There were, in Jaune's opinion, several different types of silence.

There was the awkward silence, which always stayed too long and never gave anything in return. There was the companionable silence, which never lasted long enough and always left a pang of longing. There was the shocked silence, which lasted longer than a human could conceive and less time than it took to realise what had happened.

These were all silences that Jaune had experienced in his life. They were familiar, and he knew where he stood with them.

But the silence that encompassed the distance between himself and Pyrrha Nikos? He had no idea what it was. It had been going on for hours, and had been getting heavier and heavier as that time went by.

Though the room was silent, his mind was not, and it spun question after question. What was he meant to do? Was he brave enough to try and break this silence? Should he wait for his partner to do it?

For the first time in the past three weeks, Jaune Arc found himself at a complete loss – he had no idea what to do. Even when the Deathstalker had already been freed, even when Ren had confronted him during training he had known, to some degree, what to do. They might have been bad choices but he could at least see the choices in front of him.

Now though, he couldn't see any choices. He could only hear silence, stifling in its intensity. It hung around him like a heavy shroud, muffling his thoughts.

This can't continue, he thought to himself, I've been awake for five hours now, and I just know Pyrrha's awake too. Something has to be done.

Step one, gather courage. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Repeat until loins are sufficiently girded. Open mouth...

"Jaune? Are you awake?"

Oh that was just unfair. Jaune let out a noise which was somewhere between a sigh and a chuckle, tilting his head so that he faced his partner's bed. Even in the darkness of the infirmary, green eyes shone, and he locked on to them.

"Yes. I can't sleep – the silence is too loud." he replied. The green eyes bobbed, as if their owner was nodding.

"I know what you mean. I think we may have become a bit too accustomed to our sleeping conditions." came the reply. Jaune couldn't help but chuckle at that.

The 'sleeping conditions' Pyrrha was referring to certainly weren't normal. During their first week together, Ren had informed team JNPR of Nora's little...habit. Apparently, she was too energetic for even sleep to contain her, and she had a tendency to sleepwalk. She never left her room or anything, but it wasn't uncommon for members of their team to become unwitting teddy bears overnight.

Jaune had, of course, known about this. He had experienced it quite a few times during his first tenure at Beacon. Technically, he had also experienced the look on Pyrrha's face when she was woken by an alarm clock which had wrapped itself around her waist...but that didn't mean it had any less impact than the first time.

"Yeah, I suppose we have." Jaune folded his hands behind his head, thankful that the silence was retreating in the face of conversation.

"You know, it's amazing." began Pyrrha, laughter weaving in and out of her voice. "Three weeks ago I had never even considered sharing my bed with another person. Now, it's barely been a month, and yet it feels totally natural."

Jaune was sure his grin was visible even in the dark, and he felt laughter enter his own voice. "That's Nora for you. You can't help but become a part of her world – she's like a force of nature."

That really was the only way to describe their team mate – in combat and in regular life, Nora Valkyrie was an unstoppable force. Pyrrha's voice reached Jaune again, "Well, I suppose we'll have to try and get by without her for a night. I have to say, I prefer talking to silence...so what do you want to talk about, Jaune?"

The blonde considered the question. What did he want to talk about? He remembered that he wanted to ask his partner something earlier...ah, yes.

"Well, Pyrrha, I suppose I'd like to talk about the events of..." here he glanced at the clock, "yesterday afternoon. We were interrupted earlier."

And what an interruption it was, he thought idly. I swear, I'm amazed they managed to clean up that many feathers before the matron came back.

Pyrrha laughed, but Jaune couldn't help but feel it was a bit nervous. "I suppose we were."

The quiet returned, somehow distinguishable from the spaces between speech that indicated a conversation. At least this wasn't a silence like before. It was a pause full of thoughts and possibilities, as Jaune's partner turned something over in her mind. The blonde simply lay and waited for her to make a decision, watching the clock's hands.

The minute hand moved one increment closer to declaring three o'clock in the morning, and the quality of the silence changed. Jaune turned his head back to his partner, unsurprised to find that the green eyes were once again in evidence.

"Okay, Jaune. We can talk about it. What would you like to know?" Pyrrha's voice was confident. Resolute. Whatever decision she had come to, the red-haired warrior was going to stick to it.

"After my collapse," Jaune began, "there's mostly blank space – just empty time. But there are some different parts, like splashes of colour on a blank canvas. They don't make much sense, but when I think about them they trigger emotions." Blue eyes locked with green, and he didn't need to finish his sentence...but he did so anyway. "So, Pyrrha, what happened while our auras were linked?"

His partner's green eyes shifted slightly, as if their owner was holding themselves still. They vanished and reappeared in rapid succession, blinking furiously. Then a low sigh carried across the room, and the orbs settled. "The simple answer, Jaune, is a lot. The complicated answer is...frankly embarrassing."

Jaune felt one of his eyebrows rise at that. Embarrassing? I can count on one hand the number of times Pyrrha's considered something embarrassing. Well, that certainly lends credence to my theory...

The sounds of air moving again, though this time it was a deep breathe in as Jaune's partner steeled herself. "When I linked our auras, we underwent the unlocking ritual again." Jaune nodded to himself; he hadn't known of any other possible way to link two auras...well, except one he definitely wasn't supposed to know about, and that definitely hadn't been in Forever Fall. "As we did, the emotional feedback that is normally experienced during unlocking happened again as well."

This wasn't surprising – Jaune could have predicted that happening. "However, instead of being instantly cut off, it just kept going...in effect, I spent two hours staring at your emotional state."

Eh?

It was Jaune's turn to blink rapidly, as he processed that. Pyrrha had...basically read his mind?

That gave rise to several emotions. Jaune could feel anger at the intrusion, embarrassment at what must have been revealed, pity for his partner who had basically been forced to stand in his shoes – or at least his in-souls. Oh dear Monty...I think Yang just turned over in her bed.

Green eyes watched as he sorted out the absolute mess his partner had just made of his relatively tidy mental state. The blonde decided that he would deal with each feeling individually, and then see what was left standing.

The anger faded first, put to rest by Jaune's reasoning that his partner hadn't done it on purpose. Nor had he been in any way harmed – quite the opposite, his life had been saved. Besides, there was a very short list of people in the world who he would have bared his soul to...and Pyrrha Nikos topped that list.

Embarrassment went almost alongside anger. The fact that Pyrrha was someone who Jaune trusted implicitly made it easy to handle, and Jaune turned his attention to the next.

Feeling bad for Pyrrha – that one was the most difficult to deal with. He contemplated leaving it be, but eventually logic did the job. Sure he might be in a pretty bad place...but Pyrrha was stronger than he was. If he could handle living like this, she could handle seeing it from the outside.

That left...a tiny spark of happiness, hidden deep beneath the tide of negativity. Flaring in the dark, as Jaune understood that Pyrrha now knew. If she hadn't before, then certainly she did now. She knew how he felt...and he was at least a little happy about that. Nervous to the point of freezing up, but happy nonetheless.

Back in control, blue eyes rose to meet green. "I see. Thank you, Pyrrha; that can't have been easy for you to come out with." Jaune marvelled at how expressive his partner's lungs were, as a huff from the next bed over answered his words.

"So...does this change anything?" Her quiet words drifted across the gap between them, and Jaune considered them. The blonde decided that his answer needed to be as impactful as possible...and an idea came to mind.

With a grunt of effort, JNPR's leader swung his legs out from under the bed's covers, and grabbed hold of the stand supporting the IV. It was almost empty; the glow of the dust infusion was easily visible in the low light, and the bag attached to it contained maybe a centimetre more. Still, the metal pole supporting it made for a handy walking stick as Jaune shuffled over to his partner's bed.

"Jaune! Jaune, what are you doing? You need to stay in bed!" Pyrrha's words were quiet, but frantic, even as the blonde ignored the burn in his muscles, and finally came to rest at the foot of her bed. He settled into a sitting position with a sigh of relief, turning to his red-haired partner. This close, he could make out her face, see the worry spread across it.

He reached out his left arm, finding Pyrrha's hand. He simply let his hand lie on hers, looking her in the eye to make sure he got his point across. "This only changes things if you want it to. No matter what happens, we will always be friends, and you will always be my partner. I suppose you know..." he choked a little on the words, "how...I feel...now." For Monty's sake, she already knows...why is this so difficult?

