Chapter Two, i'll unfold before you
Weiss Schnee meets her soulmate on her first day at Beacon Academy. She takes one look at him before sharply declaring "No," right to his face and turning on her heel.
She'd known well before her soulmate mark ever activated, that she would probably not end up marrying her soulmate. Her parents are not soulmates, nor were any of the Schnee's as far back in recorded history as she can find. Still, when her soulmate mark activated she was ten and naively imagines that maybe someday she will marry the Jaune Arc etched onto her hand. For a long while she places all of her hopes in her soulmate loving her unconditionally the way she has always desired and always denied.
She is 17 now and wiser. Weiss is not like her father and she isn't going to marry someone for business but she isn't going to love someone just because they are her soulmate. She will carve out her own path in life. So she is not disappointed in her soulmate the Vomit Boy, just disgusted. She takes care of him efficiently and ignores his pleading while he stumbles after her and the klutz who had knocked over her luggage gapes after them both.
When Cardin Winchester asks her on a date half way through her first semester, she says yes. He is a bit mean and over-confidant and perhaps more radically discriminatory against Faunus than she agrees to but he hates Jaune Arc and Weiss likes that about him.
Unfortunately the date ends before they can leave the restaurant to go to the movies. Apparently, Cardin is meaner than she gave him credit for and might be a bully and a misogynistic prick to boot. She splashes her drink into his arrogant face and storms out on him after yelling at him for a bit. She pays and leaves her waitress a tip larger than the bill.
Later, when she tells her team, Ruby laughs uneasily. Yang tells her she should have beat the shit out of him while Blake doesn't even look up from her book.
"What did you really expect from a bigot and a bully anyway?" Blake asks her darkly, the way she does whenever Faunus rights come up. Weiss rolls her eyes but doesn't answer because she isn't sure.
All she knows is that she wants to be better than the Schnee name and that's how she convinces herself to not hate Blake when she finds out exactly who Blake really is and where she came from. She is not like her family, she is made to do and be better.
The next boy she dates is Neptune and he is charming and cool and just her type, even if he tells her that he has a bit of a crush on Yang at first too. She can handle that even if it annoys her.
Weiss doesn't even say anything about his soulmate mark on his bicep, Sun Wu Long. It isn't like she doesn't understand and anyway it is as much her business as her soulmate mark is to him.
They date until the end of her first semester her second year at Beacon, staying together through a war. The long distance had been a strain, but that isn't why she leaves him. It isn't even being disowned by her father and sister after Schnee Industries had been caught up on the wrong side of the war, something she still cries about and Neptune doesn't really understand ("You father is an awful person and you are better off without him anyway.")
What happens is this: Neptune tells her what a great guy her soulmate is. That is how she finds out that Neptune only asked her out after Jaune cornered him and told him to man up and go out with her if he actually liked her even if he doesn't know how to dance, because Jaune would do anything for a chance with Weiss. Neptune tells her maybe she could try being platonic soulmates with Jaune, like him and Sun she assumes he means.
"I cannot believe you can say that about that – that pathetic idiot!" she screams, "How dare you suggest that him and I should –" and she shudders at the thought.
Weiss dumps him the very next day, after deliberating with her team. Weiss doesn't cry about Neptune but she does mourn the break up. She just doesn't have time to deal with guys that need someone Jaune to give them advice about how to date. Weiss doesn't want Jaune in her life at all, not even as a friend.
That's why Weiss decides to stop dating guys because they are all morons.
Instead she dates Ruby who is also a moron, but smart enough to know that Jaune is a bit of a loser even if Ruby still likes him enough to be his friend. Ruby respects that Weiss doesn't want any relationship with Jaune or for any of his meddling in her life and that is all that really matters when it comes to Jaune and Weiss.
Being with Ruby is much better than the boys and much easier, more honest and freeing. She hadn't imagined a relationship could be more liberating than being single. Ruby opens up to her about not have a soulmate mark even though she never asked, about Ruby's loneliness and anxiety that came with not having a soulmate mark. Weiss doesn't understand, but she returns her girlfriend's honesty with the same sort of sincerity. Weiss tells her girlfriend about how none of the Schnee's married their soulmate or even kept in touch. Instead the Schnee's married whoever would best serve Schnee Industries. She tells Ruby that isn't why she'd rejected Jaune though.
Ruby listens to Weiss tell her that she doesn't want someone her father picked out for business nor someone that her skin, fate, or destiny picked out for her.
"I want to be better than my family and better than the fate in my blood has in store for me." Weiss murmurs while they kiss. Ruby hums.
It isn't Ruby's fault when Weiss has to break her heart a couple months before their first year anniversary together.
(Weiss's heart breaks too).
