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Chapter Text

“‘The air is sweet and heavy with the perfume of magnolias, but the great, black door of Menagerie Manor seems like the entrance to an underworld. Somewhere within is the lady of the house, the elusive woman in black: Blake Belladonna.’”

Yang chuckled softly and shook her head. “Damn good hook, but the rest of that article is bullshit, Rubes.”

Ruby chewed her toast and looked thoughtful as her eyes flickered across her phone screen. “Still, your new boss seems to have some kind of a…troubled past.”

Who doesn’t? Yang found herself thumbing the puckered ring-shaped scar on her bicep without meaning to. She dropped her hand down onto the smudged kitchen table. “Not my boss yet, sis. I still have the interview.”

Ruby took a gulp of her coffee and looked uncharacteristically grave. It was almost funny to look at, that dark expression on Yang’s baby sister, a girl who always put spiders outside and forbid anyone from squishing them. A girl who took her coffee exclusively with milk and five sugars. “Um, do you think she really did it? Do you think she really”—Ruby whispered it around her hand as if there might be someone else listening—“killed that guy?”

Why did a chill run up her spine then, even though she knew better? Even though she knew all of it was pure sensationalism? “Ruby, come on. Give that a rest.”

By now, Yang was pretty used to being the small town scandal, so the fact that it was someone else now who had become the center of that kind of attention felt a little strange.

As it happened, Blake Belladonna was the only one who would give Yang a damn interview. Blake Belladonna had some kind of personal history that made her a highly thorny subject in the town of Remnant, South Carolina. Blake Belladonna was a politician’s daughter, well-to-do but these days rarely seen. And she may or she may not have murdered her fiancé one night two years ago. Officially, it was an accident, but no one really seemed to believe that. Maybe it was because the truth was never as electrifying or as glamorous as a good murder mystery.

It was then that clock above the hallway mirror finally came into focus.

“Shit. Shit, is it really that late?” Yang swiped the keys to the truck and the other half of Ruby’s toast on her way to the door.

“Don’t get murdered your first day on the job!” Ruby called.

Distantly, Yang recalled the picture at the top of the article. The black sweep of hair and the proud set of that goddamn gorgeous mouth. She remembered the eyes most vividly, golden and wary like a cat’s. The door slammed shut behind her. “She can murder me any day she likes.”

~

She’d missed the sunshine in that simple, desperate way that you missed home when you’d been away for a while. And Yang had been away, for a while. She’d missed Ruby’s graduation. And three birthdays.

And she’d also missed the feeling of sunshine, even if the summer months brought with them a distinctive swamp-weather—that leaden wetness in the air. But Yang could only feel human in the sunlight, in the grass, in the driver’s seat of her father’s old truck. Hell, she’d missed the old country station, too. Patsy Cline. Johnny Cash. Especially Johnny. A familiar trumpet intro came on the radio, and then that baritone voice: “Love is a burning thing…”

The scenery passed in and out of the windshield and Yang felt almost stunned by what little had changed. She’d expected to come back to a foreign-looking place, but Remnant was and would be Remnant. Yang was the one who had changed. Yang was the one who was, who felt, foreign.

The narrow driveway up to Menagerie Manor was lined on either side with enormous magnolia trees, still flowering white. The sunlight that managed to break through the leaves was scarce, and the crowded darkness made Yang feel like she was in a tunnel. After a while, Yang started to wonder if the dusty path she was on even had an end to it.

There was a break in the trees, and finally Yang came upon the manor, itself. A grand, old, dusk-colored building at the edge of town. Imposing, sure, but somehow it had a gloominess to it—like there was a permanent shadow clinging to its colonial pillars, laid out like a mist on the veranda. And then there was the “great, black door,” the apparent entrance to an underworld that hardly looked like it even opened.

Yang climbed the front steps, wincing at the tremble and groan of the wood under the heavy fall of her boots. There was no doorbell. She knocked on the massive door three times with the side of her fist and waited for the signs of life on the other side.

What followed was a long moment of silence within, interrupted only by the cicada cries without. (And the air really was heavy with the perfume of magnolia flowers. Yang didn’t hate it.)

When Yang heard the shuffle of feet before the entryway and the door finally opened, at first she thought that it had been opened by nobody. Like a fucking haunted house in a movie. But someone cleared her throat, and Yang looked down to see a tiny, stooped-over old woman with coke-bottle glasses and a sour expression.

“If you’re the new hire,” she said, tapping her cane sharply against the floor, “you’re late.”

Yang scratched her head. “Prospective hire…ma’am.”

“Maria.” She tapped the cane again as punctuation. “Don’t talk to me like I’m some old lady.”

“Right. Sorry about that, uh, Maria.” Yang resisted the urge to peer past the woman into the house. She could at least admit to herself that she’d been in search of those golden eyes since she had first climbed the steps to the porch. Or maybe she'd even been in search of them—had looked for them in the faces of passing strangers—from the first glimpse of that photo.

Maria turned in the doorway and inclined her head. “This way, groundskeeper.”

The foyer was dark, cold. The rest of the house seemed to be like that, too. Like a museum. There was something indifferent about the atmosphere of the place, like nothing could move the air. Yang looked around and only saw dark-colored furniture and bookcases (walls of them) and abstract paintings. The kind of rich-person house that didn’t look like anyone really lived in it. It was quiet as hell in the place, too.

“So, Maria. How…how long have you worked here?”

The old woman wheeled on her looking indignant. “The nerve of you!” She prodded Yang in the ribs with her cane. “I half-raised that girl. And they don’t pay me a damn thing for it.”

Yang rubbed the new bruise in her side. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to assume anything.”

Maria harrumphed. “Me and the Belladonnas, my father and Ghira Belladonna’s grandfather…well, it’s all old ties between us.”

Old ties, huh. The true, deep roots of the town were old ties twisted up in tradition twisted up in something like vanity. It was all one organism, an everlasting bastard. New ties were fickle. Change was shunned.

“Maria? I heard someone—”

Yang turned to the voice and met those golden eyes at last. Blake Belladonna stood at the foot of a twisting staircase and stared back at Yang for a long moment without speaking. Every second that passed, Blake seemed to retreat more and more into her oversized black sweater. A sweater in July, Yang mused. A sweater even though it was the end of July. But Christ was she lovely.

“Um, the…interview.” Yang’s face grew hot when she realized how stupid she sounded. “I mean, I’m here for the interview?”

Blake smiled, but it was a polite smile. It was a smile that said, with no fangs bared, keep away. “Ah, right.” Her hand curled around the banister. “You must be Yang.”

Yang tried to contain her reaction, her expression, but the sound of her name out of Blake Belladonna’s mouth for some reason had sent a jolt through her whole body. Goddammit, it sounded cosmically right. Say it again, she wanted to say, but didn’t. “And you’re Blake,” she said, more as an experiment than as an address. Well, that sounded right, too.

The other woman seemed to remember herself the next instant, detaching from the banister and walking over to Yang with her hand half-outstretched. It was trembling, just slightly. “Nice to meet you,” she said, as Yang took her hand. “I…guess I should ask you about your experience with…landscape and gardening and all that, but honestly we’re a little desperate here.”

Yang released her hand, a bit reluctantly. “Did something happen to the last groundskeeper or something?”

Blake’s expression fell a little, and Yang realized too late how the other woman might’ve taken that. The article flashed in her head like a neon sign: The entrance to an underworld. “Nothing happened,” she said. “It was nothing, just…well, I guess you’ve noticed that this place is pretty depressing. Pretty dull. No one tends to stick around for long.”

Maria cleared her throat loudly—Yang had pretty much forgotten she was even there. Blake looked sheepish. “Except for you, Maria.”

Yang’s first thought was, You’ve got money. Why not move? If this place is so depressing, why not go someplace else? Someplace where nobody knows you? But she didn’t say that out loud, either. Because her second thought was that there was something more, something complicated. That things couldn’t happen so easily.

When she met Blake Belladonna’s unsteady gaze again—met the eyes of the woman in black, met those eyes that were like a low fire—she flashed a broad smile and asked, “When do I start?”

“Today,” she said, maybe a little too quickly. “You’ll start today.”

Chapter Text

Yang had never met anybody like that, where all it took was a name. Blake had only called her name, and her heart had stood still right then. There was something spooky about that. After all, it took a lot to shake someone like Yang up. Usually.

Well, I didn’t exactly show her my cool side, Yang thought, still crouched in the truck bed. She rubbed the hole that was worn into the finger of her old work glove, remembering the chilly silence of the manor, the many (what Yang assumed had to be) empty rooms. She found it hard to believe that a property like this wasn’t being looked after and tended to by other hands. Not to keep belaboring the point, but it wasn’t as if Blake’s family couldn’t afford it.

The sun was as hard and direct as a magnifying glass beam, and sweat had already started to bead up on her brow. But the manor had been surprisingly cold, hadn’t it? Cold enough that Blake seemed to wrap herself up in a sweater out of habit. Cold enough, possibly, that her hands would tremble even beneath the too-long sleeves. (Though there were times when Yang’s hands shook, too, and not because of the temperature.)

Yang wouldn’t say that there was anything especially cold about the woman, herself, but there was definitely something careful. She moved and spoke slowly, like someone just getting over a fever, or like someone just shaken out of sleep. Yang could picture it easily, the loneliness of Blake Belladonna. She knew well how loneliness like that—something more than being alone, something more than tedium—could poison you, petrify you.

But there was a voice in the back of her head that was telling her she shouldn’t get too curious. That she should know better by now than to go running after mirages. She was drawn to Blake, sure, but she didn’t even really know her. She only knew Blake’s circumstance (though in truth that was still hardly anything) and the hearsay of strangers. And Yang was sensible enough to know that she, herself, was also a stranger.

Of course, that didn’t mean she could put a neat end to the way that Blake made her feel, but she could at least try not to let the woman make a fool of her.

“Yang—”

She jumped, losing her balance on her haunches and tottering backward onto her ass with a bang. Yang blinked and looked up at Blake, who was standing near the side of the truck with her hand over her mouth. Not out of concern. She was obviously holding back a laugh.

“Jesus, you scared me.”

Blake had shed the sweater from before and was just in a T-shirt now. She lifted the collar of it up toward her chin. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“Ah, no, don’t feel bad or anything.” Yang hopped off the end of the truck bed. “You just caught me daydreaming.”

She gave small, wry grin from behind her shirt collar. “Slacking on the job already?”

Cute. So fucking cute. God. Was this really Remnant’s own “woman in black”? Their small town femme fatale? Yang couldn’t make sense of it, the contradiction of the woman in the papers and the woman in front of her now who was still holding back laughter.

Yang grabbed her tool bucket. “I don’t suppose you’re here to give me the grand tour?”

Blake dropped her hand and leaned into the side of the truck, her smile fading. Yang had noticed it, of course, how Blake kept the corner of the truck between them as a barrier, how she wouldn’t step closer. “It’s a bit wild back there, I should warn you.” She chewed her lip and seemed like she wanted to say something else. (Yang fished the other glove from the bucket and waited for her to go on.) Blake seemed to decide a moment later that she was allowed to say it: “The last person who worked here, Ilia, she…well, she quit, you know. Two years ago. Um, you can probably guess why, what with all the…drama. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you any of that earlier, I just didn’t want to—” 

“Bring up the past?”

“Yeah. I was scared that you would ask me…” Her eyes slid over Yang’s head and away. “Ask me something that I couldn’t answer.”

Yang felt a twinge at the sight of those eyes sliding away toward the trees, at the vanished smile. “Me, too,” she said. “I was afraid of the same thing.”

That might’ve been a dangerous thing to admit. Blake probably knew something of her story, but almost definitely not all of it. And Yang wanted to keep it that way. But she didn’t want to take it back, either, what she’d said. 

“You were?” Blake cocked an eyebrow. “Somehow, that doesn’t suit you. Someone like you, being afraid of something. Or having things to hide.” 

“Confident words about a stranger.” How much did she really know? Yang tried to study her expression but found nothing.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean— That was just the impression I got.” Blake reddened slightly at the admission.

Yang leaned in toward her, not close enough to get in her space, but not far enough to be misread. “So I left a good impression on you, did I?”

“I—” Her mouth twisted to the side. She brought her collar up to her chin again and hummed. “We’ll see, slacker.”

Yang decided that, though there were things they wouldn’t ask each other, there were other things that just didn’t need to be said.

~

“You were right, this place is a hot mess.”

“Well, I warned you.”

The yard behind the manor was a sprawling, overgrown garden, the planted things gray and shriveled like little skeletons and smothered by poison ivy and weeds and honeysuckle. There was a peach tree in the far corner, the grass beneath its branches dappled by rotted, unripe fruit. The rows of what might’ve been poppies were colorless, their heads bent toward the ground. There was a rosebush without any roses on it. Only the fledgling dogwood tree seemed spared any devastation, a vigorous spot of white on a gray canvas. Yang peered past the thin line of trees that bordered the yard and saw the glint of sunlight on water. There was a small pond behind the trees; the water was dark and still, and even the high Carolina sun couldn’t pierce through it.

Yang whistled lowly. “Where should I even start with this? Leaving the trees, I think I ought to just tear everything up.”

Blake seemed troubled by that. Her gaze darted around, as if she was trying to find some shred of color, some sign that something was worth saving. “You can’t salvage anything?” 

“Well, I guess I’ll have to check the roots.” Yang shrugged and gave her a sympathetic look. “If the roots are dead, there’s not much you can do except start over. Then again, all these vines are another problem. It’s hard to untangle them without hurting the flowers, too. Oh, and sometimes the soil is the problem. Sometimes you just need healthier dirt.”

“So, what you’re saying is…?”

“I’m saying that, no matter what it is, this place is in need of an overhaul. And some serious TLC.”

Blake sighed and tugged her fingers through her hair. She looked suddenly worn-out. Like she’d expected to hear something different—no, like she’d secretly been hoping that it wasn’t what she had expected.

Yang walked over to the rosebush, rubbing the thin leaves between her fingers. “This one is in pretty bad shape. It’s all gangly, see? All thorns and no flowers.”

A hand fell on her wrist, and Yang looked up in surprise to see Blake staring at her with an unreadable expression. “Leave this one,” she said. “Please leave this one for now.”

If Yang asked her why, would she answer? It was frustrating, that face she was making. Yang wanted to crack something open, wanted to see the things that were spinning around in her head.

But the next instant Yang caught the dull gleam of an eye in the dark center of the thorns, and slowly pushed Blake behind herself. “Blake…don’t freak out, okay?” 

“Wh—?” She stopped herself when she saw it, the pink flicker of the copperhead’s tongue, the long coil of its body. “Shit, that’s—shit—”

“Blake, it kind of looks like you’re freaking out right now.”

“I’m not, it’s just—fuck, I hate snakes. I hate them so much.” She didn’t seem to realize she was doing it, but Yang felt Blake’s hands tightly gripping the back of her shirt.

Yang tried not to smile, but the whole situation struck her as just a little bit funny. Here was a woman who all of Remnant treated like some dangerous animal—like some venomous snake, herself—busy losing it over one little unexpected visitor in a rosebush.

She half-turned her head toward Blake. “Copperhead attacks are reactive. Usually, they don’t bite you unless you’ve stepped on them.”

The hands on her shirt loosened only slightly. “Usually…”

“Usually! Do me a favor, and get me the broom leaning up against the house over there?”

Blake finally released Yang and got the broom from where it was propped up against the wall. When she returned, she stepped gingerly, as if she thought the snake would get mad if she made any noise. Yang took the broom and gently nudged the copperhead out of the bush. After a few prods, it got fed up with the harassment and slipped away through the long grass toward the tree line.

When it disappeared into the undergrowth, Yang turned back to Blake—fully prepared, of course, to tease her—but stopped when she saw those golden eyes turned toward the ground, saw the brightness of sudden, bitter tears in them. Blake jammed her tongue into the inside of her cheek, something Yang knew from experience (Ruby did something similar, after all) to be the sign of someone trying desperately not to cry. 

“Blake?” Yang shed her gloves and reached for her, but Blake drew quietly away. “Blake, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“You know, that’s all I can seem to do these days,” she said, in a thick voice. She swiped at her eyes angrily. “Get scared. Freeze up. I’m…I’m tired of always being like this. I’m really sick of it.”

“Hey…” Yang stooped to try and catch her gaze. “Hey, it’s fine if you’re not good around snakes. Hell, most people—”

“It’s not about the snake, Yang,” she snapped. Immediately after she did it, though, her expression flooded with regret. “I—shit, sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. And I…God, I barely know you, and I'm dumping all of my issues on you.”

The change in tune startled her. First it was “that doesn’t suit you” and now it was “I barely know you”? Blake was contradicting herself every second. And Yang, of course, in the end didn’t know a thing about her, but she was sure she knew her better than anyone.

“You don’t need to apologize so much,” she said. “My feelings aren’t hurt so easily, you know.” Yang tried to smile but she felt heavy. She was positive by now that Blake had to be some tragic combination of stubborn resilience and open wounds and loneliness, and it made Yang feel so heavy to look at her. 

As if she hadn't pulled away from Yang’s touch just a moment earlier, Blake took one of Yang’s hands in both of her own—in that way that you grabbed onto something, anything, when you were about to fall.

“You didn’t flinch at all,” she said. “You see? I was right about you. You’re not scared of anything. I want to be strong like that, too. If…if I was even a little bit like you…”

Yang looked down at their hands. “No, it’s better if you’re not like me,” she murmured, shaking gently out of Blake’s grasp.

Chapter Text

The yard was still loud with insects, but a sudden, thick silence had settled between the two of them. It was hard to say exactly the reason why. There was something Blake should’ve asked right then and wouldn’t. There was something Yang shouldn’t have said (again.) Yang found it hard to meet Blake’s gaze.

Yang slipped her gloves back on and tugged her sleeves down to her wrists. With a terse nod to Blake (who somehow seemed self-conscious now) she resumed her work in silence. Blake went in through the back door, back into the darkness of the house. A few hours later, at noon, she wordlessly put a tray of sweet tea and sandwiches on the porch step and left again before Yang had a chance to even thank her.

What is this? Yang thought, collapsing on the porch step. What the hell is this? Yang wasn’t sure who it was who was supposed to be mad and why. Maybe Yang was only angry at herself, for being too trusting, too curious despite the fact that she’d warned herself against it. Not that Blake couldn’t be trusted. It was only a matter of how much a decent person could stand once they knew the kind of person Yang really was. Well, the kind of person she had been.

Three years was a long, long time. Apparently, the news of Yang’s being put away—and half of the why—had spread to just about the whole town within a week. That left them three years to stew in their mistrust and contempt of her. By the time Yang had come back to Remnant, she’d been abandoned by everyone. Everyone except for Ruby (she’d practically raised that kid, after all.) Tai, of course, was another story. Christ, even her own father. Even hefound it hard to speak to her like he always had. But she couldn’t blame him too much for that, either.

It might’ve been selfish of her (even a bit foolish), but Yang wanted to believe that here, this place, was different. She wanted to think of Menagerie Manor as an island—a place cut off from the grapevine and too steeped in its own turmoil to notice. Maybe she’d been secretly hoping that there was someone left here in this town, anyone, who didn’t know anything about it. Someone who wouldn’t ask, who wouldn’t judge her.

No, not just anyone. Yang could still remember what it felt like when Blake took her hand, how it stung her, how it filled her with feelings she couldn’t even name. Not anyone. It had to be Blake.

Yang brought an old wheelbarrow around and stuffed the ripped-up weeds and dead flowers into it. The rosebush she left untouched. For now, at least, she’d leave it be. Yang stooped and touched the scars left in the dirt, took the trowel to it. Nothing lived in the earth here anymore, and it was dry as hell, drier than dust. She sat back on her heels and blew out a long breath. Maybe this yard had seen some love in the past, but now it just seemed to her like…ancient ruins. Like a room in a house nobody would go into anymore, left to fall apart. Depressing shit like that.

The sky had gone a shade or two darker by the time Yang looked up at it again. She hadn’t done much but tear things up, but that was the thing you had to do first, wasn’t it? You uncovered the hurt. You cleaned the wound. Yang scribbled down her number on a napkin and left it beneath the empty tray on her way out. For…business reasons. Business reasons.

Maria was out front, rocking slowly in a chair on the corner of the veranda. (Her feet couldn’t quite reach the floor.) She glanced at Yang over a china teacup. “Running away, are you?” she asked.

“What? I’m not—” Yang scratched the back of her neck and turned to the old woman. “Look, it’s late. The day’s over. I’m just headed home for now.”

Maria shrugged her thin shoulders, stirring her tea with a tiny, ornate spoon. “You’re not at least going in to say goodbye to Blake? Hmph. You’re more sensitive than I thought.”

Yang couldn’t help it, the prickle of irritation that went through her. She loaded her stuff back onto the truck bed and slammed the tailgate shut. “Blake’s more than welcome to come on out here and tell me goodbye, herself. But I’ve got to go home now.”

Maria looked at her for a long moment. The way the old woman’s gaze seemed to strike right through her—Yang felt like she was being weighed, somehow. Like, her soul. Or her heart, maybe.

“She doesn’t remember, you know,” Maria said at last.

“‘Doesn’t remember?’” Yang echoed. “What do you mean? What doesn’t she remember?”

“That night two years ago,” she said, still serenely stirring her tea. “She can’t remember a thing.”

Yang thought about the touch of Blake’s hands again, the surprising pressure of them, thought about how they shook just a little bit when she said, I want to be strong like that, too. Yang wondered about all the little battles Blake was fighting without anyone knowing a thing about them.

Before Yang could say anything else to Maria, she heard the scrape of tires and turned to see someone pulling up into the manor’s driveway alongside Yang’s truck. A shiny black Cadillac, with a giant man stepping out of it. It was pretty damn hot out, but he was in a dress shirt, tie, and pants and seemed totally unbothered. Yang could more or less recognize him from the re-election signs around town, but most of all his eyes were a familiar color. They were, weren’t they? The exact same color as Blake’s.

The man nodded respectfully at Maria, who only smiled a mysterious, toothy sort of smile back at him. He turned his attention sharply to Yang, offering a hand as he stepped closer. “Evening,” he said. “I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting to see any new faces around here.” If Yang was anyone else, she probably would’ve felt a little intimidated. It wasn’t his stature that made her feel like that, or the vigor in his handshake. It wasn’t even the fact that he was (if she wasn’t mistaken about his identity) high-up in the county council and part of all those old roots. No, it was because there was a wariness she could see resting just beneath the affable exterior, a protectiveness. She couldn’t really blame him. He released her hand. “I’m Ghira Belladonna. Blake’s father. Are you…a friend of Blake’s?” 

A friend. That felt like a difficult question. Yang settled for the obvious. “An employee, sir.”

Ghira took in her dishevelment, the work equipment she had stashed in the back of the truck. “Oh, I see.” Somehow, he looked a little disappointed. “So you’re the new hire.”

“Seems so. I’m Yang,” she said. “Yang Xiao Long.”

He nodded, seemingly to himself. There was something oddly…knowing about that gesture. It wasn’t too hard to imagine that a man of his kind of influence would know a thing or two about Yang’s past. Or maybe Yang was being paranoid. 

“It’s really been so long since that girl’s really talked to anybody except Maria,” he said, with a terse laugh. “Hope she hasn’t given you too much trouble.”

Well, that was what he said, but Yang could hear plainly enough what he meant by it. Something like: I’ll skin you if you don’t come back tomorrow. Dads were like that. Her own dad, too, didn’t quite know how to ever say what he meant or wanted to say.

And if Ghira cared so much about her—she could see that, too, how much he cared and worried and doted—Yang had to wonder why he let her live in this lonely haunted house at the edge of Remnant. Actually, why not just be done with the whole town? There was nothing to keep her.

“Trouble? If anything, Mr. Belladonna, it might end up being the other way around,” Yang said.

Ghira laughed again, but this time it sounded a bit more genuine, a gut-laugh. “I think that’ll do her some good,” he said. “You know, someone giving her trouble. She’s got her defenses up around anyone unfamiliar these days.”

Defenses was a word for it. Though it wasn’t a thing that was hard like a shell but something half-permeable. Sometimes you could trick yourself into thinking it wasn’t even there, but the next moment you realized you were looking at her through a fog.

Yang laced her hands together behind her head and looked up at the dark windows in the face of the manor, as if Blake would be peering back at her out of one of them. “Then I guess I’ll just have to make myself familiar,” she said.

~

Ruby had somehow beaten Yang home. Zwei certainly seemed happy enough nestled in the circle of her arm (his stubby Corgi legs stuck straight up in the air) as she sifted through what looked like children’s drawings of trees.

“You’re home early,” Yang said. When Ruby had told her a few weeks back that she’d become an elementary school teacher just like Summer, just like Mom, Yang had found it pretty difficult not to get choked up over it. It was hard enough that every day Ruby seemed to look more and more like the picture of Mom they kept on the bookshelf by the window. But it did relieve her, to come back after three years and find that Ruby hadn’t changed. She’d gotten older, sure, but inside she hadn’t changed at all. 

“It was a half-day at school.” Her sister glanced up at her. Zwei also glanced up at her, his tongue lolling out of his head. “And you’re late!” she added.

“I went for a drive after work. My head’s all a mess, still.”

“‘Went for a drive.’ Pft. What are you, seventy years old?”

“Shut it.” Yang messed with Ruby’s hair, and then scratched Zwei’s ears. She hated to ruin the moment, but: “And Dad? You hear from him yet?”

Ruby sighed and set the dog down on the floor. “Well, you know Dad. These days, he gets home when he gets home.”

Yang chewed the inside of her lip and tried not to think about what it had been like, before. Before Yang fucked everything up. Tai was never a perfect dad, sure. After Summer died when they were kids, he’d been like a shell of himself for a while, as if someone had come along and replaced him with a machine that only looked and sounded like him. But time had passed and he’d come back to himself, and Yang thought that things would stay like that, warm like that, nearly whole like that.

Ruby huffed and stretched out on the couch, the drawings flying everywhere. “Ugh. I don’t wanna talk about Dad, I wanna talk about her.”

“Her?”

“Blake, duh!” Ruby’s eyes were shining and expectant.

“Well, she’s…” Yang thought about everything she could say about Blake Belladonna. She had to remind herself that she’d only known the woman for less than a day, if she could even say that Blake was knowable to begin with. There were moments when it didn’t feel like that, though. She could talk about all kinds of things. She could talk about Blake’s hands, how surprisingly strong they were even though they shook sometimes, or she could talk about that big sweater that she wore even in July. She could talk about how Blake hated snakes—passionately. She had a garden that wouldn’t grow. She lived in a haunted house surrounded by magnolia trees. Sometimes she seemed to want to get close to you only to pull away again without warning.

Yang shrugged. “She’s prettier in person, I guess.”

“We get it, you’re gay.”

“Listen, do you want me to tell you about her or not? Anyway, what Blake and I have is a strictly professional relationship—” Yang’s phone buzzed in her back pocket. She didn’t recognize the number, but she hit the answer button anyway. “Hello?”

Is that your strictly professional girlfriend? Ruby mouthed.

Don’t be stupid, Yang mouthed back.

“Hello, Yang? This is…um, this is Blake.”

Well, fuck. “Oh, Blake. Hey, thanks for calling.” Ruby’s eyes widened and she seemed to be struggling (and mostly failing) to stifle her giggling. Yang pummeled her with the couch pillow.

“You, um, left before I could even thank you for today.”

Yang felt a twinge of guilt as she walked into the next room. Maybe she had run away. She didn’t used to be that kind of person. “Listen, I’m sorry about that, leaving so suddenly. I guess I just felt…”

“Awkward, right?” Blake groaned. “Oh, God, I made things super awkward, didn’t I?”

Yang pressed her lips together and leaned back against the kitchen counter. “Don’t worry about it too much,” she said. “And I don’t really know what you called to thank me for, either. All I did was vandalize your back yard.”

There was a low chuckle on the other end of the line that nearly took Yang clean out. (Like, literally how the hell? It sounded like music.) “There’s something nice about it, though,” Blake said. “It’s like a clean slate. I look at it and I feel like I can just…start over.” Yang knew that kind of longing, too. Better than almost anyone.

“So…” Yang was surprised at how hard it was to get the word out: “Tomorrow,” she said.

“So, tomorrow?” Blake repeated, blithely.

Why did she feel like she was being messed with now? “Yeah, I was thinking we could go shopping. For new flowers, compost soil. Let’s see, what else…”

“Ah, compost soil. Sounds romantic.” Yang was pretty sure she didn’t imagine the embarrassed pause through the receiver. “Hm, you know what? Forget I said that.”

“Done.” She wouldn’t.

“Okay. Come pick me up tomorrow, then.” She definitely wasn’t imagining the smile she heard in Blake’s voice. “Don’t be late this time, slacker.” 

“I’ll come early,” she said. She wouldn’t say what she was thinking to spare Blake any more embarrassment, but what she wanted to say was, It’s a date, then.

Chapter Text

Yang didn’t want to admit it, but she was nervous. She didn’t usually get like that, but something about Blake always turned her into this strange, peeled-open version of herself. They were just buying plants and it wasn’t a real date but she was nervous as—well, as Dad used to say, lamely, nervous as a long-tailed cat. (She still wasn’t exactly sure what that meant.)

She woke up way too early. She couldn’t get back to sleep, and she couldn’t close her eyes or stay in bed, either, not with the live wire of restless energy running through her. All she could really do in those long, gray hours was wait. She’d done a lot of waiting, hadn’t she? In her life. This kind of waiting wasn’t so bad as the others, though.

Yang got dressed and made coffee quietly, peering out of the kitchen window into the hazy half-dark. The sky was turning silver, and then, slowly, pale yellow. 

Maybe she was just scared. Of messing this up, whatever it was. She could hide it well enough from the people around her, but she’d been lonely since before she could even remember—lonely to the point where it felt physical, like a broken bone that stayed broken. When she looked at Blake she knew Blake was lonely like that, too. She just knew. That was all. Yang just didn’t want to end up strangers.

She heard a shuffling in the hall, and expected to see Ruby’s bed-mussed head appear in the doorway. Instead, she saw her father.

For a second, Tai just looked at her—well, not at her at her, but he looked in her direction. Then he coughed and made for the coffee pot. “You know what time it is, Yang?”

“Too damn early, I guess.”

He clicked his tongue and grinned. “Too damn early, that’s for sure.” Tai scratched his head as if deciding whether or not he really wanted to start a conversation. “I couldn’t sleep, anyway. Bad dreams.”

Yang had an idea about what kind of bad dreams those were. They were the same as her own. She traced the rim of her coffee mug with her fingertip. “Yeah. Me, neither. Not because of bad dreams, though.”

“Oh, yeah? Wanna talk about it?”

She knew that question shouldn’t have pissed her off as much as it did, and she really didn’t want to ruin the rare good atmosphere between them, but—Wanna talk about it? Really? That was pretty rich, coming from him. After Summer died, he never let anyone talk about her or bring her up at all. But the second Yang had come back, all he seemed to want to do was “talk”—about what happened three years ago, mostly. About where her mind was at. The fact that he’d changed like that, that he only seemed to want to keep reminding her about something she wanted to leave in the past, pissed her off.

Worst of all, she couldn’t hate him for it. She could barely even stand to be angry. Every time she saw his face, she wanted to demand an apology and give one at the same time. It was frustrating.

“Not really,” she said.

Tai set his own mug down on the counter. “Right. I guess it’s just something else you can’t talk to me about.”

Her hand twitched. “How long are you going to keep holding all that over my head?”

“Yang—”

“No, I wanna know why you keep punishing me for that?” Yang knew she was being too loud, that she’d wake Ruby, but somehow she couldn’t stop herself. She couldn’t keep the words from overflowing. “Even though I’ve been punished plenty for it already. Even though I’ve apologized over and over, in all the ways I could think of. Why can’t you just trust me again?”

Tai rubbed the silver stubble on his jaw and shifted his weight to his other foot. “Alright, settle down. Ruby’s still asleep, you know?”

“Dad.” Yang finally found his eyes. They were surrounded by more lines than she remembered. Worry lines. Lines that showed her how much he’d aged because of her.

“You’re my daughter,” he said. “I love you. That ought to be enough.”

Suddenly, it was Yang who couldn’t stand to look at him. Her throat felt thick; she fought to keep that thickness out of her voice. “Right. Good to know where we stand, I guess.” She brushed past him toward the door.

He didn’t call after her, and Yang had a feeling he wasn’t watching her go, either.

~

There were still a few hours to go before the time they’d agreed to meet, so Yang took the long, long way to Menagerie Manor. This far out was just Lowcountry marshland and unpainted roads and trees shrouded in fistfuls of Spanish moss. A flat and mustard-colored landscape, vaguely eerie, a place that seemed like it would draw you in like quicksand and leave no trace of you.

For some reason, Yang’s mind, desperate for distraction, kept circling back to Maria’s words from the other day. What did she mean when she said that Blake didn’t remember that night? Was that kind of thing possible? It could’ve been shock. The shock could’ve made her forget.

She tried to imagine the kind of person Blake’s fiancé might’ve been. Someone kind, maybe? Definitely someone well-off—Menagerie Manor, after all, had apparently been his engagement present to her. It hadn’t been very long at all since the accident; Blake had to be still hurting over him. And her withdrawal into herself…that was probably her own version of mourning. Yang couldn’t have said why, but when she thought about all of that she felt a sudden pang of guilt low in her stomach. 

By the time Yang finally pulled up to the manor, she had already put all of that aside. All of those feelings, all of those thoughts. She settled into the seat for a moment with the truck turned off and let it all evaporate off of her. She didn’t want to ruin the day ahead even a little bit. 

Maria was out on the veranda again, drinking tea and reading a book by Flannery O’Connor and looking characteristically inscrutable. Without even glancing up at Yang first, Maria jabbed the end of her cane in the direction of the back yard. “You’ll find her out back.”

“Uh, thanks,” Yang said. She paused. “Listen, can I ask you—?”

“Afraid I’m a little busy right now,” Maria interrupted, yawning and turning the page.

“Right…” Yang figured the old woman only spoke seriously when it suited her, never when it suited anyone else.

Yang trudged around the house through the long grass, her ears full of the rattle of insects. It wasn’t long before she discovered that Blake was, in fact, not in the back yard. She was nowhere to be seen. Yang almost turned back to give Maria a piece of her mind, but then she caught a flicker of movement through the trees.

There was a narrow footpath leading down through the tree line to the lip of the pond. Blake was crouched by the water, her back to Yang. She was doing something Yang couldn’t see. She crept closer and saw that Blake was busy digging up a good hand-sized rock from the ash-colored muck. Strands of her hair were stuck to her face and neck with sweat. A branch cracked beneath Yang’s heel, and Blake turned on her with wide eyes. The rock slipped from her hands and splashed into the water.

“Uh, morning,” Yang said. “Did you lose something?”

“Yang…” Blake sighed and rubbed her hands clean in the water. “Ugh. My mind, maybe? Please just forget you saw any of that.”

Yang laughed. “Look, no judgment here, or anything. I swear. What were you doing, though?” 

She chewed the inside of her lip and stood up, folding her hands behind her back like she was embarrassed of them. “Nothing, I—I guess I was just trying to confirm something.”

Confirm something? The look on her face worried Yang a bit. It wasn’t a self-conscious look or an agitated look but an expression that you made when your mind wasn’t in the present anymore, wasn’t in your own body anymore. She touched Blake’s arm, barely a touch, just her fingertips. Despite the heat, her skin was cool to the touch. “You know you can say what’s on your mind, right? You don’t have to, and I know we hardly know each other, but…I just want you to know you can say anything to me.”

“I know,” Blake said. Yang blinked at the immediacy of those words, the certainty. “It’s not a nice story, though. I’d hate to dump something like that on you.”

“You’re repeating yourself, you know? From yesterday?” Unthinkingly, her hand slipped down to the indent of Blake’s elbow, down to the jut of her wrist bone. Blake’s eyes tracked the movement. “Anyway, I’ve got my own share of…stories. I can take it, whatever it is.” 

Blake saw the understanding there—saw that Yang knew what, knew who, was in her thoughts—and nodded at the unasked question. “This was the place where it happened, you know. That’s what they told me, at least. That he slipped and he…hit his head on the rocks. Isn’t that crazy? I couldn’t believe that when they told me.”

Yang let her hand fall. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m fine.”

There was something withdrawn in her voice now. Something withdrawing. Like a sea tide ebbing away. Yang didn’t know what she could do to bring her back.

“You said you couldn’t believe it. Is that because you think something else happened?”

Blake seemed to react as if pricked by something sharp. “No,” she said. “No, that isn’t it. I just had a hard time accepting it, I think. That’s all I meant by it.”

“Oh.” They rang in her ears, still, Maria’s words: She can’t remember a thing. It had to frustrating, right? Not knowing anything for certain. Yang tried to sound lighter. “Look, it doesn’t really sound like you’re ‘fine,’ but you…seem like you want me to drop it for now, so I will.”

Some tension fell out of her shoulders. She gave a smile that looked small and worn-out. “Maybe we can talk more about it later.” They looked at each other for almost a moment too long before Blake turned her face away and said, “I should go wash up. I’ll meet you out front in a second.” 

“Don’t keep me waiting too long, Belladonna.” Yang winked playfully, but was struck a bit speechless the next moment by the way that Blake, making toward the house, caught her lip softly between her teeth. She didn’t think she’d forget that one, either.

~

Blake slammed the passenger door shut and appraised the chestnut-colored upholstery. “I’ll admit, it’s slightly cleaner on the inside than I thought it would be.”

Yang gasped and gave the truck’s dashboard a protective pat. “Jolene is as clean as they come. Cleaner than your church shoes.”

“I’m not religious, actually.”

“It’s just a saying.” Another one of Dad’s lame-as-hell sayings, as it happened.

 They eyed each other for a moment before Blake couldn’t help it anymore and broke into laughter. Maybe she’d been pent up; she laughed so hard Yang saw tears spring up at the corners of her eyes. The sound of it was girlish and surprising. Yang wanted to make her do it again. “Ok, it’s not that funny.”

“No, I’m laughing because you—you seriously named your truck after a Dolly Parton song? After that Dolly Parton song? Sorry to say, it doesn’t suit her at all.” 

 “Huh! Well, sorry she’s no Batmobile, I guess.” Yang twisted the key and Jolene grumbled to life. 

Blake blotted the wetness out of her eyes with her sleeve. “‘Batmobile’? The hell are you on about now?”

“Um, your giant dad’s flashy Cadillac? That guy really knows how to leave an impression. Seriously.”

There was a shift in the air (almost missable) when she brought him up—as if the space between them in the truck cab had gone lopsided. Yang shot a quick glance at Blake and saw that Blake was already watching her. “You met my dad?” she asked. 

There was definitely something guarded in her voice. “Yesterday, yeah. Why?” She didn’t say anything right away. Touchy subject, maybe? “Afraid he said something embarrassing about you?”

“I guess.” Blake shrugged and watched the trees through the window and Yang almost thought that she had imagined it, that chilliness from earlier. “He worries a little too much, I think. What did you two talk about?”

“You, what else?”

She groaned and pressed her forehead to the window. “I figured.”

Yang drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “I guess he’s just worried that you’re lonely.” Blake had gone quiet again. Yang pressed on anyway. “Why…why stay there? At the manor? I’ve been wondering that.” Somehow, Yang felt almost nervous to look at Blake’s expression. She got the sense she had already said something she shouldn’t have, that she had dug down to some forbidden root.

It was a long moment before Blake spoke. “Why leave it?” she asked. Her voice was paper-thin, faint like it was coming from another room.

Yang’s throat felt like it was full of dust. “There are some…some pretty bad memories attached to it, aren’t there? It’s the place where he—”

“I’ve got my dad to worry about me plenty, Yang. You don’t have to worry.”

She hadn’t said it in any cruel kind of way, but Yang felt stricken all the same. “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m butting in like that. You’re grown, right? You can look after yourself.”

Another long, wordless moment passed between them. Well, it was Yang’s own fault, wasn’t it? For saying something thoughtlessly like that. She reached for the radio to interrupt the silence, but stopped herself when she heard Blake’s sudden, small exhale.

“Leaving that house would be like…” In her peripheral vision, Yang saw Blake’s gaze shift around impatiently, like she was having trouble finding the words she wanted. “Leaving it would be like…running away. That’s what it feels like. Running away. I don’t want to do that.”

Yang wondered how it could be possible. Her voice was still so faint, but on the underside of it there was a pure and startling resolve. Like porcelain veined with metal.

“I can understand that,” she murmured. 

“Can you?” Blake didn’t sound disbelieving but like someone who was searching for something. Probing.

Yang cleared her throat and fiddled with the radio. (Who was it who was playing now? Loretta Lynn?) She turned it down to background noise. “Uh, kinda! I guess you might have already heard about it, how I ran into trouble a little while back. My dad wanted us to pack up and leave town the moment I got back, but I—I guess I just wanted time to make amends for everything. I didn’t want to regret things more than I had to, you know?”

“I know…” Yang felt Blake’s fingertips graze her wrist. Her skin was still so cool to the touch. “Well, whatever happened, it’s in the past now.”

Whatever happened. So Blake really didn’t know? Yang wanted to believe that, even if it was naïve. She really, really did.

“Sometimes I wonder if that’s true,” she said.

Chapter Text

“We’re not turning here?” Blake twisted in her seat and watched the dirt road go by in the window. “The sign said ‘garden center.’”

Yang was in the middle of what someone might call, if that person knew a damn thing about Lowcountry Julys, a life-or-death struggle with the AC. (Jolene was particularly fussy in the summertime, even mean-spirited.) She banged the side of her fist against it the control panel, and Blake jumped at the sound. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to spook you.” Yang wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “And about that garden center, it—well, there was an accident there a while back. A fire.”

Her head was still turned so far that Yang couldn’t see her face. “A fire, huh.” Somehow, her voice reminded Yang of the voices you hear in dreams. Those far-off but almost familiar voices. “And they never rebuilt?” 

Well, it was probably a good thing that Blake wasn’t watching her. She didn’t know what expression she had on in that moment. In the rearview mirror, Yang watched the road and the old sign disappear. “…I don’t think they had the means.”

“That’s a shame,” Blake said, softly.

“Yeah, it is. A shame.”

Yang’s phone buzzed in the cup holder, and it felt like breaking the surface of deep, cold water. Blake glanced conspicuously at the picture—a close-up of Ruby holding Zwei, their faces pressed together. “Who’s that?”

“My baby sis. Ain’t she cute?” Genuinely happy as she was to hear from Ruby, though, Yang was admittedly glad, too, for the distraction. She pressed the call button. “Hey, Rubes. What’s up? And don’t say anything weird, you’re on speaker.”

“Ooh, so who’s in Jolene with you right now? Wait, don’t tell me it’s—!”

“It’s Blake, yeah. Please don’t say anything that’ll get me fired, either.”

Blake nudged her in the arm and whispered, “So you’ve been talking about me at home?”

She didn’t really need confirmation—the way that color readily bloomed across the back of Yang’s neck was confirmation enough. Yang was pretty certain that Blake was over there covering a satisfied smile with her hand.

Ruby giggled. “Ah, right. Because you two have a ‘strictly professional relationship,’ and all.”

Blake nudged her again. “Was that a direct quote?”

A headache… Yang felt a headache coming on. “Ruby, did you need something?”

There was a tense pause on Ruby’s end. Yang could picture her easily: chewing the inside of her lip, fiddling with the back of her earing. Stuff like that. “I just thought I should tell you that the Ice Queen dropped by a little while ago.” 

“…Shit.”

“Looking for you…”

“Shit.”

Blake mouthed, Ice Queen?

You don’t wanna know, Yang mouthed back.

Zwei was barking somewhere in the background. “She left when I told her you were out getting flowers, but she might ambush you later. You know how she gets. And she seemed serious, too.”

“She’s always serious.” Yep, that headache was definitely imminent. “Way too serious.”

“Good luck!” Ruby chirped. “And bye, Blake! Take good care of Yang.”

Ruby speaking to her directly seemed to catch Blake off-guard, and she couldn’t get out much more than a stiff reply. “Oh—sure.”

Yang peeked over at her from the corner of her eye and smiled. “Yeah, yeah, stop bugging her. See you later, Ruby.”

She ended the call and slouched back in the driver’s seat. This day really wasn’t going as well as she’d hoped it would, was it? First the thing with Dad, now this. And to be honest, an old, unpleasant feeling had begun to sink into her. She was starting to wonder if she ought to feel uneasy about the two of them being out in public together. The place they were headed to was far from the center of town, but that didn’t mean—well, she was worried more about Blake than herself. If someone recognized her, then what? 

Though it was the last thing she wanted, and she would’ve prevented it if she’d been able to, the chaos surrounding Blake and her dead fiancé had shifted some attention away from Yang’s own messy past. “In any case, we make a pretty infamous pair, don’t we?” 

“…You think so?”

Shoot, she’d said that last bit out loud without meaning to. “Ah, well—I was just thinking, one of us has a, uh, colorful record, and one of us is basically a local ghost story at this point, right? I just thought it was funny.”

“I guess,” she admitted. 

Blake seemed to have gone quiet (quieter than usual, a heavy quiet), and Yang wondered if saying all of that had been a mistake. Or maybe it had been her declaring that they were a ‘pair.’ She wondered if that was overstepping some line—some fragile line between them. Her neck felt hot again.

Blake softly cleared her throat. “So, this ‘Ice Queen’ you’re so scared of. What was that all about?”

“I’m not—listen, I’m not scared of her, okay?” Yang’s passenger looked extremely unconvinced. “We just have…kind of a rocky history. God, I hope she doesn’t hunt me down for real. I’m really not in the mood today.”

“How come?” Blake looked thoughtful now, and was perched a bit forward in the seat.

“Honestly?”

She nodded, and the directness of her gaze almost made Yang lose her nerve. It was a gaze that made her feel see-through and jelly-like. Made her feel stirred-up. Glancing across the small space between them, Yang could only stand to feel it for a moment.

“Today, at least,” she said, tugging a hand through her thick hair, “I don’t want anyone to get in the way.”

Yang braced for the recoil (seriously, why the hell did she have to go and say something weird like that?) but, unexpectedly, Blake smiled. It was the usual enigmatic smile, though this one seemed a bit shy, as well. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, actually.” 

Damn, she couldn’t stop staring. It was dangerous, but she couldn’t convince herself to look away. Right then, those golden eyes seemed like shining glass, and they reflected back at her only her own awestruck face.

She’d been caught up in it, hadn’t she? In her own ring of fire. Quietly, without a fuss—though she’d never believed in it, never imagined she’d get drawn down into it so gladly. And it burns, burns, burns, she thought. 

The road stretched out ahead of them like an arrow.

~

Well, how did you draw a line in that, she wondered? How did you draw a line between yourself and a burning thing? And how did you know it wasn’t too late, that you weren’t already the burning thing, yourself?

Yang sighed and pressed her forehead into the steering wheel. Johnny, if you’re out there…

“Yang, aren’t we gonna get out? You alright?”

They’d been sitting in the parking lot for a few minutes while Yang waded through her silent crisis. Blake sat beside her, too polite to say anything at first. A tiny crease had formed in between her eyes (Yang felt the sudden impulse to rub it out with her thumb.) 

Christ, this wasn’t like her at all. It was true, though, that ever since she’d met Blake she’d been thinking that a lot. It was also true, maybe, that what she really meant was the opposite: that she’d never been more like herself, or, at least, that it’d been a long, long time since she’d been so like herself. 

The real her was hopeless. The real her had been waiting for somebody to call her name exactly like how Blake called it. 

A hand fell on her bicep, more forcefully than what she was expecting. Her mouth opened in surprise (though no sound came out of it.) “Yang,” Blake said. “If you’re worried, don’t be. It’ll be fine. I promise.” 

Worried? Ah, right. That was right…that old feeling, that feeling that everyone around you was watching you without really looking at you. That they were waiting for you to come apart, to snap, like you were some kind of dangerous, wild animal. Yang wondered if Blake ever felt like that, though she looked, right then, as if she had already steeled her heart, looked like nothing could scratch her. Not the stares, not the voices. Nothing.

Blake’s expression slowly turned quizzical. Yang felt the press of her fingers on her arm, felt them slip under the edge of her sleeve, touch the puckered ridge of her scar. Yang steeled her heart, too. It wasn’t something she knew how to just…talk about. What kind of explanation would Blake accept? Probably only the truth. 

But Blake didn’t ask about it. She only lowered her eyes and traced the circle-shape of it with her fingertip, as if she was doing it absently, as if she already knew and accepted everything.

Yang felt oddly hypnotized. “Blake…?”

Blake took her hand away and it felt painful, like she’d dug her nails in, instead. “I’m sick of that rosebush,” she said, suddenly.

Yang felt herself blink as if coming out of a stupor. “The rosebush? You seemed so attached to it, though.”

She shook her head. “That was just me being…sentimental. It was the first thing I ever planted, you know. The first thing I ever tried growing. I guess I just thought that it would mean I’d failed somehow, if I ever had to get rid of it, if I couldn’t fix it.”

“We could always try to revive it. Well, I can’t guarantee that it’d—”

“I can’t look at it anymore,” she said. “I don’t want to.” The steel was in her eyes now, in the stubborn set of her jaw. Yang would’ve found it hard to argue even if she’d wanted to.

She got out of the truck and came around to the passenger side to open Blake’s door. “Well, if the boss lady demands it,” she said, grinning.

Blake smiled back and reached for her, loosely catching between her fingers a few gold coils of Yang’s hair. For a moment, Yang was too surprised to move. “Sunflowers,” Blake said. “I think I’d like to see some sunflowers back there. Tall ones.” 

“Oh, yeah?” Yang caught that slender hand in her own, her hair slipping free. It might’ve been just a little bit satisfying to see Blake’s face—a face that was always so reserved, so cryptic—go a shade or two pinker when she touched her. “You know, I think I’d like to see them, too.”

Not for the first time, Yang wondered if she was doing something wrong. Was it wrong to feel this goddamned happy, happy to the point where you forgot all the heavy things, all the things that made you hurt? She wished every day that she could take it back, but Yang had hurt people. Blake didn’t know a thing about that. If she ever found out…

Well, that might’ve been the last thing Yang wanted to consider. Eventually, though, she knew a time would come when she wouldn’t have a choice.

~

“You’re pretty strong. I mean, I figured you were, but still.”

 “Uh, thanks?” Yang hefted the bags of compost onto the space that was left in the truck bed, sending up clouds of dust. As promised, she thought. She didn’t mean to remember it, but Blake’s quip over the phone about it being “romantic” (and her immediate embarrassment) filled her head and wouldn’t leave. She fought against a bubble of laughter.

Of course, she still felt troubled over the thought of being recognized, still felt those invisible eyes, but suddenly she had a new pair of eyes on her. And she didn’t hate it, being looked at by those eyes. Yang peeked behind herself and watched with amusement as Blake’s gaze roamed the length of her arms, catalogued her shoulders, the shape of her back. Maybe she thought she was being discreet.

Their eyes met suddenly and Blake turned her face away. “Um, what’s our inventory right now?” 

Yang chuckled and slammed the hatch shut. “We bought a lot, so I guess we’re pretty damn lucky Jolene could fit everything. Let’s see…” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Pansies, rhododendron, tulips, chrysanthemum, crocus, marigolds, camellias, lavender—”

“And sunflowers,” Blake said, fondly thumbing the broad, yellow petals of the sunflower heads that hung over the side.

“And those, of course,” Yang said. “Are they your favorite?”

Her face changed in a way Yang couldn’t really describe. “My favorite…” She sounded a bit helpless, a bit distant. “I know you probably won’t believe me, but up until a little while ago, I never really used to think about things like that.”

For some reason, Yang felt like she was on some kind of precipice again, like again there was something that one of them just wouldn’t ask. It felt like “why,” the question or even just the thought of it, was dangerous. Volatile. “Why” would turn something over—or it’d crack it open, and something awful would come spilling out. Yang had to wonder how much longer the two of them could stand to go on like that, being scared like that.

“Tell you what,” Yang said, stepping close to her and leaning an elbow on the truck. “I’ll let you think on it. Tell me tomorrow, okay?” 

“Okay,” she said, relaxing. “I’ll think on it.”

“Happy to hear it.” Yang patted her back pocket in search of the clunky shape of her keys. Honestly, she’d been itching to get back to the manor for a while, if only to see what kind of expression Blake would make once the new flowers were planted.

Blake blinked, her eyes flickering suddenly to something over Yang’s shoulder. “Um, can I ask you something?”

“Sure?”

“Why do you call that girl ‘Ice Queen’? Is it because she has white hair?”

“What?” Yang scratched the back of her neck. Why were they talking about Weiss now? “No, we call her that because—”

“You.”

Oh, goddammit. Sure, it wasn’t like Yang hadn’t been expecting it, but she still couldn’t help but feel frustrated—hunted, even. (Seriously, why couldn’t she just have the day? She deserved at least a day, right?) She let out a long breath and turned to those familiar blue eyes. As ever, they were as clear and as sharp as broken bottle glass. Cold as ever, too. Well, Weiss had always been pretty famous for being able to “cut anyone down with a glance.” Though Yang remembered a time not too long ago when they were a little less cold, a little softer around the edges.

Weiss crossed her arms and stuck her hip out. Even in heels, even full of that domineering attitude, she was still nearly a head shorter than Yang. If this was three years ago, Yang could’ve picked on her for that and lived.

“You’ve been avoiding me ever since you got back, you selfish bastard,” she said.

Selfish bastard, huh? She never was one to spare anyone’s ego, or keep the bite out of her words. “Me? Avoiding you?” Yang lifted her hands in faux innocence. “Never, Ice Queen.”

“I’ve already told you to stop calling me that,” she snapped. Yang imagined that, if not for the fact that she was the daughter of an honest-to-god genteel family and already twenty-four years old, Weiss certainly would’ve punctuated that with a stamp of her foot.

In spite of her usual disposition, though, Yang felt herself soften toward her. Thoughts about the “old times” were really creeping up on her in strange ways. “Sorry, Weiss. Really. I know I shouldn’t’ve avoided you like that. It was just…hard, you know?”

Her scowl wavered just a hair. “It was hard for everybody, Yang.” 

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it was.”

“To get right to the point…” Weiss flicked her long ponytail over her shoulder. “The money, Yang. I know about it. I wanna know where you got it all of a sudden.”

“Weiss—” She took her arm and pulled her aside. “Keep your voice down about that shit.”

Blake cleared her throat, and when Yang turned she saw that her gaze was sliding uncertainly between the two of them. Weiss was looking at her with half-veiled interest. “Um, if this is something private, I can leave you two alone to talk.”

Yang let go of Weiss’s arm. “No, you don’t have to do that—”

“She does have to do that, because we’re talking about it, Yang.” Weiss clicked her tongue loudly against her teeth. “At least your little girlfriend knows some manners. Unlike you.”

“She—” Yang pinched the bridge of her nose. Of course she’d say something like that. “Jesus. She’s my boss, Weiss.”

Weiss delicately lifted a shoulder. “Even better, if you ask me. Someone to keep you in line. Anyway, I’ll literally kill you if you don’t meet me over by the hydrangeas in exactly one minute.”

She left them with a warning glare and Yang turned back to Blake, who seemed a little overwhelmed by Weiss’s sudden appearance. (Yang could sympathize.) “Sorry, think you can hang out by the truck for a little bit?” She touched the back of Blake’s hand with her fingertips. “I’ll be back soon.”

Blake chewed the inside of her cheek and glanced down at their hands. “Yeah. No problem.”

Was she put off? Angry? Yang tried to look cheerful. “Guard the flowers for me, okay?”

Not quite smiling, though not quite frowning, either, Blake gave her a small salute. “Sure.”

Weiss, framed by bruise-colored hydrangeas, looked like she’d been busy observing the two of them from a distance. She rolled her eyes when Yang approached. “You sure that isn’t your little girlfriend?”

“Shut up. How did you find out about the money? Actually, how did you find me?”

“It wasn’t hard. Ruby said you were working on, like, some big gardening project. I narrowed it down.” Of course. Yang wouldn’t show her face at Spring Hill even if it was still around. And this place was remote without being too out of her way. “Anyway, I heard about the money from Pyrrha. Even though she’s told you again and again not to worry about it—”

“I have a debt, you know,” Yang said. “I can’t just ignore it. And since when were you close with Pyrrha?” 

“I—” Shockingly, some color rose to her face. She stuck her tongue in her cheek. “Look, don’t be annoying about this, but we’re kind of…dating now.” 

Yang’s mouth dropped halfway open for a long moment before any sound came out of it. “Um, what was that?” she said at last. “You and fucking Pyrrha Nikos? The Ice Queen and Miss Congeniality? Now that’s a riot. Aw, and here I thought you were still hung up on me—” 

Weiss shoved her away and made a face like she’d bitten into an orange rind. “Ugh. Don’t even joke about that.”

“Well, I just figured, with the way you’ve been stalking me all day.”

“I wasn’t stalking you, asshole, I was worried.” Now, maybe even more shockingly, there was unmistakable hurt in her expression. And, though she stubbornly tried to hide it, her eyes were bright with tears. Pissed-off tears. “I’ve been worried.”

She was right, of course. Yang was a real asshole. “You don’t have to be so worried over someone like me, you know,” Yang said, drawing Weiss into the circle of her arm. Weiss wiped her face with her sleeve and pressed her forehead into Yang’s shoulder. “Just so you know, the money came out of my savings. I found a new job recently, so I just figured I’d get an early start on paying back my debt. Nothing shady, I promise.”

“I didn’t think it was anything shady…” Weiss sniffed and (a little gentler this time) pushed Yang’s arm away, drawing back. “And it’s stupid to start paying back a debt before you even make any money.”

Yang laughed. “Yeah, I guess it is. I just…wanted to do it as soon as possible, though.”

“Idiot.” Weiss looked a little exasperated and also, perhaps, a little sad. “Why does it feel like this is just you punishing yourself even more?”

Yang felt herself flinch. Punishing herself? No, that couldn’t be right. She’d suffered plenty of that already. From all kinds of people, from the universe. What was the point of doing that to herself? A debt was a debt, even if you wished things were different. Mistakes were mistakes. In the end, though, somehow she couldn’t say anything back to that.

“By the way,” Weiss said, inclining her head toward the truck, “I’m not stupid. I know the oh-so-famous Blake Belladonna when I see her. Pretty much anyone in Remnant would recognize her these days, even if it’s been a while since they’ve seen her in person.”

“Well, shit.” Yang glanced over at Blake and watched her dig a groove in the dirt with the heel of her boot. Had she imagined it, the feeling she’d had right then that Blake had been looking back at her? “Please don’t try to raise a fuss, or anything—”

Weiss scoffed. “As if I would. I don’t give a shit about the business of somebody I don’t know. But I do give a shit about yours.” When she said that, she gripped Yang’s shoulder. “Are you sure about this, Yang? I know I’m just an outsider in this, but are you sure you can trust her? I mean, your judgment in the past—”

Weiss clapped a hand over her mouth before she said the rest, though she’d already said enough. Oh, that was bitter, Yang thought. That sure was bitter. Even now. “Because my judgment about people in the past has been…not so great, right?”

“Yang, I didn’t—”

“I know you didn’t mean to say it. It's fine. Thanks for checking up on me, Ice Queen.” Yang rubbed the top of Weiss’s head, which she suffered without much complaint. “See you some other time.”

Yang let her hand fall and cut a path through the flowers toward Blake.

Chapter Text

By now, at least, it shouldn’t have come to Yang as too terrible a shock, but Blake didn’t have any words for her at all. She said nothing when Yang came back, and nothing even when they struck out on the road again in Jolene. That said, it wouldn’t have been right to call her “quiet,” either. In the passenger seat, she seemed restless, like somebody was putting pins in her.

Yang turned the radio down. “Are you gonna say what you want to say to me, or are you just gonna sit with it?” She winced at the tone of that. She hadn’t meant to sound like she was lecturing her. Or worse, accusing her. “Blake, uh…what’s on your mind?”

“I…” Blake paused and chewed intently on her thumbnail. Now that Yang thought about it, despite the general slender prettiness of Blake’s hands, her nails had always looked pretty rough, like nails marked by compulsion, always being bitten down to the tender skin beneath. “It’s hard to ask anything,” she said at last. “I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

The wrong thing? Somehow, this tense, nervous version of Blake was someone who made Yang feel…vaguely useless. Or was it that she felt oblivious, felt in-the-dark? It was hard to rightly explain the feeling, but Yang disliked the weight of it. It settled on her in a way that reminded her of those heavy crowds of buzzards that she always saw gathered on the high, spindly branches of trees.

Yang had finally come to the realization that she really didn’t know a thing about what Blake had gone through or was still going through. And it stung a little to admit that. Maybe part of it was her own sore pride, but mostly it was that Yang didn’t want to be useless to Blake. She wanted to be someone worthy. She wanted to hold all her hurt. She’d hold all of it, and Blake wouldn’t even need to think about it anymore. The question was only if Yang could ever really become that worthy person in the first place—the kind of person you could trust all your secrets to, someone who made you feel the opposite of burdened.

“There’s no way,” Yang said. “There’s no way you could say the wrong thing. Not to me.” 

“Half of me already knows that, Yang. I already know it.”

From the very beginning, Yang had always been caught up in figuring Blake out, in that way you could only unravel a silk spool one turn at a time, but there wasn’t much Blake didn’t seem to already understand about Yang, like instinct. From the beginning, Blake had always seemed to just know. Yang couldn’t help but think that maybe she ought to trust her own instincts a little more. Though she didn’t need them to read the expression Blake was making in that moment, to read the lines of unrest there. “And the other half?” she asked, gently. 

“The other half…” Blake gave a humorless laugh. She tapped the window with her finger, steadily, like she was counting. “The other half is scared. Terrified. Always has been. It’s like…it’s almost like…”

The tapping abruptly stopped. Blake tugged at her own hair in an almost desperate kind of way, but also like she didn’t know she was doing it. As if the thing she wanted to say was hiding, was just under her skin. Yang wordlessly reached between them and grabbed Blake’s hand—not roughly, not tightly. She just took her hand with all the tenderness she could, as if to say that it was alright, that she was alright.

Some tension seemed to fall out of her, to Yang’s relief. Blake closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the back of Yang’s hand. “Hey, did you ever read Jane Eyre in high school?” she asked. 

With all the books Yang had seen crammed into the shelves at the manor, it was easy to imagine Blake curled up every night with another Brontë or Woolf or Austen. Blake seemed like the kind of girl who could lose herself in an instant; she could go somewhere far away from you and you wouldn’t even know it. “Jane Eyre? Um, the one about the governess and the old guy?”

Blake smirked. “That’s the one. Do you…do you remember Rochester’s horrible secret? A secret so horrible that it made Jane run away from him?”

A secret so horrible. “It’s been a while, but…the wife, right? Like, he was secretly keeping her in the attic, or something?”

“Yeah. He did it because he thought she'd gone crazy. Locked her up like an animal.” The words were bitter, but Blake’s voice was smoothed out of any emotion. “The mad, discarded wife…” A line came into Yang’s head when Blake said that, something she hadn’t known she’d ever even remembered: What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell.

“Pretty fucked up…”

Yang felt the sudden press of Blake’s lips on her hand—feather-light, just a grazing contact. When Blake spoke again, she felt cool breath on her skin. “Sometimes I feel like that character,” she said. “Or like she’s living in a room in my head.”

Well, it wasn’t as if Yang didn’t know what it was like to be “locked up,” to be abandoned. She gave Blake’s hand one last squeeze before returning her own to the wheel. “And what is she doing, in your head? Talking? Screaming?” 

“Nothing like that. No, most of the time, she’s…quiet. So, so quiet. But somehow I know she’s there. And that’s even scarier.” Blake blew out an unsteady breath. “Fuck, now I sound crazy—” 

“You don’t.” Yang gave a decisive nod, though she wasn’t sure if she’d done it for Blake’s benefit or for her own. “You sound like you’ve been going through something hard. And that’s real, you know? That person in your head is just fiction, but everything you’re feeling is fucking real. And trust me, I know how much that shit can ruin your life.”

She felt a heavy gaze, felt those eyes like mirrors. (Dangerous, she thought. It was all so dangerous.) “It’s happening again,” Blake said. “I’m just going on and on about myself again. I feel like I’m just taking advantage of your sympathy. Like eventually I’ll use it all up.”

“‘Sympathy’?” Yang rubbed the edge of her jaw. Is that really what she thought it was? “Think what you want, I guess, but I actually like it when you talk about yourself.”

“You hardly ever say anything about yourself, though.” The weight of that stare didn’t life from her. Yang couldn’t meet it, but she couldn’t make sense of anything ahead of her, either. The effect of those eyes was too magnetic, too intimate, too there. The scenery in the windshield flew by unregistered—a shapeless, colorless backdrop.

“Sometimes it feels like I don’t even have to tell you.”

She’d said it casually enough, but Blake’s eyes widened slightly. Her hands curled together in her lap, like she was holding onto some small, secret object. “I’d like it, though,” she murmured. “If you told me it, anyway.”

“Fair enough. Shoot, then,” Yang said, with a sideways-slanting grin. “What do you wanna know about me?”

“All kinds of things,” Blake said, lowly, a bit breathily. “Everything, I think.”

It was then that Yang’s gaze slid sideways, as well, and came to rest on the graceful line of Blake’s throat. “I don’t think you know what you’re asking for when you say ‘everything,’ darlin’.” 

“Maybe not,” Blake admitted, but her fingers curled around the back of Yang’s neck when she said that, threaded into her hair. Her touch was as cool as always, but Yang’s own skin warmed beneath her fingertips. “But that’s not a bad thought, either.”

Yang turned onto the long, tree-lined drive up to Menagerie Manor. She knew this time that there was an end to it. She knew that, but even so it was hard to picture it. The glossy green and powder-white colors of the trees, the yellow smears of sun, the shadows between the leaves—all of it ran together like still-wet ink on paper. They were there together in a cocoon-like place, in a moment like a dream. Maybe it was a good thing that her eyes had a place to fix to in that moment, that her hands had a place to be. If not, then… Well, Yang wondered if she would’ve had any power left over herself.

~

The sky had gone dove-colored by the time they arrived at the manor. It wasn’t quite raining yet, but a light mist was falling and finely covering everything.

Yang leaned against a garden rake and watched Blake sweep her dark curtain of hair up into a ponytail. (As Yang suspected she would, she looked cute like that, too.) “Like I said, I’m not letting you help.”

“Hm?” Blake braced her hands on her hips. “Why not? Don’t be stingy.” 

“Stin—? Are you being serious right now?” Granted, there was hardly ever a time when Blake didn’t seem serious, but this was just all too much. Yang was starting to think that Blake had forgotten Yang’s purpose at the manor, had forgotten the nature of their relationship. Though Yang was hardly one to talk. There were times when she felt like she’d forgotten, too. “You do realize that you’re paying me to do this for you, right? That making you help out with the work basically negates the meaning of our contract?”

“Nobody’s ‘making’ me do anything, Yang. I want to. I want to do this.” She stepped closer and gripped Yang’s arm. Her voice and her eyes turned soft like the not-quite rain that fell on the yard. “Please let me?”

The mist whitened her hair. Distractedly, Yang fixed a loose strand of it and Blake, in a way that was almost missable, shivered when Yang’s finger grazed the outside shell of her ear. (A weak point? Yang would have to keep that in mind.) She smirked. “I’m not as susceptible to your little doe eyes as you think I am, Blake.”

The hand on her arm roamed upward, lightly tracing the line of her collarbone. It stopped right below her throat, in the center of her chest. “What are you susceptible to, then?”

The question caught her off-guard. Yang leaned back to get a better look at her. Well, she looked innocent enough at first glance, but—no, there it was, after all. The glint of danger like the glint of that copperhead’s eyes in the shadow of the rosebush. Yang wondered if Blake was even fully aware of it, herself, that side of her that could pull Yang in, drag her under.

Just as she thought that, the sky broke open with a close-sounding peal of thunder. The rain came down in earnest now, and Yang got the feeling it wouldn’t be long before it came down harder, still. Somehow, she sensed an imminent downpour.

The two of them broke apart with identical expressions of embarrassment. On Blake’s part, she seemed like she’d come back to herself a little and was feeling suddenly self-conscious for having touched Yang like that, spoken to her like that. As for Yang, herself—well, she hadn’t expected to be asked a question she couldn’t answer. Answering it felt…nearly too intimate. Felt like it would be the thing that cracked her wide open.

Yang dropped the rake at her feet. “We should hurry up and move the flowers into that shed over there,” she said. “Wouldn’t want them to drown, right?”

“Right…” Blake took up one of the sunflower pots, awkwardly shifting the weight of it to her hip.

Between the two of them, they made pretty quick work of moving the flowers to shelter. Though there was no helping the fact that they, themselves, had become soaked through by the rain by the time they’d finished. 

Yang set the camellias on the floor of the shed with a grunt and wiped her face with the collar of her shirt. “Well, damn. That was definitely a close…”

The words evaporated from her mouth when she turned to Blake, who was untying her hair (the humidity curled it, made it cling to her) and letting it fall free in heavy, black waves around her shoulders. A smooth sliver of her stomach was distractingly visible; it was just a little bit of skin, but Yang suddenly felt a need to discover the rest of it—the rest of Blake. (She could admit it at this point, couldn’t she? That her interest, her lonely gravitation toward that golden-eyed woman, had never been innocent of that heat? Probably not since the moment Blake had first taken her hand.)

And the drops of rain dripped down, down along the curve of her chin and neck and the dip of her collarbone. The air of the shed smelled like wet earth and new plants and the salt of skin. In an instant, Yang’s heart felt like a wild, feverish thing in her, felt uncontainable.

When she’d told Blake she wasn’t susceptible, what a spectacular lie that had been. Yang was susceptible to all of it, everything. To Blake only. Blake met her gaze and seemed to recognize it, that fever, that wildness. In the dimness of the shed, her eyes seemed illuminated, flashes of lightning caught in a window.

Her hands twisted into Yang’s shirtfront and she drew them together, and then she drew her mouth up to Yang’s.

And she burned her. All the other times, her skin had felt cool, nearly cold, but now Blake’s touch—the fervent press of her body and her mouth and her tongue—burned her. A stumble (whose stumble, Yang wasn’t sure) and Blake’s back struck the wall of the shed. She didn’t seem to notice it, though; her arms twined up around Yang’s head. Tightly. Like how honeysuckle grew, Yang thought. 

It felt just about impossible to do it, but Yang broke the kiss. “Hey, are you hurt?” she asked. Her voice surprised her. It sounded husky, breathless, like somebody else’s. She searched Blake’s face for signs of pain or discomfort, but all she found was wide-eyed want. And impatience. She could’ve laughed if her throat wasn’t so dry. 

Oh, but maybe there was something complicated emerging slowly from that flushed expression. “Am I hurt?” She repeated the question back at Yang with quiet amazement. The arms about Yang’s head tightened even more. “No,” she said. “I’m not hurt at all.”

Maybe it was a lie, but Yang didn’t have time to argue it before Blake’s mouth was on hers again. The roughness surprised her. Her lips, of course, were amazingly soft, were softer than anything, but the kiss itself was rough and insistent, even a bit careless. Yang liked it a little too much, this version of Blake who had flung all pretense of passiveness aside, this version moved purely by desire. 

She let her hands slip down along the ridge of Blake’s spine, down to the bend of her waist. Her head bent to the delicate skin of Blake’s neck and she put her mouth to the place where a pulse visibly fluttered away, then to the place right beneath the jaw, and then—Yang’s teeth came down softly on her earlobe, and she felt gratified by the way that Blake took a small, sharp breath inward. So she’d been right about the ears, after all. Yang hid a smile in the dark curls of her hair. Shit, and she smelled really, really good, too. Something like lavender but headier, like rain but sweeter.

The summer storm went on pelting the flimsy roof of the shed without relent, but in truth Yang had completely forgotten about the rain and the shed and the flowers and everything else until that moment. All of her senses had narrowed to a point without her realizing it, had convened on Blake, alone.

When was it, though? When had it happened, exactly, that the heat of the kiss had faded and they’d started clinging to each other like this, instead? Somehow, they’d ended up listening to the thrum of the rain together, holding onto each other without any sense that they should be doing anything else. It was something different from fire, from appetite, different and near-unsettling in its intimacy. Well, it felt nice. It felt so nice. Yang was sure that she had never felt so serene in her whole life.

Blake’s face was buried in her shoulder. She’d started trembling a little. Was she cold? Her body was still like a match tip, though. Yang drew the two of them apart and was stunned when she saw the tears gathering in her eyes, welling up and over.

Yang cupped her face between her palms. “Oh, baby, what is it? What’s wrong?”

Blake seemed to flinch at the way Yang spoke to her, held her. The tears had started making slow tracks down her cheeks. “You…you’re so nice to me,” she said. “You’ve only been nice to me and I’ve been lying to you, Yang.” Blake’s voice hitched over her name. She moved her face from Yang’s hands and looked away.

“What are you talking about?” For some reason, Yang felt a tight knot of dread start to form in her stomach. Of course, she’d known from the beginning that Blake was holding onto a secret or two—and Yang was no hypocrite, so there was no way she could fault her for it. But she’d never thought that Blake had been outright lying to her about anything. Not even once.

“I—I can’t…”

“Why can’t you?” 

Blake swiped at the wetness on her face with the back of her hand like she was angry at herself. “I don’t want you to hate me,” she said.

“Hate you?” Yang’s eyes widened. Looking at Blake, she couldn’t help but feel a sting, couldn’t help but be hurt by Blake’s hurt. She tried to think back to a moment ago, tried to connect this moment to the moment from before and couldn’t. No matter how secure or serene they seemed, moments were delicate like that, and they crumbled like sandcastles. You could never get the exact shape of them back. Somewhere, there had been a shift, a break, but it had been invisible to Yang. She felt a bit ashamed of that, like she hadn’t been looking carefully enough. “That’s impossible. You know that’s impossible. Blake, if anything, I…I probably lo—”

“Don’t say it,” she snapped. Blake still couldn’t seem to look at her, though she looked pained when Yang took a surprised step backward. “Please don’t say it,” she said, softer. 

“Okay.” She let her hands fall down to her sides. Why did this feel like the end of something? Yang tried to shake the feeling off of herself and couldn’t. “Okay, I won’t say it.” (Had she really been about to say it, that word?) “But please just tell me what’s going on?”

Blake folded her hands together so tightly her fingertips turned bloodless. “Yang, I’ve known everything from the start. Nothing about our meeting each other was coincidence. I…I wanted it to be you from the start.”

“Known everything.” No, that couldn’t be right. There was no way she could be talking about that. Yang was misunderstanding her. “You’ve known…what?”

“What everybody else knows,” she said. Her voice was so quiet all of a sudden. It made Yang feel restless, irritated. It felt like Blake was slipping back into her own inner shelter, a place without any warmth or room for anyone else, into the version of herself that kept everything buried. “I know about Spring Hill and the accident. About your mom—”

“Don’t ever call her that,” Yang said. She was surprised at the bitter edge in her own voice. And at Blake of all people. If there was anyone she’d wanted to spare any venom or unkindness, it was her. Yet she couldn’t seem to stop herself from going on, from driving the wedge down. “And what the hell do you mean, ‘what everybody else knows’? Nobody knows a goddamn thing about what happened, or about me, or about my shitty fucking birth mother. Not a goddamn thing.”

Fuck, the images were already sinking into her. She’d spent so much time learning how to not think about it, figuring out all the tricks. But bringing all of that up, hefting all of that to the surface when she hadn’t been expecting it, had made her start to remember. The narrow storage room, dark for a moment except for the red and blue lights that flooded the walls. And then, like there'd been nothing ever in between: all yellow, blinding, airless. Eyes reflecting firelight, disappearing. The feeling of a bullet—before the shock wears off, only like pressure, like wet. The sound bones made when they broke. The smell of smoke, the smell of blood, wound together like one thing. How that smell clung for days to her clothes no matter what she did.

“Blake…” She flinched when Yang’s eyes snapped to hers again. That only made Yang feel even shittier. (What had she seen there, in Yang’s face? Something she hadn’t expected to see? Something frightening?) “‘I wanted it to be you from the start’—you said that,” Yang said. “What did the hell did you mean? Was this all some kind of game to you? Some kind of fucked-up joke?”

“No!” Blake seemed like she wanted to reach for her, grab her hand, but she stopped herself and gripped her own arm instead. Yang could already see the deep indents her nails were leaving on her skin. Stop that, Yang wanted to say. You’ll draw blood if you grip that hard. “It was nothing like that.”

“Then what was it?”

“…I don’t know. It’s hard to—”

“Then what, Blake?”

“I just thought you’d understand!” The words burst from her, the meekness falling from her voice in an instant as sudden and white-hot as a spray of sparks. Her eyes were still wet. There were still tears there, but somehow a fire had come back into them. And this time she did take Yang’s hand. She grabbed ahold of it and held on even when Yang tried to halfheartedly pull free of her. “I thought if there was anyone who’d understand, it’d be you,” she said, trying to catch Yang’s gaze.

“What?” Christ. What was that supposed to mean, anyway? This whole situation was so fucking crazy. Blake had really known it all from the start. When they’d met, she’d already known. When she’d said she wanted to know everything, she’d already known. Every question. Every heavy pause. Every admission. And she’d known through all of it. Yang felt like the stupidest person alive. 

So why was she still waiting for Blake to say something that would make all of it evaporate? Why was she still waiting for the explanation that would fix everything? She should’ve known better by now than to wait around for something like that.

“Just what about us makes you think we’re so damn similar?” Yang demanded. By contrast, Yang felt herself freezing solid, felt that she was falling down some long, dark well that’d just opened up beneath her, that she was wanting to fall. Or else she would go on saying things she didn’t want to say, driving the wedge down until she shattered. “Look, I know you’ve had it rough, but unlike you, I’m a bad person, Blake. I had it rough, but I had it coming. That’s all there is to it. Whatever you thought about me, about the person you made up in your head—that you could ‘fix me,’ or feel better about yourself by having me around—” 

“Yang, none of that is—”

“—you might as well just give up on it now.”

Blake looked stunned. She dropped Yang’s hand on her own, like she’d been pricked by thorns. The rain was letting up, running out. Yang stepped out of the shed and waded into the high, wet grass.

“…You’re leaving?”

What was that, an accusation? It shouldn’t have worked. By now, Yang should’ve been long gone. She never should’ve asked anything, or demanded any explanations. But the question felt like a slap, anyway. Like she’d been caught in a betrayal.

She whirled around. “What did you expect me to understand?” she asked. She couldn’t help it, ask that final question, give Blake that last chance. She was a damn fool who never learned. And she still hadn’t forgotten the smell of Blake’s hair, or the feeling of Blake’s weight and warmth against her. Though she’d never felt anything like it before, the absence of that warmth felt like being halved. Like it was the first time in her life she’d noticed a place where those things ought to have been. There was a room that had always been there, for her. Yang just felt like that was the truth of it, whether she liked it or not.

But that didn’t mean there was any place like that for Yang. It was impossible that there was any place like that at all. To Blake, Yang had just been…convenient. There was a time when she’d started to think or hope otherwise, but that time had quickly become a thing of the past. 

Blake hesitated, looked away. Her eyes seemed to be in search of the fragment of the pond visible through the trees. They caught on the gray light, on the weak glimmer that reflected off of water blacker than oil. She hesitated, and Yang learned that her heart could still sink lower than it already had. “It’s…it’s hard to explain. It’s not easy to say,” she said at last.

“Right.” There were more bitter things in the world than just being wrong about somebody, Yang thought. Her eyes stung. Everything stung. “Right. Well, when you figure out how to say it, give me a call, maybe. Though I won’t promise that I’ll pick up. I’m going home now.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so fucking sorry. I didn’t mean for…” The tears started making steady tracks again. Yang couldn’t help but notice that Blake didn’t seem to make any noise when she cried. Maybe that was worse, that she wouldn’t make any sound at all. Like she was holding it inside, catching the cries in her throat before they could get free of her. Like she was afraid of what could happen.

“Let’s be done with that,” Yang murmured. She didn’t want those. The sorrys or the tears. None of it. Before she could catch herself doing it, she reached out and rubbed away the wetness from Blake’s face with her thumbs. Blake seemed too bewildered by the gesture to move.

Yang withdrew quickly. But she didn’t know what else to say, what else could be said. She knew what she wanted to say. None of what had actually come out of her mouth was what she’d wanted to say. Maybe Blake knew that.

Ah, but… The thought struck her coldly, like a heavy object: Blake probably didn’t understand her like Yang used to think she understood. They didn’t really understand each other.

Maybe that was the thing that was the bitterest of them all.

Chapter Text

Yang didn’t go home, after all.

She knew all she’d find there was Ruby, splayed out on the couch with Zwei, and she’d have come up with an explanation for herself. Ruby would see her face and know. Yang would have no choice but to confess it all—and confess what? That she’d lost her sense again? That she’d given her trust away again, this time more easily than the last? That, even though she was too old to be acting like this, she still couldn’t keep her mind off of Blake, couldn’t keep the fog of her from filling up her head and pushing everything else out? She never wanted to see Blake again. She wanted to see Blake so badly she could die. The trouble with wanting somebody was that it was never as easy as just turning it off.

So, she she didn’t go home. Old habits, she supposed. Ever since they were kids, Yang had always pushed her feelings down, down far enough so that she could keep it out of her face and out of her voice and properly look after Ruby. Because there’d been a time in their lives when, if she didn’t look out for her, nobody would’ve. Not really.

Of course, she knew her sister was old enough now to look after herself, knew that she ought to let Ruby be the one who was depended on once in a while, but it was hard for Yang to feel like she wasn’t just burdening her with something unnecessary. There was a certain purity to Ruby—something about her mind. That wasn’t entirely a good thing. Sure, she always seemed to have the right thing to say, always seemed to know how to make you feel a little hopeful against your better judgment, but she also always, always took on people’s troubles like they were her own. Those worries, those things that had nothing to do with her, weighed her down, made her forget herself.

Experience had made her a bit cynical, so there weren’t a lot of people who could convince Yang to feel like that. Ruby was one of them, of course. And she was sure that Blake would go on being one of them, as well, despite whatever disaster, whatever betrayal. Even now, she felt that those soundless tears, those veiled demons behind the eyes, those flashes of terror—she felt that all of it had been her own.

The radio played low as she sat in the parking lot of Port’s Diner, low enough that it was like somebody was whispering to her, just to her. Though Yang couldn’t quite make sense of the words. She turned the radio off and leaned her elbows against the steering wheel. 

An impatient rap came at her window. Yang caught a glimpse of white hair and a certain put-upon kind of scowl. She turned off the truck.

~

“I regret it,” Weiss said, glaring over a strawberry milkshake that was melting down the sides of the glass. “Saying that I gave a shit about your business. Can I take it back?” 

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Pyrrha said, rubbing small circles between Weiss’s shoulders—as if she was trying to soothe a very pissed-off Persian cat. They sat close to each other in the vinyl booth. Pyrrha looked across the table at Yang. “I think it’s refreshing. Yang never calls anyone for help. This must be serious.”

“If she’s even calling me now, she’s gotta be desperate.” Weiss huffed but seemed to de-bristle somewhat. She spun the metal spoon around in the extra milkshake tin. “By the way, Pyrrha’s too nice to say it, but she wants you to stop fucking sending money to Spring Hill.”

An uncomfortable silence settled between them as Yang struggled to come up with something to say back to that. She hadn’t even started to make up for what she’d done; that much seemed painfully obvious. And they expected her to just…what? Let it go, just like that? Despite what Weiss thought about Yang “punishing” herself, she was actually pretty sick of hating herself, sick of all the guilt in her head wearing her down like a river stone day after day. She wanted to find a way to be done with it. She wanted to feel like herself again, wanted somebody to tell her how.

Pyrrha smiled gently, as if sensing that Yang was at a loss. “Really, Yang,” she said, “you shouldn’t worry about it anymore, okay? Nobody blamed you—”

Weiss looked astounded. “Everybody blamed her.”

“I didn’t blame her,” Pyrrha went on, shooting Weiss a pointed look. “And neither did you, after you thought about it seriously. And Ruby never did, either.”

So that left…everybody else, Yang supposed. And Blake? What did she really think of it, that Yang had put people in the hospital protecting somebody who didn’t deserve it? That she’d lied to everyone until she couldn’t lie anymore? That Spring Hill had gone up in smoke because of her? Seeing Pyrrha again after so long had rattled her, put her on edge. Yang didn’t know what she’d been expecting, exactly. Anger, maybe, or suspicion—definitely not her complete forgiveness. Granted, this was Pyrrha she was talking about, but Yang still hadn’t been expecting it. Truth be told, she didn’t know what to do with it. 

Yang made shapes in the condensation with her straw and tried not to think about how it used to be different, how she hadn’t always been like this. She never used to hesitate so much, question herself so much. Before the whole mess with Raven, people used to think of Yang as the kind of girl anyone could depend on. Someone strong and steady. And it was frustrating, knowing that she’d just about lost every ounce of that faith. It was frustrating, not knowing herself at all. The one person she thought might’ve really known her like nobody ever had…

“Jesus, Yang.” Weiss snapped her fingers to draw her attention back. “You’ve been making that face this whole time. Seriously, what the hell’s wrong with you? Don’t tell me this is all because that girl ended up dumping you?”

Pyrrha elbowed Weiss in the arm and muttered, “A little tact, babe?” 

But Yang could only give a grim chuckle at that. Dumped. If only it was a matter of being dumped or some other high school shit like that. “Blake, she…” Pyrrha and Weiss stared at her intently, waiting for the elaboration. Oh, this was hard, wasn’t it? It was hard to put into words. Maybe it was because it felt too private, too just-between-them—like no one else would understand. Or maybe it was because Yang hadn’t yet sorted it all out in her head. She was scared to make sense of it, probably. She said, vaguely, “She’s not the person I thought she was, I guess.”

Yang expected Weiss to roll her eyes, tell her she was being melodramatic. But Weiss just looked at her steadily and said, “You know, I thought that about you, too.”

“Come again?”

“I swear, Yang, you can be so thickheaded sometimes.” Now she did roll her eyes. “I’m talking about back when we were together. That whole thing with Raven happened, and you were all over the news, and Spring Hill was gone, and—well, your dad even quit as police chief because of it—”

The last bit felt like Weiss had turned a nail in her. The nail had already been there, rusting away for three years, but saying that had twisted it. Just looking at Tai these days, at the shell of him, twisted it. “Weiss…”

Even Pyrrha seemed curious about where Weiss was going with this, looking poised to interject at any moment (though she didn’t). Weiss chewed her lip and went on, “The point is, I’d had the wrong idea about you the whole time and I was angry about that. Confused. But I…I never even tried to understand you after that.” The sudden glassiness in Weiss’s eyes, the sudden shining of tears, caught Yang off-guard. Of course, there was no way that Weiss would let them fall for real (it would ruin her image), but it was shocking nonetheless. Pyrrha took Weiss’s hand between both of her own and glanced across the table at Yang again. They exchanged a fond look—Weiss really had a way of showing her soft side that made it hard to meet without any softness of your own. 

Pyrrha sighed and bumped her shoulder into Weiss’s. “This girl you care about so much—I mean, she’s like you, right? You both have this complicated history. You’re both caught up in your own complicated truth. So much that it’s hard to see anything else.” She’s like you. Why did Yang want to cling onto that so badly? Believe it more than anything? “Listen, even if it hurts you, even if it’s not what you want to hear—you should hear her out, anyway. Weiss is right; you shouldn’t be so quick to give up on her.”

Yang crossed her ankle over her knee and peered into the lead-colored twilight through the stained window. The wet heat had followed her in. Even at this hour, the fans overhead, ancient as they were, couldn’t do much to keep the humidity at bay. It wasn’t so bad, though, the feeling. The over-awareness of her own skin. “Who says I’ve given up?”

“Ugh. I almost forgot that about you,” Weiss said, with a shrewd look. “That you’ve always been the kind of idiot who doesn’t know when to leave something alone, even when it’s for your own good. Someone who takes everything head on. This whole time, you’ve been itching to go see her, haven’t you? Despite everything?”

Head on. Yang brushed her fingers against the edge of her scar. Blake had trembled when she finally told Yang the truth. She’d trembled, but she’d said it anyway. That was what “head on” really meant, wasn’t it?

Sure, Blake had wronged her, had kept things from her, but wasn’t Yang the only one who wasn’t confronting it now that things between them had turned out like this? Wasn’t Yang the one who’d run away? There were things that still hadn’t been said, on Blake’s end of things and on Yang’s end. And Yang hadn’t even tried to get those truths out of her, hadn’t even tried to understand why Blake had looked like she would come apart at the seams if she said anything else.

“I’m not sure I’m that kind of idiot anymore, Weiss,” Yang said. “I’ve changed, I think.” 

Provoked, Weiss took up a laminated menu and whapped Yang over the head with it. Yang’s eyes went wide, and Pyrrha tried and failed to hide a smile behind her hand. “You haven’t changed,” Weiss said. She tossed the menu aside and collapsed back into the booth. “I mean, you’ve changed—we all have since then. But at the same time, you haven’t changed. Not really, not deep down.”

“Um, am I supposed to make sense of that?”

“I’m talking about your lost confidence, Yang,” Weiss snapped, jabbing a finger into Yang’s collarbone. “I’m talking about the fact that you think you don’t deserve anything good anymore. And you know what? It’s gotten real fucking old.”

Pyrrha shrugged as if to say, No helping it when Weiss decides to tell the truth. “You should try trusting yourself again,” she said, all gentleness where Weiss had been cutting precision.

Trusting herself, huh? Trusting her own heart—that seemed to be what Pyrrha was really saying, that Yang ought to finally let all the dead weight, let all those cruel voices and bad memories, slide off of her like oil. That she deserved the freedom of that. 

Weiss hopped out of the booth and slammed down money for the tip. “You’re footing the bill,” she said, her long ponytail falling over her shoulder.

“Oh, that’s right,” Yang said, with a slow grin, “I heard that Papa Schnee cut you off a little while ago.” Perfect timing—the server came around to set the bill at the edge of the table. Yang fanned herself with it and tutted sympathetically. “So this is basically charity work on my end, huh?”

Weiss gave an angelic smile and flipped her off.

Yang wondered if it was all really as simple as the two of them had made it out to be. It was hard for her to tell one emotion from another, like trying to tell object from shadow in a dark room. Not many people had hurt Yang like Blake had, in a way that felt like it had put a permanent crack in her. But when Blake had said I wanted it to be you, it was almost like Yang had been waiting for someone to say that to her all along. It was almost like healing.

~

She let herself wander a bit more. She drove down to the edge of Remnant just to see how the marshlands would shape-shift in the night, under the clouded moon. She let her mind wander, too—let it catch on the image of her sinking. In her head, she sunk down into the grass and the mud and lived there forever. That kind of solitude, where even the wind couldn’t shake you.

But the next moment she thought that it was inevitable that she’d be dragged out of it. It was, wasn’t it? Inevitable. It had already happened. Somebody had come around and dragged her out, washed her clean, set her under the moonlight.

She got home and the house was dark, save for the porch light. Ruby was definitely asleep; that kid could never stay up past ten. Between them, Yang had always been the night owl, the restless sleeper.

Batting away insects, she had nearly climbed the porch steps, had nearly reached the door, before her phone buzzed in her back pocket. Weiss, maybe, with some other lecture, a piece of advice she’d forgotten to give her. (You date one well-adjusted person and suddenly you think you’re Oprah fucking Winfrey, Yang thought.) But when Yang looked at the screen, she realized that it wasn’t Weiss who was calling her, or Pyrrha, or even Tai. It was Blake. The number that lit up the screen was Blake’s.

“…Hello?” Yang realized a second later that she was holding her breath.

“Yang,” Maria said, and her body went bloodless. “Get here as soon as you can.”

~

Blake needs you here. That was all the old woman had said before she’d hung up. No doubt she meant for Yang to come to Menagerie Manor, and that Blake was in some kind of trouble. That fact that Maria had called Yang, though, was the strange part. She couldn’t imagine what she could do for Blake that anyone else couldn’t. Blake needs you, she’d said. No, Yang couldn’t really imagine that at all—and she wouldn’t imagine it. There was nothing more self-sabotaging, after all, than imagining a specialness to somebody that just wasn’t there, or wishing someone thought of you differently.

But she went fifteen over the speed limit. The magnolia trees that lined the drive were ghostly under headlights, and they seemed to lurch toward her out of the dark. The manor as it came into a view looked less like a place you could live in and more like a shape cut out of the sky.

Yang crossed the veranda in two steps and rapped on the door. Maria was already waiting there for her. For once, Yang wasn’t greeted by any dry looks or remarks. Maria just looked up at her with small, grim eyes and gripped the head of her cane with both hands. Now that Yang was examining it more closely, she saw the skull shape carved into the wood—and the two, glittering moonstones.

“Maria, is Blake…? Yang felt as if she needed to catch her breath and couldn’t. She gripped the doorframe. “Is she alright? What happened?”

“She’s in the back,” Maria said, carefully. “She’s… You should know that right now she’s different from how you’ve seen her. I don’t want you to be shocked by it.”

Without elaborating on what she meant by that, Maria turned and led her in through the house, through the cool and empty quiet. This house was dark inside, as well, though its darkness was well-worn. Yang caught a flash of movement through the back screen door and nothing else. It hadn’t been an animal, or the wind moving the trees; that was just the feeling Yang got. She threw open the door—it struck the side of the house with a sharp bang—and peered into the shadows of the yard. 

Maria tilted her head, as if listening, and a shadow of her own seemed to swallow her expression. “It used to be every night. Two years ago, in the weeks after he died, this happened to her every night.”

“‘He’… Her fiancé, you mean?”

“Adam,” Maria said. Yang didn’t miss the way her voice changed. The way it seemed to brim with anger, how the name dripped from her mouth like a curse. Yang was no fool. By now, if she knew nothing else about him, she at least knew that he hadn’t been a good man. No one had to confirm that much for her with words. Blake had been confirming it even from the beginning, Yang realized—in every gesture, every word, every inaccessible expression she made when she thought she wasn’t being watched. Maria set her mouth in a bitter line. “After he died, Blake saw him every night, or she thought she did. In a reflection, or in the corner of an empty room. By the pond. She was hardly sleeping. Every time, she was so sure he was there. It was hard to convince her otherwise.” 

The pond—Yang felt a chill when she remembered Blake’s words: This was the place where it happened, you know. “And she saw him tonight,” Yang said. “She’s seeing him again.”

“In the past, I could always calm her down, bring her out of it, but…” Maria gestured to the back porch, and Yang saw the gleam of empty bottles that crowded the top step. “Tonight is different,” the old woman concluded. 

Yang staggered out into the humid night, scattering the bottles into the grass. She searched the break in the trees, what was visible of the path. “Why did you tell me to come here?” Outside was crowded with noise—warm, wet, and airless where the manor had been cold and dry and hollow. The back porch light was the only illumination. “Why was it me?”

In her peripheral vision, Maria rubbed a gleaming moonstone eye with her thumb. “Because she was calling for you.” 

Yang paused, her head still half-turned toward the house. “What? Blake was?”

“But not like she was looking for you,” the old woman said, lowering herself down onto the porch step. “Like she had already seen you in the distance and was trying to get your attention. She was calling for you like that.”

It made her heart ache, imagining Blake like that. She couldn’t have said why. Yang moved through the wet grass and found the sloping path that led down to the pond. She stepped carefully, scanning the darkness. The rain had made the muddy path and the rocks around the pond slicker than ice, and Yang struggled to find her footing.

She tried not to let guilt get ahold of her, make her lose her nerve, but she couldn’t help but think what might’ve happened if she’d only listened to Blake, if she hadn’t shut her eyes all of those times in the past. Blake had always had a way of telling her things without saying them. Everything about Jane Eyre and the mad wife—that had all been to make her understand things that were impossible to put any way else. But she hadn’t understood it. All Yang had done was kiss her and think of that as understanding, as closeness.

“Yang?”

She whirled, nearly losing her footing in the process, and saw Blake, who was swaying slightly and standing in the water. She was barefoot, in a black robe. And she was crying—almost as if she hadn’t stopped since Yang had left her. But there was something resigned about it now. These were the tears you cried over old wounds, Yang thought. Deep-seated wounds. These were the kind that used you up, emptied you out. Just like the stuff Blake had apparently been drinking (Yang had glimpsed the labels on the bottles earlier) was the kind that emptied you out. Drinking like that… It was obvious that she’d wanted to forget herself. The tears just meant she’d failed. 

Yang wanted to wrap Blake up in herself, desperately wanted to protect her from all of it. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? You couldn’t protect somebody from the ghosts in their head.

Her eyes were probably the thing that scared Yang most, though. There wasn’t any light in them. They looked hollow, like the real Blake was somewhere too far back in them to see. Blake gave a throaty, tired kind of laugh, still swaying. “Jesus. What are…what are you doing here? Look, I’m…kinda fucked up right now. This isn’t how I wanted you to see me.”

This isn’t how I wanted to see you, either. “That’s dangerous,” she said, stepping closer.

“Dangerous?” Blake wobbled slightly, looking like she didn’t understand. But then, she—either she moved deliberately or she lost her balance, but she stumbled deeper into the water. It came to her knees now. She lifted the hem of her robe to keep it from getting wet and glanced back at Yang. “I’m dangerous, you know.”

What was that, some kind of drunken come-on? Or the opposite, another warning to keep away. Yang felt herself getting frustrated. “Blake, come out of that. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“I’ve got my footing just fine, Yang,” she said, trailing her fingertips along the dark surface of the water. It was hard to see anything at all. The porch light could barely break in through the leaves. “If you’re worried I’ll fall and break my head open, don’t be. That’s impossible.”

Yang blinked, slowly. “Impossible…”

Blake smiled—well, it wasn’t a smile at all, really. It was purely a flash of teeth. “Impossible,” she said.

“So, the story about how…how he died…that was a lie, too. That never happened.” The pieces of it had begun to fall together, as if in slow-motion. But Yang wasn’t sure she was really prepared to see the picture they’d make. 

“That’s right. It was a lie.” Blake’s hand stilled on the water. Her voice sounded strange and painful, like it was coming out of the air, like it was tipping over the edge of something. Yang recognized it a second too late as the voice of someone without anything left to lose.

Blake spun around to face her. “I killed him. I fucking killed him, Yang,” she said, and her tears finally dried up.

Chapter Text

Yang felt that something in her would end up crushed. Her mind, her heart—just from the strain of taking everything in. Too many shocks had come to her in a short time, and Blake had a hold on her that made every revelation knife-sharp, lead-heavy. But it wasn’t like Yang could really blame her for anything.

The problem was that Yang had never felt like this before, this feeling that was half fever-dream and half quiet relief, half lost and half found. Kind of a mystical feeling. The only time she’d ever believed in anything mystical before had been in anticipation of some kind of divine retribution, but this was nothing like retribution. This was different, new, almost dizzyingly so. She knew now that it was possible to feel something like that for somebody before the week was through, before a day, in an instant, at the moment your eyes met, before then. It was possible. If someone had asked her just a little while ago, Yang wouldn’t have agreed that it was. But she’d been converted, and easily. Terrifyingly easily.

So terrifying was it, Yang again found herself waiting for the explanation. I killed him, Blake said, and all Yang could do was wait for Blake to go on. She wondered if that was the thing that made faith dangerous. 

Some sane part of her screamed at her that she had no goddamn idea what kind of woman Blake really was or what she was capable of. But the next moment Yang found herself saying, in a low, barely-contained voice that surprised her, “What did he do to you?”

Blake’s eyes went wide. “That…” For a moment, she looked almost sober. She'd started shivering, but Yang didn't think it was because she was cold. “It doesn’t matter, because I—Yang, didn’t you hear what I said…?” 

“I heard you.” Yang sucked a breath in and stepped down into the murky water. Fuck, it was cold. It was much colder than she’d expected it to be, and the bottom of the pond was muddy and uneven with rocks. “And I’m asking you what he did to you.” 

Unexpectedly, Blake’s body went still. She tipped her head back, looked up at the black sky. “The stars are spinning so much,” she mumbled, out of nowhere.

There weren’t any stars, of course. The night was overcast. “Blake—”

“And then what, after I tell you everything?” she interrupted, in a blunt voice. “Why do you care, Yang? Why should I tell you?”

Yang waded over to where she was and clasped her hand. Blake’s hand tightened around hers, as if she’d done it instinctively. “Because we’re strangers,” she said. “Because it’s easier to tell those things to a stranger.”

Another hollow laugh burst from her. Those golden eyes slid to hers, seemed to gain a little of their familiar luster. “I haven’t thought of you as a stranger even once.” 

The admission sent a complicated feeling through her. Like a tiny jolt of electricity, something that wasn’t pleasant or unpleasant. She still didn’t know why Blake had sought her out or what she really thought about her or even what she wanted from her. All Yang knew were her own damn feelings. “Yeah, I think it might be the same for me.”

Blake pulled her hand free and reached up, cradling Yang’s face between her palms. Her fingers were wet, still. They trembled slightly against her skin. “Oh,” she said, in almost a whisper, “you really deserved so much better than that.”

Deserved—past tense. Irreversible. It seemed to Yang that what she was really talking about now was something a little bit like fate. That what she was really saying was, How unlucky you are. How hopeless. 

Truthfully, that was the thing that Yang had wanted to say, that Blake probably deserved better than anything Yang could give her. But she bit them back; she knew, of course, that words like that were useless. Words like that only burrowed down deeper into hollow places. So she leaned into Blake’s touch and said, “It’s not about ‘deserve.’ You don’t have to think about those things anymore, okay? About what I deserve or about what you deserve. They’ve got nothing to do with us.”

The hands on her face fell to center of her chest, and Blake’s fingers twisted into the fabric of her shirt. This kind of pressure—Yang couldn’t tell if Blake was pushing her away or pulling her in. “‘Let’s be done with that?’” she echoed. 

Somebody giving her own words back to her was a little embarrassing. She looked away, clearing her throat. “That’s right. Let’s be done with it.”

“And what if I’m not as strong as you, Yang?” Blake stepped in close, burying her face against Yang’s neck. She smelled like rum and salt and wet grass and night. “It’s not as easy as that. As just…deciding. Not for someone like me.” 

Yang wrapped her arms around her—it felt a little bit like instinct for her, too. “I think you’re strong,” she said, into Blake’s hair.

“I—I’m not strong. I’m tired. I’m so fucking tired.” She pulled back and stared at Yang, blinking slowly like she was trying to focus on her features and couldn’t. “I think I want to go back now.”

“Okay, let’s go back, then.” Yang took in Blake’s unfocused expression and the way she seemed to be listing to one side. “Need help?”

“I’m fine.” She said that, but she didn’t give make any steps toward the house.

“Sure?”

“Yep. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

“You said that already.”

Yang probably knew better than anyone what kind of an expression I’m fine was, the kind of misery you could hide in those two words. She sighed and, without giving Blake time to protest, bent to lift her into her arms. Yang couldn’t help but notice that it was a surprisingly easy thing to do. There were things about Blake that were heavy—and those things in turn weighed heavy on Yang—but her body was…light. Like she really was a ghost, after all.

Blake gasped in surprise, her arms locking around Yang’s neck. “Wait, Yang. This way is too embarrassing.”

“You’re not sober enough to be making any demands,” Yang said, finding her way back up the dirt path.

Maria was still on the porch step, looking inscrutable, her cane laid aside. Well, maybe not totally inscrutable—there might’ve been a small note of relief there in her expression, in the steely pucker of her mouth.

Yang paused at the steps. “Her room?”

“Upstairs. Second on the right.” Maria stood and, uncharacteristically tender, brushed a few strands of Blake’s hair out of her face. When she spoke again, she spoke to Blake, sounding stern but also a little sad. “My dear, one of these days, you’re going to end up spent. You’re gonna use yourself up and wonder why you never let anyone help you.”

Blake chuckled softly. “At this rate, I’ll use everyone else up, too.” She closed her eyes, her head lolling against Yang’s shoulder. “There isn’t gonna be anyone left.”

Yang shifted Blake in her arms. Moths were darting about everywhere, throwing themselves against the porch light, going in circles inside of the yellow glow. “I’ll get her cleaned up. Put her to bed,” Yang said.

“Much appreciated.” Maria patted Yang’s shoulder and stepped to the side. “Take care of that girl. She’s tough as hell, but she’s…she’s fragile, too, you know.”

“I know.”

In some ways, finding her way up the winding staircase in the dark was harder than finding her way through the trees had been. It was hard to judge the distance, to know where it all ended, or if.

The hallway upstairs was dead quiet. It seemed like no part of the house had any feature she could pick out among the rest, and everywhere she went was scentless. It was a blank place, the opposite of the person who lived in it. Yang fumbled with the door to Blake’s room, stepping through and finding the light switch.

The look of Blake’s bedroom was both surprising and not surprising. It was sparse, but scattered here and there were marks of personality, almost as if she’d moved in only a short while ago—as if she’d only just started making the place her own. Yang gently deposited Blake at the foot of the bed, and Blake fell backwards, splaying her arms out across the dark purple comforter.

“I’ll get some towels,” Yang said, appraising the smears of mud on Blake’s legs, the bits of grass still stuck to her skin.

There were books everywhere around her room, of course, stacked a little precariously, but they didn’t look like the kind of books that were collecting dust on the shelves downstairs. Sure, there were a few classics Yang could pick out, and a few poetry collections and Shakespeare editions, but there were also a lot of cheesy-looking romance novels. Pop fiction. Shounen manga. A few books on gardening. All kinds of things. And, guarding them: colorful origami figures. Tiny animal shapes, mostly. For some reason, the thought of Blake carefully folding all those edges, quietly focused on getting the creases and shapes just right, made Yang smile. She stooped to pick up an origami dragon made out of orange, patterned paper.

“Don’t crumple her,” Blake slurred from across the room. “She took me forever.”

Still smiling—but still dazed, still mixed-up in her thoughts—she put the dragon back where she found it. “I won’t.”

~

Down the hall, Yang found hand towels in the bathroom drawers. She put one under the sink faucet and soaked it in warm water. When she came back into the room with the towels, Blake hadn’t moved. She just stared up at the ceiling without any kind of expression at all.

“Blake?” Yang crouched down at the foot of the bed and touched Blake’s wrist. “Hey, you feeling alright?”

She lifted her arm away, rested the back of her hand against her eyes. “I didn’t want to die, Yang.”

At first, Yang didn’t even register that there had been any shift in the conversation. “What?”

“I didn’t…I…” Blake sounded like she was swallowing something small and sharp like an animal bone, like it pained her just to speak. “He was really gonna kill me, Yang. He was really going to do it, and so I—”

So I killed him. But she couldn’t get those words out. All of this was so heavy, Yang thought. Too much for one person to keep inside themselves. Honestly, she wasn’t sure how Blake could stand that heaviness, day after day, how she could walk around with it, sleep with it at night in her head, in her dreams. And no one knew it. Everyone looked at her and saw a version that they could stomach, somebody cold-blooded, easy to blame. Their own woman in black.

“That bastard,” Yang spat, under her breath. She could’ve killed him right then, too. He was dead, but what she wouldn’t give to bury the piece of shit a second time. It took her a second to clear her own head of it—to stop her hands from shaking. She was more than familiar with anger, of course, righteous or otherwise. But this was dangerous, wasn’t it? This was a feeling that could warp you if you gave yourself over to it.

She helped Blake sit up on the bed and smoothed her hair, let tenderness fill her, instead. “Look, Blake, what I said before—you don’t have to tell me, okay? Don’t feel like you have to tell me.”

She knew enough, after all. About what had happened the night Adam had died. She had enough of the pieces now, all she needed. Well, even if she knew nothing at all, it was hard to say whether she could be convinced to doubt Blake even then, to stay away even then.

But Blake was feverishly shaking her head. “No, I have to, I have to say it—I need you to know it. I don’t want you to think that I wanted to…to do that. I never wanted to have to do that—”

“Blake,” Yang murmured, pulling her into her arms, “I know you didn’t want to. It’s alright. I know you didn’t.” It almost felt like Blake was sliding apart into pieces right in front of her. She was sliding apart, and Yang had to hold those parts of her together somehow. She didn’t know if it was something you could stop.

Blake wasn’t crying, but everything about her in that moment, her voice and her movements, her white-knuckled hands on the comforter, made Yang feel like crying, herself.

A long moment passed—it was hard to say exactly how much time—where they didn’t do anything else. Eventually, Yang disentangled herself, propping Blake’s leg up on her knee. She tried to smile. “Let’s clean you up, alright? And then…get you to sleep. If you can, you should try to sleep.” 

Blake was unexpectedly docile as Yang knelt in front of her and wiped her legs with the towels. She breathed slowly as she watched her, putting a hand on Yang’s shoulder as if to steady herself. There was something terribly intimate about it, about caring for somebody else like this—though it was an intimacy without any kind of suggestiveness or expectation to it at all. It was just…taking care of someone in the purest sense. They, themselves, weren’t pure, weren’t clean (and who was who had been through what they’d been through?) but in some way they could absolve each other. In some way, the feeling between them was cleaner than anything. But maybe Yang was the only one who felt like that.

Yang toweled her dry and helped her under the covers. She turned off the light and sat with her in the dark. Obviously, there was no way she’d think about sleeping in the bed, too, but she couldn’t help but feel worried about Blake, still. So she sat on the floor beside the bed, unlacing her boots and setting them aside. Under her breath, she hummed a made-up melody she used to sing to Ruby when they were kids.

But that was for when Ruby had been sick. In Blake’s case…well, it wasn’t like it was something she could just sleep off like a bad cold.

After a moment, Blake’s arms silently slid around her. She laid her forehead down on Yang’s shoulder. “I didn’t know you could sing,” she said, slightly muffled. “That’s a new thing I just learned about you. No offense, but you didn't strike me as the kind of person who could hold a tune.”

Yang chuckled. “None taken, I guess. Do you sing?”

“No, but I took piano lessons when I was a kid. I used to be pretty good.”

“What made you stop playing?”

“He didn’t like the noise.”

“Oh.” It felt kind of stupid to say, just oh. She fumbled to find something else. “He…well, he doesn’t get a say anymore. In your life, in the things you wanna do. He never did.”

“Yeah…” Blake’s arms tightened around her. She didn’t want to talk about Adam anymore, at least not tonight. Yang could sense that much. “Tell me something else,” she whispered.

“Something else?”

“About yourself.”

There were trivial things she could’ve told Blake, things like her favorite color or the music she liked or the kinds of foods she’d always hated. Blake, though—in that moment, the things she wanted to hear were the things Yang hadn’t ever talked about seriously with anybody. Not even Ruby. Especially not Tai. Whether she knew it or not, Blake wanted to hear about the hurt. Some part of Yang hoped, though, that she wouldn’t remember any of it in the morning.

“You know, Ruby is…” She sucked in her upper lip. “Uh, Ruby’s my half-sister, actually. I mean, that doesn’t make a goddamn difference to either of us, but…yeah, our moms are different. Her mom, Summer, died when we were both little. It feels kinda weird to put it like that, though. Ruby was too young to even remember her, so…”

“So she was your mom, too, you mean.” The certainty Blake said that with was kind of touching. “You have memories of her. Good memories.”

“Yeah.” She smiled despite herself. “Good memories.”

Blake lifted her head and Yang felt her eyes, felt them fix steadily on her face. “And Raven? Oh—sorry, you don’t have to talk about her if you don’t want to.” 

“No, it’s fine.” Surprisingly, it wasfine. Surprisingly, Yang wanted to tell Blake all of it. She didn’t want to leave anything out. “If you saw the news, I guess you already know a little about it, about my birth mom. How she got herself in some deep shit and came to me for help.” She picked at her fingernail, feeling, even three years after the fact, that old prickle of anger about all of it. “Which is really fucking funny, because she, uh, left me when I was an infant, so.”

Wordlessly, Blake reached down and took one of Yang’s hands, pressing it between both of her own.

“What’s funnier…what’s funnier is I actually helped her. I actually did it. I knew enough about what kind of person she was—I mean, I knew she was a bad person. She’d done a lot of shady shit, apparently. People had gotten hurt because of her. Even at the time, I knew about some of that, but I still… She wanted to lay low somewhere, and Spring Hill had an extra storage room nobody went in but me, so I helped her.”

“Why?” Her voice was clear of any contempt or judgment at all. She asked it because she sensed what it was that Yang really wanted to say to her, to explain to her.

“Because I…I was stupid, you know? I was so stupid, I thought…” Dammit, she couldn’t help it now. Her vision blurred, and hot, angry tears brimmed over. She swiped at her eyes with her free hand. “Fuck, I wanted to fix things so bad. When I was a kid, I’d go looking for her. I was obsessed with that, and it got to a point where it was really unhealthy. I thought that if she could just see me, if she could just get to know me, she would regret what she did. I seriously thought that.”

“You did it because you loved her,” Blake said. “You thought you had to be loyal to her.”

“I…” Because you loved her, she’d said. What kind of excuse was that? What kind of love was that, where you didn’t care what happened because of it? Where you became a person you hated because of it? 

“And you weren’t stupid,” Blake said, more forcefully. She slid out from under the covers and settled on the floor beside Yang. She never let go of Yang’s hand. “You were vulnerable. You were taken advantage of.”

Yang still couldn’t say anything back. A second ago, she’d been so set on getting all the truth out of her, but when it came down to actually doing it, it seemed impossible. And Blake could see that, and Yang could see just how plainly Blake could see it.

Blake wiped the wetness from Yang’s cheek with an unsteady thumb. “Oh no. We’re bad at this,” she said.

“Well, it’s hard,” Yang said, running a hand through her hair. What time was it? She felt so tired. 

“Yeah, it’s hard. The two of us have been through stuff that’s…hard.” Blake paused, frowned. “I’m sobering up a little, I think.”

Yang quirked a smile. “You just realized?”

Blake returned the smile only for a second, and then her face fell like she was thinking about something else, something sad. She let go of Yang’s hand and leaned back against the side of the bed, stared up at the shadows on the ceiling. “I thought you’d be scared,” she said.

“Of you?”

“…Yeah.” 

Maybe her own feelings—about Blake, the feelings she just couldn’t help, the feelings that had grown wild—scared her a little from time to time, but Blake herself? “I’m not scared of you,” Yang said. “I’m scarier, probably. You should—”

“I know what ‘scary’ looks like, Yang.” Blake’s throat moved noticeably. “And you’re not. I’m not scared when I’m with you.”

And that was the last thing that Yang would’ve wanted, for Blake to feel like she wasn’t safe around her, to think that Yang would ever, ever… But some part of her deep down, some ugly part of her, felt like an imposter. “Raven’s still out there somewhere, you know. She got away because I helped her get away. A shitty person like that…she’s not in jail right now because of me.”

Blake got up and kneeled in front of Yang, folding her hands in her lap. She met her gaze. “Okay.”

Okay? Was that all she had to say about it? “I…I fucking broke that guy’s leg. Mercury Black, a cop. He worked for my dad. It wasn’t on purpose, but…yeah, I tackled him. He would’ve shot her if I didn’t do anything. He might’ve killed her.”

“Okay,” she said. “What else?”

Head-on. Yang remembered that all of a sudden, looking at her. “And the fire…apparently, some electrical stuff got fucked up and it…” She clenched her jaw, bit down on the words. No, that wasn’t right, was it? Yang knew already that Blake wanted the truth, even if it was uglier than what she’d been imagining. “Well, that’s the story, anyway. But you know what? I’m pretty sure Raven started that fire. Her plan from the beginning probably was to cause a commotion and slip out. It was heartless, but it was…smart, I guess.”

In the darkness, Blake’s eyes went wide and then turned hard like glass. Yang didn’t know if she was horrorstruck or something else. Was it anger? Was Blake angry for her? Something about that seemed like too much to ask. “She did that? Even though you were still inside?”

“Well, that was her ‘rule.’ I was either strong enough to make it out of that, or I wasn’t. Which I guess is just a really selfish way of looking at the world.”

“Jesus…” she whispered. Yang felt the brush of Blake’s fingertips on her bicep. “And this scar? You were shot?”

“What? Oh, yeah, I was.” She gripped her forearm to keep her hand from trembling, digging her nails in. “I…actually can’t remember the moment exactly. I just know it happened after the fire started—probably when I attacked that guy. I passed out after that. When I woke up I was handcuffed to a hospital bed.” Mostly, what Yang remembered was the milk-colored wall with the vertical crack in it. She remembered being cold and hot at the same time, and in so much pain she could die. She remembered that no one she knew was there with her in the room, just nurses and assigned guards. People without faces. In her fog, that’s how it had seemed to her. 

“So,” Blake said, after a moment, “that’s the story.”

“That’s all of it that I can put into words right now, I guess.” There were other parts to it. There were gaps. Yang had left out what it was like, seeing Raven for the first time, talking to her for the first time. How strange it felt, noticing little habits of hers that were just like her own—and how terrifying. She had left out what it had been like to feel needed by the person who had never wanted her. But maybe those things were for another day.

Blake leaned forward, pressing her lips to the spot above Yang’s brow. Yang blinked, unsure of how to react. When was the last time, she wondered? That somebody had kissed her forehead like that? When was it? Blake put her arms around her. Yang found her cheek pressed against her shoulder, realized Blake was cupping the back of her neck, threading her fingers into Yang’s hair. Something had changed without her noticing. Now she was the one sliding apart, the one who needed to be propped upright, held together.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Blake murmured. Her voice was always so nice, so soothing to listen to; that was all Yang could think about in that moment. “You’ve been hating yourself because you’ve been told to, or because you think you have to. You’ve been thinking too much about everyone else.”

“…Lately, it feels like I’ve just been thinking about myself.”

“No, you’ve been thinking about the person everybody else made up.” It was strange, how immediate those words were. Or maybe it wasn’t so strange. “That’s someone who’s convenient for them. She’s not you, though. There’s no way she’s you.”

Yang opened her mouth to deny the rest of it, but stopped herself. Because she had heard it in Blake’s voice just then. She had sounded, in that moment, like the person she was trying to reassure more than anyone else of those things was herself. They were words Blake had always, always wanted someone to say to her. But there had been no one. 

So Yang didn’t feel like denying those things anymore. She returned Blake’s embrace and tried to believe them.

~

Yang didn’t remember falling asleep, but when she opened her eyes again, the room was light and the air smelled like smoke. And Blake wasn’t there.

She sprang to her feet and immediately regretted it—sleeping on the floor like that hadn’t exactly been refreshing, to say the least. Her body felt sore and stiff, like she was one, big creaky hinge. The smoke-smell in the air was faint, but it was definitely still there. Yang grabbed her boots from the foot of the bed and rushed downstairs, not even bothering to lace them.

There was a commotion in the adjoining room, followed by a muffled shout. She stepped around the corner, feeling her gut tense up.

“Shit—” Blake coughed and slid a skillet off the stove burner. The pan was filled with a gray and unrecognizable lump. (So the burning smell was…) Sensing Yang, she spun around, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She tried to look casual. “Oh, you’re up.”

Though she knew there wasn’t a reason for it, Yang couldn’t help but feel it, that immediate twinge of shame. After all, she’d ended up spilling her guts to this girl just a few hours earlier, in a way she hadn’t done with anyone else. But Blake wasn’t looking at her any differently. Blake looked…well, she looked a little pale, a little rumpled, but those were definitely the effects of what had to be a pretty formidable hangover.

And, somehow, she looked cute, offensively cute. Attractive in the most classic and effortless sense. Her hair was up, though loosely—pieces of it had escaped, and turned silver in the light from the window. She’d changed into shorts and a gray tank top, and Yang couldn’t stop tracing with her eyes the slender shapes of her arms. Looking at her from across the kitchen, Yang felt warm. Lame as it sounded, when she looked at her…her heart glowed.

“Yep, I’m up. Thought the house was on fire,” Yang said, trying to peer around Blake at what had most likely been a scrambled egg. 

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Only if you mean it.”

Blake blinked and put the dish towel aside like she didn’t know how to reply to that. “I forgot the oil,” she said, after a beat. “It’s been a while, you know, since anyone’s been around to cook for.”

“The thought was…nice,” Yang said, sitting at the kitchen counter stool. “I mean, no way in hell you could get me to eat that, but I’m touched, you know?”

Blake leaned her elbows on the counter, her head sagging. “At least the coffee turned out okay. These are desperate times.”

“Speaking of,”—Yang smiled sweetly—“how is that hangover treating you this morning?”

“It’s bad. It’s bad, but…” She tilted her head, peering up at Yang. “I’m used to it, I guess.”

Suddenly, things weren’t as playful as they had been. Suddenly, Yang could see right through her, right into all the rusted parts and dark places. She laid her hand down over Blake’s. Maybe she could make Blake feel as she had when Blake had wordlessly pressed Yang’s palm between her own—a feeling of relief like nothing else before it. Maybe Yang could give her that, too.

“Right.” Blake let out a breath and turned her hand over beneath Yang’s, her fingers curling gently. “I guess it’s my turn.”

Chapter Text

“It’s hard to know where to start.” Lightly, with her thumb, Blake tapped the back of Yang’s hand, back and forth over each knuckle like she was counting. Or like she was keeping time. Now that Yang thought about it, the other day, Blake had tapped the window just like this when she told Yang that some part of her was always scared. Maybe that was just something she did, in situations like this. She set the tempo, tried to breathe.

“Or how,” she added softly, her gaze falling to the side.

It was hard for Yang, too, watching her make that kind of face. It was like Blake was underwater, like she didn’t know which way to swim to get to the surface. Well, the opposite had been worse: watching her retreat into herself, keep everything in that dark room in her head without ever looking at it, watching her swallow down emotions like bitter pills.

Yang already felt lighter just for having said those things out loud. More than anything, she wanted Blake to feel lighter, too. But she didn’t want to force any of those demons out of her. She knew that the only way you could really shake them out of you was to grab ahold of them yourself. And even then, the impressions of them, the shape of the scars, stayed.

“Blake,” Yang said, rising from the chair, “take all the time you need. I’ll be here.”

Blake continued to cling onto Yang’s hand as she stood but the next moment seemed to realize she was doing it. She dropped it right away, like she was ashamed. “You don’t have to stay,” she said. “You’ve been too good to me already. I don’t even know what to do with it.”

“I want to. Uh, to stay. If that’s alright with you. And I plan on being pretty damn good to you in the future, too, so…” Yang trailed off. The future. Was she assuming too much, wishing for something like that? Well, ‘future’ could mean anything. It could mean next week. It could mean ten years from now. She stubbornly went on with the thought, trying to ignore the prickle of Blake’s stare on her, “So—so you should probably get used to that.”

After all, nobody had told Blake to sit and listen to all the things Yang had let slip last night, to put her arms around her, all gentleness (but strong, too, like oak limbs), to reassure her like she had, to take her side. And nobody had to tell Yang, either. She’d meant it, the thought from the other day—she wanted to be someone who could make Blake feel the opposite of burdened.

She cleared her throat, flipping the lump of failed breakfast into the trash. “How do you like your eggs?”

“I…” Blake stared at her, looking frustrated, worrying the inside of her cheek like she wanted to argue over it. In the end, though, she couldn’t keep her guard up, and let the tension seep out of her. “I don’t,” she said, with a reluctant smile.

~

Blake wasn’t really a fan of breakfast, but she could settle for pancakes if they were topped with butter and sugar. And she wasn’t much of a coffee-drinker, either (she made an exception for hangovers) but she liked tea. All kinds of teas, but mostly herbal teas. Lavender chamomile. Hibiscus and rosehip. If the garden ever came back, Blake wanted to dry some things out and try making her own.

Yang nodded her head as she listened, pleased by every bit of new information, no matter how small it was. Just having Blake open up to her was satisfying in itself, of course, but some part of her felt like she was making up for lost time, like they should’ve known each other a long time ago, like Blake’s burdens should’ve been halved. Yang couldn’t make sense of those feelings.

“What was that all about, though?” she asked, settling into the chair at the kitchen table. Her knee bumped Blake’s. “Earlier, I mean. Suddenly in the mood for scrambled eggs, after all?”

Blake twirled a fork between her fingers. “No, I think I just wanted to do something for you. You know, to make up for all the trouble I caused you last night. I thought eggs would be easy enough, but…I guess I was a little off on that.” For a moment, she looked a little dejected. Though she seemed to perk up when she took a bite of the pancakes, her tongue flicking out to catch the bit of sugar at the corner of her mouth. “Fuck, these are amazing. How are you good at everything?”

“What can I say? I’m sensational.” Blake rolled her eyes as Yang grinned at her over the rim of her coffee mug. There was still some lingering uneasiness in Blake’s face that made Yang feel a bit awkward, herself. “Look, as far as ‘making up’ for things goes, don’t worry about that, okay? No one should have to feel guilty for leaning on a friend from time to time.”

“A friend,” Blake repeated, setting her fork down. Her smile turned suddenly coy. “I’ll admit, I’m not really used to those. Do friends, um…usually do what we did yesterday?”

The shift in the conversation caught her off-balance. Right away, she felt heat in her face, her neck. “That kiss, you mean.”

“So I guess we do have a lot of things to talk about,” Blake observed.

“Pretty low on the list, if you ask me.”

“Oh? So it wasn’t that memorable for you?”

Blake on the offensive was bad for her head and health, Yang decided. “…Not what I meant.” 

She seemed to see her opportunity, leaning forward on her elbows, eyes glinting. “So it was memorable.” 

Maybe they were avoiding it now. Maybe what they were doing now (even if this was just a tiny, pristine piece out of the morning) was putting off the things that would hurt, that would tear them open. But, caught up in the moment, Yang didn’t feel like she was avoiding anything. She felt honest, felt right. She found herself bridging the distance, leaning across the table, as well. “Well, I could stand to have my memory jogged,” she murmured.

“Oh, could you?” Blake replied, with an incredulous crook of her brow, but she was already closing her eyes as she said it, already pressing her mouth softly to Yang’s.

This was another kind of kiss. Where the first had been insistent and half-starved, even a little bit wild, this one was serene, earnest—all the light of a fire, but only half the heat. And it was nice. It was as if, after three years of only thorns and bitter roots, some hex had lifted from her. She had to figure that this new feeling was thanks to Blake. Both of them were surrounded by—no, they were suffocated by, hounded by—things that were hard and cruel and unfair. But sometimes it seemed like this gentle, mysterious, old-new feeling between them was the only thing there was, and the only thing that mattered. And no one else would understand it. No one else had to, and maybe Yang didn’t understand it, either. Not yet, not completely. But it was just as Blake had said: That’s not a bad thought, either.

Blake’s palm was warm against her jaw. Her fingers curled around the back of Yang’s neck, sank into the heavy gold of her hair—tugged slightly, only slightly. Yang’s own hand had settled low on Blake’s waist, close to her hipbone. The material of her tank top was thin. Yang could feel, faintly, some raised bit of skin beneath it, a shape like a closed eye. Like a wound. 

It was immediate. Yang came down from that high place, from the warm and shining place she was in; the room faded back into its dark, dull colors. She pulled back and saw something reluctant in Blake’s face, saw the silent recognition of Yang’s silent question.

Blake caught her breath, her hands slowly falling to the table, gathering into fists against the dark wood. “It’s ugly.”

So don’t look, she seemed to be saying. “The memories, maybe—your memories of getting it. Those are ugly. But you? Any part of you?” Yang let her hand drop to rest on Blake’s thigh. “Yeah, that’s impossible.”

“But there are parts of me you haven’t seen yet, things I haven’t told you yet. You already know that. You know that and you’re still—” Yang could see that the frustration was quickly coming back into her. There’d been something else on her mind, something she’d been meaning and wanting to say all morning. Yang had seen the signs of it ever since she’d told Blake that she wanted to stay. 

But Blake couldn’t seem to be able to meet her eyes. “How’re your shoes, Yang?”

“My shoes?” The laces were still undone, of course. But Yang had no idea Blake was trying to get at.

“Still damp on the inside?” she asked. “Or did you not notice they were wet to begin with?”

“Blake, why are you going on about—?” 

She stood up suddenly, like she couldn’t stand to be in the room anymore. But she froze in place, gripped the back of the chair like it was the handle on a shield. “I remember all of it, you know,” Blake said. She spoke in a low, brittle-sounding voice. “Every part of it. How you came right away when Maria called you. You didn’t ask a thing, you just came. You carried me the whole way back, cleaned me up, put me to bed. And the whole time you didn’t even notice how your own shoes were wet. You—you fucking tracked mud all up the stairs, you know that?”

Yang wanted to reach for Blake’s hand but didn’t. “Oh, um, I’m sorry about that.”

“I don’t want you to be sorry,” she said. “I’m saying you should think about yourself more.”

“Myself…?” In her head, Yang heard the echo of the words Blake had said to Maria the night before, how she’d use everyone up, how there wouldn’t be anyone left. But Yang wasn’t someone who could be scared away so easily. “Honestly, Blake, most days? I hardly even know who the fuck that is. But I… Look, I know it doesn’t make any sense, but the more time I spend with you, the more I think I do know myself. Or—or I’m starting to.”

“Christ, Yang, isn’t that the problem?” Her face was ashen. “You’re just that kind of person. It’s like you don’t know who you are if you can’t…take care of somebody. Fix somebody. You never leave anything for yourself. And I’m the opposite. I can’t help being selfish.”

Yang stood now, too. Blake was barefoot, so the sudden extra height Yang had on her was enough to make both of them pause. Well, now that Blake had mentioned it, Yang really did notice the lingering dampness in the soles of her boots. “You ever stop to think that you should take your own advice?” she asked. “That the person you think you are is convenient for somebody else?” 

But now Yang was the one who found it hard to raise her eyes, even having said all that. Blake’s words from just then wouldn’t stop needling her: You don’t know who you are if you can’t fix somebody. Yang had accused Blake of the same thing just the other day, hadn’t she? Of trying to “fix” her, of treating her like someone to be pitied, someone who couldn’t even help herself. She still didn’t know why Blake had sought her out to begin with, and not knowing was terrifying. The last thing Yang wanted was to find out that she’d been right, after all. Or worse, that Blake was the one who was right. This—whatever it was that was between them now—had to mean more than that, than something as half-hearted as pity. It just had to.

“I’ve been up all morning, you know,” Blake said, after a beat. “I don’t know why, but I woke up a little after sunrise and couldn’t really get back to sleep. I looked over and…and you were still there. Some part of me thought I’d imagined all of it, I guess, so I was…surprised.”

Yang felt herself soften. “You shouldn’t have been.”

“I know.” Blake took an uneven breath inward. “That’s not who you are. It's not the kind of person you are.”

“But…” Oh, that face she was making. That face said all of it. Probably more than Blake knew. “You think you’re that kind of person.”

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to. Yang understood her meaning just fine. She could imagine it, Blake stirring awake at dawn, sober, finally alone again with her thoughts. And her first thought had been about disappearing. Running. She’d been scared. She hadn’t slept because her mind was flooded with it, was waterlogged, was reeling end over end with fear and guilt. And why did she still have to be afraid even now, Yang wondered? Yang imagined she had done everything she could’ve not to give Blake any new reasons. But maybe that was just the way it had always been for her, before. Maybe that was just the way she’d survived.

“You’re still here, too,” Yang said at last. In a lot of ways, Blake was still here.

She was shaking her head. “I really wanted to just go somewhere, somewhere else. Somewhere I wouldn’t see you and where you wouldn’t have to see me. That’s all I’ve been thinking about since yesterday, when I admitted all of that to you. When I…hurt you like that.”

“But Blake, you stayed. You didn’t run.”

Blake pressed her mouth into a line. “No, I did. In a sense, I did. In the same way I’ve always done it.”

Yang thought back to the sight of the empty bottles lining the porch step, shining like eyes in the dark. Not exactly an unfamiliar sight. Her Uncle Qrow had been in that very same trench just a few years ago, and doing the work of dragging himself out of it had been…pretty damn harrowing. For him, for everyone. And it was hard to learn that you couldn’t live somebody else’s life for him. You couldn’t set his thoughts right for him, couldn’t force someone to treat himself better, like himself better. Yang didn’t think her heart had room to break any more than it had. But Blake had a way of proving her wrong—sometimes in good ways. Sometimes not.

“Irresponsible, right?” Blake gave a grim smile, but something about her seemed unsteady. Or unstable. Like she’d turn to vapor, become just an outline of herself, at any moment. “God, what you must be thinking about me right now—”

Yang took a slow step toward Blake, and then put her arms around her, light enough so that Blake could shake out of it if she wanted to. But she didn’t. Unexpectedly, she settled deeper into Yang’s arms, tightly hugging her waist. Yang rested her cheek on Blake’s hair. “I was just thinking that I wanted to hold you. That’s it,” she murmured. 

“I don’t want you to,” Blake said, her voice almost inaudible against the hollow of Yang’s shoulder. She said that, but she clutched even tighter. Yang thought that maybe what she meant was, I don’t want you to hold me, I want you to hate me.

Which was something Yang just couldn’t do for her.

“Well, sorry about that,” she said, letting her arms fall. But with her palm, she cradled the back of Blake’s head. “Look, it’s a clear day out. Let’s get out of the house. The sunshine’ll do you good.”

Blake didn't answer.

~

“‘Danger,’” Yang said, gravely. 

“Shut up, it does not.”

“No, I’m serious. Rhododendron means ‘danger.’ Flowers have a language, and each of them has its own meaning. Sometimes more than one.” Another distraction, of course, from what Blake really wanted to talk about, or from what they ought to be talking about, but it seemed like she needed one. For now, Yang would indulge her. She wouldn’t force anything. (Or maybe it was just that she couldn’t stand to see that deep hurt darkening Blake’s expression anymore.) “It’s pretty interesting, actually. Honey made from rhododendron pollen is kinda poisonous. Like, it knocks you the fuck out if you eat enough of it.”

They crouched beside each other in the grass like kids. Blake leaned back on her haunches, frowning. “Damn. I have a soft spot for them, actually. There’s this huge rhododendron bush in the yard behind my parents’ house—it’s been there longer than I can even remember. And it has this roomy part in the middle of it, so, when I was a kid, I’d always hide there whenever I got in trouble.” 

Yang nudged Blake’s shoulder with her own. “Knowing you, you probably hid there a lot.”

“‘Knowing me?’ Since when, asshole?” But she laughed and shoved Yang away. “Still, you’re not wrong. I used to be…a bit of a troublemaker, I guess. I didn’t used to be so obedient.” 

“Obedient. Right.” Yang chuckled. “So says the girl who's finally bullied me into letting her help with the garden.”

“Oh, I bullied you, did I?” She tapped the point of the spade against her chin. “And here I thought all I did was bat my little doe eyes at you.”

Well, Blake’s version was closer to the truth. Not that Yang would confess to it. She turned and pretended to study the flowers again for damage spots. She rubbed a broad, slightly leathery sunflower leaf between two gloved fingers and thought how glad she was that nothing had wilted any after a night shut up in the shed.

“That makes a good picture,” Blake said. Yang spun back to shoot her a quizzical look. Blake, seeming to realize what she’d said, blinked and turned a shade pinker. “Ah, I just mean…you look right at home.”

“What, surrounded by flowers?”

“Yeah. You always have.”

Always, she’d said. Was that a mistake or an admission? “Blake…” Yang stuck her own spade into the earth and fell back into the tall, still-damp grass. It was even hotter today than it had been yesterday, so the cool brush of the grass on her legs was a welcome feeling. She motioned for Blake to do the same. Blake seemed to have caught the change in Yang’s voice, so she sat down just a little too far away and pulled her knees up to her chest. Yang watched her, rubbing the back of her neck. “What did you mean yesterday? When you said meeting each other wasn’t a coincidence? That’s the one thing I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.”

Blake was looking down, fiddling with two blades of grass—it looked to Yang like she was trying to tie them together. But when she pulled the knot tight, the blade snapped. “Spring Hill’s not far from here, from the manor,” Blake said, letting the pieces of grass fall out of her palm. “You ever notice that?”

“Yeah…yeah, I did.” All around them, the cries of the crickets were close and loud, nearly loud enough to drown out Yang’s own thoughts. “So what are you saying? That you’ve known about Spring Hill?”

The day was Carolina blue and windless, with an unpleasant but not unexpected wet heat still hanging in the air. Directly under the noon sun, Blake seemed to refract the light like a diamond. She pursed her lips. “I’m saying the first time I saw you, it was there. At Spring Hill.”

Yang pressed her fingers through the grass, down into the damp earth. “Blake, that doesn’t make any sense. The last time I was anywhere near Spring Hill was—”

“Three years ago. I know.”

“Oh…”Blake’s face didn’t change, but something in the air did. Yang sat forward, her eyes going wide. “Oh.” 

“I…I don’t even know how to explain it to you right,” Blake said. The circle of her clasped arms tightened around her legs. “You’ll probably just end up thinking I’m creepy, or something.”

“I won’t think that,” Yang said, automatically.

Her eyebrows lifted uncertainly, but she went on, “You already know this, but I was in a pretty bad place a couple years ago. It’s still hard for me to go into detail about it, but I…I wasn’t being treated well. I’d gotten engaged to a guy I’d known since I was a kid, and it wasn’t long before he convinced me to move in with him. He was older, outspoken. He came from a pretty influential family. I used to think he was so passionate—like he was the most interesting person I knew. But that was just what he wanted me to think about him. I came to understand that too late.”

The gnawing tension visible in her hands, in the shape of her spine, was enough to make Yang get to her feet and sit beside her. Though she’d left a comfortable space between them, Yang wanted Blake to know that she was there. There in the way that Blake had kissed her forehead, or the way that Blake had pressed Yang’s hand between both of her own.

“The garden…the garden was something I thought could really help me, you know? I thought that it would fix everything, if I could just have one thing in my life I could control. But…I guess you’ve seen my black thumb, right? It’s pretty sad.”

Well, it was sad. But not quite in the way Blake was thinking. “You’re more capable than you think,” Yang said.

Blake plucked up two dandelions and started twining the stems together—a piece of a crown. Oracle, Yang wanted to tell her. Dandelions meant oracle.

“Yeah. I guess we both know what I’m capable of,” she said, bluntly. Yang felt her fingers go cold, but she didn’t dare move a centimeter. When neither of them said anything, Blake cleared her throat and continued from where she’d left off: “So, yeah. I got fixated on the garden idea. He was out of the house one day, so I…took the risk. I went down to Spring Hill and I—well, I saw you. And there was something about you that made you hard to forget.” 

“But if we’ve met before, it doesn’t seem likely that I’d forget you, either,” Yang said.

“I never got too close. I didn’t know what would happen if I tried to get close.” Her throat moved. “Especially with Adam around. But I still…I felt like you’d given me something, even though you didn’t do anything. Even though you were a stranger. You—you smiled at everyone and it was like you were too bright to look at and…you were just everything I wasn’t. I thought something might rub off on me. It was stupid.”

Yang shifted so that she was kneeling in front of Blake. This was how she’d done it, right? Blake had done it like this, last night. She’d steadily met her gaze and said okay. “It’s not stupid,” Yang said, brushing Blake’s hair from her forehead, out of her eyes. “You gave me something, too. You don’t know it, but you’ve given me a lot.” 

Maybe she’d said too much. Suddenly, Blake was blinking quickly, rubbing her face with the heel of her palm. Yang was a little bit surprised—a little sad, a little relieved—to see Blake’s eyes shining like that. They weren’t quite tears, but her voice did come thickly. “The…the hell are you talking about?” She swatted Yang’s hand away. “The only thing I’ve given you is a job, okay? And it’s all ulterior motives on my part.”

“Okay,” Yang said. “Okay, so it’s all ulterior motives. I don’t mind that.”

“Even though I lied to you? Even though you were right? That I wanted you here just to feel better about myself?” Her fingers curled into her palm, crushing the dandelions still in her hand. “After Spring Hill burnt down, everyone was blaming you and I was angry at them. I thought that was unfair, that they’d made a mistake. I wanted to think that I was the only one who knew better about you. And then…the same thing happened to me. Suddenly, I was the one who was hated, and you know what? Some part of me was happy. Because I thought that connected us, somehow. I thought that would finally give us something in common. I’m…I’m terrible. You were suffering so much, and that’s what I was thinking about. I wanted you close out of selfishness.”

Yang didn’t think she’d ever heard Blake talk this much before. Ironic as it was, for a long moment, Yang found that she herself couldn’t even utter a word back to it. So she reached down, loosening Blake’s fingers, replacing the crushed flowers with her own hand. Blake looked mystified by Yang’s reaction, but her grip tightened, as if unconsciously. 

And then Yang laughed. She couldn’t help it. “You’ve been so worried about it, a thing like that.”

Blake’s eyes went wide, and she snatched her hand away. “Jesus, Yang, get angry or something. I let you think we were friends, that I was being honest with you, but all this time—” 

“I’m happy,” Yang said. “I can’t explain it to you, but I’m really happy.”

Or maybe she could explain it. This was simply the kind of happy you felt when somebody chose you. She’d been discarded so-goddamn-many times, but here was a girl who said, I want you close. Yang leaned forward, putting her hands down on either side of Blake. “You’re not selfish.” She was close enough now that she felt Blake’s breath. “But…you can be a little greedy when you’re with me, you know? I think I’d like that.”

“You—you’re missing the point,” Blake said, after a moment. She splayed her fingers out across Yang’s collarbone, putting a few inches of space between them. “My head’s been a mess all week because of you. I don’t know what kind of distance to put between us.”

Yang knew what she meant. As it was now, their relationship was…hard to define. “If you want space, I can give you that, too,” she said.

Blake opened her mouth to respond to that, but the words dried up when her eyes flickered to a place over Yang’s shoulder. “A visitor,” Blake said. “I don’t know him.”

Yang turned to see what kind of stranger had appeared at the top of the hill but instead she saw a familiar slouching gait. A rail-thin man with black hair.

“That’s my uncle,” Yang said, standing. “But what the hell is he doing here?”

Chapter Text

“You’re making the news again, firecracker.”

That was just like her uncle, jumping right to the point without even offering any context first. But the fact that he was calling her by old nicknames was the thing that really put Yang on her guard as she stopped up short at the top of the hill. She tossed her gloves to the grass and folded her arms. “I guess Ruby told you where to find me?”

Even though he’d sounded pretty dour a moment ago, he gave a short, startled laugh, smoothing out his hair with his palm. “Call it her educated guess. Everybody was worried after you just up and disappeared last night without a word. I tried calling you, but your goddamn phone is turned off.” Qrow’s gaze shifted conspicuously to Blake, who was leaning up against the porch column and watching them from a distance. “Should’ve known it had to do with a girl.”

“Qrow.”

“I’m just saying, you two looked pretty cozy just now—”

“Qrow.” Yang squeezed the bridge of her nose. “I…I don’t really want to talk about Blake with you.”

He stared at her for another moment before fishing his phone out of his back pocket and handing it to her. “No? Well, that’s fine. People around town have been talking about you two plenty.”

Yang looked at what was pulled up on the screen and felt her breath stutter and run out of her. “Fuck…”

Someone had posted a picture of her and Blake back at the garden center. Slightly grainy, but that made it seem somehow more incriminating. They were standing close to each other, closer than Yang remembered, framed by green. Perhaps most damning of all was the way she was touching the back of Blake’s hand. Yang didn’t recognize the handle, which was probably the part of it that disturbed her more than anything else. She clicked her tongue at the caption: holy shit!! remnant’s own bonnie & clyde???

Pictures were one thing, but Yang knew from experience that word-of-mouth around Remnant was a whole other beast entirely. News had a way of growing teeth overnight, especially if you were someone who’d already been stamped cleanly as a disturber of the peace. Folks wouldn’t be so quick to let this go if it got around.

Qrow rubbed the back of his neck, taking the phone back from her. “Yang…” Since getting sober those few years back, he’d been looking healthier, steadier, but something about him now just made him seem so bone-tired—haggard, even. “When you were released, when you finally got to be home with everyone again, we agreed that the best thing for you to do was to keep your head down. To put in the steady effort, try to get your good standing back.”

Yang prickled. “And that’s what I’ve been doing.”

“Oh, have you?” Qrow didn’t tend to have a temper. For the most part, he was pretty even-keeled in a family full of short fuses. But this was a subject that put him close to it, put him right up to some kind of edge. “That’s what you’ve been doing? By running around town with a murderer? Jesus. Where’s your head at, Yang?”

Yang prickled even more. Murderer, he’d said. “You really don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. And you especially don’t know Blake.”

“And you do?” He drew in a slow breath and put his hands on Yang’s shoulders, his anger suddenly smoothing out—replaced by something worse, a quiet grief that felt to Yang like a kick in the gut. This was almost the way he’d looked at her three years ago. “Kiddo, I know you. I have for a long, long time. So that’s how I know that Blake’s the sort of girl you just can’t leave alone. But I’m telling you to take a step back, okay? All you’re doing is bringing trouble back on yourself, and I don’t wanna watch you get hurt again.”

“You won’t,” Yang said. “I know you’re worried, that you think I’m making the same mistakes I made before, but Blake…” I don’t know her but I think I understand her, Yang wanted to tell him. But she wasn’t sure if that would make sense to anyone but herself. “Blake isn’t gonna hurt me. Not like—”

“Like Raven?” Yang stared at him, suddenly finding it hard to speak, and Qrow sighed, thrusting his hands in his pockets. If this was a few years ago, he would’ve produced a hidden flask from somewhere right about now. Even after quitting, it took him a while to shake the habit of reaching for something that wasn’t there. Yang wondered if her own habits weren’t a bit similar.

“I’m sorry if this isn’t what you want to hear right now, but you’ve always been too trusting. My sister knew that. She knew how much you wanted to trust her, how much you wanted to be special to her, and she took advantage. Maybe she felt some kind of remorse for it after the fact, some shred of motherly instinct, but she’s self-interested to her core—and you had to learn that the hard way. Or don’t you remember?”

“I remember.” Even her body remembered. Not just the scar, the physical reminder—the smell of burning made her hands shake even now. “What’s your point?”

“My point—” Qrow glanced quickly at Blake again and pitched his voice lower. “My point is, you should watch out for yourself. At least promise me that.”

If she was the person she’d been in the past, she would’ve already snapped at him, would’ve told him he had a lot of nerve coming around and lecturing her like this. But she had already seen it on his face, after Spring Hill, how scared he’d been for her back then. So she gritted her teeth and said, “Fine. I promise.” She stooped to retrieve her gloves from the grass. “So is that it? Is that all you wanted to say to me?”

He didn’t answer right away. When he took his hands from his pockets, Yang couldn’t help but catalogue the unfamiliar lines in them, the jut of the bones, the roughness. They’d always been calloused like that, of course, but they were somehow older hands than she remembered.

“You might be right. About Blake, I mean,” he said at last. “It would be nice if you were right about trusting her. But, honestly, that’s all the more reason for you to be careful about this.”

She suspected that this wasn’t something she wanted to hear, either. “What do you mean?”

“Yang, ever since her fiancé’s death and the whole media circus that followed, that girl’s practically been a recluse. After all the blame that fell on her, all the scrutiny—I mean, it’s obvious that all she wanted to do was keep a low profile, make as little noise as possible. Like she was quietly hoping that people would eventually just forget.”

Yang could remember the way Blake had sounded over the phone, how much yearning was in her voice when she’d said, It’s like a clean slate. How it made Yang ache, too. “But that isn’t right,” she said. “No one should have to live that that.”

“Maybe not, but who are you to judge the choices she made?” Qrow laid his palm down on the top of Yang’s head, like he used to do when she was a kid. “Look, I don’t particularly think you’re doing anything wrong. But you should try to think about this from her point of view. Is she going to think it’s worth it, this relationship you have, when all of those outside eyes start prying into her life again?”

“No one’s going to pry into her life anymore. I’m gonna make sure of that.” Yang ducked out from under his hand, trying not to show how deeply he’d rattled her. He’d struck more than a nerve; his warning had cleaved straight through her. She turned and found Blake in the corner of her eye, as if dreading she’d vanished between one moment and the next. Her stomach felt leaden. “…You never used to talk my ear off like this growing up, you know.”

He snorted. “That was before I realized I should start giving a damn, protect what I cared about. Or sooner or later I’d lose it.”

Yang had said it so confidently, hadn’t she? That no matter what she would see to it that Blake wouldn’t be troubled by those prying eyes this time, which was a way of saying that she’d probably sooner lose another three years of her life than let herself be the cause of any more of Blake’s unhappiness. But maybe there was no point to promises like that. After all, Blake had been thrown to the hounds again because of Yang. Maybe—and it put a bad taste in her mouth to even think it—there’d come a time when knowing Yang would be Blake’s only real burden. And just for that reason alone, if she could’ve gone back in time and kept herself from making all those mistakes, she would’ve.

What did she think would happen? What had she expected, someone like her, trying to root out someone else’s misery? Foolish to think, that you could ever put out one fire with another.

Blake, still leaning up against the porch column, watched Qrow disappear with a wary tilt of her head. “He sure left as suddenly as he came …” she said, as Yang approached. But, seeming to catch the way that Yang hesitated at the porch step, she pulled herself upright. “Are you okay? What did he want?”

Yang paused, one foot on the step, looking up at Blake. “I’m fine. More importantly…” How to tell her, exactly? About something so tacky and exaggerated it was hard to believe, but so precarious at the same time. But maybe Yang was just hesitating because she was afraid of how Blake would react to it. This rumor, the looming recoil of all that blame and hostility and alienation just when everything had finally started to calm down for her—would this be the thing that was too much? And it wasn’t like Yang would try to argue with her if it was. Blake’s decisions were her own and, frankly, she’d been through enough already. Yang wasn’t about to let the girl get dragged down into the mud again just when she’d finally started to look a little hopeful.

Well, if telling her would really mean the end of whatever relationship they had, then Yang at least wanted to finish the job Blake had asked her to do. That was the one thing she could do, the only thing she had left. Like a chain, maybe, though it was thinner than a thread of silk. “I’ll…catch you up on that in a bit,” she said. “For now, we’ve got some work ahead of ourselves, don’t we?”

Blake wanted to protest. After all, she’d seen it already. It had been one of the first things she’d seen, that troubled pause on the porch step. Yang knew it. They knew it of each other. But Blake brushed past Yang without a word, her gloves under her arm.

~

Bags of compost slung over each shoulder, Yang stopped and turned just so she could watch Blake as she struggled to get two more out of the truck bed. When she finally did, she grappled with them as she walked, looking kind of stooped over—like Uncle Qrow, she thought. (That thought was hysterical and fucking disturbing at the same time.)

“You good back there, princess?” Yang called, starting down the hill with another backward glance at Blake. “Not used to lifting something heavier than a Jane Eyre hardback?”

“If I didn’t…didn’t need you for the grunt work, I’d fire your…dumb jock ass so quick,” Blake said, gritting her teeth as she followed. At the bottom of the hill, she threw the bags down on top of where Yang had neatly stacked hers. “So I guess we’re starting with the shitty part.”

Yang blinked. “Blake, did you make a lame pun just now? You feeling okay?”

“No clue what you’re talking about.”

“And she denies it.”

Yang expected Blake to keep on playing the game. Another withering look, another dry comeback, something that felt a little like closeness but without any of the gambles of real intimacy. But what she got instead was a sudden soft smile, so fond it was almost embarrassing. She could sense that Blake was, out of habit, still maintaining some kind of implicit distance between them, but that distance didn’t seem nearly as cold or as vast as it had seemed just a short time ago. It was like she was looking at Blake through a high, open window. Blake was peering out of it and Yang was just below, peering in. And Blake wanted her to.

So she looked closer. The smile Blake had was kind of reluctant, or maybe it hadn’t entirely been on purpose, and kind of something else—way more devastating than any comeback. It was all Yang could do to keep her heart from liquefying on the spot. Well, if she could’ve let herself surrender to it, if her thoughts weren’t so tangled up in earlier revelations and Qrow’s warnings, she would’ve. So gladly.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Yang said, slinging her arm around Blake’s shoulders, “it’s mostly dead leaves and grass clippings.”

Blake seemed kind of surprised by Yang’s gesture of skinship, but she didn’t move to shake her off. She folded her arms, stuck out her hip. “Mostly…”

“Mostly!”

Yang was pretty greedy about moments like these. Especially now. She wanted to hold onto them, plant them like seeds, commit to memory the exact music of the way Blake had said this thing or that thing, or the exact shape of Blake in the circle of her arm. She didn’t want that chain to snap just yet. Talk about selfish, Yang thought. Did Blake know about this, too? About this part of her, even though Yang hadn’t dared utter any of it aloud? And what was worse, she only felt herself getting greedier. It probably hadn’t even been a full hour since Blake had last kissed her, but it had already been too long.

Oh—maybe that last thought had crept into her expression. Or, was thrown all over it, more like. Blake was looking up at her, and when she caught Yang’s eye she simply raised an eyebrow. Just the shape of that brow alone, the knife-edge shape of it, was dangerous. Her mouth hadn’t moved a hair, nor the gold of her eyes. There was no way for Yang to tell if she was being reproached or…invited. Challenged.

Space. Space, right? Blake had asked her for space, or she’d been about to. It was better to be careful about these things. Yang would rather disappoint her for now than give her something she didn’t want and couldn’t take. She let her arm slip off of Blake’s shoulders.

“It’s best to let the soil breathe,” Yang said. Right. They’d been talking about gardening. Dirt. Flowers. Work. Work she could talk about. Any other kind of thought turned back on itself and stung her. “The compost puts oxygen in the soil. It’s healthier for the plants. Nourishes them, too.”

If there was a flicker of dissatisfaction there, Blake had smothered it before Yang could see. She was good at that, changing faces. “Whatever you say, nerd.” She smirked, tapping a gloved finger against the inside of her elbow. “Where’d you learn all that?”

Yang nodded, solemnly. “Page 118. The Wonders of Compost.”

“You’re definitely fucking with me.”

“I’ll loan you my copy.”

It was decided straight away that Yang would do the lifting and Blake would do the raking out, and with that settled they fell into a mostly wordless rhythm. Between the two of them, they made surprisingly quick work of laying out the dirt. Or maybe it shouldn’t have surprised Yang that they made a good team. Blake seemed, in anticipation of finally getting the planting done, just about ready to bubble over. And she was laughing—which, yeah, made everything else in Yang’s life that had led up to the moment seem worth it. It was nice to watch her get like this, to look at her and see no shadow in back of those eyes whatsoever. Caught up in the sweetness of that laughter, Yang nearly forgot herself.

“Okay, okay, the sunflowers here.” Blake gestured with a sweep of her arm to the plot in the yard closest to the house. “I want them to be the first thing I see in the morning, when I look at the garden through my bedroom window.”

At that, she pointed up at the window in question. Yang could just make out the edges of her deep purple curtains. For some reason, it was hard for her to imagine that this garden, that the two of them in this place under the midday sun, had anything to do with that darkened room from last night. With the whispers and the small touches that had passed between them, with the night-smell on Blake’s skin. They were two different worlds.

“‘Adoration,’” Yang murmured, absently. But when she glanced at Blake, the word wouldn’t quite shake out of her head. Adoration.

~

Blake seemed to be riding some mysterious kind of high as she patted down the dirt around the crocuses and sat back on her haunches. When she let out a breath, it was like the sound the trees made after a sorely needed rain, like the sigh of the leaves. Maybe not so mysterious. Flowers, she supposed, were symbolic to Yang in one sense, to Blake in entirely another. The act of it, the planting, the way the flowers would then stretch down their roots and bloom and die and (some of them) return, was the part that had Blake breathless. “That’ll do it,” she said, with a flushed face—half from the heat, Yang suspected, and half from elation.

Yang suspected, as well, that Blake wasn’t aware of the horseshoe-shaped smear of dirt on her cheekbone. She took off her glove and wiped it away with her thumb, not even thinking too much about it. And, watching her, Yang couldn’t help but give a small chuckle; Blake’s good mood was infectious, after all. “Well, sure, that’ll do it. After we water them.”

Blake sighed and leaned her head into Yang’s hand. All Yang could do, really, was freeze in place. “We can do that later, can’t we? I’m desperate for a bath right now.”

“Well, I’ll leave you to it, then—”

Just as Yang began to withdraw her hand, Blake reached up and caught her wrist. The touch, itself, was almost timid, fingertips pressing softly into the pulse point, but Blake’s expression stilled her, caught her. Oh, right. Yang had never been all that clever at hiding things. Blake seemed to have sensed it plainly enough, that Yang had something weighing on her mind. She could probably feel that there was an ending somewhere, like the end to a root. No matter how deep you imagined the root had gone, there was always an end to it. And how deep could it have gone, really? In three days? Blake was just being stubborn.

“I’ve got another bathroom,” she said. “Come up with me.”

It took a lot to suppress the small shiver that sang through her when Blake said that, to keep it from running over. Maybe once she was washed and clean, Yang would have her sense back, would feel renewed a bit in her purpose. Be able to get to the hard part. She wasn’t so different from Blake—finding the words for things wasn’t easy for Yang, either. Sometimes when you spoke things aloud, made them real, you killed them. You killed them, or they turned into something else, unfamiliar, like a sickness you didn’t have any immunity to. “Alright,” Yang found herself saying. “Alright, I’ll come up.”

Yang knew the way, of course, but Blake led her by the hand into the gray foyer, up the stairs. I’m not gonna run off, you know, Yang almost said. Something kept her from saying it. Guilt, probably. Blake, herself, might run her off soon enough, Yang thought. Her footsteps felt heavy as she stared at Blake’s back, like there was something more than water left in her shoes.

Blake gestured to the door at the end of the hall. There was a strange, almost gloomy feeling that permeated it, the dark wood of the door and the darkness seen in the space beneath it, the brass handle in its vague eye shape. “Second bathroom’s that way,” she said. “Might be a bit dusty in there. It used to be the, um…well, it was the room I shared with him, up until he died.” Yang noticed that Blake still seemed to find it hard to say his name. As if she was afraid she’d summon him back with it. And it hurt Yang, hurt her on Blake’s behalf, to see that just the mention of him had managed to scratch away a bit of her liveliness from before. “I haven’t been in there since then,” Blake added. She said it just a little too offhandedly.

“Blake, look, I need to tell you—”

“Yang.” Blake covered over Yang’s mouth with her palm, startling her. Blake leaned toward her, raising herself to meet Yang’s eyes, speaking lowly. “Can’t you give me a little time? You’re gonna tell me something, and it’s gonna break some sort of spell, so I just…want some time. That’s all.”

She disappeared into her room before Yang could answer her. Pressing open the door at the end of the hall, Yang wondered (and she did a hell of a lot of wondering, a lifetime’s worth, when it came to Blake) what Blake was thinking would happen. Or what she thought it was that Yang had to say. Break a spell, she’d said. What was there to break, for her? Yang knew the weight of her own feeling, but what was the weight of Blake’s? What was the size and shape of the thing she seemed so scared of losing?

Yang hadn’t lied about being happy about Blake’s confession. But she also knew that the girl Blake had seen at Spring Hill, the girl too bright to look at, was long gone. Gone, or she had always just been a trick of the light.

Yang stared into the room. With the heavy curtains drawn over the windows, not much sun at all could reach this place. She stumbled over the threshold, palming the wall for a light switch. Once illuminated, the room looked…predictable. If the rest of the house was stamped with his influence, then this room was the still, cold heart of it. It was obvious, just from the look of it, that this was never a place Blake had lived in. Not really.

This room had no color, no impression, no smell except for the dust smell (most noteworthy of all, probably: no precarious book towers or even any books at all). It was like a tomb, though a tomb empty of even a body.

Yang showered quickly, though she couldn’t help but let her mind drift, let her senses catch on the heady fragrance of the body wash. None of the various bottles had been moved or thrown out, it seemed. The label said it was lavender and honey-scented. A very Blake-like smell, Yang thought—thought about a little too much. But it really seemed like thinking about Blake, in the abstract sense or in a decidedly tangible one, was always a dangerous thing to do. Every place always seemed to lead to a deeper place, and eventually Yang would lose track of the way she’d come. Eventually, the path would disappear, become more like a long drop. She knew that, given the chance to fall further, she would. But some things weren’t meant for her.

Blake ought to know a curse when she saw one.

When she emerged with a towel about her, twisting her mane of hair up into a loose, damp bun, she was a bit taken aback to see that her clothes, left (she thought) on the top of the dresser near the door, had been moved and replaced with clean clothes. Blake’s roomier casual wear, it looked like. So, after two years, Blake had finally braved this room, after all. If only to crack open the door, that is. And her reason…? Yang could only assume her clothes had been thrown in the wash just so that Blake could have a little more time. The thought made her unhappy, that Blake was feeling this kind of restlessness. But maybe it was Yang’s fault for not being able to keep her own restlessness out of her expression, for not being able to keep her worry to herself.

Knocking at Blake’s door, her whole body hummed with nerves. She cleared her throat. “Blake? Can I come in?”

The door opened beneath her hand. “Yeah…come in. Please.” Blake stepped back to let her through, and Yang couldn’t help but notice that Blake had her hair up, as well. When wet, it was even darker. Blacker than ink. And it was criminal how bare her neck was, and the way that stray curling hairs clung to her skin. She also noticed, as she brushed past, the pleasant heat that radiated off of her body, the clean, sweet scent. But the look on Blake’s face stopped her dead in the threshold, made her heart twist.

Blake lifted her eyes to Yang’s face, slowly. She sat at the foot of her bed and gestured for Yang to sit beside her, which, gingerly, unease gnawing at her, she did. “Um, you’re not mad, right?” Blake asked, making Yang blink. Her gaze flickered to Yang’s shirt, which fit just a bit too snugly around the shoulders and underarms, and down to the borrowed black shorts.

“Mad? Oh—the clothes?” She hooked a finger under the collar of the shirt, feeling almost self-conscious. “No, I was just surprised, is all. But I guess you weren’t just being hospitable, right?”

The question made Blake’s mouth thin into a line. “I guess not.”

“Blake…what’s going on with you?”

Rather than answer right away, she plucked at the comforter between them, ripped out a loose thread. Yang slid her own hand beneath Blake’s, her fingers curling loosely, though it was hard to say if Blake was comforted by it or not. One moment, she seemed watchful, like she was trying to see into Yang’s head, see through her skin, and the next she seemed so distant. Yang recalled how far away Blake had seemed to her last night, standing in the water—her eyes without any light in them, the grim flash of her teeth—and shuddered.

Blake turned suddenly, pressing down on Yang’s hand, rooting her to the bed. “Well, what about you? Ever since your uncle left, you’ve been acting like I’ll never see you again after today. It’s driving me crazy.” She was clear-eyed and alert, her face so close to Yang’s. Her passionate side always had a way of flaring up when it was least expected. Yang didn’t hate that side of her, of course (the opposite), but sometimes she could do with a warning. Sometimes Blake was as changeable and overwhelming as the sea.

When Yang didn’t speak (how could she? her throat was so damn dry) Blake went on, “And I was—fuck, I was already scared of that, you know? One moment, I was so happy, and then I realized that…that there was nothing left for you to do. That this was just a job. I don’t know how I managed to forget that so fast.”

Yang’s voice barely came at all, came out all rough edges, but she spoke anyway, putting her other hand down overtop of Blake’s. “Blake, you know it’s more than that. You have to know that.”

“Then what is it?” she asked. “What would you call it?”

“It’s just…more.”

“More?”

Now who was asking the tough questions. More, Yang thought. She didn’t have words for it except for that one. Just: more. Blake was the one with the pretty way of describing things; all Yang had were nameless feelings, always bumping up against each other.

“What—what I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Yang said, finally glancing away. “I can’t keep putting it off.”

Blake sat back, her expression sliding in between different emotions, like she couldn’t settle on just one. Something like surprise. Something careful. Fear, maybe. Definitely frustration. Eventually, she settled on wearing no expression at all, gently tugging her hand free and lacing her fingers together in her lap. “Okay,” she said. “I’m listening.”

Her spine was arrow-straight. It looked almost painful. Yang felt some frustration of her own, simmering low in her stomach, and so she jumped up from the bed, began speaking with her back to Blake. “My uncle didn’t come here with good news. I just want to start by saying that.” When she peeked at Blake from the corner of her eye, nothing about her seemed to have changed or reacted. She stayed coolly impassive, even if it was just on the surface. Yang pressed on, uneasily, “That is, we didn’t exactly fly under the radar yesterday. Around town…people have started talking again. About you. About us. And they aren’t kind things.”

“Us…” It was then that Yang did turn around completely. The shell had finally cracked open, just a bit, and Yang felt she could peer straight through it, see the things churning away inside. Blake’s eyes were trained on the floor now, but they moved rapidly, back and forth, like the pieces of what Yang had just told her were slotting into place. And when they lifted to Yang’s face again, the expression in them was nearly, was somehow…a stranger’s. A cold feeling slid through her, like the touch of a phantom hand. “And I’m responsible for it,” she said, through a shuddering breath. “You know I am. This would’ve never happened if I had just—”

“Now, hold on—”

She overlapped Yang as if she hadn’t even heard her, her voice rising to a fever-pitch, high and strange, “If I’d just kept you out of this. If I’d just done what I was supposed to do, wanted nothing, accepted how things were meant to be…”

More than before, Yang could hear the stranger in Blake’s voice, could hear somebody else speaking through her lips. If she had just done what she was “supposed” to do? If she had just wanted nothing? Yang didn’t have to wonder. Somehow, she knew just who it was who had sewn those bitter seeds to begin with. Rather, they were words like creeping vines, like something that shouldn’t have been allowed to grow. Inside Blake’s head was a thing that smothered, an invasive species that stole the life out of the things that should’ve been.

No, not should’ve been. Things that could be again, and would be. Yang drew in a deep breath, strode toward the bed, knelt down in front of Blake. She peered up into Blake’s face—sharp-featured and stubborn and lovely (so lovely, the kind that too-often struck Yang speechless in all the wrong moments), but brimming with terror—and curled both of her hands into her own, bringing them to her lips. The ridges of her knuckles were cool to the touch and smooth like shapes made in serpentine. Yang bowed her head and pressed a kiss to each one.

“Yang, what are you…?” Her own voice again. Slightly nervous, thin as a ribbon, but decidedly her own.

“I knew what I was getting into when I came here,” Yang said, pressing her forehead to the backs of Blake’s hands. The coolness of them, the soft give of her palms, settled her, tethered her in place.  “That decision was my own.”

“…So what are you so scared of now?”

Yang had always been a prideful kid, prideful up until she’d forgotten herself, had all of those easy convictions knocked out of her. Or maybe it was more like they’d bled out of her, drop by drop, until there wasn’t much left at all of who she had been. In any case, that prideful kid of the past wouldn’t have admitted to being scared of anything (and maybe she hadn’t been), but now? Now, the story was different. “I guess it’s…the thought of being left, you know? Of you running away from this because you think you have to protect me.” Protect me from yourself, she thought. But somehow she found that last part harder to say. “And it’s crazy because I’m…I’m scared of the opposite, too, I think. I’m scared of what could happen if you ask me to stay. You’ll only get hurt again. Or you’ll get tired of it, of all those eyes on you again. Tired of me.”

Blake didn’t speak right away, but Yang didn’t risk raising her head, either. Too late, she realized how different it was in daylight, saying things like that. Maybe she had a bit of pride left in her yet. The embarrassment of the moment, of Blake’s silence, threatened to crush her flat. It was only when she heard the soft murmur of the comforter as Blake shifted on the bed that Yang leaned backward on the balls of her feet to look up at her.

Her expression drawn and unreadable, Blake slid off of the bed, fast and startling like water running over the sides of a glass, and she put her knees down on either side of Yang. She clung to Yang’s shoulders to steady herself, poised carefully above her. Yang could only stare, could only wait for the thing that would come next, her hands settling reflexively on Blake’s hips. The position was a little awkward—she could feel her thighs starting to burn from the strain. “Blake…?”

“Which of us is getting the rotten deal, do you think?” she asked. With the flat of her thumb, she pressed Yang’s lower lip, dragged it down slightly.

Yang swallowed down her surprise, and she was sure Blake noticed, because Blake’s fingers fluttered gently to her throat, traced her windpipe down to the divot in the collarbone. Barely a touch, but it seared her. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Maybe the pressure of that thumb in the hollow of her throat increased somewhat. Maybe Yang wasn’t imagining that. “I mean, you say you knew what you were doing when you decided to get mixed up with a girl like me—”

“A girl like you…”

“—but I don’t think you really understood it. You still don’t.”

Putting the burning of her legs out of her mind, she stayed put, met Blake’s eyes evenly. As evenly as she could. “We had a talk like this last night, you know.”

“And I’ve been thinking more about it since then,” Blake said, staring back at Yang just as keenly. “I’ve been thinking about that other night two years ago. How much I don’t know. How many blanks there are in it.”

“Maria already told me some of it.” Her hands slid from Blake’s waist. She braced them against the waxy hardwood floor. “That you haven’t been able to remember.”

Blake took her hands away, as well. She stood and went over to the window, and Yang felt like she was coming out of a trance. She blinked quickly, as if blinking sleep from her eyes, and fell back into a sitting position, her legs splayed out in front of her.

Crouching among the stacks of books that overcrowded the far wall of the room, her finger running down each cracked spine, Blake snatched one of them free. A thick, old thing bound in red, with thin, gold lettering. “The Man with Two Souls,” Blake said, speaking lowly (as if to herself) and thumbing through the water-stained pages. She couldn’t seem to look at Yang when she said it. “I’ve been thinking about this one a lot, actually.”

Novels again. Whatever it was that Blake was finding so hard to say, she could only say it with that, with characters, with the words of people who didn’t exist. Or maybe they existed. Yang rose to her feet. “Two souls,” she repeated, stupidly.

Blake crossed the room again, clutching the book to her chest. Her mouth looked strange. Drawing tight at the corners, but not quite a smile. “The second one is buried somewhere in your head. You don’t even know it’s there, and you wouldn’t even know when you’re not yourself anymore. Crazy, isn’t it? Or maybe the second one is the realer one. Maybe that’s who you really are.” She stopped in front of Yang, still clutching the book. She closed her eyes and laid her forehead down on Yang’s shoulder. Blake felt weirdly heavy as she leaned on her, as if Yang was the only thing holding her up. She turned her face and her mouth moved against Yang’s skin. The vibrations of Blake’s voice made it seem like her own, like it was coming from Yang’s own throat. “He might’ve actually tried to kill me,” she said. “I have the scar, so…I can’t prove that he didn’t try to do it. But sometimes I think… What if I just woke up that morning and decided to do it because I was sick of it? Sick of being scared all the time? What if that’s the kind of person I am? Someone cold-blooded deep down, like everyone says. I don’t know which girl I am. There’s no way to tell.” She raised her head. “And there’s no way you could tell me, either, right? You don’t even know me.”

Despite how bitterly the words fell on her, there might’ve been some small, half-hopeful glimmer in that question. Like she wasn’t simply telling Yang she couldn’t, but asking if. “You wanna know what I think?” Yang asked, brushing a stray wisp of hair out of Blake’s face. Her hand wasn’t quite steady as she did it, but maybe Blake would forgive her for that. For being, sometimes, not quite as strong as she seemed.

Blake shook her head. “It seems like every time you say what you think, I let you talk me out of whatever thought I had. I let you talk me into believing some…some fantasy. Some nice lie. The worst part is, it sounds like the truth when you say it.”

Yang plucked the book from Blake’s hands, watched the way its gilt lettering flashed in the window light, and then she tossed it onto the bed. Blake didn’t have time to be appalled at that, because Yang’s arms encircled her and drew her in again. “I think,” Yang murmured, into Blake’s hair, “that there’s no sense in worrying about ‘deep down.’ I mean, it’s not like I’m one to talk. After everything that happened at Spring Hill, every day I thought about how much I deserved it. You know, deserved to suffer. And that, no matter what, I had to pay whatever price seemed ‘fair.’” Blake’s hands were pressed up against her chest—surely she could feel how her heart was pounding away, couldn’t she? How hard it was, trying to figure these words out? “But sooner or later, you have to figure out how to trust yourself again. The person you are isn’t this set thing, or something somebody else gives you. The person you are…I think you just have to keep choosing it.”

Those words just fell out of her. Yang wasn’t sure if she fully believed them, herself (and some of it was just what somebody else had told her), but part of her wanted to believe them. The other part, the bigger part, wanted Blake to believe them. Blake might’ve been right to call it a “nice lie.”

“That sounds…exhausting,” Blake said. And Yang could hear it, too, in her voice: that deep exhaustion, seemingly endless.

“I guess it is. But this morning, you wanted to be someone who was honest, and you were. Maybe a little too honest. Not that I minded.” Yang winked, and, surprisingly (reassuringly), a bit of color bloomed in Blake’s face. “You wanted to be happy, too. You wouldn’t have asked me to help you if you didn’t. And, even if it was just for a moment…you were. Like, you fucking glowed. I saw it.”

Blake cracked a reluctant smile. “What, you saw it? Really?”

“I definitely saw it.”

“Well, I’m starting to think”—Blake’s fingers twisted into Yang’s borrowed shirt, tugging her down; she pressed a kiss (almost too quick to notice) to Yang’s cheek—“that there’s something wrong with your eyes.”

Oh, there was a chance of that, Yang thought. There was a chance that there was something about Blake Belladonna that made it hard to see straight.

Chapter Text

Blake didn’t need someone to kiss her. That was the first thought Yang had, leaving Menagerie Manor late in the afternoon (later than she’d planned).

Or, put another way, Yang ought to know better than to act like someone who only knew how to do good. Like the goddamned prince on the white horse. She couldn’t help but think that all she was doing was making Blake—this lonely, haunted woman who was so clearly starved for a little gentleness, so nearly rootless—dependent on her. Or, at least, dependent on the things Yang seemed to promise. Dependent on that mirage-like glimmer of relief.

But what did Yang really have to offer? What could she give her without taking something even more precious away in the process? Thoughts like those only fed that deep, sick feeling in her stomach. Eventually, she would have to admit to it, that it was possible she was becoming a person she hated again. Someone whose own intentions, whose own heart, had become totally invisible to her.

She spun on her heel and stared up at the manor. It didn’t look so imposing anymore, so much like the stuff of local legend, or even so gloomy as it had looked to her that first time. It looked like a house. Chilly, not exactly inviting, but like any other house. That might’ve just been a trick of the light, though. Sunset covered everything like honey, softened all those harsh lines and edges.

She was sliding into the vinyl truck seat when Johnny came on the half-busted radio again. Yes, I’ll admit that I’m a fool for you, he crooned. Because you’re mine, I walk the line. Yang turned it down to a murmur and sulked. Tried as she might to put it out of her head, she remembered it vividly, the first time she’d taken Jolene up this endless driveway, shut up in the gloom of the crowded magnolias, Blake’s photograph flickering in and out of her mind all the while. If she’d wondered then just what the Man in Black meant when he called it a burning thing, she didn’t wonder now. Burning was the word for it. After all, everything disappeared in it. And you didn’t even think to miss it.

~

“So, where’ve ya been?”

Here we go, Yang thought, slamming the truck door shut. It'd been a long time since Tai had waited up for her. Though the look on his face as he leaned against the chipped-white porch railing made the moment decidedly more bitter than sweet. Sure, he was trying to keep things light. That was what he did, acted like things weren’t so serious as they were. (And it wasn’t like he was someone who handled “serious” well, anyway.) But the leaping muscle in his jaw betrayed him.

She found herself mourning it again, the old Tai. The way it’d used to be between him: easy, everything complicated and sad long since behind them. People always said they were so alike in their contagious grins and bad jokes and open-book way of talking. Actually, Yang couldn’t say for sure that they weren’t similar even now. Though no one would still admit to it aloud, would they?

She tried to sound nonchalant about it, too, but even to her own ears, her voice came out bristling. “What, Qrow hasn’t been keeping you in the loop? Thought he would’ve tattled on me by now.”

“That’s funny.” Well, he said that, but he didn’t look like he really thought so. He folded his arms. “Here I was thinking it was your job to keep your own family in the loop about you.”

Yang stopped up short of the house, her mouth twisting. “You always use that word to hurt, huh? These days, at least.”

“It wasn’t supposed to hurt. It was supposed to remind you.”

“Am I supposed to guess what that is?”

“‘Are you—?’” Tai uncrossed his arms and stepped toward her, his foot falling a bit too heavy on the porch step. Yang wondered if he’d go straight through it—it’d serve him right. (Ah, the jerk wasn’t really mad deep down, she knew. Just scared. And the thought, irritated as she was at him, was pretty sobering.) “I meant that you ought to be reminded about what really matters, Yang. I know you think I don’t give a damn about how or where or with who you’ve been spending your time, but you’re wrong about that.”

So much for the light approach. Yang had been “working on it” (technically), that famous short fuse of hers, but she could already feel the familiar itch, could feel her blood start to rise up in her like hot oil. Hell, she could practically hear the hiss and spit of it in her ears. Her old man really had a special way of getting under her skin. They were too alike, after all. That was part of it. “Well, thanks for all the concern, but I can look after myself just fine. I have been.”

Maybe that last bit had been a little unkind. Yang refused to let either of them stew on it, though, pushing past him on her way into the house. But when he spoke again, in a quieter voice this time, the words fixed her to the floor: “Blake Belladonna. All this time, you’ve been working…for Blake Belladonna.”

It wasn’t a question, but Tai wanted an answer to it. And it took some effort, a hard movement of her throat, to finally give it. “Qrow did tell you—”

“So this is your idea of laying low. You come back, get your life together again, and your bright goddamn idea—”

“She had a job for me, and I took it. She’s no different from anyone else.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Yang.” Something in his voice now made her turn to look at him again, some hairline fissure in the way he’d said her name. “You can yell at me, ignore me, whatever you want. But don’t you bullshit me. That girl’s a special case, and it’s got nothing to do with her history. You’re stuck on her somehow.”

There were few things Yang hated more than admitting when Tai was right about her. He had this habit of saying true things in all the worst ways, and he was far from the kind of guy who’d sweeten his words to make you feel better. He’d call you boneheaded when you were being it and he’d do it cheerfully. So, yeah. Fine. Blake was special. And he probably had no idea just how dead on he was.

Tell me something else—it felt like it’d been so long ago that Blake had whispered that to her in the dark of her bedroom. No one else asked her things like that, not in that voice. No one. That was special. As for everything else about Blake? As for that sunbeam feeling Yang got whenever she thought of her, looked at her, saw the shape of her name on Blake’s lips? Special couldn’t quite cover it. And she’d crossed into that ring so readily, so recklessly, so much like an act of muscle memory, that she couldn’t even think to recognize how deep she was. In trouble, that is. How deep and stuck she was, and how little remorse she had about it.

Tai must’ve noticed some change in her face. Something like sympathy crossed his own. “Sweetheart…”

“Dad.” Yang couldn’t even stand to face him anymore. She was scared of it, of whatever he was thinking, of whatever he had to say to her. And the thing she was the most fucking terrified of? How much he seemed like he understood everything. “Look, I…I can handle this. Whatever this is.”

“I know,” he said. Yang jumped a little when he clapped his hand to the back of her shoulder. It was hard to tell if he’d meant to push her forward or hold her in place. “I know you can. And if you get cheated again, get stuck with that weight again, you’re not gonna let anyone else carry it. That’s just how you are.”

He’d been generous with “if,” but Yang could hear in his voice that what he meant, the thing he really wanted her to hear buried in it, was “when.”

“…No one else needs to.”

That was all Yang really had to energy left to say. Suddenly, she felt deeply and fully sapped of everything except the need to sleep, to stop all the thinking even for just a few, precious hours. Though that was probably being too optimistic. She stumbled around the corner into the hallway, finding her bedroom door and collapsing onto the bed fully clothed, right on top of the comforter.

She didn’t sleep or dream so much as she just closed her eyes and remembered. It was possible that, like Blake, Yang was more than a little haunted herself. Because, as she laid in bed, as the light in the window disappeared and the room turned blue-gray, she was half-awake with memories of Raven. Not good memories, but not bad memories, either. Just memories. Just things taking up space, waiting to be put away again.

~

“Yang.”

The woman was standing by Yang’s truck, though there was something unsteady about her. She was stooped over, an arm wrapped carefully around herself. It was late, a little past sundown, and Pyrrha had already gone home for the night. It was just Yang and the stranger in the nursery parking lot.

Like Spanish moss on trees, windchimes of all kinds and colors cluttered Spring Hill’s front entrance, and a June night breeze shook through them as Yang’s head lifted at the sound of her name. Usually, their music put her at ease, but all she felt in the moment was this cold-hot feeling in her chest, spreading into her limbs. This unfamiliar person—barely visible at dusk, half-crouched against Jolene—knew her name. And she’d called in a voice like someone who was expecting something in return.

Yang’s whole body felt like a bowstring. A small twitch of the finger, and something would be loosed. Something would happen that couldn’t be undone. “Who the hell are you?”

The sound that came from the woman at that was less a laugh and more a rattle. As if from a snake’s tail. She straightened, lifting her eyes to Yang’s. They had a strange, unpleasant color in the darkness, a deep geranium color. Unnatural. (It did cross her mind, even if just for a second, that this was one of those unlucky encounters old folk around town loved to spin stories about. Encounters with devils, that was.) “Guess I shouldn’t feel too hurt that you don’t recognize me,” she said. “Though I recognized you right away.”

And as Yang catalogued the features of that face, she realized why she’d gotten that feeling of unease. Not because the woman was unfamiliar, but because she wasn’t. “…Mom?”

Dazed as she was, she’d called her that without meaning to. Even Raven seemed thrown by it, though it was hard to say for sure that Yang hadn’t imagined it, the change in the air between them. When she took her arm away, Yang could see that part of her shirt was stained darker in one place. Was it…blood? A wound? “Don’t suppose you’ve got a place I could sit down for a moment?” Raven asked. She was putting on a tough act, but her voice came even thinner than before. Her gaze started to turn dull and unfocused.

Yang caught her before she could hit the ground. When she dragged her upright, Raven leaned her weight on Yang’s arm.

“Fuck—hey, get a fucking grip.”

“I’m fine.” There was a slight ragged edge to her breathing now. “The walk was far. Farther than I expected.”

Her mind was racing, staggering over itself. After all this time, Raven was here. She was here, with no explanation, no warning at all. Did Dad know about this? Had she told anyone? Yang couldn’t imagine she had. Warnings just weren’t her style.

And Yang knew that some part of her was busy simmering in unspoken anger, in a decade and a half’s worth of pent-up resentment and hurt. But the other part of her was too bewildered to put any of it in words. She’d spent a lot of time just thinking about how she’d feel if this moment ever really did come, but now that it had? Once she put all that anger aside, she wasn’t sure if she felt anything. Or maybe she wasn’t sure which feeling she was meant to settle on.

Stupid as it sounded, she wondered if blowing up at Raven like she deserved would be the losing move. She couldn’t give her the satisfaction of that, being hurt, acting like a kid. (Like the ten-year-old girl who’d taken her bike down the long, long road that led out of town one day, looking for her. Who’d gotten as far as the next county over. Who’d tearfully called Uncle Qrow from a stranger’s phone in a gas station convenience store.) No, she’d be a fucking adult about it.

“Get in. I’m taking you to the hospital—”

Raven grunted and pushed Yang’s arm away. “Not a good plan.”

“Why not?”

“Because I need to hide.” Her gaze shifted past Yang and she peered warily into the darkness. “I need you to hide me. Until things blow over.”

Coward, she almost spat. But that was something she’d always known, maybe. That Raven was a woman who couldn’t face up to anything, who would hurt anyone if it meant she could keep her own head above water. And the worst part of it was, Yang knew she was only the second-best option. Qrow was away. His work always called him away for long periods of time. (Though unlike his twin sister, he always wandered his way back home eventually.) If it wasn’t for his absence, Raven would have passed in and out of town like a ghost without Yang even knowing it. Qrow, out of real concern for her, wouldn’t have inflicted that kind of knowledge on her.

“Are you in some kind of…trouble?” If Raven was finally back in Remnant with her tail between her legs, things had to be pretty dire, she figured.

“The world’s full of trouble, Yang,” Raven said, after a beat.

The non-answer made her teeth snap together. “Because of people like you, sure. People who only know how to make trouble for everyone else.”

Raven gave another hoarse chuckle, leaning against the truck and tossing her head back, like she was studying the stars. “I can see you’re overwhelmed. You still resent me, even though it’s been so long. Even though I never gave you anything of me to miss.”

It’s been so long, she’d said, in that damned resigned voice. As if she’d expected Yang to have gotten over it by now, as if Yang was raising a fuss. Her eyes itched, but not with tears. “You’re right. I never missed you.”

“But you looked for me,” she said, in a low, distant-sounding voice. “Why would you do a thing like that? When you knew you’d only find trouble?”

Yang opened the driver’s door and dug around for the first-aid kid under the seat, ignoring her. Why? Well, who the hell knew? Most of the time, Yang’s body acted and reacted before she could understand the reasons. She just knew that as soon as she learned half of the truth, half the story, she had to know all of it. It might’ve been something else, too. Some kind of yearning she felt against her will when she thought about how shattered her little family was, some pining for a wholeness or rightness that didn’t exist. After all, there was Weiss, whose family had all the idyllic makings of “wholeness”—two parents and three children who at one time had all lived there together in that shimmering mansion on the hill—but was more shattered, even, than Yang’s.

So, who knew why? Maybe all she wanted to do was give back just a fraction of the hurt Raven had given her. Yang slammed the truck door shut and opened her mouth to answer her, but her phone started buzzing in her back pocket. She felt her stomach flip when she saw who it was, pacing a few steps away. “Baby—”

“Oh, so you know you’re in trouble. Good.”

“I was just about to call you to tell you that I, uh…I gotta cancel tonight. I’m sorry.”

Usually, this was the part when Weiss would sigh and crack some bad joke about how she knew she was “too pretty to cheat on,” but maybe there was something about Yang’s voice that made her hesitate. Weiss was good at that, picking up on all those microscopic changes in a person. In that shimmering mansion on the hill, she’d had to become good at it. “Um, is…everything okay?”

Yang didn’t have to turn to know that those unnatural, wine-colored eyes had settled on her back. Not out of concern. Like they were studying her, dissecting her. “Everything’s fine.” It might’ve been the first lie she’d ever told her that mattered, but Yang couldn’t bring herself to backtrack on it. “Just a little trouble at work.”

“Yang…” She still sounded unconvinced, but also like she was afraid to push it. Afraid of bending things until they broke. “You know you can talk to me? About anything?”

“I know.” Why did saying that make her feel so much lonelier, though? “I love you. I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Yeah. I love you, too.” Weiss hung up first.

Yang sighed and raked her fingers through her hair. Weiss was safer if she didn’t know anything. That was what Yang told herself. From behind her, Raven huffed. “I’m surprised you’re keeping your girlfriend in the dark. Do you usually lie so easily to her like that?”

“You don’t get to say that.”

Raven took two steps toward Yang, surprisingly steady as she reached out and laid her palm across Yang’s cheek. It didn’t feel kind, or gentle, or maternal, but…possessive. No matter what, no matter if you accept it or not, you’re mine. That’s what that touch seemed to tell her. Her skin smelled like metal, like blood.

“Yang, I’m the only one who will tell you the truth,” she murmured.

~

She woke up in the dead of night and tried to wave away the last few traces of the memory like the trail of smoke from a blown-out candle. Her mouth tasted sour, and she felt disoriented and sick. And angry. There was no avoiding that, the irritation that rose up in her, just remembering Raven’s face.

“Ugh.” Yang threw her legs over the bed and stood up, cracking her back.

She heard voices in the other room. There were in the kitchen, Tai and Ruby, and speaking low. Yang caught the tail-end of the conversation as she made her way down the hall.

Tai gave a heavy sigh. “I don’t feel right about it, is all. I know she’s grown but…”

“You’re worried.”

“Mm. This girl sure got Yang wrapped around her finger fast, don’t you think? Haven’t even met her.”

“She’s seems nice. And Yang’s tough.” Ruby chuckled. “You should see how stupid happy she looks when she talks about her.”

“Yeah. I have. That’s why I’m worried.”

Yang gave it another few seconds before appearing around the corner, rubbing her eyes against the harsh, yellow glow of the kitchen fluorescents. She glanced between the two of them. “Evenin’, conspirators,” she said, and they at least had the decency to look appropriately shamed.

“She lives!” Tai grinned and folded his arms. Predictably, no trace of their last conversation was left on his face. “We didn’t wanna wake you.”

Yang pulled a chair out of the table. “Just so we’re clear,” she said, skipping the preamble, “there’s no fucking way I’m bringing Blake here.”

Jesus, the thought alone sent a chill through her. Well, not just because Tai was the most tactless person in the world (Yang could remember the trials he’d put Weiss through—vividly), but because she was afraid of how Blake would think of it. The whole meeting-the-parents…thing. Would Blake think of that as pushing some kind of unspoken boundary between them? Would she feel stifled?

Dad and Ruby shared a look, and Ruby smiled and shrugged her thin shoulders. “I get her point, I think,” she said.

“Traitor.” Tai pushed her face away and she giggled from behind his hand. “I’m not that bad.”

“Yes, you are,” Yang said. “But Ruby’s allowed to meet her. Blake told me she’s been wanting to.”

Ruby threw her hands up and cheered. Tai looked crestfallen.

Her phone buzzed. For a moment, when Yang looked down and saw it was Weiss calling, she could almost smell blood again, hear windchimes in her ears. She dug her nails into her arm to bring her back, putting the phone to her ear. “Hey, babe—”

“Don’t ‘hey, babe’ me, asshole. That just gives you away.” Ruby heard her through the receiver and cheered again, mouthing, Weiss! (They were best friends, but Weiss either didn’t know it or wouldn’t admit to it.) “Meet me at Port’s in fifteen minutes or you’re officially dead to me.”

Guilt pulsed through her. The last time they’d seen each other had been yesterday night, when Yang had been a total mess over Blake. She hadn’t told Weiss yet about everything that had happened since then. She hadn’t told anyone. “There in ten,” she said.

~

Ruby tagged along in Jolene, never one to be left out of things. But she seemed uncharacteristically quiet, like she wanted to say something but was biting her tongue, trying to work out just the right way to say it.

“You’re that curious?” Yang finally asked, and Ruby jumped in her seat like she’d been so deep in her thoughts she’d forgotten Yang was even there.

Ruby chewed her lip. “I mean, duh! You’re my sister, and she’s your…you know!”

Actually, I don’t know was what Yang wanted to tell her. Because that was the truth. She had no goddamn idea what kind of word would fit there, or if there was any word that could. Now that she thought about it, Ruby was even more in the dark than Weiss when it came to Blake. All at once, Blake was somehow hard to talk about and all Yang wanted to talk about. The question was where to start, and, more importantly, where to end it. “So, Blake is…” Yang licked her lips and started over. “Blake’s been dealing with a lot. She’s got a complicated story, even more complicated than you’d think. We had a fight yesterday, and I guess both of us were, uh, hurting in our own little bubbles. But we made up. I stayed over at her place last night because she…”  

“Because she needed you there,” Ruby finished, pulling her knees to her chest.

Yang swallowed. No, it felt more like the other way around. “I know it must seem weird to you, that I’ve gotten, like…attached to her like this. Like I’m infatuated, or something.”

“I don’t think it’s that,” Ruby said, sliding down in the truck seat. She smiled, as if to herself, softly. “I think it’s special. How you’ve already become a part of it.”

“A part of it?”

“You know!” Ruby only smiled wider. “That ‘complicated story.’”

“I—” Yang blinked back the sudden and irrational prickling of tears and tugged Ruby’s hoodie over her head. So unfair, she thought. You just couldn’t argue with her when she made a face like that.

Chapter Text

Weiss set her spoon down with a clatter, glaring at Yang from overtop yet another strawberry shake. (She’d ordered Yang a water.) “Hoping to use your sister’s natural, disarming charm to make me forget I’m mad at you? That’s just low, Xiao Long.”

But Ruby had already shot out like a bullet from behind Yang, throwing herself in the booth seat beside Weiss for a hug that threw them both off-balance. “Missed you, too, Ice Queen,” Ruby said, and of course she wasn’t even reproached for the nickname. Everyone had a soft spot for Ruby, but Weiss’s own particular soft spot was always so shockingly obvious. (And was Yang just a teeny bit bitter that Weiss greeted Ruby with fond eyerolls and Yang, habitually, with “asshole”? Well.)

Weiss gave it another moment before shrugging herself free. “Ruby, we literally saw each other the other day.”

“Yeah, but you were busy hunting Yang down, though. So it doesn’t count.”

“Well, excuse me for trying to reign her in a little.” Weiss huffed. “I think I deserve a little credit for how much suffering I go through.”

“Give up! She can’t be tamed!”

Yang shook her head and settled in on the opposite side of the booth. “That’s a compliment, right?”

Ruby proudly crowed, “Hell yeah” at the exact moment Weiss snapped, “Hell no” and the effect of it was nearly enough to double her over. But even in the middle of that sudden laughing fit, even when the other two exchanged glances and couldn’t seem to stop themselves from being pulled into it, Yang ended up thinking just about how much she’d missed it. Old-school shit like this, these late-night diner dates between the three of them, totally priceless. Losing track of the time in a good way (and not in that literally-going-crazy-with-boredom way that happened on the inside of a cinderblock cell.) Getting carried away over things that weren’t even all that funny. Everything, maybe, was exactly as it was supposed to be, even if it began and ended with that teenage giggling in the cracked diner booth.

Still, she was surprised by how…different it felt now. How much it felt like there was some missing piece, something imperfect. Didn’t take much introspection to get to the root of what, exactly, had changed, though. She wouldn’t call it what it was yet (that word she’d almost let slip the other day) but she at least had the sense to understand the kind of sea-change that had come over her, the completeness of it. It was just a fact of nature: when things finally did push up out of the ground, you couldn’t make them seeds again.

Weiss snapped her fingers in front of Yang’s nose, and her expression made Yang think that she’d been caught in the act. She’d been seen clean through. “Damn, we’ve already lost her.”

“If Yang doesn’t experience gay thoughts at least twice an hour, she’ll die,” Ruby explained, taking the opportunity to spoon some of Weiss’s extra shake from the tin cup into her mouth.

Yang shot a straw paper at her from across the table. “Hey, that isn’t how it works, brat. Me and you are supposed to bully Weiss, remember? The two of you don’t get to start ganging up on me.”

Weiss flashed that ultra-sweet smile that told you when danger was imminent. “And while we’re on the subject of Blake—”

Yang rolled her eyes and took a sip of the water in front of her. “Great. So we’re finally getting to the point—”

“Please tell me you didn’t fucking sleep with her.”

Yang choked, clamping a hand over her mouth so she didn’t spit the water right back out. Weiss made a disgusted face and handed Yang a napkin, which she ignored, along with the heat creeping into her neck. “‘Did I—?’” Yang struggled to get the words out, thumping her chest with the side of her fist. “Jesus, you really don’t know how to ask questions like a normal person, do you?”

Ruby, for her part, looked a little scandalized. “Yang, you didn’t…”

“I didn’t!” Her voice came out all weird, a little too high. Definitely defensive. She lowered her hands to her lap. “Look, it isn’t like that.”

“It’s a little ‘like that,’” Ruby whispered, too loudly.

Yang ignored her. “I don’t think I have to explain to you why Blake just…needs a friendly face around. Someone who’s not gonna look at her like she’s crazy. Or dangerous. Someone with a reason.”

Weiss pressed her fingertips into the corners of her eyes, tiredly. “It’s just, what did you expect me to think? You left, and then you went totally radio silent for like, a day and a half. I assumed—well, I just assumed you’d gone and…reconciled with her.” The implications of “reconciled” made Yang’s mouth twitch. “But if you’re saying your relationship isn’t like that, then what is it like? I know you don’t need anyone to tell you this, but you’re the last person on earth who should be getting so fixated a girl with that much baggage. You know all it’s gonna do is run you dry.”

Of course Yang knew what Weiss was telling her. Because that was just who Yang was, right? That was who everyone thought of her as, the person who didn’t know when to leave “a girl like that” alone, the person who used herself up.

And Weiss was just worried. Qrow and Tai, too. They were just worried about her. So what was she so angry about? “Yesterday you were telling me to go after her.” Her fingertips dug hard into her knees. “What the hell could’ve possibly changed between then and now?”

“Yesterday you were making a face like somebody died,” Weiss said, her mouth puckering, “and I just…thought you needed to face up to whatever it was that’d happened between you two.”

“But now that I got the closure I wanted, you want me to just—what? Leave it at that? As if I have any goddamn clue how to go back to how I used to be before this shit started?” She heard herself, felt the heaviness of those last few words just a moment too late, and she sat back with that knowledge settling on her hard enough that she was sure there was some imprint left on her skin. (Used to be, she’d said, like it’d been years instead of days. No wonder everyone was screaming at her to get a grip already.) The other two had both gone a little owl-eyed in the meantime, but Ruby recovered faster.

“That’s not what she meant, Yang,” Ruby said, after a beat. She cracked a small smile when she saw Yang’s confused look. “That part about Blake—I can tell that’s not really what she wanted to say to you. I mean, yeah, she’s worried about you, and she can come off a little harsh sometimes, but all she really wants is to know that whatever you do, whatever you decide, you’re happy.” She gently bumped Weiss’s shoulder with her own. “Right?”

Weiss chewed her lip and met Yang’s eyes reluctantly. Ruby was right, of course. Weiss could be sharp as a tack when it came to all the little shifts and folds of other people’s feelings, but a bit hopeless when it came to deciphering her own. Still, it wasn’t like she was the only one who had room to improve on that one. Sometimes you said things to the people you loved because you thought they’d be better off for hearing it, not because you believed it. There was something bittersweet about that.

“I’m not ‘harsh,’ Ruby. I’m direct,” Weiss said at last. And if there was something conspicuous about the way she softly cleared her throat, nobody said anything about it.

Yang’s smile stretched wide, and she reached across the table to muss Weiss’s perfect hair (which she dodged, expertly.) “Aw, it’s okay, Ice Queen. Your bitchiness is just one of the things we love about you.”

“Yeah! You’re like, the meanest person we know,” Ruby agreed, unhelpfully.

“Look, just so we’re clear,” Weiss said, slinging her purse strap over her shoulder, “I still don’t feel right about this stereotypical lesbian romance you’ve got going on—”

“Uh, believe it or not, we’re actually just friends right now—”

“Oh, save it. If she asked, you’d have dinner with her parents or some bullshit like that.”

Beside her, Ruby was oddly quiet. Pensive, almost. “You did get home kinda late today…”

“Okay, so Weiss is filled in.” Yang slapped a ten down on the table and slid out of the booth seat. “It’s been fun catching up, gang.” Yeah, no way in hell she’d tell her little sister about any of the things that had held her up on her way back that afternoon. About all the ways Blake, specifically, had held her up.

Weiss and Ruby hounded her on her way out the door—Weiss, of course, demanding details—but Yang had a head start on them, and was almost in the clear before she heard a voice ring out across the parking lot. A voice she wished she didn’t recognize. She really, really wished that.

“Hey, blondie. Been a while.”

Mercury fucking Black.

And Emerald, too, with her dyed-green hair, perched on the hood of his shitty Honda, the same shitty Honda he’d always had. The two were and had always been attached at the hip, but it wasn’t in the way that Weiss and Ruby and Yang were all stuck to each other. It was more the way that drowning people grabbed onto each other, trying to push the other one down to get to air. Like reflex, or more or less like some misery-loves-company bullshit. They were dependent, and maybe they even half-resented each other for it.

Then again, Yang was an outsider in all that. A really distant outsider. Who fully couldn’t stand either of them, incidentally, but especially Mercury Black.

Yang feigned ignorance even though she knew there was probably no point, pretended like she couldn’t feel her arm burning as she unlocked the driver’s door with the hand that wasn’t shaking. Yang curled her other hand into a fist and pressed it against her thigh. (Damn did she really hate how her body did shit like that all on its own. How she looked scared when she knew in her head that she wasn’t.) She’d just opened the truck door when she heard footsteps, rapid but syncopated, and then the sole of Mercury’s boot blurred past, slamming it back shut.

“Don’t really like being ignored,” he drawled. He let his foot slide off of the door, and Yang’s head lifted slowly to take in the smug grin, the apathetic glaze over the eyes that chilled her.

“It’s cute how you think you’re worth anybody’s time,” Weiss coolly replied before Yang could even think to say anything herself, catching up to them with Ruby just behind her. Ruby stepped up next to Yang and put her hand on the inside of Yang’s elbow, glaring up at Mercury in a way that—well, if you were someone who didn’t know better, you’d have thought Ruby’s face couldn’t even physically make an expression like that.

“Damn, so hostile.” Mercury lifted his hands and took a lazy step backwards, though there was a slight hitch in his gait these days that you had to be looking for to really notice. He probably wouldn’t ever manage to shake it, that imbalance. And sometimes Yang felt something that was almost like a pang of remorse over it, but he hadn’t really caught her on one of her generous days.

Just past him, Yang could see Emerald slide off the hood of his car, shoving her hands in her pockets as she jogged over to them. She stepped up behind him, grabbing his shoulder. “Don’t overdo it, Merc,” she muttered.

He shrugged her off, turning back to Yang. “You know, you’re gonna have to admit one of these days that I was just doing my job. That what happened was all because of your own stupid fucking choices. You might feel better then.”

Ruby’s hold on her tightened. “Shooting people isn’t your job,” she said, her chin trembling angrily.

His gaze, the cold color of gunmetal, slid to Ruby and that was all Yang needed to come back to herself, jolt out of whatever fog she’d been in. Her arm felt lit up from within, like a jack-o-lantern. “Guys, it’s fine.” She brought her hand down over Ruby’s and squeezed before gently loosening her fingers from the crease of her elbow. Weiss, meanwhile, was eyeing Mercury as if he was some kind of overgrown palmetto bug. “This jackass ain’t worth causing a scene.”

“Right. Wouldn’t wanna hold you up, Yang.” She caught the glint of Emerald’s teeth in the diner’s neon glow. “Since you’ve been so busy lately.”

Yang stiffened for only a moment before she fixed her stance, forcing that flash of panic down as she leaned in toward the other girl. “If you have shit to say to me,” she said, in a low voice, “then you should just say it.”

Mercury cut in between them, making Yang take an unconscious step backward. “Are you really gonna play dumb right now? Everyone knows you’ve been messing around with that Belladonna girl.” He scoffed, his eyes seeming to track the leap in the muscle of her jaw. “Nice going, by the way. Screwing some psycho is really gonna make that record of yours shine—”

Weiss grabbed Yang’s other arm just as she raised it, as if she’d known all along that it would come to this. “What happened to not causing a scene?” she hissed, under her breath. She tried her best to seem exasperated, put-upon, but her voice wavered over the last syllable.

Of course, she wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to physically prevent Yang from breaking his nose like he deserved, but something about the bloodless press of her fingers, something about the way she was biting down hard on the inside of her lip, stopped Yang cold. Just more things you had to be looking for already if you wanted to see them. Well, Yang had started looking for those kinds of things since the day—God, had it really been nearly a decade since then?—the day they were all tangled up in each other’s legs on the living room couch and Weiss, in a voice quieter than Yang had ever heard, had told them how she’d really gotten that silver scar above her eye.

She’d told them all about the wrong words and the thrown china dish and the man who’d nearly blinded his then fifteen-year-old daughter. Not that Yang and Ruby weren’t already harboring their own suspicions about him, but this was all the confirmation anyone needed. Or, all the excuse.

Weiss had stopped her then, too. Yang had yanked on a jacket and was already halfway out the door by the time anyone had caught up to her. “I’m gonna make that son of a bitch regret it,” she’d promised, but Weiss had just shook her head, looked at the floor. Ruby had to be the one to say, “Yang, this isn’t something you can fix the way you always fix things.” It had stung her pride then, but now she understood it more clearly than ever. You could make someone hurt, but you couldn’t make someone regret. And you especially couldn’t change who they were.

Mercury hadn’t flinched, like he’d been expecting her reaction, too. Or like he’d wanted it, like he’d been goading her into it all along. And he didn’t look quite so apathetic as before. The opposite—he looked on the edge of exhilaration, almost animal. “You gonna hit me, blondie?”

Emerald, at least, seemed uneasy about the change in the mood, her hands balling up into fist-shapes from inside her jacket pockets. “Mercury, let’s just go already—”

“Will you relax? I just wanna know what she’s getting so mad about.” He tilted his head to one side. “And here I was trying to offer some friendly advice.”

“I’ve been getting a lot of that lately.” Yang grinned, and maybe there was something wild about the look on her face because she felt Weiss’s grip on her loosen and fall.

“Oh, yeah? Then I guess you know that if you fuck up this time, Daddy ain’t gonna take the fall for you again.”

This time it wasn’t panic that rose up in her but something that cut her even deeper, made her body run cold. She forced that down, too. That was all she could do, kill those feelings before they had the chance to move her, make her do things she’d regret.

“What do you get out of this?” Weiss demanded. “What do you get out of being so fucking hateful?” Her voice sounded far away, like Yang was only half-awake, or like someone had their hands over her ears. Distantly, she saw Weiss’s lip curl. “You’re pathetic.”

Mercury’s face darkened. “You wanna repeat that, princess?” He made a sudden grab for her arm, and Yang moved to intercept him, but another hand was faster, catching him in an honest-to-god wristlock. Perfect form, too—the kind you didn’t have a prayer of getting out of without seriously hurting for it. Yang recognized it instantly.

“Kindly refrain from laying your hands on my girlfriend,” Pyrrha said, clicking her tongue softly against her teeth like she was in the middle of disciplining a schoolyard bully. Then again, Yang couldn’t say for sure that wasn’t exactly (fundamentally, at least) what was happening. Mercury yelped when Pyrrha tightened her grip. “You really don’t know when to leave things alone.”

It was hard to say for sure who she’d meant to direct that last part at, but Yang felt a bit sheepish anyway. She scratched the back of her neck, letting out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Pyrrha dropped Mercury’s arm, her expression still hard-edged and alert, and Weiss was gazing up at her as if cartoon hearts would come popping out of her eyes at any moment.

Emerald glared. “The hell’s your problem—you could’ve broken his wrist!”

Actually, he’d gotten off lightly, Yang thought. Considering his offense.

“Forget it, Em.” Cradling his hand to his chest, Mercury spared the rest of them one last unfriendly once-over before he spat and stalked off to his car. Typical. Cowed in an instant, the moment somebody came along and battered his ego a little. Then again, he knew, and everyone knew, that Pyrrha was supremely unflappable in a way that Yang decidedly wasn’t.

When Emerald stared at his back and didn’t go trailing after him right away, Ruby chewed her lip and took a small, careful step toward her. “You…don’t have to keep protecting him, you know,” she said. “Or defending the things he does.”

Emerald stood frozen in place, blinking slowly as if she thought she’d somehow misheard her, but the next moment she scowled and turned her back to them, too. Over her shoulder, she snapped, “Don’t talk to me like we’re friends.” Ruby seemed a little dejected, but not especially surprised.

Pyrrha sighed, the tension going out of her shoulders the moment they were out of sight, and her face slid back into its usual serene expression. “Well. Trouble just seems to follow you three around.”

“To be fair, Pyr, that’s what happens when you leave us unsupervised.” Yang smiled, and this one was genuine. “Thanks for the devastating assist, by the way.”

“Yeah, you kicked ass,” Ruby chimed in.

Weiss, meanwhile, was quiet. Was looking a little flushed. Finally, she chewed her lip and said, “You’re late.”

Pyrrha turned and brushed a few fly-away strands of hair from Weiss’s face (which made her set her jaw and turn a more vivid shade of pink.) “Sorry about that,” she murmured, in a voice like they were alone.

“Come on, Weiss.” Ruby nudged her with an elbow. “Tell her she was cool!”

“…Fine. Only because I know Pyrrha doesn’t let these things go to her head.”

“Ouch, was that a dig?”

“Shut up, Yang.” Weiss cleared her throat, and Pyrrha’s hand stilled against her cheek, her smile soft and amused. “I have to admit, it was…satisfying. Watching you handle him like that.”

Ruby giggled and Yang didn’t even bother suppressing her eye roll. “Weiss, just tell her you want her to rail you already. Christ, you’re repressed.”

“I—that…shut up, Yang! I can’t fucking believe you!” Now, Weiss had taken classical singing lessons as a kid. For years, up until high school. So maybe the way her voice had shot cleanly through two octaves like that shouldn’t have impressed her as much as it did, but it really did impress her.

Pyrrha sucked in her lip and tried not to give Yang the satisfaction of a laugh (or, maybe it was better to say she didn’t want to make Weiss doubt her loyalties.) She tucked Weiss into her side, almost protectively. Not that Weiss was someone whose feelings needed any coddling, but something about Pyrrha seemed to sway her to consent, at certain times, to being fussed over a little. But unlike in the mansion on the hill, it wasn’t a conditional or a dishonest or a calculating kind of warmth.

Yep, there sure was something about Pyrrha. Maybe Yang shouldn’t have been so surprised, back when Weiss had told her.

“That side of her is cute, though,” Pyrrha said, her hand just grazing Weiss’s shoulder.

“The part of her that can’t admit what she wants?” Yang offered.

Pyrrha was crinkling her eyes and pressing her mouth in that way that told you when she was being especially considerate of you. “Well…not many of us can, I think.”

“Ooh, another dig,” Ruby said, spying her chance to insinuate herself into what little space there was between Pyrrha and Weiss. (Two out of three, at least, seemed happy about the impromptu group hug. Weiss grumbled about feeling sweaty.) Ruby’s voice came muffled, her face pressed into Pyrrha’s shoulder. “Yang has no allies left in this cruel and unforgiving world…”

“Oh, no the hell you don’t.” Yang snatched at Ruby’s hood and dragged her backwards, wrestling her into a loose headlock. A very loving kind of headlock, of course. Ruby flailed. “You’re stuck with me more than anyone, Rubes. Face the facts.”

Ruby was squeal-laughing and Weiss couldn’t help but let her guard down—Yang saw it so clearly, the wrinkle in that “sensible” character she liked to play, the run in the seam of the costume. “The thing is, Yang,” she said, “I’m not sure there’s an escape for any of us at this point.”

If other versions of them were somewhere living their own lives, Yang wondered, would they be together in those other places, too? She didn’t ask. She held that thought to her chest and said, “That might be the nicest goddamn thing you’ve said to me all day.”

~

Ruby kept stealing glances at her on the drive back. “You…you’re not gonna let what Mercury said get to you, right?”

The warm night air blew in through the truck windows, pushed everything to the back of her mind. Yang turned the radio down. It seemed these days the radio was always on at a low murmur, even the commercials. Yang found she needed the distraction more often than not. “Hm? Which part?”

“That part about Blake. The part about Dad. Any of it.”

“Well, no one’s been telling me anything different.” Uncle Qrow’s voice itched in her ear again: Keep your head down. “…They were just a little kinder about it.”

“I’ve been telling you different.” Her voice came sudden enough, forceful enough, that Yang nearly looked away from the road entirely. In the corner of her eye, she saw Ruby’s small fists go white-knuckled in her lap. “No matter what, I’m with you.”

For her own sake, Yang thought, Ruby should’ve learned to doubt her by now.

Ruby had written her letters while she’d been away, even though it had taken a long time for Yang to be able to write any back. They didn’t lecture her, or fault her for being gone. They were letters about home, signed at the end, always, with “See you soon” (as if, instead of three years, it’d only be another three days.) And when she did finally come back, for a while, Ruby had been the only one who could still look her in the eye. There was a chance, she knew, that the good things still left in her she owed to Ruby.

But that was love with a blind eye, right? That was love that absolved you and absolved you and never learned.

Yang’s fingers flexed on the steering wheel, opening and closing like anemones. “And if I really do make the same stupid mistakes again? If I throw everything, all that progress away for—fuck, for some beautiful stranger? What will you do then?”

Ruby stuck her tongue into the inside of her cheek and Yang felt her own stubbornness turn to powder in an instant. “Idiot,” she said, trying to keep the tearfulness out of her voice. “I’ll love you. I’ll love you, and Weiss will love you, and Dad and Qrow, and Pyrrha. We’ll all just love you, the same as we always have. You don’t make it hard.”

Yang tried to laugh but it sounded more like kindling cracking. This serious side of Ruby—she didn’t have any defenses against it. “I don’t make it hard? You sure?”

Ruby battered her arm with those small fists. “You’re really fishing for me to call you a pain in the ass? Because I will. And you are.”

Yang did her best to fend her off one-handed. “Shit, you’re gonna make us crash, you monster.” She sighed. “Fine, I get it, okay? I’m sorry. I guess I’m just…scared. Of a lot of things.”

And it kind of pained her to admit that much, to Ruby more than anyone. Yang wasn’t supposed to be the one who was scared, or who hesitated. If it was for Ruby’s sake—if it was possible? Yang would make herself indestructible.

“Scared about messing up or scared because you don’t know how to deal with this whole intense, like, soulmate thing you have with Blake?”

Now there was a word with presence, a word like a blow to the back of the head—spots swam in her vision. (Yang supposed she was glad she was already turning into the driveway by then.) Well, it wasn’t like she’d never let it cross her mind, that word. Especially when she’d been struck by all that mysticism the night before, standing in the dark water with Blake, watching Blake watch invisible stars. But that kind of thing…that was a lie you told yourself when you were desperate to hold onto someone, anyone. That was the stuff of romance novels. It had nothing to do with either of them or the kind of people they were, or with real life, because in real life it was the shining, lovely things like that were the first to go up in smoke.

She turned off the truck and leaned back hard against the seat. “Soulmates aren’t a thing.”

“Mom always thought they were.”

“That—” Yang dropped her head, running her fingers through her scalp. “That’s cheating and you know it. Pulling that card. Anyway, real relationships aren’t that simple, Rubes. It isn’t just something that happens to you, being with somebody. It’s…there are a lot of factors.”

“All I’m saying is, she’s not just some ‘beautiful stranger,’” Ruby muttered. She pulled one knee up. “I mean, you’ve always been easy to read.”

What was that supposed to mean? And what did Ruby even know of it? Talking so confident about Blake and what she meant to Yang even though the two of them hadn’t even met each other yet. All she had to go by really was…what, exactly? Yang paled a little at the thought of it all being right there on her face for anyone to see. There wasn’t much she could do about that, after all. (Had Blake seen all of it, too? From the beginning?)

Ruby was right about Mom. She had always believed in stuff like that. Fate and all things mystical, those invisible threads that bound everything together, those invisible hands that pressed on your back, urged you forward. Ruby had her own quirks, but she’d always been so much like Mom. Yang couldn’t help but remember the overly casual sing-song of Ruby’s voice through the phone receiver, the way she’d said, as if in on a joke, Take good care of Yang.

Tangled up in her thoughts as she was, Yang was slow to hear the ping of a text message, slow to register the name that appeared at the top of the screen. Ruby craned her neck to see. She didn’t even try to stifle the laugh that burst from her. “See? That’s just cosmic.”

Yang blinked, opening the message.

kind of last minute, but wanna come over tomorrow? for lunch?

it’s fine if you’re busy

Her phone pinged again, not even a millisecond later:

bring ruby along! if she’s up to it

Yet again:

um just to clarify i was thinking like.. sandwiches

so no kitchen fires probably

Despite herself, and feeling Ruby’s eyes on her, Yang bit down on a smile.

i’m sure u’ll find a way *wink*

asshole. i’ll poison you

…

wait why did you type out “wink”, just use the face??

anyway is that a yes or not???

obviously it’s a yes

obviously i knew you’d say yes

“I wish you could see how stupid your expression looks right now,” Ruby said. “I really do.”

Yang’s hand floated up to her face, felt the grin there. “I was just surprised. She’s never texted me before.”

“Surprised. Sure.” But Ruby was smiling, too.

Chapter Text

Here was one way Blake had set herself to the task of holding Yang up that afternoon: asking questions she knew didn’t have answers.

“Do you really think someone like me could keep that up for long?” Her legs hung over the edge of the bed, her hair fanned out beneath her. “Being happy. Whatever that means. It just…doesn’t feel realistic. And like, some people don’t even have to think too hard about it. Their lives are happy totally by accident. It’s fucked up.”

Yang found that her cheek was still stinging softly with the static of the kiss Blake had pressed to it. She leaned back and turned her head, her nose nearly touching Blake’s thigh. It was the same as last time: Yang on the floor, Blake just out of reach until she decided not to be. Yang was probably just scared, of the intimacy or the expectation of it, of laying down beside her, scared of the shape of the imprint she’d leave. “I think you don’t understand yourself as much as you think you do.”

“That doesn’t really make me feel better, Yang.”

“Oh, you wanna feel better? I thought you wanted to be in a mood.” Yang caught the pillow (flung in a wide arc toward her face) an inch from her nose. She lowered it, looking up at Blake, who was still bristling. “Sorry, too honest? Wasn’t that what you wanted, though?”

Blake’s mouth curled. “Oh, is that what I wanted?”

She turned, her bare legs disappearing from view, and flopped heavily onto her stomach, the bed groaning on its wooden frame. Her arms slid over Yang’s shoulders, draping loosely around her neck. She pressed her face into Yang’s hair, which fell in tangles around her now and still wasn’t quite dry.

Well, sure, Yang had been wondering about it. Ever since that moment in the garden center parking lot, when Blake had first crossed that line between them, traced that raised ring-shape on her skin. Wondering how she could just reach out and touch somebody like that, so honestly, like there was no difference between Yang’s body and her own, like she had no painful or murky history to speak of. What could’ve changed? There was the girl who warned you with her eyes to keep away and whose mind at times seemed to run off somewhere far away from you, and then there was the girl whose fingertips had pressed gently, so gently, to the inside of Yang’s wrist, leading her up and up and up the stairs into the places and the rooms no one else ever saw.

Then again, maybe nothing really had changed. It might’ve been truer to say that those sides of her were just constantly displacing each other. When you thought you’d caught her in one way, you realized the next second that you were talking to a shadow on the wall.

Still feeling that weight and warmth on her back, Yang felt it slip from her before she could think to stop it: “What do you want, Blake?” Blake’s body stiffened against her back almost immediately after she said it, and Yang’s throat had probably never gone so dry so fast before. “Uh. From…from me, I mean.”

“From you,” Blake echoed, in a voice that gave nothing away. Her hands raked lightly through Yang’s hair, baring her ear, her jaw, her neck. Yang felt teeth lightly scrape skin, felt her bones tremble. “I have this theory,” she murmured. “This theory that like, thinking too much is where you go wrong. And I’m so tired of shit going wrong, you know? So let’s just…not overthink things, okay? Please?”

Yang doubted she was in any position to be doing much thinking, anyway. “Okay,” she said. “For now, we won’t.”

“For now.”

“You—are you fucking with me? You’ve just been repeating everything I say.”

Blake’s fingers dipped shallowly beneath the collar of her shirt, raising goosebumps. “If I was actually being unkind, you’d know it.”

If Yang thought there was something a little unkind about the way Blake spoke too low and too close to her ear, she kept her mouth shut. But everybody had their limits, and she’d never really been any good at the whole “restraint” thing, anyway. Impatience dug into her like a spur.

“God, I’m so selfish,” Blake said suddenly. Her small murmur came muffled through the material of Yang’s shirt. “It’s like I can’t stop myself. From asking things like that.”

Selfish, huh. Even though she didn’t even know what she wanted. “Sure. I’m a little selfish, too,” Yang said.

“Ha. That’s funny.”

“Wow. How insincere do you think I am, exactly?” Not that she blamed Blake so much as she blamed whatever it was that made every word seem like a pitfall. As if things were said not because they were meant but because they could trap you, trick you, be turned against you. Enough of that kind of treatment, and anybody would start to doubt.

“I meant it in a good way.” Yang turned her head, and this time their faces were so close her nose brushed the softness of Blake’s cheek. Blake drew back, just enough to look at Yang looking at her. Her eyelashes fluttered and lowered over her eyes (not shyly.) Her mouth was set in a slight pout, and Yang found her gaze drawn down to it.

 “…I know,” Yang said. Her fingernails dug into the woven design of the throw rug at the foot of the bed. But I’m probably not as good as you think, she thought. I’m just the normal amount. Give or take.

And really, someone who was just the normal amount of good, or less than that, really had no business acting like they had any to spare, right? Yang probably couldn’t be that person Blake seemed to think she needed—someone who didn’t get too greedy, who could be honest even when it hurt.

Blake disappeared again, her arms finally falling away. “Ugh. It’s like I can hear you overthinking things already.”

“Sorry for thinking so loud, I guess.” Yang turned and saw that Blake was sitting upright, kneeling in the middle of the bed. She was gripping another pillow in her lap, as if she still had plans to dole out swift retribution. Yang smiled crookedly. “I never used to get introspective like this. Or at all, actually. You’re making me all weird trying to figure you out.”

“You were weird before, probably.” She crept closer, her knees pressing down, leaving indents in the comforter. Yang tried, failed, not to remember those knees pressed down on either side of her hips, the thumb against the hollow of her throat. “You’re being weird right now, too.”

“…Am I?”

“You’ve been looking at me like you wanna kiss me, but you won’t.”

It was a bullseye, and she knew it. She knew it from the way that Yang rose to her feet a little too quick but didn’t move away from the foot of the bed. “Earlier, you told me you’d give me ‘space,’” Blake said, quietly, “but I never asked you to do that, you know. I’m starting to think that you’re the one who wants it.”

Blake didn’t need someone to kiss her. Actually, that was probably the last thing she needed. Especially if Yang was going to be like this, all weird and insecure in a way she’d never been around anyone before. Blake was right about her, that Yang didn’t really know what to do with closeness like this once she had it. That it was hard to know what you really wanted when you were in the eye of the storm, when everything else around you had gone so out of focus. (Not to mention, when the dust did finally settle, what could be there left standing?)

But. Blake was looking at her like that, so directly, taking in every detail, still without a trace of shyness. She was just waiting, perched at the edge of the bed, for the moment when Yang would come up to meet her. Waiting with all the patience that Yang didn’t have.

Yang reached up, her hand cradling the back of Blake’s head, and roughly brought their mouths together. And Blake almost lost her balance (or she’d let herself slip), but caught herself before she did, her palms pressing flat against Yang’s collarbone.

And here was the other way Blake held her up that afternoon: soundly kissing her back.

~

So maybe their way of settling things needed work.

Weiss would right away call her a horny dumbass if she knew any of it, but Weiss probably couldn’t understand it, the way a single look from Blake put something restless in her at ease and lit a fire under her at the same time. Brought out her competitive side, even. Blake had gotten it into her head that Yang wanted “space” from her, wanted to get away from her, but it was the opposite. What she didn’t seem to realize was that the point where distance, real distance, became impossible had already been crossed, over and over. Or it had always been crossed. Meaning, Blake was there in her blood and there was no getting away and no desire to.

(Yikes. Maybe she really was a horny dumbass. Someone lonely and senseless enough, at least, to buy so readily into the idea of fate to begin with.)

“So this haunted house in the middle of the sticks you’re dragging us to,” Weiss said, breaking into Yang’s thoughts.

Yang rolled her eyes. “It’s just a house. I mean, Blake’s not the one with like, giant portraits of herself on the wall and actual suits of armor—”

“Like in Scooby-Doo,” Ruby observed, from the backseat.

“Yeah, like in Scooby-fucking-Doo,” Yang said. “Your dad’s place definitely wins in creepiness.” As kids, Yang and Ruby had snuck into the Schnee mansion once to collect Weiss for a late-night Port’s date. Once was all it took for the two of them to vow that they’d never do that again. Ruby had nightmares for years after about headless knights chasing her down long hallways.

Weiss leaned her chin into her hand and (Yang peered over the top of her sunglasses to get a better look) there was definitely an almost-smile playing at her lips. “And in tackiness. Stupid bastard.”

“Well, that’s good ol’ Jackass for you, right? All tiny white suits and moustache twirling, and no class.”

Ruby clucked her tongue in faux sympathy. “Tragic.”

And there was the real smile. Bringing him up wasn’t something they used to do, especially at the time when her wounds and her memories of that place were still fresh and stinging, but at some point Weiss had started doing it herself. Like she just wanted to remind herself sometimes that she’d shaken free of him, survived him (and, most importantly, her heart had survived.) That she only belonged to herself, and hadn’t been born guilty of anything.

Thus, shitting on Jacques Schnee had become a time-honored pastime between them. And Pyrrha—sweet, benevolent Pyrrha who hardly ever had anything bad to say about anyone—was the most talented of them all at it.

But somehow Yang couldn’t muster anything like that, that kind of catharsis, when it came to her own family baggage. Even though it was a fact that anybody could attest to: Raven was shitty. Sure, complicated and troubled, too, but fundamentally shitty. She’d hurt her before Yang even knew what hurt was, and then she’d come back and done it all again. But every time Yang opened her mouth to say as much, or even to speak Raven’s name, she lost her voice. So she didn’t talk about it. And no one else knew how to talk about it, either.

No one except… Well, hadn’t Yang been able to say all those things to Blake, that night in her room, sitting in the dark with her? And because Blake had asked her to?

The magnolia trees came into view on either side and Yang became suddenly aware of the giddiness that hummed through her. That was what it was, right? Giddiness? Sure, she was feeling pretty damn pleased about introducing Ruby and Weiss, but more than anything, in that long, quiet stretch of time before Menagerie Manor appeared in front of them, Yang just wanted to see her.

More for the sake of her nerves than anything else, Yang reached across the space to muss up Weiss’s hair while she had her guard down. “Try to be nicer to Blake than last time, okay?”

“Ugh.” Weiss slapped Yang’s hand away and flipped down the visor mirror, smoothing each flyaway perfectly back into place. “I didn’t even get to talk to her last time. What with you being in such a hurry to ditch me and all.”

“Jealousy’s not a cute look, you know.”

“Aw, Weiss.” Ruby leaned forward between the seats, gripping the console. “Even when Yang abandons us for beautiful, mysterious women, we’re still best friends.”

Weiss patted her head.

It was because Yang and Weiss were still ribbing each other that none of them noticed it, probably, even when the truck came up to the front of the house. Or it was because Ruby was gawking up at the high windows and making breathless comments about the vibes of the place. But when they crossed the porch steps, Weiss’s gaze moved from Yang to just past her and stilled.

Yang blinked and spun and saw the welts of red color on the door, the tails that had dripped down to the porch. Paint. Obviously paint, and long dry. She knew that right away. But that didn’t stop the turn of her stomach when her eyes landed on red, didn’t stop the feeling that started as a flash of heat before becoming a chill that went through her whole body.

The curtained window by the door—a pane of it was out, one jagged piece still stuck in the frame like an animal fang. If this had happened in the middle of the night, the sound of shattering would’ve startled her awake. Yang had the stupid thought that Blake should’ve called her right away, if she’d been scared. Even if it was the early hours of the morning, Blake should’ve called her and told her to come.

Yang realized then, distantly, that she hadn’t gotten any texts from Blake that morning.

“Oh, shit,” Weiss muttered, stepping up next to Yang. “Some…some redneck assholes must’ve come by with paintball guns or something.”

“Blake?” Yang called, thumping on the door with the side of her fist. She went on, ignoring the rising panic in her voice, “Blake, it’s—it’s Yang.” Her hand fell. “Blake, please open the door.”

A long moment later she heard footsteps from within, the click of the lock, and Yang’s heart dropped when she saw that it was Maria in the doorway. “When I got here, she was already gone,” the old woman said, after a beat, tracing the moonstones in her cane with her thumb. The beady eyes through the thick glasses peered up at her, crinkling sadly. “She didn’t tell you anything?”

Yang peered into the dark, silent emptiness of the manor. “No, she didn’t.”

~

Raven was gone from the storage room one night. Not for long, but long enough for Yang to know that she’d done it other times before. Even though she was supposed to be keeping a low profile. Even though Yang was sticking her neck out for her, risking everything, her job and her relationship and all of her good standing, on a woman who probably wouldn’t even risk a broken fingernail for Yang in return. It pissed her off more than she could put into words, but she couldn’t deny the bolt of fear that’d gone through her, either, or the bitter-tasting relief she felt when Raven returned and threw herself down on the old sofa.

“…Where were you?”

Raven threw her arm over her eyes. “Doesn’t matter. No one saw me.”

“No one?” Yang demanded, taking a step toward her. This close, Yang caught a whiff of gasoline and cigarette smoke still clinging faintly to her clothes. She’d been out, probably just to the edge of town. Gas station convenience store, if she had to guess—anywhere that would sell her Camels with Yang’s money. “How do you know that?”

“No one important,” Raven clarified, peering out from under her arm with one eye. “Look, Yang, I know how to fly under the radar.”

“I know.”

Hearing the change in Yang’s tone, Raven finally lowered her arm from her face, swinging her legs to the floor with a thump. Her expression wasn’t particularly remorseful, but Yang hadn’t really expected it to be. “Oh, save it. Whatever you may think of me, that was the only good decision I ever made. Jesus, would you really have wanted me around back then? I’m sure you’ve realized by now that I’m not exactly a role model for a kid.”

“So I should feel better, then,” Yang said, pressing her mouth into a hard line. “Because you were doing me a favor.”

Raven stood, and for the first time, Yang realized that she had about two inches on the older woman. Raven seemed to register this fact, too, and shifted back on her heels like it’d startled her. But that reaction, like any other apparent vulnerability, was quickly snuffed and folded away.

Raven crossed her arms. “Maybe I was,” she said. “But I knew right away that you would turn out like me. Stubborn. Strong. But only as long as you didn’t let anything get too deep under your skin.”

“Because that would make me like Dad, right?” Yang grinned, but the shape of it felt more like a snarl. She was trembling, but she couldn’t be sure it was from anger. “He’s weak in some ways, sure, but not in the ways you think he is. And the part of me that comes from him…that isn’t weakness, either.”

Raven turned her head to the side and went silent, as if appraising her. Yang felt a prickle run down her neck when she understood what it was she was meant to be considering: the part of her that didn’t come from Tai. The part of her from Raven—something ingrained, maybe. The habits and the ways that came more naturally to you than all of the things you’d ever been taught. Habits you could tamp down, sure, but only that. There was no ridding yourself of them.

What was it that Raven thought she saw? Just strength, just stubbornness? Or something else?

As if answering Yang’s thoughts, Raven sighed and said, in a softer voice that terrified her, “You want the truth, Yang? Do you really want me to tell you what’s meant for you?”

Meant for you. Like destiny, Yang thought, opening and closing her hands at her sides. Or like a curse. “You couldn’t tell me a damn thing about myself,” Yang snapped, despite the mess of her thoughts.

“I could tell you that you’re good to people. Really good. People feel like they can rely on you. And you prize yourself on that, on being good. On being something people can use.” Raven unfolded her arms and—like she’d done when they’d first met—laid her hand across Yang’s cheek. Yang flinched under her touch but didn’t immediately move away. “But you’re not good for people, understand? Not in the long run,” she said. Seeing Yang’s stricken expression, she shook her head. “I know because you’re mine.”

Yang blinked and slapped Raven’s hand away. She felt sick. “I don’t belong to you.”

“I’m not saying these things to be cruel to you.” There was now something that was almost sorrowful in her voice. “You strained and strained against it, but I can see it in you. In the end, you got that from me. People come into your orbit and before long, they burn up in it. Can’t be helped.”

“You couldn’t help it.” But both of them could hear the flimsiness of Yang’s own voice. Yang stumbled backwards, her heel hitting up against the stacked bags of mulch at her back. “Because you’re scared of it and you always have been. I’m—I’m different from you.”

Raven lowered her hand. Even under harsh, fluorescent illumination, her geranium-colored eyes only seemed to darken. “Honestly, Yang, I hope you are. I really hope you are.”

~

Come to think of it, that was the last conversation Yang remembered ever having with her birth mother. A fittingly shitty send-off, she had to admit. Raven hadn’t exactly had very many words to spare in those final moments other than spat curses. Maybe she’d said something to Yang in parting, too soft to be heard over the chaos, but maybe that was naïve of her to imagine.

Ruby dropped onto the step beside her and leaned into her shoulder. “What are you thinking about? Blake?”

Guilt cut through the fog of the memory. Blake was there, of course, was always there in the back of Yang’s mind, but she’d been avoiding it. If she thought about her now, pictured her face, she was sure that something in her would break. “Just thinking,” she said, after a beat. She pocketed her phone. After all, it wasn’t going to ring.

“Worried?”

“Well, yeah. Of course I’m worried. But mostly, I…” She pressed back against Ruby, laying her cheek on the top of her head. “Mostly, I’m just…”

“Sad,” Ruby said, and Yang could only nod and sling her arm around the other girl’s small shoulders.

“Where do you think she went?” Weiss asked. When she didn’t get an answer, Weiss stepped in front of her, her shadow falling slantwise across Yang. “Yang. Where could she have gone?”

“I don’t know.” Yang tugged her hands through her hair, lifting it away from her face. “She might be at her parents’ house or something. Or she might have run for real. She might’ve already left this place for good. Point is, I don’t know.” She saw Weiss wince at the way she raised her voice and dropped her eyes. “Sorry.”

Weiss knelt in front of her, putting her hands over Yang’s and bringing them to her lap. “It’s okay.”

“Weiss and I aren’t going anywhere,” Ruby said, firmly. “We’ll be here for you for as long as you wanna wait for her.”

“I…” Yang couldn’t look at her, or at Weiss. She could only stare at the space between her own feet, at the warped wood of the porch step, the chipped paint. “I’ve been thinking about something Raven said to me, a while back. She said I’m good to people, but not for them. I mean, I told her she was wrong, and all this time I’ve been trying to prove it, but…I don’t know if I have. Proven it, I mean. I tried to help Blake, but I think all I did was make things worse for her.”

“Are you fucking serious, Yang?” Yang blinked and looked up at Weiss, who had shot to her feet and had her hands balled into fists at her sides. The rare soft Weiss had gone in a flash, and now she was facing down a Weiss who was wide-eyed with fury. “You’re gonna let that asshole tell you who you are?”

“Of course not!” Yang got to her feet, too. “But the fact is—look, I know you and Ruby and Pyrrha can forgive me over and over again for it, but in the end, I always destroy shit. Even when I try so hard to fix everything. No, especially when I try to fix things.”

“Yang, you…” To Yang’s utter disbelief, frustrated tears sprung up in Weiss’s eyes. She rubbed them away with the back of her arm. “You have no idea. No idea what you’ve given me. Pyrrha and Ruby, too, but—don’t you remember that night when I told you how I got the scar?”

“Yeah, I was about to run out and beat him half to death for it.” Yang scratched her ear, shame rising up in her. “And I didn’t even think about how much harder that would make things for you if I did.”

“But I’m talking about after that,” Weiss said, stepping closer, forcing Yang to meet her eyes. “Remember? After that, you dragged me out to the back yard and you taught me all those self-defense moves Tai showed you as a kid.”

Yang gave a quiet laugh. “You were scary good at the heel palm strike.”

Ruby laughed, too. “She made you bite your tongue.”

Weiss flicked Ruby’s ear. “That was an accident. Anyway, my point is, before that day, I always thought I just had to take whatever he threw at me. But you told me that wasn’t true. You told me, you and Ruby, that I could get free of him and that place one day and I could run and I could have a place to run to. Always.”

Sensing her cue, Ruby jumped and threw her arms around Yang and Weiss’s necks, nearly taking them all down with her. “Always!” she echoed. She craned her head to look at Yang. “I’m sure Blake knows it, too,” she added, speaking low like it was secret between them. “That if she wants to run, she can run to you.”

Yang thought that if everything could be just as they said, just like that, then everything would be right, if not with the world then at least with the people who mattered to her. Everything would be perfect. She felt tears of her own start to burn the backs of her eyes. “Ah, fuck. Now look at us.”

Weiss sniffled softly and buried her face in Ruby’s shoulder. “Shut up, you started it.”

“Um…what did I miss?”

The three of them sprung apart and turned to find Blake approaching the veranda steps with a quizzical lift of her brow. She was gripping the handle of a paint can in one hand, a plastic bag full of new brushes in the other, and stopped up short of them as if there was some barrier she didn’t know how to cross. The longer Yang watched her the more it seemed like the sunlight was bending to her, parting like a curtain.

Ruby, with a glance at Yang (who was still too bewildered—and relieved—for words), spoke first. “Sorry, we were kinda freaking out because we didn’t know where you were and…well, anyway, I’m Ruby! I guess you already met Weiss. Kind of.”

Weiss, looking a little embarrassed, wiped at her eyes again. “Sorry about crying in front of your house.”

Blake laughed, and it sent warmth running all through Yang’s body. “Weiss, Ruby…I’m really happy to meet you two.” And Blake looked like she really meant that. Her eyes shifted between the three of them. “I didn’t know how to interrupt.”

Yang sighed and felt those nerves again, singing in her, making it hard to keep her voice steady. “How much of that did you catch?”

Blake’s eyes finally landed on her and the gold of them softened, like pools reflecting light at the beginning of a clear day. She set the paint can down on the walkway stones. “Just the part where you were crying. Miss me that much?”

“Asshole.” Yang lurched forward and dragged Blake into a tight hug. Yeah. She’d missed her that much, enough to cry. She really had. The paint brushes clattered against the walkway when Blake dropped the bag and hugged Yang back, just as tight. Yang ignored the stares she felt on her back when she finally released her. “We saw the door and the broken window. Maria told us you’d left, but you didn’t answer any of my calls, so we…we didn’t know what to think.”

Blake’s hand fell against Yang’s arm, her thumb pressing into the crease of her elbow. “Sorry, it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing. And it’s…it’s been a while since I’ve had to tell anyone where I would be.” She chuckled, a little self-deprecatingly. “Or since I’ve been anywhere but here.”

That hand dropped to retrieve the bag of brushes she’d dropped, and Yang stooped to pick up the paint can, turning it on its side to read the label. “‘Forsythia,’” she said, already grinning. “This ain’t black, you know.”

When Blake took it back from her, she touched her hand deliberately. “I know.” And she was grinning, too.

Chapter Text

Forsythias, she suddenly remembered, as the hinges on the door fell away, were the flowers of anticipation. Maybe because they were so eager to bloom, the first flush of color you saw when spring was just leaning in. And Yang—settling the door down on one face, cracking the lid of the paint can and peering into all that yellow—couldn’t help but hum a little with anticipation, herself.

“You look happy.”

Yang turned and saw Blake was watching her, as always. She handed Blake one of the brushes from the bag. “You look happy.”

Blake blinked and made a motion as if to touch her face, like she had no clue what kind of expression she was making. “I guess I am. I’m happy you came.”

“Glad for the invite, Belladonna. You doing all right, by the way?” Yang’s fingers grazed the trails of red paint all along the door, as if she was tracing scars on skin, but she didn’t move her eyes from Blake. Sure, she looked happy, brighter in some ways, but there was something else, too, some dark matter sitting right beneath that happiness. Closer to the skin than usual. “Um, I just want you to know that if you feel like you need to get away from here for a little bit, or if you feel unsafe…well, we’d be more than happy to have you over—”

“Yeah, I’m sure your dad would be thrilled to have someone like me in his house,” Blake interrupted, deadpanning. Tracking the way that Yang’s hands stilled on the door, though, she chewed her lip and said, a little guiltily, “I’m all right. Seriously. And I…I appreciate the offer.”

Right. Of course she’d feel uncomfortable about it, Yang suggesting something like that. Somebody’s arms and somebody’s childhood home were two different thresholds entirely. Not even mentioning the whole “bringing a girl home”…thing. Introducing her as a friend even though that wasn’t quite it (though girlfriend wasn’t quite it, either.)

“Well, got all the glass off the floor,” Weiss said, rounding the corner into the garage. If she sensed any weird tension lingering in the air, she ignored it. Or maybe she just knew to expect it. She glanced at Yang, who had shifted awkwardly to one foot. “Don’t worry, Ruby’s not on glass-handling duty. I had her find something to cover up the window.”

“Thanks again for your help, Weiss,” Blake said. “I know this probably wasn’t what you had in mind when I invited everybody out here.” There was a shyness to the way she said it that Yang had almost forgotten about. No, not shyness. A guardedness. A small glimmer of the Blake who wore sweaters in July, like she wanted to disappear in them.

Weiss waved her hand lazily, as if clearing smoke out of the air. “I’ve been friends with Yang and Ruby for a long time. This was my life, like, every other Tuesday.”

“We were worse, actually,” Yang said, clicking a roller into place and setting it on the door. “Remember when Ruby made that fuckin’…super powerful potato cannon in the back yard?”

“Actually, I was remembering back when your uncle still had that motorcycle and you—”

“I was a natural. Obviously.”

“You were eleven and a menace. And you broke the fence.”

Yang turned to Blake to say something stupid like not my arm at least but something made the words dry up. Blake was chewing the inside of her cheek, distractedly thumbing the bristles of the paint brush. She probably didn’t even realize how lonely she looked in that moment. Though it was hard to know how to reassure her without making it look like pity.

“What do you think, Blake?” Both of them startled at Weiss’s question. Blake’s head shot up, her mouth settling in a slightly baffled crooked line. Weiss flicked her eyes to Yang, briefly, and Yang saw the sympathy in them, the knowing. Of course. Nothing got past Weiss, especially not somebody else’s quiet misery.

Blake dropped her hands, feigning casual. “Um, about?”

“Oh, you know…” Weiss’s expression was unsettling now. Still those kind eyes, but the smile beneath dripped with ill-intent. “Now that Yang has inflicted herself on you for a bit—”

Yang scoffed and set a hand on her hip. “Now that I’ve—?”

“What do you think?” Weiss repeated, interrupting her. “A natural or a menace?”

“If I had to say?” Blake’s tongue darted out to wet her lip. With effort, Yang moved her eyes from that mouth and stared at her own hands, splayed in front of her on the door. But she still felt a gaze, focused as always, roaming the length of her and down again. As if she was a marked page, a favorite line in a favorite book. That was the feeling she got, the feeling running into her.

Blake sighed. “Oh, a menace for sure,” she said, turning back to Weiss. “You meet her, and your whole life gets upended.”

Weiss clapped her hand over her mouth but couldn’t quite cover up her snort of laughter at the way Yang tried and failed three times in a row to conjure any syllable of a comeback. In the end, she could only shake her head and feel consoled by the extremely dorky grin Blake offered the other girl. She braced her hand on the door and leaned in toward Blake, slow, just a little reverent. “Well, what can I say?” Her smile came slow, too. “People don’t change much. So, unfortunately for you, darlin’, you’re stuck with a menace.”

The door rattled on the table when Blake leaned onto it, too. “Good luck trying to scare me off now,” she said, waving the brush around. “I’ve seen you cry twice already.”

Well, that was something for sure. There had to be something in that, she thought. Yang had always been steady, or so everyone said, the one watching out for everybody else. She wasn’t sure how or when, exactly, but everything had ended up all backwards. Somewhere along the way, she’d gone a bit unsteady, had become unfamiliar with herself. Not that it was entirely a bad thing.

And it wasn’t that she couldn’t let her guard down before. The thought just hadn’t come to her—to cry, to say helpless things like that out loud. It was almost as if Blake had turned some valve and told her the secret to it without using words. And, in turn, she’d shown Yang plenty of her tears, too, and nearly every other thorny object in her.

Yang decided she’d spare Blake the embarrassment of bringing those times up, though. “Not to mention, we’ve shoveled shit together,” she said, cheerfully. She came around to the other side of the door and threw her arm loosely around Blake’s shoulders. “If that ain’t a team-builder, I don’t know what is.”

“Uh-huh,” Weiss said, pulling a face. “I’m starting to see why painting the damn door is taking you two so long.”

“What, doubting our flawless teamwork? Blake, can you believe this?”

“No, she’s got a point.” She made a show of brushing Yang’s arm off of her shoulder, but her other hand wandered, grazed Yang’s hipbone, her lower back. “You’re distracting me.”

Weiss tiredly pressed her fingers to the corners of her eyes, a gesture Yang had seen many times before. Many, many times. (It almost felt like Blake was being formally brought into the fold, since she was half-responsible for it and all.) “And here I was thinking, naively, that you would be a good influence on Yang or something.”

“Oh, I’m not a good influence on anybody,” Blake murmured. For half a second, her hand seemed to drift just a bit lower than Yang’s back. “Sorry if you got your hopes up.”

Weiss rolled her eyes. “I don’t know about that.” She leaned in, speaking low as if it was only meant for Blake. “You might be the only person I’ve seen who can actually shut Yang up. If that’s not a good influence, I don’t know what is.”

Blake’s shoulders shook with laughter and Yang didn’t even know what she’d been so worried about. Of course they’d get along once they got to know each other (especially if all that camaraderie was at Yang’s expense, apparently, but she could forgive that.) And to think that just the other day, Weiss had so seriously warned her against it—getting stuck on a girl with that much baggage. Said she’d run herself dry trying to figure Blake out.

Well, there was no doubt that people liked to think they knew everything there was to know about Blake Belladonna until they came face to face with her. Until they realized that she wasn’t somebody you could know like that in an instant. Yang suspected you couldn’t know everything there was to know about her even after a year, or two, or ten. There were certain parts of her that would just keep on unfurling and revealing themselves, and only if she showed them to you.

Better to stick around to see it all, then, right? She hoped Blake would agree.

“You know, Weiss,” Yang said, leaning into Blake, lightly, but not enough to be misunderstood, “she could tell you her secret to shutting me up, but I don’t think you’d like it.”

Watching how the two of them went opposite colors as if on cue, Weiss blanching and Blake flushing to her ears, Yang laughed loud enough that she drew Ruby over to the garage to investigate the commotion.

“Hard at work, I see,” she said, tucking a piece of dark hair behind her ear. Her gaze found Blake and brightened. “Hi, Blake.”

She smiled and gave a small wave. “Hi, Ruby.”

Yang could still remember a time when Ruby couldn’t even look strangers in the eye. Warming up to Weiss, even, had been a comedy of errors. (Neither of them had been the best at the whole people thing for their own reasons.) So it came as a bit of a surprise to her, though mostly a relief, that Ruby had taken to Blake right away.

And, well, it was a relief to know Weiss and Ruby weren’t so easily swayed by talk. They seemed to understand that Blake was (mostly) just like any other girl. Or maybe they saw her as the special person of someone special to them. Either way, it put her at ease in a way she found hard to really put into words. The four of them together at the manor, laughing, painting the front door of the place the loudest shade of yellow imaginable. It was just cosmically right.

As they set to work on the door, for a long while nobody spoke, and the only sounds were the insects droning in the trees and the hush of paint bristles on wood. And this was nice, too, enjoying the silence together. Yang couldn’t help but keep glancing up to meet Blake’s eyes, and every time Blake would smile softly and drop her gaze again. Though after a while, her expression became harder and harder to read. Like the more she sat with her own thoughts, the more that shadow started to show its own face. If she had something on her mind, if it was hard to keep up her act, Yang wished she would just say something.

“That’s one side painted,” Ruby announced. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, smearing it yellow without seeming to notice. “I love this color. It really sears the eyes.”

Yang blinked and looked down at the door, at her own paint-stained hands—she hadn’t even realized.

“Well, it’s fast work between the four of us,” Weiss said. Distracted, Ruby almost put her elbow down in the wet paint, and Weiss had to catch her and pull her upright before she did.

Yang wrestled her hair up into a ponytail, feeling small curls cling to the back of her neck. “Seems like a good place to pause for lunch. Right, Blake?”

Blake blinked and looked up at her. “Right…” Her answering smile was warm, warmer than Yang expected, but her eyes. Something so strange and sad in the eyes. Or, not quite sad, but like she couldn’t seem to settle on any one thing.

Yang reached across to rub the paint off Ruby’s face with her thumb. “How about you girls relax, hang out on the porch, and me and Blake will bring the food out?”

Weiss huffed, looking like she understood, or at least half-understood, what Yang was doing. “Just don’t keep us waiting too long,” she said, linking her arm through Ruby’s.

“Aw, Weiss, gross,” Ruby said to her as she was being dragged off. “That’s my sister you’re making insinuations about.”

Weiss muttered something to her that Yang couldn’t hear and they were gone, which left just her and Blake alone together. The garage was warm, filled with loud summer air. Blake shifted self-consciously. “You know, I think they got the wrong idea.”

Yang winked, despite herself. “Was it?”

“Yeah.” Blake rolled her eyes, starting up the cement steps that led into the foyer. “You’re still worrying about me. Even though I told you I’m all right.”

She caught Blake’s hand. “You’re saying there’s nothing to worry about?”

There were times when somebody looked at you and it was almost like they were using words. They couldn’t say anything, couldn’t quite make themselves say the words out loud, but you could hear them anyway. That was the look Blake was giving her, and it put a hole straight through her. She felt Blake’s hand slip from her own.

In the kitchen, they washed their hands in the sink, not looking at each other but standing right beside each other. Yang was remembering smoke in the air and burnt-to-hell scrambled eggs and almost smiled to herself at the memory when Blake passed her the hand towel. “Sandwiches are already made and in the fridge,” Blake said. “Could you pour the tea? Glasses are above you.”

“This tea, you mean?” Yang shook an empty pitcher and Blake groaned and laid her head down on her forearms.

“Ah, dammit,” she mumbled. “I was planning on making that this morning, but I got all swept up in…you know.”

“Home makeover fever?”

“Ha. Wouldn’t go that far, but yeah. Something like that.” She turned her head. “Doesn’t bode well for me finally getting my shit together. If I can’t even remember to do something so simple.”

“Well, a few months back, I was forgetting all kinds of things.” Yang stooped and settled her head in her arms, too, facing Blake. “It’s funny. I was finally home, finally out of there, and I realized that I had, like…no goddamn idea how to be a human being anymore.”

Blake reached out, slowly, to brush Yang’s bangs back from her forehead. Her fingertips were soft and cool to the touch. Soothing. She wanted to sink into her like water. “You never talk about that time. Why not?”

That time. It was hard to even call it that, a time in her life. Because what it had felt like was the opposite. Something stolen from her. Like she’d been buried in an unmarked grave. Yang covered Blake’s hand with her own. “It’s hard to really explain it to anyone. It just feels like a void,” she said. “A hole cut out of my life.”

“I think I can understand that.” And Yang heard it, in her voice, how much she understood.

Yang pushed up from the kitchen counter, trying not to show on her face how strange and fragile she felt. “Ah, so I’ll put on the kettle. Won’t kill those two to wait a little longer, right?” Feeling the impulse, she mussed up Blake’s hair a bit, and Blake made a face and pushed her hand away. “I’ll let you do the sugar, even,” Yang added. “Which, yes, is the best part.”

“Thanks for letting me pour sugar in my own house, I guess.” Blake fixed her hair in her reflection in the window. “Not sure what you mean by ‘the best part,’ though.”

Yang found the black tea bags in a ceramic jar next to the toaster. “Well, my mom was always saying—um, where do you keep your sugar, by the way?”

“I’ll get it.” Blake went up on her toes to rescue the jar from the top of the fridge. Her shirt rode up some and Yang spied an inch of the scar in the indent of her hip. “What was it? That she said?”

“She told me it’s the most calming sound there is, that hush sound it makes. Kinda silly, I know—”

“I don’t seem calm?”

Yang stopped and turned, awkwardly holding the electric kettle in her hands. “I think…” she began, slowly, watching Blake’s expression. “I think you don’t know if you are or not. Like there’s something hanging on you and you don’t know how to get rid of it. Or if you should.”

“You know, it’s kinda mysterious,” Blake sighed, leaning close. She took the kettle from her hands and set it aside, pressing her face to the crook of Yang’s shoulder. “You say things like that and I wanna spill my guts to you.”

“You can,” Yang said, holding Blake’s head against her, threading her fingers through her hair. “If you want. Whatever it is, I want you to feel like you can say it.”

“You don’t even know what it is you’re forgiving.” Before Yang could respond to that, she lifted her head and kissed her, once, chastely. Though, as if she couldn’t help it, Blake kissed her again. A little slower this time, a little less chastely, pressing Yang back against the lip of the counter. She cupped her hands around Yang’s face, touching her forehead to Yang’s. Kinda mysterious, she’d said. Well, here was mysterious: the way Blake closed her eyes and seemed to breathe Yang in, seemed to recollect herself, align back together all those knife-edged pieces. The way Yang, feeling the brush of Blake’s eyelashes, closed her eyes and did the same.

She loved her. The thought hit her with a strange, sudden clarity. Yang loved her. Maybe it was too soon, too much, too strong, but there was nothing that could unconvince her of what she knew. When she opened her eyes, she found that Blake’s were open, too. Blake leaned back and took her in and seemed to understand something. She pressed her lips to Yang’s cheek.

“We should really get that tea started,” she said, clearing her throat and stepping back.

Yang turned and filled the kettle in the sink. “Blake.” She chewed the inside of her cheek. “If you want to tell me something, get it off your chest, I wish you would. I promise that whatever it is—”

Blake grabbed Yang’s sleeve, the fabric bunching in her fingers. “Please don’t. Don’t promise something like that.”

“Then—”

“I remembered it,” she burst out, and now her fingers dug into Yang’s skin, though she probably didn’t realize it. “Last night, I—I remembered it. Everything.”

Yang froze. “Everything that happened with Adam,” she breathed, though it didn’t even need to be said.

She could imagine it. Waking suddenly to the sound of shattering, the door red under the porchlight like some kind of omen, being alone in that lonely house, in the dark of those rooms. It wasn’t hard to imagine it at all, that memories like that, memories she’d kept away from herself for so long, would finally come loose.

The kettle overflowed and the feeling of water running over her wrists brought Yang out of her thoughts. She shut off the faucet and turned to bring Blake into her arms. It was easier, she knew, to not have to look at anybody. Like this, it was easier to say it.

After a long moment, what felt like an eternity, Blake said, quietly, “It was over something stupid. A stupid argument. Nothing. But he…he was so…angry. And I think that anger had been building up in him for a long time. He was just waiting for me to give him an excuse.” She took a shuddering breath inward. “…I fought him, and he stabbed me.”

She took Yang’s hand, unsteadily, and brought it to the place in the hollow of her hip, to the raised skin of the eye-shaped scar. It wasn’t ugly, like she’d once said. It was the kind of scar that you could tell, could feel, had once been a deep, deep wound. Even this, Yang thought, covering over it with her palm. Even something like this she’d survived.

“I ran out of the house and he followed me.” Blake’s arms went around her like she needed to hold herself upright. “He chased me through the trees. He held me down in the water.”

The rush of feeling struck her square in the chest. It was hard to untangle her fury from her tenderness, her sadness from her relief. She pictured the pond that light couldn’t reach through. Blake’s hands, dark with mud, gripping the stone. Blake, standing in the water, staring at the starless sky. The ghosts Blake saw that she did all she could not to see.

“I killed him,” Blake said, and there was a rough edge to her voice now, a bitterness. Her hands twisted into the back of Yang’s shirt, hard enough Yang wondered if it would tear. “I wasn’t even thinking about killing him but my vision was going dark and I was grabbing for anything, anything, and I—”

She didn’t need to finish the thought this time. Yang knew: she’d bashed his fucking skull in. With a rock. She’d done it because she didn’t want to die.

Yang’s shoulder felt suddenly warm with tears. Not tears for him. Tears Blake had for herself. For what he made her have to do. “I woke up in the hospital and my parents were there,” Blake said. Her hands loosened and slid along Yang’s spine, traced the ridges in it. “They told me he was dead. Then they told me they were sorry. They were crying and I—I have no idea what they could be sorry about. For not seeing what kind of person he was sooner? Even I…” Yang heard the way her voice rose and died out, the hard movement of her throat. “Even I couldn’t see that at first. Some days I thought I was crazy for even thinking it.”

“You weren’t.” Yang loosened Blake’s hold on her so she could finally get a look at her face. There was that same tangle of emotions she felt in herself. Bitterness and tenderness, sorrow and relief. Gold eyes lifted slowly to hers and wavered. And Yang felt like crying, too. Maybe she was. “You weren’t,” Yang said again.

“I didn’t think remembering it would be this hard. I mean, I always knew what I did, but knowing and remembering…” She dragged her arm across her face, blinked wetness from her eyes. “I think I forgot it because I didn’t want to think about those feelings, what it felt like to…to do that. About what kind of person I could be.”

“Blake, that’s not who you are. You didn’t have a choice.”

“But I did it. I did it and the first thing I thought when they told me he was dead was thank God.”

“You’re not a bad person for wanting to live. And if it was me? If I was there when that son of a bitch was…” Yang’s heart felt hot in her chest. Like it would melt straight through her, molten iron through wax paper. “I wouldn’t have hesitated. If it was your life or his, I wouldn’t have hesitated a second.”

Just how serious she was scared her a bit. Blake took her in, wide-eyed. “Not for me,” she said at last. She lifted Yang’s hand in hers and pressed her lips to a space between the knuckles. “You shouldn’t do that for me.”

“Would you?” Yang asked, feeling her pulse in her throat. “For me?”

“That’s…a cruel thing to ask, Yang.”

“I know. Would you hesitate if it was me?”

“No,” Blake said, and for a moment her gaze, fixing on her face, was completely steady. “No, I wouldn’t.”

Yang brushed Blake’s cheeks with her thumbs and Blake closed her eyes and leaned into the touch. “Take that feeling,” Yang murmured. “Take that feeling and feel it for yourself, then.”

Love you like I love you.

Blake’s eyes shot open and for a moment Yang thought she’d said that aloud without meaning to, but then they both heard footsteps echoing in the hall. Ruby and Weiss’s familiar arguing voices.

“Don’t come crying to me later if both of us end up traumatized.”

“Ugh, don’t make me picture it!”

“Yang, Blake,” Weiss called. “Put your shirts back on, we’re coming in. Ruby won’t stop whining about the heat—”

She cut herself off when she saw their expressions, the way they leaned against each other a bit desperately. How Blake cleared her throat and turned away so nobody could see how red around the eyes she was. Ruby, coming in just behind her, took in all of this, too. They both looked to Yang, helplessly.

Finally, Weiss said, in a quiet voice, “Sorry. We didn’t know we were interrupting something, um…something serious.”

Blake wiped her eyes. “No, don’t worry about it. Sorry for, uh, being like this.” Her voice came thickly. She still wouldn’t turn to look at anybody. “I’ll just…I’ll just be a second.”

She brushed past them, and Yang heard the click of the hallway bathroom door, the faucet running.

Yang turned and recovered the kettle from the sink, clicking it on. Ruby, like she didn’t know what else to do, came over and sat at the island. Weiss followed, leaning on her elbows. Yang could feel both of their stares on her back.

“You two shouldn’t look so worried,” she said. She took the plate of sandwiches out of the fridge and set it down on the counter in front of them. “We all have heavy shit like that. Things we gotta cry out sometimes.” Though it was hard to say who had it heavier than Blake.

Ruby frowned and picked at the saran wrap. “Is Blake gonna be okay?”

“Yeah, she is. She’s strong as hell.” Yang gave her a plate, and passed another to Weiss.

“She doesn’t have to be all the time,” Weiss said, nodding to herself like she was deciding something. “Not with us.”

Yang felt a sudden surge of fondness in her chest, coming around to the other side of the island to plant a quick kiss on the top of her head. (Surprisingly, she didn’t even get hissed at for it.) There was no doubt Weiss had recognized something in Blake that only she could recognize—something that made her a bit protective, made her swell with fierce sympathy. And once Weiss decided to latch onto somebody like that, she didn’t tend to let go.

The kettle clicked off at the same time the faucet in the hallway bathroom did. Yang turned in time to catch Blake appear in the entryway. She still looked like she’d been crying, but she looked better than she had, too—still precarious, not quite free of that shadow yet, but calmer in a way that was hard to describe.

“Um, so I was thinking,” she said, “and you don’t have to say yes…”

Yang smiled. “I think we’re past the need for shyness at this point.”

“Guess you’re right about that.” But her answering smile was a little bit shy, anyway. “But do you three wanna stick around for dinner? Maybe stay over? I know it’s still so early…”

But Ruby hardly looked like she was listening anymore. She’d heard “stay over” and had started basically vibrating in place. “A sleepover? Here?” she asked. “I mean, duh! Right, Weiss?”

Weiss, for her part, was making a brave attempt to reign in her own eager expression. (Even though she was most susceptible of them all to a good occasion.) “Sounds like a plan to me,” she said. “We can order in.”

Yang couldn’t help but chuckle at the three of them, already conspiring to skip to the good part. “Not to burst your sleepover bubble or anything,” she said. “But I think we’re forgetting about the front door? Or lack thereof?”

“Well, I did notice a draft…” Blake moved around Yang, taking up the empty pitcher from the countertop.

Ruby shrugged. “I think it looks better half yellow.”

“Oh, me too,” Blake said, steam rising from the tea as she filled the pitcher.

Weiss wrinkled her nose. “It’s so fucking hot out right now.”

“Well, there you have it.” Blake’s eyes found Yang’s across the kitchen. “Looks like you’re outnumbered, darlin’.”

(Though when Blake stirred in the sugar, she turned to Yang, who had wandered over to lean against the counter beside her, and murmured, “You were right. The most calming sound there is.”)

~

In the purple twilight, the whole garden, the marigolds and white chrysanthemums and the tall sunflowers, looked like a soft mirage. They had all elected to stretch out across the back porch to eat and watch the lightning bugs—Ruby’s legs tangled up in Yang’s, Weiss’s head against Ruby’s shoulder, Blake practically in Yang’s lap. It was too warm, but nobody felt like complaining.

“You know,” Blake said, a little abruptly, “I really hate those heavy bookshelves in the front room. I’ve never even read what’s in them.”

Yang laughed, and Ruby saw an opening to steal one of her spring rolls. “What did I tell you?” She pointed her chopsticks at Blake. “Home makeover fever. Once you get going…”

“You don’t wanna stop,” she finished, putting her plate down on the porch beside her. She watched the sky for a bit. No clouds tonight. “I hate the color on those walls, too. I wanna make them something bright. Clean. Like a lavender color.”

“I like that,” Yang said. “I can picture it.”

Ruby smiled at Blake, scratching at a bug bite on her leg. “It’s a good feeling, right? Knowing you can do whatever you want?” Weiss, still leaning against her, closed her eyes and looked pleased, like she knew exactly what Ruby meant.

Blake was quiet for a bit, glancing between the three of them and the darkening sky and back again. “At the risk of sounding corny…”

“God,” Weiss said, “it begins. These people have officially given you brain worms.”

“And by that, she means she always gets so sentimental around us,” Ruby said, dipping her shoulder and jostling Weiss a little. (And getting a swat for the trouble.) “Ruins her image.”

Yang slid her hand beneath Blake’s and squeezed. “We like corny.”

Blake let out a breath and squeezed back. “This place…crazy as it sounds, I wasn’t ever sure if there’d come a day where I felt like I was allowed to live in it. I thought I had to resign myself to that. Maybe that was just me being stubborn, though.” She caught Yang’s eyes and Yang remembered the two of them sitting together in Jolene, the way Blake had said, Leaving it would be like running away. The moment Yang had realized that they were the same. That they could understand things about each other without saying them aloud.

The day had gone out and night had come in before Yang had even realized. It was getting harder and harder to make out anybody’s expression. But Blake didn’t seem to mind it, or grow restless, or see ghosts on the water. She just seemed calm. Like she was content to sit there holding Yang’s hand, her legs in Yang’s lap, all night. “And now?” Yang asked, feeling a flutter in the side of her throat.

Blake leaned back to take in the new stars that had come out. “Well, it’s like I’ve been running a long time, and I…” The porchlight came on suddenly and they all shaded their eyes in the brightness. Through the screen, Maria tapped her cane against the floorboards and wandered off again. Ever-mysterious, that old woman. Manifesting at will. Blake laughed, and Yang realized she’d had a new most calming sound for a while now.

“And now I think I’ve come home,” she said.

Chapter Text

Sometimes Yang had to wonder if she’d blink awake one morning and that would be it. After all, it’d been just a bit dream-like, the way she’d fallen into it. How she’d met a girl in the middle of one hazy July who’d moved her more than most things ever had. (How she’d met her, but it didn’t feel like the first or the last time.) A heavy, dreamy, mystical kind of Carolina summer that probably only happened to you once in your life.

Or so she’d like to say. But who really knew how that all worked, chance meetings, people stumbling into your life out of nowhere, falling in and out of your orbit. Dragging you into their own. Giving or taking. Loving you in their own way. Leaving their own stamp in you. Mysterious shit like that.

