-screams at Weiss for not trying to find her teammates-
Anyway, the reason Weiss hasn't set out to find them yet is because Iris has just been born, Weiss just gave birth, so she needs to recover and allow Iris to grow up a little before she leaves on a mission to find her teammates.
Why didn't she tell Yang? It wasn't the right time, or place.
"Hey do you remember your teammate who supposedly died about a year ago? Hi, yes, I'm alive."
Location: Unknown, Vacuo
February 9th-August 17th
[Growing]
They've been walking for two hours with the hot Vacuo sun mercilessly bearing down on them and there were little to no winds blowing around them. While messing with the settings on the stroller, Weiss discovered that it has a cooling system installed into it and quietly cursed herself for not finding it at the train station. Digging deeper, she'd also discovered that there was an option to turn it into a hover stroller by tucking the wheels into a compartment below and stabilizing it with gravity dust.
It would work well in the desert of Vacuo, and Weiss was grateful for it.
A little ways away from the village, Weiss stops to roll her sleeves up and tie her shirt up behind her in an attempt to cool down, exposing her stomach was a small price to pay to prevent overheating. She felt like every inch of her body was hot and sticky with sweat; Robyn seems to be suffering as well, she's dressed in the lightest clothing she owns, but considering she's also from Solitas the heat was getting to her just as much as it was for Weiss.
Though, she seems to be handling it better than Weiss.
Weiss still wore her cloak around her shoulders, protecting her pale skin from a nasty sunburn and refusing to remove it when Robyn requested. Her feet were aching, too. Dragging her worn-out shoes through the sand was becoming tiring, she was seriously considering forcibly turning them into sandals, but then again she'd probably just ruin them.
"Weiss?" She looks up at Robyn, realizing that she's stopped walking and there was a small civilization a little piece in front of them. Tents and caravans were set up in a little clearing, their only shade being the cliff overhang above them. The community wasn't very large, maybe fifty people at the most. A good portion of them was around Weiss' age.
"You're on your own from here, good luck." Robyn patted the young mother's back and Weiss nods, forcing the dread in her belly to settle.
As Robyn walks away, she lets out a loud whistle and grabs the Tribe's attention. Weiss watches as an elderly lady with spiky, greying light brown hair stands from her seat on a caravan and approaches her cautiously, her brows narrowing suspiciously as she comes to stand a few feet away from her. "Can I help you?"
Weiss swallows hard and she comes to stand protectively in front of her daughter's stroller, keeping one hand on it and glancing around in case she is jumped. "My name is Violet," she introduces herself, her throat dry. The woman's brow lifts curiously, "I was wondering if I could travel with your Tribe until my daughter is a little older? I'm a licensed huntress, if it helps any."
Hopefully, she'll believe her.
"Can you survive?" The woman asks nonchalantly as if it was a normal question. Weiss blinks in surprise several times before reminding herself how Vacuo's community was when she visited with her team. Weiss gives a silent nod and the woman continues.
"Good. What happened to your previous group?"
Weiss has been to Vacuo once before, on a team mission. They quickly learned that most of the Tribes were were made up of survivors.
She already has a story prepared, having seen the wreckage of an old village in Vacuo on the local news this morning.
"I'm from Mistral, but my partner and I came here a few months ago. Our village was attacked by sand Grimm, my partner and my home were buried alive, but my daughter and I managed to escape."
The woman raises a brow and it causes anxiety to bite at Weiss' gut, worried she wouldn't believe her. Then, she nods. "Ah, Si Wong, I heard about that… Nice village, I will miss it… The name's Slate. I know you are a huntress and all, and you have a daughter," she places a hand on her hip, "but if it comes down to choosing your life or someone else's, your kid included, you choose your own. We look out for each other 'till then, understand?"
She wants to protest, to tell her that she'll give her own life to protect her daughter, but she already knows how that conversation will end. If she dies, Iris would follow suit because nobody wants to play caretaker for an orphaned child. If she wants to guarantee her daughter's safety, she would have to survive… "I understand."
