"It's right behind that door."

Ozpin is dreaming. He's with James in the vault under Atlas. For some reason, his dream-self is so small. He's hardly more than half of James' height, his eye level barely reaches the General's ribcage. Was he a child in this dream? It wouldn't be the first time. Might not be the last. Every childhood felt unique and not even he was an expert on the why factor in the contents of dreams.

"The staff of creation," he breathes in awe, his voice echoing in the vast chamber that contained the relic. A voice he didn't recognize, had never owned, and was alien to him. It sounded so young. Vulnerable. It was a voice that had never been his. It felt like someone else's entirely. Someone… new.

"I hoped bringing you down here might jog some memories," James was telling him. Of what? the critical part of Ozpin's sleeping mind wondered. "After all, it was your idea to use the Staff to lift Atlas off the ground."

He craned his head, looking curiously up at James. The General looks older. Tired. There was something about the look in his eyes he didn't like. Something cold, something hungry, something fearful, but nothing he thinks that hadn't been there before. And certainly nothing lay within them that Ozpin didn't already worry about. Distrust. Disloyalty. Betrayal. Of all the people who were committed to his cause, James was the one he had to worry about the most. After all, he had the most advanced military at his disposal and after earning his rank through hard work and sacrificing much of his body for his kingdom, he had distinct feelings about being in charge, disagreeing with his authority, and how wars should be conducted.

"I thought Gravity Dust kept Atlas afloat."

He felt the confusion his dream-self experienced, but why did he say that? Why didn't he know that? Why was James the one telling him this? Why had James taken him down here in the first place? This had never happened, and it was too specific and too detailed to be just a dream… wasn't it?

Was this a memory…? The future? But then… No, it had to be a dream.

"That's the public story." There's a small note of amusement in James' voice. "But with the Staff we have a constant, seemingly limitless energy source. Oz once speculated it could take us as high as we wanted. To tell you the truth, that served as the inspiration for the Amity Project. Get a communication tower up in the sky, higher than the Grimm can survive, so we never lose contact with each other again."

"But you're not using the Staff to raise Amity," said the voice who was not Ozpin.

"The Staff can only be used for one purpose at a time. We're going to have to do Amity the old-fashioned way, Dust and all."

Amity Coliseum? But that had already happened! It couldn't be the future because Amity hadn't been raised yet, but it couldn't be the past, he'd never been this voice. Dream or memory? Fabrication or reality?

"It feels strange. Knowing that part of me helped come up with all this."

The feeling of strangeness was tenfold on Ozpin's part. Who exactly was this voice his dream-self inhabited? There wasn't anything in the dream he could see himself in. He was just a small child… with James. The General didn't seem to be treating his dream-self like one of his students, but he also didn't seem to be treating him as he had known him for years either.

Why did he feel a flurry of disorientation over James' name? Why did the more intimate 'James' which he'd been calling him for years and an indicator of their friendship feel so unused and unfamiliar. Why did 'Ironwood' sit in the back of his mind, feeling more comfortable and professional? Why did he feel so conflicted over his name?

"You'll get used to it, I'm sure. Eventually, you won't even know who's who anymore."

"…Right."

In the dream, he felt hurt.

"We didn't always see eye to eye, but I wish I could ask Ozpin what he thought of all this."

In the back of his mind, the part of him that wasn't weighed down with dream fog became alarmed. He felt a rising panic in his chest. Not his dream chest but his real chest. He was asleep, but he could also feel the sweat on his hands. Something was wrong. It was a dream, but it was also a memory. It was a dream but it was also—

"Well, I can tell you what I think," his dream-self responds without missing a beat, touching his hand to his heart. "The path you're heading down where you're the only one with the answers, where you do the thing you think is right no matter the cost, it's not going to take you anywhere good."

The voice was sincere. Earnest. It doesn't sound like something Ozpin would say. His feet arrive next to James and he finds himself craning his head once again to see his face. But these weren't the words James wanted to hear. His expression darkened as he turned from him and strode away, back the way they came as if blowing off this response.

