#trans!oscar

Although, dying doesn’t necessarily scare Penny.  She’s done it once already.  She doesn’t remember it or the time between it and her reactivation.  She never felt pain, terror.  One moment she knew nothing more, and the next she was blinking awake in her father’s lab.  Penny knows truly dying means not waking up again, but she finds it hard to fear the moment when it’ll eventually happen definitively for her.

What she does fear, and what she would cry over if she had the capacity, is the possibility of an afterlife.  Penny has hard evidence now that, if an afterlife does exist, she doesn’t get to go there.  She doesn’t go anywhere.  She just shuts off.  Like any other machine.

She’s not real like actual people are.  She’s a very close replication of life, but there’s still a gaping chasm between her and everyone else.  One that she can never cross precisely because of what she is.

I have come too far to be stopped by some toy!

They’re words said in rage by someone whose opinion Penny knows she shouldn’t really be considering, but they’ve stuck with her since they were yelled at her.  Is that what she is?  A toy?  A puppet?  A plaything?  An imitation of life meant to explore humanity’s capacity for creation?

An imitation of humanity itself, one that deceived—stole—one of its greatest powers out from under it?

Penny can’t describe what having the Maiden powers feels like.  They’re just there.  A part of her, but one that’s somehow detached from her operating systems.  She controls them, can send commands and signals to them like she does literally every other aspect of her body, but they are distinctly separate from her machinery.  Like a magnet that got accidentally stuck to her and won’t come off.  Not truly a part of her.  Not really.

She shouldn’t have gotten them at all.  The Maiden powers were intended as a gift from an old wizard to four living girls, to aid mankind.  Penny isn’t alive, not like everyone else is.  The gift to the maidens was never meant for her.  She intervened in a process she should have stayed out of.  It was not her place to act like she had.

But if she hadn’t…

Penny can imagine what would have happened if Cinder won that fight.  Fria’s final moments would not have been peaceful.  Winter, out of aura and injured, would be in no condition to continue a fight against an even stronger opponent.  Penny herself…well, she already knew how little Cinder regarded her life.

She’d had no choice, hadn’t she?  To save all three of them.  To not waste the window of opportunity Winter gave her by distracting Cinder.  In those precious moments, there was only her.  Penny.

She could have told Fria to think of Winter, couldn’t she?  Fria knew Winter.  Thinking of her probably wouldn’t have been too hard.  But, Penny hadn’t.  Penny had taken Fria’s hand and held it.  Because no one should be alone in that final moment.  Because she couldn’t say she knew what awaited Fria on the other side and she wanted to give Fria whatever comfort she could to send her off.  Because, in that moment, the magical powers hadn’t mattered, but the old woman in Penny’s arms did.

Now, here she is, the Winter Maiden.  A thief of a gift to humanity.

“You okay?”

Penny nearly jumps.  She hadn’t heard Oscar come up behind her.  Her receptors had captured the echoing sound, sure, but her processors hadn’t been attuned to register it.

“I—I’m fine,” Penny says too hurriedly, and closes her lips firmly to prevent the hiccup from escaping her.

Oscar looks at Penny a long moment, and then sits down beside her.  “I hate staying behind like this,” he admits, gesturing to the cave opening the airship flew out of to exit the Crater.  “I know there’s more I can be doing but I…”

“Are too important,” Penny finishes for him.  And he is.  Ozpin can always reincarnate into someone else, yes, but there will only ever be one Oscar Pine.  Even if he stayed behind, like her, because of the special magic connected to him, that’s the truth Penny believes firmly in.

“I guess you know what that’s like.”  Oscar laughs quietly.

Penny doesn’t answer.  They settle into silence.  It’s an odd place to sit, really, the opening that looks out over the Crater.  They have an entire, somewhat comfortable, temporary hideout to go rest in, but neither really want to leave the spot where they can see the sliver of the sky where the airship will first appear when it returns.

“Penny, I…” Oscar begins, and Penny turns to him to listen.  “If it was going to be anyone, I’m glad you’re the Winter Maiden.  I know we don’t know each other well, but I do know you’re a good person.”

“Thanks,” Penny replies quietly.  She knows the words are supposed to be reassuring, but they fall flat to her.  Again, she’d been the only one there, in that moment with Fria.  If the Maiden powers could have gone somewhere else, they probably would have.

It was unfair to them, and Fria.  There’s no way the previous maiden could have known Penny’s true nature.  Fria had much more important, pressing matters on her mind to truly take a second and notice the exposed metal of the palms of Penny’s hands, first when she touched her leg, and then when she held her hand.  Fria probably hadn’t had time to realize no ordinary person could have come through the freezing whirlwind of ice and snow.  She probably hadn’t seen how Penny’s legs were clearly synthetic and attached together at an artificial knee.

Despite being a Maiden who lived well into old age and was, therefore, arguably very clever,  Fria probably hadn’t noticed all the little hints that indicated what Penny is, even though she had every reason to critically examine Penny, since she’d been attacked for the power she was tasked with protecting mere minutes before.

Because that would mean Fria had known (or at least suspected) Penny’s true nature, and decided to choose her anyway.

And why would she do that?  Penny, as she keeps telling herself over and over again, isn’t actually real.  Not a real girl.  Not like Ruby and the rest of her team.  Not like Nora, or Winter, or even Cinder, who’s part Grimm now.  All of them were born, created as girls, and Penny was…well her father had been more focused on building something that functioned.  He’d never chosen a gender for her.  She did that herself, later on, after she gained consciousness.  But he’d given her his aura, and her father was a man.  So, following that line of logic, shouldn’t she too be a man too?

“What if it was a mistake?”  Penny asks Oscar in barely a whisper.

He looks at her.  “What if what was a mistake?”

Penny takes a breath she wholly doesn’t need, but the action she learned is one that people do when they need to prepare themselves to say something important.  “Me becoming the Winter Maiden.  I have my father’s aura.  I’m not a real girl.  I tricked some of the most important magic in the world and stole it from humanity and…” she trails off, unsure of how to finish her self-doubting argument.

At first, Oscar doesn’t reply.  Then, “I have Ozpin’s magic, and his memories,” he says slowly.  “Does that make me him?”

“Of course not,” Penny retorts.  “You’re your own person!”

Oscar grins, and Penny gets the feeling it was his ploy to get her to say that, for both their sakes.  “So, if I can still be me, even if I have a wizard living in my head, then why can’t you be your own person even if your father gave you some of his aura?” He posits.

Penny huffs.  “I know I’m not the same being as my father.  There is substantial evidence supporting the concept that we are two entirely separate entities, but I have his aura, and he is a man.  The maiden powers only attach to females.  Therefore, logically, they should not have come to me.”

“So, following that reasoning, aura and gender are linked,” Oscar muses.  He pauses and, if Penny weren’t so wrapped up in her own tumultuous thoughts, she’d recognize the signs that he’s mentally preparing himself to say something he considers very important.  “What if I had evidence to the contrary?”

“What do you mean?”  Penny asks, her curiosity getting the better of her.

Oscar doesn’t look at her.  His shoulders hunch in.  Instinctively, Penny reaches over and wraps a reassuring arm around his shoulders.  She doesn’t know what he’s going to say next, but she can still recognize it’s hard for him to say.

“I was…I am…Penny, do you know what being transgender is?”

Penny doesn’t reply.  The moment she heard the unfamiliar word, she immediately sent out an inquiry to the Internet to find its meaning.

“Transgender,” she finally says.  “Denotes or relates to a person whose gender identity and expression does not correspond with what it was at birth.”

Oscar lets out a sharp laugh.  “That’s one way of putting it, I guess.”  He pauses.  Sensing he’s not finished, Penny waits for him to continue.  He does.  “For me, it means, when my parents’ only child was born, they had a daughter.”  Oscar glances at her warily, but Penny doesn’t interrupt.  He gazes down at his hands, and sighs.  “And that they never got to meet their son either.  They died before he figured that out about himself.”  Hurriedly, he adds, “That’s not the point,” while wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

Penny hugs Oscar, hoping to communicate that he doesn’t have to explain further to her if he doesn’t want to.

