Fun Fact: This story's current concept was conceived in August 2016! We used the name Ilia before Rooster Teeth, but no one will believe us (Ha!). The irony is that neither of us used her name for the color.
Ilia laid sprawled across one of the cafeteria tables as the doors were thrown open and students began to storm in, determined to pick at what scraps were left from earlier in the day before they headed back to the Great Hall for the night. She sighed for a moment as she slid off of the table and sat for a few seconds, watching everyone rush by towards the kitchen. It had been a nice moment of silence, but Ilia knew that it was time for her to prepare for some sleep and settle in for the evening. She stood up, brushing past the other teens as they filed in for food and eventually she was able to squeeze past. She headed for the dorms, hoping that maybe she'd catch the eye of an upperclassman and they would give her a place to stay for the night. She knew that she was supposed to go to the sleepover in the Great Hall, but the idea was more or less horrifying.
First of all, she was more of a loner and didn't do well with others. To be honest, the idea of having to work on a team for the next four years unsettled her stomach, but it just couldn't be helped. If she wanted to become strong enough to face her demons, she'd have no choice but to go along with whatever Beacon required of her. Another thing that she didn't care for too much was being in confined spaces, as she had shown Titus earlier in a panic. She tried to imagine complying, heading back to the Great Hall and sleeping shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of strangers. She shuddered as she reached the door of one of the dorms that had the lights on inside and banged furiously for a while. It was no use, no one was about to answer and she had no doubt that they were probably all partying, having one last end of summer celebration before they would be forced to return to class the next day.
She smirked, thinking about hiding in the bushes and hijacking a body as it passed by to enter the building, but she knew her limits, and she knew there was no way that she could take control of a body for an entire night. She was usually lucky if she could get away with a few minutes. It was much longer than she was able to maintain when she had first discovered her power, but still not quite as long as she would like. The thought of permanent possession crossed her mind on more than one occasion, but deep down, it was depressing to think about. This is who she was. She wasn't her own person, she was a girl who was constantly taking on new identities just to escape her past. Someone stopped behind her and cleared their throat and she turned around to face him.
"You're not an upperclassman. A little lost are we?" He asked. He wore a considerable amount of armor on his body, flipping his blonde hair out of his face as he held out his hand. "Jaune Arc. I'm one of the teachers here… and I've been known to do some counseling from time to time." She chuckled slightly under her breath. As if he needed an introduction. Attending certain academies brought with it a certain feeling of pride towards one's school, and the alumni that graduated from those schools were almost revered as gods. There wasn't a soul in Vale who didn't know the class of the Fall of Beacon, some of their names and images had even made it as far as Vacuo and Mistral. And of course, RWBY and JNPR had worldwide fame.
"I know who you are Mr. Arc. I don't know if lost is the right word. I know where I'm at, and where I'm at is where I want to be," she replied. "Though I do understand what you were implying. I'll make it over to the hall eventually, don't worry." He nodded his head in disbelief and peered past her at the dorm. She turned around to see if someone had finally appeared to let her in, but it wasn't the case.
"Is that so?" He asked her. She raised an eyebrow. She had a bad feeling that he was going to see to it personally that she returned to the hall, and she rubbed her shoulders, as though she was affected by the cool fall breeze that the evening had brought along with it. "You know what I think?" She wasn't sure where he was heading now with the conversation, so she shrugged and played along.
"What's that?" She asked.
"I think that you want to be alone. I don't think that you intend on going back to the Great Hall," he told her. She rolled her eyes and shook her head. Of course, he wasn't that dense. She found a humor in the fact that she had been able to outsmart more soldiers than she had cared to keep count of, but the first teacher that she was having a two-sided interaction with had seen right through her. Why wouldn't he though, she wasn't the first student who had probably tried pulling a fast one on him.
"Whatever gave you that idea?" She asked. She knew he saw right through her, so why was he playing this game? Why not take her right to the hall and be done with it. He turned around and walked to the end of the sidewalk, stopping for a moment and looking back at her, waiting for her. "What?" She knew what he wanted, but still, she felt like making him work for it. She was a rebel at heart, and she'd continue playing the part as long as she could.
"Come with me," he told her. He headed down the path, away from the Great Hall, and didn't even wait or look back for her once. She watched him around the corner of the building and she glanced back towards the main campus. Where was he taking her? She thought for sure that he would guide her back to the building, but as she ran to the end of the path, she watched as he continued to walk further away. She looked back and forth between the two options, weighing up the third of waiting for someone to come by and let her in the dorm. What if no one else came by and she was left out in the cool of the night? She couldn't risk getting sick hours before the initiation began. She thought about it for another long moment before she finally decided to chase Jaune down, matching his slow-paced walk as she arrived. "So you've made your decision, huh?"
"What's this all about?" She asked him. He smiled softly, still continuing further down the path. He didn't say anything for a while and they enjoyed a mutually agreed on silence until they path ended abruptly and they stared into the forest that bordered the school grounds. For a moment she swore that she had spotted a pair of Grimm's eyes, but she knew that it was an absurd notion. The woods had been clear since they had rebuilt the school, and with the dragon defeated, it was unlikely that they would ever see Grimm in the area ever again.
"You can't let fear control you," he told her. She stared into the woods for a long moment, trying to spot what he was staring so intently at, but had no luck in the matter. She finally turned back to look at him. "Some of the staff members saw what happened earlier with Titus." She frowned and began to walk briskly away as he looked back at her. "Ilia." Her body shook as he spoke her name, he had struck a nerve and had driven her past the point of listening for the time being.
"That isn't something that I can just turn off at will!" She yelled back at him, stopping in her tracks. "You haven't been where I am! You'd don't know what it's like to live in constant fear! It isn't something that you can just magically get over, or pretend isn't there!" There was a fire in her eyes as rage filled her entire body. For him to suggest that she could just pretend that her fear didn't exist all together pissed her off, and she refused to listen any further if he made it a point to imply that again.
"I know that," he replied softly. She scoffed and marched back to him.
"What would you know about it?" She asked him. She stopped a few feet in front of him, only a few inches shorter than he was. "What do you know about fear!? You're Jaune Arc, the White Knight!" He placed a finger to her lips for a moment and her eyes widened with shock as she batted his hand away.
"I grew up in a household with seven sisters. All of them were highly successful, and my parents gave them praise and notice on a regular basis." He chuckled slightly. "You'd think that being the only boy that they had that noticing me would have just come naturally, but it didn't. I had to fight to be recognized just as they did. I wasn't good at anything really, and so I decided I'd become the one thing that they wouldn't be able to ignore. A Huntsmen. They'd have to notice me then. The problem with that was, I wasn't good at being a Huntsmen either. I faked my transcripts to get in here. I was terrified every day, every mission that they sent us on for training, I was afraid that I wouldn't come back."
"Why'd they let you in?" She asked him, her demeanor softening. The thought that he had ever been afraid of Grimm was a novelty to her. He had been a part of Team JNPR. Team RNJR was one of the biggest reasons that Remnant hadn't fallen completely under Salem's control. Yet here stood Jaune, one of Remnant's greatest warriors, confessing to her that he had once been afraid as well. It was a different fear than hers, but fear none the less.
"Ozpin saw potential in me, as he did with all of the other students that I attended with. We know about your past Ilia, and logic dictates that everything we know about you should make us afraid to allow you to attend. But Glynda sees a potential in you that you yourself may not even be aware of yet." He placed a hand on her shoulder and smiled at her again as he walked past, heading towards another one of the dorm buildings, this one was the furthest from the campus and all of the lights were off. "To finish my story, with the help of those around me, I finally overcame my fears and became the great Huntsmen that I always hoped to become. It might not be easy Ilia, but one day you too will overcome your fear." He walked up to the dorm and unlocked the door, opening it and stepping in, turning the light on.
"I don't understand," she told him. "Is this…"
"This is the dormitory for the first year students. You'll be assigned rooms tomorrow after you find out who your teammates are," he instructed her. "There's a student lounge at the end of this main hall. You can probably sleep on one of the couches in there for the night. Just make sure that you lock the door when you leave in the morning, wouldn't want anyone finding out you were in here."
"I understand all of that, but this goes against what you said about me overcoming my fears," she told him. He laughed and walked out past her.
"No one expects you to conquer your fears in a day." He stopped at the door, about to shut it behind him as he left. "If you ever need help, we're all here for you Ilia." She smiled thoughtfully as the door closed. There was something truly different about Beacon and it made her glad that she had fled to Vale instead of staying in Vacuo and attending Shade. She walked down the hallway, the walls were bare and freshly painted white, something she was sure that they probably did on a yearly basis, and she could only imagine how crazy it was going to be in there once the rest of the students were piled in. The first door on her right was a laundry room, complete with standard washers and dryers, and a few deep sinks scattered here and there. Across the hallway was the standard public family bathroom, barely big enough for one person, and a shady locking mechanism on the door that could possibly spring open if the person waiting to get in messed with it enough.
