Chapter 8: The Hollow

"I would jump off a cliff to prove a point."

— 15 —

Weiss remembered the first time she had ever questioned if what she and her family did was wrong. After her older sister Winter had left for Atlas Academy proper, she had found her mother in her study crying into a bottle of wine. It had become something routine, almost.

"Mommy?" she tried, only to picture her father scolding her for using that kind of language. The hem of her dress felt somehow bunched up. She'd straightened it out, along with her spine and posture.

"Mother?" she tried again. Prim and proper. Even for just a little girl with her face poking through the great doors into her mother's study.

Her mother had looked up, tears in her eyes. Before she saw that angry, almost hateful look in her eyes. A wounded animal in a cage, fed from table scraps and the mockingly thrown peanuts of passersby.

Weiss had frozen, staring. Trying to figure out for all the world what she had done wrong. Winter was off to do great things. Her father had suddenly stopped talking about his eldest daughter, so that meant she wasn't doing anything bad for him to scold. If Winter was doing great, and mother was sad, then that had to mean that Weiss had done something wrong.

Her mother caught her own expression, and down what was left of her wine. "Hey there, little snow pea." All said with the kind of forced tenderness mother always tried. It always came across as fake and vaguely distressing. She would have preferred if Mother had just kept things together like Father always said a Schnee had to.

A Schnee was the storm. They were the ice and the cold. That's what the family meant.

Weiss saw the way her mother was trying to be warm and friendly. She had slammed the door shut, so no one would ever see a Schnee acting wrong.

She didn't have another even halfway serious conversation with her mother after that for the better part of a year. It's why for a time, she stuck so close to her father. Shadowing him and learning. With her older sister Winter gone for the Army, Weiss was the future of the SDC. Which meant she was the future of the family. The future of this world.

It was why she was there on that fateful day following her father as he somewhat uncharacteristically invited her to a meeting. "The proper place to learn form and function among the right people," as he called it.

The Schnees were there. Alongside the Blumens of IG Farben, an industrial biochemical company. Her father had set her on a few awkward dances with its heir, a boy named Oleander whom Weiss suspected didn't have a working face, the way he was always so blank.

The SDC, IG Farben, Hartmann Flugzeugwerke, and other old companies with equally old Mantle names save for their common modern-day acronyms. Their leaders had gathered together to meet with the recently elected Ironwood.

She still remembered the dress she wore that day. Blue with red highlights. Something she would never wear again, as it was common for her more formal attires. It matched the furniture a little too well. Taking 'children should be seen and not heard' to its logical extension of being both silent and invisible.

"Gentlemen," the tall general with a face like chiseled stone had said as soon as he entered the room. Weiss had perked up immediately, seeing Winter beside him.

Her father had only frowned deeply. As if taking the sight of his eldest daughter as a personal insult. In hindsight, Weiss recognized it as a kind of power play. But at the time, she was just happy to see her sister, and upset she had to remain silent.

"Yes, yes, Ironwood," IG Farben's ancestral leader had said, not recognizing the minor family politics at play. "The old Reichskanzler was far faster on the uptake than you. But we all came at your request. Exactly how do you intend to win our support today?"

General Ironwood had paused, an amused look on his face. His arms were behind his back in a position halfway towards parade rest. "Support? Oh no, you misunderstand this. You're here together to ensure we are all on the same page." He spread his hands magnanimously. "As of now, the Kingdom of Atlas is revoking your labor contracts. All indentured laborers are now property of the realm, and are hereby released from contract and oath. You will not be compensated. Attempts to resist or circumvent shall result in your liquidation."

It was all so many big words for Weiss. She looked first at her sister, who was only giving a kind of victorious little smile. Whatever was going on, it was something good. Winter had a better head on her shoulder than anyone Weiss knew.

"You what?!" her father had demanded, standing up so fast that his crystal glass of Patch Scotch toppled to the floor and shattered. "Are you out of your ice-picking mind, James?"

The General sucked on his lips mildly, shaking his head. He looked pleased in a way he couldn't properly show off. "My predecessor is dead. His ruinous policies, I intend to murder. That's why they elected me Chancellor of the Realm and not your generously funded patsy."

"This is absurd," her father had said so viciously that Weiss unconsciously felt the urge to bring her knees to her chest. The only thing that stopped her was when her older sister looked over at her and smiled.

