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A Family Arc

Summary:

When one’s family cannot be trusted or counted on to raise one well, one suffers. But when you have the support of a noble name and the very beings that once terrified you? Jaune Arc, for all his flaws, could still be a Hero- could still be someone worth loving and worth giving love in turn. (AU)

Chapter 1: Prologue

Chapter Text

AN:   What the fuck?  Me writing an actually (more) serious RWBY fic?  Crazy, right?

 



A Family Arc




Prologue

The Masks We Wear



   

    It was the last name of Arc.  A name lauded in the annals of history since the days of the King of Vale, a rumored ancestor to the name itself.  Whether they were bastard children who could not take the royal claim, or simply a knighthood held in high esteem by the man who helped form the Kingdoms as they were, no one alive knew.  From the days of the Great War, to the Faunus Revolution- where they aided the weak and protected both the humans and the Faunus who refused to take part in the bloodbaths of the time- all the way to the current era.

 

    His grandfather, Absinthe Arc, had been a warrior of great talents.  A man who wielded the sword Crocea Mors in defense and love of all of mankind- whether they held the additional traits of the Faunus or not.  He was not as noteworthy as General Lagune for his failures, or the victors amongst the Faunus, but it had been only another piece to add to the noble name of Arc.

 

    His father, Roux Arc, was a renowned and powerful Huntsman throughout Sanus.  For close to a whole decade, he’d worn the name Arc proudly in his business and used it to further the pride and glory of the name, until he’d met Nevena Hauteclere, now formally known as the Lady Arc.

 

    His very own beloved mother, a Huntress just like his father.  His grandmother, from what he’d been told, had been against the marriage, but the two had “fallen in love at first sight” and promptly eloped after a year of fighting alongside one another.  It helped that their firstborn child, his oldest sister Camillia, arrived barely a month after they tied the knot.

 

    Amongst noble circles, it was seen as a slight upon the name, but no one would ever dare say such a thing to the fire-haired Lord of the Arc house.  It seemed year after year, his parents’ love grew and grew, as did their family.

 

    Now, at the age of fifteen, Jaune had been their final child.  The sole born male heir to the Arc name, and thus the one most likely to propagate the name of Arc further.  Camillia had grown up resentful of their parents after she’d become a Huntress herself, their parents’ coddling and dismissal of her dream as “unsafe” had fully alienated the oldest blonde child from them.  Saphron, the second oldest child, had left to marry another woman and settle in the newly established city of Argus near Mistral.

 

    Tenderly, the next to come after his sister Saphron had been the rambunctious and tomboyish Jade.  Jade’s great fortune in birth as the middle child had left her free-willed and insightful, to a degree he did not think any other could replicate.  Where Camillia was a woman born and bred in the fire of battle and quenched in the blood of (metaphorical) Grimm and person alike, Saphron had been a young lady well-versed in etiquette but given to a taste for-

 

    -Well, to be frank, the soft flesh of other women.  Jade was everything a young woman ought to have been outside of the rigors of court society.  She was tough, as sharp as a blade, and sixteen times more dangerous with her words or a deck of cards.

 

    Gods, he hated playing cards with Jade.  He was by no means a bad player- in fact, some of his acquaintances (for he could not call them friends) insisted he cheated against them- but Jade’s preternatural ability to win almost every hand seemed like a Semblance of some variety- not to mention her damnable luck that always saw her through anything she cared to do.

 

    An adventurer in the flesh, that sister of his.  Then had come the twins, Bleu and Azula. Hellions in the finest ways, as if to replicate the feats of their eldest sister and young energetic Jade.  That they’d grown so beautiful had never tickled suitors as much as it had pleased the Arc Matriarch. The twins had been her favorites since time immemorial by his own reckoning.  It had probably helped that- unlike Camillia who had come to love neither the sword and shield of their ancestry nor the guns their mother loved so- they were the ones who took most immediately to his mother’s most favored and beloved of past-times besides her adoration of her lifestyle as the Lady Arc.

