Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They’d lost.

It was the kind of realization that sent chills down Jaune’s spin; the kind of realization that had him staring down at Penny – sweet, innocent Penny – as her blood trickled out onto the golden bridge beneath them.

Jaune was numb, despite feeling more in that moment than he ever had in his life.

Cinder was upon him in the next.

Jaune didn’t even really hear what she said. Something about him? That She was angry at him? That made sense, he supposed. He’d done as Penny had asked; kept the power from Cinder, and let her choose the one who’d gain it.

He’d killed her.

Her blood was on his hands.

He tried to fight back; honestly, he did. He raised Crocea Mors, and struck out at Cinder, but the blade snapped on their very first exchange. It felt oddly poignant. Like his blade knew that he had given up before even he had.

There was nothing left. His aura yet held, but he wondered how long that would last.

Everyone else had fallen into the abyss below. Yang first. Then Blake and Ruby. Then Weiss.

Now it was just him.

That seemed like it was going to be the case, at least, until a figure, with blue fire burning about her eyes, slammed into Cinder’s side.

The Winter Maiden.

Appropriately, it was Winter herself.

She knew, then. It wasn’t just the pale blue flames blazing out of her eyes that told him she was aware of Penny’s fate, but the tears that fell down her face. The way her lips were peeled apart, and there was naught but hate in her eyes.

She was trying to kill Cinder.

Jaune didn’t blame her that.

Their fight was the kind of thing that might be described in legends; like twin drakes, one of fire, one of ice, blasting their magics at one another. Winter was perhaps the more conditioned fighter, but Cinder was raw ferocity, and far more experienced with the Fall Maiden’s flame.

In the end, however, Cinder fled, back through the portal to Atlas.

For a minute, Jaune just… sat there. Winter came over to him, asking where Weiss was, and Jaune couldn’t do more than shake his head wearily.

“She fell…” He breathed out, at a loss. “She fell, and…”

She fell, and I killed Penny.

There was an odd feeling in the air, like the world itself had shuddered. He looked, and realized that the entire place was collapsing in on itself. Cinder had taken the Staff of Creation, and she had, seemingly, just used it.

Winter began to fly, gunning towards the portal at the back of the room. Jaune stood as well, his steps uneven, unbalanced. His head was spinning. He felt like he was going to throw up.

Winter turned around, and looked back at him. He didn’t really know why, in all honesty. She should’ve forgotten about him, and gotten herself to safety.

Then, of course, he lost his footing. He had a half-instant to look down, and realize that the bridge beneath him was gone.

Oh.

Well…

It wasn’t like he could’ve faced his friends anyways. After what he’d done… after he’d seen the blood coat his blade, after he’d watched the life leave Penny’s eyes, knowing it was his fault…

And then something barreled into his chest.

Jaune had the wind knocked out of him as Winter hauled him up, pouring a blazing blue flame out of her legs, and left arm, to keep them afloat. She had her right arm around him, but was clearly struggling to hoist his weight with just that.

“If you could help here!?” She snarled.

“Right!”

He wrapped his arms around Winter’s body, and even if at any other time he’d have been self-conscious about that… he just didn’t have the energy to be in that moment.

Winter hesitated in the air for a moment, and Jaune wondered why.

“Weiss… how long ago did she…”

Oh. She was wondering if she could catch her sister, too.

But…

“She… whatever’s down there… it absorbed them all the moment they hit.” Jaune told her, shaking his head. “She’s gone.”

It hurt him to admit it. Honestly, it did. It was clear Winter didn’t want to accept that. She hovered there, unable to move away, until Jaune’s gaze flitted towards the gate that would take them to Vacuo, and…

“It’s closing!” He pointed.

Winter turned, and then swore below her breath. She rocketed forward with the Maiden’s power, but her control of it was not nearly as adept as Cinder’s had been, which allowed the evil woman to cleanly fly through the air in whichever direction she wanted.

No, Winter was awkward, and forceful.

And at a glance, Jaune could tell it wouldn’t be enough.

Winter must’ve been able to tell as well, because she pushed herself harder, utilizing the magic now flowing through her veins. The flames emerging from out of her limbs burned hotter, and spread farther.

Jaune winced as some of those flames crawled up Winter’s legs, and licked at his own. Her fire couldn’t burn her, but that was in no way true for Jaune.

Winter reached out towards the closing gate, trying, somehow, to reach it.

“Damnit!” She screamed.

She knew they couldn’t, wouldn’t, make it.

And then, as the gate collapsed, the entire realm around them did as well. The light dimmed; a dark void enclosed around them.

The curse Jaune had been about to utter died in his throat as the darkness overwhelmed them entirely, and then, there was nothing at all.

/

Water lapped at Jaune’s heels. Sand interlaced itself through his fingers. He filtered back into consciousness. It wasn’t a quick process. It was likely a minute or two before he found the will to push himself up off the floor.

His body hurt; the aches and pains of the previous battle affecting him now that he was no longer filled with adrenaline. He tried to stand, but found his limbs sluggish and unresponsive.

Eventually, however, he was able to make it to his feet.

And take in the breathtaking landscape surrounding him.

In any other circumstance, Jaune would have been delighted at the veritable tropical wonderland before his eyes. There was a sandy beach, palm trees, and what looked to be a kind of jungle just beyond him. Hanging at the edge of the horizon was a massive tree, easily eclipsing anything else along the skyline.

But perhaps most obviously, and the thing that Jaune focused in on, was the figure lying face down in the sand just a few meters in front of him.

It was Winter.

He hobbled his way over, having seemingly injured his leg at some point. Maybe he’d blocked one of Cinder’s blows at a bad angle? He didn’t really remember.

He looked down at it, and realized that it was not a break. It had been burnt.

Winter’s fire…

That was right. She’d burned so hot and heavy trying to save the both of them.

It hadn’t been enough.

Jaune was so very used to not being enough, and so he couldn’t find it in himself to blame Winter for such.

As he arrived, he knelt down, and brought Winter’s head up off the ground.

He checked first to make sure she was breathing, and then, having confirmed that – with a breath of purest relief – he channeled his semblance into her.

Her aura hadn’t been this low before they’d been sucked into… well, wherever they were, but Jaune had to assume that they’d perhaps fallen from a great height, and that their auras had taken the impact for them, even unconscious. He was lucky his own aura was rather potent, or else he wouldn’t have been able to do much at all here.

Winter gasped awake about twenty seconds later, pushing her way out of Jaune’s hold and fighting to right herself. Jaune didn’t take it personally. She seemed to be bewildered, needing a moment to get her bearings.

Once she had them, she looked over, and asked, “What… Where the hell are we?”

“No idea.” Jaune admitted. “Woke up about two minutes ago. I’m as in the dark as you are.”

Winter hummed out noncommittally as she got to her feet. She didn’t seem to have any injuries like Jaune did, and so she was able to scout out ahead a bit. She walked over to the ocean and ran a hand through it, testing it for a reason unknown to him.

“It’s saltwater.” She spoke, and Jaune realized she’d been wanting to see if this was an ocean, as it appeared, or a lake. “We’re very likely on a coastline of some sort. This could be a saltwater lake, but they’re quite uncommon, and not usually this large. As to where… that is the question, is it not?”

Jaune did his best to stand, but hissed as his left leg spasmed under him.

“You’re injured.” Winter noted. “Don’t try and move. Give me a moment, I’ll grab a fallen log and manufacture a splint.”

It was funny how quickly Winter took charge. Perhaps that was a coping mechanism; to control that which she could, and drown out that which she could not?

Over the course of the next few minutes, Winter did as she’d said she would. It was surprising, in Jaune’s opinion, that she even bothered. He’d sort of expected her to… well, to ignore him, and go and search for Weiss.

The surprise must have shown on his face, because as Winter was showing him how to bind the splint to his leg with some palm fronds, she spoke.

“Right now, we are in an unknown situation, in unknown territory. Our first order of business is orienting ourselves. We figure out our position. Judging based purely on the local flora, I’d peg us either on the northwestern coast of Vacuo, or the southeast of Menagerie.”

It was a decent theory if they were really still on Remnant.

It was just…

“What if we’re not… on Remnant anymore?”

Winter didn’t seem to want to consider that, and yet… they were dealing with magic. Ambrosius had crafted the strange corridor that they’d been using to ferry people out of Atlas in a different dimension. It was possible that they’d been transported to another one, someplace entirely alien.

“We’ll consider that if more factors emerge that lend themselves to that theory.” Winter spoke calmly, evidently deciding to ignore the massive tree in the distance. “For now, our objective is to stay where we are, and see if we can’t link up with anyone else.”

She was confident, and for that, Jaune was grateful. He was doing… not well, but okay. He’d been better, certainly.

“Give me your blade,” She held her hand out. “We’ll need to cut firewood, and your weapon is far more suited to such than my own.”

Jaune nodded his head, reaching towards Crocea Mors, and drawing–

He drew forth a fractured blade, and reality, all at once, crashed back into him.

He’s staring down at her, just below him, with horror in his eyes. She’s smiling up at him, trying to make things easier for him, perhaps? To let him know that this is what she wants, what she knows she has to do? It’s not helping. Because he knows that smile. He’s seen it on her face while she laughs along with Ruby and the others, has seen her break out into a dance, or a song, seemingly at random, and give that same smile.

All of those memories will be forever tainted by this moment. Never again can he picture Penny smiling without remembering this.

He brings his blade up, just to get enough leverage, and then–

“Breathe, soldier!”

Jaune let out a pained gasp as he was wrenched from out of his own head. He looked up – gaze blurring – to see Winter trying to keep his eyes on her.

“Do you hear me? Breathe!”

He tried to; he really did. But he was being consumed by his own emotions, by that smile Penny had worn in her final moments, by the fact that she’d been alive for a few seconds after the blade had pierced into her, how she’d not been able to stop herself from flinching in pain.

Gods, but he’d never be able to escape that.

“Arc!”

Twin hands on his cheeks forced him to look away from the bloodied, neutered blade in his right hand, and made him look at Winter’s eyes. His breaths were coming heavy, and rasping, and far, far too shallow.

He couldn’t breathe.

His focus was hazy enough that the figure in front of him shifted. Her hair was longer. There was a scar down her left eye. She was berating him for being a fool, asking her out even after she’d made her opinion clear.

“Arc, you need to breathe. Follow along with me. Understood!?”

He forced himself to nod. He was scared. He thought he knew what this was. A panic attack, perhaps?

It was odd. Hearing them described didn’t quite do them justice.

She breathed. He breathed with her. She spoke words that he didn’t hear. He inhaled; exhaled. Over the course of the next minute or two, Jaune was brought out of his panic, and back to the present. He was panting, taking deep, greedy breaths by the time he did.

“I…” He shook his head, “Thank you, Weiss. I…”

Winter – who was very much not Weiss – looked at him strangely. He looked down and away, ashamed, and muttered out an apology.

“I didn’t–”

“Don’t explain yourself.” Winter spoke to him, and she did so… with a shocking amount of emotion in her voice. With an almost tender tone. “You’ve no need.”

He nodded his head as Winter took Crocea Mors from him – just the half-blade, she left the shield with him – and stood. She walked a few paces away before seemingly remembering something.

“Are you alright if I go inland and chop down a few trees?”

He nodded his head, and she left after a second or two, probably confirming if he really meant it. He used Crocea’s shield in sheath form to support himself as he got off the ground, and then took up the very makeshift crutch that Winter had crafted – which was a stick tied to another stick with palm fronds – under his left arm.

He was able to make it to where Winter was in a few minutes, and when she saw him, she nodded in his direction.

“I figured you’d be trying to locate Weiss.” He said, too curious to be quiet any longer.

Winter’s eyes widened a moment, before her expression fell.

“Basic survival training states to stay where one is and make themselves visible. We will be burning a fire, which will shoot up smoke into the sky that will be visible for miles inland. Hopefully, that will be enough to bring the others to us.”

Winter wasn’t saying what they were both thinking, of course; ‘what if the others aren’t here?’

Because while they’d been sent somewhere by Ambrosius’ dimension seemingly closing, the others had fallen. Perhaps those different methods of entry had resulted in them ending up in different places.

But Jaune didn’t want to consider that possibility.

Clearly, neither did Winter.

Hours passed. Winter assembled a decent fire, and it burnt on the sand of the beach they’d landed upon. Neither of them said a word, and eventually, Winter told him to sleep, and that she would take first watch.

It was a pointless endeavor for the both of them. Jaune simply laid awake on the sand, staring up at the foreign stars hanging above them.

Three hours later, when he was completely convinced that sleep was not coming to him, he pushed himself up out of bed, and told Winter that he’d take over.

She looked about as bad as he did at that point, nodded her head, and laid down on the sand.

An hour later, she sat back up, having not slept at all.

She instead trudged over to the ocean, and seemed to be attempting to catch and kill fish for them to eat. Judging by the occasional curses, and lack of fish, Jaune assumed she was not doing terribly well.

“The fish are… odd.” Winter explained as she walked back over an hour later. “They are no species I have ever seen before.”

“Then…”

Winter didn’t say anything at all, but then, she didn’t have to, either. They were both thinking it.

This isn’t Remnant, is it?

It wasn’t long after the sun rose the following morning that the initial plan fell apart.

Winter, her leg bobbing a mile a minute, stood from her place on the sand, and started slinging things that she could along her back.

“How’s your leg?”

“Better now.” For anyone else, it would’ve been pure bluster, but Jaune’s aura was powerful, and his semblance only made it more so. “Why?”

“We’re going inland.” She announced, and immediately began trekking towards the jungle in the distance.

“W-Wait, hang on,” He called out to her. “Didn’t you say we should stay put?”

Winter did stop.

“I… am choosing to renege on traditional survival tactics. We do not have the food we need, and our source of water is salty. We would need to rely on the sun to evaporate the salt out of it. And that’s something we can’t afford to wait on for so little a reward.”

Jaune heard what she was saying; really, he did, but…

“You can just admit you want to go look for Weiss, y’know.”

Winter said nothing, not looking back at him.

Eventually, they walked on.

They traveled perhaps half a day. It was not an eventful journey. It was hot and humid, both a welcome respite from Atlas’ freezing temperatures, and a bit of a problem given that he was dressed for them. He’d have taken off some of his clothes if he had any others with him.

He did not, and so he’d simply have to manage.

Eventually, however, they exited out of the jungle into a small clearing, and found…

“What… is that?”

Before them stood a decently sized tree with what looked to be clock-like fruits dangling from its branches. There were perhaps a dozen clocks strewn about it, and Jaune was initially tempted to walk right over and pluck one from its branch.

He didn’t, though.

“Uh… it looks like a tree that’s growing clocks like fruit.”

“I gathered that.” Winter replied frostily. “I meant more ‘why is there a tree growing clocks like fruit’?”

“Yeah, that’s a fair question. I don’t know.”

There was a pause.

“Should we approach it?” Jaune asked.

“I’m not certain.” Winter’s lips formed a pout as she thought. “A clock would not at all be an unfortunate thing to have in a land we are unfamiliar with. My scroll’s battery is running low, and once it dies, our only means of telling time would be the sun. Or, well, assuming the star hanging in the sky above us actually is the sun.”

“So, we’re admitting this isn’t Remnant?”

“Do you not see the tree growing clocks right in front of us?”

“Okay, yeah, fair point.”

They stood there in silence for five or so seconds.

“So… we take a clock fruit?”

“As absurd as that is to say, yes. We take a clock fruit.”

Jaune nodded his head as he stepped forward. The ticking of the clocks grew louder as he approached, and he found himself hesitating for just a moment before reaching out, and plucking one off its stem.

Immediately, the ticking grew more feverish. Jaune took a step back as the hands of the clock began moving not forwards, but backwards. He looked up at the sky as the light shifted, and saw the way that the light was ebbing and flowing far too quickly.

What in the world was–

“Stop it!” Winter shouted.

“I’m not doing anything!” He yelled back.

Winter swore below her breath, even as she charged towards him. He flinched, but he was not her target.

She knocked the clock from out of his hand, and then slammed the pommel of Crocea’s broken blade down into the clock’s face. It shattered down the middle, fracturing the mechanisms inside, and the world righted itself once more.

The sky was dark now, however. Time had passed, given it had been midday at the latest just a minute ago.

“What… just happened?” He asked Winter as he turned towards her. “What was that just now?”

“I…” Winter seemed just as uncertain as he was. But the look on her face…

It was one of worry. Of panic.

“That’s impossible… it can’t…”

“What’s impossible?”

“Look up at the sky, Arc.”

He did that, and saw… well, the night sky.

“What am I looking for?”

“The stars.” She spoke, and her tone was foreboding. “They’ve shifted in the heavens.”

He had a vague sense that such things did not happen quickly. He was aware that over the course of the year, the stars that hung over Remnant appeared to move as the seasons shifted, and the planet moved along its orbit of their star.

Which meant…

“We went forwards in time?”

“No…” Winter shook her head. “The way the sky was just moving was… it was against the current wind, which faces to the northeast. As difficult as it is to believe, If I were to guess based on the way the clouds and stars have shifted…”

Winter looked to him, and her gaze spoke of grim tidings.

“We have traveled backwards in time.”

Chapter Text

Winter was many things, but one to dwell on things outside of her control was not one of them.

Jaune took issue with that.

“What do you mean we traveled backwards in time!?”

Winter didn’t look at him as she responded. “I mean that the clouds in the sky moved against the wind. The sun traveled backwards. Both of those data points indicate that time went backwards, not forwards.”

“Okay, can you be a bit more specific on how far we’re back, then!?”

“Do you think I have the slightest idea as to the specifics of such!?” Winter fired back as they made their way deeper into whatever weird-ass world they’d ended up in. “Do you honestly believe I have any idea what’s going on around us!?”

“That…” He sighed. “No.”

“Correct.” Winter bit out between clenched teeth, looking up at the sky with a furrowed brow. “Wherever we are, it doesn’t seem like things obey the same laws that they did back on Remnant. A tree growing clocks that can reverse time is…”

“A bit weird?”

“The phrase ‘a bit’ is pulling a rather large amount of weight there.”

Jaune grunted out an acknowledgement of that. “What do we do?”

Winter considered that for quite a while. He had a feeling she didn’t actually know, but didn’t want to present a weak front. She was, after all, a Specialist, and someone to whom other soldiers looked to for guidance.

Now it was Jaune doing just that.

“We’ll continue on with our original plan.” Winter spoke, turning back to him to see if he’d agree to that. “Make our way deeper into the jungle and see if we can’t get some idea as to where we are.”

Jaune wasn’t opposed to that, even if he was, admittedly, a bit less willing to throw himself into a jungle that seemed to randomly have the ability to reverse time.

Still, in terms of options, they had but a scarce few. It was that, or go back to the beach, and risk starving to death if they couldn’t catch enough fish.

And hell, that was assuming the fish they did catch were edible. Given they were in some strange, foreign land, they very well might not have been.

But then, the wood they’d burned so far behaved like normal wood, and the fire they’d created had behaved like normal fire.

Maybe some things were the same, even… well, wherever it was they were.

In the end, they continued, irrespective of the fact that they’d been temporally displaced.

They didn’t end up making it very far. As much as both of them wanted to make progress, night had fallen, and their visibility had fallen with it. Winter was the one to ultimately call it after nearly tripping over a stray root. She ground the two of them to a halt.

“We’re not making any real progress anymore.” She sighed out, clearly as agitated as Jaune was with the situation. “Let’s make camp. We can continue moving in the morning.”

So, they did, although calling what they set up a ‘camp’ was probably giving it more credit than it was due.

They arranged a set of fallen logs to form chairs, and then a few more to form a firepit. Again, Winter lit them aflame, hoping that the smoke kicked up would attract anyone else that might be present here in this… well, wherever they were.

Sheer exhaustion overwhelmed him. Where before his own thoughts had haunted him too badly for him to sleep, his body didn’t give him the option this time. He didn’t get nearly as much of it as he probably needed, but then, when he awoke, he was pale, cold, and sweating.

He’d been having a nightmare, apparently.

Winter was looking down at him with concern, seemingly studying him.

“Are you alright?”

“I…” He shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t even remember what I was dreaming about.”

Despite saying that, he had a pretty good idea.

The sound of the blade piercing through her flesh, the feeling of her skin and muscles and organs resisting his blade, and gods, but the smell of iron and death, and–

“Arc.”

He snapped from out of his own head to see Winter looking over at him.

“Are you okay?”

He took a shaking breath, but nodded his head up and down. “I’ll live.”

Winter watched him for a bit after that before sighing, and eventually speaking.

“I need to sleep as well.” She spoke in a way that suggested she didn’t really want to, but that she knew her body would be putting up quite a fit if she didn’t. “Are you in a state that you can watch the camp?”

“Yeah.” He spoke, and he hoped for the both of their sakes that it was the truth.

“Alright.” Winter spoke, laying down on the leafy ground and running a hand through her hair exasperatedly. “At least there don’t seem to be nearly as many insects here as on remnant. I can sleep a touch more soundly.”

“I wouldn’t have thought a soldier would worry about that.” He said without thinking.

The moment he did think about it, he realized that he wasn’t quite sure why he’d said it at all. It was a rather rude thing to imply; that Winter wasn’t being a very good soldier by being worried about bugs.

And yet, Winter seemed to seriously consider what he’d said, and had an honest answer. “Tropical climates like these ones play host to some of the more deadly insects in all of Remnant. Many can be incredibly venomous. Even the less venomous ones that give you rashes might still impede your ability to act as you normally should. And if one were to give either of us dietary problems, we would lose far more water than we could reasonably take in without a source. We cannot afford such a thing.”

When Winter put it like that, he felt a little stupid for bringing it up in the first place. It…

He was just in a mood, he supposed. He’d been separated from everyone he’d ever cared about, slept for around three hours in the span of forty-eight, and he’d also apparently been transported back an unknown length of time.

He was, rather understandably, a bit irritable, and prone to jabbing comments.

He was glad that Winter hadn’t risen to it. They needed to be acting as a cohesive unit. That had been something that Clover had drilled into them over and over again. If they were ever separated from the group on an exercise in the Solitas wilderness, they were to stick close to anyone else they had around them, and work in tandem with one another. They were pointedly not supposed to fracture over petty things.

And he was definitely acting petty…

He needed to not be if they wanted to make it.

“Right, then what’s our–”

The sound of snoring interrupted him, and when he looked to its source, he found it was Winter.

She was already fast asleep.

“Hah…” Jaune breathed out a laugh.

“Guess I’ll save that question for later, then.”

/

By the time Winter awoke, the sun – or, well, Jaune thought it was the sun – was starting to crest over the lip of the horizon.

She’d slept just four hours, about as long as Jaune guessed he had. He’d had nothing better to do than track the time on his scroll. He wanted to see if there was anything odd about when the light rose in the sky in this world.

Unfortunately, he’d learned nothing new. Around when his scroll had said the sun would rise in Atlas, it had here as well. That led him to questioning whether or not this place was linked more closely to Atlas, but then…

Well, he gave up trying to rationalize his environment when a bird shaped like a music note landed on a branch nearby, gave a single squawk – which, sort of expectedly, sounded just like its corresponding note – and then flew off.

Yes, it seemed logic did not apply to this place at all.

“Did I miss anything?” Winter asked him as she sat up, and did a series of stretches.

“Other than a music-note-shaped bird? No.”

Winter didn’t ask as to the specifics of the bird he’d seen, perhaps assuming that if he’d thought it important, he’d have said something.

“What do we do, then?” Jaune asked.

“Find food and water.” Winter spoke. “That takes precedence.”

“I think some of the trees we’ve passed had fruits on them.”

“And there are quite a few fruits among Remnant that are poisonous. It’s the same thing with the venomous insects; even if they were only lightly so, if something upset out stomachs, we might end up losing more fluids than we take in. We cannot afford such a gamble at the moment.”

He couldn’t argue against that. “So…?”

“We find something that we know isn’t poisonous,” Winter spoke, “Such as flowing water, or something that we can confirm the contents of, perhaps a meaty animal.”

“And how do we know the water here isn’t naturally poisonous?”

“We don’t.”

“Great.” He groaned out.

The majority of that day was spent traveling. They stopped on very brief occasions, and usually only to rest their legs for a few minutes. Winter stressed the importance of not pushing themselves too terribly hard. In a situation like this one, they wanted to use as little energy as possible until they had a method of reliably restoring it.

Jaune was actually learning quite a bit about survival tactics. Clover had taught them from time to time when he had the time, but he often hadn’t, being the leader of the Ace-Ops whilst trying to prepare for a potential Grimm invasion and all. Even when he’d been able to squeeze them in, his lessons had usually been very generalist in terms of scope.

Winter’s lessons were much more pointed.

“We’re looking for areas of low elevation, surrounded by areas of high elevation.” She explained to him as they pushed through the dense jungle. “Gravity dictates that water is likely to travel from high to low. If we’re lucky, we’ll find somewhere like a waterfall that we can perpetually take water from. At worst, we can make an attempt to at the very least locate a stagnant pool, which, utilizing the Winter Maiden’s fire, we can boil and filter.”

“Why didn’t we just do that with seawater?”

“Because boiling water should be our last resort, not our plan A.” Winter explained. “It’s a rather inefficient process, energy wise. I’m not positive, but I don’t believe the Maiden’s magic comes from nowhere. I think it pulls from some part of me. We’re much better off walking a while, and hoping we come across a natural stream.”

It took them till around midday, but just at Winter had said they might, they ended up locating a source of fresh water.

It wasn’t a particularly impressive stream; honestly, it was little more than a small crick. But the water looked relatively clean, and more importantly, it was moving.

Interestingly enough, there were also a variety of creatures that looked vaguely like crawfish toiling around in the soil beneath the water. They were slightly hard to describe, in that they were neon pink in color, and didn’t at all blend in to their surroundings, but then, Jaune supposed logic didn’t really apply in a place like this.

Winter managed to spear a few of them on the end of her saber, and cook them with help from the maiden’s fire to make them safe to eat.

It was far from a filling meal, but it was enough for Jaune’s stomach to stop complaining in his general direction. It was funny that the largely flavorless meat of the crawfish-like creatures, alongside some lukewarm water, made for one of the best meals he’d ever had in his life.

But then, Jaune didn’t think he’d ever been truly hungry before. Now that he was, now that he knew what it was like to go days without eating…

Well, it tracked, he supposed, that he’d eat any food he could get.

It was as they were finishing their impromptu meal that Jaune noticed an irregularity in the sky above them. His eyes widened, and he nearly dropped the last crawfish – okay, it wasn’t a crawfish, but Jaune was going to call it a crawfish for his own mental health – as he drew Winter’s attention to it as well.

Because…

There were stars falling from the sky.

And that…

It was coming back to him, now. The darkness as they’d fallen; but more than that, the colors flowing all around them as they’d appeared in the sky above the beach. It hadn’t been their auras to protect them. It had been… well, whatever phenomenon that was.

And it was a phenomenon that looked rather strikingly similar to this.

He turned to Winter; his eyes wide.

“Do you think it could be–”

“I had the same thought.” Winter pushed out through gritted teeth. “I remember something similar now, but… but we’ve located a source of food and water. We should, by all logic, stay here, light a fire, and make ourselves easy to find.”

Jaune heard her. He really did.

Just…

“So, are we–”

He had barely managed to squeeze the words out before Winter vaulted off the log she’d been sat on, and gestured for him to follow.

“Come. We’ll make our way there quickly, but without wasting too much energy.”

Jaune appreciated the sentiment behind what winter was saying, but it was clear that both of them were far too excited to be worried about proper energy usage. They’d both broken out into a full sprint just a minute or so after Winter had said that.

“The beach is still probably an hour from here!” Jaune called out to Winter, realizing that trying to run the whole way was pointless. “You were right, we should conserve our energy!”

Winter seemed to honestly consider that for a moment, the validity of what he was saying.

Then, she turned around, looked him in the eye, and said, “I can fly us.”

