Chapter 5: You Too Can Be a Monster
"WTF am I gonna go to a therapist for? So I can pay money for some bitch to tell me I'm straight? To find out I'm bi and in the closet? To help me discover that deep down I'm a straight ass gender-conforming bitch? LMAO pass. Miss me with that shit. I am gay. IAMGAY!"
— 9 —
Professor Ozpin visited Coco in Beacon's hospital. She could feel the weight of his judgment in between the beeps of the EKG machine. Between the little pulses of the burning nerves in her cracked back whenever they manage to slip through the painkillers. She'd been in this bed for days since returning to campus. Doc Croaker had given her a bad prognosis or diagnosis or whatever the word was. Coco didn't know.
A dislocated and then poorly relocated arm. A broken hip. A concussion. Mild pulmonary edema. A bit of frostbite on her fingers. And she had hairline fractures over her spine and everywhere else that mattered. According to the X-rays, her bones looked like a spiderweb instead of the building blocks of calcium that should've been holding her meat together. Only her Aura had kept her together, and only if you really squinted and were willing to shrug your shoulders at any permanent damage. Beacon had some of the best medical care in the world, and Croaker's supernatural abilities meant a Hunter could recover from anything short of actually losing a limb. But even he had limits.
The doc had put nails in her spine and channeled his Semblance through it. If he'd gotten to her immediately after the injury, before the damage set it, she would've made a full, nearly instant recovery. But Coco had broken it days ago. Everything still hurt. She'd need weeks to properly recover, which was still a damn sight better than being a cripple. But she'd still need just a bit of physical therapy in water tanks and with casts and wires just to make sure she was up to snuff, and then would need months retraining her body to get back to where she was before Montluçon.
Ozpin was hardly her first visitor. At first it was just Croaker and the nurses. Then trickled in the rest of Team CFVY, making sure she was good, asking how she was, the usual meaningless shit. She'd done her best to smile, to tell them she'd be fine. She'd make a full recovery, which wasn't strictly speaking a lie, but it underscored how long that'd take. Coco could handle the looks of pity in their eyes. Even from Fox, who'd sat there and spoken in her head, she could feel the pity.
Pity is the single cruelest, most evil form of compassion out there, Jaune had told her in the caves before they got separated. Before she'd failed as a leader, let Jaune take control, and nearly gotten everyone killed. To say nothing of the people in the city who died because they'd touched some ancient evil thing they'd stumbled upon all because Coco couldn't tell everyone she'd found CCHS and then ran away.
Jaune was pretty much the only one who didn't visit her. Which might have been for the best. No one on her team liked the kid. Really, no one from Team BASS or CFVY liked each other, save for Jaune and Coco. And Coco didn't know how it'd turn out if one of them walked in while she was with someone from her team, with all the dirty looks and arguments that would ensue.
But hell, something about that hurt. Even Ruby had visited Coco in this depressing little room.
"Hey, Coco!" Ruby had said, all smiles. She held up a little box. "I got you a little gift for surviving and saving all those people! And, y'know, for being there for me when I needed some advice. So, yeah, I asked your friends and thought you might need this!"
Coco's back and ass had hurt as she reached out to accept the little box. And then everything hurt as she took out the designer shades she'd broken. Coco was only too glad when Ruby finally left. She didn't think she'd be able to live it down if Ruby saw her crying over something so simple and stupid.
Professor Ozpin leaned on his cane as he read the medical reports by the foot of Coco's bed. When he looked back at her, she averted her eyes. "You've gone through more in a couple of days than many Huntresses go through in a lifetime," he said softly.
Coco adjusted herself in her bed, trying to sit up. "Is this going to be the part like last time where you wonder how I'm going to do all of the homework I missed during the mission?"
Professor Ozpin put her medical files back in the folder slot at the foot of her bed. "No. You only accrue homework during a mission if you overstay your time in the field. You weren't in Montluçon any longer than expected, despite what happened. And more to the point, you performed beyond expectations. I have already interviewed with your team."
Her eyes widened. "And what did they say?"
He looked down his glasses at her. "That you fought hard within the caves and afterwards. That you went above and beyond your calling as a Huntress. And that you suffered a grievous injury in the line of duty to protect your teammates."
All at once, Coco realized something. Her teammates hadn't been telling the full story. They couldn't have been. She wasn't injured fighting; Coco got hurt because she ran ahead due to her claustrophobia and got shot off a ledge by a face stealing monster. She hadn't been able to keep control of her team, and everyone had defaulted to Jaune instead. The two teams hadn't ever seen eye to eye, and were fighting and bickering. And then, after the encounter with the liquid Grimm, the teams had been separated and hadn't reunited until after the fighting was done. Hell, the last part you could probably see from the TV reports. But they were all closing ranks around her.
And Coco had to screw her eyes shut.
"No," Ozpin said. "Despite everything that happened, you stuck to your guns as a Huntress, fought and defended people until the very end. I have nothing but admiration for people like you. You should be proud of what you did. But with pride comes knowing your limits."
"And what does that mean?" Coco asked with more hostility than she had intended.
He regarded her evenly. "That you need to rest, above all. Many a Hunter has fallen in the line of duty because they failed to realize what their limits were. They thought they could rely on their Aura or superior firepower to take care of them, and it cost them everything. You were hurt. And until you have recovered, I can't in good conscience ask you to return to class and your duties." He leaned forwards on his cane. "I'm excusing you from class for the next month to recover."
"That's bullshit!" she snapped, slamming a fist into the railing of her bed. "You can't just take me away from class, my friends, my peers!"
Professor Ozpin held up his hand. "I don't intend to. But I help make the lesson plans. I'm not going to punish you for doing well and saving lives by forcing you into advanced physical training or battlefield tactics that you have clearly demonstrated mastery of. You will be fine to relax for the next month and focus on your health. That is what concerns me most. I don't intend to remove you from your friends; I just want you to be okay. Once you are cleared to leave the hospital, you can return to your dorm room with your team. And then you can continue to relax and post on social media or do whatever it is the kids do these days while you focus on your recovery."
Coco grabbed at the sheets of her bed, bunching them in her hands. "And what if I don't want to? What if I want to return to class? Hell, what do you think people will say or think if I suddenly vanish because I got hurt?"
"They will be amazed at the hell you went through, and the fact that you still returned invincible as ever, Coco Adel," he said simply. "You went through something that would have killed most students here. Almost anybody without an Aura or the care of Doc Croaker would have been rendered a paraplegic by now. Yet here you are, one day returning, fine and fit for the fight. That is what they will see."
She stared into her lap, not knowing how to reply to that, how to argue with the man. How to fight him and win.
