"Uh… mom?"

"'Sup?"

"Do you, like, speak Mantell? Or anything helpful here?"

Raven snorted. "Fuck no." She frowned. "I mean, hell no. Sorry."

Ruby raised one eyebrow at her mother, feeling slightly taken aback at how they stood at equal resting height. "What?"

"What?"

"Why'd you correct yourself?"

Raven's gaze slipped aside, her lips pursing as a tiny, nervous laugh slipped out. "Cuz… cursing's bad? For your kids?"

Ruby rolled her eyes, just like Summer would. "I'm an adult, mom."

She deflated. "Yeah, well… just let me mom, okay? I've…" 'Got a lot to make up for,' Ruby heard, despite her mother saying, "It's what I'm here for," instead.

Ruby stared at her. She didn't know how to stare at her, exactly— weirdly, probingly, imploringly?— but she put her eyes on her mom and kept them there. Raven met her gaze. Summer would've looked somewhere else, but Ruby didn't (even if she wanted to).

Could she see her wife in her daughter's eyes?

Raven squinted, her mouth working slowly before sound came out, as if she wanted to chew her words out before giving them to Ruby— a rather birdlike mannerism. "You look… so…"

Of course she—

"Different."

Ruby blinked. "What?"

Raven looked away, nervous or unsure— ways Raven should never look, but it's damn-near the only way she'd looked since she teleported to Ruby. "I— I just thought… I keep thinking you're going to look like her, but… you don't."

"Like mum?"

Raven pursed her lips. "No, your dad."

Ruby leapt out of her seat in a shock. "My—"

Raven snorted so hard it sounded like her brains would get pushed out of her nose. The older Faunus fanned her face, turning red, but she couldn't hold it in— the laughter burst out of Raven Noct Branwen like water flash-boiling in a kettle, popping all her gaskets and making her jaw crack wide as she howled, releasing mirth from the deep and cobwebbed corners of her soul. She shook, rocking back and forth, and smacked her scraggly bird-knees like a sixty year old dad.

"Oh, oh," Raven gasped, rubbing tears from her eyes as her daughter silently, redly fumed. "Oh, my god, oh shii-oot. Oh man. Oh. God."

Ruby fell back into her seat, arms crossing. "Take your time. Dick."

Raven gave her a 'you're a good sport, kid' kind of pat on the arm, which was patronizing as hell. "No, no, kidding. Your mom put you in me, no doubt." She let out a long, satisfied sigh. "You shoulda seen your face."

Ruby huffed. "Fu—" no wait, nope, that'd be meaner than mom deserved, she was just teasing, after all. "Screw you."

Raven smiled at her. It felt wrong to get smiled at like that, like mom was trying to trick her or something, but mom wasn't the type to do that. Maybe she just didn't like how unfamiliar it felt. How… okay it felt.

Ruby didn't ask the specifics of how she did or didn't look like her mum, she just let the silence hang instead, at least for a few minutes before she addressed her mother again. "What all did you bring?"

Raven turned stupidly. She gave Ruby a distinctly dumb look— like she was the one who was supposed to bring stuff. Ruby was still distinctly unused to either of her mothers looking any way that could be aligned with idiocy.

She flattened her voice and glared at Raven. "Mom."

"What?"

"You did bring stuff, right? Like… clothes? Or food?"

Raven shrugged. "I've got money."

Ruby pinched the bridge of her nose. "Mm. Mmhm, yeah."

"What!"

"Mom," she said slowly. "What do you bring when you go on a mission?"

The veteran Huntress shrugged. "Nothing?"

Mum, annoyingly: 'Nope. I do all the logistics work.'

Ruby scowled.

'And the Hunting, usually.'

Ruby scowled. She'd almost forgotten she had two shitty moms.

Weiss Schnee stared at her reflection in the mirror.

Her dress. Her makeup. Her braid.

Her waist, unadorned with her partner's sword. Her hands, empty.

Made so perfect for Florabel. Made so perfect for nothing.

'You'll be a service to my Academy?'

'You really think that?'

'You…'

When last she'd confronted her reflection, Weiss had been a different girl. She could see that, beyond the lack of one stubby digit. Then, she was a strike unaimed, making a blind thrust at the world and hoping to strike an artery. And what was she now?

'You know, perhaps you may have a point.'

'Yes. You can be exceptionally useful.'

'Come to my school.'

