Emerald hit the ground. She felt the weight of the Grimm pressing down on top of her, the warmth of blood spilling down her side and trapped there by her shirt. She closed her eyes.

A flash of green pierced through her eyelids, and for an instant her face flared as something extremely hot whizzed over it.

…

She wasn't dead?

Emerald dared to open her eyes again. The last smoke particles of the Grimm drifted apart above her, inches from her nose, soon lost in the rain. A boot stomped on a puddle beside her head, and then there was a woman in a Beacon uniform standing over her, a Dust rifle cooling down in her hands.

Well, that really took the wind out of her sails.

The next few moments were a blur. She could only recognize that her ears were no longer ringing, and thus the sounds of multiple sirens ringing across the street was suddenly very apparent. She was lifted off her feet as more vehicles stormed in and agents spread out, and the next thing she knew, she was sitting in the back of an ambulance with a different woman pressing a gauze to her wound.

Emerald hissed. "Warn a girl first, would you?"

She didn't get a response from the woman, but a different agent nearby gave her a cross look and not-so-vaguely shook a rifle in her direction.

Emerald endured the rough treatment. She felt her head start to sway, and though she was shockingly alert at the moment, she knew she was about to crash any second now.

Amidst the bustle of Beacon agents pacing around, she spotted Mercury being placed in cuffs again and shoved into the back of a car. She tried to make herself a little taller so he could see her, but he didn't get to look her way before the door was closed on him.

At least he wasn't Grimm food.

A commotion drew her attention away from the car. Two agents drudged towards another ambulance, dragging a trembling Winter Schnee between them. To say she was in a bad state would have been an understatement, but that didn't seem to concern her as she futilely resisted their help.

"Ma'am, please. You're in shock. You need a doctor-"

"You don't understand," Winter said through clenched teeth. "I need-"

"We've got things under control. Please, we already have one Atlesian Specialist dead on our turf today. The last thing Director Branwen would want is to make that two."

Winter winced, and Emerald had the impression it had nothing to do with the pain. "The Director-"

A yell cut through the clamor. "We've got someone!"

Emerald looked at the crumbled building across the road. From such a distance, and with the rain and crowd impeding her vision, she could barely make out anything, but she swore she saw a hand reaching out of the rubble.

She lost sight of what was going on as half the agents in the area raced to the scene. Minutes later, Qrow Branwen, covered in dust and ash from head to toe, broke from the crowd and limped towards the ambulances, shaking off the hands that tried to help him. He shot Schnee a glance as he passed her.

"Told ya," he rasped. "Universe's least favorite."

He climbed onto Emerald's ambulance and blinked when he saw her half-lying on her cot.

"It's occupied?" he said blearily. "You don't mind."

He plopped down on the bench beside her and laid down across it.

"Wait, shit." He opened one eye to squint at her. "Do I need to collar you?"

Emerald shrugged. "I won't kill you," she said sincerely.

"Reconsider," he mumbled. "Pretty sure I've got a hundred concussions."

He groaned as an agent knocked on the lip of the ambulance.

"We've got the fleeing civilians secured, Director. Grimm are vanquished, all stragglers accounted for and dispatched."

"Fantastic."

"We've got Cinder Fall's location. Squads are in pursuit now."

At that, Branwen sat up in attention. "What's she up to?"

"Unclear as of yet, sir. But we're closing in fast."

Emerald blinked heavily. There was that crash she knew had been coming. But she felt this was something she should be awake for.

She blinked again and lied down. When her eyes closed once more on their own, she elected not to open them again.

It was like she had told Mercury. Who gave a shit?

Cinder's head buzzed with static as she fled.

Beacon's puppets were hot on her trail, their vehicles casting a spotlight on her as she ducked and weaved through Haven's labyrinth of streets. They would not capture her. Not before she was dead.

She ran without direction, but that hardly mattered. If she could just outrun them, she could lose them. And from there, forge a new path. Get back on her feet. Reclaim her destiny.

