Journey's End
A RWBY Fanfiction
A man and a woman ran through a burning forest. This was no jog, but a panicked flight from something they could no longer understand. They fled from their past, made stronger and angry with time. One had green hair and red eyes, the other had dark grey hair and black eyes. Neither hoped for escape.
"How did they find us?" He thought to himself as they ran, "We worked so hard to lay low, we did everything we could to get away…" And they had; the plan to defect was long in the making, and their decoy "deaths" were expertly constructed; but it was not enough. They had been found.
Years ago, both of them were stronger than their pursuers. They were skilled assassins, some of the best money could buy, and employed by the most dangerous and powerful woman on the planet. By comparison the two who followed them now were once children; but the children had grown in skill, in strength, and in anger. The initial fight was long and terrible, with the village the two had hidden in reduced to a ruinous mound and the countryside changed from pastoral to hellish. Now they ran like rabbits chased by hounds.
She tripped. A small root had caught her toe and she fell. He stopped and turned, urging her to get up. She looked at her ankle, fresh purple bruises now blemished her dark skin. She looked at him, red eyes wide in terror. She was hurt, she could not run or fight, he had to save her.
She saw the look on his face, the eyes turn from her toward their pursuers, and she knew what was going to happen. "NO!" she screamed, "Mercury, don't do it!" She pleaded with him, "Run, save yourself!" she begged. He smiled at her, that confident smile she had known so long, a smile with a meaning she only now understood. He walked past her, towards them.
With each step, he felt the weight of the past. He remembered friends who brought him out of darkness and remade him. He recalled their plot to shake the world to its foundations. He relived fights and glory in a floating arena. He saw, like it was yesterday, it's bloody conclusion as beasts and men destroyed one of the planet's greatest cities. In the center of it all, he saw his pursuers, another man and another woman.
The years had changed them both, but the basic description was still the same. One wore white armor over a black hood, and the other a red hood over a black dress. The male hunter's armor was now trimmed in gold. He was definitely a man now, no longer the naïve boy Mercury met years ago, and the designs on his shield now bore more than his house's double-crescent arms. The flames from the forest should have cast all of his body colors in orange, but they were overpowered by the light emanating from the man himself. Pure white, unearthly, almost as though an angel walked the battlefield instead of a man. The man's black hooded robe, long since replacing the boy's hoodie, double edged sword, and blazing blue eyes completed the picture of something both holy and terrible.
Matched with this, the woman huntress' red hood and red scythe created a similar scene. She didn't emanate light. Instead, she was fire. Her robe blew in the hot breeze of the flames, and flickered like the flames itself. Together, and mounted on war-horses, the two were a visible image of the death and judgement that followed in their wake.
Mercury thought it was appropriate, this ending, after all his sins to be brought to task by the angels of death themselves. Especially him, who took so much from those two so many years ago. He grinned. It was a grin of freedom, casting off the guilt that had burdened him for so long. If he faced judgement, then that weight no longer mattered. He charged them, hoping it would give his companion, his Emerald, time. He closed his eyes, choosing his target beforehand and knowing it did not matter if his blow landed or not. He felt the Blade pass through him, and he embraced eternity.
Through tears, Emerald saw Mercury fall. She could do nothing, her power used up in the previous fight. She knew what he wanted her to do, but she could not do it. Everything in her, all of the will to survive, ended with his life. She heard the man, Jaune Arc, say "I'm sorry, Mercury, but you made this choice." as he flicked the blood from his blade and sheathed it. It shocked her how sad he sounded, as though he also felt a part of him die with her Mercury. The huntress dismounted, walked forward, and stood in front of Emerald. She tried to blink the tears from her eyes, and looked up to see the face beneath the red cloak.
Silver eyes greeted her, hard and cold as the steel, but also mournful and tired from years of war. Slowly that silver-eyed huntress spoke, her once high-pitched voice long since mellowed by years of hardship, "Emerald Sustrai, by order of the four Councils you are have been judged traitor and outlaw. You are condemned to immediate death. Do you have any final words?"
Emerald choked back tears. There was no escape, there never was. She was sorry for her actions, but not for the brief happiness and friendships she had. "Ruby," She said, "I only wish our paths were different. Strike true." She closed her eyes with her face toward the sky. She saw three familiar faces, friends who had gone before her, her Mercury was with them. The moment was brief, then the moment was over. The Man and the Woman then laid beneath the charred branches of the forest.