8,377Not sure if this chapter might end up a little shorter. Just more work nonsense. It always seems to come halfway through the week. Though the chapter may not even end up being shorter. I've no idea. Writing this note ahead of writing, so maybe it'll all sort itself out and I'll be able to do a chapter as normal.
Cover Art: Curbizzle
Chapter 76
Jaune wasn't sure if Ozpin still remembered he was in the room. The man was moving around as if he were possessed, muttering to himself in languages unrecognisable to man. When his hands moved, occasionally there would be brief flashes of light – magic, Jaune reminded himself, pushing past the instinctive scepticism. He'd seen enough to know it was real at this point.
He didn't dare speak up and reveal his presence. Ozpin was furious, his face stretched with rage ever since he'd woken screaming Salem's name. It was a miracle he hadn't lashed out, and Jaune suspected the muttering was to prevent himself from doing that. In the dream. Jaune might have had the power to hold Ozpin back. The same couldn't be said outside of it, and if Ozpin decided to lash out at him for how he'd acted in the dream, it would be incredibly dangerous.
So, Jaune stayed still. He remained seated on the bed, legs crossed, letting the man curse and cuss himself out. It was early, not even four in the morning, so no one was around to hear, and his team wouldn't expect him for some time. Jaune closed his eyes and focused on his breathing. It didn't really help, but it distracted him from Ozpin's pacing. Nothing lasted forever, though.
"There must be something we can do!" Ozpin snapped, drawing Jaune back to the present. It looked like it was time for the conversation to become two player. "Kill the Grimm essence within her, rid her of it. If Salem can be brought back to sanity, she could still be saved! We should go back in and try again."
"Or," Jaune said, unused to being the voice of reason to someone as wise as Ozpin. "Or it won't make a difference at all."
Ozpin rounded on him. "You can't know that."
"You said the Grimm presence in her mind might have driven her mad. You may even be right. But removing it won't un-mad her. If it's already twisted her thoughts to want to destroy all life, then those are her thoughts now. Its job is done."
"It's worth the attempt!"
"Is it?" Jaune flinched under the man's furious gaze. He quickly surrendered. "I'm not saying it isn't a noble endeavour and, if it works, that's great for everyone. But you're suggesting we throw ourselves at something which has just as much control over dreams as I do – more, in fact. It's been doing this for a lot longer than I have, and it has the home advantage. It's also immortal, whereas I am pointedly not."
"If this works, we could achieve so much good!"
"And if it doesn't, we die. That's more final for me than it is for you. Are you really willing to throw a student's life away like that?"
Ozpin's silence suggested he was, and possibly that he had. Ruby's mom had been one such student, and though Jaune doubted he'd "thrown her life away" if Qrow was still willing to work with him, it was still a sacrifice. One of many.
"Hah..." Jaune laughed weakly. "That's how it is, huh? Then let me ask this. Are you willing to throw my Semblance to the Grimm to control? Because if it doesn't kill me, it might drive me mad like it did Salem. Again, I'm not immortal, but I'll go mad while I'm asleep. There's no telling how many people I could kill before Miss Goodwitch realises something is wrong and comes to kill me." Jaune cocked his head. "If I don't get to her dream first and kill her. It could take days. Just people dropping dead throughout Beacon."
Ozpin didn't look daunted. Of course he didn't. There were some two hundred or so people in Beacon – maybe a little less. It was a big school but classes weren't large. They couldn't afford to be. Either way, two hundred dead for the chance to end the danger of Salem once and forever was, in brutal terms of efficiency, a small sacrifice. Pitiful in the grand scheme of things. If they could save Salem without killing her then she could use her control over the Grimm to drive the monsters away, making huntsmen obsolete anyway.
"Your silence says it all," Jaune said. "In which case I'll be the responsible one and refuse."
"You call that responsibility?" Ozpin's words were bitingly cold. "You dedicated yourself to fighting the Grimm when you signed up here, Mr Arc. I didn't expect cowardice from you of all people."
