AN: I've decided that I'm going to be splitting up the final chapter, so volume one will now be seven chapters. It was well over 7k words, which just isn't consistent with what I've been doing. Both parts have lots of stuff in them and I'm nowhere near ready on volume two, so it wouldn't be delaying that anyways.
The Semblances We Keep: Volume One, Chapter Four
"She's a faunus."
"Fuck off," Jaune growled to himself as he sat down in Oobleck's class. "If she wanted me or anyone else to know she'd have said so by now."
"She wears that bow no matter what, definitely ears of some sort. First in her combat outfit, then in her pajamas, and even now in her school uniform, she never takes it off." His Semblance had been bugging him about it since the very first night in the ballroom and it was only getting worse in the days after the incident in the cafeteria.
"She reads with only three candles to see with, humans don't have that kind of eyesight. That means she must be of the predatory or nocturnal variety, most likely both."
"It's her business, not mine," he tried to argue, knowing the effort was wasted. Blake had an annoying amount of things to hide as it had turned out. So naturally, his Semblance absolutely loved talking about her. If an insentient voice could have a crush on someone, this was apparently what it sounded like.
"Projectile, six o'clock," his Semblance said. Jaune lazily moved to the side as Cardin's paper triangle flew past him, catching Dr. Oobleck's attention.
"Mr. Arc!" Oobleck shouted into Jaune's ears. "Finally contributing to class! This is excellent! Excellent! What is the answer?"
"Night vision." The voice was still pestering him about Blake's non-human abilities, even while it was pretending to be helpful.
"Binoculars," Jaune answered, doing his best to mock the voice in his brain. Why couldn't his Semblance just leave his friends alone? He had enough of his own secrets without knowing theirs as well.
"Very funny, Mr. Arc." Dr. Oobleck shifted his focus to the laughing Cardin. "Mr. Winchester, perhaps you would care to share your thoughts on the subject!"
Cardin's predictably racist comment was followed up by an equally predictable retort from both Pyrrha and Blake. Seriously, why wasn't his Semblance telling him Pyrrha was a faunus as well at this point? Blake spent almost as much time around the girl as she did with Weiss these days.
In the time since Pyrrha had made it known that Cardin's attitude towards faunus was unacceptable, Blake had started sitting a lot closer to her in class. It made for a very hilarious situation of Blake wanting to sit near Pyrrha and not really caring either way about where Weiss sat, Pyrrha wanting to avoid Weiss if she could still be nice about it, and Weiss wanting to sit next to them both over her own team.
"Detention!" his Semblance yelled suddenly.
"What?" Thought Jaune in confusion.
Dr. Oobleck had finished telling off Cardin for his rude comments. "You and Mr. Arc can both see me after class for additional readings."
Damn it.
Blake wiped a small amount of sweat off her brow as she and Jaune took a break from their evening rooftop spar. This was third time the two had trained together and the dozen days or so that Pyrrha had sparred with him before that were already taking effect. Blake still beat the snot out of him nine and a half times out of ten, but his massive Aura meant that the Mistral champion had been able to push him harder than any other first year. It showed.
Previously, he had always been able to dodge or block her first attack no matter how fast it came at him, but now he was managing to block one or two of those that came after. In the sparing they had been through so far, Jaune was even starting to get used to her Semblance. No longer stumbling when his weapon passed right through a clone that offered no resistance.
It also helped that he wasn't using Crocea Mors still. Jaune had decided to keep his new weapon as mostly a team secret. Since Ruby had helped him make the current prototype and he only used it when sparing with Pyrrha and Blake, no one else would find out about it until he brought it to combat class.
Lignum Mors, roughly meaning 'stick of death'. Jaune had told her he thought it was a rather pretentions title, but Ruby loved it and she was doing seventy percent of the work and all of the planning, so Jaune supposed he could settle on the name.
It was pretty much that at the moment, minus the death part, a silver metal bo staff, about the length of Jaune's arm-span, with two pairs of blades at each end so that when he spun the staff it became a lethal wheel of destruction. Well in theory at least, she and Pyrrha didn't exactly have a problem knocking him around if they wanted to.
