Hefty content warning in this one for police violence, specifically against a crowd of protesters. And some mentions of past physical abuse as well.
Winter knew it was bad just by the way the General called her into his office.
He'd always been professional with her—always, except for the last day of her first semester at Atlas Academy. She was seventeen, sitting on the landing pad outside, staring at the place where the ferry had been several hours ago. Winter had watched it take off without her, because she couldn't bring herself to get on board.
She expected help getting home. He took care of his subordinates, even when they were stupid kids who'd known the escape was only temporary. She hadn't expected a man her classmates claimed had a steel rod for a spine to sit down on the ground beside her, and ask if she wanted to stay.
He called it an internship. Found things for her to do around the Academy, because she wasn't allowed to shadow a licensed Huntsman until the end of her second semester. Father threw a fit, and mother hounded her for weeks trying to get her to visit—even Whitley sent a passive-aggressive email informing her that her books were his now. From Weiss, there was only stony silence.
"You did everything you could," he told her then. "She's too young to understand you were acting in her best interest, but she'll come around."
"Sir," she said now. "What is this about? I didn't get a briefing."
"I know. I sent one to Harriet and Marrow, but this is... something I thought you deserved to hear in person."
"Is it Taurus?" Her grip tightened on the hilt of her saber.
"No, no, nothing like that. It's about last night. The recording on the news."
Winter clenched her jaw. "I'm glad it came out," she spat, hating the way it twisted her stomach, made her feel small and petulant. "I don't care about the big picture, not when he—he deserves worse."
She could still hear the sound it made. Had he hit Weiss before? Whitley? Mother? Winter wasn't sure if she was angrier at him for making her ask the question, or herself for not knowing the answer. Could she really act like she was surprised?
General Ironwood hunched forward in his chair, bracing his elbows on his desk and massaging the bridge of his nose. "You should sit down." He gestured to the small table that had been raised in the middle of the room for the meeting.
Winter did not sit down.
"You've listened to it, then."
"Yes." She had the spiderweb crack in her scroll's display to prove it.
"Then you remember that she... borrowed a few words from Sienna Khan's broadcast."
Of the many scenarios Winter had dreaded when General Ironwood invited her to his office without a briefing, this one hadn't even occurred to her. "You can't think—she was only trying to get under his skin."
"I want to trust that you're right. I would, in isolation. But the safety of the kingdom is at stake, and this is hardly the first incident. With what we learned about Blake during the trial, their participation in a riot that gave him and this Cinder woman an opportunity to murder Sleet, and now this... it's painting a picture of the White Fang's strategy in Atlas that I can't ignore."
"Sir, she's hated them since she was a child! She stopped Ilia at the coliseum! I don't understand how you could think she has anything to do with them."
"I can't ignore what I'm seeing, Winter. I'm telling you all this so that you're aware Weiss will be part of the discussion. I promise you, whatever happens, the blame won't fall on her. At worst, she fell in with some bad people and made some bad choices. She won't be harmed. If it truly isn't safe to have her free in Atlas, I'll send her back to Vale. She'll be perfectly happy there."
"But she hasn't done any—"
"Enough."
He slammed his fist into the desk, and old instinct smothered her.
"I should have arrested her the moment she broke curfew at that protest. I am being more than fair to her because of what she means to you. And I know how hard on you this will be, but I can't rely on the Ace Ops, not with three of them dead and Harriet still injured. I need you, Winter."
She still couldn't reply. Her throat was stuck.
He sighed. "Sit down. Please."
She sat.
There was a knock at the door, and Marrow entered with Harriet close behind him. She had no business being here, or anywhere besides the medbay—it was a miracle she'd survived at all, with her armor cleaved in half and an arrow-straight cut still healing across her chest. A medical brace wouldn't stop her from pulling stitches if she wouldn't rest.
But the arsonists had just murdered three of her teammates, so Winter couldn't exactly tell her that.
The General waited for the other two to be seated before he began. "I'd hoped it wouldn't come to this. But this has reached a point where we can't ignore it any longer. We need to do something about Robyn Hill."
