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"Are you sure you won't come visit Blake in the hospital?" Ruby asked me.
"Nah. I'll leave up to your team. Might visit next time, sound fair?"
I took Adam Taurus's weapon. I added to my collection. It was in one corner next to Tyrian's wicked blades.
"I-um I guess," Ruby returned. "I really don't think she'd be bothered by it."
"But can you say that she'd be pleased by it?" I asked rhetorically.
"Well…" she hesitated. Her silver eyes flicked away from mine.
"Ahp, you had to think about it. Trust me. I'll just leave it to you girls for now. Next time. Mayhaps."
"What are you going to do around here?" Ruby asked. "If you're not coming with us, that is."
"I'm going to be with Oscar and Ozpin. Helping Winter Schnee get a handle on her new powers," I returned easily. "Don't worry. I won't get up to any trouble."
"Trouble has a way of finding you, Cloud." Ruby smiled at me good naturedly.
I laughed a little in a low chuckle. "Well if it finds me this time it won't be my fault."
"You don't get along with Winter very well," Weiss cut in.
"She actually doesn't get along with me. I do just fine with her."
"You escalate things with her," Weiss pointed out. "You don't ever try and get things to calm down. You try and rile her up. Stop it."
"Not my fault. She still wants to tango despite how bad it went for her the first time," I returned.
"Just try and not drive her crazy. She's the only real part of my family I get along with." I could sort of get that. I wanted to be on good terms with some of my family. Like my sisters. I wanted to be on good terms with them.
But Saphron… She wanted to fight me. She didn't want to try and resist Mother. She liked her servitude. That was unsettling. Was that all I had waiting for me? And my sisters had met my Mother face to face. The things Mother had done to me she'd done with half a world between us. I hadn't actually met her face to face like my sisters had.
It made me shudder. I had no idea what she could actually do to me in person. She'd been able to dominate my mind like it was nothing through that tentacled Grimm.
"I'll do what I can," I promised half-heartedly. "Give Blake my regards."
They walked out of my little Atlas Academy room with little waves goodbye. They were adorable, with Weiss pulling Ruby along by the hand.
I got up and put my sword on my back. I strode out of the tiny Academy place of stay and made my way to the training room. I found Winter inside already with Oscar leaning on his cane.
"Cloud, good of you to join us," Oscar said in a voice that made it unclear whether it was him or Ozpin talking. I stared at him long and hard for a moment. I desperately tried to decipher who I was talking to before eventually I gave up. It was probably impossible to tell at some points by the very nature of the way that they were becoming one.
I was merging in an odd way with my Mother but hey...At least I wasn't Oscar. He was really becoming one with the enormous alien mind. I could at a minimum divide myself between where I began and where my Mother ended. Oscar didn't have that. He just had a steady blurring of lines as he conjoined with the old wizard.
"It's no problem. Just not sure what light I can shed on the subject that you don't already know." I crossed my arms and stared at Oscar. I still wasn't sure who I was addressing.
"You've fought Cinder the most. You have more insights into her powers than anyone else. Some seasons tend to rhyme with one another. This summer with that other particular spring."
I supposed that made a certain amount of sense.
"Didn't you fight her too?" I asked.
"Yes, when she destroyed Ozpin's body, but her powers were only just settling in then. I fear that most of what she used was her semblance not her maiden powers."
"You know what her semblance is?" I wondered. That would be important information to have for those of us who were looking to kill her.
Like me.
"Pyrokinesis I suspect. But it's only a suspicion." He tapped his cane twice against the ground. His Hazel eyes glowed. "It blends rather well into the maiden powers, I suppose."
"What other powers does Cinder Fall possess?" Winter asked. She cut in for the first time. And it was the first time I'd seen her since she became the maiden. She didn't look or feel any different to my senses. She looked the same as ever, tall and in white.
Oscar stood in silence and seemed content for me to take the lead so I shrugged and answered, "she's got control over wind and lightning like you might with dust. And then she can fly, too. Hard to be sure which comes from which maiden part though. She could fly and control wind before she became spring. The lightning seemed new but it's impossible to tell."
"I understand. You believe my own powers will turn out similarly to Cinder's," Winter noted.
"Precisely," Oscar nodded. "We feel that seasons that take shape around the same time frame are a great deal like the others. This isn't always the case, however. Magic can take all forms. Cloud's powers are nothing like that of any maiden from recent memory."
"But I may have this power over the elements as well and flight," Winter interpreted. "Just like dust, then."
"Yes, why don't you give it a try now? Whatever feels most natural when you reach for the maiden powers," Oscar said.
Winter breathed in deeply and shut her eyes. When she opened them again there was a silvery flare to the sides of her eyes. The same color as her aura had been.
She stretched out a hand…
But nothing happened. Sort of anticlimactic.
"I am unsure where to start. I can feel my new powers but can't quite understand them."
"Why don't you try modifying your semblance. Casting a spell that normally requires dust to execute but just with the powers in hand and your semblance," I suggested. "It's pretty much what I do with my own magic."
Winter gave me an even look at my genuine helpfulness but she nodded. She extended a hand and an enormous glyph radiated to life behind her easily enough. Then lightning flared from it. It wasn't strong or very well directed. But there was a crackle of sparks across it that was vectorless.
Winter dropped panting. She'd been holding her breath as she did it.
"Oh and don't forget to breathe," I snarked. She managed a weak glare back up at me where I stood with my arms crossed.
"You know, Cloud," she emphasized. "I hardly like you being around my little sister."
"Yeah well I hardly like being alive. We can't all get what we want," I bit back. "Why don't you try it again? With breathing this time, that's important."
She nodded and got back to her feet. She breathed deeply this attempt and her eyes flared with that magical sign of the maidens.
A glyph hovered to life above us and ice came raining down through it. A jagged shard bounced off my aura and I hopped back a step.
"Sorry. I didn't quite manage what I wanted," she snarked back at me.
"Did you want to impale me? Because any time you want to go, sister. Let's go, whenever you're ready."
"Now, now," Ozpin chided. "Ms. Schnee just lost control for a moment. I'm sure it was unintentional."
"See, unintentional," Winter agreed.
"Yeah of course, never would have you pegged for childish," I muttered.
"We are all often not as others expect." She smiled cheerfully.
"Why don't we give flight a shot?" Ozpin asked.
"I am unsure how to begin with that," Winter said. Which was fair enough. You give somebody a bunch of new powers and you couldn't suddenly expect them to know how to use them. Especially with something as vague as the maiden's powers which took different shapes naturally.
"I could just drop you from the roof and see what happens," I cut in. "Experiment."
"Any serious suggestions would be appreciated," she returned smoothly.
"Maybe I was serious," I murmured. "Come find out."
"Well Mr. Strife, how is it that you fly?" Ozpin asked. "It has been some time for me."
"Not really sure. It's sort of subconscious. I just did it while my semblance was active. Then I sort of just imagine moving around once I get up to speed to control it."
"Unhelpful," Winter decided. I felt like she wasn't being super fair on that one.
"Cinder can do it so you better be able to figure it out. Can't let her outperform you, she'll be gunning for you next," I shot. "Try to imagine yourself rising on a pocket of air. That helps me."
"What makes you think she'll come for me?"
"You were the obvious choice for Ironwood to pick as the new maiden. It's an open secret how close the two of you work. I was able to figure it out and there's no reason she won't be able to. You have gotta assume she knows that you're the new maiden or close to it."
She nodded, then she closed her eyes in focus and breathed hard. The wind might have picked up a little in the airtight room. A breeze bustling through but she didn't start to rise up off the ground or anything.
"We will keep at this. You've been more than helpful, Mr. Strife."
"That's exactly what I shoot for."
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"Blake's going to be okay. She was especially happy with the news that Adam is dead," Weiss informed me later that night around the dinner table.
"Dead as a doorknob," I agreed. "It's just a shame that my sisters slipped away."
"What would you even have done with them had you gotten them?" Weiss asked. "They seemed awfully determined to be on Salem's side."
"It's not their fault. They're brainwashed," I defended them partially.
My sisters were a touchy subject. They were a shadow of what I could be. What I would otherwise have been. If Mother had her wicked way. It was hard to hate that. It was in a sense like hating my potential self. There but for a flip of a coin went I. I could still end up like them. I could still become a monster.
