Transcript 1: Decision time
"It's not the right look!"
Gale tossed the dress back onto the chair behind her and handed Lina the next one. "Why did you pick it then?"
"It seemed… opera-like. And it was such a nice colour."
"I know you like green, but we've looked at eighteen dresses so far and none of the green ones have even got a look in." She hooked the shoulder straps over a silver clothes hanger and placed it back on the rack behind her. "And it's only a theme. Qualifications for opera-styled outfits are open for interpretation."
"But we worked for days on it! It's got to be perfect!"
"Well then how about something like this?" Gale clicked over the marble tiles of Briggs & Celeste to the next rack and reefed out a strapless purple dress with layered frills around the hem.
"I'm not wearing that, it'll make me look like a pineapple."
"It will not!"
"Besides" Lina protested. "It's purple!"
Gale sighed. "I know it's purple, Rosy. It's not going to make everyone think 'look, that must be the Lavenders' daughter'. They already think of you as Lina, not someone dragged around behind a celebrity name."
"I'd rather they think of me as Rosy" said the girl, her fox tail drooping like her head as she hugged her shoulders.
"Many of them do already. But distancing yourself from every aspect of your family is not the way to go. You still care about them, don't you?"
"Of course I do!"
"Then at least wear what you have been given from them with pride!" said Gale, gesturing to the light purple bob on Lina's head and her long orange fox tail. "You can't change that."
Lina sat silent on the tiny stool in the back of the changing room, hugging her shoulders with her head drooped nearly as much as her tail. Gale didn't know a lot of things about growing up in her situation, there wasn't much to be proud of when you were so different to the things which were held in such high regard by everyone else. The fancy dinners with complete strangers for no reason other than their reputation. The cameras and living constantly at the edge of the limelight, afraid of being pushed in, yet resentful that she didn't share in it, both with the constant misidentification and questions about following in her news-reader sister or her father's footsteps. She didn't want to be known as a Lavender. She didn't even want to be Lina, after the recent flowery revelation about that name.
"I just want to… get away from it all. To live my life, not theirs. I just want to be Rosy."
"All is too much" said Gale soothingly, stooping down to comfort her. "Even Nero has ties to his parents now, and he ran away from them for a much more serious matter. They've given you more than you can realise."
Lina sniffed and wiped her finger up under her eyes, as though to stop the tear before it even came out. Gale grasped her arm gently and held up the dress in front of her.
"Look at it. This dress is you. Part Rosy, part Lavender. Partly purple, yet completely different to your name and your hair."
Lina raised her eyes above her crossed arms just a fraction. It was pretty...
"This dance is you. Partly made by your family perfectionist streak, partly a whole new creation of your own which your parents and sister would never be able to do. You may not agree with some of their attitudes or the way they interact with everyone else, but you can take those specific parts away. If you throw away the whole thing, what is there left to build on? To grow from?"
Lina slowly removed her right hand from her shoulder, and gently plucked the dress from Gale like a rich ripe grape from a vine and inspected the valleys and seams of fabric. It didn't look like a pineapple in the slightest.
"It's perfect."
"It's the perfect stalemate."
Four days later and the newly assembled pod system hadn't even been opened. Amber still lay breathless – almost literally by now – on her bed, the curtains drawn to block out intruding light from the tower windows. Glynda Goodwitch was still taking it in.
"It can kill people and force their life into someone else. Are they even the same person anymore? Does their soul follow? Ozpin, out of anyone in Remnant, you should be able to tell us what would happen!"
"But I can't."
The headmaster rose from his crouch beside Amber's bed, lifting his gaze up towards the gears and machinery above them in Beacon Tower. Round and round they went, like the progression of time, and of his lifetimes. Over and over. Both of which had seemingly turned for eternity, and felt like they would continue for an eternity more.
"It's true that I am a man of many souls. But the way each new soul is added is still a mystery to me, known only by the one responsible. Trust me, I've tried to understand, but I'm trapped watching the surface process rather than what goes on underneath."
Without changing his gaze, he placed his hand on Amber's shoulder. "If we tried to do it with Amber, to take what remains of her life force, and protect it inside someone else, we have no idea what would happen next. That's why James's idea is such a dangerous one. Will nothing happen? Will something dreadful happen? Or worst case, would it summon the gods back to destroy us for once again toying with the nature of life and death? Just as she did?"
An eerie silence screamed through the room as they pondered the consequences of going ahead with such a horrifying idea. And the consequences of the other options.
"Or, we wait for Salem's new apprentice to take all the other powers and retrieve all the relics to end the world herself" came the gravelly voice from the shadows.
"I've hidden the crown to prevent precisely that outcome."
"But it won't stay hidden forever. Especially if Salem comes looking for it personally. She'll tear all of Vale apart once she realises it's not in the vault. Probably with a full Fall Maiden. If we do nothing, Amber dies, and there's every chance the power goes straight to her new lacquey." He paused to down half the flask in his hand at that shocking revelation. "So we're screwed."
