Why did so many nightmares involve children?

Was there no one in Beacon that didn't have trauma deriving from their childhood years? He was in another school, too, looking like a pre-school this time. The kind that taught children from five to ten, long before you started learning to control your aura and throw a punch. Kids were running around a concrete playground shouting and chasing one another while a blurry-faced teacher stood in the middle with their hands in their pockets, pretending to pay attention.

It could be anyone's dream. Apparently, school was a place of trauma. Go figure. All those children, few of them with anything resembling morals, running around and learning to be human while having no empathy or understanding of what they were doing. It was a breeding ground for issues carried on through your life. If there was anything Jaune had learned from his Semblance, it was that children sucked, and any place that congregated them together might as well have been a warzone.

"No Trivia," he said, scanning the heads. He didn't know if he was disappointed or relieved. Maybe both. The last dream in a school had been her, so it was what jumped to mind. "I somehow doubt this is Blake or Weiss, either. Blake was travelling protesting and Weiss... well, I doubt she went to a place as crowded or unorganised as this."

A normal school, basically.

It could be Ruby or Yang and this could be Patch, but then it could just as easily be Nora and Ren before their village fell, or Pyrrha in Mistral, but, annoyingly, it could also be just about any other student in Beacon. Most kids went to a normal school. Not everyone was a Blake or a Weiss. And thank goodness for that. It was hard enough having the two of them.

There were quite a lot of faunus around, though. Not enough to be Menagerie, but he'd say almost half the students had visible ears, and a few probably had tails he couldn't see. It was a school that was on first glance more faunus than not. Ansel hadn't had many, and none in his school, which now that he thought about it said all sorts of things about his hometown. Villages and towns outside of the major cities tended to have less balanced distribution, so this was probably a major city, and the weather didn't match what he imagined of Atlas or Vacuo, and the architecture wasn't Mistralian, so he assumed this was a preschool in Vale.

That didn't narrow it down any. Beacon was in Vale and a lot of its students were Valean.

"Grimm! Grimm! Grimm!"

The chant came from over by what Jaune assumed was the outdoor toilets in the playground, and it sounded too cheerful and rhythmic to be an actual cry of an approaching monster. There were shrieks of laughter that followed it and running kids.

Some kind of Grimm-based game of tag, maybe?

It was the only clear sounds he'd heard, so Jaune strolled over past little kids running between his legs and away giggling. There were a few others making growling sounds with their hands up, mimicking Grimm as he'd guessed and chasing after them. The idea seemed to be that when a Grimm caught a victim, they had to become a Grimm as well and join the chase. Last one standing won. At least they weren't biting one another.

"The Grimm win again!" complained a young girl. "They always win."

"Mom says that's why we moved to the city," said a faunus with dog ears.

"They wouldn't win if we had a huntsman."

"Huntress!" shouted a little girl.

"Huntsmen are cooler!"

"Nuh-uh!"

"Yuh-uh!"

"Nuh-uh!"

Jaune angled his eyes heavenward. No wonder this place bred trauma. He was already feeling his brain coming apart at the seams. A nicer person than he, Pyrrha for sure, would have shown herself as a huntress and amused the children. It'd become a photo op and everyone would look at her and say she was such a great inspiration. Pyrrha was good with kids like that. Or maybe she'd just been trained to be by her agents, and she'd actually hate every bit of it. Not that anyone would be able to tell with the quality of her poker face.

This wasn't real life, so he didn't feel the need to entertain a bunch of fictional children.

"Start again!" shouted someone. "We need a new Grimm. Who's going to be the Grimm?"

"Not me!"

"Not it!"

"My daddy is a huntsman!"

"Cardin is the Grimm!" shouted a faunus, pointing at the familiar name. Jaune turned, eyes wide, to see a rather large ten-year-old child with short orange-brown hair. It was unmistakably Cardin, though he was in a tiny school uniform.

He also didn't look half as confident as he normally did though, even as a child, he was an inch or two taller than everyone around him. An early grower. The boy flinched under the gazes of so many children. "B—But I was the Grimm last time," he complained. "I'm always the Grimm."

Cardin Winchester was playing schoolyard games with faunus children.

What...?

It didn't fit with the image Jaune had of the guy, nor the image most people had of him. And yet here he was surrounded by faunus kids.

"You're the biggest," said a small girl.

"And the scariest," added another.

"—and my daddy says your daddy is evil—"

"He's not!" Cardin yelled.

"I heard he killed a lot of faunus," said a young boy faunus with a tail.

