Chapter 199: Mirror

Just as the students rose from their stony seating, Parc called out, "Weiss, could you stay behind please." The girl spun her head with reckless abandon, eyes bulging out of the sockets while a smirk rose on Yang's face. Ruby though tilted her head like a confused dog and Blake simply narrowed her eyes.

She did that a lot when Parc was involved.

Not moments after he spoke did Glynda raise off her own seat and speak, "same to Ferry and Lili please, I have finished with your revised schedule and would like to speak with you about it."

In turn both girls nodded, Ferry a tad slower as she was waiting to see what Lili would do. Both soon descended onto the stone bleachers with Ferry's eyes being drawn to the Esdeath woman who was sat off to the side slumped in her seat with forearm over her eyes and a sickly green shade to her cheeks.

"Yes sir?" Weiss responded, though confused, she turned back to her team ready to tell them she'd be with them shortly only to find nothing but a trail of dust and hearing the sound of bowling pins being knocked over as Yang rushed out of the classroom dragging Ruby and Blake behind her and knocking half a dozen other students filling out of the room over. "I am going to torture you Yang. Mark my words." She growled.

Descending the steps she soon arrived before the professor.

It was clear to him she was more than a little… off. Considering she was twitching and her eyes were darting anywhere but his own eyes. 'Barely touched her and she falling for me.' He shook his head and puffed.

"How are you doing?" he asked, Glynda off to the side was beginning her own conversation with Ferry and Lili. As per the usual, Lili was the voice for them. 'Those two have really become like sisters.'

Weiss paused, mind jostling to a halt at the question. She knew what he meant, what he wanted to know about. He was concerned about her? That was a strange phenomena that only really happened with an extraordinarily small amount of people. Fewer than she could count on one hand. Perhaps two if she included Ruby who seemed overly concerned about just about anything with a semi working brain.

"I… am fine." Was it. That was all she had to say. It had been a good few days since the assault on the Charlatan. She had had her time to deal with things.

"Uh huh. I'm just going to press F and doubt that. A near kidnapping, especially one where you were so helpless-"

"I wasn't helpless. I was just… planning my escape."

"No. You were helpless. Plain and simple. You were surrounded, without weapon, without dust, and your father was there burdening you like he usually does."

"My father is not a burden."

He narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms, huffily responding to her.

"Not a burden? If he wasn't a burden why are you weaker than Pyrrha? Why are you weaker than a Grimm? Why did you struggle to beat a boarbatusk on your first day?"

Her lips fell open yet nothing sounded. The words clung to the back of her throat in a retort.

"Look. I know you enough to know you have something to prove. You want people to know you, as you, and not as Weiss Schnee. Dust conglomerate heiress. Which is a fine thing to want. Wanting to make a name for yourself is nothing new. Many, god, many people before you have done just that. But do you want to know something about those people?"

She did, though she didn't show her wants.

"The ones who try too hard are forgotten. There have been… more serial killer than I can name where I'm from—and I know this isn't the greatest analogy but, the killers who kill for notoriety, the ones who try so hard to be famous, once they are caught, are swiftly forgotten. The ones that truly are remembered are the ones that kill for something. Normally, that something is some psychotic want. Some malicious thought or they just show such brutality that history can never forget about them."

"The same can be said for the good people. The heroes. You don't see the people who do good for fame. The moment that type of thing is revealed they are swiftly abandoned as being hollow, uncaring people more caught up with their heads and their asses. They are stuck in the ballroom sipping champagne while laughing it up at the lesser beings dismay. I'm sure you know someone like that."

By then her fingers had clasped and dug into her palm were threatening to tear her skin. She knew exactly who he was talking about.

"You're father. In a hundred years, no one will know his name. Maybe the few who know the history of the SDC, but the rest of humanity and faunus kind? None. That is the fate of your father. He is another villain in another story about to be another forgotten 'who's that?' In the grander scheme of things, Jacques Schnee is nothing. He's the daily news. Not the history books."

"But the people who are truly remembered, the ones who will have their names emblazoned across the world, who get their forms carved into stone and steel. Are the selfless few. The ones who do for the good what is good, because. It. Is. The good thing to do."

