A/N: Gahhh yikes it's already been five weeks since I've last updated. Big yikes.

Hello again! So apologies for the wait, and apologies again because y'all're gonna have to wait a little longer for the rest. I've been working on this chapter and it just kept getting longer and longer. If I hadn't broken it up it would be the longest single chapter I've ever written. It's not quite done, I still have some heavy work to do on the last scene, but I was sick of waiting to update so here's the first half since it's finished. Second might be a little bit, I'm on the last three weeks of my semester and I have at least three papers due in the next week and finals One of those papers is my creative writing short story that I really need to finish soon, so that'll probably take up more of my focus. Still, I'm gonna try to get the second half done before the end of April.

(Spoilers for V8 finale going forward-) Now then, while writing this the rest of volume 8 came out and I'm just- well. I'm personally intrigued but the last three episodes really messed with some of my plans. On one hand, Ambrosius is cool and I adore him, but his existence invalidates my prologue, *sigh*. (Going forward he and other relic spirits, since Ambrosius's existence implies that all the relics have spirits, will be referenced. At some point I'll probably go back and rewrite the relics in the prologue scene to fit canon, but for now use your imagination.) And then everything that happened after that just kind of... So, this was already going to be AU but now it's definitively AU and here's how:
-Nobody fell off the bridge. I know in canon RWBY + Jaune probably aren't actually dead (because I refuse to believe that a show called RWBY can continue to function without team fucking RWBY, but that after-credits teaser that shows they're apparently on Destiny Islands and is going in a direction I don't even want to try and predict. I'm getting the feel they're gonna do another huge lore drop next volume (here's my shot in the dark prediction: they'll finally cover what the fuck dust is and where it comes from, probably among other things too but I'm calling the Dust one now). I'm not sure how I feel about that, because narratively it feels like RWBY should draw to a close soon, like finish up in V10. By this point in the story I don't think any more major new info should be introduced unless it's the payoff of something foreshadowed earlier, but I digress. We'll see what CRWBY does come October or whenever V9 drops.
-Penny still dies but Ruby becomes the Winter Maiden. We're just gonna say that Penny does a better job of fending off Cinder, but still takes a bad hit and dies in Ruby's arms (like I said in that purposefully vague statement last chapter). Cinder runs away with the staff still. I haven't decided if Winter lived through her battle with Ironwood or not yet, because she wouldn't have had Maiden powers to help her pull through, but if that decision becomes relevant I'll let you know.
-So everyone made it Vacuo! No cliff hanger angst, but don't worry! Everyone still dies in this timeline eventually anyway!

Then without further ado,
Content warning: the first scene gets a little intense with mild mentions of ocular trauma, then there's also some vomiting too.
WC: 4250

"Your mother said those words to me."

Black tar and dripping fear melting on all sides. Consuming, devouring. Voracious. She is drowning in palpable fear and despair as desperate claws grab for her: her clothes her feet legs skin-handshairfacehe s-!

Eyes. Her eyes can't help her here.

All around her disembodied eyes bore into her soul pleading for mercy from their fates. They come out of the walls, sink from the ceiling, rise from the floor and fix her with gazes that demand more of her than she dares to offer. Demand that she saves them; demand that she puts them out of their misery; demand that she feels their pain too.

Their eyes are silver.

"She was wrong too."

Her eyes snap shut, she can't breath. And then the walls start to collapse on her and the silver eyes encroach, ready to swallow her whole.

She's panicking, and then there are hands on her face. They're wet and ice cold and so soft and tender on her cheeks. Her body locks up, frozen stiff as the hands' thumbs rub rhythmic circles under her eyes. A shiver runs down her spine; she is trembling. She opens her eyes.

Inches away from her face is her mother: with her milky white skin and dark hair, her heart shaped face and thin eyebrows that Ruby inherited too. Her lips are curved up in a smile, and-

Empty sockets, where her eyes are supposed to be. Ruby's terror hits a fever pitch. The viscous black liquid that surrounds them starts leaking from her mother's empty eyes. Her smile cracks open as more of it pools from her mouth and down her chin. It drips down onto Ruby's chest. The nightmare fluid begins to seep from her mother's skin, and Ruby contorts in pain. Nails bite into her face as she tries to flinch back; she's held in place, trapped. It burns-! Tears welling, It burns-!

