The author does not own Roosterteeth or any of the characters and concepts it has created. This one is not rich and creative enough to contrive a colorful world such as RWBY.

"And piled up beside her

And toppling to the skies,

Were the clothes of a king's son,

Just my size."

-The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Moonless

-0-

Here is the boy, falling.

In these last moments, it's not the landing that's finally done him; it's the fall. It bled his sanity, bit by bit, and strained his shouts to pained croaks. The air pressed around him, making it hard to breathe. Even when he can catch a few terrified seconds of air, he was shaking so badly he could barely get half a lungful before gagging. He is strong and young, nearly a Maven, but even that seemed trivial against the relentless course of gravity. It spins him around, trusses him over like a hog in the slaughter market, forcing him down the dark straits. Deeper into the onyx haze. Further into madness.

He will die.

He is in full panic now. He knows he's drifted too far in the deep, the abyssal region where none dared venture, where none can hear his anguished cries of help. He also knows there's no one to notice his disappearance, no one who'll find him when he doesn't report in. He knows he won't be saved by chance either.

It was too late.

He will die.

He will die alone.

The sudden horror of this makes him panic even more. He tries breaking surface, kicking his legs to rise, flailing his hands to grip some semblance of foundation. He tries drawing Aura, his soul authority, and forces a projection that engulfs him like a parachute. He tries praying to Oum, despite the fact nothing happens when he does that.

-Jaune-

A woman's voice sung in the darkness. It had strength metered by a calmness, a deeply centered peace. No sooner than it came, light broke out from below, and he began to feel better. He leaned in and saw a small hole where the light was coming out. Sanctuary. This was the end of the dream. Jaune could feel it.

-Jaune Arc-

Pursuing echoes call from the beacon's core. The beckoning hardened his resolve. His hands reached out to salvation, to the light looming in darkened horizon.

But in a moment of utter terror, he sensed malevolence behind the benign veil.

-Weak. Useless. Waste of skin-

Whispers, dark and grating, circled around him and were now blaring in his ears.

-Filth. Disgrace. Worthless-

The words stung, like a slap on the cheek. He tried to grab something, anything to halt himself.

-Shame. Deadweight. Mooncalf-

But there was nothing to hold on to, much less grip.

-Whoreson. Mistake. Bastard-

Down and down he went, heart dropping in hopeless despair. If this was hell, then it couldn't get much worse than this.

As chance would have, it did.

He choked as if drowning. Remembered, disremembered. Learned, unlearned. A flood of memories came and swept the boy in a raging current.

...Mother bought me a planner for my birthday. It was small enough to fit into your hand, laminated in light-reflecting silver – like flattened fun-sized disco balls– with thundercloud gray accents. Veins on the spine began forming three days in the month of January; it housed my most primal of thoughts: how sunlight weaves its way from the window to the door, through the hardwood floors and abused pillows, passing by my face at least once; how my gray shirt clashed with her blue sedan and spirit, and even how every banana, with each its own battle scars and body type, tasted the same to me – even if from different bunches and species. I wish I could hide inside the pages of my notes, and fill my life with purpose as easily as writing my thoughts during the day...

A thousand pictures greeted him, all shown simultaneously without regard for comprehension.

…We have a sword in our house. Well to be more accurate, it's mother's. The wooden thing has been with us ever since I could remember. She isn't here with me anymore but in my early childhood she swung it frequently. There's also the pistol but that's another story. I can't even remember the first time I heard it go 'woosh', but by the time I could think for myself, I was already familiar with the motions. Watching her all the time must have rubbed on me…

Dustpowder, gasoline, and alcohol, smells mixed so horribly his eyes watered from the blighted odor.

...I smell like beer and paint. It's midnight and as the clock strikes twelve, fireworks engulf the night sky. The night is filled with flashing lights, flying confetti, deafening music and people jumping up and down with cups of paint, beer and some other unknown alcoholic beverage in their hand. And this was running through my head, "I smell like beer and paint" as yet another person spills their drink at me. I look around and find my squad mates a few feet away from me, dancing and laughing to the music. "C'mon Private, drink 'til ya drop!" our commandant says from behind, blatantly handing out a shot of whiskey. Have you no care, sir? General Ironwood's glaring at you. Wait, he's glaring at me! And I'm holding the damn thing. Y-you've got it all wrong, general!...

