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Seven years since that story began. Two years, three months, seven days since it swerved off-course. A train uncoupling and sending the world flying away with it. Two years and six days. A candelabra extinguishes in the dark; she’s never known how to read the language of her life. Now she watches the treeline by the ocean skip past the fogged-up airship window and tries to breathe without fear hissing down her neck for the first time since she was twelve years old.
Blake’s cross-legged on the floor in the cargo-hold of the airship, freezing her ass off because her coat is history. Her heels lie abandoned off to the side, feet sore and aching from the heat of the battle. It’s just her and the grumble of the engine and too much to be remembered. Sometimes, it’s really nice to ditch the brave-face.
In the weak winter light that filters through the vents, she can’t stop staring at her hands, stained with the color of a sword that must be halfway to the ocean right now, slowly drying to rust on her shaking fingers. She scrubbed off most of the the blood an hour ago, the cleansing waterfall mist beading like crystals on her knuckles, but minuscule reminders are still trapped beneath her nails, embedded in her skin. She sits and aches and agonizes like a blocked-up dam. Feeling untethered. Gravity suspended.
Every blink sends her vision reeling back like a video that can’t properly load, spurts and flashes of a winter sky, perfect and blue as a mirror, Wilt curling through the air, the icy mist flurrying from the thunder of the falls, Yang’s eyes like the dangerous dawn sky before a storm, Adam’s; like oceans, like ice. So much red and so much blue and nothing between. She is drowning in the fire, her battered body remembering it all, her cheekbone still sore, her abdomen whispering of today and a ghostly night months and months ago. She’s not reliving it anymore, but she still remembers.
She’s in her body still when the past comes knocking on her door, but it’s like a spectator sport, almost, a shadow-clone that can take the blame, a shadow of herself, picking up that broken blade as Adam lunges, because it’s not her that lunges for Gambol Shroud. It’s not her that kills Adam. But it is. Every time. She’s the catalyst; she’s the broken balance. Her hands slipping against the too-hot blood that slicks the weapon’s hilt. Her body electric with the memory of the metal grinding up against his ribcage; her shaking fist bumping up against his broken chest. Adam, staggering, stopping, falling out of sight: she kills him, every time. No other choice to make. And no choice but to watch the summary of a whole life vanish in between one heartbeat and the next.
These memories are hers and this will take some days, she thinks, undoing him from her world. She’s never known a life without Adam, never known a heart that doesn’t jackhammer out of her chest when he’s close, but she’s coming to understand this life. Coming to learn how to paint new colors over the stain of his soul on her skin, lilacs and golds and whites. Trying to remember how an artist creates instead of destroys.
“Blake,” says a voice from the doorway.
Blake looks up and sees the sun. “Oh,” she says. “Hey.”
“You’re shivering. Are you cold?”
Blake presses her knuckles against the ridge of her brow. “Yeah. My coat’s probably blown halfway across Argus by now,” she says ruefully. “Maybe Cordovin will use it as white flag to plead for Ironwood’s mercy, do you think?”
“When hell freezes over,” Yang says sincerely, still hovering on the threshold. In her hands she’s clutching a blanket, fingers knotting nonsensical patterns in the corners. “Can I come in?”
Blake inclines her head. “Please.”
Yang’s steps are light, but there’s a gravity there that’s not familiar, each movement measured, exact. She pauses in front of Blake only to offer her the blanket, which she gratefully accepts, before circling around to her side and sitting close enough that Blake can smell the faintest scent of old smoke, close enough to see the faintest shadow of a bruise threatening her cheek. Yang hooks Blake in closer with her arm, the weight a warmth over her shivering shoulders, and Blake welcomes the respite she provides from the cold.
“Bad news about this whole Ironwood-swooping-in-to-save-the-day ordeal,” Yang says suddenly, “is that he’s bound to notice I’ve banged up his gift to me.” She laughs, a low sound like the purr of the engine, as she walks the metal tips of her fingers across Blake’s wrist. “Charity has its limits, especially for boneheaded military commanders. I think he’ll be pissed.”
“Let me see it,” Blake says.
Obligingly, Yang rests the prosthetic across Blake’s lap, and she stiffens at the traces of rust-red on the fingers and joints. The past that won’t be washed away just yet. Happiness has a cost and it’s remembrance of what you did to get there. Some shadow stirs behind Yang’s eyes, but all she says is, “I couldn’t get all of it off, either.”
