Disclaimer: I do not - nor do I claim to - own RWBY or any other media that may be referenced in this fic. All rights go to their respective owners. The only thing I lay any claim to are my OCs.
Raven is outgunned and she knows it.
It hadn't taken long for Tyrian to slaughter her men, with some having decided to run rather than stay and die.
Cinder had immediately gone after Vernal, leaving Raven with a tough choice to make.
"You want that key so bad?" she asks as Cinder moves to strike Vernal dead.
All four of the attackers train their eyes on her.
Slowly, Raven pulls it out, letting the last of the sun's rays glint off the metal of the pocket watch.
"I'll cut you a deal. You can have it, but you leave my tribe alone," she tells them.
Tyrian giggles. "Oh Raven, it is far past time for bargaining. You think you can fool us a third time? No no no, you made your grave, and it is our duty to ensure you lie in it." He chuckles as he kicks out at the bandit that tried to attack him from behind. "It doesn't matter if you give it to us willingly or not anymore, you will die today."
Behind her helmet, her face shielded from their scrutiny, Raven frowns.
"Well then, if I'm to die, it will be on my terms," she told them. "And I told you, I want nothing to do with old Oz, and I want nothing to do with Salem. So, I think it only fitting that…"
In her hand, she crushes the pocket watch and uses her magic to grind it into nothing but dust that falls to the ground.
"Neither of you get what you want."
Cinder reacts by plunging her grotesque grimm arms into Vernal's stomach and removing a chunk of flesh, white bone poking through the red blood dripping down it.
Vernal barely has time to gasp in pain before she's dead.
"WHERE'S THE POWER?" Cinder demands as she feels nothing from the dead girl.
"It doesn't have to be like this Blake," Adam tells her as she stands in front of a harshly breathing Sun.
"You're right, it doesn't. But you chose this, Adam. You chose this when you decided to kill and torture innocents, when you decided to destroy homes and livelihoods. You don't get to say we don't have to fight when you chose to fight," she tells him.
"And just what do you think you are doing right now?" he mocks.
"Protecting. Defending. I tried to put away my sword, Adam, but you just dragged me back," she replies. "What you're doing is wrong, and if I have to fight you to stop this destruction, then so be it."
"You already failed. Look around you, Blake. There is nothing but rubble and blood here. But from these ruins, a brighter future will be built, one where we can be free," he tells her.
Sun coughs behind her as he gets up.
"But if you are going to stand between us and that future, then you are as good as standing against us," Adam informs her. "So what will it be, Blake? Are you going to defend the world that benefits from our suffering, or are you going to come home and fight for our freedom?"
She pulls her cleaver-sheath from her back and settles into a ready position. "You and I have very different definitions of home and freedom."
He launches forwards with a slash and Blake catches it on her sheath as she brings her katana around to swipe at his head. He blocks it with his own sheath so she brings up one leg to push him away, flipping backwards in the process to give herself room.
Illia enters the fray in that moment, attacking Adam from behind. Her whip grazes him before he dodges out of the way.
The two girls exchange short nods. They're doing this together.
Behind his mask, Adam's eye flicks between the two, weighing up his options.
"You don't control us anymore, Adam," Illia tells him. "And we know you better than anyone else alive."
He sheaths his sword before backing away into the foliage.
Neither girl follow him, but the White Fang copy him, retreating into the darkness of the trees.
"Why aren't you going after him?" Sun asks them.
"Because he knows he can't beat us in an outright fight. He's trying to lure us after him so he can separate us and pick us off easier," Illia explains. "I refuse to manipulate by him anymore, and he's not worth the energy."
"He killed my team," Sun tells her. "How is that not worth the energy?"
"Killing him won't change the fact that they're gone. He'll pay for what he's done eventually, but we need to keep our focus here," Blake says. "On the survivors and looking for more. Sun, going after him blindly won't achieve anything."
"He killed my team, Blake, my family," he croaks out, voice catching in his throat.
"I know."
She holds him because there's nothing else she can do to console him.
"WHERE IS THE POWER?!"
"Cinder," Mercury breathes out. "She's already here."
Maria levels out the airship just off-centre of the fight.
"Alright, we all know the goals, let's do this," Qrow says, opening up the side door and jumps down.
Weiss uses her glyphs to propel herself towards the fight, Yang and Mercury using recoil to follow close behind. Pyrrha jumps out and surfs down on her shield with Rosa surfing on one of her swords.
