Cinder was alone.
She was sat atop a mediocre mattress within a modest hotel room. The sound of the air conditioner buzzed off to her left. There was an inactive television in front of her, and a lamp to her right that she'd turned on fifteen or so minutes ago. Her scroll was left open on her lap atop the blanket that she had wrapped around her. It was chilly, and despite the fact that she could always turn the air conditioner off, she'd always preferred her living spaces to be slightly colder; a damning thing.
It was night. As of late, the nights had started to become longer, and began much earlier in the evening than they once had. Cinder, despite ostensibly being a creature of the dark, had never truly cared for the night. It drained at her already waning energy, and she looked out of her window at the land of Vacuo a few stories down with an idle air.
It was a stunning view, if one were the type to care for such trivialities. Cinder was not, and had never been, of the proper sentiment to enjoy them. But she could appreciate Vacuo in a detached way.
It was an old city; many buildings in it dated back hundreds, if not thousands of years. They'd been built to last through the desert's endless erosion, and had done so quite well. There were, of course, more modern homesteads as well, like the hotel that Cinder was laid within right then, which created an odd sort of contrast with the historical and rustic city that was always shown in advertisements.
The ziggurat of Shade was, of course, the main attraction. It was an ancient pyramid that had gone through so many different renovations that naught but the outer shell remained. From a distance, she could see multiple windows carved into the outer stone, through which the students lights shone through.
It was, again, a striking visual.
She hummed, before looking back down at her scroll.
'The terrible twins are free!' Tyrian's message read. 'I was almost disappointed at the lack of resistance. It barely took fifteen minutes to get them out of their jail cells.'
Cinder wasn't really sure why Tyrian sent her messages to keep her informed. She was not involved in Tyrian's mission. In fact, she wasn't involved in much of anything these days. Salem hadn't provided her with a mission in the aftermath of Atlas. If Cinder had to guess, she had some inkling that Cinder had been behind Watts' death.
She was being punished. At least, that was what it felt like.
At the very least, Salem had not seen fit to punish her physically. She had, after all, dealt with just about every problem that Salem had been consistently dealing with for the last few months over just a few days in Atlas. Ironwood was gone, and with him Atlas. The Relic of Creation had been obtained, alongside the Relic of Knowledge and its password; powerless though it was. Not to mention she'd eliminated those idiotic brats in Team RWBY; Ruby Rose's passing the one that brought to her the most joy.
In her mind, Salem could not be truly angry at her for Watts' death because she had provided so much in exchange. But she had to show her that such behavior would not again be tolerated, not even if she brought about such success.
This was a fair trade for Cinder. Removing Watts from existence would've been a fair trade for anything, perhaps even her life.
…She thought, not for the first time that night, of the fact that she was alone.
It was not a foreign concept, at least not in a long-term sense. She had been alone for the majority of her life, and had not placed much onus on its opposite. Taking Emerald and Mercury along with her on her journey to become the Fall Maiden, and bring Beacon and Vale to their knees, had only ever been a matter of logic.
It was the same reason that she'd brought the White Fang and Roman Torchwick to heel. They were tools to be used, and, when they had been used, they had been discarded. It had never been more complicated than that.
It had never been more complicated than that.
…
Cinder had been walking out in the city; disguised, of course, so as to hide her face and identity. It wasn't hard to fade into the background and be invisible. She'd been forced to do so for the better part of her entire childhood. Her time at the Glass Unicorn had taught her exactly how little people wanted to see someone less fortunate than them.
She faked a limp. An injury. She wrapped her arm in a sling so as to make it seem as if she'd lost her hand. She covered the left half of her face in bandages and kept her hair in a shawl. She played the part of someone who didn't want anyone to look at them at all.
And no one did.
And yet, while she'd been out gathering intel – for her own personal use, given Salem wasn't expecting anything of her…
She'd seen Emerald.
It had been a fleeting glimpse. She'd fled the moment she'd spotted her, not wanting to risk the other woman recognizing her. It was a precaution, despite the fact that Cinder had been hidden away behind an entire crowd of people, disguised near-perfectly, and Emerald had been walking about without a care in the world, not trying at all to disguise herself.
Her mint-green hair gave her away, of course. It was distinctive. Cinder wasn't entirely certain what it was she'd been expecting, seeing Emerald there. But…
She'd looked… normal. As if there was nothing different about her current circumstances from when last Emerald had walked alongside her. She walked alongside Ozma's current incarnation, and the two lovebirds from Nikos' team, whose names escaped her. They had never been important enough to remember, despite being common sights.
And Cinder had fled, then. She'd not needed to see anything more. She was doing reconnaissance. Not only that, said reconnaissance was being done for her own amusement. She had no official reason to be there. No orders. Nothing. She was on tacit leave.
Salem would have been quite upset with her if she'd given away their presence in Vacuo on such a frivolity.
She'd returned to her hotel, and had been sat there since. That had been… a few days ago? She had been holed up, eating solely through room service, and laying atop the bed in her hotel room, for days now.
She wished Salem would give her an assignment. Something to force her up and out of the hotel. She needed to move, but couldn't risk going out in disguise again.
…Tyrian had, in all fairness, just blown their 'cover' by breaking the Asturias twins out of prison. She could be found out and about in Vacuo without necessarily causing any problems to the larger plan. Still… she would play things safe, for now.
Her scroll buzzed. She very much did not want to engage in conversation of any kind at the moment, but even so, she reached down, and brought the device up in front of her.
'Oh, but I thought you might want to know, since I was going to tell Salem; Ruby Rose and her teammates are alive.'
A ball of ice the size of a baseball sunk down into her stomach. She stared at the screen in front of her, trying to find some way she'd managed to misconstrue what Tyrian had actually said into what was staring her right back.
She could not conjure up anything.
'Explain.' She messaged back, her fingers moving at a mile a minute.
It was always obvious when Tyrian was toying with her, because the response she was itching for took a few minutes. Normally, he responded near instantaneously. He was an enigma at the best of times, but he was an efficient enigma. He was not one to waste time without reason.
Aggravating her was, apparently, reason enough.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, another message came through.
'Well, as I was flying away with the terrible twosome, I was intercepted by the Dazzling Rose and her partner themselves! Oh, but what a fine show they made! And imagine my surprise, given I had been assured of their deaths! I nearly had to leave one of the twosome behind! Of course, I managed a getaway without doing so. I would never fail my goddess.'
'What do you want?' She messaged back. Unfortunately, unlike with Watts, with whom such a gamble would have been simple – he would hold it over her to gloat, probably reveal her failure to Salem, she would be punished, and that would be that – Tyrian was not quite so predictable.
Evidently, he didn't just want to get her in trouble with Salem, or he would have simply not told her, and delighted in Cinder's punishment when she went to meet with Salem without being any the wiser. But he hadn't done that.