"We have to stop Salem. Nothing matters more."

"Some things matter more, I think," the voice disagrees, small but certain. James halts. Ozpin stills. The small voice continues. "Keeping our humanity. It's what makes us different from her."

Something in Ozpin's mind and heart go quiet.

"Sometimes I worry that's her greatest advantage. Without humanity, does she still feel fear? Does she ever hesitate? When Salem hit -... . .-con, even with all my ... ... .. .-. ..., all of m -.- / ... - .-.. -.. .. . .-.s, I was no match for her. I've never felt so helpless, the way she… - -ld me she was - ... . .-. ."

The dream started to grow haunting and bizarre. Distorted. Like a recording that had been taped over so many times that earlier recordings bled through like ectoplasm. Time shifted. Both he and James were ghostly figments in a quick cut horror movie. At some point, time in the horror movie slows down enough for him to register that he was standing at the edge of the platform in the vault, James in front of him, eyes lifeless and devoid of emotion, pistol drawn, and then he was falling, falling, fall—

The film snaps back into place.

"It's okay to be afraid," his dream-self says, and somehow Ozpin finds himself feeling comforted despite the hammering of his heart in his chest and the lingering memory of those eyes. Whoever his dream-self was and whatever role he was playing, he sounded so reassuring for someone so small. "You just can't let that fear control you."

"I am n - - going to end up like Li - -.h . .-rt. …Do you believe in me?"

Another distortion. Time sped up, then slowed to a crawl, repeating and looping back in on itself.

"To you, it's General. —it's General. —General. Gen—eral. Gen— -. . -."

The recording fixes itself once again and James' voice is replaced by his own foreign one.

"I do believe in you, but, not only you." His dream-self is gentle and yet somehow so firm in his convictions. Maybe more convinced than Ozpin himself. His dream-self strides forward to the lift, making eye contact with James until he passes him. He steps on the lift and turns around. "I think the best thing you could do is sit down and talk with the people you're most afraid to."

James looks to him, eyes widening in surprise before a hint of approval crosses his face.

"Now you are -... . -. .. -. -. .. -. -. / - - / ... -und like him."

The lift rises.

So does Ozpin, touching his chest where a phantom pain that was not his nestled close to his heart, a blossom of temporal fear and uncertainty. When he wakes fully, he finds himself staring blearily out his window and watched as the pre-dawn light slowly descended upon the courtyard, banishing all shadows before it.

He drums his fingers on the windowsill.

You just can't let that fear control you, echoes in his mind.

"Hmm," he murmurs.

Oscar opened his eyes and saw the sun. He saw the acres of farmland rolling out beneath him from his second story bedroom window in the barn. He saw the way the ice and snow glittered in the light and the cloudless blue sky above, untroubled and all-encompassing. Frost formed on the outside of the window pane and his breath fogged up the glass. He'd stared hard at all the things he had known and loved before and felt an ache in his soul.

There was no place like home.

But being home didn't relieve him of his and Oz's impossible mission. Being home didn't win this infinite war. It didn't change what he had to do or what he had to face.

It just gave him some more time.

So here were the facts:

One: somehow Oscar went back in time before the fall of Beacon.

Two: there didn't seem to be another past Oscar hanging around that was pre-Fall and it really worried him because what if pre-Fall Oscar was there but got lost or something and he was going to meet a younger version of himself without Ozpin? Would that destroy time? Or maybe he got misplaced in time too and is there a space-time continuum like sci-fi novels tell him and is he messing everything up and if pre-Fall Oscar is in the future, and post-Fall Oscar is here does that mean pre-Fall Oscar is dealing with Salem?

Three: Breathe, Oscar. Focus.

Four: As far as he could tell, past Oscar had gone mysteriously missing some months ago and no one knew anything about where he went or what happened to him, so the people around him seem to have assumed he, post-Fall Future-Oscar, was pre-Fall Past-Oscar who had gone into a fugue state after some sort of psychological or traumatic break and who only recently came back. Oscar didn't remember ever going missing in his life like this, so he was very very concerned about what happened to Other Oscar. Regardless, it was a story that was convenient but one which he struggled over.

