Disclaimer
I don't own anything. RWBY is not owned by me. It is owned by talented people. I'm a nobody. Please don't sue me.
Fifth Case:
Ugly Truths
By the time they reached the base of Green Hill it was well into the afternoon, and Weiss and Ruby were both hot and sweating again. Ruby had taken off her coat and rolled up the black sleeves of her shirt, leaving her surprisingly muscled arms exposed to the air. Weiss found the sight both incredibly distracting and infuriating, as she was both enjoying the view more than she would've imagined, and wished that she could expose her skin in the same way.
"This is it!" the sprite said. It was sitting in Weiss' gloved palm, happily chewing on the remains of the chocolate chip cookie, having already eaten almost half of it. The tiny creature's stomach was swollen so much that she looked pregnant, but she still nibbled on some of the remainder as they paused to look up the side of the mossy, vine and lichen covered hill.
"Thanks!" Ruby said cheerfully, wiping her forehead. "We'd never have found it without you!"
"Yes, thank you," Weiss said, giving the sprite a sharp nod.
She grinned up at them with chocolate stained teeth for a moment before unfurling her iridescent wings and grabbing her remaining cookie. "Goodbye! And be careful!"
"Bye!" Ruby called, waving at the tiny figure as it struggled to fly away while weighed down with so much cookie. "She was adorable."
Weiss smirked. "Sprites aren't bad to deal with, but you need to be careful. They like to play pranks, and their idea of a prank can be very, very bad for mortals. Especially if you run into a cloud of them."
"A cloud?"
"That's the term for a group of sprites," Weiss explained. "When they get together in a group they start competing with each other for who can do the best prank, and humans don't usually survive their competitions."
"Oh," Ruby said softly, still staring after the sprite. "She seemed so nice..."
"She was," Weiss agreed. "For a native of Faerie sprites are very nice. Now come on, we've wasted enough of the day."
The climb of the hill was somewhat annoying. It was quite slick in places, although the vines provided plenty of handholds, and the incline was gradual enough to keep them from having too much difficulty. They were able to enjoy the breeze more easily on the exposed hillside, but at the same time the sun beat down directly onto them, and the end result left Weiss out of breath and miserable by the time they reached the gates of the mine.
"This place is… ugly," Ruby said after they'd rested for a few moments.
"Construction isn't easy here," Weiss said. "You can't just build things. If you can't get the stones to agree to what you want to do, two bricks won't stay on top of each other. And you don't even want to know what happens if you try to build out of wood here."
After they caught their breath Weiss approached the gate and knocked. It took a minute, but finally the metal door opened, revealing a thin, dog eared faunus wearing dirty blue coveralls with the SDC logo on them. His eyes immediately locked on Weiss. "Can I help you, ma'am?"
"Yes, I am here to inspect the mine," Weiss said.
"We weren't aware of an inspection, Ms. Schnee," he said stiffly.
"We didn't notify you."
There was a long pause. "I see. Can I see your identification, ma'am?"
Weiss pulled out her credentials, and after the man looked at it for a bit he handed it back to her. "Of course, Ms. Schnee. Would you like to see the foreman?"
"Yes, thank you," Weiss said.
"No problem, ma'am," he said, opening the gate wider. It creaked loudly, but he was able to open it, and then close it behind them once they stepped inside. "He is in the main building, ma'am. There are signs for his office."
"Thanks!" Ruby said, offering him a smile which he didn't return.
The inside of the Green Hill Mine wasn't much to look at. The walls enclosed the peak of the hill, and there was only one structure inside of the area. It was a one story building made of heavy gray stone blocks, and it was large enough to fill nearly the entire area, although there was plenty of open courtyard near the gate for security and to provide an area for workers to spend time away from the mines, although it was currently unoccupied.
"Not much to see," Ruby said.
Weiss shrugged. "Like I said, construction is very difficult here. The deals we've made make it easier to build a single structure rather than several. It's a consequence of deals made during the era of walled keeps."
