SAPR

by Scipio Smith


Left Behind (New)

Left Behind

Yang could not quite keep the frown off her brow as she followed Professor Goodwitch into her office.
This was … she kind of wanted this. She had, she realized, wanted this, wanted something like this, ever since Sunset had pulled her into that storage closet in the hospital and told her the truth. She had wanted someone — Professor Ozpin, Professor Goodwitch, anyone — to confirm what Sunset had said, to not only confirm that Sunset had told her the truth but also to confirm why they hadn’t told Yang.
Why they had told Ruby all of this, but not her?
Why Ruby hadn’t told her. Why Ruby had apparently been forbidden to tell her.
And yet, at the same time, the fact that she was now getting what she wanted brought her no joy. In fact, she was more than a little upset about the whole thing; she was upset that it had taken Raven showing up to bring things to this point; she was upset that if Nora and Ren hadn’t called Professor Goodwitch about Raven, then Professor Goodwitch would have had no reason to give her this meeting, then she would never have known that Yang knew any of this.
She was upset that the only reason Professor Goodwitch was talking to her about this was because she didn’t want Yang blabbering about things that she didn’t really want Yang to know in the first place.
She was upset that the only two people who seemed to think that she deserved to know any of this stuff were her no-good abandoning mother and Sunset Shimmer, who was on her way to being a no-good abandoner herself, in Yang’s judgement.
She was upset that she was getting what she wanted in a way quite unlike she would have wanted to come by it.
Yang expected Professor Goodwitch to sit down behind her desk, but she did not; instead, as Yang shut the office door behind her, Professor Goodwitch walked briskly towards the royal blue armchair that sat just past the corner of the office, facing the burgundy sofa that sat against the wall beneath a set of framed accreditations and qualifications from various institutes and professional organisations.
Professor Goodwitch’s heels clicked against the tiles of the floor as she walked to the chair and sat down upon it. With one hand, she gestured to the sofa. “Please, sit down, Miss Xiao Long.”
Yang’s steps were slow, but she did as Professor Goodwitch had asked, making her way towards the sofa and sitting down in the middle of it, not too close to Professor Goodwitch but not too far away either, just the right distance from her.
She rested her hands on either side of her, feeling the slightly uneven texture of the sofa beneath her fingertips.
Professor Goodwitch gestured with her riding crop, and the bowl of sweets that sat on her desk levitated up and zipped across the office towards her, coming to a stop floating just in front of Yang.
“Would you care for something, Miss Xiao Long?” Professor Goodwitch asked.
Yang wasn’t sure that she would, but at this point, it would have felt rude to refuse, and so she reached out towards the glass bowl and took out a lemon and lime flavour chew. As Professor Goodwitch telekinetically placed the bowl back on her desk, Yang unwrapped the sweet — it was green and soft and squishy to the touch — and popped it into her mouth. It had a tangy flavour. As she chewed, Yang looked for somewhere to put the paper wrapper.
Professor Goodwitch gave a very discrete flick of her riding crop, and a waste paper bin of black wire scraped across the floor a little closer towards them.
Yang curled up the paper and threw it into the bin with unerring accuracy.
Professor Goodwitch said, “Miss Xiao Long, I am sure that you must have questions, but I am afraid that I must begin with a question of my own. Who told you about Salem?”
Yang swallowed the sweet. “I’m not a snitch, Professor.”
“Professor Ozpin will want to know how you came by this knowledge,” Professor Goodwitch said.
“Tough,” Yang replied. “I’m not going to get someone into trouble.”
Professor Goodwitch was silent for a moment. “I think I can hazard a guess as to where you might have heard all of this, but … why don’t we just say that Raven told you and leave it at that?”
Yang hesitated for a moment. “Thank you, Professor.”
“Despite how it may seem, Miss Xiao Long, I would like to respect your wishes,” Professor Goodwitch said softly.
Yang scowled. “You’re right; it doesn’t seem that way.”
Professor Goodwitch frowned, although by the way that her mouth turned down, it seemed like she wasn’t frowning out of anger so much as … sadness? Was she sad? Yang couldn’t really imagine what she had to be sad about.