Blake’s fingers explore the ridges of singed metal, goosebumps exploding up and down her forearms. The prosthetic’s side panel is destroyed, steel curling and charred from the heat of Adam’s charge, exposing a fine meshing of wires and chambers on the inside. It’s a tangle of intricate clockwork, each gear blackened but unbroken. The damage is undeniable, but it’s still functioning as well as it ever has.
“I’m thinking of installing a new panel,” Yang continues, frowning slightly at the charred gashes. “Battle wounds are overrated, and this just looks cheap. Do you think Atlas shops carry purple spray-paint?”
“Purple?” Blake grins. “Why not yellow again?”
“Complimentary,” Yang retorts. “You look good on me, you know.” She runs a considering finger down Blake’s arm, brow knitted. “Maybe we should get you something gold once we get there. A new coat, maybe, to keep you warm.”
“You keep me warm enough without having to waste lien on some ornate Atlas frippery.” Blake pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders and curls closer towards Yang. “If a space heater and the sun had a kid, you’d be that kid.”
Yang returns the smile before it sloughs away, a solemn lilt entering her voice. “The others were asking about you, earlier. Wondering where you were. They asked what happened up at the comms tower that kept you from responding to Jaune’s signal.”
Blake wonders if one day she’ll be able to take the mention of it without seizing up, but today it’s fresh, closer than her own skin, suffocating her. “What did you say?”
Yang breathes out, golden strands of hair fluttering in the slipstream, and despite her misgivings Blake’s still caught up in fascination at the sight of her, of all these little details; a precious thing lost and found and then almost destroyed again. They’re not whole, but they’re getting there. “I didn’t have to. Weiss told Jaune to bug off, Ruby jumped in to stop them fighting, and I took the chance to come and find you.” Yang shifts, pulls Blake a little closer against her side. “It’s crazy, after everything, and that huge fight with the mech, they’re all happy that we’re all okay and celebrating together because we’re finally on the way to Atlas - after everything we went through - I just can’t get into celebrating. I just wanted to be with you.”
Blake feels like a storm run out of rain, charged and boiling with nothing left to give. The clouds won’t subside and there’s no lightning left to strike. Just the wet pavement and the heavy, heavy sky.
Yang makes a small noise of alarm and Blake realizes she’s digging her fingers into her arm hard enough to break skin, her knuckles bloodless-white. Gently, Yang reaches over and squeezes Blake’s vice-like grip until it slackens, delicate as a bird broken on the ground. “Oh, baby,” she says, so softly, her voice aching. “It’s okay. We’re still here. We’re going to be alright.”
“He’s gone,” Blake whispers, head falling against her knees. Her eyes burn, but no tears are forthcoming; in that spinning, stretching silence, she’s infinite. She’s run through the uncertainty and fury and sorrow and resignation over and over and now they feel like something tired, an obligatory pain that no longer hurts. But looking out the window at the dull white light reflecting off the snow-choked sea, the gulls crying out as they climb higher into the beautifully empty blue sky, the high whistle of the wind as it runs over the surging waves below them, she finds her heart twisting in her chest with something new.
In the center of her soul, some unbreakable cord, stretched tight enough to strangle for seven years, unraveled at the last, and the newfound freedom feels like falling foot-first into the sky.
“I feel empty,” she gets out. “I should feel relieved. I should be happy. I just feel… nothing.” She swallows around the lump in her throat. “I didn’t want any of this. I just wanted… I wanted...” Her voice shatters, and she goes with it.
Yang’s fingers tighten on her shoulder, clinging as desperately as Blake clung to the slick stone on the waterfall bridge. For fighting on. For life itself. “You didn’t want to kill him, Blake. I didn’t want to. He didn’t give us any other choice but to choose the worst option.” She splays her prosthetic hand wide before the two of them, shining in the dim light. “It’s easier for me to believe I was trying to kill him during the whole fight, but I wasn’t, and neither were you, and I can’t lie to myself. Even if he was throwing his best into cutting us down. We just wanted him to give up and leave us alone. I just wanted… I don’t know.” She laughs, a helpless, choked little sound. “I wanted for him not to have happened to you. To us. Or I guess for him to just… realize he couldn’t make you love him again.”
For him to realize a heart can find another home, Blake thinks, but Yang’s still going on, her voice more distant than the mountains touching the shallow sky. “I thought… when he lunged at you… when he tried to grab that blade before you did, that I was going to lose you again if I didn’t do what I wasn’t strong enough to do back at Beacon. I knew there was no going back from that split-second, you knew it, and he must have, too. And we ended him so he wouldn’t end us. I just… sometimes you’re defined in a moment by the choices you make in a heartbeat. The choices where you have to be yourself without thinking about it at all. And we chose to survive.” Her eyes burn like an oath in the dusky light. “And that’s okay.”
