SHE WAS HOPE.

rq headcanon that’s maybe more of a question @ the presentation of weiss’ concert than anything else: weiss didn’t actually sing this life is mine at the concert in v4.

weiss is afraid of her father and i don’t think she’d consider the sociopolitical consequences of completely railing him through song worth the brief satisfaction of doing so. not to mention, he is a canonically controlling man and i seriously doubt her set-list was not passed under his nose for inspection before it was approved, and i can’t imagine for a second he’d allow her to sing it. 

         “i’LL NEVER LET SALEMARU HAVE RENSUKE!”

          coco thinks for a moment to imagine winter’s figure, and oh yes, coco remembers this bracelet.  she’s nearly never without it.  “ yeah, she does — why, did you make that for her? ”  the brunette grins and tilts her head down, looking at weiss over dark glasses.  “ that’s really cute.  maybe we should do something like that for her with a private dinner party.  you, ruby, fern, yang, blake, me.  i don’t think winter would be weirded out if blake came too, would she?  what do you think? ” 

     ❝ you want me to dance with you? ❞ ruby asks, her eyes wide. it shouldn’t come so much as a shock, but the both of them have experienced how clumsy ruby can be with following dance steps. even if she likes to take weiss into her arms and start twirling her around under the moonlight of their room, being a competent dance partner is a wholly different case. ruby’s bottom lip juts out a little as she idly plays with the soft silk of weiss’s dress. 

     ❝ i don’t know when or where we’d find a big dance floor, but… mm, i’ll do my best to get better at dancing— with your help! ❞ she says, and then she circles her arms around weiss and links her hands on her back, swaying her playfully. ❝ for now, let’s just buy the dress! i’ve got enough lien saved up to get it! c’mon, c’mon!❞ 

        and how could she steal a pleasure like this from ruby when she’s this excited? nothing to do with weiss’ own intense desire for the dress, and her failing bank balance. “fine,” she sighs as though it is such a great inconvenience, and ruby ought to be thankful weiss is allowing her to spoil her so. 

     ruby’s eyes pop the moment weiss turns around and shows her the zipper. the flush on her face can easily be covered by weiss’s hair, though, and she takes advantage of weiss’s own discovery with her reflection. see, it’s hard to deny herself the dress when she finally takes a look at how beautiful it looks on her! ruby rests her hands on weiss’s forearms and props her chin on her shoulder, grinning. 

     ❝ yes, yes you can!  ❞ in one familiar motion, ruby raises weiss’s arm and runs her hand down the length of it and holds weiss’s hand, her other resting on the side of her hip. ❝ just look. imagine you’re in a dance right now and you’re wow-ing all these people with the way your dress perfectly follows your pretty dancing. if i were watching, i’d just drop dead! ❞

        oh, but they do look good together. weiss finds that her attention is split now, from the dress that frames her like a valley frames a river to ruby’s face, resting on her shoulder and looking at her like she’s the stars on a translucent night. there’s the slightest flush of pink on her cheeks, and her fingers lace between ruby’s. very, very quietly, as though she can get away with conceding if ruby can barely hear her, she says “do you think your uncle’s credit card covers this price tag?” 

        she turns in ruby’s arms, resting both forearms on her shoulders and trailing fingers through loose tendrils of hair that are sticking out every which way. a mischievous curl licks her lips, and she thinks of kissing ruby’s nose if only to make her blush. (all sense of embarrassment over public displays of affection was left in argus, it seems). 

CHAINS

You have chains, keeping you linked to something you'd rather leave behind. Maybe this is a bad family, traumatic event, toxic relationship... But something's keeping you trapped there, and you don't know how to escape it.

