The entire first part of this story came to me while I was eating pizza. No joking.
Also, fair warning: at the moment of uploading this, I'm in a hurry to get this out (reason being blablabla), so the text might be pretty raw, full of mistakes and overall not proofread. Sorry not sorry, I'll go fix it later.
EDIT 2021-06-07: I fixed what I could.
"…and I'm telling you it doesn't go together, Carrot-Top! Cut it out!"
"But why? You haven't given me any explanation!"
"It just doesn't, okay. I know this is real rich coming from me, but trust me on this one!"
Pyrrha had to admit that Roman was growing on her. Not "her" per se but her essence, since they both were dead to the world of the living, and not in any shape or form other than "this is who I might be stuck with for a long time, so it's best to get along", but he was a…
Well he wasn't a pleasant conversationalist, that's for sure, flaunting his overwhelming belief in his own superiority with every single word, but there weren't any other unfortunate souls around to make her company. She really couldn't complain much.
So when they ended up in the same endlessly stretching white void between the worlds together after having to split up and go look for the other spirits, who were, much like them, lost on their way to the God of Light's Afterlife, and after Pyrrha's insistence that she did not, in fact, meet a "pint-sized polychromatic mute murder-machine girl" (to which Torchwick looked oddly relieved and saddened at the same time), that paved way for some conversation. Killing time, however weirdly it acted in this void, while waiting for salvation from GoL's apostle, Oum himself.
Pyrrha just didn't expect the topic of their conversation to steer to pizza, of all things.
"I'm sorry, but I don't see how pineapple on pizza is such a bad thing. It tasted nice, and my friends enjoyed it very much, so what's the problem?"
"The problem, Nikos," Roman gripped his head, "is that you have no friggin' class! Not you, not your friends not anyone else! You are content with eating a downright Grimm mix of molten cheese with pineapples and pickles with tomato pasta! Those things aren't pizzas anymore, just a mishmash of all the worst ingredients to be put together!
"No class, no fucking class!" he finished vehemently.
"You haven't actually told me why you think you are the leading authority on what makes a pizza good," Pyrrha quipped back, "so if you'll excuse me-"
Roman slapped his face. "Seriously?" he drawled monotonously. "Three words, then, Nikos: La Pizza Romana."
Pyrrha wracked her memory for a moment. La Pizza Romana was a high-end chain of restaurants throughout the city of Vale, offering a menu of high-price, high-quality, specialized South Sanus dishes - mostly pizza and pasta. Their teams had gone there only a handful of times, in part because the cuisine there had been so utterly…different compared to what all of them (besides Weiss) had been used to, but mostly because only the heiress and Pyrrha herself could realistically afford a meal there (the others hadn't been very thrilled at the prospect of being paid for, even if it was no skin off either girl's back).
She remembered the logo vividly, too, mostly because she found it incredibly silly: a bowler hat…on top of a walking cane…that was run through a pizza...
Oh.
"Oh. Um..," Pyrrha very eloquently voiced her embarrassment.
Embarrassment that Roman seemed to bask in very much. "Yeah. You remember what my logo looks like, don't you? Don't even answer that, I see it on your face," he spoke, voice dripping with smugness.
"I just…I didn't think-"
"Exactly," Roman interrupted her, "you didn't think. Your friends didn't think. The entire freaking city didn't think!" he shouted incredulously. "My face, my entire persona was on the headliners of all the Vale's biggest newspapers almost every week! Everybody knew what I looked like and yet nobody thought to make a connection between me," the thief pointed to himself, "and a chain of restaurants that oh-so-suspiciously had both a Roman in its name and a bowler hat in the logo that, might I add, looks exactly like the one I used to wear!" he finished, laughing.
"So, wait, you were the one behind it all?"
