Project: RWBY

Ch 35) Never Ending Entropy

He was never one to believe in the afterlife, yet there he was sitting atop the tallest building in the city to be just a little closer to the comrades he lost, the very same people he watched being lowered into a casket earlier today. It was a starless night, devoid of any silver linings with only a heavy silence to keep him company.

This solitude wouldn't last much longer, as there stood his nosy second in command at the doorway to the stairs leading to the rooftop. Staring at the figure of his hunched back she contemplates how to announce her presence. From the angle she had on him, she could see the layer of apathy on his face.

The very same mask he wore during the funeral.

There is a scene playing in her mind of one of her comrades punching L.C. across the face, shouting and blaming him for the death of his boyfriend. She remembers so many of the hostile gazes of her comrades, like daggers they cut into their commander of three and a half years waiting for a reaction, an answer to the accusation.

Neir thought she was used to his cold expression, but the harshness of it at the time was worse than the look he gave their enemies. Rarely do any emotions break across his face, let alone anger, yet even from the distance she was at she could feel the fury emanating from his person as he spoke those words of indifference.

"It was inevitable that some would lose their lives, the escape plan accounted for that. The five who lost their lives only have their luck to blame for their deaths."

A riot would have broken had half of the squad not immediately held down those who were lunging at the commander. And in the faces of the people he led, in the face of their grief, his apathetic expression never wavered.

When the funeral ended she noticed her commander had disappeared sometime in the midst of it, leaving the rest of the squad to grieve in peace.

She brushes away the memory and focuses on the present, steeling her nerves before approaching her commander.

"You're... a hard man to track down L.C." Neir speaks quietly, any trace of her usual joviality unapparent.

He doesn't flinch at her seemingly sudden appearance and remains still as a statue.

"Came all this way to blame me too?" The man in the lab coat asks in a low, menacing tone.

His words and tone shock her momentarily and only now she realizes that, she doesn't know why she spent the entire day searching for him. Was it curiosity that drove her? Concern? Maybe she just wanted to make sure he wasn't going to detonate the bomb at the base of Marcus' skull for insubordination.

She couldn't find the answer at the moment, instead a dreadful question comes to mind.

"I... just want to know one thing." Her words are hesitant, afraid of what the answer may be.

His Corporate background, the way he always addressed himself and their squad as a tool, the cold shell that surrounded him that always kept the team at a distance, none of it ever mattered to her or the team before. But after losing what she believed to be a part of her family, and knowing that it can and will happen again, she has to ask.

"A-Are we really just disposable tools in your eyes?" Gingerly, she takes a seat beside him on the edge of the rooftop so she can see his face as she asks, "Did- Do any of us, matter to you?"

Slowly, he turns his head, empty sapphire eyes staring back at her. The playful banter, dancing on the edge of life and death, those brief unexplainable moments they shared all on their lonesome, the three and a half years she's spent with him and her team pass her by in a flash.