Mother's influence on me was still there. It was always pressing. And that was without having ever seen her face to face. The sort of mind magic she could bring to bear against me must be unreal in person. How was I ever going to kill her? Or at least cut her fucking head off and bring her as close to death as she could be brought. I didn't have a clue.
"But how are you going to change that?" Yang wondered. "It's one thing if somebody wants to fight it like you do but they just want to give in."
"I… I don't know. But I can't exactly abandon them or kill them. It wasn't their fault that this happened to them and besides they're still my… still my family," I murmured. "You know what I mean? I can't leave them to that."
"But if they don't want to be saved then there's nothing we can do for them, Cloud." Yang pointed her fork at me. "You're different but your sisters seem to want it."
"I can't just give up on them," I protested. "I have… I have so many memories of time spent with them. They matter to me."
I could remember so much. So much time spent with them. It was all fake but it still made me feel something. Weiss said my feelings were valid it was hard to agree when there was so much fake pressure from Salem.
"But those memories aren't real. They're an illusion," Blake cut in. "The only times you've met them they attacked you."
"Maybe…" I muttered. "It seemed mostly playful though. Like they weren't trying to kill me."
"Playful murder?" Yang asked. "Are you serious or…?"
"Cloud you can't save people who don't want to be saved." Weiss patted my hand. "You need to come up with a real plan to deal with them."
"I suppose we'll have to fight them," I said. "I suppose… that I'll have to… I'll have to kill them, if they can't be saved they can only be put down. It's what I would want if I fell to my Mother."
"Do you really mean that, Cloud?" Ruby asked. "That you would want to… you know…"
"Die?" I asked. "Probably, yeah. It's better than being a puppet, you know?"
"I do," Weiss whispered. "It won't come to that, we'll keep you from falling to her."
"Yeah. I suppose."
"Cloud. We will keep you safe from her. You have to believe in that," Ruby murmured.
"I'm starting to, a little."
And I was. Things had been better with Weiss's and Ruby's help. I'd heard fewer whisperings from my Mother. I'd had fewer command auditory hallucinations. I had a wall erected in my mind between my Mother and I so that less of her spilled over into me. She was like ink in water, spreading out and getting into every gap. Under currents carried her influence every which way only it was inside of me.
It was hard to imagine I'd ever be totally free of her. Her tendrils reached deeply into my mind. I couldn't help but imagine it was the same for my sisters. Only they met her face to face and experienced the kind of magic she could hurt us with for real. It must have been terrible. It must have been beautiful. I imagined giving in for a moment. What it would feel like.
My Mother's influence was unbelievable. It was always present in me but there was a sort of stopping point I'd managed to create that halted her from having total rule over me.
It would feel like nothing else to give into her wishes and do what she wanted. I wasn't sure that sex would be able to compare. And Saphron had made it sound so good. She made it seem so sweet. The way her voice had purred when she talked about submitting. I got that. I really did. I just didn't want it for me. It would me losing everything that I had built up here.
It would mean sacrificing all my friendships and relationships and more. It would cost me my soul. I just couldn't give in even though every day Mother inflicted some new horror onto me. It was agony but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I'd have to immolate all my wishes and desires and dreams to become something else. Something with a new and different and terrible purpose. I'd be a weapon in her hands and nothing more.
I liked having the 'more' it was what made me feel. It made me feel Cetra. I wasn't sure what I'd be without it. So I couldn't give in. But my sisters, they had already slipped under.
They'd bowed their heads under the surface and they drank from those dark waters deeply. They became something less than Cetra. Saphron had said so herself. It was that which separated me from them and the Grimm too. The Grimm was a part of me but I didn't have to acknowledge it. I didn't have to let it rule me.
Maybe it was nothing and just maybe that was everything. Maybe it was all I needed to resist. I wasn't sure. I couldn't be sure until I ran into her again. It was a trial by fire and nothing else. There was no middle ground.
It meant that I couldn't afford any mistakes when I was next in her presence. It meant I could just collapse and become nothing again like I had before.
I just couldn't tell until next I saw her.
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-WG