Chapter Text
Sun
"How do you not know what a Grimm is?" Sun's dad frowned as he chugged his coffee, though in all fairness the expression could have just been how his face was set. Sun didn't often see his father with a smile.
Sun, the tiny child he was, furrowed his eyebrows and held his tail with both hands for comfort. "They're scary on the TV, and you an' Mom don't let me watch scary TV."
Sun's dad rolled his eyes. Like Sun, he had pale blond hair and deep dark eyes, black like the nothingness of space, although his eyes were sunken and echoed with rings of tired purple. The air conditioning was broken again, and so patches of sweat had already started to form under the man's armpits, stains creeping into his yellowed work shirt. The fur over his round monkey ears stuck to his skin, darkened to a gold hue from the humidity.
He sighed, already tired at 7:45 in the morning. Already tired before he'd even left the flat. "Grimm are uh... They're like, they're big monsters that appear when someone is too sad or angry or... Whatever."
"Why do they appear?"
"Jeez, I dunno... They're like ghosts. They just... Appear."
"Um, actually," Sun's mother appeared, scooping him off the floor and using her round pregnant belly to balance the boy. He smiled up at her face, her amber hair - from the curls on her head, to the intense waves of fur covering her arms and chest. Not all Faunus were born with the more ‘attractive’ features that humans tended to seek, but he thought his mother was lovely, fur or no fur. She continued, "they come from a person's soul, from their Aura. If you're filled with anguish, they are born and they gobble you up."
"Ew." Sun pulled a face. "What's an anguish? Is it like an avocado?"
Sun's father chuckled. "No, kiddo. It's uh... It's a special type of sadness. It's not very nice."
So they weren't nice things. That meant they were kinda like avocados.
"Now, no more nasty Grimm talk." She plopped Sun back down on the ground before he had the chance to use her as a climbing frame. "It’s nearly schooltime. Why don't you go find your little friend?"
"Okie." Sun pinched two oranges off the counter as he ran out of their little flat and down the cracked and ageing halls of the apartment complex, the walls old and yellowed like his father’s shirt. He said hello to every little bug he came across, from the spiders to the cockroaches, and jumped in the elevator. His father was very smart, and had shown him how to use the buttons for if he needed to do it by himself. And he was a big boy now, at 6 and a half years old, and was a pro at the elevator. Using that knowledge, he took two floors down and skipped right out into an identical aged hallway.
Neptune, his bestest friend in the whole wide world, was already waiting outside the door to his own flat. He saw Sun, and happily called into the flat. "I'm going out now, Grandpa!"
Before the old man, Neptune's sole relative, could even answer, the two boys were running down the hall together, back to the elevator, and out into the vapid Vacuo sunshine.
Sun handed Neptune his orange, Neptune got out two juice boxes from his big pockets, and they sat with their snacks outside a derelict building that had apparently once been a library. Sun liked to imagine that the old place still smelled of paper, of the freshness of cushions and carpets, but it simply lingered with the scent of baked cement and ash. Large NO ENTRY signs had been plastered over the place, but the reason for its danger had long been spray-painted over, layered thick with gang symbols and dirty words.
"I found out what Grimm are." Sun exclaimed proudly from around the straw of his juice box.
"What did your dad say?" Neptune peeled away the leathery skin of his orange.
"They're big evil ghost monsters that come from our souls." Sun nodded. "They feed off our avocados."
"Nuh-uh." Neptune pulled a stinky face. "My grandpa said they eat your happiness. He said they're beasts that don't have souls."
"They come FROM our souls, dummy." Sun stuck his tongue out.
"You're the dummy!" Neptune retorted.
"YOU'RE a dummy! I'm gonna tell everyone your new name is Neptune the Dummy!" Sun laughed, jumping up and running off. Neptune yelled in protest, chasing him through the derelict building, hopping over beer bottles, crumbling books and old office supplies. He ran until Neptune was far, far behind him.
But then Sun came across a single empty room. Perhaps it had been an office or an emergency exit, it was hard to tell. There was nothing in it save for browned glass from a broken window, a knotted length of rope hanging from what remained of a ceiling fan, and a large black shadow trapped on the wall. The silhouette was tall and thin, a dozen or so holes in the body and large spindly horns branching out over the ceiling. Sun swallowed, silenced by the echo of the beast. It was too tall and skinny to have been a person, and too still to be alive. He slowly dragged his eyes downward to the skirting of the room, and by the shadow of the creature's feet was a little note written on the wall in ancient pen ink.
im sorry octavia im so sorry
Something about its presence, enrapturing, drew Sun closer to it. Feelings he didn’t understand yet began to flow through his veins; dread, unease, paranoia, but above all the most intense waves of sorrow began to wrap their arms around him, beckoning him toward that black stain on the wall that could have never been a person. This building must have been full of people once, but now all that remained was the echo of this intense... thing.