And Jaune just sort of sighed and gave up.

/

Being bridal carried over a jungle by his old crush’s elder sister was something of an experience. It also wasn’t something that Jaune was going to be thinking all that much about once it was over if his dignity had any say in the matter.

Unfortunately, his dignity very rarely did have a say in the matter. He’d grown up around seven sisters. That was just kind of how life had always been for Jaune Arc.

“It should only be around fifteen minutes.” Winter spoke as they rocketed over the jungles it had taken them nearly a full day to traverse. But then, they’d been walking, and taking frequent breaks. It wasn’t a terribly long journey like this.

“Are you sure you can carry me that long?”

“I can bench press your weight.”

“I mean, sure, but can you carry my weight in an awkward position for fifteen minutes while trying to use a magic that’s basically brand new to you?”

Winter didn’t respond, and Jaune thought that was his first win in one of their brief verbal spats.

His reward was shifting slightly so that he was awkwardly holding on to Winter, taking away the need for her to have to support his weight so much. It wasn’t like she didn’t still have to haul the both of them along, of course, but it freed up her arms to spew fire from as well, and course correct if things went wrong.

The shooting stars looked like they were due to touch down soon. They’d appeared in the sky and hanged there for quite some time before beginning to sink. Jaune was almost tempted to think that the world was waiting for them, as ridiculous as it sounded.

Then again, would that even be that weird compared to half the stuff they’d seen so far?

Around the same time that Jaune and Winter finally touched down – or, well, hit the sand rather hard, and spun out onto it, being protected solely by their auras – the stars struck the water just beyond the coast.

The ocean sprayed water high into the air, the counterforce of whatever had impacted against it.

Jaune’s eyes widened.

“Did that happen to us!?”

“I don’t know,” Winter clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, as she pushed herself up, wincing somewhat. She seemed to be feeling that rough landing. “But we’re not just going to sit here. Let’s go, we’ll bail them out.”

He nodded, unlatched the heaviest pieces of his armor, and then threw himself into the sea.

It was warm, which was good. He hadn’t even considered the fact that it could have been completely freezing, given that this world didn’t seem to have any sorts of pattern to its weather. Plus, given they’d been thrown back in time, they very well could’ve been placed back far enough that the seasons had changed, and it was this world’s version of winter.

Speaking of Winter, the person, she was somehow a better swimmer than he was despite growing up in a Kingdom where the closest body of water was several hundred kilometers away, and even when one made it to it, it was freezing.

Jaune tried not to worry too much about that, to varying degrees of success.

He actually was a strong swimmer, despite the fact that Winter was showing him up a bit. He managed to make it to where one of the falling stars had crashed down without much difficulty.

And what he found there was…

A young girl, with dark skin and black hair.

Pointedly, she was no one that Jaune had ever seen before in his life.

It was… it was a difficult thing to stomach; that what they’d been hoping to find was most certainly not here. That this wasn’t their friends crashing down into their realm.

Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang…

They weren’t here.

This was just… someone.

Idly, Jaune thought that he didn’t recognize this girl from any of the refugees he’d encountered whilst escorting people off of Atlas, either. Her clothing was a bit old-fashioned, in Jaune’s opinion, what with a pure cotton dress shirt and a colorful skirt, adorned with a somewhat outdated pattern stitched into it.

But he could worry about such things later. For now, he threw the girl over his shoulder, and paddled back to shore. It was a surprisingly taxing exercise, and Jaune was suddenly aware of just how accurate some of his parents’ warnings had been about trying to rescue those who were flailing about in the water. Even without the girl panicking, or putting up any resistance at all, just having added weight was making treading water difficult.

Still, he wasn’t a Huntsman for nothing. He made it back to shore, and to his ego’s delight, even faster than Winter made it back with her own person in tow. He, like the girl Jaune had brought back in, wasn’t anyone they knew, either.

Or, well…

“You don’t know these two, do you?” He asked Winter.

“I…” Winter shook her head, sighing out in disappointment. “No. I don’t.”

He nodded his head, allowing the adrenaline of the entire affair to begin wearing off as he fell back onto the sand behind him, and then laid himself down in it entirely. The sun was still up, and would likely be so for another few hours.

He could let it dry him.

Winter seemed to have much the same idea, albeit she was not nearly so patient. She’d walked over, taken up Crocea Mors’ broken blade, and gone off to chop firewood.

They’d set up a temporary camp within a few minutes time. It helped that Jaune had gone through this process twice now, and so he was actually able to aid Winter in it much more readily.

It wasn’t much, but he set up the fire while she worked on gathering more wood for it.

“What do we do?” He asked her, gesturing towards the two kids, who were laid on their sides, entirely unconscious. They were lucky they were alive at all, in all honesty, given they’d crashed straight into the ocean.

Perhaps this world would’ve kept them alive and allowed them to wash up onto shore, just as Jaune and Winter had.

“For now, we wait for them to awaken.” Winter spoke, but the earlier fervor in her voice had gone. “After they have, we’ll make our way back towards the water source we found earlier in the day. We’ll set up a more permanent camp in and around that area.”

He nodded his head.

It was an awkward atmosphere that took over the two of them after that. They’d had their hopes crushed, and it showed on their faces. They stared down into the fire without much energy, feeling naught but an emptiness inside themselves.

And then, of course, the two children snapped awake almost simultaneously.

It was a violent thing; the both of them shouted out as they awoke from, presumably, some kind of nightmare. Winter reacted far more cautiously than he did, drawing her saber and taking a step away from the two of them.

Jaune, on the other hand, knelt down beside the girl he’d rescued; wanting to be there to reassure her that things were alright.

“W-What–” She retched, likely some of the water she’d taken in earlier. “Where am I!? Who… who are you!?”

“One step at a time,” he told her, trying to keep his voice even. “You’re safe.”

“Wait– Lewis! Where’s Lewis!?”

“Is this him?” Jaune asked, hoping that the boy who’d just awoken was who she was referring to.

Luckily, she let out an aching sigh of relief, and nodded her head. “Lewis…”

“Alyx.” The boy was clearly just as relieved. “I was… I was worried, after…”

“Don’t say anything else,” Alyx cautioned him, looking back to the two of them. “Just…”

The two of them were hiding something, but then, Jaune had known them for all of thirty seconds, so he supposed them being somewhat cautious of him was fair.

“You are Alyx, and you are Lewis, then?” Winter suddenly cut in, stepping forward as she sheathed her weapon, and nodding to each of the children.

“Uhm, yeah.” The girl, Alyx, answered for the both of them. “Who are you?”

“My name is Jaune Arc.” Jaune took this one. “This is Winter Schnee.” He was surprised by the fact that neither of the two children reacted to Winter’s name. “Do you have any idea where we are?”

“You don’t know?” Alyx’s brow was furrowed.

“I’m afraid we ended up here under circumstances outside of our control.” Jaune told them, and he watched as the two – siblings, perhaps? – met one another’s gaze. Alyx gave a subtle shake of her head. Jaune decided not to call them on it. That could wait for later.

And yet…

There was something that Jaune couldn’t quite shake. A piece of knowledge hanging at the back of his mind, something he’d all but forgotten about.

A story from when he was just a child.

The story of ‘The Girl Who Fell Through the World’.

The story of a young girl named Alyx, and her journey throughout a mysterious, odd, and seemingly magical land.

A land called the Ever After.

Chapter Text

Jaune informed Winter, privately, about his realization as to their potential location, alongside just who it was he thought they had with them. It had been an awfully long time since he’d read the story, and he didn’t remember all that much of it, but he couldn’t help but feel like it had been a relatively happy story, without much conflict.

It was the first piece of good news that Jaune had received in going on a month now – counting their time in Atlas – and he was very much a fan.

“It… adds up.” Winter sighed out, clearly not wanting to buy such an out-there theory. “As much as I’m loathe to believe it. I will admit that I am familiar with the story; I used to read it to Weiss when she was having trouble sleeping as a child.”

That had Jaune smiling; the mental image of the normally hard-ass Winter Schnee doing something as kind as reading a bedtime story for her little sister.

Evidently Winter had realized that, for she rolled her eyes. “Regardless of such things, however, I do not recall a character named Lewis being present in that story.”

“Yeah…” Jaune swallowed on nothing as he turned back around, looking at the two kids who were grouped up on their own around twenty or so meters from them, talking amongst themselves at the edge of the water. “Neither do I.”

“Let us hope it was simply an omission.” Winter echoed his own thoughts. He was very much hoping nothing bad happened to Lewis, and that there was a much kinder explanation as to his lack of appearance.

In the meantime, Jaune was certainly going to be keeping his eye on the boy, that was for sure.

“What do you want to do?” He asked Winter. “Take them to the stream we found?”

“I’d say that’s probably out best bet.” Winter sighed out. “There were crawfish – or, well, crawfish-esque creatures – present there as well, so we can feed them more easily.”

“Mm.”

They’d been sitting on the beach long enough now that the sun had set, however, so any such thoughts of moving would have to wait for the following day.

“Hey, you two!” Jaune called out to Alyx and Lewis, waving to them. He was doing his best to try and be open and friendly with them.

Lewis waved back at him, but Alyx shot her brother a look that had him clamming up. It had been their dynamic so far. It seemed that Lewis was… not subservient to Alyx, but that he trusted her, and was willing to go along with her suggestions.

Jaune didn’t get a bad vibe from Alyx, to be clear. Obviously, the two of them were hiding something, but he had a feeling that had more to do with the ‘how’ of their presence here in the Ever After than anything else.

Jaune and Winter had gotten there through using the Relic of Creation, and that told Jaune that getting here in the first place was a difficult thing to do.

He had a feeling making it here on accident was even more so.

He’d talk about that with Winter in the morning, though. For the moment, he was tired, and honestly, he still kind of wasn’t over this whole…

Ever After thing.

Winter had harvested a good few palm fronds for all of them, which Jaune laid down on the sand close to the fire that Winter had lit up to form a very makeshift bed. So far, they’d not encountered any other intelligent creatures – which was to say alike to humans or faunus – or aggressive animals. Even so, Jaune and Winter would be continuing to split watch between them until they knew for certain that they were safe to sleep through the night unattended.

They would not be taking chances.

Jaune respected that about Winter. She wasn’t one to take anything for granted.

Honestly, this whole being in the Ever After thing had given him a newfound respect for Winter in general. He’d worked with her so very sparingly, oftentimes only brushing by her in high stress situations, like when they’d been headed into the Grimm Whale to rescue Oscar.

But he could see how she’d been made into a Specialist so young, now. He’d been able to see it in the determined expression on her face. In the way that she didn’t hesitate to make hard decisions. In that she made no assumptions, only estimates, that, more often than not, were proven right.

It was as he was drifting off to sleep, however, that he heard something that had the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.

“So… we’re not telling them?” He heard Lewis whisper. “About… y’know, the blue guy?”

“No.” Alyx responded, barely loud enough to make out over the crackling of the fire. “We’re not. Now lay down. You need to sleep.”

“Okay…”

“Goodnight, Lewis.”

“Goodnight Alyx.”

Jaune found a tiny smile slipping onto his features. Even with how crabby she was, it was clear that Alyx cared about Lewis more than anything.

But even so…

Blue guy…

Yeah… Jaune had an idea as to who they were talking about.

/

Jaune awoke at what felt like two or three in the morning to take over watch duty, which Winter very clearly appreciated by the heavy bags hanging under her eyes.

In all fairness, he wasn’t much better off. As Winter laid down to rest her eyes for a few hours, Jaune started to, for the first time since they’d arrived, really feel the effects of sleeping just four or five hours a day for multiple days in a row.

It hadn’t ever been a problem for him when he’d been a kid, staying up way too late playing videogames with his friends. But then, that was because he’d done literally nothing with his energy. It was a problem now because he was actually using all of the energy his body could supply per day, and then not giving it enough time to truly replenish it, to refresh itself.

He was running on fumes. Winter was as well.

She was just a lot better at it, courtesy of being both older than him, thusly requiring less sleep, and being in the military.

Still, it wasn’t just him that would be at risk if he fell asleep at the proverbial wheel. Alyx and Lewis were sleeping right behind him as he stared out at the forests beyond their temporary camp.

It was mind-numbing, but it gave Jaune a chance to think.

And he needed to think.

His hands go slack around his blade, and yet, even despite that, it stands without his intervention, propped up by the now human flesh it’s pierced right through. The light’s gone from her eyes; there’s only a blank, hollow stare, and–

He wretched, barely fighting back the urge to vomit. He… Winter had made it very clear that he could not afford to be shedding either food or water at the moment. It was funny how that – the pragmatic, purely logical approach to the problem – was what allowed him to avoid jettisoning the modest meal he’d had earlier in the day.

Or, technically, the previous day, given it was far past midnight. Or what constituted for such in this place.

He wiped at his mouth, removing the small bits of spittle that had come out as he’d wretched. He sort of expected things to end there, but…

Then someone sat down beside him.

He panicked initially, reaching for his fractured sword for but a moment before he realized it was Winter who’d plopped down beside him. She nodded to him curtly, and he nodded back, just as much so.

“…I thought you were getting some sleep.”

“It appears that such eludes me at the moment.” Winter spoke. “Added onto that, I heard you nearly vomit just a moment ago. I came in to check in on you.”

He was surprised she cared… even if he shouldn’t have been. From a purely logical standpoint, coming to check in on her one trusted ally in a foreign land, making sure they were alright, was entirely understandable.

Still…

“I’m fine.” He lied, and it was an obvious one. Still, he hoped Winter would get off his case, allow him to–

“You are not fine.” Winter didn’t so much as hesitate. “I let it go before, yesterday morning, but it is clear that whatever this is, it is not something you are going to get over quickly.”

He looked away. Mostly because he knew Winter was right.

He debated trying to clam up and say nothing… but in the end, he realized there wasn’t much point. For the moment, it seemed as if Winter was his only real compatriot in this place.

And it would be nice to have someone to share his troubles with. Especially someone who likely shared his own emotions on the subject.

“I was thinking about Penny.”

He saw the smallest, tiniest twitch on Winter’s face, then. Her gaze went towards the tree line, where it seemed to get lost for just a moment, before training back on his own. She wet her lips with her tongue to give herself a moment to think.

What she eventually said, however…

“Do your best to put such thoughts out of mind.”

It was an unexpected thing for Jaune. He’d assumed that Winter would’ve been just as devastated as he had been to see Penny – sweet, innocent Penny – struck down just when she had a chance to be a real girl. And yet…

Maybe it was the lack of sleep catching up to him, but he couldn’t help snarling.

“How can you say that!?” He shot out, barely able to keep his voice down with the fury coursing through him. “She loved you! You were like a big sister to her, and you–”

“Do you think I don’t know that!?” Winter hissed as she rounded on him.

It was a quick change of expression on her face. Before, she’d seemed almost uncaring, but now…

Now, for the first time since they’d arrived, he saw Winter’s feigned visage crack. Her lower lip quivered; her brow was tense, and her breaths uneven.

“Do you think I don’t…” Her voice was still burning, but she forcibly took a breath then, as harrowing as it was, to cool herself down, and that gave Jaune time to deflate as well.

“I know.” She eventually gritted out. “I know that she loved me. I loved her as well. She was… a wonderful girl.” Winter spoke, her voice sounding paradoxically emotionless and heart-rending. “But this… we are far from in a stable situation, right now. We cannot afford to take time to mourn her. When we can… believe you me, I will be the first to do so.”

Jaune felt any last bits of anger still hanging about his frame going up in smoke. He’d been an idiot, he realized, and he’d snapped without much reason. Obviously, Winter had cared. It was just…

“I’m sorry.” He pushed out, unwilling to admit to the true reason he was as broken up as he was; that it had been him that Penny had turned to when she’d been unable to make that choice for herself.

“Thank you.” Winter murmured, barely there.

There was no conversation between them for a while after that, up until Winter suddenly spoke again.

“…I may present as strong, and unaffected by my surroundings, but know that I am not some unfeeling machine, Jaune Arc. I, too, am experiencing what is very likely the same sorrow that you are. But we need to keep going. Precisely because of that. Precisely because there are people waiting for us. Precisely because there is a world we must return to.” She looked to him, into his eyes, and he saw steel reflected there as the fire behind them illuminated one half of her face.

“We cannot falter here.”

He swallowed, doing his best to beat that truth into his own head. “Right…”

They didn’t speak again. Winter didn’t try to go back to sleep, either. She simply sat with him a while, until eventually, she slumped forward; sleep catching her with her arms balanced on her knees, her head dipping.

Jaune just watched the leaves rustle in the trees beyond, as the sky continued to grow lighter by the minute.

Perhaps later, much like they might mourn Penny, Jaune might admit just how striking Winter had seemed, then, when she spoke with the fire at her back; with the fire in her heart.

But now was not the time.

/

Jaune woke up to the realization that he’d had to wake up at all, which meant that he’d fallen asleep.

Aka, he’d not been watching over the camp.

He pushed himself up and off of the sand – he must’ve fallen off the log he’d been resting on during his sleep – and took inventory. It was light out, which meant it had been a few hours; he didn’t remember actually seeing the sun rise. Winter was still resting next to him, in the same position she’d been in before, which had to be terrible for her back, but…

Alyx and Lewis were gone.

Jaune’s heart hammered in his chest as he stood up, and scanned their surroundings.

He had to just be moving too quickly, missing them. Perhaps they had headed down to the water, or were playing about at the edge of the jungle?

No. They were nowhere to be found.

He swallowed down his panic and moved over to Winter, shaking her awake. He shook a bit hard, and Winter shot up, drawing her saber and pointing it right at him.

She was out of it; as tired as he’d been.

“Alyx and Lewis! They’re gone!”

Winter’s entire demeanor shifted. “What!? What happened!?”

He bit down on his bottom lip. “I… I fell asleep. I’m sorry–”

“Apologies can wait.” Winter shook her head. “For now, we need to find them. They’re children alone in a land that neither of us know the true dangers of. For all we know, the two of us could have narrowly avoided attack several times by now. We need to find them, and quickly.”

He nodded his head, and the two of them shot up the beach.

Luckily, the sand at least served to give them a good idea as to where the kids had gone. There were footprints leading inland up until the dunes gave way to dirt. From there, they had a general direction they knew they needed to travel in.

Unless the kids were trying not to be found, and had intentionally changed their direction.

Jaune just hoped that wasn’t the case.

“What on Remnant were they thinking, going off on their own!?” Winter growled out, seemingly unable to hide her frustration. Honestly, Jaune wasn’t too thrilled with the children, either, so he was right there with her.

“I don’t know.” Jaune bit out. “I think they don’t trust us.”

“I gathered that much, yes.”

He pushed a laugh through his teeth, even as they pushed on through the jungle.

In truth, they didn’t have to go particularly far. They were lucky that they heard a scream, and though Jaune paled, and his stomach dropped in his chest, they at least knew the direction they were going. It was north-northwest, and Winter and Jaune both practically flew in that direction.

When they pushed through the final thicket, they found Alyx and Lewis, as they’d hoped to.

But they also found…

It was a hard thing to describe, that which had apparently chosen to attack the two children. A strange creature, a dark plum in color, with bands of gray that ran down its sides like jagged stripes. It muttered to itself as it stalked forward, towards Alyx and Lewis.

“Prey? Prey? Prey.”

Jaune’s teeth clenched as he and Winter both moved to intercept. Where Jaune took a defensive position in front of the two children, Winter charged right for their adversary, her eyes alight with the Winter Maiden’s fire.

She was pulling no punches at all.

Then again, they were trying to defend the defenseless, and, from what they knew, auraless children. Now definitely wasn’t the time for pulling their punches.

Winter’s sabers struck down on the creature’s left flank, but its skin seemed far thicker than Winter had anticipated. Her blow cut into it, but not nearly deep enough to hamper it. Its head turned at an unnatural angle, locking ‘eyes’ with Winter.

It swung at her, although of course, Winter was faster, shooting fire out of her feet to dodge back and away.

Unfortunately, buying herself space only served to give the creature a moment, and it used that moment to charge right for Jaune and the children.

He heard them panicking behind him. Could see out of his peripheral the way that Lewis cowered in on himself, and how Alyx, steadfast, took hold of her brother, and shielded him with her own body.

It made for a rather harrowing scene; an older sister preparing to give her life for her younger brother.

For once, however, Jaune could actually make a difference.

He took the blow that the creature meant for the two of them on Crocea’s shield. With a proper blade, he might have been able to cleave the creature’s head clean from its shoulders, but without…

Well, he’d settle for a good hit.

He instead used every ounce of his strength – further enhanced with his semblance – to drive the shattered tip of Crocea Mors into the creature’s chest.

It howled, throwing itself off of Jaune’s weapon and grabbing at its injured chest. He would’ve moved to finish it off, but it had already proved to be fast enough to duck out from Winter’s attacks. He wasn’t confident he could get back around to protect the kids if he missed his attack.

So, he stayed right where he was, and allowed the creature to scamper away, bleeding, further into the jungle.

Winter seemed to feel much the same, because despite being able to do so, she didn’t attempt to follow it. She simply watched it, making sure it was fully gone before she allowed herself to take a breath, and let the Winter Maiden’s fire fade from her vision.

“What on Remnant were the two of you thinking!?” Winter immediately rounded on Alyx and Lewis both. There was a palpable rage about her whole form, and Jaune took a step back from her without even realizing. “Do you have any idea how dangerous what you just did was!?”

The two shrunk in on themselves. Lewis more than his sister, but even Alyx seemed to be affected by Winter’s words.

“You could’ve gotten yourselves killed, easily!” Winter hissed. “Did you have a plan for acquiring food? A plan for acquiring water? How about the skills to build a fire when the midnight chill hit, or a way to protect yourselves in case of aggressive wildlife, like what we just saw!?”

It was clear that the two hadn’t thought about any of it. They were just kids. Of course they hadn’t.

They likely thought themselves invincible, just like Jaune had when he’d been their age. Completely and utterly incapable of making a real mistake.

They’d been very, very close to it today.

They got lucky that Jaune and Winter had been able to rescue them in time.

“We’re sorry…” Lewis mumbled out, and Alyx, despite not saying anything, looked away, clearly feeling much the same.

That sentiment seemed to be enough to thaw some of the ice that had been hanging about Winter’s tone, and she let out a breath that was equal parts a release of anger and worry.

They might not have known Alyx and Lewis very long, but Jaune didn’t think he was alone in wanting to protect the two children who’d suddenly found themselves in their care. If they’d been hurt…

“Well, do not do so again, understood?” Winter asked them, and they both nodded. “Good. We’ll be doubling back to grab the supplies we left behind when we had to come and fetch you, but after that, we’ll be traveling towards the small crick that Jaune and myself located yesterday.”

The two kids nodded, and together, the four of them started making their way back towards the beach.

It was a trip that Jaune was expecting them to make in silence, and yet, halfway through, Lewis broke off from Alyx, and shuffled over towards him a tad awkwardly.

“U-Uhm…”

“What is it?” He tried to project himself as easygoing.

“Well… just…” Lewis took a breath, before looking up at him and smiling. “Thank you, Mister Jaune! For protecting us.”

It was odd how much that simple phrase affected him. After so very long of feeling like the bumbling idiot, the useless tagalong…

He’d saved someone.

He did his absolute best not to show how deeply he had been affected by Lewis’ words, tilting his head up so that the small number of tears gathering in his eyes didn’t spill.

“Hah…” He chuckled. “You’re welcome, Lewis.”

It was then that he cottoned onto the expression on Alyx’s face, who was watching all of this from her position two or three meters left of them. She’d been glaring over at him up until he turned to look at her.

And it wasn’t exactly a mystery why.

Jaune had enough siblings to know what was going on here. Alyx was wondering why she wasn’t being thanked for also moving to protect her brother. She had, after all, prepared to shield him with her own body. Even if she hadn’t the strength to fight back like Jaune could, she’d have done everything she could.

And that deserved commendation, in Jaune’s eyes.

“But y’know, Lewis, I think you should thank your sister, too.” Jaune nudged the boy, and he turned to look over at Alyx, who was now doing her best to pretend she’d not been staring at them the entire time. “She was going to protect you, too, wasn’t she?”

Lewis thought about that for a second, before he nodded his head with a smile on his face. “Yeah. She was.”

He walked over, and smiled. “Thanks, Alyx.”

“I…” Alyx looked away; a blush noticeable on her cheeks.

Neither Jaune nor Alyx commented on it, although, idly, Jaune thought he could see the tiniest of smiles on Winter’s lips as she looked back at the three of them; all of them following her back to the beach.

It was clear as day that Alyx didn’t trust them. Jaune didn’t exactly know why, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do anything about it.

He could make it past that spiky exterior.

He had a feeling a nice, caring girl laid behind it.

And he’d do what he could to meet her.

Chapter Text

They made the difficult decision to abandon their water source once it was clear that no else was coming. Jaune had a feeling that was due in large part to the fact that he’d touched that weird… time fruit, and that had launched them, seemingly, back into the past.

Team RWBY weren’t due to arrive for a while. Hopefully, no more than a few months.

…He just wasn’t too certain they were going to be that lucky.

Still, abandoning a source of water without knowing how easily another could be found was clearly not something Winter was keen on. They’d made more than a few ‘containers’ out of things like palm fronds and reeds to carry the water in, and they’d already made the decision that if they were running low and didn’t have another source lined up, they’d be coming back here as soon as they possibly could.

Winter used the Maiden’s Fire to rocket herself to the top of one of the nearby trees, taller than many around, and then marked the bark of the tree with fire, coloring it a dark black. In theory, she would be able to spot that difference from a distance, and let them more easily find this place.

Jaune wasn’t too sure on the logistics of that, but then, Winter was the specialist, and he wasn’t, so he just sort of shrugged and went along with it.

Jaune and Winter were the ones carrying all of the supplies, to be clear. They’d both agreed that making children do the work was either going to result in them getting cranky as all hell, or, just as likely, result in them dropping or misplacing the supplies at some point during their journey.

Jaune was familiar enough will hauling weight at this point, too, given that his armor weighed a good fourth his bodyweight. The containers of water didn’t impact Jaune much.

They ended up atop a tall cliff as they kept moving, one which hadn’t seemed terribly steep to Jaune, but one which the kids were struggling with. Alyx, of course, put up a tough front, as she always seemed to, but Lewis was clearly flagging.

“Hey, Winter,” He called out to her as quietly as he could. “I think we may need to slow down.”

Winter seemed surprised about that, although Jaune wasn’t much so about her reaction. She had, after all, likely spent the entirety of her life surrounded by military men and women; people who had no issues at all with something like this. Hell, people who wouldn’t have even considered something like this all that exerting.

Jaune would know; he’d had to become one of those people over the course of about a year and some change.

“Alright.” She nodded his way. “We’ll take a break once we make it to the top of this hill, you two.” Winter called out to Alyx and Lewis, and though the former looked frustrated that they’d realized she was struggling, the latter seemed happy to hear it.

As they approached the very top, however, Jaune had his breath taken away by something entirely different than the climb.

“Whoa…” He let out without even meaning to.

What stretched out before them was a grand and varied vista. Just in front of them laid the last little bits of their current biome, with palm trees, grass, and dirt. He’d sort of expected this entire place to look just like that, only…

To their right laid a forest that gleamed in the sun above, the leaves all a fantastic crimson color. It reminded Jaune of Forever Fall, except almost more spectacular. A little beyond that seemed to be a more normal forest, except for the titanic mushrooms which stuck out of the flora, towering above any of the trees.

To their left, however, was where things got weird.

Because there was a land of great peaks, and harsh valleys… but they were all made entirely of ice cream.

Jaune was doing his best not to let the kids see that. Mostly because a land made entirely of ice cream seemed like it would be a nightmare if there were insects of any kind.

And, y’know, dairy didn’t mix particularly well with any heat at all, and it was pretty balmy out.

It was possible it was magical ice cream; probable, even, but Jaune didn’t really want to go walking around in it, either.

