To DidYouTryDynamite, this one is for you.
(Fun fact, this was originally supposed to be called May Days.
Also, I recommend listening to the RWBY and Re:Zero soundtracks whilst reading this, specifically the peaceful songs. It's very immersive and relaxing.)
The cold was gentle to the touch.
The breeze was cool around them, flowing through the air in wisps and flutters. The sky was a gentle baby blue above them as the silver candyfloss clouds blithely flew through the sky, peacefully unaware of the world below. The ground was covered in a quilt of snow and ice, like a cotton blanket, that glistened and glittered in the sunlight and gave the world a pearly sheen. The trees around them bore no fruit or leaves and stood as silent sentries during the short days and long nights. Flowers that grew in the snow - Winter Honeysuckles and Christmas Roses, Daphne's and Cyclamen - lined the front porch and garden rows as the soil shone in a layer of ice, and the grass poked out through a thin line of snow. In the faraway distance, the white-pecked fields and snow-tipped hills stood out in bumps and curves against the outline of the sky. The dirt road ahead of them was quiet and unused by most, with grass and moss growing along the sides in the warmer seasons thanks to its disuse by most people.
It meant that this place was quiet and comfortable for its few inhabitants.
May Zedong liked it. She liked the silence. She liked the cold. It was so much different than the heat of Vacuo. It was like an angel's kiss on her dark skin, rather than the devil tearing and blistering her skin through sweat and burns (and the bloody tear of an eye being ripped from her socket by tooth and claw).
The cold was warm, in its own way.
She sat on the porch of her home and sighed contently. Content. It was not the first time that she had felt that emotion, but for the longest time - her childhood and all - she hadn't known it at all. But now, she felt new. Alive. Reborn.
Content, with herself and with everything and everyone else.
She felt at peace.
The floor of the porch creaked next to her as the door to her small home of brick and wood opened and closed behind her. Footsteps. May smiled. She didn't need to look. She already knew who it was.
"They'll be here shortly," Jaune Arc said as he took a seat next to her on the cold bench, "Very shortly, in fact. I've already set everything up," if he was made uncomfortable like the cold, he didn't say. He didn't like the cold as much as she did. He always preferred warm weather.
But he still made sacrifices for her. She smiled, and stroked his sun-kissed hair with her hand. The sleeve of her red dressing down gave way to reveal her tanned skin underneath. She giggled. She was in her loose dressing down, and he was in a jumper.
He smiled in turn, "You're happy," it was a statement, not a question.
"I am," she said to him in her usual mouse like tone, like a hushed whisper fluttering through the air, "I am..."
She lowered her hand down, and he took it into his, "Then I'm glad to be here with you as you are, Desert Flower."
There was a reason he called her Desert Flower. It was because she was born of the desert. It was because she blossomed and bloomed around him, just as he did around her.
But it wasn't the only reason.
She blushed, "Thank you, Sunflower."
'Sunflower'. It was a pet name that suited him well, in her opinion.
She felt anew. She felt at peace.
She felt content.
She felt sorrow when Jaune's gaze fell, for a single moment, upon her bare arm.
There was nothing there, but there was once something. Lines, like tally marks counting the days and hours.
There was once a time where she was not as peaceful as she once was. There was a time where things had been different- had been worse. Dangerous. Horrible.
She had been unhappy in those days. She had been distraught - she had been alone - and there had been only one way in which she knew how to cope...
…
But those days were long since gone, now.
They were in the past.
She hadn't had many friends back then, but now she did. Now she had found them.
And with them, she had found the love of her life as well.
Those days were gone... but they were not forgotten.
May couldn't bring herself to do so.
There was a myth in the society that they lived in, perpetuated by modern media: it was the lie that in order to grow stronger and progress in society, you had to go through a traumatic experience and experience suffering - you had to lose someone close to them - as if it was the only way that you could grow as a person.
'What doesn't kill you just makes you stronger.'
It was nothing more than a lie.
May had suffered. She had lost people. She had lived in misery and agony for most of her early life, but she never felt stronger because of it. She never felt like she had grown as a person. She had been perpetually shy and nervous. She had never been able to assert herself as a person. She had been... she was never stronger because of the suffering. She was just...
She was nothing.
It was only when she met the people that she could finally call her friends and family did she finally feel stronger- did she finally feel better.
It was only when she had met them - him - that she had finally felt happy. Peaceful. Content.
Reborn anew, like a flower blossoming anew.
She had finally moved beyond the pain, and had come to accept all that had happened in the past... but she did not want to forget it.
She couldn't.
"May?" Jaune squeezed her hand, "Are you alright?"
She looked at him, and smiled.
"I am now," she squeezed his hand back, "I am now..."
People had different ways of facing trauma. Some wished to confront it head on and push through their pain. Others wished to forget about it and move on with their lives. Neither answer was incorrect. Everyone had their own ways of coping with it.
May did not wish to forget the past, but she did not want to confront it. Not when she had already accepted all that had come before.
She would keep those memories inside of her. She would remember all that torment and wallowing misery that had come before her, and when she looked back into that great library of sadness within her own mind, she would smile and remember that it was all in the past.
She would smile, because she had moved on, and finally gained the happiness that she had always been looking for in her life.
A pair of figures moved down the dirt road and stopped in front of their house. The first of their guests had arrived.
"Hiya!" Neon Katt cheered as she happily waved to them, "We're here! We're awesome! We're totally outspoken!"
Reese Chloris laughed as she hopped off her hoverboard and slung it over her back, "Neon's been trying out as a cheerleading instructor," she laughed again, "Me thinks she needs to learn how to be a cheerleader herself before she tries to teach anyone herself."
"Oi!" Neon chuffed without any real heat to the word.
"Ah, shut up. You know it's true."
"Hey, be nice you too," Jaune called out to them as the two girls walked over the patio and grass to them.
"Yeah," May said as they stopped in front of the porch, "Be nice. This is a special occasion."
"Of which May still won't tell me about."
"Of which I still won't tell him about."
Reese smiled, "Well, that makes for one hell of a weird occasion," but Neon didn't say anything. She simply looked to May with a twinkle in her eye.
May smiled, and whilst Jaune and Reese weren't looking, put a finger to her lip. The little black box cleverly hidden in her baggy dressing down shorts left an imprint that could only be seen by those who knew what they were looking for.
Neon found it, but said nothing. She simply smiled to her.
I'm proud of you, the smile said.
May's smile read as, Thank you, for always being there.
Neon nodded to her, and then said to all of them, "Well, we haven't got to wait long for whatever it is you lot are going to be talking about. I think I saw your family driving up on the way, and Arslan and Pyrrha should be here in the hour."
"Awesome," said Jaune with a smile, "I'll get everything ready for them, then,"
"Why don't the both of you step inside?" May hummed to them, "I know that not everyone likes the cold like I do."
Reese shook her head in amusement, "Dude, no one likes the cold like you do."
"That's just because you're all weirdos."
"Maybe we are, but we're warm weirdos."
"Warm weirdos all the way," chirped Neon as she dragged Reese up onto the porch and into the house behind them, "C'mon Reese, I smell cookies! And Mama's on a cheat day today!"
"Every day's a cheat day for you!"
"Shush, don't tell them that!"
Jaune and May laughed at the banter, and then Jaune stood up to go back inside and get everything else ready for the celebrations to come, even if he didn't know what they would be.
But, just before they did, May gave Jaune's hand another squeeze.
"Thank you, my Sunflower... for always being there."
Jaune smiled to her, "And thank you for the same, my Desert Flower."
He leant down, and their lips connected.
It was warm and fussy, and felt like being kissed by the divine. May lost herself for so long that when they disconnected, she was unsure if seconds had gone by, or eons. There was a warmth mixed in with the pearly cold on her lips, and it reminded her of the first time they had touched, on another winter's day when the sun was cresting over the hill and the sky was awash in the auroras borealis and they shared their first night of many together.
It was on that night that she shed her mental confines, and blossomed and bloomed into herself.
She smiled.
There was a different reason as to why he called her his Desert Flower.
May Zedong, soon to be May Arc, sat back onto the bench and felt content with herself once more.
He called her the Desert, because she did not want to forget the past.
He called her his Flower, because she had blossomed, and was born anew.
I know that in DidYouTryDynamite's Team JNRZ AU, May is a lesbian (sort of, I think. Apparently the jury's still out on that regard, which means that Jaune X May might still be a thing, so I'm keeping my hopes up on that), but right now I'm on the Jaune Arc X May Zedong train, and I don't know how to get off, so this is my contribution to May Zedong's rising popularity.
(Also her sexuality was never confirmed in canon, so it's free real estate as far as I'm concerned.)
Who knows, maybe our boy will finally give us the fabled harem ending that we've all always dreamed of. Ya'll know I'm throwing my hat into the ring for it.
(Hey, just because I've said that I won't ever write harem stories (after Valentine's Day Extravaganza) doesn't mean I don't enjoy reading them... as long as they're well written, of course. I know it's a tall order, considering what kind of harem fics we tend to forget, so it's a pretty high standard all things considered.)
Anyways, Jaune Arc X May Zedong is super cute, in my opinion, and I need fanart of this ship (preferably some that isn't just porn)! So, you know, if any of ya'll want to just draw some out for me and send me it on FF or Ao3, that'd be awesome. I'd commision for it, but I don't know how to, and even if I did, I don't have any money.
Bugger.
God, this is the same problem that I had with Ascendancy. If I knew how to commission people to make these things for me, I would, but I've got no idea, and even if I did, I've got no Twitter or anything to work with.
Damn.
Anyways, also the Team JNRZ AU is super cute, so go check them out, both on FF and on DidYouTryDynamite's Tumblr. I guarantee you that it'll be worth it! I had such a blast reading it all, and I know that you guys will all enjoy it as well!
But anyways, with that little bit of cuteness out of the way, please leave a review and comment, go give this story a favourite and follow my main profile for all updates on my stories, both old and new, check out DidYouTryDynamite on both FF and Tumblr, and with all of that said and done, stay safe, stay healthy, and I'll see you all next time!
Titanmaster 117 out!