He managed to continue, "But whether or not that goes anywhere is entirely up to you. So long as I can stand with you, I don't care what the reasons are. All I want is to be near you."

The effort of the speech left the blonde exhausted, and he leaned forwards a bit as he wished his heart would slow down. He stayed like that for several minutes, just calming down, as he awaited his partner's response. Her hand was frozen under his, almost completely rigid. Jaune simply sat, and waited. He would wait forever, if need be, to get the answer to this question.

It felt like he did wait forever...if forever only constituted five minutes. At the end of that time, JNPR's leader felt the hand under his finally relax, before turning over to properly take hold of his own. "...I don't really know if this will work...if we can work...but I think that I would like to try." Pyrrha's voice trembled a little, but by the end of the sentence it was as strong as always.

Jaune felt his heart rev up again, and the feeling of warm fingers on his own was the single most important thing in the world. He felt like he could walk on air, and he was certain that the grin on his face was visible even through the infirmary's curtains. He didn't trust himself to speak, and instead he gave his partner's hand a squeeze, before dragging himself back to his feet.

He didn't even notice the fatigue as he made his way back to the bed he'd come from; right now, Jaune Arc was the happiest man alive.

Glynda Goodwitch watched the two members of team JNPR settle back into bed, finally showing the signs of true unconsciousness moments later. The camera placed in the clock over the door was meant to catch students trying to steal medical supplies. However, she had decided to watch the feed live tonight – after all, she might be leaving his condition to JNPR for now, but Jaune Arc was still a figure of interest. She sighed to herself, leaning back in the chair she currently occupied.

This is ridiculous...I had thought that RWBY would be the most troublesome team I had to deal with this year, but JNPR is fast becoming just as large a nuisance...

Glynda couldn't help but draw comparisons between the two. JNPR might not have RWBY's sheer combat prowess, but they excelled in terms of logistical, tactical and even intellectual power. Even Ms Valkyrie, who so often appeared ditsy, was consistently achieving highly positive results in her classes.

Yes, both teams were well ahead of their peers...and no matter which she looked to, she could see the resemblance to another team, from a very long time ago...

Glynda Goodwitch was not the kind to show needless emotion in front of others. But in the privacy of her office, with most of the school dead to the world, she didn't stop the pain that flashed across her face.

As she deactivated her scroll and went to bed, she could only hope that the children would outgrow the legacy they had taken upon themselves.

Professor Ozpin sat back in his office, the regular clicks of the gears around him doing little to soothe his mind. He had been keeping an eye on the students, just as Glynda had – whilst keeping an eye on his most trusted confidant as well. He knew why she couldn't leave them be. But he also knew that this course could very well drag things into the light which ought to remain buried.

The symphony of passing time was interrupted by a sloshing of liquid, as the headmaster lifted his mug to his lips. The drink, normally his sustenance, did nothing to divert his mind. Instead, it brought back memories – memories of a time lost to the ages.

Time and Irony... he thought to himself, his left hand unconsciously adjusting his glasses. You truly are the cruelest of mistresses.

And time ticked on around a figure in green and grey.

Author's Note

Sorry if this chapter is a bit weak; I'm a complete novice in love, so I'm basically making this up as I go. If you want a story with actual decent romance, I would suggest works such as FiercesomestDefenstrator's 'Catnip', or Coeur Al'Aran's 'One Good Turn Deserves Another'

The other day I received a review from a 'Richard Fern the Dragonmaster' which highlighted a major fault in my writing – namely that I tend to drag on and on. This chapter is my first attempt at implementing a new style, one which will hopefully be easier to read. I would really appreciate you guys letting me know how it compares. (If it's much better, I might go back and re-format the chapters to date)

Also, Holy Monty, we just passed 5K views! This is a real milestone for me, so I want to do something to commemorate it. What, you ask? Write something for RWBY of course! I'm going to be putting up a poll on my profile where you can vote on what kind of theme the piece will have. Drop by and cast a vote – I'd really appreciate it. Once I know what you guys want to see, I'll get to making it – I'll probably leave the poll for 4 days. The piece itself should then be completed within 2-3 days, since I want it to be a good length and well-made.

I hope you enjoyed reading this even partially as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you have any comments or criticism, please leave a review and I'll be sure to get back to you. Enjoy your day!