Disclaimer: I do not, nor do I claim to, own RWBY or any other media that may be referenced in this fic. All rights go to their respective owners. The only thing I lay any claim to are my OCs (I swear they are coming guys).
The first thing Rosa decides when she wakes up in hospital is that she hates hospital.
There are too many people rushing about, and the staff are too restrictive for her tastes. They treat her like glass, as if she would break at any moment because she was asleep - unconscious they had presumed - when she arrived.
Okay, she may have had a concussion from the airship crash and explosion, that was not helped by using her Silver Eyes (not that they knew that), but she wasn't injured otherwise. Even where she had been impaled was nothing more than a scar by the time anyone else saw it, and they easily assumed that it was an old one.
She wants to see her friends, Oscar, her Abuela, Qrow. Heck, she'd be happy to see any of her teachers at this point. Anyone but the hospital staff.
"Please, I just want to see that my squad is okay," she begs the nurse on duty that day. A week Rosa had been stuck in this white walled room. An entire week on her own with just hospital staff. She thinks she'll jump out a window if she goes much longer on her lonesome.
The nurse levels her a pitying look and nods.
"Fine, but you will be wheeled to their rooms in a wheelchair. Your aura needs every chance to recover it can get after it saved you from dying in that explosion," the nurse half scolds/half relents. Rosa nods furiously.
Ten minutes later, she's being wheeled to Weiss' room. Despite the girl having not been necessarily injured during the battle, she had been fighting a lot more than she should have been during her recovery from her previous injury at the teeth of that King Taijitu under Mountain Glenn.
They stop outside the door and she can hear voices inside.
"You will be coming home with me. Today," a male voice scolds.
"Father! I have my schooling, my squad. I can't just leave!" Weiss' voice protests.
"I have heard enough from you, young lady! It is quite clear that Vale is not safe enough for anyone, let alone my daughter. You could have been killed. As such, I, as your father, have decided that it is in your best interests to be pulled from the Beacon registry of students and brought back to Atlas, where you will be given the best of care," the male voice, Weiss' father, lectures.
"At least let me say goodbye to my squad," Weiss begs.
"No. And that is final," the man tells her. "I have taken the liberty of sending some of our staff to collect your things. You are to pack up what you have in this... room... while I wait outside this room. You will not be having any visitors," her father orders.
Weiss sighs. "Yes, Father."
The door opens and the white-haired man scowls at Rosa and the nurse.
"Move along," he all but growls at them.
The nurse nods meekly and continues to push Rosa's wheelchair to the next room, Nora's.
The ginger-haired girl is awake and sitting up on the bed, half-heartedly eating her way through a stack of syrup covered pancakes that Rosa would bet money on Ren - who is sitting in an armchair in the corner - having made.
"Hey, Nora," Rosa says weakly.
"Hi," Nora replies, just as weakly.
"How're the legs?"
"They're... healing," Nora says, looking down at her lap.
"The doctors are saying that she'll have to re-learn how to walk once her legs are finished healing. It's going to be a long process," Ren reveals sombrely.
Rosa reaches out and puts her hand on Nora's. "You'll get through this, Nora. I know you will. You're such a strong person, something like this isn't going to stop you. I believe in you."
"I just... I just want everything to go back to the way it was. I wish the Vytal Festival never happened," Nora admits.
The nurse clears her throat. "You aren't the only one with those thoughts. The world is changing, and it isn't pretty. We can't change the past though, only work towards a brighter future," she shares.
"Thank you," Ren says.
Nora meekly nods her head in agreement.
They sit in silence for a few minutes as Nora glumly pushes her pancakes around. Eventually, Rosa speaks up.
"I'll... get out of your hair and let you rest."
"Okay," Nora mumbles and Ren nods in gratitude.
The nurse wheels Rosa out and then further down the hall to Pyrrha's room.
At her bedside already is Jaune.
The girl from Argus isn't doing too well.
She's lying asleep on the bed, but by no means peacefully. Her face is covered in a sheen of sweat and is grimacing in her sleep.
"Hey, Rosa," Jaune weakly greets.
Rosa pauses, debating on what she should say. "How is she?" she decides to say.
"Her fever's come back pretty badly. She's not vomiting, which is good, and the doctors have her on an IV drip to keep her nutrient and fluid levels up. She's not all that aware of anything when she's awake, and if I had to guess, she's been having nightmares in her sleep," Jaune tells her, his shoulders stooped as if under a heavy burden.
"At least she seems to be getting better," Rosa sighs.
"I didn't think you were injured, so why are you in a wheelchair?" Jaune asks. Rosa huffs as she crosses her arms across her chest.
"The staff are being overprotective," she grumbles, eliciting a laugh from Jaune and an unimpressed glare from the nurse.
"I should take you back to your room for that," the Nurse jokingly threatens.
"If you even try and do that before I've seen the rest of my squad, I'll run away from you and find them myself," Rosa shoots back.
Jaune gives out a strained laugh. "I'll let you go see them then."
"Okay. I'll see you later?"
"Of course," Jaune replies with a nod.
Rosa is wheeled out and she comes to the room she is most nervous to enter. There is no way of knowing how her half-sister is handling.
"Would you mind giving us some time alone?" she asks the nurse before she opens the door. Hesitantly, she nods. Rosa is wheeled in and left next to the lone bed in the room.
The occupant of the bed is gazing blankly at the television on the wall and Rosa doesn't know what to say at first. She decides on bringing up a fond memory of the squad. A memory of the good days before things got so death-defying, back when it was just the different dialects of English that tripped up the squad.
"Do you have a rubber I could borrow?"
Yang turns her head to look at her, a pained look in her eyes. "Hey," she whispers.
"Hey to you too," Rosa says with a soft smile. "How you doing?"
"It's all gone," Yang says quietly. "The school, Penny, and..." the blonde trails off as she looks at where her arm used to be.
"I... I don't have any solutions for what happened to Penny, but... Beacon can be rebuilt, and you can get a prosthetic for your arm if you want to. It isn't all 'gone'," Rosa tries to point out.
"I don't care anymore, Ru. Sometimes bad things just happen, and... maybe this is a sign that I'm not cut out for being a huntress," Yang tells her.
"Yang-"
"Just leave me alone. I just want to lie here," the blonde interrupts.
Rosa droops and reluctantly nods. "Okay."
Five minutes later, the nurse opens the door and rolls Rosa out of the room and to the next and last room. Blake's.
The door opens and the room is empty. The nurse goes to the bathroom to see if she's in there, but she isn't. That's when Rosa spots the note folded in half on the bed.
She picks it up and sees that it's addressed to Squad RRAYNNBW on the outside. She opens it up and reads.
To my squad,
I have to leave. I'm sorry to do it this way, but I don't think I could go through with it if I saw any of you in person. I came to Beacon to try and put my skills to better use and hopefully work towards equality. Instead, my presence just caused more harm to you, the people I care the most about.
If I hadn't come to Beacon, Yang would still have her arm, and I'm sure a lot of other injuries wouldn't have happened either.
So, I've decided to leave, to keep you all safe.
The White Fang is after me, because I wasn't just a regular member. I was very high ranked. Third highest in the Vale branch, and even that was only a formality as I was the head of the Vale branch's partner. My leaving the Fang wasn't taken lightly, and I don't want any of you to get hurt because of my decisions.
I will miss you all dearly, and I thank you for accepting me as a part of the squad, I will always treasure the months I spent with you.
Sincerely,
Blake Belladonna.
"She's gone," Rosa brokenly whispers. She drops the note and cries. This is the straw that broke the camel's back. The nurse crouches down next to her and rubs her back as she cries her heart out.
How has everything fallen apart so badly?
Her squad has been torn to shreds.
One's lost an arm, another has to learn how to walk again; one is bed-ridden with illness and two stand watch over the ladies they love. One's been torn away from them, and another left of their own free will; leaving her to try and clutch her shattered squad to her chest.
She never planned to grow attached like this, but she has. And now her heart has to pay the price.
Another week in the hospital passes before Rosa is discharged. Yang and Pyrrha are discharged as well, and Qrow offers his house to anyone who needs a place to stay.
So, after packing up their things from the apartment Oscar and Maria were renting, they make their way towards Patch and Qrow's house where the others - sans Weiss, Blake, Ren, and Nora - are waiting.
The three Calaveras are walking through the woods on Patch when they hear it.
"Rosa! Wait up!" a voice calls, prompting all three to turn and look at the person. It's Mercury Black, one of the members of Cinder Fall's team.
Rosa's hands reach for her swords, and Oscar clutches his staff.
Mercury skids to a stop and throws up his hands in surrender. "I'm on your side, I swear."
"Prove it," Rosa growls out.
So he does. He tells them about why he had been with Cinder, and how he had been the one tipping Rosa off about things. He spoke of how he'd hated what he was doing, but he hadn't had a choice. Lastly, he told them about his mother. "I never knew much about her. My dad didn't talk about her much, so the only thing I really know about her is her name. Plata Calavera. As soon as I heard your name, I knew that I couldn't just search for a way out of Cinder's grasp, I had to help you. You could be the only family I have," he confesses.
Maria gasps when he says Plata's name, and as soon as he finished talking she walks up to him and scrutinises him.
"You look like her, not completely, but that must come from your father," she mutters. She turns to Rosa and Oscar. "What colour are his eyes?"
"Dull silver," Oscar tells her. "His eyes are dull silver, like they've been tarnished."
Maria hums at this. "Your life thus far has dulled them. That can be rectified though. It is proof enough for me that you are my blood grandson. You will come with us."
Her tone leaves no room for argument and Mercury can only nod his head.
"We should keep moving, we still have to meet up with the others," Rosa points out.
The walk only takes fifteen more minutes, which the four spend in silence. When they reach the house and go inside, the people there are immediately on the defense.
Qrow doesn't restrain himself to just being on the defence, instead opting to slam him against a wall.
"I'm on your side, I swear," Mercury chokes out as he tries to claw Qrow's hands away from his neck.
"Qrow! Let him down," Rosa growls, "now."
Reluctantly, Qrow drops him. "We can't trust him. He was there when Amber was attacked and nearly killed. He was with Cinder this entire time. We. Can't. Trust. Him," Qrow grinds out.
"You shut up you old bird," Maria snaps, conking him over the head with her walking stick and former weapon. She goes to keep talking but Mercury interrupts.
"You don't know the first thing about me," he says, voice so quiet that everyone can only barely hear him.
"That's my point. We don't know you, just what you've done. And that is reason enough to not trust you!" Qrow snaps.
"Shut it Qrow!" Rosa snaps back.
"Ru-," he starts.
"No. Don't you dare. Mercury is on our side. He risked his life to leak information to us. If Cinder had found out, he'd be dead. He did what he had to do to survive, and he risked his own survival to help us as best he could. So don't you dare start about how we don't know enough. I know plenty, and I say we trust him. Abuela says we should trust him too, and she doesn't say such things lightly," Rosa scolds the older hunter.
"That doesn't mean we should just accept him! He's part of the reason that Amber is dead!" Qrow yells.
"SHUT UP!" Mercury yells.
All eyes turn to him. They see his hands clenched in fists even as they shake. Tears threaten to spill from his eyes that look so very dead.
"You don't know the first thing about me! I didn't have a choice! You all got to choose to become fighters! I didn't!" he ducks his head, hiding his eyes from them but it doesn't stop the tears they can see trickling down.
"You don't know what it's like to have your only family forcefully amputate you in the name of making you stronger. You don't know what it's like to have to kill your only family to have a hope of having a normal life, only to have some crazy psycho bitch turn up looking for an assassination specialist mercenary. To be so beat, so scared of everything, nowhere to go, no one to ask for help, and literally about to collapse because you aren't used to the prosthetic legs you were forced to have. You don't know what that's like. So don't you dare judge me for doing what I had to. I never wanted this life."
Everyone just stands there, shock written all over their faces. Qrow plops down into a chair, hanging his head in his hands.
Rosa is the next to move, gently laying a hand on Mercury's shoulder as he furiously wipes at his eyes.
"You don't have to fight. You've done enough already to help us. If it weren't for your tip offs, there is every chance I would have killed Penny, every chance that Cinder would have gotten away with her plan entirely. You don't have to fight. You want to hang up your fighter hat? That's fine. We won't make you fight. We aren't like Cinder. We respect a person's choice," Rosa tells him.
"Thanks," he murmurs. "But I want to make things right. I want to atone for everything I've done. Whatever help you need, I'll help."
"So… what now?" Jaune asks.
"We don't exactly have a lot to go on. Cinder's trail leads all the way back to Mistral," Qrow reveals.
"She got us entry into the Vytal Tournament through Lionheart. He's on her side," Mercury shares.
"So that's who the mole is. Doesn't make it any less shit, but at least we have a bit more information. Got any more info?" Qrow asks.
So Mercury tells them everything he can. He tells them how their plan succeeded, and what he knew of Cinder's plan moving forward.
"Mistral will be the next on the list. She's mentioned that the attacks on the schools are two-fold. The first is to cripple the CCT Towers and also the huntsman presence. The second is to steal something from each of the schools. She said something about needing other people to do that as well as a pathway being opened. Lionheart is on her side, so he can probably open the pathway for her, she just needs to find whoever she needs to get what she wants, then she'll begin her attack," Mercury outlines.
"The Maidens?" Pyrrha inquires.
"No, the maidens are kind of like a key in the schools. Each of the schools hides and artefact that can only be accessed by a particular maiden. Haven's maiden is Spring. Problem there is that no one knows where she is. She ran away over a decade ago," Qrow tells them.
"So we go to Mistral and prepare for that attack. We'll have to walk since the Airships are restricted, and that will take a while. Hopefully, Cinder has trouble with finding Spring," Rosa suggests.
"I can't just ask you to do that. You're all kids," Qrow points out.
"They may be kids, but as a former huntress, they're a might better than I was when I was their age. Heck, at this stage I'd go so far as to say that they're better than I was when I got my huntress license," Maria tells him. "If they want to help, I will not be the one to deny them that."
