"Are you… robbing me?"

"Yes!"

"Ohhh…"

Ruby Rose goes after Roman Torchwick that night under the broken moon because that's what a Huntress is supposed to do. They protect people when no one else will, stand in the way of the cruel and wicked, and leave the world a better place than they found it. They fought the monsters in the night and gave quiet comfort to the frightful. Ruby didn't think she was fearless. She wasn't braver than anyone else, wasn't stronger, but she was willing try to help those she could in the face of catastrophe.

That's what she thought mattered. Trying. To do the right thing even when it was hard. Maybe especially when it was hard.

That night Professor Ozpin asked her why she wanted to be a Huntress and her words hadn't come out quite right. People misunderstood her when she talked about wanting to be a hero like in the books. She'd seen it in the way Glynda Goodwitch had looked at her during the interview, like she was airheaded and naïve. She understood why, she really did. Real life was different from the stories. Books made reality seem simple and easy instead of messy and difficult. She'd called being a Huntress romantic and cool but that's not exactly what she meant .

"Okay… get her!"

Henchmen charge at her from the entrance of the Dust shop and Ruby lifts her body up into the air using Crescent Rose both as a fulcrum and as a mechanism to pirouette effortlessly, legs ruthlessly knocking one of the henchmen to the ground. She knew what people expected of her in battle. A lot of boys at Signal had wanted to prove to each other how strong and manly they were only to be dumbfounded once taken down by this tiny, waiflike girl with an oversized scythe. People thought no way could she be any sort of threat. They expected a fumbling-bumbling-stumbling kind of girl.

They were wrong.

What she meant is that she wanted to be there for those who needed her. She's seen what loss can do to people. She couldn't stand around and do nothing when people around her were hurting.

Dad and Yang thought she hadn't noticed growing up—that her father had been gripped by an unfathomable despair, unable to handle the loss of everyone who'd gotten close to him. That it was her Uncle, who even she found drunk in a puddle of his own vomit more than once on the bathroom floor when she was little, who got Dad to take showers, get dressed, and keep it together. She hadn't missed that Yang was eyes of fire, bruises, and teeth, fist after fist and the one who held a soft, cool hand to her forehead when she was sick, trembling, and feverish, who kept her fed when Dad was too distant and lost to do it, who looked at her with pride and love, as Mom had.

Ruby's mom left on a mission and never came back. It had gouged an empty hollow into all their chests, twisting ever deeper with each revolution, carving the hearts out of them. They bled tears and clawed their way through the years with agony, endless grief pumping through their veins.

"Persistent ," Torchwick mutters under his breath when she catches up to him atop the roof. There's a bright light and a bullhead carrier rises from below, whipping her hair behind her as her hands tighten on the scythe.

"End of the line, Red," the man calls out, tossing uncut Burn Dust at her.

It takes her a few seconds to divine his intentions, but when she does, it's a few seconds too late to react. Torchwick takes his shot and the crystal explodes.

But there is nothing that is infinite.

Not even loss.

Dad returned to teaching. Yang learned how to fight. Qrow stopped passing out on the bathroom floor.

And Ruby grew up.

From the moment she'd listened to her first fairy tale to the moment she started learning how to fight, too, and eventually to now, eating cookies in front of the headmaster of Beacon Academy, she had known what she wanted to be. She wanted to fight monsters, big and small. She wanted to help people and she wanted to bring a little good into the world.

It was impossible to be there for everyone, she knew. Being able to help everyone was the real fairytale. But just because something was impossible didn't mean it was foolish to try. Choosing to help someone didn't mean choosing not to help someone else. No one's actions are that small. Tiny, insignificant acts of kindness, love, and protecting people when they needed it. Those were the things she believed in.

And if not her, then who?

Besides, Huntresses were cool and kinda romantic.

That night, Ruby dreams of snow falling in a city she's never seen.

