Almost an hour after the Beringel had faded to dust, eight huntsmen and a detachment of Vale's military forces found them in the lab. Reese mustered enough energy to help them prepare Pyrrha for travel, then fell into a haze of fatigue and medication. She slipped in and out of consciousness, the moments of wakefulness marked by a vague sensation of movement, droning engines, and a view of the inside of a bullhead.
When Reese finally woke to a lucid state of mind she found herself in a hospital bed, its head adjusted so she was sitting upright. She went to reach for the call button on her bed and winced, hissing as pain shot through her torso. She peeked down the neck of her hospital gown to find everything from her navel to her armpits wrapped in bandages.
"Nice work saving Nora," a voice said.
Reese looked over to find Coco reclining in a chair by the bed, dressed in a set of jeans and a loose tank top, her arms folded over her belly. She had more bruises, and a few stitches above one eye, but even after their brush with death she appeared fashionably weathered, like a set of pre-torn jeans. If Coco had told Reese her Semblance was always looking good, Reese wouldn't have batted an eye.
"It was all guts and no grace," said Coco. "But guts are the foundation. Everything else comes later." The corner of her mouth turned up.
Reese smirked back at her. "Isn't it a little cold this time of year for spaghetti straps?"
Coco grinned and gave her a rude hand gesture. She lifted the hem of her top with her other hand, displaying her own set of bandages. "You're not the only one bringing the sarashi back into style. This hurts like a bitch if I wear anything heavier or tighter. I understand Blake's new outfit now."
Reese's smirk disappeared. "How are Blake and Nora? And everyone else?"
"Blake's fine, apparently," Coco said, stretching. "She disappeared the night after we got back to Vale. Nora bounced back like she'd only had a rough spar. She has some pain, but she's been getting around just fine with her Semblance. Ruined a dozen forks before they let her have unlimited lightning Dust. Royce irritated Vale enough to get them to leave two huntsmen teams with his village. They're going to help them relocate to that settlement on the Vacuo border. After that, they're going to scout the region for any further clues, or any stragglers that might have been away from the White Fang's base when everything went down."
"And Pyrrha?"
Coco sagged in her seat. She pulled out her scroll and tapped a quick message. "I don't know, but we're about to find out."
…
A few minutes later Nora entered, accompanied by Councilor Stonebridge and Ambassador Sylva. Nora had a dour look on her face, which was briefly replaced by a smile as she nodded to Coco and gave Reese the best hug she could manage with Reese's injuries. Reese gave her version of the mission's events, pausing once or twice to clarify details. After she finished, Sylva and Stonebridge produced confidentiality agreements, which attested that CNBR would claim to have encountered an unusually high concentration of Grimm, and a group of raiders particularly adept at baiting Grimm to soften fortified villages. All three of them hesitated.
"Why didn't you tell us everything?" Reese asked.
Stonebridge looked at her. "It was a need-to-know situation. You had enough information to accomplish your objectives. We were confident you could fill in the gaps, and you did."
"It was reckless," Coco said. "You withheld crucial information and unnecessarily lowered the odds of success. Quite frankly, that lack of trust isn't just insulting, it's counterintuitive."
Stonebridge pursed his lips. "I didn't need a full team of people I could trust. I needed scouts. If you happened to succeed—as you did—excellent. If you didn't, then it would be another argument in favor of committing greater resources towards our allegedly outlandish theory."
Reese balled her fists. "You didn't think we could do it."
"I had hoped you could, but no, I didn't."
Coco jumped to her feet. "You son of a bitch! When I tell people what you did—"
"You'll ruin the arrangement we made for your father?" Sylva asked. "Incarcerate yourself in a Vale prison? That would be an especially poor decision. Grimm activity is increasing across Remnant. Your teams need all their members. So many accidents can happen on a mission when teams are shorthanded."
Coco bared her teeth. Nora stood and glared at Sylva and Stonebridge.
"How do I know you'll take care of Pyrrha like you said you would?" Nora asked. "What if you decide that it's not worth trying to fix her?"
Sylva gave Nora a dismissive look. "You'll just have to trust us."
The door to the room flew open. "Actually, they'll just need to trust me."
Glynda Goodwitch strode into the room, shutting the door behind her with a flick of her riding crop, her heels clicking on the floor. Reese had never seen Beacon's assistant headmaster in person, but she had been right about her assessment from the few times she'd seen her on television: This was bar none, the scariest woman she had ever seen, surpassing Arslan by an Animan mile. Without even looking at Reese, she made her feel anxious that she wasn't neatly groomed or dressed, even if lying in a hospital bed was an acceptable excuse for looking disheveled.
"Professor Goodwitch," Stonebridge said, rising to meet her and extending a hand. "We were just—"
"Meeting without me to intimidate my students and a guest of the Kingdom?" Glynda said. "You have a troubling habit of holding these meetings when I've been otherwise occupied with urgent matters. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
She gave Stonebridge a hard stare. "No one fools me three times."
Stonebridge glowered at Professor Goodwitch, but he sat back down. Glynda nodded, then turned to face Reese, Coco, and Nora.
"Sign the papers," she said.
Coco gaped at her. "Professor Goodwitch, did you hear what they said?"
"I heard enough. But while their vague threats are crude and despicable, you still participated in a covert mission. Furthermore, I think that more harm than good will come from revealing Miss Nikos' condition to the public. Vale has already lost trust and resources in the wake of what happened at Beacon. It can't afford to lose face again. Furthermore, if her condition was made public, it wouldn't just demoralize Vale's citizens, it would terrify them. We don't fully understand the extent of her condition, but the implications of someone even appearing to be part Grimm would cause a panic. The last thing we need right now is to make the populace even more tantalizing to the Grimm, or to make it easier for the people who ordered this to find her."
Nora gave Professor Goodwitch an anguished look. "But—"
"Don't worry," Glynda held up a placating hand towards Nora. "I've contacted General Ironwood, and Headmasters Lionheart and Aria. You have my assurance that we will use every resource the four of us have to help Miss Nikos. Now please, sign the papers."
The three huntresses reluctantly complied, signing without taking their eyes off Stonebridge. He snatched the papers from their hands and jabbed a finger at Glynda.
"That was confidential information. You had no right to share it with the other Kingdoms."
"The headmasters are trustworthy, and it was the right thing to do," Glynda said. "Ozpin would have done the same, and he would have swung the council's vote in his favor. It's not as if I communicated something life-threatening to the world, like the fact that the Ambassador can't swim despite the amount of time she spends travelling across the ocean, or that it would be very easy to accidentally kill you because of your severe allergy to five common types of nuts."
"How dare you threaten us!" said Sylva, glaring at her.
"I was stating facts, not making threats" Glynda said, her tone neutral. She flicked her riding crop. A fire extinguisher mounted by the door shot across the room towards the Ambassador's head, jerking to a halt an inch from her face. She shrieked, falling out of her chair.
"If anything happens to Miss Nikos, my students, or their teammates, what's left of you two won't fill a teacup. That was a threat."
Sylva climbed to her feet, brushing herself off. She and Stonebridge exchanged glares with Glynda as they left the room. The Professor produced a notepad, wrote something down, and tore off the page. She handed it to Nora.
"My scroll number. If you feel that you require assistance resolving a dispute with them, or that they aren't conducting themselves properly, don't hesitate to call." Glynda gave the three of them a tiny smile. It was barely enough to change her perpetually disapproving frown, but it was somehow the most smug expression Reese had ever seen. Without a further word, she turned and left the room.
When she was sure the Professor was out of earshot, Coco broke the silence:
"Show of hands: Who wants to be Professor Goodwitch when they grow up?"
All three of them raised their hand.
…
Two days later, Reese pulled her now-hoodless hoodie on as she prepared to leave the hospital. She took hold of a cart they'd given her to tote her belongings to the airstrip and pulled it down the hall. She stuck her free hand in her pocket to let it rest there and felt paper.
She pulled out an envelope with her name written on the front. The handwriting was too relaxed to be Coco's, and too graceful to be Nora's. She sat on a bench in a side corridor, opened the envelope, and pulled out a folded sheet of notepad paper.
Reese, the letter read. I'm sorry I left without saying anything. There's things I need to take care of, places I had intended to go before Vale persuaded me to join the three of you. My old colleague is still out there, and it appears that if Vale had ever intended to help me take care of him, they intended to use Pyrrha. Aside from being horrendously cruel, that plan seems destined to end in failure one way or another. There's nothing more I can do here, but I have ways of contacting Professor Goodwitch and Nora if I find anything that might help cure Pyrrha. Maybe I'll hear something when I investigate other branches of the White Fang.
