A/N: Dear readers,
This is a triple update to make up for my (somewhat) protracted absence, so you'll want to start with Chapter 15. My goal has always been to hopefully finish before V9 airs, and I think I should meet that target easily. I'll never abandon this fic. It's seen me through a lot, and I hope, in some small way, it offers you a similar joy.
I also wanted to express my thanks (and in my other AN note for Chapter 15 as well) for the reviews and follows. I hope you enjoy.
-Seraphina
"Happiest memory game, go," said Mercury.
"That time we stole Roman's stash of pastries. The ones with the gooey chocolate and the flaky bits? And we weren't at Beacon yet," Emerald replied easily.
Jaune watched them thoughtfully. The airship rattled, trying very hard to carry them where they needed to go. They had set out shortly after Cinder. Then they would wait until she called. Then they would go.
"What's the happy memory game?" Jaune asked.
"At Evernight, it used to keep the Seers away," Emerald said, explaining more to Nora beside her than Jaune opposite her. "Think happy thoughts and you'll fly." Emerald rolled her eyes.
They all mostly fitted into the airship. Winter had insisted on flying. The Ace-Ops had decided not to come, and the Happy Huntresses too. There was too much of a risk to Vacuo, leaving it open like that. It was the sort of opening Salem would pounce on. At first, Winter had been difficult to convince to come, and the reason was not because of Ruby. It was Cinder.
But three Maidens sat aboard the ship, and they were coming for Ruby and Cinder. They had to know that someone was coming.
Three Maidens, and the rest of them: Ren, Nora, Oscar, Weiss, Blake, Yang, Emerald, Mercury… it would be enough. Get in, get out. If anything, it would be easy. That was what he kept telling them.
"It was with me?" Mercury asked Emerald.
"Well, duh."
Jaune thinned his lips and tried to contain himself. Cinder had doubted whether there was something going on between those two. At least he could say I told you so later. Jaune could not helping being just a little bit of a gossip.
"Nora?" Emerald tried.
Nora hummed, resting her head on her hammer. For a moment it seemed like she would not answer. Then she said, "One time my hammer got stolen and Ren stole it back. It was hilarious. You should've seen the look on those bandits' faces. That was… oh, that was just a bit before Beacon too."
"I remember that. They certainly weren't expecting me to walk into the camp and just take it," Ren added.
"That wasn't my mom, was it?" Yang hotly asked.
"It wasn't," Raven said from the front.
"Would've been funny, though," Nora said amiably. "Though I guess your mom did kidnap Weiss."
"That's one way to meet your daughter's friends," Jaune muttered.
There was an awkward silence, and it made Jaune feel faintly better, that it was someone else's fault, and not his resident Salem turncoat.
Then Raven said, "Weiss was a better guest than you, Yang."
Yang slouched and let out a long groan of disappointment, but Weiss sat up primly.
Weiss said, "Even kidnapped, one can maintain one's composure." A beat. "I do recall causing some trouble, however."
"Very good, Weiss," added Winter. "Even if I would cut your fingers off for kidnapping my sister, Raven."
"I could very well beat you in a fight with no fingers," Raven deftly replied.
"We shall see."
Jaune tapped his knee. Four Maidens and a complicated web between them. At least so far Winter, Raven, and Cinder had done nothing to antagonise Ilia. She watched the conversation go on with a faint hint of horror, mixed with humour. He at least liked that she seemed to have taken to Cinder. She saw a little of what he did, what she could be.
"Who do you think would win?" Ilia asked.
Raven turned and hummed, "Hm?"
"You or Winter? Or Cinder?"
"I beat Cinder once," Raven said drily.
Jaune huffed and crossed his arms.
"I fought your brother and it came to a draw, though I think had— the general—" Winter stopped and cleared her throat, "— had General Ironwood not interrupted, I suspect I had it in the bag, so to speak—"
"I think not," said Qrow.
"— though I think it would certainly be a very interesting sight, but I should reserve that partly what may fuel the outcome is simply the fact it would not be a fight to the death. A certain je ne sais quoi. We may be evenly matched, though I shall defer to Raven being an older Maiden—"
It was Raven's turn to huff.
Ilia, though, followed the conversation seriously, and nodded her head in deep thought. She said, "It's nice we're all working together, now. Maybe we could keep practising after this?"
"Yes, after this," Winter said companionably. "I— hm."
"What?"
"I never had a team," Winter said. Jaune could see that her stare was hard and contemplative, in the reflection of the cockpit. He felt sad for her. She had been alone a long time. Penny had been her only friend. Jaune had killed Penny.
He looked away and watched the metal grated floor instead. It was not quite guilt, but perhaps sensitivity.
"We can be your team," Ilia offered. "I mean, we are a little ragtag, and rough around the edges, and there's some bad blood… but we could try."
"My team fractured," Raven said. "I broke it."
"And Cinder isn't here," Winter said. "We do not truly know if her allegiance is sworn to us."
"It is," Jaune insisted quietly.
"Very well for you to say."
"Then why are you with us?"
"Because any other choice is impossible," Winter replied. "Unconscionable. Whether or not Ruby Rose's silver eyes are vital to the cause is accessory to me. She is Weiss' friend. She gave herself up. Cold arithmetic might tell you it was the right choice. And it is one that I would struggle not to make myself." A pause. "We have the opportunity to go. You made the same choice, that day, to save Oscar."
"And you?" Jaune asked Raven.
"You don't need to know."
"I wanna know," Yang said.
"You already know."
"No, mom, I don't."
"Summer," Raven said distantly. "I was not— the person who could help her then. I was— afraid. And foolish. And I failed her. I failed her before she left. Don't make me speak on it more."
Then, in the draped silence, Nora asked Jaune, "What's a happy memory for you, Jaune?"
He met Nora's penitent gaze. He thought very hard. Beacon made him happy, with all of his friends. That silly food fight, when even after showering he still smelt like trout. It was not a perfect time, but it was a good time. Walking across the school grounds before class, especially early in the morning when the fog lingered. Jaune closed his eyes and then he opened them. He played with the hilt of his sword sheathed in his shield.
