Fanfic / Blackened Bluebird

In one world, a troubled little bluebird leaps from the gilded cage of Atlas, and lands in the hands of three women who'd change her life forever. To become May Marigold, to become a Happy Huntress, to be loved and live happily-ever-after. In another, by a small quirk of fate, the same girl falls into the grasp of a different charismatic leader, with a different crew of outcasts. The fate of all Remnant may shift under the fluttering of a blackened bluebird’s wings.

Blackened Bluebird is a RWBY fic written by Badendchan, made as a Role Swap AU where Cinder Fall takes the role of Atlas Specialist, Winter Schnee takes the role of Happy Huntress, and May Marigold takes the role of fallen Maiden. The fic follows May's perspective as she falls from grace and rises as Salem's chosen Maiden.

The fic is part of What Are THEY So Happy About?, an anthology of (occasionally NSFW) RWBY fics following the Happy Huntresses. See also Connect Four.

See also Holding the World On Their Shoulders, another RWBY fic set in an au where May Marigold becomes the Fall Maiden in place of Cinder Fall.

As the fic deals with events that were only recently revealed in RWBY, any spoilers for the show are unmarked

Tropened Bluebird

• Accidental Truth: When "Elphaba" explains her supposed Semblance, May notes that it sounds like something the Grimm do. That is exactly what it is.
• Achilles' Heel: While Cinder in the show only had her left arm infused with grimm essence, causing her to lose it to Ruby's silver eyes, May is infused throughout her entire body, and Salem warns her that a full blast from silver eyes would almost certainly kill her.
• Adaptational Villainy: May goes from heroic civil rights activist working against an oppressive system, to willing dragon to Salem, the Big Bad of the narrative.
• All for Nothing: May fell from Atlas and joined Salem in the belief that there was nothing for her there, that everyone there at best didn't care to notice that she existed, and at worst actively victimized her. Then Winter reveals that she, and possibly the other happy huntresses as well, were in love with her and utterly heartbroken when she apparently died, having hoped to invite her to join their group. May tries her best to deny the implications of what her life could have been like if she actually recognized their friendship for what it was.
• An Arm and a Leg: Once his chances to stop being transphobic runs out, May cuts of Ironwood's legs. She would have loved to kill him, but he's important to Salem's plans.
• An Ice Person: May's fake semblance while infiltrating Beacon is the ability to shape ice, using her maiden powers to do so.
• Animal Eye Spy: Ciara's semblance lets her perceive using the senses of small animals, which she uses to spy for Salem.
• Animal Motifs: May is associated with Bluebirds, leaving the gilded cage of Atlas and falling into the embrace of Salem. She even leans into this, having Emerald create an illusion of a bluebird to lure in Amber and mentally comparing herself to the wounded bird. She also grows wings in the final chapter.
• The Beastmaster: Ciara can control rats and other small animals with her semblance, seeing through their eyes and feeling what they feel.. That's what she wants you to think, at least.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted for May, who looks like a rat's nest at the start of the fic. Played straight with Salem, who supposedly doesn't use makeup meaning that her "weapons grade" eyeliner is natural.
• Bilingual Bonus: Ciara frequently peppers her speech with Irish.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: While sneaking through an Atlas lab, May notes that small drones are used to fetch coffee, deliver samples and papers, and shoot trespassers.
• The Cameo: Pietro Polendina, Penny's father, is briefly seen when May infiltrates and Atlesian lab. He's recognizeable by his spider-chair.
• Canon Immigrant: Ciara doesn't exist in the show, despite being part of Salem's inner circle here. Justified as she dies before the show starts.
• Chekhov's Skill: Ciara used her thorned staff to make it seem like her aura was going down when using her fake semblance, by hurting herself on the thorns. While infiltrating Beacon, May uses this same trick, pretending that her semblance lets her shape ice then letting the cold wear away at her aura.
• Commonality Connection: May and Salem bond over both having been imprisoned by cruel and abusive parents. May relats strongly to the fairytale, The Girl in the Tower, which happens to be based on Salem's life story.
• Death by Adaptation: Tyrian dies when his jealousy of May's closeness with Salem pushes her just a bit too far and she kills him.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Played for Laughs. While on her first mission for Salem, May's mental checklist includes "don't panic" three times.
