A/N: It's been years since I've used FFN. Please forgive me while I figure out formatting errors and catch up to how to manage a story on this site. Thank you.

Oscar awakens to the sound of Grimm, the world around him swathed in ash and smoke, a raw, primal chaos creeping through the night. A desperate scream clawed through the air, shadows darted around him. Why was the moon so high in the sky? Why was he laying on the black earth? With a feeling like static in his soul and a hollow ache in his heart, Oscar lurches unsteadily to his feet…

…And then he immediately regrets doing so because he stumbles back painfully against a tree, bracing himself. He felt light headed.

Wait. Tree? He'd passed out in the tundra below Atlas, hadn't he?

Softly, almost experimentally, he whispers, "…Oz?"

There was no answer. His ears were ringing. Snow was falling. What… happened?

"Over there!" he hears someone shout. Metal. Sparks. Something must have happened to his eardrums, because everything sounded like he was underwater, garbled and distant.
He touches his chest, as if reassuring himself he was still there before his foot catches on something.

Oh. The cane. He kicks it up into his hands for which he had enough coordination left, apparently. He didn't see any Grimm presently, but that only meant he was soon going to. The forest was alive with noise, howling and shrieking. Time seemed to be oscillating. Or dilating? Whatever. The fact was his perception of time felt offensively distorted.

Was this a concussion?

He hears a choked, fearful cry, clearer than all other sounds around him. Like a drop of water in a cavern, it was the only thing that echoed in his head. On instinct he feels compelled to follow it and Oscar unsteadily makes his way through the falling snow, his grip tightening on the Long Memory.

With all the whizzing snowflakes, smoke, and ash in the air, it was hard to see and he barely registers the movement in front of him until he nearly stumbles over the little faunus girl with budding antlers wearing a big umber-colored scarf crying in the snow. She couldn't be older than ten years old. Her eyes were big and wide and wet, staring as he approached without even seeing him. It was shock.

Oscar's eyes fall to the blood on the ground.

It would… be some kind of miracle if she got the use of her leg back.

There's a sinister crunch of snow and electricity runs up his spine, untempered, with the fear of a thousand lives lived and a thousand lived died behind it.
Red eyes, black fur. Beowolf. Grimm. Bright white teeth set into a terrible jaw that could crush his throat in an instant. Ruthless, ever-multiplying, the terrifying gifts the God of Darkness brought to Remnant.

Oscar coolly levels his cane, training kicking in where fear tried to grab hold.

His aura had been broken after General Ironwood had shot him, (how long ago was that?) but sometime between landing in the tundra and the time he had woken up from… being unconscious… he had gained some of it back. Enough to fight one Beowolf but probably not much more after that. And where there was one Beowolf, there were almost certainly more…

Despite his condition, he manages to dispatch the Grimm quickly enough, finishing it off with a brutal stroke he hadn't known he was capable of in his current condition. After which he turns back to the girl and crouches down so that they're at eye level.

You have to keep going, he tells himself. You have to keep moving, you have to keep doing.

Otherwise, he thinks, if he stopped, he'd lose his will, lay down in the snow, and sleep forever. So he had no choice but to keep going.

"I'm going to get you out of here," he tells her, sounding a hell of a lot more certain and in charge than he felt. It was easier to feel brave when there was someone else who was more scared than you were. He wondered if that was how the others felt. When she still hadn't responded, he continued in a voice that was just as calm, and a little gentle, "But first we have to do something about your leg, okay?"

Mindfully, he slowly and carefully unwraps the scarf from her neck, being absolutely sure to telegraph his every move so she wouldn't panic or frighten. Lucky for them both, the girl had been carrying a basket of sticks probably meant to be firewood before she'd been attacked. He splints her leg as best he can with the unwound scarf and scattered sticks. Occasionally, back on the farm, one of the goats or lambs would break a leg and they would have to be treated, so his aunt had taught him very basic first aid. It was the first time he's done a splint for a person though.

She trembled terribly at his touch, lips blue, her dangling earrings jingling like bells with every shudder.