 

    There were only two other sets of eyes that you did not want upon you beyond the barrel of a gun than the eyes of Nevena Arc.  The twins, not Huntresses themselves, could shoot targets as small as a copper coin at a pace that would make anyone wince. That they commonly did so adorned in the fanciest of gala dresses only further ensured that their lack of suitors was only partially caused by his mother’s overprotectiveness.  That was to leave alone their predilection towards obscene humor and social-standing-harming pranks. Nevena Arc had firmly birthed two women just like her- without his mother’s love for gin and whiskey.

 

    Then, there had been Peri, the second youngest of the Arc girls.  Nearsighted at birth, she’d embraced the stereotype that had come with a life that required glasses.  She was the first of the Arc children to have graduated from a civilian college, and then proceeded to become a Teacher herself in lovely Ansel, where the Maison d’Arc resided.  It was under her tutelage that Jaune himself had learned the inner workings of animals raised on the farm within and without. No pets were allowed within the hallowed halls of Arc, but Peri had mitigated that rule by simple virtue of making her life about caring for creatures.

 

    Roux and Nevena Arc had insisted it would always be a point of contention, that the children would not be able to share either a pet or more expensive modern gadgets.  This had, in all it’s estimation, done absolutely nothing to abate any of the eight childrens’ interests in animals or expensive toys. It had, however, been right in the end.

 

    The youngest daughter, Violette, had been shy and bashful.  Growing up pretty, and the closest in his age, she had been the second to marry after Saphron herself- but sadly the marriage had been in shambles by the time a year had worn on.

 

    Jaune wished his mother had just killed the young man.  Instead, he found out later that the social suicide he suffered had led him to commit actual suicide.

 

One did not play games with the heart of an Arc child, lest they learn what Dust-shot did to one’s body- if they had only mildly annoyed the Lady Arc, of course.  Many feared Roux Arc for what he might do to them, but the bare truth was that his father would simply maim them.

 

    His mother would make Remnant a living, breathing, fresh hell every new day that she could figure out something novel to do to you.

 

    And then, he had been the last.  His mother’s womb barren of eggs, and no longer able to handle the strain of childbirth, he had been a difficult pregnancy that had ended with him being watched over for days by doctoral specialists and even those few Aura scientists that would be ready to save his life if need be.

 

    That he had been fine within a week had been attributed to a miracle, and so he had been lauded as the child to be doted upon.  His father, ever distant and threatening in his powerful physique and blood-red hair. His mother, always babying and adoring him with her overprotective and zealous need matched only by the beautiful blonde waves that she wore like a veil.  His sisters, all mindful of his gentle nature and innocence. His youth was one spent in lessons of nobility, shielded from the darkness of the world as best as could be.

 

    The expectations upon him were simple, continue the line of Arc.  As he’d become a teenager, he’d fell more in line with the thinking of his oldest sister- idolizing the very ground his parents walked on and longing to be like them.  Etiquette lessons held him, music and art tutors gave him an escape from the courtesans whom were hired to teach and encourage him to know the ways of the world when it came to women not related to him.  He learned to please others with cuisine and pages of poems about lineage and the shade of one’s blood.

 

    It had disillusioned him with people.  Not to the point of social recluse like poor Violette had been until dragged out of her shell by sweet Saphron and her wife, but it had taught him that- for all of his mother’s pleased smiles and his father’s proud words . . .

 

    It was rarely as simple as confidence and genial nature.  Jaune still thought that the world was a place where Good ought to be done, but that he needed to be the Hero that people had seen in his ancestors.

 

    He’d stepped up to his parents, and told them of his dream when he’d turned twelve.  Both had worn forlorn looks for the night and the day afterwards.

 

    . . . But they had eventually come around.  The pressure from the fear of being treated his whole life like a stud for grooming and sale had evaporated when they had sat him down and- in a show of solidarity- even dragged their errant red daughter home long enough to see him.

 

    Perhaps in a way, it had been an attempt to disillusion him, but it had not went that way.  That night, the Arc house was filled with soft tears, platitudes, and the strong arms of his family as once again, the disconnected House Arc was filled with hope and love.