Marrow stiffened. "Sir?"
"Encouraging mass disregard for emergency protocols put in place to contain the White Fang, Sleet's assassination happening while we were distracted by the riot she instigated, and now an attack on her only rival? It's becoming very clear to me that Taurus wants her to win."
"Are we... surprised?" Marrow asked tentatively. "Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find any faunus, or any human who cares about us at all, who wouldn't prefer just about anyone to Jacques Schnee. Even his own family hates him."
"Not enough to try and kill him," said Harriet.
"I don't know about that," muttered Winter.
"Taurus isn't from Mantle," said Marrow. "I doubt he even knows who Robyn is. Besides, just look at his face. That's your motive right there."
"You may be right." General Ironwood drummed a finger on his desk. "But there's his accomplice, this Cinder woman, and the larger White Fang to consider."
"He's not with them anymore. He said so himself, on the recording."
Harriet scoffed. "Right, like we should just take his word for it."
"Cinder is human!"
"So she might be an ally of convenience," the General snapped, "Or she might be lying about a trait we don't know about, or she might be a serial killer he's pointing at his enemies. It doesn't matter. Until we know for sure that Taurus isn't in contact with them any longer, we have to assume the worst—that we have two enemies who are coordinating with one another. Especially because their actions so far back that up. Sleet's murder, and now an attempt on Jacques... all the evidence suggests they're trying to force changes in the council."
"So now Robyn is working with the White Fang?" Marrow waved a hand incredulously. "Where's the evidence of that?"
"I don't think she's complicit. Not directly, at any rate. I doubt she's changed that much since her Academy days. But her intentions aren't what matters." The General stood up, turning to gaze out the floor to ceiling window behind him. "The White Fang have infiltrated our Kingdom. Taurus tried to kill Jacques, and he may as well have succeeded—Weiss made sure of that."
Winter hunched her shoulders and stared down at the tabletop, doing her best not to feel Marrow's eyes on her.
"I can't just ignore the signs. They all point towards a plot to get Robyn in power. We can't let them put someone on the council for their benefit."
"Whose benefit, sir?"
The General frowned at Marrow. "What? I thought I was clear—"
"Were you?" Marrow threw his hands up. "I just—I can't pretend like I don't see it anymore. All this talk about saving Atlas, protecting Atlas, by keeping power away from them. Maybe you mean the White Fang, but what you're doing is making sure no faunus get a voice."
"Are you serious right now?" Harriet demanded. "They murdered Clover! Elm! Vine! And now you want to just roll over and give them what they want?!"
"I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot out of spite!" Marrow clenched his fists and stared at the General, almost pleading. "You said you wanted to change this kingdom. To carry it into a brighter, fairer future. And now you're worried about Robyn destroying Atlas? Sir, Atlas is already broken. It's been broken. We committed how many atrocities during the Great War? The Faunus Revolution? Menagerie?"
"We've had missteps in the past, but anyone who tries to use them to justify destroying us in the present is an enemy, no matter how they dress it up."
"The past? The past?" Marrow threw his head back and laughed. "How old is Cinder, again? Did you see the news about the shock collar she was carrying around, or did you stop watching the moment you heard someone quoting Sienna Khan? I don't know where she got it, but I can guess." His lip curled in disgust. "If you'd ever listened to me, even once, you'd know none of it is over. But you don't respect me at all, do you?"
"That's not true," the General assured him. "You've always been an exemplary soldier—"
"That's the whole problem! I'm always the example! I came to you because I thought you were my one shot at getting to be somebody, at showing the world I could be as good as anybody else! You have no idea how much I sacrificed for you. People like Sienna, some of my friends, my family, call me a pet because I was stupid enough to believe all your promises. And it worked. I got all the way to the Ace Ops! And after all that, when I tell you this kingdom is hurting me, is hurting everybody like me, and you're helping make it worse? All you can tell me is that I've been a good dog."
He ripped off his insignia and threw it on the table. "I'm done. I'm not arresting a candidate for the council for the crime of actually trying to help. Which is illegal, by the way. If anyone cares."