The gaps between the blades at each end would soon house a pair of yet undetermined guns, allowing for him to fire off shots from small triggers near the center of the staff, but for now, it just resembled a double ended two-pronged spear. Upon seeing it, Pyrrha had been visibly pleased with how similar Jaune's new weapon was to Miló.
As they got up to resume their sparring, Jaune tripped over some piping, stumbled, and fell forward onto his hands and knees. Blake did her best not to smirk too badly at his clumsiness and reached an arm out to pull him up. "You alright there?"
Jaune stood up with her help and brushed the dust off his knees. "Yeah sorry, it's pretty dark out and I can't see quite as well as-" Jaune clamped his mouth shut, eyes wide.
"Jaune?" Why was he acting…? Blake's eyes widened in realization, they narrowed a moment later. "How long have you known?"
"I-I…" After a moment or two of hesitation, Jaune slumped his shoulders in defeat. "Pretty much since day one."
Well at least he was clearly not about to go spreading her secret around the school if he'd known for so long already and had said nothing. The same went for the other secret. If he'd known she'd been White Fang, Blake doubted she would still be at Beacon, so there seemed to be no danger there. But how did he even find out so quickly? "What gave it away?"
Jaune started listing things on his fingers. "You don't turn on the lights to read, I know you've been eavesdropping on our classmates from halfway across the lecture halls, you stood up to Cardin both in the cafeteria and in Oobleck's class, and you literally never take that bow off."
Was it really that obvious? This was not good. "Who else knows?"
"Just me I think," he replied with a sigh. "Can I ask you something though? Why do you feel the need to even wear that bow in the first place?"
Well Cardin certainly gave her one very good answer for that question. "You may be willing to accept the faunus Jaune, but your species is not. I want to be judged for who I am, not what I am."
Jaune sighed once more, almost sounding disappointed. "Blake, if that was truly the only reason you'd have told the team already, at least I hope you trust us that much by now. Ruby doesn't have a mean bone in her and Pyrrha has made it pretty clear how she feels about anyone messing with a faunus. It also fails to explain why you would risk going after Cardin like you did a few weeks ago. You were willing to stand up for other faunus even when you won't stand up for yourself."
And that was the other reason that she wore the bow. Standing up for the faunus was what she'd thought she was doing when she was a part of the White Fang. As the years had gone by that stopped being the case, but she had gone in too deep and the White Fang wasn't something you could just tell people you were a part of, especially these days. Blake knew for sure now that her own team wouldn't treat her any different for being a faunus and Team Silver probably wouldn't either, though it was kind of hard to tell when it came to Weiss.
Beyond that, Blake didn't give a damn what any of the other students thought and her own team, especially Pyrrha, would be both willing and capable of knocking the lights out of anyone who treated her poorly, before she even got the chance to do it herself. But if her friends found out what else she was… what she'd been… what she'd done… Well, you could forget about Team Silver sticking around, it was lead by an actual member of the Schnee family and Blake doubted even her team would be okay with the fact that she'd been an actual terrorist.
Jaune seemed to have noticed her lack of response. "I can see you don't want to talk about it Blake, but you should at least consider telling Ruby and Pyrrha about your cat ears."
Blake sighed and nodded, she didn't exactly enjoy hiding her ears twenty-four seven after all. Besides, if Jaune had figured it out so quickly, it was only a matter of time before the other two wizened up, especially since they all lived together, and it was very damn apparent how little Team Brandy would care by now. Ruby had to be the nicest freaking person she'd ever met, Pyrrha had been even more vocal about defending faunus than Blake herself could afford to be at the moment, and her being a faunus wasn't something that linked her to the White Fang anyways.
Suddenly, Blake froze. "How did you know I have cat ears?"
"I just told you, the bow and your hearing."
"Sure, but I could have been hiding about a dozen other of types of ears instead, there's a pretty large number of possibilities." Now that she thought about it, the only time she ever took off her bow was in the…
"Have you been watching me bathe?!" Blake was suddenly furious.
