Chapter 2: I'm Not in Love but the Mixed-Sex Dorm is Good

"Everyone is entitled to their own sorrow, for the heart has no metrics or form of measure. And all of it—irreplaceable."

— 2 —

Mirrors never got any better. Jaune's face still gave me a frisson of unease especially when I caught it out of the corner of my eye. Whiskey helped. The first time it happened took most of a bottle. Jaune had stared back at me, and I half-expected him to start screaming at me. Demanding I leave his eyes and give his flesh back. I went as far as to put his straight-razor up to my cheek to make him stop, to cut the foreign face off and be at ease for once.

Of course, the only one screaming had been me.

It had hit me with a feeling that was almost tactile. Bubbling up from the fringes of consciousness until it practically knocked me off my feet. A sudden sense that the face was mine. All at once, my knees shaking, I was no longer able to see anything else in the reflection but a sobbing teenager. Nothing else but myself.

It had made things very awkward in the Denny's bathroom.

The Kingdom of Vale was a big place. A lot of places for a drunken trainwreck of a boy to lose himself in. And only after half-purposely stumbling over a rooftop in an attempt to just finish the fucking job, landing hard enough to discover gravity here was more like a vague suggestion than lethal, I found Jaune's paperwork.

"Congratulations on your acceptance into Beacon Academy, Jaune Arc!"

Explained the weird sword contraption strapped to my arm. The date on my phone said this was from a couple days ago, around the time I put on the new flesh like a pair of borrowed gloves. The hard copy came with an unlimited use airpass for flights to and from Beacon. Initiation would take place in two days from now.

At first I'd laughed hysterically. Until the hangover caught up to me, and I needed the last of my liquor to ease the feeling.

I had direction. I had a date. And attempts to kill myself saw me pussy out. Right time, right place, right uniform were the three things they trained you how to do in the Army. Here they were. What the hell was I supposed to do but follow the only guidelines I had? Keep trying to piss my name out on some dark alley till I got pneumonia and died?

That was the kind of self-centered pity party I couldn't stomach for long. No matter how crippling. No matter how deep it went into my psyche. It's the shit I'd skip over reading, so I'm sure you don't care either.

The memories were hazy in any case, from reading the Beacon acceptance letter to how I was currently staring at my reflection in the Team BASS bathroom. Made it easier to gloss over, to tell myself nothing of any real note had happened until I crash landed in the Emerald Forest. It'd take too much to recount every little step, every little fuckup. Most that I could gleam, I didn't really want to. Like memories of flirting with girls in middle school, sometimes it was better to just move on, smile while pretending it never happened. Gives you a shot at dating them again in college.

And right in, looking into the mirror, I hated how I'd gotten used to Jaune's eyes. I got the sense that if there was ever a path of least resistance in life, Jaune had taken most all of them. Youthful and somehow energetic despite the person behind the face. Whatever signs of hardship there were, a Patrick Bateman-esque morning skincare routine developed in a past life helped ease me into a smooth babyface that felt vaguely more like my own.

I was tall and mostly lean. Just a bit of baby fat left over. I hated it on principle. When I finished training in the Army and moved to my first real post, Big Army had forced me into about a month of COVID quarantine. Due to clerical issues, I wasn't being given a food allowance, and wasn't technically allowed to leave my quarantine room to get food. The barracks NCO had shrugged at the problem, saying I needed to pay for delivery out of my own pocket if I didn't want to starve. It was just me, Uber Eats, and as much whiskey as I could get my hands on.

And while I later learned he was a complete buffon of a leader, the fat on my stomach didn't.

Couple months later and forty-five pounds less, I had settled into a fitter routine that still held a certain psychological hold over me. One I need to get Jaune and possibly my new team into. I downed the medication for my wounds with a shot or two of Death Stalker 192-proof and got to work. I had a team. I needed to do something nice for them to make them like me.

And how better to do that than to conscript my faithful kitty-cat partner to help me?

See, I believed in God no question. Mostly 'cause the only way a fuck-up like me was still alive after all these years had to be divine intervention. Someone up there really hated me, it stood to reason.

And when I later saw Weiss's expression, I thanked God for all He was worth. Her pale face was as red as a mandrill's mating display to the point I wasn't sure if she was flirting with me or not. Color is extra important in this world, after all.

"Snickerdoodles?" she demanded with a huff.

"He made me help him," Blake said blankly. Not that you could blame her. As the partner who saw her first, I had rank seniority.

Didn't stop her from bitching when I offered her a cigarette after putting them in the oven. Nine Lives, a brand she hissed at, stating it was her father's old brand. It was Menagerie tobacco, which I half-remembered as being animal people Australia. I'd lit it up on the burning stovetop in the dorm's common room kitchen. The nicotine helped ease the nerves, cutting through the haze the Death Stalker fogged my mind up with. I still had a long time before the smoke really hurt my lungs and inevitably gave me cancer.

