The press of students spilling out of the amphitheater was abuzz with talk of the upcoming tournament and their first missions that were to follow. These missions were to be their first efforts in the field as a team, and up against a real Grimm threat. But the tournament was single elimination, and all about individual performance. Speculation, strategy, and complaints flew through the halls: this person is completely outmatched in round one, that person is clearly Ozpin's favorite, wouldn't it be cool if these two fought?

All the excited babble flowed around Team RWBY as they navigated the human river back to their dorm. They were all caught up in other things: Weiss in her Scroll, Ruby in Weiss, Blake in her book. Only Yang spoke, perhaps a little too loudly, over the tournament chatter.

"So, how about that bracket? We're all up against Concord students, isn't that crazy? Not that I'm complaining, those Vacuan boys look like they know their way around a fight…"

Weiss tapped furiously on her Scroll's screen as they entered the quad, the students scattering from the amphitheater's entrance.

"I tell you what, I really want a shot at Pyrrha. She's untouchable in our training sessions, but I think if I get close enough I can slip a few past her."

Ruby kept rising up on her toes to see what Weiss was typing, occasionally whispering questions, but her partner was clearly not listening. They passed through the shadow of the statue, Vigilance, the stone Huntsman and Huntress keeping eternal watch over Beacon's grounds. A stone Beowolf howled below them, ever hungry, ever present.

"Shame about Jaune, though. I don't think anyone from Vacuo has gone straight melee in fifty years."

Blake ignored her, pretending to read as she and her team navigated the dorm hallways. She had just gotten to the part of The Mistralite Tragedy where the hero bites out his own tongue. A rather exasperated part of Blake found itself imagining Yang doing the same. Her partner continued to do battle with the silence all the way home, and her voice rang all the louder now that they were relatively alone.

The four of them filed into their room, a tense quiet seizing its moment as Yang paused for breath. Weiss abruptly broke off from the group and sat at her desk, still absorbed in her mystery correspondence. Ruby hovered uncertainly at her shoulder, trying and failing to see what the fuss was about. If Weiss noticed, she was doing a spectacular job of hiding it. Blake stood in the center of the room for a moment, reading. Right as the door closed behind her she snapped the book shut and slipped it back onto the shelf above her desk. Without a word, she retrieved a black case from under her desk. It was emblazoned with her insignia, and she took a quick peek inside as if to check if Gambol Shroud had somehow disappeared.

"Where you headed?" Yang asked as Blake made for the door.

"Target range," Blake threw over her shoulder, already halfway out.

The door clicked shut behind her, and Yang was abruptly alone.

She crossed her arms and sighed, looking from Weiss and Ruby to the door and back. What happened all of a sudden? Everywhere I look it's gloom and doom. She opened her mouth to say something, but at that moment Weiss stood up sharply with a muffled shift of wood on carpet. She stalked over to her bed and threw herself face down on it. Her head was buried in a pillow, her Scroll discarded on her desk as she lay motionless.

Yang's heart, shaken already by Blake's reticence, throbbed at her teammate's distress, and came perilously close to breaking at the sight of her sister's expression. Ruby looked as helpless as Yang had ever seen her. Her little sister couldn't take her eyes off Weiss, who was shivering slightly as if abandoned outdoors in the winter.

For once there was nothing Yang felt she could say to lighten the mood. She sidled her way to Weiss's desk, being careful not to make too much noise. She picked up her teammate's Scroll; she'd memorized the password quite by accident.

Thank you, peripheral vision. 3878. Time to get to the bottom of this—Oh. Oh.

Weiss's scroll opened on her email client, a message glowing softly in contrast to the words within:

Miss Schnee:

Your grandmother has seen fit to inform you that she will be visiting Beacon Academy during her executive tour of the city of Vale. Madame Reine-Schnee wishes to attend your matches during the Vytal Tournament so that she might assess your performance and potential as a Huntress. It would be in your best interest to demonstrate the utmost care in your conduct and skill in her presence. As always, she expects exemplary results from her granddaughter and eventual successor as chief executive and matriarch of the company and family alike.

She will see you for tea at precisely 4 o'clock on Monday. Be waiting at the gates of Beacon no later than 3:30.

Warmest regards from the office of Bianca Reine-Schnee, President Emerita of the Schnee Dust Company.

Warmest regards. Yang almost laughed at the irony. Whose grandmother talks to her granddaughter like this? Then she reread the name. Bianca…wait, the anti-Faunus lady from the news? She's your grandma? Dang. No wonder she's so uptight.

She looked back at Weiss, her stomach twisting at the sight of her teammate reduced to hiding from the world. Before she could say anything, she felt a hand on her forearm. Yang turned to look at Ruby, who had been reading over her shoulder. Her sister gently plucked Weiss's scroll out of Yang's hand and read through the email again. Ruby's mouth was a thin, morose line across her normally bright face.

"Go talk to Blake," she whispered to her big sister. "I'll handle this."

Yang wanted to protest, but Ruby's expression was unusually composed and resolved, brooking no argument. She nodded and made to leave. After Yang retrieved Ember Celica she slipped out the door, quietly shutting it behind her.

