Beta'd by: Mishie, Apoc, OllieK.
Chapter 3
"Go fish," Weiss snarled, throwing down her hand in disgust. A delicate shade of pink had risen to her cheeks, the only sign that she'd been drinking at all. Her pale white fingers ghosted over the neck of one of the bottles. She snatched it up and carefully filled a shot glass (courtesy of the one and only Yang Xiao-Long, who would definitely keep that sort of thing in her dorm room).
Yang's room was, like every room in the freshman dorm, spacious and inviting. The majority of the floor was carpeted and large windows looked out over the university proper. Beacon was well designed in that way - students walked downhill to get to class and uphill to get back to their dorms.
There was a haphazard symmetry that divide the room between Ruby and Yang. The sisters preferred to do schoolwork facing away from one another. Ruby's desk had a shameless stack of cookie packages of all kinds. Yang's had a printer and next to it, rested one of Weiss's bottles, which looked at home next to the cups full of pens and pencils.
Both bottles had been opened at some point even though we weren't a third of the way through either of them. Yang got a little sloppy like that when she was drunk.
Weiss threw back the shot with a vengeance and coughed lightly. Ruby, who was unfairly skilled at games of all kinds, smirked at her from the bed, where she lay on her side, bending and snapping the cards between her finger. Weiss rolled her eyes helplessly.
It was nearly ten pm and we'd been engaged in a Friday afternoon favorite - doing nothing. We ate microwave dinners and slurped at cup ramen. Weiss perused a docket of news sites and Ruby searched the internet for conspiracy theories. Yang and I were pulled back and forth between the two. I read the tidbits with a vague dread in the pit of my stomach despite my attempts to stay optimistic, while Yang tried her best not to repeat a single pun. Neither of us were particularly successful.
Together, we watched videos on the internet of people banding together to fight the Grimm. Some of them were grainy little animated gifs and some of them were campy, shoddily edited music videos with quotes about the human condition prefacing them.
Weiss knew the words to all of the songs.
Inevitably, the tasteless parody videos arrived. I loved them and so did Yang. It made it seem like everything was going to be fine, even as I remembered that voice that hadn't led me astray yet - the voice that told me the Grimm were infinite.
And we drank.
It had almost become ritualistic by this point. Yang would pretend to be unsure about letting Ruby play drinking games with us and I would pointedly ask her what she'd been doing when she was sixteen. As usual, Yang relented gracefully - with a fresh story about the 'crazier' years of her life.
Because Ruby won nearly all the games, it fell on her to enforce the actual consumption of alcohol. Well, only I really needed any encouragement. Ruby became more and more lax as the hours passed - out of foresight rather than mercy. I hated to admit it, but my nickname was rooted in some sort of greater truth. What my digestive tract demanded was law and I had a history of trouble with the law.
I stared at Weiss who, on the other hand, was a model citizen. She'd come out behind in every category which wasn't entirely a game of chance to the younger girl. Weiss worked her way through maybe three-quarters of the liquor consumed so far without looking any worse for wear.
Weiss found a particularly pleasant direction to sway in.
Okay, maybe she was a little drunk.
Yang had elected to stop playing a while ago. Instead, she was guzzling spiced rum straight from the bottle she'd stashed under her bed for emergencies. She'd come up with an excuse to recolonize the bed, summarily relegating me to her rolling computer chair. Weiss was perched on a huge red bean bag with her knees tucked under her. Her back stayed straight even though she was navigating the soft seat like a naval officer in a storm.
I kicked at the ground.
"Stop spinning, Jaune, you're making me dizzy," moaned Ruby.
"Jaune!" Yang barked.
It was too late for me. I shouldn't have ever chosen the rolly chair. If I stopped now, I'd probably throw up. But if I didn't, everyone else would throw up. I slowed to a halt and waited for the beginnings of nausea to creep up on me.
"Oh god, why?" I muttered towards the heavens as a spike of dizziness cut at me. My eyes found the poster of the Backstreet Boys that Yang had somehow stuck to the ceiling.
Yang's eyes flew up to the poster and then back to me. She smiled like a Cheshire cat. "Looks like," she paused, collecting her thoughts, then losing all semblance of volume control. "You didn't want it that way," she finished triumphantly.
I hated Yang Xiao-Long.
Weiss turned to look at the completely unapologetic Yang in mute horror but I knew the worst was yet to come.
"Looks like drinking," Yang said, her smirk widening even further, "Ain't nothing but a mis-"
Ruby pushed herself up and shrieked in disbelief and anger without forming a coherent word.
Yang looked between my anger, Ruby's exasperation and Weiss's horror, completely satisfied.
"That was so bad, I think I need to throw up," Ruby said.
She turned green. "Actually. I know I need to throw up," she said. Ruby covered her mouth and made a dead run for the bathroom.
Yang's eyes widened comedically. "I didn't think it was bad enough to-"
I pointed at the bathroom door, my eyes glinting dangerously. She followed Ruby into the bathroom wordlessly. The door creaked shut, leaving me alone with Weiss. We looked at each other, with some amusement.
Weiss was an interesting girl. My family was firmly upper middle class and I'd known people who had money back at home. But Weiss was something else entirely. She was wealthy in the way that changed the world.
Schnee Corporation had been one of those businesses that had started as an arms manufacturer, with an appropriately sullied name in the history books - if anyone cared. They produced bullets and bullet casings for the Third Reich. When Germany lost the Second World War, the company had been lucky enough to find themselves west of the Berlin Wall.
Nowadays, there was barely a first world country that the corporation didn't sell oil or natural gas in. They floated towards the top of Fortune 500 without fail, year after year. Reading that magazine was how I learned, long before I'd even seen Weiss, that a known quirk of the company was the ludicrous controlling interest that the Schnee family itself still held.
One day, this interest would be passed onto the slightly wasted International Business major in front of me, who was lounging on Ruby's bean bag and picking her way through a Lunchable.
The surreality of who the girl was served only to make the silence more awkward.
"I don't think we've ever been properly introduced," Weiss said at last. She smiled. It looked like something that a politician would practice in a mirror before a photoshoot.
"I'm Jaune Arc," I said, extending my hand to her. She made a motion to stand, but, being the gentleman I was, I rolled over to her. She took my hand lightly but her handshake was firm. The smile stayed cold.
"Weiss." There was the sound of running water coming from the bathroom. "Weiss Schnee," she corrected after a pregnant pause. The words took on a similar timbre to 'Intel Computing', 'Dow Jones' or 'Miracle of Modern German Engineering'. She brushed an errant strand of hair away from her face.
"I met you on the first week," I said. I regretted my words immediately.
Weiss dissected me with her gaze and then there was a flash of recognition. "You!" Her left hand flew to her mouth. "You were that boy serenading people outside of the bar with a guitar," she accused. The hand dropped to her side, limply.
My breathing hitched just a notch. "Uh, yeah," I admitted. "I was- It wasn't…" I struggled. "It wasn't my finest moment."
I thought back on the night and found a shred of defensiveness. "My guitar playing was alright," I protested.
She tilted her head at me, her eyes narrowing. "You were leaning against a fire hydrant, vomiting all over the street and telling people to call you Don Juan."
And so I had. The mortification came thick and fast and unrelenting. I could feel the flush on my cheeks getting worse and worse until something broke.
I chuckled.
Weiss smiled widely, flashing a set of pearly white teeth and giggled softly as she poured herself another drink.
It hit ten pm. On the dot, CNN came on, replacing the notice from the Department of Homeland Security on the large flatscreen TV screen with the evening news, bringing us crashing back to reality. There was only one story, after all.
I heard the sound of Ruby (or maybe Yang) retching in the bathroom.
My thoughts wandered to the more serious side of things. "My parents didn't pick up earlier," I said, tuning out the broadcast.
Weiss shrugged, unsure as to how to comfort me. Yang would have probably told me not to worry - that one of those larger Grimm we saw in the videos probably took out some landlines.
"Did yours?"
Weiss didn't answer me. Her eyes were glued onto the screen but her hands, clutching a shot of vodka, had acquired a shakiness.
"I don't speak to them often," she ground out. If I hadn't been drunk, I would have known better than to press her on the issue. I didn't know better.
"Why not?"
Weiss turned away from the TV to give me a look that plainly asked 'who the fuck do you think you are?', but she answered me anyway. "It's pointless."
She threw down the shot.
"My father…" she trailed off. Anger splotched at her cheeks. "He didn't even come to my album release."
I'd forgotten that little bit of trivia about her. Weiss Schnee had been famous for more than just her family. She'd sold lots and lots of music. I hoped she never discovered that I'd pirated my copy of On the Wall.
"I specifically asked the label to drop it during one of his vacations."
She pushed herself to her feet and strode over to Yang's desk and placed the empty shot glass down forcefully.
"It was a bad album anyway," she muttered.
Not according to Rolling Stone.
"But that's not the point," she said, gritting her teeth as she stomped back over to the beanbag and dropped her weight onto it with a thump. "It's not like he's given me a call."
"And your mother?"
"Dead," she said shortly, forgetting her tirade. "It's alright," she said brusquely, in the manner of all prepared statements. "It's only fair of you to assume. You couldn't have possibly known."
Why did I ever open my mouth?
"It wasn't my place to ask," I said, trying to apologize.
Weiss ignored me, turning her attention back to the television.
There was the sound of more vomiting before the bathroom door flew open with a bang.
"Nothing to see here, officer," Yang slurred, dragging out Ruby by the hand. "Carry on!"
She led Ruby out of the bathroom and picked her up by the waist and dumped the younger girl into her bed like a sack of potatoes. She let out a heavy breath.
"It's ten!" Yang announced.
Weiss pulled her jacket out from under Ruby, who rolled onto her side in acquiescence.
"Off to the bar, then!" Yang shouted.
I winced.
"I want to go too," Ruby protested, muffled by her pillow. She burped into it.
Yang shook her head. "You're way too drunk right now. And as your older sister-"
"Come on, there's no harm in it," I said. "Just make sure she doesn't have anything but beer."
Ruby turned over to look at Yang hopefully but Yang was resolute. "You need to stay in bed right now, Ruby Rose. Try to sleep. If you can't, play some Counterstrike or something."
Ruby furrowed her brow. "I barely ever get to go out," she whined, sounding her age. "They haven't even checked IDs since November. Just our Beacon University card!"
"You can have the rest of my rum," Yang decided, cutting her off before Ruby could rant. "Don't get too crazy."
With that, she locked arms with me and Weiss and dragged us out of her room, closing the door behind her.
Yang's dorm room was on the first floor of the building, thankfully. If she'd needed to climb up a flight of stairs every time she came back at night, she'd probably have a broken neck by this point.
We were hit by a blast of chilled air as we made our way outside.
"Why didn't you let Ruby come with us?" I wondered. I'd been a little too overwhelmed with the rigors of putting my jacket on to protest more on her behalf even if I disagreed with Yang's judgment on the situation.
But instead of waving away my concerns and telling me the same thing she'd told Ruby - the responsible thing, Yang chose not to answer.
She let go of us and stalked ahead, glaring at the pavement.
"It's the end of the world, Yang," I said, keeping pace with her in a half-run. "She deserves to have some fun before the bars close for good."
Yang continued to ignore me. When we passed a copse of bushes, she gave one a hearty wallop, sending chunks of ice everywhere.
"Yang?"
Weiss caught up with us, hanging back. Yang was in a strange mood. She was rarely ever this standoffish, especially with me.
Yang stomped onto the concrete. Her winter boots made satisfying thunks.
"She shouldn't even be here," Yang said at last, slowing her pace down.
Wisely, Weiss didn't say a word. She must have realized that her presence itself was intruding on a private moment. Sure, she was friends with Yang, but it was plain from all those chemistry classes that Yang spent messing with me that this was something for my ears only.
"Why not?"
Yang lapsed back into silence. I began to count the patches of ice on the ground that we passed, waiting.
"It's just…" Yang hummed to herself, thinking. "I love my sister," she said, like it was a given constant in a math problem.
"Of course." I didn't doubt it in the slightest. Sometimes it felt like there was never a time when Yang didn't think of Ruby.
We were passing the campus quad now. It was mostly deserted but ahead of us and behind us I could see little groups making their way towards the bars. The sight of the clock tower seemed to trigger something in her.
"When I went off to college, I chose this place because I wanted the Beacon Experience. You know, the shitty catchphrases Dean Ozpin put on the brochure that read like they should be written in Comic Sans."
I nodded. Weiss did as well, out of the corner of my eye.
"They gave me less money than Dartmouth and I'm basically the UCLA stereotype, right?" she smiled, confident and sure. "But Beacon alums are all so glamorous. Because of this." She swept her arms around, referencing the world that surrounded us.
