The room itself was empty, the only things that could prove to be your company being the extensively long book shelves, and the rectangular shaped tables with chairs that were, for the most part, neatly pushed with the seat underneath it.
The Beacon library was a place that, though it was very easy to study almost anything relevant to the school and its classes, was not a place most wouldn't go to in their free time, the exceptions to this being the more dilligent academic students.
But due to the fact that Beacon was a school to train warriors and not scholars, this was very rarely the case with most students.
The only notable times where students could be found in the library was when there were larger exams for classes coming up.
However, in one boy's case, this was not the reason for his being in the library.
His hand holding up the side of his face and the coffee sitting next to him were the only real reasons that he was still awake, for Jaune Arc's eyes stung deeply with exhaustion, the shattered moon hanging behind him through the large window of glass that kept him from being in a room open to the night sky.
Doing his homework in the most fitting place possible, Jaune often found himself in this same position many times.
Though he wanted nothing more than to simply go back to his dorm room and fall into a deep slumber, he still forced himself to finish his work.
Even though most of the time he never even bothered to check if his answers were wrong or not, as he was too tired by the end of that to even care anymore, he felt his own moral obligation come into play for him to be silently stubborn about his homework.
The source of this moral obligation came in the form of a girl with red hair tied into a high ponytail.
When he found himself wanting to stop and give up on everything, Jaune simply forced the image of Pyrrha Nikos into his mind, and he would find himself start fighting against sleep as he forced himself to pile through his assignments.
It was because of Pyrrha that he was doing this to himself at all.
But if you were to look at it in a backwards way, you would understand that this was indirectly because of him too.
Jaune, who had never been to combat school before applying to Beacon, had brought this on himself since the standard at his academy was to be very physically adept with your own personalized weapon.
This was definitely not the case with Jaune however.
His weapon and shield being hand-me-downs from his grandfather, he naturally was not the most skilled person in the world when it came to using it.
And that was where Pyrrha came in.
Her being his teammate, and quite possibly the strongest member of his team in almost every way if one were to think of it in an intuitive manner, she very easily saw that he lacked much skill in fighting (not as though everyone else didn't notice it...), and after refusing at first, he eventually asked if she was still willing to help him become a better fighter.
And needless to say, her answer was yes (for obvious reasons).
But because they only had time to do this after classes, this ate away at their own free time, and of course, because Jaune felt that he was in a way keeping Pyrrha from doing much more important things with her time, his own morals put him in the compromising position he was in now.
He sighed, bringing the bottom most part of his palm to rub his eye sleepily, in an overall futile attempt to wake himself back up.
Reaching for his coffee, he lifted the mug up and drank in slow gulps, for the heat still resided inside of it from when he made it minutes ago as his last way to keep himself awake.
"Hey Jaune." When the girl's voice called out to him, in the room where he had once thought that he was all alone, Jaune was, of course, surprised, and in his surprise, his coffee went down the wrong tube in his throat, and he nearly choked.
Coughing on the drink, Jaune brought a fist to his mouth, trying to recover from the sudden pain he felt.
Pyrrha looked in surprise at him, then ran to his aid, the only thing she could think to do was hit his back over and over.
Whether this really helped or not, she didn't know, the sole thing that was to her knowledge being that Jaune gradually recovered.
When he calmed down, Pyrrha awkwardly apologized to him, "Sorry about that Jaune..."
"It's fine Pyrrha," Jaune coughed slightly again, "Why are you here though?"
"I was just checking to see where you were going everyday..."
Jaune could tell just by looking at her facial expression that she clearly felt guilty, "Well, you caught me." He laughed while scratching his head, trying to alleviate the situation they were in then.
This attempt was sadly a failure.
"So you were doing homework this whole time?" Pyrrha questioned him, looking at the large textbooks and papers mixed about.
"Yeah..." He said sheepishly.
"Would you like me to help you?"
He looked up at her, smiling, "No, it's fine Pyrrha."
"Are you having macho thoughts again or do you really mean that?"
"No, it isn't that this time," Jaune denied, "It's just..."
"Just what?"
"Well... I don't want to be a burden to you." Jaune blurted out honestly.
"How would that be making you a burden?" Pyrrha put her hands on her hips.
"I'm just saying," He started hurriedly, "I'm sure it can be annoying to have to pick up my slack, especially since we still have the same amount of things to do."
"We're teammates Jaune, and since you're the leader, I have to support you as your follower."
Jaune didn't respond, but he smiled.
"Now," Pyrrha pulled a chair, "What's the homework that's keeping you up so late?"
"It's not THAT late Pyrrha."
As though on cue, the bell started to toll to signal the start of another hour.
Once, twice...
Jaune counted all the times the bell rung, and he felt slightly embarassed when he counted to twelve.
It was midnight.
The fact that Pyrrha was holding the side of her jaw up with a fist while giving him a smug smile only made his embarassment worsen.
"It's for History." Jaune said, looking down at the last piece of homework he had.
"Okay, let's look over it... oh, you got most of it done anyways... and it's all right!"
Jaune laughed again, hoping this would help end his lingering embarassment.
"These are actually pretty hard questions Jaune... why is it that you can do all of this without a textbook?" Pyrrha looked over the cluster of textbooks around her, finding none of them open, and to add to that, none of them being History books.
"I'm pretty interested in history and things like that."
"Why is it that you always fall asleep in Oobleck's class then?"
She got him there.
And he couldn't use the usual excuse that people often used if they were to ever fall asleep in History class, which was that the teacher themselves were boring, especially since Oobleck was very speedy, both verbally and physically.
So the only way to say it was the truth apparently.
"I'd always listen when my dad and grandfather would talk about their own adventures, and usually, those adventures are written down in some history book somewhere. It'd always be so fun, trying to read the story from there and seeing the battles that they would describe to me and eventually putting the pieces together to find out which battles they had told me about. I just liked the feeling so much, being related to such famous people." Jaune crossed his arms on the table, a nostalgic smile touching his face.
Pyrrha took the paper, "You know, you don't always have to do all the homework the night before all the classes."
"I've got to. I want to be a hunter, but I need good grades in order to get that. I can't let all your training go to waste."
"That's not what I meant." Jaune looked at her, "You could do half of the work for the part of the school day that's after lunch and finish it during break. At least then you could get more rest."
"That's a good idea actually... thanks Pyrrha."
"No problem Jaune. Just try coming to bed sooner. We can't have our leader collapsing from exhaustion, can we?" The second part of her sentence was something Pyrrha said as she stood up.
"I'll make sure to follow your advice." Pyrrha nodded, walking away.
"Good night Jaune." She said, waving back at him.
"Good night." Jaune spoke back to her, "Oh, and Pyrrha?" He called her just as she reached the door, her hand on the door handle as she looked back at him, "Thanks... for everything."
She turned away, "It's no problem Jaune. I should actually be thanking you."
"What?" Jaune asked, him hearing the last part as a mumble from her.
"Nothing." She called back, opening the door, the entrance sliding open, "Make sure that your friends see more of you. Your teammates aren't the only ones who miss you." She added, then finally leaving.
Jaune smiled back at her, then stretched, before getting up a moment later.
Yeah, he should probably get some sleep...
A/N: I found inspiration to write and managed to pull it off in roughly an hour.
It is actually near 12:00 midnight as I write this, ironically.
There might be more of these one shots in the future, I can't say for sure.
What are your thoughts on it?