Now it was just Ruby and Weiss. The silence between them was thick with unease, and Ruby could hear quiet sobs coming from Weiss's bed. She looked at the Scroll again. Weiss had been typing furiously, but she hadn't responded to the email and there was nothing waiting to be sent. She must have typed out a response, then erased it, then typed, then erased, over and over and never coming close to an appropriate answer. There wasn't one.

Ruby set Weiss's Scroll down on the desk and sat on the edge of her partner's bed, resting a hand on her shoulder. "Weiss? How are you?" She immediately regretted asking such an obvious question. "Weiss?" she prompted, after a moment without an answer.

"Don't look at me."

"Weiss, I-"

"Don't look at me." Ruby felt Weiss shift under her hand and averted her eyes once she saw that her partner was turning toward her. She supposed there were worse ways to communicate.

Weiss cried softly, doing her best to mask the sounds. Her sniffles thwarted her. Finally her voice drifted up to Ruby. "Why now?" she whispered weakly. "Why here?"

"Talk to me, Weiss." Ruby squeezed her shoulder. "Your grandma…why is she so…" She glanced back at the Scroll, thinking of the message. So cold, so impersonal, and yet so powerful to Weiss. "…that way?"

A wave of heaving sobs contorted Weiss's body. "It's my fault," she breathed.

"Weiss, what's your fault?" Ruby bit her lip, regret stinging her instantly. "No, I mean—what happened?" Tears were her only answer. She tried again. "Weiss, whatever happened, you don't deserve to be made to feel this way."

Weiss's breath hitched in her throat. "You don't know."

"What don't I know?"

"Why do you think I became a Huntress in the first place?" Weiss cried, batting Ruby's hand away weakly.

"Weiss, you-" Ruby threw delicacy to the wind and looked down at her partner.

She saw only despair.

Weiss's face was twisted into a mask of guilt. She was red with the effort of uncontrollable crying, eyes puffy with tears that crisscrossed her normally pale cheeks. Her breath was shallow, ragged, as if her own conscience were strangling her. She was so wracked with pain that Ruby barely noticed her own eyes brimming with tears.

Weiss seized Ruby's hands in hers and buried her face in the younger girl's shoulder. "Dunce…I told you not to look."

"You don't have to hide anything from me." Ruby whispered, rubbing Weiss's back and shushing her.

They stayed like that for as long as it took for Weiss's crying to burn itself out of her. Ruby held the older girl tight as she'd hold Crescent Rose in battle, tighter even. "I'm here for you, Weiss," Ruby said. Her arm was numb from the pressure of Weiss's face against her shoulder, her cape soaked with Weiss's tears, but Ruby was beyond caring about that. "As a leader, as a friend, as whatever you need me to be."

At last Weiss took a deep, shuddering breath and pulled away. Her head was cocked to the side, eyes fixed on a point somewhere beyond Ruby. She met Ruby's eyes. It was a start. "Did you know I have a sister?"

"You never told me. What's she like?"

Weiss sighed. "Her name is Winter. She's about a year younger than you. She's a lot like you, you know. She sees the good side of most everything, even when it doesn't seem like there is any to see."

"She sounds wonderful!" Ruby smiled. "Why haven't you told us about her before?"

"We haven't spoken in a while. She's too weak to travel. She's been that way for five years now." Weiss's hands balled into fists, useless at her sides. "Blackbranch was a resort village in the mountains of western Atlas. She was learning to ski there. I didn't go…we'd had some petty argument and I stayed home to practice with my Semblance." Weiss's voice wavered, but held. "The White Fang picked that moment to attack."

Ruby listened intently as Weiss told the story of a mountain hamlet under siege by the White Fang, the heiress's younger sister taken hostage by Faunus extremists, a ransom of 250 million lien demanded for her safe return. "My father was heartbroken, but refused to negotiate. He appealed before the Atlesian High Council and sicced the army on Blackbranch. That was the beginning of a four-week siege." Weiss's tears had run dry, and her voice was level now, quiet, certain. "Ruby, every other day they'd release a video of my sister, a nine-year-old girl with guns pointed at her head while she read a list of their demands. It was torture."

It was all Ruby could do to keep from breaking down herself. "How did it end?"

Weiss gave a dry cough of a laugh. "It's never really ended for her. Ironwood was a brigadier general back then, and he volunteered to lead a team to infiltrate Blackbranch. Nobody knows what exactly happened, but a firefight broke out and Ironwood called an airstrike on his position. It was a desperate move, but it worked. He and my sister were the only ones who made it out…and the army just kept firing. They didn't stop until the town was leveled, and half the mountain with it. Most of the Atlesian White Fang were there, and the army wasn't going to let this opportunity go. Not a single one made it out." Weiss shrugged. "The White Fang haven't touched Atlas in the years since. None of the other kingdoms were willing to go that far."

"Weiss…I don't know what to say. Your sister…"

"Got out alive…but her Aura never recovered. I suppose you can guess why."

