DISCLAIMER: I do not own RWBY or its characters.
A/N: This one-shot has implied past and future White Rose, and features my OC Frost Rose Schnee, the half-human/half-wolf faunus daughter of Weiss Schnee and Ruby Rose.
Red is the Wolf
Frost Rose Schnee, newly graduated Huntress of Beacon Academy, made her way through one of the forests of Remnant that existed outside of the main kingdom. A village a few days outside of Vale – if one could move at supersonic speeds, that is – had sent out a call for help and she had taken the contract. It was her first solo contract, but she was confident she could do it; after all, it was only a few Ursae and some Beowolves according to her information. Besides, she was the daughter of two powerful Huntresses, even if one had vanished from the world stage and the other was running one of the most powerful companies on Remnant. Frost sighed as she kept walking on, mulling over her time at Beacon as she went.
It had been hard, considering who her parents were: Weiss Schnee had been an exemplary Huntress in her time, before taking over the SDC and taking it in a new – and better – direction. Ruby Rose, her other mother, had been extraordinary as a Huntress. Skilled, powerful, loyal as well as protective and selfless, she had vanished after the same mission that Weiss had retired from. Their reputations as Huntresses, and from their time at Beacon, had given both students and staff expectations of her that had put immense pressure on her. But her mom, and her team, had helped her through everything. Especially her mom; when Weiss had retired as a Huntress, she had also retired Myrtenaster. But when she had expressed interest in becoming a Huntress – keeping her true motivation for doing so a secret, though she suspected her mom always knew – Weiss had gifted her daughter with the blade and trained her in its use. As a Schnee, Frost had the family Semblance – Glyphs – but she was also a rarity in that she also had a second Semblance: Speed.
A sound caused her to freeze, her wolf ears twitching as she tried to locate the direction of its source. She frowned and unsheathed Myrtenaster, realizing that what she had faintly heard was actually a lack of sound rather than a sound itself. As a Beowolf came into her line of sight, Frost belatedly realized her ponderings on the negatives in her life had stirred up the same negative emotions which attracted the Grimm to her. Big deal, she thought. I can easily handle a few Beowolves. Right as she thought that she heard a roar behind her and whirled around to see a more than a couple of Ursa – including an Ursa Major.
"Oh, Grimmshit," she swore, evidencing the influence her Aunt Yang had had on her. She spun the Dust chamber of Myrtenaster until it stopped on Ice Dust and cast a glyph, slamming it into the ground and sending a spiking trail of ice at the Ursae before whirling around and sending a burst of ice into a Beowolf like a series of bullets. As the rest of them charged at her, she spun the chamber again and thrust her sword into the chest of another Beowolf and triggered the Dust, the Grimm exploding into flames. A slight change in pressure caused her to trigger her second Semblance as she jumped sideways, a burst of white and red rose petals marking where she'd been as the Ursa Major swiped its paw through empty space. Which it then lost with a pained roar as Frost slashed her Wind Dust activated blade through it, the Wind Dust serving to create a slight vacuum around the unique metal that allowed it to cut sharper. She had to leap backwards, though, to avoid the other Ursa as well as a Beowolf; use of a Haste Glyph as well as her Speed Semblance made it seem like she'd vanished, actually allowing the Ursa to slap the Beowolf's head off. Casting a Push Glyph behind her, she landed on it and immediately shot up into the air – narrowly avoiding a tree as she did so. She activated another Glyph as a platform, cast another Glyph below the Ursa Major, and activated her Speed at the same time she turned the platform Glyph into a Push Glyph, shooting straight down at the powerful Grimm. Myrtenaster, infused with both Wind and Fire Dust, easily pierced the Ursa Major's neck, being driven through it by her speed. She slammed onto the Glyph she had placed on the forest floor and immediately slowed down. She did have to roll out of the way, though, as the last Ursa tried to bowl her over. Coming to her feet, she did a series of Push Glyphs that bounced it up high into the air repeatedly – until she got bored and let it fall, where it impacted the ground and exploded.
Panting a bit as she tried to catch her breath, Frost just then became aware that there were more Beowolves around her, with quite a few Creeps mixed in, and what sounded like a Deathstalker coming. "Oh, fuck me sideways with a Dust shard," she groaned, readying herself. The rumors around this area had said that the Grimm avoided it because of a 'wolf monster' that lived in here. Frost suspected – hoped – it was her other mom, but as nothing more than rumors and innuendo existed about this part of the forest she had no confirmation of anything. Except for the Grimm here now.
"It can't be just me," she wondered, cycling her Dust chamber for Earth Dust. "This many Grimm….in this area where there's hardly any people." She wondered if, at one point, there had been people around, or something bad had happened here to create a 'negative zone.' But the reason didn't matter right now; surviving this second wave did. She wearily raised Myrtenaster, knowing that her penchant for flashy moves had worn her out – just like her mom had always warned her about. "My first out-of-school contract, and I act like a first-year student," she muttered. Although to be fair, the contract didn't indicate that there would be this many Grimm in the area.