It was while Jaune was distracted by that particular event – ice cream land – that he heard a skittering off to his right. He looked over, and sure enough, there was an odd, raccoon-like creature making off with Crocea Mors.

…

Hey, hold on…

“HEY!” He shouted out, startling the other three with him. “That’s mine!”

Unfortunately, shouting that out did not make the raccoon stop on a dime and return his weapon to him. It simply caused it to speed up, and run as quickly as it could in the opposite direction.

“Come back here!” Jaune shouted as he rushed ahead, giving chase through the trees.

The little bastard was quick! Then again, humans and faunus were both distance hunters, who relied on tiring out their prey in long chases. That would be Jaune’s plan, then. To run until this thing couldn’t anymore.

He slowed down, not worrying too much about keeping pace, and only making sure that the raccoon never left his line of sight. Idly, he noted that Winter and the kids had been entirely left behind, but eh, he knew which way he’d come, and if need be, he could light up a fire for them to track him via the smoke.

In the end, it turned out that persistence hunting only really worked on creatures that got tired over longer distances. Raccoons, it turned out, were not among those creatures.

Now, that wasn’t to say that Jaune couldn’t keep up. He was managing, just…

About as well as the raccoon was.

“Would you just…” He panted, only his semblance keeping him up at this point. “Stop running… and give me my stuff back!?”

The raccoon remained silent other than its own heavy breathing.

This did not particularly surprise him.

Eventually, however, he’d had just about enough. He powered as much of his aura into his legs as he could, surged forward, and leapt at the raccoon in front of him. He caught the creature by the waist, and dragged it down.

“A-AH!” The creature let out in a panic, even as it dropped Jaune’s weapon and began to laugh nervously. “Ah, uhm…”

“Wait, you can talk!?” He shook his head, realizing that really wasn’t important in that instant. “Y’know what, forget it. Give me that!”

Jaune scooped up Crocea Mors, and kept a firm grip on it. The raccoon looked rather frustrated to have lost its prize.

“…Dirty little thief.” Jaune panted out.

“I’m not a thief!” The raccoon seemed almost offended. “You didn’t seem to be using it at the moment!”

“Not using–” Jaune scoffed. “It was on my hip! How was I not using it?”

“It was not in your hands.”

“I had it around in case I needed it!”

“Then you weren’t using it!”

“Y’know what, sure, I wasn’t using it.” Jaune shook his head. “You’re still not allowed to just take it!”

“Well, I don’t see why not!”

Jaune gave up around there.

“Tell you what?” He shifted gears. “You can make it up to me. Is there anyone else who can talk in… this place?”

“Uhm… well, of course. There’re many places with many anyone’s.”

“Wait, really?”

“You missed the mice colonies?”

“What?”

“Nevermind.” The raccoon coughed into one paw. “But still; there are more of you?”

“Yes, there are–” Jaune caught himself. “Wait, how didn’t you see them? They were right next to me!”

“Well, I was focused on your item.”

“Oh, of course.” He sighed out. “Listen, just… can you take us to civilization, then?”

“I do not know this ‘civilization’,” the raccoon made air-quotes. “But I can take you to the land of the Red King, perhaps?”

King? That sounded like a civilization. Then again, this place was weird, so maybe they just didn’t have that word? Even though they had plenty of others?

Jaune just wasn’t questioning these things anymore.

“Sure.” He nodded his head. “Take us there.”

“Alright. Will you give me your item if I do?”

“No.”

“Hm.” The raccoon hummed. “Well, alright. I suppose you’ll owe me one.”

So, this world had the concept of ‘owing someone’, but not the concept of civilization?

Crappy place.

They ended up doubling back for a while after that, making their way back towards the cliff where Winter and the kids were. It didn’t take nearly to meet them as it had for him to cover so much distance, since the others had been coming their way, and they thusly met somewhere in the middle.

Jaune waved, and Winter nodded towards him.

“I see you caught your thief.”

“I am not a thief!” The raccoon claimed. “He was simply not using the object that I–”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jaune didn’t want to start this again. “But they’ve agreed to take us to someone called the Red King.”

“A king…” Winter seemed to be going through the same emotions he had been. “That sounds promising.”

“I thought the same.”

“Alright.” Winter nodded to the raccoon. “Take us there, then.”

/

The second – and far lengthier – journey was a bit more involved than the first. Where they had previously been walking across relatively tamed wilderness, now, they climbed small hills, bobbed and weaved around great vines, and ducked beneath large canopies.

All of them were a bright red in color, of course, since this place seemed to have a theme. The most concerning of those obstacles were certainly the roots, given that the tree’s bark was the normal brown, and yet the roots were a deep crimson.

It wasn’t technically a problem, but Jaune didn’t much like it.

“Ah, there we are!” The raccoon suddenly spoke out.

Jaune turned towards the direction one of its fingers was pointing, and sure enough, through the canopies of the many trees above them, he could barely make out the tip of a tall spire in the distance.

A castle, and, hopefully, a kingdom to go along with it.

He actually smiled, then, looking towards Winter to see her breathing in relief. She hid her emotions well, but it was clear she’d been worried that they were here all alone, with no one and nothing to guide them out of it.

Hopefully, they could get some real answers now.

The raccoon led them first to what seemed to be a castle town. It was a quaint place, with all different sorts of creatures hanging about. There was a creature who seemed to be perpetually holding onto both sides of its body, which heavily resembled clam shells. There was another that had the top half of a fish, and the bottom half of a horse.

Both were talking to each other like it was the most normal thing in the world.

The Ever After – assuming that was where this was – was really weird.

The entire place was also being patrolled by life-size nutcracker-men. This was oddly nostalgic for Jaune, because he’d watched a lot of Winter Festival movies as a kid that featured living nutcracker-people, and seeing them actually walking around was as neat as it was completely terrifying.

“Uhm…” Lewis was hiding behind Jaune, and he couldn’t really blame the boy for that. “Are they… mean?”

“Hm?” The raccoon turned around. “You mean the toy soldiers? No, as long as you’re not making trouble, they’re perfectly harmless.”

“Oh. That’s good.”

“Hey!” One of the toy soldiers rounded on their group. “It’s the troublemaker!”

Jaune, Winter, Lewis, and Alyx all looked down at the raccoon in front of them, who was currently being stared at by the entire square full of people. Nearly every toy soldier had drawn their weapon, and was pointing it towards them.

“Ah.” The raccoon cleared their throat. “Well… you see…”

Jaune could really only sigh.

/

They were escorted the rest of the way to the castle at spear-point. Jaune was doing his best to glare daggers into the back of the raccoon who was walking ahead of them all, who had, the moment they’d gotten in trouble, thrown the rest of them under the bus without a second thought.

“Halt!” The guard at the front of the convoy – if this was a convoy? Jaune didn’t really know military jargon all that well, despite training amongst the members of the Ace-Ops for so long – called out to them, and they did just that. “You are about to meet the Red King. You will behave yourselves in his presence, or you will be confined to the dungeons!”

Jaune and the other stayed silent, even as the raccoon themself continued to stutter out excuses as to how the soldiers “had the wrong raccoon”, or that they “were totally blowing things out of proportion”.

Those two things didn’t really match up, but then, this raccoon didn’t seem to be the best at making up excuses, either.

Eventually, the gate in front of them opened, and they stepped inside a rather… psychedelic room. It was like something out of one of those optical illusions Jaune had seen growing up. There were staircases that went up into the upper portions of the castle, but upside-down, and curving at impossible angles. There were spinning, swirling paths that led this way and that. There were doors hanging in the middle of nothing, that opened to nowhere.

Jaune was doing his best not to read into any of this all that much. That way laid madness, and Jaune had enough of that already with the rest of the Ever After.

Once they stepped into the main corridor, they were greeted with yet another nutcracker-person. Yet this man seemed a bit more regal than the others. His clothing seemed tailored. He wore gleaming golden tassels, and a long, flowing cape. Atop his head rested a gleaming crown.

This, Jaune gathered, was the Red King.

“Ah.” The Red King sighed, and he sounded almost tired. “Jinxy.”

The raccoon in front of them wasn’t meeting the king’s eyes. “Red King…”

Huh. Apparently, the raccoon’s name was Jinxy.

…Was it racist that Jaune had assumed the raccoon’s name was just ‘raccoon’? Yeah, actually, that probably was pretty racist.

“Have you not learned your lesson after the last eleven times you’ve been sent to the dungeons?”

“I, ah… er…”

The Red King sighed. “Guards, take them to the dungeons. Lock them away for a full descent this time. See if that will teach them.”

Jinxy grumbled out under their breath as they were escorted away, brought to a staircase that traveled down, but at an impossible angle. They somehow perfectly navigated the obstacle without any issue, walking right down and off the edge like it was nothing, and not falling to their dooms.

Jaune… was doing his best to take this all in stride. It got harder with every new thing.

“Uhm…” Lewis suddenly called out, and Jaune was initially panicked that he’d spoken out of turn.

Instead, the Red King turned back to them with a warm smile. “What is it, young one?”

“Oh, uhm…” Lewis looked up at Jaune, seemingly wondering if it was alright to say whatever he wanted to. Jaune nodded down to him, even if he was pretty sure he didn’t have much say in the matter. It was good that Lewis looked to him for guidance.

“How long is a full descent?”

“Ah, you wish to know how long your guide has been sentenced to the dungeon?” The king nodded. “The time it takes for the light in the sky to fully descend, and rise again, is a full descent.”

So… they were locking him up for a single day?

Huh. The Red King seemed to be a rather forgiving person.

“Okay.” Lewis nodded his head. “Thank you for answering.”

The Red King laughed. “How very polite. It is not often I get those with such manners in this hall.”

It was good to hear the man sounding almost jovial. Jaune had gotten a… while not a negative impression, certainly not a terribly grand one from being escorted into the building at the tip of a spear.

“Now, what is it that the four of you have come here for?” The man asked. “According to my guards, Jinxy spoke of you asking them to take you here.”

Ah. Once again, the raccoon had sold them out. On this particular front, however, that might have been a positive.

“We’re trying to figure out how to leave this place.”

“The King’s Acre? Well, you walk until you’re no longer within it.”

Winter stepped forward this time. “No, this world. The Ever After itself.”

The Red King’s eyes widened, and he nodded his head slowly, subtly, like he wasn’t exactly shocked by what they’d said.

“Ah. I see. So, you are not denizens of this place, are you?”

“We are not.” Winter was taking charge in the conversation, and Jaune was willing to let her. She knew what she was doing.

Or, well, at the very least, she pretended like she knew what she was doing really, really well.

“Hm. Then allow me to ask; how did you arrive here in the first place?”

“We were in a dimension created by some sort of genie.” Winter spoke, and while she did, Jaune snuck a glance at Alyx and Lewis.

They weren’t entirely surprised. So, like he suspected, they, too, had come here through something to do with the Relics as well.

“While there, we… fell.”

“Hm…” The king rubbed at his chin. “I see. How odd. I have never once heard such a tale, but then, I have never once encountered someone from outside the Ever After, either. Very well, I shall tell you how to leave this place.”

Jaune’s eyes widened, and he turned towards Lewis – who still clung to him – and smiled down at him reassuringly.

“But,” The king’s voice stymied any further joy. “I wish for you to earn said information. I will ask that you partake in a game with me.”

“What sort of game?” Winter inquired.

“A simple game.” The king chuckled. “One which will pit you and your wits against mine own. We shall each control a contingent of soldiers, with the same skills and power. The goal will be to defeat the opponent using superior strategy.”

Ah. So… they were going to be playing him in chess, then?

Jaune had a feeling that Winter was going to be pretty good at that.

The King conjured forth a table from out of nowhere, upon which already stood a good fifty or so figures. They seemed to be just… toy soldiers, but small. They had the same weapons, the same outfits, everything.

And yet, as Winter stepped forward, seemingly to sit down in the chair opposite the one the king was walking towards, Alyx blitzed right by her, and sat herself down in front of the king.

“Oh?” The man chuckled. “Are you the one who wish to play against me, young lady?”

“Alyx–” Jaune made to start, but before he could get a word in…

“I am.” She answered, and Jaune could do nothing but sigh.

Winter didn’t seem terribly pleased, either, and yet she walked over to the table. She stood beside Alyx, and then looked to the Red King.

“May I advise her?”

“I don’t need your–”

“You may.” The Red King nodded. “After all, I’ve played this game many a time. It wouldn’t be fair if she did not have some advantage to counteract my knowledge.”

Winter nodded, and then looked down at the board below.

Jaune stood back with Lewis as Winter and Alyx were told the rules. They weren’t particularly complicated. It played like a mix of chess and checkers, where the pieces moved according to what type they were, but if a piece knocked out another, that player could make another move. It was all about, seemingly, setting up massive combinations, and not allowing one’s opponent to do the same to them.

As much as she’d been gung-ho about being the one to play, it seemed as if Alyx was a bit uncertain as to what she wanted to do. She looked at the pieces, reached for each individual one, and then pulled her hand back.

She was feeling in over her head. Jaune would know; he’d been there.

He turned to Lewis.

“You should encourage her.”

The boy’s eyes widened, and he turned to look up at Jaune with some confusion. “I don’t think she’d want to hear from me.”

Jaune almost laughed. Kids could be a bit clueless about these things, it seemed. “Trust me.”

Lewis didn’t look like he believed Jaune, but he did seem to trust him. He sucked in a breath, and then cupped his hands in front of his mouth, before yelling, “Y-You can do it, Alyx!”

His sister jumped, before looking back at Lewis with a somewhat embarrassed expression. She appeared annoyed on the surface, but the way she fidgeted in her chair as she turned back around, and the way she was suddenly looking a lot livelier and more confident, told Jaune she had very much appreciated her brother’s words.

Jaune had been pretty sure she would.

In the end, the game was a lot closer than Jaune would’ve assumed. Winter was a good tactician, but the King’s experience was coming into play as well. He set up a few combinations that took out huge swaths of Alyx and Winter’s board, and it was only a heroic play at the end of the game that allowed Alyx and Winter to finally claim victory over the Red King.

Unfortunately, judging by the frustrated look on Alyx’s face, it had not been her idea that had won them the match. If anything, she likely felt helpless, like she’d had to rely on Winter to bail them out.

It was a touch cruel, even if it was also the truth. Still, Jaune made a mental note to encourage her later.

“Ah, it seems I’ve been defeated!” The Red King guffawed, clearly having enjoyed the game itself. “Oh, well. That is life, is it not? Now, then, seeing as how you’ve fulfilled my selfish request, I see no reason to not answer your question.”

He cleared his throat. “If you wish to escape the Ever After, you must make your way to the tree. That which towers over our land. It is said that there is a gateway there that can lead one outside the Ever After. I am told, however, that there exists a catch. I would not personally know; I myself have never been.”

Jaune frowned, but was ultimately unsurprised. He’d been hoping the man would lead them to a magical door and wish them goodbye, but things didn’t seem like they were going to be that simple.

“But, before you leave, allow me to give you this piece of advice…”

“One does not find the tree;” The Red King’s words were calm, yet carried an undercurrent of something Jaune could not fully identify. “The tree finds them.”

With that, the Red King pushed his way up from his seat, and gave a small, courteous bow towards them.

“And with that, I bid thee adieu. Goodbye, children. Safe tidings.”

/

They exited out of the castle a lot more calmly than they’d entered, which was helped by the fact that no one was poking them with spears.

Jaune, for his part, was mostly focused on watching the kids, who were walking in front of him.

Alyx was silently fuming, doing her best to pretend like she was fine. Jaune would know; he’d done that exact things more times than he could count as a child. Lewis tried to catch up and talk to her, but she shunned her brother away.

Jaune could only really sigh.

“It appears as if my help was unappreciated.”

Jaune breathed out a quiet laugh as Winter stepped in time with him at his side.

“I’d say it wasn’t unappreciated. I’m pretty sure she’s just frustrated she needed it at all.”

“Everyone needs help sometimes.”

“Yes, you can say that now. But did you think the same way when you were her age?”

“Ah.” Winter nodded her head. “I suppose you’re correct on that account.”

“Mm.” He was silent a while. “…I’d say give it time. I think she’s just frustrated that she has to rely on the two of us so much. She wants to be able to prove herself. And I think she wants Lewis to look up to her; not that she’ll ever admit it.”

Winter hummed. “I only hope her insistence on involving herself in such matters will not cost us.”

“Yeah…” Jaune muttered.

“You can say that again.”

Chapter Text

Making their way to the tree was, it turned out, a lot easier said than done.

The woods of the King’s Acre grew denser the further out they got from the castle town, and while both Winter and Jaune could walk for hours on end without rest, Alyx and Lewis were children.

What was more, they were also children who weren’t training to fight giant monsters, which meant they had – relative to their own – no stamina at all.

Jaune didn’t begrudge them that. Winter didn’t, either, but Alyx looked at the both of them like they were judging her constantly. She seemed to take every single time that she was incapable of keeping up with them as a slight against her. Jaune really would’ve rather sat her down and told her the truth; that she was a young girl, and that her not being able to keep up with trained Hunters was not her fault.

He was just concerned that that would result in a negative outcome regardless of his words.

Winter seemed to be taking a similar approach. She occasionally spoke with Alyx, but was usually brushed off.

The opposite was true of Lewis.

“Here, y’see this?” Jaune gestured towards the base of his sword. “When you’re cutting firewood, you’d normally want an axe. I don’t have one, though, so I’m using my sword not as a blade, but as a wedge. I’m using my body as little as possible. I’m letting the bulk of the blade split the wood.”

Lewis nodded along, a veritable sponge for information. Jaune found himself smiling as Lewis took up Crocea, and, using the method he’d just taught him, managed to split the wood just a little bit.

“Nicely done!” He laughed. “A lot better than I did on my first try.”

Lewis seemed surprised about that. “Really?”

“Would you believe me if I said I used to be pretty wimpy?”

The boy was flabbergasted. “Y-You!?”

That had Jaune laughing even harder, shaking his head. It also had him feeling a bit better about himself. He was often caught in the past; unable to reconcile the person he was now with the person he’d once been, at Beacon. The person whose weakness had cost his partner her life, whose weakness had been a hindering factor in their battle at Haven, whose weakness…

Whose weakness had been one of the reasons behind why Penny had chosen to die.

And yet now, Lewis looked at him and couldn’t fathom a world where he had once been weak. It was humbling, in a way, even if he knew a lot of other people would’ve let such a thought go to their heads.

Jaune had been the type, once. Back when he’d first started at Beacon, and been so full of himself the moment he passed initiation. He’d rejected help from Pyrrha, put his team in a bad scenario, and nearly gotten himself kicked out of Beacon.

He’d made it work, in the end. They all had, at least for a time.

…

“Are you alright, Mr. Jaune?”

Now that made him feel old. He bristled somewhat, even as he looked over at the curious Lewis and sighed.

“I’m fine, thank you.” He stood up. “We should have enough firewood for now. Let’s head back.”

Lewis nodded his head, and they made the trek back to their encampment settled by a small stream they’d found snaking through the Red Woods.

They were, at the moment, just sort of… sitting around. Mostly, because no matter how much they walked in the direction of the tree, it didn’t actually seem to grow any closer. Given that this place was pretty much confirmed to be magical at this point, Jaune wasn’t really shocked.

He was annoyed, certainly, but not shocked.

And so, for lack of anything else to do, they set up camp, and stayed put until they came up with a better plan.

That whole ‘coming up with a better plan’ part of said plan was proving elusive.

He and Lewis made it back to camp, and then sat down on some of the felled trees they’d set up as makeshift benches. The wood itself behaved much like normal wood, even if it was a bright red in coloration. Jaune was glad it wasn’t a darker shade, given that if it had been, the whole affair would’ve seemed a bit more macabre.

He was just doing his best to hope that trees weren’t sentient beings in this world or something.

Winter nodded to him as Lewis wandered over towards where Alyx was attempting to catch fish in the stream. She’d had a single success thus far over the course of three days, but had apparently decided that it was all she was going to be doing.

Jaune honestly felt for her. She was in that stage of her life where one thought they had everything figured out, and that life was simple and easy. When one was thirteen, they thought they knew everything. When one got older – as Jaune had – they realized rather rapidly that they didn’t know anything at all, that no one actually knew anything, and that everyone was just kind of making things up as they went along.

Jaune had been an annoying teenager himself, so he wasn’t about to judge Alyx for her pride.

Winter… was growing less and less understanding by the day.

“She refuses to heed my advice.” She hissed out between clenched teeth. “Her strategy of catching fish has seen little success. People have been doing such since time immemorial! Methods have been discovered to make such much easier!”

Jaune knew that, and Alyx probably did, too. She just had too much ego to ask for help, or to even accept it.

“You didn’t have a phase like that?” He asked, trying to lighten the mood.

“Of course not.” Winter huffed. “I was not given the choice of having such a phase. I was raised to never show weakness, or arrogance. To be confident, assured, but never boastful, never self-aggrandizing. The things my father got away with he did so because he was an established name. as the person who was to be taking over the SDC, I was taught that I would have to start fresh; build a rapport with those who would one day work beneath and alongside me.”

It was… more information than he’d really expected. Winter seemed to realize she’d gone off on a bit of a tangent as well, for she cleared her throat, and then said, “Regardless, no, I was never quite so insufferable.”

Jaune snorted. “I was.”

“Then I am quite glad that you have grown.”

Jaune couldn’t quite argue against that sentiment.

Over by the river, Alyx and Lewis began yelling, apparently having successfully managed to skewer something. Winter nodded, and stood from her position, making her way over to assist them.

Which left Jaune alone to tend to the camp.

It was as Jaune was doing nothing of remote import that a scuttling was heard off to his right. Jaune turned to face the brush, suspecting that maybe Alyx or Lewis had broken off from the crick, but no…

It was… a cat.

To be fair, it was clearly a magic cat. It was colored a bright cyan and magenta in alternating colors, like some kind of psychedelic chessboard, and its eyes seemed to stare into Jaune’s soul. Despite that, it was a cute little bugger, and Jaune, without even really thinking about it, held out his hand, and chirped to get the cat to come over and let him pet it.

It did just that, walking over so that Jaune could run a hand across its back. It hummed in satisfaction – which wasn’t quite a purr, but then, maybe cats just did things differently in the Ever After – as it arched its back, and Jaune scratched behind its ears a bit.

Eventually, after a two- or three-minute-long petting session, Jaune pulled his hand away, and the cat sat back on its haunches, smiling.

“Well, that was quite marvelous!” It spoke.

Jaune damn-near rocketed backwards with how hard he jumped up. As things were, he fell off of the log, hit his head on the ground, and groaned out in both pain and embarrassment.

“Ah, my apologies,” The cat bowed as it walked over to him, appearing above him and framing the sky. “I did not mean to alarm you. Given I have not seen you before, am I correct in assuming you were not under the impression that I could speak?”

“Uh… yeah.” Jaune admitted, rubbing at his head as he sat up.

“Well, I can speak.” The cat announced.

Jaune felt he hadn’t really needed to say that, but… okay.

“So… who are you, exactly?”

“I am the Curious Cat,” The cat bowed, and yeah, that name checked out, Jaune supposed. “And I saw the group of you here. I realized I had never seen anything quite like you. And so, here I am.”

Curious indeed.

“Might I ask what you are?” The cat stepped forward, before sitting down right in front of Jaune.

“I’m uh… human.”

“Human. I see. What is a human?”

Oh. This was like when Jaune had been hanging out with his youngest sisters as a kid. Constant, never ending ‘why’s’ and ‘what’s’.

Before he could get caught in that cyclical hell, though, the Cat hummed.  

“Ah, but it seems the skies see fit to deny me your answer.”

Jaune’s brow furrowed, and he looked up. Sure enough, there were gray clouds suddenly beginning to gather overhead.

“Is it going to storm?”

“Well, in a manner of speaking.”

“And that means…?”

“Well, hopefully, the storm is not here for you. It will likely pass you by without even–”

Thunder boomed out across the forest, and the leaves in the trees around them rustled.

“Hm.” The Curious Cat hummed out. “It appears that it is here for you.”

“What!?” Jaune called out, more than a little flabbergasted. He’d gone from relaxing to being bombarded by the knowledge that cats talked here to suddenly being thrust into… whatever this was! “Why?”

“Well, I cannot know.” The cat shrugged, which was an odd thing to watch a cat do. “I have not known any of you long. Ah, but, before it takes you; know that you have to come to a resolution between the two of you!”

He was… pointing his paw to Jaune and Winter? Why? What did they have to resolve? Jaune was fairly certain that they were getting on decently well.

“Until you resolve whatever it is that hangs over your heads, you won’t be able to–”

Whatever the cat said, however, was cut off entirely as reality stopped.

/

Jaune just sort of… was somewhere else.

He’d not fathomed the exact moment where he’d stopped being in the Red Woods, and had ended up wherever this was, but he was there now.

And exactly where he was…

He was still in a forest, but this was a different kind. Surrounding him were grand, decaying willow trees, with their branches weeping downwards, blocking the sky above from view. It was dark, terribly so, enough that the entire scene seemed to almost be cast in gray.

Actually… that might not have been the trees at all.

Everything was gray.

“Arc?”

He jumped, yet again, and blew breath out between his teeth to try and calm himself down. He turned to see Winter looking even more confused than he was.

Oh, right. She’d heard literally nothing of what the cat had been saying, had she?

“Where are we?”

“I don’t know.” He answered honestly. “I know that it has something to do with the fact that it was about to storm a second or so ago, but… I just sort of showed up here, without even realizing it.”

Winter hummed in answer, which told him that she likely had had the same experience.

He told Winter as much as the cat had told him. It wasn’t much.

“A talking cat, then?”

“Yep.” Jaune had left out the part where it had scared the crap out of him. “Not sure I know what’s going on there, but then, this place has pretty much been weird from minute one. I’m used to it by now.”

Winter nodded, before turning around and getting a lay of the land. Jaune did much the same. He stepped towards the edge of the dark woods surrounding them, and tried to wrestle with some of the knotted branches to form a way out.

Instead, where his arm touched, the trees seemed to move to reinforce. He pulled his arm away, then tried again in another spot. The same thing occurred. He brought out the blade of Crocea, neutered and broken as it was, and tried to hack away at them, but nothing happened.

Behind him, he heard the crackling of fire, and he turned back around to see Winter having apparently been channeling her Maiden’s fire upon the branches.

She was having about as good of luck as he was.

“Anything?” He asked, just to say something.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

Jaune walked back over to the middle of the area surrounding them, and looked up at the sky, trying to see if he could make out the sun, or any source of light. They were illuminated, given that they weren’t exactly in pitch darkness, but… it was like the brightness had been turned up on a videogame. There was no light emanating from anywhere at all. The place was lit, without reason.

Then again, given this was the Ever After, Jaune wasn’t sure why he was surprised by that.

“He said… well, the cat said, that until we come to a resolution, we’re trapped here.”

Winter visibly bristled at that. She drew her saber, summoned forth a great Megoliath, and had it charge the vines.

It struck them dead on, but simply dissipated, the force of the impact enough to crush its skull.

Winter was shaking.

“What are we supposed to admit, or resolve!?” Winter shouted, sounding angrier than anything. “This entire place… I cannot stand it!”

Jaune… he wasn’t quite where Winter was, emotionally, but he understood her feelings. This place was aggravating in that it had no set rules, no set boundaries. Just when they thought they’d figured something out, something else like this happened, and completely mucked the whole affair up.

They sat there for a while after that. Jaune wasn’t sure how long. It had to have been at least fifteen or twenty minutes by the time he was so frustrated with sitting around that he stood, if only to act.

They were stuck there, in that tiny clearing, until they… admitted something.

Jaune wasn’t really sure what it was they had to admit. Was it something they needed to share with one another? Were they somehow on uneven ground?

Idly, he realized that this place was getting to him. His breathing was quickened, and his blood was pumping.