You can turn the chain around, to help you instead of trap you... Can't you?

both winter and weiss are affected by oculocutaneous albinism, type 1b via an autosomal recessive gene, meaning the gene occurs in both parents but is not necessarily a dominant gene in either. their symptoms include: 

significantly less pigment in the skin, eyes and hair 

sensitivity in eyes and skin, particularly to sunlight

poor vision, and more rapid natural deterioration of sight

this is something both have learned to cope with and doesn’t pose much difficulty in their day to day lives (and as a result, neither tend to mention it). it does show itself in a few habits, however.

in weiss’ case: 

in summer, weiss tends to wear long sleeves and generally cover up in lieu of sun cream unless it’s just too warm, in which case she’ll be lathering up in the highest factor she can find and sticking to the shade. 

speaking of shade, weiss lives in sunglasses during the summer and a lot of spring. she’s got them Adele™ brand shades, fam. 

weiss requires corrective lenses to better her visual acuity in combat. naturally, the left lens is stronger due to scarring left by the paladin she fought in her teens. in modern verses, where contact lenses lack fictional atlesian technology, she wears glasses. 

her skin tends to be on the dryer side, and weiss always carries moisturiser around with her. she can often be found rubbing it into her arms, face and palms in moments of downtime. her hands are very soft as a result.

speaking of her skin, weiss tends to err on the side of natural products without strong scents or flavourings after one too many allergic reactions to skin creams and shampoos.

she’s not just being extra fancy for the sake of it, she only wears silver (and other expensive metals like platinum, gold and titanium) because alloys and cheap metals cause allergic reactions. 

          “ i’ve been called a lot of things, weiss, ” the brunette laughs, “ but a mind reader isn’t one of them. ”  she takes a larger drink of her coffee, closing her eyes all the while before setting the mug back down onto the table.  “ and i definitely can’t read winter’s mind.  if i could, i think we’d have gotten together a lot sooner, ” she quips, small chuckle exiting her chest.  “ i know she would hate a big party.  and if we had a smaller party, do you know who we’d invite?  you, me, and fern. ”  coco pauses to sigh.  “ hm … maybe we should take her to do something instead?  like, take her out for a nice dinner— oh, or we could MAKE her something.  she couldn’t hate anything we made her. ”

     ❝ pft, what? we’re nothing alike! ❞ says ruby, as she pours over a case file with sheets and sheets of paper spread across the coffee table. ruby sits up for the first time in two hours and hears her neck crack, groans, and then leans back into the couch where she dogpiles on weiss. ❝ just because we both really like sugar and panic-work like it’s the end of the world doesn’t mean we’re similar! in fact, you’re more like leslie, with all yours binders and hard work and need to help as many people as you can! though in this case, it’s animals. ❞

     ❝ you’ve got to be joking, ❞ she growls, hands balled into a fist on the floor.  

     she should have expected this. she’d seen how badly they had conned ozpin and the grimm witch herself, always fooling with star-crossed lovers, always doling out impossible tasks under the guise of fulfilling destiny, which, in the end, only bound the mortals to eternal damnation. no, it should have been obvious from the start that even after running across all of remnant, fighting all of grimm, eating all the dirt grovelling for the gods’ favors, they would not pay her her due. 

     why else would she be staring up at a familiar pair of eyes, a frozen blue full of shock trickling down the surface. weiss grips myrtenaster’s handle and gets up on her feet like she was meant to be standing here, tossing her head once to arrange her bangs into a suitable position and brushing off any dust on her deep blue coat.

     ❝ staring at myself in a mirror for ungodly amounts of time? i thought i was over that by the time i was at this age, ❞ weiss murmurs, looking at the mirror behind her in disapproval. did the gods find it funny to send her across the realms through a mirror, just to meet her literal reflection? her teeth grinds painfully. damn them.

if there’s anything your future self has maintained, it is the boiling spite which strengthens your resolve. @gainheart

        oh, if ONLY she could live in the world of two seconds ago, when her biggest problem (well, not the biggest, but the most immediate at least) was the dark circles that were beginning to form around her eyes, starker than normal against her pale skin. she can see those circles in this moving reflection of hers too, and for a second she wonders if that’s what has happened, that she’s somehow broken in two over the stress of being back in atlas, but this copy has wrinkles too. laugh lines, frown lines and crow’s feet too severe to have popped up overnight. weiss doesn’t know how to act other than stand there like a guppy fish, catching flies. at least, until it all gets a little too much. 

