Chapter 13


Weiss felt another wave of epileptic, monochrome sparkles swim across her vision. She'd felt tired, morally and physically, a hollow feeling consorting her makeup as she faced the upcoming event with surprisingly little feeling, all of her emotion overshadowed heavily by the swirling tiredness and painful flashes of illusory light.

Was this how people felt before they had a nervous breakdown? She diagnosed absently, mulling on the thought for a moment before discarding it.

She wasn't sure.

She was certain, however, of the increasingly overwhelming exhaustion which overcame her. She was certainly the most tired person in at least the entire building, Weiss thought confidently and also wrongly.

Traversing the outer curve of the tightly curled staircase, Weiss felt a cold shiver at the sight of the frozen courtyard, the dusky, moonlit scene framed beautifully by the gleaming fern reliefs which seemed to curl around the golden window-lattice.

As seemed to be tradition at this point, Weiss deftly avoided the sight, turning her eyes quietly away from the towering glass and hurrying past. It had been easy, in the heated confrontation of that overcrowded office, for her to ignore the inevitable future. She'd never deluded herself into thinking it could come to anything other than this, but she had, with the irresolute confidence that avoiding thought could provide, dared to hope that, somehow, it wouldn't come to this. The unexamined future was often kinder than the approaching reality, however, and, fully convinced at this point that the world wouldn't be ending at any convenient time frame, Wess marched on. Following the spiraling steps upward she walked around in another half circle, watching the final window come into view from around the sharply curving horizon of marble which made up the wall.

Distracted as she was by the thoughts of what awaited her just beyond the horizon, the cold steel doors and lonely halls, Weiss forgot to look away on her unusually slow traversal past the final window and glimpsed, for a moment, her reflection as it overlay the snow covered gardens outside, ghostly in the streaming moonlight. Weiss couldn't help her glare as she unconsciously paused her step, looking out at the internal courtyard; the purported freedom of the walled space sickened her as much as the perpetually locked windows which graced every wall. Weiss eventually found the strength to move past, her mind focused, rather than distracted, by the tumult of emotions that accompanied the sight. She walked with excruciating slowness up the last of the steps, the majority of her attention occupied by the blatant hypocrisies which she'd lived through obliviously and which now demanded her attention seemingly with every turn of her head.

Weiss paused a soon as the barest edge of the window slipped past her vision, looking forward and moving so slowly that she might have fooled an inattentive glance into thinking her a statue. The window, which stood only inches from her back, seemed as distant from her thoughts as if she'd left it behind in a distant land. Her thoughts, following her view, lay with the doors which she knew stood just around the curving marble that hugged close the space before her. Shaking her head, she once again moved languidly onward, all the while ranting out against every slight against her which the existence of the palace seemed to represent.

Much as it gladdened her to think aloud the things which she could never speak aloud, the thoughts engendered dangerous associations, and she hurried forward as uncomfortable questions arose and unwanted answers seemed anxious to escape her.

As she moved forward, and more white bricks rotated into view, Weiss found, under the high-strung intensity of enquiries which suddenly sprung up, about why she was angry and why she was going to her father of all people, Weiss found that she was almost looking forward to seeing those steel doors; she could almost imagine them as if they were already before her, like colossal guards with expressionless fronts. Weiss breathed a sigh of repose as she felt herself bracing in preparation for the sight, and with her bracing all the complicated thoughts evaporated away.

Breathing once more, Weiss stepped around, following the receding curve of the bare wall and coming face to face with...another window.

That couldn't have been right. Weiss turned around, looking down behind her as if any answers would be there. Had she mis-counted? What?

Weiss stepped forward, past the new window, this time too distracted to care about the sight beyond the heightening attrition that ground at her as she passed it. Putting the matter quickly behind her, Weiss stepped forward, rounding the forward curve and coming to face with...yet another window, identical to the one before.

Against her own admission, Weiss could feel the anomaly was affecting her more than it rationally should have, and this brought on a haunting self-analysis as she thought deeply, chiding herself for the almost embarrassing ease with which her mind fashioned the most fanciful explanations for the anomaly, as well as the even more embarrassing difficulty she faced trying to disarticulate herself of such notions. Fantastic Tales sprung wildly through her imagination, and slowly, distant whimsy turned abruptly into unnatural dread.

