She was in his arms. She hated waking up alone.
"What was your dream?" asked Jaune.
"I can't tell you," she said, "otherwise it won't come true."
"It must have been good, then."
He helped her sit up, readjusting to the absence of the arm. The pain had fled, wiped clear and bleached. She had grown so used to it. The Grimm had grown up over her biceps, but now she could see the stump of where her forearm was. She ran a hand over the skin. Baby-soft, pale since it had not seen the sun. Her face was scarred, and her neck was scarred, and her other arm was scarred, but this was not.
Good, she thought, it had been good: it was fading quickly, watercolour running down a salted page, moving around the crystals and refusing to stick. Yet it had been so intense and so vivid that it felt like her own arm, her own mouth. Bright and hot, like her Semblance burning, and more, more, on her lips. She had never been kissed. Maybe made a suggestion that she had. That she did it often and well, that she let anybody touch her skin. Even punishment came to her distant, impartial. Nothing could touch her. Except him.
But she felt it, lip to lip, the sensation burning. How could she know what a thing like that felt like without ever having had it? It was this thought that dumbly struck her. Not anything else, the hubbub around her, it all narrowed down to the whisper of something which was only a dream.
Ah, but how she dreamt.
She forced herself to sit up properly, Jaune steadying her. Her fingers dug in the sand, grains shifting under nail. The ever-present ache of the shadowed tumour, the clawed-thing, the thing-burying-inside, faded with the dream. It was a bittersweet sort of bliss. She was free, and with freedom came responsibility. Now she could not hide inside the pain, and let it do the work for her. The sand was hot.
The sun streamed through the Grimm-cleared landscape. His hair, the brush of flaxen against his forehead, a tease against his cheek. Her one-eye was so hungry, so hungry to see and feast it stung, blinking quickly to ease it, tears welling up from the too-bright sight, sensitive as a peeled back bud.
He grew more concerned the longer she did not answer.
"It was good," she relented, "and impossible."
It was the nature of goodness out of her reach.
"I always used to have bad dreams," she added. Mostly memories, twisted raw. Abstractions of the Glass Unicorn bigger than the whole of Atlas. All sorts of torments which were all of her own. She let the memory pass, and looked straight ahead of her. She had what she needed already. "So what do we do now?" she said to him, not out of deference but something closer to his being a confidante.
"What do we do about your— arm?"
"I'll figure it out," she replied, near-coy, secret-keeping.
"Yeah, I know you will."
He scrutinised their surroundings, ever the watchful eye, and she let that confidence soak in. No harsh rebuttal. No conniving on her part. Easy as, as if they had not worked for it. They had. Every conversation, since their first, before Vacuo and before the beach and her little cage, and before he found her, back at Haven, when he refused to let her go. If only he knew how much she held on now. She feared, for a crazy moment, that he could tell, that it would be obvious, the way she seared, that for once her longing would be undeniable, but her watching his lips completely missed his perception. Too familiar to her, then, to try to hide it. She looked away, but it was still all there, in plain sight, and with the way she caught Ruby watching her she knew she had already lost what she won.
"I suppose I should thank you," Cinder drawled, pulling away from Jaune, as she wanted to hoard him.
"It's just what I do," said Ruby blandly.
It was at that moment, hoisting herself up to stand on two feet, her dress resisting the movement, stiff with Jaune's blood, that Cinder looked at Ruby and Ruby looked at Cinder and Cinder realised she was going in the same direction as her, on autopilot yet out of control, doing the thing she thought she was meant for but not really sure why.
Peering through a keyhole, suddenly, then, her resentment bled out, the way a long-bleeding wound eventually clotted.
Ruby leant on her scythe like if she did not, she would collapse. Her friends hovered. Cinder extended her one good arm to help Jaune up from where he was getting to his knees beside her, his hesitance clear with the unwary glances he sent between her and Ruby.
All of her friends were filtering in, in fact. Ilia, the new Summer Maiden, turned to Cinder of all people and said: "Are you alright now?"
It took a moment for Cinder to process what she was asking. She furrowed her brow, and tried to ignore the phantom sensation— the lingering dream— of her left arm. She replied, cautiously, "I believe so." As alright as Cinder could ever be, mean thing she was.
Once she had questioned him— what do you get out of it, what do you want— he had wanted nothing, only nothing— and Ilia, a new Maiden, had no reason to speak to her. It felt like something she had been waiting for.
"If you don't mind," started Ilia, eyes fanning bright, ponytail shaking behind her head as she squirmed, almost nervous, "do you have any tips?"
Jaune, beside her, almost made to go, but she caught his elbow. She said to Ilia, "You'll have to figure it out for yourself." Then, after a pause, added slyly, "Build something with it, I suppose."
"What like a— sandcastle?"
"I guess," said Cinder.
She turned to Jaune, and caught him as he looked away. A half-smile graced her face.
"It's just, I didn't exactly sign up for this, and it's sort of scary," continued Ilia.
Cinder blinked once, twice. Was she supposed to soothe her? Is that what she wanted? But then, that searching, her hands decisively cutting through the air as she spoke, Ilia was just trying to talk to her.
What is wrong with you, Cinder almost asked.
Jaune seemed like he already knew what he was thinking, and he seemed as fascinated by her response as she was with her own.
"You did fine enough before," she said, slow and steady. "You choose what to do with it."
Was that not the truth? It came out clunky, too sentimental, too heavy. She stepped back, as the weight of what she was doing set in. She was unpractised, had all the time to herself to get to know him, and now some other Maiden was asking her for advice.
"Do you have any idea how many people I've killed?" she blurted.
"I—" Ilia tried, and stopped. "No, I don't. Do you know how many I have?"
Cinder narrowed her eye, and said nothing.
A hand made its way to the small of her back.
She thought of the arc of petrified lightning, sand frozen. She could almost make out the waveform still, glinting somewhere over the rainbow spark of Ilia's Maiden fire. Cinder wondered what she was calling on, if it were just instinct, a new thrum.
"So," she said, turning to Jaune, as he scalded her skin, "tell me who's here. Your divisions." She nodded her head in the direction of Ruby, still half-standing up, mid-conversation with her sister. "What do you intend to do about my master?" It was mostly tongue-in-cheek.
