. “Well, that’s the thing, neither do I.”
Yang snorted. “So, you just ended up on the roof by … accident?”
“I just got these legs, you know?” Sun replied. “They’ve gotta keep moving, or else they seize up, and they might not work again.”
“Really?” Yang asked. “You’d better not stand around here too long, in that case.”
“You trying to get rid of me?” Sun asked. “Because, you know, if you want me to go, then I’ll go, but if not…” He sat down beside her. “My legs can stay still for just a little bit.” He folded his arms. “So, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Yang said. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Of course,” Sun agreed. “Because people who are fine always sit alone on dark rooftops at night with their heads in their hands.”
Yang looked at him. “Do people who are fine wander around said dark rooftops instead?”
“Almost certainly not,” Sun conceded. “But then, I never claimed to be fine, did I?”
Yang chuckled. “No. No, you didn’t.” She paused. “You don’t have to stick around if you’ve got somewhere to be.”
“Yeah,” Sun said. “I think I do.”
Yang’s eyebrows rose. “Why?”
“Because I don’t think you’re really fine,” Sun said, in a conspiratorial whisper, as though this were some startling information that he had uncovered. “So I can’t leave until you are. That’s the Code of the Wukongs.”
“'The Code of the Wukongs,'” Yang repeated.
“The Code of the Wukongs,” Sun agreed. “Never let a girl cry, never let a buddy down.”
Yang’s lilac eyes narrowed. “How exactly does ditching your team and stowing away on a ship to Beacon count as not letting a buddy down?”
“Well, I knew that Scarlet really wanted to be team leader, so I got myself out of the way so that he could have a go.”
“Is that right?” Yang muttered dryly. “How about the time you stowed away on that airship with Blake and the Atlesians, ditching your team again?”
Sun laughed nervously, a flush of colour rising to his dusky cheeks. “Well … love … doesn’t always make us the best versions of ourselves.”
Yang was silent for a moment. “Have you heard from Blake lately?”
“No,” Sun said. “You?”
Yang shook her head. “Really? You’ve not heard anything?”
“Nuh-uh,” Sun replied. “Means that she must be having a great time, I guess; such a great time that she doesn’t have time to call.”
“Or write or do anything,” Yang replied. “You ought to call her out on it when she gets back.”
“Why?”
“Because … because she’s taking you for granted,” Yang declared. “You’re not a dog; she just can’t leave you here and go waltz off to another kingdom and expect you to be waiting here when she gets back.”
“But I will be waiting here when she gets back.”
“That doesn’t mean that she can expect it,” Yang insisted. “She owes you a scroll call, at least.”
Sun shook his head. “Blake doesn’t owe me anything,” he said. “Any time that I get to spend with her, I’m so lucky. Winning the lottery the first time you buy a ticket lucky. Blake … she’s like no one else in the world. When I’m with her … when I’m with her, I don’t want to move. When I’m with her, my feet don’t itch. Vacuans aren’t meant to put down roots, but when I’m with her … because she’s the one.” He paused for a second. “But she…”
Yang waited for him to finish. “But she what?”
Sun smiled. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Especially since I think you’re stalling.”
“I’m not stalling,” Yang said.
“Yeah, you are,” Sun informed her. “Come on, why are you up here all alone in the middle of the night?”
Yang hesitated for a moment. It would be good to tell someone.
Which is why it’s such a pity that I can’t tell anyone.
That’s why Ruby thought she couldn’t tell me anything about Mom.
So … talk around it?
Yeah. That … that might be nice.
Yang sighed, her chest rising and falling. “Can you keep a secret?”
Sun nodded, the smile fading from his face and leaving only an earnest expression behind.
“That’s good to know,” Yang said. She grinned. “Unfortunately for you, so can I.” She paused for a moment. “What would you do if you knew a secret that you couldn’t tell?”
“I’d tell Neptune.”
“Did you maybe miss the part where I said you ‘couldn’t tell’?”
“No, I heard that, that’s why I wouldn’t tell Scarlet or Sage or anyone else,” Sun said. “But I’d have to tell Neptune.”
