Epilogue.

"Beginning simulation."

The door hisses open behind him as he stares at the flickering screen. It's been so long now. Diagnostics, algorithms, probabilities, and more dance before his eyes. Everything so far had failed. If only—

"Hi, Jaune." Her voice is hesitant, laced with sadness.

"Hello, Ruby. Would you like to look over this file with me?"

"No." She pauses, pity and her own age-old grief welling inside her. "So, this is what you've become?"

Jaune can only lower his head. He knows he's hurt them, hurt them all so, so badly, Ren and Nora most of all, but—this is something he has to do. "I just need to see this. I think I have a way… a way to bring her back right this time."

Ruby crosses her arms, trying her best impression of the inspirational young woman she was back when they had first arrived at Beacon. "The authorities are hunting you now, Jaune. If I found you, they will, too."

She moves as if to reach out her hand, but something holds her back.

The authorities don't matter anymore. They haven't for a long time, not since one dark night long ago, not since a kiss and a needless, pointless sacrifice that so many people, himself most of all, should have seen coming, should have been able to do something to alter. "I just need a bit more time."

That's a lie. He might have it, this time, but he might not. For all he knows he could work until the last light fades and the Grimm rips his desiccated body to pieces and never come an inch closer to saving her. But he has to keep trying.

An angry yell comes from Ruby's Scroll. "No! You've had your time. You have to answer to what you did. To the Meta, to Blake, to Ruby, to me, and to her! To Phoenix!"

It's a voice he knows well. "Hello, Crocus. You came all this way just to see me?"

"I'm here to remember what you've done," his own memories excoriate him. "Somebody has to!"

"Crocus…" Ruby warns him.

"Not all of us got off scot-free, Ruby." The charge is unfair, deeply so, and Ruby's face can't hide how deeply it stings her. So many lost so much, beginning long before the project, and Ruby has for her entire life suffered as much as any of them. Not that Crocus cares right now.

"He was brilliant!" the AI cries, in the static-washed tones of the ever-logical Boreas.

"And we trusted him!" Poor, poor Thistle. As innocent as Ruby, and every bit as kind.

"But he lied to us! He twisted—" screamed Umbros, ever the deceiver—

"And tortured us, and used us!" finished Vulcan, his characteristic rage multiplied to stand out from the anguish of his peers. But the memories weren't done yet.

"He manipulated us for his own purposes," ambitious Lunos condemned him, "and for what? For this? This… shadow?"

"He needs to pay," Crocus concluded.

Ruby placed a hand on his shoulder. On the monitor, an audio file came on. "I'm sorry!"

Soft lips touched his graying brow, and Ruby pulled away.

"Just a bit more time," Jaune pleaded, his eyes thick with tears.

Ruby gazed back at him a moment longer, sorrow and pity etched deeply into her kind, heroic features, and she nodded. "Come on, Crocus. We're leaving."

"I though we came all this way to kill him," the AI objected. So she had determined that. Not surprising, really, not after everything he'd done. To be left alone like this was… well, it was more than he deserved.

"Crocus," Ruby answered the fractured program, "remember what you learned in the database? You need to let go. Your past doesn't define how you are. It just gives you the starting point for who you're going to be."

Was that true? He supposed it was. Pyrrha had once tried to drill something very similar into him, back at Beacon. He may have faked his way in, he may have been useless as a fighter, but every hero started from nothing, and relied on their friends and their own dedication to become who they were meant to be.

Who they were meant to be. That was a joke. Had Pyrrha been meant to die that night? Had he been meant to—to waste away like this, dedicated irrevocably to the memory of την πολλην αριστην Αχαιων? Whatever his destiny had been, he had surely missed it by now. All that remained was to join her.

"Ruby?"

Crocea Mors was a distant memory, but the younger Huntress had begun carrying a hand cannon, in the mold of General Ironwood's, after she had been disarmed or caught in close quarters a few times too often. She still carried the weapon; he'd seen it beside Crescent Rose as she stood next to him.

"Yes, Jaune?"

"Would you be so kind as to leave me your pistol?"

Her gaze locks with his one last time, and the redhead silently slides the weapon from its holster and places it before him on the desk. This will be easier than trying to run himself through, anyway.

"Thank you, Ruby."

"Goodbye, Jaune."

He is alone now. "Run the simulation again, Penny," he orders.

"Beginning simulation," the partially-rebuilt AI replies.

He stares at the screen, vacantly and intently at the same time. Now he cares nothing for the notes in the margins, the algorithms and technical details. He seeks out every image of her, every video of her fighting or walking or smiling. He's almost done, now.

"Thank you, Penny. Now, please erase all of our files except this one."

"All our files? Does that include me, Director?"

"It has been an honor working with you, Penny. I am sorry." And he is, he truly is. He should have sent her with Ruby, should have given her a chance to continue on past this miserable end to a miserable man's existence. But now there's nothing left, and for that he is truly sorry.

"And you, as well, Director," the AI tells him, her voice sympathetic even to the man who is ordering her destruction. But he can't dwell there, and anyways, it won't be long for either of them.

"And, before you do, please shut down all the facility systems as well. Take everything offline." He's always been a coward. Better if he doesn't leave himself an exit.

"Director," Penny objects, apparently not comprehending, "this is a sealed facility. If I shut down all systems, life support would not—"

He cuts her off, but does not explain. "Thank you, Penny. Shut them all down. Lock me in."

"Alright." She sounds reluctant, but concedes, as she always has. "Was the project a success? Did you find what you were looking for?" Of course she would ask that. Ren knew, and Nora certainly at least suspected, but he never confided in anyone else. He didn't want to see their shame.

Still, Penny has been good to him, and he answers her. He owes her that, at the very least. "No. No, I did not. But I believe I may have come very close. I wish… I wish I knew."

"I see," replies Penny, even though she clearly doesn't.

"Perhaps the next time around." Jaune reaches for Ruby's hand cannon as he listens to the door hiss closed behind him.

"It has been an honor, sir," are the last words she says to him.

The audio clip comes around again.

"I'm sorry!"