Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY, all rights go to their respective owners.
Screams echoed through his head. Ugh, why are they screaming? Can't they see that he's trying to sleep?
Cracking his eyes open the slightest bit, he saw a trickle of red water. Red... water?
…
Scrambling away his mind was instantly awake. Gaze quickly darting around his surroundings, he saw that he was trapped behind some fallen debris. The trickle of blood was trailing from under the debris around that trapped him here. He couldn't move, something was pinning him down.
Screams echoed from out beyond the enclosed area he found himself in. What should he do? Should he call for help? But the screaming, what if the monster found him instead? Shivering in fear, he tried to block out the screams.
"HELP! SOMEONE HELP ME! NO NO NO NO! NO!" someone was just beyond the rubble that trapped him in and by the sounds of it was cornered by the monster.
The screams were suddenly cut off by a snap and then a gurgle. His body trembled even harder. The monsters were attracted to fear so if he was calm then the monster wouldn't find him right? But how can someone stay calm when it's like this?!
A low-animalistic growl came from the other side. He held his breath. Please leave please leave please leave.
The crunching of something being snapped underfoot told him that the monster was leaving… right? He still couldn't really move so he just laid there, shivering in fear.
It felt like days until someone lifted the rubble around him.
"Dust… Hey! We got a survivor over here! Someone get a medic over here! Can you hear me, kid? You're gonna be alright. The doctors are going to fix you up. Just hang on."
A man's voice called out. Having been surrounded by little light for so long, the sudden brightening up of his surroundings blinded him.
Suddenly agony shot through his abdomen. Crying out in pain, he began to fall asleep again.
"Dust. Sorry kid, but we can't leave that thing impaled in your gut for any longer. Who knows where that's been."
With his last few moments left awake, he saw his savior if only just briefly. It was no doubt one of the heroes his parents had told him about. One of the heroes who went around killing those monsters and saving people.
Those stories lied.
That life as a hero doesn't exist. It never did.
She knew that she wasn't wanted by the others in this place. She was always the outcast. The others never shared any of their toys with her. Some of the older boys called her a freak.
Staring at herself in the mirror, she could see why. Those accursed horns of hers were the reason!
There were also others like her at this place but their horns were different. She was the only one with horns so strange. The others were talking about her behind her back. They always stayed far away from her. She ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner alone. Even when she tried to talk to them, they would quickly try to end the conversation there or ignore her.
Ugh, why does everything have to be so frustrating?! Why did she have to be special?! It just made her life even more difficult!
The adults didn't help her either. If anything they were the same as the other kids. They often avoid her and the women would often spread gossip about her. She once overheard them and they were talking about how she may snap and devour the other kids, that she should be placed in a high-tech security prison in Atlas.
Devour the others? Why would she eat other humans? She was fine with just the food they served here. She just didn't understand why they would be scared of her. She even tried to put on makeup and all sorts of things to try to make her seem more attractive. But not one of them worked, all she did was embarrass herself more and more.
As for parents? She couldn't even remember them. All she could remember were the walls of this house. She just woke up here one day, with no memories of what happened before. She couldn't even remember her name, the adults were the ones who gave her the name she had now.
There was no support for her as the others alienated her away from the rest of the world. With so many people living in this house, and yet not a single one approaching her as another person, the outside world would probably be no different.
She began to hole herself up in her shared room. She barely left unless it was to use the bathroom, eat, or because she had lessons to attend. That was all, the rest of the day she spent indoors with the curtains closed.
One of the kids asked how she wasn't cold with the curtains drawn almost like they expected her to be frozen solid! How cruel were they that they would wish for her death?
The days blurred by as weeks turned to months and months turned to a year. Her pattern never changed, she would stay in her room for the entire day unless she had to leave for something or another.
Truly she was all alone in this world.
He couldn't fight back. That was his problem. When the older kids picked on him, he just meekly accepted it. Every errand he ran, every toy he got, he gave it all to them. They called it sharing but he knew better than that. But he was afraid. He was afraid to tell anyone else about this. He was afraid that they would think less of him because of that. But most of all, he was afraid of the bullies who do this to him.
So when those older kids who picked on him asked him to join their gang, he couldn't turn them down. He followed them around town as they picked on more and more people. He never did any of the picking on though, he would always be standing there, staring at the ground in shame.
Whenever the older kids were about to get in trouble, they would put all the blame on him. With him lowering his head in shame, it would look like he was admitting to being responsible. Once again, he couldn't bring himself to fight back. He just followed whatever they told him to do.
That was all he did… he followed.
As the days went by, his parents' relationships became more and more strained as he got in more and more trouble. The stress from work and their troublemaking son was too much for them to handle. As such, his parents divorced, all because he couldn't fight back. The responsibility for taking care of him fell to his mother.
His mother struggled to take care of him all on her own. It didn't help that he was still just as scared to fight back as before the divorce. He got into more trouble just because the bullies knew he wouldn't go against what they told him to do.
As the police reports increased as the days went on, his mother began to get more and more stressed. Eventually his mother turned to drinking in order to cope.
He never hated himself more than ever. His mother was suffering because he just couldn't bring himself to take a stand. The drinking only got worse when they found that his father had died in an accident only a few weeks after the divorce.
This came as a shock to him and his mother. His father had only been alive a few weeks ago!
With everything about his family breaking down around him he finally snapped. One day when the bullies came to try and rope him into being their scapegoat again, he finally fought back. But his years of not fighting back showed as they quickly overpowered him. They knocked him out, not even sparing a second for him.
When he came to, he was surrounded by flames. As his mind began to connect the dots, he rushed home, ignoring the pain he felt in his head. Arriving at his house, he found the whole place on fire. There was no way for him to even try to save his mother. The flames engulfed everything around him.
Fire, what a fitting end for a traitor like him.
She loved to sing. Singing was her way of showing her appreciation for her parents and what they go through for her. Her songs would attract crowds of people, all flocking to get a chance to listen to her songs. She felt elated at the thought that her songs were reaching so many people.
She quickly became an idol and amassed a massive following. She was so popular that she heard rumors about how even Weiss Schnee couldn't match her.
Her parents were happy about her popularity as well. They were proud to see their daughter being praised practically everywhere.
Her social skills were fairly good as well. She got along with almost everyone at her school even after becoming an idol. However, this would be what led to her downfall.
The head of the Schnee Dust Company heard about her and invited her to sing at a party he was hosting. It was a win-win situation for the both of them; she got to sing and Schnee got the popularity. So she agreed to it.
On the day of the party, everything went wrong. White Fang members stormed the party and began to kill the people attending her concert. In the ensuing chaos, a round hit her eye. Pain she had never felt before, being raised in a peaceful life erupted from where her eye used to be. The pain caused her to black out which unknowingly spared her from being one of the many casualties counted among the people there.
Waking up in a hospital was bad enough. Finding out that she had lost an eye was also just as bad. But the thing that broke her was that her parents were among the many casualties. They had been in the audience as they always were. They had never missed a single one of their daughter's shows.
Her parents had no relatives, so the question of what to do with one of the world's most famous idols was asked several times. Eventually the decision to send her to an orphanage was made. The orphanage they chose was one that was near the outskirts of Vale, a place where not many should recognize her. This was to help her recover from the incident.
It was those Faunus that killed her parents, everything was their fault!
Four young children, scarred by a world that was unforgiving. It may seem like a fairytale, but just underneath lay everything that was corrupt. This world is a cruel, cruel place to be. But it's only those who see the world unveiled and can push through it all who truly deserve to be called heroes.
Fate is a cruel cruel master to please and its taken an interest in these four. Their lives from now on will no longer be their own, it will be for Fate's own amusement. Just as Fate had toyed with Salem and Ozma all those centuries ago, Fate will play with these four until they're broken.
A/N: Welcome reader to my new story. Honestly, this is just something that's been poking at the edges of my mind and I couldn't really get it out. So I really couldn't write the right scenes for RWBY Volume Z without making it very dark. That and because I've recently been reading dark fanfics too.
This is what I decided to do in order to try to empty my mind of these dark, dismal ideas of Remnant. The result? Well, you can probably tell. I can't say that this sort of thing hadn't ever crossed my mind because for all the RWBY anime tries to make itself serious, it's still lighthearted overall. Most of the time you don't really see the stories of the people who aren't part of the A or B team and how they're dealing with the aftermath of the events in the anime.
Now with that said, remember to follow and/or favorite to see when I'll update this next and remember to leave a review with CONSTRUCTIVE criticism to help me improve my writing.