Well, would you look at this? Maybe my motivation to write isn't dead after all!

So! Housekeeping. I have no schedule planned for this whatsoever, it's just gonna happen when it happens because the world is crazy and I am tired. It's only planned out in the vaguest and broadest of strokes.

Also, Error 404: Salem not found. Please do not refresh the page and try again, the people of Remnant would really much prefer if she stayed gone. (Basically, gods and Salem are cool and all but that's not what this story is about, so I'm ignoring them. Grimm still exist, and the White Fang is still around, but there's no evil conspiracy where they're working together. In the words of our Lord and Savior Nora Valkyrie: "Nothing bad ever happened. EVER.")

It was a little past two in the morning, and Nicholas was still awake. The manor was quiet. This was a very, very bad sign.

Thirteen hours ago, his daughter had gone into labor with her second child. Two hours ago, he'd heard someone sprint past the door to his room. He'd called after them, but there had been no response. Fifteen minutes ago, his nurse had told him gently but firmly that it was late, and he ought to be sleeping. When asked about the labor, he had mustered up an empty smile and assured Nicholas that everything was fine.

Everything was not fine.

"Bestefar!"

Nicholas heard the pattering of small feet racing down the hallway. That was all the warning he got before his granddaughter dashed into his room and dove onto his bed, burrowing her face into the blankets. He reached out to rub her back with a trembling hand. "What is it, darling?" he rasped. "What's wrong?"

"Daddy's angry," she mumbled, without lifting her head.

"What? Why?"

Winter shook her head.

"Did something happen to the baby?"

Another, more vigorous shake.

"Is that a no, or—"

"I don't know!" She sat up and rubbed her eyes, scowling as she sniffled. Even at age six, Winter already hated to cry.

"Alright." He looked up and nodded to his nurse. "Be a good man and bring me my chair, would you?"

The man paled. "I can't—"

"You will," Nicholas said. He didn't—couldn't—raise his voice, but something had happened to his daughter or his grandchild, and he would accept no argument. The nurse helped him into his wheelchair, and together the three of them made their way to the master bedroom, where Willow had chosen to have her baby.

The shouting could be heard from half a hallway away—but it wasn't until they were almost at the door that any words could be made out, mixed as it was with a baby's wail.

"—telling me not to believe my own eyes, is that it?"

"Jacques!" Nicholas tried to shout, but his lungs were not what they were before his time in the mines took its toll—his son-in-law didn't even hear him over his own rant.

"I know damn well that you're lying to me—"

"Stop it!"

The room fell instantly into a stunned silence—except for the hiccuping cry of the infant. Winter stood in the center of it, her hands clamped over her ears and her eyes squeezed shut.

"Thank you, my dear," Nicholas said. His own voice was barely more than a whisper, but his nurse had finally recovered. He leaned forward to hear over the crying, and repeated the words loud enough for Willow and Jacques. "Now. What is the matter."

No one spoke. Jacques' lip curled, and he extended his arms in answer. The baby lay there, still wailing, its tiny fists waving indignantly. Then he turned it, revealing its back... and what Nicholas thought for a baffling instant were a pair of extra arms. But they weren't, quite. He recognized the shape an instant later. They were wings, covered in fine down that looked more like fur than feathers, but unmistakable nonetheless.

"Ah. Well, that is a relief."

Jacques' face contorted, and went an unhealthy shade of red. "A relief."

"My grandchild is healthy," he pointed out. "If I judge by that impressive racket."

"She may be your grandchild," snarled Jacques, "but I'm sure you've noticed by now that she is not my daughter."

...Ah. That would be the other shoe, then.

"Here," Nicholas said, opening his arms. Jacques deposited the baby girl into them, and he adjusted her so that she could lie against his chest. The screaming quieted somewhat, and into the sudden quiet he let out a wheezy sigh.

"She is," Willow insisted. She was still in bed, her hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, her eyes red-rimmed and welling with tears. "I know, I know how it looks pappa, but I swear she's his!"

"She does have some of your look about her, Jacques." Her eyes were that same sharp, icy blue. He gave the baby's nose a gentle boop with his pinky, and smiled when she wrinkled it the same way Winter had as an infant. "Hello, Engel," he whispered, and for a moment she stopped crying to stare at him.

Then she flailed her arms so wildly that she nearly punched him in the face, and began loudly protesting against the shouting, her birth, and the world in general. Nicholas laughed so hard that he started to cough and wheeze. "I believe you, my dear," he told Willow, when he'd gotten some of his breath back. "But there are ways of testing that, are there not?"

"They are not reliable," Jacques said stiffly. "And it is a fact that humans do not give birth to... faunus."

"Have not and do not are two very different things," Nicholas pointed out. "And I believe you are missing something obvious, my lad."

"What."

"Who else would the father be? I would think you'd have noticed a man with full-sized wings hanging about."

Willow's eyes widened. Clearly, she hadn't considered that. "You're right! I've never even met a bird faunus before."

"So you say," Jacques said flatly. "And I suppose I shall have to swallow it."

