Author's note: This week's chapter is delayed… because it's two chapters. As I was converting the outline for chapter 4 into text, I realized that in terms of both story and character development, it didn't move the status quo far enough from the end of chapter 3 to feel like a satisfying stand-alone update. If I'd realized it earlier, I would have combined chapters 3 and 4 together, which would have been the most logical way to handle it, but since it's too late for that, I instead made some adjustments and merged chapters 4 and 5 together. The shift in perspective marks the division between chapters.
Should demand remain consistent, the next chapter's target release date will be no later than the weekend of October 17-18, and from there the pace will return to one chapter a week.
Weiss Schnee
Weiss danced about the courtyard, hopping from foot to foot as she weaved her way around the wooden dummies she'd set up. Her body was angled as she approached the first line of them, her off-hand at her hip as she darted forward and extended the tip of her sword like a piston. She pierced each of their chests with a single strike per target, then crafted one of her glyphs before her. She used this energy to violently launch herself backward into another line of targets, which she dispatched in a similar fashion. She then ended her attack by igniting the dust within the barrel of her sword, striking the ground with the blade and causing a torrent of ice shards to erupt around her, gliding out in all directions to strike everything at once.
By the time she was done, all twenty-five of the dummies she'd set up had been knocked down and perforated, a few damaged beyond repair. She took a deep breath as she surveyed the area, pulling at the fabric of her shirt to fan her chest. Klein had insisted she wear thick, protective clothing, which slowed her down a little bit… as had lack of practice, but on the whole this wasn't a bad training session! It felt good to be moving her body again.
"You're in rare form today, Ice Queen!" Torchwick said cheerfully, offering a small golf clap from the bench he was seated on. The courtyard was a small, grassy enclosure at the center of the mansion. There wasn't much to it, save a small garden and a few trees, but the long stretch of flat, grassy land was ideal for an exercise like this, and it was the closest thing to properly going outside she could hope for without a heavy escort.
"I'm a little off, actually." She admitted with a shrug, using the back of her arm to wipe some sweat from her brow. "This is the first time I've done martial practice since I got back home. Father doesn't like me doing it, so I have to try to squeeze it in whenever he leaves."
"Oh! So you mean to say that this," he gestured from her to the legion of vanquished wood all around them, and back again, "is a rebellion? Breaking the rules? Living on the edge? I'm proud of you! We might make a proper outlaw out of you, yet."
"Ugh, don't ruin this for me by saying stuff like that." She said, the annoyed tone undercut somewhat by the happy bounce she had in every step she took. It was a little distressing how quickly this had begun to feel normal for her.
By now over a week had passed since she and Torchwick had made their deal. They argued on occasion, but on the whole he tended to be surprisingly pleasant with her. Suspiciously so. He was ever-smiling, and generally supportive and reaffirming of her, but- while she never quite felt that he was outright lying to her- she also never got the sense he was being totally upfront with her. He kept his true thoughts hidden... buried beneath a personable facade.
It would be a lie to say she trusted him. She wasn't a wide-eyed idealist like Ruby. People don't change often, and when they do, it's never fast or easy. A guy like Torchwick wasn't going to turn over a new leaf just because his criminal ways literally got him killed. If she really did help him get his body back, she knew for a fact that- regardless of any promises he made- he would be back to his old ways almost immediately.
Even knowing that, though, the thought of cutting him off disquieted her. It felt a lot like murder.
Granted, she was no stranger to killing, despite her youth. Killing the Grim was one thing: they were soulless monsters who existed for no greater purpose than to cause suffering to others. A bit less cut and dry were the White Fang...
Her history with the Faunus was somewhat checkered as a result of her privileged upbringing. Had fate never seen fit to team her up with Blake, she might have remained a terrible person where they were concerned, and her words and feelings toward them for all the early years of her life remained an intense source of shame for her, in hindsight. However, that didn't mean she regretted her actions against the White Fang. The things they were attempting to do had to be stopped, and every one she had ever slain had been trying to kill her right up to the point that she'd killed them. They were still living, sentient creatures, though, and she had enough common humanity to acknowledge that the bloodshed of their conflict was a tragedy.
Compared to those battles, Torchwick was helpless. He had no means of defending himself, short of protesting, nor any way to do her harm. She didn't owe him any favors, but she gained nothing from hurting him, either. He may only be pretending to support her while he's here, but that was more than any of her actually family members were doing for her.
So it was that she'd kept him around. All for the sake of a strange amalgam of misplaced guilt and eagerness to believe a reassuring lie. At first, anyway.
Then, as days went by, something strange had happened. She began to regain her appetite. Her room, which may as well have been her tomb for the first few months since she'd returned, became merely the place where her day began. She had started to wander and socialize more normally.
