"Do you believe in destiny?"
Ironic words to remember so clearly, given how long ago Cinder had last seen the person they belonged to. Over two decades since they had fought tooth and nail atop a shattered Beacon Tower as lives burned out like birthday candles below to the hurricane of carnage and Grimm which defined The Fall. A prodigy of a fighter taking on the closest thing to a god anyone outside if certain circles had seen for at least a hundred years. Twenty-some odd years since Cinder had pierced the red-haired Pyrrha Nikos, The Invincible Girl—a somewhat ironic Title—though the heart and reduced her to embers in the breeze.
A lifetime since Cinder had been a singular whole. Since her flesh had been melted away by magic. A magic whose only purpose was to burn away the Grimm, and, somewhat ironically given the near-death experiences it had enacted upon Cinder, protect life.
"Do you think she's okay?" were the first words Cinder registered through her mental haze. They belonged to a certain pink-haired monsoon of a woman, and were somehow said with both honest empathy, and a poorly concealed desire to stuff Cinder through a doughnut conveyor before lightly dusting her with cinnamon sugar and inject her with strawberry cream.
Cinder was horrified that anyone could communicate that with just a tone of voice.
That horror helped to bring Cinder back to reality though. Well, horror and the known but unfamiliarly strong feeling of her aura repairing… something, rather adamantly. Cinder recognized first that she was resting on a comfortable couch, her feet no longer covered by her boots and propped up using throw pillows. Next, she registered four people in various states of worry in the room, though she could only remember two of their names.
Jaune was easy, still wearing his apron and standing over Cinder with glowing hands—that explains my aura feeling like it's on drugs I guess. Then there was the pair she didn't know by name, their oddly-not-clashing green and pink color schemes not going at all with the home decor, but reminiscent of the doorway to the home. Finally, there was the woman of the hour, Pyrrha Nikos.
Cinder's memory of the girl on the tower was mostly primal, but she did recall a golden circlet and bronze armor, as well as a bright red ponytail and piercing emerald eyes. This grown version of that girl kept many of the same ideals in her appearance, but not quite the same. Her eyes remained vivid green and her hair red—worn in a utilitarian, but beautiful braid over her shoulder—but the rest of the classical Mistrali elements were altered. Her brow supported a crown of laurels, still bronzed. She wore no arms or armor, but the flowing off-white tunic and sandals reminded Cinder of museums all the same. Her tunic's shoulder was clasped by a dark, four-faceted gem with beautifully preserved natural red feathers.
"Oh! She's awake, you can probably stop now," Pyrrha punctuated the suggestion with a few light slaps to Jaune's shoulder, prompting him to lower his hands and step back. "Hello again! You kind of… fell over when we met, are you feeling okay?" Pyrrha's green eyes stared into Cinder's own amber with concern—somehow not glared with hatred—and found Cinder silent from confusion more than anything.
Cinder had seen quite a bit in her life, but resurrection was a thing of fairy tales even by her non-standard standards. Cinder had a rather short list of mind-tricking semblances strong enough to even come close to this level of realism, but Emerald couldn't manage touch and Neo had always fiddled with the small details too much. The Pyrrha Nikos in front of Cinder was physically touching her forehead, and so far hadn't changed outfit or eye color that Cinder could tell.
"I-... Who?" the question slipped out as Cinder tried to muddle through the situation as best she could. Her mind was working at full speed, but couldn't truly focus on anything except the bowl of grapes currently resting on a coffee table nearby. The grapes weren't particularly interesting, simple purplish-red orbs on a vine, they were just something that could be understood in the moment and weren't raised from the dead. Easy to comprehend, non-necromantic grapes.
"I'm…" the somehow-Pyrrha began hesitantly. "Well I guess you know my name is Pyrrha Nikos, but I'm not Pyrrha," not-Pyrrha placed emphasis on the name, and her hands into her lap as she sat on the coffee table. "I'm Nikki, which may not make much sense I suppose, but please understand that distinction is very important."
Cinder tried to move her attention from the bowl of grapes to something—anything—else, but her mind was running in circles. ...Destiny. Not Pyrrha. Brisket. Jaune. Monsoon. Singing. Drinking. Thirsty. Fluids. Moist. Grapes... Over and over again the chain repeated. It could be stretched and defied but would quickly resume, making actual thought impossible. In a poorly planned attempt to break her loop. Cinder almost snapped the next step in her mental album out loud "Thirsty."
"Oh! Right, of course. I'll… go get you some water then. Wait right there." 'Nikki' swiftly rose to her full height, squared her shoulders, and performed the most confident nervous tittering Cinder had ever seen out of the room.