Which meant…
'Well, I don't want to report to our goddess that you were mistaken; you're in enough trouble as it is, after all!' Cinder's jaw clenched; her teeth grinding together. 'But I also don't have the time to go about dealing with this problem on my own! Surely you understand?'
'What do you want?' She reiterated again.
'Handle the problem.' Tyrian messaged back without delay. She'd annoyed him by not playing his games. A risk, but she didn't have it in her to do so. 'Preferably soon. I don't know how long I can keep quiet about something so important, even for you, Cindy-poo."
'Noted.' She messaged back, trying not to crush her scroll in her hand, or melt the thing into her blanket.
Then, she closed her scroll entirely.
Fury traveled through her blood like oxygen, but she bit down on it, lest she damage her hotel room, and have to relocate after she'd gone through such effort to build a known persona and identity in this place. The staff recognized her as someone she wasn't – a false name to go along with a false self – and didn't so much as question her presence. Such was to be maintained.
Calling herself into question would only bring down problems. She had enough of those.
So, she seethed, but in silence, and without action. She stood, pushed her way into the bathroom, and stripped out of her clothing. She moved over towards the walk-in shower and turned the knob. The water spritzed down at her. It was ice cold, but she endured. The cold would, at least, keep her faculties sharp. She needed them to be.
She placed both of her hands – Grimm and human – on the tile wall in front of her, and leaned forwards, resting her forehead against it as well. The water trickling down her back began to heat up, until it was barely a step away from scalding.
Heat had always been her ally. Her average resting temperature had always been warmer than most, and she much preferred the extreme heat to the extreme cold. She'd grown up in Atlas; had slept in a supply closet fully exposed to the elements for a few years. She'd felt enough cold to last a lifetime.
…She still kept the air conditioner on in the evenings, despite that. She still liked to keep her living spaces just a bit colder. She had never known what to make of that. Had never known whether or not there was anything to make of it at all.
…Ruby Rose was alive.
It was a fact that had her wanting to strangle someone; preferably the woman in question. She'd been a constant thorn in Cinder's side even before she'd melted off half of Cinder's body atop Beacon's tallest spire. She'd thought herself rid of her for good this time, and yet…
Like a damned roach, she never seemed to die.
Not for the first time, a spasm shot up her left arm, and the Grimm limb shifted of its own accord. She felt as if she should have been used to the sensation by then. She was not. Every time was a fresh agony; every time the thing claimed more and more of her as its own.
…It had climbed all the way to the base of her neck on her left side, and had even begun to creep along the edge of her left breast. Given enough time, she wondered if the thing would entirely consume her. If that was what Salem wished. For her to end up just a mindless puppet; a maiden under her full control.
…It did not matter. For the moment, she needed the power that the arm offered. Let Salem think her fully subservient. It would only serve to aid Cinder in the long run.
No matter how much she whimpered below her breath as the Grimm arm snapped and stretched, as the bones within broke themselves down the middle over and over again, repairing themselves seconds later.
This was for the best. It was.
It had to be.
When the pain subsided, she noted that the water was lukewarm. It had not seemed like long, but when she looked at her toes, she saw that they were pruning. She'd been in long enough.
She took hold of her Grimm arm with her right hand, and forcibly steadied the last trembles. It only took around four or five more seconds. Finally, she pushed her way out of the shower, grabbing a towel on the rack beside the door and beginning to dry herself off.
She'd once had a grand routine for getting out of the shower, one that guaranteed that she would always look her best. Back at Beacon – or before, when she'd briefly attended Haven – it had often taken her a full hour in order to prepare herself for the day ahead; to perfectly apply her makeup, to get her eye shadow and mascara just right.
Now, she stared at herself in the mirror. At the scar tissue that completely covered the left half of her face. At her dead left eye. At her monstrous form. There still existed signs of how beautiful she had once been, but they were muted. Dulled.
She was hideous, now.
A reflection of your true self, shining through. She heard inside of her head, spoken in the Madame's voice.
Her fist surged forwards, but she stopped it at the last second. She didn't need bloody knuckles, or a broken mirror that she'd have to pay for. Her budget would've normally been unlimited, but with her on what felt like suspension from Salem's service… well, she didn't feel like pushing her luck.
No. Before she stressed anything involving her role with Salem, she needed to make sure that the contents of what she'd said when last they'd met – that Ruby Rose and her teammates were dead – were true.
And like Tyrian had urged, she was going to handle it soon.
/
Jaune stared at the makeshift mission board set up in front of Shade's ziggurat with what he would admit was an inappropriate level of boredom.
It was inappropriate largely because just last night there'd been a major breakout of two prisoners from Vacuo's most prominent prison. It had been orchestrated by Tyrian himself, and the prisoners – Jax and Gillian, Jaune thought their names were – were apparently very dangerous individuals who'd ran a crew called 'Crown'. CFVY had been the ones to stop them.
They'd been back in the real world for… well, time had never been his strong suit, and it was even less so now, but he'd say around two or so weeks now. In that time, they'd gone through about thirty separate reunions, gotten up to speed on the situation in Vacuo – it was bad; shocker – and then been told that, for the time being, all hunters and even hunters-in-training were taking requests from the people of Vacuo. Mostly, that was trying to help ease the transition for the people of Mantle and Atlas into a completely new environment. The sooner tensions there were quelled, the sooner that the Grimm that now regularly patrolled around Vacuo's walls would leave.
They needed to handle that fear first and foremost. Jaune understood that.
It was just…
He sighed, running a hand down his face. His face, as it had been the last few times he'd done this, felt impossibly smooth. He was twenty years old again, after all. The only evidence of his time spent in the Ever After was the single lock of gray hair atop his head.
Other than that, he was just as everyone remembered him. Which was awkward at the best of times, given that Jaune hadn't seen many of them in two decades.
Certainly, his memories of the Ever After weren't as strong as those spent back on Remnant, but a twenty-year time gap made little things – like Nora's running gags or Ren's preferred quiet times in their dorm – slip his mind.
And it hurt. It hurt to disappoint the people he cared about the most, when, to them, he'd been gone a few months.
They understood intellectually what had happened to him. He'd told them, obviously. It was just… Well, he couldn't blame them for having a hard time wrapping their heads around his situation. Sometimes he had a hard time wrapping his head around it, and he'd been the one living it.
It was as he was thinking about this and that that he noticed a different sort of request from the usual strung up on the mission board in front of him. Many were simple 'help settle this dispute between Atlesians and Vacuoans' or 'I think I should be able to do this even though I've been told numerous times I can't' kinds of requests. This one…
'I spotted a suspicious, robed figure moving along the north wall last night.' the note began. Jaune kept reading. 'They jumped over into the desert beyond. I haven't seen them again, but I think they might've been with that Salem woman. Please investigate.'
Jaune would be the first to admit that a random person thinking they saw something suspicious was not at all an oddity. There had been more than one occasion of people accusing their neighbors of working with Salem, including one person actively accusing someone of worshipping the woman in a religious way.
The latter report had actually turned out to be true, and they'd taken the Salem-worshipper-lady to therapy. She had… very much needed it.
It was that second report that had Jaune seriously considering this one. Because while people did see things that hadn't actually happened, occasionally they saw things that had happened. And if a robed figure had departed Vacuo the previous night, it was possible that the person they'd seen had been one of those three; Tyrian, Jax, or Gillian.
And in truth… they were fresh out of leads in terms of where those three had gone. Ruby and Weiss had been nearby, and had caught up to Tyrian, but he'd stayed behind to stall and allowed the other two to escape, before making a getaway himself through the sewers below Vacuo. Ruby and Weiss hadn't been able to catch him before he'd entirely disappeared.
There weren't many cameras in Vacuo. It was an old city, and many of the buildings were made of things like clay or mud bricks. Installing cameras in said buildings was both expensive and time consuming. Many people didn't bother.
And that meant that while they had pieces of footage suggesting where Jax and Gillian could have gone, they didn't know enough to actually give them anywhere beyond the walls to search.
But the north wall… well, in theory, that was well within the line of where they'd been headed.
It was for that reason that he took the paper off of the board, which meant that he was accepting the mission. He turned back towards the Ziggurat to recruit others to help him out. He hoped that Ren and Nora would be free, since he could really use some time to talk to them, and combing the desert for evidence of malcontents was not going to be a quick process.
He was also open to Team RWBY coming along, even if Ruby and Weiss would probably be busy, given they'd been in interviews with both law enforcement and Headmaster Theodore's people all morning. Yang and Blake might be free though. And hell, if he really needed numbers, he could ask Team CFVY, or SSSN.
Luckily, it didn't come to that. He found Ruby and Weiss having just finished being questioned, and waved to them.
"Hey, guys."
"Hello, Jaune." Weiss smiled at him. There'd been a sort of charged energy between the two of them for a while. Jaune wasn't entirely certain what that was. The way the others looked at them like they were idiots implied that he should've. "You look determined. Has something come up?"
He explained the mission he'd found, and Weiss and Ruby were both instantly interested.
"If we can get some idea as to where Jax and Gillian might be hiding out, or even Tyrian, we might be able to cut off some of Salem's power here in Vacuo before she can truly get a foothold." Weiss reasoned. "That could buy us weeks or maybe months to build strength here."
Jaune nodded, very much in agreement. "Do you guys want to go get Yang and Blake? I'll get Ren and Nora."
"If those two are in any state to be out and about." Weiss faked a retch. "Honestly, I know far, far too much about those two's… activities, despite not sharing a room with them any longer!"
"Er… can we not talk about this?" Ruby, who was Yang's sister, would obviously rather not have this conversation continue. Jaune agreed.
"Well, knock and let them know. I figure we can be out there in around an hour or two."
"Right. See you then."
He made his way up to where Ren and Nora were staying. They were situated in a different part of Shade than he was. That was down to the fact that they'd been given rooms months before he and Team RWBY had arrived. The rooms had been filled in order of arrival. Team RWBY and Jaune were both much higher in the ziggurat, a few floors up.
He knocked on Ren and Nora's door, and it was the latter who answered. She smiled up at him and hugged him, which he returned with a little laugh.
"Hey, guys. So, I've got this mission…"
/
"Well… this is the place."
"It's a wall."
"Yes, Blake, I can see it's a wall."
Jaune snorted.
Weiss and Blake needled one another – apparently Weiss had interrupted Yang and Blake having 'personal time' after all – as Jaune moved towards the wall. There weren't any obvious signs that it had been climbed, but then… that wasn't shocking. It was made of brick and mortar. There weren't exactly going to be footsteps visible on it.
"So, from here, I guess we just… walk into the desert?" Jaune prompted the others to come up with a better plan than that. It was meant to be a baseline. Where they'd start before iterating and coming up with something less stupid.
"I guess that works, yeah." Yang shrugged.
"Mm." Ren, somehow, also seemed to agree with that assessment.
"…No one has anything better than that?"
"We could rent out a buggy or something." Nora said, sounding excited. "Ooh! I've been meaning to drive one of those!"
"Nora, I mean this in the nicest way; we cannot afford you driving a buggy right now." Ren.
Nora pouted, but, critically, did not try and argue that Ren was wrong. Mostly because he wasn't.
"Right so… are we really walking out into the desert? That's our plan?"
/
That was the plan, yeah.
The seven of them – Jaune, Ren, Nora, Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang – were about thirty minutes out from Vacuo, cresting the top of a particularly high sand dune. They were trying to see if they'd spot anything from the peak.
The others were beginning to have some doubts.
"Who did you say posted this request, again?" Weiss gazed his way.
"It was anonymous."
"Ah." Weiss' tone let him know that she was not a fan of this answer. "Anonymous. An anonymous tip. A child could have written it as a prank, Jaune. We're not supposed to accept anonymous tips."
"This seemed like something we should check out, regardless."
"Be that as it may–"
"Oh, shit, I see something!"
Yang's voice called them out of their little spat. Jaune turned and climbed the rest of the dune. At the top, he looked in the direction that Yang was pointing, and found…
"A sandstorm?" He muttered. "That's… odd. It's awfully small."
"Yeah, that's why I'm thinking it's suspect." Yang nodded her head. "I mean, normally these things are like kilometers across. This looks like… maybe a hundred meters? If that?"
"You think it's being artificially created?"
"There are Grimm that can kick up the sand to mimic sandstorms," Blake said as she stepped in next to him. "But they don't get nearly that big. Mostly, they use those disguises to attack during actual sandstorms."
"Right… so this is very suspect, basically?"
"Yep."
"Hey, guys?" Ruby sounded mildly concerned. "Am I wrong, or is the sandstorm moving towards us?"
Jaune looked back to the sandstorm, and, sure enough, it was in fact moving towards them. He couldn't quite tell if it was expanding – growing bigger and bigger – or if the epicenter of the sandstorm was simply moving in their direction. Either way…
"We should probably prepare for the worst." Jaune said. "Nora, we'll go back-to-back. Ren, use your semblance and see if you can't pick anyone out of that storm."
"Gotcha, bossman!"
"Understood."
Ruby gave her own orders to her team, even as they took stances and made their way down the dune, towards the oncoming storm. Jaune walked forward with Crocea's face raised in front of him, and his newly repaired sword – courtesy of Ruby – held in a position where he could easily attack or defend. Nora was at his back, walking in time with him. It was funny that, despite him coming up with this maneuver, she knew it better than he did now.
It had, in fairness, been about two decades since he'd performed it. But it also wasn't terribly difficult to hold a shield and walk forward.
"There's someone inside." Ren spoke. "I'm reading anger, pain, a bit of catharsis… I would assume enemy."