"One day out— out in Vacuo, not really sure where it was, it was pretty far out, past the wastes… um, there was a desert rain. And it was really hot. There were a ton of flowers which had just sprung up. Really bright colours, like sort of pink and purple? Magenta," he finally decided on, and his ears went bright red. "It was nice. I mean, not that— I was thinking of the food fight too, you remember?"
"I remember," Nora answered, but she seemed like she was keeping something to herself. She shared a knowing look with Ren.
"You were with Cinder, weren't you," Emerald said, all droll.
Jaune kicked his heels together, fidgeted. He was not exactly ashamed of Cinder, more of himself. He could have just said the food fight. Or any other day. Any other day. A day with Pyrrha. You're forgetting her already, he could sense unspoken.
But he answered, "Yeah. She made the flowers grow. She— picked one for me."
"That's your happiest memory," Nora said, leaning heavily against the seat. Her fringe brushed in her eye and hid part of her expression.
"One of them. I don't know how to quantify it, it's not like I rank it."
"I guess I wonder if there's anything else for you."
Jaune stopped. He asked, "What do you mean by that?"
"I've always had Ren, Ruby has always had Weiss… Yang has Blake… Emerald has Mercury… But Cinder killed Pyrrha. So you had to find someone for yourself, didn't you? And that became your thing. So now she's all you think about."
Jaune heard an ouch. He was not sure who said it. His chest hurt. Nora was his friend. She was kind, and understanding, and her heart was open enough to fit all of Mantle and Vacuo inside it. She was hurting. Jaune was very familiar with hurt now, the way it disguised itself as other things. It changed nothing about the pain he felt. If he were meaner, he might have said that Ren had been what she spent a lot of her time thinking about, too. But maybe she wanted to protect him from that in her own way, the same way she wanted to for Pyrrha.
But then Blake interjected and said, "Nora, please, there's a difference between not forgiving Cinder and antagonising Jaune."
"Yeah, seriously, she might be a problem but it's not like I can really blame him," said Yang.
"And there's a difference between trying to help Cinder and falling in love with her!" Nora snapped.
He thought for a long moment before he said, "That's enough. We just need to get Ruby and Cinder back. That's all we need to do."
"Is it?"
"And frankly, if you think my being lonely is the reason I care about Cinder, why didn't you ask?" Jaune gripped his sword unconsciously. "You never asked. I left you and Ren alone to do your thing and you never asked. I don't care about Cinder just because I'm pining for her or because I'm lonely or because I expect her to have feelings for me back. I just do. It's just part of me." He tapped his fingers and his gauntlets made a tapping sound against the hilt. "If you think Cinder is so monstrous she'd kill Pyrrha just to have me, then you're forgetting that she didn't even remember me at Haven. And if you asked her, she would agree that she's a monster. So I don't know what to tell you."
"We did ask," Nora said quietly.
"It was too late. And this is too late now. We have to trust Cinder. You wouldn't be here if you didn't believe in her, just a bit."
"Because she saved you," said Nora.
"She did."
"Unless it was just to trick us."
"The bond doesn't work like that."
"Then how does it work?"
Jaune answered, "I don't want to tell you."
It was too secret, and too precious. There was hardly any explaining it, either. It just was. He had often turned to look behind himself, to feel for her. It was something that existed between the cracks of everything else, when it should not have. When it should not have. When it should never have happened, and they never should have spoken to each other.
Jaune felt increasingly like this was untrue.
He needed to turn it around, quicksmart. Jaune was responsible for holding them together, especially now Ruby was gone.
He asked, "Anyway, Ren, what about you?"
"Me? Oh. Let me think for a moment." Ren pursed his chin thoughtfully. "When we arrived in Mistral, perhaps. The first day there. The big waterfalls we saw. Oh, and the noodles."
If Salem kept her word, the Grimm would probably not be about on the way there. Not worth taking a risk, though, and he and Ren would be the cover for getting in close enough to Evernight itself. It was why they took the one ship. That, and quite honestly, they were the only ones who volunteered for what amounted to what might be a mission they were not going to come back from. Jaune believed otherwise.
The flight took several uncertain hours. Eventually, Winter warily asked, "Is this Evernight, then?"
It was a great black bruise in the sky, visible as just a mote on the horizon. To pass through it, there would be hordes and hordes of Grimm, and they had to navigate through craggy, jagged outcroppings of black rock held up by gravity Dust. This was where they had to wait, and hope.
"When will you know?" Ren asked.
Jaune shrugged. "She'll tell me."
When she appeared to him, it sent the same old thrill through him it always did. He never got tired of it. It lasted only a moment, though, because he saw the worry cracked through her brow, and the taut line of her shoulders, and something in her eyes that said something was very wrong. Her thinned lips and cracked-straight spine scared him.
Of course Salem would scare her. Cinder would never admit it to his face, but he knew anyway. He had known how hard it was going to be. It was easier to stay with them if she did not have to face Salem herself. Whilst to some of the others, it had seemed like a trap, to Jaune, it seemed like a sacrifice.
For some time, Cinder stood there and said nothing. She flinched. Her left hand shook. She shook her head to herself. Salem must have been talking to her, but he did not know what to say, and most of all he was frightened of blowing her cover. He wanted so desperately to hold her hand and tell her that he was here.
"I did," Cinder said to her unseen interlocutor. Her voice came thin and weak, but underneath, he could still sense that resolve she always carried. Anything and everything, at any cost. What had seemed threatening and terrifying in her before was something he loved now.
"Pyrrha Nikos."
Jaune furrowed his brow.
"She was Jaune's partner."
She flickered out and then back again.
"No," Cinder said. It sounded like she was hiding something. She had that little dip between her brow as she had said it.
"Jaune? Jaune, is it time yet?" Nora asked.
"I've switched the main engine off. We're just hovering," Winter said from the front.
"But you're going to destroy it."
Cinder spoke over the top of the others asking him questions— and he shook his head, trying to clear it. "Just wait. There's something wrong."
