And we're back once more. The reactions to Peach last chapter were as mixed as I thought they would be. I hope that I got her reasoning across well. We'd actually do similar stuff back at the center I volunteered at, encourage people to place themselves first and be wary of entering romantic relationships, at least while unstable. As people have pointed out, yes Ruby could serve as a source of stability for Jaune, but Peach doesn't want that right now. She wants to train Jaune until he's able to serve as a source of stability for himself. For now, she wants him relying more on her than others, since she's a professional and there's far less danger of Jaune getting bad advice or becoming overly reliant. There are a lot of good reasons for her to be putting off his romantic pursuits, at least for the time being. That may change in the future, depending on how well Jaune develops.
"Crayons?" he asked.
"Crayons," she said.
Jaune sighed and looked at Peach's hands, holding a box of crayons and several blank pieces of paper. He shook his head, but took them from her nonetheless. "Alright, what am I going to be doing this time?"
"I just want you to have a coloring session, a mindful exercise. Let thoughts of the outside world, be it about the past, the present, or the future, just fade away. Focus just on the drawing. I'll even turn on some music too."
Jaune nervously eyed the posters on her wall, recalled the harsh screeching he sometimes caught her listening to when he came to the office. The thought of it made him wince.
"Don't worry, it'll just be some nice, simple piano," Peach said with a sly smile showing she knew very much how 'particular' her musical tastes were. "Unless you have some other request?"
"No, piano sounds fine."
"Good, good. Come here, you can use my desk to do your drawing, okay?" Peach rose from her seat and gestured for him to take it, which he did without protest.
"But what am I going to be drawing?" he asked her. "Anything?"
"No, not anything. I want you to draw four things in particular. Four emotions: anger, sadness, fear, joy." She sat down on the plush seat beside the couch that Jaune usually took. She took out her scroll and started swapping through the apps. "I want you to draw their manifestations, in whatever way you want. Whatever comes to you when you think of those four, draw it out. It can be abstract or specific, whatever you want. Just capture those feelings, as you see them."
Jaune hummed and spread out his supplies on the desk, feeling a little like he'd gone back in time a few years. They'd had crayons back in the vault, though they were rationed out, just a few crayons per child for their lifetime. It'd been a long time since he's scribbled his away.
Peach tapped a few commands into her scroll, and then the speaker on her desk booted up. It began to softly whisper piano notes to him, quiet and soothing. He pried open the pack of crayons, picked out a few random colors and stared down at the pile of paper before him.
He bit his lip, trying to think over how he would go about this. Peach had given him free reign when it came to visualization, but that autonomy left him without direction. He stared down at the blank paper, toying limply with a few crayons.
Joy. He could start off with that… yeah, that would be nice. So what was it that made him happy? A thing? Or a landscape… yeah, yeah a landscape. A setting. Now what kind of setting…
He took a pink crayon and scratched it against the paper, marking out a crude circle of pink scribbles. He then took a brown crayon and drew a simple rectangle sprouting down from the pink, making a very basic cherry blossom tree. It was the same sort of tree as that which stood in the center of Beacon's gardens.
From there, he took just about every crayon in box and drew out dozens of tiny dots as flowerbeds. A yellow circle in the sky served as the sun, and for good measure, he even took the black crayon and gave it a smiley face. A light blue color filled in the sky as well as the pond in which the cherry-blossom was planted.
Finally, he drew two stick figures, side-by-side. One was a bit taller than the other. On the shorter one, he colored a basic triangle over the waist, a skirt. They stood close to one another, but somehow it didn't feel quite right to him. He scowled, looking at the two figures, before a grin popped on his face, alongside an idea.
He added onto their arms, making the ones nearer to one another longer, angled them out. Their arms were now uneven and a little bent, but that was fine. It looked they were holding hands.
Then he added in several more stick figures, crowded around but giving the couple a respectful distance. A group. No one was alone.
Joy, complete.
He moved on to another paper. This time, he once more constructed the cherry-blossom, but it had no petals. It was just a bare trunk, grey this time, with poorly drawn, jagged branches that spread out leafless in the air. He used more grey to depict the many flowers around, all dead. Black filled in the night, with a single full moon in the sky serving as the sole observer to a lone stick-figure on the ground, staring absently at the dead tree and the dead flowers.