The click-clack of metal shifting and locking into place was the first indicator that there was someone else around. The second, and more telling, was when several of the Beowolves just fell apart, sliced clean. Frost blinked, confused. Her confusion only deepened when the Creeps exploded, right as the sound of heavy-caliber rounds firing reached her ears. Cycling her Dust chamber around, she summoned a Glyph and sent a burst of Ice Dust along Myrtenaster's blade and through the Glyph, creating a shotgun-like spread of ice shards that shredded two Beowolves. That wore her out further, casting the Glyph that is, and she dropped to one near, Myrtenaster planted into the ground to help her from falling flat on her face. She watched as the rest of the Grimm were slaughtered, trying to catch her breath, before – in a burst of red petals – a hooded figure stood before her. Frost stared, completely in shock, for she recognized that red cloak from the pictures her mom had had from Beacon and after, until her retirement. A cloak that had been her guiding beacon (she mentally chuckled at the word play) once she'd decided to become a Huntress. Sure, being able to keep people safe from the Grimm as well as those criminals police weren't equipped or trained to handle was good and noble, but Frost had chosen to become a Huntress mainly to find her other mom. Weiss Schnee, her mom, had believed her goal was a lost cause, that if Ruby had really wanted to be found she'd have been found years ago – or would never have left.
And when the cloaked woman turned around, revealing a scarred face with a large patch on the right side covering that eye, while the other eye was still a recognizable – if no longer gleaming – silver, along with crimson-tinted black hair….Frost knew. This was her other mother.
"You're stupid to be here," the woman said, looking at her. Frost watched as she frowned, confusion dancing behind her eye. Frost knew it was because of her appearance; she had hair that was an even if chaotically random mix of white and crimson-black, and her skin which was warmer than her mom's but still a bit paler than Ruby's, and her eyes….her eyes were the most telling. While her left eye was the signature Schnee ice blue, her right eye was the same silver as Ruby's own.
"Who are you?" Ruby asked, shaking Frost out of her thoughts.
"I'm Frost Schnee," she answered, the words making Ruby take a step back as though she'd been hit hard. "My middle name is Rose. My mom, Weiss Schnee, chose it because it was one of the names of my other mother. The other person whose blood I carry." She watched as her mother pulled her hood down and her wolf ears stood up; well, one anyway, as the other looked like half of it had been ripped or slashed off.
"I didn't know she was pregnant," Ruby whispered. "What I did…what I…what I allowed to happen-"
"She didn't blame you," Frost interrupted, getting to her feet with a small groan. "Not once. She answered every question I ever asked, including why she wasn't a Huntress anymore…and why she was confined to a wheelchair." Ruby glanced away, obviously feeling guilty about it. "Like with me, on this mission, it was incomplete intelligence that led to a clusterfuck."
"I know Weiss would never have permitted that kind of language," Ruby said.
"Yeeaahhh, I…..um, kinda spent a lot of time with Aunt Yang."
"Yang," was the softly spoken response. "How…does she…"
"She misses you, Mother." That word snapped Ruby's face back to her. "I-I mean, um, I-I could c-call you-"
"Mother's….it's fine." For the first time in roughly twenty-two years, Ruby smiled – though it faded away. "No one…hates me? Is…angry with me? Hell, I missed your entire life. I wasn't there for your birth, or to help Weiss through the pregnancy and everything else, I…I missed so much, and-"
"Trust me, Mother. Everyone…they'd all love to have you back. The thing is….well, no one knows if you're alive or dead." Frost looked down at her feet. "Mom….she is still in love with you, but gave up hope on you ever coming back to her…to us. Aunt Yang….she set up a memorial plaque for you beside Grandma Rose's own. She didn't want to believe that you'd never come back, so-"
"Felt it was better to believe that I died, rather than chose to be in self-imposed exile," Ruby finished. "What about Blake?"
"Aunt Blake never talks about that, not really. When I asked, she would just shrug and say that if you were still alive, you'd come back when you were ready to."
"She knows what it's like to run from a situation you believe you're responsible for," the reaperette replied. "And…you?"
"I knew you were alive," Frost told her. "I just…had this feeling that you were. You're the reason I became a Huntress."
"Me? What do you mean?"
"Well, Mom told me that your reason for being a Huntress was to protect people, to give others a chance at a happy ending." The young woman shrugged. "That's part of my reason for becoming a Huntress, but…finding you was my main reason."
"Do you want me to come back?"
"Do you want to come back?" she responded. "I….I would love to have you in my life. Mom…I'm sure she'd love to have you back in hers. But it's your choice, you know? What happened to Mom wasn't your fault. No one blames you for what happened – except you."
"I've spent twenty-two years running from everything," Ruby said, looking away for a moment before looking back at her daughter. "I made a mistake, and the woman I love paid the price. That's what I'd believed. I thought things would be better if I wasn't around, that I wouldn't….that I wouldn't be able to hurt anyone else." Ruby shook her head. "Instead, I hurt them all by leaving."
"But you can make things better now," Frost replied.
"Yeah," she agreed, "yeah, I can." Ruby sighed, then smiled and pulled her daughter into a hug, surprising her. "Let's go to the cabin I've been living in for almost two decades. Rest, recover….and you could tell me about your life?"
"And we could get to know each other?" Frost asked, smiling. "That would be great."