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definitelynotthedarklord · 1 year

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Talking About It

A Silent Knight Fanfic

It was a cold night in the city, but Neo had always like taking her moonlit strolls when it was cold, and though the streets were empty save for the occasional alley cat, she knew better than to go out without a disguise on. The current default was one she liked to call Cheri Cordial, with dark red hair pulled into a high ponytail and chocolate brown eyes. Roman had once asked her why she based all her alter egos on flavors of ice cream, to which Neo had responded with a playful "go fuck yourself."

"Roman," she thought, his name reminding her of the emptiness she felt at his absence. He had died so long ago that she had become used to the feeling, hardly even noticing it anymore, but not so long ago that the pain wasn't there.

A bitterly cold wind forced Neo to tighten the scarf around her neck, and flung a piece of paper into her face. Annoyed, she was about to shred the sheet to pieces, but what was on the piece of paper caught her attention. It was an advertisement for an online therapy service, one that specialized in helping people deal with the loss of a loved one. Neo scoffed, she could understand the need for such a service after all that had happened in Beacon and Atlas, but still thought it ridiculous that anyone would use it. "That's what alcohol is for." She thought. The wind started picking up, lowering the temperature to a point Neo decided was not fit for strolling, and signaled that it was time she go home.

A few nights later, Neo was lounging in her hideout, it wad an apartment in the nicer part of town that would be considered shabby be those who lives there, though Neo thought that said more about the locals than the apartment. It was mostly bare save for a few pieces of furniture, food wrappers Neo had been too lazy to clean up, and a plant she had stolen a month ago because she was bored but had let die. "No point in decorating, it's a safe house, not a safe home." Roman used to say.

Again, Neo felt a deep yet muted pain at the memory. Neo shifted from laying down on the couch to sitting up, wherein she felt something crinkle in her pocket, it was the advertisement from a few days ago, Neo had absent-mindedly put the paper in her pocket when she went home, and she was about to throw it in the trash...but she didn't, she just stood over the trashcan, staring at the paper in her hand.

"This is so stupid." Neo thought as she typed the advertised website onto her laptop. She didn't know what compelled her to investigate the online service, she wasn't stubborn enough to dismiss the entire concept of therapy, but she was sure enough that it couldn't help her, "not that I need help," she thought as the page loaded.

Neo was annoyed to find that the website in question wasn't one of those talk-to-a-therapist-online websites that seemed to be popping up everywhere these days, but rather, it was a chat room website, where if she were to have a conversation with someone about her nonexistent problems, that person would be some rando and not a trained professional. "Because that makes sense. Why talk to someone who knows how to deal with your issues when you can talk to losers asking for nudes?" Neo thought as she made her profile, going with the screen name Cheri_on_Top. "Huh, maybe I do need to cool it with the ice cream personas, and just when thought of Rochelle Rhodes for rocky road." Neo scowled.

It didn't take long for her to get a response, a simple "Hi." from someone with the username Chevalier234. Neo was already disinterested, but she had come this far. "Hello." she messaged back, quickly following it with "So I'm not the only one who thinks this is dumb, right? The advertisement said this was a therapy service, not a chatroom." She saw the icon that said Chevalier234 was responding. "I dunno, I think it could help." They said. "And how is that?" Neo asked, "I think the idea is that it's easier talking to people who have gone through similar stuff than it is talking to a therapist, like it feels less like there's something wrong with you and more like you're just letting it out and being heard." Neo was taken aback by the message, not really expecting this sort of insight from some rando on the internet. "Isn't that what friends are for?" Neo typed, not that she would know, she only ever had one friend, everyone else she knew were just henchmen. "I think the anonymity helps people feel safe to talk about stuff. I love my friends, but sometimes it feels like I can't talk about this kind of stuff, like if they knew they would look at me differently, like I might break." Neo understood that feeling, if any of her henchmen saw her like this they'd either try to take over or kill her. She knew it wasn't the same as what Chevalier234 was talking about, but it was close enough.

After that their conversation drifted towards those they'd lost. "So who did you lose?" Chevalier234 asked, quickly followed by a polite "If that's not too rude to ask." Neo responded "My best friend, my only friend, really. They were my world and then one day they were just gone." She knew it was smarter, and safer to not reveal too much, no names or information that could expose her, but still, she found it easy to type the words and talk to this person she didn't even know. "We're the two of you...together?" Chevalier234 asked, the idea made Neo snort. "No, no, he was more like an older brother to me, also I think he might have been gay? He loved wearing guy liner. Lol"

Wait, did Neo seriously just use "lol" in a completely unironic way? She quickly shut the laptop and tried to process. She had never been an "lol" person, never wanted to be one, she thought it was a dumb internet thing that would fade as quickly as it appeared, like "talk to the hand," or "all that and a bag of chips." What was this person doing to her?

