"Are you okay, Weiss?"

She didn't look okay, but asking still felt like the right thing to do to Ruby. Weiss wasn't one who enjoyed assumptions about her person, no matter how minuscule and of how little consequence they were.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Weiss asked in return and it was such a Weiss-thing to do, to not answer the question – to deflect it instead and ask a question of her own.

Ruby sighed and sat down next to her partner on her bunk. It had been an exciting day in the mine and with them becoming official huntresses. There was little time to properly process everything that happened and only now, well into the evening could they take a breather.

"Because of the things your dad said?" she offered and winced inwardly at how suddenly Weiss' shoulders stiffened, followed by a just as sudden deflation. Her usually perfect posture was now slack and lacked just about everything that made Weiss Weiss.

"...no, Ruby. I'm not fine," Weiss finally admitted with a defeated sigh.

Even after the time they spent together, fought together, lived together, survived together...Ruby still was more often than not unsure just how to approach her partner when it came to physical affection.

Screw it.

She just scooted over and threw an arm over Weiss's shoulder and pulled the older girl into her side, to which she replied with a very undignified snort, though she didn't fight it. Quite the opposite, in fact: She just melted into her.

"You do realize I will never admit this ever happened, right?" Weiss muttered with only thinly veiled humour.

"People will never believe you over me."

"I can just buy their belief."

"Heh." Ruby couldn't believe she won so easily. "You don't have money. You are disowned, remember?"

"Drat! You'd think I wouldn't keep forgetting that fact during these arguments."

"You know you can talk to me, Weiss, right?" Ruby tried to steer the conversation back to its initial topic. Her partner obviously disapproved, if the resigned sigh was any indicator.

"I know." Weiss retracted herself from Ruby's one-armed hug and turned on the bed to face her. "I know I can talk to you, just as you know how difficult I find it to do so."

Oh, Ruby knew all too well how hard sharing feelings and thoughts which went beyond 'I like' and 'I dislike' was for Weiss, especially when they first started out as Team RWBY. Weiss had no such qualms about sharing her opinion, no matter how scathing it might be, but as soon as things went more private…

"That's why I'm here," Ruby said with a bright smile. "I knew you wouldn't come to me, even if you wanted to talk to someone, so…"

"So you decided to take matters into your own hands, hm?" Weiss finished for her with a raised, delicate brow.

Ruby nodded in confirmation. "Not as the Team Leader, not as your partner, but as your best friend. As your family."

Ruby couldn't help the grin forming on her face at the twitch on Weiss's lips.

"I'm not fine, Ruby," her partner repeated her admission from earlier, apparently taking her up on her offer. "My father...he knows just which buttons to push...and…"

"Your mum?" Ruby offered softly when Weiss seemed unable to finish the sentence.

A single, stiff nod was Weiss's answer. "Yes," she added after a few moments of hesitation. "I don't...I don't want to be the reason my mother keeps poisoning herself over with alcohol…but I don't want to go back and be a prisoner in my family's home either…" Ruby was taken aback at the imploring look Weiss gave her. "Am I being selfish, Ruby?"

Ruby took a couple of moments before answering, mindful of how she was going to use her words. "Well, you did what you thought you had to do and what you wanted to do when you ran away, so...technically you were being selfish. But," she quickly added at her partner's crestfallen look, "that's okay! I did the same thing, you know?"

"What do you mean?" Weiss asked, her head slightly cocked to the side.

"Remember, after Beacon?" Weiss's eyes widened slightly in understanding while Ruby continued. "When I woke up...Yang needed me since she had lost her arm a-and Blake had left without a word...our dad heard everything that happened, just got both his daughters back and I up and leave again...without saying anything. I just left a letter behind." Ruby shrugged, absentmindedly toying with the hem of her skirt. "I just think that...that sometimes we have to make choices for ourselves."

"I suppose," Weiss replied with a sigh, apparently accepting what Ruby had to say on that matter. Her lips then quirked into a humourless smile. "I've lost everything I once prided myself in. But...I can't bring myself to care anymore."

"It kind of sucks, though. 'Uhh, look at me! My name is Weiss, I know facts, I'm rich!' doesn't work on you anymore." Ruby had to stifle her giggles when Weiss looked at her with a thoroughly unimpressed expression.

"My name is still Weiss and I still 'know facts'," she said, making air-quotes for the last couple of words. "I'm just not rich anymore."

"Maybe not in the money kind of way." Ruby scooted closer to Weiss and quickly pulled her into a fierce embrace. "But you are rich in friends and family and love!"

"That was disgustingly cheesy...but you are right. For once."

Ruby giggled a bit and pulled her partner in closer, just enjoying the hesitant yet eager way Weiss hugged her back with.

She was contradictory like that, her partner. Still a stranger to open displays of affection like a simple hug, yet she did enjoy giving and receiving them. But the only time Ruby had actually seen Weiss be the initiator, was when she hugged her sister – or Schneester as Yang dubbed her behind their backs. Yang also told them that Weiss hugged her when she freed herself from her Branwen prison during their reunion. All of those instances seemed emotionally charged though, so they might have been spur-of-the-moment-things.

But hugs like this, affection like this, without any outside forces, still seemed to feel awkward for Weiss – if her slight hesitancy was anything to go by.

Ruby didn't mind though. Weiss had come through leaps and bounds from the girl who deemed her unfit to be a leader. Now she was one of her closest friends, someone whom she'd trust even with Crescent Rose. Weiss even saw them – Team RWBY – as her family. It had made Ruby so proud.

"Do you remember when you promised me to be the best partner and team member I could ever ask for?" Ruby asked her suddenly, her voice muffled by Weiss's shoulder.

"Yes…?"

Ruby gave her partner an affectionate squeeze. "Thank you for keeping that promise."

Weiss squeezed her back.

Note: Just the two best girls being best girls.