He listed it off easily, with hand gestures, and pithy asides— "Well, you know Raven," as she knew Raven so well, that perhaps it should be suggested to fight all of your allies first— but neat, to the point, so she knew who was where and what was coming, their scattered little groups— "I know the Happy Huntresses," and, "Ace-ops? Are they still held in so high esteem to keep that name?" and, "I already know your motley group, go on,"— that she was starting to worry what he would decide to call her and him— "If you've come up with a name already, spit it out,"— except then it had only seemed to make him smirk. She narrowed her eye. It was no good, seeing that smirk on his face, one like her own. That was until the implication hit her that she was already thinking of a them, which was so sentimental she wanted to walk out of there then and there, though she would probably turn around and ask him to take her back.
"Stop smiling," she told him.
"I'm not," he said.
"And so, what," she went on, tactilely changing the topic back to safer ground, "you're just going to wait until Salem turns up, because she will, and then do the same all over again?" The thought was exhausting. "Just face her down and hope for the best?"
There was a voice in her head that sounded like Mercury scrutinising her plan: we're fucked from all sides.
"Well, when you put it like that it sounds kind of dumb, but it's not like Salem's going to do any differently."
"Sometimes she likes to spice things up. She gets bored." She blinked, staring up at the high sand dunes, where a dead woman stood. She must have come, seeking the light, the origin of the clearance. "Eternity can be terribly banal," she said. Salem had said so before. Salem had seen it all. She had seen the birth of humanity, and found it quaint.
Carmine had died thinking Gillian was dead.
Tyrian shuddered and shook, head in the sand, tail in the air. Emerald and Mercury watched on like silent sentinels, barely sent her a glance.
No tears fell. Gillian approached Carmine's closed-eyes, unbreathing body with the dirge of Vacuo wind at her back. Cinder wondered if it would be kinder to kill her now than wait, let her put her hand to the pulse as she was doing now. Sometimes killing was kinder.
The tiredness wracked through her body, like she had trekked much further than she really had, come all the way here from Vale in a dream. No more fighting, she thought, weary.
"Who did it?" asked Gillian.
Jaune found his voice first and said, "She did."
The howl was familiar. It could have been her own. It came out as if it had been forced out of her, though, like really did not want to let it on, such that eventually it cut off into delirium and she stood and said, "Then what was it all for?"
Cinder tiredly wondered, too. Maybe that had been what turned her hand eventually. What are you doing, where are you going? What do you really want? Who are you? Why you of all people? Why did you find me? Why do you keep coming back? Why did I let you in? Why am I not unhappy, that you touch me kindly, sweetly, for all I did to you, for all you wanted to do to me?
"He was supposed to protect you," said Gillian in a high voice to a dead Carmine, but for what ears, Cinder did not know.
Cinder finally understood, though. Gillian pressed her lips to Carmine's forehead, chaste, dead. If she had decided to kill Tyrian then, then that was what was coming, as surely as the Grimm would return, sensing that acute grief. First Cinder's, then hers. What a twinned siren calling.
Nobody was really sure what to do. Cinder had listened hard to where they had all went: preparing for the next round, the next exhausting assault, Tyrian barely cognisant, most of the Crown wiped out and the rest contrite, bleeding students needing tourniquets or prayers. She and Jaune heard the call of, "More Grimm!" and then something stole over Gillian, decisive, alien, not like the woman she had met in that grave, making a throne on top of the long-dead, claimant of a line nobody cared about. Who needed kings.
Gillian knelt delicately before Tyrian, like she was making an offering, deferring to him as he once deferred to her.
"Get back," Cinder snapped at Emerald and Mercury, "get back—"
"If someone's going to finish him off—"
"No, listen to me!"
Did they not trust her? Of course they did not, she realised furiously, her own fault, and her own arm reaching out trying to do something. No match for Tyrian, she thought feverishly, thinking of all that blood again and again, stretched thin at the memory of nearly losing Jaune, howling.
Gillian healed Tyrian. All of that Aura, Aura she recognised, bright and gleaming, like sunlight, poured over him, as Gillian with a slick wrist sucked even more out of Emerald and Mercury, greedy. Cinder could not go to them, as a Nevemore blotted out the sun. She drew a bow from the air. Her eye was no good. She could not shoot very well. A bead of sweat, the nock of the arrow, then she sent it flying. It missed. She should have gone for the fire, foolish sentiment, but that would have hurt them equally.
"He'll kill you," she snapped at Jaune's shoulder, as he barged ahead. "He'll kill them, and Gillian has that Semblance—"
It took everything in her, all of her pain, all of her fear, and a good screech, too, to ward Gillian off. She was not much of a fighter: Carmine was her protector, who broke her out of a prison and then killed herself at the thought she was dead. More of her worry was reserved for the Grimm overhead, sickening and twisted, and whatever had got into Tyrian now he was filled with what had to be Jaune's Aura. So that explained Carmine's moment of opportunity. What a sweet team they had made.
She put an end to that. She would not kneel.
"He as good as killed her," she taunted. Fire came down.
"And he could good as kill you—" began Gillian, but all of Gillian's Aura had been given to Tyrian, vessel she was. It was simple to knock her out. Cinder debated the merits of tying her up or turning to the Grimm overhead. Like she even cared that much.
Tyrian did what Cinder thought he would, holding off the other three with his tail. He scampered over and dug his elbow blade into Gillian's back, confident he needed no ally, that he could take them on his own. Or he was stupid. He squealed in delight and said, "Finally, finally, only one queen, useless now!"
It was Jaune's team that followed him in then, paired with Emerald and Mercury. Nora and her hammer. Feverishly, Cinder wondered if she had ever used it to hammer a nail. Here, I fixed him for you, she wanted to say, you can have him back, and you can die trying to fight Tyrian, then I'll fix you up, too.
She lifted herself up in the air on a fire hurricane. If she admitted the truth to herself it was that Tyrian scared her. Tyrian had always been Tyrian, and now he was functionally juiced up on probably the most potent Aura in Remnant.
She covered them. It cost her everything, but she covered them.
They were quick. There was five of them and one of Tyrian, and her watching over them, but they were quick. The way Emerald and Nora wove in and between each other's movements suggested they had practised together, and frequently. Mercury was a little less certain but he did well enough in covering Ren's weak spots that they must have discussed it at least once. Jaune, then: he was the same as he was at Haven and yet not. He was different, because where Tyrian was as slick as pondwater scum, as festering as algae, Jaune just waited for the opening and then he struck. That was it. Decisive, fixing the problem. The problem was Tyrian.
