Music Choices: Noises by Pale Waves, We Can Be Build a Fire by Autoheart
Eclipse
Chapter 51
The White Rook
Part III
Casa de ARSN was considerably more mellow as the team plus one dragged back to the dorm room. The sun wasn't up yet, but it was close to four thirty and many second years were already roaming the dorms and stressing out about the day, getting early breakfast before they could get some extra studying or training in. Most of said second years also had the brains to avoid questioning any of them or even making eye contact, especially with Sigyn and Raven, who were still covered in blood and bruises, their aura levels having yet to regenerate to healing levels.
Rumors would surely follow, but nothing that they were more concerned about than what they were currently dealing with.
"I'll get some fresh coffee going," Argent declared firmly, moving into the kitchen.
"Mm," Nat grunted in affirmation, following her team leader in the kitchen. Reinhardt plopped down on a beanbag and picked up a controller and headset, waving at them.
"I'm not even here! Talk away - just don't throw things towards my head please! Or the screen!"
Raven and Sigyn sat down across from one another in a pair of very abused bean bags, appraising each other carefully; gentle sparks of aura were starting up on the worst of their wears and tears. Raven could feel her eyebrow's pulsating beginning to lessen, along with her splitting headache from where Sigyn had tried to shove her head through the floor.
She regretted losing her temper earlier during the fight. She'd allowed Sigyn to get under her skin, especially with those comments about how she was ruining Summer's life, and had finally let loose. Which was the total opposite of what she had been trying to do - she was trying to resolve problems between STRQ and ARSN, not carve up any chance at peace.
Raven had never been very good at making peace; but she had to at least get better at it if this was going to work out.
"Sooo!" Sigyn whistled, cracking several joints before flopping back in her bean bag. "Who goes first?"
Raven inhaled lightly, forcing her frame to relax. Before she started speaking, however, she pulled out the ward Tormund had given her previously, in case anything or anyone magical was spying. The room flashed green briefly, and Sigyn pulled a face, staring curiously at the object; Reinhardt didn't even glance their way.
"I'm sorry for a lot of the...comments I made," Raven started finally, cleaning blood from out beneath her fingernails. "During the fight. I got pissed off, and said a bunch of horseshit I shouldn't have said and don't really believe. I was just trying to hurt you and I went too far."
Sigyn leaned forwards, elbows on her stocking covered knees, eyes changing shades occasionally as she listened to her.
"Ok. Uh - same, I, yea same," Sigyn picked at some blood dried on her skirt hem. "I-I do that, too, I know! When I get like this, I get kinda stab happy, but with words? And also probably with sharp objects."
Raven felt her lip twitch. She could empathize with that.
"And I know I'm being impulsive, and just an awful, mean bitch when I'm doing it, but there's like - it's so hard to check it sometimes. Like, that's not an excuse though, I'm not trying to make excuses, it just runs away with me sooo fast and then it's too late and the whole rooms already on fire," Sigyn rambled, staring at the blood and the floor. "And then I kinda just lock my jaws around whatever I think the problem is and don't let go!"
"Like pink, sparkly bulldog!"
"YES I know, Natty, thank you," Sigyn exclaimed, though her tone was more amused than irritated.
Much of her body language was far more relaxed and open than it had been just a few hours previously, but she was still agitated - or Raven was reading her as agitated. She already dedicated a lot of time observing people's body language to deduce or approximate what they were feeling; but with Sigyn, that language was on a wavelength she just couldn't keep up with half the time.
"Look. I don't reaaallly want you to transfer out, dude - I was just…" Sigyn trailed off for a moment, glancing up at the projected rainbow lights on the ceiling. ARSN's room had an absurd amount of theme lighting, much of it coming from Reinhardt's battlestation. "I mean I am pissed at you and Qrow, but I don't think you guys are ruining anyone's life. Not anymore than I am, which, ya know-"
"No comment."
"Hey peanut gallery!" Sigyn snort-cackled, a bizarre sound that Raven had not known a human could make. "Shut it!"
Clinking in the kitchen as Argent and Natalia drank coffee and gave them some amount of space.
