Okay so I managed to pump this out in about ten minutes because I couldn't sleep.
Nora had her face buried in her hands as Ren glared at the door Jem walked out of. Maybe he didn't mean to make Nora cry, but it didn't change the fact that he made Nora cry. Everyone else was sitting around in silence. They knew Grandmama had to have been dead for years, but to hear what had happened, it was an awful feeling.
"I couldn't be there Ren…" Nora couldn't help but cry.
To hear that the woman you loved like family had passed away was hard, but to hear that the last thing she wanted to see before she died was her adoptive granddaughter who was nowhere to be found, it was a bullet to the heart.
"Nora, there was nothing you could do…" Ren couldn't believe what Jem had told them.
If he didn't know any better, he would say Jeremiah had said that on purpose just to spite them.
"Look, I think we all need our sleep." Winter said as Ren carried Nora, who was currently too distraught to walk.
"Where are you going?" Weiss asked as she looked at her sister.
"Jem and I need to have a talk…." She said with a serious look on her face as she walked outside to where he was sitting on the porch.
"Was that really necessary?!" She yelled at the old man sitting on the porch smoking a cigar.
"She asked, I gave her an answer." He said as he blew smoke out of his nose.
"I thought you promised you would quit." She said as she glared at the cigar.
"Well, the thing about making a promise to a woman who didn't keep hers, you don't see a reason to keep yours." He said as he narrowed his eyes.
"Is that what this is about?! You made Nora cry in there! All of this just for some petty revenge?" She had never been this mad at him in her life.
"No, that's not what this was about." He said as he looked at her.
"You see, after so many years pass, and you get used to the fact that your family is DEAD and never coming back, you stop thinking about it, you don't want to remember it, when you're all alone, you don't want to think of all the fun times you had with people, whether they be friends or family, because all you will be reminded of is how they died, and how you're stuck living!" He yelled as Winter just continued to glare.
"It may have been decades for you! But only two years for us! You can't expect us to just be able to accept all the changes that occurred!" She yelled as he narrowed his eyes.
"Oh Forgive me Ms. Schnee, I'm sorry my life doesn't fit to your standards." He said coldly as she just got angrier.
"You know that's not what I meant! You sat in there and broke Nora's heart!" He looked away at that.
"No sense in lying to her, do you really think I shouldn't have told her the truth? She asked me, and I told her, do you think she was expecting some happy tale with sunshine and rainbows? News flash, Death doesn't care about you fairy tale ideals, it only cares about one thing, how many people it can take, no matter who is left in pain over the loss, what Nora is feeling in there, that's nothing new…now you all know how I felt all those years ago." He said as he began the walk to his room.
"Can't you at least try and act like you're happy to see us?" She asked as she knew he was holding a grudge against them for being gone for so long.
"No, you can't act happy when you're not….if this was fifty years ago, I would have been ecstatic to hear from you…but the thing about waiting…" He turned and glared at her.
"You eventually get tired, tell me, do you remember when we last met? The day that you went back to Remnant and we made that promise to each other? And I swore to you I would always keep it?" He asked as she nodded.
"What does that have to do with anything?" She asked as she didn't understand.
"Well…I waited for you, the first few years I told myself 'She's just having a difficult time getting back, she'll be here soon.' And I thought it was going to be great, heck I even continued to watch the show, and I watched the progress being made, enemies you were fighting, and I didn't know how things had changed, if they did at all, I just assumed you were busy fighting a war, and I needed to be more patient…and I was…" Now he was actually losing his angry expression.
"Five years after you left, I was talking with the guys in my unit, they keep asking me about this 'Mysterious girl' who I am waiting for, I tell them about you, and they all say the same thing, 'She's a lost cause, she's not coming back, you have to move on.' But I didn't listen to them, because I was convinced that they were wrong, and you were coming back. I was still young, and I wasn't afraid of being alone my entire life…" He said as he glared at her.
"Ten years later, I start to get worried, surely she must have gotten here by now, the council couldn't be that stubborn could they? Even if they were, how would they ever find out? Only a few people knew how to make that dust, surely she must be coming soon? Where is she? Where did she go? You were still alive in the show, so what was going on?" It was almost as if he was asking himself that question.
"Fifteen years later…FIFTEEN YEARS! I didn' feel worry, all I felt was anger. You weren't there! Fifteen years, and not a single sign of you! I started to wonder if I had imagined It all! Maybe this whole thing was some half assed fanfic that never got off the ground! But no! I still held on to that foolish belief that you were coming back! I was only in my thirties! I still had time!" His voice was getting angrier and angrier as he went on.