Good job pulling through when things got tough. You've still got work ahead of you, but you're not as deficient as you might feel. You're resourceful, and under that bundle of anxieties there's someone who runs towards a crisis, not away from it. Get your fire back and strengthen your body enough to survive whatever trouble that crazy head of yours lands you in, and you'll be a great huntress.
From one work-in-progress to another, good luck.
-B
Reese smiled down at the letter, then folded it back up and clutched it in her free hand.
"Good luck to you too."
…
"Eldest Brother," Reese swore. "Did a Goliath step on you, or did you just wake up like that?"
Reese had found Nora and Coco waiting at the airstrip on some staged cargo. Nora was sitting back against a crate, clutching her head. Coco was leaning upright against a taller container. She looked like a bird that had survived getting hit by a truck. Her hair was frazzled, her face looked pale and clammy, and her movements to remain in the shade were stiff. She had a cardboard carrier of coffee cups next to her in addition to her thermos, which she drank from in long pulls.
"So like I promised Nora," Coco said, her voice raw, "I found a bar where we could talk things over. By sheer coincidence, this happened to be across the street from a twenty-four hour diner that sells four pancakes for one Lien. We crossed the street five—"
"Six," Nora amended.
"—Six times last night. Neither of us got sick, but I feel so awful I wish I had. At this point, I think Nora's blood is equal parts syrup and alcohol. We would have invited you, but—"
"Don't worry about it," Reese said, moving next to Coco. "I can barely eat a sandwich without my ribs hurting. What you did last night might have literally killed me." She smirked at Coco. "You know, it's stuff like this that makes Vale want to raise the drinking age a few years above eighteen."
"Bite me, Skate Rat." Coco eyed the folded paper in Reese's hand. "She left you a letter too, huh?"
Reese nodded. "What did yours say?"
"Not much. 'I'm okay, here's proof I didn't get kidnapped by people who think I'm a White Fang spy, yadda yadda yadda, good luck, stay safe, call if you need help.' That girl's social skills are wildly inconsistent." Coco looked over at Nora. "What did she say to you?"
Nora drank from a water bottle before answering. "The same as you, just with some extra stuff about Pyrrha."
"Do you know anything else?" Reese asked.
Nora stared at the ground. "I went to see her with Professor Goodwitch. The one time they tried to wake her up she got wild and they had to sedate her again. They don't know if she had Grimm parts surgically attached, if they're infecting her like a parasite, or if it's just a mutation that looks like Grimm anatomy. One guy thinks that's not even her body. They say despite the blood test results, it could be a clone made from some trace DNA they found somewhere. It all sounds like something out of a bad science fiction movie."
"It's uncharted territory for everyone."
"Yeah," Nora said, her eyes misting. But then she smiled, and there was hope beneath her grief.
"But I know she's in there. Maybe we can't fix her now, maybe not for a long time. But if she's in there we can get her out. You can't have a Semblance without a soul."
…
Soon after, Nora left to board a bullhead to Patch. She gave the two of them the gentlest hugs she could manage, and then she was gone. Coco and Reese passed the time in silence, both too tired to hold up a conversation after the urgent topics had been discussed. A couple of hours later, Coco's scroll rang. She looked at it, ignored the call, and settled back into relative comfort.
"Your team?" Reese asked.
"Yeah," Coco said. "They can wait."
"My team should get here soon, you don't have to stay with me."
"Like hell I don't. You're still my responsibility until Arslan takes you back. I'm not going to leave you and run like I'm dropping off a package at the post office."
A cat-like grin crossed Reese's face. "Aww, you do care."
"About Arslan not punching a hole in my chest? I'd say I care about that a lot."
Reese let out a snort of laughter and they fell back into silence. Some time later, a bullhead landed. Three figures emerged and walked towards Coco and Reese. Reese felt her heart start to race. It was irrational. She hadn't been on bad terms with Bolin or Nadir, and she'd been mostly civil with Arslan, even though they'd disagreed about her coming to Vale. Still, Reese clutched the corner of the cargo container at her back, as if afraid she would bolt if she wasn't holding onto something.