        “what’s THAT supposed to mean?” weiss exclaims, both indignant and far too animated for someone as refined and dignified as herself, who might wish to impress.... herself. her eyes are too wide to maintain anything but sheer shock, and her palms are patting at her hip searching for myrtenaster ---- but who brings a weapon to the bathroom (blake, probably). oh ---- right! this... copy has it. 

        “what----” no, that’s not what she meant to ask, what she wants to know is why this intruder has her sword. “what----” again, and weiss purses her lips, fists clenching at her side and a burst of frustration spilling from her lips. 

     ruby nods, and she finally walks around the counter to sidle up to the seat next to weiss, body facing her way. she hopes weiss doesn’t mind the heat coming off her palm as she reaches for weiss’s hand and rests it on her lap. 

     ❝ well, ❞ a joyless laugh trips over her lips. ❝ we really haven’t talked about beacon in a while, huh. ❞ she plays with weiss’s fingers idly, tracing their slender figure and immaculate skin despite the trials of battle. ❝ i’m right here, weiss. all in one piece. nothing bad happened to me up at that tower. ❞ maybe it was a mercy that pyrrha was not included in weiss’s dream. waking up only to find her dream is reality is worse than any nightmare she can suffer.

        weiss’ own fingers are so cold that ruby’s feel like fire, and she abandons her coffee entirely to wrap her palms around the heat of it. it’s a small comfort when she thinks of the opposite, in a moment where her own hands, no matter how cold, wouldn’t match the chill in ruby’s. 

          “ is that so? ”  cinder faces front and squats down to weiss’s level, drawing fingertips underneath her chin.  “ ahah, tell that to pyrrha nikos. ”  they laugh again, all too eager to break weiss in the process if they must.  they stand back up once more, sighing and humming once their laughter has ceased.  once they’re standing, they turn on their heel and take a half step away, right before —

         THWACK !

          cinder spins around and their boot is colliding with weiss’s lower cheek, sending her head smacking off of the floor.  that ought to daze her, cinder thinks.  once she’s been there for a moment, they force her figure up by yanking on her ponytail, and growl softly from their position standing behind and above her.  “ i’ll toy with you all night until she gets here, ”  cinder mutters, and they shove her head forwards violently with their hand.  “ because this is all too fun for me, ”  the maiden chuckles lowly.  “ i promise you, dear weiss, you’ll be wishing it was daddy instead of me. ”

        all weiss can see is a white sky and a hundred stars all chattering with different feelings. let me die. please save me. don’t come, it’s a trap! you promised. she barely hears her own cry of pain over the sound of her skull meeting the floor and her consciousness rattling around in her head emptied of sense and filled with sheer dread. what wouldn’t cinder fall do to achieve their ends? how much more pain can they inflict? plenty, going by the way they throw her body around like she’s a red flag to a charging bull. 

         “please,” weiss whispers, and only remembers at the last second that she’s too proud to beg. (what would winter do? ah, but winter would not have engaged, silence is a sharper weapon than wit.) winter would not have cried, either, but there is little weiss can do about the tears that are streaming down her cheeks. the salt in them stings the pulsating pain in her jaw, and weiss wonders if she is bleeding from there, too. 

          “ oh … weiss … ”  blake’s eyes go huge, and she snatches the box from the schnee’s hands to rip the lid off.  her speech is urgent as she takes a deep breath of the smell like it’s a drug, and then she grab’s one of weiss’s wrists with the box in the other hand.  “ tell me you brought a fork.  weiss, tell me you brought a fork. ”  ah, but it’s nearly too late, and she’s letting go of weiss’s hand as quickly as she grabbed it.  she’s already picking a piece of the tuna from the tiny box and plopping it into her mouth.  a loud purr emerges from her throat as she munches on it, nearly feral in her actions.  she looks her teammate dead in the eyes.  “ i never thought i’d say this, but weiss schnee, i owe you my life. ”