Chapter 98: Schnee
Weiss opened her eyes slowly, thankful that she finally caught the habit of waking without needing an alarm clock. Waking up so early to such a cacophony would no doubt sour her mood. Stretching out on her bed, she realized that it was not her turn to make breakfast, meaning that she was supposed to still have at least an hour of sleep if not for her brother's laziness. And so, she decided to remind Whitley that today it was his turn to get up early and make breakfast… In the most family-friendly way possible, of course.
Which, in this particular case, meant smacking her small heel into the bed above her, where Whitley was still sleeping peacefully. Not hard enough to cause some actual damage, but enough to cause him to wake up and move sideways to look at her with his early-morning grogginess and stare at Weiss with mute irritation. Weiss smiles cheekily in response, as if to taunt her younger brother to do something about her early wake-up call.
Whitley, however, instead of reacting, having weighed the pros and cons, decided not to. Namely, the fact that Weiss was going to Beacon and Whitley himself was barely in the middle of the pack in his class at Future Hunters Preparatory School, Signal. And that was almost solely due to his academic grades, a physical altercation between them would only end in one, very emasculating way.
Whitley jerked his head irritably, letting Weiss know that he knew he had to get up at this point, but would be as slow as possible, as he descended from his top bunk.
It wasn't the end of the wordless telepathic communication between brother and sister, though. Just as Weiss was getting ready to fall back into slumber, Whitley's prying poke at her side made Weiss flinch and turn sharply to her brother. At which Whitley just grinned evilly and said the first words of the morning between the two siblings.
"Get up, you're going to clean and cut the vegetables… Or I won't tell you where I hid your chocolate stash."
At these words, Weiss frowned momentarily, and then involuntarily glanced at the nightstand beside her, her hiding spot for her stash, causing Whitley to grin sinisterly. Weiss, however, instantly glanced back at him, frowning, "You wouldn't dare…"
"I had to defend myself somehow after you strangely started winning every round of rock-paper-scissors during our decisions about who would cook… And anyway, my dear sister, haven't you been talking about how you just need to lose a few kilos? Under the circumstances, I've done the good deed of saving you from the temptation of chocolate. Aren't I such a good brother?"
Whitley grinned, knowing that he had once again beaten his sister to the punch. Not only that, but cooking was almost entirely his daily task as it is, getting up an hour and a half or two hours before everyone else every day. And so, as people said, 'misery loves company', and if Whitley has to wake up early, so does her sister.
Weiss, however, only let out the growl of a wounded animal before rolling her eyes, sighing before beginning to slowly rise from the bed, deciding to visit his brother's betrayal on another time. "I need to go take a shower."
"And you're not the only one. Don't worry, sis, I won't hog all the hot water!" Whitley shouted back at Weiss. Before he, calmly, deftly dodged a pillow thrown at him as he made his way out of the room. Leaving Weiss alone with the sound of his retreating footsteps and the annoyance that Whitley had managed to get to the bathroom first. Weiss, who was losing the battle with her sleep at the moment, especially worried about the fate of her stash, collapsed irritably back onto her bed.
Whitley would shower quickly, of course, but how much better it would be if her house had another shower room!
Weiss exhaled irritably as she plopped her head down on the pillow, exhaling once more, this time a little less irritated…
A second shower room, ha! It was a thought that would be very alien if they were still staying in the Schnee manor, and not where they are now.
Weiss's gaze moved to Whitley's bed above her, and why it had occurred to her to ask for bunk beds. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea, Weiss hadn't realized just how uncomfortable it was to have her brother constantly hanging over her head. Nor just how much of an annoying little prick Whitley really was!
Though in her defense, back then, when the Schnee first moved into this house, woefully smaller than their house in Atlas, Weiss had barely known Whitley at all…
It wasn't really a surprise, when Weiss had lived in Atlas, she'd hardly seen Whitley more than once a week, maybe even less than that… Weiss as a whole didn't remember her life in Atlas all that well.
To say as to why that was, was rather difficult. Whether the problem was that she was simply too young in those times, or that she didn't want to remember such things and simply forgot about what had happened? Weiss wasn't sure about that. But on the other hand, she didn't care.
