The Enlightened Temple of The Juniper Bough Ch. 12

How often had Weiss enviously wished to see action? How many times had she wondered what it’d be like to feel her heart race, every beat thudding with the knowledge that it might be her last, living the thrilling life that Yang and Blake and Ruby described to her?

Well, wish come true.

Weiss would like to have believed she’d proven something in her fight with Jaune, that her ability to keep her cool, to go for her pistol on instinct rather than freezing up, had confirmed that she had that essential element that forever separated a pampered princess from a hardened gang member. But now she just felt stupid. She’d gotten into a fistfight with a captive and had nearly gotten killed for it before Ilia arrived. She had a gun, two guns, and a knife, and yet, he’d been able to overpower her, and even when she got back the upper hand, it had proven all of useless in keeping him when Pyrrha arrived. She’d never been so afraid, and, until Blake found her, she scarcely was able to think above the maddening panic that overtook her.

After that, they had fallen back to the Snowflake. There’d been a tense discussion as to whether or not they should close down for a bit, if it’d be better to have more numbers around them for security or if it would just be dragging innocent people into a fight they never asked for. Yang had been of the opinion that the Juniper Bough had gotten what they wanted, that they were a group concerned with sending a message, and that staying prominent in the Snowflake would meet that message with their own. Blake suggested that they wouldn’t leave the Mistralian Quarter so aggressively, since they had, after all, let the Malachite Gang go even after they’d been driven past Hill Street. They wouldn’t try to kick them while they were down, at least not yet.

Didn’t make it any easier to sleep that night, the four of them alternating between keeping watch and fitfully trying to sleep. Trying to keep their tense energy from reaching the staff, to no avail. By daybreak, Weiss was both exhausted and in the grips of an emotionally turbulent moment. Her mind wandered to flights of fancy, wishing she was still a little girl who’d wake up from this in her bedroom, rising from a nightmare into a world where the biggest problems she had was her voice lessons and how boring Father’s tedious lecture on how this-or-that wasn’t becoming of an heiress.

But that wasn’t her life anymore. This was what she had to deal with, and wishing for things to be different wouldn’t change anything. She lived in a world where she’d been attacked, a world where, if Jaune had gotten the knife instead of her, she would be seriously injured… or worse.

She lived today in the world Yang and Ruby and… and Blake had long since gotten used to.

Sipping bitter coffee, she appreciated its coarseness as she tried to use the beverage as a substitute for sleep. Yang had put some sausages on the fire, and Weiss could hear the sizzle and crackle of fat in the pan, rousing her from her thoughts and putting her back into the world by way of a grumbling stomach. Food would help. Food and time. There’d come a day when she’d marvel that this had been enough to unmake her, but…

It might take a while.

“So,” Ruby unexpectedly cut through the gloom, “Is Pyrrha… allowed to be in love with Jaune? Because you wouldn’t think religious icons-”

“That is what you’re thinking about?” Yang cut in incredulously, “After- after all that, after we escape with our lives from whatever the hell she was, you’re worried about her dating life?”

Ruby threw up her hands defensively. “Well, what else are we supposed to talk about! I just- it’s weird that Pyrrha runs in to get Jaune and starts kissing him!”

That… that had been odd, Weiss had to admit. She threw one glance back to see if she was being pursued, and while the only thing she thought of in that moment was a sense of relief that she wasn’t being chased by a woman who could apparently beat, maybe even kill, her three closest friends… but now that she had time to think about it, it explained a lot about how swift and how… poorly organized their response had been. And how they barely even searched the place or… took them into custody or anything when backup arrived, if it had just been a personal vendetta…

“I’m just saying,” Ruby continued, “we’ve spent all this time spying on them and taking notes and making the board and all those other things, and did anyone know that they were gonna start kissing?”