This place was creepy. Terrifying, even.

…

…It couldn’t be that simple, could it?

But maybe it could. After all, they both knew it, but neither of them had said a thing about it.

In that case…

“I’m scared.” He uttered.

Winter turned to him with slightly widened eyes. She seemed… oddly flummoxed by what Jaune had just said. He wouldn’t blame her. They’d, the both of them, been keeping up appearances for a while now.

Maybe that was what this was all about. Maybe that was why they were here.

“About… this place?” She asked.

“No.” Jaune took a step forward, and looked up at the sky above him. “About where we are. About everything.”

It was an oddly freeing thing to say aloud. Jaune hadn’t realized how much it would feel like a load off his shoulders.

“That…” Winter looked away.

Jaune wasn’t finished though.

“I’m scared about what’s happening to my friends in Vacuo. I’m scared about how far back in time we’ve been sent. I’m scared about the fact that I don’t understand anything that’s happening in this world, and… and I’m scared that we’re not going to be able to get back, no matter what we do. That we’re stuck here. And… perhaps most of all… I’m scared of what Ruby, and everyone else will think when they learn what happened to Penny. When they learn… that it was me who killed her.”

Winter didn’t look back up. She just…

Spoke.

“…I am often thought of as an inhuman, unfeeling automaton.” Winter began. “Among those soldiers who have served under me, I have earned many nicknames. It’s normal for superior officers to be referred to with demeaning titles, and most allow it. It fosters camaraderie amongst the infantry. But the thing that struck to the core of me was that their most common nicknames for me were synonyms of heartless. I understand why. I have never questioned the reasoning behind such. But…”

“I am human. Like anyone else.” She exhaled, allowing herself to fall somewhat, so that she was sat down on the gray ground beneath her. “I am human… and I am afraid.”

Jaune heard the smallest of creaks from the wood behind him, and he knew that they were on the right track. Just a little bit more…

…No, this wasn’t just about getting out of here, although that was important. At the end of the day, it was important for the both of them to be honest with one another.

It was important for them to be able to admit the fact that they were both terrified of what might happen. Of what had already happened.

“I am afraid that we have been sent so far back in time that no matter how long we wait here, we will never see my sister and her friends again.” Winter continued, and Jaune nodded as light began to stream in from above, tiny glimmers of it. “I am scared that even if we do return, we will return out of our own time, effectively adrift in a world we know nothing of, and have no place in. I am scared that we won’t be able to return home to Remnant at all, and that the world will die without my being able to do a thing. But for myself… most of all…”

She laughed, then. It held little mirth, but perhaps there was a small amount of genuine amusement lurking beneath.

“I was scared to admit I was scared. That I did not know everything.”

The trees around them creaked and cracked as their leaves and branches subsided. The light from above became almost blinding, and Jaune had a feeling that it was going to encompass them fully. That once it had, they would be released, let back into the Ever After from…

Well, from wherever this was.

Despite it all, despite how bad this had all seemed at first…

At the end of the day… that hadn’t been all that bad.

“Well…” He let out an exhausted breath. “This has certainly been something.”

Winter chuckled at his joke. That… might have been the first time that had happened.

Perhaps it wasn’t just Jaune who was looking at Winter in a different light, now.

Perhaps it was Winter able to see him differently, too.

…Well, those were thoughts for later.

Alyx, Lewis, that weird cat… Jaune needed to get back to them.

The light engulfed them, until all he could see was white.

But Jaune was smiling, despite it all.

Chapter Text

They emerged outside, back in the forest they’d been walking through. It was quite odd, to Jaune, at least, for their surroundings to go from that almost monochrome gray to the bright and vibrant Ever After.

Still, the thing that stuck out most to him was that it was quiet.  

This would not normally have been odd; in fact, a loud forest would’ve been far more disconcerting.

The problem was that they had had travelling companions, who had, up until what felt like just a few minutes ago, been with them in this very spot.

And now…

Alyx, Lewis, and the cat were all gone.

Winter noticed, too, and she looked around.

“Any sign of them?”

“None.” He answered, biting down on his bottom lip. “What…”

Winter clicked her tongue, before launching herself into the air with the Maiden’s fire. She looked around from a higher vantage point, and Jaune called up to her.

“See anyone!?”

“I see smoke in the distance!” Winter announced, which was a major deal, given that smoke meant fire, and fire meant civilization… or, well, hopefully. It could’ve also meant a forest fire, but then, they would just have to hope it didn’t.

Winter landed next to him, and immediately, she started setting out a plan. “It’s due west. We’ll search the immediate area for the others first, but if we don’t find them, we can make our way there.”

Jaune nodded his head, before trying to get some idea of the time they’d been gone.

“It didn’t feel like that much time,” Jaune noted. “But by the position of the sun, it seems we were gone a while.”

“Two or three hours, perhaps?” Winter noted along with him. “We should hurry. If it’s been even a few hours, then tracks will already be growing much fainter.”

The two of them set about trying to find anything of intrigue. He dug through the underbrush, occasionally on his hands and knees, in search of anything that might give them some idea as to the twin’s location. Winter searched from the tops of the nearby boughs, but didn’t seem to find much of value.

 In the end, it was Jaune who spotted a few footprints in some nearby mud, which led west; the same direction as Winter’s smoke.

And so, they followed them.

They only walked for twenty or so minutes before the scenery around them began to shift. Gone were the lush forests of greens and browns. In its place came a forest, true, but one of dark blues, and glowing lanternfly’s. The insects themselves glowed all different colors, and they were huge, far bigger than any that Jaune had ever seen growing up in Domremy.

Despite that, they were of a calm temperament, and Jaune held out his hand for one to land on. It was the size of his palm, and its thorax, which lit up, was actually a light bulb, screwed into the rest of its body. It had a wick inside and everything.

Jaune just laughed. This whole place was ridiculous.

After thirty or so seconds of resting on his hand, the insect flew off, and Jaune realized that Winter hadn’t stopped, and was now quite far ahead of him.

He hoofed it to catch up with her, and the two of them kept on.

Their environment now was an odd thing. Mushrooms and other fungi were the largest mainstays. All around them, mushrooms of bigger and bigger sizes were growing, to the point that they were beginning to entirely dwarf Jaune and Winter both in height. They passed a particular fungus that looked like it could’ve rivaled some of the great redwood trees that grew in the middle portions of Sanus. It towered overhead, and Jaune could see moths the size of cars roosting in the growths.

Jaune hoped – nay, prayed – that they were not carnivorous. He really did not want to be fighting off giant killer moths right now.

Luckily, the insects didn’t so much as move from their positions, and so Jaune and Winter passed underneath unaccosted. He couldn’t help but marvel at it all, though. How utterly alien this place was.

It was… disconcerting to walk around in a place and not know whether or not he could encounter something dangerous. Surely, out in the forests of Domremy, where he and his sisters had often played as children, they’d been told to watch out for things like Bobcats, Bears, and other such fauna – and Grimm too, of course – but such had become… normalized.

Bears and bobcats, Beowolves and Boarbatusks… they became a fact of life.

And yet, this place obeyed none of those same rules that Jaune had grown used to.

It was humbling.

He said as much to Winter as they surmounted a short, but rather wide fungus that was growing directly in front of them.

“I cannot disagree.” Winter stated simply, accepting a hand from him as he hoisted her up onto the ledge. “Were we not in such a rush, I would love to stop and smell the proverbial roses. Alas, we are.”

Jaune grunted out under his breath in agreement, and they kept going.

In the end, it didn’t take them that long to find the place sending up smoke. It, like a lot of other things in this forest, was a giant mushroom. But it was a giant mushroom that had been hollowed out, and made into a quaint abode.

And standing outside, lounging tiredly, was the cat from before.

“Ah, you two!” He called out to them, strolling over with the casual lethargy that all cats seemed to possess. “I was beginning to think the storm had consumed you entirely, but no, it seems you’re quite alright!”

“We handled it.” Jaune said, mostly because he was pretty sure Winter wouldn’t want to discuss the situation much beyond that. “Where are Alyx and Lewis?”

“Oh, they’re inside, speaking with a friend of mine.” The cat said. “He’s quite helpful with these kinds of things. When someone has questions about themselves that they can’t quite manage to answer, he comes to their aid.”

“That’s great and all…” Jaune muttered out. “But… did Alyx and Lewis have questions about themselves they couldn’t answer?”

“I suspected it was only Alyx,” the cat stated, humming. “But lo and behold, it seems as if the other human, too, was questioning himself. They’re both in somewhat of a trance; confronting themselves.”

“…What?”

The Curious Cat smiled a touch mischievously. “Perhaps you’d like to try yourselves?”

“I think we’ve gone through enough introspection today.” Winter spoke out curtly.

The cat laughed. “Maybe you have. Come, then. They’re just in here.”

The cat led them through the hollowed-out door in the mushroom in front of them, which was draped with curtains that prevented seeing inside from outside.

“Hm?”

Jaune’s heart skipped a beat as he saw who he presumed was the person the cat had been referring to earlier. It was just…

Well, they, like many of the creatures they’d encountered so far in this glade of mushrooms, were a giant insect.

It had three eyes; that was the first thing Jaune noticed. All of them glowing in the low light of the room. Its head had short antennae coming out at the top, and its body was that of a chubby grub. Its upper torso was almost like that of a humanoid mantis, but Jaune found the creature to be rather odd-looking in its totality.

Of course, he would not give voice to this.

“Hmmm.” The insectoid creature reverberated outwards. “I am known as the Herbalist. Who are you?”

“Jaune Arc.” He smiled, trying to be kind.

“Winter Schnee.” Winter, seemingly, had the same idea.

“These two,” The Curious Cat stepped around them, and the Herbalist’s gaze turned to him. “Are with those two. Apparently, they’re their guardians.”

“I see.” The Herbalist turned back towards another room, and as Jaune peered into it, he noticed that Alyx and Lewis were sat on the floor, seemingly in some deep trance. “They’re currently facing themselves. I believe they will awaken soon.”

“…Define soon?” Jaune asked.

The Herbalist barked out a laugh. “Impatient, are you?”

“We’ve simply had a long day already.” Winter came to his defense.

“Hm. Well, if you’d like to pass the time, I do believe that you,” The Herbalist pointed towards Jaune. “Have a need to face yourself.”

“Huh?”

The Herbalists lips, already smiling, turned upwards further. “How about it? Would you like to experience what they are?”

Jaune… wasn’t really certain. A need to face himself? What did that even mean?

“What would that entail?”

“I cannot say.” The Herbalist shook its head. “It is different for everyone. And I know nothing of your problems. You will simply have to find out.”

The Herbalist held out some odd pipe. It was… a hookah, perhaps? Jaune knew of them very vaguely. They’d visited Vacuo when Jaune had been a young kid – Saphron had been thinking about applying for college there – and Jaune had seen a few older gentlemen smoking them.

“Hold out your hand.”

Jaune did after a moment’s more hesitation. He looked back to Winter, and she seemed… not entirely supportive, but neither was she against what he was doing.

If she’d thought it a stupid idea, Jaune was confident she’d have spoken up.

So… he held out his hand.

The herbalist took its hookah, and took off the nozzle. Then, it produced another from, seemingly, nowhere at all, and screwed that on.

“Take a breath.” He said simply.

Jaune had done well his entire life avoiding any sorts of drug or tobacco use, but… well, magical drugs in an alternative dimension probably didn’t count.

…Hopefully.

“Remember,” Winter spoke, and Jaune turned to see her out of the corner of his eye. “Do not lose yourself. Stay true to who you are; the same as in that odd forest we were caught within.”

He nodded in response, took the hookah, and inhaled the smoke.

A second later, he was out.

/

When Jaune awoke, he was no longer in the Herbalists hut.

In fact, he wasn’t anywhere at all, it seemed.

He was floating in some sort of endless dark void, with psychedelic colors burning into and out of existence in spots all around him, like smoky ripples on the water.

He stood from off of the ‘ground’, and tried to get some idea of… well, what he was supposed to do. He’d been told this was going to be about facing himself, which sounded like some sort of therapy, maybe, and Gods knew Jaune probably needed that.

And then, of course, a new figured materialized from out of the ether.

It was Jaune.

Or, well, it was a Jaune. It wasn’t him as he was now, but him as he had been. When he’d been seventeen and stupid, coming into Beacon Academy with nothing but a dream and the idea that he would somehow automatically be good at all of this.

“Well, well,” His shadow spoke out. “We’ve certainly looked better, haven’t we? How much sleep have we been getting?”

Jaune wasn’t really sure what he wanted to say to that. If this was him – or, well, if it was actually him, as in they shared thoughts – then he would know how much sleep he’d been getting.

So, Jaune tried that.

“Wouldn’t you know?”

“Ah, I suppose we do.” His shadow laughed. “Not enough. We’ve been run ragged for months now, but it’s really catching up to us now, isn’t it?”

It was the truth. Jaune was… exhausted.

“Yeah.”

“And frankly, I don’t think anyone could blame us. Well, actually, that’s not true, is it?”

Jaune looked up at his shadow, and the man – him – shook his head.

“Just about everyone blames us, don’t they?”

Jaune’s heart stopped, and a chill ran through him.

“After all, what have we ever been able to do?” His shadow questioned. “When our friends and allies needed us, we could never truly be there for them. Always playing second fiddle, always the comic relief, right? The lovable idiot, stuck in the tree while his friends fight for their lives, was that it?”

The line was one he’d almost forgotten saying. For it had happened so very long ago. Two years, in all honesty, but it was a length of time that felt like an eternity, what with how much had actually occurred during their time after Beacon.

“In fact, we’ve never been able to help anyone. That’s the entire reason we’re so crazy about trying to keep these kids safe.”

“That’s…”

“Am I wrong? C’mon, of course I’m not. I’m you. Alyx and Lewis? Please. We couldn’t care less about them. What we care about is finally not failing someone. Finally, being able to do some good, no matter how hopeless of an endeavor that really is. We’ve been weak our whole lives. Never able to figure out what it was we wanted to be until it was too late. We wanted to be, what, a firefighter, then a policeman, then a doctor, then a teacher… isn’t being a Huntsman just the newest in a string of crazy ideas?”

It… what the figment of his mind was conjuring before him…

It was his own thoughts. Those that haunted him in the dead of night, when he could not find slumber. Those that dogged down his heels at every step.

His friends… He felt like he’d failed them. That he’d done nothing but fail them. And now… now here he was, faced with a manifestation of himself just telling him outright.

“Do not lose yourself. Stay true to who you are.”

Winter’s words returned to him in that moment. It was… it wasn’t quite a shock, so much as a jolt that his system had desperately needed. For a moment, he’d nearly succumbed to his own shadow; to the darker recesses of his own mind made manifest.

But this…

This was just his shadow. Those parts of him that the light could never touch.

“No.” Jaune said, shaking his head. “That’s not true.”

“Not true?” His shadow laughed. “It’s nothing but true! You’ve always been jumpy, picking the next best thing after you got bored; it’s–”

“No.” Jaune stood up from where he’d been kneeling, finding his strength coming back to him. “Maybe at the beginning, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I accept that. But… all of those careers, all of those options I thought about as a child… do you know what was the one constant?”

He found a strength in his own words, and he took a step forward. His shadow seemed rather perturbed by the action.

“I wanted to help people.”

Those words seemed to settle the entire space around them. It wasn’t much, but he could feel the way that the smoke had begun to still in how much it was stirring; as if time itself had begun to slow.

“Even as a child, I knew I wasn’t content to sit back and live a quiet life.” Jaune said, and in that moment, he looked down at his own open palm, and clenched it into a fist. “I wanted to make a difference from the word ‘go’.”

“And what a difference you’ve made.” His shadow sneered. “How many people have you really helped?”

“I’ve helped hundreds.” Jaune argued back, and he could see his shadow on the back foot, now. “During the Breach, I pushed back Grimm with my team. During our missions in Atlas, I helped out civilians from all walks of life. During the evacuations, I helped escort thousands of people from what would’ve otherwise been certain death. Yes… I’ve failed to save some of my closest friends. Pyrrha, Penny, and in a way, all of Team RWBY as well… but that doesn’t mean I’ve never saved anyone.”

His shadow’s expression changed, then. Gone was the mocking energy that had hung about him the entire time. Instead, it was replaced by something almost… proud.

“Well?” It questioned. “What more have you to say?”

He took a breath, gathered himself, and then kept going.

“I’ve done my best. I’ve… I’ve come a long way, and I’m not going to stop just because I’ve made mistakes. You’re me, sure. But you don’t get to say who or what I am. Only I can do that.”

The shadow smiled.

“And who are you?”

“I’m Jaune Arc, and I’m a Huntsman.”

His shadow nodded.

“Well said.”

All of a sudden, Jaune’s vision blurred. He found himself growing horrendously dizzy, and swaying from side to side. The shadow in front of him melted away, as did the entire space he resided within. Before he knew what was happening…

He was out yet again.

/

He gasped awake a second later, feeling like he’d just gone through something truly bizarre.

“Ah, you’ve awakened.” The Herbalist was the one to greet him, giving him what Jaune could only guess was a smile. Its insect-like features made it difficult to distinguish properly. “Good, good. We were waiting for you.”

“We?”

He turned, and as Jaune sat up, sure enough, he spotted that both Alyx and Lewis were awake. Lewis smiled over at him, before giving a little wave, but Alyx continued not meeting his eyes, and sulking.

She was a teenager. Jaune wasn’t going to judge her for that too harshly.

He also looked to Winter, and she looked back at him. They shared a brief nod towards one another.

Jaune stood from his position on the floor, before stretching and turning back towards the Herbalist.

“Thank you.” He smiled. “I think I’ve managed to work out some things that had been bothering me by you helping me.”

The Herbalist chuckled. “It was not me who helped you. You faced your own insecurities, and you emerged victorious.”

Jaune nodded his head, happy to hear that.

“Oh, right,” He cleared his throat. “You wouldn’t happen to know any way of making it to the tree, would you? We’re trying to make our way there.”

“The tree?” The Herbalist hummed. “The tree is not something you find–”

“It’s something that finds us?” Winter huffed out, somewhat frustrated with this entire affair.

“So, you know the truth. Then you also know that asking for directions is entirely pointless.” The Herbalist looked to Winter. “When you are ready, you will find your way to the tree, but not a moment sooner, and not a moment later.”

Jaune wasn’t exactly thrilled to hear that either, but then, it wasn’t like they could force this. They’d definitely tried, walking straight for the tree the entirety of the last few days, without getting any closer to it at all.

There was some magic barring them passage. That meant that, if they wanted to actually end up there, they had to play by the Ever After’s rules.

The problem with that was that they were having difficulty understanding said rules. Jaune was pretty sure that they wanted to go to the tree. That he was ready to go to the tree.

So… why weren’t they able to go to the tree?

…Such were thoughts for later, Jaune supposed.

“Thank you for your help, then.” Jaune nodded the Herbalists way. “And for watching Alyx and Lewis while we were occupied.”

“Twas nothing at all.” The Herbalist took another drag of its hookah pipe. “And you?” the creature looked to Winter. “Would you wish to face yourself?”

Winter hesitated a moment, before shaking her head. “No. My problems are my own. I can handle them.”

“Mm. Suit yourself. Now, go on. You’ve clearly got goals to attend to. I’ll not distract you any longer.”

And so, they exited out of the Herbalist’s home, and began their trek through the forest of fungus.

They only walked a while before Winter turned around, and fixed her gaze at the ground behind Jaune.

“You’re coming with us?”

He turned, and saw that the Curious Cat was whom Winter had been speaking to.

“You’ve intrigued me.” The cat spoke simply. “I have to know what lies at the end of your journey. And if you truly are headed for the tree, then I would have you take me with you when you leave this place.”

Winter hummed. Jaune… wasn’t entirely certain if they were actually going to be leaving this place when they made it to the tree. Perhaps Alyx and Lewis could leave, and they’d stay behind.

Because there were people waiting for them.

Then again, the cat could go with those two if he wanted to. Nothing was stopping him.

Winter must’ve had the same thought.

“Alright.”

And nothing more, it seemed, needed to be said.

They continued moving. Winter led, and Jaune, after a moment’s deliberation, sped up so that he could walk parallel beside her.

She looked to him, nodded, and then they continued on together, in silence.

A mutual respect was growing between them, in Jaune’s opinion. He was… a lot less doubtful of that than he’d have been an hour ago, before he’d faced himself.

Hopefully, the sessions they’d had with the Herbalist would help Alyx and Lewis with their own insecurities as well.  

And yet, Jaune missed the way that Alyx’s eyes narrowed as she walked behind the group, only flanked by the Curious Cat, who was himself none the wiser. Her fists clenched, and her body shook.

For Alyx’s vision had not been a happy one.

But she did not say anything. Instead, she simply stewed in her resentment; in her anger at the world. In her suspicion of the two of them.

Regardless, onwards they marched, deeper into the Ever After’s boughs.

Chapter Text

Their journey towards the tree – if their aimless trudge to nowhere could even really be called that at all – had borne little fruit in the days and weeks that followed their weird, semi-drug-induced dreams.

Jaune couldn’t quite blame the kids for being a bit down in the dumps about that. He himself wasn’t doing much better. It had barely stopped raining the past few days, and unfortunately, Jaune couldn’t help thinking those things were connected; their rotten moods and the weather itself.

The fact that the Ever After had started to respond to their negative emotions, and was thusly raining all over them, was not helping to make them feel any better.

It was a vicious cycle.

They’d stopped and assembled a fire in a cramped cave just off of the beaten path. How said path was beaten at all, Jaune wasn’t sure, given they were the only humans, according to the Curious Cat, who had ever been to the Ever After before.

“I’ve seen all sorts,” he’d told Jaune when he’d asked, “but none quite like you all.”

When Jaune had left the cave to go and gather more firewood, the inside of the cave had barely been any warmer than outside in the pouring rain. By the time he came back, however, with a bundle of sticks and logs slung over one shoulder, bound with a small bit of twine, it was almost too warm.

“How’s everyone?” He asked of Winter, who was stood guard by the door.

The Curious Cat had told them that, aside from the odd black creature they’d encountered attacking Alyx and Lewis before, the inhabitants of the Ever After were all but harmless. That particular creature was called the Jabberwalker, although the cat was hesitant to give out information about it.

“Fine.” Winter grunted out, clearly as exhausted as he was from all the constant movement. “Quiet, I would say. Alyx still seems off.”

Jaune peered past Winter’s shoulder, where, sure enough, Alyx was sat curled into a ball in the corner. She had her head balanced atop her knees, and her arms around them. It made her look guarded, almost too much so.

The only person she’d spoken more than a few cursory words with in the last few days was Lewis, and even then, he seemed upset about how little she was sharing her emotions. Because she was clearly hurting. Jaune wasn’t going to claim to be the most emotionally intelligent guy in the world, but if it was obvious to him?

It was really obvious to anyone else.

“Well… I don’t really know what to do about that.”

“Neither do I.” Winter sighed. “I had enough issues trying to help my own sister, let alone a child I’ve only met a handful of weeks ago.”

“I’ll try talking with her again here once the storm clears.” He looked up towards the clouds in question, which only seemed to be growing greyer by the minute. “…If the storm clears.”

Winter offered him a tired smile, and that, it seemed, was the end of their little conversation.

The two of them had, as the adults of the group, been doing pretty much all of the difficult work. Whether that was lugging what little supplies they’d managed to garner through their brief travels around – such as a few shirts that had been around their sizes that some of the anthropomorphic animal people had been willing to sell them – staying up late guarding their camps, or hacking down trees for firewood.

It was always one of them.

They did their best to split the load, but at this point? They were both running on fumes.

For the time being, Jaune took over Winter’s position, sitting at the mouth of the cavern to watch for anyone coming at them. It was likely pointless, but Winter had been drilling discipline into him, and it was starting to stick.

Honestly, he was growing rather used to having Winter around him. Being able to lean on her. She was reliable to a fault; she never shirked away from what needed to be done, even when Jaune could tell she wanted nothing more, and she never hesitated to make a call, no matter how difficult.

…She was a leader, then. An actual one.

He sighed, running a hand down his face to get some of the rain off of it. He was soaked through, his hoodie – which had been washed the previous day in a nearby stream to mixed results – practically caked to his skin. He didn’t dare smell himself, for he knew the scent would be particularly rancid.

Stuck in the cave with the others… well, he was almost glad for the fire’s smoke, which drowned out the odor of just about everything else.

/

He made it a mission to find some time to talk with Alyx one on one whenever he got the chance. He received an opportunity a day or so later, as they were out foraging for food. Their supply of cured meat was running low, and really, Jaune could only eat so much overly-salted fish before he wanted to kill someone.

So it was that they were out looking to pick berries that the cat had told them weren’t poisonous to humans. How he knew this, Jaune wasn’t entirely sure, and he was going to choose not to question just how reliable the cat might be for the sake of his own sanity.

So, he crouched down next to Alyx, who was reaching into a small thistle and picking out grape-sized berries that were the color of the night sky. They seemed more like olives than anything, and when Jaune picked one of his own, and smelled it, he nearly gagged at the stench that came off of it.

It was cheesy. Stupidly so.

“Uh…” He looked down at it, really thought about just accepting the salted fish, and then threw the berry into his mouth.

…

..

.

It was surprisingly okay.

It wasn’t great, mind, not even good, but it was far more palatable than he’d been expecting. It was basically like chewing into a block of cheese that also happened to have the consistency of a grape.

Which was a really hard thing to describe, and an even harder thing for his tastebuds to attempt to make sense of.

“They’re not terribly appetizing, are they?” He joked, and Alyx hummed out under her breath. It certainly wasn’t an enthusiastic response, but Jaune was just happy she was acknowledging his existence. For a while, she hadn’t done that much, even.

“Hey, Alyx?”

The girl looked up at him, but her eyes were lidded, and her expression was glum.

“You alright?”

“I’m fine.” She turned back towards the bush.

It was a lie, rather obviously, but how was Jaune to go about calling her on that…

“Well… you don’t seem fine.”

Eh, he was tired. That was about the best he could summon up.

“What gave you that idea?” The girl smarmed, and Jaune couldn’t help but chuckle under his breath. At least she could joke around a little, even if it was clearly forced, made to make him think she was doing better than she really was.

He could see it on her face, in her eyes; just how hurt she was.

“I just… I don’t know if I can…”

“What is it?”

“…I want to keep Lewis safe.” Alyx said, and Jaune wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that. He was very much aware. “But can I? Really? Before, when it was that Jabberwalker creature, or whatever the cat called it, I couldn’t do a thing for him. We’d just both have died. And all because I made the call to try and strike out on our own.”

“You didn’t trust us.”

Alyx hummed, but didn’t refute the statement. “…There’s a lot running through my head right now. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“That’s fine.” Jaune had honestly gotten more words out of her than he’d expected to. “Just… let us know if you need help, alright? There’s zero shame in asking for it.”

“Yeah…” Alyx nodded blankly, not looking up at him.

“Will do.”

/

In the week or so that followed, things around the group began to liven just a bit.

One day, Alyx had been at her absolute lowest. She’d seemed entirely lost, staring off into the middle distance and staying silent.

The next day, she’d been animated, up and about and helping Jaune and Winter with some of the work they’d been keeping to themselves. She took up a spear and tried her hand at fishing as Winter had taught her, actually managing to get a handle on things after a while spent learning.

Winter was a surprisingly good teacher, Jaune noticed. Not that that was too surprising, given that Winter was good at just about everything she did – okay, she probably wouldn’t make for a comedian, that was for certain – but it led to Lewis also wanting to participate, and gave Jaune a chance to get in a few hours rest at the bank of the river they were fishing in.

He laid down, shut his eyes, and was promptly woken up when Lewis accidentally pulled up a flying fish – a literal flying fish, with wings and everything – from out of the water, and smacked him in the face with it still on the line.

It had been an accident, but that didn’t do much to assuage Jaune in the moment when he’d gotten a mouthful of fish juice.

