A Fairly Reasonable Crashout (RWBY Adam SI) ch 6

Day turned to night.

But that didn't mean everything else had stopped.

Pasiphae walked with purpose, a tray balanced in her hands, bowls of warm soup trembling slightly with each step. The orange glow of the jail's floodlights greeted her like the flare of a gas lamp before a fire. She paused for a moment, her breath catching in the cold, before forcing a smile onto her lips.

"Food delivery!" she called out, her voice light and cheerful—a practiced tone she'd perfected over the years.

The door creaked open. A guard poked his head out, his face slack with boredom. He gave her a once-over, his gaze lingering a little too long on her face before dropping to the tray.

"What's on the menu?"

"Cream of potato soup, mushrooms, and bacon," she said brightly. "With fresh bread."

The guard sniffed. "Eh. Put it in."

She stepped inside, humming softly under her breath. The warm glow of the fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, washing the concrete walls in a sickly yellow hue. She set the tray down on the counter, her smile never faltering.

"Don't let it get cold," she said, her voice polite and gentle, just as she'd been trained.

The guard grunted, already turning away.

Pasiphae pivoted on her heel, her footsteps soft against the worn concrete. Her breath timed itself to the hollow hum of the lights, her hands brushing absently against the folds of her apron—where the vial was hidden.

It wasn't much—just an extract from mushrooms that grew in the shade behind the kitchen. One of her coworkers swore by it to help them sleep, but Pasiphae had boiled it down to something stronger. If anyone asked, she'd simply claim someone had used the wrong ingredients. An innocent mistake.

She would return later to find the guards slumped over, heads resting on folded arms, their snores rattling softly in the still air.

When she came back, Pasiphae shook her head at the sight of them. "To think they're supposed to protect this place," she muttered under her breath.

She stepped behind the counter—calm, deliberate—and plucked the ring of keys from its hook. They jingled faintly in her hand, the sound sharper than she liked. She clutched them tighter, letting the warmth of her palm soak into the cold metal.

The cells were just ahead.

From the shadows, a low voice broke the silence.

"Well, I'll be damned," Blizzard drawled, leaning against the bars of his cell, hat tipped low over his face. "You're actually doing it."

"I'm desperate," Pasiphae said simply, the words heavier than she intended.

The fluorescent light flickered above her. She stepped into the corridor, her shadow stretching long across the damp walls.

Marianne stood at the opposite cell, her hands gripping the bars. She tilted her head, her expression unreadable.

"Girl," Marianne said, her voice quieter now, almost soft. "Before you put in that key, think carefully. Once you do this, there's no going back. You understand that, right?"

Pasiphae froze for a moment, the ring of keys dangling from her fist. The silence stretched.

Then, without a word, she slid the first key into the lock. It didn't fit.

The second didn't either.

On the third, there was a click—a sound so soft and intimate it felt like a promise cracking open.

Marianne's eyes flickered with something—relief? Respect? It was hard to tell.

Pasiphae pulled the door open and stepped aside. "For those we cherish," she whispered.

Blizzard didn't move immediately. He let the open doorway hang between them for a moment longer than necessary, his head tilted slightly as if studying her. Then, with one smooth step, he crossed through, adjusting the brim of his hat as he went.

No thanks. No awe. Just that sharp, cool stare as he adjusted his coat, eyes on her like he was still deciding something.

Marianne followed, brushing past Pasiphae with a nod.

"What's next?" Blizzard asked, his voice low.

"I get you out," Pasiphae muttered. "Not through the front. That would be far too obvious."

Blizzard smirked faintly. "Smart."

"And the guards?" Marianne asked, skeptical.

Pasiphae's lips twitched into a wry smile. "Your concern is unwarranted. Someone on staff must've used the wrong mushrooms. An honest mistake."

Marianne exchanged a glance with Blizzard. "Your confidence is inspiring. Or anxiety-inducing. I'm not sure which."

"Right," Pasiphae snorted. "Come on, then."

She led them back through the corridor in silence, her steps deliberate, measured. The fluorescent lights buzzed above, casting long, uneven shadows. Blizzard and Marianne followed close behind, their movements careful but quick, their breathing low.

