Remaining Embers~Jaune x Cinder

The Three Needed Words

Cinder fell for a long time, sinking into a seemingly endless darkness. While her first experience in this descent had left her feeling suffocated, this time she felt only as though she were constantly falling, with nothing beneath her but more blackness, and nothing above her but the dim light of the entrance Salem had created, growing increasingly further away.

Somewhere in that blackness she saw a flash of red, then blue. Cinder tried to follow it, but her limited depth perception made that a trying task. She focused her attention on the red, perhaps because she associated it with the Grimm, and waited for it to be the source of an attack.

That red flash began to slow in its movements, becoming instead a blur, then a solid mass of color slowly orbiting her. The blue followed a similar transformation as its movements slowed to a crawl, until both rotated around her with the speed of a tortoise.

Cinder also felt her descent slowing. She wasn't yet standing on any solid ground, but she no longer felt as though she were in freefall. She was able to re-orient herself, to come to a standing position between the two sluggish masses of color. She watched as each began to take shape, protruding out extremities- arms, legs, heads... taking on a humanoid form composed of their solid color and black lines to give them features.

Each continued to grow and contort, the color sharpening or fading in one place or another. The dark lines made the features more pronounced, until at last, Cinder recognized what had become of the red: "How?"

Cinder looked at a facsimile of herself, as she had been before her maiming. She was young, beautiful, with two full amber eyes (though her left was hidden by her bangs), a long mane of dark hair, and a disarming smile. She wore the red dress she'd favored before, with the black shorts and dark glass heels she'd worn at Beacon. This reddish incarnation of her past self continued to smile, even as Cinder tried to find a way to articulate her confusion.

The blue mass had taken form as well: a girl in a simple cloth traveler's outfit, whose only notable feature was a long hooded cloak. It had been a while, but Cinder would never forget her. Amber, the former Fall Maiden, cast in blue. The two stopped rotating around her and became stationary, Amber on her left, and the second Cinder on her right.

Cinder finally felt as though her feet were touching ground, though there was nothing below her but more formless dark. She moved her eye between the two, trying to comprehend what stood before her.

"Who are you?" Cinder inquired, to both, and to neither.

The second Cinder answered first: "The reflection of your soul. What you are-"

"-and what you carry with you," Amber continued. "And your burden is heavy."

Nora and Ruby hadn't had much luck in convincing themselves to sleep. Ren got there straight away, but the girls continued to worry about Jaune and speculate on where Cinder had taken him. Several hours into the night without their return, they quickly drew the obvious conclusion. Neither of them vocalized it to each other, but both were surprised things had progressed like that. It certainly changed their perception of Jaune.

Nora in particular was crushed by disappointment. Jaune could be foolhardy and stubborn, but he had a good heart. Seeing him in Cinder's grip was strangling her spirit and dampening her mood, and she'd been even more positive than usual just days beforehand, when they'd finally arrived in Mistral and she and Ren had grown a bit closer.

She wondered if that had in some way affected Jaune and led him to seek companionship. She and Ren hadn't gone very far -she hugged him all the time before then anyway- but Jaune had spent enough time in close quarters with them to realize that things had changed, just a little bit. He must've felt like a third wheel at times, staying with them while Ruby tended to Qrow.