The building had metal doors just like the gate, although smaller and able to be opened from the outside. Weiss pulled the creaking door open, and stepped inside the building itself. They were in a long hallway, illuminated by strange blue glowing stones attached to walls at regular intervals. The only doors leading from it were also made of metal, and the floor was gray stone tile. Each door had a small plaque on it indicating what was within, but there were no other decoration.
Weiss knew where to go, and after a few moments of walking she knocked on the appropriate door before simply opening it and stepping inside. It was a small office with a metal desk covered in paperwork, with a goat-horned faunus sitting behind the desk. He was wearing the same SDC coveralls that the gate guard had been wearing, although his had the word 'Foreman' written on the chest.
"Ms. Schnee?" he asked. "What are you doing here? We didn't receive notice that anyone was coming."
"We didn't send any notice," Weiss said. "I'm here to investigate possible illegal Dust Trafficking."
The foreman's eyes widened. "Dust trafficking?"
"Yes," Weiss said. "Have you observed anything unusual, Mr…?"
"Taupher Thistle, ma'am," he said. "And no, not that I can think of. As I'm sure you saw, there's nothing around for miles and miles. We don't ever leave the compound, and we certainly don't open non regulation portals from here. Not sure how dust trafficking is supposed to happen."
"I'd like to look at your records," Weiss said. "If you have nothing to hide then this won't take very long."
He hesitated for a moment before sighing. "Alright, ma'am. I'll show you to the records room."
The records room was next door to his office, and he unlocked the door to let them inside. They walked in to find a small, cramped room with filing cabinets filling most of the available space. Taupher hesitated at the door until Weiss turned to face him. "Thank you, Mr. Thistle. That will be all for now."
"Are you sure that you won't need anything?" he asked.
"No, thank you," Weiss said a little more sharply. "We will stay out of your way and let you continue working."
"Right," he said. After another long moment he crumbled under Weiss' steady gaze and left the room. They could hear through the wall the sound of his own door opening and closing as he returned to work.
"Well, I'm going to check his records to see if they match what I remember of the company records," Weiss said. "These mines can only send paper records back to our world, and proper record keeping policy includes more details than headquarters receives."
Ruby nodded. "I think I'm gonna take a look around, talk to the workers and stuff."
Weiss hesitated. "Are you sure? You've never been here before."
Ruby gave her a reassuring smile. "I'll be careful. I just wanna see if anyone has heard anything. I mean, if someone's smuggling dust out of a here, someone had to notice, right?"
"I would assume so," Weiss said. "Please be careful. We're still in Faerie, and…"
She trailed off, and Ruby reached out and took Weiss's gloved hand, giving it a gentle squeeze before raising it to her mouth to kiss her palm. They both blushed as Ruby gave it another squeeze. "I'll be careful."
"O-okay," Weiss said.
Ruby left, and Weiss sighed, looking around the room. After another moment of hesitation she opened the first cabinet and began reading through reams of records.
Hours later she finally put away another document and stood from the floor. The small room had no accommodations, so she was forced to sit on the stone floor to look at the files, and she hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast. Her watch didn't work in Faerie, but she suspected that it was late enough her time to have already eaten dinner, which did nothing to help her mood.
Weiss left the records room and looked around. After a moment of hesitation she decided to go the cafeteria. She wasn't sure where Ruby would be, although a place with food was a reasonable starting point for a search, and she was too hungry to go anywhere else.
While she knew the basic layout for the mines, the drab, empty corridors all looked the same, and it took a while to finally find the right room. She slowly pushed the door open and was very happy at what she saw. Food was still being served, and while there were a handful of faunus workers in their coveralls, most of the long tables were empty. Even better, sitting with a few of the workers and speaking quietly was Ruby.
Weiss smiled, before walking to the front of the room and grabbing a tray. The cafeteria workers stared at her, shocked to see a Schnee most likely, but fortunately she saw no signs of them spitting into her food while she filled her tray. The offerings resembled what she had read about prison food, and smelled worse than they looked, but eventually she simply filled her plate with overcooked canned vegetables and some kind of mushy casserole before making her way over to Ruby.