He has only a moment of hesitation before the memory of silver eyes flashes in the back of his mind and he shrugs off his jacket and wraps it around the girl. Even if it was slightly singed, it would hopefully help stave off hypothermia. In short order, he soon has her on his back, his cane clipped to his belt again, and is ready to trek off into less Grimm-infested forest when the girl suddenly squirms violently and cries out.

"N… N-No…! Wait! M-My hat…!"

It is with belated realization that Oscar realizes that he can hear normally again although his vision was just as bleary and tunneled as it was before. Perplexed enough over the girl's desperation over a hat, he numbly looks for it among the forest floor.

Once he finds it, Oscar carefully stoops to pick up the hat in the snow, an awkward game of shuffling just the right amount here or there, before passing it over his shoulder to the girl who hastily jammed it on her head over her tiny antlers with a look of mortification. She clung to him tightly after that.

The boy bows his head slightly as he begins to walk, feeling a sudden heartbreak and hollow ache beating behind his ribs. The visible disparity and iniquity between Mantle and Atlas, human and faunus was still fresh in his mind. Even in Argus, Cordovan had refused their transport despite them accompanying Weiss in part because of her prejudice against Blake, who kept her ears uncovered. His throat felt tight at the thought that this severely wounded little girl who needed medical attention lived in a world where whether or not she had antlers mattered when it came to the quality of her care.

The snow was falling harder now. Oscar looked to the sky and had to blink the snowflakes out of his eyes. The world felt hazy.

He remembered where he first heard voices—ha ha, out loud voices—among the snowy forest landscape and started to make his way back there. The journey seemed to take forever. He was so tired and his vision was growing spottier. His feet felt like ice, heavy and frozen. His body was so incredibly sore and he was in miserable spirits. He couldn't see Atlas in the sky nor could he see Salem's approaching army. Somehow he'd blacked out and lost track of where he was and it seemed like he was alone in his head again.

Which, in ordinary circumstances, would be a good thing, but Oscar had long ago accepted that things like ordinary and normal were things that no longer applied to him. Not even in a cool 'like in the adventure books' sort of way. He was even past the point of being afraid now, but it would have been comforting to have Oz with him to remind him what to watch out for. His body is shaking almost uncontrollably with the cold, but the thing that kept him going forward were the warm tears on his back.

"It's going to be okay," he reassures the girl.

Ruby made a choice, every day, to keep looking forward and moving on because her friends had been killed and she couldn't let herself do nothing about it. Jaune kept going because he—from what Oscar could piece together—had loved Pyrrha and he loved his team and he would rather die than let them down. Yang loved her sister, loved Blake, and would fight the entire world and nothing could stop her from trying to keep her small family safe. Not Grimm, not even Salem.

He's not sure what kept Weiss and Blake going, or Ren and Nora. They were harder to read. Nora was an explosion of personality and affection where Ren was almost the complete opposite, but he still knew so little about either of them. Weiss didn't share a lot of her private feelings nor did Blake, but he's certain that all of them had their own unshakable convictions.

After all, they all knew the truth and hadn't turned away from their mission as impossible as it seemed. They all chose to keep going. It was difficult, but it hadn't broken any of them.

He's not sure how much time had passed but thinking of his friends and teammates helped. He could hardly keep his head up and everything seemed dark. The only thing he could hear was the crunch of snow underfoot, the cheery jingle of the girl's earrings, and the distant sound of metal and sparks.

An eternity later, he hears another sound.

Grimm. Again.

Oscar blearily raises his head and grits his teeth. The girl whimpers on his back. He reaches for the cane on his belt.

He hears scrambling and shouting around him and sees a sudden light.

The Beowolf pounces.

In a motion that surprised himself, Oscar smoothly ducks under the great gaping maw and razor sharp claws with girl in tow, fluidly extends his cane, and in one swift motion drives a powerful jab right into its throat. His dodge to the side is a more than unbalanced. Luckily, he's not alone? …He thinks? Shapes and colors were beginning to blur together. Torchlight crowds closer around him, buzzing.