Oscar uses the magnetism between the two parts of his weapon to propel himself and Jaune just jumps with hopes for the best.
Tai brings up the rear thudding down to the ground.
In the clearing, Pyrrha manages to arrive first and she calls up her powers, flames dancing around her flames and wreathing her eyes.
"You want power? Come take it," she challenges.
Cinder straightens and a feral grin stretches across her faces. "So even Oz isn't above mutilating souls, the hypocrite."
With Cinder's attention on her other half, Raven grabs her saddle bag and transforms.
"Tai, go after her," Qrow orders.
"On it," the blond replies as he races after his ex-wife.
Tyrian moves to follow but Qrow intercepts and their blades begin a deadly dance. Mercury arriving to help out.
On the side-lines, Emerald creates illusions that trip up Pyrrha, but Rosa isn't having it, taking on the green-haired girl.
Weiss takes up position providing cover for Pyrrha even as Jaune joins Rosa in interfering with Emerald's own attempts at interfering in the fight between the two half maidens.
Hazel would have been more than happy to sit on the sidelines, but Yang and Oscar draw his attention when the blonde asks the younger what she should do, and the younger's eyes flash gold and he speaks in Ozpin's voice.
"Oz…pin…" he growls.
"Oh no," Ozpin mutters.
"Let me guess, he doesn't like you?" Yang asks.
"That would be correct," Ozpin states as the two watch Hazel inject himself with burn Dust.
"I'll kill you over and over again!" the giant of a man proclaims.
"You're going to have to get through me first, big guy," Yang tells him, moving in front of her sort-of cousin.
"How many more children must die for you?" Hazel demands.
Yang huffs. "You could just not kill children that stand in your way, you know," she scolds half heartedly as she dodges around his wide sweeping blow.
"They were my family, Blake, and they're dead," Sun sobs. "They were all I had left, and I left them."
"Did you tell them where you were doing?" she asks softly.
"Kinda. Said I was worried 'bout you. They were the ones who told me to go after you, make sure you were okay," he says. "I didn't mean to stay on the boat, but you needed me."
"I don't think they'd be mad at you for that."
"I never got to tell them," he admits.
"Tell them what?" Illia asks.
"How much they meant to me," Sun tells her. "I… When I arrived at Haven, I'd just lost my parents. I literally had no one. But my team helped me through everything. They were the brothers I never had. Neptune and I were the closest, obviously, and Sage was this figure that wasn't afraid to tell me when I was being stupid or having stupid thoughts. Scarlet and I were the most strained, but damnit, he was still my brother. I never got to tell them that."
The three sit together as Sun slowly pulls himself together.
"I can't believe they're dead," he says softly.
"Everything's changed," Blake replies with a sigh.
"I wish they'd go back to before."
"I don't," Illia tells them. "I don't want to go back to being manipulated by Adam. But I never wanted this either."
In battle, split seconds make all the difference.
A split second is the difference between dodging and getting hit, between hitting your target and missing.
With Cinder and Emerald being targeted by so many opponents, you would think they'd be overwhelmed easily. Unfortunately, that isn't the case.
Emerald lures Rosa and Jaune further into the trees, losing Jaune in the process as he tries to keep up with the two girls. With Jaune not there to counter Emerald's illusions on Rosa, her fight is much harder.
Meanwhile, Weiss and Pyrrha struggle to fend off Cinder's unrelenting quest to get the other half of the Fall maiden power.
Yang and Oscar try to get Hazel to go down (and stay down) with little success, the man continuing to force himself through the pain. On the other side of the road, Tyrian and Qrow and Mercury continue their deadly dance of blades and bullets.
Tyrian's eyes shift from sickly yellow to glowing purple and Qrow feels his aura shatter under the scorpion's semblance.
"Heh, it's gonna take more than an aura break to stop me," Qrow tells his opponent, hefting his scythe into a ready position just in time for Tyrian to rocket forward.
Mercury fires off a shot that forces Tyrian to alter his direction but it does little to keep the blow from connecting.
"Shit," Qrow curses as he feels his side get ripped open by Tyrian's stinger.
"Qrow!" Mercury exclaims.
"I've got him," Jaune says as he enters back into the fray and takes up a position next to Qrow.
"I thought you were with Rosa?" Mercury asks as he manages to kick Tyrian across the road.
"They're both really fast and I managed to lose them," he admits.
"PYRRHA!" Weiss yells drawing everyone's attention.