Her back betrayed her, pain surging from a point low in her spine and setting her every nerve aflame. She braced herself against a wall, the skin of her forearm scraping across the rough bricks as she refused to slow down. The bleeding only kept her more alert.

She could take a hostage, perhaps. No. That would only slow her down. She needed no fancy tricks, only determination.

She darted out of an alleyway, and her foot found open air. The ground vanished under her, and suddenly she was sliding down a sharp decline, rolling end over end. The last reserves of her energy were battered out of her each time her back hit the ground, leaving her empty and gasping for breath.

She hit the bottom.

Gripped by agony, Cinder curled into a ball and sank deep into herself.

There was no point in running. She had thought of reclaiming destiny, but she had sealed her own the moment she had defied Salem. There was no corner of this world or beyond where she could hide from her. When Salem inevitably found her, the best Cinder could hope for was to be killed for her treachery.

She grasped at the dirt under her hands, clawing through it, getting it under her nails. This was it, then. One end or another.

Cinder clambered onto her knees and faced her fate.

She was bathed in an ethereal glow. Not Beacon's searchlights, or the malignant crimson stares of Salem's army of Grimm. Red and blue and green and every color in the spectrum, it turned her skin into a kaleidoscopic sea of stars. The glow passed through her, drawing her in.

Cinder looked up. A tree stood before her, translucent, reaching to the heavens. The wind and rain raged around it but its branches didn't so much as sway. She had heard whispers of this tree, the few times she had dared ventured outside her lair. It had sprouted spontaneously after she had gone into hiding. Nikos' unwitting work, she suspected, borne of the Maiden's power – the power that was rightfully hers.

Something pulsed inside Cinder, a spark of magic she hadn't felt in months, not since she had been defeated and everything had been taken from her. It was but a drop compared to what it used to be, a withered candle next to a forest fire, but it was there, nestled deep within her soul.

Cinder realized then, as she stood to her feet, that she hadn't been running directionless after all.

The harsh glare of Beacon's searchlights found her again as she walked towards the tree, and she heard the soldiers clambering down after her. They barked orders at her. Insignificant.

As she turned and put her back against the bark of the tree, Cinder watched them circle her, weapons primed. Cinder smiled.

She would not die as a pawn in someone's game. Least of all, she would not be locked away and forgotten. Her name was Cinder Fall.

She opened her arms wide, fell through the ephemeral tree, and vanished from Remnant.

Emerald rubbed her side idly. The doctor that had stitched her up had told her to leave it alone, but Emerald could hardly help herself when she had nothing else to serve as a distraction from her thoughts.

She had tried for a while to focus on the slight hum of the collar tight around her neck, but she had grown woefully familiar to that sensation of the last few days. Branwen's lackeys hadn't hesitated to put one back on her the moment they were sure she was in the clear – Emerald supposed not running off hadn't been enough to convince them she wasn't going to give everyone around her an aneurysm the first chance she got.

Which was understandable. She wouldn't trust her if she were in their shoes. Didn't make it any less annoying, though.

They hadn't even had the grace to toss her back into her stupid cubicle cell. At least there she would have had Mercury to annoy and to annoy her back. Instead they'd just left her alone in the med bay. What was she, chopped liver?

There it was. She had managed to piss herself off for a second. And now it was gone, and the thoughts came slithering back in.

The thing that sucked about self-actualization, Emerald was finding, is that the clarity never lasted for very long. There was the high of the moment (that had been awesome), the ensuing terror (not so much), then the trying to carry on like nothing had changed (and Emerald was good at deceiving herself, but not flawless at it). Finally, when everything else was done with, the only thing left was the little seed of doubt that grew to occupy every single instant of her existence.

Had she made a mistake? Should she have gone with Cinder after all? Was Cinder not as bad as she thought? Was Cinder going to find her and cut off her head for her impertinence? Could she fix this? What was going to become of her? Did she even deserve to stand on her own?

Her imagination was already hard at work. Emerald found herself crafting narratives, taking every doubt raging inside her and wrapping them up in layers and layers of lies after lies, weaved together to make a new reality for herself. One where everything was going to work out. One where she was in control.

