Ch 58: Consequences

Almost a week after Blake's reassurance, the inevitable happened. Yang snapped.

"Okay! That's it!" Yang shouted, slamming her hands on the table as she surged to her feet, glaring at her younger siblings with red eyes and startling everyone at their corner table in the library. Ray, dressed in a butler costume to try, once again, to appeal to his twin, and Ruby, pushing a cup of steaming hot chocolate he had just brought her towards Blake, both froze like a pair of rabbits before a wolf. While Weiss and Blake, who had been discreetly enjoying the eye candy, jumped in their seats before quickly hiding their faces, blushing with guilt, behind the books in front of them, afraid and embarrassed that Yang might have caught them eyeing her younger brother. Their fears were unwarranted however.

With eyes only for her frustrating siblings, Yang stomped around the table. Grabbed Ray and Ruby by their collars and literally dragged them bodily out of the library, growling like a bear under her breath all the way. Ruby and Ray could only stare wide-eyed at each other, unwilling to put up a token resistance or even move less they make the situation even worse. They had never seen their older sister this angry before, but they had heard stories. One that came to the forefront of both their minds right now was when their father first tried to cut Yang's hair. The house had been reduced to rubble by the time she had passed out from exhaustion. Yang was only one and a half years old at the time. Nobody but Yang had ever brought a pair of scissors anywhere near her hair since.

Once Yang had dragged them around the side of the library, and away from prying eyes, she threw them both against the wall and let them have both barrels of her anger born from frustration and fear.

"I've had enough of this sh*t! You are going to tell me what the f*ck your problem is, and then you are going to kiss and make up! Or so help me, I will bend you both over my knee and spank you till your butts swell to match your overinflated heads!" Yang growled menacingly at them. Her anger at the situation having grown beyond the realm of screaming. The twins looked at their older sister and then at each other, trying to decide who should start. Ray was the first to break the silence with a bombshell of a sentence.

"Our mother, Summer, is alive." Ray said simply and then paused to let the words sink in. Yang's ferocious oni mask dropped in an instance to be replaced with uncertainty, disbelief, and confusion. After giving her a couple of seconds to digest what he had just told her, Ray opened his mouth to elaborate. However, Ruby cut him off.

"He's known for six years and never told any of us. Can you believe him!? Six years he has known our mother was alive and he never bothered to tell me! Never bothered to tell Dad!" Ruby rounded on Ray, "Do you remember how much Dad suffered when Mom died!? Do you remember how he struggled to take care of us!? Do you remember how he still cries at night when he thinks we are all asleep!? DO YOU EVEN CARE!?!"

"Of Course I Care!!" Ray met Ruby's righteous fury with his own, "I love all of you more than I could ever put into words! Do you have any idea how painful it was for me to watch! To know, I could end your's and Dad's suffering with but a single sentence?!"

"THEN WHY DIDN'T YOU!?" Ruby wailed with tears pooling in her eyes.

"I HAD TO PROTECT YOU!!" Ray screamed, "I had to protect Mom. I had to protect Dad. We were too weak. If the people who tried to kill Mom learned she was still alive, they would have used us to get to her. I had to keep this a secret. It was the only way I could protect us!"

"Nobody asked you to! We could have kept that secret together! If you had just explained! If you had just told us the truth! We could have carried this burden together! None of us would have had to suffer! WHY COULDN'T YOU JUST TRUST US!?"

"BECAUSE I WAS AFRAID!!" Ray's eyes were red now with unshed tears. "Because I was afraid you wouldn't be able to. That we wouldn't be able to keep the joy of knowing our mother was alive within. It might just be one person at first. Then one would become two. Then three. Then before we knew it, we would be fighting for our lives against an enemy I couldn't yet comprehend. Because I was just afraid."

Ray slid down the wall to crouch on the ground with his legs pulled up and his face buried between his knees. "I was so scared. So afraid that I was going to lose my family if I so much as breathed a word of this. But I wasn't willing to just let things be, so I started putting out feelers trying to understand just what sort of threat we were up against. And I got even more scared. This wasn't something as simple as Grimm or corrupt politicians. This was an ancient threat that had been stalking our world for generations. Patient, cunning, and ruthless beyond measure. I knew it was something I couldn't fight, but something I had to fight. So I started training even harder. I began gathering allies. And when I finally thought we stood a fighting chance, I realized a new fear. That I had done something unforgivable. That by keeping this secret, I might have kept my family alive only to lose them anyway. I was afraid none of you would ever be able to forgive me for what I had done." Ray's voice had started to shake towards the end.

Ruby shifted uncomfortably on her feet. She wanted to say that would never happen. That they would have forgiven him if he had just told them. But hadn't she been acting precisely as he had feared? Refusing to accept his apology no matter how hard he tried. If Yang hadn't lost her temper and forced this confrontation, how much longer would it have gone on?

On the other hand, Yang was still trying to wrap her head around what she had just learned.

[Summer is alive! Ray has known and hasn't told anyone. Not even Dad! And what was that about an ancient threat targeting Summer? Or about him gathering allies!? Just how many secrets is my little brother keeping!?!]

Thousands of thoughts raced through their heads. But in the end, none of it mattered. Ray was silently crying. Yang and Ruby looked down at their brother, and their hearts hurt. This was their brother. The indomitable spirit that they had always looked up to. The one that said nothing was impossible and lit the way forward to achieve it. That laughed with them and fought with them. That teased them, and they teased back. That loved them unconditionally and who they loved just as much.

He was curled up in a ball on the ground crying because he was afraid his worst fear was going to come to pass, and he was going to lose what he treasured most. It didn't matter how many lives he had lived or how old he was on the inside. What he cared about was what he cared about and when something was this important to you, the idea that it was about to be taken away hurt worse than anything. All that pain and fear that he had been suppressing for years had bubbled up to the surface with his confession, and they had to go somewhere. So they streamed down his face as tears.