Chapter Text
Winter leaves when Weiss is twelve years old. It’s five years after the day Winter helped her unlock her aura, four years from when their father stopped pretending he cared about their mother, three years from the first time Winter stood up and took a slap that was aimed for Weiss-- too late to protect her from the slash dripping blood into her eye but still something , someone, protecting Weiss for the first time that she could remember. Weiss is twelve and Winter is eighteen and is shipping out to the Solitas tundra where the Atlesian military runs their newest recruits into the ground under the guise of basic training.
Winter leaves, and Weiss follows. She packs up what little she cares for in the gaping manor that is the home they were raised in and stows away in the back of the truck when Winter leaves. It’s freezing and the back of the truck is full of munitions and crates of uniforms, and Weiss curls into a corner and waits. She doesn’t have a plan, necessarily-- she’s too young for the military to let her enlist, too valuable for them to do anything but drag her home to curry the favor of the most powerful civilian in Atlas-- but she can’t stay in the manor without Winter. Whitley is safe, because Whitley is her father’s favorite, but Winter is the only one who ever looked at Weiss like she was worth something, and Weiss isn’t willing to stay there without her, and she curls her knees closer to her chest and burrows deep into her aura to protect against the cold.
“What the--” There’s a rustle of metal as the truck opens up, bright sunlight pouring in and blinding Weiss momentarily, and then the unmistakable sound of guns cocking. Weiss blinks rapidly, pulls herself up to her informidable height, holds her hands up carefully.
“Weiss?” That’s Winter, and tension leaks out of Weiss’s spine immediately. “What the hell are you--”
“Schnee.”
Weiss squeezes her eyes shut and opens them, finally able to see again, just in time to watch Winter snap to attention. General Ironwood towers over her, familiar and intimidating in person, and Weiss stands up straighter without meaning to.
“What’s going on?”
“Sir,” Winter says formally, shoulders square and chin lifted with military precision. “My younger sister.”
“I see.” Even with his hands clasped behind his back, the general reeks of strength, and Weiss squares her shoulders as best she can, unwilling to blink when he looks her over. Even standing in the back of the truck she’s barely taller than him, but she’s faced down worse men in her own family before and she refuses to blink. “A stowaway.”
“Yes, sir,” Winter says. She slots a glance over towards Weiss. “I’ll arrange at once for someone to take her home.”
“Hold on, private,” the general says, one hand waving out lazily. He relaxes, shoving his hands into his pockets, and looks Weiss up and down once more. “I’m sure there’s a good reason you did this, right?”
It takes Weiss a minute to realize he’s speaking to her, and her mouth opens automatically and then snaps shut, eyes sliding over to Winter uncertainly.
“The general asked you a question, Weiss,” Winter says sharply, and Weiss reacts automatically. Winter has only ever been sharp with her to protect her, and Winter left and Weiss followed, so she answers without hesitation.
“I want to enlist,” Weiss says, firm and unwavering. There’s a laugh from behind the general, another soldier chortling into his shoulder, and Weiss glares at him. She’s learned many things living under her father’s thumb, and the withering fury of a silent glare is one of them. The soldier stops laughing immediately, shifting his weight unprofessionally from one foot to the other. “I have been training with Winter since--”
“You’re too young,” Winter says over her. She’s still stiff and unmoving, even as the general has relaxed, and there’s a glacial edge to her voice. “You cannot--”
“I’m just as competent as you are,” Weiss throws back. She wants to move, to fold her arms over her chest and jut her chin out, stomp her foot, anything to make clear how important this is to her, but she stays stock still instead. “I can fight--”
“Miss Schnee,” the general says. His head tilts to one side. “You cannot join the military at your age. If you’re even half as smart as your sister, you surely know it’s illegal.”
“I won’t go back,” Weiss says. She folds her arms over her chest. “I’m not going to live in that house anymore.”
“Surely your parents--”
“They won’t even notice,” Weiss says peevishly. “Ask Winter.”
The general glances over at Winter, taking in the way her cool facade wavers, and Weiss fights the urge to be smug. Everyone knows that Jacques Schnee is a cruel man; his children have always been public enough figures that no one ever questions where the scar slashing over Weiss’s eye came from.
“You can send me back,” Weiss says after a moment. “I’ll just leave again. I’d rather be here than anywhere else in Atlas, but I’ll still run away.”
