Standard disclaimer:

"Again?" Jeneralissima followed the long wire back to its source. "Seriously, Block?"

"I just," they made an indescribable motion with their hands. "It happened, okay?"

"Well make it happen less." Jeneralissima grumbled, looking over the small chapter in front of her. "Some of us have lives, remember?"

"Blame the muse." Writersblock perched next to their friend. "It's what I do."

"Why Clio hasn't left you, I still don't know." the Jeneral muttered.

"Oh this one was all Mel." Block kicked their feet. "This whole series is her baby, really."

A quiet snort came from Jeneralissima at that. "I'd rather read something from Melopmene than from Erato." She glanced up. "Sylvia Day you are not. Don't quit your day job."

"Wasn't planning it," Block replied cheerily. "We good to go?"

"Yep, just tell everyone we don't own RWBY, and this should at least pass muster once."

"Only once?"

"I don't think that anyone's going to want to read it more than that, do you?"

"Fair point."

Winter stared at the page in front of her.

It wasn't like she couldn't read it or even that it contained bad news. It was just another piece on the recovery efforts from Salem's one-woman war against all life. Another dissertation on how Atlas was doing better than last month, but not as good as before the battles got worse. It was another piece of evidence to add to the graph showing a steadily climbing rate of recovery.

No, there was no bad news on the report, but the Specialist still stared at it unseeingly nonetheless.

Her assistant, a young Corporal by the name of William Tell, shook his head sadly. His superior seemed so lost in thought these days. She had served honorably in the battles, but ever since the final operation she had been easily distractible.

He didn't blame her.

Winter Schnee had been the most exemplary Hunter Specialist in the Corps, having been fast-tracked to work with the General himself. She had known more about the war as it unfolded than anyone else, and she had gone above and beyond, even fighting her own sister to save Atlas (and Mantle) from tyranny and destruction. He was unaware of all of the details- most were classified-but he knew that he was lucky enough to work with a war hero and (even better, in his mind) a sibling to one of the Saviours of Remnant.

Yet, that was a double edged sword.

Weiss Schnee didn't make it. When that had happened, his superior had nearly fainted, and he had seen-for the first and last time-Winter Schnee, the ice queen herself, lose her composure. He and one of her friends had escorted her back to her quarters, and for three weeks he helped by doing as much of her work as he was allowed and arranging for anything he couldn't do himself to be quietly re-routed to those who could.

Eventually Winter had come back to work, and he acted as though nothing had changed. She seemed to appreciate that, and beyond a single statement of condolence (to which she had deflated, before thanking him) he didn't mention it. However, he still continued to vet what his boss did and did not need to do. There were plenty of things that came across the Specialist's desk that really only needed a stamp before continuing onto the final decision maker. These he would ask her about and then (usually) send along. The report she was staring at now was one such thing, but she still had to sign that she'd routed it, and therefore it was sitting in her hands waiting on her to send it along.

Now came the most important part of his job, and it was one part that he hated. "Specialist?"

Winter jumped and turned a cool gaze on him. "Yes, Corporal?"

"Ranger Walther stopped me in the hallway and asked about whether I had dropped the files for the recovery report on his desk yet." A lie, but one that the Ranger would have no issue collaborating. He was well known for tracking down paperwork he wanted to have signed off on prior to going home, and he tended to skip the chain of command and go below the person he needed the paperwork from. The junior would usually be completely lost, bring up the issue to their superior, and the superior would usually rush to finish. The Ranger tended to speak to quite a few people throughout the day, and he often forgot whom he did and did not speak to about paperwork. Tell used this to his advantage. It allowed him to pull his boss out of her reverie while simultaneously ignoring the fact that she had spaced out.

He wasn't proud of it, but it was the only way he could help.

Winter shook her head. "Of course." She set down the paper. "It looks fine, Corporal." She looked around for her pen, but the office scroll went off.

Corporal Tell nodded and went back to work. Specialist Schnee was in the office, so he wasn't going to answer. It wasn't like he was the one anyone wanted to talk to anyway; he usually just ended up taking messages.

