Some of you have accurately guessed sources of angst to come, which I find delightful.

Chapter 3: What's Not Written

Weiss braces her hands on either side of the sink, stares at her reflection, and tries to force a confident smile. Chin up, shoulders straight.

She can smile, but the smile doesn't change the dark circles under her eyes, the wrinkles in her skin, and the tangles in her hair from a full night of tossing and turning.

Yang knocks on the door to their dorm's connected bathroom. "Hey, you alright? You've been in there for a while."

"I'm fine. Just…just dealing with a pimple."

She bows her head and bites her lip. She can do this. She's a huntress. She won't show him any cracks in her armor.

By the time she emerges from the bathroom freshly showered, made up, and clothed in a simple dress, she almost believes she can do it.

Qrow glances over his shoulder at her. "Ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

"All right. Show's over, kiddo." He lifts his scythe off the table and unceremoniously shifts and stows it at the small of his back. Ruby sits back in her chair.

"I really can make it rotate," she says.

"Sure, sure. Just because you can do something doesn't mean I want you to."

Ruby pouts for show and then looks at Weiss, who can also feel the gazes of Yang and Blake from the top bunk where they've been talking. Deprived of their weapons and their scrolls, there really isn't much else for them to do.

"I'll be okay," she reassures them. "I'll have your uncle with me."

Qrow chuckles. "That's probably not the benefit you think it is, but thanks."

"Hey, Weiss?" Ruby tries to smile. "We're here for you, no matter what."

She gets a sudden lump in her throat at Ruby just announcing that unprompted. She stops herself from wiping at her eyes only to prevent any smearing of her makeup. "I know. I'll be back soon."

Qrow opens the door. "We going or what?"

"Weiss, wait." Blake jumps down and pulls her aside. "I heard from Qrow what happened—the picture getting out."

"Did you see it?"

"He showed it to us."

"Is it as bad as Winter made it sound?"

"Probably worse." Blake reaches up to gently tilt Weiss's chin back toward her. "It's bad, but you know that. You knew it the moment you saw him in that warehouse, I could tell. I know I can't change what everyone else is saying, but for what it's worth, I know you didn't do it on purpose. You're not that kind of person. You never were."

Weiss manages a watery smile. "Even at Beacon?"

Blake's smile is as threadbare as hers. They are both so very tired. "Being a spoiled heiress doesn't automatically make you a monster." She pulls Weiss into a quick hug. "Good luck. I know you'll find a way to set him free."

Weiss returns the hug and tries to share Blake's belief.

"As if mocking my generosity by fleeing this kingdom wasn't enough, you had to give those animals an excuse to shut down nearly all of my facilities with the media all too happy to provide coverage! Have you the faintest idea how much damage your little stunt has caused? How much money you've cost the company? Keep this up and your poor mother and brother will be living on the street within the year!"

Jacques pauses his tirade to breathe and adjust his tie. Weiss, face and body utterly locked down to prevent any slip up, doesn't trust herself to speak without escalating the situation and getting herself and Qrow kicked out of the manor. Official business or not—official thanks to Winter's efforts—Jacques getting in the way will slow them down and she can't stomach the idea of wasting time. Not with Adam's strained please playing in her head on repeat.

"Have you nothing to say for yourself?" Jacques challenges.

Weiss presses her lips together and draws on every scrap of self-control she has. "I came here to find a way to address the situation, not to be castigated. Will you let us go to the library or not?"

"A friendly reminder that this is official business," Qrow puts in. "Wouldn't want anything like, say, obstructing huntsmen getting thrown around during your campaign, right?"

"Are you threatening me?"

"Wouldn't dream of it."

Jacques scowls but, when Qrow's easy smile shifts into something darker, he clears his throat and waves a hand. "Fine. You have no respect for the company, but at least try to have some for the home you abandoned."

He leaves without another word; one of the maids steps up and leads them to the library despite Weiss saying she can find it on her own. At least no one follows them inside.

Qrow closes the doors with a mocking salute to the two private security personnel who take positions on the other side. Weiss takes in the place where she'd retreated for so many hours at a time as a child. In aesthetics, it's the same as everywhere else in the manor: blue, bare, cold. But the shelves upon shelves of books, their colors not limited to that chilling palette, bring life into the room. Coupled with the sunlight coming through the frosted glass set high in the walls, it almost feels warm.