She continued on her tour of the first floor, the next room on her right was a small kitchen, it had three stoves and several microwaves, in addition to two refrigerators for the students to share as well. There was enough room left over for a small table, but there wasn't one to be found and she left the room, crossing the hall into the student lounge area. It was by far the largest room on the bottom floor, several small round tables were set up, as well as three spacious couches that faced one large holographic projection television. Ilia slowly moved to the pictures on the wall, class photos of the students that had come through the dorm over the years. She laughed at the pictures as she looked them over, not really recognizing anyone with the exception of Team RWBY and JNPR.
She peered out into the hallway, noting that all that was left was a flight of stairs at the end of the hall that would have led to the next floor, before stepping back into the room and taking in the complete silence. It wasn't anything like that chaos that she had been greeted with earlier. As impractical as she knew it was, she wished it could be this silent all the time, but she then recalled what Jaune had told to her about overcoming her fear. She stood along the back of the couch, enjoying the central heat that filled the room with a comforting warmth, and she removed her weapons from her hips, setting them behind the couch as she leapt over the back and landed comfortably. She sighed in bliss as she snuggled against the cushions, she had never known such comfort! She could only imagine what the beds must feel like.
She removed her scroll and noted the missed calls, deleting them immediately before turning on some soft music that might help her drift off. This was it. This was her first night at Beacon Academy and she didn't have to be scared that they'd find her. She didn't have to fear that Glynda would find out the truth about her and throw her out into the cold. She felt safe for the first time in her life. It was a feeling that she could get used to after a while. She slowly drifted off after sometime and greeted the idea of meeting her team in the morning… Until something slammed against the front door. Ilia's eyes shot open as she remained paralyzed on the couch, not wanting to move, and hoping that after a few moments they would go away.
They slammed against the door again, and Ilia shook slightly as her imagination began to run away with the situation. How could she have been this careless, they had found her, hadn't they? Ilia threw herself over the couch, landing on top of her guns and quickly strapping them to her arms, leaping back up to her feet. She crouched as she slowly moved back into the hall, which seemed much longer than she had first remembered it being. The pounding grew more rapid now as if a Grimm was trying to tear down the building and pull her out. Surely it would batter her around for a while before finally finishing her off slowly. She shook her head, that's nonsense! She paused for a moment. What if it is a Grimm?
She argued with herself as she crept down the corridor, wondering what had come over her. Grimm were easy to take down, what was she so afraid of? She was afraid that it wasn't a Grimm. But surely the school wouldn't let them take her again, would they? You're just panicking Ilia, pull yourself together! She sprinted the rest of the way, silencing her fears and throwing the door open, guns ready to blow the intruder away. Her chest heaved as she slowly came down from her anxiety attack, noting that Jaune stood before her holding a pillow and blanket, a concerned look fixed on his face. She blushed as she lowered her guns and attached them to her jeans. She ran a hand through her hair as she looked back down the hallway towards the lounge, exhaling hard as she faced him again.
"Ilia, are you okay?" He asked. She chuckled, hoping that this time she could just play it off.
"I turned on the TV. There was some horror movie on and your knocking startled me," she explained. He handed the items to her and nodded slowly at her.
"Uh huh. I might recommend that you try and get some sleep instead," he suggested. She nodded quickly and stepped back.
"Good idea. Thanks, Mr. Arc." He nodded in response and she closed the door, heading back to the couch and making herself comfortable again. It had to have been something that she ate earlier, right? She shook her head and drew the blanket close, inviting sleep in once again.
Looks like Ilia has some issues that need to work out. Next week, will Neela tell Eliana how she feels? Chapter 7 - Waterfalls and Memories!
A special thanks once again to my co-creator OrganoidZero.
A big thank you to Diyaru4500, Demize00Zero, TheCipherNine, SketchHungry, Ookaminoki, Lightning-in-my-Hand, and Dishwasher1910. All of their artwork can be found at Deviantart, you can search Silent-Celica and under my favorites tab, I have a collection for NITE.
Until next week, have a happy and safe new year, and stay classy!