"It's, like, there's a lot I don't understand still. Like why you guys didn't trust us enough to come to us for help on any of this - I mean I get it from a logistics standpoint, to a degree but….it still really stings? And Summer used to be sooo open with me about everything and now there's this HUGE portion of her life I literally knew flipping nothing about! Nada!" Sigyn's hands gestured energetically as she spoke. "And she didn't even consider telling me diddly do about any of it? Until she literally had to because not doing so puts me in danger? So like, I want to blame you for that, because from my perspective it FEELS like it's your influence on her. But I know, logically, that that isn't fair, because Summer made that choice herself - to not include me- and that….that really, really hurts my fucking feelings."
Raven had stopped cleaning her fingernails, and was staring carefully at the girl across from her, listening intently.
Is it my influence, though? Am I pushing her away from the people close to her?
The thought chilled her, but she tried to approach that fear carefully, aware that it wanted to run away with her. To set the room on fire.
She certainly wasn't trying to isolate her partner intentionally or encourage her to distrust the people around her; but what if that was a piece of Raven that was contaminating her somehow-
No. I'm not - my problems are not contagious . I need to stop thinking this way….
It hurt though. That others might consider her in such a light. Especially people she saw as friends.
I don't know how to stop thinking this way...
"Again, I know that those feelings aren't - you were kinda right, earlier?" Sigyn ran on, watching Raven's still form. "I am totally projecting some of my own bullshit on you! Because I worry a lot that I - that my own issues combined with my Semblance or whatever - will inevitably drive the people I care about away! And it scares the shit out of me whenever I think that's happening! So I wanted to like, drive away a scapegoat of that or something annnnd. Yea. I am sorry. That was wrong of me and...I know I'm a mess."
Sigyn's voice was a little raw on the tail end of that sentence, and Raven could tell that the other girl was trying to keep from tearing up. She had the sense to not comment on that. For a brief second, Raven thought about a smiling cat and his reflection in a mirror. She took a longer breath, willing herself to be less a reflection of others fears and masking what she thought they wanted to see, and to be honest.
"To be fair," Raven drawled, tilting her head wryly. "We're both giant fucking messes, Sy. You don't get to take all the glory on that one."
Sigyn snuffled a little, but she was grinning a little; there was still a significant streak of dried blood around her mouth.
"I...have a lot of, well, similar fears I think," Raven muttered, her face slipping from dry to something more sincere. "Even though we run at very different frequencies, emotionally? Perhaps we have more in common than not. I didn't understand why you were so persistently angry at us for so long, and to be frank, I still don't. From here it just looked like you were punishing us for being honest with you. I know that's not how you meant that, and that you were just processing your stuff at your pace; but from my perspective, that reaction just reaffirmed my own...fears, I guess. That if we are totally honest about these things, then bad shit is going to happen."
Sigyn nodded slowly, her eyes cycling through the rainbow as she listened. She kept visibly resisting the urge to fidget or stretch her limbs out.
"But...the reason I keep things close to the chest instead of asking for help with such things from those close to me is...well. Complicated. It plays back into a lot of my own ingrained issues. Which, I don't currently," Raven's eyes trailed the room, following the flow of the lights. "Have the tools to dismantle or fix yet. I do know, like you said, it's not an excuse for the things I do; but it feels so fundamental to how I think and work as a person, that these days I can't tell if it is truly an aspect of who I am? Or just a response to...trauma."
Sigyn blinked owlishly before bobbing quickly.
"There's also the fact that there's these huge structures in place in relation to the dangers we've been up against; networks of people with resources and abilities that we either can't match or don't know anything about - on top of everything else. It's all just been happening so fast that it feels we were tossed headfirst without a landing strategy into this reality of magic and undead and secret societies," Raven waved her hand, her voice growing frustrated. "Because Ozpin wanted to veil us in for whatever suspicious reason - and I cannot resist hoarding knowledge like stuffing trinkets under the floorboards! But ever since last year, we've been doing whatever we can to keep our heads above just this fucking deluge of terrifying, mystical, power struggle shit we keep getting submerged in! And I don't think there is any going back! It's - I really think this is our life now."