Sadness, complete.
Another paper, and this time, he went straight to red. There was the cherry-blossom, and there was the fire. Well, there was crude, jagged lines of red, orange and yellow that he drew coming out from his simple depiction of the tree. Those same hot colors dominated the rest of the drawing, covering the ground, consuming the space where the flowers once were. The sky was grey, choked by ash. The stick figure was once more alone.
Anger, complete.
Again with the tree. It had leaves, pink scratchings of wax. A smattering of multi-colored flowers covered the ground. There was now only one stick figure, alone.
Fear, complete.
Jaune put down the crayons and stretched out his fingers, made slightly sore by the scrawling. He hadn't done anything like this in upwards of a decade. Now there were four pieces of paper, just as Peach had asked for him, and a little smile fell on his face. It was strangely satisfying, completing the task.
"I'm done," he said.
"Great!" Peach stopped looking through her scroll and hopped up from her seat. She went back to her desk and switched places with Jaune, who returned to his usual cushions as Peach reviewed his work.
She took time to observe each one, seriously dissecting their construction. She turned off the speaker and the piano music, leaving the room sounding of nothing other than her shuffling the papers and her clinking chains.
"Art can be a great tool in therapy," she eventually said. "It helps people represent feelings and thoughts that they can't exactly put into words." She glanced his way. "Tell me Jaune, did you enjoy this exercise?"
He shrugged and said, "it wasn't too bad. Kind of relaxing. A little bit of thinking."
Peach nodded and looked back to his drawings. "The goal of things like this is mindfulness, relaxing and letting other problems seep away. Not only that, but introspection. Tell me, which of these drawings do you identify with the most?"
He needed no time to think before answering: fear
Peach nodded again and shuffled through the papers. "Is that this one?" she asked, holding up the paper for sadness.
"No, it's the one with only one stick figure in the garden, and not the one where everything's on fire."
"Gotcha," she said, shuffling through to the correct piece. "This looks pretty nice," she said. "What about it represents fear?"
"The person's alone."
"Yes, yes he is."
"After some experience… there's nothing worse to me than being stuck in a pretty place and not being able to share it with people I like. I like pretty places, I really do. I even like being in them alone sometimes, 'cause it's relaxing." He shook his head. "But I don't… I don't want the option to be taken away. It feels like that one… that drawing is an alternative I don't like."
"I understand," Peach said. Her eyes flicked to a different drawing. "And is there any particular reason you drew the moon as being whole?"
Shit.
"No."
"Hm, alright. Just a bit easier to draw, I guess?"
"Yes."
She chuckled and muttered, "Can't fault you on that." She placed the pages back down on her desk and turned to him, another one of her typical sweet smiles. "I'm very happy that you took this exercise seriously Jaune. And I love how you arranged it, the same setting but under different situations. Very creative."
He chuckled and suppressed a smile. "Thanks."
"Now, is that what you're really afraid of? Being alone."
"Yeah, yeah that's probably the biggest thing."
"You know, your friends are all glad to have you," Peach said. "They won't be leaving you any time soon."
He winced. If they knew the truth of who he was, then they'd be leaving quick. Blake knew, if only a little bit, and because of that, she avoided him. They hadn't spared another word to each other since she confronted him in the infirmary; he always saw a hint of judgement in her eyes whenever he happened to catch them.
Then again, there was no need for any of them to know. In fact, it would be impossible. After all, he'd left that life a world behind him, and was now quite adept at putting on the act of a civilized, respectable human being.
"I guess they won't," he said. "But… what if they're taken away? I mean, that's what happened before."
"True," Peach said. She dolefully shrugged. "The world takes things away from us, and that's something we just have to accept. There's no way to change that. But it gives us things, too. Instead of worrying about having your friends taken away, I think it'd be better to focus on how they were given to you." She shook her head. "No, how you earned them. You earned your friends, Jaune. You did it before, and you've done it again."
I did it by lying and covering my tracks.
"Sure," he said, tersely flicking his eyes away to the floor.