"Hmm. You know, one of the things that changed about me when I unlocked my Semblance was my maturity. Everyone commented on it. Truth is, it's hard to be immature when you can suddenly understand that much more about the people around you. When you realise your life – that you considered difficult – was so easy in the grand scheme of things. The experience has made me wiser, which I admit wasn't hard given how dumb I was."
"Your point?"
Jaune offered a crooked smile. "My point is I'm not so immature anymore as to lose my temper when someone accuses me of being a coward."
"..." Ozpin tried a different angle. "Then what of the lives we could save? Think of a world without her threat, Mr Ar. Think of your friends growing old without fearing for their lives. Think of the children every year who lose their parents, or the parents who lose their children. Is saving them not worth us risking our lives?"
"Of course it is. But there's a difference between risking our lives and throwing them away." Slowly, so as not to threaten the man, Jaune climbed off the bed and to his feet. Ozpin was unimaginably tense, and the smallest movement might provoke him. "With all due respect, sir, you're shaken and not thinking straight. You've seen something that has rattled you."
"That doesn't change the fact!"
"I know. But Salem isn't going anywhere and neither am I. And going back to her dream now is pointless. The reason we were pushed out is because she's awake, and I doubt she's going to go to sleep again."
Ozpin's fists clenched but he accepted the point with a tight nod. None of them would be getting any sleep after what they'd seen, and Salem was no different. Plus, she'd realise what had happened by now. The woman would be furious.
"Any dream of hers we enter in the next few days will be against us," Jaune said. "It'll not only be the beast trying to kill us, but Salem as well. The realistic course of action is to wait until she lets her guard down before we do anything again – whatever that anything turns out to be. Hopefully, it'll be something everyone has sat down and discussed."
"Everyone? And whom is everyone?"
"Those you trust to know of Salem at any rate. Miss Goodwitch, I assume." That one got a nod. "Oobleck—" No nod. "Ironwood?" Jaune guessed. Another nod. "At least those two, and anyone else you trust. They should at least know what's going on in case it all goes wrong. If we do something stupid now and die, no one will know."
"Hm." Ozpin clenched his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. Jaune could hear the bones in hands grinding together. "Fine," he forced out, after a minute of clenching. "Fine. We will leave the matter be for now. Though we shall discuss this."
It would have been easy to feel pleased about winning, about being the clever one, about being the one who had to take control when Ozpin faltered. That was stupid, though. Everyone had their weaknesses, and Ozpin's past was his. Jaune didn't feel happy about being right either, not when the man looked so incredibly shaken. Accepting he was wrong couldn't have been easy, not when Ozpin knew his love was suffering with some alien presence in her mind.
"Thank you, sir."
"Don't—" Ozpin's violent retort was cut off. The man trembled, taking a deep breath. "You are dismissed, Mr Arc," he said, more calmly. "Leave me to my thoughts."
"Yes sir. Call me when you need me, sir."
Jaune moved swiftly to the door, opened and stepped through. Before he could close it, he caught the man – young in body but ancient in mind – slump behind his desk with his face in his hands. No matter how quickly he closed the door, there was no escaping the first sounds of the immortal breaking down.
Sometimes, it felt like his Semblance caused more pain than it helped.
/-/
Given the early hour, Jaune didn't return to his dorm and risk waking his team up. Instead, he stopped at the library to read up on Remnant history. There was nothing about Ozma or Salem in it, but that wasn't a big surprise. Ozpin had probably made sure to erase their names from history. However, there were several rulers and prominent figures with names similar to him, which left Jaune wondering how many had been Ozpin, and how many were just coincidences.
Realistically speaking, there was no reason to assume Ozpin would always end up in the heads of people with similar names. That would be incredibly contrived if, out of every potential person on Remnant, he ended up in the head of someone whose name started with Oz— or Os—. Much too contrived.
