Fanfic / Two Minutes Silence

When Yang falls, it's quiet. Calm. She did what she had to do and gods, if the others are okay, that's all that matters.
When Ruby and Blake fall, it's a jolt. A cold shock of horror that they didn't quite make it, a splash like the bright green fizz of Penny's Maiden flames.
When Weiss falls, it’s almost with relief. Living or dead, she'll see them again, and it’s almost worth the guilt of seeing Winter's tearstained face as she reaches and doesn't make it.
When Jaune falls, he thinks of his team, he thinks of one more letter knocked off of Team JNPR and of the blood on Crocea Mors' broken blade. He thinks of how he failed them all, and how they all failed each other.
When they wake up, they're at Beacon.

— Archive of Our Own description

Two Minutes Silence is a RWBY fanfic that deviates following the Volume 8 finale. In it, Team RWBY, Jaune, and Neo fall into the Void Between the Worlds as they did in canon - but rather than waking up in the Ever After, they instead wake up on the airship on their way to Beacon Academy, all the way back during the events of Volume 1. Knowing that they have to prepare for Cinder's plans for Beacon, a Team JNPR where only Jaune remembers the future, and above all the ever-present possibility of Neopolitan coming back for revenge, Team RWBY and Jaune do whatever they can to prevent the Bad Future from coming into existence.

The story can be read here on Archive of Our Own and here on FanFiction.Net.

This work contains examples of:

