Chapter 28
Back at the house, Weiss and Pyrrha laid together for a long time. They both lost track of the hours ticking by a while ago. Weiss was mulling things over in her head, and Pyrrha was giving her the silence to do so. The two of them basking in relative peace. Their slow breaths were the only thing that broke the stillness of the air, but eventually, Weiss found her voice.
"Why me?" It was a soft question, sudden and harsh against the serenity that had chosen them.
"Why not you?" Pyrrha returned, the reply as simple as it could get.
Both questions were valid. Both were reasonable. Both were even expected to the point of frivolity. Both women had asked them anyone, a testament to the words that needed to be said.
There was once a time Weiss would have prided herself on every little bit of perfection her family name afforded her. Why not Weiss Schnee indeed? She had money back then. She had the clout. Weiss even had the will to use it.
In her naivety, Weiss believed that the question Pyrrha voiced, and ones like it, were the questions on everyone's mind. Weiss was of a select few with such an upbringing. Such unfathomable privilege that it was to be expected.
Why not someone as beautiful as her? As wealthy as her? As influential as her? Why not choose to be absorbed into the Schnee family? Why not choose the immaculate lifestyle of the rich and famous? Why not pay the price of just a little conformity, and adopt bigotry?
Why not?
It wasn't until Weiss had gone to Beacon and learn about Blake, that she truly began to understand the true magnitude of that question. There were so many good answers as to why not. More than Weiss would ever want to admit. Sadly, she couldn't truly explain any of it the way she wanted to, so she focused on the obvious detail.
"Why not, you ask..." Weiss murmured darkly. "Why stoop so low, Pyrrha? Why choose someone with such a tainted past? Before me, there was only Jaune. He's too pure to be compared to someone such as myself. Too noble for his own good. I don't understand how you could ever make such a strange connection. What could you ever possibly see in me?"
Pyrrha laughed at that, eyes closing tiredly as she shook her head. "You two are actually quite similar, though I doubt you'd ever believe that."
"You're right." Weiss said. "I don't."
"A pity, all the same." Pyrrha replied.
"Care to explain, or am I just to wonder?"
Pyrrha's fingers trailed little circles, noticing that Weiss was so very soft to the touch. "There's this thread of self-deprecation that runs through the both of you." She explained slowly, following the loops her fingers made with her eyes. "Although you both deal with the negative perception of yourselves differently, you both only see negative things. Never the good." Pyrrha trailed off then, her arms tightening the embrace, her lips ghosting over smoothed porcelain skin. "Beyond that, you demand more of yourselves than might otherwise be fair."
"Me and Jaune?" Weiss huffed. "You are delusional."
"Am I?" Pyrrha asked. "Or are you just afraid to admit that you don't find Jaune half as annoying as you pretend to?" Pyrrha accused gently, her smirk hard to suppress.
"Oh, the man is aggravating." Weiss shot back. "I won't pretend otherwise."
"I believe that's the heart of the issue. It's why you aren't as close with him as anyone would like, and why he was so enamored with you at first." Pyrrha wanted Weiss to understand, but didn't know how best to go about that. Instead she placed a gentle kiss on the nape of her neck. "Both of you, in many ways, bring out the most honest sides of each other. As flawed as those sides might be, they're also quite endearing. Neither of you choose to acknowledge that, though…"
"Did you forget that he wouldn't stop hitting on me for the longest time?"
"No, Weiss, strangely enough, I didn't forget that at all." Pyrrha laughed. "I believe any romantic endeavor would have been doomed to fail. However, that's not to say I don't think you shouldn't have given him a chance. In fact, if you had dated each other for a short time, you might have come out of it learning something about yourselves." Pyrrha shrugged then as she pulled away and sat up, looking down at the comforter she had been laying on. "I know he would have…"
"What do you think I could have possibly learned from dating a man, that I couldn't have learned elsewhere, such as with a woman?"
"It's not his gender, Weiss." Pyrrha chastised. "It has nothing to do with him being a male."
"Then what is it?"