As the hours crept by, it wasn't one of his teammates who found him first but, of all people, Qrow Branwen. And the man had been looking for him if the way he hurried over was any indication.
"There you are. Ozpin – sorry, Oswald – isn't answering any of my calls. What happened?"
"Did he tell you about us...?" Jaune asked.
"I was made aware the two of you were going to try and use your Semblance on Salem. I was waiting in Vale in the event you managed to find where she or Cinder were hiding away. Either one would have been enough for me to make a move." Qrow crossed his arms. "So, it's early, I've no sleep, and Oswald isn't responding. I'm feeling pretty cranky, kid. Don't make me wait any longer."
"There isn't much I'd feel safe telling you without offending Ozpin," Jaune replied. "The dream went wrong and we discovered more than we wanted to. It has shaken him. He's probably still in his office, but now is not a good time to go to him."
Qrow frowned. "Shaken how...?"
"I think he was weeping when I left."
"Fuck me." Qrow's eyes widened. "Uh. Okay, sure, maybe I can wait to call om him."
"That might be for the best. I think Ozpin is planning to call a meeting of all those who know about Salem to discuss the findings, so you'll probably be told during that."
"Right. Right, yeah. I guess I should get some sleep then," Qrow yawned and pushed off the table Jaune had been seated at. "Keep whatever you and Ozpin saw to yourself."
"I don't share people's dreams with others."
Not outside of extreme circumstances involving criminal dreamers and threats to other people, anyway. Salem counted, but since the dream told just as much of Ozma's past as hers, he wasn't about to share it.
I wonder if Qrow would react the same way if the dream showed him Summer...
Probably. Jaune looked down as the man left and felt an urge to look up psychological studies on grief. He knew of the five stages – the popularised theory – but it'd be interesting to read about more distant grief, and how it could flare back up. Would it do a widow good to be able to interact with the one they loved in their dreams, or would it reopen old wounds? Would it be closure or torture?
Amber flashed in his mind, dying in a dream in his arms. Jaune's fingers gripped the edges of the book but he forced himself to exhale and let go. Amber was still fresh, and they'd barely known each other. Amber thought she knew him from months or years travelling together, but that had all been a sweet lie. The time they spent with one another could have been measured in hours.
"How much worse would it be if we'd known one another all our lives...?"
It was enough to make him wonder if falling in love was even worth it. Everyone always said it was better to have loved and lost, but loss seemed so final, so difficult to recover from, and you could always fight the loneliness of not having it. Fill your life with other things to keep you happy and entertained.
It was a miserable few hours spent alone until breakfast.
/-/
It was everyone else who rescued him from his dour mood, filling the air with so much laughter and pointless bickering that it slowly washed away the lonely and miserable thoughts. Weiss arguing with Blake over her reading material, Yang with Ruby over what age it was acceptable to keep reading comics until (forever in Ruby's opinion) and Nora and Ren bickering over how Ren didn't need an underslung grenade launcher on his weapons.
Stupid, pointless, meaningless little arguments that eroded away at the previous night's misery and reminded him why it was worth taking a risk on connecting with people even if they might be taken away later.
Classes made it even easier to forget, and soon Jaune had more to worry about than a bad night's sleep. There was an exam in Oobleck's class, another impromptu Grimm captured and shown off in Port's, and then combat class with Headmistress Goodwitch. Oswald's absence from it was written off as sickness. There was much cheering among the students, aside from Pyrrha who lamented at the absence of her favourite teacher. Miss Goodwitch didn't seem to know what to do with the students begging her to come back full-time and save them from the evil Mr Oswald.
As the class ended, Jaune was held back. "A word, Mr Arc."
Jaune waved his friends on and slid over. "Yes ma'am?"
"Oswald has asked you to meet with us this weekend," she said. "Qrow will come collect you. It is to be myself, Qrow, Oswald, Ironwood and you. I suspect you know more of what this is about than I do."
"I might," he admitted.
"Hm." Glynda didn't press. "The meeting will be held at six. General Ironwood has been warned to be on his best behaviour. I expect you to be as well."
