Chapter Text
It was a while before Penny accepted that no one was coming to meet her.
Every process is unique, Fria had explained after Penny’s transition completed. Penny had been welcoming Fria into her own soul, which she discovered to her delight looked like Atlas Academy: it was the place where she was made, with beautiful geometries and enough space to hold every thought and feeling she ever called her own. We will be with you always—never doubt that—but you have control over what relationships you want to have with each of us, with the number of us you wish to accept and embrace.
Penny was never going to turn down a chance to meet new friends, so she had immediately thrown the door to her mind wide open. It had been a little overwhelming. She gave tours of the Atlas campus all the time, but it was harder to explain how her facsimile—with instant access to all her favorite places and people—worked to strangers. And there were so many previous Maidens, all of them unfamiliar. Even Fria.
But she had managed to do it. On the airship ride from Atlas to Mantle it had felt like she was in two places at once, but nestled between Ruby and Weiss she had felt grounded. Safe. And afterward, in the Happy Huntress shelter with Dad—
Oh, Penny thought. Oh, Dad. She hoped he had heard her as she’d fallen out of Amity. She hoped he hadn’t heard anything after.
Dad had been taken aback by everything at first, too. But when Penny had tried to explain the way it felt, all the new parts within her taking up residence, he’d chuckled. Doesn’t sound too different from a routine software installation for us. A nervous cough. Well—maybe not so routine.
He was not correct, but the reassurance had made her feel better anyway.
It had been a lot. A lot of new people to meet and know. But Penny had people of her own, and the time, to…process. Not a lot, or for very long. But some.
Winter, she was not getting time. Or people. Penny had sensed that even in the isolated clearing she found herself in after the finished transfer, had felt the sky and the earth crack open and her own eyes well up with the force of shuddering grief.
Winter was not getting time. But Penny—she could be Winter’s people. Person. She was not new or unfamiliar. And if Winter would not…if Winter could not come meet her, then Penny would go to her instead, and help her get to know everyone else who had come before.
She walked forward.
The prickling grass beneath her bare feet soon turned into that of a neater, well-kept lawn, then into a white stone path. Then she was past a metal gate, in front of ornate gray doors—
Penny paused. This was…she recognized this place. She’d left it just hours ago.
This was Schnee Manor.
She thought about knocking. Then she thought better, and just pushed the door open. “Salu—"
Her gasp cut off the rest of the greeting. The main hall of the Manor had been damaged when she’d left it, from the Hound’s attack and from when she had been—when she had been forced to attack her friends. But it had not looked anything like this: nearly everything in sight was smashed to pieces. Scorch marks and streaks of frost littered the floor and the walls, and the suit of armor Willow and Whitley had toppled over in life was still upright, but eaten away with rust.
And it was…loud. Half-familiar voices bounced off the walls, muffled and sharp all at once, overlapping too much to make out individual words.
“Hello?” She could not help but try again. “Winter?”
No answer, save for how her own voice joined the echoes.
Right. Penny had downloaded the Manor’s full layout before the dinner party, per General Ironwood’s request, but she was only familiar with a few rooms. She had been in the dining area, and…
Her feet were already taking her to Weiss’ bedroom. She’d felt the shape of Winter’s scream earlier, so maybe Winter was—she had to be somewhere, this was her own soul—maybe she was waiting in her sister’s room?
Penny turned the doorknob—
Then she was back in the main foyer.
Some kind of defense. (Against what? What did Winter need to defend in her own mind?) But that likely meant that Winter was in there, and Penny, she wasn’t an attacker. Winter had to know that. If she just tried again…
She made her way back to the door. Then the floor dropped away and she fell with it.
And she shrank.
Penny’s father had shown her all of her schematics. The physical specifications of her body had varied with each recreation to accommodate for hardware upgrades. Even when she’d made herself, by herself, she’d made some adjustments. Not because she had to, but just to try—try changing the texture of her hair from synthetic-fine strands to something curlier, springier; try having her freckles extend down her shoulders and arms, even though no one would really see them. Tinkered, in a way that she had hoped would make him proud.
She had never been much smaller, though. She had never been small in the way a human child was small, and she had never had an even smaller body cling to her with cold cramping fingers as echoing voices suddenly crescendoed into angry shouts—
Then the rockets beneath her feet—no, the Maiden flames—then Penny remembered she could fly. She hurtled upward through what seemed like forever until she found solid ground again, until she was herself and back in the Manor, in front of Weiss’ room—
But the door to the room was gone.
Well, Penny thought, staring at what was now a featureless wall. That was okay. Winter was somewhere in this place, and Penny had plenty of time to find her.
Eventually she ran out of Grimm.
The sandstorm proved more difficult. Generating power from herself in the form of concentrated blasts already felt as natural to Winter as breathing, an extension of what she could already do with her Semblance, but there was something about the existing weather that could not be pushed. She finally gave up on quelling it outright, and made do with simply sending it deeper into the Vacuan desert.