The temptation to let herself believe was so strong, resisting it hurt more than the actual wound on her body. And that was good. If there was one area where Emerald could tell truth from fiction without fail, it was pain. She had been trying to avoid pain all her life. Now it was her greatest ally.

She let it reign her, then, not the doubts. She allowed them to storm inside her, rather than denying them, but she refused to give them any more agency than that.

In that storm, Emerald picked three things she knew to be truth. Whatever came next, they would guide her forward.

The first:

Her name was Emerald Sustrai, and she wasn't a good person.

The second:

She had done some very bad things, and that was no one's fault but her own.

The third:

She would like to be someone new, but that didn't erase the above two items.

And after a moment's hesitation, because this one wasn't exactly up to her to decide if it was true, she decided on a fourth thing:

There was one person in this world that still cared about her, and if that was the case, maybe it was worth keeping a little bit of her old self around.

The cold air made the hair of Qrow's arms stand on end as he walked into the morgue. The door clicked shut behind him. He walked to the table in the middle of the room.

Clover Ebi lay dead.

Most of his body was hidden under a black tarp, only his face and neck left uncovered. Qrow had nixed an autopsy, knowing James would want his own people to perform one. The only hands to have touched the body had done so to clean it, for the most part, and to close his eyes.

Clover's face was blank in his final rest, but if Qrow glanced at it from an angle, for a second he could almost see the familiar shape of a smile on that mouth.

He was supposed to say something. An apology, maybe, or a polite goodbye. Maybe even an angry jab, because it wasn't like Clover hadn't acted on his own to get himself here. Instead Qrow just tapped Clover's elbow and turned away brusquely.

The deceased's belongings had been bagged and set on a nearby desk. Those that had been on his person at the moment of death, anyway. Qrow was pretty sure Clover hadn't packed for an extended trip. There was his bloody and torn uniform; a Dust pistol that had lasted well past the point it should have run out of ammo or backfired; his shattered phone.

A metal cylinder of unknown function. Labeled so on the plastic bag.

Qrow unzipped the bag and took it out. With a tap and a flick, Ozpin's cane extended to its full length.

"Forgot I gave this to you. Too late now to ask if you got anything interesting out of it, huh?" Qrow spoke to the air.

Clover's corpse did not reply.

"Stupid." Qrow pressed the cane to his forehead. The metal was cool on his skin. "Of course you didn't."

He sighed from the depths of his soul and walked back to the table with Clover. He put the cane down beside the body, then leaned on the edge of the table.

The door opened and shut behind him. Steady footsteps clicked on the marble tiles.

"I thought the docs gave you bed rest," Qrow said.

Winter stopped beside him. Her shoulder was set in a brace, and her complexion still looked sick, even as she put on a tough face. "I thought the same was true of you."

"Two peas in a pod, aren't we?"

Winter stared at the body for a moment.

"He was a good soldier."

"I think so too," Qrow said. "But tell me your definition."

Winter's silence mingled with the room's. Qrow was sure that if he could get her to drop her reservations and speak truthfully, this would turn into pandemonium. Maybe it was a good thing, after all, that she had such self-control.

"You talked to your boss yet?" Qrow asked.

"I have tried, but he has yet to pick up any of my calls," Winter said. "But, it hasn't been more than a day. The General is not one to act prematurely."

"Making flimsy excuses has never been your style, either," Qrow noted, and Winter bristled at that, but did not retort. "I'm worried, and so are you. This was a complete shitshow, Winter. And yes, it could have been avoided, but it wasn't me who lit the fuse. And now your General is silent? Something's not right here."

Winter crossed her arms. Her eyes did not leave Clover.

"You know what was done to him?" Qrow asked.

"I was not privy to the specifics. Most of what I know is what you've pieced together yourself," Winter said. "And nothing was done to him. It was a voluntary procedure."

"I'm not trying to start a fight. Just work with me here, okay?" Qrow said. "Far as I can tell, they unlocked his Semblance by injecting him with Dust. He had so much running in his body, it burned him out from the inside. Especially in the end. Where have we seen that kind of thing before?"

