One Last Breath
Weiss woke just as she did every morning. Her eyes opening slowly, painfully, scraping against the jagged spikes coating the pale blue. It hurt so bad, but there was no preventing it. No use in complaining either. She'd tried everything to understand it. To find a cure. Nothing worked. Little bits of stardust would continue to collect on her eyes day by day as long as she lived.
She looked over at the other side of the bed. She reached out and felt the empty space. There was nothing. No warmth left by her wife. She couldn't remember her. She never could. She didn't really understand why. Blake and Yang had explained it to her one day, early in the morning. She was married. She was in love. She was happy. She believed them. Had no reason not to. When they told her she forgot every morning she believed that to. She could feel the memories buried somewhere she couldn't reach. She knew it was true.
She sat up in bed. A monumental task all things considered. Why it left her so breathless she'd never fully understand. She was a huntress after all. Or at least she had been. She had been confined to her house for years at this point. Too frail, too weak to run, much less fight.
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, and grabbed the crutch resting against the night stand. She couldn't walk without it anymore. Crippled and broken, she felt more than ever that she didn't deserve her grandfather's name. She could only imagine how disappointed her father would be, if she had kept in contact with him at all.
She stumbled into the bathroom, the rhythmic click of the crutch against the floor signaling her arrival. She ran a bath, scalding as usual. She couldn't take showers anymore. Couldn't bear to stand that long. Her legs would give out, and she didn't much feel like crawling to breakfast.
Her eyes fell upon the sticky note of the day, stuck to the bottom of the mirror.
"Breakfast will be waiting when you get out. Summon me whenever you can, don't push yourself too hard. I love you."
Her wife, she supposed, though written in her own handwriting. That had been explained too. A habit picked up from years of this pattern, so as to not confuse her too much.
The word summon felt intentional. Too intentional to ignore. Why wouldn't she use call instead? Summon was too... formal. Her lack of memory must have something to do with her summons. She hadn't quite figured that part out. Blake and Yang were pretty intentionally vague regarding it. Or maybe they hadn't been? That memory was so hazy.
She stepped into the bath and let out a groan. It hurt. It always hurt. Everything always hurt. The heat soothed her muscles, but something about it always felt wrong. Like the fatigue was deeper, too deep for the heat to reach.
A slow blink, her eyelids raw already. She could feel it when they started to flow. Stars mingling with the bath. This happened every morning. Her heart gripped by the overwhelming need to confess to her partner. The woman she was assured time and time again that she was married to.
She hugged her knees to her chest and let the tears fall. Why had this afflicted her? Why had it persisted so many years? Why did she feel this compulsion to tell her wife how she felt when they'd been married so long? It was exhausting. She didn't know how long she could keep this up.
She needed to get out. Get breakfast. Summon her wife. But she couldn't. She didn't feel like she had the strength to stand again. She didn't feel the urgency she knew she should. How would she explain that? Would her wife even understand? She didn't have much choice.
"Wife?"
The word echoed in the empty bathroom. She never saw it open, but the bathroom door was ajar. She never saw it brought in, but there was a long tray laid across the tub, held above the water. It was holding a freshly made and still hot breakfast, and a steaming mug of coffee.
"How..." Weiss gave a deep sigh. "Thank you. I'm sorry I'm so useless. I... I love you. Even if I can't remember you, I'm sure I must to still be living here with you after years of this."
She began to eat slowly. Her arms didn't want to lift today. It was delicious, as it always was. She didn't see it happen, she didn't feel the touch, or the water, but when she finished eating her hair was wet, and smelled clean. She hadn't washed it yet.
More tears slipped into the water. Her wife was so tender, so caring, even when she couldn't be seen. Or remembered. Even when the things she touched showed no signs of her existence to Weiss, still her wife loved her. Maybe that made up for this affliction.
She looked down at the tray and saw another note.
"Any chance you can summon me? I wanna take care of you properly. I'm worried. You're not usually this bad."
Weiss let out a deep sigh. She wanted to of course, but even eating was a test of her strength. How could she be expected to use her Semblance? That wasn't fair to her wife though. Whoever she was.
Weiss closed her eyes, ignoring the sting. She focused. Drawing on the feelings she always did to summon. She drew on her aura. There was nothing there.
Weiss's brow furrowed with effort. That couldn't be right. She must've made a mistake. Gotten distracted. She just had to try again. Another deep breath. Another reach for her aura. Nothing.
Her eyes snapped open. She looked up at where she approximated her wife to be. Based on nothing really, just where it felt natural to look. She didn't have aura. It wasn't just diminished, or strained. She couldn't feel it at all.
"I can't..." was all she could manage.
"What do you mean 'can't'?" Was the reply of the sticky note, appearing on her forehead after a blink.
