A/N: SEARCH AT LAST!
Hey guys, you've been way patient- we're still working! So don't worry, haha. We're aiming for good chapter breaks and some marginal editing rather than a regular schedule, so just follow and hang in there!
Anyway, on with the show. Good luck, guys!
- Fiercesomest
The medical tent was silent as always.
Pyrrha preferred it that way. From her usual sleepless spot kneeling beside Jaune, leaning both arms atop the cot's edge and resting her head in the crook of her elbow, Pyrrha quietly watched her partner's peaceful, sleeping face. His breaths came in even measure, his chest rising and falling in silence, as it should.
Silence meant no one was suffering.
A small sniffle coming from the far side of the tent broke the tranquility. Pyrrha hadn't even realized she had been drifting, but she was certainly awake now. She stood. Jaune lay still, undisturbed.
Another small strangled sound drew Pyrrha's attention to the bundle of blankets that was Weiss, curled up and facing away from her on the other cot. As she approached, she could see the blankets shaking, the barest of movements, as though the heiress was holding something back with all her might. Pyrrha couldn't see her face for the blankets. Was she having a nightmare? That would be understandable after the wild rollercoaster this day had turned out to be.
And... it wasn't even just today. This entire situation - Weiss had witnessed first hand James Point's destruction, but then kept going, her entire team kept going, working together, fueled by hope, only to come back to... nothing. There was nothing left here. Not a single shred of help to send back to that doomed town.
There were times when Pyrrha could scarcely bring herself to face them. RWBY, her friends, had arrived with hope, only to be greeted with nothing but ruins and the bleak reality of her own failure to keep Vale from falling...
The blankets jolted with a harshly stifled whimper, snapping the bone-weary huntress-turned-maiden's attention back to the matter at hand. Keeping her voice low, Pyrrha called to her, "...Weiss?"
The heiress stiffened under her blankets in fierce determination to appear to be asleep. The moment passed, though, and she apparently gave up, scrubbing her eyes and nose with a worn handkerchief
"Ugh, fine," she propped herself on her side on one elbow, still facing away from Pyrrha as she grumbled a stiff, "What do you want?"
"I-... I'm sorry," Pyrrha folded her arms across her stomach. What she wanted, she couldn't have. "You sounded distressed."
"Well I was trying to suffer in silence, but apparently that's not working," Weiss sat up the rest of the way, halfway facing Pyrrha and sniffling primly. A stray tear dripped from her chin, "I think this might a side effect from using my aura to siphon Ruby's out of that thing."
Pyrrha tried not to think about her earlier conversation with Qrow.
...like tripping a breaker switch...
Weiss had been sharing aura with Ruby quite a bit since they'd arrived... and there was that entire ordeal with the Grimm rat toxins back at Beacon, long before Vale's collapse... and who knows whether they'd shared auras during their time at James Point, or their entire return trip...
"That was a pretty impressive feat." Pyrrha offered a warm smile to spite the worry starting to pool in her stomach, though it fell several notches when she cast a glance back at Jaune. "I don't think I would have been able to do something like that."
"Don't you dare patronize me, Pyrrha Nikos," the heiress snapped, her finger pointing at the red-head's collar. "I'll have you know I've been living out of a sled for the past three and a half weeks, so I am not in the mood. Besides, everyone knows you would do the same if it would help-" she hesitated, ice blue eyes darting in the direction Pyrrha had looked a moment before. "... if it would help at all."
Pyrrha's posture slipped a bit, but she looked more exhausted than offended. If anything, even after all that had happened, Weiss was just as frank as she remembered, putting her very much at ease.
The cot whined under Pyrrha's added weight as she sat beside Weiss, her back to Jaune. She couldn't bring herself to look at him right now. "That's the problem precisely," she said, closing her eyes for a moment to gather her thoughts, "You're absolutely right that I would try to help. The question is whether I can..." she looked to Weiss, "And the answer is... I can't."
Caught off guard by the sudden intrusion into her personal space, Weiss shifted on the cot, gripping the edge, unsure if the flimsy construction could hold both her and the taller girl's weight. She used her free hand to dab at her nose with her handkerchief, still glowering a little, "What are you talking about?"
"I'm... envious, I think. Your ability to connect with Ruby seems so effortless, and I can't even-" brows furrowing, Pyrrha covered her mouth, her eyes dropping momentarily to the ground before returning to Weiss in apology. "I'm sorry-" she said upon lowering her hand again, "I spoke without thinking, I know the situation that forced you to learn that skill was... unthinkable."
Weiss could absolutely do without having to think about the rat poison situation, or the nightmare she'd dropped into earlier in the day. So she didn't, instead focusing on the problem Pyrrha seemed to be having. "You can't aura heal?"
It was a surprise, given how masterfully the Mistral champion wielded her semblance which, after all, was just an extension of her aura. Considering the trouble Weiss had with aspects of her own semblance, summoning up her aura and sharing it with someone else seemed almost trivial. Not that she knew at all what she was doing since ninety percent of the time she'd been doing it out of sheer desperation and hoping it worked.
"That... seems to be the case," Pyrrha bowed her head, resolute in her refusal to glance back at Jaune again.
"Don't you have two auras in you? That has to make it more complicated." Weiss was still skeptical about Qrow's explanations. Had Pyrrha and the last 'maiden' or whatever the term was had their auras fuse? Or were they somewhat distinct? Either way her nose was still dripping and her handkerchief was becoming less and less effective. "Ugh, you're really not missing much."
Pyrrha's eyes widened in brief surprise. Of course, thinking on it a bit longer, it made sense that Weiss would know, considering Weiss had been there with Ruby and Qrow, down in those maintenance corridors... Her heart still twisted at the thought of Sun down in that locked hall. That was probably where Neptune had been spending his evenings. Sage however... seemed to be resting fairly peacefully next to a stack of crates. Either that or he was excellent at feigning sleep. Pyrrha gently ran her hands over the twisted metal covering her arms. "I suppose that could be the case... I haven't actually told everyone about that yet... I assume Qrow mentioned everything? The maidens? The Atlesian machine?"
"Everything except anything useful, like how it was supposed to work, or what was supposed to happen afterwards," Weiss resorted to using the cuff of her sleeve to dry her eyes. The tears had slowed to an annoying trickle. "I can see why it might have seemed like a good idea given the general destruction," she made a vague motion to indicate the world outside the tent, "but in my opinion having to make a choice like that was completely unfair to you."
There was that frankness again, bringing along with it a crashing wave of gratitude that momentarily blindsided Pyrrha. She could feel tears starting to pool in the corners of her eyes, so she turned her head away, hastily blinking them back. She was so used to being placed on that pedestal... So used to people simply expecting perfection of her, the Mistralian warrior prodigy, the invincible girl... There were times she wondered whether she did things because she truly wanted to, or because she simply knew it was expected of her.
It took a moment, but once Pyrrha wrestled herself under control, she glanced at Weiss again. "That... means a great deal to me. Thank you." Biting her lip, she tried to straighten her posture, but ended up slumping her shoulders just a bit, "I... I'm truly glad Ruby woke up. I was so worried she may end up like..." Pyrrha still couldn't look at him.
Weiss might have brushed the concern off (comatose Ruby had been several notches down on her list of worries while she'd been asleep, the top one involving bone masks and glowing red eyes), but before she could she noticed something... odd at the edge of Pyrrha's recently repaired gauntlet. It was black, like it could have been soot from a fire.
"Did you burn yourself?" she frowned, motioning to her mostly-covered forearm.
The question caught Pyrrha off guard. "What?" Then she looked at her own arm, dread overtaking her confusion in an instant. "Oh, no, I- I'm fine," she quickly rested her hand atop the offending area.
Well, that wasn't the reaction of someone who was fine. Weiss had seen Pyrrha covered in what looked like frost earlier- probably a manifestation of the maiden powers Qrow had talked about- so burns didn't seem that far-fetched, and after all the other disasters that had happened today the last thing anyone needed was someone getting blood poisoning from an untended wound. Besides, the lithe red-head was still sitting uncomfortably close to her on the cot, so she obviously wanted to talk. Weiss was too exhausted to be subtle about dragging it out of her, though.
"Pyrrha, we haven't exactly spent a lot of time together," as the smartest girl in school and the strongest girl in school respectively, they'd had different styles, which meant different schedules. Plus Jaune and Pyrrha were something of a mismatched set, and Weiss tended to avoid the latter. She crossed her arms unconsciously, as if to maintain a little of her own space without pushing Pyrrha away, and gave her an admonishing look, "Still. Believe me when I say that you're a terrible liar."
Pyrrha's hand clenched over her arm. She had to leave, she needed to leave before Weiss started prying... but something held her back. Probably exhaustion, if she had to put a name to it. Pyrrha managed a weak smile and an even weaker laugh, "...Am I?"
Weiss raised a brow at her because honestly she was proving her point. "Do you want to talk about it or not? I'm not sure how much Blake and Yang filled you in on what happened on our assignment, but I can almost guarantee I've seen worse by now."
