Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

  He had killed his father.
  It wasn’t something he ever hid. In fact, Mercury was more than happy to boast to the world that he had killed the man. Marcus Black was known across Remnant as an assassin. The worst way for an assassin to go was to be killed by another one. But he hated acknowledging that Marcus had any impact on him. Marcus had been the one who trained him, beating every lesson into his body and then beating him more after he’d had too many drinks. In the moment, that rush as he took his father’s life, Mercury had never felt better.
  He wore his prosthetics like trophies. They were his pride and joy, and if they didn’t give him such an advantage in a fight by being hidden, he’d proudly show the world what a threat his weaponized legs made him. He worked on them himself, had learned every piece, every screw, every wire better than his own body. Yeah, his dad was the one who took away his legs, just like he took everything else from Mercury, but he had replaced them with something was purely his own.
  Mercury was more than just Marcus Black’s legacy. He was a fighter, a survivor… he was always only in it for his own gain, he reminded himself constantly. He didn’t feel guilt toward the lives he was ruining, or the lives he had taken. He was his own assassin now. He didn’t get that luxury.
  So why… damn why, was he always seeing that yellow arm in front of his eyes?
  Their attack on Haven had been derailed right from the start, but Mercury was never upset by that kind of stuff. He liked things to be exciting. He was an assassin but he also liked to brawl, and he’d been itching to pay Blondie back for the Vytal Festival. Sure, it had been their plan to trick her, but Mercury never expected she would use a round on him. Sure he had no legs to break, but she’d damaged his prosthetic enough to piss him off. Naturally he’d been all too enthusiastic to fight her when opponents started pairing off.
  Her name was Yang Xiao Long, and it bugged Mercury that he remembered it. But he knew why he did. At Haven, she gave him a match. Sure he got the upper hand on her, but it wasn’t an easy punch-out like he had been confident it would be. She was calm, more controlled. It was like fighting a totally different person who used her style, and it threw him off his game. She didn’t react to his taunts, didn’t throw her punches as predictably as before, moved quicker on her feet. When their fight shifted in tandem with Emerald and Little Red’s, Mercury had been sure they’d win. He and Emerald might not necessarily get along the best, but they fought pretty damn well together. He’d been wrong. Against the sisters, he and Emerald had been no match.
  Mercury let out a frustrated grunt as he came back to reality. He threw a punch into the bag he was standing in front of, full of power and fury.
  Damn it, he was even thinking about her now! What was wrong with him?
  But he knew the answer to that too. He knew exactly what was drawing him back to her over and over again. It was that moment, when the world seemed to slow down as he registered Ruby’s words, then realized Yang was going after Cinder and Raven. If only to protect his own hide, not because he thought Yang wouldn’t get her ass handed to her by the two older, much more powerful women, he lunged for her. His grip tightened around her arm, and he was prepared to toss her, kick her, anything to prevent her from going after his boss.
  But Mercury had stumbled. Yang got free, and jumped down the elevator shaft which the little Schnee princess then sealed up with ice so no one could go after her. He had certainly been in no condition to do so anyway, still absolutely dumbfounded as to how he hadn’t been able to stop her. His grip hadn’t loosened on her arm one bit. And then he realized what that had to mean.
  That didn’t lessen his shock when he looked down at the yellow automail in his hand.
  They were more alike than had even been previously pointed out by literally everyone, even Cinder and Emerald - not only did they fight similar, but they also both had lost parts of themselves. But the questions that had planted in his mind - how had Yang lost her arm? He was pretty sure she had both when they fought in the Vytal Festival, which meant it was recent, but when? - sunk into him, deep, and made it nearly impossible to stop thinking. His brain flickered a million thoughts at once, and it must have been plain on his face because no one attacked him when he had so obviously been open.
  But the thing was, he could’ve taken the arm. He knew how crippling it was to first not have the real deal, but then to have the replacement taken away. To be forced to experience the world without automail after having gained it back was also extremely difficult.
  Yang has it so much easier than you, he tried to tell himself. She can live without hers. You can’t. It’s different. Just take her arm and set back your enemy.
  What he did instead was drop it when Yang returned with the Relic. It might have been on purpose, or it might’ve been from shock. He didn’t remember. The only thing he remembered was thinking that the only  way the blonde could be standing there in front of them was for Cinder to be gone.
  But he did remember. That image of her, with one arm clutching the Lantern and the other ending at the sleeve of her jacket, made him sick. He couldn’t do that to her. He couldn’t do something to her that if done to him, would ruin his life.
  Mercury roared as Yang flashed in front of his eyes again, furious at his own traitorous mind. He tried to focus on his workout, but it was futile. He could see her, and her stupid smile, damn friends, and that fucking arm. That arm, that thing made him feel like he and Yang were the same. But they weren’t, because she hadn’t turned bitter against it all. She hadn’t been abandoned, forced to claw her way out of a shithole, forced to fight to prove her place in the world. They were the same, but at the same time they couldn’t be more different.
  “Damn it!” All his fury unleashed at once in that moment, fists slamming into the bag in front of him, harder and harder until he wasn’t even counting his punches anymore. It was a dangerous feeling, similar to how he felt while fighting his father. Furious to the point where he couldn’t even think, with underlying fear. He knew where the fear was coming from this time.
  Working for Salem was working for the personification of nightmares.
  Mercury slowed down finally, when his emotions just felt numb. Anger still coursed through his veins, but at this point he was becoming more and more tolerant to its effects. He had buried these feelings for some time, even told Emerald that he was right where he belonged when she started to waver. But it was the words of that freak who worked for Salem that brought all his own conflicting feelings back. 
  Oh yes, the world is mean, and I’m a big, bad man now just like the others.
  He threw more punches blindly.
 All you ever learned was pain and violence, and now you’re too afraid to leave it! Such a tragedy.
  Mercury only saw red.
  Your question is all wrong. “What do you want from this?” Children, please, if you’re not absolutely loving what you’re doing, than you’re in the wrong field.
  So what, are you saying we should just leave?
  Oh no no no no, you can’t do that!
  He could see that smug expression, the crazy eyes. Oh, how much did he want to rip that mechanical tail off one more time for mocking them…
  Do what makes you happy children… please? Mmhmhmhm… I’m begging you.
  Mercury slammed his fist once more against the bag, relishing in the pain from his strike. But the bag swung wildly; if it had been a real person it would’ve been much more hurt than he was. It felt damn good.
  Yes, he was raised in darkness. That was something he would never deny. Not only raised and nurtured by it, but also raised to never understand anything else. He was raised to kill people; why would he leave that when it was all he knew how to do? Nothing else in the world would ever accept him.
  But Yang hadn’t let what happened to her turn her to spite. She hadn’t even turned her back on Ozpin, she’d jumped right back into the game.
  Mercury gritted his teeth. “I am nothing like Yang!” He roared again, slamming his fist into the punching bag once again, somehow with even more power.
  “I don’t remember anyone ever saying you were.”
  Mercury turned, panting less from the workout and more just from how angry he was, to find Emerald standing in the doorway watching him. He glared at her. The expression she wore was of amusement.
  “What do you want?” He snapped.
  “Well, I stayed to check on you when I realized you were wailing on that poor thing,” she nodded to the punching bag.
  Mercury turned and noticed for the first time there was sand flowing out of it from several tears in the bag. He’d been so angry that he hadn’t even noticed.
  “Tsk, whatever,” Mercury went and sat down. He was still seeing red - or rather, seeing yellow - and he could feel the blood pounding in his veins.
  “You want to talk about it?” She asked with a cruel tone to her voice. She wanted to make fun of him and he could tell.
  “With you? Not really,” he said. “Just go back to your identity crisis, or plan your escape of this place, whatever. Doesn’t matter to me.”
  “What are you talking about?”
  He sneered at her. “All that stuff you said about, now that Cinder’s not here you’re questioning if what we’re doing is right. Duh, of course it isn’t? I might be an assassin Emerald, but you’ve caused people to die too. It’s like that scorpion freak said; you don’t like it, pick another life. Only, I’m not gonna stop you. The others might.”
  “Oh right, that,” Emerald laughed a bit. “I’m over that.”
  “What?” He couldn’t hide his surprise. “What the hell do you mean you’re over it?”
  It hadn’t been that long since Emerald had voiced her doubts, how could she have just moved on? Mercury remembered it because he’d told her about his father taking his semblance. Which was something he didn’t even like to think about.
  “I told you. Cinder is everything to me,” she said. “If Salem is going to take her back after she shows she is worthy of her service once again, then there’s no point in thinking over it anymore. And to be honest, we’re only safe when we’re with Salem.”
  “I told you that Cinder doesn’t care about you!” He exclaimed.
  “And I told you that I didn’t care if she did or not,” Emerald crossed her arms. “But that I would never leave her because I owe her everything. The situation really was much simpler than I was making it. When you told me not to have an identity crisis, you were right. So thanks, Merc.”
  “You just changed your mind? Just like that?”
  “Yeah, I guess I did,” she looked over at him over her shoulder. “What’s wrong with that? I came to the right answer, didn’t I?”
  Mercury realized for a moment that it was the right answer, and that he was looking really suspicious in questioning it. Why was he even questioning it? What did it matter to him whether Emerald stayed or not? Why was he surprised that she had chosen to stay?
  “Yeah,” he grumbled, and got back to his feet. “I’m going to sleep.”
  “Mercury,” she called after him as he walked past her, and he stopped but didn’t turn around.
  Emerald paused for a long moment before she continued with a threatening tone in her voice. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but don’t make the wrong choice here.”
  His eyes widened, her uncharacteristic words and manner make a chill run up his spine. Mercury had relatively steeled nerves, so he surprised himself with this reaction. In fact, the only person who ever gave him a feeling like that…
  Well, he didn’t want to think of what that meant for his partner.
  He waved at her nonchalantly as he left the room. Like a true assassin, he buried his unease. “Don’t worry about me, Em. Like I told you before, I’m right where I‘m supposed to be.”

~

  Why hadn’t she turned to spite?
  He was laying in the meager bed Salem’s palace offered him, still better than the nights spent traveling before Cinder brought him there, and even better than the years he spent in Marcus’s house. It was one in the morning. He couldn’t bring himself to sleep, because a certain blonde was finding her way into his dreams as of late and it pissed him off. If he was going to think of Yang, it was better in a way that he could apprehend himself for doing so.
  That never really stopped him either, though. He remembered every fight he’d had with her, running through it in his head over and over again. Mercury told himself it was so he could beat her into the ground the next time they met. But even he knew he was lying to himself. Even he had to admit that Emerald voicing her doubts about Salem had pulled his own to the forefront, and that was when he had started thinking about Yang.
  Surely, her happy-go-lucky attitude from before meant that she’d had a pretty good life before Beacon Academy. He hated the world for giving him Marcus as a father, but that was how he had become who he was now. Even her eyes, soft and sparkling in the moments before their first fight, seemed to have darkened the last time he saw her. He wondered what it would be like if Yang turned to Salem, if she had given up on the world that had betrayed her. Would she end up like Tyrian, Hazel, or Cinder, driven mad by her desires? Or would she end up like he and Emerald - arrogant and eager to prove herself?
  Mercury found his thoughts slowly shifting to wonder what it would be like to be on the same side as her, whichever side that may be. To fight alongside her. The idea was not as repulsive to him as it should have been, and that scared him too. 
  Had the darkness encroached on Yang, or was her light burning him?
  Either way, the longer he thought on her the more Mercury felt himself compelled to her place in the world. Away from the suffocating eye of Salem, free to choose where she went - though he held no desire to find her.
  Mercury’s eyes widened as he realized the thoughts that had just passed through his head. He wanted to leave. A part of him had wanted Emerald to keep doubting, keep wondering, to tell him that she was going to leave too. And that was why he had been so bothered by their conversation earlier. He still wanted to leave, but she didn’t.
  The young assassin worked quickly after he came to this revelation. He wasn’t entirely sure if Salem slept or not, and he knew that if he ran into her while leaving that she would see straight through any lie he could cook up. Mercury wasn’t even sure he would make it out of the palace in one piece. For all he knew, by joining Cinder he had subjected himself to Salem’s magic, where she could always know where he was or what he was thinking. She could very well have been alerted the instant he changed his mind.
  He found no resistance at his chosen airship, the only answer to his defiant actions were the roars and shrieks of new Grimm as they crawled from the pools of death around him. None paid him any mind; Mercury smirked to himself, wondering how long it would be before his immunity from the creatures disappeared, and he’d have to get used to defending himself from them again.
  As the airship lifted softly into the air, Mercury felt multiple conflicting emotions stirring from within him. Relief floated up with his lift, like he had shed weights that were holding him down. Fear sunk in his gut, pulling him back down as he thought of Salem coming after him. And regret, that he had left Emerald behind.
  But there was one more that he tried to ignore. It overwhelmed him, deafening, silencing the other feelings by comparison. There was hope inside him, glowing gold. He didn’t need to see any images behind his eyelids to know it was her doing.
  Long into the night he traveled, the soft pinging of the airship the only thing interrupting his traitorous thoughts. There was no way that he was under Salem’s protection anymore, not with his intentions, so Mercury was surprised that he didn’t run into any trouble. Perhaps it was because he was so calm, despite the fear gathering within him, and the determination with which he guided the airship toward Anima which kept the Grimm at bay. 
  He had a plan. He’d disappear into the underground crowd of Mistral, the parts of the world where mercenaries and assassins like himself made a living. He’d jump to Vacuo if Salem ever caught wind of him; both places were ideal to disappear. Vale and Atlas on the other hand, he’d steer clear of completely. Mercury was on the run from both sides, but if he got caught by the kingdoms’ players he’d just be prolonging his death until the day Salem destroyed them and took over. His best bet at survival was distancing himself from it all. As long as no one from his past caught up to him, and he took care of anyone who recognized him, he’d be in the clear.
  Especially anyone from Blondie’s team, let alone the bimbo herself.
  Several hours and one partly crash-landed airship later, Mercury dropped from the ruined machine, grateful to return to solid ground. He spent no extra time near it, walking straight toward the civilization he knew there would be; he’d purposely landed close enough, but still a ways away, from the continent’s largest city. 
  Some time had passed when Mercury felt it, his whole body going cold. Somehow he just knew that Salem had discerned his intentions, and that his all-or-nothing game of cat and mouse had begun.
  “I’m right where I‘m supposed to be,” he repeated under his breath as he lost himself within the crowd of the dirty Mistral market street.

