The silence between them was palpable as they sat there, Emerald frowning down at the table, eyes still stinging from before.
When she was able to find her voice, she finally spoke up.
"I just... I don't get it. Why? Knowing what I've done... Why?"
Jaune didn't answer immediately.
Thinking back to his actions, and especially the circumstances, his frown mirrored Emerald's.
He wanted, very much, to say he did it because that was just his job as a Huntsman in training, or because it was merely the "right thing" to do.
Yet, the more he thought of it, the less sense such reasons made to him.
While, simply put, protecting people from danger WAS his job, especially concerning the Grimm, Emerald was a part of a much bigger danger, one that operated behind the scenes for untold generations, hoping to bring about the downfall of everything humanity had worked so hard to uphold.
Even if he ignored the side she was on, her confessions made it painfully clear that she was extremely dangerous, with his life twice being at her mercy, regardless of whether he suspected it or not.
For an aspiring Huntsman, saving such an individual would be seen as counterproductive to his purpose.
"I don't know." He admitted with a sigh.
Emerald looked up to him, ruby red eyes glimmering with confusion.
"Don't you hate me?" She asked him.
"... No."
Jaune was unsure if it was shame or something else that filled him as he said this, not meeting her eyes.
"Then... Why?" Emerald asked, her uncomprehensive and almost angry.
"I don't know." Jaune repeated.
It was as he spoke that he realized his mental exhaustion, and held his head.
"How do YOU feel?" Jaune asked her. "About me helping you?"
"... I wish you'd left me to die." She said bluntly.
"Because... you feel guilty for everything?"
"Because I AM guilty for everything." She corrected. "I'm a terrible person. That's the long and short of it."
He needed a moment to gather his thoughts, through how jumbled up they were.
"... You've done bad things." Jaune conceded. "You worked with someone like Cinder. I don't even know if there's more to it than what you've told me so far. But... I don't think it's THAT simple."
Emerald looked up to him, with growing annoyance.
"How?"
"The second night we spent together, after we got married... You went to the bathroom, and suddenly started screaming at the top of your lungs. You said it was because you thought back to the day Beacon got overrun with Grimm. Was that true?"
Emerald lowered her head, grasping the arm that wasn't burnt.
"So what, if it was?"
"You said you caused it, yet you kept screaming, saying, "I'm sorry" over and over." Jaune reminded her. "You ARE sorry about what happened, right?"
"It doesn't change anything." She answered with audible frustration, glaring at him, but keeping her voice low. "Even if I apologize, people are still dead because of me."
"Alright." He crossed his arms. "Fine. But... There's something else I'm not getting. You had the chance to kill me, again and again, these past few days. But... Just this afternoon, you tried helping me, telling me what was going on. Despite me being against Cinder and Salem, you helped. I don't know what happened, but... Why did you do that?"
Emerald looked down.
"If it's hard to talk about, I understand." Jaune said, looking down. "You don't have to force yourself."
"Or what? You turn me over to the police?" Emerald wondered grimly.
Jaune didn't answer.
"Cinder always told me not to think, when it came to these things." Emerald lamented. "I assumed it was just her being, well, HER at first. But now I know. Now I understand why she said it."
It was so much easier to compromise her morals, she realized, when she had the excuse of either orders or survival to hide behind, to curb any inkling of guilt she felt in the aftermath.
After days of abrupt reminders of her own horrid actions, and the consequences behind them, with little but time to think whenever she was left alone, her justifications crumbled, the more she thought of them.
"All I've been doing these past few days is thinking. Thinking about all the things I did, how I made so many people's lives worse. By the time I told you, I understood just how much I'd done. And for once... I realized I just couldn't do it anymore. I thought you didn't deserve to be treated like that... and that I deserved whatever I had coming to me."
"So, you gave me a chance at revenge, for that?" Jaune tried to sum up.
She nodded.
"Is that why you told me everything? To make me want to do it?"
"Yes." She sighed, and her tone grew utterly exhausted. "But... you didn't."
"I know... I know." He looked down at the table. "I had the perfect chance, and all the right reasons. But I managed to screw it up, like everything I do in life."
Emerald applied pressure to her head to ease her headache.
The cluster of emotions she was going through, from the shock of having killed Cinder, to the other shock Jaune's decision to protect Emerald from the Grimm, wore on her already sapped mind even more.
Unable to understand Jaune's actions, she began to wonder if he even understood the circumstances fully, to act as he had.
"... You understand that I've done a lot of things, not just to you, but to different people too, right?" Emerald asked him. "That I didn't even bat an eye about it, when I did? Why would you save someone like that? Didn't you hate Cinder, for the same reasons? You tried KILLING her, the first chance you had. Why am I any different?"
"Because you're NOT Cinder." Jaune finally managed to give a reason he felt satisfied with, and he was surprised by the calmness of his voice.
Her eyebrows furrowed.
"What?"
