Chapter Text
"So here's the question asked:
Of all the things you love -the people, places, from the future to your ancient past-
Of every one of those, which one will cause you to let it go, let it go
Need to crash"
Better-OneRepublic
Slaughtering the hordes of grimm is easy. Relieving, even. With each pack that falls to her blade and semblance, she hopes for more, and more, and more. Each grimm killed is a victory, but that victory is but a grain of sand to the mountain that is her failure to save Weiss, and Penny, and Jaune. To save her home.
She should have been faster.
She should have been stronger.
She should have trusted her instincts (her sister) instead of clinging to the military; instead of clinging to her loyalty to Ironwood.
The military had saved her -Ironwood had saved her- by giving her an escape from her father’s scorn, and a life of rubbing elbows with arrogant rich families and their equally abhorrent children. She would have taken over a company that was a mockery of everything her grandfather built, and been stuck in a hellish marriage just like her mother.
She thought she had escaped hell, but the last few days have made it clear that all she did was trap herself into a different one. The trap just took longer to spring.
The grimm end before the sandstorm does. She lands, keeping her sword at ready, waiting -hoping- for more to appear. People call her name, race to her. Nora, Ren, Oscar, and Emerald. They have hope and fear in their eyes. Unwilling to say the truth out loud, all she can do is shake her head, shattering the first and confirming the second. Penny was killed. Jaune did not make it. Weiss did not make it. She does not see Ruby, Yang, or Blake among them, and she fears what that means.
Mother, Klein, and Whitley are following them. They are in no hurry, and all are hunched from the weight of their grief; they must have guessed that Weiss was lost when she found herself unable to look them in the eye.
“You can clear the storm,” Oscar tells her. “With your power.”
He watches her with eyes too old and too tired to belong to a boy, and she knows that this is Ozpin speaking to her. Part of her wants to hate him, wants to blame him for Ironwood’s descent into paranoia and tyranny, but she knows that Ironwood made his own choices.
It wasn’t Ozpin, after all, that turned the council against his friend before the Vytal Festival. It wasn’t Ozpin that closed the borders. It wasn’t Ozpin that abandoned a whole city. It wasn’t Ozpin that tried to commit mass murder.
Ozpin does not demand her obedience. He is asking her to push her limits -and she is at her limit; is beyond it even- and hates to do it. But they both know that she has no choice, for she hears what he does not say; it is the only way to keep her people safe.
So she summons all the magic that she can, and changes the weather. Magic surrounds her, blue like the glaciers of Solitas, with flashes of green threaded throughout that are Penny.
(“I won’t be gone. I’ll be part of you.”)
Taming nature is simple compared to taming the grief inside her heart.
But when the dust settles, she wishes she hadn’t listened.
The city of Vacuo is revealed in the far distance, but so too is a herd of giant grimm that can crush the refugees and the city all. Panic spreads like wildfire, and the people react as any creature would when faced with certain death; they stampede toward safety. Some stay: huntsmen, soldiers, even academy students. There aren’t nearly as many of them as there should be, but more than there would have been if she hadn’t thrown herself into her role as a committer of treason. Too many were lost defending Mantle, then Atlas, and now the refugees. They need no order. They simply line up and ready their weapons, resigning themselves to death.
It shouldn’t be like this.
This shouldn’t feel like the end. Not here, when they have made it out of Atlas. Not now, when safety is in sight.
Not when too many children had to die for them to get this far.
On her knees, fighting the urge to throw up or pass out or both, she feels the world around her slow, then stop, as her mind tries to take it all in. It’s too much. All of it is just. Too much.
(“Much like our auras, extreme emotions can strengthen the maiden powers.”
She pauses her tea pouring and looks back at Fria. The woman stares back with clear eyes and a sad smile. Such instances have become rarer and rarer of late, and she finds herself putting the tea aside entirely so she can devote her full attention to whatever wisdom Fria is about to impart. This may have started as yet another duty -another burden- but she has found herself genuinely enjoying the older woman’s conversation. Fria reminds her of her grandfather in some ways: always kind, free with a smile, and surprisingly gentle for all her strength.
Once, she had dreamed of being that sort of person.
“Aura can be affected by emotions in extreme cases; that is common knowledge. Many people even rely on certain emotions to boost their power. What many people never learn is that, as with any muscle, relying on one single emotion can leave you unbalanced. Rage, for instance, can make you powerful if you harness it, but when you don’t have it, you become worse than useless.” Fria sighs sadly and sinks back into her bed. The look in her eyes is still clear, but it’s distant now, seeing visions of a past long gone. “I’ve always found that using all of my emotions works better with the maiden powers. We humans are such complicated creatures, with such messy emotions, but that is what makes us human. However painful it is, it should be embraced.”)
People are talking around her. Someone is trying to get her up. She shakes them off.
“Damn it! If you’re just going to get in the way, then get out of here!”
“Shut up,” she whispers. “I need you. To shut up.”
She breathes.
Frustration. (They have no options)
Tranquility. (Life or death battles were once her playground.)
Hatred. (Salem and Cinder have taken everything from her.)
Love. (She will do anything to protect the people in her care.)
Grief. (So many lives lost. Weiss. Penny. Ruby. Yang. Blake. Jaune. James.)
Relief. (So many lives saved. Atlas, Mantle, the soldiers, the academy students.)
She has never felt weaker in her life.
Yet never has she been more powerful.
She takes a deep breath, and does what she always has when life drags her down to her knees: she rises.
“Winter?” Oscar sounds worried. Scared. Weiss and Whitley used to sound like that: when she couldn’t sneak into her room fast enough after another one of father’s “lectures,” when their mother first started staggering the house with a bottle of wine in hand, and when she left for the academy.
The desire to comfort him just as she used to comfort Weiss is instinctive, but she can’t bring herself to indulge in it. There is no comfort she can offer to anyone in this situation, no words that will make their lives less broken, their people safer, or their dead return. So she does not offer cold comfort, but rather stares out at the horde of grimm, taps her earpiece, and activates the open comm channel. “All soldiers and huntsmen listening, this is Special Operative Winter Schnee, ordering you to fall back. Remain in formation, and protect any injured.”
A hand grabs her shoulder and forces her to turn. The person glaring at her is a familiar one. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Staring dispassionately at the disowned Marigold, she says, “Didn’t you hear me? Fall. Back.”
If Marigold replies, she doesn’t hear it. She doesn’t acknowledge the kids, or her family, or the soldiers around them watching her in confusion. She simply turns back to the grimm, and flies out to meet them, Penny’s gift swirling around her as she, for the first time in her life, unleashes all the emotions that she was taught made her weak.
~
May shivers. The desert isn’t nearly as cold as home, but those flashing blue eyes filled with incomprehensible power had chilled her to the bone. That unnerving calmness, the flat voice; she had not been talking to a person, she had been talking to a force of nature. The storm of fire, ice, wind, and lightning that grows above the distant horde only confirms that. She wonders, have they traded the monster that was Ironwood for another monster, one far more powerful?
Oz watches Winter’s fading form through Oscar’s eyes. He grieves for Penny, another life ended far too soon, but he cannot help but be relieved that the powers of the Winter Maiden have been given to Winter. She is someone who will use them as he had intended them to be used; to protect as many people as possible, without ever giving thought to her own needs. That selflessness is the only thing saving them now. (It may also be the very thing that destroys her.)
Willow drops her head, tears slowly falling from the corners of her eyes. Just as with every other moment of Winter’s life, she can’t even bring herself to watch as everything falls apart around them and her daughter takes it upon herself to pick up the pieces. Winter, the only one of her children who saw a normal, happy childhood turn into a nightmare. Winter, who always puts herself in harm’s way to protect her siblings. Winter, who once smiled brightly up at her, wrapped up in her grandfather’s red scarf and tiny fists resting on her hips, declaring with all the seriousness a five year old can muster that she is going to be as strong and nice as Grandpa Nic someday.
“Because that’s our legacy. To help people! I’ll be a huntress and do that too!”