This idea came when I was reading through a discussion thread about how Blake might react to discovering fairy tales are real. Enjoy!


Weiss shifted uncomfortably. Shortly after Ozpin/Oscar and Qrow had stepped out to 'run an errand', Blake had arrived along with Sun. First there had been crying. When Yang came downstairs, the crying quickly turned to shouting. The shouting grew louder, accompanied by shoving, and peaking with Yang flipping furniture. It culminated with the shouting melting into loud sobbing as the two reunited partners fell to their knees, clutching each other like drowning sailors clinging to a buoy. When they had calmed down, Ren set out tea and some leftovers, and Ruby began catching Blake and Sun up on what Ozpin had revealed.

The change had been subtle. Even after the fight had passed and Yang had expressed forgiveness, Blake had huddled close to Sun, looking at the wall to avoid meeting Yang's eyes. As Ruby spoke, Blake's face showed the same incredulity that they'd all displayed when they'd learned the truth. When she heard how Ozpin was the wizard and the roles Cinder and Pyrrha played, her ears twitched straight up. Then she grew sober, the emotional storm of the reunion forgotten, her face becoming more and more stern as they told her the story. Everyone else was so overwhelmed by her return or so focused on filling her in, that no one noticed the shift that had made Weiss's hair stand on end until Ruby had finished. Ruby blinked at Blake.

"Are you okay?" she asked. "I know it's a lot to take in."

Blake set down her mug slowly. She pressed her hands against the tops of her thighs, pursing her lips in thought. Then she looked up and locked eyes with Ruby.

"Is that everything?" Her voice was quiet, but it possessed a grave and steady quality that chilled the room. Glancing around the circle, Weiss saw that everyone was starting to feel the same way she did. Ruby's mouth hung open for a moment before she managed to swallow a sizeable lump in her throat.

"Yeah, that's all we know. You're kind of freaking me out a little, Blake."

"Good," said Blake. She looked around the group once. "He didn't give any of you additional information?"

Everyone else said 'no' or shook their head. Blake rubbed her face, as if she could simply wipe her frustration away. She took a shuddering breath, then exhaled.

"If that's true," she said, "There's something you all need to know."

The door swung open at that moment, slamming into the wall. Qrow stumbled in, followed by Oscar. Oscar closed the door, then turned his head in confusion. Qrow blinked, then threw his hands up in an intoxicated flail.

"Great! We got more huntsmen!"

Blake rose to her feet and turned her back on the pair. "Team meeting, out back, now," she said. She looked at Jaune, Nora, and Ren. "You too."

"Um, you're Blake, I guess?" Blake turned to see Oscar standing next to her. "This is going to sound odd, but there's someone who says they can help you understand what's going on."

"I said 'Team Meeting'," Blake snapped. "You aren't part of the team."

A green light flashed across Oscar's body and the young boy stood erect, his eyes filled with a sage's confidence.

"Perhaps not, Miss Belladonna," said Professor Ozpin. "But I feel I can still offer valuable perspective. If you might recall, your team was but one of many I oversaw during my tenure as Headmaster."

Blake seized Oscar by the collar and slammed him into the wall, with enough force to crack it.

"You two-faced bastard!"

The room burst into chaos. While Oscar dangled from Blake's grip, Ruby darted towards Blake and attempted to pull her hands off Oscar. Qrow caught Blake in a headlock, squeezing her throat. Blake slapped at Qrow with one hand, holding Oscar with the other. She started to feel lightheaded, but Yang and Sun pried Qrow off her and the feeling passed. Qrow pulled free of the two blondes and put up his fists, only to find the two of them squared off against him. Jaune joined them, sword in hand, while Ren tried to hold him back. Ruby froze, her head jerking between her uncle and her friends like a broken animatronic. Everyone was shouting, but it all faded to a low roar as Blake locked eyes with the person inside Oscar.

A sound like a cross between a gong ringing and a bomb exploding rang out, and everyone flinched. They turned to look at Nora, who held Yang's gauntlet in one hand and the large iron wok she had fired it into in the other.

"Everyone calm the hell down!" she said. Qrow and the group that had almost fought him stepped back from each other, but never looked away. Ruby was huddled against the wall, gasping like she'd sprinted to Haven from Vale in the span of an hour. Weiss had wrapped an arm around Ruby's shoulder, whispering reassurances while she held her hand. Nora's attention drifted to Blake, who still held Oscar's body to the wall.

"Blake, let him down."

"No," Blake said.

"Blake—"

"It's alright, Miss Valkyrie," Ozpin said, clear despite the pressure against his throat. "She has every reason to be upset."

"Please stop," Ruby said, her voice quivering. "We're all on the same side."

Blake glanced to Ruby, then back to Ozpin, and then she let go, letting him collapse to the floor. She let out a heavy sigh.

"We may be on the same side, but that doesn't mean we want what's best for each other."

Blake walked over to Qrow and plucked his flask from his pocket. She took two heavy swigs from it as she walked back towards Ruby, then slid it into her pocket. She turned to face the group, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"Would someone who isn't a wizard or an alcoholic care to summarize the Tale of the Four Maidens?" Blake asked.

After a moment of silence, Ruby spoke, stammering with uncharacteristic timidity: "A lonely old man gave four sisters magic to thank them for being kind to him."

"That wasn't the only thing he gave them…" Blake muttered in sing-song.

"I don't understand."

Blake shook her head. "I'm holding you all to unrealistic standards," she said. "That version has been popular since a few decades after The Great War ended. You heard it from a big pastel volume with a watercolor painting on the cover, right? Tales of Ages Past? Even I had it as a kid. After the Great War happy endings sold better, but it's still possible to find the original versions of many old stories in Pallas' Fairy Tales. My dad had a copy from his grandfather and he—"

Blake broke off and pressed a hand to her chest. She took another pull from Qrow's flask, inhaled and spoke again:

"Not many people know the full stories because so few go back and read the original versions. Most of them have endings we'd label 'dark' now because fairy tales were considered cautionary tales for children back then. The Ogre of Kuchinashi Temple was framed and executed for the murders of the woman he loved and his best friend; The Fairest Faunus skinned her coat with a magic knife to appeal to a human prince, but died of heartbreak and blood loss when he didn't reciprocate her feelings…and the four maidens were deceived into accepting a burden they were never told about."

"Miss Belladonna—" Ozpin began.

"Let her finish," Jaune said.

Ozpin sighed, but didn't interject again. Blake continued:

"In the original, the old man wasn't just lonely: He had become a hermit after a long life, fraught with misfortune at his hands. Much of the trouble he caused had resulted from honest mistakes, and those acts that stemmed from selfishness or wrath were often counterbalanced by good deeds. He wasn't evil, he was just human. But he had lived for so long that his negative emotions attracted demons that tormented him at night, reminding him of all the wrongs he had committed over his life."

The room grew dead still at that last sentence. Blake let out a dry laugh.

"You're catching on. The part where the four maidens visited was more or less the same, but when he decided to share his powers with them he passed along his negative emotions as well, with the thought that they'd want to help him, and that their youth would give them the strength to weather the demons' torments. They absorbed his fears, his anger, his guilt, and his sorrow, without being told. The demons ceased tormenting him, and haunted the four sisters for the rest of their days. Their newfound power and their drive to help others kept them from being driven mad at night by their affliction, but every day was anguish for them.

"The story was originally about the consequences of accepting gifts from strangers, and the periodic difficulty of helping others. The sanitized version turned it into a bland creation myth with some vague moral of power coming to those who were selfless. I thought editing it like that was just propaganda and an attempt to cater to a wide audience."

Blake glared at Ozpin. "Now I suspect that wasn't quite the truth."

All eyes turned to Ozpin. Yang and Jaune glared like Blake. Ren, Nora, and Weiss all looked nervous. Even Qrow looked a little uncertain. Ruby kneaded her cape with her fingers, a nervous childlike gesture.

"The story got something wrong," Ruby said, her voice small. "Right professor?"

Ozpin stood silent for a long time. "The second transfer was one of the greatest moments of weakness in my life," said Ozpin. "It was never meant to be permanent, but I gave too much of my power to fix my mistake. The draw of my emotions gave the Maidens an easy way to lure the Grimm away from human settlements, but it condemned them to the same isolation and suffering that I had experienced for my entire life."

"Was that really a mistake?" Jaune asked. "It's easy to manipulate someone who feels isolated."

"That was never my intent. With the original four or Miss Nikos."

Jaune glared at Ozpin, tensed to fight. Then he shook his head and walked to the door.

"I'll look for an inn with room for eight," he said. "I'll call when I find one."

Jaune slammed the door behind him. Nora and Ren trailed after him. Ruby pulled the hood of her cloak up and drew the folds of the garment around her, shuffling back towards her room with Weiss at her side. Qrow took a step towards her, but Yang stopped him and shook her head before following her sister. Qrow slouched towards the door, disappearing into the night. Blake strode after the rest of Team RWBY with Sun. Just before they turned the corner, Ozpin spoke:

"There's one more thing the story got wrong, Miss Belladonna." Blake turned to look at Ozpin. While in control of Oscar, the boy's eyes had somehow reflected the Professor's age. Now his posture made his whole body appear frail, despite his youth. Blake felt a pang of sympathy for the man, and it stoked the hate in her gut even more.

"I parted with many painful emotions. But I never parted with my guilt."