This is a terrible way to die... drowned like a rat in ice water.
As Weiss felt herself get thrown back and forth in the rapids, her only emotion was a sense of melancholy for her fate. How could she let this happen? One moment in charge of her destiny, and the next completely at the whims of chance. As her body was slammed against a wall by the water, Weiss couldn't even guess whether she had hit the stream's bottom or one of the channel walls that had been carved out through centuries of the rapid's constant pounding. Weiss was so turned around by the rapids that she didn't even know which direction was up, although every few seconds she would feel one of her arms or a foot break through the water's surface and into the air. At some point the water surrounding her had become dark, and although every once in a while Weiss's head broke the surface of the water for a brief second for some air, she couldn't see anything when she did get above the rapids.
There was no sense of time within the rapids. The heiress could have been within the grips of the waves for anywhere between single seconds to full hours. All she could feel were tendrils of water pulling violently at her, causing her to continue to tumble head over heels in the waves.
At a particularly rough twist in the stream, Weiss felt her body get slammed into a submerged boulder. And a quarter of a second later, the heiress heard a resounding crack from somewhere inside her ribcage. At the pain Weiss involuntarily exhaled underwater, and she felt all of air inside of her lungs burst out of her lips and through her nose. Immediately Weiss missed the air that had been there only a moment before. It was odd how much she missed something she had taken for granted her entire life. It had always been there, like a friend that she had never valued. And now that it was gone, Weiss felt her lungs scream as they were filled with ice.
There's no pride in dying this way. Even if I went out by my own hand, it would at least have been by my terms…
For a moment Weiss felt her cheek scrap along what must have been the riverbed… or maybe it was the river's sidewall? Even so, Weiss was so cold that she could barely feel any of the dozens of screaming pain signals coming from her body. One addition made no difference.
Weiss was starting to feel light-headed as she continued her path down the stream, now staying totally submerged. It was actually more peaceful in this section of the stream... more relaxed. The water flowed a little slower here, and the heiress had stopped tumbling chaotically down the stream. Weiss only felt her back scraping against what she now knew was the riverbed. She knew it was the riverbed, because as the heiress was looking up at the tumbling surface of the water, she saw muted green lights above her. So it was night-time… or at least that was the assumption that Weiss's brain made. And that of all things was what drove Weiss into action.
Oh my god… if the stars are green… how dirty is this water!? I'm… I am NOT dying in this cesspool, where the stars look fucking green!
While it was a great thought, one that would have driven her to action any other day, Weiss's body didn't respond in the slightest to her brain's orders. Oxygen deprived and beaten half to death by the rocky path, Weiss's limbs simply lacked the energy to move. The blonde screamed at her own body again, her fury at the situation boiling over into pure rage.
Move! I don't care if the name means nothing anymore! I am a fucking Schnee! I will not die in some waste pool like this!
Again though, nothing changed. All Weiss felt was the back of her winter coat getting caught on a few of the rockier portions of the channel bottom. A few times the fabric got caught for a few seconds before the nylon would snap and she would be released back into the grips of the waves again. And as Weiss's rage began to seep away, it was replaced by cold, bitter sadness.
Ah… no hope in hell for me anyway. Maybe this is what my name is worth? Just a nameless death, for a nameless player. I probably could have just been called Female Schnee Two, and been just as useful.
As she began to give up hope, Weiss didn't even register when her boots dragged across gravel. When her face broke the surface of the stream for a slight second a moment later though, it sent a shock through her fading mind. Weiss's body, moments before insolent, now seemed to react to her brains signals again. But Weiss was conflicted in sending them.
It's always been this way… whenever I want to succeed, I can't. And whenever I give up, I'm just given what I need to keep on... enduring? Yeah, enduring. I've always won just because somebody else was there to keep me from falling into last place. A series of lucky chances given to me by others. My sister, taking the fall for me so I wouldn't have to immediately marry somebody else for the good of the company and leave Beacon when I was nineteen. Or getting paired with Ruby. While I never admitted it, I would have quit the whole huntress thing out of anger at least a dozen times over if she hadn't made me stay. I used to think all the petty squabbling by our classmates was beneath someone like me, even though I was no better. And then she spends the last seven years protecting me while I couldn't do the same for her.
I'm... I'm so sorry Ruby. I got you killed, because I was as useless and weak as always. I didn't want that to be what my life was worth… I never wanted to just be a burden for others and rely on pure chance to be saved…
But subconsciously, even if her oxygen deprived brain couldn't get the words out itself, Weiss did want to live. Because she craved what she had been taught to chase since her childhood. She craved the thing the heiress felt she had been denied her entire life. Weiss wanted control. If she was going to die, it would be at her terms. So as an arm involuntarily shot out and desperately clawed at the gravel that had coated the bottom of the riverbed, Weiss's body moved on its own and crawled up a slope where the blonde could see foam lapping against a rocky shore.
As Weiss's weighed down body desperately crawled its way up the incline, she felt herself once again be pulled at by the rapids. But the blonde was out of the worst of the rapid's influence, and try as it might the water couldn't drag her any farther back into the stream. With one last surge forward, just as her body was about to give up again for the final time, Weiss broke through the water's surface and pulled herself onto shore.
Now surrounded by air, Weiss tried to take in the biggest lung full that she could. But she couldn't. The space was already taken up by frigid water. Still half in-half out of the stream, Weiss began to cough violently, feeling the water shoot out of her lungs through her mouth and nose. It was actually quite painful, and as air began to find its way into her lungs, the space inside her chest seemed to burn as it was forced to do its job again.
Even after all the water was gone, Weiss was still crouched over coughing violently, her forehead pushing against the pebble shore while her back arched in the air. It actually hurt to just breathe in and out, and Weiss began to wonder if she had made the correct choice. What if she had fought so hard to live, just to die for some odd reason on the shore? Maybe there was a point where you just couldn't come back from drowning, even if you were able to breathe again. Weiss's oxygen deprived brain began to step outside of the realms of science, and began making wild guess's at what was killing her. Maybe the water gets into your blood, and it's going to just drown me from the inside even though my lungs are clear.
It was a ludicrous thought though, and as Weiss felt tears streaming from her eyes up over her temples from all of her hacking and coughing, she slowly began to regain some semblance of composure. While her lungs still hurt like hell, they weren't screaming out in pain like they had been moments before. Now her breath was more of a raspy rattle, and after a few seconds of groaning the heiress got to her feet and slowly trudged the extra foot out of the calf high water and onto the shore.
Now on her feet, and out of the water, Weiss cast a look around. Looking down on herself, still not entirely clear minded, the blonde grumbled at her appearance. Her pure white outfit, drenched with water and weighing her body down, had been stained green by whatever had been in that putrid stream. It wasn't until Weiss tried to wipe at her jacket with her right hand, and saw her hand was colored green as well that the heiress looked around.
Weiss hadn't turned green, and looking back in the stream, Weiss now understood that the water was most likely sparklingly clean. As she looked up Weiss saw dozens upon dozens of stalactites, many of them larger than she was, hanging from the ceiling of the cave that she had washed ashore in. And coating the stalactites were thousands of colonies of glowing green moss. Those had been the constellations that Weiss had thought she was seeing. Individually they didn't provide much light, but through sheer numbers the colonies gave off a strong green glow throughout the entire cave.
The lichen supplied more than enough light to see by, and Weiss took in the area she had washed ashore in. The cavern was a perfect circle three hundred meters across, with a small lake in the center of the circle taking up the majority of the cave's floor. One side of the cavern had the stream that Weiss must have come from flowing out of a small tunnel and directly into the small lake. And on the other a larger river, almost three times as big as the fast-moving stream, flowed lazily on out of the cavern into a large tunnel. The bank that Weiss was standing on hugged this edge of the river and continued on into the second tunnel.
As Weiss stood there, admiring the view, her sense of pain suddenly kicked into gear. And it hit the blonde hard, as though a sledge-hammer suddenly swung forward and hit her in the gut. Stumbling slightly from the sudden shock, Weiss finally took in the aggravated screams her nerves had sent her. The first message was an overwhelming sense of cold, as though she was freezing in her own clothes. Which she probably was. And second was pain. The pain pretty much covered her entire body, as the blonde had been smashed up badly by the abusive rapids. But the two main points that hurt the most were Weiss's left hand and the right side of her rib cage. Remembering from her survival classes at Beacon, Weiss decided to deal with the cold first.
Weiss knew she had to get out of her soaked clothes, which were leaching off her body heat. Throwing her pack off to the side, which had miraculously somehow hung onto the crook of the heiress' arm, Weiss began to get out of her clothes as fast as she possibly could. The blonde's frozen fingers fumbled with her jacket, quickly shrugging off her soaked nylon jacket and the heavy knit sweater she wore underneath that. Moving her left hand through the sleeves while she took the clothing off was painful, although Weiss knew it was better to take the situation one step at a time. Using only one hand she then ripped off her feet the waterlogged boots and socks that were freezing her toes. If they had any feeling in them, it probably would have been painful to walk across the pebble shore. She then pulled off her belt and pushed her pants, which had always been a size too big, down her legs.
Stepping out of her pants, now left in only her undergarments, Weiss decided she had done enough. Her teachers would have scolded her for worrying about modesty in a moment like this, while her life was hanging on warming up. While it was probably irrational, Weiss didn't want to disrobe completely, even if she was without a doubt sure that she was alone. Besides, Weiss already felt slightly warmer now that she was out of the soaking clothes, even if she was now standing in the frigid air. One problem down.
Now came the moment of truth. Taking a hasty breath, Weiss looked down at her hand. Her breath caught it her throat, because while she was relieved to not see any bone sticking out, the sight was still pretty grim. At some point, Weiss must have smashed her hand in the tumbling waves against a rock wall. Because while her thumb, pointer and little fingers were fine, both her middle and ring fingers bent at the second joint away from her pointer finger. Weiss's ring finger actually crossed over her pinky finger, and the two mangled digits had both turned an angry red color.
Weiss had never reset a finger before, but the heiress knew she couldn't just leave them like that. She really didn't know what she was doing; Ruby was the one who had actually ever learned about first aid. Taking a guess at what she should do though, the heiress just grabbed her middle finger and violently tried to yank it back into place. Weiss heard a pop sound, which she guessed was a good thing, although the digit still hurt just as much if not more than it had a moment ago. She then repeated the process with her ring finger, which was less successful. Weiss didn't hear any pop like she had with her middle digit, and even after she tried twice the finger still pointed off at a slight angle. But it wasn't anywhere near as extreme as it had been a moment ago, and for now Weiss's patch job would have to do.
The rest of the pain was just something that Weiss would have to live with. Weiss had broken ribs before while out on assignments, and from that experience the heiress was pretty confident in saying that she had cracked at least three. She couldn't do anything if there was any internal damage, so the blonde just decided to not worry about it and hope for the best.
Already feeling sore, Weiss hobbled over to her discarded bag, which she had dropped by the edge of the stream. Leaning down and grabbing the handle on her pack, Weiss realized something was wrong when she felt almost no resistance as she lifted the bag.
"…Fuck me" Weiss groaned as she turned the bag over and shook it wildly, hoping for something to fall out. Other than a few drops of water, the bag was totally empty. At some point through the tumbling of the rapids, the pack must have opened and released everything into the stream's waves. There was absolutely nothing inside the bag except for an old pocket sewing kit, one that she had only used once or twice over the past few years. Weiss had lost everything.
Throwing the bag at the cavern' s wall in rage, Weiss began to curse her fate. So great, I'm fucking underground, stuck with nothing, and I'm still freezing cold and wet! This has been a great fucking day!
Still though, Weiss couldn't just stand there and do nothing. Looking down at the rocks at her feet, Weiss's mind began to wander, and before she knew why the blonde began to think of the old kid shows she would watch when nobody else was around. Sure the heiress had been way too old for them, but Weiss hadn't cared. They were simple and to the point, with no twists and no cliffhangers. Just garbage that was easy to rot her brain on. And in the back of her mind Weiss remembered one of her favorite characters, an old western cowboy, had used a pair of rocks to light a stick of dynamite in the show.
Picking up the two closest to her feet, two dull brown oval rocks, Weiss tried to smash the two against each other to create a spark. Nothing. After a few tries, where she tried to orient the rocks in different ways, Weiss dropped the two and sighed. These won't work… what about those over there?
Over the next ten minutes, Weiss limped back and forth across the rocky bank on the balls of her feet, trying to find rocks that would actually work. She'd pick up a pair, strike them off of each other a few times, and drop them and move on if they failed her. Finally Weiss found a set that seemed to work: a pair of silvery gray stones that at least gave off sparks when she scraped them against each other.