Slate doesn't say anything and simply turns around to head back to the camp, "You can come out, friends!" She calls, causing Weiss to notice that everybody within the camp had disappeared without a trace. Weiss stays put for a moment before slowly pulling the stroller in that direction as people begin to gather around Slate.
A small voice in the back of her head told her to keep her distance from the Tribe until she knew them better.
As she steps past one of the tents, she immediately notices all eyes on her. She breathes a shaky breath and her attention drifts to the newborn resting inside the stroller, Weiss looks back to the community as they approach Slate for answers and takes the opportunity to settle herself a little ways away from them. Ignoring the many pairs of eyes on her, Weiss sets her bag down.
When she removes the tent from her bag, a silver trinket falls out with it and Weiss' eyes dart down to look at it. Her heart nearly stops.
Her bracelet…
With shaky fingers, she picks the little object up and examines it. She'd thought she lost it months ago… A tiny smile crosses her lips and she slides it back onto her wrist; a warm fuzzy feeling course through her body. Weiss lifts her head to look back towards the Tribe, letting out a heavy sigh as a weight is lifted from her shoulders.
She was still close enough to be considered within safety, but far enough from the Tribe that hopefully, they understood not to interact with her.
Not that they looked like they wanted to, anyway. Most of them were watching her with a suspicious expression, the general energy radiating from the Tribe was uneasiness due to her presence and it made the young huntress worry.
She pulls the stroller closer to her, eyeing the people watching her as Slate returns to her wagon. Her feet were aching, and it looked like the Tribe had just settled down recently, so she would hopefully have some time to regenerate before it was time to move.
And Gods she was starving! Why didn't she eat that greasy, sandy burger back at the hotel? She was regretting that decision now as hunger pangs were rumbling at her stomach. She glances back to the Tribe as she stabilizes her own tent, thankful that it wasn't as difficult to put up as the tents her team was assigned when they visited Vacuo.
Weiss turns away to unzip the tent and she takes Iris from the stroller, holding the infant in one arm and curiously pressing the button on the side. Her jaw drops and she watches in awe as it folds down into a carrier, tucking everything else into the compartment and readjusting the handle to rest in the center.
"Nice." She grins as she sets it inside the tent. Footsteps move through the sand behind her and her blood runs cold, annoyance pooling in the pit of her stomach.
"Hello." A voice greeted her sweetly.
She feels like a snake is slithering down her spine, its fangs dripping venom. "Slate told me you're Violet?" She turns around to see a man with dusty hair smiling kindly at her, she glares at him and Weiss shifts Iris to her other arm and effortlessly removes Myrtenaster from her hip, pointing the blade at him threateningly. He holds his hands up. "Woah, Woah, Woah, calm down, ma'am." He smiles nervously, almost sweating. "I only want to help. Put the weapon away."
Weiss reluctantly attaches her weapon back to her side and steps back to put distance between herself and the dusty-haired man. "What do you want?"
"I'm Bast… I was wondering how you were doing?"
Weiss raises a brow in disbelief, "It's fucking hot, how do you think I'm doing?"
Bast laughs. "I was going to tell you that food will be done in a few minutes if you want some." He tells her as his arms descend back to his sides, eyeing the weapon she'd pointed at him.
"What are you cooking…?" Weiss asked again cautiously. The frustration she felt was like a standstill tornado, swirling all around her and theoretically placing a shield between herself and the man.
Bast stares at her for a moment before hollering over his shoulder with one hand cupped around his mouth. "Yo! What's on the menu again?" After a few seconds, he turns back to her and Weiss raises a brow, not having heard anybody reply. "All we could scrape up was some insects n' bugs, but we fried 'em and added some seasoning and spice! Should taste fine!"
Weiss' lip curls up and her brows pull together, her nose wrinkles as she begins to phantom the smell, the taste of it. A lump forms in her throat and she suppresses a gag, her mouth clamps shut in an attempt to conceal her visible disgust. Inner turmoil tugs at her, the logical side of her brain telling her that she needs to eat to sustain herself and Iris, but the Schnee in her is revolted by the mere thought and would rather starve.
