Wilted is a RWBY Fan Fiction by Lonessa
that ships Quicksilver - that's Ruby and Mercury.
...Wait, where are you going? Come back!
Mercury Black, due to a chance meeting, is assigned to get close to Ruby Rose and become a part of her inner circle. It seemed easy enough. The girl was ditzy and trusted easily, and it took him only a couple one on one talks until he was in.
What he didn't plan for was actually starting to care for her.
With the rest of Team RWBY ready to strike if he breaks the cookie loving huntress's heart and his boss breathing down his neck for intel, Mercury finds himself in an uncomfortable predicament. Stay bad, or turn good? He never thought he would get the choice before, that's for sure.
Wilted is currently ongoing, and can be read here at Fan Fiction.net, or here at Archive of Our Own. It also features a number of short spin-off and What If? stories, all of which can be found here, under the title Beautifully Wilted.
Wilted contains examples of the following Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Marcus Black, natch. Even though he's long dead before the story starts, his actions cast a long shadow over the events, and over Mercury and Ruby's relationship.
- Adaptational Sexuality: David Scarlet is depicted as at least having an attraction to girls (and ends up with Neo), but in canon he’s homosexual. Somewhat justified as much of the story was written when he was an underwritten side character in canon.
- Emotion Bomb: Lynae's semblance allows her to make other people experience her own past injuries; after Neo experiences it first hand, she thinks the pain was so extreme that she wonders how Lynae survived whatever happened to her.
- Gone Horribly Right: The premise of the fic. Mercury initially befriends Ruby Rose for information. Their seemingly one-sided friendship starts blossoming into a relationship instead.
- Just Between You and Me: Slate and Lynae, thinking they had her dead to rights during the Breach, told Ruby that Roman was ultimately just a pawn in someone's much larger game; while they didn't say who, it's enough for Team RWBY to continue their investigation even after Torchwick's arrest, unlike canon where they thought that was the end of the matter.
- Heel–Face Turn: Mercury, Neo, and Roman, by the time of the finals round, all agree to cut a deal against Cinder. Mercury and Neo try and convince Emerald to join them, but her loyalty to Cinder wins out.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: How Ruby gets Roman to confirm that Cinder is the Fall Maiden. After revealing that Ozpin told her and her teammates about the Maidens and trying to convince Roman they can protect him from Cinder, he doesn't deny that "Cinder" is his boss' name, confirming her suspicions.
- In Love with the Mark: The whole premise of the story, if you couldn't tell.
- Original Character: A few. The standout examples, however:
- Slate and Lynae, a pair of assassins Cinder brought in to help do her dirty work while Mercury, Emerald, and Neo are undercover at Beacon.
- Amethyst Grendel, the Summer Maiden.
- Morality Pet: Ruby becomes one for Mercury, something the memory of Marcus inside Mercury's mindscape Lampshades.Marcus: It's in here, I can see it. He's got no conscience... but he gets one when he thinks of you.
- Percussive Maintenance: After several false starts, Mercury manages to fix a computer by punching it.
- Smarter Than You Look: People tend to assume that Ruby is naive and gullible because of her optimistic, childish demeanor, but is actually far more perceptive than those people realize - as soon as she gets word that Roman is working for someone else, she quickly deduces that it's the "Fire Lady" who was with him the night of the Dust robbery, and who broke into Beacon. During her interrogation of Roman she leaves him an opportunity to take her hostage just to see if he would take it and get a better idea of his character. By chapter 30 she's started to suspect that CMSN are the infiltrators they've been looking for.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Cookies for Ruby, ice cream for Neo, as per usual.
