Hey everyone! I'm not dead yet!
Enjoy the chapter, anyway.
He caught the scent much sooner than he caught the sounds of her. Both would've been obvious signs of exactly who was coming through the bushes. The sounds of someone else, and their scent too, was just another little extra he didn't even need before he promptly made his decision.
He dived into a bush and waited for Weiss Icicle Schnee and Ruby Cookie Rose to pass.
Not that he particularly disliked the two. Ruby had been very kind and compassionate to him, and even though she thought like the others that blinds weren't even able to live without a nurse, he was kinda okay with her. He and Weiss hadn't exactly argued during their first meeting, and he had to say he was impressed she had at least tried to prove why being a blind warrior was an oxymoron, instead of just labelling him as incompetent and moving on like many others had done. He was praying the Gods not to end up with Yang. The girl had the subtlety not of a charging Ursa, but of a stampeding herd of Goliaths on fire with Nevermores picking off the remains. The Faunus girl, Blake if he had heard right, wasn't exactly high on his list, either. She seemed to be really silent and introvert. He would not have been a good teammate for her. She needed someone to drag her out of her silence like Ruby and Yang had done the night before... Mmh, yes, she would definitely need Yang's bluntness.
And he wasn't trying to get his fellow blonde off his own back. Mostly.
The girl called Pyrrha Nikos seemed pretty famous, given how many had asked her an autograph, or a selfie, or anything, and he really didn't want too many people around. He would already have to live with a team of who knew how many. In the case the two of them partnered up, he would have to warn her to keep her fandom away from him, or said fandom could find itself flung through a wall. The two teenagers he had perceived on the train, the isolated ones... well, they boy seemed kinda okay. Jaune still had to hear his voice, so he probably was as laconic and introvert as he was. The girl, however... he shivered. She was a nightmare. Endless energy, cheerful and nonsenseful talk, and the will to pester everyone around her with it. Yeah, she was probably one of his worst nightmares.
Still, they were better than others.
He would just leave Beacon in the case he got partnered with the racist boy. Not just because of him, but because he already knew their team wouldn't work. Not in the slightest. He would probably end up expelled for having sent the boy through a couple of walls. And laughing while doing so. His temper wasn't the calmest thing of him, and although with his friends he was patient... that wasn't the case for his enemies. The man he had lived with for the last two years had been very clear about the second part. He had taught him to be always aware... or rather Jaune had learned to be always aware during the endless beatings he got from that man. To that day, he still had to land a hit on him, and he would probably never had the chance to.
Who knew, maybe teams were made up nine people and he would get them all in his team.
He paled and shivered. 'Oum, everything but not that', he prayed.
It wasn't that Jaune was so introvert and wary that he couldn't bear talking to people. It was just that he already knew he and his team would have many discussions on his status. If they were not-so-nice people, they would insult, belittle and try to intimidate him, and he would probably cause a brawl. If they were nice, they would try to keep him from doing anything, thinking that for a blind just sitting around would be better than to try and fail at doing other things because of his lack of sight.
When the man unlocked his Aura, Jaune had hoped for a Semblance to help him out with his lack of sight. Not for sight itself: he was fine without it, maybe even better off without it. He had wanted a Semblance like that so people would've stopped treating him like a `poor, unlucky blind boy`. Instead, he got some crazy kind of telekinetic Semblance, only working on metals. It was absurd. Weren't Semblances supposed to be somehow related to someone's personality? Why would his Semblance have anything to do with manipulating metals?
Mysteries of life.
In the forest, he heard movements, paired with a faint scent of bronze, sweat, fire and orange. Since they sounded and smelled alone, he just decided to let them stumble into him. After all, if eye contact was needed, that meant he could easily choose his partner... if he hurried to find one. Who knew how many had already been taken.
Pyrrha Nikos -of course it was her- was definitely surprised, if her confused `err...` was any indication, at finding him on her path, standing stock-still in the middle of the forest, not even looking her way. Her footsteps stopped for a second before she warily closed the distance, using her weapon -a sword, but not a very long one- to cut through the bushes. He had already put the machete he had been using back into its scabbard, but he was otherwise ready to walk away in case the girl didn't turn out to be a good partner.