“What if you couldn’t?” Yang asked. “What if you really, absolutely couldn’t, because…”
“Because what?” Sun pressed.
“Honestly … I don’t know,” Yang replied. “Well, no, that’s not quite true, I do know; I just … I don’t know how to tell you without—”
“Telling me the secret that you know?” Sun suggested.
“Something like that, yeah,” Yang muttered. “What would you do if you found out that the world wasn’t quite what you thought it was? What if the things that you thought you knew, the things that you took for granted … they were slightly skewed, they didn’t look the way they’d seemed before.”
Sun was quiet for a moment. “Then … I guess I’d deal with it.”
“Just like that?”
Sun shrugged. “What else am I going to do? If that’s the way things are, then I can’t change them back to the way I thought they were, right?”
Yang chuckled. “Well, I … I guess not,” she admitted. “Doesn’t always mean it’s that easy though. I had a fight with Ruby.”
“Because of this secret that you can’t tell.”
“Because Ruby knew first, and she didn’t tell me,” Yang said. “I guess she doesn’t like me as much as you like Neptune.”
“Well, when I said that I would tell Neptune,” Sun said, “what I meant was that I would think about telling Neptune, whereas I would never think about telling Sage or Scarlet, not that I would always, without fail, tell Neptune. I mean, there are things that I wouldn’t tell Neptune, and there are things that Neptune wouldn’t tell me; I’d just think about telling him, just like I’m sure that Ruby thought about telling you—“
“Has anyone ever told you that you babble a little bit when you’re under pressure?” asked Yang.
Sun blinked. “No.”
“You babble when you’re under pressure,” Yang told him. “You don’t need to make excuses for Ruby. I … I get why she didn’t tell me.”
“But you had a fight with her anyway?”
Yang was silent for a moment, collecting her thoughts. “Ruby and I … we’re only half-sisters. Same dad, different moms.”
Sun nodded. “I guess that explains the names. So … did your mom die—“
“Ruby’s mom died,” Yang said. “My mom walked out on her family when I was just a baby. I didn’t even realise that Ruby’s mom wasn’t also my mom until … until she was gone.” She hesitated. “Can you keep a secret?”
“I didn’t think you were going to give me the chance to prove it,” Sun said.
“This is one of those things that I think I can tell you,” Yang said. “But I’d rather that you only thought about telling Neptune. I don’t want to get anyone into trouble.”
“Hey, ‘never let a girl cry, never let a buddy down,’ remember?” Sun reminded her. “The Code of the Wukongs.”
“How many Wukongs actually follow this code?” Yang asked.
“Oh, all the Wukongs do,” Sun assured her. “That’s easy, because I’m the only one there is.”
“Really?” Yang asked. “You … you don’t … your family, were they-?”
“No,” Sun told her. “Or at least, maybe they were, but I don’t remember it. Vacuans don’t do families.”
“Everyone does families.”
“Not Vacuans,” Sun insisted. “They only slow you down.”
“If you got rid of everything that slowed you down, then you’d have nothing worth living for,” Yang replied. “Besides, if families slow you down, then what do girls who drive you so crazy that you have to stow away aboard Atlesian airships do?”
Sun chuckled and scratched the back of his head with one head. “Well … listen, I never said that I was the perfect Vacuan; I just know that we don’t believe in settling down in any one place, we don’t believe in getting too attached to places or people, and … and I don’t remember my parents. I don’t remember any family, really. I’ve got a cousin who works as a mechanic, I think, but we don’t talk much. Or at all. Other than that … I’ve got no strings to hold me down. Except Neptune, I guess, and Blake.”
“Part of me thinks that you’re lucky,” Yang said. “The other part of me wants to give you a hug and tell you how sorry I am. Having no family … I can’t imagine what that’s like.” She took a moment before she went on. “Sunset stole mom’s diary — Ruby’s mom’s diary — from the Beacon archives. She stole it, and she gave it to Ruby. And Ruby read it with me, because…”
“Because she was your mom, too,” Sun said softly.
