Remnants of Another World

Chapter Ten

Weiss

What was the Heiress after she had been disinherited? What was Weiss after losing her status, her wealth, and all of the things that made her … her?

She didn't know, but, taking one last look back at the house she grew up in, she knew she wasn't going to find out here. When it was the only thing she'd known, it had seemed normal to her, but now she saw it for what it was: an ivory tower and a gilded cage wrapped up in one. Not a home. A home was never so cold.

She shivered, shaking the snow out of her platinum-blonde hair. She had been cold for as long as she lived in Atlas. Sometimes it was a brisk cold, invigorating her to act. Sometimes the cold was empty, a void that sucked the heat from her. This cold, tonight, pierced her to the core.

Her father had never wanted her to study at Beacon. He hadn't wanted her to become a Huntress at all. Why would the future C.E.O of the Schnee Dust Corporation need to know how to fight Grimm? Why travel halfway across the world when Atlas Academy was only an hour away?

Why do anything that would open a door that her father didn't hold the key to?

She turned away from the Schnee mansion for the last time. What was left for her there now? What was ever there for her? The hope that her father would realize that an heir who told him everything he wanted to hear wasn't what he wanted? Or maybe the hope that her mother would take charge of the travesty that was the Schnee family, sometime next year … when she was sober.

She still didn't know what she was, now that she didn't have her father tugging at her leash day and night, but she was free to find out.

Yes.

That was it.

She was free.

WWW

"What do you mean, you own me?" Weiss demanded.

"You're my familiar," Louise said. "All mages have one; I'm surprised you haven't heard of this before."

Weiss had said yes when Louise asked her if she was a mage, but when the pink-haired girl referred to Myrtenaster as a "sword-wand," Weiss began to think she'd misunderstood something.

"No one has 'familiars' in Atlas."

"Where's that?"

"North of here." Weiss didn't know where Tristain was, but Atlas was north of everything.

"Well, in more civilized parts of the world, we have familiars."

Weiss choked down a laugh at the "civilized" remark. The academy Louise had summoned her to looked like it was built in the Dark Ages, right down to its total lack of wi-fi. That Louise had summoned her at all and had no idea how (or desire) to send her back didn't bother her either. She had spent her formative years surrounded by self centered snobs, so one more didn't bother her, but Louise had managed to be completely ignorant of the location of one of the four major kingdoms in the world.

She sat down to think. "Hey!" Louise said. "I did not give you permission to sit."

"No, you did not," Weiss said without standing. "If you were civilized, you would have offered your guest a seat as soon as we entered your room, but I have generously decided to overlook that."

"Who said you were a guest?"

"I did. Like I said, I'm generous. See, either I am your accidental guest and grateful for your hospitality, or you kidnapped me, and that would be most unwise. So? What am I?"

Weiss looked her in the eyes with an icy stare, and Louise looked her in the … scar. People always did. They seemed surprise that a girl with her perfectly styled hair and refined manners had been marked by combat, but she was glad she had it. It proved that the sword at her hip was not for show.

"Fa-mil-iar," Louise said, as though speaking to an exceptionally dull child. "That means that I have to take care of you, and you have to do what I say. I don't like it either. I've never even heard of a human familiar, let alone a human mage familiar, but if I have to deal with it then so do you."

Weiss considered that. Technically she didn't have any money, not in this backwards country (they still used the gold standard here, for crying out loud), and it wouldn't hurt to have a place to stay until she figured out which nowhere she had ended up in the middle of. "Let's say I decide to play along. Where would I even sleep? You only have one bed."

Technically it was large enough for two, but the closest Weiss had ever come to sharing a bed with someone was Ruby sticking her inverted head down from the top bunk to bother her all night long.

"Obviously you'd sleep on the floor," Louise said.

Weiss raised an eyebrow. She'd slept on floors before while on a team mission, but for Louise to demand that while sleeping on a bed was petty. No, it was worse than petty; it was obviously petty. A pettiness cliché.

She knew what it was about, of course. Posturing. Treat someone like an animal long enough, and they'll start acting like one. But this girl was an amateur. Weiss' father knew every trick in the book to demean and belittle people until they began to accept it—believe it. Dust, he had written the book.

And it made for a lousy bedtime story.

But like that, she had the answer to the question she had been asking since she left home. What am I, after losing everything by which I defined myself? What am I when I no longer have what has always made me, me?

She was, she realized, what she had always been.

"I'm the Ice Queen," she whispered.

"What?"

Weiss stood up, drew Myrtenaster, and slammed its tip into the floor. A trail of ice crystals, beautiful and cold, exploded into existence, freezing Louise up to her neck. "You said I have to do what you say. Let's test that, shall we?"

Louise struggled, but couldn't move. "What are you doing? Let me go!"

Weiss cocked her head. "Hmm, that didn't seem to work. Try again. Use your mystic arts, like when you branded this scar into my hand." Louise had done that with a kiss, which was frankly as improper as it was rude.

"Familiar! As your master, I order you to release me!"

"See, that only makes me want to help you less. If you do not understand, then I blame myself for not being clear, so let me say this: I am not your pet. I am not some other thing you own. I am Weiss Schnee, and I demand your respect."

"I'm serious, Weiss! This is really cold!" Her lower lip began to tremble. Was she going to start crying? Well, so be it. It would take more than tears to melt her ice. "Please!"

"You only needed to ask." With a tap from her sword, the ice shattered, and Louise fell to the floor, damp and shivering. Weiss pulled her to her feet, not roughly, but not gently either. "Now go cocoon yourself in blankets until you don't look so pathetic."

Louise scurried to her bed and bundled herself up until she was nothing but a scowling face. "You're mean."

Weiss tilted her head. "From where I'm standing I have been most fair. Now that I have your attention, let's establish the sleeping arrangement. We'll be sharing the bed until another one of equal or greater quality becomes available. Before you get any ideas, we'll be sharing meal plans as well as anything else I might need during my stay here, which you, as my gracious host, will be happy to provide." She planted a glyph on the floor, created a throne of ice, and sat down on it, crossing her legs primly.

"What do I get out of this?"

"In return, I will ignore the fact that you kidnapped me."

"But I never even wanted you!"

"Then perhaps you should be more careful in the future. Hopefully this will be a brief arrangement until I procure a means of transport to my destination." A throne of ice, she decided, was exactly as comfortable as it looked. Still, it made a good impression. "Louise, I do not know if you understand this, so let me make this clear. I am offering to treat you as an equal, which is not an honor I hand out lightly or often."

Louise glared at her, still buried in her own blankets. "If you hate me so much, why offer me anything?"

"I don't hate you," Weiss said. "I pity you."

Louise's eyes grew wide. "What? I'll have you know that I am a Valliére, youngest daughter of a duke! I do not need nor want your pity!"

Weiss nodded slowly. "Yes, I thought it was something like that." Mirror, mirror. "I do not know the name, but it sounds like you come from a respected and prestigious family. It sounds like you have carried the burden of your name your whole life, knowing that your every achievement would be taken for granted, and that no failure would ever be forgotten. It sounds, Louise, like you are worthy of much pity."

Louise stared at her. "What? No, I'm not … that's not …" She fell silent. "Okay," she said finally, her eyes narrowed. "When we're alone, you can do whatever you like, but when we're in public, you will at least pretend to be my familiar."

Weiss shook her head. "No. When we are in public, I will pretend to be your friend. It's a believable enough lie, I think." And if Weiss had to guess, she'd say that Louise didn't have many friends. Weiss never did, until she came to Beacon.

Louise hesitated, considering her options. Or rather, her option. Or rather, the icecube. "Okay, fine. If you're not staying long, it hardly matters anyway."

After that, Weiss shattered her ice throne and the two of them got ready for bed. She searched Louise's wardrobe for a nightdress that wasn't horrendously pink, but her new roommate seemed thorough in her fashion mistakes.

Climbing into bed with a relative stranger was awkward in several ways that Weiss was determined not to focus on, but after a few minutes she had managed to relax. She had nearly fallen asleep when Louise let out a shriek.

"What is it?"

"Holy Founder!" Louise gasped. "Your feet are freezing!"

Weiss blinked. They are? "Um, you have … exceptionally warm legs."

"Yeah, and I want to keep them that way! You nearly gave me hypothermia tonight, Weiss. There's no way I'm letting you give me frostbite too."

Louise rolled over to a safe distance, and Weiss thought about her friends as she tried to fall asleep again. Blake, Yang, Ruby. Ending up in this backwards country was a setback, but a minor one. As soon as she found out where Tristain was on a map, she could make her way to a metropolitan center with a serviceable airport, and she'd be in Mistral in a few weeks at most.

If she had looked out the window and noticed the second moon in the night sky, Weiss might have felt far less confident in her travel plans.

WWW

A/n And that's the Weiss chapter. With how much she and Louise have in common, I figured that either they'd get along really well or really badly. If Louise had summoned volume one Weiss, this would have been a very different story.

As usual, thank you for everyone who left a review, and thank you Magery for editing this. He also showed me his meme vault. He has a meme vault. Does everyone have a meme vault? Should I get a meme vault? I should get a meme vault … because I don't have enough distractions on the internet already. I shouldn't get a meme vault. But you should leave a review, because that's what wonderful people do, and I'm sure you could be a wonderful person if you tried really hard.