Sometimes, extremely rarely, but sometimes, memories from her childhood would surface, random flashes of the past, in dreams or randomly surfacing memories, only to disappear again. Most were of indistinct screams, her father's face, the holidays, flashes of lights, photographs, uncomfortable dresses, silverware… Weiss could, with some effort, recall, probably, a memory when she was five, maybe a little further back, but not too clearly.
She remembered the flickering figures of some people, Weiss couldn't remember their names, but she remembered that they were important people, very important. She had known at the time that she was someone influential, but she had not known why or how that had happened. Her memories were when she was more interested in the colors, the butler's funny mustache… And her older sister, Winter.
So when her father suddenly stopped coming home at some point, Weiss didn't even notice it. It wasn't unusual for her father to not interact with her for days, he usually showed up once a week or even less often for dinner, and Weiss couldn't remember ever having a conversation with him in her past. In fact, she has more memories about her butler than with her family.
Willow always preferred to spend her time in her room or the garden, drinking. Nothing has changed now either, actually. Well, minus the drinking, thankfully. And Winter had gone to Beacon, not that Weiss where she had gone back then, only that she started seeing her sister barely twice a year. So when the destruction of the Schnee trading empire had begun, when Jacques Schnee had been taken into custody and sent to prison for attempting a coup d'état in Atlas, Weiss didn't even notice.
Nothing had changed for her after all.
It took years for Weiss to finally realize that something unusual had happened, that her great wealth was not common at all. The first inklings had started to appear back when she first encountered private teachers and instructors when she was eight, when she first interacted with the outside world more, if only through the books and the lessons.
Encountering the world outside of her home, her outings to shop in Atlas doesn't count, she barely did anything then, she had started wondering if the situation in her mansion was normal. The letters from Winter in turn had also made her think, for the first time, that perhaps — not all of Remnant lived the same way she did?
But it was too difficult for an eight-year-old to make sense of the complex and convoluted system of political and societal issues, the conflict between the haves and the have-nots. When she'd first moved to Vale, she'd been shocked at how small Winter's house was. And that was despite the fact that, as she had learned later, Winter's house was considerably larger than average due to her earnings as a Beacon teacher and the need to provide living space for her younger sister and brother.
So, how should anyone expect the same 8-year-old to understand the coup, or how the Schnee's business empire fits into Mantle's revolutionary sentiments. Nor what it meant to finally 'settle the Jacques Schnee question'.
No, Weiss was not a stupid child, anybody who says such a thing would be on the pointy end of her rapier. When the situation began to heat up in Atlas, Weiss knew, how could she miss it? She could tell from the small and extraneous facts around her, the atmosphere itself seemed to be charged with tension. But suspicion couldn't save her from shock the moment Winter showed up at Schnee Manor and announced that Weiss and Whitley were to travel with her to Vale. That they had to leave for their safety.
It was even harder for her to understand and accept the concept of a 'refugee'.
Just one day, suddenly, Winter announced the urgent need to pack a bag full of personal belongings and essentials, and go with her. By then, Weiss was already aware that what was happening in Atlas at the moment had little to do with the norms of normalcy. Even though she was only ten years old, she already knew that the constant patrols of uniformed soldiers and armored vehicles outside her window meant nothing good to Weiss.
But even so, the moment Winter appeared on the doorstep of the manor, fully armed, had been a surprise to her.
When Weiss tried to resist her older sister's demand, refused to pack until Winter explained to her exactly what was happening at the moment and where exactly Weiss was going, Winter didn't waste time explaining. Instead, Winter's semblance restrained Weiss, whereupon she found herself in a private Bullhead, all strapped into her seat with Whitley sitting across from her. Winter appeared a couple of minutes later and quickly skirted into the cockpit. Willow's absence was very conspicuous.
And they left Atlas – without warning, a goodbye, with a couple of suitcases in the boot, a fortnight before Glenn had led the troops into Mantle and Atlas, leaving Willow at the mansion along with Klein.
Winter had later told Weiss what had happened, how she had tried to evacuate Willow, but the latter had been so drunk that she had simply refused to follow her daughter. Or maybe she had been so drunk that she hadn't been able to recognize the Winter? Or maybe she just wanted to stay… The mansion might be Weiss' home for 10 years, but it was Willow's for much longer, she at least found it much easier to abandon her children than her house.