The Grimm were another question, but she had that covered; in fact, across the open sky, she could see the other Maidens and their own lightshows, the scattered remnants of Huntsman and Huntress teams. It was almost impressive.
She had wanted to kill Tyrian so badly. Make it mean something. It was like her hatred for him displaced another, quieter loathing. Whatever she could not feel for Salem, like resentment, doubt, fear, memory, frenzy, she let Tyrian carry instead, a monument to everything she hated, everything she hid inside of herself. Everywhere she looked, she attributed evils that had become her crutch to others, let Watts have what he had coming because it was easier him than Salem.
Maybe that was why she did not have the heart to stop Tyrian. She knew who her enemy was, what collar she had worn. His squealing and his mockery passed over her like water.
"Come and play, Cinder!"
He was going to kill Mercury this time, of course. That was clear from when Mercury's Aura broke again. Cinder blinked and then she heard, over the sonorous cacophony of Vacuo-on-fire, Vacuo-full-of-Grimm playing loud and clear and dead, the sound of bone snapping. It was Tyrian's wrist, caught in Jaune's hand, sword in the other, shield at his waist, bent in half. It would have got Mercury.
His hands were so gentle and touched her so softly she forgot that Aura could be as strong as steel, if you needed. It warmed her in bed and it wrenched Tyrian in half. It was nearly as alluring and reassuring to her either way.
"Jaune," she called, as Tyrian came down in one, two, three. "Jaune."
Tyrian was groaning, almost mewling, as Emerald yanked him back by the braided ponytail. It was such a dirty move it made her laugh. Cinder had taught her that. Go for the balls next, she almost said.
"You've been a pain in my ass since we met," said Mercury to Tyrian, in what he must have thought was a threatening tone. At least he was not bleeding out this time. That was good.
Nora grabbed Tyrian by the tail, and Ren joined her, like a mockery of a game of skip rope.
Eyes open wide, scalp taut, neck bent back, bared to the open air, Adam's apple bobbing, Tyrian said, saliva-thick, almost frothing, "Such pain that has only taught you exactly what you needed to know."
"We're locking you up and throwing away the key," Nora answered instead.
"I'll escape," Tyrian idly replied. "Who are you again? Oh, wait, are you orphaned, too?" He tried to squint and Emerald yanked his plait again. "Motherless babes. What are we to do with the unloved?"
They held onto Tyrian. Mercury was a grey-rock, waiting and glaring, looking like he would much enjoy to kill Tyrian the way Cinder first found him. Ren, then, resigned, to what she did not know, as Nora looked like she was borderline about to start teething on Tyrian. That was until she looked at Jaune.
His hands were shaking. It might have just been from adrenaline but his whole body was taut. The black of his mail shifted with his heaving chest, and the jagged edge of his armour whence a hole had been carved into him cut into it. In the sunlight, his sword, maybe still called death and maybe not, was white-black, unmoving at his side.
"Mercury, this isn't you," he said. "You don't have to do it."
"You saw what he did," choked out Mercury, though that was more to Emerald, and maybe even Cinder.
She knew the calculation. Cinder's feet touched the sand. Nora and Ren had been firsthand to the black-out election night string of murders, such that they must have hated that Grimm cloud. It must have been reassuring to know where Tyrian was now, at least.
"Go on, Mercury," she said. "Step back."
"I thought you'd approve of getting rid of him."
She knew what she was. "But you don't need to."
"What?"
"It's not you anymore," she said tightly.
It was not her either, if she wished to win any points with Jaune's friends. From the way Nora could not decide whether to glare at her more or Tyrian, she was probably next in line. What difference was her evil, anyway? She considered if Jaune had ever wanted to look inside Tyrian's heart and see if he could turn back the way she had dumbly attempted. Perhaps there was no difference between them, as meaningless as whether she or Pyrrha were the Fall Maiden, as open to chance in a way which terrified her.
Vacuo might have been a green place once, but it was a dying place now. The Summer Maiden in her bed, the Summer Maiden in the sands which buried her, Gillian buried above and not below in the tombs, the cracked earth giving way wilting blossoms. Died and came new.
A hesitating step, then one, then two, then a cackle, which sounded like an imitation of Salem's, a shoddy recording of the piercing bells.
"Little boy can't do it," said Tyrian.
Emerald yanked again. "Shut the hell up."
"Well, put your heads together, maybe hold hands. Do the right thing. I'm waiting."
Would you kill him? Would you kill me?
"When you're finished with me you can deal with her—"
It was clean. For all that she might have once considered him clumsy, he seemed to find the solution in no bells and whistles, no preamble, just a sword in the chest, black one side and white the other. The determined tilt of his profile struck something deep in her like maybe fear, but he was not cold, not unseeing, just focussed. He drove the sword in deeper as Tyrian laughed, finally getting the joke.
Jaune turned his head to look at her like she was the only person in the world.
"It doesn't have to be you," he said. It was a promise.
When he saw what happened to her, when she was a little girl, she had thought he would condemn her the same as Rhodes. That he would see all of it and say that she should have left the sisters, or waited longer, or let Rhodes beat her, teach her a lesson properly. Some way it could have gone differently, so she would never have ended up with Salem, joined Atlas instead of toppling it, done better when all she did was bad.
He had not. He had simply said it should not have been her, or her choice, if there were really one at all. Perhaps she had fallen in love with him then, or sometime sooner than that, but then, that was a foolish task to wonder. If somebody asked her when, she would have said either now or Haven, since loving him was sort of like having always loved him.
The sword slid out wet, red, black, and white. Emerald let go. Ren and Nora then, when the tail ceased seizing. Tyrian made no sound, and no one mourned for him when he collapsed.
"What did you just do?" Nora almost stammered.
"What had to be done," Jaune said. He tugged on the end of his shirt, shifting the chainmail, so he could wipe the blade. Swift, unthinking. He stepped back and did his own survey of their predicament, as Nora started to barrage him with questions, and he answered every one of them simply, counting Grimm.
Cinder cut in and said, "You had said it was like murder."
"Not the same thing."
"Wasn't it?" she sniped, her blood running hot and wild. "Wasn't I the same monster as him, the same one before you—"
"No, you were Tyrian's victim."
