Crescent Rose lit up with metallic song as she fired; one, two, three, four rounds erupting in destructive energy mere feet from her muzzle. Her lithe, jagged frame, marred by the scratches and abrasions of countless combats, rattled from the recoil of each Dust-infused bullet exiting her battle-hardened barrel.

Directly behind stood Ruby Rose, immersed in deadly intent as she guided her weapon's sonorous rage. Her jaw was clenched, teeth gritted, silver eyes stilled with steely focus. Slender, scarred fingers echoed Crescent Rose's well-oiled motions, cycling her companion's bolt with a rhythmic, immaculate precision. Brass casings tolled like windchimes as they fluttered to the ground, their shaped payloads prying, point-blank, into sputtering Aura, splashing into tongues of flame like foamy waves breaking upon a cliff.

Nearby, Weiss's battered body sat collapsed against a shattered pillar, desperate lungs shallowly gasping for air. Deep, bloody gashes ran across her body like fractures atop a cracked mirror, shredding through her dress and leaving her Aura barely aflicker. Yet despite these brutal injuries, she permeated with an austere energy, her open wounds radiating a severe, snow-white glow. Frozen ripples shimmered the air around her, tendrils of frost wisping to and fro in measured fervour. Lines of ice, tracing directly towards the duo's mortal foe, ran like twine from her fingertips, binding in tight, brambled loops the infernal form that had menaced them for so long; the form of Cinder Fall.

With crimson rivulets of determination still dripping down her face, Weiss stared into the amber eye which had, just moments ago, come so close to killing her. A single, burning eye, which returned the gesture in an expression of unconcealed, unmitigated hatred. And attached to a body that, if it wasn't currently locked in midair with the malice of a brutal winter's frost, would have no qualms or difficulties in letting the rest of Weiss's blood join those first few drops, already staining red the stone brick underneath her. Perhaps, if she was in any state of mind less primal than struggling for her very existence, Weiss might have thought to deliver a smug, defiant smirk, with the satisfaction that she'd just outmaneuvered her most dogged enemy. In her current condition, however, she could hardly muster anything more than the desperate determination which was, at the moment, consuming her, every last drop of her power being sent to sustain the freezing, shackling grasp she held on Cinder. One that she couldn't afford to let slip, for, if she did, it would be all her opponent needed to bring the full fury of autumn upon the two of them once again.

It was into this unseasonal struggle that those four fateful shots were sent, blooming into a scorching pyrotechnical sunset. A sunset of fire and flames, with its vibrant reds and oranges sinking deep into pitch-like blackness.

The first two rounds detonated against an unsteady ripple of orange, glittering in fanatical, delusional defiance. The third met a shrill, ear-splitting screech, auburn shards shattering as they crumbled towards the earth. And, then, the last bullet, finding no resistance ahead, buried itself deep into darkened, inhuman flesh, before combusting into a horrific, heart-rending portrait of explosive force.

She would have surely shrieked if she had been able to. Used her final, dying breaths to prove that she was, if only in the most base of ways, still herself, still human. But, held in stasis by deep roots of frost running from her calves to her crown, Cinder Fall was robbed of even this last little dignity. Her body, corrupted beyond sanity by her patron's Grimm influence, bled not red but instead a midnight black, seeping, gushing from the sucking hole that once was her chest. She stiffened for a moment, every part of her being drawn taut like the infernal bowstring she clutched in her tight, morbidic grip. One final pathetic glare was all she had left to muster in resistance, before that, too, finally drained from her body. And then, at last, Cinder's muscles sagged, life fading from her eyes like the dying embers of a doused flame.

With that, the world fell silent around the two Huntresses. Weiss's ears, however, were still ringing like church bells, her head aching as if it were about to split in twain. Her gaze, then, drifted idly onto her partner, ever-so-delicately retracting Crescent Rose's blade, eyes lingering warily upon the corpse of her longtime foe.

Ruby's lip was bitten in thought as she stared, slowly processing an ungodly cocktail of emotions while she watched Cinder's wizening, cracking skin slough off in gullies of black flakes, each layer of fading flesh peeling away only to reveal yet more singed tissue, falling bit by bit like ash from a hellish fire, drifting to the ground in a cadaverous blizzard.

