Chapter 4

James woke up in his bedroom bed.

He was alive. He had returned to the past, despite everything. But that didn't bring him any relief. Why would it? He had lost again. He would have to go through that nightmare again.

He got out of bed, grabbed the lamp on his nightstand, and slammed it against the wall with all his might.

The wild scream of a dying animal escaped him and he hit the wall again with the lamp, which had been bent in half by the force of the first impact. The bulb exploded, scattering shards of glass everywhere.

"What's wrong?" Pyrrha asked, entering the bathroom hurriedly.

When she saw him there, hunched over and clutching the shattered lamp so tightly his knuckles had turned white, she pressed her lips into a thin line.

Ren stared at him with wide eyes. Nora was silent, for once.

Jaune dropped the lamp. What did he think he was going to accomplish with that? He couldn't fill the hole in his heart by smashing things like that.

He had lost control of himself. What he had just done was not something he could explain, nor something they were willing to let go of.

"Jaune?" Pyrrha approached and extended a hand towards him, slowly. Almost as if she were afraid of him. As if she expected him to throw himself at her with the same violence he had shown with the lamp."What's wrong? Talk to me."

He realized he was crying, because everything was blurry.

"Don't come near me! " He shouted, when the hand was about to touch his shoulder.

Pyrrha stepped back. She didn't know how to respond to that, and he didn't blame her. She couldn't understand what had happened to him, because he wasn't the same person she had known. Not anymore. It had been an eternity since he had entered Beacon as leader of Team Juniper.

"Stay away!"

He ran out of the room, staggering as if he were drunk.

He heard her call his name, but he didn't back down.

His thoughts were spinning around in his head, colliding with each other. The broken pieces of those thoughts were stuck deep in his mind.

He wanted to free himself from that inescapable pain.

As if controlled by a will other than his own, his feet carried him to the rooftop. The place where he had almost lost everything he had gained in his first days at the academy. The place he used to go with Pyrrha.

In a way, it was ironic that he had ended up in this place, of all places. If circumstances had been different, he would have laughed.

He approached the edge.

The distance from the roof to the ground wouldn't be enough, of course. At most he would break his neck if he jumped from Beacon to the ground, nothing and no one could save him. It would be a quick, painless end.

Much quicker and painless than if he had continued as before. Afterwards, everything he thought and thought of was useless.

Jaune fell to his knees.

After a moment, or maybe an eternity, someone burst onto the roof. The sound of footsteps. The someone knelt behind him, but didn't touch him or say anything for a while.

Just as he began to think that those sounds had only been in his head, he heard something else "Please tell me what's wrong."

A woman's voice. Pyrrha's voice.

"If you do, I might be able to help you. I'll do everything in my power. I hate seeing you like this, Jaune."

"It wouldn't make sense," he replied, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Why not? Don't you trust me?"

"You wouldn't believe me."

"You can't be sure unless you try.' She put her arms around him and held him close to her. 

"Have faith in me."

"Even Ozpin, with all the years he's lived and all he's seen, finds it hard to believe me. It's useless."

"Ozpin? Does the headmaster know?"

"No. Not this headmaster."

"This headmaster? I don't… understand what you mean. The headmaster of Atlas? He's the one who knows?"

"Pyrrha. You are one of the people I care about the most. You know that, right? So listen to me carefully. You should just go away and leave me to my own devices, because…"

"Never!"She held him tighter "I would never leave you. You… I care about you too. A lot."

"It's not a normal problem, like feeling inadequate or something. Don't you understand that I meant that warning seriously?"

"All the more reason to lend you a hand."

"But…"

"But nothing! Enough! You're not going to dissuade me. I won't move and I won't let you move until you're ready to tell me everything.'

Jaune was stunned. He had never seen Pyrrha like this, even on the verge of death. Really angry, not just being strict.

"I didn't mean it like that," she whispered. Now that she thought about it, she was too close to him. "I'm really scared. I don't know what's going on, but it's obvious you can't face this alone. We're a team, Jaune. We have to stick together."

He closed his eyes.

He may have been right.

He was not a hero, nor had he ever been. He needed others with him to fight his battles. He was no great leader either, but perhaps he could become someone worthy of the role he had been given.

He could put an end to Cinder and her plans, and recover the things he had inadvertently lost along the way.

He had never told Pyrrha. What he knew, he told Ozpin, but never her.

It was a decision full of limitless possibilities. A blank page. It would probably lead to a different death, and not an end, but the hope that burned in his chest with an alarming intensity would not allow him to see reason.

"Okay, I'll talk. But I hope you don't regret it."

"Let's make sure of that later."

"Yeah."

So he opened his mouth and told her everything. As he spoke, the darkness that had been hiding in the crevices of his heart came out of his body. As he spoke, he felt himself coming back to life.

As if he was throwing a spear of hope towards the heavens, hoping it would fly.

[T/N: These are really small huh... maybe I should just finish them all and mass-release them, NAH! Though Jaune's getting some help, hard to think that after how many deaths, he never thought to ask for help from his friends. Anyway, why don't you leave a comment, write a review for this new book, and drop some stones. If you don't know I've got a few good books I'm busy with right now so why not check them out, just go to my profile, or search for the books, Invisible-A Harry Potter FanFic, and A Gamer in Game of Thrones. Or if you want to read some advanced chapters then check out the P@treon, or the Ko-fi.]

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