"Jaune, if you were to give me a list, to the best of your abilities, what would you say are some of the biggest things contributing to your low self-esteem?
"Up until now, I've assumed that much of your difficulties spawned from the events with your team, about the feelings of guilt and failure you associate with that. Am I correct?"
"Yes."
"Is there anything else bothering you?"
Peach raised one eyebrow. Jaune saw it when he glanced back at her, but he pretended like he hadn't and looked away once more. The floor was strangely interesting at this time of the day, after all; he just couldn't keep his eyes away. It was just so… floor.
"Jaune, what else is there that's bothering you?"
"Nothing."
"Lying to me does you no favors,"' Peach said. "I'm only helping you, you know that; I've told you that, and I'll keep telling you that and trying my best to prove it. Whatever it is, you don't need to be afraid about me judging you. I won't."
I seriously doubt that.
"It's fine, really."
"I can tell from the way you're acting that it really isn't. Your speech, your posture, it's all guarded. You don't need to hide anything from me, Jaune."
"I'm not hiding anything."
She scowled, but eventually gave up with a sigh. "Alright fine, I can't force you… but I will remind you that it is only in your best interest to do so. I'll give you until next session, alright?"
"Next session?"
"Yes, I'll drop it for now, and I expect you to think it over and come up with a way to broach the topic of your additional issues next session. Perhaps you just need some time to think over how best to tell me."
"There's nothing wrong, Peach." He knew there was no convincing her, but he hoped nonetheless that she would get the message that he really didn't want to talk about it. Then again, she didn't really care for what he wanted or not, did she? She was more focused on what he needed… or what she thought he needed.
"Next session," Peach said. "You have until next session, when I'll start pestering you again."
"I thought you said you weren't going to force me?"
"No, but I did say I was going to push you. I can't make you tell me, no matter what." She crossed her arms over her chest, and the chains around her waist jingled as the clinked against one another. "I will push you, encourage you, try to convince you. I'll spend all the time I need on that until we get to the root of your problems, or you can save us both a lot of time and come out with it on your own. After all, you promised me, you promised yourself, you promised your friends, that you would commit to this, didn't you?"
A welt of guilt formed in his gut. "Yes…"
"Now, there's nothing wrong with you continuing to be apprehensive about certain topics," Peach said. Her voice was a lighter tone now, less firm than it had been a moment before, comforting. "Especially if it's difficult. I'm not judging you for your reservation, and I hope that you don't judge yourself for it. It's entirely natural. I just really want you to try and overcome it, okay? Even if it's difficult. So next session. We'll talk about it then."
He swallowed.
"Okay."
His hands shuddered slightly. Whether that was because of lingering nervousness from his latest session with Peach and all its implications, or because of the little bout of withdrawal he still went through occasionally, or because of some combination thereof, he didn't know. All he could do was take out his pack of nicotine gum and put a tab of it in his mouth.
The fight before him didn't much capture his interest, partly because he'd known what the outcome would be from the moment Goodwitch announced the match. From his position in the stand, he watched Pyrrha annihilate Team CRDL while he sat with the rest of his team as well as RWBY. Although his partner's prowess was certainly impressive, he didn't exactly find fights 'entertaining'.
He'd long since stopped thinking of violence as 'fun'.
Nevertheless, he was the first to start clapping and the last to stop when Miss Goodwitch declared Pyrrha the victor. His partner was still in the green, having annihilated CRDL while only just breaking a sweat. A feat he'd accomplished himself, though only though the use of his dirtier tactics.
She got out of the arena without incident and took a seat besides him.
"Great as usual," he said, jabbing his elbow in her ribs. A normal compliment. It wasn't too gratuitous since he knew that that would only cause her concern for her fame to flare. He didn't care, really, and he made sure to act in kind.
"Thank you," Pyrrha replied, smiling and gratefully accepting his praise, as well as the praise of her other friends.
A crack of Miss Goodwitch's whip stopped any and all conversation in the room. "Would anyone like to volunteer for the next spar?"
One hand rose from the crowd.
"Yeah, I'd like to fight," said a student with silver hair. He held a cocky smirk on his face.
