Summer stood in a dimly lit cave, dark enough that only someone who had been in it for hours would be able to see the gashes on the wall where Grimm had scrambled on, attempting to swarm and devour her negativity. Summer's hate was so alluring that Grimm had no choice but to hunt for her specifically, leaving the small village she had been sent to protect alone in the process.
She no longer held onto her weapons, there was no need to with the blood caked onto her hands fusing her palms to the handles of her twin blades. Summer Rose swayed in a cave without wind or ally.
Her breathing— short. Cut down by the deep gashes across her chest. Her eyes dead— her eyes less silver and more gray.
Summer did not sit, for she knew that if she did, she would not stand back up. If she sat, she would continue to sit in that cave, before expiring in her craft in the way that many had before her— alone. Her Scroll long since clawed off her person and trampled, she was a dead Hunter standing.
There was no savior for her, here. No god of the machine to heal her wounds or revive her. There wasn't even wind in this cave of the damned, there was simply Summer, and walls of rock scored by the claws of confined Grimm across hundreds of years as they were held back by barriers and Hunters. Hunters like her, who had given up their lives to save ungrateful villages that they couldn't remember the name of. Hunters who would never know the people they saved, nor receive thanks for placing down their lives as tribute.
The cave grew darker for Summer. She leaned against a wall, her vision filled with static as blood rushed around desperately to fill a body that simply did not have enough blood to go around. To fill an arm, perhaps, but nothing more. Aura might repair flesh given time, but Summer had no time nor aura. She had lost the latter hours ago and the former was whittling away, her number of breaths remaining in the double digits.
Summer's legs betrayed her. She came face to face with a pool of her own blood. Her dimming eyes surely saw the face of a betrayed Hunter that had never, and would never, understand humanity. Not that her countenance would be recognizable even to her husband, it was too laden with scratches that had yet to heal and covered in a mixture of her blood, sweat, and matted hair.
She confronted the specter in her bloody mirror, smiling weakly at it. It smiled back. Why Summer would smile at the face of a demon who fought for a cause it didn't appreciate, I will never comprehend. Perhaps it was stupidity or a delusion that had infected her, or a haze that had attacked her brain while it was weary from a lack of blood.
What I understand even less is how the reflection stood up. Her body far more than half dead, Summer Rose's specter moved away from the crimson reflection. Not through the act of a god or her fellow man, but her own sheer force of will. She held onto the wall for support, making sure not to slip on her own blood as she walked to the entrance of the cave, limping at a glacial but measurable pace.
Under her breath, she muttered the remnant of a flowery and pointless poem. One of her earliest memories was her mother disclosing the origin of her name. Summer's mother believed that she had done her child a kindness by naming her after the poem of what she thought would bestow upon her strength and beauty, but if only she'd known the other half. She never would have inflicted such a curse of loneliness on her only child.
It was only later in life that Summer found her namesake poem— better left corroded by time in a collection at Beacon— and she understood the true nature of both her personality and destiny. While most would be insane and egotistical to find meaning in the writing of a poet long dead, Summer was correct in her epiphany that it portrayed her destiny. Not because of some juvenile act of a twisted and perverted God— as that would actually be more fitting.
No, Summer Rose fit the poem because she believed it to be her destiny and followed it as one might a guide. Pushing away those dear to her to save them, and only reconsidering her iron creed after her heart could no longer take the sight of Taiyang's depression.
Even after her awkward marriage, Summer had never really changed, setting herself apart from humanity, but protecting them all the same. Hating herself for protecting those that had hurt and degraded her, but never able to act on those feelings.
The cave grew lighter, Summer Rose's limbs feeling light as she lost her limp, moving towards the entrance with hope twinkling in her dead eyes.
"Tis' the last rose of summer, left blooming alone."
The already dead Hunter quoted perfectly, with not a single cough of blood to accompany the line.
"All her lovely companions are faded and gone."
She was nearly at the mouth of the cave, and if she just made it a little further, she could leave. Summer could see the family she so desperately wanted to see again. She'd make it out of this cave of the damned no matter what, slay any amount of Grimm, pay any price, just to see their faces again.
"No flower of her kindred, no rose-bud is nigh."
Summer sped up, so close to escaping the cave of Arnab.
The sun was everything she had remembered and more. The light that she usually hid from illuminated her form. And upon reaching up a hand to block the life giving sun—
The sun reached her eyes regardless.