"It was the time and place. Jaune as a person, and the factor of youth." Pyrrha said it so honestly, it was clear the redhead believed her own words without a shadow of a doubt. "It was the situation you were both in. Your personalities and personal struggles. All of it leads me to believe that if things had been different, the two of you might have become more well-adjusted people."
"I think you may be coming down with a cold." Weiss replied, lifting her hand to Pyrrha's forehead as if to check for a fever.
Pyrrha only grasped that calculating hand and kissed the back of it, as if to wordlessly apologize, without backing down. "Weiss, listen, I can't explain it very well, and obviously that lesson has been lost to time now..."
"Then why bring it up at all?"
"Because you asked." Pyrrha said softly. "That being said, I think that the two of you would have come out of any relationship with an impossibly deep friendship. Within that, I think you would have found an ally that you both so desperately needed at the time...I think, in some capacity, you both would have healed a lot of personal scars for your trouble."
"Yes, well, as interesting as that might be to think about, it didn't happen that way." Weiss bristled uncomfortably. "I'm still not altogether fond of him, either."
"Trust me, I know." Pyrrha said then, lifting a hand to take long strands of red hair away from her face. Then she reached over, doing the same to help Weiss school hers into some semblance of order. With crystal blue eyes revealed from the veil that covered them, there was no place for Weiss to hide. No place for her to cast her gaze that would keep Pyrrha away.
The thoughts rolling around in the depths her analytical mind were like a mirror to Pyrrha. "I still don't see how you expect for this to work." Weiss said then. "You're in love with a monster. There is no excusing that fact."
"Nobody thinks that."
"Nobody says it." Weiss shot back. "Thoughts and feelings are more complicated, you know. It's easier to sweep the matter under the rug, rather than just accept that I might just be a terrible person. We all willingly blind ourselves for less."
"Have you ever spoken to Blake about the matter?"
"Why would I?"
"Supposedly you're a monster, aren't you?" Pyrrha sighed at length. If she couldn't get Weiss to take comfort in heartfelt words, then perhaps the woman might listen to logic. Pyrrha prayed it so. "I cannot help but think that if you were so terrible, Blake would have something to say about it. I doubt she would let you around a Faunus as young as Ace. If she thought you to be the horrible person you say you are, she probably wouldn't even tolerate you."
"Oh please, the moment you turn to Blake for a morality check, is the moment you truly are a lost cause to society." Weiss licked her lips, old taboos and ill-fated words bubbling to the surface. All sorts of acerbic arguments and conjecture boiling in her mind. "Blake is hardly the activist she makes herself out to be. She put that aside when she entered Beacon."
"I doubt that..."
"To what degree?" Weiss hissed, biting on her lower lip with a scowl. "She's still passionate about the Faunus plight, of course, but I'd be willing to bet she would put our team before anything else."
"And this is a problem because?"
"If it came down to a choice of loyalty, the answer is just as twisted as my own." Weiss shot back. "That kind a favoritism can be very, very dangerous."
"Under that logic, Weiss, I'd be a monster too."
"The difference is, Pyrrha, Blake and I stood a real chance at doing something about all of this." Weiss said, her hand flailing towards the window, pointing outward into the city. "We could have upheaved so many troublesome things, and reformed them. If we had pressed for control in the right places respectively. We could have done something to fix so many broken systems…but we didn't…" She shook her head, her failings too numerous to name. "We chose not to."
"I hardly see how that makes you a monster."
"Because they aren't your sins, Pyrrha." Weiss shot back. "They're mine. Just likes Blake's sins are her own. I don't know how she lives with herself, and honestly, that's not my problem. I have my own guilt to sort through without asking about hers."
Pyrrha felt her lips tug upward at the hilarious hypocrisy of it all. "Then, I suppose I'm in love with a monster." Pyrrha replied evenly, tired amusement dripping from her voice. "Does that admittance please you in the slightest?" The wordless frown she earned was enough of a reply, and Pyrrha chuckled low and weakly. "What you need is a distraction. Tomorrow, we're going out for breakfast, and I won't hear another word about it."