"I mean, just bear with me." He raised his hands defensively. "As far as I know, Cinder treats the whole thing like- like it's a big joke. Something you could go out and talk with your friends about, over lunch."
Stumbling over his words, he tried to collect his thoughts.
"It's not JUST that she caused so much pain and loss. It's just... Between her doing it, mocking people's deaths, and acting the way she did, on top of that... It's like she's having FUN doing those things, killing people, rubbing it in people's faces." Having finally verbalized his feelings, he continued. "Of COURSE I'd hate someone like that. Even when I was fighting her, she was just... mocking me."
He met her gaze.
"But you're different. You're not mocking me for not doing it. You're just... mad I didn't, instead of trying."
She had fallen silent at his wordings.
"What you've done is still wrong." Jaune added. "But... From what I've seen of you, you don't give me that reason to hate you. At least, not as bad as I hate Cinder. I know it's weird that I don't hate you like that, given what you've done, but... I don't."
They held one another's gazes for a moment, before Jaune looked down.
"That being said... There's more to it than just that." Jaune admitted.
"What?" Emerald asked him.
"It's a bit hard to explain, but I... When those Grimm showed up... You reminded me of someone." He rubbed the back of his head.
Emerald blinked.
"Who?"
"Just... An old friend." He lied, deciding not to tell her he meant himself. "He... He always had problems at home. His family never really encouraged him, and he always felt like he was just never good enough. He felt like a waste of space most of the time, but he hated admitting it to himself. When someone actually came to him though, wanting to help, he lashed out. He met the first person who believed in him, and he... Just pushed her away."
Emerald watched the pained emotions flickering through his face, the self-disgust and the shame, but remained silent.
"Not long after though, he understood what he did wrong. Once he apologized to her, she forgave him, and that was how he started to improve."
"And... You're saying you want to give me a chance too?" Emerald asked.
He nodded slowly.
"Yeah. I think I do."
"... Do you even know what you're SAYING?"
In his weary mind, Jaune smiled before he realized it, and he laughed faintly.
"I do." He admitted. "I do, and... I mean it."
"Think about what you're SAYING right now. I could just be a liability. Once they figure out what I've done, there'll be a target on my back. You heard what Cinder said before. Tyrian and Hazel can find us anywhere. And now I'm a Maiden apparently, so..."
"They're still after Ruby, as far as I know. And I won't let them take her. So... I'm against them, no matter what I do." Jaune said.
Emerald stared at him.
"What makes you so certain I wouldn't just... stab you all in the back?" She lowered her head. "I owed everything to Cinder, and I..." She grimaced, an almost disorienting cluster of pain and other emotions filling her chest, nearly robbing her of her voice. "I still betrayed her. I - I killed her. Think about that." She looked to him, eyes becoming glassy. "I killed her, for someone I barely know. Someone I should be FIGHTING against. Would you really WANT someone like that on your side? Who'd leave you, in your time of need?"
She saw him staring at her for a moment, before his blue eyes looked over her sleeves, Emerald freezing up.
"Maybe you did kill her." He conceded, tone even. "But no matter what she did for you, it doesn't give her the right to hurt you... or worse. You didn't betray her for me. You were acting in self defense. That much is obvious. I see where you're coming from though." He lamented. "But still. I don't think it's too late. Too late to change for the better, I mean."
Emerald slumped in her seat, about to give up on logic, just for the sake of understanding how this situation was even happening.
"Could I ask you something?" Jaune asked her.
"What?"
"Were you trying to... make up for your mistakes? By letting me kill you?"
"No." She said weakly, shaking her head. "I'm past the point where I can make up for it. Especially by dying."
"Then... WHY did you want to die so much?" Jaune finally asked.
"Because I was... I AM tired of living like this." Emerald closed her eyes. "I've been a thief all my life. I've been killing other people ever since I met Cinder, all those months ago. I stuck with it because it let me survive. That was all I cared about before." She held her head. "But, like I said... I just can't do it anymore. Every day I've spent with you, I'm reminded of all the lives I've screwed up. I could justify it before, somehow. But the more I think of it... The more I know I'm just lying to myself. And... Just looking back at my old life... I don't have anything to fall back on, but old habits, if I somehow managed to run away from all this. Cinder, Salem, everything. I don't have any way to live a good, honest life." She opened her eyes again, looking up at him. "So... I wanted you to kill me. If I died, then I COULDN'T fall back on old habits, or hurt anyone else. So that nothing else would have to suffer, for my worthless life."
"... You're not even willing to try?" Jaune asked her.
Emerald didn't answer.
"Emerald... You wanted to die, NOT because you thought it would make up for what you've done, but because you're TIRED of doing the wrong thing?"
"... Yes." She answered. "I'm just... Trying to make it so I don't end up hurting anyone else."
"... Suicide isn't the way to go about it. You'd just be running away from the responsibility of it all."
