Chapter 4: Reality Hits You Hard

"Mankind would be nothing if not for our sins."

Robin sat there and gazed down at his food. The chicken wings looked more like a disjointed little thing of cracked bone and flesh. Idly he grabbed it and examined it. It didn't look any more appetizing up close. He put it to his mouth, and all he tasted were tendons and iron.

He dropped the food and rested his head on his palms. His flesh felt wrong, like living in a house with the AC off and all the windows closed, his body feeling host and stuffy and worthless. He wasn't running a fever or throwing his guts up. It just hurt; everything inside him hurt.

He exhaled through his fingers. He wished he was still home, wished he was still able to just be a stupid kid worried about normal classes and whatever girl he liked. He couldn't, though; he had lost every one of substance.

It's not worth thinking about. He lifted his head and gazed once more at his food. Today was a bad day. He was just an automaton, an electric ghost haunting a meat puppet with a few bones for good measure.

A distant commotion drew his attention away from his own pity party as he turned his head to see Cardin, Sky, and Dove all standing around some lady with rabbit ears. They were yanking on them and saying mean things standard fair, really. Part of his mind then registers what's going on. Oh, we're at that part already. Truth be told, he knew it was happening on some level but hadn't been there to witness it until now. Cardin would just slink away occasionally and come back cackling like a goblin. Oh well, it wasn't his problem. It would sort itself out eventually. Anyway, he had better things to focus his energy on.

Slowly he started to pick at his food again until he heard a loud cough from behind him. He turned, chicken wing hanging from his mouth, to face the source of the noise, only to find a table full of protagonists sitting there, some still looking at the scene of Cardin's bullying, some looking at him expectantly. They want something from him. What do they want? He was sure he wasn't in debt yet.

He felt like he was just staring at them back at them like a confused child. The way he sat, legs folded, tongue poking his cheek. His brain just wasn't there today.

"Mm?" He said, more of a reptilian groan than a proper response like he was about to ask them if they had shot any blood out of their eyes at any interesting predators lately instead of proceeding into a normal human conversation.

Robin shook his head to clear his thoughts. Slowly his brain kicked into gear as he made himself smile by force. He can do this; he's happy and excited. He read a study once that said if you smiled even though you didn't feel like it, it tricked the brain. It would start to make the happy chemicals because it presupposed if you are smiling, you've got a good reason. Boy fucking howdy did he hope it actually worked.

He refocused back onto the group of people staring at him. The rich chick with white hair started giving him the stink eye. Hesitantly he grabbed a chicken wing off of his plate and held it out to them as an offering, like an attempt to placate a pack of hungry dogs. This was apparently the wrong move, as the stink eye from the group only intensified.

Finally, one of them, a boy with a pink streak in his hair, understood Robin's stupidity and pointed at the scene where Cardin was still picking on the rabbit girl. Robin looked at the scene and looked back at the table. They held expressions as if they expected him to get it now. What the fuck was he supposed to get? Why were they communicating in semaphore?

Finally, a neuron connected in his brain by some miracle, or more likely, the protracted series of increasingly painful knocks to the head Cardin had delivered to him over the last days. They were the protagonists, big heroes, and all that. He was on Cardin's team but not participating in the bullying. They probably expected him to do something about it.

He rolled his eyes and shook his head no. It wasn't his job to keep up with whatever Cardin's dumbass did in his free time. They were teammates, not siblings. He noted vague looks of annoyance and disappointment spread across the group as he turned back to his chicken. How the fuck were they disappointed? How did any of them have any expectations for him? His only interactions had been insulting Ruby in a weapons store.

Still, as he watched the girl eventually maneuver out of Cardin's grasp and walk out of the cafeteria, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of something in his gut. Robin stared. There's something in his head, he thought. It didn't feel right. None of this did. She was a second-year student. She could have easily kicked all three of their asses with a hand behind her back, but she didn't. There was a story there, one he was mighty curious to figure out.

He stood, gritting his teeth and watching the ground as it moved away from him. His legs carried him forward past his confused-looking team as he followed after the path of the rabbit girl. He wasn't really looking forward to learning if the show's godawful attempt to showcase racism was how things actually worked here.

His wandering led him out to the courtyard. His eyes spotted the brown-haired girl sitting on a stone bench, seemingly just observing the scenery. She didn't look distressed or anything like that. Still, he approached; there was a bit of a mystery here, and he was rearing to solve it.

Robin stopped a few feet away, mentally reviewing the best way to start the conversation before settling on a simple "Yo?"

The girl turned her head, a small smile present at the awkward start of the conversation. "Yo." She languidly returned.

"I'm Robin, Cardin's partner and part-time babysitter. I saw y'alls less than stellar interaction earlier, figured I come out here and clear the air." He spoke a frown slowly forming across his face. It was an uncomfortable feeling, seriousness. He didn't like how his muscles moved when he gave her a sober expression. It felt like he was out of character. But in a way, that's all it was, really. In times like this, he was ever so consciously aware he was playing a caricature of himself, and sometimes that character broke.

