Disclaimer:
I do not own RWBY, RWBY belongs to Rooster Teeth and was created by the late Monty Oum. I only own my OC's and any non-canonical events in the story
Prologue - The Wolf and the Candle
It was cold. October's in Vale are usually pretty cold already, so the rain did not help the situation at all. The sky was grey and gloomy, a normal thing that occurs when the clouds start pouring. A young ginger-haired man walked through the streets of Vale, making grunting noise with each time his foot hitting the ground, making the water puddles on the sidewalk ripple.
He pulled something out of his coat pocket. Using his right hand to reach in the right pocket, he pulled out a cigar. He placed the cigar between his lips before reaching in his pocket again to grab the lighter.
"Stupid thing." He growled and kept turning the spark wheel, trying to make the thing light up the wick. "Grr… no use."
He hastily shoved the two things back in his pocket alongside his hands, trying to keep it as warm as possible. The warm surroundings of the pocket were blissful for him, at least now not the entirety of his body is cold. He turned left from the corner of the street and kept walking straight, it's visible that the further he walked, the better the neighborhood became. "Come on, Roman." He whispered to himself. "Just a few more blocks and you'll be home free. Literally."
The young thief managed to buy off this house after a couple of heists he did with some Dust shipments, the police have been on his back since then, so he's been laying low for the last couple of months and has gotten himself a hobby, reading. At first, Roman was not the reading kind of person, not that reading is hard for him or he's lazy, it's just the fact that he is always busy with either planning the next set of heists or running away from the cops, somehow busy-ness and complication always finds him.
Roman tensed slightly as he saw two police officers inside a cafe he passed by. He tipped his hat slightly so that his face was slightly less visible thus harder to recognize. He stopped doing as fast as he did, realizing how stupid the act was. The cops don't even have a picture of his face yet, so why try to hide it when you're not doing something less legal than a normal civilian would do. It's pretty suspicious when someone tries to hide their face like that.
He race walked across the street in an attempt to put as much distance between him and the cafe. He half-expected for people to start yelling "Stop!" at him, but it never came much to Roman's delight. When he turned his head back to check if anyone was following him to find none, he relaxed by just a sliver, but still kept his guard up.
'Just a couple more blocks.'
His increased his walking pace to the point where he was basically race walking and soon proved effective as he was in front of his place. Roman had managed to buy off the place after his first dozen of heists and robberies, albeit it took him a while to get it even though he already had the money because he needed to launder the money first to squash any suspicion that leads to him, so technically speaking, the place belonged to a dummy company his friend Junior help set up for him. Damn, that man had a lot of connections.
The building which was similar to the ones next to it, which was similar to the ones next to it. Now that Roman thinks of it, the entire block was the same, whether that's the construction company's bad decision or the Author's laziness.
It wasn't really a house, but a three-story building with a loft on each floor, Roman's was on the top floor, much to his great luck of not liking to hear footsteps from above, seriously, those people are the worst, only seconds to horny newlyweds.
He quickly shrugged the thought off and was about to open the wooden double doors when something stopped him midway.
Something crying.
Someone crying to be exact, coming out of the alley next to Roman's place. Normally Roman would just ignore this and let it be someone else's problem, but unbeknownst to him, he couldn't keep his body from walking down the stairs and enter the dark and gloomy alley.
Maybe it's just a drunk homeless person? No, the voice is to high pitched for it. A child perhaps? Yeah, that's entirely possible, maybe the mother or father is there trying to get the baby to stop crying but can't since it was probably hungry. What's worse might be the fact that the child was alone.
Roman slowly and silently walked his way through the alley, getting deeper and deeper into it while passing multiple blue garbage container. The crying became closer and closer as Roman proceeded to the point where he managed to accurately figure out where it's coming from. The crying was coming out of a small cardboard box which had a cloth covered over it, behind one of the trash containers.
The thief squatted in front of the box, he wouldn't possibly kneel down and ruin these perfectly good trousers, Oum no! He slowly pulled the cloth over the cardboard box and saw the source of the quite loud crying. There it was, a small child with white hair and white animal ears? Perhaps a wolf? A cat maybe? Roman had no idea, he didn't really pay any attention to biology class, not that he went to school.
