Chapter One Somewhere, Deep in a Forest

Danny can feel the arrow hit her lung just as she finishes teleporting in front of the scared girl. The woman doesn't waste time wrapping an arm around Amber and teleporting to another clearing. Then she pushes the girl away and collapses on the ground, empty picnic basket falling beside her.

Danny coughs weakly as blood fills her lungs. Her smile is bitter, and eyes are shut. Just her luck to die while saving someone she wishes would drop dead. Three days before she turns thirty-two. She had been really hoping to pass thirty-five this time… too bad.

Third time isn't her charm.

Danny keeps her eyes shut, even as Amber starts calling out for help. The woman knows the arrow to her lung is a death blow. Knifed in a mugging, blacked out in an airplane crash, and now target practice. Really, she knows this isn't the type of wound you walk away from.

She assumes it is for the best. She was never in the story, not that she can remember, and a certain young woman is supposed to have the Spring Maiden's powers. No time like the present to give up her magic.

Danny squeezes her eyes shut and starts to focus. A face, the next Spring Maiden's, enters her mind. The dying woman pushes away the pain, the sounds, the feeling of drowning, and just focuses on that one face.

A story must go on. The story told from her first life, her first world, must happen. She is supposed to die, and never be mentioned again.

"Danny!"

S***.

Danny forces her eyelids to stay closed. She can hear her best friend run up to her. His scythe clicks back into a blade, and he sounds panicked. Double s***. She realizes she can't be the best sight in the world, but can he at least not freak out over her death?

…Right. She remembers that death is supposed to be permanent. And that she hasn't yet told him what that flask of hers could do.

She gives a wet chuckle, ignoring Amber's panicked sentences. Danny forgot how shocked he will look when he sees her next.

"Go to Ozpin," Qrow demands. Danny remembers that she should be focusing on dying, and again pictures the next Maiden in her head. Amber scrambles away, leaving the two. "Danny? Danny!" His hands tear out the arrow and the woman chokes a gasps. The wound has gotten worse. He curses and tries to put pressure on the wound. "Danny, I need you to open your eyes. Come on Danny... F***! Open your eyes!"

The woman wants to know why it's taking so long to die. It probably has something to do with her aura. This is the first world she's ever used one, so she doesn't know how to turn it off. Could also be the magic, though. It doesn't seem to want to leave quite yet.

"S***!" Qrow keeps cursing. He seems to give up trying to stop the blood and loops his arms under her, trying to carry her. "Come on Danny, stay with me!"

Danny wants to snort. She keeps a picture of the Maiden in her mind, unwilling to follow his instructions. If she opens her eyes, the next Maiden is likely not to get her powers. They need everyone's help for the future.

"Please," Qrow's voice quivers. "D*** it! Please, don't do this to me. We're a team, remember? You and I, against everything. We can't be a team if you're gone. Just open your eyes, Danny!"

She can't follow his orders even if she wants to. The drowning feeling fades as her lungs scream for air, and a buzzing sound starts. She can feel the magic in her latch onto the image in her head. Danny is almost dead. She goes limp.

"F***! Danny, come on-"

Her body tries to convulse as her heart stops. The magic completes her last need for it to find the host she's chosen. She feels the only thing keeping her alive start to pulse out of her body.

"S***! What the f-"

;;;

Danny wakes up in a hospital bed.

It is disorientating, and there are tubes everywhere, and everything hurts, and-

She is in her second body.

It takes Danny a moment to comprehend that her third life ended before her second.

The doctors tell her that the plane crash left her in a coma for two weeks.

Her heart had stopped in the middle of surgery, two weeks ago.

She was officially dead for half a minute before they revived her.

Danny gives the doctors thanks for saving her life.

Once alone in her hospital room, Danny closes her eyes and leans heavily into the bed. Her eyelids leak tears, and she finally lets herself see her best friend's face.

"I'm sorry," Danny speaks her apology to a man in another world. To a best friend she has no hope of seeing again. "I'm so sorry."

Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY. All rights belong to its respective owners.