So when Yang turned underneath the comforter and felt sunlight on her face, she kept her eyes closed for a bit. Just for a bit. She was waiting, probably, for some kind of sign or sensation to tell her things were real. As everlasting as anything was allowed to be, she wanted that for a morning, a feeling, like this one.

On cue, cool fingertips slid into her hair (thrown wildly against the pillow) and gently scratched her scalp. She felt lips graze her neck, the delicate spot right at the corner of the jaw. And when Blake kissed her, humming softly, she felt the small vibration of it in her skin.

“No sleeping in today,” Blake whispered.

Yang cracked an eye, the room’s muted purples swimming into her vision. And Blake. Her eyes, still bleary with sleep, her hair slipping over her bare shoulder like a curtain. “Even if I can make a really good argument for it?”

“Oh, I bet you can.” She slid off of her, and the missing warmth made Yang pout and sink deeper into the covers. “But your dad’s gonna be here in a few hours, and I still want him to think I’m ‘a nice girl’ and all that.”

Yang smirked, recalling just how quickly Blake had managed to win him over. All that hardass shit he’d said before hadn’t meant a thing, apparently. Especially not once Blake made the mistake of indulging some lame joke of his. Yang turned and watched her sit up on the bed, the dip of her shoulder blades as she stretched, the strong, lithe bend of her back. Moved by impulse, she reached and brushed her waist with the backs of her fingers, and Blake shivered even though Yang’s hand was warm. “I think you’re a nice girl.”

Blake laughed—that soft laugh, low in her throat, that Yang loved. “Baby,” she said, throwing a wicked glance over her shoulder, “you might be the only one who knows that ain’t true.”

Well. Blake was making a damn good case for sleeping in, too. Yang flopped onto her back, her heart pounding a little. She still wasn’t quite used to it. That other kind of danger that Blake had in her. “They might be catching on. I’ve been sleeping over more often than not lately.”

Blake tsked, throwing a rumpled yellow T-shirt at her. “And leaving all your shit around.”

Yang laughed. “Like you haven’t been stealing my shit.” She looked at the shirt and saw it was the one that said buzz off! with the bumblebee stitched into the pocket. “I’ve been looking for this, by the way.”

“Oh, I was borrowing that one.”

“Of course you were.” Yang propped herself up on one elbow. “You know, it’s really starting to sink in for me. The whole, um…girlfriend thing.”

Blake was quiet for a moment and Yang was worried that she’d subtly overstepped. They hadn’t exactly put a label on it yet, even three months into their backwards-as-hell courtship (as Weiss liked to call it). Well, in all fairness, it was hard to name it, the thing between them that was all kinds of complicated and uncomplicated at the same time. Backwards wasn’t really the word for it—it felt more like the two of them had been running a little late from the start, like there was some serious catching up to do.

But then Blake peeked over her shoulder at Yang again. Differently. Holding her gaze for longer, like she was taking her in. “The girlfriend thing,” she echoed, sounding a little amused. A little mystified. “Yeah, me too.”

Yang felt herself relax, felt the sun warm her. “Feels almost like a spring day.”

“Pft. Yang, it’s October.”

“But you can see ‘em, right?” she murmured, sliding to the side of the bed. She pressed her cheek to Blake’s shoulder. “In the window?”

Like it was between one blink and another, somehow the sunflowers had grown so tall. In the distance, their heads peered over the sill like dark eyes ringed in gold.

“The first thing,” Blake said, softly, leaning her head against Yang’s.

And Yang wondered (half-seriously) if tenderness like this, crushing and absolute, could actually kill you—if that was just the price you eventually had to pay for it. Or, more to the point, if she’d mind.

~

Blake passed Yang the extra toothbrush from the bathroom sink cabinet, bumping her with her hip. In the bathroom’s sterile glow, dressed in shorts and a loose T-shirt (Yang’s again), Blake made a different kind of pretty picture. Toothpaste in the corner of her mouth and everything.

Complete hopeless idiot that she was, Yang found herself taking a mental picture at least two hundred times a day, and it was probably only going to keep getting worse. These days, Blake had less and less of that troubled fold in her brow and more and more of something light in her, something soft, that you couldn’t rightfully call anything other than happiness (green as it was, still just getting its feet under it). It was hypnotic.

Blake spat water into the sink and seemed to catch her own eyes in the mirror. “I wonder if the me from three months ago would even recognize this place…” she mumbled, as if to herself.

Yang couldn’t help but feel she’d meant to say something different when she said this place. That it was just her way of saying this feeling. This me. The new color on the walls and the new books and the windows thrown open to let in the breeze and the garden you could look at from the bedroom—none of that could ever feel quite as new or important as being able to meet your own eyes in the mirror without being afraid of what you’d see.

In other words, Yang knew just what she meant. “For starters, it’s like somebody actually lives here now,” she said.

Blake made an insulted noise, but she was smiling. “If you wanna pass off your mess as ‘lived in,’ be my guest.”

“Oh, sure. I’ll just go ahead and clear my mess out, then. But…” Yang stepped closer, putting a hand on Blake’s hip and turning her around to face her. Blake drew in a breath and held it, her gaze flicking between Yang’s eyes and her mouth. “…you’re wearing my shirt again, you know?” Yang’s hands slipped beneath the hem of Blake’s T-shirt, palming her hipbones, fingers ghosting across her ribs.

“Mhm. I know.” Blake drew in her lower lip, her arms curling around Yang’s head. “You can’t have it back.”

“You sure are testing me today,” Yang muttered as Blake pressed against her, the gold in her eyes liquefying.

“Uh oh. Where’s your mind gone, Yang?” The arms around her suddenly lowered, and Blake stepped around her, still smiling. “Isn’t there a birthday cake that still needs baking?”

Oh, Blake knew exactly where her mind had gone. And she didn’t doubt that Blake’s mind had gone off somewhere similar. Surprisingly, that kindred feeling, that sureness, didn’t excite her even half as much as it made her feel so much lighter, like she’d just drift up to the ceiling if Blake didn’t take care to hold her down.

Half an hour later, her hair curling from a shower, Blake wandered out of her closet in a loose dress shirt, only half-buttoned and folded at the elbows—looking like a fucking prince—and Yang was sure she’d endured all that was possible.

When she brushed past, she smelled good. Not just like shampoo but something subtle and woodsy that would probably actually drive Yang crazy if Blake lingered just a little too long doing her mascara at the vanity.

She turned in the doorway. “I’ll see you downstairs?”

“Oh…sure.” Yang blinked and managed to summon at least a little bit of casual. “Don’t start all the fun without me, okay?”

“I don’t think anybody wants to see how that would turn out,” Blake called, her voice echoing in the long hallway.

And who could forget the heroic attempt Blake had made for Yang’s birthday two months ago? She smiled at the memory of it—a cake right out of Sleeping Beauty, listing to one side, totally a mess. (But for some reason, she still found herself wanting to take a bite.)

Yang dressed quickly, tugging on jeans and a sweater that didn’t have the collar all stretched out. Upstairs was all honey-yellow now, wide open, stamped here and there with pieces of tacky local art Blake had picked up from their handful of local market dates. Yang could still remember the first time she’d seen this hallway, how empty and small it’d felt, like a hallway in a dollhouse. And now things were different. Blake was different, too. When she saw her ghosts now, it was less often that she tried to drink them out of her head and more often that she called Yang. And Yang always came. As for the room at the end of the hall—it would probably be a little while longer before Blake could bring herself to face it.

Downstairs had seen another kind of transformation, at least for today. Nearly every corner was strung up with some loud tangle of multicolored birthday streamers and orange Halloween lights. Bat silhouettes and fake spiderwebs were in every window. The whole deal. There was even a mismatched family of carved pumpkins on the porch. Predictably, Yang’s and Ruby’s both looked more carved than pumpkin. Blake’s was surprisingly artistic. And Weiss’s was…well, was a sight to behold in its own right. (Ruby had declared, “He looks like he’s melting.”)

Yang stepped into the kitchen and smiled at the sight of Blake carefully deciphering Maria’s supposedly coveted (and near-illegible) chocolate cake recipe scribbled down on old notebook paper.

“I didn’t smell smoke.” Yet. Yang sidled comfortably up next to her. “Figured that was a good sign.”

Her eyes flickered briefly to Yang’s. “Don’t praise me yet. We’ll just see if I can crack the eggs into the bowl this time.”

“Eggs, your archnemesis,” Yang sighed, laying her head down in the crook of one arm, still ogling Blake’s profile. (That focused look in her eye was somehow hilarious and sexy.) “You seem pretty fired up about this.”

“Well…” Blake smoothed the creases out of the page and drummed her fingers on the countertop. “It’s been a long time since you’ve been home to celebrate Ruby’s birthday with her, right? I figured you were actually serious about this, too, but you’ve been downplaying it because you didn’t want anyone to feel awkward about it. Especially not Ruby.”

Yang stared. There were times when Blake could really just cut straight through whatever fog there was around her—she had to feel a little awestruck about it. Yang hadn’t even fully grasped it herself, not until that moment. How much she really wanted today to be perfect. “Guess I’m not much of an actress.”

“Aw, don’t pout.” Blake smoothed Yang’s bangs back from her forehead. “It’s cute, always being able to tell what you’re thinking. And more than that, it’s…I guess it relaxes me. Um, Adam, he—”

Yang tensed, raising her head. His name still didn’t come easily, and maybe it never would. Bringing him up meant there was something that had to be said, like a fever you had to sweat out. She took Blake’s hand in both of her own. There was tension in Blake’s body, too, but her hand, at least, was steady.

“Whenever I looked at him, it was like…it was always like he was wearing a mask. Even the times when he was kind, or said kind things, his eyes never looked kind.” She let out a breath, her other hand covering Yang’s. “So that’s why I’m glad. That I met you. That you’re the person I…” Blake flushed suddenly. “That we’re together now, I mean.”

I’m glad that you’re the person I fell in love with. Yang didn’t think she was crazy to imagine Blake had meant to say something like that. She was content to let herself imagine that.

“I’m glad, too.” Yang tugged Blake closer for a moment, brushing her lips against her cheek. She could give her time to say it, all the time she needed. Just another thing to look forward to.

When Blake pulled back, she’d gone an even brighter shade. “Stop smiling at me like that, weirdo.”

“Hm? Like what? I thought you liked corny?”

“You like corny.”

“And, as we’ve established, you’re already a lost cause.” Yang dropped a heap of flour into the giant mixing bowl on the counter, sending up a cloud between them. Blake, seeming to not have any defense for that, dumped in two cups of sugar, and Yang added half of a third. Catching a quirked brow, Yang said, “Trust me. This is Ruby we’re talking about.”

Blake laughed. “I bet she loves having a Halloween birthday.”

“Because it gives her an excuse to eat more sweets than should be humanly possible? Yeah. She really does.” Maybe Ruby had just been born with that sweet tooth, but sometimes Yang wondered if it didn’t have something to do with Mom. Sure, Yang couldn’t remember as much as she wanted about Summer, but she remembered the warmth of the tiny kitchen, the constant cinnamon-smell. Flour handprints on clothes. Dripping mixing bowl spoons. Baking had been Summer’s way of solving every little family crisis. And it’d worked like a charm every time. Yang smiled and shook her head. “It’s nice knowing that Ruby’s always gonna be Ruby. Through and through.”

“You really are such a fool for your baby sister.” But the look Blake was giving her when she said it was soft, maybe softer than she realized, crinkling slightly at the corners of the eyes. After a moment, though, she seemed to turn a bit wistful. Clouds changed overhead, muting the light in the window. “You know, for a long time, I thought I had to be that person, too. Someone who didn’t change, or couldn’t. Like if I went and did that, then I’d be breaking a promise to somebody. Or I’d just be fooling myself.”

“Do you…feel like you’re fooling yourself now?”

“Maybe,” Blake admitted, and Yang had been half-expecting that.

After all, didn’t Yang feel something similar? Some days, even now, she sat there alone at the kitchen table, in the house she’d lived in forever, and felt like a trespasser. She looked out the window again, watched the grass and the trees pass in and out of sunlight.

“But…” Blake chewed her lip. “Maybe that’s not as important, whether you’re fooling yourself or not. I’ve been thinking that lately. That moving forward is good enough on its own.”

“Oh.” Yang felt her chest swell suddenly (a mixture of pride and that irrepressible emotion that made you wanna kiss somebody until you forgot about whatever it was you were meant to be doing.) “And what are the big plans right now?” she asked.

“I don’t know if you’d call them big, but…I was thinking of going back to school. Getting a degree in something I give a damn about.” She looked almost embarrassed saying that, but there was something stubborn, too, about the way she nodded her head. Like she was realizing all over again that there was nobody who would tell her she couldn’t, nobody who would chain her to dependency. “I mean, getting engaged young and…everything that happened after that kind of fucked up my career goals, you know?”

“Trust me, I know all about fucked up plans,” Yang said, and Blake smirked back at her. “But, hey. That’s just how it goes. Sometimes fate gives you new plans. Sometimes you even get lucky in the end.”

Blake’s fingers splayed out across Yang’s collarbone. “Yeah.”

“Now who’s being corny.” Though Yang found herself thinking that the two of them probably weren’t a new plan at all but an old one. Old old. Something you just couldn’t even fathom.

~

Yang leaned into the doorframe. “I see you’re a full hour early. Classic Ice Queen.” Her gaze shifted from an already pissed off Weiss to a more cheerful-looking Pyrrha, who had her arm looped lightly around Weiss’s waist. “Y’all look almost too put together.”

“Well, you know Weiss,” Pyrrha said, handing Yang their gift for Ruby. Yang turned it over in her hands, inspecting the wrapping. Sure enough. Not an edge on it that wasn’t Type A crisp. Like the shit you saw in display windows at Christmas. Pyrrha leaned in a bit, her smile turning uncharacteristically sly. “She thinks I don’t know when she’s showing me off.”

“Ugh, I’m not showing you off like some trophy wife,” Weiss objected, sounding genuinely disgusted. “I’m showing us off. Look at us, we’re a fucking adorable couple. I’m doing everyone a favor.”

Though Pyrrha was already looking—those serene eyes, softly amused but also brimming over with that special affection she seemed to save just for Weiss. Yang wondered just how Weiss had managed it, winning a saint’s worship. But maybe Pyrrha had always been looking, even back then.

“Oh, she’s right, Yang,” Blake chimed in, suddenly hanging off of Yang’s shoulder. “They’re definitely the cutest couple here.”

“Aw, feeling neglected because I don’t show you off like a trophy wife?”

“Of course not,” Blake sighed, sliding off of her. “Obviously you’re the trophy wife.”

“I don’t know how it’s possible,” Weiss said, shouldering past them into the foyer, “but you two get more annoying every time I see you.” She shrugged out of her jacket and tossed it at Yang.

Pyrrha seemed to hesitate at the threshold a bit before following, her head craning to take everything in when she stepped inside. “If everyone could see their ‘haunted house’ now…”

Blake hummed, taking Weiss’s jacket from Yang and hanging it on the coatrack. “Don’t think it was ever the house that was,” she said, “but the makeover doesn’t hurt.”

“Oh! That reminds me—” Pyrrha turned, catching Weiss’s quick glance. Weiss stepped up next to her again, clasping Pyrrha’s hand, barely keeping her own eager expression in check. “It’s about Spring Hill. Good news.”

“Good news about Spring Hill?” Yang asked, crossing her arms. It was hard to imagine, considering how the place had brought her no small amount of suffering. Even now it stung her, the scar of it, always a bitter-tasting reminder.

Then again, Yang supposed she could admit that the place had, in some way or another, in more than one way, brought Blake into her life. Yang could still remember Blake’s quiet confession as they sat cross-legged in the grass together—I’m saying the first time I saw you, it was there.

“The fundraiser to rebuild met its goal,” Pyrrha said, green eyes twinkling. “So, by next year…”

“It’ll come back,” Weiss finished, and Yang felt Blake’s hand on her lower back, steadying her.

Yang blew out a breath, leaning back against the wall. “That’s…” She tugged a hand through her hair. “That is some damn good news, Pyr. Your mom must be pleased to have the store back.”

“She is.”

“You told me over and over to stop sending money to Spring Hill, though.”

Pyrrha sighed, tapping her fingers against Yang’s cheek, urging her to raise her head. “It wouldn’t be right,” she murmured. “Not from you. You’ve had enough taken from you already, don’t you think? How much more do you intend to give up?”

Yang held her gaze for a moment longer before she looked away. It really was impossible to argue with someone like Pyrrha. Yang felt the tension fall out of her in small pieces. She didn’t exactly feel forgiven, and she wondered if she would ever feel that way, but she felt some small, fluttery thing that was almost like it. Something promising. Like maybe the time to atone, to set things upright, hadn’t come and gone like she’d thought. Blake’s hand still pressed firmly against her back.

She heard new voices approaching, from the path. “See, honey, I told you we’re not too early—”

“No, Kali, we’re definitely too early. Everyone else is just too early, as well.”

“Then we’re on time, aren’t we?”

Ghira could only scratch his beard and trail wordlessly behind her on the walkway leading up to the house. Well, Blake had to have learned it from somewhere, Yang thought. How to soundly win arguments before they even really started. It just figured.

Blake met them on the porch, hugging Kali and then Ghira.  “Don’t worry, Dad,” she said. “Some of my friends are just, um…like that.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Weiss muttered.

“She means you’re like, too much of a Virgo,” Yang said, behind her hand. Blake pretended not to hear, but Yang caught how she bit down on a smile.

Pyrrha patted Weiss’s arm. “Everyone knows you’re here to critique the decorations, baby.”

“Offer suggestions.” Something seemed to draw her eye as she said that, and she started dragging Pyrrha away, exclaiming about the haphazardly spaced bat decals.

“Is that okay, letting her loose?” Yang asked, stepping out onto the porch.

“She has Pyrrha to veto her bolder choices,” Blake said. She turned to wrap her arm around Yang’s waist. “Besides, it doesn’t hurt to have an expert opinion.”

“Blake, sweetie, stop hogging Yang for two whole seconds and let her say hi.” Kali drew her into a sudden embrace and Yang could only blink and hesitantly return it. She was a little embarrassed to say this aloud, but Kali really did give the best hugs. There was just something nice about them, something almost familiar. They made Yang nostalgic for the things she couldn’t even remember.

“Hi, Mrs. Belladonna,” Yang said, gently disentangling herself. “Glad you both could make it.”

“Oh, Yang, I already told you that ‘Kali’ is just fine by me.”

Blake scoffed. “Geez, Mom, sometimes I think you love my girlfriend a little too much.”

Yang didn’t miss the raised eyebrows Blake’s parents exchanged at girlfriend. She wondered just what Blake had been calling her until now when Yang wasn’t around, how she’d talked about her. Though it was true that sometimes you showed your hand without meaning to, without even saying the words. (Like how Blake couldn’t help but shift her weight so their shoulders brushed together, like how she didn’t even seem to notice she was doing it.)

“Dad’s quite the fan, too, you know,” Kali said. “He’s just too shy to admit it.”

From beside her, Ghira shifted and softly cleared his throat. (Yang had no clue how she’d found him so intimidating before.) “You’re exaggerating a little.”

“So…” Yang stuck out her hand, schooling her expression. “Guess that’s ‘Mr. Belladonna,’ then?”

“Don’t be a wiseass with me.” He ignored the outstretched hand and pulled Yang into a short—albeit thoroughly rib-crushing—hug. He stepped back, patting her shoulders awkwardly. “Mr. Belladonna’s a mouthful. Ghira’s fine.”

Blake snorted a laugh but did her best to smother it for the sake of his pride.

“You know…” Yang felt a sudden wistful pang, glancing up at the face of the manor, the light that filled the windows. “I think I made pretty good on that promise from before. About making myself familiar.” Funny how that felt like a long time ago and no time at all.

“Hmph.” Ghira crossed his arms over his chest and cracked a smile. “Made yourself a little too familiar, if you ask me.”

A laugh burst out of her, and Ghira gave his own low chuckle, clapping Yang on her back. Kali caught Blake’s curious glance and shrugged.

“Man, and here I thought I’d managed to show up early for once.”

She peered around them, feeling her expression ripple for just a second as she registered Tai coming up the walkway, sunlight spotting his head and his blue button-up. Blake, sensing the change in her, squeezed Yang’s hand and whispered, “I’ll see you inside” before ushering her parents toward the door. She was being considerate of her, of course, but Yang almost wished that Blake would stay.

She blew out a breath, jamming her hands in her pockets as she turned back to Tai at the top of the steps. “Nah,” she said. “You’re right on time.”

~

Yang hopped up to sit on the porch railing, hearing the murmur of voices through the door. Tai, taking the hint, leaned his elbows onto the railing beside her.

“Blake’s parents seem like good people,” Tai said, breaking the lull that had settled between them. “Looks like they like you a lot.”

Yang gave a soft laugh, ducking her head. “Yeah, I’m still not sure what it is I did, though.”

“I think they’re just grateful.” Tai caught her surprised glance and shrugged. “They’re relieved that someone like you came into her life. I mean, I don’t know all the details of how it was for her before, but when she’s with you, she looks really…happy.”

Someone like you. No teeth in that at all. (Why did that surprise her?) “She did it herself, honestly. I just…supported that.”

Tai leaned back, still gripping the railing, standing nearly level with her now. “You don’t give yourself enough credit, kiddo. Sometimes people just need someone to tell them it’s alright to flap the wings they already got. Don’t you think?”

Yang smirked. “Kinda poetic. Coming from you.”

“Hey, I got a lot of wisdom in me, brat.” He shoved her arm, nearly making her lose her balance, and she laughed. “That comes from years of screwing up.”

“Come on. You had to have gotten some stuff right,” Yang said. “Just look at how Ruby turned out.”

“I happen to think my eldest turned out pretty alright, too. One way or another.”

For a long moment, Yang was too surprised to say anything back. Not that she didn’t know it, that deep down Tai really didn’t blame her for anything, that when he said one thing, it might’ve just been half of what he really meant. But actually hearing it was somehow something else.

She leaned onto her legs. “I think I took a bit of a winding path, Dad.”

“Yeah, well, you learned from the master,” he said, pushing the toe of his boot between the slats in the railing.

“Raven, you mean…?”

He was startled enough to laugh. “No…no. That woman ain’t ever gonna change. And if she did, I don’t know that we’d hear about it.” He took his frayed baseball cap from his head and stuck it on Yang’s, yanking the brim down over her eyes. “I was talking about myself, actually.”

“Ugh.” Yang took it off again, smoothing flyaway hairs. It was a hat back from when he was her softball coach for a summer—the yellow dragon mascot stared at her with its cartoonish red eyes. He sure was sentimental. “What if I learned too much from her in the end?” She thumbed the lines in her palm, remembering the light pressure of Blake’s fingers. “Like, what if I fuck up again, drag everyone down with me after things have been so good?”

Yang wondered how far lost on a path a person could get. If they weren’t careful, if they wanted too much. She wondered how far Blake would follow.

“Damn, you’re cynical.” Tai blew out a heavy breath. “Who raised you like that?”

“I was being serious—”

“I know you’re being serious. Then you just gotta find your way back, right?” He seemed to think on that a moment and change his mind. “Well, I guess there’d be no real way back, just the way ahead of you.” His face softened. “Life’s long, you know. Plenty of time to make amends.”

Maybe he was talking about himself again, too. “Right.” She stretched, leaning back to take in the shadow-and-light patterns of glossy magnolia leaves above her. “I guess you do have some wisdom in you, after all, old man.”

“Pft.” Tai shook his head and turned away from her. “I’d say you worry too much for your own good, but I guess Blake’s lucky she’s got someone to worry about her like that. And if she didn’t worry about you even half as much, I’d tell you that girl wasn’t good enough for you.”

Yang jumped down from the railing, suppressing an eye roll. “You’d cry if we ever broke up.”

“Obviously that’s because I’ve determined she’s a good one,” Tai said, snatching his hat back.

“Oh, you’ve determined it—”

A high-pitched noise made them both turn. “Are you guys having a bonding moment without me? On my birthday?”

Ruby was on the porch steps, her cheek puffing out sulkily for a moment before (like she just couldn’t help it, and she probably couldn’t) her face dissolved fully into a grin. She charged the rest of the way up the steps and rocketed herself at them both, knocking an oomph out of Tai. (Yang had to remind herself that the girl was really twenty-three now. Twenty-fucking-three. Yang swore she still had memories of her in diapers.) She spotted Qrow over Ruby’s shoulder, offering Maria a hand as she stepped out of the car, though she swatted away his help. Surprisingly, or maybe unsurprisingly, those two had been getting on well enough. Probably something to do with the old “misery loves company” rule.

Yang bent and kissed the top of Ruby’s head. “Good to see you’re not late to the party, Rubes. Weiss would’ve made you pay for that, birthday girl or not.”

“Weiss would’ve made you pay for that,” she retorted, her voice muffled through Yang’s shirt. And, well, she was right. Ruby had a special immunity when it came to Weiss’s wrath and Yang really, really did not. “Where’s Blake? I wanna thank her for hosting and everything.”

“Well, look at those good manners,” Tai said. “Maybe that’s why Weiss likes her better, Yang.”

“Whatever. Weiss is obsessed with me,” Yang said, following Ruby to the door.

“I’m telling her you said that.”

~

Well into the party, as the sun started to dip and everything turned soft-edged, Tai had gone sentimental enough to break out a guitar and bring it to the back porch. Ruby hung over his shoulders as he settled into the chair, messing with the tuning pegs—no doubt trying to sabotage him before he could start. He swatted at her, but Yang could hear him laughing through the screen door.

Blake was already out on the porch with them, making occasional comments and watching the lightning bugs flicker in between the flowers. Yang settled on the step right behind her, her legs on either side, and Blake automatically settled back against her.

Tai had started strumming the first few chords of a song she almost recognized, talking low with Ruby, teaching her the words.

“Your parents have decided to give themselves a house tour, I think,” Yang said, after a beat.

Blake sighed, reaching back for Yang’s arm and pulling it against her. “They haven’t seen the inside of this house in a long time.”

“Oh, yeah?” She kept her voice light. Blake nodded and pressed her lips like she had more to say. Yang hummed the melody of the song Tai was singing—before gold found the hills, oh, I was loving you—and waited for her to go on.

“At first…” Blake squeezed her just a little bit tighter. “First, it was just excuses on my part. Like when he would get in these moods…I thought they wouldn’t understand. That they’d get too involved. Looking back, though, I think that’s just what he wanted, for me to feel like I couldn’t be around them. Couldn’t trust them. And then, after everything that happened, I could barely even look at them.”

“Yeah.” Yang wrapped her other arm around Blake’s shoulders, leaning their heads close together so they weren’t overheard. “I know that feeling. Like you don’t know who it is you’re even trying to protect.”

“That shouldn’t be what love is, though,” Blake sighed. “Where everyone ends up miserable, even when you think you’re doing the right thing. It’s a little late, but I’ve been figuring that one out.”

“Well…good. I’m glad.” Yang found it hard to speak casually around the knot in her throat. (God, she was so full of pride and so warm with Blake’s back pressed against her she couldn’t stand it.) “And if it helps, I’m not miserable.”

Blake clicked her tongue, lightly smacking Yang’s shin with the back of her hand. “Yet.”

“Nah, I don’t see that happening.” The two of them blinked and looked over at Ruby, who was smiling softly and watching them as she leaned against the porch post. “You’re too stuck on each other. It’s a little weird. Uh, good weird, I mean.”

“Better than bad normal, I guess,” Blake deadpanned.

Tai was plucking at the guitar, still, and chuckling to himself. He’d said something like that, hadn’t he? Stuck on each other. Back when he’d given that big lecture—specifically, that Yang was the one who was stuck. And maybe it’d been that way in the beginning, a bit unexpected, a bit helpless, like the small things caught in tree sap that, after a good lifetime or two, turned to amber.

But that was all a little too resigned for Yang’s taste, like there weren’t choices she’d made. If she had to call it anything now, she’d call it something different, more. Growing. Like vines that grew and tangled together and took on new shapes. Pretty soon, you had some kind of tapestry out of it.

“‘Good weird,’ huh.” Yang grinned back at her. “Funny, that’s just what I’d call you, brat.”

“Oh, thank you. I try.” Ruby struck a pose in a way that made Yang bust out laughing.

Tai leaned the guitar up against the house, crossing one ankle over his knee. His thoughts seemed suddenly far away. “Man, time really goes by,” he said, after a beat. “Faster than you can remember yourself in the middle of it.”

Yang raised an eyebrow. “You’re sounding more like an old-timer than usual over there.”

“Huh!” He rocked back in the chair, flicking the brim of his hat, fully affecting that classic Southern Dad routine of his. “And here I was—

“Yeah, yeah, I get it—”

“—generously giving you even more good advice to chew on, and all I get is lip.”

“You’ve been getting lip from Yang since she learned words, Dad,” Ruby pointed out.

He uncrossed his ankle and looked wistful. “Sure have.”

Blake was watching them with a fond shine in her eye, rubbing Yang’s forearms. “It is good advice, though,” she said. Yang almost cautioned her against feeding his ego, but the way Blake sighed, the way she closed her eyes and pressed back against Yang, stilled her. “Wish somebody had told me it sooner.” Her face had a complicated expression. It wasn’t quite longing, wasn’t quite lighthearted. She sprung up from the step, linking their hands as she turned. “But now’s a good time, too.”

Yang brought the knuckles of Blake’s hand to her lips. “Now’s perfect.”

It was almost funny—how simple, innocent things like that could still make the color rise in Blake’s face (just as much as the less innocent things did). Yang thought that if she could keep finding ways to get that softly startled blush out of her in the future, she wouldn’t need to worry about much else.

Ruby groaned and peeked at them from behind her hand. “Should Dad and I give y’all some space, or…?”

Yang jumped up, feeling a grin pull at her. “Aw, you lonely over there?”

Dodging Ruby’s defenses, Yang dragged her in—half bear hug, half headlock. Tai, seeming as if he’d been waiting for the opportunity, jumped up, too, sandwiching Ruby between them. Which, of course, only made her groan harder and try (unsuccessfully) to wriggle free.

Blake stepped up behind Yang, reaching through to pat Ruby’s head. “Sorry your family is the way it is, Ruby.”

Tai laughed and lifted his arm, leaving a pocket of space between them. “Hate to break this to you, sweetheart,” he said, “but you’re part of all this weird, too.”

For a moment, Blake seemed like she’d try and deny it, but the next she was ducking under his arm, softly bumping the inside of Yang’s shoulder with her head. “How’d you put it earlier?” she mumbled. Yang felt the small breath of her laugh against her skin. “A ‘lost cause?’”

~

“You know, we don’t have to sneak off like this if you wanna make out,” Yang said, letting herself be steered into an unfamiliar part of the house. Almost strange to think, that there were still places she hadn’t seen. That Blake hadn’t shown her yet. “Everybody’s gone home already. Even Maria!”

Poor Maria, Yang thought, absently. It was definitely more than just once that the old woman had shuffled in unannounced on something scandalous.

“Hush, you’re ruining the moment,” Blake said, but Yang could see her make the effort to drag her gaze away from the other rooms they passed as if talking herself out of something.

On the far side of the house, opposite the kitchen, was a small, dim hallway surprisingly easy to miss. Yang gave Blake’s hand in hers a small squeeze and wondered what other kinds of plain-view hiding places the manor still held. Though when Blake opened the door at the end of the hallway and flicked on the lights, at first it just looked like some unused study. Boxes and books in their haphazard towers, Christmas ornaments she couldn’t find the space for strewn across an old sofa, what looked like dusty academic awards from high school.

But then Yang saw the mahogany upright in the corner of the room, its cover flipped open like a jewelry box to reveal polished-looking keys, saw the nervous twist of Blake’s mouth as she brought Yang over to it.

“Surprised?”

“A little,” Yang breathed. “You never told me you still had the piano.”

Blake sighed and brushed her fingertips across the keys, not quite hard enough to sound any notes. “Oh, getting rid of it would’ve been too sad,” she said, quietly. “I’d already killed too much of me back then.”

He didn’t like the noise—Yang heard it in her head exactly the way Blake had said it to her in her room, in the dark. Even then, Yang had heard it, heard the mourning of something, plainer than she probably knew. Sometimes, when Blake was absentminded, Yang watched her hands play phantom notes on the countertops. She couldn’t imagine not loving that part of her.

Blake settled on the creaking piano bench, but her hands were still at her sides, braced against the edge of the seat. Yang stepped close, reaching over her shoulder and thumbing the sheet music on the stand. The chords were messily penciled in, written and crossed out and rewritten, and above them, in Blake’s small, squarish (the opposite of Yang’s own loud, looping) handwriting: (turn your life to) gold.

“I’ve been practicing a bit,” Blake said. Her face was turned away, so Yang had no clue what kind of expression she was making, but there was something sheepish in her voice. Like some part of her still couldn’t help but feel anxious about Yang’s reaction. “You know, when I’ve been by myself. I was…rustier than I thought I’d be.”

Yang sat beside her on the bench. “Not just practicing, it looks like.” She leaned into Blake’s space, bumping their shoulders together, trying to catch her eyes. “Hmm, I wonder if there was a reason you brought me here…”

Blake laughed and pushed her face away. “Ugh, quit looking so smug.”

“So. You wrote me a song?”

“Okay, well, it’s…I’m still working on it. Don’t expect anything amazing.”

“Blake, you wrote me a song.” Yang moved a strand of hair behind her ear, letting the backs of her fingers rest against Blake’s jaw, trail to the edge of her chin. “It’s already my favorite.”

Blake leaned into her, worrying her lip, her eyes intent on her own hands. “You should know…I got the melody from you. A long time ago.”

“From me?”

“Yeah. I heard it and I couldn’t get it out of my head, so…” The bench creaked again as Blake shifted her weight, her feet pressing down on the pedals. A soft thunk sound echoed inside the hollow part of the piano. “I hope you don’t mind me borrowing it.” Her hands drifted down to the keys the way leaves fell and skimmed water. Just naturally like that, like something inevitable.

It took Yang a moment to recognize the melody, but once she did… It was like it was the same but something else, like the same fabric sewn in different shapes, or the same face with a different expression. New but familiar, so familiar she felt something well up in her, not tears but the feeling that she could cry. So familiar Yang could close her eyes and see that exact shell-pink color of Ruby’s bedroom walls as a kid, see the rose pattern on the comforter Ruby still didn’t sleep without.

And as much as it was full of Ruby and those colors, it spilled over with high yellow windows and tall sunflowers and fresh paint and porch lights, with the sight of her own reflection in Blake’s bathroom mirror, with yellow lines on a road that stretched out ahead of you like an arrow. It was loud with all the things Blake felt but couldn’t say. Yang was sure of that.

And Jesus, if she’d had plans of kissing this girl before, it was next to impossible stopping herself from doing it now. Actually, she was starting to forget the reasons she had for stopping herself at all. When Blake turned her face to Yang, Yang was surprised to find them so close, their noses almost touching—as if Yang had drifted into her gravitational pull, was on the brink of some kind of world-ending collision, before she’d even realized it.

Blake made a noise under her breath and lifted her hands, cupped Yang’s face, kissed her deeply. Her mouth slid warmly against Yang’s, and when she released her again, it was far too soon. “You’re not even listening anymore,” she murmured, a little reproachful, but Yang could see her pulse hammering softly in her throat.

“Oh, I listened to all of it,” Yang said, still feeling a bit dazed. “I just don’t…I don’t even know what to say. Other than I’m really, really happy right now.”

Impossible that the way she’d been feeling since the morning could get any bigger, but there she was. Totally ascended. Probably making her stupidest expression yet.

“Yeah?” Well, maybe she could feel satisfied that Blake’s expression was pretty goofy-looking, too.

“Mhm.” Yang laughed, a bit shakily. “You’re good at that.”

Blake quirked a brow, like she couldn’t help but fall back on the comfort of her suspicion. “The record shows otherwise, I think.”

“Nah. I don’t think it does.” Blake looked like she wanted to disagree some more, bring up the past, all that heartache—in just a few days, about as much heartache as Yang had ever felt. (Or so it’d seemed, at the time.) But Yang knew that was only because every emotion Blake showed her, she felt the shockwaves of it in her own body, like it was her own. Yang hooked one finger over Blake’s. “Some things aren’t easy, sure,” she said. “Some things aren’t effortless. But, uh…well, you know, Ruby’s been telling me that I’ve been smiling a lot lately. To myself. Whenever somebody brings you up, whenever I remember something funny you said.”

Blake flushed darkly and spun around suddenly on the seat, kicking her legs outward. “I’ll never know how you can just say stuff like that.”

Yang snorted. “What, you’re embarrassed now but didn’t bat an eye about playing, like, that super personal, heartfelt song for me a second ago?”

“I was gonna play it for everyone, actually,” Blake said, sulkily. “Earlier, at the party. It was supposed to be a present to you and Ruby. But in the end, I guess I chickened out.”

Oh, she sure could be cute sometimes. So unreasonably cute. It made Yang want to be unreasonably selfish, made her think that nobody could blame her if she was. “That’s all right,” Yang said. “Honestly…I like being the first to hear it. More than you even know.”

But Blake smiled at that, like she understood just what Yang meant. “I wanted you to be.”

If I could only be so lucky, Yang thought. If she could be that person at the front of Blake’s mind forever. Even if she couldn’t always be the first thought, she at least wanted to be close to it, to the glow of it. Well, even then, there was no changing the fact that Blake was always there at the front of Yang’s.

Nested in the corner of the house, the room was silent and bright and all Yang could hear was Blake’s slow breathing, her own breathing, the hum of electricity. She stood, feeling a familiar warmth fill her, make her hum electric, too.

She offered Blake her hand. “Coming up?” she asked.

Blake’s eyes were like a low fire. Her hand curled slowly around Yang’s, possessive and gentle and certain. She took her time with her answer: “Let’s make room here.”