As the red-haired half-maiden clutches the spear impaled through her side, Weiss and her arma gigus swing their swords crackling with ice Dust towards Cinder who skids out of the way. Darting into the undergrowth, the half-maiden takes off in the direction that Raven and Tai had.
"Arc, go help her, I'll be fine," Qrow orders.
The blond rushes over to his girlfriend, and puts pressure on the wound. "You just have to hold on, Pyr, we'll get you back on the airship and get you help," he tells her, tearing his hoodie to strips as best he can with one hand. "You have to hold on though, I can't lose you."
"PYRRHA!"
Rosa's eyes go wide at the scream and she has just a split second to make a choice.
Emerald's sickle flies past her head and Rosa ducks under it, letting her momentum carry her backwards into the thick of the trees. From there she abandons that fight, running towards her friends.
She can hear Emerald chasing her but she pays the thief only enough attention to avoid getting caught by her blades.
Rosa emerges onto the dirt road and sees Jaune bent over Pyrrha who is bleeding out on the ground, her siblings still fighting of a giant of a man, and Mercury losing ground to the psychopathic faunus. Brandishing her swords, she leaps into action, driving the scorpion away from her cousin.
"Oh the poor little wolf, all your friends dropping like flies, no one to help you now," the scorpion coos at her before cackling wildly.
Emerald bursts out of the trees and behind her goggles, Rosa spares her a glance.
"Mercury, Weiss, take care of her," she orders quickly.
"But," Mercury tries to argue.
"I can take him," she assures before turning her attention back on her deranged opponent. "You're right, I am a wolf, and I'm a hunter to the core, scorpion. Are you ready to be prey?" she growls out as she grips the hilts of her swords tighter.
"You think you're the hunter here? Oh, poor little wolf, how wrong you are," he mocks her.
"That's what you think," she mutters before she's rushing him.
Qrow watches with wide eyes as his younger niece fights like a force of nature. Swords flashing like lightning and dodging strikes as if a whirlwind was guiding her.
Opposing her, the scorpion faunus grew even more chaotic in his attacks, leaping spontaneously and not holding back an inch.
Rosa, a girl not even seventeen yet, was matching him blow for blow.
The moment of change between the fast-paced movements and flashes of metal was a blink and you miss it moment.
A tail striking out.
A sword left suspended in the air.
A hand wrapping around the base of the stinger.
Rosa's body twists around as she holds the stinger away from her opponent's body with one hand, while the other swings its sword in a deadly arc through flesh and bone.
"YOU BITCH!" the wounded faunus screams.
He launches forwards, intent on ripping her aura to shreds and cutting off her own faunus trait, her ears.
Rage clouds his vision as blinding hot pain shots up his spine, he doesn't see the sword that impales him.
Suspended in mid-air and a puddle of blood forming on the floor, a sword buried to the hilt in his swiftly dying body with the blood-soaked tip extending out the back, the unoccupied watch him take a last shuddering breath.
It's a hard struggle to keep up with Raven as she flies, but somehow, Tai manages to do so.
After a few minutes of the chase, Raven shifts at the edge of a ravine.
"Tai," she begins to growl out.
"Let me take the relic," he demands. "I know you didn't just steal the key, you wouldn't have grabbed your bag otherwise."
"I need the relic to stand a chance against Salem," Raven bites out half-heartedly.
He shakes his head. "If you leave here with the relic in hand, Salem will follow you, will hunt you to the ends of the planet. You have nothing to gain by keeping it, you've already lost your tribe for it."
"I'm not going to let you take it," she insists, voice catching in her throat. "I can't."
"Why not?" he asks. "It isn't like you care about what happens to me."
She steps back in shock, like the words had been a physical blow. Her eyes – tears welling in tired red – meet with his cold unflinching blue behind her helmet and for once she lets the tears fall.
"I…" she almost stops herself here. A lifetime of hiding, of keeping secrets. No more. "I never stopped," she says as she pulls her helmet off.
"Never stopped what Rae?" he spits out, barely masking his fury.
"I never stopped loving you."
"What? But… you left me, left Yang… how could you?"
"I left because I was scared, scared of my tribe trying to use you or Yang to get me to return. I knew they would be so much more dangerous if I didn't return to them and keep them in line. I was scared they'd go after you. I never stopped loving you," she tells him.