She reaches up a trails her fingers across the worn spines. No one in this house will come here anymore. She's willing to bet the maids are the library's most regular patrons.

"Family records are this way," she says over her shoulder to Qrow. He trails behind her while they walk, passing scattered oak tables ornately carved with various Schnee family symbols. Each one probably costs more than the entirety of Beacon's four-year tuition.

They also pass various statues and carving. One depicts her grandfather holding out a hand to a kneeling faunus with chains falling off their wrists. Weiss's stomach twists.

"I wasn't about to say anything in front of your dad, but you look like you haven't slept. I'm guessing your sister told you about the picture."

"Hard not to hear about it." They're at the right place. Weiss stops and stares without reading at all the books and journals in front of her face. "I summoned him again during my interview."

"That so?"

"He said," she swallowed, "he said he's awake when he's not summoned. That he's in pain, constant pain. He called it hell."

Qrow whistles. "Wow. The Schnees torturing people where no one else can see?"

Weiss winces and glares at him in guilt-ridden betrayal. He sighs and scratches the back of his neck.

"Okay, right, well. Obviously you're not trying to torture the guy if it's got you this messed up. If you feel so bad about it, then bring him out."

"Here?" Weiss hisses.

"Do you have control of your summons or not? Worst case," he drops a meaningful hand to Harbinger's hilt extending out from his lower back, "I make sure he stays in line. You're trying to do him a favor, right? At least give the guy a chance to recognize that if it's making you feel this guilty."

"But…"

"What else?"

She grips her sleeve. "Whenever I summon him, he's possessed by the need to protect me. I think it gets stronger every time."

"Pretty galling for him, yeah. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. The both of you. Either summon him here or don't; it's up to you, princess."

She winces. Princess.

Under Qrow's watchful gaze, she reaches into the depths of her soul and draws Adam out of the abyss. He swirls into existence between the dusty sunbeams and breathes in deep before his flintlock gaze falls on Weiss. "What now?"

"Ease up," Qrow advises. Adam stiffens and turns toward him, hand on Wilt. Qrow raises both palms. "We're here to figure out how to get you out of your situation. Research. She was kind enough to let you out because she feels bad but try anything and your stint here ends on the spot. By force if need be."

"I don't want this."

Adam angles his face toward her.

"I don't," she repeats. "I've never agreed with exploiting humans or faunus or anyone. If I'd known this would happen—"

"How many?"

"—I-I'm sorry?"

"How many faunus do you think your family enslaved in life and again in death? How many lives reaped for profit and sick pleasure?" He faces her fully with rage burning in his ice-ridden eyes. "Look at me, Schnee. Look. I was a slave once. I swore never to be that again no matter the cost. I thought I'd always have a choice. At least in death I'd be free. Because of you, I don't even have that."

He releases a thready laugh that just sets her more on edge. "And that's not even the worst part."

"What?"

"I can't hurt you." He raises his hands and pantomimes wrapping them around her throat. His jaw feathers from the effort. "I want to. I want you dead so badly it hurts. But just the thought makes me sick. What you did to me, this…infection. It tries to influence me. It wants to keep you safe. Every second I spend hating you, it begs me to adore you." His voice shakes with fury. "Enslaving my body wasn't enough. You had to take my soul."

She opens her mouth but nothing comes out. What can she say? "I—I'm trying to make this right."

"There is no making it right."

Qrow dumps a pile of books on the table. Weiss and Adam both flinch.

"Sorry to interrupt," Qrow drawls unapologetically, "but seems you're forgetting the whole reason we came. C'mon, these won't read themselves." He eyes Adam. "Care to help? Something in here might just have the key to getting you back on the path to whatever hell is waiting for you."

Adam shudders and grabs a book. "I already know one hell. Another can't be worse."

The books are manifold and vapid. Weiss pages through essay after essay on the Schnee semblance—one of the very rare inherited types—or on the legacy of success their family has enjoyed since the first records about it. None of them go into the mechanics.

"Oh boy, Grandpa Schnee traipses into yet another Grimm-infested tundra." Qrow shuts his latest read and shoves it to the end of the table, where a pile of similarly discarded tomes rests. "How's it going over there?"

Weiss closes her own book with a sigh. "Nothing but tales of grand battles with no details that matter." She grabs another and unceremoniously cracks it open. "Something has to be here. It has to be."

Adam stands.

"What are you doing?"