The Schnee's three children had escaped from Atlas just days before the powder keg exploded, burying hundreds of people underneath, burning under the fire of revolution. For what it mattered, the fact that only a hundred people had died, instead of an even more horrifying tragedy, was a miracle in and of itself.
A miracle that Jonathan Goodman had accomplished.
Jonathan Goodman, huh…
The sound of the shower, the background noise to her recollecting her past, finally stopped, Whitley had already finished with his shower. The fact caused Weiss to rise with a mirthless groan from her bed, she could no longer procrastinate. If she was going to keep on napping, she was going to have to forget about the stolen stash of chocolate, Whitley wasn't exactly throwing empty threats around.
Besides, Weiss knew the good times could only last a while, already, she'd dumped all the chores on Whitley for three weeks. Now it was time for the status quo to return, her idea to use Aura to boost her reflex to cheat on rock, paper, scissors had run its course. Too bad she couldn't think of another game to cheat her chores with school coming soon.
Weiss staggered out of the room, her legs having not fully woke up. Then, in complete defiance of all the etiquette she'd learned during her childhood in Atlas, yawned in full force as she walked past the barely dressed Whitley fresh from the shower. He squawked in surprise as he quickly pulled the towel off of his head to cover himself.
Passing her fuming brother, who hurried past her, slamming the door in his passing, one that Weiss ignored with practice, she entered the shower cubicle, her thought still on the man of miracles.
Jonathan Goodman. The man who had been both the reason for the recent meteoric rise, and the demise of Schnee's empire. The man who had saved her mother, but had created the conditions for her to be in danger in the first place. The man who destroyed Atlas, but saved so many people, in Glenn, in Mantle, and even in Atlas itself.
An outside observer, that is somehow privy to her thoughts, could say that Weiss had a mixed perception of Jonathan, but that was not the case. In order to judge Jonathan's actions, Weiss had to be at least personally acquainted with him, she was personally experienced with just how the news distorts reality after all. The closest Weiss came to that was Winter's account of how she had once met Jonathan as a child, many years ago, in Atlas, before Jonathan became King of Glenn.
A funny story she might tell her future teammates, or when she has the chance to meet the King, but that was the extent of her interaction with Jonathan. A chance encounter that he must've already forgotten, and one that really doesn't tell Weiss of Jonathan's disposition.
So Weiss could not talk about the person, Jonathan Goodman, only about Jonathan Goodman, the King of Glenn, and the world shake-ups that the latter seems to have brought to Remnant.
And judging him that way, Weiss opinion on him was… Controversial, to say the least.
Weiss was as aware as most of the common facts of Jonathan's reign, how it began, and how he had acted while on the throne. Saving Glenn, destroying the Grimm Super-horde, helping Vacuo, preventing the disaster in Mantle, befriending and helping Menagerie. In general, all those things that presented him in the most favorable of lights. A savior, a protector, a genius of technology on such an inexplicable level that he had managed to single-handedly invent teleportation, and perhaps the greatest medicine to have ever existed. A panacea even, given that it cured virtually any disease.
Weiss, on the other hand, was not part of Jonathan's fan club, given the fact that Jonathan had once faced the Schnee megacorporation head-on, and defeated it. Not the way wars are won, with the enemy defeated, and a flag stuck in the ashes of the enemy's capital, but by manipulating the situation in Atlas and Mantle. By subterfuge and backroom dealings.
First, by effectively removing Weiss's father from power, then getting rid of him, cutting the head off of the Schnee Dust company, before slowly dismembering its limbs, picking up the pieces, scavenging what was left of Grandpa Nicholas' legacy. Jonathan had killed her father and destroyed her grandfather's legacy. The legacy that all of Atlas, that she, had once been proud of.
No, Weiss didn't consider Jonathan her enemy. No desire of suicide by natural means aside, memories of her father were fuzzy at best, so she can't evoke the feeling of hatred of losing her father to Jonathan's machinations. And even those that Weiss could recall, the occasional dinners or attendance at a formal soirée as a young heiress to a business, none of it had awakened any real love in Weiss. But, Jacques was still her father, estranged or not. What's more pertinent for her feelings about Jonathan, however, was the collapse of the Schnee Dust Company, the legacy of her grandfather's labors. Previously, Remnant's most powerful company, once a symbol not only of financial might but of what just one man in Remnant could achieve, armed with a blade and a belief in a better future… It had all been destroyed.