"I was Tyrian!" she said, bounding forth.
"You weren't."
"What makes me different at all?" Her voice rang high.
"Because I know. I wondered. And I decided there was a difference. The fact you think you're anything like him at all already means you're not."
She was more scared of herself than him. The others, Ren and Nora, Emerald and Mercury, watched her with bewilderment. She felt keenly aware of her sticky skin, her stiff clothes, not her own blood, stump at her forearm.
Was it her inside of him? Did she make him like this, make him touch darkness? Maybe the Aura bond was not the light thing she thought it was. Maybe she had infected him, made him something he was not. Ren and Nora probably agreed with that. After all, she had forced his hand, broke his sword for him, had him gut Penny.
But that was his type of self-sacrificial thinking, not hers.
Besides, she knew him. He went for the throat the first time he properly introduced himself, when she pretended not to remember him. They were bound then anyway.
Even in her imagination she could not imagine him killing her, first if she did not let him, second if she begged for it.
He needed to be touched. He seemed not uncertain, but outside of his own body, watching her watching him. Neither of them paid much mind to who was spectating. There was only him, there, with the wiped off blood, and the offering. It really was a sick sort of offering, and maybe he knew that she, of all people, would be the one to appreciate it.
Tyrian's purple eyes were unseeing, so she did him the kindness, crouched, and closed his lids for him. No one else would.
When she rose, she pushed herself up first with the stump. She reached in, burnt, and up from the Vacuo sand came glass, the beginning of a new forearm, a wrist, fingers and nails, like the one in the dream. It gleamed as bright as she remembered, threaded through with a reflection of the light. Clear glass raised up to touch his cheek.
"Don't do it again," she told him.
"I won't need to," he said roughly.
"It starts like that."
"It doesn't," he insisted. "He had enough chances. Someone had to stop it." He swallowed. "Consider it fixed."
It was his way of protecting them. Not just her, but Emerald and Mercury. Somehow that filled her with the strangest of affections, that it was not a monstrousness she had pushed onto him, but it was already his own, and he wanted to use it to shield them.
"Where did you get the idea?" he asked, pressing his cheek into her hand. His own hung at his side, all the fight draining out of him, all of the roughness and the tenderness left.
The Grimm fused to her had no sense. She could not even feel it when it clawed into her prey, only had to vicariously try to feed off her imminent victory, her clawed-to destination. It always felt like losing. The glass felt like her flesh, and she felt his. It was the hand she remembered, or so she had tried to.
It took her a moment before she found the strength to answer. It was such whimsy, so silly. She said, "The dream."
"Will you tell me about it one day?"
In that one day contained all sorts of curses and blessings. One day beyond the old man and her old master. One day where she could deign to tell him that she loved the bond, that she never wanted to break it, that she wanted to keep it always, that she nursed inside of her a fire he helped light again, the hottest, bluest of blue flames. He had once said that she had a flair for dramatics more than Salem. Begrudgingly she would admit to him being right, only if he knew what she thought about him.
"I can't," came her reply, quiet and cruel. It was harsher than the sound of gunfire.
She would never consider it a mistake, nor would she expect him to feel the same way back. Wrapped up in her was a possessiveness, a covetedness, a wanting-and-not-having, a childish please love me intertwined with the release of her own freedom, the balm of the arm gone, the home she never had. It was that struggle, that tension, which gave her all of her strength. The pain meant something, but so did the joy.
It was that which made her lower her hand, before it went on too long.
"It's magic," she said, as it swelled.
"It looks right."
There was destruction all around them.
"I would do terrible things for you," Jaune shuddered out. He stepped closer and then he seemed to think better of it. "Stay close, please."
She stayed close.
When Salem split, Cinder wanted to know where her mind went. If it were white-bright, pure oblivion. She never had the dignity of dying.
The last time the arm had announced Salem's presence, nerve-bright and torturous. Salem's call was a wardrum, thrumming in the Grimm. Now Cinder had it no more. She was free, yet deaf.
But it was not like her old master was all that much of a subtle presence. The dome of black in the sky very far, the folding of a napkin, was followed by the distant call, not Grimm yet like a Grimm, of a creature she had made into existence. At least, Ambrosius had.
"She's coming," she said, beside Jaune. "There's no running."
"Vacuo hasn't fallen yet," he said.
"Yes. Yes, you have that, at least." She paused briefly and sent him a hesitant glance. "I almost started to like the place."
"Are you going soft?"
"I rue the day," she drawled, arms crossed.
Her glower, at least, made him laugh, mixing with the adrenaline to make her feel just a bit high. Fighting was one thing: this felt monumental, like the world was carved out new.
Ruby was getting everybody back inside the school, since even the Grimm had got scared and begun to hang back. Cinder had told the students to run.
"It's their fault if they were already hanging around," she said.
"I think you have more familiarity with what's coming than them," said Jaune, motioning more to the school, finding some hiding under virtual haystacks, others bleeding out.
Jaune, bleeding heart he was, knelt with the same sort of care and respect he might have reserved for his very own closest friends. "Tell me where you're from," he would say, and some of them would answer: "I'm actually from Beacon," and then he would ask who their favourite professor was, if they liked Vacuo much.
"I like Vacuo," he said to a bleeding girl, clothes red, hair black.
He was helpless, though, as he inspected her arm. He had been trying to do things without his Aura, and Cinder, sensing he was about to do something stupid like use up what she had already given him, huffed. With an unhappy sigh, she ripped the end of her skirt, the tear of fabric as quick as a whip, and then passed it to him.
"Tie it around her arm," she prompted.
He reached out, armoured hand taking it from her, as if it were precious. He hoisted the girl's arm up, tied it above the gash, pulling tightly. Over and then under. The girl winced. Cinder watched his careful movements, the way he was gentle even when he was rough.
Cinder's skirt was just a bit shorter, but it was mostly done for anyway.
"You can walk," she said sternly to the girl. "Walk back to the school, and try not to bleed out."
The girl nodded, blinking oddly at Jaune. "What are we running from?"
"Me."
When the girl left in a quick scurry, it seemed like she believed her.
Jaune turned to Cinder. He raised his fair brows, beseeching.
"What," she asked flatly.
He thinned his lips, shaking his head. The fairness of his fringe brushed against the sweet slope of his brow. "You're just— funny. Terrifying, but funny."
"I'm not funny," she said.