While she said nothing, he pulled up a chair and sat beside her. He drummed his fingers on his cane until she was able to look back up at him. At him in that damn little smile of his.
"I don't intend to keep you locked up in a tower," he said. "You are one of our best, Coco. But you're also young and impulsive and brash and all of those other qualities that make you an excellent Huntress. I simply won't let your best traits be the ones that destroy you." He shrugged with one hand. "But I'll talk to the doctor. I think he wants to play it safe and keep you here as long as possible. I believe I can negotiate with some of the best brandy I keep hidden in my desk to allow you out of here sooner, if you're truly feeling it and promise not to strain yourself."
She swallowed, nodding. Far behind the professor, through the windows, the CCTS tower obscured the sun and cast long shadows through the room. She could barely see his face even this close.
"Thank you, professor," she said weakly. It felt so empty and pathetic. Like a starving dog being forced to roll over for table scraps. But she didn't know what else she could get. What else she could do.
Coco saw the faintest glimmer of Aura in the eyes of his shadowed face as he said, "There is one other matter. About what you saw down in the caverns."
Her mind's eye went to Haakon, screaming her name as the tree grew through his body. As that monstrous Grimm with the chain around its neck protected her from harm and let her go, with an almost implicit promise that one day she would be next for whatever it was doing to the man.
Instead of directly asking, he pulled out his scroll. With the touch of a button, she watched a video unfold. She felt almost numb as saw herself in the video, leg shaking, skin melting. Jaune talking to a blonde girl. And a woman with porcelain skin who drowned them. Coco didn't so much watch it, as experienced all over again, remembering every single detail. She felt her breath hitch in her throat not from the pain or the shame or the shock that there was a video of this, but from the sudden memory of the little baby bat she had adopted before the air in the cave had scrambled its organs into a mushy paste.
"Your friend Velvet took this video," he said. "She took a number of pictures and videos from your adventure. But this one was the most concerning. Do you know who she is?"
She remembered being trapped in what during the airship ride back to Vale, Jaune had called a reality marble. The encounter in the fake cafeteria with all the people who just stopped, their faces and body language rigid as they stood up and stared her way.
"She said…" Coco swallowed. "No, I don't know. I think she had power over the Grimm. She's the one who made the liquid flow. Trapped all of us in this kind of liminal space. She said that she 'grants people eyes.' I don't know what it meant, but she felt so inviting, so motherly, but everything around her gave me the feeling like I was bleeding internally."
The professor stared at her for a long moment. She just kept bunching her hands into her bed sheets and felt sweaty. She really wanted the man's eyes off her.
"Do you believe people can control the Grimm?" he asked. It felt like a loaded question somehow.
"No—maybe? I don't know. I don't know what I saw. What was going on. I don't know anything." Every answer fell with the wrong one. Like everything she said made his eyes burrow deeper into her. Every time she tried to give an answer, Ozpin inched away from the friendly, if somewhat absent-minded professor who ran the academy to something Coco didn't like.
"It's possible," he said simply, and she stared at him. "Two years ago in the city of Kuchinashi, Mistral, a man by the name of Javi Pastel discovered a necklace. Much like the architecture I can see in this video, Pastel found the artifact in ruins beyond time. It allowed him to control the Grimm. A team of Huntsmen eventually subdued him and took him out, putting the necklace safely into the possession of the academies."
She sat up sharply. "Wait, so there's something to those ancient fairy tales?"
"Every legend begins with a grain of truth. The Girl in the Tower, the Lance of Passion, the Infinite Man. This world is old. And even its most ancient civilizations knew Remnant's ancient age as a fact." He sighed deeply. "I'm telling you this because sometimes these old horrors show their faces. And we Huntsmen have to put them down, and keep them secret. I've known men close to me who've gone mad pursuing these powers and abilities, like Doctor Merlot, for good or ill. The results are always the same. Although I'm sure you've never heard of him because of our efforts. To be a Hunter is more than just to fight evil wherever it may rear its head; sometimes it is protecting people from the truth for their own sake."
He gestured to the television in the room, broadcasting a standoff between General Ironwood of Atlas and a faunus colonel whose division had been let within the pomœrium to evict Atlas as part of a state of emergency. The faunus looked almost eager to be able to metaphorically spit in the general's face and throw him and his airship out of the harbor.
"We believe the person you saw down there was someone much like Javi Pastel," he said. "Someone twisted and corrupted by things we don't understand, but know are evil. Pursuing power and control and pain."
"Who is she? And why would she do that?" Coco croaked.
"Because she can," he said softly. "You too can be a monster, Coco. It pays handsomely."
She didn't know what to say.
"You saw first hand that she can be beaten," he said. "That's what we do to monsters. Our job is to make it too costly to play these wicked games for the opposing team. Just her afterimage, the swarm of Grimm in an old fortified city, was enough to throw this entire country into disarray. Could you imagine the panic, the chaos, the death and destruction, if the truth got out? If what you knew entered common knowledge, how far would the damage go?"
Coco swallowed. "It would be awful," she said slowly, trying to follow along with what he expected her to conclude. "People would panic. The Grimm would be enraged. People could die, not just here, but all across the world."
He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. It felt cold. "Indeed. I'm glad you see it my way. Because it is our duty to save lives. To protect the defenseless against the monsters. That's why you signed up to be a Huntress. That's why I became a Huntsman. I wouldn't normally trust this kind of information to a sophomore. But you saw it first-hand, and then you went above and beyond the call of duty. I know you're someone I can trust, Coco. But at this level of play, the only way out is through, and we must take our secrets to the grave if we wish to uphold the promises we made by becoming what we are."
For a moment, Coco felt something cold in her heart. Something in the way he was looking at her, the tone of his voice. She almost thought, for a completely insane instant, that he was going to kill her. That he told her this just so that she would die with questions answered, reassured that she had done her best, but knew too much. If she wasn't injured, she imagined she could have been able to fight him. He might have been the hottest shit when he was her age, but he was in his forties now, decades away from the front lines she had just returned from.
But as things were now?
Instead, Professor Ozpin stood up. He turned to face the window and the dying embers of the sun. "This world is old, Coco. And I have been around long enough to know its most dangerous secrets are best left forgotten. But I too shall die one day. When that happens, my position must go to the strongest of your generation, the most compassionate, the most able to tell right from wrong."
He looked over his shoulder at her and allowed himself a smile. "Which means I can't let my most promising student in recent memory hurt herself. I know you'll do the right thing. It's in your nature. I'm sorry this happened to you. But I believe you'll be your old self in no time if you allow yourself."
