The loud and endless beep of Amber's life support echoed in his ears even after Ozpin escorted him from the basement and up to his office. A warm cup of coffee was pushed into his hands. He sipped at it mechanically and grimaced at the sweetness. It wasn't coffee at all; it was hot chocolate. Jaune took a longer sip, the velvety concoction coating his mouth and taking away the taste of the cold flagstones he'd tasted before.

Amber was dead.

She'd died. Right in front of him. Died asking him for a kiss. Died thinking they were going to go on a romantic date. Died thinking she was free, when in reality she'd been in a fucking test tube while her murderer ran free. Jaune's hands shook, spilling chocolate on his fingers. The pain felt good. Ozpin's kindly voice interrupted it.

"I realise you're not in any good state of mind right now, Mr Arc, and I would give you time to recover in any other situation. But I have to know. Were you able to find out who attacked Amber? Were you able to see their faces?"

Oh. That.

Intellectually, he knew he ought to feel more worried about having disregarded Ozpin and Ironwood's instructions. That was cold and logical thinking, however. He wasn't capable of it at that moment. "No." His voice came out wooden and flat. "I wasn't."

Ozpin cursed. "Why not?"

"Amber knew she was approaching her end even in the dream. We were in a forest. It was dark and... ominous."

"Ominous?"

"That might not mean much to you, but it's a big deal in the dreams." The older man nodded, content to listen to the explanation. "If something appears ominous then it absolutely is a bad memory, because there aren't any coincidences in dreams. Everything is scripted."

"I see. Amber recognised the point of her attack and had a panic attack. Is that what you're saying?"

"Close enough." Jaune took a longer drink. "Amber freaked out and then we appeared in a field of flowers far away." It wasn't a complete lie. "She wanted to avoid remembering a traumatic experience, and so we avoided it. She... died soon after."

Ozpin sat back, collapsing in his seat. He looked exhausted. "A mental block. I suppose she would have suppressed such a traumatic memory." Jaune didn't correct him. "In a way... In a way, I am happy for her. That she didn't have to experience that moment again." Ozpin took a breath, and it was shaky. Very shaky. "Was she peaceful, Mr Arc? At the end? Was it a kind death?"

Jaune's fingers gripped the mug tight. His own voice was hoarse. "It was the kindest I could give her."

"Thank you for that." Ozpin heaved a heavy sigh.

There was silence between them for the longest time. Minutes. Enough that his hot chocolate turned cold, and for his thoughts to drift to terrible places. Neither felt like breaking the silence, and neither would have known what to say anyway.

Eventually, Ozpin spoke, "I can provide you a private room for the night if you would rather not face your team."

Jaune nodded. His teammates would be full of sympathy and would stay up all night to keep an eye on him. He just didn't think he could deal with that right now. It would break him. He wanted to be somewhere alone where he could bury his face in a pillow and scream without someone stroking his back or trying to be there for him.

"I shall also deal with James so you don't have to."

"Thank you..." Jaune set the cup down. "I will... I will let you know if I find out who did this." He saw the teacher's confused expression and elaborated. "If they... If they dream about it... I'll know. I'll catch them."

"Ah." Ozpin nodded, then stood. "Thank you for that. Come. I'll show you to where you can rest. I will also alert your team to the fact someone close to you has passed, and I will tell them you are not in Beacon tonight. You deserve some peace."

They were silent again on the journey to a private guestroom in Beacon, and there were no words between them as Ozpin opened the door, let him inside, and then closed it again. The room was nice, with a big double bed and wide windows looking out over a beautiful view of Beacon's architecture and the forest in the distance. The cracked moon hung high in the sky, free in a way Amber never had been. Taunting him.

He couldn't regret taking her away from her final moments and giving a brief instance of hope. He couldn't, and wouldn't, but that didn't mean his body wasn't shaking with anger. Some monsters had killed her, and they might be here in Beacon. They might be the ones behind the attack on the CCT during the dance. Jaune gripped the curtains tight, ripped them across the window, then drew out his scroll. He navigated to the alarms, setting one after another, all throughout the night.

1130. 0000. 0030. 0100. 0130. 0200. 0230.

On and on, in thirty minute increments. Sixteen alarms for an eight-hour sleep period. He turned the volume to maximum and set the device on the small table by the bed before laying down and closing his eyes.

If her killer was out there...

He would find them.

/-/

A boy knelt among the broken remains of his team, weeping at his inability to protect them. It wasn't real, only a nightmare, and Jaune couldn't muster the empathy he would have felt before. His aura flared, wiping the bodies away and leaving the boy – now a man – looking around, confused. When he looked up, he didn't see Jaune. He saw a woman with tan skin and dark hair, in a green hood. He saw Amber.

Jaune, in Amber's body, approached the man. "Do you know who I am?"

The man shook his head.

Bzt!

Bzzzt!

Bzzzzzt!

Jaune slapped a hand down on his scroll, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes.

A huntress was fleeing from an army of Grimm with the faces of people she knew, all crying for her to slow down so they could have her join them. The huntress tripped, fell with a cry, and covered her face as the mass bore down on her.

White light shone out and blew the monster away, scattering particles of dust into the air. A woman stalked out from the ruined mass of flesh, her dark hair flapping behind her along with her green hood. She spoke, with an oddly masculine voice.

"Do you recognise me?"

The huntress tried to recognise her saviour, she really did, but she was forced to shake her head.

Bzt!

Bzzzt!

Bzzzzzt!

Eyes opened. A hand touched a button.

Eyes closed.

Iron bars were pulled away from a cage. The faunus inside looked up at his saviour, a woman with dark hair and tanned skin, reaching in with one hand to pull him out. "Do you know who I am?" she asked.

"Are you a hero...?" he asked.

Bzt!

Bzzzt!

Bzzzzzt!

"Have you seen me before?"

Bzt!

Bzzzt!

Bzzzzzt!

"Do you recognise me?"

Bzt!

Bzzzt!

Bzzzzzt!

Jaune slapped the alarm off, it being close to five in the morning. His scroll beeped again, this time a warning. A red light flashed on the screen. "Warning: 0% aura." Jaune slapped that off too, assuming it just another alarm, and laid down to put himself under again. They were out there. They had to be. He would find them.

He would avenge her.

He was in a forest. It was dark, the cracked moon was high in the sky, and Jaune's footsteps echoed on the mud. It was the same forest, he knew. The same one that Amber had died in. There was a certainty in him, the absolute certainty that he had found the right place. He had found the right dream.

"This is it," he hissed. "This is the person who killed her!"

Heart racing, blood pounding, Jaune ran out and saw a person stood over a body. The body on the ground had a green cloak, while the one above them was cloaked in grey. Jaune roared out his fury and charged straight at them, hand outstretched to rip their hood down. They danced away however, drawing a weapon caked with blood.

Crocea Mors appeared in his own hand and he lashed out, determined to beat them down and unveil them before the dream ended. Nothing here mattered, so he ignored their swing and the phantom pain it caused as it plunged into his side. Instead, he speared his own sword through their stomach and out their back in a spray of blood.

That didn't exist either, but they still gasped and froze up. He grabbed their collar with one hand and used his other to rip down their hood and expose them.

Amber's pale face stared back at him, blood leaking from her lips.

"J-Jaune...?" she whimpered. "W-Why...?"

No.

Nonononono. Jaune tried to back away, but they were transfixed, both of them caught on the other's blades. Worse yet, Amber pulled herself toward him, impaling herself even more. "I loved you," she cried, bloody tears running down her cheeks. "You said you loved me too. But you lied to me, didn't you? You lied about loving me, about being my friend, and about travelling with me..."

"Amber, no. I..."

"None of it was real, Jaune. I died cold and alone in a basement." Her face crashed against his, and he screamed as a centipede crawled out of her suddenly empty eye-socket. Her face was rotted and her jaw hung down. "Do you still love me, Jaune? Kiss me. Kiss me like you failed to before."

He pushed her away, and the skeleton with rotten bits of flesh splashed down into the mud.

Amber's voice came from all around him. From the trees, the grass, the sky, and the dark shadows creeping ever inward.

"What's wrong, Jaune? Don't you love me anymore? Is that all I was to you? Did you only pity me? I loved you. I trusted you. I believed in you. Where did it get me, Jaune? Why did I have to die? Why couldn't you save me?"

"I couldn't!"

"You could have freed me, Jaune. I was trapped in that tube, in the basement, and you knew. You knew I wanted to be free. Why didn't you let me out?"