Limping back to where her pack had landed against the wall, Weiss decided there was no better kindling in the room than the moss itself. Reaching up with her good hand, and feeling her abused muscles ache at the motion, Weiss ripped down a stretch of moss as long as she was tall and at least half as wide. Folding it over a few times, Weiss threw the bundle unceremoniously on the ground and attempted to set it on fire with her new stones.
It took almost ten minutes to get the stupid fire going, and even when Weiss succeeded it was only a small reddish-brown glow in the center of the bundle. Weiss threw another mass of lichen on top of the flame, hoping to grow the fire, and sat down against the wall of the cavern. Without warning the fire suddenly flared into life, and while it gave off the most acrid smell Weiss had ever ran into, it did provide more than enough heat, and soon Weiss was no longer shivering from the cold.
At least there is that… now what am I going to do?
But the day's events had left the blonde both low in spirits and moral, so Weiss just sighed to herself internally and mumbled out loud "I'll just deal with whatever comes in the morning…" And with that, Weiss curled up with her arms around her knees, and laid down next to the fire. Lying on the rocks wasn't comfortable, but she was so exhausted that she had no trouble drifting off into a light slumber.
"Ah… Ow… Fucking hell…" Weiss groaned as she pushed herself of the ground with one arm, feeling all of her muscles scream as she used them to reposition herself. Apparently the resting time Weiss had given her body had allowed it to realize how beat to hell she was. As if she already couldn't tell.
At some point the fire had gone out in the… night? There was no way to tell time here, there weren't any paths to the surface that Weiss could see, and no light coming in through cracks in the wall. For all Weiss knew it could have been the middle of the day. Now in her old pit, a few embers glowed dully in the center of a black scorch mark.
Weiss pushed herself off the ground, and felt even more cries in agony from her legs as she stood up. Her neck cracked as she looked around for some more moss to burn. It was a kind of sad though, as she lit up her side of the cave, it became darker and darker as the glowing moss no longer covered her corner of the cavern. Still though, she needed the warmth and light more than ever. Reaching up again, and feeling her shoulder burn in protest, Weiss ripped down a few large patches of moss from the wall and threw them on top of the embers, hoping that they would catch fire without her needing to do any work.
Weiss slowly crouched down next to the fire, wincing as her knees and ankles sent her needly messages of pain. But as she sat down, she saw that instead of lighting the new moss ablaze, her new kindling had simply smothered the embers out. A single tendril of smoke spiraled upwards out of the pile of green moss as the ashes lost their flame. Weiss grabbed her two flint stones in anger and tried to strike up a new flame, missing the stones as much as she actually got them to connect and strike off of each other.
While she sat there, Weiss thought to herself on the predicament she had gotten herself into. Working on autopilot, the blonde swung the stones at each other, missing as much as she actually connected while Weiss stewed over the situation. Well, this is great. I can barely stand, I'm stuck underground in the middle of the mountain, and I've got no supplies… and... and I'm all alone…
Before Weiss could dwell on that final thought though, a fire suddenly kicked into gear in front of her. And by the light, Weiss could see how badly bruised she was. She had at one time joked with Ruby on how easily she bruised, and had been compared to a banana by Yang multiple times in the past. But now, looking down at the dozens of purple splotches on her arms and legs, Weiss silently cursed everything from bad genes to her stupid inability to tan. Tan people didn't bruise as badly, or at least she had never seen a tan person receive as obvious a bruise. And some of Weiss's bruises were very apparent, such as the large fist sized blotch on Weiss's right side that ran from the bottom of her ribcage upwards. As Weiss looked at the bruise, she explored the wound with her fingers, and pressed down in a few spots. While it hurt to touch, at least the ribs stayed in place and didn't shift under her fingers.
Weiss didn't want to dwell, as there wasn't anything positive to think about, so she just walked over to where she had dropped all of her clothes and pulled them off the floor. They weren't heavy like they had been when she first left the water, but they were still damp and filled with moisture from the piles she had just left them in. Pulling them over to the fire, Weiss laid out all of her clothes on the opposite side of the pit, hoping to dry out her gear quickly. And as she laid out each piece of clothing, Weiss did inventory on all of her possessions.