"I see…" His superior's tone made the room's temperature drop a few degrees, and he involuntarily shivered. The Specialist was a good boss, but she could be downright terrifying sometimes, and she could do so with as little as one word. "I will, of course, attend, Whitley, but perhaps you could refrain from calling me at work." Her voice was as frigid as her name. Finally she scoffed and with an, "I will see you later, brother," she ended the call. He heard a snap as the wired scroll was hung up a bit hard and a heavily scratched signature, before she dropped the folder on his desk. "See to it that Ranger Walther gets this. I'm out of the office. I will see you tomorrow. I will not be taking calls."

The Corporal nodded, unconcerned with his superior's brusqueness. It was the way she worked, and that was okay. He understood she just wanted to make sure the job was done. He sighed a bit as the door closed behind her. She wasn't quite the same, but she seemed to be healing, and that was good.

Winter gently opened the door of the manor she had once called home.

The silence was absolute. The lack of servants unnerved her, not because she couldn't take care of herself, but because the house had (somehow) taken on an even lonelier and more oppressive atmosphere without the bustle and action behind the scenes that the help had always brought. She could practically hear the carpet collapsing under the weight of each step, and she found it unsettling how quiet it was. Eventually she made it to the balcony and was immediately glad to hear the birdsong that assaulted her ears.

"Hello, dear sister."

She was less happy to hear Whitley.

"Good day, brother."

The two Schnee siblings stared at each other for a moment. Whitley was as inscrutable as ever, while Winter kept a sneer on her face. No matter what her mother said about her younger brother, she found what he'd done to Weiss deplorable and thought that her mother's excuse about him feeling left behind was fine, but should be taken with a grain of salt. He could have reached out to Weiss, and instead he'd stabbed her in the back.

Winter didn't trust her brother. She never would after what he'd done to their sister.

"Won't you have a seat, dear sister? We have much to discuss."

Winter swept into the offered chair, leaning back into it and carefully placing her arms on either armrest. It wasn't too hard to look like the queen she'd trained at her father's knee to be, until she had seen what he did to those who got in his way. She might not have wanted to have anything to do with the SDC after watching her father systematically destroy its reputation with his unethical and flat out cruel business practices, but she wanted even less to do with it after the deplorable way her father chose to tell her mother about why he married her. It was to her eternal shame that she left her younger sister to be brainwashed by the man who had pretended to care for them, and it had been a point of pride for her when Weiss had run away.

Her feelings after that tended to be a mix of disappointment and simultaneous pride. She and Weiss didn't always see eye to eye, but they usually came down on the right side-or at least the same side-eventually. It had taken some time after Salem's attack, but they made up.

And then everything had gone to shit.

Sighing, she glared at her brother. "You called this meeting, brother. What do you want?"

"It is lovely to see you as well." Whitley sat down smoothly, adopting a similar posture to his older sister, though without as much practice he took a moment before he appeared to relax into the position. "I am so very glad you could meet with me, and I do have a reason for interrupting your busy day, but as it is so rare that I hear from you I just must know: how are you doing?"

"As well as can be expected." Winter ground out. "What do you want?"

"I need to know if you are aware of the location of mother's will."

The birds continued singing, and the wind gently rattled the branches as silence fell between the two. Finally, when Winter had managed to form a coherent thought again, she raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"I may need to enact it soon."

"And you didn't feel the need to tell me?" Winter's voice dropped dangerously. "People do not just die out of the blue, brother, and if they do, questions are often asked. Is mother in danger of death?"

"She is not ill, though bedridden," her brother allowed, and she narrowed her eyes.

"Have you brought this to the doctor's attention?"

"Of course."

"And you did not think to bring it to my attention?" He grimaced and looked away, and she mentally smirked.

"Is that not what I am doing?"

"You are asking me to find mother's will. That is hardly the same thing."

"Fine," he snapped, meeting her eyes defiantly. "Perhaps I did want to leave you out of it. You have gone out of your way to exclude me from your life-"

"I have no time for a traitor." Winter cut him off quietly, venom dripping from every syllable.

Her brother looked as though he'd been struck. "Traitor? Dear sister, what have I ever done to you to be called such a thing?"

"You dare ask?" Winter snarled, her mask slipping. "You, who stabbed our sister in the back? You dare to ask?"

