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Whitley tries Winter first.
It's too sensible not to. She's the one who taught Weiss, isn't she? So he grits his teeth and barges into her tent in the early morning when he knows she isn't sleeping, and waits for her to look up. The angle makes shadows pool beneath her eyes.
"I want to learn to fight."
"No."
"I was thinking we could practice in—what?"
"No. I don't have time."
He clenches his fists. "You can't be serious! Back when Weiss decided to go to Beacon you couldn't shut up about how I should learn too, and now that there's been an apocalypse and there are Grimm everywhere you won't teach me?"
"There aren't Grimm everywhere. As long as you stay in the camp, you'll be fine."
"But what if Salem shows up again? What if—"
"It doesn't matter what happens." Winter stands up, and grimaces because she's not wearing the brace. A hand settles on his shoulder. "I'll protect you."
"Like you protected Weiss?"
That's how he finds out what it would sound like to stab someone. The wet, choked-off gasp. Her throat bobbing as she tries to swallow around the knife. But there's no blood—just him and his only sister and a handful of words he can't take back.
Whitley doesn't wait to find out what will happen once she recovers from her shock, if she'll cry or scream or hit him. He runs off rather than give her the chance.
Nora takes walks, now.
It's not because she likes them. They're stupid and slow and boring and the scenery around the camp is awful, nothing but tents and trash and sweaty people as far as the eye can see. She's pretty sure you're supposed to walk with other people. That was what made it bearable back—back in Mistral. But it would also kind of defeat the point.
She clung to Ren, after. Clung to him for days, because Jaune was gone and Pyrrha was gone and everyone was gone and she was six years old again and the moment she let go of him he'd just—
She can't keep doing that. She's trying to figure out who Nora is, right? That doesn't work if she's never alone.
Only she's starting to wonder what the point is. What's she going to find that's worth this? Wandering around in circles getting nowhere every day, learning nothing, just wasting time that she could be spending with Ren in case—
Fact about Nora number... what, two? She's really, really scared that Ren is going to disappear. And it only took her like a week of daily walks to figure that out! She kicks an abandoned rifle shell down a dune and thinks that maybe this will be her last walk.
"Nora?"
She turns to see Weiss' little brother, still all decked out in a dress shirt and tie even though it's a million degrees out and he must be melting. "That's me," she says, and forces a smile.
Whitley stands up straight and addresses her like she's Goodwitch or something. "I want to learn to fight."
"Oh. Sure."
He blinks a few times. "That's it?"
"Yeah? I'm not doing anything right now, and walking sucks."
So they find a patch of dust that nobody's using for anything, and an old rapier too dull to kill any Grimm with, and they set to work.
"We should probably start with unlocking your aura."
Whitley makes a face.
"Just stay right there, okay? I'll, um..." She puts one hand on his shoulder, the other on his chest. Right over the heart seems like a good spot, right? She's pretty sure that's what Pyrrha did. It's been a while since Jaune told the story.
"Did something go wrong?" Whitley asks anxiously. "Is it broken?"
"What? No! Aura can't break. Or, okay, it can, but not like that. I just don't totally know how to do this." Ren did it for her—that's a better memory, even though she was bleeding a whole lot. He just sort of... reached in and tugged. She can do that. Probably.
"What's taking so long?"
"Shush! I'm thinking!" Reach in how? Tug on what? How is she supposed to awaken Whitley's aura when she barely knows him?
Her throat closes up—but she knows what to do.
"For. Um. For it is in passing that we achieve immortality. We..." Nora stumbles, and her heart plummets through her ribs. She doesn't remember. She doesn't remember the words.
She pictures Pyrrha instead. The dance—the red dress—laughing so hard she almost tipped over. People didn't realize how clumsy she could be, when she was hanging out instead of fighting. Maybe that's why so many of them didn't get why she and Jaune got along. But the chant isn't about sweet, awkward, apologizes-way-too-much Pyrrha.
"We become a... a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all."
It's about the Pyrrha that got a statue.
