A/N: So, this chapter wound up being not merely about the end of Volume 6, but of Volume 7, with spoilers for both volumes. It sort of flips between the events of both volumes' climaxes, but I want to be clear that the V6 stuff isn't just flashbacks. Or more accurately, that Oscar isn't flashing back during the rest of the story. He's entirely present within both narratives, not thinking back to prior events. I feel the end of V7C13 is very much the emotional payoff and a strong narrative mirror to Ozpin's presence in V6C12 and Oscar's revelation of it in V6C13, so I wove the stories together, but they are very much distinct threads. In fact, fully half of the Volume 6 sections were already written shortly after that volume's finale aired last year; I just could never bring the story to a satisfactory conclusion without inventing things whole-cloth. But now...well, see and decide for yourself.

This is almost certainly the final chapter I'll upload. I think Oscar has found his footing now. Whatever else happens, he's done falling, and Crashing Down has been very much about that fall. Here's to the landing! I hope you enjoy. Thanks especially to everyone who's been following this story from the very beginning; there literally would not be more than a single chapter without you!

Like the firebird from the ashes

The sharp report of Due Process echoes around the cavernous underside of Atlas. It continues to ring in Oscar's ears long after the initial sound has dissipated into silence. He knows that if he's ever able to sleep again, that gunshot will thunder endlessly in his nightmares, accompanied by the terrible feeling of his Aura breaking apart into motes of light around him as the bullet slides off in the act of fracturing it, leaving a bruise instead of a hole and flinging him over the edge of the path. Even without the perfect memory that is part and parcel of the curse he's inherited, he doubts he could ever forget the hard, cold blue of James's eyes as the general fired.

Betrayal does not sting; it aches like an old wound when the weather turns, familiar and awful and far less surprising than anything so painful should ever be.

He is free-falling and fast approaching terminal velocity, and such is his life that this isn't even the first time this has happened to him. It's not even the first time all year. It will, Oscar realises with a dull, sickening shock, most likely be the last time this ever happens to him.

Maybe. Maybe not. He's not sure what happens now; when he dies, will it be over? Or will it be his turn to be a voice in someone's head, a presence in their dreams, a well of terrible knowledge for them to shy away from?

He's not ready for that. He has so much left to learn; he can't trust himself to teach. He's a fourteen-year-old trainee—unofficial trainee!—who can't even cast a spell, who was worn out by a single skilled opponent, who can't even keep the loyalty of men who are supposedly his most reliable allies. How is he meant to pass the torch of magic and memory to another? And he was never, should never have had to be, prepared for this. He had almost, almost made his peace with the far-off fading into each other that would be his fate and Ozpin's both. He doesn't want to—no, he cannot do this alone.

But he is alone. He has no Aura, no plan; a weapon, but gravity is not an enemy he can fight. The magic bound to his soul is nothing but flickering embers, and he does not know how to fan them into a flame he can use. No one knows where he is, no one but James Ironwood, his friend—his murderer. Fear, anger, and disbelief war over his psyche, but in the end exhaustion wins out; not only of the body, but of the soul.

In the end, he is alone, and no one is coming to save him.

The light of the Vault of Creation is nothing more than a pinprick above him now, and what lies below is a seemingly-endless darkness. There's no telling how long he has before he hits the distant ground and meets his end, or perhaps his new beginning. Oscar falls through a void, frigid and silent but for the sound of the air his body pushes out of the way as he hurtles ever downward. It rushes in his ears like a thousand angry, indistinct whispers, berating him for his failures, for his helplessness. The people of Mantle, abandoned by the man entrusted with their protection, doomed by Oscar's failed efforts to reason with him. The people of Vale, broken and scattered when their own protector was not strong enough to save them.

(His people. His weakness. His fault.)

The cold bites into him more fiercely than he's ever felt before; there are no heaters here, and the air is thin, and the warmth of his Aura around him is only a fleeting memory. Cold comfort, Oscar thinks inanely, wrapped only in battered, filthy clothes and morbid resignation. His heart feels as numb as his limbs are becoming, and his mind is slowing to match, winding down to rest and wait and maybe—oh, how he hopes!—maybe to simply cease.

Let it be Ozpin's problem, he pleads selfishly to absent gods; let me rest, let it end, I can't make someone else be me—

His eyes flutter closed.

