Snow Garden

Chapter I: Journey Into the Known World

"Weiss, we're worried about you," she said.

Weiss pushed her chair from under the table. She stood. "Not this again."

Weiss remembered why she so often disliked these 'team nights'. Yang took to peppering her with questions about her whereabouts and actions during the last week or the last month. Blake treated her like she was a ticking time bomb and the solution was love and attention. Weiss loved her former teammates dearly, but her preferred method of communication was over the internet and separated by scroll screens.

"Thank you for the meal," Weiss said. She grabbed her coat from the hanger. The white long coat was tattered and darkened from exposure to the elements and various Grimm, and Weiss held a fondness for it and its miraculous survival over the years. She put on her shoes, boots commissioned by the SDC and fitted for Weiss. She hadn't replaced them in two years, and the wear was starting to show. Myrtenaster was already on her hip. Weiss didn't take the Multi-Action Dust Rapier off when she didn't need to.

Yang scowled at Weiss, and Weiss knew she would go on a tangent and try to convince Weiss to stay and talk―to behave like a "reasonable, healthy adult" and to stop "stomping off when things get difficult". But this time, Blake put a hand on Yang's shoulder and shook her head.

"Let her go," Blake said.

A gust of wind blew past Weiss as she opened the door. Weiss shivered, though she was used to the chill. Let her go. Those words made Weiss cold.

"Do you have a place to stay?" Blake asked her.

"I'll find one." Weiss stepped into the snowstorm. She looked up and saw the stars litter the night sky. The shattered moon felt ominous against those stars. Weiss had come to think of it as a haunting reminder of the past.

Though she promised Blake she would find a place to stay, Weiss ended up resting under a large tree on the bottom of the hill. She summoned a Boarbatusk to block the snow and warm her body. Weiss spent most of the year on the outskirts of civilization in order to fulfill missions as a Huntress, and the wilderness had grown on her over the years. She preferred silence and solitude over people.

Surely, the Weiss at seventeen would have denounced this Weiss who was now twenty-seven. Perhaps she would have commented on the uncivilized nature of Weiss's way of living, and how Weiss could never bring herself to settle in one place. Her face would morph into disbelief over how Weiss dressed or who she associated herself with. And she would have certainly been furious, aghast even, when she learned that Weiss didn't care to hold any stocks in the SDC, and cared even less for ownership over the company.

Though Weiss vaguely remembered her younger self that way and felt immense disappointment over the person she was, she couldn't say she liked who she was now either. It was hard to tell who she liked better or even if she liked herself at all. Given all of that, Weiss thought that at the very least her younger self never had to deal with the problems she now dealt with and the memories that only serve to hurt her to remember. As Weiss grew drowsy, she was left with the feeling that it was simply easier to live back then.

The birds were chirping and the sun was shining in her eyes. Blades of grass tickled her hands. The ground was dry and soft.

Something was very, very wrong.

Her head felt light and breezy, a sensation not dissimilar to when your body adjusted to a sudden change in air pressure. Her ears popped as she moved into a sitting position and opened her eyes.

The bright spots faded from her vision, and Weiss gained a perspective on her situation. She had fallen asleep under a hill in Patch, the island Blake and Yang called home, and awakened in a different location altogether. In front of her, the trees formed a circle around a large and ancient temple. The temple had fallen into disrepair long ago; large sections of the temple were missing and foliage grew from cracks in the wall.

The abandoned temple in Emerald Forest was a source of great and ancient power. It was also a place Weiss had hoped she'd never see again.

Weiss found Mytrenaster's grip and felt an immense sense of relief. She drew the weapon from her hip. Then, she made a long, thin straight line in the ground. Following the line, she took nine steps in a heel-to-toe fashion. After the ninth step, she turned on one foot and returned to the beginning of the line the same way. She concluded that she was not under the influence nor mildly hallucinating. This conclusion gave Weiss little to no comfort.

The situation itself was far too abnormal. Weiss was in the Emerald Forest, a place she was intimately familiar with, in the ring of power of that temple. Besides that absurd coincidence, the Emerald Forest was in Vale, which shared seasonal cycles with Patch. Therefore, it should be that time of year when it was freezing and snowing. Weiss recalled hearing that a snowstorm had passed Vale mere days before, and it was that same snowstorm she encountered last night.

Weiss looked at the green leaves on the trees and the soft, sprouting grass and flowers on the ground and concluded that it was not, in fact, wintertime.

She opened her scroll, the newest SDC model, and a gift from her brother. There was no service, and Weiss had the best service provider on Remnant. Nonetheless, if Weiss traveled to Beacon, she could hook her scroll on the staff internet. If she was in an elaborate hallucination, it would almost certainly fall apart by then.

Weiss commended herself on her brilliant plan and set a course for Beacon.

The feeling that something was very wrong grew as Weiss saw more of Beacon Academy over the horizon. In Weiss's first and only year at Beacon Academy, a battle later penned by scholars as the Fall of Beacon destroyed much of the infrastructure of the towers. When Beacon was reclaimed and rebuilt four years later, the towers were reconstructed and modernized. The Beacon before the Fall and the Beacon after the Fall were vastly different in appearance and technology.

Weiss knew all of this. She had been to the new Beacon, and she had seen the reconstruction with her very own eyes.

The old Beacon Academy loomed over her; the core CCT tower and the signature pointed towers that were destroyed in the Fall of Beacon were unscathed. The weather was clear, and it felt like spring. But even more so, it felt like an image straight from Weiss's teenage years. An odd, nervous feeling bubbled in Weiss's stomach as she passed the front gates.

A face from the past stood next to the entrance beyond the courtyard. It was impossible, Weiss herself made sure it was impossible, yet she stood there.

"Headmaster Ozpin awaits your arrival."

A/N:

Time-travel fanfics often fail because while there is a good premise, the author is unable to deliver in execution over the long term. This is unfortunate because I love time-travel fanfics. So I decided to plot my own.

If it doesn't exist, make it yourself?