Willow Schnee let out a sigh of content as she sank further down into her bubble bath, her eyes closed. Even through her eyelids, she could see the subtle flickering caused by the myriad of candles surrounding the edge of the tub. The rose petals scattered about in the water provided a pleasant scent to the room when paired with the various oils mixed into the liquid, and Willow thought that she couldn't possibly be happier late on a Friday night.

Much to her surprise, she was entirely wrong.

The sudden vibration of her scroll upon the side of the tub caused her to jolt back to awareness, and she leaned forward slightly to pluck the device from the ceramic edge of the basin. Throughout the entire process of pulling her scroll to herself and unlocking it, the scroll kept buzzing furiously, as though it was about to explode. Willow arched a perfect brow as she tapped away at the screen, only to find her group chat with Teams STRQ and OKRA filled with messages. Upon scrolling her way back to the top of the new chain, she found one marked R.T., and immediately allowed herself a full smile.

I'm in. Dad's letting me go.

Willow breathed a sigh of relief and wiped a damp strand of hair from her face before beginning to tap away at the screen of her scroll.

Excellent. Happy to have you with us, Roman.

The moment she hit "Send", a knock came at the door to her dormitory. Willow checked the clock on her scroll, only to do a double take. Immediately afterward, she checked the crystal clock kept upon the bathroom counter to confirm what she had seen- it was nearly midnight. Slowly, she snapped her scroll shut and rose from the tub, dripping scented water as she stood naked in the bathroom. The heiress hurriedly pulled a towel off the rack before opening the bathroom door and peeking her head out into her unoccupied dormitory.

"Coming!" Willow called before pulling the door open entirely. She worked to towel off as quickly as she could, her muscles already missing the relaxing calm of the bubble bath. "Sorry, I'll be just a moment!"

No response came from the other side of the door, and Willow stopped toweling herself for a moment to simply stare at the wood. While wrapping herself in her towel and stepping into a pair of fuzzy white slippers, she made her way to the door with cautious steps, staying as silent as she could. After taking in a deep breath, Willow put her eye to the peephole. Her eye involuntarily widened at the sight of Adam Taurus standing in the hallway, both alone and armed. The boy had his visible eye closed and his unoccupied hand clenched into a tight fist as he paced back and forth in front of the door. Willow hesitated briefly and then made a detour into the living room, where she grabbed Myrtenaster off the coffee table. She took several deep breaths before making her way to the kitchenette and standing behind the island in the center of the floor, her rapier and lower body hidden from view.

With a quick series of hand motions, a pair of white glyphs manifested around the double locks upon the dormitory door before a third appeared around the handle and pulled the portal open. Adam's attention snapped to Willow as the door opened, and he seemed taken aback. Whether the boy's surprise was at the fact that she answered the door mostly naked, the fact that she had opened the door at all, or the fact that she had done so with her semblance, Willow couldn't tell.

"…good evening," Willow said warmly as she did her best to fake a smile. She kept a hand upon the handle of Myrtenaster all the while, her heart pounding in her chest. "Is something wrong?"

Adam blinked and cleared his throat before quickly diverting his attention off into the living room and away from Willow as his cheeks turned pink.

"I… no, no, nothing's wrong, I just… I needed to see you. Tonight."

"…oh?" Willow asked as she quirked a brow, her grip around Myrtenaster's hilt tightening as her knuckles turned white. She did her best to keep her voice calm and steady, though it began to waver much like Adam's own. "Alone, though? You've never come here alone."

"No, I know," Adam began as he made a slow approach toward Willow. "I… generally don't go anywhere alone, unless I'm hiding from people. But this is something… this is something I have to do on my own, before the vacation. It's something I should have done a long t-"

"Why are you armed?" Willow interrupted, her voice suddenly cold and her gaze piercing.

Adam stopped walking immediately and raised his free hand in a defensive posture. His eye never left Willow's, and while her face was full of concern and tension, his was simply confused. After several moments of processing what exactly she meant, Adam looked down to his sheathed katana and then immediately back to Willow. Seemingly horrified, he took a step back and shook his head furiously.

"No, I'm not… I didn't… you thought I was…?"

"Planning to use it," Willow said carefully. "Adam, you're here in my suite, alone, at midnight, with your weapon, and our history. Do you not see a cause for concern?"