He tilted his head at her, considering. He was so close to her, so corporeal, substantial; hell was on their heels, and some shadow of him had been revealed to her— or perhaps it had always been there.
It was terrible work, finding Huntsmen and Huntress students trained to never run from a fight and telling them to run from this fight. But it was hard to communicate that Salem was not the sort of Grimm you could kill. Carmine, in her stupidity and her bravery, had not known that or believed that, but, begrudgingly, Carmine had also bought them a little time.
Wherever Cinder went, she was mostly running from Salem, so only semantics had really changed. Well, other than the killing and the maiming: she could not do that as much anymore. Pity.
"So what, we herd them like sheep to safety? Then we wait?" complained Cinder.
His friends all looked like varying shades of death warmed up. Nora sent her a look, which was almost matronly. Cinder expected hatred, but not whatever that was. She ignored it. Anyway, Cinder's personal interest was right in front of her.
"What would you have us do?" Jaune asked her sincerely.
She pursed her lips and eyed the black cloud. Vacuo's long, hot days of blue were familiar to her now. If she had to stay in one place, she would take the warm any day. First she let out a sigh, then said, "I think you should run."
They fell quiet at that, as if to judge her cowardice. It was a tough crowd.
Ruby said, stubbornly, "We can't run. We're meeting Salem head on."
"And you intend to kill her with what weapon?" Cinder snapped, gesturing at Ruby's oversized farming tool. "I thought all of your heroic angst was that you can't kill her."
A beat. Then, "I have something in mind."
"Ruby always has something in mind," Weiss helpfully added, though her ease was belied by a tight grip on her rapier, and feet poised to strike. She must have studied fencing. Only the finest, of course.
Cinder wondered if she gripped her weapon tighter in fear of the Queen of Death or Cinder herself. The Schnees had faced her down before with little hesitation, so she assumed the former. Cinder was losing her edge.
She gripped a fist and shoved down the feeling. None of these people even meant anything to her, except for one, and he belonged there, her only playing voyeur.
She was better than this. So she said measuredly, "Does this plan involve handing over a Relic?" The Staff at her waist felt insistent, as if pleading her to use it.
It got the reaction she expected. A shuddering of objections, silent judgement. Ruby stood rock-still, resolute, and answered eventually over the hubbub, "It won't come to that."
But it was an option on the table. Just like Ironwood had wanted. Cinder let a mean smirk curl her mouth. Could anybody become like him, if driven to? If you pushed in the right spot? Had Ruby already broken, with barely any of Cinder's intervention? She searched for a coldness or weakness in her. She waited. Ruby waited.
"What happened to you?" Cinder asked.
Something rumbled. She ignored it, but she turned to look at Jaune. It could not just be what he did that disturbed her. It was something more.
Ruby's silver eyes cast a pensive gaze at the black cloud, then at the Relic at Cinder's waist—urging in its weight— then at her friends, leaning forward. They knew Ruby kept something.
"I saw something," Ruby broke out. "Something I shouldn't have. It— it scared me. And I don't know what to do."
Her sister took her by the shoulder, but Ruby shrugged her off.
Weakly, Weiss said, "Talk to us, please. You know you can tell us anything."
Jaune was torn. Cinder hardly paid attention to their reactions except his. He had seen terrible things, too, but such terrible things had a voice and a presence, creeping over his shoulder, lurking in his room, watching his every move, his own reflection, his shadow on the wall, his perpetual pain and sorrow. It was easy to fear, easy to loathe. She had taken that ease from him, replaced it with something complicated, but she bore the same name, stayed the same terrible thing, wanted to possess his every move all the same. It just burnt a little hotter.
She cut through the strife and said, "It was what you were meant to see."
"What?" Ruby's voice went high and childlike, the way she had sounded at Beacon, so ear-piercing you could hear her a hall away.
"It doesn't matter if it scared you. You were supposed to see it." Cinder knew it with conviction, and as she said it she believed it more.
"You were the one who wanted to run!" Ruby accused. "Now you're telling me to face it!"
Cinder rolled her eyes. Ruby needed a good scare. "Yes, face it first, then run."
They waited, and waited. Their little friends remained quiet. Then Ruby said, brokenly, "I thought I'd see my mom down there. Neo saw Roman. And I thought Jaune had seen Pyrrha. So I thought I was out of luck, but it wasn't a place like that at all. It wasn't where the dead went. I saw... I think I saw... he was cruel. He didn't like my eyes. He said I stole them from him and he said to never come back again."
A silence fell. Then Cinder said quietly, "I saw his terrible brother. I used the Relic to run."
That seemed to shock an answer out of Ruby, whatever dim grey that had grown over her washing off. "When were you there?"
"Ah," she said delicately, "an expedition."
"But how could a Relic work?"
Cinder shrugged. "Didn't bother me."
"No, but they made them!"
"You're focussing on the wrong detail."
"Which is what? That the Brothers who cursed Salem are just as bad?" Ruby snapped, and at that Weiss went to put a hand on her and she shrugged it off, storming away. She stopped for a moment to shove the Relic of Knowlege in Yang's hands, as if it were an unwanted toy, then kept stomping away.
Her friends called after her. See, face it and run, she wanted to add. Cinder turned in the opposite direction, moving up the crest of a dune to rest on a stone outcropping. She peered out, mouth downturned, arms crossed. Ruby was worrying about a God of Light when a bad witch was coming. She had been in her head too much.
Salem had fallen at Carmine's sacrifice of her own Aura and the Sword, and the wraith, the thing like her, had gone who knows where. She— it— did not know where she was going, or where she had come from. She had been what was holding Vale. So now nothing was holding Vale.
Salem had played her hand. So why had she called the wraith? Because she knew Cinder was no good, would turn her back? No, Salem had conditioned her well enough; back in Atlas, Salem had certainly sensed her doubts, and known what to do and say, yank and loosen the leash. She trusted Tyrian absolutely. Then what was the thing for?
There was always the possibility Salem had just got bored again. Cinder had not quite wanted to tear down Vacuo the way she had Atlas. Maybe they needed a new hobby.
"When Salem came back last time, it was right where she had died," she said to the person approaching behind her. "Maybe the Sword scattered her. Proof even a Relic doesn't work, I suppose." She turned. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
He seemed to search for an answer. His lip quivered and her left hand shook. There was something uncertain, nearly shy about him. The blood on him had dried brown. Eventually he said, "I'm just waiting for you to disappear again." He shook his head. "I'm just being stupid."