"Mr. Black, thank you for your enthusiasm. Would anyone like to volunteer to fight as well?"
"Actually, I was wondering if I could make a request," he said. He looked across the room and pointed directly at Jaune. "The guy with the chainsaw. Never fought anything like that before, seems like it'd be fun."
"Well Mr. Arc? Would you like to fight?" Miss Goodwitch asked.
There was a pang of paranoia, of course. He'd been called out specifically, pointed at, made the center of attention. A prickling sensation scratched around under his skin, but he held his breathe and forced that away, before releasing the air. Crocea Mors was a unique weapon that had garnered a few questions and stares during his time at Beacon. The curiosity it aroused was wholly natural.
There was nothing amiss here.
"Not a problem," Jaune said, rising from his seat. He cracked his knuckles.
"Then you were all like, 'Ha! I am the victor!'" Nora proudly proclaimed, stabbing a fork into her chicken as she did so, hard enough to cause the entire cafeteria table to shake. "Best fighter!"
"Not really," Jaune said with a shrug, benignly cutting up his own beef.
"Oh come, take our kudos at least this one time," Yang said. "I mean, you smoked the guy."
Jaune shook his head. "Yeah… but… it felt too easy. It was weird. I don't think he was giving it his all. I mean, it felt like he just stayed in the preliminary part of the fight, like he didn't actually commit. I kept waiting for him to strike out or start attacking or do something." He sighed and took a bite of his meat, gnawing out the juicy flavor before swallowing, "I mean, even Miss Goodwitch chewed him out for not following up on anything."
"That's because I didn't want to," said a voice from behind.
Jaune turned and saw none other than Mercury Black standing a few feet behind him, though he wasn't alone. He recognized two of his teammates with him as well, a girl with green hair and another with black. They all wore the distinctive outfits of Beacon's Mistralian counterpart, Haven. Mercury took a seat just beside him on the table, making him scoot away and inch and turn more bodily to face him. His fellow student wasn't posturing in any aggressive way, however, casually leaning on the table and sporting an equally casual smile. Jaune remained on guard nonetheless.
"You did really good," Mercury said, "like, really good. I can tell you're probably gonna end up fighting in the tournament, huh? Especially with Nikos as your partner." Mercury nodded to Pyrrha, who politely waved back. "Just figured I'd follow up our fight with some banter: it's just the most 'sportsmanlike' thing to do, dontcha think?"
"Guess so."
"Anyway, Mercury Black, new arrival from Haven" he said, extending a hand for Jaune to shake, which he did (though not without a second of trepidation). They each possessed a grip that was noticeably forcible and more than firm. They each appreciated that.
"But why did you hold back in the fight?" Jaune asked.
It was his teammate who answered, the one with black hair: "Strategy. We don't want to give out all our abilities before the possible competition, after all."
"So you're planning on entering the tournament?" Weiss asked, perking up at the mention of cold tactics and competition.
"That we are," she replied. "We just wanted to get a feel for some of the other major players… I heard that team JNPR is one of the best around."
Jaune bristled. So they had possessed an ulterior motive, huh?
"And Mercury did really want to fight against a chainsaw."
"Guilt as charged," he said, and it was hard to dislike the smile on his face. "But man, you and I got to catch up sometime after the tournament and go all out together, I really want to see the full potential of the chainsaw, man."
"Maybe."
"But yes, we're trying to be strategic, since we want to win, of course," the girl continued. "But strategic hardly translates to heartless. I want everyone here to get along well, competitor or not." Her smile was saccharine.
He calmed slightly, paranoia becoming slightly assuaged. It was only natural that they'd be probing the competition while keeping themselves reserved, a smart strategy given the tournament was near. Hell, he'd certainly been hearing Weiss talk about it a lot. And of course Pyrrha, with her naturally competitive spirit and history, was itching to perform well too. He didn't really have any right to judge this team, if his own friends were caught up in the same sort of thinking, now did he?
"Alright, not a problem," he said. "I can get where you're coming from, and nice of you to still try and be friendly." Affirm. Peach had told him. Affirm people's actions; if you agree with or like something they did, say it. It was just one good little skill to include into your interpersonal communication.
