Tearfull Trials Along the Tracks

"I can't believe you got us stuck here for the night" Weiss grumbled for what must have been the hundredth time. Ruby didn't even attempt responding, being as every time she had her excuses were simply waved away. Instead she devoted her attention to the arrival-departure board, looking for another way home.

Ruby and Weiss were both dressed more comfortably than usual, Ruby in a red and black long sleeve blouse and a skirt, and Weiss in a pale blue sleeveless sundress, since normal huntress gear wasn't the most inconspicuous. While it probably wouldn't happen, it wasn't uncommon for random hunters and huntresses to be identified and then asked for help. Hunters and Huntresses swore an oath similar to the ones doctors did, and if the need was urgent they were required to help. Not to say that they wouldn't spring into action if real assistance was needed, but neither Ruby nor Weiss were in the mood to rescue any cats from trees. Ruby and Weiss were already late, and one was particularly grouchy on account of a sprained wrist.

A week earlier Ruby and Weiss had been sent off to the eastern mountains to aid a village with a pack of unusually aggressive beowolves that had come to prey on the villagers. Normally a larger and more experienced group would have been dispatched to deal with such a threat, but team RWBY had proven themselves more than capable in the past. Ozpin would have sent Blake and Yang along as well, but circumstances required their attendance at the academy. And while Ruby was completely gung ho for the adventure, Weiss viewed the activity as a waste of time. Only under the threat of having a report of disobedience against her did Weiss finally comply with Ozpin's demands.

Tracking down the pack of beowolves hadn't been an issue once they arrived, but unfortunately they stumbled upon the pack's den a stone throw away from the Village. Caught by surprise and forced to fight on the spot, a lot of the fighting spilled into the city. Most of the villagers had taken to hiding in cellars or attics, but all of the orphanage's children had been hidden inside of a small one room school, which got a beowolf thrown through one of the walls by Ruby. All of the children ran from the single teacher as their safe haven was destroyed, and one of the children was spotted running into the woods.

The fight went smoothly with none of the villagers getting injured. Ruby escaped the fray with only minor cuts and a few nasty bruises, but Weiss did sustain some minor injuries. On a bad dismount from an acrobatic stunt, Weiss sprained her left wrist. Nothing series, but bothersome enough that Ruby had to hear Weiss complain about it constantly. When returning to the village, Ruby was surprised at how the villagers didn't seem to be at peace now that the threat was gone.

Ruby had a big heart, and when she heard that a child from the town had gone missing during the Beowolf attack, she couldn't help be feel obligated to lend a hand. Weiss had been of a different opinion, being that the longer she spent away from beacon the more lessons and classes she would be missing. And while Ruby could care less about falling behind, to Weiss, becoming inferior to her classmates in any way was unacceptable. In Weiss's own opinion the child would turn up eventually, as the woods were now safe. Ruby made her position clear though, and while they would be scolded for returning to the academy late, Weiss couldn't even begin to imagine the wrath she would receive from Professor Ozpin if she abandoned he partner.

Finding the child wasn't easy, and the first two days went without a single trace of the boy. While Weiss would never admit it, she had become extremely worried about the child, and spent more time than anyone out searching. The search wasn't easy, as the forest was a perfect place to hide, especially a child who could easily fit into the nooks and crannies of the trees. Weiss's hard work paid off in the end, due to her pushing out farther than anyone thought the young boy would be able to travel. She found him passed out from exhaustion under a large willow tree over 10 miles out from the village. Weiss herself brought the child back, although she didn't stick around to accept the village's gratitude. As far as anyone knew, including Ruby, he just appeared on the doorstep of the orphanage.

If Ruby and Weiss had left the day after they removed the beowolf pack, they would have been ahead of schedule and could have not officially returned to beacon for another two days. While Weiss would have never taken advantage of the time off from class, Ruby had been looking forward to a few days of relaxation. The extra three days for searching had eaten up that time, and now the pair was going to be marked absent for as many days as it took for them to return.

"The next train arrives at noon tomorrow, and will make two stops before arriving in beacon around 8 o'clock at night," Ruby stated to the air, not wanting to address Weiss directly while she was still on the war path. Unfortunately, Weiss though this to be the perfect chance to be the one to needle the other for a change.