"Right." Jaune communicated as much to Team RWBY. Ruby nodded back to him. "Sandstorm will be on us any second now. Prepare for an attack. Ren, where are they, spatially?"
"More towards Team RWBY. About fifty meters in front of us. I can't get much else."
"Alone?"
"It seems."
He frowned. That sounded… odd. He wasn't quite sure he bought that whoever this was happened to be working alone.
Again, he informed Ruby of what he'd heard, and watched as Weiss conjured a Giant Nevermore into being. It flapped its great wings, trying to blow away the sandstorm entirely. Unfortunately, whatever was creating it was stronger than the Nevermore, and the sand that was buffeted back was replaced mere moments later.
"We've got no choice." Jaune relented. "We go in and we face them. Whoever they are."
"If they can control a sandstorm, then…" Ren hummed darkly. "I think this may be someone we know."
"Hm?" Jaune couldn't think of anyone. None of Jax, Gillian, or Tyrian would've been able to pull this off. "Who are you talking about?"
"I'm–"
Suddenly, Weiss' Giant Nevermore let out a great cry, beginning to fall from the sky. There was a shard of obsidian lodged inside of its head.
Obsidian… he… he knew those weapons. But where–
"Shit, it's Cinder!" Yang cried.
And Jaune remembered.
It was odd. He wasn't sure how, even after so much time, he'd forgotten about Cinder Fall. She'd been such a great source of anger and pain that there was no reason he should've forgotten. And yet–
"INCOMING!"
A black shape trained down on them. Jaune snapped back into focus, raising his shield and deflecting the Grimm that was coming right at them. He struck down once it was batted to the side, and skewered it right between its neck and collarbone. It let out a shriek, even as it tried to put distance between them. Nora put it down just seconds later with a swing from her hammer, breaking the things skull in twain.
"We need to get to Team RWBY!" Ren told them. "They're under attack from Cinder!"
Jaune nodded. He doubted it would be so simple if Cinder somehow had control over Grimm enough to send one of them after their group, like she just had. But even so, there was nothing to do but start.
He pushed forwards, feeling the sand buffeting him from every angle. Visibility was poor. Even this artificial sandstorm was enough to keep him from seeing more than just a few meters in front of him, if that.
A Deathstalker rose from out of the sands beneath them, hissing and clacking its mandibles together. Ren was faster than it, dodging in, underneath its claws, and then landing atop it. It tried to strike down at him with its stinger, but because he was quite literally on the creature, it could not strike at him with too much force, lest it risk impaling itself.
It was more than enough distraction for Jaune to get to its left and cleave off a few of its legs. The creature shrieked, but Ren shot two full clips into its carapace. The shrieking died down, and ceased entirely when Nora came in with another blow from her hammer and struck the thing in the face, collapsing its exoskeleton entirely.
"There are a lot of these guys!" Jaune swore as he dodged around a Grimm that was all teeth, some kind of sand worm. He sliced the thing down the middle, causing both sides to flail about before disintegrating. "Was Cinder always able to command Grimm like this!?"
"Not that I remember!" Nora bit out between swinging her hammer at another bunch of creatures. "This is new!"
"Team RWBY are losing!" Ren called out. "They're getting torn apart by Cinder and the Grimm combined! Cinder's hitting and running, moving in and out to keep the sandstorm going! They can't focus on the Grimm and her!"
Jaune came up with a plan in an instant. "Ren, what direction is Cinder?"
"There," He pointed. "Are you charging her!?"
"Yeah!" He called back. "If I can keep her down for a bit, then the sandstorm will die down!"
"It's a risk!"
"I'll handle it." Jaune called back. "I didn't spend the last twenty years doing nothing. I'm a bit stronger than I used to be!"
Ren clearly didn't like his idea, but he huffed as another Grimm came at him. He shot the thing in the face enough that it stopped moving, and then turned back to him.
"Alright. But be safe."
"Of course. She still in the same place?"
"Mm. Go."
And with that, he charged towards where Ren had just pointed.
He had his hand up in front of his eyes, but it was obviously impossible to keep all of the sand out. His aura was the thing doing most of the work to keep his eyes from needing to close. It was acting as a barrier, keeping the sand from touching his corneas.
It took a moment, but eventually, he could see the outline of a figure robed in black.
He recognized her after another few steps. She didn't see him coming. Not fast enough.
Cinder looked different than he remembered. The Grimm arm on her left side, even covered with bandages as it was, had clearly begun to crawl up her body further than when he'd last seen her, and her hair was longer, but also more unkempt.
He didn't have time to take in any more details before Cinder's eyes darted towards him, and he was within a single step of her.
She lashed out with a blast of flame, but it was too late to stop him. His aura took the hit, and he slammed right into her. She was launched backwards, but intelligently used the Maiden's fire as fuel to propel her even further, putting distance between them. It was not far enough for Jaune to miss her words, however.
"You!" She hissed.
He began another charge, trying to close the space between them, but Cinder was no fool. Jaune lacked in just about every way when it came to range. She peppered him with fire from a distance, causing his aura to begin to drop.
Even so, the sandstorm that raged around them could not do so forever without Cinder fueling it. And if she was fighting him, she wasn't fueling it.
So, he held up Crocea's face, and kept going.
He heard Cinder let out an almost animalistic growl, before the fire that was striking him died entirely. He had a moment to wonder about that before Cinder's entire bodyweight struck his shield head on, and it was his turn to be launched backwards.
He was not so agile as Cinder to recover immediately, but he was able to bring himself back to a fighting position in time to see Cinder coming right for him, her twin blades drawn.
He took the blades on his shield, trying to stab out and up at Cinder. She was faster, though, using the Maiden's fire to reposition herself so that she was to his left, beyond where he could move Crocea to block her blows.
Even so, Jaune was not quite so helpless in this situation. Cinder made to slash down at him, but Crocea had seen a face-lift thanks to Ruby's help.
He activated the gravity dust inside of his shield, angled it as best he could, and unleashed the blast. Cinder cried out as she was buffeted backwards. Jaune would've capitalized on the moment of weakness, if not for the fact that the gravity dust had, of course, affected him with an equal force, sending him down on one knee.
He fought his way up, and charged over towards Cinder's downed form. He was not expecting her to quite literally explode with fire, which wreathed through the sand around them, creating raining shards of glass.
"YOU!" She snarled. "It's always you!"
He wasn't sure what the woman was getting at, but he felt very similarly. For all his time as a hunter, it had been Cinder ruining everything. She'd started the attack that had killed Pyrrha and maimed Yang, she'd impaled Weiss, forced him to have to kill Penny…
He felt anger building within him, and he was moving in the next moment. He slotted Crocea into its sheathe, and transformed the blade into its greatsword form. He swung, using both his aura and the gravity dust within the blade to send a shockwave of energy flying towards Cinder, but she avoided the attack by the slimmest of margins, coming right at him.
She pushed into him, taking him by his arms and launching the both of them up into the air. He resisted, snapping an arm free of her grip and punching her square in the jaw. Cinder breathed fire at his face, and singed him significantly, enough that his eyes burned. He shut them, but that meant he was blind to Cinder kicking him straight in the diaphragm.
The wind was knocked out of him, and he wheezed out, even as he fought to regain control of their little flight. As he opened his eyes, he realized that they'd exited out of Cinder's faux sandstorm, and were now flying away from the battle. His friends were no longer in danger, which was good, but he didn't favor his chances in a one-on-one against Cinder. He wrestled her, forcing her somewhat off course as they continued to sail over the dunes of Vacuo.
His biggest advantage was that he was far stronger than her in a purely physical sense. He weighed more, and that meant this close up, without any weapons, he'd win.
Of course, Cinder had the ability to breath fire, summon obsidian weapons from out of nothing, and do a whole lot of other very hurtful things, so he didn't think he was overly favored. He just had a better chance here than anywhere else.
Cinder broke out of his grip by superheating her body, forcing him to let her go, and then kicked him hard, sending him spiraling down to the dunes below. He used his semblance to force aura into his back, which prevented him from taking a heavy injury from the fall as he slammed down into the sand.
He rolled, drawing his sword out of its greatsword form and raising his shield. Cinder was on him a moment later, striking against him with a high kick, and then breathing fire at his legs. It burned, and stripped him of even more aura, but he held firm, and smashed Crocea's face into Cinder's own.
She was stunned by the hit, and he used that to slash forwards, cutting across her aura from her shoulder to her hip. She screamed out in pain, but her aura held. She, again, superheated herself, and this time she launched herself at Jaune. He raised his shield, but the metal in it quickly became intolerably hot, and he was forced to drop it.
Cinder kicked his shield away, although the sand prevented it from going too far. If he could make it back to it–
Cinder wasn't going to give him a moment. She shot forwards, again superheated, and kicked him right across the face. He felt his jaw bone crack, but didn't have the time to really worry about that. His aura would hopefully be enough to handle it.
His vision swam, but he was still conscious. He lunged at Cinder, a desperate maneuver, but a successful one. He got hold of her left leg as she tried to back away from him, and he dragged her back. She kicked out at him with her right, nearly sending her heel into his eye, but instead striking him in the nose.
The bone inside broke, but he didn't much care.
He hammered Cinder from above with punch after punch, ignoring the way that she was superheating her body to try and force him off of her. He was hemorrhaging aura just to keep attacking her.
Eventually, it was too much, and Cinder was given the opportunity to kick him off of her. He landed a ways away in a heap, sputtering. His lower body felt like it was on fire. In fairness, it all but had been. His skin was probably burned, even through his aura, and his fists weren't much better off.
His aura… he had an innate feeling that it was around twenty percent, perhaps lower. Cinder couldn't have been doing better than him, though. She'd taken enough punches that she looked loopy. Out of it. Yet she was furious. It was clear in her eyes.
Idly, he noticed a real, actual sandstorm approaching from the east. It would probably be on them in around ten or so minutes. Jaune… he needed to get back to the others before it hit. If he was trapped out here in that, then–
She moved. Faster and more abruptly than he'd thought she could. Whether or not she'd been faking being out of it, or she'd simply recovered quickly, he'd not at all been prepared for such an immediate strike. Cinder slammed into him, and stabbed up into his gut with an obsidian dagger.
His aura was strong enough to prevent the blow from piercing into him, but Cinder herself still carried him backwards, once again taking them into the air. This time, she seemed to be trying to drop him from a great height; letting gravity do most of the work in killing him. His aura could save him, but the higher the fall, the more he'd need to use to catch himself.
And if he didn't have enough, then that would be it.
He needed to prevent Cinder from getting higher, then. That was clear. So, he did the only thing he could think to.
He reached up, grabbed Cinder's longer hair, and yanked.
Cinder cried out in pain, even as they veered to the left, the direction he'd pulled from. She snarled, using the same obsidian dagger she'd stabbed out at him with to cut her hair where he was grabbing it, leaving him holding a bunch of cut strands. She stabbed down at him, even as they lost altitude.
He caught the dagger with his hand and the last smatterings of his aura. In the same instant, he turned Cinder's wrist, leaving her with the option to allow a break, or turn with it.
She chose the latter.
And then they both slammed into the sand.
Jaune's aura broke on contact, and he felt his body scream out in pain. The sand absorbed a lot of his momentum, but even so, he slid for a moment before coming to a stop.
He couldn't, though. Cinder would be on him in a moment. Or, if he was lucky, he could finish Cinder off. End this once and for all.
He pushed himself shakily to a position where he could at least put eyes on Cinder. When he did, he saw she, too, was struggling to stand. Her aura was gone as well.
In the distance, the real sandstorm was closing in on them. They had maybe a few minutes.
And yet, that would not matter. Not truly.
For as Jaune and Cinder both stood, as they tried to finish their battle, the sand beneath them gave way.
And suddenly, they fell.
It took Jaune a moment, upon gasping awake, to remember where he was.
He ran through the events leading to ending up at the bottom of a desert canyon inside of his head. Notice on the mission board. Trip out beyond the north wall. Encounter in the desert with Cinder.
Oh. Right.
Her.
He pushed himself up off of the canyon floor – or, well, tried to. It turned out that there was nothing for him to push himself off of beneath him, and he swore below his breath as he barely caught himself from falling off of the ledge that he was balanced precariously atop of.
Not the canyon floor at all, apparently.
Below him was even more canyon, stretching downwards for another twenty or so meters. Not a fatal fall for him with his aura up, but he wasn't sure if his aura was up. When last he'd been fighting, his aura had shattered.
He felt around for it, and the tiniest, most absent bit of it reached back. He was probably around five or six percent. Maybe slightly more. Now, to be fair, for a normal person that was probably ten or fifteen percent, because Jaune had quite a bit of aura, but that didn't make him feel much better.
His body was used to his aura; whether it was absurd to anyone else or not.
He shook off the last dregs of unconsciousness and searched around. Both for Team RWBY, Ren and Nora, but also for Cinder herself. The former could take him back to Vacuo – and get him out of this canyon – and the latter…
Well, the latter had it coming. And if he could finish what he'd started, then that would be good as well.
He looked up, and saw a sandstorm raging. He swore. He'd forgotten about that; the oncoming sandstorm. He and the others hadn't been in Vacuo long, but they'd learned that sandstorms killed visibility, and, what was more important in this case, telling how long a sandstorm was going to be raging for was not a skill they'd developed yet. They mostly counted on the locals to tell them that information, but they'd not gone out that day knowing a sandstorm was coming at all.
Jaune sighed, shook his head, but began to mentally prepare himself to hunker down in the desert for the night. The others would come and find him once the storm had died down. Hell, if he could find some way to light a fire, he could make their jobs that much easier.