Sigyn nodded rapidly again, her fingers steepled as she squished into the beanbag.
"And it doesn't play well with being a group of Hunters in training! Especially when it constantly puts us at odds with law enforcement agencies - this shit with the King's Service has been a total fucking nightmare! We're still not in the clear yet either, there's -" she shook her head, realizing she was getting close to perhaps saying too much.
Sigyn watched her cut herself off, but didn't comment on it.
Should I tell them? They're involved now. And it's not like I'm probably going to be able to keep this to myself if Summer demands total honesty later on. Everything's going to come out, I won't be able to help it.
"...There's a lot of dangerous shit still going on that I am trying to get ahead of," Raven said intently, glaring at the floor. "And Summer and the others don't know about it yet."
"Hmmm. Mhm, is it because you're trying to protect them? Orrr because you're scared to tell them?" Sigyn wheedled, eying her craftily. "Cuz there is a difference."
"Can it not be both?" Raven droned.
"I dunno, look, context is key here!" Sigyn snorted. "Of these secrets or whatever, what is most likely gonna piss somebody off? If you specifically don't tell them and then they find out?"
Raven double checked the ward and glanced over at Reinhardt, who was busy murdering people on screen.
"This room is totally bug-proof? There's no chance of listening devices?"
There also were no mirrors in the main-room, only in the bathroom.
We need to magic proof all of our mirrors, both ARSN and STRQ...
"Pffft, only bugs we got here are Sigyn's lice, babbbbby -OH that's right! Suck my ass, shitlord!" Reinhardt hooted as he blew someone's head off. Sigyn blew a raspberry at her teammate and he chortled. She waited for them to quiet down before speaking again.
"I'm planning the assassination of one of the Kings Servicemembers," Raven admitted, and promptly heard Argent spit out his drink in the kitchen.
Sigyn made a face torn between apprehension and respect, while Reinhardt's character got promptly downed as he had an intelligible coughing fit.
"Mmmmk," Sigyn hummed. "Go onnnn. Why is this what's gonna get you dunked into the spiciest of the punchbowls?"
"...Because I went to your dad for help," Raven muttered, glancing away. "He's supplying me and giving tactical advice."
Another beat.
"Ooooooh," Sigyn let out a groan, making a pained face. "Ohhh nooo - Raven, noooo. You did it on purpose? Cuz you knew he wouldn't say anything to us?"
A beat.
"...Yes."
"Raven noooo! Ugggh," Sigyn facepalmed, exclaiming loudly as the rest of ARSN made various noises and comments. "That is so shitty - I mean, I get it! I do! But at the same time - girl, nnoooo ! She's gonna be so flippin pissed! And she's already SUPER mad!"
Raven sunk further into the stupid bean bag, her stomach feeling utterly sick. A sensation of doom was settling heavily around her shoulders; she hadn't planned on ever telling Summer of Tormund's involvement, or telling the others anything about it at all. It had seemed like the most logical course of action at the time, and the fact that Tormund had completely agreed with her decision had reassured her that she was making the right, and most mature, choice.
No, I fucking knew better. I didn't want them to find out, because then I'd be confronted with the truth that sneaking around behind them was wrong. At this rate, I'll be lucky if she just dumps me.
"But look! It's ok! Well, it isn't! But it can be! It's not like she wasn't sorta doing something similar to me with all this, and uh - we'll probably just have like a big, awkward family meeting or somethiiing," Sigyn winced, rubbing the back of her head, her bracelets jingling. "Why though? Like, why do you have to kill this one dude? I'm not judging that, by the way, I'm assuming it's gotta happen cuz otherwise dad wouldn't support you - so you've got that going for you! But like - why him?"
"Was it that man from interrogation?" Natalia stuck her head into the room. "The creepy one?"
"Yes, actually," Raven admitted in surprise, eying the gunwoman. "You know you guys don't have to hide in there, right? I don't bite-"
"Bitch, yes the fuck you do," Sigyn scoffed, waving her forearm at her.
