I, Jaune: Or, The Context-Insensitive Semblance

by Eric d'Orleans

Jaune's new team Gaslights, Gatekeeps, and Girlbosses its way from one mental health crisis to another. A story about self-improvement, failing to live up to your own expectations, cute girls suffering emotionally, and learning how Blake somehow goes from Bland to Best Girl. The ride only stops in case of emergency, and crippling trauma is NOT an emergency!

54. Volume 5, Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Push Your Panties & Your Pride to the Side

"The deeps are treacherous," said Enyis. "It's cold, and my ribs hurt. I fear my poor heart will give out before long. How on earth can I protect it, if not by steel?"

"You can't," said the Boar King. "A hero must always wear his heart on the outside."

— 30 —

We decided we weren't getting any further than this side of the bridge with our wounded. I didn't have much to say or comment on the matter. There's a misconception that it's easy to pass out. The reality is the opposite. Most people, even when they faint, aren't really knocked out cold. At best, beaten and bloodied and burned as I was, I was half awake, mostly just focused on trying to tune everything out and fall asleep.

I did have a momentary flair of panic that the people who helped us weren't our friends, but skinwalkers. But no, they really had just followed along the cliff, found a way down on this side of things, and set off the flare. Blake and the others had followed the flare too, apparently, which was some solid initiative on their part. If I had any nagging paranoid doubts, Coco talking into Fox's head with his telepathic Semblance squared those away.

We made camp. One flank secured by the bridge, the other flanks secured by a water, and the only way into this little encampment being a fairly easy to guard choke point. Building a fire somehow felt sacrilegious with the blaze across the water. We all set our bags down as Shamrock and a wounded Fox got to building it. I excused myself from the group, claiming I was going to an isolated little plateau to overlook the lake and make sure nothing was swimming across to get us.

What started as too much Dust and the effect of an unexpected Semblance had spread. A couple of burning patches of mushroom and mold had turned into a full-scale conflagration, igniting the entire cave past the lake. It was like something out of global warming California, the smoke rising into the air, fungus and other organic matter popping and burning. There was a sound almost like someone screaming, a guttural howl mixed with panicked shrieks and roars of the Grimm. Luckily, none of the monsters could swim. Sitting down on a rock, I took out a cigarette, and somehow couldn't find the effort to light it up. I simply rolled it through my fingers, watching the fire, listening to the shrieks and screams echoing across the water.

I recalled the journal of an unnamed soldier recovered from Stalingrad. How in the shelling and the fire, all life fled. The dogs and rats ran from the city, swimming across the Volga River to escape the apocalypse. Only men chose to remain in that hell. Looking across the lake, I could almost imagine that. The kind of thing soldiers like myself were expected to do. But of course, I was never infantry. I was military intelligence through and through. They expected to keep men like me far away from the gunfire because we were more valuable that way. I could LARP as hard as I wanted to about being a hardcore soldier, a killer and a man of action, but that wasn't really me, wasn't what I was trained for in a practical sense. I wasn't even really cut out to be a leader.

I rolled the cigarette through my fingers, looking up at the smoke-filled sky. I couldn't see the lights up there anymore. The cave had gone dark before the fires and the ash. Whatever silkworms made their home up there, creating the semblance of a starry night, were probably dead. I wondered how Weiss was taking it. I hadn't gotten the chance to talk to her after we returned. Hell, I had barely talked to anyone. Not even Coco, who still had my gun.

With her back now, I had to wonder if I wouldn't be de facto in charge anymore. Part of me looked forward to that. Another part of me doubted she could do it. I kept thinking of the way she had barely been holding herself together, but trying to fight on all the same, and wasn't sure if I respected it, or thought she was pushing herself too hard to try to pretend like it was normal. It was the same feeling I had when she commented on the fact that Weiss really did wear compression shorts under her skirt. In the middle of combat, Coco had been trying to play it cool, and make an upskirt comment. Only ruined by the fact that her heart and voice just didn't feel into it. Like she was moving more on inertia and expectation than what she really wanted.

I wondered if that was myself. If the way I doubted Coco was the way everyone was doubting me in my moment in the spotlight. I had barely made it through a complete panic attack through what basically amounted to peer pressure. Everyone looked to me, expecting me to have some kind of answer or plan, and I defaulted to the advice Coco once gave me when we met that first time in the gym. Fake it till you make it.

Velvet hadn't really agreed. But it almost felt like she gave into the pressure of the rest of the group going along with me. If not for that, I wondered how this entire night would have gone. If people had broken apart and refused to cooperate. If I hadn't been able to emotionally bully her into complying.

Right now, she and the rest of Team CFVY were all together. Providing Coco the emotional support that she needed. The exact kind of thing I had excused myself to avoid, just so I could be alone with my thoughts, as cringe-inducing as that was.

Too much self-reflection. Too many worries and doubts. I really wish I could find the effort to light the cigarette.

I put it away and walked down the embankment. Once upon a time, it looked like there had been some kind of staircase and a jetty. Now, isolated from the view of the camp, it was little more than a couple of lichen encrusted stones and a platform a couple of yards out. Whenever I went on a death march back in the Army because my commander was a little bit too crazy about rucking at high speed, the only thing that ever bothered me was the sweat and the filth. You'd be surprised how dirty you felt from just your own body after walking eight miles at a fourteen-minute pace carrying a measly thirty pounds on your back. Now picture doing that, but also running from soulless monsters, and carrying a wounded girl on your back, and then getting set mostly on fire.

I set my stuff and ruined clothing beneath the shade of a mushroom tree. There wasn't as dense foliage on this side of the water. Wearing only my weapons, I found that the water was surprisingly warm. Velvet had mentioned something about hot springs, I distantly recalled, but I hadn't recalled anything about volcanism in the area. Not to say the water was heated, but I still had a scrotum after diving in and trying to wash the filth off my body, cringing every time I moved a little too fast or touched a blister.