"Is she dead?"

Weiss coughed weakly, startling Ruby out of her brief reverie. The wounded girl still had Myrtenaster pointed right at Cinder's corpse, the icy manifestations of her power continuing to keep the rotting body airborne.

"I… I think so. I'm not convinced even Cinder could survive having her chest blown open like that." Ruby replied, giving Weiss a soft, ironic smile as she nodded her assent.

Slowly, and still with much trepidation, Weiss lowered Myrtenaster's tip, letting it clink gently onto the stone below. As she did so, the ice-blue sigils of frost encircling Cinder's neck and ankles shattered, bursting into frozen slivers.

With nothing left to suspend her in midair, gravity was finally able to take its due, and Cinder's body began to fall. But, just like the Grimm she had become so similar to, death was merely a precursor to the complete obliteration of her physical form. It had already crumbled into little more than a featureless effigy of black material. So, as soon as her bonds were broken, she exploded into a cloud of dark dust, gusting out in a haze of particulate that blanketed the air with a thick, ashen smoke. The two Huntresses quickly covered their mouths, holding their breath to avoid inhaling any of their deceased enemy's remains until the ashes settled, slowly winking out of existence and leaving behind no trace Cinder had ever existed, save the tattered remnants of her blood-red robe.

Their eyes remained on the remnants of that robe as it fluttered to the ground. It was all that remained of the woman who had taken so much from them, time and time again; their only proof that she had been extinguished, once and for all. But, as it fell, those red scraps of fabric began to glow a rich orange, at first gently, then with a brilliant radiance. The light soon severed itself from its substrate, congealing into a fizzling orb of light, warbling like space outside space, time outside time.

Weiss could feel it looking, observing them like a curious dog. Its not-quite-eyes first turned to her, assessing with some sort of familiar, primordial intelligence, before quickly shifting its gaze onto Ruby.

And then, in a blinding flash of speed, it leapt towards Weiss's partner.

Ruby barely had time to recoil before she was consumed by that blinding, burning light. Its bright, autumnal haze overran her body, filling her soul full of unearthly energies and powers, churning and roiling under her skin. She felt as if she was being embraced by flames. But not like being ignited, no. The feeling was much more a facsimile of sitting next to a roaring campfire, cool air wicking gently in contrast to the alluring, overbearing heat. It was cozy. Warm. Rich, with just a tinge of bitterness. She savoured the sensation washing over her, diffusing it into herself as, slowly, the light began to fade, dimming into nothing at all by the time Ruby reopened her eyes.

Limply, Weiss stared at her friend, surprised and more than a little startled. In amongst the pain and adrenaline of combat and grave injury, she'd forgotten about the fact that Cinder was, indeed, the Fall Maiden. And thus, that the power of the Fall Maiden would be released after her demise. She glanced back down at her own fingers, still crawling with frozen crystals, and frowned.

Both of them knew, at least abstractly, what it meant to carry the burden of a Maiden's powers. And both had met, lived with, and fought alongside several who held the title as their own. But Weiss was the only one who had intimate familiarity with the actual weight the forces of the Seasons placed upon their vessels. She'd honestly hoped to keep it that way, if only to spare Ruby from yet another small slice of pain. Something else she'd failed at doing. She winced.

Then again, Weiss supposed, this one wasn't exactly something she had much control over. And out of anyone that could have received the blessing, Weiss certainly was not going to be upset that it was Ruby. Loyal, dependable, heroic Ruby. So, at long last, Weiss let the breath she hardly realized she'd been holding exit her lungs, reclining her head against the shattered stone pillar she was propped up against in utter fatigue.

Only then, with the dust fully settled, did the pain finally begin to seep back in. It raked across every square inch of Weiss's body, from bruises to burns to deep lacerations. And the sensations - horrible sensations - flooded through her very being: needling numbness and sharp tears, dull aches and savage agonies.

Despite the severity of her injuries, however, Weiss had on her face only a smile of wry fatalism. Her finger traced over the deepest cuts she'd sustained: a trio of them running directly across her chest and over her heart. Gingerly, she poked at them, cringing slightly at both the sudden sting and the severity of her wounds. They certainly were not superficial. But she had seen friends survive much, much worse. Then again, she'd also seen them die from far less.