The melancholy and despair that had been her constant companions since her return hadn't left, really, but the grip of their talons in her soul had lessened a bit more, day by day. Today, she'd even felt the itch to try combat training… a notion that wouldn't have occurred to her even just a week ago, regardless of whether her father was close by or not. She felt like she was reclaiming the person she wanted to be- the person she had been during those happy days at Beacon- little by little.
Should Torchwick get the credit for this? Not really. This side of herself, this 'fire', as he was fond of calling it, had never stopped smoldering within her. Something about this place, and about her father, made her feel overwhelmed and powerless, but she'd never intended to allow those feelings to beat her. She wasn't a doll to be directed as her father pleased, however much it sometimes felt to the contrary.
Still, his arrival was the spark that began this transformation in her mindset, and while the motive behind his efforts to reassure her wasn't pure, having him around to listen to her problems had helped her start directing all her sorrow and anger into a positive direction. He may be a criminal, and he may be her enemy, but in this moment his presence in her life was making it better. She couldn't help but feel grateful to him for that, regardless of his ulterior motives.
She hurriedly cleaned the ice and debris from the courtyard, much to Torchwick's amusement, then had him wait in the hallway as she returned to the manor to shower. It had felt so good to exercise again that she's forgotten the big reason she was so eager to train again: her concert was tomorrow. The thought filled her with dread.
Not the public performance part, at least. She'd been singing for crowds since she was a little girl, and she felt justly proud of her singing ability. Rather, it was the more daunting task at the heart of the event, for her: convincing her peers here in Atlas to lend their support to Vale. Torchwick wasn't shy about expressing how futile he thought the whole plan was, but she had to believe in them.
Before she'd left home for the first time, and before she'd gone to Beacon and met her friends, these were her people. If she had continued to walk down the path her father laid out for her, they were the kind of people whom she would eventually become. If they were like her, she had to believe they could be reasoned with. They could be made to see what a tragedy the fall of Beacon had been.
That she might succeed was what worried her, though… If she could somehow help Vale from here, despite being powerless to protect it while fighting on the ground as a huntress, then would it mean her father was right all along, and she'd been a naive fool for refusing to listen?
She shuddered, and a chill ran up her spine heedless of the hot water pouring over her. Thinking about it was starting to bring the gloom back into her heart, so she tried to forget about it for now. She finished her shower, spent the next hour brushing her hair, and when her spirits still refused to rebound, decided to just give up on the rest of the evening and go to bed early.
Thinking about tomorrow wouldn't change anything. Whatever happened, happened. She yawned and sighed, emerging from her private bathroom in an eruption of steam. She was wearing a light blue button-up silk nightgown, her unbound hair falling freely about her frame like an elegant cape of snow, and as soon as she entered her bedroom she dragged her feet all the way to her bed and collapsed onto it in a heap. Suddenly, she just wanted to sleep.
Strangely, however, 'screw it, whatever' wasn't much of a reassurance for her, and an hour later she was still awake. Despite how heavy her eyelids felt, keeping them closed took conscious effort, and any time she got close to sleep those same thoughts would seep into her mind again. Fear that he was right. That this was where she belonged, and that she would never escape from it again. Her time at Beacon may have ultimately served as nothing but a means for her father to enhance his torture: allowing her to glimpse the life she wanted, but could never have, so that the everyday life she'd had before would be all the more painful for her.
She frowned, giving up on the strain of keeping her eyes shut, and staring vacantly out into the darkness of her room. What was wrong with her? Why did she behave so differently in this place than literally anywhere else? Who was she, really?
"Hey, Torchwick, are you there?" She called out softly. He still wasn't high on her list of people to talk to, but he was the best option available right now, and she had a feeling if she left herself alone with her own thoughts right now, they'd try to pull her into a very dark place.
"Need you ask? It may shock you to learn this, but the entertainment options within a 30-foot radius of your bedroom are somewhat limited, especially for the incorporeal, so I never wander far. What's up?" His voice had its usual cool, detached manner, even when muffled on the other side of the bedroom door.
"Would you mind coming in here for a while? I need to talk to someone or I'm going to go crazy." She lay on her back now, staring up at the ceiling as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.
"Into your room? I recall you made me promise I wouldn't. Are you sure it's okay? This isn't some kind of setup?"
"It's fine. Just this once." She replied. For all his feigned hesitation, not more than a second passed after she gave her permission before his head poked straight through the wooden door. He looked about curiously for a moment before stepping through with the rest of his body, tapping a toe against the ground and adjusting his coat. Weiss watched him enter with a neutral expression, not even flinching at this, anymore. It was weird how quickly you could get used to a ghost walking through walls in front of you.