“I’m sorry, Yang,” she said, her voice unexpectedly soft and gentle. “You deserve — in my opinion, at least — better than this. I can’t imagine how hard all of this must be for you.”
“I’ll bet you can’t,” Yang muttered.
Professor Goodwitch said, “If you’re angry, then please feel free to let me know it. This is … a safe space.”
Yang blinked. “Are we … are we having therapy?”
“No,” Professor Goodwitch said. “But I think that some of the conditions of counselling are applicable in this case. Feel free to yell at me, if you wish.”
“Oh, thank you, Professor, that’s really nice of you, to admit that I have things to be angry about,” Yang said, her voice rising. “I’m angry that Ruby, who is only fifteen, who is just a first-year student, has spent the whole year getting involved in stuff that grown huntsmen ought to be doing; no, in fact, it’s even worse than that: she’s doing things that most grown huntsmen never even come close to doing! That most grown huntsmen never even know about! I’m angry because I came into this office, and I talked to you about this at the start of last semester; I told you that I didn’t get why Ruby and her team were doing a job like that instead of any professional huntsmen, and you acted as though you were on my side, and then you turned around and you recruited her to fight some immortal witch who can’t be killed, and yes, I know that’s a tauta— … a tortuo— … I know that those things both mean the same!
“I’m angry that you trusted Ruby, and Jaune, and … okay, Pyrrha I can get; if I was in your shoes, I’d want Pyrrha on the team too, but Jaune and Sunset? You thought Sunset was trustworthy, you thought that Sunset could be told about this, and that was fine, but me? No, you made it clear to Ruby that I wasn’t supposed to know any of this. And more than that, Professor Ozpin has started telling Ruby all about Mom, but I don’t deserve to know any of that either!
“She was my mother too!” Yang cried, leaning forwards, tears springing to her eyes. “Just because she didn’t give birth to me like she did Ruby … she’s the one who I remember tucking me in at night, and when I scraped my knees, she’s the one who kissed it better. She was my mother too, and I’m not even … even that is being kept from me, by Professor Ozpin, by Ruby. By Ruby, who complains about the way that her teammates treat her while treating me in the exact same way, and I’m angry at myself because I’m aware of the hypocrisy of me actually knowing this stuff and not telling Ren or Nora about it.”
She closed her eyes, wiping away her tears with one hand. “And I’m angry because … because it seems like Raven was right. You did recruit Ruby just like you recruited Mom and Dad and Raven and Uncle Qrow, and … and Mom died, and now, Ruby is walking down that exact same path, and … will she even live long enough to have a kid of her own to abandon?”
Professor Goodwitch waited for a moment, seemingly to confirm that Yang was done. “And Miss Belladonna?”
Yang blinked. “What about her?”
“She also knows the truth; she also kept it from you.”
“I’m not angry at her, if that’s what you mean,” Yang said. “If we were real partners, then sure, I’d be angry at her too, but … what we have is a … it’s convenient. It’s convenient for her, it’s convenient for me and my team, but next year, she’ll be gone to Atlas, and … she doesn’t owe me anything. Besides, it’s only because she’s halfway through the door to Atlas already that she knows anything about this, right?”
Professor Goodwitch did not reply.
“Come on, Professor,” Yang said. “I already know so much; what have you got to lose by telling me the rest?”
“More than a little,” Professor Goodwitch replied. “But you are … not incorrect. It was not Professor Ozpin’s choice to inform Miss Belladonna — although Professor Ozpin’s plans do sometimes rely on his ability to predict the actions of others, so I wouldn’t wholly discount the possibility — and if she had not been associated with Team Rosepetal, then it is possible that she would have remained in the dark about this.” She paused for a moment. “I must ask that you continue to keep Miss Valkyrie and Mister Ren ignorant of these facts that you have learned.”
“Why?” Yang asked. “Why keep it a secret?”