She grits her teeth together. "Fine."
Bast smiles and retreats to join the rest of his Tribe, while Weiss watches him carefully for a few seconds before turning to duck inside her little tent.
She rests Iris inside the baby carrier and she sits down with a loud sigh. Exhaust sweeps through her being and she leans back until she's laying on the tent floor. Well, so long as she could keep them off her case, she should be alright.
It took two to three months for her to be completely accepted and feel comfortable within the group, but still, hardly let anybody around her daughter despite knowing that they would not harm her. She managed to make lien by accompanying traveling huntsmen on their missions, she used it to purchase hair dye to keep her white hair hidden, and concealer to cover the scar on her eye.
Weiss learned a lot about Vacuo from simply sitting around the campfire when the Tribe settled down for the night, and from the few attacks from the wildlife they encountered. With both experience and observation, she learned that the wildlife was much more dangerous than the Grimm she usually fought.
She also learned a few things about hunting and harvesting meat, something she found herself to be rather interested in. It could come in handy, especially if it meant not eating bugs for supper. To her surprise, she'd been asked to join a hunting mission one night and the man's wife offered to watch over six-month-old Iris.
They returned with a bag full of puma meat with only a few injuries. It'd been difficult for Weiss not to rely on her glyphs for her fighting, but considering she was the one who delivered the final blow, she couldn't have been too bad.
Granted, a one-eyed woman wielding razor-sharp claws had managed to weaken before she withdrew her blade and joined the battle.
"Wooo-weee!" A man whistles in astonishment as he exits his hiding place, having been left behind by the Tribe. Weiss looks up, panting as she dislodges her blade from the head of the feline. While it was feeding on a former acquaintance of theirs, she'd managed to catch the animal off guard and use the nearby ledge it'd leaped from to embed Myrtenaster into its skull, "Look at the size of that thing!" He grins, admiring the weight of the puma. "It can definitely be of use, I can tell you that!"
The feline resembled a Sabyr Grimm, only the fangs were smaller. The Tribe was right about the wildlife being more dangerous than Grimm; while Grimm mostly followed negative emotions and attacked head-on, this creature had been following them for the last few miles, unnoticed and ready to sink its fangs into their flesh. Unfortunately, they'd lost one of their own to this creature already.
The puma was swift, launching itself from a nearby ledge just as the Tribe caught sight of it and locking both forepaws around a man's neck, pressing all of its weight against him and suffocating him with its sharp fangs locked around his throat.
Weiss moves off from the forequarters of their fallen prey and a young woman who'd been hiding nearby approaches her, patting her back. "I didn't think you could take down one of those without the proper weapons, but you did good! You might be useful yet!" She smiles at her and walks towards her friend, kneeling beside him to work on harvesting the meat from the creature.
"We're eating good tonight, guys!"
Once they were finished harvesting the meat, the woman preserved the meat with sand and it took every ounce of Weiss' willpower not to grimace in disgust. Sure, she's grown used to the grainy taste of sand in her food, but that didn't mean she had to enjoy it.
It doesn't take long for them to locate the Tribe, finding them to have settled in the nearest village; a settlement created within an old meteor crater with naturally made steep, staircase-like rocks leading down inside. Weiss hears her acquaintances mention the name of the settlement, but she pays no attention to it as it's simply another place for them to stay until they begin moving again.
The village is made up of huts of clay and shacks with tin roofs, some homes were made out of old vehicles, and a few homeless people were resting beneath a ledge for shelter. Judging by the recent destruction on the far side of the crater, Weiss assumes that they'd lost their home to a Grimm attack. Not to mention, the town's civilization seems a little shaken up.
"There they are." One of the people she was traveling with points somewhere to the east, "Looks like they took the other way, the caravans are still intact." Weiss glances back at the entrance behind her and her lips curls. If the wagons had come down that hill, they would be nothing but splinters of wood.
"So do villages like this always have two entrances?" She asks.
"No, this is the only one." The one-eyed woman answers.