• Acting Unnatural:
  • Team RWBY and Jaune are very bad at acting "natural" when they're first realizing their circumstances. In particular, Jaune knows that he won't be able to hide recognizing Pyrrha, so Weiss has to effectively beat him up during their first meeting to cover it up. They get better as time goes on, but Jaune in particular slips every now and then.
  • As always, Penny is absolutely terrible at pretending to be human and only gets away with it because the people she's talking to either already know the truth, are too focused on something else to deal with it, or are stupid enough to fall for it. There's even a point where she calls the police with her internal systems and Yang can see from a distance that she didn't even pretend to turn her scroll on to fake a call.
• Adaptational Badass: All of the time travelers are far stronger going into Initiation than they were in canon. In particular, Jaune goes from being completely untrained to being able to take on his entire team at once and win.
• Adaptational Personality Change: In canon, there's nothing indicating that Ren or Nora had trouble adjusting to life in Beacon. Here, Ren struggles with switching off his survival instincts from their time in the wilds; among other things, he originally pegs Blake as a potential threat/thief because of her quiet walk, and he's quietly furious throughout Professor Port's class because of how pointless his stories are compared to what he's lived through.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Ilia ends up bunking with the entirety of Team SSSN after the docks heist, whereas in the show she only interacted with Sun and (briefly) Neptune.
• All for Nothing: Played for Laughs; Team RWBY spends months trying to learn how to effectively pickpocket (so they can take Lionheart's watch from him and get into Haven's vault), leading to a lot of embarrassing mishaps for all of them when they try to pickpocket each other and fail. It ends up meaning nothing because Neo joins them and shows them the back way into the Vault that she took in the original timeline, leaving the team hilariously distraught at all of their wasted effort.
• Batman Gambit: The first part of the plan to recruit Neo banks on analyzing what they can figure out of her motivation and then extrapolating her actions from there. They thus assume that Neo will go to the docks this time around, since she's desperate to keep Roman alive, and use the opportunity to try to recruit her to their side.
• Broken Pedestal: The docks heist completely breaks any of Ilia's faith in the White Fang and especially Adam, as it makes her realize that the Fang has to be preparing for something truly heinous if they're collecting that much Dust and working with Roman Torchwick. It makes her fight against them during the docks heist and even call the police on them afterward.
• Commonality Connection: Ilia quickly forms a friendship with Scarlet as a "fellow same-sex enjoyer".
• Deliberate Under-Performance: Jaune makes a point to tell the Headmaster that he doesn't have a landing strategy before the Initiation begins. In truth, Jaune could easily just tank the fall between his shield and his Aura, but he's playing up his helplessness so that Pyrrha will still spear him to a tree and seek him out.
• Didn't Think This Through: As Yang thinks about Ironwood's fall from grace, she thinks about how even if his plans had somehow worked, they only would've doomed Atlas in the long run. If they had risen the kingdom above the Grimm, they would've eventually run out of supplies; if he had bombed the evacuation ships, then Atlas's reputation would've been even more destroyed than it already was. Disregarding the morality of it, Yang can't forgive how downright stupid he became after going mad.
• Dramatic Irony: Any chapter that takes place from the perspective of someone who isn't a time traveler is rife with hints towards the knowledge that only the audience has.
  • During Initiation, Pyrrha notices that Team RWBY and Jaune act weird when they suggest staying behind for longer to protect any other initiates, but takes their excuse at face value. The audience knows they're sneakily coming up with an excuse to stay behind to see if Neo takes the chance to attack.
  • Roman and Neo's entire first on-page conversation is tainted with the knowledge that for all his confidence that they can eventually survive Cinder and that she'll never have to lose him, she already has lost him because of their current trajectory.
  • When she's trying to understand why Jaune is acting odd, the first ideas Nora gets are that he has a crush on Pyrrha and that he's a time traveler sent back to protect her. Both of them are spot on, but she dismisses them because his actions don't quite line up with the theories - because Jaune is doing his damndest to not let anyone cotton on - and goes with him being either a secret agent or a bodyguard.
  • After Yang and Blake execute a perfect pincer maneuver against Cinder in the CCT, Winter notes that this is postgraduate levels of skill. It absolutely is, but she has no idea why they're so good.
• Driving Question: Why were Team RWBY, Jaune, and Neo sent back in time, how could it be reversed, and do they want to reverse it? For the audience, why were they not sent to the Ever After?
• Enemy Mine: One of the group's first priorities is recruiting Neo and Torchwick to their side, as they realize they have a far more visceral stake in the game against Salem's group and might be willing to take an out if they present it. Though Neo flees the docks heist where they first try to extend this olive branch, she tracks them down on the train to Mistral and says she's in.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • As much as Nora is desperate to figure out what's up with Jaune, she draws the line at recording him in the night while they sleep.
  • Ironwood is genuinely horrified when he finds out everything he did in the previous timeline - not just because of how awful they were, but because most of his actions make logical sense to him, then he gets to abandoning Mantle to die and they suddenly don't.
  • Though she cares little for how it affects Roman, Weiss is struck with brief horror at the sight of his cell, which is barely bigger than the average closet. She can't help but note that although Roman might deserve such inhumane treatment, Atlas statistically had to imprison an innocent person every once in a while and they would've faced the same thing, which gives her just another strike against her homeland.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: As Ruby points out to Neo, disregarding any of the morality of her actions, supporting Salem is already a terrible idea in itself because Salem wants to destroy the world that Neo happens to live on. There's no way to protect Roman from that kind of fate even if they get in her good graces.
