A/N: All titles from Woodkid's "The Golden Age"
through the snow
You'll never be able to go back.
Honestly, you're not sure if it's even still there. The dorms are overrun with Grimm now, and they never leave a place standing unless they've dug in so thoroughly it's just a big building-shaped deathtrap. Grimm behavior is weirdly predictable once you get into the mindset of "hate everything about people ever."
You remember sitting on the roof after one or another one of your daily training (getting-your-butt-kicked-again) sessions with Pyrrha, waiting for your Aura to patch you up (because it's not like you actually landed a hit on her more than once in a never) and trading stories about anything and everything but your childhoods. So a lot of those stories wound up being about Beacon, about the professors' many quirks and Nora's antics and Ren's Ren-ness. You were so proud of your great-grandfather's memorial standing right in the middle of Beacon, so of course you bragged about that.
You never told her about talking to it, spilling all your fears to your ancestor's stone face like it was an actual person who might care about your problems. You knew you were being silly, but why care about looking crazy when you're in a school for Huntsmen and Huntresses? Everyone knows that if you fight Grimm for long enough, you go a little bit cuckoo.
You're figuring out now that that was code for "live long enough to fight more Grimm (because they will never end)" plus not having any friends still alive to share the burden.
You grew up in a backcountry town as an ordinary, unremarkable kid. Every kid you know grew up learning the same kinds of lessons, like: Go to prayers at least once a week, if you can, and on the big holidays no matter what (unless you are literally in the hospital). Be kind to your neighbors and say hi to strangers, but don't talk to outsiders if you can help it. If someone stabs you in the back, you stab them in the front from far enough away that they can't backstab you again.
Always help your family. Always keep your word.
And whatever you do, never say anything rude to a lady behind her back. You always ought to say it to her face, and take whatever you get for it.
With that in mind, Cinder can go to the deepest frozen pits of hell and stay there 'til the moon heals itself.
You can't go back, even if someone figures out how to perma-kill that darn dragon and clear the school of all the other Grimm. Even if the ruins are somehow rebuilt, or at least cleared away so they don't fall on someone's head when they get stuck exploring the place, like you had to go through those stone ruins on initiation day. Or like Oobleck explores creepy Grimm-infested ruins for fun, if Ruby's stories are anything to go by. It's nice that she wants to keep the memory of her team alive, but you're getting kind of tired of the scheme-fests with Nora. You had seven sisters, you know what girl-plotting looks like and that is it.
You definitely aren't planning to ditch the girls and take off with Ren at the next fork in the road in search of some peace and quiet. (You would be, but you're pretty sure leaving Ruby and Nora alone in Grimm-infested woods is a great way to get a forest fire started, and you really don't want to spend today trying to outrun a natural disaster on top of everything else.)
You're grateful for your friends, though. They... they can't ground you, exactly. You're still on your hands and knees screaming at nothing, somewhere in your head. It's harder than you'd ever thought it would be to pick yourself up this time, mostly because you never thought you'd be the one stuck mourning her. It was always you dying, in your nightmares, in the quiet times before the sun got up when it was just you and the anchor-memory of how weak you really are.
But between Ruby clinging to you and Nora and Ren like the loneliest little barnacle in the sea, and Nora and Ren practically gluing themselves to you since the- since you- well, just since, you're so busy trying to keep Nora from giving all your positions away with her yelling or Ren from poisoning everyone with his so-called cooking (which actually isn't terrible, but those health drinks are just... no.) or Ruby from running off after every half-cocked lead that dumps itself into your laps like an ode to over-convenience to literally everything else that can go wrong...
You're consistently and constantly busy these days, so much so that when you see a tattered old poster of Pyrrha hanging on a half-wrecked wall in one of the newer ghost towns, you only think about kicking the wall down for no reason. Besides, like Nora said, it's a pointless waste of Aura – better to save it for killing Grimm.
You're still kind of upset (slowly tearing yourself apart with grief and guilt and shame) but you've all got jobs to do.
You, you your-unremarkable-self, are alive and Pyrrha is not. You (you and all your remaining friends, however few) are going to find a way to kill Cinder for real.
And if you somehow manage to live through this? Well, you've got plans. They're not great plans, or even good ones. Maybe someday, after Cinder's dead and gone and there is nothing left of her but bad memories, you'll go back to what's left of Beacon. Never mind the school, that's past saving, but it's just not safe to have that many strong Grimm that deep in one of the Kingdoms.
Maybe there's something worth salvaging in those ruins, deep under the school where Headmaster Ozpin hid all the real secrets. Maybe there'll even be something left of your great-grandfather's statue. Maybe, maybe. Just maybe.
Maybe your old dorm building will be standing, still. You know it's not likely (or even possible) but still, you miss it.
Right now, with Vale withering and the Kingdoms all desperate not to be the first to fall, because of course pride and image matter now – this is Cinder's "invincible" winning streak. When that ends, all the stories and all the statues are going to be about what people want to remember.
Someday, the world will have Pyrrha again. She'll be a tragedy and a warning, a glory of self-sacrifice for new generations of Huntsmen to aspire to. The world can have the story of Pyrrha.
You'd rather be back on that rooftop, bruised and humble with the truth of her.
You're here, so you get up and keep going.