The next day, Neo had curiously and cautiously opened her laptop, as though it were a bomb. The chatroom was still open, and Chevalier234 had responded to her last message with "I'm sorry to hear that, I know losing someone can be hard. I lost someone too, we were friends, though I think she wanted to be more. She was the only one who truly believed in me when even I didn't, and when she was gone it felt like a piece of me was gone too. Sorry to dump all that onto you, but I just wanted you to know if you want to talk I want to listen." Then they had sent a message asking if she was still there. Neo felt a twinge of guilt, a feeling she had hardly ever felt because guilt was for people dumb enough to believe it was wrong to do whatever the hell they want, that's what Roman taught her, at least. She had considered messaging back, making up some excuse like she had fallen asleep or her laptop died, but oddly she didn't want to lie to this person she didn't even know. She moved her cursor to close the window, but her finger just hovered over the touchpad before falling by Neo's side. Neo sat down on the couch and let out a heavy sigh, her head hanging low. What was happening to her, she thought, a feeling of defeat washing over her.

Eventually she looked up at the screen, and gave in to the guilt, typing a reply to Chevalier234's last message. "Sorry, I closed my laptop last night after my last message because it felt too weird to talk to you." She sat and stared at the screen, waiting for a reply, but when none came she began to worry she had burned this bridge. A few hours later, while slurping some ramen and watching Atlas After Dark, a drama about cops in Atlas doing whatever it took to get the job done and occasionally sleeping together, her laptop showed she had gotten a message from Chevalier234. Neo had moved so quickly to open the message she almost spilled her dinner. The message said "Sorry for the late reply, I just got home." Then a second message popped up, "And I'm sorry me saying all that stuff made you feel weird." The message pulled at her heart. "It wasn't you," she began, "it just felt weird talking about all this to someone, and about laughing at the things he did." Chevalier234 messaged back, "I know the feeling, like it feels wrong to think about the good times, like their being gone means we should only ever feel sad anymore, but I think it should be the opposite, we should want to feel happy, not that they're gone but that they were here when they were. There's always going to be that feeling of her being gone, but I want to remember her how she was in life, brave and happy, I want to remember the way she made me feel when I stood next to her, because then she's never really gone, you know?"

As Neo read the message, she felt her heart tighten and hot tears running down her cheeks. She tried to stop but she couldn't, the tears turned to sobbing and her body shook, she couldn't remember the last time she cried, but she had never cried as hard as she did that night.

After that night, Neo had opened up to Chevalier234, little by little, but more than she had with anyone else. They talked about those they had lost, the good times and the bad, never anything incriminating, but enough that she felt lighter than she had in ages. One day Chevalier234 reached our to her in a surprising way. "Listen, I know this is all supposed to be anonymous, and I don't want to come across like a creep, but would you want to meet irl?" This had surprised Neo, she would have imagined this sort of thing was against some unwritten rule about internet etiquette, but she felt comfortable enough with Chevalier234, and she did like breaking rules, plus if things went south she could always kill him, and with a smile she typed "When and where?"

Neo sat alone at a table in the café she and Chevalier234 had agreed to meet, disguised as Cheri Cordial and patiently stirring her coffee as she waited. She began to wonder what kind of person Chevalier234 was in real life, would they be some hideous thing that lived in their parent's basement and smelled like stale pizza? They had given her a brief description of what they looked like, a guy with scruffy blond hair, though that was much too vague for her liking. "Mad about someone being vague? Well if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black..." she mused as she sipped her coffee. She turned to look out the window and almost choked on her drink when she saw none other than Jaune Arc, leader of team JNPR and friend to Ruby Rose. Neo had stopped trying to get revenge on Ruby a while ago, though she still hated her on principle, the same went for all hunters and huntresses. As she watched the hunter walk outside she realized something she should have a while ago. "Wait, a guy with scruffy blond hair, who calls himself Chevalier...it can't be." Neo thought as she turned to look at the door to the café. The door opened and the hunter entered, scanning the area until his eyes landed on her. "Cheri?" He asked with a smile. "It is! Oh gods, it is." Neo thought as Jaune approached.

How could she be so stupid, and so unlucky? Agreeing to meet some rando she met on the internet and it being one of her worst enemies? "Why couldn't it have been the basement dweller?" Neo lamented before snapping out of it. "Okay Neo, think, there's got to be a way out, he's already seen you so you can't run. Maybe say you don't feel well? No he'd probably want to make sure you're okay. Wait! I know..." Neo thought with a mischievous grin.

Jaune sat in the chair across from her, greeting her with a warm, genuine smile. "Its so nice to finally meet you, Cheri." Neo responded by signing "Its nice to meet you as well." She smiled at how clever she felt, knowing once the hunter realized they couldn't carry on a conversation without a computer she could escape, Jaune looked surprised for a moment before smiling again and signing as he spoke. "You never mentioned you knew sign. Are you deaf, or maybe mute?" Neo maintained her smile despite the revelation. "He knows sign? Crap, that was my trump card!" Neo thought, starting to panic. She knew if he figured her out it would all be over, she had managed to evade the police and hunters for months, and the heat had cooled down, but if this sign knowing himbo put 2 and 2 together, thinking there can't be that many mutes who were named after ice cream, she'll have the whole city looking for her.

"I'm mute." She finally signed, then tried to shift attention off of her by asking how he knew sign. "I have an older sister who's deaf, Daisy, she taught me sign when I was young, though she taught me the sign for "broccoli" and told me it meant "cookie" which led to some pretty heated temper tantrums." Jaune laughed. Neo let out a nervous chuckle, still on edge, she studied Jaune's face, looking for any indication that he knew who she was, but as far as she could tell he was clueless. "So," Neo began, "would I be right to assume the person you lost, the one you told me about was Pyrrha Nickos?" Jaune looked surprised and asked"Yeah, how'd you know?" "I remember seeing the two of you fight together in that tournament." Neo answered. Jaune looked down at his coffee, an expression of sorrow on his face. "I remember that day, hard to imagine how normal that day felt." Neo's nervousness turned to concern, was that how she looked when she thought of Roman? Jaune's expression shifted as he looked back up at Neo, smiling again. "Sorry, didn't mean to bring the mood down. I know i said I prefer thinking about the good times, but its hard not to remember the bad, you know?" Jaune's smile was different than before, before it was a warm, friendly smile, now it was one that felt a little forced, the kind one wore when they weren't alright but needed others to think they were. "Is that the smile you wear for your teammates?" Neo asked, causing the smile to drop. "Yeah." Jaune answered, looking back down at his drink. Neo didn't know what compelled her to do what she did, but before she knew it she had reached across the table and took a hold of Jaune's hand, drawing his eyes to hers. Neo put on a smile like his and signed "What was she like? I know what I've seen on TV, but what was she really like?" Jaune perked up a little and started talking, his real smile returning as he did.

As the two of them sat and talked, drinking coffee and munching on pastries, all of Neo's concerns about Jaune finding her out vanished, not because she thought he wouldn't turn her in if he did find put, but because she genuinely enjoyed talking with him. She loved listening to his stories, about fighting Grimm, about traveling Remnant, though she did get a bit uncomfortable when he talked about fighting her and Roman. They had talked for so long that the café staff had asked them to leave. Neo found it annoying but Jaune just laughed. "I guess we have been here a while, huh?" He asked. Neo felt a little disheartened at this development, wanting to talk more with the hunter, but then he heald his hand out to her. "You wanna take a walk with me?"

They walked side by side through the park in silence, from this point Neo could see how much taller Jaune was, as well as how broad his chest and shoulders were. "No, bad Neo, none of that!" She thought to herself, feeling the heat of embarrassment in her cheeks. "So," Jaune began, "I notice you keep asking about me, but you haven't really said anything about yourself." Neo looked away, not sure what to say. There was only so much she could say without giving herself away, and she didn't want to lie to Jaune. "But I'm lying right now, aren't i?" She asked herself. "Its okay if it's hard to talk about, it actually took me a while to be this open, I just feel like I can talk to you." The way he looked at her pulled at her heartstrings like someone was trying to open a parachute. "What would you like to know?" She asked hesitantly. "Well, tell me about your family, your mom and dad, do you have any siblings?" Of course the first thing he wanted to ask her was the one thing she wanted to talk about less than her life of crime. "I have no parents, I lived on the streets." It wasn't a total lie, she did live on the streets for a while, and she stopped thinking of her parents as her parents long before that. Jaune looked at her with a heartbroken expression. "I'm so sorry," he said, "we don't have to talk if you don't want." He was trying to backpeddle, not because what she said made him uncomfortable, but because he didn't want her to be uncomfortable. "It's fine." Neo responded. "Living on the streets is how I met..." She knew better than to use his real name, "Reggie, the guy I told you about." "The older brother with a thing for guy liner." Jaune said, showing her he paid attention, that made her smile, but the smile faded as she stopped walking. Jaune stopped and looked at her curiously. "Jaune, if you want to know more about me, you should know I've done things, not exactly legal things." There was no going back now, she didn't think Jaune would start yelling at her and threatening to call the cops, but she seriously doubted he would be accepting.

Jaune was quiet for a minute, his expression unreadable, not that Neo could look him in the eyes at that moment. "And are you still doing "not exactly legal things?"" He asked. Neo nodded, signing "When I have to." "But you don't have to, do you?" Jaune said in an accusatory voice, which made Neo flinch. Jaune sighed, looking almost defeated. "Listen Cheri, I'm not going to call the cops on you or anything like that, but I can't be near you if i know you're breaking the law, at some point I'm going to have to do something, so please, don't make me do something." There was a look in Jaune's eyes, something between determination and pleading that worried Neo, she could tell he meant every word, and that doing so hurt him.

Neo couldn't remember a time she felt more conflicted, she had been a criminal her whole life, it was all she knew, and now this hunter was telling her she had to stop or else? He hadn't been the first, but the way he looked at her made her want him to be the last. Neo took a deep breath, signed "Okay." and watched him for his response. Jaune looked at her for a moment before letting out a shaky breath, and said "Okay, good, thank you." "I guess he was as worried as I was." Neo thought.

They resumed their walk as Neo told him about her life, even the parts she was worried he would hate her for, but she could tell there was nothing to worry about, the way he looked at her and listened, she knew he understood, and before she knew it the sun had set. Neo told Jaune that it was getting late and that she should head home, and he offered to walk her there, Neo accepted. It was so strange, she had just revealed her criminal past to a hunter, someone sworn to protect others from people like her, but all he did was listen and accept her. Being in Jaune's presence gave her a sense of ease she wasn't sure she had ever felt before, as well as other feelings, ones that she really didn't want to acknowledge.

When they got to Neo's apartment, they stood on the doorstep for a minute before one of them said something. "So I guess this is goodbye, and goodnight. I had a really great time with you today, and listen, I was serious about not calling the cops on you. Everyone has a past, but that shouldn't stop you from having a future." Jaune said, it wasn't the best thing he could have said, Neo thought, but she appreciated it nonetheless. He turned to leave, but Neo's hand shot out and grabbed his sleeve without thinking. Jaune turned back and looked surprised, Neo had no idea why she did that, okay she had some idea, but she really wish she didn't. "Is something wrong?" Jaune asked sincerely. Yes, there was, there very much was something wrong, she thought, wishing she wasn't about to do what she so desperately wanted to do. "No, I just needed to tell you something." Neo answered, trying not to seem nervous. "Okay." Jaune nodded, giving her his full attention, Neo motioned for him to bend down and get closer to her, Jaune obliged, and Neo dove in, connecting her lips to his. It was a half second of contact, but it sent electricity all throughout her body. She could see Jaune's shocked expression for a split second as she turned to run inside as fast as she could, but she was stopped when Jaune grabbed her hand and pulled her into him, spinning her to face him and planting his lips onto hers. Now she was the one wearing a shocked expression, but as the kiss deepened her shock melted away, and she wrapped her arms around his craned neck as she gave in to the feel of his hands on her hips and the taste of coffee on his lips. The night has gotten cold, but that didn't stop the wave of warmth that washed over her.

They disconnected when they needed to breathe, slowly opening their eyes to look at each other, but Jaune's eyes widened and he quickly backed away from her. Neo wanted to ask what was wrong, but she figured it out when he said her name, her real name, "Neo Politan?" Jaune asked, completely dumbfounded. Neo had let her semblance fall when they were kissing, and without thinking Neo ran inside, slamming the door to her apartment and locking the door.

Her heart was beating so fast she thought it might just burst, and a thousand thoughts whirled through her mind. "How could I have let my guard down? Maybe he didn't notice. Oh who am I kidding he said my whole name, of course he noticed. Any minute now he's going to call the cops and they're going to break down my door! I need to run! But what about Jaune? What ABOUT Jaune? He's a hunter and a do-gooder and-and...and he kissed me! Oh gods, I KISSED HIM! And I liked it, I really, really liked it, and I like him, but dammit why did my semblance have to fail?"

Neo's mind went quiet when she heard a knock on her door. "Are you there?" She heard Jaune say from the other side. "Be quiet, maybe he'll go away!" A voice inside told her, though she tiptoed to the door regardless, peering through the peep hole. She saw Jaune's face, distorted by the hole, but she could tell he looked like he was in pain. She lightly tapped the door, hoping he would understand that that meant yes. Jaune didn't say anything for a long while before asking "Was any of it real?" The question squeezed her heart, she realized they had been enemies for a long time in the past, but right now the last thing she wanted to do was hurt him. "Just say it wasn't, tell me this was some kind of joke, some kind of sick plan to get close to me and make me fall for you just so you could break my heart, because...because I have, fallen for you, I mean, or at least for the version of you you pretended to be. So if it was all a lie please tell me, I deserve that much." Neo's hand shook as she undid the locks and opened the door, just enough that he could see her. "It wasn't a lie, not really. I may have used a different name, but everything I said was true." Neo signed. Jaune let out a sigh, though she couldn't tell if it was out of relief or frustration, or maybe both.

"So...what happens now?" Jaune asked, Neo opened the door wider and signed "You could come inside, and we could talk about it." Jaune smiled that smile Neo loved, and accepted her invitation.

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