Professor Ozpin turned to leave.
"Wait!" Coco said, holding out her hand.
He gave her a curious look, saying nothing.
"Where are you going now?" She swallowed, and her throat felt dry enough that she nearly coughed. The only sound she heard was the distant hum of the air conditioner, a constant background droning.
Professor Ozpin put a shushing finger to his lips. "I'm doing as the headmaster must do: working to take permanent care of my students. Some more than others. I might care about you, but you're hardly the only one who has my eye. It wouldn't be fair otherwise."
"And what if I still have questions about what I saw, about the things that go bump in the night?"
Chuckling to himself, he walked towards the door. "Come find me when you recover. There's much work to be done keeping nightmares in their graves, if only you're willing to damn yourself to it. Whatever choice you make, I have faith in you, Coco."
And then Coco was alone. More than anything, she felt like she needed a drink.
— 10 —
The evening colors washed everything out. Coco bent her knees, testing her back, seeing what did and didn't hurt. She moved a little too quickly and hissed, nearly falling back into her hospital bed. A brief flare of Aura and everything was better.
Doc Croaker eyed her. In an abstract way, she could kind of see what so many girls saw in him. When he had first taught a guest lecture back in her freshman year, Coco couldn't roll her eyes hard enough at the way Velvet fawned over him. Human, dark blue eyes, big, sharp features for a man his age, with a permanent expression like he thought he was better than you and somehow really annoyed that you didn't agree.
He made a face, chastising her in a language she didn't understand.
She looked back up at him, blinking. "What?"
Croaker frowned, tapping his medical clipboard against his knee as he sat there. "Oh. Your name's Adel. Figured you spoke Eranstani."
She scowled. "Let me guess, you were trying to badmouth me for nearly falling over?"
He made a so-so gesture with his zombie hand, the one that looked like it had been cut apart into neat little pieces before being sewn back together. It was his most distinctive feature. "More or less. The old man says it's bad for him if I constantly swear at students. So I use one of the many languages I picked up in my mercenary days to get around that stupid rule. Did you know he also says it's bad form to swear at him when he says it's okay to let an injured student back to her room without observation? Because you should."
She folded her arms. "I'm fine!"
Croaker flipped the medical clipboard around, showing her a diagram of her body and injuries. "Enough to walk, post on social media, and generally make an ass of yourself, but not enough to be a functioning Huntress. We've only had you for a couple of days. I expect you to still show up for check up appointments until you're actually cleared to return to the field."
Coco glared at him, and found him returning her gaze with a calm dispassion. She averted her eyes until she realized she had the sunglasses Ruby had gotten her as replacement. She put them on, and suddenly the faded colors of the room felt right, felt natural. It was a shame with evening afoot, she wouldn't be able to actually see with them much longer. But already, it made her feel like he couldn't track her eyes, but she could follow him. It felt like a weight sloughed off her heart.
"Yeah, sure, fine," she said, throwing a hand up. "I'll come back for the routine weekly prostate check. Just—can I go yet, doc?"
She hated the way he stared right through her sunglasses.
"Go for it, kid," Croaker said. "I'm not going to be the one that's legally at fault if you hurt yourself. That's for old man Ozpin."
"You two are practically the same age!" she huffed, looking for her purse, before she had a moment of sanity and realized her equipment was probably back in her dorm room.
"I think he lies about his age," Croaker said evenly. "His eyes are wrong."
Coco remembered Ozpin's hand on her shoulder from only a couple of days ago, the way his tone had shaken her, and swallowed.
The doctor shrugged. "Then again, you've gained a couple years beneath those shades these last few weeks too."
She gave him one last glare, before realizing he probably couldn't see them. Then she just tightened her beret, kept her Aura running as low as it could possibly go to prepare for the winter chill outside, and left the hospital.
Coco had lost her best pair of heeled boots back in Montluçon. While she was staying in the hospital, Fox had brought her a pair of something to wear so she could walk around. She didn't think she'd notice it if it was, but the subtle loss of inches made everything feel just a little off. The only good thing about it was the colors were back to normal, darkened by her shades. She'd missed it.
It was maybe a twenty minute walk back to the dorms from the hospital on campus. Coco made it in thirty, slower than she liked. Some of that was a mix of trying not to agitate her back. And some of that was just slowing down to say hi to all the people who saw her and cheered on her return. From watching the newsreel on TV in her room, she had learnt that Teams CFVY and BASS had been front and center on most people's TV for the better part of a couple of days, interspersed with soldiers and artillery and all that nonsense from the city. The soldiers had been boots on the ground, but there was always a kind of mystique about Hunters that dominated the imagination.
Of course, whenever she saw herself on TV, the only thing she could see was Yatsuhashi carrying her because she couldn't run. Occasionally setting her down, forcing her on her knees as she used Gianduja like a kind of stationary turret. She wasn't out there in the thick of it, fighting tooth and nail. She was a glorified machine gun on rails at the best of times, trying to give orders and directions as she couldn't move.
Nobody greeted her when she entered the dorms. For some reason, she had expected a kind of surprise welcome party. But she hadn't exactly announced she was getting out of the hospital just yet, and it was late enough in the evening that people probably weren't likely to be coming and going in any large numbers. She stared at the staircase she usually took. And then at the elevator that went up to the third story, where she dormed. Coco was alone in the poorly lit entrance hall, next to all of the PO mailboxes. Just looking between the stairwell and the elevator. Rubbing her hand over her lower back and wondering if she could take it without using her Aura. And if anyone would see her taking the elevator and wondering what was wrong with her.
"Coco, you're back!" Ruby's inherently squeaky voice cried out from behind her.
Coco spun around, bracing herself. And just like she thought, Ruby was practically sprinting at her from the doorway. Only to pull up short.
"You cool with a hug?" Ruby asked. She was carrying a bunch of bags in one hand.
Coco laughed. "Since when has personal space ever been an issue for you?"
"Ha! It's not. But, I just don't want to, you know." Ruby smiled widely.
Oh. Oh. She meant that Coco was so hurt and weak, she couldn't even handle a basic goddamn hug. The girl was hiding an implicit insult behind a friendly offer.
Trying not to let it sour her, Coco made herself smile as she grabbed Ruby into a hug. "Aw, screw you, kid! These sunglasses are awesome. How are you doing?"
Ruby hugged back, but her arms were a lot weaker than they normally were. Like she wasn't trying to squeeze as hard. Like she thought Coco was delicate.
"I have no opinions on the topic!" Ruby said happily. "I've mostly just been going through class. We didn't really have a hard mission, even though things got really stupid, so we weren't given recovery time unlike you and BASS. Which has been kind of awful. I basically can't go outside anymore."