The arms of sorrow tightened. He took a step closer.
Neptune finally stumbled into Sun's back. "Hey! This isn't a good hiding spot -!" He stopped as he saw the blackness staining the yellow walls.
The boys stood there for only a few moments longer, and Neptune silently pulled Sun away from the darkness before the stagnant air suffocated them both. They left the building and finished their breakfast outside, and decided not to speak of that place when they got to school.
—
Adam
The children had been cruel. But then, they were always cruel.
Adam’s face was sore, from the frost biting at his cheeks and nose, and from the most recent fight with his peers. Mantle’s orphanages were never short of Faunus children, but that never allowed them to be seen as a constant in the minds of the humans. They were still the ‘other’, for reasons Adam couldn’t quite understand. Although everyone, and that meant everyone, was miserable in this place, still the humans found clever little ways of making it worse.
They were let in from the expanse of snow and stone that was their playground. Adam hadn’t wanted to go out in the snow and dark anyway, but it had been made clear early on that he didn’t have a say in the matter. If he was scheduled to go outside, then he would be going outside. So he’d zipped up the coat that must have belonged to several different children before him, and set out into the cold. Carers were supposed to watch the children, but that didn’t mean much if they didn’t actually do anything to help. And today had been like any other, with carers looking the other way as the older children tried their best to make playtime fun, and if that resorted to picking fights with other kids - Faunus kids - then so be it. They always went for someone younger, Adam found. Someone smaller. Someone with as few friends to back them up as possible.
So, it was often for them to pick Adam to torment. To drag him across the playground by his horns until his entire head hurt. To hit him until patches of purple covered his skin. They’d even thrown stones at him before, but the ice had frozen everything into place so, this time, it was seen as too much effort to dig the stones out of the ground. The only reason the bullies had even stopped today was because the bell rang, and although that was never a guarantee to get them to leave, today it seemed that getting inside and warming up must have been much more preferable to attacking him. And it was bitterly cold that day. The sort of cold that made you wonder if it would ever get better.
So, everyone had scrambled inside, been made to take off their shoes and coats, and were pushed into ‘the living area’. The carers preferred the more sterile name as opposed to ‘living room’, removing any warmth or homeliness the place could try to pretend to have. It could hardly be called a home, after all. Just a place to exist.
The other children sat huddled in groups while Adam was alone, because Adam was always alone. He watched some of them hovering around a human girl playing her music box, all she had left of her old home. Within a few months, someone would smash the thing. Adam was sure of it.
Another group, much younger, followed an older kid who’d taken their storybook. They didn’t have a great many books, and the younger orphans fawned over the pretty pictures of princesses and dragons, of dancing skeletons and rabbits in waistcoats. By the end of the day, that book would have half of its pages torn out. Adam was sure of it.
Because this little place bred cruelty like flies bred maggots. Even at 6 and a half, he had learned the rules of this place; this was not his home and it never will be. Other children had homes, and families, and toys of their own and a bed that nobody else had slept in before them. But Adam did not have such things. Adam wasn’t allowed such things - maybe the horns on his head were a warning to the grown-ups looking to adopt, to show them to stay away. That was how they acted when they saw him, anyway.
Maybe one day, someone nice would come in and take him away from this place. But that day had not come yet, and he was stuck here.
And Adam sat on his own. Because Adam was always alone. He sat in front of a holo screen, the blue tones coming through harsher on the older models such as this one. There were plenty of holo-screens and even older television models dotted around the orphanage, but this one was too busted to have been linked to any children’s channels. It only ever played the news, old opera and, at night, true crime documentaries. As such, most children ignored the thing. Luckily, it meant that while Adam was by it, there was a higher chance that they’d ignore him too.
The brown carpet wasn’t clean by any means, but Adam sat regardless. Whenever he’d tried sitting on a cushion, he’d always had it yanked out from under him by either an older orphan or a carer chastising him for putting it on the floor. Pointing out how filthy the floor was only made things worse. Instead, Adam tried to pretend that the carpet was naturally that shade of brown, that the stains were patterns he couldn’t quite figure out.
He stared into the blueish screen. Someone had busted it more than before so the channel could no longer be changed from the opera one. Adam had only just caught the end of a white-haired woman singing a low, slow melody, before standing before a pitch black crowd as she received her applause. The song made him sad and he wasn’t sure why. The lady herself looked sad, tired deep down. Her dress was blue, complete with an ornate logo that looked like a weird snowflake printed on the front. The strange snowflake glimmered like freshly fallen snow, but the light of it did not reach the lady’s eyes.
A new act came on the screen, and Adam was just about to get up and leave when he saw her. A tall woman, pale blonde hair in a bun. Gorgeous green eyes observing the audience just as much as they observed her. He tilted his head to the side; something about her posture spoke volumes in its own right. She was regal, elegant, but she carried with her a sturdiness he’d never seen in any grown-up. Not even the meaner carers seemed strong like she was.
So, as the announcer presented Glynda Goodwitch to the stage, Adam watched with big eyes as she summoned long black ribbons seemingly out of the sky, and began to climb. The music was eerie, frightful almost, but Adam remained focused on her, enchanted. Because, for once, he wasn’t thinking about the way his head ached, or the dirty carpet, or the careless carers or the bullies and their stones. He only thought about the lady on the silks, spinning, wrapping the ribbons around her wrists, ankles, as though she’d done it a million times before. He only thought about how the music picked up as she spun and spun and spun, green eyes flashing as she moved and dove and danced, and danced, and danced.
It was as though she really were a witch, casting a spell on him. The music crackled through the dusty speaker, the vision wavered as the signal went bad, but she returned as soon as she’d left. Adam wondered how she could do it, how she could dance in midair like that, how such delicate-looking ribbons could hold her so well.
It felt like it was over far too soon. The room darkened and the sorry lot of children were told to go to dinner. All through the night, Adam thought of the lady on the silks. How beautiful she was. How fearless she was, high above anyone who may ever want to hurt her.
How, maybe one day, Adam could do the same.
—
Sun
Shade Academy was everything that Sun had dreamed of and more. Its big, imposing walls that tilted inwards somehow held the most hopeful, freeing touch to him, its studios spacious and decked out with everything a dancer could need. From photos he’d seen online to what students spoke about in interviews on TV, it seemed like a marvel made of brick and glass. It was his golden ticket, his opportunity for stardom, handed to him on a silver platter.
To be a Performer had always been Sun’s destiny, both his and Neptune’s, he could feel it in his bones. To spend his every waking moment in the spotlight, to dance, to sing for crowds across the world – what could be better than that? Grimm were on the rise according to the miserable reporters on the scrolls and holo-screens, that people were spawning these demons of despair more and more until everyone had to take notice. The streets of Vacuo’s most inner city had shadows that moved and writhed, encouraged every passerby to give into their darkest fears, their doubts, their nightmares. It was a scary world to live in, where your own emotions could become so intense that they gain a life of their own.
Granted, most scientists ushered away claims that Grimm had their own souls – they come from souls, they come from the living, but that doesn’t mean they themselves live and breathe like we do, think and feel of their own accord. Grimm were simply manifestations of heartache, the only issue was they were sometimes able to use that heartache to kill their creators.
Sun had heard of it happening time and time again – a bride abandoned on her wedding day would be found dead days later, her very Aura drained from her corpse, and a weeping Grimm adorned in a black veil would be found haunting her home. A father would be lulled into an unending sleep by tiny whispers under his bed after his child’s funeral, and a collaboration of shadows and bone would be found in a half-assembled crib.
The heart was a beastly thing, but that’s not all it could be.
That was why Sun wanted to perform, to be a Performer. They were the only people this world had to offer to counter the Creatures of Grimm. They actively hunted the beasts, searched far and wide for any soul they were haunting, and strove to heal that soul. Through music, through song or theatre, or – most famously – through dance; active art, as Sun’s teachers used to call it, was able to sway people like nothing else. Performers put their very Aura into their techniques in order to inspire hope in people. They ignited the first sparks of love, and courage, and even if they could not do that, they could at least offer catharsis to those whose hearts had already been darkened by the presence of tragedy. This was the cure for a Grimm infection, one of the only cures Remnant could offer.
Sun was more than willing to admit he wanted the fame. He wanted the attention, the adoration, the money. But although his parents scoffed at it, Sun wanted to help people. He couldn’t imagine how it felt to be so fallen, so far gone in the waves of agony that your soul could even begin to create something as dreadful as a Grimm. He never wanted a single person to be subjected to that.
The thing is, the only way to get the right to be called a Performer was to earn it. To train and, more importantly, to graduate one of the schools designated to this precise career. Sure, anyone could dance, anyone could sing (well, maybe not Neptune, but Sun didn’t wanna hurt his feelings), but Performers seemed to just have that... spark. Something that lived in them that was able to inspire the best in people, both humanity and the Faunus. Perhaps it was simply their mindset, or perhaps their Aura was bound in such a way that they could activate and use it like no other person could. A spark that set them apart, that made them destined for greatness.
Sun knew he had that spark. Since he could walk he’d been dancing, since he could talk he’d been singing. And he’d been doing it well . Since he was a kid, he’d been going out after school, dancing on street corners with his friend, entertaining the elderly with dance styles from days gone by with the energy they may have had in their own day, sometimes even earning money from it. But it wasn’t about the money he earned – although that was a brilliant boost – it had taught him something else. Something valuable.
He could make people happy.
He could make people smile, and laugh, and clap their hands and sing along. People gravitated to him when he danced, people who would usually sneer at just another Faunus loitering the streets or ignore him entirely would suddenly gather round, and cheer, and toss a few coins his way with no regard to his messy hair or tail or tattered clothes. And when he was with Neptune, those crowds only grew, for Neptune had the same fire in his own soul that Sun had, and people could feel it radiate from them like beams of light. They were destined for greatness.
So when he got expelled from Shade Academy on the first day, it was kind of a bummer.
They’d entered the imposing school with high hopes, but they hadn’t expected the atmosphere it stagnated in, like the smell of sweat in old locker rooms at night. The halls were strictly monitored, as was each and every class, Shade’s teachers eyeing up every student like they were a collective meal. Headmaster Theodore greeted them in the Assembly Hall, but it was brief and clipped, as though he couldn’t wait to be rid of them all. The welcoming speech ended with a damning warning to behave, and so the rest of the morning Sun was just itching to get into trouble.
He couldn’t help it, he never could. It would be his downfall, many warned, but the simple fact of the matter was that he couldn’t stand it when people tried to tell him what to do, tried to tell him how to act, how to behave, as though they knew everything about him and disapproved of it all. What did they all know? With their dismissive glares and clicking tongues?
So what choice did Sun have other than to make life difficult for them?
Their class had been ushered into a studio like cattle, to be greeted by Professor Rowena Sunnybrook, a woman who’s surname did not match her demeanour, and a handful of ornate black platforms. Atop each waist-height platform, contained in glass cases, was Dust. Some small shards for easy use, but that wasn’t what Sun was focused on. Instead he gazed in awe at the biggest pieces – huge rocks of the stuff in their purest forms, glistening like the creative – and destructive – forces of nature they were, commanding respect they rightfully earned simply by existing as they did in this world.
“C’mon, man, don’t.” Came Neptune’s voice, giving Sun a look.
“What? I haven’t even done anything.” Sun shoved his pal.
“You got that look in your eye, dude. I know you too well.”
Sun only chuckled as Prof Sunnybrook cleared her throat and greeted the class. “Let’s start things off lightly. Today will merely be dedicated to adjusting yourselves to the feeling of Dust, not the manipulation of the substances. Dust is in every facet of our lives and will be valuable tools to your shows – assuming you have what it takes to graduate.” She let her gaze cast over every student like a bad smell. “We will not be manipulating Dust to any degree, only handling them. Be careful, and...” Her eyes lingered over Sun in disdain as a teaching assistant removed the cases from the platforms, “no monkey business .”
Oh, she was going to pay for that one.
It wasn’t as commonplace for the people of Vacuo to care about such things as whether you were Faunus or human, not the way people apparently cared so much in Atlas or even Mistral, so it was a noticeable act of wilful ignorance to be like that here, especially from a teacher . Sun had gotten comments like that before, of course he had, and every damn time he made sure to throw it right back at them. Today wasn’t going to be any different.
“Sun...” Neptune breathed as he spotted his friend making a beeline for a chunk of golden-red Dust, the smell of bonfires and gasoline seemingly moulded into the very essence of the piece. Other students grabbed and held little shards, awkward and delicate, while Sun scooped up the entire thing. It felt rough in his hands, like a chunk of sandpaper, and despite it being the side of a baseball, the piece weighed much more than he’d imagined. It likely cost more money than his dad brought home in a month, and Sun wondered if rich people used stuff like this as doorstoppers.
“Careful with that.” The Professor looked over at Sun, but she was too far away to stop him from trailing up the curtain, tail helping him balance as he climbed up the high arches of the window. He laughed as he sat atop, looking down at the crowd like a gargoyle as Sunnybrook stomped her way towards the window. He knew he was going to get detention. He didn’t care. “Get down from there THIS INSTANT! You don’t know how dangerous that Dust is!”
“Oh come on,” Sun chuckled, juggling the Dust carelessly between his hands until Sunnybrook’s face turned the same colour as the rock, “you said no monkey business, so how about monkey playtime instead?”
Neptune put his hands on his hips, but his grin shone brighter than any attempt at disapproval he may have tried to give off.
“I said get down from there NOW!”
Sun rolled his eyes. “You also said today was all about getting a handle of these things, so...”
What Sun was going to say next was that he clearly had a very good handle on the Dust. What happened instead proved the exact opposite.
The Dust ball slipped from his grip, flinging downward to the ground. Sunnybrook’s face paled. Sun had just enough time to gulp as the Fire Dust hit the floor, and everything went red.