"Do you really believe that?" Cinder was staring at something which frightened her. Not Salem. Something worse. Something much worse. "The brother gods won't do that."
Oh no, he thought. What was she doing?
"They'll destroy it. There won't be anything left."
He watched, completely powerless, as something terrible wrenched across Cinder's face, and in her face he saw despair, and longing, and hatred, but for whom he did not know. Her mouth twisted, her fists clenched, and the picture doubled itself over: he could see the woman he had hated, with her cool disregard and dispassionate glare, and the fury of the woman— he loved.
She disappeared, shattering in an opalescent glow, and then she came back and finally, finally looked at him. Cinder nodded incrementally.
"Now!" he said to Winter.
Ren knelt on the grated floor, one hand steadying himself, Nora holding him by the shoulder. On his other shoulder, Jaune rested his gauntleted hand and opened his Semblance up. Ren took in a deep breath, and then the ship turned black and white. Silent and colourless, so the Grimm could sense nothing.
They would go in the same way he had first left with Cinder. As soon as they left the ship, they would be detected. It was just the slimmest of chances, but Jaune had bet most of his life so far on a slim chance.
"Do we know where Ruby is yet?" asked Yang.
Jaune shook his head. "Cinder hasn't had the opportunity to tell me." He looked over at her warily.
She did not look back. It seemed like she was trying hard not to, all her focus everywhere but him. But she had not shut him out. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
Mercury and Emerald got out of their seats to watch over Winter's shoulder. They began giving her directions for navigating the floating archipelago. They drifted past Grimm, which saw them unseeing. The airship chugged along, stuttering loudly. Jaune just focussed on what he could: his Semblance, Cinder.
"What do you intend to do with her?" he heard Cinder ask.
Make an example. Like mother, like daughter, darling Cinder. Your silver eyed warriors are not dead. They are mine.
"Yes. It's inevitable." Something set in place over her. Like a mask. The lower half of her face barely moved, as she said words which seemed like they were said by someone else. Her eyes, though. That familiar burnt honey. The milky pearl. She was in agony.
Listening to a conversation with a speaker missing was difficult. He kept trying to make out what they were discussing, but it was hard to tell. It sounded like Cinder was repeating things Salem was saying. Then, the gut punch: "Without you, I am nothing."
"You're not," he told her, half-choked. "Cinder, you're—" but she disappeared.
"Jaune?" Ren tried.
"Something is wrong. Really wrong. I think Salem knows we're coming. I think Cinder was trying to warn me… Salem won't leave her alone, though."
"Or she knew all along," Nora offered darkly.
"She didn't," Jaune finally snapped. What had been quiet before was now dead silent. None of them must have known how to handle the situation he had forced them into, and Jaune did take some of the blame. He made a decision independent of them. He went back on his own maddened hatred.
"Oh shit," he heard Mercury say.
Jaune turned his head. From where he was, he could not quite make out what was in view of the cockpit. There should have been nothing there to disturb Mercury, who had seen Salem's lair enough times.
"What is it?" Yang got out of her seat and navigated unsteadily up beside him. The ship shook with turbulence.
"So you know that part where Salem ordered her whole Grimm horde away from Vacuo?" Emerald began. She tossed her head back and sighed. "Yeah. Guess where they all are now."
"What do you see?" Jaune asked.
"A nest of Grimm."
"More specific."
"I'm not one for description! There's a lot!"
"Like, I can't see Salem's big witchy castle," Mercury added.
"It's worse than Vacuo was," Yang said. "Like when the Grimm blocked out everything and we couldn't see."
Jaune nodded and considered. He thought for a moment. Ren grunted, and Jaune patted him encouragingly on the shoulder. "You can hold it, buddy."
"I'll last until we land, and not a moment longer," Ren said through his teeth.
"That's all we need. That's it though, isn't it? We're not taking on all the Grimm. That'd be stupid. We're just getting Ruby and Cinder out. Cinder probably already knows where Ruby is, and then we… run."
"But we're supposed to fight," suddenly Blake spoke up. "We can't just keep running forever."
Jaune did not interrogate whatever unsaid passed between Blake and Yang in the next moment. The only thing he needed to do was focus on whatever was immediately in front of him. It had not failed him yet. The first step, the second step, the third step. Just a bit longer. Then, easy does it, the rest would come. He was sure of it.
"There's no fighting Salem," said Oscar. He passed the cane back and forth between his hands. "That's why Ruby did this. We don't have a different answer for her."
"Then we'd better come up with one," Yang said tightly.
With a new-dawning horror, Jaune had a terrible feeling. He said, "She may not even come with us. Is that what you're suggesting?"
"I'm saying that she's stubborn and when she's got a plan, she sticks to it. Whether it succeeds or not. If she's decided this way is the best, exactly what hope do we have with convincing her otherwise?"
"But we still have to try," Weiss added. "She needs to know we'd try."
A murmur of agreement passed, awkward, stilted, not quite as even as it would have been if Ruby were there to smooth it over.
"And that one of us would offer to take her place," finally Jaune said.
"Too bad for you, then. Salem only wants a silver-eyed warrior. Or a Maiden," Raven said, indifferent, too casually.
Jaune had never asked Cinder how long it took for the arm to take. He knew how it worked; some alchemy, part of her in exchange for part of the Grimm to bind it to her Aura. The eyes were the window to the soul, and Salem smashed it open. Salem took some time to perfect it, if Summer Rose's condition were any proof. Too much, and they lost parts of themselves. Summer Rose's white blanketed stare, unrecognising of her children, was enough to prove that. Too little, and the Grimm arm grafted to Cinder precipitated her revolt. It had given her an out. It had connected her to Jaune.
Then too much again: from what Ruby had said of the Hound, the Faunus man had suffered. He was still a man beneath the skin. He had still peered out through one silver eye. Besides, Jaune had known, deep down, the arm was not all there was to Cinder.
