Into the Mirror

by cdahlenburg

A series of 42 prompts based on compounds of light, shadow, glass and dust. Multi-character.

Summary: 42 assorted prompts, various characters/pairings and a million shards of glass.

---

1. War –

Pyrrha/Jaune

And as she watched him breathe, she began to wonder. As she raised her spear and he lowered his sword, that if the world were to be consumed by either dust or glass, which of them would suffice?

2. First –

Salem/Ozpin

The first time she saw him, she trembled in the cold. Magic's essence, it seemed, was wound up of the beauty of lights and the charms of shadows.

3. Safe –

Blake/Adam

Her own closure – security, was a poison as much as it was a victory. They were too wild, too bound by their elemental stature of being a Faunus that she had to leave. He reasoned why she could never stay.

4. Book –

Ozpin/Cinder

He called her a liar, naming faults and weaknesses in her flames. It scared her that he could read her flickering so deeply, and yet she could not see through his clear demeanour that was shielded by a pair of glasses.

5. Cool –

Glynda/Ironwood

She often flinched under his gaze and the endless power behind it, the features of his face so harsh, yet so alluring.

6. Wall –

Mercury/Emerald

He towered over her, stiff implacable as steel almost. She'd smile at his imperviousness and he'd return the gesture.

7. Thousand –

Blake/Adam

She paused when counting the heartbeats, reprimanding her inability to decide and her deeper knowledge that she would leave when a part of her so desperately wanted to stay.

8. Illusion –

Blake/Adam

'None of this is real', she reminded herself as she stumbled down from the mountains, 'What he offered me isn't real,' she muttered through her fears, clawing at the urge to turn back.

9. God –

Cinder/Ozpin

She had almost been blinded by his gaze, the vitality of his face paired with the ageless depths of his eyes lent him an intoxicating omnipotence.

10. Hold –

Qrow/Summer

On the worst of nights, when the memories were just too much, he would drink and drink and drink. He would fantasise about her touch; about merely having someone to hold. It had been far too long.

11. Motion –

Ozpin/Salem

For so long, he stood unmoved. And then after four hundred millenniums, she appeared. She started to move, he started to run.

12. Goddess –

Adam/Cinder

He cursed at the winds, for the walking demon was strong than a man. He saw her stand before him, wearing her licentious crown. He feared her as she burned against the great sheaths of white, prevailing.

13. Torn –

Glynda/Ironwood

They had both lost things dear to them, they had both been betrayed. Perhaps it was common that pain unleashed their wrath – and fused him them in such strangely profound ways.

14. Ghost –

Blake/Adam

'Goodbye' was all she said as her goodbyes, all that she would leave him to find and ponder over in her absence.

15. Learn –

Cinder/Emerald

There was still flickering dissent in her eyes and most pleasingly, fear. But as her laughter sounded through the halls, she mused. Perhaps, or perhaps not, she would come forth within her flames, unwavering with obedience.

16. History -

Blake/Yang

As she allowed part of herself to reform in a lesser state under her voice, she revealed a deeper side to her that she thought not to exist; even the frozen beauty of her shadows could dissolve under the stinging cruelty of the world.

17. Command –

Blake/Adam

The world was being torn apart around her, his anger thickened the air, his voice commanding her return. Flickering with her shadow in the dying sun, she found herself on the edge of compliance.

18. Wait –

Ozpin/Salem

Each one of them had time. Waiting, biding for one to succumb and fall. Each of them would make sure of it.

19. Naked –

Torchwick/Cinder

He quivered at the touch of her hands as though she had stripped him and looked upon him in his barest self.

20. Shadow –

Adam/Blake

Sorrow overcame him when he found her beyond the train's destination, when he knew she would not be coming back.

21. Now –

Pyrrha/Jaune

With his touch, she forgot all that had gone. All that mattered was this very moment.

22. Young –

Salem/Cinder

White like the snow that bound her home, she reflected as she surveyed her, the top of where the bottom of her flames were bluish-white – and young, so very young. And so easy to burn.

23. Wash –

Qrow/Winter

The searing heat of the water on his skin was welcome. It scorched away the ashes of his recent past, unable to remove the imprints of her icy graze.

24. Eye –

Blake/Adam

Her choice to leave was irrevocable, she knew that – she saw that. But it also hurt – that strange lightness – that relief – to have finally chosen.

25. Change –

Ruby/Pyrrha

In time, she learned to observe invincibility, to use it to her advantage. To use the poles of the earth as she used them to save the world.

26. Fury -

Ozpin/Cinder

He cracked when her flames suggested that he knew nothing of love or grief. He knew well enough of the pain they brought, the pain that flared, and the pain they would bring again.

27. Sudden –

Ruby/Penny

The return of strength surprised her with the hope of renewal. She shielded it from constant vigilance, but still, deeper, there was a guilt of wanting to let go.

28. Last –

Pyrrha/Jaune

"So, she is smart." They were doomed from the very start, she should have known. Bounded and stretched by fervour and ardour, she should have known it would never last.

29. Tears –

Jaune/Pyrrha

Upon the news of her death, he forgot how to cry, beneath his rage and in between his one day, he did.

30. Goodbye –

Jaune/Pyrrha

There was always a sprinkle of ashes in his abode, a feeling that would not let him pass, nor let him forget.

31. Harm –

Blake/Adam

He could understand how he had hurt her, betrayed her even, but he still raged that she had the impunity to try and run.

32. Gentle –

Winter/Qrow

His hand was soft as it held her face. She couldn't hide the desire that his touch sparked: neither could hide her humiliation over his triumph when he had recognised it.

33. Foremost –

Jaune/Pyrrha

On occasion, he let her mind wander to her and the dull ache she'd bore on his heart. She was now one love amongst many, but she always had a distinction of being the first.

34. Precious –

Qrow/Ruby/Summer

Always, he watched her. Her warmth could only be fanned for him alone, in respect to the heat of Summer, the light of whom he once bathed in.

35. Tremor –

Adam/Yang

The faint shudder he felt as he sliced the girl's arm pleased him to no end. He had made the first mark.

36. Fool –

Jaune/Pyrrha

There came a day when he could no longer feel the print she made on his mind; she had departed the world and he wept for the grief flowering within him, for freedom could not be brought with death.

37. Wrong –

Blake/Adam

There was always something unsettling about her home as she wondered through the halls; then he found her, and all she could think of was him.

38. Stop –

Ozpin/Salem

Despite all that she had taken from him, above all the searing pain she had caused, there was still that wanting. Even as his snowstorms thundered in the night to wage a war to end her rage – he knew she had won. He could not deny it.

39. Regression –

Qrow/Winter

As he captured her lips again, intent on experiencing the pleasures of a quenched thirst once more, he realised that his regression to that lesser state of existence he had tried so desperately to ascend from was truly complete. It would be a long and difficult road back to the ascetic idealism he had been so close to achieving. Luckily, he had all the time in the world so there was no need to rush.

40. Hide –

Blake/Ruby/Weiss/Yang

There were moments when she would regret what had been done. There were moments where she would lie in the dark. But they were buried with a smile of red, white and yellow. And the reassurance that everything was fine. She was fine.

41. Reign –

Salem/Ozpin

She offered him a kingdom, a place by her side. He would have been more than the Wizard. He would have been the King.

42. Vision –

Jaune/Pyrrha

He finally understood that she had truly loved him, but nor for burning half his soul with hers in a desire for emotional completion. Rather, he was reminded that the earth, in all her blazing glory, in all his ascetic kaleidoscopes of gold and red, was already whole.