Author's Note: So, I usually write about the Legend of Zelda, and I definitely have things in the works for that, but here is some RWBY until then.
Basically a friend and I were talking about Oscars' development and as much as we loved Volume 6, we felt there was a missed opportunity. Thanks to our brainstorming, I wrote this as a one-shot.
Spoilers for RWBY Volumes 1-6.
"Maybe we could all use some space, " Blake said, Yang nodding in agreement as team RWBY shared guarded looks.
They started to separate slowly, heads downcast, deep in brooding thoughts they could only hope to make sense of, to ever express out loud.
Yet, a creaking door pulled their focus.
Looking over, they saw Oscar holding the knob of an open door, staring at the outside night in front of him.
"Oscar?" Ruby asked, "Where are you going?"
Without turning around, keeping his eyes set on the lamp post that stood before him, he replied curtly,
"I need some air. "
"Oscar… " started Weiss as the door closed, yet Oscar paid no mind.
He stood alone on the steps, the frigid night air cold enough to make him shiver.
Oscar crossed his arms as he made his way down the steps, his mind a jumble with recollection, drawing forth every word with an inevitable dread.
"We've got Ozpin with us, " Nora had said just hours before, "he usually knows what to do. "
The false hope they had placed in him, all of them. How fragile it must have been to crumble so fast.
Yet, he didn't want to think about how strong it must have been for them to be so shaken up, so devastated.
He could still almost feel the pain on his cheek from Qrows' punch, the back of his head slammed against that tree with such force, their betrayed, furtive, and suspicious glances as the snowflakes started to fall again.
Perhaps they would always be engraved into his mind.
And his back, his back that still ached, his back that must have been bruised. Just a few moments ago, Jaune had nearly broken the wall trying to force him against it.
He had considered him a comrade, a friend, all of them.
How could they forget that he was as clueless as they were in all of this?
He had always looked to Ruby as the leader, the instigator, the one he trusted the most. Oscar hated that they all could have trusted him like that.
Him, the farmhand
No, him, the liar, the schemer
The murderer
Looking back at the house, seeming to tower over him with immensity, mocking his insignificance, his insurmountable goal, his inadequacy to uphold it, his inability to make up for their losses.
"Everything we did was for nothing!" he heard Jaune's voice angrily echo in his mind as his heart started to race.
Perhaps it was the cold, he thought as his breath quickened as well, the puffs forming from his exhales becoming faster, more frequent.
"How much longer can we even trust him?!"
Oscar started to walk, not even paying attention to the direction he was going, knowing he just wanted to get away from all of it.
He walked and he walked, his mind a haze of worry, his eyes only seeing blurs of light, of night life and of smiling faces that were all too foreign to him.
He wanted to get somewhere, anywhere where the voices couldn't catch him.
All of the voices
Not just the ones he manufactured from memory but the one voice he had come to dread the most.
The voice that had ruined his life and everyone else's as well.
Ozpins' voice
Oscar suddenly felt a thud on his shoulder, inducing him to stagger forward. He looked back to see a couple with wide, surprised eyes looking at him.
"S-sorry…" Oscar made out, realizing he had bumped into them. He averted his gaze as he walked quickly away from them.
"Hey boy!" A voice behind him said, "Do you need help?"
Yet, he kept going, ignoring the inquiry, walking faster and faster, wanting to get away from everything, indulging an instinct to flee that he had been suppressing for so long.
As he passed perhaps his third fire hydrant, his breathing started to become constricted. Walking wasn't helping, his heart now a resounding boom in his chest, his lungs seeming to forget how to breathe at all.
A breath of fresh air was all that he'd asked for.
Then again, he asked for peace and happiness once, long ago.
He didn't get that either.
In fact, he didn't ask for what he got instead.
Oscars' hand found a wall, fumbling for its' support as he tried to just breathe.
He closed his eyes and tried to focus on anything else as he forced his lungs in and out, slower and slower.
He pictured in his mind the farm in the wake of sunrise, the amber light casting its' glow on the fields of wheat as the birds chirped their sweet songs. The smell of fertilizer, of soil, of the distant roses, daises, sunflowers in his aunts' garden, of peach cobbler wafting from the window of the kitchen. It all smelled like home.
He pictured himself leaving the farm, how right that felt, how excited he was to be on his own, how beautiful the rest of Anima was. He pictured meeting Qrow, meeting Ruby for the first time, holding that cane. He pictured the first time he saw Ruby laugh, saw Weiss smile, saw Ren and Nora exchange meaningful glances, the first times he really saw them as people.
He opened his eyes to the alley in front of him, in the reality he found himself in instead, where all of them were surely miles away, forgetting all of it.
Those moments of happiness were becoming fewer and farther between, harder to predict.
Apathetic machines, weapons, desensitized to loss.
"How could you do that to them?" Oscar asked, "They've given everything for your war and you just—"
He stopped himself, sliding his hand off the wall.
"Forget it, " he said as he sat down on a nearby crate burying his face into his hands, "you won't respond. You have the luxury to sit back and…and…what I wouldn't give…"
He felt anger boiling inside him again, seething, like a kettle about to whistle its' tune.
"What's happening to me!" Oscar exclaimed, distraught as he stood quickly, standing up and staring at where he sat, scared of what he had said.
"I can't even trust myself! How can I expect them to trust me if I'm turning into you! Into…into…"
"I don't even know who you are!" He exclaimed in frustration, "you…you…"
"Can you even hear me?!" He asked, "Are you listening? Have you ever listened to me?!"
"No, wait, I know the answer, save your breath," Oscar remarked, "not like you have one to lose anyway. "
Oscar started to pace back and forth in front of the crate, as if a child was sitting there, waiting to be disciplined.