Nicholas narrowed his eyes. "If you cannot get past this, that is ultimately up to you."

"Give her to me."

He hesitated, suddenly uncertain. But if Jacques was going to accept this little girl as his daughter, he needed to see himself in her. Hold her, care for her. Love her. So he nodded to the nurse, who helped him hand the baby back to her father.

Jacques looked down at the baby's tiny, fuzzy wings. Then he turned on his heel, and left the room. "Where are you going?" Nicholas said, a little more sharply than he'd intended.

"For a walk. I need time to think."

The baby's cries, which had died down a bit once everyone around her calmed down, started fresh. Then the door closed, and the sound faded away.

"Are you alright, darling?" Nicholas asked. He got a weary nod from his daughter, and Winter grabbed his hand and squeezed it. "Good. That's good." He was tired, now. All the way down to his bones. His eyes started to drift closed.

"Perhaps I should take you to your room?" suggested the nurse.

"Not yet." Nicholas yawned. "I'll nap where I am. I want to be here when he comes back."

But it wasn't Jacques that came back. Instead, the door burst open as a butler who would barely have come up to a younger Nicholas' navel charged in without so much as a knock. "I beg your pardon!" Nicholas said indignantly.

"Terribly sorry sir, madam, but I just saw an airship landing. I went to speak to the crew, and they told me the man on board is a Doctor Arthur Watts."

"What?" Willow tried to sit up, and winced. "Now? Why on Remnant would we need another doctor when she's perfectly healthy?" Then she paled. "Is he trying to do the paternity test already?"

"No..." Nicholas felt something cold in the pit of his stomach. "He hardly seemed to want one at all, let alone right now." What else could they need a doctor for, with only a healthy newborn to consider? A healthy newborn with a pair of tiny wings that everyone on Remnant would see as a sign that she was not, in fact, her father's daughter. "Sabyr's fangs!"

Willow couldn't walk to follow them. In the end the nurse half-led, half carried her, while the butler—whose named turned out to be Klein—pushed Nicholas' chair. Winter hurried along behind them, loudly wondering what was going on and why everyone was panicking. They didn't answer her. If they were wrong, there was no need to frighten her. If they were right... that wasn't something to tell a child.

They found Jacques in a room with an unfamiliar man holding a briefcase. The baby was in her father's arms, screaming up a storm. "What do you think you're doing?" Nicholas wanted to bellow, but a hoarse whisper was the best his voice could do without breaking. His nurse repeated it in halting, fearful tones.

Jacques straightened to his full height and glared down at Nicholas. "I am correcting the problem."

"The sooner it's done, the easier it will be," the doctor chipped in. "The base, here—" he prodded the place where a wing emerged from her back, and she wailed even louder in protest. "It will only get larger as more muscle develops. Harder to deal with without scarring."

Nicholas felt sick. "That is your daughter, Jacques."

"That's not how the world will see it." He raised an eyebrow. "How do you think she'll fare, trying to claim her inheritance when everyone in Atlas thinks she's illegitimate?"

He scowled. As hateful a sentiment as it was, it wasn't wrong—the law had changed considerably since the Great War, but some scraps of the old ways remained. A child born out of wedlock could only inherit if there were no trueborn siblings to take priority. Not being human would only make it harder.

"And after that? Do you think the world will be kind to a faunus bastard?" Jacques set his jaw. "If she is my daughter, as you claim, clearly these are a mistake. She won't miss them. There's no reason she should even know they were there. She'll live a far happier life that way."

"That is not your choice." The nurse stammered over the words, and Nicholas waved him away in disgust. Unprompted, Winter clambered up into his lap and bent close to listen.

"Am I her father or not?" Jacques snapped. "If she's mine, it is my choice."

"No." Winter's voice rang out clear and strong. He had no idea how much she understood what was happening, but there was a fierce set to her jaw that made him nearly burst with pride. He hadn't even spoken, yet.

"You can explain this to her when she's older," Nicholas said, through his granddaughter. "But you will not touch those wings until she turns eighteen. I won't allow it."

"I am allowing her into my family." Jacques' lip curled. "I am giving her an opportunity any of those creatures in Mantle would kill for, and I will not become a laughing stock for it!"

"We can hide them." Willow's voice was soft, but determined. "Until she's old enough. This—we can't take it back once it's done, Jacques. I don't want her growing up to regret something we did."

For a moment, Nicholas thought Jacques was going to shout. A vein pulsed in his forehead, his hands tightened on the baby in his arms—but he could see that he was outvoted. "I will reach out to you again when it's time," he told Doctor Watts stiffly. "Thank you for coming on such short notice."

Watts raised an eyebrow, then bowed and left the room. Jacques shoved the baby girl into Willow's hands and stormed out.

Mother and daughter cried in unison. Nicholas reached out to lay a hand on Willow's shoulder. "He'll come around," he promised, though saying it made him uneasy. He'd never seen Jacques act that way before. Anyone would react badly to thinking their wife had just had a child by cheating on them, but... even so.

He changed the subject. "What do you think you'll name her?"

Willow looked down, as if startled to realize she was holding her baby. "I..." The infant's cries tapered off, now that the worst of the excitement was over. She reached out and grabbed one of her mother's fingers.

This time, at least, the tears welling in Willow's eyes were happy ones. "Weiss," she decided. "I think it suits her. If... if he likes it."

Jacques made no objections. He nodded shortly when asked about his youngest daughter's name, and then retreated to his office. For once, he didn't so much as glance at the SDC's stocks. Bird faunus were rare—it shouldn't take long to get a list of every single one of them who'd been in Atlas in the past year.

When Nicholas passed a year and a half later, Doctor Watts was once again called to the Schnee manor. This time, it was Willow who put her foot down. She had her doubts—wasn't it cruel to raise Weiss as a faunus and a bastard, when she wasn't really either? Wouldn't it be harder on her, to get rid of the wings later in life once she'd already gotten used to them? And, though she tried not to think it, wouldn't Jacques feel better without the reminder? Wouldn't that help him see that she'd never strayed?

But there was no getting around it—they'd promised pappa. So they gave Klein, who already knew the whole truth, the task of looking after the baby. They wrapped the fledgling wings in fabric that bound them tight against her back, so that she could be out in public. And as soon as she learned to talk, they made sure to impress on her how important it was that she didn't talk about her secret.

Two years later, Willow's desperation to prove her faithfulness and Jacques' wish for another heir—just in case—culminated with the birth of Whitley. He was checked over, thoroughly, but there were no wings. No ears or tail. He was entirely human. Whatever infidelity or stray quirk of genetics had been responsible for Weiss, it never repeated itself.

He was not told that there was anything different about his sister. Of course, a four year old is only so good at keeping secrets. He saw her wings almost a dozen times, the last when he was about three and a half. All he took of those memories into his teenage years were strange fragments of a dream, of Weiss standing in a rain of feathers. These, he ignored.

When Weiss was ten, Willow gave up. Jacques never said it—he would never say it—but she could tell he didn't love her anymore. How could he? The paternity tests kept coming back inconclusive. Every medical textbook she flipped through said the same thing. Two humans will always have a human child. Maybe it would have been easier to confess. Maybe then they could move on and heal. But she could never quite bring herself to lie to him.

It was the reminder. That constant reminder that kept the wound between them festering. And wasn't it better? Wasn't it easier? Weiss hated having her wings tied down. She complained constantly of cramps, and they were starting to shed feathers that gave her nasty rashes all over her back. How needlessly cruel, to subject a child to that.

"You would be perfectly safe," her father explained to her, three days after her birthday. "Doctor Marigold is very good at what he does. Once it's over, you'll be just like your brother and sister. Wouldn't you like that?"

"Um..." Weiss fidgeted. Willow could tell her wings were bothering her by the way she stood, her back slightly arched to take the pressure off them. "I guess so."

"You guess?"

She quailed under Jacques' glare.

"Do you know what will happen, if you don't get rid of those things? You'll be a faunus bastard in the eyes of the law. You won't get any inheritance, not from me and not from Whitley when he takes over the company. If you're lucky, you'll find someplace decent in Mantle to scrape by. Atlas won't want you."

"Jacques!"

"Am I supposed to lie to her?" he demanded. "I've been doing that for ten years. The longer we wait, the more visible the scars will be."

Weiss hunched her shoulders. "Will it hurt?"

"No," Willow promised her. "It won't hurt a bit. You'll be asleep the whole time, and Doctor Marigold—"

The door slammed open. Winter strode through it, with a practice saber in her hand and fire in her eyes. "Stop."

"What do you think you're doing?" Jacques hissed. "Get out of here, now!"

Weiss hugged her arms around her stomach. "Winter? What's going on?"

"You promised grandfather."

Willow winced. "Winter, I know it's not what we agreed on, but things have changed—"

"No."

"Go to your room," Jacques insisted. "We'll speak about this at length, later."

"No!"

"Winter—!"

"I'll tell them," Winter blurted. Her hand clenched around the hilt of the saber until her knuckles went white. "If you do this, I'll tell everyone. Nothing happens until she turns eighteen, so she can decide. That's what grandfather wanted."

Jacques stared at her. "You wouldn't dare."

"Watch me."

"And what happens to your sister, when you tell the world what she is?" he demanded. Willow suppressed a shiver at the way he said it, what she is, and Weiss started to cry.

"I don't want to live in Mantle," she insisted. "Don't make me!"

Winter set her jaw. "It'll hurt you more than it hurts her. And it'll hurt her less than what you're about to do."

Willow tried to reason with her. Jacques ranted and raged. Weiss tugged on her sleeve and begged her not to tell anyone. Through it all, Winter stood ramrod straight and did not give an inch.

There was nothing to be done. She could only be grounded for so long—if she decided to talk, word would get out. Doctor Marigold was sent on his way without ever learning why he was summoned, and life in the Schnee household went on.