Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The falling feels like it takes days.

The thing is, she’s got sight of Blake. Wind and magic are howling around her, her pulse roaring in her ears, throat stopped with terror and regret, but. She’s got sight of Blake, even if they can’t talk. She’s got sight of Blake until suddenly she doesn’t, as they plunge through the dark, and all she can think is—

This is what it was like for Yang. This is what Yang saw, this is what Yang felt. At the end.

She hopes it won’t hurt.

(It doesn’t. Hurt, that is. When she lands. But she has no recollection of landing.)

When she wakes, she’s warm. She can’t remember when she last felt warmth, not in the frigidness of the Atlas air—

—that’s not true, she can, she can remember exactly. Arms familiar in their strength but thrillingly novel in their softness around her and Do hugs always make you feel this warm inside? and yes, they do, they always have. From her they always, always have—

—but here it’s humid and balmy, sand beneath her back and a canopy of trees above her. She can hear the crash of waves, somewhere off to her left.

“Blake?!” she calls as she gets to her feet, because they couldn’t have been separated that long, Blake couldn’t have gotten that far. And then, when she hears nothing, she tries frantically, hopefully: “Yang?!”

Nothing.

(She remembers the market, back on Patch. How Yang would take her along in the wagon when she went for groceries because leaving Ruby alone at home—well. Alone-enough, alone with Dad, who was there but not present—didn’t seem like an option. How Ruby went wandering, once, enticed by the colorful fruit displays, and they spent nearly an hour missing each other by moments once they realized they were separated. How when they’d finally reunited, Yang had grabbed her by the shoulders and said, in her most serious voice, If you ever get lost I need you to stay where you are. I’m gonna come find you, okay? I promise. But if I’m looking for you, and you’re looking for me, that makes it harder. I will retrace my steps. That’s my job. Your job is to stay where you are.)

But there’s no steps to retrace, not this time. And if Ruby stops moving she’ll start crying, and if she starts crying she’ll never stop. So she puts one foot in front of the other and looks around to get her bearings.

She finds the beach easily enough, the shore spreading out endlessly in either direction. She calls names as she goes, but hears nothing but the water and the sound of her own voice.

And yet still—despite the fact that she’s looking—she’s surprised when she sees the body.

It’s the hair she notices first, coppery strands glinting in the sunlight (is it sunlight? she suddenly realizes she’s not sure) and she’s running before she’s even fully processed what’s she’s seen, “Penny Penny PENNY—” falling from her mouth as she stumbles and sprints and falls to her knees to turn her over, to check her breathing—

—only Penny’s torso, when Ruby rolls her onto her back, is painted with blood. Not the green stuff she remembers from Schnee Manor, but. Blood. Real blood.

Red as rubies.

“No, no, no, no no no no no—please—”

She reaches, instinctive, to look for a heartbeat, but as her stretching fingers span Penny’s chest they find only the divots of puncture wounds. Arrayed claw marks, in the shape of a grasping hand, if only her grip were a little wider. A little less human. (There’s a stab wound, too, deep in her stomach, and that—wouldn’t it be cauterized? Cinder’s never made a sword she didn’t set aflame, that doesn’t seem right, that doesn’t seem—)

(—none of this is right—)

She’s cold to the touch, is the thing. And Penny’s never been that, not even when she was steel and circuitry; she always hummed with energy, with heat, with life.

“Penny, please—”

But she’s gone. 

She’s gone.

Kill me. Kill me, and I can make sure the power goes to you. 

That’s what she’d said.

Ruby takes a deep breath—shuddering, a hiccup—and tries to feel it, tries to trace the edge of a foreign power inside of her, but there’s nothing, she doesn’t feel any different—

—that’s not true, she feels wholly different. She feels changed, feels entirely unlike herself, feels monstrous and desperate and devastated. Feels like she could tear the world apart, like she could kick at the columns here in this place beneath all places that hold Remnant up and bring everything she’s ever known crumbling down on top of her with the strength of her grief; she just got her back, she just got her back, they were—

It stays nothing. When she reaches for an unlocked tempest within, all she finds is her own sorrow; when she squeezes her eyes shut and thinks fire, all that comes are tears.

So—so Cinder took everything, then. 

Even this. 

Not the power—Ruby couldn’t care less about that, not now, but. The legacy. The promise that at least a part of Penny might live on, might linger in someone who loved her.

—who loved her—

“Ruby?!”

She could swear she hears the sound of her own name, but it’s distant. Barely audible, even, over the unholy racket that’s surrounding her, this—this awful noise—

—it’s her, she realizes. She’s screaming, she must be screaming, wracked with incoherent sobs—

Sturdy arms embrace her from behind, a voice saying “Ruby, Ruby, I’ve got you, it’s okay, it’s—is that blood? Is she—? Oh, Ruby—”

And Ruby collapses backwards into Blake’s shaking hold, and cries, and cries, and cries. 

Staying where she is, in the hopes that she’ll be found.

Chapter Text

It takes the better part of an hour to coax Ruby away from Penny’s body.

(Or at least, Blake thinks it does. It’s a little hard know for sure, because time is weird here. Like when you get lost in a good book and suddenly look up and realize you’re sitting in the dark because the sun went down without you noticing, only somehow in reverse—the shock coming not from the passage of time, but from the nagging sense that it refuses to. There’s a stillness here that makes her teeth ache; makes the hair on her upper arms prickle like she’s being watched.)

She doesn’t know what to say. There’s nothing she can say, nothing that can make it better, and she knows that, but. She’s never felt quite so unequal to a task in her life. She’s not Ruby, with her usually-boundless optimism and hope; she’s not Weiss, all aggressive support and unexpected insight; she’s not—

She’s not—

(She’s not thinking about Yang, she’s not, because if she lets herself the thought will consume her, and it won’t leave room for anything else. She can’t fall apart. Ruby needs her, and Yang would want her to take care of Ruby. So that’s what Blake’s going to do.)

But everything she can think of to say feels hollow and cruel. What can they do? Bury her, in this place time’s forsaken? Promise to come back for her, as though escape is possible? The last time Ruby was this miserable, at Schnee Manor with Yang—

—(don’t think about Yang)—

—well. Blake hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but her ears are sensitive. And thinking back on it now, it’s nothing anyone said that snapped Ruby out of her spiral. It was breaking glass and Jaune’s boots on the stairs; it was the thought that—

That Penny needed her.

“Ruby, we have to keep going,” she says softly. Rubbing at the nape of Ruby’s neck the way her mom used to, when Blake was young and couldn’t sleep after a nightmare. 

As though there’s any waking up from this.

“I can’t.”

“I know it’s hard, but we have to, we—”

“I can’t. I—I c-can’t find any more bodies, Blake. I can’t.”

(Blake knows what it feels like, to be impaled. This is worse.)

“We w—” (She swallows back her won’t. She doesn’t want to lie.) “I’m alive. You’re alive. If anyone else fell after us, they might be—I mean at the very least, Yang’s probably—”

“I know,” Ruby interrupts—not testy, exactly, just simple and clear. “No offense, but if I thought Yang were dead, I wouldn’t—I mean, I couldn’t—”

Blake can relate to that feeling, too. She squeezes Ruby’s shoulder, hoping it comes across as reassuring instead of like the needy grasp for her own reassurance it really is. “Then let’s go find her.”

“But I...” Ruby looks mournfully back down at Penny’s body; at the way her own is now covered in Penny’s blood, from clinging to her so tight.

The question’s out of Blake’s mouth before she can really consider what it is she’s offering:

“Do you want me to carry her? Take her with us?”

(She would do it, if Ruby asked her to. Gladly. She’s done it before; she’s stronger than she looks.)

The question seems to take Ruby aback; knocks a little bit of life back into her vacant gaze. “No, I—no. Thank you. We should... let her rest. She never got to—” Tears gather again at the corners of her eyes, but she holds them off, this time. “—I always told her she never understood the glory of naps. I bet she was looking forward to that.”

It’s a horrifying thought, really, but it’s the best they have. So they pick themselves up, and off they go—Ruby casting forlorn glances over her shoulder every few steps, but always, always moving forward.

They travel along the tree line, so they’ve got eyes on the beach and the forest at once. Occasionally they call names—arbitrary, hopeless, unsure of who might be down here with them—but mostly they sniffle, and keep to themselves.

It’s Ruby who spots the glint of metal first. “Crocea Mors!” she gasps, running, which—seriously? Blake can see the sword, but taken out of context like this she has no idea how Ruby could tell what she was looking at from so far off. Only maybe it’s not so surprising; the only person with better recall for weapons than Ruby that Blake’s ever met is Velvet. Then: “Oh, no—”

It’s Crocea Mors, alright. 

Half of it. Covered in blood.

“Do you think—?”

They both saw the stab wound in Penny’s stomach; both saw the lack of burns accompanying it. If Cinder did this, if she broke Jaune’s sword in two and used it to cut Penny down, then Jaune—Jaune’s probably—

(But no, she can’t think like that. She’s only carrying half a weapon herself right now, and she’s still standing. It doesn’t have to mean anything.)

(Only now she’s dwelling on it, thinking about the thin line of gold that knit Gambol Shroud back together once before. Thinking about the gold on his shield. And it’s unbearable.)

“It was the last he had of—”

“It was his great-great-grandfather’s,” Ruby says, pointedly enough that Blake realizes if she’d managed to say Pyrrha’s name aloud, the girl before her would have shattered like the sword in her hand. “We’ve lost—so many people, and all we can do is get used to it, carve them up and carry the pieces like it’s normal, and—”

A voice cuts through the quiet, interrupting them:

“Weiss? Ruby? Anyone?!”

Jaune’s alive Weiss fell that’s Jaune that was Jaune—

They take off running into the woods.

They find Jaune in a clearing, Crescent Rose mounted safely on his back, bracing his mouth between cupped hands as he hollers. “Blake? Yang? Hello?”

When he gets a good look at Ruby when they emerge from the trees—at the crimson painting her front, at the severed steel held in her hands—he goes silent.

Then he falls to his knees, and sobs:

“She asked me to, she asked me to, I’m so sorry—but Winter’s—it worked, it’s what she wanted, please, I’m so sorry, she told me—”

The words don’t make any sense... 

... until suddenly they do.

Blake thought that surely, after everything, she knew all of the ways that devastation could paint Ruby Rose’s features. The pain and sorrow and grief and rage and impotent, helpless shock.

She was wrong.

Chapter Text

When Weiss jerks awake in an unfamiliar landscape, her body floods with adrenaline before she’s even opened her eyes. She reels as she sits up, overwhelmed with sensation—a familiar searing ache in her ribs, and blinding fear, and the euphoric, indescribable shock of it, of realizing: alive alive alive I’m alive.

Because she shouldn’t be. Because the last thing she saw was her sister, desperate, crying, diving after her with eyes wide and hands reaching and all Weiss wants to do is throw up because—

—because you don’t do that. You don’t turn your back on Cinder Fall, not unless you want a spear through it. It’s not safe.

And Winter knew that, once. Didn’t she?

I am not always going to be around to save you, Weiss.

But she’d tried, and she knew better, and the failure of it’s going to eat her alive, if Cinder doesn’t get to her first. Weiss knows that. What she doesn’t know—what she needs to know, more than anything, is—

—is who’s going to save Winter?

“We don’t have time for that right now,” she orders herself sharply, saying it aloud in the hopes that it might sound more convincing that way. “Get up. Get moving.” She takes a deep breath and shakes off her panic, climbing to her feet. 

Don’t fall, Ambrosius had warned, and now here she is. Why hadn’t she pressed for details? Why hadn’t any of them asked? 

What’s that supposed to mean?

She’s surrounded by a copse of strange ferns and plants; above her, dominating the landscape, rises a single, massive tree. Height. That’s what she needs. Get the lay of the land; find the others. If she’s alive, so are they—she can’t let herself think anything else. She takes another calming breath—in, out—brandishes Myrtenaster, and thinks of that day in the forest outside Beacon. Of the first time she was a member of a team; the first time she felt a part of something bigger than herself.

...nothing happens.

Fine, she thinks, rolling her eyes with annoyance. Fine. She’s still not ready for the Nevermore, yet; she shouldn’t have tried. Who’s there to show off to, anyway? Instead she reaches for a more familiar ally, Summoning her Queen Lancer to her side.

...nothing.

Not even the hint of a something, the familiar hum of her Aura under her skin.

...which means...

Slowly at first, and then with increasing distress, Weiss slashes her rapier through the air and tries to produce Glyphs. Something, anything—even just a simple platform. Nothing comes. She must look ridiculous, she realizes; like a child playing pirates with a stick on the playground.

Where are they, if they’ve landed somewhere Semblances don’t work? Are they—is she even alive, after all?

She forces herself to take another breath. In, out. That works the same, at least. Dead people don’t need to breathe, last she checked.

If she can’t fly, she’s going to have to walk.

She heads towards the Tree—the big tree, the one that merits mental capitalization—on instinct, figuring everyone will have to make their way there eventually. It’s the only mutual landmark they’ll have. It’s difficult to say how long she walks; the light never changes, and moments seem to stretch like molasses. 

But after what she can only guess is an hour, she realizes that she’s being followed.

She knows she’s not imagining it. Her voyeur is being careful, but Weiss can clock the signs: her footfalls have a partner echo; the branches creak in nonexistent wind. 

“You might as well come out,” she says, raising her weapon to the ready. “I know you’re there.”

Well that was a stupid thing to say, she reprimands herself immediately after, when she’s beset by a pink-and-brown blur and the next thing she feels is a crushing pain in her fingers as Neo pounces from the trees feet-first and tries to kick Myrtenaster from her grip.

She thinks: oh, that’s not happening.

She thinks: Neo’s unarmed; keep her that way. 

She says: “I’m going to dismember you, you fucking bitch!”

The fight should be easy—Weiss is the one with the upper hand, Neo mostly on defense and resorting to dirty tricks to try and get the sword away—but it’s not. Partly because it’s harder than Weiss thought it would be, to ignore her own training; she keeps instinctively throwing up Glyphs that never appear, leaving herself vulnerable as she waits for effects that never happen. But mostly because Weiss can barely concentrate, can barely see her opponent through her tears as a non-stop invective pours from her lips. 

(“You vile—heinous—wretched—”) 

All the things she’d wanted to say to Cinder but couldn’t, all the things that are true, that she deserves. This woman’s tracked them for years, it seems, to get a shot at Ruby, and for what? For Roman Torchwick? For just the memory of him?

“You’re pathetic,” Weiss snarls. But just as Neo prepares to dive at her for another grapple, two shotgun blasts ring out—knocking her backwards, into a tree.

“Leave,” a familiar voice says, and Weiss’ knees go weak, because—

—well, it’s probably only been a few hours in the grand scheme of things, but she thought she’d never hear that voice again. 

Yang steps forward from the forest and into Weiss’ peripheral vision, cocking Ember Celica with a flick of her wrists: “It’s two on one, now, and you’re unarmed. I don’t know what happens if you die in hell, but if I were you, I wouldn’t want to test my luck and find out. Make your own way, and don’t follow us. Leave.”

Neo’s eyes narrow as she assesses her odds, glance darting between the two of them. Then she sticks out her tongue, winks, and runs off into the woods.

“Are you oka—oof!” Yang yelps as Weiss throws herself into Yang’s embrace. Yang chuckles, arms coming up to hold her tight. “We’ve gotta stop meeting like this,” she jokes lightly, giving Weiss a teasing squeeze. All it gets her is a sob, Weiss burying her face deeper in Yang’s neck—as though she could get Yang’s reassuring words further into her ears by nuzzling closer.

“We thought you were dead,” she whispers, breathing too shaky to attempt actual warbling speech.

“Hey, let’s not get too excited. We might both be dead,” Yang notes, maddeningly casual. “I haven’t exactly seen anything to rule it out.” 

And Weiss—

—not wanting to release the hug—

—stomps on her foot.

Chapter Text

“I just—I really think we should talk about this—”

“It’s fine, Jaune,” Ruby grits out, audibly at the limits of her patience. “We can deal with everything later. Right now, we just have to keep moving. Find the team, find a way out, get to Vacuo. The rest can wait. It’s fine.”

But it’s not fine—even assuming there is a way out. If it were fine, Ruby would talk to him. If it were fine, Ruby would at the very least look at him, instead of refusing to even turn her head as she brusquely slashes through the underbrush with Crescent Rose as they make their way deeper into the island. They keep single file, Blake serving as a silent buffer-- head down, but ears swiveling back and forth between the two of them every time Jaune tries to engage in conversation. The only spectators to his utter failure.

“I’m sorry, but—I don’t think it can wait. We know better than to push each other away by now; if you’re mad at me just say so and—”

“I’m not mad at you,” Ruby interrupts, even as the set of her shoulders belies her eerie calm. “It would be stupid to be mad at you, and a pointless waste of time. So I’m not.”

“But you should be; I’m mad at me, so why can’t we just—?”

“What do you want me to say, Jaune?” she bursts out, sheathing her weapon and whirling on him. He flinches to see the tears in her eyes. “That I hate you? I don’t! That you made the wrong call? Join the club! All I’ve done since getting to Atlas is make the wrong call, over and over and over.”

“Ruby—” Blake breaks in softly, reaching out, but Ruby shrugs her off.

“That I don’t forgive you, when all you did is what Penny asked you? I understand! She asked me, too! Only I didn’t do it, because I never could, and I—I didn’t have to, because you were there. You fixed it, because that’s what you do. You make people better. All I do is—I—”

Ruby sways precariously, looking nauseated; this time, when Blake offers an arm, Ruby grabs onto her elbow to keep steady as she sinks dizzily to the ground. Blake sits beside her, entwining their fingers, but Jaune doesn’t dare join them. He feels rooted where he stands; frozen.

Ruby’s voice is bitter: “I was just being naïve. Again. Thinking I’d get to keep her twice; that I’d outsmarted anyone. I should never have gotten clever with Ambrosius; we should have just knocked her out after she opened the vault and figured it out in Vacuo. And even if we didn’t manage it, even if she’d hurt herself, if she hadn’t been in her stupid new body it was my stupid idea to make, we could have—Dr. Polendina would have somehow found a way to—” She’s shaking, now, body wracked with hiccupping sobs. “Don’t you get it? It’s my fault. You didn’t kill Penny, Jaune. I did.”

“What? No, that’s—you can’t say that—”

“But it’s true, I—”

“If you killed Penny, then I killed Pyrrha,” Jaune says, voice cracking on her name. He means for it to sound absurd, for it to show Ruby how irrational she’s being, but now that it’s in the air... well. There’s still a voice in his head that goes but you did, you did, you did. He’s suddenly not sure whom he’s trying to convince. “If that’s all it takes, then—then it counts just as much. She asked me for advice and I pushed her into danger, she was only there because of me, so—”

“You can’t blame yourself for that, she made a choice—”

“And I made a choice, with Penny. I didn’t have to listen when she told me her plan, we could have found another way, I was just—”

“Adam was my first kiss,” Blake murmurs, and her quiet interjection is so profoundly unexpected it knocks both of them into silence. “He was—a lot of other things, too, terrible things, but. He meant something to me. I loved him, once. He was a person. But when the time came that he made me choose, I put an end to it. Because otherwise, he was never going to stop hurting people. Hurting me. And I’m not—” Blake pauses, swallowing hard. “I’m not sorry, for what I did. I’d do it again if I had to. But... I think about it every day. Every day.” 

Jaune meets Ruby’s eyes, suddenly feeling like a complete asshole. How was it only a day ago that he was admonishing Ren for making it everything about his own insecurity, instead of staying focused on what matters? And now he’s back to doing the same thing. If the look on Ruby’s face is anything to go by, she feels just as contrite. Even from this far away, he can see how tightly she’s squeezing Blake’s hand—in apology, in thanks, like a lifeline.

But Blake’s not done talking, her voice soft yet threaded with steel: “I can’t talk you out of carrying this—either of you—if you think it’s yours to hold. I don’t think it’s something we get to just put down. But I think... arguing over who should bear more of the blame...” She shrugs, helpless. “You shouldn’t make it heavier than it needs to be.”

“It feels easier, though,” Ruby says—not arguing, really, so much as chuckling ruefully at herself. “To point fingers, I mean. Instead of just... letting myself feel sad.” She looks up at Jaune again, eyes shining. “But I really mean it—I’m not mad at you. Even if I get why you want me to be; because maybe that would feel easier for you, too.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, heaving out a breath and feeling just the tiniest bit of weight leave his shoulders on the exhale. For a second, they all just stare at each other, reveling in the released tension. 

Ruby collapses into Blake’s side, resting her head in the crook of Blake’s neck. Then she reaches out towards Jaune and makes grabby hands: “What are you still standing there for? Get over here; bridge hug!”

“Bridge?” he asks, even as he obediently trots over to them and joins them on the ground, folding them into his arms.

“That’s us,” Ruby says, wiggling to cuddle closer. “Team BRJ.“

“Oh, I’m in charge?” Blake laughs, sounding—charmed, in a terrified sort of way. Or maybe Jaune’s got that backwards.

Ruby hugs them both tighter before leaning back, just a bit. “I think Jaune and I might be leadered out for a little while,” she confesses, smile sheepish but the haunted look in her eyes showing only painful honesty. Until they suddenly spark with mischief: “Unless Operation: Find Yang is something you don’t feel up to taking point on...?”

“I think I’ll figure it out,” Blake replies lightly, joking tone undergirded with an unshakeable determination. After pats on the back all around they get to their feet, energy renewed—but Jaune grabs onto both the girls’ wrists before they can get going.

“Hey, I—thank you. Both of you.”

Ruby’s lips quirk in a shadow of her usual grin. “What are friends for?”

Chapter Text

Let no one ever doubt that Yang can be a champion whiner when she wants to be.

She was on her best behavior before, listening intently as Weiss caught her up on just how badly the fight with Cinder went, and brainstorming up next steps (get to the Tree; send up a flare with Ember Celica because if there were Grimm they needed to worry about, they would have run into some by now; wait). Only there wasn’t much to talk about after that that wasn’t wildly depressing, and they’d fallen into an uneasy silence—Yang watching Weiss hunch tighter and tighter in on herself with every step.

So she’d filled the quiet: complaining about how they’d be there by now if only she still had Bumblebee; bitching about how unfair it is that they can’t seem to get their Semblances to work; grumbling over how she has no idea how long they’ve been walking because the light never seems to change here. And Weiss snaps back, of course, but Yang can tell the annoyance is feigned—the more irritated Weiss’s answers are, the more relaxed her body language becomes. Normalcy’s thin on the ground, here; Yang will provide it anywhere she can.

Except—

—except also something on the ground here, it seems—

—is Gambol Shroud.

“Oh,” Yang breathes, in a tone of voice she’s not entirely sure she’s ever produced before. Weiss runs ahead and drops to her knees, but hesitates when she goes to scoop up the weapon—her hand hovering over it, shaking.

“I—sorry. It’s not my—you should—”

“You should give it back to her,” Yang says, keeping her distance and a soft smile on her face.

Weiss looks up at her with wide eyes. “But you—” 

“—didn’t have to see her fall. You did. And you—you did really good, Weiss. You should give it back to her.” It seems a small concession to make, in the grand scheme of things. She’s going to have plenty of Blake, and soon. She knows it-- she’s sure of that down to her bones, now. So what is there to be possessive of? She waits until Weiss nods, and slips the katana through one of her scabbard loops. It’s not exactly meant to be carried that way, but whatever. It looks pretty badass. “C’mon,” she says, helping Weiss to her feet. “We’re close. I can feel it.”

Weiss roasts her mercilessly when it’s a good age and a half of walking before they even hit the tree’s roots (“Oh, are we close, Yang? Can you feel it?”), but they don’t come across any other surprises. When the roots start to twist and rise above them, Yang clambers up to a decent plateau and sets off two charges—shooting them high into the air and watching them explode like fireworks. Yang smirks, tucking her arms behind her head as she prepares to settle in and wait—

—and promptly slips and falls out of the tree when a trio of familiar voices happily cry “Yang?!” only seconds after the flare’s report.

(It’s not her fault, okay? She wasn’t expecting them to be this close, or together; wasn’t expecting Jaune to be down here at all; it’s whatever—)

By the time she’s picked herself up and dusted herself off, Ruby, Jaune and Blake have come into view, just across the clearing. 

“Ruby!” Weiss cries, sprinting towards them, and that’s—she’s Yang’s sister, she should get dibs on first hug, what gives, only then Weiss actually throws a thumbs up behind her as she runs and that’s just-- that’s just rude, honestly, as if—

“Yang,” Blake says, close enough to touch, and when did that happen?

“Blake, I—”

She has no idea how that sentence was supposed to end. Luckily, Blake relieves her of the burden, busying her mouth and bringing her thoughts to a grinding halt by pulling her into a swift, determined kiss. Yang’s struck so dumb by the shock of it that for a moment she forgets to kiss back—hands hanging limply at her sides as she tries to process the intent pressure of Blake’s lips against hers; the swell of body heat where they’re pressed together, chest to chest; the tender way Blake cradles her jaw, all fingertips, the way you touch something precious and fragile. Every muscle in Yang’s body relaxes in an instant—at last, finally, thank you—and a needy, wanting noise tears itself from her throat, entirely without her volition.

It’s possible she goes a bit overboard when she finally gets control of her limbs again, wrapping her arms around Blake’s sides and dipping her into the kind of kiss she’s only seen on the covers of Blake’s novels, but it’s hard to care about how it looks—not when Blake’s laughing into her mouth, and Ruby’s wolf-whistling (Yang releases her hold on Blake for that, briefly, only because she has to prioritize flipping Ruby the bird) and has she mentioned that she’s kissing Blake Belladonna? 

She’s kissing Blake Belladonna.

She might never stop kissing Blake Belladonna.

Or, okay, maybe she will; her back kind of hurts holding this weird position so long. But when she pulls Blake back to standing, she suddenly registers wetness on her own cheeks, and she wouldn’t be surprised she’s crying only she’s—she’s really pretty sure she’s not, so that means—

“Don’t cry,” she whispers, reaching up to brush the tears from Blake’s lashes. “If you cry I’m gonna cry, and—”

“I love you,” Blake breathes, and the words lay Yang out faster than any punch, knocking the wind right out of her lungs. The look on Blake’s face is beatific—elated and adoring and thrilled. Like she’s proud of herself for being brave enough to say it; like she wasn’t sure she was going to know how. Only then the tears well up again; her voice hitches as she stutters: “I promised; I couldn’t get to you in time, you can’t—I’ll follow you anywhere, I promised, I swear it, but you have to let me, I thought I lost you—”

This time it’s Yang’s turn to quiet Blake with a kiss, and she lets herself savor it. She clocks every sensation, every touch, every sigh, every brush of their lips. This isn’t about utility, or merely silencing Blake’s fears. It’s reassurance, and devotion, and a promise all its own: we’re okay. We can have this, now.

When she pulls back, she takes a deep breath, determined to find words that will mean as much as Blake’s just did, to make it clear just how much she feels—

—only it’s a little hard to concentrate over how loudly Weiss is crying, a few yards away where Ruby and Jaune have her sandwiched between them.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to—I just—you did promise, all of you, you said you’d never leave my side and I was—I was alone, I was the only one left, and I—”

Yang takes Blake’s hand, gratified when she gets an understanding squeeze and a nod in return-- to be continued. Whatever confessions of love Yang’s got scratching at the walls of her insides, they can wait a little longer; right now, they need to be with their team.

Together, they join the group huddle, saying nothing as collectively they abandon any attempts at soothing words and instead finally let themselves fall apart. Ruby all but crawls into Yang’s lap, and a thread of tension deep within Yang finally, finally relaxes, knowing that her sister is safe. Jaune cries loudest and hardest of all, and Yang buries a hand in his hair, wishing she could make it better. She knows what it feels like, to stab down and feel the life leave someone’s body, but that was-- she’d hated Adam. To have to do it to an ally, a friend, to have that responsibility on you, for someone you love—

—kill me, and I can make sure the power goes to you—

—she shakes off the stubborn image of Raven’s scarlet eyes filling her vision and focuses on the people in her arms.

“Not to be super morbid, but maybe...” She pauses and chews on her words, wanting to make sure she says what she means to. “We might be a little past promises, now. All of us. I don’t know where we go from here, and the choices are only going to get harder. But-- we’ve always found our way back to each other before. Even here, and—and I don’t even really know where here is. So maybe we can just... trust that. See where it takes us.”

She doesn’t realize she’s closed her eyes in a wince, unsure of how she’ll be received, until she cautiously squints them open again and sees half her universe staring back at her with nothing but love.

