Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jaune was glad to be back in his nineteen-year old body. He’d forgotten what it was like to have joints that didn’t creak when he walked. Around when he’d been twenty-five in Ever After he’d broken his hand and even if it had mostly healed, the bones had ached every time it got cold. It was nice, to not notice the pain anymore.

He and Team RWBY stepped through the portal and into blinding sunlight. The air was scalding hot around him- too hot for the lack of warning, and dry. Ruby slipped her hand into his as they stepped through it and that was nice, to know that he wasn’t going to be going through this one alone.

Qrow had been standing at the fenced off edge of the roof the portal opened up to. He jerked around, drawing Harbinger. Jaune had only been around Raven for about an hour, but he already understood the instinct: Yang had spent the whole time watching her mother with a cautious hope but hadn’t moved from where she had an arm slung protectively over Weiss.

His face went blank with surprise when he saw them, then broke into heartbreaking relief. Jaune had been frustrated with Qrow for most of their time trekking across Mantle, falling into a bottle and taking so long to crawl out of it. He got it now. What all that loss could do to a person, without enough to balance it out on the other side.

Ruby’s breath hitched, and then she was on the other side of the roof, slamming into her uncle so hard they almost fell over the railing. “I’m fine,” Jaune heard Weiss murmur, pushing at Yang, “Go on.” And then Yang was racing over too. Blake sidled closer to Weiss to take her pace. Raven rolled her eyes at this, but Weiss’s shoulders relaxed incrementally.

Jaune was going to join them, offer support on her other side, but then the door back into the building opened up and a group of four walked out.

“Hey Qrow, are you coming to the meeting-” And then the group stopped mid-step, all at once. That was his team: Ren, shocked and delighted, Oscar grinning helplessly, and Nora with her hands over her mouth between them, bloodless.

Jaune had fantasized about finding his team again for years now. Every dream paled in comparison to this one real moment.

“Hey guys.”

Oscar lost Ozpin’s cane in the ensuing sprint across the roof. Jaune ended up in a tangle of arms. Nora curling into his breastbone hard enough to bruise, Oscar and Ren on either side. It wasn’t until she dragged in a sob that Jaune realized she was weeping.

He started to pull back, but she made a wounded noise and pressed closer. “No! No, don’t-” Her fingers scrabbled over the armor until they met fabric and then curled hard into it. “Don’t leave!” She was starting to shake. Oscar patted what he could reach of Jaune’s arm and then carefully extracted his other hand to throw it around Nora. Ren angled his head to lean against hers but didn’t let go of Jaune either. All four of RWBY were inching closer, and Jaune was convinced they would end up in the pile momentarily.

One person had not run forward. Over Nora’s head, Jaune looked up to see Emerald standing where the others had left her, face perfectly blank as she watched them.

Jaune had lived a generation without his team, alone in the Ever After except for Juniper, he’d missed them every day. Even after he’d given up hope of getting back home, he’d still fantasized about seeing them again, talking with them. He’d always imagined that he could slot back into the team easily.

As it turned out, the spot had an occupant.

For Jaune, his separation from the team had been for almost two decades. For them it had been six months. And somehow in that time Emerald had become an integral member of his team.

She helped Ren with the food. “Not the cooking so much,” Oscar explained when he caught Jaune staring as she followed Ren into the tiny kitchen area in the dorm room they’d been assigned at Shade Academy, “But she’s really good at keeping track of what we have and what we’re running low on, and where to find replacements for cheap. Ren likes to have her help.”

Ren had banned everyone from the kitchen during cooking times after one too many incidents with Nora ‘helping’. Oscar had briefly been an exception to this rule for about a fortnight, at which point he was comfortable enough to volunteer how Ren’s methods were different from back home. Oscar had been summarily introduced to the wait of shame with the rest of them.

Apparently, Emerald had been allowed in a week after they got their assigned quarters at Shade.

Emerald had been at Beacon. She’d helped to start the whole nightmare they were in. She’d saved Oscar. She’d fought them at Haven, where Weiss had almost died. She’d left Salem, joined them, and about six hours later Jaune had fallen and fallen and then lived alone for longer than he’d been alive in Remnant.

“Welcome back,” she said after they’d been relocated to the quarters they’d been assigned in Shade, and Nora had finally been extricated from Jaune. Ren and Nora had gone to get food, and Oscar was still talking to Ruby by the memorial, so they were the only ones in the living area. The words were awkward; Emerald’s gaze was fixed on the empty chair to the right of Jaune, avoiding looking at him entirely.

Jaune felt as awkward as she looked. “Good to be back.”

Jaune didn’t say anything else until the others returned. Emerald didn’t say anything for the rest of the night.

Jaune was aware- had always been aware in the corner of his mind, but too lonely and hurt to care for most of Ever After- that the way he had coped with his isolation and guilt before RWBY had caught up to him had been…not great. He had held onto things too tightly, ruminated on failures and battles and loss. And as the years passed and time marched on relentlessly, he clung to the memories of his team.

Six hours of tentative teamwork was very short when it came to Emerald Sustrai.

The most Jaune remembered about her defection was watching Emerald talking quietly with Oscar, apart from the rest of them in Weiss’s comically large manor. He remembered thinking just one sign, and I won’t hesitate. Now he didn’t know how many signs he might have missed.

She can’t have betrayed them, because she was still here and Oscar’s affection hadn’t diminished at all, had in fact been joined by Ren’s and Nora’s, and now Jaune was the one confused on the sidelines.

And he couldn’t get a handle on it because she was hardly ever in any room he was in.

More importantly, the team wasn’t acting the way he remembered. Nora existed in his periphery, watching him like she was scared to look away. Ren seemed to have gotten a handle on his new Semblance abilities, but Jaune had a feeling he was using them more often that people would be comfortable knowing. He’d caught him looking hard at Ruby when they met up the next day, eyes just a hair too wide. And Oscar’s words sometimes slipped into a familiar cadence that called to mind Beacon Academy, that told Jaune he’d had to let Ozpin in enough that they’d mixed together that much more since he'd last seen the boy.

Jaune wasn’t who he had been twenty years six months ago either. The others were just as much at a loss as him.