"Infinite in distance and unbound by death, I release your soul, and—"
And suddenly it's not Pyrrha she's seeing at all. It's a goofy grin. A soft blue onesie. A new haircut that came out two inches too short, because Nora tried to help and accidentally shaved off a chunk at the back of his head. His hands—glowing, healing, always warm to the touch. The golden arc of his shield.
"And by my shoulder, protect thee."
She forgets about Whitley by the time it's over. Maybe the words have some magic in them after all, or maybe his aura recognizes some hollow ache in hers, but it works anyway. A baby blue glow flickers at her fingertips for just an instant before it sinks back under his skin.
"There," she says, beaming like she isn't on the edge of bawling. "That wasn't too hard!"
Whitley stares down at his hands for a long while. "What now?"
"That. Is a really good question."
He looks up. "What?"
"How would I know? I use a hammer that weighs more than you, not a little toothpick. Pretty sure you'd get in trouble swinging that around the way I'm used to. But I know somebody who can help! C'mon."
"Keep your aura up!" Oscar shouts, spinning around a thrust of Whitley's rapier and smacking him in the face to drive the point home. He's starting to question how good an idea that actually is—it's been weeks and he still keeps dropping his aura every time his focus lapses a little.
"I'm trying!"
Go through the parries again, Ozpin tells him. He hesitates too much on defense.
Oscar sighs. "So—"
"Ugh, again?"
"He says you have to know them well enough that you don't think about it."
They spend another hour like that, working up a sweat and listening to the familiar tap tap tap of cane meeting rapier. Oscar's surprised to notice Nora still sitting off to the side. Normally she gets bored of watching them fence by now, and wanders off until it's her turn to spar with Whitley.
Every so often she cups her hands around her mouth and shouts, "Aura!" and Whitley flinches and tries to activate it. He's... well...
"That was, um, better!" Oscar says.
Whitley rolls his eyes. "You know, considering how much you apparently lied to everyone, you're not very good at it."
"Hey!" says Nora. "That was Ozpin, not Oscar."
"Then maybe you should have him lie about my progress instead."
"You are doing better." Nora walks over to punch him lightly in the shoulder. He almost tips over—Oscar winces in sympathy. "Nobody gets good at this right away. It takes a long time to learn."
"Oscar lived on a farm two years ago."
"Yeah, well." He scuffs at the dirt with his boot. "I got a head start."
Oscar...
"I've been fighting Grimm since I was like six," says Nora. "And I super wasn't good at it when I started. There was a lot of running around and screaming and almost dying. I bet Weiss had to work really hard for a long time, just like you and me."
"I wouldn't know. Winter won't talk about it." Whitley looks down. It takes a moment for Oscar to realize he's staring at Long Memory. "No one wants to talk about her. Mother only does it when she's drunk, and Winter would rather fight a whole horde of Grimm than say her name. I don't know anything."
"We could talk," Oscar says tentatively. "If you want."
He's looking at the cane again.
Oscar—
I know. I see it.
"Does Ozpin have stories?"
"Not really." Oscar sits down cross-legged with his cane in his lap, and pats the ground beside him. "He didn't talk to Weiss much before he died. I have a story, though."
Whitley squats down with his arms around his knees. Nora sits, too, dead quiet like she can be when the situation really calls for it. Ozpin never knew that about her. That's something Oscar figured out.
"It was in Atlas, right before everything went crazy. Jaune—" Nora flinches. Oscar feels achy and wistful, but his voice stays steady.
"Jaune wanted to see a movie, so he invited everyone along, and it ended up being me and him and Weiss. We sat in the theater for hours, and it was just... awful. There were like four other people in there, and two of them left partway through.
"Weiss started making these—I guess they weren't jokes, she'd just poke holes in all the stupid stuff that was happening. Totally serious. This was some super dramatic artsy thing, it wasn't supposed to be a comedy, but we were all sitting in the back row losing our minds."
He never realized she was funny, until then. Ozpin never knew. He's getting possessive of these things. Little details that he found, that make them feel like friends. Not... students.
Oscar shakes himself. "Anyway... then Jaune said something about Spruce Willis and they wouldn't stop laughing for ages. It was kind of annoying."