“Weiss.” Winter softens immeasurably, shoulders tilting towards her. There’s a familiar downturn to her lips, the same sad one that she’d had when she disinfected the gash over Weiss’s eye, took her to a doctor and held her hand while she was stitched up, and Weiss knows that she’s won.
“Perhaps we can come to an arrangement,” General Ironwood says. He straightens back up, and every soldier around him matches pace as they stand at attention. Weiss is a beat later, straightening her shoulders and snapping tension into her spine. “Doctor Polendina could use an assistant. There are work-study programs that we haven’t used in a while, but they remain valid.”
“Sir,” Winter starts to say, cutting off when he holds up a hand, still looking at Weiss.
“You will complete your education,” he says firmly. “Upon graduation and your eighteenth birthday, you will enlist and serve in the Atlas military. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Weiss says before Winter can interject. “Absolutely.”
“Very well,” General Ironwood says with a nod. “Private Schnee, please escort your sister to the quartermaster and have her equipped. I will inform Doctor Polendina.”
“Yes, sir,” Winter says. She glares sideways at Weiss. “Of course.”
The general nods and spins on one heel, marching off with a contingent of soldiers following him. Weiss is left in the truck, alone with Winter and the glare leveled at her, and after a long moment Weiss launches forward to hug Winter.
“You left,” Weiss says into her shoulder. “I couldn’t stay.”
There’s an excruciatingly long moment before Winter moves, arms wrapping around Weiss hesitantly and cheek leaning against her hair comfortingly.
“I wish you hadn’t come,” Winter says eventually. “The military is-- I wish you hadn’t done this.”
“You’re in the military.” Weiss pulls back and straightens herself up professionally. “It’s an honorable choice--”
“I wish you hadn’t come here,” Winter says again, gentle, so gentle, and Weiss wavers for the first time since she decided to leave. Winter’s hands fall on her shoulders softly, and she shakes her head. “I just-- it’s dangerous, Weiss, and all I ever wanted was to protect you.”
“You can’t protect me if you’re not there.” Weiss lifts her chin to glare up at Winter-- she’s still waiting for the growth spurt Winter got at fifteen, still waiting to break five feet, still so small and she hates it-- and sets her jaw when Winter flinches.
“You’re right,” Winter says after a long moment. Her hands fall from Weiss’s shoulders, clasping together behind her back as she settles into parade rest. “Let’s go.”
Weiss scrambles back into the truck to grab the bag she’d brought with her-- only half full, with barely a change of clothes and a scroll and a handful of cash-- and hops back down to see Winter already marching into the base.
Winter leaves, and Weiss follows.
The years pass quickly. Doctor Polendina is kindly and warm, an oasis of calm in the midst of a harried military base, and she breezes through her mandatory classes under his tutelage. Weiss isn’t allowed to join Winter’s unit in the morning for calisthenics or weapons training, but she meticulously monitors the squad records for workouts projected on the screens and, after her morning classes and afternoons working in the lab, pushes herself to run just as fast, do just as many pushups and pullups, every evening when soldiers are in the mess hall and she has the gyms to herself. The training simulations are the best she has to work with, and she fights her way through them methodically, leveraging the swordsmanship training from home and building on it with firearms as she does.
Her growth spurt never comes. A week before she turns eighteen, she’s still barely over five feet tall, scowling at the faint notches she’d logged into the doorjamb of her closet and how she hasn’t stretched past the most recent one in over a year. Winter isn’t tall , but she still seems to tower over Weiss when she steps into Weiss’s room without knocking and catches her sulking at the unmoved notches.
“Maybe you’ll have a late growth spurt,” Winter says conversationally, and Weiss considers throwing a notebook at her.
“Unlikely,” Weiss sniffs.
“Height isn’t everything.” Winter shuts the door behind her and unbuttons the high collar on her uniform, relaxing as she does. “How are you?”
“I beat your record on the fitness test,” Weiss informs her instead of answering.
“I saw.” Winter folds her arms over her chest and leans against the wall, and Weiss settles more comfortably in the desk chair and raises an eyebrow at her.
“You’re being weird,” Weiss says.
“I am not weird ,” Winter says, so annoyed Weiss can’t help but warm under it, and after a drawn out moment Winter smiles, small and affectionate. “I’m shipping out on a mission tomorrow.”
“I heard.” Weiss isn’t supposed to be privy to military intelligence, but she’s also spent six years being tutored by the Atlas military’s foremost technology expert and she’s become practiced at sneaking into the military intelligence systems to see what Winter’s doing.
“Since you’re coming of age next week, I asked the general if you could join him in satcom while I do,” Winter says, skating right past the fact that they both know Weiss had broken more than one law in keeping tabs on Winter’s movements.
Weiss blinks up at her. “Seriously?” Satcom is the most restricted area on the base, the nervous center of every priority mission that the Atlas military went on, reserved only for the highest ranking officials and the occasional member of the Atlas high council.
“Seriously,” Winter says. “You’ll be expected to be silent and unobtrusive in all ways, and if the general tells you to leave you will do so immediately, but he agreed.”
Weiss launches out of her chair without meaning to, slamming into Winter hard enough that they both tumble into the wall behind her. Winter stumbles but manages to catch her, holding her up in a hug for a too-short moment before clearing her throat and setting Weiss back down, looking down at her imperiously.
“Consider it a graduation gift,” Winter says, hands falling in a familiar posture on Weiss’s shoulder, and Weiss straightens automatically under it. “Since you’ll be starting your own official training soon.”
“I’m ready,” Weiss says, voice swelling with pride, because she is. She came here a stowaway, trailing after the only family that had ever loved her, and she’s been the orphaned adoptee of the whole base since she did: smaller than everyone else, but just as determined, just as stubborn, as every soldier that passed through. She’s sought after the same standards that Winter was held to, memorized rank and procedure and requirements, molded herself into the most perfect soldier she can possibly be before she even turns eighteen.
“I know you are,” Winter says. There’s a hint of something that could almost be pride, tugging at one side of her mouth, and Weiss beams under it. Winter squeezes her shoulders and nods, a soft smile tilting at her mouth. “Report to satcom at 1900 hours tomorrow. The general knows you’ll be there. I’ll be back before your birthday, and I have a few days of leave to use up. Perhaps we could go off-base for a celebration.”
Weiss freezes in place, staring up at Winter with a level of wonder she hasn’t felt since before she left home, because in the years since she ran away she’s always been in Winter’s orbit but never as her sister . The whole base knows that Weiss is the younger sister of the hotshot prodigy Specialist Schnee, the tagalong of the general’s specially picked protege, but there’s never been a moment where either of them have acted like it-- Winter because she has a reputation to earn, and Weiss because she has too much to prove to everyone but especially to Winter.
But Winter is here, now, looking down at her with such warmth, promising a birthday celebration just for the two of them, and Weiss can barely breathe past the ache in her throat.
“Of course,” she says, as formally as she can muster. “I would appreciate that.”
Winter nods and straightens back up, hands leaving warm spots on Weiss’s shoulders as she pulls away and buttons her collar back up. “I’ll see you soon, then.”
She dips her chin formally, and Weiss nearly snaps into a salute, stopping only because she isn’t formally in the military for another six days, and instead clasps her hands behind her back and mirrors Winter’s posture.
“I’ll see you soon,” she echoes,and then clenches her teeth together. Be safe rattles in her chest. I love you . Instead, she nods briskly, just as Winter had, and watches as Winter marches back out of the room. It’s not until the door’s shut and Weiss is alone, once again, that she relaxes, collapsing onto the side of her bed. Her hands itch to move, to fight, to grab for Winter and beg to be taken along once more, but instead she stays put. In six days, she’ll be eighteen. In six days, she’ll be part of the same military, the same family, that Winter has thrived in.
She stands up primly and sets to straightening the blankets on her bed, fixing the hospital corners on the sheets even though they didn’t need to be fixed at all, and stands uncertainly in the middle of her room for a long minute before settling at her desk. She has barely over a day before she has to report to satcom to watch in real time as Winter leads her team on a mission, and it’s barely enough time to brush up on everything she’s learned in the last three years-- Specialist unit stealth patterns, Remnant’s current political climate, the ever-shifting borders around Atlas that the world is constantly encroaching on-- so she can be as fully prepared as possible before she does .
Weiss arrives at the door to satcom at 18:50 and stands at attention six strides away from the guards and waits. General Ironwood had a meeting on the other side of base at 18:15 and wouldn’t be inside yet, and she waits patiently until she sees him striding down the hall with his head bent over his tablet.
“Miss Schnee,” he says, continuing past her without breaking stride. The guards open the doors for him, and he tilts his head towards the room. “Hurry up.”
Weiss practically sprints after him, decorum barely holding her back to a brisk walk, and she trails into the bustling room after him. There’s an enormous screen with a block pattern of live video feeds taking up the whole front wall, and Weiss nearly trips when she catches a glance of Winter’s sharp profile on one of them. Rows of computer terminals fill the room, and the general takes his place in the center of them all, hands behind his back after he hands his tablet off and calls for a report. Weiss hangs back, behind the last row of terminals, listening acutely as the techs rattle off information and filing it away.
Winter’s squad is deep in the mountains near the Argus border, which Weiss isn’t supposed to know. She’s not supposed to know that they’re en route to intercept a train full of insurgent weapons headed from Argus deeper into Mistral, on an old barely-functional set of tracks that have been long abandoned by commuter and tourist lines. She’s not supposed to know that Winter is leading an elite infiltration team, that they’re going to be parachuting down through a windy mountain range, that their mandate is to capture as many of the insurgents as they can and, if they have to, do whatever it takes to stop the train.
Weiss isn’t supposed to know any of this, and she stands at attention in the back of the room, listening with one ear as wind speed and target location statistics are rattled out for the general to note. The camera feeds are flickering periodically, the soldiers in the airship swaying with every gust of wind, and an ache that might be nerves, might be excitement, might even be fear builds in Weiss’s stomach every time Winter’s voice crackles over the comms as she issues orders to her team.
“Target in sight,” one of the techs says, and the general nods absently.
“Specialist,” he says, and on screen Winter’s hand goes to her ear. “Target acquired. Execute on your mark.”
“Roger that, sir,” Winter says, and pride burns deep in Weiss’s chest because her sister is barely 24 years old and is leading a squad of elite soldiers. She winds her fingers together behind her back to keep from reaching towards the screen, towards Winter, but she can’t keep herself from leaning towards Winter anyways.
Winter’s voice sounds on the comms again, and then the airship opens up. Wind noise fills the room from the speakers, howling and overbearing, and Weiss is certain she can feel the cold air on her own skin. She watches as Winter sends her squad out one at a time, each of the video feeds flashing by her and then disappearing into barely-visible dark sky as each soldier leaps out of the ship and parachutes downwards. Winter is the last to go, her video feed suddenly exactly like everyone else’s even with it’s privileged spot in the top left of the screen grid, and Weiss’s fingernails dig into her palms as she squints at it from her place so far back.
Gunfire cracks over the speakers, and a series of curses follow, and then one of the camera feeds flashes into static.
“Status,” General Ironwood barks out.
“Enemy fire,” one of the techs says, hands flying over the keyboard. “From the train?”
“Redirect,” Winter yells over the comms, voice cracking in the cold air, and Weiss nearly screams when there’s the unmistakable sound of a bullet hitting a bulletproof vest and Winter’s entire video screen shakes violently. Half of the feeds explode into nothing in the next six seconds, cameras dying before their owners do, cameras staying live as dead bodies fall through the sky and crash into the mountain faces.
“Alpha team, redirect north,” Winter says over the comms, breath coming heavily. “Retreat pattern echo. Get out of range now .”
Weiss digs her fingernails harder into her hands, watching without breathing as Winter’s camera shakes when she lands on a snowy ledge next to one of her soldiers, his white camouflage uniform stained bright red over his ribs .
“Specialist Schnee,” the general says sharply. “Retreat now .”
There’s no response, Winter’s camera shaking more as she struggles out of her chute harness and her hands appear in the feed, gloved hands pressing over the gunshot wound in his stomach.
“Requesting medevac,” Winter says shakily over the comms. “Specialist Schnee and Sergeant Mills, we’re two clicks south of the target point and taking fire.”
Weiss finally moves, shoving her way forward past anxious techs and military police until she’s next to the general, wide eyes locked on the screen.
“You have to help them,” she says without meaning to. She doesn’t look away from the screen. The dead camera feeds are gone. Only a half dozen of them are still live, filling up the screen, and one of them is the sergeant’s, jostled every time Winter readjusts her hands over the wound in his stomach, half of her profile split in shadow and barely visible in the unsteady connection. “There’s a patrol north of Argus always, they could--”
A hand settles on her shoulder, heavy and firm, and Weiss glances up to where the general is staring at the screens as well.
“We can’t pull a patrol,” he says softly. “The risks are too high.”