"Weiss," Winter supplied, and the coolness in her reply suggested that the idea had been spinning in her busy head long before he brought it up. "She originally unlocked her Semblance with a Dust formula she herself manufactured. But her case was drastically different. For one, save for an initial period of shock, Weiss never suffered from any unstable side effects. The Dust was a mere catalyst for her awakening, rather than a constant power supply as seemed to be the case with Ebi."

Qrow turned around and leaned his back against the table. "Which implies…?"

"It implies whatever method was used in Clover's procedure, it was likely not the same my sister used."

That likely was doing a lot of work there, but Qrow understood it. Matters of family always got complicated, and that seemed to be one of the few people problems Winter was not immune to.

"Maybe," he said. "Or maybe it was the same formula, but modified. Maybe it was unfinished and whoever completed it royally botched the job. If I recall, your sister didn't share her formula with anyone, did she?"

"She did not," Winter replied readily. The frown on her face told a different story. "My apologies. That is not entirely correct. My father had knowledge of the formula, but he is as good at doing science work as he is at raising children. That, and he is in prison."

"Hmm. Wouldn't stop someone else from taking what he knows and doing the rest of the work."

He didn't finish the rest of that thought, but Winter was way ahead of him.

"General Ironwood would never work with my father," she spat, and for once Qrow felt like he deserved some of that venom. "He despises that man nearly as much as I do. For goodness' sake, Qrow, he's the one who threw him in prison."

"All fair points," Qrow said. He decided not to bring up the fact that Jacques Schnee's 'prison' was a cushy penthouse apartment, because that was besides the point and would only get him punched in the face. "But you don't think he could put that behind him for the sake of his country's defense? Hell, he wouldn't even have to work with Jacques. I've never known James to balk from strong-arming people into doing what he wants."

"He would not work with Jacques," Winter said. "Not without consulting me first," she added, a moment later.

Qrow nodded. "He wouldn't. Just like he wouldn't tell me he wanted nothing to do with Fall, then go back on his word and cause the biggest diplomatic incident of the last fifteen years, all while keeping you in the dark."

"If you have a point to make, Director, then I implore you to get to it rather than keeping with these obtuse pageantries."

"I'm not being obtuse, I'm agreeing with you," Qrow said. "James wouldn't do any of that. Which means?"

To her credit, once that wall of stubbornness came down, it took no more than a second for Winter to connect the dots.

"You believe the General is compromised," she said.

"Bingo." Qrow clapped his hands. "The enemy behind our walls."

He could see it on her face that she was immediately going back in time, examining all of her recent interactions with the General for evidence that he was right. Or, knowing where her loyalties lay, that he was wrong. Qrow almost hoped she would come up with something to disprove his theory. He didn't like the idea of Salem pulling the strings of Atlas' most powerful man.

Sadly, he didn't think Winter was going to manage that.

"I don't blame you for missing it," Qrow said. "Changes like that, when they're gradual, you're actually more likely to miss them the closer you are to the person. Me? I'm supposed to clock this stuff."

Winter was silent for a moment longer. "What are you going to do?"

What am I going to do, was the real question she was asking herself. Qrow felt as if he was looking at a version of himself from three months ago.

"I'm going to try to figure this out, obviously, and the General is going to shut me out completely," Qrow said. "I'll have to send someone else, then. Which is why you're going to tell them that Sustrai died in the fiasco."

"What?" Winter looked first confused, then shocked, and finally pissed off. Qrow almost felt bad for throwing so much at her in so little time. "You're going to send Fall's lackey to spy on the General. And then, that not being enough, you mean to make me complicit in this farce."

"You catch on very fast. Adore that about you."

"That is completely absurd. There were multiple witnesses to her survival."

"No, there were witnesses to her being carted away in an ambulance. She could have died anytime after that."

"Regardless-" Winter inhaled sharply- "You realize I cannot in good conscience keep this from the General, no matter whether you're correct in your wild assumptions. I do not throw my loyalties away so easily."