Pyrrha studied the floor, her smile quickly fading. "I... don't..." It wouldn't be fair to burden someone else with something like this... And yet, even as that thought was still crossing her mind, she knew it wasn't right. It was just a cover. She was afraid.
Releasing her arm, Pyrrha forced herself to her feet and faced Weiss. "But I should." She was so tired of hiding. Heart racing a mile a minute, she briefly glanced towards the crates at the far end of the tent, at the bundle of blankets that was Sage. "Would you mind if we changed locations?"
Weiss huffed and climbed off the cot after her, straightening her coat and pulling her gloves from her pockets in preparation for venturing back outdoors. "Well it's not like I was going to get any sleep. Lead the way."
The night air held a slight bite to it as the pair stepped out of the tent and into the open, a light breeze gently stirring up the dirt loosened by the day's events. Pyrrha led the way as requested, her arms folded across her stomach as though she could somehow quell the swarm of butterflies swirling inside. With each step towards the dark opening that led to the maintenance corridors her current reality sank in a bit further. She was really going to do this. She was really going to...
Pyrrha took a shaky breath, staring hard at the dark patch peeking out from underneath her bracers. Even when gently reflecting the shattered moonlight, the dented patchwork metal was simply hideous compared to the armor she'd adorned previously, made of the finest gold, forged in the finest Mistralian armories to commemorate her status as Champion... but that set had been all but decimated during her battle against Cinder. And, despite how it looked, this current armor was... surprisingly functional. With its cobbled together design and winter's quickly dropping temperatures, no one had questioned when she quietly added pieces to it here and there. Armor to fully cover her torso, her shoulders, her upper arms, her legs...
The opening loomed closer and closer, filling the former champion with dread. Only a few paces away, Pyrrha's eyes darted to Weiss, finding her... walking next to her. Not trailing behind her, but right beside her. Pyrrha doubted the gesture was intentional, but it eased her nerves just enough to cross the threshold, stepping out of the shattered moon's light.
She ushered Weiss into a room close to the maintenance corridor's entrance, one that was likely the maintenance staff room, judging by the enormous tool bench that took up one entire wall. A lone table and Dust powered lamp sat in the room's center. Flicking the lamp on, Pyrrha turned to face Weiss, the light's slight reddish tint reflecting in her green eyes. Self-conscious, she gripped the edge of her arm once more. After an awkward moment of silence, Pyrrha found her voice.
"Is this... really okay?" She wasn't certain if she was asking Weiss or herself.
Weiss darted a glance around the room. The Dust lamp crackled and flickered like it was running on coarse grained Dust instead of standard fine crystals. Her breath hung in the air. The tools that were left looked like they'd been strapped down as per regulation when the coliseum crashed, but most had been scavenged, probably by the group. She'd been wondering why they hadn't turned this room into part of their base instead of using tents, but the echoes of an inhuman howl travelled the length of the hall outside. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end.
"Well I sincerely hope that you didn't bring us all the way here just to decide not to say anything," she gripped Myrtenaster's hilt, keeping an eye on the door just in case.
Funnily enough, Pyrrha didn't know what to say at all. Every explanation she could give ran in circles around and around in her head, but nothing came out. In the end, just showing Weiss was probably best.
With one last breath to steel her nerves, Pyrrha wordlessly called upon her semblance, the black glow of her polarity peeling back the armor around her forearm.
At first Weiss thought her arm underneath the metal was dark because of some residual effect of her semblance- the black glow that rimmed the metal Pyrrha worked with. Then, slowly, with a cold sinking feeling, she realized that wasn't the case.
Snow-white plates of bone stood out in stark contrast to the pitch blackness canvassing every inch of Pyrrha's skin beneath the thin sheet metal, spreading nearly to her wrist.
Ruby sat bolt upright. She'd cried herself out a second time (this wasn't her greatest day ever, but she did feel better now) and had almost fallen asleep when a sense of danger shot through her like a lightning bolt. When Blake and Yang stirred, she shushed them, her heart going a mile a minute as she listened in the dark.
The tent was quiet, sheltered from the wind by the high walls of the arena. Nothing made a sound, but she knew something was wrong. At least, it felt like something was wrong. She scrambled to find Crescent Rose.
Undeterred by being shushed, Yang attempted to lift her head, blearily rubbing at her eyes. "Ruby?" Seeing her little sister fumble for her weapon woke her up a great deal more. She tried not to jostle Blake, who had curled up against her side. "Hey, what's up?"