 

    Camillia still would not forgive their father, but she told him everything of the life of a Huntsman.  From the dark, disturbing things done by man to other man, to the bright and blinding light of man making a world swarming with the tides of Darkness step back in fear and give back the thing that Jaune wanted most to give the world around him.

 

    Hope.

 

    Hope that he would bring to those who had none.  Victory he would hoist on high like a flag atop a spear-pole.  Light to burn away the darkness that ate at the hearts of others.



x+x+x+x+x



    “This feels silly.”  Jaune noted, carefully pressing the Aura-sensitive mask to his face.  It was- in showcasing his status and eligibility- a deep and rich lacquered black and designed to hide the curve of his cheeks, brow, and leave only his lips and jaw exposed.  Upon it’s pristine surface were marks like scar-like paintings in gold that symbolized the warrior’s spirit, alongside a pair of diamonds in white to tease the cheeks and state mourning of one’s lost youth.   The mask was accompanied by a foppish hat that was accented with a set of deep blue plumes.

 

    It was only one of ten masks to adorn the faces of the family Arc tonight- though three would go unworn.  Camillia, Saphron, and Violette all refused to attend the party for different reasons, though his Scroll had been blown up with videos from his errant sisters.

 

    Violette was watching over the newest addition to their little family, little Adrian, while Saphron indulged in a night out with her dusken-skinned wife.

 

    A hand brushed down the shoulders of the old-fashioned suit that he wore, his gaze turning from the floor-length mirror that remained one of the few vain pieces of his room.  An orange-painted smile greeted him as he looked upon the mask that hid all of the features of his mother’s lovely face save for those rich ochre lips that he knew would soon spout yet another of her favorite phrases.

 

    “Now, sweetheart, you know these things are expected of us as nobles.  Besides, isn’t it fun? You can enjoy yourself, and we have so many guests tonight!  Perhaps you’ll even find a suitable girl to make a bride?”

 

    Jaune tried desperately not to squint at his mother’s playful interference in his (dead) love life.  Put in this situation, he could “schmooze” with the best of them, but it always felt . . . fake. Romance had always seemed so much more brilliant in a book, a comic, or a video game rather than at places like this.

 

    Not being leered at and judged by people who saw only a name, or a means to further themselves.  To marry into the “illustrious family of Arc”, even though he could almost always add a mental sneer to those words.

 

    No one cared that he was Jaune.  That he felt shy and nervous around beautiful girls, that he secretly loved dancing and thus had become one of the best he could be, that he loved sugary sweet cereals with rabbits for mascots, and indulged his parents in these parties and the displays of nobility purely to see them both smile.

 

    Jaune Arc was, in so many words, a good son.

 

    “Perhaps even more than one?”  Nevena Arc continued, fixing the rim of his hat as she stepped away and smoothed down the pleats of her own richly golden gown.  The mask that hid her face was ironic in its fine make, depicting her as a witch worn down by time from the red lines that made beautiful patterns upon the white lacquer.  If he had thought his mother to be like him, he would have seen it as self-deprecation.

 

    Instead, he knew it was a measure of her own mortality.  Today was his birthday, and thus her time as the Mother was over, now she was the Crone.  Even unto her dying day, however, Jaune knew no one would dare call her anything but beautiful.

 

    That she had such a sense of humor that had been instilled within each of her eight children simply reminded him how truly loved they all were.  Despite himself, Jaune smiled.

 

    “I don’t think I’ll be so popular, Mom.  But-” He cut her off as she prepared to “boost his confidence” with words of affection that only a doting mother could share, “- I will try.”  He finished, affecting a proper air of pomp and circumstance accented by the “anonymity” given by the mask.

 

    “That’s all I ask, Jaune.  Now, come. Your father’s likely been driven mad with boredom by now, and your sisters won’t step down the stairs without you alongside them.”



+x+x+x+



    The step down into the ballroom was filled with the sound of instruments, some of which he could even play to an acceptable degree.  From the bannisters stepped the sisters still home in their own color-coded gowns and with their masks affixed with varying degrees of design and required care.  Peri was the most immediately noticeable, since she still required her glasses to be worn and thus she only settled for a simple domino mask that went well with her high-worn ponytail and the gentle dress that gave life to her namesake Periwinkle color.  The twins were more outrageous in their designs, horned features mixed with fanged protrusions that partially covered blue-painted lips, with the defining features being that one’s mask had a larger horn on one side over the other.

 

    He could tell which was which by simple virtue of how they wore their hair differently.  Bleu wore her’s curled, while Azula left her’s straight as a curtain of gold. Jade was more ostentatious, grinning a nearly fanged smile in far better state than the lacquered masks that the twin sisters wore by virtue of him knowing the evil that lurked behind those green eyes.  A jester’s mask designs and colors standing out in stark relief from her earthy green dress.

 

    And here he was, adorned in almost funerary black with gold and blue to accent it all.  With his mother at his arm, his four present sisters curtseyed and he and his mother returned the public favor before splitting off after he bowed to her own curtsey.  A server, a young brunette he knew to be one of Jade’s school friends once upon a time, offered him a glass filled with light champagne which he took and throated with ease.

 

    The liquor content of drinks like it were just enough to offer a pleasant heat to those uninitiated to harder drinks.  Perfect for a young man now in the age of majority- and likely an effort by his sisters to see him loosen up.

 

    He hardly needed it, in his opinion.  His nerves always made him reflect back on trained instincts, rather than his own nervous whims.

 

    With their arrival, he watched the hall begin to gather around as the stage the band was upraised upon was filled with the gargantuan size of his father and shortly joined by the glowing form of his mother.  While his father wore no noticeable blade, he knew beneath the skirt of her dress, his mother had her own gun strapped to a thigh.

 

    The presence of armed guards was gauche, in her own words.  That did not mean it was not necessary, just that it was better to accessorize with weapons rather than ruin the mood of their guests.

 

    Blue eyes that had been taught by his oldest sister, mother, and father slipped over the few men and women who wore jackets alongside their attire.  If it weren’t for the music, and the bustle of the crowd, he was sure he would have been able to hear the fabric straining under the weight of knives, handguns, and other such tools of death.

 

    It almost distracted him from the hush that fell over the crowd as his parents spoke.

 

    “Welcome to our house, honored and beloved guests.  This quaint little Masquerade, hosted on the eve of our son’s manhood.”  Of the family, his father’s voice was the most easy to hear in speech. Tone-deaf to a key, all that he was, Jaune had yet to meet a better orator.  He was sure they existed, however.

 

    His mother’s lovely singing voice had been passed down to the daughters, and even he hoped that he held that sweet honeyed tone that made his father cry when his mother saw fit to sing for him.

 

    It was a bit of personal pride, one of few he ever wore openly.

 

    “To come all the way from distant Atlas, Vacuo, and even Menagerie, I must thank you all for celebrating this wonderful time in our family’s life.  I applaud you humbly.” Jaune watched as his father’s huge scarred hands raised and clapped, the crowd joining him after a few thunderstrokes of those giant palms.

 

    Hands that had beat him senseless time after time after he’d unlocked his Aura two years ago.  Perhaps he was still a poor fighter, but if he had learned nothing else from his family, it was how to take a blow.  He had been denied time at a proper Combat School, but he would not have traded time with his parents or Camillia for the world.

 

    The hush returned, and his mother stepped up, offering a pleased smile beneath the lights that made her glitter and gleam like all the jewels of royalty.  “To all of you whom I have made careful considerations,” She began, and he felt a chill roll down his spine like a melting brick of ice, “I encourage you to enjoy tonight’s festivities to the fullest.  As you well know, I have given the young ladies in attendance a task that you may begin now that our son has arrived. And now he has been forewarned, so--”

 

    He swallowed thickly past a wave of nausea.

 

    “--May your hunt be fruitful, and may you find the beast stalking tonight’s hall.”

 

    He tried to restrain a laugh, adoring the way she made him out to be what he was not.  Sadly, it was held down by fear of what his mother may have told those “eligible ladies” in attendance.