"Good," Qrow said. "That's what I'm counting on. Tell James I'm up to no good. And keep very close to him."

Winter blinked. She exhaled, and as angry as she looked, he couldn't miss the begrudging respect in her eyes. Qrow vowed to not let it get to his head.

"Congratulations, Director," Winter said. "You've entrapped me."

"Maybe, but you don't have to listen to me. Go home, make your own conclusions, do your own work. I'm just giving you an in," Qrow said. "I was pretty sure before that James sent you to babysit me while he tested me. Now I'm starting to wonder if all of this wasn't a test for you too."

"You think he doubted my loyalty?"

"I think he needed to know if he can count on you. Whatever that entails."

Winter turned away from him, her hands going to her hips. The motion made her injured shoulder jolt, and he caught her wince for a split second, before she sighed.

"It is extremely aggravating," she said, "that after all that's happened, you have come up with this harebrained scheme, that you are unreasonably confident it will work, and most of all, that it actually might. I suppose it was too much to hope for that you might learn to act with a little more prudence going forward."

"This is me being prudent," Qrow said. "You were right before, when you said I'm more comfortable mending a disaster than preventing one. Here's the part you haven't figured out – that's a learned behavior. I'm not proud of it, but it's how I got here today."

He grabbed Ozpin's cane and held it before him.

"Something big's coming. Walls crumble, night falls. I don't think I could prevent that if I tried. Don't think anyone could. And maybe that's why I'm the guy with the cane now," he said. "Still, maybe an old bird can learn some new tricks, as long as he's got help."

Qrow shrank the cane with a flick of his wrist, put it in his pocket, and turned to offer Winter a handshake.

"Oz had a thing about putting his faith in people. He… liked his inner circles," he said. "Maybe in that way, I can take after him. What do you say?"

Winter pursed her lips. After a long minute, she looked to the ceiling and mouthed something, maybe an apology to her General or to her own conscience, before she gave him a nod.

"I suppose I would rather be in your confidence than let you run amok. I will not, however, shake your hand," she said. "My shoulder is on fire, and your ego is not worth my discomfort."

Qrow grinned. She could never let him have it easy.

For all the bad shit Emerald had done in her life, she somehow had never been held in an interrogation room. Not even after Vale – that had been a quick pipeline of handcuffs, bulletproof van, max security prison. This was a novel experience, then.

She couldn't say she was enjoying it much, but maybe she'd had it coming.

"You eat anything recently?" Branwen asked as he sat down across from her. "Aside from that gross jello stuff the docs shove in your mouth, I mean."

He slid a bag of chips across the table. Emerald caught it clumsily between her cuffed wrists.

"What is this, a bribe?" she asked.

"If that's a bribe, either your standards are ground-level, or you think very little of me," Qrow said. "What would I even bribe you for?"

"Don't know. Not exactly my business to figure that out, is it?"

It was a bit of a fight, but she managed to pull the bag apart at the seams, then stick a hand inside and pluck a chip out of it. It melted on her tongue, salty and dripping with fat at the same time. Disgusting.

She scooped up a handful and began stuffing her mouth. Branwen stared at her, arms crossed and face impassive. She didn't like that he was being silent.

"Maybe you just want to keep me happy," she said between mouthfuls. "You know, so I don't cause any more trouble."

"Are you planning to cause me more trouble, Sustrai?" Branwen asked.

Emerald licked the tip of her fingers, then paused, noticing the frown starting to show on his face. She wasn't making a good impression, was she? Without even thinking, she had defaulted right back to that casual contempt of authority she was so fond of. Some habits died hard.

"No," she said, lowering the bag of chips to her lap. "I'm not gonna cause any trouble. Not that I could, but... I'm not gonna try."

"Isn't that music to my ears," Branwen said. "Course, woulda been better if you had changed your tune sooner. Could have saved me a lot of headache. Literally."

"Well, you could have caught me sooner and stopped all of that if you hadn't acted like a complete dumbass." Emerald winced. "Sorry. You're totally throwing me back in prison, aren't you?"

Branwen sat back, his coat hanging loose off him as he threw his arms around his chair. "What would you do if I didn't?"

Emerald blinked. That had to be a trick question. If so, she didn't have a clue what he wanted to hear. And if she were being honest…

She had nothing. Her best idea before had been finding some quiet corner of the world to live out the rest of her life in peace, but the Emerald who had made those plans had included Cinder in every version of them, and she had been a severely less guilt-ridden Emerald too. Just entertaining the thought now made her feel all sorts of twisted inside.

"I couldn't tell you," Emerald said. "Not causing trouble was kind of the top of my ambitions, to be honest."

Branwen hummed and, for a long while, just stared at her, not particularly like he distrusted her answer or found it lacking, but like he was trying to dig out something deeper.

Emerald decided that she really disliked being interrogated.

"I am bribing you, actually," he said finally. "I have a job for you, and if you accept, you get to not serve the rest of your sentence. Could even get you a full pardon." He paused. "I think. Probably. I'm the Director of Beacon, so I don't know who could stop me."

Emerald frowned. "What kind of job?"

"Something suited to your strengths. Up north where it's snowy. I'll share more, but first I want to hear some commitment."

Up north. She shivered, and it wasn't because she remembered how miserably cold Atlas was. But that wasn't her biggest concern.

"Why would you even trust me with anything?"

"Well, a week ago, you were so enamored with Fall that you busted into a surgery room and held people at gunpoint to save her life," Branwen said. "And now – correct me if I'm wrong – you want nothing to do with her."

"That doesn't mean much."

"Not on its own, yeah. Cutting ties with a psychopath doesn't mean you're suddenly any less of a bastard yourself." He leaned forward. "But you had every opportunity to run away, and you didn't take them. Some of that was for Black's sake, I'm sure."

Emerald flinched. Where did he get off, reading her for filth like that?

"But it tells me something else as well," he continued. "It tells me you're looking for a change. You want to do some good, for once. Make up for some of the pain you've caused, even if nothing will ever be enough. And maybe I have a soft spot for fuck ups and vagabonds, but that." He pointed at her. "That, I can trust."

Emerald thought she had been done accepting her new reality and the goals she had set for herself, meager as they had been, but just like that, he had burrowed himself in and ripped it all from her. She didn't just want to be someone new, or someone different. She wanted to be someone better.

She wasn't sure she deserved that. Maybe that was why she hadn't dared to admit that to herself before. But here he was, telling her she did.

The possibility was intoxicating, but one look at him, and the excitement drained out of her. That look he was giving her, like he had figured her out and had her in the palm of his hand already. One little promise and she gave herself away.

Never again.

"You trust me," Emerald said. "Why should I trust you?"

He looked puzzled, but only for a moment. "I thought the part about not throwing you in prison was pretty enticing."

"That's a shitty bribe. Barely better than these chips."

"You'll get to live without that collar on you at all times."

"You'll need me out of the collar if you want me doing your stupid job."

The Director crossed his arms again, sucking on his teeth as he stared at her. The corner of his mouth quirked into a grin, which Emerald just found infuriating.

"Tell me what you want then, and we'll meet halfway."

"Not halfway. All the way," Emerald said. "I know my worth."

Branwen rolled his eyes. "I'm starting to understand how Winter feels. Fine. Name your conditions."

"I've got two." Emerald raised her fingers. "First, I want to know what the deal is with the witch."

He squinted at her for a moment, before he sat up, suddenly alert. "What witch do you mean? You haven't met Glynda, have you?"

"You know what I'm talking about," Emerald said. A second later, she realized that maybe he didn't. "The Grimm lady Cinder's scared shitless of. Evil incarnate. Big mommy with the tentacle servants?"

Branwen rubbed at the corner of his eyes.

"You know what? What I'm sending you to do, maybe it is best that you're in the loop about her. I've done dumber stuff before."

Emerald believed him.

"I'll tell you. Later." Branwen gestured at her to go on.

