Dawn: End.
Summary: A moment of rest at the end of Night. AU.
The endless darkness encroaching on his vision was pushed back by blaring klaxons. Barely, just brief spots of blinding red light between each siren's call. Petals of Death floating down gently, dark and overly bright spots in his vision. He was dying, in a pool of his own blood, the crimson and amber molasses slowly flowing along the crevices of the cold metal floor he was laying on, carrying on it the shattered fragments of his visor twinkling as they reflected the red light. There was no fear, no reproachment. No burning tenacity forcing him back onto his feet, to rise up again to his eternal struggle. All he felt was a strange sense of familiarity and peace, a slight longingness, like the feeling a man would feel after returning home after a long day of work.
Home... Does he... still have a home...?
The question remained only a thought drifting away in the air filled with burning embers. The klaxons continued to blare out, its call to arms and struggle he no longer heeded, no longer needed to. He felt the pull of his rended flesh at his aura reserve, feeling its despair as it found nothing, not even a droplet left in the once-thought infinite tankard. He was drained, empty and exhausted; yet for once he allowed himself to lay still and silent.
And from that blinding light, she stood. Hovering over him, her silver eyes hidden in the shade of her cloak glimmering up by that red light. An ethereal, ephemeral Angel looking down at him with her judgement. On her face was a forlorn and saddened look, if not an unkind one, as she gently craddled his head in her arms.
"You..." He rasped, coughing up the tang of oxidized iron and Life-Containing Liquid. Not a simple figment of imagination, not the lifeless eyes staring at him from his memories whenever he rests. "It is... really you."
His ghost.
His murderer.
His...
"Yes, Jaune." Two orbs of silver light rolled down her cheeks, as the words softly parted from her rose-blossomed lips. She was smiling now. A smile free of ill-will and malice nor was it any thin veneer plastered on marble flesh, but a true smile carrying within full of what this world has lost, and now found again. The gentle kindness, the determination brimming, the shaken, but unfaded, hopeful mercy shown to even a wicked man as him. It was not the radiant, perfect smile he had remembered, but why should he trust the memory of a broken man?
"It's me." It is her.
A blink. It felt so hard to open his eyelids again, the molasses sticking it shut dilluted by a salty, clear liquid.
"C...an... I...?"
He could not feel his legs, his arms anymore. But he could, somehow, from the numbness, feel the tenderness of her pale cheeks. His lifted hand touching, adding its crimson smear to the wetness of her silver tears, mixed together with red blood oozing from the gash where he had managed to land a hit, one of many. He, the blind man striking out against hope herself, tenacity blinding himself to the truth.
The truth. A frown flashed by his face. Had it all been for nothing? All the loss, sacrifices, this entire War... Such irony is not lost on him that a son of Arc would once again serve another lie.
"Jaune," he fell silent as she called out his name. The thought was lifted away so gently as he could almost feel her pale fingers wrapping, clasping around his own. "Jaune." She repeated, speaking out his name, the word unspoken for so long. Her fingers brushed away the blood from his eyelids. "It's okay now, Jaune."
The feeling of calmness filled his mind as he allowed himself to drift away in her arms. Déjà vu, something familiar, almost like a distorted mirror-image of what had happened once before. Only with their positions switched. The cause changed, the reason altered, yet just the same.
The War didn't end either.
"Huh-a..ah!" The sobering thought pulled him back from the blissful dream with a choked gasp, his eyelids rapidly fluttering. For just a moment, the fog of numbness receded and he could make out from the blaring sirens, the din of the battle still raging on around them. Her face was lit up both by blaring klaxons and flashing machine gun fire. Glowing tracers zipping by in the air somehow missing them both - the concussion blast of grenade and the pervasive stench of death, of Grimm ringing in his ears and nostrils.
"Ruby... I... the W-ar!" He coughed, spurting out more blood and LCL. One last gasp, as he felt the pull at his aura began anew, the ravenous pull tugging on the strings, unraveling the last shred of his soul. His hand fell from her face, as they tried to force him back up once more. His voice became clearer, as the viscuous liquids left his mouth in great, hacking splurts, splattering onto the cold metal floor. "I- I can still fight." He rasply spoke, and felt her hands tremble, retracting. "For you."
His heart leapt as she drew in a hard breath.
"For me..." Her eyes widened, her head shaking in denial. "Jaune..."
"I can still fight." He repeated, pleadingly, tilting his limp body until it laid completely on his arms. With a gasp, he pushed himself up. Weakly at first, his numbed limbs giving out half-way, before he did it again more firmly, reaching out to the dormant aura in the air and the recent-deaths, pulling forth more aura from the strings of his soul. He could feel the numbness being pushed away now, yet as more of a different kind settled in. Unraveling himself as he forced bones and flesh to knit. His hand reached forward, to her.
She did not took his hand.
"No." Her head weakly shook. His eyes stared at her. The Angel in Silver. More blood spluttered from a missed cough, aura shattering as the wounds tore. She caught him as his arms gave under him.
"No." She repeated, shaking her head again more firmly. "No. No, Jaune."
His heart fell, hollow and empty. Before the man breathed in a pained gasp as she shifted - and pulled him close, wrapping her arms tightly around him in an embrace. His glazed eyes widened, before focusing, mouthing out her name.
"You don't have to fight anymore." Her words whispered into his ears were filled with sorrow and determination. Something more than forgiveness. Solid, resolute, a commandment to him. "Your War is over, Jaune. It's mine now."
"It's... over?" The man blinked, again. Repeating the foreign word in his mouth. His hand loosened around the hilt of his sword. More bullets zipped by, and blood continued to flow, and his eyes glazed and fell.
"Yes." She sniffled, yet he could feel her smile on his shoulders. "It's over... You can stop fighting now."
And he laughed. A laugh more free, more childish than any he had ever let out. The simple reaffirmation, the end of his duty, of the lie he is forced to uphold, the weight of war and bloodshed lifted from his very soul. Before his eyelids once again felt so heavy, and he so very tired.
It's over.
"It's over." She repeated.
The tired man closed his eyes. There was a smile on his face as he let himself drift into blissful sleep.
A/N: A sad ending for a future unknown. The Night's over.
+Alternate path: One last time: recruit a level 5 Commander named (Jaune Arc), with traits (Undying), (Dreadful combatant) and (Soulless).
Her hand shook as she took his, and pulled him onto his knees.
"...Can I borrow your blade, Jaune?" Her voice quivered, the pain ripping into her soul as she asked him of the impossible task. It was not a command, she tried to make clear of that. But to him, it was, a command as iron as an oath on his name.
'Just one last time.' The thought faded from his mind, as a swift, monotonous nod came to his neck. His eyes were glazed and empty now, seeing but not acknowledging the tears freely rolling down her cheeks. The last shreds of his soul scattered away into the ember-filled air, dust the same color as the aura enveloping his body and hers.
"Thank you."
The man only smiled as his body rose up, for one last time..