Yo! Sorry about the long wait! I had vacation and then got distracted by Xenoblade X DE. Which is just... sooooo good.

Anyways, here's this!

Start Chapter 5

Making their way to the tree was, it turned out, a lot easier said than done.

The woods of the King's Acre grew denser the further out they got from the castle town, and while both Winter and Jaune could walk for hours on end without rest, Alyx and Lewis were children.

What was more, they were also children who weren't training to fight giant monsters, which meant they had – relative to their own – no stamina at all.

Jaune didn't begrudge them that. Winter didn't, either, but Alyx looked at the both of them like they were judging her constantly. She seemed to take every single time that she was incapable of keeping up with them as a slight against her. Jaune really would've rather sat her down and told her the truth; that she was a young girl, and that her not being able to keep up with trained Hunters was not her fault.

He was just concerned that that would result in a negative outcome regardless of his words.

Winter seemed to be taking a similar approach. She occasionally spoke with Alyx, but was usually brushed off.

The opposite was true of Lewis.

"Here, y'see this?" Jaune gestured towards the base of his sword. "When you're cutting firewood, you'd normally want an axe. I don't have one, though, so I'm using my sword not as a blade, but as a wedge. I'm using my body as little as possible. I'm letting the bulk of the blade split the wood."

Lewis nodded along, a veritable sponge for information. Jaune found himself smiling as Lewis took up Crocea, and, using the method he'd just taught him, managed to split the wood just a little bit.

"Nicely done!" He laughed. "A lot better than I did on my first try."

Lewis seemed surprised about that. "Really?"

"Would you believe me if I said I used to be pretty wimpy?"

The boy was flabbergasted. "Y-You!?"

That had Jaune laughing even harder, shaking his head. It also had him feeling a bit better about himself. He was often caught in the past; unable to reconcile the person he was now with the person he'd once been, at Beacon. The person whose weakness had cost his partner her life, whose weakness had been a hindering factor in their battle at Haven, whose weakness…

Whose weakness had been one of the reasons behind why Penny had chosen to die.

And yet now, Lewis looked at him and couldn't fathom a world where he had once been weak. It was humbling, in a way, even if he knew a lot of other people would've let such a thought go to their heads.

Jaune had been the type, once. Back when he'd first started at Beacon, and been so full of himself the moment he passed initiation. He'd rejected help from Pyrrha, put his team in a bad scenario, and nearly gotten himself kicked out of Beacon.

He'd made it work, in the end. They all had, at least for a time.

…

"Are you alright, Mr. Jaune?"

Now that made him feel old. He bristled somewhat, even as he looked over at the curious Lewis and sighed.

"I'm fine, thank you." He stood up. "We should have enough firewood for now. Let's head back."

Lewis nodded his head, and they made the trek back to their encampment settled by a small stream they'd found snaking through the Red Woods.

They were, at the moment, just sort of… sitting around. Mostly, because no matter how much they walked in the direction of the tree, it didn't actually seem to grow any closer. Given that this place was pretty much confirmed to be magical at this point, Jaune wasn't really shocked.

He was annoyed, certainly, but not shocked.

And so, for lack of anything else to do, they set up camp, and stayed put until they came up with a better plan.

That whole 'coming up with a better plan' part of said plan was proving elusive.

He and Lewis made it back to camp, and then sat down on some of the felled trees they'd set up as makeshift benches. The wood itself behaved much like normal wood, even if it was a bright red in coloration. Jaune was glad it wasn't a darker shade, given that if it had been, the whole affair would've seemed a bit more macabre.

He was just doing his best to hope that trees weren't sentient beings in this world or something.

Winter nodded to him as Lewis wandered over towards where Alyx was attempting to catch fish in the stream. She'd had a single success thus far over the course of three days, but had apparently decided that it was all she was going to be doing.

Jaune honestly felt for her. She was in that stage of her life where one thought they had everything figured out, and that life was simple and easy. When one was thirteen, they thought they knew everything. When one got older – as Jaune had – they realized rather rapidly that they didn't know anything at all, that no one actually knew anything, and that everyone was just kind of making things up as they went along.

Jaune had been an annoying teenager himself, so he wasn't about to judge Alyx for her pride.

Winter… was growing less and less understanding by the day.

"She refuses to heed my advice." She hissed out between clenched teeth. "Her strategy of catching fish has seen little success. People have been doing such since time immemorial! Methods have been discovered to make such much easier!"

Jaune knew that, and Alyx probably did, too. She just had too much ego to ask for help, or to even accept it.

"You didn't have a phase like that?" He asked, trying to lighten the mood.

"Of course not." Winter huffed. "I was not given the choice of having such a phase. I was raised to never show weakness, or arrogance. To be confident, assured, but never boastful, never self-aggrandizing. The things my father got away with he did so because he was an established name. as the person who was to be taking over the SDC, I was taught that I would have to start fresh; build a rapport with those who would one day work beneath and alongside me."

It was… more information than he'd really expected. Winter seemed to realize she'd gone off on a bit of a tangent as well, for she cleared her throat, and then said, "Regardless, no, I was never quite so insufferable."

Jaune snorted. "I was."

"Then I am quite glad that you have grown."

Jaune couldn't quite argue against that sentiment.

Over by the river, Alyx and Lewis began yelling, apparently having successfully managed to skewer something. Winter nodded, and stood from her position, making her way over to assist them.

Which left Jaune alone to tend to the camp.

It was as Jaune was doing nothing of remote import that a scuttling was heard off to his right. Jaune turned to face the brush, suspecting that maybe Alyx or Lewis had broken off from the crick, but no…

It was… a cat.

To be fair, it was clearly a magic cat. It was colored a bright cyan and magenta in alternating colors, like some kind of psychedelic chessboard, and its eyes seemed to stare into Jaune's soul. Despite that, it was a cute little bugger, and Jaune, without even really thinking about it, held out his hand, and chirped to get the cat to come over and let him pet it.

It did just that, walking over so that Jaune could run a hand across its back. It hummed in satisfaction – which wasn't quite a purr, but then, maybe cats just did things differently in the Ever After – as it arched its back, and Jaune scratched behind its ears a bit.

Eventually, after a two- or three-minute-long petting session, Jaune pulled his hand away, and the cat sat back on its haunches, smiling.

"Well, that was quite marvelous!" It spoke.

Jaune damn-near rocketed backwards with how hard he jumped up. As things were, he fell off of the log, hit his head on the ground, and groaned out in both pain and embarrassment.

"Ah, my apologies," The cat bowed as it walked over to him, appearing above him and framing the sky. "I did not mean to alarm you. Given I have not seen you before, am I correct in assuming you were not under the impression that I could speak?"

"Uh… yeah." Jaune admitted, rubbing at his head as he sat up.

"Well, I can speak." The cat announced.

Jaune felt he hadn't really needed to say that, but… okay.

"So… who are you, exactly?"

"I am the Curious Cat," The cat bowed, and yeah, that name checked out, Jaune supposed. "And I saw the group of you here. I realized I had never seen anything quite like you. And so, here I am."

Curious indeed.

"Might I ask what you are?" The cat stepped forward, before sitting down right in front of Jaune.

"I'm uh… human."

"Human. I see. What is a human?"

Oh. This was like when Jaune had been hanging out with his youngest sisters as a kid. Constant, never ending 'why's' and 'what's'.

Before he could get caught in that cyclical hell, though, the Cat hummed.

"Ah, but it seems the skies see fit to deny me your answer."

Jaune's brow furrowed, and he looked up. Sure enough, there were gray clouds suddenly beginning to gather overhead.

"Is it going to storm?"

"Well, in a manner of speaking."

"And that means…?"

"Well, hopefully, the storm is not here for you. It will likely pass you by without even–"

Thunder boomed out across the forest, and the leaves in the trees around them rustled.

"Hm." The Curious Cat hummed out. "It appears that it is here for you."

"What!?" Jaune called out, more than a little flabbergasted. He'd gone from relaxing to being bombarded by the knowledge that cats talked here to suddenly being thrust into… whatever this was! "Why?"

"Well, I cannot know." The cat shrugged, which was an odd thing to watch a cat do. "I have not known any of you long. Ah, but, before it takes you; know that you have to come to a resolution between the two of you!"

He was… pointing his paw to Jaune and Winter? Why? What did they have to resolve? Jaune was fairly certain that they were getting on decently well.

"Until you resolve whatever it is that hangs over your heads, you won't be able to–"

Whatever the cat said, however, was cut off entirely as reality stopped.

/

Jaune just sort of… was somewhere else.

He'd not fathomed the exact moment where he'd stopped being in the Red Woods, and had ended up wherever this was, but he was there now.

And exactly where he was…

He was still in a forest, but this was a different kind. Surrounding him were grand, decaying willow trees, with their branches weeping downwards, blocking the sky above from view. It was dark, terribly so, enough that the entire scene seemed to almost be cast in gray.

Actually… that might not have been the trees at all.

Everything was gray.

"Arc?"

He jumped, yet again, and blew breath out between his teeth to try and calm himself down. He turned to see Winter looking even more confused than he was.

Oh, right. She'd heard literally nothing of what the cat had been saying, had she?

"Where are we?"

"I don't know." He answered honestly. "I know that it has something to do with the fact that it was about to storm a second or so ago, but… I just sort of showed up here, without even realizing it."

Winter hummed in answer, which told him that she likely had had the same experience.

He told Winter as much as the cat had told him. It wasn't much.

"A talking cat, then?"

"Yep." Jaune had left out the part where it had scared the crap out of him. "Not sure I know what's going on there, but then, this place has pretty much been weird from minute one. I'm used to it by now."

Winter nodded, before turning around and getting a lay of the land. Jaune did much the same. He stepped towards the edge of the dark woods surrounding them, and tried to wrestle with some of the knotted branches to form a way out.

Instead, where his arm touched, the trees seemed to move to reinforce. He pulled his arm away, then tried again in another spot. The same thing occurred. He brought out the blade of Crocea, neutered and broken as it was, and tried to hack away at them, but nothing happened.

Behind him, he heard the crackling of fire, and he turned back around to see Winter having apparently been channeling her Maiden's fire upon the branches.

She was having about as good of luck as he was.

"Anything?" He asked, just to say something.

She shook her head. "Nothing."

Jaune walked back over to the middle of the area surrounding them, and looked up at the sky, trying to see if he could make out the sun, or any source of light. They were illuminated, given that they weren't exactly in pitch darkness, but… it was like the brightness had been turned up on a videogame. There was no light emanating from anywhere at all. The place was lit, without reason.

Then again, given this was the Ever After, Jaune wasn't sure why he was surprised by that.

"He said… well, the cat said, that until we come to a resolution, we're trapped here."

Winter visibly bristled at that. She drew her saber, summoned forth a great Megoliath, and had it charge the vines.

It struck them dead on, but simply dissipated, the force of the impact enough to crush its skull.

Winter was shaking.

"What are we supposed to admit, or resolve!?" Winter shouted, sounding angrier than anything. "This entire place… I cannot stand it!"

Jaune… he wasn't quite where Winter was, emotionally, but he understood her feelings. This place was aggravating in that it had no set rules, no set boundaries. Just when they thought they'd figured something out, something else like this happened, and completely mucked the whole affair up.

They sat there for a while after that. Jaune wasn't sure how long. It had to have been at least fifteen or twenty minutes by the time he was so frustrated with sitting around that he stood, if only to act.

They were stuck there, in that tiny clearing, until they… admitted something.

Jaune wasn't really sure what it was they had to admit. Was it something they needed to share with one another? Were they somehow on uneven ground?

Idly, he realized that this place was getting to him. His breathing was quickened, and his blood was pumping.

This place was creepy. Terrifying, even.

…

…It couldn't be that simple, could it?

But maybe it could. After all, they both knew it, but neither of them had said a thing about it.

In that case…

"I'm scared." He uttered.

Winter turned to him with slightly widened eyes. She seemed… oddly flummoxed by what Jaune had just said. He wouldn't blame her. They'd, the both of them, been keeping up appearances for a while now.

Maybe that was what this was all about. Maybe that was why they were here.

"About… this place?" She asked.

"No." Jaune took a step forward, and looked up at the sky above him. "About where we are. About everything."

It was an oddly freeing thing to say aloud. Jaune hadn't realized how much it would feel like a load off his shoulders.

"That…" Winter looked away.

Jaune wasn't finished though.

"I'm scared about what's happening to my friends in Vacuo. I'm scared about how far back in time we've been sent. I'm scared about the fact that I don't understand anything that's happening in this world, and… and I'm scared that we're not going to be able to get back, no matter what we do. That we're stuck here. And… perhaps most of all… I'm scared of what Ruby, and everyone else will think when they learn what happened to Penny. When they learn… that it was me who killed her."

Winter didn't look back up. She just…

Spoke.

"…I am often thought of as an inhuman, unfeeling automaton." Winter began. "Among those soldiers who have served under me, I have earned many nicknames. It's normal for superior officers to be referred to with demeaning titles, and most allow it. It fosters camaraderie amongst the infantry. But the thing that struck to the core of me was that their most common nicknames for me were synonyms of heartless. I understand why. I have never questioned the reasoning behind such. But…"

"I am human. Like anyone else." She exhaled, allowing herself to fall somewhat, so that she was sat down on the gray ground beneath her. "I am human… and I am afraid."

Jaune heard the smallest of creaks from the wood behind him, and he knew that they were on the right track. Just a little bit more…

…No, this wasn't just about getting out of here, although that was important. At the end of the day, it was important for the both of them to be honest with one another.

It was important for them to be able to admit the fact that they were both terrified of what might happen. Of what had already happened.

"I am afraid that we have been sent so far back in time that no matter how long we wait here, we will never see my sister and her friends again." Winter continued, and Jaune nodded as light began to stream in from above, tiny glimmers of it. "I am scared that even if we do return, we will return out of our own time, effectively adrift in a world we know nothing of, and have no place in. I am scared that we won't be able to return home to Remnant at all, and that the world will die without my being able to do a thing. But for myself… most of all…"

She laughed, then. It held little mirth, but perhaps there was a small amount of genuine amusement lurking beneath.

"I was scared to admit I was scared. That I did not know everything."

The trees around them creaked and cracked as their leaves and branches subsided. The light from above became almost blinding, and Jaune had a feeling that it was going to encompass them fully. That once it had, they would be released, let back into the Ever After from…

Well, from wherever this was.

Despite it all, despite how bad this had all seemed at first…

At the end of the day… that hadn't been all that bad.

"Well…" He let out an exhausted breath. "This has certainly been something."

Winter chuckled at his joke. That… might have been the first time that had happened.

Perhaps it wasn't just Jaune who was looking at Winter in a different light, now.

Perhaps it was Winter able to see him differently, too.

…Well, those were thoughts for later.

Alyx, Lewis, that weird cat… Jaune needed to get back to them.

The light engulfed them, until all he could see was white.

But Jaune was smiling, despite it all.

End Chapter 5

Hey, progress! Jaune and Winter are finally honest with each other. They're both terrified, but now that they've admitted that, maybe they can do some bonding?

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