Just being clean did wonders for morale and my ability to relax. Which just meant that I was toweling myself off on the little stone platform out in the water, still fully armed, and watching the burning forest across the lake.

"Damn," someone said behind me. I turned and saw Blake standing there on the shore, one hand on her hip, the other clutching a small box. "Looks like I came a little too late to enjoy an unfortunate misunderstanding and an awkward conversation. Did you actually go swimming?"

I moved my towel up to keep drawing my hair. "Bathing, actually. And it's all good. If you walk away and come back in a minute, I promise to be back in the water, naked and ready for any kind of stupid cliché. Anything for the classics."

She laughed, shaking her head. "Is that a threat or an offer?"

I shrugged. "Both? If it sweetens the deal, I can pretend to be a clueless idiot and invite you to join me when you show back up. Aggressively act like nothing is weird about that."

"Except I don't have a swimsuit."

"Skinny dipping, obviously. With the murderous howls of soulless monsters in the background. I'm pretty sure there was a scene in one of your books just like it." I shot at her with a pair of finger guns.

Blake just looked at me with this little half grimace, her eyes distant but on me, fazed out. Until she shook her head. "Nah. Way too forced. It would ruin the magic of me pretending to be upset despite me being the one to walk in on you."

"Eh, suit yourself," I said, jumping onto one of the stone supports that had once held the dock. One more and I was back on solid ground beside Blake.

"What suits me right now is you not getting dressed," she said evenly.

I searched her face for any sign she was joking, and was convinced I saw it. She wasn't holding a straight expression very well. "Talking like that, I regret getting this close to you. Should I start screaming for help?"

Once again, she laughed. "Good luck with that, boy. I'm vicious and I get what I want."

"Well, pretty much the only thing I know about you is you want equality for the races, and we're still oh for one on that front." I tsked. "You're not very good at getting what you want."

Blake scowled. "Too far. Not cool."

I held up my hands. "Sorry, sorry. Low hanging fruit."

"You really couldn't think of anything else I wanted to use against me?" she asked, shifting her weight. The box she was carrying rattled slightly.

I stared at her for a long moment, hesitating. "Tuna?"

"Ugh!" She rolled her eyes so hard her whole body moved with her, but a smile was tugging at the edges of her lips.

"Hey, I'm just happy you showed up instead of someone else. I have endless material to give you shit over." I winked.

"It almost wasn't. I won the right to be first with a game of rock-paper-scissors."

I cocked an eyebrow. "Who did you beat?"

"Weiss. She always picks scissors. I straight up told her that I was going to pick rock, and she just stood there for a minute over-analyzing it, and then went with scissors anyways." She shook her head. "Still can't believe that actually worked."

I looked back out across the water, at the reflections of the fire in the darkness. "Why would she want to visit me?"

"For the exact same reason I don't want you to get dressed," she said, rattling the box she was carrying.

I paused, looking up from my grounded rucksack. "Is this the part where you tell me she too likes to read the real Huntsman fanfic section on HuntsHub?"

Blake blinked. "Wait, you actually read that stuff?"

"Course not," I said, standing back up with my hands on hips. "But we all share a single Wi-Fi network in the dorms. I can kind of figure out your browsing history from recommended tabs."

She hissed in a breath. "I only went there to laugh at the horrible writing!"

"Uh-huh."

Blake thrust the box she was holding forwards. "Look, this was supposed to be clever and not weird. It's about all the burns. She wanted to apologize, and I had this."

"Always wanted my own pet box."

She sighed, shaking her head. "Jaune, teammate, partner, complete idiot—you're kind of covered in burns. And not even the cool ones that are going to leave scars. Little ugly ones that your Aura is going to heal but are going to hurt like a bitch in the meantime."

I made a low, reptilian grown in the back of my throat, holding up my hands with fingers splayed. "She tell you how it happened, I take it?"

"Yeah. Kind of stupid. This entire day has been stupid. I don't think anybody has made a smart decision since we decided to show up to this city. Or this cave. Or wherever we even are anymore."

"Are you questioning my leadership abilities?" I asked, putting a hand to my breast and mock offense. The burns on my hand and chest stung, but I held it with grit teeth for effect.

"Yep," she said, nudging me.

I scrunched my eyes shut from the pain.

Blake hissed. "Crap, sorry, sorry, didn't realize you were burned there too!"

"I'll be fine; I just need to sleep it off and burn my Aura." I swallowed, resisting the urge to wipe a bit of sweat off my brow. I didn't want to touch the blisters on the hand.

She shook her box again. "Be better with this."

"It being?"

Blake shrugged. "Miscellaneous medical supplies you had me bring. At first, I was actually kind of offended."

"By what?"

She pursed her lips to the side. "I mention exactly one time that I have some field medic experience. You know, stuff with them. And now suddenly I'm the medic, packing a couple of generic store-bought medkits. It almost felt pretty demeaning, but then here we are, and it turns out I'm probably the only one keeping us from dying. Don't know how I feel about that." She opened up the box. "The kit came with burn cream, hydrogen peroxide, and way too much gauze. But it turns out that's kind of what I needed. Do you know how to use this stuff?"

I shrugged. "Apply directly to the forehead. Hope for the best. Start screaming in pain if it doesn't. Generic medical stuff. My mom was a nurse; I learned from her."

Blake sighed and unscrewed the top of the tube of burn ointment. "Thought so. Here, sit down and lemme help. Give me your hands."

I hesitated. So she just grabbed my wrist and pulled me towards her, sitting down with me. "C'mere, you big baby. Hold still."

That was enough to keep me quiet as she spread the off-white cream on my hands and its score of blisters. I simply kept my eyes closed and tried not to groan in discomfort. But it was harder not to make noises as she wrapped my hands up in the gauze like the world's tiniest mummies.

"Better?" she asked.

"It kind of feels like someone's rubbed mint gum into the taste buds of my hand."

