Hello, hello. Another week, another chapter. Not much to say here. I suppose I could again shoot down the 'moving to weekly' idea. Still not really feeling it. I actually had Strep throat this week (and if you've had Strep throat, you know that shit fucking blows) so I haven't done much work at all on this or Paved, and am largely utilizing my reserves on both to upload chapters this week. Still, I may eventually move this story back to weekly, although that may be a while from now.

Now, onto the chapter...

Start Chapter 22

In Blake's eyes, the plan for arriving in Menagerie had seemed so simple.

She'd get in, she'd dismantle the entirety of the White Fang's organization with the help of her parents – and Sun, who had apparently decided to come with her because… he's a good person? Okay, sure, she'd take it – and then turn the organization into one that more reflects her own beliefs.

It had really, really seemed simple.

…

Well, aside from the part where she had gotten stabbed, her Soulmate had gotten her arm cut off, it had all been her fault, she'd needed to run, because there was no way Yang would ever be able to forgive her for that, and she can't exactly fault her that, so she runs, but then when she arrives in Menagerie she finds out that the entire island is pretending as if everything is business as usual except there's a power struggle happening between Sienna and Adam and any day now tensions might boil over–

Oh. She's mentally hyperventilating.

Blake takes a few deep, steadying breaths as she leans over the banister off of the second story balcony of the Belladonna mansion. Her parents are downstairs, probably discussing something with Sun, and she's…

Brooding? Is that the term for it?

That actually feels like the term for it, yeah.

And if she's being really, truly honest? She's perfectly content for absolutely nothing to happen at all. For quite literally nothing abnormal to occur. For her to sit here for a while, brood silently, and then go back inside the house. Nothing having happened.

Life, as it always seems to, has other plans.

A shadow drops down beside her in the next moment, panting and wheezing, and Blake has a second to realize she knows who that shadow is before they're practically lunging for her, and Blake is forced to the ground.

Her hand is halfway to Gambol Shroud before the shadow holds its hands up.

"I-I'm sorry!" Ilia stammers out. "I didn't… I didn't mean to…"

Blake let out a breath herself. Ilia… Blake and Sun had caught her tailing them the other night. At the time, she'd seemed to speak like they'd be enemies. Like she would be taking Adam's side.

And perhaps she still is, but…

There's simply something in her expression that, to Blake, at least, tells her otherwise.

"What's wrong, Ilia? Did something happen?"

"Uhm… well… Yeah?" Ilia takes a breath, evidently trying to steady herself. "I'm uh… it's… complicated."

"Do you want to talk about it, or…?"

"Okay… this is going to sound a little weird?"

Blake really isn't sure if anything can surprise her anymore at this point, what with what had happened to Beacon.

"Go ahead. I'm listening."

Ilia nods her head, takes a deep breath, and then…

"Okay so Adam and the Albain brothers plotted to overthrow Sienna and create a new White Fang in their image and they were getting help from some mysterious benefactor and when I did some research into what you said the other day about Beacon and whatnot I saw that woman who did all the bad stuff at Beacon I think her name was like Cinder or something anyways–" Ilia takes a gasping breath, and Blake is simply too flabbergasted to interrupt. "So I wasn't really sure about this plan right but I thought if it was for the good of the Faunus I could go along with it so I just gritted my teeth but what I wasn't expecting was that that Cinder lady arrived and it turns out that she's Adam's help but also she had a bunch of kids with her and I think some of them might be your old schoolmates because I'm pretty sure I recognized Pyrrha Nikos in there somewhere but anyways Adam stabbed Sienna in the chest and I nearly threw up but then one of them this blonde scraggly kid" –Ilia again stops to let out a horrible, wretched gasping sound, before re-righting herself, and continuing in the exact same panicked, rushed cadence. "Ran up to Sienna and started healing her out of nowhere even though I thought that they were supposed to be on Adam's side and then Adam nearly killed him but then Cinder nearly killed Adam and then Pyrrha Nikos was there too, and a bunch of other people and Yuma and Trifa and I jumped in but I was shaking like a leaf because holy shit Adam stabbed Sienna I didn't think he was going to do that but then Cinder set the room on fire and she and her people all ran away but as they were leaving I think I met my Soulmate!"