Not like I was going to survive that long in any case, not if I didn't make friends with my team like I was trying here.

I poked idly at the bandages around my chest, wondering how good the stitches there were. "Look, Cold Lips, they're diet cookies with zero carbs. Your prissy lil' tushy will remain pristine."

Blake averted her eyes. "I'm not comfortable calling those cookies at his point."

Cold Lips glared at me. "Are you high?"

I held up a finger to her, then paused. I started counting off my fingers and muttering under my breath. "600 mg ibuprofen, 4 mg nicotine, 2.5 mg prescription hydrocodone, 200 mg caffeine, 300 mg acetaminophen, antibiotics, and whatever's in this here bottle of Amphetamine Cola Zero I picked up at the corner gas station last night."

"Probably amphetamine," Blake said helpfully. "Diet-flavored."

Mittens has earned herself +1 point towards Best Girl.

"What is wrong with you, Jaune!" Weiss demanded.

"My therapist killed herself, so that's a can of Worm you don't wanna hear." It was a great pun. I would refuse to hear otherwise.

"Oh great, I'm on a team with a murderer," she huffed.

I glanced at Blake, whose face was unreadable. Back to the girl in the white dress, I said, "Whatcha gonna do, call the pigs on me?

"If it gets rid of you and gets us someone better, yes!"

"Just have a cookie already, little miss Netflix No-Chill," I said with a dismissive wave of the hand. I fell back onto my dorm room bed. "I homemade them myself to celebrate our brand new team! Or don't eat them. What do I care if you break poor Blake's heart here?"

"Oh hey, got my name right for once," Mittens muttered.

"I misspoke," I said with a slight smile. "Won't happen again."

Weiss gave the most miserable sigh I'd ever heard and snatched a cookie from the plate on the counter. It was the sound of a wounded animal accepting death.

I was affecting my old self as much as I could. The more I let loose with a bit of sauce, the easier it was. People back home had loved me for my upbeat, somewhat irreverent nature. Only thing I took seriously was my job. I had to assume that bulling through things with a smile and bad joke would get me everywhere here, too. Teenage girls risking life or limb though they were, they were going to find me charming, right?

If rough-and-tumble soldiers with a drinking problem and PTSD could dig me, this would be a cakewalk.

Team BASS would, I amended. I liked imagining it was short for team BadASS, but I had me this hankering suspicion that the headmaster dude was just making a fish joke because of Mittens' dark secret. Or maybe it was short for basic bitches, which would be an equally appropriate name for the team. It's not like anyone could agree on how to pronounce it.

There were only two teams I could remember forming the other day through the painkillers, neither of which I was sure existed in canon in large part because I am damn sure Ruby is not on the same team as Pyrrha. Probably my fault from the way I crashed into people parachuting down into the Emerald Forest. My team formed from the scraps left over after everyone else had found teams, meaning we had Blake, myself, Netflix No-Chill, and…

"You want a cookie, Shadow Person?" I asked.

"I got a name, dude," he said bemused.

I waved a hand. "No ya don't, stop lying to your team leader. Eat the cookie. Be cool. Cute girls are watching."

"And I thought you didn't like pig," he said. "Why you gotta be one?"

"Eh, as-salamu 'alaykum"

"It's selamün aleyküm," Shadow Person said pointedly, tugging at the collar of his brightly colored, loose-fitting suit.

"Bruh, I only know enough Arabic to know the two dudes at the corner 7-11 kept thinking me and my friend were gay whenever we went it to buy smokes."

"Ara-what?"

I shrugged him off.

Whatever he said next, I didn't care. I folded my arms under my head and relaxed in my bed. This here mixed-sex team dorm still struck me as odd. But whatever. What I did care for was this week's simple agenda: figure out how to get my Aura working so I don't die in class. Rest assured I was a dead boy either way this rodeo went. But—so long as I didn't think too hard about that my anxiety didn't turn me into a shivering ball in the corner.

Had to ignore how I'm going to die. Focus on the present. People around me. Hell, focus on my wounds. Just keep your head clear enough to do what you gotta, and high enough not to let the bad thoughts overwhelm.

"Huh. Not the worst," Weiss said as she chewed the snickerdoodle.

I opened an eye and said in German, "You like it and you know it, sweetie."

That gave her pause.

I winked, and she shook her head. Not worth the pain of talking to me.

Welcome to Beacon, Jaune.