Finally not staring at the either the grapes or 'Nikki' Cinder's thoughts began organizing themselves into a shade of coherence. Enough, at least, to turn her eye to Jaune standing just on the other side of the room, nearby the pair currently sharing the love seat. As he began to sit, the woman with pink hair almost vibrated with… excitement? Maybe restraint?
"Sorry, for all this. I… it's been a while since anyone who knew Pyrrha met Nikki, and we all sort of… Forgot," Jaune was wringing his hands as he apologized.
"And… who, or what is… Nikki then?"
Jaune motioned towards the man in deep green southern Mistrali garb, "Ren can probably tell it better than me. I know the story first hand, but I'm not so great at the actual explaining part."
Cinder moved her gaze over to the man in question, his presence only really standing out now that attention had been drawn to him. She saw now that the overly still woman next to him was actually being kept in check by his calm demeanor.
Ren gave a small bow of his head, "Lie Ren, the name the world calls me matches the name of my birth," a formal Mistrali greeting delivered in perfect southern Animan. In short it was a request to share names, specifically the name of one's family. The wording sounded normal enough for those not familiar, but the specific conjugation identified the greeting as a temporary truce between those who didn't know if they could trust the other. Classically, the ability to locate an enemy's family had been a kind of collateral, though the modern usage had done away with that implication. The rest of the room didn't seem to quite know what it meant.
Cinder replied in kind, her own Animan a bit more… rustic. Low-born to use the proper term. "Vermillion Ash, the world names me as Cinder Fall," ending with the best head bow she could perform after sitting up.
Seemingly placated by the reply, Ren relaxed a bit. "Nora." With that one word, the woman beside him—Nora—visibly relaxed as well. Her eyes no longer contemplated pastry-based lonely funerals for Cinder, and her energy almost appeared to visibly discharge from her previously flexing muscles.
Classical implication fully intended then.
Ren took a deep breath, his relaxation diminishing as he prepared to speak. "Pyrrha—Our Pyrrha Nikos— is dead. By your hand, on top of Beacon Tower," the room didn't so much tense as it did crackle. "You have been largely forgotten by the world, your actions barely footnotes in the history books. We know your actions, Cinder. She was our friend, but I won't make threats about making you wish for death. For memory of her, and by request of Pyrrha Nikos, you have been forgiven for what you did. Don't think for a second we've forgotten.
"Nikki is Pyrrha Nikos, just not the Pyrrha Nikos who you murdered." Well, that's good to have cleared up at least. "How much did you learn about the Relics? You held one for a time, and were central to Salem's plans, but how much did she tell you?"
Cinder knew quite a bit about the Relics, in fact. She knew they were incredibly powerful, and each one specialized in a separate Original Gift element. Each had a form of guardian tied to it, and when brought together they would unleash untold powe—
"Prfftt!" Nora interrupted Cinder's rundown with a poor attempt at hiding a laugh. "So not really anything! Good to know Salem was consistent about keeping people in the dark too."
"I'm confused." Cinder was confused.
Attempting to summarize years of research apparently took far longer than a quick elevator pitch. According to Salem, and even Cinder's own investigations into the Relics, the conjoined power of all four being brought together would be nothing less than catastrophic. Cinder knew that the last time the they had all been together, two beings which she had initially thought of as merely guardians—she had only learned during the prolonged event in question that they were, in fact, the Brother Gods—appeared for the sake of stopping the user, Ruby in that case, from gaining power beyond that of the existing deities.
Now it was Jaune's turn to burst into laughter, even Nikki joined in with a chuckle having returned partway through Cinder's nearly hour-long retelling of the rather boring process of piecing together of legends and forgotten histories from around the kingdoms. "Oh man, and I thought Oz kept stuff from us," Jaune seemed to realize the sentence he had just said. "Okay, yeah, he kept that from us too. Guess those two were more alike than any of us want to admit."
"Have you met Ruby?" Nora interjected while practically rolling atop Ren in her laughter.
"She's probably the last person to want 'power greater than the gods', or did you miss the 'Go lick a nevermore.' speech?" Jaune again, now nearly doubled over in laughter.
Cinder's face burned with an embarrassed blush, "And how do any of you know I'm wrong?" she motioned her arms wide, referencing all present. "You could have gone digging, same as me, but definitely not until after all four had been brought together. You even said yourself that Ozpin hid the information from you."