"... Who are you to talk?" Emerald asked him, tone growing cold. "You're the one who charged Cinder, even though you knew you had no chance of winning. And for what? So you could have a chance at revenge against her?"
Jaune looked down.
"It was a stupid mistake for me to make." He responded. "One of the biggest mistakes I ever made in my life. I thought my life didn't mean anything, that I was just deadweight to everyone else. I thought that the only value I could ever have was helping them with my own worthless life, even if it meant losing it. But... That doesn't give me an excuse to give up, the fact that I'm practically useless compared to them. It doesn't mean I shouldn't learn my lesson, or try to change. If I do die on purpose, though... I really WOULD be worthless, and I've come to realize that. If an idiot like me can find meaning to my life, when I'm useless compared to everyone else... Then there's no reason someone like YOU can't find that sort of meaning either."
Emerald's hand grasped at her wrist.
"What do you mean, someone like me?"
"If you're really tired of hurting, and killing innocent people... There's more ways to use your power than just helping people like Cinder. You could use it to fight AGAINST people like that. You could join us, help make it so this can end." Jaune told her.
Her glare softened.
"But... I've done too many horrible things." Emerald insisted. "After everything I've done, there's no way I can just... Switch sides like that. You know that, don't you?"
"If you're really tired of this, you can't think like that. It's never too late to change for the better Emerald. I've made mistakes too, and I want to do better. There's no reason you can't too."
"That's DIFFERENT! You made a dumb move that nearly got one person killed." Her voice raised itself, before lowering back down. "But... What I did was so much worse. So many people died Jaune. And it wasn't just the people who died that night at the Vytal Tournament. I did it to other people too. People who were scared, and just wanted to run away from all of this. I don't have the right to back out, after that."
"... I've made selfish decisions too." Jaune told her. "Decisions that... Probably could've saved some lives, if I hadn't made them."
"... Like what?" Emerald asked.
"Like... enrolling in Beacon." Jaune looked down. "It was a Huntsman academy, for the best of the best, but I had never gone to any kind of training classes, or combat schools. Instead I... I forged all my letters of recommendation, and barely passed the field entrance exams. I was less a Huntsman in training, and more of a giant Huntsman wannabe. That spot could've gone to someone who could've become a fighter so much better than me, if they'd gone to Beacon. But... I was too much of an idiot to think about anything other than me. So... We're in the same boat. We're both people who did things that we can't just ignore."
Her jaw clenched.
"That isn't the same."
"From how I see it, it is."
He kept his voice even, and Emerald didn't respond for a few moments, thoughts hazy amidst her anger.
"Why are you trying to tell me these things? Do you really want me to join you THAT badly?" Emerald asked. "That's the reason you didn't kill me, isn't it? Because you thought I'd be useful? I mean, it'd only make sense. I'm even the Fall Maiden now."
"It isn't that. These past few days, they might have been an illusion, me spending time with each person. But it doesn't mean all of it just didn't happen. Something always felt off. It just... Didn't feel right. Now I know why. Because it was never Weiss, or Yang. It was always you. And knowing what I do now... Even if we aren't on the same side of this fight, part of me just..."
He took a deep breath.
"... I want to help you." He finally said. "Even knowing the things you've done... I DON'T want to fight you. I don't say it to say I'm not MAD about the things you two did. I don't know if I'll ever forgive Cinder. But you... you're still different. Even if it sounds crazy, if everything you've told me is true... Then I... I can forgive you."
"... Jaune..."
His words struck a chord in her.
"I don't understand." She whispered as she gazed at him, tears falling. "I just... I don't understand..."
"Emerald," he rose to his feet, then came to her side, kneeling beside her, his tone soft and hesitant as he spoke to her, "I want to give you a chance. But... Can you give yourself a chance? A chance to change? I'm not saying this because I want to recruit you. I'm saying this because... Your life has so much more MEANING to it, than you're giving yourself credit for. Even if you say we're different, I still know that dying like that isn't the right choice. So... Please, Emerald. Don't do this to yourself. You CAN change. I know you can."
"... But... But how?" She asked him with a barely audible whisper. "How can I change? After everything..."
"If you're willing to try... I think that's a big step by itself. It might be scary, and it might be hard. But you won't be alone. We can figure it out together. What do you say?" He asked her.
Jaune slowly spread his arms out to her, his hopeful smile making Emerald, for a moment, forget everything that worried and scared her.
She gave no answer at first.
His inviting embrace culled her in a manner she did not understand, her leaning forward, and in the next moment, she sat on her knees on the floor next to him, uncaring of the people who took notice of them, her resting her weary head against his chest, arms wrapping tightly around him.
".. Okay." She said, tears spilling from her eyes once more. "I'll do it."
Jaune returned her embrace, smiling down at her.
A/N: I wrote this very early into the story, so I still had it around, but what I didn't have was the epilogue.
Should I just summarize the epilogue though? That much I'm still mulling over.