Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ilia doesn’t trust Blake’s friends.

For one thing, they’re all human. All of them, except for Sun, though Ilia doesn’t think that’s a point in her favor.

Now, Ilia knows, possibly better than any of them, what it feels like to be judged on something you can’t control. However, she also knows that humans, especially young humans, aren’t great around people that tend to have fluffy appendages. Plus, she’s still trying to get used to the whole, ‘ not working for the white fang ,’ thing.

So suddenly living in a house with eight other humans while they attempt to find transportation to Atlas isn’t exactly the most comfortable experience for her after living near none for so many years.

Ren is okay, she can live with him. He’s quiet and respects her boundaries and doesn’t ask questions. He spends most of his time attempting to wrangle the redheaded girl anyways so he doesn’t have time to bother her.

Jaune, well it’d be kind of stupid to hate their healer anyway. He’s nice enough, even if he gives off this sort of aura of sorrow that reminds her too much of when Blake first disappeared and no one knew why.

Nora is loud and terrifying and asks questions Ilia either does not know the answers too or doesn’t want to know the answers to. Fortunately, she’s easily distracted and so Ilia just avoids her the best that she can.

Then there’s Blake’s team, which is an entire other can of worms.

Blake is so close with them, so protective and so fragile. Ilia doesn’t think she’s ever seen Blake look so vulnerable. When she looked at the three girls hugging without her after the battle of Haven, waiting to either be told to leave or join, she looked ready to break right there.

Ruby is loud and excitable most of the time. Unlike Nora, she seems to have a second side to her, one that usually creeps out during the early hours of the mornings and empty parts of the afternoon. Ilia will be looking for a place to get away from the other loud teens and find the little girl in red perched in a window sill, on a roof, or once just in the middle of the training courtyard, staring at seemingly nothing and not moving a single muscle.

Ilia likes Ruby when she’s like that. Because the little girl is surprisingly wise for her age, and a good listener. She never asks personal questions unless prompted.

Now, Yang, Ilia wants to hate Yang.

She spent so many years chasing after Blake, knowing that the other girl couldn’t love her back, knowing that it was futile and stupid and the best she could hope for was a friendship. She spent so many years locked in her own internal anguish about being stupid and falling in love with a straight girl.

And then this blonde bitch shows up and suddenly Blake is tripping over her own feet to follow her around like a lost puppy, looking at her like she hung the stars in the sky.

Ilia wants to hate her, especially when she basically ignores all of Blake’s attempts at conversation and refuses to make eye contact with either her, Ilia, or Sun.

But Blake has talked her ears off about her and she just can’t.

How can she hate someone who has been there for Blake when she needed someone most, who looked out for her, who believed in her no matter what? How can she hate someone who gave their right arm for Blake? Who stood up to Adam for Blake, when she herself didn’t.

Especially when she catches her giving Blake that same sad look that Blake gives Yang when she thinks no one’s looking.

Then, there’s Weiss. The last thing she expected to see in Blake’s “found family.”

Ilia really doesn’t know what to make of Weiss.

~

Just after the battle of Haven, Blake had pulled her over by the wrist, smiling brighter than she’d seen her do since she came back from Beacon, and with tear tracks glistening on her cheeks, towards a group of three girls she didn’t recognize.

“Ilia,” she’d breathed, sounding a little out of it, “these are my teammates. Ruby Rose-” the little red girl smiled, “Yang Xiao Long,” the blonde nodded stoically, “ and Weiss-”

“Just Weiss,” the smallest girl interrupted.

Ilia almost screamed.

Weiss Schnee. The Weiss Schnee, the one she’d seen on a million ‘Target’ notices, a million attack boards, whose picture she’d seen a million times, whose last name was plastered over her parent’s fucking tombstone, was standing in front of her.

She could feel her eyes turning red.

Three girls blinked, turning to look at the heiress in surprise. The girl smiled, a little bit of sorrow in it.

“Just Weiss,” she said again, nodding, sounding surer of herself.

Ilia suddenly noticed the bloodstain on the girl’s gown.

“You’re hurt,” she heard herself mutter before she could think better of it, her brain was still processing the fact that the Schnee company heiress is standing within striking distance.

Weiss blinked, confused, before glancing down at her gown and apparently noticing the bloodstain. “Oh it’s nothing, Jaune took care of it.”

“You got shish-kebabed, I wouldn’t call that nothing,” the blonde next to her muttered, giving Weiss a small smile. The heiress glared up at her and smacked her arm, retracting her hand with a wince when a metallic clang was heard. The blonde’s grin turned sharklike. She rose her hand, showing off the robotic digits, rotating the wrist 360 degrees just to show off, Ilia guessed, “Careful princess, you’ll hurt yourself.”

“Says the girl who got kicked in the face by a boy who has guns for feet,” Weiss grumbled and Ilia caught Blake smiling fondly out of the corner of her eye.

“Blake,” a small voice spoke as the two blondes continued to bicker. Both Ilia and Blake turned towards the voice, and the small red girl lowered her hood, showing off startling silver eyes that made Ilia take a step back. The girl smiled as if she were used to that reaction and took Blake’s hands in her own. Ilia tensed, she knew that Blake hated to be touched, but her oldest friend barely reacted to it.

“We’re glad to have you back,” she whispered and squeezed her hands. A smile wider than Ilia’s ever seen spread across Blake’s face along with a fresh set of tears, and the initial response to get Blake out of there was stopped when the little girl pulled her into a hug. The bickering suddenly cut off beside them.

Ilia glanced over to find both Weiss and Yang watching the hug with two different expressions.

Yang looked longing, and maybe a touch jealous, but Weiss was smiling in a way that no faunus hater had a right to smile like.

Her face was soft, unguarded, and kind, she stepped forwards unprompted and Ilia had to step further back so that the heiress could join the hug.

Blake welcomed her with a raised arm that quickly wrapped tightly over her shoulder.

Ilia felt, not for the first time, that she was invisible.

~

It keeps happening though, Ilia discovers.

Weiss, Just Weiss, keeps acting in a way that no child of that man has a right to act.

She had since learned that the reason, probably, that Weiss no longer wanted to be called Schnee was because she’d been disinherited, which made sense, but also made Ilia just a touch more pissed.

A Schnee until it’s no longer convenient for you, is that it? She thinks bitterly.

Then Weiss goes and does stuff like remembers her name when no one else does, and how she likes her tea after being told once.

She offers sparring advice and smiles way too prettily for it to be natural, but Ilia can’t find it within herself to voice her growing frustration when she’s met with big blue eyes and a soft sad smile.

Weiss, the daughter of her sworn enemy for so very long, the daughter of the man who killed her parents, is just so nice . And calm, and quiet, and she likes books, and she’s not just some dumb princess who got into Blake’s school because daddy paid for it. She’s a powerhouse, as Ilia learns the first time she sees the girl spar

It’s just a few days after the Battle of Haven, and though Weiss was apparently , stabbed through the freaking abdomen by a demon sword (wtf Weiss?!?!), she insists on sparring.

“I’m fine guys, and we all know that when we get to Atlas we’re just going to have to deal with more of Salem’s forces, so let's get some practice in, or so help me I’ll go down to Minstral and find a fighting ring.” She’d declared at breakfast that morning and apparently no one was as keen on that as Ilia, so sparring it was.

Ilia had been stuck with the blonde boy whom she’d electrocuted within the first twenty seconds. Jaune, she learned his name later, was a surprisingly good sport about it and had simply laughed it off when she’d apologized about it.

But, with such a short bout she was able to witness Weiss’s fight, and oh what a fight it was.

Ruby, who she’d since learned was Blake’s team leader (somehow), had decided not to place Blake against her old partner, as apparently, they were still dealing with ‘issues’, which Blake had refused to go into detail about when Ilia had asked. And so, Ilia watched her oldest friend dance around the former heiress.

And Ilia knew Blake, she knew how fast she was, knew how strong she was, knew everything Blake knew, and then some.

And Blake was losing.

Blake was a whirlwind of deadly slashes and quick calculated hits, and Weiss moved around the field like a ballerina. Her feet seemingly barely touched the ground, leaping gracefully from glyph to glyph, the occasional clang of swords puncturing the air every few seconds as Blake darted in, only to be met with a sharp strike of a rapier.

It was captivating, white and black moving so fast that Ilia could barely distinguish the shapes.

Blake leaped up from the ground, and Weiss shot right, moving her rapier in a wide arch of motion, ice spiking up from the ground as Blake weaved frantically to avoid it. Weiss took the chance to dart in, landing in front of Blake just as she ended her obstacle course to be met with another clang of metal.

Of course there were other battles, Nora and Ruby were making some strange sort of whining noises Ilia didn’t know the origins of, and Yang and Ren were locked in such a fast route of motion that Ilia honestly couldn’t tell where one of them ended and the other began, but Blake and Weiss just drew her in.

Maybe it was because she’d been captivated by Blake for so long. Maybe it was because everything Blake knew, she did too. Maybe it was because Blake had been the center of her universe for so many years.

Maybe it was because Weiss wasn’t what she expected at all.

Blake hit the ground with a dull thud, skidding across loose earth to land at the feet of the boy that switched between being called teacher and student.

“Well done Miss Schnee.” He said.

Weiss flinched.

“I was sloppy,” was all she said. Blake pulled herself back to her feet and spat out a clod of dirt.

“You call that sloppy?!” she asked, Weiss’s lips twitched upwards the slightest.

“I’m out of practice. I’ve been cooped up in a bedroom for five months,” her voice is so soft, so simple, so undemanding and it makes Ilia want to scream because it isn’t supposed to be like this. She isn’t supposed to be like this.

Blake continues to grumble to herself, muttering something that sounds suspiciously like “damn princess.”

“You up for another one?” Ilia hears herself asking before she can stop herself. Weiss’s eyes flicker up to her, then down to Jaune who is still lying spread eagle behind her, and her lips twitch upwards once again.

“Maybe next time, I think my aura is too compromised right now, and I see you’ve had your fun with our resident healer.”

Jaune lifts his hand from the dirt in a rude gesture. Weiss chuckles.

~

They don’t hear from any of Qrow’s contacts for days and are stuck in an increasingly claustrophobic house. Ren’s natural quietness becomes unresponsiveness. Nora’s questions become too personal. Jaune’s sorrow becomes suffocating, and suddenly Ilia finds herself leaving the stupid house every chance she gets.

She’s never been good with groups, human, faunus, even her own family. She’s spent all of her life avoiding crowds, avoiding homes, avoiding people.

That’s what made her and Blake click so much, they both understood the need to be alone. Blake let her be alone without being lonely, and maybe that’s why she latched onto her so hard. Maybe that’s why she started looking at her like she was something more.

Haven is hot, and though Ilia hasn’t been there in years, growing up in Atlas leaves one with a natural tolerance for cold and a natural adversity to heat.

The roof is cool and quiet and she doesn’t have to listen to the constant bickering between siblings, or the constant heated exchanges between Blake and Yang.

So Ilia lays on the roof, closes her eyes, and just pretends for five goddamn minutes that she’s really alone. That no one is expecting her to continue to follow this group of people she still doesn’t quite fit with. It’s been three weeks and she still finds that sometimes Yang or Jaune will blink when she walks into a room as if they forgot she was there.

The night is young and warm, and she can hear the crickets down in the yard below, and the quiet pitter-patter of water dripping from the broken hose. The trees rustle in the distance, an owl sings a mourning lullaby and Ilia just breathes for a minute and forgets.

“Oh,” the voice is quiet and doesn’t quite break Ilia out of her reprieve, leaving her to struggle through layers of drowsiness before she can fully decipher who spoke.

Weiss, Just Weiss, stands on the balcony below her, the one she continuously climbs up to reach this secluded spot. She isn’t dressed like she normally is, white pressed clothes, hair perfect and styled, makeup in place, looking as if the world itself doesn’t have the guts to try and faze her.

No, Weiss is wearing one of Yang’s t-shirts and a pair of pajama pants, her hair hangs loose down to her waist and her face doesn’t have a lick of makeup, leaving Ilia staring at a sprinkling of freckles across her nose she didn’t know was there.

“I’m sorry I didn’t realise you were there,” she rubs her eyes and that’s when Ilia realises she’s been crying. “I-I’ll just-”

“Are you okay?” Ilia wants to slap herself, she’s crying dimwit, of course, she’s not .

Weiss pauses, giving her a strange look, eyes slightly rimmed red, but a shy grin pulling at the corners of her lips.

“I think that’s the most I’ve heard you say,” she mutters and Ilia comes to a horrible realization.

“Shit, I said that out loud.”

Weiss laughs, watery and breathy, but she laughs. Not the sardonic chuckle she’s heard so many times, nor the sarcastic snort she’s become synonymous with.

She throws back her head and laughs.

Ilia feels some strange hot thing in her chest that’s been sitting there for dust knows how long melt.

She doesn’t know why, or what exactly, but she knows that somehow, this is what she’s been looking for. Weiss, as far as she has been able to tell, is perfect. Kind, pretty, always put together, always right, always waiting with both an encouraging word and a sharp snap of wit.

It’s good to know even angels apparently have off days.

Angels born of devils, she reminds herself internally.

Weiss’s laughter slowly pitters off and she sniffs again, wiping at her face and fixing Ilia with a look she can’t quite decipher.

“You know, when you showed up no one really knew what to think of you,” she says, not accusatory like Nora would be, but honest. Curious.

“I could say the same about you,” Ilia finds herself muttering. 'Just Weiss' nods, casting her eyes to the ground.

“My father has a reputation,” she says quietly, then laughs again, this time bitter, cold, “And I guess I did too.”

“Weiss Schnee, Atlas’s golden girl. Faunus hater, best in literally everything, star singer, and future huntsman.” Ilia recites, feeling not for the first time she’s reading from a textbook. Weiss sneers.

“Three out of four,” she mutters. Ilia raises her brows.

“What changed?” she asks and slowly, she lifts her face towards her. Ilia doesn’t let her gaze falter, even when those big blue eyes soften with something akin to fondness.

“Blake.” She answers and Ilia can’t stop the laugh that bubbles in her chest. Of course. Blake, who seems to be the center of all things in Ilia’s life.

“Found out your friend was one of us and had a change of heart?” she asks, somewhat bitter, and Weiss shakes her head, rueful smile.

“I wish,” she mutters, “Would’ve saved both of us a lot of grief.” Slowly, she lifts her head once more to look Ilia in the face. “No. I had to get lectured, and educated, and it was a long and painful process. I spent months trying to decode what my father had instilled in me for years.”

“And Blake started it all for you,” she finishes, Weiss nods. Ilia sighs, letting the tension in her shoulders fall to the ground, dead and useless.

“Why is she always the one who starts everyone’s redemption arcs.”

“You too?” she asks, amusement in her gaze and Ilia snorts without anything else to do. She lets the silence hang for a moment, she doesn’t have to tell her. Doesn’t have to tell Weiss anything, that’s the thing though. She’s stuck around long enough to know that Weiss doesn’t force things out of people, that her preferred method of interrogation is sharing, a piece of me for a piece of you.

But Weiss has already given her a piece of her, a truth, and an ugly one at that. ‘I used to hate your kind,’ she admits, ‘I used to be what you expected of me.’

But you’re not. Ilia can hear the words ringing in her head, all unspoken, all just implied truths, but ones that make her want to look up to the heavens and ask the gods why.

She doesn’t have to tell Weiss anything.

But enough things have been left unsaid today.

“I assume Blake has told you a little of my past,” she mutters and Weiss hums softly in thought.

“She mentioned you met in the White Fang.”

Ilia sighs, but nods anyway.

“She left when Adam started to go off the rails. I think… I think I knew then, that the Fang was starting to break, but…” Ilia doesn’t know what else to say.

“But you didn’t have anywhere else to go?” Weiss guesses, fixing her with that gaze again. Ilia swallows a hot aching ball of grief in her chest.

“Yeah,” it comes out more strangled than she wanted it to. “My.. My parents died when I was young. I joined the Fang almost immediately afterwards, and stuck with it. It was my home, my family. Blake ran away, and I probably would’ve too… if she’d just have let me go with her.”

The silence descends over them again. Weiss is no longer looking at her, instead, her gaze is fixed on one of the windows below them. Ilia doesn’t know who occupies it, but Weiss’s face has a sort of recognition in it that she doesn’t know what to do with. Slowly, Weiss takes a breath.

“Did you love her?”

Ilia blinks, startled, “Wha-”

“Nevermind,” Weiss cuts her off, shaking her head, “That’s too personal, I shouldn’t have asked-”

“Yes.” Ilia startles herself with the firmness of her voice, the conviction in her throat. Weiss fixes her gaze on her once again and Ilia finds her throat working once again. “I… Blake was my first friend. My first love. I trusted her, admired her, and we just... Just sorta clicked. She understood when I needed company and when I needed to be alone. She… she let me trust her, I spilled everything to her and she came to me in return. I just… It didn’t work, and I knew that. I understood it was one-sided. I could live with that. I thought I could… and then she left. Without a word or a sign. She just disappeared.”

Weiss sucks in her bottom lip, something is happening in her gaze, Ilia can see the gears turning. Then she nods to herself, pulling away from the railing.

“Thank you Ilia,” she murmurs, smiling at her, leaving Ilia puzzled and confused.

“For what?” she asks.

“You’ve helped me understand something,” she turns to leave the balcony, but pauses, turning back to fix her with one last look. “I owe you one.” With that, she pats Ilia’s hand and then disappears through the door.

Ilia simply stares at her hand, lost for words to say.

Chapter Text

It doesn’t take long for Ilia to figure out what exactly Weiss understood.

Ilia rarely sleeps at night, whether that be because she’s spent years of her schedule being nighttime missions and daytime naps, or simply because when she sleeps sometimes she can feel the dust mines falling on top of her.

As of late, it’s been more nightmares of a fiery house, an old friend looking at her in desperation as she refuses to acknowledge what she already knows. A ceiling that collapses on top of her, father uncaring of the girl who betrayed his daughter. Daughter too hurt to try and save someone who wouldn’t save her.

So for her to be wandering around the house in the dead of night, is not unusual.

For there to be others, is.

Ilia is aimlessly wandering the halls when she hears a couple of hushed whispers and finds herself frozen, unable to decide whether to turn around, announce her presence, or just melt into a puddle on the floor.

“Weiss, what the hell is this about-” one voice hisses, quickly hushed by the second, Ilia presses herself back against the wall, feeling the familiar itch of color changing across her skin, dyeing it as dark as night.

“You’re in love with Blake.” Weiss hisses, and that’s all it takes for Ilia to realize who the first voice must be.

“What the fuck Weiss-” Yang’s voice starts loud, rapidly depleting as she remembers the time of night and Weiss continuously shushes her.

“Don’t try to deny it,” she growls back, and they exchange a couple of hushed growls that Ilia can’t begin to understand.

“Fine!” Yang cries out finally, causing Weiss to shush her again, and Ilia hears something that sounds like Yang batting Weiss’s hand away. “Fine, maybe, maybe , I had a crush, a crush , on Blake before she left. But it’s too late now, too much has happened.”

Ilia swears she can feel Weiss’s eyes roll from here.

“Yang, if you didn’t care you wouldn’t still be upset.”

“I’m not upset!” Yang cries.

Weiss shushes her again.

“You are, stop pretending that you’re not affected, or that everything’s fine, because it isn’t. You’re upset and heartbroken, and clearly, need to talk-”

“Weiss-” Yang growls, Ilia hears a light slapping noise.

“You need to talk to her. Honestly. Tell her the truth, that when she left she broke your heart and that you fucking love her, because if I have to watch you two going at it over the breakfast table one more goddamn time I’m going to take your arm and hide it from you for a week.”

There’s a standoff of some sort, that much Ilia can tell by the charged silence that follows. It lasts long enough for Ilia to wonder if maybe they left, bickering their way back down the hallway, but a sigh alerts her to their presence once again.

“You are so lucky that my sister likes you.” with that Ilia hears stomping down the hall her way, and presses herself tighter against the wall, hoping desperately that Human eyesight is as poor in the dark as she’s heard.

Yang storms by, unperturbed and unnoticing. She doesn’t so much as look up from the floor, walking down the hallway fast enough to put some distance between the second set of footsteps.

Weiss, on the other hand, is more observant than Yang. She makes it two steps down the hall after her, before stopping and turning on her heel to look at Ilia. Ilia freezes, holding her breath and hoping desperately that her chameleon traits are enough to hide her.

No such luck.

“You know that your eyes don’t change, right?”

Ilia let out her held breath in a disgruntled sigh, relaxing against the wall and allowing her color to return to normal, not that it matters much in the darkened hallway.

Weiss is dressed the same as before, but for some strange reason in the dark she seems to glow with some sort of unearthly light. Her theory of an angel seems to garner another point.

“What are you doing up so late?” she asks and Ilia narrows her eyes.

“I could ask you the same,” she snipes back, only to be met with an eyebrow raise.

“You do realize you already pulled that one today.”

Ilia huffs, just barely holding back a growl.

“I… I don’t sleep.” she mutters finally. Weiss’s raised brow suddenly draws together in concern.

“Ever?” she asks and that does manage to startle a bit of a laugh out of Ilia.

“No, I mean… I… don’t usually sleep… not at night at least,” she finds her arms have come up to hug themselves. Not for the first time, she’s glad humans don’t have as good eyesight as faunus.

“So… you just wander around the corridors at night blending into the shadows for fun?” Weiss’s brows slowly come apart again to match the dubious tone in her voice. Ilia finds herself smiling sheepishly.

“Well… I uh… overheard your conversation and uh..”

Weiss simply sighs and drops her head, but doesn’t seem too upset about Ilia’s eavesdropping.

“I’m not crazy, right? Those two-”

“Seriously need to bone? Yes.” Ilia finishes for her. Weiss blinks, then grins.

“I didn’t take you for the vulgar type,” she mutters and Ilia snorts.

“I grew up in slums in Atlas, my mouth wouldn’t be clean if I wanted it to be.”

“You grew up in Atlas?” Weiss asks, genuinely sounding taken aback. Ilia frowns.

“I thought you said Blake told you about me?”

“She didn’t mention you were from Atlas,” Weiss finishes.

Ilia chews her lip, that discovery could lead to dangerous territory, especially now that she knows exactly what Weiss knows about her past. So she decides to steer the conversation as far away from that topic as possible.

“So, Blake and Yang. I figured with all the arguing and longing gay looks, but how’d that all work out?” she asks. Weiss’s lips twitch back upwards in a smile.

“Well, I highly doubt I’m getting back to sleep tonight, so why don’t we take this conversation into somewhere more… well lit?”

~

Weiss’s company, as she proves over several cups of coffee as they watch the sunrise in the common room, is good. She’s quiet enough to be calm, and loud enough to be heard. She doesn’t probe for answers, at least not without offering a few of her own. She laughs at all the right points, smiles just the right way, and whenever the conversation does come to a lull, turns over a new leaf with a practiced ease.

Ilia learns of Blake’s beacon days, of the trials of a newly formed team RWBY attempting to get along and not kill each other in the process. She learns Jaune used to be a lot more talkative and a lot more carefree, that this calm wiser side of Ruby is a new thing, and didn’t really make an appearance until after the fall of Beacon.

In return, Ilia shares tales of Blake in the White Fang, of plans gone wrong, raids that ended with a roof over their heads and considered a victory just because of that.

They don’t delve into each other's childhoods, those are memories too raw, too personal, too fragile to share as the hours slowly climb past six.

Around seven Ruby and Jaune join them, both in equal states of half sleep and, upon a little prompting, join in on regaling tales of adventures in a school that Ilia has only ever seen pictures of.

Nora and Ren come shortly after, followed by Qrow and Oscar.

It’s only around 9:30 that they begin to notice a lack of two teenage girls.

Weiss looks entirely too pleased with herself, like the cat that ate the canary, and the others in the room immediately begin arguing over who owes who what. Nora actually standing atop the table to claim that she was the first to propose that Blake and Yang needed to get it on, only for Ruby to remind her that she and Weiss actually lived with the two for several months and therefore had firsthand experience.

