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"I'm sorry. I know you expected me to follow your orders and to kill them with you but I just wasn't able to do it. And the way you fought - you killed them all - how could you? You're a good man. How can you be a good man and kill people?"

It was late. The sun had set hours ago and we were near where the bandits had camped setting up our own. It was so late and I was so tired.

"Isn't it obvious?" I asked Rosé. She looked at me and said nothing. "I'm not a good man."

"You're empathetic," she protested. "And kind and you're not selfish. But you also kill. How can you do it? How can you kill? I don't understand. You just cut them down like they were animals. You treated them like animals."

"Which they were. Weren't they? Aren't we all but them in particular as well. Didn't they slaughter and attack and give up their right to personhood? I have killed men and women as well. I've killed innocent people. I've killed people I called friends. You have no idea what I am."

"You're a good man." She was crying now. I wasn't good with crying women. It made me uncomfortable. "How can you be an empath and kill people?"

"It's easy," I whispered. "It's so frightfully easy to kill a person for me now. I'm good at it. If you're going to be a huntress you will be too. You have to. Or you'll die. At some point it will just happen to you. And after the first time it becomes so easy. You have no idea. You can even develop a taste for it." Rosé looked at me with abject horror in her eyes. "Neo has. I have too."

"What have you done to yourself? Oh, gods above, what have you done?"

"Oh stop that. You should have known it wasn't all monsters and glory. You're too old to believe in fairy tales. There are no heroes, not anymore. You should have known that being a hunter means getting your hands dirty too."

"I knew that it was tough but not this. Never this."

"Yes. Exactly this. Being a hunter means killing bandits and outlaws. You knew that. Don't start being childish on me now. You've got to have known. This is the way of the world. What should I have done besides destroy them? I can't take them prisoner. I can't leave them alone. I had to end them. Be reasonable. Even if you couldn't do it you have to see that I had to. It was them or someone else. Someone innocent."

She stammered off into sobs. I watched her break down in front of me. All the while I knew that there was really nothing I could do about it. She had to go through this. She had to. And all I could do was continue telling her the truth. The truth was brutal and uncaring. It was like staring into the sun. It was going to burn you totally if you let it. The truth was illuminating but it was also blinding.

"You just hopped on board with the first hunter that would take you on. You had no idea what kind of person I am. Do you know how dangerous that was? I could be anything! Especially and including a killer. You want to go back to Winhill then say the word. You want to give up being a huntress then say that too. You're not cut out for this if you can't kill someone."

I execrate her pity. She looked upon me with such innocent shame and dreadful remorse. I wasn't what she thought I was. I didn't want her pity directed at me. It was simply too much for the sixteen years old girl to have such complicated feelings in her tear soaked eyes. I never wanted this for her. I never wanted this for anyone. But she chose this life. She must have known what that meant.

"So that's it? You'll stop training me? I'm sorry I couldn't go through with it."

"The choice has always been yours. I'll train you or help you get back to Winhill. But you have to understand the kind of life you're choosing. You will kill someone. Accidentally. On purpose. Somehow, someway, sometime. It will catch up with you. You'll have power and a responsibility to use it. That means something. I forgive you for not following through. Perhaps I expected too much of you too quickly. But in your heart you have to understand people will die."

This wasn't a block in her training. It might even be conducive to it. She saw people die now. Maybe she will be ready next time. I resolved to not push the issue too hard but to apply at least some pressure in regards to it. There was no need for regret or for her to look at me with such shame. She looked at me like I had wronged myself. She looked at me like she found me slitting my wrists for pleasure and pain and she didn't know how to cope with what she had stumbled across. She was at a loss and tears ran from soft baby blue eyes and down her cheeks. She couldn't comprehend. Her horror was too great.

"How can you be a good man, and you are a good man, Cloud, and kill people? I don't understand. It's like there are two of you. One is a hero and the other is a cold blooded killer."

Didn't she get it? There were two of me. At least two of me.

The enthusiastic temperament of the adolescent girl was hard to manage. Had all girls been like this? Sure dealing with death was hard but she was making such a big deal out of me. I was the focus of her remarks regarding the killing. Not the actual killing itself. I had no idea what that meant. She seemed so focused on this idea she had of me in her head that she had lost touch with true reality. And that true reality was that I had a taste for killing. It was satisfying to me to end someone's life with my power. It was so piquant. I was not what she thought I was and I never had been. What she expected me to be was unfair. Her expectations were too great. She wanted me to be all good and I just straight up was not. She couldn't reconcile the grey blob which was me with the shining light she expected. But it was also part of growing up. I had to temper myself a little. She was just a kid. Just a dumb kid in over her head. She would get used to that. Being in over one's head was a fact of life. It was a constant at least in my experience. But I had always taken on challenges that forced me to my limits. It was a part of who I was.

Other people weren't like I was. They weren't always finding something way more dangerous than them and fighting it. I was. I was always after the biggest fish I could find and eventually I had become a shark myself. I couldn't expect that in someone else.

I walked up to her and put my hand out to set it on her shoulder below me. She looked up at me with deep blue eyes.

"This isn't the end for you if you don't want it to be. Your journey as a huntress doesn't have to end here. But it can. If you want it to. I asked too much of you. I forgot how young you are. That's on me. But you must agree that I did what I had to do. There's no way around that and before we get to Vale we will run into more Branwens. That'll happen. You need to be ready for me to do what I have to do."

"You don't have to enjoy it. I saw you," she hurled that at me like an accusation and it was as sharp as any blade. "I saw you," she repeated.

