Chapter Text

When all is said and done, it really is the commander's coup d'œil [“stroke of the eye”], his ability to see things simply, to identify the whole business of war completely with himself, that is the essence of good generalship. [...] an intellect which, even in the midst of this intense obscurity, is not without some traces of inner light, which lead to the truth, and then the courage to follow this faint light.

Winter Schnee did not want to be here.

Some part of her knew she should try to hide that fact, but she knew just as well that that wasn't likely to succeed. For all the iciness of her name and image, Winter Schnee had never been particularly adept at hiding her emotions. Her blood ran hot, and she ran with it. Which, she distantly noted, was part of the reason why she was here in the first place.

Here: Atlas Academy, formerly known as Alsius, relatively known as 'the place Winter Schnee had been banished to'. Built around a fortress that pre-dated gunpowder, the Academy was otherwise in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Or, more importantly - a six-hour airship ride from her father's manor in the capital. And he hadn't exactly been begging her to visit often when she'd left. Or seen her off to aerodrome. Or the front door.

An involuntary shudder at the cold shook Winter's body, but the fire in her veins kept her warm. She might not want to be here - standing at attention in the Academy's courtyard for what was approaching three hours - but like hell was she going to let something as petty as the cold break her. It wasn't snowing, which was a small mercy, but the temperature was well below the point of freezing, and a bitter arctic wing stung at every inch of exposed skin.

She figured that that effect was intentional, perhaps the reason Atlas Academy started in winter instead of in spring like the other schools. The entire class of freshmen, hundreds of teenagers from across Atlas and the rest of Remnant, stood at attention while the Headmaster made a few moments' small talk with them all. Every. Single. Student. A few of her soon-to-be classmates had already withdrawn from the courtyard, unable to bear a cold that blued skin and froze bones. And whatever anyone believed, Winter Schnee was no more immune to the cold than the rest of them. Just twice again as stubborn.

"Hey," a voice to Winter's left called out, high-pitched and feminine. It belonged to someone who'd been trying to catch her eye for some time now. Winter ignored it. The Headmaster was still dozens of students away from her position in the receiving line, but she was using every power of observation she possessed to study him. Get a handle on his body language, his cadence, his movements and mannerism, lest she be caught flat-footed by him.

"Helloooo." Winter kept ignoring her. She wasn't here to make small talk or friends, neither of which she'd had much success with growing up. Her father might have banished her to the Academy in an attempt to tame his shrew, but Winter was at least going to salvage a first-rate education in the process, if nothing else. She didn't need distractions. "Hey… hey you're Jacques Schnee's daughter, aren't you?" Winter's jaw tightened. "What by the Shattered Moon did you fuck up to end up out here?"

"My name is Winter," she hissed back, shooting her darkest look at the woman beside her. "And I have better things to do with my time than gossip."

That sentence brushed against the real reason for her irritation: 'I have better things to do than be here at all'. Its prestigious reputation notwithstanding, Winter could come up with a list a mile long of things she'd rather spend the next four years doing than grinding away in the cloistered confines of Atlas Academy.

To Winter's mild surprise, the woman beside her didn't flinch, or cower, or explode. She just grinned the grin of someone who'd gotten exactly what they'd wanted. Namely a response. "Don't worry, my fair Winter, I know your name. Just not what you did to piss off the family patriarch."

Winter said nothing, having already mentally categorized the woman beside her as at best a waste of air and space. Less charitably, she was likely one of the thousands of parasites Winter had grown up around, oh-so-desperate to insinuate themselves into the good graces of the Schnee family. Faking friendship or irreverence was hardly an original stratagem. Winter had long since found that ignoring the aspiring sycophants was usually the most efficient route…

"This is the part where you say, 'I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage', and ask for my name," the woman prattled on, almost infuriatingly indifferent to Winter's iciness.

"I don't particularly care," Winter replied, honestly, eyes forward again.

"Is yours a misanthropic persona, or was Grandma telling the truth about Schnees being able to smell Adels at a hundred yards?" To her own annoyance, Winter's head once more twitched sideways at the words, catching that playful grin again. That smile of victory. "It's true: I'm an Adel, blue-blooded as you. Well, almost. We do everything in leather instead of ivory." She shrugged. "I think it looks prettier anyways."

"… so what is your name? Or would you rather I just call you Adel?" Winter managed to make the surname into a slur, just like her father did.

"Xocolātl. Xocolātl Adel, at your service," replied the other woman, with an easy smile and a faint bow of her head. "There's a macron over the 'a', please don't forget it. But my friends can call me Chalk."

"Mm," acknowledged Winter, in a tone suggesting that she was filing that last datum away under 'Information I Will Never Need to Know'.

Unfortunately for Winter, Chalk was an aggressively good read of character. And she could recognize curiosity when she saw it. "So, Winter Schnee, you never did answer my question."

Something treacherous tugged at the corner of Winter's cheek. "No, Adel, I suppose I did not." The Headmaster was close enough that Winter could hear the murmur of his voice, if not the words themselves. To his credit, the Headmaster seemed to be as unfazed by the cold as he expected his students to be. And Adel seemed more distraught by the blandness of her uniform than the sub-zero temperatures.

"Spoilsport," teased back Chalk in reply. "I'll go first, if it makes you feel any less nervous." It was an artless bit of baiting that nevertheless rankled Winter. "To make a long story very short and very dull, I maxed out one too many credit cards, on the same night Daddy's million-lien car got blown to smithereens." If the Adel girl felt any remorse for her actions she was concealing it exceptionally well.

"So Adels truly are as decadent as the tabloids say. How fascinating." Chalk hummed contentedly in reply, clearing giving not a whit what Winter had read. Something in the woman's unabashed honesty struck a chord with the Schnee, despite herself, eliciting an impulse to reciprocate she'd been taught all her life to suppress. "…I'm here because my father," something venous slipping into that last noun, "thinks that it would be good for my self-discipline if I spent a few years in a military academy."

"Ahhh. Figures. My dad's pretty much the same, except I'm pretty sure he's given up at this point." Chalk shrugged, smiling half-heartedly as she did.

"Can't imagine why," Winter responded, but the jibe seemed to pluck Chalk from her momentary melancholy.

"Your Dad and the Headmaster go back a ways, right? I've heard they're pretty buddy-buddy when it comes to clearing Grimm from potential Dust mines."

"A stable supply of Dust is vital to the safety of all the Kingdoms in Remnant," Winter hissed back, unable to suppress a reflexive defense of her inheritance. Winter glanced to her right. "We'll talk later."

The Headmaster was close enough that the Adel woman had the good sense to shut up (at least for a few minutes). Not that Winter was getting a vibe of 'deferential respect for authority' from this Adel, but there was no sense in making an ass of yourself this early in the school year. Or perhaps Winter's offer of a conversation in the future had bought her a few moments reprieve in the present.

Winter redirected her focus to the Headmaster, hoping the frostbite nipping at her ears wouldn’t impair their function for a few minutes more. The conversations, from what fragments she could overhear, were largely the formulaic. A polite introduction and welcome. A quick question about the student's background, and a follow-up. Maybe one or two sentences about a subject of interest.

Adel snapped to attention as the Headmaster stood in front of her, giving Chalk a once-over with an eye well-versed in rapid assessments. Winter wanted to wince at how wide Chalk's grin was, even as the Adel's fingers were turning a very morbid shade of blue.

"Xocolātl Adel," stated the Headmaster. They weren't organized in any kind of alphabetical line, which seemed slightly unusual given the Academy's reputation for discipline, and Winter wondered just how exactly he was recalling every student's name. Surely he hadn't committed the names and faces of hundreds of freshmen to memory, but then… "Thank you for choosing Atlas Academy."

"Thrilled to be here, sir," replied Chalk, way too enthusiastically. She was halfway into a curtsey when she caught herself, snapping upright into a martial salute as per protocol. The Headmaster raised an eyebrow in amusement. "I'll show you just what the Adel name is worth, sir."

"I don't doubt it," stated the Headmaster, offering her a reassuring nod. "How is Brennan these days?"

Chalk tensed ever-so-slightly, a child's unease at hearing their father addressed so familiarly. "Fine, sir. But I think Coco's going to drive him even crazier than I do. Did."

The Headmaster chuckled to himself, before offering Chalk an approving nod. The Adel - familial reputation for irreverence notwithstanding - visibly relaxed as he moved on.

"Winter... Winter Schnee."

Winter's spine, if possible, managed to straighten even straighter.

"Headmaster Ironwood," replied Winter, offering a salute that was surprisingly crisp given her unfamiliarity with the motion. "Or do you prefer 'General', sir?"

Ironwood looked at her discerningly. "As you are no doubt aware, Schnee, the two are ultimately one and the same." He paused for a long moment. "Whichever you choose is correct, though 'Headmaster' is more customary within these walls."

"Understood, sir." Winter remained at attention, waiting for the follow-up question Ironwood seemed to have prepared for every student in line (if that was actually possible). If he'd asked Chalk (Adel!) about ‘Brennan’ than she had little doubt what would be directed her way. James Ironwood, after all, was possibly the closest thing her father had to a friend anymore.

"Have you successfully Summoned anything yet, Schnee?"

Winter blinked, a foot scraping backwards in surprise. "Sir?" Ironwood tilted his head slightly, but gave her the time to fumble for words. She cleared her throat. "Not completely, sir. I've had some preliminary success, but my father has... discouraged... me from practicing without professional supervision."

"…Supervision which he has no doubt been slow in providing." The words hung in the air for a long moment, the implications drifting down like snowflakes. "I look forward to hearing more from you, Schnee."

"Sir." Was all Winter could get out, her chest suddenly tight, as the Headmaster moved down to the next student in line.

Chalk leaned in for a conspiratorial whisper. "Looks like someone made a friend," she murmured, in a teasing lilt.

Some part of Winter’s subconscious knew that Chalk was off by one. Though it still hadn’t figured out in which direction.