The quarters the team had been assigned at Shade were clearly lived in. They’d been here for five months now, after getting the refugees through the deserts to the city.

There were four chairs around the table. Three beds, crammed into two small rooms. And now there were five of them.

“I’ll take the couch,” Emerald volunteered before anyone else could. There was something brittle in her eyes that was quickly wiped away. If Oscar hadn’t frowned too Jaune might have written it off.

“We can take turns,” Oscar told her, “Like a rotation. Until we can get another bed.”

Emerald’s eyes slid to him. It was as if a mask pulled over her face, even though her expression didn’t change at all. “I’m not going to turn down a bed,” she said lightly, corner of her mouth curling up.

Except that night she pulled a night patrol with the Happy Huntresses, and there was no point in Oscar taking the couch when she wasn’t even getting back until after midnight. Oscar took the bed. Jaune was glad; he hadn’t especially wanted to share a room with Emerald. Emerald must have felt the same way because she took the same mission for the next two nights.

Oscar gave up after that. He elbowed Emerald on the third day. “Alright already. You win.”

“I always win,” she told him, and this must have been an inside joke, but Jaune didn’t know the lead-up. Something in the fond exasperation in Oscar’s expression stayed with Jaune, keeping him up after the rest of his team had gone to bed.

Emerald was sitting on floor by the couch, sharpening her kama with a whetstone, when he poked his head out. This was a perfectly normal thing for a Huntress to do. Jaune tried not to feel uneasy about it.

“Do you have something to say or are you going to keep staring at me?” she asked without looking up when he hesitated. She’d been friendly when talking to Oscar but there was no softness in her voice now.

“I don’t have a problem with rotating who gets the bed.” He didn’t, not really. It felt odd to have five of them there when he’d last been there with only four, and it would be a minor irritation to have to switch off, but it wasn’t a problem. “Oscar said we could get another one in a bit; I don’t mind taking turns until then.”

“Oscar’s naïve,” she dismissed, sending a jolt of defensive anger through him, “Shade’s already full of refugees; if there were extra beds, they’d be using them already. We were lucky to get three as it was.” She waved a hand. “I’ve slept in worse places.”

The worst part was that she was right; the next time he spoke to Ruby she admitted to that Yang and Blake were doubling up in what had formerly been Qrow’s bed, and she and Weiss were sharing a mattress propped up by books to keep it a few inches away from the sand that managed to get everywhere.

“Weiss is having a hard time with it; but she’s not getting between those two,” Ruby grinned, indicating Blake and Yang. The two were practicing sparring in the center of the training hall, but from the way they were looking at each other Jaune had a feeling the brawl was going to end in a make-out session. Nora had been downright aggrieved that she’d missed them getting together.

Privately, Jaune thought Weiss could get a bed if she indicated to her older sister that she wanted one. The way Winter was looking at Weiss had him pretty sure that Winter would upend the entire world if her younger sister said the word.

Ruby and Yang had been experiencing much of the same. Their father had beat them here to join in the fighting. That had been another tearful reunion. He and Raven were circling around each other Not Talking in a way that managed to be very loud. There was currently, in fact, a bird in the rafters of the training hall, eyes trained on yellow hair. Jaune didn’t know if that was Raven or Qrow.

It was enough to make him happy he’d had the distance of a Scroll call to speak with Saph and let her know he was alright.

When he looked back away from the fighting, Ruby was watching him carefully. “Are you feeling ok?” she asked tentatively.

“Why wouldn’t I be ok?”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he heard how defensive they sounded. Heat crept up his neck.

“It’s kind of weird to be back,” Ruby admitted, picking at her gloves, “And we were only in Ever After for a few weeks.”

She was giving him that look again, like they’d done when they’d finally found him in Ever After. Cautious. Like Jaune was something to be handled carefully.

He tried not to resent it. Jaune was nineteen again, but he didn’t feel nineteen. Sometimes the weight of the years pressed down against his chest until he could barely breathe around it. He kept bracing for his joints to ache.

Ruby didn’t mean anything by it. She was concerned about him. Jaune had given her good reason to be concerned, and even when he had been older, he hadn’t been mature enough to help Ruby when she needed it. So Jaune tried to ride out the feeling until it wouldn’t escape when he spoke.

He was still wrestling it under control when she added. “I don’t want to pretend I’m alright anymore. And I don’t think you should either. I know I- Back at Beacon, I thought that we couldn’t admit things like that. I’m worried I pushed you to think you couldn’t either.”

Jaune thought back to those early days at Beacon. Ruby, two years early but already one of the top students on fighting skills alone. Neither of them had really felt like they’d belonged, let alone like they should have been the team leaders over the others. They’d leaned on each other a lot in those first weeks.

“Don’t tell them about the Paper Pleasers,” he said finally. “Please? I want to be the one to tell them, I just…I need to think how to say it.”

Ruby patted his hand. “As long as you don’t tell my dad about the tea.”

They sat like that for a while. All of their teammates were spread around the training hall, none of them willing to let the others out of their sight quite yet. This did feel strange, in a way that was close to painful. Jaune wasn’t supposed to feel this out of place around his teammates. They were his, in a way no one else ever had been.

“That’s kind of weird too,” Ruby said, watching Oscar talk animatedly with Emerald in the corner. In their quarters, Emerald always seemed stiff. But she hadn’t noticed them watching now; she was relaxed and grinning at whatever the younger boy was saying. “Uncle Qrow is pretty impressed by her. He said she’s been a big help since Atlas fell. I’m glad she has,” she added hurriedly, “But it’s still…”

Jaune knew without asking that she was thinking about Beacon, and then Haven. “It’s weird,” he finished for her.

Ruby leaned against him, and it made him think very suddenly of Beacon, Ruby too young and him too inexperienced, both of them unprepared to be team leaders but excited at the prospect. Jaune was glad she was still there for him to lean on. “The others trust her,” she said finally, “We’ll just have to catch up, I guess.”

Ruby was right, as usual. Everyone else trusted Emerald. Clearly Jaune was the outlier here. And he trusted his team. He’d been through so much with Nora and Ren. He trusted their judgement. Time would help, and would hopefully also help with the awful, impending sense that he didn’t fit in his team anymore.

He was trying to remind his brain of this later that day when someone grabbed his sleeve as he passed.