Ruby had her own tray of food in front of her, although her meal was mostly eaten already. She also had one of the most serious expressions on her face that Weiss had ever seen from her as she spoke quietly to some of the workers. When they noticed her approach the faunus stood and left, which let Weiss sit across from Ruby, offering her girlfriend a smile. Ruby didn't return the gesture, making Weiss' stomach churn.
"Ruby?"
"Weiss," Ruby said flatly.
Weiss bit her lip, unable to continue looking at Ruby. She focused on her food instead, but the sudden tension robbed her of her appetite, and she found herself picking at the tray rather than eating much. Time passed with interminable slowness as she nibbled at her food, eating small amounts of the awful, overcooked mush, until finally Ruby broke the silence.
"I looked around for a while," Ruby said. "I saw the place where the faunus live… did you know they don't have rec rooms? Of any kind? And they have these big shared barracks. They cram forty workers in each room, just rows of bunk beds and little lockers for their stuff. I guess that was enough space, since they're only allowed to bring one small bag with them for five years here."
"It does cost quite a bit to ship objects through portals," Weiss said blandly without looking up at her girlfriend.
Ruby gave an unhappy grunt before continuing. "I also found my way into the mines. Wow. I mean, I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I thought, you know, some kinda modern mining of some kind or something. You know? Do you know what I found?"
"Modern machinery doesn't work in Faerie," Weiss said after a long pause. "The standard procedure is to use picks and hammers to break up the rock. Raw dust is a crystal which runs in veins in the stone, so they have to tunnel through solid rock to find it."
"Those tunnels were tiny," Ruby seethed. "I had to crouch just to move around, and the only lights were on their hard hats. The people mining were in the dark, down on their knees swinging picks against solid rock. They were dirty, and exhausted, and even injured they had to work… are you even listening to me?"
Weiss finally looked up at Ruby, her face carefully kept blank. "I always listen to you, Ruby."
"Do you listen to them," she snapped, gesturing around the room.
"Probably not as often as I should," Weiss said. "Most of my experience has been them hating me and attempting to kill me for being a Schnee."
Ruby hesitated for just a moment before narrowing her eyes. "I'm not surprised. They come here, work really long shifts everyday, then pass out on hard bunks at night just to get up and do it again the next day. Even if they had time off what could they do with it? There's nowhere to go. Nothing to do. This… they're kept like slaves in pens."
"It's in their contracts," Weiss said. "We explain everything about the conditions thoroughly in them. Faunus workers have tried suing in the past, but everything is explicitly spelled out in the contract, including the mandatory five year terms, the amount of material they can bring, even the living conditions and amount of work they will be doing."
"You think that makes it okay? They can't even quit because of those contracts. How can you use magic to force them to work for you!?"
"If we didn't they would die," Weiss snapped, finally feeling her temper fraying. "Do you think my family woke up one day and decided to use faerie contracts to force them to work for us? The magic in those contracts is what keeps them alive! If they weren't magical they wouldn't be binding in Faerie, and they couldn't get the protections we paid for them to have."
"That-"
"No!" Weiss snarled, clenching her fists. "It's my turn to talk. Do you want to know the price we've paid for those contracts? What we've done to keep you safe while you and everyone else benefiting from them spit on us?
"Do you want to know why you can see? Light doesn't do anything without the agreement forged by one of my ancestors, Amaz Schnee, who gave up her and her children's ability to ever see to let us do so here. That branch of the family died out in the seventeen hundreds, but not before blinding thirty-seven people."
She grabbed her white ponytail and pulled it in front of her, waving it angrily at Ruby. "Do you want to know why our hair is white? Our family once had dark hair, but we were able to trade the color to gain the ability for the food eaten here to nourish us. Otherwise that meal you and everyone else here ate would do nothing for you.