Without a second thought, Adam reapproached the kitchen island and put his sword atop it before backing away. The faunus raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and hung his head with a sigh.

"…of course I do, now. I just… wasn't thinking about what it would look like, from your perspective. I was so caught up in my own head that the obvious didn't even occur to me. I'm sorry, Willow. Entirely my fault."

"Ironic to hear those words coming from you to me instead of the reverse, isn't it?" Willow asked as she stepped around the island and picked up Adam's sheathed sword. After briefly inspecting the craftsmanship, she held it out to offer it back to him. "And I overreacted, but… this isn't typical behavior from you, and I scare easily at night. No harm done."

Adam gingerly accepted the sword and gave Willow a muted smirk.

"No harm done. Not tonight, anyway. That's actually why I came here, Willow. I think… as much as I appreciate the invitation to Vacuo, I'm not sure that I can accept."

"Didn't you see Roman's text?" Willow asked as she tilted her head.

"I did," Adam confirmed. "But it isn't that. It's… 'our history', as you put it. I came here alone because I want to tell you the truth about what happened down in the mines. You should be the first to know, and I can't take advantage of your kindness without at least giving you the full story and knowing that you're at peace with it."

Willow hesitated for a moment and then drew in a deep, sobering breath. She wrapped an arm around the upper bounds of her towel and kept a grip on Myrtenaster with her other hand. Somehow, her fingers hadn't loosened around the hilt at all.

"…Adam… I already know, and to an extent, I… I understand. I've heard it from my father, from our friends, and I've heard some from you, as well. You killed people employed by my father's company. Some of them, I knew. One of them, I was close with. While I will always hold them in my heart, and… truthfully, somewhat resent you for it… at the same time, I can't. I know that in the heat of the moment, you did what you had to do, and I've been doing my utmost to put the situation behind me and focus on your role in my life now."

It was Adam's turn to take in a deep breath, and he shook his head softly.

"That… isn't what happened, down there," Adam said slowly. "I didn't kill people."

Willow's eyes widened as she leaned back into the kitchen island while searching Adam's face for any sign of a lie.

"What…?"

Adam looked up, his voice firm, yet gentle.

"I killed a person."

An incredibly uncomfortable silence came over the dormitory, and Adam's shoulders stiffened as Willow shook her head in disbelief.

"But… Adam, how can that be? There were multiple bodies. I've seen the news reports, I've… I've seen pictures of the dead from that day. Some of our friends have told me what you told them about slaughtering your way out of the mines, and my father has told m-"

"Your father lied," Adam said firmly. "And… so did I. I've been… playing it up. Exaggerating. Hoping that by painting a picture as though I had an impressive body count, people would just leave me alone. Rumors spread all throughout our first year here, and once they did, that approach worked… but it's also not fair. It's not fair to you, or the other faunus down there, or… anyone here at Beacon. I lied to Headmaster Ozpin to make him feel more sympathy for me, because if he knew the truth… I don't think I'd be here right now."

Willow stared at the faunus, her mouth slightly agape as she tried to process the sudden flood of information. After several more moments of tense silence, she took a step toward her bedroom and shook her head.

"I… I think I need to get changed, and this needs to be a long conversation. Would you get out the wine? The good stuff."

"Yeah," Adam agreed as he moved toward the refrigerator. "Yes, to all of that…"

As Willow made her way through the doorway and disappeared from view, Adam pulled open the heavy refrigerator door. Despite his youth and general inexperience with alcohol, he had quickly learned which bottle was "the good stuff" and pulled the chilled container from the shelf. Adam placed his sheathed weapon upon the kitchen island once again, and used his freshly unoccupied hand to take down two stemmed glasses from an upper cabinet before heading over to the couches. With great care, he placed the glasses and bottle upon the coffee table, before taking a seat upon the furniture facing Willow's bedroom door.

Willow walked out of her bedroom in a pair of silken lavender pajamas that thoroughly covered her entire body, though she left the top few buttons open. She moved quickly to the couch across from Adam's and took a seat without a word. Adam noticed that her expression had become incredibly uncomfortable- even more so than when she had thought he had arrived at the suite with intent to do harm.

"…I'm sorry to ruin your evening with this…" Adam began as he lifted the bottle of wine and uncorked it.