"Then why-"
"Why agree to the divorce?" she interrupts. "I didn't want that divorce. I loved you even as I signed that dotted line, and I still love you now. I only agreed because it was what you wanted, and I've always wanted you to be happy."
He doesn't say anything as he steps forward and cups her face in his hands.
"Now can you see? I can't let you take the relic, Tai, I can't put you in danger like that. I can't," she blubbers in a way she had never been able to. For once, able to be vulnerable in the hands of the man she's loved for so long. "But I can lead Salem away from you, keep you safe from her."
He shakes his head. "You can't. I've made my choice, Rae. I'm going to help Qrow, Yang and Ru- Rosa; fight with them against Salem. You can't keep me safe when I'm marching into battle. Not without marching by my side." His eyes light up for a moment. "Rae, you could join us. Help us fight Salem, leave behind the bandit life. We could be a family again."
She searches his face for any hints of a lie, for any hints that he won't accept her, and she finds nothing to say that he's being dishonest. He'd always been a blunt man, honest to a fault, it was one of the reasons she fell in love.
"Tai," she whimpers, her hands flitting to rest on his waist as he pulls her in closer, into an embrace of warmth.
Fresh tears stream down her face. How long had it been since she had felt an embrace like this? How long had it been since she had been loved?
"How sweet," Cinder says as she approaches from the tree line. "The bandit queen does have a heart."
Raven growls. "You aren't touching him."
"And you're a fool if you think I'm letting you kill her," Tai states, flames billowing out from around his fists and wreathing his whole body.
"Then you'll die together," Cinder decrees, a sword of fire forming in one hand as she readies herself for a fight.
"Jaune," Pyrrha chokes out.
"Don't talk, Pyrrha, you need to save your energy. Just hold on," he begs her, tears starting to drop down his cheeks.
She nods weakly but her head rolls to the side, her entire body going limp.
"Pyrrha? Pyrrha? No no no no no no no. You can't die, you can't die!" Jaune rambles, eyes closed and begging, praying really, to whatever force is out there to save her.
Then he feels something change, like water washing over him. He opens his eyes and sees his own aura enveloping Pyrrha. She's gasping for breath and he can see that the blood has stopped sluggishly emptying onto the ground. He doesn't dare take his eyes off her, terrified that doing so would undo whatever miracle this is.
He doesn't look up at the sound of Hazel screaming threats at Ozpin. He doesn't look up when he hears Qrow cursing in pain. He doesn't spare a glance for the rapidly cooling corpses mere metres away from them, corpses that Pyrrha so easily could have mirrored. Could still mirror.
His entire focus is on his friend, his teammate, he can't afford anything else. He trusts Rosa, trusts Weiss and Mercury to protect them so he can sustain this miracle unfolding in front of his eyes.
"What's happening?" Pyrrha blearily asks, her voice clearing with each word.
"I'm not sure. How… how are you feeling?" Jaune asks.
She sits up, despite Jaune trying to stop her. "Better. I feel better. Whatever you're doing, keep it up," she tells him.
"I can only try," he replies.
She pulls herself up to her feet and closes her eyes, hands outstretched, and around them the wind picks up. Leaves shake off the trees and the weapons of dead bandits rising into the air.
Jaune watches as her eyes open and weak green flames spill forth, the leaves and weapons in the air rocketing towards their enemies.
"Yang, go after your parents," Qrow orders.
The girl swallows and looks over to Oscar.
"I'll be fine, go," he manages to gasp out.
So as Pyrrha unleashes her magic, Yang goes after her parents.
Tai and Raven stand side by side for the first time in years.
One wreathed in flames, the other holding a sword of pure ice.
Eternal opposites. City and wilderness. Focus and distraction. Fire and ice. Light and darkness. Harsh reality and soft fantasy. Truth and lies.
They never should have been able to work together. Too different, two extremes. Yet, they had been partners since their initiation at Beacon.
The saying opposites attract had never been truer than in their circumstances, but they still couldn't last.
For all their past was messy, standing side by side in battle is natural, as easy as breathing.
Cinder watches them, cautious about going after them on her own, but the prize of the Spring Maiden's power was just too tempting.
When the fight begins, it is between one heartbeat and the next. Flames lick at Cinder's body as she dodges around Tai's strikes, and her swords fizzle each time she blocks a slice from Raven.
As hungry for power as she is, she is no fool. Cinder knows that close quarters combat is not her strength, nor is it advisable against two opponents that clearly specialise in it.