Qrow simply rolled his eyes and dunked back the contents of his flask which, upon reflection, Ilia was beginning to suspect wasn’t actually alcohol.

If it was, she was certain the man would be long dead by now.

As the arguing continued, Ilia caught a hint of movement out of the corner of her eyes and, upon glancing down the hall, caught a glimpse of one very bright red Blake attempting to scamper back through the halls unnoticed.

A snicker caught her attention and she glanced back over at Weiss who smiled at her around her fifth mug of coffee.

Ilia decided that maybe the Schnee wasn’t so bad after all.

~

Just two days later Qrow finally got a response. A friend of his who owned an old beat up airship was willing to let them use it. They, however, had to get across the ocean and through the blockade surrounding Atlas themselves.

The fact that no one except for Ilia seemed slightly concerned about that detail just said that apparently they weren’t used to having good luck.

Fantastic.

That’s how she found herself seated around a map with the RW half of team RWBY, Jaune, Ozpin, and Qrow. Where Ren and Nora were was anyone’s guess, and Ilia honestly didn’t really want to know what Blake and Yang were getting up to at the moment.

(The two had become almost disgustingly sweet over the past two days and Ilia was beginning to regret ever suggesting they needed to talk it out. Weiss seemed inclined to agree, offering her two cents and snarky comments any chance she could. Ilia liked to think that at the very least the former heiress and she had a good relationship established solely off of embarrassing the newly honeymooning couple.)

Qrow points at a specific point on the map. A narrow strait that Ilia knew from first-hand experience was surrounded by mountains as far as the eye could see.

“It’s as good an entry point as we’re going to get.” Qrow wasn’t an unkind man. He was smart, if a bit lax, and cared a good deal about his nieces, she’d bet her right leg that team JNR had too wormed their way into his Jack Daniels heart.

Ozpin frowns, shaking his head. “It’s too risky. The only reason that area is as unguarded as it is is because it’s a graveyard. More airships have crashed there than anywhere else on Remnant.” Ilia still wasn’t too sure what she thought of a man who was both older than she’d ever be and three years her junior.

“If I may,” Weiss interrupts the two, raising her hand before tugging it back to her lap, as if she was just barely fighting the impulse to shoot it upwards like she would’ve back in school. (She’d heard way too many stories of her studious impulses as Yang tried to get payback for Weiss spilling about getting launched through the ceiling in the so-called ‘food fight’.)

Ozpin nodded, “Yes Miss Schnee?”

Weiss flinched again, but her expression didn’t change from its calm poker face Ilia was beginning to become familiar with.

“Just south of that mountain range there’s a forest.” The huntress reaches out to trace her finger across the map, dragging it a few centimeters downward to an old forest Ilia had heard far too many stories about in her youth. “It’s not likely to be as heavily guarded as the rest of the border, and it’ll be easier to fly over.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ilia finds herself muttering, intending to keep the comment to herself, but from the raised eyebrows she’s receiving from the other faces present, she must’ve said that louder than intended.

“Mis Amolita?” Ozpin asks and she gulps. She hasn’t heard anyone addressed that way since her mother died.

“I-I… nevermind it’s… just don’t listen to me.”

Jaune and Ruby both lean forwards, curiosity sparking in their eyes. Qrow sniffs indignantly and takes a pull from his flask.

Weiss knit her brows.

“You’re talking about the Waldkönig?”

Ilia feels her skin paling, near white as goosebumps travel down her spine.

“Don’t speak its name-” she hisses.

“Ilia, it’s probably just a Grimm.”

Ilia shakes her head.

“You didn’t live near the forest did you?”

When Weiss only shakes her head Ilia closes her eyes.

“It only called at night. A long, deep sound, low and grating. All the animals in the area ran scared. Children, men, women, pets, it didn’t matter. Almost anything that went into those woods never came out. It’s too risky.” Hundreds of nights listening to that deep bellow. The covers pulled tight over her head while she prayed to some sort of god that the Waldkönig wouldn’t come for her tonight.

“Remember Ren’s Grim,” Jaune whispers, voice remarkably stable.

Ruby nods sagely, “The Nuckelavee.” Jaune and Qrow both raise a brow. Ruby blinks. “What?! I read!”

“Miss Rose and Mr. Arc are right,” Ozpin interjects. His chin rests against his cane, hands folded just beneath it. “This Waldkönig could possibly be another type of extremely powerful and rare Grimm. As long as we steer away from the tree canopy we should be fine to cross over the forest.”

Something in Ilia’s stomach bubbled. No, she thought, we won’t. But she said nothing.

“Alright,” Qrow says, sitting back up to his full height. “So over the Mitternächtlich Forest, it is.”

Ilia catches Weiss looking at her, some sort of question in her gaze, but Ilia doesn’t know how to answer it. Instead, she looks back at the map.

There’s a small doodle of a snowflake over the forest.

~

As they begin to load their supplies into the airship, Ilia finds herself cornered in the southernmost corner of the house. She’d just been looking for her gloves, not to get harassed by three different members of Team RWBY.

Ruby, Yang, and Blake all stand before her, Ruby is wringing her hands nervously and Yang is scowling in a way that shows both disapproval and distrust. Blake, simply has her arms crossed over her chest, bottom lip trapped between her teeth as her ears flick atop her her head nervously.

“What did I do exactly?” she asks, noting the absence of a certain Atlesian.

“No, no you didn’t do anything wrong,” Ruby says, raising her hands placatingly, smiling in a way that is in direct contrast to the expression her older sister is giving her.

“It’s just…” Blake trails off, something seems to be bothering her and Ilia can’t quite pin it.

“You’ve been spending an awful lot of time with Weiss.” Yang interrupts. The scowl in her face unwavering. Ilia blinks, unsure of how to respond.

“Uh… Yeah…?” she mutters dumbly.

“Well you see,” Ruby says, setting a hand on her sister’s shoulder as if trying to soothe the storm Ilia can see forming beneath the surface of her gaze. “Weiss is… we all care about her a lot. And we want to make sure that you understand that she’s… she means well. Even when she doesn’t always come across that way.”

Ilia blinks, still not quite sure what it is they’re talking about.

“Weiss is fine,” she assures, setting down her bag and turning to lean back against the wall. “She’s cool,” she blinks, “er, pun not intended.”

Yang’s lips twitch upwards just the slightest.

“Ilia,” Blake’s hands drop from their crossed position and she raises one to run it back through her hair. “What we’re saying is-”

“If you hurt a single hair on Weiss’s head we’ll skin you alive.” Yang interrupts.

“Yang!” Ruby yells, smacking her sister on the shoulder and Ilia blinks. Confused.

“H-Hang on,” she says, feeling like the floor is falling out from beneath her. “Are-are you giving me the shovel talk?!”

She hates how her voice sounds like a puppy whose tail has been stepped on.

“Weiss is a bitch,” Yang says, arm outstretched so that Ruby can’t reach her while she’s talking. Blake lifts her palm to her face and begins rubbing her temples. “But she’s our bitch, and if she so much as sheds a single tear over you Salem isn’t going to be the only one you have to worry about.”

“Yang, I thought we agreed to be more tactful.” Blake grumbles into her palm.

“This is tactful.”

“Remind me again why I put up with you?”

“Because of my irresistible charm and amazing puns.” Yang pauses, shooting Blake a broad grin. “Also, I’m great in-”

“Yang!” Ruby yells, finally having enough of the wrestling match and leaping upwards, successfully tackling her sister to the floor. Blake slowly slides her hand down from her eyes, glaring at Yang over the top of it, before turning her gaze back on Ilia, only to find a bright pink chameleon faunus staring back at her. From the tip of her ponytail to her toes, such a loud pink she appears to be glowing. The spots on her face and arm taking on a color that is definitely emitting light.

“Ilia?” she asks. The smaller faunus startles at the sound of her name, stiffening almost immediately.

“It’s not like that!” she squeaks, somehow increasing in color at the exclamation. Blake’s ears lay flat at her volume, but Ilia doesn’t seem to notice, spluttering incoherently.

“Ilia, look,” Blake raises her hands in surrender, “the nature of your and Weiss’s relationship is your business, and your business alone. We just want to make sure you both understand that you both have a lot of emotional baggage. We don’t want you to get hurt, either of you. Weiss is surprisingly sensitive once you get past the ‘ice queen’ exterior and we all kind of consider her a little sister. Friend or something more-” Ilia splutters louder, “we just want what’s best for her.”

“We-I I don’t- We’re not- what- why- wh-”

“Guys?” All four of them whirled to see a confused and perhaps slightly concerned Weiss standing at the corner. “What’s going on?”

If it was possible Ilia is sure she’d be giving off steam.

“We’re just talking about Ilia’s little crush,” Yang says from the floor, followed by a “OW!” when Ruby smacks her a little too hard on the chest.

Weiss raises an eyebrow, fixing Ilia a look where she’s sinking slowly to the ground, pink verging on red at this point.

“Well you better stop or I think you’re going to kill her,” she mutters. Ilia buries her face in her knees and the members of team RWBY laugh.

Why are teenagers like this?

~

Leaving Haven is bittersweet.

Mistral, despite all its flaws, is a beautiful city. Green mountains spilling water that refracts light all around like molten glass. The air is pleasantly warm and smells of wildflowers and dust.

Ilia, even from the standpoint of someone who isn’t really big on art, can appreciate that beauty.

But Atlas holds so many pieces of history from her. Pieces she buried with her parents and didn’t go looking for again. Now they’re unearthing themselves and clawing at her ankles. If she’s not careful she’s sure they’ll climb their way up to sink their claws in her throat.

She watches from the bottom most point of the airship as they rise over the earth, climbing into the sky and away from a place where she buried her ties to an organization that gave her everything she has.

It seems she buries too many pieces of herself around the world. She might find humor in it if it wasn’t so terribly sad.

“Ilia?”

She finds herself drawn from her thoughts by a soft voice, a pair of blue eyes watch her from the bottom of the stairs.

“Weiss.” Her voice sounds hoarse and Ilia becomes aware of a stinging in her eyes. She clears her throat and blinks a few times to banish it. “What’s up?”

“The others were claiming bunks and I was going to come and get you,” Weiss steps off the last stair and makes her way towards Ilia. It’s been a long time since she had to look down in order to meet someone’s gaze. “Are you alright?”

Ilia wants to say the obvious answer: 'yeah, just thinking,' but the words are hollow. Weiss’s expression shows she wouldn’t believe her anyway.

“I… I’m not sure if I’m ready,” she finds herself saying instead.

Weiss nods, coming to stand beside her, glancing out the window. Mistral is growing smaller and smaller in the distance. Ilia can feel pieces of her past crawling up her calves.

“Truth be told I’m not either,” Weiss mutters, and Ilia brings her gaze back to the Atlesian. Weiss’s eyes have always been a point in her favor. They’re so expressive, and Ilia can’t help but feel like even if Weiss was what she expected of her that those eyes would make her question it.

Weiss sighs.

“When I left,” she murmurs, slowly turning outwards toward something only she can see. “I thought it was for good.”

Weiss’s hands come up to her chest, the right taking the left and passing its thumb over her palm.

“I thought I was leaving behind a family that never truly cared about me and heading towards one that I had chosen. Unbound by blood and instead by choice,” she chuckles, a little bit of bitterness in her tone. One that Ilia is incredibly familiar with. Hatred.

“My father,” at the word her jaw clenches just the slightest, teeth gritted together, “He used to tell me that was all I had. This group of Atlesian uppercrust was all I could ever count on. That if I ever even attempted to find someone else they’d just use me for my money. It didn’t matter if I wanted something else.”

Ilia watches as Weiss’s hands drop, a breath released from lips as a certain exhaustion drops over her shoulders.

“Fortunately, he was lying. I just wish I’d seen it earlier,” her gaze slowly turns back to Ilia, “Atlas was my prison for seventeen years.”

Ilia sucks in a breath. Her eyes are slowly drawn to the scar across Weiss’s left eye, a sense of dread building in her stomach.

“Did he give you that?” she finds herself asking.

When Weiss just blinks at her confusedly she lifts a hand, just barely tracing the fingertip over the raised skin. Weiss closes her eyes for a moment, and Ilia stands transfixed. Something unnamed passes between them, and when Weiss opens her eyes again Ilia finds that her knees have turned to jelly.

“Not directly,” Weiss’s gaze doesn’t move from hers and Ilia can feel the tip of her hair starting to lighten. The spots along her arms are itching as she avidly fights the color change for the first time since she left Atlas.

Weiss’s hand makes contact with Ilia’s and that’s when she realizes what she’s doing. Porcelain skin against burnt umber. Her thumb is curled just beneath Weiss’s scar, the pad tracing along the edge. Palm resting against the girl’s cheek. Weiss’s fingers curl around her wrist, not pulling her away, instead keeping her in place. Pale fingertips tracing along her knuckles, lingering against the scales that come with her faunus heritage.

Ilia retracts the hand in one quick move. Snapping the hand up and over her shoulder, clenching it against the roots of her hair and tugging, smiling too wide and hoping desperately that her scales are not turning pink.

“I- Uhm,” Ilia turns away from the imperious blue eyes directed at her, instead focusing on the window. The continent of Anima flying by, Mistral just a spec in the distance by now. “Wh-When I left Atlas,” her throat closes up. When she wasn’t paying attention, those traitorous pieces of her past had come up to strangle her.

“I,” she swallows, “I was afraid. I wasn’t intending on going to the White Fang, I wasn’t intending on going anywhere except away.” A chuckle pulls at her chest, rueful and bitter in the deepest sense.

“My parents had just died, along with a dozen other faunus I knew, and I’d just made myself a criminal in the eyes of the Atlesian government. I was young, I was scared, I was hurt, so I ran. I hopped on the first boat I saw and hoped for the best.”

Truth be told she didn’t remember exactly how she ended up with the White Fang. After her parent’s death, it was a blur for months. She wasn’t sure who found her, what continent she got off on, or even if she had gotten off willingly or kicked off of the boat.

All she remembered was the all consuming numbness.

The ache in her chest that still resurfaced if she thought about it for too long.

“Did you ever visit them?” Weiss asks. Ilia chews her lips and looks down at her hands. Finding them trembling at her sides.

“I can’t.” she says softly. “There’s no grave for me to visit.”

A soft, pale hand grabs hers. Slowly she follows it, up an arm, a shoulder, a neck, and finally to a pair of blue eyes. Glistening with a righteous fury that Ilia doesn’t understand.

“They died in a Dust mine, didn’t they.” It’s not a question.

Ilia’s chest seizes.

A normal afternoon at her school, faceless girls all around, laughing over some other student’s antics.

Then the words come like a bucket of ice.

A boy with glistening blue eyes comes over, dark blue hair flopping around in his face.

“You guys hear what happened down at the Schnee mines?” He asks, and a girl, Catherine, Ilia remembers, gasps in delight. Lips pulling upwards to show off perfect teeth.

“Yes, apparently a mineshaft collapsed because some idiot stabbed themselves with a fire crystal.”

A girl next to her starts snickering.

“They should’ve been more careful. Did someone let go of a leash?”

Laughter ripples across the room, faces that Ilia knows lifting in mirth at the thought of a mine collapsing on itself. Dozens trapped in its depths.

“Miss Amolita,” one of the instructors stands behind her, his face drawn in a frown of displeasure, and pity.

She can feel the dread in her stomach.

“Your parents-”

It’s all buzzing.

“Ilia.” Two hands grab the sides of her face and Ilia snaps out of the memory, retracting from the hold on instinct alone, but the hands follow her, gripping tighter and forcing her to look at the face the hands belong to.

She becomes aware, suddenly, that she’s on the floor, knees pulled to her chest and wetness on her cheeks. Her throat clenches, raw and aching.

“Weiss I-” she can barely speak, hoarse and strangled.

Weiss’s fingers pass beneath her eyes and she pulls her gaze back up to hers.

Blue eyes pierce her soul.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Ilia sucks in a breath.

“You’re not your father.”

It’s the first time she’s admitted it, and honestly, it feels more of a comfort to her than Weiss. She is not her father. She doesn’t hate the faunus, and she is not responsible for Ilia’s parent’s death.

A weight lifts from her chest.

Weiss doesn’t look like she believes her.

“I remember that mine,” she mutters, slowly, her hands drop from Ilia’s face, head dropping with them. Ilia finds that they’re knelt together on the floor. Pressed against the glass wall of the airship, Ilia propped against it as she probably had a panic attack.

“When Father came home he was furious. Spent an hour ranting about how much it was going to cost and how he hoped those ‘stupid animals’ got a taste of their own medicine.” Weiss sighs, running her hand back through her hair.

“Winter was out at the time, concentrating on her huntress studies and not much else, and it was just after my father admitted that he only married my mother for the company so she wasn’t around either.”

Weiss looks back at her.

“So he took his anger out on me instead.”

Ilia pictures a young Weiss, small and with big blue eyes, looking up at her father in terror, pain etched in her face as an enraged man shouted at her for something so far beyond her control she couldn’t possibly even know what it was.

Red falls over her like a ton of bricks, sinking into her bones and staining her hair yellow like flames.

“That-”

“It wasn’t the first time,” Weiss interjects.

Just as quickly as it came, the anger falls away, replaced by a cold emptiness in her stomach.

Weiss’s hands rest on her shoulders and she isn’t looking for pity. Instead, there’s a sense of understanding, responsibility, in her eyes.

“I was too young to understand anything other than because of someone else’s mistake I was suffering.”

Ilia’s stomach drops.

“Weiss, you were a child-”

“So were you.”

Ilia blinks, and Weiss sighs. Slowly she stands, and offers Ilia a hand.

“I… I guess what I’m trying to say is…” Weiss’s eyes bore into hers once more. “It’s not your fault for running away.”

Ilia breathes, startled at first, then, when Weiss’s hand doesn’t retract, she releases it.

Cautiously, she takes her hand.

~

They end up bunking together. Mostly because Blake and Yang bunk together and Ruby bunks with Jaune, leaving them as the last two who don’t have a partner and not enough beds for them to bunk separately. It’s not necessarily a bad thing though. After their conversation in the bottom of the airship, Ilia feels lighter.

Weiss is not her father. Weiss is not responsible for her parent’s death.

Weiss is just as much a victim of her father’s tyranny as herself.

That, oddly, is comforting.

So when Ilia ends up sharing bunks with Weiss, she finds that the last remaining shreds of her doubt when it comes to the smaller girl are quiet. Then Weiss smiles at her comfortingly, and they too diminish into the background noise.

Atlas is a seven-hour airship ride away, and so they bed down for the night, hoping against hope that by the time their eyes open they’ll be in Atlas, delivering the artifact that they fought so hard to get.

Of course, as Ilia is learning, nothing ever goes according to plan when it comes to these people.

She’s awoken at ass o’clock in the morning by the blaring of sirens and shouts of people in other parts of the ship, echoing through metal corridors and ceilings, nothing to stop or muffle them. The ship jerks left, then right, tossing Ilia from her bed, and against the opposite wall where she lands with a thud. If it weren’t for a panicked flash of aura she’s sure she’d have a concussion.

Weiss, isn’t so lucky.

She’d insisted on the top bunk, something about ‘being deprived of it’ at Beacon.

So, when the ship jerks Weiss falls from the top bunk, crashing to the floor with a thud before letting out a startled and half asleep shriek when on the second jerk she lands sprawled on top of Ilia where she lay dazed against the wall.

Sirens wailed, strange thudding noises filled the halls, but all Ilia could hear was the thudding of a heartbeat pressed against her ear.

Oh dust, she was gay.

Weiss pushed herself up, hair disheveled from sleep and her tumble from her bed. She glared blearily at the flashing red lights and wailing sirens through squinted eyes.

Suddenly Weiss’s heartbeat wasn’t the one she could hear.

“What the hell did those idiots get themselves into now?” She growls, climbing to her feet and wasting no time in grabbing Myrtenaster from the wall, checking the dust compartments before nodding to herself and starting towards the door, stopping suddenly. She whips back to look at Ilia, eyebrow risen in a challenge.

“You coming?”

Illia swallows thickly before nodding.

As it turns out, “what those idiots got themselves into” was flying over the Mitternächtlich Forest.

Ilia tried to warn them.

Tendrils of thick dark smoke cover the entire dashboard, obstructing their view. something hard and sharp. Pelting into the side of the ship.

Jaune and Oscar are trying their best to repel them, Oscar’s shield multiplied by Jaune’s Aura buff.

Blake, Ren, and Nora are focused on trying to dissipate the smoke so that they could at least see where they were going.

Yang and Qrow are arguing over the controls.

Once Weiss and Ilia reach the crowded control room they’re simply met with seven glares and a collective, “Not now!”

The words ‘I told you so!’ Continue to hum in the back of Ilia’s mind.

“Where’s Ruby?” Weiss shouts over the pelting of whatever is hitting the ship.

“She went down to the engine room,” Yang shouts back, shoving her uncle aside to yank the joystick upwards, Ilia goes flying off the floor, Weiss gripping onto the door to keep herself stable.

“What the hell are you doing?!” she shouts, darting across the room to wrestle the control away from the blonde and bring them back into something level, allowing Ilia to reconnect with the ground in a heap.

“Trying to shake this thing off of us!” Yang growls, trying to wrestle back. Qrow grabs both girls by the scruffs of their necks and tugs them back, leaving him the only one with the controls.

“Well you’re both going to make us crash if you don’t get your shit together,” he growls, punching a few buttons on the pad. Air jets begin to blow hard just outside the plane, attempting to blow off whatever is attached to them.

“Amy-” he shouts and it takes Ilia a minute to realize he means her.

“It’s Amoli-”

“Go check on Rubes, see if she needs any help in the engine room,” his hot whiskey eyes don’t leave room for question before zeroing in on the still bickering members of team RWBY.

“Ice Queen jr.” he growls, causing both their heads to snap towards him, Weiss letting out a slight cry of indignation, “I want you to head up top. Your semblance can keep you on this thing if it flips right?”

Yang appears to be stifling a snicker, but Weiss simply elbows her in the side.

“Firecracker,” he growls once more and Yang stiffens, “Go help your girlfriend.”

~

It’s a good thing Qrow sent her to help Ruby because the poor girl looks ready to pull her hair out.

Whatever had been pelting the ship has impaled itself into the engine room, missing the engine itself by sheer dumb luck. The spike is easily as tall as Ruby is tall, tremblings and shaking in the heat of the engine room like it’s alive.

Fuck.

“Ilia?!” Ruby yells over the roar of the engine and Ilia blinks, shaking herself back to reality and forcing herself to move from her spot in the doorway.

“What do you need?” she shouts back, and Ruby huffs in exertion, wiping a sleeve across her forehead and leaving a trail of engine oil.

“You wouldn’t happen to have your weapon on you?”

Ilia produces the whip, and Ruby grins, mischievous eyes sparkling in the red-lit engine room. Ilia carefully makes her way over, stepping over discarded tools and hissing pieces of metal in order to stand next to her.

The ship shakes and Ilia barely manages to stay upright, bracing against the wall. Ruby grabs onto the spike she was tampering with. The spike shakes slightly with the ship, and Ilia suddenly has a sneaking suspicion that this spike is attached to something.

“What is going on up there?” Ruby asks, taking the offered weapon from her hands once the ship has righted itself again.

“Qrow and Yang are-”

“Ah,” Ruby says before she even finishes the sentence, lashing the whip out in one practiced motion that Ilia herself would probably take a few attempts to make. It wraps snugly around the spike and she grins maniacally. “That explains it. Here, grab my waist.”

“What?” Ilia asks, but Ruby doesn’t wait for her to reply, pulling the trigger on the whip which sparks to life. As it does so the spike begins crackling and blistering and suddenly Ilia realizes it isn’t a spike.

It’s a claw.