He stepped inside, leaning his back against the wall beside her bedroom door. He did a lot of leaning. He'd confessed to Weiss that he could only seem to interact with the physical world if he approached it backwards, a fact which pretty obviously frustrated him, though he always tried to play it off.
"So this is your room, huh? This is my first time seeing it without the winter storm advisory in effect. It's nice. Very fitting for an-." He scanned the room slowly, his green eyes so bright they shone even in the darkness. When his line of sight got to the bed he met her gaze and abruptly trailed off his words. The confident smile he always wore melting into surprise as unexpected silence befell them.
"W-what's wrong?" Weiss asked, his intense stare causing her to look away. After a moment he shook his head, as if to restart his brain, and replied.
"Sorry. I've just never seen you with your hair down before. It's a nice look! Surprised you don't wear it more often."
"Oh..." She furrowed her brow and blushed a bit despite herself, a hand reaching up to stroke her hair absently. "I let it down to make it easier to get to sleep, sometimes. Keeping it down otherwise is a bother. It doesn't make fighting easy. Or walking. Or doing much of anything."
"So it's a practical decision! Your sister would be proud. Either way's fine, though. 'If it feels good: do it', that's the Torchwick way to live. What's on the agenda for tonight? A slumber party? Want to talk about boys and do each other's nails? I'm game for sure, but Snowflake..." He raised his gloved hands up to either side of his face, shaking them for emphasis, "I'm not confident I can take the gloves off in my current form."
This time it was Weiss' turn to cause a sudden silence because she was staring. Well, 'glaring', more precisely, as she didn't even attempt to keep her annoyed disappointment off her face.
"Maybe this was a mistake." She said in a cold tone before turning away from him. "Never mind."
"Oh, come on, Ice Queen, no need to pout." Torchwick protested in a reassuring tone. "I was just trying to lighten up the mood a little. You look more down in the dumps than I am… and I'm six feet under them! Y'know you got a captive audience here, so why not use it?"
There was another moment of silence before Weiss sighed, rolling back around just far enough to allow one light blue eye to peek back over her shoulder at him.
"The concert is tomorrow." She groaned.
"Yeah, so we've discussed! I thought you'd made your peace with that."
"I thought so, too, but I really don't want to do it." Came her sullen reply. She rolled onto her stomach and buried her face in her pillow.
"Right! So then… don't do it?" He offered, eliciting merely a disdainful snort from the upset girl.
"...I have to." She shook her head, muttering into her pillow.
"Oh, well, better do it then?" He said in the same tone as before.
"But I really don't want to."
"Right! So then… don't do it?"
Weiss finally turned back toward him at that, growling a bit. He raised his hands once more, this time defensively, before frowning sternly.
"As I recall, this was a good thing. Something about helping Vale? What happened to that?" He'd done a good job of concealing any negative emotions she'd elicited in him since he'd begun to haunt her, but his slight frustration with her was clear. She couldn't even fault him for it, really. She wasn't making much sense to herself these days, either.
"Nothing. I want to help Vale rebuild more than anything." She said. That much was true. She wanted to believe that if it hadn't been a charity event for precisely that purpose, she would have never allowed her father to push her into the performance. "I'm just scared. When Cinder launched her attack, I was there. I was a huntress, and no matter how hard I fought, I couldn't save anyone. What if tomorrow is different? If by singing and mingling I can make them care about Vale, I'll be able to save it in a way I never could have as a huntress. Will that mean that Father was right all along? That this is my place, that these are my people, and that leaving home was a mistake?"
Intellectually, she knew that it wasn't that simple. She was being unreasonable with herself. Trauma and a sense of helplessness had left her feeling vulnerable. She hated feeling like this.
"You're worried your dad may be right about something? The vacant-eyed imbecile with the walrus mustache? Relax! There are only two things that dimwit is good for: if you need someone to spend his wife's money, or a machine capable of turning champagne into piss. I can't help but feel you're giving him way too much credit."
"Maybe," She conceded. Part of it was being back here, but just the thought of her father intimidated her. While she was living at Beacon she couldn't even bring herself to speak to him. In her mind, she had built him up into this great, formidable demon against whom she never stood a chance unless she fled.
"Was your father like that, too?" She asked after a long pause. She had begun to fear that if she kept trying to talk through her feelings about tomorrow, then their conversation would loop endlessly, so instead she tried to distract herself with a different subject.
"My dad?" He asked with a bitter snort, "Nah, he was the most kind-hearted idiot I've ever met in my life, even counting your little hunter group. That isn't a subject I'm willing to discuss tonight, though- Or ever, for that matter."
"No? Tell me something else, then. Do you ever feel anything besides groundless self-confidence and contempt for everyone else? Have you ever cared about anyone?" She continued. In all the time they'd been together, he was always needling her to talk about her feelings, but never offered anything of his own in return. She had always been a little curious about whether he was as shallow as he always seemed.
"Caring about me is a full-time job! I mean, you have seen how amazing I am, right? I'm Roman gods-damned Torchwick! The rolling stone by which all others are judged. You know what they say about rolling stones and moss and whatnot."
"Oh, I see." She said in a deflated tone. She frowned a bit, eyes narrowed, but there was no anger in her expression, only an intense disappointment. She couldn't really be surprised someone willing to do the terrible things he'd done would be like this.
Another uncomfortable silence. Weiss truly was beginning to feel like inviting him in had been a mistake. She didn't want to be alone, but someone like him couldn't help her, either.
"Oh, don't look at me like that." He said finally, crossing his arms and turning away. It was difficult to tell in the darkness of the night, but Weiss thought he might actually be a little bit flustered. After a moment he finally conceded with a long sigh. "Fine! I'm not usually one to play fair, but I guess I have seen you at your lowest more than once since I got here. I may be a crook, but I'm not a monster."
"I'll keep your hidden heart of gold a secret, promise." She replied with a roll of her eyes, hoisting herself up into a seated position with her legs crossed under the covers. It really was starting to feel a little bit like a slumber party, though she hated how amusing that was to her. "Does that mean you did care about something?"
"My confession, dear Ice Queen, is as follows," He cleared his throat and put a hand to his chest, as if swearing an oath. "I, Roman Tochwick, once had a cat."
"A… cat?" She slanted her brow at him. She wasn't sure what she expected him to say, but that wasn't it. He nodded twice in quick succession, affirming her question with a solemn grunt. She couldn't find it in her to doubt him when he was being so...err...strange, so it was her turn to sigh and concede. "You just don't seem the type, is all."
"Right? I totally agree! That's just the thing, though. You wanna know the story of my life? Just an unending sequence of cats forcing themselves into my life and imposing their will on me in turn. This one was special, though, because I actually didn't hate her. You know how it goes with strays? Sometimes you feed one for a laugh, and it decides it's going to adopt you? That's what happened with us. She followed me around for so many years I kind of forgot what my life was like before she showed up."
"It's so hard for me to picture." Weiss admitted, a light smile tugging at her lips, all the same. "I mean, it's hard for me to picture you not committing some sort of felony in the first place, let alone showing compassion to another living creature."
"So rude! And after I went through all the trouble of exposing my soft, vulnerable underbelly just to make you feel a little better." He reeled back a bit, crossing his arms and looking away in a show of indignity. It was strange behavior to take for a man who wanted to accuse her of pouting.
"I guess that was a little unfair of me. We didn't really know you that well. Outside your day-job, I mean." The smile that had been threatening to form was finally beginning to spread across her face in earnest. She didn't for a moment believe he had any genuine concern for her, but he was still trying to make her feel better. Maybe he was capable of being a decent human being… so long as it was the only way to get something he wanted.
...It really was strange he had such a strong dislike of her father, come to think of it, since they shared that much in common.
"Exactly. Committing felonies is just what I do for a living. I may be a scoundrel, but when I'm not on the clock, I have hobbies, same as anyone else. Though, I do admit that most of my hobbies are… also felonies. Eh, maybe you do know me pretty well."
"You are a criminal, after all. So then? What happened to your cat?" Weiss asked, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. She wasn't sure when it had happened, but she'd almost forgotten she was back and home. The atmosphere in her room had come to resemble how she'd felt at school.
She watched as, for just a moment, every trace of merriment drained from Torchwick's body language: his casual smirk slowly giving way to an expression that looked half sad and half furious, then vanished again. He looked away from her and stared instead into the darkness beside her bed.
"She died." He said simply, his voice as newly devoid of fun as the rest of him. Weiss' own smile began to waver a bit as she subconsciously shifted in place. Maybe this was a bad subject to bring up, after all?
"I-I'm sorry, maybe I-" She began to offer an apology, but didn't even get halfway through it before she was interrupted by the sound of Torchwick's laughter. It surprised her, both the notion that he would laugh after what had just happened, but also the sound of it. It wasn't the maniacal cackling she would have expected from a criminal mastermind, but rather a deep, warm chortle that seemed to fill the air around them.
"Snowflake, I'm kidding." He reassured her, simmering his laugh down to a snicker as he reached up with the back of his hand to brush a mirthful tear from his eye. "You really shouldn't believe everything a guy like me tells you. I thought you were the grounded, cynical type!" He was so amused he'd even begun to double over a little, clearly quite pleased with himself.