Roman rolled his eyes. "Of course I was. Used to be a pleb just like you that was be satisfied with any kind of trashcan shit being thrown together and called "pizza", but as I rose through the ranks of being a criminal and was introduced to serious players - the Dons of Vale's Underworld, that meant stepping up my class, so when one of them introduced me to the South Sanus pizza, the one made by real cooks in the image of what it had been first created like decades, if not centuries, ago, not the blowhard morons working at your typical cheap-ass joint…let me tell you, there's life before it and life after it," the crook answered.
"After that, I knew I had to introduce as many people to what the real shit is all about as possible, hence La Pizza Romana. Handpicked only the real masters of their craft for every single restaurant for that exact purpose. And besides, it made for one hell of a money laundering operation," the crook finished, smiling faintly.
"My friends and I have been to your "restaurants" a couple of times. There have barely been any customers in there. If your pizza was as good as you made it out to be, why were you barely getting any business?" Pyrrha challenged Roman, not wanting to be one-upped by the crook.
All traces of the faint smile vanished from the thief's face, replaced by a snarl. "You wanna know why, girlie? Fine. It's because Valeans are really fucking stupid. They would rather eat garbage out of a trash can than go for a decent meal! You are among their ranks, too."
"But I'm from Mistral?"
"Yeah I damn well know you're from Mistral, but you spend enough time in Vale, and you'll start thinking like a box of rocks too," Torchwick waved her off. "I built and organised La Pizza Romana the way I did because I knew nobody would lift their head out of the collective pile of mud and consider all the facts. You want to know by what name I went in all the legal documents?"
Forget embarrassed. Pyrrha was annoyed at being patronized so much. "Must I even answer that? It's a rhetorical question in any case."
Roman completely ignored her. "Tch. I went by the name of Roman Candlestick," he half-laughed, half-scoffed.
Pyrrha's jaw dropped. "What."
"Yep. Hiding in plain sight usually works for so long, but alas, this was Vale," Torchwick shrugged his shoulders. Getting a headshake from Pyrrha in response, he started pacing around. "Wouldn't have worked anywhere else, but the freaking place just had that blanket of idiocy, of brainlessness. People just stop thinking. As a matter of fact, you want to know something?" His companion shook her head and hands in an obvious no; naturally, Roman ignored it.
"Some people thought me a racist, especially, I believe, your little ex-Fang kitty friend. I'm really not. I hate everyone equally. And almost everybody in Vale was in equal parts an idiot. That pissed me off to no end, so, to maintain my emotional balance and my sanity, I had to piss them off as well. It just so happens that the Fangs get very angry when you call them "animals".
The thief continued pacing around. "When I said I hated everyone, I meant it. I hated Mistraleans – they were the best of the bunch, sure, cause they actually had heads on their shoulders, but dear Gods were they stubborn – made it freakin' impossible to do any decent deals with 'em. I hated Atleasians – they may have been smart too, but every single one of them worth dealing with had a stick so far up their own ass it was sticking right out of their mouths and talking for them. I hated Vacuoans because, you know Vacuo. But fuck me, the Valeans were the absolute worst of the bunch. Kingdom-wide spread of idiocy. You wanted to know? There, now you know," he made a show of theatrically bowing to the girl.
Said girl raised a brow. "You know, Torchwick, if you were that unkind to everyone, I wonder how anyone at all trusted you, let alone worked with you."
"Pff. Who needs trust when you've got leverage?" Roman laughed. "You flash 'em just a tidbit of cash, your ability to call in a good word for 'em or something nobody but them's supposed to know – and the sheep fall straight in line. Didn't stop the local chumps from being supremely stupid 'bout their actions."
Pyrrha wasn't deterred. "If Vale was as bad as you make it out to be, mist…mister Candlestick, why stay there? Why not go and be a criminal somewhere else? Like Mistral?"
"Trying to move up from the kids' table with that nickname, Carrot-Top?" Torchwick scoffed, "Ya might as well drop it, 'cause I've got twenty plus years of name-calling and "being an ass" experience ahead of you. Or is that a Huntsman habit, running into battles you can't possibly win?"
The girl swallowed her response. Roman wasn't above crossing lines not meant to be crossed, it seemed.
"Oum, speaking to you is already horrible enough to make me reconsider asking you anything ever again," Pyrrha rubbed her temples. She wasn't feeling any pain per se, but even Aura Ghosts weren't safe from mental exhaustion. "Why do you seek to annoy me even now? We're both dead, there's...nothing you could gain from this!"
"Besides entertainment?" Roman raised a brow. "Well, I piss people off to make them angry. When people are angry, they're prone to make mistakes. Said mistakes I use as my leverage against them," he explained. "You're angry, aren't you?" he smiled a decidedly-not-friendly smile.
What was that about "Roman growing on her"?
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's a good thing you have died," Pyrrha sneered, wiping the smile off Roman's face. "I just wish it wasn't me who has to deal with you in the afterlife." With that, she turned and walked away – annoyed, offended and defeated.
"What? Going on a silence strike, Big Red? We both damn know you ain't gonna last!"
"I don't think you will either, Roman," Pyrrha replied, not bothering to turn back. "And if you believe this will be as hard on me as it will be on you, don't forget: I'm not above running into battles I can't win, apparently. I'll take my chances." She still hadn't turned around to see his reaction, but the complete silence that followed was a victory, however small, that she was willing to take.
After a few minutes of that silence (it was hard to tell the time), Pyrrha heard Roman clear his throat. "Alright. Looks like I played my cards wrong here. You want to know why I haven't moved out while I had the chance?...Come on, Red." He added when it was obvious that the champion was about to give in.
A few more moments of silence passed before the crook heaved an exasperated sigh. "Fine. Looks like I'll be monologuing. You wanted to know? Okay. Number one: it was easy. Business," he clarified, "was easy. Your average chump in Vale was so dumb that pulling cons and theft jobs in that kindergarten of a city was easier than stealing candy from a baby - atleast babies are usually aware that they had candies in the first place. The VPD was the freaking epitome of moronic corruption too - I had half the cops in there on a payroll, and the other half barely had two braincells to rub together. With law enforcement like that, pulling off any kind of job was piss easy. I'm pretty sure you've met them too, Nikos - you remember what they were like?"
No response followed, and Roman grunted in disappointment. "Yeah, fair enough. As for number two: well...I gotta admit I was pretty fucking stupid myself."
Such a surprising admission finally drew a response from Pyrrha, who turned around to face Torchwick with raised eyebrows.
"Okay, that's...surprising, coming from you. I'm listening," she said, trying to keep her voice straight.
"Y'see," the thief sighed, "when you deal with morons on a daily basis, sooner or later you're bound to...inherit some of that idiotic behavior. I've been thinking this over, and, well: I'd grown fat and content robbing the idiots in Vale...maybe not fat, but you get the point. I'd become an idiot myself. It's like...what was the word for it..." Roman narrowed his eyes, trying to remember, "...fucking...oh! Osmosis! That's the one. You remember what it is, Red?"
Being a model student, Pyrrha needed much less time to remember the definition. "Yes, it's, um, spontaneous movement of solvent in through a membrane in the liq-"
"Yeahyeahyeah, that's the one. The body of, what was it. Liquid, water? The body of water that was the entire kingdom of Vale had an overwhelming concentration of dumb cretinism, and when the body of water that was me, Roman Torchwick, interacted with that one, this process of idiotic osmosis started happening, and I fell victim to it. Something like that."
"That is...some comparison...but why bother with it?" Pyrrha questioned.
"Felt like it," Torchwick shrugged, making the girl shake her head in disbelief. "Anyway, truth of the matter is: once those crime bosses of the old left this world by my hand, the entire Vale became my playground. It was so easy doing shit in the damn city, I forgot what it's like to struggle, to face a challenge. I had forgotten that there's always a bigger fish lurking 'round that I have to worry about," he shook his head. "So when said bigger fish took the stage, I swam right into its' maw, like an idiot. Just bent over and took it, like the Dons before me. And kept taking it all the way 'till the Fire Bitch decided it was time for a final showdown."