Whatever was going on, Winter was darkly satisfied. And she always knew what to do. Always knew the right thing. And if this was the wrong thing, why was she so happy?

"How dare you try to tell us what to do!" her father had spat. "You're no king!"

The General had looked unconcerned. "That's right. My army murdered the royal family seventy years ago. We're stepping back by the will of the people to sort out the mess you've made of our realm. Like the old monarch, you threw in your lot with the wrong horse. No one has ever been beyond our reach. I intend to make it very clear why yours was a fatal mistake. But I trust men as intelligent as you to not make them in the future. Adjust accordingly to the new market of the Zollverein. Do I make myself understood?"

Weiss screwed her eyes up at the memory. Right now, here at Beacon, she simply brushed her hair to the side and pressed her ears against her headphones. Letting the soft music act as a sort of home remedy for a headache.

Certain artists and genres had effects on her. It was as much physical as psychosomatic. It happened days since the incident, and she kept having intrusive thoughts about her past. The men she had tried so hard to escape by coming here. They had shown up in her dreams when she was passed out from what the unofficial reports were describing as a massive CCTS microwave burst. No one exactly had answers, but the prevailing theory was that something in the communications tower had broken, and sent intense radio waves down across campus. The more sensitive students and faculty had been knocked out by it until a brave Atlas technician had fixed the mechanical error.

She was vaguely aware of the dangers of intense radio communications. Once upon a time, she had visited a military base, overseeing some of her company's delivery to the soldiers. She had watched the soldiers load up special Dust into their communication equipment, located in a sort of compound that the captain in charge had certainly referred to as the Wurstbude, the bratwurst shack. Apparently if you left sausages or other meat too close to the equipment, the microwave radiation would literally cook them to a crisp. It was recommended you turn the equipment on and then run away really fast.

Given the impossible power and importance of the central CCTS Tower at the heart of Beacon, one of the four great towers that enabled instantaneous global communication, she supposed the theory was accurate.

She hoped the incident wouldn't give her brain cancer. Maybe that was the source of all the annoying thoughts she'd had during her dream while passed out. An oddly clear, clinical dream that didn't fade with time like most.

"Is this seat taken?" a woman asked, snapping Weiss out of her reveries. She was partially thankful for it. Those thoughts were becoming more and more intrusive. Another part of her was offended. She'd come to this spot in the library to be alone.

Without detention anymore, Weiss was admittedly a bit at a loss to figure out what to do with her time. She'd always been the kind of girl unable to get anything done if she had an appointment, at, say, four p.m. Part of that had been inbuilt, and another just a fact of life for a Schnee. Her father ensured her life was busy, and barely under her control. Singing lessons in the morning, followed by dancing, private lectures with her tutors. The only real act of rebellion had been getting her rapier and practicing with it. Until she'd convinced her father to consider working with it to be a good addendum to dance. Probably why she found the two acts so intrinsically linked on an almost spiritual level.

But when she blinked away her thought to see who it was, she nearly did a double take. Pyrrha Nikos. Winner of the Mistral Regional Tournament four years running. The star of the current freshmen year. And the girl she would have killed for to have as a partner instead of that weird Shamrock person.

"I'll take your silence as a no," Pyrrha said, taking a seat. She wasn't dressed in her school uniform or even her armor. Not that she really had to. Just something casual, a sweater tied around her waist. Weiss herself didn't exactly have anything casual like that. The best was the outfit her father had jokingly called Snow Pea, since her normal dress was still in the laundromat after getting hit by flying food.

"Hi," Weiss said, perfectly on time and elegant.

Pyrrha side-eyed her. Before just kind of shrugging it off, not bringing attention to it. "I see you here a lot, Weiss. That's your name, right? We've only spoken about twice before, and I'm not sure you ever gave me your name."

The girl had a way of making Weiss feel distinctly out of place. Just calling attention to the basic facts of her surroundings. It had something to do with her voice. She sounded older than she was, and she was no more than seventeen. Weiss knew that for a fact. She also knew that it would only be about seven months before she was eighteen, a fact she only knew regretfully. In doing her research for potential future partners during the night before the Initiation, Weiss had stumbled across a HuntsHub thread about the upcoming freshman class here at Beacon, and apparently learned that a non-insubstantial group of fans were keeping detailed calendars of when the girls of the freshman class would turn eighteen. A bunch of creeps, one and all.