Cinder looked quite pleased by his statement, letting her smile widen. She really was a pretty woman. No, beautiful. Really, what was it with all the people around here, being attractive as hell? Heck, her smile was particularly enticing, wet lips under sparkling eyes.
Hm, was he staring?
He blinked and glanced away, damn hormones could still act up every now and again. Best not to look like a creep to every nice-looking girl that comes by, lord knows he'd taken long enough to get over Weiss.
"I was examining you in the fight," she said. "I must admit, I found your form very impressive." She put an inflection in the last world, let the syllables dance in a noticeable manner.
Huh, maybe it's a part of an accent? I mean, she's from Mistral, right?
"Thanks," he said, shrugging and swerving around the compliment as he usually did. "Nothing much."
"No really, you were a spectacle," she said. "But I don't actually think I've introduced myself just yet." She leaned across the table, hand extended. "I'm Cinder Fall, lovely to meet you."
"Same," he said, clasping her hand in his own. It was calloused, just as much as any other huntress or huntsman he'd shook hands with, a clear sign of her work. Nevertheless, it was clear that she must put in some kind of skincare effort, since her fingers still retained a silky lack of friction, smooth and soft.
She shook his hand gently, then twisted her fingers and let them remain entwined with his for a single lingering moment that mimicked a kind of intimacy which brought some heat to his neck. If he didn't know any better, then he might have mistook it for flirtation.
But man, who the hell would want to flirt with me of all people?
When she retracted her hand, Cinder was still leaning over the table. She crossed her arms so that they folded over one another just under her breasts, making her bust more prominent than it otherwise would be.
It didn't seem like that comfortable a position, but Jaune had noticed long ago that girls always seemed to settle into weird spots. Like, Ruby always crossed her legs under her while sitting, and Amata would try to lay back on desks, or kick her feet up against the wall. Girls were just more bendy, at least more than he. So he wouldn't judge Cinder if she was gonna hike herself up like that.
However, it still required on his part no small amount of cordial willpower to avoid checking out her rack. He focused on her eyes instead.
"I'd love to spar against you myself," Cinder said.
"Why, so you can spy on me a little more?" Only half-joking.
"No, because I think you and I can have a lot of fun together," she said while coyly twirling one lock of dark hair around her finger.
Hm, sparring is generally pretty fun… though this girl probably still has an ulterior motive. She definitely just wants to check out my abilities some more… but I could do the same, couldn't I? I mean, getting a feel for what she's capable of could certainly help out the team—
"Nope!" All of the sudden, Ruby was directly behind him, hands on his shoulders, and she'd wrenched him back, almost making him tip back out of his seat. "Sorry, but Jaune and I are working hard on stuff right now, special stuff, secret stuff, okay? And he needs to keep working more with his team too, for the first mission and the tournament. Can't really make time for you." She smiled wide. "Sorry!"
What? But getting some more intel on the potential enemy was valuable, and even putting aside the Machiavellian undertones of his planning, Peach had told him it was a good idea to start prodding for more opportunities to be kind to people beyond his current friends, if not to make new friends than just to engage more socially. And he was well aware of his own penchant for paranoia, such that it could very well be possible he was just blowing out of proportion a reasonable and friendly offer. This was just the sort of effort he'd promised to Peach.
"Well, I could still probably—"
"Sorry Jaune, but I was actually thinking of upping our training schedule," Pyrrha said.
"Really?"
"Yes, I was talking about it with Nora and Ren earlier today."
"Huh, we were?" Nora asked, confused for a moment, before realization clicked in her mind, and she hurriedly smiled and nodded along. "Yup, I remember, a lot more training, and talking, and studying and stuff. More stuff. Right Ren?"
"Yes."
"Oh… well if I'm gonna be that busy, then sorry. Not sure I can make the time."
Cinder chuckled darkly.
"Not a problem, not a problem. Though if you ever have some spare time soon"– she slipped him a piece of paper across the table and winked –"just call me." With that, she rose from her seat, departing with her teammates following after. He didn't fail to notice how sensually her hips swayed.