"Sister, you must understand-"

"What must I understand?" Winter cut him off coldly, taking satisfaction at the way he flinched at her tone. Sitting back, she resumed her regal posture from before. "Must I understand that you somehow did our sister a favor by forcing our father's hand? That it was acceptable, in your eyes, to force your older sister-who cared deeply for you, I might add-into a circumstance in which she had to choose between her freedom and her safety?" She spread her arms wide. "Please, brother, tell me just how your betrayal of my little sister, whose only crime was to stand up for those who died protecting children, was, in fact, something I failed to understand!"

The silence was absolute, and Winter gently set her arms back down on the chair. "Well?"

Whitley sighed, steepling his fingers. "I...see your point, sister. I handled it poorly. It was not my intention-"

"What was your intention?" Winter asked flatly, drumming her fingers on the arm of the chair.

"To warn her," her brother replied, placing his hands back on the chair arms. "I forced father's hand in removing her by requesting the heirship myself. After that, it was simple to inform her that she had nothing tying her here any longer." He shrugged, looking sad. "I suppose I was disappointed when she left, and upset when Klein was let go. I was even more upset when I was unable to find him after mother took over right after father's little… indiscretion."

"Yes, yes. You were left alone, and you were sad. Poor little boy." Winter's tone showed her ambivalence to her brother's plight. "I still fail to see why you felt it was necessary to betray family."

"Sister, Weiss was being contracted to marry."

Winter stood. "That pig!" She hissed. "I'll kill him myself!"

"Please, sister! Sit!" Whitley stood as well, motioning to the chair his older sister had just vacated.

"He would have sold our sister, and I am to just leave him?" Winter snapped, turning.

Her brother rested his hand on her shoulder. "Sister, what would you do?"

"I will start by ensuring no other child has to put up with the misfortune of having that sperm donor as a father, and go from there." The huntress pinned her brother with a look. "I cannot believe that he would-" she cut herself off. "Actually, I can, which speaks volumes on its own. I want nothing more to do with him, and yet I still want to tear him to pieces."

Whitley stepped back, his arm dropping to his side. "Indeed, sister. Please sit. He is not going anywhere, but I would rather not lose another family member to the prison system, and I certainly do not wish to lose another sister. One was hard enough to accept."

Winter spent every ounce of strength she had on suppressing the sudden urge to cry. The Schnee children, as a general rule, did not show emotion. Emotion was weakness. Their father had beaten that into them, sometimes literally, in their younger years. Schnees did not hurt, they did not anger (often), they were not happy or sad, and they did not love.

Weiss used to say that hate was allowed on alternate Thursdays, but she had always been the most vocal and rebellious of the three of them. Winter's actions may have made her an enemy of her father, but her sister's mouth got everyone into trouble at some point-including their father, now that she thought about it.

Closing her eyes, she sat down, leaning back in such a way that it looked as though she was merely thinking or resting. Her brother had still made an enemy of her, and she was not one to allow an enemy (or even a friend) to see her slip. She was a Schnee, by birth if not by right, and she Would. Not. Break.

Finally she opened her eyes to meet her brother's gaze. "If you are expecting a declaration of familial love, you are going to be waiting a while, brother."

He shook his head, a slight smile on his face. "No, sister; however, I anticipate you have something to say about Weiss as well?"

"I blamed you." The words were out of her mouth before she could even think about them, before she could even consider their impact on both him and herself. "I saw her death as your fault. The person who betrayed her." She narrowed her eyes, willing the tears forming at the edge of her vision away. "I blamed myself. I blamed father and mother. I blamed her team. I blamed her partner. But most of all, I blamed you. Because you took everything from her. I could see no other reason she would throw her life away so callously."

He raised an eyebrow at the last sentence. "I was under the impression she gave her life willingly, for another of her team."

"The faunus?" Winter laughed harshly. "As if! We both know that our sister was many things, but generous to the faunus she was not. She worshiped at our father's altar for far too long. Blake may have tempered her ability to interact with them, but I saw no evidence that my sister had changed in any meaningful way when it came to them."

Whitley looked at her for a moment, before shaking his head. "I forgot you were in the land of darkness-"

"I had to… I had to know it was over. That it was worth it." Winter looked away. "I just wish we could have seen the body."