“Something like that, even though she wasn’t,” Yang replied. “Only now … I found out that Ruby had gone to see Professor Ozpin and gotten first-hand stories about her mother, about what she was like, what she went through here at Beacon. And she didn’t even tell me! She didn’t tell me the stories; she didn’t even tell me she was having the meeting. Because I wasn’t supposed to know the big secret. Because I can’t be trusted. Because my mom…”
Sun waited for a few seconds. “Because your mom what?”
Yang glanced at him. “If Vacuans don’t do families, then what do they think about defining people by their parents?”
Sun snorted. “That’s just dumb. Neptune’s family are all champion swimmers, but Neptune…”
“Neptune what?”
Sun laughed nervously. “Let’s just say that that’s a secret he’d want me to think before I shared it with anyone else, and that judging people by what their parents did or were like is moronic, okay?”
Yang hesitated. It was easy to say something like that; it might not be so easy to maintain that frame of mind once you actually had the necessary context. Still, it would be good to tell someone. “My mom is a bandit.”
Sun’s expression didn’t alter. “You’re not talking about the good kind, are you?”
“No,” Yang said softly. “I’m talking about the very, very bad kind.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I love my Dad,” she said, “with his bad jokes and his experimental recipes. But when I was a kid … there were times when I wished my name was Rose, not Xiao Long, because that would mean that I was Summer Rose’s daughter, just like Ruby. I still wish my name was Rose.”
Sun was silent for a moment, staring at her without saying anything. “What was she like?”
“Who?”
“Summer Rose,” Sun clarified. “What was she like?”
“I don’t know,” Yang said. “I’m not allowed to know.”
“What do you remember?” Sun asked.
“I remember … I remember that she used to always have this smell, like—”
“Roses?” Sun guessed.
“Sunflowers,” Yang corrected him. “Like the sunflowers that grow around our house.” Maybe that was why Dad had started planting them; she didn’t remember them being there until after Mom had gone. “When we would play hide and seek, I could always tell when she was getting warm because I could smell her coming. It would come in with her, like perfume, but … nicer. I remember this one time, I … I couldn’t go to sleep. I don’t remember why not; I just remember that I couldn’t get to sleep, and she wasn’t around. Maybe I couldn’t get to sleep because she wasn’t around, I don’t remember, but the point is … Dad couldn’t get me to sleep, and eventually, he gave up trying and let me stay up with him to wait for Mom, for Summer. And she comes in, about midnight, with this wound on her arm, and the first thing that she said, before anything else, she looked at me and said, ‘Isn’t it past your bedtime, young lady?’” Yang grinned. “Still, she let me stay up … or I don’t suppose she had much choice, since I wanted her to put me to bed, and she couldn’t do that with a bleeding arm, so she had to let me stay up until Dad had tended to her injury. Eventually, as she was tucking me in, I asked why she had to go away like that, and she kissed me on the forehead and she said, ‘For all the other little girls who might not have a mommy to tuck them in if I don’t.’”
She paused. “When I, when we were little, Ruby and me, I used to make up stories about her. I used to tell Ruby these stories about Summer Rose, the great hero with a shining sword, the fearless monster slayer. They weren’t true. I don’t remember anything about what she did as a huntress; if she ever talked to me about it, I’ve forgotten. But I knew what she did, I remember that much; I knew what she did, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever, even if I did sometimes want to wait up for her for when she got back from her missions.”
Until one night when she didn’t come back. Yang didn’t think about that; it wasn’t the kind of thing that she wanted to remember. “I remember,” she went on, “how she used to experiment with her cookies. It was like … it was like they were new to her, and she was pushing the boundaries of how far she could take them.” She paused. “I mean, apparently, she did grow up outside the kingdoms and didn’t arrive in Vale until she started at Beacon, so that might actually be exactly what it was. Anyway, she could make the basic cookie flavours: chocolate, double chocolate, triple chocolate … chocolate and orange, I guess. And she could put the usual extras in like cinnamon or cardamon or … other things ending in ‘mon.’ But she would also come up with these weird ones like … pineapple cookies, bright green — and I’m talking really bright, like neon — lime cookies, cookies stuffed with ice cream in the middle, peaches and cream cookies. Some of them were really great, and I wish that I knew where she’d left the recipes for them because I’ve tried a hundred times since she left to replicate them myself, and they never work out the way I remember hers tasting. Some of them … didn’t quite work out so well, but … we always used to eat them right up because … because they were made with love.”