"Clear the air? Well, I suppose it'll be interesting, if nothing else. Velvet, by the way." She made a vague gesture urging him to continue.

"Well, there ain't two ways about it. I can't exactly apologize on behalf of him. That ain't my job, it's his. But what I can say is he probably didn't mean it," Robin paused to think of Cardin's actual opinions on the whole faunus thing. "Well, he probably didn't mean all of it. He's sorta like a grade school kid who never actually learned how to make friends properly, so most of his interactions with folks consist of him insulting them."

As he spoke, he could see her eyebrows rise until she laughed as he finished. "That was the most half-assed attempt at clearing the air I've ever seen in my life. So what are you really here for?"

Robin can only hold his hands up in surrender. "Alright, you got me. I did mean some of that, though. You got me real curious is what's going on. You're a second-year student on one of the best teams of that year. So why…" He trails off.

"Why what? Use your words." Velvet said.

"Why don't you just beat the snot out of him? I ain't got no illusions of my team being some tough shit. I'm aware enough to know we are low-level pests at best. So why put up with it? Me personally, I would have lost it on them by now." Robin moved as he talked and took a squat on a bench across from her.

Velvet regarded him for a moment before beginning to speak deliberately. "What was the quote? Violence, naked force, has solved more problems in human history than anything else. Is this you?"

She paused momentarily as if to gather her thoughts and then continued. "If it were so easy. If that's really the way of the world, why aren't your teammates laid out on the floor in the cafeteria? What's stopping me from destroying them with my bare hands?"

Silence reigned as Robin considered it. Nothing was really stopping her, she could defeat them with relative ease, and she knew it. However, she shook her head. "Violence for violence merely destroys. It's not violence that rebuilds a ruined society. It's not naked violence that holds off the Grimm; it's cooperation and teamwork. It's not some ethos of the state as a monopoly on force that holds society together; it's cooperation. It's love. Friendship. We can work together, the fact we can put aside our differences to work on bigger, better things." She spoke softly.

"Violence for its own sake is how to get killed or outcasted. The scariest bastards out there–kings, politicians, generals–they got that way because they knew not to use violence. They made friends and allies. They worked together. They cooperated with others. And thinking anything else will just lead to people cooperating to commit naked violence against you for the good of all." She let out a breath as she finished. It was clear it wasn't off the cuff but something she had been considering for a while.

Robin was stunned to silence; whatever he was expecting, it hadn't been this. He spoke as soon as a new thought entered his mind. "So where does that place me on your little worldview? I ain't been telling my team to stop, and apparently, my gut reaction would place me on the poor side of things."

Velvet let out a chuckle. "I don't know you, Robin. I genuinely don't. But I don't want to think you're a terrible person. I can hear it in your voice. You're someone who cares, who wants to do the right thing. I… someone who was once dear to me told me that if you just give people a chance, most folks want to do the right thing. But a lot of us don't know how. A lot of us get confused or led astray. It's not that we're foolish or dumb or whatever. It's just that sometimes knowing what the right thing truly is doesn't come naturally. Sometimes it's learned behavior, and sometimes it's trying to hide from something. Until you know right from wrong for real, you're just fighting to figure out what right is in the first place."

"I don't think you're a bad person, Robin. I think you care. And that, to me, says more than anything else you've done. Not that you've really done anything."

Robin found himself giving a sad smile as she finished, her words bouncing around his skull. When he spoke, it was hard to recognize his own voice. "Reach heaven through violence, as an old friend of mine liked to say. Not against others. But against the self, cutting through the bullshit to find the truth. Against the shit holding you back as a person and realizing the value in yourself and other people," He paused for a moment. "But I was never too good at it, as much as I wished otherwise."

She opened her mouth to speak, likely to give another speech, but he interrupted her by standing from his bench, stepping to the side but then backtracking, moving nowhere. His hands fidgeted. Part of him felt something twitch in his gut, in his veins. "I don't like you, Velvet. It's not because I dislike you. It's 'cause you're better people than me in all the ways I can't be. Envy is an ugly word. But I'm a very ugly man."

He glimpsed something akin to pity in her gaze as he bodily turned away and walked off. Wordlessly he walked off, no real direction in mind but away. Until eventually, he found himself by the cliffside, overlooking the great river that ran through Vale. He found all he could do was sit, legs swinging over the edge. He doesn't really have thoughts, not as one would normally know them. Just a quiet vague pain in his chest and head that stood in for the normal wear and tear of existing.

It was quiet.

It was peaceful.

It was the hell he was getting all too used to.

Note: Been looking forward to getting this one out. There won't be a chapter tomorrow as I am gonna be busy moving back into my dorm, but hopefully should get chapter 5 out this weekend. Outside of that hope y'all enjoy and have a good day!