Whitley looked confused for a moment before nodding. "Ah, yes. Her."

"Yes, her," Winter agreed, her own tone darkening. "The only thing that kept me from punching Ruby was that she arranged for the monster that killed our sister to die. She killed something unkillable to get justice." She smiled, feeling a bit unhinged as she did so. Whitley shifted uncomfortably across from her but said nothing.

The two sat in silence for a moment, and finally her brother spoke. "Sister, I know you weren't here, but-" He held up a hand in a silent request to continue. "-but all of RWBY, with the exception of our illustrious sister, obviously, agreed that our sister did, in fact, give her life for Blake."

"As if." Winter snorted. "If they did-and I have not verified, because those meetings were…counterproductive to my wellbeing-then I appreciate that they had the decency to paint our sister and our family in such a good light. But I do not believe it."

Whitley shook his head a bit, but continued. "No matter. You blamed me? I find that strange, sister, as I thought you and father shouldered most of the blame when it came to my beloved older sister."

"I fail to see how I could have had any impact-"

"Why, sister, it was not I who carefully groomed our sister to be a clone of themselves." Winter bristled, but Whitley continued, a smile playing across his face. "It was not I who taught her to think of herself. It was not I who taught her to be 'better' by looking out for her own interests, no matter what she might think they were."

"I did no such things!"

He smiled darkly. "It was not I who, after teaching her everything she knew to love, respect, and strive to be, betrayed her to support a mad tyrant. That. Was. You."

Winter sat back, feeling as though she had been slapped. "I…I had no-"

"You had the same kind of choices I had."

And there was no response she could make to that. In the yard below the birds continued to sing and the water in the pools gurgled as it made its way through the fountains. Whitley sat back, smirking. Finally she broke the silence.

"She couldn't have-I mean, she knew I cared for her?" It had started confident, but halfway through it turned questioning, as though Winter wasn't sure anymore.

"Did she?" Whitley asked silkily. "I believe she thought you did, or rather, she did until you turned on her."

"I had to." Winter said weakly.

Her brother scoffed. "Just as I did, sister? No. I acted to save her. You truly betrayed her. For no other reason than your precious job." He sneered. "You did not have to choose a mere general over family-over blood." He shook his head, disgust etched into his features. "For all you claim I failed my sister, and you are correct, I take exception to being called betrayer when another traitor sits in front of me and defends her actions as necessary."

"You were, though," she growled, and he inclined his head in acknowledgement.

"Yes. I am. But I also admit to it. You, my eldest and only remaining sister, do not."

She tried not to explode. Whitley had always been such a dangerous child, and even now she saw so little had changed. He would much rather blame her for what had happened than face facts.

"Fine."

He blinked. "Yes?"

"If you want to blame me, then fine. Do so. I will not waste my breath trying to change your mind." She drew herself up and stared down her nose at him. "Your opinion stopped mattering to me the day you handed our sister her shattered dreams and laughed." He narrowed his eyes, and she smirked internally at the victory.

"I had thought you understood my decisions."

"That didn't make them right."

"Then why have you continued to defend your own wrong decisions?"

"Because mine were right."

Whitley sighed. "And how do you know that, dear sister?" She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. After a moment, he continued. "Can you perhaps explain why my actions- which were deplorable, I will admit, yet were intended to keep our sister safe-were less justifiable than your cruel decision to support someone who was neither family nor blood, and a more unstable tyrant than our father?"

He hadn't seen the slap coming, but in retrospect, he should have. He could feel the heat radiating from the left side of his face, and his head was spinning slightly. Carefully waiting to get his head into a much less dizzying position, he deliberately turned back to look at his furious older sister.

"Never insult General Ironwood in my hearing." She was breathing hard, her nostrils flared and her shoulders back. "He is a fine man."

"He made a mistake." Whitley said, ignoring the pulsing in his cheek. "And that mistake undermined everything he stood for."

SMACK!

He felt the other cheek beginning to pulse like the first. "I see."

"I should think so."

"I believe our conversation is at an end, Winter."

Winter blinked. Her brother had not turned back to her. Instead he had continued to stare in the direction his head had faced after her second slap.

