Chapter Text
They say when you die your life flashes before your eyes.
Yang thinks they’re wrong. It goes like this:
A fiery pain that pales in comparison to the stab in her chest when she saw Neo’s intended target. Running like she’s never ran before and shoving Ruby out of the way, taking a hit that would have sliced her baby sister’s neck, a distant part of her realizing there was no longer any ground underneath her feet.
donotfalldonotfalldONOTFALL-
She blinks. The nothingness is cradling her now, brushing its fingers through her hair in a damning lullaby. She waits for her life to flash before her eyes.
It never comes.
(Instead, everything seems ethereal; the golden freckles of light falling from the platforms as she passed, the glittering inky darkness, the way her hair tickles her cheeks and if the wind hadn’t been knocked out of her she might have laughed at the sensation. She wants to tell Blake and Ruby and Weiss about this beauty, how she thinks she found the meaning of everything in the ending of it all. She thinks Blake would appreciate the poetry of it. Yes, she thinks, Blake likes poetry. Yang likes poetry because Blake does.
It’s all poetry. It’s all just trying to find deeper meaning beyond the words and reaching transcendence when you do. It all matters. That’s the trick.
Yang’s life was gorgeous in each day she had lived it but now she thinks that it’s nothing to how astounding it all is at the end.
How divine everything seems in death.
She’s slipping through something warm and bright and through it all she sees Blake so, so far away. So far out of reach. She smiles.
Blake -)
screams.
Yang gasps, shooting upright like she had been laying on a bed of hot coals, reaching for her partner she swore she’d protect in turn and instead her fingers curl around a ball of light. There’s stars all around her and she’s alone. Blake’s gone. The bridges are gone which means the rest of her team is to and-
Maybe this is death. Maybe this is the price.
Not yet, a part of her screams. Not until I see Pyrrha in the fucking flesh-
Her back slams into the ground.
Her eyes instinctively lock shut at the impact as her torso screams at the growing list of hits its taken in the past thirty minutes alone. She keeps them shut. Squeezes them even as she hears foreign birdsong and crashing waves, sea spray misting her hot skin. If I don’t open my eyes, it won’t be real. A childish hope.
She’s six years old again and running to her bed as soon as she flicks the lights off to burrow under her covers like it’ll save her from the monsters in her head. She’s had to be brave for Ruby all day, she thinks she’ll have to be brave for the rest of her life, but in the darkness of night she allows herself to be scared. Her mom’s gone. Uncle Qrow hasn’t checked in for weeks. Dad’s broken. She has to save herself, even if she’s scared.
There are no monsters. Not yet.
But still, she closes her eyes and tells herself that they can’t see her because she can’t see them. She doesn’t know they’ll take the shape of a man in a mask and a woman more Grimm than human. Her eyes are shut. They can’t touch her.
She’s not dead. She can’t be. There’s no one here to greet her, no Mom, no Pyrrha. Death hurts. Her ribs are probably broken and her hair is slightly singed.
(She wanted it to be beautiful. She wanted it to be worth something, for the hopes of a whole world to be true and for everything they’d lost to be waiting in the after.
But when had the Gods ever been beautiful? When had Gods ever been kind?)
Yang takes in a long, shaky breath. Something in her ribcage shifts. She’ll deal with it later. She clenches her fists, braces herself, takes her time to face whatever is after death and -
Click.
Her eyes snap open.
Yang had expected to see a lot of things when she died. Summer, maybe Pyrrha, an endless paradise that somehow made all of their suffering into something worthy of absolution. She’d even faced the possibility of pure nothingness and peace.
A talking purple racoon running away with her arm wasn’t anywhere near the top of the list.
After thoroughly checking her head for bumps or blood that would point to the signs of her newfound lifelong enemy in a talking purple arm-stealing racoon being the result of an unfortunately timed head injury, Yang moves further into not-heaven not-hell in pursuit. It quickly becomes less of a chase and more of a scenic tour after the raccoon evades her. Along the way she takes note of a series of further concerning creatures including but not limited to: an uncomfortably large and vocal pink bird, a golden ocean, a whimsical yet equally annoying equivalent to mosquitos, and the real kicker, two suns.
She’s definitely not in Remnant anymore. Any lingering hope of being transported to the far reaches of Vacuo dies with each step she takes into the bizarre landscape. And if she’s not in Remnant, then she’s dead.
Dead. Done. Over.
Her story’s finished. It ended with a single fall.
For all she did and how hard she fought, she was taken out of the fight, out of a lifetime, just like that.
But her team isn’t here with her. Good. She fell so no one else had to. They could live without her, she couldn’t live without them. And despite it all, despite losing everything, despite being alone, despite being dead, Yang falls back down, buries her head in her knees, and cries with a smile on her face.
She’ll have to wait years to tell Blake she loves her. But it’s worth it. Blake’s always worth the wait. And if Yang has anything to say about it, she’d better make her wait for it. She still has a life to live, after all. And when she’s lived a long, fulfilling life, Yang will run to her and never let go. Her love is intense and desperate and pious. Her love is willing to wait.
Yang lays back down and cushions her head with her hands. Her smile falls as she imagines Weiss’s grief, Blake’s horror, Ruby’s denial. She sees a future where they live without her. She sees them grieve her and never stop, she sees them fall apart and fall together again like all broken teams do, she sees them live lives that may not be long or happy but are living all the same.
Yang died. The others lived.
She may have ran out of time, but she gave the others enough to walk away. They still had time. It wasn’t over yet.
She thinks that’s a price worth paying.
“I said, I wasn’t done with you yet!”
There’s a purple creature stalking her, then running from her, and she’s thrown four rocks at it one-handed and has a fifth one ready to go when she hears voices that she’d recognize anywhere.
She thinks that maybe her life is finally flashing before her eyes in some sort of delayed response because surely, certainly they couldn’t all be here. Weiss, Blake, Ruby, her whole life, her entire soul, her endless heart.
They couldn’t all be dead.
“Damn it! You weren’t supposed to be here!”
So maybe this wasn’t death. It couldn’t be so cruel when it was meant to be a sanctuary.
She wouldn’t let it.
The air in her lungs feels different, feels fresh and new. This isn’t a denouement. There’s still time to change their endings.
(The world looks breathtaking again and as soon as they crawl their way back to Remnant Yang is taking them all by the hand and making them look.
Everything is divine in death, but in life it is empyrean.
Because in life there is love, there is growth. There is hope.)
They say when you die your life flashes before your eyes.
But right here, right now, with Blake on her chest and Ruby and Weiss at her sides and her arms around them all, Yang has her whole life within reach.