Nadir's face lined with distress when he saw Reese and they exchanged an embrace. The larger boy matched the strength of his hold to Reese's, giving a firm hug without aggravating her injured ribs. They parted, and Reese turned to Bolin. His eyebrows rose, then he traded grips with Reese, giving her hand a quick squeeze.
"You look you had more fun than we did," he said.
"Only if you have a weird definition of 'fun'," Reese replied.
"Storytime later?"
Reese started to reply when Arslan stepped forward. Reese shrank a bit and lowered her eyes as Arslan approached. She looked Reese over, her brow furrowed.
"How are you holding up?" Arslan asked.
"As best as I can." Reese forced herself to meet Arslan's eyes. "They say I'll need a couple weeks to heal up, then I can start easing back into training."
"Nothing permanent?"
Reese shook her head. Arslan's expression became neutral and she nodded. Then she frowned and turned to face Coco, her eyes flinty.
"Make no mistake," Arslan said. "I am still angry that this happened to Reese, but you made it sound a lot worse than this. The way you spoke when you called me, I thought we were going to have to roll her home on a stretcher."
"I didn't exaggerate anything," Coco said, folding her arms.
"No, but when we spoke you were…agitated, and hard to understand."
Coco's cheeks turned pink, and Reese could have sworn she trembled a little. Arslan's posture softened a bit, and she rolled her eyes.
"Probably just the damn interference on the daisy-chain radio you used to call Mistral."
"Yeah, probably," Coco muttered, looking away.
Arslan shrugged. "Is there any sort of red tape we have to deal with? I think we all want to get home as soon as possible."
Coco gestured towards a one-story building. "Just stop in the customs office while your flight is refueling, they'll handle everything. They're used to short stops so they'll do it quick."
"Good to know. I think we can take it from here."
Coco nodded, then turned to Reese. A wistful look crossed her face. "I think we've said everything we need to say. Stay bold, Skate Rat."
Reese flashed her a lazy salute. "Take it easy, Bossy Britches."
Coco snorted at that and turned to leave. After taking a few steps, Arslan drew alongside Coco and said something the rest of them couldn't hear. Coco nodded again, replied, and squeezed Arslan's hand. She squeezed back and clapped Coco on the shoulder. Then Coco flicked her sunglasses down from her brow and walked away, boots clicking across the tarmac.
"Where's your stuff?" Bolin asked.
"Here," Reese said, pointing at her cart. "Or in Vale's possession. They offered to load all the extra junk I brought along that we didn't use."
"Literally the least they can do after making you handle whatever mess they needed cleaned up," Arslan said. She sighed. "Let's just head to the office so we can leave—"
Reese wrapped her arms around Arslan, despite the pain it caused in her chest. Arslan froze, surprised, then laid an arm around Reese's shoulders and awkwardly patted her back. Words escaped Reese. Did she apologize for agreeing to help Vale? Start up old arguments? Reveal the secrets she'd been burdened with to relieve the pressure inside her? They'd been fortunate to survive. Some of it had been luck, but some of it had been grit and skill. Gratitude was in order. Arslan hadn't been directly involved, but she'd always done her best to lead and prepare ABRN for anything life threw at them.
"Thank you for all the workouts you made us do," Reese said. "Especially the crunches." The words sounded lame and underwhelming to Reese's ears, but they were truthful.
Arslan drew back and gave Reese a perplexed look. "The workouts you constantly complained about and usually tried to weasel out of?"
Reese nodded.
"You're welcome…is there something we need to discuss?"
Memories of writhing Grimm, fetid breath, and cries of pain from Grimm and humans alike flashed through Reese's head. She drew back and saw Nadir watching her with concern; Bolin smirking like he'd already planned the perfect homecoming celebration in Mistral's lower levels; and Arslan, furious underneath her concern, but furious for Reese, not at her. The memories didn't depart, but for a moment they faded to something more manageable, a dull roar in the background.
"No," Reese said, shaking her head. "Let's go home."
And that's the end! Thank you for reading my longest piece of writing to date. Writing it was a long journey, but one I'm glad I completed. I had fun, and I hope you did too.
I might post one or two one-shots in the coming weeks, but for the most part I'm going to take a break for a while to take care of personal matters and outline and plan my next story, but I'll be back!
Thank you again for reading!
-Sungrass