"Wait, so you lied?" Weiss demanded, her hands balling into fists. This jerk! To think she'd started to feel bad for him! He finally got control over his laughter, taking a deep breath as the fit finally came to an end with an amused exhale.
"Maybe I did, but in my defense," He paused for effect, winking one eye as he raised his hand and pointed toward her, "… I made ya forget about your problems for a minute, didn't I?"
Weiss had been preparing to shout, but his words had hit home, the realization of it causing her to go wide-eyed. She had completely forgotten about the concert! Had this been his plan the entire time? Was he secretly some sort of genius of cheering people up? It was hard to believe he possessed that level of empathy, based on their history.
For a while neither of them spoke, though the silence didn't feel awkward or heavy, as it had before. It was almost comfortable. Before she'd realized it a laugh of her own had begun to rise from her chest. It started as a soft giggle that barely sounded through her gritted teeth, but then erupted loudly. Seeing this, Torchwick began to laugh again, and for a minute they just enjoyed feeling jovial together.
"Anyway," It was Torchiwick who eventually broke the spell, finally standing again, "I'm starting to get that worrying about stuff is just, like, your hobby, but you've been thinking in circles. There's no such thing as destiny, so nowhere can be your 'place' without your consent. Just do what makes you happy."
Ha! This was new for him. He tended to encourage her to talk about her problems, but she couldn't recall a time he'd ever actually tried to give her advice… outside his repeated insistence that she would make an incredible dust smuggler. She didn't mind this, of course. The fact that he was one of the only forces in her life at present who didn't act like he knew what was best for her was a big part of the reason she didn't mind having him around… but in this instance it was a nice change of pace. The advice was very Ruby-like.
Weiss smirked and laid back in her bed. Come to think of it, when you got past the cynical detachment, there was a handful of things about his way of looking at life that reminded her of Ruby. Part of her wanted to tell him so, just because she knew how much he'd hate to hear it.
"Maybe." She said airily, centering her head onto her pillow and feeling her body begin to sink into the warm softness of her bed. The reduction in her worry only helped her to remember how tired she'd been.
"Just something to think about. If you enjoy stress that much, I don't have the heart to tell you to stop indulging in it. Either way it turned out to be a fun slumber party, after all. Thanks for inviting me! We should do it again sometime. In the meantime, I shall return to my cold, blue hallway, and see you again in the morning."
He walked back toward the door, stepping through it as he had when he entered, though before he fully left he leaned his upper body backward, turning toward her and waving a final time.
"Good luck with the performance tomorrow. I'll be sitting stage-side." He flashed her a mischievous smile and finally vanished. Her eyes had already begun to lose their focus as he did this, though, and she heard his words without comprehending them.
Roman Torchwick
Today had brought many changes with it, some more welcome than others. For one thing, he was finally able to leave the mansion for the first time since his return to Remnant. That much he enjoyed, as well as being shuffled off in a limousine to the concert hall, though when he reached the hall itself, and discovered that it, like the manor, was decked exclusively in shades of blue, white, and black, he felt himself re-dying a little bit inside.
Someone needs to stage an intervention for this family. They have a problem.
From there it was a spectacle he'd never had a firsthand experience with: dozens of people showed up, soon to be hundreds, and then thousands. It was clear the Schnee family name had some pull on it, and at the price charged per-head to attend, the event would definitely raise a lot of money for Vale, which would make the Ice Queen happy- though Torchwick would gladly eat his much-missed hat if more than a baker's dozen of the attendees actually knew or cared what the event was meant to accomplish.
The contrast between this atmosphere and the dismal, isolated existence he had been living back at the manor was so sharp that he almost felt overwhelmed. Weiss didn't mingle with the crowd prior to her performance, choosing instead to sequester herself in the backstage room and warm up. Tied to her as he was, this meant he couldn't go out and see the crowd for himself, either, but even from here the din of thousands of excited voices- people yammering and getting gradually more drunk- was palpable.
Not getting to mix himself up with that crowd wasn't really breaking his heart. Torchwick wasn't an introvert by any definition of the word, but he wasn't a social butterfly either. He took a 'quality over quantity' approach to human interaction, and on the occasion that he did feel the urge to party, this was far from the sort of scene he would want to crash. Never in his entire life had he ever encountered one of these blue-blood types who had anything to say that was worth the effort it took to listen to them.
So it was that he spent the waning hours of the afternoon alongside the girl holding him hostage, doing his best to play the part of the supportive friend as she continued to do battle with the same demons that had been plaguing her for the entire time they'd been together. She'd been in surprisingly high spirits when she awoke that morning, which he took as a sign that at least their night together had been a bit helpful, though as they'd approached the concert hall her countenance began to gradually darken again. It was as if being confronted with the reality of what awaited her had chased all her resolve away again.
