Chapter 19: Ice Bath
Qrow was quick to break the embrace he had been sharing with Weiss. There was no foul play intended, it was just a show of thanks for his new flask. Winter's appearance had made the entire situation somewhat awkward. Not that her presence was much of a surprise, but Qrow was still caught off guard by it. He had heard, and later seen, the titanic Schnee Dust Company luxury liner as it entered into Vale's airspace. To him, it looked more like one of Ironwood's ships, only fancier.
Weiss's reaction to the sound of such a familiar voice coming from behind her was less dramatic, and more relieving. She had considered the presence of her father to be a nuisance and a threat. It would be a poor decision to openly disrespect him, but she assumed that she would have no problem standing up to him. The fact that Winter's voice came from the hallway and not her father's created a different sort of problem. Weiss loved her sister, and respected her greatly. But as she stood presently, she had not showered, or even bothered to fix her hair in days. It was not held up in any form or fashion, and her bangs had become ruffled, hanging down past her eyebrows.
As Weiss spun around to face her sister, Qrow noticed that some of the chocolate pudding that decorated his face had gotten into her hair. He began to consider the ways that the blemish would be interpreted. Huh. Maybe she'll think it's dirt. Nobody's had a lot of time to clean up around here and -
Winter's no nonsense demeanor interrupted his thought process. "How is it possible that you've managed to make yourself appear even more homeless than you did last week?"
He thought for a moment. "Well, I was staying at Beacon the last time you saw me. Since then, the Grimm have more or less evicted me. So… I mean technically, I am more homeless than I was last week." Winter growled at the inhumane levels of snark that seemed to emanate from Qrow at all times. She tried to form a quick-witted response, but before her thoughts could be organized into a rebuttal, Qrow did his best to rationalize the pudding crisis. "This isn't what it probably looks like, just so you know."
Weiss turned her head halfway around, forming a puzzled expression on her face. "Wait… what?" She thought for a few moments about the implications of the hug she had shared. "Are you saying she thought… that we were… Oh nonononono." She turned back to her sister. "Winter, it's not what it looks-"
"You have chocolate pudding in your hair, sister," Winter said, flatly. "Please, go make yourself presentable."
The look that Weiss gave to Qrow would have killed a lesser man. But, in an attempt to avoid creating a scene in the presence of her sister, she gritted her teeth and stormed across the hall to the room that she had occupied in the absence of Blake.
The traffic in the hallway was typically light, but the occasional passerby was enough to cause concern for Winter. She waited until after her sister had closed the door to her room to speak again. "I think it would be best if we find a more… secure… area before any sensitive information is exchanged."
Qrow nodded in agreement. "Well then. Come on in." He began to turn back towards the interior of the room he had previously occupied, but he was stopped before completing his change of direction.
"Qrow. There are two young girls and a hospital worker in the room. You may recall that I did say 'sensitive information' in my previous statement." The nurse who had all but finished tending to Yang, having heard the comment, stood up and began to head toward the exit before Qrow stopped her.
"You don't have to leave if you aren't finished. Whatever she has to say, I think we've all earned the right to hear it." The nurse was clearly torn about the choice she had been presented. After a brief moment of consideration, she made the decision to finish taking care of Yang before moving on to her next job.
The direct contradiction to Winter's presumed authority made her furious. She moved to within a few inches of Qrow, lowering her tone to a snarl. "Who do you think you are, that you get to decide who is, and who is not privy to information directly concerning the Military of Atlas?"
His response was in feigned terror. "Oh, I'm so sorry. Please forgive me for not respecting the sanctity of such a pure, unblemished fighting force." Qrow lifted the veil of insincerity before continuing, "Where do you think you are? I'm not sure how things are going in Atlas these days, but in Vale, everybody's pretty much on the same page. We've all been through one circle of hell or another over the last few days. What could you possibly think is happening here that's such a well kept secret?"
In his mind, he pleaded to some greater power that the existence of the four maidens had not become common knowledge among the ranks of the Atlesian Military. Qrow was not interested in speaking of the legends that Oz had told him over the years, especially not in front of his two young nieces and a member of the hospital staff.
Fortunately for him, it looked as if that secret would remain safe for now, as Winter simply responded, "I. Don't. Know. But I am here on behalf of the Ruling Council of Atlas to find out. The last images we saw of Vale before the CCTS failed were of Atlesian units attacking the city, Beacon, civilians and students. Unsure of how such action would be possible or necessary, the council has advised the formation of a special inquisitorial task force. As part of my investigation, I will need to speak to General Ironwood as soon as possible. I have an urgent message that requires his immediate attention."
"That all seems pretty serious. You know, you sound really official when you use big words like that." Qrow knew that continually joking with Winter would get him nowhere. She clearly had an agenda, and he had no idea what it was. "But why tell me all of this? Isn't your usual answer for everything, 'classified'?"
She exhaled loudly, for effect. "My superiors back in Atlas recognize your… perceived value to any kind of intelligence gathering mission. And as much as it pains me to admit it, you are one of the best huntsmen that we have left. Also, considering that you've spent the majority of the last week in Vale, I think it is fair to assume that you have your nose in more than just my sister's hair. As such, I have been granted the authority to offer you a place on my team, should you be interested."
Qrow grimaced, likely at the thought of collaborating with, as he considered them, a bunch of sellouts. "Your witch hunt is pointless. I can tell you just about everything you want to know, and that sounds a lot better than selling my soul to Atlas. Besides, you said you were looking for Ironwood. I say we find him, and we'll talk all of this out. Two birds, one stone."
To Winter, this was so easy that it almost seemed like a trap. "Fine, but we're doing this my way," she demanded. Qrow agreed to some extent, but instead of leading the way to General Ironwood's makeshift headquarters, he turned back into the room and picked up his bowl of pudding, much to the dismay of Winter. "Could you not?"
"You're just mad that I'm not gonna share."
Weiss spent her time in the washroom thinking about what her family's presence in Vale could mean for her. If this is anything like last time, then Winter is probably just here to oversee the deployment of reinforcements. She can't actually be mad at me, can she? Maybe once I explain what we've been through, she could understand. Besides, it's not like she told me she was coming. How can I be expected to keep myself 'presentable' at all times in the middle of a war? This is literally the first shower I've taken in days.
And what about father? He has to be here, right? There's no way he would just lend his ship out for something that he had no stake in. The way Winter explained it, he must have been upset with the way I left. For Beacon, I mean. It's not what he wanted for me. She shook her head, He never cared enough to actually have a conversation about it. Why should I have to explain anything to him?
A barely audible knock at the door broke her concentration, and sent her into a panic. Regardless of who was outside her room, she was wrapped in only a bath towel. It subsequently occurred to her that the only clothes she had were the ones she had just changed out of before stepping into the shower. Great. I wonder if a bath towel counts as 'presentable'. I guess I'll find out.
She peered through the eyehole in her door, but didn't see anyone in the hallway. When she turned the handle on the door to peer outside, it flew open, and a completely unprepared Jaune fell to the floor. Apparently, he had been leaning on the door, waiting for a response. Weiss quickly retreated several steps back, as a short scream escaped her mouth at the surprise of it all.
Before he even looked up to take in the sight of his friend in a bath towel, Jaune began to apologize, "Sorry, Weiss. I was trying to listen for sounds to see if you were in there, then the door ju-" He lifted his head, and saw the bewildered heiress slowly backing into the washroom, wrapped in a towel. "Oh Crap! Weiss! I- Sorry, I didn't know!" He scrambled back into the hall, still on his hands and knees, pulling the door closed behind him. For a moment, he collected himself, then stood back up. This time, he chose the wall as a more solid surface to lean on while he waited for Weiss to sort herself out.