Sometime between the Fall of Beacon, and when they met each other at Haven, the Grimm arm had been grafted to her, and she had learnt to use it, and let it use her, in a parasitic relationship. Had it been weeks? Months? She had screamed at him: I didn't choose it! The sight of her that day— furious, furious, so angry at the idea she had any choice at all, angry at his assumption, angry at his pretending to know her, her face pulled in fury, the scar on her face tugging— he could never forget.
It did not take it long for him to put it together. His stomach dropped. It was not possible. He only hoped that Salem was slow. That Ruby had tried to fight it every step of the way. But had not Cinder? Then he thought of that collar he had seen, only once when she had shown him; the collar and the arm had been the same. Of course she fought, but what could he have expected she do? It was what she had known. Salem would sooner have taught her place than allow her to voice her complaints, and Cinder had lost her voice then.
His belief in Cinder, and his belief in Ruby, were the only two reasons he did not tell Winter to turn the ship around. That, and he could not leave Cinder by herself. Whatever had happened to Ruby, they would face it head on, and they would help her. He hoped that Salem's magic had warped, and that her hands were unsteady, and that Ruby had fought, and that Grimm disobeyed her, and all sorts of impossible things: he hoped they would get out safely, and Cinder would come with him.
He shut down all evidence of what he was thinking, and kept his face blank. They did not need his worry, nor his panic, and even if they knew, they would be unprepared for what they would see.
"We might have difficulty getting Ruby out," Jaune decided on. "No matter what, we don't leave anybody behind."
"No arguments from me," said Yang.
Even if she were a monster? thought Jaune. Even if she did not recognise them? If she came, tearing and screaming? But of course. There was no qualifying element to it. She would come with them, in whatever form.
"How much longer?" asked Ren.
"Not long," said Emerald weakly. "We're already beginning descent."
"I did not miss this place," Mercury said absently.
"Oh? You didn't like the fire and brimstone? I thought you were down with it all then," Emerald shot back.
"Fire, brimstone— hot water, though. And all of those weird Grimm that watched you when you slept, and Tyrian down the hall…" He turned and shot a look at Jaune, letting out a huff through his nose which approximated a laugh. "I still can't believe Cinder stole my clothes and let you wear them, man."
At a loss, Jaune tried to think of how to respond, until he said, "She complained that I smelled of seawater. But um, yeah, the shower was surprisingly nice."
Emerald and Mercury shared a laugh, which seemed to be more at his expense than anything. He rolled his eyes.
"Like she cared how you smelled," Emerald added.
Mercury groaned in feigned disgust. "So weird."
"Am I weird or is she weird? Who do you mean?"
"Both," said both Emerald and Mercury, and then they glared at each other. Then Mercury fell into her side when Winter pulled up abruptly, the descent going quick and fast, but she had to weave around Grimm.
"Think you can fly through all that?" said Raven.
"Can I?" Winter huffed.
"If you need help making the landing, I can use my Glyphs," Weiss supplied. "In fact, I could even Summon; my Knight can ward off any Grimm in our way."
Jaune expected Winter to rebuff her, but she replied primly, "Yes. Summon your Knight, Weiss. Show me how you've improved."
"Oh, have I!"
He smiled to himself. The Knight cleared the way and they went to and fro through the Grimm, indefinable blackness.
"Steady on," said Mercury, then he gave directions, Emerald offering corrections.
Qrow was in conversation with Raven, and Yang and Blake shared wordless glances as Blake unsheathed Gambol Shroud. Nora offered encouragement to Ren, and Oscar and Weiss both said how much easier it would have been with Ruby with them, if only Ruby were here to save herself.
Jaune felt something piercing in his chest, but then, in the lonely corner of the ship, Cinder appeared again.
"She knows you're here," Cinder told him, her arms crossed, speaking as if she had rehearsed it. There was never a lovelier sight than her and her black hair spilling down her back.
He nodded at her. "I guessed as much."
The others ignored him, either because they were not listening or because they had figured the incorporeal appearance of Cinder required no commenting upon.
He said for her, "Is Salem listening to what you're saying?"
She inclined her head.
"Then tell me what you have to tell me."
"Ruby is down in one of the lowest levels of the castle. Ask Emerald and Mercury. It's where I was… when I was sick."
"Then we won't all go down. We'll cover each other. What is Salem doing?"
She did not answer.
"Cinder, what is Salem doing?"
"Waiting," she said evasively.
The airship was shaking back and forth. The descent was rocky, cloaked as they were.
"Are you okay?" he asked her. "Cinder? Are you safe? If you have to, just go. Go back to Vacuo if you can, just don't—"
"Stop," she interrupted him coldly. "I'm staying."
He watched her for a long, long moment. If they had not functionally crashlanded, he was sure he would have kept staring.
"Weiss!" he exclaimed.
"I'm already on it, honestly," said Weiss, as she grounded them all with her gravity Glyph. All of the force flooded out of them and went somewhere else.
"When I take my Semblance off of Ren, we get in as quickly as possible," Jaune said. "Straight up the ramp."
Emerald turned to Jaune with a quiet gasp.
"As we agreed… Raven, Winter, and Ilia will cover our exits with Qrow. Oscar, I want you far away from Salem as you can. The rest of us will be going to down to… where Salem kept Cinder when she was sick.""
Ilia led the way out. They ran. Seeing the Grimm was something else. It was like a wasp nest at the height of summer. There was that, and then there were the dark pools of Grimm, or proto-Grimm. It was daytime, but the moon could be seen faintly in the red-blood sky. He wondered why Salem had chosen this as her home. It was sad. There was just death on death.
If he had not seen the shadow that passed over Vacuo, he might have been scared. But his sight was clear and there were three Maidens currently causing a storm. Thunder danced, and three pairs of eyes lit up. Jaune covered his team, and when the Grimm came for them, he touched Nora on the shoulder and touched his Aura to hers.
Winter struck lightning down on her and then she hit the Nevermore coming for them really, really hard.
When they finally made it inside— Jaune calling for cover for Blake, Raven and Qrow having gone ahead— the Grimm did not stop there. They broke the windows open and chased them down the halls. There was the vague notion that they might have had more cover, but Grimm did not care for glass or propriety. They brought the mess inside.
