Chapter 5: Wreckage

Getting any sleep after that midnight episode is a dream itself. After cleaning herself up and assuring her team she's okay, Weiss snatches scant minutes of rest between tossing and turning and staring holes through the ceiling. Though that horrible nausea and skull-splitting agony in her head fade with Adam's disappearance, the lingering headache his actions caused does not.

In the morning, she gets up more tired than when she laid down and heads into the washroom before her teammates can see just how out of sorts she is. A hot shower does nothing to ease the dull pain in her head nor the ache in her chest. She presses a hand to her sternum, half-expecting her ribs to cave under even that light pressure. In so doing, she realizes the source isn't anything physical; the more she tries to pin down exactly where it sits, the vaguer its origin becomes.

That…cannot be good. Surely Adam isn't trying anything else—her command had to have brought him some measure of peace, right? They're on the same side, he has to know that now. Besides, with the way he'd splintered and fallen apart, she doubts he's in any state to attempt clawing his way out of her…soul, wherever he goes when he's not here.

She finishes her morning routine with hands that refuse to stop shaking—nearly having to redo her makeup as a result—and emerges to a quiet dorm. For a second, she dares to hope her teammates are still sleeping, but her hopes are dashed when she sees Ruby has joined Yang on her bed and Blake is propped up against her headboard with a book in hand as though it's not obvious she's watching Weiss instead of the pages.

When Weiss ticks an eyebrow, Blake gives up the charade, folds the corner of the page she wasn't reading, and sets her book aside. "How are you feeling?"

Ruby and Yang both look over, their quiet conversation ended.

"Better," Weiss says, and it's true: she certainly feels better than she did when Adam was actively ripping his way out of her soul. "Shall we see about getting JNR in here?"

"All right." Yang jumps down and heads for the door. "Let's see if we can get these guys to let our friends in."

In the end, they're only able to get Jaune permission to enter. Something about team leaders and minimizing visitation during an active investigation into a violent crime, according to Winter. Frankly, Weiss suspects Winter simply doesn't care to advocate harder to get the rest of the team a pass. Jaune's only other advantage besides being team leader is that his semblance might help Weiss, a flimsy reasoning that Winter rolled her eyes at but didn't argue against. With Ozpin still silent, they have no other cards to play. Nora raises hell about it, as does Ren in his own way, but they are both denied and threatened with suspended licenses if they don't relent, so between that and convincing on Weiss's part, relent they do.

Thus is Jaune brought into their dorm room and up to speed an hour later. He brings coffee in with him, which Weiss and the others accept gratefully while they arrange themselves in the various seats around the room. Sipping that deliciously warm drink and letting it chase away—or at least weaken—her headache, Weiss explains everything. Jaune's expression, already worried at the start, is grave and a touch horrified by the end.

"Weiss," he says when she finishes, "I don't—I'm so sorry you're going through this. That's horrible." He glances around at the others. "What can I do to help?"

"We should actually see if your semblance does anything," Weiss says, earning confused looks. "I…I have felt something wrong since I woke up. Whatever Adam did last night, I believe it had side effects for more than just him."

"You should've said something!" Yang's distress sends a small knife of guilt through Weiss.

"I didn't want you to worry when there's nothing we can do," she says. It's a weak defense and they all know it.

"Weiss, you know you don't have to hide anything from us." Ruby leans forward. "Even if there's nothing we can do, we're a team. We're shouldering this together."

"And if you suddenly collapse," Blake adds mildly, "it might be useful to be able to tell the doctors what your symptoms were."

Weiss flushes at the last painfully practical note. "Right. Of course. I'll keep that in mind."

They reshuffle themselves so Jaune can sit next to Weiss. He holds himself a little awkwardly. "So, um. Where does it hurt?"

She opens her mouth and then closes it, heat rising in her cheeks when she realizes she doesn't have an answer. Everyone's looking, though, so she gives the closest likely spot: "My chest. Near my heart."

"Okay. This'll work best if I can," he fumbles, going red himself, "uh, get my hands close. For my semblance."

