Winter and Qrow's house had a guest room and a den, where the unexpected guest were able to crash.

Cinder was left in the living room. She thought it was weird they'd just agreed to let them all stay--she didn't understand the familial urge to keep your siblings or friends close after such an ordeal just to see if they were okay. She was a stranger to that kind of care.

But not, unfortunately, to the repercussions of the stress of the day. It took her a while to fall asleep--and then she had nightmares.

It was a blur, as nightmares tend to be, but one thing that was clear was it was about what happened.

She was reliving killing that bandit, only, in the dream, instead of the others saying it was okay, they were scared and running away from her, and the other bandits and Grimm turned to her and attacked as one.

She woke up with a sharp cry. It wasn't that loud, as often our voice is more hushed when we're speaking in a dream.

The walls of the living room, hung with pictures and lined with bookshelves or other decor, met her instead of the woods.

So it had just been a dream.

She put her hand to her heart. Her pulse was racing.

"Is something wrong?" Winter almost made her jump off the sofa by walking into the room.

She was carrying one of the twins...Whitney, judging by the pajamas and blanket.

"What are you doing up?" Cinder asked the stupid question.

Winter chose not to acknowledge it was stupid. "She didn't want to go back to sleep yet. We have to walk her around.... It's my turn."

Cinder turned away.

"I thought I heard a cry. Are you all right?" Winter asked.

"Fine." Stiffly.

Winter glanced at Whitney, who was not crying at least and was staring at her like even she thought the crabby lady was a bad liar. [If she takes after Raven, that'll be reality in a few years.]

"You know," she said in a nonchalant tone, like it was about the weather, "it's funny, they have such different temperaments even now. Nick never gives much trouble about sleeping.... They say everyone is different, but I never truly had to try to adjust my approach before now."

She sat down in an armchair to prop Whitney up. "You don't even realize how set you are in your ways until you have to have a family to live with.... Other people just hold up the mirror. It was simpler to be alone...but the trouble is, it was lonely."

She seemed to be implying something.

Cinder glanced up. "What do you want?"

"I suppose this is my attempt at offering to help," Winter said. "You'll forgive mey lack of practice at it. I'm not in the habit."

"I don't want your help." Cinder frowned at her.

"I know that," Winter said. "You never have. But I suppose Miss Likstar would not let that stop her with any of us, so we shouldn't allow it to be an obstacle either."

Cindre didn't answer that. She didn't really want to get into a battle of wits with Winter, and not at this hour especially.

Whitney made a squeak but didn't actually cry. Winter adjusted automatically.

"Isn't it weird, suddenly having two kids and living a boring home life?" Cinder said.

Winter raised an eyebrow. "I'll choose not to be insulted by that."

Cinder shrugged.

"It is a change," Winter said. "Not that I intend to be at home forever, but it would be a change anyway. And it wasn't exactly planned. I did learn that things like love and life, they aren't something you can always plan or control or even prevent. We want to have too much control. I suppose that was Atlas' downfall, but we don't need to go into that. Aren't you surprised by where you are in life currently?"

"Surprised?" Cinder was bitter. "No, this is about right. On the run from psychopaths who want to kill me, dodging maniacs in the woods, trying to get the upper hand and being thwarted. Nothing has changed."

"I'm surprised you'd say so--but not as much as I would have been before I knew I'd likely think the same thing without anyone to ground me," Winter mused. "Something has changed, hasn't it...? Weiss told us what happened yesterday."

She grew a bit more somber as the reality of losing Weiss never ceased to be a heavy thought of her--nor should it. "I was going to mention that anyway. Maybe not in the middle of the night but...I should thank you. We almost lost her, and I couldn't be there. It is hard to not be able to be there most of the time, but I at least know her team will do their best."

"Thank me?" Cinder snorted. "It's not like I did that for her."

"Who else was it for? Was someone else in front of her?" Winter was actually rather sardonic.

"No, that's not what I--that is, it wasn't for any special reason. I just wanted to win." Cinder hugged her knees. "Those inhuman monsters would have killed us all if we gave them the chance. Of course I resorted to killing him, but they would have done that and worse."