The Manta spins sickeningly in the sky, twisting and tumbling with all the grace of a concussed albatross but headed indisputably down, nose angling steeply towards the forest below as the treetops fast-forward out of sight beneath them. In the pilot's seat, Maria is yelling, cursing Cordovin and the airship and even herself, struggling with the controls and her goggles as if in desperate hope that she can find the magic combination to restore her sight and the integrity of the ship's engines in one go.

Magic, Oscar thinks wildly; can he levitate the ship? Lift its occupants to safety? Shield them from the impact somehow? He doesn't know. He'll never know. He hadn't wanted to know, because learning magic was more than a reluctant acceptance of the inevitable, it was a deliberate commitment to his future as Ozpin—not the Headmaster of Beacon, but the ancient, immortal wizard of Remnant, keeper of the Relics, creator of the Maidens. Ozpin, keenly aware of Oscar's feelings and never imagining that there would be a scenario where he couldn't step in to help, hadn't pushed the issue.

For once, Oscar really, really wishes the stubborn old man had pushed him.

There is nothing he can do; the controls are unfamiliar, the readouts indecipherable to someone of his limited experience. He has a vague understanding that pulling back on the yoke should make the ship point up again, but when he tries the Manta doesn't respond.

"We're going to crash!" he shouts back to Ruby, hearing the quaver in his voice and hating it but there's no helping it.

We're going to crash.

We're going to die.

It's the last clear thought he has, his panicked mind turning instead to irrational flashes like: Ruby's too nice to go out like this, she's too young damn it even though he's younger, and: I can't let Maria die, Maria's awesome—and then, suddenly, Stay calm.

The ship's sailed on staying calm—but immediately, Oscar's pulse slows, his breathing evening out, clarity and stillness replacing the panicked rush of what he was sure would be his final thoughts. It would be alarming, the way his own instincts cede so immediately to Ozpin's will, if the results weren't such a relief. In all the adrenaline, he can't even muster any surprise, let alone an entire additional layer of distress.

It's going to be okay, Ozpin tells him. His mental voice is soft and tired, oddly listless, but there is nothing rote in his reassurances. Waves of calm and certainty break gently against Oscar as he gradually realises he knows how to pilot a military aircraft, and never mind the fact that he didn't five long, terrifying seconds ago.

You know now. You can do this, Oscar. Just breathe…

Oscar. Oscar!

Oscar's eyes fly open. He feels for an instant a peculiar disconnect that his own brief dissociation cannot quite explain, but when it passes he feels more himself and in-control than he has since Ironwood shot him. It's as if he's been jolted somehow, shaken back to his senses from the inside out.

The Long Memory falls beside him—at the same rate, and that's wrong, density and air resistance and—doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. He needs his cane, not for comfort or support or self-defence but because he's suddenly certain that if he can get his hands around it and grip the lever just so then something miraculous will happen.

He snatches at it, fingers just barely brushing it and then it's in his hands. A press of the lever, and the cane extends. Another press, and a matching pressure inside, and there's a golden light sparking between his hands, over his fingers, in his heart, between the teeth of the gears as they spin to life and for one precious instant he is home: warm sunlight on his freckled skin and catching in his dark hair as he walks among the fields of his aunt's little farm, clockwork turning in the ceiling above his head as pale fingers curl around a warm mug and ageing eyes watch the world go by below his tower.

He's not entirely sure who he is when he breaks through the cavern floor and falls at last into the glow of the sunrise, flipping himself so that he is correctly positioned for what he mentally reframes as an airdrop. It's a particular skill of his, this shift in perspective. A tragedy becomes an opportunity. Omission becomes compartmentalisation, classification. A lie becomes a kindness, and he has been kindest of all to himself in this poisonous way.

He has allowed fear to change him. Not to rule him, as Ironwood has. Ironwood has crossed lines Ozpin still balks at. Ozpin did not leave his kingdom to die. Ozpin has not sentenced a wounded child to death for the crime of counselling mercy. Ozpin knows fear, and while he cannot claim to have stood firm against it—he has flinched, he has run, he has hidden—he has never bowed.

His mistakes seem so small now, in the shadow of Ironwood's, and yet they still loom large. Because they are his own, and he cannot brush off what he has done simply because someone else has done something worse. If only he could, Salem's mere existence would absolve him of any wrongdoing.

Salem.

Oscar remembers Ruby's frantic message—he sees a glimpse of stormclouds on the horizon, roiling with unnatural colours—Ozpin reaches out with that strange other sense that sets his blood humming in the presence of Relics and Maidens—

And something as ancient as he and darker by far lashes back, the sting of it searing through them and solidifying suspicion into awful certainty.

Salem is here.

The wizard's two souls share a grim reflection on frying pans and fires as the ground rushes up to meet them. They reach inside for the familiar crackling heat of their magic, letting it burn through their veins and further. It catches fire on the jagged edges of their shattered Aura.

We say Aura is drawn from an inner pool, a well, a reservoir, one of them whispers, speaking on a level so deep that it's not really accurate to say it is speech at all. It is knowledge, pure and direct. Yet we do not say it runs dry. We say it breaks. If the soul is flame, then Aura cannot be water. It is neither and both. It is—

In the immediate trauma of the crash Oscar blacks out, and the last thing he feels from Ozpin is fear-shame-grief-failure breaking through the heavy, forced calm because in that split second he believes, as Oscar does, that this is it.

I'm sorry, he whispers wretchedly, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—

And then his consciousness is snuffed along with Oscar's, and time—

—skips—

There's a dull, spreading ache resounding through his skull as he stares out at the wrecked and smouldering forest. Beside him, Maria looks shaken but whole.

"We're—we're still in one piece!" he gasps, or he thinks he does, before the heavy tread of Cordovin's mech intrudes on his brief elation.

It isn't over.

He helps Maria climb out of the wreckage of the cockpit, less with the physical effort of it than the sensory feedback, warning her around sharp broken edges and sparking wires and trip hazards that he isn't sure her Semblance will pick up on. Looking around, he sees Ruby on her knees beside the open door of the Manta's hold, bracing herself to stand with Crescent Rose. Nora, Ren, and Jaune are racing towards them along the cliffside; a little black bird wings over the trees ahead of them, his identity clear enough even without the peculiar tug in Oscar's chest as the magic in him recognises itself in Qrow.

There's still no sign of Yang or Blake, he notes with a touch of fear—or of Ozpin, the abrupt realisation of which fans that fear into a momentary panic as Oscar imagines the impact knocked him right out of his head, forced out by the physical motion of his brain bouncing off the inside his skull.

A mechanical clicking sound jolts him back to rationality, turning a concerned look towards Maria as she fiddles with her eyes again. As she grumbles, Oscar draws in a deep breath, forcing himself to calm. He can already feel his overtaxed Aura going to work on his slight concussion, easing the strained feeling behind his eyes and quelling the stirrings of vertigo. If Ozpin could be dislodged by physical trauma, especially trauma mild enough to walk away from, it would have happened to some other like-minded soul further up the line before now. The old man's still in there, which is more of a relief than he's comfortable admitting.

The wizard's brief resurgence has left Oscar feeling oddly drained now that he's retreated, caught between his own fatigue and the hollow lightness where the pressure of Ozpin's presence had been. He still has room for dread as he looks up at Cordovin's hulking mech. He hopes the others are in better shape than he is. There'll be no more fighting for him today unless there's no other choice. Just as Ozma's magic is no more than a flicker inside him, the Aura around him feels as fragile as spun—

—glass.

The white-hot edges of his Aura fuse together, magic arcing in the spaces between. The air around him feels heavy like a storm. The scent of ozone and waiting rain is overpowering, the blank cold of the snowfield yielding to the clean sear of the forge.

He twists in midair moments before impact and pushes, a luminous green shield crackling with magic's lightning crystallising around him. He lands with a sound like thunder, eldritch electricity grounding back into him, entirely unscathed and crouched to spring at any waiting attackers. But he is alone—though no longer truly alone—and so he straightens, and as he does so he realises that he is still Oscar.

He doesn't ask Ozpin if he's back. He states it as a fact. The wizard's presence is unmistakable; he's shown up yet again to rescue Oscar from a crisis. Ozpin hastens to assure him otherwise.

You saved us. There's…warmth, pride, in the words. It's the first iota of positive emotion he's felt from Ozpin since the train crash, and it begins to dawn on Oscar that Ozpin really is back; back for good. But there's something tentative and hesitant about him. As if he's uncertain of his welcome. A rush of sorrow and guilt pours from him in answer to the observation, and Oscar has the impression of a deep inhale, a bowed head. He can quite literally feel the apology coming.

