As originally published on my RWBY sideblog, remnant-roses, with a few minor tweaks for readability.
For Rosegarden Week 2021 (spring edition), covering the prompts 'After the War' and 'Scars.' I had this fic idea during the mid-season hiatus, hence the canon divergence, though I didn't get a chance to sit down and write it until the season was over.
"I think I'm… done."
He'd expected them to argue, to try and convince him to stay. But standing before them, his small frame battered, bloody, and broken, they averted their eyes. Even Ozpin remained quiet.
He'd kept their secrets, prevented Salem from using the relic, endured torment for their sakes. He'd suffered for them. He'd killed for them. And it had shattered him. He felt hollow.
He just wanted to go home.
And they... let him.
He allowed Ozpin to take over, to tell them the last things they'd need to know about the vaults, the relics, the war to save humanity.
And when the dust settled in Atlas, when the refugees poured out into the other kingdoms, he went with them, just one more body, lost among the masses.
He didn't even tell them goodbye. Yet through the numbness that gripped his soul, he still felt a sting of regret when he thought of her face, silver eyes brimming with tears.
Don't… ever talk to me again. Just let me be normal. Please, he told Ozpin as he boarded the train that would take him back home.
There was no reply, but the guilt and sorrow that radiated off of that other inside of him was answer enough.
Ozpin would let him abdicate, even at the height of this conflict. Even when it looked like humanity was balanced on a knife's edge.
Let this war pass him by. They could fight it without him. And if they couldn't win, in time, the burden would roll on to his next incarnation. But Oscar… he'd given all he could. He didn't have anything left.
He knocked on the farmhouse door, and felt like a stranger even on his own doorstep.
His aunt cried, off and on, for days after his return. First tears of relief, of joy, and then tears of worry and grief, of frustration and anger.
He understood. He wasn't her son, but she had raised him, loved him, and he'd left her all alone here. How many tears must she have cried while he was gone, that he hadn't seen?
He told her what he could. Not everything, not even much. But enough to make her understand why he'd left - the voice in his head, the war for humanity. She'd seen the broadcast in that brief moment that global communications had been reestablished. She could grasp the basics - that he'd been caught up in a conflict for the fate of the world, and that it had chewed him up and spit him out. Left him broken.
He couldn't bear to tell her any more, dreaded the inevitable probing questions, but then she surprised him.
She understood. Ember Pine knew well the sting of loss, how stifling it was to be coddled and fussed over. She gave him space to think, to heal, in his own time.
And he loved her for it.
It was seven weeks before his wounds closed fully.
The scar tissue pulled at his skin as he threw himself into the work of maintaining a farm, like a waking manifestation of the terrors that still haunted his dreams and left him gasping for air when he woke.
He ignored it with a resolute determination, letting himself get lost in the monotony of tilling and plowing and tending livestock. It was backbreaking work, but he welcomed even the pain. It filled the empty hollows of his mind and left no room for reflection… for memories too terrible to bear.
To think, he'd once resented the repetitive nature of work on the farm. He'd dreamed of adventure, of new and exciting vistas, of being important.
If only he'd known.
But at nights, he'd climb onto the roof of the barn and stare at the sky and think of a girl with eyes like moonlight, and wonder.
Was she still fighting? Was she even still alive?
Did I make the right choice?
The seasons came and went, and war did not come to the fields of Mistral. Nothing of interest had ever happened here.
It was 11 months after his return when the CCT system came back online.
He hadn't noticed right away. He'd been working in the fields, and there was no point in taking a Scroll out there when it had no signal.
But as he walked in the house that evening, he was greeted by the sound of tinny, faraway voices pouring out of his aunt's living room, and then…
There she was, on the screen, her red cape and pale skin washed with blue in the light of the projection. Her hair was a little longer, her eyes a little sadder, but it was her.
She was saying something about the CCT, how exactly they'd managed to restore it, but the words wouldn't process, they swam in his head until it was just noise. There was only one thought that mattered.
She's alive.
"Isn't it wonderful, Oscar," his aunt was saying, "the world can talk to each other again…"
It was then she noticed the white-knuckled grip he had on the back of the sofa, and the tears streaming silently down his face.
He told her that night, told her everything. About RWBY and JNR, about the attack at Haven, about a drunk old crow, about crashed trains and snowstorms, about the fall of Atlas.
About the belly of a great black beast, and the torture he'd suffered at the hands of humanity's greatest enemy. About the hollowness he'd felt when he left, and the crushing guilt that had slowly come to replace it.
She cried, and he cried, and she held him, and in the background, news reports played clips of familiar faces on repeat. Still out there, doing their best, without him.
There was one thing he left out - no need to tell his aunt about silver eyes and a kind smile, about how much it hurt to know that he'd left her behind, specifically.
That much, at least, was still his own.
He still watched the night sky, but now the questions he asked himself had changed.
Do they hate me for leaving?
Had they ever even needed me?
He only heard from Ozpin twice in his time at the farm.
Once, about a month after the CCT was restored, when a Grimm had nearly gotten the drop on him.
Behind you, Oscar.
The voice was gone as quickly as it had come, without even an apology for breaking his pact of silence. But it had given him just enough time to see the Beowulf coming, to get his pitchfork up to block the jagged teeth as it lunged.
It took him an embarrassingly long time to dispatch it, even though it was merely a single beast, even though a year before, he could have killed it in mere seconds.
He was rusty.
And he was letting himself wallow, something every Remnant child was cautioned against. Hell, he'd probably drawn the Grimm in with his own guilt and self-pity.
He took up training again after that, practicing against hay bales and scarecrows in the early mornings before his daily duties began.
He wasn't going to let himself be a beacon of despair. He wasn't going to endanger his aunt, or himself, like that.
It was a year and nine months after his return, the second and final time Ozpin spoke to him.
He was at the feed store, loading bags of dried corn into his aunt's beat-up truck for the chickens, when Ozpin uttered a single word:
Oh.
And then he was gone.
Not gone in the way he'd been for the past two years, where Oscar had always been aware of a silent presence in the deepest corners of his mind. But fully, completely gone.
Oscar expected the sky to rip open, for people to scream, to cry, for something, anything, to look different. He pulled out his Scroll, checked the news. Nothing.
Something monumental must have happened. But life continued around him, unchanged. The clerk at the feed store gave him a funny look. He was blocking the loading bay.
He drove home in a daze, tears blurring his vision, and told his aunt to turn on the TV.
It took three hours for the news reports to start rolling in. Humanity's greatest enemy, defeated. Faunus and human together, standing united. A mysterious silver light seen in a ruined continent to the west.
He and his aunt watched the footage in silence for hours, and he found himself searching for a red cape, for a mop of long blonde hair, any hint of what might have truly transpired.
When he climbed on the barn roof to watch the night sky that evening, his questions had changed once again.
They'd done it.
But what had become of them?
Of her?