But Not Like This

All she could do was scream.

Ambur writhed around in the snow as the pain boiled in her veins. She could barely think straight. Her entire mind was too occupied with the one thing that she had been trained to keep her mind off of. Fear.

Grimm fed off of many emotions. Sadness and anger were some of their favorite human emotions because they lit people up like a colorful chew toy that would grab the attention of a dog. But fear was worse. They could smell fear. They could feel fear at much greater distances than anything else.

She couldn't see either. Between the snowflakes landing on her face, her already half-useless right eye, and the tears, she couldn't really see much of anything. Everything hurt. Every single inch of her felt like she'd been hit by a bus but there were a few standout areas that were worse than the rest. Her ribs ached and she could feel a stabbing pain in her stomach beneath them. She must have broken a few of them. Her wrist too on her left arm stung considerably more than the rest of her muscles or bones except for, of course…

Ambur ground her teeth together and growled through her tears as her fingers finally brushed against her thighs. She'd been trying to sit up or crawl away for several moments now but her legs weren't following orders very well. That was what she was screaming and writhing around in pain about. She couldn't feel anything below her knees. All she could feel was the bountiful wellspring of pain emanating from her, probably shattered, femurs. She didn't know what had stopped her fall, she had been flung so fast that she couldn't really see where she was headed. When the world had stopped spinning she'd landed on her back and she was in too much pain to crawl or to sit up.

She turned her head and tried to keep her good eye open long enough to look around her. On one side she could see the giant Uru, still struggling to break the rest of the wires that were tied between it's towering legs. As she turned her head to her right she found Mydnight on his knees in the distance.

He was pretty far away from her and as twilight was falling with the snowstorm around them she couldn't quite make out his face. She could tell from his body language that he was staring in her direction and that something had him stunned. She couldn't even see his tail twitching at all which was almost a constant for the wolf boy.

Still, none of this answered what had caught her. She should be dead right now. If she didn't start to move then she would be when the spider finally broke free of its bonds. She had no aura, Mydnight had no aura either. She tilted her head back so she could look behind her and that's when she saw it.

Her blood ran cold and she froze in place. Her eyes widened and she sucked in a pained breath that inflated her lungs against some of her broken ribs. Her tears kept flowing as she ground her teeth and forced herself to roll over. Her pained scream that followed was the loudest she thought she'd ever been in her life. Her legs lagged behind her and as she rolled one of them fell against the ground and she thought she may throw up from the pain alone it hurt so much. Her stomach against the ground put more pressure on her broken ribs and she struggled to breathe but she couldn't stop. Lying face down in the snow behind her was a mangled mess. There were pools and little rivers of blood in the snow all around the two of them and Ambur wasn't sure if any of it was hers. She hadn't been able to lift her head to look herself over but now the adrenaline was enough to make this move. She had to make it to him. "Z," she growled out to him. She hadn't meant for the word to come out so harsh but the pain had made it impossible to speak normally.

His mangled body was motionless except for his clothing that flapped in the wind in a few places. As she finally made it to him though, a part of her already knew the truth. The rest of her though was far too inclined to deny the reality, however. She placed a hand on his shoulder and rolled him over so she could look at his face but when she did she felt a wave of dread take over her. She couldn't look away. "Z," she breathed, voice shaking. "No no no Z," she sobbed as she rested her head down against his shoulder.

This couldn't be real could it? What was even happening right now? Before she could answer any of these questions she heard another loud and awful snap as another one of the tension wires snapped between the spider's legs behind her. She turned her head to see the massive hulking beast walking toward her awkwardly. Most of its eight legs were still bound but now it had two of them free to balance on with the others bunched up underneath it. It was slow and lumbering but she knew she would never get away from the beast fast enough. She turned her head back and buried it into Bronzine's cold and lifeless chest as she wrapped her arms around his corpse and held him just like that.

This was it. This was how they were all going to die. Out here in the snow, alone and afraid.

She'd failed. She'd failed all of them.

It was only then that she heard the crunching snow behind her. She turned her head one more time to find Mydnight standing between her and the massive Grimm. He was breathing hard and his shoulders were slumped, arms slack and barely able to stay on his feet. "Mydnight," she gasped. She stared at him for a long while before she could even hear her own thoughts. "Run!" She sobbed. "Run away!"

She watched as he refused to move, electing to simply stand there and keep trying to catch his breath. She could see his hot breath clouding up in the cold air each time he exhaled and she began to wonder if it was even Mydnight she was speaking to at all.

"I won't," was all he said and she grit her teeth. She couldn't stop crying.