A flip and blast of ice sends Cinder flying back towards the cliff edge and the former couple skitting towards the tree line.
A bow of black glass forms in Cinder's deft hands and three arrows glowing red with a hidden fire sitting ready to be loosed from the drawstring. The half-maiden doesn't even wait to land before she's firing on her opposition, sending them on the defensive.
Raven and Tai exchange glances and nod in agreement to something only they knew.
A split-second later, they are sprinting towards Cinder, dodging arrows and blasts of fire.
Tai reaches the half-maiden first, wrapping his arms around her midsection and containing the fire she tries to call on.
Or at least, he would have had she called on fire.
Instead, pain blossoms through his gut, a blade of glass rammed through his ribs.
Raven screams as she charges the half-maiden. Cinder doesn't even get to react as she is knocked from the cliff edge, her body encased in ice and her blade left in her victim.
Revenge dealt, Raven kneels gingerly at Tai's side.
"You can't die," she whispers. "I'm nothing without you."
He smiles weakly before wincing. "You're Raven Branwen. You don't need a man to be worth anything."
"I need you, I can't… I can't live in a world where you don't exist," she sobs out.
He reaches one hand up to her face and wipes away some of her tears. "You can. You're stronger than I am after all."
She grasps his hand in hers and kisses his knuckles. "You're wrong. You've been my strength for so long, I'm weak without you to guide me."
His eyes go glassy with unshed tears. "Tell Yang… that I'm sorry… I should have… been… a… better… da-."
The link that bonded her to him, allowed her to open a portal to him, the link that she had treasured for so long… snaps.
He's gone.
Gone.
She pulls his body into her arms and rocks back and forth as she cries. The world could have ended around her, and she would fail to notice.
A gentle metal hand places itself on her shoulder as its human counterpart gentle closes the blond's glassy and unseeing eyes.
"Yang… I… I'm sorry… I couldn't save him," Raven sobs.
The blonde woman sighs. "I know. Just… tell me that Cinder paid for this."
Raven nods. "I encased her in ice and sent her plummeting over the edge of the ravine."
"Good. I hope she felt her death."
"He… he wanted me to tell you that he was sorry," Raven tells her daughter.
"Don't," Yang tells her. "Tell me later, when we've had a chance to collect ourselves."
Raven swallows before trying to hand Yang her saddlebag. "He wanted you to have it."
"You can give it to me later, we need to get his body back to the others," Yang insists.
The blonde picks up her father in her arms as Raven watches on, light shining in her eyes. Her right hand grips the hilt of her sword, but not in the way she would when preparing to attack.
Raven's breath shudders as she speaks. "I'm sorry."
Yang turns and her purple eyes lock with red.
"Mom?"
"I love you, Yang," the black-haired woman says as she draws a shorter sword, the tip pointing between her breasts. Her aura flickers red once and disappears.
Recognition flits through purple eyes, then panic. A thud followed by footsteps pounding against dirt sound as Yang drops her father's body and sprints towards her mother.
She's too slow.
The red sword embeds itself in Raven's chest.
Yang catches her mother as she falls to the ground, blood pooling beneath her.
Raven gasps for breath and coughs blood. With nothing Yang can do to stop the bleeding, Raven bleeds out in seconds.
Tears drip down her face even as she feels power flow through her, and she howls in pain and anger.
Yang grabs an emergency flare from her belt and sends it up. She doesn't have the strength to carry both of them, and she's not going to leave them behind.
It hadn't taken long for the combination of Rosa, Weiss and Pyrrha to force Hazel and Emerald to retreat, and Qrow needed medical attention.
They pick up Yang, and piled onto the airship covered in dust a blood with three corpses in tow, it takes an hour to get back to Mistral.
"It's gone," Jaune exclaims from the cockpit.
"What's gone?" Weiss asks.
"Haven," he chokes out. "It's been blown to rubble."
A/N: Welcome back to the Grimm Reaper! Hope you enjoyed it, and in case you were wondering, yes, Tai, Raven and Tyrian were all set to die in the Haven arc I originally wrote before I decided to change a bunch of stuff. It almost feels like a cop out for Tai and Raven, but at the same time it felt fitting and it's going to tie in nicely with some later scenes (I'm gonna be mean and not tell you how though).
Anyways, let me know what you thought by dropping a review (reading them makes me happy), or send me a PM if you want to chat. Otherwise, I'll see you next week with another chapter.
- RebeccaMagic9