"Fair enough - I won't bite."
"I do not hide, I drink and play Go with Argent," Natalia insisted, sounding offended. "Why is this man in particular after you? Compared to the rest of the agency?"
Raven paused again, weighing the pros and cons of confessing the total truth. Verdant wasn't the only agent targeting them, but he was, in her opinion, the most dangerous. Perhaps she was a little biased, considering he had already killed her once.
"Because," she started cautiously. "He is our biological father."
More clattering in the kitchen before Argent stuck his head out over Natalia's. Reinhardt threw his controller down and spun around in his seat, while Sigyn let out a long, low whistle.
"He knows too much about the free people and our magic, and is dead set on eliminating us from the face of the planet," Raven continued, her voice sounding almost flat. "And he is not going to stop or go away until he gets what he wants. Which is for all us to either be dead, or enslaved to the King of Vale. I am going to fucking kill him so that doesn't happen."
Besides the noises coming from the tv, the room was utterly silent as ARSN collectively tried to pick their jaws off the floor. Sigyn's leg was bouncing rapidly as her eyes flashed prismatically, and Natalia roved into view, appraising Raven seriously.
"Mm. I have question," Nat prompted.
Raven raised a brow slowly, aware that they were all staring at her in some kind of shock and could, technically, turn her into the police; not that ARSN ever would , but it was a lot.
"Why is it that only you get to kill him?" Nat asked, clearly utilizing her Semblance to study her. Raven would typically react harshly to such a thing, but considering the circumstances, she'd allow it.
"It would severely harm my brother to be involved," Raven explained coolly, her voice dry. Detached. Clinical.
She noted Natalia's gentle shift in expression at the mention of her brother and filed it away for later.
"Neither Summer nor Taiyang are not killers, and that isn't something I can or ever want to ask of them. The rest of my family is swamped trying to repair the genocide that V - that he has begun on this continent and abroad, and do not have the resources to dedicate to this. That and if my parents fail and are murdered or captured, then my people will die out; and so too will most of the tribes on Anima, as the Branwen and the Morrigan are the literal aegis-cloak between them and the corrupt Hunters and Mistrali forces seeking to exterminate them all. In the event I fail? They will live on to fight and survive another day. Oh, and I can't ask Arc to do it, because she would likely inform my parents and prevent me from taking necessary action."
Possibly, anyways. Arc had been her second go-to after Tormund. However, she feared her teacher would reach out to Nwfyre somehow, now that they had made some kind of amends; and then the Morrigan would intervene, despite everything else she had on her plate, and put herself at risk of elimination by Verdant.
Because Verdant desperately wanted to kill Nwyfre; which, now that she had time to consider it, of course he did.
Nwyfre was everything he should have been, but failed to be.
Sigyn bobbed, looking as though she understood and to an extent agreed, while Reinhardt and Argent were still exchanging looks in a silent, wide eyed conversation. Natalia, however, was staring at Raven with her typical, grim facade; neither impressed nor disturbed.
"That sounds very logical," Natalia started after a moment. "You're very good at sounding logical. Very convincing."
Raven's brow twitched, narrowing her eyes at her tone.
"But you aren't being logical right now, Raven. You are being martyr."
Raven sneered instinctively; Nat didn't even blink, because of course she didn't.
"Don't be fucking absurd. I have no intentions of martyring myself," Raven glared coldly, her hackles rising instantly.
She'd been thorough, cautious, and was seeking out assistance from an expert. She wanted to make it out alive. She didn't want notoriety or fucking attention! She just wanted to do what was best for her people!
"You are self sacrificing by jumping on a grenade," Natalia squated nearby, studying her openly as she chewed thoughtfully on a toothpick.
It made her a little nervous, to be honest. Nat could literally see parts of her psyche; parts that Raven perhaps didn't even have access to.
"Because you are convinced no one else can handle it or help you with it, or will want to; and because you want to make amends to the world just for existing. That isn't logic , Raven, that is self destruction. That is self harm."