Someone had stitched his ears together with barbed wire and attached them to speakers cranked at the maximum volume.

...at some point of my being alive, I found myself standing in a snowy field on a Saturday morning. Standing upright, back as sweaty as my cramped-up neck bent to the ground, I observe a half-eaten carcass of a gerbil. "It's the remains of the meal of a snowy owl," our white-haired instructor says, eyes squinting from the glare of the sun. I make a mental note that even a Schnee could make mistakes. The textbook says owls swallow prey whole...

These are…memories?

…New Year's was where it all fell apart, basically. I stood on the balcony, looking at the flashing colors of the fireworks with the battalion. When she said something I never thought she would say, "Let's break up." I didn't quite get what she said and chalked it up as racket from the sky. I asked her to explain what she meant. "Let's stop this." This line. I cannot even fathom how much this devastated me back then. A three-word sentence that punched a hole in my heart that exists even until now, as I am writing at this very moment. How amusing. This girl that was the source of my happiness and energy for the past year was the very person that destroyed me. It's depressing to imagine just how many more times I'm going to get screwed over like this when I reach thirty…

Yes...his memories, rushing faster than the brain could safely register.

…"Not my fault." I keep on repeating to myself as I head to the garrison. 8:24 p.m. Rain was pouring, and she loved rain. This much I know and remember. I walk slowly, trying to think of a way to start the endeavor of writing about love lost. I didn't want to do it at first, but I figured it would help me cope with the hounds and phantoms. I guess it also helps me finally put into words what I have been putting off every time someone asks, "Are you seeing someone?" or "My place at 6?" Insensate assholes. Can't you see a man grieving? …

A bright light at the end of the tunnel. Life memories flashing. Out of body experiences and the decision of whether it's the right time go into the light. This was probably his mind shutting down for good. Not that there was anything good about it.

His eyes shut to the safety of darkness and watched color burst through with the brightness of a thousand suns. A sign burned through this whiteness:

SLAY THE SCION
STOCK OF THE ANTECEDENT

The words kindled familiarity, yet at the same time, felt distant. Like a shadow, one could only see, not feel. A futile chase. A senseless endeavor. A hollow understanding.

The light scorched his eyes, but it was nothing compared to the lines that impressed on his mind. They were deeply invasive, such that the orders slowly and inexorably wired to his unconsciousness. He screamed and screamed until it proved too much the darkness took over. A numb bliss.

Franz Nieche, Violet Inquisitor of the Atlas Military and self-appointed Guardian of the Spire, reached for his cup and took a genteel sip of his afternoon tequila.

Tea was for peasants.

"Gaah!" A scream cut through the stillness, followed by a crash.

Franz replaced the cup in its saucer with a faint chink of porcelain. "Awake, are we?"

On the floor was a tatter-clothed man staring vexingly at the Inquisitor. Dark circles and lines under his eyes made him looks decades older than his records implied. Through the torn sleeves his arms looked horrible — blue, swollen, scraped up, and riddled with frost burn. His eyes, a heraldic blue, blinked rapidly as his mind shifted from reverie to reality. His gray ombre hair is matted, and the stitches on his head need to be replaced. Franz stares at the boy. Pain, confusion, and anger stare back.

"Who're you?" the boy slurs.

With a sigh, Franz drummed his manicured fingernails on the desktop, "Straight to the senseless questions. How many times must I say it? The drugs might have addled your brain to primitiveness, but stupidity has its limits. If I hadn't known any better, I would think you're doing this on purpose. But I shall humor you if but to sate my ever-growing boredom."

A gloved finger points at the prone form. "Jaune Bow. Ex-soldier. Deserter. Seditionist." The point swivels to Franz's chest. "Franz. Inquisitor. Interrogator. Imperialist."

"Did that jog your memory enough?"