"Another fifteen years later…I'm sitting in a bar in New Zealand, looking at my phone, the number hasn't changed, and I know I gave you it to carry with you so no matter where I was, you would always be able to find me and call me, sort of a way that you could contact me when you did come back, I would sit there looking at the pictures of us, just wondering, what if this isn't real? What if I just imagined it all?" His grip tightened on the cigar.
"And then five years later…I snapped, I threw photos into the wall, I smoked, I drank, I did anything I could to forget about it, there was no way it could be real, I had to have imagined it, but no, I knew it was real, and that was what made it even worse, because a fictional character had come into my life, and I fell in love with her….and she made me think that she loved me…" He said as that made Winter wince.
"But Jem, I do lo-" He cut her off, his anger reaching new heights.
"THIRTY FIVE YEARS! I was sick of waiting, and you know what the worst part was? You want to know the worst part?!" He yelled as she was scared of Jem, this was a side she didn't know he had.
"I had been through this before…I had done this whole thing before, you meet…you fall in love….and she leaves, but I told myself you would come back….and years later nothing, I know that was the end because…" He looked her dead in the eyes.
"Because I told you all those years ago about that woman I fell in love with, and how I waited for her for three years to come back, and she moved on with her life, and I had to learn to live on my own again. But you see, in a way, you're even worse…" He didn't care anymore, he needed to say this.
"I TRUSTED YOU! I shared that story with you because I felt I could trust you! You made me feel happy again! You helped me show that life could be good! And I could learn to let it go! And then….then you leave, and you never came back!" He said as he threw the cigar away.
"I shared my experience, and you turned it up to eleven, you didn't make me wait three years, you made me wait SIXTY! And to top it all off, I trusted you more than I had ever trusted anyone before in my life! And then, I had to come to accept a cold hard truth…" Winter was trying to keep her emotions in check.
"You weren't coming back….and I was all alone, but it was too late for me, I was getting older, I couldn't move on and meet someone else….how could anyone compare to you?" Winter froze as she heard that, for once he seemed to be saying something nice…
"How could I possibly move on after one of the most amazing women came into my life? How do you move on from that? How can you live a normal life after a Hunttress from another world comes into your life? How can you lead a normal life? I didn't know how...so I left." He said as he remembered his travels.
"Now, here I am, old, Arthritic, my family is dead, the living relatives I have left hate me, and I hate them, and then, you all come back…" He said as Team RWBY was listening from their bedroom.
"You show up with smiles on your faces, like nothing never happened! And you EXPECT me to just welcome you back with open arms?! AFTER EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED?!" Team RWBY winced at his tone of voice.
"You know we didn't have a choice! We didn't know that time moved differently! You can't blame us for that!" She said as it got really quiet.
Team RWBY was listening with baited breath, while Jaune, Ren, and Pyrrha had come in to listen in as well. Nora was currently in her bed sleeping off the stress of the night.
"You're right…I can't." Jem was admitting he was wrong.
"But do you really think I shouldn't be pissed off? Do you know what I see when I look at you all?" He asked as Winter had a feeling she wasn't going to like the answer.
"I see the life I didn't get to have, I see your youth, and I see the years I wasted, I see the great and powerful Ms. Winter Schnee! Pride of the Atlesian Army! Member of the prestigious Schnee family! And still as young as the last day I saw her, and I see that she will be able to live a life that I never had….it's too late for me….it's too late to go back….and when death comes…" He turned and gave Winter one last look.
"I'll be here waiting with a smile on my face saying 'What are you waiting for?'" That made Winter's blood and the two teams blood run cold.
"Y-You don't mean that…" Winter couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"Don't I? Tell me, what have I got left to live for?" He asked as he felt like he had outlived his time.
"I've done all I can with what I got, I did what I could with my life, what do I have left?" He asked as he leaned against the wall.
"You have me…" Winter said as he scoffed.
"You don't need to waste your time with me Winter, look at me!" He yelled as he motioned to his old face.
"I'm old! You're young! It can never work out! Even if somehow we did work it out, which I don't find possible with my age, I'm going to be around for another year or two at most! And all that you'll be left with is a shriveling corpse! So no point in getting close to me again when I don't have much time left!" Winter covered her mouth as she couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"Just go home….live out the rest of your life….because trust me…." He finally walked back inside.
"Time won't wait for you."