Weiss didn't curse Jonathan for the fact that she was now sleeping in a bunk bed instead of her private room in a huge mansion. In fact, Weiss even saw it as a blessing of sorts. Before moving to Vale, and to the aforementioned bunk bed, she barely knew anything about Whitley, only seeing her own brother every few days, and barely for an hour at that. After her move to Vale, Weiss had become much closer to him, and to Winter as well…
But what had happened still left its mark on Weiss' perception of Jonathan.
Yes, Jonathan's intervention in Willow's life had saved her from an early death from alcoholism. The last time Weiss had seen her, a few weeks ago, she had even looked like the person that Weiss had once remembered in her vague half-forgotten childhood memories of big warm hugs and lullabies. And that was good. Even if the past couldn't be changed, at least Weiss could look at this strange woman who called herself her mother and was happy that she was well.
She was well enough that building back their relationship didn't seem so farfetched, but…
However, what happened, had happened, nothing could change that fact. She had been without her mother for a decade before Willow finally got herself back together so now…
A knock on the door caused Weiss to shudder, knocking her out of her thoughts. It seemed Whitley had realized that her sister had not started showering, probably thinking that she was trying to welch on helping with the chores.
"Don't bang the door!"
Shaking her head to clear the cobwebs of her thoughts, Weiss finally started on her morning shower.
***
Willow Schnee opened her eyes slowly, with reluctance, yawning at the full force of her jaws before slowly rising from her bed. The habit of waking up early, of many years ago when Willow had been a Huntress. Or, more accurately, a Hunter-in-training in Atlas, since she never completed her schooling, had come back to her after the time she'd spent without alcohol… She supposed it could be said that the withdrawal from alcohol had gradually begun to restore her conditioning.
But to say so would be to seriously underestimate the extent of the problems that had developed in the wake of her excessive drinking.
No, some things were now forever left to her, as an admonishment, as punishment, as consequences of her decisions. Thanks to her training and past health despite the seemingly endless list of ailments she was supposed to have from her excessive libations, Willow barely had health problems. Glenn's medical care played no small part in that, of course.
What once, long ago, would be a permanent illness, for instance her liver that had been turned into a piece of alcohol-mutilated meat began its slow recovery. Along with her kidneys, GI tract, heart, and pancreas, there has been a lot of damage due to her years of heavy drinking, all healing. There was talk that Glenn's miracle medicine was even beginning to repair her nervous system.
Yet no medicine could glue back together her family, personality, and past.
Rising from the bed, Willow slowly made her way to the négligée lying on a chair not far from her. Sure, her estate had emptied out considerably since she remembered it, but that was no reason to travel around naked.
Ever since she could remember, huh....
Ten years in an unbroken bender. Ten years of despair and misery inflicted by Willow Schnee's own hands… A decade of misery, all because her marriage was in shambles.
Willow didn't remember when Weiss said her first word, or when Whitley spelled 'Mum' with awkward childish mistakes. Hadn't seen Winter off on her bullheaded trip to Beacon. Wasn't there when Jacques accused Winter of betrayal and stripped her of her heiress status. Wasn't there when Jacques was arrested for attempted treason.
Willow had missed even the revolution in Mantle.
Missed the moment when roadblocks were set up on the streets of Atlas. Was too drunk to see the explosions outside her window. Even her rescue from the hands of the angry citizens of the kingdom was only due to Raven's intervention, at the behest of Jonathan Goodman… Without his intervention, she doubts that she would be sober enough to know when she's dead.
Willow Schnee was no longer young, not young at all. She may have still possessed the fading beauty of a mature woman, but even the most charming sycophant eager to compliment her could not say she was young, at best, 'well-looking for her years'. A backhanded insult if she'd ever heard one.
And then she went and wasted ten years of her life, a decade had been crossed out in a single moment when she first picked up a bottle. And even Glenn's most miraculous medicine couldn't give her back the past ten years.
Willow made her way to her négligée and put it on, then walked past the mirror without looking in it. She already knew what she looked like in the mirror, deep wrinkles, graying hair and the old tired sadness deep in her eyes… Willow Schnee was who she was now. The person she had become.
With her next steps, Willow made her way out of her bedroom, heading towards the nearest bathroom, bypassing the nearby bathhouse on the way. Willow had absolutely no desire for such a morning activity.
