Chapter Text
Blake's reaction at the sight of all the friends she was certain she would never see again felt... underwhelming. She wasn’t ready - no, she wasn’t expecting - to be hugged by Ruby, and then Jaune, Ren, and Nora. Last time she reunited with someone, she had had weeks to prepare going to Menagerie, seeing her parents, practicing what to say…
None of it mattered anymore. Her heart seemed to expand in her chest, becoming too big and beating too fast. She couldn’t look into anyone’s eyes, but she couldn’t let anyone out of her sight. She kept wanting to touch Ruby, make sure she was there, her hand grazing the red cape that had become tattered with use, and yet some tremor of hesitation kept her from moving.
She felt untethered, dizzy, and completely out of sort, and everyone was smiling, laughing, ignoring Ruby and Nora’s misty eyes, Jaune and Blake’s still reddened faces and the hidden pain that couldn’t be named just yet.
She was here for the White Fang, she was here as a protector. She couldn’t fall apart.
Her gaze always seeking something that wasn’t there, some missing elements in the tableau.
Sensing where her thoughts were going, Ruby answered her unasked question.
“It’s just us. For now, at least.” Blake looked back at her, her fist tightening. “Yang was still recovering when I left. And Weiss… We haven’t had any news from Atlas.”
Oh. Blake had spent so much time thinking back on those final moments, focused on getting away, making a clean cut and keeping everyone safe, that she never let herself imagine what exactly had happened after she left. Or rather, she had imagined so many possibilities that it was a shock to see what was really going on. Ruby was alone here. Blake’s hand relaxed, needing to anchor herself and bring Ruby back into her orbit. Her throat bobbed, teeth clenched ; she gazed into Ruby’s eyes and nodded, gripping her cloak tightly.
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The introductions were… interesting, to say the least.
Blake should have expected it, but Ruby was both ecstatic and nervous to meet her father. He approached her and held out his hand respectfully, meeting her eyes with a gentle smile.
“Ruby Rose. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Blake’s father, Ghira.” In all of her time in Menagerie, she never told him much about her teammates, and yet he recognized her leader effortlessly.. Either he gleaned some information from whatever he could find on the Vytal Festival, or Sun had been talking. Ruby glanced at her friend quickly, clearly surprised, but Blake avoided her gaze. Ruby then looked up at him, smiling widely and with a confident spark in her eyes.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Belladonna!”
“BLAKE’S DAAAAD?” Nora’s voice hurt Blake’s ears. The bow was uncomfortable but it did help with dulling the shrillest sounds. “Wow, you’re very tall.” She was seizing him up, her hands on her hips, and Blake was suddenly worried she might ask something embarrassing.
“And!” she almost shouted, as Jaune, bless him, politely introduced himself to Ghira. “This is my friend, Ilia.” She pointed at the girl, who looked extremely uncomfortable. Blake blushed too, and felt the need to explain herself. “We’ve… We’ve known each other for a long time.” Ruby nodded, grinned widely.
“It’s really nice to meet you, Ilia.”
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Once everyone settled down and most questions were answered – Blake wasn’t sure why exactly a young boy like Oscar would be with her hunters-in-training friends and their huntsman mentor – Qrow sat in one of the armchair, his flask hanging loosely from his hand, and motioned for everyone to take a seat. Blake carefully sat on the sofa, Ilia on her right and Ruby taking a seat on her left. She started playing with her weapon’s strap buckle.
“So. You said you had an army?” Ghira frowned, his yellow eyes falling down on the huntsman. Blake was also getting suspicious.
“No. As I already told you, we came with concerned citizens who want to help with the White Fang situation here in Mistral,” he said diplomatically.
“Right, right. The situation with the White Fang has been pretty inflammatory since they helped destroy Beacon, that's for sure. But they've been pretty quiet.”
“That was a splinter group.” Ghira turned his head to the side, closing his eyes and inhaling loudly, as if to put his ideas into place. Blake fidgeted with the buckle. “No matter. I’ve told you why we came. We have evidence that they are planning on attacking the Academy.”
“Yeah... We kinda… already knew that?” Ruby said. Ghira looked at her, confused. “I mean, not the White Fang, but we came here to stop Haven from falling the way Beacon did!”
“Lionheart knows that Haven is the next target. Ozpin had contingency plans, defense strategies, everything was put in place in case the worst case scenario happened.”
That actually didn’t surprise Blake, now that she thought about it. Ozpin sent them to check on White Fang activities before the Vytal Tournament even started. Ironwood’s fleet was a big clue that they were expecting some kind of fight.
“So you know that the White Fang is planning an attack… but the school is completely empty and not at all protected? We just walked in there without any issues!” Ilia said.
“And you said Lionheart wasn’t even there!” Sun added.