She'd just miscounted, she repeated to herself, fatalistic exhaustion doing nothing to obscure her lack of confidence in the statement as she stepped forward, uncaring as she passed the window.

Her steps felt heavy and leadened, limbs fashioned slowly, as if pressing against some odd resistance as an existential terror overtook her, the slowly unravelling curve seeming always to hide the unconscionable horrors her mind involuntarily threw upon itself, as if survival demanded it.

After the conclusion to the great war, a rapid modernization effort washed out across remnant with the newly formed city of Atlas at its center. With this, there also came a rapid dissolution of superstition and folk-lore, well, ostensibly, there was, in any case. For, while most of remnant succeeded in stamping out the primitive talismans and unseasonable convictions of the old world, they only did so with the overt rejection and self abashed concealment of what had once been daily affairs. Atlas, riding the leading edge of this wave, were the quickest to enact this front, upending a thousand years of tradition with blistering reformation. As a result, Atlesians were both the most and least superstitious people of remnant, for while the daily rituals and affronts of the folk was all but erased, it is a fact of human nature that a person can not actively tear themself away from a belief without handing over to it their total heed and consciousness. Most people would live their lives never having to face the ramifications of such a thing, but perhaps once or twice in a generation, an Atlesian might, sufficiently overwrought with the emotions of fate, face something quite similar to those things that the grown ups, and the politicians, and the authority figures, along with everyone else had denounced with a strangely, to a young child's eyes, over emphatic demeanor. How could anyone put such effort into denying what they said were just stories after all?

It was enough to make one suspicious, and, as of now, a very superstitious feeling came over Weiss as she stared, wide eyed and frozen at the curling wall ahead of her, feet stiff as an alien atmosphere descended to displace her tiredness. Memories crawled back of the uncounted nights where she'd been told the story of Treppewittchen, the girl cursed to wander the same corridor for all of eternity because she'd lied, most grievously, to herself. It seemed delusory, head whirling as if she could remember every word of every instance at which her grandmother had, with deeply knowing eyes and the most secretive reverence, told the story to her, told her of the eternally similar corridors, and the hauntingly distant noises that serenade the girl to this day.

"This is stupid," Weiss wanted to say as she moved up one step and more white bricks came into view beyond the stone horizon. 'This is stupid,' she thought, again, very quietly as she ascended yet another step, standing with both feet as she ground her teeth, cursing her silence as she tried to find the will to deny her fears, daring herself to say the words aloud as proof against the anxious terrors that hounded her. Grinding her teeth yet harder, she froze in place, battling with herself for such a time that the bright bricks of the wall seemed to imprint themselves onto her locked eyes.

Daring a glance backwards, Weiss could see the barest edge of the last window behind her. Focusing her eyes, she saw that, from here she could see only the sterile bricks of the opposite wall through the sliver of glass which presented itself to her. Here she indignantly forced down a jump of her heart. She was just unable to see the rest of the garden, she told herself surely. All she would have to do would be to take one step down, and she'd be able to see enough of the window to see the snow dusted plants, plants that wouldn't be there in an eternal corridor, where everything would be made of stone, after al-

Here Weiss interrupted herself with a violent flare of anger. 'This is stupid,' she thought fiercely enough to ignore the fact that she still wasn't saying it out loud. She would not be taking a single step down to confirm something so stupid! She declared with certainty. Clenching her fists and taking stiff steps, she once more ascended the stairs with brittle confidence. In the instant between her initial steps, she thought of many things, but, deep in her mind, an admission prepared itself, perhaps as a token admission of truth that would get her out of here.

Weiss took a step and focused her eyes on the steps before her, chanting with her every footfall: This is stupid, of course there isn't going to be another window, and even if there is I just miscounted, that's all!

Here, Weiss could, with unreasonable certainty, feel that she was just on the edge of making that critical turn and finding out the truth. Blundering herself past trepidation and freezing, Weiss chanted, unheard, even by herself, and with short, huffing breaths.

It's not going to be another window, I obviously just miscounted.

It's not going to be another window, I obviously just miscounted.

It's not going to be another window, I obviously just miscounted.

It's not going to be another window, I obviously just miscounted.