He somehow managed to hold onto his lunch in time to cook the blasted thing. They then salted the rest of the meat they’d fished up, and set it out to bake and preserve in the sun. Alyx had wanted to be the one to do that, so Jaune had given her a few pointers – which he’d learned from Clover back in Atlas – before letting her take over.

After they’d done that, Alyx had the cat take her out into some of the nearby forests and groves, and explain to her which berries could be eaten, and which couldn’t be. Which would be delicious, and which would knock them out on their asses for days in sickness.

She came back with a smattering of those berries, and began to make them into different things; jams, tarts, and other such commodities.

Honestly, Jaune felt that things were more than looking up at that point. They’d gotten over that initial awkward hump, and were now able to appreciate each other for what they could each bring to the table.

Alyx decided to cook that evening. She had some help from Lewis and Winter, and when they came back with what seemed to be toast with berry jam spread over the top, Jaune could not deny that it both looked and smelled amazing.

How odd, that he would come to see toast – something he’d had for breakfast countless times as a child – a delicacy. That was living in the wild, he supposed. They’d had to spend the entire day to prepare for this meal, and Jaune wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth on that one.

So, they sat around the fire, which now didn’t have to be made indoors. The sadness rain that had been assaulting them a week or so ago had faded, and it was actually sunny out. It was warm, and toasty, and they even had some berry juice to go with their meals, as watered down as it was given that they didn’t have nearly enough berries to actually make juice.

Jaune took a bite of his toast. It was scrumptious. It was the kind of good that he hadn’t had since he was back in Atlas, and it had to have been… months since then.

Winter seemed to feel the same, for she practically moaned into her bite, before reaching up and covering her mouth, embarrassed. Jaune laughed at her, and she shot him a glare over her toast as she took another bite.

Lewis and Alyx sat beside each other, and the two ate of their own meals. Their jam was of a different variety, but it looked no less delicious than Jaune and Winter’s own, if a bit darker in coloration. Perhaps Alyx was a fan of more extreme flavors.

Idly, he noticed the way that she watched both he and Winter carefully, as if expectant. Jaune wasn’t entirely sure why that would be.

Still, that moment of oddity was quickly forgotten. For the first time ever, they were all jovial. They shared laughter and jokes around the fire. The cat hummed a little tune. Lewis took a look at Jaune’s sword and shield, turning them over and over in his hands until Jaune was sure he was going to wear away the paint on them.

For a while, it seemed like all was right with the world.

And then…

A pain shot through Jaune, coming from his stomach. It was like someone had taken a knife to his organs and stabbed him through, and he fell from the log he’d been sitting on, barely able to keep himself up on all fours.

That pain quickly spiked in intensity. Just to his left, Winter hacked out a cough, reaching up towards her throat.

“What…” She hissed out between her teeth.

Lewis rushed to Jaune’s side, trying to see what was wrong, and that cat tilted its head towards them, seeming confused, but not overly concerned.

Alyx approached as well, but she did so slowly, cautiously.

She stared at them with deadened eyes, and determination in her gaze.

“Don’t worry. It’s not fatal.” She spoke, her voice absent any emotion. “I made sure of it.”

Jaune’s blood ran cold. His hands shook, and his body was shivering. He felt cold, so very cold.

“Alyx… what are you…” His voice was weak. Far weaker than it should’ve been.

“What have you done!?” Winter spat out, barely able to push herself up off of the ground from where she’d fallen backwards off of the log she’d been sat upon.

“A-Alyx?” Lewis looked towards his sister with confusion and hesitation both. “What–”

“Don’t worry, Lewis.” His sister smiled at him, but it was an almost frightening thing to see. “I’m only preventing them from stopping us any longer.”

“W-What–”

“Don’t you see?” Alyx shook her head, and she looked down at Winter and Jaune both with disgust in her gaze. “They’re the reason we haven’t found our way to the tree. I know it. Because they’ve been trying to keep us here. They’ve been trying to trick us. They pretend like they’re human, but how likely is that? That some other humans also happened to show up here just a day or two before we did? I don’t believe it.”

“What!?” Winter hissed out. “What are you talking about!?”

“I’m not going to fall for your lies and your tricks any longer. I might not be strong enough to stop you physically, but I can take you unawares.” Alyx’s expression was so very severe, and in that moment, Jaune put it together.

She’d prepared their food. She’d gone out with the cat in order to pick berries, and had likely chosen some that were poisonous.

She’d poisoned them, then. That was what had happened.

Jaune’s entire body ached. It felt like he needed to vomit, but he couldn’t bring himself to. His veins felt like they were filled with liquid metal, weighing him down to the point that he could barely move.

Somehow, Alyx had gotten it into her head that they were trying to keep them here in the Ever After, and that they were actually Afterans…

It was nonsense. Utter nonsense.

But Alyx sounded so sure of herself.

Had it been her own vision, back in the Herbalists hut? Had it shown her something she was unable to contend with, that had left her vulnerable; broken?

“You’re not going to turn me astray. You’re not going to prevent us from making it back home.” Alyx said, walking over towards their bags of supplies and slinging them onto her back. “We’re going to get out of here.”

“Alyx…” He tried to say something, to stop her, but his voice would barely come out.

“Goodbye, Jaune. Goodbye, Winter.” Alyx glared at them. “Perhaps the next humans to come by won’t be quite so smart. Come on, Lewis.”

The boy in question looked to them with concern. “But–”

“Lewis!”

Lewis looked to him, to Winter, and then back to Alyx. He looked to the fire, to the remnants of their meal, to the remnants of their happy times together, which had only really just begun…

And then he followed his sister, deeper into the woods. Deeper into the Ever After’s depths.

And eventually, the three of them, Alyx, Lewis, and the Cat, were entirely gone.

Jaune was barely able to look over towards Winter, and what he saw was that she’d already passed out. Her body mass was lower than his, and that meant the poison would be affecting her more harshly than it was him. But even so…

He knew he didn’t have long. Black spots danced in his vision. His hearing was gradually fading.

And before he knew it, there was only darkness.

Chapter Text

Pain was the first, and really only thing he felt upon being jostled into consciousness, however briefly. He was being bounced back and forth, as if whatever he was on top of was bobbing up and down. There was fur beneath his fingers, and though his vision was hazy, he could just barely make out what looked like the outline of horns in front of him.

It seemed he was being carried along by a horned animal of some sort.

Where it was going, he had no idea. Under whose orders it was doing so, still, he had no idea. If it was taking him back to its den to eat him, equally, he had no idea.

Honestly, he could barely even remember what it was that he was doing there. How he’d ended up as he was.

…No. He could.

Alyx. Lewis. The path to the tree. Their being stalled, unable to advance.

And finally, the poison.

Alyx…

His vision swam. He could not keep his eyes open for long. Nary a moment later, his faculties failed him, and the world went dark again.

/

For an uncertain period of time, that was how Jaune experienced the world. Brief flashes of color or movement would awaken him from his sickened state, but inevitably, he would falter yet again.

After an indeterminable period, he woke from out of that horrible loop to his body in perhaps more pain than he had ever felt. It was like the very worst stomach aches he’d ever suffered as a child magnified by ten, and that pain suffused all of him. Whatever poison Alyx had fed to him; it was taking its toll.

Except she hadn’t just fed it to him.

Winter had been its victim as well.

His vision was still horrendously blurry, but he tried to locate Winter, to see if she, too, was… well, wherever it was they’d been taken.

He saw the barest hint of white out of the corner of his eye before his vision swam again, and he felt bile rise within his throat. He vomited onto the ground just off of the elevated platform he was laid atop of, and instantly felt better.

To be clear, it wasn’t as if he was cured of his affliction. But his condition felt noticeably more manageable. He was able to, with great effort, pry himself up into a sitting position. Once he’d done so, he did, admittedly, vomit yet again off of the side of the cot he’d been placed atop of, but once again, he also felt better following that.

“Ah, we had not expected you to be up so quickly.”

Jaune jumped, his hand reaching towards his waist, where Crocea Mors normally rested. It was, of course, not on him. In fact, he could see it across the room, leant against a wall in whatever building this was. His armor was there as well, having been taken off of him.

Perhaps most noticeably, however, was the fact that the person who’d just called out to Jaune was a starfish made out of paper.

Which… huh. Yeah, the Ever After never ceased to surprise him.

…Although now that he was paying more attention to his surroundings…

The ‘house’ he currently inhabited had its fair share of oddities about it as well. For one, the walls seemed to be made up of a sort of paper themselves, and the cot he was resting atop of had a lot more give than felt appropriate, like it wasn’t quite used to the amount of weight it was supporting. It held, but only just.

The floor that he’d so ignominiously vomited upon was also paper, albeit a sort of paper mâché that was now absorbing his vomit in a – actually, y’know what? Jaune was going to stop thinking about that.

“Uh…” He tried to get himself back on track. “Sorry about your floor.”

“It is no problem.” The star-person said. “I will clean it up. That is our purpose, after all. To make everything wonderful as best we can. You have simply provided me with another chance to bring good to the world.”

…Okay. Sure. That was a way of looking at it, Jaune supposed.

He wasn’t really going to complain. He was in no state to be doing any cleaning himself.

“Where are we?” He asked, and the star, as it fetched a mop and bucket, answered him.

“We are in the Origami Acre.”

“Okay… where is that like… geographically?”

The star hummed with a curious lilt to its voice. “All realms stand equidistant to the tree, but if you are curious, we are three cycles travel from the base.”

Clearly, they were not operating on the same wave lengths here, so Jaune was going to stop asking these types of questions.

“How did you find us?”

“We did not find you.” The star told him. “It was the steed who located you. It came in with the two of you on its back, and we welcomed it, for that is what we do. We did our best to nurse the two of you back to health. Luckily, the poison flowing through you was not intended to force an ascension, or it would have been far too late to save you.”

Okay… Jaune thought he was kind of getting what the star meant by that. The weird… horse-thing that he’d seen carrying them had seemingly brought them here to the Origami Acre. After that, the stars had taken care of them. Alyx’s poison had never been intended to kill them, and so they survived. If it had been, they’d have been completely screwed.

He thought that about captured the gist of it.

“Alright…” He looked over towards where Winter was laid down on her cot, and tried to push himself up so he could go check on her directly. Instead, he was met with his limbs failing him, and he nearly fell right off of his cot.

Would have, too, if not for another star, who Jaune had not seen enter into the room, catching him, and pushing him back onto the paper cot.

“Be careful.” This star was red. The other, the first, was a pure white. Jaune had sort of assumed, because of that, that all of them would be that color. The color of paper.

Then again… was paper even naturally white, or was that some kind of treatment they did? Jaune had absolutely no idea.

This was likely not the time for such considerations, regardless.

“Thanks.” He remarked, easing himself back into his laying position. “Winter, er– the woman over there. How is she?”

The white star answered. “She is worse off than you. We do not know why. We do not know what it is the two of you are. And that is preventing us from truly helping her.”

Oh. Jaune imagined that if a completely random organism he’d never seen in his life popped up and needed healing, he wouldn’t quite know what to do with them either. That they’d managed to get Jaune past the worst of it at all was probably tantamount to how hard they’d worked to try and help them.

He knew enough to potentially guide them through, however, and so he said as much.

“Her body mass is lower than mine, but she was probably fed the same amount of poison.” He realized. “Alyx – the girl who poisoned us – might not have calculated for that. She’s just a kid. She wouldn’t know about that kind of stuff.”

“I see. What do you suppose we do?

“Other than keep doing what you’re doing? I don’t know.” Jaune felt a tad helpless. “I…”

He was trying to think back to their lessons with Clover, but poison was never something that had come up. It was a simple assumption that they weren’t going to go around drinking and eating food amongst people who might want to kill them.

Which felt fair at the time, not so much now.

But it wasn’t like Jaune could do much laid out like this…

…Or, well…

Maybe he could.

“Hey,” He turned to one of the stars. “I don’t know if you can, but… can you move me so that I’m beside Winter? I think I can use my semblance to help her.”

The stars looked to each other, seemingly sharing a private conversation without words. How they were doing that when they had no facial expressions to speak of, Jaune didn’t know, but he also wasn’t going to put too much stock into anything that happened in the Ever After.

That way laid madness, and he liked being sane.

“What is a semblance?”

“Uh… kind of an innate power?”

“Ah. Then allow us to fetch the steed.” The red star spoke.

It departed, and was gone for quite a while. Some five or so minutes. But eventually, the star did return, and with an odd creature following behind it.

It was not quite the horse that Jaune had expected it to be, if this was the same creature that had carried both he and Winter here to the Origami Acre. It was much more of a deer than that, with great antlers, but more than anything, it reminded Jaune of the legends of Jackalope’s.

It had the face of a rabbit, and though its body shared some similarities with that of a deer’s, it was ultimately just as rabbit-like as its face. Quite an odd creature, but Jaune found himself smiling as it walked up to him, and nuzzled its face against his own.

“Uh… thanks. For bringing us here.”

The creature made a huffing noise, and then butted Jaune with one of its antlers seemingly on accident. He wasn’t going to get upset. He’d probably hit people on accident too if he had two massive tree-branch-looking-things attached to his head.

The stars hoisted themselves up onto Jaune’s bed – which was rather low to the ground, perhaps a foot and a half or so up off of it –and then, with a strength that he’d have never guessed they possessed, lifted him onto the creature’s back. It ferried him across the room, so that he was right next to Winter.

Up close like this, he could see what the paper stars had meant; Winter’s complexion was horrendously pale, and she looked like a ghost. Her skin was cool to the touch, and though she stirred slightly as he touched her, it was only to groan out in what sounded like pain.

He conjured up his semblance with everything he had, and though it was spotty, barely there, it came to him. He channeled it on Winter, and felt a pain wracking through his gut.

He realized what it was just a moment later.

His aura was currently keeping him from feeling the worst of the poison’s effects, and yet his semblance was draining his own aura to strengthen Winter’s. Even so, with the amount of poison that Winter had ingested being unknown, he wasn’t about to take any chances.

He would sacrifice his own comfort if it meant assuring Winter’s life. He knew she’d have done the same for him, were she in his situation.

So, he flooded Winter with his own aura until he felt ready to collapse, and then he allowed himself to do just that, turning off his semblance and slumping atop the jackalope. It gave a noise halfway between a grunt and a huff, and moved him back over to his cot.

He was in agony yet again, but he could hear Winter’s breaths now, coming more steadily. If it meant her chances increased, then he would continue to act as he just had.

And that was all there was to it.

So, he laid down, closed his eyes, and allowed himself to slip away.

/

For the following few days, things continued like that. His condition would improve and then quickly devolve when he used his semblance on Winter. He wouldn’t have felt the need to do that if she had woken up by now, but even a few days later, though she still tossed and turned, she’d yet to open her eyes.

Jaune was trying to keep himself from thinking too harshly about what had happened with Alyx and Lewis. He really was. It had been easier the first few days, when the exhaustion and pain he was experiencing would knock him out whenever he wasn’t actively eating, drinking, or throwing up.

Unfortunately – well, really, it was a fortunate thing in all other circumstances – even after draining himself via his semblance these days, he still felt relatively healthy. More than enough to lay around and have nothing but time to think.

This was not helping him. Not remotely.

He’d never really been a worrier growing up. His mother had been, and he couldn’t really blame her for that given how he and his sisters had always been. Yet even so, he was gradually becoming more and more paranoid these days… ever since Pyrrha had passed away, really.

He was thinking about Alyx and Lewis, and whether or not they’d be alright on their own. Alyx’s delusions aside, just because she knew how to gather berries or catch fish didn’t mean she understood everything that was required to survive out here. Jaune and Winter were trained Hunters.

They were notably not.

He had to hope they wouldn’t run into anyone dangerous. The Ever After only seemed to have the singular danger in the Jabberwalker, but…

He shook his head. This wasn’t helping. Not remotely.

Instead, he forced himself to lay back on his cot, and tried to void his thoughts. To think on nothing at all.

And of course, in that moment, he heard a noise from off to his right, just before Winter Schnee gasped awake.

She sounded panicked, and though Jaune still wasn’t fully recovered, he turned himself over so that he could face her.

“Winter?” He called, wondering how actually conscious she was. He’d heard that people awakening from being passed out could do so multiple times before truly becoming lucid once again.

“Where…” She mumbled, before grasping her throat and wincing. “…Where are we?”

Her voice sounded horribly scratchy, which wasn’t a surprise. Her throat was probably sore as all hell, and her body couldn’t be feeling much better. She was feeling how he had been when he’d first awakened, which meant–

Winter promptly turned to the left, and vomited off the side of her cot.

Jaune frowned.

Yep. Just like him.

/

Ultimately, the stars cleaned that particular mess up as well, and then ran Winter through a lot of what they’d already done for Jaune. She took it a lot better than he initially had, not even batting an eye at the whole ‘living origami stars’ thing, which Jaune had started to gather might’ve just been her standard coping mechanism.

If one pretended to be completely unsurprised by everything, maybe one eventually just… was unsurprised by everything.

Food for thought, he supposed.

Either way, for the time being, he and Winter were left alone. The stars had departed, and the odd Jackalope creature went off back into the Origami Forest; to what end he didn’t know.

Jaune was still achy, but feeling a bit better than he had been before. Winter, clearly, could barely muster up the energy to move. He knew that had to be the case, because Winter Schnee didn’t seem the type to sit and do nothing if she had any other option.

“This is… infuriating.” Winter coughed out, basically confirming what he’d just been thinking. “My body feels horrible. My muscles aren’t responding. No matter how hard I try, I can’t lift a finger.” She growled almost animalistically. “Gods damnit!”

Her fist slammed into the cot she was laid upon, and Jaune couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment.

It was just the two of them, now. Alone in a foreign land. And now, they were all but powerless. Jaune had grown used to feeling like he could handle himself, and now…

It was disconcerting, feeling like he was relying on nothing coming after them, when for the longest time nothing but that had happened.

“…I’m sorry.” Winter suddenly spoke out, and Jaune’s eyes went wide.

“Sorry? What for?”

“I didn’t notice the poison. I never expected Alyx to do something like that, but… I should’ve seen the signs that she was changing, I should’ve–”

“Winter,” Jaune cut her off. “You can’t seriously be blaming yourself for this? What happened wasn’t your fault. Alyx made her choice in secret; not even Lewis knew. How were we expected to figure it out if her own brother couldn’t? You said it before yourself. We’ve only known them a few weeks at most.”

Winter quieted after that, saying nothing for thirty seconds or so. She ran a hand down her face and sighed wearily.

“To be poisoned by a child… I’m a failure of a Specialist.”

“You’re not a failure. I just said that, Winter.”

The woman pushed breath out through her teeth. “It feels like I am.”

“Yeah, I… I get that feeling.”

It put it into perspective somewhat, to hear himself admit that. Because the truth of the matter was that he’d been dealing with those kinds of feelings for the last two years, off and on. Ever since Pyrrha had passed away…

He’d been unable to look at himself as anything other than a failure.

Sure, this situation with Alyx and Lewis wasn’t helping to make him feel better, but he didn’t think it was the sole reason he felt like that. It was everything all adding up, and weighing him down.

…

“Is it really Alyx poisoning us that’s making you feel like a failure?”

Winter eyed him suspiciously. “What?

“The reason you feel like a failure…” He swallows. “It’s everything, isn’t it? Because you couldn’t save Penny, and because you couldn’t save Weiss, right?

Winter’s expression betrayed that he was right indeed. So, he kept going.

“What happened back there wasn’t your fault either. It was a joint effort. Our plan. Cinder came at us when we least expected it, and she came at us hard. You had your own matters to attend to, and–”

“Shut up!”

Jaune flinched, and even Winter herself seemed surprised she’d screamed at him. It had clearly hurt to expend so much energy, and she winced as she gripped her chest.

“Stop psychoanalyzing me!” She panted.

“I’m not trying to…” He trailed off, wilting somewhat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“It’s…” Winter turned away, so that she was facing the opposite wall. After ten or so seconds, she spoke again. Her voice was flat now; devoid of emotion. “It’s fine. I’m exhausted, and in pain, and taking it out on you.”

It was the truth, but Jaune didn’t think it was the full truth at all.

Still, the overall atmosphere in the room was far too awkward for him to want to approach it again. Instead, Jaune laid his head back, and stared up at the ceiling.

Nothing happened. For what felt like hours, nothing happened at all. Silence reigned.

Neither of them made to speak, or say so much as a word.

Instead, as exhaustion overtook him, his condition not quite fully healed, his thoughts drifted one final time to the look that had been upon Lewis’ face as he’d left with Alyx.

That look of fear, and doubt, but also a tentative trust.

Even after everything, he still trusted his sister.

And the longer they sat around here uselessly…

The greater the chance that trust got him killed.

Chapter Text

When Jaune awoke that next day, he had briefly forgotten the entire debacle with Alyx and Lewis. He sat up, felt a pain in his abdomen, and reflected on why that might be.

Of course, the answer came to him around then. He grimaced, before shaking his head and standing regardless. The pain was present, and far from comfortable, but he could at least get up and move around. He’d take it after being confined to a bed for so long.

His aura had regenerated enough that as he took a few steps, it covered for him, keeping him in a good enough shape to take a few more. He tried to do some light exercise, but quickly realized that that was a touch too far. Instead, he went into the ‘village’ of the Paper Pleasers, and tried to see what it was they were up to.

In a word; nothing. They were up to nothing. The Paper Pleasers went around watering paper flowers, tying paper knots, lifting paper furniture through paper windows and probably getting into paper fights. He didn’t really know, but the entire thing was really on brand.

He asked them if they needed any help, and was promptly asked if he needed any help, which, again, was on brand. They eventually shooed him back to his room with Winter, and laid him back down on his bed, making it clear to him that he was still recovering, and was not to get up until he had.

How they’d figured that out – that he needed to be resting – Jaune didn’t know. The Paper Pleasers hadn’t seemed to know much about humans at all the previous few days. They were fast learners, it seemed. That, or how to please – or otherwise assist – someone was information that just sort of found its way into their heads.

So, he sat around. For hours, he went through the rather tedious monotony of sleeping, waking up, sleeping, waking up, and then sleeping some more. He knew, intellectually, that it was what his body needed.

He just wasn’t sure if he could bring himself to care about that when he was bored out of his mind.

It was at this point, of course, that the other person sleeping in the room chimed in, groaning out under their breath in what sounded like agony.

He’d never heard such a noise from Winter before. Even when vomiting the previous day, she’d been… while not composed, guarded. Unwilling to show weakness more than she had to. In the here and now, she clutched at her stomach, moaning out in pain.

“Winter?” He called out to her, trying to rouse her from her slumber.

Winter then proceeded to vomit off the side of her bed. Idly, Jaune noted that the floor directly beneath them had been vomited on a solid half a dozen times in roughly a three-day span.

Of course, then he realized there were more pressing matters.

The floor was entirely covered, which meant that Jaune couldn’t just step around it. Even so, he grimaced, but went to Winter’s bedside, allowing the… actually, he was going to stop thinking about what was probably happening to his boots.

“Hey, Winter?” He tried to get an idea of how she was feeling. If she needed water, or if she just wanted him to shut up. “What’s wrong? Are you alright?”

She didn’t say anything. Didn’t do anything but continue to groan. She didn’t seem to even acknowledge him.

She was in a bad way. Jaune called out for one of the Paper Pleasers, wanting to see if one of them might be able to help. One arrived a moment or two later, the white one from the previous day.

“She threw up again.” He told the Paper Pleaser what had happened. “I don’t know why. I thought she’d be over this by now.”

“Hm.” The star bent forwards, pressing its hands against Winter’s face – maybe checking temperature? Jaune didn’t exactly know how a paper star would do that without… y’know, the sensation of touch, but then, he’d met talking nutcracker men, so perhaps he was overthinking this. “It appears she’s contracted a virus of some sort.”

Okay. Apparently touching someone gave the Paper Pleasers the ability to diagnose their problems. Jaune decided to roll with it.

“I am not terribly sure how she contracted it.” The Paper Pleaser went on. “I would say that, unfortunately, this will only extend the amount of time she will need to spend recovering from the poison you say she ingested, and she is likely to face harder times in the coming days.”

Jaune swallowed on nothing, trying not to worry too terribly much until he knew more. “Is she going to be okay?”

“If you mean to ask on whether or not this illness will cause her to ascend, it is too early to say.” Now that had Jaune worrying. “She has contracted this sickness as an incredibly poor time. We Paper Pleasers do not experience such things, but even so, to help others is our purpose. We will do all we can for her.”

He nodded, even as another Paper Pleaser came into the room with a paper mop and bucket, and began cleaning up the vomit. Jaune stepped out of the way, before looking down at his shoes, and deciding that he needed to, at least briefly, get some air.

He left the room for a few minutes, and headed to a nearby stream. He dipped his shoes in, and washed them as best he could. They were holding up surprisingly well given that Jaune had been wearing them without taking them off, in the middle of a rugged and varied wilderness, for at least a months’ time.

When he came back in, the floor was spotless, and two stars, a blue and a green one, were working with washcloths, setting them on Winter’s face, and inside of her coat. Jaune had a brief moment where his inner-teenaged self freaked out about seeing Winter’s shirt open in front of him, but the rest of him – that of a fully-fledged Huntsman – told that part to get lost.

Winter’s safety took paramount over whatever idiotic adolescent fantasies played out in the back of his mind – unbidden. He channeled his semblance in his hands, stepped up next to the Paper Pleasers, and placed his hands directly atop Winter’s heart.

By his math, if her heart was still beating, then Winter was doing better than she otherwise could be. Strengthen Winter’s core, and hopefully, that strength would emanate out from there, buffing up her entire body. It was… well, it was the best theory he was going to be able to come up with, and honestly, outside of healing surface wounds directly visible to him, channeling his semblance over someone’s entire body was the best he could do when he wasn’t exactly sure of the centralized location of the virus.

If there was one.

He decided to think more on the virus in question as he zoned out, channeling his semblance more of a passive activity than an active one. Specifically, he thought of the fact that he hadn’t contracted anything, and that he and Winter had been in, and slept in, the same room, beds only two or three meters apart. If she’d gotten something, chances were that he probably would’ve gotten it, too.

Then again, she didn’t have a semblance like his own, which was, even when he wasn’t actively telling it to, likely boosting his immune system by quite a bit. He also had a larger than average aura, and, if Weiss’ own somewhat poor aura reserves had been something she’d received genetically, then the Schnee’s were not known for having particularly large pools themselves.

All of it was adding up to a rather damning picture. Even so, the stars hadn’t exactly claimed that Winter was going to die, even without his semblance, and she wasn’t going to on Jaune’s watch.

Even if he himself wasn’t doing all that much better.

“You must rest.” One of the stars, the green one, stepped in front of him, blocking his view. It didn’t actually stop him channeling his semblance on Winter, but it was distracting enough to get him to pay attention. “You are in no shape to help others.”

“She needs help much more than I do.”

“Help is not something that should be allotted out, and given only to those most in need. All people are deserving of help.” The Paper Pleaser spoke, which was a cool philosophy in a vacuum, but he was fine, and Winter was very much not.

“Yeah, well, in my eyes, every once in a while, someone has to take one for the team.” Jaune grimaced, his vision briefly blurring as he forced more aura out of himself, and into Winter. Maybe the stars weren’t entirely wrong. “Tell you what; if you want to help me, then get me something to eat. I can regenerate my aura faster on a full stomach.”

The star stared at him for two or three seconds before, with an oddly human sigh of resignment, it waddled out of the room.

So it was that Jaune stood rooted to that spot for another ten or so minutes, taking quick thirty second breaks to allow his head to stop spinning after he’d been using his semblance too long, and a longer two- or three-minute pause to wolf down a sandwich. By the end, he could see that Winter’s complexion had, once again, returned to a semi-normal shade.

It wasn’t great; she was still quite pale, but it was a helluva lot better than the damn-near corpse-like pallor she’d had prior.