"I'm not what you thought I was. I like it. I like the power I wield and I like wielding it. It probably would be safer in someone else's hands but it's not. It's in my hands and I have a taste for blood and vengeance. It's probably why I have the power I do. The gods know how I am going to abuse it so they gave it to me. It would be better off with someone else. That's why they gave it to me. If the gods weren't cruel then I wouldn't be here. They wouldn't have set me loose. The world needs good people, people like you, to have power it would be a better world that way."

"That's why you took me on then. You feel guilty."

"I am guilty. Or do you disagree?"

"You don't have to be this thing if you don't want to be. You say the gods are cruel because they gave you power but they also gave you the ability to choose. You can choose how you wield that power. You don't have to be a murderer."

"We don't get to choose what we like or what we fear or what we hate. Those things get chosen for us. I have to kill. I have to like it. That's outside of my power to choose. Do you think I can lay down my weapon? Should I stop killing bandits? What should I do? I'm not a god. My power is extreme but not omnipotent. I have to do what I must. I save lives this way. And so what if I do like it. Lots of people enjoy their work."

"You're being extreme and you know it. Most jobs don't involve killing people."

"Mine does though. Should I stop? Or should I direct that energy in a productive way? You won't answer my questions."

"Your questions avoid the real issues."

"What are the real issues? That there's something wrong with me? I already know that. Every single person on this planet has something wrong with them and is slowly dying in their own special way. I don't see why I should be twisted up about mine."

"But you admit that you are twisted up about it. You don't like the way that you are. That's why you're training me. To feel better about yourself."

"And?"

"And that's my point. You don't want to like killing people. So don't. Be a different person," she ordered. She made it sound so incredibly simple. Like I could just be something different at the drop of a hat. That wasn't how it worked.

If people could change that easily then they would.

"It's not that easy. You can't just become someone else. We are what we are. We are all sick. I just happen to be sick with a lot of power backing me up. That's the only difference between me and everyone else."

"I'm becoming something different. Why can't you? What's the difference between you asking me to kill with you and me asking you to not enjoy it. We both have to change to do either of those things. These days I spend training are all about changing myself. If I can do it then so can you. It takes work. Hard work. But it is possible. You have to have a little faith."

"I have no faith. Go to bed Rosé. This discussion makes me tired and it's nothing I don't already know. It's not my fault the blood of my enemies tastes so good."

"But they aren't your enemies," she stamped a foot in frustration at me. "They just happened to be in your way. So you killed them and you liked it. I saw you. You had this smile on your face that-that…" she broke off into a shudder. She couldn't go on. She was too horrified with me. If only Ruby and Weiss could see me that way. It would stop them in their tracks and make them think twice.

"Go to bed Rosé. You learned something new about me today. That's all."

"You're doing something horrible to yourself. I won't stand by and let that happen. Mark my words." She still wanted to save me. Didn't she get that I didn't need it? They all wanted to try and save me but I simply was. I couldn't be saved. Not from myself, and not from Mother. I was this thing.

"Marked. Have you had enough yet?" I asked her. She stared on with a determination to her brow. She tossed her hair back.

"This isn't over."

"If you say so."

"If you want me to leave say it."

I didn't.

"You want me to stay. You want to be saved. I'm showing you how. I'm telling you how. It doesn't have to be like this. You can change. And Neo… she's a bad influence on you. She enjoys it as well. Both of you steep yourselves in it together and it's unhealthy for you both. You want to get better and you don't know how. Well I'm telling you how you can. You send your letters off to your friends. You want them to be close to you but you don't know how to do it with everything else going on. Well I won't leave you to this. I can help. You have to let me try to help. Or else you're just giving up. You're giving up on everything. Right now you're not even trying."

"Rosé," I said slowly.

"What?" She demanded.

"Go the fuck to bed."

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We started with dust crystals in the morning. She still didn't have the hang of using them in their raw form and she didn't have her semblance to eat one and use it with. Besides if she couldn't handle it raw I was afraid to give her any to eat. That sounded like I was signing her death warrant and I wasn't about that.

She said nothing of our late night discussion but I knew that she wanted to. She wanted to do and say more but I didn't give her the chance to.

She crushed a shock crystal with her eyes closed and waved a hand to expel the energy. It blew up in her face for the third time in a row. Neo, watching from the sidelines, clapped excitedly at the explosion. She was always down to watch Rosé try her hand with the crystals. Rosé just couldn't get the hang of actually casting the power away from her and so she usually ended up flat on her ass and covered in dirt.

Today was no different.

"I think that's about enough of that for today," I ordered.

Neo silently booed me with a thumbs down but Rosé was getting low on aura from the detonations. I paced over and helped her to her feet. She took my hand up but she wouldn't look at me. She refused and she turned her nose up in a bit of disgust.

"Rosé I know we don't exactly see eye to eye on what happened yesterday but I still need your respect as a teacher."

"Or what? You don't want me gone."

That was true enough. Teaching her was one of the few things I could say was genuinely good in my life. It was a rare gem in the dirt. Besides, I kinda liked it.

"There is no or what. I'm just asking. Please. Don't turn this into anything weird or more than it already is."

She sighed heavily at me.

"Fine. I'm not giving up on you though."

"You know that I'm not asking you to. I need something to keep me in check. I need some form of balance. Neo is chaotic. I could easily fall into that. Again. Fall into that again. I did once before. Back when my team got finished off. I was in a dark place and I found Neo and I did some god awful shit just because no one could stop me. That's what happened. It doesn't make it okay but that's what happened. I do need the balance. But you also need me. Don't forget that."

"I won't," she agreed.

I relaxed a little. I could breathe a little easier.

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-WG