"Shh," Ruby put out her hand, still trying to listen. The hairs on the back of her neck were all prickled up. The seconds stretched into a minute, but there was no sound. Nothing out of the ordinary, anyway. The wind outside, across the top of the arena walls. Her teammates sleeping in the tent. She got up and went to the door of the tent, Crescent Rose at the ready.
By that point, Blake had stirred as well, her Faunus ears swiveling to catch even the slightest sound. At least, anything other than the slight snores coming from Robin, who had splayed out beside her. It was nice seeing the little Faunus finally relaxed enough to sleep in a position other than curled into a tiny ball, and yet... Blake gently lifted the little girl's leg that was draped over her side.
Yang took a moment to help Blake properly bury their small charge in warm blankets before creeping up to Ruby's side, giving her a questioning look.
Ruby still hadn't heard anything. She took Yang's look as a yes-I-will-provide-backup and slipped outside of the tent, scoping for something, anything in the dark.
The area around the supply tent was deserted. She lowered her scythe-rifle, her brow furrowed as her breath misted in the sharp cold of the night air. There was nothing here. So why did she still feel like something was about to jump her?
Blake crept up to join Yang at the tent's entrance.
"Do you hear anything?" Yang whispered to her.
Blake shook her head.
Brows furrowing, Yang stepped out into the night air, coming to a stop just behind Ruby. "Hey," she called softly, gently tugging at the hood of her sister's cloak, "What's going on?"
"I... I dunno," Ruby shook her head, like maybe she just needed to shake the feeling off. Her grip tightened on Crescent Rose, "It feels like something's wrong."
"Do you think it's Weiss?"
Once Yang recovered from her mild heart attack over Blake suddenly being right behind them, she arched a brow at her, "Weiss?"
"Maybe it's like earlier," Blake's eyes scanned the surrounding darkness, there really was nothing out here, "When she apparently shared Ruby's pain."
"Oh. So like... she's having a nightmare... and you're feeling it? Or something?" Yang looked to Ruby. "Where did Weiss even storm off to, anyway?"
Ruby heard Blake talk, but the only words that came through were 'Weiss' and 'pain', and Yang was talking about nightmares, and that was enough for her panic to flare up.
"Guys, we have to find her," she turned to Blake even though her instincts were telling her to go, "Can you track where she went?"
Blake nodded, but her eyes darted back to their tent.
"I can keep an eye on the kid," Yang offered at once. "And y'know, stand guard in case Weiss comes trotting back here looking for us."
"Okay," put at ease enough to offer her partner a gentle smile, Blake then turned and swept the ground with her eyes, cutting through the dark with ease. All the commotion from earlier had kicked up enough dust that footprints were readily visible. She motioned for Ruby to follow her, "This way."
Weiss stood frozen, her gaze locked on Pyrrha's forearm. Her gloves concealed the white knuckle grip she had on her sword.
Clearing her throat to hide the edge in her voice, she tore her eyes from the bone plating to meet Pyrrha's gaze, "... what is that?"
Relieved that Weiss hadn't run from the room screaming, or worse, attacked her outright, Pyrrha simply shook her head. "I... I'm sorry. I don't know." Another howl echoed through the tunnels. Pyrrha's lips pressed together in a thin line. "But I can guess." Sighing, she leaned against the table's edge, head bowed as she glanced at Weiss out of the corner of her eyes. "It's... been spreading."
Weiss's hold on her weapon hadn't slackened, and she clutched her wrist with her free hand. Her wrist, where once upon a nightmare Ruby's teeth had sunk deep enough to draw thick, black blood.
She'd been telling herself that all of that had been a nightmare- a nightmare that could have consequences in the real world, but still a nightmare. People didn't turn into Grimm in real life. Even in spite of having seen Drei... the white fur meshing with the black under the starlight, Ruby trying to help him change back... he was a dog, though, not a human being. Her mouth had gone dry so she could barely swallow and her shoulders were square only out of the rigid practice of not letting anyone see she her degree of terror. "So that... that thing down the hall..."
Pyrrha stayed silent. After a while, she called upon her semblance again, letting her armor drop away all at once. It floated neatly onto the table behind her, and she stretched, standing before Weiss in nothing but her leather bodice, skirt, and boots. Her entire left side and a little bit of her right sported the same affliction, a frown darkening Pyrrha's features as she noticed how far down her arm it had traveled. "Sun... is the first we've been able to capture," she sighed, idly running a hand over the back of her neck where small bony spines were starting to form. "Coco and Velvet are still out there somewhere."