Coco frowned, pushing Ruby away. "Why not?"
Ruby looked away and grimaced. "Well, my dad and uncle just keep calling me to make sure I'm okay, and it's getting really annoying, so I need to constantly pretend that I'm in a tunnel to avoid talking to them again. It's like, there's only so many times I can tell them I'm fine before it just gets annoying, you know?"
"I know what that is like," Coco said with a laugh. "My first week here my mom just would not leave me alone. I nearly had to block her to keep her from using up my minutes. My advice is just to say you're good, and leave it at that. We're supposed to be independent here, not just kids anymore. We're adults now. They can be worried, but you're your own person."
"Makes sense to me." She wrung her hands. "Just feels a little rude."
"Well, birds that don't leave their eggs just die in their shells," Coco said, recalling a poorly translated saying her grandfather once gave her.
"I like that. I'm going to steal that from you," Ruby said.
Coco tousled Ruby's hair, earning her an adorable scowl. "Go for it, Ruby. I'm all about dispensing helpful advice."
"Do you also know what it's like dealing with an online hate mob?" Ruby asked suddenly.
Coco blinked. "Wha'?"
Waving a hand dismissively, Ruby said, "Aha! I have found the limits to your advice."
"No, no, no, run that back by me one more time."
Ruby frowned. "It's sort of why I'm avoiding the internet. We were on a mission and it got complicated, and I might have helped General Ironwood not take a rock to the face, and then there was a whole riot, and people were kind of blaming me and my team but also not really and it's—ugh, it just sucks."
Coco just stared. "Don't use your scroll?"
"Tried that," Ruby said, blowing a stray bang from her face. "But the thing about Beacon is they give you a scroll and expect you to keep it on hand. I hate my scroll. All my enemies are inside it. Like Becky from Signal." She balled her hands. "She used to spell my name Reuben like the sandwich and thought my love for guns was way too boyish. Well, who's laughing now, Becky! If she knew how to use a gun, she would've been able to figure out condoms and wouldn't be pregnant. She's not even married and I am. Stupid Becky. Stupid Signal. Stupid internet!"
That took a lot of Coco's brainpower to process. Which gave Ruby time to calm down and collect herself.
"You're married?" Coco finally asked.
Ruby shrugged like it didn't matter. "Tax reasons. Long story. Not terribly interesting. Think I should post pics of us being happy together to make Becky seethe? I'm a Huntress who's got a boywife with a clickbait body, and you have gross stretch marks. We are not the same."
"Maybe don't do that?"
"Yeah, you're right. Too petty. I'm above that kind of stupid drama. I'm better than her and don't need to prove it. Forget I said anything."
Coco just kind of stared. "So. Uh. Internet hate mob?"
Ruby groaned. "Look, I'll just stay offline for a couple of days. Except maybe to show off to Becky. People have really short memories. I'm not one of those terminally online losers, so it'll be easy. I'll just stick to text and stuff."
Coco glanced at the stairs. Ruby still wasn't moving, just sticking around. Which meant Coco couldn't slink to the lift while she was here and could see.
"What's with the bags, Ruby?" Coco tried, hoping to so thoroughly bore Ruby that the girl would just lose interest in Coco like some sort of bear.
"Hmm, these?" Ruby jostled the bags. "My husband asked me to go to the store and pick up some ingredients. He's making his partner a cake and apparently is broke as heck, so being the sugar momma I am, I picked up some actual sugar."
"What, so, it's like an open relationship?"
Ruby snorted. "Please. Open relationships are just an excuse to cheat on your significant other without any guilt. If your partner asks for one, your relationship is basically already over and they just want your material benefits without any of the real commitment. I just use Jaune for tax benefits, no love involved."
"Wait, Jaune?"
"Only one I know, see?"
Ruby held up her scroll, showing a text chat over the last hour or so.
Jaune Rose: I just need the cake stuff. Please don't use the money to buy gun oil.
You: It'll make the cake yummy! Look here's a picture
And there it was, a picture of Ruby's face next to a case of gun lubricant and other cleaning supplies.
You: is non-toxic! Works as food coloring
Jaune Rose: I'm divorcing you.
You: gyaaa~ I think we're moving our relationship too fast. We need to go thru *years* of mistrust and an affair before we get to the divorce
Jaune Rose: Fuck you
You: ;) okay when?
Jaune Rose: use the leftover money to buy condoms
You: I'm getting strawberry flavored ones
Jaune Rose: Good idea. I think strawberries will really make this birthday cake pop.
You: :heart:
Coco just stared at the text. "I legitimately can't decide if your relationship is wholesome or deeply distressing."
Her scroll beeped again. Ruby groaned. "Ugh. Uncle Qrow's still trying to talk to me."
"Tell him you're busy?"
Ruby looked thoughtful in a way that made Coco's skin crawl. "Hmm. Good idea. Here." She screenshotted her conversation with Jaune and sent it.
You: Stop texting me. You're killing my boi game out heyah~
Uncle Qrow: ! WITH JAUNE?
You: ye
You: bye
Ruby stared at her scroll for a moment. When nothing happened, she sighed contently and said, "Ah, I love my uncle and the fact he respects my boundaries to a frankly weird extent. Anyhow, you should join us in making the cake if you're feeling it. I gotta run; they're waiting on me!"
She turned into a storm of rose petals and vanished up the stairs. Coco watched to make sure she wasn't going to come down to hug Coco again or something, but no. Ruby had truly left Coco alone.
Which meant she could crawl to the elevator and enjoy her misery alone.
The ride up seemed to take forever. Just her and the hum of the lift.
The walk to her dorm felt even longer. Coco was alone in an empty hallway, dimly lit. No signs of life but her. But she doubted she was alive in the first place.
She stood outside her door, room key in hand, simply staring at the electronic lock. She couldn't hear anything from within. No sounds of Velvet listening to obnoxious music. No Yatsuhashi trying to play peacekeeper to some dumb argument. And no Fox making wise remarks, that no one found funny, but he just kept doing them all the same because he liked it. For a brief moment, she wondered if maybe she had just imagined her team surviving. Hallucinated seeing them in her hospital room. A part of her thought it might have been easier. To come from an empty hospital room to a barren dorm. In silence to undress and crawl under the covers, never to return.
Coco swallowed and opened the door in one motion.
It was almost as she remembered leaving it before she hopped on the airship to Montluçon. That little dent on Fox's bed from where he routinely banged his shins somehow almost every morning. The band posters by Velvet's section of the room. The way the walk-in closet didn't close properly because of the one time Yatsuhashi had forced himself through the doorway and broken it, and they just simply hadn't reported it to any authorities for fear of being charged for the damages.