Os…

c…

ar—

There's a voice calling his name. He could barely hear it or, maybe, he didn't understand it? The syllables were garbled and distorted, like he was underwater. Like he was drowning. He felt heavy, so heavy . His head was filled with hammering static, his bones full of throbbing lead. He started to sink further into whatever dark unconscious realm he'd slipped into.

Os… car…!

The voice becomes insistent even though it was far, far away, deeper underwater, deeper in the darkness where light dare not travel. He vaguely feels a sense of panic and dread that is not his own. Wait. No. That doesn't make sense. Not his own? Yet he was certain of what he felt, even if he wasn't the one who was feeling it.

There's a question on his lips but he is too weighed down, too sluggish, and too everything to do anything but maybe will a strained, hollow sense of dull confusion in the direction of whatever it was that was feeling feelings.

There was no response from the voice. They were too far from each other to communicate. Transmission failed.

Oscar allows his consciousness to drift aimlessly. Static in his head, lead in his bones, a wrongness settling into his heart. He reaches out to a forgotten memory…

…

Oscar wakes up on the train. Had he been dreaming? Maybe. He couldn't remember.

Leaving home had been… hard. Harder than the first time he'd left.

Last time he'd left without a word and without a note. It had felt wrong to go and it felt wrong to stay, but no matter how he looked at it, he couldn't find in himself the courage to tell his aunt why he had to leave and that he was hearing voices. Or, well, a voice. He had still been thinking he was losing his mind at that point and couldn't bear to see how his aunt might look at him.

This time, however, everyone he'd gotten to know came with him to the station to say their goodbyes and to wish him well before he could buy his tickets. Marin had lifted him off his feet and had given him a spine-crushing bear hug, telling him how much she'd miss her little sparring partner. (She'd also miss trying to set him up with one of her daughters, but Oscar decided if she wasn't going to mention it then neither was he.)

His aunt also hugged him and cried telling him how much she loved him and how proud of him she was and how she knew he was going to do great things, which then made him cry.

Umber had held his hand all the way to the station, resolutely holding back her own tears. She didn't want him to go, but she knew this was something he wanted so she was trying to show him her support. She hugged him tight and afterwards held out a small package to him. A going away gift.

"Don't open it until you're on the train!" Umber scolded him indignantly when he tried to take a peek inside. She was a lot more self-assured now since she'd taken off her hat and stomped on Rhys' terrible face. Oscar was glad for it.

Even Ed crouched down and hugged him, murmuring a quiet "Thank you for everything" in his ear and like Umber, pressed something into his hands when they parted.

"These are pre-paid tickets!" Oscar exclaimed. "When did you—?"

Ed laughed, "Pretty much as soon as I knew when you were going."

Oscar couldn't help but be astonished. In the months before the semester started, he'd worked hard at the farm and at the market nearby doing odd jobs to save up as much as he could for the travel costs and whatever else he might need in the future. This was too much, he couldn't accep—

"Don't even tell me something like you can't accept this," Ed told him, as if reading his mind. "As far as I'm concerned, you're family."

Oscar brings his sleeve up to his eyes.

"I'll take care of your aunt while you're gone. I know that's what you're worried about the most."

"She can take care of herself, thank you," his aunt pipes up.

Ed winked.

Soon after that, it was time for the train to leave and as it pulled away from the station, the adults waved goodbye and Umber ran alongside the train until there was no more platform left.

On the train, now awake and bored, Oscar watches the scenery outside fly past.

Traveling to Beacon made him a little nervous. Half of all the trains he's been on have crashed. That's, like, a fifty percent chance of disaster based on past statistics. Given that he'd been carrying an ancient invaluable magic lantern that attracted Grimm at the time, it was hard to blame the train itself for that particular misfortune. However, he'd also been shot down after helping steal an airship, which, okay, yeah, maybe not the best circumstances to find himself in, but it didn't make his journey using alternative transportation feel any more safe.

The trip to Beacon required a train ride and passage aboard an airship. Those were two things that could potentially crash on him.