"You would have died!"

"I would have died free."

Jaune's knees hit the mud. His chin fell to his chest, and his hands into his lap. It was all true. He'd known what she would have wanted, but he'd left her there, too much of a coward to do anything to help her. Jaune remained on his knees as bony hands wrapped around him from behind, embracing him, and as yet more reached out of the mud to grasp his legs, his hips, his hands, his arms, his neck and his head.

He could feel himself being lifted. He could hear voices shouting. He could feel something cold placed against his chest, and he could feel a sudden jolt running through it. He felt his body jump. He felt his bones hurt. He felt pain in his chest. He felt a raw feeling in his throat.

But, beyond it all, he felt weak.

So very, very weak...

"Jauneeee," a million voices crooned at once. "You failed me, Jaune."

He was crying. "I'm sorry..."

The bony hands pulled at him, drawing him down into the ground, into the mud, which somehow felt so very cool and inviting. It would be peaceful there, he knew, and he could fall asleep and never have to worry about anything ever again.

"We're losing him!" someone in the sky shouted.

He closed his eyes.

All he wanted was to rest.

A warm light shone behind him, and he tried to turn to see it, only to feel it press up against his back. Soft, warm arms wrapped around his chest and hands linked over his heart. A chin came down to rest on his shoulder, with a warm cheek touching his own.

"Oh Jaune," she whispered.

"A-Amber...?"

"Not yet, Jaune," said Amber, pressing her lips to his cheek. "Not like this. Not so soon. I won't let you follow me this quickly."

"Amber, I... I'm sorry... Everything was a lie. I lied to you and... and I'm so sorry..."

Her arms squeezed him tighter. "I'm not." Her breath brushed against his ear. "I'm not sorry about any of it."

Warmth rushed into him.

"Goodbye..."

/-/

Jaune's eyes opened to the stench of sterilised floors and the beeping of a monitor. The ceiling was white, his body ached, and there was something sharp pressed into his arm. He might not have recognised the place if not for how often he'd spent time in there of late. It was Beacon's medical bay, and he was in a bed with a drip feeding into his arm and several machines around him.

"Are you awake?" asked Tsune, appearing nearby with a tired expression. "Thank goodness for that. You have no idea how much of a scare you put everyone through. Foolish boy. You do realise that aura is the soul, don't you? There's a reason Glynda has spars end at 15%. A damn good reason. When your aura is at zero, you are not to keep pushing. What do you think your Semblance feeds on once your aura runs out? What do you think happens when the human body is drained of its very soul?"

The faunus' voice grew in intensity, but she caught herself, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. "You are fortunate that we know better than to trust our students fully here," she said. "Your scroll, the scrolls of everyone in Beacon, have emergency systems in place for if a person continues to use aura after they should have stopped. Ozpin broke down your door himself and found you suffering a cardiac arrest."

What...?

"You should have known better!"

Should he have...? Probably. Jaune groaned. It was undoubtedly one of those things everyone else had been taught when they unlocked their aura, and that he should have known but didn't. He knew that when aura shattered, you were vulnerable, and he'd assumed that was the end of it. He hadn't even known you could keep using your Semblance after running out of aura, but then he'd never had a need to know before now.

And most people tended to die once their aura ran out, the last hit draining the last bit of it, so it hadn't ever come up in training. Everyone stopped when their aura entered the red, and Glynda was ruthless about enforcing that. With good reason, apparently.

"H... How long...?"

"You've been out for two days. Your team was obviously informed and have been here almost every day. They've quite naturally been beside themselves with worry. You've had Ozpin and Doctor Oobleck visiting each day as well." The woman sighed as the door was opened, and Ozpin stepped in. "Oh no," she said. "No. Ozpin, he needs his rest. Not whatever you need to say."

"It won't be long," said Ozpin. "I only want to caution him against a repeat occurrence."

Tsune grumbled but left them to talk. Ozpin drew up a seat beside the bed. "I feel like this is in some way my fault, Mr Arc."

"It's not. I... I didn't even realise this could happen..."

