Everybody in the noisy spacious room suddenly freezes when the famous huntress Glynda Goodwitch abruptly enters Junior's shady establishment. The crooks in the black suits pause as they are making their rounds and eager hands dart towards the cheap red axes secured around their belts, the men's hostility boiling like the anger of an Alpha Beowolf.
"Everyone stop, let the good professor pass. She is here for me after all."
The voice of the young man sitting next to the bar is calm and commanding, so much in fact that the crooks in the black suits don't even think of disobeying him. The snarling criminals return back to their respective posts as the blonde huntress approaches her expelled former pupil. Miss Goodwitch tentatively takes a seat next to the visibly drunken man, her arm still cautiously lingering close to her favorite weapon as the professor's solemn green eyes wander across the quiet boy's hunched form carefully examining his defeated posture.
Jaune Arc had obviously changed over the course of the years she hadn't laid eyes on the kind young man. His expulsion had apparently taken its toll on him if the new company he kept was any indication of how pain and tragedy can transform a naive moldable huntsman. Not that Jaune Arc had ever had the chance to hold that prestigious title of course. Oh no, Glynda herself had clipped the young knight's wings before the young fraud had even been close to approaching his lifelong dream and his ambitious goal of becoming a brave huntsman.
Time seemed to have been particularly harsh with the former leader of team JNPR, but then again when did Jaune fail to get the short end of the stick when it came to life? The expelled knight's once vibrant azure eyes were now dull chips painted a faded withered blue and his once golden hair were overdue for a haircut. His unkempt messy blond bangs almost obscured the tired young man's vision and he had traded his family's priceless legendary heirloom for a common untrustworthy old pistol he had bought from Oum knows where and a handful of low quality dust rounds.
Jaune Arc is still wearing his faded cereal commercial hoody at least, but it is stained and dirty and Glynda's apprehensive gaze can easily spot more than a few tears and holes in the unwashed fabric. And they are eerily looking like bullet holes if the experienced huntress is not mistaken.
"Roman had told me you would try to reach out to me one of those days, Professor."
The middle-aged huntress glares at the exhausted-looking young man and she mentally sighs when her nose detects the familiar odor of strong alcohol permeating his breath and his abused and stained clothes. Jaune Arc blatantly ignores her displeased look as he quickly downs the drink he has been nursing before she had entered the nightclub. He then casualy taps two fingers against the polished surface of the wooden bar and another glass with liquid fire is shoved into his twiching awaiting fingers.
"Oh yes, Roman had speculated your arrival when he found out what my semblance was. He told me the most interesting tale about a sleeping beauty resting beneath Beacon Academy."
Glynda's eyes narrow as jade-colored orbs calmly observe Junior's hired muscle lazily strolling inside the club, moving in pairs as they patrol around the bar or stand guard near the dance floor and the dancing customers and occasionally grunt before throwing her suspicious glares and stealthily eyeing her drunken companion. Miss Goodwitch soon grows tired of Jaune's waiting game and the obnoxious music booming against her eardrums and so she opens her mouth to reveal her intentions for coming there in the first place, but her voice betrays her when Jaune's empty glass suddenly slams down on the polished bar and shatters against its wooden surface.
"I refuse!"
The new headmistress of Beacon almost grimaces at all the attention the young blond man's sudden outburst gathers before she uses her stern glare to make the club patrons return their gazes back to their friends and mind their own damn business.
"I would ask you to reconsider this mister Arc this matter is much more important than our own old petty differences."
"Petty?" The young boy growls and then signals the barman. Junior sighs and merely nods as his men rush to evacuate the dance floor and close the establishment. "Please explain to me your definition of pettiness Miss Goodwitch because I am not really sure you have realized the result of your actions."
"Keeping you in Beacon would have resulted in your death. You unfortunately had neither the talent nor the experience to keep up with the rest of the students." Her assertion is indeed correct, her logic is sound and her tone carries a finality that almost convinces him to reconsider. The keyword here being almost.
"And yet I helped my team kill a giant Death Stalker, I passed the initiation and even beat one of your oh so precious and proud huntsmen. How is Cardin doing by the way? Is he still tormenting poor faunus students under your nose?"