"Yes ma'am."
"Very well. Off you go."
Yang caught him on her way out the changing rooms. "Someone is getting in trouble a lot lately," she teased, slinging an arm around his shoulders. "What would my daddy think if he knew I was dating someone who was so naughty?"
"He'd feel sorry for me."
Yang choked on her laugh. "Ha! Probably. Not in trouble, then?"
"It doesn't look like it."
"Good. Because you and I are going out on a date this Friday."
"We are...?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Problem?"
"No. Not at all."
He was more surprised than anything. Though the two of them were officially dating, it often felt like they weren't. Yang just wasn't super affectionate. Occasionally, they spent time together, but Jaune could count the number of times they'd kissed on two hands. It never bothered him, especially not now he was so busy. If she'd been clingier then he wouldn't have been able to find the time between figuring out his Semblance and treating her properly.
But, in truth, he'd kind of started to think they weren't boyfriend and girlfriend at all, and that Yang was just using him as a smokescreen to convince others to leave her alone. He was fine with that if it were true, but he'd never cared enough to ask.
"Where are we doing?"
"I've book us a restaurant," she said.
"You have...?"
"Okay. Sheesh. Weiss booked us a restaurant. Way to take the wind out my sails."
"Ahah. Well, um. Do you want to go or is this Weiss pushing...?"
Yang smiled. "I asked her to arrange it. Don't worry, this isn't some reluctance thing. And it's not some I don't want to hurt your feelings but I'm about to dump you softly thing either, so don't stress out about that either."
"Right. Just a date, then?"
"Just a date," she agreed. "Just the two of us for a change. Dress up nice."
"Are you saying I don't normally?"
"Yes."
"Rude," Jaune complained, as Yang winked and strolled back to her team. "Rude, but not entirely inaccurate. But it's not like I can nip into Vale to buy better clothes with both Cinder and Salem out there."
His team wanted to know what Yang had said, and he told them with just a little cushioning smile to Pyrrha. His partner took it well, hiding her feelings. He didn't want to hurt her, but keeping this a secret and then having her find out later and wonder why he didn't tell her would hurt twice as much.
"I'm glad you two are doing more," she said. "Yang really doesn't do enough with you."
"It's not all her fault, Pyr. I'm so dragged down by my Semblance that I've been just as absent as a boyfriend."
"Yes, but you have that as an excuse."
"Speaking of Semblances," Ren interrupted. "Are you even sure you'll be allowed off campus in the first place? Headmaster Ozpin put that lock in place for your safety, and the headmistress hasn't removed it since he retired."
Retired. Right. They were still of the opinion that Ozpin was alive and still in his old body, but that he'd grown too old to continue on at Beacon. That didn't matter, since Ren made a damn good point.
"I guess I'll have to ask her..." Ozpin, that was. "But now I'm worried they'll say no."
"With good reason," Nora said. "That bitch is still out there. Ruby and Yang's uncle is apparently too useless to find her."
"That's a little harsh. Finding one person in Vale when they want to stay hidden isn't easy."
"Actually..." Ren interrupted. "Maybe you should ask him for help on this. If you need someone to take your side and convince Miss Goodwitch to let you go out into the city for an hour, Qrow Branwen would be your best bet. He could keep an eye on you both to make sure Cinder doesn't try anything. Not that she should. If you and Yang leave for one or two hours and come back, it's unlikely Cinder will even notice, let alone have time to act."
"Or reason," said Pyrrha. "Intelligent reason, anyway. If she wants to stay hidden, she isn't going to jump on Jaune the moment he steps out of Beacon."
"True." Jaune smirked. "If it were that easy, I think Qrow would have put me in a shark cage and dangled me out as bait already, and Cinder would be locked away for good. Yeah, it'll probably be fine but I'd best speak to Qrow about it first, then Miss Goodwitch." And then Ozpin. "And if they say no, I'll ask for a written note proving it to give to Yang."