Another thing out of her control, she supposed.

With nothing much else to do, Weiss allowed herself a moment to survey the destruction that they'd wrought; the destruction that now surrounded them on all sides like a living journal of their final encounter with Cinder.

The shattered remains of the cathedral lay broken all around them. Much of the brick was scorched a grim, sooty black, at least, where it hadn't been either knocked loose or vapourized by their explosive energies. Deep scratch marks and bullet holes accentuated the carnage, tracing all across the combat space, while shattered shards of stained glass mixed with splinters of richly treated wood in loose patches all over the dusty floor. The roof, already spotty with holes when they arrived, was now utterly collapsed, the beams and brickwork lying all around them, forming into rough piles of rubble, looking like a warzone in miniature. Fitting, perhaps, for the stakes of the fight they'd just endured.

One of the few things that remained standing, however, was a lone statue, taller than Weiss by at least a head and perched atop a gilded pedestal. Carved out of silver, it depicted a figure she couldn't recognize, regardless of her encyclopedic memory. Taking the form of a lady with grand wings, she carried a colossal scythe in one hand and a clover in the other. An ancient harbinger of death, forgotten from time immemorial? Perhaps a harvest goddess? It was anyone's guess. Though, with nothing overhead, the afternoon sun was beating down hard on its gleaming face in a most unsettling, surely unplanned manner. The light, reflecting off the silver woman's carefully sculpted hair, may have formed brilliant, sunlit patterns all over what remained of the church's walls, but the subtle, softly textured shadows cast on her visage gave the statue itself an odd, inhuman quality.

So, despite its ethereal aura, the sight of the statue hardly soothed Weiss's nerves. It was just that she, though subconsciously and without rational explanation, had a sense that its presence would do nothing but worsen the prognosis of her current, diminished state. And Weiss, despite everything she'd endured and everyone she'd lost, wasn't quite yet in the mood for death to overtake her. She silently mulled on her superstitious anxiety for a moment, before a voice suddenly caught her ear.

"Wow."

Ruby blurted out, breaking the silence with the only word that could come to mind after her transcendental experience. She was shining, her aura taking on a faint auburn, crackling with energy, ringing out in crisp notes like red leaves underfoot.

"Wow, indeed."

Weiss replied, her voice faint and straining to keep an even tone as she tried to sound celebratory. Her lips crooked in a pained affectation of a smile, adding,

"We did it. We won. We killed Cinder. We actually did it."

"Yeah. We beat her once and for all, didn't we."

Ruby smiled, seemingly luxuriating in the satisfaction of, arguably, her first real kill. But then, abruptly, her head snapped towards the direction where Weiss was lying.

"Oh. Wait, oh. Gods, Weiss. Are you okay?"

Her voice grew urgent as she grazed a palm over Weiss's bloody chest.

"Dangit, we've got to get you to a hospital, soon. But, ah shoot, we're miles out, and the rest of them won't be here until tomorrow, and - gods, that's a lot of blood. I don't know if I can carry you that far; can you walk? Wait, scratch that. Wait, don't actually scratch anything, you'll make it worse. We need to stop the bleeding, but… oh, Brothers, I don't think I brought a trauma kit."

In a panic, Ruby patted herself down, desperately looking for something, anything, to stem the bleeding. Her eyes turned to her cloak, but before she could impulsively begin tearing strips from it, Weiss laid a gentle hand onto her partner's.

"I appreciate you worrying so much about me, Ruby. But I'm not sure any of that will actually help."

She gestured with her other hand, conjuring a spark of ice in the air as she continued,

"The frost will do more than any improvised torniquet you could make. We just have to hope it will be enough. Right now, my life is in the Brothers' hands."

"No, no, NO!" Ruby shouted. "I can't lose you too. Not after Pyrrha. Not after Blake. I'll go run for help. I'll use the Fall Maiden powers to heal you."

Weiss slowly shook her head in response, frowning.

"Either of those plans is liable to end with both of us dead. Your aura is barely up, and you're exhausted. Moreover, you haven't trained to precisely apply the energy of a Maiden. Blowing up a rock is one thing, but trying to put someone back together takes a lifetime of finesse."