The soft sound of slipper soles was barely perceptible even in the empty, echo-filled corridors of Schnee Manor, but a light shuffle was still noticeable as Willow moved. Step by step, step by step, closer to her goal. Each lightly shuffling step echoed off the walls of the corridors, causing Willow to sink a little more into the pensive atmosphere of the early morning with each step, wondering… Why exactly had she woken up today?
After Willow had come out of her alcoholic coma and was able to look at the world soberly for the first time, so many things had changed in the world around her, she'd almost failed to recognize it.
Jacques, her husband, had disappeared years ago, for official reasons of course, incarcerated for criminal charges. The moment he disappeared had been the perfect moment for Willow to wake up from her slumber, pull herself together and claim the entire Schnee Dust Corporation back…
Only she didn't.
Willow wasn't even coherent enough to know of Jacques' disappearance the moment a few Atlas Specialists took him away from the house. Instead, she chose to pour herself some tequila from Vacuo. It seemed to be a pattern with her.
When the Schnee Dust Company, her company, her father's legacy, began to be torn apart, she was busy tasting Vale's finest cognac. And when Winter visited, pleading, trying to convince her to run away from Atlas, Willow was busy trying to recover from the hangover she got from the sake from Mistral.
When Glenn came, when the Revolution started, and even when the hordes of Grimm came, it all flew past Willow's perception. Until one day Glenn's army, RATS in fact, sent her to compulsory treatment for alcoholism.
Ten years of alcohol abuse couldn't end because of a couple of days of abstinence, of course not. Months of rehabilitation, of treatment, it was painful, but gradually, as the worst reactions of her body and psyche began to recede, gradually Willow began to come back to herself. Her mind, her curiosity, her desire to make up for lost time…
It was all too late.
Not for everything, thankfully. As her mind started to recover, Willow slowly recounted just what is it she had missed in her binges, but by the time she did come to her senses, many things could no longer be changed.
Her family was gone. Dissolved like fine morning mist, as if they had never existed. Willow could remember the moment when Winter had tried to convince her to evacuate, but as Willow remembered it, she had been drunk as usual that night, and Winter had stopped trying. Her daughter knew that her mother was long gone by that point, and she had two younger siblings to save.
Willow held no grudge against her daughter. In those conditions, even Willow herself would have left herself at Schnee Manor.
Her family had moved to Vale, and she herself, when she came to her senses… Suddenly she realized that her situation had not changed so dramatically.
Reaching the bathroom, Willow stepped inside, then made her way to the standing bathtub, opening the tap and, finding the right temperature, clogged the drain, causing the tub to fill up. On her own, Willow walked over to the sink next to her and began brushing her teeth, her morning self-care ritual.
When Willow came to her senses finally, Atlas was destroyed, the SDC was destroyed and the Schnee family was also destroyed. Although, could it be said, all three of those things listed had been destroyed for a long time, it was just that the final moment of the long sunset had arrived, the final nail in the coffin.
And when Willow was allowed to return to her mansion, still under the doctor's care, but no longer restrained in her room… Willow suddenly realized that the mansion, restored to its previous pristine condition, meant nothing. Had nothing in this life.
The SDC had been destroyed long ago, in fact, her mansion and residence had been provided by the government's appointed maintenance. In the past, it had been done after the destruction of Schnee's megacorporation to legitimize the state takeover of Remnant's most powerful financial empire. And even after Jonathan's arrival, Willow had remained in the same role.
Even with all that had changed, nothing had changed for Willow. She was still nothing more than a puppet, serving to legitimize Glenn's claim to the Schnee's financial throne. Necessary only to prevent Vale from asserting their own claim with the help of Winter, as the eldest daughter of Jacques Schnee, and Weiss, as the official heiress.
Other than that? Other than that, there was nothing. Willow wasn't allowed to have any real corporate management, no official positions, no way to even get out of Atlas.
At least, that was the way it had been in the past.
Spitting out her toothpaste, Willow made her way back to the bathtub, shutting off the flowing water. Throwing off her négligée, she carefully dipped foot after foot before sinking into the nice warm bath.