Coco found somebody in the room, but that somehow made it worse. No Velvet, no Yatsuhashi. Fox sat alone by the side of his bed, staring down the point of one of his arm blades. For a moment, she thought she was back in that reality marble thing, helpless to watch as her friend and partner gouged out his own eyes. But he wasn't moving to stab himself. He was just running his fingers along the blade, moving it towards his pupil as if expecting some reaction, but not even flinching.
"You should've knocked," Fox said directly into her mind, sending shivers down Coco's spine. She kept staring at the bite marks on his throat only recently turned to scar tissue. "I could have been naked."
Coco closed the door with her foot. "It's not like I don't know what you look like naked already. Remember that time under the waterfall during that one mission?"
He regarded her mildly. "Yes, the time your designer shampoo rendered an entire species of carp extinct."
She plopped down on her bed, removing her shoes. "Gah, are you still on that? I told you it was an accident!"
Fox set his arm blades down and neatly by his feet. "If we could just go on one mission without causing an ecological disaster, I'd be happy. First the carp, and then you probably destroyed an entire underground ecosystem by setting it on fire. We really do suck as a team, don't we?"
"Well, if rare, endangered creatures wanted to survive, they shouldn't make for such nice coats!" she huffed, crossing her arms.
He smiled. "I missed you. Glad you're back."
"Where are the other two?"
"Velvet went to the mailroom to get a new shipment of hard light Dust from her dad," Fox said. "Yats went with. I have been all alone with nothing but my thoughts. And my thoughts suck. I just keep replaying the events of the last few days over and over."
Setting her sunglasses and beret on her nightstand, Coco said, "Just do what I do and repress it all. Really does wonder for the skin."
Although Fox didn't look at her, she still somehow felt his intense focus on her. It looked like he wanted to say something, but just kept failing. In the end, he just shook his head and said, "Yeah."
Halfheartedly, she raised her hand as if to touch him, and gave up herself. "Yeah."
Coco didn't know what to say. Neither of them really did. Eventually, Fox shoved his gear under his bed and stood up. She kept feeling his intense focus on her, even with his eyes nowhere near her. Even as he just sat down on his bed and held his head in his hands.
She could hear the nearly imperceptible buzz of the fluorescent light. The way air circulated through the ventilation. Even the occasional buffet of snowy wind outside on the window. But more than anything, as she watched him, Coco could feel her heart. The way blood moved from ventricle to ventricle, dispersing through arteries, capillaries, and eventually becoming a ringing in her ears. Her chest felt hot.
When Fox's eyes lifted to her, she thought this was it, the moment she was waiting for. When he asked her why she had fucked them all; when he told her that she had failed her team; that all of the suffering he and the rest of team CFVY went through, could have just been avoided if only she had better thought the mission through, had actually been the leader they deserved.
"I don't know what we saw back there," Fox said softly, like distant rain.
She cringed as she forced herself to smile. "You can't see, remember?"
"For once, I was able to forget."
Coco pressed her fists into her eyes until she saw nothing but spots. They were the same color as the inside of her mouth.
"There was a girl with scratched out eyes," Fox said. "She played with your hair. Told me if I wanted to protect the people I cared about, I'd have to give up the one thing I wanted most. So I did."
She watched with silent horror as he pressed his index finger into the whites of his eye. Fox rubbed back and forth. He pulled his hand back and stared at the little spot of moisture on his finger his eyeball had left behind.
"I don't—I don't know where I'm going with this," he said. "Professor Ozpin told me—told all of us, really—not to talk about it. Not in so many words. But I got the feeling he knew what we saw. And he was afraid of what would happen if people knew. As if now, I have to make the choice between trying to process what I saw, and keeping the world safe."
Fox laughed. "But it's the most crazy thing. All the legends, all the stories, they like to paint Huntsmen as the thin line between civilization and the Grimm. People who exist solely to fight and die against those horrors from beyond the pale. That's all we're good for. All anyone expects of us." He shook his head. "And I don't really give a fuck about the world. It's too big, too abstract. Of all the millions of people on Remnant, I can count the ones I care about who are still alive on one hand."
Coco swallowed. "How many fingers do you need?"
"Three. And I'll eventually see every one of them if I just sit here all day."
"If you don't want to protect the world," she said, gripping at her pants, "why did you become a Huntsman?"
Fox tilted his head. "Well, I didn't join to cut out my own eyes. I did that for the people I do care about. If Fatima al-Random asked me to do that, I'd kindly ask her to go shove it."
She thought back to the professor's hand on her shoulder, tight, firm, and somehow implicitly threatening even as he suggested that one day she might succeed him. "Fox, I need you to trust me here, but we can't talk about it. It would only make everything we've done so far in vain."
He hesitated, and that hurt worst of all. "Where I'm from, the word for trust is the same as the word for water. It's not common in the deserts. Water flows from the mountains, bubbling from the oases, and it must be shared evenly lest the whole tribe die. One can only know true trust if the last member of the tribe to receive a drink is allowed the same as the first."
"I understand," she said slowly. "Professor Ozpin told me. There are ancient things that let people control or influence Grimm, I think. Lost technology or artifacts or something, I don't know. Whatever we saw down there, it was the result of something like that. Sometimes the job of a Hunter is to kill monsters. And sometimes, our job is to prevent people from knowing just how bad the monsters are. Fear, discord, panic—it makes them stronger, the Grimm. Whatever's bothering you, we can talk about it ourselves, but I don't think… I mean, I know it can't get out. We saw something we never should have, got involved with things way above our pay grade, but now that we know, we can't unknow."
He stared at her for a long time. "Ozpin drank more water than you."
She stood up sharply. "I know, okay! I don't even think he wanted to tell me, but he had to, because of what we saw, because of the video Velvet took. If she hadn't been so stupid and dedicated to documenting our entire adventure, maybe we could have pretended like we didn't see anything and—"
"Don't call her stupid," he snapped. "You're sounding like one of those BASS assholes."
Coco rubbed her face. "You're right, I'm sorry. It's just—it's just I don't know what to do. I don't know a lot of things. And I'm just trying my best." She made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "I really don't know that my best can cut it anymore!"
Fox sighed, rubbing his arm. "If there's one thing I've always admired about you, it's that you don't know how to scroll it in. Always trying to be the best, to be number one, and to drag us all along with you whether we consented or not. It's what made us the team we are. You damn near broke your back down there, and yet after we crawled out of those caves, you were still fighting your best, trying to keep control of the situation against hopeless odds, and one way or the other were the reason we got out of there alive."