Tears were beginning to pool in the red reaper's eyes, her fingers desperately trying to wrap tightly the scraps of Weiss's dress over her most serious wounds. As glimmering tears fell from her face, a soft hand caressed her temple, tousling her hair with gentle affection.

"Look, Ruby, I miss them too. More than you can imagine. But, right now, there's nothing more you can do for me, except permit me the privilege of gambling with death and give me the time to, perhaps, convalesce afterwards."

Weiss's voice was gentle, as filled with comfort as she could muster given her battered throat. She continued to run her fingers through Ruby's red-tipped locks, dying them a further muddy scarlet with her own warm ink while she spoke.

"If anything - and I know it would be difficult, so I wouldn't demand it of you - but, what you should do for me is celebrate. Be happy. After all, it's over. We've won. It was worth it. For them. For me. For us. They didn't die in vain. If I die here, it won't be in vain either. And nobody else will have to die, in vain or otherwise, due to people like Cinder. She's been reduced to ashes. Returned to the earth. In my opinion, that's cause enough to rejoice."

The look that Ruby gave in return could only be described as heartbroken. She sighed, prying Weiss's fingers out of her bangs as she mumbled,

"No. It's not over yet. There's still one more thing I need to do."

She saw Weiss cock her head sideways in worry. Ruby tried to give a disarming smile, which barely managed to appear, half-formed, on her face.

"I need to kill Salem."

Weiss made an awful choking noise in her throat, caught about halfway between a gag and a scoff. Upon finally managing to regain her breath, she began to splutter an indignant counterargument.

"To hell with Salem! We've either killed or locked up every single one of her underlings, destroyed a veritable rogue's gallery of her most powerful Grimm, and razed to the ground not just her first but her hidden base as well. We smashed her precious relics. Even with Grimm at her beck and call, we don't need to be scared of her, not anymore. Not when there are still Huntsmen and Huntresses ready to do what needs to be done, and when the world is aware - and willing - to fight."

The injured Huntress took a deep breath, her passionate monologue combined with blood loss leaving her light in the head. After a pause, she asked Ruby,

"How are you planning to find Salem, anyways? We haven't seen a trace of her since Vale burned. She's gone to ground, likely deep in the unmapped corners of the world. It'd take a miracle to figure out where she's hiding."

Ruby sighed, a strained expression plastered across her face as she responded.

"I don't need to find her. Do you remember what Oscar said to us, before he broke Ozpin's soul to destroy the Relics? About Salem. He told us that, even though she might look like a cross between a Grimm and a deity, her mind is still human. She has emotions, and wants, and desires, even if it's all buried under thousands of years of hatred and evil. If Oscar was even a little bit right, then that means she'll want revenge. She hated Ozpin because he was one of the few who could stop her plans. She hates us for the same reason; it's why she's spent so much of her time trying to kill us. I don't think she can suffer people who successfully oppose her lightly."

Ruby's eyes glimmered with nervous energy, continuing,

"She put a lot of energy and effort into Cinder after Vacuo, Weiss. And this was probably her last, desperate push, with everything she had left. Cinder was a big part of it, maybe the biggest part. Guess who just turned her to dust. She's got nobody left to send in her stead, so it's more than likely that she'll come for me herself. Especially if I tell her exactly where I am. Plus, you remember Atlas. She likes to be close to the action."

Weiss dipped her head, deep in thought. After a moment, she spoke again, a single, dry phrase coming from her mouth.

"We don't even know if she can be killed."

Ruby shrugged, helplessly.

"You're right; we don't. But I have to try, even if the chances are a million to one."

Weiss shook her head in disbelief.

"Ruby Rose, why do you insist on throwing away your life on a mad gamble?"

Her face was locked in a soft grimace as she tried to explain herself to Weiss.

"Even at a million to one, the odds are too good not to take, Weiss. We're not going to get a better chance than this. Salem will never stop killing people, unless we destroy her once and for all. If I can do anything to stand in the way of that, I'll do it. Even if it means I'll have to die for it. I'm not scared."