“The White Fang is the least of our problem here, they’re as good as hired guns in this fight.” Qrow stayed silent for a bit, pondering. “I’m not sure how much we can trust Leo anymore.” Qrow got up, came to stand next to Oscar. “It seems like he’s leaving the school up for grab. He sent everyone home, on,” he lifted his hands, making the universal quoting gesture, “vacations, told me the council had requisitioned all the huntsmen… I’ve spent the whole day skimming through the mission logs to see if there’s anyone left in the city or its vicinity.” Ruby became agitated.
“You haven’t found anyone who can help?” she asked.
“No. At least not before now.” He turned around and looked straight at Ghira. “The school will be fine for now. If we want to stop the attack, we need to retrieve someone. The problem is,” Qrow placed his scroll on the living room table, displaying a map of Anima, “we don’t have the manpower to get her.”
Ghira crossed his arms. “Why would you expect a fight if you’re just retrieving someone?” Qrow hung his head down, inhaling tersely.
“It’s not… She’s with a bandit tribe.” Ghira’s eyebrows shot up. “We need to get her away from here, as far as we can. By force, if necessary. We can’t do this on our own, but with you and your people’s help… We might even prevent them from attacking Haven,” he drawled.
Blake was lost. How could one person stop the attack? Ruby seemed pleased, hopeful even. Blake felt she was missing something. Her father looked at Qrow.
“You want us to help you retrieve a woman from a bandit tribe, in a dangerous mission away from Mistral, where we know the White Fang is going to attack in two weeks, and with no hunstman to be seen in the entire kingdom?” Qrow smiled tentatively. It made him look a lot younger. “No,” was Ghira’s final answer, as he stood up, towering over everyone in the room. Qrow’s smile vanished.
“What? I don’t think you understa –“
“No, Mr. Branwen, you don’t understand. My people are not warriors; and most of them came to Menagerie in order to stop fighting for their lives, every step of the way. We,” he motioned to Blake, “have asked for them to step up in regards to the White Fang, to protect the peace with the humans and to refuse to let what has become a violent terrorist organization speak in our stead. They were not easy to convince, but their sense of justice and the weight of responsibility was strong enough to make them come this far... We do not wish to fight with weapons, although we will if we have to. I will not ask of my people to follow in your elaborate ploy and leave Haven defenseless.”
Qrow deflated, and Blake spied Ruby and Jaune doing the same in the corner of her eyes. They might win in the end, but attacking a well-armed bandit tribe would be a slaughter, considering all the non-experienced fighters who had agreed to join them. Ghira, seeing everyone’s reaction, sighed deeply.
“I will ask our most experienced fighters if they would like to help you. If you wish to make your case, you can come by in the morning.”
“Dad is right,” Blake tried. “Menagerie’s fight is with the White Fang. But if we can help in any way, we will.” Sun pumped up his arm, Ilia smiled shily, and Ruby bumped her shoulder, thankful.
“Well… I’m glad you’re here! It’s great that we’re not alone in this anymore, right Uncle Qrow?” Qrow grimaced at Ruby, clearly frustrated.
“Yeah, at least we’ve got options. There isn’t much you guys can do right now. I’d rather not tip off Leo that we have reinforcement in case anything goes wrong, just in case.” He glanced Oscar’s way, again. “But it’s nice to know we’ll get help when it all goes to hell.”
“Well, that’s uplifting,” Ilia whispered next to her.
“Then we’re in agreement,” Ghira nodded.
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Blake hadn’t laughed quite so much in a long time. Her father had gone back to the ship to update everyone, but he told them to stay here for the evening and catch up with their friends. Ilia wanted to go back with him but Blake managed to convince her that she'd have fun - and possibly, the perspective of walking back alone with a man she'd been tasked to kill a few weeks before might have been worse than spending the evening with her human friends from Beacon.
Jaune, Ren and Oscar refused their help in cooking dinner, but they all hung out in the kitchen until it was ready, alternating stories from Beacon and tales of their more recent adventures. Sun and Ruby launched into a very long and heated debate over which of their fight was the coolest: defeating the Nuckelavee or slaying the Sea Feilong. Blake wisely stayed silent but thought that fighting a giant Grimm on a boat over water should give them an edge in the debate.
“ Your father is the CHIEF?!”
“Wow, Blake, you’re like a princess!”
Blake blushed lightly as Nora and Ruby attached themselves to her. She hoped they wouldn’t ask about that. She wasn’t in any way ashamed of her parents, but she wasn’t in a hurry to discuss either her estrangement or her choice to return to Menagerie.
“You really had no idea?” Ilia asked dubiously.
“It is surprising,” Ren said.
“Blake never really liked talking about herself,” Ruby added. “Not that you had to!” she quickly amended.