"Don't you-"

"No. I believe everything has been said and done that needs to be." He finally looked back at her dispassionately. "Wouldn't you agree?"

"I-"

"Excellent. You saw your way in, I'm sure you can find your way out."

"Brother, I-"

He rose, turning to look out over the grounds. "Good day, Winter."

"Whitley-"

"I have nothing more to say, and you have made it clear you have no intent to listen if I did." His voice was colder than hers could be, and it chilled her to the bone.

"I didn't-"

He turned to look at her, his eyes filled with a cold resignation rather than the fury she'd expected to see. "I really shouldn't have expected anything from you. You left Weiss and I to fend for ourselves as soon as you could, and you never considered that you had poisoned our sister with the same propensity to abandon her family-her blood." He turned back, hiding his slowly darkening complexion as his face began to bruise from her blows. "I asked you here to help prepare for the worst. To help me and help mother. She is weak, and I do not wish to press her for something that will only worsen her condition and her opinion of me."

He glanced back. "You have made it clear to me, just as you made it clear to father and mother and even my older sister all those years ago, that you left this family well before he threw you out." She rose to join him, but he turned his back on her, turning to face the garden and stepping away.

"I have nothing else to say to you, Winter. You have drawn lines and set me firmly across from you. I have tried to reach you, to speak with you, to help you, but I see now that Weiss was more right than she knew."

Winter felt as though she had been punched. "Brother-"

"No!" He cut her off sharply. "Not 'brother.' Never again 'brother.' You chose something else, remember? Someone else. Someone not blood nor ally, yet you still-even now-support him!" Now he looked angry, and Winter stepped back despite herself.

"No, Winter. I may be your brother, and you may be my sister, but you spat on any family ties we may have had."

Winter felt the words cut into her far more deeply than she ever would have imagined. "B-Whitley, please-"

"You don't know me." He cut her off in a low tone. "And from our conversation, it's clear you never knew Weiss either."

With those final words he swept from the room, and Winter collapsed into the chair, desperately denying everything he'd said, even as she knew that for all her denials, for all her lies, he spoke the truth.

Yang pushed the twisting, roiling feeling in her stomach aside as she looked at her childhood home. She had mixed feelings about the little cabin that she had grown up in. On one hand, there were hours of fun memories that had accumulated here, and yet the sight of her home also brought back the pain of losing her arm, her partner, and Beacon.

Almost subconsciously, she formed a fist with her prosthetic hand.

Memories be damned, she had something she had to do. Her father had been very cagey when she'd asked about Ruby, going so far as to tell her to 'just leave it be.'

Clearly, he didn't know her that well if he thought that would discourage her.

Now she'd come to the source of her frustration. Her father had to know where Ruby was, and she wouldn't take no for an answer.

Striding up to the door, she hesitated slightly. She had often met with her parents outside their house, but she hadn't been to the cottage and she wasn't sure what the proper thing to do was. Did she knock? Walk in like she used to? She still had a room in the house, but she hadn't been back in so long she wasn't sure what the protocol was. She was saved from her dilemma by a slight cough from behind her.

"Yang?"

"Dad!" She grinned as she turned to see a blonde man carrying a bag of gardening tools. Not caring about the dirt on his face or clothes, she gave him a big hug. "It's good to see you." And it was. In that moment she wasn't a young twenty-something on a quest to track down her little sister; she was just a girl who'd come home to see her dad.

And it felt nice.

"Little Dragon-air!" Her dad managed to get out, and she backed off by a factor of ten as he laughed. "It's good to see you too." He set the bag next to the door and motioned for her to join him. "Your mother isn't here right now. She'll be sorry she missed you."

Yang wasn't sure what to say to that. She and Raven didn't exactly get along. Her mother had sat on the sidelines of a major war until she hadn't had any choice in the matter, and then only done the bare minimum to make it look like she was helping. Maybe Yang wasn't being entirely fair to her mom, but she didn't care. Raven had made her choice in Mistral all those years ago; she could reap what she'd sown.

Tai sighed when Yang didn't say anything. "You know she's sorry, Yang."

The brawler bit her lip. They'd had this fight before, and she knew that the same way she'd support Blake through anything, so too would her father support her mother. Nothing she said would change his mind. Instead, she changed the subject. "So, are you going to wash up, or do I need to get the hose again?"