Now she was a girl. A little cult-kid, Ruby had called her, despite being almost a year older than the girl. She wasn't a metaphor, nor even a simile, she was a girl. Two arms, two legs, one eye, nine fingers, human. Girl.

'Protection?'

'Of course I'll protect you.'

'Just do one thing for me.'

She'd take the deal again, so long as it got her out of here. Not like she'd upheld it either way.

'There's a student I want you to meet—'

'Need you to meet.'

'A Faunus. You'll know.'

How easily she'd forgotten— no, she'd never forgotten. She just didn't care. Somewhere between 'F-fuck, go away,' and 'I cannot stand you,' she'd decided not to care.

'Why?'

'I want you to kill her, obviously.'

She'd decided she'd never care again. Diving from one evil old man to another, she never need to heed them. They were evil old men. She was young, very much not a man, and on the moral compass she was…

Well, she was trying. More or less. Somewhat.

She wasn't beholden to whatever wafer-thin promises she gave them under duress. Damn promises, damn evil old men, damn Florabel, damn Ruby— damn her!

Damn her. Damn her for…

It would've been so much easier just to kill her, or even to die trying. So desperately she'd wanted to despise the girl. She was everything a good Fourth like her was supposed to hate: godless, Faunus, descended from the Second. She was everything Weiss was raised to hate— raised by an evil old man to hate. Why run from him, yet feign to clutch at his ideals? Why be a hypocrite?

Why keep pretending that there could ever be a world where she didn't want Ruby? Why push away the unity that she craved? Why push away the floral snap of frozen apples? Why pretend that it mattered what was between her legs, especially after that prom night?

Why stand there and stare. Why not open the door. Why not dive from the edge of the district and wait for Florabel to find the red smear of her corpse. Not like anybody else could feed her, now (she'd be Flora-bound forever. Ru-bound. Bel-bound).

Why not leave all these other Faunus behind.

Five raps on the door (thump-tha-thump, thum-thump): father's knock.

She didn't invite him in like she should've. This would make him, as Ruby would say: 'pissy,' but no force on this world or any other could drive her to care. He was an adult. He could open a door himself.

Jacques Schnee, her father, an adult, opened the door himself. He stepped through the threshold himself. His presence (as an Evil Old Man) invaded Weiss' space.

"Weiss," he said through his awful mustache. "My daughter," he said with his awful, haughty voice, speaking Mantell as if he were butchering it despite it being his first tongue. "You have finally come home."

Weiss considered how she could shatter the mirror, pluck a shard of glass, and kill Jacques Schnee before more words could desecrate the air of her room. She considered, then let it drop. He had an Aura. She didn't. Without her sword— the sword for which she would kiss Ruby fully on the mouth— she had no means of murdering her father (not while remaining alive herself, that is) before he could restrain her. She was useless without Ruby's help.

Weiss eyed her father's left hand. Two rings remained on his finger.

There was a new ring on his middle finger.

Her gaze was drawn up as he stepped forward, his arms rising. "Come, snowflake, hug your papa."

Weiss considered what Ruby would say if their circumstances were traded:

"Fuck you," she would say, so Weiss said it. "Kill yourself. Die," and when it felt like she needed just a little bit more, she added. "Bitch."

Jacques blinked at her, and he said "What?" in their mother tongue because he did not speak Valish. Weiss scowled, considering suicide, but she wouldn't rob her partner quite yet.

"Get away from me," she restated in a language he'd understand. "Wretched old pig."

Jacques laughed smugly, like he deserved to have Weiss there, impotently insulting him. Like she was a consolation prize for his troubles. "No, I think I will stay. I have missed my daughter— we all have."

Weiss considered kicking him in the testes. This would not work since he had an Aura, but a girl deserved to wonder.

"There is so much for you to do to catch up, the work you were made for." Jacques' eyes were softer than they ever deserved to be. "We have been waiting for you to come back, snowflake."

Perhaps, if Ruby called her 'snowflake' in Valish, it would lodge itself as deeply as 'princess' did. She had a talent for turning Weiss' least favorite words into gold. "I will do nothing for you, you walking ass-polyp of colonic disease."

'It sounds better in Mantell,' she would've told Ruby if she'd called her that in Valish, since that stupid bird probably would've just lost her head laughing at the verbose insult. 'Shut up!' she would've whined at that unbearable creature.

"Go crawling back to your…" Weiss sneered pointedly at her father's left hand. "New wife, you whore."