Pasiphae returned the keys to the hook, leaving them exactly as she'd found them—neat, unbothered, as if no one had touched them. Marianne ducked into a side room and emerged moments later with something stuffed beneath her coat.

"Weapons," Marianne muttered, holding out what looked like a small pistol to Blizzard.

"If you're going to use that," Pasiphae said, glancing over her shoulder, "please don't shoot it next to me."

Blizzard smirked, tucking the weapon into his coat. "Duly noted."

They moved quickly now, slipping past slumped guards and flickering lights. Pasiphae's steps never faltered. She knew exactly where to go—every squeaky tile, every blind spot between cameras.

At the end of the hall, she shoved open a rusted side door with her shoulder. The cold hit them like a wall—sharp and unforgiving.

Blizzard stepped out first, his boots crunching against the snow. Marianne followed, her breath a visible fog in the freezing air.

Pasiphae lingered at the threshold, scanning the dark horizon.

"This way," she whispered, pulling her coat tighter around herself.

Blizzard and Marianne followed, steps silent but purposeful. The fluorescent lights of the facility glowed faintly behind them, casting long shadows across the snow.

The crunch of boots echoed faintly in the distance. Pasiphae froze, raising a hand. The others stopped immediately, breathing low, eyes scanning the gloom.

"Patrols," she murmured, barely audible over the wind.

"You know where you're going, right?" Blizzard asked.

"I thought about taking you through an old drain," Pasiphae muttered. "But we'd run out of back alleys before we made it far enough."

"You got a plan B?" Marianne asked.

"I do," Pasiphae nodded. "But you're going to have to hold your noses."

"Why?" Marianne narrowed her eyes.

"You'll see," Pasiphae snorted. "And you two have aura. You'll survive."

She moved fast. Blizzard and Marianne followed like shadows, coats pulled tight against the wind.

They rounded a bend and ducked beneath a crooked pipe. The alley narrowed into a low passage hemmed in by chain-link fences and the backs of forgotten buildings, steam rising from floor drains like ghost-breath in the night.

Pasiphae didn't slow.

She turned a final corner and came to a halt in a small, enclosed courtyard hemmed in by high walls. Four massive dumpsters lined one side—rectangular beasts of stained steel, their lids cracked open, their bodies caked in years of grease and frost.

The air reeked of old food, bleach, and rot.

"You're joking," Marianne muttered.

"I am not," Pasiphae whispered, glancing back. "Get in."

Blizzard raised a brow. "You want us to hide… in there?"

"Either that," Pasiphae snapped, "or you play hide and seek with the wall guards. Pick."

Marianne grimaced. "You're going to roll us out with the trash?"

"That's exactly what I'm going to do."

Blizzard folded his arms. "That's bold."

"It's necessary." Pasiphae shoved one of the lids open. "This one's mostly produce boxes. Soft landing. Just don't move too much or you'll hit the old grease bags."

Marianne glared at Blizzard. "Aura or not, if I smell like onions and blood for the next week, I'm blaming you."

Blizzard laughed and climbed in. Marianne followed, muttering curses with every step.

Now fully packed, Pasiphae braced herself.

She pushed.

The dumpster groaned. Metal squealed. Her boots skidded, then caught. The wheels clattered across cracked concrete as it began to move—slow and loud in a way that made her chest pound.

She pushed harder. Out into the alley.

Then—

"Hey! What the fuck are you doing out here?"

Pasiphae froze, hands still on the handle.

An SDC guard stood nearby, eyebrow raised, harness light on. His partner yawned beside him, barely interested.

Pasiphae blinked, startled, then straightened her spine.

"Trash duty," she said smoothly. "Kitchen dumpsters were neglected today. I'm taking care of it."

The guard rolled his eyes. "Lazy faunus. Typical."

It took all her will not to flinch. "Yes, well, I'm trying to follow protocol. If we don't empty these by end-of-day, it clogs the loading chute."

"Ugh, trash," the other guard muttered. "Keep it quick. Wandering the street at night's bad for productivity."

"Wouldn't want to hurt company profits," Pasiphae said under her breath.

"What was that?"

"Nothing," she replied quickly. "Goodnight, sirs."

She pushed.

The wheels bounced and screeched, but the guards didn't stop her. They turned away, bored and cold, already lighting another cigarette.

Pasiphae pressed on, breath fogging her vision.

