12/19/2009… early in the morning.
The first thing he heard was the sounds of something crying in the next room over.
Jaune creaked open a tired eye and sat up before he fumbled over to his Motorola Droid smartphone and clicked the power button to see the time.
"Jesus kiddo let us sleep…" Jaune said after seeing a 2, but not being able to make out the rest of the time.
Trying to think he realized that he had handled the last feeling and reached over to wake his wife up who was blissfully unaware that the little demon they had created was awake.
Ruby just slapped his hand away loudly shouting "It's your turn damnit!"
Jaune sighed as he got up, normally she could feel when he got out of bed but she must have missed the last time the little human air raid siren had sounded off.
With some reluctance, he dragged himself out of bed and put his cold feet on the hardwood floor of their bedroom. Ruby and Him had relocated down to Texas about a year ago when she got a better offer at a local hospital than he had at the small comic studio he was working for at the time.
Jaune knew his wife's skillsets were in demand, someone that knew the ins and outs of prosthetics as was as a damn fine surgeon.
He just wishes the winters here weren't so damn cold.
As he reached up and scratched his carefully trimmed beard he walked over into the next room where a small set of eyes were looking through the bars of her crib at him.
His little girl, all of three months old.
He walked over and carefully lifted the little bundle after he turned on the light and picked her up. A few moments later he carried the tiny little girl over to her changing table to take care of the stinky mess that had woken her up before he decided to get a bottle ready for her.
The whole time his little girl, Pyrrha Arc looked up at her dad with fascination.
A few minutes later with his daughter, in one hand, a bottle in the other, and his phone in his pocket he sat down in the rocking chair in their living room, dimly lit up by the Christmas tree in the corner as the soft while lights beamed around the room. Jaune found himself watching as the small bald baby girl noisily drank her bottle that he had carefully propped up.
Jaune looked at her eyes, he was told his little girl had the most brilliant blue-gray eyes anyone had ever seen. Just like her mother.
While his daughter relaxed and ate, Jaune pulled out his phone and clicked on the Facebook app, and started scrolling down the feed to keep himself awake.
As he scrolled through Facebook, he first saw a post from Weiss. About four years ago, fresh out of college with a business degree in hand she joined her father's company and had been apprenticing side by side with her father. It was expected in the next couple of years, her father was going to retire from the day to day handling of the company and leave the whole thing to her.
Earlier in the year, the state of Vermont legalized same-sex marriage, Weiss and Blake had flown over there and had made it official for them about a month later. Weiss became a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage years ago when she first learned she wouldn't be allowed to marry her long time girlfriend.
But, Blake Schnee was now officially part of the family, and if anyone wanted to bitch about it, they could haul their own god damn trash to the dump.
Blake on the other hand found her niche when she started publishing romance novels about three or four years back. She had in the last couple of years, managed to get out a whopping seven novels and was starting to see that pay off. She has plans on branching off to other genres in an effort trying to break out of the horny housewives market.
Jaune smiled as he scrolled and listened to the tired coos of his daughter as she got comfortable in the crook of his arm after she finished eating, Jaune started to rock in the rocking chair to hopefully get his daughter back to sleep. As he did he came across a picture of Ren standing in front of an aircraft with his wife Nora and their now almost seven-year-old daughter Winter. Ren's time in the air force had been a somewhat difficult one for him.
Ren joined a mere four months before 9/11 changed everything, Ren had at the time been talked by a recruiter into becoming part of the AC-130 program as a gunner never thinking he'd ever be needed to actually fight. Ren once recounted to him just how often he was reminded that he was, as part of that program, likely going to kill people.
Ren didn't talk too much about his two tours in the middle east, but he eventually got out of the gunner's seat, and when he went to officers training school and flight school two years back, he now flies cargo planes moving around freight between bases, and Jaune figured it was only a matter of time before he retired from the Airforce and tried to become a commercial pilot.
Jaune kept scrolling and came across a post from Penny and her husband, she eventually married some kid named Oscar back east who was also studying to become a zoologist. Both of them ended up landing jobs as licensed veterinarians at the Bronx Zoo.
Jaune was pretty happy for her. He couldn't necessarily say the thing for Yang However. Her time with the Adam's county sheriff's department has been one mired in difficulties and controversy.
Three years ago they lost Neptune when he was shot and killed by a drunk with a gun at a traffic stop. While his killer was caught and they threw the book at him it did little for Yang who was four months pregnant with their child at the time. Fortunately, Sun was still around, he was a fellow deputy and he offered to step in and help Yang raise the kid like it was one of his own. Yang ended up agreeing and it was of little surprise when they unexpectedly ended up eloping last year.
Jaune was still trying to get Ruby and Yang to talk to each other again after that fiasco...
A couple of moments later he felt a hand tap him on the shoulder snapping him from his train of thought. When he looked he saw the bleary-eyed face of his wife looking at him in her nightgown and robe.
Ruby signed at him not having her "ears" in [Hey, actually was this one my turn?]
Jaune quietly chuckled and signed back with one hand [It kinda was actually.]
Ruby yawns as she signed [Sorry, but you should head back to bed, you have your first day at that animation studio today right?]
Jaune looked over at his little girl who had fallen asleep before he looked back at Ruby and Signed [Yeah I do, let me go lay her back down and I'll come back to bed.]
Ruby who was now slightly more awake smiled and leaned in to give Jaune a light kiss [Don't take too long, otherwise you're going to end up slamming Starbucks all day again.]
Jaune smiled and carefully stood up as if to not wake the little one again as he carefully moved her to bed. He watched the young sleeping child in her crib for a few moments before he decided to head back to his bed shortly after.
"Just another late night in the Arc household" He mused as he exited his daughter's room.
So here we are, a brief look at where the case started close to eight years after where the main story ended. I kind of wanted to more or less write this at as close to a random moment in the life of the stories "Power couple" and while it won't answer all the questions, it'll hopefully show that for the most part everyone turned out okay. a true happily ever after doesn't exist in the real world, and it doesn't exist in this fic, life will always toss a new challenge or six at you, and happiness once found, has to be worked at to keep.
Looking back over the notes and older chapters of the fic, I actually found myself catching things, and making some mental observations I had written in to the story. For example I didn't really catch it at first, but I kind of unintentionally wrote Blake and Jaune as having a lot of chemistry as characters. The two characters at various points noted an attraction to the other, and that led to Blakes comment about once having a bit of a crush on him. I also kind of found myself thinking of various events I probably would have handled a bit differently with the power of hindsight on my side. In retrospect, giving Jaune his voice back was... honestly kind of unrealistic I feel. but I digress a bit. I guess if I ever get around to converting this fic into a more "Rwby-less" version like I did with the first 20 chapters or so. I have some idea's as to changes I'd make at least.
Actually I'm going to put in a last challenge for you the readers. If I was to hypothetically write as sort of series of short story "alt history scenarios". I mean not an entire long fic, but just looking at the overall story and asking "Okay what if this happened instead" What would you all like to see?
And for the last time lets go over the reviews, it's a bit of a bummer that I won't be able to directly respond to these at the end of chapters, but I'm still reading them none the less.
ZHsteven: Hopefully you can see the cast ended up fine with a couple exceptions, but even characters that didn't have a great post story life are still working towards that goal even in this epilogue.
Dragonlord: I mean I can't claim to have to have gone far from home for school either, so I don't personally have that particular life experience either.
MasterScarcity1: Yeah I remember that, what can I say, I'm a sucker for Lancaster even thought I don't really bother with ships anymore.
As for everyone else, Well hey I want to of course, as always, want to say for sticking it out this long, and for reading this story, and I'll see you all next time in whatever form that will take.