He then passed out.

So it was that the next few hours passed in relative stillness. Jaune didn’t get up to much, on account of his own aura needing time to recuperate. The food he’d eaten settled… decently in his stomach. He didn’t feel like he was going to throw up, at least, and he’d needed the energy for his body to properly begin revitalizing his aura after burning a good seventy percent of it on healing Winter.

He understood that he would feel better quicker if he slept, and if he was going to be burning his aura in intervals to keep Winter from experiencing the worst of her illness, then he needed to be sleeping. It was odd how he hadn’t cared about sleeping when it had been his own help, but the moment Winter’s safety had entered into the mix, he was sleeping like it was his primary function.

He was awoken from out of one of those naps by the sound of Winter suddenly gasping awake, and panting in what sounded like a mixture of panic and pain.

“Where… how long have I…”

He sat up, ignoring the pain in his abdomen, and faced Winter.

“You’re alright.”

She looked over at him, and took a breath, seeming to calm somewhat. “You’re…”

“We’re still in the village of the Paper Pleasers.” He told her. “You’ve been in and out of consciousness for about a day now. Apparently, you got some sort of virus while you were recovering from the poisoning. You’ll… probably be confined to bedrest for a week or so. Maybe more.”

“That…” Winter’s hands balled into fists at her sides. “Gods dammit! Why now, of all times? They need us. They can’t just be out there wandering. They’re going to die!”

It was odd; Jaune hadn’t exactly forgotten about Alyx and Lewis, but he’d been far more focused on making sure Winter actually survived this combination of afflictions, and so they’d sort of slipped his mind that day. He didn’t want to tell her straight up that her life was at risk, especially since he had his semblance to assist in keeping her healthy, but…

“I get it, but let’s try to focus on getting ourselves back into working order for the time being.”

“I know that!” Winter snapped at him, likely just from the amount of pain and stress she was under. Jaune didn’t blame her. “I know. I just…”

She trailed off, laying her head back on the pile of pillows behind it.

“I’ve never felt quite so defeated as I have consistently, over and over, these past few months. Ironwood’s decline, Atlas falling, Weiss being lost to me, and now this…”

He couldn’t disagree. They’d suffered crippling defeat after crippling defeat in Atlas, and here was turning out to be much of the same. Alyx and Lewis… Jaune didn’t necessarily think they’d die, but he was certainly worried about the two of them walking around the Ever After without help.

He believed that Alyx would help Lewis, at least. She wasn’t going to let her brother be harmed. Not while she drew breath.

That was just what Jaune was worried about.

“Why are you helping me?”

It was such an out of nowhere question that Jaune actually physically shook his head, as if trying to dislodge his brain of some unknown obstacle that had prevented him from correctly interpreting Winter’s words. Yet, no, she had said that.

“What?” Was about all he could think to say in response.

“You could go after them. Alyx and Lewis.” Winter said, not meeting his eyes. “You could just leave me here, and rescue them.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Why?”

“Uhm… because you need help?” He felt that was rather obvious.

“I… yes, I suppose that was an obvious answer.” Winter sighed. “Is it truly so simple for you?”

“How could it be complicated? Someone needs my help; I help them.”

Winter looked over at him, and seemed to study his features. She looked into his eyes, and he did his best not to shirk away from her gaze.

She said nothing. Just looked away after a while and stared up at the ceiling. He didn’t really know what to make of that.

“…It is just that… I… no, never mind.”

“You can tell me.” Jaune called to her, before backpedaling. “Well, unless you don’t want to. Then that’s fine. But don’t feel like you can’t tell me something.”

“Haha– gh!” Winter winced. “Ah. Even laughter brings pain, I’m afraid.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry. That can’t be fun.”

“It isn’t.” Winter confirmed.

Seconds passed in silence. Jaune almost felt like there was an air of awkwardness settling over the two of them.

And then…

“I can remember the first time that I grew ill as a child. I was just six years old.” Winter began; her voice scratchy. “At the time, I suppose I still believed that my parents cared for me. My father was distant, but my mother was more present than… well, than she is in the current day.”

Jaune hadn’t met up with Willow himself – having been in Mantle at the time – but he’d heard from Weiss and some of the others that she’d been doing her best to improve. He supposed that, to Winter, who’d had an absent mother her entire life, that didn’t really mean so much.

“Yet when I was sick, when I had a fever, it was not my mother and father who assisted me in getting better. It was the maid staff, the servants, those who were paid to do such things. They did not do it because they wished to. The first time I was nursed back to health, I was too young to see the truth; that nearly every single one of them held nothing but contempt for me as they worked. But eventually, when I was seven or eight, I did.”

“I saw it in the way they looked at me. The way that they responded to my fevered demands for water and food with naught but scorn in their gazes. Eventually, I stopped asking for things in the first place. And they were glad for it.”

“That’s terrible.”

“I knew nothing else.” Winter admitted. “The maids and servants knew, of course, that unless my father cared to enforce proper treatment of me, they had no reason to do so. There were a few exceptions of course. But they were few and far between. They barely put the effort in after the second or third time, by the time I was ten or so years old. I was old enough to understand that my parents didn’t truly care for me. Not really. I was old enough to understand that the maids and servants who I’d grown to love and adore didn’t feel anything remotely similar towards me.”

“That pattern; of being treated at all kindly only because of who I was, continued for my entire life. And so… I suppose I closed myself off from it all. When I left to join the Atlas military, those emotions I’d buried never truly resurfaced. Eventually, I was a high-ranking officer, and then a specialist. When people grumbled about my name getting me there – about how I must have bought my position, I simply… allowed it. I could not find the energy to fight back against their words.”

Jaune felt a profound sadness filter through him. He didn’t know what to say except, “I’m sorry.”

A small chuckle emerged from out of Winter’s lips.

“You should not apologize.” Winter’s eyes never leaving the ceiling above her.

“Of all people in the world…”

She didn’t finish her sentence. Instead, she simply sighed, and leaned back, so that she was somewhat more comfortable. Within two or three minutes, her breathing had evened out, and she was asleep.

Jaune… he sat there for a long while, just sort of watching her. Winter’s words had been loaded, weighed down by emotion, and yet…

He was confused as to why he, of all people, had been the one to receive them.

Then again, the two of them were there alone. No one else was there, and there was a good chance that no one else was coming. Not for a long time.

They’d been sent back into the past. Into a time far from their own.

They were, functionally, adrift.

And now, they only had each other.

Jaune tried to wash away the worry and frustration building within him, even as he followed Winter’s lead. He leaned back, laid his head down on the pillow, and was asleep within a minute.

Chapter Text

Jaune and Winter got up to very little in the days following their talk. Mostly, that was due to the fact that Winter’s recovery was far slower than either of them would have liked. It seemed that which had afflicted her was a rather potent virus or infection, for it took nearly a full week for her to fight it off.

At the end of that week, she was able to move around to an extent. She didn’t leave bed for very long – and even when she did, she often had to be helped around by Jaune or the Paper Pleasers – but he could tell that even being able to move at all was helping to keep her from collapsing entirely.

But Jaune couldn’t help feeling like Winter was only just holding together.

The major source of discord for Winter and Jaune both was, of course, the fact that Alyx and Lewis were still out there. Not only that, but they were actively getting farther away with each passing day.

If they hadn’t already been hurt, or worse…

He tried not to think about that. There wasn’t much point until they could actually move freely, which meant that for the time being, they needed to bide their time. They were just very tired of biding their time.

It didn’t help that the weight of everything was still hanging over them. Atlas, this place, being back in time… all of that combined with their sicknesses, recovering from being poisoned, dealing with the fact that Alyx and Lewis were in danger, and they just had to sit and wait…

Winter wasn’t alone in being on a short fuse.

This manifested in Jaune himself spending the majority of his time that wasn’t spent healing Winter trying to busy himself. He did that by assisting the Paper Pleasers, and by taking care of the creature that had brought the two of them here. The Jackalope.

He’d taken to calling it Juniper.

“Hey, June!” He called out, and the beast gave a low rumbling in its throat, which Jaune had come to understand was akin to excitement. “How’ve you been?”

She nuzzled against Jaune’s hand as he petted her, and then toppled over, giving Jaune a chance to rub her belly. He laughed, but acquiesced, doing as the creature bade him. Her leg kicked out rapidly as he scratched a particularly good spot, and he rolled his eyes as he tried to get up, and Juniper did her best to knock him back down.

“Alright, alright. Five more minutes, and then I’ve got to go check on the Paper Pleasers.”

Five minutes turned into twenty-five, but in the end, he did get away from Juniper’s demands for belly rubs. He wandered the village of the Paper Pleasers, seeing if there was anyone that needed his assistance. They’d told him numerous times that they did not need help, and Jaune did hear them…

But he wasn’t the kind of person to allow a favor to go unreturned, and the Paper Pleasers were owed quite a bit.

So, he helped them place paper tiles on their rooves. He helped them to plant their paper plants in the ground. He helped them to build up their paper dam, which, apparently, held back a great supply of water that could threaten to drown the entire village.

Jaune worried for them, but they simply shook their heads.

“When it is our time, the dam shall break. But we will be safe until then.”

He wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. Actually, scratch that, he knew what to make of that; he very much did not approve.

He just wasn’t sure it mattered whether or not he approved.

In the end, he ended up loitering around the village for a while, trying to find something else to do. Eventually, he spotted an odd sight; a raincloud hovering just a few meters off of the ground, and moving quickly, like it was attached to something.

Or someone, perhaps.

He followed it to its source, although he stopped preemptively, hearing voices speaking in the distance.

One of them was a Paper Pleaser, but the other…

The other was Winter.

“I’m fine.” She spoke out, sounding somewhat aggravated. She’d been like that for about a week now, given they were tied down in one place thanks to her illness. He couldn’t blame her for her frustration, even if he wished he could get her to relax a bit. “You don’t need to help me.”

“We are drawn to help everyone we can. But especially so when someone is in need of it. And you are; gravely so.”

“I said,” Winter’s voice gains a small edge to it. “I’m fine.”

“I see. I am bringing you undue stress by continuing to push verbally. I shall refrain for now.”

Winter didn’t say anything. He heard her footsteps fade away into the distance, even as the Paper Pleaser itself came around the corner, and looked over at Jaune.

“Ah, the one called Jaune.” He wasn’t quite used to them referring to him by name.

“Hey.” He nodded his head. “What were you talking to Winter about? Just now?”

“She is experiencing a grievous suffering of some kind. The raincloud that follows her speaks to her emotions, whether or not she will admit them or not.”

So, the raincloud had been attached to Winter. Jaune supposed it added up. She couldn’t have been feeling great about… really anything in her life right now. That she was bottling things up was obvious. But he hadn’t quite been aware that it was to an extent as bad as the Paper Pleasers were claiming.

That meant… well, that meant that as her sole actual ally in the world – and boy, was that a sad thought for the both of them – he had a duty to try and make things right.

Or maybe he didn’t have a duty per se, but Jaune…

He wasn’t going to let someone just wither away in their sorrow. He wasn’t that kind of person.

The question became whether to lay out all his cards, or to take a more subtle approach.

And, well…

Jaune had never been one for subtlety.

/

Finding the right time to go about talking to Winter was about as far as Jaune was willing to go in terms of not barreling right through the problem. His emotional intelligence was… well, it left a bit to be desired, so he’d been told, but he felt that walking right up to Winter and asking ‘what’s wrong’ probably wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

They slept in the same room, only a few meters away from one another. For now, that was Jaune’s angle. He’d wait until night fell, and for when they retired to bed.

And then…

“Winter?”

The two of them had done just that; retiring to their room to sleep. Neither of them needed it quite as desperately as they had a week or so ago, and so it was becoming much harder for both of them to find rest.

“What is it?”

She wasn’t too short with him, which was a good sign, he supposed. If she was teetering on the edge, then even the slightest annoyance – like being interrupted from sleeping – might be enough to cause her to lash out.

“Uh, y’know, just checking in.” He came up with something on the spot, almost annoyed at himself for not having an idea ahead of time. “How are you feeling? Sickness-wise, I mean.”

“Fine.” Winter echoed her sentiments from earlier in the day.

“Okay. That’s good.”

An awkward silence fell over them. Winter probably thought he was done, and so he watched as she pulled the covers over herself – they were of course made of paper – and laid her head down on the stack of pillows – also made of paper.

“So, uh…”

“What is it?” Winter was curter with him this time, glancing over at him.

He just wasn’t good at this subtle stuff.

Probably time to just swing for the fences.

“…I saw that raincloud earlier today.”

The flinch on Winter’s face, then, told him that she had not wanted to discuss this. Unfortunately for her, Jaune wasn’t willing to let this go.

Not when it was clear that Winter was suffering, and he could do something about it.

Winter turned around, so that she was facing the opposite wall. “I’m fine. Don’t worry yourself over it.”

“Are you? Really?” Jaune said, and his voice must’ve betrayed his doubt, because when next Winter spoke, it was far less kindly.

“Did you not hear me!?” She snapped. “I said I’m fine!”

“Yeah, and I’m sure the giant raincloud over your head was just for show?” He argued back, being a bit petulant, but in his defense, he was a bit tired of being cooped up here, too. Winter wasn’t the only one going a bit stir-crazy.

Winter actually growled as she sat up, and turned once again to face him. Anger was practically carved into her features.

“What is it you want me to say right now?” She questioned. “I am handling my own issues, as I assume are you. We needn’t bother one another with such petty things. There is no need. Soon, when we are both ready, we will depart to look for Alyx and Lewis. For the meantime, however, I fail to see what we have to address.”

“How about the fact that there isn’t a giant raincloud following me around!?” He argued back. “If we were really dealing with the same ‘petty things’, then I’d assume I’d have the same symptoms. But we’re not, are we?”

That, at least, caused Winter to hesitate. She shut her lips, and seemed determined to say nothing at all.

It was petulant, almost childlike, but then, neither of them was being terribly mature at the moment.

“…Winter, I just want to talk to you.” He decided to be honest. That had rarely failed him. “As far as I’m concerned, here in the Ever After, we’re partners. And I want to be able to help you when you’re struggling. Even–” He cut her off before she could claim she wasn’t. “If you don’t think you are.”

Winter looked away, not meeting his gaze. He waited her out. Ten seconds became twenty, then thirty, then forty. Finally, after what felt like a minute of silence, Winter let out a haggard breath.

“…It’s not so simple.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean–” Winter started angry, but she forced herself to pause. “…I am not– that is to say, I am not entirely familiar with…”

She stopped. Jaune waited for her to continue her train of thought. She never did.

Instead, she ran a pair of hands down her face, massaging at it and letting out a shivering breath from her lips.

“I don’t know.” She finally said, and the words sounded like they had been extracted from out of Winter by torture. “I don’t know; does that answer satisfy you?”

“You don’t know… what?”

“I don’t know why it can’t be simple!” Winter shouted, her emotions causing her to go from quiet to terribly loud every few seconds. Again, she reigned herself in. “I… I don’t know why nothing in my life can ever be simple!”

Okay… this, Jaune felt, was probably coming closer to the heart of the matter. He wasn’t an expert on mental health, certainly, but…

Well, he’d let Winter talk.

“I thought–” She bit down on her bottom lip, and it wobbled and shook. Jaune’s eyes were wide at the raw emotion on display, something he’d have never guessed could come from Winter Schnee. “I thought that when I joined the Specialists, for once, perhaps, things would go right. I wasn’t made their leader, but I quickly proved myself a force on the battlefield. For once, I was separated from my name, my status as the Schnee’s heiress. I was just… just Winter.”

“But… it all came crumbling down. Everything always has to, doesn’t it?” She sounded so desolate, and Jaune saw tears in her eyes. “First Tortuga, then Clover. Then Ironwood lost himself, and only Marrow and I kept to the ideals we’d been held to for our entire lives, and Harriet and Elm and Vine, they all…” She shook her head. “They’re all probably dead. Marrow might very well be, too. I couldn’t protect Weiss, and she ended up here. I couldn’t protect my friends. I couldn’t…”

Her voice hitched.

“I couldn’t protect Penny. Even after I obtained the Winter Maiden’s power, even when I had magic coursing through my veins, surging from my fingertips, I still couldn’t do anything!”

Winter’s voice cracked on the final word, and her body was shaking; sorrow and fury and a million other things raging about her.  

“And then we get here, and we’re stuck together, flung back into the past, without a clue what to do, and we end up encountering fairy-tale characters, and we’re just supposed to deal with that, and we can’t take time to stop, or mourn, or think about anything, because we have to survive, and–”

“Winter,” he tried to interrupt, because she was so clearly out of breath, and ranting deliriously. Exhaustion and pain and regret all played out on her face.

“And we have two kids pop into our lives, and we have to prevent them from going off and getting themselves killed, even when neither of us can really handle that, and yet somehow you look like this is all second nature to you!” Winter screamed at him, bludgeoning right through his attempts to halt her. “Lewis likes you, and Alyx calms down around you, and…”

The topics were coming at him at a mile a minute. Winter was just unloading. All of it. All of her grievances.

It was a mess, but this was what he’d wanted. He’d wanted her to be honest with him. To just say how she felt.

And she was.

Even if he didn’t really agree with them, he’d have time to think on her words later.

“But then I failed them, too!” Winter covered her face as she tried to breath, but those breaths were caught by hiccupping as she tried to keep herself together. “And who am I supposed to blame!? What am I supposed to do!?”

He stood up. He wasn’t just going to lay there and leave Winter all on her own. He… he didn’t quite know how to offer comfort to her, but…

She looked up at him as he approached, removing her hands from her face and showing the fact that honest-to-gods tears were gathering in her eyes. She looked at him like she hated him, and like she envied him, and like she hated herself for the fact that she felt like that at all.

He reached forward, trying to place a hand on her shoulder, but Winter’s face curled into an angry sneer, and she batted his hand away.

“Don’t touch me!”

“I’m sorry, I just–”

“Stop that!” Winter cried out, her hands balling into tight fists. “Stop– stop acting like you want– why are you like that!? Why can’t you just let me handle it by myself!? I was fine! And now I’m imploding like I’m some imbecile–”

“Winter, letting it out is a lot healthier than–”

“Gods damnit, shut up!” She pushed herself off of the bed, took ahold of Jaune’s collar, and got in his face. She was screaming, and Jaune’s ears were ringing, but he didn’t back down. He couldn’t; wouldn’t. Not now. Not when Winter needed him. “Just shut up! Stop talking! Stop analyzing me! Stop trying to help me! I don’t need help! I can do this… I can… for my entire life, I’ve handled things just fine on my own! I don’t need you!”

“I never said you did.” He tried to keep his voice calm, but he had heard it shake somewhat. Emotions were running high, even his own. Winter saying she didn’t need him, after everything they’d gone through in the Ever After, for better or worse, together, was…

It hurt. It hurt more than he’d expected it could. Suddenly, the off-handed comments from her the past few days – small things, “I don’t need your help”, “You can leave. I’m fine.”, “I can do this without you.” – started to weigh on his psyche.

He almost felt vindictive. After everything he’d done for her, she was still–

 That emotion; that small, tiny anger that had been building within his breast, evaporated in the next moment. Winter, who’d managed to keep herself upright this entire time, faltered then. A dry sob wracked her body, and she fell to the floor, her arms coming to wrap around herself.

“Why!?” She bit out, the sound throaty and hoarse. “Why does everything… why does it all…”

She retreated inwards on herself further, somehow. Like a collapsing star, she became smaller and smaller. Shame. Embarrassment, and a lifetime of being conditioned to be the strongest person in the room. To show no weakness, lest she be devoured by the sharks that constantly circled her, day in and day out, through no fault of her own.

A profound sadness hit him all at once, then. He wondered if Winter had ever truly broken down like this. If she had, it would have to have been years ago, before she’d hardened herself; become the unflappable soldier he’d always known her to be.

He knelt down before her, trying to see between her knees, which she had drawn up in front of her body, blocking her face. She was sobbing, which was obvious from the way her body shook, but she was also hiding away, trying to make herself invisible.

He’d felt like that before. Wanting to be invisible. Wanting to cry all alone, where no one could see him. When Pyrrha had died…

He’d been a wreck. A complete and utter wreck.

He’d almost wanted to be miserable. He hadn’t wanted help. He’d just wanted to scream.

And now, with everything that had happened in the Ever After…

Tears came to his own eyes. He held them at bay as best he could. It would not do for him to break down before he had helped Winter. Once that happened… well, he’d let the chips fall where they may, to coin a phrase of Pyrrha’s.

“Can I hug you?” He asked her.

Winter didn’t say anything. She didn’t move, or give any indication that she’d heard him. He shuffled forwards, closing the distance between them so that it was only a scant few inches.

“…Go away.” Winter moaned out pitifully.

“I don’t want to do that.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re suffering.” He said, and it really was that simple.

“That’s what I hate about you…” Winter laughed, but there was no humor in it. It was half-sobbing anyhow. “I hate that you’re so… damned…”

She didn’t say anything else. Jaune shuffled forward more. Silence. He moved an inch, this time to her side, so he could hug her past her knees. Another.

Eventually, he held out his hands, trying to show them to Winter.

If she wanted to stop him, he wanted to give her every opportunity.

She didn’t.

Instead, some a minute later, he finally managed to get his arms around Winter. She shook somewhat in his hold, and Jaune ended up resting his own head on top of hers.

Tears fell down his own face, then. He didn’t sob, because he simply didn’t have the energy. But he felt it. The weight of Atlas, and the Ever After, and being adrift in time in a foreign land. He felt the trials and tribulations they’d gone through. He felt the utter exhaustion that he was sure hung over the both of them.

For a while, they just sat there, Jaune’s arms around the still-defensive Winter. Eventually, she croaked something out beneath her breath.

“Other than Weiss… I don’t think anyone’s ever hugged me before.”

That made Jaune sadder than perhaps anything else Winter had told him.

“I’m sorry.”

Winter shook her head, and he felt it against his chest. “Didn’t I tell you before?”

“You of all people have nothing to apologize for.”

Jaune heard her. He really did. In fact, his heart beat just a bit quicker at her words. But…

“Even so.”

Winter laughed, but this one held some real emotion within it. Some faint scent of mirth.

And so, they sat there, the two of them, arm in arm. The whole moon hanging in the sky above them brought some small light into their shared bedroom. Jaune felt as if they’d made progress; real, genuine progress.

…He wasn’t going to think about the fact that Winter felt so nice against him. That hearing her laugh, truly laugh, had, however briefly, stopped his heart.

Such thoughts…

Were of no purpose at all.

Chapter Text

Winter Schnee’s faculties came back to her slowly. Memories of the previous night came back gradually after that.

She was warm. That was really the first thing she catalogued. She was almost too warm. She felt constricted and constrained, and when she opened her eyes, she realized why.

She still had her arms wrapped around the sleeping form of one Jaune Arc. His arms, too, were still around her.

Winter’s face, naturally, went a fierce scarlet. For a moment, she was about to launch Jaune across the room with all the strength she held within her breast, but she quickly chained down that feeling. It would be rude, for one, and two, it would set a horrible precedent.

Jaune had helped her. Been there for her when she’d gone through one of the lowest moments of her life.

Certainly, this moment was embarrassing; shameful, even, but…

She extricated herself from out of Jaune’s grip as gently as she could, doing her best to not wake him. If she could remove herself without him awakening, then this embarrassment would be hers alone. She could gather it, lock it away, and then bury the feeling so deep that she would never again have to so much as consider it.

Yes. That was a good practice.

She managed to wriggle out of his hold, but not without Jaune groaning out under his breath, and seeming to subconsciously reach for her. Her face went redder still as she dodged out of the way of his arms, and he fell to the paper ground.

She winced, assuming he’d wake up, but apparently Jaune was utterly exhausted, because even as his face impacted against the paper, he continued to calmly sleep as if nothing was amiss.

Winter was cold, all of a sudden.

She really wished she didn’t know why.

/

She exited out of their shared sleeping quarters to see the village of the Paper Pleasers looking identical to how it had the previous day. The titular pleasers were out and about, wandering around and doing tasks all about the village. Winter wasn’t entirely sure, but she felt as if they were slowing down, somewhat. As if the previous day they’d been a bit fuller of energy and life.

Winter wanted to think that it was a coincidence. Nothing to be concerned about.

She had never been the kind of person to believe such things, however.

“Is something the matter?” She walked over to the nearest of the Paper Pleaser. It was a verdant green in coloration, and though it did not have a face in the traditional sense, Winter could tell it was listening to her. “You all seem less spirited this morning.”

“Ah.” The Paper Pleaser’s voice betrayed no sadness, or trouble. If anything, it sounded at peace. “We are coming to realize that our time is fast approaching.”

“Your time?”

“We will soon ascend.”

Winter’s eyes widened. It was said in such a matter-of-fact manner that she could scarce believe what she’d just heard.

“How… do you know?”

“It is simply a feeling.” The Paper Pleaser described its own death, as far as Winter could understand it, with a stunning level of clarity and calmness. “We know that it will occur soon. We will be called to the tree, and when that time comes, we will go willingly.”

Winter… she wasn’t quite sure she understood why that would be. This place was odd, and followed its own set of rules, of course. But even so…

“Why?” She asked it.

“Because that is the way of things.”

She was half-tempted to ask ‘why’ again, but she did not, for such would only incur a circular loop. She could tell that the Paper Pleaser had made up its mind.

“Will such bring about pain or suffering for you?”

“Why do you ask?”

Winter found the answer obvious, herself. “I would aim to protect you from such a fate, if it was within my power.”

“No.” The Pleaser stated. “It will not bring about pain. The tree does not inflict such things upon its children. It will take us, and mold us into something new. We will not know it. We will not be the same as we once were. But even so, we will continue. Merely as something else. Something other.”

Winter… she nodded, then, understanding that this wasn’t something she could talk the Paper Pleasers out of. It was clear that this was what they wanted. That they’d accepted it as well.

So, she would not stand between them and their choice.

“I wish you all well, then.”

If it was possible for the Paper Pleaser before her to smile, Winter was fairly sure it would’ve.

/

Winter had, to her immense annoyance, still not fully recovered. She was probably at around 85% in terms of overall combat effectiveness, but even so, the gulf between her at her best and now was a sheer one.

Jaune’s semblance worked its way over her as she laid down on her cot. It was… a hard thing to describe, in truth. Her own aura was being manipulated; strengthened and added to by Jaune’s own, made to do things it would not otherwise be capable of. In theory, it should have felt like it always did when her aura affected her, perhaps somewhat steeper.

But Winter could feel Jaune’s own aura coursing into her as well. Could feel as it ebbed and flowed around her own. She felt it poke and prod in certain places, affecting her in ways she was never quite able to anticipate.

It was a foreign body inside of her soul, after all. Whether or not she knew it to be benign; actively attempting to help her… she couldn’t quite reconcile the feeling.

There was also the unfortunate fact that Jaune’s semblance felt quite good. It was almost like a warm, full body massage. She had of course had such luxuries before. The Schnee Mansion had two inhouse physical therapists. Both were some of the very best at what they did in Atlas.

Even so… Jaune’s semblance had them beat.

She had to fight to keep herself silent as the aches and pains of her muscles were gradually pushed out of her.

“How are you feeling?” Jaune asked her as he stepped away, and rubbed at his forehead. “Better?”

“More so than this morning, certainly.” She confirmed as she sat up, and stretched out her limbs. They felt lithe and limber. “Your semblance is a powerful thing.”

“Yeah, it’s one of my few positives.” Jaune said, smiling. Winter didn’t feel a need to rebuke him when he was clearly joking like this, but even so, she wasn’t much a fan of Jaune’s occasional self-needling. “I was thinking, given that we’re almost back up to a hundred percent… we should probably try and come up with a route soon. Y’know, to chase after Alyx and Lewis?”

She nodded her head. It was what she’d wanted to do for the better part of a few weeks now. Ever since she’d awoken after being poisoned, regardless of her sickness, all she’d wanted to do was force herself up.

