Sometimes I really hate myself for the stuff I write...

Firstly, I want to quickly thank you guys so much for how well you took last chapter. There were no author's notes at the end of last chapter, and that was entirely intentional, so I'm going to do it here briefly. I wanted to see how you guys would react to the chapter without any interference from me; no softening the blow, no ruining the tone by making a joke at the end, just raw emotions. And can I just say, for someone who was literally preparing the speech I would give if I lost half my followers, I cannot thank you guys enough for sticking through that and continuing to read this story. You guys are awesome.

When I started this story I was giddy with imagining ways I could gruesomely kill off my characters (I've read far too much G.R.R. Martin) but as I actually began writing and developing these characters... I fell in love with them. And it was with the heavier and most regretful heart that I wrote chapter 11. But I guarantee that to the best of my ability, Buzz will not have died for no reason.

Now I wish I could say that was the lowest point in this story but...

"In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons"

Herodotus

Chapter Twelve—Darkest Day

That same day, Jaune buried Buzz.

Finnegan, Bounty and Cat watched as he dug Buzz's grave. No one moved. No one spoke. What was there to say?

They needed to leave. The Atlas outpost they'd captured wasn't safe anymore. The body of the sixteen-year-old kid proved that. They should move on. Take what provisions they had and get as far away from this accursed clearing as was humanly possible. They would do that soon.

But they weren't leaving just yet. They had one more task to complete here.

Finnegan watched Jaune's spade rise and fall, shovelling dirt over his shoulder with each motion, creating the pit that Buzz would lie in. It wasn't right. None of this was right. That they had been abandoned by their army in a hostile, monster-infested forest. That a child had been forced to lead them. That Buzz had… that Buzz was…

Fuck.

Finn's face slowly curdled as he watched Jaune work, each one of his motions sending Finn's lip downturning further and further. The rhythmic thumping of dirt hitting the ground behind Jaune became the only sound in the entire clearing, the entire damn world.

What a fucking mess.

Eventually, Cat seemed to have enough. "I'm going to check on Naomi," she snapped.

"You sure you wa-"

"I wasn't talking to you, Bounty" Cat sneered. She shot one last, jaded glare at Jaune's back, before spinning on her heel and entering the tent Naomi was 'resting' in.

Naomi hadn't left it since the attack.

"Ah, bugger me…" mumbled Bounty.

That left just Bounty and Finn. Fan-fucking-tastic.

Finally, Bounty just had to break the silence. "Why did you save me?" Finn didn't reply. "You had the chance to run. To get back to safety," Bounty's gruff voice continued, "but you came back to save me from that Boarbatusk. Why?"

Finnegan spat on the ground. "If this is your roundabout way of saying thank you, don't bother."

Bounty gave a mirthless, hollow chuckle, more like he was going through the motions than because he felt any particular amusement at that moment. "Why did you?" Fucking hell, couldn't the oaf just take a bloody hint?

"I don't want to talk about it," Finn tried to shut down the conversation, but Bounty wouldn't be swayed.

"Even after everything I said to you. Even after what I said about your… your wife, you still put your own life at risk for mine. I want to know why."

"Why do you care?"

"Because you're a dick." Finn almost choked. He was the dick? "You're always complaining, you're traitorous, cowardly, and when push came to shove, you abandoned us to save your own hide. But despite all that, you still came back for me when my life was on the line. That doesn't fit into my understanding of you. So why save me?"

"I don't know," Finn stubbornly stated. Bounty could go to hell; Finn didn't owe him anything, least of all the truth.

"Bullshit," Bounty growled. "There's a reason, or you've at least got an idea why you did it. Tell me."

Finn growled straight back. "I don't want to talk about it," he said, striding back to his tent. Bounty followed.

"Why abandon us once, then save me later? It doesn't make sense."

Finn snarled. "You're never going to let that first ambush go, are you?"

"No. You left all your squad mates to die because you figured your life was more valuable than any of ours. We had two kids with us then. Did you think about them when you ran off to save your skin?"

Finn felt his fists clenching and his blood boiling, but worse, he felt his face burning in shame. He wasn't proud of what he'd done in that first ambush. But no matter what he did, he knew it'd a black blotch on his name for the rest of the time he spent in Beta section.

"Go, away," he growled at Bounty.

"Not until I get a reason."

"Fine!" roared Finn, spinning around and shoving a finger in Bounty's fat face. If the idiot wouldn't leave him alone, he'd give him what he wanted. Anything to make him piss off. "I was terrified in that first ambush," he exploded. "Scared shitless. I'd never been in anything like that before. The only thing I could think of was to get away from there. So I did. I fled. You can call me cowardly if you want, but I'd rather be cowardly and living than brave and dead."

"Plenty of us were scared," replied Bounty, arms crossed and face unimpressed. "Didn't mean we all left the others to die."

"You still don't understand. I had to survive."

"Why?" Bounty demanded.

"Because I made a promise to my wife I'd come home!" Finn practically screamed. A thousand feelings and sensations slammed into Finnegan as fresh as they'd been that day, not a single one dulled by the passing of time: him staring into Jasmine's face, the woman he had given his heart to, and who had cherished and nurtured him into a better man than he'd ever been on his own, taking the time to commit every single inch of her unblemished skin to memory; the feelings of grief at the knowledge that he wouldn't see her again for potentially months; the secret from his wife, whispered into his ear as they'd held each other one last time, that had rocked his world and left him reeling; the promise she'd begged him to make, just before he was pulled away and shoved onto the bullhead. "Promise me you'll survive, Finn. Promise me you'll come home to us." Not 'me'. 'Us'.

The shards of pain latticed throughout the memory sliced into Finnegan with the force of a truck, leaving all the wounds he'd tried to hide wide open. Finn's rage was expelled in an instant, forced out of the holes in his soul as the grief consumed him fully, leaving little more than a slump-shouldered, shrunken husk of a man in its wake, burdened by loss and grief.

Bounty, for once, looked at a loss for words. "Then… then why did you join the army?" he finally questioned uncertainly.

"I never wanted to," admitted Finn weakly. "I blew some money, made some bad decisions. Before I knew it, I was drowning in debt. The government promised to pay off my loans if I'd join their stupid recruitment program. I had no choice. Jasmine begged me and begged me not to accept their offer. Said we'd find another way, that we'd figure it out together. I didn't believe her. I signed myself up for the bloody military, thinking it'd be a cake walk." Finnegan let out a bitter laugh. "Next thing I know, I'm being shot at by a fucking airship and attacked by Atlas soldiers. Some cake walk."

Finn lapsed back into silence. He felt utterly drained, as if recounting his mistakes had slowly leeched the life out of him. His dark skin was a little paler than usual, and his eyes were a thousand miles away.

"Look… Finn…" Bounty began uncomfortably, "I'm, sorry, for what, for what I said last night. About… about your wife."

A little spark of fire came back to Finn at that, and he stared Bounty down. "You're an asshole, you know that?" Bounty chuckled quietly.

"Yeah, I've been told that a few times."

"Well it's true. You're violent, loudmouthed and rude. You don't know the meaning of personal space, and what you call bravery is nothing short of suicidal idiocy."

"If you hate me so much then why did you save me?" Finn gave a frustrated sigh.

"It was different this time. Sure, I was still scared. But it wasn't the same mind-numbing terror. This time I could still think. And as I watched you do your very best to throw your life away, I thought of something. If I died, Jasmine would be heartbroken. So would my parents, my friends, my brother. And I realised something I hadn't considered before: if you died, how many people would you have left distraught? How many lives would you have taken a chunk out of with your death?"

Bounty stiffened very suddenly. Finn looked at him, but Bounty refused to meet his eye. "None," he mumbled, almost to himself. "No one loves me. If I'd died this morning no one would have batted an eyelid."

"That's good to know for next time," Finn shot, but then he sighed. "Regardless, Jasmine would have wanted me to save you. She always does the right thing." Bounty nodded, and the two men fell once more into silence, watching Jaune dig. Eventually, Finn turned. "If you're done interrogating me, I'm going back to my tent. I've had enough talking for one day." Bounty didn't stop him as he spun away and stalked into his tent.

What a colossal fuckup.

In. Lift. Over the shoulder. In. Lift. Over the shoulder.

