Main theme: Metro Exodus rap by Jt Music, featuring Andrea Storm Kaden
Theme: Reflection from the Destiny 2: Beyond Light soundtrack
Ren couldn't remember how long he had spent over the last few days around the dead and the dying.
He walked between the rows of beds, some of them actual mattresses and cushions, others makeshift from old pillows and sheets, and the rest made from salvaged metals and any discarded clothes and fabrics that happened to be lying around at the time. Overhead, the giant hanger bay doors of the Argent Victory Dreadnaught were closed, with rows of lights strapped onto them and shining down on the improv hospital below, glowing circles of light covering the thousands of beds below, all placed in messy formations and divided into sections by messy lines and chalk colourings. Salvaged and makeshift IV drip stands and heart monitors scattered the ground and laid between many of the beds, wires lining the floors and connecting to switch ports and connection points in the faraway walls.
Almost all of these beds had people in them, all sporting wounds that ranged from minor to possibly life-threatening.
And these weren't even all of them.
Some of the more worse-off patients had been sent off into separate rooms, where they would be hooked up to the healing gel tanks or kept away from the others due to the severity of their wounds, or even if they had gathered infectious diseases in them.
Jaune was in one of those healing tanks right now.
He had collapsed immediately after the Battle of Mantle.
Ren winced at the memory, and refocused himself on the task before him- Helping an amputee- An elderly woman without any legs- Into her wheelchair.
He liked doing this. Helping people. It helped him too, to keep him busy- To take his mind off the fact that his team leader was currently in yet another coma and had come so close to dying, again, for their sakes.
He suspected that Nora felt the same as well. Or maybe she just wanted to be with him when they both volunteered to be part of the makeshift hospital staff.
Ren wasn't sure who had organised for the Argent's main hanger to be converted into the resistance's temporary hospital, but once he had heard about it, he and Nora had put themselves forward as temporary nurses and doctors for the swath of injured fighters that had survived the Battle of Mantle.
They hadn't been the only ones, though. A thousand people had volunteered alongside them, marking only the first wave of temporary medics to be brought forwards to heal the sick and comfort the dying, constructing the makeshift hospice within the landed Argent, and bringing together all of those that had been injured from the previous battle and skirmishes. Another thousand people had followed in the second wave of volunteers, bringing with them recovered stashes of medicine from the wreckage of hospitals and pharmacies that could still be accessed within the remains of Atlas and Mantle, as well as any that they had previously been hoarding for themselves.
After the end of the battle, all of Solitas had come together to build a better future for themselves.
All of the resistance had sprung into action.
And there was only one person that Ren could think of to thank for that.
Still, it was hard not to be demoralised by it all. The rows and rows of people with paved-over holes in their guts and stumps where their limbs should be.
As he helped the elderly woman into her wheelchair, lifting her up under her arms and carefully placing her on her seat, he looked to the side to see two temp-nurses- A pair of Faunus from the White Wolves- Turning to each other and shaking their heads, and looking away from the limp, closed-eyed body beneath them to another temp-nurse carrying an empty body bag, signalling him over to them.
Ren's aura kicked in instinctively, and he was awash with a monochrome hue.
It had hard to keep oneself moralised in this place, where the shadow of death hung over them constantly. How was one supposed to focus on helping others when, in the bowels of a room of the dead and the dying, the lingering feeling of lost life clung to them and refused to let go?
How was one meant to remember what was good in the world in a place like this?
As the body was carried away and taken out of sight, a married couple burst through another door at the far end of the hanger, and announced with teary cheer that their child, having been sheltering with Veronica Masters since the Atlesian Civil War began, was going to survive their grievous injury.
Around them, a thousand people, even the mourners, clapped their hands and let out cheers of happiness and relief.
And the monochrome hue around Ren faded as he joined them.
That was how he remembered.
That was how he knew what was good in the world.
Reviewer response time:
Augustus Arc: General Ironwood will be featured soon enough, don't worry. And thanks for the kind review as well!
MilitiaMasker: I can't wait for when they're all reunited as well! But next arc's going to be a bit of a breather, so we've just got a little bit longer left to wait for them all to come together again.
SentinalSlice: Ozpin's got his own things to work through, and he won't realise that Jaune's important to the Daughter just yet. Jaune's got good reason to not trust him with this kind of information after all. However, on a grander scale... Well, we'll just wait and see.
gogo bananas: Yes man yes man yes man yes man.
VV: Ah, I see what you mean by it now... Well, it's less naivety, and more him not wanting to be part of a war, like most people, and having to deal with the Daughter's schenanigans. He's got idealism, yes- A good heap of it- And that's a good thing to have, but he also has a few more reasons for acting in the way that he does. But don't worry, he's still got quite a bit of growing up to do.
N-Lorin: Thank you, she's one of my favourite characters to write!
Originally I wanted to just skip over the short stories and head straight into the new arc, but there's a lot of context and character introspections that didn't fit right into the first draft of the chapter that I was writing, so I've decided to go back to the short stories and put them in there.
It also helps to avoid burnout, these things do.