Saphron and Terra had a lovely townhouse, but their space was not meant to keep ten guests at once. After a bit of adjustment, the women of the house took their son into the master with them and gave his room to Team RWBY, while their guest room was given to Jaune, Ren, Nora, and Oscar. Qrow could sleep basically anywhere and had just been given a recliner. Maria had been offered a fold out but declined, preferring the smaller love seat... after she spent a bit more time out in the garden. She appreciated having a roof over her head -unfamiliar house though it was- but any good sleep had eluded her ever since the train crash and certain... illuminations about the world. The brief moment of respite she had at Brunswick was swiftly followed by a herd of Grimm rising up from the farm cellar, and it had become increasingly difficult for her to close her eyes.
Instead she sat out in the garden, idly watching the city lights over the bay. Cold winds blew from the north and the south, but her shawl mitigated it all enough. Just the occasional cold jolt to remind her she was still awake.
Age had not dulled her instincts. Ruby and her friends were no longer strangers to her and she'd have been surprised if Terra or Saphron had ever done harm to anyone, but she was still surrounded by the unfamiliar. She was not safe, so how was she to sleep?
Though even an uncomfortable wooden chair could be surprisingly accommodating... she kept feeling her chin slide off her palm as she slumped back in her seat over and over.
There may well have been Grimm under this city, or lurking in the bay just past it, but there weren't any in this backyard or waiting to swoop in and carry her off into the night. To the extent she could be in an unfamiliar couple's home, she was alone.
Sleeping out in the cold shouldn't have been easier than in the home of a nice, accommodating couple... but for her, it always had been. It always felt more natural to be by herself, wherever that may have taken her.
And being stuck with all these kids hadn't given her much time to process what she'd heard. It... it all stuck with her when she'd had no chance to dwell on her own thoughts, between keeping safe from the elements, to retreating from an overwhelming force of Grimm, to trying to persuade Atlas to lessen their authoritarian grip just a little...
Maria didn't think she had all the answers, but she had enough. Only to realize -completely out of the blue- she hadn't even known the questions.
There was an afterlife, but was it for her and the others who lived in the world now, or only for the first generation of humanity, who'd actually lived alongside and heard the voices of their gods?
The Grimm were not simply cruel and angry, but directed by someone even more malicious than they. The master hunter, the Grimm Reaper had never known the true nature of her greatest enemies.
Time had worn on her, and she was closer to the end than the beginning. She'd contemplated mortality before, but when she'd asked what awaited her on the other side... she hadn't expected to know that her makers were just as flawed and fallible as she was. She hadn't expected to learn all the progress she'd thought she'd made in slaying the Grimm had been little impediment to the works of their master.
That was her legacy, then... to have tried and done little to make any change. The gods may have been flawed, but how favorably would they judge her when they reviewed her list of deeds? Would they even hear her plea at all, or would she just cease to be when her name was called?
Would anyone think to ask a magic lamp about her life? Would anyone waste a question asking the final fate of the Grimm Reaper?
Would it matter if they did?
A rustling caught her ear. Not the wind... a footstep on the grass. Maria lifted her chin from her palm and turned her gaze towards...
Towards...
"Hey, me lovely," she greeted through those sharp, pointed teeth. "Miss me?"
Maria's prosthetics cast the world in hollow gray. Yet this enemy appeared before her in stark, vivid color.
Those intense green eyes. That pallid gray, almost green skin. A single cutlass in her left hand, the opposite poised over a clock strapped to her belt.
"No..." Maria whispered.
"Oh, yes," she greeted, idly waving the sword in her hand. "You didn't think you got to get away from me forever, now, did you?"
"You're dead," Maria curtly told her.
"Am I now? How would you know...?" the Faunus assassin mused. She reached her right hand up from the clock on her hip to point at her eye. "Didn't actually see me go, now did you?"
Maria heard her kama drive into the assassin's back. She slashed with its opposite, feeling the Faunus' neck crack and the splatter of blood on her sleeve. Decades and decades ago... and could have easily been yesterday.
Maria climbed up from her chair, reaching for her kama. She remained convinced this wasn't real, but perhaps a Semblance, an illusion cast by a different enemy...
"There it is," the girl nodded, grinning with her glinting fangs. "Come play with me, old girl."
Maria moved. Her Aura wouldn't hold out as it had in the past and her stamina wasn't what it once was, but she could still-
The crocodile Faunus drove her heel into Maria's stomach, knocking the wind from her. She bashed Maria's wrist with the hilt of her cutlass, jostling her kama loose. Without her support, Maria flopped onto the ground.
"Look at you, so old and feeble," her would-be assassin mocked. "I'm more alive than you now, ain't I? Always gonna be in top form, while you just shrink and wither..."
Maria knew it couldn't be real. No matter how it felt, it must've been a trick... the dead didn't return to life, no matter the strength of their grudge.
But now she knew better. Now she'd seen proof that the dead did not always stay that way.
Still, her instincts remained sharp. She crawled towards her kama, keeping her Aura active, preparing for a second round and still scanning the garden for signs of the master pulling this puppet's strings.