The baby stopped crying and opened its eyes, looking at Roman. Those beautiful golden eyes, not yellow, not amber, but an actual shining pair of gold eyes. The thing was mesmerizing, nearly hypnotic.
Nearly hypnotic until it started giggling which made Roman raise one of his eyebrows as the baby's animal ears kept twitching. What was it even laughing at? Roman? You know what, a baby's a baby.
Roman slowly picked the baby up and cradled it in his hands. "Hey, little guy. What are you doing all alone here?" Roman the fact that he was asking a baby which was probably no older than one year old made him realize how stupid he must've sounded like right now.
The thought disappeared as the baby let out another cute giggle which made Roman feel funny on the inside. Roman couldn't remember when was the last time he felt this kind of feeling, hell, he doubted that he even ever felt it.
Whatever the feeling was it made Roman smile, a pure, and honest smile.
"It's cold out here, let's get you inside." The baby giggled in response and Roman turned on his heels, exiting the dark alley and entering the building that houses Roman's loft. He tiptoed the whole way and was just about to reach his floor when a familiar voice made him stop climbing up the stairs.
"Roman? I haven't seen you around in a while." Roman quickly turn around with an awkward smile on his face and hid the Faunus baby behind his back.
"Ian!" Roman greeted the blue haired man. "Yeahh… uhh… my job's been… keeping me busy… yeah." The baby behind Roman's back giggled again which forced Roman to let out a weird faint laugh.
"Uh… Are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah! Just was uhh… clearing my throat, ahem."
Roman's neighbor narrowed his eyes for a while, Roman thought that he was blown and that Ian knew something was wrong. "Oh, okay." Ian replied with a flat tone.
'Are you freaking kidding me?'
"Why don't you come to the bar with some of my other friends, you're pretty anti-social you know?"
Roman awkwardly laughed at this. "Yeah, haha, sure… actually, I really gotta go see you in a bit bye!" Roman dashed up the stairs which left a very confused Ian who just shrugged it off and exited the building.
Roman let out a sigh of relief as he entered his loft and quickly locked the door before shutting all the curtains on the windows while turning any necessary lights, not to mention the heater because it's freezing in here. "Here you go little guy, hold on just a second." Roman placed the small baby on top of the couch and looked around the room in search for some warm blankets and towels. He finally found some and returned back to the baby to find it out of its original blanket and was now crawling on top of the couch while making several baby noises. This made Roman smile as he approached the child. "Hey, kid." He kneeled next to the couch and looked at the baby. "Let's get you dried up."
Roman started by drying the head of the small baby and worked his way down, while he was drying the back of the baby, Roman noticed something interesting, there was a small but fluffy tail happily wagging back and forth like an excited puppy would. This was strange, Faunus' usually only has one animal physicality, like if it was a deer Faunus, it would either have antlers or a tail, or if it was a rabbit Faunus, he/she would either have a pair of long ears or those… pom tails? Roman noted that he really has to read some more animal biology books. This fact about the Faunus, even with Roman's lack of knowledge within their species was something that Roman was sure of, mostly because his sister married one, a rabbit one to be exact. Scary dude, we'll talk about him later.
But the question remains, why does he have two animal physicality? And yes, it's a he, Roman checked, don't take that the wrong way. Perhaps the boy was a rare breed? Roman heard about royal Faunus families that live in Menagerie, maybe the boy has royalty in him? Actually, cross that, Roman's pretty sure that royalties don't go and put their children in cardboard boxes and leaving them in shady alleyways.
The baby was now dry and seeing as Roman doesn't have any baby clothing, he just wrapped the baby around a small blanket that he placed near the heater. Well, Roman tried to wrap the blanket around the baby but just the kid kept resisting.
"Nyoh!" The boy wailed and made various unintelligible noises while pushing the blanket away which made Roman raise his brow. So, the boy can talk, even though only short words that he can't even say properly yet, so Roman supposed the baby is probably around twelve months old. The boy finally gave up and Roman managed to wrap him up.
Nodding at his success, Roman awkwardly cradled the baby and sat down on the couch in front of the electric fireplace he turned on earlier. The fact that the baby was starting to slowly close his eyelids surprised Roman to no limit.
'Damn, I'm good.'