"No, no," Willow insisted as she shook her head and furrowed her brows. She kept her eyes upon her glass as Adam filled it nearly to the brim. "Honestly, it's… if you're telling me the truth, this is a great relief. Taking a life still isn't something I can swallow easily, but compared to the impression that I had before…"

"What reason would I have to come here and lie to you tonight?" Adam asked as he tilted the wine bottle up before bringing it over to his own glass.

"What reason would my father have to lie about how many were slain?" Willow countered, finally lifting her eyes to meet Adam's.

"…money. Corruption. A cover-up?" the faunus offered. "A worker escaping his mines and causing a death is a very convenient potential cover story for other killings. Maybe those other people were problematic. Would you really put something like that past the Atlesian elites?"

Willow carefully lifted her glass and began to rotate the stem between her fingers. She looked at her reflection with uncertainty, as though she barely recognized the distorted face as her own.

"You're asking me to believe your word over that of my family, Adam."

"I'm proposing a possibility," Adam corrected. "I don't know how or why there were multiple bodies. I didn't know that there were multiple people killed until I started to see news reports, weeks into my time here. It just lined up conveniently. I got lucky with my story."

"Lucky," Willow repeated. "I wouldn't call it lucky. But… I need to know. What did happen, if you only killed one person? And who was it…?"

"I don't know," Adam replied. "A guard. A worker, who got sloppy. He was nodding off at his post in the middle of the night, and I had just enough room to move through the shadows out of sight of his partner. I took his sword from the sheath on his belt, covered his mouth from behind, and… well… I did what I had to do to make an opening. My people have been branded, or even killed for disobedience, and their deaths have been blamed on accidents in the mines. I've seen it firsthand… and I kept telling myself that one human life to save my own was a fair trade."

"A guard," Willow repeated. She raised her glass to her lips and drank deeply, before shivering. "A man you had seen before, around the mines? Not a visitor?"

"Not a visitor… and definitely someone I had seen before," Adam confirmed as he watched Willow visibly relax a bit. "I know that… whoever he was, he was just doing his job, but… we were dying down there, Willow. Many of us still are. I never met my parents, after being born at a labor camp and raised to work against my will. I don't know how much your father actually knows about what goes on down in the mines, but… he has the power to change it. He's the only one with that power."

"He doesn't know much," Willow admitted. "He never visits the mines himself and prefers to run the other non-dust subdivisions of the corporation. Something about not wanting to know how the sausage is made, or so he says."

"How irresponsible and inhumane of him," Adam spat. "Would he care, if he saw what really goes on?"

"I…" Willow paused to consider the notion, before running her hands through her hair. "I-I don't know. I've no idea what he's thinking, what he is and isn't involved with, or where he stands on faunus rights, anymore. He's working with Kali and I t-"

"To what?" Adam asked, his tone gaining an edge. "What's changed, after months of meetings?"

Willow sucked in a breath through her nose and bit her bottom lip. She drained her glass entirely before pouring herself another and taking a long drink yet again.

"…it's moments like these when I wish I could simply disappear into this bottle," Willow said bitterly.

"Moments when you have to confront what your family name stands for?" Adam asked.

"Exactly that. Nothing has changed, and I'm well aware of it," Willow confirmed. "I'm going to need some time to come up with a plan, after we return from Vacuo… but I'm going to find out the truth. I owe it to you, Kali, and the people who have died in those mines to get to the bottom of this. Jacques can help, and I may know of one other individual up in Atlas who could assist me in getting into my father's systems."

"You think there's a record?" Adam inquired as he raised a brow.

"There's always a record, when money's involved," Willow replied coldly. "Perhaps even surveillance footage. I'm going to dig into every secret he doesn't want me to see, and if I find proof of what you're telling me… I'll put it all to good use."

Adam set down his glass, suddenly feeling uncomfortable.

"…how so? If you find irrefutable proof that he's hiding things, what then?"

Willow finished her second drink before emptying the rest of the bottle into her waiting glass.

"Then? Then, he's going to have to deal with explaining himself to you."

Author's Note:

One of the main arcs of Volume 2 has been set up. Many, many hints as to the direction that things are going are sprinkled about. Next update the week of the 28th.

-RD