“Mmh, I guess you wouldn’t have talked to us about it, either, if you wanted to share.” Damn Nora for being so insightful. She vented a lot to Sun, and she discussed a bit of her past with Yang, when she was trying to make sense of what the White Fang had become. She also deliberately told Weiss about her father’s peaceful ideals and how it shaped the White Fang she grew up in. But never anything specific. And Weiss and Yang weren’t there anyway.
Ruby noticed Blake’s ears dropping. They were an unusual sight on Blake, who preferred not to get used to having them out in Beacon - removing the bow made her uncomfortable, twitchy, both more frightened and more aggressive. It always filled Ruby with grief.. Yang had the uncanny ability to read Blake’s mood, sensing when her being quiet meant she was annoyed, or sad, or that she needed to be alone. Weiss would usually pester, wanting to know what exactly was wrong. In lieu of all that, Ruby stayed quiet. She took a page out of Yang’s book and, when direct comfort didn’t seem to be of any help, she’d clean the room, or bake cookies, or organize their little bookshelf, always taking care of putting Blake’s books on the back, where Yang wouldn’t find them - Yang totally knew, of course, but she could be tactful sometimes.
“And then it started getting really hot! And when we got to the main room there were flames everywhere!” Sun gesticulated wildly, trying to convey the chaos of the event. Ilia snorted.
“That was all Blake’s fault.”
“My fault? You were the one -”
“HA! I always knew you had it in you, Blake!”
“You burned down a house?” Jaune parroted.
“Her parents’ house!”
“You burned down your parents’ house?” Jaune croaked, visibly shaken. “Where did you sleep?”
Blake couldn’t help giggling at the shock on his face. “It didn’t burn down completely! And it wasn’t my fault!”
“You started the fire.”
“Technically, but -” she stopped, hesitated, her gaze shifting to Ilia, whose crooked smile could still be hinted at. She scrunched up her face, crossed her arms, and pouted petulantly. “I have no idea how you guys don’t get crazy in the dark. I was just trying to see where Ilia was!” At the mention of her unfortunate murder attempt, her friend froze, her face pale as guilt seemed to settle in. Having anticipated it, Blake grinned at her and very purposefully stuck her tongue out at her.
Sun hollered, and soon everyone followed. Nailed it. Blake wasn’t surprised. It always seemed to work whenever Yang did that with Weiss.
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"Why didn't you ever tell us that your ears were so cute?" Blake blushed, leaned away from Nora's hands, almost falling on Ilia's lap.
"They're not!"
"They are!"
"They're not!"
"Nora, don't try and grab her ears." Gods bless Ren. "But I have to agree, your ears are very expressive." Ruby nodded, the traitor.
"You're a lot more... approachable, ah, without the bow I mean." Blake glared at Jaune. He gulped.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It's true that your Blake-ey face isn't as effective with your ears." Sun raised his hands, as if surrendering, when her eyes turned to him. Blake slumped, closer to Ilia, and realized her friend hadn't given her opinion yet. Seeing her inquisitive look, Ilia blushed, her words seeming to tangle in her throat.
"... They're nice."
Moving away from Ilia, Blake dramatically slumped over the table, letting out a frustrated noise as her ears picked up everybody's snickering.
__
“Okay, so you guys fought off a giant Grimm, and then you almost got killed in a ploy to end your lives. Sounds like we’re two for two!” Jaune chuckled, then winced.
“What do you mean?” she inquired. Nora sighed.
“Oh, you know, got followed by a crazy guy with a tail. Fought him off. Lost, horribly, then Qrow came out of nowhere and kicked his ass!”
“He got stung in the process,” Ren amended.
“What? Why would he attack you?” Nora and Jaune bowed down their head. Ruby was uncharacteristically silent.
“He…” Ren started.
“He was after me,” Ruby continued. “It’s a long story. But we’re fine! I mean, we were worried about Qrow for a bit, but everything turned out great!”
She smiled, but Blake could see that her smile was veiled with unspoken shadows. It dawned on her that the last time she had seen Ruby awake was before the nightmare started. They had just gotten the news that they were disqualified, and Blake remembered feeling frustrated, and worried, thinking that Beacon was too good to be true after all. Still, Ruby was excited to see Pyrrha fight, to know that Penny was still in the race…
The next time she had seen Ruby, she was unconscious on a stretcher, passing in front of her as medics shouted incoherently.
“You fought off someone who beat Qrow ?” Her voice had gone up on those last words, and from upstairs a slurred and muffled yell was heard. It was probably indistinguishable for the others but Blake thought she heard something about kicking ass.
“He didn’t beat Qrow!” Ruby was only marginally less indignant than Qrow himself. “He just stung him with the deadly poison from his tail. And then I cut off his tail.”
Sun’s jaw snapped shut as he audibly cringed. He squirmed on his seat, hunching a little bit, his tail nowhere to be seen. Ilia patted his back, but she was carefully hiding a smile, too. He looked the picture of miserable.
Blake couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing.