RWBY Through Worlds (End)

BC44: New (Emerald & Co.)

Emerald tugged her hair.

"Maybe you, and I, will never be exactly like them," she said slowly. "I'm always going to have spent more time on my own. It's like something Raven said to me--a street rat is what I was, and it's going to be part of me my whole life. Not that I have to think that way now, but that I had that experience, and it's going to give me a different take on things. You're the same way. But that doesn't make us outcasts, does it?"

"Why wouldn't it?" bitterly now.

"You can't be an outcast if people accept you the way you are," Emerald said simply.

That had to sink in.

Cinder wasn't sure what to say.

"Maybe in a few months, you'll feel different," Emerald said. "It took a while for me to feel normal too.... You don't have to stay here forever, but it's okay to be part of things for a bit, isn't it? It's...a learning experience."

"You truly think they don't think about it?" Cinder was skeptical.

"I know they do," Emerald said. "I know sometimes Pyrrha even has nightmares about the Festival...not so much now. Her mom told me. She didn't know I was part of it. She worries, you know? But I have nightmares sometimes, too. I think...you don't just forget stuff like that, not in 3 or 4 years, but it's really less than it used to be. And now, when I wake up, I remember that it's over and that it's better, and it's not like while I worked for Salem. That nightmare was ongoing. Don't you think, for you, it could be like that? We remember what happened, but we're not living it."

"If I were them--" Cinder was frank for once. "--I would not forgive me, no matter that I helped stop it. I didn't do it for them."

"Cinder, that's not entirely true," Emerald said. "We all know you did step in to save some of us a few times. Jaune was one of them, wasn't he? I think by the end of the mission, you'd already started to see that you had to watch out for other people. You've been helping us here and there. I can tell that this stuff gets to you sometimes, other people's suffering, like with Mercury and that creepy house. You're not the sociopathic killer Cinder anymore.... You went a little crazy working for Salem, but who didn't? At least we snapped back."

Cinder actually smiled at that, only at the irony, really, not the humor.

"That's really making it out to be less atrocious than it was," she said.

"But didn't you tell me you didn't feel remorse?" Emerald said. "That doesn't seem true anymore."

Cinder hadn't thought of what it was, but finally, like a lightbulb going on, it came to her that...what she was experiencing was an awful lot like remorse.

Was it possible that, in all these years, her heart had actually grown less numb?

She didn't think it was by much--she didn't feel a great need to go rescue kittens or save schools...

But...maybe she thought of other people's suffering more than before.

What had possessed her to do so?

They walked toward the tram stop, and Emerald wasn't sure what else to say.

Finally, while they were waiting for the tram to arrive, Cinder said, "I think it really hit with that dumb pilot."

"Royal?" Emerald didn't even act that surprised. "He does leave an impression with all that 'not judging you' stuff.... Is it true he punched Watts though? I was kind of surprised when Blake told me that."

"It's true." Cinder smirked a little at the memory. "It was actually glorious. The look on Arthur's face was priceless."

"I'm not so enlightened that I wouldn't have enjoyed that a little," Emerald admitted. "Did you dismiss your idea about him being out for revenge after that? You guys both don't like Watts."