Chapter Text
The girl in the corner is completely and strikingly alone. She has a book in her hand, but nothing is sitting beside her. Nothing is perched on her shoulder. Nothing is curled up in her lap.
Behind Yang, Aegis whuffs.
"Easy. Let her get used to you before you jump all over her." He stares back at her, and she flushes. "I mean, as used to you as anyone gets." Most shards are smaller than their people. Her grizzly bear... isn't. People are staring at him more than the girl without a shard.
Which makes sense. Most of them probably figure she has an insect or a mouse tucked away in her pocket. But she doesn't look like the type, and Yang knows that not everyone has a shard. Sometimes they die, like her dad's duck Harbor. Sometimes they leave. The raven named Slán-Eág who lives in their house doesn't belong to Uncle Qrow.
Yang knows he and her dad both hate people gawking at them. So she smiles, and drags Ruby over to the girl who's sitting so alone, and doesn't ask where her other half is. She likes to think Blake appreciates the break.
Three days later, the morning after her talk with Ruby, Weiss finds out she and Paean are strange.
It starts when he picks a fight with Aegis. He's an albatross, which means he's gigantic for a bird—his wingspan is wider than she is tall, and standing he comes nearly to her waist. That doesn't mean he should go around antagonizing bears.
"Stop. Here." She snaps her fingers at him, and he reluctantly backs off from where he was flaring his wings in an attempt to intimidate a bemused Aegis. He settles into his usual place, standing with his right side pressed against her left.
Weiss is a little worried Yang might push the issue, but she just laughs. "You know, for an oversize duck he's pretty vicious."
"He's an albatross, thank you very much," she says primly. "And yes, he can be... aggressive." Seeing an opportunity to build a better rapport with her team, she jokes, "I used to be terrified of him when I was little." After all, Yang has a bear and Ruby a wolf—surely they can relate.
All three of her teammates stare at her.
"...What?"
"But... he's your shard." Ruby glances at Paean, who chooses this moment to go back to flapping his wings at Aegis.
"Even if he is kind of an asshole," adds Yang.
"Excuse you," Weiss snaps. "Paean is perfectly lovely."
Paean lets out a menacing hiss.
"And you can't seriously be telling me you were never worried about living with a grizzly bear that can ignore your aura."
The staring intensifies.
"Your aura doesn't protect you from your shard," Weiss says slowly, baffled that they've all apparently gone their entire lives without noticing.
Blake's eyes narrow. "How do you know that?"
Weiss always assumed it was common knowledge. Suddenly self-conscious under all the stares, she turns and busies herself with her desk. "He doesn't do it anymore. And it's not as if he mauled me, he's a bird. He just pecked me sometimes when he was annoyed."
She decides not to mention it was when Paean stopped biting her that she realized something was very, very wrong.
"Is it just me," Jaune asks at breakfast one morning, "or do Ren and Nora's shards not really fit?"
Everyone stares at him. He's suddenly glad he chose to say this now, when Ren has a cold and the two of them are staying in for the day. Two extra pairs of eyes would be a lot, on top of the five he already has to deal with. Nine if he counts the shards.
"Jaune..." He can tell from her tone that Pyrrha's about to have to break something super obvious to him. His only hope is that it won't be quite as bad as the pickle incident.
"No, no." Yang grins. "I wanna hear this. Are you saying a praying mantis doesn't fit Nora?"
Jaune shifts nervously in his chair. "I mean... Still obviously loves her and everything. It's just that he's always so... uh, still. I mean he hangs out on her shoulder a lot, which is super cute, but I guess I figured her shard would have more energy."
"Like a grasshopper," Weiss says flatly. There goes his hope of not looking stupid in front of her. Again.
"Well... yeah?"
"Uh, Jaune?" Ruby at least has the decency to look embarrassed for him. "Still is female."
"Bwuh?"
"Because she's Ren's," Blake cuts in. "And Shimmer is Nora's."
"But..." Jaune looks around helplessly. "They don't—they're always—"
"Sometimes shards find somebody else they like better," Yang says. It sounds like it's supposed to be a joke, but her tone is off and it falls flat. "Seriously, though, can we talk about this essay? It's due in two days and that's how many words I've got."