She launches forwards, wrapping her arms around Ruby’s middle as a low, deep bellow surrounds them, one Ilia used to hear in the dead of night on her youngest days. Monsters chasing her through nightmares while she cried for parents who weren’t there because they had to work that night.

The claw retracts, pulling itself free from the metal ship with a dull moaning sound, causing the ship to lurch as it was freed from its hold. Air sucked through the hole left behind, destabilizing air causing Ilia to choke and gasp, digging in her heels and trying desperately to keep Ruby and herself from tumbling out of the hole.

“What the hell is that thing,” she hisses, turning to brace them both against the nearest engine.

“The Waldkönig,” Ruby answers, voice remarkably steady despite the lack of air. She reaches behind her and produces her scythe, digging it into the metal hull in order to keep them both from flying out the hole.

The Waldkönig roars, there’s no other way to describe it, and Ilia finds herself swallowing thickly.

“Shit.” she breathes and Ruby laughs.

“Agreed.” She turns in Ilia’s grip, wrapping one arm around her shoulders. “We need to find a way to close that hole or this whole room is going to explode in,” one glance at the clock, “about two minutes.”

“What the actual fuck, Ruby?!” Ilia yells over the roar of wind and the angry Grimm beneath them.

Ruby simply shrugs, then directs her gaze to the hole in the floor.

“Think you could use your whip to heat up my scythe blade?” she asks, and Ilia just wants to pause for a moment and scream because what the literal hell has she just gotten herself into that the most normal out of them is completely unfazed by the idea that they’re going to explode in two minutes if they can’t find a way to fix a hole in the floor made by a Grimm easily big enough to swallow their entire airship.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t even have that luxury.

So she wraps her whip around Ruby’s scythe blade and pulls the trigger.

Ruby grits her teeth and hangs on as the blade so very slowly changes color, going from silvery white to a bright heated color in the span of a few seconds. She nods, then glances at Ilia.

“I’m going to have to let you go,” she says, and Ilia bites her lip.

“And I’m going to keep from getting sucked out of here, how?” she asks and Ruby’s eyes flick over to a pipe against the wall.

“On three?” she prompts.

Ilia sighs.

“On three,” she mutters.

“One.” Ruby’s grip on the scythe tightens.

“Two.” Ilia prepares herself to swing, gaze set on the pipe only two meters from them.

“Three!” Ruby releases her and Ilia jumps, reaching frantically for the pipe. Just as her hands make contact with the metal there’s a horrible, aching roar and the smell of something hot fills the air.

Ruby shouts in terror, scythe held before her like a shield, the end still glowing with heat, and it’s at this moment that Ilia realizes something.

She forgot to disconnect her whip.

The entire ship shakes, something smacks against it and suddenly they’re losing altitude so quickly that Ruby is pressed flat against the ceiling.

Ilia isn’t so lucky.

The pipe, is loose.

Chapter Text

She’s not entirely sure what happened after that.

She is sure she hit her head, the aching later and literal crack in her skull is proof enough of that.

Other than that all Ilia remembers is an endless dark sky, weightlessness, and shouting.

There’s roaring, hot and aching, and then cold.

It’s so so cold.

Ilia falls.

~

It’s so very cold.

Freezing, biting cold. Covering every inch of her body and all Ilia can really think is that she can’t move.

She’s cold and she can’t move and everything is just so very dark.

Then, she realizes, it's silent.

Three weeks surrounded by other teenagers and city life, and now all she can hear is her own breathing. She tries to move, tries desperately to pry her eyes open, but nothing seems to be working. It feels as if she’s made out of lead.

In the end, all Ilia manages is a cough, weak and aching, but it’s progress.

Until it isn’t.

One measly little cough turns into a rattling, bone-chilling seizure in her chest. Ilia’s eyes fly open, freed from their frozen state as she sits up rapidly, coughing loud enough and violently enough to wake the dead.

She then crashes back down, dizziness and a blinding pain in her skull, overwhelming her and shocking the cough out of her lungs. Replacing it with a deep wave of nausea and fuzziness that leaves her staring at the sky and unable to get anything except the color through her mind.

Blue , it repeats over and over again like a mantra. A prayer.

She’s not entirely sure why that matters.

Blue, her brain insists, like it’s important.

She tells her brain to shut up.

It takes two more attempts, but Ilia manages to pull herself into a sitting position, bracing herself against a nearby tree trunk for balance.

She appears to have landed in the middle of the forest. All around her trees cover the farthest reaches of her sight, broken branches, and strewn pine needles. Sunlight dapples snow, blinding and bright and searing Ilia’s eyelids, forcing her to squint through the tiniest slits.

She also appears to be alone.

Alone, in the middle of the Mitternächtlich forest, covered in snow, with a concussion, clothing not appropriate for the weather, and missing her weapon.

Wait.

Shit.

Ilia groans, dropping back into the snow in anguish, feeling numb and dizzy and in pain.

Her fucking whip is gone.

“Fuuuuuuuck.”

~

Ilia manages to pull herself together and get on her feet because laying in the snow until she dies of hypothermia is not exactly her idea of a good time. Neither is tromping through the snow in a wet catsuit that only goes down to the thighs, but hey, pick your battles .

Ilia would almost find the image comical, a small snow-covered chameleon faunus tromping through the Atlesian wilderness if she herself wasn’t the chameleon faunus.

The concussion isn't helping.

Trees swim lazily in her vision as she forces her tired limbs to cooperate, left, right, left, right.

Left. The earth lurches.

Right. Her chest hurts.

Left. Ilia just wants to stop.

Right. She’s so tired.

Left. She’s so heavy.

Right. She’s so cold.

Lef- she falls.

~

Ilia wakes up again, but this time its dark. Dark and even colder and Ilia honestly can’t even conjure the strength to raise her head this time around.

This is it, she thinks, this is where I die.

She always thought she’d go out a bit more heroically. Okay, maybe heroic isn’t the right word, but she always thought her death would at least mean something.

Surrounded, making a last stand for her people. Shouting in the face of death that she wasn’t afraid.

But here, alone, cold, and in the dark she is afraid.

The sky stares back at her, cold and unfeeling.

Ilia’s so heavy.

So so heavy.

So cold.

She can feel the ice in her bones, the heart in her chest thuds heavily with every beat, attempting to move frozen blood through frozen veins and all Ilia can do is close her eyes and pray.

She wonders if she’ll see her parents again, or if she’s already too late.

A growl sounds in her ears.

Ilia shoots upwards, sending snow and ice flying as her frozen joints scream in agony at being forced into submission.

Glittering red eyes stare her down. An Ursa, she realizes, panic flooding down her spine.

RUN , some deep-seated part of her screams.

It’s not like she has another alternative.

The trees are swimming, her vision washing in and out of color, black, then white, then starburst, and Ilia just continues to stumble away. Her legs don’t work properly, her lungs ache with every breath.

The Ursa roars, giving chase and Ilia can feel its breath hot on her heels, teeth snapping so close she can feel the air dispelling. The woods blur together into one senseless tide of shapes, brown and green and white. For some reason, Ilia recognizes the feeling of color itching across her skin, but she can’t quite piece what colors she’s turning.

The Ursa screams in outrage and Ilia can hear others coming to join the hunt. Wounded and sick prey is always the easiest to catch after all.

She focuses again, left right, left right, left r -

Her foot doesn’t meet the ground.

Ilia realizes too late what that means.

The ground is gone and she’s falling, falling, falling. Tumbling end over end and she can taste dirt and dust. A thousand more aches and pains fill her nerves. Her ribs shriek, her arms groan, her spine cries, the muscles in her calves whimper. Her head pounds like an anvil.

Suddenly, there’s a wet cracking noise.

Her leg wails.

Or maybe that’s her, at this point she isn’t entirely sure.

All she knows is that she lands in a heap at the bottom of a hill and that the pain is blinding.

She doesn’t care anymore, death can take her, death can take her a million times over she just wants it all to stop.

Stop. Please, please just stop.

~

It stops.

~

Ilia wakes up warm.

It’s a slow process, not like the shock of pain that ripped her from her slumber previously. No, instead she’s roused by a gentle sound just beyond her, the soft crackling of a fire she can’t see, but warmth washes over her in waves.

Slowly, Ilia feels herself going limp, boneless and unafraid because she’s warm . Warm and comfortable, she sinks further back against the furs beneath her.

Furs? Her brain questions, sluggish, but Ilia’s eyes won't open. Too content, too comfortable to open them and potentially ruin this small semblance of comfort she’s managed to gain.

There’s movement somewhere to Ilia’s left, the quiet kind that speaks simply of the rustle of fabric and something being scraped into a bowl.

Food, the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind during her ordeal, but the thought alone is nearly enough to get her to pry open her eyes.

The moment she does, however, light hits her over the head like a baseball bat. She snaps them back closed and releases a groan of displeasure. The movement at her feet becomes a little faster and Ilia is suddenly greeted by a warm hand grasping the side of her face and turning it back over.

“Ilia,” a gentle voice urges and Ilia vaguely recognizes it, but it's so very far away, and her eyes just won’t open.

So instead she just groans again in response.

The voice mutters something she doesn’t catch and something warm is pressed against her lips.

“Drink,” it commands. Ilia doesn’t have the presence of mind to question it, so she does.

It’s not the best-tasting stew in the world, but to Ilia, it’s heaven on her tongue and she laps at it hungrily, licking blindly from the spoon until there’s nothing left, and then whimpering for more.

The voice tuts, something about, “why are they always puppies?” and then the spoon is returned to her lips.

Ilia eats her fill, only managing a few more spoonfuls before the dizziness settles over her again, leaving her to sprawl back against the furs. The voice huffs and something cool presses against Ilia’s head, though not unpleasantly so.

“You’re getting warmer,” she mutters. Ilia suddenly recognizes the voice as feminine. “I’m not entirely sure if that’s a good or bad thing.”

“mmm,” Ilia tries, she honestly does. She summons all the strength she can manage and tries her hardest to form a sentence, a question, a word, anything. Her eyebrows scrunch in effort and suddenly that cool hand is back, smoothing over her brow and soothing her head back against the furs where she hadn’t noticed she’s lifted it from.

“Shhh, you’re still weak,” the voice comforts, stroking idly through the loose strands of Ilia’s hair, freed from its usual ponytail. “Rest. You’re going to be fine.”

Ilia can't find it within herself to protest when everything feels so soft and warm.

So she just relaxes once again, boneless and limp.

The voice hums a gentle lullaby. One that Ilia hasn’t heard since her childhood.

~

The next time she wakes up she doesn’t have to force her eyes open, so that’s somewhat a plus. It doesn’t help her identify her surroundings though.

She’s in a cave, small and cramped as it is, she’s not entirely sure if that’s the right word for it, or if it’s just an outcropping covered by shrubbery with a fire.

Or what’s left of it.

Glowing embers lay twisted at her feet, still smoldering with warmth, but any flames that might’ve been lit have long since died. The remains of some kind of animal are lay beside them, drying out in the heat they provide.

Ilia finds herself curled on top of what looks to be a wolf pelt, though the edges are frayed in a way that suggests it wasn’t made professionally, and it smells freshly tanned. Something is still tickling in the back of her brain, but she can’t quite figure it out.

With more effort than she’d like to admit, Ilia lifts herself from her sprawl.

She makes it to her elbows with little trouble, then almost to a sitting position before it comes. Hot and blinding, pain stabs through her ribs and head, sending her crashing back against the ground with a cry of pain.

Something rattles to the ground and heavy footsteps crunch through the snow. Ilia can barely see straight, fighting through flash after flash of blinding pain. The ceiling of the cave dances above, flashing different colors that make about as much sense as the last.

The shrubbery is woven together at the edge of the outcrop parts and a pale head comes stumbling through, sword gripped tightly in her left hand.

Ilia struggles to make sense of the colors.

“Ilia!” It’s that voice again. Painfully familiar, but still unrecognizable.

Cold hands grab her shoulders, forcing her down and holding her there while she continues to shake. Flashes of a night sky, weightlessness, earth, ground, approaching faster and faster until-

“Ilia, breathe.” the voice is stern but not angry. Ilia forces herself to focus.

Breathe. She thinks, I can do that.

She sucks in a breath, shaky and uneven as it is. The air in the shelter is cold now, leaking through the opened wall, and the cold air bites at Ilia’s lungs, leaving her coughing and choking on it.

Soothing hands rub her shoulders, keeping her in place and slowly urging her back into a state that resembles calm. It’s only after a minute of that, that Ilia can finally pry her eyes back open to meet the gaze of her savior.

Bright blue eyes, or eye, glitter back at her. One is open, though scarred at it is, staring at her in concern. The other is swollen shut and blackened like an overly ripe plum.

“We-Eissss?” she rasps, spitting out a few more stubborn last coughs.

Weiss’s entire being sags in relief, and she slowly lays her head forwards, nearly bringing it to rest against Ilia’s, before suddenly retracting it, a dusting of pink on her cheeks and a fire in that eye.

“What the hell were you thinking?!” she shouts suddenly and Ilia flinches away from the sound. “We’re heading to Atlas, one of the coldest places in Remnant, and what do you do?! You wear fucking shorts! ”

Ilia’s head already hurts, the sudden shouting isn’t exactly helping, but a sudden burst of shame does travel up her spine. She really should’ve been more prepared, especially since she was the one who claimed something bad was going to happen over the forest.

“I-I-”

“Also, what the actual living hell happened in that engine room?!” she growls, icy gaze boring into Ilia’s soul. “One moment I’m watching this massive--gods-know-what--Grimm swatting at our ship like it’s an annoying bug, the next, the ship is fucking gone and I’m falling towards the earth at terminal velocity with absolutely no idea where anyone else is or even if we’re falling in the same direction!”

Ilia tries for a sheepish smile, but the movement just causes more pain to rise in her temples. She winces, scrunching her eyes closed again.

Weiss’s harsh breathing slows, and fingers come up to trace over her brow once again. She recognizes the touch now, such a simple gesture for all that it means. Her scowl inches away, prying her eyes open once again.

Weiss’s cheeks are still a bit red from anger (or indignation, which Ilia isn’t sure)but she doesn’t yell at her again. Instead, she traces her fingers along the side of her face, stopping just before she hits her head wound.

“Dustdamnit Ilia,” she breathes, dropping her gaze back down to the pelt they’re both kneeled over. “I was so scared that I found you too late.”

Weiss’s voice breaks, cracked and uneven and hurting in all the ways that make Ilia want to curl her arms around her and never let go.

Ilia blinks, okay concussion brain, she thinks, tone down the gay .

“Weiss,” she settles for curling a hand in hers instead. Weiss slowly curls her fingers around hers in retribution. “You… saved… me…”

It’s hoarse and broken, but it’s the best she can manage in her current state of health.

Weiss’s brow knits in shame, gaze distant.

“Not soon enough,” she whispers.

Ilia wants to laugh, but it turns into coughing before she can even start. Weiss rubs her shoulders and back, keeping her in place as violent tremors run up and down her body.

“F-fu-uck. Me-e,” Ilia rasps between coughs, Weiss’s hand still clutched tightly in hers.

“Maybe later,” she mumbles, then lights up a shade of pink Ilia didn’t know she was capable of. “I-I mean-”

Ilia cracks her best crooked grin, receiving a glare and slap to the shoulder in return.

“Ow,” she jokes and Weiss rolls her eyes.

“I’ve been spending too much time with Yang.”

Ilia quiets at that, a broken ship, and if Weiss is correct they probably all fell.

That means back up isn’t coming.

“D-do you think the others are alright?”

Weiss’s mouth tightens into a thin line, eyes glancing back the way she came.

“I’m not sure. I saw some smoke in the distance, but that could just be a village.”

“There’s a mine twenty clicks north,” Ilia mutters, closing her eyes in order to try and remember the camp in the best clarity she can. “It’s a small one, only about forty families, but being so close to the forest they get Grimm attacks a lot.” She remembers a graveyard far too large for a camp she could run across at the age of six without breaking a sweat. Canvas and wooden buildings, bearing the scars of claws that haven’t touched them in years, shouting in the middle of the night while her parents took turns holding her close and leaving the safety of their home to fight.

It was a wonder they all survived long enough to traumatize her in the fifth grade.

Weiss’s voice swam back into her ears, distant and echoing as if she were speaking down a pipe.

“-head there? I mean, I know it’s hardly ideal, but you’re not doing too good.”

Ilia forces her eyes back open.

“Hmm?” she manages. Weiss’s face is concerned, eyebrows knitting together as she sucks her lip between her teeth.

“You need help,” she decides, a little of that fire re-igniting itself in her eyes. “Medical help, and I can’t give that to you.” She sighs as if it pains her to admit it.

“‘Ts just a head bump,” Ilia protests, trying to push herself up with her elbows. “And a little hypothermia. Another night by the fire and I’ll- augh!”

Her leg sends a sharp shock through her, forcing her back down, hissing through her teeth the whole way. Weiss’s eyebrows rise in disbelief, Ilia notices suddenly that her hand is resting on her knee.

“Okay, and a leg wound.”

Weiss scowls.

“A broken leg.”

Weiss’s expression still doesn’t change and Ilia is forced to admit defeat.

“A concussion, cracked ribs, and a broken leg as well as enough hypothermia to kill a horse.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t get frostbite,” Weiss states flatly, releasing the pressure on her leg and Ilia hisses again at the sudden change. Weiss does wince in sympathy, but directs her gaze back towards the dying fire, standing and dragging over a log to place into the pit, blowing gently on the flames.

“h-How’d you get all this anyway?” Ilia grunts through her pain, trying to distract herself from the sudden shiver that wracks her body now that Weiss is no longer pressed up against it.

Weiss purses her lips, then sighs.

“I did have a little bit of an obsession with camping as a child,” she admits, poking and prodding the coals with her sword.

“The wolf pelt,” Ilia clarifies.

A smile pulls at the corners of her mouth, one that Ilia recognizes as the small self-satisfied grin she’d give when she managed to win a sparring match against one of her teammates.

“Well, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I wasn’t impressed that I remembered how to tan a hide.”

Ilia manages another laugh, nothing more than a bark of humor, but it makes her feel a little better about herself. Especially when she gets fixed with that look that seems so very fond for someone she’s known for only about a month now.

Then again, she got attached to Blake within two weeks.

Shut up brain! She screams internally.

Weiss’s gaze slowly drags its way back over to her, but instead of settling on her face, it focuses on the tight wraps around her leg, lips pursing in concern.

“Hey,” Ilia whispers, drawing her gaze back to her face. “You saved my life. I’m gonna be fine.”

“It’s…” Weiss sighs, “Your leg is bad Ilia.”

Ilia nods, remembers a blinding pain, a loud wet snap that made her insides roil in revulsion. She can’t bring herself to look down at it in all honesty.

“Well, then it’s a good thing I’ve got a guardian Schnow-angel,” she winces, closing her eyes, “aaand that’s the concussion talking. Please forget I ever said that.”

Laughter trickles through the air from the other side of Ilia’s clenched eyelids and she peeks from behind them just in time to catch the tail end of Weiss’s laughter. Hands held over her mouth as she attempts to stifle giggles behind them.

It’s honestly one of the most endearing sights that Ilia has come across.

Weiss fixes her with a glare that has no real malice in it and Ilia feels warmth wash over her skin. The spots on her arms start to turn pink and the flashing oh no, in her brain doesn’t have time to fully register before she’s clapping her arms over each other as if that can hide the color shift. As if her face doesn’t also have spots on it.

Weiss laughs again and Ilia splutters indignantly.

~

The next time Ilia wakes up she’s not warm.

She’s baking.

Heat rolling over her body in waves she can’t control nor name. Her head pounds, no longer sharp, instead subdued but aching. With each heartbeat it throbs, making her close her eyes with each beat.

The cave is dark. Darker than it was when she was talking to Weiss earlier, and the crackle of the fire has risen to a roar. Something that used to be a comfort now a burden.

Ilia shuffles, uneasy and uncoordinated, away from the blaze, praying silently that the heat will go away, that it’s just a bad dream.

That she doesn’t have to drop another dead weight onto Weiss’s shoulders.

Throughout her shuffling, she neglects to open her eyes and runs into another body in her desperate bid to get away from the sweltering heat that seems to be settling in her bones.

Weiss draws in a breath and rolls over, meeting Ilia’s gaze through a half-asleep squint.

“Illllia?” she slurs, confusion in her voice.

Ilia’s throat aches and speaking feels like she’s doing gymnastics, but she fights her way through.

“Go back to sleep, just getting a bit warm by the fire,” she rasps. Her voice cracks unsteadily and she can taste how sour her breath is.

Weiss is either too tired to notice, or she’s a better liar than she thinks she is because the former heiress doesn’t protest. Instead, she leans forwards, curling an arm over Ilia’s middle and nuzzling her way beneath her chin.

“You’re warm,” is all she says and then her breaths deepen into sleep, leaving a sweating gay Ilia with a cute girl asleep on her chest.

She lights up like a Christmas tree.

Oh dear gods, I’m screwed.

Chapter Text

The world swirls, wind buffeting across a barren landscape that stretches on for miles and miles in all directions. Tainted black earth covering her feet, trapped up to her knees in the stuff, watching as a poisonous green sky swirls above her.

She can hear them in the distance: screams, cries. She watches, solemn, silent, as blood begins to flow from the earth itself. Rising up above the landscape, steadily climbing past her legs and waist, covering her skin in sticky warm liquid.

Her whole body twinges with revulsion and she begins squirming.

Thrashing.

Screaming.

Crying out with all her strength because what else can she do? She can’t move.

She’s helpless.

And the blood keeps rising. Past her chest, over her shoulders, it creeps over her neck so very very slowly.

She could’ve been like that for minutes, hours, an eternity, struggling to keep her head above the blood.

Then it’s over her head and she can’t breathe.

~

Fingers card softly through Ilia’s hair, pulling her from the depths of exhaustion with all the effectiveness of a pool noodle.

She’s still hot, though not quite as sweltering as when she last woke.

The fingers in her hair still for a second, and a whine makes its way through her throat before she can find the self-control to stop it.

The fingers continue their ministrations absently, scratching blunted nails against her scalp and Ilia presses against them, seeking out human contact like a person in the desert seeks water. The last time someone besides herself touched her hair it was Blake.

It feels like years ago at this point.

“God you’re a puppy,” Weiss mutters, Ilia can hear the furrow in her brows and forces her eyes open to observe such an expression instead of just imagining it.

Weiss appears startled by her, snapping her gaze down to meet Ilia’s and steadily growing more colorful beneath it. Her fingers freeze in Ilia’s hair once again, but she doesn’t retract them either.

Ilia just stares, caught up in the fact that Weiss’s eyes are the same damn color as the sky. A blue that should be physically impossible for a human to achieve.

She faintly is aware that something is buzzing around in her brain, something she can’t fully bother to address because everything feels a little bit wrong right now anyway.

The world is a little floaty, her limbs feel loose like gravity isn’t really holding her down. The light in the cave dances in patterns on the wall, twisting up and around each other in a waltz of shadow and orange light. Weiss’s hands are cool, and her body is warm, and Ilia is boiling, but the warmth in Weiss’s chest pulls her in, making her curl into her without a second thought.

Her eyes slide closed and she sighs. Not quite in content, but she doesn’t really want to move again any time soon.

“Ilia,” Weiss’s voice echoes and slowly, ever so slowly, she manages to pry her eyes open once again.

“Mm?”

The fingers carding through her hair tighten just a little.

“You’re getting worse,” she whispers.

Ilia blinks, slow and lazy. Worse? She thinks, but I feel fine.

She tries to voice that, but as she draws in a breath, her lungs sting, and she heaves, coughing and hacking until she can feel something hot and metallic in her mouth. Weiss’s arms brace against her, keeping her from falling onto the cave floor or into the fire in her fit, but Ilia still struggles to pull her hands to her face and wipe away the blood.

Blood.

~

Drowning, drowning, drowning.

Down down down.

All she can taste is blood, metallic, and hot, and thick.