Fire Bitch, huh? Pyrrha wasn't that far off from the general assessment of the woman herself, it seemed.
"Me and Neo had had plenty of opportunities to get out, now that I think 'bout it," Roman continued, unaware of Pyrrha's thoughts. "Could've, no, should've skipped town the moment that bitch burned one of my boys with a flick of her fingers. Could've prepped a fake corpse of me and left it after a job-gone-wrong; your merry band of happy-go-lucky heroes had given me plenty of opportunities. Hell, I could've gotten over myself and asked your fucking Headmaster for help. But nope! I acted like an idiot, so here I am now, dealing with the consequences."
"Ozpin?"
"Yup. There were three good apples in the kingdom: me, Neo and old Ozpin. I swear, the few times I had to deal with the guy indirectly, he was a real crafty bastard. Respect to him in that regard."
"Well..." Pyrrha thought how to best break the news, "Ozpin's...dead."
"What?" Roman frowned. "Ack, don't tell me the Fire Bitch whacked him too."
"She did, indeed," the girl exhaled. "Also, if I understand right, this "Fire Bitch" went by the name of Cinder Fall?" she thought to ask, even though the answer was clear.
Torchwick furrowed his brows. "Hold it, how'd you know her name? Wait," he paused in disbelief, "she got you too?"
"Shot me through the heart and incinerated me," Pyrrha replied in a detached voice, shivering at having to remember her death.
"Yowch," the crook winced, "not the best of ways to go. 'least my Grimm buddy was considerate enough to snap my neck first. In any case, welcome to "Cinder Fall's Victims Club", he shrugged his shoulder.
Pyrrha chuckled humorlessly, then realized something. "Wait, didn't you say Ruby killed you?"
"Ah, you remember that?" Roman winced again. "Well, it's safe to say I was pretty pissed off when I was talking about Rose, but - ah - it's not her fault, not entirely. Make no mistake, Little Red can still go fuck herself for letting me get chomped by a Grimm, but it was Cinder Whore," Roman snarled as he said the name, "that's roped me into being a terrorist in the first place. She can fuck off even more," he spat out.
A minute of tense silence passed before Pyrrha drew a breath. "Okay, Roman, I see. That is..." she struggled to find an appropriate word, "a fair position to be looking down from, I suppose. But," she frowned, looking the man straight in the eyes, "I do not with to be patronized and belittled to the degree you showed, do you understand?"
"Yeah girlie, I understand," Roman grunted out, getting up and walking towards the girl, "I don't hold all the good cards here evidently and since, knowing Neo, she ain't planning to join me in the Land of the Dead any time soon, it looks like I ought to start treating you like an equal. So, how 'bout a deal: I promise not to be as much of an asshole towards you anymore...and you," he emphasized the word, "don't try to piss me off with your bad life choices. Capiche?" he finished, stretching out his hand.
"Capiche?" Pyrrha asked, confused, not going for a handshake just yet.
Torchwick rolled his eyes. "Ah, it's nothing. Shit like that's stuck to me like honey ever since I first bent a knee to one of the Dons. I swear, they only good things they've left me with were a taste for good alcohol, cigars and pizza - that's it. So," he shook his still-hanging hand, "we have a deal, Nikos? Or you gonna leave ol' Roman hanging?"
Pyrrha eyed the semi-transparent hand of her similarly semi-transparent companion for a moment.
"It's a deal...Roman. But you better hold up to your end!
With that, she made to do the handshake.
Except, as soon as she touched the hand, her world exploded. In that fleeting moment, as hers and Roman's hands touched, she felt his soul. She felt everything that made Roman Roman.
All the way from his downright brutal experiences at the now-infamous East Sanus Orphanage, to induction into the life of crime, to meeting Neo, to an extremely convoluted relationship with her that somehow, in that fleeting moment, still made sense to Pyrrha.