"I note there is something apologetic about the way you phrased that." Winter wasn't missing a thing. "You 'resorted' to it. Please, Cinder, I'm a military operative. We're not strangers to the idea of killing in battle. It's fortunate that usually that only means Grimm, but when dealing with people like this, I can't pretend I don't think it's more than justified. Or necessary. I do not think I'd have done any different if left with no other options. They'll be killed anyway, if they're processed by the kingdoms, as a warning to others. You've never had any problem doing it before. I wonder if Oscar was right--you are acting as if it bothered you."

"Why would it?" Cinder said coolly. "I've killed many people. Usually with that 'damn smile', like Jaune said that one time. I almost killed Weiss once, with a spear. It didn't bother me then. I never had any trouble sleeping afterwards either."

"If this was meant to shock me, I assure you, I've already been informed of this long ago," Winter said. "Why bring it up now?"

"Because there's no reason for you to act like this is something to be grateful for. And I have no idea why it would bother me. That creep certainly deserves it, and I've killed people who didn't deserve it far more than those who did." Cinder realized that her hands were shaking again.

Winter was watching her closely.

"Well, you're right. There's no reason for it to change now," she said, calmly. "I've known people who didn't like to kill at first learn to not be shaken by it."

She meant of course, Ironwood.

"But I haven't had the chance to know many people who that happened in reverse to," she said. "Emerald and Mercury are the only ones it comes to mind...and of course my husband."

"Qrow?" Cinder always forgot Qrow had been a bandit.

"It's not as if, in nearly 4 years of marriage and longer than that of being close, I haven't heard more about the past," Winter said candidly. "Qrow and Raven were both taught to steal and kill from a young age. Not often perhaps, and perhaps not wholly murder, if it's in an open fight. But they both did things that we would call unlawful. It changed after they went to Beacon...for Qrow. I've never had to kill a person--always the might of Atlas' sheer force was enough to win a fight without it coming to that, and we're supposed to be able to fight well enough not to have to kill, but he tells me you get used to it...only looking back, it starts to bother you."

"Perhaps many people would find your relationship odd considering that background." Cinder didn't know why she said that--other than Winter was known for being such a stiff, and her choice in partners had never stopped being strange to some people, Cinder included.

"So many people have told me, in not so many words," Winter said, not caring. "But I don't think less of Qrow for what he did then. I think more of him for waking up to it because of Ozpin, who we all know was a deeply flawed role model at best, but he still passed on better values. Perhaps it shows someone's character is at the core better, if they can turn aside from that willingly and change how they view the world. There're...scars, I suppose. Some things can't be changed, but the important thing, what we are capable of now, that can change. That's all that matters."

"You think so?" Cinder said, not buying it.

"I have to think so," Winter said. "Not just for him--for myself also. You forget that, at one time, we were almost willing to do the same thing. I put different labels on it, but it was all hypocrisy. Pyrrha helped me to see that most, perhaps. She was so quick to admit her own near fall into corruption. She's a brave woman. It was harder for me, but it was as it was. I might be tempted to resent your targeting Weiss, as you mentioned--" With a hard look for a second. "--and yet...it's not as if I was doing any differently. To make matters worse, I turned on her for a time when the General was ordering it. I never actually fought her, but would I have if I had to? If I can do that, and I've claimed to love Weiss her whole life, then can I judge what you did any more harshly? You didn't have any reason to hold back."

"No, don't do that." Cinder was getting sick of this kind of mercy from the team--or really it was starting to freak her out. "Don't gloss over it."

"I assure you, I have never done that." Winter's tone became little more like her old self.

Whitney stirred but then went back to sleep.

Winter softened again. "It seems you forget I once threatened you that you would pay for everything you did."

"I remember that." Cinder hadn't cared about it at the time. "That didn't work out so well for you."

"I don't know about that. I think you did pay--just not because of me." Winter tilted her head. "Shine persuaded me to drop my wish for revenge. It was not easy at first. I was furious. I thought at the time that you only hurt people because you liked it and that you were an arrogant and cold-hearted fiend who'd already sold her soul to the enemy."

All accurate, to Cinder's memory of her own state of mind.

"You were the last person I thought would ever change, except maybe for Callows," Winter added. "Shine told me that you deserved to die--but you know when Shine says that, she doesn't mean she's going to kill you. She said that we all deserved punishment, and, as usual, she didn't hesitate to point out my own blind spots. She is a challenging person to get along with at times, but I'm glad now that she did it. I see that my revenge would have only made our victory impossible, likely as not. In the end, we all had to renounce that power and that quest for it. You did the same as us. Thus we became equal in a sense. And whatever things magic led us to do, I hope it is over.... Do you ever miss it?"

"Only when it would be a massive advantage to be able to use it against the people who are fighting dirty," Cinder said.

So only every other week or so.

"I suppose that makes sense, but I don't miss it," Winter said. "Qrow says he sometimes misses flying, but somehow he doesn't really miss magic. Magic seems to make having peace almost impossible in yourself. I could never really rest with it. I'm going to assume it was the same for you. You were just what all of us would have been without the checks in our lives...and the unpleasant reality was that we were being more like that all the time. The line between heroes and villains was blurring, and Shine and Wally lost no time in proving that to us. We must thank them for that, as it is not easy to confront people in that manner, and we didn't give them a pleasant time about it, but it saved our lives...and our souls."

She leaned back now. "So perhaps you don't believe me, but, I really have put aside the grudges of the past. I understand that you don't exactly receive that message well, and I know why. I don't either. But I'm trying to learn."

"You? What do you have to worry about there? You've always been so sickeningly selfless about it," Cinder said.

"Thank you, I suppose, but there's a selflessness that is actually more harmful than selfishness. Not because selfishness is acceptable, but because we can be pridefully selfless. Putting aside what is right, just in the name of sacrificing ourselves, is also an evil, one masked as goodness, which makes it so much more deadly. The General fell into that trap, and I was hardly two steps away from it, if that much. In a sense, you stopped me the same way you stopped Pyrrha, and whatever your intentions were, I should have seen the similarities between us then, but I blinded myself to it. Now I don't, that's all. I'd think you'd allow for that. Why is it so important to you that you push all of us away and remain the outcast?"

Winter would always ask questions that bluntly, and sometimes she could cut deeper than Raven, who didn't usually bother to prod you about your feelings. 

Cinder shivered without meaning to, but the question made her uncomfortable.

"It's because all of you want to have all this 'good will'." She made an air quote. "But with each other, it's effortless for you. It's not for me. That proves that I do not fit. Nor did I ever want to. You can all claim it's all in the past, but things still stand. Maybe you're not all so innocent--I certainly never claimed you were--but perhaps your crimes were at least done for anyone other than yourself. That's something people forgive more easily. Not mine. I can't change what I was in the past, and I don't know even what is different now."

"Perhaps you don't see it because you're looking at the wrong thing," Winter said simply.

"Looking at.... See, there it is--you all talk in riddles. Ever since the DJs taught you, it's the same," Cinder said.

"I'll take that as a compliment. But I think the point is clear, isn't it? You keep comparing all our differences and evaluating them, weighing them to see who is the most worthy to be called 'good' now, or 'reformed'. You have reasons for everyone but yourself being higher on the scale. One might mistake this as humility, but I see no great change from before when you wanted to impress us all with how evil you were. I believe Shine perhaps saw through it first. At some level, if you have to show how evil you are, you know that evil is not the right state of things. The truly mad don't need to prove they are mad--they are the proof themselves by not noticing it. We've known people like that. But your crimes seem to be more trying to become something that you knew all along was wrong.... I've come to know more of your story, through the others, and it's not a pretty one...but neither is mine. Neither are most of ours. The better question is: why are we able to let ourselves not be the mere product of our backgrounds? Because we have more now, and you seem unable to let it go."

That was, in fact, the real question.

"Like this part about the bandits," Winter said. "All of us can say he deserved it and it wasn't wrong. Some of us have killed before, some of us haven't, but we all agreed about that. No one feels it was any moral loss to you or to our team. Perhaps a strategic one, but we can recover from that. I could not recover so well from losing Weiss, and I daresay the same goes for the family of that poor girl you managed to save. Some things must be done, even if they are ugly. What is it that you fear about it?"

"Fear?" Cinder would have laughed that off--but then she couldn't quite make herself do it. 

She looked down instead. "When the magic and Grimm left my brain, I began to understand the things I did were monstrous.... I knew before that, but I didn't feel it. I didn't really accept it for long after that, but lately it's been becoming more clear. Perhaps it's seeing how it must have looked to other people when I did what these people do. You said it yourself."

"It was inconsiderate of me to say that in front of you." Winter had felt like she should apologize for that. "When you gave it up."

"I gave it up to save myself."

"I believe, in that situation, the only reasonable thing to do would be to save yourself. Who else except yourself can be saved from something that is inside you?"

"Even if that's true, would I have been one of these people, had I had the chance?" Cinder finally came to her real point, what was haunting her. "We're not that different. Maybe even now we're not that different. Killing that man was easy for me. I didn't hesitate. Even the others said they might have. As if it's a credit to me not to hesitate to take someone's life, even if they deserved it. That's not the point. Shine and Wally would spare Salem herself, for far more crimes, out of mercy. I wouldn't have. I wouldn't now, probably. So even if I acknowledge the things I did before were wrong, does that mean I really regret them?"

https://youtu.be/BG7xVIRkxAU

["I Didn't Ask For This"--Beth Crowley.]

"Cinder, slow down," Winter cut in. "I believe you're making a leap in logic."

Ah, yes, Winter's classic reaction to people's issues.

"I see your point that perhaps it is so that you would not hesitate as much as we would, though I don't even know if I would, not if it was to save Weiss or anyone else close to me," Winter said. "If someone came into this house right now, after my family, I would kill them if that's what it took. That's not wrong, that's how it must be. Evil people will not always hold back. Sometimes we cannot afford to. Your concern is that your ability to do this is proof that you are no different. But that is a fallacy. If you were not different, you would not be concerned."

"You think I didn't suspect deep down that Jaune was right about me?" Cinder was getting more upset now. "Of course I did.... I pushed it aside. But I knew."

"I don't doubt it." Winter was more firm. "It would be more concerning if you didn't.... We all have demons that we fight. But if you're worried about relapsing, then put that fear aside. Perhaps it is possible. I suppose we can make the wrong choice again, just as we can make the right choice. But this is a fear I have also. And no one I've spoken to about this has not expressed that fear to me."

Cinder was surprised to hear that.

"So we all worry that our change is not permanent," Winter said. "Shine and Wally do also. They've written as much to me, I imagine to you too. However, all of us see in each other the clear wish to be better, and we believe that the others will succeed. We doubt ourselves. I know that, inside me, there is still that old, cold, at times willing to be callous Winter Schnee. I hope that she was never the truest part of me, but even if she had been, she's been replaced. I still can hear that woman at times. I still can make choices that I do not like. Don't mistake our happiness for utter bliss. There are plenty of prideful moments in life, and in marriage and family, that if we let them, would grow into large issues...but being aware of that, we try to stop them early on. I could list off problems here to you, but I won't. Because my focus is not the problems, it's the benefits. I strongly advise you to do the same in your life. It may be that you have felt the temptation to think the same as before about killing that man, and that is what is scaring you... but nevermind it. Just decide that you will not do the same."

"Emerald wants to help these people still." Cinder almost had a bitter humor to her tone. "I don't want that."

"I don't really want that either," Winter said. "But I know that I am a less forgiving person than Emerald is.... I'm working on that, with the grace of God, naturally. Perhaps the same will work in you. But I don't think you need to want it. Just decide not to oppose it, if it comes. That's what we did with you, for goodness' sake. We weren't happy about it at first. But over time we saw the wisdom of their decision to allow you to help us. As it stands...perhaps no one else in the team would have acted so quickly to save Weiss, so perhaps you may see that as a demerit in your character, but for once we're glad for that. Were we fools to not want to even give you that chance? Most people wouldn't say so, but we're not most people. You must decide what you believe."

"I might never be able to be like the rest of you," Cinder said. "I've never been exactly normal."

"Perhaps you've had an unusually difficult life, but it seems as if the real difference is that you fear that you will never be different.... Maybe you are not like the rest of us...but our differences have made us stronger as a unit in many ways. Why do you care? Do you wish you had closer friends?"

Cinder shrugged. "I don't know. That's not what I would have thought it was a year ago. But I wouldn't know what it is. I thought caring about people made you weak, but it doesn't really seem to. I don't know if it makes you stronger either."

"Didn't Shine once say to you or to us that caring for others is a weakness in some ways? But it is also a strength in others. It depends on what kind of strength you value. At this point in your life, do you value the strength that being cold-hearted would give you? It might make you stronger in one way. Unshakable. But if that is what you wanted, why does the very act of doing something in the old way, and not being shaken by it, disturb you?"

This was a very good point.

And Cinder had a moment of more clarity. It was true.... If that was what was upsetting her, then that wasn't the same as before. Before she'd have been more upset by the thought that anything would shake her resolve to kill and lie and steal to get what she wanted--now it was reversed. She worried that her resolve to stay on the right course would be shaken by old temptations.

"So do I care about what's right now?" she asked.

"Everything about this conversation has implied that so far." Winter almost was laughing behind her words, however wryly, since she knew Cinder's kind of self blindness was not that different from her own. "I don't know why you don't believe it."

"I always thought it would feel different," Cinder admitted. "I guess you all feel so confident about good and evil, and I don't."

"Forgive me for saying this, but wasn't your entire vendetta against Atlas based on its corruption? Honestly, something I've come to see had more merit than I thought at the time."

She sounded like Royal there.

"That wasn't liking goodness, was it?" Cinder said. "Just calling out the hypocrisy, mostly just to divide people."

"I suppose, but, similar to Salem, the delight you have in destroying things you don't like seems to imply in some sense that you've been disappointed by them. It isn't like the devil and out of pure jealousy. That's not the impression I got from either of you. I see now why Shine thought Salem had to have more human feelings under the curse. A demon might have destroyed the world just for sheer love of it, but she always had a point to prove, and that is only something a human would have. And didn't you also? I won't say it was right in any way, but it has a human quality, nonetheless, and theoretically we can understand it. Whether we like it or not."

"I was worse than Atlas though." Cinder said a thing that she'd never have said before now. "Because if I thought I was so corrupt, or that it was such a pull to get power and to be feared, then if I was really fair, I'd have seen that other people had just as much reason to pursue it as myself. It was always about taking what they had, not really making it better. I was angry and bitter, and it wasn't about justice."

"All this strongly suggests that you've come to see it in a new light," Winter said. "I can't make you forgive yourself any more than anyone can make me. But I think that's your real obstacle now. The light of life has changed you also...clearly. Why is that so difficult to believe?"

Cinder rubbed her face. "Maybe it's pride," she said, perhaps honest with herself for the moment. "I thought I was beyond reach of any attempts to make me see things differently, and even if it did happen, I didn't like to admit it. Now it's a habit to be that prideful."

"All of us have that habit then." Winter shrugged. "Do you at least believe now that I do not still harbor bitter feelings?"

"I...well, yes, I just think you're wrong." Almost wryly.

"Why? Who are you still out to kill for what they did to you?"

"Most of them are dead already."

"Ruby isn't."

"Ruby didn't even mean to do what she did," Cinder said. "I feared her, but I didn't really blame her...and Salem never thought to mention the Silver Eyes before I got those blasted powers."

"Nice of her. I wonder if she didn't think of it, or she just didn't care," Winter mused. "Even she's moved on.... You know, perhaps the best way to really have justice is to simply live your life and try to be happy. The real thing that no evil person wants is for anyone to be happy, even themselves, I think. Shine's counsel to me and Qrow has been to try to have the best life we can and not to let the people who tried to ruin it ruin any more by making us bitter."

"She's given me the same advice, as if it's that easy."

"It is and it isn't. In one way, it's incredibly easy to do that. All it takes is not pursuing a grudge and not hanging onto that guilt, to focus on the here and now, and I have plenty to focus on there." Winter nodded at Whitney. "That's been helpful for me, actually. I have less time to think about the past. In another way, it's still very hard. Happiness is a fragile thing, like glass, easily shattered by outside blows...but deeper things, like peace, joy, and love, and hope also, are not so easily shattered. We should want to be happy but be deeply rooted in something beyond ourselves, so that happiness being broken for a while does not break our spirit. The blessings of life are gifts, Cinder. They are not given to everyone equally, but what are given, are temporary, some more so than others. We must love them while we have them. I've learned that a bit more...perhaps mostly from Qrow. He's been so afraid of losing things...but he's fought hard for them. It made me think I should fight harder also. And you should also. But if you do lose more, don't let that shake your core. We all have the same inheritance in one way. We all have the same faith. We all have the same teachers who left us to carry on their legacy, and in it that way whatever you do, you still have the same purpose as us. Perhaps if you take that attitude, you can take the blessings when they do come and not be so afraid of them...and one of those is being able to accept the rest of us as your support--however pitiful we are at it." She smiled faintly. "I'm not saying we're going to be very close friends. But we are here if you need us. And so far you've been there when we needed your assistance--even unwittingly. That's all that we started off with, so at least it's not going backwards."

"You sound just like her, you know that?" Cinder said. "Just like Shine."

"Again, thank you."

"And like Pyrrha."

"I'm still flattered."

"If this is what all of you really think," Cinder said, "I wonder why I don't."

"Don't you? You seem to find it easy enough to allow that the others have changed, just not yourself."

"I don't know..."

"We're going to move at different rates and in different ways. It would be a bad sign otherwise. But my point is that your method is not any worse than ours. What truths you have to learn in your life, they are still important ones, even if they are different ones from us. So do not let the differences make you ashamed of them. You should at least be pleased that you have learned. Stagnation would be the worst thing after all we've seen.... But I suppose I am starting to sound what the kids call 'bossy'."

"The kids who are all adults now," Cinder said dryly.

"Is something wrong?" Qrow finally appeared, looking sleepy.

"No," Winter said, "but could you put her down?"

Whitney had fallen asleep long ago and seemed intent on staying that way.

"The famous Qrow Branwen," Cinder said dryly, "living the domestic life."

"No one with real street cred would let a little domestic responsibility kill it," Qrow said airily. "I can still slay, trust me. When I get back out there, I'll start showing all of you slackers how it's done again."

"And you'll still remember to pick up groceries after work," Winter said drolly. "Personally, when I get back out there, I'm sure people will think I lost my touch. I might have to knock some sense back into the troops. I worry they walked all over Raven. I hear Zapato left the base without permission just two nights ago."

Cinder looked uncomfortable. "Well, that was Robyn's fault."

"Robyn really shouldn't be breaking the rules like that now," Qrow said. "Not that I give a d--- personally, but we need to know where the agents are when we're stretched as thin as we've been these days. Raven will get mad at her if she pulls that again."

"Good luck with that," Cinder said. "That woman is incorrigible."

"I heard you didn't get along so well." Qrow thought it was funny. "That was in the report. Zapato has his hands full leading teams of women who just wanted to be catty."

"Qrow," Winter warned.

"What? They were."

"I suppose he's right," Cinder said. "But it's a waste of energy, I've decided."

"Well, that is a miracle," Qrow said. "Who are you, and what have you done with Cinder Fall?"

"Qrow," Winter hissed at him. "Show some sensitivity."

"I suppose I can take that from the person who's holding an infant right now and still thinks he has street cred," Cinder said.

"Hey, come at me, I can still take you down," Qrow insisted, though not really harshly. "But I have better things to do these days." He winked at Winter.

"Go back to bed!" Winter hissed in annoyance. "And hurry before she wakes up again."

"Yes, ma'am." Qrow left.

"Ugh, you have kids and you're still so nauseating to be around," Cinder said.

"Oh, be quiet." Winter sat back. "I know by now that all of you only say that because you wish you had a better relationship."

That was likely true.