July 15, 1918

Jaune heard the whistles before someone screamed the obvious.

"Artillerie!"

His head was already tucked under his arm while he pressed himself inside the culvert his squadron had dug for themselves. Even then, despite his experience, he found that he could not get used to the shells landing around them, ripping up holes in the earth and showering them in mud, dirt, and debris.

His ears were still ringing from the blasts when the battle cries of frenzied German infantry resonated over the uneven ridges. Jaune immediately pressed himself behind the barricades, his rifle poking through the slit.

"Prépares vous!" he ordered.

An unassuming civilian observer would be surprised to find unshaven men of varying ages stiffening and obeying an order from a boy who had barely grown his whiskers. Yet, they did. They trusted him. Or rather, they were cowed by the reputation that preceded the blonde, blue-eyed young man from Greece, Ionas Arkos, simplified for their sakes as Jaune Arc in reference to the legendary heroine Joan D'Arc.

In minutes, a line of French infantry braced themselves for the impending charge. Dots emerged out of the ridge and were immediately met with the bursts and pops of Allied small arms. Jaune was already loading in a new clip to replace the depleted cartridges pooling around his boots. Peering through his slit, he could see the bodies dropping all across the broken field, some disappearing into the craters they themselves carved up.

"Ils sont ici, les Allemands!" someone announced as he once again brought his rifle to bear.

Jaune's movements were automatic. He centered his sights on a mass in black uniform angling with his Mauser over a fallen log. In a rare moment, the infantryman was close enough to meet his steely gaze. Blonde hair, blue eyes. They looked the same. They all looked the same.

The German stood frozen in the middle of the battlefield, as though captivated by the look in his eyes. Jaune kept from firing to study his enemy. They were all the same. Boys younger than the legal age drafted to fight a war that was not theirs to begin with. Given a gun and told to kill the people on the other side because of...things.

A year ago, he would have deserted. And be shot for it.

A year ago, he would have hidden in a crater and cried. And be shot for it.

A year ago, he would have mustered the guts to shoot himself.

But that was a year ago. For all the things he had done since then, he doubted his own family, Ruby, or anyone for that matter could forgive him...if they ever found out, let alone found where he was. He was a different man, a boy no more. Right now, on this day in the bloodied fields of France, Corporal Ionas Arkos of the French Army, romanticized as Jaune Arc, snapped out of his musings and guiltlessly shot the German infantryman square in the face as more poured in behind him to try and seize their positions on the Marne.

"Isha, is there something the matter?"

Weiss blinked away from the glass at the mention of her nickname. She would have lied expertly through her teeth but she could bring herself to conceal any secrets from the family that she had grown to love and care for in this insane world. She spared a final glance at the soldiers milling about outside before turning from her window sill.

"Isha?"

"I...don't trust them," she answered carefully. For now, it was safe to speak in English. Her Russian was still rusty in some areas.

Anastasia tilted her head, her curiosity replaced with a worried look. "Oh. I see."

Weiss sighed. She could never get used to house arrest despite the long months she had spent in the company of the imprisoned. Revolution and civil war had torn apart this once glorious empire—the largest she had ever learned of to actually exist—and, through the irony of circumstance or perhaps even fate, she found herself in the service of the people who used to rule over it, now shackled to this mansion by an indignant government.

Those fanatical Bolsheviks painted them horribly while the loyalist Whites were too pandering with their praise. But when Weiss finally met Tsar Nicholas the Second and his family, all she could see was a man stripped of his power striving to care for his wife, children, and loyal retainers in the midst of a world that hated him and his whole house. Kind of like the father she never had.

Her mind wandered to where Winter could be, how she was doing, what she was doing. Her older sister would probably have thought her long dead by now. And her team...they were probably gone as well. She could have been more hopeful but after witnessing first and secondhand the horrors of this world, she found such hope futile and puerile. The atrocities of home were dwarfed by what mankind was capable of achieving in droves here.

"Isha."

Weiss snapped out of her thoughts at the touch of Anastasia's hand over her own. "Sorry. Just thinking."

"Don't."

"Pardon?"

"Don't," the grand duchess insisted. "You worry too much."

"But you yourself are equally suspicious about—"

"Isha." Anastasia cupped her hand in her own. "They only changed the guards. Don't think too much of it."

"Anya, these men are drastically different," the white-haired girl argued. "They've changed their shifts, they let us do anything rarely, and you know my Russian isn't that good. Also, that commandant of theirs..." She shuddered. "He doesn't like me."

"He doesn't like any of us."

"I know. So why the sudden changes?"

"Unless they thought we needed better security."

Weiss shook her head. "From what? Ourselves? Our last guards were very courteous." And sympathetic, she did not add.

Anastasia shrugged. Her seeming nonchalance and cheerful persona emerged with that smile that began to form on her lips. Much like Ruby except with Weiss's own maturity. "We may be prisoners but at least we're safe."

Weiss had a gut feeling that they were not. She wanted to voice her other concerns but the ever optimistic atmosphere that radiated from the grand duchess was too much. She hated to see Anastasia down. Even in these constrained times, the royal in peasant's clothing somehow found something to be grateful and cheerful for.

"How about you help me with my sewing," Anastasia started. "You need a distraction."

"I guess so." And Weiss Schnee, talented runaway daughter of some obscure German businessman, picked up a needle and thread while Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna poured diamonds and gemstones through a seam in her dress.

ORIGINALLY DRAFTED: July 16, 2018

LAST EDITED: July 17, 2018

INITIALLY UPLOADED: July 16, 2018

NOTE: I was left hanging by some good RWBY WW1 fics out there so I decided to write my own.