Oscar had a tendency of disappearing, so he kept a close eye on him.
Emerald and Mercury led the way. Jaune held off Grimm breaking through the windows, shattering them open, and Ren and Nora covered them as they kept moving through. Once they hit the threshold, and began descent, the light began to die out and the Grimm on all sides chased them. But the pathways were narrow, and they were built as if Salem had changed her mind many times about where they were supposed to go. Dead ends, false doors. Mercury pointed and said, "Trapdoor," as he yanked Jaune back before he fell down one.
It probably felt normal to Cinder, coming down here. She probably did not register the missing steps, or the windowless darkness, or, indeed, the trapdoors Jaune nearly kept falling in. Emerald caught him the second time.
"Seriously, you've got a knack for this," she said.
A Seer stood in their way. It did not move. The Grimm behind them back off, so Jaune moved to the front, to put himself between his teammates and the Seer. Its long tentacles twitched as if it were cramping. The orb of its head was a swirl of black and red smoke encased in a bone-like shell. The tittering, almost goblin-like laughing bounced off the walls, and suddenly he knew, looking into the ball, that Salem was peering through it.
Its limbs struck out and grabbed Nora by the leg. Ren cut it. Then it grabbed him, too, and Mercury and Emerald knew what they had to do and held off the assault with Blake and Yag. Jaune slunk around them, pressing against the wall in the dizzying chaos, and then he, swordsman of not much merit, drove his sword— half his, half Cinder's— through the skull of the Seer. It cracked open with the sound of bone breaking, and it gushed a viscous, blackened blood down his front and his sword. It hit the ground with a sopping noise in such a rush, and then whatever was left of its leg-like tentacles gave out, and the rest of it cracked again once it hit the stone floor.
Jaune felt a little gross. He let out a long breath.
"Nice one," said Yang. "You've got Grimm goop down your front."
"Thanks," Jaune replied drily. They set off again, allowing Emerald and Mercury to take the lead.
"Wait, is it left or right?" Mercury suddenly said.
"What do you mean, of course it's right," Emerald replied.
Jaune came to a stop behind her. There was a lull in the assault, like a false assurance.
"No, I think it might be left. We passed the funky looking grotesque with the huge tongue."
"Oh, great, leave it up to you two for us to die down here getting lost," Yang said.
"We're not lost," Blake said. "Don't worry. Besides, we can always backtrack."
Jaune really hoped Cinder would let him in, and he really, really hoped that she could answer. In the near dark, so dark his eyes had to strain, she had flame in hand, toying with it between her fingers, watching it with distance.
"Is it right or left past the— the 'funky looking grotesque with the huge tongue'?"
A half smile broke out on her face. It might have been mocking, but he was pretty sure it was not. She said, "Right. But tell Mercury the effort mattered."
Jaune said to Mercury, "It's right, but Cinder said to tell you the effort mattered."
"How is it she's sarcastic even when it's a message being passed through her pet?" Mercury scoffed. "I can't catch a break, man."
"I'm not her pet," Jaune grumbled.
Cinder laughed.
"Not you, too!"
"I'm not agreeing, I just feel sorry for you."
He shook his head at her. But it was like a stone dropping into water. The ripples in him told him that she did not mean that humourously, so he did not laugh. As they went ahead, she disappeared again behind him. If he looked back for her, then it was no secret anymore.
"Is that it?" Weiss asked quietly. "Big door, red light?"
"Big door, red light," Emerald confirmed.
"I'll go in first. Weiss, you stay out here with Ren and Nora. The rest of you, with me."
"We should go in," Nora objected.
"If you need to leave, Ren can hide you both, and you can get out of here quicker than any of us."
Nora looked away, dissatisfied.
"You're more than brawn, Nora. I know you'll protect Ren and Weiss."
There was a howl.
Come in, come in, let me in little piggies… The howl went on, and on, and on. To whom it called, he did not know. It sounded lonely, and sad, and it kept calling. Jaune did not need to break the door down. It was heavy, but it opened easily.
He always saw Cinder first. That was the first part he zeroed in on. Then he saw Summer Rose, crouched in the corner, her head between her knees. Another Seer, its sickly light the only offering to the dark. Then Salem, her back to them, her spiderlike hair poking out in the air as if with greedy hands, her long cloak spilling out across the black stone floor. It was strange to see Salem in the flesh again. She was so much shorter than he thought she would be.
There was a bed, and in it, a wolfy Grimm. It snuffled and growled and then it howled again, and shuffled around in its bed, the blanket pulled halfway up its waist in a crude mockery of a person trying to sleep in a bed. Its snout was wet like a dog, and it smelt a little like one, too.
"Welcome," announced Salem. Her voice bounced off the walls, reverberating in his ears, welcome welcome welcome welcome welcome.
Jaune lowered his sword and shield. Behind him, he heard gasps, and something which sounded like Nora growling in anger.
"I wanted you to see," Salem said. "I wanted you to see what all your heroic delusions are worth. Admit it: you've lost." A brief pause, then she added, borderline smug, "I've won."
Cinder was frozen. She was a fiery thing, and she was not meant to be so still.
"Cinder," he tried, reaching for the only thing he could. "Cinder. It's okay. I'm here now. We'll get out."
"Where have I heard that before?" Salem mused. "You do not know how many like you I have been acquainted with. How many Maiden vessels? How many heedless heroes? But I suppose the difference might be that you succeeded." Salem turned to Cinder. "The first of mine to become the Fall Maiden. That is what makes you what you are. You are all that is needed. One more Relic, and then… and then…"
"It— it can't be," said Blake behind him. With her, Nora and Ren went back and forth with each other— is it? It couldn't— but Emerald and Mercury were silent.
"You monster," rasped Yang sadly, "you complete and utter monster, you made Ruby just like you— you made her like you and you want us to see."
"Of course I want you to see," Salem said.
"We should have come sooner! We could've stopped her! We could've saved her, Ruby, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry—" but the wolf howling cut her off, and then the Seer strung Yang up on its tentacles and thrashed her against the wall. Blake went after her, trying to catch her in time, and then from the black stone beneath, a shadowed hand sprung up like a dead flower and caught her, slamming all of her and her limbs to join Yang. It happened one by one; Nora and Ren tried to hold them off and then so did Emerald and Mercury, but no one had Jaune's back.