He looked down at the scrap of paper in his hands, something she'd evidently prepared and had been keeping in her pocket. Black lettering displayed a full scroll-number, presumably hers. Hm, she must really want to see more of him in action, get a feel for him herself. Although, in all honesty, it was likely that she was just using circumlocution, that her real target was his own abilities or even Pyrrha, and she was trying to pry information out that way. Conniving, to be sure.
I mean, what other reason would she have?
He shook his head. Peach had told him to look on the brighter side of things... so maybe she really was just trying to be friendly? After all, the exchange students had only arrived a little while ago, so she could very well just be seeking some company for herself and her team, taking the lead in socializing in a way that he had never done. If he ever got the time, then maybe he would give her a chance.
After he finished making her a contact, he put his scroll away and looked back up, then felt some mild surprise upon seeing the others. Ruby had sat back down, and was now glaring into her cup of water, as if she wanted to murder the liquid inside. Yang was sending him a sidelong scowl from the corner of her eyes, whereas Weiss lack such finesse (or, more accurately, care for his perception) and scowled at him directly. Blake sighed and rolled her eyes before turning her attention once more to her book. Ren was as stoic as usual. Nora huffed and turned away from him. Pyrrha looked almost worried, biting her lip.
He eyed them all with growing confusion. Had something happened that he missed?
"What?" he asked.
"Well that's nice," Peach said. "Good line of thinking there Jaune. If you ever have some free time, then yeah, absolutely follow up on it. The more socializing you can get, the better." Peach smiled and clapped her hands. "Happy to see you're already doing your best to incorporate our lessons."
"Yeah, yeah I was thinking ack to what we've been talking about, what you've been teaching me," Jaune said. He absentmindedly toyed with the slinky in his hands. It was a new one that Peach had bought after he'd ruined the old one, still tinny and simple.
"Also, are you absolutely sure she wasn't hitting on you?" Peach asked. "Because it honestly sounds like she was hitting on you, from what you said."
"Yes, I'm sure. She didn't give off any of those vibes at all."
Peach raised one eyebrow, but eventually wound up shrugging. "Alright. If she does try anything overtly romantic, let her down easy, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, I will. Not like anybody but Ruby can really get my attention anyway."
"No, no they cannot," Peach said, laughing slightly. He was cute, he really was. Maybe, in time, he would get to live out his romantic desires.
For now, however, they had other things to attend to.
"I trust you've thought over what we talked about last session?"
Jaune stopped playing with the slinky. It rattled slightly as the last vestiges of prior energy died away in the form of minute movement, until it became still.
"Yeah, yeah I have." He sighed and shifted, laying back on the couch and adopting that most stereotypical position for all therapy patients. "I've thought it all over."
"Well then, let me hear it."
He closed his eyes.
Breathe deep. Hold. Release.
She'd told him that she would never judge him, ever. Time to put that to the test, huh?
Breathe deep. Hold. Release.
"It all started right after I left home:"
I'd never seen the outside world before then. It was as amazing as it was scary. The sky, the dirt, the feeling of the breeze on my skin… it was all so new. I couldn't stop staring at everything around me. Every rock, every scraggly bush, every dirty cloud, every ruin. I was blown away by all of it.
Then I was shot.
It couldn't have been more than a few minutes that I spent outside my town, before I was shot in the shoulder. Christ, I can still remember how much that hurt. I hadn't felt anything that bad in… forever. It was the worst pain I'd ever known up to that point. I dropped to the ground and crawled to a nearby rock outcropping, where I propped myself up against a boulder and drew my pistol.
"Come on out pal!" I heard someone yell. It was a rough voice, mean sounding. "Not making nothing easier for yourself right now!" More bullets hit the rocks around me. "Come on out and let us shoot ye! Then maybe we'll kill you quick!"
I heard some other people laughing too, and I'd never been more afraid. The first thing to happen to me when I left home, the first step of my adventure, was for all of it to end, right then and there.
I couldn't let that happen. I became… simpler. I thought on instinct, do or die. Kill or be killed.
I peeked around the corner of the boulder, readied my gun and fired.
I'd never killed anyone before that. I'd needed to fight my way out of my village, but I hadn't killed anybody. I knew who they all were, had trained with them. I just ran our used my baseball bat to hurt them, disarm them. I just escaped.