But her eyes rendered the world a dull gray. And it was so dark; even the city's lights seemed to have dulled.
Her assassin drove her boot into Maria's back, digging the heel in and pinning her to the floor. Maria audibly heard the glint of steel as the crocodile Faunus held her sword under Maria's chin.
"Pay attention now, because this is the important part," the Faunus advised. "This is when the Grimm Reaper gets what she's earned."
Maria tried to move, but her skin was precariously close to her assassin's steel. Her kama was still out of reach, just past her fingertips...
The darkness seemed to move around her weapon, contorting about... until a hand reached down to lift her ancient staff. Someone other than the reaper now wielded Death in her hand.
Maria's eyes trailed up to this new arrival, to the gray outlined against the black. Like the Faunus holding her prisoner now, this one Maria saw clearly: though her skin was just as gray as the rest of the world seemed to be in her prosthetic, the eyes burned a dark, bloody red.
The master who'd sent the Grimm to her waiting hand... and sent this assassin to rob her of her eyes.
The lonely girl in the tower. The last survivor of a world reduced to a remnant.
Salem reached down with her opposite hand. "Grimm Reaper... do you know why I've come?"
"...I can guess," Maria defiantly spat.
"You're going to die," Salem told her matter-of-factly. "Someday you will face that moment."
Someday...?
"Long overdue," Maria acknowledged. "But let me guess: you wanna make some speech at me before you gut me?"
Despite her doubts, she had not forgotten what to say in the face of the end: come and get me.
"What awaits you, do you think?" Salem asked her. "Complete nonexistence... or something even stranger? Can you even imagine it?"
"Don't have to," Maria replied. "I'll see it. You never will."
One last reminder to the master of the Grimm that not everyone feared her. Not everyone ran in the face of the inevitable.
Salem gave a nod. Maria saw a familiar glint of steel out the corner of her eye-
Maria felt her chin slide off her palm and slam into her wrist. She snorted as she was jostled awake, glancing around the unfamiliar garden as it all started to come back to her.
The sunlight was creeping out over the bay. The city lights still illuminated Argus, but there was little sound of bustle. The world was waking around the same time she was, and still finding its feet.
Maria glanced down at the flat of her palm, then to her kama, resting against her wooden chair. Death, her constant companion... though the first time it visited her dreams in quite some time.
A reminder, perhaps, of how doubt pushed her closer to the inevitable end every time she let it creep in. A warning that even if her time was limited and her best days were behind her, she could not resign herself to what was inevitable.
Death was always on her heels, and no matter how much she fought it, there was no way to overcome it; no change to certainty. But she'd allowed herself to be resigned to it, to dwell on what came after rather than remember she was still alive.
The only person who'd lived forever... didn't want to. And the children she'd found herself allied with now were rushing towards death a lot more than they were running from it. They probably had the same doubts she had; they'd probably known as many sleepless nights, if they'd known about this Salem and her machinations before she had.
Death... why should it trouble her? Her legacy? Why should it worry her when there was still time to build upon it?
Maria climbed out of her seat and ambled in from the garden. The others were slow to rise, but their bagged eyes and grim expressions told her they'd slept about as well as she had... probably troubled by much the same doubt.
And still pressing on, even in the face of the inevitable...
Maria found her favorite among them, the silver-eyed girl whom Maria once reminded of the preciousness of life, the need to defend against what seemed unstoppable... the one who continued to fight when it all seemed hopeless.
They made a plan to carry on their mission, to break through Atlas' security and carry on the fight, against all odds. Maria had not intended to throw in her lot with them, but more and more it seemed she found herself sharing common cause. From one house to one vehicle after another, she'd rejoined the unending battle against the darkness.
Maria wasn't a reaper any longer... but so long as she could still fight...
The inevitable could be pushed back another day. Then another, and another...
And doubt would fall away. Death would be forced to wait, and her legacy granted one more accomplishment, and one more witness.
As for what followed... perhaps she'd never know. But she no longer felt much need to. Her ghosts held no more sway over her: she was no longer alone.
A/N: Okay, I think I mean it this time. "Full Circle" was going to be my last entry ever until Shand opted to split the semi-annual FFA into two parts, and for my last entry I was ruminating on the series, on the passage of time, even my own mortality; and this is the result of that. Ultimately, I fell in love with RWBY because of the characters, and wanted to take a moment with a character piece on someone who might've experienced the same pangs of doubt I had.
On August 19th, 2016, I finished my very first RWBY fanfic and tested the waters of the r/RWBY subreddit to see if it might appeal to other fans of the show. Shandromand enjoyed it and encouraged me to keep writing, inviting me to participate in the regular Writing Prompt Wednesday thread, which had just finished its first week. It's safe to say that without his encouragement and the threads he diligently made every week, I would not have written the RWBY stories I did nor found the joy it brought to my life the past few years. Just a few words from a few people made all the difference in turning a prompt response into a full fledged fan fiction, or even making the decision to write at all. And for that, at least, I will always be grateful. This whole anthology is directly because of a small act of kindness and acknowledgment, and I thank you for doing the same in taking the time to read it.