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It’s old news, how neatly the Schnee name collapses under the weight of its crimes.
Her father made sure to exploit nearly every law loophole her could find, and if it was discovered, the person was paid and kept an NDA. Only surveyed mines could be deemed unsafe, so he continuously falsified survey records. After so many hours he had to offer benefits, so he kept workers just under that number. He bought up other companies left and right to make sure he held a monopoly on sales and the workforce. Many workplace incidents were kept quiet.
Weiss finds records of every single incident, every single payout, how lawyers bent over backwards to keep things hush-hush. It should be old news to her when she discovers it, but the sheer amount of paperwork kept neat and tidy on a hard drive in her father’s office knocks her backwards.
She’s glad she didn’t burn it with the rest of her father’s mansion.
She anonymously leaves it in a mailbox for her favorite newspaper publisher after making backups for herself in case her plan goes awry. She writes the note in aggressively-not-Weiss handwriting, hoping to remain anonymous with her kind donation. As the documents spread, shares in the SDC plummet, and what’s left by the time she liquidates everything is donated to groups aiming to assist displaced Faunus by this sudden destruction along with injury payouts.
Is it truly so sudden, though, to anyone who was watching? Was its reputation not already melting away as her father’s greed burned too fiercely?
Snow is such a fragile thing. Weiss shakes the name from her shoulders as what is rightfully hers burns away beneath the heat of interrogation and discovery. She did not do those things; she was powerless to stop the atrocious acts. She was barely able to stop her father at all, but a hidden knife to the jugular seemed to do the trick.
That does not make it to the presses; he merely died in a house fire caused by rebels aiming to disgrace the Schnee family name.
Jacques Schnee did not need help on that front.
It’s been years now since that sequence of events, and Weiss happily lives with her father-in-law on the beautiful island of Patch, where three headstones rest just at the tip of the cliff. She has a routine, and she remains anonymous to most of the population in the small town just by the port, just known as Taiyang’s third daughter. In all reality, Tai seems to have taken their whole group as his kids; once they’ve fought Salem and returned to one of the only solid places that any of them can call home, they’d all strewn themselves about his cabin and slept wherever there was room. It was boisterous and busy and crowded, but it was something that Weiss found herself enjoying.
They’ve all gone their separate ways, but that’s old news.
"You’re looking pensive today, dearie.”
Weiss turns to find Bertha, one of the older women of the island, settling next to her on the bank of the channel between Patch and Vale. “Just thinking about how I’ve ended up here. I never would’ve guessed that this,” and she gestures wildly with her arms, “is where I’d end up.”
Bertha has kind eyes and a warm smile. She doesn’t remember her grandmother, but she imagines this is how grandmothers are supposed to be. “Life rarely takes us where we want it to, much like taking a rowboat out to sea. When’s your next trip to Menagerie?”
Bertha’s still sharp for her age, recalling Weiss' agreement to speak to those affected by her father's arrogance. “Ah, Blake and I mostly hold video conferences now. I don’t have any more money left to give to supplementing faunus-led companies.” She’d sold the last heirloom, a dramatic pearl necklace, at an auction a few weeks ago. Old news, but she supposes she hasn’t talked to Bertha lately.
“Never thought I’d hear a Schnee say she’s broke.”
Weiss can’t help but laugh; despite throwing away her maiden name, she’s still tied to the family no matter what she does. At least she’s not seen as corrupt or spoiled. “Gods, me neither.” Weiss toes off her sandals and slides forward to rest her feet in the water. “I don’t know what’s next.”
“Does anyone? From what I hear, you had no idea what was next when you were fighting all those monsters.”
Weiss blinks. “I guess not. I just always had an outline of a life plan, and now it’s at its end.” Granted, it’s taken many turns, many of them less appealing than other alternatives, but she’s lived this long. “I feel like I should be doing something grand, but instead I’m simply sitting on the channel.”
“Isn’t that grand in and of itself? That you’re alive to feel the water between your toes?”
She wiggles her toes in the cool water, really feels the thick grains of not-quite-sand under her hands. “It is.” At some point, she’ll get up and run her errands like she meant to when she’d first gotten to this side of the island, but the channel is soothing, the boats reminding her that life isn’t quite as still as it in on Tai’s plot of land. “Sometimes I have to remember.”
“Don’t forget too often. You’ve done your time.”
Old news, she thinks. It’s all been said to her a dozen times in different ways, but sitting on the banks of the channel, indulging in the sweet spring breeze and the lapping of the tiniest waves at her toes, she thinks of how lucky she is to be here, instead of rotting away with her family’s name.
It’s yesterday’s snow, she thinks. Just like it’s cold coffee, just like she’s had her nose full of adventure and chaos.
She waves at a ship with the Atlesian flag. It blows the horn in response.