"Excuse me!" A voice calls out to them, succeeding in receiving their attention. They approach them with a concerned, fear-struck expression on their face. "H-have you seen my partner?" They ask, presenting a picture of the missing individual. Weiss' belly grows cold, recognizing the man as the sole victim of the puma attack. "He was left behind with you all, and his legs do not function very well."
One man sighs and he exchanges a look with Weiss and their acquaintance. He approaches the person and reaches to place a hand on the person's shoulder, reluctantly informing them of their loss.
Weiss watches as grief crosses their face and their shoulders droop, now avoiding eye contact with the two of them. They clear their voice and their face hardens, "Oh-oh, um… Thank you for telling me."
Weiss moves towards them this time, feeling the one-eyed man watching her from behind. "It's okay to grieve…" She tells them, ignoring the puzzled stare she received from the copper-haired man standing next to her. "I know what it's like to be separated from someone you care about…"
The person looks like they want to thank her, but they straighten their posture. "I don't needa grieve. Vester shoulda have known to stay with me… It is his fault that he is dead."
Weiss suppresses a loud groan of annoyance. What was it with Vacuoans and refusing to show weakness? Sure, life was hard out here, but that doesn't mean they can't feel things.
Weiss turns to walk away and she feels eyes on her, she looks back to see a young man watching her from the shadows and chills raced up her spine. She quickens her pace to fall into step with one of the men and her hand instinctively reaches to grab at the weapon attached to her side.
"Relax." The one-eyed woman next says to her, voice deep and scratchy, "Nobody here will attack unless you make the first move." Reluctantly, she lets go of Myrtenaster.
"Violet!" She turns her head to see a familiar scrawny man separating from her and the other guy. She recognizes him as the man whose wife was watching Iris, she sighs and moves to follow him towards a clay cabin a little ways off from the village. "Home sweet home, am I right?" He laughs as he pushes the door open, "Krys! We're back!"
A quiet cry grabs Weiss' attention and she lifts her head to see a hazel-haired woman with white eyes coming around the corner, she smiles at the sight of her daughter in her arms and she meets her halfway.
"I think she was beginning to wonder when Mommy would be back." Krys laughs as Weiss takes the baby from the woman, cradling her in her arms and smiling when blue eyes meet hers.
Recognition flashes through Iris' eyes and she begins babbling happily, her chubby little hands reaching for her. "Hey, baby!" Weiss greets with a babyish voice, "Did you miss me?"
Iris makes a sound similar to 'Mama' and the child's hands bap at her eye in greeting. Weiss giggles as she walks out of the house, "Alright, little one, one eye is already scarred, don't poke the other out, okay?" She says, taking a moment to thank the woman before searching for Amaranth's caravan.
A hand rests on her shoulder and she looks back to see Krys behind her. "Here," Krys says as she hands Weiss a satchel, she takes it and loops it over her shoulder, "that's for you and Amaranth."
She smiles, "Thank you." She says before heading towards the caravan.
A few weeks ago, a woman named Amaranth and her child, Ash, joined the Tribe while searching for the village of Coquina. She had a caravan with her, and upon noticing Weiss and Iris, she offered to share her wagon as she understood the difficulty of raising a child alone in the desert of Vacuo.
Weiss and Amaranth weren't good friends, but she would admit that the presence of another woman made her feel more at peace, she eventually began keeping her bag in the back of the caravan so that she wouldn't have to carry it. Plus, Iris and Ash seemed to get along, despite Ash being noticeably older than the little girl.
"Hey!" The woman greets her as Ash bounces over, greeting them as well with the same optimism as his mother. Weiss offers them both a smile, placing Myrtenaster on the side of their caravan. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd ever make it back! Ash here was worried."
Ash pouts, "No I wasn't!"
"Don't worry. I won't go down that easily," Weiss chuckles as she sits down across from her friend, setting Iris into the sand and allowing the seven-month-old to play with her older friend. "I'm a huntress, after all, it's gonna take a lot more than that to hurt me."
Ash lifts his head from behind his hand, ignoring Iris, who had cried in protest as her game of peek-a-boo had been put on pause. "That was a big cat, though!" He says in astonishment, his jaw-dropping as glee crosses his face.