 

    As the music resumed again, he broke away from proximity with his family, seeing it as the only way he would go unnoticed.  A huge man and a motherly woman, both adorned in black and with purple accents alongside full-head masks that did not quite hide wisps of inky black hair that fell down from the pristine white masks that looked akin to roaring wild-cats, offered commentary while he circled the dance floor as it filled with a few couples.

 

    “This is so wonderful, Ghira.”  The woman remarked, and he could only smile at the woman’s happy tone.  “A party we were invited to. And it’s so cute. The masks are nice. Why, we could pretend not to know one another!”

 

    “Except you’ve already used my name.”  “Ghira” noted, using a large set of knuckles to brush the hip of the woman.  Jaune had to admire the easy grace which both showcased a fond connection, a feeling he one day would desire for himself.

 

    As the violin picked up within the band proceeding into “L’Vampyr”, a song about a man’s lust for a woman, his eyes drew to a white-haired woman wearing an elfin mask that concealed the whole of her features as she stood aimlessly by the refreshment table.  A winter maiden awash in a sea of more colorful creatures, he admired the way she stared at the dance floor through the holes in her mask. The curtain of her freely worn hair only mitigated by beads woven into the sheet of white in soft blues and grays.

 

    Feeling inspiration, he slunk up to her and greeted her with a deep bow which he put his left foot forward for, one hand at his waist while the other fisted against his back.  Without words, he offered her a hand and turned the features of his mask towards the floor. In offering to his own silence, she stared at him- giving him a view into ice blue eyes hidden away behind pristine white unmarked by paint or design but with exaggerated pointed ears- before softly taking his hand in one swathed in a silken elbow-length glove.

 

    Parading her forward unto the floor, he took position in the formation that had begun to occur and started the dance.  A hand cupping her hip while the other held her’s up high and proclaimed the tickling of the bow’s strings against the fine instruments.

 

    The deep, hard bass of the drums led his steps, while she spun and twirled with him.  The chorus of voices being directed to howl in delight and despair of the song’s story telling his feet when to twirl and when to die in stillness while mask stared at mask.

 

    While young, pretty woman hid away from him, and he hid away from the dangers of his mother’s predations.

 

    For a magical, lovely moment, he forgot.  He remembered his love for dancing, and one song became a second.  The whispers of faerie wings played by plucked strings, and he attacked.  Joined by a few other couples, he lifted the light young woman up into the air, earning him a muted “Ah?!” as he settled her back upon her dancer’s heels and then led her into the stages of the King and Queen’s embrace.

 

    A hand shaping to the form of her shoulderblade, another to gather the edge of her skirt as they swayed.  He felt her discomfort in being so close to him, but she did not pull away.

 

    She was, like him, trapped in this game of the King and the Queen lilting through the wonderland of snow and magic.  Finally, the music changed and she abandoned him with a stiff curtsey. He watched her go with a feeling between sadness, and acceptance.

 

    Another passed into his arms, a gown of rich chocolate brown met his eyes as he looked over his newest partner as the dancers on the floor grew synchronized once again.  A fist pressed against his breast while the other swept inwards and then away as she greeted him in turn with a swirling curtsey and then pressed her back to his.

 

    Sweet, unrelenting friction made him aware of her perfume, and of the smell of jasmine in her black hair.  Equally brown eyes, the same as her gown, lilted over a cream-colored shoulder as he wound his fingers against hers and then upraised them to twirl her away and then draw her in once again as they stepped inwards and outwards from one another.  The new song a gentle, playful tune that promised the birth of friendship-

 

    -and wound its way into passionate energy.  Closer now to her, and with his focus able to be on her face rather than the way she moved, he knew her immediately by the sight of a beauty mark beneath her nose and lower lip.  Ah- Camillia’s old friend Ochre. He remembered her well, a mother of two now.

 

    He offered her a smile, and her eyes glinted in return.  They separated, and his next dance partner was a man of an older age, salt and pepper hair tickling into a moustache that could not be defeated by the white mask painted to look like a checkerboard that hid his cheeks and brow, but did not contain the proud mane of hair that he wore just as distinctly.