Oscar leans into the hug.  He doesn’t wrap his arms around Penny in return, but he does rest his weight on her.  “The point is,” he starts again.  “I once had…doubts.  Kind of like you do.  But I learned aura and gender aren’t really related.  Aura is just aura.  It doesn’t really concern itself with any other part of you.  It’s just there.  Completely yours.  It’s what we believe about ourselves, our identities, that makes us who we are.”

“But my aura is my—”

“Yours.”  Oscar sits back.  “Penny, have you ever considered that all parents create their children’s auras when they conceive them?”

“What?”

“It’s something Oz told me once.  We had a conversation kind of like this.”  Oscar inhales slowly and exhales.  “Oz told me everything comes from somewhere.  He has…interesting theories on the origins of Dust and semblances, for instance.  But he told me, our parents are always a part of us, because they gave a part of themselves to make us.  He said, because of that, mine will always be with me.”  Oscar stares down at his hands.  “Even if I never got to know them.  My aunt used to say the same, that I had my father’s laugh and my aura is nearly the same shade of green as my mother’s, but she’s not an ancient, mystical immortal, so I guess she was harder to believe.”

He smiles softly.  “It’s reassuring, in a way.  To know they gave me part of who I am.  My aura.  My laugh.  My appearance, to an extent.  But they didn’t decide who I am.  I’ve done that on my own.”  Oscar looks up at Penny.  “So have you.  You said it yourself.  You aren’t your father.  You have substantial evidence proving that.”

“But you’re human.  I’m not alive.  I don’t have a soul like—”

“How do you know?”  Oscar interrupts.  “How do you know you don’t have a soul?”

Penny hesitates, and then admits what she’s been thinking,  “I died.  I died and I didn’t go to an afterlife or anything.  I just shut down like any other old machine.”

There’s a long pause where Oscar doesn’t say anything.  Penny begins to think he doesn’t have an argument to refute her claim.  When she’s about to stand and walk away, Oscar finally speaks.

“What if you weren’t dead?”  He asks quietly.

“What?”

“Your father recovered your core, you, from Amity Arena, and used it to rebuild you.  A part of you never shut down completely.  In your own way, you were still alive.”  Though the words seem more like an statement, Oscar speaks them like he’s asking a question.

“I guess.”  Penny frowns.  She’s never really thought of it like that before.  Everyone told her she died, so she assumed she had.  But, a part of her had still existed in the world, hadn’t it?  Vulnerable.  Weak.  But not snuffed out completely.

Penny thinks about it more deeply.  Maybe it was like she had been in a coma?  When people are grievously injured, they can go into comas.  They don’t necessarily remember what happens during them either.  They wake up on the other end still alive, just with a gaping hole of time they weren’t conscious for in their life.  Like her.

“That doesn’t mean I have a soul or will go to an afterlife like everyone else,” Penny mumbles, but she’s not as certain that she believes herself now.

“Penny, I’m not sure how else to tell you this, but no one knows what happens to us after we die.  Not even me, and I—well, Ozma—sort of died once.  Actually, it was more like a couple times.”  Oscar winces.  “But Ozma didn’t maintain memories of what happened to him after once the God of Light brought him back.”  He smiles at her.  “Wondering about it, I think, is one of the most human things someone can do.”

“Oh.”  Penny considers the idea that she’s just as alive as everyone else is, and lets that sink in.

“If it helps.”  Oscar leans back on his hands and looks up to the small sliver of sky that’s visible to them.  “We’re probably the only two people who can be completely certain about their identities.”

“How so?”  Curious, Penny cocks her head.

“I was chosen as the next life as an immortal who only reincarnates into men.  You’re the Winter Maiden, who can only be a girl.”  Oscar shrugs.  “We were each chosen by magic older than this incarnation of humanity itself based on the identities we decided for ourselves.  If that’s not validating, I don’t know what is.”

“I never thought about it like that.”  Penny sighs.  “I—I thought I tricked it.  That I looked enough like a girl that the maiden powers came to me because they had no place else to go.”