“You saw how people reacted in the immediate aftermath of the Breach,” Professor Goodwitch said. “Just the reminder that we live in a dangerous world was enough to shock the inhabitants of this kingdom. Imagine what knowledge such as you possess would do. And to what end? As you seem to be aware, Salem cannot be killed, so what would people do with the knowledge that she exists? Brood upon it, panic at it, despair at it? The best thing that they could do is put it from their minds, and that being the case, it is better that it never enters their minds to begin with.”
“When you put it like that, Professor, it makes me wonder why she doesn’t publicise herself,” Yang murmured.
Professor Goodwith was silent for a moment. “That is not a bad point,” she conceded. “But neither I, nor Professor Ozpin, is inclined to look that particular gift horse in the mouth.” Again, she paused. “This … this may sound self-serving, and you are free to dismiss it if you wish, but … I think Professor Ozpin was wrong to keep this from you. If it had been my choice, I would have brought Team Iron into the fold, rather than Team Sapphire.”
Yang’s eyebrows. “You … really?”
Professor Goodwitch ventured a small smile. “Is that so surprising, Miss Xiao Long?”
Yang was silent for a second. “Um … kinda?”
Professor Goodwitch rose to her feet, walking across the room towards the window. It was dark outside, but the stars offered little pinpricks of light in the blackness beyond. “Partly, I must admit, it is nothing more than personal preference. We all, I think, choose those to whom we feel … those we feel are more like ourselves. So, General Ironwood would choose — has chosen — those who are skilled applicants of force … and not much more,” she added, with clear disdain that Yang didn’t know the Atlesians well enough to judge whether it was earned or not.
“I’m not sure Blake’s like that,” she ventured. “In fact, I’m pretty sure she isn’t.”
“How would you know, Miss Xiao Long?” Professor Goodwitch asked.
That was a good point, to which Yang had no response.
“And Professor Ozpin?” she asked, changing the subject. “And you?”
Professor Goodwitch was silent for a moment. “Do you know what Raven Branwen is?” she asked. “Did she tell you?”
Yang wasn’t sure what the professor’s question had to do with hers, but she answered it nevertheless. “No, she didn’t. It didn’t come up.”
“I can imagine it didn’t,” Professor Goodwitch growled. “Raven is a bandit.”
Yang’s eyebrows rose. “A … a bandit.”
It was … not what she had been expecting. She had known that Raven had ditched her, ditched Dad, run away and abandoned her family, but to what, to where … she had had no idea. She hadn’t really thought about it. The what, she meant. She’d thought about the where a whole lot, but the what … whenever she had imagined finding her mother again, whenever she had thought about their reunion … what her mother was, what Raven was beyond Yang’s mother, that … that was kind of hazy. It wasn’t something she had been concerned with.
She couldn’t help but be concerned now. “You … you’re not talking about a romantic bandit, are you? Not someone who took up arms against a wicked official or whatever?”
“No, Miss Xiao Long, I am talking about the kind of bandit that steals, that murders anyone who comes between her and that which she wishes to steal, who despoils villages, and whose depredations call down the grimm on any poor souls who happen to survive her attack, that is the kind of bandit Raven Branwen is.” Professor Goodwitch sighed. “That is why I cannot forgive her, as Professor Ozpin might. I could, perhaps, forgive the cowardice; I could forgive her for running away, for forsaking the battle; if that were all that she had done, it might be said that Professor Ozpin chose poorly … he did choose poorly, in my opinion, just as in my opinion he has done so again, but I could possibly forgive Raven for not living up to the expectations placed upon her. But for what she did afterwards, for what she turned to after her flight … that, I cannot forgive. That deserves nothing but my contempt.”
Yang swallowed. It was not what she had expected … and it was not what she had wanted to hear. Her mother … a bandit. Her mother, a murderer; her mother, a thief. Her mother, the most wretched scum on Remnant.
And that was the woman I wanted to find so badly. No wonder Dad and Uncle Qrow didn’t tell me anything about her, or where she might be.
I guess they were trying to protect me, after all.
Not that that makes it any better. Ruby might have been trying to protect me too, but it doesn’t make that any better either.
She could not meet Professor Goodwitch’s eyes. She looked down at her knees, and upon her hands which rested upon them.