Trailing to silence he glanced to Glynda and saw her wrapping things up with Lili and Ferry and was casting intentfully narrowed eyes Esdeath's way.

"My tangents finished. For the most part. What I'm getting at is that… you, you have nothing to prove. Not to me. Not to your father. Not to Ruby. Not to anyone. But you know who you have the least to prove to?"

This time he waited, he locked eyes with her. His gaze soft and pounding Weiss' heart too many beats faster. Licking her lips, she already knew the answer. That much she was able to surmise from his line of examples.

"Myself."

"Exactly." A short, approving nod calmed her heart only to send her cheeks red. "Of all the people in this world. The one you have nothing to prove to. Is yourself. Tell me. Let's say there are two you's, they are standing right here, right now. The one is the you of now, and the other is the you of tomorrow. Who, is the you of tomorrow?"

The question was loaded and confusing. The her of tomorrow? She was a heiress, the leader of the Schnee Dust Company. She was trapped with a chain around her neck and shackles around her wrists and ankles. She was everything Weiss didn't want to be. A puppet.

"Is she the you, you want to be?"

Weiss gulped, her head nervously shaking as she just imagined herself standing behind him just a little off to the side. She was taller, more womanly, yet also tired, hateful, not just at herself but at the world for what she'd become. "No."

"Good."

Just like that things sparked and both hers looked to him in confusion.

"Now you know what you don't want to be. What do you want to be?"

"I…" Weiss glanced over his other shoulder, there was another her, yet at the same time her form was shallow, lacking in definition, lacking in anything that was her. The only thing she knew and could see defined was that there were no chains. Nothing holding her back, no one controlling her. "I don't know."

"Then stew on it. Something like that takes time to figure out." Lightly placing a hand on her shoulder, Parc leaned down and met her eyes as straight as he could, "when you do. You'll finally know who you are."

She wanted to say something, yet again, her voice was sealed. Her mind too busy racing about from all he'd said to even process the silence between them. She knew he was finished speaking, finished with her, at least for now.

All she could do was stare at him, mouth raising and lowering but silence was all she spoke, that was until she was awoken by the sharp clack of heels of professor Goodwitch making her way to their side. She stopped just a bit off of Parc and it was clear she had something to say to him.

On the bleachers, Lili and Ferry were still seated and lazily wandering about the room with their eyes for anything interesting. What they were waiting for Weiss wasn't sure in that moment.

Finding it time for her to go, Weiss attempted to raise her foot and step backwards but paused as a question came to her mind.

"Sir. If… if you don't mind me asking you a question. Who are you?"

He smirked, his smile amused and strong, everything she wasn't.

"Me? I'm a nobody. Just another shadow on the wall, ready to be forgotten."

With a wink, Weiss was left flabbergasted. After all that he called himself a nobody? Heres to ruining her image of something spectacular, a hero misaligned by fate yet steeled himself to being good.

"Oh." With that she spun around, brows furrowing and took slow, clicking steps towards the staircase leading to the doorway. All the way frowning and trying her utmost to solidify the form that was the her she wanted to be. Failing all the while.

With her gone, Parc's eyes wandered off her back and fell onto Glynda. "Everything good on your end?" he questioned laying his hand atop his hip.

"It is. Baring my questions about… her. I thought it best to inform you that Lili and Ferry's tutor should be here any moment now to do a few tests to properly discern their competencies as well as begin a few a simpler topics to ease them into the study flow expected of them."

She fideled with her spectacles and turned her eyes to slits. Without waiting for a reply, she asked. "Now. Who is she? What is your relationship with her? And have you told her about… the true nature of the world?" she cautiously glanced to the two faunus girls but quickly remembered they knew more than those their age should about the truth of everything.

Parc chuckled a breath or two and looking to Esdeath he spoke, "that is going to be quite the explanation."

"I have plenty of time. I do not have any more lessons planned for the day, so I am expecting full sentences and a lengthy, in depth explanation."

Of all the ways she could choose to intimidate Parc, being the stern teacher was not one of them.

Especially not when she clad herself in form fitting clothing which soon turned that archetype into the more sexy variant.

"Well, it all began in a snowy forest…"

***

Yoo, fuckup on my part. This chapter was supposed to come out before revelation but I ended up releasing it after. Fixed the progression