Jaune thought of Jabberwalkers and the Curious Cat before he thought of where he was. It took a second for his brain to catch up. He wasn’t in Origami Acre. He was in Shade, in possibly the safest place in Vacuo.

Emerald had moved the second he had, sliding back, so she didn’t get hurt. But still. There was a wariness in her eyes now. “Sorry,” Jaune said awkwardly.

Emerald shrugged this off. “Force of habit, right?” she said with a smile that was a little too sharp to be anything but forced.

Jaune colored. “That’s not-” he started, too fast, then stopped. “Sorry. What is it?” That came out too blunt too, but it was too late to take it back.

Emerald didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands, putting them in her pockets and then drawing them out again. Eventually she settled for crossing her arms. “Nora likes to have sleepovers,” she said abruptly, stilted.

Jaune knew that. Sleepovers had been a fixture of their time at Beacon, with her dragging them all to sleep in a pile of bedding on the floor instead of the beds. Sometimes she’d hauled RWBY and some of their other classmates into it, but usually it had just been their team; Nora hanging off Ren and insisting on braiding Pyrrha’s hair.

“It's nice when it’s just us,” she’d confessed.

Jaune had grown up in a house with seven older sisters and a parade of their friends. He’d never been part of a ‘just us’ before.

“They make her feel better when she’s upset,” Emerald continued. Like she thought Jaune didn’t know that. She rubbed at her arms once, brisk. “You should ask her if she wants to have one.”

Jaune didn’t need to ask if she wanted one. He knew she did; he’d seen the spark of the idea in her eyes the second RWBY had been sequestered in their own quarters down the hall. She’d gone so far as opening her mouth, her eyes still red from crying. But then she’d hesitated. Jaune had watched her mouth close again and hadn’t pressed when she’d ended up in the room she shared with Ren instead of the one he and Oscar were using. It was one of the puzzling things that had to stem from the time he missed

“We can have a sleepover if she wants. All she has to do is say so.” Had she asked Emerald before she’d asked Jaune? Jaune dismissed the thought as childish almost as soon as it registered, but it still sat heavy and unwelcome against his heart.

“But she’s not going to.”

The complete confidence with which Emerald said this startled him. Jaune didn’t like the idea that he could be startled by information about Nora. “Why wouldn’t she?”

Emerald’s eyes were intent. They were very jarring in the half-shadows she was standing in. “Because she thinks you’re mad at her.” Like this was obvious. Like there was some kind of universe where it would make sense that Nora would be afraid of Jaune and not Emerald Sustrai.

“She thinks I’m mad at her?” Jaune echoed, “Why?”

Emerald looked at him as if this was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. “Because you told her to get help and she didn’t.”

It honestly took him a minute to remember the bridge. He’d asked Nora to bring back help a lifetime ago. At one point he might have resented it; he’d cycled through a lot of bitterness and anger in Ever After, especially after Alyx. But in the end, he’d just been lonely. Jaune had clung to the memories of his team for as long as he could. But two decades. Of everything that had happened on his last day in Remnant, asking Nora to bring help was barely a blip in his memory, a faint impression of a hand clasped in his.

“That’s why you have to ask.”

She didn’t mean anything by it. Jaune didn’t have a good handle on Emerald Sustrai, but he was sure of that. There was no reason for it to make him upset. But the words, and her certainty that she was talking about a facet of Nora that she knew and Jaune didn’t sparked something hot and bitter in his chest.

Six months felt like nothing against the years and years in Ever After. Jaune shouldn’t have been gone long enough to miss anything. But he had, and it was something as serious as him hurting one of the people closest to his heart, and Jaune hadn’t even noticed but somehow Emerald had.

“I don’t need you to tell me about my team!” he snapped, “Anything Nora’s worried about; she can talk to me about herself!”

Some unidentifiable emotion flitted over her face, there and gone before Jaune could place it. Then she just looked angry, a much more familiar aspect of her to Jaune. “Fine!” she snapped, shouldering past him.

The sharp, hot thing in his chest fueled Jaune for the rest of the day, through a training session with Oscar so awkward it bordered on unpleasant, all their group moves atrophied from disuse and from practice with other partners. Jaune had to bite down on any questions about what team moves Oscar and the rest of them had been doing with Emerald. Even frustrated as he was, he could hear how petty it would sound.

Oscar claimed the shower when they returned. Jaune was heading to put down his gear when he heard voices from the side room Ren and Nora had claimed.

Ren was cooking, alone this time. Jaune glanced around, then drifted closer.

“-stand to look at me,” Nora was saying, and his stomach flipped at how thick her voice was.

“He doesn’t blame you for that,” Emerald told her, “I sounded him out and he didn’t care. You guys aren’t like that.”

“How can he not blame me? He was counting on me, and I couldn’t-”

“That wasn’t your fault. You tried to get back.” Nora didn’t say anything to this. Emerald must have been concerned by this because she added, “You need to tell him.” Nora made a muffled, unhappy sound but didn’t argue. “Nora,” Emerald said slowly, “He’s back. You can talk to him about it now. But he doesn’t blame you. He told me so.”

Nora made a small, unhappy sound, almost a sob. Jaune was paralyzed by the guilt in Nora’s voice. He hadn’t realized she had been carrying that request with her this whole time.

“You sounded him out?” Nora asked when the sound of plates was coming from the kitchen, sounding marginally calmer, something closer to amused.

When she spoke again, Emerald sounded the closest to flustered that he’d ever heard. “I- well, you were worried about it. And you’re the one who’s supposed to know him, so if you’re worried-”

“You’ll get to know him too,” Nora promised. Emerald hummed noncommittally, sounding unenthused at the prospect. But she must have succeeded in turning Nora’s mood around, because when Nora spoke again her voice was teasing. “My hero.” Jaune was behind the door, but he could imagine her reaching over to nudge the other girl. Nora had always been free with her affection among her friends. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I didn’t,” she agreed, “Because he doesn’t blame you.”

“I know,” Nora said finally, “I do. But I- he’s my team, you know? And I let him down.”