The answer came from Ren, who had been laughing but not nearly as raciously. "We asked—or more specifically, team RWBY asked—the Relic of Knowledge what Ozpin had been hiding…"
The story which followed shattered much of what remained of Cinder's world, told over a well prepared meal kept warm during Cinder's… mental absence. The lives of Salem and Ozma leading to the death of an entire species of ultra-magical humans. The Brother Gods and their charging of Ozma with the unification of the world. All the way up to the relics being yet more fractions of their own power.
"—and then you killed Professor Ozpin, who popped into Oscar, but you should know that already, and the rest you were pretty much there for," Nora finished off the retelling rather nonchalantly before stuffing a massive bite of Mistrali bread-cake into her seemingly infinite maw.
It had taken the better part of another hour, mostly being interrupted by mouthfuls of wondrous food. Everything from sweet potato casserole, and of course the brisket, to Cinder's own baked brie and wild berries as a not-quite dessert. The meal was amazing and the story told across it equally awesome.
"Alright, so now that you've all thoroughly discounted my expertise on magical history and the Relics, what do they have to do with Nikki being not?" Cinder put as much inflection into the final word as she could without saying the name 'Pyrrha.' "I understand the Relic of Choice could do something like reverse a choice made, but then you'd probably all be dead in her place. And Creation can't recreate, which I know firsthand."
Ren nodded in confirmation. "That's where the trick comes in. Using Jinn's final question, we found out that the Relics can be used in various combinations, and those each contained their own unique number of uses from the individual Relic's." Ren began holding up fingers as he listed, "Creation and Destruction together can create a single new species or race. Choice and Destruction can essentially cure any physical ailment. Creation and Knowledge can bring boundless inspiration up to five times—"
"—And Creation, Destruction, and Choice used together, allows for a single, special kind of Wish." Nikki jumped to the end of the list, interrupting Ren. "Without reverberating consequences, those three in unison allows for one change to be made to a past event and it's concurrent result to be seamlessly spliced into the world. But the relics cannot change the events of an era already passed," Nikki's face fell as she continued. "I am that result."
Cinder was astonished. The 'good guys' had used a nearly limitless, complication-free alteration of the past selfishly? "... So you had the complete ability to, what? Rewrite almost any major disaster in the last century?"
Suddenly, some of the details of the past nine months clicked into place for Cinder; she was allowed into these people's lives out of guilt— "Prevent the Fall of Beacon?"
They didn't actually want Cinder around. She was just some trophy to say 'Look! Look what good people we are' and distract the world from knowing just what a travesty they had allowed to happen—"And you used it to bring your friend back to life?"
The sheer absurdity of this entire night was catching up to Cinder. These people had invited her, a known murderer, into their home to share a meal. "That's… impressively selfish. My inner demons applaud you all," Cinder playfully clapped her hands as she accused. She really was impressed they had all that power, and didn't even think beyond 'I wish my friend had lived.'
Nothing could convince Cinder that this was all some stupid charade to make themselves feel good.
"I wished I had died." Jaune said, with the kind of calm certainty that only came from absolute understanding of what those words meant.
Oh. Well, now Cinder just felt like an asshole.
The rest of the table was disturbingly still and silent. "That I had been the one to fight on Beacon tower. 'That Jaune Arc had been the one to die, instead of Pyrrha Nikos.' I only learned after Nikki showed up, that didn't mean I would be the Jaune Arc to die."
Cinder didn't know what to say to that. The old, young Cinder probably would have scoffed and continued to belittle him for his shortsightedness, and not accepted such a simple answer to the question of why. The Cinder who had lived through two decades of aimless existence understood that wish, but had never been so weak as to actually consider the option.
Cinder's eyes drifted over to Pyrrha Nikos, who's face held the same solid emptiness as Jaune's, and wondered what her side of the story was. If for no other reason than to feign a semblance of empathy, Cinder wanted to change the subject and never think of her recent lack of tact again. It was unlikely that she could get the full story from anyone else, and so far Nikki had been reminding Cinder of some cross between Emerald and Ruby. Maybe a simple question would get Cinder the distraction, and answers, she wanted.
As Emerald had said earlier in the day: 'You never get the answer to a question you don't ask.'
A/N
So that's the quick rundown of what happened, there's going to be a bit more explanation but I wanted to give it it's own chapter.
Yell Head/WhatOtherPlanet, as always, was a huge help. deTimber also deserves a shout-out for helping me with a few areas.
Coming up very soon, you may notice the chapter numbers change since I'll be rewriting and combining the first six at least to add some exposition, explanation, and overall details and quality I didn't have back then. Those hopefully won't take as long as brand new chapters, but there will almost definitely be additional information added to them.
As always, feedback is appreciated.