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Succumbing to the Sea
He would kick himself later.
He had an infinity of laters, as long as he didn't succumb to the primordial waters of Mariana that brushed against the shores of Deer Country.
----
Oscar Pine was no stranger to the abyss. His awakening in Deerington, the remnants of a child's life told in the fashion of a nightmare, had opened up far more doors than coming into the legacy that happenstance thrust upon him had. He had met strange, new people and learned an untold number of things about these worlds that existed at nexus points in the multiverse. The Waking World was no different. Julia Sodder's reality may have been bleak, but the world that her vision of Maine became had it's own strange wonders and beauty.
It was becoming home.
It was the only home that Oscar had left; all he wanted to do was protect it.
Such was the reason why he had kept a leery eye on the black-eyed man whose voice was as smooth as his hot cocoa but whose touch made his nerves recoil the way the black ichor that dripped down the walls of his holding cell within Salem's floating lair had. Something in those eyes burned worse than the impenetrable ice of the tundras of Solitas-- and something inside Oscar recognized exactly what he was looking at.
One of the many lessons he had learned from team RWBY and JNR was to take nothing for granted. If an opening was found, it needed to be taken with expediency to protect what was left of Remnant from the ongoing threats that bore down on them. That was why he made moves-- not to target the kindly teacher, but to at least start sowing uncertainty.
He started within the ranks of his peers that flocked around him like lost sheep that had been found by a shepherd, both in expressing his uncertainties and in finding proof to back those uncertainties up. From there, people started to talk. Every word they said about the man only made Oscar more and more leery, until--
Happening upon someone in the midst of a vision was always a strange situation. Oscar knew the glazed over panic in Qrow's crimson eyes would only haunt his dreams. But, he also knew they had to move.
Or else it would be too late.
-- Except--
It already was.
Cold fury had bought him enough heart-rending clarity in those instances that he had moved without thinking. Taking wing, Oscar swapped between bird and boy body freely mid-flight as he had watched Qrow do so many times. The shots he had fired lasted the span of a few heart beats. The calculations he had made allowed him to avoid injury or capture. And yet--
Chara still got him.
The promise of a boy and his gun, backed by the righteous fury of thousands of lifetimes as men, kings, and gods, was enough to land a single blow on the man named John. It wasn't enough to fend off the sheer dispassion of a child that had been asked to snap the ends off of the garden beans for supper.
He would have an infinity of laters, as long as he didn't succumb to the ocean.
His mantra hadn't said anything about knives sharper than the sun.
----
Nothingness was it's own terror.
In another time, Oscar may have welcomed it. But, in this time and place, his only thoughts were of Ruby and Ozpin. He couldn't leave them. He wasn't ready. The boy that was just Oscar struggled against the darkness without body or voice. Untethered, ungrounded, he was cast adrift with nothing but his own fears.
He couldn't succumb to the ocean, or it was over.
There was no point in going back to a world where failure was all but a certainty. Without Ruby and her team, without Penny, without Jaune, without Qrow-- what did they have to their names to prevent all out chaos in Vacuo? What guarantee did they have that they would break the cycle, that Ozpin would finally be allowed to rest after millennia?
He had rescued Emerald... but lost everyone else.
Was Remnant even worth returning to?
He couldn't succumb to the ocean, or it was over.
Oscar, without eyes to cry or hands to hold onto anyone-- anything, floated in the riptide of his own fears. He barely knew how to swim. Instead of trying, he bobbed around like a leaf thrown into the current. At times he was sucked under, where the coldness of eternity brushed against his soul and caused him to recoil. Others, he was thrust out into the open where he was launched from one memory to another-- each more cloying and painful than the last.
Images of his family farm were interspersed with dinners with RNJR in Haven, with Ren calmly flipping pancakes in his apron that read DO NOTHING TO THE COOK in big enough capital letters that not even Nora could ignore it. Ruby and Jaune took turns stuffing as many pancakes in their mouths as they could until they choked; somewhere, Qrow was trying and failing to make coffee in a machine that decided to stop working at his touch. Another time, another place: This time, Argus. He and Blake traded books while Weiss and Yang bickered about something silly involving Yang's motorcycle while Jaune told Ren and Nora about how he had found Pyrrha's statue in the park. Oscar had never met Pyrrha Nikos, but Ruby had told him a lot about her-- about how she had died during the fall of Beacon, the same night that Ozpin disappeared...
The sights made Oscar's heart ache in longing for his missing friends-- but he knew there was no going back to that.
He couldn't succumb to the ocean. He didn't want to succumb to the ocean.
He wanted to build a space in Trench for his teammates, should they ever find their way back to the shored.
But to do that, he needed to return to the place he belonged. By the side of his friends.
----
Oscar Pine didn't succumb to the ocean-- but his heart was ready before his body. The years of pain, frustrations, grief, and denials had done their own kinds of damage alongside the fatal knife, and a part of him longed for the peace of non-existence. He would need to integrate that part later. For the moment, he just needed to know...