With the door closed again, Weiss began to frantically search the room for something to wear. Her old clothes were dirty and worn, but they would suffice if they were her only option. She knew that her search was hopeless. When they left their dormitory at Beacon for the last time, none of her team could have known to pack a change of clothes. It was this train of thought that caused her to stop in her tracks at the sight of a perfectly folded and arranged set of clean clothes for her to wear, laid out neatly on her bed.
She reached out to them cautiously, almost as if she expected a giant mouse trap to snap closed on her. When she wasn't crushed under the force of a giant, spring loaded death trap, Weiss quickly put on her clothes. She found that they were identical to the usual outfit that she wore around Beacon. The only difference was the folded piece of paper that was tucked into her sleeve. It was typed on an official Schnee Dust Company letterhead, and simply read, "We need to talk." Her father had signed his name at the bottom.
So, he knows I'm here. He knows where I'm staying. He seems to know about my distinct lack of wardrobes. And he made one of his secretaries type out four words on a page. On the bright side, he does seem to actually want to talk to me, which is… new...for him. The resentment inside of her grew at the thought of her father being so disconnected emotionally that he had sent what was effectively a memo to her room, informing her that she was being summoned to his presence.
By this time, Weiss had gotten herself fully dressed. All that was left to do was putting on her boots and organizing her hair into something that didn't resemble a wet dog, which could wait for at least a little while. She made her way back to the door, this time giving fair warning to anyone leaning on it, "I'm opening the door now."
Jaune was just to the left of the door as it swung open, still leaning against the wall, still standing. He did not immediately turn his attention to activity happening to his right. He did acknowledge it, though. "Is it safe for me to look?"
"Yeah, I'm decent now, you can come in if you want to," she said as she retreated back into her room. The sight of Jaune following her into into the room was alarming, mostly because she realized how tall he was. Without her heels to effectively boost her up, Jaune seemed to tower over Weiss even more than usual. The difference in their height was more than an entire foot now.
Jaune gently closed the door behind him, before taking a seat on the extra chair that was in each of the hospital rooms. At the same time, Weiss reached for the hairbrush that had also been so conveniently left on her bed, along with the proper pins and ties necessary to form her hair into her traditional ponytail. "He really thought of everything. Or someone did, anyway," she said quietly to herself.
Jaune wasn't sure if he was being addressed, "Who did?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, I was kind of… talking to myself. What I mean is, I'm still trying to figure out my clothes. I didn't get a chance to pack before I left Beacon, but I think my father sent me an extra set."
"Yeah, I should probably be the one who's sorry here. I mean, I almost killed you with the door, and then there's the whole… bath towel thing. Y-know, I honestly thought you'd be more upset by all of this." Jaune's thoughts shifted to her comments about her father. "Your dad is… here?"
She lowered her eyes, almost as if to communicate sadness to him, "It would seem so, yes. I know that my sister is here. I've already spoken with her, but I found this note..." Weiss removed the memo from the nightstand, and handed it to Jaune. "Looks like he's made enough time in his busy schedule to squeeze me in."
"Is this a bad time, then? I can come back later if you want… Really, it's no big deal." The tone of his voice made Jaune sound completely defeated. She couldn't blame him, though. He had been a ghost for the better part of a day and a half since their last meeting in the hallway, not long after her return from Beacon.
"No, Jaune. Stay. I want you to." She lifted her head and gave him a little smile. "I haven't spoken to my father in months, and I'm in no hurry to change that. You're here now, so what's on your mind?"
"Well… it's just… I've had some time to think now. I did my best to clear my head of all of the dreams… the nightmares that have been haunting me. I think I'm good now. But I still don't really feel like I understand all the details of what happened back at the school. Like I've seen a lot of stuff that still doesn't make any sense to me." Jaune trailed off toward the end of his sentence, trying to gauge if Weiss was following his line of thought at all.
