Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY nor its characters, I am merely playing in the wonderful sandbox Rooster Teeth has created for us.

This takes place post-V6 and presumably pre-V7. It can be considered a spiritual successor to my other story, 'Contemplation' as well. I certainly wrote it with that little bit of headcanon in mind. Please enjoy!

Either he was getting better at noticing changes in his surroundings, or Ruby was truly exhausted, because when she slipped out of the small apartment provided to them by the Atlesian military, Oscar was aware of it. That alone surprised him – travelling with a group of huntsmen ('Not yet' a voice whispered back at him, not his own) was stressful. Not only did they attract terrifying monsters seemingly by chance, but they also managed to constantly surprise him.

Huntsmen were quiet. They were skilled. They needed to be to stalk their prey, and in the 'killing Grimm' category, his companions were particularly prodigious. Sadly, he was a mere farm boy and they often managed to sneak up on him without meaning.

'You're improving,' the other voice whispered again, part in amusement, part just stating a simple truth.

Oscar scoffed, suppressing the tiny glow of pride in his chest, but the other presence noticed it anyways and flickered with amusement.

His mind returned to Ruby. It wasn't the first time she'd slipped away from the group to be alone. According to Weiss it was extremely unusual behavior for her – Ruby tended to cleave to her friends when emotional or troubled. The heiress had been very offput when he'd confided in her about it; she'd waived him off at the time, but Oscar didn't need help from his other half to realize that she was more troubled she hadn't noticed it herself.

What was Ruby doing? Was she just trying to get away from everyone for a little while, find some privacy? After living with just his aunt for several years – punctuated by the frequent visits of neighbors and distant relations, especially during harvest season – Oscar could appreciate how overwhelming it could be to suddenly be surrounded by people day and night. Hell, he felt the same way when he first joined up with Qrow and RNJR for the first time, never mind the additions of Ruby's original teammates.

'…Go talk to her.'

"What?" Oscar muttered back. He wasn't quite used to the mental conversation thing. It was far more comfortable to speak aloud when possible. "Maybe she just wants some privacy, I don't want to be rude!"

Ozpin shifted – an interesting, if decidedly odd feeling, constrained by his own little partition of their shared consciousness as it was. 'I don't believe that is the case… at any rate, I want to speak with her.'

Oscar hesitated. "If you're sure…?"

'As I can be. This has been long in coming anyways. Better now than after we meet with James… Powers know what will happen after that conversation.'

"Fine."

He grabbed his cane from the countertop he'd been fiddling with it on, the handle fitting his hand like a glove. Thankfully he'd elected to stay dressed – Solitas was, quite frankly, freezing. To an extent Oscar hadn't felt since the bitter winters of his early childhood. The lining of his coat was particularly good at keeping out the chill.

Ruby'd been wearing her cloak, but aside from that just wore her usual attire… Thankfully her footsteps were clear in the fresh snowfall, not yet destroyed by the passerby that would undoubtedly turn the white blanket into grey slush come morning.

A few blocks down – not far enough to be worrisome, far enough to feel distant from the rest. Up some stairs, and there she was. Protected from the snow by a decorative awning, Ruby shivered on a bench, staring out over the Atlesian skyline.

Tense – and still not sure he wasn't interrupting some sort of private moment of self-reflection or somesuch – Oscar of course tripped on the last chair, startling Ruby out of her contemplation. "Oscar!"

"Uh… hi?"

There were shadows underneath her eyes, and Oscar felt Ozpin measuring the slump of the girl's shoulders, as well as the sag in her usually excellent posture.

If she noticed his once-over, she didn't show it, instead putting on a concerned expression. "Is something the matter? Everyone's alright, right?"

"Yeah!" Picking himself up, he walked over to the bench. "Yeah, nothing's wrong, just saw you leaving and figured I'd… um."

Oscar floundered for a moment, suddenly aware that he hadn't followed her for any particular reason. 'A little help?'

Ozpin chuckled, a sound Oscar only knew from Ozpin's memories – when he took the reigns his voice was Oscar's, if inflected differently. It was a different man's laugh in his mind.

He felt the nudge, like a hand slipping into a glove, except the glove was his body and the hand was Ozpin's mind slipping around Oscar's. It was quite the feeling, and one he hadn't realized he'd grown familiar with until Ozpin disappeared entirely for the last few days. Oscar surrendered to the loss of agency willingly, becoming just a presence in another's mind, watching from his eyes as a passenger.

Through those eyes he saw Ruby's silver widening in recognition as Ozpin shifted posture, both hands resting on the handle of their cane, shoulders evening out in that just-so manner that Oscar's aunt would have cried to see.

"Oh… Professor Ozpin."

"Miss Rose. If we're not interrupting anything, I would like to have a chat." Oscar could feel the distance between Ozpin and his words. The formality, the coolness bordering on warmth – it was the tone he used to greet new students at Beacon, the tone he'd used to first greet Oscar himself that fateful morning. Jovial, polite, and perfunctory… but still undeniably the voice of a stranger speaking to another stranger.

Ruby blinked, some emotion passing over her face before it shifted into something resigned. Or maybe resolved. Oscar couldn't really tell – he was used to drawing on Ozpin's muscle memory and tactical memories, not so much the social kind. Those were a bit more… personal.

At any rate, she didn't say anything, just mutely nodded and sat back down. Ozpin joined her, leaning forward to put his weight on the cane, just staring out over the Atlesian skyline.

He and Oscar both could sense the tension radiating from the girl. Among the myriad emotions swirling within his other half – more than Oscar had ever felt at once from the older soul – he could feel a trickle of pity and, surprisingly, empathy. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

"It's so much…" Ruby whispered. "So many buildings… like Vale, but so much more high-tech… This is where Weiss grew up."

"Indeed. It's not too hard to see how Miss Schnee could come to be the woman she was when she first arrived at Beacon when her origins lay here."

"It's nothing like Patch."

Sadness, a faint memory of a childhood spent far from the city, stars overhead and forests surrounding. Oscar marveled – the images were not his… yet they were so similar to his own, save for perhaps the constellations.

"Atlas is spectacular… though I find myself longing for the days when Mantle was ascendant. Perhaps it was less prosperous, less populous, and dare I say even less beautiful, but there was a pioneer spirit to be found here. The feeling that if you just worked hard enough, for long enough the faintest of dreams were within your grasp."

"Kind of like Beacon."

"Yes. The best huntsmen came here because of the city's lack of natural fortifications, Grimm were still drawn here like moths to the flame. It was slow, but progress was made, and all so suddenly the city was rising before my eyes."

Oscar saw a flat plain, broken only by the random outcropping of grey stone. Hardly the kind of place one would put a city, with so little in the way of natural fortifications. Grimm would wash over this place like a dark tide, and yet…

Dust. Someone, somehow, managed to discover a truly incredibly vein of Dust. That justified the settlement. The mines. The mistreatment, though he could only watch on in sorrow, a mere visitor – a stranger – hoping against hope that things would change.

Change it did. The vein led to deeper tunnels, more intensive mining, new veins and even more Dust. Soon the settlement grew to a city. Alsius coming into being after the war. The military moving in, providing even more protection as more of Mantle's population moved to the thriving boom town.

Amidst sorrow, toil, and sweat, a city rose to supplant its parent, eclipsing it in all things.

And then it rose. The mines finally ran dry, but the city would not be deterred. They were Atlas, now. Like the Vytal stadium, the best minds worked in concert and the city moved itself to a new vein – discovered underneath the old capital… too late to save it from ignominy.

Oscar gasped – was it a gasp, if it only happened in his mind? He was not used to falling into flurries of memory like that. It was always nudges or feelings, the briefest glimpses of thought from Ozpin.

'Hiding did me little good before,' the older soul admitted mentally, outwardly silent as he and Ruby gazed out on the skyline. 'And though I don't believe you'll pry again, you also don't deserve me shutting you out entirely… and wasn't it just incredible, seeing the change?'

'Yeah,' Oscar thought. 'I've never seen anything like that… it was like the crops back at home, but bigger. And faster.'

Ozpin chuckled in his mind, almost but not quite hiding the shift Oscar got from him. He was steeling himself for something.

Beside them, Ruby shifted uncomfortably. She was so tense he couldn't detect her shivering any more, but Oscar could tell her mind wasn't on the sights any more.

Ozpin broke the stalemate.

"I wanted to tell you that I was sorry, Miss Rose, for deceiving you." Ruby flinched, otherwise frozen, but remained silent. Ozpin carried on. "I've had a fair amount of time to reflect on the last few months, and on my behavior since the fall of Beacon. I haven't been fair to you, or your teams. I expected too much from you, and didn't correct you when you made your own assumptions."

"Professor—"

"No, I don't want there to be—"

"Professor."

Ozpin fell silent, halted by the ragged note in Ruby's voice. The smallness, like he hadn't ever heard from the girl. She clenched her fists, refusing to meet his eyes, her gaze fixed on the city like it was her prey. "Professor, what we did…" Ruby shook her head, brow furrowing. "What I did was wrong. It wasn't my business to ask Jinn that question… I shouldn't have pried."

Oscar blinked – no, that was Ozpin, Oscar could only feel the slightest edge of bewilderment and sorrow from his other half. Ruby was shaking. His own gold-flecked-hazel orbs tried meeting hers, tried to lock with her gaze to convey… something, Oscar couldn't tell what Ozpin wanted to do. But they wouldn't turn.

"I was impulsive," her voice cracked. "I was cruel… I was a bully."

Oscar recoiled as the tears began to flow. "I wasn't thinking about what would happen when I asked, I was just thinking about needing to know… I didn't want to trust you. I didn't trust you to not lie again – to hide whatever it was from us behind something else… I'm sorry."

Their hand rose, hesitantly hanging in the air as the girl buried her face in her hands, cutting herself off from them entirely. Should they comfort her, should they say something? Oscar had no reference, and Ozpin was hesitant to push… worried that too much would break the fragile soul beside him, a feeling he knew too well.

They let the silence hold for a few seconds. Oscar could feel him ruminating in the back of their mind, feel the faintest swell of emotion, of empathy.

'The harshest criticism comes from within,' the older soul whispered sadly, a sliver of sympathetic ice spearing their heart. As it had only days before.

Their hand fell, and Oscar watched from the back of their mind as Ruby had her cry. They were a silent presence beside her – had the adrenaline just run out? Was it just the day, the fight, the horror and shock as their plan fell apart around their ears? Or perhaps it was an older wound than that – is this what she did, each time she vanished out on her own?

'This must be really hard on her too,' Oscar remembered sadly, images from their shared memories, neither one nor the other's alone. Ruby knew what to say to make him feel better, at least that one time. He felt helpless now.

'It is hard on us all – she isn't ready for this,' Ozpin frowned. 'None of you are. In many respects.'

'No kidding.'

Several minutes passed before Ruby pulled herself together. Minutes that Oscar spent in his own partition, blocking everything else out and seeking some of that peace his aunt tried to teach him in the garden pulling weeds. Away from it all.

"It seems we've both made our mistakes." Ozpin commented after Ruby wiped her eyes.

"Yeah." Ruby sniffled, looking for once utterly pathetic.

"I'm sad to say, as your teacher, that they only tend to pile up as the years pass by."

Ruby gave a watery laugh. "I don't think they have to be this bad."

That drew a smile from their lips. "We live in interesting times… it used to be said that those were the sort of times you cursed being born into. It's still a saying in Mistral, if I'm not mistaken."

Ruby wasn't distracted by the old man's intentional rambling – Oscar could only watch from the background as the professor tried guiding her back out of the hole she'd dug for herself.

"I really am sorry, Professor," Ruby said again, finally turning to look them in the eyes. Pain shone in those silver orbs – as well as guilt, and sadness, and exhaustion.

'She really needs a good sleep,' Oscar observed.

'I wouldn't say no to that, myself.' Something felt lighter in his other half. His emotions were a swirling mess – more chaotic than Oscar was used to feeling from the controlled, reserved soul. But it was a good chaos – there was no hiding, no shying, not even from himself.

"I forgive you."

Eh?

He said it so simply. Like it was nothing, and yet…

"What I did was unforgivable!"

"Well, I forgive you anyways." There was a note of humor in their voice, entirely Ozpin. He… meant it. Why?

'Hm.'

He wetted their lips, choosing his words carefully. "Maybe it was unforgivable… It certainly hurt, more than I believe you can even comprehend… but…" Ozpin paused, his mind casting very far back, farther than Oscar had ever felt before. "…I learned long ago that forgiveness is the surest path to peace… I have committed many sins… 'More than any man, woman or child on this planet,' I believe I told you… Yet I have met many hundreds of people willing to forgive me, trust me, to be my friends and confidents… Those are the people I have treasured most in my, very, long memory."

Naked emotion shone in Ruby's silver eyes, as well as the faintest glint of tears. "I don't deserve it."

"'Deserve?'" Their lips quirked. "No… you don't. But it is my choice. You didn't mean to hurt me, though you did. Your actions were not born of malice, though their results struck truer than many a mortal enemy I've faced… and you clearly feel remorse." Ozpin hummed, eyes distant on the horizon, peering far back into that ancient memory Oscar couldn't quite view. "Maybe I shouldn't forgive you… maybe I should hold onto my anger, lest you tempt me to lower my guard again… but I won't. I don't want to. I won't let her win."

"Professor…"

"Ozpin. I may still be your teacher, but while we journey together, I believe it wouldn't be too out of line for your to call me by my given name."

'Such confusion!' Ozpin chuckled.

'Ozpin?' Yes, he was confused, and would like an explanation please?

'I don't like grudges, Oscar. Perhaps you may feel differently – and I will not urge you to choose anything not to your desires – but I will not torment Miss Rose further when she clearly loathes herself for what she did more than I ever could. Better to bury the hatchet and move on.'

Not parley to their mental exchange, Ruby stared in bewilderment at them. "Does that mean we're… friends?"

Ozpin mentally blinked – he was too outwardly controlled to let such a tell go unchecked. It was another distinctly odd sensation to feel from a mind. 'Not the question I would have asked.'

'Ruby is Ruby.'

"If you would like to call it that, yes."

That seemed to break her out of her shell a little, because she smiled. It was weak – tentative – but it was something. "Well, my friends call me Ruby."

Ozpin smiled wryly. "Ruby it is then."

"Yang is still mad at you."

Their eyebrow quirked.

"Indeed, and I don't believe I've forgiven her for the 'bastard' remark – my mother was a wonderful woman, and happily married."

"Uncle Qrow's drinking's been getting worse."

"Neither I nor Oscar have forgiven him that right cross… and shan't until he pulls himself out of his despair enough that he apologizes himself. Oscar can speak for himself on the matter."

"I still don't trust you entirely, even though I want to."

"I don't believe I shall ever forget what you made me go through, at least not for a long while… but hindsight truly is crystal clear."

Ruby let out a laugh, hugging herself. "Dust… I've made so many mistakes…"

"The Leviathan was a particularly impressive fuckup, if you'll pardon my language."

Her arms tightened. "I was only thinking about getting to Atlas…"

"Tunnel vision," Ozpin remarked clinically. Oscar marveled – he was so… casual about it. About all of these terrible things. The lightness in his spirit refused to be dampened. "It's a trap even the best fall into. Huntress you are, you were trained to work with goals in mind. If things had been different, Glynda would be working you to the bone even as we speak on repercussions, law, and the more mundane skills to learn. Like critical thinking."

Ruby groaned, burying her head in her hands.

"Now now, Ruby. You managed to clean up after yourself, and only a few people were hurt."

"The gryphon pack grounded three of the Argussian airships and thirteen people were injured," she muttered.

"And a steeple," Ozpin threw in flippantly. "Never forget infrastructure damage – Glynda was always on me about the migraine of paperwork involved in that." He folded their hands. "Indeed, your failure endangered countless lives and might have had grievous repercussions… but such is the life you have chosen to lead. Entrusted with the lives of Remnant, your mistakes will cost many more as the years go on. The trick of it all is to reduce the mistakes, and ensure that those that are, for the most part, preventable, do not occur."

"How can you be so… casual! About this?!" The bewilderment was back.

But Ozpin had an answer for her – one that drew on some of the darker clouds in the morass of his soul. They had just the slightest hint of sharpness, self-loathing. Some irony. "Because I vividly remember a time not so long ago that my lack of foresight and passivity cost me my home, my school, and thousands of people their lives. Even after thousands of years the simplest mistakes to make are made, and there is little to do about it save to pick yourself up, do your best to ensure it never happens again, and move on. Such is life."

Ruby laughed into her hands, a sound suspiciously close to a sob, and Ozpin patted her gently on the shoulder. Thankfully, she didn't dissolve back into tears and her moment passed.

"Will you come back after this?"

"I will to meet with James… I don't believe that Qrow is up to the challenge of countering James' ego… nor his paranoia."

"But what about… us? The group?"

"I…" Ozpin paused, eyes flickering down. "In time. A few days isn't very long. It speaks to your character that you are willing to forgive so quickly… I am not so… inclined."

'What happened to the 'no grudges' thing?' Oscar asked.

'You'll find that there's a difference when the other party actually feels remorse for their misdeeds. I don't like grudges… but I am not a saint.'

Ruby straightened up. In spite of the exhaustion clinging to her frame, she looked more like her normal self than she had all day. "I'll talk to them," she said resolutely. "Yang is angry… she'll be angry for a long time. So will Jaune… Blake will listen, I think. So will Ren. They can help me with the others."

Curiosity.

"And Miss Schnee?"

"I don't know about Weiss…" a shadow passed across her face. "Being in Atlas is hard for her, she's scared her dad will come after her when he hears about her being here. I don't want to push again…"

'Ah.' Ozpin hummed. "Give it time. Impatience got you into this mess, patience will, hopefully, be the cure. I appreciate your effort all the same." To both his and Oscar's surprise, he meant it.

"Thank you, Ozpin."

"Thank you, Ruby."

If you enjoyed, please leave a review. They inspire me to write more.