Forged Destiny [Book 7: Ch. 7]

Before I reached it, however, a strange, warm vibration echoed from my pocket. The Whisper Stone, I realised, pulling it out. The gift from Ironwood for our Quest in Atlas. The range wasn't always the best, certainly not enough to reach from Beacon to the Palace itself, but this far was fine.

"Hello?"

"Jaune." Ruby's voice. She sounded nervous.

"Hey Ruby. Is something wrong?" And if so, couldn't she have asked me when I was at the Lodge?

"It's nothing much, I… I wanted to ask about tomorrow. About the fight. The fake fight." That she felt she had to point out that was regrettable, but I didn't comment on it.

"Yeah? What's wrong?"

"You said you wanted me to be the one to do it. You want to stage the fight with me."

It was what we'd discussed and, despite complaints from Weiss and Yang, I'd requested that the fight be staged between Ruby and I and no one else. The Reaper had been silent at the time, I'd thought she was okay with it. Evidently. Not.

"I did..."

"Why…?" Ruby sounded tortured. "Did I do something wrong!?"

"What? No, no. It's…" I paused, looked for the right words. "This is… You're alone, right?"

"Yeah. It's why I waited to call you."

Good. No one else would overhear. "It's not that I don't trust you, Ruby. And I know Weiss is against it because she thinks you won't be able to act it out properly, but you're the only one I can handle doing this at the moment."

"What do you mean?"

"It's… The apologies. I know everyone is serious about them. I am, too. But they're still just apologies at this time. The things that were said, the things they did, those still hurt. They'll probably keep hurting until some time passes and we put it behind us. But you figured out the truth before it was revealed. You knew what I was."

Only by a day or two, so small a time as to be insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but it was enough that Ruby hadn't felt the same sense of anger and betrayal everyone else had. That was important. Very important.

"If I'm being honest, Blake and Weiss would be the best for this," I said. "Blake could act it out perfectly, and she could do it without meaning a word of whatever she said. And Weiss is just good at acting angry. At being angry." I smiled when Ruby snickered. "But I'm not good at taking it," I interrupted, more serious. "If Blake says things to me, even if she's pretending, it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt a whole lot more than I can handle."

"You're afraid the fight will become real…?"

"I'm afraid it'll open wounds that we've only just closed, and barely at best. Ruby, we've had our apologies less than an hour ago. If we start screaming things at one another less than twenty-four hours later, it's going to get heated. Some of those barbs, intentional or not, are going to stick. They're going to be founded in truth, even if we don't mean them to hurt."

Ruby was silent for a long moment. "And you're okay if I hurt you…?"

"Honestly… yes."

"Why? I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't," I said, smiling. "Because if you scream at me about how I lied about my Class, how I betrayed you and how much it hurt… it will be a lie. It won't be real. Because you figured it out, so there was no betrayal. There was no secret. I won't be able to take it seriously, so we'll both know everything we say, no matter how horrible, will be made up. It's… safer this way, I think."

"Safer for the Guild," Ruby said, sounding a little more confident. Relieved, even. "I think I get it. I'll do it. I'll fake the fight tomorrow, and I'll do it perfectly, I promise." Because if she didn't, Blake would need to step in – and that would drive an even bigger wedge between us. Ruby must have realised that.

"Thanks, Ruby. I… I want you to do this because I trust you. More than anyone else right now, and I know that sounds bad, but things have been rough."

"I know. And you can trust me! I won't let you down."

"You never have, Ruby. You never have."

—Forged Destiny [Book 7: Ch. 7]