“You have to,” Weiss says, shrill and aching, and she yanks her shoulder free, throws a technician away from his terminal. She has the feed from the airship up in an instant, hovering out of firing range but losing power quickly. The ledge Winter is on is just barely visible from so far away. “They’re right there! You have to--”
“Miss Schnee,” General Ironwood says over her. “We cannot divert an existing patrol--”
He’s cut off by the sound of a rocket launching, a whistle shrieking over the sound of the wind, and Weiss stares at the airship feed, the camera wobbling as the airship starts to lose altitude, and watches as a rocket streams towards the ledge Winter is on. Her fists slam into the keyboard when the rocket lands, rock and snow and fire exploding out of the mountainside above Winter. Plastic keys scatter along the terminal as Weiss watches in horror as Winter and the sergeant’s feeds both go dead and, from the airship camera, a tiny figure is blown out from the mountainside and tumbles down, disappearing into the snow.
There’s a long, protracted moment as the airship starts to spiral out of the sky, the camera feed spinning dizzily, and then another rocket crashes into it and the final camera feed goes dead. Weiss stares numbly at the static on the screen in front of her, the broken keyboard under her hands.
“Sir.”
She doesn’t recognize the voice, barely registers the general humming in response, his hand still heavy on her shoulder.
“Should we send a rescue crew in?”
General Ironwood’s hand tightens on her shoulder, holding Weiss in place when her head jerks up hopefully and she tries to leap to her feet. Winter’s aura wasn’t damaged at all, and the explosion hadn’t killed her; there’s still a chance she’s alive.
“Yes,” Weiss says stupidly, before the general can answer, and is rewarded with his hand tightening on her shoulder so hard her bones creak under it.
“No,” he says firmly. “We don’t have the resources.”
Weiss stares up at him, nausea twisting in her stomach, because General Ironwood gave her a home, gave the both of them a home away from the abuse from their father, the neglect from their mother, and Winter, the best soldier in the military by his own admission, might still be alive and--
“You have to,” Weiss snaps out. She yanks her shoulder free, hard enough that the general nearly stumbles, and stands up as tall as she can. “Those are your people out there and--”
“Exactly,” General Ironwood says, glaring down at her. “My soldiers. My decision. We do not have the resources to spare to send a squad in search of one person--”
“Fuck you,” Weiss says, trembling with every minute of combat training she’s fought through in the last five years. Her muscles burn, her fists clenching at her side, and she doesn’t look away from Ironwood and the way he’s gaping at her, not even when the entirety of satcom erupts in a flurry of uncertainty at her disrespect.
“You’re a coward, sir ,” she spits out when one of the MPs grabs for her arm. She yanks her arm until he’s off balance and slams her heel into his ankle, not breaking eye contact with Ironwood as she sends one of his soldiers to the floor with a fractured ankle.
“You insubordination will not--”
“I’m not one of your soldiers,” Weiss throws back. She’s only seventeen and she’s so tired -- tired of being pushed from person to person, of being looked down at as a burden, of working so hard for acceptance and still being meaningless-- and she just watched the only person she’s ever loved die and Ironwood won’t even pay Winter the respect of trying to find out if she survived the fall. Ironwood’s disapproval is nothing in the face of the gaping ache pulling at her chest, and she pulls herself up as straight as she can and shoves past the remaining MP, stalking out of satcom and letting the door slam satisfyingly behind her.
She makes it down one flight in the emergency exit stairwell before collapsing against the wall. Her palms are smeared with blood, ripped skin from her fingernails stinging in the cool air of the stairwell, and she stares down at her hands as she gasps for breath. Her chest is surely about to burst, so similar to when she’d fought her way into breaking a course record on the obstacle course, lungs aching for breath after pushing too hard for too long, but she’s not running right now. It’s just grief, a horrible knot sitting heavy behind her sternum, and she slides down to the floor and presses her forehead into her knees, tears burning behind her eyes and breaths heavy and gasping.
Distantly, there’s the sound of satcom emptying out, the final level of certainty that Ironwood wouldn’t be sending anyone to find Winter, and Weiss sits up straighter, lets her head fall back against the wall. Winter is dead. Winter, her sister, the only person who ever fought for her, the only person Weiss has ever been sure loved her, is dead.
Winter is dead and Weiss has no tether anymore. The world outside of the shields of Atlas is a mess of roaming bandits and slipshod governments constantly at war with one another, but Winter gave her life to Atlas and was left for dead because of it, and Weiss has no interest in giving herself over to the same people who left Winter to die. She scrubs at her eyes with the back of her hands, breathes in deep, exhales slower. Her legs move without her realizing it, and then she’s standing, and then she’s down in the access tunnels under the base, moving numbly through familiar corridors.
“Weiss?” Doctor Polendina, good and kind and warm Pietro, looks up from his workbench with a frown. “What are you doing here this late?”
“I need to leave,” Weiss says bluntly. She settles herself primly on the stool next to his wheelchair and picks up one of the transistor parts scattered on the table. There’s still dried blood on her palms. “Today.”
Pietro pauses, sitting up straighter in his chair and pushing his glasses up his nose. “What do you mean?”
“Winter is dead.” Weiss unscrews a cross-threaded bolt and resettles it, the screwdriver steady in her unshaking hands. “I was in satcom and saw it happen. Ironwood refused to send a rescue squad, and it’s too cold for anyone to survive for more than a day out there.”
“Oh, Weiss,” Pietro says softly, so softly, and Weiss shakes her head. If he comforts her, she’ll lean into it, and then she’ll cry, and then she’ll have to face the full force of what happened in the last hour.
“I need to leave, before my birthday,” Weiss says. She keeps her focus on the screwdriver in her hands, turning the screw slowly and methodically in the battery array. “Once I turn eighteen, I’m officially part of the military, but not until then. So I need to get out of here, out of Atlas , before then.”
“Are you sure?”
It’s not what she expects, and Weiss pauses, the screwdriver slowing in her hands. She expected resistance, arguments, distrust, anything but the warmth in Pietro’s voice. His hand settles on her shoulder, just like Ironwood’s but so very different, and the screwdriver skids out of her hands. Her shoulders bow momentarily and she nearly crumbles, but instead she just breathes in deep and exhales slowly and nods.
“Yes.”
Pietro’s hand is gentle on her shoulder, and she keeps her focus on her hands, even without the screwdriver to occupy them. Her palms aren’t bleeding anymore and the blood under her fingernails has dried. She’ll need to bandage them before the leaves.
“Have you ever been outside of Atlas?”
Weiss shakes her head and pushes her hands into her lap miserably. “My father traveled for business, sometimes, but we were never allowed to go. I never even left the city until I came here.”
Her eyes water and she wills herself to stay calm, to not cry, to keep her composure, and she straightens up until she can look over to where Pietro has his contemplative face on, the one that he gets before some inevitable breakthrough or another.
“I have a way out,” he says eventually. “We can leave tonight.”
Weiss blinks at him, shakes her head. “We? What--”
“My dear, I have no love for this place,” Pietro says, shaking his own head and wheeling sharply back from the workbench to his computer terminal. “I have family outside the walls.”
Weiss stares at his familiar profile and shakes her head again. “Then why are you--”
“They all got out years ago.” His hands fly along the keyboard, moving files and reorganizing the system in the blink of an eye. He hums at the download progress bar on the screen and wheels around to face her.
“I’ve had a way out set up for years,” he says kindly, and a wave of affection rises unbidden in her throat. “But you were so young, and I was worried about leaving you--”
Weiss wrapping him up in a hug cuts him off, and he lets out a soft noise and then holds her close, one hand comforting and solid at the back of her head.
“We’ll have to move quickly,” he says eventually. Weiss pulls back, swipes at her eyes, nods. “No going back to your quarters. Once the file transfers are complete, I’ll wipe the hard drive, and after that we’ll have maybe two hours before they notice.”
Weiss eyes the computer behind him, considers the work she’s helped him with over the years-- shield generators, communications arrays, weapons development-- and the fact that taking it off base is surely treason, and nods briskly. “Okay.”
“Good,” he says with a nod of his own. He glances back to the progress bar, more than halfway done, and nods again. “There’s a crate in the ventilation panel, the broken one.”
Something that almost feels like a smile pulls at Weiss’s lips as she crosses the lab to the familiar ventilation panel, the same one she’d complained about more than once because it never worked. It lets out a screech as she pries it loose with the screwdriver and, sure enough, there’s a plastic munitions crate sitting just barely past arm’s reach in the ventilation shaft.
The crate is covered in dust, and she opens it carefully to find cold weather uniforms and boots, and half a dozen handguns. She glances over at Pietro, who’s tapping his fingers rapidly on the arm of his chair and watching the downloads finish, and decides she’d rather not know where he managed to get them all from. She shrugs out of her jacket, the same one that the students at the military academy wear, a grey version of the blue and white battle dress uniform of the full military, and trades it for the base layers in the stored uniform. There’s no telling if they’re going to be out in the tundra, but she’s not willing to risk her aura if she doesn’t have to.
She rummages through the crate until she finds boxes of ammunition and loads her pockets with them, holstering two of the guns at the small of her back and hoping it’ll be enough. Pietro lets out a small noise when the computer dings and the file transfers finish, and she hauls the rest of the parkas and base layers up with them and hurries over to help him layer up.
“What’s your way out?” She accepts the hard drive he offers her and kneels beside his chair, prying open the compartment in the base he used to store snacks in and stowing it away. She dusts off her knees as she stands up, frowns down at her aching palms, and shakes her head.
“I built in a temporary surveillance blind spot two floors down,” he says briskly, dragging base layers over his head and setting his glasses askew. “Once I start the system wipe, we have ten minutes to get there for when it activates the blind spot. After that, it’s three miles out through an old access tunnel that was meant to be blocked off years ago.”
“How do you know it wasn’t actually blocked off?” Weiss hands him a gun, brandishing it stubbornly when he shakes his head. “Take it, please. Just in case.”
“I designed the audit system for maintenance.” Pietro accepts the gun with a grumble and shrugs into his parka. He wheels off at a rapid clip, and it’s only years of practice that has Weiss matching pace with him. Sweat prickles at the back of her neck, the building heating more than she wants to deal with in a full parka for the tundra, but she hurries along at Pietro’s side anyways. “It’s mysteriously appeared as completed every quarter and the maintenance apparatus is too expansive for anyone to realize that no one has physically seen it in years.”
“You’ve thought this through,” Weiss comments, for lack of anything better to say. It’s easier to focus on the treason they’re both committing, that Pietro’s apparently had planned for as long as she’s been here, that Pietro stayed for her, than on Winter: Winter, standing up for her; Winter, standing tall in Weiss’s room and promising a birthday celebration; Winter, who’d always loved Weiss as best she could from their farce of a family and who’d died alone and afraid in the Solitas tundra, abandoned by her army and her kingdom.
Pietro is talking, but it barely cuts through the ringing in her ears. It’s not until she hears her name-- once, twice, a third time, sharper than she’s ever heard from him before-- that she snaps out of it and realizes they already in the access tunnel. She blinks and shakes her head, unclenches her aching fists.
“Three miles, right?” she says, as if she hadn’t been on the verge of disappearing into her grief, and he watches her with an immeasurable sadness and nods.
“Let’s go,” she says briskly. She doesn’t wait, setting off at a pace she knows he can keep up with, each step taking her further from Ironwood, from the military, from the home she’d built after running away from the one she was born into.
At a run, she could make it three miles in just over fifteen minutes. With Pietro, it takes just over twenty, and there’s sweat prickling at the back of her neck when they come to the end of the tunnel and are faced with a metal door and a keypad lock. Pietro wheels past her silently and punches a code into the door, and there’s a creak and a groan inside the door as the locking mechanism releases.
“It’s probably rusted shut,” Pietro says when she tries the handle the first time. She grunts and braces her boots on the concrete, breathes in and out and channels her aura into her shoulder and slams into it, earning another groan from the metal. Weiss shoves her shoulder into the door once more and the rusty hinges finally break loose. She stumbles out into the cold, wind whipping at her cheeks, and hands close around her arms and steady her in the snow. Weiss jerks back with a curse, whipping one of the guns out blindly, only for a yell from Pietro to stop her before she cocks it.
“It’s okay!” he says again, wheeling out towards the door. Weiss pauses and then lowers the gun, blinking watering eyes until they adjust to the darkness outside of the dim tunnel lights, and finds herself staring at a girl barely older than her, dark hair melting into the night sky and eyes so amber they’re practically a glowing gold, hands out in front of her pacifyingly. “She’s our ride.”
“Doc,” she says evenly, hands still out. The cat ears on top of her head twitch, perking up momentarily at the sight of Pietro before flattening again as she turns her focus back to Weiss. Weiss stares baldly at her ears, hands tight still around the gun. A faunus. She’s been taught about the faunus, the dangers they present, their weaknesses in combat, the unbridled rage and fury they carry towards civilization, but she’s never seen one in person.
“Weiss, it’s okay,” Pietro says firmly. “You can trust Blake.”
Blake’s ears twitch, just enough to shake off the snowflakes that had settled on them, and her head cocks to one side.
“You sure this is a good idea?” she says, not looking away from Weiss. Her voice is light but there’s a tension in her shoulders, a defensive set to her stance.
“Yes,” Pietro says. “Weiss, put it down. She’s here to help us, and we need to get out of here.”
Weiss breathes in slowly, considering Pietro and the way he’d bundled her out of Atlas without a moment’s hesitation, Ironwood and the way he’d turned his back on Winter so abruptly, and lowers the gun.
“Thanks,” Blake says, one hand going up to her lips so she can let out a piercing whistle that leaves Weiss’s ears ringing. There’s the familiar hum of engines, and then an airship appears out of the clouds, lowering down towards them and landing easily. “Everybody inside.”
She skirts past Weiss and slaps a hand on Pietro’s shoulder, waiting for him to nod before she takes ahold of the low handles on his wheelchair and pushes him out into the snow to where a ramp is extending out of the airship. The snow is deep and soft, and she grunts with the effort, and it shakes Weiss out of her stupor.
“I can help,” she says, uprooting her feet and crossing behind Pietro as well. Blake glances sidelong at her, distrust as clear in her eyes as in the way her ears flatten against her head, but after a protracted hesitation she nods and moves to one side. Together, they push Pietro through the piling snow and up the ramp. It’s practically hot in the airship, a blast of warm air hitting Weiss in the face when she crosses the threshold.
Blake lets out an unconcerned noise as she none-too-gently hipchecks Weiss out of the way and wheels Pietro across the hold to where there’s a docking station already set up for his chair. Weiss stands stupidly in place for a minute and then glances back outside to where the snow is already filling in their tracks.
“Take a seat, princess,” Blake says, one fist hitting the button to retract the ramp and close the doors.
“My name is Weiss,” Weiss says sharply, pulling herself up to her full height, but it does nothing because Blake is still taller than her, still standing easily with a confidence Weiss has never had and looking down at her like Weiss is exactly as meaningless as she’s always feared.
“And I’m Yang,” the pilot yells back, loud enough that Weiss nearly tips over into Blake with how fast she turns around. “Now that we’ve all been introduced, everyone get your ass in a chair, please.”
“Keep your pants on,” Blake says, rolling her eyes and leaving Weiss back with Pietro as she settles into the copilot seat. “Chair, harness, now, princess.”
Weiss bristles and practically growls, and it’s only Pietro’s hand on her arm that stops her from throwing a punch at the back of Blake’s head. Instead she sits down into the closest jump seat and yanks at the harness. It’s Atlesian standard, a few years old, and she frowns down at the familiar locking mechanism as she straps in to what is apparently a stolen airship.
There’s a hum in the engines as they take off, Yang keeping the burn low enough that only a few inches of snow melt, and Weiss watches out the window as fresh snow fills it in before they’ve even ascended high enough for her view to be obscured. There’ll be no trace of them within minutes, nothing for the military to track, and she slumps back into her seat with a sigh.
Beside her, Pietro offers his hand, and she takes it after a moment. She lets her head tilt back against the wall behind her and lag to the side until she can see out the front windows, past Yang’s wild head of blonde hair and the easy flick of Blake’s cat ears. Distant lights make up the base she’s called home since she ran away from her parents, the home she made with Winter. Winter who’s now dead.
Pietro squeezes her hand and, finally, exhaustion catches up to her and opens the door for grief, gaping and aching in her chest, and a sob catches in her throat. Her cheeks ache from the cold and she barely feels it as she starts to cry, but Pietro’s hand tightens around hers and she can feel that, at least, the way the pressure aggravates the aching damage in her palms from her own fingernails, even through the gloves they’re both wearing. She holds on tight and swallows the way her body wants to collapse and sob and yell, and instead focuses on the windscreen as the airship flies higher.
Weiss has never loved anyone or anything like she did Winter-- not the rest of her family, not the military, not the kingdom-- and any loyalty she’d had to Atlas shattered the minute Winter fell and Ironwood refused to help. Atlas wasn’t what she thought it was, and without Winter, there’s nothing to keep her here.
The ship breaks through the clouds and over the storm, into calmer air, and Yang turns them sharp to port and heads out to the west, taking them away from the base, away from Atlas, past the walls and further away from everything Weiss has ever called home.
Winter left, and Weiss follows.