RWBY Through Worlds (End)

BC63: Capital Loss (Raven's team & Co.)--4

"You just don't know what it's like." She fell back on defensiveness. "To have everyone be able to cast that up to you, all the time. And to know they're thinking it even if they don't say it."

Royal rubbed his hair.

"Yeah...okay, you're right.... It would probably drive me crazy if that was going on all the time. I... don't have that experience, exactly. Though I do know what it's like for people to expect something of you no matter what you do...but that's just it--you can't change it by force or by playing into it. It's just how they are.... Maybe I just...well, I assume that it's simple for other people to see that."

"Well, it's not." Cinder was still mad, though more petulant than livid by now.

"No..." Royal stepped back a little, thinking. "Actually that's what I appreciate about you."

"What?" Blankly.

Yeah, he had her utterly kerflummoxed on that--absolutely no response.

"That probably sounds weird," Royal mused. "But...you have to understand, my whole life I've always accepted that people will just act a certain way and I couldn't change it. Not really the sort of person who tries to change anything. I'd just avoid it. And...that's been easier, I admit. You get right up in people's grill and challenge them, and I would never do that. I wish I had that more. Because maybe it does work, sometimes. Maybe some people will rethink how they act... not all of them, but...passivity doesn't change anything. You're fearless...but at times, to me, that's uncomfortable. And...well, it could be maybe at times it's okay to take the less aggressive route, and that's kind of where you are impossible to deter."

Cinder just stared at him weirdly, but then finally she shook herself. This was undignified...and she had lost enough dignity already in this conversation. She wasn't going to keep gawking like this.

"Lately you've seemed to be doing just fine confronting people," she said aloud, skeptically.

"Well, I'm learning," Royal admitted. "I mean, I won't say I've never lost my cool in my entire life. It just isn't as natural to me...but that's not the same thing. And I don't go out of my way to find it. I always thought that didn't make any sense to do, stir up trouble.... On the other hand, some people really should be called out, and when everyone is too afraid to do it, you get...Ironwood."

Cinder nodded.

She thought it was weird she was agreeing, but what could she have disagreed with there? She thought the same thing.

"So maybe I do need to learn not to always do that," Royal said. "But...you could just be a little less harsh about it. It's all new to me, and it's not exactly something a lot of people are used to either. There's not so many people who do what you do."

"Shine does it." Cinder couldn't believe she just compared herself to Shine, but it was the one thing they had in common.

"I could believe that, actually," Royal said. "Both of you have a fierce kind of quality. I could sense that with her too...but her partner not so much."

"He has a temper," Cinder said.

"I'm sure. Everyone does, but I get the impression he's pretty hard to piss off.... Clearly they found ways to work with each other, so I guess they've come to terms with it...but not everyone does. And haven't you all said that she was hard to handle at first?"

"She was..." Cinder was calming down slowly because they were talking about someone else. "Most of them didn't like her right away, because she confronted them on things they didn't want her to talk about. I only heard most of that secondhand, but she did the same to me...no matter how much I threatened her."