 

    Man danced with man, and lady danced with lady.  Solidarity and kinship expressed in closeness and steps that were as basic as any Waltz could be without being three steps long.

 

    As he parted from the older gentleman with a bow, he quit the floor and moved through the crowd to where a group hogged a pair of servers with champagne flutes and small treats.  He eavesdropped on the conversation as he let his gaze grace over a glass and was offered it by a man in a jacket. He nursed this glass much more gently- like an aperitif- than the first he’d put back like a thirsty man.

 

    “How outdated.”  A portly man remarked to a similarly out-of-shape woman, their conversational partners a pair of young women likely to be the couple’s daughters from the way their hair-colors and features- from what he could see around the masks.

 

    “I think it’s quite neat.”  The younger of the two girls noted with a pleased air, “Most parties nowadays are more formal and political.  This is more like something out of a romance novel. And-”

 

    The younger girl who wore a gown of bloody red, was interrupted by what he presumed to be her sister, the other girl adorned in a more pastel pink.  “-shouldn’t it be? After all. This party is the Arc’s way of finding a wife for their son before he goes to Vale to that Huntsman Academy, isn’t it?  Do you think he asked for all this?”

 

    Jaune would have loved to butt in and to insist that not a lick of this had been by his word, but he kept his mouth shut firmly as he finished his flute and returned it to the armed server, snatching a vegetable-rich bit of finger food to chew as he slipped from one section of the floor to another.  In the periphery of his gaze, he saw the white-attired girl being spoken to by an older gentleman in a white suit, and he put it aside from his mind.

 

    As he stepped around another gathering of gossipers, he spied the broad form of his father looking put off by a local politician.  The hairs on his nape stood on end as he turned and raised a hand, not surprised to find Jade greeting him with the entwining of her own fingers in his and a grin that promised only pain.

 

    Nonetheless, he obeyed her as she stepped back unto the floor to dance.  The music now a heavy, overbearing tempo. “La Résistance d’Chevalier Faunus”, a piece written explicitly about his very own grandfather.  A piece not to luxuriate in one’s own nobility to, but instead to condemn the evils of one’s without.

 

    It was music written to stand against one’s foes, not to dance to.  That was why so few couples remained on the floor, as a stray few men and ladies twirled and thrust their arms open wide as if accepting the condemnation.

 

    Within the center of that mass of regret and promised protection, two siblings Arc battled with touches to the arms and shoulders.  Depicting scars worn through battle, blades broken by ardent combat. It was one of the very first songs he’d ever been taught, both to play and to know the meaning of.

 

    Family history was of the most importance, after all.  A knife-like palm rested against his heart, and he cradled his wild sister’s nape with his fingers as they stepped in circles and faced one another like they participated in a duel, rather than an elegant dance.

 

    They broke away, imploring with outstretched arms to dancers without, and then turned in again and Jade fell into his arms.  The last few notes of the song droning on in the death an era of war- and any future attempts of peace.

 

    It was a lament, one that they broke away from.  Jade curtseying to him in kind as dancers rejoined the floor, and he was greeted by the woman whom had been speaking to her lover earlier.  The proud visage of that snarling cat making his lips curl into a smile as she curtseyed and then kept one side of her skirts pinched while a softer tone overtook the band.

 

    “My daughter would love you, I think.”  She noted, the first all night to have spared words for him.  Despite his wish to remain unknown, her comforting presence made his lips peel back over his teeth.  Painted lips curled up in amusement in response.

 

    “I’m honored,” He noted, earning a laugh like tinkling bells, “Does she hate parties, and so she didn’t come herself?”

 

    They stepped, one foot each going outwards but towards each other as he led her through the “kicking of the heels” that some called a movement much more difficult to learn than one might think from looking at it.  “Sadly, she chose another path in life.” The woman’s voice hinted at sorrow, and he could only nod his head in return.

 

    “Then, for her, I am glad you and your husband came.”  He offered an easy smile, one his sisters had insisted he never use upon a woman while his mother had uttered dark threats to her husband while he’d simply grinned in turn.  Confidence is all you need.   He remembered Roux Arc’s words in that moment.

 

    The music paced back down as they spoke of inconsequential things.  She and her husband were from Menagerie- and he was proud of himself for having ascertained how deep their relationship was- and they’d come to the party as dignitaries invited for their importance.  He knew enough about Menagerie that he wished he could more perfectly know who he was dancing with, but the fact that she calmed him alone was enough to make him glad she came.

 

    As her husband arrived to cut in, a bemused look on what he could see of the large man’s visible face, she curtseyed and moved unto a dance with him while Jaune returned to slinking his way back through the revelers.

 

    Finally, he found an excuse and slipped past the band and the stage out unto the balcony.  Out amidst the stars, he could lean against the stonework and think without feeling the pressure upon his shoulders.

 

    Two years.  Two years more of training and then he would go to Beacon Academy, under the recommendation of his sister Camillia.  The proximity to Ansel had been the quickest reason for his parents’ acceptance of that, and so he’d seen no reason to pry into Atlas, Haven, or Shade.

 

    That it was considered the premiere one under the head of Ozpin himself was irrelevant.  Sanus was a large continent all it’s own. Vale was, by airship, several hours away. Even with a ground vehicle, it would take the better part of a day to reach the city itself.

 

    It would be the first time outside of family trips that he’d been away from home.  Vacations to Shion, and Mistral would never compare to life in the dormitories- he already knew.

 

    It would be freeing.  To be away from the pressure of nobility that he was suffocated with here in Ansel.  No one would see “Jaune Arc, son of the House Arc”, they would see just “Jaune Arc, Huntsman Trainee.”

 

    At most, they would perhaps remember Camillia Arc, and that would be the teachers there, assuredly.  He would be amongst men and women his own age.

 

    He was not a bird in a cage, but he longed to know what it was like to be just another young man.  To find love, to build glory, and- eventually- become a hero BECAUSE he was Jaune Arc, not because he was Jaune Arc .

 

    Part of a legacy to be proud of.

 

    As he turned to return to the party, he caught the sight of his mother standing at the door back into the ballroom, an amused smile on her lips.

 

    “Miss Schnee won.”  Nevena Arc noted, and he raised a brow behind his mask.  “Two dances with her, and only one with everyone else. So, if her father will permit-”

 

    He winced, already not liking where this was going.

 

    “- we will invite her to come again.  Her pedigree is good, and though I don’t . . . like . . . her parents, I think you would be good for her, hm?”

 

    The fact that his mother wouldn’t approve of someone wasn’t new, though he had to wonder what the young white-haired woman’s parents were like to earn such immediate ire.  Then again, the name she offered told him enough.

 

    Schnee.   Atlesian dust sellers, with news outlets all over- especially Faunus friendly ones like those surreptitiously backed by the White Fang- going on at length about their mistreatment of workers in the mines.

 

    No, he doubted anything would come of it.  That thought settled him back down.

 

    “I don’t think it will matter.”  He responded easily as he stepped away from the balcony’s edge and towards the gold-adorned form of his mother, as she offered a beatific smile that told him his self-deprecation would soon be earning him a gentle scolding.

 

    “Probably not,” She instead agreed, “From what I know about her mother and father, the best we could hope for is a rebellious jaunt into your arms.  But-” And that was when his mother’s expression warped from one of familial warmth to an expression he’d only ever seen on her when she trained him.

 

    Calculating, cruel intent that scared him to know existed in the golden-haired woman whom had given him and all of his sisters life.  “- she wishes to be a Huntress as well. Perhaps if she goes to Beacon, you will be partnered with her and grow close. Young women are much more likely to grow fond of someone who offers them stability, you know.”

 

    He could only shake his head as they returned to the party.  That was two years from now, and so he knew it was his mother simply seeing gold where only wheat existed.

 

True to form, Weiss Schnee did not accept an offer to return and speak of a potential courtship.

 

Two years passed, and Jaune found himself praying that the air sickness medicine would last the flight up to Beacon from Vale, and then he set foot upon the place where- for the first time in his life- he would grow to truly appreciate all that his family had ever done for him.