Back in the real world, Weiss shrugged. "It's quiet here. At least usually. Most of the time in my room, I can barely think."

"Not used to teammates?" Pyrrha asked. "I admit it was a little odd myself. Back at Sanctum, we actually had dedicated rooms for ourselves, sort of. The team I had back then, the only part of the room we shared was a common area with a little kitchenette. It's taken some adjustment to get used to one giant bedroom."

Weiss scowled. "You can say that again. It's bad enough with a couple of girls with you. I've got a boy and a half in my room."

"Shamrock and Jaune?"

How did she know everyone's name like that? Knowing Weiss, she could understand. She was a big deal. But the only other team that Weiss herself could name was VYPR, mostly because it was where her dream teammate Pyrrha had wound up. Other teams didn't exactly matter on that level, and it didn't typically come up in conversation for her. So either Pyrrha had an exceptional memory, or spent way too much time doing background research.

Weiss shook her head. "I suppose. But I don't really want to dedicate any brain cells to them. They've taken up enough so far."

Pyrrha gave her a small frown that looked somehow concerned and painfully motherly. At least, that's what Weiss imagined motherly looked like. Not that she had much experience receiving. "Trying to get away from them?"

"Pyrrha, I'm flattered you care," she said with a bit more hostility than she had intended, "but my team is my business."

"A business you're avoiding," she said with a raised eyebrow. The girl shook her head and took out the book from her backpack. A textbook authored by none other than Professor Port himself. There had to be some kind of business sham going on with that at the school. "But I suppose it really isn't my business. I don't know why, but people like to include me in it. Jaune did, trying to get me to help him figure out his Aura. I think it's slowly turning me into a more nosy girl."

Weiss folded her arms across the table in front of her. "Well, he figured that out."

It had been impossible to ignore. She had seen it last night when she had been trying to sleep. Jaune came in late and for some reason Blake was still up, as if waiting for him like a sailor's wife. She had expected Blake to do the reasonable thing when he tried to talk to her, and tell him to shut up or go away. Instead, the two of them had talked together, sharing a moment that Weiss was entirely positive she wasn't supposed to see. Up until the moment Blake threw her shoe at the boy, and he deflected it with an honest-to-gods Aura.

She had expected Pyrrha to act surprised. To ask how it happened. So that Weiss could tell her that she had no idea, but that it had to have something to do with Blake. The two of them somehow connecting despite the impossibility of getting along with Jaune.

Instead, the girl gave Weiss a look. "So is this my business again or am I supposed to just nod along?"

Weiss grimaced. "I'm not sure being passive aggressive suits you, Pyrrha."

That at least, did manage to get a surprised look from the girl. "Huh. Sorry. I've been wearing a lot of hats these days since becoming team leader."

"You weren't a team leader back at Sanctum?"

She shook her head. "No. Probably for the best. The only thing I really focused on back then was myself. I had my team to consider, but they weren't exactly permanent like they are here. Most of the time once you reach your academy, those three people you live with, you spend a lot of time with afterwards."

Weiss stared at her hands. "I don't think mine is going to be one of those times. I can't really imagine myself spending any more time with my team than I have to. That's why I'm here, not with them." She paused. "Am I oversharing? I feel like I'm oversharing right now."

Pyrrha opened her book, pulling out a tab she had to use to mark a page. "A little. But it's my fault. I'm pretty sure I opened up a can of worms bringing up your team."

Weiss looked away, gazing out at the fairly sparsely populated library. Not many people were here on the weekends. There was a computer lab, but for some reason the connection on those machines was very slow, and the room was intensely hot. "It's my fault, really. Half my team gets along. Meanwhile, I can barely even talk to my partner."

"Shamrock?"

"Yes. They've got something going on with them. Not very open to talking. I've never really met anyone like them."

"You're using the singular they," Pyrrha noted, fingers idly drumming on her book.

Weiss nodded. "It's weird. I don't really understand it. Something to do with their Semblance. They're kind of like a, um. I think there's a word in Mistrali for it. Not exactly a boy or girl, but also are when they want to be. Wakashu."

Pyrrha blinked. Eyes wide, seeming like she was searching for the words to reply, she ran her hands through her long red hair. "That's… okay, wow. First of all, that's an incredibly vulgar word. Second of all, incredibly outdated. And third, if you're using it like how I think you are, an incredibly reductive Atlesian simplification of a complex sexual topic even in its own case."