Landing was…a mistake. Her legs were shaky enough even without the new terrain wreaking havoc on her heels, and Winter was beginning to think her eyes would never fully focus again. When Penny—the Maiden transfer had thankfully replenished her Aura, but the fighting that had come after had worn it back down to a bare nub.
By the time Winter felt sure enough that she could straighten without toppling over or heaving what was left in her—what was left in her stomach? Surely she had eaten at some point—onto the sand, the milling crowd had given way to an armed welcoming party: a trio of crossbows, all aimed at her.
“May,” she said, locking eyes with the leader. Her throat was raw. The sand, and…she’d been shouting a lot, in all likelihood, during the past day.
Days.
Neither May nor the two Huntresses flanking her lifted their fingers from their weapon triggers. Fiona Thyme, some part of Winter’s brain recollected from mission briefs past. Joanna Greenleaf. “Schnee,” May snapped back, “What did you do?”
What did she do. Winter felt her face twitch as she fought back a tide of…something. Later. She would have time for hysterics later. “The Grimm have only been driven back temporarily. We need to—"
“You know that’s not what I mean,” May barked, hand tightening even further around her weapon. “Where did the gate go? Why do you have the Maiden powers? What did you do to P—"
“She gave them to me,” Winter said, interrupting May for no reason except for her absolute certainty that she in this moment could not bear hearing Penny’s name spoken aloud—by May, or by anyone.
This was a gift. A gift she’d immediately squandered. “The evacuation is finished. No one was left by the time Jaune and I…"
But Jaune had been behind her. And the portal had closed as soon as she passed through.
Winter’s eyes roved over the crowd before landing on the remains of Team JNPR. Nora looked to be crying into Ren’s shirt. They’d realized, then. Still, she would need to—go to them. Tell them what she could piece together of what happened. She was the only left who could, now.
“Bullshit,” May snarled, “We’re still waiting on people, so you can do your whatever with Penny’s magic to open it up again—"
“I can’t do that.” There was a lot she couldn’t do. “The Staff created the portals, and—where is Robyn?”
May’s eyes narrowed sharply, but not before Winter saw the way they’d brightened with unshed tears. “You don’t get to ask that question.”
Which was answer enough. “She wasn’t in the evacuation area. I only saw Jaune and—"
The name almost made it out. She’d felt her lips form around the beginning W before the air suddenly left her lungs.
May’s expression changed, like she had figured something out. “Schnee…”
Winter couldn’t stop herself from flinching. “They fell. Jaune and…and RWBY.” She tried to take a steadying breath, but her lungs felt like they were being forced through a gravel tumbler. She might have broken her ribs. Re-broken them. It was hard to keep track.
“Team RWBY,” she clarified. She did not need to scan the crowd to make sure, not when she could feel it: could hear Blake Belladonna’s distant, agonized Yang through Penny’s ears, could see two figures plummet from a cut line through Penny’s eyes, wet with tears for the first and last time. The memories were not her own, but the truth was, now.
I’ll be part of you. Apparently Penny had meant that in a more literal way than Winter had assumed, or dared to hope. That was—something. She tried not to grasp for it too desperately. Later. That too would be for later.
“The whole team?“ Then Winter saw May do it, too. Heard the silence, as May’s lips formed around the first sound in Weiss’ name and did not continue.
But—the other implications of Robyn’s absence suddenly sunk in. She could not see Qrow, either, and he had been with Robyn—
Winter yanked at the relief burgeoning up within her and twisted it sharply back into shame. What kind of selfish cowardice did she possess, to be glad to have lost another person, to have lost Qrow, simply because it meant she would not have to tell him about his nieces? Of all the petty—she would not let herself shirk this duty. This was what she deserved, for stepping in too late. For not doing enough.
They had a father in Patch, Ruby and Yang. She would inform him. And Yang—it would be difficult to locate Raven Branwen, but she would try, because the woman needed to know she’d lost a child and a brother. Jaune had…a sister in Argus, which at least would make it easy to get in touch. Anyone else she would need to ask his surviving teammates. But the Belladonnas were still in Menagerie. This would all be simpler had they actually managed to restore global communications, but it would not be impossible. She would find a way. There was also…
Dad, some part of her chimed in, and Winter nearly retched at the disorienting double image that flickered across her mind. Thoughts of her father she could usually shove aside with the ease of long practice, but Penny’s affection for hers was bleeding over this time, marooning her until all she could hear was are you going to leave me here? She’d told him no, for Weiss, but then she had. She had failed Weiss, even in this—
Enough, Winter commanded herself brusquely. Focus. Doctor Polendina was not among the crowd, but he had been MIA long before the evacuation had even begun. Odds were good he and Maria Calavera were still aboard Amity and would touch down on the tundra as projected. Assuming Salem did not rain destruction over the continent with her departure—and they had all forced themselves to assume that, drafting this plan—it should be possible to retrieve them, once the relocation process began.