“Why?” she asked. “Of all the things that she could do, why that?”
Professor Goodwitch did not reply.
“Professor?” Yang asked, looking up at her.
“I fear I may have said too much already,” Professor Goodwitch said softly. “Your father and uncle might not—”
“Come on, Professor!” Yang cried. “Whether or not you’ve said too much, you’ve said it now; you can’t take it back. You may as well tell me the rest.”
Professor Goodwitch nodded. “Very well. Raven returned to banditry; she had been born into it; the Branwen Tribe are a particularly notorious group of outlaws. She, and your uncle, were sent to Beacon to … to hone the skills that they would then bring back to their tribe, for that tribe’s benefit.”
Yang’s eyes widened. “Did … did you know that at the time, or—?”
“They admitted as much, eventually,” Professor Goodwitch said.
“Uncle Qrow, too?” Yang whispered.
“You should not judge your uncle for this,” Professor Goodwitch told her. “No one can help who they are born or where they are born into; unlike Raven, he did not return to the tribe or to their way or life. Unlike Raven, he rose to Professor Ozpin’s expectations of him, regardless of whether you think it was right to put such expectations upon him in the first place.”
“You didn’t think they should?” Yang guessed.
“I knew there was something that the Branwen twins were hiding; I just didn’t know what it was,” Professor Goodwitch said. “And I must admit that I never really liked Raven. At that time, I wasn’t particularly fond of Qrow, either.”
“And now?”
“Now … now, I must concede that your uncle has earned our trust and a place in our circle,” Professor Goodwitch said.
“And my mom?” asked Yang. “Summer, I mean, and Dad?”
Professor Goodwitch glanced away, towards the window and the night beyond. “The whole of Team Stark was … very young,” she said. “Too young, I thought. But then, I was very young myself at the time, young and unsure of my place, still less of my right to criticize Professor Ozpin or speak out against him. I had only taken up the post of combat instructor the year before, and I had only graduated a couple of years before that.”
“Did you know?” Yang asked. “About Salem and all the rest, before you got the job?”
“No,” Professor Goodwitch replied. “That was something that came up with Professor Ozpin shortly before my first term began. ‘Ah, Glynda, how are you settling in? Splendid. Just wanted to go over a few details, check that you were ready to go, don’t hesitate to ask if you need help with lesson plans, and by the way, the grimm are led by an immortal queen who cannot be killed, and part of your job is to train the students to do battle with her sinister agents. Best of luck.’”
Yang snorted. That snort turned into a brief fit of the giggles, which forced her to cover her mouth with one hand. “Sorry, Professor,” she said.
But Professor Goodwitch was smiling as well. “It wasn’t quite that perfunctory,” she admitted. “But it was not far off.”
Yang smiled. “So … none of the rest of your team, no one—”
“No,” Professor Goodwitch said. “No one but myself.”
“That must have been hard,” Yang murmured.
“There were certainly people that I wanted to tell,” Professor Goodwitch admitted. “But what good would it have done? What would it have helped to have told my old partner, any friends? The people … the people I most wanted to tell were the students. I wanted to tell them what they were really up against. I know that some students find my combat class a little … puzzling. They don’t understand why so much time is devoted to teaching you how to fight other human or faunus opponents when the primary purpose of a huntsman is to fight grimm.”
Yang shrugged. “Bandits—”
“Who frequently have no aura, or very little of it, and no training such as you receive here,” Professor Goodwitch said. “If that were all, my class truly would be a waste of time.”
“The Vytal Festival?” Yang offered.
“Yes,” Professor Goodwitch said, without much enthusiasm. “Yes, that is the common answer. A lot of students do see my class as training and preparation for the tournament, and those who have less interest in the tournament can sometimes see my class as a lark in response. I wanted to tell them all, to shake them by the collar, to shout at them ‘This is not a game! This could be life and death!’”
“Then why didn’t you?” Yang asked.
Professor Goodwitch took a deep breath. “Professor Ozpin revealed a little more to me of the history of this struggle, how the knowledge of Salem has … broken people. Broken them as it broke Raven, or worse.”
