NOTICE:
There is no chapter 08th October. I have been asked to take part in a conference call to my cousin, who is ill with coronavirus, live from his hospital bed tomorrow (or today - 8th October; this written on 7th). I don't expect the news to be good and am certainly not going to be able to write before it due to worrying, or likely after if the news is what I think it will be.
Cover Art: Mystery White Flame
Chapter 79
"Ozma."
"Salem."
Me. Jaune thought, sweating only a little as the two immortals sized one another up, a difficult task given one was inhabiting a body some fourteen years old. What the people on the walls must have thought of him taking a child to meet the Grimm, he didn't know. Oh, who was he kidding – they probably thought it part of some genius plan.
Which it was. Sort of. For once.
"I brought a chocolate cake this time." He set it down on the table with a bright and cheery smile. "Nothing like chocolate to brighten your day, that's what my sisters always say. I have whipped cream or clotted, too. Salem, how do you like your-?"
"The visage of a child suits you. It perfectly encapsulates your personality."
"As does the wicked with of the Grimmlands for yours-mph!" Ozpin choked on a spoonful of chocolatey goodness, briefly pulling back before closing his eyes and munching through it, swallowing with a gulp. "Was that necessary, Mr Arc?"
"Right back at you, sir. Right back at you." He cut a slice for Salem and turned with a smile. "And for you, Salem. Would you like any cream?"
The eldritch abomination accepted it politely. "I would love some cream, Jaune. Thank you."
Another day, another therapy session, this time with the Beowolves laid around nearby and Ironwood hurriedly conducting field repairs on his artillery cannons. The General had all but taken over running the actual defence while Jaune closeted himself up with videos on relationship counselling and browsed some of the trashiest and deviant parts of the internet, most of which included AITA forums. And yes, if you felt the need to ask, then chances are you're the asshole.
One thing he had learned from such horrific drudgery was that being designated the asshole was a big deal. Whether it was wanting the sweet justification of random people telling you you're okay or wanting the sweet, sweet revenge of some pixelated fury calling your ex an asshole, no one really wanted what he would have assumed they wanted. Namely, the truth.
Ah, the truth. That nameless and strange thing that he had eluded for so long. We meet again. In this case, the truth was probably that both Salem and Ozpin were being complete idiots – fuckwits as his mother would say – but saying that now wouldn't do much good. He wasn't actually sure what would. For all that Ozpin had been sympathetic to Salem's plight in the safety of their office, he'd quickly become defensive and antagonistic on seeing her again.
"Okay, so, this is nice," Jaune said, sitting between them. "How long has it been since the two of you had a chance to sit down and talk like this?"
"Not long en-owww!" Ozpin yanked his foot away from Jaune's.
Salem purred contentedly.
"It's been about two thousand years."
"Six hundred, actually," Salem said. "You're forgetting the time I captured you after that rebellion in the desert. The one with the tribe."
"Ah, yes. You tortured me for three months before I expired."
Jaune winced.
"That was fun," Salem said with a whimsical smile. "I had this wonderful idea that if I broke your mind completely, it wouldn't matter if you returned upon death. You would only be a gibbering wreck of a voice in the back of someone's head."
"I proved more resilient than you anticipated."
"Less, more like. You died barely a quarter of the way into it. Really, Ozma, I had this ingenious little plan with parasites eating through your body. It was going to be so visceral."
Jaune's wince settled down, had children and raised a family. Okay, this was… a little more than the threads had prepared him for. "I captured my husband and tortured him until he died, trapped in a haze of agony as the life slowly slipped from his body. Am I the asshole?"
"Quite a while, then," Jaune stepped in to rescue the conversation. "At least since you've had an amicable meeting and a chance to chat." He smiled and placed his untouched bowl on the table. "I think this is a prime opportunity for the two of you to work some of your frustrations out."
Salem tilted her head. "You mean I can break his body in two?"
"Through dialogue."
"Oh." Salem slumped.
"Just like you to resort to violence at the first opportunity," Ozpin said. "If you'd thought to talk first then our children would still- yowww!"
Jaune stamped, stamped and stamped a third time, teeth gritted and eyes hot. "If Ozpin can shut the hell up now while I talk, that'd be great."
"You realise I am still your employer!"
"Try explaining that in court. Ahem. So, it seems to me that there is some simmering tension between you still. Just a touch. I really think this could be a great chance to express some of that. Get it out. Come to understand what flaws you see in each other without reacting with instant threats of violence, dismemberment or caustic snark. Salem, why don't you go first?"
"And do what…?"
"Tell Ozpin how you really feel. Get things off your chest. There must have been something you wish you could have said to him all those millennia ago. This is your chance. Don't hold back, either. Ozpin is going to listen."
"I'm n-ugh!" His face twisted. "T-This is Oscar's body you're damaging."
"He'll forgive me," Jaune snarled. "Act your age, not your host's."
"I-I'll listen…"
"Salem. The floor is yours."