"Disobeying an order is illegal," Harriet shot back.
Marrow squared his jaw. "Well? Are you going to have me court-martialed? That's going to look interesting."
General Ironwood shook his head. "Just... put him in a holding cell, for now. If you really want to do this, Marrow, we can talk about it once you've had some time to cool down. Winter?"
She'd forgotten for a moment that she was there. Sitting at the same table, with her hands clenched around each other. Able to speak.
"Sir, you know what he did to us. What he did to Weiss. When he makes a better ally, isn't that... doesn't that say something about what we're trying to do?"
He walked around his desk to lay a hand on her shoulder. "I don't like it either. But sometimes protecting a Kingdom means making tough calls, and working with people you don't want to. I know this hasn't been easy for you."
It had. That was the thing. It had always been easy to trust him, when every decision she ever made turned out to be wrong.
Marrow took a very long time to notice.
"Uh," he said, as they turned down a hallway that led directly away from the holding cells. "You're going the wrong way."
"It's a habit of mine."
"...You're not turning around."
"No." She gritted her teeth, and didn't look at him.
When she was sixteen, Winter stormed into her father's office with a practice saber. There'd been no plan—she came up with the threat as she said it, grasping for the only power she had in a house that had always been hostile territory. It tore her family apart and ruined her relationship with Weiss for over a decade.
And if she went back to that night, right now... Winter couldn't do it again. She would hesitate. Question herself. And he would do what he did best—seize on the first crack or flaw he found, twist her uncertainty, warp the world until she was wrong and he was right. She would walk out and let him mutilate her little sister, and she shuddered to think what would happen after that.
That was the thing about her family. The thing Weiss finally seemed to see—the thing Winter was still trying to wrap her head around. She'd never made the right choices because there hadn't been any. Every decision had her trapped between bad and worse, just enough freedom to let her feel like it was her fault when it all fell apart.
She couldn't be the older, wiser version of herself right now. Winter needed the angry sixteen-year-old who would burn her whole life down rather than become her mother. The girl who'd let every threat her father could think of wash over her like fire over stone. Who'd clung to the path she'd set for herself, even after Weiss started to cry, because if she had to do something unforgivable then at least it wouldn't be the thing he wanted.
Too bad, then, that she had no idea where that girl went.
They reached the hangar. Winter pointed to her ship and said, "Get in."
She piloted the ship. Marrow directed, because Winter had no idea where she was supposed to go now and worried she might start hitting things if she thought about it too hard. He picked the same news outlet that had broadcast Weiss' interview, and within hours their faces were all over Remnant under the words whistle blowers.
The cameras were barely finished rolling before a reporter was ushering them out of the building. "Sorry," he said, glancing nervously over his shoulder, "but we're about to get our doors kicked in and you probably shouldn't be here when that happens."
They ducked into an alleyway, knowing it was only a matter of minutes before one of the drones spotted them. "Now might be a good time to call for backup?" Marrow suggested.
Winter gritted her teeth. But there was no other choice, so she got out her scroll and dialed, and was so shocked when Weiss bothered to pick up that she didn't have a clue what to say.
"Winter? We're watching the news right now—are you okay? Where are you?" Then, slightly muffled because she was talking to someone else, "Wait, do we have to worry about someone listening in?"
A pause, and a reply too soft to hear.
"On second thought, don't answer that. Also, Blake says to ditch your scrolls after this. They're military issue, so Ironwood might use them to track you."
Winter's jaw started to ache. Stupid, that she hadn't already thought of that. That she'd never bothered to think about how her scroll was always broadcasting her location, in all the time she'd had it. Of course this was how she realized how deeply she'd come to trust her first escape.
"It's okay," Weiss said hurriedly. She realized her breathing must be audible on the other end of the call. "We'll come find you."
"Be careful. He's gotten it into his head that you're with the White Fang."
"Well, I wasn't," Weiss said peevishly, "but if he's going to stage a coup then I suppose I'll have to be."
"Weiss!"
"I'll see you soon!"