"Ehm... hello?", she asked, somewhat awkwardly. That was expected. He was used to people get off-kilter at his sight. Probably something about the fact that he was dressed in something vaguely resembling a waiter's uniform. The black pants and white shirt were present, but over the shirt he wore a black leather armour, light and flexible. Not really enough to protect him from a serious swipe from a strong Grimm, but that was what Aura was for, right?
"I guess you haven't partnered up yet", he replied, turning just slightly to face her. He still hadn't removed his bandage, and with the combined darkness cast upon his face by both the hood and the tree's foliage even his lower face was barely visible. "My name is Jaune Arc. It's a pleasure to meet you".
"I'm Pyrrha", she answered his introduction, even though he already knew her name. "And no, I'm still to find a partner... but I guess now we are partners, right?".
"That is yet to be decided", he shrugged, and then cringed at how harsh it had come out. "I don't mean I wouldn't have you as partner, it's just... better to know if we can get along fine, or if we will try to kill each other by the end of the week".
"Oh", was all she said. From that alone, Jaune couldn't really understand if she had forgiven him for the harshness or not, but then she continued. "I guess that's okay... Although it's kind of a bit unfair for the others: they don't get to dec...".
She trailed off as both their scrolls began to ring. Jaune took his own out with a sigh and answered the call right away.
"Given your special circumstances, Mr Arc", said Ozpin's voice on the other end. "We decided to bend the rules a little. You are now Ms Nikos's partner".
He pocketed his scroll again, metaphorically staring off in the distance. 'Great', he thought. 'Let's just hope she's not like her Schnee friend... or even worse like Ruby's sister'.
"Seems like eye contact messed up and now you're stuck with me", he said wearily. He should've expected Ozpin to pull off something like that. There was a reason students couldn't choose their partners... although he failed to understand it. "Ozpin said so, at least".
"Stuck with you?", she asked in a slightly confused tone. "Why would I be stuck with you?".
He scowled. One thing was to kindly keep away from the issue, but pretending right away his blindness didn't bother her was something else altogether. "Just in case you haven't noticed, I can't see", he replied rigidly. "Surely the... what did Schnee called you?... four times winner of the Mistral-something tournament doesn't want to be stuck with a handicapped like me". He spat the word like venom. Far too many times he had heard that word thrown at him out of pity, wicked amusement or even just ignorance. He was blind, not handicapped.
"Didn't you say you can still fight?", she asked, and he could've sworn he heard some hesitation and a good dose of sadness in her voice. Oum alone knew why.
"Of course I can", he retorted, not at all softer. "But some people, namely everyone, thinks that being blind means being unable to take care of oneself".
"Then prove them wrong", she continued, and he laughed. Loud, long and bitter.
"And what do you think I've been doing since I first put on this bandage?", he shot back, unamused. "Sitting around? It's not about what you do. It's about what people think, and people won't change their ideas so easily".
"Well, you still haven't proved yourself to me", she replied, and he heard a vein of anger in her voice. She was getting riled up. "So instead of whining, why don't you show me...".
Before she could finish, a kris shot by her head and embedded itself in the tree behind her. He waited for her to process the action before walking past her and retrieving his kris. When he turned, she still hadn't moved. "Surprised? When I said I could fight you basing on your scent, your sounds and your movements, I wasn't joking".
"That knife flew an inch from my head", she said slowly. "How can you be so precise?".
Before answering, he walked up to her and put a gloved finger on her lips. He felt her stiffen, but he wasn't finished yet. "I can hear you speak, and so I can pinpoint your mouth", he explained before slowly moving his finger from her lips to the side of her head. "The human body is proportionate. I know at which height your mouth is, so I can imagine where the top of your head is, where the sides are, and were the rest of your body is. And that only if you're not moving or fighting. In that case, I can use other sounds to fight back".
"I've never heard someone explain something like that", she admitted, and he was satisfied to hear the trace of confusion replaced by understanding.
"You've never met a blind man", he replied without missing a beat. It wasn't that hard. Also, she was a Huntress in training. She was probably kept in contact only with the fittest people so to learn from them. It was difficult, otherwise, for her to be four times winner of the Mistral-something. "When you lose a sense, you make up with the others".
"Aren't you distressed at not seeing any more?", she asked warily. And she had every right to be, given the subject.
"I was two years ago... surely not now", he replied lightly, trying to keep the memories of that day flowing back to him.
"Get up", the man ordered, smirking when the boy stumbled to his feet. "Your will is surely strong... what a pity. It won't help you if you lack the strength to fight".
"I can fight", he replied, his breath ragged and coming in short gasps. "Continue".
"No, you can't fight any more", snickered the man. "I'd really like to just prove it to you, but I'd also like to keep you for a little longer. You're oh so amusing, boy".
"I can still fight", he retorted, tightening his grip on Crocea Mors. "As long as I can see you, I can still fight. When I will fall unconscious, that is when I won't fight any more".
"As long as you can see me? How foolish", laughed the man as he swatted his sword aside and entered the boy's personal space with a grin. "You can see me, but you can't fight me, boy. You're weak".
"I. Can. Fight", he growled back, trying to disengage and failing at that. "I'm not giving up".
"And that's your problem. Giving up means you get to live", said the man, his mirth suddenly gone. The boy tensed. Those were the moments in which the man really taught him something important, and often brutally. "As long as you don't lose something, you think that fighting is just a game. Let me remind you how wrong you are".
Jaune tried to step away from him, and tried to raise his shield in defence, but his limbs were too tired. The shield was merely kicked aside before a steel blade flashed at his face.
And then there was pain.
Blinding, agonizing pain burst from his eyes. Immediately dropping his weapons, he brought his bare hands to his face, only to find it drenched with blood. All he could see was the crimson of his own blood and the black of darkness. There was nothing else in the world. The pain was rising, tearing a scream after the other from him as he curled into a ball and tried to somehow lessen it. Ripping a strip of cloth from his shirt, he tried to wipe off the blood, but it just kept flowing, and his vision didn't clear up.
The man just watched it in silence, a tiny smirk on his face, as the boy finally lost consciousness.
Jaune shook himself. That had been two years prior, just a couple of months after he had met the man. Or rather, after the man had met him. That was past. He had to focus on the present.
"Jaune?".
"I was just lost in thought for a second", he replied, beginning to walk away, the girl following soon after. Somehow, his Semblance also let him know where the North was. Maybe it was something to do with North's magnetism, related to metals, related to his telekinetic Semblance. Not even Oum had all the answers, so it was normal that to a mere mortal even something like that was a mystery.
"How do you know it's this way?", she asked, and it made sense. She didn't know his Semblance.
"Dunno", he replied, shrugging. "Maybe it has something to do with my Semblance, or the fact I'm blind".
She made a sound of agreement before they both fell back into silence. It wasn't the `something awkward was said` kind of silence. It was more of a `got nothing more to say` silence. In that silence, they continued to walk toward the `abandoned temple` Ozpin wanted them to reach.
The forest wasn't too thick, at least for his own standards, so they weren't particularly slowed down, but the silence began to feel a bit too heavy to bear. Eventually, Pyrrha broke it.
"So... you kinda said you lost your sight two years ago", she said slowly, as if expecting him to lash out. "If you don't mind sharing...".
"I mind", he bit back angrily, and then sighed when she stiffened audibly. "Sorry, I'm not exactly used to sharing. It'll probably come out during the first month of school. Besides, it's not a good memory".
"Sorry for bringing it up", she said, and she sounded really sorry.
"It's not that much of a deal", he shrugged off her apology. "It taught me something and besides, it's not like moping around will give me my sight back".
"I'm sorry", she repeated, but he stopped her with a hand.
"You weren't the cause of this. If you were...". He thought about it for a second. "Well, probably right now I'd be either dead or running. You had no influence on what happened. You can be sorry only on what you did, not on what just happened".
"Was it a Grimm?", she asked, and it was his turn to stiffen.
"I guess that will come out on its own", he said, and resumed to walk North, Pyrrha in tow.
#####
Half an hour later, eight teens were arguing in the temple's clearing. Or rather, four of those teens were arguing, while three stared at them and one, unable to stare, laid on the grass, enjoying the warmth of the Sun's rays on his skin for as long as he could.
The subject of the argument was whether they needed to kill the Ursa Major a girl called Nora Valkyrie had ridden straight into the clearing, or use it as she had previously done. The poor Grimm, exhausted, could barely growl softly whenever the word `ride` came up again in the conversation. The four discussing it were Nora, Ruby and Yang for the `let's ride (growl) it back!` against Weiss for the `let's just kill him`. A Giant Nevermore, apparently one Ruby and Weiss had used as transport, was cawing loudly from the trees, but he wouldn't dare approach the eight teens without backup. He wasn't that stupid. Even mindlessness had a limit.
And said limit was a group of Huntsmen and Huntresses in training. They were even more dangerous than a group of experienced Huntsmen: they were incline to chase Grimm for fun way more than the adults.
The four who weren't arguing were instead enjoying the peace. Jaune was laying on the grass, the cat Faunus Blake had taken a book out of who knew where and was reading it, the boy who was oh so obviously paired with Nora, his name was Ren, was standing stock-still beside his partner, not saying a word, and Pyrrha was keeping an eye on the Ursa, that was so tired it couldn't even move. After a while, Weiss won the argument and Nora, ruefully, killed the Ursa. Jaune was almost sure he heard a sigh of relief coming from the beast, but he pushed the idea out of his head. Even Nora couldn't be that bad.
Right?
He shook his head as he heard someone sit beside him. Basing on the scent of bronze and orange scent, it was Pyrrha. "Hey", she just said, plopping down beside him.
"Hey", he replied, sitting up. "What do you want?".
"Do I need to have a purpose in order to talk to you?", she asked, friendly. "I just wanted to chat a little".
"What about?", he countered easily, checking his hood to keep it from showing his face. Since she was going to be his partner, she was probably going to see his scars, but he would delay the moment for as long as he could. Being pitied for his blindness was already enough. He surely did not want them to worry about his scars. He just hoped Ruby wasn't gonna end up in her team. "Sorry, but for the time being I'm not keen on talking of my past".
"I... It's okay", she said, a little saddened by his response. "I... I just wanted to know why do you keep your hood always up... I mean, I know you're blind but... it shouldn't make any difference, should it?".
He turned to `look` at her. Maybe he would show her beforehand, after all. She was going to know just the same, and maybe it was better if she saw his scars not all at the same time. Especially because his face wouldn't have been the worst off, hadn't his eyes been damaged like that. "I could show you, if you want", he said. His plan was moderately dangerous but, hey, she was bound to see his scars soon in any case. If he had to receive pity, he might as well get on with it. "Just try not to be too obvious when commenting. I'm showing only you, just because you're my partner".
"O-Okay", she agreed warily, waiting for him to move.
The first thing he did was to remove his bandage, letting the heavy cloth fall on his lap. His face was still covered. He could still go back, say he wasn't ready yet, or some other crap like that. She would've probably believed it. Heck, she would've probably felt sorry for having caused him to be uncomfortable. He had known her for less than an hour, and he already knew she was of the type who apologized for everything. She would probably apologize for his scars, too, or for having pushed him into revealing them.
With a deep breath, he threw the hood back, exposing his face.
#####
Pyrrha could honestly say she had never seen scars like those on a person before.
She had met people with many scars, horrible scars and frightening scars before. Her own parents had a few scars. She herself had her fair share of small scars from her training, and basically all the students at Sanctum had their own. All the Huntsmen she had met had scars to remember them that they were untouchable. Not even Vero Tear, a son of a bitch and her greatest rival in the ring, had been spared by the inevitable signs of training.
All of that paled to what she was saw on Jaune's face.
His scars were many, and they were terrible, but what caught her attention the most was that they looked inflicted by a blade, and so by a person. Someone had maimed the boy so horribly. She had always had the childish idea that a scar on the face could only be the ever-famous diagonal scar from temple to chin, but she was oh so wrong.
Jaune's scars were everywhere on his face.
The horror wasn't that he didn't have unblemished patches of skin, but that the scars didn't look clean. They looked rough and ruptured, as if they had healed naturally, without any kind of treatment. And some of them were far too wide to have just been slashed open. Some of those scars had been worked on. Whoever had done that had taken the time to inflict large wounds and passing time and again on the old ones.
A single horizontal scar was all what was left of the obviously terrible wound that had blinded the boy. It ran from side to side, a line of harder and rougher flesh on his otherwise smooth skin. It would've been whiter, too, but with his bandage and hood always on, his face was already ghostly white.
All other kinds of scars ran across his face. His lips were cut twice by two different scars, one almost at the left corner of his mouth and the other just a bit to the right of the middle of his lips. A scar on his cheek seemed large enough to indicate that the wound that had caused it had actually hacked through, cutting the flesh open. He had literally found a blade in his mouth without having parted his lips. Her stomach recoiled as she stifled a whimper. He was obviously her own age, so he must've been even younger when that happened. 'Two years', her mind supplied. 'He said he lost his sight two years ago'. He had been fifteen at the time.
What kind of monster could do that to a child? She shivered. Jaune didn't seem mentally broken, and she thanked whatever God had been watching over him for that, but his appearance wasn't the one of a normal seventeen-year-old boy any more. Whoever had done that, she would find. Jaune was her partner now, right? Then she would find whoever had maimed a child so horribly, and they would pay for that. She was the Invincible Girl, after all, the Goddess of Victory.
The Goddess of Victory then felt curious.
"J-Jaune?", she whimpered, her voice shaking audibly. "C-Can you... o-open your e-eyes?".
For a long moment, she thought he would refuse. He just stood still, not moving, and not saying a word. The seconds ticked away, and he remained in silence, and she was sure her words had pissed him off. 'Of course', she berated herself with a pained grimace. 'He's blind. Way to go, Pyrrha Nikos'.
And then he slowly opened his eyes and stared at her.
His eyes were... strange. Not in the blind kind of strange. First of all, they weren't white. They looked completely normal. Of a blue so deep she felt as if she could fall into it and drown into the ocean in his eyes, his eyes behave strangely. He blinked slowly, too slowly, and his eyes weren't, like most, continually shifting fractionally, taking in thousands of details every time. His eyes were set on her face, unconsciously meeting her own green ones. They would've been incredibly handsome, on a normal boy. On his scarred face, they felt wrong. They were devoid of the harshness his skin had. They felt off. As if someone had replaced his true eyes with a child's.
His abnormally slow blinking, his eyes' steady gaze and the fact that he did not react at all when she grimaced at him proved he couldn't see her. To him, she was just a voice, a scent, some sounds, and a personality. She had no visual description. If he had to describe her to someone, he would use everything but visual characteristics. She filled up with sorrow. He couldn't see all the colours, all the shades, all the marvellous things in the world.
On the other hand, he didn't treat anyone differently just because of their looks. Pyrrha didn't know if to feel sad about what happened to him, or to feel proud he had endured it and found strength in it. In the end, she opted for both.
"I'm sorry", she said quietly, screwing her eyes shut to avoid the moistness in them to become tears but her voice, muffled by the lump she felt in her throat, gave her away.
Her eyes snapped open again when she felt a hand cupping her cheek and making her look at him. The expression on his face was a mixed one. Idly, she wondered how he could've maintained such facial expressiveness with the fact he kept it hidden most of the time. His eyes and light smile were soft, but there was pain hidden behind them, she could tell. She had long learned how to see past façades.
"You weren't the one who did this", he told her calmly. "And you can't do anything about it. Let it go. If I managed it, you surely can".
She finally found the strength to nod, and he got the message since his hand was still on her cheek. He retrieved it a second later to tie the cloth back on his eyes, hiding his ocean-deep eyes from sight again.
Then he pulled his hood up, and he was a shadow yet again.
I hate having already reached my 50 documents limit in my account. Ah, well, I guess I was bound to. And yes, Vero Tear and his Team TTNN (Titan) will show up.
I make no promises on what will happen.
Until next time,
Khor Evik Vlakhavlakh