Still, he'd come to realize that, for as much as the Ice Queen liked to over-obsess with the negative, when she settled on a course of action she always tried to follow through with it. By the time of her performance she had calmed down; she had abandoned both the relaxed attitude she'd had the previous night and the stressed attitude she'd carried into the building, in favor of a mask of stoic, determined stillness.
He walked with her and her escort as she rounded the backstage and waited for her cue. When she heard the announcer declare her name, the pair of them headed out to the spotlight, with her moving to the center of the stage and him walking around it to hop down to the seats below. The house was packed, so he contented himself to lean his back against the wall and cross his arms.
Weiss was radiant. If he hadn't spent as much time with her as he had, he would have mistaken her for merely being professional, but now he could see the sorrow she radiated, as well. She was, after all, a caged bird being made to sing. She scanned the entire area slowly before she began. When her gaze reached the place he was standing, their eyes met for a moment and he smiled reassuringly; She gave him an expression he couldn't begin to interpret, then turned away from him, faced the audience once more, and began her performance.
The two of them had been together for almost as long as she'd been preparing for this event, so he had heard most of the song many times already, but man! There really was no comparison to hearing the actual performance. The instant she raised her voice, the crowd fell completely silent, and all attention fell to her. The melody she sang was wistful and a little angry… appropriate for something like the attack on beacon, though Torchwick couldn't escape the feeling that the source of those emotions was something smaller and more intimate to her.
...in fact, he knew for certain this was the case… for something strange began to happen to him as he listened. He had kept his eyes on her as she sang, but his vision began to haze. The light around her lost its definition, and formed a blinding halo that stole everything else from his line of sight. It was then that the images began.
Scenes from a life he didn't recognize began to flow into his mind. The mental image of a crying woman looking over at him from from under her arm, gripping a bottle in her hand. Of Jacques Schnee pulling him by the wrist, so forcefully he feared that his arm may be ripped from its socket. Of a young girl he could only barely recognize as a teenage Winter Schnee lecturing him. The memories came to him in still frames, so fragmented he couldn't understand their context, only the emotions behind them: sadness, frustration, fear, and loneliness.
It was as if some divine being had stitched together a patchwork quilt of images from another person's life, sewed until that quilt stretched on for miles, and then pushed the entirety of it into his mind. His breath hitched as a wave of pain slammed into his brain, causing him to fall to his knees cradling his forehead in his hand. He felt like a balloon being filled with air until it burst.
The pain was bad. As was the intensity of the negative emotions he was feeling second-hand, but the worst sensation was of losing himself. His consciousness was drowning in an ocean of alien memories, his own thoughts and feelings subsumed and swallowed by them, carried away into the currents of his subconscious. He began to feel as if his existence itself would be erased, and the instinctive terror this instilled in him quickly overrode his senses.
Make it stop. Make it stop… Make it stop! The phrase was the only thing he could think as he attempted to escape, wanting to be away from this place, from her song. He turned and attempted to push his way through the wall, but he'd already been near the limit of how far his invisible leash would allow him to be from Weiss, and he felt that familiar weight trap him down.
Then the sensation ended.
In an instant the flood of memories halted, and the pain it brought with it. Torchwick blinked, suddenly feeling exactly as he had before Weiss started her song. He awkwardly forced himself back up onto his feet and returned to the stage. The sound of audience applause was deafening, and in response Weiss bowed her head slightly before turning to return to the backstage area. For a moment he stared at her, but finally regained his senses enough to chase after her.
What the hell was that?
***
Jacques Schnee's laughter filled the ballroom, and he clasped his conversation partner on the back joyfully. The concert's after-party was as lively as the lead-up to the concert had been, with the entire crowd now packed into the massive auditorium next to the performance hall. Long tables had been set up along the walls, lined with food, and servants traveled between the guests with glasses of champagne on offer. The far wall was covered in framed painting for the auction that would conclude the evening. The atmosphere was as busy as it was devoid of any substance.
Weiss and her brother had been kept at their father's side since the moment they'd arrived here, forced to stand in his wake as he traveled from one boring guest to another and exchanged meaningless pleasantries. When a servant moved past them, the old walrus gasped in delight, taking one of the champagne glasses from her tray and downing half its contents in a single gulp.
"Looks like the machine is starting up early today..." Torchwick leaned down and whispered into Weiss' ear. She snorted, giving him a disapproving look despite covering her mouth to conceal her smile. He winked and gave her an apologetic shrug, knowing in a place like this she couldn't really interact with him.