Tai cracked a smile, heading to the kitchen as he did so. "I forgot about that, the time you waited in the living room to ambush me. Water went everywhere and I grounded you for three weeks." He chuckled. "I called Qrow and he couldn't stop laughing. I put you to bed and called him back and we stayed up late just comparing stories and laughing until it was way too early."

"Ruby was so upset," Yang reminisced fondly. "It was the first time she'd been grounded and she didn't really get how it worked."

Tai shook his head as he washed his arms in the sink, a half smile on his face. "She just knew that she couldn't have cookies, so she got creative." Yang looked at him curiously: his tone had changed from fondness to that of someone who was remembering a dead companion. "She pretended to nap and waited until I went outside to the garden." He shook his head again, his tone bittersweet. "I was in the middle of harvesting the peas when I heard a loud crash downstairs. I raced in to see what you'd broken." Yang wanted to protest, but her father's tone was becoming more morose with each word, and she was getting concerned. "There was Ruby sitting in the middle of the floor, happily chewing on a cookie, three more in her other hand." He sighed heavily. "I still have the picture."

"Dad." Yang reached out and touched her father's shoulder. "I need to know what's going on with Ruby."

Tai sighed again, carefully washing his arms clean of dirt. "I know. You wouldn't have come home otherwise."

"I would have come to see you." Yang disagreed. "I'm just not sure how to face… everything here."

Her father nodded. "Let's go to the garden, then."

"We just got you clean." Yang joked, but followed him outside. "How's the weather been?" she asked half-jokingly.

Tai cracked a smile. "Almost perfect for the garden. Rain every third day, but not a downpour…" They walked through the growing vegetables, speaking about the garden. Or Tai did. Yang kept her own counsel (it was boring, and a lot of miserable work that could be tasty, but was a lot slower than a quick trip down to the supermarket) but her dad seemed thrilled to have something to talk to her about that wasn't related to Ruby. Eventually they found themselves on the overlook next to Ruby's mother's headstone.

"It was here." Tai said abruptly. "About six months ago. Ruby came by to see her mother, Raven, and I." He ran his hands over the rough stone. "She said she'd gotten into some trouble and that she didn't know what to do." He sighed. "We asked her what it was, told her we'd help, Raven offered to go to the tribes, everything. She just said she couldn't ask that of us." He looked over the landscape below. "Then, three months ago, Raven went hunting for her."

Yang looked up incredulously. "Mom actually did something without being cornered into it?"

"You should give your mother more credit." Tai said softly. "She has more depth than you've seen."

"Something I would no doubt know if she had bothered to raise me herself." Yang replied frostily. As Tai tried to respond, the brawler held up her hand. "My mother has taken a very spartan approach to parenting, and she doesn't like that I see her the same way she sees, or used to see, me: as someone that I will only help once. I did my part. If she wanted a more meaningful mother-daughter relationship, she shouldn't have left." She paused before pushing on. "So what did she do?"

"She tracked Ruby down, and she says she's lost to us." Her father wiped his eyes. "Raven had opened her portal here, over Summer, because her semblance had been re-targeted."

Yang gasped. "What? But your semblance doesn't just change on its own. Besides, Mom can't re-target a dead person."

"Only one person, or rather, deity, has the power." Tai agreed quietly. "I found Raven crying over Summer's grave, apologizing for failing her daughter. She tracked Ruby to the land of darkness and doesn't remember much beyond that she is never allowed to return. When she tried to follow her portal to Ruby, it took her here." He sighed. "Yang, I know that you aren't going to listen to me when I tell you not to go after your sister, and I don't blame you, but if the Brothers don't want us to interfere then we shouldn't."

The blonde brawler stared out over the landscape, her eyes tracing paths in the forest. "I can't not try. Dad, she's my sister."

"I know. That's why I didn't want to tell you." Yang was about to respond with a cutting remark, when a sniff caught her off guard. Looking she saw tears slipping from under her father's eyelids. "I'm a step from chasing her down myself, but Qrow said he'd go looking…and we haven't heard from him since."

"I'll keep an eye out for him," Yang promised.

"Be safe, my Dragon. I love you."

"I love you too, dad."