It’s sick, sickening, filling her lungs with every desperate gasp for air, fighting upwards. Upwards, away, trying desperately to scrabble for purchase, but finding nothing instead except more blood and disappointment.

It’s so hot.

Sweltering.

Boiling.

Burning.

She screams.

Bubbles escape her.

~

Arms pull Ilia upright.

Through the tiniest crack in her eyelids, Ilia can just barely make out a pale blob before her, moving with all the speed and fevor of someone verging on panic.

For some reason, she knows that’s a bad thing.

“Come on, come on Ilia, wake up!” the pale thing shouts, shaking her by the shoulders.

Ilia groans, too tired, too heavy to try and form actual words.

The pale thing shakes her again.

“I don’t care if you don’t want to, you’re not dying on me, you overgrown gecko! Wake up!”

Ilia forces her eyes open, if only so she can look the person in the face and glare at them for that. Overgrown gecko, really?

To no avail it seems, her vision refuses to focus, remaining a canvas of blurred shapes and colors that don’t really make any sense to her fever-addled brain. Just her eyes being open seems to calm the pale thing though, so at least she isn’t being shaken like a ragdoll anymore.

“Dustdammit Ilia,” it hisses and Ilia blinks slowly, trying desperately to remember where she’s heard that before. “You scared the living shit out of me.”

“Guh,” is all Ilia manages.

The pale thing flinches, or maybe winces, she can’t really tell without being able to see it’s facial expression. The arms set her back against something hard and upright. A wall, her brain supplies, she tells it to shut up.

“We can’t wait around here any longer,” the pale thing mutters, straightening up and walking over to where a brown thing had been discarded in the corner. Ilia reasonably assumes it’s a bag of some sort when they begin to shove things in it. “You’re getting worse by the hour and it’s only a matter of time before some Grimm catch our scent.”

They pause, hand clenched on the wolf pelt that Ilia recognizes from the night previously, then, with a heavy sigh, carries it back over to Ilia. They drape it over her shoulders like a blanket and tighten it, pausing when their hand touches her face, pressing the back of it against Ilia’s forehead.

She closes her eye, grateful for the coolness of the skin.

Then the touch retracts and Ilia forces her eyes open again. The pale thing just stares at her for a moment before continuing.

“We should head for the dust mine,” Ilia shivers at the words, not knowing much, but knowing that they leave a bitter taste in her mouth. The other person sighs. “I know, it’s hardly ideal, but any help is better than none at this point. We’ve got no idea where anyone else is, and best case scenario they also headed towards the thing spitting out smoke.”

Blue eyes swim in to focus, staring her down.

“I’m not letting you die on me Amolita.”

~

It’s dark now.

Dark and cold.

Ilia can’t feel anything.

Her arms are numb, her legs tired.

She’s just so heavy.

Sinking.

Deeper and deeper.

Too tired to fight anymore.

Too tired to care, Ilia sinks.

~

She’s moving, of that much Ilia is sure.

An arm wrapped around her waist, bracing her against a warm but smaller body, keeping her upright, if just barely, and dragging her toes in the snow.

She struggles, pained and dizzy, to lift her head. It’s so heavy, so so hot, she wants to cry.

She hasn’t cried, not really, not since her parent’s death. A few errant tears, yes, but a full on sob like the one that threatens to wrack her whole body? No. But she finds in this instant that everything just feels wrong.

Everything hurts and she wants to cry.

She can feel the tears welling in her eyes.

“Come on,” a voice hums close to her ear and she winces at the volume.

“I-I,” she chokes.

The arm around her waist tightens, lifting her up higher.

“Come on Ilia, I can’t carry you the whole way.” The voice urges again and Ilia takes the hint, forcing shaking legs beneath her and pushing with as much strength as she can muster.

It’s slow going.

Her vision is minimal at best, nonexistent at worse, leaving her at the complete mercy of whoever it is who is guiding her through this snow-ridden landscape. Her legs ache with each step, refusing to bare her full weight, the right leg, in particular, causes her to cry out the first time she steps with it, falling back against her guide who grunts with the effort of keeping them both upright.

Ilia becomes aware, with time, that the person holding her up is shivering, body pressed tightly against Ilia’s considerably warmer one, but still somehow keeping them from falling.

It doesn’t help when Ilia starts to nod off again.

It’s not like she wants to, though the deep reaches of sleep seem considerably better than whatever hell she’s gotten herself trapped in right this instant, but she remembers enough about her state of health to know that if she does fall asleep she risks not waking up again. However, she’s just so tired and every step feels like a battle that she just barely manages to win by the skin of her teeth.

“Ilia,” the voice says again and she snaps her head back up, setting her eyes on their face in pure defiance. She’s not dying today.

Weiss’s brows are knit in exertion and her cheeks are swollen red from the cold. She adjusts her grip on Ilia’s waist, bringing them forward another step.

“You gotta stay with me,” she whispers, nothing more than a breath escaping in a cloud of mist. Ilia blinks slowly, trying to remember where they’re going.

“I-I’m okay,” she tries to reassure, breath coming out hot and sour. Her mouth tastes metallic and her tongue feels swollen.

Weiss just shakes her head.

“No, you’re not.” Sighing, another cloud of breath leaves her and Ilia shivers when it touches the side of her face. Weiss sets her gaze ahead of them. “I should’ve gone to get help a while ago. I knew you were injured, I knew you needed help and I foolishly thought I could take care of it.”

Ilia doesn’t like the self-deprecating tone filling Weiss’s voice.

“N-Not. Your. F-fault,” she struggles out, breath already labored and shallow.

Weiss tightens her grip.

“I’m not letting you die on me,” she growls, that fiery defiance back in her voice. Ilia feels a grin pulling at her lips, delirious with pain and fever.

“Heh, you’re a good cookie, Schnee.”

Weiss blinks, giving her an incredulous look.

“Did you just call me a ‘good cookie’?”

Ilia laughs, rattling and halfway to a cough, but she laughs, shaking her entire body in the process. Weiss struggles to keep them up.

“Yupp,” Ilia manages once again, slumping forwards when her legs give out. Weiss yelps, lurching to try and take the sudden weight, gritting her teeth and grunting with effort. It takes longer than it should to get back to their feet, Ilia having all the coordination of a wet noodle.

“Weiss?” Ilia asks after a couple minutes of silence. Weiss sighs, but not unkindly.

“Yes?”

“Do you think,” Ilia swallows, but it’s a struggle considering her mouth is so dry. Her knees wobble and she makes a conscious effort to put another foot down. “Wh-what d’ you think is gonna happen when this is all over?”

Weiss’s brows knit, and for a minute doesn’t respond, Ilia thinks she might’ve either not heard her, or is dismissing her because she’s not really likely to be available for intelligent conversation right now.

“Well in a perfect world we’d go back to school,” Weiss says eventually, and Ilia pulls her gaze back over to the girl from where it’d begun to wander to the trees surrounding them. She looks troubled, her mouth pulled into a hard line and eyebrows still pressing against one another. “Though I honestly think we’ll be lucky if this is over within our lifetimes.”

Ilia hums, stifling a cry of pain when underneath the blanket of snow her foot comes into contact with something hard. Together, they spend a good few seconds struggling to get over what turns out to be a large rock embedded in the snow that comes up to their knees, before just carving their way around it.

“H-How long do you think it’ll take?”

Weiss’s gaze flickers upwards towards the smoke in the distance. It’s getting closer, but oh so slowly, to the point that Ilia thinks they’ll be lucky if they get there by the next morning.

“If Ozpin has been fighting Salem over the course of a hundred lives, what chance do we have?” Is all she responds.

Ilia would perhaps find that more damning if she could stop thinking about how the white snow reminds her of her mother’s wedding dress, stored away in a back corner throughout her childhood, an old family heirloom older than the camp, older than Atlas probably. It was easily the nicest thing her family owned and would only be brought out again into the light once Ilia found herself a partner. She’d lost it when her parents died. Every last piece of their property taken by the Schnee Dust Company and sold to compensate for the lives of workers and the money they were going to lose because of it.

“Wh-” Ilia struggles to get her tongue to work. It feels swollen and hot inside her mouth. “What ‘bout Blake and Yang?”

Weiss blinks, finally shifted her gaze from the path ahead to give Ilia a good look. “What do you mean?”

“When,” Ilia narrowly avoids spilling to the ground when she steps in the snow to find it farther downwards than she was anticipating. “When ‘is is over, y-you think they’ll get married?”

A burst of startled laughter escapes Weiss. She holds onto Ilia a little tighter and buries her face in the side of Ilia’s neck. She’s cold, almost unimaginably cold, and against her hot skin it’s like someone’s stuck a dagger in her side, but she holds it together because she doesn’t really have the energy to shrink away anyway.

“I-” Weiss coughs, and Ilia doesn’t like the sound of it. Not rattling like her own, but rather wheezing, like air is struggling to escape her. “-I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that for a while.”

Ilia hums, unconvinced.

“B-Blake wa-as always a romantic.”

Weiss hums in agreement.

“That she was.” they lapse into silence for another dozen yards. The sounds of wind and crunching snow being the only things to accompany them. Weiss’s labored breaths in Ilia’s ear, Ilia’s growing pounding in her head. Her head starts to drop again, and Ilia doesn’t have the presence of mind to stop it.

She’s so so tired.

Weiss coughs, and Ilia snaps back to attention.

“How,” Weiss whispers, “How’d that train of thought come about anyway?”

Ilia thinks, only for the briefest of moments, about lying to her. Telling her that she was just curious or that she doesn’t really know. One look in those big blue eyes though and her lips are moving without her consent.

“My mam,” she’s tired and the accent that comes with the deepest regions of Atlas’s territory can’t be covered by the forced Mistralian one she’d adopted after a couple months in the Fang. “Hadt dis dress, se ssnov s’a same kolor.” Her tongue clicks awkwardly against her teeth in consonants that it hasn’t used in years, but the pattern is familiar enough that Ilia doesn’t even really notice.

“I meant Blake and Yang,” Weiss’s voice softens slightly, maybe because she recognizes the accent, maybe the earwax in Ilia’s ears has just frozen solid and she can’t hear very well. Ilia presumes either is possible.

“KouldtN’t sink of aNy fone elz.” She shrugs.

“What?” Weiss asks, a little bit of humor in her voice, a little bit of something that Ilia can’t identify. “Not even Ren and Nora?”

“N-Nott rrealley seirr styell.” Ilia can feel a smile pulling at the corners of her lips. A cold wind rushes through both of them, traveling up their spines and forcing Ilia to press closer to Weiss in order to keep her legs from giving out beneath her.

Weiss doesn’t complain, most likely because it’s cold and if nothing else, Ilia is a warm body next to her.

They keep walking.

~

It’s about an hour before the Grimm catch their scent.

Honestly, given the amount of distance they’ve covered in that time Ilia is surprised they didn’t run into them ages back.

Guess Weiss was better at wilderness skills than she liked to broadcast, though practically carrying someone more than her own body weight had to be taxing. She didn’t exactly have a chance to cover their tracks or check Ilia to make sure she hadn’t started bleeding somewhere (spoiler, she had. Damn leg.), so the appearance of Grimm wasn’t exactly surprising.

The fact that it was a pride of Manticores, was.

Manticores weren’t uncommon in Atlas, prides were often seen roaming the more mountainous regions and the deeper seated regions of canyons and iced over rivers.

The middle of the forest, however? Unheard of.

Until now, Ilia thinks dully when she recognizes the roar echoing through the trees. Weiss curses, slinging Ilia behind her in one swift motion and lifting Myrtenaster. Ilia’s breath leaves her when she catches sight of them.

They certainly don’t look like any Manticores she’s seen.

Their fur is white, pure undefiled white, clashing against the snow with such a defiance that Ilia can’t even look at them directly. As the snow whips around them, slicing into her skin like millions of tiny needles, Ilia can see that the fur of these creatures is thick enough that she seriously thinks she wouldn’t be able to pierce it with her whip. And they’re massive. Manticores usually stand about two and a half meters tall, these stand about four, towering over both of them with gaping red maws and teeth the size of her head.

Weiss’s grip on Myrtenaster tightens, teeth gritting together with enough pressure to break them.

“Ilia,” she instructs, squeezing her once before tossing her into the treeline. “If anything goes wrong… I’m sorry.” And with that, she charges into the fray.

Ilia wants to scream, to tell her to stop, to run, to do anything besides run headlong into almost certain death at this point. She’s the weak one, the injured one, the easy prey. Weiss should just run and leave her to the literal Grimm. Instead, she’s charging into the fray with a war cry that would send Nevermores running.

The Manticores scream, the largest stands at the head of the pack, roaring defiantly, it’s mane furling out behind him like tongues of flame against the grey sky. Two of his friends take his roar as commands, circling around Weiss and entrapping her within their ranks.

But Weiss is too fast for them, darting through the opening the two leave before they can even see it and spinning on her heels. A glyph lights up just beyond her hands, blazing like she holds the very sun in her hands before releasing a blast of fire upon the Manticores. The largest gets the brunt of it, stumbling backward with a shriek while his buddies slink forwards, baring their teeth in retribution.

A smaller one, female from her lack of mane, charges, claws and teeth outstretched. Weiss spins, raising a glyph in time that the lioness bounces off the shield, tumbling through the snow in a series of snarls and roars. A second creeps through the foliage at the same time, coming up behind Weiss and pouncing while Weiss deflects the first. She barely manages to spring away, feet just inches from outstretched claws.

She lands against a tree, dull thud resounding in the air with the crack of wood. Weiss curses, struggling back to her feet as four manticores converge on her at once. She’s a whirlwind of movement, blade flashing faster than the eye can track, and bursts of light and ice come from her like a particularly reactive firework. Weiss shoots upwards, leaving a manticore encased in ice, scorching one into a pile of ash, and two others pawing over their eyes in pain. She starts towards Ilia, heaving with breath and part of her sleeve is torn, bite marks, though the teeth don't appear to have pierced skin.

Suddenly, a dark shadow falls across Weiss’s path, the largest Manticore recovered from his burn and deftly not happy about it. He roars straight in her face and Weiss curses, loud and unladylike, and all the things that Ilia has ever thought about the Schnee name.

They shoot away, ripping up trees and snow drifts in their wake, leaving a swiss cheese of wilderness behind. Which would be all well in good if it weren’t for one little problem.

Weiss is gone and the two she’d blinded are recovering.

Ilia curses, pawing desperately for something, anything. Adrenaline begins to pull her out of the depths of her fevered haze, but her limbs are sore and awkward. Stiff with muscles that are overworked and dangerously close to just giving out on her.

The first licks his lips in triumph, he can probably smell the sickness and fatigue on her, and grins that feline grin that Ilia’s seen far too many times to not fear. He lunges and with a desperate, panicked cry, Ilia lurches sideways.

It seems the manticore miscalculated his jump.

He plows headfirst into the tree behind her with such a force the trunk cracks over him, falling forwards and crushing the Grimm in a bout of sheer luck. Ilia would be impressed if she didn’t still have another Grimm on her tail. The second is female and decidedly bigger because of it, snarling at the loss of her mate she sets those soulless crimson eyes on Ilia. She’s sure if Grimm could speak she’d be saying now it’s your turn.

Ilia reaches for something, anything.

The manticore lunges.

She grabs a fallen branch.

Jaws clamp down on wood, directly over Ilia’s head, inches from her face. Teeth hot and dripping with drool, splinters flying around her face and forcing her to screw it shut, pushing her backward on the snow, leaving her gasping for breath and pushing with every last bit of strength she has. The wood groans beneath the pressure of a two-ton creature attempting to bite through it.

A distant roar draws Ilia’s attention and she looks away just in time to watch as Weiss’s furry friend dive bombs for her, driving itself headfirst into a boulder much like the one that had attempted to get her at the tree. The force of the collision enough to shake the ground beneath all of them. With a final war cry much more dramatic than necessary Weiss raises a block of solid ice over her head and slams it over the creatures already horribly misshapen skull. A cloud of black smoke rises beneath it.

The wood in Ilia’s hands begins to crackle.

Fuck.

“WEISS!” she shouts, hoarse and broken and closer to a scream than anything else.

Time slows.

The wood is still breaking, but Ilia can literally see each individual splinter coming apart from itself, she can see every inch, every centimeter the jaws of the Manticore close, she can count each individual snowflake that falls on the Manticores face.

But most of all, she can see Weiss.

Because Weiss isn’t slowing down.

Ilai feels an itch, not unlike the one that comes across her skin when she changes color, but this one erupts in her gut, pulling like someone has tied a rope to her intestines and is attempting to pull it out through her bellybutton.

The world freezes.

A sword tip pierces through the back of the Manticore’s head and nearly touches Ilia’s nose before the creature disrupts in an explosion of black smoke.

Ilia falls back, exhausted, and the world rights itself in its motion.

Weiss heaves, “What the hell was that?” Her face is flushed with exertion, bent partially over on herself because she has to brace herself against something even if that something is just herself.

Ilia doesn’t have an answer.

A distant rolling thunder breaks on the horizon. Weiss’s head whips up and Ilia can feel the dread building in her stomach.

“Se Waldkönig.” She whispers

~

Weiss’s knight is fast, she’ll give it that.

Unfortunately, the Waldkönig is faster.

Now, in the light of day, even strewn through storm clouds as it is, Ilia can see the full creature and honestly she gets why the manticores would flee.

The thing is massive, dwarfing Weiss’s knight to the point where Ilia isn’t sure how she’s never seen it before. A tower of fur as dark as night and glistening red eyes that make blood look pale in comparison.

It appears vaguely canine like a Beowulf had a child with a Sphynx and then the child ate a hundred steroids. A large canine maw with wings the size of Ferris wheels on either side of the ridged spine that springs up from its back. Its forepaws have claws bigger than Ilia is tall and as they descend from the torso they slowly turn reptilian, white scales chinking within each other and collecting snow as it bounds after them.

Weiss looks about ready to scream, she looks exhausted, absolutely beaten. Her aura is still holding for the time being but all of her concentration seems to be focused on keeping the Knight moving, teeth gritted tight enough together that Ilia fears she might break them. As the Knight leaps over a fallen tree Ilia watches her face screw itself up into an expression of pure strain.

The Waldkönig screams, shrieking at a frequency at rattles the branches of the trees around them and sends all types of fauna fleeing. She spots deer, rabbits, wolves, even other smaller Grimm tearing through the forest in a blind panic attempting to get away from the massive beast bearing down on them.

“Weiss!” Ilia yells, nestled in the knight’s elbow as she is she can just barely make out Weiss’s face from where she’s pressed into the Knight’s helmet. She doesn’t respond in anything that Ilia can hear, and that might just be a lack of response or she just can't hear her over the sounds of hundreds of trees being ripped up from the ground.

Ilia swallows, glancing forward. In the distance she can see the old mining town coming into shape, canvas tents and leaning buildings clustered together in a clearing that seems too small for all of the homes crammed into it. Ilia’s heart is pounding, not just because she can feel every single one of the knight’s steps beneath her.

“Go left!” she yells again over the wind. They can’t lead the Waldkönig straight into the camp, help or no help, it would be a massacre. She just hopes that Weiss hears her.

The knight veers to the left, heavy steps becoming frantic as Weiss begins to tremble, strain making sweat form along her brow and shoulders to heave with breath. The knight feels less solid suddenly and Ilia presses closer for the illusion of something pressing back on her, keeping her aloft rather than air.

The Waldkönig rears backward and Ilia knows what's happening, and she’s powerless to stop it.

As it rises on its hind legs one of those great big reptilian paws rises from the ground, rearing back like Yang does when she’s getting ready for a punch. Ilia lets out a final desperate cry of warning, but its too late, Weiss is too tired, and they’re not fast enough.

The paw swiped through the knight like a knife through butter, and they go tumbling down.

End over end, head and feet spinning in a competition with gravity that she somehow managed to survive once and doubts that she will a second time when her aura is already as compromised as it is.

The earth comes to greet her and Ilia meets it flat on her back screaming.

Somehow, she doesn’t really feel it.

She just feels the cold, cold and this heavy sense of numbness washing over her. Weiss lands beside her with a loud wump, snow crushed in her wake and she can see the aura flickering over her form. The last protection before it flickers out, bright white disappearing.

Weiss doesn’t open her eyes.

The Waldkönig closes in.

Ilia watches, helpless as it rears back its massive head in triumph and roars into the sky, all of her worst childhood nightmares come to life.

Somehow, in Ilia’s last seconds she comes to the realization that if she’s about to die she would’ve at least liked to kiss a girl at some point.

Don’t even think about it death brain, she hisses internally.

You’re about to die, can’t we have just one nice thing?

Not when she’s sleeping! What the hell brain?! And a Schnee?!

A Schnee you like.

I swear to Remnant-

The Waldkonig leans in, parting its massive jaws for the kill.

She’s heard about life flashing before one’s eyes, the final moments being drawn out, but not like this, never like this. Not like the earth itself has come to a standstill, when everything seems frozen except for her own breathing and Weiss’s drawn-out heartbeat.

She thinks of their friends, yes, their friends. Ilia’s never had many but at this moment Ilia knows that she’d take even Nora right now. They care about her, or at least they make it seem like they do, and she doesn’t doubt that when their bodies are failed to be recovered that they’ll mourn their loss with a vengeance that sends Salem into the ground.

And Ilia thinks of Weiss.

Weiss who looks her in the eyes, doesn’t shy away from her past or her long drawn out bouts of angst that even sends Blake running from time to time.

How Weiss is not what she expected.

How Weiss is the textbook definition of a hero, righteous and courageous, and trying her absolute best to not only save the day but also improve herself along the way.

Ilia thinks one last thought.

I don’t want to die without having a chance to live.

Ilia’s panic manifests itself in the depth of her stomach, instead of an itch like before the sensation progressed to a burning. A roaring, blazing internal flame in her stomach and Ilia wonders why death feels like it’s about to consume her from the inside out.

The Waldkönig freezes.

Stock still, a statue, she can't even feel the creature's breath. All around them snow continues to fall, Ilia’s heart continues to pound in her chest, Weiss’s breath continues to escape her in small little puffs of air.

Ilia hears, very very softly, a humming in the air.

It sounds like an airship. She can feel tears in her eyes.

“Here!” she cries, broken and desperate and exhausted. The burning in her stomach continues as she struggles to her feet, her whole body twinging with pain. The Waldkonig remains frozen, eyes set sightlessly on the spot she had just vacated.

“Here!” she screams, searching desperately for their savior, their rescuer, curling her arms under Weiss’s head with all the intention of dragging her, leg be damned.

She looks up and leaning out of an airship overhead, sleek black body like nothing hse has seen before, is a familiar pair of blue eyes, scarless.

Chapter Text

Weiss can hear a droning.

It’s faint, distant, but there: the familiar sound of a heating unit trying its best to combat the cold Atlesian winters. It’s a sound she’s heard so many times that it should be comforting. However, Weiss is hardly comforted by familiar things. Familiar things mean Atlas, and Atlas means home, which means Father.

And Father is anything but comforting.

Slowly, ever so painfully, Weiss pries her eyes open, squinting them against the harsh fluorescent light and trying desperately to string together a coherent thought. The best she gets is ‘where?’ Before her eyes flicker shut once again, shielding her retinas from the glare. She hears shuffling, footsteps, a hand pushes against her forehead and then the buttons of some machines are pushed.

No one speaks, no one yells or calls.

All Weiss can hear is a single person moving and the drone of a heater.

Silence.

Weiss has grown to hate silence over the years. Her father's house was always silent, too large of a place to contain the sound and movements of its inhabitants. Even when Winter was young enough to indulge Weiss’s more playful side, it would seem as if the entire manor was nothing more than their own voices echoing back to them through the halls. Then Winter left and it truly did become silent. A room far too large for a single girl filled with objects that had never been touched, never been moved from their places. Silent faces in silent picture frames staring back at her in silent judgment.

It had driven her insane.