• Didn't Think This Through: Ciara decides that, since she can't convince May that Salem is evil, it's better to give her a Mercy Kill. This dispells the Geas May was under, allowing her to fight back.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Adam Taurus dies during the Fall of Beacon, unlike the show where he was killed by Blake and Yang in volume 6.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The scene of Salem giving May her first dose of grimm-infused blood reads heavily like a sex scene.
• Downer Ending: May succeeds in her mission to destroy Beacon and murder Ozpin's current host. Thousands of people are killed in the Fall, May's misplaced belief in Salem is unquestioned, and the war has only just begun. The final scene of the fic is May returing to Salem's embrace flying on her mutated grimm wings.
• Driven to Suicide: Before the beginning of the fic, May had already attempted and failed to kill herself by falling from Atlas, driven to that point by the relentless bullying, depression, and dysphoria she suffered.
• Early-Bird Cameo: May briefly sees a file name called Project: PENNY long before Penny herself becomes important.
• Easy Sex Change: Downplayed. May transitions by way of Salem's black grimm-infused blood, which lets her magically rearrange May's body. The effect is the same as by normal hormone replacement therapy, though it works by way of magic and seems a tad bit more efficient. It is also agonizingly painful and nebulously corruptive.
  In hindsight, it was childish to assume she would wave a magic wand and poof you right. That the magic she wields would be like that of the watered-down, child-safe storybooks, and not the grislier legends upon which they were based.
• The Elites Jump Ship: Salem's base in Solitas is a defunct bunker built by a wealthy precious metals magnate and art collector who wanted a getaway in case things ever went south.
• Fallen Hero: Oh, May falls hard. Initially, she's just a girl who goes through some pretty horriffic Trans Tribulations who falls in with Salem because she offers her both safety and a way to make the world better. Over time, she becomes a fanatically devoted servant and consort to Salem willing to murder and transcend humanity (and not in a good way) for her goddess. Her fall culminates in the Fall of Beacon, where she commits an act of terrorism that kills thousands.
• Fairytale Motifs: May jokes that her encounter with Salem sounds like something out of a fairytale, and that Salem is either her fairy godmother or a wicked witch planning to eat her.
  Salem: Let us not rush to conclusions. I could very well be both.
• Given Name Reveal: Actually chosen name reveal. While the audience obviously knows it from the start, May doesn't reveal her chosen name to anyone until chapter 9, when she gives it to Salem.
• Goth: Ciara is dressed goth to the nines, with black dyed hair and a black and "gratuitously belted" trenchcoat.
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • May admits to his corpse that she's jealous of Ozpin, since he's the only one that can love Salem as an equal, whereas May is a fleeting flight of fancy at best.
  • Tyrian resents May because, as Salem's consort and chosen Maiden, she is much closer to his goddess than he is, and he tries repeatedly to murder her for it. He eventually pushes her too far and she kills him.
• Green Thumb: Ciara is a dustmage who wields plant dust and can create and control vines with it.
• Hate Sink: Team RAMM, May's old Atlas team, exists solely to be despicable and a source of May's Trans Tribulations. Toxically masculine bullies who single out May as the least masculine of them and therefore the one they get to push and bully around as much as they want. During a sparring match, they lose due to their own recklessness, then blame May and force her to take the Humiliating Wager alone. They are also sexist and implicitly transphobic.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: While ifiltrating an Atlesian R&D facility, May muses that Ironwood probably never expected one of his students to use the skillset he taught her against Atlas.
• Horrible Judge of Character: May, though given her trauma it's hard to blame her. Joining up with the Obviously Evil Salem may not have been the best idea, though justified in that she had few other options at the time. Worse is that she, deeply depressed, assumed that Winter's team disliked her, or at best saw her as a source of amusement. In reality, the future Happy Huntresses were attempting to befriend May and hoped to help her, even offer her the chance to join them.
• Humanoid Abomination: The thicker grimm goop that May takes along with her grimm hormone replacement therapy has the effect of slowly mutating her into a grimm-human hybrid, giving her the ability to morph parts of her body into corresponding parts on grimm, or even grow brand new bodyparts. By the end of it, it's unclear how much of her is human and how much is grimm, but she thinks of herself as a grimm wearing human skin.
• I Have Many Names: Hazel says word for word that "our Lady" has many names.
• In Medias Res: The fic opens on May dumpster diving to survive in Mantle, with the circumstances that led her there only hinted at.