Blake blinks. She takes a second to try and ponder… any of what's just been communicated to her.

…

She blinks again for good measure.

"What?"

/

Jaune doesn't think he's ever had a dream like this before.

Okay, obviously, he dreams often enough. He dreams of weird things, and little things, and sometimes bigger things. But they're all kind of… meaningless, in a sense.

This dream does not seem the same.

There's a certain… quality to the dream that has him paying rapt attention. He's watching as a bull and a tiger square off in the middle of a vast desert. Jaune's fairly certain that bulls and tigers do not live in similar habitats at all, nor do either of them live in deserts, but then again, this is a dream, it doesn't have to make sense.

Wherever the bull goes, blood seems to spread at his feet, sinking into the sand and dyeing it red. And whenever the tiger gives ground, blood spews from the grains beneath, as if pouring from a wound.

The tiger is losing. Perhaps it has already lost. And then…

He's moving. Light encompasses the tiger, and it rises. The bull charges him.

And then a torrent of fire as bright as the sun.

He understands this part, he thinks. This is what's just happened. This is Sienna and Adam. This is himself and Cinder.

What comes next has his eyes widening, however.

A black lioness drops onto the scene, and in an instant, the bull turns. Its attention is completely diverted from the tiger. Completely diverted from himself. It charges, but…

A dragon. A golden dragon, glimmering with power and flame in equal measure stops it. The lioness and the dragon face the bull, and they defeat it.

It is sent spiraling into a black void. One that rises and consumes it; subsumes it. Jaune has no idea what to make of that.

And the blood is washed away from the sands beneath. It is replaced by a golden ichor, that shines darkly somehow. It doesn't make any sense, but it's a dream, Jaune thinks, so it doesn't really have to.

But this substance on the ground seems oddly… familiar.

His head hurts.

It hurts where the magic resides. It hurts in that tiny basin, where he's only just begun to see.

He finds himself wondering if this is somehow related. If what he's looking at, golden and dark simultaneously, is magic itself. If this dream is magic. If this is some kind of… some kind of vision.

That fire from earlier burns even still, but there is a silhouette among the flames. A chained, broken being within them, screaming and wailing and raging against the world. Around her, a miasma of darkness that the flames cannot seem to eliminate.

He is reaching out. Reaching. Reaching.

He cannot rea–

And the scene changes entirely.

It is a different thing, this scene. Grander somehow, that he can tell. It has little to do with the scene that has just transpired, but…

The hair stands up along the back of his neck.

There's another figure that enters into the scene, entirely different from what Jaune has seen thus far.

It is…

It is death. Black and horrid and everything wrong with the world. It wears a woman's face, and possesses a woman's heart, but it is blackened and dried and…

And it is beating, even still. It seems to gravitate towards the light. It is… intrigued by it.

Even still, its presence dims the flame beside him. Its presence is only hurting it.

He's not sure when the flame and him had arrived in the scene. Perhaps they'd always been there.

But there is something else, there. Something separate from either of them.

A wolf.

There is a wolf at the thing's side. It, too, is black, and monstrous. It is not like the bull, or the tiger. It is not an animal.

It is not entirely a Grimm, either, Jaune thinks.

And it looks at him as its jaw unhinges and a face – a human face, with eyes a gleaming silver – appears within. Somehow…

Somehow the face there is familiar.

And Jaune finds his eyes widening.

Ruby!?

And then the black swallows the world.

/

Jaune awakes with a frightful start, which has the unintended effect of seemingly scaring the bejesus out of his companions. All of them settle when they realize it's only him who's made the noise, before they seemingly then remember that he'd been injured in some way, and rush to his side.

"Jauney!" Nora exclaims first. "You came back! You didn't go towards the light!"

He stares at her a moment. "Nora I think I passed out from aura exhaustion. I don't think I was close to–"

"So young," Nora continues to be dramatic for the sake of being dramatic. "Nearly taken from us so young…"

He rolls his eyes, turning instead to Pyrrha and Ren, and nodding to the both of them. They exchange similar expressions with him, and then, finally, he turns to Cinder.