She hadn't spoken much since the end of the performance, but it was clear she was less than thrilled by her public's reaction. She may have half-hoped to reach these people, but he found it hard to believe that even she could be so naive as to believe it in full. The ruling class of Atlas were collapsed into balls of hedonism by the gravity well of their egos, and that wasn't going to change just because of a song, however heartfelt.
Ugh, that song.
He grimaced, remembering what had happened to him during the performance. He knew she hadn't done it on purpose, but whatever it was, it'd left him feeling a bit… overstimulated. Well, if he needed to turn his brain off for a while, this was definitely the crowd to do it in. Most of these people didn't look like they'd had a thought in their lives.
"Stimulating as shadowing the world's least interesting rich man is, I'll leave you to it for now. Gonna go drink in the atmosphere. Good luck staying awake, Snowflake." He whispered. She looked back at him, frowning a bit, but nodded her consent, and he took off into the crowd of people.
This was, perhaps, the first time he ever felt blessed to be dead. The room was packed with bodies: young trust-fund boys chasing skirts, middle-aged status climbers kissing up to the next rung on their social ladders, would-be gold diggers looking for the next old man to sink their hooks into... All very drunk and so very, very loud. As a man he would have had to push his way through them, but as a ghostly spirit he simply phased through them the same as any other solid matter. It turned out it tickled to pass through people whether they walked through him or he walked through them, though he quickly learned to close his eyes as he did so, lest he gaze upon horrors not meant for mortal eyes when he saw them from the inside out.
For a few minutes he explored the range he could travel around Weiss, taking in the atmosphere. The conversation may be dull, but the drinks looked good. God, he missed drinking. He also missed cigars, for that matter. Hell, he'd have settled for most anything. After the day he'd had, he wouldn't turn down any method of altering his consciousness. He wasn't sure he'd been forced to endure an entire week of unbroken sobriety in his entire adult life!
It was while he was in this state- lamenting his mental clarity, pretending to dance with the occasional drunken debutante, and enjoying the smug sense of superiority that inevitably came from listening to the rich pretend they had any awareness about the world around them- that he realized he saw a face he recognized.
The older man was in the far corner of the room, where the drinks were being made. He had his back to Torchwick, but even from here he could recognize that white tailcoat… and that hair! Even back when Torchwick had seen him last he was already starting to lose his battle with the ravages of time, with the hair around the back of his neck long since having gone gray, leaving only the hair on the crown of his head displaying his original black shade.
"Well, now! If it isn't my favorite babysitter. Fancy running into, oh!" Torchwick called out to the man, not particularly bothered by the fact that he couldn't hear him. As he spoke he'd moved around to get a better look at the man. His eyes hadn't deceived him! This truly was James Ironwood. Atlesian general, and his one-time jailer. More surprising than that, though, he was a wreck! His state was so surprising that Torchwick stopped mid-sentence to inspect him more closely.
The once clean-cut man's chin was now dotted with stubble, and his bangs were allowed to hang slightly loose. Dark rings had come to circle his blue eyes, making them appear sunken in, and he was hunched over the bar with his head down. He had a line of four champagne glasses assembled before him, and he downed each in rapid succession, swallowing the last of them with an audible groan before looking thoughtfully at the table.
This was a sight! Maybe this party had some entertainment value after all. Torchwick threw back his head and laughed, sitting on the table beside the old general.
"Look at you! Y'know, when I saw you, I really hated that I still couldn't touch anything. I wanted to... hmm... dump a drink on you maybe? Maybe pants you? Some simple prank one would expect from an incorporeal puckish rogue. Then I saw you, and man! Maybe it's for the best that I can't. I mean, what can I do to you that the universe isn't already? You're making my situation look fabulous, and- I hesitate to admit- my situation ain't good!"
He sighed contentedly as Ironwood finally stood again and rejoined the party. It would be a stretch to say Torchwick 'regretted' his role in the attack on Vale. He certainly didn't have any sort of humanitarian remorse for his role in it, even if he generally preferred to avoid killing when there wasn't some monetary benefit to the act. Still, it was an incident that reminded him how helpless he was, and had he been given his own choice in the matter, he wouldn't have participated in it.
...Seeing Ironwood like this did cheer him up, though. If the attack on Vale was what brought him to this, then at least there was a silver lining to the whole thing. He tried to be a 'glass half-full' kind of guy.
He didn't have much longer to think about such things, though, as he heard a familiar voice erupt above the hazy noise of the party, so forceful and aggressive it caused much of the chatter to fall silent.
"Shut up!" He heard Weiss angrily roar. It sounded like she had finally cut herself free from the old walrus' coat tails for a moment.
Torchwick clicked his tongue and smiled broadly. See? This is what happens when he takes a moment to savor some wholesome schadenfreude. He misses out on all the character development! He crossed the ballroom just in time to see Weiss standing in front of a large painting of Beacon academy. The victim of her wrath seemed to be one of the women in the crowd, though he was sad to see he'd missed what she'd said to trigger it.
