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Ren likes to know when his friends are okay.
He’s never been good at reading people, feeling out emotions, which is why when his semblance becomes something more- when it can help him with that- it opens up Ren’s world in ways that he never would have imagined before. He can finally understand them, and he can help them get through it.
He’s failed Nora in that. It’s the least he can do to rectify his misgivings.
He reads his friends like a heart monitor. He searches them up and down, checking their vital signs, examining their faces for circles under their eyes (right now they’re all exhausted, but sleep will come in due time), giving them small reassurances that they’re loved and cared for.
His friends have an amazing stubbornness when it comes to looking after themselves. He supposes he does too. Perhaps that is part of what brought them together as a group; separate, and they’ll tear themselves apart from the inside out, but together they can get through their own problems. Ren sees that now. He should’ve known that, but he was too blinded by his own pigheadedness and failure complex bullshit. With help, they can find a way to grow themselves.
He knows that now, but as he reads his friends, he finds someone else who isn’t getting that.
Looking at Ruby with his semblance for the first time makes him visibly react the most. Grief and guilt cling to her like an old friend, so much so that the deep blues and purples of her petals wash out the red. What horrifies him about it is how calm she appears without the petals to expose her. Okay, so maybe calm isn’t the right word, Ruby wears mostly a bleary expression these days. It’s the stark difference of what she wears on her face and what she carries underneath it that’s gut-wrenching to him.
She’s worried, she’s overwhelmed, she’s confused and scared in all the wrong ways. She doesn’t know what she’s doing but at the same time she believes what she’s doing is right and that makes things so much worse, especially when not everyone thinks she’s right. Not everyone is supporting her or backing her up, not even her own sister, and she thinks every decision she’s made has been the wrong one but she doesn’t know what else to do.
Ruby’s emotions are piled up, and those piles have piles and there’s so many and it’s bound to overflow at any given moment. She keeps putting the lid on it and it boils over. She never thinks to just turn off the gas.
He shouldn’t have judged her so harshly. He shouldn’t have judged any of them so harshly. It’s been hard for all of them.
Nobody is perfect.
It’s when they find out and discuss that the talking grimm/hound beast that had kidnapped Oscar had been a person inside that Ren confronts Ruby about it.
She’s sitting by herself in the corner while they calm down and recuperate before making a plan to save Penny and evacuate Mantle and Atlas, hugging her knees close to her chest. They have a small amount of time to kill- enough to catch their breaths, but they’re going to follow through with Ironwood’s demands. They have to, if they want to save the citizens of Mantle and Penny at the same time.
He watches as Ruby takes another deep breath, her eyes shut. It’s shaky. Unsteady. It’s like she’s trying her best to keep herself calm, to keep things from boiling over again. She’d choked up earlier and she’s clearly not willing to let that happen again. Her silver eyes are void of any emotion.
Silver eyes. Like the person inside that monster.
Yeah… he’s still trying to get a handle on the squeezing in his chest after finding out that tiny detail. It’s… hardly a small thing, but calling it that makes it more manageable. Once he’d gotten Nora out of bed, they’d immediately told WBY about Tyrian apparently hunting them down all across Anima.
“There’s something you guys should know,” Nora had said warily. “Salem… she sent Tyrian after Ruby while we were on the road to Mistral.”
All three of the RWBY girls’ eyes had widened, but Yang stepped forward. “What?” Her voice came out in a breathy whisper.
“She’s wanted Ruby alive this whole time,” Jaune snarled. “Knowing now that… that it was for this- that scares me.”
“He was so close too,” Ren told them in a low voice, looking down in shame. “If it wasn’t for Qrow…”
“I,” Blake’s voice wavered. “I can’t believe she was so close to getting her, and we weren’t even there.”
“That can’t happen again,” Yang’s eyes burned as she spoke. They burned red with fury, determination, and desperation. “Salem isn’t taking another member of my family again. She can’t have my sister, too.”
Nora, without a word, placed her hand in the middle of the group, and nodded once. That was all that was needed. Every hand went in that circle, as they swore a silent pact. Salem was not allowed to have Ruby. Not on their watch.
If the hound, being a silver eyed warrior, had shaken them all up, Ren can’t even begin to imagine what that discovery is doing to Ruby. After all, Ruby and Yang’s family has been in this fight longer than they have, and to learn that that’s what happened rather than her dying a hero’s death…
Ren’s heart aches for Ruby right now.
Ren approaches Ruby silently, accustomed to moving into a space as though he were a shadow. She notices him right away though, ever alert to her surroundings. He watches as a painful smile wavers onto her face- Ren feels the pain just looking at it. He sees as her grip on her knees tighten and she curls further inward into herself, just subtly enough that if you weren’t paying attention you might miss it.
“Hey, Ren,” She says. “What’s up? Do you need anything?”
Always checking in on everyone else first. She does a better job at that then he ever will.
Ren gazes at her sadly- not with pity, but with sympathy. Ruby starts at the reaction, face melting to a confused frown. Her silver eyes flick cautiously in his direction as he does nothing- says nothing- and moves to sit next to her on the floor. He’s closer than usual, which probably confuses her even more. He can feel his own body warmth warming hers up, and he can see the conflicted storm brewing in her eyes. She wants to lean in, but knows it will expose her distress.
Ren and Ruby were never particularly close, but their trek across Anima has allowed them to bond in a quiet way that most people wouldn’t notice. The both of them have become each other’s emotional crutch in the smallest of ways. Upon coming across yet another abandoned or destroyed town, Ruby would come up to Ren and place a hand on his lower back. In the late nights when Ruby couldn’t sleep, he would give her a squeeze and stay with her until her eyes began to droop. Just pure, unspoken support.
This mostly started because neither of them were very sociable at the time, and didn’t know how to converse with someone they barely knew (still don’t, really). But somehow they both knew what they needed at the time of their distress.
This time is different. Now, Ren has a chance to talk to Ruby about it.
Ruby is tense against him, but Ren moves to grab one of Ruby’s hands from her knees, and pulls it down between them, giving it a squeeze. Her fingertips are cold. Ruby wilts at the touch, realizing what’s happening, and lets their silent comfort routine continue.
He starts with an apology. “I’m… sorry.”
She frowns again. “For what?”
Ren bites his lip, hesitant with his words. “I… I wasn’t fair to you. This whole time I believed that you were being childish, fighting a fight that was doomed to fail,” She flinches, more guilt petals sprouting around her, and the reaction causes him to panic as he tries to recover. “I lost faith. In you, in everyone. I shouldn’t have. That’s not what a friend does.”
Ruby smiles feebly. “It’s okay, Ren,” she says. “I mean, it’s not like my idea worked anyways.”
“No,” Ren shakes his head, dismissing what she said entirely. “You inspire me in a way. Not everyone was with you on this, but you kept going anyways despite the odds stacked against you. Should’ve expected that, I guess, you’ve always been that way.” Ruby smiles again, but this time it reaches her eyes, if only for a moment. Ren continues. “But, um, you don’t always have to be that way. I mean, you can keep moving forward, obviously, but don’t move at a pace that leaves everything else behind.”
“What do you mean?” She asks.
“Well,” Ren sighs shakily. He can do this. “What if I told you that before Jaune, Yang and I went to save Oscar, my semblance… evolved?”
She blinks, then leans into him. “That’s great! I know you were working hard on that. Congratulations.”
“Well, what if I said that my semblance not only masks people’s emotions, but it can also… read them?”
She tenses against him and pulls away, looking at him in the eye like a deer caught in the headlights. “What?”
“I can see what you’re feeling.”
“Right now?”
“Right now.”
“... Oh.”
There’s a pause in the air heavy enough to manifest an ocean, pulling them deeper into its depths and making it hard to breathe. Ruby’s shoulders hunch with discomfort as she registers what that means.
“Like, exactly what I’m feeling, or-?”
“Ruby,” Ren interrupts her with a warning in his tone. He’s watching her now, swimming through the molten silver in her eyes as she scrambles for some kind of excuse.
She’s shying away fast. She’s fidgeting with the folds in her cloak over her shoulders, and Ren’s traveled with her long enough to know that it means she wants to put it on and hide.
“You don’t have to talk,” Ren says. “I know how hard that is. But just listen. Even if things don’t work out the way you hoped, at least you tried. That’s all anyone can do: try. If we don’t we lose anyways. At least trying gives us a chance.”
“But,” Ruby damn near whimpers out. “Trying isn’t good enough.”
“That is all there is to do,” Ren says. “Something has to be done, and you do it. You always do it.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t, Ren,” Ruby snaps. “And I know it goes against what you just told me, but that doesn’t- it-” She gasps for breath. “-if I try and it always fails then it would be better to just not, right?”
“Then you’re choosing to fail.”
“No, Ren, I’m not. Maybe I’m choosing something better. Maybe I’m actually giving people who deserve it a better chance. If I’m not enough, maybe someone else is.”
“Ruby, if you refuse to take a test at Beacon, and leave it there, is someone going to pick it up and do it for you?”
“... No.”
“But if you do it then maybe you’ll make some progress?”
Ruby shakes her head, standing up and making waving arm gestures around her body. “Or- or maybe I do it and fail anyways?! I wasn’t the smartest student in Beacon, Ren. I only did a year, nobody prepared me for-”
“For this?”
She freezes, as if realizing what she just said. She sits back down numbly, refusing to look at Ren. Then she sighs, and the very movement in her lungs makes her whole body quiver. She buries her head in her knees, putting her hood over it. “I don’t know what I’m doing.” She finally admits.
“I know.”
“I just-” Her voice is muffled by the fabric, shuddering under the weight of each word. “If what I’m doing is right, and it keeps failing, then… I’m- I’m not good enough or something? I don’t understand- what- what am I doing wrong ?”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Ren wraps an arm around her shoulders and back. She’s shaking, but no sobs are wracking her body at all. He looks at her again; some of the petals have cleared, but there is still a significant enough amount to make him grunt. But there’s another colour in there, one he hasn’t seen before: a bright silvery glow, like Ruby’s eyes. He watches the single petal curiously as it flickers into existence for a moment before it sputters out.
He decides to call it hope, but it’s a different kind of hope. A kind of hope exclusive to someone like Ruby. To someone with a desire to take that hope and inspire others. To preserve life.
But it was gone as quickly as it came, and Ren mourns its loss. This will take a lot of work to clear out all those petals. There’s no way he can lift that weight off of her with his words alone. It’s going to take all of them. But she needs to let them first.
He rubs her back, and continues his previous thought. “Don’t blame yourself for impossible odds. You can’t fight what you don’t see coming, and nobody saw this coming.”
She huffs. Ren can see that she thinks she should see it coming, but she doesn’t follow through on that thought. No matter, Ren thinks as he shuts his eyes tiredly. He can’t always use her own thoughts to push her to share. It would be unfair.
But if there’s ever a time when he needs to, he will. If her stubbornness gets the better of her, he will use it.
“Maybe we weren’t ready to be huntsmen and huntresses,” Ren says. “But we’re the best chance the world has. Save some of that faith and hope you give to humanity so much for yourself.”
Ruby lifts her head as her eyes open. Ren searches for tears, but finds none. Instead he sees shadows under her eyes and storm clouds still lingering. But she smiles, and Ren thinks she might’ve heard him.
“I’ll try,” She says, doubt causing her voice to crack, but determined nonetheless. Then, she suddenly swallows him in a hug. Instead of tensing up like usual, he sinks into it, and wraps his arms around her in return.
“Please, don’t mention anything to the others?” Ruby says. “It’s… a lot. But I’m managing. Please?”
She gives him a look- one Nora has identified as the certified Ruby Puppy Eyes. Ren huffs a breath.
“Fine. But promise me you’ll open up to your team? Like… before you die?”
Ruby moans. “Do I have to?”
“If I did, so do you.” He pokes her in the ribs.
“Ow! Okay, okay, fine!”
“Fine what?”
“... I promise. I’ll open up. Maybe.”
“Definitely.”
“Yeah.”
“Good,” Ren gets up, then helps Ruby to her feet. “C’mon. Let’s go give it our best shot.”
Ruby smiles. “Trying, right?”
Ren nods. “Trying. The best we can.”