She hung up, and Winter was left gaping at her scroll. Marrow heaved a sigh. "You know I hate to say it, but... I don't think we get to be picky about allies here." They smashed their scrolls on the sidewalk and ducked down a narrow side-street.
"If it's a choice between helping them and helping him, I'd rather take my chances in the tundra."
"This is the part where I tell you something you won't like."
Winter scowled at him.
"The White Fang is too big and too fractured to treat as one organization anymore. Under Taurus it tried to murder thousands of people—in Menagerie, it runs the post office."
"Sienna Khan is not running a post office."
"No, but... look, I've said I don't like her, but now we know she's not behind the arsons. So the military's been massively overreacting to her for years."
"If she didn't support it, she could have condemned it," Winter muttered.
Marrow sighed. "So... remember that time you asked me to tell you if you ever said something very Schnee?"
"...Yes."
"I have to condemn Sienna every time she comes up in conversation, because we're both faunus so otherwise everyone will assume I support her. And the arsonist was targeting people who abused faunus labor, ergo Sienna has to condemn them or else she supports arson. All of a sudden if I don't tell everyone who'll listen how much I don't like her..."
"By the transitive property, you support arson."
"Yeah. It's annoying, but I do it anyway because otherwise no one will listen to me. Sienna doesn't bother."
"You've... never mentioned anything like this before."
"Nope."
"Why not? I want to—"
"Practice. For Weiss, right? It's sweet, really, but you outranked me until we both became fugitives a couple hours ago."
"Oh." She looked at the ground. "I didn't realize I was asking so much."
"Well, yeah. I couldn't tell you." He shrugged. "It's not like I don't get why. Weiss wasn't in any kind of place to talk to you about it back then, and you can't learn this stuff out of thin air. The problem is more that you could've ruined my career over it, since it's basically up to Ironwood to decide what's discrimination and you're his favorite. But since we're both fired anyway... maybe we can have an actual talk after the civil war." He grinned at her, inviting her to share the joke.
Winter scowled. "You're too nice."
"I was hoping for a thank you, Marrow, actually."
"I forced you to walk through a minefield, regularly, and you put up with it without saying anything." She folded her arms, hating the defensive gesture yet utterly unable to relax it. "And now you're making jokes. That isn't fair."
"Yeah, well, life's not—"
"I know life isn't fair! That doesn't mean you should laugh it off like—you should yell at me, at least."
Marrow stared at her. Winter looked away, because she hadn't quite meant to say that last part out loud, and was a little worried he might take her up on it and get them caught.
"Look." He put a hand on her shoulder—she flinched, and promptly felt much worse. "It was uncomfortable, yeah. I'm glad you realize that. But going into a huge guilt spiral and punishing yourself just makes talking about this stuff harder. It doesn't help me, and it won't help your sister. What you're doing right now, going to the media with me and calling out what the General is trying to do? That helps us."
It occurred to her that it had taken almost eighteen years before she finally asked what Weiss had wanted, and that her answer had been nearly as simple. She'd only ever wanted to know she was loved as she was. Not easy, not with the way they were raised, but... simple. At least compared to guesswork and groping around in the dark.
Winter let out a shaky breath. She felt very foolish—but he'd literally just asked her not to dwell on it, so she did her best to push it aside. "Thank you, Marrow."
It was a good thing they'd talked about it, because not twenty minutes later Winter walked into a dingy basement and came face to face with Sienna Khan herself. She was reclining in a fold-out chair between a pair of well-loved easels, speaking to a dog-eared faunus so quietly that they probably needed their enhanced hearing to understand one another.
"Where's my sister?" Winter demanded, gripping her sword hilt.
Weiss hadn't been the one to find them—she still couldn't walk very well on her broken ankle, so her team had split up to search the neighborhood around the news station. It was Ruby who'd stumbled across Winter and Marrow first, and led them to a safehouse in Mantle. A White Fang safehouse, apparently, hidden in the basement of a craft store.
Sienna raised an eyebrow, but otherwise didn't react to the threat at all. "In the back," she said, tilting her head at a door behind her.