Jaune repeated the motions like a mantra as he dug, ignoring the sweat stinging his eyes, ignoring the blisters forming on his hands, ignoring the weight of the shovel and the aching of his back.

Ignoring Buzz's corpse next to him.

In. Lift. Over the shoulder.

Jaune's eyes burned, but not from the perspiration that dripped into them. His fault. All this; his fault. If he hadn't bitten off more than he could chew by attacking this outpost. If he hadn't been so careless and not realised the Atlas prisoners would attract the Grimm. If he had just gotten to Naomi sooner during the attack. Then Buzz might have been… Buzz might still be…

In. Lift. Over the shoulder.

Drops of water crept down his nose and splashed into the pit, turning the dirt dark where they landed. Jaune's hands tightened on his shovel when he saw this, and his next in pierced the ground deeply. Crying wouldn't help Buzz now. Nothing would help Buzz now.

Why then, did the tears keep falling?

In. Buzz was dead. Lift. His squad was in tatters. Over the shoulder. And it was all. On. Him.

Jaune stabbed the ground again and again and again, over and over and over, as if all his failings stemmed from this one patch of hated earth. He attacked the ground with a vigour he'd never seen in himself before, wishing he could beat his frustrations out of him. Hot tears streaked down his face, blurring his vision. He furiously wiped at them with his sleeve, finally halting his work for the first time in an age. He looked at the grave he'd made. Buzz's grave. It was done.

Tentatively, with as much care as he could, he lifted Buzz's body and lowered it into the hole. No words of ceremony were said. No mournful congregation was there to bid their friend goodbye. There was just Jaune, the sighing of the wind through the too-silent clearing, and the inescapable sense of loneliness that enveloped him as he stood there.

Jaune looked once more upon the purple hair and youthful face of one of the first friends he'd had in the army. At the boy who had laughed so freely. Had been a source of such joy, no matter the circumstance. Had been ever the optimist, despite their dire situations. If Jaune ignored the gaping holes in his chest and the too-pale face he might have even looked… peaceful.

Jaune began piling dirt back into his pit. Soon, Buzz had disappeared beneath a mound of soil, and was gone from Jaune's sight for the last time.

Beta section left the outpost later that day. Naomi had been barely able to walk without Cat's help, and even then, she hadn't said a single word for the rest of the day. She'd simply trundled along in silence, half held up by Cat, ashen faced and with a vacant expression. The moment Jaune had called for them to make camp for the night, she had simply drifted into her tent without a second glance at any of them. Cat had hurriedly gone in after her, and neither had emerged since.

Jaune entered his own tent. Being the commanding officer, he'd gotten the biggest one. There was even a foldable camp chair and desk for him, not that he'd ever need them.

Slowly, Jaune lowered himself into his seat and moved to put his head in his hands. But even with his eyelids squeezed shut, one image still swirled endlessly in his mind. Innocent, brown eyes filled with hope. A mouth, ever twitching at the sides, as if the world were a place of constant joy and happiness which just had to be smiled at. Violet hair framing a youthful face. A grinning face. Buzz's face.

Jaune's hands reached his coarse, unwashed hair—

—and Jaune snapped.

He exploded outwards, flailing a leg that crashed into the table and sent it flying. His foot throbbed.

Sergeant Cole had been a real leader. He'd trained his squad relentlessly, giving them the best chance of surviving the situation they were in. He'd rescued his squad from a sure death trap and led them to relative safety. He'd saved Jaune at the cost of his own life, taking the bullet that should have been for Jaune because he'd been too damn slow. That man should have been leading them. A selfless man. Dead.

Jaune picked up his chair and hurled it at the ground. It made a pitifully unsatisfying sound as it bounced on the dirt and didn't break.

Ash had been a stronger man than Jaune would ever be. He'd lost everything he'd ever loved and still hadn't broken. He'd been as tough as nails. As immovable as a mountain. And when it came down to it, he hadn't hesitated to save the people he'd never even liked. That kind of man was the one who should have survived. An unbreakable man. Dead.

Jaune stomped his way over to where his desk had fallen. He punched a fist onto the flimsy plastic top. And then another. And then another. The table refused to break. Jaune's knuckles ached.