No, stop , he chides himself. We've talked about this. You're catastrophizing. Focus on something else.

He opens Umber's gift.

It's packets of hot chocolate and a necklace. The pendant was an orange camellia flower bud, just blooming, pressed between two thin pieces of diamond-shaped glass with a silver wire frame. It came with a note.

Dear Oscar,

I'm so glad I was able to meet you. Thank you for everything. Thank you for playing with me, and reading to me, and being my friend. Thank you for saving me again. I know you have to go and Vale is far away but we're still gonna be friends, OK?

P.S.

I made this! Daddy says camellia flowers are a symbol of strength to overcome affercityadvercity adversity. You helped me look at what made me scared and let me choose what to do. I hope it can help you do the same when you're scared too.

I love you lots. Thank you so much.

Sincerely

-Umber

His heart felt warm and he couldn't stop smiling all the way to the airship.

Once he reaches the airship and it takes off, Oscar spots a girl with red hair and golden armor. Oh no. Oh no oh no. That's right. She was from Mistral. She went to Sanctum. Even he had known her name before he'd been drawn into this war without end, before he took his first uncertain step away from home, before he started to hear a voice in his head, self-assured but tinged with a hidden sorrow. He'd seen her face on the cereal box, he'd seen her face lit green in the vault. He puts his head in his hands, fire in the dark, an inferno under his skin. Don't think about it, don't think about it, don't think—

"Are you alright?"

Oscar looks up from his hands.

She's standing next to him looking down at him. Kind green eyes, a warm smile, both older than him and far too young to die.

"M… Migraine," he manages to tell the phantom, somehow. Nothing felt real. He couldn't feel his fingers. Everything was hot. He was spiraling again.

"Oh, well… I think there's still some empty seats we can sit down in back there. Here, let me show you if you don't mind."

Oscar followed Pyrrha with silent horror rising off him in dark waves. He'd never met her, he didn't know her. He'd never met her, he didn't know her. But he did know her. He knew the way she'd touched the lives of everyone in team JNPR and RWBY. Knew that Jaune and Ruby both blamed themselves for how she died even if it was a battle she chose to fight and they had both been powerless to stop her. He'd seen the way she looked at him—no, wrong again, looked at Ozpin —in the machine, determined.

Oh no oh no oh no. Going to Beacon had been a bad idea. What had he been thinking? Why had he thought he could change anything if he could barely handle seeing a girl he knew would die? He can't… he can't let that happen… but he was just one person…

She helps him into one of the seats in front of a window while he quietly freaks out and sits down with him. A small weight presses the inside of his pocket and Oscar finds himself clutching tightly the necklace Umber had made for him.

"It's okay," she tells him kindly and with relaxed patience. "I'm right beside you. Breathe."

He does so, holding the necklace to his chest with both hands. Breathe, breathe, breathe, man was made of Dust, sea, and stars; things that were greater than both Ozpin and Salem and himself. Even Ozpin was once just a man. Salem, too, once just a woman.

And he was just Oscar and he was going to try his best.

When he calms down enough to start breathing normally, Pyrrha points out the window, "Look, you can see Signal from here."

Oscar looks. Oh. So that was Signal. That was where Ruby trained before she went to Beacon.

It occurs to him that Ruby wouldn't have stopped moving forward. If her place were swapped with his, she would still choose to go to Beacon, still choose to fight Salem. She would have pressed on and kept fighting. She would make that choice and she would never look back or regret it.

She didn't back down because something was hard or she got scared, instead, she squared up.

Thinking about that helped calm him down further, making him feel real and human and whole again.

"S-Sorry," he apologizes. "And thank you, Miss Nikos."

He only realized what he said after he said it and started to silently panic once again because like "James" that was an Oz slip of the tongue who still wasn't here and— but before he could start to unravel, Pyrrha responds.