He could tell she hadn't given thought to what she might say. That was how it was. You always had that long list of things you wanted to say to someone, all the words planned out, their shocked reactions in your mind, and then when the opportunity came, your mind went blank. Seeing someone so old and powerful looking like a cornered girl should have been amusing, but honestly just looked a little sad. He had to remind himself she was in control of every Grimm on the planet and could – and had – killed a lot of people.
"You… You're a coward!"
"I-"
"Shush." Jaune told Ozpin. "Salem is speaking."
The young immortal's lips thinned and Jaune was for a moment worried he would either refuse to listen or get up and walk away. Either would ruin everything, and thankfully Ozpin seemed to realise that at the last second, crossing his arms but paying attention.
"You're a coward, Ozma!" Salem spat. "Running away the moment things got difficult. The people were rising up, our children were in danger and I needed you. What did I get? You trying to steal them away in the middle of the night without so much as a word! If you were that against my plans, then why didn't you stay and challenge them. We're the immortal ones! Even if I lost my temper and killed you, you would have come back. It wouldn't have meant the deaths of our children!"
That was an interesting point for sure. He'd listened to the story of how, when discovering Ozma's plan to leave, she went crazy and tried to kill him. Hearing that in isolation made her sound like a nutjob that didn't deserve any empathy, but Ozpin was immortal. As was she. It didn't forgive her actions, but in the same way two huntsmen punching one another was more acceptable than civilians doing it because they were trained and could withstand it.
Salem actively trying to kill Ozma… well, it wasn't normal, but then neither were they. At the very least both she and he would have known there was no real threat to it. It was more akin to a loud fight that ended in smashed plates and screaming, albeit dialled up a few notches. Not ideal, but not quite as murderous as it first sounded.
"You should have faced me!" she spat. "You should have confronted me!"
"Hmm." Jaune nodded his head. "Okay, now I think it's Ozpin's turn. What do you think, Ozpin?"
"Why is it my responsibility to step in and fix your mistakes? You are the one who decided to kill everyone, you are the one who decided to open fire on me without making sure our daughters were safe. Take some responsibility for your own actions."
Salem slammed her hands down and rose to her feet.
Jaune risked his life in jumping up and pushing her back down by her shoulders, well aware she could, with a snap of her fingers, summon the Grimm and end his life. "Relax. Relax. All of this is in the past so it's not like we're living it again. This is just getting words out of you both that should have been expressed all those thousands of years ago. It's okay to be angry. Anger is normal. Don't let it force you to walk away from here. Have some more cake."
Cake fixed things. Cake was the equaliser. It wasn't ice-cream, but Neo had trained him well and Salem ferociously dug into a slice, glaring at Ozpin over the rim of the bowl.
"It's good to get these feelings out," he continued. "You two never had a chance to say them and I bet they've been festering all these centuries. Don't you feel a little lighter already?"
"No." Ozpin said.
"Not really." Salem said.
"Great!" Jaune wept. "Already forming a united front against me. We're making progress already. Why don't we move onto addressing the problem why the two of you had such a split? Namely, the events that led to Salem wanting to destroy humanity."
"It's obvious the pools of darkness corrupted her," Ozpin said.
"You would say that, wouldn't you?" she hissed. "I had always been corrupted by them, hundreds of years before when you married me, and we brought those people back together. Why would we have hundreds of years of peace without a single problem, and then the suddenly, I'm corrupted. It doesn't work like that!"
"The Gods-"
"Are not a part of this discussion." Jaune said. "This is about the two of you."
"You wanted to kill innocent people, Salem!"
"Innocent? They tried to kill our daughter. They did kill her dog! Our dog."
"Is that reason for them to be brutally slaughtered?"
"Yes." Salem and Ozpin both paused to swivel their heads his way. "Oh. Sorry," Jaune said. "I shouldn't have interrupted."
"No, no," Salem said happily. "I'm fine with it."
"Mr Arc," Ozpin said sadly. "They were misguided."
"Sorry, Oz. I can't agree with you on this one. You can't mess with a dog like that. It'd be one thing if they beat a person up – people are assholes; I should know, I'm one of them – but you can't hurt a dog, let alone kill one. It's just not on."
"Exactly!" Salem crowed.
"That said, while I agree with punishing those directly responsible, I don't think eradicating an entire species based on it is a good idea. There would be a lot of other dogs who would be left bereft of their loving owners and families."
"Mr Arc. I thought this was about us. Not dogs."
I'd rather it be a therapy session with dogs, Jaune thought miserably. It would have been much more bearable. Hm. I should have brought Zwei along. He'd risk his life if I offered him some bacon and I bet he'd win Salem over in a heartbeat.
Too late to think about that now. He technically had the two of them focusing on him, which didn't exactly mean they were fine with each other's presence, but sort of did. Technically? Maybe? Eh, he'd run with it.
"The point isn't to talk about who is right and who is wrong," he bullshitted. "We'll simply never know because it didn't happen. Maybe Salem was right. Maybe Ozpin was right. Maybe it could have worked either way. The problem is you ended up fighting with each other when you should have been working together."