She is looking his way, but she has kept some small distance between the two of them. He's not entirely sure why – actually, when he thinks about it, he realizes that Cinder has always been a private person – but he tries his best to give her a smile.

She seems to brighten somewhat at that, so he's glad.

"What've I missed?" He asks as he sits up, and realizes just how scratchy his throat is. "And… how long have I been out?"

"Eighteen hours, give or take a few minutes." Mercury comments from nearby. "Not all that long, in the grand scheme of things, but you had a few of your gang worried for a bit there."

Left unsaid is that Mercury hadn't been worried, but Jaune has grown to expect such callousness from the man, so he doesn't really take it all that personally.

"Oh, and Emerald met her Soulmate." The man tacks on at the end, like it's nothing. "So that's a thing."

His eyes widen as he turns to Emerald, seeing if she'll deny the claim. When she instead simply looks away from him, all but confirming the validity of the statement, he smiles.

"Well, that's great! Congratulations."

From the way Pyrrha winces beside him, Jaune gathers he's missing some information here.

"Her Soulmate was uhm…" His partner speaks awkwardly, looking towards Emerald and, not getting any sign of hesitancy or resistance, continues on. "She was a member of Adam's elite guard. Emerald's pretty sure it was the one with the electric whip."

…Jaune tries to remember back to the battle – if it could even be called that – in the White Fang base, but it's all feeling kind of fuzzy at the moment. And besides, he doesn't think it particularly matters if he remembers which of the White Fang is Emerald's Soulmate. If they run into her again, he has enough information to go off of.

"That seems… complicated." He says in answer.

"It is very complicated." Emerald grumbles, hiding her head in her hands. "And unfortunately, on our list of priorities, it is also staggeringly low."

Jaune wonders for just a moment what it is that Emerald's talking about, until his eyes widen, and he suddenly remembers just why it is that they're camped out in the middle of a jungle, a good few kilometers from civilization of any kind.

"Right… the White Fang…" He bolts upright. "The tiger lady! Is she okay!?"

"She's fine."

Jaune turns towards Cinder now, and sees that the woman is not off on her own away from him for nothing. No, she is tending to someone. He gets up – minding the way that some parts of him do hurt, despite the fact that he can't particularly remember getting injured in any real way – and walks over, seeing the woman he'd chosen to heal laying underneath a tarp. It is likely the closest thing any of them could've found that constituted a blanket.

"That's…" He sighs in relief. "That's good. I was worried it was all… all going to be for nothing."

"Yes." Cinder sighs. "As was I."

Jaune's getting the feeling that Cinder has quite a few choice words for him, and frankly, yeah, that's fair, he did run off on his own and nearly get himself killed by Adam Taurus, but in his defense…

Someone had been hurt in front of him. Quite literally stabbed in the back. He couldn't… he hadn't been able to simply watch that happen, and do nothing.

And if he'd delayed himself for even a moment… he doesn't think he would've been able to save her.

He'll discuss this with her later. As soon as he can find a moment for it.

"Is she conscious yet?"

"No. She's not awoken." Cinder gestures towards him. "Although if you wished to attempt to funnel more aura into her, I imagine it couldn't hurt."

He nods, ignoring the tiny piece of him that points out that it's a bit abnormal for Cinder to be so… what's the word he's even looking for… kind, perhaps?

Well, not to say Cinder isn't kind, because she is, but that's only to him. She can feign it for others, mostly those he's close to, but that kindness isn't something she usually extends to anyone else.

He thinks he knows why, too.

To Cinder, the Soulbond had always represented that which she had never had. An unconditional love. The love of someone who she had been destined to be with. For Jaune, it had been the same sort of thing, only… only his desire had always been to provide love to that pained being on the other end of his link.

So, she can be nice to him. Can be kind to him. Can show her true emotions to him, because she thinks that given the Soulbonds existence, there is no way that Jaune could ever judge her for her actions. For all the little things she's had to have drilled out of her by everyone else in her life.

It's a little sad, Jaune can't help thinking.

He gets to work on healing the woman – Sienna Khan, he's pretty sure her name had been – as he continues pondering.