"Did you kill it? Oh, my Gods you did, didn't you?" Weiss looks down and a tiny smile crosses her lips, noticing that her daughter was watching the bigger kid and attempting to match his expression of awe. She's startled when Ash leaps to his feet. "That's so cool! Were you scared! I bet you weren't! I wouldn't be afraid if-"
Amaranth cuts him off, "Ash!" The boy smiles sheepishly and returns to his game with his little friend, putting his hand back over his hands as he rests his elbows in the sand. "Did you harvest any meat?"
Weiss nods and removes the satchel from her side, "Here." She says as she hands it to her. Amaranth delicately takes it from her and opens it, "We have food for the next few days, I suppose." She smiles as the other woman gets up to set the satchel in a little compartment inside the caravan. Weiss grimaces upon her next words, "Please tell me that puma meat is better tasting than bat stew or crab steak…"
Her friend laughs, "Well, it tastes like meat. Does that help?"
Weiss suppresses a roll of her eyes. "Well, so long as it doesn't have bones in it like that snake meat dish last week…"
She feels a pull at her red cloak and she looks down, seeing Iris attempting to wrap the cloth around her. "What are you doing?" Noticing Weiss was watching her, she ducks behind her as quickly as she could, Weiss lifts a brow in amusement. "Oh no, where did she go?" She asks, feigning a concerned voice, "My little girl's disappeared!"
The one-year-old moves out from behind her and makes a growling noise, baring her few tiny teeth in an attempt to appear intimidating.
"Look out!" Ash cries dramatically, grabbing the younger child's attention and causing a grin to cross her face, "It's an Ursa! It's gonna eat us! Run!"
As Iris crawls after the older boy, Weiss refocuses her attention on Amaranth whilst keeping an eye on her daughter, glancing behind her to make sure that she was with Ash and wasn't crawling off somewhere. "I don't think I've ever asked, what happened to Ash's father?"
The redheaded woman sighs heavily, a remorseful look on her features. "Our village was attacked by a horde of Grimm before Ash was born, I watched his father bravely try to defend me and our unborn baby, but a Nevermore swooped down and swallowed him with one gulp…"
Most of the refugees in the Tribe were from destroyed villages, some raided by bandits and others wrecked by Grimm.
Ash pulls at her sleeve and Weiss looks at him, "Ms. Violet?" He gestures behind him, "Is she supposed to be playing with that?"
She follows his hand and her eyes widen. Iris was pulling herself up on the wheel of the wagon, her little hands reaching desperately for the weapon only inches away from her.
"Iris! No!" She shrieks as panic strikes Weiss like a flash of lightning and she bolts over to her daughter, kicking up winds of sand behind her. Before she can think, she's grabbing Iris up and her hand is flying down to swat at Iris. Her palm collides with the back of Iris' hand and the baby lets out a confused, pained cry. "Don't touch that!"
Teary blue eyes look up at Weiss with a betrayed and hurt expression reading 'why?', her attention is pulled away by whimpers from the squirming seven-month-old. She was trying to get away from her… She'd hurt her...
Realization hits and Weiss cradles the whining baby close and securely, guilt rolling through her like cold and relentless waves of water during a storm in the middle of the night. Her gut feels hollow and tears sting behind her eyes. She'd reacted in the only way she knew how.
"I'm sorry," she whispers guiltily, "Mama's sorry, Flower… I didn't mean to hurt you."
If she acts on her emotions, Iris may grow to fear and or despise her. She couldn't have that…
Suddenly, Amaranth is sitting next to her and her voice pulls Weiss from her brief self-despair. "How about we try a different method?" She suggests, noticing the anguish on her face. "When she reaches for something, never pop or yell at her."
Weiss listens closely, resting Iris down enough for the baby to crawl away from her, she moves to grab her when the little girl reaches for something that looks like an old glass bottle buried in the sand.
Amaranth stops her. "Teach her 'no'," she says, "move her away from it while saying the word. If she has it in her hands, gently take it from her and say the word again."