Here, though, there would be no escape.
I saw that there were four of them. Two were armed with guns, another two were charging at me. I steadied my aim and fired. The two charging at me dropped. I kept pulling the trigger, but nothing more would come out. It was just clicking. I pulled back just before the others could get a good shot at me. That was when I started shaking. My hands, my body, my everything. I'm pretty sure it was from some combination of shock from my wound and shock from what I'd just done. But everything was going by so fast that I didn't have time to think, hesitate.
I tried to reload my gun, but with one arm feeling like it was on fire every time I tried to move it, it was hard. Not to mention: I really just couldn't stop shaking. I was afraid, too. I could hear them screaming at me, running, coming closer. I tried to breathe deep, calm myself. I managed to reload my gun just in time.
One of them came around the corner, and I fired desperately, wildly. I fired a couple rounds into his chest. He didn't die right away. No, he started gasping, wheezing. The look on his face… I don't think I'll ever forget it. Never.
He was terrified. He was in pain. He was… was dying.
I fired a few more times, and I was too shocked to be accurate with it… just firing. He collapsed— eventually.
I'll never, ever forget that.
The other one came around then, from the other side of the boulder. He raised his gun and I didn't have the time to raise my own.
Then there was a crack, and his brains were blown out. They splattered all over me while the rest of his body collapsed.
I couldn't think. I couldn't feel. It was like everything had all of the sudden just become nothing.
"You okay kid?" Someone asked me, the man who'd saved my life. A mysterious stranger. I wouldn't meet him again for a long time but…
Jaune sighed.
"That was the first time I ever killed anyone," he told Peach. "Wouldn't be the last, either."
He kept his eyes closed. He didn't want to see, didn't want to have the slightest inkling as to what her reaction would be, just that he could imagine—
"Oh Jaune, that's so terrible," Peach said. "I can't even imagine how painful that must have been for you."
He opened his eyes. He glanced over, and the expression on Peach's face was… hurt. It was that kind of empathetic pain, when one reaches out and mimics in some small way the pain felt by another by the natural human care for their kind.
Jaune sighed and brought his hand up to his shoulder, feeling the scar there. It was his first ever bullet wound. It would not be his last. "Getting shot wasn't too bad in the end, but yeah… it hurt a lot."
"That's not what I meant," Peach said. "I mean, taking another person's life…"
Is terrible, I know.
"It can be one of the most difficult, painful things for a human being to go through. Especially for someone like you."
"Someone like me? What's that supposed to mean?"
"Someone as caring and empathetic as yourself… I can't imagine the harm that experience did to you."
Caring and empathetic?
"Peach, I'm not so sure you're the most qualified judge of character…"
"And I'm not so sure you are either, young man." She crossed her hands over her chest. "Time and time again, over and over, you've shown a great trend towards compassion; to your friends, to strangers, to humanity as a whole. Someone like yourself… having to kill must have been horrendous. Everyone deserves to keep their innocence for as long as they can.
"And it makes sense, given the high standards you set for yourself and your strong moral direction, that you would feel guilty for that, that you would draw on killing as another source for self-hate. We need to defy that."
He… wasn't quite sure he was hearing her right.
"Wait… you… you don't think what I did was bad?"
"You were defending yourself. You were victimized Jaune, of course it wasn't a bad thing to do, though it's clearly traumatized you."
But that's not all of it…
"But that's—"
"The truth," Peach said. "The very fact that you feel bad for what you did is proof enough for your character."
Wait… was it? He scrunched his brow, thinking.
No, no Peach didn't know all of it, not how many and not how brutal it all had been. This… this first time… it was just the tip of the iceberg.
He was too afraid to tell her that.
"Okay…"
"Yeah," Peach said, "killing is a very, very hard thing to do, unless you're some kind of sociopath— which you certainly are not." She sighed, heavily. "It sounds like you've been forced through some very bad situations, Jaune."
You don't know the worst of it.
"But it's something that's sadly unavoidable for many in our field."
That perked his head up. "Have you…?"
"Yes."
