A Change Of Fate, white trailer
This is a flashback in my RWBY villain au, where when the girls were young they were influenced away from their correct paths and join Salem under the watch of Pastel, an oc of mine. This is the story of how Weiss was pushed over that edge.
Weiss has always known her place, ever since she was young, it'd been ingrained in her mind.
She was a jewel in her families crown.
Stand there, look pretty, stay quiet, make the Schnee family look good, that's all she had to do. Yet it seemed sometimes she could not even manage that.
Others looked at her and admired her pure beauty, listened to her songs and showered her with their praise. All but her own family, the ones she was trying so hard to reach perfection for, offered her kindness.
She had a hair out of place, she was slightly off tempo, those were the criticisms she received instead. No matter how much she wished for a pat on the head, all she got was the cold shoulder. Her mother was almost never without her bottles and a distant gaze, her brother was young but already gazing at the world with eyes that saw only selfish opportunities, her father...
She'd had a butler, Klein, who always made her laugh and cheered her up. She'd loved Klein. He was fired when he talked back to her father after he'd been yelling at her for repeatedly messing up in her dance rehearsal. She hoped he'd found good work somewhere else.
Her sister, Winter, had been the only one to hold her gently, to stroke her hair after a long day of dealing with the adults she was paraded around, and tell her she did a good job. Then, she left, shouted at their father and turned away from her name, joined Ironwood's ranks. A gem cracked and fallen from the crown.
Her father became so much worse, he snapped and barked when she so much as took a step out place. Whitley jeered at her from his shadow.
What had she done wrong? Why couldn't she just play her role right?
She just needed to be perfect, then her father would praise her, mother wouldn't walk through the halls in a drunken daze, Whitley would back off, Winter would come home, and sweet Klein never would have been fired. The reason nothing was right around her was because she was failing her family name. She was a Schnee, and that meant perfection was the minimum requirement for her.
So she paraded herself with not a hair out of place at every ball, sang without a single missed note, she didn't talk back and learned to say the right things at the right time to make everyone happy.
She started to see the hollowness within the praise, she saw greed behind every smile. Their words weren't for her, they were for themselves. If they sucked up to the heiress, then surely it would come back for their gain.
They didn't matter, none of those groveling fools mattered. What mattered were the Schnees, what mattered was that she danced along with her strings and shinned with not a crack in sight until her family recognized her.
Weiss cried herself to sleep every night, the cold loneliness of her home crushing in around her.
She was a Schnee, perfection amongst the filth of society. Perfection did not mess up. Not like she did, that day.
She'd lost track of how many balls she'd attended, at age twelve they were already blending together. She smiled sweetly at some story the business man in front of her was telling, laughing when appropriate. Her father's hand rested on her shoulder, no one noticed his tight grip but Weiss.
The faces blurred together too, she didn't even know who the woman in front of them now was. She wore a soft pink dress, frills like a flower sprouting from her shoulder and wrapping around down to her waist. She wore flowers in her pastel hair as well. Her voice was sweet and sounded like bells, Weiss perked up when she talked. She didn't know why, but she liked this woman more than any of the other people attending.
"So, this is the sweet, young heiress to the Schnee dust company. Well, aren't you just the most precious thing I've ever seen. Look at you, perfect like a little doll."
Weiss giggled and curtsied "Thank you, ma'am." She didn't say anything else, she wasn't supposed to.
"You must be proud to have a daughter as lovely as she is." She addressed her father.
He smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. "Yes, she's my pride and joy; I know this company will one day be in good hands with her."
She laughed and Weiss wanted to lean into her warmth "I'm sure it will be." She looked around at the sparkling ball room "This is a wonderful little party you've thrown here, the Schnee family is truly amazing."
"I appreciate it, miss. We Schnee's pride ourselves on our ability to please the people." He laughed. Weiss wanted to flinch away.
There was a slight commotion somewhere off in the crowd, and her father let a scowl slip onto his face for a moment before it returned to a polite smile. "Excuse me, one moment." He strode into the crowd, people parting to make way for him. Now, Weiss was left just with the nice lady whose sweet perfume made her feel safe.
The lady lowered herself to Weiss's level "I don't believe I actually introduced myself, my name is Pastel."
"It's very nice to meet you." Weiss said.
Pastel smiled "You're a girl of few words, that's okay. You know, the Schnee's truly are amazing. You all look so regal, so above it all, so... Perfect."
Something within Weiss squirmed and clawed at her, but she swallowed it down and just nodded to what Pastel said.
"Oh," she continued, clapping her hands together and her sweet smile growing with excitement "I also heard something so fascinating, is it true your semblances are hereditary?"
"Yes ma'am, though, I've never used mine before." She'd once dreamed of being a huntress, of using her power to help people and do her name proud, but that was just a childish wish, her father had made that clear. Winter had betrayed them all for a stupid dream like that.
"Really? Now that's a shame. A power like that, glyphs to utilize the full potential of dust at your finger tips, and the ability to summon your past foes to your side, think of all you could do."
Weiss didn't want to. The lady didn't feel so safe anymore, but it was like something wrapped around her with each word she said and soothed her unease. "It wouldn't be proper of me, ma'am."
