Chapter 11: Worthy Among the Worthless

"There is no meme. Die."

— 22 —

This is the part where I make some funny observations. Make a mocking joke about something I find ridiculous or meta. Or maybe relate some story from my past to put things into perspective.

This is the part you expect to end a serious personal note with a one-sentence gag line.

It made things really awkward in that Denny's men's room or Blondie here was a goddamn golden shower or haha Ren's penis so funny.

That's just who I am.

Whoever the fuck I am.

But as my eyes fluttered open in the Beacon hospital bed, thought itself felt ponderous with effort. I struggled to think of anything. The closest I got was the last time I'd really been here, feeling like this. Walter Reed Hospital, my squad leader putting my hero of a sergeant on the phone. I had covered my hand, apologizing for being a fuck-up, wishing I could just blow my brains out to save the man the trouble of being forced to deal with me.

There. Have your memory of how I'm such a fucking trainwreck of a man. Are you happy now?

The EKG machine beeped faster. I turned my head towards, hating how familiar I'd become with that goddamn piece of tech since coming to this school. How hadn't I been expelled for being so pathetic?

Looking back at me was a girl in Blake, amber eyes gazing towards me curiously. She'd folded the book in her lap and sat there in her chair. Seeing her, I couldn't help but scowl despite myself. Last time I'd been in this situation, it'd been me and Shamrock. Shadow Person, not even bothering to learn their name. I still didn't know anything about Shamrock in the least bit. Why the hell did I think I could ever connect to someone I knew or cared so little about?

I screwed my eyes shut, looking away. I couldn't handle Blake's expression right now. "Let me guess. Drew the short straw to come get me?" I asked bitterly.

My partner sighed, an altogether less angry sound than I expected. "No. I guess I kinda volunteered to come here. The doctor says you had a seizure or something."

I sniffled. My nose felt clogged, filled with scabs and dried blood. "Why?"

She shrugged, hands resting on the cover of her book. She somehow looked so delicate, just sitting there. Like she'd break at any moment with just a touch. "No one knows. You just started shaking. Starting shooting at the empty air. And collapsed bleeding. They tested your blood for alcohol, and you were clean."

I covered my face with my hands, blocking out the incessant bright light from the fluorescents above. Hospitals were always too bright to sleep. The lights were based on movement and hated you in particular. "No, I mean. Why are you here?"

Blake was quiet for a long moment. "I… guess I found myself with some unexpected free time." Just the barest attempt at a smile. Neither of us looked directly at each other. "Don't know what you did, but, thanks, I guess."

"My fault you were there in the first place, detention."

"Nah," she said, a touch more casual. "My fault for listening to you. That was my first mistake."

I cringed. "And the second?"

"Also listening to you. It was just so bad it counts as mistakes one through three."

Despite myself, a kind of laugh escaped my lips. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, Blake. World's best partner."

"They have that on mugs in the campus gift shop," she suggested.

I just laid there, head on my pillow, aiming a smile her way. "Stop there with me on the way back?"

"And waste your sushi money on ceramics? Please." Another kind of smile. She never smiled normally. They always felt like she willed them into existence against the wishes of her thin lips. Every time I got one, it made me feel like I had earned it, instead of just a matter of polite conversation.

"Weiss and Shamrock agree to it, then?"

"I never got around to telling Weiss," Blake admitted. At my expression, she said, "Didn't really want to talk to her."

I nodded. "There's a good person buried in her somewhere, Blake. I—we—just need to show her it's there. Nobody came to Beacon just to be a piece of shit."

"I know. Some of us," she said slowly, thinking through every word, "came here because we used to be."

I didn't have a follow-up to that. Not immediately. I just ran my hands over my face, feeling my little baby blond beard. Whiskers in need of a trim, really.

"Who's Simone?" Blake asked softly, and cringed as my eyes shot towards her.

"Wha'?"

She shifted uncomfortably. "Just… a name you muttered as you thrashed. Nightmare?"

"She was."

Blake sucked on her lips slightly, and nodded. "She why you came to Beacon?"

I considered my answer long enough that answering her became more than a little awkward. "There's people really important in life sometimes. Ones you love and would do everything for. Sometimes they help you learn something about yourself. Let you see who you really are. And they can't love you for what you really are, and you learn you can't really love them anymore. Seeing your true colors, you see theirs."

Blake stared intently at her lap and wet her lips. I got the feeling I'd hurt her, said the wrong thing. I shuffled to find where my arms were and reached a hand out to her. Only to stop as she said, "I understand."

She cast her ambers up to mine. "I understand, Jaune."

I felt a sudden rush of embarrassed shame and withdrew my hand to the shitty covers. "Do you?"

Blake swallowed. "I loved someone like that too once. I—" She broke off with this bitter little laugh. "I left home to be a better person. Because out there in the world, it's a messed up place. I wanted to change the world, and he said we could do it together. And I was just—I was so in love with the idea of love, I didn't see what I was doing. I thought it'd be okay. If he was just as damaged as me, I could help him, and he could help me. If I just worked a little harder, everything would just be okay, y'know?"

"The only thing that changed was you, wasn't it?"

The smile was a painful thing. Aimed at nothing but her own memories. "We both did. I looked into his eyes once, and I didn't recognize the girl reflected in them anymore. He taught me everything he knew. Fought together. Loved together. But in the end, I wasn't Blake, wasn't me. I was just…" She swayed side to side slightly, as if trying to knock the right words loose. "…someone else. I saw her in his eyes, not me, and I ran. I just ran. Terrified of who she was. Because the girl he saw was exactly who I'd become. He never loved me. He loved the girl he was creating."