Cinder is… complicated. That much is probably fair to say. A tough nut to crack in the best and worst of ways. She is hard-edged, thorned, a veritable fortress to try and reach out to. But inside…

She's a delicate thing. Something that must be handled softly, gently, carefully. He's been doing his best to coax it out, that little, fragile heart that lurks within that outer wall. That's had to hide away, and build layer after layer of hate, and anger, and misery to keep herself strong.

He finds himself thinking back on the dream, the way the shadowed being inside of the flames had been hounded by darkness, chained, and held in place as it was eaten away at, and he frowns. Even despite that, she'd kept burning. Kept blazing. Only ever strong.

…Jaune wants to give her the chance to be weak, if she needs to be. He thinks that's a pretty important thing to have.

A place to come back to where nothing is expected of you.

Unconditional love, Jaune supposes, is something like that.

…Jaune loves Cinder.

Not Loves loves, to be fair. He loves her in the same way that he loves all of those close to him. In the same way he loves Ren, and Nora, and Pyrrha, and Ruby and all the others he's grown close to. Perhaps, even, he loves her like he does his family. Those especially closest to him.

Or perhaps that's oversimplifying. Perhaps it is so much more complicated than he could ever hope to parse.

Because he knows that despite what he feels for Cinder… there are things he knows he needs to help her change.

He's working on it. So is she, he likes to think.

A sudden gasp from the woman beneath him cuts into Jaune's flow, and he's snapped from his mind when the woman nearly shears through his skull with her long nails, which seem to have been strengthened with aura, given they leave marks in his gauntlets, which is how he'd blocked the blow at all.

He's just about to say that she's in safe hands, that they're not there to hurt her, when Cinder flares onto the scene, slamming Sienna back into the dirt and snarling at her.

"Cinder! It's okay!" He places a hand on his Soulmates' shoulder. "It's fine. She's just confused. She didn't mean to hurt me."

"What…" Sienna, beneath them, speaks up, but he can tell it comes to her far less easy than she'd hoped. "Who are you? Where am I? Where–" Her eyes widen. "Adam, that godsdamned– where is he!? I'll have his head mounted to my–"

"And you!" Jaune points towards the woman, who seems rather startled to have been addressed by him. "Relax for a minute!"

Sienna does. Jaune's both glad, and confused as to why, as the moment his senses actually return to him, he realizes she had had very little actual reason to do so.

"Do not attack him again." Cinder speaks through a clenched jaw.

Sienna either knows how powerful Cinder is, or simply doesn't see any real need to go against her words, for she simply nods Cinder's way as the woman dismounts her, and allows her to sit up.

"I… that bastard stabbed me…" Sienna looks rather terribly furious. "We served together for a decade… we stood together to build the White Fang after we took control over it… and he just… stabs me in the back!?"

Jaune can understand how upset she would be. To be betrayed, Jaune feels, is a rather terrible thing.

He'd know. It had felt like somewhat of a betrayal when he'd first seen Cinder. First met her eye. When he'd realized that the person he'd been destined for had been the same who'd burned Beacon to the ground.

"Did you not see this coming?" It's Ren who asks that. "Were there no signs?"

"There were signs, of course there were…" Sienna shakes her head, forcing a breath out between her teeth that sounds almost like a snarl. "But… I did not think Adam would go so far. It is customary for Chieftains of the Faunus to be challenged to single combat when another thinks they are unfit to rule. The loser is exiled. The White Fang has always used a similar system. It is long since how I have protected my position from wannabe usurpers. I… I assumed that if Adam were to attempt to overthrow me, he would do such a thing. That… honorless pile of… Grah!"

"So… what happens now?" It was Pyrrha, this time. "I mean… with the White Fang. Is there no one who would protest a change in leadership?"

"If they knew the truth, perhaps." Sienna shakes her head. "Though given the only ones on my side who know it are currently sitting in the middle of the jungle, I doubt he has much to worry about in terms of spreading his own story. He will claim he defeated me, and I chose to leave Menagerie so as to not be seen in my shame. Perhaps he will even claim me dead, although such a thing would be foolish were I to show up alive. I imagine it is far more likely, however, that he will claim I fully supported his rise to power. Unfortunately, it would not even be that hard to believe. His current… if you could even call it a "Success" at Beacon Academy has left many of the Warhawks among our number satisfied. It would not be unforeseen for me to have seen the changing tides, and bowed out early to make room for another."

That's a tad bit concerning for Jaune, given that he's now pretty sure that an Adam controlled White Fang is the last thing they want.

…Well, up until Mercury speaks, that is.

"So, wait, wasn't the whole plan in us coming here that we'd support Adam's rise to high leader of the Fang?"

They all turn to him in that moment, and Emerald rolls her eyes at his seeming inability to read the room.

"You… were supposed to be with Adam!?" Sienna snarls out, taking a defensive position.

Jaune finds himself wanting to sigh as everyone now glares at Mercury.

"Hey, I just felt the need to say it. I'm not really in the mood to piss off the scary immortal magic lady." Mercury shrugs. "You guys seem a lot cooler with that."

"Could've picked a better time to interject, though." Nora, in a rare bout of seriousness, provides in answer what they're all thinking.

"If Salem actually cared about Adam Taurus' cause, then perhaps. She does not, however." Cinder says, her single arm grabbing the stump of her other. "In fact, were we to acquire the support of the White Fang, in practically any capacity, I do not believe that Salem would be particularly bothered. I doubt she'd so much as notice the alteration."

Sienna seems to absorb what's being said with a chagrin that Jaune can't really blame her for. She shakes her head in the next moment, apparently making some kind of decision, and looks to Cinder, identifying her as the leader of their little group.

Jaune feels that's a fair assumption.

"Very well, then. If it's the White Fang's commitment that you need… I will give it to you."

A few of their members seem surprised at that, but to Jaune, at least, it had seemed the obvious outcome. There had been no reason that Sienna would not immediately recognize that they'd already alienated Adam, and still needed the White Fang.

The window for her to become a necessary part of their plan had been both narrow, and quite clear.

"In exchange, you help me in winning back the White Fang from that bastard Adam. For the time being, we will act as allies. Equals." Sienna speaks, and Jaune can, for a moment, see how she could've once commanded the entirety of the organization. Her voice carries with it a certain… power. "Is that amicable to you?"

Cinder looks for a moment like she is going to make the decision on her own, before turning to Jaune and raising a single eyebrow.

She's asking his input on the matter.

"I think it's the best idea we have." Jaune says with a shrug. "Frankly, I don't see how we can do better. Although I struggle to think how we're going to take on the entirety of the White Fang on our lonesome."

"Yes, there seemed to be quite a few fighters among them who would be able to match the level of a Beacon student." Ren speaks. "Adam's elite fighters, along with the man himself, would likely require all of us combined to down."

Cinder takes some issue with that, Jaune can tell. And to be fair to her, she's probably right. Jaune can't quite help feeling that if they simply sent her into the base on her own, there'd be a half-decent chance that she'd emerge the next day victorious, ignoring that she'd likely not leave much of the base intact to begin with.

Of course, there's also a half-decent chance that she wouldn't come back out at all.

And that's not a risk Jaune's willing to take.

"In that case, I may have someone who we could call upon." Sienna speaks, although she does not sound particularly thrilled with the idea. "There is another faction. Someone who I… who I once betrayed. I believe, however, that if there is anyone on Menagerie capable of aiding us in taking down Taurus, it is them."

Jaune nods, as do the rest of them. It's not like any of them have ever been to Menagerie before.

"And who is this, exactly?" Cinder asks.

"The Chieftains of Kuo Kuana." Sienna speaks. "The Belladonna family."

And Jaune lets out a tiny gasp. He isn't alone. Pyrrha, Ren, and Nora follow suit.

"…So, uh…"

"What?" Sienna looks to them, seemingly confused.

"Oh, nothing, it's just… uh…"

Jaune lets out a little laugh.

"They wouldn't happen to have a daughter named 'Blake', would they?"

End Chapter 22

Jaune and friends suddenly realized they had quite the bit of political pull in Menagerie.

Anyways, more from this fic two weeks from now. See you all then!