"I can't summon you. I-..." a deep breath. A long pause. More tears. "I don't have aura. It's gone. I don't know what happened to it. Maybe the constant strain of using it all up every day for years pushed it past what it could handle. I didn't even know something like this could happen. Truthfully I still don't believe it has."
Weiss tried once again to draw on her aura, on the manifestation of her very soul. Not to summon, not to shield, not to use it in anyway, just desperate to feel any response at all. There was none.
She fell apart. Just as she had all those years ago in the Ever After. This time she didn't even have the strength to wail. She was hollow. Empty. There was nothing left. Not the will to stop the stars from falling. Not the desire nor ability to summon her wife. Only dejection. Only silent sobs in a bath that had long since cooled. Only an emptiness she couldn't fathom.
Her own soul had given up on her.
She pushed the tray away and forced herself to stand. She reached for the crutch resting against the sink. It was too far. She swore under her breath. Nothing else to do. She forced one leg out of the tub, putting as much weight on it as she dared.
Too hasty. Too presumptuous. Her soul had given up, and her body was no different. The floor was hard and unforgiving. She could taste iron. Feel the blood trickling from her nose.
"Damn it! Why won't you just cooperate?!" She screamed at herself through the haze of blood and stars.
She grabbed the crutch and used it to force herself to her feet. She shambled to the door. Determined to do one thing and one thing only.
As she threw it open, she felt her bathrobe draped loosely around her shoulders. Her wife urging her to put it on she realized. She didn't care. Modesty didn't matter right now. Warmth didn't matter right now.
She brushed it off and walked through the bedroom. Making her way through the small cottage to the kitchen, to the sliding glass doors that led to the balcony.
She reached for the handle and tugged, finding it unmoving. She reached down and turned the lock. Tugging it once more, it again remained firmly in place, the lock flipped back to its previous position.
"Wife. Knock it off." Weiss turned the lock again, keeping her hand on it to bar interference as she at last pulled the door open.
She hated that. 'Wife'. It felt so cold. So impersonal. She hated that she couldn't remember the name. Again. Decades of this day in day out. Forced to wear down her soul until it was gone just so the emptiness would abate. She didn't deserve this. Her wife didn't deserve this.
This life was wretched. Hobbling around like a decrepit old lady when she was in the prime of her life. Her mind failing her because of some stupid tears. Her body and soul in worse condition that that. She couldn't continue. She couldn't bare to make her wife give up her happiness, her ambitions, whatever they may be, to take care of her. She didn't want to be a burden. She didn't want to need constant care just to barely make it through a day.
The mid winter wind thrashed against her skin as she stepped out onto the balcony. Her hair was already starting to frost over, but she couldn't pay it any mind. She heard the clack of her ring against the railing.
She glanced down at it. At the silver band. At the rose set atop it. At the ruby resting at its core. Every part of it was some aspect of her wife. She knew that. She'd never been told, but she knew. It simply had to be the case. She felt a gnawing in the back of her mind. As if a memory was there but she wasn't allowed to access it.
That thought was worse than all the rest.
Weiss used all of her remaining strength to push against the railing. She began the arduous process of hoisting her frail body up and over. She would let the waves take her. Lose herself in the sea she adored so much. Free herself of this pain. Free her wife of this burden.
She closed her eyes. Taking in for one final time the sound of the waves crashing against the wall of stone below. Taking in the salty scent of the sea. Her resolve was set. She took one last breath.
As her muscled tensed that final time, pulling her over, there was a light. The brightest she'd ever
seen. But it wasn't uncomfortable. It didn't hurt. She didn't need to squint or shy away from it. It was warm, radiant, comfortable, and above all else it was familiar. The silver glow that she'd seen so many times all those years ago. She felt a shift. The pearlescent film that had coated her eyes since the day Atlas fell crumbled and cracked, dissolving into dust that scattered in the mid-Winter wind.
She felt an arm wrap around her waist. Followed by another. They pulled her back from the railing. For the first time in years she felt the warmth of her wife pressed against her back without the strain of summoning. She felt relief, comfort, and safety. All the things that Ruby had promised her on their wedding day.
She felt her wife's trembling.
"Weiss... don't do this... please..."
"Ruby!" Weiss sobbed, turning in her wife's embrace to face her.
"Shh. I know Weiss. I know." Ruby soothed, holding her close. Even when her own voice was shaking with worry, her own eyes filled with tears, she did nothing but think of her wife's well being. "Let's get you in outta the cold."
Weiss nodded, allowing herself to be led in to their house. Into the warmth of her loving marriage, now blissfully free of burden, of the constant exhaustion brought about by those accursed stars. She was finally free to love Ruby as she always had.