It felt dishonest. Like he was keeping secrets, but he couldn't tell anyone he was from the future, what he had experienced, and his mission. He accepted Ozpin as the voice in his head being the person he said he was, and others in the know validated his reality, but telling other ordinary people who weren't involved, let alone the mention of time-travel was going to make people worried and consider medical treatment he didn't need. Especially if he couldn't produce Ozpin anymore.

Five: it was selfish, but he'd decided he wasn't going to tell his Aunt. There was a difference between sharing the truth with people who were already involved and were hunters-in-training or actual licensed hunters, sharing it with the whole world or a kingdom when you've made preparations for the fallout, versus telling innocent people who weren't involved and who might be killed just for knowing about it.

Six: As far as he could figure out where he'd fallen into the exact timeline, it was the winter before Beacon fell. The only member of their group he could find news about was Weiss because she was the most public. She was still performing concerts and hadn't even been enrolled in Beacon yet. She was seventeen, so she'd probably start in the fall.

Seven: it felt weird and skeevy to be looking up information about Weiss on his Scroll. He really didn't like it and he hoped she could forgive him.

Eight: Ozpin still wasn't responding in their mutual headspace, so Oscar sometimes thinks about what he would have said or might have said about their predicament and what they should do and then argues against his fictional version in his head. Oscar had his points and so did imaginary Ozpin, but it was Oscar who got to make the decision.

Nine: He still had to stop Salem. Win this war.

So there were only a few options left to him.

You need to get to Beacon, the Ozpin he imagined said when he was thinking about what he should do.

Oscar threw his hands out almost aggressively, "How?"

Enroll, his imagination supplied, amused. It was incredible because his imaginary Ozpin was almost as cryptic and unhelpful as the real one. Oscar felt he needed to get better at arguing with himself.

"Yeah, okay, with what transcript? At my age?"

Ruby Rose enrolled when she was fifteen. Early acceptance is possible for the right candidate. You just have to be the right candidate.

Right, of course. There was a practical exam. You had to be of a certain age usually, but…

Oscar glances at the cane by his side.

…But he supposed if he were able to peak Past Ozpin's interest, then it might make him the right kind of candidate.

There was a knock on his bedroom door.

"Oscar?" his aunt called out. "Can I come in?"

"You already climbed the whole way up the ladder," Oscar said when he opened the door to let his aunt in. He smiled a little mischievously.

"It's been a while since I was last in here," his aunt said, looking around curiously. Oscar goes back to sitting on his bed as her eyes wander. She glances over the books crammed into his bookshelf and at the one he'd been reading on the bed without apparent interest. His aunt had probably expected him to be reading. She eventually adds, looking at the news articles he'd pinned to his wall, "Well, this is new. "

"Oh, um—"

She reads off a few headlines: "Serial Killer Tyrian Callows Still at Large. Arthur Watts, Atlas Scientist, Deceased. Weiss Schnee Considering Beacon Instead of Atlas Despite Criticism—oh! That's a cute little picture of her you've found. Beacon Academy to Host Vytal Festival in the Coming Year, Unrest in Mantle Rises, Terrorist Group White Fang Increase Activity in Vale. Oscar, most of these are some really serious articles."

"I, um… Well, you see…"

His aunt sits on the bed with him, the book he was reading in-between them. She reaches out to hold his hand.

"You don't have to pretend with me, Oscar."

His shoulders stiffened.

"What?"

She squeezes his hand, looking into his eyes.

"I know it's hard, being back. I know there are things you aren't telling me, maybe you can't tell me. Maybe you're embarrassed or scared or don't want me to think less of you. But I need you to know that I will never stop loving you. I know you went through something terrible—I won't ask, but whenever you decide to tell me, even if it's years later, I'll listen. I know you're growing up. You saved that little girl in the snowstorm from the Grimm. You've gotten so strong and so brave and I know your parents would be proud of you."