Raven nearly bared her teeth, fury rising up as she strongly considered getting up and just walking out. She didn't feel these fuckings things at all . Natalia was just making in complete assumptions, not accurate assessments.
"I know you struggle to detect certain feelings at times. I can see this struggle, you know? It is result of injury - multiple injuries," Natalia waved, studying the air around her. Or her non-visible aura. "But those feelings, those thoughts? They are still there. Even when you aren't actively aware of or suppress them. You have your hands on the hot stove and can't feel that you are burning yet! This entire scenario is harming you."
Raven opened her mouth to counter, a bloodthirsty snarl on her lips; but something in her chest throbbed in helpless agony and said snarl died out. She thought about her conversation with Taiyang from several weeks ago, considering the legitimacy of what Natalia was saying.
"Say any of that is somehow true," Raven started, her voice rougher than what she had been going for. Raw. "It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things! Something still has to be done!"
Natalia stared at her, x-ray vision picking her apart, seeing every fucking thing that Raven tried to hide relentlessly from ever seeing the light of day. From her friends. From her loved ones. From herself.
"My other options are severely limited! Even if I were, hypothetically, stuck in some sort of invisible mental crisis? It is irrelevant compared to the fates of thousands of people that could rest on me taking some kind of action! All we managed to do, after everything we already did and risked?" Raven gestured angrily. "Was delay him! That isn't good enough! He needs to be eliminated outright!"
Sigyn was glancing rapidly between Raven and Natalia, her chin resting in her hand. Reinhardt had scooted in closer to the beanbag psych-circle, while Argent had plopped down next to Natalia; he was still taller than her when sitting.
"I mean," Argent tilted his bald head, appraising her. "Both of these things can be true, though. Yea?"
Raven sent a glare his way, which he took better perhaps than he might have in times previous. He raised an eyebrow right back at her.
"There's no reason both of these things can't exist as coexisting facts," he held up two of his fingers. "That this V guy has to be taken down before he kills or abducts more people, more successfully, and harms or kills STRQ. And, this situation is causing you a lot of mental and emotional harm, that you aren't equipped to deal with solo. And that is ok."
Natalia played with her toothpick, nodding once. Sigyn was bouncing in the bean-bag, a look of devious excitement lighting up her still bloody face, while Reinhardt watched his glittery teammate with knowingly.
"Ooo! Ooo!" Sigyn was clapping her hands together quickly. "I know what to do!"
Raven hesitated, sharing a look with Reinhardt.
Oh no. Nonono-
"Let's ALL help kill him!" Sigyn announced gleefully, clapping her hands together. "Let's! Be! Assassins!"
Raven shook her head rapidly, standing up; it would have been more impressive if she hadn't had to pull herself out of the confines of a very squishy, purple bean-bag..
"No?! Sigyn? No!" Raven insisted, her voice raising to get through to her.
"Sigyn YES," the renegade popped to her feet in one, nigh inhuman motion before pausing. "After we uh talk to Summer about everything first! Can't ran off on a murder spree before that - but afterwards!? Totally!"
"We're not going on a murder spree!" Raven glared, feeling increasingly desperate. "I do not need, nor gods help me - do I fucking wan t - your help with this! I wasn't asking - see, no! This is why I don't say shit!"
Her protests were thoroughly ignored. It was too late.
"Murder spree! Murder spree! Murder spree!" Sigyn chanted, doing a wild ass dance and trying to convince Reinhardt to dance with her. The technopath hesitated, before he snickered at Raven's horrified expression and started to dance too.
"Fuck it!" Reinhardt hooted, shaking his butt. " Murder spree! Murder spree! Murder spree! Come on, Natty! Argent! Murder spree dance!"
Argent shook his head slowly. That was all he had to say on the subject, and no one else tried to pressure him to do so.
"I do not dance," Natalia droned. "You know this."
"You dance for the fucking anthem of this household, young lady!" Reinhardt gyrated bizarrely. "Show some respect for the troops!"
Natalia glanced at Raven, who was strongly considering jumping out the window and flying away.