• I Reject Your Reality: Ironwood, faced wtih a Maiden-empowered May who makes it clear that she's a woman, would rather conclude that Salem has somehow found a way for men to inherit the Maiden powers and then used that method on May, than accept that trans women can become Maidens.
• Irony: In the source material, Adam is an obssessive stalker and abusive boyfriend who pursues his ex across several continent because of his mad obsession with her, refusing to listen when she tells him to leave her alone. In the fic, Adam dies because he ignored May's advice during the Fall of Beacon, meaning that his death was directly caused by not listening to a woman.
• Jerkass Gods: Salem of course has very little good things to say about the Brother Gods who created Remnant. This is apparently not a sentiment unique to her, as there's a famous controversial painting In-Universe that depicts the gods as drunkards causing suffering through negligence.
• Kill the God: What Salem intends to do once all the artifacts are gathered and May has taken all the maiden powers for herself. Take this with a grain of salt, however, as Salem is both a Death Seeker and an extremely Unreliable Expositor.
• Mayfly–December Romance: No pun intended. May, a 20-something woman at the end of the fic, is in a relationship with Salem, a witch older than human civilization. May is aware of the obvious imbalance of their relationship, and part of her insecurities is that she can never love Salem as an equal.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Team RAMM, May's old Atlas team. Rams are notoriously stubborn and can be extremely dangerous, which has made them one of the animals most commonly associated with masculinity. Team RAMM are a group of testosterone poisoned, toxic masculine assholes who degrade and look down on Marigold for being the least masculine of them.
  • May's new sword, the Danse Macabre, is named after a motif in medieval art depicting skeletons dancing with popes, emperors, and beggars. It's meant as a reminder that all are equal in death.
• Mundane Utility:
  • Salem has the grimm ability to sense negative emotion. Negative emotion includes dysphoria, which means she can easily clock trans people at a glance. She also uses her Perception Filter to leave clothes in the bathroom while May showers undetected.
  • Apparently Salem's grimm-infused blood can also serve as hormone replacement therapy, who would've thought.
• Named Weapons:
  • Ciara's weapon is named Eadránai, "Arbitrator" in Irish.
  • The sword May makes while working for Salem is named Danse Macabre.
• Not Hyperbole: May's "Fall" from grace (or in this case, Atlas) is often brought up. The "Fall" part is rather literal though it might be more accurate to say that she threw herself from Atlas.
• Odd Name Out: Elphaba West has no colour motif in her name, causing May to think it's an old pre-war name. Her real name, Salem, doesn't have it either because it predates humanity.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. May overhears Salem's agents talk about "Winter", meaning the Winter Maiden, and does a double take thinking they mean her friend Winter Schnee.
• Only One Name: Hazel specifies that his name is just Hazel.
• Perception Filter: Salem has some kind of magic to this effect that lets her move through heavily guarded gates without the guards noticing her. May describes it as like her semblance, only without actual invisibility.
• Point of No Return: After her first job for Salem, May is offered a choice; Join Salem wherever she's going, or remain in Mantle with access to the survival bunker and relative comfort. May choses the former, and the rest is history.
• Politically Incorrect Hero:
  • "Hero" might be a bit far given his Well-Intentioned Extremist traits, but Ironwood continuously refers to May by masculine pronouns and treats her as a man even after May corrects him two times (and warns him that he doesn't get a third chance), and faced with the undeniable proof that May inherited the Maiden powers.
  • If Salem's word is to be taken at face value (which is, admittedly, a big ask), then Ozpin forced a trans girl to remain closeted to make it more difficult for Salem to find the Maiden at one point.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: May goes from a broken, dysphoric homeless girl to the monster who destroys Beacon and kills Ozpin. This is framed less as a tragedy, and more as a triumphant rise to power.
• "Ray of Hope" Ending: While it's up for interpretation, one reading of the ending is that Winter did succeed in placing the seed of doubt in May, and while she is still loyal to Salem, she may eventually start to question her and potentially even have a Heel Realization.
• Required Secondary Powers: May's semblance doesn't just let light pass through her (rendering her invisible), but also replicates it within her invisibility bubble. Without it, she would be blind.
• Riches to Rags: May goes from a wealthy Atlesian heir to dumpster diving homeless girl before the fic even starts.
