Author's Note 2: In addition to uploading this chapter, I have updated all previous chapters to 'remaster' them. This just meant cutting out any unnecessary updates in the Author's Notes and adding POV indicators for all chapters.

IF YOU GOT 22 NOTIFICATIONS OR EMAILS THAT THIS STORY WAS UPDATED, SORRY! THIS IS THE ONE CHAPTER THAT IS NEW!

Author's Note: Technically, this is the last chapter, but only kind of. See the author's note at the end for more info.

Future

(Jaune's POV)

P-Money: We're heading to order up my armor now. Still on for the rendezvous later?

Me: Yes. Plans still the same.

It made me beyond nervous to be back in Mistral so soon, considering the whole reason we were sent to Patch was to get away from Mistral. Neo had organized a new safehouse and we only moved under the cover of night, but it was hard to shake that feeling that you were making a mistake.

Maybe that's just the creepiness of this dungeon getting to me, though. I don't know how Neo found a dungeon in the middle of Mistral, but I would say we walked down enough steps to be four or five stories below ground; on top of that, we were already in an abandoned district, so the chances of being discovered were almost nothing. That didn't mean a lot when your enemy was Salem, however.

I followed Neo using my scroll's light until we made it to the bottom, where two thugs were posted outside of a door. Through a passage way I could see torchlight and crates stacked, meaning that Neo also used this place for storage or planning operations. But given that this is where she hid her most precious resources, I would doubt she would use this place for any capacity that could get it compromised.

The thugs unlocked the door and let us through, closing it behind us. In front of us was the prisoner we were looking for: Mercury Black. His legs were gone and attached to metal poles that came out of the ground, locking him into place. Around Mercury's waist was a sheet of metal that surrounded him in all directions and anchored into the walls to his sides and behind him. Because of this, his arms were allowed to be free, seeing as he had no way to reach around the sheet to detach his legs from their prison.

As the door opened, Mercury shot up from where he had been leaned over, sleeping against the metal plate. His face soured when he saw us, but there was very little intensity behind it. Simply put, there wasn't much fight left in him.

"What do you want?" He asked bitterly. He had no shirt, exposing the shell of the man he had once been; no doubt that Neo's men had only fed him the bare minimum to keep him alive, and his strength had rotted away.

"To set you free. Isn't it your lucky day?" I mocked.

Mercury never responded, and instead mustered all his strength into a glare at me. He couldn't hold it for very long, though.

"Look, one of us does kinda feel bad for locking you away in a dungeon instead of turning you over to proper authorities." I cut Neo a glance, and she smiled innocently. "So, if you help that one of us, I'm certain that they'll let you go."

Mercury tried to summon what strength and anger he had left, but it fizzled out before it could amount to anything serious. "What do you want from me?"

"I want you to take me somewhere, and once you do, you're free to do with your life what you want. I'll even give you your legs back."

"And what makes you think I know where this place is?"

"You've taken me there before. Neo only knows part of the way, and she says that you know the other part."

Mercury's eyebrows raised, though only slightly in his current state.

"You think I'm going to lead your forces there? There isn't anything you can do to me that would make me more scared of you than her."

"No, no, no. I'm not leading an army there. Just three people. I want to have a civilized discussion."

Whatever strength Mercury went into a laugh, though it soon sputtered into coughing as he braced himself with his arms on the metal sheet.

"Do you want to die?" He asked, before quickly changing pace. "You know what, I'll do it. It'll be the last thing I do, but at least I'll get to see you die first."

I turned to Neo. "Looks like we're all set. What could go wrong?"

Present

(Pyrrha's POV)

As soon as I turned the corner, I knew something was wrong. Nora had that grin on her face, the one that strikes fear into the heart of anyone who has ever seen it before. Some ancient texts spoke of it being a sign of the apocalypse, and they may not be far off.

"Nora…" I let out cautiously. "What did you do?"

"Hello Pyrrha!" Nora practically sung as she looked up from the scroll that she had been watching with that grin.

"Nora…" I let out again. "What did you do?"

"Why, whatever do you mean, Pyrrha?" Nora called back overly-playful.

"The grin, Nora. You have that stupid Nora™ grin that tells me you did something."

"Maaaaybe."

"Nora…"

A bang came from the closed door that Nora had been sitting next to, followed by voices. "Hey! Hey, is that someone out there?! Let us out, please!"

"Nora… Why is the door begging me?" Nora shrugged nonchalantly and returned to watching her scroll, even going so far as to put one of the two earbuds in. "Nora… Who did you lock inside that room?"

"Is that Pyrrha? PYRRHA LET US OUT!"

"No one."

"That sounds like…Jaune?"

"Nora, you know we could bust out the window!"

"Yeah, but you won't, or else you'll have Taiyang to answer to! Plus, Yang wouldn't like you breaking her window either!" Nora yelled back so suddenly that I jumped back.

"Yang wouldn't like us being in her room."

"All the more reason you two should get it over with!" Nora yelled back, silencing the dissenting voice from behind the door.

"Nora, who did you lock in there with Jaune, and why?"

"You know that thing on TV where when two people are angry at each other, their friends lock them in a room until they sort things out?" Nora asked.

"Yeah…?"

"Yeah." Nora echoed with her smug grin returning. "I even have a camera feed so I KNOW IF THEY'RE TRYING TO TRICK ME!"

"Damnit."

"H-how long have you had them in there?"

"An hour, at least. Gosh, I kinda lost track of the time; they're taking forever…"

I put my face in my hands as a long sigh escaped my lips. "Nora… first of all, you can't just take a silly trope from TV and expect it to work everything out magically. Second, that usually works because they two people are lovers, Nora, and when they're locked in a room together, they make up quick because they want to…" I trailed off, shaking the thoughts from my mind. "You know what, I don't care. Just make sure you water and feed them occasionally."

I turned to walk away, hoping to clear my mind of any shenanigans or Nora-ness, but didn't make it far.

"No, god, no! Pyrrha please! Don't leave us to her!"

That wasn't the voice that made me stop, though.

"It's been three days, Pyrrha."

"Huh?" I asked as I turned back around.

"We've all been here three days, and Jaune has pretty much talked with everybody at least once, except for Ren. They've been avoiding this for three days." Nora's grin was gone, and replacing it was a tight frown. "If they can't man up, then I'll be enough of a man for the both of them!"

"Somehow, Nora, I believe that."

"You better! If this doesn't work, then I have to resort to MUCH MORE PAINFUL STRATEGIES!"

"You're insane!"

"Nora, look, why don't we let them out-"

"I don't like this plan."

"-and talk to them separately. I'm sure you can talk Ren into just about anything, so let me talk to Jaune and see if we can't find a better method than whatever this is." Nora bit her lip and gave me a sideways glance, before relenting.

"Fiiiine." Nora hit a button on her scroll, and I heard a lock pop from the door next to me. I don't even want to know how Nora did that. "YOU GUYS CAN COME OUT NOW!"

Instantly, the door burst open as Jaune shot out and down the hall, shouting something along the lines of "FREEDOM" and "GET THAT PSYCHO AWAY FROM ME." He had made it most the way down the hall before I reached out with my semblance and picked him up by his metal chest plate, then took my time to walk down and catch up with him.

"Not so fast, Jaune. I got you out, so now you owe me. Let's take a walk." I teased as I finally sat him down. His eyes darted back and forth between me and Nora, and he quickly chose me.

We wondered around the exterior of the house for a little while, both aimlessly wondering but also looking for a quiet place to talk. Eventually, Jaune walked over and sat down against the wall of the house, using it both to lean against and for its shade. I moved to sit down close to him.

I looked down to my hand, and realized that it rested on the ground only a few inches away from his, and I began to move it toward his before catching myself. We've never actually addressed 'us' and the last time anything happened, it ended with me slamming him into a wall. Was it okay to go ahead and make a move on him now, or had something changed? I put my hand on the ground subtly, hoping he hadn't seen, and proceeded to stare at his hand while I fiercely debated what I should do.

After a few moments, a small chuckle from Jaune broke my concentration. I looked up and instantly realized that he had seen it and he was chuckling at me. Once my focus was on him, he tried to hide his smirk, and instantly I was torn between the urge to crawl under a rock in embarrassment and urge to wipe that stupid smirk off of his face.

I settled, of course, on reaching out to take his hand (now conveniently held open for me) and look away from his gaze as I slowly leaned over until I rested against his side, with my head on his shoulder.

"So what's the deal with Ren?" I asked after a long pause. The last time we did this, I ended up regretting ruining it by asking Jaune a question, so that factored in to how long I savored the moment before bringing this us. In the end, though, it was too important to leave unsaid, though.

"He's…different from everyone else." Jaune answered slowly.

"What do you mean?"

"With everyone else, there wasn't any one thing I could do to earn their forgiveness; it was just let them say what they needed to and accept whatever punishment they thought would help, and hope that time makes things better.

"With Yang, I gave her my best fight and let her decide how far to take it, and that seemed to help. Nora… I just kinda made breakfast for and said I was sorry." Jaune chuckled softly, and I used his distraction to scooch closer to him. "Weiss was interesting, because I thought she would be angrier, but instead she just made me apologized and…watched me weirdly."

"And Ruby?" I prompted.

"Ruby's the hardest to talk to now, because she's had the most time to think about things, so whenever she looks at me, the disappointment in her eyes hurts even more for it. But then when she looks from me to you, all of that anger just melts from her face and she looks like she feels guilty for even thinking I did anything wrong. I think she gets it now.

"And of course, I don't think I need to explain to you why I did what I did." Jaune half-teased as he squeezed my hand tighter.

"I don't know. It would be nice to hear that you did it for any other reason than to screw with Fate…"

Jaune squeezed my hand again but this time leaned his head to rest against the top of mine. It was a small, simple gesture, but damnit if I didn't stop breathing for two seconds because of it.

"What, I haven't told you how important you are to me as a friend yet?" Jaune asked. My heart sank to my feet as I completely missed the sarcastic tone in his voice, and it shattered into pieces as it hit the ground when he took his hand out of mine.

It was soon remedied as that same armed wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me tighter into his side. I would be lying if I said that I put any effort whatsoever into resisting it, too.

"That's not funny." I wined as I settled in to my new (favorite) position. "I almost thought you were serious, too." Jaune found it funny.

"So, what's different about Ren?" I redirected our conversation back to where we were.

"With everyone else, there wasn't something I could do to earn their forgiveness. Ren…well, Ren gave me one requirement that I have to meet before he'll agree to reform Team JNPR."

"What is it?"

"I have to tell everyone the full story of what I did, why I did it, and then…"

"And then…?"

"And then I have to apologize for it."

"That's…not terrible, is it?"

"N-no, but it's…I don't know, some part of me can't bring myself to do that yet."

"I-if it helps, don't worry about it hurting me. I know that you wouldn't mean for it to. If I'm what's holding you back, then it'll be okay. I promise."

Jaune never answered, but he pulled me just a little closer to him, and I reached around his waist with my arms to hold on to him. For the longest time, we just sat there, and I can't say that I could complain.

In the end, it was a buzz from his scroll that finally changed things.

"That probably means that they're ready."

"Who?"

"Nora and Ren. That probably means that they've gathered everyone for my Official Apology." Before I could ask a question, he continued. "Ren and I were trapped in that room for an hour. We actually did talk, at least enough to agree that once we got out we would go through with this. Nora just kept us in there for no reason."

Jaune moved to stand up, and before I could stop myself I groaned my displeasure. Begrudgingly, I got up to follow him.

We walked into the living room of the house, and true to their word, Ren and Nora had everyone assembled and waiting for us. There was one empty seat near the center of the area they had circled around with their seats. Yang, Taiyang, and Ruby respectively sat on the couch, with Weiss standing behind it but leaning over to be close enough to whisper to Ruby if needed. Nora sat in a wooden chair pulled into the room from the kitchen, and Ren stood behind it much how Weiss stood behind Ruby. In the back corner looking out the window was Neo, who appeared utterly disinterested, or would if she wasn't rigorously watching the crowd out of the corner of her eye.

"So, I'm sure Ren told you all that I was going to apologize, but I'd like to start with an admission instead.

"I'm sure that you've all come up with all sorts of theories on why I did this. Was this my ignoring my friends to protect them or because I didn't trust them, was I a good guy willing to sacrifice anything or was I a reckless fool who didn't care about the consequences? Well, the real reason I did it all is because I'm selfish.

"I wanted Pyrrha back for selfish reasons, although I'm sure no one here would have disagreed with them. That's how it started, and if that was where it ended, I'm sure this would be a lot easier, but things aren't that simple. Once I actually had that opportunity in front of me, I realized that I could be the one to save her, not us. That's where the real selfishness began. I thought that I could save Pyrrha. If I'm being perfectly honest, I thought that the only way that I could ever be as heroic as any of you was if I traded my life to save Pyrrha's; my most selfish thought was that if I died to bring her back, then I'll have traded me for her and made the world a better place in the process. If I'm being honest, I never really thought that my plans would work, and that's my final piece of selfishness: I thought this would get me killed, and I didn't care. I was taking the chance that sacrificing myself would bring her back, despite the great odds against it. In all reality, I was on a suicidal mission with no real chance of success. The fact that it all worked out in the end shouldn't take away from that."

Jaune paused to take a deep breath and steady himself before he looked around the room again. He had been avoiding eye contact as much as he could until now.

"Looking back at this now, that all sounds so horrible, and it is. I was so selfish that I was going to get myself killed without any of you ever knowing. I know that it was wrong. But that isn't the worst thing I did, as bad as that is.

"You see, the worst thing is that I'm not sorry for any of it."

Jaune looked around the room, his steely gaze and his jaw both set confidently.

"I'm not sorry about going behind your backs. I'm not sorry that I shot Ruby. I'm not sorry that I broke your trust. I would do it all again without changing a thing if I had to. The only thing more selfish that what I already have done would be do try to change things to make me look better, so I won't. I won't lie about being sorry, and I won't lie about what I did. If you're looking for a reason to hate me, then that's it right there.

"But whatever you do…" Jaune looked straight at Ren. "Don't think for a moment that you can just ignore it, that we could make it all better by apologizing for it. Don't cheapen what I did, both the good and the bad. If you're fine with what I did, then okay. But if you're not, then don't pretend to be. Don't feel like you have to get over it for the sake of the team, or our friendship; I don't deserve that."

Jaune and Ren never broke eye contact, having an intense staring contest that couldn't be interrupted by all of the strange looks Jaune was getting from the room. Whispers from just about everyone floated around the room, but Jaune and Ren never rose to them, locked in their silent battle.

"So, what do we do from here?" Ruby called out, breaking Jaune's focus for Ren.

"You can do whatever you like. I won't beg for your forgiveness or apologize for what I did, but that doesn't mean I won't work to make it up. I'm going to go after the White Fang and Adam Taurus and hope that's enough to at least put this all behind us. You can come with or you can not; it's up to you."

Everyone looked around at each other, unsure of what to do or say. Everyone except for Ren, who still hadn't taken his eyes off of Jaune.

"What do you say, Neo? Wanna start a gang war with terrorists?" Jaune called out. Neo perked up nearly instantly and walked slowly over to where Jaune was standing, twirling her umbrella with an evil grin on her face. "Figures." Jaune laughed softly before turning his attention back to the group.

Nora and I both stood up and almost started to walk towards Jaune, but Nora stopped when Ren never moved.

"R-Renny?" Nora almost choked out.

Ren looked up at Nora, then slowly shifted his eyes back to Jaune one last time before shaking his head and looking away, making it clear that he was not going. Nora looked confused and heart-broken as she shifted her eyes back and forth from Jaune to Ren, utterly lost. I could almost hear her heart shatter as she made her choice; she bowed her head and sat down next to Ren. It's too much to ask her to leave him.

Now all attention was left on me, the last person standing who hadn't made their choice. I made eye contact with Ren, whose eyes were distant and unreadable, though I would like to think I saw him struggling internally. I shifted my eyes to Nora, who looked up at me with wide eyes but couldn't hold my gaze, and turned away as tears threatened to wash over her.

It's too much to ask me to leave Jaune, though.

As I turned away from my friends and walked to Jaune, I wondered what I would have chosen if things were different. If I was still that same girl who chose to leave Jaune and follow my Destiny, would I have picked Jaune again here, or would I have stayed with Ren and Nora? Was I picking Jaune solely because of his ties to Fate, or was I being selfish and picking Jaune to be with him?

Does it even matter?

"If it helps, this isn't a final goodbye or anything. This is more of a 'see you later' than anything. We'll go track down the White Fang, and when we're done…" Jaune trailed off as Nora looked up to make eye contact with him, fighting a losing battle with her tears. "When we're done, we'll try this 'Team' thing again."

Author's Note 1: There was no actual reason for me to split the author's note into before and after the chapter, other than it's more dramatic that way. Gotta love some cheap drama.

Author's Note 2: For this story, this is the final chapter. However, next week there will be one more upload that might as well be the actual final chapter. It will be the epilogue, and will take place in the Future designation. As there have only been 2 Future sections so far in this story, it may not be difficult to guess where this takes place, but I think that there will be some fun surprises that make for a good ending. So yeah, this is the last chapter, but not really.

I don't have any plans to make a sequel to this story the same way that I didn't have any plans to make a second chapter to this story. I could see how a second story would happen and what it would entail, but that would take us well into the start of Vol 5, and by then I expect enough to have changed with RWBY that this story either makes no sense or just diverges too far from the RWBY-verse.

If this "final" chapter felt underwhelming to you, then don't worry, because it did to me too, and I'm writing the Epilogue basically because I feel it ends much better than this chapter could, so there's that.

You guys are lucky that I powered into an upload schedule and finished this story just in time, because if I had let this go past September 6th, then it never would have gotten finished. All of my time would have been sacrificed unto the alter of Destiny 2, and then one month after that I also would have Middle Earth: Shadow of War to distract me!

It's been fun, and until next week, Tschüss, Tschau, und Auf Wiedersehen! (bye, bye, and goodbye in German).

No, I'm not German. I speak it terribly, at like a Kindergarten level or worse.