"Cinder," he tried again, "please tell me—"
"That she has a plan?" Salem interrupted, and then laughed at him, then like conducting an orchestra, gestured at the air, and a hand covered his mouth.
The wolf got out of the bed on ungainly limbs, like she was learning to walk. When she stood on all four paws upright, she was about as tall as Jaune. That black goop dripped from her tail, and her snout, and her big ears.
"It's stuffy down here," said Salem. "Let's go to the receiving hall, shall we? I suspect the boy Oscar is here, with cunning Ozma. I want him to see, too. We don't know where the last Relic is, after all. Perhaps this might wizen him up, to talk." She hummed to herself.
Cinder did not look at him. Surely she had something up her sleeve. She was clever, and he could help her if she needed it, and surely— surely— surely they would both get out of this. A dim part of him was beginning to wonder if that were still true.
Maybe she had been right, that night at the dance, when she had broken through the window and announced her presence in a way he could never ignore. They had run out of time.
His mind swam in the darkness. It was thick and deep, and he wanted to give up, like the hands that held him were sucking out anything left in him. They had been foolish to come. But that idea was unfinished. It was foolish to come, and it had been the only choice. He would die a fool.
Salem placed a hand on Ruby's wolfish shoulder. Cinder stared somewhere else blankly.
Jaune's skin burnt. He felt like he was going to crack with despair, his skin opening up. Not just that, though. Sometimes he ran a little hot, and he thought that maybe sharing a bed meant he got too warm, or maybe the perpetual heat of Vacuo got to him.
Then when he felt like he was going to burn up, he dropped to the ground, and when he came to his senses he made a run for it. He ran like he had never run before, and he ignored the shouts behind him: incoherent screaming, howling, his name, his name, screaming and screaming. Tentacles beating at his feet. But Jaune had long legs, and though he would have once been called clumsy, his balanced cleared, and it felt like the easiest thing in the world to sprint up the uneven stairs, to remember where the traps were, to remember right or left. Right the way they came, left the way back.
He ran until his lungs burnt. He had Grimm biting at his feet and he kept running. He felt one grab him and then it recoiled when it felt his skin turn molten. He kept running when he could hear Salem behind him, angry he had got away, angry that someone had tried to get one over her.
He hoped Cinder used the opportunity to free his friends, because it was that, or he dragged another Maiden down to help him. He kept running. He did not stop. Suddenly, he understood why it was so easy for Cinder to just leave. He hoped she knew that he would come back for her. That it was the same the other way around. That he knew she would come for him.
He ran as fluid as water, as quick as the waves, as steady as the tide. There was no choice about it. There was no stopping, there was no going back. The Grimm roared behind him. He had only looked the next step in front of him, but where was he going?
Jaune was running to ask for help, and, Jaune was running because he was bait. He hoped Ruby-the-wolf came after him, and chased him as far as she could. He hoped Salem was angry.
He thought he might not make it. He was just one person, and of all of them he was not the cleverest, and he was not the swiftest, and he was, in truth, not really the hero either. Salem was wrong about that. He just wanted to help.
When he broke to the surface he nearly fainted. Then he kept running, and dove into cover as he evaded Grimm sweeping in: Nevermores and Grimms he had no name for, those big twisted things from Vacuo with two legs for eyes and five fingers for feet. He had nobody to cover him, and he was running out of time, but not quite. Not quite. Jaune ran.
He found the other Maidens because of the storm. He laughed at the thunder rumbling.
"Jaune?" said Oscar. He feinted behind Qrow. "Jaune? What's happening?"
"Ruby's a wolf and Salem's angry and the others are trapped!" he exclaimed, and then doubled over.
"Ruby's— a wolf?"
"They're HURT! We need to help them!" Jaune coughed. He had never run so fast or such distance, and in heavy armour at that. "Cinder— Cinder—"
"You," Salem growled. "It is futile. You cannot run from it—"
Then the ceiling fell in.
It collapsed on top of them, just like that, like it had been rend up from its foundation and broken down in one fell swoop. He thought at first it had been Salem, but in the rubble and the crumbling pillars, he was certain he knew who did it. He pushed off the heavy beam he was stuck under with ease and then dusted himself off. He searched for Oscar, and found him and helped him up, then searched for the other Maidens, and Qrow, who had turned into a crow.
"Good thinking," Jaune said absently.
He turned and saw Salem on her knees, Cinder mysteriously unhurt. The wolf, Ruby, was beside her. He heard the rest of Evernight beginning to crumble, as supports crashed, as the receiving hall— it must have been that— stood bared to the elements, of the dry dead wind, the shrieking call of the Grimm, the pervading cold.
When the Grimm came, they met lightning and ice and the dark energy of the three Maidens. A three-striped assault, so awesome it would have been beautiful, the sharp strikes of light, the frozen Grimm as perfect as statues, the waves of shadow. Nora sounded excited, yipping and hooting.
But Jaune did not move, because Cinder did not move.
"Cinder, come on," he called. "Come on."
Salem got up from her knees. "Oh, dear child. Do you truly believe that my best and greatest would defect? Cinder Fall? The girl who tore down your schools, and killed your headmasters, and your friend— little Pyrrha Nikos, is that right?" Salem huffed.
Salem wanted the last Relic. She would do everything to keep Cinder, and, if he were right about where Salem's focus was, she wanted Oscar too.
Jaune said, shield up, moving in front of Oscar, "Yes, I do believe that."
"Stupid boy," said Salem.
They held out for as long as they could. Salem watched on indolently. It was no use trying to kill Salem, but they had to try to get out. But Ruby was there with Cinder, and so they were in a bind.
"Ruby?" Yang tried, and then promptly got knocked out by a Chimera. Oscar after her, then Weiss, then Blake, then Qrow, then Jaune, and when he broke out of the Grimm holding him she just summoned more to hold him.