"The others should know about this," Weiss said, increasingly aware of how alone they were in this maintenance tunnel, shut in this room. Pyrrha seemed lucid, but the amount of skin she was showing- the amount that wasn't skin- triggered every alarm the heiress possessed. The only thing keeping her from retreating at once was the small degree of confidence that she could fend off Pyrrha armed better than she could Ruby empty handed. It was a very, very small degree, though. "Do they already know?"
Pyrrha shook her head, dutifully ignoring Weiss's hand still resting on her weapon. "About Coco and Velvet, yes. But… you're the only one who knows about me." Gently pushing herself away from the table, Pyrrha crossing the room to the tool bench. "I... have no plans on telling anyone else."
Weiss watched Pyrrha pace to the edge of the room, doing her best to ignore the starts of bone spikes showing along her spine at the base of her neck. "You can't be serious."
Upon reaching the bench, Pyrrha looked back at Weiss, mildly surprised. "Of course I can." Met with a highly incredulous stare in response, Pyrrha sighed as she pulled a heavy duty lockbox from one of the highest shelves and returned to take a seat atop the table.
"I did think about telling Ren and Nora, at first." Pyrrha placed her hand over the lock, her hands glowing black just long enough for a light click to echo through the room. "But... I knew they would have tried to aura heal me, regardless of the risk to themselves." Setting the box beside her, Pyrrha lifted its lid, retrieving a small black notebook and pen from within. After a cursory check of her arms, she jotted a few things down, "Even now, I imagine they would still try. But, after seeing what happened to Ruby- and those warnings from Qrow..." Pyrrha shook her head, setting the notebook aside so she could start taking off her boots. "I can't do it."
"So you're going to wait until you're as bad as… as Sun and then let them try?" Weiss had quit gripping her sword, but her fists were still tight enough to strain the synthetic leather of her gloves. She closed the distance between herself and Pyrrha and stood ramrod straight to compensate for their height difference, "Is that what you want? Because that's what's going to happen if you don't tell them."
Pyrrha frowned at Weiss. The heiress was nearly eye-level with her like this, and yet... somehow Weiss wasn't seeing eye-to-eye with her at all. Pursing her lips, Pyrrha looked away, picking up the notebook once more as she inspected her own legs. "No, it won't," she jotted down a few more notes, "I'll be gone before then."
Weiss refrained from joining the inspection- she'd seen too much bone plating already. "Excuse me?"
"Weiss," Pyrrha lifted her bowed head, "I'm fully aware of how dangerous this is," she gestured to her afflicted arm, "how dangerous I am," the pen she held creaked in her hand, crushed in a desperate grip, "If I get anywhere near as bad as Sun, or Velvet, or Coco... that is, if I feel myself start to slip, I'm leaving."
She was serious. Weiss searched Pyrrha and could see that this had been her decision for days- weeks even- and it had been eating her alive almost as badly as the black creeping death on the rest of her. The weight of it made some of her terror drop away- or rather, it made her livid and in her exhaustion that displaced everything else.
The heiress pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and middle finger, leaning her back against the workbench. "Pyrrha. I'm trying to think of a tactful way to tell you that you're an idiot, and that we need to go talk to Ruby and the others, but it's been three days and I'm running on six hours of sleep and a bowl of Neptune's semi-burned concoction," she looked up, glaring at her, "so you're an idiot, and we're going to go talk to Ruby and the others."
Emerald eyes widened in surprise. "Weiss," dropping the pen and notebook, Pyrrha stood, "that's not going to-"
"We're going to talk to them," Weiss repeated, refusing to give an inch as her classmate stood over her, "because you know what happens if you don't? You leave, and we spend the rest of our lives looking for you out in the icy, Grimm infested wilderness. Ruby and I tracked Blake and Yang for a week in horrible trackless nowhere when they tried to pull some kind of moronic rescue mission, and if we hadn't found them we would not have stopped looking." She took a breath but didn't allow Pyrrha to break in, "I don't care about Ruby's uncle. We have experience dealing with this sort of thing now, and a shockingly decent success rate given the circumstances. Your leaving won't stop them from trying, and under no circumstances am I going to let you make it worse by waiting until you have zero control over yourself."
Shock, a glimmer of hope, and a split second rush of white-hot anger flashed in Pyrrha's eyes, but she shook her head, pressing a hand to her temple. "Icy, Grimm infested wilderness?" She somehow sounded even more exhausted than before. "Despite what you seem to think of me, I'm not an idiot, Weiss. Do you really think I'd just let myself run loose in the wild?" Her expression darkened, "I know exactly where I'm going."