RWBY Through Worlds

179: Second Tries

The 3rd night passed quietly enough from the outside, but the team was troubled by dreams again.

Oscar especially, despite the Isracis not affecting him, but his dreams were like visions of memories of Ozpin's--and the feeling that he was losing control.

He woke up half thinking he already had, not sure which one he was.

Shine, who apparently was adept at doing night vigils, heard him and came to sit with him just like with Emerald. A least Emerald seemed a little more peaceful.

They heard Blake crying again, but her own team seemed to comfort her and reassure her it was just a dream and they were all here.

Raven, rather unhelpfully, wondered aloud if they'd all go mad by the time they even reached Salem.

When dawn finally rolled around, absolutely no one wanted to go any farther into the Grimm lands than they already had, but they knew they couldn't turn back.

Shine patted Oscar on the head gently as they were leaving.

Oscar really felt almost worse with people being nice to him. It was that his struggle was on a new level, so no one got cross or said a word to him about it. They were all very nice, but...bthey looked sad.

Frankly, it made Oscar feel like he was already dead, in a way, and they were already sorry about it.

The truth was, the team didn't actually think that, but they did wonder if it would be too late for Oscar soon.

"I don't understand." Pyrrha had doubt. "I thought with the new strength we've been given, he could keep Ozpin in check, but the switching off and on, it seems more and more Ozpin and less Oscar."

"I think," Jaune said somberly, "I think that it was one thing for Oscar to stay in control while we weren't doing anything that difficult for Ozpin, because then Ozpin wasn't trying to take control, and Oscar was resisting the curse... but now it's like Oscar is still resisting it--I mean, there's not been any time I feel like Oscar is the one trying to stop us--but Ozpin is fighting for it, with the help of the curse. So... in a way, Oscar is still Oscar--but is he losing to Ozpin?"

"That's horrible!" Pyrrha was pale. "That's... that's basically saying Ozpin will kill Oscar if he wins. Instead of them merging, he'll just... be gone."

"I keep thinking of something Shine said," Jaune said, "that curses always do what they do but more. The curse makes Ozpin reincarnate... and the idea is that it's with a like-minded host, but if the host stops being like-minded, I think the curse remains and so does the relationship... so they're just swallowed up. It would explain a lot... I mean, you'd think anyone who ever resisted Ozpin before, there'd be some record of it--guy with weird spells like that. But other than that book, there isn't."

"What if the time when Ozpin wrote that book about the two souls, the host was like Oscar? They didn't like doing what Ozpin did," Pyrrha said. "And they lost."

Jaune shuddered. "Sometimes I feel like Ozpin's done more things than we realize."

"At the same time, Ozpin can't go away, and he can't stop the curse," Pyrrha said. "I could see him encouraging it if only to make this grueling process finally stop. It's dreadful, and yet it makes sense."

"Why would you want to understand Ozpin? I think it's horrible."

"I almost made that same choice once," Pyrrha reminded him. "I suppose I wonder how I would have justified it. Ozpin still has not... actually really repented."

"I... really hope that Oscar can win."

"I don't know, Jaune, because Oscar and the DJs told me about this other time they talked," Pyrrha said ruefully, "and Shine warned Oscar that if he chose to keep Ozpin in his head, it would be very difficult. And she was so, so much more right than I imagined. But the other option was to cast Ozpin out, and that would either kill him, or send him into someone else. So... I guess a death was involved either way."