Glynda is seething. Her piercing, nearly weaponized glare could once make Jaune Arc literally wet himself on the spot and then curl up in a ball as to seek comfort and yet here he is now staring at her with those dull faded eyes, his lips forming a challenging snarl. What in the dust's name could have happened to the shy well-mannered boy Glynda had used to know before she had expelled Jaune from Beacon?
"I fail to see how you winning one lucky spar proves that you actually deserved to be trained as a huntsman and should have earned you a place in Beacon?"
Miss Goodwitch is lying through her teeth of course, most of those children had shed sweat, blood and tears to be the men and women they currently were and Jaune Arc, this pathetic untrained fraud had managed to defeat one of them in a duel. His improvement had been exceptionally fast and he might had managed to catch on with his peers if he had been allowed to continue following the path of a huntsman.
"And yet here you are Professor, asking me to use my semblance to heal your injured friend, Amber was it?"
The new headmistress of Beacon forces herself to refrain from rattling Jaune any more than she has already have. They need the boy's support if they are to resurrect the comatose Fall Maiden that sleeps beneath the academy and have a chance of winning against the black queen and their unseen enemy.
"Helping Amber wake up could potentially save thousands of innocent lives."
"I still refuse."
"You will be hailed as a hero."
"I was never supposed to become a hero, I thought our previous discussion had made that quite clear, Professor."
"A huntsman would put aside their personal feelings to help those in need."
"Yes, but I am not one of your dear beacons of hope, Professor, and we both know why! You made sure that no huntsmen training academy would ever accept me after you expelled me from Beacon! And so my answer still remains the same"
"Mister Arc I implore you to think of the lives of your old teammates!"
"The one Ozpin sacrificed like a mere pawn while trying to resurrect this Amber girl or the other two you forcefully split me away from when you kicked my ass out of Beacon!"
Both of them are now panting for breath inside the utterly deserted club as even Junior has wisely decided to retire for the rest of the night.
Both of them are right and yet both of them are wrong. Does it even matter at this point? Glynda had snuffed away the once radiant light of young Jaune Arc when she had decided to send him back home and keep him away from the creatures of Grimm in order to save his life. Jaune Arc had been too angry and hopeless, too hurt and too bitter to allow himself to be dragged back home to his overprotective family and live the rest of his life as a pitiful dreamless failure. His decision to stay in Vale didn't matter in the long run.
Jaune Arc had allowed himself to sink into the sickly darkness of fear and depression and let it twist his innocent soul like a spindle and damage it irreversibly, whereas Glynda Goodwitch had smothered the glowing torch that could have otherwise shattered the darkness threatening Remnant like the bright burning beacon named after her currently crumbling academy.
The new headmistress eyes never leave his as the two of them force some air back into their aching lungs. Glynda is feeling exhausted, so very unbelievingly tired. Jaune had passed that point a long, long time ago. It's been years since he had experienced a bright day in this insane dark world called Remnant.
"I can no longer recognize you Jaune."
The female in the room states and she sounds at least as defeated as he feels and the blond broken man sighs as he grabs a brown folder and carelessly tosses it towards the slouched from of the headmistress.
"That's because Jaune Arc is already dead." The former knight says and Glynda's eyes blink in confusion as the contents of the file are soon revealed to be a collection of bloody photos and falsified Vale documents. Perplexed green eyes rise to meet faded azure orbs and for a moment the blonde huntress can almost feel the defeated man's burden crushing her shoulders and breaking her spine.
"He died a couple of years ago when he tried pretending to be something that he just wasn't meant to be. Now please send the poor boy home and give some closure to his mourning family."
The blond boy and the stern woman stare at each other's eyes for what feels like an eternity, until the new headmistress pf Beacon slowly nods her head in agreement. Jaune turns around and serves himself another drink and Glynda Goodwitch takes that as her cue to make herself scarce. The blonde huntress is almost halfway out of the club's doors when the young man's shaky voice suddenly reaches her ears.
"Wait, you will need a body to send back home I suppose."
A single loud gunshot rings from somewhere near the bar and the middle-aged headmistress closes her eyes when a loud slump follows it. The kind light of Jaune Arc had at last been completely extinguished from the doomed face of Vale.