Blue Books and Babies, Ch. 1: Yang
Ruby never had a brother.
When she was little, she snuck into the attic for the first time, when her father was trying to calm Yang down after her hair got caught on a tree branch and pulled a few strands out.  She sat there, drawing crude doodles of grimm in the dust that caked every surface, before stumbling upon a stack of photo albums. She opened the first page, set with a single image, then quickly flipped through the whole book. The pictures were faded, but they showed a past her father rarely talked about. She returned to the front and studied the first photo. He looked young, with fewer wrinkles and brighter eyes, but the same blond hair and shining smile. One arm slung around a man that must have been Uncle Qrow, though he was almost unrecognizable without his patchy beard and shadows under his eyes. He looked away, annoyed at the unwanted hug from his teammate, grimacing at a woman besides him. She was tall, her spiky long hair cascading down her back with a small lock in a ponytail. She was smirking at him, as though she found his discomfort amusing. Ruby didn’t know her name, but she had the same piercing red eyes as her uncle. Maybe she was his sister? But she quickly moved on, to the one in the photograph she most wanted to see.
She was hidden, half her face obscured under her snow white cloak. Her one visible eye was closed, but Ruby could see her smile, wide, laughing at the comical actions of her teammates. She was seemed young. Happy. Real.
Ruby had learned, from a very young age, it was better to not ask too much about her mother. Mentioning her always made her dad grow distant, and it usually hurt more than it helped her learn anything. But seeing this picture filled her heart, brought back a piece she hadn’t realized was missing. Her mom was more than a tragedy.
But her attention span was short, and she quickly flipped through the other albums, coughing through dust clouds as she laughed at her parents’ high school antics. She discovered that her dad had an affinity for posing dramatically with his weapon, and the long haired woman smiled the most when Uncle Qrow was smiling the least, especially when he was wearing a skirt, which seemed to happen more than once.
Finally she reached the bottom book. It was a small, pale blue album titled “Daddy’s Little Boy”. The photos seemed more recent, although the book was barely filled. The few photos in it showed an infant with a strangely full head of blonde hair and light lavender eyes. “Like Yang,” Ruby thought. All the captions beneath the photos had been scribbled out in crayon.
“Ruby!” Her father called her name, and she dropped the book, sprinting out of the attic before her father caught her there.
“Yang,” Ruby asked her sister that night, curled up in their bed way past their bedtime. “I found a book up in the attic today.”
“Ruby,” Yang exclaimed with a tone of sarcastic scolding. “You’re not supposed to go up in the attic!”
“Yang, stop it!” The sisters giggled, shushing each other so their father wouldn’t hear. “I found bunch of books up in the attic with photos in them, and one of had some pictures of a baby that looked kinda like you. But all the words were scribbled out, and the cover said the baby was a boy. Who was that?”
There was a moment of silence. “He wasn’t real.” She said angrily. “The book was a joke. Forget about it, okay?” She turned away, her back to her sister. “Go to sleep, Ruby.”
The next day, Ruby snuck back up to the attic, but the blue book was missing. She came down to the kitchen later to see a pile of ash on floor and her father scolding Yang, who took the punishment with a self-satisfied smile. Ruby never saw the book again. But, she realized in time, she didn’t need to. She had Yang, and she wouldn’t trade her for anything.