Really, there wasn't much good news with her search. Sure she still had her clothes, but she was missing pretty much everything else. Weiss's pistol wasn't among the pile, and neither was her hunting knife. And every one of the blondes pockets were empty, save for a wadded up hunk of papers that Weiss identified as being her journal pages. The ink had all ran together, and the paper was almost unreadable. They could have been salvaged and dried out though, if Weiss took the time to save her diary pages.
Weiss Began to gently pull apart the pages, until a line from the letter caught her eye. "I don't feel as though I'm living... I'm just putting off my death". More of my defeatist attitude, huh? Well, I didn't need these anyway… they haven't done me any good. With a dispassionate flick of the wrist, Weiss threw the wet paper into the fire, and heard a few pops as the waterlogged paper's moisture evaporated in the heat.
Sitting back down again Weiss just stared into the fire while she waited for her clothes to dry. She really just wanted to put her shoes back on, so that she could walk around on the beach without feeling the pebbles dig into the bottoms of her feet. But that would take time, and with nothing better to do, Weiss leaned her head back and tried to fall asleep once again. It was a lot easier than she thought it would be.
When Weiss awoke again, the fire was still going, although it would probably run out of fuel again in the next few minutes. She still felt just as sore, and as she pulled herself up the cavern wall by divots in the stone, Weiss could barely keep herself standing. But she couldn't let herself fall, and after a moment to get herself together, Weiss straightened out to her full height and walked over to where her clothes had been laid out.
At least they were all dry, and as the blonde pulled on her winter clothes, she thought to herself what she could do next. Going back the way she came wouldn't be an option, as Weiss wouldn't be able to swim up such a strong current back to the surface. So she really had only two choices: stay and die... or move forward.
Ruby would hate me if I gave up now... after all we struggled through... but it would be so easy...
Fully clothed again, Weiss shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and turned away from her campsite, already dreading the next leg of her grueling journey. What if the path was a dead-end? What if she ran into obstacles she couldn't overcome alone?
How can I go by myself? I'll probably just die somewhere... trapped at a dead-end... lost in the dark...
Weiss shook her head, chasing those worries from her mind. The river had to let out somewhere, and that somewhere had to be better than here.
I can't know that... It will be quiet again, even quieter than with Ruby... I just can't go on by myself anymore...
But Weiss shut that inner voice down, and tried to lock it away, as deep as she could. As Weiss walked towards the large tunnel entrance, leaving the small semicircle of light that she had rested in behind, the blonde also tried to leave behind all of her doubt and fear. She wanted to leave behind her self-loathing, her self-doubt, her pessimism, everything negative that had brought her life to this point. Everything she now blamed for all the bad thing that had happened in her life. It was an irrational thought, but the more she pondered on it, the more Weiss realized she could draw back every mishap in her life to those emotions. They were anchors that Weiss had clung to. And she was sick of them.
It would be so easy to stop... I could just sit by the fire and daydream what time I have left away...
As the blonde traded the warm light of the fire for the soft cool glow of the tunnel moss, Weiss angrily mumbled to herself "I'm not allowed to quit anymore. Ruby may have given it to me, but it's my fate now, and it's mine to control."
I'm making a mistake... I'll just torment myself before I actually die starving at the bottom of a pit...
Now yelling, hearing her own voice reverberate off of the tunnel walls, Weiss angrily stated to the air "Ruby died for me." The realization hit her hard after she yelled it out and heard herself say it back a moment later. And any other day it would have destroyed the heiress to hear that. Any other Weiss would have been destroyed. But instead, all that cruel reality did was solidify her resolve. "Ruby died for me! And I am NOT wasting her sacrifice!"
Quieter this time, now that she was outside of the circle of campfire light, Weiss kept on talking to herself. "Yang blamed herself for what happened to Blake. Ruby blamed herself for what happened to Yang. I blame myself for what happened to Ruby…. But I'm not going to live like Ruby did. And I won't be like I was before. I have to keep going now, because Ruby would hate me if I quit now...like I always have before."
And with that, without any weapons or supplies, Weiss strode out of the cavern and into the tunnel, leading herself deeper and deeper into the bowels of the mountain.
Alright, so… if parts of this seem a bit repetitive, that's because I wrote about half of this before the last chapter, and about half of it after. So that's why Weiss drowning was in both. But, way more detail here! Which you may not like… but hopefully you do though.
So yeah, follow the story and comment, I always want constructive criticism or to hear any readers opinion. Thanks again, and I'll be updating soon!