It's not going to be another window. I am going to turn the corner and see those stoopid doors standing there like they always do.

And, why not, she was right.

Weiss was almost more surprised at the sight than she would have been at seeing another window. Frazzled and harried as she was, she couldn't even muster, or perhaps comprehend, any emotional response to the situation. As it was, she couldn't even manage to even play pretend, to say that she'd known all along that the obvious would happen and that she was never afraid of anything at all. The truth was, she had been afraid, as afraid as she'd been of anything in her life. And, like many people who were tired and scared, she found it very easy to see the truth. And, unfortunate as it may have seemed, the truth was exactly what her self mind had prepared on this occasion. In the now fading terror of her supernatural episode, Weiss remembered with distinct clarity the moments just before she made that final turn, when she, in some faithful attempt to combat her fears, had piled together the various truths she'd hidden and effaced, readying, as if, to admit them in the face of damnation. And, as things turned, and she came to face with the doors, she felt herself collapsing under the weight of those truths, catching herself on the top step as she fell onto her hands and looked out at the sight before her.

Filtered light shone onto her from all the gleaming surfaces of the silent level, and the imposing doorways of steel glared out at her like the gates of hell. Somehow, Weiss felt a distinct longing for the eternal corridors she'd just been faced with.

The sight seemed to have a muted tone to it, however. She'd expected to feel something on seeing her father's doorway, but she didn't, not like she'd deluded herself into thinking she would, anyway. It was true, she was angry at him, and rightly so, but, right now, unable to blind herself to it, the truth revealed itself to her peeling away with increasingly intense revelations.

She realized fully the unbearable guilt she bore when Blake's expression fell and fell throughout the day. She realized the bile of self loathing she'd tried to ignore when she realized just how much she'd destroyed her Blake's chance at any sort of happy life. They'd been together for months by this point, they'd sacrificed so, so much, and she'd gambled everything for, for this. They should have been happily away from here by now, unashamed of being together, yet here she lay. Blake's white fang membership had been revealed, they'd hurt the SDC in ways she couldn't imagine could be fixed, she'd drawn attention to herself and Blake moments before doing so, and now...now she was here, in the middle of Atlas and carrying the responsibility of Blake's White Fang membership. Perhaps, in another time, she could have rented a room in the lower city with her faunus and decidedly not internationally recognized as a former White Fang member, girlfriend. Yet, here she was...she would have to...

A panicked frenzy of every emotion ran through her at this. She thought that she'd been calm, that she understood what she was doing, but now she realized she'd been lying to herself. That, the thing which she had thought was composure had been nothing more than fading shock. She wanted to scream, but couldn't find the ability, she wanted to run but couldn't find it in her to do so.

With the unbidden truth open before her, Weiss understood, finally understood, that she'd known all along why she was coming here, perhaps she had known it in the instant Blake's White Fang associations had been revealed. No body in Atlas would let them stay the night, absolutely nobody. A cavalcade of riots would appear around Schnee manor before the end of the night, and they'd be a lot closer if she and Blake were outside the manor walls when they happened.

Part of her, a disturbingly large part, had a great desire to be there when those riots happened. She had nothing to fear from some crowds, and they'd take her mind off her father, in any case…

But, Blake: The statement seemed to come as if in answer and justification for all her doubts. She saw how much she'd been hurt today, and she knew how much such a scene could just harm her, hurt her worse than anything. She knew Blake would expect the people, the faunus at least, to understand and take them in…

She shook her head and faced the facts. Another confusing tumult of emotions making her head woozy as she acknowledged that she would have to see her father, and beg him to let them stay in the castle.

Hah, she cried bitterly with a wavering voice. She'd started the night excited for her awaiting freedom, and readying to cut her final ties with this place, and him. Yet, here she was, all but crawling to his door to ask him to let them stay.

The situation was very clear to Weiss now, and as she wrestled with it, another truth became apparent to her. Not particularly obvious, yet at the same time undeniably true, a concluding realization seemed to cap the tumult of truths which whirled around her head, building off of those truths to present itself to her.

With realizations whirling and mind whirring, combining all the facets of her situation in coldly logical fashion, it became quickly obvious to her: Weiss realized: She'd fucked up.