“A choice.” A sob extinguishes itself in Blake’s throat. She’s had an armful of choices, of decisions, of vows, kept close to her chest for her entire life. She should hate that in the moment it mattered most, only one promise was not worth her own death, but worth the death of someone who was once worth every choice in the world. “I never wanted anyone to die. I never...”
Yang stares hard at the flaking blood trapped on their hands, both of their hands. “Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and it’ll feel real, you know? That he’s dead. That we don’t have to be scared anymore. We’ve killed hundreds of Grimm, and I don’t think that’s the hang-up - taking someone else’s life. Killing is just another part of what we do. It’s defense. Against evil and hatred. And we were just acting in defense. But I understand, I do. It’s like you’ve lived in the same room as a ghost for all of your life and you’ve only ever seen the pieces of your life shift around from the influence of this thing that you can’t even see, but you know it’s there, it exists.” Yang shakes her head, frustrated. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that… you can’t feel bad because you chose us, Blake. For choosing yourself. You can’t blame yourself for wanting happiness over wanting forgiveness for someone who never deserved it. ”
“I spent so much time in the shadows because Adam always made me feel like that’s where I belonged,” Blake chokes out. “I don’t know what else to believe now that he’s gone.”
Yang traps a lock of Blake’s hair between her thumb and index finger, tucks it behind her ear. She leans in and presses lingering lips between Blake’s brows, her breath slow and stuttering, the kiss a thing gentler than snow against the sea. “I know, Blake,” she whispers. “But the shadows are just shadows. They’re not you.”
Blake closes her eyes, giving herself over to the singing rush that dances through her head at Yang’s touch, like sunlight glancing off a stream, dispelling the shadows bearing Adam’s blue eyes. Louder than a shout in the dark. The thing that makes the scars seem smaller. It slept dormant ever since she ran from Beacon all those months ago, but she’s been relearning it day by day. It’s Yang’s presence, Blake thinks, the inexplicable ways she makes tomorrow not seem like such a scary thing. Her resolve and her grin and her fierce devotion. Something about Yang makes her fall in love with summertime all over again.
“Thank you,” Blake breathes.
Yang pulls back by degrees, still kneeling inches from Blake’s nose. Foreheads almost touching, but not quite. Her calloused hands rest on Blake’s knees, the distance between them so close, much too far. Blake can see new details, freed from the weeping that prevented it before: the dusting of freckles across the bridge of Yang’s nose, the tilt of confusion in her lips, the way the winter ocean reflects gray in her eyes. “For what?”
Blake surrenders to the impulse she’s had since the train’s journey to Argus, since since the afternoon falling gold through the windows, since Yang; she brings a hand up to cup her jaw, but Yang doesn’t need the encouragement; she leans in, meeting Blake halfway through, their kiss softer, sweeter than sunlight. It’s brief; Blake knows this because her heart crashes like thunder in her ears, she tastes salt and smoke and something shining, and then the crash subsides and they’ve broken apart, foreheads still leaned against one another. Time steps to the sidelines and leaves only this: the purr of the engine, the distant song of the ocean, two mismatched heartbeats finding solace in the stillness, after everything.
“For loving me,” Blake says.
Yang’s eyes blaze and she closes the distance between their lips again, her kiss hungry now, seeking, hands sliding up from Blake’s knees and drawing her in, close, closer. Her thumb, patterning out slow circles, finds the ridged rise of the scar and stays there, the contact sending lightning strikes down Blake’s spine. Where Adam’s touch brought fire, fury, Yang’s brings warmth - just warmth. Just safety. Her touch says home.
“Don’t thank me like it’s some big thing,” she murmurs against her lips. “Way too much credit. Loving you comes easy.”
Blake leans back a little, runs a finger down the side of Yang’s face, lost in what she sees there; the hectic flush on her cheeks, the glisten of her lips. Now that she’s kissed Yang already, the impulse hasn’t died down; if anything, it’s stronger than it ever was. She just wants to breathe her in and never stop. “You make me start to believe in that again.”
Yang breaks away, sitting back on her knees. She reaches out to wind a loop of Blake’s hair around her thumb, nibbling her lip. “Okay, I’ll be honest with you here.” She lets the curl spring free, a nervous grin flitting across her face. “I know I wing, like, everything, but I don’t wanna wing this. I want it to be, like…. I want great. I want us to be great. I just… is there a way to do this proper, or do I just…” She gestures expansively, suddenly pensive. “Ask you flat-out?”