— 3 —

Classes at Beacon felt off. I know I probably should have been slacking off, but ever since I was a kid I had nightmares about missing class. Christ, I even have nightmares about showing up on time to class instead of half an hour early. I blame that on my mother.

At my insistence, team BASS sat in the very front of the lecture hall. All it was today was going over the semester syllabus. After class I introduced myself to Professor whatever-his-name-was and stated how much I was looking forward to his class.

"And here I thought you could only communicate through snickerdoodles. Care to explain the sudden ability to speak properly?" Weiss asked as we headed to our next class.

I eyed her, considering a response. "I'm gonna be the very best there is, sug'. That starts with a smile and good notes. Try it sometime."

"I don't try, I outdo."

"I'm just happy you're gonna climb that ladder with us," I said with a nod. "You're gonna be the lynchpin to our awesome."

She hmmed disinterestedly, but I could tell the words stroked her ego in the right direction.

By day's end I had collected all five of my syllabi. We had two online class quizzes to complete to prove we'd read their respective classes' syllabus, but it was a cakewalk.

Honestly, there's something comforting in higher education. To my mind Beacon was functionally a university. Its structure was a lot less terrible than an American public high school. I took Russian and then Latin in university and found those classes terribly fun and enlightening compared to the seven years of Spanish I took in public school. I learned nada in todos there.

"Hey, Schneekönigin," I said as we ate dinner in the mess hall, speaking my best German. Of course, my best German was mostly learned through Rammstein, Oomph!, and Eisbrecher. My old friend in the city of Cologne used to tell me I sounded like I had a pronounced gay lisp when I spoke his language. Still, it was my best foreign language.

Weiss shot me a suffering look. "What?"

"You're smart. You understand the auras. Can you help me therewith?"

"Excuse me?" she replied, refusing to speak Atlas German back at me.

I dropped back into English. "I ain't got me no activated aura, so I'm awful prone to dying. Reckon you might could help me pump it up?"

She looked horrified. "You got into Beacon and you don't have an active aura?"

I shrugged. "I suck a mean dick. That gets you mighty far in life. Now mind giving me a hand or not? If I die, pretty sure we all flunk the school year by default."

After all the huff and 'I am offend,' she said, "I'll look into it."

I'd thought every cute girl could do it, but what did I know? Not like I finished watching the show in any capacity.

"Sounds gucci," I said, standing to leave.

She grabbed my collar and held me in place. "Oh no you don't. You're not leaving me to do all the work by myself."

I shot the Ice Queen a look. Near as I saw it, trying to ask me to help studying up on auras was about as worthwhile as strutting into a preschool and shoving down the fattest kid in order to proclaim yourself the coolest kid in school—despite this being the morning of your 34th birthday.

"So. You want some quality study time with me, that is?" I asked, hoping to weasel my way out of any work. I needed to hit the gym and see what this injured body could get away with.

"Oh my goodness, Jaune, wow, you're so smooth," she deadpanned. "I've never heard anything so charming."

"Thanks, I try."

"Dude," Shadow Person chastised, wrinkling his nose. He looked up from his sword-but-also-a-revolver he'd been sharpening with a stone. Why he felt the need to do this at lunch was beyond me. Probably trying to impress girls with his weapon.

I met his eyes and compressed a sigh. "Alright, alright. When and where, Schnee?"

Weiss gave Shadow Person this approving glance before scowling at me again. "One hour, campus library."

As it turned out, solid information on auras isn't entirely common knowledge. No real ways to homeschool this sort of information through a quick Wiki-walk. You wanted this information for practical knowhow, you needed books. In Ice Queen's case, she needed me to fetch for her copies of several books over the past two hours. The last three had been Auras for Auridiots, Resemblance to Semblance, and So You're Now a Human Lava Lamp.

I myself perched up on one of those ladders that grew naturally in libraries, sitting high above Schnee. I'd found a book called Help, My Pet Dog Can't Possibly Be This Hot!, a surprisingly heartwarming novel about a guy whose pet dog suddenly became a hot faunus chick and insisted on calling him master (complete with illustrations). Don't ask me why this was in the Beacon library, but I had the sudden urge to buy a copy and gift it to Mittens. According to my snooping, the dog ears in her current book had been rapidly nearing the end.

"Most of this you're supposed to be able to figure out yourself," Ice Queen said, startling me from my book.

"That I'm the most handsome boy on campus? Already figured that."

Her stare could wither a bull's testicles. "Everyone has an aura. You went to a combat school before coming here. What did you try before?"

Poor Jaune. Don't worry, bodyjacked buddy, I'll keep your secrets safe. Just like how I'll never tell anyone your PIN number is J-A-R-C or how you have a truly startling amount of time invested into watching near-naked girls livestreaming themselves playing video games. Do you know how hard it was navigating an unknown phone OS to turn off those "livestream starting" notifications?

