Chapter Text
i)
Ruby’s seven years old when she speaks to her for the first time.
Their school is holding a bake sale and Ruby sits with Yang in the pathway leading to the entrance, the air filled with the scent of vanilla and the chatter of her classmates. The girl looks like she’s had the worst day of her life and Ruby wants to make her smile.
She doesn’t think too much about it. She drops an extra cookie and a tiny piece of paper with a drawing of a grinning sun that’s wearing shades in her bag and hopes the girl won’t notice until she’s quite far away and wouldn’t want to waste the time coming back to return it.
The girl takes the bag, her eyes rimmed red and Ruby wants to hug her but she’s been told before that hugging a stranger wasn’t okay because some people might not like it. So she does her best to smile her brightest smile and tells her to have a good forever (she doesn’t want to be stingy and wish this person just one good day). If the girl notices anything she doesn’t show it and after a rather stiff nod she walks away.
Ruby watches her go and hopes she feels a little better today.
Yang tells her that she shouldn’t be handing out freebies to everyone. She also sees Yang wink and sneak in a cookie from her own stash to replace the one Ruby had given away and Ruby hugs her tight and the sound of her sister’s laughter makes her feel light and warm. She hopes the girl feels a little better too.
Half an hour later the girl comes back and she’s standing in front of Ruby, her hands on her hips. Ruby does her best to look at anyone but her but that’s very difficult when you’re tiny and the other person has the presence of a tall building (even though they’re barely taller than Yang).
She looks like she’s angry and Ruby wants to run, before the girl places a tiny paper packet on the table and briskly walks away.
Curious and feeling relatively safe, Ruby opens the tiny packet, careful not to rip it. It’s a tiny keychain with a very very cute puppy wearing a rainbow-colored afro wig.
Ruby decides that she’ll take it wherever she goes from that moment onwards.
She looks up, hoping to thank the girl and learn her name but she’s gone, swallowed by the crowd.
Ruby can't wait to meet her again.
ii)
Ruby doesn’t have to wait long to meet her again (not that she was counting days or anything).
After being declared as too energetic, their dad enrolls the sisters in art classes. Ruby had always liked drawing and going to classes meant she could sit behind Yang on her cycle, all bright and yellow and cool as she rode super-fast by the bus stop near the sea so it was a win.
The girl sits to her right and Yang to her left as the teacher goes around helping everyone. Ruby’s been wanting to say something since the moment the girl walked in but she doesn’t know how or even what to say.
She notices through the corner of her eye that the girl is eyeing her bag with laser focus and she turns to look as well.
It’s the keychain that the girl had given her.
When Ruby meets the girl’s eyes, she immediately turns away and her face becomes red. Ruby wonders if she’s feeling okay or if they need to tell the teacher. She remembered Yang looking really red when she had fallen sick last summer. Pushing her thoughts aside she does something she’s been wanting to do for a while.
She rips a tiny piece of paper from her book and pens a note. It isn’t fancy or anything, she thanks her for the keychain and tells her that she always has it with her. She adds that she hopes she has a great forever, because everyone deserves to have a great forever. She also adds a smiling cloud because she can and slides it across.
The girl eyes the note but doesn’t open it, instead sending a glare and a huff. Ruby doesn’t feel bad at all because the girl is looking at her (even though she looks angry) and Ruby feels like she’ll remember this girl forever.
Her pretty blue eyes and pretty white hair make her seem like someone out of a fairytale and Ruby loves fairytales. She grins and goes back to drawing.
Class goes on and Ruby is drawing a very detailed soap bubble that has all her attention. It’s twenty minutes later when she realizes that she’s lost her eraser and turns to Yang hoping to snag hers but she isn’t there anymore.
Looking around, the teacher isn’t either and all the other kids are out of their seats as well. Shuffling her feet, she wonders what to do when she notices an eraser being nudged towards her from her right.
The girl doesn’t look at her, her hand on her chin, seemingly not paying attention to her but the eraser says otherwise. It’s a very pretty bright blue eraser and Ruby almost feels bad for using it.
She eyes it for a second before shooting the girl a quick thanks and takes it, but to her surprise notices a piece of paper stuck between the cover.
Its neatly folded, very different from the shred of paper with ripped edges that Ruby had given and she wonders when the girl had the time to neatly cut it. Curious , she spreads it out, the creases making the paper wobble on the surface as she holds it down.
The first thing Ruby notices is that the handwriting is very pretty, it almost looks printed.
The second thing she notices is the very cute snowflake drawn at the top right corner.
She looks to her right and its very obvious that the girl was looking at her until that exact moment and Ruby is momentarily worried her neighbor might’ve sprained her neck. Very amused, Ruby turns her attention back to what’s in front of her.
The first line says ‘Stop sending me notes during class, it’s undisciplined’ and Ruby is amazed at the girl for knowing how to spell such a big word.
‘My name is Weiss’ the note says and Ruby never knew she could love a word as much as she did right then. It was a very pretty name.
Ruby quickly rips out another bit of paper and scribbles a ‘My name is Ruby! Let’s be friends!’ and practically throws it at Weiss in her excitement.
Weiss glares at her but Ruby’s too excited to care. She watches Weiss straighten the slightly crumpled note and read. Ruby’s almost one second away from falling off her chair before Weiss writes a reply and slides the paper back.
She quickly opens it and finds a very pretty ‘No’ in cursive and laughs in surprise. She starts ripping another bit of paper before she hears a sound resembling a frazzled squirrel and finds a very square piece of paper that feels like it’s made just for the purpose of passing notes.
She shrugs and accepts it, writes in ‘WHY’ in all caps and adds in a pouting puppy dog for good measure and sends it back.
She decides she likes this. Passing notes in secret. She feels like she’s in a spy movie passing notes with her spy friend, exchanging top secret things to save the world.
Turning she finds Weiss, staring holes at the note as if she’s thinking very very hard for a reason to not be friends. Ruby finds it all very funny so while Weiss is trying to set the note on fire with her eyes, she quickly writes another one.
‘do you want some help thinking of reasons?’
She knows she’s being cheeky; Yang having called her that many times. But it’s worth it when she sees the way Weiss’ face changes from surprise to confusion to a scowl.
She really likes Weiss she decides. Because she can see that her scowl is weird, twitching upwards-- very identical to the face her uncle makes when he’s trying to be mad at her but ends up laughing and ruffling her hair.
The note comes back with a ‘Dunce’ written on it and Ruby isn’t sure what that means but Weiss has her hand covering her mouth and if trying to hide her very visible smile and Ruby doesn’t know how to contain the happiness she feels at that.
Weiss sends another note and Ruby takes it faster than she can slide it all the way across.
In her haste she knocks over a cup of paintbrush water all over Weiss’s shirt. She looks on in horror as the liquid seeps through, spreading across the white shirt she was wearing, now slowly turning into a murky green.
Weiss is watching with the same horror, and the expression would have made her laugh out loud if she didn’t feel extremely bad about it.
The shrill cry of ‘You dolt!!!’ rings louder than a fire alarm and though Ruby doesn’t know it yet, the story of her first proper meeting with Weiss would be repeated for years to come over many occasions by many people narrating many different versions and every time she hears Weiss laugh at them, she’ll fall just a little bit more in love with her.
Not today though, for Ruby doesn’t really know much about love or feelings and not enough time has passed for them to look back and laugh at it since it just happened a grand total of three seconds ago.
Today, Ruby follows a very irritated Weiss to the sink apologizing profusely and pelting napkins at her. And when she sees that Weiss’s shirt is permanently colored despite using water and soap, she takes a nearby cup and dumps it over her shirt as well.
“We match now!” she says and she knows it doesn’t really make anything better, but Weiss shoots her a very surprised confused look before groaning, her hands on the bridge of her nose like she had seen her dad do whenever Uncle Qrow came back home with lots of ice cream.
They leave class that day with matching dirty shirts and Weiss even waved goodbye as someone who looked like an older version of her came to pick her up, Yang very amused it by all as she listens to Ruby as they ride back home.
The wind is cold as it hits her face, as they race across trying to make it in time for the new episode of CardCaptors when she remembers that Weiss had written a note to her that she never got the chance to open.
She finds it in her notebook later that night, when everyone else has already gone to bed, her sister snoring on the top bunk.
‘Brat’ it says and Ruby has stop herself from laughing out loud this late in the night.
The next line says ‘I’m sure I’ll come up with something by tomorrow ‘and Ruby wonders how high the whole ‘spilling brown water on her’ will rank in her list of reasons.
She’s also stupidly excited because Weiss said tomorrow and that meant she might not mind sitting next to her again (water incident notwithstanding).
She tucks all the notes in her tiny treasure box and finally goes to sleep, already planning all the things she would talk about with Weiss tomorrow.