Chapter Text
Arcadia sighs as she walks through the black portal, returning from yet another mission for Salem rubbing her neck only to see Summer shaking her head as she steps out of Cinders room to see the queen of the Grimm herself standing outside the room.
It’s been three weeks since she had saved Cinder and brought her back to Evernight castle, and since then she hadn’t come out of her room, but Arcadia thanked eternity that she was at least eating, as evidenced by the empty trays of food Summer brought out of the room.
Arcadia had convinced Salem to let Summer take point in getting the teenager to open up but much to Arcadia's surprise Summer has had no luck in getting her to open up.
“Any luck?” Salem asks, her voice cold and unattached.
“Unfortunately no she remains as quiet as the day Arcadia brought her” Summer says with a frown.
Salem then turns her head to face Arcadia, “I take it your mission was successful?”
Arcadia nods holding up the hard drive with Atlesian troop deployments.
“A complete success, one hard drive with Atlesian troop and huntsman deployments as requested, General Thea has no idea I stole them” Arcadia says.
“And your secondary objective?”
Arcadia looks down dejectedly, "despite me finding reports that the Glass Unicorn was reported to the Atlesian council General Thea says he never received those reports so I traced it down to a commander Ironwood and determined the reports died with him”
Salem lets out an angry huff, “and let me guess… one of Ozpin's?"
Arcadia replies with a curt nod, “yeah Ozpin is looking to make him head of the Atlesian military when general Thea either dies or retires.”
“Just because this Ironwood knew about the Glass Unicorn doesn’t mean he did nothing about it.”
Salem shakes her head, "You're still very naive miss Rose the real world is much different than you think”
Summer reaches for Sundered Rose, gritting her teeth, “I am not a child! Maybe if you let me leave once in a while I’d know the world better.”
Salem glares down at Summer but before either of them can act or say anything Arcadia gets between the two of them.
“Whoa whoa whoa both of you knock it off!”
Summer glares at Salem before taking her hand off Sundered Rose and Salem smirks.
“Fine, what'll we do about Cinder? She can’t stay in her room forever... Plus from the one or two times she has spoken I can tell she has a lot of anger within her if she doesn't find an outlet for that anger I'm worried about the consequences.”
“Well you two better figure it out because if you can’t make some headway with her...”
“No! You are not wiping her mind!” Arcadia yells, “And we are definitely not dumping her back on the streets. This is you chance to be a mother again Salem, or at least a mother figure”
The air is still but charged with anger then suddenly pain erupts up Arcadia's spine, forcing Arcadia to drop to the floor and scream in pain as Salem triggers Arcadia's loyalty mark.
“Salem! Stop!” Summer yells her heart clenching as the woman she once loved... still loves? Writhes on the ground in pain.
Salem just glares down at Arcadia before she takes a deep breath and deactivates Arcadia's mark and turns away.
“Do you have a plan?” Salem asks.
Arcadia pants and shifts to one knee as she struggles to stand back up.
“Yes but I need to bring an outsider here. She knows about you and I work for you and out of everyone I can think of she's the only one who might be able to get through to her.” Arcadia states.
“Who is this outsider?” Salem asks.
Arcadia takes a deep, hesitant breath.
“My sister”
Vale
2:32 PM
Arcadia steps out of the alley down the street from her sister's bakery and looks around making sure n o one saw her before stepping out of the alley and starts heading towards the bakery.
She steps into the busy bakery and walks behind the counter, tipping her hat at the cashier before walking into the back.
There’s four faunus working in the back, a goat, horse, Rhino and a squirrel all of whom are deep into their work. Arcadia scans the room for her sister before the squirrel faunus notices her.
“Oh Miss Silvea! It's lovely to see you, are you here for your sister?”
Arcadia nods, “Yeah it's wonderful to see you Helen, my sister in the office?”
The squirrel faunus nods before handing Arcadia a fresh chocolate chip cookie cookie off the tray that was cooling.
“Yeah she went in to take a break about fifteen minutes ago”
“Arcadia takes a bite of the cookie, “mmm thanks Helen”
Arcadia walks back to the office and opens the door without knocking.
“Hey sis I need....” Her voice falters when she walks in.
Sitting on the desk is her sister Mia, eyes wide staring at Acadia and standing in front of her, is someone with a lithe feminine body whose height is about 6’1” about four inches taller than Mia, they have a soft face which is currently as red as a tomato as their golden eyes stare at Arcadia. They have brown hair in a sleek comb-Over side part style.