Perhaps it might be shocking to hear, but when she first got out of her stupor, she wished for nothing more than to get back to it. Recovering her wits only to discover that the things that had pushed to the grips of alcohol had not changed, if not actually worse, was not a source of joy for her.
The missing decades, a broken family, and a meaningless existence… Even if Glenn's doctors had succeeded in curing her of her alcoholism, it had only led to a desire to deal with her constant, lingering heartache in a different, far more radical way.
Willow pondered about that thought for a long time. Every time she'd passed her father's old room, her eyes would gaze longingly to where his battle weapons were still kept, as a museum piece. The times she tried sunbathing on the roof, she would place herself precariously close to the edge, looking at the deceptively distant ground beneath her feet. Looking wistfully at the cars passing by the mansion.
Slowly, Glenn's doctors began to leave, satisfied that her physical condition was returning to normal, and Willow made a decision. When the last of them would leave her mansion, when she would have the opportunity, when she could do anything…
She would welcome that abyss once again.
For the first time in an unspeakably long time, Willow allowed herself a small, shy smile as she immersed herself in a deep bath. When Willow had made her decision, the very day she had put on her favorite dress and headed for one final exit from the mansion, by chance Willow had stopped to see a letter arriving at the mansion. A letter addressed to her.
Financial Advisor to the government of the Kingdom of Mantle and Atlas.
The new title and position that the letter that had arrived in her name had bestowed upon her.
Once again, immersed in her own thoughts and misery, Willow didn't notice how the world outside her window had changed. Along with the Glenn doctors, many of the other Glenn personnel began to leave Mantle and Atlas, soldiers, officials, industrialists. Of course, some remained, those who had managed to establish a family in the new state, or were simply part of the limited military contingent, diplomats and financial advisors. If only to make sure that Atlas didn't plunge into civil war again.
But slowly, Glenn's people, seemingly settled forever in the new territorial acquisition of Remnant's strongest state, began to leave.
It didn't take long, beyond the possible celebrations, for Mantle to instantly be faced by the unpleasant consequences of Glenn's withdrawal from Mantle territory. First and foremost, a power vacuum.
Power is not only endless reports, but primarily the people who receive and compile them, and along with Glenn, those who were in charge of them began to leave. Because of which, Mantle and Atlas had to urgently search for those who would be ready to take the vacated places. Former leaders of individual cells of the Mantle Liberation Front, retired Atlas military men… And Willow Schnee. The closest thing Atlas had to a financial administrator.
Willow didn't know what was funnier, the fact that someone had seriously suggested that she could hold such a position, or the fact that she had agreed to it.
And so, Willow Schnee had returned to the political arena, so many years after she had fled it, preferring the bottle…
At some point, people started appearing around her, half-forgotten old acquaintances, survivors of the change of power in Atlas, barely familiar names from the past.
And at some other point, she received an offer from Glenn, directly from Jonathan Goodman, to slowly rehabilitate her company's name and restore her father's inheritance lost through years of dirty dealings.
The man who had turned her into a puppet was determined to turn her back into the head of the Schnee's mega-corporation.
And gradually, the long, monotonous labor of an army of consultants, economists, and lawyers began, a tangled bureaucratic trail of acquisitions, shifts, decrees, and raids. At a time of gradual decline in Willow's life, she could see her father's legacy slowly being restored. A legacy that she thought was lost because of her own decisions.
And then, one day, a distracted Willow, who had left her past plan of a final walk through Atlas on the furthest shelf of her mind, received another letter from…
Winter. Her daughter.
The letter was drenched in awkwardness, awkward congratulations on her new position, awkward wishes for her health, awkward questions about her condition… Then there was the awkward conversation. Then an awkward visit to the mansion. And an awkward return visit to Winter's house. The meeting with Weiss and Whitley…
It was all terribly awkward. So awkward that Willow wanted to fall through the ground.
But she would never give it up.
After enjoying her bath for a while, Willow went up to the shampoo, gel, scrub, mask standing next to her and began the long work of her daily grooming routine.
Perhaps Willow Schnee was old and past her prime, but even so, now, she had found reasons to prepare herself for each future day that awaited her.
Because despite all the years that had passed, even years later, at the sunset of her life, Willow found a reason to look forward to each new day. Who knows?
Maybe, no matter how hard the Willow of the past had tried, maybe she hadn't yet destroyed all the good things that could await her in each new day.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone