A Fairly Reasonable Crashout (RWBY Adam SI) ch 5

+++

The wind hit the window like it was trying to break in. I could hear the frame shaking, feel the chill squeezing through the cracks in the wall. Morning hadn't fully arrived, but there was just enough light to see—a pale wash turning the room to gray. Pasiphae was still asleep beside me, her breathing steady, her golden hair spilled across the pillow. I watched her for a moment, just breathing with her. My chest ached—deep and sharp. It wouldn't go away. I reached out and cupped her cheek. She murmured something, lips twitching into a sleepy smile. I leaned in and kissed her softly on the side of her face, then pulled the blanket off and sat up.

In the kitchen, I froze.

He was already up, sitting at the table, hunched over a cup of coffee. Steam curled off it, but it didn't do a damn thing to hide the stench of sickness—the kind that clings to fabric and skin and won't wash out. The kind that eats from the inside.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

He looked over his shoulder. His face was hollow in the light. Pale. Eyes bloodshot. "Getting ready for work," he said. Then he coughed, and it sounded like his lungs were full of glass. That same rattle. The one I couldn't stop hearing.

"No. No, you're not." I walked over. "You need rest. You're sick, Dad."

"I'm not that sick." He waved me off like that cough hadn't nearly split him in two. "I'll rest when I can't move."

"Dad." I dragged a hand down my face. "We've been through this."

"Yeah," he snapped, slamming his mug on the table. Coffee spilled across the surface. "We talked. And I told you—I'm not going to sit here while you and your wife burn through everything trying to keep me alive."

"You're not a burden," I said through clenched teeth. "You're my father."

He stared at me, defiant. "And your father's not a goddamn charity case." He coughed again, worse than before, and this time I saw it—his hand, shaking where it clutched the edge of the table. He noticed me looking and straightened up, forcing the tremor out of his voice. "What's the point of medicine? So I can live a little longer digging dust?"

"You could live long enough to meet your grandchild," I said. I hadn't meant to. It just came out.

He froze. Looked up like he hadn't heard me right. "Is... she...?"

"No," I said. "Not yet. But one day. And when that happens, I don't want them growing up here. Not in this town. Not in that mine. And I'd want them to meet their grandpa."

He looked away. His shoulders slumped. He reached for the mug, then stopped. Let his hand fall back to the table. He didn't speak for a long time.

"Stubborn boy," he muttered.

I almost smiled. "I'm a bull. What did you expect?"

That got a weak grin out of him. Not much. But it was real.

He nodded slowly. "Let me work. If I don't, I'll get fired."

His voice was low. Not pleading, but firm. Final.

I clicked my tongue. "Fine. I'll take the heavy jobs. You rest when you need to. No arguments."

"Fair enough," he said, and drained the last of his coffee. It took him a second to get to his feet—his joints moved like rusted hinges. "Bathroom," he muttered, and shuffled down the hall.

I watched him go, that ache in my chest tightening like a screw. Then I heard her.

"Adam?"

I turned. Pasiphae stood in the kitchen doorway, the blanket pulled tight around her shoulders. Her hair was a mess, but her eyes were sharp.

"Phae," I said.

She looked past me. "Where's your dad going?"

"He's going to work," I said, trying not to sound bitter. "He insists."

Her eyes widened. "But if he goes back down there, it'll only make things worse."

"I know," I said. "He's a stubborn old fuck." I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. "But he's right. If he doesn't punch in, he'll get fired. I'm going in with him. Can you talk to the doctor? Let them know we're transferring him to the municipal?"

She nodded. "I will." But she didn't move. Her face looked off—tense.

"What is it?"

She hesitated. Then bit her lip and stepped forward. "While you were sleeping, something hit the window."

My gut tightened. "What?"

She reached into the folds of the blanket and pulled out a folded paper. Old. Dirty. The corners were curled and soft from weather. I took it from her, and my blood turned cold.

The symbol. White. Jagged. A wolf's head, snarling.

"Throw it away," I said, fast.

She didn't move. "It's the White Fang. Maybe they can help."

"Help?" I snapped. "How? Are they gonna storm the mine with pickaxes and pamphlets? Maybe bore the foreman to death with a speech?"

She flinched a little. I sighed and pulled back.

"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I just... what can they actually do? They're not doctors. They're not miracle workers. They're activists. Posters and rallies. They can't pay for hospital beds. They can't fix lungs."

"I don't know," she said. "But maybe they know someone. Maybe they have connections. Maybe they can point us somewhere."

I shook my head. "We're not getting involved. Not with the one they caught. Not with the others. Not even if they show up at the front door."

"So that's it?" she said, her voice rising. "You're going to drag yourself into the mine and let it chew you up too? Just like your father? You're okay with that?"

"No." My voice was low, steady. "But we are not talking to them."

She didn't argue. She just folded the paper and tucked it back into the blanket, her mouth set in a tight line.

"Then don't talk to them," she said. "I will."

I stepped toward her, fast. "Phae, no."

She was already moving, barefoot across the cold floor. I reached out for her, and she spun—eyes burning, voice cracking as she clutched my wrist.

"Don't," she whispered. "We have to try, Adam. We have to. I don't want to watch you die slowly too."

She let go of my wrist. Slow. Fingers slipping away like she didn't want to, but couldn't hold on either. Her eyes stayed on mine for another second, two, then dropped to the floor. She turned and walked back toward the bedroom—no sound but her feet on the old boards and the blanket dragging behind her.

I just stood there.

The paper was still in my hand. That damn wolf staring up at me with its teeth bared. It felt wrong in my fingers. Too heavy for just paper. I walked over to the stove, opened the little drawer full of matchbooks and expired coupons, and shoved it deep into the back. Out of sight.

The hallway creaked again. My father was back, leaning on the doorframe with one hand and a scowl half-buried on his face.

"You two fighting about me?" he rasped.

I didn't look at him. "Sort of."

He grunted, walked back to the table like every step took effort, then sat down. "If she's smart, she'll stop wasting her breath."

"She's going to the doctor," I said. "But she might talk to someone else too."

He looked up, one eyebrow raised. "White Fang?"

I didn't answer.

He shook his head, slow and tired. "They're wolves. Doesn't matter what they say. Doesn't matter how friendly they look. They don't come around unless they smell blood."

"You ever talk to them?" I asked, watching him.

"Once," he said, leaning back. "Long time ago. When the SDC started lowering wages, they came to organize the faunus."

"What happened?"

He just shrugged and glanced around.

I didn't say anything.

He coughed again—sharp, wet. Wiped his mouth with a napkin he didn't bother looking at before tossing it into the sink.

"Don't bother with the White Fang," he muttered. "When was the last time they achieved anything that mattered?"

I poured the last of the coffee into his cup. It was cold.

By the time Pasiphae came back out, she was dressed. Jeans, old coat, boots laced up. The blanket was gone. Her hair was tied back, rough and quick, but out of her face.

"I'll stop at the clinic first," she said. "Then I'm reporting to the kitchen staff."

I nodded. "Be careful."

"I will."

We stood there a moment longer, both of us waiting for the other to say something that wouldn't help. Then she leaned in and kissed my cheek. It was quick. Barely there. But her breath lingered.

And then she was gone.

The front door opened. The wind came with it. Then the latch clicked shut, and the house went still again.

My father sipped his cold coffee. "You trust her?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Even if she doesn't trust you back?"

I looked at him. "What the hell does that mean?"

"She's doing what she thinks is right. You're doing what you think is safe. Those don't always line up."

"I'm trying to keep this family together."

"You're trying to survive," he said. "She wants to live. There's a difference, my boy."

We didn't talk after that.

+++

The wind hit her first. Cold and sharp, sliding past the buildings and slapping her coat flat against her frame. She gritted her teeth and pulled the collar up tighter around her neck. The morning light was barely there—just a thin silver bleeding between thick clouds. The ground was stiff with frost, the kind that didn't melt, not even when noon came crawling by. Her boots crunched on gravel, slipping now and then on frozen mud. Nothing in this town was made for comfort. Everything had edges.

Pasiphae kept her head down as she walked.

Her mind worked. 

And the image of a snarling Wolf's head flashed in her mind.

Adam was wrong. 

The White Fang represented something, a means to grasp out, to do something, anything. What the hell else was out there? The SDC? The government? The foreman?

None of them were going to save Adam. None of them were going to give his father back his lungs. None of them cared what happened to this place.

She stepped off the road and into the narrow path that led to the back of the clinic. Her breath fogged in front of her, thin and fast.

She stopped and leaned against the wall. The brick was cold, rough against her back. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the last time the air didn't smell like suffering.

The mine was killing them. Day by day. Inch by inch. And Adam—he was walking right into it. Just like his father. Just like every man before them. The town was a trap that looked like home.

Pasiphae opened her eyes again.

She wasn't going to let it take him.

She was going to the clinic, yes. But after that? She was going to find the ones the guards caught. The White Fang members. 

She was going to do something, anything. 

Even if it cost her.

Even if it meant lying to Adam.

Already, a plan was forming in her mind. 

+++

The clittering echoed off the stone like nails skittering across old bone—sharp, pointless, irritating. Blizzard sat slouched against the back wall of the cell, hat pulled low over his face, boots stretched out, every inch of him radiating a lazy kind of defiance. His coat was still wet from snowmelt and stank of iron and smoke. He ignored the sound for a while—or tried to—but after the fifth minute, he let out a long, theatrical sigh.

"Jones," he muttered, not bothering to lift the hat, "you can try to pick the ever-living hell out of that wall. It won't budge."

The noise stopped for a heartbeat.

Then resumed, louder.

"Damn it, Blizz," Marianne snapped. "Can you let me try to break us out of here in peace?"

Blizzard didn't flinch. "In peace? You're scraping a fork against stone like you're trying to wake the dead."

The scraping stopped again. He could practically feel her eyes drilling into the side of his head. Then came the sharp clang of metal jabbing into the crack between bricks—again. Slower now, angrier. She was wasting effort, but she needed to waste it. He got that.

They'd been reckless. Overconfident. It wasn't supposed to go down like this.

The intel had been bad—thin, secondhand, probably compromised. They hadn't expected the foreman to bring in someone like Blair Frick. Most of the local guards were drunk, bored, or both. Not Frick. Frick was an SDC warhound. And worse—he enjoyed the hunt. White Fang operatives didn't just disappear when Frick got involved. They turned up dead. Or, if they were lucky, shipped out to rot in whatever blacksite the SDC couldn't publicly admit existed.

Now here they were. Two cells, back-to-back. No weapons, no gear. Just cold stone, rusted bars, and the steady drip of meltwater leaking through the ceiling. Every few minutes, a gust of air would whistle through the cracks in the masonry, carrying with it the scent of ash and dust.

They'd been scheduled for transfer at dawn a few days ago. But even the Atlesians weren't risking transport across a snowstorm. Only a fool would try to navigate the northern routes during a whiteout.

Or someone born into it.

Blizzard smiled beneath his hat, though there was nothing warm about it. He hadn't earned the nickname 'Blizzard' for nothing. They might've been locked up, but if the storm held, they weren't dead yet.

"Just wait for an opportunity. Trust me," he said after a minute. "Frick's a bastard, but he cares for his men. He won't risk sending people out on a bad day."

Marianne didn't answer, but the scraping slowed.

He finally sat up, adjusted the hat, and looked over at her. She was crouched low, shoulders tense, hair stuck to her cheek with sweat and grit. The fork in her hand was bent now, prongs twisted from slamming it into mortar that had held for decades.

"We have aura, damn it," Marianne muttered in frustration. "We could just break out."

"You want to waste your energy fighting a whole mine's worth of guards, then try escaping into the frozen north?" Blizzard retorted. "And not just that—a dust mine? One wrong move, and bam, we're all blown to smithereens."

"Not if we're careful," she muttered again.

"Huntsmen and careful do not mix," Blizzard snorted.

He sighed, sweeping his legs off the wall-bed and pushing himself up to walk over to the window.

The window itself—more of a slit, really—barely let in enough light to call it morning. But through it, just barely visible in the murky gloom, a face appeared.

A girl's face.

Dog ears. Retriever. Blonde hair windblown beneath her cap, cheeks flushed from cold. She clung to the iron bars outside the window, knuckles pale from gripping the frozen metal, breath fogging in front of her.

"Hey," she greeted them casually, tapping once with her fingernail. "You two White Fang?"

Blizzard froze.

Marianne looked up first from the opposite cell, startled by the sudden voice. The sound was soft, breathy, but it wasn't weak. It had intent.

Blizzard stood slowly, pushing off the wall. "You've got the wrong window," he said, keeping his tone casual.

"No," the girl said, louder now. "I don't."

They both stepped closer to the barred slit, narrow enough for barely a hand to fit through. Blizzard squinted, eyes adjusting to the outdoor light, and finally took her in fully.

Thin, underfed. Not guard. Not company. Too clean to be a miner, too tense to be a civilian. She wasn't used to this.

"What do you want?" Marianne asked cautiously.

"I need help," the girl said.

"Name," Blizzard said. "You've got five seconds to make us trust you."

"Pasiphae," she said quickly. "I'm from here. I work kitchen detail."

Blizzard tilted his head. "Go on."

She pressed closer to the bars, her voice trembling slightly—not from fear, but from urgency.

"My father-in-law's lungs are giving out. He can't breathe. He worked for the mine until his lungs filled with dust, and now the company's thrown him aside. I'm begging you—can you help him?"

Blizzard glanced back at Marianne. She said nothing, but her eyes were sharp now. Focused.

"You think the White Fang runs a charity?" Blizzard asked dryly.

"No, I don't," Pasiphae retorted. "But I believe you people want to help your fellow faunus. I know you hate seeing us live like this. Can you help?"

Blizzard stared at her.

"We can," he answered. "We were here to ferment a strike. Not much luck with that—until now."

"A strike?" Pasiphae raised an eyebrow.

"Yes. Work stoppages and the like," he admitted. "But like I said, not much luck. Most had no reason to fight. Until now."

"You know?" she asked.

He snorted. "Girl, I heard the announcement. Everyone and their mother knows where this is going." He smiled. "And now you tell me the SDC is willing to let a worker die?"

The Khan would be pleased at this opportunity.

Pasiphae's mind raced. "But what good will a strike do? It won't stop my father-in-law from dying."

"It won't," Blizzard admitted. "But it will force the SDC to the table. To negotiate. To pay what they owe. It could save the next ten men like him."

"I need more than that," Pasiphae said, her voice cracking. "I need his lungs fixed. If I let you go—will you bring medicine for his dust-lung?"

Blizzard turned to Marianne. She was already shaking her head violently. Don't promise that.

But Blizzard didn't look away from the girl outside the window.

"I'll get you those meds," he said quietly. "And more."

Pasiphae stared, as if trying to test his honesty. Then, she nodded. "I will hold you to it," she muttered. "I'll get you two out." 

"Really? How?" Marianne challenged, disbelief in her voice. 

"Just watch me." 

And with that, she descended away from the window. Blizzard watched her slip away.

"Do you really think she can get us out?" Marianne asked

"That, I do not know," Blizzard shrugged. "But if she is that desperate, she might be willing to do anything to move things forward." 

He went back to his wall-bed, adjusting his hat on his face. "We'll see." 

"Blizz, why did you promise her those medicines?" Marianne asked. "I hate involving civilians in shit like this." 

He glanced up, one eye opened to wards Marianne. "We involve them regardless. Our goal is for the happiness of all faunus. If we don't believe in that, then what is the point?"

+++

Pasiphae hopped off the stack of crates she'd been balancing on, boots thudding softly against the frozen ground. Her palms were raw, dusted with old rust and fresh splinters, and she rubbed them absently against the hem of her coat. Her breath came out in white puffs as she stepped back from the narrow slit in the stone wall—the only window into the holding cells. She hadn't needed to climb for long.

The arguing had given them away before she even looked.

She'd expected locked-down silence, maybe groans, maybe snoring. But what she got instead was a full-blown bickering session—sharp, hushed voices bouncing off cold rock and old iron. Two faunus. Male and female. One resigned, one defiant. The scrape of metal on stone. An edge in every word.

She didn't even need to see them to know who they were.

White Fang. No one else in this part of town had the nerve to argue like that behind bars.

She crept up close again, fingers wrapping around the icy bars, her retriever ears twitching for signs of movement. Inside, she caught only fragments:

"—waste your aura on a damn wall and see how far you get—"

"Better than rotting in here!"

And then a sigh. Long, tired, theatrical.

Yeah, they were in there.

She did her piece and left now with a problem. How to get them out?

The town guards had been twitchy ever since the wage cuts were announced. When it came out, the miners had all but assembled and would've torn the foreman's office down beam by beam if Frick hadn't shown up with his riflemen—long coats, gleaming dust barrels, those quiet helmets that made them look more machine than man. The protest had scattered fast after that. No one in Nicolasburg wanted to end up a smear on the snow.

Pasiphae knew she didn't stand a chance in a fight. She didn't have aura. Didn't know how to block, how to counter, how to kill. She didn't even know if she had the guts to try. But she didn't need guts.

She had proximity.

She had access.

And she had the kitchen.

No one ever watched the kitchen girls. Not really. You could be bleeding from the hands and they'd still expect you to carry another load. You could listen to plans, orders, payroll whispers, guard rotations—all while mopping up boiled gristle off the floor. She wasn't important enough to be a threat. That was her strength.

She had a plan.

Now, it was time to enact it.

+++

A/N: Pasiphae, what are you doing. Pasiphae, stop.