“He’s your teammate,” Emerald said finally. Jaune couldn’t see her, but the note in her voice made him think of the split second it had looked like she had cared about sleeping on the couch. “You just have to talk to him.” And then, returning to a tone that he was more familiar with, “And go do it now, so you can go back to being your usual amount of annoying. This is too much.”

Nora pulled Jaune aside after dinner. “Can I talk to you about something?”

Jaune felt very small and very petty, thinking of how angry he’d been at Emerald when all the while she’d been right, and Nora had been hurting. “You can talk to me about anything,” he promised. Nora’s answering smile didn’t reach her eyes.

They ended up in the room Nora and Ren were sharing. It was barely a closet with a bed and a shelf for clothing, but Shade was pressed for space with all the people from Atlas and Mantle. Emerald hadn’t been wrong about the lack of things.

Nora wouldn’t look at him. Her fingers were working, grasping open and closed in agitation.

She spoke before he could. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get help!” she blurted. “I- you asked for me to bring back help to fight Cinder and Neo and I didn’t. I’m so sorry, Jaune-”

“Hey. Hey.” Jaune scooted closer so that he could put his hands on her arms. There was a fine tremor running through Nora. “It’s ok. I know you would have come back if you could. I figured there was some Grimm or something on the other side-”

“That wasn’t it!” Tears were pricking the corners of Nora’s eyes. She was shaking harder now, miserable, curling into herself like she was injured and trying to hide it. “There was a flock of Ravagers, but that wasn’t it. The door was only one way. Once you went through you couldn’t go back.”

Oh. Oh.

Nora kept going, laying it out, and it made sense. They’d asked for a way out of Atlas. Ozpin had warned them that they would have to be specific, and they’d tried to think of everything, but they’d been so short on time. Jaune wasn’t sure they would have thought to ask if they’d had all the time in the world. Why would they have wanted to come back?

“I tried to get back to you,” she was saying thickly, “Jaune, I swear I tried, I-”

“I know you tried. Nora, I know you.”

And he did, even now, the knowledge closing the distance of the years. Nora Valkyrie was his teammate, was his sister. No amount of time was going to change that.

Nora folded in on herself when he hugged her. When she was happy, Nora’s hugs were enormous, rib-creaking things, but when she was upset, she ended up so small.

“Please don’t leave again,” she whispered into his shoulder.

“Never again,” he promised.

For a long time they just stayed like that. Jaune didn’t pull away until Nora did, wiping at her eyes. She flexed her hand again. Jaune had noticed she’d been doing that more often, but thought it was because of all the practice they’d been doing in preparation of the upcoming war.

This close, he could see that her fingers weren’t quite straight. One of her pinkies was crooked, and the middle finger on her other hand. There were scars starbursting all along her knuckles, a different color than the ones crossing her arms and neck.

“When the door wouldn’t open the other way,” she said when she noticed him looking, “I thought if I just kept trying…” Jaune had had injuries like that in Ever After. His arm had ached after the break had healed in Ever After, when it rained and when the weather turned. It got so cold in the desert at night here.

It he’d been here he could have amped her Aura. She wouldn’t have to deal with the healing injuries and the aftermath of them on top of everything else if he’d been here with his team like he belonged.

“I would have done it a thousand times over,” she said, so firmly he had to believe it. “It would have been worth it, if I got back in time to help you.”

Jaune laced his fingers with hers. Nora’s grip was just as strong as he’d remembered.

Emerald was actually there for dinner that night instead of helping Robyn with patrols. Her eyes settled on the way Nora’s head rested on Jaune’s shoulder. Her expression didn’t change until Nora saw her and smiled, but her answering grin only lasted as long as Nora’s eyes were on her.

Jaune filed that away for later. Right now his focus needed to be Nora.

He took his time getting ready for bed that night, long enough that the others would have retired already. Nora still hadn’t asked for a sleepover, but she also wasn’t looking like she was on the verge of fracturing apart either. Maybe he could suggest it in the next few days, if she didn't.

Emerald had a book open on her lap when he did start to hover by the door. She didn’t look up, but he could feel the weight of her attention slide to him.

“Thank you,” he said awkwardly.

Emerald wasn’t looking at him, but she also wasn’t actually reading. “Sure.”

“I should have-” he started, because even if it stung, he did know that Emerald had been right.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” she interrupted without looking up.

“If that’s what you want.”

Emerald’s nostrils flared; her lips pressed into a thin line. Her eyes didn’t move from their spot on the page. “What I want,” she echoed flatly, “Sure.”

“Emerald, if you-”

“We don’t have to talk about it, Arc.” She wouldn’t look at him, but her eyes did flick to the door to Nora and Ren’s room. “As long as she’s better, that’s all that matters.”

Well. That was something they could agree on.

Things got a little better, and they didn’t.

Now that they’d had their talk, Nora had begun to start filling him in on everything he’d missed. Emerald featured prominently in the stories. Jaune didn’t let that bother him.

He didn’t want it to bother him. She’d clearly been helping Nora and the others while he couldn’t, and he was willing to forgive a lot on that basis.

It was just strange because she never seemed to be around. She was still helping on missions with Robyn Hill’s huntresses, or with Sun and Neptune. Jaune caught glimpses of her with Qrow a few times, but Qrow was sticking close to Ruby and Yang, and Emerald seemed to be skirting around RWBY as well, so that was less frequent. Outside of that, the most Jaune saw Emerald was at night, when he couldn’t sleep and gave into the urge to check on the room that Nora and Ren were in.

Sleep still came only with difficulty. He'd gotten so used to sleeping alone that Oscar’s breathing was strange now. Jaune kept waking up in the middle of the night, thinking the sun is about to go off, and then feeling the sense of displacement rattling around in his chest until seeing his teammates felt like the only thing that would make it settle again.

Sometimes she was awake still when he went to check, flipping through pictures on her scroll. Those times her eyes flicked to him and then she would ignore him. Jaune left her in peace, but he could see the pictures from the corner of his eye; Nora, Ren and Oscar in various shots. He was pretty sure there were a few lone candids of a slate-haired boy mixed in there but mentioning it would mean admitting he was looking, so he didn’t.

If she wasn’t awake when he opened the door, the sound got her up every time. She pretended to be asleep, but he wasn’t the worst student at Beacon anymore. He’d built up the experience to see her jerk awake every time the door opened, stiffness to the way she feigned sleep with her fingers on the hilt of her kama. He didn’t call her on it. They still weren’t talking to each other.

One time she wasn’t on the couch, and it was only by the moonlight from the window that he saw she was over in the back of the room, looking over the items arranged on the shelf.

That was Ren’s shrine.

It wasn’t a full shrine. But Ren had a few small keepsakes that he set up to the east of their room at Beacon: his father’s pin and a comb inlaid with jade that had belonged to his mother. A few pictures with the edges eaten by wear, that were always carefully arranged in a particular order. They hadn’t come out when they’d been on the move, but anywhere on their long trek through Mistral that they’d stayed for longer than a few days he’d taken them out and arranged them again. After Beacon, he’d added Pyrrha’s armband, and a picture from the dance. Pictures were for family, and Huntsmen tended to include their team members in that.

It was a Mistral custom, and when Oscar had admitted that he’d had one at his aunt’s farm they’d all started to tease Jaune about being their obligatory minority, but they’d taught him enough about it that he had a good enough handle on the tradition by now. It made sense that Ren had set it up here now that they had a semi-permanent space again.

Ren didn’t mind people interacting with it as long as they were respectful, but Jaune was pretty sure that he would have a problem with Emerald reaching right in and plucking out one of the photographs, making a rotating movement with her wrist like she was about to slip it into her pocket.

He grabbed her wrist.

Her kama had been on their table, but that didn’t slow her down much; Emerald’s free hand yanked a small knife out of her pocket in one fluid movement. She had it halfway to his neck before she registered who he was and froze.

A beat later and she lowered it back down to her side again. “Force of habit,” she said with the same too-tight smile. Her arm was rigid under Jaune’s hand despite the ease in her voice. Stiffly, she stuffed the knife back in her pocket with her free hand.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“He didn’t want you to see,” she said, which didn’t make sense until Jaune registered what was in the hand he was holding in place.

Ren had added Jaune’s picture to the shrine.

Of course he had. Jaune had been presumed dead for half a year. He’d seen his name on the monument to the lost at the edge of the city. But that was very different than this.

There was a thick chain of braided fabric in the colors of team RWBY for close friends, but pictures were for family members and that was Jaune’s picture she’d taken out from its place next to Ren’s parents and Pyrrha.

“He hasn’t had a chance to move it. They’re always around you now, so he couldn’t without you noticing.” The odd note was back in her voice, but Jaune couldn’t even begin to pay attention to that now, let alone decipher it.

They’d told him how long it had been. Nora had known down to the hour when they’d lost him. But he hadn’t taken Nora’s guilt and the three’s relief to see him and connected it to the idea that they’d been mourning.

Nora and Ren didn’t have any living family left. They’d been alone for years before they’d made their way to Beacon. They’d already lost one teammate. And then they’d thought they’d lost Jaune too.

Jaune felt a frisson of dissonance, staring at the picture of a younger, Beacon-era Jaune in the glossy picture. He looked like a stranger.

He should say something. The voice in the back of his head was pointing out that he shouldn’t be this quiet for this long. But his brain was still stalling on the idea of his picture on that mantle.

Emerald was still standing there, looking more and more frustrated the longer he blanked. “You need to let go of me, because I am about to stop being nice about it.”

Jaune let go. Emerald flipped the picture between her fingers in an agitation that would have read as nervous if it was someone else, then placed it face down on the counter next to the shrine.

“Ren-” she started, then stopped abruptly.

“What about Ren?” Jaune prompted when she didn’t go on.

But she shook her head, and the strange expression on her face was twisting into something cold. “Never mind,” she said. Her voice was low enough that no one would wake up, but poisonous. “He’s your teammate, you know better him than me.” And she whipped around and left their quarters entirely, the door closing soundlessly behind her.

Alone in the living room, Jaune picked up the picture and looked at it. Picture Jaune looked so carefree that he was almost unrecognizable. Jaune felt a very uncomfortable, very strong urge to place the boy in his first year at Beacon back on the shrine, so he could be mourned properly.

Slowly, Jaune settled back into his place in Remnant. Old inside jokes started to resurface from the depths of his memories; practices stopped being so awkward as they began to start moving in sync again. Jaune started letting the poison out slowly, sharing bits of his time alone in Ever After. Not the Paper Pleasers, he was still trying to figure out how to word that one- but other pieces of it: Juniper, the mirrors. Alyx.

Ruby was right; it did help.

Day by day, Jaune stopped feeling like a spectator in his team’s life.

About a week after they’d made it back to Remnant he and Oscar ended up in their room while Ren and Nora went on a patrol with RWBY to show them around the city. Emerald was helping the Huntresses again without word of when she’d be back.

Oscar and Jaune were using downtime between preparations and training to catch up on TV shows Jaune had missed, because it gave them a good excuse to spend time together without talking about Salem or Ever After, and neither of them cared too much if they ended up talking through it. Oscar seemed to enjoy it despite how cramped the room was with three people’s worth of stuff, and there had been nothing in his speech pattern that belonged to anyone except a teenager the whole day. That was good; Nora had tattled about how they’d been leaning on Ozpin to get the refugees settled when Vacuo’s population had initially balked. They were all relieved that it seemed less necessary now.

For the most part the time worked out well for both of them. But Jaune noticed that Oscar’s smile died bit by bit the longer the night went on. His eyes went pinched at the edges.

“What is it?”

“I’m worried about Emerald,” he admitted, “She’s been pulling away.”

Jaune hadn’t noticed her pulling away. Rather, she’d made a concerted effort to not get close enough to be able to pull away from. “It seems like she works with the Happy Huntresses a lot,” Jaune said cautiously.

“Hm? Yeah, they like her. And they keep away anyone who…doesn’t,” he finished the sentence carefully.

It hadn’t occurred to Jaune that other people would be angry at her for Beacon, but only because things had been too busy for him to think of it. The idea wasn’t surprising especially, but it was…disquieting. Because for all he still felt uneasy around her, Jaune hadn’t heard one bad thing about Emerald the whole week he’d been back, not from his team or Qrow or even Winter Schnee.

There was a dissatisfied twist to Oscar’s mouth. “But she’s usually with us, and she hasn’t been.”

Jaune had maybe spent six hours with Emerald post-defection before Cinder had knocked him into Ever After. He wasn’t sure he’d spent six hours with her in the week and a half since he’d gotten back.

Oscar looked at Jaune from the corner of his eyes, vaguely guilty, and Jaune realized that he did know the reason and didn’t want to say it; Emerald wasn’t around because Jaune was here, and she was avoiding him.

“I haven’t said anything to her,” Jaune said. Just that one argument about Nora, but he’d thought that was sorted out. It wasn’t like Jaune was a stranger to putting his foot in his mouth, but he hadn’t even had the chance to mess up saying anything to Emerald because she barely spoke to him.

“I’ve noticed,” Oscar said, with a quirk of his eyebrows that called to mind Ozpin so strongly Jaune half-expected to get detention.

That stung a little bit. “She doesn’t seem to care that much.” It wasn’t like Jaune was making himself unavailable. Emerald was the one who kept finding reasons to not be in the shared quarters and disappeared from every team training activity Ren put together.

“She pretends like she doesn’t care,” corrected Oscar, “It’s a bad habit. But she does. And something is wrong because she’s avoiding Ren too.” That was confusing for all of a second, and then Jaune realized that with his Semblance Ren would be able to pick it up at once. He wasn’t quite a mind-reader, but at this point he was the next best thing.

“I think you should talk to her,” Oscar broached finally, in the middle of the last episode of Pumpkin Pete.

Jaune was pretty sure that if Oscar had been around during Beacon, he would not have this much confidence in Jaune’s communication skills. “I think you should be the one to talk to her if you’re worried,” he said, “Because she actually likes you.”

“She’d like you fine if you’d both sit and actually talk,” he said with a hint of exasperation. Jaune had some deep-seated doubts about this.

Oscar was facing the screen but his eyes were on Jaune. It was all Oscar in his face, none of Ozpin’s confidence or experience; just the kid that Jaune had come to think of as his little brother. “It can be hard, joining a team that was already formed,” he said carefully, “There’s a lot of elbow-bumping.”

And Jaune knew that they’d handled Oscar’s introduction to their team badly- all of them. He’d apologized for it. They’d had a lot of talks about it in Atlas, reaffirming Oscar’s place with them. Even after having settled it, he still felt guilty for the knee-jerk way he’d reacted.

“I’m not trying to-” he started, but Oscar knew that already. “It’s just been hard to…re-acclimate,” he admitted. Oscar knew that too, but it was easier to say. “It’s been strange to be back and see how much everything changed.” And everyone, he didn’t say.

Oscar rolled his cane between his hands. “We’ve been through a lot together,” he said apologetically. He looked guilty, like he knew how upset Jaune was that he hadn’t been there for it too.

“I know.” Now that he’d gotten a glimpse of the toll grief had taken on his team, he was even coming around to the idea that he was glad that someone had been there for them. But he still felt an unpleasant weight in his stomach all through the next several minutes on the show.

Oscar leaned over to rest against him. Everyone had been very tactile since they’d stepped through the door back to Vacou. He wasn’t complaining; Jaune may or may not have been a bit touch-starved in the wake of Ever After. “We’re really glad you’re back,” he said, “You know that right?”

Jaune leaned back. “I’m really glad too.”

They sat through the rest of the episode, but Jaune didn’t really register it. He had a lot to think about. Jaune extricated himself from a dozing Oscar as the credits rolled, who’d started to doze off, in order to get ready for bed.

Emerald was standing outside their room, back against the wall. Her things were still in their room because they’d agreed there was no point in moving them to the living room where they’d get in everyone’s way. It was clear that she’d heard at least part of the conversation, probably more.

She looked tired. The only times Jaune was ever really around her was at night, but this was the first time she’d truly looked tired.

“Were you…waiting to go in?”

It was a stupid question. Obviously she was waiting to go in. But Emerald’s shoulders curled up. “No,” she lied, which- she was supposed to be good at lying, wasn’t she? Oscar had told him several funny stories to that effect. This was not a particularly effective lie. But she spun on her heel and left the room, which was a pretty effective way of getting out of the rest of the conversation.

Between that exchange and Oscar’s observations, Jaune was left with an uneasy feeling in his stomach as he got ready to sleep. Something in the way she’d looked reminded him of the Afterans. Not the Paper Pleasers, but some of the others he’d met in his travels. The ones who had ascended; they’d looked tired like that before they went.

That night Jaune woke up two hours after he’d fallen asleep, thinking that Origami Acre was going to drown again. Oscar was still asleep in the bed on the other side of the room, one leg sticking out from under the mosquito netting that was used to try to keep some of the sand out.

Emerald wasn’t on the couch when he opened the door. Jaune checked on the others; Nora was star-fished over the bed while Ren lay completely straight on his half, one of Nora’s arms flung over his face. Emerald wasn’t there either.

He glanced at the empty couch again. Unbidden, he thought of how tired she’d looked again.

Jaune sighed. He hoped Oscar’s faith wasn’t unfounded this time.

Shade had put as many of the refugees as they could fit into the east wing of the school. Jaune thought it was a very good stroke of luck, as it contained a gym that the Huntsmen and Huntresses would be able to use at all hours without having to overcrowd the ones used by the others.

When he poked his head into the gym it was empty. He didn’t see Emerald in the halls or by the wing where the Happy Huntresses stayed with the bulk of the civilian refugees. The halls were mostly silent, though he saw Qrow also walking towards the gym with Harbinger propped against his shoulder and nodded at him.

He probably would have missed her completely, except just as he was turning the corner to go back up and try their floor again, he heard Qrow say, “I don’t know if anyone’s told you this kid, but people go to gyms to use the equipment.”

“Fuck off,” ordered Emerald from inside the gym, and Jaune swiveled back around to stare down the hall he’d just come through, just in time to see Qrow’s cape disappear into the room.

“I feel like I should be a responsible adult and tell you that a Huntsmen gym is possibly the worst place to be lurking in corners,” Qrow continued as Jaune moved back towards the door. The idea of Qrow being a responsible adult was nearly the most bizarre thing Jaune had heard since arrival. “Some jumpy rookie is going to shoot you on reflex.”

“They can try.” Emerald didn’t sound particularly concerned about the idea. To be fair, Jaune did remember her being remarkably hard to hit. He was at the edge of the door now but couldn’t make himself walk into the room. This was the closest Emerald had sounded to what he remembered since he came back. “What are you doing here anyway? Shouldn’t you be with your family?”

There was a touch of acid thrown on the last word. Qrow’s voice was dry when he answered. “My nieces are sleeping like normal, well-adjusted people.”

“Oh, so that explains why you’re here,” she shot back. A flare of defensive outrage started to rise in Jaune’s throat at that, but Qrow barked a laugh.

“No one’s ever accused me of being well-adjusted,” he agreed easily, amused, “It’s easier to train when there isn’t anyone else around. Less chance of my Semblance acting up. Now what’s your excuse?”

Emerald might have shrugged, or she might have given him a rude gesture. But after an expectant pause, she said, “At Salem’s…place. I would go to the training halls when I couldn’t sleep. Mercury was always practicing. It was safe there. Safe as it ever got.”

“The training halls, or being around your broody murder friend?”

That wasn’t any more rude than what she’d said to Qrow, but from the way she reacted he’d managed to hit a bigger nerve than she had. “Shut up!” she snapped, “You don’t get it! It was-”

“I get it, kid,” Qrow said, not unkindly. Emerald fell into a sullen silence. “So that’s it then? You’re lonely so you came down here to mope?”

“I’m not moping,” she bit out in the same tone that she’d used when she’d lied to Jaune earlier that night.

“Oof, you are moping,” Qrow said, clearly just realizing it. Emerald made a noise like a tea kettle. Jaune couldn’t see anything from behind the door, but he could picture Qrow looking her over. “Well, you alright with me practicing in here anyway? I know I won’t be a good substitute, but. Maybe better than nothing?”

The silence spread out between them. Jaune resisted the urge to poke his head into the room.

“As long as you don’t shoot me, I guess,” Emerald said finally. She sounded grudging, but Qrow huffed a laugh as if he’d read something else in her tone entirely. Ruby had told Jaune that Qrow seemed fond of Emerald now, but Jaune hadn’t quite believed it.

It was a strange-mirror image of earlier that night, when Emerald must have been eavesdropping on them. Jaune knew that he should move one way or another, either go in and give them privacy. Logically he knew that it was probably better to leave Qrow to it, that he seemed to have a better handle on Emerald than Jaune did, but he couldn’t make his feet move. Some instinct, honed either from his time in Ever After or before, was telling him to hold here.

“I feel obligated to ask if you want to talk about it,” Qrow said after a few minutes of nothing but the sound of a blade cutting through the air.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Emerald muttered, “I’m fine.”

“Fine people aren’t up at two in a training hall,” Qrow shot back, “I feel like we just established that a minute ago.”

“It’s fine,” she said, which didn’t sound any more convincing than ‘I’m fine’ had, and which wasn’t quite the same thing. Qrow hummed doubtfully. “It is.” And then, with a casual tone so patently false it was brittle with it- “Everyone gets tired to me eventually. I should have prepared better.”

The sounds of Qrow’s kata stopped entirely. Jaune felt more than saw the older man stare at her. “Look, kid, green- well, I guess green is your color, but that doesn’t mean you should lean into it.”

“That’s not what this is!” she insisted, “I’m being realistic. It’s fine. He’s back, and they’re happy. It’s good. It’s great.”

“Have you talked to them about this? No, what am I saying? Of course you haven’t; if you had you wouldn’t be here at two AM talking to me-”

“I’m not talking about it with them,” she interrupted, clipped. “I didn’t even want to talk about it with you. I’m not making it about me. They’re happy he’s back; I’m not getting in the way of that. I’m not trying to- I’m just trying to be realistic.”

Qrow didn’t say anything to this at all. But it was a very pointed silence, and from the way words started to spill out of Emerald, he didn’t need to do anything more anyway.

“It is good. Nora’s not getting eaten alive by guilt anymore. Oscar won’t have to feel like he needs to tapping into Ozpin to be the team leader. Ren doesn’t have to keep worrying about keeping both of their heads above water. This is better for everyone. They had to grieve him. They should get to be happy too. It isn’t about me. I didn’t have any right to be there with them anyway.”

“You need to have more faith in your team.”

“They aren’t my team!” she snapped, something awful creeping into her voice, “I was a placeholder. We just didn’t know it. But- but now we do. So.” The longer Emerald was talking into the silence, the worse she became at hiding her emotion. “This is good. It’s good. I’m happy for them. You saw how they were before. When we thought the others were dead; you saw what it did to them.”

“I saw you helping them too,” Qrow pointed out, more gently.

“It doesn’t matter if I was helping them, because he’s back. If they have to choose, it’s over.”

“Hm. Do you want to tell me why you think they have to choose?”

Emerald was silent for a beat. “He wants me gone,” she admitted finally.

The world was tilting under Jaune’s feet, just enough to reshuffle all his interactions with Emerald into something closer to understanding, finally identifying the prickly, standoffish way she’d been watching him. She’d been watching him watching her, reading a meaning into it that he wasn’t quite sure he could say was incorrect.

He had been resentful that she’d folded herself into the team, when he didn’t know her and when he hadn’t been there to help them. Jaune had spent more time in Ever After than he’d been alive in Remnant trying to get back to his team, and all the while Emerald had been here. Even if she'd been helping them, that was supposed to be his job.

Jaune had gradually realized how much she’d meant to the others; he hadn’t made the leap to what they meant to her.

“It’s just a matter of time,” she said now without inflection, “I can go with Robyn’s group; they’re too understaffed to be picky about who they take. That’ll see me through the end of the war at least. Exit strategy accomplished.”

“I know what’s it’s like to not be familiar with all this,” Qrow said into the silence, “I get what that feels like. But you’re not being fair to the others. They love you.”

This was the breaking point for Emerald. “Only because there wasn’t anyone else left! I know this part, ok? I know my place; if the universe keeps showing me over and over, I’m bound to get it eventually! It doesn’t matter how hard I try; it’s never going to be good enough-”

And Jaune was suddenly back at Beacon a lifetime ago, realizing how completely outclassed he was compared to the others, how far he was outside the circle of their shared competence. Reading pity into the way that Pyrrha offered him help because he hadn’t been able to think of another reason she would care enough to help when he so clearly didn’t belong.

Jaune peeked into the room. If he hadn’t had Qrow’s form to guide him, he wouldn’t have seen Emerald curled up in the far corner of the room. Harbinger was propped against the wall; Qrow had crouched down to be at her level. Emerald was breathing hard, leaning into his hand on her forehead. Her eyes were screwed shut.

“-stop spiraling. Listen to me. Are you back with me?” He waited until her head jerked in a small nod. “This isn't a zero sum game. There is room for both of you.”

“What if there’s not?” Her voice cracked.

“You’re going to have to trust me on this one." She didn't say anything to this. Qrow pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. " If I sit down next to you, are you going to shoot me?”

“Yes,” she said thickly, at once, but she didn’t uncurl when he shifted to slouching against the wall next to her.

Jaune eased away from the door and started to head back to the elevator.

By the time he returned, Emerald had recovered enough of her emotional equilibrium that Qrow had gone back to his exercises. She was watching him with her chin tucked over her knees. Her eyes were following the movements, tired but intent.

They snapped to Jaune when he stepped into the room and it was like a wall went up behind them, just too slow to hide the flash of resentment.

“Hey, Emerald.” This did not quite have the effect of seeming like he’d stumbled upon her like he’d hoped. “We’re having a team sleepover.”

If anything, she closed off even more at this. “Good for you,” she said shortly, and didn’t uncurl.

“Yeesh,” Qrow volunteered from where he was leaning on his scythe, watching them. Emerald’s eyes shifted to him in exasperated, furious betrayal, and then back to Jaune.

Jaune rubbed at the back of his neck awkwardly. “It’s, um, kind of not a team sleepover without all the team there.”

For a second the wall around her cracked, just enough that he could see the misery behind it. “Then why are you here?” And now that he knew what he was looking at it was easy to read the resentment there, the furious, indignant disbelief that he was wasting the time he could be with the others just to rub it in her face.

“I’m getting them,” he told her mildly, then held his hand out to her, “We’re waiting on you.”

Emerald had opened her mouth before he’d finished but she snapped it closed again now, eyes wide. There was no wall now; Emerald looked shocked and suspicious, and under it all very fragile.

“What?”

“Come on,” Jaune said, “Let’s go join the others.”

Jaune had to keep waiting for a good two minutes but it was worth it; Emerald tentatively put her hand on top of his and let him pull her up.

“Gee, Qrow, I guess you were right after all,” Qrow said pointedly at Emerald as she stood there staring at Jaune, which broke the spell long enough for her to throw her kusarigama out and knock Harbinger off balance enough to almost trip him. “Brat,” he pronounced, and then nodded at Jaune in acknowledgement. Jaune hadn’t had the best introductions to Qrow either, between the injury and the drinking afterwards in Mistral, but the approval in his gaze still felt good. “I’ve been meaning to spar with you,” he told Jaune, “Ruby says you’ve picked up some new tricks.”

“Maybe tomorrow?” Jaune asked, “Team stuff comes first.” From the corner of his eye he could see Emerald twitch slightly at that.

Qrow waved a hand. “By all means; I don’t want to get involved in this disaster any more than I already am.”

Emerald followed him silently back to the elevator. Jaune saw her open her mouth and then decide against what she’d been planning on saying twice. “I never thanked you for watching out for them while I was gone,” Jaune said as the elevator moved. “So- thank you.”

Emerald rubbed at her arms. “I didn’t do it for you,” she muttered.

Jaune thought about his words carefully before he chose them. “It’s been harder than I thought, coming back,” he admitted. “I don’t have my head on straight all the way again. But I’m glad that they had you looking out for them. I should have led with that last week.”

Emerald’s eyes darted to him and then away again. “Anytime,” she said, completely failing to sound casual.

The couch was shoved up against the wall when they made it back to their quarters. Ren had swept up any residual sand while Nora cleared furniture out of the way. Oscar had gotten everyone’s bedding and spread it out onto the freshly cleaned floor.

Jaune had figured it was bad enough that he’d been eavesdropping on Emerald and Qrow; he hadn’t told the others what he’d heard. But Oscar hadn’t been the only one who’d picked up on Emerald’s sudden withdrawal; Nora beamed when she saw the other girl and started waving at the folded comforter between her and Oscar, making the blanket around her shoulders flail wildly.

“Emerald! Come sit over here, we saved you a spot-”

Emerald came to a dead stop. “Oh,” she said weakly. Tears began to roll down her face. Nora cut off abruptly, smile sliding away.

“Emerald,” Oscar started.

Emerald was already wiping at her eyes. “It’s nothing,” she said before he could finish asking, “I’m fine it’s, it’s so stupid-”

Nora was already halfway across the room. She put her hands on Emerald’s shoulders and Emerald buckled against her, folding into the shelter of Nora’s frame. Nora guided them both to the floor, curling around the other girl. Jaune could see Emerald’s hands twisting into Nora’s blanket; she didn’t say it but he could read the don’t leave don’t leave just as clearly as from when Nora had done it to him on arrival in Vacuo. “I’m sorry,” Emerald was repeating, shuddering into the embrace, “I was being stupid, it’s fine-”

Nora hugged her more tightly. “It will be,” she said firmly, “You have us to help now.”

Oscar squirmed closer to them. “I told you the bed rotation would be better,” he told her, exasperated. Emerald extracted one hand from the tangle of blankets to shove him ass over teakettle and then went back to clinging to Nora.

Ren’s head was tilted to the side from his spot on his own bedding, watching them carefully. When he exhaled and started to smile Jaune knew he’d read what he wanted with his Semblance. “That’s much better,” he said quietly to Jaune as Jaune sat next to him. “Good job.” Oscar had kicked halfheartedly at Emerald from where he’d gone sprawling but then gotten up and wormed his way into the hug.

Jaune leaned back until his shoulder knocked into Ren’s. This was going to be good for them. Maybe another few sleepovers would be in order with RWBY as well, help them get familiar with the new dynamics with their team.

Not all of the sleepovers though. It was nice when it was just them.