Ch. 83 Reconsider

Jaune sat at his workbench, his focus on the work on it unwavering. Yet still, his mind wandered even as his fingers slowly inscribed lore onto a piece of golden metal.

A flash of silver light resurfaced in his memory and his fingers stopped.

Beacon was reclaimed, but at what cost.

Yet the simple knowledge of how much higher that cost could have been…

The huntsmen of Vale chose to bet their lives on a gamble. One that paid off.

But… despite what he knew Ruby expected of him, to take her father away from the immediate danger, it was Jaune's poor judgement that sealed Taiyangs fate.

O=O=O=

Raven stood over the unconscious body of Taiyang.

He was laying on a hospital bed now, his wounds cleaned and bandaged. The petrified remains of Grimm teeth and claws surgically removed. His heart restarted after much effort from the doctors.

Yet his mind remained in the darkness of unconsciousness.

Had she not intervened, Taiyang would have bled out on the battlefield. Raven ended up bending her rules, ended up saving him from certain death and brought him to Haven through her connection to both him and her daughter.

A screaming match ensued shortly after the panicked Yang called in the resident medical staff. And worst of all Raven knew her daughter had been right then. She could have prevented many of those injuries with ease had she simply acted sooner.

When the door opened, she expected to see one of the girls enter the room. Both Ruby and Yang spent hours of their days here. To her surprise it was neither of them, it was Nora.

"Hey…" the girl spoke in an unnaturally subdued tone.

"Did you come to see him?" Raven asked, knowing full well Nora had only spent a short while getting to know the father of her team leader.

"I… wanted to talk to you actually…"

Raven took a moment to look at Taiyang before nodding and motioning the girl to continue.

"...I wanted to know… was it my fault?"

This gave Raven pause. "Why would it be your fault?"

"I… if I haven't delayed us before leaving Keel…"

"No." There was a finality in that answer as Raven kept a poker face.

Here was an excuse, a perfect way to justify to herself, just why Taiyangs fate wasn't her fault. But just like she refused to blame Ruby, Qrow or even Jaune for Taiyang's injuries, she also refused to blame anyone else for her own hesitation and late action.

"No? Wha…"

"No it wasn't you, or Ren. Tay wasn't mortally injured then… that came after… after I flew away from Yang."

The relief in Nora's expression was poorly hidden, if she even tried to hide it at all. Yet she spoke with genuine concern. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

O=O=O=

While Ren was preparing his tools for the procedure, Verdant was busy strapping his arm to the operating table.

"So… what made you change the approach?" Verdant asked.

"I came to a realisation…"

"Ah, the mysterious excursion that ended with mister Xiao-Long landing in the medical wing of this school."

Ren frowned "I met an… unlikely person… He gave me some very good advice on working with Aura altered flesh and wood."

"And they advised you to preserve my arm as opposed to cutting it off?"

"No, in fact I believe they insinuated that cutting the arm off entirely and replacing it with a purely mechanical prosthesis would be more effective."

Verdant looked away from his arm and over to the surgical and carpenters tools Ren was preparing. "And why did you decide otherwise?"

"I came to a realisation… I am not a craftsman like Jaune Arc or an engineer like Ruby Rose. I am Lie Ren. I am a part of the project not to push the limit of what's possible but to help as best as I can."

"And perhaps that makes you more suited for the task ahead." Verdant smiled.

Ren didn't answer and moved towards the headmaster.

The plan was both simpler and far more difficult than it was originally. Ren had spent most of the time since they returned from Forever Fall reworking the blueprint to work with the new procedure. After all, they were no longer aiming to cut a new arm out of the old.

A prosthesis, even one so well connected to a person's aura was at the end of the day just that, a prosthesis. Verdant didn't need a prosthesis, he needed his arm back.

He looked over the text he would be inscribing one last time before beginning the operation. It took a while and they had to make a few last minute changes but it was as ready as it would ever be.

Ren activated his semblance and his world turned colourless. "Once we start it would be unwise to stop midway. That being said, take your time growing the wood into shape. It is more Aura efficient not having to remove material."

Having said what needed to be said, Ren reached out to Verdant with his left hand and took hold of one of the smaller saws.

Just before the first incision was made the colourless effect of Ren's semblance enveloped the headmaster, pushing down the emotions and physical pain.

Ren watched the wood almost flow as it grew into its new shape, his steady hands merely guiding it and removing the excess where necessary.