There was a reason why we attracted the interesting ones - the ones who already had achievements. While Yang and I were in the sure majority, the fact of the matter was that the concentration of people like Weiss and Ruby were much higher than average. I wasn't sure if my nearly stellar grades would have made the cut had my high school not fudged them by overweighing honors courses.
"When I applied, I thought I was going to show up here and have the first-year roommate from hell, like everyone else. I was going to party like…"
She chortled.
"Like the world was ending."
I understood.
"But the only way Dad was going to let Ruby go off to Uni was with me. And surprise, Ruby's got a full scholarship!" There was no jealousy in her voice but that only serve to dull the distinct touch of bitterness a little.
"Hey," I said, in my most reassuring voice, throwing my arm around her as we walked past the quad and onwards to the gates. "Look at it like this," I said, smiling. "If she didn't come here with you, then this whole thing would be a lot worse."
It seemed that I just couldn't find the right things to say tonight. Yang huffed loudly. "Don't you think I know that?"
I grimaced.
"That's what makes this so fucked up to begin with! I love my sister," she repeated for emphasis. "This is the best possible way this whole thing could have turned out, given what's happened."
I sighed and thought that it would be best if I didn't say anything.
"Why am I such a shitty older sister?" Yang asked either me, herself or god.
"You're not." Weiss.
Yang turned to her, blushing in anger and embarrassment, only just remembering that I wasn't the only person walking with her.
Weiss wasn't done. "If Ruby didn't come to college with you, you wouldn't have carried Jaune back to your dorm," she said. "No offense." She gave me a once over. "You would have spent the whole time calling her, asking where she was. Making sure she was okay." There was a hard edge to her voice.
Yang shrugged. "Who knows."
"I wish my older sister were like you," Weiss said so quietly that I couldn't be sure that I hadn't imagined it.
We didn't speak anymore and the bad mood quickly evaporated as we drew closer to the bar. A bunch of upperclassmen that Yang knew crowded around us and began asking us inane questions about whether or not we were enjoying our time here, carefully avoiding the topic of the Grimm.
~Fictional~
Ruby was right.
There wasn't even a bouncer out in front to check whether or not we were actually University students at the Mother Goose that night.
The Mother Goose was accustomed to doing good business on Fridays. It ran on a very specific business model that involved a cover charge to ensure that people weren't just using the bar as a space to socialize. Normally, by this point at night, the tables and chairs over the dance floor would be cleared out and an up-and-coming local DJ would play. He took requests grudgingly.
Tonight, however, the bar was packed beyond belief and the DJ was nowhere to be seen. The news played up overhead instead of a football game and, for once, everyone in sight was drinking. Every part-time worker had been called in to serve the patrons.
Despite the better service and brighter lighting, there was something aggressive and angry in the atmosphere which Yang picked up on instantly.
"What's going on?" I asked. I'd never seen the bar like this before.
She drew me close. "Lots of people died today," she explained by way of whisper.
I could see one of Cardin's friends in a corner with a pile of empty beer bottles on the small rounded table where he sat alone. Russell, that was his name. He was pointedly staring at his drink and held it in a death grip. The bartender was thoughtful enough to have the beers delivered straight to him. I figured that Russell had been here for a while tonight. He handed a wad of bills to one of the workers.
Yang, who was the most used to the currents and directions of a bar crowd dragged me and Weiss along by the hand and somehow navigated up into a suddenly empty barstool in less than a minute. The distance could be counted in tens of people.
Sometimes it really paid to party with Yang Xiao-Long.
"Junior!" she cried out, using what I'd call her flirty voice. It was a little higher pitched and grabbed the attention of everyone around us. "I've got a hero over here who needs a grown-up drink!"
Yang was always patronizing enough to make everyone smile without offending anyone.
The man paid her personal attention. "A hero?" he asked, sizing me up with dark eyes. "What'd he do?"
Yang leaned forward conspiratorially, lowering her voice just enough so that the large, middle-aged man had to lean in as well. "He fought a Grimm who broke into our chem exam. By himself."
Junior nodded appreciatively, his eyes still on me. I could tell that he was humoring her for show.
"And he beat the shit out of it," she said, her smile widening.
"One on the house then," Junior said, his gaze lingering on Yang's midriff. "The usual for you?"
Yang nodded and pointed at Weiss, who smile mechanically but prettily.
The drinks came and went. Unlike a normal day at the bar with Yang, very few people actually approached us. Junior had, by popular demand, turned up the volume on the news and it captured the attention of everyone who wasn't drowning out their sorrows.
With its usual lack of tact, CNN was now approaching the segment in which they discussed death tolls. They used large holographic screens that the anchor showed only passing familiarity with.
A large map of the United States appeared on the screen with garish font running across the top which proclaimed DISASTERWATCH.
I was surprised there weren't any exclamation points.
The anchor explained the unfailingly obvious color key which determined the number of deaths in each region. Shaded dark red were the cities - where the most people had died. Yellow and green colored the more rural areas, usually correlated to population density. The general location of Vale was yellow.
It looked like they had reused a map that last described the severity of a winter storm.
To my eternal pride, mostly everyone in the bar was a decent human being - staring at the screen with a sort of fixed disgust, not only at the events but at their presentation.
"Can't watch this anymore," Yang shouted over the din. Her arm snaked out and found Weiss. "Gotta use the bathroom. Keep my seat warm, Jaune," she ordered.
It was nearly twelve - the time in the night when the amount of people leaving and entering the bar was nearly at equilibrium.
"Hey Jaune," said a voice I would have had a much easier time recognizing if I weren't so deep into my cups.
"Pyrrha," I muttered. A shock of deep red hair hit me in the face as I turned around.
Of course, she noticed. "Oh, sorry!" she cried out. "How are you feeling?"
She was nursing a beer and looked like a girl out of a story. A glossy nail scratched behind an ear.
"Wish I had some cereal right now," I muttered, saying the first thing that came to mind.
The perpetual smile on her face eased a little. "Are you hungry?"
I shook my head, realizing it was an invitation to leave with her. "Nah, ate a bunch before I showed up." I pulled my missing companion's drinks closer. "We've been here for a while, just drinking a little and watching the news. I'm playing watchdog," I joked, pointing at the drinks.
The smile slipped a little. Pyrrha watched with me. Thankfully the anchors moved onwards from the death tolls and started talking about where the Grimm could have come from.
"They don't have any answers," Pyrrha said, gulping at her beer. "Just that they come from somewhere and the mist shows up before they do and it gets really, really cold."
She'd been in the chemistry classroom with me.
"Look at them, they're trying so hard to give us some kind of scientific explanation for all of this that doesn't sound like a conspiracy theory," she said. It wasn't mocking - Pyrrha wasn't ever like that. Her matter-of-fact tone, however, made it all the worse.
The word rang in my head again. Infinite. Were we as the human race truly resourceful enough to survive even this? I searched deep for some kind of humanism and thought of the people I'd met at Beacon.
Pyrrha.
I turned to her but she was gone. In her place stood Weiss Schnee, who nearly sprawled onto me. I found that I liked the feeling.
"Where did Yang go?" I wondered.
Weiss pointed in the other girl's general direction. Yang was talking to a bunch of people I didn't know, as she was wont to do.
"She doesn't see it," Weiss said.
"Pardon?" I looked back at her. I'd hit a plateau in my drunken state that I was comfortable with. It was highly functioning and I was unlikely to vomit. A pleasant buzz encircled my senses and motion was eminently confusing.
Weiss, who'd drank maybe three times as much as I had, was far beyond that point. Her ponytail was more disheveled than I'd ever seen it and her little golden crucifix swung back and forth like a pendulum suspended by her long, white neck. Her eyes darted to and fro, over everything and nothing.
"It's everywhere," she said. "It's been everywhere."
"W-weiss?"
"Don't you see it?" she asked, with a deadly whisper. "Falling through the air like ash, covering everything, as though it weren't part of everything already?"
Haughty, arrogant and knowing. That was Weiss, here. A secret that she could only share with a boy who fought monsters.
I looked around and tried to be that boy. I shook my head. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary.
She looked crestfallen. "I thought maybe you would be able to see it too."
She leaned closer to me, clutching onto the sleeve of my jacket like a lifeline. Maybe it was the trick of the light, but her eyes appeared mismatched. The iris on her right was a light powder blue but the other, the one that the scar she'd acquired in the morning had bisected cleanly without truly harming her, was a shade deeper and almost electric under the barlights.
"Why do you figure?" I asked, desperate.
"Because you have an angel following you," she said.
Oh.