When Salem tortured her with his magic, his mind whited out. It was what Cinder had felt. He had no idea how she stood it for so long, how deep her agony went, how much her hatred.
"Stop," Cinder begged. He had never heard her beg like that. "That's enough."
"There," Salem said. "I stopped. It was simply punishment for trying to run, young Cinder. Nothing more."
"You don't need to hurt him."
"I don't care," Salem snapped.
They were all strung out by the Grimm, now. He could hear something warbling, almost like a cheer, from all of the Grimm. They crowed and sang with Salem's glee.
The only one quiet was Ruby.
"Ruby," Oscar tried again. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry we couldn't help you. I'm sorry that you thought this was your only choice. I wish—" he sobbed, "I wish I had understood."
"Silence," Salem hissed.
But he kept talking, "But you know, I thought that I was just going to become Ozma. That I'd lose myself. You were the one who believed in me first. So let me return it, please?" A Grimm hand covered his mouth, and he yelled around it.
"I said I'd always protect you," said Yang, from where her face was pressed into the ground, rubble digging into her cheek. "Let me do my job!" Then she was silenced.
"We came all this way for you!" Weiss screeched. "You're my partner!"
"We wouldn't be who we are without you," said Blake. "We're your team, and there's no one like you, Ruby, and we'll always come back for you."
"I grow tired of this," Salem bit out. Then they were all silenced.
Jaune burnt. When he tried to run they caught him again, and again. He heard the wolf howl sadly.
"Cinder, Cinder, Cinder," he heard Salem say. He turned his neck as far as it would go so he could see. "It seems we have a mess on our hands."
There was a long pause before Cinder said, "You could let them go. Keep Oscar."
Jaune heard the Maidens squirmed under the Grimm grip. There were storms brewing above, but every time they stirred they quickly weakened again.
"I think not. I let them go last time. And the time before that, they escaped." Salem's voice was like a whip, quick and sharp and painful. "I have one final test for you."
"I have done as you've asked. I secured the power, I brought you back the Relics, we have the old man here—"
"You have not done as I have entirely asked. The connection to the boy is a problem. Your attentions have strayed. You have put your priorities before my own. You have forgotten what made you powerful. Not him, not the Maiden power, me. I lifted you up from nothing."
Jaune tried to resist, but he failed.
"Did you think you would so easily get away without punishment? That you would simply be free from responsibility?" Salem clucked her tongue. The Grimm roared. "One final test, to prove you are truly redeemed."
He could see her. The brush of her fringe over her forehead, the way her ears poked out, the pearl earrings that hung and caught the light, the little stab of her nose, the plushness of her mouth, the curve of her jaw, the swanlike dip of her neck, the jut of her collarbones, the soft slope of her arms, her breasts, her ribs, her waist, her hips, her thighs, her calves, her arms, her hands, her delicate fingers, and her ankles and her feet. If he did not see her, he knew what she looked like in his mind's eye anyway. He wanted to remember.
"I see what you have become, Cinder. More than I could have ever possibly hoped for. You are strong, and violent, and clever, and you could unseat the world, if I let you. Prove it to me. When you were once a frightened little girl, you are the Fall Maiden. When you were dying, you lived. When you lost, you won. Kill the boy, and all is forgiven."
Cinder did not falter.
"I shall never doubt your loyalty again. I… shall take your counsel, and I… shall consider what you think to do with the Relics. The new world you wanted could be yours. I shall help you build it. Truly.
"If you do not kill him… then you will die with them."
Salem offered more than he was expecting. What Nora had said rang in his head. All of the doubt, all of the fear ran through him, but in truth, it went in him and then went out of him. There was no doubt. If there were fear, then he could see through it clearly.
A tear ran down her cheek. He wanted to brush it aside for her. He struggled. Then he stopped struggling, and he tried to tell her through just his eyes that he forgave her. If she struck him down, he forgave her. If she ran, he forgave her. If she could not decide, he forgave her. If Salem killed him first, he forgave her. If she killed Pyrrha, he forgave her. If she killed anybody, touched anybody, whatever crime she committed he already forgave her. Unceasingly, forever, as long as they were bound, and if he had it his way, it would be for the rest of his life. He wanted to tell her that he was with her, whatever she did.
He had seen the fire burning inside her. There was light. For all of the darkness, and whatever monster she thought she was, to him, she was a Maiden.
"I'll prove it to you," said Cinder brokenly. One eye flared with fire the colour of a burning sunset. The other like crushed pearl. "I promise. From now until the end. I'm yours."
"A wise decision," Salem said, crossing her hands in satisfaction, stepping back as if to watch the show.
Cinder stepped forward. She began unsteadily, "I wondered what would happen if one of us died. Carmine and Gillian wondered, too. I think they were fascinated. If he dies, do I die as well?" She turned to Salem. "I don't think I would. It might be a near thing, though."
"The bond is of no consequence. Aura magic is pedestrian."
"You used my Semblance," Cinder said to Jaune. "Thief. That's part of me. That's part of you, too." She summoned a sword, and the embers glittered in the air, dancing away. It was the same shape as his, its dark reflection.
Salem's voice boomed, "Stop dawdling. Kill the boy."
He wanted to remember her. If he died now, and wherever he went next, he wanted to remember her. It was a real madness. She could break him and he would never, ever, ever hold it against her. It was too much. But that was them.
"You miscalculated," Cinder said, turning her head, her profile in sharp, intent relief.
The firestorm was like nothing else. When you swam in the ocean, it was sort of like swimming in a pool. When you got burnt by a hot stove, it was sort of like being burnt by a match. When cried because you were sad, it was a bit like crying because you were happy. But there was nothing like the storm. It just was. Everything was on fire, and who saw fire like that and felt safe?
Jaune felt the Grimm burn away, and he sat up, crawled on his knees. They were black with soot. Cinder put out her glass hand and pulled him to his feet. The fire wiped out all sound.
"Tyrian's dead!" Cinder yelled at Salem. "Jaune killed him. Your allies are gone. Vacuo stands. Hazel betrayed you, Watts is dead— I killed him— Summer Rose is barely a memory, and Ruby Rose is too audacious to stay a wolf!"