"W-what?!" Jaune seemed mortified. "No, I swear! I just figured, uh… uh…" Well at least he wasn't a pervert. He looked far too shocked to be lying and it's not like she left the door unlocked when she showered.
"Alright, alright," she waved off his excuses. "How did you know then?"
Jaune answered her with a suddenly neutral voice. "When you decide to tell me the other reason you wear that bow, then I'll tell you how I guessed that bit."
Blake still didn't like the implication there, but she let it go for now. As pleased as she was that he didn't seem to care in the slightest that she was a faunus, Blake didn't want this conversation to continue any further, lest he find out anymore of her past. The offer certainly wasn't one she planned to take him up on.
"I think we've done enough for today." She moved towards the door. "Let's head back to the others."
"You go on ahead, I'm going to work on my Aura for a bit longer."
As she moved past him down the stairs, Blake noted with mild curiosity that Jaune seemed to be waiting for something. She didn't sense any change in his stance that would hint he was starting the routine Pyrrha had set for him and when she looked back he was just staring out over the rooftop.
Jaune didn't have to wait long.
"Oh Jaune," Cardin said with a satisfied laugh as he climbed up onto the roof. "I couldn't help, but overhear you two from my dorm room. Sounds like you have quite the animal of a team leader."
Jaune grimaced. His Semblance had told him, near the end of his conversation, that someone else; Cardin apparently, was listening in. Unfortunately, it had been well after he had called out Blake as a faunus. Jaune felt absolutely sick. He had tried to help Blake and now he had managed to spill her secret to the worst possible person at Beacon Academy. Jaune knew it was probably a lost cause already, but he couldn't give up. "Please! Cardin, please, don't tell anyone!" he begged.
"Jaune, come on, I'd never rat out a friend like that."
Huh? Friends? Jaune was suddenly hopeful, if a bit confused. Maybe Cardin wasn't as bad as he seemed.
"Extortion," his Semblance informed him. "He is about to ask you to do Dr. Oobleck's essay for him." Yeah, that made a lot more sense.
"I'll take care of the extra reading Oobleck gave us," Jaune said with a sigh.
"You're smarter than you look Jauney boy, but I've got a feeling that we're going to be friends for a long time," Cardin said with another smug laugh as he climbed back off the roof. "Don't worry Jaune; her secret is safe with me."
"Damn it Ruby, stop," Blake growled as she felt hand trying to creep under her bow once more. This is ridiculous! Why did I listen to Jaune?
"But they're soooo sooooft!" Ruby whined from the bunk above her. "Please let me touch them again."
Blake looked up from her book and gave her partner a glare. These had not been the reactions she had been expecting from her team when she had pulled off her bow in front of them a few days ago. Pyrrha had been so upset that Blake felt the need to wear a bow in the first place that she nearly went to the headmaster about it. Blake had to force the idea into Pyrrha's far-too-nice head that she didn't want anyone else to know, including said headmaster. Ruby, on the other hand, had an even worse reaction and seemed to think her ears were the cutest darn things she'd ever seen.
In fact, it seemed like the only member of her team that wasn't on board was the teammate who had gotten her to talk about it in the first place. She didn't understand. One day Jaune had been one hundred percent supportive of her and the very next morning he was eating breakfast with Team Cardinal, the loudest group of faunus haters at the school, with a depressed look and zero explanation.
Pyrrha's face had twitched violently between anger and sadness when she'd seen them all together, eventually settling on the latter. Blake had gone through a similar spectrum of emotions, only hers was more towards the former now. Jaune refused to even talk to any of them about why it was he was following that team around. Ruby had been the one trying the hardest on that front. Blake lessened her glare a bit to see if her partner had been having any luck. "Were you able to talk to Jaune after class today?"
"Yeah, but only for a moment or two…" Ruby trailed off sadly. Her partner had been trying to hide it over the past days, but Ruby was clearly not a fan of Jaune's new habit either. Ruby and Jaune had been good friends since the very first day and probably spent more time together than any other members of the team did. Especially with all the effort spent in the workshop during the first few weeks. "Hopefully he'll talk to us on the field trip tomorrow."
"Ruby, it's still Wednesday. We don't go to Forever Fall until the day after tomorrow," Blake corrected.
"Oh, right." Ruby flopped back down on her bed. "I'll try again tomorrow in that case..."
The next day, Ruby and Jaune sat together in the workshop, busy tinkering with Lignum Mors.
Ruby liked making weapons. She loved the way all the solid metal pieces could move together so fluidly. It actually sent shivers down her spine sometimes and other times uh... well she liked weapons okay. There's nothing wrong with that, right? Everything fit together so cleanly when you planned it all out in advance. You couldn't plan out a conversation like that. Your weapons couldn't lie to you and they certainly didn't run off on you to spend time with a pack of brutes like Jaune had.
"So, where have you been lately?" Ruby asked him, already knowing the answer. Not much had changed since yesterday and Jaune was still spending most of his free time with Cardin and his team. The only time he spent with Team Brandy outside of class was during what were essentially mandatory spars with Blake and Pyrrha or in the workshop with her, working on Lignum Mors.
Jaune hadn't been very enthusiastic about much lately, but Ruby needed to find a way to get him to open up since Blake seemed to be the last person who wanted to talk to him these days and he was always weirdly awkward around Pyrrha. Thinking about how Blake's Gambol Shroud could be used as either a single weapon or dual wielded, Ruby had convinced him to join her in making the latest version of Lignum Mors or Mr. Death Stick, as she liked to call it. Lignum Mors could now be separated in the middle, becoming a pair of weapons that each resembled a bizarre split short sword. The blades could then retract as well, making it compact enough to stow it behind his back like Ruby did with her own Crescent Rose.
"I uh…" Jaune sighed, "I've been busy is all."
Ruby knew she was a nice person, but she wasn't a bottomless pit of positivity. Jaune had been her first real friend at Beacon and now it finally looked like he was leaving her and it didn't feel good. "Busy with your new friends?" she asked with the tiniest hint of scorn in her voice.
"They aren't my friends Ruby."
"Then why are you always hanging out with them?"
"I… I can't answer that." Jaune's scroll rang and he looked down. "Sorry Ruby, I need to take this. I'll talk to you tomorrow," he said, getting up to leave the room.
"That's Cardin, isn't it?" Ruby scowled.
"Yes," he admitted with guilt. "I promise I'm not trying to hurt any of you."
"I hope so Jaune, I hope so," Ruby said to herself sadly as Jaune left the room.
"Yes students, the forest of Forever Fall is indeed beautiful, but we are not here to sight see..."
As Pyrrha and the other first years followed after Professor Goodwitch, she couldn't help but wonder who the hell Professor Peach was and why Pyrrha had never even heard of her before. Several yards behind her, Jaune was carrying a large box along with all of Team Cardinal's sap jars. Between those and his own weapons Jaune seemed close to collapsing under the weight. Pyrrha stared sadly after him as Cardin dragged her blonde crush off into the forest.
"You should go with him." Ruby had snuck up behind Pyrrha, clearly just as worried. "Goodwitch told us to stick with our partners."
"He doesn't seem to want to stick around any of us Ruby." Least of all me…
"Please Pyrrha, Blake shuts down whenever I try to get her to talk about it and Jaune already pushed me off yesterday."
"If he won't talk to you or Blake, I doubt he'll talk to me." Pyrrha had started to notice even before this week's issues, that her partner might not like spending time with her all that much. He wasn't rude to her or anything, but he always spoke as little as he could to her during their training sessions and she hadn't gotten to know him nearly as much as she would have liked to. Pyrrha hated it, but she couldn't control how she felt about him, even now.
"Please, it can't hurt to try." Ruby looked up at her with those wide silver eyes and Pyrrha didn't have the heart to say no.
"Alright Ruby, I'll try." Pyrrha started walking slowly off in the direction where the group of five had gone, trying to figure out what she was going to say.
Pyrrha knew she had her issues. Falling for someone that quickly just because they hadn't known whom she was wasn't exactly normal. She'd spent most of her life being told how special she was by everyone she met and any praise had become meaningless within a year or two. Like she had hoped, things had gotten a bit better when she had left Mistral and her team had become some of the first people in years she actually felt close to, but there were still others like Weiss who only wanted to be near her because of what she was, not who she was.
As she spiked a nearby trunk to begin filling up her jar, she was reminded of the last time she had nailed something to a tree.
She hadn't really meant to force Jaune to be her partner, but she hoped he might consider it when she 'helped' with his landing strategy. When she showed up to get her spear back however, Weiss had been right there and clearly wanted to join up with her. That was the last thing she was interested in and Jaune had been the only route of escape so Pyrrha might have panicked a bit and had been a lot more forceful than she intended. Now she was wondering if that hadn't been a mistake. She would still choose Jaune as a partner over someone who acted like Weiss did, but being borderline ignored for so long wasn't turning out to be all that great of a feeling either. It was still loneliness, just of a kind she wasn't used to.
A few minutes later, Pyrrah finished filling up her jar of sap, put the lid back on, and moved closer to where she knew Team Cardinal had gathered. As she drew closer, she could hear the start of a shouting match between Cardin and Jaune.
"No!"
"What do you mean no? Hit that black-haired freak with the sap or I'll tell the rest of my team her little secret and make sure they spread it far and wide when we get back to Beacon!"
Jaune and Cardin were alone on a small ridge overlooking the remainder of Team Silver and Brandy in the distance. The rest of Cardin's team must have gone off to fill their own jars, as they were nowhere to be found.
"I'm done with this Cardin. If you're going to hurt my team anyways, then at least I won't have to be a part of it!" Jaune rose, starting to walk off, leaving the jar of sap behind.
"She's going to hate you when she finds out you're the reason everyone knows what a little pussy she is!" Cardin snarled.
Pyrrha gasped, as understanding slammed into her. Suddenly Jaune's behavior for the last week made sense. Remembering their talk with Blake earlier in the week, Pyrrha knew Cardin could only be insinuating one thing. Not only had Blake told them about her true heritage, but also that Jaune had apparently already known about it for weeks. Somehow, Jaune must have slipped up and told Cardin about Blake's faunus status and Cardin was now holding it over his head.
Pyrrha felt warmth run to her chest, knowing that Jaune had been trying to protect their team leader this whole time. Pyrrha hated to admit it, but she been starting to think her crush was turning into one of Cardin's lackeys. That he didn't care about his team or want to spend time with them, but he hadn't just suddenly abandoned them. He'd been suffering on Blake's behalf the entire time.
She looked back at Jaune to see him shaking in anger at Cardin's vile comment. Jaune looked like he was about to say something, but then slumped his shoulders in defeat and continued to walk off. "I know," he muttered, so low that Pyrrha could barely hear him. Gods, Pyrrha didn't think her heart could take seeing him like this. He was too hard on himself.
Jaune had his back turned away and never noticed Cardin pick up the jar in anger and instead aim it at Jaune's head. Pyrrha rose up to shout a warning as the jar tumbled towards his skull, but she was far too slow.
Jaune caught it in one hand, only inches from his face, after turning around at the last possible second.
Wait, what!? Pyrrha tilted her head in shock and then crouched back down to watch. Jaune hurled the jar back at Cardin smashing the glass and spattering purple liquid all across his chest plate. "Oh, you've done it now Jauney boy!" Cardin charged in at Jaune with a roar.
Jaune sidestepped and tripped him with barely any effort.
What's happening? His borderline unnatural reactions weren't unfamiliar, she'd seen them to a lesser extent in her own sparring with him, but it seemed to be slightly more pronounced against the slower Cardin for some reason and Jaune never beat him in combat class. Cardin got up off of the ground and swung at Jaune with a meaty fist, missing again, but then caught him with a powerful uppercut from the other hand. Knocking Jaune off his feet.
"Never mind, this is exactly like combat class," Pyrrha sighed to herself and made to rise up and help, when suddenly a loud roar came from across the clearing.
