A/N: Final part. Sometimes you just gotta let it go.

OoOoOo

"Six goddamn babies," Yang says, feeding one of the kittens with an unimpressed expression. They hadn't lost any of their charm or helpless fragility, but after the first two weeks of constant care on top of school and trying to maintain a social life, she is more than a little jaded by them. It might not have been so bad if she could have slapped a diaper on them and called it a day, but kittens are apparently too stupid to know when to pee and crap on their own, and needed stimulation from a wet cloth. It is a decidedly unglamorous care process. "Six. Mama cat, rest in peace, but why did you have to be such a slut? I'm too young to be a teen mother."

Lying on her back on their dorm room floor, with the other five kittens resting on her chest, Ruby tilts her head up to shoot Yang a dirty glare. "Yang! How could you talk about Mama that way?"

Wrapped up in her homework, Weiss still finds enough interest in the conversation to twist in her chair and add, "Yeah. Have a little respect for the dead, Yang."

Yang just rolls her eyes, cleaning some of the dribble from the kitten's mouth once she is done feeding him. "I'm not disrespecting," she says, idly planting a kiss on top of the kitten's head. It's the ginger one, the only one in the litter who didn't inherit Mama's polydactyl paws. "I got mad respect for a woman who manages to wrap three other kitty daddies around her extra pinkie. But I am allowed to complain that it sucks sometimes that we got saddled with them, all right?"

It also gets them a lot of attention, both good and bad. The first time Ruby tries to surreptitiously feed her cats in class, the ones not being fed at the time keep squalling until she has to run outside, red faced. She gets a stern talking to after she slinks back into class for disrupting lecture. And while everyone wants to pay attention to you when you pack three newborn kittens into your hood so your arms aren't laden with a shoebox as well as your textbooks, it doesn't last long. Others are jealous and wonder what makes Team RWBY special enough for the 'privilege' of owning a pet on campus. The bitterness has a way of sticking around a lot longer than the admiration.

She stops trying to explain that their ownership of the kittens is only temporary after a while, but Weiss still gets into bristling arguments with smart-mouthed students every other day.

"They're just cats," Blake mutters under her breath the first time someone tries to hassle over it. "Get a life." And somehow that is the extent of that for her.

There are four boys— a gray one, the ginger, a solid black one and one of the mixed kittens with white bellies and black backs. The other mixed cat is a girl, as is the creamy white one who almost looks like Mama, if it wasn't for the hint of tabby stripes on her legs and face. Ruby takes care of the mixed cats and the white one, while Weiss chose the little gray boy and Blake ironically was saddled with the solid black one.

For all her complaints, Yang adores the kitten she chose to take care of, the ginger with only five toes. She names him Nora Jr. at first before discovering his gender, at which point she is torn equally between "Spitfire" and "Aron"— Nora backwards. It tickles the original Nora to no end when she hears about it, and she's the one who unintentionally gives him his final name.

"Hi Junior," she croons to him every morning at breakfast. She sits next to Yang to link arms with her and rests her head on her taller friend's shoulder, watching him like they are his proud parents. Junior, for his part, wobbles around on the table and meows until someone holds him again. Yang develops the bad habit of just keeping him on her chest when she needs her hands free.

Everyone begs Blake to name the black one after herself. Begs. She ignores them all, not wanting to name him anything yet, though she is partial to "Poe". That is, until the day she hears a shout from above as she hangs around her bunk, quietly reading. Yang has all the kittens on her mattress, also busy with a book, and doesn't notice "Poe" tumbling over the side until it's too late.

She shouts on instinct— "Mayday! Cat! Get the cat!" and Blake whips one hand out and catches him before his small body hits the ground and that's how Mayday gets his name.

Weiss immediately knows what to name her cat: Grau Schnee, of course. Ruby also has no trouble with her cats. The two black and white ones get named Tuxedo Mask and Oreo. The white one is Hemingway.

"Hemingway the Hemingway cat," Ruby says, grinning at her and holding her over her head.

Their ears twitch and begin to stand on their own. They open their eyes, foggy blue at first before settling into yellow and greens and blacks. They walk more, run more, play more, and develop personalities. Mayday grows strong enough to perch on Blake's shoulder on his own, and after that she no longer has to carry her shoebox around. His weight becomes natural, his quiet presence a constant comfort. Grau could always be seen tucked into Weiss' arm or in her purse, asleep or resting against her. Junior still has an unfortunate proclivity to rest on the boob shelf.

Three little heads poke out of Ruby's hood as she walks around campus, comfortable to remain as marsupials for now. They're getting almost too heavy for it, but Ruby doesn't mind.