~

Upon arriving at Beacon and being surrounded by sound and stimulation from other people, as well as living in a small room in which nothing was ever untouched, Weiss had been more surprised than anyone else to find that silence had bothered her.

She remembered a particular night several weeks into the school year, perhaps even a couple months, in which she’d woken up to find that both Yang and Blake had snuck out of the room for some quality partner shenanigans. Ruby slept differently than both her sister (Yang snored, loudly ) and Blake (although she didn’t snore like her partner, she made little-muttering noises and sighs throughout the night), Ruby, slept silent as a rock.

Weiss lay there, still, encased in silence for perhaps the first time since leaving her Father’s house.

And she’d lost it.

She wasn’t entirely sure what happened, she only remembered a horrible sense of panic washing over her, like the silence itself had wrapped it’s ugly fingers around her throat and begun to constrict.

Ruby had eventually brought her back from whatever catatonic state she’d entered, cradling her in her arms as she trembled, pressed against the wall in the farthest corner of her bed, listening to the heartbeat of her only teammate present to watch her break down.

Weiss had grown fond of Ruby before that night, it was hard not to if she was honest. Ruby was- all atrocities to the name of dust and practical fashion aside- a good kid. She meant well, tried her best in her classes, and never fell back on her promises. That was more than Weiss could say about most people, herself included.

However, looking into a pair of silver eyes that held neither judgment nor pity, Weiss couldn’t possibly help it if after that night she became… a little more than fond of Ruby.

“Weiss,” Ruby had whispered once Weiss had regained her sense of place and recognized her surroundings as that of the dorm, not her childhood home.

“I-” her voice came out hoarse and scratchy, and it was only by that point that she realized she’d been crying. She reached up with shaking hands and wiped furiously at her eyes, unable to understand for the life of her exactly what had happened.

Ruby didn’t stop her, didn’t pull her tighter, didn’t force her to talk. She just watched her, silent, open. In her pajamas and the light of the shattered moon she looked like she couldn’t be any older than twelve, much less the same girl who carried a scythe twice her size and took down packs of Beowulves with little more than a smirk and a wink.

“Weiss.” She didn’t demand anything of her, it was just a statement, a gentle reminder. Weiss closed her eyes and tried desperately to get a handle on herself.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened,” she whispered, pushing herself back into an upright position, but Ruby stopped her, hands landing on her shoulders and keeping her in place.

“It’s okay.” Ruby’s gaze didn’t turn away from her. She didn’t give her even a shred of judgment and Weiss honestly doesn’t know how she managed it. She knows that if she had found Ruby in the same state she’s currently in she wouldn’t be half as calm as Ruby is. “It’s okay to not be okay.”

There she went with those simple statements. So much meaning in so few words. Weiss hated it, and she’d never been more grateful for it.

~

There were other instances like that, and not always with Ruby. Yang caught her in the mid-afternoon during the winter and again when she was supposed to be studying on the lawn, and once Blake had as well -that had been awkward as they had still been working through the whole ‘White Fang’ issue at the time- and eventually Weiss had to face the music: at some point in her life she’d developed a fear of silence. How exactly that happened was a good question, and truthfully Weiss only saw it as a matter of inconvenience.

Her team members didn’t seem to agree. Yang suddenly made a point to leave some sort of music on when she left the dorm in case Weiss entered while she was out. Ruby took to filling idle time spent studying or tinkering with Crescent Rose with humming. Even Blake made some effort to make a little more sound than she usually would if she and Weiss were alone in a room together, flipping pages of her books a little more aggressively, or fiddling with a pencil so that Weiss could hear the sound of metal parts clinking together.

Weiss had gotten used to it, the sounds of different people in her space, living with other living breathing people who moved and thought and spoke. She liked it, got comfortable in it.

And then it all disappeared overnight.

~

Weiss had spent the first couple weeks back at her father’s home (her father’s, not hers. That manor never was and never will be any sort of home. At best it was a prison.) in a near constant state of panic. Focusing on the sounds of the old grandfather clock that sat down the hallway and playing her piano had been her only comforts. Her family was hardly ever around and the servants stayed away if they could, fearing the sharp tongue of the girl who had left Atlas all those months ago.

Klein had been a solace, the lone member of the staff who had been able to keep up with her back during her, self-admitted, snobby days. He’d found her one morning pressed against the farthest wall from the door, eyes closed and trying desperately to hear anything other than her own heartbeat. Her throat wouldn’t allow her to speak, to make any sound other than choked breathes that just seemed to close in around her. Weiss had never been afraid of enclosed spaces, but whenever it became like that she felt like she was in a box that she couldn’t move in.

Klein had brought her back, whispering calm words as she struggled to breathe, and then swore to secrecy. For the next several months they’d sat together, talking, playing chess, anything to keep the silence away. Her father had not summoned her, her brother was about as competent and pleasant as a piece of wet cabbage, and so the company was appreciated.

She’d found a couple weeks later that a fear of being alone often accompanied a fear of silence.

~

Klein saw her off, and she’d bought passage with a pilot to Mistral, intending to find her sister, perhaps the only family she had left, and then she’d sat down in the hull of the airship to wait out the passage.

It wasn’t exactly silent, engines humming and the occasional beeping coming from the cockpit. Air rushing by at thousands of kilometers per hour, Weiss could rest easy knowing she wasn’t going to have a meltdown.

Until she couldn’t. A couple hours out and that familiar tightness in her chest had begun to creep back over her, leaving her swallowing profusely and struggling to remember where she was going and why she was sitting in a plane hull to begin with.

She’d managed to climb her way back into the cockpit, trembling and just barely keeping it together on the way there.

The pilot was kind, and he didn’t question why a shaking teenager was pressing into the cockpit with him. Weiss hoped that someone out there had gotten around to burying him. She doubted Yang’s mom would’ve.

~

The silence of the hospital room isn’t exactly comforting .

Her heart takes off like a gunshot. Pounding in her chest with such strength that what little sound she could make out, the heater, is instantly drowned out by the beat, climbing from her chest to her head and sending her spiraling out of control.

She can’t even hear herself breathing with the thudding in her head that seems to grow louder with each passing second, faster and faster.

She shoots upwards, pain twinges across her body, but she doesn’t care because she needs to breathe. I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.

Hands grab her, landing on her shoulders, she can see a face, blurry with light she hasn’t adjusted to and tears she can vaguely feel on her face. They’re saying something, she can see their mouth moving, but no sound reaches her ears. Her heartbeat just drowns out everything else.

“I can’t breathe,” she chokes, wheezes more like. She doesn’t even know if she actually said it or only thought it. Sound has no damn meaning anymore.

The world is swimming, spinning, dizzyingly fast and unsteady. I can’t breathe, I can’t fucking breathe.

The person holding her shakes her, and when that doesn’t get any reaction from a panicked Weiss they place a hand on her back, rubbing up and down in long evenly spaced strokes.

Weiss doesn’t understand, her heart thuds on.

The strokes don’t speed, they don’t slow, they don’t stop, they just continue, steady and strong.

Weiss’s heart slows.

The hand continues.

Slowly, Weiss recognizes the action as one that Yang did whenever she had a panic attack.

Just a simple even motion, something to focus on.

Weiss stops shaking.

Her heart quiets.

She can hear the rustle of fabric as the hand on her back makes contact with her clothes.

Weiss breathes.

She almost immediately coughs up a lung, but she manages to draw in a breath. Enough that she can feel her lungs expanding once again, and is grateful, even when she’s continuing to choke on her own spit.

The hand on her back stops stroking and instead takes to patting her as she attempts to dispense her internal organs out her throat.

“Weiss.” A familiar voice whispers behind her and Weiss’s coughing turns to sputtering as shock takes over every last nerve ending in her body.

“Winter?!” she squeaks, whipping her head up to look at her older sister.

Winter doesn’t look like a day has passed since they last spoke despite the fact it’s been months. Her hair is in that same perfect bun, her uniform that same pristine white that Weiss has associated with her older sister almost her entire life.

Except, she looks noticeably more tired. Dark circles make themselves known beneath deeply inset eyes from either extremely late shifts or no sleep to speak of. Her face is weathered, permanently stained red from the ice that whips in the wind in Atlas’s mountains and can leave cuts on one’s face if they’re not careful. Curiously, there seems to be a cluster of bruises forming just above her left eye,

“What happened to you?” Weiss hears herself speak before she can think better of it and Winter’s brows rise steadily on her face.

“You’re the one who was found unconscious in the woods after facing off against the Waldkonig, I should be asking you.” Winter’s brows don’t dip downwards, instead, they stay up in a silent question, one that Weiss can hear as plain as day. What the living hell were you thinking?

Weiss swallows, though with some noted difficulty. “I-I, well you see-”

“Give the kid a break, Ice Queen.” A new voice breaks in and Weiss looks up to see Qrow Branwen standing in the doorway. He’s sporting a similar set of bruises to Winter’s across his face, and his left arm is in a sling around his neck, though he sports a roguish grin that contrasts greatly with his appearance. “She’s been through enough.”

Winter scowls, a displeased frown drawing across her face in record time.

“What are you doing out of bed, Branwen?” she growls, moving around the foot of Weiss’s bed to stand in front of him. Qrow hardly spares her a glance before passing her to stand by Weiss’s head.

“I’m checking in on my Nieces’ teammate since you’ve been prohibiting them from coming back here.”

If it’s possible Winter’s scowl becomes sourer.

“Protocol states that only family-”

“Which no one here has. We’re all we got Ice Queen, and that means that this kid’s ‘family’ is her team. Not that damn father of yours, not your shit little brother, and not you.”

Winter’s face turns red. “You insufferable little-”

“Stop.” Weiss croaks and two faces of pure rage turn towards her. Weiss should perhaps feel a little fearful at angering a couple of fully trained huntsmen known for beating each other into the ground at any given chance, but at this point, with the adrenaline draining out of her system, she just feels exhausted. “Can you two stop arguing for five goddamn minutes?!”

When Winter’s eyes widen Weiss realizes that may be the first time she’s ever cursed in front of her sister.

Qrow just laughs, boisterous and rowdy just like his niece. She certainly sees where Yang gets her more… loud… qualities.

“Good to see you back to normal Jr.,” he says, flashing that roguish grin once again and Weiss fights the impulse to facepalm.

“Don’t call me that,” she mutters and Qrow shrugs.

“Your friends’ nickname is already taken so-”

“Weiss would suffice,” she volunteers and Qrow just chuckles again, lifting his flask from his coat and throwing back a couple gulps. Winter’s nose wrinkles in disgust.

“Weiss,” she continues, clearly trying to distance herself from the man standing next to her, “you were saying?”

Weiss casts a look at Qrow, who just shrugs, and then sighs.

“Well our airship crashed-”

“An airship you were riding why?” Winter’s gaze has settled on Weiss, cold and scolding. Weiss swallows.

“We needed to get to Atlas Academy. We need to speak with General Ironwood-”

“And who is ‘we’” Winter finally breaks her stiff posture to throw up her hands. “You’re a group of nine children whose chaperone is a drunk chicken-!”

“Crow,” Qrow corrects. Winter’s glare pierces into him and he holds up his hands in surrender.

Weiss raises her eyebrows at him.

“She doesn’t know?” she asks and Qrow sighs.

“I’m not authorized to tell that story,” he mutters. “Not unless absolutely necessary. And with you-know-who back I’ve lost even that right.”

Weiss sighs, reaching up to massage her forehead.

“I’m guessing that means I’m not authorized either.”

“Nope,” Qrow mutters, sipping his flask again. “Welcome to adulthood.”

Winter looks about ready to explode.

“Would someone please tell me why my sister is getting dragged across the world with a group of hooligans chaperoned by a drunkard, and nearly getting herself killed in an airship crash!” she roars.

Both Weiss and Qrow wince.

“Well,” Weiss starts.

“You see,” Qrow continues.

Winter’s eyes narrow.

“Weiss?” a quiet voice interrupts from the doorway. Weiss is glad for the distraction, and even gladder to see the speaker.

Ilia stands- actually stands on her own, only a single crutch to keep her upright- with a single bandage wrapped around her forehead and a cast around her left leg. She’d looked on death’s doorstep when she last saw her, and Weiss can feel the relief washing over her at the sight of her up and about.

“Ilia,” she sighs, actually sighs the name as the relief steals all the tension from her bones and the fight from her spine. She nearly goes spilling off the bed, but both Qrow and Winter rush to keep her upright. Ilia smiles, though it’s shy and uncomfortable.

“Hey, I uh… heard shouting and I just… ‘m glad to see you’re okay,” she whispers. She looks so small. Weiss is reminded of the girl she met after the battle of haven. Nary a word other than to express concern at the sight of blood, before going silent and remaining at Blake’s side for the rest of the night.

She’d seemed so… aloof was certainly one way of putting it. Closed off was perhaps a better way. Over the next couple of days, she’d proven herself almost as quiet as Ren, though if provoked, which Nora seemed to enjoy doing, held a much sharper tongue than their resident silent friend.

“You’re the one with a broken leg and concussion, Amolita.” Weiss pokes back and Ilia’s grin grows just the slightest.

“Well, not the only one with a concussion,” Ilia says pointedly. Weiss suddenly registers a piece of white cloth in the edge of her vision.

“Unfair.” she bites.

Ilia chuckles.

Qrow and Winter exchange glances, some sort of agreement passing between the two before they release Weiss, lowering her back against the mattress.

“Winter,” Qrow says, “We need to talk.”

Winter nods. “We most certainly do.”

The pair exit, though Weiss catches Winter placing a hand on Ilia’s shoulder. The faunus looks upwards, and something unspoken passes between the two and Weiss is beginning to dislike being left out of silent conversations.

Ilia remains in the doorway, leaning against it, looking all the awkward girl she met on the roof of a house they’d been trapped in for nearly a month together, and none the fearless girl who- somehow with a concussion, broken leg, and ribs- had faced down a manticore with only her strength and a wooden stick.

That mental image had burned itself into her eyelids and still refused to leave even after an apparent knock to the head.

Ilia coughs, “can… Can I come in?” she asks. Weiss nods, still attempting to process exactly what’s going on.

Ilia grabs her crutch and swings herself into the room, hobbling to a chair pulled up by her bedside which she’d guess until this point was probably occupied by Winter. Ilia plunks down in it, wincing as she jostles her ribs. She looks good, healthy, returned to her normal color and in a clean set of clothes, a plain long-sleeved white shirt, and drawstring pants, but clean all the same.

Weiss sighs, still reeling from the relief that’s crashing over her bones.

“You saved my life,” Ilia says, going straight in for the elephant in the room. Weiss doesn’t fight the impulse to laugh, though it comes out slightly wheezing. Ilia’s hands tighten at her sides.

“ You saved my life,” Weiss counters, settling a look at Ilia. She’s not making eye contact, instead, she sets her gaze in her lap where she begins to fiddle with the string on her pants. “Don’t think I didn’t see what happened with that Manticore.”

Time had literally stopped, she could see it as she had approached. It was terrifying, watching as a Manticore slowed to a crawl and the snowfall around her suspended in thin air.

Ilia winces.

“About that,” she mutters, lifting a hand, Weiss can see the faint crackle of aura across it, a strange combination of color, one she’s never seen before in aura. Aura is always a solid color, no one knows why other than it has something to do with the person’s semblance. Ilia’s, however, appears to change color, flashing red, then orange, followed by a gold that flickers to green faster than her eyes can track. It’s outstanding and would be more interesting if Weiss could perhaps think of an explanation.

“The Waldkonig,” Ilia whispers and the word sends chills down her spine. Ilia’s initial fear of the creature suddenly seems a lot more sensible now that she’s seen it with her own two eyes. A tower of black fur and piercing red eyes, reptilian claws poised for the kill.  “I froze it.”

Weiss blinks, staring at Ilia for a solid five seconds.

“You what?”

“Froze it,” Ilia mutters, shifting awkwardly. “That’s… that’s my semblance apparently. I-I can freeze stuff, stop time.”

“You froze a creature three times the size of my knight whilst nursing serious enough injuries to kill a person on top of hypothermia.” Weiss deadpans. Ilia squirms, red rising in her cheeks.

“Well, when you put it like that it sounds a lot more impressive than ‘I panicked and tried really hard not to die’,” she mutters, voice barely making it above a whisper. Weiss has to a take a second to picture that. The Waldkonig, a freaking demon in corporeal form, looming over Ilia, only to freeze solid in place. It sounds impressive enough that Weiss suddenly wonders why her sister is letting Ilia wander around wherever it is they are without supervision.

“How long have I been out,” she decides to steer the conversation in a safer direction. Ilia shrugs.

“Two days at most, I’m not entirely sure. After we got picked up by the Atlesian military I just kinda crashed. I don’t really remember much after they gunned down the Waldkonig.”

Weiss hums, eyebrows furrowing together in thought. Ilia swallows, rubbing the back of her neck and tugging at the roots of her hair. It’s a habit that Weiss is beginning to become familiar with in the other girl. A nervous tick.

“Weiss..?” her voice is questioning, bordering on nervous. If Weiss didn’t know any better she’d think the girl was scared of her. “How… How exactly did you find me?”

Weiss can’t breathe.

~

The crash was horrendous, to say the least. One moment she’s staring into the face of the largest Grimm she’s seen in her life, trying desperately to pry its claws from the ship’s hull. The next there’s a loud boom and waves of heat and air washing over her.

She’s spinning, spiraling out of control with no destination in mind and no concept of which way is up and which way is down. She can’t hear anything except the rush of air and aftershocks of an explosion that’s left her brain rattling inside her skull.

All in all, not the best set of circumstances.

“For God’s sake!”

Weiss needs to make a decision and needs to do it fast, the air in her face is just making her have to close her eyes and the vertigo of tumbling end over end is beginning to make her feel sick.

Vaguely, she’s reminded of her first day at Beacon, falling through the sky into a forest where she’d meet her partner for the next four years.

Ah little Weiss, you sweet summer child.

Weiss forces her limbs to move, fighting the pull of gravity and the push of wind in order to turn herself into a sort of x formation. She’s still spinning, but it seems to be slowing, and she can now make out the ground beneath her.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Trees.

Joy.

Weiss remembers she still has Myrentaster clutched in her left hand and pulls up the fear in her gut for any sort of fuel to the fire blazing within her. She remembers the first day of Beacon, she remembers the plane crash that she endured with that poor pilot.

She reached outwards and casts a glyph.

It’s not a beautiful descent but she manages not to break any bones so she’ll take it.

As it is, she gets a faceful of snow and a good hit to the stomach by an errant tree branch she didn’t manage to dodge in time.

So, as she lays on the ground trying desperately to remember which way is up, she gets a good look at her surroundings: towering trees in the night darkened sky, shadows against a backdrop of ink and stars, staining Weiss’s vision into a darkened landscape of solitude.

Once she finally regained the ability to breathe she was hit with the cold.

Atlas was, not even arguably, the coldest place on Remnant. That wasn’t a question, and traveling there during the fall season wasn’t exactly helpful, the ending of summer could sometimes be harsher than the dead of the Atlesian winters as wind currents and fronts fought for control over the mountainous terrain, spilling thunder and shards of ice throughout the nights.

She groans, pulling herself up slowly as to check for injuries. Nothing twinges in pain directly, but her aura is likely compromised. She did just survive a 30,000-foot free fall and mid-air explosion; so, truly, she supposes that’s as much as she can wish for.

A couple feet away the remains of part of the ship’s hull lay against the ground, spilling out pieces of charred metal and the remains of what Weiss thinks were Jaune’s luggage. Weiss can’t help but find the sight some sort of omen, they’ve crashed, lost control of their ship and undeniably been scattered throughout the Mitternachtlich forest with no way to find their way back to each other. It’s dark, nighttime, so even if there was some sort of obvious meeting point, Weiss can’t see it. All she can see is the stars above, staring down at her, unfeeling and uncaring to her plight.

In the distance, Weiss can hear the angry scream of a Grim that has lost its prey, cry thrown in the face of the same unfeeling stars.

“Okay,” Weiss whispers to herself, “pull yourself together.”

Let it be said, Weiss Schnee is nothing if not good in a crisis.

She’s not entirely sure how she does it, but she finds herself on her feet in no time, bent over and sifting through the crash materials she’s been provided with for anything possibly useful.

When she was much younger her older sister Winter had insisted on camping trips at least once a month, as the brat little sister she was she had made sure to complain the entire time and whine about how unnecessary it was. Winter had just smiled and pretended she couldn’t hear her.

Weiss has never been more grateful for those camping trips.

Her hands grab onto the first item of clothing she can find, a vastly oversized hoodie (definitely Jaune’s, it smells like cheap cologne), and she immediately throws it over her head. Winter’s words echoing in her head, long forgotten to time: I told you to wear layers, Weiss! Are you trying to die of hypothermia?!

She grabs the remains of what she thinks used to be a coat and ties that over her shoulders as well, tugging up the bag itself and inspecting it for damage. She finds a large scrape along the back and one of the straps had come undone, but otherwise, it is remarkably intact and she thus begins to stuff it with clothes and shrapnel.

Anything can be a weapon, Weiss. If only one is clever enough to use it.

Shut up brain Winter , she internally grumbles, swinging the bag over her head and taking in a deep breath.

I’ve faced worse, is the mantra that begins to run through her head as she stands and braces herself for the only possible thing she can do right now: find shelter.

Needless to say, it’s going to be a long night.

Chapter Text

The wolves find her first.

Weiss has had a lifetime to learn how to keep her emotions in check, a million lessons on how to never show even the slightest sign of weakness or pain. It’s an art, and she had perfected her craft by the time she finished grade school. Anger masked all things of course.

So, keeping grim away, she knew how to do that, no questions asked.

Wildlife, on the other hand, didn’t rely on emotions to track their prey.

The wolves arrive, baring glistening teeth for the kill, but all she can think of is the massive mounds of black smoke and glistening red eyes. A freaking dragon descending from above, screaming to the sky in all its horrible glory.

She looks at these brown, grey, and white creatures, pelts glistening in the dawn just beginning to break the edges of the horizon, and she feels the bitter, angry laugh boiling in her chest.

They’re so small, so harmless in comparison to all she’s seen.

The lead one lunges at her, teeth set for her throat, and she stabs Myrentaster clean through its chest.

Blood spills on the snow, crimson startling in its wake. The wolf hangs from her sword, the fierce snarl goes slack as the life drains from its yellow eyes. She just barely lowers the sword and it slides to the ground with a sickening, anticlimactic thud.

The rest run from her, yelps of fear follow them as they scramble and leave her with a wolf carcass and the cold.

It’s so damn cold.

It’s cold, the snow is red, and the wolf lays dead at her feet.

Weiss has the inkling that there’s something ironic about this situation but she can’t quite put a finger on it.

Count your blessings, Winter whispers from somewhere deep in her mind. Weiss laughs and it’s only slightly hysterical, but she laughs and presses her bloodied hand to her face.

It smells like iron and rot and she can feel her stomach roiling, but she knows better than to vomit now. She can’t hydrate, not until she finds somewhere to build a fire.

She stares at the wolf, throat constricting.

She can’t just leave it here though, it’ll just attract more wildlife.

Shelter, Winter reminds her. You need shelter.

“Okay,” she gathers herself together once more.

And keeps marching.

~

By the time she finds the cave the sun has risen well above the horizon to stain white snow gold and cast shadows long enough to drown Weiss within them. The sun brings with it just the slightest warmth, not enough to save her from the chill that had turned her cheeks numb, but enough that she feels grateful for the first time since the fall.

The cave, if she can even call it that, is small. Nothing more than an alcove under which no snow has managed to collect and the stone lays barren from any sort of plant life. The air is still fridged, the alcove does little to trap her heat, and just allows the moisture from snow to cement itself in her clothes.

Weiss collapses beneath it and almost cries in relief.

Her legs are sore, tired muscles fight through the numbness that has taken her entire body hostage at this point, and her eyes burn from the cold wind constantly blowing ice into them. So she stays there, exhausted, and tries her best to get in just a couple minutes of rest, just a few precious minutes of dead exhaustion, and then she’ll do something. Please, please just let her rest she’s so tired and so cold and so-

You sleep, you die. Winter snaps.