Ren smirked. "Imagine having to get a note from your teacher to say you can't go out on a date with your girlfriend."
"That's so pathetic!" Nora giggled.
"Guys... Guys, come on..."
"It is kind of funny..."
"You too, Pyrrha? My own partner...?"
/-/
"A date..."
As expected, Ozpin was not amused.
"A date, Mr Arc. At this time? With all the things we have on?"
"I've already agreed to come to your meeting on Saturday, sir, but I can't make a good excuse for Yang."
"Cinder Fall is the excuse. A very real one at that."
"Yes, but she's been quiet for weeks— and I know that's to avoid detection," he rushed out, when Ozpin frowned. "But maybe that's the point. Honestly, Cinder isn't likely to even realise we've gone out if it's just for an hour or two. And, missing Mercury, she's a man down."
"That's no reason to be reckless."
"Maybe not, sir, but what if the reason to be reckless was to have me act as bait...?"
Ozpin frowned. "Hmmm."
"Think about it, sir. Qrow hasn't had any luck – no offence," he threw out to the man stood nearby. Qrow snorted and waved his hand. "And Cinder is going to stay hidden unless we do something. Plus, the longer she stays hidden the longer Salem is going to be around putting people in danger. Maybe it's best to have me act as bait."
"You just got done telling us how unlikely it is she'd bite."
"Yes, but that's the first time. Here, Cinder won't even notice, but she'll probably find out about it after and then she might start to think you're lowering security. If we act like we think Cinder has left Vale and start to let me out a little bit – not alone, but with Qrow nearby – then it might be enough to make Cinder think we've let our guard down."
"Need I remind you Cinder is not the only threat in Vale...?"
"You need not," Jaune replied, clumsily. "But you said yourself that Salem is more likely to focus on Cinder than me. She has all the time in the world to get to me—" His natural lifespan at any rate. "—but Cinder is a much more immediate threat for her, because if Cinder gets me first then Salem is in trouble. So, if I go out and Cinder and Salem both appear, it makes much more sense Salem will focus on Cinder. She might even work to let me escape because she knows she can always try again later if I'm alive, but not if I'm dead."
"It's a plan," said Qrow. "Not a good one or anything, but it's definitely a plan."
Ozpin sighed. "All this so you and your girlfriend can make out, Mr Arc?"
Jaune shifted. "It's not that. We don't even really do that. It's just..." Jaune looked helplessly to Qrow. "I feel like I've done nothing for her of late. I've been so busy learning more about my Semblance and helping you with Salem and Cinder that I've neglected Yang. And I'm already willing to give more in aid of you, so can't you give something back...? Is that too selfish to ask for?"
There was an awkward silence.
Eventually, Qrow broke it. "Kid has a point, Oz. If we're asking him to risk his life in Salem's head, the least we can do is bail him out for one night. It's not fair otherwise."
"Yes, and I'm sure the fact it's your niece he's talking about isn't influencing your thoughts any..."
"No more than the fact Salem is your wife influences yours," Jaune returned.
Qrow balked. "Wife!?"
Ozpin looked up and scowled.
Jaune winced. "Was I not meant to say that?"
"You'll get your date, Mr Arc. Now please excuse us while I explain to Mr Branwen the rather unsettling thing you've just revealed."
"WIFE!" Qrow barked, and then scowled. "You mean this whole thing is some fucking marital breakdown!? You lied to us!"
"No. No, it is far more than that. Out, Mr Arc. Qrow, take a seat. I have not lied to you. I simply left out some things that happened so long ago that they had little to no importance in today's world. Or will you begrudge me a marriage that ended two thousand years prior?"
Wincing, Jaune let himself out and closed the door. He'd assumed Qrow knew, that everyone knew, but it looked like there were some things Ozpin had told them and different things he'd told Jaune. Things he'd just revealed that he really should not have.
"Well... at least I can go out with Yang..."
Small victories.
Next Chapter: 14th November
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