He knew that some desert canyons could grow vegetation, which would make his quest to light a fire much easier. He searched above him, but saw nothing. On a second look beneath him, he spotted something. It was hard to quite make out, but it looked like it could've been–
His heart stilled.
It was Cinder.
She was lying prone on the ground, unmoving. Jaune didn't dare assume she was dead. That would've been far too easy. She was like a cockroach, no matter what happened. She wasn't going to die to this.
He looked around for a way to scale down the canyon, and saw a few more ridges that jutted out from the canyon walls. Over the course of the next fifteen minutes, he scaled down the twenty or so meters to the bottom without expending any of his aura, eventually ending up just a few paces from Cinder's form.
Crocea Mors hadn't fallen anywhere near him. If he was particularly unlucky – he usually was – then it was still above them, laying in the sand. Hell, the sandstorm might've buried it entirely.
He could be angry about that later. In the meantime, he needed a weapon of some kind. He saw a heavy-looking rock, and decided that something in this case was better than nothing.
He drew it up, and felt the weight of it in his grasp. It was heavy; more than heavy enough for what he needed it for. He moved towards his enemy.
He stood above Cinder Fall. He looked down upon her.
Her landing had evidently not been as lucky as his own. She seemed to have caught more than one of the outcroppings on the way down, but unlike him, she had not landed on them. Instead, she'd slammed into them, and kept falling. He bit down on the inside of his cheek as he noticed blood pooling below Cinder's stomach. There was a sharp stone digging up through her back, coming out of her front.
The bandages around her Grimm arm had also come loose. The limb continued to writhe and quiver outside of her control, like an entirely separate organism. It made him want to retch.
Even so…
He could solve this. Right here and now. He could kill Cinder Fall, eliminate her threat, and end it. Prevent her from hurting anyone else.
It… wouldn't even take much. Hell, if she was out of aura, and bleeding from that wound in her stomach, she might even die without him having to do anything. He could keep his hands clean, avoid staining them further, and just…
Just let that happen.
He didn't have to do anything.
…
A moment later, all hell broke loose.
It was a sudden assault on the senses. He'd been stood above Cinder, trying to find the will within himself to raise the rock in his arms over his head, and in the next moment, Cinder was screaming.
The scream was suffering given form. Cinder Fall snapped awake, flailing about as she used her right arm to take hold of her Grimm left arm, and tried to hold it still. It resisted her, continuing to writhe under its own power.
He stood there, transfixed, for longer than he would've liked to admit. Cinder Fall's agony… perhaps it should've brought him some strange schadenfreude, but it didn't. All he could feel was a hollowness in his chest.
The rock fell from his fingers, slamming into the canyon floor beneath him. He still didn't make any movements. He just… watched.
And then her eyes locked onto his own.
There was a moment then. Time seemed to stand still. He saw in Cinder Fall's eyes hatred for a fleeting instance. A hatred of him and everything he stood for.
And then, in the next moment, there was fear, and panic. Perhaps he should've been glad to see such emotions in her.
He was not.
All he could see was a singular desire.
Save me, her eyes seemed to scream.
In the next moment, he was kneeling down beside her, activating his semblance, despite his own dwindling aura reserves, and pouring aura into his most hated enemy. He lifted her off of the sharp rock she'd been caught on, and set her down beside it.
Gods but he felt like an idiot. Despite the fact that he didn't stop utilizing his semblance on Cinder, he couldn't help but feel foolish. Like this was all some cosmic joke. After everything Cinder Fall had done to him, here he was helping her.
A shudder ran through Cinder's body, even as the Grimm arm on her left continued shaking. He realized that while his semblance was coming, it was stilted, slow. Like his very soul was at war with itself. Yes, that felt accurate. Half of him thought that this was the worst thing he'd done in his life, and the other half was determined to help anyone, regardless of what they'd done.
The Grimm arm stilled, slowly, so very slowly, like it was falling more and more under Cinder's control. Jaune probably should've eased off of utilizing his semblance at that point. He didn't really have the aura to be using it in the first place. He understood that. But instead, he kept going.
That proved to be a mistake.
Because the moment that Cinder was truly conscious, she tackled him forwards, and held an obsidian dagger to his neck.
"You!" She pushed out between gritted teeth. "What did you do!?"
Perhaps there was some part of him that found this situation humorous. He'd done something he shouldn't have, and now he was about to be punished for it. There was probably a fairytale about someone doing exactly this. Something to warn kids, like 'don't try and help crazy evil people, no matter how much you think it's the right thing to do, because they will still be crazy and evil.'.
"I healed you." He spat at her, a healthy dose of indignation bubbling up within his chest. "You were on the brink of death, and like an idiot, I healed you instead of just finishing you off!"
Cinder's expression was complicated. She seemed to filter through a range of different emotions, none of them easy for Jaune to understand. The dagger against his throat didn't move, didn't bite any deeper into the skin and muscle.
"What!?" Confusion was evident in her expression. "What the hell is wrong with you!?"
"Good question," Jaune bit out. "I'm not quite sure."
"What, did you think I'd spare you if you helped me!?" Cinder growled out. "That I'd not finish what I started just because you tried to switch sides!?"
"Switch sides!? Hah!" He barked out a laugh; mean and loud. "No. I'd never join you."
"Oh? Then just what the hell are you doing!?"
"I don't know!" He shouted back, adrenaline and a million other chemicals and emotions mixing together in his head. "I saw you on the ground, and you were bleeding from that stone going straight through you! Then you screamed from your Grimm arm doing something, and I couldn't bring myself to slam that rock down upon your head! Instead, I used my semblance on you like an idiot, and now I'm about to pay for it!"
The dagger at Jaune's throat pressed forwards by a hair, and he felt as if the moment of his death was likely incoming. He almost wanted to laugh. Back a few weeks from twenty-odd years in the Ever After, and he'd already found a way to get himself killed.
Fabulous.
"What's your game!?" Cinder's eyes were narrow as she leaned forwards.
"There is no 'game'!"
"Bullshit!" Cinder snarled. "You expect me to believe that!?"
"Given you are who you are!? No, probably not! But I didn't heal you for any– any tactical reason, which, believe me, is feeling dumber and dumber by the minute! I just…"
"Just what!?"
"I saw someone hurting in front of me!" He screamed, finally admitting the truth. "I saw someone, no matter who they were, in pain, and I could do something about it! So, I did! That's it! Nothing deeper than that; no game! If you're going to kill me, do it already, I'm tired of talking to you!"
Cinder bared her teeth as she sneered down at him. He figured that would be it for him. He'd get his throat slit while Cinder Fall laughed at his stupidity.
And yet… instead of breaking Jaune's remaining aura, and finishing him off…
"That's it?" Cinder asked, sounding genuinely angry. He wasn't sure where that came from, to be honest. "Do you think I needed your help!? That I couldn't bear something as little as this on my lonesome!?"