Yang frowned. “What’s worse than banditry?”
“Betrayal,” Professor Goodwitch replied. “Some, driven by fear of Salem, have joined her in the hopes of fair advantage or simple survival. The more people are aware of the truth, the greater the chance that some of them will be…”
“Broken by it,” Yang finished for her. “Which is why Professor Ozpin didn’t want me to know. To be honest…”
“Yes, Miss Xiao Long?”
“I’m a little surprised he let me into Beacon,” Yang admitted. “What with what my—”
“You are not Raven Branwen, Yang,” Professor Goodwitch said, her voice softening. She returned to her chair. “You were not born guilty of her crimes.”
“But I am her daughter,” Yang murmured. “And that’s why Professor Ozpin doesn’t trust me.”
“Then Professor Ozpin is mistaken,” Professor Goodwitch said firmly. “You are nothing like Raven. You have far too much of your mother in you.”
Yang looked at her. “I…” She blinked rapidly. “Thank you, Professor,” she murmured. She shuffled across the sofa, closer to Professor Goodwitch.
“For what?” Professor Goodwitch said. “For truth? Summer Rose was brave, yes, but also kind and thoughtful, considerate of others' weaknesses as well as their strengths. I am sure, I know, that she would be very proud of the person you’ve become.”
Yang smiled, she could not resist the smile that spread across her face. “You … you never actually answered my question, Professor.”
“Which question?” Professor Goodwitch asked.
“What you and Professor Ozpin look for and why it’s different,” Yang reminded her.
“Ah, yes,” Professor Goodwitch said. “You mean, why Professor Ozpin chose Team Sapphire in whom to place his trust, while I would have chosen you?”
Yang nodded.
Professor Goodwitch paused for a moment. “Professor Ozpin … Professor Ozpin is of two minds in what he wants; on the one hand, he favours those with an outsized desire to do good, a self-conscious sense of heroism about them; one might almost call it a belief that one is the hero of one’s own story. And yet, he also favours those who require … some work. Those like Raven.”
“Or Sunset,” Yang said.
“I’m not going to comment on present students; that would be very unprofessional,” Professor Goodwitch said.
“Fair enough,” Yang said, “but what about you, Professor? What would you choose, if the choice was yours?”
She could understand how Team Sapphire fit Professor Goodwitch’s description of Professor Ozpin’s aims; now, she couldn’t help but be curious as to how she saw Yang and her own team.
“I must admit,” Professor Goodwitch said, “that I wasn’t certain about your team at first. I wasn’t sure about Miss Valkyrie and Mister Ren, how they would get along, but the three of you — leaving Miss Belladonna aside, given her status — have shown me the makings of professional huntsmen and huntresses. You have completed the missions assigned to you with a minimum of fuss, you have answered the call when you have heard it … that is what I would look for, if it were up to me: those who could get the job done, quickly, cleanly, professionally. Is that the praise you were hoping for, Miss Xiao Long?”
“It’s maybe not what I expected,” Yang said. “But I’ll take it.”
As she said that, she realized that while it may not have been what she expected, she could understand what Professor Goodwitch was saying. You might not look at Nora — or Yang herself — and immediately think the word ‘professional,’ but they never let their manners get in the way of the work.
“But I still can’t tell them,” she said. “Can I?”
“No,” Professor Goodwitch said. “I’m afraid not. Professor Ozpin is our leader, for good or ill. But, since you know already, having been informed by … Raven, do you have any questions?”
Yang let out a sort of laugh. “I suppose we could start with ‘it’s all true, isn’t it?’ Salem, immortal, unkillable, controls the grimm.”
“Sadly, yes,” Professor Goodwitch replied. “All true.”
“How does that work?” Yang asked. “Controlling the grimm?”
“I hardly know; the opportunity to study it has been limited,” Professor Goodwitch said. “But direct control is … rare, it seems. The grimm are not a hivemind, and most of the time appear to be driven by the base instincts that you learn about in Professor Port’s Grimm Studies.”
“Glad to know that’s not a complete waste of time,” Yang muttered. “I … I don’t know, Professor; this is so big that it’s hard to know where to … why students? You’ve told me why, out of all the students at this school, Professor Ozpin chose Team Sapphire, but … why students? He waited until you graduated, why not do that?”
“Sometimes it isn’t always possible,” Professor Goodwitch said. “Events move at their own pace, or at a pace dictated by Salem. When Miss Fall’s treachery was discovered … it became necessary to move swiftly.”
“There was no one else?” asked Yang. “No real huntsmen at all you could have sent to Mountain Glenn?”
“Only your uncle Qrow,” Professor Goodwitch said. “And he has been out of contact for a while.”
“So, less of a secret conspiracy, and more of a…” Yang trailed off. “'Out of contact'?”
“That’s not unusual, unfortunately.”
“Yeah, for us,” Yang said. “Since Uncle Qrow quit teaching, he can go weeks, months without dropping by or calling or … anything like that. But I figured that since he works for you on something this important that you’d know how to find out where he was. You … you don’t?”
“If Qrow chooses to go dark, it must be because he considers it important to do so,” Professor Goodwitch said. “Any attempt we could make to reach him could compromise his position.”
“Yeah, but he could also be dead somewhere, and you’d never know,” Yang declared. “Just like Mom.”
“Unfortunately, yes, that is also true.”
Yang frowned. It’s Uncle Qrow; he’ll be fine.
I hope he’ll be fine.
He’d better be fine.
“So … aside from Uncle Qrow, you’ve got no one else, so you had to recruit Team Sapphire?”
“Yes,” Professor Goodwitch said, not sounding very proud of the fact.
“How did you manage when Uncle Qrow was teaching at Signal?”
“There were others, at that time,” Professor Goodwitch said softly.
Yang didn’t ask what had happened to them. She could guess the answers already. “I gotta say, Professor, you’re not filling me up with good feelings about all this.”
“I wish that I had more comfort to offer you,” Professor Goodwitch said. “But I think you would rather have the truth than comforting lies, wouldn’t you?”
Yang snorted. “Yeah,” she said, “yeah, I would.” She paused for a moment. “Professor … what are the Four Maidens?”
Professor Goodwitch’s eyebrows rose. “Not something I would have expected you to know about.”
Not something that Sunset chose not to tell me then, something she doesn’t know either. “I really did hear that from Raven,” Yang explained. “You burst in before she could spill the details.”
“I’m afraid that I won’t be providing the explanation that she did not,” Professor Goodwitch said.
“But you do know the answer,” Yang said.
“Yes,” Professor Goodwitch allowed. “But there are secrets that … lives would be put in danger by spreading certain information too freely.”
“The lives of the Four Maidens?” Yang asked.
Professor Goodwitch’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Yang raised her hands. “Okay, okay, I get it.”
She wasn’t entirely happy about the fact, but she could appreciate that people’s lives — the lives of the Four Maidens, the lives of people connected with them maybe — were more important than her desire to know. She wanted answers, but not if those answers were going to get people killed.
You had to be … professional, about these things.
“Why … just because I’m not supposed to know about Salem, why does that mean that I can’t learn about Mom?”
“Well,” Professor Goodwitch said, “Professor Ozpin isn’t the only person who could tell you about your mother.”
“Really?” Yang asked, her voice rising. “Like … now?”
Professor Goodwitch checked the time on her watch. “If you wish.”
A part of Yang knew that she ought to get Ruby; another part of her felt that turnaround was eminently fair play in this particular situation.
“I’d like that a lot, Professor,” she said. “Thank you.”
Professor Goodwitch smiled. “Well then,” she said. “My first memory of your mother is of the very first combat class that she participated in. Raven had humiliated herself at the beginning of the lesson, so I intended to take pity on the rest of Team Stark, but your mother stood up and volunteered for the first fight.”
“Did you pit the students against one another to see what level they were at, the way you did for us?” Yang asked.
“Precisely,” Professor Goodwitch said. “Now, for Summer’s opponent, I chose a huntress named Celestia…”