It is very clear ARcadia had walked in on the two of them
“Oooh... A-arcadia y-you should’ve...” Mia starts to say.
BANG
Arcadia takes a deep breath after slamming the door shut before whispering to herself.
“Well it appears she's dating again.”
After a minute the door opens from inside and Mia stands there, where white fox ears flat against her head in embarrassment.
“C-come in sis” She says.
Arcadia steps into the office as Mia closes the door behind her and chuckles softly.
“S-so this is Ari Nedal m-my partner, Ari this is my sister Arcadia” Mia says nervously.
“Wow okay she wasn’t kidding when she said you were a giant” Ari says
“She called you partner so I’m guessing they/them pronouns?” Arcadia asks sharply with a protective glare.
Ari returns the glare which catches Arcadia off guard for a second.
“Yes I’m non binary, you must be the trans sister she’s told me about.”
Arcadia steps closer to Ari and glares down at them and Ari actually returns the glare and after glaring at each other for about five minutes they both smirk.
“Hunter?” Arcadia asks.
“Nope”
“Okay...Parents are Huntsman”
“Yep”
“Eyes too soft for the military, too hard for the police... Private security?”
“Nope”
“Hmmm civilian then?”
“Yep”
Arcadia looks Ari up and down.. Then it hits her.
“Lawyer”
“Yep, what kind?”
“Too hard for civil disputes, too confident for criminals....” Arcadia looks at her sister and sees her tail wagging slowly and gets an idea, “Hmmmm Faunus civil rights lawyer”
Ari nods, “Correct”
Arcadia puts a hand on her revolvers, “I’m guessing it’d be a bad idea to threaten you?”
Ari shrugs, glaring challengingly up at Arcadia, “Maybe you should find out?”
The room is silent before Arcadia lets out a soft laugh, “I think I’ll like you... but” Sher grabs Ari by the collar and lifts them up against the wall, “If you hurt her... no one will find your body... got it?”
Ari doesn’t struggle and just rolls their eyes, “Understood and Arcadia drops them.
“I should get going, gotta pick up the kids from my mom Love ya babe,” They kiss Mia's cheek before walking out of the office.
Arcadia closes the door behind them and looks at her big sister, “Really? How long has that been going on?”
Mia just rolls her eyes, her tail swaying idly behind her, “What do you want lil pup?”
Arcadia sighs at the nickname, “To put it frankly... we need your help”
Mia turns back to the desk and begins straightening papers on it, “Sure, lemme guess Rhea and Tan want another batch of cookies?”
Arcadia clears her throat before clarifying, “No they’re on admission in the mountains of Atlas.... WE need your help”
Mia stops what she’s doing before her ears flatten on her head, “What do you need my help with... I’m not a huntress. Just a baker.”
Arcadia takes a deep breath, “Yes and that's why we need you”
Arcadia then explains Cinder and her situation as Mia listens with a concerned look on her face. When Arcadia is done explaining Mia has a determined and protective look on her face and she starts growling and involuntarily gekking.
“You’re hunting the bastards who enabled her treatment, correct?” Mia asks.
Arcadia nods, “Of course... but you’re our best hope, you can break through to teenagers better than I can, better than Summer time, and most certainly better than SHE can”
Mia ponders for a minute before pushing past her sister, “Give me an hour to prep”
“Wait, you're coming today?” Arcadia asks\.
“She needs help and what better to help with ones emotions than junk food” Mia says walking into the kitchen and walking up to the squirrel faunus, “Helen I need a variety pack of cookies”
“Okay, any specific ones you want?” She asks.
“Surprise me” Mia says before walking over to the the Rhino faunus, “Ade, i’m gonna be stepping out probably for the rest of the day, you’re in charge and make sure you lock up after you close”
“Yes ma’am” The Rhino says.
A minute later Helen hands Mia a box of cookies, “Good luck Miss Silvea”
Mia smiles and nods and follows Arcadia out the back of the store into the alley.
Arcadia looks around and once she confirms they were alone she sends a mental message to Salem and a black portal opens, startling Mia but she steps through.
As soon as she steps through it feels like her body temperature drops to zeo as she's met by her sisters... boss.
“You must be Mia,” Salem says with a cold tone.
“Y-yes ma’am”
“And you’re aware of who I am?”
“You’re the queen of the Grimm” Mia answers.