"Weiss!" Ruby called out. "We found them!"
The door burst open, rebounding off the wall with a crack that was almost lost in the sudden rush of air, as Weiss flapped her wings and propelled herself across the room. It happened so quickly that Winter braced herself for an attack without thinking—but Weiss only wrapped her arms around her shoulders. The force of the hug was still enough to make her stumble back several steps.
"You're okay!"
Winter nearly recoiled. Part of her was looking for the trick behind a gesture that seemed entirely undeserved, which wasn't fair—if there was one thing she'd never needed to worry about with Weiss, it was hidden barbs. Another, much larger part didn't care if it was genuine. She wanted to shrug it off until she'd earned it.
But who does that help, exactly?
"Your foot," she found herself saying. It was still in a cast, and dangling perilously close to the floor at an angle that couldn't be comfortable. Winter shifted to put her shoulder under Weiss' arm and take her weight off the injury.
"Oh, right." Weiss glanced towards the back room.
"Looking for this?" asked a newcomer Winter didn't recognize—a girl about Weiss' age, with grey eyes and a long brown ponytail. She tossed something at Weiss. Winter almost snapped at her, but her sister caught it out of the air without missing a beat. It turned out to be a crutch, apparently abandoned in her haste.
"Um, hi?" said Ruby. She held out a hand. "Do you know Weiss? I kind of didn't think she'd met too many oth—oh my god you're Ilia!"
"What."
Weiss' half-hug turned into a restraining grip on Winter's arm. "She's here to help."
"She almost killed you a few months ago, how—"
"She could have," Weiss said. "But she didn't. I like to think we have an understanding."
Ilia snorted. "Sure. Be more smug about it, why don't you?"
"She works for Taurus." Winter's eyes narrowed.
Every inch of Ilia, from skin to hair to eyes, flashed shades of neon orange and scarlet. "I did. And you were working with Ironwood until a few hours ago, so I guess nobody's perfect."
A throat cleared. They all turned to find Sienna watching the exchange from the corner, ears slightly flattened. "We're all going to have to get used to strange bedfellows, if we want to be free to complain about them when this is over."
Ilia shrugged carelessly, though the red hadn't quite faded from her skin.
Winter gritted her teeth. Then a light tug at her arm reminded her, and she looked away. It was as close as she could bring herself to an apology here.
"Good," said Sienna. Her ears twitched. "Everyone's accounted for."
Before anyone could object to that, on the grounds that Blake and Yang were very much not accounted for, footsteps became audible on the stairs leading down. There were only two people the guard up there would have allowed to enter, but Winter still tensed, her hand resting on the hilt of her sword before the door opened and the missing pair entered.
Blake stumbled on the threshold. "Oh," she blurted.
"...Hey," said Ilia, with a pained wince.
"It's good to see you." Blake stepped forward to give her a brief, tentative hug. Winter caught a glimpse of Ilia's all-too-familiar expression, and was trapped for an instant in unwilling solidarity.
Winter cleared her throat as Blake let go. "Well? I hope you all have some kind of plan."
The plan, if you could even call it that, didn't come together in that basement. In the traditional sense, it never came together at all. It began long before Winter found herself sitting at a fold-out table with Sienna Khan, without any of them knowing a thing about it.
An SDC mine six miles north of the city ground to a halt. Tools were abandoned in the tunnels, raw Dust left unsorted in storage rooms. A red-faced supervisor chased a crowd of workers into the snow, shouting that they'd better not come crawling back tomorrow—there'd be a whole new crew by then, eager to fill any openings left by a pack of ingrates.
When Winter and the others emerged into the city, weapons out and ears pricked for danger, a crowd was already forming in the streets. The plaintive cries of a handful of drones could be heard over the din saying, "Citizens, please disperse!" Winter watched a civilian clobber one of them with a snow shovel until its speakers failed.
At the heart of the crowd, Robyn and her team had climbed atop one of Mantle's many broken heaters. "But Atlas forgot something today," she was saying, gesturing at the shadow over their heads. "General Ironwood can treat us like children who can't be trusted to decide our future for ourselves—like criminals who need to be watched at every second, who threaten the safety of this kingdom whenever we demand better from the people in power. He can forget that those drones and airships and paladins, the hard light shields, the climate control that grows our food, everything that makes life possible out here all runs on Dust that we mine."
She pointed to the base of Atlas, the tether that tied it to the world below. "But he can't change the fact that they need us. If Ironwood wants to strip us of our voice and make all our decisions for us? I think it's time we remind him."
The march carried the crowd deep into the shadow of Atlas, through chain-link fences and down the terraced cliffs that descended into the crater. Winter kept out of the thick of it, watching for drones and cameras and cutting them down wherever she found them. It never stopped feeling strange—she kept turning to throw up a glyph between military drones and the crowd, only to find half of them already broken on the ground with a chain knife embedded in the face plate, or an electrified whip wrapped around the torso.
Mantle police were harder to deal with. A handful pretended not to see them, which Winter suspected was as close to support as they would get for fear of retaliation. Most joined the drones in ordering the crowd's immediate dispersal, and turned tear gas and rubber bullets on them when they did not.
Winter did her best to be gentle when disarming them, since she could never tell which ones had an active aura and which didn't. The White Fang mirrored the brutality they were shown, leaving behind a string of concussions and broken bones. But they were backed into a corner, and almost none of the protesters had aura to protect them—an uncomfortable knot formed in the pit of her stomach, as she started to wonder whether it was her or Sienna Khan who was being reckless. She could only grit her teeth and hope this wasn't remembered as the first battle of the next great war.
They weren't even halfway there when the sirens started. Winter expected military Huntsmen to join the fray—but they didn't. Instead, the rubber bullets disappeared.
"What the hell is going on?!" Marrow demanded. He stood with his arms outstretched, a half-dozen police and a handful of drones all frozen in the act of firing live rounds at civilians.
Nobody answered him. There wasn't time—their only saving grace was how quickly the White Fang adapted, Sienna barking out new orders without hesitating for an instant. As if they weren't surprised at all.
Winter couldn't even try to wrap her head around it. She was too busy moving, faster and faster, her heart in her throat. There wasn't time for pulling punches, she had to prioritize the civilians. Better to accidentally break a wrist than hesitate and let a killing blow slip through.
Between their handful of Huntsmen and the White Fang—and, for some reason no one had bothered explaining to her, an old woman with a staff—they could hold the line. Penny proved to be particularly invaluable, flying overhead and destroying any larger mechs before they could get close enough for Winter to catch more than a glimpse of them. But no one, not even Robyn, could keep the crowd from panicking.
Orderly lines disintegrated. People pushed and shoved to get away from the fighting. Some fled into the narrow, crooked streets of the crater. Suddenly there were too many angles for them to protect all at once. Shots rang out. Several retreating figures fell. One got up—the rest didn't.
Sienna roared orders over the noise, directing her people to keep the crowd from scattering. May disappeared altogether—Winter guessed she was ferrying civilians away from the fighting, but in a crowd like this she might as well be bailing a ship with a teaspoon. She spotted Weiss' knight lifting people over a fence, Blake shielding a teenaged boy with her body while a man in Atlesian whites and blues fired Dust rounds at them, Ilia materializing out of the shadows to run him through.
They retreated to the shipping district, in the end, not because it had been their original goal but because they were the only defensible buildings in sight. Winter positioned herself at one of the doors to Snowshoe shipping, covering the civilians pouring through the gates with glyphs and summons.
It had been repaired since the incident that cost half the Ace Ops their lives, but hastily. Scorch marks still covered half the floor. Winter glanced at Marrow, but it was impossible to tell from his expression if it bothered him, or if he'd even noticed in the pandemonium. Grim reminder or not, the building was solid. With every exit guarded and their numbers noticeably dwindling, their attackers retreated behind cover. A tense silence fell.
The police weren't the ones who broke it. Neither were the protesters. Distant howls echoed across the tundra, and Winter thought nothing of it—they were a long way behind the wall. Another thing she should have learned not to trust a long time ago. The noise grew closer, and mixed with screams.
Whether out of respect for longstanding codes of war or simple self-preservation, no one shot at Winter when she ran out of the warehouse. There were already Sabyrs prowling around—she only found out weeks later that the panic had attracted the attention of a Megoliath, which had charged through a weakened section of the wall.
No support arrived from Atlas. The only small mercy was that the Grimm incursion effectively ended the attack on the protesters. There weren't very many police left, and the lack of aid left their morale in tatters. They dispersed, quiet and sullen, leaving the shaken crowd standing around the handful of warehouses that connected the twin cities. The chutes made a perfect target for the mess of rage and fear the attack had left behind. By nightfall, there wasn't a single one still working. The crowd dispersed.
Winter only learned the reason for the massacre the next morning. The sirens hadn't been for them at all—Taurus and Cinder had resurfaced to storm Atlas Academy. There was no telling if they'd actually thought they could win, or if this had been some warped attempt to help, or if they'd simply run out of soft targets and had thrown themselves into an impossible battle rather than stop. Both ended up in custody, though not before demolishing half the building.
She understood it, then. She wished she didn't—wished she could put her head in her hands and stare into space, struggling to wrap her mind around why the man who'd given her a life worth living would order an attack on civilians.
But they weren't civilians, to him. Just like Weiss, they challenged him when he felt threatened, and became another enemy. Destabilizing his power and supporting the arsonists trying to destroy the city were one and the same. There were no Huntsmen to spare to suppress the attack in Mantle. So he ordered his forces to shoot innocent people, and acted like he hadn't had a choice.
It hurt to see the institution that had shielded her for half her life turned on the people it was supposed to protect. And she felt pathetic, because it also hurt to watch it crumble in a matter of days.
The damage to the Academy was manageable. All the most critical systems were underground, and emerged from the fire unscathed. It wouldn't prevent Atlas from fighting a war—and it would have to. Despite attempts to gag the media, word reached the rest of the world astonishingly quickly. Unless you happened to know that several of Ozpin's students and Ghira Belladonna's daughter had been in the thick of the whole mess, in which case it happened exactly as quickly as you'd expect.
The Kingdom of Vale issued a long statement, citing the codes in the Vytal treaty that Atlas was breaking by firing on civilians, and by consolidating power under what was effectively a modern Kaiser. Menagerie's response was rather shorter and more to the point—it had been born from the worst cruelties of the Great War and the years that came after, and had no intention of standing by while they were repeated.
News was slightly delayed in reaching the rest of the world. Atlas' CCT tower became inaccessible to all but military personnel, and shut down communication between kingdoms entirely. So Vacuo had to send a diplomat to Vale by airship to declare its willingness to go to war if Atlas didn't back down. Mistral soon followed suit.
At the height of its power, Atlas might have been able to meet those threats. It was the only kingdom that kept a standing army beyond Huntsmen to deal with the Grimm—the others would have needed time to raise one, and even once they did, no one with any sense would willingly invade Solitas. Those generals who'd tried in ages past had quickly discovered that their enemies didn't need to do much of anything besides sit back and watch them succumb to frostbite and pneumonia out in the tundra.
Atlas was not at the height of its power. With Mantle in open rebellion, it was left with a dwindling supply of Dust with which to fuel its mechanized army, its hard-light shields, and the infrastructure that kept it warm and well-fed. Most of its citizens had no interest in kicking off a second Great War, and those that did weren't keen on the severe rationing it would take to fight one. Snow fell on the city in the sky for the first time in decades. Military Huntsmen defected in droves. General Ironwood was removed from his position without fanfare, and placed in custody alongside Taurus and Cinder.
Within a week, Winter found herself standing in the courtyard of the Academy, staring at the two broken towers. They were covered in scaffolding and crawling with builders, looking from this distance like colorful ants. It was so quiet. Everything was different, but the central tower looked exactly like it had when she'd first arrived here at seventeen. Hard to believe the man she was here to see was locked away in a cell, not waiting for her in his office as he had dozens of times before.
Winter strode through the open doors, and wound her way down into the bowels of the Academy, until she finally reached the room that housed the former General. A field of hard light Dust separated the door from the small living space within. There was a bookshelf, a cot, and a chair that he'd turned to face the wall. He sat there, motionless.
"For what it's worth... I wish it hadn't come to this."
She seated herself on a stool someone had left out for her—at least, Winter assumed it was for her. He hadn't had any other visitors.
"It's not the end of Atlas. Things are changing, but... they needed to. I know you wanted to protect this kingdom, but that can't mean protecting it from its own legacy—it needs to face the Great War, and everything that's happened since."
He didn't speak. Didn't turn. Didn't even twitch.
"I—I don't know what will happen to you, exactly. The council will decide, and it looks like Robyn will win a seat but I have no idea who else might be on it. She told me she wants you to face prison time, not..." Not the penalty he'd tried to force on Taurus.
Winter clenched her fists in her lap. "Please, say something."
"Why?" he asked the wall. "Haven't I done enough for you?"
"I'll always be grateful for that—"
"You have a funny way of showing it."
She shot to her feet and began to pace. "Was I supposed to help you put my father on the council? You knew he was a monster, you knew he hurt my sister, and you—" Her voice cracked. "You asked me to keep quiet about it, and I did. I don't care what you say, you have no idea how hard that was. How wrong that was. I almost lost Weiss again, for you, and that wasn't enough?"
"I told you why it was necessary. I told you I'd send her back to Vale, he wouldn't have been able to lay a finger on her there. Just because you don't want to look at the bigger picture—"
"I don't care about the bigger picture!" Winter lashed out, kicking the stool so hard that it rebounded off the hard-light shield and made a dent in the opposite wall. "Forget politics, forget the council, forget Atlas!"
He did look at her, then. Angry, at first—and then, seeing the look on her face, he froze.
"Do you know how stupid I feel for being surprised that he hit Weiss? I had to protect her when we were children, but she wanted to be a Huntress, and she was already training for it by the time I left. I thought he'd leave her alone, because he stopped hitting me once he knew I could hit back."
Her hands started to shake—she clenched them around the hilt of her saber. "I came to the Academy to get away from him. I trusted you because you were there for me when I was too scared to go home. And then you told me to turn my whole world into that house, and stay trapped with him for the rest of my life. Don't you dare act like I was the one who turned my back on you."
His shoulders slumped. "I didn't want it to be him. I didn't have a choice—I couldn't let the White Fang destroy Atlas."
"If this kingdom can't learn to exist without suffering," Winter quoted, "then I suppose it will have to burn."
She turned to go. Her hand rested on the handle, but she paused there for a moment—because she might not owe him anymore, but that evening on the tarmac still meant something. "I think it can," she told him. "And I hope you can, too."
The scheduled end of her visit arrived to find Winter outside, sitting stiffly on a bench by the airfield and staring at empty pavement. Something soft brushed her shoulder. She jumped, and turned to find Weiss settling in beside her, one wing extended to fold around Winter.
"I'd ask how it went, but I think I can guess."
Winter tried to smile, then turned away when she couldn't make it stick. "I'm... sorry. You were right, and I should have listened to you."
"You did."
"If I'd done it earlier, you wouldn't have needed to go to mother for help. You wouldn't have needed to face father." Winter clenched her jaw until it ached. "You have every right to hate me for that."
"I don't," Weiss said softly. "I have no idea what I'd do if Ruby asked me to hurt someone I care about, but I can't imagine I'd handle it gracefully. I know it's not exactly the same, but..."
She wanted to argue. She was angry, even—Weiss knew better than anyone how easy it was to be hurt by their family. How dare she sit here and say something like that, and open herself up to yet another disappointment? It was reckless, and foolish, and Winter wished she'd wash her hands of every single one of them and keep herself safe for once.
But that wouldn't help anyone. So she kept her mouth shut, and let Weiss lean her head on her shoulder, and promised herself she would earn this chance.