Ten minutes. Fifteen.

Then she reached the drop-off: a darkened edge behind a derelict shed. The landfill chute. She leaned against the dumpster, chest heaving.

"All clear," she whispered, tapping twice.

The lid cracked open.

Blizzard emerged first, scowling beneath his hat. "Remind me to never complain about prison food again."

Marianne followed, tangled hair and eyes wild. "I'll never be clean again."

Pasiphae smiled, barely upright. "You're out, aren't you?"

Blizzard looked around. "Now what?"

Pasiphae pointed. "Downhill. Through the landfill. It'll spit you into the treeline."

Blizzard grunted. "Good thing Marianne has me or she'd die."

"Not my fault I grew up in a city, dipshit," Marianne snapped.

Blizzard grinned. "Trash, then freedom."

He hopped down into the pit.

Pasiphae called out, "Remember our deal!"

Blizzard turned. "Be careful, girl. The SDC won't forget this."

Pasiphae smiled cold. "They can choke on it."

And then she was gone.

+++

She helped them escape.

The thought dropped like a stone into the silence behind her. No echo. No splash. Just the hollow impact of something irreversible.

Pasiphae stood at the edge of the drop, breath clouding in the freezing air, fingers still curled against the cold lip of the dumpster. The stink clung to her skin—rotting onions, bleach, the sour tang of grease-slick metal—but she barely registered it. Her eyes were on the darkness below, the pit where two fugitives had just disappeared into blackness and wind, swallowed by the very waste the company she served churned out day after day.

She had done it.

She had pushed them to freedom.

And now?

Now her knees wanted to buckle.

The cold wasn't what made her shake.

What have I done?

The question echoed through her skull, not a scream but a whisper—soft and insistent. It slipped beneath her ribs and curled there like a worm in the gut.

Stupid. So stupid. A kitchen girl helping the White Fang? That's what the posters called treason. That's what the guards called cause for interrogation. That's what the SDC called a corpse in a ditch.

They'll come looking. They'll tear the kitchens apart. Check every bunk, every locker. They'll question everyone, and she—

She would lie. She already had.

An honest mistake. The wrong mushrooms. An accident. Just a quiet, helpful girl doing her part.

No one important.

You're not important, she reminded herself. That's why you'll survive this.

But her heart wouldn't stop pounding.

She pressed a hand to her chest. It thumped like it wanted to escape her ribs. Like maybe it hadn't agreed with what she'd done.

She helped the White Fang.

But it wasn't about them.

It was for him.

Her father-in-law. Lungs wrecked from years of mine dust, his breath a rattle behind paper walls, dying slowly and forgotten. She did not want the same fate for Adam. She did not want their kids, whenever they would get to it, to grow up without a father.

Pasiphae turned away from the cliff.

She returned home.

And already, the quiet had swallowed the walls.

No voices. No flickering lights. Just the weight of cold and stillness pressing in from all sides, like the house itself had exhaled and never breathed back in.

She closed the door behind her with a soft click. The wind didn't follow. Only silence.

Her boots dripped meltwater onto the cracked tile floor as she slipped them off, her body moving by instinct now—quiet, methodical, like a ghost retracing its path through old sins. The small heater near the wall hummed faintly, throwing out just enough warmth to make the chill feel cruel.

She passed the first room. The door cracked open.

Her father-in-law lay buried beneath quilts and folded time, his breath shallow but steady, the rhythm of a man too exhausted to stir. His chest rose like something mechanical—reliable, but wrong.

Still alive. For now.

She lingered only a moment before continuing down the hall.

The second door she opened slowly.

Her husband's room was barely lit by the weak spill of moonlight through the slats of the shuttered window, slicing across the bed in thin, silver stripes. Dust drifted through the light like ash in a battlefield. The smell of copper and old sweat hung in the air—sharper than it had any right to be.

He lay sprawled on the mattress, not under the blanket but on top of it, face turned to the wall, shirt stuck to his skin. His breath came in a low groan—long, strained, a sound that started in the gut and barely made it past his throat. Not quite a cry. Not quite a sigh.

She froze in the doorway.

His hand twitched once, curling toward his side as if to shield himself from something unseen. Then relaxed again. Another groan. A deeper one.

