04/30/1999 8:35 am… Friday

Jaune wasn't at school yesterday. It became apparent that something was desperately wrong with him when his mother and Ozpin arrived home to find Jaune sitting on the kitchen floor barely responsive from yet another mental episode.

Jaune remembered when he was asked what happened, he excused it away as him having a flashback to his suicide attempt a few months back. His mother and Ozpin were at if nothing else, willing to accept that weak response. But he still ended up being kept home the next day.

Even still as he sat in the office of Ms Fall the school counselor and his informal therapist, he still couldn't find the words to describe what actually had happened.

"Then why don't you just talk and I'll listen. Walk me through what's bothering you." Cinder fall said as she sat with a warm smile on her face. "Remember, anything you say is confidential, not even the principal well hear about it."

Jaune stared at the device on the desk, an old laptop computer with text to speech software installed on it, one that was purchased at Ms Fall's personal expense. As Jaune typed into it the words were translated into an imperfect speech translation. [I suppose I don't know what to say, I haven't been right since I ran out of medication, I guess the guilt just began to eat at me again.]

"Jaune, I know what a depression based nervous breakdown looks like, and from what Alan described to me, you sounded afraid, not depressed." Cinder said as she leaned forward in her seat. "Tell me what was on your mind that night, be detailed."

Jaune flexed his hands as he tried to think before he typed out [I… It's difficult to talk about… I…. Don't know quite how to describe it, but I still feel guilt over what happened]

"To the young Ms Nikos?" Cinder asked. "I had thought we had established that you had no real way of preventing what happened."

[I know, and I think I can kinda accept that now it's just…] Jaune stopped typing as he felt a damp hand touching his neck.

"It's just what Jaune?" Cinder asked looking over at Jaune with a puzzled expression.

"Go ahead and tell her, tell her that you drove me to suicide, tell her the truth" Pyrrha's voice could be heard in his ear.

Cinder leaned forward seeing the distress on Jaune's face "Hey, you with me Jaune?"

Between the hallucination in his ear, and Ms Fall trying to get his attention it was all he could do to snap him out of it by slapping his cheeks to remind himself that he was still sitting there.

[Yes, I still feel guilty over it, who the fuck wouldn't? I think…] Jaune paused feeling the presence behind him. [I feel like I suspected that there were problems with Pyrrha even before we became a couple... I still lose sleep over the idea that I should have encouraged her to talk to a professional about it..]

Jaune sat there shaking his head as the malevolence behind him started to wane. [I was selfish, I was stupid, I was a dumb thirteen year old kid that finally had a friend after failing at it for so long. It was just my luck that she just happened to be pretty at the same time. Lucky me right?]

Cinder had stopped taking notes and just looked at the young man typing at her desk. "Jaune, you just said it yourself, you were thirteen, no one is expecting a thirteen year old to be able to read someone's mental well being."

Jaune furiously typed, more angry at himself than Ms Fall [She was not just someone… she was my first real friend, hell one of few people the entire goddamn school that I called a friend.] Jaune clenched his fists. [No… I was happy with how things were going, I liked feeling needed by someone. So I didn't do what I should have been doing to really help her!]

"A good counter point would be that maybe if you had never moved as you got older and you had become more mature, you would have seen with an older set of eyes what her life was really like. Maybe over time you would have shifted from just being there for her, to helping push her to get help." Cinder said.

[That's some real crap ma'am. It was less than a year ago, and it took her death for me to change. How do I know that I wouldn't have changed if she was still alive.] Jaune typed.

"I can tell you now, that your reaction to her death, tells me that you were forced to change, to mature if you don't mind me saying so." Cinder said. "Loss, Pain, Trauma. All of them are a part of life, and all of them can have a profound effect on us as people. Your loss, and the pain and trauma you endured have made you a better person have they not?"

[No they haven't, they only made me aware of the problem.] Jaune typed out still in self destructive rage.

"Being aware of the problem, makes you able to do something about it." Cinder said.

Jaune just shook his head in disagreement [It won't bring her back!]

"Jaune I'm going to slap with a hard truth. She was not your responsibility." Cinder said bluntly "I agree partially with the idea as her boyfriend you were in a position to see inside her head better than most. But I'm going to stress this, you knew her between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. I can say that when I was that age, I was goddamn idiot."

Jaune didn't have a rebuttal this time so Cinder continued. "You act like your the only one the not see what the hell was going on her head, but your mother was there, her own parents were there, as was the rest of her friends."

[Yeah, but come on you just said I was in the best position to catch the problem.] Jaune typed

"You were in a good position to see the problems she was facing, but I never said you were in the best position." Cinder "She had parents, friends, classmates. There were other people that could have taken action. It's not right to put the blame on a kid who didn't know better."

Jaune rubbed his face finding it difficult to counter Cinder's point. [I get it, I shouldn't shoulder the weight alone, is that what your trying to tell me?] he typed out.

"That's the basic gist of it yeah" Cinder said with a smile. "Unfortunately were out of time so I need you to make me a promise. "

[Okay, we do one of these every time. Let's get this over with.] Jaune typed.

"Promise me that you will put a real effort into thinking of the ways you become a better person in the last year." Cinder said "Bring me in a list of five ways you became a better person in the last year by our next appointment."

Jaune just stood up giving a halfhearted thumbs up. Once again he left questioning if this was actually doing him any good at all.


Jaune made it home after class, he missed talking to his friends that morning at Ms Falls request and now he had to go straight back home that evening at his mothers request. A bitter taste filled his mouth as he walked through the Kitchen where his mother was waiting for him.

[Hey mom] Jaune signed as he sat down at the counter and rested his emotionally exhausted head on the table.

"Hey Jaune, Tai called earlier on Ruby's behalf, she's going to come over to hang out later. I'll order us dinner so she can eat as well when she does." Mina said to her son as she held a can on Budweiser in her hand, occasionally pressing it to her head to ward off the heat..

Jaune's response was a simple thumbs up as he was enjoying the cool surface of the kitchen counter. As he rested his head he heard a rattling sound of a pill bottle being waved in front of him. Jaune managed to lift his head and saw his mother was holding up a bottle of pills. His eyes got wide for a second as she handed the bottle to him.

"Yeah, the finally refilled your prescription, go ahead and down one and get a shower so you can look somewhat normal for when Ruby shows up." Mina said as she leaned up and took a sip from a beer she was nursing.

Jaune popped the bottle and took a pill in hand and stared at it for a while as he thought "Jesus, the last week has been hell because I ran out of these things….". He rolled the small pill around in his hand for a few moments and contemplated its existence as he thought to himself. "These pills keep me from seeing her. They keep me from having to really think about what happened to her…" He mused.

"You alright?" Mina asked with a puzzled look on her face.

Jaune swallowed the pill dry and picked up the bottle to take to his room without a single word. Once he got to his room he put the bottle on the shelf where he normally keeps it while thinking. "I don't want to be on these for the rest of my life."

Jaune spent a few minutes standing silently waiting for the meds to kick in so he can feel at least somewhat normal again. When he heard a knock on his door he turned and saw Ruby was standing there with a smile on her face.

Jaune smiled and smiled out [Hey, Been missing you today!]

Ruby smiled and walked over throwing her arms around Jaune letting out a contented sigh as she did. Jaune pulled her in closer with, wrapping her up in his own arms as he focused on enjoying the feeling. About five or six minutes of making out later they finally pulled back from each other to talk. Ruby signed out [Well I'm glad to see your doing better.]

[Well mostly better] Jaune signed as he leaned against the wall. [Honestly I would kinda prefer to never have to go through that again.]

Ruby smiled as she took her button off shirt off leaving her in her Tank-top [Yeah I hear you, did it get warmer in here?]

[We were just making out ruby, I'm feeling kinda warm as well.] Jaune blushed out as he signed.

Ruby smiled signing [So, uh, kinda trying to distract myself from wanting to make out more thing… Me and Winter made the prototype of those braces.]

Jaune smiled and signed [Yeah, did it work out as well as you wanted it to?]

[Yeah, they worked perfectly. We had Weiss standing almost on her own, she needed a walker, but damn that worked out better than I could hope.] Ruby signed with a beaming smile on her face.

[So what are they going to do now?] Jaune signed smiling wide as well.

[Well, Weiss's family has already called a machine shop, I guess they have one they have in their pocket for when they need to machine work parts for their trucks.] Ruby was almost dancing in place. [They should have permanent braces for her in a few weeks.!]

Jaune's eyes shot wide [Damn sounds like you pulled it off hon!]

Ruby walked over and kissed her boyfriend. [You helped.]

[I made a couple sketches, you did all the hard work.] Jaune signed out.

Ruby's smile got a bit wider and signed out [You still helped out]

Jaune blushed a bit at the praise, he was finding himself not entirely used to it at the moment. He was about to sign out something when he heard a call from across the house "Jaune, both Alan and the Pizza are here, I need you two both out here! Please both be wearing clothes!"

Jaune silently chuckled [Mom said Ozpin and the food is here, let's go eat]

As Jaune looked like he was about to pass he felt Ruby grab his hand. When he turned to look at her he felt her lips press against his briefly. Ruby smiled and signed [You already look a lot better, Jaune] as she put a hand to his cheek.

Jaune put a hand over the one touching his face and smiled. As she let go and left the room Jaune stood alone for a second. The thought went through his head "No, I don't want to be dependent on these pills forever. I have to find a way to get past Pyrrha… Ruby deserves that much from me."

Jaune snapped back to reality when he heard his mother call again and he ran out to join the others for dinner.


This chapter, took for freaking ever to write, I started working on this the day after I posted the last Dust Eater chapter, and honestly my ability to concentrate on writing was frankly shattered this week. I think it was partially due to the fact that my son was home on summer break all week, my wife is still recovering from her surgery and was starting to feel the effects of cabin fever.

I'll admit, there was also a bit of... well discomfort writing a story about a Teenager recovering from a Suicide attempt after some news that broke out this week. I won't claim to have ever been Etika's number one fan or anything like that. But following Etika's subreddit during his disappearance was hard, It's also kinda hard to watch stuff that had him in it, especially some of the AH videos he was in, or the few minutes of the last Off-Topic video.

Look the point is, if your having thoughts of self harm, depression, or even if it's just you feeling stressed out, Talk to someone about it. Find a parent, a friend, a teacher, a coworker. I don't care who you talk to, just talk to someone okay? Besides if I lose any of you all who read this story then who am I going to low key torture with my shit writing right?

Anyways, I'll try to be a bit better about hitting a schedule with AQMW going forward, and I just want to say, thanks as always for reading, and I hope you all have a great day out there.