The heiress could only stare forlornly at her partner, terrified of her absolutist ideology. Sighing, she buried her bloody hands in her face. How could Ruby care so much about everyone else, yet give her own life such little consideration? Especially when, as she admitted herself, it was almost guaranteed that her efforts would end up futile?

Sometimes Weiss wondered if, despite everything they'd gone through, Ruby still had a seed of her old fairy tales planted in her mind, promising her a happy - or perhaps just poetic - ending.

Still, she could see no way to talk Ruby out of her position, and she was in no condition to restrain her friend from walking off to her own near-assured death. Cautiously, Weiss gathered herself once again to speak, searching for compromise.

"If you're going to do this, then at least let us fight with you. Wait for me to heal; for Jaune and Ren and Nora to get here. Then we can go hunt her down together, like a team. Like we always have."

She smiled sadly, hoping that she could get through to her friend. Ruby's unchanging expression quickly quashed those hopes.

"We can't afford to wait."

Weiss would have screamed if she didn't think it would have aggravated her injuries.

"What do you mean we can't afford to wait? Humanity has survived the Grimm for millenia. The world can sit around for a month to let us convalesce, regroup, and rearm before we try and take down a literal demigoddess."

"If we wait, Salem will have time to come to her senses. Think rationally about the fact that she's immortal, and we're not. Realize that we're probably prepared for her. Expecting her. Realize that with nothing left at stake, she can afford to wait us out. Then she'll disappear back into the darkness, to brood, to scheme, to plan. And without Ozpin in her way any longer, she'll gladly do all of this over again, recruiting a new set of minions to set the world ablaze. Sure, it might be a long, long time until she can fight again. Maybe we'll be safe. Maybe our children, too. But what about our grandkids? Or their children? One day Salem will be back, and our descendants won't have us or Ozpin to help them fight. If we can't kill Salem now, we may have won the battle, but we'll lose the war."

"Alright, Ruby. Let's say that all of that is true. That she'll miscalculate in anger and come to hunt you down. What then? Are you just planning to face her down and die? The Maiden powers are strong, but they're no match for someone like Salem. You've seen it yourself. And right now, you're not much better off than I am. Even at your best, even with the Fall Maiden's strength, you're not going to be a match for Salem by yourself. As it stands, you'll barely be able to say a word before she destroys you. You're going to be killed, Ruby. You don't even have a plan!"

Weiss was nearly shouting now, gesticulating as wildly as she could given her injuries. She stared Ruby in the eyes, daring her to prove her point.

"I have a plan, Weiss."

"Then what is it?" The heiress demanded. "What plan could there be that is possibly good enough to let you match up against evil incarnate?"

"The Equinox shrine."

"Oh."

Oh.

Whatever cynical retort Weiss was preparing fell immediately by the wayside as she quickly realized what Ruby meant. What she intended to do.

"I know everyone's written her off like Amber, but I'm sure I can get through to her. I know it. And you've seen the power of a dying Maiden. She holds two, Weiss. Two. Together we'll make it three, now that Cinder's dead and I have the Fall Maiden's power. You saw what she could do in Vacuo, against Neo and the Wurm Grimm."

Her plan was Yang. It was a horrific plan, an unthinkable one. It also was one, perhaps the only one that, just maybe, might be enough. With the power of three Maidens, she'd be more powerful than almost anyone else on Remnant. Perhaps even strong enough to fight a demigod. Perhaps strong enough to kill Salem.

But there was a reason such power was essentially unattainable.

"It'll consume you too. Almost certainly faster than with Yang."

"I know."

"Ruby, this plan is a one-way ticket. Even if you manage to survive, even if you beat Salem, you'll be gone. There's no coming out of this."

"I know."

Ruby's fatalistic heroism was going to make Weiss mentally explode.

She sighed, letting her mind jump back to - gods, that was almost a year ago, wasn't it - the moment when Blake died. The other half of RWBY had, by that point, both inherited Maiden powers: Blake from the slain Lady Solana, and Yang from her mother. Under siege by a colossal Grimm, they'd mounted a desperate defense in a high mountain pass, intent on keeping Salem as far away from Vacuo as they could.

What they really hadn't needed were Mercury and Neo showing up in the middle of their mortal struggle.