Weiss realized Yang and Blake both glanced to her at that. She awkwardly shrugged, “I… I suppose we didn’t really… know much about Mr. Arc at all until we had him in our hands. And Ms. Nikos having any… personal affections, that was-”

“We wouldn’t have taken him back home if we knew, that’s for sure,” Yang gruffly cut in, scooping sausages out of the pan and onto a plate. Weiss’s stomach growled at the sight of the greasy links and her mind wanted the reprieve from all this discussion of what she didn’t know. “But who would… who would even expect Pyrrha to be anything like that?”

Blake reached forward to spear a sausage on the end of her fork. “I mean, I didn’t expect it, but...” she took a bite, only to immediately realize it was too hot to eat just yet.

“But because of your books,” Yang teasingly replied before snatching up a greasy sausage with her fingers and popping it in her mouth, heedless to the temperature, “of course you can see the sacred maiden falling for the forbidden fruit of a clergyman.”

Blake snickered, and Weiss felt like a weight had been lifted off all their shoulders as Blake shot back, “Come on, you can’t blame my books, Yang! Wouldn’t you go after the sacred virgin if you had the chance? The ultimate forbidden fruit!”

“Ha!” Yang barked, “If I’d been asked to seduce the Invincible Girl, we’d be in a much better place right now. And hey, if we’re looking into Plan B...”

Ruby shook her head. “Ugh, guys! Gross!”

“Cardin did imply that there was something like that in the theology of the Juniper Bough,” Weiss added, carefully using her fork to spear a plump sausage for herself. “All this talk about Keys and Vessels certainly sounded like there was something… cruder to their rituals. He, at least, seemed to think he’d be involved with the Vessel in… that manner.” Taking a bite of her sausage, Weiss gave herself a moment to savor the way food, even cheap, greasy sausages, had almost infinite value on a hungry stomach before adding, “I… wonder if the Juniper Bough might target him next, or if they knew he was talking to us.”

“Can’t imagine they didn’t,” Blake added, “That they could find my safehouse that fast, they had to know a lot more than what they kept in their archives.”

Weiss just shrugged. “He paid in advance and we covered our end of the bargain, and besides...” she took a moment to ponder things, “I don’t think we’d have even been considered as a possibility unless...”

Shaking her head, Yang chuckled. “You think the Bough went after him first, he talked, and we got fucked by the timing?”

“He didn’t strike me as a man who wouldn’t throw us under the bus if anything happened to him,” Blake dryly added. “Well, with luck, he’s currently learning whatever it is the Juniper Bough does to members who try to back out, and if it isn’t that bad, then maybe we should be thinking of snipping that loose end...”

Weiss paled as Blake glanced to her. She clearly expected Weiss to already have some plan in motion, some way of teaching Cardin what happened when he betrayed the criminals he hired. But Weiss didn’t have a plan. Because she didn’t want to have a plan.

“We… we just suffered a major defeat,” she began, “we’re in no position to do anything about the Juniper Bough and so I thought… we could just...” her voice began to tremble with all the emotion that she’d spent years learning to suppress, “We don’t have to fight this, we can just… leave.”

“Weiss...” Ruby asked, her mind struggling to process her words, “What are you… what are you saying?”

There was no point hiding it. No reason to beat around the bush. “We went up against the Juniper Bough and we lost. They beat us, they know far more than we anticipated and are much better equipped for a fight, and- and- and we don’t have to fight them! They’re the Constabulary’s problem now. We’ve done our best, and you three can accompany me on holiday in Vacuo for the winter. They can’t-”

“If we retreat,” Yang said, enough growl in her voice to show she cared about this, but mostly dropping this as just a matter of fact, “we basically admit we’re weak and can’t even try and fight back. Just roll over and give up. And worse, if we’re rolling over, the Juniper Bough’s got no reason not to send someone to finish the job while we’re at our weakest and running away.”

“If they send Pyrrha again...” Weiss said, matching Yang’s force with some of her own, “it doesn’t matter where we are or what we’ve prepared. We. Can’t. Win. And I don’t think they’ll content themselves with just leaving us unconscious the next time.”

Yang rose up, planting her hands down firmly on the table in a show of physical force. But Weiss wasn’t intimidated. She glared right back until Yang’s bravado broke and she sat back down. But she wasn’t done. In a weary voice, she added, “You think we have a choice here, but we don’t. You can’t show weakness on the streets. You can lose, you can see your turf whittled down to nothing, but you can’t look weak, can’t look like you… like you really think your luck just has to break your way and can take it all back. You’re smart, Weiss, you’re good at figuring out plans and finding people’s secrets, but you can’t do anything in this business unless me and Blake are out gathering rumors from the docks and chatting up former servants. And if they think we’re nothing, they aren’t gonna talk to us. If we back down now… it’s gonna be a long time before we can come back.”

Weiss knew Yang. Knew her well, knew more than the brutish exterior or even her teasing camaraderie showed. And so she knew that it wasn’t just wounded pride in her voice but real concern. A fear as deep as Weiss was feeling right now—but one Yang was far more experienced at suppressing—of the inescapable spiral that lurked behind every successful operation. A sudden injury putting her out of commission, an unexpected setback getting worse and worse as issues compounded, and all the other ways even the strongest could suddenly find their hold on things slip right through their fingers.

“We don’t have to come back,” Weiss said in a small voice, “We… we have money. I could pay you all salaries as… as attendants and we could just… we don’t have to fight to hold on to a corner of a city when we can just leave.”

“You can always leave,” Yang said, undisguised venom in her voice.

“And now I’m offering to help you leave, too.”

A silence settled over the room. Weiss looked around. This had been the room they’d strategized in. Collected information, pitched plans and counter-plans, divvied up the loot of a successful heist or payday. It was the place where Weiss felt more in control than she had ever felt before in her entire life, more free than she ever imagined she could be back in Father’s mansion. She glanced to Ruby, the heart of their team, her keen, silver eyes now darting fretfully between her sister and… and to the small pile of books she’d heaped up, books on agriculture of all things, a new flight of fancy she might actually be able to pursue with her earnings if she cashed out. She glanced to Blake, her hand carefully tracing over the tallymarks she’d carved into the table, each one a sign of their success. Weiss watched her slender, delicate fingers dance across the table until she pulled her eyes away, her mind remembering the flood of emotion when she saw Blake’s face after the battle with Pyrrha.

Yang leaned back in her chair. “We put it to a vote, then,” she growled, “Weiss gets two for her shares-”

“No,” Weiss shook her head, “not by shares. When it comes to our future, we’re all equals here. But… I vote that we fall back. Leave Vale. Take some time to lick our wounds and find a new option for us.”

Yang slowly nodded. “I vote we stay. Rubes?”

Ruby cast her eyes down to the table, but her voice rose with an insistent deliberateness, betraying none of the uncertainty of her body language, as she finally, slowly said, “I’m with Yang. We can’t leave.”

Her answer was terse and there was clearly more she could have said, but Weiss wasn’t going to pry into Ruby’s thinking. Besides, Weiss could take some small relief that she hadn’t put an open wedge between sisters on the issue. It… it really left Blake now, and as Weiss glanced at her friend, she saw that Blake wouldn’t meet her eyes, her fingers still tracing the tally marks on the table. What Weiss wouldn’t give to know what was going on in her mind right now, to know what balance of emotion and feelings were at war within her! Deducing her way through Jaune’s person was nothing compared to trying to make sense of Blake!

“I… I think Weiss has a point,” she said in a shaky voice, “but… I can’t… I can’t endorse running away. Not… not again, not anymore. We stay.”

Weiss gave a long, slow nod. Yang gave her a sympathetic glance—these were hard decisions, but they all cared for each other, even in conflict. “If you want out,” she said, quietly, “none of us would-”

“No,” Weiss shook her head. “If the Ruby Masque is going to stay, then that means I’m staying. We’re… we’re a team, aren’t we?” she gave a weak smile to her comrades, seeing them slowly smile back.

“Hell yeah we are,” Yang chuckled, slapping her fist down on the table with a loud THUMP!

Blake gave Weiss a soft smile, maddeningly unreadable in its contours, as she asked, “So, if we’re staying… what’s the plan?”

It was a touching gesture. A sign to Weiss that even after she suggested something none of them could abide that she was still… still the lady with the plan. And Weiss felt heartened, for the first time since they’d lost, that she still held on to some of her old strengths among her friends. And yet… what was “the plan?” What was there to say when fear of the Juniper Bough’s next move kept her paralyzed with indecision? Their foe could out-think, out-fight, out-reach them so long as they were in Beacon, and so they had to-

“How ‘bout we just see what the Bough does next?” Ruby unexpectedly cut in, a welcome reprieve from the pressure Weiss felt upon her brow, “They’ve got the upper hand, but… but everything with Pyrrha kissing Jaune-”

“You’re not gonna let that go,” Yang chuckled, shaking her head.

Ruby shrugged. “Maybe there’s something to all that?” she ventured, “Maybe… maybe the Bough wasn’t what was really after us? Maybe we just… stole a girl’s boyfriend and she came down to get him back?”

Weiss gave a slow nod. “Actually…” she mused, “There… there might be something to that… I don’t think we’re off the hook, but Ruby does have a point. The attack on the safehouse was definitely disorganized, and I don’t think it was just because they didn’t have their Mastermind on call… maybe this was just an impulsive act, and the Temple will see it more as… a personal matter?”

Stroking her chin, Yang gave Weiss a long, piercing look before asking, “And you think…”

“I don’t know,” Weiss admitted, “But I say we go with Ruby’s plan and just… see what the Temple does next. Fortify our position, force them to make a move outside the Quarter, and see if they’re willing to risk unbalancing themselves going after us. And once they’ve made their move… We’ll decide from there.”

A nod of agreement passed across the table, buoying Weiss’s spirits further to know she had the support of her team. And… and with the way Blake wore that quiet, soft smile on her face, that familiar look of contentment of… of faith in her, it made Weiss really believe she could do this.

LINE BREAK JAUNE

Jaune had been in these cells many times before. He’d even been in this specific cell a couple of times, handling official matters of internal security or interrogating enemies of the Faith. In a weird way, it took away some of the bite of being imprisoned, the curious amusement that came with seeing a familiar place in an unfamiliar way, but in the other sense…

It stung Jaune’s pride to be kept in a cell where he’d once been jailer. A deliberate strategy, for sure, to remind him that he was no longer in a place of honor, that he had been cast down to a place Jaune knew all too well. And knew all too well how these things ended.

The formal crime was Blasphemy. Well, probably. He knew there were charges of Apostasy, Heretical Utterances, and surely a whole litany of crimes on his ledger, but Blasphemy was what, as he understood it, he was formally charged with. Befouling the Vessel was undeniably a blasphemous act, and there were witnesses. Every other charge was just some more drama added to his trial, likely to be conducted in absentia… possibly to even be conducted post mortem if he knew the Elders.

A secretive group, to be sure. Even as one of their most highly-placed servants, Jaune knew little of the men who truly ran the Temple. Some of the Fathers, he knew, had been there from the beginning, and had never truly moved on from the old asceticism that defined the original Path of the Juniper Bough, before it became a Temple. One, as he understood it, was still in Mistral, still living in the old cave complex that had originally housed them, tending to his goats and forsaking the world to contemplate the nature of the universe. He knew those men had no love for him, a symbol of the change that had come upon the Enlightened, a shift towards action rather than contemplation. Jaune hadn’t been the one to make the change; he’d merely grown up with it, but he’d perfected such worldly violence and power, and they hated him for it.

And if they really wished to twist the knife, they’d make…

He shuddered to even think it, but if they really wanted to make him pay, they’d make Pyrrha his executioner. It would confirm her innocence, separate Jaune entirely from the faith, and reinscribe her authority. Casting out temptation like such would be a fine parable that the Sacristans could spin. It was what he would do if he was the one in power, and another had… fallen. But the one comfort Jaune had was that he knew the Elders would move swiftly. If the Fathers hated him, then the Elders feared him. They had always feared him, someone so powerful and influential in the Temple who wasn’t of their circle. He’d done the real work of making the Bough powerful in Beacon, and deep down, they knew he was the source of the success they claimed. They resented him, and now he’d humiliated them, and they would surely move to destroy him swiftly. Which meant that he’d be little more than ashes when they convinced Pyrrha to once again forsake the hold the material world held over her. Her temptation would be gone, reduced to so much dust, and she could only look to the future, to a new world, to creating a place where things like this did not happen.

Jaune wished that it didn’t bring him comfort to imagine it, but… but Pyrrha would be okay. New Sacristans would be appointed to her service, and she would continue on, as brilliant and fearless and perfect as she always was. He was just… a distraction. An unfortunate error that would forever wish he hadn’t put her through this. And Ren and Nora… they’d be alright, too. It’d take a long time, but… but they’d be alright. Too connected to him to be trusted but too valuable to be thrown out. They were smart—Ren’s denouncement had surely already come, and Ren would be able to convince Nora to forcibly distance herself from him as well. A… a hard conversation, but Jaune knew Ren. Knew he’d keep Nora safe, no matter what. And Pyrrha might even be able to retain the both of them, thanks to their long service and how much she replied upon Nora. There was a way where they’d end up alright, and if Jaune could see it… so could they.

All they had to do was denounce him. And everyone else would be able to move on. There was something… something reassuring in that.

A rattle at the door told him the next stage of his imprisonment had arrived. He’d honestly wondered if they might spare him, as Nadir and Russell entered with a familiar tray of instruments. It had been stupid to think it, after all, these two probably leapt at the opportunity, it was probably a reward for them, but Jaune had held out an idle hope that the Temple wouldn’t see the need to torture him when they’d write his confession for him, post mortem. But torture wasn’t to get answers, now, was it?

“Your Grace,” Russell began with a taunting bow—and the wrong title, which was probably to annoy Jaune’s fussier side—before turning to his equipment. “We regret that we must, in the name of the Temple of the Juniper Bough and in the pursuit of Holy Enlightenment, make use of all methods available-”

“Don’t slouch.”

Russell looked up in surprise, startled to be addressed in such a superior tone. “Excuse me?” he asked, trying to sneer but coming across more shame-faced than anything.

“Don’t slouch,” Jaune repeated, his eyes narrowing and his authority, as diminished as it was, flaring on the young man. “You’re in an interrogation, you’re presenting yourself as an unstoppable, omniscient force. You don’t slouch, it gives the subject reason to believe you’re a sloppy operation… and that escape is possible.”

Jaune had personally drilled these men. Had been in the Initiation of both of them as Sacristans, had taught them firsthand that pain was merely the lash of the Fallen World. And in that moment, he briefly reminded them that he was, even in chains, still their superior. That he might be in disgrace, but there was a reason they were not of the Office of the Infallible Vessel, that they did not meet Jaune’s exacting standards for his subordinates. It did not last, but it had put a crack in both men’s armor. Nadir seemed momentarily shaken; Russell got mad.

But anger made him sloppy. As his fist met Jaune’s cheek, he unwittingly recreated his Initiation in reverse, and unlike Russell, Jaune knew how to show his serene indifference towards the cruelty of the world. He met Russell’s gaze with his own, his eyes shining with the demure truth: another and another and ten thousand more, there is no Fallen power that can assault the immortal soul.

And the fool boy gave him exactly that. Furious blow after blow after blow to split Jaune’s lip, crack his jaw, leave his face pulped and swollen and throbbing with every heartbeat… but what was pain? Pain was nothing. Jaune had been trained on all the ways one could escape the dominion pain had over the body, and besides, these were amateurs. He could focus simply on what they were doing wrong and outlast them.

Through the ringing in his ears, Jaune could hear Russell panting in rage and exertion. Jaune’s eyes were too swollen to see, but he could tell that he’d found beating a man bloody and raw to be a surprisingly exhausting effort. Jaune opened his mouth, every nerve screaming as he forced his body to obey his will and, with perfection diction, said, “While the concussion dulls the subject’s sensitivity to further tortures, more significantly, your emotional outburst suggests the subject is capable of-”

“SHUT! UP!”

“-meaningfully altering the world through his efforts, and-”

“Sir!”

Nadir’s voice surprised Jaune. Unlike Russell, who was all arrogance and rage, Nadir sounded… wounded. His voice was laden with emotion and regret. An odd tack for a torturer, but Jaune gave him an opening.

“We have been tasked with a sorrowful duty. You… you’re one of us! The best of us! A-and now… now we have to…” his voice cracked as he continued, “Just… confess. Confess, and we can all move past this and make things… how they used to be. Sir… please. Just… please.”

Ah, yes, the old wisdom of the good and the bad constable, to trick the captive into making common cause with his captors.

“An odd choice,” Jaune said slowly, “because my cooperation means nothing to you.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Nadir’s, he realized, as his voice came, low and heavy, “I really do mean this, sir… I deeply regret what I have been tasked to do.”

“Then you might find yourself where I am some day,” Jaune answered dryly. But he knew the time for talk was over. Fists alone were not going to be their tool of choice for extracting confessions. He could hear the slow scrape of the pliers against the table as Nadir took them in his hands. Make the prisoner imagine his pain, then show him the limits of his imagination. They’d start by breaking his fingers. He was a Hand of the Temple, and he’d seen Ren do as much with an offender before. It would be painful—he felt the metal bite of the pliers start on his left ring finger, where once he’d worn a symbol of his office—but pain was nothing to Jaune. It would be humiliating—the slow pull of his finger upwards to the limits of its extension—but he had a higher cause to focus on. It would be-

“That’s enough.”

Jaune’s heart sank.

Even as the pressure to break his finger vanished, his heart sank. Torture, any torture was endurable. But not this. Not him. Anything in the world could be pulled against Jaune by the men of the Temple and of his so-called Brothers, but not… not him.

“Brother Ren,” Russell began, clearly not expecting his appearance and even more clearly unsure about what to do with a man who’d been so close to Jaune. How stupid that he believed that Ren might be here to help Jaune! “Brother Shoko and I have been-”

“Your orders are remanded, as Lead Sacristan of Office of the Infallible Vessel-” That had not been an expected development! “-I order you to depart from this cell.”

The air was thick with uncertainty. Nadir and Russell clearly weren’t sure if this was a trick of some kind, but evidently, Ren had proof he’d been given his new office. And Jaune knew that what he was about to do was how he’d earned it. As much as Jaune saw himself above and beyond most of the petty suffering of the world, there was some pains he knew he could not endure.

He heard the footsteps of his torturers leaving. Jaune looked up to where, through his swollen eyes, he could see where the light was coming from, see the shadow of Lie Ren standing at the portal. His Brother, in every sense, even now, even after everything. And worse… even through his clouded vision, Jaune could see the agony on his face. The agony that told Jaune he’d already made up his mind, that he’d already taken his side… and that meant he had fully committed to it.

Ren entered the cell and delicately made his way to Jaune’s side. Always so deliberate, always perfect, until he stood next to him. He placed his hand on Jaune’s shoulder, his fingers briefly trembling with the pain and regret for what he was about to say.

“Are you going to confess?”