RWBY Through Worlds (End)

BC57: Capital Loss (Raven's team & Co.)--1

Probably the only person she would have opened the door for immediately, which she did.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. 

"I...well, I just wanted to make sure you were okay after yesterday...?" Oscar rubbed his arm.

"Oh, I'm fine," Cinder lied.

Pause.

"Come in..." she sighed.

A few minutes later, with coffee, they sat...well, there wasn't much furniture, so it was on the floor.

"Would Ruby be okay with you being over here?" Cinder asked.

"Oh, yeah, she knew I was coming.... Why?" Oscar asked.

Cinder raised an eyebrow.

"So..." Oscar changed the subject, "about yesterday...it wasn't your fault. You know that, right? What they did, it's unheard of--well, almost. Any of us would have been caught off guard."

Cinder frowned. "I know that I didn't make them spike Neo with that substance...but things were already going wrong before that. I did do that."

"I think it takes more than one person to make a problem, usually." Oscar thought back to when they used to blame Salem for everything, or Ozma.... The truth had always turned out to be more complicated than that.

"There's no point trying to make me feel better," Cinder said.

"Not if you're determined not to." Oscar had major Shine vibes when he was that sassy...or Alicia. You could really tell his influences.

"No, face it, I'm not good at this." Cinder gestured. "I was only doing it to save my own skin anyway. It's not like I put teammates first. But that's the way they run things here. I'm a terrible fit for Argus' new system."

"You always say that," Oscar said. "You're so quick to put yourself down. But I don't think it's humility. There's being honest, and then there's being overly critical."

Cinder pressed her lips together, which was definitely not agreement.

"Come on, Cinder, remember when we were fighting the gods?" Oscar said. "You passed, same as everyone else. It wasn't harder for you than us--I think it might even have been easier than for some. And you apologized then for what you did at Beacon. I think everyone let it go."

"Not completely...and that was only one of the things I did," Cinder said. "Frankly, you don't understand it, Oscar. Everyone looks to you as a paragon of virtue, the person they all want to be like. I'm the person they warn people not to be like if they don't want to end up in prison--or worse."

"I know that people perceive us differently. I couldn't really be blind to that," Oscar acknowledged. "But it doesn't matter. I know I made mistakes of judgment. Maybe I didn't try to do evil...but who really does, at first? Having the curse made me humble in that it forced me to learn things were out of my control. But if I hadn't had that, who knows? I think it's just different circumstances. We all have our own story. Yours isn't worse than anyone else's. I think it's incredible to come back from the edge of that. I mean, you had the Grimm inside you, for crying out loud. But you still came out of that. There has to be hope for anyone then, and isn't that something to be glad about? There's nothing wrong with being an example of the impossible."

That was an interesting way to put that.

"But perhaps that stopped there," Cinder said. "I don't know anything about walking this out. You know the book goes on and on about love--do I seem like someone who even knows what the word means?"

"More than you did.... I can't picture the you of before even caring about it," Oscar said.

"I didn't...but isn't that what it boils down to? All this talk about how I can't work with anyone, I can't cut anyone slack, I only think to blame them...I'm not 'nice'." Cinder made some mocking air quotes and a gagging face, but then sombered. "I never have been."