"Taking a walk." He shoves his book down to the end of the table; he hadn't been reading it, not really, by the end. "Your family is disgusting."

Qrow stands too. Adam scowls. "You can't be serious."

Weiss glances up from the biography of some ancestor she's never heard of before. "I won't finish looking through these on my own."

"He can't wander around alone. Either you release your semblance or I go with him."

Adam pales. "I—"

"No!" Weiss shakes her head and tries to compose herself. "There's a third option."

She looks at Adam. "Don't hurt anyone or damage anything."

He stiffens at the commands but, after clenching his teeth hard enough to make a muscle in his jaw twitch, manages a stiff nod.

Weiss returns her focus to her book. "See? Now are you helping or not?"

To say the absurdity of the situation is beginning to wear on him would be to discount the edges of his sense of self already scraped raw and bleeding. Every little death he suffers cuts into what is left.

Denied oblivion.

Enslaved by the Schnees. Again.

Constantly forced to battle the urge to treat this Schnee with the respect and protectiveness her blood will never deserve.

Coerced by that same urge to follow her orders like some kind of pet being housebroken.

And, whenever her aura or her patience runs out, cast into a void that is nothing but soul-searing agony.

That he lasted as long as he did sitting there and reading books that he could tell after the first wouldn't have an answer is a miracle. He paces through the shelves for a while, but his new form doesn't tire the way he's used to, so that doesn't bleed off any stress at all. He'd try sweeping some books to the floor, throwing down a bookshelf, even slicing apart a table, but Weiss's command holds him fast. If he breaks it, she'll know, and she'll send him back to that place even sooner.

Anything but that.

He's feeling sick at the mere thought of disobeying and that itself inspires more nausea. His own soul turned against him.

Worse, the farther he wanders from Weiss—and he hates that his mind tips toward Weiss and not the Schnee—the weaker he feels. Too far, he suspects, and his tenuous presence in this world will be ripped away.

He shudders. Anything but that.

Anything? Even debasing himself, listening to the Schnee's orders, serving her instead of slitting her throat?

A stronger man would sooner slit his own throat. Better to endure the agony of being unmade than compromise everything he's ever believed.

He unsheathes Wilt and rests the naked blade on his left palm. Its blue facsimile of metal is wrong. His ghostly hands are wrong. All of this is wrong.

He raises it to the side of his neck, left hand braced on the back for control. The edge bites into his skin, a sharp pinprick of cold promise.

One swift cut. A jerk of his arms. One wrench and it'll be over.

Or it'll only just begin. Ice washes through his veins, followed by the phantom sensation of a thousand needles digging into his skin. Except it's not his skin, it's something deeper, something inviolable now utterly and irrevocably violated.

His hands are trembling so badly he can't hold the sword steady. That screaming blight of an existence compared to this quiet library, with its neat shelves and dust motes floating in the soft sunlight streaming in from the high windows overhead, is unspeakable. Unimaginable. It's with a bite of hysteria that he realizes he can't even comprehend what it does to him unless he's trapped in its depths.

The cold point on his neck grows; his shaking limbs have dug the sword deeper.

One strike. Just one. Freedom or death, right?

"Come on," he hisses to the floor. "Do it."

He sucks in a breath, straightens his shoulders, and tenses his arms. The blade steadies.

His jaw aches. His heart pounds. It's so quiet.

With a great heave, he hurls Wilt to the ground. He falls after it, knees and elbows slamming into the carpet while a sob bursts from his throat. Tears streak down his cheeks, gather on his nose, and splatter against the fabric an inch from his eyes. His nails dig into his palms through his gloves and he hunches in on himself, more sobs he can't strangle into complete silence breaking through.

He's a coward. A coward and a weakling, too pathetic to even do what he should. Leader of the Vale Branch? High Leader of the White Fang? Who did he think he was fooling? In death the gods saw fit to remind him of what he's always been: a slave with delusions of freedom, a tool convinced it can be anything other than used.

He reaches blindly and grabs Wilt. The blade bites into his fingers and he squeezes until the pain drowns out everything else. Only then can he crawl to the nearest shelf and curl up against it, clutching Wilt like it can shield him from the inevitable.

Eventually, his tears run out. He's left to stare across the aisle to and through the opposite shelves. Drying tracks itch on his cheeks as they break up into frost.

What's left for him? What does any of it matter? What's the fucking point anymore?

Time passes; he doesn't move. Even this misery, however long it lasts, is better than the infinite void.

It's as he's staring dead-eyed that he catches a flutter of motion at the very edges of his vision. A balcony—no, a second floor that runs in a ring to look down at the first. And on that balcony…

The point, he thinks, is distraction. So he stands. He takes a step. And he jumps. His hand latches onto the railing and he swiftly vaults over it to land in a crouch in front of the boy who'd thought himself sly.

"If you want to spy, do better."

The boy—Whitley Schnee, most likely—yelps, falls back onto his butt, and scrambles back. Adam stands slowly. His connection to Weiss is getting stronger, which means she's getting closer. Maybe she heard her brother's cry or, more likely, felt him getting too far away.

So he stands, and he stays where he is, and he doesn't move when Qrow and Weiss jump up to him.

"I didn't touch him," is all he says.

"He threatened me!" Whitley cries. Lying little shit.

Weiss frowns. "What happened?"

"I was just trying to get a book and he leaped up here to attack me."

Qrow rolls his eyes. "Weiss—"

"Whitley."

"It's the truth!"

Weiss sighs and looks at Adam. He notices for the first time the sheen of sweat on her brow and registers the change in the unwilling bond between them. She's running out of aura.

"Adam, what happened? Tell me the truth."

He tenses on reflex, bites down on his tongue. She orders him to tell the truth? And of course that damnable urge to protect her surges up inside him, morphs and twists until it's a wheedling need to do as she says. He wrestles it. Not because he's against saying what actually happened—he'll just be repeating himself—but because caving to this alien will pressing on his own makes him sick to his core.

"Adam."

Just hearing his name from her lips sends a spike of nausea through him. That sensation is just distracting enough that his resistance slips. Halting words fall from his unwilling tongue: "He was spying. I told him to do it better. I didn't touch him." He grabs hold of himself again and he turns his vitriol on Whitley—verbally if only because Weiss's earlier commands prevent him from doing so physically. "Another Schnee that's a cowardly liar, just like all the rest."

"Whitley, go to your room. You're not helping here."

The brat gets up and dusts himself off. The illusion of composure is too shallow to hide the fear in his eyes whenever he looks at Adam. "This isn't your house, sister. You can't order me to do anything."

Qrow throws an arm around Whitley's shoulders, fast and tight enough that Whitley's attempt to recoil away goes nowhere. "Might not be her house, but right now, we're here on official business. Meaning I could have you arrested for gettin' in the way. If I wanted to."

"Th-that would never stick," Whitley stammers.

"But how long would it take Daddy's lawyers to get you out of the holding cell? I know some officers who'd love to show you all the hospitality Mantle's got to offer. Consider it a free upgrade from Atlas's stuffy cells."

Whitley blanches, an impressive feat with his already paper-white skin. Qrow grins and releases him. The boy manages a half-run under the guise of a speedy walk until he reaches the door and—after fumbling the handle once—slips out.

With Whitley gone, Weiss's strength wavers. She sways on her feet and leans against the wall. Adam strangles the urge to help hold her up. If she falls, she falls. He'd stomp on her neck if he could, and he tries to take some sliver of satisfaction in that idea even as it leaves his traitorous body ill.

As he has the thought, realization follows in its wake. Weiss's semblance lives with her. Should her life come to an end...

"Doing okay?" Qrow asks. Weiss shakes her head. He pulls out his scroll and drags her aura reading into view. Red.

Adam's satisfaction dies.

Weiss stares at that reading and feels a great pressure growing on her chest. So soon? Once it runs out, her semblance—

She and Adam make eye contact. He looks sick. She feels it.

"I haven't found anything," she tells him. "I looked. I read every scrap of family history. There are records of other people summoning the souls of powerful warriors they killed but nothing about letting them go."

"Why would they?" Adam spits. "They don't care about consequences. Just how useful their new tool is."

"I'm sorry." It comes out as a whisper.

He barks out a laugh.

Weiss tries again. "We've exhausted history but that doesn't mean I can't find a new way. I'll try. I will find something. Even if there's no record of anyone ever losing a summon once they have it. I—I just don't know what else to do. Where I'd even start."

His shoulders creep higher with her every word until he digs his fingers into the skin around his left eye. When he next speaks, his hatred is as clear and cutting as ice. "There's one thing you can do."

"What?"

"Die."

Her aura runs out and Adam disappears.