Roman himself wasn't faring much better. In his ghostly mind, he saw the life of a girl flash by in an instant - a normal one st first, but the one that had turned to the life of extreme pressure and loneliness, of being forced to be seen as nothing but the best. The life on the pedestal she had put herself on for the sake of other, slowly forgetting who the girl before that pedestal used to be.
Both of them bounced back from each other and fell on the stark-white and solid ground, disoriented and panicking.
Pyrrha recovered first. "That was..." she stammered, still in daze.
"..not fun..." Roman finished for her, still recovering in the ground. "What in the..." he heaved a very heavy breath out, "...sodden Grimm shit was that?!"
"I think...that was because we've...touched each-other's souls...directly," Pyrrha struggled through an explanation.
"Didn't think that was going to happen..." Roman tried to shake himself sober. "Whatever it was, we are not doing that ever again."
"I have to agree..." Pyrrha spoke, slowly getting herself under control. Then, "Actually, in a sense, this finalizes our...deal."
"Huh?" Roman eloquently responded.
"It was like signing a mutual contract...but instead of just signing contract we, sort of, used our souls, if that makes sense?". Right away Pyrrha realized she really could have worded it better, but she was still coming off of a soul-touching experience, so the girl let it go.
"Whatever you say, Nikos. But I think our first ever deal has just become our last."
At this moment, Pyrrha heard a wooshing sound appear behind her. Even through had heard it many times already, and she hadn't recovered fully, the girl sprang back up to her feet in a split second in a perfect unarmed stance, ready to defend herself.
It was a grey-ish white spherical shape in the air that quickly and steadily grew until it was about twice her height. Pyrrha forced herself to relax - it was just a portal; the kind she'd found opening every time she managed to come across another poor soul lost in this endless emptiness and convinced them to go through it, supposedly straight into Oum's (God of Light's Apostle and a guide for the dead) care.
At least, that was what Roman had told her to do the first time they came across eachother; "a glorified fetch quest" he'd called it back then.
Pyrrha's train of thought was interrupted as a figure walked out of the portal - a humanoid figure of pure white light, so intensely bright that the surrounding expanse seemed dark in comparison.
"Pyrrha Nikos. Roman Torchwick," it spoke with an unnatural, echoing voice. Pyrrha trembled. She'd been slightly skeptical of this figure being real, but right now her skepticism had all but withered away.
"Yeah, I had 'bout the same reaction, Red," she heard Roman from behind her, before he came up to her side a second later. "Pyrrha, this is Oum - I've told you about him. Oum, Your Holliness, this - ah, nevermind."
"I apologize for frightening both of you, my children," the figure spoke once more, in a quieter, less frightening voice. "I am Oum, Apostle of the God of Light and the Messenger of the Dead. You have my eternal gratitude in helping me find all of the lost souls within this dimension. Every single one of the Gods' children has been rescued; you are the last. Come," it pointed at the portal.
"Just to be sure: we're going to the afterlife, right?" Pyrrha heard Torchwick speak up.
"Yes, my child," Oum bowed, "to the realm of eternal peace, where you may bask in His excellence for all eternity."
"Don't have a lot of options left, besides here, so I'm down for eternal relaxation!" Roman spoke, both of them approaching the portal. He turned around and looked at Pyrrha expectedly. "Well? If we ain't jumping together, then I'll see you on the other side, Nikos!"
With that, he disappeared inside. Pyrrha turned around to face Oum.
"My friends on Remnant...will I be able to see them?" she timidly asked.
"You will be, child", the figure assured her. "I will tell you more on the other side. Let us leave this accursed place behind."
Oum's words gave Pyrrha confidence...and hope.
She walked into the portal and, for the first time in a long while, found herself instantly drifting off to blissfull sleep.
Gonna explain wtf is this story later. Time to leave.
Also, Roman absolutely keeps writing himself. How's he doing it, I have no idea, but it's fun.
EDIT 2021-06-07: small mistakes, added and removed a few lines. Honestly quite surprised at how little I had to fix.
EDIT 2021-06-30: more small mistakes