“Good and you know what’ll happen if you reveal anything you see here to anyone else?”
“Yes the Grimm will devour me”
“Good as long as you’re aware...” Salem starts to walk away before looking back at her, her eyes almost soft, “Good luck”
Arcadia glances over to Summer as both of their eyes widen before Mia turns to Summer.
“Its good to see you again Summer" She gives Summer a one armed hug which Summer returns with a small smile.
“Its good to see you again Mia”
Mia maintains the hug for a moment before letting go, “So... where’s Cinder?
Cinder is sitting on the bed in the room she had been given, her knees pulled up to her chest the same thoughts kept running through her head, as they had these past three weeks, these people weren’t being nice they were just waiting, just waiting to use her just like Madame had. The SIlver one had removed the shock collar but she knew it wouldn’t be long before it was slapped back on her. Or maybe it would be the brown haired one that would do it, they were both professional huntsmen. If she tried to fight back against them then she’d just end up dead... maybe that would be better.
Her thoughts are interrupted by a knock at her door which causes her to pull her knees tighter to her chest.
Another knock but this time an unfamiliar voice speaks, its not Arcadia or Summer, or even the third mysterious woman that lived in this palace, but someone who has a softer voice than the three of them... one that actually sounded like she cared.
“Come in” She whispers against her better judgement.
She thinks the new person doesn’t hear her but then her door opens and in walks a rather short fox faunus with white ears and a white tail.
“Hi Cinder... I’m Mia, I’m Arcadia's older sister.” The faunus says holding a silver box.
Cinder's eyes widen and she slowly backs away from the box... assuming its time for a new collar.
Mia recognizes Cinders panic towards the box and she quickly lowers it and opens it, revealing various types of cookies.
“Hey hey hey its okay, they're just cookies” Mia says setting the box down close to Cinder, “Have as many as you want. May I sit?”
Cinder looks at Mia who is gesturing to the end of the bed the furthest away from CInder. Again against her better judgment she nods and Mia sits down.
They both sit in silence for a few minutes before Cinder speaks up quietly, “Why are you still here?”
Mia looks at her and smiles at her softly, “Because, I’m here if you want to talk”
Cinder scoffs, “Clearly the others didn’t get the message. I don’t want to fucking talk to people who are just gonna use me like Madam did!”
Mia's smile fades as she looks at Cinder, “Is...Is that what you think they... we’re gonna do?”
Cinder looks at her with a sneer, “That’s what everyone that's ever tried to “Help” has done, just use me and throw me away”
Mia just looks stunned for a moment before she looks down, “I know how that feels.”
Cinder's sneer disappears, “What?”
Mia gives her a soft smile, “Me and my sister.... For the first fourteen years of my life and ten years of hers we were raised in Vacuo, to a gunslinger and a huntress, we had older fraternal twin siblings. But when I was 14 and Arcadia had just turned ten our family died.”
Cinder listens intently as she steals a cookie while Mia looks away.
“First it was our dad, then our mom a week later, two weeks after that the twins both disappeared and haven’t been seen or heard from since so we’ve both accepted they’re dead.” Mia picks at her fingernails as she hears Cinder slowly chewing a cookie, “Our parents left us a bit of money so I decided to move us to Vale before the government could separate us”
Mia glances back at the cookie box and sees another cookie missing and she smiles softly.
“With the money our parents left us I managed to get us small apartments on the outskirts of Vale, using a bit more of the money I managed to get us forged documents so Arcadia could go to school in the city and I could get a job. But two years after we moved we fell behind with money and we were about to get kicked out. Arcadia offered to do odd jobs around the city to help but back then finding a job for a faunus was hard enough, it sure was for me so I didn't want her to go through that until she was older”
Cinder finishes the second cookie she “stole”, “So what did you do?”
Mia takes a deep breath as her ears flatten against her head and her tail poofs up.
Cinder sees this and offers Mia a cookie she just grabbed, “You don’t have to say anymore” Cinder offers politely but she secretly hopes she continues.
Mia smiles and takes the cookie, an oatmeal raisin one, “Thanks... Back then things were very different for faunus, we had just started getting rights but there was still a lot we were barred from doing. But one thing that hasn’t changed.... Is the fetishization of certain types of faunus. Fox faunus’s for example”
Cinder's eyes widened, “You....”
Mia nods, “I prostituted myself at 16 just to ensure my sister would still have a roof over her head and a full belly when she went to sleep”
Cinder just stares at her in shock while Mia slowly eats her cookie, “H-how did it finally stop?”
Mia laughs, “when she was 17 My sister got into Beacon after a pack of beowulfs managed to get into our neighborhood and the only huntsman to show up was a Vacuoan gunslinger. Unfortunately he fell... and Arcadia didn’t hesitate, she grabbed his weapons and fought until three more huntsmen showed up, one of them was the headmaster of Beacon Academy and he personally invited her. And suddenly we were in a better apartment, paid for by the academy so I could focus on my main job and I didn’t have to sleep with anyone.”
Cinder grabs another cookie and takes a bite, “Does your sister know about your past?”
Mia shakes her head as she finishes her cookie, “No... well I hope I did my very best to hide it from her, and if she does know she hasn’t said anything”
Cinder finishes the cookie, “But how does this relate to you knowing what being used is like?”
Mia's smile fades, "Seven times, seven times men promised me they’d help me and Arcadia get out of our situation, but once they’d grow bored of me they’d ghost me and leave me heart broken. But eventually I stopped believing them, those men shattered my trust.”
Cinder clenches her fists at her side, “How did you learn to trust again?”
“It took years. I am thirty nine, I have not prostituted myself for over almost a decade and I only managed to trust someone enough to date them a few months ago.” Mia says nibbling on a cookie, “What I’m really trying to say is once someone has betrayed your trust, it becomes hard to ever give a stranger your trust again.”
Cinder looks at Mia before taking a deep breath, “I never knew my parents. They died before I could remember them and I was raised in an orphanage in Mistral”
Mia listens intently, not wanting to interrupt Cinder and have her shut her out again.
“I spent ten years in that orphanage, most of it I spent getting bullied and abused. The guardians made it clear I was just a burden to them. So when madame showed up and said she wanted to adopt me, I was excited that I actually felt wanted but when we got to Atlas, things changed she put that on me” She nods to the dresser where the deactivated shock collar sits, “And told me I had to do all the cleaning and maintenance of the hotel. It was torture and if I ever disobeyed she’d shock me with the collar.”
Mia's hand clenches into a fist if Cinder hadn’t already killed this Madame, she'd pay a visit to Atlas herself and rip the bitches throat out. But she takes a deep breath as she takes another cookie out of the box and offers it to Cinder who takes it without a second thought.
“It was torture, Madame had two daughters that would constantly torment me. They’d shove me, sully things up on purpose and complain to their mom and she’d always believe them and I’d get shocked.” Cinder takes a free bite of the cookie before continuing, “A year ago a huntsman named Rhodes after he saw when I activated my semblance for the first time, I was scrubbing the floor when the sisters walked across the floor I had just cleaned with muddy shoes andI got so angry I triggered the semblance and all the water on the brush I was holding burst into steam. I was punished severely for that. Rhodes saw the steam explosion and later that night he snuck into the backrooms and found me, we talked and he offered to train me to become a huntress, so for the next year he kept returning to train me... and I'm guessing you were told how it ended.”
Mia just slowly nods, “Yeah my sister filled me in on everything before she brought me here.”
Cinder closes into herself again, pulling her knees back up to her chest.
They both sit in silence for a few minutes before Cinder looks at Mia, “How... How do I learn to trust again?”
Mia reaches up and touches the necklace ARi had given her, “You have to heal from your past traumas first,” She glances at the shock collar on the dresser again before standing up and walking over to the dresser and picking it up like it's a dirty piece of clothing, “I think this would be a good place to start”
Cinder looks at the fox faunus confused, “What do you mean?”
“You should decide whether to destroy it, keep it, or I can talk to Summer to turn it into something new but the first step... is to do something with it” Mia sets the collar down.
Cinder looks down at the bedding, unsure of what to do. “I-I think i’ll take some time to think”
Mia nods, “Take all the time you need” she pulls out a piece of paper and a pen and writes a small not and sets it on the dresser I’m not sure if my sisters gotten you a scroll yet but thats my scroll number, contact me any time and I'll do my best to respond.”
Cinder nod as Mia approaches the door before noticing the box of cookies that they'd eaten half of, “You forgot the cookies”
Mia turns back to her and smiles, "Keep them, I brought them for you after all”
Cinder's eyes widen as she watches Mia leave before looking back down at the half full box of cookies.
Cinder couldn’t trust Mia yet, she just couldn't.
But she for sure wanted to. She wanted to trust all of them.