Chapter Text

   It wasn’t something she absolutely hated, but she shifted uncomfortably under the gazes bearing into her. Normally, going into bars were nothing to her. Maybe it was because this one was crowded with people she didn’t know. Maybe it’s because she wasn’t searching for her mother this time. Either way she was sure the faster she left, the better.
   Was it that obvious she didn’t belong here? Did they all think she was going to try to bust them? She was in the heart of the black market, but she wasn’t stupid. Any wrong move and there’d be seven knives and hatchets pressed to her back. Still, she thought it was pretty clear she was a Huntress and that none of them would be stupid enough to go toe-to-toe with her, but she didn’t particularly want to test it.
   She approached the bartender and sat down on one of the stools, resting both arms on the counter in front of her. Slowly, the older woman standing behind the bar cleaning glasses moved over toward her with an interested expression. The busty, crimson-lipped bartender gave her a once over and her smile appeared more amused as she tucked a loss strand of burgundy hair behind her ear.
   “Doll, aren’t you a little young to be here?” She asked with a sultry voice.
   “I get that a lot. Heard this is the heart of the town. Just here to ask something.”
   “You’ll get an answer depending on what it is you want, sweetie,” there was an ominous, daring tone to the woman’s voice now, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
   Still, she knew to play coy. “I don’t know why everyone’s so suspicious of me. Just looking for someone selling a bike around here. Working condition, I don’t have time to fix her up.”
   The bartender looked her up and down once again, some coldness disappearing from her expression. “We’re just not very fond of people who come around carrying themselves as righteous as you do. But if you’re just here for the business, I think I’ve got something for you. Heard there’s a man on the north end of town who’s got his hand on a nearly brand-new motorcycle. No questions asked where he got it, and it’s yours. Provided you can pay.”
   “I don’t think that’ll be an issue. Thanks for the tip, Miss... uh... sorry, I never caught your name.”
   “Mathilda,” she answered with a smirk, a sultry gaze fixated on the young Huntress in front of her. “Mathilda Applegate. But don’t go thinkin’ just cuz you’re cute that you can name drop me all over town, sweetheart.”
   “Wouldn’t dream of it,” she saluted the older woman with two fingers as she got off the barstool. “Thanks for the tip, Mathilda. Hope I see you around!”
   With that, she took one final look around the bar before pushing the door to the outside back open with a bright yellow arm that caught the bartender’s eye for the first time.
   “That must be the Branwen Clan’s girl,” the older woman mumbled to herself as the door closed behind the girl with golden hair.
   Yang blew out a breath as the doors closed behind her, taking a moment to stretch before continuing on with the information the bartender had given her. If there was no bike, she was going to be really freaking pissed. The whole situation made her miss BMBLB more than anything. Though she could hardly say that she regretted the actions that had befallen her beautiful bike - running over a psychotic terrorist who had tormented her best friend for years and had caused her disability was wonderfully therapeutic - she did regret other things that this was reminding her of. Therefore, the faster she got a new ride, the better.
   Her scroll went off just as she had started her trek to the northern side of lower Mistral. Yang walked with a carefree attitude, but unlocked her Ember Celica just in case anyone thought it would be a good idea to jump her while she was distracted.
   “Hey sis, what’s up?”
   “Oh, nothing. Just wanted to check up on you. You’ve been gone for a bit now.”
   Yang laughed. “Ruby, it’s only been a couple days. I think I’ll be okay.”
   “I know I know, if anyone would, it’d be you,” her sister replied. “General Ironwood said he wants our ship to Vacuo leaving as soon as possible, though. He doesn’t know we’re only waiting on you.”
   “I mean, if he’s going to make a big deal about it, you guys can leave and I’ll catch up. Or just a few of you can go.”
   “You know we don’t want to split up again unless we’re forced to,” Ruby said with a downtrodden expression.
   Yang felt a sense of nostalgia and guilt twisting in her stomach at that. Though she was perhaps the only member of Team RWBY not to pick up and leave everyone behind after what happened at Beacon, Yang knew that mentally, she’d been gone. Ruby had left with Jaune, Ren, and Nora because Yang had not been ready to go with them.
   “I don’t want to split up unless we have to either,” she mumbled, before her expression became sunny again. “Listen, I think I’ve found a guy. As long as the bike’s in working condition, I’ll be back on the train to Argus by tonight! Doesn’t that sound great?”
   “Yeah, but Yang...” Ruby squinted her eyes on the small screen. “Where are you?”
   “In Mistral?”
   “That doesn’t look anything like when we were there before!”
   Yang glanced around herself before offering a sheepish smile. “I miiiiight be in the bottom levels of the city... where Qrow told us never to go...”
   Her sister’s eyes grew wide. “Yang! He told us not to go there because it was dangerous!”
   “I know, but where else was I gonna get a bike? Besides, I think I’m okay,” The tone of her voice portraying the actual meaning of her words, I don’t think anyone is going to mess with me, and I’m going to leave as soon as I get the bike so that I don’t test it.
   Ruby sighed. “Okay Yang, just... be careful. Please.”
   “When have I ever given you a chance to worry?” She offered in a sort of playful tone, watching as her sister’s expression darkened once again. There were plenty of times. Guilt sunk in Yang’s stomach again as she almost found herself sunken back into her memories. Before she could be completely swallowed, however, a sudden commotion behind her caught the blonde brawler’s attention.
   “Yang? What is it?” Ruby asked, though her sister did not hear her. Yang had put her scroll down to her side as she turned, where she saw a small group of men huddled around an alleyway. As she watched, one of the men raised a gun to the sky and fired off several warning shots.
   “C’mon kid!” The man was laughing. “If you don’t hand everything you got over, we’ll just have to take it from ya!”
   “Pretty boy shouldn’t have anything on the bunch of us,” said another within Yang’s line of vision, warming up his fists by hitting them together in a similar manner to her. When he did, she could see sparks from electric dust come off his bracelets.
   A familiar sensation made its way to the surface from inside her, of hitting thugs where it hurt when she was just starting out fighting. Of dueling her mother’s bandits on her search for Ruby and the others. Of being tricked and lied to, over and over again by people who just didn’t care about others. She remembered looking into the gray eyes of a man who had lied to her, who had used her, who had turned everyone against her and turned into a damn puppet and laughed about it the whole time. She remembered how much she really, really hated that feeling and her eyes went red.
   Were these guys some slimy Huntsmen? Or just low-lifes who got their hands on Huntsmen weaponry? Yang guessed to the latter, since this was the area of notorious black market deals of Mistral. That’s why she was here, after all.
   “Yang! YANG!” Ruby was still calling from beside her. She rose her scroll back to her face. Her sister looked concerned. “What’s going on?!”
   “I’m fine Ruby, but I gotta go! I have to help him!” Yang explained quickly.
   “Wait, don’t-“ she cut Ruby off by hanging up on her and stuffing her scroll back in her pocket. Taking off by letting out a blast from both her Ember Celica and the gun on her prosthetic arm reminiscent of the old days, Yang went flying at the men laughing and firing intimidation shots into the sky.
   So much for laying low, echoed in the back of her mind, but as Yang swung her fist at the first asshole she came up on, she remembered that laying low had never really been her style.

~

   It had been longer than 24 hours since leaving Salem’s palace, and what a quiet few hours it had been. Mercury wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. In that time he’d bounced between taverns, keeping his ears open as he listened to the mumbling between tavern drunkards and sketchy shopkeeps for any jobs that caught his fancy.
   He had to start from scratch. He wasn’t going to ride on what he’d done for Salem and Cinder, and the idea of using Marcus for legacy left a bad taste in his mouth. That meant he’d need to take the dirtiest jobs he could find, the ones that not just any assassin would take. He figured becoming a regular mercenary wasn’t a bad idea either, since all he knew was how to fight and he saw no point in limiting himself further. Anything that gave him a new reputation and a neutral place in the world, and made it clear that no one could mess with him.
   Every voice that triggered a memory made him jump though, every flash of red, green, or gold made him freeze. He was so freaked out at the prospect of being recognized that he hadn’t been able to sleep. This was the life that he was leading now, and he knew he’d have to get used to it. A fake sense of freedom while he ran from everything he had left behind. Mercury was glad he’d remembered his money in his haste to leave Salem’s palace, after getting himself some food and restocking supplies of dust and ammo that he loaded into his greaves. An assassin caught without his weapons was a dead one, though he knew he could overwhelm anyone with his kicks he didn’t want to risk it. Especially with so many people after him.
   He was just leaving the shop, and glanced up toward the higher levels of Mistral along the side of the mountain when another familiar caught in his ears. It rattled in his head, causing his breath to catch in his throat.
   “Thanks for the tip, Mathilda!” Called the worst possible voice he could hear right now, even worse than Salem’s. “Hope I see you around!”
   Mercury whipped around, looking for the source of the voice. Had he imagined it? Was he literally so paranoid at this point that he was hallucinating? If he was going insane though, he could handle that. Anything was better than actually running into anyone. Than running into her.
   But then the flash of gold caught his eye. There she stood, a hand on her forehead to block the sun from her eyes as she looked around. Blonde hair just as wild and free as he remembered. Same clothes, with a purple bandana tied around her leg that should’ve given away that it was her. But what really convinced Mercury was the lemon-yellow paint job on her prosthetic arm.
   He stood, frozen, for some time, staring at her as if he couldn’t believe she was real. He was staring with his mouth agape too, and vaguely saw people giving him odd looks as they passed by. They probably just thought he was perverted or something, which was perfectly fine by him. Anything was better than being spotted by her.
   What was she doing here? Why was she in Mistral? The last thing he knew about her and the others, they’d been in Atlas. They had already gotten the Relic from Haven - he’d chosen to hide in Mistral over Vacuo for that exact reason. Because he knew they wouldn’t be here. What the hell was she doing here?
   Mercury finally steadied himself, and backed away slowly. He noticed she had started to walk in the opposite direction with her scroll up to her face, speaking to someone, and he breathed a sigh of relief. This was it, he thought as he watched her form moving further away from him, her golden hair getting swallowed by the crowd of loners and mercenaries. This was his escape from the old life.
   But you could ask her why.
   The voice was so sudden, so unexpected, that Mercury looked around himself, expecting someone to have crept up behind him and whispered in his ear. When he found no one, he realized that voice was his. The traitorous Mercury had returned, the one who had kept reminding him of her and her arm before.
   Before he could even wonder what it was that he wanted to know, it struck him. Before he could even think about what he was doing, Mercury was moving swiftly through the crowd toward. He shouldered people out of his way, just barely holding on to the last he could see of her golden hair. It was as if his feet were moving on his own as he drifted behind her. He couldn’t make out who she was talking to, but he caught some of the words.
   “-Listen, I think I’ve found a guy. As long as the bike’s in working condition, I’ll be back on the train to Argus by tonight! Doesn’t that sound great?”
   So she was in Mistral looking for someone, and the rest of the team was in Argus. What were they doing back in Anima though? Had Ozpin directed them there? If so, he was incredibly stupid. Going back to Argus was just as predictable as going to Vacuo. Salem would surely go after them there. At least he knew now to stay as far away from Argus as he possible.
   “In Mistral?” He heard her ask as he got closer, still keeping distance to prevent her from noticing him and to keep anyone from noticing that he was following her. He had garnered some of his senses by this point, remembering that he needed to be inconspicuous. The question sounded less like an inquiry, however, and more of an effort on Yang’s end to answer whatever the person she was talking to had asked; a coverup, if Mercury had ever seen one.
   Finally, he made out the voice on the other end of the call, and Mercury ducked into a nearby alley after realizing how close he was to her.
   “That doesn’t look anything like when we were there before!”
   Of course it was Little Red, the irritatingly hyper leader of their team and her younger sister.
   “I miiiiight be in the bottom levels of the city... where Qrow told us never to go...”
   He heard her sister begin to whine in protest, but Mercury was suddenly knocked to his knees from a blow to the back of his head. Stars covered his vision for a moment from the impact as his entire body was immediately on edge, sense of survival alerting him instantly to a group of people having now surrounded him. In a burst of adrenaline, Mercury whipped his body around so that he had a better angle to defend himself from. He finally shook the stars out of his eyes and faced the group above him.
   On instinct, he took them all in. Five people, four men and one woman holding what appeared to be a modified falchion. A gunshot went off in his ear, but no pain registered to him. Mercury looked down to his legs, but saw no bullet hole. Instead, the bastard with the gun was just standing there, grinning down at him with the barrel raised to the sky, smoking from his warning shot.
   “That’s an awful fancy pair of boots you got, sweetie,” the woman with the falchion purred. “Mind if I have a look?”
   “C’mon kid!” The first man laughed when Mercury didn’t reply. “If you don’t hand everything you got over, we’ll just have to take it from ya!”
   Mercury geared up into a fighting stance in response, glowering at the thugs from behind his messy gray hair.
   “Pretty boy shouldn’t have anything on the bunch of us,” spoke one of the other men, who slammed his fists together. The bracelets around his wrists crackled with electric dust, but what really got Mercury was how much that pose reminded him of the girl he’d been tailing. He shook his head though, pushing her to the back of his mind. This wasn’t about her anymore. This was about his survival on the streets.
   A warning shot, huh? What a group of morons.
   Mercury lunged forward at the nearest adversary, a third man holding a surprisingly vanilla knife. They were just a bunch of wannabes. They couldn’t hold a candle to the real deal. The knife collided with the armor covering his bicep, and all he could do was smirk at the dumb expression on the man’s face as Mercury swept his feet out from underneath him, and then spun around and nailed him in the cheek with his other boot. As the man went flying, he turned around to face the others.
   “You should’ve taken the shot and gotten the upper hand on me when you had the chance,” he mocked, lifting his leg into the air and cocking the pistol in his boot. Before he could take his own shot, a deafening, high-pitched yell echoed back from the main street and sent chills down Mercury’s spine.
   A flash of gold erupted in front of his eyes, brilliant and blinding and the combination of the worst possible thing he could imagine in that moment. Her own gauntlets went off as her fist collided with the man holding the gun, sending him flying in a similar manner to what he’d done to the man with the regular knife. Mercury didn’t really know why, but he froze when he realized she’d come to help him.
   “Hey, leave him alone you freaks!” Yang exclaimed, before turning her gaze toward where he stood in the middle of the group. “Are you okay ma-“ he watched her eyes grow wide, shock and fury increasing by the second as recognition fell over her. “Mercury?!”
   Unsurprisingly, she had come to his assistance without knowing it was him.  He wondered if she was going to regret that punch in the long run. He sure was.
   Mercury lifted his chin up in her direction, offering her the same smirk he’d given her when they reunited at Haven Academy. He wasn’t quite sure what was possessing him, but he couldn’t stop smiling.
   “How’s it going, Blondie?”

~

   The wind that whistled through the valley and the cries of the nightmare creatures being birthed of the pools of tar around the castle were the only noises around as Emerald entered Salem’s throne room. She disliked the palace’s grand view very much, especially since Salem had never fixed the shattered glass windows. Her hair whipped around as she stepped forward, getting down on her knees.
   “You wanted to see me, your Grace?”
   The witch turned around when she spoke, looking down with indifference toward her pawn. No, at this point Emerald had become at least a Rook. Cinder was the Pawn now. And the loss of one of her Knights greatly displeased Salem.
   “I did, yes,” she spoke in that soft tone, the one she used when appealing to her conspirators’ needs. “I wanted to talk to you because it has come to my attention that Mercury has left. You two are rather close, aren’t you? Did he tell you where he was going?”
   Emerald faltered, shifting awkwardly. “No, he didn’t say anything to me. And we aren’t that close,” she looked down toward her feet. “We worked together because we both worked for Cinder. And then, you.”
   “I can tell when you lie, Emerald,” Salem sounded displeased, but not angry. “You care about him.”
   “Only because he’s some of the only family I’ve had. You and Cinder are more important to me.”
   “Good,” Salem’s voice came from right above her now. Emerald hadn’t even realized she had been walking closer to her. “I’m glad to hear you say that. Because I have reason to believe that our poor, dear Mercury left with the intention of running away from our cause.”
   Her eyes widened at her mistress’s words. “No... no, there’s no way! There’s no way he would walk away from this!”
   Emerald immediately flinched, years spent with Cinder instantly reminding her that to speak disbelief, to argue even with the older woman’s best interest in mind was inviting punishment. But Salem did nothing. When she looked up toward the witch, Salem was almost looking at her with pity.
   “I’m very sorry to be the one who tells you this,” there was no sympathy in her voice though. Salem, physically, didn’t have the capacity for such a thing. “But Mercury Black has fled. He not only forfeits his place in my world and the desires I would have gifted him, but he has also forfeited his life. I will not be sending you after him, as I have more important things for you to accomplish and I feel that my Grimm will find him soon enough, but you must understand Emerald... if you were to run into him out in the world of Remnant, you are to kill him.”
   There was another silent moment of horror as she took in Salem’s orders. She had worked with him, ended up trusting her back to him. He was some of the only family she’d ever had. But at the same time, the news of his abandonment burned an anger within her unlike anything she had ever felt before, even after she believed Cinder had died. When she had been doubting their allegiance, he had scorned her. Insulted her. And he’d constantly made fun of her for caring about Cinder all the while before. Now he had left her alone.
   Salem was right, she realized bitterly. Mercury was either with them or dead. He didn’t get a choice any other way.
   Emerald closed her eyes and bowed her head very so slightly. “Of course, your Highness.”
   Salem stopped at the tone of her voice, turning around toward the young woman with a smile.
   “Very good.”

Chapter Text

 He hadn’t changed a bit since the last time she had seen him.
  Silver hair, steely gray eyes that glittered like cruel gemstones to a thief. He was taunting her, daring her to make a move. So she did.
  “Whoa, there!” Mercury laughed out as he dodged her fist coming at his head. “Not the face, please.”
  While her intense, blinding fury had dissipated upon seeing it was him being harassed by a group of street thugs, a new, calm anger, a familiar feeling since Beacon Academy fell, washed over Yang. She did not lose herself, like she had done in the past. She was focused, smart, and she knew how to fight him and win.
  Mercury responded to her stoicism by fighting back, snapping like a bullet being fired from the barrel of a gun. His boot struck her with the deadly ferocity of a Deathstalker’s stinger, however Yang caught the motion and blocked the strike with her gauntlet. She pushed back against his boot but he answered with his own pressure, their strength nearly match for match.
   “You were following me,” she accused as she narrowed her eyes at him. When she had heard people mumbling around her earlier about a boy acting strange she’d honestly assumed that some weirdo or drunk from the tavern had been leering at her. It occurred to her now that it had been him. He had been surprised when she appeared to help, but he hadn’t been surprised to see her.
  “Maybe I was,” Mercury’s answer was smug, just as he always had been. Even before she knew who he truly was, when he was masquerading as a student, he’d always been that way. “You aren’t really sure, are you?”
  He kicked off to break their stalemate, launching himself into the air and causing her to stumble backwards from the recoil. Yang looked up and followed his arc, jerking her elbow back to get the ammo in her Ember Celica ready before throwing two shadow punches, firing glittering shells at where he was going to land. Mercury threw his arms up in front of his face to take the brunt of the shot, but the explosive shells made contact and knocked him back into the wall of one of the buildings surrounding the alley.
  Another gunshot went off suddenly and Yang gasped when a bullet hit her shoulder, her Aura protecting her from any injury but she still felt the damage reverberate through her body. She whipped around as her eyes switched to crimson, intense fury returning as she knew where the bullet had come from.
  “Bitch! We saw him first!” Yelled the thug who she’d sent flying, holding the smoking gun toward her. The group had reformed and surrounded once more, and their focus had now switched to her.
  Before she could even act, she noticed just as the woman flipped her curved sword around, the blade breaking up into the shape of a whip.
  “C’mere, sweetheart!” With an excited yell, the woman lashed out with her weapon. She caught Yang around the leg when she tried to dodge out of the way, pulling her balance out from underneath her. Yang landed hard on her ass as the small blades that made up the whip dug in, and she let out a cry as they dragged her closer. Though no cuts actually appeared, no blood spilled, she felt the sting of the blades slicing through her Aura. But Yang saw her opportunity and seized it.
  Bringing her arms around in front of her, she fired off two shots from both weapons to boost herself into the air. With all the strength and momentum she could muster, she brought her body into a backflip while at the same time kicking her leg back in a violent arc. The other woman let out a scream as she was pulled into the air, up and above Yang, before being thrown harshly back into the ground. Utilizing the extra damage done by doing that all with a bladed whip cutting into her, when Yang landed her hair ignited into flames.
  “Get out of here!” She yelled, slamming her fist into the man who’d shot her. The shockwave was so great that it caught up the rest of his thugs and knocked them all back several feet.
  Yang watched them all run with their tails between their legs the moment any of them recovered, turning back to the one she actually needed to fight when she heard his voice.
  “Always a pleasure with you,” Mercury spoke with his same cruel smirk, tipping his head to her. “That’ll be all.”
  She shot two more firecrackers at him, but Mercury anticipated the move and catapulted himself out of the way. He landed on the other side of the alley and instantly broke into a run. Yang’s eyes widened when she realized he was just trying to escape like that.
  Escape? That was the last thing the Mercury she had known, both the fake one and the one who worked for Salem, would do. He didn’t just run. Something was going on, and Yang only hesitated for a moment before chasing after him. She was going to make him talk.
  Mercury ducked back into the crowd, disregarding every person he shoved and even jumping over some to get away. Yang ran after him with a similar intensity, but instead of a shit-eating grin she wore an intense glare. She spun to avoid colliding with people in her way, attempting to not bowl anyone over but not being shy. She couldn’t lose sight him.
  She pushed herself to her limits to get after him, despite every muscle screaming in protest already. The fire that he ignited in her was more volatile and dangerous than anyone else, but it also made her feel stronger, an almost addicting high. She knew it was dangerous, but the adrenaline rush always reminded her of when she was learning to be a Huntress. She had to remember that every match against him was wagering life and death from now on. In another world, she and Mercury could’ve just been simple rivals, pushing each other further, perhaps even friends. And that only made her anger toward him burn even brighter.
  Yang saw Mercury make another attempt to fake her out by slipping into a smaller alleyway just as Yang slammed into a dense crowd of people. She gritted her teeth and roughly pushed past the few more people before following him.
  “Mercury!” She shouted at him, and emptied her weapons of spent shells in a defiant show of intent.
  He slowed to a stop, shoulders moving as he gave a very heavy sigh. “You just can’t get enough of me, can you Blondie?” He turned around to face her, and Yang was taken aback for a moment by how guarded his expression appeared now. That was also very uncharacteristic of the Mercury she had known, but she didn’t get a chance to inspect it any longer as the look in his eyes disappeared when his smirk returned. “Play your cards right and I might just give you what you want.”
  Yang rolled her eyes, but continued to try and read his intentions as she spoke. “What I want is information. Why were you following me? What are you trying to do? What is Salem planning?”
  “Ohhhh...” He tapped his chin, glancing at her casually. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t actually give you any of that.”
  “Oh, but I think you will.”
  Mercury looked thoroughly entertained by their banter. “Then you’re going to have to take it from me.”
  He stepped back into a fighting stance, holding his fists up in front of the smirk that had haunted her since their fight at Haven Academy, the first time she had truly seen him and confirmed he was on Salem’s side. Yang slowed her breathing - this was it, this was why she kept training harder and harder, why she had to keep getting stronger. To beat people like him, to prevent people like him from ever hurting her family again.
  And why she was going to uncontestedly beat him this time without her Semblance.
  Yang made the first move, propelling herself at him with her arm winding back for a very obvious punch. His response was exactly what she expected, and Yang caught the movement in her eyes an instant before Mercury’s boot would have collided with her head. He stopped her fist but the punch itself had been a feint, a point of rotation so she could throw her entire body at him.
  He gave a short gasp of surprise when her shoulder hit him square in the chest, knocking him back. Mercury recovered much faster than she would’ve liked, launching off while she steadied herself back to her feet. Yang threw her arms up to block his attack, fast and powerful enough to push her backwards a bit though her defense held strong. When he shifted back to his other foot she lashed out with her fist just as fast as him, striking him in the nose. Though she felt the pushback from his Aura, the attack was enough to throw him off balance and suddenly Yang had the advantage.
  She dodged his fists and got in close, quickly controlling the situation by separating his hands and exposing his body. That was the number one rule of their fighting styles, though hers were primarily her fists and his were his legs, they were both brawlers. You never let the enemy get inside your space, and you certainly never let them have control over it. As long as she had it she was going to make it work for her, because she was sure he’d figure out a counter soon.
  Yang threw one punch, two, three - getting in a total of five solid hits before Mercury interrupted her rhythm, pushing himself into an acrobatic spin and bringing his kick down on her from above. Finally getting a strike in that actually knocked his opponent off balance, Mercury was relentless in his assault. He was always like that, and once her defense was down against him she knew it was always hard getting it back up.
  Even in the relatively short time it had been since they fought at Haven Academy, he’d grown exponentially stronger. She felt it behind every strike, every movement he made had even more deadly accuracy than before. Sometimes she wondered if he had only thrown their match during the Vytal Festival. It was a strong possibility. In the beginning, Mercury had surely been leagues better. Yes, even with that, he’d become an even bigger threat.
  “But so have I!” Yang exclaimed, as she brought up her own side kick to block his strike with her own leg.
  There was a moment of shock that registered on his face before Mercury’s grin reappeared. “Well,” he said as he winked at her. “I can always appreciate a girl with a good set of legs.”
  Yang’s answer was to simply hold out her arm and fire off another round of bullets at him.
  Though he got her in the hip when he fired off his own shell to get away, Yang hit him several times in the shoulder. She felt her cold anger building up again as she pursued him, and as they clashed once more. Empty bullet casings littered the alley around them, wooden structures crumbling from missed shots. Was that a crowd forming? It wasn’t all that surprising, but Yang couldn’t divert her attention for one moment or else he’d get the advantage over her. Both parties deviated from their usual styles, Yang hitting him with everything she had in a blur of fists and kicks while Mercury ditched his speed for slower, stronger punches and a more defensive stance as each tried to beat the one person who matched them, who pushed them further past their limits than anyone else could.
  Their clash culminated into one big burst of energy when their weapons collided, just as they had at the tournament. The force pushed both fighters away from one another, and Yang took the opportunity to catch her breath. While she hadn’t expected her trip to Mistral to be quiet, she certainly couldn’t have imagined it would turn into a punch-out with a member of Salem’s followers, let alone the one who had come to blows with her more often than not. He had humiliated her over and over again, but aside from that he had hurt so many people that she cared about. Messing with her family... for that, she had resolved to make him, and all of Salem’s faction, pay. They’d all be history, starting with Mercury.
  She yelled as she ran at him again, moving first before he could. She went for the feint punch again, but Mercury wasn’t about to fall for that twice. When he caught her shoulder in his other hand, Yang adjusted and aimed her elbow up into his chin as hard as she could. He grunted and she took the opening to fire off a shell from Ember Celica at point blank. This time, there wasn’t an ounce of guilt; the jerk still had his Aura, after all.
  She was surprised, however, when this didn’t stop him. Suddenly Mercury had her grappled, one arm twisted behind her back and Yang cried out a bit. Her Aura couldn’t protect her from the pain that action had caused.
  “Are you still sure about this, Blondie?” He was almost purring the words out, right in her ear. Yang could hear the grin on his face. Cocky bastard. “I’m gonna make you regret this little fight.”
  Without giving her a chance to respond - though her response would’ve been to spit on him, as she was trying to figure out how to do so with how he was restraining her - Mercury shoved her forward. He didn’t let go of her arm though, and as quickly as he did, he pulled her back toward him. She saw that grin for just a moment before he landed a solid punch to her cheek, then slammed his knee into her stomach. He was completely merciless and in control as she doubled over, his boot coming up to strike her in the head several times.
  Yang felt a rage return to her, fury as she realized that Mercury was beating her with her own damn technique. He spun her around to keep her from steadying herself and form a counter, before letting go of her suddenly and sent her stumbling. More movement caught her eye, and Yang looked up just in time for Mercury to finish another acrobatic, and watched his leg sweep in a wide arc. Before she even recognized where he was aiming, a burst of yellow flashed in front of her eyes, followed by the feeling of horrible pain that spread across her lower back. Someone screamed. She realized it was herself.
  Yang fell forward onto her hands and knees, heaving. She couldn’t believe her Aura hadn’t fizzled out at that attack, though she knew it was very low. The burst of yellow had indicated she’d taken a lot of damage from that one strike. Yang realized that meant if she kicked out her Semblance right now, she could end it.
  Fury suddenly bubbles up inside her, but not towards Mercury; towards herself. She had sworn she wasn’t going to use her Semblance. Mercury still hadn’t brought out his, so she refused to also. This was going to be a brawl. She just had to win, there was no other choice.
  Yang got up to one knee and immediately blocked two kicks close to her face, one on the left and one on the right. He was driven, she had to at least give him that, refusing to give her any room to breathe. Then again, that was how she fought too when she had the upper hand. She got into her own spin and threw a kick at him. Though she missed, she was able to get back to her feet with a renewed vigor, hands in front of her face to show him she was ready to go again.
  Mercury had completely switched over now to his style of overwhelming, relentless attacks that were almost completely unpredictable, flowing more like he was dancing than fighting. She saw him wind back to take another shot and she threw another feint punch, this time instead firing off a round into the ground to launch into a corkscrew over him and leaping to his other side. Just as she’d done when fighting her mother’s goons, she figured on using her predictably full-on attacking approach to her advantage.
  Yang landed behind him and went for her best move, dropping quickly to sweep his leg out from underneath him. When Mercury tripped she twisted back up and threw a punch to slam him into the ground. Before she had even finished pulling her arm back she took another strike to the head, and then another before she finally got out of the way.
  Mercury had caught himself, legs flying in a deadly, sporadic arc of airflares that she remembered vividly but hadn’t seen since the Vytal tournament. A sizable amount of Dust bullets were already amassing around him like a cyclone, preventing Yang from going in to stop him without taking a heavy amount of damage. Damage that her Aura wasn’t going to be able to take. She was low, she could feel it, but Yang was pretty damn sure he was too. That had to be why he was going for such a trump card, because he needed to make sure he finished this now if he wanted to win.
  But she had to think of something fast, or else he would. She had never had the time to figure out how his cyclone worked before, and she wasn’t quite sure she could now. All she had to do was dodge it, which was a hell of a lot easier said than done. The Dust swirled around in tandem with his legs, going at about the same rate. Yang noticed a faint purple glow in his boots, and a smile widened on her face. Gravity Dust, of course. She didn’t have to watch his bullets, she had to watch his legs.
  When he swung and fired the dust at her, she was ready. Yang took a deep breath, and fired off several rounds from her gauntlets. A huge cloud of white Dust erupted around her. He probably thought she was out, but all it really did was conceal her.
  “YEAAAAAAAHHHH!” With a fierce, unyielding cry Yang rocketed out of the smoke, flying toward him loud and brilliant just like the firecracker she was. Mercury had his back to her as if he had just started walking away, and she saw him turn slightly, saw his eyes grow wide.
  She couldn’t believe she’d gotten him.
  She brought her leg down in a swinging arc, simultaneously knocking him down and paying him back for every kick to the head she’d had to take. As she landed directly on top of him, Yang anchored her knee into the middle of his back. As soon as he hit the ground, she grabbed his arm and pulled it back towards her. She then pushed her other hand into the back of head, holding him in place.
  “Stay down!” She barked at him. But as Yang watched, his silver Aura crackled, then faded, right underneath her fingertips.
  A new wave of high jolted through her body. Her heart was pounding, chest heaving as she was finally able to fully catch her breath. She could hardly believe it. I won. I beat Mercury!
  She heard Mercury groan with annoyance, and pressed her knee a little bit harder into his back. “I said-“
  “I know what you said,” he sighed, turning his head a bit so he could look at her. “Well Blondie, what do you want to know?”

Chapter Text

  The moment he saw her leaping out of the cloud of dust at him, Mercury had known he had lost. That didn’t make it any less frustrating, though.

  Yang dug her knee a little deeper into his back, just enough that it was noticeably painful. He could tell she was trying not to hurt him though, because if she was, she wouldn’t be holding his arm back at such a low angle as she had it. If it were him, he’d probably have the arm straight up. Dislocated shoulders were among the nicest things he’d learned to restrain someone with.

  “I said-“

  He cut her off, wanting to get this over with. “I know what you said.”

  Mercury looked around, in front of him - only what he could see, because she was mashing his head against the ground - and quickly deduced there was really no way out of this. Despite everything, he had lost to Yang. He could hardly believe it, save for the gravel in his mouth.

  He sighed deeply as he turned just enough to see her, where she was positioned on top of him. “Well Blondie, what do you want to know?”

  “You already know,” she growled, and pressed her knee into his back a little harder as she let go of his head to grab something from her bag. With such a fiery, easily flustered, and - admittedly - attractive girl like Yang restraining him, it was extremely difficult for Mercury to hold back the temptation to make any sexual innuendos of the situation. For now.

  And he was successful for all of two minutes; that was when Yang removed a pair of handcuff-like restraints from her belt, and pulled back both of his arms to lock them in place. A smirk found its way back to his face as she got off him and lifted him to his feet.

  “Never pictured you as that kinda girl,” his grin widened when she glared daggers into him. “Hey, hey, I’m not complaining.”

  She didn’t answer, but shoved him back into the wall of the alley. Mercury winced as he felt the impact in his shoulder. It wasn’t a particularly hard hit, only that it always took a minute for his body to adjust to pain in the outside world without the safety cushion of his Aura. Honestly if Marcus had been around even a little bit longer, he probably would’ve figured out a way to take that from him, too.

  Yang got into his face as she pushed him down on top of a barrel. He was just getting more and more interested in the way she was treating him - if he wasn’t absolutely pissed that he had ran into her barely two days since he’d been away from Salem. This was certainly not how he wanted to go.

  “I have no problem breaking your leg for real this time,” she snarled. Mercury watched as Yang got down on her knees and pressed them into his boots as she started to take off his greaves. He would’ve made another joke about what sorta things she was into getting on her knees like that, if it wasn’t for how much her words bothered him.

  “So you’re so much better than us, right? Even though I guess you’re just as willing to hurt people as I am,” his voice was so cold and bitter it almost surprised himself. Sure, he never would have expected Yang to be friendly and welcoming to him, and sure, she had no idea of the real reason he was in Mistral, but he had certainly expected more. He hadn’t expected her to remind him of Salem, of Cinder, even of Marcus Black. He had expected Yang to remind him of the reason he had ran.

  That hope he had felt while running, that hope that had been shining like gold.

  Yang was visibly disturbed by this, avoiding his gaze. “How do you take your greaves off?”

  He gave her an incredulous look. “What?”

  “I’ve gotta take your greaves off, now let’s just make this easy and tell me how to do it, okay?”

  A panic washed over him and Mercury incubated the idea of just attempting to run, but he already knew that’d be a terrible idea. “Or you can fuck off, how about that?”

  Yang rolled her eyes, seeming not aware of his panic. “You need to walk, and I don’t really like the idea of getting shot in the foot. I’d prefer to not have to chain up your feet and then carry you all the way to Argus.”

  Every word she said sunk deeper in his gut. “I’m not going to Argus,” He snarled.

  “Oh, that’s exactly where we’ll be going,” she answered, and Mercury was horrified by the sound of his greaves disengaging as Yang popped them off herself. “There we go. Guess your boots just gotta come off too.”

  “No!” Mercury snapped. “There’s a way to lock the guns. God, let me keep my shoes on, please.”

  Once that had been taken care of, Yang pulled him to stand again and guided him by the restraints out of the alley past the crowd of people who had gathered during their fight. Yang held up her scroll to the bystanders, identifying herself as a Huntress apprehending a criminal.

  Right, because that’s what he was. Mercury supposed that someone would’ve eventually reported him anyway - his face was everywhere because of what happened at Haven Academy - and that Yang had just gotten him first. Which was still pretty damn frustrating.

  “Let’s see... I guess getting you back to Argus before your Aura regenerates and you decide you can fight back again is top priority,” she wiped some sweat off her forehead. “Too bad. I had business I wanted to take care of here but I can always come back.”

  “You won’t get me past the station,” he grumbled.

  She scowled at him. “What was that?”

  “They wouldn’t let me on the train. Telling people you’re a Huntress might’ve worked on people of Mistral, but the police aren’t gonna care. You’ll be back to where you started, except beat up.”

  Yang groaned. “I hate it but you’re right. And you in police custody doesn’t help anyone but yourself. We’re gonna have to find another way to Argus.”

  “Or, you could just let me go and pretend nothing happened?” He sarcastically spat back.

  She glared at him again, but for the first time her fury had grown cold. He was used to her both metaphorically and literally being on fire. The cold anger sent a chill down his spine, it was so strange.

  “You’re part of a group that has hurt people, over and over again, just for your own gain,” her voice was even, controlled now. “You destroyed Beacon. You’ve brought Grimm against thousands of innocent people just to please some nightmare queen and her pawns. You’ve tricked and used people, like me. You’ve killed two of my friends. Most importantly, your fucking queen has gone after my sister. My sister. Let me make this very clear to you, Merc; I am never letting you go. And I’m going to make you tell me everything you know about Salem and her little group.”

  The flames from her words licked at his face, and he watched her blink and her purple eyes had turned to red. Somehow, this was the most angry he’d ever seen her, and yet she wasn’t yelling to the heavens. For a moment, he thought she might have a chance against Salem. Only for a moment though.

  “Fine,” he turned his face from her. “God you’re crazy, Blondie.”

  He heard her take a deep breath, and she raised her Scroll to her ear as she called someone. Mercury looked down at his greaves from where they were now jammed into her bag, and as he tried to concoct a plan to get them back, as if she could sense his intentions, Yang put a hand on them. He sneered and gave up for now. He’d just have to play prisoner for a bit and find a way to escape her later.

  “Hey, I’m sorry I hung up on you,” she said, and he assumed she had called her sister again. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. The guy’s... fine...”

  She cut her eyes toward him as she said that and Mercury was vaguely surprised to realize she was talking about him. She must have still been on the phone with her sister when she noticed the thugs who had surrounded him. He smirked to himself, wondering how her friends would all react when they learned she had “rescued” him.

  “Just... uh, some complications came up, and it’s going to take me a lot longer to get to Argus until I can figure something out. I’m serious, you guys can leave without me, but I know you won’t...” he watched Yang close her eyes and shake her head, though now she was smiling. “Okay. I love you too, Ruby.”

  He looked back toward her as she hung up. Yang let out a sigh, rubbing her face with her hands as if contemplating something. Then she slapped both of her cheeks lightly, and clearly forced a smile toward him.

  “C’mon, Merc!” She chirped, though her voice sounded tired. He supposed the fight was probably starting to catch up to her. “We’re going shopping.”

~

  Mercury shifted uncomfortably back and forth on his prosthetics, feeling them grow so stiff that he was afraid they would start creaking. He glanced toward the other side of the room, where Yang was still haggling with the vendor. He really had no idea what they were doing in a motor shop, she didn’t even have her bike with her.

  She’d taken off his restraints just for the moment, and while Mercury could have easily escaped, she still had his greaves and the key to releasing the locked barrels on his boots. Without either of those things, he wouldn’t be able to fight. If he couldn’t fight he couldn’t take jobs, which meant no money. Which meant he wouldn’t have any way of hiding from Salem. So he stayed.

  “At least let me see her first,” Yang said loudly, and Mercury looked up in confusion to her wording. Who was she here to see? He thought she needed to buy stuff.

  “I was told she was in pretty good condition, if I’m gonna be spending this much I wanna know it’s true.”

  Uh, what?

  The older man disappeared toward the back of the shop while Mercury stared at her. He had to have heard her wrong. There was no way someone like her would yell at him about hurting people, then turn around and condone some sort of-

  His trail of consciousness stopped when the shopkeeper rolled a whole motorcycle out of the back room.

  It was a moderate size, a bit bigger than her other bright yellow and orange bike from the best he could recall. Though a bit dirty, it had chrome plating and dark gray covers with black handlebars and dashboard. In fact what struck Mercury first was how much the bike reminded him of himself.

  Yang put her hands on her hips, whistling low as she approached it. “She’s a beauty. I’m certainly interested, but I’d like to see how she runs before I buy. You understand, don’t you?”

  Though he gave another exasperated sigh, the shopkeeper turned and went to go retrieve the keys. Mercury watched as Yang ran her fingers over the handlebars with a clear sense of longing. Or some kind of sadness. He didn’t really care, he just found the reaction to be strange.

  “I can’t wait to ride you,” she mumbled under breath, Mercury only just barely catching it.

  “What happened to your other bike?” He spoke up finally, not for the answer but perhaps just to get her to remember she wasn’t alone. It was a bit insulting honestly, because he felt like she had forgotten she’d even put him on lockdown.

  Yang jolted a bit, and her fingers curled tightly around the handlebar. “BMBLB went down for me. I needed a new one.”

  “Ah,” it was painfully obvious there was more to the story, but he really didn’t care. Just as long as she understood that she was being massively weird.

  When the man came back with the key and the silver motorcycle hummed to life with no issue, Mercury was unsurprised that Yang immediately slammed her money down on the counter. He couldn’t believe she had been carrying that much lien around. If Emerald had been here, that would’ve been gone two hours ago.

  A sickness sunk in his stomach as one of the people he’d been trying to avoid thinking about had rose to his mind so quickly. How had she reacted, when she learned he had left? Would Salem even tell her the truth? He had no idea of what Salem would do. That was the most frightening part about the witch.

  “Mercury? Mercury, hey,” he came back to the blonde in his face, tugging on his arm. “Come on, we’re all set here.”

  “Tch,” he made the most uncaring tone in the world to cover up his own behavior. “Whatever.”

  After also purchasing fuel for the bike, Yang jerked him after her as if to reprimand him for his poor acting skills - what did he care whether or not people knew she was keeping him as a prisoner? - waving to the shopkeeper the entire way out the door. With her sing-songy “Byeee! Thank you so much! Looking forward to doing business again!” Mercury concluded that he really did not fucking understand this girl whatsoever. He much didn’t want to, either.

  As soon as they got outside the shop, she snapped the restraints back on him, any smile that had been there before now gone.

  “Get on the bike,” she snapped at him.

  Mercury snorted, kicking his leg over the seat as Yang climbed on behind him.

  “What’s to stop me from jumping?” He sneered as her arms appeared on either side of him. “Or if I don’t just fall off.”

  “Good point, Merc,” she answered. He was surprised when she suddenly unlatched one side of the handcuffs, but then hooked it back to her own arm. “Now if you try anything I can just kick your ass again.”

  Annoyed with her tone and mildly humiliated with the accommodations, Mercury remained quiet as Yang started the ignition. As before, the motorcycle hummed to life with no issue, and continued performing as such as she sped out of Mistral toward the mountains.

  “Oh, listen to you purr, baby,” he rolled his eyes as she drifted off into her bike fantasy world again. “Oh yeah, we should have no problems getting to Argus.”

~

  They rode for a solid few more hours, out of the kingdom and into Grimm land. Mercury knew there were a few villages that survived on the edges of Mistral’s reach, and a few that they drove through, so he expected Yang to stop and spend the night there before continuing. To his surprise, she drove straight through as the sun began to set, only finally stopping when the sky was beginning to turn from reds and oranges to purple and dark blue.

  “Well, going through the whole night is just going to attract Grimm to the noise,” Yang said as she reached around to unlock the restraint, and hook both of his wrists together again. “So I guess we’ll camp here. I don’t care if you sleep or not, I’ll be taking my own watches.”

  He was silent for a while, debating whether or not to tell her about what his situation actually entailed. The real question was whether or not he cared if she got tangled up in it. “You’re pretty ballsy, camping in Grimm territory.”

  “It’s something we’re taught how to do well, because it’s almost guaranteed to happen at some point in a Huntsman’s career.”

  He gave a little bit of a sigh, as he felt that fear twisting up in his gut again. There was no way he couldn’t give her some warning. He was too damn nervous over his own safety. “Salem can see through the eyes of Grimm, you know.”

  Yang opened one eye, focusing her attention on him. “Well, shit,” she spoke more as if he’d just told her something mildly inconvenient as opposed to the fact that the literal witch who wanted to destroy the kingdoms could find them through any of her nightmare creatures. He wasn’t sure which he found more annoying of Yang, her strange optimism or her moments of indifference.

  Yang tucked her arms behind her head as she leaned back against her new bike and looked up toward the sky. “So, is she gonna come and try to rescue you?”

  Mercury gave another sigh. He couldn’t tell her what was really going on, that he was now running for his life from Salem. He didn’t need her preaching to him to join her cause - or her pity. “Something like that. ‘Night, Blondie.”

Chapter Text

   As if the universe couldn’t let her have one day on high, Yang had nightmares again once she had fallen asleep.

   They never had Salem in them. Maybe she was cocky for not being afraid of her. Except that was a lie. She was afraid of Salem, everyone she knew and loved and cared about was. It was simply idiotic that she would even claim such a thing. But Salem wasn’t the one who haunted her.

   No, the black and red and white that she saw were all the same person, over and over again. His cruel torment, and she’d cry out for Blake again and again, and she’d scream at the burning pain across her arm. She’d look down, and her automail would be gone. And then she would watch him die. Over and over again.  Dead or alive, she could not escape Adam Taurus.

   Nothing good had come out of what they did. She couldn’t even find peace.

   Yang shot up in a cold sweat. It was early in the morning, the sky a soft silvery-blue and the sun just barely peeking over the mountains on the horizon. She heard several Beowulf Grimm in the distance, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary with them; she knew she could take them on herself if she needed to. And they sounded a ways off, so for now she figured that she and Mercury were safe.

   And Mercury.

   She looked over toward her reluctant companion as she lifted a hand up to her neck and checked her pulse. Her heart rate had already begun to calm down, and Yang let out a sigh. Since that day back in Argus so long ago, she hadn’t been suffering from the physical trauma as much. Her hands didn’t shake when she got into a fight. She had confidence in her strength and in her Semblance again. She didn’t see him everywhere. She was no longer scared of being hurt by him.

   Yang was relieved that her exclamation had not appeared to wake Mercury up. She really didn’t want him to see her like that. He’d tricked them once already, learned how she and her sister and her friends trained, how they laughed and cried and trusted one another, how they fought. He had learned their strengths and their weaknesses, and then pulled the rug out from underneath them. He was the reason Beacon fell. He-

   He wasn’t the one who cut off your arm. Don’t say it. A traitorous voice whispered in the back of her head, and Yang felt herself start to tear up.

   She knew that was true, of course. Mercury was not the one who took her arm. And she knew it was unfair to link him to that. But he had been fine with all of them dying, hadn’t he? No guilt on his conscious. In fact, hadn’t he tried to kill her when they fought at Haven Academy?

   He probably would have cut her arm off too, given the chance.

   Feeling a wave of fury rush over her, Yang pushed it down and clenched her fists as she got back to her feet. No, it wasn’t worth it. Giving in to her anger and taking it out on Mercury was not the person she was anymore. She had grown so much more since the last time she saw him.

   “Get up,” Yang commanded, tapping Mercury’s stomach with her boot.

   It wasn’t like she had kicked him or anything, so Yang was caught off guard when Mercury’s arms flew up and grabbed her foot, eyes shot open and glaring at her.

   “Don’t touch me like that,” he snarled.

   “How else am I supposed to wake you up?” She asked, but sighed when his glare deepened. “Okay, okay. Whatever! Just get up. Let’s get going.”

   They were both silent for the rest of the day. Mercury, she was surprised, didn’t try to protest or fight her or get away. Yang didn’t want to talk to him because she knew he was smarter than he appeared and didn’t want to give anything away. His whole style was about deception. She knew he liked it when people underestimated him. She couldn’t ever let her guard down around him.

~

   “So I’m curious,” Mercury spoke up suddenly while Yang was preparing the rations from her bag for the two of them after setting up camp. She was once again surprised, as they had spent the entire day in silence other than the humming of her new motorbike. She found herself distracted by it now, the way the chrome plating gleamed in the moonlight. She missed the yellow of BMBLB, but found herself liking the silver of the bike more and more. Yang looked over at him to continue.

   “What did Little Red tell you about that night? At Beacon, I mean.”

   Yang felt her entire body grow stiff with coldness. What was he trying to accomplish? What advantage would her answering this question give him? Was he just trying to get a rise out of her? Was he trying to get information that Salem needed? Frankly she didn’t want to answer him at all. But she also felt a question burning on her lips that she knew he would never answer unless she gave him wanted he wanted.

   “She told me she found you in a back hallway in the arena, looking like I had never touched you,” Yang tried to bite back the bitterness creeping into her voice. They were in the middle of Grimm territory. She had to stay calm, and she needed to remember that. “You fought her. You tried to stop her. But she knew as soon as she saw you.”

   “Are you still mad we used you? Tricked you? Got the whole world to believe you were a monster?”

   She flinched, feeling a wave of hatred inside her at his words. What in Remnant was he trying to accomplish? Surely this was some sort of escape plan. That had to be it. Get her upset, attract some Grimm, and the queen of darkness would swoop in to save him. She could not let herself play straight into his hand.

   “I would say I’m over it,” she lied. “I can’t change what happened, what you guys did.”

   He shrugged. “That’s fair, I guess.”

   “I’ve got a question for you then,” Yang continued, stealing a glance at him from the corner of her eye. He looked up at her when she spoke, and she felt a smugness come over her now that she had turned the tables and caught him off guard.

   She took a deep breath. “Was everything part of the trick? All the dumb shit you did that made us laugh... all the training with Pyrrha and I?” Yang swallowed hard to suppress her rising anger. “Ruby and Emerald’s friendship? That was all part of the lie, wasn’t it?”

   Mercury was silent for a while, which was not the response she had expected from him at all. When she looked over at him again, he was looking away from her.

   “What a dumb question, Blondie,” his words were bitter, not smug. “Of course it was.”

   “Good. I didn’t want to pity you,” she crossed her arms as she laid her head down, turning away from him. “Night, Merc.”

Chapter Text

  With a wave of snow-white hands and black fingertips, Salem conjured a ring of black smoke swirling within the glass-like orb of the Seer that allowed her to peer through the eyes of reality. From the smoke, an image gradually shimmered into focus. 

   Mercury the runaway, speeding through the forest on a motorized bike that shined a silver chrome nearly the same color as his hair. But the motorcycle didn’t belong to him. Though she was unable to see the driver’s face, Salem could see golden hair, and clothes of brown and yellow. Someone was helping him, which was quite unusual for the young assassin who had often touted how much he preferred to work alone. He must have paid them.

   Salem put no effort into suppressing an amused, cruel smile. Money held no weight against her might. Even the greediest of individuals would too, grow compliant under pressure and fear of her power. As confident as she was that she could crush the willpower of the strongest humans with time, she did so enjoy when loyalty was bought. Because that was so much easier to break.

   “Keep running, little insignificant Mercury Black,” she told the Grimm. “It only makes this all the more amusing.”

   Mercury woke up to the sound of revving engines in the distance.

   He’d slept more soundly than he had expected to, while right in the middle of Salem’s territory. He glanced toward Yang, then back to the cuffs on his wrists. If he wanted to, he could easily snatch the key and his weapons back and high-tail it out of there before she knew what was going on. He could probably restrain her back and take the key. The Mercury who worked for Cinder would’ve done that. But the idea sat uncomfortably in his stomach.

   Yang slept soundly. It was almost annoying how peacefully she was sleeping, as if she wasn’t in peril of being attacked at any time and he wouldn’t be able to help her. He couldn’t say he blamed her for wanting to de-weaponize him, but he was still mad about it. He felt an anxiety without his boots, a panic that he wouldn’t be able to protect himself when it counted. He was a damn good fighter, that’s how he had killed Marcus - with nothing but his bare hands and mostly destroyed legs - but Marcus was nothing compared to Salem.

   But even he knew not to underestimate Yang. He had woken up in the night once, taken a glance at her and seen she was awake. When she told him she’d be taking her own watches, he wasn’t quite sure what that meant. Then as he spied on her, a soft alarm had gone off on her phone. After setting it again she promptly laid down and shut her eyes. She’d been sleeping in intervals on a timer.

   Mercury still couldn’t believe people willingly chose this life.

   As he sat up, the engines that he had heard in the distance, probably from a group of people trying to get quickly through the Grimm territory as well, continued. It wasn’t such a horrible idea really, traveling in small groups as opposed to the trains that ran from Mistral to Argus. Mercury knew that the bigger a group of people were, the more likely they were to have some negative emotions set in and that was more likely to attract Grimm. So he guessed Blondie didn’t have such a terrible idea either. He hated the begrudging respect he felt building for her, and reminded himself of how high and mighty she had been before. She was hardly any different than him, she just thought she was saving the world.

   As Mercury listened, however, he could faintly hear talking that he couldn’t before. The engines had grown louder. He supposed it wouldn’t be so strange that the other people were driving near them, but something about the voices sounded jovial, not at all how average people acted when trying to keep a low profile. Sure, being in a good mood definitely made it harder for Grimm to sense humans, but the monsters could still hear. He felt that instinct curling up in his gut, his urge for self-preservation crying out. Something was wrong.

   An instant after the hair on his body stood up on end, Mercury noticed something on Yang’s bike that he hadn’t before. The chrome plating of the bike shined with a green undertone. The bike had been the same shade of silver as him when he first saw it, of that he was certain. There was no way that green had been there before.

   He watched as the color gave a soft pulse, changing in hue so gently that he knew would’ve been extremely difficult to detect if he weren’t so intensely scrutinizing it as he was now. The engines, and the voices grew closer, and he watched as the pulses slowly grew more frequent. His blood froze.

   They were being hunted.

   Stumbling over the ground as best he could with his wrists locked together, Mercury practically threw himself at the Huntress’s side.

   “Blondie!” He yelled, not caring about making noise anymore as he desperately attempted to jostle her awake. “God damn it, get up! We’ve been tracked!”

   Were they mercenaries hired by Salem’s forces to find him? He had always assumed he would’ve had at least a few more days on anyone looking for him. It was probably her fault, for fighting him in the back alley. Whatever it meant though, a suffocating panic washed over him again when he spotted his greaves sticking out of her bag. Mercury abandoned his attempts to wake her up and instead began searching for the keys to unlock his restraints. Whoever was coming after them, he had to defend himself.

   Cold metal clamped around his arm, and Mercury looked to find Yang sitting up, scowling at him, her prosthetic’s fingers grasping him so tightly he knew they were at least going to leave a bruise.

   “What the hell are you doing?” She growled.

   Mercury looked between the flashing green light on her bike and the angry Huntress in front of him, and he knew he didn’t have enough time to explain it all. However, he really didn’t feel like having to fight Yang and the people hunting them, so he did his best.

   “Someone’s been tracking your bike, and they’re almost on top of us. You gotta let me out, it sounds like a big group-“ as if to prove his point, their pursuers let out a series of hoots and cheers. Yeah, they were clearly not the type of people who were cowering against the Grimm.

   “But how do you know they’re-“

   Mercury stopped her mid-question, indicating the new motorcycle she had acquired. The green mark over the bike was now pulsing so fast it was basically flashing, and Mercury understood what it was now; a beacon, alerting both the enemies and their prey to the proximity they were in with one another.

   “You can’t fight all of them by yourself,” he told her, reading the thought straight on her face as he held out the restraints around his wrist toward her. “And I’m not interested in getting kidnapped a second time.”

   “You think they’re after you?” She asked with a bewildered expression toward him. “Why?”

   He knew it before he even saw them, that they were out of time. From the brush in front of them a group of motorcycles emerged, their riders still cheering and laughing amongst them. Yang activated her gauntlet and held her fists up in a defensive stance, while Mercury mentally tried to calm his rising anxiety. Even though he fought mostly with his feet, he could feel it, deep in his gut that his balance was off because of how his arms had been restrained. On top of that, he had no form of crowd control without the bullets in his boots. He’d been screwed before, but this was the first time in a long time he was truly on his own in a fight he didn’t think he could win.

   One of the bikes sat forward of the others, an obvious show of who was in charge of this gang. The rest surrounded Mercury and Yang, enough to make a semicircle boxing them in against the tree they had been resting under. The rider of the lead bike swung off the vehicle, revealing an older blonde woman with a black and burgundy corset with leather pants and crimson red lips. She was in a word, the stereotypical biker chick.

   What Mercury wasn’t expecting, though, was the way Yang recognized the woman.

   “Mathilda?” She stared, stunned, and with some sense of admiration that annoyed the hell out of him.

   “Didn’t I tell you, honey, that just because you were cute didn’t mean you could name drop?” She replied.

   Yang’s surprise had dropped, and now she gave a wide grin. “I knew we had a connection, but I certainly didn’t expect you to follow me to the ends of Remnant.”

   Mathilda scoffed a bit. “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re cute, but you aren’t my type,” she eyed Mercury for what appeared to be the first time since their arrival. “Besides, it looks like you’ve got a companion already. What a disappointment.”

   Though he was more preoccupied with finding a way out of this situation rather than listening to whatever the hell this was, Mercury couldn’t help the huge wave of relief that washed over him when he realized that they weren’t here for him; otherwise, he knew the gang would’ve opened fire already. They had no idea who he was, and that was a good thing. 

   Mercury looked over to Yang. “Can we speed this up a little?” He grunted low under his breath. “I don’t think she’s here just to talk, so we need to make ourselves scarce.”

   “Right you are, mister,” Mathilda pointed right at Yang’s new motorcycle. “We’re here for the bike!”

   She looked back from the older woman to the motorcycle that she had acquired just a few days ago with bewilderment. “What the hell? No way! You’re the one who led me to the bike in the first place!”

   That cleared up some of Mercury’s confusion on how the two knew each other, but still left a lot of unanswered questions that before, never would have mattered to him.

   “You don’t have much of a choice do you, honey?” The older woman leaned one arm on the handle of her bike. She raised her other and snapped, instantly summoning the gang around to train their weapons - mostly some different kinds of guns, though a few had swords and he recognized the thugs who had tried to mug him in Mistral were amongst the group, including the woman with the bladed whip - on himself and Yang.

   “You can’t fight them all off yourself,” he growled at the girl beside him once more, quickly scanning his eyes over her for the key to his restraints.

   Yang narrowed her eyes. “Watch me,” With that, she pushed her arms back and fired off the shotguns, propelling herself forward at their assailants.

   “Dammit Blondie!” He exclaimed in exasperation. With little other option, Mercury backed up toward Yang’s bike and looped his thumbs around his belt loops in an attempt to create a center of balance for himself in such an awkward position. He was going to have to fight too, if only to convince her to unrestrain him. Never in his life did Mercury think he’d be assisting someone like her in a fight.

   Yang surprised him again, though, when she didn’t go flying straight for the big boss; instead, changing her trajectory for the guy on the bike to the direct left of the leader. With just the slimmest opportunity for surprise left, her target had no time to defend or even brace himself, and was instantly down for the count.

   “You three!” Mathilda barked. “Kill the guy, take the bike!” She pulled a shotgun-like weapon from her holster, cranking back the very large and archaic-looking hammer to load its ammunition. “The rest of us can handle the Huntress.”

   As commanded, a detachment of three bandits rushed at him, notably including the woman with the bladed whip that doubled as a sword who had jumped him before. She already had her weapon in the form that made it more difficult to predict, sending the whip at him as soon as she could reach. Mercury found a piece to focus on however, and kicked it at just the right moment to throw her veering off balance.

   He so enjoyed when people thought he was just a meat-headed brawler.

   Mercury steadied himself and let the other two come in close, where he could compensate for lack of ammo and really control the balance of the fight. They weren’t brawlers on any level close to his, or even to Yang, who had consistently given him one hell of a power struggle each time they faced off. He shook his head; this wasn’t about Yang. This was about him and his self-preservation. He was fighting in tandem with her because he had to.

   The first goon collided with the armor of his bracers, and Mercury could instantly feel the power difference between them. This guy had the dexterity, but he didn’t have enough muscle to contest in strength. Unfortunately for him, Mercury had both. The second one swept at Mercury’s legs, but anyone who knew who he was would never go for his legs first. 

   Using the first enemy as a point of leverage, Mercury got his legs into the air and instantly swept at his face, knocking him back with a swift blur of silver. His other boot swung around and came down on to the head of the second guy, knocking him straight to the ground with a loud crack. Either this guy had next to none aura levels or his strikes were so good they went straight through it. Either was good. 

   Mercury landed and went to pull his arms back, only to be stopped by the restraints keeping his wrists together. Right, fucking Blondie refused to let him fight at full strength. He allowed himself to take a swift glance toward her.

   Yang was handling herself more than well, flying around in different directions thanks to excellent timing on her part and the power behind her high-impact shells. She was gold in the early morning sun, a blur as she flew around Mathilda’s crew that, despite being wildly outnumbered, she took out at a breakneck pace. Mercury took a few steps toward her as Yang finally slowed, facing off against Mathilda.

   He noticed something coming at him though out of the corner of his eye, and Mercury jumped back at the last moment as the bladed whip struck where he’d been standing. The woman had gathered herself enough to throw directly into a fight with him.

   Mercury usually enjoyed himself. Overwhelming an opponent with his too-fast-to-keep-up strikes that were equally just as powerful, and he even usually liked it when he had a disadvantage - a leveled playing field for his opponent only got him more pumped up to take them down - but with the sequence of events that had befallen him one after the other, he only felt annoyance. He jumped and ducked around the blades, forced on the defensive because he wasn’t able to get in close enough. He tried to find the point of momentum of the whip again to knock her off balance, but it seemed as though the woman had caught on to his calculating and scheming because she didn’t lose her balance again. Frustrated, he decided to run at her and kicked upward at her into an aerial cork. His foot hadn’t connected with anything, so she must have rolled out of his way.

   The next moment after he landed, Mercury felt sharp pain cutting into his skin, dampened only slightly by his Aura. He looked down just in time to see possibly the worst case scenario before he was jerked forward off his feet, the bladed whip wrapped around the restraints taking him with it when his opponent returned her weapon toward her, retracting the whip back into a sword.

   “Blondie, will you please take these stupid cuffs off me?!” He yelled toward Yang upon hearing her gauntlets go off again. Mercury hit the ground hard, taking a face-full of dirt and the woman’s boot stamping down on his head didn’t make him feel any better.

   “Stay down, unless you want more,” she laughed, and he heard - but couldn’t see -  her sword transforming into a whip again.

   “Right, cuz I’ve ever taken orders from anyone,” he grumbled, before he kicked up with his boot to try and hit her leg and knock her off. At the same time Yang came flying, throwing a punch that sent the woman flying.

   “I’m so glad you’re pulling your weight!” She exclaimed sarcastically as she yanked him back to his feet.

   “I think I did pretty well there, considering I literally can’t use my arms,” he answered dryly, and held the restraints out toward her.

   Yang looked between his unamused expression and his arms several times, as if they weren’t in the middle of a fight at that very moment. It took her quite a bit of pondering before she finally heaved a sigh and pulled out the key from her pocket.

   “If you run, I might literally kill you,” she threatened.

   “Duly noted,” Mercury grunted, rolling his wrists once they were finally free. That familiar smirk found its way onto his face, and he turned to the bandits with a renewed vigor. Despite the situation, he certainly couldn’t complain about all these great slugfests he seemed to be getting into lately and now that he had the full extent of his abilities back, these bandits didn’t stand a chance.

   “Ohhh, he was your prisoner!” They both turned when they heard laughter coming from the group. It was Mathilda. “I thought you were just really cocky and one of those kinky couples.”

   Mercury cracked his neck, rolling his shoulders to loosen up. “Trust me. I’m into some weird shit, but not with her.”

   Yang shot him a mostly irritated look, but there was this goofy shock factor that almost made him laugh out loud were they not in the middle of a fight.

   “Oh I like him. He’s got some wit. It’s a shame you aren’t as cute as her,” Mathilda held her gun out to the side, dramatically making a show of transforming it into a literal hammer. “Let’s finish this now, yeah?”

   Following Yang’s lead, he leapt at the bandits. While Yang went and engaged the leader directly, Mercury decided to first warm up against a few of the goons who’d gotten back up after the first barrage. His movements were tight and precise again, his body control and balance back to what it was supposed to be. He didn’t need gunshots to change direction on a dime like she did, his body flipping between opponents in a breakneck showcase of aerobatics, sending kicks in every direction. But this was him fighting at his best, and every kick was precise, not a single strike wasted. It was almost disappointing how quickly his opponents went down.

   As he straightened up, and prepared himself to join Yang’s brawl with Mathilda, there was suddenly a growl from the bushes beside him. Mercury had only enough time to look in the direction before a black shape bowled him over. He held his arms out just in time for the Ursa that had pinned him to the ground to snap at his face. Damn Grimm, catching him off guard. How had one so big snuck up on them?

   “Mercury!” He heard Yang exclaim, and then several seconds later she gave an angry “Hey!”

  From behind the Ursa growling in his face, he heard several motorcycles start up again. One of them was on the wrong side of the clearing, by the tree they had slept under. Mercury knew what that meant. He gritted his teeth and began struggling from under the Grimm.

   He might have lost his weapons, but he was not going back to Salem.

   The bikes rode off, laughing and hollering coming from the bandits again as they chased after Yang. The engines faded into the distance, and he cursed his terrible luck in it all. Was this karma for choosing Salem in the first place?

   And just like that, the pressure on top of him was gone as the Grimm disintegrated into dust. Mercury lay there stunned for a moment as his brain tried to understand what had happened. He had barely struck the creature three times with half the strength of a normal kick, so there was no way he had been the one who killed it. His vision turned gold when she leaned over him, her and her ass-length golden hair.

   “Come on, get up,” Yang demanded of him, forcibly grabbing his arm and pulling him to his feet. “I’m sure that Grimm will attract more, so we need to move.”

   He looked around the clearing. Yang still had her bag of supplies, but the chrome bike was gone. She was here, but the bike wasn’t. He understood what had occurred now, but it only made him more confused.

   Yang had sacrificed her bike to help him. But why?

~

   After setting up camp and rationing out the food in Yang’s bag, the two begrudging, tentative allies sat in silence. He did nothing to alleviate the hostile tension between them but ignore it. Though Yang herself feigned a lazy indifference, he could see the attentiveness with which she watched the forest around them, as well as a flaming fury burning in her eyes. He knew that routine well, as it was something he did often himself.

   For the first time since his kidnapping - as he was inclined to call it, no matter how much she might insist she had arrested him - Mercury’s eyes wandered down to her prosthetic arm. He smirked to himself and leaned back as he remembered with a cruel sense of irony that the damn thing was responsible for all this. That arm and its refusal to leave his head was what had kept reminding him of her, which kept reminding him of how much he hated being one of Salem’s puppets.

   “Are you laughing at me?” She growled suddenly.

   He sat up and found her blazing gaze cast on him. The arm he had been looking at a moment ago was curled into a fist.

   Mercury hadn’t even realized he made a sound. Or maybe he hadn’t even made one, and she’d just caught the twisting of his smile out of the corner of her eye. Either way, Mercury figured his situation couldn’t get much worse.

   “And if I am, what are you gonna do, Blondie? Prisoners have rights too, you know.”

   “Why you little-!” She started toward him, but a sound in the distance made both of them freeze up. Yang looked over her shoulder and held her breath, releasing it after almost a minute when the sound didn’t appear to be coming any closer. “Whatever. You aren’t worth dying over.”

   “I’m not?” He guffawed. “You’ve hurt my feelings Blondie.”

   “Will you please stop calling me that? I already hate this just as much as you do.”

   Mercury narrowed his eyes and looked away from her. “Nah, I don’t think so.”

   “Excuse me? We’re stranded in the middle of your queen’s territory, and I got my bike jacked by some stupid, attractive bitch. You’re probably having a field day now.”

   “Please, if my queen shows up around here, I’d shove my foot up her ass.”

   It was stupid, and he hated it, but honestly Mercury had forgotten that Yang didn’t know he was on the run from Salem; that is, until those words came out of his mouth and Yang reacted.

   “Uh, is that like some dumb joke you guys have on the bad side?” Her voice was still so cold it sounded as if she was offended at what he’d said. “From what I’ve heard about her, Salem wouldn’t like hearing that.”

   For a moment he contemplated telling her. Seriously. He thought if she knew, maybe there was a chance she’d let him go when she found out he wasn’t part of Salem’s crew anymore and that the witch wasn’t actually going to miss him - in fact, she was probably plotting as to how she could get him killed right now. But then he realized it would probably have the opposite effect; Yang, ever the do-gooding crusader, would probably try to recruit him. And he wanted that even less.

   However, she was also smarter than he gave her credit for. When Mercury didn’t reply, he saw her shift toward him in the corner of his eye.

   “I was eventually gonna ask what she could possibly have you doing back in Mistral in the first place but... hey, Mercury? Did you escape from Salem?” He hated the way her voice softened, even if only slightly, when she asked that. This girl was really unlike anyone he’d ever met, and it was frustrating; one moment she’d be cold as ice, the next her emotions exploding like a firecracker.

   “You don’t escape from her,” he answered after a long silence. “I’m running. And you said it yourself. Now we’re in the middle of her goddamn territory. You’ve only slowed me down, and now we’re both gonna die for it.”

   “You can’t blame me for that,” she snapped. “You joined up with her in the first place.”

   “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I didn’t know exactly what I was getting myself into?” He snarled back.

   She glared at him when he met her eyes, daring him to either explain himself further or shut up. That same stupid gold flashed in front of his eyes again.

   “I was recruited by Cinder. I didn’t really know who her benefactor was until after the Vytal Festival. And man, was it a high. But then I realized that I wasn’t anymore safe with her than anyone else in the world is when her plans are realized. So I figured I might as well enjoy myself before that happens and left.”

   “Her plans won’t be realized. You joined the wrong side and you screwed yourself over for it. When we defeat Salem-“

   “I thought you were at least smarter than that, Blondie,” he cut her off, tossing a rock into the bushes absentmindedly. “You can’t defeat Salem.”

   “When we defeat Salem,” she repeated - ignoring what he had said completely - “you’ve got no place in any of the kingdoms.”

   Mercury replied with a cruel laugh. “I never had a place in the kingdoms. People like me, we don’t fit in. We crawl in the underbellies of places like that. I was trained to be an assassin, you know? I kill people. There’s only a place for someone like me with Salem or on my own. So I know what you’re gonna try to do. Don’t even bother. I’ve basically accepted I’m just going to rot in prison at this point; until you got your bike stolen. Now I’m just gonna die to her fucking Grimm.”

   “As long as you’re with me, we aren’t going to die,” Yang answered.

   He looked up, ready to snap at her for her overconfidence, an irritation that bubbled up his throat. But the words died on Mercury’s lips when he saw her expression. She wasn’t confident. In fact, she looked devastated. The fire and fury in her eyes had gone out, replaced by a cold, steely determination. He knew what she was thinking about.

   He shook his head, attempting to get rid of the ringing in his ears. “How can you be so delusional, Blondie?”

   “When I lost my arm, I had almost given up,” the tone of her voice shocked him. It sounded so uncharacteristic of her, much to his ire. He was so sure he’d had her all figured out by now, but it seemed like every hour that passed with her he was with a completely different person than his original impression. “And because of that, people important to me have gotten hurt, over and over again. I don’t ever want to leave Ruby, or Blake, or Weiss, or even Qrow alone ever again. Whether you like it or not Mercury, we’re getting to Argus.”

   His eyes wandered to her arm again, and for what felt like the thousandth time, he wondered what had happened. He knew it was that arm, that reminder of how he had felt the first time he noticed it, that prompted his response.

   “You know, we really aren’t as different as you think we are.”

   Yang narrowed her eyes and looked as though she were about to argue with him, but stopped when Mercury reached down and started rolling up the bottom of his pants.

Chapter Text

  Yang stared at his legs, and silver metal-plated machinery stared right back.

   Any sound, any snide comment Mercury might have made was lost on her. The world went silent, and all she could hear was the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears. Suddenly, everything made sense - how Mercury had tricked her during the festival tournament; his weird reaction with her arm at Haven; his odd behavior since she had ran into him in Mistral a few days ago; even the way he had freaked out when she tried to remove his boots.

   “You seem really surprised, Blondie,” he was saying, as her senses finally returned to her. “I don’t know why. The world we live in, surely you’ve seen so many other people like us. I’ve even heard the General himself is half cybernetics.”

   “Yeah,” Yang weakly muttered in reply, as the last of her anger and annoyance toward him left her in a breath. She felt like Mercury had just sucker punched her. Scratch that, she wished he would have done that instead of this. Because for all the shit he had put her and her friends through, she was instantly beginning to sympathize with him.

   No! This is a trick. It has to be.

   Yeah, it made perfect sense. Mercury knew her, knew that it would play on how she felt, that it would knock her guard down. No matter how she tried resisting it though, she couldn’t ignore the fact that from the mid-thigh down, both of his legs had been amputated. Whether she liked it or not, he was right; they were more similar than she could have realized.

   “When-“

   “Way before I met Cinder.”

   “How-“

   “An accident,” He snapped with more venom than she had heard from him, ever, instantly ending that angle of the conversation. She sat in silence with him after that, both unable to take their eyes off the other’s prosthetic limbs. At least, she thought she could see him staring at hers. Her eyes didn’t leave his legs as her mind went back to the final round in the Vytal Festival tournament.

   The fight had been intense, but she had enjoyed every moment of it. Mercury was a tough opponent, she knew, but she was still so sure she had it in the bag. So of course she had gotten mad when he started beating the crap out of her, and using that stupid twister gravity dust move. But she had flipped the battle in her favor and knocked him out, securing another win for her team. Yes, she had known that his Aura had completely gone out. Yes, she had known what throwing a punch while expending one of the shells from Ember Celica would do. And yet when she felt that chill, when she heard his voice rattling around in her brain like an angry wasp, she didn’t hesitate. She couldn’t understand where his sudden animosity had came from, but Yang was very much the type of person to punch her way out of danger first, ask questions second.

   “There’s not going to be a next time, Blondie.”

   Even through all of the awful things she had been through since then, Yang knew she could never forget that night. From fury at his threat, to confusion when the Atlesian military guard surrounded her at gunpoint, to the dread that overtook her when she found her team in the stands; Weiss looked stunned, Blake looked disgusted, and Ruby, poor Ruby, looked horrified. She didn’t think her sister’s face in that moment would ever leave her. 

   And for a moment, Yang herself had believed the deception. Had she truly gone so mad, that her mind made up what she had seen? Had she really just hurt someone who she had thought was her friend for the last semester for no reason? She remembered her thoughts as Mercury cried out, as Emerald ran to his side, as her opponent was carried away on a stretcher - God, oh god what have I done?!

   The longer she was alone afterwards, though, the more sure of what had happened she became. When her team finally came to see her, and no matter how much more convincing they needed to hear, their promises to stand by her side elated her. And she knew, the moment that she saw the conclusion of the match between Pyrrha and Penny, despite the chaos and confusion, whatever had happened to her was related to whoever had done this.

   That Mercury, and probably Emerald too, were part of the conspiracy.

   And after all the time she spent in Patch recovering, the years she spent separated from her sister, when she finally reunited with Ruby in Mistral, Ruby told her about finding and fighting Mercury that night. Not even a day later, and he was walking around fine and had even attacked her sister. When she fought him at Haven Academy, Yang had never hated someone so much. In the moments that she saw his smug face, where he insisted he had to pay her back for what happened at the festival, she hated him even more than she hated Adam. Now as she stared at the same person, she felt only an uncomfortable connection.

   She couldn’t hate him any more.

   “Hey Mercury,” Yang said finally.

   She watched as he slowly looked up toward her again, an unreadable expression on his face. “What?”

   “Why did you hide-“ she paused mid-sentence. She knew exactly why he hid his prosthetic legs. “No... why did you show me?”

   To her surprise, he laughed. “I don’t really know, Blondie. I wish it was because I was trying to get the jump on you, but I’m not.”

   She narrowed her eyes toward him. “I’m glad you’re finding this so amusing. I’m not.”

   “Oh? Why not?” Mercury’s grin turned more cruel. “Can’t stand the thought that you and I are too similar? Wouldn’t want to be associated with scum like me, right?”

   “That’s beyond the point! I’m trying to save people’s lives-“

   “So what, are you going to try to save mine?” He snapped, cutting her off. “It’s not worth your time. I might have run from Salem, but I’m not joining Ozpin’s army. I already told you that you don’t have a chance against her, and I’m not getting back into the war unless I’m dragged back kicking and screaming.”

   Yang remained defiant, however, her expression unflinching in the face of Mercury’s increasing attitude. She could see what was truly there behind his eyes. He wasn’t angry with her, and that’s how she knew he was telling the truth. “I am going to save your life.”

   His expression fell to something almost like shock at her words. He was trying to push her away, that was clearly why he hadn’t expected what had come out of her mouth. But it was every bit the truth; if Mercury wasn’t on Salem’s side any longer, that meant she had no choice but to save him from Salem. While he was stunned, she continued.

   “She’s going to come after you, and we’re stranded in the middle of nowhere,” as if to prove her point, another pack of Beowulf Grimm howled in the distance. “We are going to get out of this alive, in one piece, and in Argus. You’re going to give me and my team everything we want to know, and then you can fuck off on your own. But for now, you and I are going to have to work together if we want to survive.”

   Mercury stared at her. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking at all, but he didn’t seem angry any longer. The only thing she could get out of him was that he just looked tired.

   “Even if you don’t care about me, at least do it for your own self-preservation, yeah?” she relented.

   He mumbled something under his breath in response.

   “Huh?” Yang sneered. Was he really trying to be snarky at a time like this?

   But she was surprised once again when Mercury’s head shot up, looking mortified. Mortified she might have heard what he said? She wasn’t sure. “I just said - fine, whatever you say Blondie.”

   His cheeks reddened, and Yang almost burst out laughing at how he looked. Embarrassed, blushing Mercury was one of the oddest things she had ever seen. She couldn’t say it was hideous, though.

   “Great, I look forward to a wonderful partnership,” she tossed her pillow at him, and laid down on her blankets. “You’re on first watch!”

   “What? I-“ he was cut off when she started to make exaggerated, fake snores. 

   Mercury rolled his eyes and settled in, propping himself up against a tree with the pillow. He waited to be sure she was asleep and no longer listening, when he repeated to himself what he’d said before under his breath.

   “You were the one who wanted to know what working with her was like, dumbass.”

Chapter Text

   It had almost felt like a bad dream, the way events had unfolded, and Mercury was half expecting to wake up in his bed back in Salem’s palace. But his eyes opened to a mess of golden locks in his face.

   “What are you-“ he tried to demand, but Yang slapped a hand over his mouth. The motion made more of her goddamn hair fall in his eyes.

   “Shut up. Don’t make any noise!” She hissed at him.

   Mercury wanted to snap back at her, but remembered that they were supposed to kinda be working together now. He knew that Yang thought she had a better chance of survival with him around, so he begrudgingly accepted that she was probably reacting to something serious and remained quiet, listening.

   The steady beat of wings caught in his ears swiftly, and Mercury’s muscles immediately tensed. Grimm naturally gave off an aura of dread, and now that he wasn’t with Salem it was already affecting him once again. He heard the sounds of the trees around them bend and groan under the turbulence, branches snapping and giving way as a giant, ancient Nevermore landed and perched in the trees above them. Mercury could see it now, where he was laying, above where Yang was leaned over him. It must have sensed them for a moment, when she surprised him.

   “I don’t care what it is, but think positive thoughts,” Yang whispered to him. “It could be daydreaming about strangling me for all I care. But it won’t be able to sense us if we’re happy.”

   He wanted to quip back that he knew that, he probably knew more about these creatures than she did, but he really didn’t need to make the situation worse for them than it already was. One wrong move and the thing would probably spear both of them with its feathers in a second, if it didn’t just scoop them both up in its beak.

   Mercury closed his eyes and tried to breathe steady. Happy... he knew that was how you hide yourself from the Grimm, but he didn’t really have anything happy to think about. It all came rushing back to him, all his insecurities... this was stupid, why had he run; why hadn’t he just stayed with Salem, where he’d be safe under her protection-

   The Nevermore let out a bloodcurdling cry, and Mercury knew it was his fault.

   He opened his eyes to see if it had spotted them, if he’d literally just gotten them killed; but what he saw was Yang still sitting over him. Her eyes were closed, an expression softer than he’d seen from her before. She looked vulnerable. Scared. But there was something else. Something that made her truly happy in that moment, that kept the Nevermore away.

   He became hyperaware of the grip she had on him. She wasn’t just holding his arm, she had grabbed his hand and was squeezing it.

   Mercury closed his eyes and tried again. He thought about beating his father in their death match. He thought about messing with people, picking on Emerald - he felt a twinge in his chest though, and immediately moved on - he thought about the euphoria of working out, sweating, feeling good about his prowess. Small things, like getting money, not getting hit by his piece of shit for a father anymore. It didn’t erase the terror he was feeling, and the Nevermore screamed above him again.

   Mercury realized what he was grasping for too late. Hope, glittering gold, just as it had before replaced his petty thoughts. The same hope that had given him the strength to leave Salem’s palace, to press on further and further and not turn back to his death. Hope the same color as Yang’s hair. Hope that he clung to, that felt suspiciously like the way he was clutching to her hand.

   That memory of Yang changing him. And here he was, with her again.

   A gust of wind hit his face, and Mercury opened his eyes again to watch the Nevermore take back to the sky. He glanced over to Yang, who held her breath until the beating of the wings faded away. She opened her eyes, and because Mercury was looking at her face, he looked right at them. He’d never known her eyes were violet. The only time he noticed them was when they were burning red during a fight. He had always just assumed they were red all the time.

   “We should go,” Yang said, getting to her feet and pulling him with her. “That thing is probably going to become a problem for us so... whatever you did, we need to keep thinking about it.”

   “What did you think about?” He asked her suddenly.

   Yang gave him an incredulous look. “Why? Does it matter?”

   Mercury wasn’t even sure why he had asked her himself. So instead of answering he did a metaphorical heel-face turn.

   “Blondie, what’s in it for me when we get to Argus?”

   She looked as though she were going to question him again for a moment but gave up, and started walking. “You mean, besides avoiding jail time for directly and indirectly causing hundreds of casualties while working for Salem?”

   “Well, you’re letting me go right? You’re just gonna let a poor guy who’s a fugitive to the all-powerful nightmare witch go off with nothing? A poor, disabled fugitive?” When she turned around to look at him, he gestured at his legs.

   Yang rolled her eyes. “We both have prosthetic limbs, that’s not gonna get any pity points from me. Not to mention the fact that I’ve seen those legs hurt a lot of people. You can’t just work as a mercenary?”

   “I would if I had any supplies, but I am running low on both dust and bullets.”

   “Fine, what do you want?”

   “Hire me, and pay me when we get to Argus.”

   Yang groaned. “For what?”

   He jogged to catch up to her, grinning by the time he joined her side. “Clearly I’m gonna need to be compensated for the information I provide on Salem, and escorting you safely back to everyone, don’t you think?”

   She crossed her arms, clearly unamused. “You’re getting immunity from the kingdoms, and money to go start working in the underbelly of Remnant?”

   “I think it's fair, in exchange for giving you everything I know about Salem."

- In order to keep him around without restraining him, Yang and Mercury strike up a deal that he help her get to Argus, and gift them with as much knowledge on Salem and her faction as he can, and she promises to leave him alone, grant him immunity from all the kingdoms, and to pay him as if she hired him as a mercenary guard

- “Why didn’t you use your Semblance on me?”

- “What are you talking about?”

- “You tricked me at the Vytal Festival. Made Coco see shit when she was fighting Emerald. Then again when we fought at Haven Academy, I saw like a bunch of you. I wanted to finally beat whatever that was.”

- “That wasn’t my Semblance. That was Emerald’s.”

- “Huh, well what’s your Semblance then?”

- “Drop it Blondie.”

- “Oh come on, Merc! We’re friends now, kinda? Don’t you think?”

- “Don’t call me Merc.”

- “Only if you stop calling me Blondie.”

- “Not gonna happen.”

- “Merc it is then.”

- “That’s what Emerald called me. You really wanna be like Emerald?”

- “Fine, how about Boots?”

- “That sounds like a fucking children’s cartoon character.”

- “And you’re dodging the question! Come on, Mercury! If we’re going to get out of this, we’ve got no choice but to work together. Which means I need to know what I can play off of! What’s your Semblance?”

- “I don’t have one.”

- “What are you talking about? Everyone who uses Aura has a Semblance.”

- “I don’t.”

- “Yes you do.”

- “What about your friend Jaune?”

- “He unlocked it during the Haven fight. Were you even paying attention at all?”

- “I was paying attention to trying to kill you.”

- “Maybe you just haven’t unlocked it yet?”

- “Trust me, I know.”

- “Or maybe you have a passive one like Uncle Qrow, and just don’t know about it yet-“

- “Did you say “Uncle Qrow”? Qrow Branwen is your uncle?”

- “Well, yeah. What, did you think he hangs out with a bunch of kids because he likes us?”

- “But that must mean... you’re Raven Branwen’s daughter?”

- “Can we not talk about my mom right now?”

- “You two are kinda alike.”

- “I know you don’t really care about my feelings, but that’s really not what I want to hear. Ever.”

- “You must have gotten that insufferable do-gooder attitude from your dad though.”

- “And I’d guess your lack of tact came from yours.”

- “You’d probably be right. I got a lot of things from that shitbag. And he took away a lot of things, too.”

At the end of the chapter, they would have heard Grimm nearby, and found an abandoned barn to take shelter in for the night.

Chapter Text

   “This place is creepy as hell,” Yang mumbled to herself.

   He smirked to himself. “Aw, you aren’t scared of a few spiders and rats are you?”

   “No... just being crushed when the house comes down.”

   Mercury glanced around them. Well she wasn’t wrong, the place was obviously falling apart. But with Salem’s Grimm probably going so far as to track him down, Mercury knew that even possibly getting into one fight out there could result in many, many more. And they were both still low on ammo and Dust from their fight earlier.

   “Think of your sister, and all that,” he told her. “We’re in the middle of straight Grimm territory. Anything even remotely negative could attract a pack of Beowulfs to us. One slip up and this house becomes our grave.”

   “I know I know, sheesh,” she huffed. “Honestly, you act as though all I do is fight you. I know how to handle Grimm. They showed up in Patch all the time.”

   “You grew up surrounded by Grimm?”

   “Well, I was raised by two of the best Huntsmen in the world and another one came to visit a lot. I think they liked the privacy. Plus, my dad used it to teach his students from Signal Academy.”

   Mercury rolled his eyes. “It sounds like Huntsmen are raised the same way as I was. You know, besides the straight-up abuse.”

   “And the fact that you were raised to straight-up murder people, while I was raised to hunt Grimm.”

   “You mean you were raised to actively seek out the literal personification of horror and fear, and I was beaten into being exactly like my father. Right.”

   “Hey, you-!” Yang exclaimed as she took another step forward, and suddenly the floorboards underneath her gave way. They had been talking so much the neither of them had heard the cracking, the groaning coming from the structure of the abandoned house.

   “Yang!” Mercury had been turning to face her when she continued talking, and he reacted as quickly as he could. He lunged forward as she fell, not exactly sure what part of her he was diving to grab but doing so anyway.

   “Shit!” He gasped when he realized he had missed her. Mercury felt dread settle in the pit of his stomach, before he was suddenly yanked forward closer toward the hole. When he landed on his ass was when everything finally stopped moving.

   He felt the strained weight hanging off his leg, and Mercury instantly understood what had happened. He looked down to find Yang free-hanging from his boot. Both of her hands were gripped around the sole, and she breathed out a sigh of relief as though she hadn’t even realized she had saved herself.

   “Impressive reflexes,” he mused.

   “Please tell me your legs don’t detach as easily as my arm does,” she sighed.

   “They’re attached with a series of implants so I don’t think so,” he grunted, reaching down to grab her arm. “But I don’t wanna test that. Let’s get you back up.”

   “Mercury,” Yang’s voice had suddenly grown so cold it froze his blood. “There’s something living here.”

   He looked up to her face and found her head turned away from him, looking downward. Mercury followed her gaze, down several feet into the basement. Beneath the gaping hole where Yang was dangling, what would be called a basement had been further carved out, and what should’ve been a drop of only several feet looked to be equivalent of jumping out a three-story window. Such a fall still probably wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact they were both exhausted, depleted of Aura, and the scatter of bones, dried blood, and giant webs which cradled giant, suspiciously human-shaped cocoons resting at the bottom of the cavern.

   “Well shit, that is one big spider,” he groaned. “We shouldn’t stay here. We’ll have to keep moving-“

   He froze, both in speaking and in pulling her up, when Mercury realized there was a persistent clicking sound growing closer to them. He was not surprised, if only a bit disappointed, when he saw the first five-foot leg from down the hall. The second and third made his stomach drop.

   “Aw, fucking hell!” Mercury spat, nearly dropping her arm that he was holding on to. With his free hand he leaned into his boot, and removed a small weapon, a pistol with a knife attached to the barrel in front of where his fingers pulled the trigger.

   “What is that?” Yang asked.

   “Backup for situations like this. You’re

 gonna have to climb my leg yourself, Blondie. I’m a terrible shot with my hands, I gotta use both.”

   “What? Mercury!” She exclaimed as he let go of her arm. Yang gave a groan as her hand caught ahold of his metal knee, pulling her body up purely through her own strength. Damn, that woman was strong.

   “Shit, be careful,” he snapped at her as he aimed the gun at where the creature was coming from. His plan wasn’t to shoot until the Grimm saw them, in case it kept walking. But he supposed that the pain he was in from Yang’s entire weight straining his prosthetic leg was enough of a negative emotion, because the spider Grimm turned its attention to them the instant he saw its eyes. It was similar to a Deathstalker, letting out a screech as it started toward them.

   “Damn it Yang! Hurry up!” He yelled at her, and opened fire on the Grimm.

   “I’m trying!” She yelled back at him. The nerve sensors on the top of his foot reacted, telling Mercury that she was kneeling on it. He felt some of the surgical implants at the connection on his thigh straining and start to tear, and pain like nothing he had experienced in some time wracked through his body.

   “Ah!” He cried out in agony, but gritted his teeth and continued firing at the Grimm. Yang wasn’t going to make it. Mercury’s shots had certainly slowed the creature down, but it seemed only to get angrier and it showed no signs of injury. He looked around, and suddenly he knew what he had to do.

   “Yang, I’m sending you into the air!” Mercury demanded. “Let go when I kick!”

   “What?!”

   He didn’t give her another minute though, as the spider was nearly on top of them. Rolling his ankle to get the gun in his boots cocked, Mercury prayed his leg, though injured, would be able to make it before he kicked. She had listened though, because the force of the kick and his accompanied gunshot sent Yang flying toward the ceiling. 

   “Kill it!” He yelled to her, before the Grimm was upon him. Mercury covered his face with his free hand and slashed with the small knife. Though he couldn’t see, he hoped to catch it, to give some damage. But his knife struck nothing until it was knocked out of his hand when the creature slammed its body into him and screeched again. Mercury let out a grunt, though the pain from the tear in his leg was greater.

   He heard Yang’s gauntlet go off. “Get off him!”

   Mercury opened his eyes to see her land right on top of the creature. She shot multiple rounds into the Grimm, slamming her metal fist into its head. The spider screeched again and tossed Yang off itself, throwing her through a nearby rotting wall, which crumpled easily under the impact on top of her. When the creature made a move to go after her, Mercury took the opportunity to fire shells at the Grimm from the boot on the leg that hadn’t been damaged. His heavy-impact shots seemed to do more than the gun, and the creature was knocked back into the hole Yang had been hanging from only a few moments ago.

   He could hear it thrashing about below them, and Mercury got back to his feet finally to make his way to where Yang had been thrown. He stumbled the first step that he took on his right leg, pain shooting through his entire body. It was very, very damaged, implants shifted out of their holdings. He swore under his breath as he found his companion, tossing wooden foundation off her. Mercury was concerned for a moment she had been knocked unconscious, but grew relieved when she coughed and sat up.

   He instantly seized her arm, pulling her back to her feet. “Come on, we gotta leave now!”

- The Nevermore they had avoided before attacks, as well as the spider Grimm

- Mercury and Yang work together to fight them off, Yang also having to defend him because one of his legs is busted (I Burn)

- Yang’s prosthetic arm is damaged by the Nevermore and the gun on it jams

- After barely escaping the Grimm, they continue to struggle to make their way through the woods, hoping they’ll be able to reach Argus by foot. They come upon the bandit camp that stole her bike, and come up with a plan to steal the bike back

- Out of ammo and a crippled prosthetic each, Yang and Mercury are forced to be very creative in their fight against the bandits. This time they work together flawlessly, and both continue to be impressed by the other’s prowess (Armed and Ready). They're having fun in a fight again, it's been a long time for Yang since she's felt that way. Even longer for Mercury. There's some flirting.

- “You’ve got some fancy footwork there, Blondie.”

- “Thanks. You have magic hands of your own, don’t you?”

- “Any time you want the experience for yourself, let me know.”

- “Hold on there hotshot, take me out to dinner first.”

- Yang realizes she’s kind of taken a liking to Mercury, and worries about how her friends and family are going to react when they see him

Chapter Text

   No one had been more silent since Mercury had limped into the room than Qrow. Yang looked toward her uncle, and felt her stomach drop at the expression on his face. He drew pure, unadulterated hatred into the young man standing beside his niece, a cold bite that sent shivers down her spine, and it wasn’t even directed toward her. Yang couldn’t remember ever seeing her uncle look such a way, the closest being when he fought her mother at Haven Academy, or looking upon Cinder. She glanced toward Mercury, who seemed unaffected by her uncle’s glare.

   Qrow got to his feet. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he said coldly.

   “Huh?”

   “There is no way I’m letting someone from Salem anywhere near Ozpin. Let alone any of the danger that you kids tend to trap yourself into anyway,” Qrow scowled. “We don’t need any more.”

   “But I told you, he’s running from Salem!”

   “I watched this kid hold back Amber while his bitch of a boss drained her life and her powers from her. That’s a real hard thing to make me forgive and forget. I’m glad you’re alive firecracker, and I’m glad he helped you out there, but a few good deeds aren’t going to erase what he did before. He’s part of the reason a lot of good people are dead.”

   “But Uncle Qrow-“

   “No, Yang!” His voice rose suddenly. “Now get him out of here before I call the Argus police!”

   Yang looked from Mercury and back to her uncle slowly, expression going from stunned to upset to angry. She indicated the young man next to her. “He can’t walk.” She snapped.

   Another long moment of silence hung over the room as though it were the first time anyone had noticed the set of prosthetic legs that peeked out from underneath Mercury’s tattered pants. One of those legs was definitely crooked, Mercury having to find the most comfortable position as he stood there.

   Qrow gave another heavy sigh as Oscar slid a chair over to Mercury so he could sit.

   “Is that... are those...” Ruby spoke up. “The Vytal Festival, when I saw your leg wasn’t actually broken-“

   “Yes,” Mercury answered stiffly. “The plan was always for us to do that. In fact, before Cinder found out about that robot girl, we were going to rig the machine so that I was paired up with your magnetic friend. Have her freak out and bend one of my legs. Heh, wouldn’t that have been a sight?”

   “How dare you-!” Jaune snapped and made a step forward toward him, but both Ren and Nora on his sides reached forward to stop him. Mercury looked up at Jaune with a dead expression as he was recounting the events.

   “But when Cinder found out about Atlas’s robot girl, she knew we had to have those two go up against each other. That fight went all according to the plan too,” he leaned forward, rubbing his face a little. “So then who could we trick into hurting me, and make it believable? I’d been watching Yang, scoping her out. We were concerned with using the strongest, brightest Huntsmen that we could for a maximum impact. Students who the world looked at and saw someone who could only do good, and make them agents of fear and panic. That’s why we picked the Nikos girl, and that’s why we picked Yang. I knew that she could give me a tough fight, make it believable that I lost. I knew that I could force her to use her Semblance, which was key to getting everyone to believe she had gotten angry, or at least fired up enough, to hurt me even after she saw my Aura go out. Obviously, you guys saw how that went.”

   Blake cleared her throat nervously. “So when Yang said that she saw you attack her, what was that?”

   “That was Em’s Semblance,” he answered as his gaze shifted over to her. “She can plant something in your head that isn’t really there. She can really only do one or two people at a time, though that picture of Salem she conjured at Haven Academy, we all saw it. She’s getting stronger, which is really fucking bad because she didn’t leave with me. She still believes in Salem.”

   “And why,” Qrow snarled with obvious animosity. “Did you leave Salem?”

- Yang and Mercury arrive in Argus with the new bike, and Yang takes him to where she and the others have been staying at the Atlas military base. Mercury is relieved because he knows he’s at least more safe there, but knows the others aren’t going to give him a warm welcome

- Everyone is worried and delighted to see Yang, and when inquiring about what took her so long she tries to build them up before bringing Mercury in. Her companions are not happy, especially Qrow who recounts seeing Mercury assist Cinder with stealing Amber’s powers

- Still, Ruby speaks up and insists that they give Mercury a chance, just as Yang did. Mercury tells them he’ll give them information about Salem, but that he won’t join their side and is only there because Yang took him prisoner, and then owes her for saving his life out there (even if she got him in the mess in the first place)

   “Ow ow ow...”

   Mercury looked up from quietly working a screwdriver in his legs to Yang on the other side of the room, hunched over her automail and mumbling to herself. He waited, letting out a breath assuming it might’ve just been a little trip up, when Yang made a whine of discomfort again. She immediately sat up and looked toward the door. When nothing happened, she let out an oddly relieved sigh.

   “Did you need some help over there?” He spoke up.

   Yang jumped in her seat, as though she had forgotten he was in the room with her. She turned to him slowly.

   “Sorry Mercury, if I was bugging you. I’m fine.”

   He rose an eyebrow, catching on that something must be up due to a tense tone in her voice that he didn’t recognize, and because he was pretty sure that was the first time she had called him straight Mercury since they begrudgingly teamed up in the woods. Mercury grunted and got to his feet, wincing as the still newly set implant in his leg grinded against scar tissue.

   “Wait you don’t have to get up-“ she got to her feet to help him, but he held a hand up to stop her.

   “I’m already up, I’m already coming. Sit down, you sound like you’re having a hard time with your repairs. Just let me look at it.”

   Yang pressed her other hand to her cheek as he sat down across from her, offering the opened prosthetic with exposed wires and circuit boards to him. He took her arm to survey the work. It was certainly more advanced than his. Even painted a burning yellow, it boasted an immistakeable shape and design; her arm was Atlas tech.

   Using his tools, Mercury got to work rewiring and adjusting the damage that her arm had sustained in their fight. She had fought like hell for him, so he owed her this. That was what he told himself as the realization of just how personal, how fucking intimate this was struck him. He was going into the machinations of her arm, something he himself would never allow on his own legs. He was peering into a part of her. Mercury snuck a glance up toward her face to see how she was reacting. Yang’s face read not fluster, but frustration. He deflated a bit, hoping she would have been bothered as well, to settle the embarrassment in his stomach.

   “This is Atlesian tech, huh?” He mumbled.

   Yang looked toward him. “Uh, yeah.”

   “The paint job is nice, but there’s no mistaking that sleek, production-line wiring,” Mercury said. “This shit’s got no character.”

   “It was a gift from General Ironwood,” she explained. “I probably only got it because of Qrow. Ironwood’s got cybernetics himself, but he isn’t that generous to just give away tech to anybody. Still, I was grateful.”

    “Yeah, I’ll bet it performs well. It took me a long time to find durable materials that could take a beating like they do now. Aura doesn’t really protect them,” he mumbled in half-interest, though he had to make himself pay less attention to her talking, and more to his work on her arm. Everything was still in place, original wiring and plates. He’d suspected, and she had then confirmed that the amputation had been recent, but he hadn’t expected it to be virtually unscathed.

   It was then that it had occurred to him for the first time that she had probably sustained the injury from the fall of Beacon - an event he had helped trigger. The embarrassment he felt dissolved into a cruel sense of irony, that he’d indirectly caused her to need the prosthetic arm that he was fixing for her now.

   “Yeah, it came through when it mattered most,” she answered as she stared off into the room. “Against him.”

   “Against who?” He turned his attention back to her arm.

   “Adam Taurus.”

   Mercury felt a chill go down his spine at her answer, the bull Faunus flashing in his mind. He was positive now, he understood. Adam had been working with Cinder. He had been the one who brought the dropships full of Grimm into the arena, and overran Beacon Academy. Somewhere during that night Yang must have ran into him. He didn’t even need to ask. Her reaction had said it all.

   “I’m sorry.”

   Yang frowned, looking down at him. “You didn’t have anything to do with it.” She stated simply.

   “But I was part of it. I barely spoke to the guy, but I was working with him.”

   Realization passed over her face as she realized Mercury meant the night Beacon fell, the night she lost her arm. That he had figured it out.

   “Yeah, you were part of the reason everything went to shit. And yeah, you were the one who made the world hate me, and you wouldn’t have given a shit if we died that night,” Yang sighed. “But I’m not gonna blame you, Mercury, for what happened to my arm. In fact, you seem to feel just as awful about it as I did in the beginning. And look at where we are now.”

   She put her elbow on the table and leaned in toward him. “You might not believe in Ozpin - but believe me, I understand that. I have my concerns with him too. You could’ve just up and left us in the night but you haven’t. We fought together, and protected each other out there. That’s gotta mean something to you, yeah?”

   Yang felt so vulnerable, and a part of her was screaming in absolute panic for it. She had never been naive enough to think everything would just go away with Adam’s death, but she certainly had expected to feel relieved, some sort of release from what haunted her. Yet she still found herself trembling at the thought, still found herself seeing him when she was alone.

   “Well, we could go after him. Make him pay for what he did.”

   “What?”

   “I don’t know if you remember this, but I’m an assassin. I could go after Adam. A lot of people want him dead anyway right? You could come with me if you wanted your own revenge. We don’t have to keep fighting this fight against Salem. We don’t have to go to Vacuo.”

   “That’s not the point... the point is to protect people, to protect the world. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. That’s why I’m a Huntress. I can’t just drop out of this fight! Besides, you don’t... no one has to... there’s no one for you to go after, Mercury.”

   “You’re still talking about Adam?”

   “Adam... got too caught up in his own power high. When it all came crashing down he lost it and went after what he thought was the source of all his problems... and got himself killed by two girls who were blinded by their own desperation.”

   “I think I can guess who these girls were. What are you keeping me around for then? If I’m not killing, I’m basically useless.”

At the end of a chapter, there would've been two more scenes: Blake talking to Yang about how she feels about Sun (im shamelessly forever going to be a blacksun and gng shipper), in a way trying to draw Yang's feelings for Mercury out of her. Aside from Ruby, Blake is the most accepting of Mercury being there because she can see how Yang cares for him. The two most against it are Qrow and Jaune.

Mercury finds Yang with the bike, still silver. He asks if she's going to paint it yellow like her old one again, and Yang mentions the color is kind of growing on her now.

Chapter Text

- Yang learns about Mercury’s past growing up with his father, and how he lost his legs

- Realizing that killing people is all he’s ever known, she offers him a place with their family where he can find people who will care about him. Mercury is put off by this but in reality is trying to push Yang away, scared of growing too close to her

- He explains to her how terrified he actually is of Salem, and just wants to get away from this whole war stuff. Yang reminds him that Salem likely won’t let that happen because he knows a lot of her plans

- Later, the team discusses what to do with Mercury. Blake and Weiss are unsure, promising that they trust Yang but not wanting to trust him. Ruby teases Yang about developing feelings for her rival, which she denies; but privately, realizes her sister might be right, as she’s connected with him on a level she’s never felt with someone before

- Yang goes to Mercury hoping she can convince him to join their side, but he gets frustrated and reminds her that defeating Salem is pretty much impossible. He admits he’s scared of her, and gets mad when Yang calls him a coward. They argue, and Yang realizes that the kindness she has shown him scares him, that he doesn’t know how to let go of his demons, and that he’s insecure about being accepted by them

- The group prepares to leave for Vacuo, with Mercury debating on whether or not he wants to come with them

- Salem sends Emerald to Argus to destroy their communication tower and plunge the city into panic

- As Grimm begin to infiltrate the city, the team spurs to action. Remembering where the communication tower is, Yang heads off to see if they can find the culprit alone, since Blake is still traumatized by what occurred there when she was ambushed by Adam

- Mercury, who had stormed off after arguing with Yang, joins the fray late. He realizes Emerald is to blame when he hears some Argus Huntsmen talking about her. He asks Ruby where Yang is, and Ruby tells him she went to the communication tower, where he knows Emerald is.

- Yang and Emerald fight, and Emerald, unknowing that Mercury was there with the group and had grown close to Yang, conjures an illusion of him to trick her. She is surprised when Yang reacts not by attacking the illusion, but being absolutely devastated believing that Mercury had lied to and betrayed her (Time to Die)

   “Aah!”

   Yang let out a cry as her body was flung off the ground, hitting it and rolling. She clutched her stomach where Emerald has kicked her.

   “I can’t believe Mercury lost to you,” the illusionist taunted. “Twice! You were nothing.”

   Yang coughed and dry heaved, glaring toward Emerald. Because her Aura had been broken, she couldn’t use her semblance. Which meant she had taken all those hits for nothing.

   “You know why you got me. It’s cuz of your damn semblance. Without it, you’d have nothing!”

   “Yeah, I know. But I never expected you to react like that,” she sneered. “I honestly was just hoping you’d attack my illusion first and stumble, but you froze and looked so devastated. Don’t tell me you fell in love with him or something.”