"That you can kill yourself with a Semblance? It's a weapon like any other, and you should know weapon safety. I will have to ask Bart to talk you through the specifics. Most people don't have this problem because their consciousness fades when aura breaks - either because they've been rendered unconscious or are too exhausted to stand. Your semblance is unique in that it works while you're unconscious, so it must have kept going even without aura. Drawing on something else to fuel itself. Your energy reserves, your muscle mass, potentially even your life." He leaned in. "What happened. How did this occur?"

"It was my fault, sir. I... I set my alarm to every 30 minutes. I thought if I went into as many dreams as possible and showed them Amber, that someone might react if they'd known her. I overtook their dreams. Used my aura to get rid of any distractions." He grimaced. "I thought I'd just stop automatically when I ran out of aura. That I'd just stop hopping into people's heads. And I think I did. The last dream... the last nightmare... it was my own..."

Ozpin sighed. "Foolish boy. And foolish me for not predicting this. I would like you to keep an eye out for the one who harmed Amber, yes, but not at the expense of your own life." Ozpin fixed him with a stern glare. "And I daresay Amber would feel much the same. Grief is painful, Mr Arc, and it hurts to lose those we love, but to lose yourself to anger is not the way. There are over a thousand students here, and even if you were to sleep ten hours and visit twenty dreams a night, it would take you 50 nights to see everyone's and that's assuming you never entered the same dream twice. You could not survive that long without sleep."

Jaune grimaced. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do this. I just... I thought I'd wake up tired. That's all. I didn't think I'd end up worrying everyone."

Ozpin let out a long sigh. "I suppose that's a good answer. Not a very clever one, but I'd rather have this be an accident you regret than something you're thinking of repeating. I've lost one former student of mine this week already, Mr Arc. Do not make me lose another."

"I'm sorry."

"As am I," said Ozpin. "I should have known you would do something reckless." He sighed and reached out to bring forth a beautiful ocean-coloured vase. "And there is another reason I came. This is..." He didn't finish, and he didn't have to. The name 'Amber' was written on the vase in beautiful handwriting. Ozpin set the vase down upon the bedside table. "I believe she would have felt trapped with me. You are the last one she saw, and the last person to ever grow close to her. I think she would prefer if things were this way."

Jaune swallowed. "Thank you, sir..."

"I will leave you be. Please try and rest and do your best to avoid straining your Semblance."

Ozpin was not his final visitor for the day. Not even close. His team came by soon after, Nora practically sobbing and Pyrrha looking stunned and guilty. They looked at him like he'd tried to take his own life, but he explained that he'd made a stupid mistake with his aura instead and pushed himself too far. Nora would have punched him if it weren't for his injuries. Pyrrha told him they would be training once he was back on his feet, and that she'd be teaching him about aura and Semblances, and how to understand his limits.

Oobleck reinforced that lesson in the afternoon with a full one-hour lecture, complete with textbooks and a wheel-in blackboard, in which he drew diagrams and explained how Semblances worked. They were tied intrinsically to aura, as Jaune had known, but it was possible to force the usage of them without. It just took a lot of concentration and that normally didn't happen when 99% of the reasons for why a person's aura had run out were usually combat-related, so the average huntsman would be dead from other causes long before Semblance overuse became an issue.

"Your problem is that your Semblance is intrinsic," explained Oobleck. "It happens when you sleep regardless of your control, so, unlike almost any other person with a Semblance, you're at genuine risk of using it automatically without aura." He tapped a finger on Jaune's head. "And I thought that was obvious. Why else did you think we spent the first week of you unlocking your Semblance having your vitals be monitored, and having you spend days away resting in the infirmary?" Oobleck sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "If preventing you invading dreams was as easy as draining your aura, we'd have done that every day!"

"I'm sorry. I didn't think. I was... I wasn't in my right mind."

Oobleck sighed. "I can see that, and I'm not angry at you, Jaune. I'm angry for you. Out of concern. A good teacher does not play favourites, but we've spent much time together discussing philosophy, psychology and the nature of dreams. Waking up to learn you had a heart attack was not something I was looking forward to!"

"I won't do it again."

"You're damn right you won't", grumbled the older man. "Bah. Some of the fault is no doubt my own for not double-checking your knowledge of Semblances when you unlocked yours. I assumed it was common knowledge, however."

It probably was for anyone who had really been to an academy before this.

"Just be careful in the future, Jaune. Your Semblance is not combat-related, so you won't need to worry about having the same accidents others have. You have to worry in other ways. If you are low aura before sleeping, then remind yourself to let dreams happen and not interfere. And never force yourself to do what you did last night. You were waking up on low aura before when you visited one or two dreams. Pushing yourself to over ten dreams as you did here was reckless. Learn from this mistake. Learn and do not do it again."

Team RWBY were his final visitors. Ruby was gentle and afraid to touch him for making anything worse, but also quick to get him anything he wanted. Blake was calm but focused, preventing any of them from making anything worse and asking the most about whether he was okay. Yang hovered and tried to cheer him up with stories of how badly everyone had come apart out of worry, and how Cardin had dropped one bad line before a spar, and then needed to be scooped off the ceiling once Pyrrha was done with him. Laughing hurt his chest, which got Yang told off by Blake, but it felt good to be able to. Weiss brought gifts. Quite a few gifts. Chocolates, flowers, some books. "They're not romantic flowers!" she said as she put them down. "They mean get well soon and friendship."

"Wow," said Yang. "Friend zoning the guy who almost died from a literal broken heart."

"He's your boyfriend!" howled Weiss, pointing at the blonde. "And the fact he had a cardiac arrest is all the more reason for him to not be getting worked up." Weiss looked back, and there was some genuine concern. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. It was a dumb mistake in a bad moment. This..." Jaune gestured down his body. "This isn't something that's going to happen again. Ever. I'll be making sure of that."

"Good."

Weiss' eyes drifted to the vase on the table.

Everyone had looked at it at least once, but not one had the guts to ask The shape of it, its prominence, and also the name, all made it clear what this was. Weiss opened her mouth, but, like so many others, lost her nerve and looked away. Sensing the mood, Yang placed herself between them and began another silly story.

/-/

Jaune stood on the edge of a cliff.

Below him, the Emerald Forest stretched on for what felt like eternity. He was facing the opposite way from Vale and civilisation, and away from Beacon. It was where they'd been launched what felt like years ago for their initiation. Jaune took a deep breath of the cool air and looked down at the vase held in his hands.

Behind him, a respectful distance away, his teammates waited.

He still felt sore and tired, and Tsune hadn't wanted him up and about, but Jaune refused to leave Amber trapped for any longer than she had to be. All her life, she'd longed for freedom, and the confines of the vase were not that. From a home that felt like a prison, to a test tube, to a ceramic vase. He wouldn't let her spend the rest of time locked in there, and she would have hated the idea of being buried underground as well.

"You always wanted to be free," said Jaune, speaking down on the pretty thing. "I'm sorry I couldn't give you that in life. I'm sorry we only met as late as we did." He took a shaky breath. "But I like to think I gave you the best I could."

His eyes closed and he remembered the feeling of her warmth against him.

"And I think you knew that."

He didn't want to do this.

There was a part of him that wanted to keep her with him, even like this, so that he could look to the vase and imagine she was still in his life, and so he could talk to it as if it were her. Amber was dead, gone, and that same part of him argued that she should be fine for him to keep her ashes if it gave him peace. That Amber wouldn't begrudge him it.

But it wouldn't be what she wanted.

Before his nerve could abandon him, he uncorked the top and raised the vase out in front of him, then turned it upside down. The ash that came out was white, a fine powder that blew away on the strong wind, taken over the Emerald Forest and out into the world.

Free, at last.

It kept coming on and on, in quantities he hadn't expected. He'd imagined it to take one or two seconds, it all coming out in one go and vanishing, but the stream seemed never-ending. Of course it wouldn't be that quick.

This was a human body. This was the culmination of a fully grown woman, her life, her experiences, her memories, her dreams, taken away on the breeze as fine powder. It felt wrong. It felt awful. Amber deserved better, and to have all her life reduced to dust was...

It was sad.

But it was her life.

No matter how rough it had been, and no matter how cruelly it had ended, Amber had been here. Amber had existed. Some of her dreams had not come true, and some had, and that was the sum of experience for every single person who drew breath. There would always be regrets, especially for those left behind who felt like they could have done so much more for them.

It took over two minutes before the last of Amber's ashes fluttered out of the vase and away, carried out into the distance. Away from Beacon, away from Vale, away from civilisation, and out into the world. One last journey.

"Be free, Amber," he whispered, releasing the vase and letting it fall. "Nothing will hold you back anymore..."