RWBY Through Worlds (End)

BC80: Red Herring (Heroes and Villains)--7

Cinder wasn't satisfied with that cop out.

"Talk about what?" she demanded.

"You know what." Royal echoed her words. "But now isn't the right time, is it?"

"I don't know what," Cinder said.

Royal sighed. "Cinder, why do you think I act the way I do?"

Cinder began to feel strange--partially wary, partially something like excitement but more nauseating.

"Like what?" She feigned cluelessness.

No, this was not the conversation they were having, she thought. Not at all. This was about something else.

"The others keep saying just to talk," Royal remarked, as if to himself. "I wonder if they know just how difficult that is... You know what? Forget it."

"Wait, are you just giving up that easily?" Cinder went from embarrassed to insulted. "It couldn't be that important, then. To make such a big deal of it and then drop it."

"I really think you don't want to hear what I have to say." Royal sounded a bit more upset. "So what's the point?"

Cinder went quiet for a moment.

After reconsidering if she wanted to start this, and finding that the idea of stopping it was just too torturous to commit to, she decided to just bite the bullet.

"This is about that thing Mercury talked to me about, isn't it?" she said, less confidently than usual. "He said something to you also."

"No, but that confirms that he did say something to you," Royal said. "He's such a...narc... No, that's not the right word. Well anyway, he's not very trustworthy. What did he tell you?"

"I'd rather not say." Cinder would much rather not say. "It was...idiotic."

"I'd rather not say either...so both of us are going to sit here in awkward silence." Royal folded his arms. "Maybe I am an idiot... What would I know anyway?..."

He shook his head. "Honestly, I don't know anything. Maybe you get it... Maybe you don't. I didn't plan for it to turn out the way it did, but it did."

"Make sense," Cinder said sharply, but in her head she was begging for some clarity.

"I can't." Royal shook his head. "Just forget about this, all right?... Maybe Raven should consider not assigning us to the same teams so often."

What was he saying now?

"Where did that come from?" Cinder asked. "Did I do something to you?"

Well, of course she was usually a jerk, but...not more than usual.

"Yeah, maybe," Royal said. 

"What? Specifically?" Cinder frowned.

Royal was thinking to himself that there was really nowhere to start.

Be specific? Like he really could be.

Like, telling her that since the first time they'd met, he'd known something about her drew him like a magnet, and over time that had only gotten stronger?

Or should he explain that it was getting harder and harder to focus on anyone else while on a mission, and he had to force himself to look at and talk to them instead of her?

Or that he asked her friends about her because he wanted to know more and more?

No, he couldn't say that. She'd kill him.

Well, not really, but she'd freak out, and that was almost as bad.

Yeah, how did he explain that the whole reason he never talked about this was because he knew that would mean the end of their rocky friendship? How could he ask for more when she was barely okay with that?