Weiss sighs and carefully lifts Iris just before her hands touch the broken glass, she sets her away from it. "Iris, no." She says gently with one breath as bewilderment crosses the baby's face. Confused, Iris begins crawling for the glass again, only to be moved back beside Weiss again. She cries and her brows furrowed together as she looks at her mother, "No."
Iris stares at her and her face twitches as she attempts to match Weiss' expression. She lets out a noise that sounds a lot like the word 'no'.'
Weiss stays quiet for a few moments, processing it. "Did you just 'no' me?"
"No!" The seven-month-old says again, grinning victoriously.
Weiss just giggles happily, thankful that she'd somehow managed to keep her daughter's attention off the dangerous glass next to them. "Of course, of course, it would be your first word…"
Iris rocks herself back and forth on her hands and knees, she matches Weiss' laugh and the smile on her face. She babbles another unintelligible word.
For a moment, her daughter's blue eyes reflect silver, and Weiss' belly grows cold again. Silver eyes... She shakes her head and blinks several times, looking at Iris again. The baby stops rocking and tilts her head as she tries to figure out the emotion on her mother's face.
"Hey," Amaranth's voice reels Weiss out of her thoughts, bringing her back to reality "we're heading to join the others, you coming? We're having the bat stew Topaz sent for us!"
Weiss glances between Amaranth and Iris for a moment, "No thank you," she answers while pulling a wandering Iris back to her side, "I wish to rest for a little bit." She murmurs, looking back at her daughter and sighing heavily. Amaranth doesn't say another word and she gestures for Ash to follow her, the boy immediately obeys and rushes to her side.
As her friend leaves, Iris lifts her head to look at Weiss in confusion as if asking why they weren't going, too. Weiss keeps the child's chin tilted up as she examines her eyes, disregarding the confusion on the baby's face as she tilts her head to the side. A shaky breath escapes Weiss' lips upon seeing Iris' eyes briefly reflect silver, the edges of her pupils are beginning to change color.
"You have your mother's eyes," she whispers as she brushes Iris' ivory-white hair back again and ruffles the sand out of her scalp. "Gods, look at all this sand!" Apparently, she's been rolling in the sand while Weiss is gone. Iris giggles when Weiss plants her palm on her forehead, keeping her head slightly tilted up. She grins a little, "Well, it appears that you also will not listen to me either, will you?"
A familiar scratchy voice comes from behind her and Weiss' blood turns cold with annoyance; "If she belongs to who I'm thinkin' she belongs to, then no." The woman chuckles and she pulls Iris close to her, looking over her shoulder and meeting the woman's gaze with a stoic expression. "Couldn't help but to notice you fightin' that cougar back there."
Weiss remains quiet and watches the one-eyed woman as she moves around in front of her, smiling a little too nicely. She's acting too casual, and it was beginning to rub her the wrong way. "I've only seen one girl fight like that," he says as Weiss starts trying to place the vaguely familiar voice, "but she died a few months ago."
A cold adrenaline rush shoots through her and her breath catches in her throat. She remembers her now, she'd become a good friend of her team and JNPR during their mission in Vacuo; it seemed like she'd figured out her identity…
She wasn't even going to answer, that's exactly what she wanted. Confirmation regarding her identity so that she can turn her in.
Weiss stands to her feet and cradles her confused, babbling daughter to her chest as she approaches the caravan. "How sad." She says, making sure that her accent was noticeable by slowing her speech down, "While I'm really sorry you lost your friend, I'd like a lil' privacy." She raises a brow and pulls the caravan door closed, allowing the weight to roll off her shoulders.
She can't risk someone figuring her out, especially now that she's managed to create a life here. She was safe, her daughter had a considerably stable way to grow up, and she's made acquaintances she could trust.
She couldn't leave.
Sorry about the lack of Ruby recently!
This story has been written and planned out all the way to the very end, so I can assure you that you'll see her again in just a few more chapters!
The woman at the end of this chapter is called Verde, she belongs to my very good friend FoxxoTheDoggo.