Ursa. A massive alpha came crashing through the trees straight for Cardin and Jaune.
Pyrrha started to move with even more urgency pulling out her weapons as she did, but then rolled to the side as a large paw crashed down next to her. Two smaller Ursa had snuck up behind her. Pyrrha cursed at herself. How distracted did you need to be for even one Ursa to sneak up on you? She needed to deal with them quickly if she was going to save Jaune.
As Pyrrha engaged the first Ursa, blocking a claw with her shield she saw, in the corner of her eye, Crocea Mors getting knocked out of Jaune's hand. Furious, she cut the Ursa before her in a long slash from shoulder to hip, killing it. As she charged the second Grimm that had now moved to block the path between her and Jaune she could only watch in frustration as the massive Ursa knocked Cardin's mace away. Jaune rushed in front of him, apparently unarmed, to engage the Ursa once more.
What are you doing you brave idiot? Get out of there! Pyrrha threw her spear at the face of her opponent in desperation. Hoping she wouldn't be too late.
Pulling Miló out of the Ursa's eye socket as it dissolved, Pyrrha quickly jumped past it to dash to Jaune's rescue, only to stop once more at the scene before her. Jaune stood protectively over Cardin, stabbing upwards not with Crocea Mors, but Lignum Mors. He must have kept his second weapon strapped to his back and under his hoodie, in its separated form. Using the bladed staff as a spear, he ran the Ursa through at the chest and pushed it onto its back, climbing on top of its chest as he did so. Jaune pulled the blade out and spun it once, separating the Ursa in two at the neck.
As the Ursa dissolved and Jaune helped Cardin to his feet, Pyrrha turned away with a small smile and headed back to the main group. The rest of the team needed to hear about this.
Back in their dorm room Ruby cringed as their team leader tore into Jaune.
"That's why you were spending all that time with Cardin?!" Blake demanded, "You are such an idiot! I appreciate what you did, but why the hell didn't you tell us about it?"
"It was my fault he found out."
"Yes, it was your fault for getting me to open up to the rest of the team because that went so badly," Blake said sarcastically. "You clearly forced Cardin to eavesdrop on us, while we were on the top of an empty fucking roof!"
"I should have kept my mouth shut. It wasn't my secret to share," Jaune said in a defeated tone.
"Are you even listening to me?" Blake slapped him. "It wasn't your fault!"
Ruby winced. She wasn't sure what a good leader was supposed to do, but she was pretty sure physically assaulting Jaune wasn't part of it. On the opposite bed to Ruby, Pyrrha was cringing even worse. She didn't seem to have expected this reaction from Blake in the slightest.
"Okay, okay, guys, let's all calm down," Ruby said, jumping up, waving her arms, and shoving herself in between the two. "From what Pyrrha said, it sounds like Cardin isn't even going to talk about it and the rest of his team doesn't even know, right Jaune?"
"I guess, but I doubt he'll feel that way forever." Jaune turned away. "He isn't the most understanding of people. Even if I did save his life."
"Also… I think you do own us an apology," Ruby said hesitantly.
"I'm sorry for betraying your trust Blake."
This time Ruby slapped him. Maybe Blake did have the right idea. "You really aren't listening, are you?" Ruby rushed in to hug the big idiot. "We aren't mad about that, we're mad you didn't talk to us about it! You left us and it hurt. We thought you hated us or something."
Jaune stared down at her for a few moments, and then seemed to finally realize how much of a dummy he was. "Okay Ruby, you win," he conceded, leaning down slightly to return the hug with an arm. "I'm sorry for not telling you all about this in the first place."
"I suppose that's good enough for now," Blake said tersely. "But promise us that next time you'll come to us with a problem instead of running off on your own."
"Right back at you kitty-cat," Jaune said with a knowing smile that Ruby couldn't quite understand.
AN: This bloody Jaundice/Forever Fall chapter. I do not like the arc it comes from and it was hard to write, so many scenes had to be tossed and started over from scratch. I did what needed to be done plot wise, but I am very glad to be moving on to bigger and better things. The remaining chapters in this volume are much more to my taste.