"I said leave!" She pleaded. "Leave me here and ru-"

"No!" He yelled down to her, turning his head to look at her. "I'm not leaving you here to die!"

Ambur's lips parted to speak but all that came out was more sobs and tears. "Please…" she whimpered up at him. "I don't want you to die," she cried softly. It was too late though, she could already see the shadows pouring off of his shoulders. He had no aura left after all. What else was he supposed to do? This was the only way he had left to protect her. As he changed into the wolf, Mydnight began to stagger forward. Once the wolf stood tall over her it looked down to her one more time before it took off sprinting at the giant spider.

Mydnight felt nothing. He felt empty. Devoid of every emotion that he had ever felt. He didn't know what to focus on. He couldn't pick just one thing to feel. He had no aura left, Rosaria had run away and Ambur lay on the ground beside the fresh corpse of his best friend. This was it. No back up, no warnings and no weapon.

Ambur was going to die out here. Alone and afraid and broken.

That was the last thought Mydnight had before his mind finally went silent and let the wolf take over. If it had been only a moment more he may have actually heard the dropship descending toward him but it was too late for that.

"Kid wait!" Qrow shouted down to him but he was off. The wolf had taken him over completely. His body had already changed and the shadows were already dispersing. Qrow watched as he took off toward where Ambur was. "Get down there! We need to get Ambur out of here!" He shouted to the pilot.

When the dropship touched down Qrow jumped out and ran through the short distance of snow to get to her. The pair of them watched as Mydnight stopped for a moment where Ambur's heavy blade had hit the ground after she'd fallen. He cocked his head to the side and yanked it up from the earth between his teeth before he continued running toward the Uru.

"Mydnight wait!" He yelled after him.

"Mydnight stop!" He heard and saw Ambur reaching out toward him as he ran away. Her cheeks were stained with frozen tears and her voice hitched in her throat several times. Qrow had to stop. There was no medical staff on board and someone had to get her into the ship.

He crouched down and slipped an arm under Ambur's back and tried to lift her only for her to cry out in pain and clutch at her thighs. "Look this is gonna hurt a lot but we need to get you to the hospital okay?" He said through gritted teeth.

"What about Mydnight!? He can't beat that thing alone!"

"Come on," Qrow growled and lifted her as best he could to her feet and saw her clamp her teeth down on her lower lip as she stifled another scream. It came out as a low gurgling noise from her throat and it continued with her shallow pained breaths until he lay her down on the floor of the dropship up against the wall. "Get her out of here!" Qrow yelled up to the pilot before running back out of the ship.

The wolf was already at the massive monster and Qrow hesitated. He turned to Bronzine's body and scooped it up as best he could before bringing it back to the dropship. He had to jump in at the last moment as the pilot had already taken off. He looked back out over the landscape and found the large black wolf easily enough against the white backdrop of the landscape.

Mydnight had charged at the Spider as fast as he could and when he'd made it he stopped, digging all four paws into the snow to slow himself before he swung his head as fast as he could and threw Ambur's blade up into the air as high as he could. He jumped after it and caught it in his teeth before he began to fall back down toward where one of its free legs connected with its main body.

He fell at it and began to spin around as much as he could to build up momentum before the blade finally connected and the leg was sliced clean off.

The creature wailed loudly as it's severed leg fell to the ground and turned to dust. The wolf quickly planted Ambur's sword down in the dirt by the hilt, blade pointing straight up. The spider fell, off-balance thanks to the remaining wires between its other legs and it's head smashed down into the landscape as it fell. All its weight came crashing down on top of Ambur's heavy blade and the sword plunged into its body. He'd wanted its head to fall on it but this wasn't bad. It was a deep strike and the beast cried in anguish.

Qrow lept from the shuttle and transformed into a crow as he flew toward the pair. He transformed back high up in the air and began falling at the creature with his blade ready to strike down at its head. At the last second, he swung as hard as he could and his blade cut deep into the creature's throat. They heard one final gurgle of pain from it before the entire monster started to disintegrate around them. The wires clattered to the ground and they found Ambur's sword still pointed upward from the earth. Qrow could see Mydnight's scythe a few feet away on the ground steadily being covered with snow. It was in pieces. The creature must have fallen on it after it had gotten stuck in its flesh earlier.

The wolf was staring at him now. Growling and baring its fangs. Qrow dropped his weapon and put his hands up. "Mydnight I'm sorry," he began before the wolf barked at him viciously. "I know I'm late just please listen!"