Blake leans in and plants a swift kiss on her lips, searing like flame. It’s addictive already. Brew happiness and bottle it; that’s kissing Yang. “That depends,” she says, mock-sweetly, folding her hands atop her knees. “What is it that you want to ask me?”
Yang socks her in the leg, laughing loud. “Blake Belladonna.”
Blake mimics her irritation by folding her arms. “Yang Xiao Long.”
Her laugh subsides into a lopsided, flush-cheeked grin, lighting her expression from the inside-out. “Okay,” she says. “Okay, I’ll tell you.” She clears her throat and leans forward, the intensity in her eyes taking Blake aback. “I’ll tell you that you’re my better half. That you make me happy. You make the moon shine twice as bright in a night sky. When you’re in the room with me, you’re who I wanna be around. When you leave it, I miss you. I wonder when you’re coming back and if it can be sooner than it already is, because when you’re with me I’m at home. In a fight, there’s no one else I trust more at my back. You’re who I want to talk to, who I want to share my secrets with, who I want to make smile. When you’re here, the sun shines. When you’re gone, everything is grey.” Yang’s smile has died down under the weight of her words, but it’s still there, flickering in her face, at the edges of her lips. But it’s earnestness, more than anything, knitting her brows and shining in her eyes. “I’m tired of only you and then just me. I think we work better as an us.” She catches Blake’s hand, hugs it between her own, warm skin and cold metal, and brings it close to her chest. “What do you think?”
“Girlfriend,” Blake says, unable to force back the smile threatening to spread over her face, “the word you’re looking for is girlfriend, Yang.”
“Ass. You could’ve just said yes or no.” Yang brings Blake’s hand to her mouth, her breath ghosting against her knuckles as she huffs out a laugh. “I was trying to do some profound speech, to be all - poetic and poignant and shit, like you, and you’ve gone and made it seem all - ”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry. It was a beautiful speech. I loved it.” Blake’s laughing and she wishes she could bottle up the feeling flooding through her veins at that moment; it’s the antonym of Adam, the antonym of every thought that’s anchored her to the belief that she’ll never discover light again. Maybe love, maybe joy. Maybe a combination. It’s a glow with Yang’s name written all over it. “Okay, here’s what I think: I think that the best thing fate ever did for me was pushing you to come talk to me in the ballroom two years ago,” she says. “I think the best thing I ever did for myself was choose you. And I think - ”
She’s interrupted by Yang leaning in and kissing her, smolderingly, achingly slow, but it’s hardly an interruption she protests. Anyways, it’s a spectacular exercise in self-control, Blake thinks, breaking away from it to manage on a choppy, breathless breath, “Yes.”
“Huh?” Yang wrinkles her nose in an adorable confusion and Blake can’t resist the swelling of her heart.
“Yes,” she repeats. “I’ll be your girlfriend.”
“Oh,” Yang says, and then the smile that bursts across her face has nothing on the weak winter sun struggling through the clouds. “Come on, don’t sound so smug. Like you were ever gonna dream of saying no to all of this in a million years - ”
“I don’t regard myself as being incredibly stupid, so, no,” Blake admits. “But don’t get too cocky with yourself. We’ve still got a long way to go with each other.”
“Noted,” Yang says, and then: “Just think how disappointed Ilia and Sun are gonna be when you see them again, though!”
“Why?”
“You’ve been on the make-it-to-Atlas-or-bust mission for only six days,” she exclaims, “and you’re already hitched.”
“We’re not married, Yang.”
“Maybe not,” Yang announces, “but I’ve got plans, great plans.” She leans in, her prosthetic stroking across Blake’s stomach, erasing the pain of the scars, the nights of lonely uncertainty, promising something new, light, together. “And we’re gonna be together in every single one of them. That’s a promise.”
“A promise,” Blake whispers, daring to believe it, surprised to find that the belief comes easy. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
She leans in, then, presses a kiss to Yang’s temple, her lips lingering close to the warmth. Yang’s hand tightens wordlessly on her own. The silence fallen between them is close, but it’s comforting, like a friend long-lost and then returned in the aftermath of chaos. Blake thinks it might be restoration. The thing that makes fault lines shift back together again.
Outside the airship window, the sun finally breaches the gray bank of clouds, shining against the sea like a beacon.