Garek was a Huntsman, and a faunus.
He was competent, but not a particularly skilled Huntsman.
He was not particularly renowned either.
He also did not have a team. After Haven, his team, already down one member, and barely held together by his Team Leader, fractured and went their separate ways. It happened, Professor Greene had told him, sympathetically. Some teams worked. Some did not. Some bonded in the face of adversity, triumph, and tragedy. Some wanted to put such things behind them with as few reminders as possible.
Garek was a reminder to the other two.
And so he had taken his own path. Four years of solo jobs protecting villages, slaying Grimm, investigating disappearances across Western Mistral and Northeastern Vale. Five years with sporadic visits to his parents. At first he had checked in every few months. Then half year. Now it had been a year. They worried about him. About his loneliness, his issues with trust. His misplaced trust had cost him one teammate, and then he'd been abandoned by the other two.
So he relied on his best and only friend.
Himself.
It was a lonely life. But not one lacking in satisfaction at times. When he succeeded, he did so on his own terms. When he failed, he need not share the blame with others. He found himself, at times, craving both peace and solitude. Something not often found in Remnant. Where there was peace, there were people, seeking to make the most of it. Where there was solitude, there were Grimm, or at least the risk of them.
Until he found a place that gave lie to that rule.
It was an island, and not a large one, off the coast of northern Sanus, west of the much larger Vytal Island. He had first seen it when travelling by Bullhead from Atlas to Vale, and had later explored it out of curiosity. After being dropped off by local fishermen.
"Tis haunted lad." The weathered and wiry old man had said. His name was Tarlech. "Not a safe place for man nor beast," he had warned.
"You mean Grimm?"
"Nie. No Grimm that I've seen. But something. Old Meg claimed she saw something there, not two years ago. Wouldn't say what, but twas no Grimm she swore. Left her shaking and landbound for weeks. She passed last month, rest her soul."
It had taken a lot of lien to convince them to drop him off, with a promise to come back in 3 days to pick him up.
He'd found no Humans, no faunus, no Grimm, and no Ghosts nor the signs of them other than what might have been a long-abandoned campsite a few hours hike inland. Just a small, heavily wooded island with plentiful game and wildlife, along with enough wild edible plants to easily prevent having to dive into his rations. It was, in a word, peaceful and remote. He spent three days listening to silence and nature, reading, foraging, and thinking on his life. It was perfect.
He left feeling refreshed and feeling able to deal with civilization again for another six months before the urge to return struck again. And another three after that. Each time extending his stay a bit longer, and the fisherman becoming less wary of the trip, though they still balked at spending any time on its shores.
This was his fourth, and the longest. Seven days, he'd told the fisherman, who had only shaken his head sadly and taken his lien. They would return then, and pick him up where they had dropped him off.
Seven days of bliss.
His second evening, his solitude was interrupted for the first time ever. It was the barest glimpse out of his peripheral vision, of a large object passing overhead, eclipsing the broken moon as it passed over his campsite in the hours after dusk. He went from faunus on sabbatical to huntsman on alert immediately.
Nevermore. And a large one.
He cast his eyes to the campfire. It was too late to douse it. The smell of smoke would give his position away, even if this flames were removed. Quickly he prepared for an unwelcome visitor.
The person, cloaked and hooded, approached the clearing and campsite warily and quietly. They had not expected to find anything here, other than an empty clearing. They had left their own gear several meters back.
They paused at the treeline, hidden eyes scanning the clearing. Noting a single tent. A plate and mug. A single pack. A single figure sitting hunched on a log with its back to them.
They held still for some minutes. Then seemed to make a decision, moving forward near silently, hand reaching out for the still figure before them.
Only to freeze as first a soft thump behind them heralded something dropping from the trees, and a lean but strong hand grasped their shoulder.
A sharp presence bit into the middle of their back, just below their ribcage.
"Do not move," a rough voice hissed quietly, "unless you wish to make it your last mistake in this life."
Garek felt adrenaline, fear, and anger. Adrenaline was normal. It sharpened the senses. But it could also could the mind.
The fear was of the unknown. He had spent 45 minutes quickly posing his bedroll, cloak, and other items into a slouched dummy on the log, then quickly used his handily clawed fingernails to scale a tree at the edge of the clearing, in the direction he guessed intruders or Grimm would come.
He wrapped his backup cloak around him, and waited.
The fact that he saw only a single figure surprised him, but also fed his fear. This could be no mere bandit or fisherman. It had to be someone with power and confidence. Someone who would dare approach an unknown camp with no obvious weapon drawn. Someone who had access to aerial transportation. All of this said threat. He would not be caught overtrusting again.
The anger was for the loss of his solitude. His own personal haven. No longer would he be able to bask in the silence, secure that nothing would threaten him. He would never sleep easily here again.
Ruined.
As the figure passed beneath him, creeping toward the rough mannequin he had fashioned, he waited until they had leaned forward, reaching out with one hand to grasp his distraction, and then turned the tables. He leapt from the limb, drawing his rapier and dropping immediately behind them with a soft thud.
His right hand gripped their right shoulder roughly, even as his rapier pressed into the small of their back, angling upward to pierce into their most vital organs. Liver. Heart. Lungs. Any of the three would have them bleeding out in seconds or minutes.
"Do not move," he hissed quietly, "unless you wish to make it your last mistake in this life."
The figure before him froze, and time slowed to a crawl.
The figure gasped, and he warned. "Do not scream."
The figure did not. Instead a quiet, young female voice came from the figure before him. "Pl- please. Do not hurt me. I… I meant no harm," she pled.
It could have been a ruse. A ploy. A similar one had cost him his partner's life. The urge to take no chances. To make this a simple decision, warred within him.
But he was a Huntsman. Years older and wiser. And he could feel the shoulder beneath his right hand trembling. No, it was shaking. Her pale hand was still outstretched but frozen in place, shaking violently as well.
One heartbeat. Two heartbeats.
"How many are you?"
"Please, I beg of you…"
"How many!" He shook her shoulder slightly, his pointed fingernails extending and biting into her. She gasped, nearly buckling but for the threat of his blade keeping her standing. It had already pierced cloth and was pressed into skin. It should have told him something, but he was not thinking clearly.
"Alone," she sobbed quietly, "I am alone."
His eyes narrowed, scanning the area. Tawney ears perked, listening and hearing nothing but their own rapid breathing and the return of night sounds after her passing.
Gritting his teeth, he forced his hand to remove a little pressure. "Who are you? Why are you here? Speak truthfully, and I won't hurt you." He took a breath. "You can lower your arm, but keep them away from your cloak."
She did, seeming to slump slightly. "I… I am. My name is Selene. This is my… this is my place. My quiet place. I did not… I did not think to see another here. I was surprised and wished to see what you were. Please, let me go. I will leave."
Her place? He considered the clearing, with its once used feel. It made sense. He nodded to himself. "Well then, Selene. I'm afraid I've intruded. But I can't leave here for many days, and I can't let you leave and return with others, either." He felt her begin to shake again, and she made a small sound in her throat. "Calm. I won't hurt you. But you'll have to stay until it's time for me to leave." He considered. "Unless you have transport I could use to leave earlier."
She went from shaking to tense. "I do not. Not that you could use, and it would leave me stranded here."
"As I expected. Where are your weapons?"
"I have none with me."
He paused. Surprised by the statement. "What if you were attacked?"
"What would attack me here? I did not believe it needful," she said mournfully. "And I believe it would merely have cost me my life here." She took in a shuddering breath. "May I know the name of my captor?"
"Garek." The adrenaline was beginning to wear off, and he found himself reevaluating the situation. Instead of a trained Huntsman removing a threat, he began to feel more like a bandit taking a helpless villager hostage. "My apologies, Selene, the wilds have taught me to be overly cautious." He took a deep breath. Released it. "I'm going to remove my right hand from your shoulder, and check you for weapons. Don't move."
The hood nodded, and he used the back of his hand to check under arms, around waist, and ankles for any sheathes or holsters, and found none, unless shaking in fear could be used as a weapon.
"I see." A sick feeling began to pool in his stomach. "I… My apologies again, lady. I am going to remove my blade. I won't hurt you. But don't try to run. Sit next to my decoy there… please." He added at the end, to try to soften it.
The cloak nodded again, and he eased his rapier away from her flesh, half expecting her to spin around and use some Semblance to… wait.
Why had she not relied on her aura to protect her?
The ugly feeling intensified. This was no Huntress. At worst, it was a bandit, but even that seemed improbable. She didn't have the reflexes nor the mannerisms from his experience.
He watched carefully as she slowly made shaking limbs move, stepping over and then lowering herself on to the log, carefully avoiding looking back at him. Probably to avoid being able to identify him in a bid to increase her chances of survival. She drew her knees up, and wrapped her arms around them.
"I have done as you ask."
"Thank you." He moved around slightly behind and to her right, and perched on a stump. Taking a deep breath, he sought to calm his racing pulse. "And again, I apologize. I am wary, and with good reason. I've seen men killed before because they were not suspicious enough." Gotten men killed. "And again, I promise, I have no intent to harm you." He paused. "You said this was your quiet place?"
The hood bowed. "Yes," she sadly whispered. "It was."
Ugh. "Dammit." He shook his head. "It was mine too, though I suspect it was yours first."
She turned sharply toward him, and he saw a faint reflection of the reddish firelight within the hood. "Ah." She laughed bitterly. "Then it seems we have ruined it for each other."
"Hah. Life again plays a cruel joke on me."
There was a long silence as her hands played with the hem of her cloak and the fire quietly crackled. She broke it softly. "Where are you from? What do you do here?"
He hummed softly. It could not hurt. "I'm from Mistral. A small village you've never heard of. Though I travel a lot. I come here when I need to forget how annoying people are." He chuckled softly.
"Why do you travel?"
"Ah. Well I am a Huntsman. I protect frontier villages mostly across Mistral and Vale."
"So it is your… work?"
"Right."
She seemed to consider. "What do you protect them from?"
"Well lately it's been bandits mostly, though I avoid taking on larger tribes. Last month it was protecting a faunus village from a human supremacist vigilante group."
"Faunus?" she seemed to roll the word over as she repeated it. "What is this?"
He paused. "What do you mean?"
"What I say. What is a faunus?"
Garek blinked and raised a hand, pointing to the small spots that featured heavily on his neck, but faded out as they approached his head and face, then the two small golden ears on top of his head. There were patches on his arms and legs too, but those were hidden. "Faunus."
The hood turned slightly more. "Oh… I… I had thought you human. My apologies."
"It's fine. I can imagine you had other concerns."
"So you… travel and protect against bandits and… people who hate your kind?"
"Well and attacks by Grimm of course."
He felt the sudden tension in the air. "Oh." She whispered.
"It's okay. It's what we train for. Frankly it's often safer than facing bandits or bigots."
"Yes. I… I see. And you… defend against attacks."
"Right."
"But what if… what if the Grimm were… just passing by."
Garek frowned. What an odd question. "Well… at least in my experience… they don't. When a Grimm sees a human or faunus, it attacks."
"Truly?"
"In my experience, yes. And I've never heard of anyone else say otherwise."
Selene made a small sound. "But… but what if it did. What if… what if you found a small Grimm. "She gestured, making the shape the size of a small animal, "and it was merely sitting, harming nothing."
Garek scratched the base of an ear. "I… I don't know. I would have to think about that. It would…"
"But you would think, yes? You would not just attack it?"
He felt like this was not just an idle question. She seemed too intent. "I. Sure. Yes, I would have to think about it. It might be a threat later. I would have to weigh that."
The hooded figure turned toward the campfire and he heard her take a deep breath. "And if… if one were to be sitting on a log, in front of a warm fire…" her voice shook as she softly continued, "asking you questions?"
Garek's brain vapor-locked as his body did the same. He could feel his pulse slow to a crawl, breathing stop. The words went round and round in his head. Individually, they all made sense. Combined, they were meaningless. Fantastical. Impossible. His lungs were hurting, so he exhaled, sucked in another lungful.
Selene had not moved. Nor had she laughed at the jest. Or the impossible hypothetical.
He felt dizzy, but he felt she was waiting for an answer. He coughed. "That… that would be impossible."
"But if it were not?"
"Then I would… I would definitely have to think… carefully… about that."
"Even…" she took another breath. He saw her hands clench on her knees, "even if you had already promised you would not harm them?"
His stomach flipped several times. He realized his hand was white on his rapier, point still buried in the ground before him. He cleared his throat. "Selene. I would ask you… would you remove your hood?"
"I'm afraid," she whispered.
His gut wrenched. "I… I won't…" What the hell was he saying? She was implying. Hell, she wasn't just implying… that she was Grimm. That she feared he would attack her. And he was about to tell her that he would not. As if any of this could be possible.
And if It were?
Grimm don't talk. Grimm don't shake in fear. Grimm don't sit on a log in front of a fire next to a Huntsman with their weapon out. They did not have names.
But if they did…what kind of person would he be, Huntsman or not, to strike them down without justification? Would just existing be justification?
That sounded like human-supremacist thinking. White Fang thinking.
"I won't… I won't attack a person named Selene." There. That was… that was better. That he could say.
The hood dipped, and both her hands raised toward her face. Her hands were pale, he suddenly noticed. Paler than the moonlight. They grasped the hem of her hood on either side, and slowly pulled it back as she faced away from him, revealing pure white hair streaked with black, running straight and shoulder-length. One incredibly pale ear peeked out from the right side. She sat still, head bowed as she returned her hands to her knees.
Then she slowly turned her head toward him.
He felt his eyes widen and mouth go slack as she revealed her face to him. Pale complexion, bone-white. Black eyebrows only served to accentuate the features that really drew his attention.
Black pupils, framed by Grimm-red, scarlet irises… bordered by black sclera instead of white.
Grimm a voice deep inside him growled. Dangerous. Deadly.
Fight.
"What are you?" He croaked.
"I am Selene," she tried to smile, but her eyes ruined it. He could see them becoming glassy. They glanced down and he followed her gaze to find he had lifted his rapier, point up toward her. He swallowed thickly and forced his hand down, burying the point back in the dirt of the campsite. He heard her choke and inhale as he did so. "Thank you, Garek," she finished.