"And Navy?" Maroon was leaning back in his crooked chair, glaring Jaune down from across the table.
"No." Jaune shook his head, defeat and failure weighing on his shoulders. The paladins had wanted him to brief them as soon as they'd gotten the crowd to leave, which was only accomplished after Maroon had started threatening force. That had put the man in a tense mood and as was his luck, Jaune had to weather it.
Maroon sighed, rubbing his forehead with a gloved hand. "Jaune, why are you here?"
Jaune swallowed, his worst fear coming to light. That everyone saw him the way his father did. "Uhm, sir?" Just his luck.
"Forget it, Jaune. I… am frustrated. This might just be the biggest mess up the order has ever had." Maroon's gaze softened a bit, but in the dim light that seemed native to Patch, it didn't do much to make him feel softer. "I understand you're just as overwhelmed as the rest of us. I'm just glad you made it back to us alive."
Jaune nodded. He couldn't bring himself to say anything as shame crept into his face in a crimson blush.
"So, the vampire? You said you know how to find it?"
Jaune sat up straighter. The one thing he could do. "Y-Yes! She ran and Olivier told me to follow after her, so I did. Uhm," He hesitated, not wanting to admit that he got lost and panicked, or that in reality he wasn't even chasing her but running for his life. These thoughts circled in his head and he wished he could be home, eating some of his sister's cinnamon scones with milk rather than explaining to a man who saw him as hardly more than luggage that he was a to-the-bone coward.
"I got lost, sir. It wasn't easy to keep track of my direction, and I got lost." He forced the words out of his mouth. It was like spitting up nails. Maroon didn't show any outward reaction, other than nodding to indicate that Jaune should keep speaking and stop dragging the interview on. That's how he interpreted it, anyway. "I stopped to catch my breath and try and get my bearings and that's when she approached me, sir."
Maroon nearly stood from his chair. "It approached you?"
Jaune nodded. "Yeah. It was… uhm, I was surprised as well, sir. It didn't want to fight me at all. It wanted help."
Maroon did stand up. "Keep talking, squire!" He demanded when Jaune hesitated again. Feeling the pressure, Jaune hurried forward with the rest.
"She's looking for someone and asked me to help her find them! She said she would tell me more. I don't know, sir. I told her yes. I didn't know what else to do, I agreed and she just let me go!" Jaune rushed through the rest. It still shocked him that she hadn't second guessed any aspect of her plan.
Of course, maybe the thought had occurred since then and she simply wouldn't show up now.
Back there, for a brief moment, Jaune had felt victorious. A way to claim a victory, finally. Now, though, it seemed pointless. Port, their commander, was dead lying on a table below. Olivier… He didn't want to think about Olivier or the things he'd heard the paladins speaking about under hushed breath.
That Olivier had come back. That Olivier was the last one who went to see the commander and now he was gone and the commander was dead.
Jaune felt the pit of blackness in him swell again. Questions of why it even mattered kept festering, nicking little pieces of him. He'd stopped answering them and instead just let them be, doing his best to ignore them.
Maroon quietly sat back down, staring past Jaune. Jaune thought the man was dealing with his own pit as well. "That'll be it, squire. Go in silver."
Jaune stood up too quickly, his chair making too much noise on wood, awkwardly saluted and left the room they'd turned into a makeshift office for Maroon.
The door clicked shut and he paused, immediately aware of a force, as if there was something exerting pressure on him from behind. Inexplicably, he was afraid.
He ducked, somehow, as an object swung for the back of his head. He stumbled against the door, catching himself on his shoulder, and opened his mouth to call for help only to bite down on his tongue and draw blood as something connected with the back of his head.
He slumped to the floor, vision muddied. Through the pain and daze he heard footsteps, muffled to his ears. The pressure returned, the fear, but he could only gurgle past his tongue which burned in his mouth. Almost thankfully another blow landed and sweet silence took him.
When he woke, he immediately leaned over as far as his binds would let him and threw up.
"That's disgusting." A voice said. It sounded to him as if someone was speaking to him from inside a bucket. Jaune looked up with teary eyes, dizzy and nauseous, head a blazing fire of agony, to see a blonde haired woman sitting cross kneed on a table before him, tying her long hair up with a leather strip. "But it's okay, don't worry about it. You knock a guy out and kidnap him, I think he gets the right to throw up on your floor. Not that it's even my floor."
Jaune blinked, trying to stop seeing three of her. Godly brother but his head hurt. Pressure from every direction, pounding and pounding on his skull. His tongue was aching and the back of his head was a little piece of primordial suffering just for him. His throat hurt from the retching.
He bent over again at the urging of his body, unable to fight it back down. The woman waited without comment until he was left heaving, head hanging limp from his shoulders as he breathed deep, ragged breaths.
"Sorry about that. I really thought you'd go down in one… You're tougher than you look. Sort of." He heard her get off the table. "Water?"
Godly brother, yes. He raised his head and she held out a cup to him. She brought it to his lips and he drank eagerly, relishing the feeling of water in his throat. It was lukewarm and tasted odd but he didn't care. Anything to rid himself of the taste in his mouth. Most of the cup ended up on his chin and his clothes. Luckily, she offered him another without a word and hee drank a little more carefully.
When he was done, she put the cup down on the table and walked away from him. "Try and get yourself together, kid. I'll be back in a bit." He groaned in response, watching her leave through a door. Beyond her he couldn't make out much, other than there was daylight.
The door shut and he was left in a dark room with little light to see. He glanced around and realized he was in a kitchen. So, above ground. Maybe even close to the village still. He wasn't sure what that did for him but he just wanted to try and get a sense of what had happened to him, what might happen to him.
He couldn't make himself think very well, though. Anything that wasn't occurring to him naturally, if he tried to think about it, the flame in his head would seem to expand and intensify. He leaned back in his chair. He didn't even bother to try and test the bonds holding his hands and feet to the chair. He doubted he could walk.
True to her word, after only a few minutes the woman came back. "Yang! I told you to be careful, why would you-" The door swung open and the blonde haired woman came through, followed by Ruby without her cloak. "Hey, Jaune." She said, sounding tired.
Ah. Understanding and clarity. So, this woman was working with Ruby. She'd probably heard Jaune's discussion. That meant Jaune was probably dead.
Damn.
Yang, the blonde, he figured, shrugged and sat back up on the table. "How about you leave these things to me, little sis. I brought him."
Ruby smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry, she can be… Well, she's the one who always beat up the kids that bullied me."
Yang grinned. "Anything for my little sister."
Ruby stepped right up to Jaune's chair and he flinched, expecting her to kill him. She froze, her face contorting into guilt. "Uhm, sorry." She took a step back. "Uhm, Yang says it's best if you're tied up. Because you're probably a little confused and, and… uhm, scared."
"She's not very nice." He had to wince through his swollen tongue. Ruby gave a sidelong glance to Yang, who shrugged.
"Listen, Jaune. I'll get through this as quickly as possible so that we can let you out of these ropes. I understand that you think I'm a monster or something, but… I don't know. I just know that I'm not what you think I am, or those others think I am." Her voice shook as she spoke, as if holding back emotion. Jaune found himself listening intently, if only for the fact that she said she wanted to let him loose.
"The other night, when I found you in the woods and saved your life, I really meant it. That man you saw out there, the one who fought your friend, he needs help, Jaune. He's scared and confused. We don't know what to do." She stepped forward, her eyes searching his. "But you're one of those Beacon people. I'm sure you know something, right? Or you know someone who does?"
Something was off. "You asked me to help you find someone." Jaune said flatly. That was what was wrong. "You said you need me to help you find someone in the village, not that you needed help from me and the other-"
"They're dead." Yang interrupted. Jaune's words caught in his throat. "Same person who killed your friend."
Jaune swallowed dryly. "My Commander." He corrected in a small voice. Yang dipped her head towards him.
"Sorry."
Ruby cleared her throat. "Something really bad is happening here, Jaune. You've seen it. Someone is killing people, there are things in Patch… My family, my friends, everyone on this island are in danger. We need your help."
Jaune almost felt like laughing but pain and nausea prevented it. Him? Help with something like this? He could hardly make it through an interview. Yang, whoever or whatever she was, had knocked him flat in an instant. "I'm not sure I can do anything for you guys." He said quietly. Even if he wanted to, there was just nothing he felt like he could do. This was over his head.
Yang got up. "See? Told ya. From what I heard the guy is a total dud. We're on our own in this one Ruby."
Jaune looked away. Even if it pissed him off, she was right.
He felt a hand on his knee as Ruby knelt down before him. He nearly fell out of the chair, which is to say, he jerked away and went nowhere. Ruby stayed still. Kneeling almost in his vomit, silver eyes looking up into his. "Jaune, please. The whole village is afraid of me, my uncle is losing his mind and I think it's going to get a lot worse. Please, whatever you think you can do, even if it's just not leading your friends to us."
He was about to repeat what he told them, but he hesitated. Desperation reached out from her to him, reflected in her eyes. She was kneeling in his vomit in order to ask him to help her. To just try.
The pit called out to him, told him he would make things harder somehow, that whatever she entrusted to him he would mess up. It was the way of things for him, since he could remember.
She squeezed his knee, asking him with vulnerable eyes, if he could just try.
"Okay." He said through numb lips. For a moment, a tiny moment, he thought that maybe this time he could do it. The feeling left with the words out of his mouth but it was too late to take them back. Ruby smiled, so brightly, that his dark deep pit shut up and left him alone. Understanding that he was agreeing to betraying his order seemed mute under the imprisoning gaze of Ruby's eyes.