"Destiny, " he said coldly, "that's what you always talk about, right? Destiny?"
"'It's a destiny we can't avoid' , that's what you said when you used to talk all those months ago. So it's my destiny then, to lose myself, to become like you, to accept myself as a larger soul, to forget death as a tragedy, to see sacrifice as a means of moving forward? They've lost so much, how can you sit back and let them lose more?! How can you expect me to!"
"Tell me, please, I need to know, " Oscar pleaded desperately, stopping his incessant pacing, "how long until I stop caring like you have?!"
Oscar paused, waiting, wanting to hear the voice he grew to loathe, the voice he hated to need, the voice he regretted loving as a comfort.
"Tell me!" He shouted so loud a dog barked in the distance.
"Just say something, you coward!" Oscar yelled, his voice breaking.
He closed his eyes and exhaled in response to the silence he got. Oscar's eyes watered when they opened again, the gold and the green warping as he tried not to cry.
"What a curse you've had placed on you…on us…on me…on everyone…to go blindly against an unstoppable evil…and for you not to care…"
It was no use as his words faltered. It was the first time he could afford to cry, with only the night sky to bear witness.
And, of course…
"Oscar…" the voice said in his mind.
It was him, really him. Oscar was silenced by how real it sounded, anticipating with a held rage the words he would hear.
"Oscar…it's just not that simple, " Ozpin said.
"Oh, okay, " he said with a sniff of his nose, in a disbelief that Ozpin could still be so vague, "thank you, that really helps."
"Oscar…" Ozpin repeated, the concern in his voice apparent.
Yet, Oscar didn't seem to care.
"Now that I have you here, I think it's time you listened to me. Do you realize what you've done to us all in the pursuit of your victory? Is this peace we're fighting for even possible if we can't defeat Salem? Have you truly set us on a fool's errand? After all these years, how could you? How many times must your reincarnated souls live through this torment before too many lives have been lost? How do you…how will I become so unfeeling that their loss is your gain? How are you that…selfish?"
"Oscar, listen to me, I can try to ex—"
"No! You listen to me! I didn't ask for this, none of them did! You've left us with no choice! Don't they at least deserve that?!"
"They do, Oscar, and I ha—"
"No, you haven't!" Oscar yelled, silencing Ozpin into submission, "and you know it."
Oscar sat back on the crate, resting his forearms on his legs before he continued,
"How masterfully you had maneuvered their obedience, their loyalty…all of them…you're no different from that…that witch!"
"I cannot object to that, " Ozpin said, his voice slow, filled with regret.
"I just want you to answer one question, " Oscar started quietly after the panting breaths of rage subsided, "truthfully, none of this…none of this destiny crap. "
"Go on, " Ozpin said, as a statement of agreement.
"How can you justify using them as soldiers for your war? Plastic pawns in your…game?" Oscar asked.
There was a silence that followed, Oscar waiting for a response.
"I can't, " Ozpin said with a pain in his voice that made Oscar's eyes widen, "but I have to. "
Oscar stood up and started a walk out the alleyway, as if Ozpin were merely a person he could walk away from, a person he could never see again, never hear again.
"I remember all of them, you know, " Ozpin said dejectedly, Oscar stopping in his tracks, listening intently, "I could list all their names, right here, right now, as I have done everyday. And there are even more who have suffered as a result of the loss of them. Those who fell in loyalty to me…I've counted every one with a great deal of regret, and…the survivors…the countless survivors…I wish with all my heart that they could live as well…"
"Because surviving isn't living," Oscar said quietly.
"Yes, Oscar, " Ozpin replied, "surviving isn't living. Salem has manifested a world of destruction, a precursor to what she feels humanity truly deserves…annihilation…"
"In this world, all anyone can do is survive, so I fought to change that. I saw in humanity what Salem did not, what Salem has forgotten, the capacity to love. I've seen, time and time again that peace is possible and that we must pursue it. We owe it to everyone who has suffered to pursue it, to keep moving forward. "
"You are right, " Ozpin continued when Oscar kept his silence, "Salem and I…we are the same. I cannot deny that. The only difference is that I hope to bring life to Remnant, in both small ways and big, and to prove the strength of love and of hope. I regret with all my heart that the combination of her forces and my insistence on opposing it has caused the death and loss of so many. She sees that as a victory. I see it as a tragedy. It is unfortunate that we fight for peace in such a violent world. The divisiveness Salem is so intent on…all we have is the hope that someday our efforts will change it. "
"I'm sorry Oscar, but…all I can give you is hope. "
Oscar's hands balled into clenched fists before they released.
"Is it enough to make up for all that has been lost?" Oscar asked with a sad tone.
"Someday, I think it will be, " Ozpin replied.
Oscar nodded slowly.
"What else can we do but move forward… " Oscar whispered to himself, even though he knew someone else was listening.
"What about me, then? How…how will I change? How long until I become like Salem?" asked Oscar, calmed by what seemed to be honesty, appeased by Ozpin's genuine answers.
Yet there was no reply in the silence that followed.
Oscar took a shaky, fearful deep breath in and out.
Ozpin was gone.
The feeling of being left alone in the world Ozpin described seemed to crush itself upon him as he stood in the sidewalk. The chilly breeze ran past him, through him, reminding him of his bare forearms, his thin shirt, his chattering teeth.
He was lonely and he was cold.
He'd rather see those hurt expressions again then stay out alone in the cold. Even if their pain felt like a knife, cutting deep into his soul, somehow even into the soul of the man inside him, he still found solace in their company. He would try to make it up to them when he got back, as best he could, for not being a better reincarnation of the man they couldn't trust, for not being a better, more capable leader, for all the loss they've endured, and him so little.
They were his friends, after all.
But first, perhaps a change…