Her father died, leaving her at the mercies of a stepmother who didn't want her, but had no intention in sharing in the wealth left behind. She'd always believed her stepmother only married him to be close to the strings of his purse, and the two daughters she brought along played the part of loving, attentive children... by telling him what he wanted to hear. In his old age, he preferred lies to the truth, and her honest advice went unheeded, and he sided with those who catered to his ego.
She might have resented that, were she not without him now. Were she not feeling as though the only person in the world who'd loved her had left, and she too preferred lies to the truth. She too wished there was more than a memory to turn to for love, and so accepted her place on the very lowest rung of her new family... never to ascend, but never to be cast out either...
Until she was. Until after years of loyal service to a family name went rewarded only with further abuse and neglect... all while her new mother waited for the moment when she could cut this unwelcome reminder of her marriage loose and hoard the wealth and prestige for herself and her trueborn children...
All in that moment when she felt something awaken in her, something dark and terrible... and powerfulas it told her she could escape, could kill, could erase this woman and her children and be the only one to savor the fruits of her father's labor...
Love, she reminded herself. She tried to love them, even if they did not love her. Her father loved them once, and she would much rather be like him -or at least what she recalled him to be- than this woman casting her out. She tried to think herself not so ruthless, so conniving, so... without that capacity to love.
She was not a murderer. She was not a slayer of her own kin.
Her hesitation led to her "sisters" attacking her. She reacted instinctively, drawing upon a power she could not yet control.
Shards of clinking glass. A spark generated by the heat of molten slag. No knowledge of how to extinguish a raging flame and no cooperation from those trapped by its embrace.
She tried to help them. She tried to be better than they were and offer help.
She'd come to prefer lies to the truth.
But the fire spread, and she ran. She had nothing to run towards, and nothing to run back to. All she could do was move forward.
The fire drew two sets of eyes. One was weary in her resignation, used to such folly from man. Another rushed towards the inferno to save those ensnared by it, for she had the ability to do so and could do no less.
Fate turned -as it so often did- on the smallest step. If she had run a moment sooner, if she had fled in another direction, if she had not stopped to try and save those who despised her, she may have vanished into the night before she saw the blur.
Instead, she nearly ran right in its path and dove aside, tumbling into the freezing snow. She looked up, sleet still clinging to her cheeks as she beheld a figure clad in a white robe standing over her.
Had she waited too long? Had Death come to collect her along with her mother and her sisters?
No. Death did not offer a hand to help her to her feet. Death certainly did not crouch down to be at eye level with a young girl... nor did she think Death would be quite so short as to barely have to crouch at all.
"Are you all right, sweetie?" the one in white asked. Before she could respond, she found herself enveloped in the white cloak, an arm encircling her and pulling her towards something warm... somewhere preferable to the burning cinders of her house and the sleet she'd fallen into.
She could not yet speak. Her breathing was too fast, her heart pounding too hard. She could do little more than look up and tremble.
Look up at a warm, smiling face with piercing gray eyes...
No. Not gray. Silver. Shining so brightly...
"What's your name?" the silver-eyed one asked.
What should she say? That she was the child of a wealthy man or the discarded excess of a conniving and wretched stepmother? Should she say she was an arsonist, an outcast?
Should she say that girl died in the fire with her family?
She reached up to wipe snow from her cheeks. It bought her a moment to look past the silver eyes to the burning wreckage of her home.
Nowhere to turn back to, but... something she could use, so long as she left it behind and let the falling snow extinguish it after it served its purpose.
"C-Cinder," she finally managed to say.
Cinder...
"Cinder Fall."
It... sounded like a name, at least.
"Cinder," the silver-eyed one replied. She had yet to relax her grip... and... "Cinder" had gone so long without this feeling of embrace she had forgotten how much value there was in a warm arm covering her own. "I'm Summer."
Warm indeed.
And watching the fire and snow a short distance away, another scoffed and departed. She couldn't reveal her hand to Ozpin just yet, but his silver-eyed warrior had come... so he knew she had made plans for the territory.
A setback, but hardly one to dwell on. There hadn't been anything to gain from this place; just a staging ground swiftly replaced by another.
Nothing of value was lost...
How fate turned.
Her mother was preoccupied now. Cinder did her best to be patient, but if she was honest... she was scared out of her mind.
It hadn't been that long ago that her last parent had welcomed new children into his life, and those children had usurped her place by whispering sweet promises... a talent Cinder had yet to master. She was too blunt and honest for her own good.
Summer picked up the little girl with such delight, bouncing her up and down on the older woman's knee. Cinder could not recall ever seeing a baby -Cinder had previously been youngest- but she did admit the small blonde with such big lavender eyes could be quite... cute.