Oscar eyes the rug on the floor, smiling, but a little embarrassed too.

"And it's adorable to know my little nephew has a crush on Weiss Schnee!" His aunt moves her hand in an elaborate gesture that suggested she was nudging a crowd of people aside. "Move outta the way ladies and gentlefolk, Oscar Pine is here to sweep the lady off her feet!"

"Auntie Em! It's not like that!"

His aunt laughs at his burning red face and Oscar fears the more he protests the more his aunt is going to think it's true. Weiss was on there because no one else was writing articles about Yang or Nora or Ruby or Qrow or anyone else! Beyond finding out Qrow had been a legitimate professor at Signal academy, there was nothing more said about him publicly other than he was often out in the field on missions. And Oscar knew what kinds of missions those were.

His aunt puts her hands out in front of her as a calming gesture.

"Okay, okay. It's not like that~"

She didn't believe him. He could just about die from embarrassment. He could almost feel Weiss' withering gaze from across the annuls of time itself and felt a chill go down his spine. The moon rises higher in the sky.

"I'm…" Oscar starts, words thoughtful, mind elsewhere, like his aunt wasn't even in the room, "going to go to Beacon."

His aunt seems to think about this.

"That's a long way away."

"There's… something I have to do."

Oscar opens his mouth to say something further and then stops. He tries to corral his thoughts in order before speaking. His aunt was trying her best and she deserved his best in return. He couldn't tell her a truth that would endanger her, but he didn't want to lie.

His aunt trusted him.

Oscar looked at the moon outside.

Recently, Oscar had found himself thinking about the nature of trust. What did it really mean to trust someone? He didn't think it meant blind faith, like the kind Ozpin's inner circle had possessed for the old headmaster. It wasn't' a loyalty that was never questioned or a reverence that never wavered. Instead, Oscar thought it felt a lot more like Qrow and Ruby.

After the stolen airship had crashed through the trees and Oscar had been guided through a successful crash-landing, he had thought they were done for. Ruby, groaning, had stumbled out of the airship and onto the snowy ground outside while he helped Maria get out of her seatbelt and hovered uncertainly around to see if she was going to be okay.

From the corner of his eye he'd seen Ruby briefly glance at the two of them and then Oscar found himself watching as she strode away, mouth set in a grim line of determination, relic bouncing against her hip.

Qrow darted after her, grasping desperately at her hand to stop her from putting herself right back in danger again. Ruby's uncle was a lot of things, not all of them good, but if there was one thing that defined the best in him, it was his love for his nieces.

"Ruby! Stop!"

The girl turned slowly, deliberately, to face her uncle, and gazed unwaveringly into his eyes. Her response is quiet, but Oscar still heard the words she said to him, felt the weight and gravitas behind them.

"You need to trust me."

Her voice was soft. Vulnerable. But there was also an underlying spark to it, something powerful that refused to give in, something unshakeable that didn't give up. There was something in Ruby that saw things in a way other people didn't.

From behind, he sees Qrow's shoulders stiffen and then, touched by something in her expression, bows his head slightly, letting go of Ruby with something like shame, or resignation. As if he were sending her to her death.

But he still made that choice to believe in her. He let Ruby go.

Trust didn't mean lack of doubt. It meant belief despite doubt.

Oscar finally speaks.

"When I…" he tries to think of an appropriate phrase, "was gone… I met a lot of people who became very important to me. I've been to Atlas, I've been to Mantle. I've been to Haven and Argus and lots of other places. I can't say why. I need… I need you to trust me, but I can't say why. I've seen what people can be like when they're… afraid. I've seen… grief, and horror, and heartbreak. Rage. Despair. But I've also seen hope. I've seen unity."

In turn, he remembers the faces of his friends and allies, even enemies. Jaune, in grief, grabbing him and pushing him back against the wall. Weiss, in horror, Ruby covering her with a blanket after discovering the atrophied dead at the farm. Qrow, in despair, picking up yet another bottle of alcohol and Ruby looking on, her heart breaking just a little bit more each time. There was rage in Hazel who was so torn up inside, his grief and anguish dripping from his soul even if he didn't feel the physical pain.

But just for a moment, Robyn and Ironwood's hands had intertwined, there had been hope and unity. And that's what he chose to believe in. Trust. It was the one thing Ozpin couldn't do and the one thing Oscar could. Ozpin had probably imagined fighting Salem alone at the end of it all, if he ever got so far as to face her again, the victor of a secret war. Oscar always imagined facing her with the others by his side. He felt the weight of defeating Salem on his shoulders, but he knew Ruby and the others felt that weight just as much as he did. He still worried about becoming Ozpin, of eventually forgetting how to be himself, but not as much.

Perhaps because he felt there was so much more to him now.

"I want to be a part of that. Hope. Unity. There's people in this world I want to protect," he tells his aunt finally. He gestures at the news articles he'd been collecting on his wall. "I can't do nothing."

His aunt thinks this over for a few minutes, watching the moon outside like he just done earlier.

"Is the reason you can't tell me why because there's something you're ashamed of?"

"No."

She hugged him.

"Then I trust you."

Sometimes, it was that simple.

Later, when he'd climbed into bed and stared at the map of stars in the black sky outside his window, he realized he needed to modify it. The Long Memory. At least cosmetically. He had enough basic mechanical knowledge from fixing farming equipment every winter that he felt comfortable attempting the task and at least one of Oz's incarnations had probably been an engineer, considering (here Oscar mentally makes a wide sweeping gesture in his imagination) how he'd practically come up with and constructed the schools. Oscar could probably figure out how to draft a new design. Or at least make the Long Memory as the Long memory less obvious. Going into Beacon with a dubious background below the age requirement was possible. Going into Beacon with the Long Memory exactly as it was and is would be asking for trouble and unwanted scrutiny.

No. He wanted it recognizable to Ozpin, but different enough that a casual observer might think it was just inspired by the Long Memory. Ruby's weapon was based off Qrow's and Qrow had been inspired by Maria, so it had to be a normal thing Hunters did. He also didn't want another Hazel to come after him just for wielding this cane.

Besides, if he was the next Oz and all the responsibility and hardship that entailed, then he… kind of… wanted to leave a little bit of himself in this endless legacy of war and rebirth. Something not quite Oz.

He felt almost embarrassed to even think that.

He fell asleep.

Umber's thank you letter had been simple and written in neat but bubbly script.

Dear Oscar,

Thank you for saving me and getting my hat. My name is Umber. Do you remember me? Me and Daddy used to drive by your farm on the way to the market. We would wave to you and you would wave back. Daddy said you were lost for a while, but you're back now! I hope I can see you again when you're better.

Sincerely

Umber

She'd drawn a picture of him carrying her in the snowstorm. Or at least that's what he assumed he was looking at, considering the position of the green scribble in relation to the orange blob. It wasn't his place to judge children's art anyway. It wasn't like he could draw very well either.

Oscar pinned the letter to his wall, smiling.

True to his word, Ed came back to visit them in a few days and this time he brought his daughter.

"Hey, kid," he says gruffly after they had climbed up and Oscar opened his bedroom door to them. "Your aunt said you didn't mind if we came to see you in here. You look a lot better."

Oscar, even though he'd known they were coming and had the time to prepare himself for company still felt a little uneasy because he'd gotten distracted reading books instead of mentally preparing, timidly replied, "All thanks to you, Mr. Ed."

Umber's eyes lit up when she saw Oscar, but soon after she hid shyly behind her dad's bulky frame, small hand clutching his sleeve and fidgeting. Her dad wrapped his hand around hers and gave her a gentle tug so that she'd take a step closer to the threshold.

"And you look like you're in good spirits! Even better! Can we come in? It's quite a climb all the way up here."

"Uh, yeah. Sure. I'm… sorry, about last time."

"Don't sweat it kid. You wouldn't be the first huntsman I've treated who came back from the brink all weird and confused. People get scary emotional after stuff like that. I can't blame you."

"Huntsman…?" Oscar begins to say before shortly trailing off thoughtfully as he let the two of them into his room and returns to the place where he'd been reading on his bed. He supposed he at least looked the part of a hunter even if he didn't always feel like it.

He's brought back out of his thoughts when Ed abruptly follows up with a question.

"You fight Grimm?"

"Yeah, I suppose?"

"You gonna fight more?"

"…Probably."

"Then you're a huntsman."

Oscar has to think about that but he isn't given a lot of time before Ed's little girl walks up to him.

"Hi there," he says gently when Umber's uncertain and somewhat unsteady gait brought her closer to him on the foot of the bed and she peered at him with big, expressive eyes. If they didn't have wooden floorboards, Oscar might have been unable to tell the auditory difference between the little girl's footsteps. Prosthetic, he reminds himself, even though he couldn't see it under the girl's big orange sweater dress and loose black trousers. When she gets as close to him as she dares, she clasps her hands together, glances at his face, and then eyes her feet as she talks.

"H… Hi. I'm Umber. Um…"

"Hello, Umber," he says politely, making sure to smile and speak evenly. She seemed a lot like him at that age. Painfully shy, anxious, and nervous. Not that he wasn't those things now, but he wanted to put her at ease. "My name is Oscar."

"Um…! Did you get my letter? Daddy said he gave it to you, but, you know, he sometimes forgets things."

Her voice is rushed and a little squeaky.

"Hey!" Ed responds, turning away from inspecting Oscar's growing collection of articles. His finger had been tracing an article thoughtfully about an ongoing court case detailing an instance of discriminatory business practices in the real estate industry targeting faunus. Then he spots his daughter's letter on the wall. Ed points to it with an exaggerated gesticulation of both his arms as if presenting it to an audience.

"Sorry, Daddy," she responds in kind, her voice only about a decibel louder than the volume of her speaking voice and without any hint of apology. She turns back to Oscar, hand cupping one side of her mouth, and tells him conspiratorially in a whisper, "It's true."

Oscar can't help but laugh.

Umber spots the book on his bed.

"What are you reading?" she asks.

Oscar grabs the book and looks it over in his hands.

"It's a book about the history of the kingdom of Atlas. You know where that is, right?"

"Y-Yeah…! It's in the north. It's supposed to be reaaally cold, right?"

Ed continues to poke about in his tiny room while he talked to Umber. Oscar didn't really mind since it wasn't like he had anything embarrassing hidden. Or even very many places to hide anything besides the large chest at the other side of his room, which… mostly kept more books and summer clothing.

"I was wondering why," Ed commented, finding the books in the chest. "for a farm boy, you seemed so well spoken and educated and now I know."

"The library van still makes it out here every two weeks," Oscar replied mildly, unbothered. Ed seemed like the kind of guy who sometimes liked to rile people up on purpose. While having a grown man rifle around his room while he was there was invasive and annoying, knowing that killed any flicker of irritation over it.

It didn't help that he was desensitized to the idea of invasion of his privacy due to the immortal wizard living in his head. The wizard was out at the moment, but that didn't change anything.

Ed only grunted and moved onto the pieces of paper Oscar had left laying on the top of his little bookcase.

"Oscar, look!"

Umber pulled up the cuff of her trouser to show Oscar the prosthetic leg.

"Oh wow," he commented, not entirely certain how to respond. From what he knew, Yang had a hard time accepting the loss of her arm and recovering her spirit, needing a lot of time to work out her feelings and frustration. Oscar could kind of relate to being emotional about losing a part of yourself, since that was apparently the future he had to look forward to.

In comparison, Umber didn't seem to have had any trouble adjusting considering the little amount of time she's had with it. Carefully, he added, "You were able to climb all the way up here with that, huh?"