Or rather, where her eyes had been.
Summer Rose was, as I have clearly stated, dead.
There was no miracle of strength as Summer had stared at her bloody counterpart, the specter. There was no realization, no epiphany. There was no help from her fellow man, for she had no fellows. There was no help from the gods, for she had run dry of entertainment, her shtick predictable and cliche.
Summer Rose lay dead in a cave of Arnab, her face pressed into her own cold, drying blood.
Her flesh and blood that she had hated so dearly had finally relieved Summer's soul of her duty, however it did not think to inform her of this.
Summer Rose's specter did not cry as she looked out upon a desert, her work the antithesis to that of Ozymandias. Even if she were alive and able to shout, 'Look upon my works!' no one would answer, and there were no works to be found in monsters that disintegrated immediately after death. Only her lifeless body, and her blood remained.
Summer Rose did not cry, because she was unable to. Her original form was lifeless, but still filled with purpose. Just not the purpose she intended.
As Summer Rose's specter gazed out upon the Vacuan desert, she said nothing. As did her counterpart, remaining silent in solidarity.
Summer Rose's specter refused to move from the mouth of the cave, still acclimating to her new position in life.
The same cannot be said of her body.
"Thus kindly I scatter." The specter whispered to nobody in particular, finishing out her namesake poem, even if in reality, the entirety of the poem was lost to time. The thing she had read nothing more than a remnant of a remnant, and a twisted one at that.
And to Summer, her name controlled her future. Who she became.
But to many, a name is just a title. Not something indicative of personality or destiny, but a reference to their kind, a sort of designation.
The Grimm that slithered from some forsaken part of the cave falls under this category. A monster with no name, but hundreds of titles and designations. Replicant. Jabberwock. Shaitan. In every language known to Remnant, this ungodly creature had at least five ways to reference it.
But everyone feared it the same. From innocent children, to the adults that hoped it was nothing more than a fairy tale.
Summer's body found its newly given purpose as the tiny and unassuming creature, with more intelligence than a Grimm had any right to own, slithered into her body through her blood soaked nose, squeezing its malleable body around her brain.
For a moment, nothing happened. And for several months, nothing would. Not until it learned how to control the nervous system of a human. One infinitely more complex than any other stupid animal, such to the point that it would take months to learn the basics of how to move a simple limb.
Not five minutes had passed since Summer's death before the Jabberwock moved Summer's arm.
The Jabberwock stood awkwardly, as if Summer's body was controlled by an aging puppeteer that had forgotten his craft.
Just as quickly the Jabberwock fell, smashing Summer's face against the floor as it failed to break the fall with her arms. For it had no instincts, no innate understanding of human anatomy. It had only signals provided by a nervous system that didn't quite work, and would take time to understand and use.
To complete the realization of her death, Summer Rose's specter stepped back into the dark cavern, away from the sun at the mouth of the cave. She had promised herself that if she saw her dead body, that was that. She would accept her death, and... move on. How she did this she did not know, but she knew all the same.
There was a sense of relief as she found her still body. She knew for certain she was dead now, and could accept it.
What she didn't understand was why there were tracks of blood that looked like they had been made after she fell.
Summer Rose's specter did not flinch as her body flailed wildly, the Jabberwock sending out a brigade of signals to her nervous system. Instead of backing away, Summer stepped closer to try and turn it over— not that it would do much in her incorporeal form.
As Luck would have it, this was unnecessary. The Jabberwock flipped the body over, revealing the true nature of her previous flesh and blood.
Instinctively, Summer lashed out with her weapons, beheading her form and putting the Jabberwock to rest.
Her chain weapons had passed straight through the body, accomplishing nothing more than making Summer look foolish and desperate.
It was the eyes that had given away the Jabberwock. Summer had never forgotten the eyes of the dead man, and she never would. Few things scared her, even less still terrified her, and the eyes of the dead man after being puppeteered by a Jabberwock was chilling to the Huntress.
Overwhelming hatred towards everything filled Summer. Fueled in equal parts by desperation and an emotion she couldn't quite place, Summer refused to hold it back as she had all her life.
Summer Rose had fluctuated between accepting her death and rejecting it. But now there was no uncertainty, she was dead. Unlike her body, the purpose of Summer Rose's specter remained unchanged.
The destruction of Grimm.