"Don't say that. We can at least help Amber for now by beginning the healing process with the pod."
"It's not gonna work."
"Please, Qrow, don't say it."
"Even if it does, what then? Half her aura and powers were taken, and who knows how much more at the vault. This machine has limits, you know. She'll be out of action for the rest of her life. And hunted. Hunted continuously by someone much more able-bodied than her. And then we'll all die in the end anyway."
Glynda stepped in. "You want Amber to die now?" she glared at him with eyes full of ice.
"No," Qrow sighed. "But I don't want her to suffer, either. We put her in, she hurts. And we take the first step on a pathway we may forever regret. Or never come back from."
"There is a lot of "may" on both sides, Qrow" noted Ozpin in a low voice. "We are dancing with death."
He finally dropped his gaze from the cogs in the ceiling, looking straight at Qrow and Glynda.
"One side of that dance will just have to be risked."
Transcript 2: Hard Questions
"I love your hair beads, they're aquamarines, not sapphires like your combat gems, right?"
"That's right!" replied Jewel as she picked up a brilliant red gown. "I wear these on formal occasions, so I brought them along to try out with the clothes I'm picking for the dance."
"Speaking of that," replied Jasper, looking around the shop half-embarrassed to see where the rest of Team MAJE had gone. "You and I have spent a lot of time together over the last few months, even in more recent times. I'd love the chance to see those stones a little nearer, instead of a close-up of the other pair." He grinned awkwardly at his half-hearted joke about their combat history. "Will you join me on Saturday night?
Jewel flushed a little and accepted his hand. "I was hoping a certain gem enthusiast would ask."
"Aww…" cooed Gale from across the shop as Jewel and Jasper walked to the other end of Briggs and Celeste. "I knew they would end up together. The jewellery connoisseur and the son of a jewellery maker. Like it was meant to be."
"Have you thought about who you would like to go to the dance with, Gale?" replied Lina from the changerooms. "Or are you too busy matchmaking like you were with our teams before initiation?"
"No, I haven't much really. Well, maybe a little bit. But there's so many people still left, it could be anyone, even someone from another year."
"We haven't had much to do with many of them since we got back from Atlas" replied Lina's voice. "Us first-years aren't as helpless as we were back in first semester when we pestered them with questions on how to survive Beacon and Professor Peach's dust course."
"True, but you never know. And if I need to, I'll probably ask someone myself."
"In that case you really do need to think about it!"
She pulled the curtain back and stood there, all 4 feet 11 inches of her, and flicked her tail at Gale. "Well?"
Gale clasped her hands together. "It's perfect. Even better than I thought."
"Thanks. I think this is the one. Let's go buy it."
They brought the deep purple garment up to the counter and swiped Lina's card as it was folded neatly into a luxurious paper package. A stylish attendant with pure white gloves thanked them for their service as he accompanied them to the exit.
"I'm glad it was on sale," remarked Lina after the attendant left them. "I don't know how Coco affords to shop here so often. Must be…"
Her voice trailed off as the world fell apart around her. Not twenty metres in front of them, heading directly towards the entrance they had just left, were Castor Oyle and Iris Marilla hand in hand. Gale was speechless. She didn't know how to comfort Lina for something she had had her heart fixed on for so long. She looked over at a frozen Lina as Castor and Iris passed by a few metres away and entered the store, having barely noticed the two girls.
"I… I'm so sorry Lina, it's…"
But the Faunus girl was already running, running faster than her heart had broken, away from this horrible shop which sold things she no longer needed, away from the betrayal she felt, all the way to the airbus stop back to Beacon.
Nero's head snapped up in surprise as the door practically burst off its hinges and a sobbing Lina threw herself onto her bed and buried her face in her pillow, hugging desperately at a package nestled in her arms. A few seconds, later, concerned chocolate eyes peeked around the frame and Nero gestured frantically to grab her attention. Nero raised his eyebrows and pointed with his chin towards the bed in the opposite corner, and read "Castor" on Gale's silent lips. That certainly explained a lot.
He shook his head and motioned for her to leave, which brought imploring looks from the other party. Nero shook his head again and gestured to himself, which resulted in a sad nod of understanding, and Gale withdrew herself from the room. Nero waited silently, and a little nerve-rackingly, in the opposite corner of the room for what must have been ten minutes or longer, before Lina's tear-stained face rolled over and widened as she spotted him sitting on his own bed.
"How long have you been here?"
"I was already in the room when you came in."
"Oh."
The face turned redder still and sat up to reveal the rest of Lina, a little dishevelled from her hurried trip back to Beacon. Nero's eyes fell on the package now discarded on the side of the edge of the bed.
"What's that?" he enquired, knowing already that it must be what she and Gale had originally left for, even without seeing the Briggs & Celeste emblems all over the paper. He cursed himself internally, realising that this was the complete opposite of a distraction.
Lina's eyes grew moist again and she grasped the paper bundle to her chest, hugging it tightly as though the memory of its purpose would seep through to comfort her.
"It's… worthless. My perfect dress, worthless, with Castor gone. I don't know how I can show up on Saturday night and see him… with her."
Nero suspected, correctly, that this must have been Iris. Lina hadn't been the only girl hanging around the handsome and chiselled leader of Team CURI, and she wouldn't have had as much opportunity to be around him as one of Castor's own teammates. None in Team JNGL wanted to disrupt the fantasy Lina had had should it come true, but deep down this was something most of them had suspected.
"I'm sorry" he offered. "I won't lie to you and say it's going to be ok right away, when things like this hurt so much."
"But it will be later?" snivelled a miserable Lina. "How would you know?"
"I don't. I've never experienced what you have. But I do know what it's like to be rejected. From a certain point of view."
Lina sniffled disbelievingly, but waited for him to continue. As did the Gale, half of Team CFVY and the rest of the group which had assembled in the hallway just out of sight.
"When I was younger, I had a fantastic family life. Dad was out of the picture, but my mum loved me unconditionally. Then it slowly changed. She became more abusive, drank even more and let dad back into our lives. I'm not saying it was a bad decision, but it felt like it for me at the time, and the abuse continued from both parties."
He lowered his head.
"One day, I snapped. I was fourteen. During one episode, I screamed at my mother for what she was doing, what she had done to me, how she had abandoned me for someone else, let go from the love that she had promised to always give. I told her I wished she was dead. And in that moment, I really did wish that" Nero said shamefacedly. "She collapsed, screaming, on the floor and instantly all that hate evaporated. Once we realised what happened, I made her promise not to tell dad."
Gale's eyes widened. Jasper had been very right about Nero's semblance.
"I was scared. Of myself, and what my parents would do to me, because I didn't trust her not to tell. How could you trust someone who had changed so much and broken so many promises and responsibilities?"
Nero coughed, and shifted on his bed uneasily.
"So I left. Two days later, without a goodbye. It haunted me for years, and I've only just started repairing that breach, from both sides. So I do know what it is like to be rejected, agonisingly, and to reject someone myself. Never romantically, but I have hurt - for a long, long time - because of rejection."
The first trails of a tear began to slip down his own cheek. "I've never told anyone that before. Not Jasper, with his own semblance worries, or even my own dad."
He steeled himself, and looked up at Lina, a fierce resolve behind his purple eyes.
"So I hate rejection. I never want, or want others to have to experience something so painful. And… if it could be of any help, would it be worth asking if I could accompany you to the dance in a few days' time?"
The whole hall was stunned into silence, and not just the listeners eavesdropping outside the door. Lina sat speechless at this incredible turn of events. None of this was expected. No part of anything was lining up with how she had imagined her perfect, romantic setup leading into the dance.
"You're asking me, after all you've just said, to go to the dance with you? After trying to understand a tiny part of how I might be feeling about this whole situation?
"No. I'm asking if I can accompany you to the dance. Whether as a friend, a dance partner, or a teammate, it's up to you."
"But… you can't… it's never… why do…" Lina ran out of words, her mouth opening and closing in disbelief.
"You can still say no." he said quietly.
Lina's mind was in meltdown. What was Nero doing? Was this some sort of sick joke, or a plan to find a partner without regard for anybody's thoughts and feelings? No, it couldn't be, he sounded absolutely genuine. Or was he? And had Castor really even cared about her that much? How could Castor do this to her? How could Nero do this to her? Or even Iris?
"If it makes any difference," Nero said to her. "I think it might help me a great deal too."
Nero twitched internally. Had he really meant that? Helping someone with their rejection, would it really help him deal with his own? He paused. Yes. Yes, it absolutely would.
"Well fine then!" she practically shouted as she threw her hands in the air, all thoughts of holding on to romantic fantasies long gone. "Let's do it! It can't be that much worse than what's already happening!" And with that, she stood up and quickly walked towards the door.
The listeners took off, Coco leading the way and frantically gesturing them towards CFVY's own quarters. They disappeared inside just as Lina exited JNGL's room. She took three steps, faltered, and looked back at the door.
"I don't know," Lina said hopelessly as she poked her head back around the frame.
"Take your time. There's plenty of days left before Saturday night."
"Thanks."
"If anything changes, just let me know. I'll be around."
She disappeared again, and walked slowly out through the dorms, processing. But for the first time since that morning, there was a glimmer of hope inside her.
Similarly, a little shaken up at dredging up so much of what he had suppressed for so long, Nero too was mentally overload.
But there was a smile at the corner of his lips. Maybe Saturday night would be better than expected. For both of them.