The Grimm doesn't make any noise after that, so either he'd defeated it or the blobby shapes around him did. Soon the shapes are talking to him and someone is lifting the girl off his back while his consciousness starts to disassociate. Oscar finds himself nodding at points of color and light saying 'Okay' to a lot to things he can't hear and can't mentally process right now.

"—ank you, you have no idea how—"

"—in't see that com—you're pretty strong, ki—"

"—ust look at him! The poor boy needs—"

But whatever it was he needed, he didn't find out. The high-pitched buzzing in his ears kept growing and growing until he started to feel unnaturally hot and his vision fell away and for the second time in a few hours (he thinks) he blacks out.

Oscar eventually awakes to murmuring voices, white noise in the background of his consciousness. There's static in his head, lead in his bones, but a feeling of distant comfort settling into his heart the longer he lays there. He blankly listens without comprehension or thought, merely existing as he was in the here and now, hearing words and syllables only as reassurances that he was still alive.

Eventually he brought his hand up to his face to scratch an itch and belatedly discovered he was in bed under several layers of quilts and blankets. He deeply contemplates this new addition to his expanding world and soon forgets about the itch. Something about being in this bed felt so familiar and warm.

The room was dark, but light streamed in from under the door to the other side of him.

He cogitates.

He's too hot, he realized. It's too hot under here and there are too many blankets. His body felt heavy enough, he had to get rid of some of these before he died from Too Many Blankets. Struggling with the quilts he suddenly begins to better hear the words from behind the door, though he still couldn't seem to understand them.

One of the voices from last night was talking. A man, maybe? Deep, scratchy voice.

"—came out of the woods pale as a ghost carrying my little Umber on his back. Slew a Beowolf in one shot right before he passed out. Almost didn't recognize who he was."

A familiar voice responded, distraught. It was a woman's voice. For some reason he imagined it was the kind of voice that belonged to someone no nonsense, but also somehow playful and kind. The thought of the voice somehow felt so painfully familiar. It tugged at his heart, the fiber of his being, but he didn't understand why. He still hadn't fully come back to the world.

He swings his legs out numbly from over the bed preparing to stand up but uncertain whether or not his heavy body could support him.

He only then notices the bandages on his legs and feet.

"Doctor, what happened to him?"

The doctor replies with a slow, heavy sigh. He sounded tired, like he hadn't slept for days, maybe years. He also sounded kind of old, which, given Oscar's circumstances, everyone was either kind of old or really young when he had an immortal spirit living in him but he was also just fourteen.

"Honestly, I don't know much more than that. He's been missing, right? We found him a coupl'a towns over in the forest during the Grimm attack with that scorched combat gear and huntsman weapon on him. Definitely knew how to use it, too, from the looks of it. You said he never went to combat school?"

"No, never. My sister and her spouse never had the chance to send him to regular school, and when I got him, I didn't have the money. But with my job working from home, at least I had the time to homeschool him myself."

"Well, whatever happened to him when he disappeared, he learned how to fight Grimm."

Now that he looked, he had bandages on his hands and arms too. Why? He didn't remember getting injured there. He didn't remember much from the last time he was awake either, though. Snow. Something black, something red. White moon in the sky, static in his soul.

Oscar blinks.

"Is he… going to be okay?" The second voice trembles with concern and his heart twists again and his chest tightens. He feels nothing but a compelling desire to reach out to the voice and reassure it. But first…

He stared at the wooden floorboards beneath his feet, thinking hard about the concept of balance.

"Physically? Yeah, sure, he'll be fine. He's been asleep longer than I thought he would be, but it looks like he was bone-tired long before that skirmish with the Grimm and catching this fever. Low grade hyporthermia too, bit'a frostbite, depleted aura. I'll be honest, he sure gave us all a scare when he passed out like that. Me n' my team took care of him though. Don't you worry."

A moment of silence. An unspoken question stirs in the air. The doctor gives another heavy sigh.

"Psych'logically, w-ell… now, it ain't right to lie, but I don't think we can be sure of anything until he wakes up. We dunno if he left willingly, looking to do something more than work on a farm all his life, an' we don't know if he was taken. All I know is, when I saw him come out of the trees with my daughter, he looked like he didn't even know where he was. I reckon he was in a fugue state."

Oh, Oscar finally realized, something clicking in his brain, language becoming accessible again. They're talking about me!

Experimentally he gets to his feet and tries creeping closer to the door being careful of any would-be creaky floorboard.

The doctor continued.

"Trauma can do some funny things to a person. He might never say what happened to him, or maybe he will. He might not even remember what happened if the trauma was great enough. Try to be patient with him. Give him time. Give him some space. He'll tell you if and when he's ready."

Trauma? These voices think he went through some kind of trauma? Oscar's not sure what to think about that. Sure, things had been horrifying and difficult and frustrating and exhilarating all to different degrees but he's not sure how he felt about the word trauma. Or how he felt about other people thinking he had trauma. That was a thing other people with serious problems had. Definitely not him.

He frowns at the door.

The doctor's voice brightens, trying to put a positive spin on the other speaker's worried perspective.

"It's not all bad," the doctor reassures her. "For what it's worth he looks adequately nourished and otherwise healthy. With those skills, maybe he'll go to combat school once he gets a little older because of this experience. Trauma doesn't have to break people. Sometimes it just makes 'em different. Lets 'em face what they're afraid of."

Oscar thinks of General Ironwood.

"Haven, maybe?" the doctor suddenly suggests. "It's close enough. Or Beacon? Definitely not Atlas. If you let them think they know you, then they think they own you."

They were talking like… Atlas wasn't under attack… like… Beacon was still standing…

How long had he been out? Years? Had Beacon been rebuilt during that time? What happened with Salem? What about Mantle? And... Ruby? And the others?

"So what you're saying is I shouldn't focus on what happened moreso than supporting him and his future. Got it. I won't try to press him, even though I want to. Encourage future-thinking, accommodate new habits or behavior, respect his new experiences. Stay positive—" the voice was crisp, its tone gradually turning assertive, before almost as quickly faltering. "—What can I expect? It's been so long. I don't even know why he disappeared, if it was his own volition or… or something I—"

"Mood swings," the doctor cuts in, not allowing the other voice to beat themselves up any further. "Listlessness, depression. Grief. Anger. He might go quiet. I know he's always been kind of a quiet boy though, right? Anxious? Doesn't say too much unless you're talking to him specifically and won't meet your eyes, from what I recall."

Oscar would call him rude, but he wasn't being dishonest about him being quiet and anxious, nor did he know Oscar was eavesdropping on him right now, so he could say whatever he wanted. All that stuff about mood swings and depression was nonsense though.

He imagined the owner of the other voice nodding.

"Now, I'll bring my girl over sometime. Even though he might go quiet, he'll need a friend to talk to even if it's about nothing. Also, she keeps yammering at me and asking if he's alright. I thought it would just be easier to show her."

Oscar was vaguely beginning to recall more from his most recent memories. Blood in the snow, an unraveled scarf, smoke and ash. A girl? Yeah, a faunus girl. With a hat. But what did she have to do with anything?

Oscar curiously reaches for the doorknob, his heart hammering relentlessly in his chest. He… he recognized this room. This door, that bed, those quilts. His other senses came back to him and he smells what he knows to be a pot of a stew he's eaten before.

"But I won't take her over until he's ready. She's been through quite a trauma too nd she still needs time getting used to her new leg. Bah! Atlas tech, but my design."

He knows where he is and with sudden trepidation and anxiety opens the door to the light beyond and, because they were talking about him, shyly peeks out.

"Ah, there he is. The hero of the hour."

Oscar's face freezes.

"H-ello...?" he manages to respond, quietly and unclimactically.

His aunt—because that's where he was, safe and sound in his aunt's home, far far away from the horrors of…

Oscar's aunt Emma practically drops the dishes in her hands, and runs to envelop him in a tight, spine-crushing hug, half-sobbing, half-scolding him.

"Don't you ever do that to me again! You scared me half to death! Oh, Oscar!"

"Um," Oscar says into aunt Emma's collarbone, speaking for the first time in…

…Honestly what was the point in trying to keep track anymore.

His throat felt dry.

"Give the lad some breathing room, m'dear."

"Oh, right. I'm sorry, Oscar."

His aunt backs away, her hands still hovering above his arms like she would hug him again at any moment. Oscar smiles brightly at her.

Oscar's attention was soon drawn to the man sitting at his aunt's kitchen table. He was extremely tall even though he was seated, portly, and had red beard turning gray that he'd split and created two braids from. While the boy squints in the bright light and tries to place him, the man chuckles to himself, eyes crinkling kindly, and starts to pour a glass of water from the pitcher on the table.

"Don't worry your little head over trying to remember who I am. You've been through a lot, Oscar. I think we can all forgive you for needing some time to get up to speed. The name's Ed. You saved my daughter."

The man picks up the glass and gestures for him to take it. Oscar's mind goes blank at his words as he lets go of his aunt's hand and reaches for the water.

"You carried her through the forest on your back? Splinted her leg?"

…

"Ohh."

Ugh! Oscar's embarrassed at his slow uptake and wished he could back out of this conversation and try again when he didn't feel so... everything. Fighting Grimm good, social interaction bad. He takes a sip of water. And then another. And then so many sips after that soon the glass was empty. He hands it back to Ed and he refills it.

"Oh, so she's alright then? That's good…"

Oscar touches his chest, surprised at how much lighter he felt. His aunt smiled adoringly down at him, with pride. For some reason it was embarrassing to see her like that too so he suddenly found reason to inspect the floorboards.

"Yeah. We couldn't save the leg, but she'll be zipping around in no time once she gets used to the new prosthetic. Kids can bounce back right quick."

"Oh, that's… yeah, that's good. I'm glad for her." He adds, looking up, thinking of Yang, "Prosthetics have really come a long way these days."

Ed watches at him thoughtfully and gestures to one of the kitchen chairs.

"Sit down, kid. We don't want you passing out on us again. And… your aunt and I would like to talk if you feel up to it."

"Yeah. Okay. Sure."

He sits.

"Oscar," his aunt starts hesitantly with an uncertainty he doesn't think he's ever seen before, "are you… okay?"

"…I'm… Yeah? Sure?"

Ed butts in.

"Only you've been missing for months and you come back with a thousand-yard stare looking like you just came home from war. Where have you been?"

Prompted by the question, Oscar searches his memories and with a startling realization, bolted to his feet, blood drained from his face.

"Oh no! Atlas! What's happening there right now? I've got to get back!"

"Atlas?" his aunt starts, positively startled. "As far as I know, the only thing that's been happening are election campaigns and another one of Weiss Schnee's concerts."

"But the elections already happened!"

"Whoa there," Ed cuts in again. "I know it's gonna be hard, but try to calm down a bit, kid. Look."

He hands Oscar a newsletter from the neat pile of mail on his aunt's table. It was about who was running for a seat on the council next… next year. Next year? That's not possible. Oscar was there. They definitely already held elections; Jaques Schnee won. Criminally, with the help of Watts, but it didn't change any of his feelings about it nor the events that followed.

Oscar checked the date on the letter, staring in overwhelming shock, his thoughts quickly spiraling. His hands started shaking.

"But the date…"

"That's right," Ed gives an encouraging nod, clasping his hands between his knees as he leaned forward a bit. "Last week. Like I said, you've been through a lot and some of your thoughts and memories might be all scrambled up and distorted. Time, too. You have to take it slow."

His aunt was nodding along with Ed, so it seemed like this was a fact for her too. And his aunt would never lie to him, even as a joke. Playful sarcasm, sure. But no lies. They were looking at him with… with pity and he has never felt worse in his entire life.

But this was unbelievable! It couldn't be right. The elections can't not have happened, because they already happened! Unless…

Here, he feels, was a good time it would be comforting to have the wizard that took up residence in the attic of his headspace to come back. Was… time travel… a thing? Did we go back in time? He'd read fiction books, but it was all in the genre: fiction. Is he going crazy for real this time? Did he imagine everything that he thought happened?