Was everyone okay?
He had an infinity of laters, as long as he didn't succumb to the primordial waters of Mariana that brushed against the shores of Deer Country.
----
Oscar Pine was no stranger to the abyss. His awakening in Deerington, the remnants of a child's life told in the fashion of a nightmare, had opened up far more doors than coming into the legacy that happenstance thrust upon him had. He had met strange, new people and learned an untold number of things about these worlds that existed at nexus points in the multiverse. The Waking World was no different. Julia Sodder's reality may have been bleak, but the world that her vision of Maine became had it's own strange wonders and beauty.
It was becoming home.
It was the only home that Oscar had left; all he wanted to do was protect it.
Such was the reason why he had kept a leery eye on the black-eyed man whose voice was as smooth as his hot cocoa but whose touch made his nerves recoil the way the black ichor that dripped down the walls of his holding cell within Salem's floating lair had. Something in those eyes burned worse than the impenetrable ice of the tundras of Solitas-- and something inside Oscar recognized exactly what he was looking at.
One of the many lessons he had learned from team RWBY and JNR was to take nothing for granted. If an opening was found, it needed to be taken with expediency to protect what was left of Remnant from the ongoing threats that bore down on them. That was why he made moves-- not to target the kindly teacher, but to at least start sowing uncertainty.
He started within the ranks of his peers that flocked around him like lost sheep that had been found by a shepherd, both in expressing his uncertainties and in finding proof to back those uncertainties up. From there, people started to talk. Every word they said about the man only made Oscar more and more leery, until--
Happening upon someone in the midst of a vision was always a strange situation. Oscar knew the glazed over panic in Qrow's crimson eyes would only haunt his dreams. But, he also knew they had to move.
Or else it would be too late.
-- Except--
It already was.
Cold fury had bought him enough heart-rending clarity in those instances that he had moved without thinking. Taking wing, Oscar swapped between bird and boy body freely mid-flight as he had watched Qrow do so many times. The shots he had fired lasted the span of a few heart beats. The calculations he had made allowed him to avoid injury or capture. And yet--
Chara still got him.
The promise of a boy and his gun, backed by the righteous fury of thousands of lifetimes as men, kings, and gods, was enough to land a single blow on the man named John. It wasn't enough to fend off the sheer dispassion of a child that had been asked to snap the ends off of the garden beans for supper.
He would have an infinity of laters, as long as he didn't succumb to the ocean.
His mantra hadn't said anything about knives sharper than the sun.
----
Nothingness was it's own terror.
In another time, Oscar may have welcomed it. But, in this time and place, his only thoughts were of Ruby and Ozpin. He couldn't leave them. He wasn't ready. The boy that was just Oscar struggled against the darkness without body or voice. Untethered, ungrounded, he was cast adrift with nothing but his own fears.
He couldn't succumb to the ocean, or it was over.
There was no point in going back to a world where failure was all but a certainty. Without Ruby and her team, without Penny, without Jaune, without Qrow-- what did they have to their names to prevent all out chaos in Vacuo? What guarantee did they have that they would break the cycle, that Ozpin would finally be allowed to rest after millennia?
He had rescued Emerald... but lost everyone else.
Was Remnant even worth returning to?
He couldn't succumb to the ocean, or it was over.
Oscar, without eyes to cry or hands to hold onto anyone-- anything, floated in the riptide of his own fears. He barely knew how to swim. Instead of trying, he bobbed around like a leaf thrown into the current. At times he was sucked under, where the coldness of eternity brushed against his soul and caused him to recoil. Others, he was thrust out into the open where he was launched from one memory to another-- each more cloying and painful than the last.
Images of his family farm were interspersed with dinners with RNJR in Haven, with Ren calmly flipping pancakes in his apron that read DO NOTHING TO THE COOK in big enough capital letters that not even Nora could ignore it. Ruby and Jaune took turns stuffing as many pancakes in their mouths as they could until they choked; somewhere, Qrow was trying and failing to make coffee in a machine that decided to stop working at his touch. Another time, another place: This time, Argus. He and Blake traded books while Weiss and Yang bickered about something silly involving Yang's motorcycle while Jaune told Ren and Nora about how he had found Pyrrha's statue in the park. Oscar had never met Pyrrha Nikos, but Ruby had told him a lot about her-- about how she had died during the fall of Beacon, the same night that Ozpin disappeared...
The sights made Oscar's heart ache in longing for his missing friends-- but he knew there was no going back to that.
He couldn't succumb to the ocean. He didn't want to succumb to the ocean.
He wanted to build a space in Trench for his teammates, should they ever find their way back to the shored.
But to do that, he needed to return to the place he belonged. By the side of his friends.
----
Oscar Pine didn't succumb to the ocean-- but his heart was ready before his body. The years of pain, frustrations, grief, and denials had done their own kinds of damage alongside the fatal knife, and a part of him longed for the peace of non-existence. He would need to integrate that part later. For the moment, he just needed to know...
Was everyone okay?