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The last of the Grimm were fading away. Nora and Ren were taking up the rear, weapons still drawn as they watched the disintegrating Grimm for any sign of movement. Ruby could feel their steps falter, could hear Weiss panting just at her back, Blake and Yang with their backs together, weapons drawn. The only place they’d seen more Grimm after the train had crashed into the city of Vale, or when Beacon-
Ruby shoved that thought away.
She was glad that JNR was focused on the Grimm, because she couldn’t bring herself to look away from the sight in front of her.
There were still dozens of disintegrating Grimm carcasses in front of them, but there weren’t ones that they had taken out. Ashes spilled out across the field, over the deep furrows that the battle had driven into the ground like wounds, so that it almost looked like the earth was bleeding. In the ringing silence left after the battle, the noise of their collapsing bodies was sinisterly soft. It made Ruby’s hands shake on Crescent Rose with more than just adrenaline.
A whole field of Grimm, scattered into dust.
Not all of them were falling into pieces though. Statues littered the battlefield, grotesque, half-formed statues, with pieces still decaying while the rest stayed grey stone.
Petrified, that was what Maria had said it was on the nights she tried to teach Ruby control. Silver eyes could petrify Grimm into stone. Only Ruby hadn’t done this.
“I don’t understand,” Weiss said faintly. Maria stepped forward, picking up a piece of the stone with a faint frown and turning it around in her hand.
Ruby wanted to answer but she felt like her mind was running through quicksand. She could only stare at the scene in front of her.
“Stay back!”
Emerald’s kama was shaking in her hands. Her face was twisted with fury and fear as her eyes darted between the members of her group. She was outnumbered and she knew it, but she didn’t run, because that would mean leaving Mercury, who was on the ground with one leg a mangled mess of metal, propping himself up with one arm and still managing to look dangerous despite the disadvantage.
Yang pounded her hands together, Ember Celia whirring, and Emerald’s weapon swung to point at her.
“Don’t come near us, you all stay back-”
“Emerald, get out of here,” Mercury ordered, and Ruby probably wasn’t supposed to hear that, but it didn’t matter because Emerald only shook her head once and brandished her kama again. The pair of them flickered out of sight for a minute, then back into it again. Ruby had just enough time to see Emerald grit her teeth before they vanished again.
This time it lasted an even shorter time. Emerald clapped a hand over her nose, which had begun to pour blood.
“Emerald,” Mercury hissed.
“No!” she flung out the kama again, red trickling over the handle of her blade. “You stay back!”
Maria clicked her tongue and stepped forward.
Emerald jerked, but Mercury was the one who moved, one hand shooting out to grab his broken leg and haul it around, firing at Maria before anyone else had unfroze enough to do anything about it.
Maria smacked it clear out of the air with her cane, the projectile embedding itself into a Grimm statue to the side. In a single sweeping movement, she knocked the prosthetic out of his hands and brought the end of the cane under his chin. Mercury went stiff but she only tilted his head up, peering at him with a thoughtful frown.
“You, boy. What color are your eyes?”
Mercury’s expression twitched, but he didn't pull away. Sweat beaded his forehead. Ruby couldn't remember much about the tower in Beacon after the world had gone white, but it had taken her days to wake up after using her eyes. Mercury had to be fighting for consciousness tooth and nail.
Before he could answer, their image flickered out one last time, leaving the field in front of them empty.
Maria’s cane darted out again, into the nothingness on the right, and Emerald staggered back into existence with a choked-off sound as the wood knocked her off balance.
“Stop doing that, foolish child. It’s not going to do any good.” Her free hand came up to tap her goggles. “You can’t mess with these eyes.”
Emerald took a step back, and her hand was still covering most of her face but it couldn’t disguise her sudden panic.
Mercury took advantage of the confusion to fling a piece of the rock at Maria’s head. She caught it inches from her face.
“Now I may be just an old woman, but I daresay I have more tricks up my sleeve than a pair of children on their last legs.” Her gaze slipped down. “Well. Last leg, perhaps.”
“Fuck you-”
This time the cane came down on Mercury’s head.
“And when I ask a question, I expect it to be answered.”
Mercury batted her cane away with a glare. “Am I supposed to know you?” he demanded.
“Maria, I don’t think you understand who these two are.” There was a note of warning in Qrow’s voice. He must have been a few steps ahead of Ruby, because she was still too shocked to understand what exactly was happening. “They helped bring down Beacon. They worked for Salem-”
“They probably led the Grimm straight here,” Yang cut in with a poisonous look at Mercury. He snarled at her, though the intimidation in the action was undercut by Maria’s cane hanging threateningly over his head, “Salem controls the Grimm, just like she controls these two-”
Mercury let out an ugly bark of a laugh, and Emerald’s face contorted again, with derision this time.
