..... what if the first person Ruby finds in wonderland is Penny's body?
The falling feels like it takes days.
The thing is, she’s got sight of Blake. Wind and magic are howling around her, her pulse roaring in her ears, throat stopped with terror and regret, but. She’s got sight of Blake, even if they can’t talk. She’s got sight of Blake until suddenly she doesn’t, as they plunge through the dark, and all she can think is--
This is what it was like for Yang. This is what Yang saw, this is what Yang felt. At the end.
(It doesn’t. Hurt, that is. When she lands. But she has no recollection of landing.)
When she wakes, she’s warm. She can’t remember when she last felt warmth, not in the frigidness of the Atlas air--
--that’s not true, she can, she can remember exactly. Arms familiar in their strength but thrillingly novel in their softness around her and Do hugs always make you feel this warm inside? and yes, they do, they always have. From her they always, always have--
-- but here it’s humid and balmy, sand beneath her back and a canopy of trees above her. She can hear the crash of waves, somewhere off to her left.
“Blake?!” she calls as she gets to her feet, because they couldn’t have been separated that long, Blake couldn’t have gotten that far. And then, when she hears nothing, she tries frantically, hopefully: “Yang?!”
(She remembers the market, back on Patch. How Yang would take her along in the wagon when she went for groceries because leaving Ruby alone at home-- well. Alone-enough, alone with Dad, who was there but not present-- didn’t seem like an option. How Ruby went wandering, once, enticed by the colorful fruit displays, and they spent nearly an hour missing each other by moments once they realized they were separated. How when they’d finally reunited, Yang had grabbed her by the shoulders and said, in her most serious voice, If you ever get lost I need you to stay where you are. I’m gonna come find you, okay? I promise. But if I’m looking for you, and you’re looking for me, that makes it harder. I will retrace my steps. That’s my job. Your job is to stay where you are.)
But there’s no steps to retrace, not this time. And if Ruby stops moving she’ll start crying, and if she starts crying she’ll never stop. So she puts one foot in front of the other and looks around to get her bearings.
She finds the beach easily enough, the shore spreading out endlessly in either direction. She calls names as she goes, but hears nothing but the water and the sound of her own voice.
And yet still-- despite the fact that she’s looking-- she’s surprised when she sees the body.
It’s the hair she notices first, coppery strands glinting in the sunlight (is it sunlight? she suddenly realizes she’s not sure) and she’s running before she’s even fully processed what’s she’s seen, “Penny Penny PENNY--” falling from her mouth as she stumbles and sprints and falls to her knees to turn her over, to check her breathing--
-- only Penny’s torso, when Ruby rolls her onto her back, is painted with blood. Not the green stuff she remembers from Schnee Manor, but. Blood. Real blood.
“No, no, no, no no no no no-- please--”
She reaches, instinctive, to look for a heartbeat, but as her stretching fingers span Penny’s chest they find only the divots of puncture wounds. Arrayed claw marks, in the shape of a grasping hand, if only her grip were a little wider. A little less human. (There’s a stab wound, too, deep in her stomach, and that-- wouldn’t it be cauterized? Cinder’s never made a sword she didn’t set aflame, that doesn’t seem right, that doesn’t seem--)
(-- none of this is right--)
She’s cold to the touch, is the thing. And Penny’s never been that, not even when she was steel and circuitry; she always hummed with energy, with heat, with life.
Kill me. Kill me, and I can make sure the power goes to you.
Ruby takes a deep breath-- shuddering, a hiccup-- and tries to feel it, tries to trace the edge of a foreign power inside of her, but there’s nothing, she doesn’t feel any different--
--that’s not true, she feels wholly different. She feels changed, feels entirely unlike herself, feels monstrous and desperate and devastated. Feels like she could tear the world apart, like she could kick at the columns here in this place beneath all places that hold Remnant up and bring everything she’s ever known crumbling down on top of her with the strength of her grief; she just got her back, she just got her back, they were--
It stays nothing. When she reaches for an unlocked tempest within, all she finds is her own sorrow; when she squeezes her eyes shut and thinks fire, all that comes are tears.
So-- so Cinder took everything, then.
Not the power-- Ruby couldn’t care less about that, not now, but. The legacy. The promise that at least a part of Penny might live on, might linger in someone who loved her.
She could swear she hears the sound of her own name, but it’s distant. Barely audible, even, over the unholy racket that’s surrounding her, this-- this awful noise--
-- it’s her, she realizes. She’s screaming, she must be screaming, wracked with incoherent sobs--
Sturdy arms embrace her from behind, a voice saying “Ruby, Ruby, I’ve got you, it’s okay, it’s-- is that blood? Is she--? Oh, Ruby--”
And Ruby collapses backwards into Blake’s shaking hold, and cries, and cries, and cries.
Staying where she is, in the hopes that she’ll be found.