Weiss held up her hands. "Sorry, sorry! I didn't mean to be offensive. Shamrock can be a boy, or they can be a girl, or they could be neither, and I'm pretty sure they come with all the parts. Not intersex or hermaphrodite or… I'm sorry, this is just getting weird. You see why I have trouble talking to them? I can't even describe their basic condition of life without apparently insulting everyone around me."

The redhead frowned in thought. "Yes. Very cool of you to apologize for colonial misappropriation of Mistrali customs."

She got the distinct impression that Pyrrha was mocking her. She bristled. "You're from Argus. Your people conquered Mistral. We have the same ancestors, if you go back far enough."

Pyrrha gave just the barest hint of a smile. And Weiss realized she was being screwed with, not out of any sense of malice, but more just as a distraction. It felt odd, thinking Pyrrha had any kind of friendly, playful side. She just seemed like the kind of person who would work herself to death every day, never smiling or laughing.

"And to the Glory, the spoils," Pyrrha said.

Weiss squinted. "What?"

Pyrrha shrugged. "Afosíosi sti dóxa. It's an old Argus joke based off something Megas Alexandros once said, I guess. Something you say before a fight. I've yet to hear it in Vale. Always makes me feel like when I'm sparring here, the other person is somehow being rude or spiteful. But I've come to learn that it's just a culture thing. I know it's really not my place to intrude, but maybe that's something to do with your team. You are from Atlas. I've met my fair share of your people."

Which made a lot of sense to Weiss. Atlas operated a massive military base out in the Argus harbor. Even though she had been joking about the old faux pas word colonialism, it wasn't that far from the truth, given Atlas' influence over the northern Mistrali city-states and tribes.

"A lot of you are slow to adapt," Pyrrha said cautiously.

"In certain contexts, that could be considered a rude assessment," Weiss said slowly, poking her tongue into her cheek.

"I'm on a team with two girls from Patch and a Heartlander," Pyrrha said. "Coming from the North, I've gotten way more than my fair share of accidentally rude assessments. And also questions about being able to score Ruby free cereal. But much like how I'm not willing to give her early-onset childhood diabetes, I'm also not going to get upset because of a little clash of culture and personality."

Weiss let out a breath, and found that she was idly poking at her own fingers. "It's not my fault my teammates are either antisocial or one step away from Communards. I've tried, believe you me. Shamrock doesn't really seem to connect with me, Blake gets upset at everything for no reason, and Jaune is a creep no one likes."

"Someone likes him enough to figure out his Aura."

"Blake does."

"Teamwork starts with being able to listen," Pyrrha said.

Weiss didn't reply.

"I know I wouldn't be able to work with someone like Ruby if I wasn't able to listen to her. Not that she always says the most important things, but just being able to goes a long way."

Weiss thought of the conversation she overheard between Jaune and Blake. If she hadn't known any better, she would have said that they somehow became an item while she wasn't watching. They had been able to talk with each other, and they had been listening. It felt like whatever it was, something about Coco and Cardin, it had been important to them. Weiss couldn't think of a single conversation she had ever had with Shamrock on any level besides superficial. Just going through the motions that humans are supposed to make with each other.

Had any of her conversations with anybody been any different? She tried thinking back to Atlas, to trying to speak to her family. It had felt just as fake. Coming here to Beacon, she had been trying to escape that. Reinvent herself. Not totally, she still wanted to be the best there ever could be. But a different best. Yet even here, it felt like she wasn't really talking with Pyrrha. The girl was just talking at her, and Weiss was a passive observer.

She stood up slowly and sighed. "Yeah." Simple, basic, defeated. Why the hell was she even at Beacon?

She swallowed hard. "I'm—yeah. Thank you for the conversation, I suppose, Pyrrha."

The girl said nothing, just silently watched as Weiss left. She was probably happy to see her go. It wasn't like anyone actually wanted Weiss.

— 16 —

You: Hey, do you have a moment?

Weiss stared at her scroll. She felt like a character in one of those teen dramas, the ones idly texting a boy and hoping for a response. Weiss was such a great teammate that she had absolutely no idea what her partner got up to in their free time. She had left the room earlier, getting frustrated by the way Blake and Jaune were just being idiots together.

"I'm telling you, this is the best way to get down on the ground," he had been saying. "It's all about four points of contact. Two-count motion."