Gods. They were both so young.
"He tried to ask her out," says Nora. Whitley whips his head around to gawp at her, and she giggles. "That's probably why they were laughing. He asked her to see a Spruce Willis move and it was a disaster."
Whitley makes a face. "I should hope so. He's all—um." He glances into his lap. "Sorry."
"He's... he grew up a lot since then." Nora sniffles and hugs her arms around her middle. "And he always meant well. It just... didn't always work. One time, before the dance, he showed up at team RWBY's door and asked her out with a song. I'm practically tone deaf and even I could tell it was bad."
Whitley snorts. "Weiss had perfect pitch. He might as well have serenaded her with nails on a chalkboard."
Nora's smile starts to shake. "He was always like that. It was—it was sweet. Not to Weiss, he got too pushy there, but... he always tried so hard. Even when he had no idea what he was doing. That's—I mean—I think that's why Pyrrha—" She makes a soft choking sound, and shoots to her feet. "I gotta... sorry. I'll see you guys next time."
"I'm sorry—" Whitley blurts, but she's already running away.
"It's okay. This is just... hard. On everyone. She's not mad at you."
"I didn't mean to..."
"You didn't do anything wrong." Oscar sighs and rubs a thumb on the pommel of Long Memory. Whitley's eyes follow the motion.
"You're lucky."
His head snaps up. Whitley looks almost as startled to hear himself speak—his eyes go wide and he snaps them from the cane to Oscar's face.
"I'm really not."
"But you are. You have all these stories and memories, right there in your head." He reaches for the cane. Oscar tightens his grip, and Whitley's fingers freeze just before they can touch it.
"You don't know what you're talking about."
He stares at a point somewhere far away. "I just... wish I had something. She was different, when she came back. I didn't even really know her by the end."
Oscar swallows, and—ignoring the cautioning voice in his head—holds out Long Memory for Whitley to touch. He lays a hand on it and frowns.
"You do have them, you know," Oscar tells him. "Stories. I never knew Weiss had perfect pitch."
"Her team probably did."
"Probably. But you still know things they didn't. Little things. Things that can be important, just because they're yours."
"She tried to braid my hair, once. When we were really little. It wasn't long enough, and she got so frustrated that she stole a mop and used it as a wig." The ghost of a smile lights his face. "I bet she never told anyone that. She threatened to shave me bald if I said anything to Winter."
"See?"
Whitley rolls his eyes. The resemblance is suddenly striking. Then he closes his hand around the cane, looking more lost than Oscar has ever seen Weiss. "I still wish..."
"No, you don't." Oscar sighs and gently reclaims his cane. "Jaune was like the big brother I never had. On the whale, it was when he hugged me that I knew I was okay. And Ruby... she was the first one who treated me like I belonged with them. She had this way of making you feel like you could survive anything, even in the middle of an apocalypse. I don't know what to do without her.
"The first time you lose someone like that, it's terrifying. You're feeling things you've never felt before, and you never know when something's going to happen that makes you cry, or break things, or say the worst thing you could and lose a friend."
Whitley flinches.
"It's just as scary the second time, and the third, and the fourth. But... the twentieth time? The hundredth time? The thousandth? It still hurts. I don't think it ever hurts any less. And it's different, because the person you lost is different, but you aren't. So you know what's happening. You've felt something like this before, and you know you can get through it. Because you've already done it."
"Sounds nice."
"It's not." Oscar's vision blurs. "My parents died, but I was too young to remember any of it. It was just me and my aunt for a long time. Ruby and Jaune and the others... they were my first real friends, and five of them are gone, and I'm mourning like him."
Whitley ducks his head, chagrined. "I didn't..."
"I know. You're learning." Oscar stands, and the tip of the cane makes a soft hushing sound as it strikes the sand. Whitley looks up at him. They're nearly the same age, and he looks so young that it aches. Oscar can feel it like a chasm growing between them. Between him, and everyone. How long does he have before he looks at Qrow and sees a child?
How can he feel so old, and still be just as lost as when it all started?
Whitley attacks Nora like she owes him money. Fast and vicious, putting his whole body into every swing. And it's... bad.
Like, really bad. So bad that Nora can tell how bad it is even though she's never used a rapier before. He's all off-balance because his feet keep ending up in places they're not supposed to be, he telegraphs his attacks a mile off, and he still forgets to keep his aura up as a shield—which makes it terrifying to spar with him, by the way.
"Aura up!" she shouts, when she spots the telltale flicker of it disappearing back under his skin.
Whitley tosses his rapier aside and collapses on his butt. He's breathing hard—less, she suspects, from the exercise, and more from whatever made him ask to spar in the middle of the night in the first place.
Sighing, Nora sets down Magnhild and sits cross-legged beside him. "Ready to call it a night?"
"It's been months." He looks down at his lap. "I'm not any good at this, am I?"
"...Not really."
He flinches, and Nora gives him a bracing clap on the shoulder. "Hey, it's not the end of the world! Sometimes you find a style that clicks with you right away, but sometimes it takes some messing around to figure out what you like. Ruby tried pretty much everything before she built her scythe. We could hunt around the camp, see if we can't scrounge up a few other weapons for you to try."
"No!" Whitley glares at her, fists clenched, shoulders hiked up to his ears. "I need to do this."
They're quiet for a while. Whitley pulls his knees against his chest and wraps his arms around them.
"You know..." Nora bounces Magnhild on her palms. "This hammer's a lot more than a hammer."
"I did notice the grenade launcher."
She grins. "Well, yeah, but it's also a part of me. A Huntsman's weapon is an extension of himself. That's why all the prep schools have you forge your own."
"Do you have a point, or are you trying to give me history lessons since the combat ones aren't sticking?"
Nora glances at his old practice rapier. "Is there anything you'd want to do with it? If you stick with the rapier? Add a gun mode, maybe?" She waggles her eyebrows. "There's no law saying you can't have a toothpick sword and a grenade launcher."
He shrugs. "Dust, probably."
Yeah. She sorta figured.
"You don't have to be Weiss, y'know. You can just be Whitley."
"And how am I supposed to do that?"
"Good question." She flops over and lands on her back with her arms behind her head, staring up at the stars. "Let me know if you figure it out, okay?"
For a moment, she thinks he might storm off. But instead he lies down beside her. Quiet. It's almost nice. She makes it a whole four seconds before it reminds her of Ren.
"I wanted something that was hers," says Whitley. "That's what I'm supposed to do, isn't it? Hold on to a locket or something, and cry over it sometimes until I feel better? But everything she didn't leave behind at the manor fell with her."
Nora thinks of the dagger Ren straps to his arm. The sash Jaune wore around his waist, and the bronze accents on his shield. "That'd be nice, wouldn't it? Having something you can touch." She finds herself blinking back tears. "I wore the same shirt for like six years. Even after I met Ren and we joined one of the prep schools, and we had uniforms and stuff we could use instead. It didn't fit anymore and it was all kinds of gross because I pretty much only ever washed it with me in it, but I didn't care. I didn't want to get rid of it."
"That's disgusting."
"Yep." She reaches up to her chest, and remembers with an odd pang that the heart isn't there anymore. It's moved to her skirt instead. "I... think it's because my mom got it for me? It's not like it was hers, or a special gift or anything. But she helped me put it on that morning. So. Maybe that's why I got so attached to it? I never realized that before."
The sky's all blurry, now. She doesn't know how Ren can stand this, staying quiet and thinking until the world goes grey. "C'mon," she says, sitting up. "I have an idea."
She drags Whitley all the way out of the camp and into the winding streets of Vacuo, many of which are still crowded with market stalls even though the moon is up. There's never really a time of night when the whole city goes to sleep. That happens a little after noon, when the heat gets so bad that everyone does their best to hide inside and nap through it.
"What are we doing?" Whitley asks irritably.
"Looking for Weiss-y stuff." Nora points to a stall hung with wool jackets. "Wanna see if they have anything with snowflakes on them?"
They wander for a long while. Finding snow and ice-themed clothes in Vacuo is hard—and spotting anything that even kind of resembles the Schnee family emblem is much harder. It's Whitley who finally finds a prize. He stumbles mid-step and crashes into her a little, and they both turn to stare at a jewlery display across the street. A pair of earrings are nestled into an open box. It only takes a glance at the price tag to know that the deep red rubies dangling from them are definitely fake.
It's still way more than she should be spending. The refugee camp isn't exactly rolling in lien to pay them for protection from the Grimm, seeing as all the wealth of Atlas is underwater now. But he picks them up and goes so quiet and still, she doesn't have the heart to say no.
"My ears aren't pierced," he mumbles, as they walk away from the stand.
"We can fix that."
"You want me to get my ears pierced. By a stranger. In Vacuo. At midnight." He stares at her, looking impressed. "That's insane."
"Hey, it beats sitting around being sad, right?"
"You're a terrible influence."
Nora takes that as the highest possible compliment, and sits with him while he squirms through the whole poking-holes-in-his-ears thing. He'll be fine—you have to try pretty hard to get an infection with an active aura, which is good because otherwise she and Ren probably wouldn't have made it to puberty. He'll still have to let them heal a bit before putting in the dangly earrings, though.
Whitley cups them in his hands as they walk back towards the camp, watching the imitation gems catch the light. Real or not, they're still pretty.
They're on the outskirts of the city when something catches Nora's eye. A glimmer of light that turns out to be a cheap plastic toy designed to hang off a keychain. She picks it up. It fits neatly in her palm—a little knight in shining armor, brandishing a sword at the sky. His form is awful, he's holding his teeny shield way too low, but her fingers curl around him anyway.
The same stall has other figurines, too. She picks up a gladiator in red and gold and holds it up next to the knight. And then, just when she's about to put them down in front of the seller and pay up, she spots a third one. Classic princess, with a nice dress that reminds Nora of the dance.
Would she have liked this one better? Jaune said she'd wanted to get away from the champion, at the end. But it feels wrong to tie her to the knight, tight enough to suffocate. It's a choice between what she was to him, and what she was to everyone else... but there isn't a little figurine here for whatever Pyrrha was to herself.
Did Pyrrha know who that was? Nora never thought to ask.
"They're only a few lien," Whitley says. "Just get all three."
So that's how Nora winds up sitting in the tent Whitley shares with his mom, prying bits of armor off the gladiator figurine with a hunting knife and gluing them onto the princess. It's actually him that winds up doing most of the craft stuff. She starts to cry partway through, and her hands shake too badly for her to be much help.
The result is messy and crooked, with little blobs of glue poking out of the seams... but Nora thinks Pyrrha would've liked it anyway. She always appreciated the small stuff. They dangle side by side on her belt, the knight and the glad-cess—and Nora feels a tiny bit closer to the little girl who clung to a nasty old shirt, because she knew all too well what it was to be alone.
It's late when Nora leaves. Mother's still not back yet—Whitley's starting to think she found somewhere else to sleep.
He doesn't feel bad about sniping at her earlier.
He might feel a little bad about Nora talking about her mom in the past tense.
He definitely feels bad about Winter.
It was easier with father. He was always simple to please—do what he wanted, don't contradict him, remember what he said and find places to parrot it back to him later. Whitley always used to wonder why his sisters couldn't seem to figure it out. He never realized he was trading something away.
The rapier is still propped up in the tent. He throws his blanket at it, knocking it over and covering the stupid thing so he doesn't have to look at it anymore.
Is that all he is, now? A mimic? Shaping himself after his dead sister instead of his dead father?
He scowls at the cheap fake jewelry. It feels stupid, now. He feels stupid. Almost stupid enough to take the little studs out of his ears. But when he thinks about throwing them away, he curls up around them and starts to cry.
When he drifts off, Whitley shivers through dreams about gluing plastic armor on a keychain toy. About imitation rubies, and facets, and the people he's tried to be.
He wakes up no wiser, but much warmer for the blanket tucked beneath his chin.