"Not stupid. I know when you're being stupid," she said. "But I suppose I deserve it. I don't exactly have the emotional range to parse your complicated feelings about my leaving. If you want to accuse me of a grievous crime instead, go ahead. That might be easier to grapple with. I don't think we ever struggled with that."
He laughed, but it sounded like he was laughing at himself. "You'd rather talk about murder than—"
"Or we could talk about yours," she sniped. "I'm sure your friends would like to conflate the topics."
It was so easy to talk to him sometimes it made her want to stitch her mouth up. Cinder was a talker, she knew it— and she hated people who loved the sound of their own voice— and early on, when she hated him, or something approximating it, she had to mostly attribute her liking of him to the fact he kept asking her questions.
Something like that, anyway. The mystic in her said it was because he was her soulmate.
Because he made her say these things, she said, "I didn't want to leave."
"That's why it's not fair that I feel the way I do."
"I don't care about fairness," she replied, with a slight lip curl.
"Okay, how about a better answer: your abusive ex-boss is currently a big ball of black in the sky on the horizon and she's probably going to try to turn us into meat skewers, so making this about my attachment issues is not a great idea."
"I'll make time." She stepped closer. "Besides, I'm sure your attachment issues are my fault anyway." She gestured with her head to his gaggle of friends patting themselves on the back about their clever plans, and Ruby, in a mountain of angst, standing off on her own. "How well did they take it?"
"Which part," he grumbled.
"That bad?" Cinder laughed and chastised herself for how breathy it was.
"It's not what you're thinking." His hand went to his sword, all protective-like. Mysterious little thing.
She wondered what he was keeping from her. "You don't know what I'm thinking."
Just for the game of it, she tried to hold his gaze, and thought very loudly at him: You're beautiful. You're more than everything and I know I'm not nothing, that it doesn't have to always hurt. When I feel you it's like having gone my whole life without the sun touching my skin. You peeled back the arm before Ruby ever touched it. When you touch me I feel human. I dreamed of you before I knew you.
"Well?" she asked.
It would have been embarrassing if he knew. What silly things she thought. How Salem had chastised her so, and how as always she had been right. It was very foolish of her. It was kind of Salem to turn up again to remind her. So many things she had learnt from her oldest teacher.
The black pearl storm haloed her arrival. Salem rode the beast in, its feet trundling, the sound muffled by sand. It was loyal. The wraith perched where Cinder had sat, like they had traded chairs. She shuddered to think of what was behind that unseeing veil. If it were human anymore. If it were Hound-like, a frothing dog.
Mostly they just waited. Salem liked making people wait. She said that if she had to wait for humanity to evolve a second time then everybody else could wait for her to conquer it.
Cinder strode past Jaune and then she strode past his friends, and the idiotically named Ace-Ops, and the Happy Huntresses and then whoever else was holding the rear and then she pushed back Ruby's useless uncle and the Spring Maiden and the other Maidens and found Ruby. Salem stared down at them.
With the barest nod she communicated Salem smiled that deathless smile. Let her think me a double-agent, Cinder thought and did not say, not spoken to first. All her life she had been one, keeping a secret, playing subterfuge. It came to her naturally.
"Ruby Rose," Salem announced, "I come in peace."
The scene: Salem, self-satisfied and pleased, the beast huffing and puffing, and that small white figure, cape blowing in the wind, watching the procession impassively. Salem above, they below.
"You and I had a very important conversation. Did you tell your companions about it?"
There was the master Cinder knew. Half her control was setting the stage.
"They don't need to know," Ruby said.
"Ah, there's the familiar sound of Ozma I know. He taught you well." Then she let out a little prim noise of disappointment. Salem added, "Where did my gift for you, Cinder, go?"
"It's gone," Cinder said.
"Gone."
"It went."
"So evasive. Is this because she used her eyes?" Salem glared at Ruby. "How annoying."
Yes, it is annoying that she helped me, because now I owe her.
"Well, if you're so ungrateful for my gifts," Salem began, and the beast warbled, a long, strangling sound punctuating the magnificent, terrible pause, "I have one for Ruby instead."
It all made sense, then, Salem's peculiar, new interest in Ruby. Like her. Like the Hound. It was worse than Cinder had ever imagined, though. The silver eyes, after all, were genetic. She heard a howl somewhere, almost a squawk.
She grabbed Ruby's shoulder, "Don't look."
It was a terrible thing. The white cape billowed, thick and heavy, spidersilk resistant. The face unseeing, so if you looked nothing looked back. Beside Cinder, Ruby's red cloak, in girlish imitation, twitched in a dead wind.
Ruby was looking anyway. "Mom?"
The wraith, Summer Rose. Like Cinder. Cinder was not Salem's first experiment; Cinder was the connecting thread between Ruby and her mother.
"I love reuniting family," Salem said, almost sing-song. "I can barely remember the face of my father, or my mother, for that matter. She died when I was very young. Aren't you glad that she's here, that she made this sacrifice for you?"
"Sacrifice?"
"Don't play along," Cinder snapped, unable to help herself. She felt Jaune approach behind her, his shield out. "Get back," she snapped again. "Get away."
"She bought my silence for a few years," said Salem. "You had your childhood. I kept to my word. I ask you this: of what you saw, do you think your mother made the wrong decision?"
She heard another call for her mother.
"What was your plan?" Cinder nearly shrieked. "Ruby, what was your plan?"
The wraith did not speak, and Ruby said, "I don't have one. I do now."
"No," said Yang behind her. "No!"
"No, you don't understand," Ruby said, "not now— it's different now—"
Cinder pulled her bodily by the shoulder as Yang did. "You're an idiot," Cinder said. "You're the silver-eyed girl, you're the last person who even has a chance of stopping her. SHE'LL TURN YOU INTO A MONSTER."
Ignoring her, she said, "Will you leave them alone if I go with you?"
"Yes," intoned Salem.
"Will you give them— time, will you leave the Relics alone?"
"Yes," intoned Salem again.
"And don't hurt them."
"Yes."
"Will you let me talk to my mother?"
"Why," said Salem, "I brought her for you."
Ruby nodded to herself as they objected, as Cinder felt herself fall away.
Ruby damned them and saved them and said, "Okay."