"Before the assassination attempt I was to be the heir to the SDC. You've met Winter, though. My older sister. Did you think she was competent?"
Ruby didn't say anything at first, but finally spoke when Weiss waited pointedly for a response. "Weiss..."
"Don't Weiss me," she snapped. "Do you want to know why Winter couldn't be the heir?"
"Why?" Ruby finally asked.
"Do you remember how you couldn't breath when we passed through the portal? The price for the air to sustain us was the fertility of the first born Schnee in every third generation. Winter can never have children, and no matter how competent only someone who can is eligible to be heir.
"And of course, those are just the start," Weiss continued after taking a deep breath, calming down slightly. "One particularly ruthless Schnee who was exiled from the family when he agreed to exchanged one hundred and one human children for dust mining rights. We never learned what the Sidhe Lords did with them, but they've always had a thing for children. Do you want to know what was demanded when we tried to improve the quality of life for the miners? Do you?"
"What was demanded?" Ruby asked somberly.
"In exchange for any improvements, we would've had to allow the Sidhe Lords to ignore the Great Barrier. Before it was created they went on regular Wild Hunts, riding through the countryside kidnapping any children who caught their fancy, which they could do because of some old agreement with a king during the dark ages. We can't form any deal to improve things that doesn't include that provision, and we refuse to allow that, so here we sit, stuck with the deals we were able to strike before the Great Barrier."
"But why can't they leave?" Ruby asked. "Why can't they choose how long they work? Go home sometimes?"
Weiss sighed, deflating, her anger's departure leaving her feeling hollowed out. "In the beginning we made deals which only granted our protections to our family members. Eventually we extended the deals to allow those we claim and put under our protection to be helped by them, which is how you are here. That won't work for our employees, however. The nature of a working relationship won't allow us to claim them, and so we struck another deal, which allows them to be bound by magical contract for a period of five years and five minutes. Part of the deal is that they are bound to remain in Faerie for the entire time of the contract. They literally cannot leave or it breaks."
"What happens if it breaks?"
"The contracts punish them," Weiss said soberly. "Whoever is responsible loses half the span of their years… they just… wither and age like I was touching them. If I let a worker go home I would be the one to suffer that fate. If they refuse to work, the magic inflicts that upon them. Slowly at first, and painfully enough that most who try to go on strike only lose a few months of their life."
"This is… this is just wrong," Ruby said.
Weiss shook her head. "Wrong was the time when the Sidhe rode freely through the countryside. Wrong was when demons were as common as wolves, and Grimm attack was a leading cause of death. Wrong was when humans were nothing but pawns in the machinations of gods and demon lords who cared nothing for us. The only way we can maintain the Great Barrier is with dust mining, and the only weapon we have against the monsters that slip through the cracks is dust."
"The ends don't justify the means," Ruby said.
"Sometimes they do," Weiss snapped. "Sometimes the ends must be reached, and the means are the only way to reach them. The miners here suffer for five years to save the lives of millions of innocent people, and we pay them and provide all of the safety and protection the law requires. It's easy to judge us when you don't have to make the hard choices, Ruby. But just because you can be blissfully ignorant doesn't mean we all can be."
They sat in silence for while, Weiss looking down at her food, her appetite long gone. After a bit she spoke again, this time not looking up at her girlfriend. "I've never lied to myself about what this all means, not since I was old enough to understand. Just because it has to be done doesn't mean that I'm a good person for doing it. If you can't be with me I… I will understand..."
"No!" Ruby interrupted, her sudden shout drawing Weiss' eyes. "No, I… I don't like this. I don't like this at all. And I hate that you're a part of it. And it… it shouldn't happen. But it does. And maybe it has to… maybe there's something you could do, I don't know. But… I know that you aren't this bad person you think you are, and I know that I love you. This doesn't… me being mad doesn't mean I'm just going to dump you, okay? I love you, Weiss."
Weiss felt her heart unclench as she reached out and took Ruby's hand, squeezing gently. The rest of her anxiety faded as she felt Ruby squeeze back.