"Oh, you don't have to be so formal. Especially since you already know who I am. Actually, I already know who you are too."

What?!

"…W-What?"

"I saw you earlier when we were all boarding and I thought you looked a little young to be going to Beacon, but then I remembered seeing your face in a newspaper article. From what I recall, last spring you helped to apprehend a murderer. Am I wrong?"

"…No…" he puts his hands over his face, feeling suddenly embarrassed, "You're right. Please tell me it was a very small article in the back that no one else read."

He'd forgotten about the photographer. And the reporter. He lived in the middle of nowhere and no one really paid attention to newspapers and it wasn't like a lot happened there, so he didn't expect anyone outside of where he lived to really care abou—

Pyrrha laughed.

"A- ha . A 'humble hero', huh?"

"It's not like that," he tells her hastily, "I just don't like being the center of attention, you know?"

"Believe me," Pyrrha says, face turning serious, "I know the feeling. Don't worry, I was just visiting some relatives out in the country when I saw it. I don't think the story made it anywhere else."

They're quiet for a while and she eventually asks, "Does that happen often? Your panic attacks?"

"Panic attack?"

"Yes, p—it's… Oscar, right? Can I call you that?" He nods. "Oscar, do you not know what a panic attack is?"

"No, I know what one is, I just don't think I've ever…"

Oscar knew he frightened easily and panicked often, but the circumstances he and teams RWBY and JNPR found themselves in were, of themselves, panic-worthy. Maria taunted angry old women into firing missiles at them, Ruby dove down cannon barrels and then goes to face a Leviathan alone right after, Jaune throws himself into battle with Cinder without a thought for himself, tall, skeletal Grimm burn in an abandoned farmhouse in Brunswick…

In the middle of it all, he'd just been Oscar. New to fighting for his life, new to fighting for and supporting others. It was easy to feel scared all the time. With time, he'd started to feel less scared after each encounter, but he thought that composure only started settling over his shoulders once the reached Atlas.

Sure, sometimes he would spiral and think himself in a corner on his own when the thought about how big everything was, how important their mission was, what the cost of failing was, but he didn't think he'd ever had a panic attack before. And… he didn't think it was just his feelings he was shouldering right now. These images, memories, small terrors and guilt were Ozpin's. Ozma's. Whoever's.

And it was a lot harder to manage being bombarded by the recent past of a previous life when their feelings were bleeding into yours.

Pyrrha hums in thought.

"It looks like we'll be arriving soon. Do you mind if we stick together? It'd be nice to start the school year with someone I already know."

Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no o—

Oscar gives a crooked smile.

"That sounds great," his treacherous mouth responds to the girl who would be dead and whom he now desperately wanted to save.

Going to Beacon was a terrible idea, he kept telling himself, it spawned a countless number of emotional horrors and triggers. If spotting Pyrrha had been bad, being on campus was worse. It was like being back at Atlas, besieged with memories and impulses that weren't his and he had to carefully navigate what to follow through on and what to ignore. He kept seeing images of battle. Destroyed buildings, ripped flagstone, fire, the onslaught of Atlesian Knights, campus overrun with Grimm…

…Fallen students.

It was hell.

He hadn't thought this through. He was so far in over his head and there was no turning back. All he had planned for was getting to Beacon, he hadn't thought about what he would do once he got there. Convince Ozpin, obviously. But how? Prevent the fall of Beacon? Save Pyrrha? How? If he didn't even know the major events that made it happen, then how?

No, Oscar. Stop. Focus on what you know.

Oscar knew he could get into Beacon's vault on his own, could even map his route in his mind from where he was even though this was the first time his feet have touched the flagstones. But even if he ran to defend Ozpin to prevent him from dying at Cinder's hands, what could he really do? Ozpin had years…. Millenia of experience, in battle and in strategy and Oscar… was Oscar.

Okay, don't panic, just put it on a list of problems to consider in due time.

