Jaune felt Blake pull back the chair beside him and settle into it. It was evening in Beacon and the library was quiet; the "homework legions" had departed, finally cranking out their last-minute coursework and going back to playing games. The only ones that remained were what Jaune labelled the "reading club", which was actually a scattering of individuals in nooks and corners reading fiction. They might have looked lonely to the casual observer, and yet if one looked closely enough they would notice rapt attention on the books and tiny smiles on their faces. It was a calming atmosphere where booklovers lounged for an hour or two before bed, enjoying the simple sounds of pages turning and the smell of leather-bound books and old, musty pages.

"I tried to apologise to Weiss," said Blake.

"Tried? What went wrong?"

"I don't know that anything did but... it doesn't feel like it's enough." Blake cracked her book open, but he knew she wasn't reading. "Weiss said there was nothing to apologise for, and that she wasn't that angry. That we were just having an argument. We agreed to try and talk things out more peacefully but..."

"But it's not just the argument."

Blake sighed and closed her eyes. "It's not just the argument. When did you get so wise?"

"It's almost like I've been reaching psychology books every single afternoon."

"And yet you're still not smart enough to detect a rhetorical question when you hear it." Blake's knee bumped against his to let him know she was joking. "But you're right. It wasn't just about that. The argument is... Weiss is right; it was just us getting heated and butting heads. I think Ruby appreciated my apology more than Weiss did there. I hear she slept in your bed."

"Not with me."

"I know that." Blake rolled her eyes. "Ruby was spluttering it out when Yang teased her about trying to steal her man. It wasn't an issue sleeping with Ren?"

"Our bromance remains strong."

"Idiot," she chuffed, bumping her knee against his again. "How do you do it?" she asked.

"Mm? Seduce Ren? I think it's my natural—"

"Keep your team so even," she interrupted, this time stamping on his foot. "Team JNPR never has any problems and is always peaceful. Meanwhile, we switch up our drama more often than the cafeteria does meals."

"I think you overestimate us to be honest." Jaune set his own book down, folding the page to mark his progress on a study into narrative psychology. "Just because our team's drama isn't as explosive or obvious as yours doesn't mean we don't have any."

"Oh? Like what?"

"Like how Pyrrha is in love with me and her heart is breaking every day she sees me with Yang."

It wasn't revealing anything Blake didn't know. Pyrrha's feelings had been obvious to everyone but him, but as much as they probably thought him an idiot, he felt he had a good defence in the fact that Pyrrha obviously hid it when he was looking. It wasn't hard for other people to tell, but whenever he turned to face her she'd looked perfectly serene and happy. Because she was putting that face on for him.

"Ah." Blake glanced away. "You know, then."

"I know now. I didn't before. And it's not just Pyrrha. You know Nora has feelings for Ren."

"I think the whole school knows that."

"Well, Ren might not have the same feelings for her. Or for anyone. I can't tell if he's just not interested in her, doesn't want to ruin what they have, or if he's asexual or aromantic. Whatever the case, Nora has no chance with him, and he has no chance with anyone else because he will never bring himself to hurt Nora's feelings like that."

"Oh."

Blake stared down at her romance novel for several long minutes, giving him time to begin reading again. They did so in silence, neither really knowing what to say until, after almost half an hour, Blake cleared her throat.

"Are you... doing anything about it...?"

"What is there for me to do? I can't force Ren to like someone he doesn't, and he wouldn't thank me for stepping in and breaking Nora's heart over him. At least this issue with you and Weiss burns hot; that means it can be dealt with quickly. My team's romantic issues are probably going to persist for years and explode in tears and screaming more than loud fights like you two." He lowered the book to ask, "Unless you have any advice?"

"None." Blake shook her head. "I... This is so far beyond my expertise I wouldn't know where to start."

"What is your expertise?"

"Upsetting my teammates and feeling sorry for myself, apparently. Oh, and running away."

"There's nothing wrong with running away as long as it's to buy time to regroup. It's only bad if you run away and never come back – like you almost did at the docks that time. And don't sweat my team; I didn't say that to one-up you."

"I know. You were just showing me it's not only my team that's a dysfunctional mess. I appreciate it. Makes mine and Weiss' problems seem a little less apocalyptic now. I guess this is the reason why people say you should never date among your teammates."

"Let's move away from romance."

"Let's do that." Blake sounded just as desperate as him. "Do you..." Blake hesitated, but Jaune waited patiently, forcing her to continue. "Do you think you could... help? If you have time," she rushed out. "Forget it. This is stupid—"

"I'm listening, Blake. Go on."

"It's just... Your advice before, or this morning, it helped a little. I know I need to talk to someone about all this, but I can't really talk to the teachers because what I did in the past is... Ozpin knows what I was, but I don't want others to know I was a terrorist. And I know doctor=patient confidentiality is a thing, but I wouldn't trust my secrets to a therapist."

Jaune set his book down for the last time. "Wait, what? You want me to be your therapist?"

Unable to form the words, Blake nodded.

"Why!?"

"Because for some bizarre reason I trust you to be."

"Not that – though I'm flattered." And vaguely insulted. What was so bizarre about trusting him? Sheesh. "I meant more the therapy angle. How would I help you? How could I help you? Didn't you just hear me tell you how useless I am at helping my own team?"

"That's because your team's romantic issues are a hotpot of doom," she said bluntly. He couldn't disagree. "I don't think the world's best counsellors could solve that. But mine... well, mine are bad, but they're probably not that bad, and maybe I just need someone to talk to about it. Bluntly. Honestly."

"And it can't be your team?"

Blake looked away again. "There are some things that it's easier talking to someone else about. I have to sleep in the same room as them, eat with them, fight with them, share tents with them. I'll probably be with them for years after Beacon. It would be too awkward if they knew everything about me. With you..." Blake shrugged. "I'm not saying you're any less of a friend, but we don't spend close to twenty hours a day together like I do with them. I don't have to lay awake in bed thinking about how you're in the bunk above me and know my darkest secrets."

He could understand where she was coming from; it was why it was easier to confide in her his problems with Pyrrha than it was to talk to her directly. It didn't mean he loved Pyrrha any less, or that Blake didn't trust her teammates, only that they didn't want to sour those relationships. The big question was whether he was the right person to help Blake or if he'd just make it worse. He knew more secrets than she knew and wasn't sure he had any right to know more.

But maybe – just maybe – this could be a step toward making things right.

"Okay. Let's do this."

/-/

Rather than spill secrets in the library, they let themselves into Port's classroom and claimed their usual seats behind the long, curved desks. He'd considered seeking out somewhere she could lay down, but he wasn't sure what the whole therapist's chair thing was about. Maybe the idea was that the more relaxed a person was physically, the more relaxed they'd be mentally? He wasn't sure Blake would actually like feeling vulnerable, however.

"Okay... so..." Blake fidgeted. "How do I start?"

You ask me this now? How am I meant to know when you sprung this on me!?

Jaune cleared his throat. He might not have been a real therapist, but he had read a lot of psychology, and had even more lectures from Doctor Oobleck. He knew more than the average person, he was sure.

"Would it be too difficult if I asked you to just start talking about your past?"

"Yes." Blake looked down at her hands. "I... I think I'd clam up."

"Hmmm." Jaune closed his eyes and thought about the book he'd just been reading. "Then how would you feel if I asked you to tell me a story about another person? About a girl named... Belle, who joined the White Fang—"

"Jaune, this isn't a joke."

"I don't mean it as one. I've been studying narrative psychology. It's a psychological field around narrative and stories." Because the nightmares he was in often played out like stories, so it had felt like a good angle. "The idea is that it's often hard for people to really look at their own experiences because of all the emotion and baggage involved in them. Little memories and traumas that come to the surface. It's why everyone is always so self-critical; we're terrible at judging ourselves because we're too emotionally connected to our experiences. We're much better at judging other people."

Blake hummed, listening now that he was explaining it. "That makes sense. How does telling a story help?"

"It helps because you're going to tell the story of your past as if it were someone else going through it. As if it were a fictional story. If you had time, I'd even suggest you write bits down – in third person, too. Talk about this person – Belle – and what experiences she went through, why she believes she made the choices she did, and why she turned out the way she did. By isolating those things and making them apart from you, it lets you – and us – look at the story with a more detached air." He finished with a rather lame, "I'm told this helps."

"Okay." Blake leaned back and closed her eyes, but he was sure she was thinking of how to begin and waited for her. "I guess it all started..." She bit her lip. "No. One second." Blake cleared her throat and took a deep breath.

And then she began.

"Belle was a single child, born to two parents she idolised for their work in trying to peacefully bring about radical change in human-faunus relations. Belle grew up surrounded by brave people who wanted to make a difference, and who would march together with signs and placards through the streets of Atlas, asking, pleading, begging for people to listen to them. No one ever did, and Belle was forced to watch as all those brave people began to lose hope, and as the parents she loved and idolised struggled against what felt at times to be an impossible barrier."

Her voice grew to become monotone, losing any warmth, and he wasn't sure if that was a bad thing or not. Being able to talk about these things in an un-involved way might be what she needed. A chance to coldly lay out the facts and analyse them.

And she did.

Blake talked and talked more than he'd ever heard her talk, for well over an hour until her voice croaked and they had to pause while he went and bought them some drinks from a vending machine. Then, they began again, as Blake told of how Belle – desperate to do something – found herself agreeing with the ideas of those who angrily asserted that the humans would never listen to their peaceful words, and that the last great change the world of Remnant had been through, the Colour Revolution, had been achieved through violent rebellion.

That was the rub, wasn't it? People always said that violence never solved anything, but history disagreed time and time again. The Colour Revolution had been violent; The Great War had been bloody. These two events were taught to everyone in history lessons, and they were often parroted as overall good events. The Colour Revolution had ended the authoritative rule of Atlas that threatened other Kingdoms, and the Great War had brought about the end of racial segregation, even if it had just been replaced with a more simmering tension.

Violence did fix things. It did change things.

But it wasn't ideal.

It was meant to be a last resort.

"—and Belle saw it as one," she continued, clenching her eyes shut. "Belle felt trapped, angry, but also bitter because her parents – who had tried so hard and so faithfully to promote peace through nonviolent means – were ridiculed. It infuriated her. She loved them. They were perfect in her eyes, and the world... the world didn't care. Newspapers mocked them as naïve, and some called them outright violent. They would make up stories and draw from witnesses Belle had never heard of to claim that her parents were actually violent terrorists, all because one person marching out of ten thousand might have thrown a punch – when the people of Atlas threw rocks! Belle couldn't stand that they would lie and claim they were the violent ones and ignore how violent Atlas and her people were." Blake took a deep breath. "So, Belle wanted to show them. Punish them. Make them see what real violence was like and watch the people who wrote those articles drown in their words." A breath rushed out of her, as tension left her. "But they didn't. They just kept going, funded by racists and monsters, and used our acts as proof that they had been right all along, as if they hadn't been the very ones to birth it."

Blake talked of how Belle revelled in the violence at first, and how she'd well and truly loved it despite also feeling guilty. She talked of the complicated feelings Belle went through, of how she would think of the victims with horror, but also think of the fear the bastards back in Atlas would feel with glee. How at times Belle didn't know if she was committed or not, but how she also felt so guilty at her thoughts that she couldn't bring herself to go back and see her parents.

"She was a mess," said Blake, speaking now with open eyes and a curious expression. "Belle continued to wallow in her own mess despite the fact that she knew deep inside her parents would have forgiven her." Her eyes were red and brimming with tears. "Belle never even contacted them to say she'd left the White Fang, and told herself they wouldn't want to hear from her, but that wasn't the truth, was it?" Her voice cracked. "Belle was just too afraid to face them and admit she'd been wrong, and that fear caused her to continue hurting them..."

Blake's chair scraped back. The woman leapt to her feet.

Jaune too. "Blake...?"

"I... I need to call my parents," she blurted out, eyes wide and hands shaking. "I need to— I have to. Damn it, I can't believe I never did! What must they be thinking? The White Fang must have told them I deserted, but they don't even know if I'm alive!"

She moved, then stopped herself and turned back.

"It's helping!" she told him, with a huge smile. "It sounds stupid but this is helping. Looking at her – at me, but at her – I can't help but think how stupid she was." Her laughter was hoarse. "But it also helps notice things. Like how angry she – how angry I – was. It feels less evil, more understandable. Not excusable – I still became a terrorist – but I can look at it and say I became a terrorist because I was an angry child bitter at how everyone was treating my parents." Blake smiled. "Rather than say I became a terrorist because I'm an evil piece of scum."

"I don't think you're evil."

"I know. I don't think anyone does but... You're right. It's too easy to hate myself. I couldn't look at it objectively because it was my past. I kept blaming myself, hating myself, and that meant every time I tried to look back and ask where it all went wrong, all I saw was hate. This is helping put it in perspective. Can we... Can we continue this? Another day?"

"Of course. Whenever you like."

"Thank you." This time, her smile was honest. Beautiful. "I'm going to call my parents. Apologise. Be yelled at, probably." She chuckled under her breath. "But I deserve that for ghosting them this long. We'll finish the story another time. And if you need my help—?"

"Don't feel like you need to try and sort out my team's issues because you owe me, Blake. I didn't help you out for a reward. Friendship isn't transactional."

"I know. But I'll listen if you just need to vent."

"I may end up taking you up on that. Good luck with your parents."

He watched her go and only stood up once she'd left. It felt good to be able to help, and to not have to think about invading anyone's privacy. Maybe this was even an escape from it because he could now say he knew Blake's secrets because she trusted him rather than because he'd seen them in her head. Sure, that permission to know had come after he already did, but late permission was better than no permission. At least now he could know one person was happy to let him hold their secrets and might hate him less when they eventually found out.

Should I tell her? Blake would listen, and she knows what it's like to have done things you're not proud of. But wouldn't she also feel bound to protect her teammates?

He'd be putting her in an unwinnable situation.

Keep his secrets and let her teammate's dreams be invaded again and again without privacy or tell them and betray his trust in her. She'd feel awful either way, and it wouldn't be fair to put that on her when he couldn't yet stop his Semblance doing as it wished. Jaune walked out and immediately came to a halt when he bumped into a woman with black hair.

"Cinder...?"

"Jaune." She nodded back, arms crossed under her breasts and her back leaning on the wall. She was wearing a thin scarf for some reason; he hadn't thought it that cold, but maybe it was a fashion choice. "It's been a while. Tell me, have you been in my dreams recently?"

"No! No." He shook his head. "I was only in them the first time."

Her eyes narrowed on his, but he maintained eye contact and tried to show her as much sincerity as he could. It must have worked because she smirked and pushed off the wall. "That's good to know. I was just testing you. Have you gotten it under control any...?"

"Not yet, and not for lack of trying." He groaned. "I'm still stuck jumping around people's dreams without any control, though I've gotten better at controlling what happens in them. I've been trying not to poke my nose into people's private lives."

"A wise choice. Is that why the girl who fled here was crying—?"

"Ah, no." He shuffled, not sure if he should be guilty or not if Blake really had burst into tears. They'd surely have been happy ones, and Cinder might just have been exaggerating. "That was... something else. We were having a heart to heart. I can't say," he added. "I made it a rule to never talk about the things I see in dreams to other people."

"Is that so? Then you've told no one of mine."

"No one. I promise. And yours... They weren't that bad."

Cinder's eyes hardened. "Excuse me?"

"I mean they were obviously very serious!" he said quickly, waving his hands before him. "But I meant they weren't anything to feel guilty or worried over. I've seen some... I've seen some questionable stuff. You killing the dream version of someone who hurt you is honestly one of the tamer ones."

Cinder was stood perfectly still, making him think he'd said something to insult her, but she eventually nodded. "Yes. I suppose it is."

"Do those people—?"

"They are no longer in my life."

"That's good. I'm glad to hear you're rid of them."

"Me too." Cinder smiled mirthfully. "Well, I just wanted to check up on you. I'm pleased to hear you've managed to stay out my head, even if it's unintentionally. Would it be too much trouble if I asked you to alert me whenever you do? If you do at all, that is. I'd rather know than not."

That seemed fair. "Sure. Should I knock on your door or...?"

"Call me." Cinder held out her scroll, and they held them together, automatically exchanging numbers. "Perhaps I've overreacting but I'd rather know."

"You're one of the only people to actually know what I can do, so I've no real frame of reference on what is overreacting or not. But this seems fair. At least then I won't have to feel like I'm keeping secrets. It's not easy knowing things about people that you shouldn't."

"As long as you're not using that knowledge against them, I'm sure it's fine." Cinder took her scroll back. She moved away, then paused to look back. "Oh. And Jaune? I was sorry to hear about your friend who died." Her voice was flat, more polite than really caring. "I hope their passing was gentle and swift."

Jaune's blood ran cold, but he stamped down the irrational anger. Cinder hadn't known Amber and she was only being polite. It was surely the thought that counted, even as his aura roiled and turned like stormy ocean.

"Amber was at peace. Thank you, Cinder."

No dreams in today's chapter, but Jaune learning to help someone outside of a dream is by no means a bad thing. Narrative psychology is an interesting field, too.