"To what, destroy humanity!?"
"To let them abuse us!?"
"To agree on a solution as a married couple should. One that didn't agree running away in the night like a coward," he told Ozpin, watching the man flush. "Or getting so angry that you hurled around magic capable of killing people," he said to Salem. Her head dipped. "And as a result of that, terrible things happened, but they've already happened so there's no point the two of you feeling bad about it. Would your daughters really want you to keep blaming yourselves? Didn't they love you more than that?"
"Yes," Salem said.
"They did," Ozpin agreed. "And we have moved on…"
Had they? They'd moved on from one another, but was that really confronting the issue or just running away from it? Like he and Glynda had been. They'd faced their insecurities and talked, however, and they'd come out the better for it. Not together, but content. Respectful. Friends. These two clearly hadn't had that conversation.
"You can't fully move on without first dealing with the problem. Whether you like it or not, it happened, and it's clearly festering. You two have what I assume is hundreds of years of history living together and thousands at war, and yet all you can both talk about is that one moment in time, that brief spec of history."
"Because it killed our children!" Salem snapped. "I'm done with this," she said, standing. "The siege continues! These meetings are done."
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Salem was already walking away, and Ozpin's eyes were closed, accepting the futility without even trying. Think, Jaune. There has to be something. Appealing to her kindness? Her old feelings? No, he had to go with something more immediate.
"If you walk away now then you'll never have any closure."
Salem paused. "How can you say that? I'll have closure once I wipe humanity from Remnant and kill Ozma. Then, I shall finally be alone."
"You've been alone for thousands of years and it hasn't helped."
"…" Salem's fists clenched.
Jaune ploughed on. "The closure you'll win is nothing more than the time you've already spent alone in that tower. You won't even have the distraction of planning Ozpin's death or how to overthrow humanity. There'll be nothing left. No challenges, no distractions, no interactions. Just you and a dark, empty world."
"Perhaps that will be better," she said. "I won't know until I try."
"Maybe. But you'll never again have a chance to say the words you've always wanted to, will you? Walk away now and you will forever forfeit your right to tell Ozpin how you feel."
Salem laughed bitterly. "And what are my feelings, Jaune of Arc? Love? Loss? Grief?"
"Hell no." He laughed. "Anger."
Salem turned, perplexed.
"You're pissed off at him. He's pissed off at you. And to be honest, you both have reason to hate one another at least a little bit. Do you really want to walk away and give up the chance to ever tell him how much of a dickhead he really is?" He sent an apologetic grin to Ozpin. "I mean, you'll have all the time in the world to kill us all and go for that empty planet scenario, but you'll never have another chance to sit down, stare Ozpin in the face and call him a twat. Not if you walk away now."
"Do you really think that alone will motivate me? The chance to rub my victory in his face?"
Knowing people like he did? Roman, Neo, Ironwood, Cinder and so many others. The wise choice was to walk away and get on with what she was doing, and Salem had to know that, but people – human and faunus alike – so rarely made the wise decisions. Not when ego got involved. There was always that trope in movies where the villain would gloat over the hero and people would call them stupid for not just killing them but put them in real life with someone they despised beyond all else, and you just couldn't help it.
Winning was final. It was transient and then it was over. Even he'd enjoyed the odd chance to mock Cinder, just to watch her ger angry, just to get his own back in the last second or spit in the face of death. It was human nature, and Salem, no matter what she thought, still had a little human left in her. Enough, he hoped.
The chair scraped back. It flexed under her weight. Salem sat, leaned over and glared into Ozpin's face. "You, Ozma, are a coward and a bastard."
"You're a violent maniac," he returned.
"Soft and naïve."
"Cynical and paranoid."
"Runaway husband!"
"Constantly on PMS!"
"Limp little baby di-"
Jaune tuned out, leaning back in his chair as the two went at it like an angry married couple.
This was progress, right...?
/-/
"I'm a bitch. I'm a lover. I'm a child. I'm a mother…"
Yang sang along with her scroll, belting out music as she swung pirouetted in the centre of the room, arms held out and Ember Celica barking a constant trail of buckshot and fire. With no signal and no reason to keep their scrolls topped up on battery, she'd found little reason not to delve into her saved music.
Paintings and wardrobes exploded into splinters, walls became pitted and torn, chairs blew up like wooden grenades, spraying her in sawdust. All the while, Yang sang off-key, wondering for a moment if she hadn't missed her calling in life when she chose to become a huntress instead of working for a demolition company.
Cathartic didn't even begin to describe it.
Okay, very sudden stop but my mother is having blood pressure and heart problems at home and her monitor is recording high blood pressure, low pulse. I'm having to break off to take her to the local hospital. Will probably be there for hours and hours, but this is more important than my fic, so yeah.
Next Chapter: 15th Oct - Two weeks - see top of chapter for note
P a treon . com (slash) Coeur