She just worried about how cute her mother found this girl to be, because by all indications, Summer intended to take in another child as her own... one child to someone Summer already loved and treasured rather than some amber-eyed brunette she picked up from the snow.
Cinder tried not to be bothered by this girl so much smaller than herself. But the more she thought on the blonde, the more she couldn't help but be bothered. Someone younger and cuter was to be her sister, and while she may not yet have possessed a silver tongue like Cinder's other sisters, she'd already won her mother over and Cinder had no reading as yet on her new father to be.
She didn't mind going from a luxurious mansion to a small cabin in an equally small, isolated island village, but she did fear what would become of her if those around her thought her... redundant. She'd said very little; tried not to let the truth slip from her lips too often, but it hung over her every thought what her mother thought of her and if she liked her less than she had the day they met.
Love could only stretch so far, though Summer repeatedly seemed to challenge that assertion. She indicated she still loved the woman who'd left Taiyang, and that baffled Cinder: who would continue to love someone after that someone hurt them or those they cared about?
Well, Cinder herself tried. It just hadn't worked out as she'd hoped it would.
Summer Rose. Cinder Fall. Taiyang Xiao Long. There was no common theme in the family...
Save that Summer and Tai knew each other before, and Tai had actually fathered Yang, rather than the other girl Summer brought along with her.
Her own father came to love daughters not his own. Perhaps Cinder just needed to always tell him what he wanted to hear.
Or...
Or... something... more drastic.
She told herself she did this to survive. She told herself she'd been here before and wanted to learn from her mistake and not let history repeat itself.
Other sisters took all that she had and tried to cast her out. This girl had already won Summer's heart and Cinder had to be careful not to lose the parent she had. Miracles couldn't happen more than once; life was not a fairy tale.
She once turned glass to blade, and slag to flame. She could walk in the room with a shard of glass and walk away with no sign she'd been there at all or done anything to affect this child or the house taking her in.
Cinder leaned over the crib with shard in hand...
...Yang, they called her, looked up with those big lavender eyes...
...she smiled at her...
Cinder looked at the shard in her hand, not so different from the one she held a long time before that...
She was not a murderer. She was not a slayer of her own kin.
Cinder slid the shard into her sleeve and reached down to pick up the little girl, gingerly lifting her with both hands, desperately hoping she wouldn't cry out and wake Tai and her mother, and make them suspect Cinder had... the intent that filled her moments beforehand.
But Yang didn't cry. She cooed, nuzzling against the warmth of Cinder's shoulder and tickling the skin of her neck with tiny blonde hairs.
Cinder wasn't sure exactly what to do next. She just held Yang in her arms, watching her gently bob her head and glance around.
A hand found her shoulder. Cinder nearly jumped, snapping her head around to look, only to see her mother bring a finger to her lips to shush her, indicating Yang with her other hand.
Cinder focused on what she could recall that was technically true. "S-she was awake... I just... wanted to... uh, come in and..." And then a lie. "...see her."
"Well, you did," Summer confirmed. "Beautiful, isn't she?"
Summer reached a hand to those small blonde hairs. She was already starting to curl, even with only a few days of exposure to the world and its elements. Cinder imagined Yang's hair would be very messy and unruly... curly and thick, rather than wavy like her own.
Cinder was imagining what Yang would be like a little more grown than she was now... and notwith the malicious intent that reared itself when she thought of her sisters preceding Yang.
"Yeah..." Cinder nodded. "Yeah, she is."
Summer smiled, reaching over to take the small blonde girl in her own arms. When Yang found her bearings, her lavender eyes remained on the big sister who found her awake in her crib.
Big sister...
Summer didn't seem to suspect anything, but she was a trained Huntress. Could she see the weapon hiding in Cinder's sleeve? Had she come to defend her child from an assassin?
Or did Summer genuinely believe -or want to believe- that Cinder was taken with Yang too?
It wasn't... wasn't the truth when she stepped into the room, but it wasn't a lie any longer either.
Cinder gently reached her fingers over to Yang's head, tentatively feeling the blonde hair. Again, Yang cooed to her.
"She's gonna have so many split ends when she grows up..." Cinder mused, for once not disguising her thoughts through careful discretion... for once just saying what she thought.
Summer giggled. "Good thing she'll have a big sister to brush her hair."
Cinder smiled. Entirely of her own accord.
Big sister... there was that thought again.
A family of many disparate parts, with a strange arrangement of names and without ties of blood...
But family just the same. Her family. Her mother and her sister together in her father's house.
Cinder reached an arm over to hug her mother. Summer eagerly took her daughter into her arms.
The hug she found herself in now... whatever feeling Summer had for Yang hadn't sapped all she felt for Cinder, at the very least.
Cinder was the one finding a shoulder to rest her head in now, the one content to find the wonders of the world there in the safety of her home.