"Excuse me?"
The innkeeper glanced up to find Jaune standing on the other side of the counter.
"Everything alright?" He asked the young man.
"Uh... Yeah. I just wanted to ask if you saw the girl I came in with anywhere."
When Emerald opened the door again, she found Jaune sitting on the bed quietly, gazing at the window in thought.
"Is... That you Weiss?" Jaune asked over his shoulder.
She mentally sighed, having hoped to wait him out to see if he was asleep.
"It is." Emerald replied, walking back inside the room. "I'd thought you'd be asleep by now."
"I just... Wanted to make sure you were safe, before I did it. But I wasn't sure where you'd gone. I just... Waited here for a while."
How could a person be so obliviously good at making others feel like crap?
"Thank you." Emerald said, rubbing the back of her head. "I'm here now though. You don't have to worry."
"That's... good."
The air between them had notably grown more distant than before, and Emerald held her head.
"Will that be enough to let you sleep again?"
"Maybe. I wanted to know if you planned on leaving again tonight." Jaune said, yet he didn't look back to her. "Will you?"
"Not really. I'm tired." Emerald admitted.
"I am too." He said this with a weary tone, and laying in his casual clothes, he laid down, not facing directly towards her as he pulled the cover over himself. "Good night, Weiss."
"Good night." Emerald told him, and she watched his laid down form for a short while.
When she was certain he was asleep, she looked down to the sheathed sword that Jaune carried around with him, having gathered their weapons from the innkeeper, who (very tiredly) reported that they were in the midst of being much too drunk to use them responsibly, when he'd taken them and stored them away, along with giving them the keys to a free room.
Her guns tucked to the back of her hips, she carried the heavy sword into the bathroom, walking with careful steps as she gently pushed the door open with her hip upon seeing it slightly ajar.
As she entered, she eased the door closed while keeping a careful eye on the blonde knight sleeping on the bed.
She then the bathroom closet, careful with each step, taking wary glances at even the slightest sound of movement in the bed as she walked into the storage space of the closet, placed the family heirloom inside, then promptly stepped back out.
The task finished, she gave a small breath of relief.
However, she knew upon coming here that it was only a matter of time before it all fell apart.
Cinder had explicitly sent her to do this with this in mind, as the woman had explained in their brief time talking to one another that night.
At that time, Emerald relayed the fact that no valuable information was brought up from her attempts at gleening it off of him.
Despite this being the case, Emerald understood the lack of forethought Cinder had in many of her present decisions.
One idea that Emerald's mind erected was that the Grimm parts implanted in her body were gradually wearing on Cinder's psyche, and her current indulgence of her own sadism came as a result of these effects gradually overwhelming what little remained of her original humanity.
It was the only reason Emerald had to explain the weirdness of this idea, of this "plan", and when Emerald questioned it, at long last, the answer all but confirmed her theory to her.
"I only wanted to see him suffer, once he realized just what was happening. Even if vicariously, I wanted to know I caused him to suffer just a tad bit more."
Before hearing those words, it was a given that Cinder was a domineering, sadistic person.
Once Cinder had spoken this confession however, Emerald understood that dominance and sadism were words that could no longer fully describe who Cinder was as a person, what she had become.
Thinking on it now, Emerald understood then, better than ever before, that Cinder embodied the very definition of "needlessly cruel".
Tired and exhausted, she decided that she would tell the truth to Jaune, and, ideally, just get out of dodge before he could scramble to get his weapons.
(She doubted this would be the case, so much so she admitted to herself that it was naught but a pipe dream, and that was why she went about sitting in the currently locked bathroom as opposed to sitting in the bedroom, where it'd probably go South in an instant the second he saw her actual form.)
With this in mind, Emerald gently closed her eyes, mind drifting off to sleep.
"...?"
The girl awoke with sand under her body.
"Oh. It looks like you're awake."
Emerald's body felt heavy as this voice so to her, but as she pulled herself up, she looked forward, then blinked.
"Cinder?" She questioned.
"Did you expect someone else?" Cinder asked her, seemingly oblivious to the thing Emerald found so weird about it.
"Cinder... You're... A statue?" She questioned with quirked eyebrows.
"Why so surprised?" Cinder asked down to her. "You brought me something, didn't you?"
Emerald blinked, before slowly looking down, eyes widening greatly.
All around her, at her feet, countless carcasses sat strewn around her, their bloody, battered and broken bodies little the sands.