Ruby nodded. She remembered Uncle Qrow telling her during Aura lessons at Signal. "Your Aura is like your immune system. It protects you even when you can't control it, and it can surge out in this huge burst when you're in danger. That's what happened, isn't it?"

"Winter lived, but at the cost of her Aura. She hadn't developed her Semblance and now never will. My family keeps her under close watch at all times. She doesn't even leave our home because something might happen to her." Weiss swallowed hard. "And that's where my grandmother comes in. She pushes me hard to succeed where I failed."

Ruby was speechless. "Weiss, what do you mean? You didn't do anything!"

"Exactly!" Ice had entered Weiss's voice, her cold blue eyes. "There's nothing I can't do with my glyphs. I can manipulate gravity, I can speed up time, I can create shields. If I had been there I could have done something for her."

"No!" Ruby leaped up, cracking her head painfully on her bed. It swayed above Weiss's bed, the ropes creaking perilously. She shrugged off the pain, talking faster and faster as she took Weiss's hand in hers. "Weiss, you can't blame yourself for what happened to Winter! You couldn't have known the White Fang would attack, or that the army would do what they did! And even if you could have, just beating yourself up about it doesn't make it better!"

Weiss smiled sadly and brushed Ruby's own tears away. "You saying that means a lot to me, Ruby. But when you grow up hearing something, when it surrounds you for years and you can't escape it…you start to believe it. Even if you know it's not true, even if you want to believe otherwise. When someone keeps repeating it, especially your grandmother…you can't help but wonder. That's why I want to be a Huntress. I have to be able to protect those who can't protect themselves."

Ruby looked down at her hands and Weiss's, fingers intertwined and tracing each other gently. Then she looked back at Weiss, a hint of a smile creeping onto her face. "Then I'll just have to keep doing it."

Weiss looked uncertain. "Doing what?"

"Telling you it's not your fault." Ruby got off the bed and put her hand over her heart, striking what she must have thought was a serious and resolute pose. "I, Ruby Rose, solemnly swear to remind you that you are not to blame for what happened, whenever you want me to, and maybe even when you don't! I swear to tell you this until you start believing it yourself!"

Weiss smirked. That smirk gave way to a smile, which gave way to a full-blown laugh. "You look ridiculous, do you know that?"

Ruby blushed, but merely nodded. "Maybe. But if it helps you believe in yourself, I'll look as ridiculous as I need to. We're teammates, Weiss. We have to keep each other strong. And as your friend, I can't just watch when you're hurting."

"Hmm." Weiss's smile faltered. "Ruby…what are we? I think at this stage we're trying to be a little more than friends. What does that mean?"

They both considered it briefly. Weiss watched patiently, hands folded in her lap, as Ruby bounced up and down on her heels. Ruby thought about it, but couldn't quite put her finger on it. "Well…we enjoy each other's company. We're good teammates, and we want to keep doing that. And, we…" Her cheeks were blooming into a powerful blush again. "Well…you're really pretty, and I liked when we kissed…"

"Stop."

"Huh?" Ruby froze, instantly shrinking. Had she said something wrong?

Weiss shook her head and smiled again, as if reassuring a child that had broken her mother's favorite vase. "You're being very cute right now, but I shouldn't have asked. Instead of talking about it, we should just do it."

Ruby went as red as her cape. "Well…I mean…not that I don't want to, but…"

Weiss rolled her eyes, stood up and flicked Ruby on the forehead. "Ow!"

"Don't be dense. I meant we should go on a date. We can do it Saturday afternoon. We'll get tea at that place Blake told us about." Weiss looked down at her boots, tracing a nervous circle in the carpet. "It'll be just you and me. We can forget about everything else." She closed her eyes. "Maybe…just for the afternoon…I can forget I'm a Schnee."

Weiss held her hands behind her back, uncertain and suddenly unwilling to open her eyes again. She wanted this, but there was no way it could work out. Her family would never approve, and she doubted that she herself even deserved—

Flick. "Ow!"

Ruby giggled as Weiss put her hand to her forehead. She hadn't flicked her that hard. "You don't have to. You're already the best Schnee I know. And as long as you keep being the best Schnee you can be, you don't have to worry about what anyone else thinks." She gently moved Weiss's hand down and held it in hers. "And when your grandma does get here…well, she'll just have to accept you. And me."

That was new to Weiss. She looked into Ruby's eyes, finding nothing to suggest otherwise. Weiss considered herself fairly good at reading people, and all she saw in Ruby was sincerity. She couldn't lie if her life depended on it. Weiss took comfort in that. She took comfort in Ruby's reassurance. She took comfort in the shorter girl's arms and took comfort in their kiss, which had snuck up on her just like the first time in the workshop, and all the little details that came with it. Strawberries, with a hint of spearmint. She uses Shi-nee Toothpaste.

That's the good stuff.

Author's Note: There's where that backstory was hiding. I promise something will actually happen in the next chapter or two; I just don't want to make anyone's relationship too easy. Relationships are hard. They require maintenance.

"They are both in either's pow'rs. But this swift business

I must uneasy make, lest too light winning

Make the prize light."

-The Tempest ( .451-453).

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-ZB