"I've always felt I was destined to be a huntress and help people. I will help," Pyrrha announces.
Jaune squeezes her hand. "Where Pyrrha goes, I'm following her."
"I would go whether you want me to or not, and I think Oscar would come with me too. So, the way I see it Qrow, the choice isn't yours to make. We're going whether you like it or not," Rosa tells him.
Extra Scene: Dialect barriers (Takes place at some point between chapter 5: Thin Ice and chapter 6: Family)
The dorm for Squad RRAYNNBW is largely quiet. The scratch of pencils against paper and the pages of books being turned mixed in with exasperated groans are just about the only sounds in the room.
A study session where - for once - they're managing to actually study.
"ARGH!" Weiss groans. "Can someone lend me a rubber?"
Jaune drops his pencil in shock and Yang starts laughing.
"What are you laughing at, you brute?" Weiss demands to know as the others watch on, confusion plain as day on their faces.
"You... you... bwahahaha!" Yang splutters.
"Oh," Rosa says. "OH!"
"Can someone explain what is happening please?" Pyrrha asks.
"I don't know," Blake says pointedly while Nora shrugs.
Rosa blushes. "Yang and Jaune thought you were asking for a... a condom."
"THEY WHAT?!" Weiss screeches.
"That's what they're called, though!" Yang manages to gasp out.
"Uh, no, they aren't," Blake interjects.
"It depends on the dialect of English. Jaune and Yang speak Valian English, in which a colloquial name for condoms are 'rubbers'. In pretty much every other dialect of English, rubbers are synonymous with erasers," Rosa explains meekly.
"Wait, are Yang and I seriously the only ones who speak Valian English?" Jaune asks.
Six heads nod.
"I'm from Atlas, I speak Atlesian English," Weiss says in a 'duh' tone.
"Argus uses both English and French, and the English is more closely aligned with Atlesian English," Pyrrha says.
"Ren and I originally grew up in isolated communities that didn't speak much English. We had a steep learning curve after we met each other so that we could properly talk to each other and we spent more time around English-speaking Mistral colonies," Nora explains.
"We didn't even realise there were different dialects of English," Ren adds on.
"Menagerie has its own dialect of English, so I grew up with that one. I've spent so long away though that I don't really use all the slang and jargon in the Menagerian English dialect anymore," Blake admits.
"And I've travelled all over, so I never really settled into any specific dialect," Rosa says.
"Jeez, how did we not run into this sooner?" Yang exclaims.
Weiss huffs. "Well, I don't know, but can I please borrow someone's eraser?"
Ren hands her his.
"Thank you, Ren," she says kindly before going back to her work.
"Hold up, Nora said that she and Ren grew up speaking a different language, and Pyrrha apparently knows French. Who else knows a language other than English?" Jaune enquires.
Every hand except his goes up.
"Seriously?"
"Atlas has three official languages. Why does this come as a surprise to you?" Weiss asks tersely.
"Three?" Jaune pales.
"Atlesian English, German, and Russian. My family has germanic roots," she elaborates.
"My uncle Qrow has Norse roots, so he taught me a bunch when I was younger," Yang shrugs.
"OOH! Another Nordic! My birth village was Nordic too! I speak fluent Norse, and a smattering of Ren's native Japanese," Nora blabbers.
Ren clears his throat. "I have picked up on some Norse from Nora, and I am fluent in Japanese as that is what my birth village spoke."
"My mother is Mistralian. She grew up in the French sector, so she speaks fluent French. She taught it to me when I was younger, and I'm reasonably fluent," Blake admits.
Rosa smiles. "Abuela comes from a village where they only speak Spanish, so she taught me and Oscar Spanish so that we would be able to communicate if we ever went to Spain."
"I'm the only monolingual person in the squad then?" Jaune asks.
"Yes," seven other voices say with varying levels of amusement. Jaune lets out a small groan as his head thumps down onto his desk.
"Can we please get back to studying?" Weiss asks.
The rest agree, although Jaune does make a comment about how it is so very clear that his lack of intelligence is due to being monolingual (which Pyrrha assures him is not the case).
A/N: Welcome back to the Grimm Reaper. Considering how often this becomes upload day, I might as well just change it going forward (writes a note about that). Anyways, the fall out! Yep, Blake ran away, Pyrrha is still struggling, and Nora ain't in great shape. We got Mercury in the main cast now, but all his trauma? It is going nowhere. As for the bonus scene, I couldn't fit it in earlier, because plot, but since i referenced the scene during this chapter, I figured I'd add in that bit of light-hearted comedy amidst all the heaviness of these past few chapters.
That's about all I have to say for now, so let me know your thoughts with a review, or send me a PM if you want and/or need someone to talk to. Otherwise, I'll see you next week with another chapter.
- RebeccaMagic9