Roman smiled as he looked down at the baby who was sleeping peacefully. Roman saw something inside the blanket that the boy was originally in but decided to investigate it later to not wake up the sleeping child.
Speaking of the child, what should he do!? The better question is what should he do about the child. Should Roman leave the boy in an orphanage? No, he has personally experienced what those places are like when he was little, abusive caretakers, kids who will basically beat you up just because you looked them wrong, not to mention the fact the boy was a Faunus with two physicalities, he'll be discriminated by the humans because of him being a Faunus, and he'll be discriminated by the Faunus there because of his difference, he'll have no friends there.
So what then? Leave him to the police and file a missing child report? But if no one claims to be the boy's parent's, the authority would just send the boy to a foster home or orphanage. Roman's facing a dilemma as of right now, all of the options are all terrible, which leaves only one, Roman should take care of the boy.
Gah, who was he kidding. He's Roman Torchwick! Master thief, criminal mastermind, cunning tactician, and- OH MY GOD THE BABY'S GONNA WAKE UP. Roman shushed at the boy while patting his back, still cradling the baby. Roman really wanted to take care of the boy, but his current profession really stops him from doing so. What if Roman went out on a midnight heist and the baby cried because he's hungry? What's worse is that Roman gets captured while doing a job and nobody even knows the existence of the baby. What if one day Roman gets released only to find a dead baby in his home? His future parole officer would not be happy about it.
There were many factors that could stop Roman from taking the boy in, but there was one major factor, Roman knew next to nothing about taking care of a child. Of course, he knew the basics, like how to… cross that, he knew nothing of it. Sure he's training the Israfel kid, but that kid is way older than this baby and Roman's pretty sure that the boy could take care of himself very well. Roman has seen that boy fight with his own eyes, sloppy, but a lot of undiscovered potentials.
That was when it clicked in Roman's brain, his sister is in Vale with her husband and kid. He slowly stands up to not wake the baby up and picked up his scroll to call someone. He called the number and waited as the line rang only to enter the voicebox.
"Hi! Mabel Torchwick, I'm not here right now, you know the drill."
The line beeped again and Roman started talking. "Hey, sis? Uhh… it's Roman and I… kindaaa… need your help. Can you like… come to my house? ASAP?" Roman ended the call and slowly placed the scroll back down on the table. Seeing as the baby is still asleep, Roman went to investigate the thing he saw earlier. He reached for the blanket to feel something cold and was probably made out of metal, he slowly pulled it out and raised it in front of his face. It was a necklace that had a thin rolo chain which connects to a small, diamond-shaped pendant.
The ginger flipped the pendant to the back to see something faint engraved on the back of the thing. After some more inspections, Roman realized that it was a name.
"Thomas? That's your name?" Roman whispered which made the boy tuck his hands closer to his chest in his sleep. Roman smiled at this, now he was certain that he wants to take care of the baby. After all, who knows…
"Thomas... Thomas Torchwick." The baby smiled which made Roman chuckle lightly.
… maybe the boy would prove to be useful in the future.
(-)
A man inside a parked limo watched as a ginger-haired man walked into a building with a small child in his hand. He looked at the child with a worried look, one that a parent would give to their children, or a teacher to a student.
"Are you sure this is the best course of action?" A female voice asked.
He turned his head towards the blonde haired woman and nodded. "Yes, it's best that they don't know about him. His mother also agreed. He'll be safe, live a normal life."
"But, don't you think it's in our best interest that the boy should know?"
"In the future, yes." He turned away from his friend and back to the building. "But for now, let him be happy like a normal child would."
A/N: CE...LE...BRATE GOOD TIMES, COME ON! And we're back on the story! For new readers, welcome, please take a seat. For you who have been reading since the first time, welcome back! Please sit on the available chairs alongside new readers since we cannot afford VIP booths. Short chapter, I know. Neither Editor nor I have the idea, material, or idea to write the usual 5000 words for a prologue. As you can see, we are taking things from the start... of Thomas' life. There'll be some time skips here and there because the editor and I combined do not have the creativity of Coeur fucking Al'Aran. Cringy fourth wall breaks that have no context whatsoever? Gone, FOREVER! Only relatable jokes and gags from now on. OC Characters? Yep, still a thing. Sorry guests, you're too unknown for your opinion to be valid. So yeah, hope you liked it!
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