Two Maidens should have been more than enough to battle off a couple of human adversaries, even with the blessings of Salem. Unfortunately, their opponents possessed something that tilted the scales quite a bit. The Relic of Destruction. All it took was one tiny cut.

Blake, paralyzed and slowly disintegrating, made the choice to transfer her powers to Yang. She didn't know there was a reason Maidens were forbidden to pass on their blessing to another living Maiden.

In her rage, Yang had immediately annihilated both the Grimm horde and the two members of Salem's cabal who'd killed her lover. The team, initially, celebrated this discovery as much as they could, given the fact that one of their own had just died. It might have been enough, Weiss hypothesized, to turn the tides of the war in their favor.

But then the madness came.

It started mildly: memory loss, uncontrolled emissions of light, insomnia. But soon it got much, much worse, as Yang slowly became, for all intents and purposes, a catatonic short circuit. They all had to watch, helpless, while she lost her mind, utterly corrupted by the sheer energy of the powers inside her. It wasn't long before Oz took her away to a secret shrine, far away from anything - or anyone - else, to spare them any further pain from seeing their friend undergo complete mental collapse.

Shaking her head, Weiss tried to clear her mind of the memory, returning back to the conversation at hand.

"Look, even with all of that power, we still don't know if Salem is fundamentally killable. If she isn't, she'll just keep coming back, whittling you down until everything you did to give yourself a chance erodes to nothing."

Ruby shrugged.

"I don't need to kill her. At least, not in a fight. All I need to do is live long enough for her to listen."

Weiss's eyes bulged at her partner, dumbfounded yet again by what she was proposing. She nearly tripped over her words as she spoke, incredulous.

"Listen? Listen to what? Are you seriously telling me that your brilliant strategem is to talk Salem into capitulation? What are you going to do, tell her that killing people is bad and that she should stop? She's a force of pure evil!"

"Weiss, Salem wants to die."

This final revelation actually managed to render Weiss speechless.

"Emerald told me a while ago. She'd overheard a conversation between Salem and Cinder, Cinder asking about what she wanted out of stealing all the relics. Her answer was, apparently, as simple as that."

Ruby watched, curious, as Weiss's mouth remained agape, before continuing.

"She wants the same thing we do, funnily enough. I just need to convince her that it's true before she kills me."

"Gods above, Ruby."

Weiss groaned, clutching her head between her knees.

"Just… why does it have to be you? Why not Jaune, or Emerald, or - seven hells - me?"

"I have the Fall Maiden's powers. I'm the only one fast enough to outrun Salem, to lure her to the grove. I'm probably the only one who'll be able to get through to Yang, to convince her to… give up her powers. It has to be me. And I have the silver eyes. It's like it was written in the stars. This is how it has to go."

Ruby was, maddeningly enough, probably right. It had to be her. But that didn't make Weiss like the reality of the matter any more.

"Pyrrha, Blake, Ozpin, Oscar," She muttered. "They died, Ruby. Those were our friends, people who meant more than anyone else on Remnant to us, and now they sit in the ground, six feet under. At least the lucky ones, with a body left to bury."

Weiss sighed, letting all of her pent up rage and frustration out in a breath of stale air. Lifting her head, she looked Ruby straight in the eyes as she finished her point.

"If you do this, you're adding yourself to that list. Ruby, if you do this, I'll have lost my entire team."

Ruby's expression remained impassive, determined, resolute. It nearly broke Weiss's heart.

"They died for this war, and I won't let it be for nothing, just like you said. Even if it means I'll be joining them on that list. This is my fate, Weiss. It's where my story is going to end. And honestly, even despite the death and the suffering, I think it's pretty beautiful. I don't need a happy ending if I can keep everyone else safe. That's good enough for me."

"Ruby," Weiss winced. "Please, don't try to play this off as some ebullient destiny. Life isn't a fairytale. Can't you stay? For me? I want you alive, isn't that enough?"

This, for once, was enough to silence Ruby, if only for a brief second. She slowly shook her head, voice trembling ever so slightly.

"I have to do it, Weiss. It's my choice."

"Is it really a choice, if you claim that you have to do it?"

"Maybe not. But does that matter?"

Weiss couldn't think of a counter-response, and so took to simply clenching and unclenching her fists. Ruby smiled, wanly.