The sooner they could’ve gotten up and gotten out there, the more likely they would’ve actually found any evidence of Alyx and Lewis’ trail.

This long after, however…

Well, Winter was doing her best to stay positive, even if her intellectual mind understood that any trace of them had to have been entirely erased after this long. Even so, they needed to try. The sooner, the better.

Maybe, just maybe, there’d be something to find.

Jaune had made it a habit to go out and assist the Paper Pleasers with their work while he wasn’t healing her for the past few days. Winter had tried helping for a while, but the Paper Pleasers had abjectly refused to allow her to assist them. They claimed that they would not risk her potentially reaggravating her injuries.

And so it was that she had sat alone in her bed, doing nothing at all, sick as a dog, for weeks.

Now, she was determined to do something. What that was, she did not know. But she would act, regardless.

She came out to find Jaune helping one of the Paper Pleasers over by the dam. They seemed to be placing and removing certain bricks, and to Winter’s eye, at least, it looked as if they were weakening the foundation of the dam.

Jaune, it seemed, had also cottoned onto that fact.

“So, uh… why are we doing this, exactly?” Jaune asked.

“We are making it easier for the dam to break in the coming days.” The Paper Pleaser explained, happy as could be, seeing nothing wrong with its statement.

“W-What!?” Jaune reacted to that how Winter had expected him to. A la, poorly. “What are you talking about? Why would you want the dam to break!?”

“Because our time is coming soon. And the dam breaking would be the easiest way for the tree to bring about our ascension.”

It… Winter understood what they were saying, sort of. Not from a human perspective, but then, they weren’t human. The Paper Pleasers were Afterans through and through. And that meant they saw the world, and living in it, differently than Winter or Jaune ever could.

In truth, however, Winter didn’t entirely disagree with why Jaune was upset. It was… it was simply understood that death was something to be avoided. Perhaps the Afterans thought they had no choice but to accept their fate, to embrace the end, rather than to fight to continue to exist.

Perhaps, the two of them could show them another way?

Jaune seemed content to do just that. Instead of helping to remove certain bricks, he began to reinforce the walls, starting from the bottom. When the Paper Pleasers asked him to stop, he refused, and instead asked them to help him.

“You wouldn’t turn down someone in need of aid, would you?” He put them on the spot.

And the Paper Pleasers didn’t. They helped him.

They helped him to do the one thing they didn’t want to do.

And Winter, even if she partially agreed with Jaune, couldn’t help but see the melancholy in that.

/

It was later in the evening, while Winter was still sat outside, enjoying the cool, crisp air after the sun had set, that one of the Paper Pleasers approached her. It was the same one she’d spoken to earlier in the day. The one whom she had talked to about the ascension of the Paper Pleasers.

“Hello.” She greeted it.

“Hello.” It greeted her back. “We have come to talk to you.”

“I see.” She was fairly sure she knew what this was about.

“We wish for you to convince the one called Jaune to assist us in bringing about our ascension.”

Yes. That had been what Winter had feared the Pleaser was going to say.

“I see. Before I agree to anything, might I hear your reasoning?”

“On what, exactly?”

“Why do you want to ascend.”

“Because it is what we must do.”

“But why?”

The Paper Pleaser did stop and think about that for a time, it seemed. It was rooted to the spot, and was not even rustled by the wind. It almost disturbed Winter how still the creature was, until, finally, it responded.

“Why do the note-birds know how to fly? Why do the guile-fish know how to swim? Why do the great moths know to rest under the canopies of the mushroom forest? Because it is in their nature. And for us Paper Pleasers, it is in our nature to help others. And when that is done, when we have helped all those that we can, we will move forward, and become something else.”

“We are lucky. Sometimes, the ascension of a being is brought about before they are ready. You have seen this happen; made this happen. You devoured quite a few of the neon crawfish to prolong the time until your own ascensions, did you not?”

Winter’s eyes widened, and she felt an odd guilty swirl about in her stomach at being called out directly, but she nodded her head. She would not shy away from that truth, nor would she apologize for doing what they had had to do to survive. “We did.”

“And yet, you did not wish for them to live on. To not ascend. Why do you do so for us?”

“Because you have treated the both of us well.”

“Indeed. That was our nature. And now that you have recovered, our time has come. We would ask that you accept that.”

Winter thought about that long and hard. It was not as easy a decision as the Paper Pleasers made it out to be, but at the same time, she… she understood their perspective.

“I suppose it is human nature to want to help those who have helped us in turn.”

The Paper Pleaser might’ve smiled, had it the capability. “Helping would be allowing us to ascend.”

“You mean that? Truthfully?”

“Completely.”

Winter sighed. She took a breath. Three seconds passed. Then five.

“Okay.” She finally stated.

“I’ll talk to Jaune.”

/

Jaune was in his bed. This was not a surprise. It was quite late by the time that Winter had formulated an idea of an argument in her mind, and come up with a few simple counterarguments against points that Jaune might bring up. She was not one to enter into a scenario unprepared.

And from what she’d seen earlier, she had a feeling Jaune would fight back against this with all that he was.

“Jaune?”

She wasn’t entirely certain when it had become second-nature for her to refer to Jaune Arc by his first name. She’d been calling him Arc for the longest time here in the Ever After, but…

Well, sometime around when he’d saved her life, she’d started to show a bit more familiarity. It helped that she’d realized that she was purposefully distancing herself to avoid having to show emotion; to avoid risking a breakdown. She’d been on the cusp of one ever since arriving in the Ever After, in truth. She’d been holding on by a thread.

The events of the previous day had only been the final straw, as it were.

“Huh?” Jaune had evidently been half-asleep. “Uh, what’s up?”

“I wanted to speak to you about what happened today. The Paper Pleasers and the dam.”

Jaune’s jaw tensed. “What’s there to talk about? They want to… we’re not going to let them do that. We can’t.”

She took a moment to formulate her next few sentences.

“You reacted poorly to their plan.”

Jaune’s brow furrowed. “Of course I did. I’d assume you see why, too.”

“I do.”

“Okay, good. What’s there to discuss, then?”

“I do not believe stopping the Paper Pleasers from seeking their ascension is something we should be considering.”

Jaune’s eyes widened. “What!? Why!?”

“I have formulated a multitude of reasons,” Winter cleared her throat. “But first and foremost is that we simply will not be here.”

“What?”

“Alyx and Lewis are out there.” Winter spoke, and she watched Jaune’s expression falter; his gaze lower to the ground. “Every day, they grow further and further from us. For all we know, they’re in grave danger, and they need us to go and find them. I’m not willing to give up on them to try and keep a group of people who wish to pass on from doing so.”

“That…”

“I have spoken with several Paper Pleasers. Each of them has assured me that this is not a decision they are making in haste. They feel that their time has come. And so, they are resolved to meet it head on.”

“But that’s–”

“Completely alien to us?” Winter guessed, and judging by the way that Jaune didn’t say anything, she felt she’d done a pretty good job guessing. “Yes, I know. I cannot blame you for being disturbed by the casual manner with which they greet their demise. But at the same time, I do not think that is the entire reason that you are so vehemently opposed.”

“What?”

“I have been thinking for the last few hours about what your own motivations would be to save the Paper Pleasers from their chosen fate. I believe that your desire to not see the Paper Pleasers meet their end is one born from your own feelings of inadequacy.”

Jaune’s entire face pulled down into a frown. Winter was not about to blame him for that. She had expected as much, and she wanted to clarify what she meant before he took such a comment from her personally. She had not meant it as an insult. More as a diagnosis.

“I should state first and foremost that you are not inadequate. You are perfectly capable, and you have helped many people.”

“I know that.”

“I’m sure you understand that intellectually, yes. But just as I myself feel like I cannot help anyone I care about, I imagine you feel much the same. You have had a longer time here with the Paper Pleasers. You have relied on them, helped them, built a rapport with them. And now they seek to meet their ends. I cannot blame you for feeling as if such a thing is wrong.”

“But even so… the Paper Pleasers choosing to meet their fate is not a failure on your part, Jaune. It is their decision, irrespective of anything the two of us might do. And that is the end of it.”

Jaune stared at her a long time. He didn’t say anything. Winter waited. She had said all she had to say. Now, it was up to him.

Eventually, he let out a titanic sigh, leaned back in his bed, and looked up at the ceiling.

“…You’re right. I know you’re right. But… that doesn’t make it easier.” Jaune rubbed at his eyes. “I’ve just… I’ve seen so many people die. We both have. I just… I don’t want to let more people die if I can help it. And it feels like I can. And now… now you’re telling me that it’s what they want? I understand that, I do, but…”

“But you don’t want to accept it?”

“Mm.” Jaune confirmed. “…But honestly, the first thing you said is what’s really convincing me. Alyx and Lewis are still out there. Hell, that cat is, too. I feel responsible for them more than I do for the Paper Pleasers. And… and that means we need to get back out there, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“Fuck…” Jaune groaned, his head falling. “I just… I just want to help people. Why is that so hard?”

“I do not know.” Winter answered, feeling the weight of Jaune’s words in her stomach, settling there, like a lead weight. “I wish I had the answer. But I think that some things do not possess an answer. I have come to believe as of late that it is far more difficult to help another than it is to hurt them. That it is far more difficult to save another than it is to damn them. Such is life.”

Jaune actually laughed. “Don’t get too philosophical with me right now. I’m too tired for it.”

Winter, despite herself, couldn’t help but snicker below her breath. “My apologies, then. It is late. Perhaps we should retire for now. Tomorrow, we can begin planning our route.”

“That…” Jaune took a deep breath. “…Yeah.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

/

In the end, tomorrow came and went, and then, the day following that, the two of them packed their meagre belongings, and made for the edge of the Paper Pleasers village.

“Thank you again for everything you’ve done for us.” Jaune spoke, and the Paper Pleaser who’d come to escort them, a bright white in color, bowed to them.

“You have nothing to thank us for. We have only acted as was in our natures.”

“Even so. You helped us. And it’s human nature to thank those who’ve helped you.”

“I see. I had not known this.”

Winter smiled. “Humans are rather complicated creatures, I’m afraid. Some of our natures are different from others.”

“How complex.” The Paper Pleaser seemed to absorb that information, before bowing once more. “We wish you luck on your journey. We will not be here in this village for much longer. Soon, the tree will take us, and we will ascend.”

Jaune grimaced, and Winter could not blame him for that. He was too kind a person, in truth. Too concerned for others.

Winter found she did not mind such a trait. Not at all, in fact.

“But even so, should you return… I have faith that you will find yourselves aided by whomever remains, just as we would have.”

“How can you be sure?” Winter asked, curious more than anything.

“I cannot.” The Paper Pleaser stated. “I simply have faith.”

And that was enough for them.

So, Winter and Jaune said their final goodbyes, and then they left. Some few minutes later, they came to the top of a nearby hill, and looked down upon the village of the Paper Pleasers.

Soon it would be no more. The occupants itself had said as much.

Winter wished them well. Whatever happened afterwards, wherever they ended up, she hoped they would find what it was they were looking for.

The two of them turned around, faced the oncoming journey head on, and took their first steps down the path.

Chapter Text

The thing that became very apparent for both Jaune and Winter the moment they left the Origami Acre was that neither of them had any idea of what to do next.

There was no sign saying ‘this way to find lost children’, or obvious footprints for them to follow. In fact, the closest thing either of them had to a lead was the fact that, when they’d last seen Alyx and Lewis as they’d been passing out from the poison affecting them, the two kids had been walking in the tree’s direction.

Which was… not very helpful, given that they’d already been trying to reach the tree for what felt like months now without any luck.

Jaune doubted that the two of them were suddenly going to have any better luck on that front.

So it was that the two of them made their way out of the Origami Acre without much of a plan, walked for a while, and then set up camp. They could still see the edge of the Origami Acre in the distance from where they were.

The place they were actually in was… well, quite interesting, and not at all in a good way. For one, it was rocky, with jagged outcroppings popping up every which way. It was also hot as all hell, to the point that Jaune was sweating just sitting down doing nothing.

Jaune looked away from the Origami Acre, and saw an honest-to-goodness volcano hanging on the horizon.

He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with that.

They did not need to make a fire, given that it was quite hot. It was as if the very moment they’d exited the Origami Acre, the temperature had gone from pleasant to broiling. Jaune had stripped off his armor, which was laying a way’s away, and had even vandalized one of the outfits that the Paper Pleasers had made for him; cutting off the sleeves and leaving his arms some room to breathe.

It was very barely helping.

Winter wasn’t doing much better. Her specialist outfit was built for the cold of Atlas, and whether or not she had taken off much of her actual armor, the outfits the Paper Pleasers had made for her were, just like Jaune’s own, ones clearly designed for cooler temperatures.

So it was that Winter had, like Jaune, cut the sleeves off of her outfit, and then, for good measure, also rolled up her pants to around the knee.

It was an imperfect solution, but it was what they were working with.

“This sucks.” Jaune commented idly, aware that he sounded like a whiny teenager. “Why does it have to be so hot?”

“I’m beginning to suspect it is because we have done something to offend the brothers in a previous life.” Winter muttered, wiping the sweat from her forehead as she set their dinner – some odd red lizards they’d caught – onto a rock to cook in the sun. The very fact that they could cook something without a fire said enough about their situation in Jaune’s eyes. “Other than that, I haven’t any theories.”

He hummed out in agreement, even as he laid back, trying to give himself some manner of rest. Maybe then he could cool down.

He knew even then that such was pointless. He could only hope that this place had a sort of desert-like climate, in that it would grow to be freezing in the evening.

Cold was easy to deal with. Put on more clothes, or make a fire. Hot was far more difficult, in that no matter how many pieces of clothing he took off, he couldn’t quite manage to beat the heat when it was this bad.

“Okay, so…” He muttered from his position laying down on the volcanic rock. “Can I cast my vote for not being here anymore?”

Winter laughed. “I rather agree. This place is… undesirable. On the other hand, I fear our other options are also moot.”

“Huh?”

“I looked at a map that the Paper Pleasers possessed.” Winter spoke, and Jaune wished he had done the same. “To the south of this place is a desert biome, sand as far as the eye can see, which might give us less to work with than here. To the west of it is a great jungle, which, from their sketches, seemed to be inhabited by giant insects that were… predatorial.”

“Wow. So, here’s actually the best?” Jaune felt exhausted just pondering that. “Can’t say I expected or hoped for that.”

“Indeed.” Winter sighed. “At least our biggest direct threat here is just the heat. That can be remedied.”

“How?”

Winter held out her hand, which from out of it she spawned a spray of icy mist. It coated the ground in front of them, until, some thirty seconds later, the two of them were staring at a solid sheet of ice, around a meter in diameter.

“Huh.” Jaune remarked. “Y’know, I forgot you could do that.”

“It is a good thing I didn’t.” Winter smiled. “Lay down on that if you wish to. Or, if you need it, I can spray some of this directly onto you.”

“Please.” Jaune practically begged.

So it was that Jaune spent the next hour or so laying down in icy-hot bliss, with ice all over him. He took a nap and awoke to see that the sun had set in the sky. He’d expected that given the sky was dark, there would be little light to work with.

But no. Their surroundings were still quite visible, and not from a fire created by Winter, either. Instead, it was…

“Yes, I was surprised by it, too.” Winter nodded to him as he sat up. “It is rather beautiful, I cannot deny.”

He agreed. He was looking down at the rock beneath them, and the way that there were blue lines of energy running through it like veins. It gave off a soft glow, almost akin to a nightlight. Not quite enough to illuminate them as if it were daytime, but enough so that Jaune could see quite well into the distance.

Even the volcano, which had stopped spewing out molten lava, now glowed a brilliant cobalt.

“Huh.” He remarked, a bit stunned. “I can’t say we would have ever seen anything like this back on Remnant.”

Winter didn’t answer him, at least, not immediately. It was fifteen or so seconds later that she finally said, “I suppose we would not have, no.”

Eventually, the two of them laid down to rest.

Jaune stared up at the foreign stars in the sky, partially hidden by the pale blue glow all around them, and couldn’t help but feel the smallest bit better.

/

Their travel the next day was not quite as miserable as it had been before. This was mostly down to Winter’s ability to keep them cool.

That was in spite of the fact that the volcano acre, as Jaune had taken to calling it, was trying its best to keep them down. If it had been hot the previous day, it was scorching now. Without the Maiden’s ice to cool them down, Jaune was certain they would have needed to stop to try and avoid heatstroke. Even with it, Jaune was uncomfortable, sweaty, and just in general having a not so good time.

Of course, there was no sign of Alyx or Lewis. Not that that was a surprise, because this place was absolutely horrid, and Jaune imagined that the two of them would’ve taken one look at it, and turned around and gone the other way.

Which Jaune and Winter probably should’ve done, too, but at this point they were committed.

Mostly, that was down to the fact that their only other ways of circling the tree in a generally northeastern direction were a forest full of man-eating bugs, and a desert that had no actual landmarks.

Both of which were probably, somehow, worse than this.

Jaune wasn’t sure if that was possible, but he was also okay with never finding out.

“So, uh…” Jaune sighed. “I apologize for the cliché, but… are we there yet?”

“I do not believe we are.” Winter answered. “And what do you mean by cliché?”

“Uh… you’ve never heard someone say that?”

“I cannot say I have.”

“Really? It’s from… uh…” He was blanking. “Movies.”

“I do not watch them.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

Jaune had to take a second to process that information. It was difficult, given it went against everything he’d ever known.

“Okay, so like… you’ve never seen a family comedy before?”

“I have seen three movies.”

“You’ve–” Jaune gasped. “Three!? Which three!?”

“I was taken to the premier of movies that my father sponsored, although I never actually watched any of them. Of the few I’ve seen… the only one I remember the name of is Tzar Wars.”

“Oh, shit, which one?”

Winter hesitated. “…I believe there was a young man with a blue sword of light?”

“Yeah, that doesn’t really narrow it down.”

“I have not seen it in going on fifteen years now.” Winter stated simply, but she sounded a bit embarrassed. “Forgive me for not exactly remembering the plot.”

“Ah, well, it’s a classic. You should watch it when we get out of here.”

Winter raised an eyebrow in his direction. “I have a feeling we will have bigger issues when we escape from out of the Ever After, Jaune.”

Oh, right. The whole… end of the world thing.

Yeah.

“Y’know, I had actually managed to forget about Salem there for a second.”

Winter actually chuckled. “Well, I will admit that thinking about what we will do after Salem is defeated is perhaps a worthy topic of conversation. Do you enjoy movies?”

“I guess.” Jaune shrugged. “I mean, I prefer video games to movies, but yeah, I enjoy them.”

“Ah. Video games. I must confess I take some small guilty pleasure in them as well.”

Jaune was borderline shocked. “You!? You play video games!?”

“Indeed. Specifically, I play this game on my scroll where I need to match three different–”

“Oh. You play mobile games.”

Winter, again, eyed him. This time she looked quite a bit more annoyed.

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“Well, it’s not really… they’re not… uh…”

“No, go on. Let’s hear it.”

Jaune needed to shift the topic away from him putting his own foot in his mouth. Unfortunately, he was really struggling to come up with much of anything.

“…They’re kind of… simple, I guess?”

“Do you believe there’s something wrong with that?”

“…Er… No?”

“You seemed to.”

“I have changed my opinion.”

Winter seemed amused by that. “Just now?”

“Just now.”

“I see. Very open minded of you.”

“Ah, y’know, I try.”

Jaune could practically see the smug smile on Winter’s face, even though she was walking behind him.

/

It turned out that travelling by night, when the volcanic flows abruptly ceased, was their best bet. Especially so when they had to actually surmount one.

The volcano they were climbing up was by far the tallest thing Jaune had ever seen – not counting the floating city of Atlas, because that was kind of cheating. It seemed to be almost four kilometers tall. Far more relevantly, it was rather steep, which had Jaune’s ankles killing him as he walked up the sloped terrain towards…

Well, towards the other side of the volcano.

Winter had initially been down to fly them across it, but it turned out that there was a limit, albeit a very lax one, on how much magic the Maiden’s power could provide at any one time. She was not able to supply them with cold air during their travels and still retain enough magic to fly them over the entirety of the volcanic landscape. Especially not when it seemed like the air above them was caked in volcanic ash that never fell.

Jaune didn’t really feel like getting some lung disease, so they mostly stuck to the ground.

That was exhausting in a completely separate way, but something, something, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

As they walked along the edges of the volcano, shale fell out from under them. Multiple times Winter or Jaune would stumble, and the other would have to catch them. This was much easier for Jaune than it was for Winter, given he weighed quite a bit more than she did.

In fairness, Winter could fly, so… maybe that evened things out.  

Some few hours later, they’d successfully managed to get around the volcano’s edge, and were getting their first good looks out at what laid beyond.

Shocker; it was more volcanoes.

Jaune was disappointed, if not unsurprised.

What they hadn’t expected to see, however…

Was what seemed to be a great valley, with steam rising from out of it.

At first glance, it wouldn’t have been anything to write home about. But on a second, Jaune spotted some inconsistencies with everything around it. For one, neither of them had spotted anything like geysers, or underground hot springs, during their journey thus far. There had been nothing from which steam would normally arise.

It wasn’t impossible that this area had a small pocket of them unique to it, but it would be somewhat odd.

The other thing was that Jaune thought he could, just barely, spot movement in and around that valley.

“Hey, do you see that?”

Winter peered at it as well, and her brow furrowed.

“Movement. Yes.”

“What do we think?”

“It could be a society of some sort.” Winter pondered, rubbing at her chin. “…What is your opinion?”

“On?”

“Whether or not to approach.”

That made sense. And, in Jaune’s mind at least, the decision was an easy one.

“If there’s actually a society here, then… well, who knows. One of them could’ve seen Alyx or Lewis. I think we don’t have much option but to try and see what they know.”

Winter hummed out. “I agree.”

“Can’t say I want to be spending any more time here than we have to, though.” Jaune sighed, realizing that their initial plan of getting out of here as soon as possible was no longer going to be happening. “Ah, well. Duty calls, I suppose.”

“When does it not?” Winter commented absently.

/

It took them another hour or two to approach the steam rising in the distance, but it was a journey made much faster by going downhill. It especially helped that Winter carried them through the final leg of the journey as the sun set, and the heat died down by a small amount, enough that they didn’t need to constantly have ice channeled on them.

Still, after a full day of travel, Jaune and Winter were exhausted. They trudged along less under their own power, and more so due to the fact that their legs didn’t really know what else to do but to keep going.

Eventually, they arrived at the lip of a great divide, which seemed to be the place that the steam was rising out of.

“So, uh… want to go in?”

“I will lower us down.” Winter nodded. “If it’s superheated water without anything else, then I will also carry us out.”

“Sounds good.”

Winter did as she’d said, lowering them down into the hole. It wasn’t deep; maybe four or five meters until they were perched on another platform.

And this time, they weren’t alone.

The person – well, kind of – that they were looking at was… different. For one, they were made of rocks. Jaune wouldn’t have thought they were alive at all if not for the fact that they turned towards Winter and Jaune, and loudly exclaimed, “Yooooo!” in a voice that sounded almost like a Vacuoan surfer dude.

Winter placed her hands on her weapons, but didn’t draw them. Jaune raised his hand and waved.

“Uh. Hey. Sorry to drop in on you–”

“Hah!” The rock-guy laughed. “Drop in, good one.”

Jaune failed to see how it was a good one.

“So, what-up?” The rock-guy took a step forward, looking – or, well, Jaune assumed he was looking, he didn’t actually have eyes – at the both of them. “You guys new here?”

“Uh… yeah? I’m Jaune. This is Winter.”

“Cool.” The rock-guy said, before pulling out a steaming rock from out of… somewhere, and holding it up to its ‘face’. Rock-guy seemed to inhale, or something akin to that, for the steam went into some hole in his face, and didn’t come back out. “Hooo. Sweet. Hey, but I shouldn’t be rude, right? You guys want a puff?”

“…No?” Winter eyed the rock-guy… suspiciously.

“Hey, more for me,” Rock-guy laughed. “No complaints here. Oh, uh… who were you guys again?”

As Winter’s eyes narrowed, and Jaune had a moment to think, he suddenly realized just what this was.

This person was from a species of rock-people.

Humanoid rocks.

Who were getting stoned.

From stones.

Oh. Yes, Jaune couldn’t help but think.

The universe must’ve thought itself terribly clever.

Chapter Text

The stoners, as Jaune had taken to calling them, were a rather odd people. This wasn’t exactly a shock; not when the first stoner they’d met had been sucking the smoke out of a steaming rock and, presumably, getting a high off of it.

Their society was just… even weirder somehow.

The place they entered into was like a cross between a budget yoga studio and a boulder-based art exhibit. There were about a hundred different stoners of all sorts of shapes and sizes – including one that was at least fifteen meters tall, who seemed a lot more sober than any of the others – crowded around the cavern.

They were, down to a man, all attempting to get high in some way shape or form. Even the big one, although, given it was so much larger, Jaune understood why it was struggling with that.

Some part of Jaune, the part of him that would be seventeen forever, thought this was technically kind of funny. But it was funny in a far off, not very present way.

In the present, he was feeling a lot more… exhausted than anything else.

“Alright, so…” He looked towards the stoner that was ‘guiding them’ through the ‘village’. In reality, they were just sort of following it. Frankly, Jaune didn’t even know if the stoner knew it was taking them anywhere. Scratch that. He didn’t know if the stoner was still aware they existed. “We’re looking for a couple of people, would you–”

“Woah, woah,” The stoner turned around, shaking its head. “Like, bro, you gotta’ chill out with the questions. It’s been like… five minutes man. Wait a bit, chill a bit, smoke a bit,” he didn’t think he’d ever seen a rock raise its eyebrows in a suggestive manner before, but he had now. “And then we can talk about the real stuff, huh?”

Winter glared. “We would prefer to leave as soon as possible.”

“Whaaaat?” The stoner nearly dropped his rock, so surprised was he by this. “C’moooon, you guys gotta’ at least try the springs around here. They’re soooo nice.”

Jaune was sure they were, actually. And his back hurt from sleeping on the hard ground for the last… month? Two months? Outside of the two weeks at the Paper Pleasers village, it had been a while.

“Think about it, yeah? It’s a blast, I’m tellin’ ya.”

As the stoner kept walking, Jaune tugged on Winter’s sleeve. She looked back at him questioningly, and he cleared his throat.

“I know this might not be a popular decision, but… I think we might want to listen to them.”

“What?”

“If they have hot springs, for one, we can actually bathe, and I don’t know about you, but I feel disgusting.”

Winter didn’t seem to have it in herself to argue against that.

“And for two, we can let ourselves relax a little. Not for long, but maybe we take the day off? We’ve basically been moving through that volcanic wasteland for a week. I’m hot, sweaty, and I want to take some time to not be those things.”

Winter looked at him. He could visibly see her resolve weakening.

“…I…”

Jaune didn’t say anything. He just waited. He’d learned by now that Winter had a habit of being her own worst enemy when it came to things like this. She’d talk herself down without him having to do anything.

“…Alright.”

Jaune refused to outwardly react, but even so, he damn near cheered.

They caught up with the stoner they’d been following, and informed him that they would go along to the hot springs. The rock guy nodded, before pointing them in the direction of the steam that was rising in the distance.

Jaune supposed that made sense for a source.

And yet, as they made their way over in that direction, they discovered that their brief moment of relaxation simply wasn’t to be.

Jaune reacted… poorly.

“CLOSED!?”

“Ye-ep.” The stoner at the entrance to the springs shrugged. “They’re too hot right now, even for us. And we’re rocks. You are not. You guys would go off to meet the tree, like, really quickly. And not in like a cool way.”

Okay, yes, that made sense. Jaune just didn’t really care too much about sense in that moment; he wanted to take a dip in some damned hot springs!

“Why are they so hot?” Winter, much calmer than he, asked sensibly.