"All I said was that I lost a bobby pin. Then you just suddenly turn into a robot and get down into a push-up."

"It's the most effective way!" he whined, repeating the motion into what was admittedly a push-up position, before getting back up to his feet. "I can get up and down in less than a second!"

"But what if you want to get down on your back? How are you supposed to get down if you want to sleep on your back if that's the only way you know how?"

"Well, obviously, that requires butter."

"Butter?"

He nodded seriously. "Just get a butter knife, put some on the rock hard abs that I'm working on, and as soon as I get down I'll flip around onto my back butter side up. The perfect plan."

Weiss couldn't stand it. Part of her just couldn't watch it. So she had left. Tried to find time to herself in the library or wherever really. Putting on her headphones and listening to the construct vocaloid Lapiné. She was a proof of concept and then released to the people. It didn't hit the same way as something like Weiss' own singing, from the true heart. But she was able to keep notes longer than a living human could. It was the closest Atlas had to its own endemic pop music, a field typically otherwise dominated by the cultural power of Vale. Atlas had technology and military. Mistral had old psychospiritual techniques and a rich history. Vacuo had the power to make people forget it existed. And Vale had financial domination and disco.

Finally, after pacing back and forth, her scroll buzzed.

Shamrock: explain what's wrong. 10 words or less

Weiss just kind of stared at her scroll. How exactly do you respond to something like that? She let her fingers do the talking on the hard light screen.

You: Want to hang out?

Her fingers betrayed her. She couldn't help but sense that her question had come across as desperate and creepy. No explanation. No place to hang out specified. Hell, Weiss didn't even really know how to hang out. When she pictured it in her head, all she could imagine was just standing in a room with Shamrock, doing their own thing separately in proximity.

The text reply came quick.

Shamrock: You did it in four words. I'm proud of you

You: Is that a yes?

Shamrock: Kinda busy

You: With?

Shamrock: Taking all of Jack's money. You don't play cards. It's cool

She couldn't help but remember the time at lunch when Shamrock had offered to teach the girls how to play cards, and Weiss had soundly rejected them.

She thought back to Pyrrha's face. She imagined explaining to her why trying to connect with her partner had failed. And the thought of the redhead just frowning at her, judgmentally shaking her head, made Weiss' heart hurt. Especially when she considered how easy Jaune and Blake seemed to be able to do it. It felt like they could just talk about anything and it would just click in a way that Weiss could not comprehend.

Have you ever done something really bad? Screwed up in such a colossal way that as soon as you saw the dominoes start to fall, you realized you could never take it back? Looking at the text she got from Shamrock, that sinking feeling in her heart escalated. A deep well that she couldn't entirely articulate.

It made her think back to her baby brother, Whitley. She hadn't even said goodbye to him, not really. She had simply passed him off to her butler, asking him to relay a message that she only half-heartedly felt. She thought of her mother, sobbing and drunk in her chambers. Trying so desperately to connect to Weiss, her little snow pea.

And the way she had slammed the door shut and ran away.

Her scroll buzzed one last time.

Shamrock: Maybe later I'll have time dunno

Weiss deserved this.

A thousand miles from home, and karma had finally caught up to her.

She couldn't help but laugh, a single, worthless noise bubbling up from the back of her throat.

She wondered how her big sister, Winter, was doing. There, in service to Atlas, she had seemed happy. Like she had found purpose, a family. What the hell had Weiss found but a dark pit and a shovel to keep digging?

And just like back home whenever she got this feeling, where else was she supposed to go but back to her room and face down into her pillow? To just wait the day out until tomorrow broke the spell and she forced herself to wake up. The weekends were especially bad like that. Even back home. At least here during the normal days, she could lose herself in class work. Focus on learning this and that. Drown herself in studying until she was tired and bleary-eyed. Everyday the same as the last, but you could at least lose yourself in the monotony.

She paused at the door to her room, of course. There was a noise coming through the other side. She held the key to the room, and pressed her ear up against the wood. She imagined she must have looked completely ridiculous. But it was definitely there. For a fraction of a moment she was afraid she was hearing beds scratching. That, if she had walked in, she might have found Jaune and Blake. It's not like she knew what they did on an average weekend either, except for Jaune having apparently replaced the team in weekend detention in the later afternoon and evening. But it wasn't that time yet.