Weiss shrieks and leaps out of her chair. Her foot lands just wrong on a stack of books, and she topples over sideways and cracks the side of her head against Blake's bed. Ruby yelps and falls out of hers, drawing an alarming groan from the ropes holding it up. The bathroom door bangs open, revealing Yang wearing a towel and wielding a bottle of shampoo like an improvised mace.
But it's Paean who's ready for a fight. He hisses and mantles his wings, his eyes narrowed as he glares down the threat.
"Uh, Weiss?" Yang leans against the doorframe. "What's going on?"
"It's fine," she grumbles. "There's just..."
A buzzing sound, and the tink-tink-tink of a tiny armored body striking the window.
"Oh." Yang shoots a longing glance towards the shower and sighs. "Okay, okay, we'll get it out."
Aegis lumbers towards the window, sniffing suspiciously. Then he rears up and roars, a paw flying to his nose. The wasp darts across the room, making Ruby squeak as it dives past her. It misses Blake by only a hair. She flinches away, half closes her book and raises it to shield herself—
Paean lunges. His beak snaps shut, and the wasp finally goes still.
Yang whistles. "Not bad for a goose."
"Albatross."
"Are you sure you're okay?" Ruby asks. "You look kinda rattled."
"It's fine. I just... really don't like wasps."
Seven years earlier, Weiss learned that shards could be stolen.
She sat in Father's office, her ears ringing as he shouted things she didn't care about. All her attention was on the arctic fox lying at his feet, his dark eyes half-lidded. Indifferent.
In the corner of the room there sat a jar. Weiss didn't look at it.
Tink-tink-tink—!
Years passed. Paean dulled. He stopped fighting her. He stopped fighting at all.
As vicious as he was, he was hers. She'd rather die than let him turn into Torpor. So she grabbed him and shouted at him until he did something, anything. There's still a little scar on her thumb. Then she buried her face in his downy feathers and whispered, "Don't go."
He pressed their foreheads together—a silent, sacred vow.
There was a time when Torpor was bright-eyed and curious, when mother would gather him into her lap and let them pet him while he wagged his fluffy tail. According to Winter, anyway—Whitley doesn't remember that.
He does remember the day Winter had to explain to him that he isn't Father's shard. It was the same day his ermine Echo took to burrowing herself into his shirt pocket, curling into a warm ball against his chest.
She's always been like that. Timid. He used to think it was just her shape. When he looked it up, he found out real ermines can hunt prey many times their size. They're fierce little things, and Echo is not.
It doesn't matter. What use would it be for her to be fierce? She's not big like Paean—as much as he likes to tell Weiss that he's a glorified seagull, he could probably swallow Echo whole if he wanted to. Then there's Levee, Winter's stallion, who could take on a full squad of Atlesian soldiers by himself. Even he is nothing compared to their grandfather's infamous polar bear.
He doesn't remember Anemoia, of course, since he never met his grandfather. He's only seen pictures of her, towering over the armored figure beside her. She broke a record after Nicholas died—it took more than two weeks for her to fade away, the longest recorded half-life of any shard. But that's not why people know about her.
Her temperament changed when his grandfather died. Most shards that linger too long get a little savage, but they never attack the family of their human. Never... except for Anemoia. Father would have been killed if mother hadn't stopped her. It took a full team of Hunters to lock her away.
Whitley suppresses a shiver. He loves Echo—but sometimes he wonders what it would be like if she was strong.
Sun is open, friendly, and curious. A bit of a dork, really, but the way he wears it on his sleeve makes it more charming than any suave act could be. Blake's spent far too much time puzzling over his complete lack of mystery. He's not hiding anything... it's just that his monkey shard is so odd.
Every so often she spots Joy exploring Beacon's campus, with Sun somewhere off in the distance or, stranger still, nowhere to be found. Even when she's alone, she's easy around other people in a way Blake's never seen before. Sometimes she goes as far as letting her run a hand through her golden fur. She wishes she wouldn't. It's too tempting to close her eyes for an instant and pretend—
Distances. She was thinking about distances.
Neptune and his shard spend a lot of time apart, too. At first glance Blake thinks he's like her. (But he isn't, is he? He didn't let it happen.) He seems to read that in their expressions and lets out a long-suffering sigh. "Fathom's in my dorm. She's an octopus, so... kinda can't cart a fish tank everywhere I go."
Blake would. She'd carry it on her back if only she could be close to him again.
Some people might psychoanalyze this kind of thing. Blake might even be one of them, if it wasn't for the fact that Weiss is the first person she would've expected to be distant with their shard. Paean never wanders, though—it's rare to see them more than a foot or two apart, and when they walk he stays so close that his wings brush against her calves, like he's afraid to stop touching her.
Besides. It's obvious to anyone who cares to look that it's security, not distance, that lets Joy roam. She always comes back to him in the end.
They don't come back.
Yang's never studied shards or anything, but her life to date has been a thorough crash course in how and why they disappear. Mostly, she learned that they never do it when you're expecting it.
Phobos was half Slán's size, and twice as terrifying. Not because he'd ever hurt them—he was a sweetheart, but their dad made the mistake of telling them that true shrikes hunt by impaling their prey on thorns. He didn't fit Summer very well, but they loved him anyway. From his sharp claws to his fierce beak to the bold black band across his eyes.
Dad's duck Harbor flew out with Summer on her missions. Phobos stayed behind, sitting on Yang and Ruby's heads like a tiny guardian angel. They all knew something was wrong the day he got sick. The same day dad stopped dead in the middle of the kitchen and fell to his knees, gasping and clutching at his chest. The same day they spent in the hospital while doctor after doctor told them it wasn't a heart attack, that there was nothing wrong with him.
There was definitely something wrong with Phobos. Feathers scattered all over the house, and he shrank into a packet of skin and bones and the last scraps of down. Even the black mask wilted away. By the time Qrow came to tell them, dad definitely knew. Yang thinks she might have, too. Only Ruby was young enough that it didn't sink in.
Yang expected Phobos to gutter out like a candle in the instant she heard the fatal words. But he just let out a weak little chirp and fluttered into Qrow's hands.
Two days later, she tickled him under the beak before stepping into the shower. He was gone when she got out.
A frenzy of barking brings Pyrrha to the window in a rush, her heart pounding—and in a single glance, it melts.
Flicker charges across the green. Then he leaps, pouncing on a tiny dark streak and rolling over and over on the lawn. Zwei lands on top, his hindquarters wiggling, and lets out a happy bark. The source of most of the noise jumps on both of them, until the three are in a heap of wagging tails and tangled fur.
Elixir pants happily from the top of the pile, her ears perked up tall and her golden fur shining in the sun. Pyrrha looks around, and finally spots Jaune and Ruby off to the side, leaning on one another to stay upright while they laugh.
There's a pang of resentment in her gut.
Kismet lifts his head and rumbles his concern. "Nothing," she tells him, forcing a smile. "I'm just being silly." He snorts and gives her a playful swat. She grins, and this time it's genuine.
"Looking forward to sparring today?"
His emerald eyes light up. Lithe muscles ripple under striped orange fur, as a shiver of excitement runs down the length of his body. For years he's had to sit and watch on the sidelines—he's a textbook example of why shards are banned from taking part in tournaments with their people. After all, it would be something of an unfair advantage to have a tiger on her side.
In Beacon, he's matched with another shard in roughly the same weight class. Which, in practice, is always Yang's Aegis. Or, sometimes, he helps the smaller shards practice. Shimmer and Still, for instance, are too small to be any use in combat no matter how much training they get. Instead they practice dodging and evading, while Kismet plays the Grimm.
It's wonderful, but she'll never forget the thrill of initiation. No sparring with him looking on, no simultaneous duels with different opponents. They fought together, weaving in and out of one another's attacks, basking in the feeling of completeness. She can't wait to do it again.
Blake is happy, and it's so, so wrong.
She doesn't mean to let herself. It's just so easy to lose herself in a book, with her back to her favorite tree on Beacon's lawn, and forget. And in the instant she forgets, Joy will hang down from the upper branches and chatter at her. Sometimes she'll hop to the grass and wobble around like she's drunk, just to make Blake laugh.
The dorm is worse. She always feels him there before she sees him—the weight of his head settling on the mattress, his nose pressing against her side. Then when she looks down Aegis blinks his big brown eyes at her, and she can't help it. Her hand comes down between his ears, and he leans into the touch, and—
Stop.
He's not hers. How much of a monster must she be to want to take him, after everything Yang's told her about her mother, and her family's lost shards? She won't. She won't do that.
But the thing about deciding to stop petting a grizzly bear is that she doesn't actually get a choice.
"Aegis!" She tries to move away. He throws one of his gigantic paws over her back. His fur is warm and coarse and smells like a home she doesn't deserve to come back to.
A boot nudges his nose. It's Yang's. "C'mon, you big jerk. We talked about this."
Across the room, Ruby giggles. "Sorry Blake. He gets clingy sometimes."
Flicker yips and jumps on top of them both, panting happily and getting his fluff all over her shirt. Paean sticks his beak in the air... but he keeps sneaking glances.
Yang sighs and hauls the wolf off her by the scruff. Ruby grabs him in a hug to keep him from jumping on them again, laughing as his wagging tail whips her across the face. But if Aegis doesn't want to move, there's no use trying to pick him up. So Yang kneels down and leans close, and whispers something in his ear that Blake isn't supposed to hear.
"It's not about what you want."
"No," Yang snapped.
A dark shadow swept down and landed on her shoulder, his feathers shining purple-black wherever the sun touched them. She grimaced and brushed him off. He fluttered to the ground.
She turned and walked away. But when she glanced down again, he was strutting along behind her, his head bobbing with every step. "Shoo," she said, and nudged him with her boot. His feathers fluffed up indignantly.
It was the morning she and Ruby departed for Beacon—her sister and her dad and all their luggage were already well on their way in his old truck. She should have followed them on Bumblebee ten minutes ago.
Slán-Eág quorked and hopped to her shoulder. Yang picked him up and tossed him into the air. "Go home!"
He landed on top of her head.
"You little—" Her hair was thoroughly mussed by the time she managed to push him back to the ground. "I have Aegis. I'll be fine."
Slán flew onto her shard's back. Aegis narrowed his eyes and snarled a warning.
"I said, go!"
When he still didn't move, Aegis reared up onto his hind legs and roared. He came crashing down with all the force he could muster, sending Slán flapping back to the safety of the trees.
"Dad needs you, asshole! Qrow needs you! I don't need you and I don't want you, so go! Home!"
She turned away, so she didn't see him fly off—she just heard the sound, and this time when she glanced back there was just a feather lying in the grass. Yang didn't pick it up.
As she lies on her back and stares up into the dark, Yang wonders if Slán felt like this when she told him to go away. And as consciousness dissolves and the thoughts she tries not to have seep in through the cracks, she wonders if this is how her mother felt before Slán decided he didn't want her.
Kismet takes no interest in the Vytal Tournament.
Pyrrha shouldn't be surprised—he's always chafed under the tournament restrictions that force him to watch from the sidelines while she fights. But he used to watch her matches with keen attention, his tail flicking back and forth, roaring whenever she scored a hit.
He spends their whole first match pacing, his green eyes fixed on a point somewhere in the distance. Ignoring her entirely.
Pyrrha can't help looking at the other contestants' shards. She's relieved to see he's not the only one who's restless. Most are excited and engaged, like Flicker and Elixir, who bark and howl and jump around outside the arena all through the match as if cheering their humans on, but quite a few react poorly to the new setup.
Still and Shimmer are both among them. They're willing to be quite far from their own humans if need be, but Still keeps trying to climb up Nora's leg, and twenty minutes after the match they find Shimmer stowed away in Ren's pocket. She's surprised to find that the same is also true of Paean, who flatly refuses to leave his perch on Weiss' shoulder until Aegis lets him sit on his back.
Others are conspicuous by their absence. Blake is unrepresented—but that hardly raises an eyebrow when Mercury's team walks out with only a single shard between them.
One shard visible, that is.
Devotion hasn't left Cinder's side in years, and he isn't about to start now. No one sees him crawl up the back of her neck, where he's completely invisible under her hair. And what would it matter if they did? He's only a spider, no larger than a fingernail, useless in a fight. He's not even venomous.
He doesn't need to be. He's a good scout, and an even better guarantee of Emerald's good behavior.
An old man stands alone in his tower. Gears tick overhead.
An old woman stands alone in her castle. Many floors beneath her, scarlet wings beat against the bars of a cage.
Many floors beneath the old man, a stag lies in a makeshift bed of blankets. He stirs, presses his nose weakly against a pane of glass, and falls still.
The crowd is screaming. Kismet thrashes on the sidelines, snarling and snapping at thin air. His human stands there. Motionless. Numb.
There's a screech overhead. Penny's auburn-feathered owl Heartspring tucks in his wings and dives. No one is looking at him—they are preoccupied with the thing on the floor. The dead body, or the broken machine, depending on who you ask.
Ruby never needed to ask. She wouldn't, even if it weren't for the proof of Penny's soul that comes sweeping down and crashes into her, cheeping his fright and burying his face against her chest.
She cradles him close. Flicker throws his head back and howls their grief and fear, and it's like the world was waiting for his signal to erupt into chaos. A Nevermore crashes into the center of the arena, and Pyrrha still doesn't move. Heartspring lets out another screech and takes to the wing. Ruby follows. She knows what he wants—what Penny would want.
They fight, and the Nevermore dissolves. Ruby's shoulders slump, the weight of all that's happened and all that's still happening dragging her down now this first danger is past—
But it isn't.
Kismet snarls and roars, his ears pinning flat against his skull. Ruby looks wildly around for the enemy. Did another Grimm get into the stadium?
A cry from behind her. Kismet is crouched low, his teeth bared, growling at Pyrrha. There's a row of shallow scratches on her jaw, and blood on his claws.
"Stop it!" Ruby jumps between them. "What are you doing?"
Flicker tugs at her cloak. She turns—and it's only looking at Pyrrha that she realizes. Ruby drops Penny's sword and wraps her in a hug.
Jaune kneels in front of Kismet. "The woman on the microphone," he says. "She did this. It's not Pyrrha's fault."
Slowly, the wildness drains out of his eyes. He rubs his head against his human's shoulder, and even nuzzles apologetically at the scratches on her face. With him calm, Ruby looks for Heartspring—but he's already gone.
An auburn speck vanishes unremarked over the northern horizon.
Beacon's ballroom is a cavernous space, with a high vaulted ceiling, gigantic windows, and a vast stretch of empty floor meant to be filled with laughing, dancing bodies. How small and alone it makes the two of them seem.
How small and alone Blake feels, when Adam pushes her back towards the wall. The horror of it threatens to swallow her—where is he?—but she can't give in yet. Not when he's just as alone as she is.
His sword lashes out. The collar of his jacket shifts with the movement, revealing the start of a dark bruise on his neck. It looks old—and there's only one creature alive that could give him a wound his aura won't heal.
"Blight," she gasps between desperate parries.
His face twists. In one smooth motion he tears the jacket open, tugging his shirt down to real more of the damage. Below his collarbone, his skin is an ugly greenish-yellow. "You did this. She hit me, but it's your fault."
Her eyes widen, and she stumbles away from him. "Adam... what did you do?"
He doesn't answer. Bile rises in her throat. He's vile, like this—torn in half by his own choice. They're a matching pair.
"Where is he?"
Adam laughs and attacks her again. This time her weapon slips between her fingers, and in an instant she's on her back on the ground and he's sneering down at her. "Since when do you care?"
"Did you kill him too?" Her voice breaks.
"No."
A voice calls out from somewhere nearby. He jerks his arm and the sword plunges into her stomach, pinning her to the ground like a butterfly to a card.
He leans close to whisper in her ear, "I'm going to destroy everything you love. And when I do?"
Yang reaches the window and screams her name.
"He'll be mine."
An airship emblazoned with the White Fang insignia goes down when one of the Atlesian ships veers off course and smashes into it. The larger ship makes it through relatively unscathed, with Torchwick swearing and jabbing random buttons at its console. The smaller one crashes nose-first into the lawn, on the opposite side of the campus from the ballroom.
At the heart of the wreckage, metal beams start to shift. A black paw reaches out into open air.
A long time ago, Cinder Fall sold her soul.
No. She is not weak. She does not regret it. She will remember it as it was. She will remember that it—
A long time ago, Cinder Fall was given a creature that was half weapon, half parasite. She knew the price. Hecatomb knew, too. He agreed to it. And if he thrashed and struggled in the end, what does that matter? She screamed too. That doesn't mean she wanted it to stop.
She has a new shard, now. A beetle. And it—
A long time ago, Cinder Fall had a viper. He was beautiful and deadly, his sleek scales banded with black and yellow and red, like embers in charcoal. Salem told her what would happen to him, and he wound himself around her throat. If he really wanted to live, he could have squeezed. But he only coiled close to the heat of her body and waited for the end without a hint of fear.
Of course he did. Hecatomb never looked afraid. His snake's eyes stayed flat and cool and calm, even as the beetle ate him alive.
Qrow Branwen descends from Beacon tower with Ruby in his arms. There's a small crowd waiting for him—Flicker bounds forward and jumps on him, licking her dangling fingers. Weiss stands deathly still, a strange ringing in her ears blocking out everything except her partner's steady breathing.
Jaune looks for the others who should be coming down. Any second now. At his feet, Elixir sniffs the air and whimpers.
"He's waiting for you," Qrow says. "At the top. I'd have brought him down, but..."
Weiss makes a spiral staircase for him with her glyphs. He walks up in a daze, clutching Elixir against his chest. She's crying softly, but his eyes are dry—it's not real to him yet. Nothing is real. The world just ended, and he's walking into the sky, but it's Pyrrha. She'll be there.
Kismet is alone at the top of the tower. His chest is heaving and his emerald eyes are glazed over. There's blood matting the fur on his flank. A pair of curved antlers jut out from his forehead, stained red from when they burst free of his skull. Jaune can't speak. He can't move. He doesn't know what to do.
Elixir does. She squirms out of his arms and skids to a stop beside Kismet. He tries to lift his head to greet her, but all the strength's gone out of him and the antlers weigh him down. So she crouches low and gently touches her nose to his.
Jaune falls to his knees and gathers the tiger's head into his lap. He's breathing harder, now, his tongue lolling out as he pants through the pain.
"I'm so sorry," he murmurs, stroking his ears and neck. He doesn't know if he should touch the antlers, or if that would only hurt him more. Kismet groans and shuts his eyes. His breathing starts to slow.
"You're beautiful," Jaune tells him. Tears finally come, wetting the tiger's brow. "And strong, and kind, and brave... and I don't... I can't..."
There's an instant where Kismet shines crimson with the last of her aura—like the sun just before it sets, the leaves just before they fall. Then Jaune's hands close on thin air, and he breaks down completely. Elixir crawls into his lap, soft and warm and wrong, it should still be Kismet there, he wasn't ready...
Jaune kneels at the top of the broken tower for a long time, sobbing into his shard's golden fur.
When Father comes for her, Paean screams like he's dying.
"No!" Weiss shouts. Not at Father—what would be the point?—but at her shard. She doesn't know what she means. She can't tell which of them is trying to tear them apart, so there's no way of knowing if she's begging him to stay or to go.
Maybe he obeys her, or maybe he abandons her, but he stays where he is. When she gets in the airship without him, she thinks Father might be pleased. She doesn't want to know why.
Two hours later, another airship departs from Beacon—heading first to the safe zone in Vale, and then to the island of Patch with its last handful of passengers. Then they, too, are gone, and the ship is empty except for its pilot and crew. They're just about to lock up and head into town for the night when they hear a quiet thump coming from outside. One guard rushes out to look, but there's nothing there.
They're tired. They shrug it off and assume they're all just being jumpy.
A shadow sniffs the air, then slinks down an alleyway. Heading straight for the woods.