"I didn't think you should have to." He said before he could think not to.
/
"I didn't think you should have to." Spoke the man beneath her, with her dagger across his throat.
The words were jarring enough, and would have been more so, had the entire conversation – if this could really be called such – not been just as much so. The last thing she'd been able to remember before it had started had been toppling down that canyon. Her aura had been exhausted, and as she'd gone to reach for the Maiden's powers to fly herself out of it, she'd hit her head hard on an outcropping.
When she'd struck the bottom, she'd done so without aura. She'd landed on a sharp, pointed rock which had dug straight through her. And when she'd awoken…
Pain. Agony. Her left arm staging a mutiny against her. Every time it shook, and rebelled, it took a little more of her with it. She could fight it normally when she possessed full aura, but without it…
She'd been helpless. Unable to do anything but let it eat away at her until she was strong enough to fight back.
But then she'd felt better. And then better still. Something had been helping her. There had been a warmth suffusing her form unlike anything she'd felt in all her life. It had been… steadying. Like a light inside of her soul that had never been there before.
She'd been lifted off of the rock, had felt the wound in her stomach close, and then, when she had opened her eyes…
That man, Jaune Arc, former partner to Pyrrha Nikos and constant thorn in her side – second only to Rose – had been leant over her, doing something to her.
She'd not hesitated to push him down, put a dagger to his throat, and interrogate him.
She wanted information before she slew him. Wanted to know what his play was. He'd healed her, according to him. That he could do such at all made sense. He'd done the same to Weiss Schnee once upon a time after Cinder had impaled her with a blazing spear. That he would do such for her…
Cinder had asked him why. Had demanded to know why. Because it did not make sense. Then, when she'd received an answer, she got even angrier. Because he'd thought her helpless, some powerless little girl who couldn't handle herself.
And yet…
"…Are you…" Jaune Arc's breath rattled as he spoke. "Going to kill me? If you are, then–"
"Quiet!" She snapped at him, pushing the dagger just a bit harder. It had not yet pierced his aura – that he had aura after their battle was impressive as it was, but that he still had more after healing her was almost ludicrous – but if she applied more force, it would.
Arc quieted.
She stared down at him. He stared up at her. She was caught in her own thoughts, in her own head.
What did she want, exactly? What was she doing? Why was the man beneath her still alive? Why was any of this happening?
She looked above her. The sandstorm – the real, actual sandstorm, not one she'd created – had begun to rage. It could die at any moment, but could also keep up for hours, if not longer depending on the severity.
Cinder didn't know this area. Her best bet was to hunker down, wait for it to pass, and then make her way back to Vacuo.
She glared back down at Jaune Arc. He looked up at her now with something akin to curiosity. Like she wasn't a threat, but something interesting. She almost wanted to kill him for that insult alone.
Only…
"…I do not owe debts." Cinder muttered out as she pulled the dagger back from his throat, and pushed herself into a standing position above him. "Go. We are even."
Arc's eyes were wide. And yet, a moment later, anger overtook his expression.
"Even!?" He hissed at her from his position on the sandstone ground of the canyon. "Even!? After how many you've killed! You're–"
"If you'd rather I kill you, here and now, then that can be arranged." Cinder manifested a flaming obsidian blade in the shape of Midnight, and pointed it towards the man. "But somehow, I don't–"
And then Cinder's legs gave out from under her.
It was such an unexpected event that she let out a small yelp as she struck the sandstone beneath her. She grimaced, even as she tried her absolute hardest to push herself up off the ground. She was vulnerable like this. Arc could easily get atop her and kill her before she could do anything about him.
And yet, as she managed to get herself up off the ground – utilizing far more force than she'd thought she'd need to – it was to see Jaune Arc looking at her strangely.
"What happened?" He eyed her.
"Nothing happened." She lied, because admitting that her legs had given out beneath her was tantamount to suicide.
"Obviously something happened." Arc rolled his eyes. "You fell. Somehow, I don't think you're the type to fall for no reason."
Cinder growled below her breath, but didn't say anything. Let the man make his own assumptions.
A chill was beginning to sneak its way into the air, however. She had not planned on this excursion to kill Ruby Rose and company taking more than a few hours, and yet clearly nightfall had arrived. The temperature would drop below freezing, and soon.
And yet the sandstorm mixed with the late hour would prevent her from seeing her way back to Vacuo. She could risk launching herself in a direction with the Maiden's powers if she wished, but in truth, she felt terrible. She'd lost her mental map of the area once she'd passed out, and right now, her entire body was screaming at her to sit still.
She did not feel like taking any unnecessary risks.
And yet, was staying within this canyon alongside Jaune Arc not a risk in and of itself? The man hated her and everything she stood for. He would not hesitate to kill her if given the chance.
He already had the chance. Some part of her informed the rest. He did not take it. He will not take it when it would be more difficult.
She glanced back over her shoulder at Jaune Arc, who still hadn't moved from his position on the ground. He looked at her like she was some great predator, and that, if he moved out of turn, she would strike.
She enjoyed that expression. It felt fitting. And yet…
"Your friends do not seem to be coming to save you."
Arc glared her way. "This sandstorm would make that a bad idea. They'll wait it out, then come looking for me."
Cinder let loose a breath of mirth through her nostrils, but otherwise dropped the topic. She looked about for things that could be set on fire. She spotted a small, leafless bush. It looked to have recently perished.
She tried to stand and make her way over to it, but her entire body shook with pain when she did. The earlier adrenaline had kept her moving despite her injuries, but when she looked down at her stomach, she saw that she was bleeding again from the wound she'd sustained on falling into this canyon.
She bit down on the inside of her cheek, even as she looked back over at Arc with no small amount of anger.
"You. Rip up that bush and assemble the sticks into a pile. I will set it alight and form a fire."
Arc shot her a look. He probably didn't believe that she was being truthful. He likely suspected that this was some ploy to try and kill him.
In fairness to him, his caution was well warranted.
"In case you have not noticed," She was loathe to admit this, but she did not wish to spend the night freezing in this canyon until the sandstorm gave out. "I can barely move. You will gather those branches, and I will set them alight."
"And so, what, we share a fire?" Arc was still untrustworthy.
"You seemed to believe that my sparing your life was not payment enough for us to be 'even'." Cinder pointed out. "Then I shall keep the both of us warm. And that will be the end of it."
Jaune Arc's jaw tightened, and he looked like he wanted to shout something at her, but he held back. Instead, he stood, and walked towards her. Cinder tensed, but he passed by without incident, and moved over to the dead brush.
"Do you have something sharp?"
Cinder summoned him an obsidian dagger – she kept another hidden behind her back, ready to stab out at him if he tried anything – which he took and used to carve at the main stem of the bush. After that, he began carving the different 'branches' from the main body. The entire process took perhaps fifteen minutes. Cinder watched it all with a detached air. He did not try anything.