She doesn't dare scream; if she opened her mouth the awful liquid would slide down her throat and rot her from the inside out.

"Ruby…" and it's her mother's awful, garbled voice drawling her name. She pitches forward as the thing that is her mother forcefully grips her to her chest. The body underneath is unfirm; it writhes like living demons and she hears it squelch. Slowly she feels herself sinking into it, the grimm essence coats her skin in agonizing scalding pain. She struggles, but it's futile. "Ruuuubyyy…"

"No!" The screech escapes her, and that's the opening the poison needs.

Caustic black sludge fills her mouth. Her lungs flood and she's drowning as her oxygen is cut off. She's dying .

Hacking, spitting, desperation taking her over, get it out get it out get itoutgetitoutgetitoutgetitoutgetitoutgetitout-!

And suddenly she was up and running, lungs on fire. She blacked out.

The next time she was lucid she sat kneeled over a ceramic toilet bowl under the flickering of sterile fluorescent lights.

"Wh-wha?" She murmured in confusion. Her grip on the ceramic slipped and she fell back onto her butt. Dingy bathroom tiles felt cool under her the palms of her hand and soles of her feet. A sharp acidic taste filled her mouth, like she had just thrown up.

Hesitantly she glanced over the side of the toilet bowl. So she had. A nasty looking mush of chewed chicken and green beans spattered the insides. White, yellow and green. Ugly, disgusting, but not black. Not blood either, which was always a plus. She heaved a massive sigh. Thank Oum.

Too exhausted to care about hygiene, she slumped back on the bathroom floor. This is filthy! You can't just lie down in a public restroom! A little voice that sounded an awful lot like Weiss scolded from her subconscious. With a tired groan she stood up and steadied herself on the bathroom stall. A knot of nausea still sat in her stomach, churning uncomfortably. She hovered around the toilet for a few more minutes before deciding the feeling probably wasn't going to get much better.

Ruby left the bathroom after cleaning up and rinsing the taste of vomit out of her mouth. How or why she ended up there and not just upchucking over the side of her cot was still a little hazy, but at least it was convenient. She'd have hated needing to clean it up, or to sleep by the stench. It was nice to know that her subconscious had its priorities straight.

Tiredly she ambled her way back to the sea of cots where the migrants slept. The calm blue numbers of the large clock hanging on the northern wall read that it was just after three A.M. It was dawning on the seventh day since she and Oscar had arrived in the past. This would probably be their last night here, they were supposed to meet Junior in the morning to pick up the items they requested. She felt relief at that; she didn't like sleeping in big, exposed areas like this, or around so many unknown people.

Soft blue lights marked the walls and guided her back through the rows to where she and Oscar were set up. No one else in the great room seemed to be stirring, she walked quietly so not to disturb them. Oscar was still out and lying still on his back.

For a moment she watched the rise and fall of his chest until she realized he wasn't actually sleeping. She cussed and checked him over for injuries, scanning over her shoulder for threats or signs of someone messing with his body while he was like this. But she found nothing; with a sigh Ruby plopped down next to his cot and let her corded up tension go slack. It was fine, Oscar was fine.

Meditation: a deep trance-like state Oscar would go into when he was taking the time to examine his memories from past incarnations. He told her once it was like opening a door to a great big library, with hundreds of thousands of books all organized by a system. The problem was that Oscar didn't inherently know said system, and that meant he couldn't always recall the knowledge he needed at the time he needed it. Once he knew what he needed he could recall it perfectly, he just didn't always know what he knew. To manage it, he would periodically enter these trances to sort through and familiarize himself with all the memories.

Ruby found it a little confusing, but was more concerned with the fact that when he was doing that he was completely dead to the world. Defenseless. Absently she played with his hair, gave his cheek a little poke. Oscar didn't stir. She wished he had told her he was going to trance tonight, so she could have kept a lookout. It didn't matter that this was supposed to be a safe place; safe places could be lies. She couldn't help but think about what could have happened while she was wasting time sleeping.

The nightmare had left her tense and jumpy, but truthfully it was just another drop in the bucket. She ignored the inkling that the bucket was probably close to overflowing by this point. It wasn't even just the emotional side of things anymore. Ruby physically felt like shit too. This was the third day in a row she had woken up to the need to puke her guts out. She always felt slightly overheated, and her whole body was annoyingly tender, like she had been run over by a pack of beowolves.

Since coming to the past she's had regular showers, safe and reasonably comfortable sleeping arrangements, and three guaranteed meals a day but her body still felt like absolute crap. She ached everywhere, and she was upset that she couldn't point to a reason as to why.

Constant, general discomfort was something she thought she was used to. Apparently not! What a joke. Stress, anxiety, years of battle and hardship finally catching up with her: one of them probably had something to do with her current state. Or all of them. Regardless, it was not doing wonders for her mental health at the moment.

Ruby continued to twine strands of Oscar's hair around her fingers. The action was soothing and helped calm her down. Her gaze drifted down to an object clipped to Oscar's belt. Even in trance his hand was clasped protectively over it, but she knew what it was: a small silver plated canister, roughly half the size of a fist. There were visible segmentations in the sides that revealed where the metal could open windows to the canister's contents at the push of a button.

Ruby's left eye, the socket, suddenly ached. She absentmindedly rubbed the area around it.

The blue blinking numbers of the clock read 3:20 AM now. Sighing, Ruby tucked her knees to her chest and waited for morning to come. She'd feel more at ease once they started doing something again.

He's looking down at his hands. They're pale, long and thin like a pianist's. But he doesn't play piano, he plays chess. He moves pieces along a blood soaked board like those before him and he hates every second of it. These hands are rested on the pommel of his cane as he stands tall, looking down from Beacon Tower onto the courtyard. He is in his office, where there are many, many conversations that he needs to know and understand and find the truth in.

He's listening to Glynda-good, reliable, trustworthy, efficient, friend-read off security statistics and numbers from Grimm Reports and police reports on the dust robberies. He tries to remember where they are and how much and why and who and anything that could possibly be helpful. Anything that might be a pattern, a clue. Anything that might reveal from which shadow the next blade would be striking.

He's standing up from his desk and greeting James-strong, critical, diligent , paranoid, too aggressive, heartless- and he can look him in the eye without craning his head back like a child. He can say what he wants to say and be believed in, even if the doubt has already begun to take root and there's nothing he can say to calm this terrified man.

He's calling board members, council members, news outlets, professors, field operatives. Assuring and reassuring things he can't really say with certainty but needs to do so because one man being afraid is better than all of them.

He's being threatened with removal from his life's work by his ally, someone he thinks of as friend. It's already begun, and now it becomes even harder to look for patterns and prepare them all for the blades.

He's sitting at his desk listening as Glynda, James, and Qrow-loyal, dedicated, brave, deserves better, deserves truth -argue about spies, about duties, about actions, about Maidens and Magic and Souls until it hurts and then hurts some more. He ultimately can't change their decision, because they have choiceand he cannot violate that.

He's trying. Trying to plan, trying to fortify, trying not to show weakness, trying to make sense of the thousands of puzzle pieces that he has with no clear picture, only more questions. Trying not to let his fear control him, and it is so dreadfully difficult.

He's standing at the end of the Vault in the shadow cast by yet another child he's failed. He's leading another to take the burden he's unfairly dropped. He's fearing condemning her to the same kind of hell he's lived through and will continue to live through. He's fearing the consequences of not doing so, the fates of the hundreds of thousands of screaming souls warring with demise above when if he fails.

He's staring down a young woman with burning eyes that remind him how inadequate he is, remind him that as hard as he tries there will always be something, someone in this world that he can't save. She calls him arrogant. She is right.

He's fighting desperately, even when he's so tired from all of it and it would be easier to lay down and die. He's fighting desperately because he's clinging to some modicum of hope that he can regain control over the situation even though he just watched the last embers of the Maiden, of his symbol, be stolen and corrupted. He is fighting to delay the inevitable yet again and again and again and-

He loses. His shield breaks and the hungry flames ignite around him and once again he-

- Oscar forcefully slams the memory shut. Just a second too late: his imaginary skin tingles with the phantom pain of burning alive, and leaves him metaphorically gasping for air.

He doesn't need to, he's not really awake and he's not really hurt in any way. The pain and the need to react to it is entirely psychological. It will fade once he manages to reorient where, when, and who he is in relation to the collective of souls that make up Oz.

Slowly his abstract perceptions return. White space stretches out around him as far as he can see. Below him, because now Oscar's lucid enough for his avatar to reform, ripples almost violently with dark, shifting colors.

This was the mental representation of his-of all the Oz's- memories. From here he could call upon all their memories and recall them again. The place shifted frequently, depending on his emotional state, and could look like anything he could imagine. At the moment it was fairly conceptual, consisting only of blank space and impressions of color and movement. Reasonable, considering where he had just come from.

Oscar sighs and tries to steady his, quite literal, internal turmoil. The litany of emotions that Ozpin felt leading up to Beacon's fall and his own demise twist in his soul achingly. After the feelings fail to fade, he tries a different approach. He calls out for a new memory.

The white around Oscar shifts and he's melting back under into different colors-

-And now he's looking down at a different pair of hands. They're big with hairy knuckles, stained with oil and machine grease. Calluses mark his fingers and palms; they're the hands of a craftsman, not just a warrior. At the moment they were holding tiny, intricate gears, hovering over a table with a hundred more of them carefully placed around a larger metal object: a handle.

He nearly jumps out of his skin as a large mass collides with his back. There's a dull welling panic as the table in front of him, with all its meticulously arranged small pieces, is jostled. A pair of dark, skinny arms wrap a little too tightly around his collar and he hears a bird song of high-pitched giggling. "Daddy!" The panic subsides.

Context naturally flows to him as he feels a grin split his face. He gently puts the gears-the components of the Long Memory-down and pulls the figure from his back to cradle in his arms.

Huge silver eyes and small white teeth flashing, a little girl in a yellow dress shrieking with laughter. She's overflowing with so much joy she can't speak, but it's infectious and he finds himself laughing too. Why are they laughing? He doesn't know, but decides he doesn't care. He lets himself float on the euphoric joy and wonder that this tiny soul sparks in him. He is unbelievably happy for no particular reason at all.

Eventually though they both catch their breath. The little girl- his daughter -calms into muffled giggles as she tucks her face into his chest. He marvels over how small and fragile she is, at how big she is already compared to the tiny infant she was when she was born.

"Diggs, you should take a break." A smiling voice calls for him from behind. Because that's his name right now, not Ozma or Ozpin or Oscar. Diggs, short for Diggory: the inventor and handy-man that fixes up clocks and farm equipment who lives with his family in the village. Not a hero or a king or a teacher or a farmhand. He turns to meet the source of the voice, a woman in the doorway. She has short dark hair and blue eyes, and she looks like an older version of the little girl in his arms. She is visibly pregnant; around six months, his mind whispers. His wife.

(and cognitive dissonance jerks Oscar from the memory ever so briefly with flickers of aquamarine-green-gold-brown-amber- red-silversilversilverbeautiful silver-- before he settles back behind Diggs's eyes and heart. He's more careful to sort through the tangle of threads that tie him to the inventor, mindful to keep the tightest grip on his own and the eyes it will lead him back to.)

He feels the impression of Diggs's fondness and steady love flower in his chest as he stands up to follow the woman out of his workshop, still cradling the little girl protectively in the crook of his arm. Family. It's such a rare pleasure for Oz he can't help but feel giddy every time he is reminded he has it. It warms him every day he wakes up beside them, shares a meal with them, kisses them goodnight in this cozy house with wooden walls and the stone fireplace. Oscar feels how easily Oz forgets his struggles in lives like these, revels in the moments of quiet peace the memories bring.

Time slightly liquifies and it's later in the evening, after dinner. Diggs and his blue eyed wife are curled together on a couch in front of a roaring fire. Their daughter sits on the rug, playing with a doll her mother made. Diggs's wife shifts suddenly before grabbing at him for attention.

"The baby's kicking!" Blue eyes whispers with excitement. Their daughter gasps and jumps up from the ground. The mother guides her daughter's hands to feel, then Diggs's. Quiet amazement seeps through the tint of memories, along with love, joy, hope. All of it is enough to drown out the fear Oz feels every time he has a child, the anxiety that claws at him whenever he remembers just what Salem likes to do to his children.

In time Diggs would come to agonize over the possibilities like those before him, but for this fleeting fragment of time he was light. Oz was light. And for a moment, Oscar could feel light too.

Mood slightly improved, Oscar pulls himself away from the world of dreams and slowly drifts out of trance.

It was the comforting, familiar feeling of someone playing with his hair that Oscar woke up to. Slowly he opened his eyes to see Ruby, back lit by soft blue light, staring down at him. He smiled, "Good morning, if it's morning yet." Her silver eye narrowed, and he's dazed enough that he wasn't able to track her hand as she lightly flicked his forehead. "Ow."

"You didn't tell me you were going to trance tonight."

Ah, so that's how it was. Sitting up and stretching some of the stiffness out of his back and shoulders, Oscar crossed his legs beneath him and turned to face her. "You needed more sleep. Besides, this place has full time police and huntsmen guards."

"That means nothing." In the low blue light it was hard to see, but he could still make out the deep bags under her eyes. They weren't a new addition, Oscar had them too, but he had hoped finally having a safe place again would give her time to rest and recover even if just a little bit.

"How much sleep did you get?" He watched her purse her lips and look away. "Ruby…"

"I only woke up an hour ago, so don't worry." But he did anyway. He glanced at the clock and saw it was almost four in the morning. He knew what time they went to bed, and knew how well she could fake sleep. "I…" She trailed off. Oscar grabbed one of her hands and held it. "I had to throw up again."

Concern tightened in his chest. He bit his glove to take it off before checking her temperature on the back of his hand. "We should go see a doctor."

"I'm fine I just-"

"That's the third night in a row."

"I know! But," She looked him in the eyes and sighed. "If it happens again tomorrow then we'll go. We'll have IDs by then, right? Those can get us into Vale's general hospital without all the hassle."

Slowly he nodded, removing his hand. "Alright, it's a promise."

They slipped into a silence that's half comfortable. It's not totally quiet; there's a hum of the shelter's permanently on electric lights, and someone in the room has a horrible snoring problem. The two of them had slipped into that odd time where it's both too late and too early to do anything but exist and contemplate.

Eventually Oscar cleared his throat. "How are you feeling?"

Ruby was quiet for a long while, her unfocused gaze pointed in the direction of the wall. "I'm tired," she finally admitted, and he hated how dead she sounded. "I know, we haven't been here long, but I'm still just… exhausted."

"We've been through a lot. That's natural."

"But we haven't done anything yet. All we've managed to do is basic recon and act like a pair of thugs in a nightclub."

"We've only been here a few days. We still have time."

"Do we? Do we really have time?" There was a note of rising irritation in her voice that surprised him. She was getting angry.

"Yes, we do." Oscar answered calmly, watching her reactions carefully. "We'll meet Junior in the morning, then we'll finish nailing down our plan of action. We already have an idea, but this will give us a more solid framework to work with."

Ruby's arms tightened around her knees. "I don't like this."

He straightened up to attention. "Do you regret-?"

" No ." She answered firmly, which helped to assuage his own flutterings of panic. "No, I don't regret coming back. I'm just… what if we're in over our heads? What if this is more than we can do?"

"You're scared." It's a statement, without any judgement.

She sighed, "Yes, I'm scared."

"That's okay. I'm scared too." Fear was a natural emotion, one shared by everything with a soul. Ruby was the strongest person he knew, maybe the strongest he'd ever met in hundreds of lives stretched over thousands of years. Part of that was because he's seen her be absolutely terrified, but never truly broken. She never used her fears as an excuse to not be kind, never became cruel or coldhearted. Never since he's known her had she ever stopped struggling towards a goal, whatever it may be.

Now she said she was tired, and he understood. The last twelve years were by far the most bloody and chaotic of all of Remnant's history. They left their stains and scars on all of them, scars that ached and caused pain even when what caused them was far away. He knew the feeling, the bone deep, soul deep exhaustion that clings when one lives with so few victories and such a futile-seeming cause. It was awful, something he wouldn't wish upon his worst enemies, and much less for the woman he cared so deeply for.

Wordlessly Oscar moved over to the edge of his cot and patted the open space next to him. She quirked a brow but obliged, and they fit together chest to chest. Ruby's nose dug into his collar bone and he had his arm slung protectively over her side, cherishing the sensation of each rise and fall of her frame. "It's going to be okay." Ruby stilled. He could feel her holding her breath. "We're going to make it through this. We're going to save people. She won't win."

Oscar kept murmuring reassurances until they became truths, prophecy. Kept repeating them for her, like she had for him when he had needed them so desperately. Kept repeating them until they beat back the overwhelming tide of anxiety that threatened to swallow them home. Kept repeating them until they made a point to stand upon to catch their breaths, a vantage point to leap from once they were ready to start moving forward again.

"I love you," Ruby declared softly, abruptly.

He pressed a kiss to her hairline. "I love you too." Her earlier tension seemed to have drained out and away from where they lay. She nuzzled into him more closely, and they maneuvered into a more comfortable position. It was peaceful again, at least for a moment.

"Tell me a story?"

"Which one?"

"Any. You have the best ones, and the best voices."

Oscar smiled, feeling a little glow of happiness. After a moment of thought he began to whisper one of the fairytales he carried with him everywhere, carved somewhere into his being like mantras, "In a very distant past, much longer ago than anyone can remember, people wondered why nights were so dark…"

As he told a tale of the moon and its pieces he felt her finally drift back into sleep. Hope, he decided it was, in one of its many forms. Such a nice feeling, Oscar thought before going to meet Ruby in fields of dreams where hope was just starting to bloom from its roots once again.

Ya know the good thing about splitting up the chapter like this is that my foreshadowing seems smarter because it's more spread out, instead of just piling it all at the beginning of one chapter and BOOM payoff at the end. I dropped a hint about what I'm doing in part two of this chapter in last chapter's author's notes, but nobody called me out on that. I wonder if any y'all will this time, I think I was a bit more obvious with it. Interesting.

Note on Oz-incarnation names. I forgot to bring it up in the prologue notes, but instead of making up a bunch of names with 'Oz' in them I'm just using various names from Frank L Baum's Wizard of Oz's veerry long full name, which is Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs if you're curious. The King of Vale is Phadrig, a variant of Patrick, means 'nobleman,' seemed fitting for a king. And if it wasn't obvious, Diggs is the settler/inventor Oz with the family. Ozpin is just the initials of the first five names, by the way.

I didn't plan on writing an Oscar dream sequence but I wrote a Ruby one first and Oscar was just like 'I want one too' and I couldn't say no and it ended up being twice as long as Ruby's... whoops.

This is the slow half of this chapter, the second half has significantly more going on. Hopefully I'll get it out soon, like I said up top there's only one seen left, but it is a big and messy seen. After that we're going to start moving the plot along, and I am excited.

Please, please leave a review of what you think. They mean so much to me, especially since I reread them when I need motivation to work on this.

Anyway, it's two am and I'm going to bed, have a very pleasant next 24 hours.