Then, for a split second, the forms of the carcasses distorted, warping into the shapes of human corpses, Emerald stumbling back in shock at this as they reverted to normal.
But then, as though the ground itself began to have its own heart, there came a pulse that rang steady under her, revealing the dead people around her repeatedly, her looking up to find that each pulse reverted the Cinder statue to her regular form, her stepping along the corpseland without anything more than a lumbering chuckle as she smiled at all of the carnage.
"You're really desperate for me, aren't you?" Cinder asked, looking down at her and seeming to find the sheer shock of Emerald's expression hilarious, even as her form shifted between her human and statue forms. "I appreciate all these people you've killed for me... But I can't help thinking you're not doing it for the right reasons."
She reached down towards Emerald slowly, the girl frozen stiff as the pulsing shifts in perspective reflected altering actions between the human shape of Cinder and the statue.
The human was trying to stroke her cheek, but the statue reached lower - to her neck.
Emerald felt her breathing constrict as the pulsing grew rapid, her emitting a soft whimper as fear settled itself into core, both sights of Cinder reflecting nothing but bottomless sadism for her pain.
"Don't be scared," she cooed down to her, yet the grip on Emerald's neck tightened, lifting her up into the air, "you killed so many people for me already. What's one more?"
The pulsing was hammering now, and Emerald whimpered again, clawing helplessly at the fingers serenely squeezing the life out of her.
Her voice sounded different, her hands no longer able to grasp at Cinder's fingers as they dug further and further into her skin.
Then, like the snap of a twig, her neck snapped under her grip, and Cinder let her now limp body fall to the ground like the rest, the pulsing of the ground now as still as her own body.
There only came the sound of faint laughter before Cinder spoke again.
"You'll be a nice fit here." Cinder said down to her, Emerald's corpse left to rot by the callous and sadistic statue that dismissed her death as another tool for her entertainment.
With a gasp, Emerald snapped up, hand grasping at her neck as she opened her eyes, looking around herself quickly.
For a moment, she wondered where she was, and how she got there, and it took a moment more for her to realize she had been sleeping.
There was a faint knocking on the door she laid against, and there was Jaune's voice, asking if she was in there, and if she was okay.
She rose to her feet sluggishly, holding her head as she tried to make sense of the dream she just had, her seeing the closed closet door and suddenly feeling a tightening in her chest.
"Can you answer me, if you're in there?" Jaune's voice asked.
She looked to the door, and she immediately fell back on reflex before even realizing it, despite the choice she told herself just the night before.
"I'm fine." The tired voice of the person inside said to him.
Jaune blinked, staring at the door in surprise.
"... Yang?" He asked in confusion.
"Y-Yeah... Who else?"
"When did you get in here?" Jaune asked. "Did you see Weiss?"
"Weiss? You saw her before?"
"Yeah. We were here yesterday and..."
"Aaand what?"
The door opened up, the blonde kickboxer leaning on the door frame casually.
The sight of Yang there made Jaune frown.
Something wasn't adding up right, he thought.
"Well..."
"Geez, did you go around telling people already?" Yang asked him, standing up and walking past him.
"Huh?" Jaune looked after her, and the one-armed girl raised her hand for emphasis.
"That we got married yesterday. Sorry that I slept in the bathroom, by the way," Yang turned to face him, raking her fingers through her hair, "I don't usually drink that much. Didn't want to make a mess on the bed."
She looked to the bed in question.
"... Well, more than we did."
Jaune flushed, him holding his head while his expression blanked.
This didn't make any sense! he mentally exclaimed.
"What's wrong? Got something on your mind?" Yang asked him, before a light smirk came to her face. "Y'mad I hogged the bathroom Vomit Boy?"
Jaune seemed to try verbalizing his thoughts and feelings, but he could only open and close his mouth while making half gestures to her and the bathroom.
"I'm gonna let you use it now, if you need it." Yang waved to him with her cybernetic hand, strolling out. "I won't be long."
She left the room without waiting for a response.
Silence filled the room behind her as she closed the door, Emerald staring forward for a few moments.
"What?!" Jaune's muffled yell came from behind the door, him finally verbalizing his thoughts and feelings in one word.
Emerald walked over to the wall opposite her and began thumping her head against it with self-frustration.
"Damn it, damn it, damn it me." She cursed to herself.
A/N: Yaaay, this story's one third of the way done, whoooo.