He was lying to her. She knew he had to be. The same way he and the rest of her team had lied to Ozpin. Instead of blaming her, rightly pointing out just how much she had fucked up every step of the way, he was trying to comfort her. Tell her that she had done her best, and that her best really had been good enough, instead of the slap dash failure it was.
"Stop it," she said, pressing her fingers into her tear ducts. She paced back and forth. "Just stop it, alright?"
His expression soured. "Oh, okay. Let me just stop believing in you for one second real quick."
"Fuck you!" she hissed.
Fox sneered. "Pass. I got vision for the first time in my life, and pretty much the only thing I saw were women. In hindsight, I'm gonna consider it a victory that I've never seen any of the girls I've been with."
"Great, now you're making fun of me!"
He threw his hands up. "Hell yeah I am! What's gotten into you?"
"Me? Me? Oh that's pretty fucking rich!" She made a noise in her throat that pretended it could be a laugh. "It's like you're perfectly okay listening to me when we're in danger out in the field, but the moment I say maybe we shouldn't talk about the potentially world ending consequences of what we saw, you start questioning me. Why is now any different, huh?"
"The hell are you on about, girl?" Fox asked, shaking his head. "I feel like we're having two different conversations, each one stupider than the last."
"No! Because this is all one conversation. About my judgment and your trust of it! One moment, you do, because it got you through Montluçon. But when I say maybe we keep a lid on what we really saw down there until we actually understand it, then you have questions, and then you stop caring about the entire world."
"Because I don't think you know the full story! Something about this just feels wrong. It's like you're taking a suggestion as divinely inspired truth."
"Maybe it's because the same way you trust me, I trust Ozpin! If he says it's a bad idea, I'm willing to listen to him."
"Why?" Fox asked with painful emphasis.
"Because I don't know what else to do!" she screamed. She found herself staring him down, panting. Her skin felt hot and clammy. Her heart felt like it had an extra compartment just for all of her disgust and doubt to pile up in, seeping into her bloodstream. "If there's anybody who knows about this kind of thing, it's him. We saw something we can't explain. He could, and I think he's terrified, and so I'm terrified. Is that so hard to understand?"
He looked down into his lap. "I don't know."
"Good!" she said, putting her foot down hard. "So we're in the same boat. You trusted me this far, so let's share a little bit more water. This is my team, and I'm in charge, and this is my decision. We stick together as one or we're not a team at all. And you might as well have just plucked your eyes out for no goddamn reason if that's how you want to play."
Fox had the audacity to look like she had just slapped him across the face. He raised a hand to rub his cheekbone, just staring at her, eyes wide. It looked like he couldn't find anywhere comfortable to rest his fingers, and just kept playing with them across his arms.
"Yarham allah," he whispered, and wet his lips.
She continued to just stand there, panting. Fists balled at her side. But staring him down felt ridiculous. What was the point if she won a staring contest against someone who was blind and didn't even know he was playing?
"Are… Coco, are you okay?" he asked.
Coco inhaled sharply. "Don't you play that card with me! Because you know what, I'm not okay. I think I'm actually thirsty. And I'm going to go get a drink of water from the kitchen sink, because unlike Vacuo, water is a little easier to come by in civilization. Thank you!"
She stormed out of the room without even bothering to put her shoes on or fetch her beret.
— 11 —
Coco made it only seven steps before her heart caught up to her. Clutching at her chest, she nearly doubled over, and dry heaved. She choked for air, as if suffocating on nothing. The feeling kept bubbling from her guts as she slid across the wall, face pressed into the wallpaper, all the way down to the third floor kitchen.
Finally, she spat out all of her nothing into the sink. She watched the little dribble of drool leak down from her mouth into the drain, saliva mixed with the thinnest bits of blood. She tasted acid and bile in the back of her throat. It was all she could do to just keep spitting it out and washing it down with water.
Her knees gave out before anything else. She collapsed onto her ass, back against the sink as she held her legs to her chest. Her spine sang in pain as she landed. The running water drowned out the forced, angry sobs.
What the fuck was she doing? What was the point of this? What if someone saw her, the awesome and cool Coco Adel, with drool around her mouth and tears in her eyes? They'd realize she was pathetic. Just a fraud. Barely a team leader, just some dumb girl who kept stumbling her way into not dying time and time again. Coco didn't have any answers, didn't have any good reasons; not even any plausible lies. She was just a girl in the fetal position beneath a sink.
She felt like she did all those years ago, when she'd been locked inside of a cabinet during a game of hide and seek. One way or the other, the walls were closing in on her. Fox had to know. The rest of her team knew. They were just pretending for her sake, maybe to try to preserve their own sanity. But they had to know better. Nobody could be that blind, not even a boy like Fox who didn't have working eyes.
Coco Adel didn't know what she was doing. She didn't have any answers. Didn't even have a properly working backbone anymore, metaphorically or literally.
Because maybe if she had one, she would have been able to tell her friends the truth about Haakon and avoided this entire disaster. They wouldn't have kept going into the cave, sparking the whole disaster, and getting untold amounts of people eaten alive by demons. Or maybe better yet, she wouldn't have abandoned him to the Grimm, and could have died fighting with some dignity.
She screwed her eyes shut, and all she could see was the man with the tree growing through his body as he screamed at her. The scent of cherries and mustard in the air that she still couldn't get out of her lungs. And the rattling chain of that monstrous Grimm as it smiled at her and gently patted her head.
Coco had to wonder what her grandfather would think if he could see her now.
She slammed the back of her head against the counter to make the thoughts stop. It didn't help terribly. It just gave her a new headache to focus on.
Before she could do it again, she felt a thump beneath her. Like somebody the floor below had just jumped into the ceiling. Coco dragged herself up to the edge of the sink and turned it off just so she could listen. It came again, a thump on the floor. And the distant sound of people shouting and screaming and laughing below from the second story kitchen.
Instantly, she thought back to all of the bags Ruby was carrying to bake a cake, and wondered if that was the cause of the ruckus. And if so, why trying to make dessert had turned into a riot. It made her really want to see what was going on. Especially because it seemed like something to do that didn't involve bashing her head against the counter until she blacked out from another concussion.
She looked back at the hallway, towards her dorm room. Fox hadn't followed her. He had to have still been in the room, just sitting there, maybe waiting for her to crawl back and apologize or come clean or… whatever. But when she looked down at the floor, it almost sounded like somebody was stomping on it, like gravity had been inverted and they were line dancing.