"All by myself!" Umber beams. "Daddy designed it!"

Oscar turns to look at Ed, raising an eyebrow.

"You design prosthetics?"

"Weapons and armor, too. My pieces are works of art. I might be a doctor but I'm also an artist!" He flaps the papers he was holding, an immense pride creeping into his voice. The papers he was flapping around were Oscar's concept sketches of possible alterations to the Long Memory's design. "You really want to keep these clockwork innards visible, huh? These specs are a lil' rough but I think I get what you're goin' for. I thought maybe you were doing upgrade sketches, but this is all…"

"Visual," Oscar supplied.

"Superficial. You could easily add a Dust chamber to this or make it so it can fire rounds."

Oscar hears a gunshot go off in his head and remembers a pain in his chest.

"No," he says more quickly than he meant to, his eyes going unexpectedly wide as he brushes a hand against his chest reminding himself that he is safe, safe, safe. "I-I like it how it is."

Ed shrugs and continues to inspect the design, humming. Impatiently, Umber hops up on the foot of the bed with Oscar, smiling at him and more than happy to have his attention once again. Her trouser cuff was still rolled up.

"Do you want to look at the pictures?" Oscar asks her, picking up the book and opening it in his lap.

"Oh! That's a lot of snow!" she says, swinging her legs back in forth.

"Yeah, the cold of Solitas will kill you in a matter of minutes without your aura to protect you."

"Aura…" Umber murmurs to herself.

Ed watches them from behind Oscar's designs with a scrutinizing gleam in his eye.

Later, Oscar's aunt calls them all for dinner and Umber excitedly climbs down the ladder all by herself. Oscar would have quickly followed after her if her father hadn't blocked the way, sitting down on the wooden platform, the soles of his shoes resting on the rungs of the ladder. He looks up at Oscar.

"You're a good kid, Oscar."

"Wh-What? That's sudden."

"You haven't asked me about my daughter's antlers."

"How do—?"

"You idiot, you think I don't talk to my own daughter?"

"Oh. Well t-that doesn't mean—"

"Yeah. It don't have to mean anything. Except you've got articles on your wall about civil rights violations and my daughter's letter. You're a good kid who's real bad at takin' compliments and treats my daughter, a faunus, with kindness and respect, who spent a whole thirty minutes patiently teaching her about Atlas and helping her with all the big words and who don't look at her funny trying to see under her hat. A lotta boys—"

He stops himself, closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them again.

"Sorry. A lotta men are uncomfortable with being kind. I think it takes more courage to be kind in a cruel world than it does to be strong in an unkind one. An' not a lot of strong people are kind; not a lot of kind people are strong, either. You happen to be both."

Ed's shoulders sag and he stares down at the bales of hay below them as if he were seeing something else entirely. He sadly clasps his hands in his lap and Oscar somehow felt the weight of an unspoken history settle on him.

"You shouldn't be so reluctant to express yourself and your opinion."

Oscar is quiet for a moment and then, without knowing why, softly admits in a very small, shaky voice, "The last person I had a difference of opinion with... shot me point blank and I fell down several miles of an underground shaft into the open tundra of Solitas. I'm… not afraid of expressing my opinion, and I think I'd do it again, I'm just…"

Oscar wavers and then flaps a hand vaguely.

"…reluctant to get shot."

There's a very long silence before Ed speaks again.

"Oh."

Something seems to click in Ed's brain. "Oh. So that's why you—"

"I think of it as a defensive weapon. Parry, strike, protect. Meant to kill Grimm, not people. No blade, no bullets. My enemy isn't other people, even if they want to be. Division between people destroys us all. We're stronger together."

Ed suddenly has a lot to think about.

"You're really a rare kid, Oscar."

They boy opens his mouth to respond but doesn't get the chance.

"Doctor Eddie! Oscar! Dinner time! And wash those hands!"

The two of them hastily get a move on.

[A/N: Again, sorry about weird formatting, maybe. Still figuring it out. Thank you for reading!]