The Bloodied Thirty Pieces

20 - And Red Roses Too

Don't fret precious I'm here.

Pain, pure unending agony surrounding you consuming you in hellish red and orange-yellow light.

Step away from the window, and go back to sleep.

The pain leaves, hands find you, carry you to a dark cold place. The hands touch you, lessening the embers of the pain under your skin.

Safe from pain, and truth, and choice.

A voice, soft and delicate and warming, sings to you as you sleep, as the hands take away the embers.

And other poison devils.

The hands stop, but there are still embers, embers that grow that hurt that burn. The voice still sings, but now in words of venom and blood, words that both worsen and lessen the embers, but stirs the cold burn in your chest.

See, they don't give a fuck about you.

A window opens. Inside a flash of brilliant red, the colour or murder, followed by vivid green eyes wide in shock and despair and fear as blood erupts covering the ground, forming letters and words, cruel whispering voices filling the space as the eyes fade, forever frozen screaming silently their question amongst the shock. Why?

Like I do.

The eyes blink, blood runs down her face as she rises, her cold hands stained the colour of her hair wrap around your neck, the same voice, melodiously venomous escape her dead lips, fill your head.

Go back to sleep.

Ruby startled awake, a scream caught in her throat. Her breath was ragged and frantic, her skin covered in a cold sweat, her eyes were wide with the lingering fear from her nightmare. She could still hear the song echoing in her mind, and she felt the ghostly touch of fingers rubbing her hair or her scarred and burnt skin. Ruby closed her eyes and let her head collapse back on the pillow, trying to even her breathing and stop the drum solo in her chest. As the fear started to fade Ruby began to feel the dull ache of pain, made worse by her recent surgery. Mostly it was numbed by pain killers and Dust, but always lurking there, just at the edge of her touch; she thought that she would always feel it for the rest of her life, a constant reminder of betrayal and her death.

You weren't betrayed.

Ruby let out a sigh of annoyance as the voice in her head, her angel on her shoulder, criticized her. She still didn't entirely believe that Pyrrha, Weiss and CRDL didn't betray and try to kill her. But they must have, they must have planned to kill her. Or else-.

Ruby shook her head, trying to clear her head of that particular train of thought before it lead her nowhere good. There had been nights where she had cried and screamed herself to sleep following that rabbit hole, and other nights she had woken screaming because they haunted her nightmares.

Everyone tiptoed around the topic, and they all tried to avoid talking about the day she had died as much as possible. Even Ozpin, Pastel and Velvet, the medical staff, and the two students 'interrogating' her stopped bringing it up. Yang and Blake often talked about the normal things that had happened while Ruby had been 'away' such as Blake's Faunus heritage and how they found out about it, the fight that had gone down at the docks with Roman Torchwick and the White Fang, or the massive food fight _WBY, CRDL and JNPR had gotten in the week before. CRDL had been totally destroyed and JNPR won the overall fight.

Betrayed you.

Killed you.

Go back to sleep.