And Buzz… Buzz…

Jaune should have been the one to die.

And in that moment, with the weight of the world collapsing around him, frightened, unsure, alone, Jaune Arc finally gave up.

The next moment, Terry burst in, apparently having taken it upon himself to guard Jaune's tent. "Sarge, what happened? I heard a noise—" he stopped when he saw Jaune's desk and chair knocked over. "Oh, uh, sorry Sarge, I uh, didn't mean to interrupt anything…"

"It's fine Terry," Jaune mumbled, feeling a tiredness that went beyond bone deep. He picked up his chair and collapsed back onto it. He felt… hollow. Even the anger, born of hopelessness and despair, which had possessed him mere seconds before had completely evaporated, leaving nothing behind but a vague numbness, and an unbeatable fatigue.

Terry still hovered by the flap to Jaune's tent, clearly worried for Jaune but apparently unable to decide what to do. "Is there, uh, anything I can do to help?" Jaune was about to dismiss him, but then he paused. He dreaded the answer he'd receive, but he had to ask nonetheless.

"Terry, am I… am I a good leader?" Terry shuffled around uncomfortably.

"Well, uh, I mean, I haven't really known a lot of leaders. The only other one I had was Sergeant Cole, so, uh, I don't have a lot to go on." Jaune nodded stiffly. Terry was trying to be kind by not answering the question, but his real thoughts were obvious. No, he wasn't a good leader. Good leaders didn't get a sixteen-year-old kid killed. Good leaders didn't leave one of their female members in a depression so black it looked impossible to drag them back from. Good leaders wouldn't, having been confronted by their own inadequacies, have given up on any hope of them getting out of this mess. How could anyone think otherwise.

"But if it means anything, I think you're a good leader, Jaune," said Terry. Jaune's head snapped to Terry, trying to gauge if this was a joke. Terry's face was deadly serious.

"Me?" he asked, incredulous. "How can you say that?" Finally, a little spark of emotion wormed its way through his apathy, and he clung onto the anger like a drowning man, feeding the little ember, stoking it, until he was on his feet and advancing menacingly on Terry. "Just look at where we are. Stuck in a hostile forest, Sergeant Cole, Ash and now Buzz all… all…" The glob in Jaune's throat choked off the rest of his sentence. "Naomi hasn't spoken all day, home is still miles away, we're in most of this mess because of me and I don't know what to do!" Jaune shouted, releasing all of his frustrations in a frenzy. Some rational corner of him knew it wasn't fair on Terry, who was just trying to help, but a larger part knew he was failing horrifically, and would rather the hard truth than a white lie from his squad mate, whilst yet another portion of his brain feared letting go of this rage lest he fall back into the pit of despair. "I have no idea how to make this right! I never have. All the way since day one, I've been bluffing and winging my way through every problem we've come across. Tell me then, how can I be a good leader?" Jaune demanded.

Terry shied away, instantly making his body smaller and less offensive. He was at least a few years older than Jaune, but he still diverted his eyes to stare at the floor instead of at Jaune. Jaune immediately felt bad, and like a hole in a fish tank, all his anger rushed out of him, leaving him once more empty and tired.

"I'm sorry Terry," he sighed, "I've had… a pretty rough day." Jaune turned and made his way back to the centre of the tent.

"You're a good leader," spoke a timid voice from the entrance, "because you did everything you could to help us." Jaune turned back towards Terry. "Sometimes bad things just happen. My dad learnt that the hard way. You didn't make those Atlas soldiers attack us, but at least you did what you could to get us more supplies, so we could keep going."

"But what good was that if I can't save everyone?"

"This is war, Jaune. It's unlikely you'll be able to save any of us. It's not your fault if some things just can't be done. But at least you tried. That's what matters, I think."

That's what matters? That wasn't right. How was just trying the most important thing? How could it be acceptable to fail so miserably, so long as you gave it your all?

Ruby wouldn't have accepted that as an answer. If she were here, she would have been able to get her team out of this mess. Jaune hadn't known her for long, but he'd spent enough time with her to know that she always found a way to put things right. How she did it, Jaune had no idea. She might have been a better fighter, but she had no more leadership experience than Jaune did. But she always believed there was a solution to any problem, and somehow, she found it. Why couldn't Jaune do the same? She always believed that she could succeed, and succeed she did. She always believed that good would eventually triumph over evil. She always believed…

She always believed?

No matter how dire the situation got, Ruby was not the kind of person to lose faith. Jaune had originally found that an admirable quality, if a little naïve, but what if he'd been looking at it wrong. Terry didn't really believe that they could get home; that much was clear from what he'd said, and Jaune found it easy to imagine that the others felt similarly. But if they didn't believe that they could get out of this mess, then what chance did they have? How was it possible to do something if even you thought it was impossible? At the end of the day, you had to at least have hope that you could do it.

Maybe that was why Ruby always seemed to overcome her problems. Because she thought that there was always a way. No, she knew that there was always a way, at least in her mind. Is that what Terry meant by at least trying to be worth a lot. Because ultimately, he could never accomplish anything unless he at least tried, and he couldn't try anything unless he believed that there was a way to do it. He had to have faith. Hope.

Was that what a leader was supposed to do? When things were at their worst, was a leader meant to inspire hope in his team once more. Jaune had never really thought of leadership like that, but it was blatantly obvious his team was losing faith. Was it then, his job, to give them the spark they needed to get home. But could he even do it?

Did he even want to?

Jaune tried to want to give his team hope. He wanted to want this. But… it was like trying to put butter on the sides of a greased pan. Nothing would stick. Anger seemed the only emotion he could even momentarily hold onto, but even that burnt up quickly, leaving him with nothing but an empty pit inside his stomach. Jaune was just struggling to… care. He knew he should. He could use all the logic he wanted to argue what he needed to do, how he needed to feel, but it was like fighting a storm front. He would push against it as hard as he could, but his hands would slide right through, leaving the blackness to envelope his mind and suffocate his emotions completely. He'd try as hard as he could to hold on to anything at all, but it would simply slip away, and he'd forget why he even bothered.

He was drowning. That was what it was. He was drowning in a sea of apathy. He just didn't see a reason to fight on. Why did he even want to get home? What was there for him? His family might miss him for a short while, but there were nine of them. They'd move on soon enough, and little, clumsy, awkward Jaune would be side-lined once again. It was nothing new. He was used to it. And as for his team in Beacon… no. He didn't have a team anymore. That was the point. At best they'd forgotten all about him. At worst they still hated his guts. There was nothing for Jaune back in Vale. So what was the point in continuing to fight a lost battle.

Buzz had died because of him. Because of his mistakes. Before, every time he'd messed up, it had only been him to suffer. Never anyone else. Buzz had changed all that. Now, for the first time, someone else had been hurt by Jaune's failure. No, not hurt. Killed. Killed because Jaune had screwed up. This wasn't a game. This wasn't a fairy-tale. His actions were directly affecting the people around him, and Jaune had only just realised how serious that was. If he tried to keep going, tried to get up and fight on, how many more of his friends would he kill? How many bodies would he have to bury before he learnt his lesson and stayed down.

He couldn't go through that again. He wouldn't. Jaune could accept dying. Death might even be peaceful. But Jaune would not be responsible for another dead friend. The cost of failure was too great. He couldn't want to get home unless he had a reason to. So he wouldn't even try. Not until he had a good reason to risk getting anyone else's blood on his hands.

With a tired wave of his hand, Jaune asked Terry to leave him alone to think. The moment Terry was gone, Jaune picked his table up, slumped back down into the chair, and laid his head over the table. Without another word he closed his eyes and fell asleep to dream of nothing.

Well, I guess we can't have peaks without a few troughs. Thankfully, this should be the lowest point in this story. I actually meant this chapter to come out earlier today, but as I was proofreading it I had a mid-chapter crisis and wanted to rewrite a chunk of it. Hopefully doesn't seem too clunky.

The situation looks dire for our heroes: Buzz is dead. The squad is barely keeping it together. And our blond protagonist has given up. Can Jaune find it in himself to keep going after this? Will Naomi ever recover? Are we ever going to see anyone else from the main RWBY cast? Stay tuned, and all your questions will be answered soon.