But instead of feeling like a complete voyeur, she heard what sounded like guitar. Was someone in there playing music? She listened again for a moment, trying to pick out the notes or the lyrics. All she got was mumbles. For one reason or another, the individual rooms in Beacon were fairly sound insulated. And so, with a feeling like she was about to walk in on something she shouldn't be seeing, she unlocked the door and opened it by a crack.

He was there on the bed, shirtless as he always was. Jaune, with a guitar in his arms. She remembered when she first saw him, his eyes unfocused, barely looked like he could dress himself, all scraggly looking like something had just crawled out of a gutter. She was pretty sure he had been drunk. The very first thing he had ever said to her was Damn, girl, are you a school? Because I want to shoot a couple kids inside you. Before breaking out laughing, and leaving her feeling like she needed a shower. Since then, he had lost a bit of weight, and then put it back on with just the barest hint of muscle. She was surprised how just a couple of push-ups in the morning had seemed to make his shoulder look a little wider. Coupled with the scars running across his body, if she hadn't known him, she might have almost said he looked like a Huntsman.

But she did know him. And if not for the melody he was trying for, she would have probably just left him there. The last thing she wanted to do was be alone in her bed with him in the room. The idea alone gave her uncomfortable goosebumps.

But she kept staring at him, his back to her. Jaune was rocking back and forth, playing something bizarrely in the key of B-flat minor, using what she thought was a 6/8 time signature. She thought, because he wasn't doing it very well. Every other couple of notes, he would mess up.

He swore under his breath. "They's your fingers. Why can't you do this, Jaune?" he asked the empty room. His accent always made it sound like he was gargling gravel.

Jaune laughed at himself, shaking his head. "Yeah. Poppy taught me a little bit. Apparently he played guitar in a CCR cover band after getting out of Vietnam."

At first, Weiss wondered who he was talking to. But then, that was obvious. He was just talking out loud to himself, coaching himself along. It was common enough among anyone practicing something. Only a little bit weird, but then, she would be a hypocrite if she said she'd never done it during her dancing or singing or sword fighting lessons.

Jaune sighed and tried again. This time, he managed to hold the melody longer before very obviously hitting the wrong strings. He grimaced, and then tried the same bars again.

Part of her really wanted him to nail the melody. It was weird and interesting and somehow entirely alien to her. B-flat minor, in the words of one of her tutors, was a naturally dark note, something you only use to express the feeling of being alone in a barren world. Listening to him get it right for just that moment made her swallow.

But of course, he messed it up. Gritting his teeth, he looked up, slowly nodding. And then adjusted his fingers again. "Maybe try singing it?" he asked. Then he snorted. "No. I can shoot, do the Argentine Tango, and funny third thing, but singing?"

Jaune groaned. "Alright, alright, I'll give it a shot."

So, feeling like a voyeur, she watched him restart the melody. He managed to get it down so that it sounded correct to her, before stopping and starting again. This time joining it with a kind of mumble singing voice.

"Run, desire, run. Sexual being," he said, rocking back and forth as he played. "Run him like a blade to and through the heart."

He actually managed to continually nail the melody, his fingers moving artfully. Well, with the sloppiness of an amateur, but getting the notes right to her ears.

Until he tried to keep a longer note, alongside his voice. "Screaming feeEeEEEeed—"

Weiss couldn't help herself. She grunted in pain as his voice broke horribly. He hadn't been very good at singing anyways, but this was just painful.

Jaune immediately stopped, his eyes snapping up and around towards her. She saw his Aura in the back of his baby blues, this faint no-color glow that made her feel incredibly uneasy. He looked just as shocked to see her as she was.

For a moment, she panicked. She had no idea what he would do or say. She knew she'd be creeped out if someone was just watching her sing topless in her room when she thought she was alone.

"You were off pitch," she said. "Your voice." Her own voice sounded hollow to her. Incredibly forced. She just wanted Jaune to go away so she could fall face down into her bed alone.

But as he stared back at her, she braced herself. She didn't know what she expected, but knowing him, it would be something rude, something offensive, something vulgar. The kind of comment that would make her skin itch. She'd heard enough of them before to have started making a list. Although he had pretty much stopped that ever since the night of the Dust store. After she and the rest of the team had flushed away his alcohol and drugs. Right before him and Blake had suddenly become best friends.

Instead, the boy looked thoughtful, and then nodded. "You know how to sing?"

The question sent a shiver up her spine. Especially with the way his Aura was in his eyes. Like the light reflecting off the back of a camera lens. He asked it like he was sure of her answer. As if he knew exactly what she would say, and would know if she was lying.

Setting herself, freezing her spine solid like any good Schnee could, she opened the door and fully entered the room. Weiss wouldn't let him intimidate her like this. "I do."

He glanced over his shoulder, in the direction he had broadly been looking when talking to himself. Whatever he was looking for wasn't there, and his attention went back to Weiss as the door closed behind her. She suddenly felt very alone in the room with the boy.

Idly, he strummed a couple of notes on the guitar. "Figured me so. I'm just getting into this guitar stuff. It's kind of, uh, kind of like a forgotten memory I'm trying to access. It's been just so long. I thought maybe singing with the song I'm trying to play would help me keep my notes."

She folded her arms cautiously. "It did help you keep the melody. But your voice ruined it." For this sudden, inexplicably irrational moment, she felt like she was being too hard on Jaune. Not that he deserved her going soft, the way he had acted almost the entire time she had known the drunken fool. But right here?

"I've just heard a lot of music," she admitted, sounding like the words were crawling out of her throat against her will. "My father made sure I could sing in opera. It's a popular way to show off in Atlas."

"Have you done so recently?"

Without thinking, she touched the scar over her left eye. "Not exactly."

"So you're rusty at your talent too," he said, giving her a boyish smile.

"I wouldn't exactly say rusty." Weiss didn't want to meet his eyes.

"Do you think you could help me?"

"What?" Her thoughts turned to the last time he had asked her for help. It had been what felt like a month ago. She had been training on her own, practicing with her sword, when he had come into the gym smoking a cigarette. And all but completely belittled her in an attempt to bully her into teaching him how to fight a little better. Going as far as to try to use her feelings towards her father as a weapon against her.

After she'd told him to leave her alone, she'd needed hours to calm herself down. To stop from shaking at the memories of her father. And the thought that he somehow knew that much about her.

This didn't feel like that. This didn't feel like he expected to win anything. Like he was counting on her just serving his interest as a matter of course. And in a very real sense, this wasn't something like that. This was just a hobby.

Jaune ran a hand through his short blond hair. "I, uh. I know I really haven't been a good teammate. Honestly, probably the worst. If you don't want to, that's cool. I can't fault you for that. But, I don't know. I'm trying to practice this guitar, maybe sing a little better. And if you can sing, maybe you cain't help ya boy out with some tips? It'll be like the world's worst duet."

He kept nervously tapping on the wood of his guitar. Anxiously waiting for her to respond. Instinctively, she wanted to reject him. To tell him to piss off and leave her alone. Not to include her in whatever stupid game he was playing.

But then she thought back to Shamrock. She thought of the way that this idiot boy had somehow managed to make friends with Blake, and the two of them sharing that personal moment over something Weiss couldn't understand.

She felt her mouth drying out. She rubbed her left eye on her sleeve, the scar itching. Her heart was beating a little faster.

"I…" The words wouldn't come out.

Jaune nodded. "Yeah, I'm sorry," he sighed. "Shouldn't have asked. Probably don't want to be wasting your time on me." He laughed, but there was no humor in that sound.

"No!" she said, and then cringed inwardly onto herself. Until she felt like a hunchback for a moment there. In a more measured voice, she said, "I mean, no, Jaune. Do you, y'know, do you know how embarrassing it would be if it got out that my teammates couldn't, uh."

Trying to make it sound boastful and proud just came across as fake and hollow. It only made the entire thing more painful. She put her hand over her mouth and breathed through her fingers.

And all the while, he kept watching her. Not like he was trying to undress her with his eyes like she kept expecting him to do. But it was this almost sympathetic look. There was no pity to be found, just someone who understood. It grated on her.

She wanted to offer to help. Wanted to be the bigger person between the two of them. But she just couldn't find the words. She couldn't bring herself to say it. Not to him.

Jaune licked his lips, and started playing the guitar again. "Screaming feeEeEeed—"

She held up her finger. He began the bars again, and this time she said it with him, "Screaming feeeeed me here. Fill me up again."

His voice still wasn't entirely on key, but he was following her lead. She knew instinctively from the way the melody was arranged exactly what would sound best from a voice here.

Jaune started again. And this time, both of them sang the line in tune together.