“You think the Grimm were here for you?” she wanted to know, voice hollow with fury, and Ruby was struck suddenly by the scratches that raked across Emerald’s bare skin, the exhausted, hunched way she stood, as desperate to catch her breath as the rest of them. Her nose was still bleeding, red seeping between her fingers. Her gaze skittered around the group again, one hand still on her kama, still shaking. “We defected. Just let us go.”
“Let you-” Jaune exploded, but Maria’s voice cut across his like a blade, unyielding.
“I still haven’t gotten my answer.”
“Maria, we wouldn’t even be in this mess if it wasn’t for them-”
She interrupted Uncle Qrow too.
“No, you wouldn’t be in this mess. I’m here for one reason and one reason only.” The cane came up- Mercury jerked away warily- but it only swung to point at Ruby. “Because after decades thinking I was the last of my kind, I found someone else with silver eyes, who needs to be trained. Now I want to know what color this boy’s eyes are before I decide what to do with him!”
“They’re fucking grey, you old hag!” Mercury bit out into the silence, and Maria turned her scowl back on him. She waved the piece of stone he’d thrown at her, just large enough that Ruby could see the outline of the Beowolf’s snout.
“Somehow I disagree.” A muscle jumped in his jaw. Mercury looked away.
Maria tutted as if he’d confirmed it.
“He has silver eyes. And you don’t have the first clue how to use them, do you?” When Mercury didn’t answer she nodded. “He needs to be trained.”
“No,” Uncle Qrow said instantly.
“Yes,” she snapped back, “You don’t get to decide this one. Silver eyes are my jurisdiction.” And she stepped in front of Mercury and Emerald, gripping her cane like she was ready to fight Uncle Qrow over this, and with her stance and the way the wind caught at her cape it was easy to see how she was once the most legendary Huntress in Remnant.
Ruby glanced at behind her, because if there was a time for Ozpin to show up it would be now, but she could only find Oscar in his face.
“There aren’t enough of us left that we get to be choosy about who deserves to live.” Maria thumped her cane on the ground for emphasis. “I’m not watching another of my kind die, not even in the name of salvation.” Emerald and Mercury were staring at her, frozen with surprise at this unexpected defense.
“They’re not-”
“Life. Must. Be. Protected.” The words jolted through Ruby, because that was what Maria had taught her to help control her powers. She needed to want to preserve life to use it. She needed to want to protect.
She looked at the battlefield again. Their end of it had been chaotic, messy and scattered, but it was easy to see how the fight had ended here. The broken fragments of petrified Grimm were spread out in a loose circle, closing off escape routes for Mercury and Emerald. Mercury’s leg was mangled but Emerald was the one who looked like she’d taken the brunt of the fighting. They had been attacked by the Grimm, which meant that Salem really was after them. That part hadn’t been a lie.
He’d told Emerald to run, when they’d approached.
“I’ll take responsibility for him. For both of them,” Maria was saying, and Emerald twitched with surprise, still hovering close to Mercury, “If that’s quite alright with you. Or if it isn’t.”
Qrow groaned. Mercury was staring up at Maria with open suspicion, Emerald with fear.
He’d been trying to protect Emerald. That had to count for something. He couldn’t be all bad, if he was trying to do that. There had to be some good in him, if he was trying to save her.
And Ruby was so tired of fighting, fighting Grimm and humans and faunus and Salem. There was so much more fighting to be done. If they could avoid just this one fight, wouldn’t it be worth it.
“We said no more deaths,” Ruby said, when she’d found her voice, and their eyes both snapped to her, wary. His eyes really were silver. Ruby couldn’t believe she’d never noticed it before. “That has to mean them too.”
Maria clapped her hands, as if that was the end of that.
“Well, if that’s all settled-”
“It’s not-” Yang and Mercury said at the same time, then glared at each other.
Maria plowed on, good humor restored now that she’d gotten her way.
“We’d better get away from here before someone realizes what’s happened. You, girl, help your friend up,” she said, nudging Emerald. “Lots to do.”
Emerald’s expression couldn’t settle on looking stunned or horrified. Ruby could relate. But Maria only waved a hand impatiently and her eyes flicked back to Ruby and her classmates fanning out behind her, and it was obvious when she realized this was her only way out of a fight she couldn’t win.
Emerald grabbed Mercury and hauled him up so he could lean his weight on her.
“Do I get a say in this?” Mercury demanded, breathless with anger.
“Hmm…no.” Maria’s grin turned sly, she scooped her his prosthetic and waved it at him. “I’m pretty sure your argument wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.” She prodded him forward before he could react to that. “Let’s move out! We have a lot to discuss.”
“We’re all going to regret this,” Qrow muttered, head still in his hands.
Yang put a hand on her hip.
“Look on the bright side,” she said slowly, “We won’t regret it more than Mercury.”