The witch cast a spell, and took away the girl, in the arms of her mother. Finally, that screaming banshee call made sense. It was a wolf-mother howl, an earsplitting call because the wraith could not remember her name, or the face of her daughter, only the grief. If everything else fell away, that endured. Cinder threw her hands over her ears as she fell to her knees.
All the Dust and the Summoning and the reasoning in the world could do nothing to stop Ruby as she cut herself in three, petals trailing behind her on the wind, dissolving in the air. The fresh scent of roses, marking Ruby somewhere nearby or gone, a trail to find your way.
The orange fur of dusk parted the dying sun and bled into blue.
Cinder had no reason to hide, but still, she hid. She slouched around the hanging gardens, where she had come and gone, and touched her hand to the false greenery. How did they keep it so verdant in such a dry place, she had always wondered.
She picked up some sand and started again, trying to fine-tune the shape of what she was trying to make. It was difficult to get right. Rounded and softened edges with her were incompatible.
"I don't like your habit of eavesdropping," she said to the shadow.
"Are you sure about staying?"
"Less sure now I know how harebrained their plans are." She turned to Emerald, who stood there uncertainly with her arms crossed, the white of her jacket standing out starkly against the dim of the light. Mercury slunk out beside her. What a horrible pair they were. She asked, "What gave me away?"
"Ren's Semblance," Emerald said. "He's a bit of a gossip, too."
"An empath and a gossip does not appear like the most sound of combinations."
"Well, helpful for us, anyway. He said your signature is linked to Jaune's. Easy."
"We kept it a secret, you know," said Mercury, all proud.
Cinder melted the glass and tried again. "You didn't do it for me. You did it for him." A beat. "I can imagine your disappointment in what you expected of them. I, too, did not anticipate Ruby giving herself up to Salem. Now you're stuck with me again." She laughed meanly. "Go and tell the others they can crucify me later, once I'm of no more use for the last Relic."
"Again with the bossing around," Mercury muttered.
"Shut up."
"You don't have to hide," Emerald said uncertainly.
"I'm not hiding."
"Tactically disguising yourself, fine."
Mercury beside her chuckled and then pushed Emerald in the shoulder companionably. "Yeah, tactical. Like Jaune's real tactical."
"Shut up!"
"Totally," Emerald agreed. "I bet you thought that one through."
"Cinder doesn't think through her plans—"
"I did this time," she interrupted. She inspected the glass wedge in her hand. It was smooth, clear and clean. It fit in the palm of her hand, the size of a cartoonish tear drop. She ran a hand over the socket of her old eye. "If you're done making fun of me, you can report back that I haven't killed anybody yet."
"Was that— a joke?" asked Mercury.
"Maybe." Cinder pocketed her little trick. She swallowed and stood almost awkwardly. "I think you should get away. Go bother Jaune with your stand up comedy."
Emerald and Mercury shared a look, which meant something she could not parse. "They're not going to crucify you," said Emerald eventually.
"I expect nothing less." She began to make her way up the wall. "You work with them well."
She scaled it without looking back. An apology would be facile. She had given them what they needed and then she had broken them. There was nothing else to be said. They took their own freedom, and she took hers, and that was that, she kept telling herself.
His window was stiff when she went to open it, but it came free after a gentle push. She lowered herself in, with the new dress she had pilfered over her back, the glass ball in her pocket, hovering so her bloodied and dirty boots would not touch the ground, muddy it. She slipped them off.
Next she peeled off her stiff clothes. They had stuck to her skin, bonded to it. The bodice first, and then the remnants of the leather ties to her armoured arm, the neck wrap, the arm wrap. Her mask was somewhere in the middle of the desert. The ripped skirt she unfastened with nimble hands, no claws to catch on loose threads. Once she unclipped her pantyhose and threw it in the basket she felt a little lighter, but her skin was still stained here and there. Not her blood.
She undid her bra and then she slipped her underwear off, the soft cotton giving way to a hot night foreclosing in. The hairbrush on the bedside table— hers— she took and began with the ends of her hair, holding it tightly in her fist so it would not snag on the knots. She untied the half-ponytail, and began again, brushing and brushing until it shone. When she could drag through the ends without catching, she worked upwards, gradually bringing down from her scalp, until she lost herself in the repetition. No more dull ache. Her hair loose. Her clothes shucked off. She did not feel like the same person, the one who had left, climbing out of that window, already having lost the fight. Now she had come back and Ruby had taken her place and she had taken hers.
They must have hated her for that, too.
She looked out the window, brushing still. The last of the sunset passed as twilight, black- and purple-curled, set in. All was silent. No Grimm. No Crown, for that matter, and four relatively docile Maidens under one building, albeit it was a large building, so Cinder and Winter could avoid each other, and Cinder and Raven too. Cinder palpably realised she was the complicating factor.
The door opened and she turned her head at the intruder.
In the growing darkness he said nothing, just closed the door behind him and turned to face the way he had come. She did not move.
"I thought you'd run away." It came out hot and harsh.
"Do you lack object permanence? Like a baby?"
When he thudded his head against the door she kept talking.
"You could have just called," she went on.
"It was kind of bedlam out there and you just up and left. Also you weren't answering last time." He sighed. "Could you— put something on?"
Well, now he sounded like he was sad. Cinder did not like that. "Oh, I'm sorry, I took my clothes off because they were stiff and covered in blood. Not mine." She laughed, short and mean. "Not usually mine anyway."
"Do you want a different room," he asked flatly, apropos of nothing.
"What?"
"Do you want a different room?" he asked again.
"Is this your subtle way of getting rid of me." She resumed brushing. "You should work on it."
"You don't have to hide in here." His speech was muffled against the door now like this was the last conversation he ever wanted to have.
"Allow me to wash the blood off of me first." It kissed her knees and blotted her arms. She set the brush down quietly and near shamefully. For a maddening moment she wanted him to turn and look. Then in a low voice she said, "I didn't expect you back so soon."
"It's hard without Ruby."
She could see the sorrow lining the droop of his shoulders. He wanted to love and protect with such an intensity it almost scared her. It was no reason to be jealous. It merely explained a great deal to her.
She was still jealous. Yet she stamped it down and she said, "She made a choice."
"It's not that I have a problem with. I just want my friend back."