"He's a war criminal. That's what my big brother said." The words had Cardin tearing up. "So you have to be the Grimm. You're the closest we have to—"

Cardin threw back his head.

And cried.

The guy who had bullied Jaune relentlessly sobbed like an absolute baby and ran out the pack of children, straight for the teacher in the middle of the playground. The teacher let out an audible sigh.

"Problems again, Cardin?" she asked, sounding exasperated. "You can wait in the classroom with Mrs Roberts if you want."

Cardin nodded tearfully and headed for one of the buildings. The other kids didn't care. They just continued on their game while picking a new Grimm. Jaune was dragged along with his bully because he was the dreamer, taken into a narrow hallway with loads of small coats on hooks for when they'd go home. There were only a few classrooms, and each was brightly decorated, with huge pastel colours and shapes and overly cute kid's teaching aides that were honestly kind of horrifying to look at as an adult. Big, creepy eyes and cavernous smiles as they told you to practice your A, B, C's. The crying Cardin knew where he was going though, approaching a classroom.

But he paused on hearing voices inside. He'd probably been taught, like most kids, not to interrupt and to wait until the adults were done talking. Jaune leaned against the wall, seemingly invisible to Cardin, and listened in with the boy.

"—my older brother died in the faunus rebellions. How am I meant to teach history – the very history I've lived through – when his child is in the classroom."

"It's not Cardin's fault," said a woman's voice. "He's a child, Stuart."

"I know that! Do you ever see me picking on him? No. But his father is a monster who killed hundreds of my kind. What am I supposed to do when parent-teacher night comes around? How am I meant to look the man who killed my brother in the eye and talk about how his spawn—"

"Stuart! He's a child! He's not his father!"

"He'll grow up to be like him. We both know it."

"Nonsense. He's a lovely young boy with an inquisitive mind—"

"Surrounded by faunus. Why do you think his father sent him here, huh? There are a whole host of schools with more human children than faunus, but he picks the most unbalanced one in Vale. He's taunting us. Making sure we know we can't escape him."

"Stop projecting your trauma onto a child, Stuart. You're better than this."

"Easy for you to say!" hissed the man. "You're not a faunus. You don't have to look at the child of the man who killed your family for his own sick amusement!"

Cardin pushed away from the door and stumbled away, bitter tears in his eyes. The faunus rebellion was something Jaune had only really learned about in Beacon. Ansel had its history lessons but, looking back, it was obvious the education he'd gotten in a small village had picked and chosen its topics. There weren't many faunus in Ansel, and the school there never bothered to cover it. He didn't know if his father had been a part of the rebellion or not.

He didn't even really understand how the faunus had won it and yet somehow come out of their victory in such a bad position. That didn't really matter. Jaune followed Cardin and wondered if he should show himself. Maybe as a child? He could try and befriend the kid. It was Cardin, his own bully, but right now he was a sobbing child repeatedly rubbing his uniform sleeve under his nose. It was already snotted up.

The world blurred, then. Twisted and turned dark and swept inward, their surroundings morphing into warmer lighting and more reasonable décor. A home. Probably Cardin's. It was sizable for sure, with expensive trappings, but it didn't look as wealthy as Weiss or Trivia's homes. Jaune hadn't put much thought into how Cardin lived but, if he were asked, he'd have said a cold and unloving home with a brutish father and an unloving mother.

Anything to explain how much of a jerk he was.

Instead, Cardin was swept up and greeted by a larger-than-average woman with soft features and a loving smile. "There's my little boy!" she crooned, picking him up and spinning him around. Cardin giggled. "I've missed you. The house is so quiet without you here."

"T—Then can't I stay home...?"

The woman laughed. "Oh, baby. Every child your age and older would love to do just that but school is important, no matter how boring it is. You need to grow up smart and strong. As strong as your father."

Cardin sobbed a little.

"What's wrong?" asked his mother, holding him out from her and getting down on her knees. "What's wrong, darling? Are you okay?"

"M—Mom. Is... Is dad going to prison...?"

"What!? Darling, why would you ask that?"

"Because... Because I heard dad's a war criminal and I thought—"

The woman's face registered shock at first, and then such an ugly anger as Jaune had ever seen, but she hid it by dragging her son in for a hug so he wouldn't see her furious eyes. "No, sweetie. No. Where did you hear that? Who is saying things like that around a child?"

"The other boys at school said—"

"They're wrong. They're wrong." Her hands ran up and down Cardin's back. "Those boys are going to school to learn, the same as you, and that means they need to unlearn some things as well. Your father loves you. You know that. Do you think he's a bad person?" Cardin mutely shook his head. "That's right. He's your father. He's a respected citizen of Vale. And he was a soldier but..."

She trailed off, obviously unsure what to say. "Mom...?"

"Maybe it's best your father answer this one, sweetie. Why don't we go talk to him?"

Cardin was picked up and carried through a set of double doors. His mom seemed nice. That was all Jaune could think as he followed. She was obviously a very loving mother, not at all like he'd rather unfairly assumed. Jaune told himself it was because there were so many crappy parents in other nightmares. Weiss', Trivia's, Ruby's. The latter had been a nightmare where she imagined her parents as horrible and critical, but it was the same thing. Nightmares didn't normally have "nice" people in them because, well, they were nightmares. Even a mother who loved you in real life could become a monster in a dream.

They travelled through to a reading room of sorts. There was a gently roaring fire and a man who looked to be in his thirties slumped on an armchair. He looked exhausted, worn, and he had a beaten-down look to him. He was huge, bigger than Cardin at Beacon, with a terribly scarred face and no hair. The scars carried on over his bald head, too, and he had a bottle of beer in hand.

And yet, when Cardin entered with his mother, the man set the beer down and turned to them, offering a warm smile. "There's my son!" he said. There was a coldness to his eyes. An emptiness. "How was school?"

"Our son heard something bad at school today."

"Oh dear." The father chuckled awkwardly. "I hope you're not learning any slurs." He then winced, adding, "This isn't the talk, is it?"

The mother didn't smile. "The word he learned today was war criminal."

Cardin's father aged ten years.

"I thought you could help explain things better than I."

"Yes. Yes. I... I suppose I should. Give him here." The man patted his lap and accepted Cardin, balancing his son on one knee with an arm around his waist. "Can you—?" He looked up helplessly, and his wife nodded and left. "Thank you." He swallowed. "Son, I... This..." He let out a heavy sigh, not seeing Jaune as he settled into one of the other seats. "This isn't a conversation I thought we'd be having so soon."

"They called you a bad man," whispered Cardin.

"Who did? The faunus students? Ah, but they have their reasons, champ. And those reasons... well, they must feel as valid as anyone who hates them back. How do I explain this? Your old man, I... I'm a soldier, as you know. They call me a hero. Imagine that." He glanced at some medals on the mantlepiece and then back to his son. "But the truth is I was just a man terrified of what was going on, and who was scared he wouldn't be able to return to the girl he'd fallen in love with. Your mother."

"War... War is a bad thing, my son. It's a terrible thing. There's nothing good about it no matter how the movies like to portray it. It takes good men and fills them with such fear that they'll do terrible things, and that holds true for both sides. But it's especially true for the losing side. When you feel the tide turn against you and you know you might be overrun, you get desperate. You find yourself trying things that you never would have before."

He trailed off there, unsure how to continue. Jaune couldn't fault the man as this was a subject far above Cardin's age. And yet after what he'd seen in the playground, Jaune didn't think it could just be left alone.

"I hurt a lot of people, son. They weren't good people nor were they bad people. They were just other soldiers, fighting for what they believed in. The same as us. And I was a very frightened man, which made me especially good when it came to surviving. Nothing was off limits if it meant I could walk away alive while the other person..."

He was silent, then.

Still.

For a whole minute.

"Dad...?"

The man flinched, his arms tightening around Cardin so hard that the boy cried out softly. That woke the man up and he looked horrified. "Did I hurt you? I'm sorry! Where does it hurt? I'll get your mother—"

"I'm okay. I'm okay. You just squeezed tight."

"I... I see..." The man was shaking, but he forced a smile. "That's because I love you so much. Can't help but want to keep hugging you. W—Where was I? Nowhere, I imagine. Lost in my own thoughts as always. Back there." He laughed bitterly. "Don't worry, son, I'm okay. Just lost down memory lane. The point is, I want you to grow up better than me. Your mother always says she wants you to grow up strong like me, but I hope you'll grow up smart and warm like her. A better person than some frightened man on the battlefield. That's why I sent you to this school. I want you to be able to meet other people, human and faunus both, and get to know them."

"The other kids hate me."

The father slumped. "That's not true, Cardin. They hate me. Or their families do. They... They just don't know you." He smiled, bouncing his son on his knee. "They haven't had the pleasure to get to know you and realise how great a boy you are. Give them time. Please. For me. Show them that you're a Winchester like your mother, and that you're a different breed to me."

"I want to be like you."

"I want you to be better than me, Cardin." The man poked the boy's nose. "And I know you can be."

"Can I...?"

"Absolutely. You have the best bits of your mother to outweigh the worst parts of me. Now. Chin up, and stand firm in front of them tomorrow. Show them that they should get to know you, and not rely on what their parents think of me. Okay? Can you do that?" Cardin nodded. "That's my boy! I'm proud of you, son."

The world moulded again.

Twisted.

They were back at the school again, and it was daytime. Maybe a day after the last. Cardin was on the schoolyard looking nervous, but he whispered something to himself – probably his father's words – and then approached the same kids from before.

"Cardin's back!" said a young female faunus.

To her credit, she didn't seem to dislike him.

None of them did.

Their parents might have said bad things and they might have parroted them back at Cardin, but they were kids and they didn't really understand them. All they wanted to do was play and mess around between classes.

"H—Hey," Cardin waved. "Can I play...?"

"Sure! We're playing Grimm again. Oh, but you have to be the Grimm cuz you're the last to join!"

Cardin looked sad again, but he squared his shoulders and nodded, clearly trying to put his father's advice to work. "Okay."

"And we came up with a new rule too!" said a faunus boy. "Huntsmen and huntresses. You know, because they're cool."

Cardin smiled. "Huntsmen are cool."

"Huntresses are cooler!"

"Nuh-uh!"

"Yuh-uh!"

"We made is to that there would be one or two huntsmen or huntresses that would be able to stop the Grimm," explained the lead boy. "They get to slow the Grimm down by hitting them with a stick, and then the Grimm has to count to five before they can start again."

Cardin nodded. "O—Okay."

"Buuuut..." The boy smiled. "There were a lot of fights over who got to be the huntsman. Everyone wanted to be one, so we came up with a new game! It's still Grimm but different. More fun! In this version, everyone gets to be huntsmen!" There were excited cheers all around. "And it's one Grimm to start, and the Grimm has to run away from the huntsmen!"

"Because they're heroes!" shouted a faunus girl. "And the heroes always win!"

"W—What? But what do I do?" asked Cardin. "How do I win?"

"You win if you can catch everyone, but you have to stop and count to five if a huntsman or huntress whacks you!"

The faunus children brandished sticks. They were twigs for the most part, but some were soft branches that would surely make a whip and a crack when they hit. Jaune couldn't believe a teacher would let this happen, but when he looked over he saw the one watching over the playground was smoking a cigarette and looking at their scroll. They weren't paying attention.

"You're the Grimm!" one boy shouted and hit Cardin over his back.

"Ow!"

"Count to five!"

"But that hurt—"

"Count! You're beaten, evil Grimm!"

"Okay. Okay. One, two—"

It wasn't a fair game. It was one designed by kids and designed so that the "good guys" would win. The children chased Cardin across the playground, ever more kids adding to their number as the game took off but, tellingly, none joining the side of the Grimm. The legions of brave huntsmen and huntresses grew, and soon cornered Cardin in a dead end between the back of the toilets and a tall fence to keep the kids in school.

There, Cardin huddled down with his arms over his head, crying and trying to beg them to stop as they slapped and struck him with branches and leaves, and as the kids hurled abuse at him. They called him Grimm, monster, evil, and anything else their childish minds could think of. Cardin's pleas for them to stop were drowned under their shrieking laughter and giggling, and he soon gave up, huddling into a ball as they struck him again and again and again.

Jaune had seen enough.

And he probably should have stepped in a lot earlier.

"Enough!" He materialised as a tall adult in their midst and was instantly assumed to be a teacher. "You're hurting him! Stop!"

"You can't hurt Grimm, silly," said a tiny fox faunus.

"Monsters don't feel pain," agreed another."

"He's not a monster. He's a child."

"He'll grow up to be a monster, though," said a man's voice behind him. The teacher from before. "Just you watch. He'll grow up and prove us all right. Turn into a faunus-hating monster like his old man. Just you wait and see."

"He might not have if you'd not pushed him into it!" shouted Jaune.

The world exploded into white as Cardin woke up.

/-/

Jaune cut off his angry cry upon waking with weeks of experience, biting down on continuing the tirade he'd been about to let loose by slapping a hand over his mouth. As he did, he found his hand covering another hand, smaller than his, and looked up.

Up into pink and brown eyes, and a finger held over a tiny pair of lips.

Trivia.

In his team's bedroom.

In his bed. On top of him. The dangerous criminal she was.

Jaune's scream was muffled into her hand.