“Well, we’re not all that sure. Normally, they get heated up by the tree roots that snake through the ground around here.”

Jaune was pretty sure that wasn’t how hot springs worked back on Remnant, but this was the Ever After, so he just shrugged and nodded his head.

“So, maybe the tree’s going nutso or somethin’? Pretty weird since that doesn’t usually happen. I’d say that there might be some sort of odd activity happening at the tree?”

Now that had both Jaune and Winter reacting. They looked at each other, then back towards the stoner at the gate.

“Define odd activity.”

“Well… there could be any number of things.” The stoner shrugged, sounding both high and bored. “Jabberwalker could be tryin’ to blow up the gate again, the cat could be helpin’ some Afterans out with ascending, or there could just be higher traffic than normal on trying to reach the tree. Too many trying to ascend all at once. We can’t really know unless we go there and check.”

Jaune liked the sound of that. “Could we? Go there and check?”

“Hm? Sure. Why not?”

“We’ve been having problems getting to the tree.” Winter spoke, crossing her arms.

“Oh. Then never mind.”

Winter’s expression fell. “Why?”

“Well, if you’re not able to reach the tree, that’s not going to suddenly change. If the tree doesn’t want to see you, or you don’t want to see the tree, you’re not going to be able to see the tree.”

Jaune couldn’t help but sigh. Every sentence out of this stoner’s mouth was leaving him less and less satisfied.

“…But, if it’s just the hot springs you guys are interested in fixin’, you might be able to do somethin’ about it.”

Jaune was almost annoyed that that was all it took to hook him. “Go on.”

“Well… we could jury-rig somethin’ to work for an hour or two, cool the water down manually… iiiiiif…”

Jaune had a feeling he wasn’t going to like the next sentence very much.

/

Jaune hadn’t liked the next sentence very much.

“Remind me again why we’re doing this!?” Jaune shouted as he ducked around dust and rough particulate being kicked up from the inside of the active volcano that they were now lowering themselves down into. “Because I know this was my idea, but it’s seeming less and less intelligent every second we’re here!”

“They want a rock from inside this place!” Winter yelled, barely audible over the roar of the wind and the hissing of the molten rock below them. “I’d imagine to get themselves even higher than normal!”

“That’s dumb!”

“It was your idea!”

“I know! And I’m coming to the conclusion that I’m dumb!”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it!”

She was supporting the both of them with the Maiden’s power as she steadily lowered them into the crater. It was, shockingly, hot. Hotter than Jaune had ever really felt before in his life. Winter had covered the both of them in ice before they’d begun their descent, but even so, Jaune was already burning aura to keep himself cool.

“We’ve gotta’ be quick about this.” He stated the obvious. “I don’t want to be here any longer than we have to be.”

“Neither do I.” Winter agreed. “According to the stoner–”

“Oh, hey, you picked up my nickname for them!”

“It is… apt.”

Jaune laughed, despite it all.

“Regardless, according to the stoner, the stone they’re looking for is a deep azure color, and located near the bottom of the crater, hovering just above the magma line.”

He peered down into the crater itself, where, sure enough, a line of blue rocks, which resembled, somewhat, the color that the veins would glow during the night in this biome, formed a sort of ring near the bottom of the crater.

“I’ll go and retrieve one.” Winter spoke out, sounding exhausted already.

“Are you sure you’re up to that?”

“I am fine.”

He believed her, but even so…

He reached across, and placed his hand on her shoulder. Her eyes widened as he began coursing his own aura across hers. Sure enough, she was sitting at around sixty percent, far lower than his eighty-five or so. He gave her enough to top her up, which brought him down to around seventy percent of his own aura.

She stared at him oddly, then, as if studying him.

“What’s up?”

“…It’s nothing.”

“Okay, sure, I’ll pretend I believe you.”

Winter glared at him, but it didn’t have any bite. He couldn’t help smiling as she leapt off of the wall, and used the Maiden’s power to guide her way down into the crater. He paid close attention as she hovered just above one of the stones, and, using the Maiden’s powers, removed a sizable piece from the wall.

Then, without anything inhibiting her in any way, she casually flew back up to where Jaune was standing.

And that… was the end of it.

Jaune understood, really, that he should say nothing. He should keep his lips sealed, turn around, and allow Winter to fly the two of them out of there. Instead, his brain pushed words through his lips without actually receiving his consent to do so.

“That felt easy.”

Hm. Shouldn’t have said that.

Winter eyed him. “Why would you say that?”

Suddenly, the volcano began to rumble. Bits and pieces of the rock above them began to fall all around them.

Winter eyed him with much more anger this time. “WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT!?”

“I DON’T KNOW OKAY!? IT JUST CAME OUT!”

Winter grabbed hold of him like he was a large breed of dog, straining her back in the process, before practically launching the two of them upwards and out of the crater of the volcano. It was a good thing she’d done so, too, because a moment later, molten lava burst from the top like a carbonated beverage that had been dropped on the ground.

“Okay, so… normally, I don’t believe in jinxes,” Jaune coughed into one hand. “But given we’re in the Ever After, I think that might have been my fault.”

Winter’s right eye twitched as she looked down at him.

“You think?”

“Okay, that one was my fault.”

“Yes.” Winter sighed. “At least we’re on the same wavelength there.”

“Hey, Winter? Not to be that guy, but uh… where’s the rock?”

Winter looked down at him, who she was currently supporting in her arms, and then back to herself, who, of course, was using both of her arms and hands to do this.

Notably, she had been using one of said arms or hands to hold the rock that they’d been sent to get just moments before the volcano had begun to erupt.

Thusly, the rock had been dropped.

Likely inside of the volcano, which was now erupting, entirely preventing them from getting back inside the crater.

“Jaune?”

“Yeah?”

“This is your fault.”

“Yeah, I know.”

/

It took them around seven more hours to get another rock. This was because all of the other volcanoes in the area were much larger than the one that they’d checked, and many of them hadn’t had any of the cobalt rocks at all.

 Jaune understood he had no one to blame for this but himself, he just wished the universe would be a little less of a dick about it.

Still, as the two of them made their way back to the village of the stoners, they were given a hero’s welcome. Now, was that because they were essentially holding hard drugs that the entire place was going to use to get high off of? Yes. Did Jaune still appreciate it? Also, yes.

“Three cheers for, uh… these guys!”

“Hip hip, Hooray!”

“Hey, so, can you guys give us the rocks now?”

Winter just groaned.

/

Everything leading up to the hot springs had been hell. Jaune was more than willing to admit that.

But the hot springs themselves…

“Alright,” One of the rock guys told them. “You all should be good to hop in, now. They’re not going to be cooled down for more than a few hours, so you’d best hurry up.”

Jaune and Winter had both nodded, before moving into the springs themselves. They were… well, cramped, in a word, but from what Jaune had heard, the rock people basically didn’t have much choice in terms of which spring they’d cooled down. The bigger ones they wouldn’t have been able to manually cool, and so they’d chosen the smallest of their spring. It was the only one they could directly affect.

Jaune also suspected that the cobalt rock they’d brought the stoners had had almost nothing to do with them being able to cool the springs down. They had just wanted to get really high before doing them a favor.

Jaune sighed, but accepted that easily enough.

The spring itself was, as Jaune had previously stated, quite small. The rocks leading up to it became darker and darker, until those that were directly adjacent to the water became almost entirely black, as if charred from the heat.

Still, the rocks formed natural steps leading into the springs, and Jaune wondered if they had been carved down manually, or if they had simply formed in such a way.

He stripped off his armor, and then his top and pants, leaving him in just his underwear. Winter had turned around to face the opposite wall, and so, as he stripped those off, too, and then moved into the water – it was almost, almost too hot, but just barely tolerable – he called out to her.

“I’m in.”

She hummed out in response, and this time, Jaune closed his eyes.

Even despite his eyes being closed, the sound of Winter sliding her outfit off had him feeling… well, despite everything, he was a nineteen – maybe twenty? – year old guy. He hid his interest deep, though, and as Winter got into the water uncomfortably close to him – it was, again, a very small spring – he allowed himself to open his eyes.

Luckily for the both of them, the water came up to their shoulders, hiding anything below. Jaune let out a breath of utter relaxation as he allowed himself to sink in further, and felt the muscles in his neck and back begin to unwind.

He hadn’t realized just how horrible he’d felt until then.

“I must confess, this is… wondrous.” Winter moaned out herself, closing her eyes and leaning back against the black rock behind her. “I had the privilege of visiting some of the nicest springs in all of Atlas. But I never once did so with the soreness I possess now.”

“Yeah, this is… really nice.” Jaune answered, groaning as he stretched out his back. “I think the whole volcano saga was worth it for this.”

“I’m tempted to agree.”

They sat in silence for a while after that. Jaune actually nodded off for a minute or two, but was swiftly awoken by Winter.

“Best not to fall asleep in here. You could overheat quite easily.”

“Ah, thanks.” He wasn’t quite sure if he wanted to talk or not. Eventually, he settled on keeping things relatively light. “So, you’ve visited hot springs in Atlas before?”

“Only the highest echelon, which…” Winter chuckled. “I realize sounds like the opposite of a problem. It’s more that when I visited, I did so as an accessory to my parents. I was never really allowed to relax, simply to be present, have photos taken, things like that.”

Things had gone from light to heavy quite quickly. They often seemed to with Winter.

Jaune wasn’t going to complain, though. Winter was opening up to him, and that was a good thing.

“That sucks.”

“It was simply my life. I’m sure Weiss has told you much about it as well.”

“A bit. It’s really only recently that the two of us have actually become friends. Good friends. I guess we’ve been friends a while. But I was kind of insufferable to her back at Beacon, and Weiss herself could be…”

Winter eyed him with some amusement. “Go on.”

“She was absolutely perfect in all ways?”

“Hm. Good answer.”

They both laughed.

“Still, we both grew as people, so… she started telling me about her life back then. It sounds like… it was a combination of a lot of things. Your parents, and the lifestyle, and the expectations, too.”

“Mm. It was. Still, I will not pretend as if I have not led an extremely privileged life. My issues are simply emotional. There are many in the world born into poverty, wondering if they might be able to so much as have a meal the next day. Never was I forced to ask such things. For that, I am lucky.”

Jaune nodded along. Winter very much seemed a realist in things like this, and he was glad for it.

“How’ve you been adjusting to the Maiden’s powers, by the way?”

“Hm? I suppose well enough. They are… interesting. They feel somewhat like another piece of my semblance, albeit one more powerful than any of the others. But because my semblance is already multi-faceted, I think I am adjusting faster than a normal person might upon receiving the powers.”

That made sense to him.

His mind drifted, however, to an adjacent, but painful thought.

“…I’m sorry about Penny.”

Winter eyed him oddly. “An odd thing to suddenly say. We have discussed this before.”

“I know. But even so, I…” He let out a shaky breath. “She had only just gained a life. A true life. Not as a machine, but as a person, and I…”

Winter shook her head. “Penny spoke to me when she passed the powers to me. Have I told you that?”

Jaune couldn’t expressly remember whether she had or not. But he was fairly certain she hadn’t.

“Despite it all, despite her circumstances… she greeted me with a smile in that strange, liminal space.”

That almost hurt worse.

“That’s simply who Penny is. Who Penny has always been. Who… who she would have always been. She would not begrudge you for the choice she asked you to make. You know that. In your heart of hearts, I am sure you know that.”

He did. It hurt to admit it, but a part of him knew the truth. He had done what Penny had asked of him. And that was all he’d been able to do.

“…Thank you.”

Winter gazed down into the water with an almost invisible smile on her face.

“It’s nothing. You’ve helped me through my own issues. I shan’t let you suffer alone.”

Despite it all, Jaune smiled, too.

A few more minutes passed by in relative silence.

“Y’know, I gotta’ say, this would’ve been a lot worse being stuck here on my own.” He muttered, looking over towards Winter and smiling as honestly as he could. “So, uh… thanks. For sticking by me.”

Winter’s own eyes widened minutely, before she shook her head with a small smile. “I could say the same to you. Like I said, you’ve helped me through my own issues. Even my own breakdown was likely an important step in the healing process.”

“Yeah, bottling that up didn’t seem healthy.”

“I can almost guarantee it was not. It was simply what I had known to do for my entire life.”

“That’s kind of depressing.”

Winter actually laughed. “I suppose it is, in a way. I can say that I have no intentions of continuing such behavior once we are out of here. Especially not with my father…”

Winter trailed off, and Jaune spared the woman a glance. Her features had fallen.

“…You okay?”

“I am fine.” Winter answered perhaps too quickly, before sighing and reaching up to massage the bridge of her nose. “…No. That is a lie. It is just… my father was a cruel, vindictive man. He treated me, and the rest of my family, terribly. And yet, even so, I loved him. Now, he is gone. Dead with the rest of Atlas, I must assume.”

He had, after all, been locked up. Jaune and the others hadn’t been able to get anywhere near the deepest levels of Atlas HQ to try and help any of the people there for fear of retribution.

Her father had been left behind. And he was, almost assuredly, dead because of it.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” Winter smiled, and it seemed real. “I will learn to handle it. Even if I may be more open about how I feel, now, the general steps to take in dealing with my emotions have not changed.”

“Well… feel free to talk to me if you need to. I’m always here.”

Winter’s face, if he wasn’t crazy, seemed to grow a touch warmer.

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you, Jaune.”

“Eh, what are friends for, right?”

They sat in silence for another ten or so minutes, just enjoying the pleasant warmth of the springs.

As they were sitting there, however, Jaune couldn’t help but feel like something was slightly amiss.

“…Hey, is it getting hotter, or am I crazy?”

“No, it is most certainly getting hotter.”

“Hm.”

“We should likely get out.”

“Yeah. We probably– ow, fuck, okay, yeah, getting out!”

Jaune pushed his way out of the water, not so much as thinking about the fact that he was A) nude, and B) standing two or so meters from Winter, who was staring right at him.

He winced as he shook his limbs out, trying to remove the scalding water. His aura was keeping the worst of the damage at bay, but it had still been rather painful.

He heard the sound of sloshing water, and turned to say something to Winter. Probably a joke about how the Stoners had tried to cook them to solve their drug-induced hunger pangs. He was actually pretty proud of that one.

His thoughts sort of died as he instead saw Winter’s bare, nubile form. The only thing preventing him from gazing upon her in her entirety being her right arm, pulled in front of her breasts, and her left hand, placed atop her pelvic region.

And it was only then, some ten seconds too late, that he realized that he should probably also have been doing the same.

“I-I’M SORRY!” He screeched out much too loudly, reaching down and covering himself.

Winter didn’t say anything. She just looked away, turning somewhat to the side so as to hide herself from view.

Jaune got the memo, and turned around, so that he was facing the other direction entirely. He probably should’ve done that immediately, and would’ve, if not for his brain deciding that now was the best time to take a couple-minute sabbatical.

…Gods, but Winter was pretty.

No! Jaune’s mind helpfully supplied. We’re not doing this.

No matter how much Jaune’s lower brain might have wanted to argue, the rest of him was very much still in agreement. They were working together as a team at this point, not quite a well-oiled machine, but getting there. He didn’t want to add some spanner in the works that would prevent that from being the case.

He could shelve his own feelings for Winter if it was for the sake of their continued survival.

After all…

He’d already been doing that for a while, now.

So, as they dressed, neither Jaune nor Winter looked at the other. Their bodies were scarlet from the hot water’s burns…

But their faces, too, were scarlet, and for entirely different reasons.

Chapter Text

It was time for them to leave the village of the Stoners, and Jaune was pretty happy about it, all things considered.

It didn’t have that much to do with the stoners being a bunch of weirdoes, despite the fact that they very much were a bunch of weirdoes. No, it was really just down to the fact that he could only spend so long in the blistering heat of the Volcanic Acre without wanting to kill something.

And given it was just him and Winter most of the time, that bode poorly for both of them. Mostly him. He hadn’t been about to win that one on one before Winter acquired literal magic, and he certainly wasn’t winning it now.

“It was nice getting to um…” Jaune struggled to come up with something honest as he stood in front of a singular stoner near the entrance to the village. The rock-guy was maybe looking at them. Jaune couldn’t tell, given the lack of eyes. “Know you?”

“Hah, that’s funny. We haven’t spoken, like, at all, man.” The stoner in front of him chuckled. “Like, who even are you?”

Jaune debated trying to explain himself to the stoner. This debate lasted all of two or three seconds before he, wisely, decided not to bother with that at all.

“Well, anyways, we’re going to head out, now. You guys have fun doing… whatever it is you do.”

“We get high!”

“Okay. Have fun getting high.”

“We always do, but thanks, bro!”

Winter was waiting for him as he made it to the edge of the stoner’s village. She was, much like him, not making terribly much eye-contact. Neither of them had been super comfortable with the other after the… events that had taken place back inside of the hot springs.

They weren’t at fault for them, but seeing each other naked had been, well, awkward to say the least. Even more awkward was the fact that Jaune was starting to understand that he was nursing a rather massive crush on Winter which was, in a word, inappropriate.

They were all each other had at the moment. He couldn’t afford to throw a spanner in the works by being some idiot falling for Winter and making things uncomfortable between them.

Unless she likes you–

Jaune told his inner voice to shut up, because it was going to get him killed, or, at the very least, thoroughly embarrassed. He was not a fan of either. In the real world, he could at least avoid Winter if he embarrassed himself. Here they were stuck together.

So, for the moment, he wasn’t going to think about Winter. He wasn’t going to think about her stern frown that he kind of loved. Nor was he going to think about her adorable pout when she was upset. He especially wasn’t going to think on her nubile body that he’d gotten a peak at, or–

No. Cease. Now.

His mind refused to listen to him, as was the usual scenario.

“Alright, well… I guess we’d best get a move on, yeah?” He tried to focus back in on reality.

“Indeed.” Winter cleared her throat, seemingly also trying to not think about the thing they were both thinking about. At least this sucked for both of them. …That wasn’t a super healthy thing to think, was it? “It’s starting to grow rather ridiculously hot. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that we’ve thus far only felt the Volcano Acre at a relatively mild temperature.”

What a terrifying thought that was.

“In that case, let’s get out of here before things get worse.”

“Agreed. At the very least, we know that wherever we end up next cannot be worse than this.”

Jaune laughed, because it was definitely the truth.

/

For once, the very obvious curse that Jaune and Winter had tried to unleash upon themselves had not worked, and they exited out of the Volcano Acre into a wide stretch of beach, with a massive lake at its center.

Jaune let out a sigh of relief, even as he threw off his sweaty clothing, and leapt into the water without so much as thinking about whether or not that was a good idea. Actually, the only thing his mind was considering was the idea that if he jumped into the water, Winter might follow him.

Unfortunately for his libido, jumping in was proven to be a very bad idea.

He exited the water about as quickly as possible to see that Winter, too, was taking off her top. He wasn’t actually all that worried about that, despite his thoughts from five seconds prior, mostly because he was far more concerned with what had been in the water.

“You do not want to go in there.” Jaune announced, the panic still filtering into his voice.

“Why?” Winter was evidently upset about hearing that, given she was, just like him, sweating up a storm.

It turned out that Jaune didn’t actually have to answer, because a moment later, a massive shape came to the very surface of the water, its glowing eyes searching for the prey that it had just barely missed catching. Once it realized that he was safely on land, it turned back around, and faded back into the murky depths.

“Ah.” Winter’s eyes were wide as she started sliding her gross shirt back on. “I see.”

They stood there awkwardly for the next five or ten minutes. The nice thing was that although it was warm there in the… Lake Acre? Sure, that worked. Even if it was warm in the Lake Acre, it was far cooler than it had been back at the Volcano Acre, and so they were naturally beginning to cool off a bit. Jaune had also gotten the chance to dip himself into the water however briefly, so the sweat on his body had at least partially washed away.

“Hey, Winter?”

“What is it?”

“How do we get to the other side?”

Winter’s eyes narrowed, even as she turned and looked at what he was looking at.

Because, unlike the other acres they’d entered into, the Lake Acre – which was growing on him, name-wise – did not have land that connected them to the other acres. Far from it. There was the bit of land they were currently stood upon, and, on the opposite bank, which Jaune could just barely see, there was yet another patch of land.

“Oh.” Winter noted.

“We have to cross the lake, don’t we?” Jaune asked, knowing the answer.

Winter just sighed.

Mostly because their curse very much had worked, it turned out.

/

Winter could, admittedly, have just flown the two of them over the lake. Given the fact that Jaune could see the other side, that meant that it wasn’t that large a distance. But she hadn’t wanted to expend that much magic when they didn’t really know what they were dealing with, and so she decided instead to make them a raft to cross the water.

A raft made of ice.

Which was very cold.

Jaune just hoped his body would hold up under the intense thermal scrutiny it was being put through over the last few weeks.

He also hoped that the horrendous creature he’d seen beneath the surface of the water was the only one in the lake. Of course, knowing his luck, they were as common as algae.

It was as he was having this thought that a tiny splash came out from off to his left. Jaune didn’t really think anything of this, of course. It was probably just a small fish trying to feed off something on the surface.

And then he was spoken to. Which he thought much more of.

“Ey, Polly! Come look at dis’!”

“We got a couple of idiots crossin’ through our turf, eh?”

Jaune heard the accents, which sounded like they belonged to gangsters from out of a stereotypical mob movie, and turned to his left expecting the worst.

He was, notably, not expecting fish.

Just… fish.

“So, who da *bleep*–” somehow, the very sound coming out of the fish’s mouth warped into a cartoonish censoring noise. Jaune just went with it. “Do ya’ think ya’ are, huh?”

Jaune stared down at the fish in front of him. It was important to note, in Jaune’s opinion, that this was, in all regards, a completely normal fish. It was not a cartoon fish, or an anthropomorphized fish. It was around a foot long, with bluish colored scales and beady, glassy eyes. Despite this, it talked in what Jaune could only describe as a perfect West-Valean accent. Exactly like a mobster might.

How that was possible, he did not know.

“Uhm… I’m Jaune.” He decided to keep things simple. Mostly because that was all his brain was capable of at the moment. “Jaune Arc. This is–”

“Oh, oh, okay, so we got a smart*bleep* here.” The second fish barked out a laugh. This was weird, because, as Jaune felt the need to reiterate, the fish was not anthropomorphized at all. It was just a fish. Jaune had caught fish just like it in his childhood out at the pond a few minutes from his house. “Real *bleep*in’ cute. Tell you what, you mouth off to me like that again, I break your *bleep*in’ knees, capiche!?”

“…How would you do that?”

Instantly, Jaune knew that he probably shouldn’t have said that. He’d simply been far too curious about the logistics of this fish – who, Jaune again felt the need to clarify, was maybe a foot long, y’know, normal fish sized – breaking his knees to not comment.

The fish, as if only just realizing the absurdity of what it had said, stared up at him with its beady black eyes.

Nothing happened. Multiple seconds passed by in absolute silence.

“…Polly, geet Ghostscale.”

“Understood, boss.”

Jaune looked to Winter for support. Winter seemed to have no concept of what she could do to support. This was fair. Jaune wasn’t sure he’d have known what to do in her position either.

The two fish disappeared below the water a few moments later. Jaune hoped beyond all hope that they weren’t going to come back. He knew they would, of course, because the Ever After was a constant fever dream, but he’d been hoping they wouldn’t.

They did.

In fact, when they resurfaced, they didn’t do so alone.

A giant thing emerged out of the water. Jaune recognized it as the creature he’d briefly seen below the waves before when he’d jumped into the water. His breath caught. It was nearly eight meters long – and that was only the parts they could see – and its face was a cross between an eel and a dragon.

“Feast your *bleep*in’ eyes on Ghostscale! Our hardest enforcer!” The one that wasn’t named Polly yelled out, laughing maniacally. “Try *bleep*in’ with him, huh!?”

Ghostscale came right at them, churning the water about on both sides of him as he swam right for their little ice-boat.

“Uh, Winter!?”

Winter, not panicking nearly as badly as him, just nodded. “I have it.”

She shot frost out of her hands, which almost instantly stopped Ghostscale in its tracks. In fact, before it could make a single move, it had already been slowed to the point of being unable to move. Only fifteen or so seconds of coursing icy frost upon its body, and it was encased in a giant block of ice around two meters wide.

The ice cube turned on its side, where it continued to float along the surface. Inside, Ghostscale was barely visible, but Jaune could tell the creature wasn’t dead. In fact, it didn’t even seem that bothered by its predicament. Although, it also didn’t seem like it could do much about it, either.

Jaune looked back to the mob-fish, and saw them staring up at Jaune and Winter with open-mouthed shock.

This was very humorous, given they were fish.

Finally, after five straight, silent seconds of a staring contest, the one that wasn’t named Polly shouted, “You *bleep*ers win this round! But we’ll be back!”

And then, without any pizazz or panache, the two gangster-fish disappeared beneath the waves.

For a while, Jaune and Winter just sort of floated along on their way to the other edge of the lake. Someone did need to say something, though, mostly because that was the single strangest thing that Jaune had ever experienced.

“…Uhm… what was that?”

“I have quite literally no idea.” Winter spoke, just sort of staring blankly at the water where Ghostscale’s icy form was still floating along, undeterred, as they put more and more distance between them. “I’m going to do my best not to think about it.”

Jaune decided that that was probably a pretty good idea, too.

As they finally crested the beaches on the opposite end of the water, Jaune saw the biome that awaited them next.

“Cheese Acre.” Jaune noted the massive mountains made of cheese. “Huh. Don’t rich people eat cheese all the time?”

Winter shot him a look. “…It’s cheese. Everyone eats cheese.”

“Yeah, but like… rich people eat more cheese.”

“What are you talking about right now?”

“Y’know, to be honest? I don’t know. I think I’m trying to be funny. It’s not working that well.”

At least this biome would be easy.

/

He’d thought volcano land had been bad. He’d been under the impression that nothing could be quite so ridiculous as the mafioso fish. He’d been right on both accounts, but this new land…

“Ugh…” Jaune nearly vomited again for the fourth time. “Why… why would there be an entire land made of cheese!?”

Winter, who was doing much less well than him, vomited for perhaps the sixth time onto the cheesy ground. She shivered horribly, even as Jaune forced some of his aura into her with his semblance. It wasn’t doing much, since her aura was still topped up, but he knew his semblance could make people feel a bit better, so that was what he was banking on.

“The smell…” Winter groaned, wiping at her lips. “Gods, but the smell…”

He’d not thought anything of a cheese land at first. Weird, yes, and probably a tad bit difficult to navigate given it was all the same color – and squishy and kind of difficult to get traction on.

But that had changed quickly when the sun had risen, and the cheese had begun to give off an odor.

And then that odor had gotten worse. And worse.

And worse.

He gagged, before trying to come up with some kind of remedy for their current situation. Winter had suggested trying to burn something so that they could smell the smoke instead, until Jaune had pointed out that directly inhaling smoke would kill them.

This had significantly dampened Winter’s spirits.

“How… is it this bad…” Winter panted. “I’ve never smelled anything so… acrid in my life!”

“And here I’d actually thought we could at least eat some of it.” Jaune wretched at the thought. “I didn’t realize this cheese had just… been out in the sun forever!”

“Let’s just… keep going. The less we talk the –urgh– the better.”

“Yeah… you’re probably right.”

Idly, Jaune couldn’t help but note that things hadn’t gone as badly as they could’ve.

At least those gangster fish had not shown up a second time.

It was in that exact instance that the cheese in front of them exploded, and from out of it came a massive, centipede-like creature that had seemingly been blending into the cheese. It was almost like a yellow-jacket. Just… longer. Much longer.

And with big fangs. And legs. Hundreds of legs.

Jaune, somehow, was entirely calm. Winter wasn’t freaking out, either.

Neither of them had the energy.

“Jaune?” Winter called to him.

“Yeah?” He answered back.

“I think this place hates us.”

“Y’know, I was just thinking the same thing.”