"Oh, well… if it's only two days of missed classes it won't be that bad at least. I mean, what could possibly happen in two days that could be worth our time at the academy? Why don't we just skip the month?!" Weiss's anger had been building up since before the trip, and she had finally found the perfect argument to let it out on Ruby with. "Why can't you take your studies seriously for once? Your grades are sloppy; you don't worry about our exams even though they are barely over two weeks away, and we only have one more week before the final in Grimm classification!"

"Chill out Weiss, we have more than enough time, and with my B+ I'm ranked 7 in a class of 34. I think I'll be just fine." Ruby in her own opinion wasn't too concerned about courses that required book knowledge, and focused more on her training courses. If it was up to Ruby, she would be fine getting through a class such as this with just a pass, since it wasn't necessary to get an A to get into the following course next semester. However, it was far easier to study for the class than to have to hear another lecture on responsibility from Weiss, so she read and practiced questions for the sake of what Ruby wanted, a simple friendship with Weiss.

This response however, was not satisfactory to Weiss, and it set her off on another tirade. "I would be fine if your sloppiness didn't affect me, but we're a team, and our grades get averaged out together. With you I go from being ranked number one in the class on my own to being ranked number 3 with you, and that simply isn't acceptable!"

With no way of calming Weiss down in sight, Ruby simply sighed and walked off, hoping that the connected motel would have a room they could rent out for the night. And all the while Weiss ranted and raved at her while walking behind her.

"Well, this is just great…." Weiss complained. Unfortunately for both of them, especially for Ruby since she now had to listen to Weiss's complaining for the next few hours, there were no more rooms in the connected motel, and the train station's taxi service had ended about an hour ago. Unless they wanted to hike four miles uphill in the dark to the closest hotel, they were unfortunately going to have to sleep in the train station. Ruby walked back to the chairs across from the board, and lay down across three of the chairs. While they were by no means comfortable, they were far better than the floor. The padding in the chairs needed to be replaced though, as they were saggy in the middle, and she felt as though she was lying across a soft mountain range.

"Weiss, we might as well get comfortable, we aren't going anywhere" Ruby huffed. Weiss could never get as comfortable in a public place as Ruby just had, so she sat down two seats in front of Ruby's head and stared up at the ceiling. While Weiss wanted nothing more than to sit there and quietly think about the day's events, Ruby saw this as a great opportunity to get to know Weiss better. Using her feet, Ruby scooted across the padded chairs until her head was in the seat next to where Weiss was sitting.

"So… have you had any pets?"

"What?" Weiss asked without looking down.

"I mean, have you ever had a cat or a rabbit or something?" Ruby though she might be able to get somewhere and actually learn something about her partner, instead of their usual policy of keeping their personal lives to themselves. Or at least Weiss's policy, since Ruby was usually perfectly fine with sharing anything with Weiss in hope of receiving something back.

"No, no cats or rabbits" Weiss stated simply.

"Anything?" Ruby reached.

"…Well, there was a turtle…" Weiss mumbled uncomfortably.

Ruby wanted to jump up and ask a million questions, but decided to work slowly, otherwise Weiss could very easily close up again and end the conversation. "That definitely counts. What was his name?"

"Itty" Weiss huffed out, already beginning to feel uncomfortable.

Ruby wasn't expecting something like that from the prim and proper Ms. Schnee. In all honesty she was expecting more of a "Hubert" or an "Egstein". Instead of saying something that would end the conversation, Ruby bit her tongue and simply said "That's a cute name, where'd it come from".

Weiss could still hear the tiny bit of a laugh in Ruby's voice, and while she didn't appreciate it she continued on. Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered why she was sharing this information with Ruby at all, and she guessed that the pain killers she had taken for her sprained wrist had probably loosened her tongue. She wasn't too bothered though, and she continued on.

"When I got him, he wasn't much bigger than a bottle cap. Even after he stopped growing he never grew to be that big. He had this really cute way of bobbing his head whenever you looked at him, as if he was nodding along to everything you said". Weiss continued on about her turtle for the next few minutes. "He wouldn't eat any lettuce unless it was the soft and leafy bits at the end. And when I felt like giving him a treat I would even drop him little minnows I would catch for him from the pond out behind the house into his tank to eat. I didn't realize for the longest time that he was too slow and that he would never be able to catch them." Weiss had actually started to laugh to herself at the last line, and she had almost forgotten that Ruby was lying there listening observantly to what Weiss had to say.