Jacques stared at her, but not at all like he was insulted. Rather like Weiss was the victim of a particularly pungent dramatic irony. "New wife," he repeated, chuckling. "That is… oh, my child, you never fail to amuse me."

Within the pure and perfect confines of her mind, Weiss Schnee vaporized him. It was a lovely thing to imagine.

"Come," Jacques softly demanded.

Weiss stayed precisely where she was. Something about her father was different. He used to do things with a sense of hurried desperation, as if every tiny job he assigned had to be done immediately, lest the world and culture and everything collapse and billions die.

But now his shoulders were back, his hands at his sides. Easy. Unburdened. All ways that Jacques Schnee had never looked. He stepped out of her room.

For once, she did not follow.

For once, he did not snap.

He simply looked over his shoulder, his eyes… soft on her. What was once a cold and surgical glare, through some impossible means, was warm. Weiss flinched at the sight. Jacques smiled, nodding his head companionably for her to come along.

Weiss was not angry. She was not frustrated. She was not distraught. Coming to his side, Weiss Schnee was, to her own downfall, undeniably curious. It wasn't every day your wretch of a father became remarkably unwretched.

Jacques guided her through the compound like she had never been, giving her a full tour spiel. He knew each room, each hall, each painting. He even opined on the doors and the door handles. His gait was young. Impossibly full of spirit. His voice was calm.

"And— I know you know this, but entertain me, I'm practicing— not many are aware, but this part of the compound is actually the oldest mansion in the whole of Atlas; some even call it 'The Arch's Refuge,' but that much is a local legend. Though I personally feel our Arch's presence here, I very much doubt the Fourth built this place himself."

Weiss nodded dumbly— she'd heard 'The Arch's Refuge' a hundred times, but never had she heard her father claim that this place wasn't the seat of the Fourth.

Jacques stopped in the sitting room. Weiss hadn't even noticed where they'd been going. "Just a moment, snowflake," he requested, gentler than Jacques possibly could. "We'll wait here a moment— the cooks are at work and, well," he checked his watch and chuckled, making an old-person noise as he bent down to sit on a cushioned bench. "It looks like we're fast walkers."

Weiss stared at him. She could not comprehend this man— this thing who had replaced her father within a span of five to six months.

Jacques pointed at her own watch. "Ah, I like yours. And in your schema, too, that's hard to find."

Too bewildered to do anything else, Weiss nodded. Jacques pointed the spot beside him, but the final drop of wherewithal in Weiss' being convinced her to sit somewhere else. Jacques shrugged.

"How has your schooling been?" He asked (genuinely?) before waving himself off with a wince. "Apologies, I have heard what happened. I will not ask."

Weiss blinked. "Something… happened? To the school?"

Jacques cocked his head. "Why, of course, have you not seen the news?" At his daughter's glare, he had the humility to look apologetic and explain: "Some freak attack— an ancient Ur-Dragon sleeping beneath Lake Castellan, likely disturbed by the Vytal Platform's thrust. I heard it was defeated at great cost."

Weiss' heart shot up into her throat. "G-great cost?"

Damn the school. Damn everyone in it. Damn the Headmaster. Damn it all. There was only one cost she cared about.

"Some twenty Beacon students dead," Jacques expanded solemnly, hanging his head. "A hundred injured, many hundreds of other casualties in staff and bystanders or live tourney attendants— a shame. A damn shame."

Weiss held her tongue. She wanted to ask for Ruby— despite all the logic that her father was likely bereft of any such list of casualties— but that was a name Jacques Schnee should never know, for Ruby's sake and Weiss' own.

Jacques continued: "And the Academy itself was quite damaged— classes furloughed for the first time in two centuries. The last time that happened was when an earthquake dropped the entire school into the lake, so… it must be quite bad."

"Ah! Jacques!"

Weiss leapt fully out of her skin, not just at the surprise of someone appearing from the dining room, but that somebody in this house had the audacity to call him Jacques. She turned to address the bold soul, already mentally preparing their obituary.

"And— Miss Schnee! My— my god, I haven't— come here!"

Weiss froze as the elk faunus Klein Sitko surged towards her, taking her wholly into his arms and hugging her tight. He sobbed.

"Oh, Miss Schnee, I missed you dearly!" he wept, clutching her skinny body closely. "After— after your accident, I— I—" he wailed and Jacques approached from behind him, patting his back, which seemed to silently urge him to release Weiss. She stared at Klein, the elk faunus, the man who was the best butler he could be, despite his job being assigned as punishment.

She stared at his hands: human fingers fused, indistinguishable, held together by the keratin cap of his malformed hooves. Before, father liked to laugh as he fumbled with whatever task he was given. Now, each hand had a rubber-coated hook attached to a pulley-apparatus, the hooks closing and opening as he flexed his wrists. They weren't anything pretty— no robotic prosthetics or mechanical masterpieces— but they were non-invasive, and the man could actually grab things.

"K-Klein…" was all she could possibly manage, because everything was too much. When the butler separated, he met Jacques' eyes and smiled, then turned to grab Weiss' hands again, one of his legs stretching back to nudge the dining room door open once more.

"Please, Miss Schnee, allow us to welcome you home once more— a fine meal awaits, perfect for a cold night like this!"

Weiss found herself tugged into the dining room, and the scent of candles burning swept into her nostrils as a nostalgic miasma. She looked around, astounded at how much of the dining room was different: the lighting warm, now, not bright, the walls now either bare or covered in paintings and portraits, not white-red banners of the Fourth's faith; and how much was the same: the long wooden table, ten seats lined with plush white cushions, the long-armed iron candelabra sitting in the middle— only now its wax-covered stems were cleared to show the black iron beneath, rather than having huge, old drips of wax solidifying the thing to the table. Weiss was ushered into a seat, her eyes tracking the action of Klein's hooks as they pulled her chair out.

She was so enraptured that she didn't realize she'd been placed at the head of the table, opposite her father. She was so enraptured that she hadn't seen Ironwood sitting at his right, and Winter sitting at his left. The table became a mile long, then snapped back like a rubber band as a domed serving platter landed before her, a warm hand placing itself between her shoulder blades.

Another hand (pale, slender, wrinkled knuckles) uncovered the meal. The sour smell of it hit her in the soul— a good sour, an old sour. After months of uninspired Valish food, lacking in tastes that stimulated the Atlan tongue, seeing that bright red soup made her eyes well up with tears.

Borscht. Honest-to-god borscht.

Weiss' mouth watered. Her fingers twitched. She took a deep breath, inhaling a childhood comfort forgotten. "Is this…" her eyes sought her father, the presence of the others momentarily pushed along. Jacques nodded, tweaking his moustache.

"Your mama's recipe."

"You… you remembered it?"

Jacques barked a loud laugh that made Weiss jump. "Remember! I could never! Even if I could, it would not be right, now would it?"

He nodded behind her. The hand was still on her back. Her heart pulled towards it.

Weiss did not look. She did not.

If she looked, she would not be able to un-look. It was a sick joke. A prank, pulled by a sadistic Jacques or Ironwood, everything else a comfort to lure her in, and this would be the moment they jerked the hook through her lip. The moment she looked— saw her mama's face, saw it not split, saw it blue-eyed, saw it sparking with life— her life would be held captive.

Because she could not bear to see her mother. Who could bear to see a parent you had eaten?

Ruby stared at the hotel mirror, poking her face, prodding her cheeks, searching for signs of the parent she had eaten.

She loosed her ravenish hair from its signature, styleless low ponytail, since being plain was her signature now. Weiss had braided it really nicely, but she couldn't be bothered to practice doing that on her own. She'd done good for that date with Blake, but… well… it hadn't done any good for her in the end.

It was long. Black and red. Jagged, in a way. She hadn't cut it in a good year or two, so it fell between her shoulder blades.

Fighting a Beowolf, the claws could get caught in it. That would kill her.

Fighting a person, they could grab it and expose her throat. That would get her killed.

Fighting anything, it could fall in her face and blind her. In combat, that split second of blindness would be the end.

Ruby jolted, throwing down the scissors her hand had picked up. She shook her arms out, feeling them, reinforcing that they were hers.

"Mum," she quietly growled to her own reflection. "You may not cut my hair."

The soul inside her own twisted bitterly, indignant. Mum's patronization: 'Don't be afraid to take advice.'

Ruby rolled her eyes. "I don't want advice. My hair is fine."

It didn't even look that good.

Ruby bit her cheeks, growling, "Wow, mum. Fuck you."

It was all… messy. Frazzled.

"It's like your wife's."

Yeah, well…

"'Yeah, well' what? What, you don't find your own wife attractive?"

The soul twisted back beneath the wooden slats of Ruby's mind. Huffing, Ruby split her hair over her shoulders. She started braiding.

"See what that bitch says when she sees pigtails. Yeah, mum. Talk shit about that."