"Well, I tried getting punched in the face, jumping off ledges, asking the hot girl to junior prom—normal life-threatening stuff that could activate the aura. Eventually came to the conclusion I needed someone to help me do it for me."

"Meaning I have to use my aura to unlock yours," she said slowly with this dawning look of hopelessness.

I shrugged. "Prolly. What's the matter? Figured someone as strong as you would have no problem."

The ego stroking didn't work. Weiss slunk down in her chair. I set my book back into the shelf and slid down the ladder. My wounds from the forest ached in protest as I landed.

"There's an interpersonal emotional component," she said before I had time to ask.

Unconsciously I found myself drumming fingers against Jaune's arm-shield. "Meaning?"

"Meaning it's tied to emotion and the soul. Meaning I can't just aura-tap you and fix you. Meaning if I tried it could backfire."

"Why?" I asked self-consciously.

"Because for my aura to pull yours out, I'd need to actually like you."

I paused, taking her meaning instantly. Produced a toothpick from a pocket. Chewed it. Probably had an oral fixation.

Fuck me sideways. I tried not to think about the pit welling up in my gut. Or about the general impression I'd made back during orientation. It helped that I barely remembered it in any case. Back then had been my closest moment to sobriety in a while, and only then because I was hiding my alcohol and instead downing caffeine like it was going out of style. It was hard to find the right mix where I could be funny, and not a depressive trainwreck in Jaune's sleeve.

Whatever I'd done to Weiss and Blake back then, said or whatever, I'd failed to hit the balance. It's why I'd tried drafting my partner Blake to work with me to make some cookies and feed the team. My own desperate attempts to fix them.

Judging from the way Weiss behaved, it hadn't worked. And thinking on that only pissed me off. What the hell had Ruby done any different in the show? Weiss hated her, and after only a little bit of trying and being a childish brat, Weiss had accepted her as a friend. Season one shit.

What was I doing wrong?

"Would 'merely tolerate' work?"

She gave a single mocking "Ha!"

I frowned. "Okay, and what if you tried it right now anyway?"

"You'll have a bad time."

"But could it work?"

She shook her head and folded her arms. "Imagine something as powerful as an activated soul reaching into your soul and despising you. Do you really want to risk that?"

I regarded her for a long moment. "Might as well keep raking fingernails over the bottom of the barrel. I mean, you're only doing this for me because the Headmaster refused to make you team leader when you came a-beggin' to him today. What's one more Hail Mary?"

"Shut up," she huffed.

"What? Headmaster just sees more true potential in me than you."

"I said shut it."

I grinned snakelike.

She scowled. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

"I believe your people call it Schadenfreude," I said blankly.

"Sociopath."

I hissed air in through my teeth. "If you paid attention in our intro-to-psych class today, you'd know that's not a real medical diagnosis. I prefer to think of myself as 'empathically uninhibited.'"

I knew it wasn't helping anything at all, but it wasn't like I could dig my grave any deeper. And with a back to a wall and my nerves on end, it felt good to say. Jabbing with barbs for its own self-destructive sake. Not exactly my best trait.

Most people back home had kind of liked it. Mostly, I aimed the barbs at myself. Able to ramble on for minutes on any stupid topic. My old Captain had liked it, since when rubber hit the road, I was mission-focused and good at what I did. Funny only on accident, as far as he saw it. My old Sergeant had thought my flippant flamboyance meant I was gay.

Her delicate nose wrinkled in a most unladylike fashion. "Now you're just trying to upset me."

"Succeeding," I corrected.

She lunged for my throat. Her hands wrapped around it, thumbs pressing against my Adam's apple. "Just shut up and stand still," she commanded tersely.

I obeyed without question. Weiss focused intently on me, probably fantasizing about all the ways she could kill me and get away with it. For all the practice and fighting the girl could do, she had remarkably soft hands.

We were so close I could smell the vanilla of her hair conditioner. I remembered that very clearly as something started burning in my chest. It spread through my veins and arteries like a blood infection, bringing fever wherever it touched. Weiss now had this faint white outline and I…

I…

The burning was the only thing I could feel. I tumbled to the side and took Netflix No-Chill with me. One moment the ground was six feet down and the next it was reaching up for my face. A wave of vomit hit the ground first in an effort to keep it away.

To be honest, falling face-first into a pool of vomit while a cute blonde was strangling you wasn't the worst way to die. Definitely up there in the top three ways I've kicked the bucket.

a/n: Even the wiki isn't good with info on activating auras, so I made this reasoning up because narrative consequences for Jaune being Jaune are juicy. I'm told it is "eh" plausible.