Weiss’s eyes tug themselves open and she glares at the stone above her head.

“I hate you more than words can describe.”

Not my fault that you’re experiencing the effects of hypothermia. Her sister’s voice isn’t just a repetition of past words this time, it’s a full response.

“And now I’m talking to myself.” Weiss slowly forces her tired muscles to pull her upright once more. “Fantastic.”

Actually, you’re talking to an imaginary version of your sister, Brain Winter replies. Weiss scowls.

“That’s so much better.”

Whatever keeps you going. Winter’s voice gives the impression of a shrug and Weiss takes a moment to question her sanity. She’s been alone in the wilderness probably less than five hours and she’s already reduced herself to having conversations with a relative she hasn’t seen in ages. What the hell, brain?

Would you rather I take on the persona of someone more recent?  This time Ruby’s voice replies and Weiss actually shrinks away, pressing her back into the stone.

“Okay, that’s a low blow, even for me,” she growls back, only to receive silence in return. The sounds of wind and rattling tree branches are her only company. For one terrifying moment, Weiss thinks she might’ve actually managed to bully her own mind into leaving her alone. Alone in the deafening silence that’s the wilderness, covered in inches of pure white snow that dull all senses to the point of no return.

She can feel the panic beginning to grip her chest.

“Okay, okay!” she shouts, to no one in particular, just to hear her own voice echo back to her and remind herself that she’s here. That she’s not back in that goddamn house.

You’re an interesting one, Schnee. Her brain replies in a new voice, one that takes Weiss a little longer to decipher than the others.

“Ilia?” she asks, whipping her head to the side as if expecting to see the chameleon faunus sitting next to her. She finds nothing, just grey stone and wet rock. The wind howls once again, picking up ice and shaking the trees in its path.

You’re not going to find me out there, Ice Queen. The voice replies.

Weiss sucks in a breath. Okay, she thinks, I either move and talk to myself, or sit here and die either of silence or hypothermia.

Not great options. Ilia comments.

“You’re not helping.” Weiss does spare herself a small smile, the chameleon faunus isn’t nearly as… harsh as her sister, nor is she as excitable as Ruby, both of which she could do without the commentary from. Ilia shared her bad sense of humour and dry commentary on the stupidity of others. She remembered vividly from their discussion over Blake’s time in the White Fang the amount of fond sarcasm that dripped from her voice that could only have been rivalled by her own.

A chuckle broke through her reprieve.

Come on Ice queen, Ilia whispers, that same fond tone she used when she was teasing Blake bleeding into her voice, get your ass up and moving, or do you want to die here?

“I don’t exactly have much of a choice,” Weiss mutters but struggles to her feet nonetheless. “The supplies I have is essentially what you’d find at your local garbage dump and a couple of sets of exploded clothing, most of which are Jaune’s. Not to mention I’m not a survival expert and don’t know how to make much of a shelter out of this, or a fire-”

Less talking more working. Ilia’s mental touch shoves her forwards and she can’t tell if she actually stumbles or just loses her balance a little.

I’m actually losing it. She thinks.

Weiss, Winter’s voice is back, just as cold and scolding as ever. Weiss instinctually stiffens. Snow is a good insulator, it can trap heat effectively enough to make a shelter if absolutely necessary, but make sure to poke holes in it if you do, carbon monoxide will get trapped otherwise.

Vaguely, Weiss remembers a camping trip with a mound of snow, but she was much, much younger back then. So young she doesn’t think she even knew how to tie her own shoes.

Your brain stores more information than you’d think, Ilia’s voice comes back, a smirk in her voice.

“I’m not sure how I like Ilia, imaginary or otherwise, browsing the contents of my brain,” Weiss grumbles, starting to move, searching her vicinity for snow she can begin packing into makeshift walls. Fortunately, the shelter isn’t too tall, just short enough that she still has to bend over like she’s bowing to fit into it properly.

Ilia laughs, mirthful and warm in ways that Weiss has never been able to properly mimic herself, no matter how truly happy she was.

What, scared she’d find something?

Weiss scoffs. “I have nothing to hide.”

Really? She can feel the mental eyebrow raise. Even feelings for a certain little cloak wearing huntress?

Weiss pauses, scowling.

“I already told you that was a low blow.”

No, the voice was Ruby’s again, You told me that.

Weiss’s hands clench into fists.

“It doesn’t matter which one of you I tell because you’re the same damn part of my mind that’s slowly spiralling into insanity.” She snaps.

If that’s the case, the voice was Blake’s now, why does it matter what voice I speak in?

“You’re a part of my mind, you know damn well.”

Ah but that’s the thing, Ilia’s playful mirth was back and it carried with it a malice she’d never heard from the real Ilia. I am a part of your mind, so tell me, why can’t you admit to yourself what the real problem is?

Weiss grits her teeth and sets herself back to shovelling snow.

“Because now is not the time to be having epiphanies, especially not ones that have anything to do with my love life.” she sighs, expelling more weight with it than she knew she had. “I’m just trying not to die, I don’t need emotional conversations with my subconscious distracting me.”

Hmm, Yang hums this time. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Weiss laughs and doesn’t deny the hysterical edge to it this time. “Yang has no grounds to talk to me about love.”

Maybe so, the voice is still Yang’s, but she does have grounds to talk to you about that little crush of yours. Especially when it involves-

“I don’t like Ruby!” she snaps, shovelling snow down with raw frozen hands. She can feel them burning from the wet cold and she’s just barely started making the wall she’s going to need to survive this hellscape.

Silence greets her. Trees rustle, snow falls, wind howls.

Her chest tightens.

It’s so cold.

Therein lies the problem. Ruby whispers, soft and steady and every inch the same voice that greeted her the first time she broke down.

Weiss feels her shoulders slump.

You feel guilty. Ilia responds for her.

Weiss laughs, not hysterical, but sad.

It’s not your fault, she can hear the scuff of Ruby’s boot against the ground. The same noise that she makes when she doesn’t know what words to say.

“First loves are always the worst.” Winter’s words echo from her own lips, her sister’s voice rings through her skull.

And you gave her up for what? It’s Blake again, accusatory and hostile, the same tone she used when they argued about the White Fang, it’s simultaneously yesterday and thousands of years ago. Your family’s worst enemy.

“I am not my father.” Weiss pleads. There’s moisture on her frozen cheeks.

Who told you that? Jacques asks.

Weiss throws Myrtenaster. It impales solid stone and stays there, sticking out at her and shaking like a leaf in the wind. There’s nothing there, no one there, no one to watch as she screams, screams just to hear her own voice echoing back at her. Anything besides the echoes of her own brain.

“Get out! Get out, get out, get out!”

No one responds.

~

The voice doesn’t come back until she goes to see if the wolf carcass had attracted any other wildlife.

She’d already managed to set up a fire and while the warmth was welcomed she understood that retrieving the pelt of the creature and skinning it could provide some much necessary heat-trapping material. Some that would keep her already limited body heat from escaping. Plus, the meat of the wolf, while hardly ideal, would stave off the hunger that had begun to gnaw at her insides a couple of hours prior.

She reached the wolf, and upon arriving, saw that it lay just as she’d left it: prone, red crimson blood staining the snow beneath it. The eyes settled blindly in a fierce scowl, eternally snarling at an invisible foe.

She made short work of it.

Myrtenaster was far from a hunting knife and the edges were more rugged than she would’ve liked, but skinning the beast wasn’t the hard part: a long cut along the wolf’s belly, and a couple quick, thorough movements and the pelt came clean from the creature’s long since frozen body.

Exposed tendons and dripping, liquid blood and fat stained her fingertips.

Revulsion ran rampant through her veins.

And you call yourself a huntress. The humour in the voice is not something she has the energy to acknowledge at the moment.

What? No witty comeback?  It asks once again. Weiss bites the inside of her cheek and lifts the wolf pelt from the ground, throwing it over her shoulder and beginning the trek back towards where she set up camp.

Come on, Schnee.

Weiss can feel herself flinch and hates herself so much more for it. What kind of huntress is she that a damn name can get under her skin?

One that’s traumatized.

Weiss can taste blood in her mouth.

“I’ve decided you’re not worth the effort,” she growls. The voice tuts at her disapprovingly.

Well, I’m still here so, apparently, I am.

Weiss sighs harshly, expelling a cloud of breath from her mouth that reminds her vaguely of a dragon breathing fire. She allows the image to amuse her for a moment before banishing it, she’s hardly a dragon. If anything, she’s a wolf. The irony of the creature’s pelt on her shoulder does not escape her.

A wolf, the voice cackles, sweetheart, you’re barely a hedgehog.

Weiss glowers, “I’d appreciate if you didn’t use her voice.”

Ilia hums noncommittally. And what voice would you prefer I use?

“Oh I don’t know,” Weiss grabs the branch of a nearby tree to pull herself up and over a large rock in her path. “Maybe mine? You’re a part of my brain after all.”

But what’s the fun in that?

If Weiss huffs any more she thinks that she won’t be able to pull breath back into her lungs, so she settles for an eye-roll instead.

“What exactly is it that you want from me?”

Ilia hums again, more of a question this time. I think only you can really answer that.

Weiss stands corrected.

“God, you’re annoying.”

I’m your mind.

Weiss pauses, leaning against a nearby tree and closing her eyes in order to concentrate on her inner argument.

“Well I’d hope so, I don’t see why you’re choosing Ilia to be my voice of reason though.” A startling pang of guilt runs through her. “I barely know her.”

You know more about her than you’d like to admit. The voice argues. You know that she’s strong and shy. You know that she prefers coffee to tea and takes it with enough milk to drown a horse. You know that she’s from mantle but grew up in Atlas, and that her pare-

“Stop.” Weiss snaps her eyes open to glare at her nonexistent torturer. The empty woods glare back at her, the sun reflects off of snow and shines in her eyes with a vengeance. Wind howls, ice flies, and no one is there to watch as Weiss suppresses the urge to scream.

She’s already forgiven you. Ilia whispers.

Weiss doesn’t respond.

Come on Schnee. You and I both know why Ilia is the voice that keeps coming back.

“Because I had a very long and personal discussion with Ilia just before I got stuck in this mess?” Weiss can feel a tight hot sensation in her face and she doesn’t like it one bit. Her jaw is beginning to feel sore.

If I have to spell it out I will.

That same hot and painful sensation lodges itself in Weiss’s stomach and she presses her hand against it as if that’ll stop it. It just wells up and pushes upwards through her chest and against the back of her throat.

You like her, Ilia sing-songs in a voice all too childlike for the one she’s heard from the Faunus's lips, and you’re scared of what that means because of what happened the last time you liked someone.

“I can hardly like someone I’ve had three real conversations with.” Weiss tries to deny again, but her throat is too tight, her words come out warbled and indecipherable.

Two of which were pretty insightful if you ask me. Weiss gets the impression of a shrug, one she’d seen Ilia give Blake on more than one occasion when fixed with an incredulous stare. Not to mention that you started liking your other little friend after knowing her for a mere two days. You’ve known Ilia for several weeks now.

“Can you please leave that subject alone.” Weiss sets herself walking again. It’s already noon and the sun will fall faster here than anywhere else in Remnant. No matter the time of year.

Nope.

Weiss sighs, harshly.

“And why, may I ask, can you not go on about something more pressing? Like, for instance, the current state of affairs?”

You have no survival supplies other than what you’ve gathered from your crash site, a couple of ripped sets of Jaune’s clothing, the wolf carcass currently on your back, and a fire that could go out at the drop of a hat. No way of finding civilization, no clue where you or anyone else from your party is, and a part of your brain is talking to you. Not to mention a phobia of silence while your in the grim infested woods outside Atlas where everything is silent, all the time, unless there’s a grim breathing down your neck.

Weiss stops dead, taking in that dump of overbearing information.

“I think I prefer the needless romantic jabber.”

Really? I wouldn’t have guessed.

Weiss sighs, forcing her frozen calves to begin moving once more. “Still, do you have to bring up the… Ruby part..?”

First loves leave impacts on everyone. Requited or otherwise.

“You can’t exactly call Ruby my first love,” she grumbles.

I can when she’s the first ‘love’ you had who wasn’t a book character. Ilia’s dry tone makes her want to scream again.

“Look, it’s over, it’s done with. Ruby was… she was young and she’s busy. It’s no surprise she’s not interested in… in a relationship right now.”

Then why are you still refraining from talking about it? If you were truly over her, as you claim, then-

“Then it wouldn’t hurt as much, I know. Okay.” Weiss expels all of the remaining fight from her lungs. “I know… I just… Ilia is great. She’s strong, she’s smart, we get along well, have similar senses of humor, heck she’s an amazing fighter-”

Not to mention hot as hell. And those eyes, damn.

Weiss glowers. “It’s bad enough to hear me say it out loud, it's worse when my brain is saying it in her voice.”

Point taken.

“Look, the point is, Ilia is great, fantastic even, I just…”

You feel guilty.

“And I don’t know why!” she can see what she’s made of a camp just over the hill, hidden between the trees and nestled among a couple younger saplings that provide a decent enough cover. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

You’ve moved on, Ilia suggests, you’ve let your first love die and, did it hurt like a bitch? Hell yeah, but now that you’ve got someone else in mind you feel like you never really gave the first one a try.

“Or that Ilia deserves better than second best.”

Oh come on, you didn’t even know Ilia back then, that doesn’t exactly make her second best.

“It just feels unfair to her, okay.” Weiss hunches over in order to fit through the entrance hole she’d spent a good hour trying to carve before just giving up and blasting a fireball through. Hardened snow and ice crunch beneath her feet before giving way to the considerably warmer interior of her makeshift igloo.  “Ilia is great, she deserves more than…”

More than you?

Yes.

The cave hangs silent and Weiss can just barely hear her own breathing over it. The silence is almost a tangible weight, dropping down on Weiss’s shoulders with enough force to break them. She barely keeps from crumbling under the pressure.

You’re Weiss goddamn Schnee whether you like it or not. The voice snaps, and Weiss can’t really tell if its still in her head or outside of it anymore. There’s no one better than you.

“I’m not perfect.” she pleads and another Weiss, one not much younger, but so much more naive snaps back at her.

I’m still leagues better than you.

Weiss closes her eyes.

She can taste the crisp autumn air of Vale on her tongue. The earth is soft beneath her feet, not frozen like the ground of Atlas. She can smell the afterthoughts of someone’s cleaning supplies and body odor, the fragrance of unfinished breakfasts littered on any flat surface surrounding her.

When she opens her eyes she can see the dorm: haphazard decorations and abandoned shoes that lay at the edge of her bed as if their owner had disappeared without them. Clothes remain displaced around the floor, waiting to be picked up and put on by their owners. Pencils lay carelessly across any and every surface, papers stuffed in the most capricious of places.

Ruby’s bed sways precariously on its ropes. Blake’s books underneath the windowsill remain untouched and disconsolate. Yang’s disc player remains unmoved, the top still open and waiting to receive a new record.

The curtain’s stitches glint.

It’s all waiting for its inhabitants to return. Children to come home and fill an empty dorm with life once more.

But the Children won’t come home.

The children are dead.

Weiss opens her eyes.

The cave is empty.

You’re not the same person you were, the voice whispers and finally, finally, it sounds like her own.

“I’m not better,” she says, stubborn despite it. The voice laughs, rugged and tired in ways that no eighteen-year-old’s should be.

Perhaps not, but you aren’t worse.

Weiss hums, non-committal, but not another disagreement either.

Her voice doesn’t reply. Weiss spares the cave another glance, like if she looks hard enough she’ll be able to find the dorm within it once again. The dorm is gone though, and all that’s left is barren stone walls.

She drops the wolf pelt beside the fire and sits down to scrape it clean.

~

She can’t breathe.

She’s made of glass and she can’t breathe.

Her fingers tremble, glittering and transparent and shining with all the brilliance of the sun.

They shake, tremble, quiver with uncertainty.

She can’t breathe, she can’t breathe, she can’t breathe.

If she does she’ll shatter.

And if she shatters.

there

will

be

no

one

left.

She gasps.

And falls to pieces.

~

She wakes up to howling.

Weiss knows enough about these woods to know they are one of the most heavily Grimm infested areas in the world and when you hear howling like that in the middle of the night it's either the sparse packs of wildlife closing in on game.

Or the Grimm found an unlucky traveller.

She’s fighting to her feet before she can think twice of it, snatching up Myrentaster and tearing from her camp on winged heels.

The woods are little more than blurs, the night chill an afterthought, the only thing running through her head is the thought that there’s someone out there. Someone alive.

Someone else who survived the crash.

Weiss isn’t stupid, she knows that her friends are all competent fighters in their own right, and they must have some sort of landing strategy if they survived Beacon’s initiation, but that fall caught all of them off guard and, in all honesty, aura can only do so much.

Not to mention some of them, namely, Oscar and Ilia, don’t fully understand how to use it correctly.

Also, last time he fell, Jaune had a little help not dying.

So yeah, she’ll take any proof that her friends are alive, that she’s not the only one out here.

That she’s not alone all over again because of her mistake.

She suggested the passage over Mitternachtlich, she refused to listen to Ilia’s warnings even when she knew that Ilia was from the area and likely knew it a lot better than she did.

If anyone is dead, it’s on her head.

Growls roar through the night, and as the despair of thoughts she can’t control bubbles through her chest they get closer. Their glowing red eyes flashing through the night, brighter and harsher than any headlights she’s seen. Their teeth are bared, white pinpricks in the night of the shattered moon.

Weiss keeps running, raising Myrenaster with a grace that’s been engraved into her bones for so long she can hardly remember the awkward days she first held the sword, struggling to keep the point away from the floor. Ursa fall, Beowulves scream, but all Weiss can think of is the howls in the distance, the crunching of snow beneath her feet hardly registers when she reaches the bottom of a cliff and hears a piercing scream.

No, not a scream, a wail.

A body tumbles from the cliff, and Weiss watches with sick awe as it bounces along. She's horror-struck as it trembles and shakes and the bone of the left tibula and fibula snap clean in half.

White bone exposed in dark scarlet to an uncaring sky.

Weiss isn’t sure if the scream is the body’s or her own.

They land, crumpled and limp, mere yards from her feet.

Her throat swells and some part of her, something deep down and primal, tells her to run, to turn around and leave because how in the hell can anyone survive that? Does she even want to know if they survived that?

Some part of her tells her she doesn’t. That she doesn’t even want to know who that is.

Ursa snarl above.

Weiss lurches forwards on unsteady legs, landing just above the poor soul, Myrtenaster extended above her head. She should be watching the cliff, should be watching the Grimm threatening to close in around them and bring death.

All she can see is the person limp on the ground.

Flayed tanned flesh, blood trickling from the tears in the skin where fragments of red-stained bone poke through. Bruises cover the flesh, not just the leg appears to be injured. The poor soul has so much blood dripping from their forehead that Weiss can’t fully make out their face in the moonlight.

But Weiss recognizes that jacket.

Weiss knows those scales.

Ilia.

Anguish fills her chest and the grim come charging for her.

~🦎~

Ilia’s head hurts.

Actually, scratch that, Ilia’s everything hurts.

Her legs scream, arms ache, her spine throbs with every movement, and the section of skin between her eyes twinges with every beat of her heart.

In other words, she’s not doing too great

Vaguely she remembers snow, cold, a terrible splitting pain in her leg, but the majority of everything after the plane exploded is a blur of pain and laboured breath. Then Ilia remembers a set of penetrating red eyes and glistening white scales. Fur as dark as night coming to swallow her up.

A set of blue eyes looking down at her with more concern than she can name.

Ilia shoots up like a rocket, pounding head and screaming back be damned. It’s bright, so very bright, sirens are blaring, buttons are flashing, the world is a kaleidoscope of sound and light and colour. Shapes move across her vision, frantically pressing against her as she fights them, searching desperately for those blue eyes.

“Weiss!” she yells, searching frantically. Something hard presses against her shoulders and her breath comes out in panicked gasps. “Weiss!” she pleads.

She can hear voices but they’re too loud, too close. She can’t decipher them, she can’t see their sources, all she can see is an endless tide of changing colour. All she can hear is the roar of her own heartbeat.

“Weiss!” she can’t breathe, everything tastes like metal and the air hurts her lungs. Something is pounding away in the background, thudding louder and louder, neverending like a mechanical, metal heartbeat.

Ilia’s gut erupts.

It hurts , she’d felt it before but never like this, never like her insides are exploding outwards, tearing her open from the inside out and blasting all over the walls around her. Her gut explodes.

And the world goes silent.

The colours stop.

The heartbeat fades.

The sound is gone.

Ilia breathes, deep and desperate, and it’s all she can hear.

Each breath drawn in brings the world into a little more focus. She’s in an airship, the blades of the motor frozen in place, wind and flecks of snow outside the cabin stopped in time, not falling any faster than the airship, suspended in air.

Around her, faces stare in empty panic, frozen in their exchanged concerned looks.

No one moves, no one breathes.

Ilia gasps.

“What… What the fuck?!”

Her own voice comes back to her, hoarse and roughened around the edges. There’s no response, just the empty, hollow echo against the silent metal cabin. The wind doesn’t howl, the snow doesn’t fall. The world is still.

Utterly and completely still.

Ilia gulps.

I’m dreaming, she thinks, then winces. Or I’m dead and this is some sort of purgatory.

Still, no one moves.

Slowly, ever so carefully, Ilia extracts herself from her medical bed, her leg aches, shaking as she forces it to bear her weight, and every muscle in her body begs her to just lay back down, but military installation or not, she needs to find Weiss.

Just the name makes her chest ache, those damn eyes watching her as she just barely forced herself to stay conscious. Ilia recalls half a dozen expressions, all of which include that little concerned furrow in Weiss’s brow that makes the stupid impulse to press her lips to it run rampant through her brain. She suppresses a smile with a deeply disturbing thought:

Last she saw of her, Weiss was laying on the ground after falling from a barely sustained summon that nearly killed her.

The ache in her chest comes back with a vengeance.

Ilia’s legs shake, but she forces them to bare her weight. She must find Weiss. Only then can she rest. A chuckle tears at the back of her throat and nearly sends her toppling to the floor for her effort. Of course she’s ended up desperately searching for a Schnee after somehow stopping time. That’s just how her life goes: absolutely batshit crazy.

Did you expect anything else?

Honestly, no.

The airship is small, only divided into four sections: barracks, medical bay, cockpit, and cargo. The Medical Bay and barracks take up the majority of the space and Ilia doesn’t have to think too hard to figure out what kind of ship she’s on. A rescue vessel.

Someone knew they were out there.

Ilia takes that information in and can’t decide if it’s good or bad. She needs to find Weiss.

But as her feet pad down metal corridors and she peaks into vacant frozen rooms the burning in her gut grows with each beat of her heart. By the time she makes it to the other side of the ship, she’s leaning heavily against the wall and streaming tears from her eyes. Each breath is a battle and she can feel the bones of her ribs shifting with each thudding step. She collapses against a doorway, ready to slide down it and just give up, but as her eyes slide shut she catches a glimpse of the white hair that she’s been searching for.

Weiss lays sprawled across what could generously be described as a cot, covered in blankets and an IV stuck into her forearm. Aura boosters are connected to her chest, pulsating white light frozen mid flash across her body like a second skin.

And beside her, halfway to a stance, is her carbon copy.

Vaguely, Ilia remembers the mention of Weiss’s elder sister, but she can’t really remember if it was from the heiress herself or the target notices from her heyday in the Fang. It’s too blurry, the ache in her gut too raw. She can hardly keep her head up, her eyes open, and, with Weiss within reach the adrenaline that kept her going for the last few minutes, her resolve is fading fast

So, Ilia lets go.

The burning stops, the world catapults back into motion, and Ilia’s body sinks to the floor, boneless and exhausted.

