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Jaune is sitting in the basement of the Rose-Xiao-Long-Branwen household with Ruby and Yang. His two friends are working on something called homework that mostly seems to be a bunch of math and words he doesn’t understand.
Well technically it’s a new basement, in a new house seeing as their old one burnt down. And with several new people living in it, him included.
Even with all the changes, the basement feels as cozy and homely as the first time he entered it all that time ago when he first escaped the Facility. How has it already been six months? Feels like just a few weeks. Jaune feels like he blinked and half a year passed.
Mr. Xiao-Long says that’s because of the trauma, and because of something called ADHD. Yang thinks it’s because of the repeated Wipes he had the whole time he was growing up. Frying his brain. Jaune pretended not to see Mr. Xiao-Long kick his daughter under the table when she said that.
Jaune doesn’t know what to believe. Thinking about the Facility still hurts, even though sometimes late at night he still finds himself missing it.
“Hey Jaune?” Ruby’s voice pipes up, and he jumps as he snaps out of his thoughts. “Oh sorry! Didn’t mean to startle you,” she apologizes, holding up her hands.
She puts her pencil down and rubs circles into his hand until his breathing slows. It takes a little less time than it used to, which helps him fight down the embarrassment. “You good now?”
Jaune nods, and his wings settle back down against his back. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Ruby waves him away. “Come look at this?” She pats the ground next to her and Jaune scootches over. There’s a thick book open in front of Ruby with pictures of skeletons and nerves, structures of animals and people.
The page she has open is birds in flight. Jaune feels his wings tense.
“I just wanted to ask you a question if I can,” she says slowly. Ruby glances around for her sister, but Yang isn’t there. Jaune distantly remembers her saying something about a glass of water, but that feels very far away right now.
“We’re doing birds in Anatomy this month, and I was wondering if I could ask you a question?” Ruby eventually plows ahead, speaking very quickly. “It’s about… them.” Her silver eyes glance at his wings and Jaune can feel the back of his neck heat up. “It would just take a few minutes.”
“Sure. Of course.” He answers on autopilot, the words spilling out of his mouth before he can stop them.
His eyes are locked on the photos in the book. Silhouettes with skeletons. Bodies laid bare for their insides to touch the air. Bones and muscle and nerves and feathers. The thick deep scars on his chest and limbs tingle.
Jaune’s not really here anymore, but Ruby doesn’t see the warning signs. “What does it feel like to fly?”
Wonderful Jaune almost says. Terrible he thinks right after. Like a leash and a shock collar and freedom and fighting. Lightning in his veins and a whirlwind of snow. Death and life.
A young boy standing in a cold white room with wings barely feathered. Newly healed scars from being cut open like a bird in Ruby’s book. Taken apart and put back together wrong, all for the sake of a false goddess’s science.
Jaune’s legs are shaking with exhaustion as he stands poised, his stomach rumbles with hunger. It’s been hours, days maybe. But whatever Miss Salem is law, so he can’t stop. “You may begin,” a cold voice echoes in his mind, echoes around the cold white room.
At her word he jumps into the air. His wings beat and flap with all their might, lifting him a foot off the ground, and then another. Jaune’s eyes are squeezed shut tight as pinpricks of sweat drip down his face.
His wings feel like lead balloons even as they fight to keep him aloft. Exertion and pain and their newness making them like four blazing irons strapped to his bare back.
Hours, minutes, seconds later he falls crashing to the ground. His limbs shake and his wings lay limp across his back. Get up, get up, but he’s so tired his legs aren’t listening. Unbidden, tears well up in his eyes and drip down to the tiles under his face.
“Terrible, you’re not even trying,” the cold voice hisses. Jaune flinches away, shaking and sobbing silently. He disappointed Miss Salem. How could he disappoint her?! What was WRONG with him-
“Jaune? You okay?” Again Ruby’s voice shakes him out of his thoughts, but this time he doesn’t jump. Jaune sucks in a breath and stares at her. Ruby is watching him, eyes flicking across his face, ears pulled back in concern. “If you don’t want to answer it’s okay, I know it’s a sensitive-”
“What?” Jaune feels like he’s floating, like the ground is drifting away. “You asked me something… right?” His thoughts are scattered like feathers in a breeze.
“Yeah I did, but if you’re not okay-”
His thoughts catch up with him. What does it feel like to fly.
“It feels like burning.” His voice is sure, but small. Jaune is shaking, and his eyes drop back to the pages of her book. A starling flies under a blue sky. Too close to the sun, its wings would melt.
Falling down after hours of attempts and getting up again because he had to. Because this was what he was, a weapon, a tool to be tested and pushed past his limits until he broke.
Flying above a burning home and feeling the red hot blood of a stab wound drip down his wing. Agony and sorrow and grief burning through him as a fellow victim sets a place of safety ablaze just to get to him
Bonding himself to the woman who raised him, who ruined him, and burning from the inside out in a supernova of energy. While just out of reach and out of sight a facsimile of the only person who had ever been kind to him is turned to ash.
“Flying it… it feels like burning .”
Ruby pushes her book aside and pulls him into a hug. It takes him a long time to stop shaking. She doesn’t ask him any more questions.