• Exact Words: Team RWBY's hyper-specific question leads Jinn to take their story all the way back to the beginning, with Ruby's fight with Torchwick that got her sent to Beacon.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Downplayed; Ruby can understand Neo's desire to avenge her loved one, but she can't even begin to think about killing anyone else in the process as she did.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Ren points out that for all that Port is clearly a showboat who is way past his prime, he did manage to capture a Boarbatusk and keep it alive, which is far more difficult than it appears on its face. It requires him to have built a cage that was slightly too small for it (so that it couldn't get the momentum to bash itself to death) and for Port to successfully get the Grimm in the cage in the first place without causing it significant harm.
  • Nora of all people is the first person to cotton on to Jaune acting strange when no one's looking, even when Ren dismisses anything suspicious as trauma or an eccentricity. Through analysis of his behavior both public and private, she becomes the first person to ever guess Jaune is actually hiding something beyond his potential trauma. She even correctly guesses that he's a time traveler, but initially dismisses it.
  • During a conversation with Ilia, Sun shows a surprising amount of understanding of Weiss's past and emotional logic, suggesting that the reason she throws money at people's problems is that it's the only way she knows to show affection and that any potential racist or problematic behaviors probably come from Jacques. This is especially noticeable because he's barely interacted with her at this point and is only using educated guesses.
  • Whitley isn't just interested in running the SDC, he absolutely loves Dust manufacturing and outright nerds out over all of the machinery required in the Dust refineries and on Dust theory in general. He gets so excited while explaining all of the minutiae of Dust refining to Penny that he doesn't notice his clothes getting dirty. He also gets so emotionally invested in The Lady of the Rings that Boromir's death brings him to tears.
• Hope Spot: During the Battle of Beacon, Mercury recounts that Atlas soldiers arrive in the brig with their weapons out, meaning that Ironwood has given the kill order on Cinder, Emerald, and him to ensure Cinder can't get the Maiden's power. The next chapter reveals that Tyrian got there just in time to instead massacre the Atlas soldiers and get the three of them out scot-free.
• Hypocrite: What turns Ilia away from Adam for good is that for all his anti-human rhetoric, he was willing to align himself with a bunch of humans and attack other Faunus once it suited his ends.
• Innocently Insensitive: Penny accidentally makes Ilia choke on air during their sleepover by directly asking if Ilia thinks she's cute.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Thanks to their determination, the group ensures that Teams RWBY and JNPR still form correctly, and they even still kill the giant Nevermore even though Ruby and Weiss don't aggravate it.
  • Though the team plans to run into Sun to recruit him for the docks heist, they accidentally run into Penny on the way, so she still ends up playing a role as well.
  • Even though what was once a two-on-one fight becomes a four-on-one fight this time around, Roman still escapes the docks heist thanks to Neo's intervention.
  • Even after all the changes the heroes make and with all the future knowledge they can use, the Battle of Beacon still kicks off during the Vytal Tournament thanks to Watts and Tyrian picking up Cinder's slack.
• Internal Reveal:
  • Chapter 12 begins to show the rest of Team JNPR (besides Jaune) the past timeline the others came from. They thus learn all about the past timeline, the fall of Vale, the attack on Haven, the destruction of Atlas, and Salem's existence and past. Chapter 16 has Weiss inform Pietro and Penny about the past timeline as well, and then chapter 17 brings in Ozpin, Glynda, Penny, and Team SSSNI.
  • Chapters 12 and 13 also give all of the time-travellers complete insight into everything that happened in the original timeline until they fell into the Void thanks to Jinn showing them their past in detail, meaning that rather than only working with the facts they had when they fell, they basically have the same understanding of the show's events as an audience member would.
• "Let's Watch Our Show" Plot: Chapters 12 and 13 are essentially a reaction fic, with Team RWBY, Team JNPR, and Neo all being shown all of the events from volumes 1 to 8. While most of them were there for most of it, it catches the rest of Team JNPR up to speed and gives all of them insight into things they didn't personally witness, such as Clover's death.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Most of Team JNPR and all of Team SSSN are led to believe that Team RWBY essentially stumbled on evidence of a grand conspiracy that incriminates professor Lionheart, hence why they're so dedicated to being secretive and solving the matter themselves - they can't bring their suspicions to anyone in power because they don't know who they can trust. Jinn obviously breaks that illusion by showing Pyrrha, Nora, and Ren the past timeline.
• Loophole Abuse: Subverted; after their encounter with Ambrosius, Team RWBY spends months planning the specific wording of the question they want to ask Jinn so that she can't weasel out of the information they need. Jinn finds their incredibly specific question funny and tells them that while she'll answer the question as they intend, they don't have to worry about loopholes with her; as her primary function is to aid humanity, Jinn is willing to bend her own rules and answer more questions free of charge if her original answer doesn't fulfill their requirement.
• Manipulative Bitch: Blake is willing to manipulate Ilia's feelings for her if it means ensuring her redemption comes early. It horrifies her that she's willing to stoop to Adam's level, even if it's for Ilia's own good, but she does it anyway.
• Mistaken for Romance: Pyrrha admits to Ruby in the forge that she thinks Ruby and Jaune are dating based on how often they interact. Though Ruby struggles to explain why they're so close without revealing their larger past, she does confirm that they're only socially-awkward BFFS, which clearly relieves poor Pyrrha.
• Mood Whiplash: Team RWBY discusses their plans for the future on a whiteboard that Ruby is in charge of, meaning they're having a deadly serious conversation with the "notes" being cartoon drawings of the villains. Her notes also include things like convincing Neo to switch sides with "We also want to violently murder the woman who left you to die. Team effort!"
• Moral Myopia: Weiss internally discusses at length how hypocritical it is for Neo to help Roman burn down Vale if it means protecting themselves, only to take it personally when he was killed incidentally along the way. As she puts it, Roman accepted the consequences of his actions when he joined Cinder, and Neo has no right to act like his death is a great tragedy even if it's personal for her.
• Mundane Utility: Part of Pyrrha's Semblance training is to have her go down to the local scrapyard and use her Semblance to sort all of the piles of metal.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: The group is willing to try recruiting Roman and Neo, but several of them agree that Cinder and Adam need to die. In Adam's case, as Blake discusses, killing him is literally the best option because keeping him alive would allow Cinder to turn him into a racial martyr and enflame the White Fang, and for Cinder, all of them have been too traumatized by all of her actions to even consider letting her live (plus, they know that Neo will want to kill her as well).
• Newspaper-Thin Disguise: After meeting Blake and Yang, Sun and Penny decide to eavesdrop on their resulting conversation with Ilia to figure out what they're being all secretive about. Naturally, their disguise consists of newspapers that they conspicuously open all the way and clearly aren't actually reading. Penny accidentally compares the situation to an In-Universe equivalent to The Pink Panther, apparently thinking it was a legitimate tactic.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Jinn asks Team RWBY and Jaune what they intend to do with the information she gives them about their situation, even though Ruby points out that she would already know that because the answer concerns the present and past. It makes her realize that she just wants to hear their answer to test their resolve.
• Pet the Dog: Pietro takes one look at Whitley and realizes that he needs a better father figure than Jacques, so he lets Whitley stay the night at his shop and encourages him to join a movie night.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Ilia notes that the White Fang doesn't have a presence in Vacuo because there's nothing for them to gain there; Vacuo already has a survival of the fittest mentality regardless of someone's race, so it lacks the industrialized racism they fight in other Kingdoms. At the minimum, it would require one hell of an argument for the Fang to set up shop there.
• Properly Paranoid: The time travelers are very cautious to both protect themselves and ensure that Salem's forces don't cotton on to their presence.
  • On the first night and during Initiation, the group stands guard through the night and day just in case Neo decides to try attacking them, rotating the shift and then sticking back after their teams have been formed during Initiation. We later find out that she never intended to attack them, but they had no way of knowing that, especially given her illusionary Semblance.
  • Knowing that Beacon got hacked at some point but not knowing when, they have to try to keep themselves acting normal at all times they're in public, even if no one else is around, so that the cameras don't give Watts anything to work with. In particular, Jaune doesn't get to have the emotional breakdown he desperately needs until he's alone in his bathroom.
    Ruby's whiteboard: It's not paranoia if they are out to get you :)
  • The group, especially Neo, makes sure that Roman doesn't know she's aligning with Team RWBY, as they all know the moment he knows "Little Red" is in on the alliance, he'll back out. Instead, she just prohibits him from meeting the people she's meeting with. They finally have to reveal the truth when they break Roman out of the airship, but by that point the shit has hit the fan and they don't have time to get into it.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Discussed at length.
  • Early on, it's pointed out that a lot of civilians fell into the void alongside Team RWBY, meaning they may have a lot of people to worry about. Weiss instead points out that without the knowledge the heroes had about Salem and magic, those civilians are far more likely to just dismiss it as a dream, but they agree to keep an ear to Atlas news to see if there are any rumors circulating.
  • When Blake points out that she wants to go back to their timeline and save their life, Jaune immediately asks why she would want to go back. When she points out that there's an entire world they might have left behind, he thinks of Pyrrha still being alive and clams up, genuinely wondering if he's selfish enough to doom an entire world to keep her alive. In the end, he decides that he'd be willing to go back, even if it means leaving his current team without him, because the other Ren and Nora would need him more. Luckily for him, Jinn reveals to the group that they actually did time travel, meaning that there is no "other" Ren and Nora to return to; on the one hand, it basically means that everyone they knew is dead, but on the other, they get a completely clean slate.
• Revenge Before Reason: At the docks heist, Neo is so desperate to kill Ruby before she can move against Roman that she completely ignores any attempt to recruit her to defeat Salem until Weiss physically holds her still with glyphs.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: All of the group are very traumatized from their previous adventures and have to do their best to hide their triggers. Jaune in particular has terrible visions of killing Penny, while Ruby struggles to act normal around Pyrrha after witnessing her death.
• Sympathy for the Devil: After a nightmare, Yang thinks to herself about how she sympathizes with Ironwood, pointing out that he has three different high-stress jobs (running the military, Academy, and anti-Salem forces) and no chance to possibly take a break or treat his clear PTSD. However, she still can't forgive his villainous and frankly stupid decisions he made after he went mad.
• Trauma Button: Even mentioning Kuroyuri is enough to make Ren pause in the middle of fixing his weapons in a manner that almost breaks them even more.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 7, "The Bonfire": The first stage of the group's plan goes wrong when Neo flees the docks heist rather than commit to any kind of alliance.
  • Chapter 13, "Parting the Vail 2": Jinn's story comes to a close and she reveals that the group has legitimately time travelled. Unfortunately, while she knows Ambrosius wouldn't have warned them not to fall without a good reason, she doesn't know the reason, meaning they have to look out for side effects. Neo decides not to use the question she was promised, so the group leaves the Lamp with one question left in the Vault.
  • Chapter 31, "The Winter": The attack on Beacon ends with all of the time-travellers (and Roman) dead despite the battle going better than it did the first time... and then RWBY, Jaune, and Neo wake up back at the start of the school year again, having arrived in a new timeline in the same order and timeframe that they died in the previous timeline.
• Wham Line: While Team RWBY is on the train heading towards Mistral, Ilia walks into the car unannounced. They soon realize it's actually Neo, but she silences their concerns with two words on her scroll: "I'm in".
• What If?: For some reason, the void in the central location sends the people who fell in back in time instead of to the Ever After. This leaves Team RWBY, Jaune, and Neo back in the events of Volume One while they're fully aware of the future.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Yang calls Blake out for having spent their entire year at Beacon without ever once calling her parents.
• Wild Card: The group struggles with how to handle Neopolitan because her motivation is both out of love and fundamentally selfish. They intend to recruit her and Roman to their side by appealing to their pragmatism, especially because the only other option is to try to kill her, but they admit that they may only be able to just make them neutral.

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