Wilt and Scatter

In a few short minutes, Ruby knew, the last of the bars representing her scroll's CCT connection would blip out. Mountain Glenn was a dead zone; only short-range peer-to-peer connections worked within its borders thanks to the Grimm ripping apart anything that tried to be more permanent.

So she had only these few short minutes in the bullhead's quietly thrumming interior to reply to the message that had just lit up her scroll.

Aiden, 7:12am: If you wanted our arrangement to end, you should've just said so.

He was mad, obviously. He had a right to be, in this respect: she'd been ghosting him for almost a month. After weeks of working together closely, messaging almost every day, that he'd waited so long to say anything showed just how much he'd wanted their arrangement to continue. Same as how her inability to do what Velvet recommended—block him, delete every message, report everything she knew to the police—reflected how much she'd wanted the same.

A month of silence. A month of a tenuous status quo she didn't know how to break, now broken precisely because she'd done nothing.

Her fingers hovered over the digital keyboard without pressing down. She had no idea what to say. There was Adam, migraine sufferer and rose appreciator and White Fang saboteur. Then there was Adam, terrorist and murderer and White Fang leader.

And there in the middle was Ruby, Beacon first year who was hiding his identity from her whole team not least because she was too scared of the consequences of telling the truth now. Yang would yell at her, Weiss would yell at her, Blake would yell at her—and they'd all be right to do it. Adam Taurus, terrorist and murderer.

Her scroll was down to the last bar, now. With a determined straightening of her shoulders, Ruby flicked it closed and slid it into a pocket. Part of the reason she'd pushed so hard for doing this Mountain Glenn mission was to make up for not having Adam's intel. They, she, could do right without him.

They would do this their own way.

(missed call) Ruby, 5:46pm

(missed call) Ruby, 5:47pm

(voicemail) Ruby, 00:08, 5:47pm

Ruby, 5:48pm: Aiden

Ruby, 5:49pm: We need to talk

Ruby, 5:52pm: Its really important

(missed call) Ruby, 5:53pm

Ruby, 6:03pm: Did you know?

Ruby, 7:59pm: Were you there?

Ruby, 9:47pm: Are you alive?

You, 3:13am: I'm sorry

Yang was brushing her hair. Weiss was applying her makeup. Blake was grinding out a nick in Gambol Shroud's blade. Ruby was poking at her scroll. Morning routines, adjusted for cancelled classes and the fact that none of them had felt comfortable leaving their weapons in their lockers the previous night.

Routine could only take them so far: Yang started getting dressed but hesitated to button her jacket; Weiss put up her hair and went to grab her books, only to pause once she had them in her hands; Blake stared down at her shoes without moving to put them on.

"Are we even allowed to go out today?" she asked no one in particular.

"Probably not." Yang flipped open her scroll. "Yeah, nope. School's got first years on lockdown, just like the city until they get the last of the mess sorted out. Everyone's saying at least the whole day, maybe tomorrow too."

Weapon restored, Blake set it aside, stood, and went to the window. "We should be out there, helping."

"Look what our help already did," Weiss said. "A runaway train, a Grimm invasion in the center of Vale, and a black eye for both Beacon and Atlas's reputations."

"I don't see how we could make it worse by going down there now."

"With our track record so far, I think we'd find a way."

Blake's eyes flashed but she bit her tongue and didn't push. They were all still a little on edge from what was now being called the Breach: a train loaded with volatile Dust sent hurtling from Mountain Glenn to Vale using the old subway tunnels, drawing Grimm along the way and creating a massive hole in Vale's defenses. All because they'd completely botched their scouting mission in Mountain Glenn, alerted their enemies, and let Torchwick start that train. The hole had since been closed up but the purging of Grimm continued.

What stung even more was that the team of second years, Velvet's team, team CFVY, had managed to scout around Mountain Glenn and report on the unusually active Grimm presence and unsafely decommissioned power plant just fine. Sure, they'd slowly been worn down and hadn't been able to stay indefinitely, but they were models of perfection compared to what RWBY had managed. What Ruby had done.

"Hey, sis, you've been awfully quiet. What're you looking at? Word from Signal?" Yang sat next to Ruby on her bed and peered at Ruby's scroll; unlike every time before, Ruby made no effort to hide it. "Wait, Aiden? You think he was caught in that? Why's he sorry?"

Ruby squeezed her scroll. She felt sick, had felt as such from the moment yesterday she realized Adam wasn't going to reply to her questions—sometime around the third text. "Yang?"

Picking up on the hitch in her sister's voice, Yang's expression shifted from curiosity to worry. "Yeah, what's wrong?"

"Would you…If I was hiding something from you, would you be mad?"

Yang's eyes flicked to her scroll and went wide. "He's your boyfriend?"

"No, no!"

"Sounds like something someone hiding a boyfriend would say," Weiss put in wryly.

"You're not helping!"

"Ruby…"

"He's not—it's not like that, Yang, honest! Honest."

Yang crossed her arms and leaned away to give Ruby a measuring once-over. Antsy, Ruby fidgeted through it all until Yang blew out a breath and grinned with almost convincing levity. "I know, sis. I'm messing with you."

Ruby deflated. "Yang!"

Laughing, Yang patted her on the shoulder. "Aw, c'mon, can you blame me? You looked way too serious. C'mon, you know there's nothing you could do to make me mad. If he's not your boyfriend and he's not—what did Velvet say? Right, stealing your money or trying to kidnap you, if he's not doing any of that, then what are you so worried about?"

Ruby pressed her lips together. The truth caught in her throat like a heavy stone. She wanted to say it, she needed to say it, but…but once she said it, everything was going to change.

Everything's already changed, a quiet part of her whispered, and it was right. She took a deep breath, steadied her nerves, and spoke. "Aiden was my source in the White Fang."

Yang's hand on her shoulder went perfectly still. "What?"

"Was?" Blake repeated, so quietly it was lost on everyone else.

"I should've figured that out," Weiss muttered. "The way you're texting him at all hours, even when you're supposed to be studying! Though," she hesitated, eyes narrowing, "you've actually been far more responsible lately. And we haven't done any of those missions of yours since before the dance."

"It's…complicated."

"You said 'was,'" noted Blake. She leaned against the windowsill and crossed her arms. "What happened? Is this because you asked him about Torchwick? Because you told us about that 'landlord' of his?"

"Not—not exactly."

Her eyes narrowed. Her glare, Ruby reflected as she flinched away, put Yang's to shame. Yang herself held out a hand for peace between them. "We're still on the same side here, guys. Ruby, was he in Mountain Glenn? Is that why you were worried?"

"N-not," she hunched in on herself, "exactly."

"For gods' sake, just say what it exactly is," Weiss huffed. "We're going to be guessing all day at this rate."

Fiddling with her scroll, Ruby tried to find where to start. She supposed the reason they stopped going on missions was as good as anything. "I…found out something, about him, a while ago. I didn't know what was the right thing to do but it didn't feel right to keep working with him like we were. I, um. I kinda ghosted him."

Blake's frown, already cutting from her earlier glare, grew even more severe. "You had a contact within the White Fang high enough to know about the person pulling Torchwick's strings and you just," she fumbled for the right words in her disbelief, "you just stopped talking to him? Because he made you, what, a little uncomfortable? We could've helped so many more—"

"Hey," Yang snapped. Blake scowled but stopped.

Weiss sat on the opposite bed and asked with a surprising lack of hostility, "What did you find out?"

All eyes fell once more on Ruby. She swallowed. "His name isn't Aiden. It's Adam. Adam Taurus."

Blake choked and braced a hand against the windowsill to avoid slipping. "What?"

"You know him?" asked Yang.

"I-I—it's—"

Weiss snapped her fingers. "You talked about him when we were in Mountain Glenn."