For once, Salem said nothing.
"You played the wrong hand against me. Your hatred for the old man blinded you."
"Then you'll die with him," Salem hissed, like a final defence, but it was a weak one.
Cinder covered his back. That was what he had been looking for.
When the four Maidens stood together, the whole of Evernight came down. Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall, who had been waiting for each other, and had found one another, even if the way there was messy. It was destructive and beautiful and everything was burning, everything in sight was on fire, and Salem, too, burnt.
Jaune felt it in his heart, the way bass thumped through right to the centre of your body. He had one job. Get everybody out. He tried to herd them towards the airship, where the path to it was broken and burning and melting. The hallway to it had collapsed in half, and he and Nora helped Oscar across it first, and then when they both turned back they saw a lonely wolf trailing after Weiss. In her mouth, she carried one of Salem's limbs.
He had to find Cinder. He went back.
The path was crumbling. When he found her, Salem was half-melting, half-reforming in the flame— her face melting and dripping in a hot white wax, and then reforming at the same pace, her nose half cut off, half grown again, her hair as tangled as spiderwebs, the flame trying to lick at her eyes and her brow and her cheekbones hollowing and filling out again and again. The rest of her body was as thin and broken and melting, the bone burning black and then regrowing in white, the flesh exposed. Cinder looked like she wanted to say something, but she could not speak. Salem herself could not scream, because she had no mouth Her unseeing eyes watched them not with hatred, but something wholly foreign. Cinder's expression a horror he felt. There was no room for hatred them then, either.
When they broke out of Evernight, what remained of it, anyway, he kept on walking ahead but she had stopped. Then she turned, at the top of the path, and called on the fire again.
The rest of them were already down the long, long way to the ship.
"What are you doing?" he asked her.
"Burning it down. All of it."
He heard something crash, rumble beneath their feet. "You've done enough."
"She'll just come back. It needs to burn for a long time. She needs to stay dead."
"Yeah, and you've done that, so come with us now." Jaune strode over beside her, where the bright fire reflected in her eyes, and made her so bright in the dark.
"No, you don't get it. I don't come out of this in one piece. I'm staying here for as long as I have to."
"No, you're coming with me."
"Do you think Salem lied? Salem kills you slowly with the truth. Or something like it. Something close to the truth." Cinder shook her head at him, whilst it looked like she held up the world with her arms outstretched, the Maiden fire from her arms burning.
He heard Nora call. He ignored it. He said, "If you're staying, so am I."
"No. You go live your life. You fix this mess and you— do you think there was any other end to this but my death? Do you think I so easily escape the consequences of Pyrrha Nikos? Do you think someone like me— someone like me— gets away with it— gets—" She cried, but it was an angry sort of cry, against her will, and she tried to hide it from Jaune.
He stepped closer, gently, and reached out and caught her jaw to gently catch her. He said, "Do you seriously think I'd leave you behind? Or let you sacrifice yourself like this?" Shaking his head, he added, "You know it doesn't work like that. I told you. It's not tit-for-tat, and please— I cannot afford to watch you do this. I just can't take it anymore."
"Someone has to hold her back. It's fitting that it's me."
"It's not," he said quietly, and came closer. He searched the fire like it had an answer, and then hovering closer and closer, he used his Semblance on her. When his met hers, it felt right. That was the only word for it. "The Maiden power is connected to your Aura." He shrugged. "I wonder what would happen."
"That Semblance of yours can certainly do some things," she joked weakly. "But I don't believe it's enough this time."
"What did you tell Ruby? That you had to listen?"
Cinder let out a cry. "I'm trying."
"What do you listen for?"
"Everything in between," she said. "I don't know. You would only know it if you felt it."
"I know something like that," he replied easily.
The fire kept building, and perhaps his Semblance was enough.
Cinder truly had no idea what she meant to him, and he had been afraid of using her vulnerability, of slipping in the cracks. He was, in truth, a little afraid of her, because she was Cinder Fall, magnificent and terrifying, and she was bound to him.
If she would not come at his word, then blame what he did next on the hot blood from her decision to save him and not kill him. It was his foolishness, yes, it was his and it was not hers at all, but she risked everything for him. Part of her. Part of him. The whole picture revealed itself, and suddenly it all made sense, if he just tilted his head a little, and looked properly. Clear as glass.
He needed her to know that he would be with her.
Jaune lifted his other hand up to her jaw and turned her gently to face him, but she did not turn to touch him, her arms still outstretched, tears falling down her face, the soft side and the scarred side. He could not help smiling a secret smile.
"This place can burn," he told her. "Light it up. Not just Evernight, but all the Grimm pools too, and let the fire catch. I know you can do it."
She nodded steadily at him, the movement a little awkward in his hands. Then she said, "And you'll go."
"No, sweetheart, we're staying together," he said, and then he kissed her.
She kissed back. Cinder never did anything by half, and it felt more like she was trying to fit him inside her. Her lips were as soft as he had always suspected. This close, his nose pressed into her cheek, he thought of nothing else. He did what felt right, and then her mouth opened into his and her tongue moved with his, wet and open. There was no chance of it being chaste. She was all fire, a glass cannon, everything and nothing, between all things, in him.
He could feel the saltwater of her tears, the wetness of it. She kept crying. He brushed them aside as he held her, but he did not shush her, just held her and kept kissing. He was not sure how long it went on for. He wanted to press her close against him, and find out what the rest of her felt like, and then he went dizzy at the thought of it, and had to keep kissing her, like it was his one job, like it was the only thing he was made for.
When she fainted forward into his arms, and the kiss broke, he did not stumble, but eased her up into his arms. She was not quite out of it, but she was breathing quick and fast, her little chest easing in and out too much for her own good. He looked up at what she had done, and the pillar of fire touched the sky, and the rest of the barren wasteland burnt, and it would keep burning, for who knew how long. It burnt red, orange, yellow, and perfect.
Jaune tucked Cinder against him, and he began to carry her back.