Soon the elegant shape presented itself for inscription. A poem that spoke of the green woods and crimson blood.

O=O=O=

"So you saw Sky and Cardin?"

"Yeah… they seemed okay." Ruby answered Yang's question without much enthusiasm.

"They came to find us after…" she stumbled over her words, not wanting to mention the moment she saw her dad, injured and dying "...after I did the thing with my eyes." she ended up saying.

Yang nodded, not keen on following that line of questioning.

"So… you and Pyrrha?" Ruby asked, desperate to turn the conversation away from their parents.

"Uh… kinda. Nothing official I guess… You know, now that she's back in Mistral, where the world can see her…"

"She's got fans?"

"Uh… not as many as you'd think, they're just…"

"...a bit much?" asked Ruby hopefully.

"I was going to say creeps."

This earned an honest, though a bit crooked, smile on both of their faces.

It was a pointless bit of banter, but it delayed the discussion that would have to take place later.

O=O=O=

"Here…" Qrow said as he walked through the portal Raven made back into his room "I don't think anything is missing. Didn't look like any of them went through your stuff."

"Thanks." she said simply, though even that coming from raven was more than Qrow expected.

"So… why?" Qrow asked.

"Why what?" Raven answered with feigned ignorance.

Qrow sighed. They both knew the why, he just wanted to hear her say it.

"Why make me fly all the way to get your stuff back from the camp."

"You are a faster flyer…"

Qrow grinned. It was true that he was faster, but that wasn't the real reason.

"Oh don't give me that, there's no way you'd admit that if you weren't trying to hide the truth."

"FINE! I didn't want to face them!"

Leave it to Raven, the strongest of the Branwen tribe, to run away from that.

"Grown fond of the murderous bunch?" Qrow teased.

"You know that isn't who I meant."

"Yeah… I do." he relented. "Told the urchins to head to Haven if they wanted a better life."

"...did you?" Raven spoke with uncertainty. She might have sent Qrow to evade having to face the youngins, but that didn't mean she thought he would help them.

"And maybe I've also threatened the older ones to not steal from those leaving…"

"Thank you."

O=O=O=

Roman longed on a sofa in a family home that wasn't his. Not the first time he's done that if he was being honest, though this time was a bit different. His leg was still in a cast because apparently the semblance the kid used to fix his leg on the battlefield somehow disrupted the healing process of his Aura. Because of course it did.

It was nice to talk to Qrow for a bit after the mess, even if it was just for a few minutes. The guy had taken a chance working with him back before Beacon fell and Roman wouldn't forget that.

So when the guy you consider a friend asks to take care of the house of the guy you pretty much sent to his death… Well, the least you can do is feed his dog.

Speaking of Zwei, the fluffy bugger was smart, a bit too smart for Roman's liking. When Roman picked the key from under the doormat to open the door for the first time the dog went ballistic, barking up a storm just behind the door. Still as per Qrow's instruction, Roman calmly explained what had happened.

He expected to be literally talking to a door, but the dog stopped barking and to Roman's surprise, he heard the deadbolt click open from the inside. He still had no idea how the dog had managed to open it, or lock it closed for that matter.

He looked over to the corgi, lounging in his doggie bed by the window, sound asleep.

Then he looked around the room, at all the family pictures, mostly of the two girls and their father, sometimes featuring an exhausted looking Qrow.

To think that one botched dust robbery would lead him here. From being hunted down as a criminal to lounging in her childhood home looking after her dog… a wild and unhinged set of circumstances.

As for Beacon? Glynda's problem as far as he was concerned, the Grimm were gone, from Beacon and the exclusion zone in Vale propper was in the process of being sweeped for stragglers before allowing civilians to return. A good outcome all things considered. And she got a whole bunch of students from the Initiation. There was a high amount of injuries, sure but no one died and that was a win in Roman's books.

Lie, cheat but most importantly survive.

O=O=O=

Author's note:

So this one is a bit of a breather after the action of the last chapter. Unfortunately it ended up a little short of what I wanted length wise.

I've been feeling a bit under the weather, a combination of weather and work no doubt.

But hey if you want to support me you can do so on P a treon . com (slash) OlympianScribe

Anyway I hope you enjoyed and are looking forward to the next chapter: Ch. 84 Carcer Aeternus Infiniti Hominis