Weiss doesn't want a soulmate or anything like that. She can handle commitment but she doesn't want to feel obliged to maintain a relationship when things change just because things change. She doesn't want just one person to be her end-all be-all, she can't handling being someone's everything.
Ruby wants a hero's story and that comes with a soulmate and Weiss can't be the soulmate Ruby wants and deserves. So they break up and Ruby and Weiss cry, even if they still have each other every other way. Yang bakes chocolate chip cookies for Ruby and Blake reads to her out loud from her soppy romance novels and they pick them apart and laugh and cry. She finds out Blake had just broke up with Sun and they lean on each other.
"I love her, I do," Weiss cries "I wish –," but she stops herself because she doesn't know what she wishes. She doesn't want to be different and she doesn't want Ruby to be different either.
"I didn't. Love him that is," Blake confesses and then rushes to amend, "Not that way. I wish I did. It would be easier if I did."
Weiss has a string of casual relationships that don't last very long after that, her classmates, some upperclassmen and some underclassmen as well. It is during her third year that she makes out with Pyrrha Nikos.
Weiss hadn't known it her first year, but she thinks Pyrrha might have been her first crush.
When Weiss takes off Pyrrha's pajama top to touch her warm skin, she cannot stop her gasp at seeing Jaune Arc along Pyrrha's spine but she doesn't mention it. If there is one thing she has learned about soulmate marks during her time at Beacon is that they rarely work out the way they do in the movies even for people who aren't Schnee's.
The two girls that share a soulmate mark share a night together.
Afterwards Weiss mostly dates civilians, trying to separate duty from love, but she finds she is most attracted to those that understand what being a huntress entails and she tires of them.
Her last day of her third year, Weiss reads about Winter's wedding on her scroll but she didn't receive an invite. She hadn't expected one but it still hurts. She talks about it with Blake, who holds her and strokes her hair.
"We were never close, but I just – oh I don't know. Maybe being around Ruby and Yang has lead me to have unrealistic hopes for my sister." Weiss wipes at her eyes, but she isn't crying. She wishes she could cry about it, maybe it would be easier to handle.
Blake hums as she listens, hands rubbing her back. "Your feelings aren't wrong."
Blake's validation is what make her eyes sting with tears for the first time that night.
"I don't even know if the guy she married is her soulmate," Weiss says dully, but she doubts that he is.
The next day, she arranges for her sister to receive a bouquet of flowers and a card, wishing her sister happiness. She stays with Yang and Ruby and Blake in Patch for the break between third and fourth year just like she did the years before.
Falling in love with Blake happens without Weiss' notice. Loving Blake is that easy, it is like breathing. They become girlfriends naturally without preamble. Weiss is more scared of hurting Ruby, of what Yang will think of her caught between these two, but the rest of Blake and Weiss' team and friends support them the way they did went it was Ruby and Weiss.
"As long as you both are happy. I love you both so much." Ruby tells her brightly and Weiss knows she is being sincere.
When they return to Beacon Weiss asks about the soulmate mark on Blake's thigh. She'd suspected it before she'd seen it but she isn't certain what to make of it.
"I'll take care of it," Blake says. Weiss rolls her eyes.
"I wasn't saying that. I was just wondering what the situation is."
"I'll ask. It was my fault in the first place. But it won't change anything between you and me," Blake promises.
"Of course."
Their relationship gets only gets more intimate afterwards. It isn't as easy as falling in love, but it is even more gratifying. Weiss finds herself changing more and more, not because of Blake but because Blake's support enables her to, because Blake challenges her in all the best ways.
They aren't soulmates, but their bond isn't any less than.
Their final year ends and they graduate. While the team relaxes and waits for their first mission as qualified huntresses, Weiss gets a message on her scroll from Jaune. He has met a girl whose soulmate had attacked her at their first meeting, telling her to never show her face in front of her again. Apparently the girl's soulmate was already in love with someone else and had no place for Jaune's girl. Jaune wants her to know he is happy and forgives her.
She rolls her eyes and deletes the message without reading the rest of it, turning her attention to her team and the photo album at Ruby's knee.
"I am so happy to have you," Weiss tells Blake, "I don't think I could be the person I am now without you. I am better because I love you."
"You were pretty awful, when we first met." Blake laughs when Weiss squawks in indignation. "You are so incredible Weiss. I love you, I love having you."
They laugh and Weiss puts her head on Blake's shoulder. When Ruby and Penny and Yang leave to go slay some Beowulves, they look over the album together.
Weiss and Blake don't know if they'll be forever, but Weiss has chosen Blake and she's better for it. She'll work hard to keep what she has with Blake and her team and friends and new family because it is all that she has ever wanted and she'll work to keep it all.
Thank you for reading. More author notes on Ao3, link on my profile.