Chapter 16
Weiss had been given her passes, and increasingly, the floor started looking like a viable alternative to a bed.
Ozpin and Glynda were surprised when, at the far end of the distant hallway they travelled, they could see Mr. S pass slowly by in a trance-like state, as if already halfway in the depths of sleep.
Eventually, as their paths met, they were again surprised at the polite ease with which he mustered a response to their greetings. This, despite the fact that his eyes, glazed over in unconsciousness, never left that point, several miles straight ahead of him, at which they conspired persistently to stare at.
"I'm no great friend of Jacquez', but he seems to me to be rather… disturbed, as of late," Glynda noted, looking back at the man's still retreating form.
"Yes." Ozpin coolly took another sip from his mug.
Glynda looked up at the man. "I imagine you might be familiar with what's ailing him, then?"
"Glynda -" Ozpin said jovially, looking over at her with a sly, knowing look, " - I have absolutely no idea."
And, they both continued on their way, thinking, in some way, on the strange meeting with the man.
Mr. S, for his part, failed to remember the encounter even twelve paces beyond where it had occurred.
He was… wretchedly tired. For some reason, the image of the girl, Weiss, flinching away from him when they'd spoken replayed in his mind.
He… felt tired - so much so that he couldn't even comprehend exactly how he felt about that knowledge, other than that it increased his exhaustion tenfold and robbed him of his desire to sleep.
Faintly, now, he recognized the approaching mass of metal that guarded his corner of the palace. Outside of it, Schwarz was standing in patient expectation.
"Mr. Schnee," she began expectantly at his arrival, holding up a glowing tablet, "I'm sorry to bother you, but we-"
"Please, Schwarz," he interrupted weakly, "I'm just tired right now."
Schwarz blinked in shocked surprise, "Of course." She backed deferentially away from the doorway, other words not finding their way.
Burying the pang of guilt that sparked up at the dismissal, he stepped, through the doorway, onto the soft carpets of his inner manor. In the privacy of his little domain, he could feel himself almost physically falling to bits and pieces, every joint hanging loosely off every other. Mustering the last rags of his strength, he made his way painfully off to the inviting sheen of his bedroom door.
As he stepped into the strangely familiar room, a sudden memory, one which could only have been constructed to torment him especially, dawned.
Looking at the darkened room and the freshly made bed, the events of the day rushed back, and he recalled with hazy memory, that he had, just this morning, knowingly held in his hand the chance to reveal himself!
And, despite the confusion and delirium which racked his faculties, he could still understand, clear as day, that that opportunity was now gone.
It was shocking in it's starkness how, eighteen hours ago, an admission ot the truth would have been… insane, yet, by that very insanity, believable. Now... now all such an admission would raise would be rumors and accusations of how desperately he was trying to account for his recent failures.
If there were ever an opportunity to admit himself cleanly, it was gone now, irrevocably gone.
The thought hit him like a hammer, forcing the breath from him in a sort of low, tortured moan. That problem alone, he could have, perhaps, mustered himself against, but the vicious undercurrents, and unknowns and problems it lay piled upon…
He only let out another, self soothing moan, barely heard, even to himself, yet expressing the deepest despair.
And still, at such a time, with so many problems hanging over his head, he could really think only of sleep.
Mr. S felt the sickening, drug-like, beat of his heart strengthen when his eyes made contact with his bed. He swore he could see every stitch on the comforter, even in the sparse moonlight which shone through the window.
There, the carpet passed underfoot, and the bookshelf drew closer and behind him the mirror stood vigil on the night stand.
All the rest of the world seemed peripheral, however, as he approached the vestigial canopy stands, feeling silken cloth under his fingers, and a soft give under his back.
And, sliding unconsciously beneath the fluffy, white blanket he closed his eye, and, in doing so, didn't so much drift into sleep as he crashed into it.
The wreckage was acrid. Smoke obscured the world, and what little he could peer through it was nothing more than a soot covered window and blood stained dashboard.
To his side, and in the back were mangled-
He was stumbling out of the wreckage, screaming, he thought. A broken, unhinged propeller spun endlessly at the front of his plane.
Strangely peaceful, manicured grass and a man-made garden surrounded the burning wreckage, somehow engulfing it in their general serenity.
Cut lawn, geometric bushes, and pastel flowers which shone against the white sky made up this world. No part of it interested him as much, at the moment, however, as the fountain.
Still screaming, he was sure he was screaming, he ran and dunked his burning face into the fountain, splashing the cold water wildly onto his char-blackened body and drinking it down his horrid throat when off to the side, visible even beyond his closed eyelids, a white flash came.
More than that, with the white flash, the presence of something came.
"Opening his eyes," he found that his physical aches were disappeared, and he was now standing straight in a clean, grey suit - looking at himself.
No, no, that wasn't him. He was looking at someone else.
He didn't devote much attention to the phenomenon. His head flickered nervously about in frantic observation. His breathes came hurried and forceful and he tried, again, to focus on everything but his memories.
"Who are you supposed to be?" he asked the figure pointlessly, trying to fill the dead time with words.
To his complete surprise, the man standing opposite him answered.
Snow-white hair glimmered in the sunlight and a silver ring moved with a gesture and the man introduced himself.
"Why," he began, sounding almost surprised at the question, "I'm Jacquez Schnee."