   Emerald opened the dual scythes on her rifles as she walked toward where Yang was getting to her knees. The grin she wore was almost unrecognizable to Yang; from the girl masquerading as her sister’s fake friend during the Vytal Festival, to Cinder’s devote follower during the battle at Haven Academy, she had never seen Emerald look so cruel through all of it. Yang had this horrible gut feeling, thinking of how fondly Mercury had talked of her. This was not the Emerald she knew, nor the one he had worked with all along. This girl had been corrupted by Salem.

   Yang spat on to the ground, before glaring up at her. “Without your semblance, no one would have even wanted you.”

   A flash of fury crossed the other young woman’s face, before she returned to her smug expression once again. “You speak rather brave words for someone who’s Aura has gone out. Sorry you don’t get to say goodbye to your sister, Blondie, but at least her Highness will be happy you’re gone.”

   She aimed her barrels at Yang’s head, but before she could take the shot or move closer, a new voice rang out.

   “Emerald!”

   Both young women looked up to the newcomer. Storming in with a look of determination was Mercury, the real Mercury, who leapt and kicked his leg into the air. He fired one of his high-impact shells at his former partner. Though momentarily stunned, Emerald jumped backwards to dodge the attack. When she stood back up again, Mercury had positioned himself between her and Yang.

   Furiously, her eyes widened as she took in his intentions. “What are you doing here?” She growled at her former partner, who she now found on the opposing side.

   He stepped back into an open stance, holding his fists up in front of his body, making it clear that he was ready for a fight.

   “I won’t let you hurt her, Emerald,” Mercury warned. “It doesn’t matter if it’s you I’m fighting, I will stop you. Now is your only chance to leave.”

   She threw her head back in laughter. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. For her , really? So you’re loyal to Ozpin now, are you?”

   “No,” he scowled. “I’m loyal to myself only. I don’t give a shit about Ozpin, and I don’t give a shit about Salem. I’m protecting her because I choose to protect her.”

   “Whether you’re on Ozpin’s side or not, Salem branded you a traitor. Once you learned everything you can’t just leave. You walk away, you die. Tyrian told us that,” Emerald narrowed her eyes. “I thought you were smarter than this Merc, but I guess we never really knew each other huh?”

   “I guess we didn’t Em,” he answered. “I thought you would leave Salem too.”

   An instant before silver and green collided, Yang noticed the tremble in his hands.

   With the sharp pang of metal on metal, Mercury’s boots and Emerald’s weapons matched blow for blow. 

- Mercury battles Emerald, both angry at the other. Mercury pleads with Emerald to leave Salem like he did, but she refuses. She voices her frustration that she thought they had grown close, become friends even, and Mercury insists that he does care and that’s why he wants her with him (Divide)

- With the Grimm falling more and more to the Huntsmen, Ruby calls Yang and tells her they’re on their way to help. Emerald, in tears and feeling very conflicted by Mercury’s words, decides to escape by snapping a satellite off the communication tower and bringing it down on Yang. Mercury abandons his pursuit of Emerald to save Yang. Emerald sees this as a betrayal believing that he now cares about Yang more than anything else, and decides she can’t go with him.

- Mercury is frustrated by Emerald’s escape, but hurt after fighting her. Yang rushes back over and hugs him, promising to be the support he needs

- It is then that Mercury realizes he has to be in this game, he has to take Ozpin’s side, because he’s fallen in love with Yang

      As Mercury and Emerald’s fight devolved more and more around her, the buildings of Argus crumbling and the air alight with the cries of Grimm, Yang backed herself flat against the wall. She was trembling, fear gripping her heart on Mercury’s behalf. She had known Emerald was important to him, but she had never realized before then how much being pitted against her would hurt him. She looked around, frantically scanning for some way she could help him. In her panic she hardly noticed her scroll ringing until three people were calling her at the same time. Seeing Ruby, Weiss, and Blake all trying to reach her, almost as if in a trance she answered.

   “Yang!” Her sister cried almost immediately. “Did Mercury find you? What’s going on?”

   “We took care of most of the Grimm coming from the sea,” Blake explained, her voice echoed from the other calls. “Qrow and Oscar are staying back to finish up, while Jaune and the others are going to help at the wall.”

   Wordlessly, Yang flipped her scroll around to show her team the fight currently going on in front of her between the former partners.

   “Mercury!” Ruby gasped. “Is that Emerald?”

   “We’re on our way toward the tower!” Weiss replied. “We’re coming to help!”

   “Yang! Are you okay?” Her own partner sounded devastated.

   Yang looked up when the sound of clashing weapons stopped, and saw both Mercury and Emerald staring at her. The conversation between her team had clearly expanded to their ears, and Emerald, with tears streaming down her face, looked frustrated.

   And then suddenly she burst forward toward Yang, pulling back her weapons as if to attack her again. Yang threw her arms up to protect herself, but no attack ever came.

   “Emerald!” Mercury yelled in fury again as he rushed to pursue her. He jumped and kicked off with a shot from both of his boots, rocketing himself forward in her direction in a desperate attempt to stop her before she reached the girl sitting on the ground.

   With the chain-scythes detached from her main weapon, Emerald leapt and swung them at a satellite dish hanging above their heads. The cable and support structure severed, with the sound of screeching and whining metal the satellite came down. Gravity locked its trajectory to crush the exhausted golden Huntress who sat in its path.

   It seemed as though everyone cried out for her at once as Yang struggled to move and get out of the way in time.

   Mercury took one look at the fleeing form of Emerald, but he knew what he had to do and he wasn’t going to hesitate. With another gunshot from his boots he switched his direction, grabbing Yang and crashing to the ground with her before the satellite dish smashed into the spot where she had been only moments before. It took both of them a long moment to realize that Mercury had saved her, Yang’s eyes wide at his quick reaction. Mercury had saved her completely willingly. He hadn’t gained anything from doing so - in fact, he’d lost his chance at getting Emerald.

   Emerald, who had turned around to watch Mercury’s reaction. Emerald, who had given Mercury a choice; to save her, or to save Yang. And he’d chosen Yang. 

   Everything he had said was a lie. He didn’t care about her more than anything else. He cared about Yang. The Mercury she knew was gone. Everything had changed.

   Emerald steeled herself. He had made his decision, so she made hers. And with that, she turned and fled the scene, retreating back to fix her wounds and close her heart. She had hesitated for just a moment too long though, and heard him as she ran.

   “Emerald!”

   Mercury had gotten back to his feet and crossed the clearing several meters away from Yang in the direction she had fled, and for a moment Yang was sure he would go after her. Instead, she watched as he sunk to his knees in defeat.

   It was that sight of him defeated, devastated, which pulled her from her stunned state. The moment that Mercury’s knees hit the ground, Yang was scrambling to her feet. It was almost as if her body was moving all on her own. She was always like this, had always felt an overwhelming need to hold her friends close when she knew they were hurting more than anything else in the world. But this wasn’t just any friend, it was Mercury. He had to know he had people to rely on now. 

   Ruby, Weiss, and Blake had heard the crash, heard Mercury’s desperate cry for the thief who made her escape. They arrived just in time to watch Yang run and drop down to Mercury’s side, throwing her arms around his neck and pressing her head against him. Mercury didn’t move.

   “I am never going to leave you alone,” Yang spoke softly, calmly, despite the state of Argus around them. “I will stand with you against Salem. I won’t ever let her hurt you. And I will help you get Emerald back.”

   The young man in her embrace gave no reply, but as her team watched, his trembling arms found their way around her as well before he leaned down and pressed his face into her shoulder. There was no sound from him, no shoulders shaking, and that was to be expected; they all knew that if Mercury still had the capacity to cry, he would be.

   A gentle smile appeared on her face, and she felt Mercury squeeze her a little tighter. She would be what he needed. An anchor, to keep him from drifting away.

   “I promise you won’t ever be alone again.”

Chapter Text

   A flash of red. Searing pain severed her arm. She was reliving it all again.

   Red hair, black suit. A rose. Dark, glistening horns. A red and white mask, the shape of a Grimm. That smirk, that horrible, smug smirk. He was in her face. He was holding her down. She was powerless.

   Yang looked down to her arm. Where she expected to see her automail, she saw just a stump. Her body trembled. Adam rose his sword above her to strike the finishing blow.

   His entire body lurched forward. His mouth stood agape. His mask fell off, and she looked into his eyes, blue as the sea. That scar, no, that brand, she would never forget it as long as she lived. Yang looked down, though she knew what she would see this time. Two blades had been plunged into his chest. Now she had her robotic arm, holding the piece of Gambol Shroud that would’ve been in Blake’s hand during the fight. Behind Adam, she saw herself reflected. 

   Eyes red, yellow arm holding the other half of Blake’s blade that protruded through his back. Adam sunk, rolled out of her sight. She heard the thud against the rock, the splash of the body hitting the river. She cried out for Blake.

   With a gasp, Yang sat up out of her bed. Both she and her sheets were drenched in sweat. It was only a heartbeat before she felt it coming on, her entire body trembling before she burst into messy, snotty, sobbing tears. With her eyes closed she felt around for her other arm, her defense against the feelings of helplessness. Yang felt the bubble in her throat as she began to panic when she couldn’t find it, angrily pushing past her tears and opening her eyes. The arm was just a little out of reach. Yang seized her automail, reattached it to the nerve endings of her elbow, wiped her eyes, and stormed out of her room.

   It was the middle of the night, but if she was going to be plagued by nightmares again she figured the best thing would be to fight it off. Killing Adam had weighed heavily on her conscience, but Yang had thought his death would at least make the nightmares go away. She had been so wrong, it only made them worse. It only made everything worse.

   At least Blake was finally rid of him for good. At least it was her who was still suffering. No one else.

   Yang slumped her gym bag on the ground before stancing up in front of the punching bag, ready to go for a while, until her muscles whined in agony and she was drenched in good sweat. However, before she could even start a heavy sigh and the brush of cold, midnight wind stole her attention. She looked up to see a silhouette on the other side of the bay doors, out on the balcony against the banister.

   She let out a breath, recognizing the figure instantly. No one else was that tall with that broad of shoulders besides Ren, but Ren had long hair and this person didn’t. A little sense of warmth gathered in her chest at the sight of him.

   “Mercury,” she called softly.

   He turned around to her slowly, like in some kind of movie, and flashed her a grin. It wasn’t his normal smug expression, like when something crazy was about to happen or in the middle of a fight. It was the grin she noticed he gave her more often than not. Her stomach did backflips as she wondered internally what he could mean by such a gesture.

   “Hey Blondie, hows it going?” he muttered, repeating the words he had first spoken to her the day she had recognized him in Mistral. His tone was much softer this time, his expression not containing any bad blood or competition between them. Of course, she trusted Mercury immensely now; and Yang was under the impression that he too, felt the same. So much had changed in such a short period of time. “What’re you doing up so late?”

   “I could ask you the same,” she replied as she joined his side. It was a beautiful night. At least the world had made it worthwhile for her to stay up.

   He snorted. “Not really. I asked you first.”

   She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Bad dreams. Now your turn.”

   “What kind of bad dreams?”

   “The kind that aren’t your business.”

   “What are we, five?”

   “We might as well be.”

   He turned and gave an amused snort. “Adam, huh?”

   Yang sighed. “How did you do it, Merc? How did you... become you?”

   He visibly stiffened when she used his nickname, but the smug grin and dangerous glitter to his eyes appeared again quickly. “Well Yang, when a mommy assassin and a daddy assassin love each other very much, they-“

   “Not that, you dumbass. I’ve heard that joke a million times from Uncle Qrow,” she rolled back and hung her head between her arms, looking down to her feet. “How did you willingly kill people?”

   Mercury’s expression darkened again, but he did not look away from her like he would have before. “You were raised to protect life,” he answered. “I was raised by that son of a bitch to snuff it out. Simple as that.”

   Yang raised her head to look at him. “But didn’t you ever question it? Didn’t you ever feel guilty?”

   “No. The only thing I ever questioned was why the guy who wanted me to follow in his footsteps so badly beat me so much. Nothing else was relevant.”

   She shrank back against his gaze, looking over her opposite shoulder. “Sorry I asked.”

   “I see them sometimes. They’ve started coming back. I wonder how many of them were completely innocent, the people I killed for Torchwick, the White Fang, Cinder, Salem. But I’m changing because of you. You can push past what Adam did to you.”

   “So why were you out here?”

   “Thinking about stuff.”

   “So I’m forced to explain everything but you don’t have to?”

Some point here she would have admitted she likes that her new bike reminds her of him. She would have showed him her new license plate for it - SLVRLYTE (theres where the title came from!)

and confession of feelings here, there's kiss. Honestly i could see it going either way, but I picture Mercury initiating it in this context.

   He no longer had a choice, whether he travel with the team to Vacuo or go on his own. There was no way he could leave. Mercury had no choice but to join Ozpin and fight against Salem, because he had fallen in love with her.

   She still looked stunned when he pulled away, before a smile as bright as the sun cracked across her face. Golden hair spilled back as she laughed, a laugh he had grown frighteningly fond of. And when her lavender eyes fell back on him full of fondness and joy - a fondness and joy for him - that was when Mercury really felt the feeling sink down in his stomach.

   Shit. He was in love with Yang Xiao Long.

   A silence hung over the court of nightmares, all eyes trained on the younger woman at the front of the room. Emerald shrunk back from the intensely scrutinizing gaze of the woman she served, Salem’s expression unreadable. Her reaction to the events that had unfolded in Argus was indifferent, and Emerald was unsure of what that meant for her. Uncertainty of Salem’s decisions was more terrifying than anything else.

   “So let me get this clarified, as I am just trying to understand,” the witch spoke finally, voice short and even, commanding like a blade ready to slice Emerald apart. “Mercury appeared, you two fought - you, failing, to kill him - but he did not pursue you?”

   “Th-that is correct, ma’am,” she heard her own voice shaking as though it were not hers. Salem’s emphasis on her failure caused her to shake with fear. Tyrian’s maniacal giggles made sure that Emerald was very aware that everyone in the room could see it.

   Salem crossed her arms and leaned forward. “And you are certain that Mercury is working for Ozpin now, then?”

   Across the table, Hazel gave a long sigh. “Poor, foolish boy. Giving away everything to join up as a replaceable soldier in Ozpin’s war.”

   “Well... I don’t think he’s exactly uh, working for Ozpin...”

   Again, all eyes bore into Emerald. Salem turned her head toward her once more.

   “Go on,” the witch was looking unimpressed.

   “Mercury wasn’t interested in stopping me. At least, not at first,” she explained, her expression suddenly darkening and her voice becoming clear with anger as she recalled the events that had unfolded. “He fought me because I had been about to kill Yang.”

   “Who?” Dr. Watts sounded offended that she had introduced a new name to the conversation.

   “Yang Xiao Long. She’s the blonde that fought Mercury in the Vytal Festival. Her Semblance is basically a temper tantrum?”

   Salem gestured for Emerald to come around the table closer to her, so she did. Standing beside the dark queen, a chill crawled down her spine.

   Her black as night eyes bore straight into the young girl. “Show me.”

   Taking a deep breath, Emerald closed her eyes and pushed her Semblance into Salem’s mind, of the most recent image of Yang that she could conjure. Where she was tentative, where she expected to feel resistance, she felt instead a willingness. Salem beckoned the image into her mind.

   A sudden burst of power surprised Emerald, causing her to gasp and nearly fall back, but the witch reached out and grabbed her. Emerald’s eyes opened, and into the face of an amused Salem. She indicated the front of the room, where Watts, Tyrian, and Hazel’s attentions were all directed. She followed their faces, confused by what had occurred.

   At the front of the room, Emerald saw the very illusion that she had given to Salem. Yang, on her knees, with her arms wrapped around an illusionary Mercury, who held her as flush against him as he could. The sight of it not only in her mind, but in the room before her, caused Emerald’s blood to boil again.

   Lies. Everything he said to me was all lies!

   “Ohohoho, well isn’t this an interesting development for our poor prince of darkness?” Tyrian’s laughter rang out in the silence first.

   Hazel, beside him, cleared his throat and looked toward Salem. “I recognize the girl. She was at Haven Academy, accompanying Ozpin and the girl with the silver eyes.”

   “I believe she may also be one of the girls who we suspect killed Adam Taurus,” spoke the Doctor from across the table as he scrutinized the image. “And she was certainly also with the group who tried to help Ironwood in Atlas.”

   Hearing that, Emerald spoke up too. “It’s more than that. She is Qrow Branwen’s niece,” she paused to look Salem in the eyes once again. “And the older sister of Ruby Rose.”

   Silence once again filled the room, even Tyrian growing silent. They felt it, an overwhelming surge of power growing from Salem’s very presence. It didn’t feel angry, but it felt strong. Again, difficult to understand what the witch was feeling.

   “She is important to both Mercury and Ruby Rose?” Finally, an amused smile crossed Salem’s face. “How interesting.”

“May I remind you all, as poor Mercury forgot, that by working for me you also expose your greatest weaknesses to me. Of course it is so I may cover for them, but it also allows me to gut you like a pig should you do what he has done.” - Salem

“I know what he desires, what he craves most in this world. He was but a lonely young man looking for people to love him like Marcus never could. Oh Mercury, I would have thought you would be smarter than to expose a weakness so readily exploitable to me. Emerald, tell me more about this Yang Xiao Long.” - Salem (this would have been the last line of the fic)