Just A Shadow (RWBY male reader insert)

V4 Ch3: Buried In The Ashes

(Writing is so much harder and I hate ittttt I just wanna writtteeee ;_;)

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The sound of screaming students and billowing flames fills the smoky air like like thunder. She coughs and claws for breath, her vision hazy and filled with smog, only the horrible red light of the flames gives any possibility of sight in the inferno around her.

Somebody screams in pain, somebody she knows, she tosses her head in the direction of the sound, peering frightened through the haze.

A tall dark figure looms over her friend, his crimson blade dripping with her blood as she writhes, screaming in pain before him.

A rage fills her, she charges the man, her vision turning red in her anger.

The man turns to face her, his white mask burns a hole in her vision, and the horns atop his head dance like black flames as his blade glows a deep, disgusting red light. His words feel like knives digging into her ears.

"I'll make you suffer...starting with her."

A pain like no other rips her arm from her shoulder, she finds herself unable to scream, her lungs choked and burning with smoke as she falls to the floor.

"YAAANG!!!"

The bloodied scream is the last thing she hears as the ceiling collapses on them all, and fills her head with darkness.

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Yang Xiao Long wakes in a frenzy, her semblance flaring with her emotions as her fist puts yet another hole in her bedroom wall. She lies there, panting and in tears as her eyes scan the walls, ceiling and floor wildly, as if at any moment, something might go for her neck. Slowly her breathing shifts from panicked, to shaked sobs as her semblance dies out, her normally radiant and perfect hair, falling in a dirty, unwashed and frilled mess over her face.

She sits there for a moment, shaking in her quiet anguish before her head lifts up from dangling between ther shoulders. She looks sadly around the room. The room she once shared with her little sister was now dirty and unkempt. Trash and clothes littered the floor, and the only light there was drifted in through the blinds covering the window, the morning was already well on its way to noon.

Her gaze landed finally on her bedside table. It was mostly empty, the lamp that sat on it had been jettisoned across the room several says ago from a similar frightened awakening. All that remained on it was a picture, of her and the other four members of team RWBY. It was from their first day as a team. All standing in front of the statue in Beacons courtyard, Ruby had insisted they take one, and convinced Jaune to be their photographer.

She took her time looking at every member of the team. Herself, Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Soran. Her gaze lingered especially long on the final two members, with a hurt contempt at the former, and with grief at the latter. It was barely even a year ago, but it felt like a lifetime. Things were easier, they were happy, a team. A family.

Her eyes fall from the photo to the last object on the small table, one she knew well, the only thing she had left to help remember her friend, no, her brother. She moved to grasp it in her right hand, and stopped herself. She looked, and remembered, forcefully reminded by the stump just above where her elbow used to be.

She stopped herself from crying anymore, and looked back to the necklace, relenting as she gently took it into her left hand.her thumb gently ran over the emblem that never seemed to dirty or tarnish, that always managed to anchor her somehow.