Coco washed her face in the sink, getting rid of the tears and a bit of snot. She sniffled and made sure she was looking presentable. As cool and awesome as everyone liked to think she was, as she desperately needed them all to think of her. And then made the arduous trek down the stairs to the second floor, so that no one would see her take the elevator and think she was as pathetic as she actually was.
She heard people yelling. Maybe it was Ruby and Weiss? There was music playing on the other side of the door. All she had to do was open it and walk onto the second floor and into the common room kitchen. For a sudden, awful moment, she had an attack of sanity, and wondered just what the hell she was doing. She should be trying to collect her wits and go back to apologize to Fox. But somehow, the thought of turning around and going right back to the room right after screaming at him felt wrong. More cowardly than just standing here, her hand on the door, listening to music and people arguing.
"Coco?" a girl asked, coming up the stairs. "What are you doing here?"
She jumped, turning around to see one of the members of Team VYPR, Yang Xiao Long. The girl was wearing the equivalent of gym clothing or maybe some kind of pajamas that revealed her navel. On some level, Coco was surprised Yang knew who she was; but of course she would know who Coco was, the famous leader of Team CFVY and the girl who just spent a couple of days on the front page news cycle from Montluçon. Everyone had probably seen her.
Probably even her grandfather in Eranstan.
"Oh, I, uh, what are you doing?" Coco said back.
Yang frowned. "I asked you first. You're standing in front of the door, too."
"Yes, but I'm a sophomore, so I have seniority of questioning."
After a long moment of dubious staring, Yang held up her scroll. "Was in the gym. Then my uncle asked me to check up on Ruby about a cake she was making."
"Is that really something worth stopping a workout for?"
Yang shrugged. "He used proper punctuation and spelling, which is an instant red flag, so pretty much, yeah."
"Ah!" Ruby yelped from beyond the door. "Watch it, ouch! Careful with that. My hair!"
"For the love of God or the Saints or whatever crazy sky people you believe in," Weiss screamed, "would you knock that off, you two!? Ugh!"
Yang swore under her breath and ran for the door. She nearly pushed Coco through it on her way past. Coco stumbled into the common room and nearly fell before Yang caught her.
Coco saw what she supposed was a kitchen, except it was in complete disarray. Piles of ingredients all over the place, pots and pans scattered to the four winds, baking trays in improbable locations, a sink about to overflow, and four freshmen. She recognized Shamrock and Weiss—
Whoa. Never mind, Coco did not recognize Weiss. For a moment, she almost thought the girl wasn't wearing pants, the way her leggings matched her general color scheme. She had to kind of admit she liked it. And the utterly pissed off expression on her scarred face was just the most adorable thing. That apron would have looked really good on her. If only she wasn't wearing that blouse beneath it.
It took her a moment to realize that everyone was staring at Jaune and Ruby, currently fighting with their hands interlocked like a game of patty cake that had gone violent—just trying to push each other away and win, but he was way bigger than her. Rock music from someone's scroll played in the background.
"Ruby!" Yang yelled.
No one said anything for a moment. Jaune just looked like he was about to die. But Ruby, she just got a vicious look in her silver eyes.
"Don't worry," she said malevolently. "It's consensual and exactly what you think it is!"
Jaune stared down at her as if watching his entire life die before his eyes. Then he set his features into stone and said, "You know what, fuck it. Actually, it's worse. We're trying anal, but Ruby here is just an entire asshole full stop, so I don't know where to stick it and I'm trying everywhere."
"It's true!" Ruby said happily. "I'm a bundle of painful mysteries because every thorn has its rose. Yang, why does it look like you're having a stroke?"
Weiss grabbed her face and dragged her hands down, groaning hard. Her partner, Shamrock, put a supporting hand on her shoulder.
Coco watched the scene, having no idea what to make of it. She looked at the way Ruby was challenging Yang, the way Jaune just seemed like he was accepting it, and the myriad of emotions fluttering across Yang's face. For just the briefest of moments, she thought she saw a tint of red behind Yang's otherwise purple eyes. Her body tensed.
And then the fire beneath Yang's ass just kind of died. She rubbed her forehead and sighed. "You know what? I don't care anymore. Just don't kiss her. Because if you kiss a girl while doing anal, you're basically forming a singular tunnel of meat from your mouth all the way to your dick. Basically giving yourself a blowjob with her asshole."
Ruby beamed. "I know, right? I'm going to get a tramp stamp that says exit only. My butt is mine."
Jaune let go of Ruby as Yang walked into the kitchen. "Wait, so we're cool? Did our last conversation actually have lasting consequences?"
As soon as his hands were away from her, Ruby slammed her hand into the wall beside Jaune as if trying to pin him in place kabedon style. It almost might have been intimidating if it wasn't for the fact that her head only came up partially up his chest. "Gotcha! Now you cannot escape me as I tell you all about my collection of weapon figurines!"
"Mm, no," Jaune said, casually shoving her back. Without Ruby in the way, Coco could read the words on his apron: please do not pet me i am a service dog. She didn't think he was wearing a shirt beneath it, which gave him an appreciable side profile.
Yang leaned against the kitchen island, resting her head on her hand as she watched her sister and apparently her brother-in-law or whatever the hell this relationship was. "Look, just—I don't care. You can't make me care. I'm not falling for it this time. Not letting any of you get to me or anything. Do you need help making a cake or whatever? I came all this way, so I might as well do something productive."
"Yes!" Weiss shouted, throwing her hands up. "Please, thank you, someone with a lick of sanity!"
"I'm well appreciated everywhere I go for my ability to lick, Weiss cream," Yang said dryly, like she was trying to sound sultry but her heart just wasn't in it.
"Somehow, I doubt that," Shamrock said helpfully, picking up her scroll and turning the music off.
"Let me pretend like I'm cool and in control here. Just give me this. That's all I ask for." Yang sighed. "But for real, how you been, Sham, Weiss?"
"Awful!" Weiss said, frantically gesturing to all of the scattered objects around her kitchen.
"I'm actually having a pretty good time," Shamrock said, running a hand through her red hair.
Weiss stabbed her finger at Shamrock. "Don't encourage them!"
"I'm cool being encouraged!" Ruby said, walking up to the oven. "The sooner we can figure out how to make a cake, the sooner I can take a selfie with it to show Becky that I'm living a much cooler and happier life than she is."
Coco looked at her hands before deciding to say, "I thought you said you were better than her."
Ruby and Jaune both seemed to remember at once that Coco was there.
"I've decided the only way to prove I'm better than her is to rub it in that I'm a cool Huntress and I've got a meal ticket husband, and she has to go on reality TV just to figure out who her baby daddy is."
Cracking a couple of eggs into a mixing bowl, and occasionally glancing at Weiss to make sure he was doing it right, Jaune said, "I'm not sure I want to advertise our sham not-even-legal marriage to the world just so you can flex on a bitch. We're not even together. You're basically my completely platonic stalker at this point."
Ruby took out her scroll and bit Jaune on the bicep. Right on the tattoo. She took a selfie with it.
"Ow, what the fuck?" he asked.
As she typed furiously on her scroll, Ruby said, "Okay, I think I'm going to title this one '#TastesAsGoodAsItLooks'. What do you think?"
"I think you left a goddamn bruise! My poor, delicate skin!" Jaune whined.
Yang pulled a pop out of the fridge. She looked like she kept expecting herself to get angry, but just couldn't find the willpower to feel any particular emotion. "If you're going to keep faking it, you should leave me a better cover story, you two. I mean, Jaune, Ruby, which one of you is the wife, and which one of you is the one who's going to tragically die on a mission?"
Coco held up her hand and a moment later Yang tossed her another pop. Some kind of Patch sarsaparilla. "You know, I can't tell if that question was homophobic or something even dumber."
"I mean, it's a fair question," Yang said, glaring at Jaune over the top of her can. "Pretty sure my dad was the wife. Mom couldn't cook."
"Cake. Help. Now," Weiss said, glowering. "Or else I'm going to burn your house down."
"Chill out, ice princess," Yang said. "What can I do?"
Weiss picked up a book off the counter and held it up. "We're following this recipe. I did some background research, and a lot of asking innocuous questions that there's totally and absolutely zero way she saw through, and I've come to the conclusion that Blake really likes cookies and cream. So the bottom layer of the cake is going to be a cookies and cream crumble birthday cake, and the top, smaller layer is going to be a same flavored cheesecake. Yang, I want you to mix the cream cheese with the crème fraîche."
Yang squinted. "The what?"
"A Valais kind of sour cream, which we can also add to the cheesecake if there's no fraîche."
"Sour cream?" Yang asked dubiously, as if the idea disgusted her. But she fished around in the refrigerator for them anyway.
Weiss double-checked her notebook. "Alright, I don't actually know why the recipe calls for sour cream as an alternative, but I have faith. I have only destroyed six recipes from this website, which means I can't possibly mess it up a seventh time."
Carrying a bag of flour to Jaune and the main mixing bowl, Shamrock said, "Sour cream is a common softening agent. Makes it more moist. Hint of tang, too." She made an okay sign with her left hand.
Weiss replied with a more complex gesture from the same hand starting at her heart. "How do you know that?"
Shamrock shrugged. "I used to belong to a religion that outlawed the consumption of certain things. Vale requires products to list ingredients and their general purpose. I actually research what I eat."
Weiss glowered, then turned back to Yang. "Okay, so we're going to, I believe, mix the cream cheese with sugar and blend together. Do you know how to use a blender? I mean, a whisk. Electric whisk. I think there's one in the cupboard. You know how to use that kind of thing, right?"
Yang dropped an armful of cream cheese and a container of sour cream onto the counter. With a dubious expression, she asked, "Is that a vibrator joke?"
"What, no!" Weiss sputtered, rubbing her hands on her own apron. It didn't have a dumb service dog joke on it. "Why would you even think that? Why would your mind go there?" She rapped her knuckles on Yang's temples.
Yang shrugged. "This whole conversation has been uncomfortably sexually charged, Ruby."
Ruby looked up from her scroll in a confused daze. "What, what? I took another picture and now I'm looking for a filter; don't distract me. Becky already replied to the last picture and I need to establish dominance."
Coco looked down at the pop Yang had thrown her, and just felt out of place. The freshmen were giving each other a shit, talking about nonsense, and most of them seemed to be having a good time. She didn't know what she was doing. For a girl who liked to be the center of everyone's attention, she sure did feel like a wallflower. It was an alien experience, like being out of body behind her own eyes.
"Hey, Coco, you gonna just stand there or you finna help?" Jaune asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.
She jumped at his touch, nearly hiccuping in surprise. She hadn't even realized he left his mixing bowl. Coco stared at the girls in the kitchen trying and rather failing to make a cake or even cooperate on a basic level. And then her attention went back to Jaune.
The boy shrugged. "You just look like you want something to do. At the very least, I could use someone to help me distract Ruby. Kid's a goddamn handful."
"How can you be so calm and happy?" she asked in a low voice. "After everything we just went through, all that shit and everything, how can you just go back to—just being an idiot and trying to make a cake?"
Jaune blinked. He glanced over his shoulder. "What the fuck else is there to do?" he said for only her to hear. "Sit around my ass and feel sorry for myself? Please. I've got enough trouble on my plate without my own feelings getting in on the action. I've got the people worth fighting for here with me now, willing to hang out."
Coco felt a powerful urge to bite her fingernails and had to stop herself, fingers inches from her lips. She realized he was staring into her eyes without the protection of her sunglasses to shield them. It was all she could do to stop herself from looking away first.
"It just feels… trivial," she said.
Jaune laughed. "Yeah, it better be. It's the trivial shit that makes life worth living. Pretty sure we'd all die of boredom and burn out if everyday was a life or death circumstance. Only reason I fought so hard to get back here was so that I could have these moments again. Usually with this group of idiots."
He put his hand gently on her upper back and pushed. She felt a sudden panic in her heart And she worried it might spike the pain and she would double over or something. But nothing happened. She just found herself getting pushed into the kitchen, into the mess of people who didn't seem to know what they were doing in the least bit.
Jaune put a mixing spoon into her hand and left to go grab something from the bottom drawer of the fridge.
Coco looked back and saw Ruby staring at her, eyes a little too discerning for comfort.
"Hey, you're an expert at looking cool, right?" Ruby asked.
Coco nodded, making herself smile. "Best in the business, girl."
Ruby grinned. "Awesome. I need to figure out the best, most passive aggressive way to caption a picture with you. And then we'll mix the cake and cook it and try not to burn it, because the last time Weiss burnt a cake it set off the smoke detector at two in the morning."
"The burning cake didn't set off the smoke detector!" Weiss said loudly. "It was the drapes. Catching fire. Again."
Coco looked around, and felt the most weird sensation. A laugh bubbling up from somewhere in her chest. Things weren't better. Things were not alright. They were pretty much the opposite of alright. But for the moment, surrounded by a bunch of idiot freshmen, most of whom still seemed to like her for some unfathomable reason, Coco could allow herself to forget. And just be swept away in a moment of normal idiocy amidst a sea of guilt.
And, for a brief bit of cake-making time, Coco could be happy again.