Weiss’s sister makes it to her feet and the thumping of helicopter blades thunder back into motion. Sirens wail, the other half of incoherent shouts ring through metal corridors, but all Ilia can do is try to catch her breath.

Then there’s a sword in her face.

Slowly, slower than can be considered healthy, Ilia follows the blade up. Tired eyes slide up gleaming metal, white starched cloth, and into a face set in stern determination.

Those blue eyes with the same defiant icy fire.

“How the hell did you get in here?” Her words sound muddled to Ilia’s ears.

“I fucked up time,” is the best explanation that Ilia can offer, but her tongue feels swollen in her mouth. One perfectly manicured brow rises and Ilia coughs a rattling, breaking thing.

“You… what?”

Weiss makes a small mumbling noise from her position on the cot and Ilia’s gaze immediately snaps over to her. She looks pale, swaddled in cloth like a newborn baby, and shivering as if she’s never been warm before in her life, but otherwise intact. No broken bones or gaping wounds, just a small bandage plastered against her brow above the pink flesh that Ilia has grown infinitely familiar with. She lets out an audible sigh of relief and the sword in her face twitches a little. It takes too long for her attention to slide back to the woman standing over her.

“Regardless of how you got here,” the drawl in her tone reminds Ilia vaguely of Weiss’s disapproving frown she often gave Qrow, the one that was missing the undercurrent of fondness she used for Ruby and Yang’s antics. “Who are you and what on earth were you and my sister doing out there?”

Ilia winces at the tone and pushes herself more upright, using the wall as leverage.

“M-My name is Ilia and our-”

“Ilia who,” the woman interrupts, still with the damn sword in her face. Ilia swallows.

“Ilia Amitola.” She whispers. The woman nods and slowly, carefully, lowers the sword. Apparently, she’s not a threat. Footsteps come thudding down the corridor and a man slides into place beside the door, heaving with breath.

“Specialist Schnee, the Fanus-”

“Is right here with me,” Weiss’s sister interrupts before he can finish his sentence, gesturing to Ilia. The man blinks and does a double-take at the small girl currently at his commander’s feet. “I want a chair in here stat,” that icy glare slides down to Ilia once more, “we have some things to discuss.”

Ilia swallows and the man nods stiffly before turning on his heel and thundering back down the corridor. The taller woman sheathes her sword before offering her a hand.

“Miss Amitola, I understand that you and my sister are friends?” she asks, Ilia pauses, staring at the hand as if expecting it to lash out at her, but when it fails to do so she takes it with ginger caution.

She’s tugged to her feet in one quick movement that nearly sends her right back down on her face rather than her spine. Weiss’s sister catches her and knits her eyebrows in a familiar expression. “Perhaps we should postpone this conversation until you can stand properly.”

“No, no, I’m fine.” Ilia struggles back to her feet and pretends that the ground isn’t wiggling beneath her. She doesn’t look like she believes her but when she catches Ilia’s gaze lingering on her sister her expression settles back into its stony demeanour. A soldier appears with a foldable chair and deposits it at Weiss’s sister's side before saluting and beating a hasty retreat. Not a single word is spoken through the whole exchange and Ilia’s anxiety ratings are beginning to climb off the charts.

She gestures to the chair before resuming her position in her own, pointedly positioned between Ilia and Weiss’s bed.

Ilia sits, swallowing for the third time in this exchange, and places her hands in her lap because, even if she isn’t, she can appear civilized.

“I’ll ask this once more,” the woman’s eyes narrow and Ilia’s spine begins to ache from being held so straight, “what on earth were you and my sister doing in those woods.”

Ilia’s almost certain she’s going to swallow her own tongue.

“W-well you see-e Miss-”

“Winter,” she snaps. Ilia winces.

“Miss Winter,” she amends, “O-Our ship crashed and-”

“I already know that.” Winter crosses her legs at the knee with military precision and timing, like she’s executed a gunshot rather than an adjustment of her sitting position. “Who do you think told me where to find you? I want you to tell me what your little band of compatriots was doing attempting to cross into Atlas territory, knowing the borders are closed, on such a dangerous patch of land?”

Ilia’s body aches, urging her to just collapse back against the chair she’s seated in. Everything hurts and it feels like she’s being torn apart by the atoms, but she refuses to let exhaustion make her look weak in front of a Schnee.

“We knew getting into Atlas would be difficult, Weiss suggested this would be the stretch of territory least likely to be guarded.”

Winter scowls further, but the expression seems directed at her unconscious sister rather than Ilia, which a bit of a relief.

“Well she’s not wrong,” she murmurs, “however what used to be a mining town was recently confiscated by the Atlesian military and turned into a base. Were you aware of this?”

Ilia blinks, remembering the camp she’d spent the majority of her childhood running around, and attempting to coincide that with what little she knows of the Atlesian military. “Uhm… no..?”

Winter seems to take her genuine confusion in and nods. “Very well. You’re lucky it was, we saw your ship go down and collected your compatriots, however you two were missing.” Winter’s tone tells her that someone paid dearly when she found out exactly who had gone missing.

Weiss’s expression clenches and she visibly stiffens against the bed. Both Winter and Ilia react in tandem, quietly reaching for the girl before noticing the other and stiffening back into place. Winter blinks, apparently startled by the turn of events. Ilia just sits, trying desperately to keep her scales from turning pink. She clears her throat and tries for an innocent smile.

“So…  Atlesian Military?”

Winter slowly raises a brow. “What did you say your name was again?”

“Ilia,” she responds automatically and winces internally.

“Amitola…” Winter finishes for her, “Meaning rainbow?”

Ilia blinks, “Uh… yeah…”

“And your trait is, chameleon I take it?” Winter carefully pulls out her scroll. Ilia stiffens.

“Wait,” Ilia reaches before she thinks and finds her fingers wrapped around Winter’s scroll and the woman staring at her incredulously. Ilia can feel the breath in her lungs turning to ice. Her heart thuds like a cannon firing. “I… I can explain-”

“Is there something you don’t want me to know, Miss Amitola?” Winter’s voice has taken on an icy edge that makes her blood run cold. Ilia can physically feel the white pricking up her spine and over the scales that dot her cheeks and forearms. Once again Winter’s eyes widen just a little in interest.

Ilia chokes down a squeak and instead pries her fingers off of Winter’s scroll. “Look,” she expels all of the bubbling anxiety she has out of her lungs and looks back at her with resignation. “A lot has happened over the past couple weeks and I don’t really think I’m the best person to ask for an explanation because I have a concussion and I only understand about half of it myself.”

Winter looks unimpressed so Ilia presses on, trying to get as many words out in one breath as she can in hopes that it won’t leave room for the other woman to question them.

“So, like, long story short there’s an evil lady that caused the fall of Beacon, took over the White Fang, who I used to work for but don’t anymore because they’re evil now I guess? Anyway, Evil Lady is trying to destroy Remnant because she’s evil or whatever and she needs these relics to do it? But in order to get the relics she first has to get the four maidens, who apparently actually exist, and she almost got the Relic of Knowledge at Haven but we stopped her and now we need to get the relic to Ironwood so he can seal it away again and we can all go back to school and pretend this never happened.” Ilia gasps for breath and leans back in her seat, still unsure if what she said was even English.

Winter’s eyebrows twitch and her entire face is in such a state of disbelief that Ilia fears she might’ve somehow broken the woman.

“You… what?”

“Please don’t make me explain it again.” Is all Ilia responds with.

~

“Hang on,” Weiss interrupts, cutting Ilia off mid-sentence. “You told my sister everything?”

Ilia winces, idly fidgeting with her drawstring once again. “In my defence, I didn’t know it was a secret.”

“And she believed you?” Weiss asks, disbelieving.

“Believed is a strong word. I’d say she humoured me, and no one has confirmed nor denied my claims so…”

Weiss sighs, pressing a hand to her face. “Is that what the whole shoulder thing was about?”

Ilia blinks. “Shoulder thing?”

“Yeah, when she and Qrow were leaving?”

“Oh,” Ilia’s face suddenly is a lot pinker and the scales on her arms are starting to glow slightly. “No, uh… that… was something else.”

Weiss narrows her eyes, “Ilia, what aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing!” Her voice comes out as a squeak and she immediately winces at the pitch.

“You’re a terrible liar, anyone ever tell you that?” Ilia deflates at Weiss’s words, a slight pout stretching across her face in the process.

“I think it’s just you, you do realize that my primary function in the Fang was a scout/spy, right?”

Weiss rolls her eyes, “You’re dodging the question.”

“Look, it's nothing important-”

“If it concerns my sister it's very important to me.” Weiss interrupts, fixing Ilia with her best information extracting glare. Ilia sighs and slumps over.

“Asshole,” she grumbles before straightening herself out once more. “Look… after what happened in the forest I’d say we’re… we’re friends right?”

The raw vulnerability of that question hits Weiss in the gut like a cinder block.

“Ilia,” she sits up to reach towards the girl, but only makes it to her elbows before her aura flickers to life in a vain attempt at protecting her from internal injuries. Pain laces down her spine and pulls her back against the mattress in a motion not unlike a wire wrapping around her neck and being pulled tight. Ilia rises too fast for her to witness and hands come to wrap around Weiss’s waist.

She’s close, almost too close for comfort. So close that Weiss can make out the single flecks of blue in her irises and the individual eyelashes that catch when she blinks.

“Be careful,” Ilia probably meant the words to be more chastising, but said so close to her face, barely more than a brush of air against skin, all Weiss can think is the warmth in Ilia’s hands.

How her room was always so cold.

How Ruby’s hands always shook with barely contained energy.

And Ilia’s are steady with a contained strength.

Weiss shoves it as far down as the thought process will go.

“I’ll be careful when you stop asking stupidass questions,” Weiss says instead because sarcasm and snark have always been her greatest strengths, her sword and shield. They’ve yet to let her down and so she always comes back to them. Ilia’s brows rise just slightly as humour pulls at the corners of her eyes. The pink that has yet to leave her cheeks tinges just a shade darker, inching towards red.

“That mouth the same one you kiss your mother with?” she asks and Weiss doesn’t spare her the scoff.

“You and I both know I wouldn’t kiss my mother if she paid me.”

Ilia laughs, the kind of laugh one makes when they’re nervous, the one that pushes at the edges of their vocal range, but brings about a smile that's just a tinge real and a tinge adrenaline-laced.

“Ilia.” Weiss keeps her tone steady, stern. Ilia’s smile stills. “Talk.”

Ilia lowers Weiss back to the bed as the fight leaves her once more. She settles against Weiss’s bed and releases a deep, drawn-out breath. Weiss pretends not to notice as the warmth of her hands leave.

“After I explained everything to Winter and convinced her I wasn’t crazy, nor trying to kill you,” Weiss doesn’t try to contain her snort at the thought of Ilia, though fierce she may be, trying to kill her. She can’t picture those kind, slightly awkward eyes staring at her over the other side of a weapon, she just can’t. Ilia casts a glare at her but there’s no real heat in it. Her eyes remain that stormcloud grey she’s come to admire. “I… she started to question why my semblance would activate then of all times, and why when all my other traits seem to point to my semblance being something more… illusion based, how it ended in time manipulation.”

Weiss can see Ilia’s throat bobbing.

“Then… then you woke up.”

~

Weiss’s aura boosters let out a loud, piercing squeal. Ilia, who was beginning to sink further and further downwards in her seat in an attempt to hide from the elder sister currently giving her the third degree, topples to the floor in surprise.

Weiss herself jerks upwards, gasping for breath as her eyes snap open, pale blue flying sightlessly around the room.

“Weiss!” Winter calls, rising to her feet to attempt to calm her sister, but Weiss pays her no mind, instead, she begins to tear at her covers and medical instruments, first the aura boosters and once the white light that had been enveloping her had cut off, tearing at her IV with clumsy fingers.

“Weiss!” Winter grabs her sister’s arms to keep her from injuring herself, but Weiss’s eyes, wide with fear and adrenaline-fueled-panic, look straight through her. She continues to fight, directing her blows at her sister rather than her blankets. Winter quickly gains a nice blow to her jaw and a second to her left eye and either her aura was already compromised by something Ilia didn’t witness, or in the heat of the moment, she forgot to put it up, because she stumbles back, bruising already beginning to colour the areas that Weiss struck.

Weiss continues to thrash, ignoring her sister’s startled gasp, and crying hoarsely for someone that Ilia can’t name. Her words are slurred, stilted, syllables and constants stumbling over one another until it’s just a tide of sound tumbling from shaking lips.

Winter shouts an order but Ilia moves, once again, before she thinks. She’s on her feet and rushing forwards, grabbing Weiss by the shoulders and all but smashing her into her chest. Weiss doesn’t recognize her, continuing to thrash even once Ilia has started to whisper in her ear.

“It’s okay, you’re okay, you’re safe,” the mantra continues to fall from Ilia’s mouth, even if she isn’t totally sure if she believes the words.

Weiss’s movements aren’t coordinated, just desperate, trying to free herself from an invisible enemy. Her voice reaches Ilia’s ears and all she can hear is the way that hoarse words catch on hitched breathes. The places where Weiss’s face makes contact with her body are rapidly gaining moisture. Ilia’s chest aches.

“I know,” she switches to, “I know. It’s okay, I promise. He’s not here,” she doesn’t know how, but she knows who Weiss is fighting. “He’s not here.”

Weiss slows but doesn’t stop completely.

“He’s not here,” Ilia promises, drawing circles against Weiss’s spine with her free hand, the other is pinned against the back of Weiss’s neck, keeping her cries muffled and her head still so she doesn’t end up headbutting her in the face.

Weiss sags against her, no longer fighting, but instead melting into a puddle of tears and aching cries. Ilia’s body sags with her, loosening to accommodate the arms that are no longer reigning bowls, but instead clutching on like she’s all there is between safety and certain death.

Vaguely, Ilia becomes aware of the thundering of boots against metal corridors.

It’s all the warning that Ilia gets before the door bursts open, the soldier from earlier returned with several of his tall burly friends. Their eyes all settle on Ilia, the person in her lap, and then the bruised woman standing by the door, and they move before a word makes it past anyone’s lips.

Ilia’s wrists are seized roughly and she makes a harsh, startled cry as she’s wrenched away from the bed. Weiss, who is probably only partially conscious, refuses to let her go, and therefore goes tumbling down with her. Winter yells another order, but Ilia can’t hear it over the roar of her own blood in her ears as she recalls half a million scenarios in which her arms would be wrenched in this way. She remembers the age-old fear of the Atlesian Military that all faunus from Mantle are born with and very nearly begins her own thrashing fit before a voice breaks through.

“Enough!”

The room falls silent and five sets of eyes turn to look at the man standing in the doorway.

Ilia recognizes that dishevelled black hair.

“Qrow?” she squeaks, muffled by the arm currently around her head in what could generously be described as a headlock.

“Put the kid down,” he grumbles, taking a couple gulps from his flask before wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “She’s fragile.”

The three soldiers holding Ilia up drop her like she’s hot.

Winter catches her before she and Weiss can hit the floor hard enough to hurt themselves, but she decidedly does not look happy about it.

“Qrow,” her voice reaches that same icy edge she gave Ilia earlier and she has to fight the impulse to swallow once again. “What on Remnant are you doing up here?”

“With all the racket you could wake the dead, Ice Queen.” Qrow is a master at appearing despondent to most things, but in the presence of Winter, he practically reeks of lackadaisical energy. His hot whiskey eyes slide over the faces in the room like he just can’t muster the energy to recognize any of them. “Besides, I was informed that one of my kids was awake.”

“ Your kids,” Winter’s disapproving tone turns incredulous, “you’re not fit to take care of yourself, much less a band of eight teenagers and a child.”

Qrow huffs, “Funny, considering I’ve been in charge of most of them for over four months now.” He offers his best roguish grin and if Ilia hadn’t seen the other side of him, the one he shows when he’s just with Ruby and Yang, she would probably flinch away from it. He looks greasy, beat up and sleazy in the way that no one in charge of children should ever be, and she can tell by the glint in his eye that he loves every second of it.

“And if I got my way you wouldn't spend another second around them,” Winter growls. Qrow rolls his eyes and pointedly steps away from the door, making a sweeping motion with his arms. When no one moves he tries again. Only on the third time does Winter take pity on him and dismiss her soldiers herself.

Qrow sighs, kicking the door closed. “You gave us a good scare, Amy.”

Ilia blinks from her position on the floor. Winter is currently attempting to place Weiss back on the bed, but getting her grip untangled from Ilia’s waist is proving to be more of a challenge than she thought.

“It’s Amito-”

“What on Remnant were you thinking?”

Ilia blinks again. “I… what?”

“You know,” Qrow’s grin flashes once again, “it’s supposed to be me who has the worst luck.”

Winter lets out a sigh that is so thick with resignation Ilia thinks she can feel it hit her across the face.

“I warned you against going over the Mitternachtlich forest!” Ilia interjects before the two can begin to bicker again.

Winter’s brow raises before she gives Qrow a pointed look. He shrugs. “Well, you should’ve warned louder.” Ilia is halfway ready to strangle the man herself, “in any case, you nearly got yourself and Ice-queen jr. killed, so I speak for most of us when I say that you are quite firmly, grounded.”

“Grounded?” Ilia says, unsure whether to actually be offended or just burst out laughing. “Qrow, I haven’t been grounded since I was nine.”

“Well then it’s high past time,” he says, still flashing that roguish grin. Ilia can’t stop it anymore, the laugh blows out of her chest with enough force to send her into a rattling coughing fit, but the laugh remains undeterred. The very notion, the very idea that Ilia, who has been without parents for almost a decade now, can be grounded is so utterly ridiculous that she can’t breathe.

Suddenly she feels arms pass beneath her and she’s lifted up. The ground disappears from beneath her, but before she can even fully process that she’s been set back down in the chair she’d previously vacated and Qrow has returned to his post beside the door, roguish grin replaced with a sad one that Ilia understands all too well: pity.

“Relax kid, you’re not grounded, but don’t expect to be going anywhere for a while. We’re technically illegal aliens right now and you’re sporting enough broken ribs to even make me concerned.” His voice takes on that same soft quality that he uses when he talks to Ruby, one that she thought was reserved for his nieces and them alone.

“I…” In truth, the change in both position and tone is enough to give Ilia whiplash. She blinks rapidly, hoping that’ll somehow give her an answer of how to respond. Qrow just smiles that sad smile again.

Out of the corner of her eye, Ilia can see the questioning gaze of Winter fixed on him.

“The particulars on your stay can wait,” Winter says eventually, apparently tiring of Qrow and Ilia’s staring contest and itching to return to the more concerning issue at hand. “In the meantime, let's discuss you, Miss Amitola.”

Ilia feels her spine straighten.

“When I found Qrow and the rest of your party-”

“When we came knocking on the Atlesian Military’s front door,” Qrow amends. Winter fixes him a withering glare that he fails to take as the warning it clearly is.

“When Qrow came to discuss the problem of his missing children,” she says instead, receiving a shrug from Qrow in return. “I was none too pleased to find one of them was my sister-”

“Understatement.”

“But-” Winter’s glare could freeze molten lava. Qrow smiles in spite of it. “To hear the other was a former member of the White Fang,” Ilia feels the white rush over her skin in record time. “That really… displeased me.”

Ilia gulps audibly.

“Winter,” Qrow says, that easy, lazy tone gone from his voice. Winter holds up her hand in his face, effectively cutting him off. She stalks around the edge of Weiss’s bed, never once letting her gaze leave Ilia’s.

Once, when Ilia was still living with her parents, she’d been on the way home from school when a couple of older faunus backed her into an alleyway. The oldest and meanest had been a snow leopard, as shown by his long spotted tail, and his eyes had been the same luminescent blue, gleaming in the dulled light of the alley as he held the knife to her throat.

“You shouldn’t have come down here, monkey,” he’d hissed, teeth flashing with metal sharpened points. “Now, we’re going to take what you took from us.”

Ilia had gone home that day with a missing backpack, a new layer of scars along the sides of her ribs, and a hushed promise that she’d never let herself be backed into a corner again.

Now, all Ilia can do is sit in her chair and feel paralyzed.

“Miss Amitola,” Winter’s tone is clipped and her shoulders snap into a posture that could be described as stiff if one was being kind. “Give me one reason that I shouldn’t throw you in my compound’s holding cells and let you rot.”

Ilia’s brain goes blanks.

Empty.

Frozen.

Her gut erupts.

The world is once again rendered silent, but it does little to alleviate her pain. If anything it’s making it worse as the burning in her stomach grows and her vision begins to turn fuzzy at the edges.

Winter’s eyes still bore into hers, and Qrow’s face is frozen in one between anguish and a sense of respect that seems oddly misplaced given the circumstances. Weiss remains a sweaty, tear-stained mess on the bed and Ilia feels like she herself might start crying. All she wanted to do was help. For once in her goddamned life, she wanted to do something right, and that wasn’t enough to save her from her past mistakes.

The world doesn’t move when Ilia finally breaks.

She collapses in on herself and screams at the splinters that spring apart from the desiccated corpse.

She screams, she cries, she punches the walls and tears at her insides.

And no one moves.

No one blinks.

No one sees.

All Ilia has ever wanted was to be seen.

To be seen as more than just a no-good dirty faunus, more than just another private in the White Fang, just a friend to Blake, just a teammate to Weiss.

All Ilia has ever wanted was to be more.

And now she’s nothing.

A single, suspended moment in time that no one will ever see except herself.

A single forgotten girl when the rest of the team leaves her behind in Atlas because all she ever was was a liability.

Ilia screams.

Time shatters.

Chapter Text

Ilia’s not sure when she was moved, but next thing she knows she finds herself lying in a cot beside Weiss, her gut feels like someone has reached inside and started swishing everything around, and that spot between her brows has begun to pound once again. Vaguely, Ilia recognizes the glow of an aura booster over her skin, although she isn’t sure why the color keeps changing.

“You’re awake,” a voice murmurs.

With more effort than it should take Ilia rolls her head to the side to attempt to turn the speaker into someone she recognizes. It takes a couple of slow blinks for her eyes to adjust enough for her to recognize the disheveled black hair and scent of alcohol that follows the man wherever he goes. It reminds her of her father and how his coat always smelled like gin.

“Qrow?” she questions, voice hoarse and aching. Her head swims with the effort of the single word. Qrow huffs before giving her a look somewhere between exasperated and impressed.

“You’re weak, kid, I’m surprised you’re even conscious,” he rolls his eyes with enough force to put Weiss to shame, “look, I talked to Winter and she’s agreed to hear you out, but…” he lets out a heavy sigh, “it’s not looking good kid. She’s got a serious vendetta against the Fang, one I’ve tried to talk her out of before, but Ice Queen doesn’t like to listen.”

Ilia would laugh if it didn’t hurt so much to move.

“Don’t… blame her…” she rasps instead and nearly expels her lungs to do it.

She doesn’t miss the smile Qrow hides behind his flask. “Geez kid, and I thought I was bad at your age.”

Ilia furrows her brows but doesn’t get an explanation from the old man who just downs whatever is left in the bottle before tucking it away and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

“Just get some rest, I’ll go inform your friends of the situation and see if Ruby can get something figured out,” his loose grin falls just the slightest in a sadness that Ilia knows all too well as grief, “She’s always been good at talking her way out of bad situations.”

If Ilia recalls the story of what happened that night at haven, the last time Ruby tried that someone ended up impaled.

Qrow has already turned around and left the room before she can point that out.

~

“How is this explaining the shoulder touch?” Weiss’s brows look ready to fly away and leave her behind. If they go any higher, Ilia fears that she’ll never see them again.

“I’m getting there,” Ilia assures, “You humans are so impatient.”

“Well with all your talking, you’re starting to sound like Professor Port.”

When all Ilia manages in response is a confused expression, Weiss rolls her eyes.

“Grimm Studies Professor,” she mutters, “not a good thing.”