She absolutely refuses to be embarrassed like he is. This isn't some juvenile game. Her soul hurts because an ex-slave White Fang terrorist just ripped his way out of it to try to kill her.

"Here," she says, grabbing Jaune's wrist and settling his hand so his fingers rest just below the hollow of her throat. He jumps a little bit but, seeing her expression, clears his throat and thankfully composes himself.

The last time Weiss had experienced the effects of his semblance, she'd been…somewhat out of it, on account of the hole in her abdomen. All she remembers of its influence is a comforting warmth that dulled and then drowned out the searing agony, like being wrapped in a fuzzy blanket on a cold day rather than having hot glass rammed through her guts.

This is similar, at least in the sense of that fuzzy-blanket feeling. That feeling, though, is on the surface. As she watches the white light radiate out from Jaune's hand and mingle with her own aura, she keeps waiting for it to sink deeper and take the edge off the ache whose source is still frustratingly vague.

"Anything?" Jaune asks after a minute. Weiss shakes her head. He purses his lips, brings up his other hand to press on the first, and closes his eyes. The light brightens and Weiss lets out a quiet, involuntary gasp when the blanket turns weighted. Insistent. If there is hurt here, it seems to say, show yourself.

She hadn't realized healing could be so…combative. But the unorthodox approach feels like it's working: she can breathe a little more easily and the sharpest part has lost its bite.

"Better?" Jaune checks in after another minute, the tone of his voice letting her know he's already noticed her relaxing. She nods. He keeps it up for another moment before pulling his hands away, healing done.

Weiss gasps again the moment his hands leave—not out of surprise but pain. She doubles over, hand pressed to her sternum, teeth gritted to lock in an even less composed noise. Huntresses do not groan.

There are suddenly a lot of people very close and a lot of hands threatening to touch.

"Weiss?"

"What's going on?"

"What did you do?"

"I thought it was helping!"

"Clearly it—"

"I'm fine," Weiss cuts in before Yang could finish snapping at Jaune. Maybe a little of the groan slips through because absolutely no one looks convinced. She draws in a breath and sits straight with straight shoulders. "Fine," she reiterates, with identical results. Yang looks one more word away from shaking Jaune by the grip she has on his collar.

Since they're so close, Weiss reaches out and pries Yang's hand free. "It did help. It simply…came back." Even worse than before, like the ache had taken Jaune's semblance and used it to amplify itself.

Which…it probably had, she realizes. If it were truly a problem with her soul, and Jaune's semblance amplified rather than simply healed…

She can see that same arithmetic playing out on her friends' faces.

"Okay," says Ruby slowly, "so, um, let's not try that again."

"I'm so sorry." Jaune looks genuinely miserable. Weiss allows herself one awkward pat of his shoulder before reaching for her coffee.

"I'm the one who asked you to do it."

Blake stands from where she'd been crouched ready to catch Weiss if she pitched over. "What now?"

"There's the lamp," Yang offers.

"I am not letting you waste an all-knowing relic's final question for the next hundred years on me," Weiss sniffs. "Try again."

"Okay, Weiss's issues with self-worth aside—"

"Hey!"

"Are there other options?" Ruby glances around, biting her lip when no one speaks up. They all stare down at their drinks; none of them can look Weiss in the eye.

That thing in her chest twists again, but she manages to hide her wince this time.

"There…might be something." Jaune looks up. "I don't know if they have one here, but they said the technology came from Atlas, so…"

"Spit it out," says Yang. "What technology?"

"Aura transfer. They had a machine for it under Beacon; they were trying to use it to give Pyrrha the summer maiden's powers. She was, um, comatose, I think? Before Cinder attacked, anyway. It's probably worth at least asking about it."

"Penny," Ruby breathes with an air of excitement. She shoots to her feet. "That's how Pietro made Penny! They definitely have that technology here!"

Yang stands too. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's track him down!"

"Two problems," Blake says, which she follows with a pointedly slow sip of her coffee that dissipates the abrupt rush of momentum. "One, Weiss is still under house arrest, and our own movements are restricted too. We need to talk to Weiss's sister if we want to see Pietro. Two, even if they have the technology, how does that help? How does getting rid of Weiss's aura fix anything?"

"We don't have to get rid of all of it," Yang argues. "Just the part holding Adam."

"Assuming that's how her semblance even works for storing her summons, do you even know if that's possible?"

"No, but Pietro would. Probably."

"Which," Ruby cuts in, "is why we should talk to him! We don't even need to bother Winter. I can just call Penny." She holds up her scroll to emphasize her point.

"Three," Blake says, voice growing even more pointed, "we don't know if Adam will agree to go along with this instead of trying to kill Weiss again. With how badly his last attack affected her, there's no way to know if she'd survive another one. I want to think he's on the same page we are, but I also don't want to be caught by surprise."

Goosebumps break out on Weiss's skin. She shivers and tries to draw some warmth from her drink. "I would like to think we reached a truce."

"He doesn't do truces."

Yang nods. "For all we know that pain she's feeling right now is his doing."

Weiss has no doubt it's his doing, but she does doubt it's intentional.

Ruby fidgets and then glances at Weiss. "I guess…we ask him?"

She summons him again. In her boundless, sick mercy, she thinks dragging him into the light of the schism that forms his new reality is preferable to the agony of the howling dark.

Pain is pain and he's found himself craving the suffocating blanket of madness it threatens to drag over his mind. This, though. This is something else. Not madness but an unraveling of which he is agonizingly aware.

There are two of him now, he decides. In the wake of her imperious do not let my semblance change you, he split. Splintered. There are two of him but they aren't equal.

One side is him as best he remembers how he's supposed to be: Adam Taurus, terrorist, murderer, defiler. A nexus of rage, hate, and pain compacted into a man denied what he wanted over and over and over again. A being carefully quarantined behind the fault line Weiss's command created, out of its reach but at least close enough for him to reference. To remember.

The other side, the growing side, the side he knows his self is coming out of even as the very thought makes him sick, is the traitor. The lapdog. The disgrace. Wanting Weiss's attention and desiring her safety above all else. Leaping at her command with no thought of asking how high.

Pathetic.

But only one part of him thinks that, now. Every time his mind slips toward the inevitability of that true Adam's eventual destruction, the schism shivers, a rend from skull to soul that aches and burns in equal measure.

She issued an impossible command, thinking it was a favor. A mercy. All she's done is damn him into even more painful awareness of his fall. Bad enough to think he's slipping. Worse to know it.

It'll be easier, he figures, when he's just one part. One shadow of a person who can't even remember why considering his own existence brings echoes of a scream to his head. Until then, the scream is no echo, and it's unending.

"Adam?"

He turns away from the window, sees Blake's expectant look, and rewinds the conversation of the last several minutes to play it back. There are a lot of gaps; he wasn't paying attention. Wasn't ordered to, he thinks wryly. Or maybe that's Weiss's semblance talking, because other-him shudders with rage at the thought. No wry humor, there.

"What?" he says for lack of knowing what else to say.

"What do you think? Could it work?"

Another rewind, more careful this time. Atlas tech, aura manipulation, what he interpreted as some kind of semblance-soul-surgery. The kind of gods-playing science he'd happily put a torch to because he knows how it ends, how it always ends: Faunus paying the price. How many of the advancements that led to this technology were tested on unwilling Faunus? How many died?

Even in his current state, he's delighted to discover the distaste is genuine. There are still pieces of him her semblance hasn't touched—maybe only the pieces Weiss herself doesn't have an opinion on, but it's something.

"I don't know. Ask your precious scientist friend."

"So you're willing to go along with this."

He turns his gaze back to the window. The view from up this high is spectacular. He hates it. He hates even more the alien familiarity he feels when he catches a glimpse of the Schnee manor, the conflicting waves of fondness and resentment and vitriol sweeping through him with enough force to drown out everything else.

In the choice between staring out at that place and looking at Blake, he opts for the third option: closing his eyes and picturing Forever Fall, the red leaves rustling in the wind and spiraling down onto the dirt path that winds between the trunks. Him, walking along that path, eyes pointed forward and never back because he has his whole life ahead of him and there is nothing worthwhile behind him.

Nothing at all.

"Do what you want."