Clearly, though that wasn't on Mydnight short agenda because the wolf just moved to where Ambur's sword was sticking up from the earth and took the hilt between his teeth again and started walking. After a few moments, the sword was surrounded by darkness and started to melt into his form before it disappeared entirely. He didn't look at Qrow. He just kept walking back toward the city.

Qrow reasoned that Mydnight was probably exhausted and if he changed back now he'd more than likely faint. He shifted his form and began to fly back toward the city himself to try and catch up with the dropship.

/

Ambur sat against the cold wall of the ship in near silence as she stared across the space at the corpse of her teammate. Why would he do that for her? Her hands were palm up, rested on the floor as she sat and cried. She couldn't move. Too exhausted, too full of pain...and too empty to try.

This was it. This was every nightmare she had ever had about being a team leader. Every time she'd worried about how she would act under pressure while out on a real mission and in control of her entire team, the daydreams had ended similarly to this. Well, they had at first.

During their first year at the school, they were far more common. But as time had gone on, as she and Mydnight had run solo missions or gone out with Qrow to Shadow him, her fears had slowly begun to vanish.

She felt foolish now. Foolish that she had ever thought that she could handle this. And now here she was, unable to move, unable to look away from the corpse of Mydnight's best friend or stop crying.

"Mydnight," she wept quietly. She didn't even know if he was still alive. Sure he was with Qrow but...could Qrow handle the Uru either? How big of a gap was there really between a student and a professional huntsman. Her partner had been on empty when he'd jumped in front of her and pledged to not let her die alone.

What if he...what if he was already dead? What if he'd died trying to take care of her. She didn't want that. She never asked for that. She was supposed to be the strong one. She was supposed to take hits for her teammates...for Mydnight. Not the other way around. She might have still lived if Bronzine hadn't tried to catch her. She'd be in a lot worse shape than she was now but...it may have been enough.

Maybe if she hadn't yelled so much then Rosa wouldn't have left as soon as she'd turned her back…

Maybe Mydnight would still be here if she...she stopped short of finishing that thought as her scroll began to ring in her pocket.

It still worked? She must not have landed on it. She pulled the device from her pocket and saw that the call was from Olivier. She answered it slowly and was silent as her friend's voice poured through its speakers.

It felt surreal. Like a dream.

"Ambur! What happened are you okay!?" Liv's voice felt so far away. The words bounced off of her like wind or smoke and she couldn't really understand them. "I was watching your auras on my scroll. Ambur are you there?!" She yelled again.

"...Liv," she choked out softly and Olivier stopped talking.

She hadn't heard Ambur speak in that tone since the day she'd found out that Mydnight and Rosa were dating. Her voice was so full of sorrow that Liv didn't even know what to say.

"I…" she sobbed again and Liv could hear her breathing start to pick up faster and shallower with each breath.

That was the last she heard of Ambur's voice before she heard nothing at all coming through her scroll.

"Ambur!" She shouted desperately. The line was still open. Liv would continue to call out for her over and over again to no avail. Ambur's scroll had dropped to the floor as her body had gone slack.

She'd felt too much pain, both inside and outside for her mind to bear any longer and she had blacked out on the floor of the dropship.

Liv looked back to her scroll and hung up the call eventually before trying to pull up their aura readings again. This time she found the screen very different than when she had started to try and get ahold of Ambur. Rosa's picture was gone completely. The only way that could happen was if her scroll had been smashed. Mydnight Bronzine and Ambur were all greyed out as well, signaling that they were completely out of aura.

Though judging from Ambur's voice...it was far worse than that.

/

Someone was screaming.

Right?

He couldn't remember. He thought that was what he was hearing. The high pitched whine burned through his mind and it didn't seem to have an end in sight.

He wasn't really sure where he was going either. He had been walking for what felt like days. His paws were tired and his eyes were threatening to drift shut. Why was he so tired? What happened? He felt like he'd run a marathon.

There was something heavy too. Something he was dragging along behind him that he couldn't quite remember the significance of. Just that if he let it go, he may not be able to find it again. He knew it mattered but he didn't know why.

There were people all around him. Some of them stood by wide-eyed as he walked. Others walked with him. They had weapons drawn but they weren't shooting at him. More like...escorting him? They surrounded him on all sides just as they had as soon as he'd hit the city limits. None of them looked familiar. He couldn't see most of their faces either because most of them wore helmets.

They had seemed to be following him at first but now he thought he might be doing the following. They'd even led him onto an airship and brought him up into the clouds to the floating city above the one he had found his way into. None of them said a word the entire way. Not to him, not to each other.

Nothing.