What about Ozpin? In that brief instance where he heard his voice again, he felt like they were finally connected—that they were both focused on a mutual goal, that he wasn't fighting for his own identity but rather they were working in tandem. He felt they had both been committed to stopping Salem—stopping, not stalling—while looking up at Atlas full of purpose.

Even Ozpin wouldn't make them activate some hidden unknown time magic semblance right then, even if he was even capable of something like that. He just knew it.

Directing these thoughts louder and louder at the place he imagined Oz to be in his head, he still received no response.

Oscar stares morosely at the newsletter mute and unresponsive until Ed gently pries it from his grasp.

"So you were in Atlas this whole time, boy?"

"Don't call me boy!" Oscar snaps in an unexpected burst of anger, a memory of Hazel flitting through his mind. It was different when Nora said "cute boy Oz" or sometimes embarrassing when girls he didn't know called him a "cute farm boy." Being called 'boy' by another man who towered over him even when sitting made him feel unexpectedly anxious and small. He didn't entirely know why. Oscar takes a deep breath and runs his hands over his face.

Ed and Aunt Emma share gazes.

"Sorry," he apologizes through his palms, voice much more soft and with a touch of shame. "Don't call me that, please."

They wait in silence until Oscar calms down and sits back down, folding his hands together on the table. He sits up straighter than he ever used to although he was still avoiding eye contact by looking at his hands. Aunt Emma goes over to tend to the pot on the stove before turning off the burner and serving each of them a bowl of stew.

"Yes," Oscar tells them finally, feeling defeated, staring at a lump of potatoes in the bowl. "I was in Atlas, but not just Atlas. I got separated from my—wait! My Scroll!"

He pats his pockets only to find he wasn't wearing his combat gear and didn't even ¬have pockets to check. These were… his old pajamas? If he still had his Scroll maybe he could contact the others! Oscar's not sure whether he thinks he can contact them from here and now or of there and then, but it was still something he could try.

Ed reaches into his own pocket and sadly offers its contents to Oscar.

"We found it in your coat after you passed out. Think it might've been cracked earlier when you were…" Ed pauses, thoughtful, then waves his hand vaguely, "…travelling. I did my best to recover it for you, but it looks like all the data's been scratched. I can fix the hardware for you, but it'll have to be factory reset in order to work again."

Oscar stares forlornly at the cracked Scroll cradled in his palms, despair rolling in. His past, no, the future? It had to have existed, it had happened to him. Everyone else had been there too. He couldn't just make up all of that, could he? This was… this was honestly worse than the first few days Oz had started talking to him.

He holds onto his Scroll with one hand and rakes his fingers through his hair with the other.

The man watches him for a minute before getting up from his chair and going over to the coat rack.

"Well, I think that's enough for one night. Don't want to upset the b—upset Oscar any more tonight. You take care of that fever, okay? I'll come back to check on you two in a few days."

He looks over his shoulder.

"By the way, Oscar. My daughter wrote a get-well-soon card for you. She's been real worried about your recovery. I left it on the nightstand in your aunt's room. Please do her a kindness and read it."

He shrugs on his coat, wraps a scarf tightly around his neck, and reached for the door.

Soon, Oscar was alone in the farm house with his aunt.

"I—" Oscar starts.

"I—" his aunt begins.

They stare at each other for a moment. There's so much he wants to say and so much in his heart he knew he couldn't properly express. The gears in his mind halt, eyes watching the face of his aunt who seemed similarly at a loss of words now that they were alone together.

Oscar feels his eyes tear up.

But it seemed he didn't need to say anything at all. Soon enough, he was wrapped in his aunt's warm embrace once again, her chin on top of his head, her hands on his back. She squeezed him tightly, her own tears falling into her hair.

"Welcome home," she murmurs into his hair.

"Auntie Em…" Oscar near whispers, trying to look up at her.

She reluctantly pulls herself away from him, sniffs, wipes a tear away, and then puts her hands on her hips.

"Now you eat that stew before it goes cold, young man, or I'll be very cross with you."

Oscar gives a shaky laugh and a shy, wobbly smile.