Ilia shrugs, “Well I’m pretty sure sounding like a Professor is , so-”

“Not this one.” Weiss cuts her off, “Now, continue, how does this relate to my sister?”

Ilia sighs returning to the previous subject, “So after Qrow left and I got a bit of sleep she came back in-”

~

Ilia wakes up to the sound of metal sliding against leather. She’s spent enough of her life surrounded by criminals and self-proclaimed vigilantes to know that sound by heart.

She’s already on her feet and wrapping her fingers around the closest object that can be used as a weapon before consciousness has managed to work its way to the front of her mind.

Once it has, instead of finding herself facing down a bandit with a knife or a comrade with an amused expression, she looks into a familiar pair of blue eyes and the glint of a blade mid-polish. They both blink, clearly startled by the other, before both setting down their respective weapons in an almost sheepish movement. Ilia only registers once she’s let it go that her ‘weapon’ was a mostly used bottle of what she can only assume is some type of medicine.

Neither of them speak, neither move, neither look away, Ilia finds herself in an impromptu staring competition with her only friend within walking distance’s older sister who is set on locking her up in a cage for the rest of her life. Wow, you sure know how to pick them Amitola.

Eventually, Winter clears her throat and Ilia’s attention comes back into focus.

“Shouldn’t you be resting?” Winter‘s eyes flick between Ilia and the bed she hadn’t even noticed she’d vacated

“Oh,” Ilia whispers, only to let out another cough as her lungs expand just a little too much with the effort of producing sound. She ignores the taste of iron in her mouth, “...right.”

She makes an effort to look sheepish and return to her bed without making eye contact again, the last thing she needs is to give the woman more reason to dislike her, attempted decapitation with a medicine bottle aside.

“Wait.” It’s one simple word but the sudden nature of it and the fact that it isn’t said in the same stiff, clipped tone that everything else Winter has so far is enough to get Ilia to freeze. She stands there, waiting, prepared for the other shoe to drop and to hear words spoken that she’s been actively avoiding since she was a child, for slurs she’s buried under years of repressed memories to come sailing back to life. What she gets is a shuffle of fabric and something she never imagined hearing from a woman with Schnee as her last name.

“I owe you an apology.”

Ilia whirls around so fast she fears she might capsize.

“I’m… sorry?”

Winter blinks, confused, “I thought the point was that I was sorry?”

Ilia can’t tell whether that’s a joke or not. When she fails to respond Winter seems to take it as her cue to explain.

“I… after Qrow kicked me out,” she makes a face at the mention of Ilia’s chaperone, but doesn’t comment further on the man, “I looked into your files.”
Ilia tugs in a breath, she knows what she must’ve found.

“Your parents…” she sighs, straightening her spine before rising to her full height, dwarfing Ilia in the process and she can’t help but wonder how Winter ended up with that gene and Weiss… didn’t. From all the pictures that she’s seen of them, both of Weiss’s parents are relatively tall. “My initial reaction, all of it, I owe you an apology.”

Ilia draws in a breath, all she can see is Weiss’s face when she tried to apologize for the same thing.

“You know…” her voice cracks unevenly on words that hurt to speak. She coughs and ignores it anyway. “Apologies don’t erase what’s already been done.”
Winter winces, but before she can open her mouth for a rebuttal, Ilia continues.

“If anyone should know that, it would be me.” they meet gazes once more and instead of the hatred that Ilia has spent her entire life running from she finds understanding. She offers a shaky smile. “Look, you’ve got no reason to trust me, and that’s fine,” she tries her hardest not to laugh and coughs weakly instead, “I wouldn’t trust me either. But your sister… she, Blake, Qrow, all of them, they’re all I’ve got.”

Ilia glances over at Weiss. She’s still asleep, all perfect brows, round cheeks, upturned nose, and full pink lips. Her chest burns and this time it’s not the ribs. “So I’ll protect them, no matter what.”

She feels a sudden weight on her shoulder and nearly jumps high enough to clear the bed, however, when she looks up it’s just Winter, hand resting on her and a glint of humor in her eyes that she wouldn’t have thought possible.

“Don’t think I forgot what happened earlier,” Winter whispers and then gestures to the bruises that have begun to form around her eye. Ilia winces, “She trusts you, and Weiss usually has a pretty good judge of character.” That glint of humor turns to mischief, “besides, I have a feeling I might be seeing more of you in the future.”
Ilia decides not to think too much about what that might mean. “So… you’re not going to lock me up and leave me to rot?” Her voice sounds so incredibly small, even to her own ears, like a child who is asking if they’re still in trouble.

Winter laughs and it’s nothing like Weiss’s laugh. When Weiss laughs the sound is sudden and startled, like she herself did not know she was capable of making it. It rings up from her chest in a bubbling, ungraceful mess that never fails to tug a grin out of whoever is listening. Winter’s laugh is a little rougher, a little deeper, a little fuller. It’s still startled, but it doesn’t burst forth like a particularly happy little bell, it rings from her chest, deep and low in a way that most would expect from cartoon villains, not slightly too overprotective older sisters.

“I apologize for that,” though Winter doesn’t sound particularly apologetic, “I’ve been told I can be… intense.”

“That’s certainly one way of putting it,” Ilia whispers beneath her breath. When Winter raises a brow she smiles her best ‘innocent’ grin.

~

“So you’re telling me,” Weiss finishes for her, looking more dubious than she does when Ruby claims that everything is fine. “That my incredibly overprotective older sister just suddenly forgave you for participating in an organization responsible for a good portion of our shared childhood trauma?”

“I never said that,” Ilia raises her hands in surrender. “What I’m saying is that she’s decided to… overlook the detail for the time being.”

“And this has to do with the shoulder touch…?” Weiss lets the question hang as red rises to Ilia’s face once more.

“Well…” she brings up her hand to clench it in the roots of her hair, a gesture that Weiss has long since become familiar with as a nervous tick. “We came to the agreement that… um… as long as I don’t do anything that makes you hate me then we’re cool.”

Weiss’s eyes narrow. “Why do I get the feeling that’s not the way she phrased it?”

Ilia’s red face is rapidly getting worse.

“She said,” Ilia tugs a couple of times against her hair like it’ll somehow turn down the heat in her face. “And I quote,” she clears her throat before lowering her voice in a poor attempt at replicating Winter’s strict, clipped tone, “ ‘Ultimately it is up to my sister, she has grown quite fond of you, but, disappoint her, insult her, or give her any reason to be upset and I will find you. Are we clear, Amitola?’ “

The silence that hangs between them is nearly unbearable.

“Oh.”

Weiss’s face rivals Ilia’s but she has no answer for that, and so they sit staring at each other with equally flushed faces.

The hospital room is quiet, not silent because distantly Ilia can hear the hustle and bustle of different doctors and soldiers moving through the hall behind her, but in this moment Weiss’s face is red and her shoulders aren’t rising and falling in breath. She’s frozen and Ilia doesn’t know what to say, what to do.

She’s terrible with girls.

Hell, Blake might as well qualify as her first real crush and she has so many memories of doing stupid things in a bid to gain her attention that she could probably scare Salem off with them. She remembers one particular incident where she tried to suggest to the cat faunus that it was a custom in Atlas for friends to kiss to express gratitude.

Ilia hates herself sometimes.

Weiss still isn’t responding, Ilia isn’t even sure if she’s breathing.

“Weiss?” She squeaks, hoping desperately that she hasn’t just thrown their fledgling relationship down the drain.

Weiss doesn’t even blink. Ilia isn’t even sure if the girl is alive or managed to die of shock and she’s going to be stuck staring at her until her corpse finally flops over.

Jeez, dramatic much?

Shut up, I’m trying.

Just as Ilia takes in another breath to try and convince Weiss that, somehow, her sister was being dramatic and that there’s no boiling gay tension between them, the door to the hall bursts open and in pile three very concerned teenage girls.

“WEISS!” comes the chorused call and the ‘blue (read: red) screen of death’ look on her face is replaced by one of sheer exasperation.

“What the hell are you three doing?!” she cries, only to be muffled mid-sentence by three bodies flopping atop her and effectively obstructing Ilia’s view.

She’s completely cut off from the quiet relieved sobs of four teenage girls trying to squeeze the life out of each other. She can still hear Weiss’s voice from deep within the dogpile, but it carries that little tone of warmth that Ilia knows is reserved for her team and her team only.

Ilia’s well versed in this, she knows when it’s time for her to disappear.

❄

Once she’s finally managed to calm down her worried and overzealous teammates, Weiss is immediately aware of the absence of one chameleon faunus, and in all honesty, doesn’t know whether to be glad for that or not. On the one hand, she just about had a nervous breakdown over the fact that a pretty girl admitted in a very round about way that she was interested in her, on the other, her older sister not only knew about her sexuality but supported it.
It was a lot to take in.

Her teammates’ worry was not helping.

“After the ship blew up we thought-” Ruby starts.

“We spent days combing through the wilderness-” Yang adds.

“And then we found Ilia’s whip and-” Blake’s voice shakes the way it does when she’s reliving memories she doesn’t want to think about. Weiss notes that her ears have considerably lowered and that Yang’s arm, the real one, loops around her waist without any sort of prompt.

“The concern is appreciated,” Weiss starts to push herself upwards, even though last time she did so she almost passed out, “but I’m fine .” The last word comes through gritted teeth as her ribs give a loud and clear twinge of displeasure at being forced to move so early into her recovery. Two sets of dubious glares and one set of arms on her shoulders tell her how convincing she is.

“Weiss,” it’s Ruby speaking and she’s using that voice that only comes out when the situation is dire or she’s about to chew someone out for something. It isn’t quite angry, but it’s not one she wants to hear most of the time. “When you came in you were covered in bandages, pale enough to see the veins in your cheeks, and critically hypothermic. You were not fine .”

Weiss sucks in a breath through her teeth. “Well, I-”

“We were worried about you, Princess.” Weiss has never liked that nickname, for a multitude of reasons, the main one being that she’s not a princess. Princesses have someone to save them, princesses get a happy ending. However, when Yang says it there’s no malice in it, and there’s no teasing lilt that she’s become used to from the blonde. When Yang says it, it’s just a nickname. Just a title, a term of endearment and nothing more, something to say ‘I care about you, you moron.’

The way her gaze is fixed firmly on the bandage currently wrapped around her forehead says more.

Weiss deflates, partially because she doesn’t have the energy to fight them off, and partially because she understands that they are just looking out for her. In the end, Qrow is right, this is the only family she has left.

“I know,” she mutters and she can see the three lose some of the fight in their shoulders. “I’m sorry. I just… it was a strange couple days.”

Blake snorts, “understatement.” Ruby sends her a glare.

“What happened, anyway?” Yang takes off from Blake’s cue, not missing a beat, “Ruby said that Ilia got sucked out of the bottom when the Waldkonig took its claw out. How’d you two end up together?”

She means it in the purely platonic way, how they ended up banding together to brave the elements of Solitas together, but Weiss can’t stop the rush of butterflies in her chest or the blush she’s sure has returned to her cheeks. She ignores the eyebrow raises and clears her throat to try and calm the color.

“I’m not quite sure,” she answers truthfully, “She sorta just fell on top of me? I heard some Grimm chasing something around and went to go check it out.”

“You ran towards rampaging Grimm?” Yang asks, dubious. Weiss winces.

“In my defense, I wasn’t exactly in my right mind.”

“Did you have another attack?” Blake breaks in, all concerned brows and open, tilted ears. She really has changed since she returned from Menagerie, but then again, haven’t they all?

“No, no- er, well…” Weiss pauses, remembers arguing with her own brain for a good portion of her time alone, “I wasn’t at my best, but I didn’t have a breakdown if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Weiss.” Ruby’s voice still has that serious, darker quality that makes her question if her partner is the two years younger than the rest of them that her ID says she is. 

“Ruby.” the response is automatic and perhaps meant to be in jest, but Ruby’s face remains an unamused glare. She sighs before raising her hands in surrender “Seriously, I was fine. Nothing happened.”

“Well, then what does, ‘not at my best’ mean?”

Weiss blinks. Perhaps it isn’t the best idea to just outright mention that, hey, I had an extended argument with myself that lasted at least a full twenty-four hours. 

Yeah, no.

“You try falling from 30,000 feet into what is basically your worst nightmare and be at your best.”

Ruby’s accusing face falls, just the slightest. “Fair point.”

“Look,” Yang breaks in, “if Weiss says she was fine, she was fine,” the look settled on her holds the same weight that the one she gave her all those months ago did. She can feel the warmth of her hands on her back, gently coaxing her into a state of calm after she lost all semblance of control. “Right?”

Weiss almost feels guilty to answer her. “Right.”

Her three teammates visibly relax. Then, scarcely before she can take a breath to relish it, a mischievous, devilish grin spreads across Yang’s face.

“So Weiss,” she leans back against one white plastered wall, arms crossed over her chest and head tilted downwards so that she can look at her through the lashes of her eyes. “I see a certain little friend of ours was here.”

Oh, if only Weiss could get up to strangle her right now.

“ Yang .” 

Yang’s shit-eating grin doesn’t diminish, if anything it doubles in size.

“Nope, guess again.”

Ruby snickers and Weiss shoots her a glare before returning her ire on the blonde buffoon she occasionally calls friend.

“Don’t start with me, Xiao Long, or do I need to remind you how many conversations we’ve had about your love life.”

“So you admit that there is something going on between you and the walking rainbow.”

“Yang!” Weiss shrieks.

“Yang.” Blake scolds.

“Whaat?” Yang drops her arms from their crossed position beneath her chest to spread them before her. Blake rolls her eyes, but there’s a little fond smile quirking at the corner of her mouth that makes Weiss want to throttle the both of them. She’s already had her crisis about stupid gay feelings this week, can’t they come back later? Say, next month?

“You know that Ilia doesn’t like it when you call her that.” Yang pouts further at Blake’s dismissal, but Blake hardly spares her a glance before her attention is back on Weiss. “But she’s not wrong. What happened between the two of you out there?”

Weiss blinks, for once at a loss for words.

“Nothing.”

“Weeee-iiiiss.” Ruby’s voice sends chills racing up her spine, shit. She’s spent months awkwardly pining over the girl and denying that she was doing it, now they’re openly discussing her interest in another girl. Weiss’s heart thuds as she turns to face her leader, only to get a small amused grin and a pose very similar to the one her sister was giving her earlier. “I don’t normally care about all this… romance-stuff, but even I can tell that there’s something going on with you two.”

Something in Weiss’s chest, a last remaining piece of her long harbored and harshly buried crush on the younger girl, breaks. She noticed three weeks of awkward small talk but not months of pining?!

In the corner of her vision, Weiss can see Yang wince in sympathy.

“I…” In all honesty, Weiss is flabbergasted. She doesn’t know how to react, how to function, what to say. All she knows is that a pretty girl blushed down to the tips of her hair and declared that she had feelings for her, and then another told her that she was being silly for not acknowledging them.

She finally understands the meaning of ‘from the frying pan into the fire’.

The amusement in Ruby’s grin changes, softens, into something akin to an apology. 

Just a few months ago if someone told Weiss that Ruby, Ruby Rose of all people, was going to become one of the most level headed and emotionally mature people (second only to Ren) that she knew, she would’ve laughed in their face.

Now, when Ruby stands and places a hand on her shoulder she can’t help but feel like she’s looking at someone much older than a sixteen-year-old girl.

“Don’t let it pass you by because you’re scared.”

And with that, she’s gone. Weiss gets to see the swishing of her cloak and hear the quiet patter of boots on tile, then the door is shut and she’s alone in the hospital room with Blake and Yang. A very confused Blake and Yang.

“Is… is she okay?”

Yang’s face twists into a frown, an expression that Weiss is still getting used to but is much more familiar with than she was back at Beacon. Beside her, Blake’s ears twitch downward.

“She’s been… acting weird for a while now,” Yang answers slowly, eyes still set on the door that had clicked shut on her sister’s heels.

“I don’t know if I’d call it weird,” Blake mutters. Her face twists into one of mixed concern and sorrow and all Weiss can think of is the girl she shared a room with who refused to share her favorite food until Yang caught her sneaking extra portions of fish from the cafeteria. Oh, how times have changed. “We all… went through a lot when Beacon fell.”

The way she says it feels like the most massive understatement that Weiss has heard in her life; she has to restrain the urge to laugh.

“She’s had to grow up a lot.” Yang’s voice does not convey any of the demented amusement in Weiss’s chest, instead, there’s a solemn guilt in the way her shoulders drop. Suddenly the humor in the situation is a lot less prevalent.

“We all have.” The words leave her mouth without her consent, but it doesn’t make them any less true. Blake and Yang both raise their heads to meet her gaze and she can’t help but think that these aren’t the same people she met that fateful day at Beacon. Yang’s eyes are harder, her shoulders stiffer, and some of the light that used to pulsate from within her has dimmed. Blake, however, looks softer, warmer, like a leather boot that is still strong but has been used enough times to start to conform to the shape of the user. It’s like they each took a piece of the other, Blake’s guarded posture and Yang’s warmth, each still there, but no longer confined to just one body.

They really have changed.

Weiss wonders what they see when they look at her.

🦎

Oh, how Ilia hates her stupid, stupid mouth sometimes. 

Yeah, sure Ilia, instead of directly admitting that you like a person awkwardly hint at the idea that their older sibling thinks they’re already in a relationship, that’ll go over well.

“Stupid…” she hisses the word out like it burns her tongue and hobbles her way over to rest against one of the compounds walls. She hasn’t been here long enough to know the layout of the building and it’s honestly a miracle she hasn’t managed to get lost yet, but she knows enough about the Atlesian military to know that they’re allergic to natural light.

Which is why she’s so surprised to see a window just around the corner.

She remembers another militant exterior, but not Atlesian in origin, and the glass that showed thousands upon thousands of miles of land moving below. Now though, the earth is still and she watches as lights twinkle in the distant homes of mantle citizens below, the mountains beyond as bleak and dark as they’ve always been.

She can’t help but feel like they’re mocking her.

She left Atlas, left all of it behind because her world was flipped on its head and it’s only once it has been flipped once again that she manages to come back, and it remains unchanged, like her absence meant nothing, like years of anguish and strife have nothing to show for it.

Ilia growls, slamming a fist into the wall beside the window and watching as nothing more than a dull, anticlimactic thud comes back to her. She hates it when she does this, when one small thing goes wrong or she makes one mistake and suddenly she’s reliving years of strife and self-hatred buried beneath a desire to do better. It’s just so hard to do better when you’re at the bottom looking at the peak of the mountain.

“Was hoping I’d catch up to you…” 

Ilia whirls on her heels like a carousel gone wrong, nearly capsizing in the process and having to collapse back against the wall in order to prevent it. Her crutch flails wildly before losing all purchase on the tiled floor and leaving her sliding down the wall to collapse in a puddle on the floor, a loud clattering noise follows her down.

A pair of silver eyes squint slightly as the girl standing above her winces in something between sympathy and amusement.

“Sorry…” Ruby’s apologetic smile is a poor attempt at complacency when Ilia already knows how awkward the two of them can be when they’re alone together. It’s not for any reason that she can tell other than Ruby is just naturally bad at social interaction and Ilia wouldn’t know how to break the ice if someone gave her a step-by-step guide. Of course, Ruby seeking her out doesn’t help matters.

Yes, Ilia likes Ruby, the girl is seriously brave and, whilst both cheerful and hyper to a degree that sometimes rivals Nora, she has a more serious side that makes Ilia feel welcome and safe. In a word, Ruby reminds her a lot of Blake really, especially when she first met Blake and she hadn’t lost that spark of revolution in her chest yet, before Adam’s spite infected her with melancholy. 

But there’s that other thing, Ruby reminds her of Blake and, though they may be on good terms, there will always be that underlying tone of ‘what could’ve been’, at least for Ilia. Ruby’s uncanny similarity also makes the whole Weiss situation that much more complicated.

God, can’t her stupid gay brain just shut up for once in her life, they have a goddess to find and kill.

“S’fine, just startled me.” Ilia raises a hand awkwardly and then attempts to get her crutch underneath herself again, ready to push herself back into a standing position. She barely gets it on the ground before Ruby flops down next to her and gently pushes the crutch back down.

“I uh, I actually kinda wanted to talk to you…” there’s that smile again, not the awkward one that she presented earlier, but the nervous one that either means she’s about to be asked to do a very strange favor or she’s going to get another shovel talk. At this point, she’s hoping for the former, “... It’s… uh… about Weiss-” of course not.

Ilia lets out a truly epic groan and drops her head back against the wall with a dramatic thud. Ruby’s eyebrows lift and Ilia pulls her knees- er… knee… to her chest to have something to do with her hands.

“Please don’t give me another shovel talk, I already got one from Winter and I’ve already screwed up so-”

Ruby laughs. It’s not the same laugh that she’s heard several times in the weeks that they’ve lived in the same house, it’s not even the laugh that she’s seen her give when her nerves finally catch up to her. No, this laugh is bone-deep and chilling in a way that Ilia doesn’t really know how to name. It’s the laugh of someone who has held in secrets for far too long and doesn’t know how to bring them back into the light. At that moment Ilia can’t help but think that Ruby looks so much older, so much more tired than any 16-year-old should. 

Finally, the laughter dies down and Ruby wipes furiously at her face, dismissing tears that Ilia isn’t entirely sure are just from laughter. “That’s-” she cuts off to bark out another laugh before attempting to stifle it once again, “not what I meant.”

Ilia blinks, feeling a bit like someone has struck her between the eyes. “Oh.”

“Well, I mean-,” Ruby snorts again, but this time she coughs at the end of it, “not exactly, I mean, it goes without saying: I carry a scythe bigger than I am and I know where you sleep, so…”

Ilia gulps.

“What I was going to say is,” and just like that the humor is replaced with a soft sadness that reminds Ilia a little too much of Jaune. “Weiss has a big heart, and she will deny that ‘til the day she dies, but she cares so much about all the people in her life, so don’t take it personally if it takes her a while to come around to you, she has to consider all the variables first.”

Ilia stares dumbly, “Variables?”

“She doesn’t want to hurt anyone,” Ilia recognizes the sorrow in her posture but she doesn’t remember from where. “Not when she understands how painful this kind of thing can be for anyone and everyone involved.”

Ilia can feel the pink color returning to her cheeks, itching along the scales of her arms and face. “What do you mean?”

Ruby sighs, shoulders drooping, then, returns her gaze to Ilia. Those silver eyes are sharper than any weapon could ever hope to be.

“Back at Beacon ,” and the way she says it. Beacon, like the word is carved into her heart, scarred and ugly. “We all lived together, all of us, JNPR included.” her lips twitch, “and well, living with eight teenagers, not including the countless other students in our year, it’s hard to keep secrets…”

Suddenly, Ilia understands, “She liked someone and they didn’t reciprocate?” It sounds childish, phrasing it like that, but… well… Ilia remembers so many nights wishing that Blake could just notice her as more than a stupid friend. She remembers how much it hurt every time she’d look past her to smile at Adam instead.

Ruby shrugs, “you could say that.” she answers. “She never acted on it, I probably wouldn’t have noticed if it weren’t for the fact that she gets flustered so easily. Anyway, point is that nothing ever came of it and she wasn’t exactly thrilled about it. So she gets it, gets being on that side of things, but she doesn’t really get the side she’s on now. She’ll want to check and make sure that no one gets caught in the crossfire.”

With that, she stands. “My point is, be patient with her. She’ll come around eventually.”

Ilia can’t help but think that something major has just gone unsaid. “Who did she…?”

Ruby smiles mysteriously. “That’s not for me to say, but… don’t wait too long Ilia. We’re still in a war here.” The smile is gone, replaced with a distant look in her eyes, “You never know who will and won’t be here when tomorrow comes.”

Her footsteps echo hollowly as she turns to march down the corridor, the exact opposite direction she came.

❄️

Seeing Winter after all this time, even if it has technically only been a few months and they’ve been apart for far longer stretches of time, is like looking at a funhouse mirror of the girl who first entered Beacon.