Chapter Text
Some months ago, in Mistral:
Hazel watched as his entire reason for coming here bounced bonelessly down the steps. Sienna Khan—High Leader of the White Fang—fell into a heap at the bottom of the stairs leading up to her own throne. When her corpse rolled to an abrupt stop at Hazel’s feet, she was staring face-forward, flat on her back, limbs splayed out as though—even in death—she was still trying to catch herself and lunge back to action. Even now, the snarl never left her face. A fighter to the end. He respected that.
He did not share that same respect for her usurper, speaking now to the guards that helped betray her. Giving speeches, telling lies and telling others to spread them. As though their fellow faunus didn’t already have enough atrocities to be angry about, and enough loved ones to mourn.
“Sienna Khan will become a martyr for our cause,” Adam said. “Her final act as High Leader.”
Two guards robotically approached Sienna’s body with a stretcher, as though they had been ready for this, briefed on it, and held no particular feeling about any of it. Like they had killed her in their minds long before Adam had stabbed her through the chest and made it final. They simply lifted her, and left. No ceremony. No grief. No loyalty. They moved like the Grimm they fashioned masks of, killing efficiently and without second thought.
Hazel didn’t think Adam truly understood how concerning that was. Of what it meant for the stability of the Fang going forward, and the things Salem would demand of all their brothers and sisters in the times to come. Of how she would test their bonds, and their cause, and the very structure of their entire organization.
He tried to understand. He truly did. “When were you planning on telling me about… that.” The killing, the coup, the coverup—to Hazel, it had all come out of nowhere. What was the point?
Adam wiped the blood off his sword casually. “This was my business, not yours.”
“It’s our business now. And I don’t appreciate you withholding things like that.”
“Your master was concerned with Sienna’s willingness to cooperate. Now… she doesn’t have to be.” He said it like it was easy. Like it meant nothing at all. That a life wasn’t wasted when the whole point of Hazel coming here was to talk.
Hazel steadied his fists. He remembered his sister and found his resolve. He chose to focus on more pressing things, other matters that demanded his attention here in Mistral and what Salem had asked of him. Things that would make what he said to Adam next sound hypocritical in comparison:
“Nobody needed to die today.”
Even as he turned around to leave the throne room, Hazel could hear the smirk in Adam’s response, the pride he must feel as he sat down and his newfound seat of power creaked beneath his weight. “I disagree—”
But then Adam didn’t sound proud at all. His voice caught on his teeth, and Hazel turned back just in time to see him slash at nothing over his shoulder. He whirled around in a frenzy, kicked the throne out of his way, and went on the warpath. His sword cut through the air and empty space behind him. Obviously, it did not fight back.
Hazel watched him rage about his throne with a flat expression. He wasn’t sure how to react. Wasn’t sure what there was to react about in the first place.
Eventually, the boy settled down, chest heaving as he ripped his blade from the wall, gouging through the elaborate tapestries that hung over the throne. It perfectly cut through the White Fang insignia emblazoned in the fabric, leaving an impression of a wounded, gutted animal in its place.
Adam took a moment to stare at it: the mess he made. He calmed his breathing till he almost sounded monotone. Indifferent. “Did you hear her, too?
Hazel frowned. “Who?”
Adam didn’t answer. He just kept staring where his sword cleaved the White Fang in two, the threads frayed apart straight between its angry, open jaws. It barely hung together at all anymore, on the verge of total collapse.
“...I think you should leave,” Adam eventually said.
And so Hazel did. He left the throne room, and set out to his next priority: preparing a supply for Watts’ upcoming operation. Assuming his machine was ready by the time Hazel had rounded up enough gangs and warehouse space for all the Aura users they would need for the experiment. He hoped it wasn’t; he hoped Watts failed and flustered and died in his sleep. He hoped he didn’t have to go through any of this at all. The sheer number of children alone was—
Hazel stirred from his thoughts as he caught sight of Sienna’s body, still being prepped for burial. The guards that had carried her into the hall had set her stretcher back on the floor, murmuring to each other quietly as they stared down at her corpse with visible unease.
It took a moment for Hazel to understand why. To find what could have possibly shaken them more than her actual murder. But he did. He saw, in perfect clarity, that her expression had changed. She was no longer snarling, eyes wide in dead surprise; the tone had changed entirely. Unnervingly so.
He kept walking, set back on the path Ozpin’s negligence had sent him on long ago, idly wondering how common it was for a mouth—post-mortem—to break into a ravenous grin mere minutes after death.
Present:
Ruby Rose bled open like a pomegranate. She felt like one, too. Juicy and fruity and full of holes that shouldn’t be there. She coughed and more juice spilled out. It was funny to think of it like that, instead of blood in her teeth, in her hair, and her fingers. Like there wasn’t something stringy and made of Ruby meat dangling out from her open chest, a bare rib catching the strand like someone poking a fork through her intestines. Like spaghetti. Pomegranate spaghetti.
Funny imagery to think about, so long as Ruby forgot that she was probably about to die.
Her vision swirled red as her namesake as she thrashed in and out of consciousness. Hands tugged at all sides of her body—holding her down, tearing her clothes, pricking her skin—but she couldn’t see any of them clearly. Just bloody impressions of people made entirely of bright red polka dots, poking and prodding and murmuring nonsense to themselves as they jostled Ruby in every which direction.
She couldn’t remember how she got here, or where she was, or who they were, or why she was hurting more than she ever thought possible, but questions like those were for people without holes in their stomachs or ribs protruding past their very open skin. Ruby wished she was one of those lucky people. She’d probably be screaming a whole lot less.
Voices beyond her own tried their best to speak over her, and push her down, and touch her naked ribs, and, well, Ruby didn’t very much like that. Not at all. At some point or another, she snapped her teeth at fingers that brushed too close to her mouth, and someone other than herself screamed about it, but it was all lost in the sea of hands and bright, bloody polka dots that kept spinning and singing and spinning all over again.
Eventually, the dots became more solid—more unified—as one voice dominated the rest:
“Some say that it is in passing that we achieve immortality.”
Every hand gripped into Ruby more tightly than before, an unbearable heat suddenly building between each and every fingertip, closing in together like a living circuit board.
“But merely passing is not enough. It is not enough to have existed. It is not enough to have been born, and then died, with nothing of value in between. To become worthy of immortality is to become worthy of being remembered. To scar the world with your every action and word and breath, until no one alive now or forever after can deny your memory.”
The warmth consumed her entire body. It felt like her Aura, brittle and waning, stretched to its absolute thinnest limits. It made Ruby feel so very fragile, and small, and whimpering for it to be over.
“To do this, you must survive as long as you can and by any means necessary. Steal if you are able. Murder if you must. Whatever it takes to leave your mark on the world, do it. For the world will not remember you for being kind. You must be ruthless.”
The warmth—her Aura—was focused all into one spot: the hole in her chest. Not by Ruby, but by the hands holding her, coaxing her Aura to follow both their touch and their words. Voices chanting in delayed unison that kept droning on and on about nothing and everything all at once.
“We must cut ourselves off from all weakness and hesitation and rise above all others. For it is in strength that we will find victory.”
Suddenly, Ruby’s vision cleared of red swirls and bloody spots. Replacing it all came the face of a familiar Nevermore in a mockingly human shape. Though its beak did not move, it spoke just the same:
“Infinite in power and unbound by death, I release your soul, and by my blade, demand thee rise.”
As its red blade tapped her sternum, Ruby felt the hole in her stomach clench and reknit and throb in fresh waves of pain as her eyes screamed open to numbing white and—
“Ruby?”
She woke up. And she was fine. No more hands, no more weird chanting or Nevermores who somehow knew how to swordfight. Just a persistent ache in her upper abdomen that flared even worse when she tried to touch it.
“I wouldn’t recommend doing that, Ruby. The stitches are still fresh.”
Ruby blinked and remembered she had eyes, and that they worked, and that they could be used to look at her favorite people. “Penny?”
By her side—a bedside, because, apparently, Ruby was lying in a bed full of pelted furs and patched up blankets—was, somehow, miraculously—impossibly—Penny. Or, well, totally possibly, because she still sorta kinda remembered the events leading up to this moment, Grimm bits and all (still fuzzy and coming back to her in pieces) but! Still! Penny!!!???
“Salutations, Ruby,” Penny said—'cause she was real and alive and Ruby might still be a little light headed or something from the blood loss ‘cause she kept changing colors. “I’m glad you’re awake. The last few nights have been… difficult to watch.”
While her vision stabilized and things got clearer and less wonky, Ruby clutched at her chest self-consciously, tallying all the spots it hurt too much to touch or move or think about. “A few nights, huh? Gosh… how much of me did they have to put back together?”
“More than they could have, less than they thought.” At Ruby’s confusion, Penny clarified, “Your eyes did something again, and, well… turned some of your outsides back into your insides. But it wasn’t enough on its own. The Branwens had to work their magic on you for days.” Penny curled up against Ruby, slotting her face like a perfect cog between the crook of Ruby’s neck and shoulderblade. She felt warm. “I don’t think I like anatomy anymore. I hope I never have to look at yours that closely again.”
It hurt a little to maneuver, but Ruby returned a little affection of her own, curling one trembling arm around Penny’s shoulder and hugging her tight. “Yeah, me neither. Sucked ass.” Penny’s giggles bounced down her neck and sent her goosebumps aflutter. Then her heart stopped. “Wait—the whomst?”
Penny visibly recalibrated. “Define… whomst?”
Ruby did, and Penny found it fun to say, which was cute and, like, really nice to watch her repeat a few times in a row as she found it funnier and funnier, but also—
“Yang’s MOM saved us? How? Why? Whomst’d?”
“Whomst’d,” Penny echoed, giggling again. “Also I have no idea either. She doesn’t like answering my questions… or talking to me in general. Or anyone. I think she’s very bad at communicating her feelings, like I am.”
“That’s called being a bitch, Penny. And—trust me—she is nothing like you.”
Ruby’s mood soured as Emerald’s head popped through a tent flap with the rest of her body, proving that, unfortunately, the details she had rather hoped she’d imagined about their escape from Salem had been entirely accurate. Crescent Rose stealing and all.
Emerald went to open her mouth again, but Ruby shut that down real fast. “Shut up—where’s my baby?”
Emerald froze, tilted her ear as though she was listening to someone explain something over her shoulder, before she groaned and rolled her eyes. “It’s literally right next to you, doofus.”
Ruby blinked, and looked down at the opposite side of the bed from Penny, and there CR was: folded, compact, and propped up on a pillow like a proper princess. As she deserved.
Still, Ruby eyed Emerald warily. “...why are you still here?”
Once more, Emerald rolled her eyes. “Uh… where the fuck else would I be? As much as I hate it, we’re kinda stuck together now. At least until we figure out what to do next. Speaking of which, now that you’re awake, we should probably decide where we’re going from here—”
Ruby shushed her again. Get shushed, idiot. “Uh, no, slow down—why are you here at all? Why did you help us? I still don’t really get what her whole deal is, but I know enough about Salem to safely say, yeah, she’s awful and evil and I hate her face and THAT YOU WORK FOR HER! Even if the ghost of Professor Ozpin is possessing you or something and helped us get out, that doesn’t actually explain anything—”
This time, Emerald shushed Ruby—physically, hand over mouth. Ruby retaliated with a tactical lick and saw Emerald regret every choice she made in her life in real time. She gawked, pulled her hand back, and stifled an angry scream behind gritted teeth. “Don’t say his name here—especially anything about him and me sharing brain cells, okay? Hate me all you want—’cause I don’t like you either—but Raven literally hates him enough to kill me JUST to get to him. Understand?”
Ruby thought about it. “No.”
Emerald breathed through her teeth, and seemed to calm herself. “No, you wouldn’t, would you? I forgot you don’t know as much as Penny yet.” She sat down on the ground of the tent, and steepled her forehead behind both hands. “Fuck… where should I even start?”
Ruby had plenty of questions of her own that she would be just thrilled to start off with, but then Emerald went really quiet, tilting her head again, her face exploding into something between a cringe and an outright aneurysm. “I am NOT saying that! That’s… so lame.”
Ruby just stared at her, Penny following suit. After a moment of (internal?) deliberation, Emerald finally sighed, mumbled ‘fuck it’ under her breath and asked:
“...What’s your favorite fairy tale?”
So, Ruby ruined Emerald’s info dump immediately when she answered that her favorite fairy tale was one of the few that Oz had absolutely nothing to do with:
The Girl Who fell through the World.
And because Oz had nothing to do with it, it meant there was literally no good segue from there to get into the Maidens or Relics or Brothers or the entire clusterfuck of a situationship that Oz and Salem had going on for the past few thousand years. Details that Oz didn’t seem particularly happy about sharing with Ruby… but fuck him ‘cause if he’s too pussy to do the talking while Raven is still out and clawing about, then Emerald could tell however much of the story she goddamn wanted to.
“Harsh, but fair,” Oz relented. “I suppose it would be stranger to keep Ruby in the dark anyway at this point, especially since Penny knows most of the details already as well.”
In the end, Emerald just ignored Ruby’s answer and used the Story of the Seasons instead (because, apparently, that was Oz’s go to or something?) and then quickly jumped BACK a cycle or so of humanity to explain The Girl in the Tower, and how Salem wanted to become a Goddess because she was too much of a bad bitch to die, and how the Brothers took that so personally they blew up the moon.
Oz glared daggers at her from behind her own eyeballs. “...you simply MUST phrase it better than that. You aren’t even describing the proper order of events.”
Penny helped fill in the other bits (and the bits that Emerald was a little too impatient to explain, correcting her where she summarized too much at once), particularly her time at Evernight and how she and Emerald grew to become unlikely friends while trapped under Salem’s thumb. Of course, that just led into everyone’s favorite bit of mildly controversial, totally morally ambiguous behavior—
“So, let me get this straight,” Ruby said, hands trembling as she fumbled for the oversized scythe at her bedside. “After you helped destroy my school and kill my friends and countless other people, you went on to gaslight Penny for months into joining Salem’s side—literally corrupting her soul to become someone else, with a VIRUS implanted in her body to keep her under control—AND you did all of that to Penny wh-while…” Her breath stuttered. “While pretending to be me.”
Emerald twiddled her fingers together, glancing away awkwardly. “I mean… I didn’t do that last part on purpose. I kinda lucked into it.”
Somehow, despite all the stitches, Ruby managed to cock her gun. “I’m going to kill you.”
Fortunately, Penny disliked that idea almost as much as Emerald. “Please don’t.”
“Why not? Penny, her semblance is the reason you died! She tricked Pyrrha into killing you—who she ALSO helped kill! She’s dangerous. She’s awful. I’m… I’m not just gonna forgive her!”
Penny clasped Ruby’s trembling hands and helped her put the gun down. It didn’t look easy. “I’m not asking you to forgive her. Merely to understand.”
Even Emerald flinched at the hurt washing over Ruby’s face, the pain that wracked through her entire body. “Understand what? You should understand me—you said you didn’t like seeing my insides? Well… right back at you. I didn’t like seeing yours either, back at Beacon.” Her hands twitched, threatening to pull from Penny’s. But she gave in, and held tighter, and started to cry. “Do you have any idea what it was like? Running from the stands, bursting through the doors to the arena, and seeing you in pieces? I even figured it out right before it happened—figured out what they were going to do with you. At the last. Possible. Fucking. Second! And I… I…”
Crescent Rose clattered to the floor and Ruby just… broke. She wept so hard it made her veins go black. The Grimm inside—its mind scattered and small and hard for Emerald to pick out cleanly—felt bigger. Engorged. Taking new roots while Ruby fell apart.
“I can’t fail you again,” Ruby said. “I just… can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t!” Words came out of her in a rush, something thunderous gaining weight behind them. “Just let me kill her. Make her dead. Make her suffer.”
Though those brambles Ruby wielded in Evernight didn’t shoot out immediately, Emerald could still see them threatening to grow beneath the skin, poking at tissue and waiting to be unleashed. It didn’t take using her semblance to feel the Grimm’s hate pounding behind Ruby’s. It was like Cinder all over again—the parasite feeding on negativity where it could, using Emerald as the catalyst. She didn’t know how to stop it, and neither did Oz.
Even Penny seemed rattled, trying (and failing) to yank her hands from Ruby’s sudden death grip. “Ruby, you… you’re hurting me.”
That did it. That gave Ruby pause. Made her pale in ways worse than just the blood loss. She pried her fingers from Penny’s wrists and hid them with the rest of her body, beneath a thick blanket. The Grimm settled down, still blackening the veins in Ruby’s neck, but no longer prodding beneath her stitches for a quick opening.
Emerald—feeling too many gods awful things all at once to respond appropriately—tried to break the tension with a laugh. “Well, fuck—that was scary.”
Ruby glared at her. Oz did the mental equivalent. It wasn’t until Penny glanced harshly at her that Emerald felt well and truly chastised.
“Emerald,” Penny said carefully. In a tone that reminded Emerald that she—out of everyone here—had the least reason to be gentle with her. And yet she was. And yet she tried. And yet she merely asked and did not demand: “Could you please leave us for the night? I think… I think Ruby needs some space.” From you especially was not said, but heard nonetheless.
“Yeah,” Emerald said, even as Ruby’s veins flexed and darkened and summoned images of someone else’s hand clutching and clawing and pawing at her throat. “Okay.”
She left the tent and found the Branwen encampment just as unwelcoming as before. Not that she was used to being welcome, like, anywhere—but still… the people here sucked. Mostly in the same way that Emerald did.
Bandits and scoundrels eyed her as she passed them, sizing her up, weighing their chances, and slowly remembered they were under strict orders to leave her alone. For now. For as long as Raven desired.
However long that would last.
“Hard to say,” Oz said. “She has never been known for kindness. Her concern for Miss Rose was unexpected enough on its own, much less for the two tagalongs she took back with her on a whim. Still, I doubt she’d suddenly change her mind for no reason. Especially after all that effort she put into Ruby’s recovery.”
“Yeah… what was it you called that chanting stuff again? A Mantra?” Emerald honestly didn’t give that much of a shit, she just needed the distraction. Lectures were boring, but remarkably better to listen to than bandits plotting her murder or Ruby plotting the same. “I still don’t get how it wasn’t like… magic. The real kind, like we did.”
While Emerald found a quiet corner of the camp—a place she scouted out with her semblance and felt no hidden minds that could overhear her whispering to herself like a lunatic—Oz took his time to answer, like she had asked something complicated instead of just one simple fucking question.
“I just don’t want to confuse you, Emerald. Not that Mantras are a difficult concept to understand—not exactly—but the truth is… I don’t fully understand them either. I can’t even use them myself. I lack the necessary mindset.”
Emerald considered that. “Why not? Are Mantras like Semblances, or the Maiden powers? Unique to certain people?”
“No, in fact from what I understand… anyone can use them, or rather anyone can learn to use them. More like… another universal application of Aura, similar to how you use it to shield your body, heal your wounds, and strengthen your weapons. Aura can also be used in tandem with another’s—without a semblance—through Mantras.”
“Well, I’ve never heard of people using them before. Doesn’t seem so universal if this place is the only one that does it.”
Oz sighed at that, and she felt his own resentment. “That is my fault. I… I accidentally eradicated the practice. When I first brought Semblances to humanity.”
Emerald perked up, now genuinely interested. “Oh yeah—Salem said something about that. About you giving them to us. Almost forgot about that in the aftermath of, well… everything.” It still felt unreal. The escape; Penny’s remodeling; Raven’s interference. It all just sorta… came together all at once. Nonstop crisis after crisis until now. Sitting here in the dark where the skies weren’t red and trying to kill her. But alone, without a warm body to cling to when the world felt cold. She hugged herself. “I hope Cinder is doing okay. Wherever she is.”
Oz pointedly ignored that comment, continuing on: “I haven’t forgotten my promise to you, Emerald.”
“Promise? What promis—” And then Emerald remembered, and she realized a part of herself never thought she’d actually survive long enough for Oz to follow through with this. “You’ll finally tell me everything? Like, everything, everything?”
“Though the collective experience of over half my lifetimes up until this point urges me to reconsider… yes, Emerald. As you had promised me, you helped save Miss Rose from Salem and you defected from her circle. Though I fear your loyalty to Cinder is still a problem we must address in the days to come, you taught me a lesson in waiting too long to confront a problem. Of leaving things unsaid and regretting them later. So… yes. Ask me anything, and I will answer.”
Emerald was dreaming. Or dead. Or dead and dreaming. The most unbelievable thing was that she was alive, now, with the potential of learning EVERYTHING that Oz had been so frustratingly vague about back at Evernight. The real reason he made the Maidens, his experiments with Ruby, the missing pieces he still hadn’t revealed of his past with Salem and their on-again-off-again nonsense for the past who knows how many thousands of years.
She could have started somewhere small, but still significant, letting Oz build up to the bigger, possibly more shameful things he had done across his many lives. Small, like the origin of Semblances. Or badgering him a bit more on what he meant by ‘accidentally eradicating’ Mantras. But Emerald didn’t want to start somewhere small, somewhere easy. She wanted to know that whatever came next, whatever choices she made against the immortal Grimm queen, would be worth it. That maybe, for the first time in her life, she could actually let herself believe she had a future to look forward to.
And so, crouched in a dark corner of a bandit camp—surrounded by thieves and murderers and absolutely no one that loved her—Emerald asked Oz her very first question:
“What is your plan to defeat Salem?”
Oz paused. Sighed. Collected his thoughts behind Emerald’s and didn’t let her sneak a peak before he was done sorting it all out. But he did not break his promise. “I will put an end to Salem’s story the same way it began: with her locked in a tower.”