"Oh…"
"I was on a detachment with another group of huntsmen a few years ago, providing relief to a few villages that were being struck by a Grimm migration. Some bandits got together to try and take advantage of the situation and… well, things turned out nasty.
"Many of the other staff here have as well. Oobleck likes to focus on ancient history because he's seen what people can do to each other, looks for answers for a better future by examining the past. Goodwitch and Ozpin have each faced down their fair share of non-Grimm foes. The only stories that Port doesn't tell are the ones where he has to deal with people. Huntsman and huntresses are charged with upholding the law, besides just killing Grimm. We wind up facing the most dangerous criminals.
"It's rough, for everyone. Taking a life damages all parties in one way or another."
"Yeah, yeah it does."
"This really helps explain some things," Peach said. "Well, with how much you talked about your homeland being awful, I could already somewhat assume this being the case.
"Still, thank you for telling me." She looked him directly in the eyes. "Really, that must have been hard for you, and I appreciated how you're willing to trust in me and the process." She smiled. "Thank you for committing."
He hummed but said nothing, allowed himself to feel some mild satisfaction at her praise.
He hadn't shared everything, not at all, but this was a start, wasn't it?
"Now we've already established that your past weighs on you so much… so how about we try to focus a bit more on the present for now?" Peach asked. "I can tell you over and over about how killing doesn't outright make you a bad person, but I understand you won't believed all of it; at least, not for now." She reached across her desk, picked up his notebook. "So how about we go through and review your positives, hm? Take a look at all the good things that have been happening to you in the last few weeks. We can spend the rest of this session just talking about all the nice things that have been happening, okay? Especially after you powered through that retelling."
"Yeah… yeah that sounds nice."
"Right, it's always good to focus on the present, since things are often going better than you think."
"You think he was just turning you down, or is he really that much of an idiot?"
"He appeared sincere, which puts him on the side of idiocy… either that, or he possesses more nuance than I anticipated," Cinder said. She sat with Emerald in their dorm, the shower currently running and Mercury annoyingly whistling a scratchy tune as he bathed.
"I'd bet on nuance. Someone good enough to get on the Commander's bad side can't be that blind," Emerald said. "And after what we saw him do against Mercury… yeah, he's definitely a good fighter. Got that confirmed."
"We already had it confirmed after the Commander told us," Cinder replied. "He's good enough a fighter to tell us when he sees another person of ability. No, Arc's prowess was never in question." She sighed and pulled out her scroll, opening up a file that showed everything they had on Jaune Arc, the 'Steve' who'd captured her attention so long ago. "By having Mercury fight him, I wanted to gleam some information on his semblance, but that seems an unknown still denied to us." She scowled. If only they could enter into Beacon's files again… but a security sweep had forced them to shutter their entryways to the system, with that useless Watts saying it would take time for them to infiltrate again.
"You still want to look into Nikos, too?" Emerald asked.
"No, we're shelving those plans," Cinder replied. "We should be able to influence whomever we need at Amity, and it's not worth the risk of tipping off Arc. He and his friends will surely buy the cover that I was simply flirting, but expanding our interest to others around him?"
"You really think he's that paranoid?"
"Haven't you seen the way he behaves?" Cinder asked. "Guarded, back against the wall, looking over his shoulder habitually, huddled, coiled a spring… except for when he's around his friends, which implies protectiveness." She shook her head. "No, better just to keep an eye on him and him alone. We cannot, I repeat, cannot, afford to let him slip through our grasp. He's currently the lynchpin we need to secure the Commander's loyalty."
Emerald nodded. What little she'd seen of the Commander and his operation had proven how industrious and useful he would be as an ally, especially with the White Fang being far more erratic and unreliable. Their prime goal for being undercover in Beacon anyway was just to secure the best position from which to sabotage the tournament, and that meant causing as little trouble as they could for now so as not to be discovered. That gave them little leeway with how much investigation could be managed, much of which naturally went towards the maiden. It was a good use of what time they could spare, keeping an eye on Arc. He was valuable.
"If I can't seduce him, then we can at least get as much information on him as we can," Cinder said. "Our efforts so far have already shown some interesting details…"
"Like Ruby Rose?"
"Exactly," Cinder chuckled. "That's the sort of thing we can exploit."