"Jaune, nothing I've seen in the last three days makes any sense to me. We're supposed to be kids learning how to be adults… how to be professionals. The things I've done over the past few days have made me feel more like a headmaster. We've both had to deal with heartbreak and tragedy. I was down in that nightmare, vault thing when I found Ozpin's cane. I saw Blake leave the city. I watched Yang crumble emotionally right in front of me. Ruby is still not awake, and I don't know what the next hour has in store for me."
Jaune stared intently at Weiss. For a moment, he remained silent. Some of the things she had said were news to him, but the part about Professor Ozpin was especially interesting. "You were in the vault? Wasn't Ozpin there?"
"No, I got chased down there not more than a few minutes after you called me, right after Ruby went up the tower. I was alone for a little while, so I looked around. That's when I found Ozpin's cane. And I saw that girl in the pod." Weiss connected some dots in her mind, "Wait, you went to the vault too?"
He nodded his head. "I… The three of us went down there. Ozpin, Pyrrha and myself. I didn't have time to ask anyone what all of it meant, but Pyrrha got into the empty pod that was down there. Then Ozpin started some kind of machine, and Pyrrha started screaming. I turned around to see what was wrong, and an arrow flew past my head. It hit this other girl… and then there was this amber colored light that left her body and went to the woman who shot the arrow. All of the sudden she could fly, and she used this… fire… or something… to shrug off my attack, then Pyrrha's. Ozpin told us to get out of there, to get help, but we barely made it out of the building before that woman flew to the top of the tower."
Weiss took a seat on her bed, clearly unsure how to process what she was hearing. "None of that makes any sense to me… I mean, I heard everything you told me, but the lights and the fire? It sounds like something out of a fantasy novel… But, you were in the city when you called me, weren't you?"
Jaune didn't even acknowledge the question for a few moments, as if he had to open a box that was locked away in his mind. "I… took out my scroll to try to call for help. I was going to call Glynda, but I sidetracked myself asking Pyrrha about what in the world I had just witnessed. She hesitated, and just kept looking back at the tower. It only took me a few seconds to figure out why. That was the moment. Right there, she made her choice about her destiny. She knew what she had to do. I tried to reason with her…"
"Jaune, she made that decision for herself. You can't beat yourself up over this again." Weiss made her best attempt to insulate Jaune from another traumatic recollection of that day's events.
"She… made that decision... for me. It's like I said. I was trying desperately to reason with her, to talk her out of going up there alone. I was prepared to go with her, or drag her away. I was ready for anything. Except for a kiss."
Weiss' eyes widened with this revelation. She began to consider, for the first time, how strong Jaune had been through all of this. She never realized that he had been that close to Pyrrha. "I- I had no idea…"
Jaune gave a defeated laugh. "Wanna know the real shame of it? Neither did I. I spent a lot of time thinking about it since yesterday morning. I talked a lot with Ren and Nora too. The truth of it is, I was just too worried about myself to ever think about her as anything more than a friend. She did all of the right things, and made all of the right moves. Eventually, I started to get it. But it only really clicked in my mind a few hours before her fight at the tournament."
"Are... you sure you want to be talking about this?" Weiss asked cautiously. "I don't want to make this uncomfortable for you."
"She saved me, Weiss. She may have saved you too. But that doesn't mean I'm going to mourn her. That's not what she would have wanted. I am going to make it my purpose in life to honor Pyrrha's memory in everything that I do. And that starts now. The reason I came over here was to find out if you know where Crow is. He told me to come find him when I was ready. With everything you told me about the vault underneath the school, and Ozpin being gone… I have a lot of questions for him. I know it's only been a little while, but I'm more ready, more focused now than I've ever been." Jaune rose defiantly from his chair, and offered his hand in assistance to Weiss.
She accepted, and the two of them walked toward the exit to the room, stopping only briefly for Weiss to put on her boots. "If they're not across the hall, then they probably went to the debriefing room. That's where General Ironwood stays, and if I know my sister, that's where she'll want to go."
As they closed the door behind them, Jaune's only words were "It's time to get some answers."