The negative emotion overflowed, and a bloody rose print that branded her as the black sheep of black sheep appeared on the ground, pulsing as the hatred of Summer Rose's specter fueled it.
A cursed semblance brought on by two bloodlines, a power she had barred herself from tapping ever since it first manifested. Summer Rose was born of a mixture of humanity and hatred, and in the end, hatred had won out, leaving her unable to harness her humanity to its full potential during her life. Her lack of humanity had bound her silver eyes, meaning that they were nothing more than fakes, trophies of what could have been and never would.
As a spirit unbound by time and unchained by Fate, this restraint was no longer an issue. Summer wielded both powers in equal measure, but did not know it.
Summer's scream of rage and hatred filled the empty caverns, reaching nobody as her negativity overflowed, pulling from the depths of hell that which goes by the title Grimm.
The red soaked imprint of a rose opened like a great maw, revealing an abyssal black underneath. Dozens of claws and tendrils reached through the portal, but only one Grimm slipped through, dyed red and white by passing through Summer's gateway. The portal closed behind it, snapping shut.
Summer Rose's specter gave the newborn Grimm one single command, DESECRATE. One that it was gleeful to follow.
Blood and flesh scattered over the ground as the Grimm tore and ripped at its fellow's new host, uncaring of its woes or shrieks, thinking nothing of the parasite's poor attempts to use Summer's vocal cords which came out as scratchy and inhuman.
Limb was disconnected from limb, appendages were pulverized, and nothing was left of Summer Rose except a bloody specter filled with hatred.
It was an open casket funeral, though there was nothing inside the coffin save for satin.
The summer heat beat down relentlessly on the priest, urging him to loosen the collar of his formal dress. The oppressive atmosphere and unforgiving sun beat down heavily on the occupants of three out of the twenty chairs at the funeral.
"We are gathered here today to honor the death of Summer Rose. We give thanks to the gods for the life she spent, and ask that she spend the rest of her existence in their all consuming splendor. But for the rest of us still bound to this earth, the remnants of what have long passed, we will forever be affected by her time with us. A mother of three," the priest said, incorrectly remembering his notes and wanting to be smited on the spot for such an error, "a Huntress renowned across the kingdoms," He continued to an audience of three people and a raven, "and a paragon of self sacrifice."
A hateful breeze with no refreshing air to speak of passed by the occasion, doing nothing but blowing hot air in all their faces. One might recognize it as a breeze from the Vacuan desert if they were astute.
If there was a corner of the room, Summer's specter would be leaning there, watching and angry. Instead she watched from the metal chair next to her husband, angry at the world, but still unsure what to do with her extended time on Remnant, even after two months deliberation.
"Per the request of the deceased, there will be no prayers. Would any of the family like to offer remarks?" The priest asked, trying to keep up a strong facade for the family. Or at least the children, as the widower was smiling. His smile was unnerving to the young priest, having never seen such a happy person at his own wife's funeral.
The priest did his best to continue the ceremony, faltering when Taiyang laughed for no apparent reason, apparently thinking something in the Father's kind and well meaning words beyond hilarious. The angry look his blonde-haired daughter shot her father every time he chortled implied this was at the very least, not a genetic issue.
The black haired daughter was absent from the world, lost in thought. She was only eight years old to any observer, her legs too short to touch the ground as she sat on the chair. So she sat swinging her legs above the grass, and staring at the movement of her shoes for no discernable reason.
"...Peace be with you." The priest ended the ceremony. None of the trio— nor the raven or specter— finished his line, leaving an awkward silence that shouldn't have existed. The young priest was unused to such silences, attempting to fill it.
"Summer will be buried momentarily. And I-I know this may be inappropriate, but I... never got the chance to give her my gratitude for saving my village of Bassin. The opportunity never arrived and—"
"No need. You can thank her yourself when she's back." Taiyang said, smiling.
"Pardon?"
"You can thank her for saving Bassin yourself, when she comes back to Patch."
"Mr—"
"Just call me Taiyang." He interrupted. "And these are my lovely daughters, Yang and Ruby. Say hi to the nice man."
There was an unenthusiastic duet of, "Hi,", from Ruby and Yang.
"Taiyang, Summer Rose is dead."
"Not going to believe it until I see a body. She's just lost, right now. How many times did she come back after being gone for two months, girls?"
"0." Yang replied angrily. Ruby ignored him, staring at the far off raven— sitting backwards in her seat to try and squint at the far off bird.
Taiyang scruffed Yang's hair before she pulled away. "Kids, what can I say? Anyway, Father McKenzie, I bet you that in the next week, she'll be back. What would you say to that?"
"I would say she's dead, sir."
"Scared to lose, eh? Alright. Alright." He repeated. "I'll help you put in the coffin, but I'm telling you, it's pointless."
With the steady hand of a delusional man, Taiyang closed the lid of the coffin, picked it up with the help of the priest, and lowered it into the ground. He took the first turn of shoveling the loose dirt onto his wife's empty grave, a resting place nowhere near the cliff where her spirit would truly lie, eventually.
All the while the specter that had once been Summer Rose watched, cycling between anger and sadness. Unable to decide whether to damn humanity, or to let her death go and forgive them. The easiest way to rid the world of Grimm was to kill the source of their food, humans. She knew with her semblance that she could wreak havoc upon the world, destroy the pointless little villages she had once protected alone. Not that she thought about it in these correct terms, as she was infected with delusion. Summer Rose's specter thought she 'knew' that destroying those who had betrayed her was evil and wrong, even if it would end in the eradication of Grimm.
"Yang?" Ruby asked, her silver eyes focused on her half sister.
"What?" Yang replied, exasperated.
"Did the Grimm kill mom?"
"...probably." Yang said, shifting uncomfortably. She didn't know her sister even knew the word 'kill'.
"But dad said mom isn't dead?"
In Ruby's young mind, both her father and older sister's words were absolute. What they said was always truthful. But she couldn't think of a way for them both to be correct, despite all her intellect and willpower.
"Dad's being stupid right now. Mom's dead." Yang said harshly, crossing her arms as she looked away from her little sister. "Just get it in your head."
"Oh, okay."
Yang's eyes shot back to Ruby. This was not the answer she had expected or hoped for. She desired for retaliation, for Ruby to say she was wrong, to give her a glimmer of hope that her mother wasn't dead. If only so that Yang could call Summer 'mom' in person once, as she had refused to call her by that title in life, ignoring the weak smiles that Summer put up to hide her pain at Yang's denial.
Yang punched Ruby in the arm. Ruby bawled her eyes out, crying for her mother, and asking where she was.
Or at least, this is what Yang wanted to happen. She wanted someone else to share her pain if her father wouldn't.
And yet again, Ruby refused to react in the manner Yang wished. The black-haired girl sat lost in thought, still trying to parse the paradox of how two contradictory statements can both be truthful.
"Sorry."
Ruby cocked her head, confused at Yang's sudden apology. But she didn't question her sister, instead choosing another path to consider. A way to solve the paradox.
"Yang?" The black-haired girl asked.
"Yes, Ruby?"
"I'll kill them."
"Kill who?"
"The Grimm."
Of everything that had been said and done in the last two months in the Xiao-Long household where Summer spent her time haunting, this was the one thing that caught Summer's attention. Dredging up a memory long forgotten. Uncertainty became certainty as she relived the memory. Overflowing hate emanated from the glimpse into the past, fading away as quickly as it had appeared when Summer tried desperately to grit her teeth and forget the tragedy.
"You can't just kill all the Grimm. That wouldn't bring mom back, anyway." Yang said seriously.
"Mom said I can do anything I set my mind to."
"Yeah, but she didn't mean like that." Yang said, turning her body to face Ruby, her legs barely long enough to touch the ground.
"How would you know that if she's dead?" Ruby asked, her silver eyes piercing through Yang.
"Because... I know." Yang said weakly.
The rules in Ruby's mind shifted. The two stable points of life in her life were no longer absolute sources of truth. She was intelligent enough to recognize the fallacies in their arguments and assertions, but not old enough to understand the logic that kept Yang and her father sane.
Which left only one twisted rule etched in her mind, 'Mom wants me to kill all Grimm'. A smearing of two ideas that left a hideous mark on the once black-haired girl, her hair now tinged with the same dye that permeated the insides of Summer's cloak.
Generally flashbacks of your entire life happen before death, but in Summer's case, it was well after. Righteous anger against humanity strengthened what was now only an echo of Summer, her specter— Aura given will.
As her daughter decided to pursue the path of a Hunter, Summer vowed to stop a dream that would only end in misery and loneliness, by any means necessary.
A/N: Thank you for reading. I am always open to feedback and critique of my writing and its style if you would like to review or PM me.