Shortly after he was free once again, if not his mind at least his body. Yang led him to a dark room furnished with an old bed that smelt of dust and unwashed sheets, a blurry mirror and a wash basin. The water was cold when he'd dipped a finger in. "In case you want to rinse or something, after everything." She'd told him, with a smile and a wink. Even now as he pondered the interaction, laying in the bed as his vision swam, he wasn't sure if that was an apology or not.
The only thing he knew was that he'd really dug himself in this time. "Swell work Jaune! You've really proved that you can keep going deeper!" He hissed to himself, rolling over on his side to stare uselessly at a boarded window. He had no idea where the two sisters had taken him but it didn't seem important anyways. If they'd wanted to kill him they would have, so logically he trusted them at this point.
More worrying was whatever they had planned for him. Maybe, if he was lucky, it would be simply leaving the island and taking the paladins with him. He knew the protocol, that if the commander were to fall during a campaign, if there was no suitable next in command, the order was to return to the nearest Chapel and receive new direction. Maroon and the others were hesitating for some reason, he could tell.
The anger inside him happened to agree with them, but the rest of his being was desperate to be rid of the awful place. Patch, he'd decided, was the worst island on all of Remnant.
Soon, without realizing it, his eyes shut and he found heavy sleep amidst troubled dreams.
"You'll be okay here with that guy?" Yang asked, sliding an arm through her leather coat.
Ruby looked up from her seat in her father's rocking chair with a flat stare. "Yang, come on." They both knew Jaune was no threat, not to anyone.
Yang grinned. "I know, just teasing. Well, alright kid. I'm off then. Gonna keep an eye on things in the village, maybe I can get close to those paladin guys and find out who their murder buddy is."
The day grew a little darker for Ruby as Yang said her goodbye. "Be safe, okay?"
"Always am. You be safe!" She admonished, annoyingly so. "See ya!" And like that Yang was gone and it was just Ruby alone with a kidnapped boy. She found herself staring out at the closed door, as if she could still see her sister walking away. Unwelcome memories of better times started to filter in at the edges of her psyche and she tore her attention away, back to the present. The cold thing inside her stirred at her emotions, but like always, somehow without doing anything she forced it back into silence. Like breathing.
However she did that, she had to know. Maybe if she could teach Qrow.
Yes. That was what she had to do right now. Figure out the best way to make use of Jaune to help Qrow and the others. He was from Beacon, a Paladin. That probably meant connections to important people, surely there was someone who knew what could be done; there had to be.
Right. She began to rock swiftly in the chair, the motion of back and forth both comforting and focusing. Maybe Jaune could convince the others to help as well. If they could trap Qrow, capture him, then she could just show him now, without any need to ask for additional help.
Of course she'd have to know how she did it in the first place. Growling with frustration, Ruby abruptly stopped her rocking. Maybe that was a good way to make use of Jaune. Maybe he could help her find out. He might know things that she didn't; all she knew about her… condition, came from old stories her dad would tell her to keep her out of the woods.
Not that she'd listened. Clearly.
"Stop fighting."
Ruby jumped, and the thing inside squirmed. Oily, slick and revolting, it slithered within, drawn to the surface by her arrival. Ruby shut her eyes. "Go away." She whispered, knowing that it didn't matter. Whenever she came, there was no banishing her until she went on her own.
"You are already mine, child of Silver. I have claimed you, I have made you mine. You only delay, you only make it worse for yourself." Every word was both excruciating pain and blissful ecstasy, as the thing inside tried to reach out to its mistress, warring against her own repulsion. All Ruby could do was grit her teeth, crowns grinding against one another in mimicry of her inner conflict.
"I bore you into this world, oh child. Delivered from shackles, reborn as harbinger." She could feel her so near, smell her, hear her. Ruby shivered, her mind quivering, but she remembered Yang telling her to be strong. It was her only way to combat the fear.
"I can only await your obedience so much longer. If you will not deliver yourself to me, then I shall have you delivered."
Ruby's eyes shot open, and they burned with dryness. Frantically she sat up in her chair, trying to see her. Only shadows cast by small gaps between wooden planks greeted her, dust motes dancing in the narrow shafts of sunlight. The thing was quiet, stilled for some reason, but she could sense that it was happy. Smug.
She had to do something. She had to.
Jaune knew he was dreaming again. Sitting on the bottom stair leading to the porch of his family's farm, he watched his younger self playing with his father, pretending to be a knight. His wooden sword clacked against his father's real shield, and the boy giggled. His father laughed.
Sorry for the longer wait on this chapter getting out! I was pretty occupied with some work, but here we are. Hope everyone enjoys. :)