And it would need to begin immediately, lest they lose what little they had managed to salvage. What had the General said, during their first private brief after the Fall of Beacon? We have to consider the continuity of civilization.
Maybe she should have known then, the kind of person he would become.
Yet even he had not considered this. Nearly their entire Kingdom’s population dropped onto Vacuo’s doorstep, solely dependent on a foreign nation’s goodwill…
Well. Not solely dependent. Winter would make certain of that. Atlas had its outposts, even in this desert, and they could serve as enclaves for the time being. SDC facilities were ubiquitous as well; she was familiar with those jointly established with the military, but for the ones with more independent business interests she would need to speak with Whitley—
She would need to speak with Whitley.
A new chorus of ghastly shrieks rang out, deep in the desert.
“Grimm again,” May spat, finally turning her crossbow away from Winter. “Fuck.”
“It’s all the negativity,” Fiona said plaintively. “Ren tried to mask us for as long as he could, but there’s so much, and we can’t outrun them with this many people…”
The rest of what she said faded from Winter’s ears as she stared down at her hands. Oh.
It was simple, really. Escorts tended to be thinner on the ground than the more proactive Search and Destroys, but between the Academy and the military Winter had done more than enough of them to automatically recall the operating procedure. Here the scale was much bigger—many more people meant many more Grimm—but the core principle was the same. And she was more, too.
She could fix this. She could fix this now.
“Ask Ren to resume using his Semblance if any of his Aura has returned,” she said. The ground was treacherous enough that she did not trust herself to walk, so Winter flared her newfound power again and rose into the air. “Shade Academy should be close. You’ll need to set up a rotating perimeter around the civilians as they move…”
There had to be other armed and combat ready evacuees in the crowd: Huntsmen and Specialists, Academy students—
She was looking for Marrow, Winter realized abruptly. Marrow, and Elm, and Vine, and Harriet. But she could not find them, which meant that they, too, were lost.
They were lost. Winter was surprised this was something she could still feel; that she still had room for it, in the ransacked chambers of her heart.
Then she wrapped that grief up with the rest. Later. The word thudded through her chest, a drumbeat for music she would not yet set to a dirge. She could see other Specialists in the crowd, and there were some of the upperclassmen the General had sent to the front lines. The Happy Huntresses, Weiss and Penny’s remaining friends—they would not need to fight alone.
May had gone back to looking mutinous. “We can do our jobs,” Joanna Greenleaf said, tone pointed even as she laid a restraining hand on May’s shoulder. “What are you gonna do?”
Winter’s fingers pulsed and tingled as they wrapped around the hilt of her sword. Another loss to lay at Cinder’s feet, but this one no longer mattered. This was a gift. Penny had ensured that she would never have to lower her weapon again. “I’m giving you a head start,” she answered, and took off toward the horde.
Grimm were drawn to negative emotion. There was no way for a solitary Huntress—even a team—to compete with the panic of a throng of evacuating civilians, but Grimm were also drawn to power. One strong Aura could compel the Grimm to forgo much easier targets, and Winter would wager that magic could act as similar bait.
If she was wrong about that part—well. She was the most proximal prey, now. And a single Huntress could not hope to compete with the negativity of an entire Kingdom, but Winter had plenty of negativity to use regardless.
She looked back; the crowd was moving, slowly but surely in the opposite direction. By now she had created enough distance from them to fight without fear of collateral, but she continued flying onward. As she flew she carefully unshackled her thoughts, letting them hurtle back to mere minutes ago—inside the network of portals Weiss had created—Weiss—
Winter had been afraid of it for so long—her entire life—but in truth some part of her never believed that Weiss could die. Even when she first entered the portal and saw her sister lying motionless on the ground she had not paused; she had not stopped to consider what might have already happened, what could happen.
The screams of the Ravagers were drawing nearer.
Weiss had gotten up while Winter was fighting. She had not seen Jaune help Weiss toward the exit. Cinder had seen them first, because Winter had been consumed by the fight, and the Staff.
You must learn to give ground, her combat instructors were all in accord with that particular lecture, and yet she never did learn. She could have waited. She could have drawn Cinder’s attention for longer, given Jaune and Weiss the time to make it through. Instead she had tried to take the first opening she saw, so arrogant in her new power—
But even after Weiss had been blown from the edge a part of Winter had refused to believe it. She had kept flying—down, down, with her hand outstretched—because what she was seeing was impossible. Weiss could not—Winter had warned her. Had warned herself, so surely—
The Grimm were nearly upon her now.
In her mind, Winter watched once again as her sister sailed in an almost graceful arc into the void. She heard, once again, Weiss’ last desperate, fearful cry before she turned to dust.
Then she, too, screamed.