Cinder knew better than to linger. His blood ran down the shower drain and turned pink with the water. It had dried an oxidised brown against her skin. Once she came out and dressed in his clothes she said, "Now you may exile me."
Her hair was wet at her back and she was nearly asleep standing up, but she waited, standing stock-still beside where he was seated on the sandstone floor.
"I'm not exiling you, I was just asking."
"It must be disappointing to make such a poor trade."
That made him look up at her, dragging his gaze up like it was heavy. "What?"
"But I suppose I owe her," Cinder blandly continued. "My master's collar is gone. And my master seems to be labouring under the assumption I am still loyal. She expects me to bring the Relics. Fitting, then, I have reason to return."
He was blinking very quickly as he digested what she was saying.
"Do you remember the way to Evernight?" she asked. "I, after all, showed you the way."
"What do you mean poor trade?"
"Of course, Evernight is much more outfitted a base than the whale. The whale was an experiment. I'm not sure how long she grew it for, in a big black Grimm pool. Clearly, she's taken to new Grimm abominations—"
"Poor trade," he repeated.
"—four Maidens might be enough to supplement your team, but it's also practically a suicide mission. If the four Maidens happen to be in agreement. Since I'm responsible for one of their bosses' slash father figure's downfall, and another I simply have a personal vendetta with—"
"Are you serious?"
"—and all of your friends know me to be the monster I am, so you're in very poor luck. Thankfully, they presumably like Ruby more than they hate me."
"You're not a trade," he snapped, getting to his feet again.
She ignored him and went over to fetch the little glass sliver from her pocket. In front of the mirror in the bathroom, she inspected the scarred skin uncovered. Maybe in time it would soften. She pulled her upper eyelid to free the socket, and slid the top of the glass up then let it tuck underneath the lower lid as she let it down. The glass fitted at the first try. Her Semblance was good like that. She knew the shape of things.
She blinked once, twice, just to test it. The magic, just like it tortured her with things she could see but never have, let her see again. The light in her eye was pearlescent, shimmering and shaking almost with magic.
He snuck up on her in her reflection.
"The dream," she explained. "And, well, I suppose no longer bothering with the mask anymore. It's stuffy. And scratchy."
It looked right. That was the part which scared her. Him standing behind her— protectively, nearly, watching over her, her own reflection looking back at her and at him, with her glass eye and arm. This was where she wanted to be. This was everything she had ever wanted, unconditionally and without reserve and with no expectation.
Nothing could sliver up her glass arm and hurt her. Nobody could see through her own eyes, unless she let him. She lifted a hand and held a thumb up and wondered at her depth perception.
"It looks good," he said.
Her milky eye stared back. "Do you really want me to find another room?"
"Are you scared of me?"
"Now you're not making sense," she said, and turned. "Why would I be afraid of you?" She laughed, high and long.
He reached for his armour and began to undo the straps, removing it piece by piece. She was familiar with the process now; she could even do it for him. That would be too far. That would be too kind. She simply watched instead.
"I killed him," he explained presently. "It made you— it made you think of when I helped you. You know I wouldn't hurt you."
"I would hurt you."
"You wouldn't."
"I did."
He was struggling with the strap on his back. She went up and loosened it for him, and her hand lingered on the muscle. She just liked feeling his breaths in and out.
"I was beginning to understand why you did it," she said, easier to talk as she hid herself. "I admit to being thrown off. But you weren't doing it for yourself. You didn't do it for yourself either time."
"Do you—" he started, choked, hands shaking as he tore off his gloves, "do you think I'm— bad?"
"No," she answered, close enough to gentle as he ever made her. "Do you think I'm good?"
The laugh wrung out of him moved her hands with the motion. She could feel the rumble. "I see how it sounds."
She hummed in agreement. "Whether you're bad or not doesn't matter. You know what you'll do next. You'll save your friend then figure the rest out. Besides," she said, "I'm not sure I could take another murder on my soul."
"You know that's why."
"I know," she answered, and in that was it all. He knew. She knew.
There was but yet one horrible secret she was keeping from him. If she told him, she wondered if he would judge her. If he would find it disgusting that his mercy and his kindness had been warped into something possessive which made her want to keep him all to herself, such that she could barely stand, staying in that restless desert, the aftermath of their attempts to save Ruby having failed. You could not save someone who chose to leave.
Meaner, selfish, all those of shades of bad he had seen and should not be surprised by: she did not save him out of the goodness of her heart, only the call of it. It was a mean, hoarding thing inside of her. That she was as covetous as she had always been. That the arm might be gone but she was still a monster.
Then, as quickly as that secret washed over her, she realised the purity of the feeling. That she— without expectation, without reserve— felt it anyway, that she kept it to herself, endured and embraced the longing. There was something redeeming in that, she was sure. She would have him safe and happy, whether she was in the picture or not. He would never know. It was a kind yet cruel secret.
A dust storm blew outside, the wind almost singing a type of dirge, sweet and sad. She let herself have these things. She helped him peel off the rest of his armour shedding it like skin, all weepy and fresh, and tactfully looked away when he did the rest. She could be good. Cinder could show him the same chastity he demonstrated.
As she waited on his bed, she thought of the house. The walls had been duck egg blue, breezy and light. The grass had grown straight and short, where it had been mown, but wildflowers mostly overtook it. The windows big, the kitchen packed with food. It was a good dream.
When he came out she tried to reconcile it. What had she said to Ruby? You were meant to see it. She was meant to see what she could not have, to be humbled. She was humbled, and now she had an arm and an eye. Next sleep. She wanted to fall asleep in his arms. But that was too far. They had done too much for each other now for it to be safe.
Jaune sat next to her anyway and ignored her thoughts, if he could hear them, and stroked her back, just the faintest touch of his thumb. It must have been an unconscious action. He said, "We're not like Salem, you know. They might be upset, but it'll never be the same as what she did to you."
"There are good pains and bad pains," she said. "Some you learn from and some that just hurt. I'm not looking for forgiveness, Jaune."
The thumb travelled lower, pressing against her spine, dancing up and down. She wanted more. He had to stop. She had to tell him to stop, for her own good. For his. He embraced her instead.
"I've wanted to do that since you came back. Sorry."
Her arms pressed up against his chest and her head tucked just so in his shoulder, safe and warm. Don't. I want more. She said, "You were busy dying."
So tender against her. So tender it hurt. The sweetest of hurts.