They led him inside a great white building with a red cross on the front and again he was surrounded by people who gave him wild and terrified looks, only for those leading him to try and calm the others down. They led him down hallway after hallway and even into a cargo elevator. Seven floors up and they exited the lift and led him down one final hallway.

There were people everywhere. Students, officers, doctors and even some faces he thought might be familiar. The haze was too thick to tell.

He could smell it though. The one bright spot shining in his clouded and overworked senses. It was like a sunflower. He'd always thought she'd smelled like sunflowers but never had the clarity to say anything about it. He'd never bothered to ask her what she sprayed on herself every day.

He was led to a door and one of the guards hesitantly opened it. He thought he'd heard someone order the man to open the door but the face and the voice were just swallowed up by the fog. He lowered his head to fit through the doorway and there it was.

The great big, bright sunflower girl sat up in a bed. Things were sticking out of her but he couldn't tell what they were. She was looking at him though. He could tell that much. He thought she might be speaking or...crying? Maybe both.

It didn't matter too much, either way, did it? He'd found his way home at least. He felt his eyes start to drift closed and this time he didn't fight it. He was safe. He was always safe when the sunflower girl was around. She made him feel secure and warm and all the things he'd never thought he could never feel.

She made him feel wanted.

He watched as the fog began to turn black around him and took a deep breath as he felt his form begin to shift.

/

Ambur had been asleep for nearly an hour when she finally woke up. There was some commotion outside the room. She looked around herself to find she was hooked up to more than just one thing. She could see an IV drip in her arm. Another tube snaked it's way under her back and she could just barely feel a needle in her lower back. Her pointer fingers were in little heart monitors with cords feeding into equipment to the left of her bed. Her hospital bed. "Wha…" she groaned.

She felt like Jell-O. Most of her body was numb and almost none of it was clothed. Her chest and abdomen were wrapped in bandages and she could see solid casts on both of her upper legs. Her wrist too was wrapped in a cast and she could only manage shallow breaths.

She felt like she'd been asleep for a week. She could barely keep her eyes open. There were people everywhere and the talking outside the window of her room was getting louder. She wasn't sure if that was because of her waking up more or if they were shouting now.

"Where…" she fought to get the word past her lips and saw a doctor turn to her from the doorway.

"Hey, she's awake! She should be out right now!" The man yelled and several nurses rushed back into her room from the hallway.

They buzzed around her like annoying flies and she couldn't even bring her hands up to shoo them away. "Where," she breathed again after much labor. She could hear beeping coming from the equipment strung up to her and it was getting faster the more she listened to it.

Then the nurses froze and Ambur thought that they looked like they'd seen a ghost. They were facing the door and some of them were even backing away from it. They backed up so far that some of their backs hit the walls of her room.

Ambur tried to turn her face back toward the door and once she did, she saw a large black mass standing in the doorway.

She squinted. Her vision was too fuzzy to make out what it was. That is until she saw the two massive golden orbs staring her back in the face.

"Muh," she thought out loud. Her brain was working overtime just to remember the wolf's name through all of the drugs blasting through her brain. "My…"

She watched as the blurry thing entered her room the rest of the way and it came slightly more into focus. It was a wolf after all. She hadn't really been sure at first but now, as it seemed to be smelling her, she could tell from how close its head was to hers. It was leaning down over her bed and she could feel it's breath on her body, Even through the thin sheet they had draped over her.

Then the mass began to grow. Blackness poured off of the wolf and pooled around her bed on the floor. It looked like it was melting. She jumped a little as a loud clang echoed through the silent room. She willed her vision to the floor, where she found several broken floor tiles scattered around a large metal object. It looked familiar but through her tired eyes she couldn't make out what it was.

The wolf was different somehow. It still had a tail, and still had those big fluffy ears that she liked so much but...it wasn't the right shape.

Not to mention that it couldn't seem to stand up straight. It swayed back and forth like a drunken man freshly kicked out of a bar. At least, it did for a moment. She thought she might have heard her name on the figure's way to the floor.

A moment was all it took for him to fall forward and smack his forehead on the metal railing of her bed before he hit the floor. It was only after he'd hit the ground, and the nurses had started attending to the boy that Ambur's eyes drew open wide.

It was slow. The tears came even slower then the realization did but all the drugs on Remnant wouldn't have been enough to hold them back. Her hands flew to the railings on each side of the bed as she jerked herself upright. "Mydnihhh-"

Her head swam as her eyes rolled up. Almost as soon as she was up she felt herself falling back down toward the pillow she'd been leaned against, consciousness slipping from her once again.

"My…"