Goodbye.

I remembered laying in bed back in Florida. My foot half gone from running through the swamps to avoid an alligator, the sharp rocks having shredded the flesh of my bare foot. Back in the days of Skype, a friend of mine from Russia and me were talking. He sent me a video with the message, "THIS IS HOW YOU DO ANIMATION TRAILER."

I'd booted it up and saw the Black trailer. The first time I'd ever seen anything RWBY. A killer fight scene between a girl in a bowtie and a man with a red katana destroying robots. Separating a train. And her leaving the man alone on the train, unable to work with a monster like him.

At the time, I'd thought the action was awesome. I just thought the voice acting was a little cringy. A little goofy, somehow. The characters seemed kinda funny, but I was hyped to see more from Rooster Teeth, a company I'd loved since the first seasons of Red vs. Blue.

Characters.

I looked up at Blake as she just sat there, staring at her lap, and felt a hot sense of shame and hatred. I'd been here before back in the old flesh. Dinah. Blake.

A mere character I didn't care for. Whose motivation and ties to the plot seemed like something to roll my eyes at. A girl in an awful situation, whose personal demons I had sided with in the story just because I found them far more interesting to explore. Until I actually met her. Got to know her. And found myself gritting my teeth in pain.

However broken I was, and however impossible my situation, looking at the girl in front of me I couldn't help but ache. After everything I did, she was trying to relate to me. In a real sense, trying to comfort me. Returning the favor for sticking up for her just a couple days ago. Sharing myself in my weakest moment with her just to know she wasn't alone. That she had people who cared for her. That she could rely on.

Blake wasn't just some anime girl in a high concept action adventure. Here, in front of me, Blake Belladonna wasn't a character.

Blake was just a girl in a shitty situation doing her best.

And I hadn't helped make it any better for her.

"It was the White Fang, wasn't it?" I croaked.

Blake's breath hitched in her throat. Slowly, looking straight through me, she reached her hands up to her headband. Alone together in this too-bright hospital room, Blake pulled it off. Those black-furred cat ears twitched freely.

"Guess it wasn't hard to figure out, huh?" she said with one of those small, infinitely valuable smiles. "You pay a lot more attention than you let people think you do, Jaune."

"You're my partner, Blake," I said seriously, sitting up. "I'll always listen and pay attention to you. What kind of bastard would I be if I didn't?"

"The one I used to think you were. Still kinda do. But, less so, I guess."

I smiled her way. "I have a long way to go until you can say nice things like that about me, girl."

"And you're not mad about me?" she asked, cringing a little. "I mean, what I am. What I used to be. What I did." There was almost this sense that she wanted me to be. To conform to all her worst fears and hate her. The idea was itself laughable.

"Are you mad about what I did?"

Blake leaned forwards, fractionally. "A little, yeah. You did force me to help you make snickerdoodles that one time."

I reached out my hand and touched her, holding her hand over her hairbow. Her eyes fluttered at me with surprise, one of her ears twitching. "Whatever you did, you chose to change. Chose to be a better person. And near as I can, compared to me, it's working, Blake. Don't let anyone tell you different. Least of all not yourself."

There was a sligh flush on her cheeks. Her mouth started to move. No words came out, and she swallowed. Tried again, her voice a low whisper.

"From shadows we come, to shadows we run. Above the darkness and the shame. Above the torture and the pain. Above the ridicule and hate. Above the binding of our fate. Your hopes have become my burden. I will find my own path. Just as I release you to yours."

I inhaled sharply, hand tightening over hers. My body flickered like turning on a dying lightbulb. A sizzling like a television tuned to a dead channel. I saw my glowing reflection in her eyes as she herself lit up with a dark purple Aura.

The Auras touched like we did. Colors running together as I held her. From whitish-yellow to her purple, washing together like tie dye.

For a moment, we connected on a level I couldn't fully articulate.

My Aura flickered. Changing colors like a glitch.

Blake's ears flattened, recoiling but unable to pull herself away. I saw through her eyes as much as my own. Myself sitting on the bed, holding her hand. The Gunslinger sitting in the room's only other chair and twirling a revolver, the white-blonde girl with her slender hand on his shoulder. The broad-shouldered, hazel-eyed man looking like a NFL linebacker who didn't meet the height requirements to get in, standing there at parade rest in a US Army Combat Uniform.

She hissed in a desperate breath, body starting to shake. Eyes darting from person to person. My Aura flickered colors, surging forwards along our arms into her. Her nose began to bleed.

Blake Belladonna screamed.

— 23 —

Ozma sat at his desk, frozen. Staring into his cup of coffee. Ozma. The reflection in the dark brew wasn't himself, wasn't Headmaster Ozpin. It was the dark skin of the Infinite Man of a thousand legends.

Ozpin stood up sharply, feeling a tightness in his lungs like pneumonia. A thousand faces stared back at him from his entire office. Judgement, terror, fear, hatred. Every conceivable emotion he had ever felt for himself when bonding with a new host. The all-too familiar scent of the Old Magic, like cherries and mustard.

He took one step forward and collapsed face-first onto his desk.

End of Volume 2

See you next week for No Truce With the Furies