"Yes, that's so important, isn't it? Can't let anything be out of place, outside the mold you were born into. That perfection is in your grasp, then? Of course it is, you're a perfect gem of the Schnee family name, perfect is all you can be."
Weiss could hardly feel the party around her, all the voices seemed muffled, her own breathing and Pastel's melodious voice were the only things her ears could focus on. It felt like Pastel was looking into her very being, that she could see everything within her; every thought, every fear.
She barely registered Pastel reach forward and the weight of something being pressed into her palm.
"Such a shame, don't you think that power deserves to be let out?"
"Don't you think you could be doing so much more than breaking yourself and clawing for all this empty praise?"
"Don't you think, if you're daddy was ever going to acknowledge you, he would have done so by now?"
Everything spun around Weiss, her breathing became hard to control.
Pastels voice was a whisper "Don't restrain yourself for these idiots, let out what screams within you."
Weiss was standing alone amongst the crowd, the pounding in her ears drowning out the mindless chatter of the masses. They were all fools, all of them climbing over each other for a scrap of wealth, a shred of acknowledgement from those around them, from her father. Why? Why was it like this?
She trembled, she couldn't stop it. Her hands came up to her head to clutch her hair, messing up the carefully placed strands. It was too much, she couldn't, she couldn't be here right now.
That thing buried deep within her wriggled, and she couldn't push it down. It tore at her, thrashed about, and it screamed. It screamed so loud it's throat stung in agony. It was the pain that made her realize the screaming wasn't just inside her, that it came out of her own throat, not the imaginary beast's.
There was ice all around her, and for once it wasn't metaphorical. Shocked party guests scrambled away from her, a sea of fearful faces. Amongst them all, like a jagged rock in the waves, was one face twisted in fury.
Her father slammed the door behind them, throwing her to the ground in front of him. He'd dragged her all the way from the ball room to her bedroom, his grip crushing her wrist.
"What, in the name of the gods, was that?" He seethed.
"I-I-I-" she stammered, because she didn't know. Everything felt like a blur now. She'd been taking to someone, hadn't she?
"'I-I-I-' what?" He stalked forward and pulled her up roughly by the forearm "What could you have possibly been thinking? Bringing up a glyph like that in the middle of a party, throwing out a wall of ice!" His hand snatched her wrist again and brought it in front of her face, and only then did she realize she had a shard of ice dust tightly clutched in her fist. That must have been what abled her to bring up such a large amount of ice. How long has she been holding it? "Where were you even hiding this? Did you squirle it away just for the express purpose of humiliating me tonight?!"
"I- I'm sorry, father, please." She was crying now, thick tears gathering at the corners of her eyes and flowing down her cheeks. She tried to stop them, father hated it when she cried, but they were ceaseless.
Her father's face was red, his teeth ground. "Sorry, huh?" He released his grip and she sagged with relief, only to find herself falling to the floor with a sharp sting on her cheek. She looked up at him in shock.
Her father towered above her "You will stay in here and think about what you've done, you brat. You don't deserve the name Schnee, you only bring shame to it!" He spat.
"Pl-Please, father! I'm sorry! I don't know what happened. I'll make it right, I swear. You'll see, I can be perfect just like a Schnee should be. I'll be a daughter you can trust, you said yourself I'm a good heiress, I'll never betray our name!"
"Are you so naive to have thought I could ever actually trust a child like you with my company? You're pathetic." He left her there, then, and the slam of her door was the worst thing she'd ever heard.
She didn't cry anymore, she just hugged her knees to her chest and rocked herself. Truthfully, it felt like the slamming of that door had wiped away all her other emotions and left her with an all encompassing numbness. This house was cold, and she felt every bit of it inside and out. She couldn't say how long she'd stayed like that.
There was a soft tutting behind her, and she slowly turned her face over her shoulder to see a woman in a soft pink dress standing illuminated on her balcony, the moon giant and it's light embracing her gently from behind. She seemed familiar, but Weiss couldn't place it. That night's events had just been too chaotic.
"You poor thing," The woman said "no child deserves to be treated like that by a parent. Especially not one as lovely as you."
"Who are you?" Her voice was weak, she would be surprised if the woman could hear it from across the room.
She smiled "I'm a friend. A friend who wishes to see you thrive away from this place that seeks to stifle you. You seek perfection, do you not? I can help you find it."
"I'm not sure such a thing is possible." She croaked.
"Maybe not here, in this cruel place with those people, but think of how you could shine if you were out in the open. You are so much more than just an accessory in someone else's crown, you are your own glittering centerpiece. That foolish man and his dirty name could never possibly hope to know perfection, but you dear Weiss, you can. Come with me, come meet my benefactor, and you can one day blind these fools with your shinning perfection." The woman walked smoothly across the floor until she reached Weiss, and she crouched and held out a hand with a smile "A princess should never bow for a mere court jester. Come with me, Weiss."
The numbness in Weiss's body remained, but a cold rage bubbled within her, the first emotion she'd felt since she'd been left on the tile. That flicker is what made her not hesitate in grabbing the woman's hand.
There was a blue fire in her eyes, frigid and bright. She was done with the Schnee's, done with this society of tittering morons, and done with their idea of perfection. She'd show them what that word truly meant, and they'd see she was not just some toy for them to pose and manipulate as they pleased.