"What happened to him?" The second Ruby asked the question she kicked herself for it. When do stories about childhood pets have happy endings?

The question sobered up Weiss quickly, and she returned to her more cold and stony exterior. "When my dad told me that I was going to become a huntress for the good of the company, he said that I shouldn't waste my time doting over silly animals. The day he gave me my rapier he took away Itty" she sniffed, as though the loss of an animal she had cared for was as boring as the classified ads in the Sunday newspaper.

Stunned, Ruby didn't even know how to respond to something like that. The silence that continued for the next few minutes was uncomfortable, and Ruby wasn't sure if she should continue. Weiss decided that while what Ruby had tried to do, to bond, was a little tackles, it was also sweet and kind. She actually broke the silence by asking "well… did you ever have any pets?"

Ruby shook her head saying "Yang's family didn't want any animals, so I went with their opinion".

"Ah… what about before you lived with Yang?" Weiss asked, actually curious now.

"Nope."

The two went on like this for hours. They talked about mostly inconsequential things, like pets, places they had visited, music they liked, books they hadn't. Ruby was ecstatic to get to speak to Weiss one on one equally. And while Weiss found the experience a little uncomfortable at first, she too began to have fun with the light chitchat. On their own they both realized topics they shouldn't broach. Ruby learned that feeling and emotions were hard for Weiss to voice, and when she did she would then quickly retreat back into her shell, and it would take a lot of effort for Ruby to get Weiss to lower her walls again. It had become almost one in the morning before Weiss had started to notice a trend in Ruby's answers. Ruby would share almost anything she could, but as the questions went farther and farther back into Ruby's past, the dark haired girl would say less and less.

Weiss decided that if she really wanted to learn something about Ruby, she would have to give something up of equal value. "I never told you about how I was raised." Weiss started this statement nonchalantly, knowing without a doubt that Ruby was hooked.

Weiss's story wasn't happy and it didn't get a lot of smiles out of Ruby. Weiss started that when she was born, her mother died during the pregnancy. The pregnancy wasn't too easy on her mother, and towards the end it looked as though neither of them were going to make it. When her mother died, she was removed from the womb a week premature. She had been unstable for the first few weeks, but after that she was as normal as any other child. Her father hadn't "been too bothered" as Weiss put it, since he finally had an heir to the family business now. His marriage had been arranged by his own father, and he had never viewed Weiss's mother as anything more than a warming bed for a son. When he heard it was a girl, he wasn't happy like most fathers, but was instead disappointed at all the time wasted on "a weaker version of himself". Unfortunately for him, the first born was the one to inherit the company, so a second child was futile. If anything, he was happy that he could now find a new wife, one who would allow him to grow the family company even further than before in another direction. Weiss had heard stories about her mother from some of the older staff members in the mansion, who said that Weiss's namesake had been kind and loving, and was so anxious to meet Weiss. Weiss was upset that she never got the chance to meet an actual parent.

"The few times I meet my father when we're not in front of dignitaries, business men, and other nobles, he has said I look like my mother." The blonde girl sat their silently for a moment, and Ruby actually thought the story was over, until Weiss continued with her previous thought saying "he never made that sound like a complement though. As if being like my mother was just a disappointment". If Weiss had glanced down at Ruby then, she would have seen the look of sympathy on her face.

"There's not much else to say after that. I grew up in the mansion, was educated in everything I would need to know in the future as the head of a multinational corporation, and I waited for the days when my dad would bring me out to his side to show the world the rising star that would one day be in control of one of the biggest companies on the planet." After a short pause, Weiss also mentioned "Technically I have two other half-sisters, although I have never met them. He had them with his second wife, the daughter of some big shipping tycoon. He didn't want us to mix too much, in case one day we become the heads of rival businesses again." Weiss said all of this unpassionately, and pretended to be interested in her nails and how they had been filed at the particular moment. Ruby, however, could hear the slight sound of melancholy in the heiresses' voice. Instead of the relaxed position she had begun in, she now found herself propped up on one elbow, as a form of respect to Weiss's hardships.

"I'm sorry you've had to deal that over the years" Ruby voiced honestly.

"It's not so bad" Weiss answered back, although at that point she wasn't sure if she was saying that to Ruby or for herself.

The silence lasted again for a few minutes, as both of them digested what Weiss had said. Finally Weiss asked the question that she had been chewing over in the back of her mind for the past few hours.

"Ruby, I know you don't like to talk about it, but I'm curious, how were you raised? How did you end up living with Yang?"

Their positions reversed, and it was now Ruby who was looking ahead while Weiss looked at the dark haired girl for a response. Ruby opened and closed her mouth several times, obviously trying to think of a way to voice her thoughts, until she finally whispered "I would rather talk about something else."

Weiss was speechless, and she got up and angrily paced back and forth for a few seconds before simply exclaiming "Why?!"

"It wasn't easy telling you what I did. But I did. I opened up to you like your always telling me I should, since we're partners. And when you finally get me to tell you something, something that wasn't easy to say, something I really didn't want to share, you give me nothing back!" Weiss wouldn't usually get this angry, but a mixture of exhaustion and feeling betrayed set her off. "And I'm the one who is mean! Who's bitchy, whose constantly getting pegged as the one who doesn't want to be a part of this team! I'm the one who's in the wrong constantly?!"

Ruby, now sitting upright, was taken aback by the sudden outburst. "I don't think you are any of those things" Ruby stated simply.

"Sure you don't, but everyone else does! And how could I not look mean, when compared to the constant ball of sunshine that is Ruby Rose!" Weiss was already calming down, now that she had reached the peak of her anger. Looking at the shocked look on Ruby's face, she instantly regretted what she had said. She turned away for a moment, wondering if she could ever repair the damage she had just inflicted on their partnership.

"Weiss" Ruby simply said from her seat. Weiss turned around, expecting to either receive tears or a slap. Instead, she simply saw a pensive look on Ruby's face, both eyes shut. Without a word Ruby patted the seat on her right, and without opening her eyes either. When Weiss sat down next to her, Ruby opened her eyes and looked directly forward. Weiss could see that Ruby was on the verge of bursting into tears, but instead of wiping her eyes she began to pull at her sleeve. Weiss really quickly reassessed what Ruby was wearing, and realized that Ruby's one piece blouse was actually two pieces. The shirt was actually a red short sleeved blouse and a pair of black arm wraps that went from about her wrists to her shoulders.

Pulling off her sleeve on her right arm, she turned her back to Weiss and said "lift up the hem on my sleeve" in a thicker than usual voice. Thinking that it would be worse at this point to refuse, Weiss pushed back the frilly fabric, exposing Ruby's shoulder and part of her shoulder blade. While the lighting in this part of the station wasn't great, it was easy for Weiss to see several of what appeared to be cigar burns on Ruby's shoulder blade and upper arm. Weiss counted six, although there could have been more that were still covered. Weiss let go of the hemming, silent as stone, and slowly leaned back into her chair. Ruby, a little more loudly, huffed and flopped back into the chair, pressing her back to the seat as if to hide what she felt ashamed about. Using the sleeve to wipe away a few tears, she simply stated "My parents weren't the greatest either".

Both of them sat wordlessly for the next few minutes, Weiss feeling horrible and trying to think of what she could ever say, and Ruby not thinking at all. Without warning, Ruby leaned against Weiss, wordlessly saying that all had been forgiven. They sat there like that through the night, soundlessly waiting for the train's arrival.

This turned out well, had a little bit of a hard time writing the emotions at the end. But this is my first fanfiction, and I'm really proud of it. Still, I'm here to improve. If its just good... yay, say that. But someone probably see's something that I don't, so tell me.

Note 9-7-14: Wow... how far I have come. I'm never touching this story, even though I groaned through the majority of this while I was rereading it. It holds a special place for being the first thing I ever wrote and published (and I do consider posting things here publishing). It's really cool how much better I have gotten, at least I think I've gotten better. Also, how did I not get like thirty PM's telling me that I misspelled the name of my freaking story?!