• Role Swap AU: What the fic ultimately is, though focusing on only one of the characters being swapped. May Marigold takes the role of Fall Maiden in place of Cinder Fall, Cinder becomes Ironwood's right hand in place of Winter Schnee, and Winter becomes a happy huntress in place of May.
• Second-Person Narration: The story is told using this, with the reader in May's shoes the entire time. This serves both as a way to get the reader into May's head and see how she could fall the way she did, and to avoid giving away May's deadname since the narration only ever calls her "you".
• Shout-Out: Salem's chosen alias when first appearing to May is Elphaba West, after the Wicked Witch of the West's name in Wicked.
• Spared By Adaptation: Pyrrha survives the Fall of Beacon, because May had the entire Maiden powers and therefore Pyrrha had no motive to confront her. Roman also survives, because May was a bit more micromanaging than Cinder.
• Stealth Insult: When Salem specifies that May uses She/Her pronouns, Watts responds by calling her by They/Them, subtly misgendering her without being blatantly transphobic.
• Synchronization: While using her semblance, Ciara can feel whatever her animal spies feel. May learns about this when she pets one she named Gruyere for doing a good job, only for Ciara to chime in that she can feel it.
• That Came Out Wrong: Played for Drama. Ciara tries to persuade May to come with her to Ozpin by saying that Ozpin can get the grimm essence out of May's body, specifically phrasing it as "change you back" and "make everything just like it was before". Given that May is a trans woman who transitioned with the help of Salem's grimm essence, this is perhaps the worst thing Ciara could've said, even if she didn't mean it like that.
• Took a Level in Badass: May in the original is rarely seen fighting, but she can be assumed to be a good but not exceptional fighter. This version of her becomes a trained assassin with Maiden powers and Lovecraftian Superpowers.
• Trans Tribulations:
  • May's entire life prior to joining Salem in a nutshell. On the external side, she lived in the conservative kingdom of Atlas and had deeply transphobic parents who would certainly ruin her life if she ever came out. Her teammates were also sexist, toxic masculine assholes who already bullied her for being the least masculine, and would make that ten times worse if they knew she was trans, and would likely out her as well. On the internal side, she suffered intense dysphoria which she didn't know how to identify as dysphoria until the Happy Huntresses made her wear a maid outfit as part of a Humiliating Wager, meaning she had no idea what the source of her depression was or how to deal with it, and she had about two seconds to process that before her aforementioned teammates caught her. This is the incident that made her attempt suicide, though she thankfully survived.
  • It gets slightly better after joining Salem, though she still suffers transphobia from Watts, Tyrian, and Ironwood.
• Unreliable Narrator: The fic is written from the perspective of May, who is intensely traumatized, a Horrible Judge of Character, and heavily gaslit and manipulated by Salem. Her point of view is severely flawed and prone to bias and poor judgement, meaning that nearly everything she thinks should be taken with a grain of salt. For specific examples, she sees Salem as a benevolent Big Good and Ozpin as a Big Bad, and she assumes the Happy Huntresses hated her when in reality they deeply cared about her.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • The Humiliating Wager that gave May the chance to wear a dress was intended as a well-meaning gesture to let her explore her identity without fear of being outed. The Happy Huntresses had no way of knowing that May's team would walk in on her, or that this would be the final straw leading to May's attempted suicide and everything that followed.
  • Earlier, May laments that she didn't get put on a better team than RAMM because she did poorly during initiation, blaming Cinder for having melted her sword. In other words, pretty much the entire fic can be traced back to Cinder.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Before learning who she truly is, May notices that "Elphaba"'s dress has no pockets, and wonders if maybe she keeps her scroll in her cleavage like some of her female former classmates. She quickly moves away from that train of thoughts.
• Villain Protagonist: May is the protagonist and only point of view in the story and, while she is a Well-Intentioned Extremist, she is far from heroic, given both the methods she willingly resorts to and the fact that she works for Salem.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: Prior to joining Salem, May had not chosen a weapon properly. Since weapons in Remnant are meant to represent their wielders, and May had never had the chance to explore or express herself, she couldn't make anything that fit her and just used a variety of academy weapons.

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