Happily Ever After
Death was unavoidable. That was a lesson Weiss Schnee learnt many years back as she watched them drop like flies, her friends and family falling one-by-one until all that remained was her. It was only a matter of time before she too was taken.
It had always been a touchy subject, death, the end of it all. The light at the end of the tunnel. Before any of this, death was something Weiss never wanted to experience. Sure, it was an inevitable truth, especially in the line of work that she had chosen. But there was always hope, hope for a happily ever after.
But that last bit of hope was snuffed out like a flame.
And now, during her final moments she lay embracing the sweet comfort of death. For what else was there left in this wretched world? They had lost, and the small pockets of humanity remaining slowly disappeared, leaving but a few. Of all the people she had once known, Weiss was the final survivor.
It had all began back over twenty years ago – though it felt like a lifetime ago, during that terrible day. Before then, there were eight of them, the combined team RWBY and JNPR. There were others too, but Weiss barely remembered them – Team SSSN seemed like so long ago, CFVY barely a spec in her dwindling memory. But she remembered those seven.
Phyrra Nikos was the first one to go. Shot in the heart by the monster known as Cinder, burnt to ashes. The invincible girl was no longer invincible, it seemed. Her death is the spark that ignited the fires of this war, fire which burnt for twenty whole years.
Weiss barely remembers what she looked like, but the flaming colour of her hair is burnt into her mind forever.
Next to go was the once cheerful, bubbly girl known as Nora Valkyrie. It was meant to be a simple mission for the remainder of team JNPR and Ruby Rose, but they were underprepared and outnumbered. Weiss didn't know exactly what happened, the three survivors would rarely ever talk about it. There were too many Grimm, they got separated. Nora got wounded – living just long enough to then die in the arms of the one she loved.
Lie Ren didn't last much longer, the pain of losing his best friend too great for the man. He became quiet, much more than usual, and reckless. He challenged a hoard of Alphas by himself.
He didn't survive.
It was not long afterwards that team RWBY reunited, with the addition of the distraught and depressed Jaune Arc. The same innocent, cheerful Jaune Arc she knew from Beacon barely slept, training all day and all night, promising he'd get better.
He didn't want to lose anything else.
The next to go was Blake Belladonna, a year after their reunion. Blake's death was the first one Weiss saw, her teammate and friend stabbed in the heart right in front of her while she could do nothing about it. Adam Taurus killed her, and all Weiss could do was watch helplessly. It was then she began to realise how Jaune felt – helpless, lost.
Weak.
By then, everybody had changed.
Weiss couldn't remember the last time the remaining three smiled. Perhaps it was when they had finally met again, ignoring all their pains and hugging, promising to never let go.
"We will never separate ever again." They had said.
After Blake's death, no more than small smiles left their faces. Even Ruby Rose, the cheerful young woman who never seemed to stop smiling, lost a part of her soul that day.
Weiss reached a weak arm to her pocket, pulling out a picture. It was the five of them – Team RWBY along with Jaune Arc. The picture, taken a week before Blake's demise, always left a bittersweet feeling in Weiss' heart. The last image of their smiles.
Yang was the next to die.
They had chased Adam Taurus, their burning desire for revenge getting in the way of proper thinking. Yang had attacked him alone, and after a bloody and gruesome fight, managed to defeat him. Yang celebrated, despite her broken mechanical arm and the cuts that littered her body, her aura diminished. She had defeated him.
Until she was stabbed from behind by a young White Fang member, right in the heart.
Ruby was the first to find her body.
From that day forward, Ruby Rose rarely uttered a word. Becoming cold and distant, so unlike herself. The death of her sister hit her hard. Weiss couldn't stand to watch her partner, her best friend, turn to a shadow of her former self, but she had no choice.
Jaune Arc was the next to die. It was him against Cinder Fall. It was impossible for him to win against a maiden, but that didn't stop him.
Nor did it stop him from winning.
In one final burst of power, Cinder refused to die without taking him with her. She exploded from the inside, the burst large enough to take Jaune with her. Jaune didn't care, however. He had won, Phyrra Nikos' killer was dead, even if it meant he went with her.
Ruby Rose didn't last much longer than that. Even with the powers of her Silver Eyes, or her newly acquired Winter Maiden powers, Ruby stood no chance against the one known as Salem. With one blow, Salem broke her weapon in half.
Crescent Rose was Ruby's most cherished possession, and Salem destroyed it with a flick of her wrist, before destroying Ruby's life along with it.
And now, here she was. Alone. Weiss Schnee. Her name meant nothing anymore. Her world was nothing anymore. There was no point – no hope.
Her mind drifted to those fairy tales that Ruby used to read. Books that promised a happy ending. Weiss used to scoff at those stories, but now she wished she could read them once more.
Maybe, just maybe, this was all a dream. She would open her eyes, back in her dorm room, to the smiling face of Ruby Rose, the terrible puns that Yang Xiao Long used to constantly make, or the ever silent face of Blake Belladonna.
She wished she could wake up, find she was dreaming, and live a life happily ever after.
As Weiss took her last breath, she forced her eyes open to look at the remains of the broken moon. Even that, too, had died, turned to nothing more than a few glowing rocks in the distance.
And with that, she closed her eyes.