It gets harder and harder to realize one day they're going to have to let them go.

A month passes.

"Hey fatty," Yang says to Junior, trying to keep him still as he crawls all over her. "It's lunch time, nerd, quit running around."

Ruby doesn't think Yang has much to complain about, what with the three of her cats vying for her attention, but she doesn't say anything. "Think we should start weaning them soon?"

Junior bites Yang right on the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. "Ah! Ow. Asshole." To Ruby, she adds, "Maybe? They seem almost ready." Toilet training isn't going very well. If they had an adult cat around to show the kittens how to behave, their job might be a little easier, but alas. "Wanna try?"

Ruby decides to start the process, putting the formula in a bowl instead of hand feeding them anymore. Tuxedo Mask gets it faster than the rest. The other two and Junior crowd around him at once until Ruby has to break them up again, putting out another bowl and monitoring them to make sure they stayed two per plate. "Cats are so dumb," she says, stroking Oreo along her spine. She crouches behind them, arms wrapped around her knees. She watches them lap at the bowl, with fondness and sadness.

Yang snorts. "Everybody's dumb when they're a baby, Ruby."

"Yeah," she says, "Well, cats are extra dumb." She lowers her head, sighing quietly. "Dumb, dumb, dumb…."

Resting her palm against her face, Ruby takes a deep breath. Tries to hold it in.

Lets it out, in sudden, physical pain.

"…Why'd she have to die like that, Yang?" she says at last, grinding the heel of her palm against her eyes. "Why'd she have to be so dumb? Blake told me she was probably too old to be having babies. Why'd she do it anyway? We should have kept her with us in the dorm room when we saw how pregnant she was. Or took her to a shelter. I should have taken better care of her."

She loses her balance, the world too heavy as Yang comes to sit beside her, holding her by her shoulders. Sitting down ungracefully, she tries not to cry any more than she already has. Not over this. Not over a cat. "I—it's all my fault. If I had been there…" she says, trying to laugh it off still, smiling through her tears, laughing helplessly. "If I wasn't too late— if I wasn't always too late—" She isn't crying over the cat anymore. Yang wonders if she ever actually had been.

"Why'd she have to die like that, Yang?" she says again, shoulders shaking violent and hard.

"I dunno, baby," Yang murmurs, running her hands through her hair, across her face and neck and back, trying to touch more of her, like she could leech the pain away if she was there enough. "I dunno."

Hemingway puts her paws on her lap, crawling onto her and meowing for attention. Suddenly inspired, Yang yoinks her up, pressing her against Ruby's face, poor Hemingway being used as a tissue. It's so abrupt and strange that Ruby jerks back in surprise, shocked laughter hiccuping through the tears. "Aw, Yang! No, don't do that to Hemingway!"

Yang pulls Oreo away from her lunch. "If sad, apply kittens directly to face," she says in a stiff, serious voice. "If still sad, consider seeing your doctor for a higher dosage." She manages to get all four of them in her hands, bumping them against Ruby as they meow in protest. She keeps it up until Ruby is laughing again, so hard she needs to gasp for air.

OoOoOo

It's a year later and there aren't any bowls or litter boxes in the dorm room anymore. The kittens have left, ever since they were old enough to be spayed and neutered. Though Weiss was the loudest in agreeing it was the responsible thing to do, some part of her feels guilty, knowing that no more Hemingway cats would come from this particular stock. She grieves it in her own way.

And when she walks from her classes to the other buildings, Grau is outside the door, patiently waiting for her. He follows with his tail erect, majestic and well-groomed.

Blake spends a lot more time outdoors, Mayday sitting on her shoulder still. He's not allowed indoors, of course, not anymore, but that's fine. More excuse to lounge in the sunlight with a good book rather than hole up in the library.

The other four regularly wind in and out of Ozpin's office through the open window, a permanent fixture on campus and around the buildings. It becomes something like a mascot— lucky six-toed cats, Hemingway cats. Glynda gives him grief for it on occasion, saying that he's setting a bad example, that he's too lenient with his students, that it sets a precedent for favoritism and rule breaking and all out anarchy, if you believe her.

"Glynda," he says with faux-concern, Junior lovingly weaving between his legs until he gets picked up, always the neediest of the bunch. "There may be dozens of reasons and rules for why a student cannot have a pet, but there are none that say why I cannot have one."

Hemingway leaps onto his desk, purring and butting her head against Glynda's hand for affection. Unlike the others she wears a collar, bright red and hand woven.

"Or six," he adds mildly.

And that is that.