As befitted his prisoner position, Jaune was situated on the floor, battered and bloody, hands and ankles cuffed behind him. His gaze wandered about the bright but flickering room. The gray walls cracked and crumbled, looked weak enough to be toppled by a child's kick. Standing crookedly at the center was a blood-smeared table intimately familiar with Jaune's face. Plastered on one side of the wall was a tinted mirror, two-way in design and dusty beyond reasonable measure. Only a door, brown and lonely, appeared new. The room had probably seen better days. Like himself in that respect.

Squirming around– really, the boy ate far too many pastries, Franz thought – Jaune let out a grunt of resignation. He wasn't ripping the cuffs anytime soon. "Ghhr…"

"Oh dear, even your tongue caught the stupidity pox you Mavens seem to fester innately. For our relationship to work, you must be at least lucid."

Jaune's ears pled for silence. This guy loved his voice way too much. He craned his neck, glared at Franz with his sole functioning eye and attempted a scathing remark. Swollen lips did not get the chance to part a sound.

Faster than Jaune could react, not that he could, the purple coated man vanished in a blink. A boot smashed from behind, crushing Jaune's face against the ground in a pulverized kiss. Slowly it stirred and grinded, tearing the stitches out of place.

"You will learn what it is that you are now, welp. The others may not have broken you, but by my hand, you will be a tame dog ready to swallow my cock on command. First, I will punish you for your impertinence."

Franz stepped back and, with a spiked baton, struck Jaune a hard blow on his exposed back. It sent a shock through his beaten body. The thought of his Aura buffering the force crossed his mind, except that this wasn't his first session with an Inquisitor. Franz Nieche was his sixth.

'I will not scream. I will not cry out for these demons. Pain comes and goes but my soul forges on. The body is the kiln of my soul. Tempered by pain, brazened by will. They will never break me.' In the back of his mind, fear and trepidation grew. 'Will I die here? When will it end?' He pushed those thoughts away and resolved to be brave, no matter how many cycles they throw at him.

The Inquisitor hit Jaune again over his kidneys and then migrated upwards. The blows landed faster, some falling harder than others. Through the waves of pain and the short moments between strikes, Jaune hoped the damage on his ribs weren't permanent. Living was hard enough; painful respiration would stretch his already strained spirits to breaking.

Again and again, they came. He did not cry out, but there was a wheeze in his throat, and he felt his strength wane. Each strike sent a wave of violence and pain through his body. Again and again, the blunt strikes found his head, spraying gore like embers on hammered metal. A fire began to eat his body from the inside. He lost count of the blows and then, suddenly, it was done. Jaune couldn't move, slumped motionless on the floor.

"That was for looking at me the wrong way," Franz said. "This next one is to make you a good, obedient dog."

Jaune felt the sun on his back. He waited for the baton's blow, but what came instead was a whip. It was a thick lash used for scourging punishment in the army and each time it landed, nine slashes formed - a claw. The whip cut into his back and he could feel blood running down his loins. He could hear small noises in his throat and tried to hold in the sobs. He lost count of the strokes and his back twisted with each bite of the Cat. It would be so easy to let go, to have Oum take him, but he would die then, and something inside said 'survive.'

The whipping stopped. He lay gasping and heaving and crying and he thought he might vomit. Pain saturated his senses and he could no longer feel his torso.

He thought about his mother and found a memory of her face in the moonlight while he rested in bed. In that one small second, it helped ward off the cry of defeat. The sadistic chuckle that followed, however, drowned any form of relief.

"We've been at this for more than I would've liked," Franz said. "It's fine, though," a tongue trailed over the lobe of Jaune's ear.

"I like boys who last long."

Memories, dark and ominous, rushed into his mind. He did not react, didn't stiffen, didn't recoil. Over the years, he'd experienced harassment much worse than this. Some instances were forced, but there were times when the yearnings for comfort overrode the sense of dignity.

Franz grabbed a fistful of bloodied hair, hefting Jaune to height. Gravity's unremitting pull combined with the head wounds flooded his senses with so much pain he screamed uncontrollably from the head-splitting sensation. The suddenness sapped the foundations of Jaune's will.

"Gaaaaah!" he screamed, letting out all the repression accrued over the years. Failure, humiliation, envy, loss, anger – he screamed it all out.

