Grimmling (RWBY)

Chapter 2 - A Quiet Place - First Meetings

Garek was a Huntsman, and a faunus. He considered himself skilled for his mid-twenties but not, he believed, anything particularly special.

He also didn't have a team. After Haven, Team STAG, already down one member due to tragedy, and barely held together by his Team leader, fractured and went their separate ways. It happened, Professor Copperhead had told him, sympathetically. Some teams worked. Some did not. Some bonded in the face of adversity, triumph, and tragedy. Some wanted to put such things behind them with as few reminders as possible.

Garek was a reminder to his remaining teammates.

And so, he had taken his own path. Four years of solo jobs protecting villages, slaying Grimm, investigating disappearances across Western Mistral and Northeastern Vale. Four years of sporadic visits to his parents, gradually less frequently. At first, he had checked in every few months. Then every half year. Now it had been a full year since he'd visited his family. They worried about him. About his loneliness, his issues with trust. His misplaced trust had cost him one teammate, and then he'd been abandoned by the other two.

So, he relied on his best and only truly trusted friend.

Himself.

It was a lonely life. But not one lacking in satisfaction at times. When he succeeded, he did so on his own terms. When he failed, he need not share the blame with others. He found himself, at times, craving both peace and solitude. Something not often found in Remnant. Where there was peace, there were people, seeking to make the most of it. Where there was solitude, there were Grimm, or at least the risk of them.

Until, one summer month, he found a place that gave lie to that rule.

It was an island, and not a large one, off the coast of northern Sanus, west of the much larger Vytal Island. He had first seen it when travelling by Bullhead from Atlas to Vale, and had later explored it out of curiosity. After being dropped off by local fishermen.

"'Tis haunted lad." The weathered and wiry old man had said. His name was Tarlech. "Not a safe place for man nor beast," he had warned.

"You mean Grimm?"

"Nie. No Grimm that I've seen. But something. Old Meg claimed she saw something there, not two years ago. Wouldn't say what, but 'twas no Grimm, she swore. Left her shaking and landbound for weeks. She passed last month, rest her soul."

It had taken a lot of lien to convince them to drop him off, with a promise to come back in 3 days to pick him up.

He'd found no Humans, no Faunus, no Grimm, and no Ghosts nor the signs of them other than what might have been a long-abandoned campsite a few hours hike inland. Just a small, heavily wooded island with plentiful game and wildlife, along with enough wild edible plants to easily prevent having to dive into his rations. It was, in a word, peaceful and remote. He spent three days listening to silence and nature, reading, foraging, and thinking on his life. It was perfect.

He left feeling refreshed and feeling able to deal with civilization again for another three months before the urge to return struck again that fall. He extended his stay a bit longer, and the fisherman becoming less wary of the trip, though they still balked at spending any time on its shores.

January marked his third visit, and the longest. The winter had been unseasonably warm. Seven days, he'd told the fisherman, who had only shaken his head sadly and taken his lien. They would return then, and pick him up where they had dropped him off.

Seven days of bliss.

His second evening, his solitude was interrupted for the first time ever. It was the barest glimpse out of his peripheral vision, of a large object passing overhead, eclipsing the broken moon as it passed over his campsite in the hours after dusk. He went from faunus on sabbatical to huntsman on alert immediately.