Oscar, I—

"Stop," Oscar cuts him off, and maybe it's cruel of him. But he doesn't need to hear Ozpin say he's sorry; he can gauge that for himself, and he is so damn tired of this endless cycle of recrimination and absolution, guilt and blame and shame and fault and always at the worst possible time. He is tired of being driven by suspicion and fear, that of others and his own. If they could have just sorted everything out before the world went to hell, if they hadn't been so afraid of shattering the fragile equilibrium they'd built—! Between Salem and Ironwood, the uneasy peace among them is broken beyond repair now, and where they might have had time to fix it before, now they'll have to leave the pieces where they lie until there's time to breathe again. But of course, time to breathe is time to worry; time to overthink and second-guess and catastrophise. And Oscar can hardly claim that he hasn't been part of the problem up to now…

He thinks Qrow suspects. No one else seems to. Oscar is at war with himself, wondering whether he should speak up or not. They hate having things kept from them, but this isn't the sort of news they have a history of wanting to hear. How will they take it? What's the right choice?

But then Ruby gives him the perfect opening—and, more importantly, puts him in a position where if he says nothing, he'll be lying.

He doesn't want to lie. He definitely doesn't want them to think of him as a liar. Doesn't want to be tarred with the same brush as Ozpin. There isn't anything wrong, though, surely, in saving lives—in being saved? Will they see a selfish act, Ozpin stepping in to preserve his vessel when he'd been absent before? Will they think Oscar was lying when he said Ozpin was gone in the first place? When he says Ozpin is gone now?

Nothing for it. Better to get it over with quickly. He's sure enough of his place to know no one will go so far as to punt him out of the airship mid-flight, and that'll have to do.

"I've been meaning to tell you guys…"

He senses more than sees Qrow tense in the co-pilot's seat. It's as if Qrow somehow knows what he's about to say, and maybe he does—Mantas and Bullheads handle similarly once they're actually in the air, but Oscar has flown neither and Qrow knows it, just as he knows Ozpin has.

For a moment he wonders absurdly if the news will inspire something like hope, or even just relief—but after a quick glance around at cautious, wary faces (Jaune's and Yang's edging towards outright hostility), he abandons that notion. He keeps his eyes between his feet as he tells them how Ozpin intervened. How he seemed called by Oscar's despair and didn't take control, but only offered knowledge, a flicker of much-needed reassurance, and then receded once more into his self-imposed exile.

It's Yang who speaks out, because of course it is, and maybe that's unfair of him but almost all he's known from her is the suspicion and resentment she bears towards Ozpin. Ironically enough, without Ozpin he has no other, more flattering memories of her to fall back on.

"Does that mean he's been watching us this whole time!?"

"I don't know," Oscar has to admit, raising his head; Yang is glaring at him, but not, he now knows, at him. It hurts anyway, but that she doesn't mean it to takes the edge off. Still, he finds the group as a whole looks more thoughtful than truly upset. "But…at least it means he was looking out for us." This much he can do: assure them of what he knows of Ozpin's intentions. Whether they trust his judgement or not is up to them.

He debates continuing with something more definitely no-shaped, but he isn't sure if it will convince anyone—isn't totally sure, even, that 'no' is the answer everyone really wants. Regardless, it's the answer he'd have to lean towards giving. Oscar doesn't know if he can describe how total, how absolute the feeling of Ozpin's absence is in a way that will make the others understand. He isn't dormant like he was in the time between the Fall of Beacon and the day Oscar first looked in a mirror and failed to recognise himself. He's just…gone. Like any other dead man would be. And once again, Oscar has no way of knowing whether to expect another ghostly visitation before the final resurrection in him.

He doesn't really know what to hope for, either.

Ozpin retreats, but doesn't withdraw. He waits. For once, he is the anxious one in the face of Oscar's patience.

"All I want to know," Oscar says in an even tone, "is how we save Atlas next." There's a coldness at his core now, dulling his emotional turmoil into a faint static. It freezes his thoughts into crystal clarity, sharpens his focus to a razor edge. He recognises this detached intensity. This feeling of summoning up all his will and forging it into confidence and determination, an armour of certainty and authority—if only over himself—whose fit resembles nothing so much as arrogance. It's what drove the last king of Vale to seek bloody victory in the Great War when there was no peaceful alternative, sent the Headmaster of Beacon racing to meet the death he knew likely awaited him in the Vault of Choice when there was no other chance to save his school and his city. It's what General Ironwood is trying to emulate high above them this very moment so that the reality of killing a child in cold blood and damning an entire nation in the name of tactics does not destroy him. It's what will have to carry Oscar through this nightmare and maybe, if he's lucky, beyond it, to a place where he can take the armour off again.

So help him, Atlas will not fall just because everyone is too busy fighting over who to blame. If they lose here, it will be because victory was impossible—not because they allowed it to slip through their fingers. Not again.

There will be no victory through strength, Ozpin recites, a glint of the old professorial tone shining through.

"Good, 'cause I think it's safe to say Salem's got the upper hand there."

He gazes up at the oncoming storm, dark and turbulent and unspeakably wrong against the warm blush of the sunset. It's been a long time since Salem joined the fray in person. She must be very certain her campaign is in its endgame.

She comes, in part, for us. She will try to capture us, and break us, if she can.

Oscar shudders at the echo of memories Ozpin carefully does not call to mind.

"Why doesn't she ever just stop?"

For the same reason she began. She doesn't know how to let go. She can't see a future through the rubble of her past.

Something clicks for Oscar, then. He's always thought of Ozpin as a ghost even though he knows, viscerally, that he is more. He's referred to him in thoughts and spoken words alike as a dead man, and Ozpin has never argued. Ozpin has died hundreds of times, and yet—he's lived hundreds of times as well. He's grown old almost as often as he's died young, made foolish mistakes and earned wisdom off the back of them. He has faded and been renewed with each and every lifetime, changed and grown and become something and someone else.

Ozpin, Oscar realises, is very much alive. Salem died when she chose to kill the man she once waged a war against the gods themselves to save.

"She's like…some kind of restless spirit. Holding onto hate because she doesn't know how to move on."

If it's a lesson you're proposing, I fear I'm the wrong teacher.

"I'm not proposing anything. Just finally starting to understand, I think. She's fighting because she thinks she needs to win. Because it's the only way forward she can see. But we're not fighting to get anything, just to keep what we have. And that means that even if we never win…"

Yes. The game has always been rigged, but the rules are fixed; she can't take our turn away. We just have to keep playing. As long as we are careful not to let her win, the game continues. Life goes on.

"Ever been tempted to flip the board?" Oscar asks quietly, thinking of the Relics.

Why do you think I bolted down the corners?

There is a bitter irony in the fact that they know exactly how to destroy the world, but not how to save it. Yet in a way, it makes sense. Ozpin isn't a saviour. He hasn't claimed to be, hasn't tried to be, for a very long time. Salvation, if it exists, is beyond his power to bring to bear. So he's given his life—so many of his lives, their lives—to the cause of protection instead. It's an ongoing suicide mission, buying time for generations of Humanity to live and love and die. A perpetual sacrifice robbed of grace by millennia of repetition, by a force of habit that has numbed what was once nobility into weary pragmatism.

"Just to be clear, there's still no plan?"

The 'plan', when Salem comes knocking, is to run.

"Not an option."

No.

"So we find the others, and…"

…we do our best. You realise we're likely—?

"Going to die. Yeah. Never stopped us before."

Sorrow, edged with the ever-present guilt. Plus something…else. Something warmer, kinder, half-buried beneath the rest. Bittersweet.

"What?"

Oscar has another of those strange impressions of Ozpin, then. Like the old man is smiling at him. When he replies, Oscar smiles too. He thinks it might even be the same smile, small and soft and a little bit sad, and it stays in place as he gathers himself up and turns away, headed for a narrow path that he hopes will lead him back to his friends.

You've grown up.

A/N: Reviews are always very welcome; whether you have something to say or not, though, thanks for reading!

That's all I have to say re:the fic; the rest of this note is about the fact that I'm now over at AO3, as some of you may have already noticed. For anyone who follows me as an author and doesn't just know me through this fic, what that means is that I will continue to update ongoing fics here, even if I cross-post them to AO3 and update there as well. Most of my new fics will be added to that site, however. I may crosspost a few here if they're for fandoms that are particularly active on this site—like, say, RWBY, but if I seem to have gone dark even by my highly-irregular standards of activity, that's why. If you happen to read any of the AO3 versions of my fics, you might notice slight changes or additions in some of them; I haven't replicated those changes on this site because I didn't think they were significant enough. And...that's the sum-total of what there is to say about that, I think! Alright. See y'all around, and as always, thanks for being here!