She leaned her head back, giving me a weird look. "I'm going to pretend that made sense."

"Better for your sanity that way."

Blake stood up, hands-on hips. "You know what? Just for that I'm going to go extra rough on the rest of your burns."

I glanced back towards the top of the little ridge as if that could help me. The teams had set up camp and a fire up there, not that I could see them. Everyone had laid out their sleeping bags around, mostly sticking close to the flame. It had to be more for light than the warmth, given the ambient temperature down here. Coco had complained that it was cold, but I couldn't feel it. It probably meant she had lost too much blood. Point being, it didn't look like anyone over there could hear us, so no one was coming to help me.

"I think I'm good; just let me change into my new threads. Had to toss out the old ones over there for having holes. I'll manage just fine."

Blake rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I know. It was almost kind of funny watching you grunt and pretend like it didn't hurt when you took them off."

I blinked. "Hold up, I did that while I was out of sight. Were you actually watching me this whole time?"

The girl made a face. "It's called personal space, Jaune. I saw you undressing and then decided to come back in a couple minutes." She shrugged. "So stop whining and let me help."

I stood up, holding my bandage hands out to her. "Alright, if you could understand personal space back then, you can understand it now. I think I'm good."

She gave me a significant look, hands still on her hips. "Really? After all the time you spend half naked around the team, now is the one time you decide to be modest?"

"I mean, we're in public. Kind of."

Blake sighed sufferingly. "You've been to the same lectures in Port's classes I have. Modesty is one of the first things that has to go out in the field. We're partners." She waved a hand dismissively. "One way or the other, there's probably nothing the other has we're not going to end up seeing."

"Yeah, but there's a difference between accidentally walking in on you bathing in the river, and asking you to show your tits because I want to touch them for totally legitimate medical reasons."

With a slight flush on her cheeks, she folded her arms over her chest and looked away. In a mocking tone, she said, "Oh, please. You want me topless before you let me help you out? Will that make you feel better?"

I blinked. "I—Blake, quit it. Why you gotta make this weird?"

She rolled her eyes. "Because two can play at this game. I think at this point I can outweird you. I play to win, Jaune."

I put my fingers to the bridge of my nose. "It's—stop that, stop doing that."

She frowned. "Stop doing what? Stop trying to be nice? Trying to care?"

I inhaled deeply. "Yeah. But, no. Trying."

Blake gave me a skeptical look. "Do you want to rephrase that?"

"It's like you're trying too hard, I guess. It feels weird in the wrong way. Not the kind of weirdness that you and I usually have going for us just talking back and forth and being idiots together. It's like—" I made an imprecise gesture with my hand. "Have you ever been in a relationship with someone and it's been failing and you don't know why?"

Her eyes widened fractionally, her lips thinning. "I don't know."

"Because that's almost what it feels like."

She shook her head. "What are you saying?"

"It's like—it's like being with someone, things falling apart and you don't know why, and so you're trying to force it. Trying aggressively to pretend like everything is some imagined normal from some better time that never was. So you're acting like you care about me, not saying you don't, but you're overdoing it. And it feels weird. And I know I feel like I always have. And, I guess, it just makes you want to ask—are you okay, Blake?"

She sat there in silence for a very long moment, just staring at me. Idly, she tucked a loose strand of black hair behind her ear. As if speaking through molasses holding her jaw back, she said, "Are we okay?"

I sighed, rubbing the side of my head. My blistered hand hurt, but the bandages and burn cream made it easily bearable. "Way I see it? No."

"No?" Blake repeated dubiously. Then she laughed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

I shook my head. "I mean no, it's not okay, we're not okay, and that's okay. Things between us have never really been okay. We've gone from hating each other to toleration to being friends and partners and, you know, and all along the way I can't point to a solid moment and go aha, that's where it all changed between us. I know how you feel and—"

Instead of saying anything, Blake just folded her legs, idly bouncing one foot. The box on her lap rattled. She just looked at me questioningly.

I met her eyes. Paused. Sighed. Mentally readjusted myself. "Right now, all of us are stressed. No one is in a good place right now. Things is painful and things is confusing and we don't know what tomorrow holds. So maybe I'll die tomorrow. Maybe we'll lose Weiss or Coco. I don't know, and I'm scared." I sucked on my lips. "The only thing I do know is that so long as I draw breath, I'll still be me. And as long as I am me, I'll be there for you. You kinda wormed your way into being the most important person in my life like that."

With a slight flush, she looked away. "Well. Y'know." Suddenly she met my eyes with a smile I didn't like. "I'm rubber and you're glue. Anything you say to me bounces off and sticks to you."

Despite myself, I laughed and punched her in the arm. "Shut the fuck up. I hate you. I take it all back and I'm going to kill myself now."

Blake gave me an exaggerated frown. "I thought you promised that your world would end with me?"

"You're right. Suicide pact with me?"

She nodded eagerly. "Oh, bet. You go first?"

Laughing, I sat back down beside her. Our bodies touched, and my burns didn't feel as bad as they should have. I closed my eyes to gather myself for a moment, before putting my hand on top of hers.

"Look, Blake, if you want to play the medic here, go ahead. But stop acting like it's some big deal. Stop making it weird. Because making things weird is my job. Which is why it's going to be weird for us tomorrow when I'm still alive, and weird for us the day after, and weird the day after that and so on and so forth—because I'm not planning on going anywhere anytime soon. And anywhere I am, I want you to be there too. You and me together until the end, girl. Now stop stressing."

She gave me a kind of dubious half grimace. "I'm trying to remember what book you're quoting right now, and it feels like you're quoting all of them at once. Weird how that works."

"Good artists innovate, great artists plagiarize—with style." I reached up and flicked her on the shoulder.

She rattled her box of medical supplies. "I am going to be extra rough and drop all of my surgical equipment into your wounds."

I laughed. "Look, do whatever, but be quick. All this talk of tits and getting rough with a girl is starting to edge this way too close to awkward boner territory."

Blake just stared me down, arching one eyebrow. "Oh, don't worry about that. I know the care for that one too."

I made a face. "You do?"

She shrugged, opening the box again. "I'll just repeat one of your jokes."

"Wha'?"

Blake shot me this almost smug little smile. "Because I can't think of any bigger turn off than your sense of humor."

I blinked. Slowly, I cupped my hands around my eyes like an embarrassed child standing next to their mother as she berated the dollar store cashier. "I—fucking hell, Blake. Why do you have to fucking murder me like that? Oh God I'm going to have cringe nightmares about this for years. Aaah!"

She just smiled. "Perfect. All that blood going to your cheeks means it's already working. Now take off your shirt. I need to get to your burns before wrapping you up."

— 31 —

The revolver Coco had been holding jumped from her hands, and she gasped. She tried lunging after it, but that only hurt her, well, her everything. She found herself nearly tumbling to her knees, only to see the gun in Jaune's hand as he stood above her with a faint little smile that she utterly hated.

The boy almost entirely covered in gauze sat down beside Coco, ruining her night. At least she thought it was night. It was hard to tell anymore. Her scroll had lost its charge hours ago, and she hadn't found a way to recharge it. And it wasn't like she or anybody else wore a watch. Those were decidedly unfashionable.

And so, after Velvet and the rest of the team had manhandled her making sure she was okay and all right, and everyone else had started making camp for the night in a safe little spot by the destroyed bridge, Coco had volunteered for first watch of the night. Partially to make sure that no one thought she was too hurt to do anything, and partially because the area she chose to set watch was isolated enough that she could hold her knees to her chest and sit down without people staring.

And she really needed to. The fire across the river burned. The distant shrieks and howls of the Grimm. And the fact that sometimes, when the firestorm wind picked up, she swore she could hear Haakon screaming Coco on the breeze. Putting something to her back to sit down against, still cradling Jaune's revolver. At least until he had taken it from her with that weird Dust trick Ruby had designed into his glove.

She sat back up, slowly, feeling the ache in every muscle and the crunching of bones that should have been in one piece. At least by now she could use both of her arms. It had been a force of effort not to scream when Yatsuhashi had physically yanked her dislocated arm back into its socket. It turned out the arm wasn't broken, just horribly bruised down to the bone.

"Hey," he said easily. Both of them were behind a rock and a lone mushroom tree. He put his knees up to his chest in imitation of her, holding out the gun for her.

She snatched it back, feeling angrier than she had any right to. It was his gun after all. But it was also the only weapon she could reliably use with just one arm.

"What do you want?" she snapped. "I'm trying to take the first watch of the night. You should be trying to sleep. Also, you're naked."

He looked down at his bandages, as if seeing them for the first time. "Hadn't noticed."

She scowled. "That doesn't explain why you're here."

Jaune looked out into the darkness, drumming his fingers idly on his sheath. "You need at least two people to take watch. And I always like going first or last for night watch." He looked up at the roof of the cave, now black with smoke. "It's the only way to guarantee solid sleep. According to the official manual, you're only required four hours of sleep out in the field during a six-hour sleep cycle. I try to get them in all at once."

Coco made a face. "What kind of combat school did you go to? Sounds like the freaking army."

He gave her an oddly significant look. "Something like that. It was a very progressive school. My point is, there's no better way to stay awake than with a partner. And given that Fox is still resting his wounds off, and I can't really sleep until my aura manages to numb the burning down—" He shrugged. "Figured you could do with some backup."

She tried not to sneer. "I don't need backup. I'm fully armed and I have your bullets and I'm good."

"Cool," he said, sidling up to sit next to her.

Coco wrinkled her nose. "What are you doing?"

"Taking the first watch with you. I thought we established this."

She rubbed the bridge of her nose. "What do you want, Jaune?"

He shrugged indifferently. "Oh, nothing more than the average boy. To crush watermelons using only my six pack like a woman might do with her thighs, go to exotic lands and meet cute girls, and finally attain perfect hatred of my enemies. Fairly mild stuff."

The image of Jaune doing a crunch and smashing the watermelon using only his chest was a very weird image. In hindsight, she thoroughly wished he had never said that. It was going to take a long time to suppress that mental image.

Coco tried again. "Go away. You shouldn't even be out here with all your burns."

"And you shouldn't be out here with a nearly broken spine."

She hissed at him. "I'm perfectly fine! It's just a little pain. Nothing I can't handle."

He adjusted his arm so that his shield sword pressed into the rocky ground. "One time," he said, as if recounting a fond memory and completely dissociating from the conversation, "I went to the dentist. It was a long procedure. Hours there with novocaine in my gums as they drilled into me. Eventually, midway through the morning, the dentist missed with her drill. Aiming for one of my back teeth, she instead drilled a hole into my gums. I only noticed because I suddenly heard the sound like somebody putting steak in a blender.

"The dentist gasped as the blood spewed out everywhere. It didn't really bother me; I was more surprised than anything. So, with the blood pooling in my mouth, I just choked out laughing. And, get this, apparently when there's a giant bleeding hole in your mouth, the correct response is not to burst out laughing and spew blood everywhere. The doctor decided to call the appointment there and asked me to return Monday after she had gotten a chance to talk to her therapist."

"Are you even listening to me?" Coco asked sharply, tightening her beret. The sleeping bat in her hair didn't seem to notice. She'd managed to feed it a bit of canned fruit from Velvet's supplies, so at least her secret pet wouldn't starve on her watch.

The boy shrugged. "All I'm saying is my general reaction to pain is to laugh at it. I think I'm neurologically broken. I like rolling around in the pain of destroying my muscles in the gym. Makes me feel comfortable and warm. So getting a little burned all over to keep you safe—I'm crazy enough to find that comfy."

Her chest felt hot suddenly. "I didn't ask to be saved!"