"What were you even doing out here?" Arc asked.
"What?" She sneered. "Why would I answer that?"
"Because we're still not even." The man said with a glare towards her. "And because sitting around in silence is boring."
"Hah." Her laughter was mirthless. Just a mockery. "I came out here to kill Ruby Rose and her comrades."
Arc's brow drew further down. Anger, or hate, perhaps.
"How are you alive?" Cinder questioned. "The five of you; you were known to be dead. I had seen the memorials around. How are you here?"
"I don't owe you anything." Arc fired back, and Cinder wished she had the strength to strangle the man for his insolence. "Here, light this."
He gestured towards the pile of sticks and dead branches he'd assembled on the canyon floor. Cinder flicked out with the Maiden's powers and set them aflame.
Soon enough, they had a modest fire burning.
Despite common sense, however, Arc sat down across from her, and Cinder barked out a laugh.
"No. Gather more firewood."
"What?"
"These sticks," Cinder inclined her head towards the piddly flame. "Will not last more than an hour at most. Worry not. It will keep me quite warm whilst you are out gathering further fuel."
Arc made a face at her. Cinder did not waver in the face of it. She was not wrong.
"Fine." Arc breathed out harshly. He stood, and turned back towards the section of the canyon he'd come from.
And Cinder was left alone.
…
She stared into the flames in front of her. It was hard not to get lost in their greedy undulations; constantly reaching out for any way to expand their pyre. It was hard not to see herself within them; constantly searching for greater strength.
She had heard on occasion that some semblance researchers theorized that if a person did not naturally unlock their semblance young, then when it did emerge, their semblance would be awakened by their environment. By the circumstances and stimuli that surrounded them.
She found the idea to have some merit. It had been true in her case, after all. For a girl who'd grown up in the cold, there was no comfort quite like heat.
/
Jaune was stupid.
That was it. There was nothing else for him to think. He was an idiot. He was going around the base of a canyon, collecting sticks to form a fire that he was planning on sharing with his greatest enemy, and he didn't actually know what he was doing at all when it came to making a fire.
In his defense, he'd always had the Paper Pleasers to rely on for things such as that. The Ever After had magically infinite coals and wooden logs, which would simply replenish themselves after burning, meaning that Jaune didn't have to worry about collecting firewood, or even knowing how much fuel was necessary for a fire to burn for longer periods of time.
Even those times he'd been out on his own… well, he'd just snuggled up with Juniper on colder nights.
It had worked for the both of them.
He still felt like an idiot, even if his idiocy made sense.
One particular bush was driving him insane. He'd cut what he thought was the stem on this damned thing going on three times now, and each time, a new cluster of roots still embedded in the ground seemed to pop right up.
It got to the point where he said screw it, flooded his arms with his remaining aura, and yanked the thing out of the earth through brute strength alone.
Again, it wasn't the smartest thing he could've done, but it was therapeutic, and in that moment Jaune needed that more than anything.
He had what he felt was enough firewood – it was a collection of sticks and dead brush; there was no actual wood – and so he made his way back towards the fire.
It wasn't hard to spot. It illuminated the now almost pitch-black canyon quite well, casting long, sharp shadows across the canyon walls. It was beautiful in a way, despite everything.
Cinder was in the exact same position that she'd been in before. She'd not so much as moved her head, which was really creepy given it had been at least half an hour.
Jaune just shook the emotion off, before stepping in front of her. Cinder jumped a little. He wondered if she'd forgotten he was here at all.
"Back with fuel." He stated, holding up the pile of sticks. "Do we throw them in now?"
"No." Cinder shook her head. "The fire would just burn bigger, and burn more fuel because of it. Throw a few sticks on the fire every couple of minutes. I'll instruct you as to when and how much."
Jaune looked at his pile. He had about five hundred sticks, give or take a couple.
"Right." He sighed. The day's events were catching up to him. His body was exhausted. He sat down with the fire separating he and Cinder.
He… stared at her for a while after that. The look on her face told him that she was not blind to his stare, either. She eyed him suspiciously, wondering just what it was he wanted, or what he was trying to gain out of this.
For his part, he wasn't quite sure he knew the answer to those questions. Either of them.
Although a question of his own bubbled up within him.
"Why Salem?" He asked, and Cinder's eyes were suddenly wide. "I mean, of all the people to join up with; her?"
He wondered whether or not Cinder knew the actual truth of Salem's past; her goals. She almost certainly didn't. He debated telling her, but then… what would that actually accomplish? He had a fleeting hope that she might switch sides if she knew that all Salem wanted was to end all things, instead of what she apparently had told Emerald; that they would destroy the world, but remake another, better one in its place.
But then, he had a feeling that Cinder didn't care. Not as long as she got what she wanted.
"She offered me something I couldn't get anywhere else." Cinder actually answered him, which was more than he'd expected. "Power. The freedom to utilize it. If I had to guess, you had an average homelife growing up? Two parents, siblings, a regular life?"
Jaune's brow furrowed. "I did. Where is this going?"
"Then there's no point in us having this conversation." Cinder breathed out mirthfully. "Someone like you wouldn't understand."
"Somehow, no, I don't think I'd end up understanding you."
Cinder actually smiled over at him. It wasn't a kind or gentle smile, of course, but it had a lilt of humor within it. Like she was amused at his answer.
"Aren't you going to ask me the normal questions?" Cinder raised an eyebrow. "Last time, at Haven… what was it you asked me? How could someone end up like me? So – what were the words you used – 'broken inside'?"
He could barely remember that day, despite its importance. It had been twenty years ago for him, after all. But… some things came back. Cinder standing over him with a heel stabbing into his chest. Her furious expression. Asking him why he'd done what he'd done. Throwing his life away. He'd tried to answer in a way that belied the truth of things. Perhaps she'd seen through him. She'd laughed, then thrown a spear through Weiss' back.
Ruby's silver eyes had bailed him out of that situation; being trapped beneath Cinder's heel. He'd healed Weiss; unlocked his semblance. In a way, he had Cinder to thank for that.
Of course, to thank was not the way he would've worded that situation.
"I wondered, yeah." Jaune shot back, doing his best not to let Cinder get under his skin. It was… hard. He'd spent twenty years in the Ever After, been separated from the situation for so very long, and even so, he couldn't help but feel that familiar fury rearing up within him. "But why ask? Are you in a talking mood or something?"
Cinder barked out a laugh. "I cannot move. You will not kill me. I doubt either one of us will trust the other enough to sleep. There is nothing to do but tend a fire and talk. If you would rather sit here without making a sound, that can be arranged."
He supposed that was true. However long the sandstorm raged for… they were just sitting there.
"Fine." He sighed, but looked up and met Cinder's singular eye.
"Tell me; how'd you end up with Salem?"
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TO BE CONTINUED