Sun smiled softly. “I admit that I’m not the best judge, but … that all sounds pretty much like a Mom to me.”
“Sounds like a family, anyway,” Nora said.
Yang looked around, to see Nora and Ren standing in the doorway. Ren was lounging against the doorframe, while Nora stood just in front of him with her arms folded.
“How long have you two been here?” Yang asked.
“A little while,” Nora admitted. “We came to look for you, but we didn’t want to interrupt.”
“Ruby seems … a little upset about something,” Ren added.
Yang winced. “Yeah, I … I’m a little upset with her too, honestly. Ruby … Ruby was keeping things from me.”
“Things to do with your Mom?” Nora asked.
Yang shook her head. “To do with her Mom.”
“Who just so happened to do everything for you that a mother is supposed to do,” Sun pointed out. “Come on, Yang, if she wasn’t your mom, then who was she?”
Yang smiled sadly. “I wish I could believe that.”
“Then believe it!” Sun cried. “That’s what's cool about belief; nobody can say you’re wrong. If they try, you just say ‘that’s what I choose to believe.’”
“But my mom isn’t…” Yang paused for a moment. “She didn’t give birth to me. My mother isn’t the one who baked me cookies or tucked me in at night; my mother is the one who abandoned me—”
“So did mine,” Nora said quietly.
Yang turned to her once more. “R-really?” she asked. “You never … I guess I always thought that—”
“Well, she might as well have,” Nora declared as she walked forwards, Ren trailing a step or two behind her. “When the grimm attacked, she left me behind and never looked back. Kinda amazing that I survived really, but then, I guess I am kinda amazing in so many ways.” She grinned, although she couldn’t keep the smile on her face for very long. “The point is … if being left behind by my own mother taught me anything, if my life has taught me anything, it’s that family isn’t the person who happens to give birth to you.” She reached out one hand, and Ren silently slipped his fingers into her palm. “It’s the people who love you.” With her free hand, Nora reached out and gently touched Yang’s shoulder.
“But her blood is in me,” Yang murmured. “Not the blood of a hero, but a—“
“A bandit?” Nora asked. “Yeah, we heard that too. But so what? You think that means you’re going to turn to a life of crime because of whose blood flows in your veins? Do you think I’m automatically going to ditch the people I care about because my mother ditched me?”
“Bandits are amongst the most despicable people in all of Remnant,” Ren said sternly. “I have no words strong enough to condemn them and the way that they ruin and destroy lives and put even those victims they do not kill at risk from the creatures of grimm.” He looked into Yang’s eyes. “But that is not the kind of person you are, and no amount of revelations about your birth family can change that.”
Yang looked from Sun, back to Ren and Nora. “Thanks, guys,” she said softly.
The four of them sat in silence for a little while as the moon shone down upon them.
Yang turned her eyes once more towards the gleaming green lights of the Emerald Tower, but then her gaze rose further up, towards the heavens, towards the stars that stood guard all around the moon.
“They’re pretty nice tonight, aren’t they?” Yang asked. “The stars, I mean.”
“Yeah,” Nora agreed, “yeah, they are.”
And so they sat, and so they watched, and so they said little or nothing at all, as the moon and stars kept them company.
Ruby trudged across the dorm room. It was empty, of course, and it would be empty until Sunset, Jaune, and Pyrrha got back.
The dorm room was empty, and Yang didn’t want to talk to her.
As she sunk down onto her bed, Ruby was aware that possibly she could have handled this better. But that didn’t mean it was her fault! If she’d insisted on Yang being there, then Professor Ozpin might have changed his mind — after all, he’d promised that they would talk about Mom, not that the three of them would — and then none of them would have learned anything!