For the first time this entire conversation, he looked her in the eyes with a serious expression. She saw the dimmest light of Aura behind his pupils, and she had to look away.

"No," he said. "You told me to leave you back there. That that was what you would do if you were me."

Coco screwed her eyes shut to collect the rage in her thoughts. When she opened them, she was breathing through her teeth as if in pain. "Yeah. I did. So what? Is that why you're really here? Because you're pissed off at me? Or maybe try to teach me some object lesson about how you're better than me because you'd never leave me. Is that what this is really about? Some dick measuring contest?"

Jaune didn't get angry back at her, and that only pissed her off more. He said, "I don't even know how I would dick measure with a girl. Penis length versus vaginal depth? If my dick touches your cervix, do I win?"

She balled her hands into fists. "Is that what it's really all about? You brought it up; it obviously pissed you off. But you're just brushing it off like I'm just, like, like, just some girl. 'Oh no, look at you, you've obviously done some bad, irredeemable shit. But it's cool because I still want to fuck you.' Let me guess, if I hadn't jokingly promised to let you feel me up, you would have just left me like I told you to!"

Coco expected that to finally push him. Either he would get angry and let it all out, or confused and finally stumble backwards and she could press the advantage. On some level, she knew she was being ridiculous. But all she could see was red at the way he just seemed so calm and relaxed right here, right now.

Instead, Jaune just looked pensive. "No. I made that mistake with a girl once. She told me to my face that she was an awful person. Gave me the proof, even, and I just looked past it because she was a hot girl and I thought we were getting along. I just opened up a packet of sugar, flicked it towards her, and told her that she didn't look good sad, better covered in sugar." Jaune sighed, then pursed his lips. "Then she stole my fucking dog and it was all downhill from there. Worst date of my life."

Despite herself, Coco gave a little surprised laugh. "What the hell?"

Jaune shook his head. "My point is, she and I probably weren't compatible. Pretty sure she was ace and I'm so aggressively heterosexual that I'm convinced that liking girls makes me dangerously homosexual adjacent. So I definitely wouldn't make that mistake for you if I actually thought you were a bitch deep down inside. I'm capable of character growth. It's my secret ability. Like back there when we thought you were all dead, the only thing that got me through that was pretending like I was in charge. Same way you tried insisting that I had to fake it until I made it. Pretty awful advice, but sometimes, well, awful advice is all you have to go with." He shrugged. "You're alive because you gave me awful advice and I stuck with it. I'm not sure if that makes us even or what. But it was definitely reason enough to drag your fat ass out of the water and up through here."

"How can you be cool with that?" she asked, shaking her head. Her thoughts swam with the image of Haakon begging for help, and running away from him. "I told you I would leave you to die!"

He snorted. "Yeah, but, like, that's just your opinion. And life has taught me that the opinions of women don't matter."

Compulsively, she went to lower her shades at him, before remembering she had broken them earlier in the cave and didn't have anything to wear on her face. Her eyes were dangerously exposed. Anyone could look at her and tell what she was eyeing up, and that made her feel like she didn't want to be here in particular.

"So most of your teammates are women, most of your friends are women," she said dubiously, "and the person whose advice you're taking to heart is a woman. Remind me again how it's possible for you to be that sexist?"

He frowned thoughtfully. "It's a conscious effort of will."

"More like a profound character flaw."

He raised his arms and flexed, his bandages straining. "When you're as strong and perfect as me, you need to put in daily effort to still being a flawed hero. It makes me sexier to have flaws, but only the cool flaws, like depression, self-doubt, and rampant misogyny."

Coco hugged her knees and sighed. "You're really making it hard to be angry right now. You're just too dumb to hate."

He shrugged, pulling out and unscrewing his canteen. He took a sip before offering it to her. As she drank from the water, he said, "Really, it comes with the territory. Sometimes I do good deeds, but most of the time I'm just retarded. Saving you was both retarded and a good deed. It was just that mythical Nirvana of perfectly masculine, therefore."

She nearly spat out her water. "Gods, you're the worst. I can't believe I almost unironically like you. Stop making yourself so hard to hate. I'm really angry right now and I'm trying to enjoy my anger."

"And let you have fun while I'm miserable and in pain? Never!" He took the canteen back.

"I thought you said you liked pain."

"Only the cool pain like muscle soreness or getting hurt to protect your friends. I'll still cry like a bitch if I get a hangnail. I just have to do that behind closed doors because it'll ruin my masculine image otherwise."

"Try being born as a hot chick next life," Coco suggested. "Bonus points, I can get some eye candy. You're pretty much the only one on your team I can't ogle."

He gave her a significant look. "Well next life, choose to be straight and then we'll call it even."

"Not sure you can choose that one."

"Sure you can," he said, nodding. "I wake up every morning and choose to be straight, which is why I don't like girls, because they are too close to being gay. It is an act of everyday choice to be this powerfully heterosexual and to avoid women altogether."

"That's literally the gayest thing I've ever heard and I'm actually gay," Coco said dryly. "Like it is so gay that I decided that liking girls is cringey now. I'm going to go back to my sexually confused combat school days."

"Well, if you're looking to solve your confusion, you know my number." Jaune winked.

She nodded seriously. "Perfect. You'd be perfect to show me why I'm not into boys! It's like being scared straight, only in reverse."

"I think being scared straight is a tactic to prevent crime."

"Being as fashionable and cool as I am is definitely illegal. Just lock me up and throw away the keys."

"You're into bondage," Jaune said, drumming his fingers on his sheath. "Noted."

"You're the one carrying zip tie handcuffs in your rucksack. Yeah that's right; I know what you're carrying. I saw it while we were all packing before we headed down here."

He took a sip from his canteen. "They're for personal use. Helps keep my knees locked and straight when I'm around girls like you, because I can't stand these hoes."

"It's kind of cute how I genuinely can't tell if we're just giving each other shit, or if you're actually sexist sometimes."

"Fuck casual sexism, we're on that competitive level now," he said, his eyes going up to the smokey ceiling of the cave.

"Ooh, are we playing to win? Because I'm not about to let you beat me, boy. Not at this or anything."

He shrugged. "I'm not even going to give you a chance to compete at my level. Did you know that sometimes after going to the gym together, Cardin and I like to stand on street corners holding hands and catcall women? It's not because we're actually trying to sleep with them or anything. We just both genuinely hate women that much."

"What's scary is that I can kind of picture you doing that ironically, but Cardin doing it on his own?" She shrugged. "He strikes me as the kind of idiot who actually catcalls women."

"Which never made any sense to me," Jaune went on, sounding more serious, like this was actually up for debate somehow. "Feminists always make it some kind of sexist thing, but I'd, like, I just have to know if catcalling a girl has ever actually worked."

Coco laughed. "Doubt it. Never in the history of vaginas has one ever gotten moist because a sweaty construction worker yelled at a girl. It's basically a one-way ticket to Vacuo." She made a vaguely masturbatory gesture in the air.

"I think I'll use that as a self-defense tactic in the future," he said, angling himself towards her, and gesturing wildly with his hands. "In case the girls around me start getting too horny, I'll just be all like eyy bb. Because it's way faster and cheaper than horny jail and I don't believe in mass incarceration."

It took Coco a moment to process that. "That has several layers of fucked up social commentary in just one sentence and I don't know how to unpack that."

"Just be like a guy who pretends to have a latex allergy, and don't unpack it. Don't even wrap it up. Just let it be."

Despite everything, how Coco was feeling, the pain coursing through her body, the arm which hadn't properly been relocated, and her general feelings of anger and self-loathing—she found herself laughing with the boy. It was a kind of stupid cringy humor. The kind of stuff she wouldn't be caught dead saying around someone like Fox or Velvet. For some reason, being completely braindead stupid was something she only managed to achieve around Jaune. She wondered if he just had that effect on people around him. That he somehow collectively lowered the IQ in any room he was in, and when you got that dumb, anything was fun and enjoyable.

Coco wasn't even entirely sure how he had managed to snake the conversation down to this level. She was supposed to be pissed off and angry at him, feeling offended by his presence. Instead, she was… just kind of thankful he was here, and acting like nothing was wrong in a way she didn't mind. Not like he was ignoring the problem, the elephant in the room, but that it didn't matter to him.

It made her think of her grandfather. And at the smoke blotting out the light in the sky, of her grandmother. Whom one day she would still meet.

She stopped hugging her legs and let them slide out. And there she was, just sitting up against a rock, beside a mushroom tree. Standing watch with the fire somewhere in the background, and the darkness of the cave in front of her.

"So how come you're really here, Jaune?" she asked slowly.

He scrunched his knees up to his chest, just looking at what had once been an old stone road along the lakeside. "We don't usually talk about anything serious, you and I. I guess I really don't know how to be real with you. But I figured maybe you did want to talk."

"And if I didn't?"

He shrugged with one hand. "Then I would tell you, like before, to push your panties and your pride to the side and let me in."

Coco smiled at him. "I think that's the sweetest way I've ever been sexually harassed in my entire life."

"So, one way or another, figured we'd jaw off. Work through shit. I don't know. Sort of my specialty."

"You got a degree in therapy now?" she asked, propping herself up on an elbow and looking up at him.

"I ordered a mail-order degree from an offshore Vacuan academy," he said simply. "That pretty much makes me a legal pro."

"That so?"

"I'm also legally a minister," he said.

"Yeah, right."

Jaune shook his head. "No, that one's true. Turns out you just need to fill out a form on the Valean government's website, pay a hundred lien, and now I can legally marry people."

She snorted. "Why the hell would you ever want to do that?"

The boy shrugged. "Dunno. Ruby is convinced it'd make a great tax fraud scheme. We did it online together, but she's too young to get the license, so she made me do it. I'm thinking of starting my own religion at this point purely so I can issue a fatwa against high-carb foods and deprive Ruby of sweets. Karmic justice."

That got a curious look out of her. "You're a Valais boy. How do you know about odd Vacuan religions?"

He made a face right back at her. "How do you know 'bout 'em?"

"Adel."

"Yeah, it's your last name. So what?"

"It's an Eranstani name. My grandpa was a fire-worshipper, but there's lots of Vacuan faiths in the area. Spent some time there near Tesifon as a girl and learned a bit about Vacuo by proxy. The regions are right next to each other."

"Huh. Funny. You look like just another white girl to me."

"I legally identify as Eranstani on the census for affirmative action benefits," she said simply. "It helps to identify as a colonial."

"How scummy," he said, pulling out a cigarette. He flicked it against the pack's ignition patch and lit up. After an exhale, she held up two fingers.

"You want oral sex or a puff? The gesture is ambiguous," he said.

Coco scoffed. He handed her the deathstick and she took a drag. She didn't even like it, but the action was still calming. She handed it back, and he puffed, and gave it back. They shared cancer and spit between each other in silence, just thinking.

"My therapist used to be a smoker," Jaune finally said. "The one Beacon provides. Said that nicotine's a stimulant, and always found it funny how it also was good at calming her down. We thought it wasn't the drug, it was breathing. That rhythmic in and out is what we're really after. The drugs just make it addiction. And makes you feel cooler than lame meditation exercises."

Coco rolled the cigarettes through her fingers, examining the cherry. "I don't know. I guess I can almost see it."

He took it back and let out a drag of smoke. It whisped up into the air, eventually to join the smoke on the cave ceiling. "This really what you want to talk about? Cheating affirmative action and sexism and other bullshit."

She shrugged. "I mean, what else is there? Stupid shit is… nice."

"Kick the demons down the road like tin cans," he said.

Coco scowled, taking the smoke back. "I mean, what else is there to chat about? Purses and cute girls and your fragile heterosexuality?"

"Time and a place for it, I guess."

She scooted back, sitting up a little taller. "I mean, if you wanna talk about that, we can always talk about your team."

Jaune gave her an unsure look.

"Can't tell me you're not always thinking about it, Jaune."

"Whatcha mean?"

Coco shrugged. "I mean, you're the team boy. Surrounded by like three girls all the time, you're not trying to get with at least one of them. They are pretty fine."

His expression soured slightly. "Coco."

"I mean," she said with a sudden laugh, "if not, is it because you're shy or something?"

"I'll get naked for no reason; I ain't me none too shy."

"So what's wrong?" she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder. The cigarette ashed against her ruined pants. "I mean, hey, if you're willing to share, I bet you and I could at least get Weiss naked. She's got a cute little butt. What do you say, partner? Between the two of us, I get—"

"Coco," he said more seriously, snatching the cigarette back. "No. I'm not interested, and neither are you, I don't think. How come the moment I try to get this serious ball rolling, you start doing this? Stop acting like you're the shit and try to level with me, girl. I know shit's fucked. I know you're scared because I'm a solid rock and I'm fucking terrified. Just because you're not at your best right now, you think I'd honestly ever think less of you for it?"

She inhaled sharply. "And just what do you know about it, huh?! The worst you got were a couple of burns your Aura will clear up. This, right here, what I'm feeling? It fucking hurts and here you are, acting like I'm something to pity. Like I'm not me, like I'm some wilting flower."

"That really what you reckon I'd ever think?"

"What else?!" Coco snapped.

He sighed, looking at the dying cigarette in his fingers. "I know what it's like, Coco. I do."

"Fucking do you?" She laughed mirthlessly. "I'm me. I'm Coco Adel. Team CFVY is mine and we're the goddamn best, and here we are out of our element, and pathetic, and some freshman team is doing better than us, and everyone is looking to you instead of me because deep down all of my friends know that I'm broken right now I can't do fucking shit. Do you really know what that's like, kid?!"

The boy shook his head. "Not that way. But I know what it's like to be afraid of pity."

"Pity?"

"It's the single cruelest, most evil form of compassion out there," he said, wringing his bandaged hands. "You don't pity someone you respect. You don't pity someone you want to look up to. You pity a three-legged dog. You pity the kid who lied to join the army and is way out of his league now. You pity the person you're fucking glad you're not. And I know what pity feels like. It's the fire behind you when you're standing on the ledge. It's that thing that makes you want to jump because of all the emotions we humans feel, pity is the most painful to receive."

She sneered. "So, what, you'd rather kill yourself than be pitied?"

Jaune leaned to the side, looking over at the campfire and the people snuggled up in sleeping bags around it. Returning his attention to her, he said, "Well, I can't really fathom a difference between suicide and trying to get Weiss naked, so…"

Despite herself, she found herself laughing again. "I think I see what you're doing now. You're talking around the topic. You make things light-hearted and fun, and then you stab at something serious and piss me off. Is this always how you deal with problems?"

He offered her the last puff of the cigarette, and she took it. "More or less," he said mildly. "You're trying to act angry and tough and all aggressive because shit's bugging you, Coco. I know our friendship has been pretty stupid since we met back in the gym, but I do kind of care about you. You could be talking with your team about this. It's what me and BASS do when things bother us. The only way to really work through your issues is with other people, because hell is other people, but the only way out is through. So if you're not going to talk to them, I'll force it out of you, but first I'm going to make you laugh and distract you."

Coco tossed the cigarette stub to the side. "Funny thing is, this whole time, I'm still not sure what we're even talking about."

"We were dancing around you being scared, and you trying to front by getting all angry and acting like a bulldyke."

Her eyes fluttered in surprise. "Okay, I'm pretty relaxed, but that's actually pretty offensive. Don't say that again, that word. Ever."

The boy shrugged indifferently. "Gotcha. Doesn't change the fact that you're so bothered you're acting pretty out of character. If you actually were aggressive and slept around, I'm pretty sure I'd know by now."

"And that's weirdly personal. I don't like it. Stop."

He held up his hands. "I'm just saying, you're not like that. Not aggressive or predatory or anything. And trying to act like a big man on campus just makes you look like you need help."

Coco shrugged the conversation away, folding her knees up to her chest again. She kept doing that throughout her time pretending to be on watch. Hugging herself. It made her feel pathetic.

She looked around the rock she was sitting up against, at the campfire and her team. Shamrock was sitting beside Fox, and the two of them were talking. She was tempted to try to send Fox a message in his head, but declined it. Her eyes settled on Velvet, who was laying on the ground, arms folded behind her head, idly chatting with her partner, Yatsuhashi, who was just standing there, staring out across the lake.

Coco let out a breath and looked back at Jaune, who just looked tired and hurt.

"No. I guess I'm not," she said. "Maybe it is just nice to try to chat and bullshit."

"Is it so wrong to feel that way?" he asked.

Coco thought for a long moment before saying, "We once had to do this morality test in combat school. It was for a philosophy course, I think. One of the questions was if you were close to somebody and you knew it wasn't romantically intimate, but you found them in a situation like a breakup and you thought you could get with them, would you do it?"

He cocked an eyebrow. "And would you?"

Coco pressed her tongue to the inside of her cheeks, thinking it over.

"Say if Velvet had a really bad break up, and she was drinking," he said, "and she said she was going to swear off boys forever."

"I mean, if she was drinking, that's an automatic no-go. But if we were drinking together?" She shrugged one arm. "I think I'd be too guilty in the morning. And I know I'd be guilty. So I don't think I could ever take advantage of her that way. She's my friend. She's my teammate. I love her, but, it's not that kind of love. Nothing predatory."

He nodded. "Yeah." His voice was oddly quiet, so unlike him. "That's how I feel about my partner."

"You love her?" she asked, genuinely intrigued.

"Saying a man loves a woman makes it automatically gay," he said, puffing his chest.

She blew her tongue at him. "We've been over this. I have literally never seen masculinity so fragile in my entire life. It's kind of sad, like a puppy with a broken leg."

He held up his hands in mock defense. "But, yeah. It's not like a family thing. I don't look at her like a sister. Not even as someone to protect, since I'm pretty sure that she could still kick my ass in a fight if we really got down to the brass tacks. L-O-V-E is a word I never quite learned how to pronounce, but I care for her more than anyone. If something were to happen…"

Jaune paused for a very long moment. "It's complicated. Stupid. Mutual, in a way." Slowly, he grabbed a little pebble off the ground and threw it towards the water. It didn't skip, just fell in. The boy frowned.

"If I did something because I'm me and can't help myself," he said, "if she thought she caught feelings for me, I'd never be able to take advantage of her like that. Not her, not Weiss, not even Shamrock when they are a she. It'd be fucked up. It'd be wrong. And most importantly, I think it would hurt them most of all. "

Coco looked at the bandages across his body. "She was the one playing medic with my partner. Is she the one who patched you up?"

Jaune nodded. "Yeah. She was worried. We had a little fight over it. Honestly, that's bothering me way more than any burns might. It's part of the reason I excused myself from the team to go hang with you. I figured whatever was fucking you up would be way easier to deal with than that."

Coco smiled sadly. "You know how you feel. I know how I feel, how Velvet feels. Do you know how Blake feels?"

Uncharacteristically, he just looked out into the darkness, saying nothing for the longest time. She almost thought he wasn't going to say anything, until he did. "I know that if I jumped off a cliff, she'd be there with me. Even if just to strangle me on the way down for making her worry. And right now, it feels like she's especially worried about me. This mission, this danger, it's unfamiliar water for all of us and I'm not sure any of us know how to handle it, know how to handle how we feel in the moment. And like most of my problems, I prefer not to deal with it until it explodes."

"And yet here you are, acting like me avoiding what's bothering me is a problem when you're doing it yourself." She almost looked smug.

His eyes fell down into his lap. "I also use my combat therapy powers on other people to avoid dealing with my own problems. It's very efficient. If I can't stab my problems, I just talk about them with other people."

"I imagine the problems you have, most of them aren't Grimm. You must have a very tired jaw."

Almost absently, he grabbed his sword from its sheath and pulled it out. Pointing it in the darkness, he said, "Reach heaven through violence. Because this world is hell, and the only thing keeping me going are the people I'd die for. Being a Huntsman idn't really a career for someone fixin' to get long in tooth."

Coco snorted. "Alright, Spruce Willis. Calm down."

"Spruce Willis?" Velvet said, approaching the two of them out of the darkness. "Were you two really just talking movies this entire time?"

Standing beside her, Shamrock just adjusted her top hat. "Knowing Jaune, it's probably some abstract metaphor."

Coco blinked in surprise. "What are you two doing here?"

Velvet shrugged. "It's been a couple hours. We lost a game of rock-paper-scissors so Shamrock and I have the next watch."

"I didn't realize it's been that long already," Coco said, a little blindsided.

Jaune put his sword away and stood up. He stretched his arms out over his head, before offering a hand up for Coco. "They had good timing. This touchy feely conversation was getting a little too close towards my problems and not yours. Let's sleep it off before continuing this once we save the world and find whatever happened to team CCHS."

For a moment, Coco's mind's eye went back to that tree, to Haakon screaming her name. To the fact that she swore she could still hear him howling over the fire. She shook her head and made the image go away, before realizing how much her back and legs hurt, and that Jaune was offering her a hand.

She looked towards Velvet and Shamrock. Her teammate and the girl she didn't know at all. She had a sudden rush of self-consciousness, realizing that Velvet would see her needing help getting up.

You think I'd honestly ever think less of you for it? Jaune had told her. He wasn't her teammate sworn to always be at her back. He was just a friend and somewhat decent protégé. And when she really thought about it, she believed him. So why would she be worried about one of her teammates seeing her take a hand up?

She swallowed her pride and took Jaune's hand. Her spine sang in protest as he lifted her to her feet. Her Aura was a little too weak to numb the pain as well that it should have. She only needed to lean on him a little bit to stay on her feet, though. That was way better than before. She paled at the thought of needing physical therapy after this.

"C'mon," Jaune said. "Let's let them ruin their sleep. I'm tired of that shit and you look like you could use a solid eight hours clocked out."

She made herself smile as the two of them walked to camp. "Maybe. But hey, your sleeping bag looks comfiest. How badly do I have to play up the injured angle to be able to get yours?"

"More than you are doing now," he said. "You really have to sell it."

The campfire was warm and inviting. Just being near it, she could feel her knees going weak and her eyes heavy.

"Oof, ouch, pain," Coco said unenthusiastically. "The sexy pain."

Jaune gave her a skeptical look. "Nah. Two out of ten performance. Best I can do is offer to share the sleeping bag with you, because you're not getting it alone. It's too comfy to risk going without."

Coco hummed. "I wouldn't say that if I were you. I sleep in the nude! Plus I'm a bed hog."

Jaune's partner, Blake, sat up sharply from her own sleeping bag. The face she made was actually kind of cute. But all she said was, "Would you keep it down? I'm trying to sleep here."

Coco and the boy exchanged glances and laughed. They still had to figure out how they would rest given that she had lost her own sleeping bag when she crash landed in the cave. Honestly, she probably would have to share it with somebody. Or maybe take turns stealing someone else's bag whenever they went on night watch. It was whatever. She was too tired to really care.

Coco really could use a good night's sleep to rest and recharge. Recuperate her Aura and try to function as a human being again in the morning. Then she could wake up and be grumpy about shitty sleeping conditions. But that was a problem for tomorrow, after getting in some Z's.

It was a shame that no one was going to get a full night's sleep that night.