"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." - Ford Prefect from Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (I really should read that, The movie was damn good. Maybe I will borrow it from my sister when I am back visitin...wait, what was I doing again? Oh yeah! An intro!)
I'm back! Well, for now. Study started up and time got away from me but I found this old thing that I wrote in my breaks when I was working in a vineyard. For those wondering, yes, I will be continuing on with my other RWBY story (feel free to check it out :)
A Weiss Choice to Make ) and possibly my other stories? I'm not really motivated to write my Doctor Who/Tron one, But who knows. I have some ideas for my COD Zombies one! Depends on how busy I am. I only got this one out for the hype for Volume 4 and had to dust off the ending and polish it up.
Obviously, this is all based on RWBY, property of Roosterteeth so its their universe and stuff. Created by the wonderful Monty Oum. Rest in all miss you, I wish I had the chance to meet you...
But I digress, here is a new story of Winter Schnee! What led her to be who she is? This is my take from pre-Volume 4. So my stories will be set in a seperate universe from them. But enjoy!
Huge shout out to my wonderful sister for being my editor! I am imaginative as hell, but whether my sentence makes sense or not is up in the air. She is the one who made it readable.
The thunder echoed throughout the vast halls of Schnee Manor, resounding everywhere from the elegant library to the young Winter Schnee's room. She jumped when it reached her, mistaking it for her father's voice. She took a deep breath as looked at her Scroll. She had discovered from her friends that the acceptance letters for Beacon Academy had returned, telling them if they had passed and were allowed to attend or not. Winter had applied not long ago but more importantly, she had done so without telling her father.
Looking back, the idea seemed idiotic to even think about applying, let alone actually follow through. Her father enjoyed having a say in her life. Many a nights had been wasted with fruitless argument for independence. Winter sighed and closed her eyes in preparation for her father's reaction and the foretold argument to follow. It was met early with a roar that would put thunder to shame, by uttering a single word that came from the depths within the home: "WHAT?!"
Winter winced at the noise, imagining the look on his face. While she enjoyed rebelling against him, he tended to blur moral lines when his anger fell out of hand. Winter jumped when a quiet but sharp knock surprised her from her door.
"Miss Schnee?" a servant asked as she recomposed herself. "Are you in there?"
"Enter," she said coolly, in an attempt to cover her fear, to keep up her family's image to the servants as the perfect rich family.
"Your father is urgently requesting your presence," he said as he opened the door. Winter saw him and was a little shocked. The servant was pale and even though it was trying to remain hidden, the way he was visibly shaken showed through. She was shocked that her father had actually lost his cool in front of the servants. He was all about family image.
"I bet he does..." Winter muttered so he wouldn't hear before addressing him. "Very well, I shall follow you to see him." She got up and took a deep breath and pulled the hem of her shirt down so she looked proper. She was screaming internally not to follow, to make a dash for it and make a excuse and leave, but it was too late. She had already got up to follow the servant. No turning back now. She followed him through the halls to her father's study. She entered and it looked like a cross between a bedroom, lounge, and library. The room's bold white coloured walls contrasted from all the pale blue furniture, from the two large rug welcoming the room's entrance to the two couches that were positioned in front of the bold blue flames of the fire. Bookcases covered the walls with the the exception of the wall sized window that covered the wall behind his desk on the room's second level. To its left was a large portrait of her mother, and to the right was more bookcases. Her father stood behind the desk staring out at the city of Atlas below, his back turned to her. She used this small amount of time to look at the picture of her mother.
It was a full length portrait that captured her with her hands behind her back and stood to attention. She looked as she always did. Her pale blue with darker blue tipped hair travelled halfway down her back, except for the single ponytail she had coming from the side of her head. She wore a simple light blue dress that was covered in a silver breastplate and shin guards. Her long navy trench coat with a hood on was wrapped around her. She was in white crystalline heels and stood with ease. Though Winter was normally used to her father's ice blue eyes being full of sadness and anger, her mother's were filled with happiness and kindness to compliment her small smile.
Winter was snapped back to reality when her father addressed her. "Imagine my surprise," he said calmly while he still faced away from her, "when I arrived home from my usual busy day of work, exhausted with the promise of more work to be completed at home, and I discovered a letter from Beacon Academy detailing how much of a pleasure it would be for them to have you attend their school. Most of your poor life choices can be sorted right by the servants but this time you have gone too far". Winter stood there in shook, overwhelmed by the combination of being told that Beacon was more than happy to have her, and the cruel cold words he had just said about her.
"I...", was as far as Winter got while he sighed and over powered her with his powerful voice. She knew she had already lost. Most arguments were lost when her father began it.
"Winter," he said after his sigh, lowering his head to press against the window away from her. "I had hoped that with time these rebellious and childish outbursts would be grown out of you. This subtle path is not going to work so I am going to be blunt with you, daughter of mine." Winter closed her mouth and crossed her arms, standing as she was adamantly against sitting down but still curious about what he had to say. "If you let me speak uninterrupted, I'll explain the plan that was laid out for you," he said, straightening his head and placing a hand in the other behind his back.
"You, Winter, are destined to take my place as the owner of the Schnee Dust Company and to carry on the Schnee name in all its greatness and power. Your mother was chosen by my father as a compatible partner so you would gain our families powerful hereditary Semblance, as well be physically brought up to be a strong leader and woman. Regardless of her previously promised 'righteous path' as a huntress, my father chose her to be my perfect partner to continue our family into a stronger age, so that we may grow and become stronger and no one could stand against you and you would have nothing to fear. This is your destiny, Winter and this is why I cannot allow you to go study at Beacon. You still have much to learn about the family business and how to run it. I cannot compromise on this Winter, you must take the company from me and you must be ready for that time."
Winter was stunned. This amount of information was too much. Her father had been controlling the strings of her life like a puppet master so that she would go towards this life she didn't want.
"If it is true you want me to honour the family name, I can do it in a whole new way and grow from..." Winter tried to change her father's mind, her calm voice holding back repressed anger, but it was to no avail.
"You will keep to the tradition and the path at hand," he said sternly as he too showed how he was visibly repressing his own anger. "I have spoken, Winter and that is final."
"Couldn't Weiss just..." Winter began, breaking her normal calm posture and tone and unfolding her arms to take a defiant stance.
"Weiss is off the table," her father cut through her sharp and coldly. "You need not concern yourself with her anymore."
"What are you talking about?" Winter asked in concern. Her sister meant the world to her.
"She was...not a part of the plan," he said as he dramatically relaxed his muscles to show his loss of restraint. "She is nothing more than a drunken mistake I made with your mother. She will not be around for long. She is Schnee blood but she is also a liability to the family and how she chooses her partner. One is sufficient so two is not required. The public know of her existence so there may be a accident on the horizon..."
"HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT?!" Winter screamed as she cut him off for the first time ever, finally snapping as he went too far. "How can you be so focused on the family name, and how it continues, to talk in such a way about your own flesh and blood? Mother would never have..."
It was at this point that it was his turn to snap. She barely could react. He blurred as he used his Aura and a glyph beneath his feet to spin around and piece her with those cold blue eyes. She barely made it to the hilt of her premium schooling edition sword as he already unsheathed his sword and slashed it in her direction. As he swung he pulled the trigger in the hilt to ignite the Dust clip loaded in the base of the sword. Blue ice dust swung around at her, encasing her in a crystalline formation from her feet that reached up to her chest. There she was, frozen and defenceless.
"Do not presume to know what your mother would have done, let alone bring her up at all!" Her father yelled back at her, sword still raised and aimed at her, his eyes alight with anger still locked on her. "Now listen to me," he said as he walked down from behind his desk towards her. "You will follow through with this plan, too much time and effort has gone into it. I will write back to Beacon and Professor Ozpin and inform him that we will humbly decline the opportunity and have a different course of life to take. You will stay here and follow the life graciously given to you. I will assemble the best tutors of business, accounting, leadership and economics and you will learn everything you will need. You will forget these stupid childish dreams of fighting to defend strangers. Do I make myself clear?"
Winter was initially afraid when he had frozen her, but during his speech it had worn off and she defiantly relaxed her face and turned it away from him as best she could when he posed the question. Colour rose in his normally pale face and another glyph appeared beneath him and he blurred to be right in front of her with the sword blade inches from her neck as he yelled in repetition, "AM I UNDERSTOOD?!"
She turned her head back to him to glare and say with attitude and coolness, "Understood."
"Very well," he said, swinging his sword back behind him to charge up and then slash at the ice, stopping just before the blade made contact. The shockwave produced by the sword cut cleanly into the ice and caused it to shatter. Unfortunately for Winter, the shockwave followed through and struck her in the side. Her Aura would help repress most of the damage from the slash from being a clean cut through her, but she knew it would probably bruise up at the least, maybe even bleed. "You may leave".
Winter fell and clutched her side where she had been struck and wheezed as she weakly stood back up. Her father had already walked back to his desk and picked up his Scroll, probably to message Beacon and completely crush her dreams. She left unsteadily through the door and leaned back on it once it was closed.
She closed her eyes as she went through all the information she had just been given. It was too much. Everything was being ruined, her life being torn apart. She clenched her fists and kicked off the door as she opened her eyes and punched a single punch into the opposite wall. Her Aura took most of the pain and she felt better, but it still scared her. Considering the argument they had just had, if her father saw what she had just done, or the servants saw how dysfunctional their family actually was, it would be tenfold of what had just happened. She quickly looked around as she heard a servant approach. The wall was covered in large paintings. While her mother had been the one who was actually interested in the culture they represented, her father approved their symbol of wealth. She found one that was tall and wide enough to cover the hole and placed to lean against the wall and hide it. As she did, the servant approached.
"Is there anything you need, Miss Schnee?", he asked obediently, bowing slightly as she saw her. Winter cocked her head to one side, thinking briefly. There was only one thing that stood out to her - that she needed to calm down.
"Could you tell me where my sister is?" she asked boldly, barely managing to cover up her anger and act like a Schnee always should.
"Ah yes, young Miss Weiss Schnee went to bed just an hour ago. I believe she had just been reading fairy tales to the servants to practise her reading and speaking. I believe she did quite well with the story of the Four Maidens," he responded quickly, straightening out of his slight bow.
"Very good, I shall go and check on her. Can you please see to it that this painting is sorted out?" she replied and walked off through the hallways.
"Of course, Miss Schnee, I don't know what it is doing down, I will get men onto it right now!" he said after her as she left the scene.
It wasn't long before she arrived at her sister's door. She stopped to looked at the decorations on it. It was lightly covered in the family's Semblance glyphs. These were much more simplified than the ones that actually appeared when they used their Semblance. Winter sighed. She wished that using the glyphs were as simple as that, but she knew from experience that was not the case. Winter herself hadn't completely mastered the Semblance, but she wasn't bad. She still had to focus on summoning, as all she could do was make basic things. Winter softly turned the door handle and quietly pushed the door open. She cautiously peeked her head into the younger girl's room and smiled at the situation.
The room was lightly lit with a cyan nightlight that showed the young girl silently sleeping. Winter could easily imagine the previous scene, as she was a usual at the events. Weiss would've been seated proudly on her bed as she read out to a audience of paid business men in suits who worked for their father, sitting in child-sized seats. Now, Winter entered as she tried to keep quiet to avoid waking her little sister. She pulled a child's chair from the stack that had without a doubt been cleaned up by a small squad of servants and sat down beside Weiss. She looked down at her and saw her slightly troubled expression as she slept. Winter brushed some hair out of her sister's eyes and started singing.
"Mirror...tell me something...tell me who's the loneliest of all?"
It had been her mother's last musical piece she composed before her untimely death. Before she had joined the huntress style of life, she had been known as The Woman With A Voice of Silk. Winter had overheard grown-ups talking about her mother as she grew up, stating that her mother's methodical and logical thinking combined with her musical and rhythmical skill set gave her a impossibly difficult fighting style which she had mastered, and which made her nearly unstoppable. Winter sighed as she remembered all her happy memories she had of her mother. Running to her mother when she returned home from a mission, then running together to her mother's study to play the piano together and talk about anything. Weiss was there too after she was born, but only to be watched as she was too young to join in. Looking back, her mother had seemed quite stressed when Weiss came around. With what Winter had learned today, this revelation did not surprise her as much as it would have before.
Winter couldn't hold back a single tear as she finished up the last line of the song, "I'm the loneliest of...all..." The song must have had more meaning than Winter had realised at the time. Winter wiped the tear from her face and looked back at Weiss. It seemed the singing had calmed her down and she wore a small smile. Winter soon replicated the smile, at the sight of the happiness she had brought her sister. Winter lightly kissed Weiss' forehead and quietly got up and left the room.
Once the door closed, Winter began to walk away down the hallway before a painful reminder of her injury from her father caused her to clutch her side and lean against the wall. This brought about a flare of anger in Winter, which she brushed past with a deep breath and walked to her room. Her solution would be to use her en suite bathroom to have a cold bath and focus her Aura to heal her wound in the physical sense. While no one could see the wound when it would be healed, she would still know that it happened. Winter took off her clothes and wore her silk bathrobe and prepared a cold bath. Not only because she preferred the cold to the heat, but the cold meant that she could focus on her own problems and forget about the outside world. She put in a decent amount of morning frost scented bath soap that began to bubble up as she swirled the water.
Once she had a deep bath, she took off the bath robe and examined her wound. The gash was harshly drawn on her rib side. She gently ran a hand over it which caused her to gasp in pain. When her hand reached the bottom it caused it to rupture and begin to bleed. She placed her palm softly over it and lay down in the bath tub. She shimmied down so that her face barely reached out of the water and foam. She closed her eyes as she ignored the pain of the water on her injury. She could only imagine the gaseous looking blood swirling around the bath from beneath her hand. She began to take deep breaths as she focused on all she had been told. Her father could not dictate her whole life. She was in charge of her own life, not him. She thought back to her younger years when her father had taken control in many occasions. All these times he had stepped in and made a decision for her that she disagreed with. She screwed her eyes and changed focus back to her Aura. Her body lightly glowed as a fresh web of skin crawled over the injury making it look completely new. She sighed, exhausted from the strain of healing herself. She then returned her focus to her predicament of her life.
She looked at all she had learned and gave herself two choices.
Choice one: Completely give in to her father, become his puppet and lived her life in eternal sadness.
Choice two: Get out. Just get out. Run as far as she could and don't look back and be free.
Winter got up out of the bath, let the water out, put a towel then robe on and left to stand in her room to mull the matter over. She paced back and forth as she weighed up the options. Really in hindsight the situation was a no brainer, but the consequences if it went wrong could be drastic.
Nevertheless. She was going to run.
Winter sighed lightly and got dressed. She put on a very usual outfit. Simple white heels, a knee long light grey skirt, a white singlet mostly hidden by a light blue long sleeved blouse and a usual company logo hair tie. She thought about all the things needed to do. She began to pack a relatively large sized backpack with a lot of essentials that she would need to survive on her own. It was well filled so that it was easy to close and an easy weight to lift. She then put some important and sentimental objects that were close to her heart into a small satchel.
She then had a sudden realisation of something she needed to do. Something it had been a long time since she had done. She left her bags on the floor of her room, picked up her school sword and walked off through the halls. She reached her destination with slight familiarity. It had really been a long time since she was last there. Her mother's study door had barely been touched since her death, only locked. Winter looked at the door and checked how it was locked. Only a single lock seemed to be holding it shut by the door handle. She raised her sword and swung it cleanly down through the crack of the door, splitting the lock from the door. She lightly pushed the door open with the tip of her sword and stepped into the room.
It was dark but luckily the power was still going to the room. Winter flicked on the lights and basked in the familiar memories. The room was almost completely as it had always been. Bookcases covering the walls except for the wall opposite her desk which had a large map sprawled across the free wall with pins and string connecting clues and leads for her job artistically drawn over it.
The only vivid thing that stood out as a anomaly was a box on her mother's desk that was covered by her mother's navy militaristic coat - and on top of that was one of her mother's swords. Winter walked over to them and picked them up. They had never found her mother's other sword, it went missing when she died. She picked it up and ran her hand down the side of the blade. It was heavier than the swords she was used to, but she still felt a familiarity. Like her mother had left some kind of emotion in the sword. She placed the sword in the desk and lifted the coat. It was relatively undamaged, only slight amounts of dust and burnt patches lightly decorated over it. She turned it around and tried it on. It was a alright fit but being a trench coat and Winter not as tall as her mother was, the tail of the coat trailed on the ground. She sheathed the sword she had placed on the desk and turned to leave, but another object caught her eye.
Winter picked up the photo frame she had spotted and inspected the captured scene. It was one of their family photos. These were traditional to mark special events like the celebration of the Winter Festival or a newborn. This particular photo had been taken when Weiss was born. Winter smirked as she saw that her father's usual upright and strict manner showed, but he still stood away from the family, proving to anyone who knew how much he disliked Weiss. Winter then focused on the remaining people who sat together. Winter sat upon her mother's knee, and Winter was holding Weiss. Winter was smiling happily at the camera, while Weiss' face was confused as to what was going on. Their mother however was the most interesting. She looked so happy, like she loved being with her girls. Winter teared up a little at the thought of her mother's pain of being forced into this lifestyle. Winter now knew her mother mustn't have been happy, but she knew her mother really loved her children. This picture was all the proof she needed. She put the photograph back down and looked at her mother as she wiped the tears away.
"I will make you proud mother...", she weakly said before turning on the spot and letting determination take hold and give her energy.
When she got back to her room, she had her plan already laid out. Winter grabbed the backpack and satchel and put them on securely before looking back at her old sword on her bed. She picked it up and fondly dwelled on the memories they had, before throwing it cleanly at the wall where it stayed stuck silently. She unsheathed her mother's sword and checked the cartridge. It was full, which meant she only had ten shots of blue Dust in it before she would need to buy more ammunition.
She aimed the sword at her bedroom window and pulled the concealed trigger. A crystalline clump of ice expanded out from the sword and gelatinously landed over the window. Winter smiled at her handy work as she stepped back so she stood at the wall opposite the window. Winter took a deep breath and focused on what she was about to do. This was the point of no return. If she did this, everything would change.
She inhaled a deep breath and focused on the plan. A large glyph appeared behind her, spinning around and making a light rumble sound similar to a windy storm. She was glad she had mastered her favourite move. The cannonball charge. She released the glyph and leapt from it. Mustering the speed given to her by the glyph, she stabbed the sword forwards as she reached the window. The window and part of the wall shattered away and she shot through the debris, flying through the stormy winters air relatively quietly. The wind caught dramatically around her mother's coat and flapped like wings. She flew through the air and landed on the side of the wall that surrounded the Schnee estate.
Winter couldn't lose focus as she summoned up more glyphs all the way up the wall and darted up all the way to the top. She leapt down on top of the wall and saw some of the guards who patrolled at night in a nearby tower. They seemed to be playing some sort of card game and arguing about some kind of misunderstanding about who moved some paintings. One guard was trying to ask the guys if they even thought about why they were there. Winter smiled and took her chance while they hadn't yet noticed her, and she darted to the other side of the wall, jumping up onto the railing and gently falling off the edge. She fell head first as she stared at how far she had until she hit the ground. She wrapped her arms around the edges of her coat and spread her arms wide. The coat managed to glide her to levelling off but she was still falling downwards. She focused on some glyphs to appear in the air in front of her to catch her on her descent and speed her up to the nearest roof top.
The plan worked, until she got to the roof where the wind caught her as she was just about landed. It threw her sideways and forced her into a rolling crash of a landing onto the roof. She grunted as she wasn't focused on that kind of landing and her Aura wasn't activated which made her hand have gashes and scrapes. The rest of her was just sore. She refocused her Aura to her hands which healed up with a light glow.
She cautiously stood and looked back at where she had come from. She could hear a distant alarm coming from the main building and the tower projected the commotions of the guards preparing to search out what the noise was. Winter couldn't waste time. She ran to the edge of the building and looked down. This building was bare, but the opposite building had a fire escape ladder she could jump to. She crouched, leapt the gap and grabbed the ladder. It rattled as it was slightly rusty and she took no time in waiting to slide all the way down while holding the sides. She landed heavily at the bottom thanks to the momentum she had gained sliding down.
She looked around at the alley she had landed in. It was dirty. She had never seen a place so dirty, the worst she had seen was her private school bathrooms, but even they were consistently cleaned. The smell was so bad she had to cover her mouth and nose with her hand, and breathe in only through the nose. And yet, she couldn't help but smile. She had been outside of the manor before but always followed by her father's personal guards. She thought the place was so foul. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before. Remembering the alarms she had just raised in the manor, she came to the conclusion that she couldn't hang around. She adjusted her hood to hide her face and hair and brought the collar up high to cover her mouth. She took in a stifled deep breath to avoid the smell and calmly walked down the alley way and onto the footpath, heading down towards the riverside.
OH! and a hidden RVB easter egg :D Not a Halo fan, but I love the show. Anyway, until next time, where a dusty scythe weilder may turn up, but not quite so old...
