Chapter Text
The chaste kiss became a distant memory.
Haunted by memory.
Jaune ran away from his friends, leaving them clueless to where he was and what he was doing.
He had wrecked his scroll after calling Weiss, and his fear and despair had made him run.
His friends surely would have called him a coward.
If what he saw in these memories was what would have happened if he had come with them, then it meant he had let them suffer and he had abandoned his friends.
Jaune pulled on his hair as he let the memories influenced him, the years of loneliness, the experience, nourishing him greatly.
His own memories and emotions becoming one with the memories of the Older Jaune Arc, the Rusted Knight of Ever After.
Their Semblance was the same and yet the rusted knight’s mastery of his aura and Semblance became his greatest asset, further enhancing his skills and abilities he had learned throughout the years he spent hunting Grimm and Criminals in Anima.
He roamed around like a madman, helping people out, compensating for the fall of Beacon.
And doing so, he had grown up.
The boyish charm was gone, leaving only a long hair tied in a warrior’s wolf-tail with a stubble oddly suiting him and clad in armor and long coat.
Jaune escaped Vale as fast as he could after Beacon fell.
He didn’t have time to get a new scroll.
He was always on the move.
Always afraid of the Grimm.
Always hunting.
Jaune knew his friends were alive and were currently in Atlas.
Even without him, they could manage.
It made him uncomfortable about how little he had contributed, but then again, he was the black sheep.
His friends were prodigy while he was a fool who thought he could make it in Beacon without training.
And looked at where he was now?
Spitting on the sacrifice of a girl who had not lived her life.
He knew it was a different timeline, but the absence he felt was the same.
The Rusted Knight, the Jaune trapped in the Ever After, was more of a man than he’d ever be.
Crossing two continents despite his grief, and despite his inability to save himself, and finally surrendering to the tree for ascension.
The Rusted Knight’s last wish was selfless.
He hoped no Jaune would suffer his pain.
And yet the Blacksmith was kind enough to fulfill the wish of a boy who aspired to be a hero once.
The Rusted Knight’s tale was a tragic one. It was all he could do, hoping his experiences would help, and it did.
Jaune, the Jaune who ran, received hope from his older self.
That somewhere out there, there was a version of him that tried his best.
A Jaune who didn’t want to lose his friends despite how weak he was.
Seeing that hope.
Jaune laughed to himself, and for a second, the boyish grin returned.
Gone was the hooded hunter wandering around, killing Grimm, and behind the shade of his hood was a smile.
Shouldering Crocea Mors, the Hooded Huntsman walked out of the forest.
It was time to find and catch up to his friends.