I dedicate this chapter to WhiteRose1517.
She was gone. Even though I had known it was coming as I saw her dying in my arms, I held onto hope for as long as I could. Even as her eyes closed for the last time, her body falling limp, I had to check her pulse. But it was gone. She was gone. Everything went white.
I woke up three weeks later, back in patch. Part of me hoped that all of the memories flooding my head were a dream; but most of me didn't. Because I knew that I would do it all over again to have those memories, up to the very last moment before I whited out. That was how everyone else found out that I was awake; they heard my crying as hard as I could.
A lot of people were there, surprisingly; my remaining family, my team, team JNPR and CFVY, and a few other people I knew. I'd say they didn't help but, despite generally being bad at socializing, I had made some close friends during my time at Beacon. After a few days, I stopped losing weight. After a few weeks, I was eating two meals a day and I almost weighed as much as I did at Beacon. A few weeks after that and I was getting out of bed every day, talking to my friends (though mostly over scroll, because most had to go back to where they came from), and going outside. A few months after that and I could distract myself from thinking about her. Even now, though, so many years after it happened… I was never the same. I could never get back into hunting without thinking about her, and eventually it became too much and I had to quit. I know it's not what she would have wanted in the end, but it just reminded me of how little I was without her. Instead, I decided to become a weapons designer, something I always had a passion for but never really thought about doing as a job. The job paid pretty well, and I could help with the Grimm problem by making more efficient, cheaper, and more powerful weapons. The highlight of my career was a completely dust free railgun, using high powered electromagnets that could be charged using solar energy.
I was helping. Honestly, it was probably more that I could have done as a huntress, no matter how strong I could have gotten. My weapons dominated the market, cheap enough to make a dozen for every citizen, had no effect on humans besides incapacitating them (The guns used electricity as a basis, which disrupted neurotransmitters in humans; Grimm however only have them in their brains, so they could die from a much weaker voltage), and powerful enough to take out a Nevermore in a single shot.
But, even after everything, I knew there was still something missing. I didn't even know what I believed in anymore, after all I had done. All I had been through. I realized why I felt so empty; I didn't belong in Remnant anymore. Without her, I was nothing… And so, on the 30th year of her passing, I ended it. I rigged a gun to fire a strong enough pulse to shut down my neurological system for a few minutes; long enough for me to die, and dissolve into dust like everyone does. One twitch, and I was dead. Forever.