Tired. Aching.

Burnt out from hours hauling what little pride the mine hadn't already stripped from him.

Pasiphae's lip trembled. She bit down on it hard—so hard it stung.

She didn't step forward.

Not yet.

She just stood there, framed in the door, backlit by a hallway full of shadows, watching the man she loved come apart quietly in his sleep. Watching what the company had made of him. What it kept making of them all.

Her eyes burned, but she didn't cry.

She couldn't afford to cry.

Instead, she whispered his name. Not loud. Just enough for herself.

+++

He sat quietly.

Eyes fixed on the screen, fingers steepled beneath his chin. The monitors bathed his face in flickering blue light—grainy feeds shifting between alleyways, shadowed corridors, the kitchen courtyard choked in frost and silence. Every angle accounted for. Every shadow catalogued. A cold ballet of escape playing out in real-time.

And he let it happen.

The girl thought she was slick.

She was wrong.

They'd been under surveillance since the moment they stormed the foreman's office. Frick had seen to it personally—new camera placements, tighter perimeter sweeps, overlapping fields of view. Nothing high-tech. Just thorough.

Every key turned. Every whisper shared behind rusted bars. Every quiet click of a cell unlocking—it had all been watched.

Allowed.

Because the hunt only ever truly began when they thought they'd won.

A closed fist struck wood. Hard.

The foreman stood across the room, red-faced, his breathing sharp, his knuckles whitening as they dug into the polished desk.

"And pray tell," he snapped, voice strangled with fury, "why we didn't intercept them midway?"

Frick didn't look away from the monitors.

"You wanted to cause a scene?" he asked, lifting a single brow. "Guns drawn in the courtyard? Panic in the kitchens? The miners would riot."

"They're escaping!" the foreman barked, pacing now like a dog chained too long. "They've escaped! That faunus bitch has—"

"Not entirely," Frick interrupted, shrugging one shoulder. "My men are waiting in the forest. Let them run. Let them breathe freedom for five, ten minutes. Let them think it worked."

He leaned back in his chair, boot propped against the console, posture loose and relaxed—the stillness of a man who saw no reason to rush.

"And then?" the foreman demanded, spitting the words like they burned his mouth.

Frick's voice was calm. Detached. "They'll die there. Every last one."

Silence spread across the room like frost.

The foreman's jaw clenched tight. His fingers tapped against the desk in staccato fury.

"And the girl?" he asked, lower now. More careful. "Her family?"

Frick turned, just enough for the pale monitor glow to catch his eyes. Cold. Glassy. Surgical.

"Hence why I didn't intercept the girl," he said. "We take her now, the boy gets to agitate on her behalf. Raise voices. Stir trouble. We take them both… or not at all."

Then, almost as an afterthought, he looked back to the screen—just in time to watch the dumpster disappear into shadow.

Let her think she won.

It always made the loss worse.

+++

I woke up feeling like I'd been run over by a truck.

Double shifts—first one, and it already sucked worse than I remembered. Muscles sore. Eyes dry. Soul halfway still asleep.

I turned, half-expecting empty sheets.

But Pasiphae was there.

Curled up beside me, hair a tangled halo across the pillow, her breathing soft and even. I smiled, leaned in, and kissed her forehead. She stirred, murmured something incoherent, lips barely parting.

Didn't matter.

Time to move.

I slid out of bed and into the chill, dragging on my shirt with a yawn that cracked my jaw. The hallway light was dim—early morning gray leaking through the curtains, the kind of light that made everything feel slower. Heavier.

Then I stepped into the living room.

And stopped cold.

My throat dried up instantly.

There—sitting like it was the most normal thing in the world—was my father. Seated in his usual chair, a steaming mug of coffee resting in his hands.

And across from him, sipping calmly from an identical cup, sat Blair Frick.

Frick.

Wearing that same long coat, collar up, boots dusted with frost. Like he'd walked in out of a graveyard and decided to make himself comfortable.

The air didn't move. It just hung.

Silence stretched around me, wrapping tight like barbed wire.

Frick looked up.

"Adam Taurus," he said, voice cool and polite, like this was just another morning chat. Like he hadn't hunted and executed people for less.

He gestured to the empty chair between them.

"Would you care to take a seat?"

+++

A/N: C: