Chapter 6: I'm Sorry

A/N: Hello readers! I'm back! I think that you'll like this chapter. I don't know why. I just got a feeling, you know? Also, just about half of the chapter is comedy, so yeah. Thanks again to KodaTheBeaver for the inspiration for the canon of events. I was actually thinking of following up on "Amnesiac" with something like a combo of that and the Player-choice driven game, Life is Strange. I felt like I just needed to do that, since it could totally work, what with the whole "Semblance" thing I could do with it. It fits as if they were pieces of the same puzzle. I just need to get Koda's permission first. I'll write it after I finish this story so don't worry about it. Thanks guys.

Once again, the regulars at the campfire were surrounding it again. Only this time, they were without a storyteller.

"So," said one who couldn't bare the silence, "Do any of us want to share a story?"

"Uh…Okay. One time, I tripped on a cat and twisted my ankle. I was drunk. Or at least, I'm not sure I was because I can actually remember what happened."

As the members shared their stories of woe and doom because of pets and alcohol, a small figure with a hood over its head walked toward the group from the bottom of the hill they were set upon. The guard, who was watching the perimeter had noticed this and pointed everyone to the source of the faint thumping noises coming from the east.

"Hey, is anyone else worried that the beige grim reaper is heading right toward us?"

No one responded.

The guard closed his eyes.

He opened them again, and all he saw were a pair of dark brown eyes staring back at him.

"Who are you!?" the guard shouted, obviously frightened out of his mind.

"Shhh-shh. I don't want to surprise your friends. I'm just as scared as you are. I won't hurt you. I haven't been able to ever physically hurt someone. Emotionally, however, I can do. And I can do that very well. Some people were grieving me before I had even died."

"So then I was all like 'giiiirl, whatchoo talkin abou'."

"I don't know. What are you all here for?"

All those who were new to the zombie apocalypse equivalent of the midnight society backed off, well away from the hooded figure. The others had recognized who had come. Their new storyteller.

"Happy Easter," the hooded figure said, rather cheerily.

"The f*** are you talking about?" asked one man in a slightly very much more saddened tone.

Not responding, the hooded figure threw its hood off, revealing brown, shining hair with eyes to match and a pair of awkwardly hanging rabbit ears, one of them slightly askew due to a long time under the hood.

"So? How about I share in your stories?"

"No, no…Go ahead, we want to hear yours. 'Flower' just ran off after she left us all with just, 'Vac-U' and, 'Easter's coming early.' Oh…Wait. Now I get it. Right, because the…Yes! It all makes sense now!"

"Lower your voice, man. I know you all need to shout just to hear yourselves, but please, remember who and what is with you here." She said, gesturing toward both her sets of ears.

So, Vac-U. Vacuo University. Lucky us, we had come prepared. We all had horses. Well, almost all of us. Ruby had to ride a donkey. She was in a tizzy about it for a long time.

"Why would you ever want something with a mind of its own bobbing up and down repeatedly with you on its back?" She'd say.

"C'mon. You know you always wanted to do this with me," I said before speeding in front of her and meeting with the rest of the group.

"Where's the fire?" Ruby said in a sort of dizzy, disoriented tone.

"You'll get used to it!" I shouted happily back to her.

"You Damn Scarlet Velveteena!" I kind of felt sorry. She sounded drunk, she was so dizzy.

I ended up having to balance her, lying down across the back of my horse on top of the saddlebags. She fell asleep as soon as I set her down.

I said more to myself than I did to her, "I'm sorry about that."

We made it to Vac-U with Ruby sleeping like a baby on the back of my horse. We got off at the entrance to the parking lot and tied our horses to a lamppost. I tried to wake Ruby, but she wouldn't budge. She just laid there. I had to carry her. It was all funny, embarrassing, and also very pleasant, even though on a rare occasion, she would whisper in her sleep. It was sort of normal until she was dreaming about me. I heard her whisper my name, then she'd make these weird sighing noises and then I looked back and she was pretty much a tomato for a head, and a normal body…I had to keep an eye on her to see if this was a recurring thing.

We had made it to the main campus when we saw a very familiar sight. The Schnee family's crest. A bluish-white snowflake patterned coat of arms.

"Oh no. I don't think that this is going to end well," I said, nervously holding onto Ruby tighter.

"Ouch. Velvet? Why are you…"I heard Ruby trail off.

"What's wrong, Ruby? Are you embarrassed?"

"Oh. I see. That's the tone we're going for. Huh."

"You know, you whisper in your sleep?"

"What?"

"Yep. You went on about some things I didn't quite understand, and then you said my name, sighed a bunch, and then turned the same shade of red as your cloak."

"Uh-oh…I don't really know for sure, Velvet. I wonder what that could possibly mean."

"Well then," I said, half surprised, half expecting it, "I didn't know you swung that way. Are you like one of those lopsided pendulums?"

"Shut up, Velvet," she said bitterly. I knew she meant it in an endearing way though.

"Thank you."

We came upon a large arch. On top of it, it said in grimy, silver letters, "Dormitories and Recreational Park."

I was along with everyone else until I saw a figure in white standing by the fountain. She bowed her head in sorrow before I saw a single tear drop from her face. I told everyone else to stay back.

"Hello?" I questioned shakily, "Um…Weiss? Hello? Ms. Schnee?"

"They…they're all…all of them, they're…"

"What? Who is what?"

"They're all dead! Mom, Dad, Winter, all of them! They're dead. Gone. The most I can hope is to see them shambling around on the street. I can't do it. I can't even think about it. Help me. Please," the poor girl had turned to sob into my arms as I told her I would help. As far as I could tell, she seemed fine. At least, physically fine. Definitely not emotionally. I picked her up and swung her arm over my shoulder.

"Weiss, walk with me."

"…I'm sorry."

I walked her over to the rest of my companions, where she was rested on a bench. I talked in private with my friends.

"She seems healthy, nothing big to remark on except a couple scratches on her arm and her eye scar. The scratches look too small to be a bite. Probably either knife or nails. Her family is now infected, so she's in a state of emotional shock. I told her I would 'help them along,' so when she wakes up, make sure to leave that subject where it already broke down in a ditch."

I trudged around the halls of the dormitory building. It was a lot like one of those really suspenseful parts when the main character of a horror film is in the between zone of "are they going to live," or, "are they going to end up a mound of flesh sitting in a bloody sink with their spirit forever haunting the washroom mirror."

I checked from door to door, looking through the door's eyehole and placing my ear against the door to listen to the noise possibly coming from the inside. I heard something resembling a muffled, yet angry, "Help me," and immediately made my way to the sound.

A darker door than all the other's had shown itself, along with the Schnee company symbol on it. I heard the angry "Help me" more clearly now. I looked through the eyehole in the door and found a red eye with strange, yellow pupils looking straight back out at me. I jumped back, letting out a shrill squeak as I did. If the apocalypse didn't kill me, the jumpscares in it would. I slowly opened the door a crack and looked in. I saw a tall, yet hunched man, a tall woman with straight, snowy white hair and a short, gray haired girl with a small sword just barely hanging from her hand.

"Well…Welcome to the family," I said to myself in an attempt at dark humor.

A silver rapier was laying there at the doorstep. I picked it up, reminding me of the way I saw Weiss practice her fencing.

I thought to myself, "You can do this. Right foot forward, shoulders back, elbows bent, chin up. Wait for an attack…" But the attack never came. They stayed standing, like they were when I entered the room. I decided, "I'm sorry Weiss. I'll have to do it Ruby's way."

I took out an old switchblade. The tall one, the man, was easy. One in the back of the head and he was done. The woman, she shambled off to a corner and fell over. I felt bad. I felt like I was killing people and not those mindless sods. The kid though, she was the worst. She yelled and ran and the best I could get in on her was a large swipe across the arm. She ended up chasing me around the dorm hallways until she bled out. She was screaming by that time. She stopped before me after a slow crawl across the floor of what ironically was her dorm room. To this day, I still feel horrible about it.

I walked back to the outdoors to be greeted by my friends…minus Weiss and Lumin. I asked them what had happened.

"Weiss got into an argument with Lumin and stormed off into that trailer," said Blake.

"Well? Did any of you check on her at least?"

"Lumin went over to the trailer to try and apologize."

"Wonder why it's so quiet?"

"Not really…Why?"

"I'll show you in a minute. Just…Someone find me a gun."

I ran to the trailer, pistol in hand. I climbed on top of it, opened the escape hatch at the roof of it, and silently dropped in. In front of me, I saw a red eyed Weiss.

She stood there, not a word, not a sound, nothing. I took up my gun, seeing the intent to kill slowly return to her eyes.

"I'm sorry."

With the trigger pulled and the bullet now free, it made its way to the dark recesses of sadness that had become Weiss's mind through its own entrance at the point where the bridge of her nose met her forehead. It made a single, straight shot through her head, instantly dispatching the monster that Weiss had become. She fell in a pile on the floor. I looked behind me and I saw a sight I really did not want to see. I saw a bleeding Fox-man sitting in the driver's seat, holding his own neck.

I asked him what he wanted me to do.

"I'm sorry."

That was all he said.

He slumped over in his seat and I prepared my gun to shoot what he would soon become, but he never turned. We both sat there for a full two hours. Nothing. That's both what happened and what I had been feeling at that moment. Nothing.

"I'm sorry."

I was.

"I'm sorry."

First Weiss, then Lumin.

"I'm sorry."

I am too.