"You don't have a clue! None of you do! You're all just standing around, talking about nothing. Worrying about your hair, your money, your stupid problems that don't mean anything!"
I had a feeling it was something like that… Good ole Atlesians! Thought Torchwick contentedly. Crushing optimism with their myopic idiocy since the days of Mantle.
Weiss was presenting her anger more openly than he'd ever seen her do outside the privacy of her room. She was better at repressing her emotions than anyone he'd ever seen, so for her to be brought to this state must mean she truly did, on some level, have faith in these people. The realization of how deep her naivete went soured his good humor a little bit, as it threatened to conjure memories he'd just as soon keep forgotten, but empathy for her would require him to stop thinking about how this was advancing his own agenda.
...Perhaps that may sound terrible to a normal person, but Torchwick was firmly of the opinion that if you were Roman Torchwick, you'd also want to spend as much time as possible thinking about yourself.
The old walrus ran to try to get his daughter under control, grabbing her wrist and hissing for her to calm down. The sight of it conjured up one of the images Weiss had so rudely forced into Torchwick's head earlier, causing him to close his eyes and wince in pain. By the time he opened his eyes again, Weiss was on the ground.
From the moment the after-party started until now, Weiss' anger was cut with equal parts of disappointment and sadness… but now, the way her blue eyes narrowed, her face grew colder, and her trembling ceased made it clear that only the foremost of those emotions remained. She now radiated a fury so pure and intense that he was sure he'd be able to feel the endorphins vicariously even if they hadn't been connected.
A glyph began to glow beside her, projecting energy outward that quickly took the shape of a large, pig-like Grim. A summon! A trick he knew she had, but hadn't seen her do back at the manor. Maybe that was what he was, too? Was that how her semblance connected to that alternate world? Well, whatever! Where before he was lamenting his inability to drink, he now lamented his lack of a bag of popcorn. Even he hadn't dared to anticipate a reaction this strong.
Without a moments hesitation Weiss allowed the beast to charge the offending woman, who could only offer stammering apologies in reply. This attack was a statement of intent so pure it took Torchwick's breath away! She was the Ice Queen, after all: level-headed, and favoring precise and exact strikes to overwhelming force. Even when he fought their group he'd never seen her like this!
The beast charged forward, crossing two-thirds of the distance between Weiss and the woman before a shot rang out in the hall. The creature grunted, flying onto its side before vanishing into a miasma of dust as suddenly as it had appeared. On the other side of the group Ironwood stood, the smoking barrel of his revolver pointed toward the space where the creature had been charging.
"Arrest her! She's crazy! She's insane! She should be locked up!" The assailed woman rambled as she turned to her liberator, pointing desperately at Weiss. Seemed her remorse from before was already forgotten.
"She's the only one making sense around here." Spat Ironwood bitterly, returning his weapon to its holster. He didn't seem interested in exploring the events any further, as he sullenly walked away, stopping only to turn toward Jacques and offer a cold "Thanks for the party."
Heh, you're so cool, Woodsie. Torchwick rolled his eyes, though deep down he knew it was to his benefit that the old man had been there to stop that attack. Shame you're so beat-up, but it's your own fault. You 'straight-arrow' types snap the fastest and the hardest… but don't worry. I'll see if I can't save the little Ice Queen from turning out like you.
Weiss wasn't too far behind Ironwood in storming out of the party, forcing Torchwick to hastily chase after her. As he watched her move, her head lowered now, and that pure anger replaced with a sort of sheepish confusion, he found himself wanting to say something. Anything. He'd wanted this experience to be a catalyst for convincing her to leave the manor, but had it been too traumatic? He tried to remember the threshold a normal person had for this kind of thing. Should he reassure her that things do get better?
I'm sorry, Snowflake. It hurts to be betrayed by people you thought were your own. I know exactly how that feels, but this was a good thing. Do you get it now? People don't deserve your sacrifice for their protection. Can't you see that this is how everyone is? Screw 'em!
However, as the pair of them walked away, he remained silent. They walked down the entryway of the concert hall, stepping out into the cold autumn night, and only then did she finally turn to face him.
To his surprise, her gaze was firm as she looked him squarely in the eye, the emotional state she'd been in just moments before seeming to have vanished into smoke. Now her face was placid, showing nothing but a firm determination.
"We have to get out of here." She said simply. The sound of her words erased all of his worries. He smiled broadly and closed his eyes. His hand found its way to his chest and he stepped forward, bowing melodramatically.
"Thy will be done, your frosty majesty." He replied with sardonic glee.