"He's the leader of the Vale White Fang," Ruby said to Yang's confused look, voice hollow.

Yang glanced at Blake. "So not just mentor, he was your boss too?"

"He was. Was. He—I couldn't follow him anymore. He became a monster. You were working with him? He was your informant? Do you have any idea how dangerous he is? How cruel?"

Ruby shrank into herself. "He wasn't."

"Ruby—"

"I'm not a kid, okay? I knew he wasn't who he said he was!" She stared at her scroll, which had gone to sleep while she was distracted. "He's…he's not a monster. Maybe he was, but not when I met him. I knew from the start something was off. I knew he was hiding things. But I know he needs help, he wasn't lying about that, so I…helped. Until Velvet told me who he really was and things got way too complicated." She squeezed her scroll. "Am I supposed to help someone like that if it means helping more people? What if I told everyone about him but that just got everyone he was trying to protect killed instead?"

"So you ghosted him," Weiss summarized. "Then the Breach happened and he says he's sorry. How noble of him."

Blake's fingernails were digging into the windowsill but she didn't protest Weiss's comment. Yang, meanwhile, brought her legs onto the bed and sat cross-legged facing her sister. "Tell us everything."

So Ruby did. From their very first meeting in Vale all those weeks ago to his text apology that morning. Every detail, every single thing she could remember, the good and the bad.

"Wait," Weiss said into the stunned silence after Ruby's story finished, "you knew about him—his real identity—all the way back when you talked to Velvet in the library? And you didn't say anything?"

"I didn't know what to do," Ruby replied miserably. "He was genuinely trying to help." She looked up at Weiss and her stomach twisted. Weiss Schnee, heiress to the SDC. SDC, the letters seared over Adam's eye, letters she'd only been able to make out clearly once they'd met in Forever Fall. Letters she'd tried to ignore and talk over that day, anxiety making the words spill out even as she tried to keep them in. "It didn't feel right to break his trust."

Weiss frowned. "What? Why not? How could keeping secrets and breaking our trust be better?"

Blake flinched.

"What if he led us into a trap?" Yang asked. "Or led you, alone? What if we weren't there to help?"

Ruby put her head in her hands. "I don't know."

Yang drew breath to push the issue but cut herself off when Blake abruptly sank to the floor, one hand on her chest while she struggled to breathe slowly. "Blake? You okay?"

"What did you tell him about us? Ruby. What did you say?"

"I—not much. Your name and Weiss's, um, your first names." Realization dawned. Her voice went quiet and guilty. "And that you're a cat faunus."

If anything, Blake's panic increased.

"I was well aware my presence at Beacon wouldn't go unnoticed by any local," Weiss paused with a careful look at Blake's visible distress, "dissidents. I don't doubt he knew exactly who I was from my first name alone."

Blake chewed her lip. Her ears were flattened back against her head.

Weiss and Yang exchanged a look but it was Weiss who spoke. "He was more than your mentor, wasn't he?"

Blake closed her eyes as though in pain. "We were partners."

Now Yang's turn. "Partners partners, or…?"

"No, not…we tried, for a while. It didn't work. Like I said: more of a mentor. I didn't come here to run from him, exactly, but—I was still trying to get away. He's dangerous, unstable, and he's known I was here for weeks." Her fist slammed into the wall behind her and stayed there, trembling, until she let it fall.

"Is there a reason he'd chase you down?"

"He…we were close. And the White Fang, his White Fang, isn't kind to traitors."

"But he's betraying them too." Yang shrugged a little when Blake looked at her. "Like, obviously it's a little different, but he sent us after his own people. He didn't use Ruby to get to you, either." Her voice dropped and her eyes flickered red. "Not that it would've ended well for him if he did."

Blake cut her gaze to the floor, the frustration of that problem helping her to quell her anxiety. "I don't understand why he was working to put so many of our people in prison. It goes against everything he believes in, just like working with humans. As bad as it is for Ruby to work with him, it's far stranger for him to work with her. Much less apologize to her. It doesn't make sense."

"But if he's basically being blackmailed, maybe it's more complicated?" Yang suggested. "I mean, he's got that lady—landlord, whatever—pulling his strings. He could be trying to help the White Fang by putting them where they're out of her reach."

Blake took a deep, slow breath, stood, and began to pace. "I still don't get it. Ruby, when you talked to him, did he ever mention a High Leader?"

"A what?"

"The person who leads the White Fang. All its branches, not a regional one?" Ruby shook her head. "Anything about headquarters? Mistral?"

"Mistral. He asked me about getting a message to someone in Mistral once."

Weiss rolled her eyes. "What, by carrier pigeon? You're talking as if the CCT doesn't exist."

"He wouldn't trust that. The White Fang usually avoids standard communication tools for a reason; they're too easily tapped."

"Okay, no. I've seen you use scrolls."

"Subnetworks. You have cells set up a tower and relays all over the city for encrypted communication."

"Seriously?"

"Combine that with drop sites and messengers carrying coded letters for cross-continent messages when coded calls on the CCT aren't enough and you have the White Fang's basic framework for staying organized. But if he was going to you for that, Ruby…Vale's branch must've been cut off from the rest. Sienna doesn't know he's being threatened."

"O-kay," Yang said slowly. "What does that mean, exactly?"

"It means he's on his own. He needs support. Support the rest of the White Fang could provide."

"Or, I don't know, Atlas." Weiss crossed her arms. "I'm not trying to shut anything down, but are we forgetting the frigates floating over the city right now? If Adam really is as influential as you're saying, then all he needs to do is tell General Ironwood what he knows."

"Ironwood has no reason to believe him. Besides, Adam would sooner cut out his own tongue than go to Atlas for help."

"What? Why?"

Blake looked at Ruby, who fidgeted enough that she caught Weiss's eye. "You'll understand if you see his face," she said weakly.

"Fine. Why don't we just get the information from him and take it to Atlas ourselves? If nothing else, I can vouch for us. My sister will listen."

"Not to rain on your parade, Weiss," said Yang, "but why would Atlas believe us? We're just some students with no proof other than the word of an internationally wanted terrorist one of us was secretly working with. Not exactly a good look."

Weiss's eyes flickered and she looked away. Whatever bond she had with her sister, she didn't think it was strong enough to overcome those hurdles.

"Sienna needs to know." Blake stopped pacing to focus her momentum on the gears turning in her mind. "But first," she balled one hand into a fist and spoke with clear reluctance, "we need to talk to Adam."

"The guy you think wants to kill you and definitely wants to kill Weiss," Yang clarified.

"We need to know what's really going on." Blake brought her other hand up to massage her temples. "He worked with Ruby. That—and Ruby's vouching for him—that has to mean something. I need—I want it to mean something." She let her hand drop and composed herself. "We go together and we talk to him. After that, we decide what to do. There's no point making a grand plan to involve Atlesian generals when we don't even know what we're actually dealing with. We're not repeating Mountain Glenn."

Her words brought a chill to the room. Ruby bit her lip and then nodded. "I'll see if I can get him to agree to meet. I don't know if he will, though."

Blake's gaze was uncompromising. "Do your best."

Two days. Two days since the reality of Cinder's goals had stomped down on his throat. The number of dead from Mountain Glenn just kept rising. Adam squeezed Blush for all the good that would do. His hands and arms, still sore after hours upon hours of leading futile efforts to dig out survivors in the tunnels while avoiding Atlas's forces, trembled.

Not even being back and Vale and witnessing the first clear sunset in days could alleviate the darkness that preyed on him. He tried to take in the sight from the window nearby, but the vibrant oranges, reds, and golds lacked all of their luster through the cracked and dusty panes. They might as well have been shades of gray.

He had a headache. Not a migraine, just a stress headache, but there was no making it go away.

His unmasked gaze dropped to the plaza below. Beacon's witch had cleaned up the rubble and restored the entire area to pristine condition as though an SDC freight train hadn't crashed up through the sealed-off subway tunnel mere days ago. He wasn't sure whether he found the utter lack of lasting marks relieving or infuriating.

Restored though it was, the plaza was notably devoid of traffic. No one wanted to pass through it. He wondered if, for those first hours after the hole had been sealed, anyone had heard the faunus screaming for help underground before the Grimm took them.

His own voice echoed in his ears from his reassurance to Cinder: "They'll listen to me."

They still would. Because they had no other choice. They were all in too deep now, too far to turn back, too desperate to make it through to stop digging.

He pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes. The youngest ever branch leader in the organization, the most driven, the most passionate, the most determined to force the humans to listen, but this? The Breach? Putting innocent faunus in the crossfire? What was he doing?

Gods, if Sienna found out the truth of what was happening in Vale, she'd strip him of his rank in a heartbeat. Before the Breach, she'd been a possible lighthouse in the storm—now, he knew, she'd sooner wreck him upon the rocks herself for instigating war.

If she came to Vale, he'd lose everything. Worse, Cinder would burn every White Fang member in Vale to ashes in retribution for her interference. He needed to keep a tight grip on his men if only so none of them would let word slip to Mistral, but it was like trying to hold grains of sand in a clenched fist. And if Cinder sensed any of this weakness? No, that couldn't happen. He had to put up a front. To her, to his people, to anyone who could see through and shatter this glass castle.

His instinct, at the start and even now, was to put his head down and charge forward. It was what he'd always done in the past, and in the past, it had worked. But back then he'd had a goal and the ability to see past whatever stood in his way. Now, what lay beyond that red dress and sharp smile was vague. Maybe it was Beacon's fall and a message no one could ignore. Maybe it was death. Maybe it was the end of everything.

His scroll buzzed, a welcome interruption to his spiraling thoughts. He pulled it out and stared dead-eyed at the message from someone he never expected to hear from again. Well, first he stared at his own message, what he'd thought was the end of the conversation: I'm sorry. It felt so pathetic. So inadequate. But his traitorous heart hadn't let him cut her free without a word. He hadn't even been able to block her, so really, this new message reaching him was his own fault.

Ruby, 10:22am: Can we talk?

As he read that, one more message came through: I want to make sure you're okay.

And then a third: I didn't see you in Mountain Glenn or on the train. You made it out, right?

Realization swept through him in an icy wave. Ruby had been in Mountain Glenn. On the train. In the tunnels. Why? Because of him? Because of the crumbs he's put in front of her, not even considering she might follow where they led?

While he'd been traipsing around Vale seeing to Cinder's every whim lest she yank the chain tighter around his neck, that kid had put her life on the line trying to clean up his—well, Torchwick's—mess.

He'd thought he was keeping her out of it! The worst of it, at least. But now she undoubtedly had both Cinder's eye and ire for interfering enough to spoil one major aspect of the assault on Vale.

Ruby was going to end up dead.

Are you okay?

I can't just leave you here alone when you're in pain like this.

You have a rose emblem too? That's so cool!

I'll help.

I want to make the world better however I can.

He squeezed his scroll, the very thought of her demise making his stomach churn. If he hadn't met her, if he hadn't said anything, roped her into his schemes, she'd be blissfully unaware of any of this just like every other Beacon student. Instead, whether she knew it or not, she'd gotten the unwanted attention of some of the most dangerous people in the world.

His actions had already torn apart everything he cared about. Ruby…He could spare her, at least. Save one good thing from the poison of his influence.

Pressing one hand over his mouth, he stared at those messages and tried to think. First and foremost: he had to convince her to stay out of it. Hell, he'd get her to leave Beacon and move back to wherever she'd come from if he had to—but that wasn't the kind of thing he could pull off with a simple call. No, this required something face-to-face.

One more time before the end, he was going to see Ruby.

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