But maybe I should have told her before I told Sunset.
I would have … probably.
What am I supposed to do to fix this?
In the utter absence of anyone to talk to in the dorm room, Ruby got out her scroll and called someone who might know about fighting with her older sibling.
She waited a few moments as the call went through, before the face of Juturna Rutulus appeared on the other end of the device. Her hair was a lot messier than it usually was — she had full on bedhead, bits of hair sticking out all over the place, drooping everywhere — and she wasn’t wearing any makeup either.
And she was wearing pyjamas: purple pyjamas that didn’t quite fit her any more and had a cartoon tiger on the front.
Oh, yeah, right; time difference.
“Ruby,” Juturna said, with a leonine yawn. “What time is it where you are? It’s first thing in the morning here.”
“It’s … the middle of the night,” Ruby said. “Sorry, I can’t sleep right now.”
“Eh, it’s not like you woke me up or anything,” Juturna said, although the fact that she then yawned again suggested that she hadn’t had a completely restful night.
“You okay?” Ruby asked.
Juturna laughed. “You’re the one who rang me, and you’re asking if I’m okay?”
“You seem tired,” Ruby pointed out.
“I’m not tired, I just…” Juturna paused for some more yawning. “Okay, yes, I am a little bit tired, but only because we went to the premiere of Jewel of Menagerie last night, and we didn’t get home until late.”
“Was it any good?”
“It was pretty good fun, yeah,” Juturna said. “Boulder movies are always pretty good fun.” She sighed. “I tried to chat up one of the cute younger actors, but they’re all scared of my brother.”
Ruby chuckled. “Would he have a problem with it?”
Juturna sat down on her bed. “If they had enough money, it might be enough to help him get over the fact that they’re still just actors, but nobody wants to be the one to try it and find out.” She paused. “Anyway, you’re the one who called me, which means that you’re the one having issues, so: ‘sup?”
“Well, it’s actually kind of about … that, sort of,” Ruby said. “Do you ever fight with your brother?”
Juturna blinked. “What kind of a question is that?”
“Come on, just answer,” Ruby said. “Please.”
“Okay, the answer is no.”
“No?” Ruby repeated. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Juturna said. “We don’t fight.”
“Not ever?”
“Okay, maybe not ‘never,’” Juturna said. “But not often. Turnus doesn’t get mad at me because … well, we don’t get mad at each other because we don’t do anything for the other to get mad about.”
“What about the way that you can’t find a boyfriend because everyone is scared of him?” Ruby asked.
Juturna laughed. “Ruby, just because some actors are more chicken in real life than the characters they play … I could get a boyfriend, if I wanted one. Yeah, Turnus would have to approve of the guy — and so would Camilla as well, for different reasons — but only because … look, I’m Turnus’ little sister, and he cares about me, and until he has any kids — which might not happen if he can’t get over himself and accept that Pyrrha’s gone — then I’m his heir. He wants to make sure that the family money and land and the company isn’t going to some jackass who isn’t going to know what to do with it, and he wants to make sure that I find someone who's going to treat me right, and if he does have kids — and I really hope he will, because I really want to be someone’s cool aunt — then I won’t inherit anything so he wants to make sure that I’ll be taken care of. It’s a lot to think about, and … well, I’d rather he thought about it than he didn’t care, you get me?”
That seemed like an awful lot to think about, to Ruby; she wondered if poor people who could just date whoever they liked were better off without having to consider such a list of … considerations.
Then again, Pyrrha seems to manage okay.
“Ruby,” Juturna said, “what’s this about?”
Ruby sighed. “I’m having a fight with Yang. I guess I was hoping for some advice.”
“Hmm,” Juturna said. “Are you mad, or is she mad?”
“Yang’s mad,” Ruby supplied.
Juturna nodded. “Well, on the rare occasion when Turnus does get mad at me, I find the best thing to do is beg forgiveness.”
“Why?”
“Because he never makes me beg very long,” Juturna explained. “Neither of them do, so once I apologise, they forgive me, we hug it out, and then everything’s back to normal.”
That sounded a little disingenuous. “Do you mean it?” Ruby asked. “Your apology, I mean.”
“Yeah!” Juturna insisted. “I may be lazy and aimless and kind of stupid, but I would never intentionally get my family or Rutulian Security into any trouble, and the only reason why Turnus would ever get mad at me is if I caused or risked some kind of trouble, so I apologise and say I didn’t mean it, which I didn’t.”
“What if it isn’t your fault?”
“It’s always my fault,” Juturna said. “Like I said, Turnus wouldn’t get mad at me if it wasn’t.” Her eyebrows rose. “So, what did you do?”
“How do you know I did anything?” Ruby demanded.
Juturna smiled knowingly. “Okay, what is your sister mad at you about?”
Ruby hesitated for a moment.
“Come on!” Juturna urged. “Spill it!”
Ruby took a deep breath and let out an equally deep sigh. “I found out some stuff about our mom, stuff about her past, stuff that we didn’t know. And I kept it to myself, and I didn’t tell her about it.”
Juturna was silent for a moment. “Yeah, Ruby, I won’t lie to you, that sounds terrible, and you should totally apologise.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty bad,” Juturna said. “You knew she wanted to know, right?”
“I … yeah, yeah I did,” Ruby murmured.
“Yeah,” Juturna said, drawing out the word. “Your sister’s got a right to be mad at you.”
In general, moral disapproval bites more fiercely when coming from the morally upstanding, but there is a certain edge that occasionally comes from being judged by the … okay, Juturna wasn’t a bad person, but, like, Ruby was pretty sure that she was, as a general rule, a kinder and more considerate person than Juturna was. That made the fact that Juturna now possessed the moral high ground and was using it to look down on Ruby a particularly uncomfortable experience.
“Any tips for how I should say sorry?” Ruby asked. “I’ve already tried just saying sorry. It didn’t take.”
Juturna winced. “Give it some time, maybe. I don’t know. Like I said, Turnus is very quick to forgive me; they both are. I guess I’m really lucky that way.”
“Yeah,” Ruby said, a slight smile upon her face. “Yeah, you really are.”
“Sorry I can’t be of much help,” Juturna said. “Oh! But hey, while you’re there, there’s something that I wanted to tell you: Turnus is coming to Vale in a few days, and he wants to meet you.”
“What?” Ruby asked. “Your brother’s coming here? Why? It’s not something to do with Pyrrha, is it?”
“No, it’s nothing like that; it’s work,” Juturna said. “Have you heard of the Heart of Mistral?”
“Sounds a bit like one of Pyrrha’s nicknames,” Ruby said.
Juturna laughed. “Yeah, I guess it does, doesn’t it?” she replied. “But no, it’s a ruby; it’s a really big, supposedly really beautiful ruby that they mined out from the mountain in the really old days. It belonged to the Emperor until he gave it away to his daughter on her wedding day. One of her descendants was wearing it when he was killed during the war, and one of you Valish took it off his body, and it’s been in your museums ever since. Only now, Vale has agreed to give it back — I think they’re getting a discount on the cost of those battleships you’re buying off us — and Lord Kiro has hired Rutulian Security to protect him while he goes and gets it. So, Turnus is going to be in Vale, and he wants to meet you.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re friends,” Juturna said. “And Turnus likes to get to know my friends.”
“And scare them?”
Juturna grinned. “Come on, Ruby, you’re a badass huntress; I’m sure you can handle it. Shall I tell him that you’re looking forward to it? Come on, what’s the harm in letting him take you to dinner?”
“Well … Pyrrha—”
“He is not going to say anything about Pyrrha or try to get you to do anything or … anything like that,” Juturna promised. “Turnus isn’t perfect, but on the whole, he’s a really great guy, and he wouldn’t do something like that. I promise.”
“Okay,” Ruby said. “In that case, sure. I’d love to meet him. I really would. I mean, you obviously think a lot of him. Yeah, tell him that I’m looking forward to it.”
Although I’m not sure Jaune and Pyrrha will be when they find out about it.