"Alright," Emerald said, lifting her chin, because she really wasn't budging on this one. "My second condition."

The guard opened the door of the cubicle cell. When he didn't move, Emerald continued to stare at him. Only when she sharpened that into a glare did he get the hint and shuffle away to provide her some privacy, but not before warning her with a look.

Emerald turned herself around, breathed in and out twice, and stepped into Mercury's cell.

He sat up in his bed as she approached, rubbing his eyes as if he had just woken up from a nap. She didn't buy it for a second.

"Oh hey, you didn't bleed out to death," he said. "Joy in all the world."

Emerald huffed, and just like him, didn't acknowledge the reason why she had nearly bled to death. She looked at his bed, spotting the magazines strewn open over it.

"I see you've finally gotten some good boy privileges. Whose ass did you have to kiss?"

"I'm not the kinda guy who tells. Why, you jealous?"

Emerald scoffed. His eyes fell on her bare neck.

"Looks like I'm not the only one with privileges," Mercury said. "How did you convince the bird man you weren't going to blow up the brains of everyone in this building the moment they took that thing off you?"

"I didn't." Emerald shrugged. "This is kind of a test drive. Trust me, they're watching me like a hawk."

She put her hands on her hips.

"Director Dickwad offered me a job."

"Oh?"

"Low-key surveillance job. Sneak around, keep tabs on some bigwig bastards. I don't have all the details yet." She paused. "Up in Atlas."

He winced at that. She'd figured he would.

"Well, congratulations to you, I guess," Mercury said. "Never figured you for a turncoat, but you gotta respect the hustle."

"I didn't say if I accepted yet. I was waiting to hear what you'd say first."

He scoffed. "What, you need my blessing?"

"I was kinda hoping you'd take the job with me."

Emerald's heart vibrated like crazy inside her chest, especially as she watched the multitude of emotions on his face settle into a withdrawn, distrustful expression.

"Why would I wanna go to Atlas, with you, to work for goddamn Beacon?"

"Well," Emerald said, "there's the not going to prison, for one."

"Have you thought maybe I belong in prison? And you! Why would you want me to come with you?" Mercury asked.

He was barely thinking before he spoke. It was the only way he could speak so earnestly.

"Because I-" Emerald's voice cut out, and something else took over for a second. "It would be boring by myself."

Mercury gave her a long look, before he suddenly stood up and paced to the other end of the cell, putting his back to her.

Emerald balled her fists and pressed her to her temples. Why couldn't she just tell him the truth for once? She had risked her own life for him, how could one moment of honesty be scarier than that?

"Look, I- I'm not going without you," she said, and she hated the bitterness that seeped into her voice. "We're a package deal, so if you want us to rot in prison together, that's fine, I'll do that instead."

She saw him sneer in his reflection. "Oh, so the idea is to guilt trip me, then. What makes you think I give a shit about you?"

"Because I give a shit about you, Mercury!" Emerald yelled.

Silence settled over them like a physical force, curling around her neck to cut off her breath. Mercury bowed his head, and she could no longer see his face.

"I… I realize it's scary, and that you feel like you don't deserve a second chance," Emerald said. "Hell, maybe you don't. But are you going to just accept that? Everyone in your life has beat it into you that you're a monster, and that the only thing that's worth anything about you is the pain you can cause others. Are you going to let them have the final word, or are you going to do something for yourself, for once?"

Mercury turned around slowly, and she realized he was shaking as badly as she was. If she closed her eyes, she could almost feel his heartbeat fluttering in pace with her own.

"I know this is all just words. You said before that it was too late for us, and I don't blame you if you can't ever trust me again," Emerald said. "So how about we start over, and we do things better this time?"

She took a deep breath, willed her heart to steady, and extended her hand.

"I'm Emerald," she told him. "I'll catch you if you fall."

Mercury stared at her for a long while.

He snorted.

"You already know my name, dumbass."

He walked over and took her hand.

And that's a wrap on Emerald.

Thank you for reading this story! Tune in again this Sunday for a post-credits scene or three, and the author's rambling thoughts.

-Zeroan