Then there was the matter of teams RWBY and JNPR. What was he even supposed to say? Hi, guys, I'm Oscar. I'm a friend and teammate of yours from the future and also sometimes your headmaster who died horribly? Hope we get along!

How could he ease them into the truth? How much could he change events or prepare the others for the events in the future? …How much should he change events? Science-fiction had a lot to say about the rules of time-travel, but in all practicality, if events deviated too far from the original timeline, then his knowledge of future events would be useless . Even if his knowledge of future events didn't get more exact until after Beacon falls.

If he changes the past drastically, then Salem would respond differently, and he wasn't sure he could risk that. He didn't want everyone caught unaware. He wanted to save Beacon, he wanted Haven to stay untouched like in his timeline, he didn't want Atlas to fall. If he saved Beacon, would Salem change plans from going after Haven next?

And that was all presuming he, one person, could even do enough to prevent the disasters he knows are coming. It also presumes he might be selfish enough to only change the past enough where only he still knew what was going to happen.

Okay, ethical dilemma five thousand and problem number nine million. Time to move on for now.

The more he thought about it, the more he thought that everyone would have to be eased into it. Fed pieces of information at the right time so that they'd be prepared, but not too prepared so as to not skew so far from what he knew that he made things worse .

But that felt so incredibly like Ozpin. It made him feel so torn up and resentful. Maybe there was another option…

Oscar didn't hate Ozpin. Actually, he could understand his actions on an emotional level even if he didn't approve. He'd lied to Qrow his entire life, lied to Ironwood and his lieutenants about the real scope of their enemy, kept people in the dark because he couldn't allow himself to fully trust them. Ozpin was afraid . And he got it. He really did. He was afraid all the time, too. Their task was far too big for one person alone and with the insidious machinations and manipulations of Salem, he could see why it would be so hard to trust others.

But he can't win this war alone . We can't win this war alone. They had to do this together.

Oscar also understood the other, darker impulse that came with being the hand that guided everyone to the better future because you had knowledge and experience others didn't. It was about having control. Being able to control what happened in the future and devising to shape the world into the one you wanted with the people loyal to you.

It was an incredibly scary impulse to wrestle with.

But he was going to do the best he could being as honest as he could. Lying was… something he wasn't good at and a skill he didn't care to improve on, but he couldn't show all his cards until he had enough information to make his move.

His own words to Ironwood during their final confrontation came back to him in full force: "If you abandon Mantle, then you abandon our best chance of reuniting the world! You abandon Remnant! Leaving millions to fend for themselves so a few can survive!"

"You alright there, Oscar?" Pyrrha asks him, interrupting his thoughts. "You're falling behind."

Honestly, and strangely enough, he wasn't sure he would have even made it to the auditorium if Pyrrha hadn't been with him.

"Just thinking," he responds, matching his pace with hers.

He refused to abandon Remnant. He refused to abandon Mantle. This wasn't Mantle, but it didn't mean the stakes weren't just as high. If he allowed Beacon to fall, then Mantle would find itself in the same situation it was dealing with now.

…Then, he corrects himself. Then, in the future-past.

He wanted to mend the world. He wanted to prevent Beacon from falling, Pyrrha and Oz from dying, stop the world from growing wary and paranoid, nearing the brink of war—reunited before even having a chance to fall apart. He wanted Qrow and Ironwood to know the truth, the real threat of what they were facing. He wanted justice for Mantle.

Whatever he decided on, whatever path he chose, he had to try . It was going to be hard. Maybe harder than anything he's already done so far. He didn't ask for this. But he couldn't let fear worm its way into his heart like it had with Ozpin. Like Ironwood. That's what Salem thrived on. He had to do the best he could. He had to be the one who took the next steps.

Because… if not him, then who?

Somewhere in the courtyard behind them just beyond the edge of hearing, someone sneezes followed by a small Fire Dust explosion which is then soon followed by shrill, angry yelling.

[A/N: yells forever i love Ruby Rose!]