"Louder!" the man laughed, eyes shining in demoniacal glee," I want you to sing for me!" he could feel hair and skin slowly leave, ripping through each layer of membrane. Strands of bloodied thread sprung out from the pressure, heightening the mindless intensity of the pain.

Tearing. Ripping. Pelting. Evisceration. This was evisceration. His head was being wrung of all its fluid, his insides pulled out. The familiar, dizzying feeling of blood draining out was setting him to insentience. Eyelids teetered to a close. Yes, sleep sounded nice. Oum knows he needed the blissful escape.

A slap broke the shackles of slumber and budding demise.

"I said sing! Not sleep!" Franz roared, striking his cheek once again like lightning.

"Graaahh!" Pain beyond his will.

SLAP

"Louder!"

A symphony of flesh smacking and shrieking filled the decrepit room. Jaune screamed and screamed until his throat swelled and bled. The beating did not cease in its intensity.

10.

30.

50.

Minutes pass, an eternity for Jaune, and Franz halted-

"Hah!"

-and threw him like a fastball. He crashed head first into the wall and landed his cheek on a needle. More than a dozen syringes litter the floor, while color assorted pills lie scattered out of bottles on the table — who knows which ones he'll take this time.

"I'm not happy doing this," Franz lies, walking towards the prone form. This was the final round. The last bullet in the chamber. If drugs and violence don't work, protocol dictated clemency.

Heh. Clemency. Jaune couldn't help but smile bitterly.

Clemency, in this man's line of work, is as good as nonexistent. Clemency, was an ingenious term Atlas made to describe another angle of grilling the steak. If sticks and flame don't break the person, feed him a poisoned carrot. That way, he'll rot from the inside. Another gear to advance this corrupted torture machine.

Torture has been a brutal reality for many unfortunate people. But the most unsettling fact about torture wasn't its existence, but the way people have injected a perverted sense of creativity into the infliction of pain. Of all the Kingdoms, Atlas reigned supreme in the art. Kafka would have been proud.

A hand pulled the battered boy upright, the other yanking the needle out. "We can end all of this right now," he patted Jaune's cheek like a butcher inspecting fat in a pig.

"Just tell us…tell me…how'd you do it?" A whisper now, pleading.

Sleep deprivation. Psychosis. Cramped confinement. Sexual harassment. Mock executions. Forced medications. Extreme temperature exposure. Noise bombardment. Waterboarding. Flogging. Fingernail wrenching. Groin crushing. Heck, not even tickling was spared from the list. Enough. Jaune had had enough.

Enough of Franz.

"Aye, sir," Jaune says faintly, head sluggishly moving forward to whisper his testimony. The Inquisitor indulges, setting an ear inches before his lips.

"Ah…" Jaune ventured the very slightest of smiles; sympathy for a man about to be condemned to death.

"Don't let pride keep you back," his torturer prods, mixing virtue with deceit. "If you don't tell us now, you won't get any more chances to do so."

Except that was a big fat lie. So long as Jaune refused to answer, they wouldn't kill him. Couldn't. Atlas prided itself with security. Turning a blind eye would be tantamount to abdicating constitutionally imposed responsibilities.

"How…" the battered boy croaked, furtively glancing at the mirror. They want to see a breakdown? Well, he'll give them one.

Jaune paused dramatically, feigning hesitance, before dropping the guillotine. He professed, with a loud and terse exposition of truth, to the voyeurs beyond the mirror. A speech so radical, the audience trembled in condemnation.

The devil himself would approve.

"How is General Mauve's daughter doing?" Franz's face and shoulders went taut. A sadistic smile formed in Jaune's swollen lips. Time to snare the fly in the spider's web.

"Quite lovely that girl. A lot like her mother. I can't say the same for her father, though. Her skin's too tan, nose too long, and if you squint hard enough, you can see strands of red on her hair." Jaune made an infuriating grin. Something was niggling on his mind, but he ignored it. Retribution came first.

"The same shade as yours."

All the color drained from the Inquisitor's face, and the tension was electrifying. He imagined his father with the same expression, and the thrill turned orgasmic. He shouldn't be feeling happy in ruining lives, but this asshole deserved it. Revenge knows no mercy.

Calloused hands trailed upwards slowly - arms, shoulder, finally resting on a neck. Jaune didn't have to be an oracle to know what came next, but he wasn't finished. The coffin wasn't ready. Not yet.

"Isn't it strange that she turned pregnant during the General's two-month leave?" All the nails have been hammered.

"Isn't it even stranger that of all the Specialists, Jacks, and Inquisitors, she chose you as her guard detail. You exclusively." The farewells have been said.

All that's left was the descent. "Oh, and I sent the general your kinky video back in the record room. You know what I'm talking about. The one in Vale. I didn't know she had a fetish for choco–"

The purple visage of Death hulked over him, hands gripping like iron shackles, choking off his windpipe, crushing his throat. Struggling, unable to breathe, Jaune felt his eyes bulging, his face threatening to burst. At first, it was no different than holding his breath, then it started to burn, like a dynamite wick set alight. The first convulsion hit him, and his body struggled to take in air.

No, Jaune screamed silently, no, it's a mistake! That was a lie! The second convulsion was worse, and now Jaune was fighting back with everything he had, but Franz's grip did not waver. A demon out of hell had seized him and was strangling the life from his body…a power overwhelming…dimming the world.

Dead.

…

…

Or so he thought. For a while, he felt no pain, no burden. Then his windpipe suddenly opened and sucked in screaming air, his eyes fluttered and his chest expanded despite the searing burn from the action. He gasped, gulped, breathed.

"You ruined her life!"

And regretted.

Holding the enraged man were his colleagues, dressed in the same purple overcoat as Franz. Their faces were stone, but Jaune could sense pity and fear as they restrained the flailing Inquisitor. Disgust and sympathy for their friend. Enmity and dread to Jaune.

After all, the same thing happened to the other five who dealt with him.

"She'll be thrown out the streets!" Franz continued, "stripped naked and shamed!" Jaune looked at the delirious man impassively. Forced to fend for herself? Big deal. The lot of us survived in training.

"She's could've been a White!" If Jaune could scoff, he would've done it thrice. Was he trying to guilt trip him? After all that's happened, do they think he still cared about ranks?

"You didn't just kill me, boy." He could feel Franz' anger like fire. "You killed Amaranth."

Amaranth. He tested the vowels and consonants in his mind-projected voice. A dull ache of familiarity reverberated.

Who was she again?

"Jaune? What are you doing down there? Didn't you hear the alarm? There are bombs in the camp." I kept my attention fixed on the white wall. Beneath the dark helmet that covers me from head to nose, my face should be unreadable. But Amaranth Bleu and I have been together for nearly every day of the fourteen years we've been training at Atlas Military Academy; she can probably hear me thinking.

That put the fear in Jaune. His eyes, a heraldic blue, widened in disbelief.

She comes around me silently, and I look up into her eyes, as red and vibrant as the leaves of the maple trees in Eastern Mistral.

"C'mon." She ran a hand over her purple hair, braided, as always, into a ponytail. "Evacuation started minutes ago."

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

"You killed her future."

Jaune felt dread swallow him from the stomach up. The air was heavy with regret, and he found it hard to breathe. Something struck his heart. Something fast and sharp and relentless. It hadn't come from them, or he would've been prepared. No, the blow came from within. After everything that happened, that self-inflicted wound hurt the most.

"You fucking bastard!"

And he was right. Franz didn't know how close he was to the truth. Wretch, degenerate, illegal - Jaune was a bastard in the truest sense. The little shits ruined everything: friendships, families, kingdoms, heck, even themselves.

The dam shivered, cracked, and bore down its mighty pressure.

For the first time in fourteen years, Jaune wept. He wept for his mother, gone without so much a farewell. He wept for his own childhood, an irretrievable innocence. He wept for Amaranth, and all the others he condemned.

Stories show that; you were either a champion or a victim, hero or fool, villain or vassal. In the past, he didn't know the type he fell on. But now, he was certain.

Whatever kindness he offered. Whatever slaying he committed. Whatever conflict he resolved. Nothing shall ever change this written fact.

He was no hero.

The door closed shut, pathetic sobs filling the room.