"I'm from Mantle," she shrugged, while still maintaining a squat. "We have no fucking respect for troops. And? We do not dance."
"LIAR, you dance with QROW!" Sigyn shouted as she flailed around with Reinhardt, the pair looking like they were trying to summon an eldritch entity and possibly dance on a stripper pole at the same time.
"Shut up," Natalia sniffed.
"I don't know what you expected," Argent chuckled, eying Raven's outraged expression. "Joking asides though - consider the offer at least?"
She absolutely would the hell not consider it! The operation required subtlety and intense organization and planning; not ARSN, who were the antithesis of all of those things.
A sharp knocking on the door and Raven nearly jumped. Sigyn and Reinhardt did not stop chanting or dancing, as Natalia moved to pull the door open sharply.
"Excuse me?" a brown haired boy started, his voice and demeanor far too condescending for his own well being.
Raven realized she recognized him as one of the new leaders of a freshmen team; FLNT she believed.
"You're excused," Natalia droned.
"You guys are screaming and stomping around at four in the bloody morning, right on top of our room - can you not?" the boy tried to look around Nat's shoulder at the murder spree cultists. "I..."
Sigyn pointed dramatically at him, her face still covered in blood from their brawl earlier as she started to cavort towards the door menacingly.
"Murder spree. Murder spree. MURDER SPREE," Sigyn chanted ominously as she danced towards the door, followed by Reinhardt, who was cackling gleefully.
Fiyero then made eye contact with Raven, who was similarly covered in her own blood, and on the precipice of strangling her idiot friends. There was an awkward pause, as perhaps Fiyero realized he had stumbled into a situation way beyond his paygrade.
"Um…?"
"Mind your fucking business!" Raven snarled and Fiyero quickly backpedaled, having gone utterly pale. "Go! Get the fuck out!"
Nat slammed the door as Sigyn and Reinhardt cackled like too over caffeinated hyenas. Argent sighed.
"Will you guys quit terrorizing the freshmen? They're already all afraid of us," he scolded, moving towards the kitchen again. "Except that one chick that keeps coming around trying to buy intel and snoop."
Nat frowned at that, grumbling darkly under her breath.
"As they should be!" Sigyn declared, her hands on her hips. "Ooh, Argent? Areeeee you making breakfast?"
"Yep!" he smirked. "All for me! Not for thee!"
"Awww, please? Pretty please?" Sigyn's tune changed quickly, rubbing her growling stomach. "I'll make you breakfast next time?"
"Please don't," Argent chuckled. "I don't want food poisoning again."
Sigyn pouted.
"Go wash up, dude, you've got a blood-mask going on," Argent waved towards the bathroom. Sigyn stuck her tongue out, before she and Reinhardt raced to the bathroom, squabbling over who got to shower first. "Raven? If you want, you can stay for breakfast with us. Since things might be kinda tense back in your room, I don't know."
Raven grumbled a little, but was ultimately grateful for the offer. She didn't want to go back to the room yet; she wasn't sure she could deal with feeling Summer's anger washing over the bond while awkwardly trying to stay out of the way.
"You might also want to wash," Natalia suggested, acquiring more coffee. "You look like one of the tundra women with her war-paint on."
She rolled her eyes, well aware that she needed a shower, before pausing and considering the implication of what Nat had said.
"...There are still free tribes around Mantle?" Raven prompted quietly.
Natalia grunted in affirmation, taking a sip.
"They lay low. But yes. We'd trade with them for food during shortages. Very good hunters."
That's incredible. I'd heard they'd all been driven away or killed off by Atlas. Everyone thought they were all gone years ago. Despite the odds, they are somehow still alive.
She smirked slightly at the thought, a slight spark of hope taking up in her chest, over the anger, fear and stress. It wasn't much, but it helped keep her from letting her anxiety spiral out of control as she lent Argent a hand making breakfast; and it helped keep her from feeling overwhelmed by the fear that she had single handedly destroyed her relationship by once again being a trauma goblin.
It would not last forever, this little glimmer of hope. However, it got her through the first steps of the morning; and for the moment, that was enough.