"Plus, I want to see Yang one last time. She's suffered long enough. None of us can even bear to see her anymore. I'm the only one who can stomach a visit, and you know what a state it puts me in when I do. She deserves to die an honorable death, rather than waste away in some magical stone hovel. And if someone has to kill her, doesn't she deserve it to be her sister? The person left in this entire world that cares for her more than anyone else?"

Sighing, Weiss finally recognized that this wasn't an argument she could win. Still, even if she couldn't convince Ruby to preserve her own life, she wasn't about to let her partner do this alone. Even if it meant taking drastic action. As Ruby turned to leave, she extended a hand, and shouted,

"Wait! Ruby, if you're going to do this, at least let me come with you in spirit. Let me help you win. Give you every chance you can get. I'd rather do that than bleed out in the middle of nowhere. Let me have that honorable death too."

In response, Ruby simply shook her head.

"I'm not going to let you do that for me. One of us needs to live. Team RWBY needs to live."

Weiss scoffed at the sentiment.

"I've been cut open a thousand and one different ways. What makes you so sure I won't be dead within the hour?"

"You're a Schnee. Your family looks death in the face and tells her to go home."

"Father didn't. Winter didn't."

She let the implication linger in the air, heavier than a blizzard. Her eyes tracked Ruby, shifting on the balls of her feet, squirming in her own skin.

"Weiss, please. Don't fight me on this too. I can't imagine letting Team RWBY fade into nothing more than myth. Someone needs to survive to tell our story. Please. For me."

"What good are stories to the dead?"

Weiss muttered coldly, voice dripping with sarcastic angst. She picked at her bloodied nails, idly drawing red patterns with her finger on the brick underfoot. Suddenly, she stopped, realizing what she'd made. A dagger. Slowly, her hand trailed towards the gleaming hilt of her discarded weapon, cold intent congealing in her veins.

Ruby's head was turned away, her legs already carrying her out of the cathedral ruins, yet her subconscious conscience urged her to turn back for a second, if only to look into her partner's eyes at least one more time before she went to face near-certain death. However, what she saw was nothing short of heart-stopping. Weiss had Myrtenaster's radiant blade placed squarely against her neck, small slivers of blood already forming along its razor-sharp edge.

Acting on instinct, Ruby raised Crescent Rose with her last reserves of vigor, aiming with muscle memory more than active intent. Two shots rang out like church bells against the weapon's ornate guard, the force more than enough to knock the weapon out of Weiss's hand. One last bullet slid it far, far out of reach.

Defeated, Weiss raised her head with forlorn, broken eyes, as she muttered softly, almost to herself,

"For once, can't I be the one who gets to make my own destiny?"

Her smile was horribly pained, her soft gaze on her team leader not angry, not disappointed, just… sad. Tears welled in Ruby's eyes, lowered in poignant shame, unable to meet her partner's gentle reproach as she prepared to take her leave for the last time.

"I'm so, so sorry. Please don't hate me."

The rose petals that streaked behind her departing path were wilted, discoloured, dry. Weiss picked one up between two bloody fingers. Sighing, she rubbed it between her digits, letting it crumble into dust. And now, with nothing but muddy reds painting the otherwise soot-black ground, Weiss Schnee was well and truly alone.

Undoing her shirt, she ran a solitary finger down her injury. A spiderweb of frost quickly tracked along its path, freezing the wound in place with icy blood. It stung and numbed at her flesh, but it would hold, at least until she was strong enough to try suturing herself back together again. Her mind, bathed in a cocktail of fading adrenaline, slowly turned back to Ruby's final words to her.

She was right, in a way. Other Schnees might have yielded easily to death, but Weiss would not. Not yet, at least. Though perhaps that was easier when life, too, had been missing for the longest time from her heart. When death had taken, bit by bit, every piece of warmth in her life, until she had grown so cold as to be immune to its predatory charms.

The winter truly was the loneliest season, wasn't it?

No.

No, Weiss would change that.

With a shaking hand, she pried herself off of the stone floor, unsteady on her feet as she leaned against the shattered pillar for support. Her eyes followed the line of dying rose petals that led out the door of the ruined cathedral.

There was only one thing left to do.