“I think that sounds good,” Blake says, 

but her eyes say so much more.

Chapter Text

It doesn’t occur to that she’s allowed to talk to them until Torchwick reveals himself to Neo. And even then, well—Roman Torchwick isn’t exactly a shining paragon when it comes to setting a good example of what’s allowed.

But the idea refuses to stop hounding her footsteps, once it’s come. Once she’s seen it’s possible, without consequences. Still, she waits, and keeps her distance. There’s no sunset, here on the island, no night, but there are shady places beneath the towering roots of the Tree; eventually, they all bed down, and Jaune—as she’d known he would—volunteers to take first watch. It’s a heartening display: Yang and Blake twined together like ivy on a wrought iron gate, but each clinging to the hands of their teammates, chained together by grasping fingers. Otters in a stream, unwilling to be separated.

She doesn’t know why she’s surprised to hear her own voice when she approaches.

...I know this can be frustrating, and it can feel like so much effort to progress such a small amount, but I want you to know that I'm proud of you. I've never met someone so determined to better themselves...

“You’ll drain your battery,” she cautions, reaching out with her mind to press the off button on his scroll. His head whips up, expression aghast, and she smiles at him softly. “I’d have thought you’d have it memorized by now anyhow; you haven’t seemed to need it in some time.”

She expects disbelief, perhaps, or shock. Joy would have been nice, but she’d have understood anger. So she’s surprised and—bizarrely proud, actually—when instead his eyes narrow in suspicion and the first thing he says is, “Your Semblance works.”

“Well, yes.”

“Why does your Semblance work?”

“Because I’m where I’m supposed to be. A soul knows when it’s in the right place. Or the wrong one, as the case may be.”

“Or I’m dreaming.”

“Or you’re dreaming,” she agrees, keeping her voice mild, but feeling it like a punch to the stomach when his shoulders relax at the idea. Does he... not want her here? Goodness, but she’s out of practice. She’d forgotten it was like this; how talking to him had been both the easiest and the hardest thing in the world. “Would you—prefer that? If I weren’t really here?”

“The real Pyrrha would know better than to ask me that.”

Despite herself, she laughs. “Oh, I wish that were true. I asked myself that every day. Every class, every glance, every study session on the roof. I’m afraid I was never as confident as I should have been.” It’s an embarrassing admission, but an effective one; the walled-up caution behind his eyes dissipates... only for tears to well up in its stead.

“Are you—can I touch you?”

“I hope so.” (She’d left Torchwick and Neo behind before they’d gotten that far, for obvious reasons.)

“I—” He scrambles to his feet and crosses the distance between them, enveloping her in a crushing hug. It doesn’t feel like she remembers, but then, that’s no surprise—he’s taller than he used to be, and her body isn’t exactly a body, per se. She’s grateful, even so. Happy just to have the chance to hold him up. She keeps quiet at first, letting him get it all out as he sobs incoherent apologies into her shoulder—

(IloveyouImissyouIloveyouImissyouI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry)

--and contents herself with playing with the short hair at the nape of his neck. Eventually, he calms.

“I like the haircut,” she says, when he pulls away. “It’s handsome. You look so grown up.”

“You look so young,” he croaks in response, and—she supposes she must, to his eyes. It’s strange to think that she’s the same age as Ruby now; that they’ve kept going on without her, and they’ll continue to do so, once she’s led them out. “Are you—? Have you—?” He wipes at his eyes, laughing at himself a little. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know where to start. I just—I can't believe you're here with me.”

“I'm always with you,” she assures him, unable to suppress the urge to thumb away a tear he’s missed. She keeps her hand there, at his cheek, as she she speaks: “Even when you can’t sense me, I... oh, Jaune. I’m so proud of you. You’ve come so far.”

He sighs and steps out of the circle of her arms, hanging his head to stare at Crocea Mors where it rests in its sheath. You’d never know it to be broken, just by looking. The scabbard hides the damage—giving him the appearance of being armed and ready though all he carries is a shattered hilt. “Yeah, maybe. I—I thought I had, but...” He swallows, face filled with shame.

She starts to reach for him again, unwilling to waste even a moment of their time not touching him, but forces herself to relax and drop her hands to her sides. It has to be his choice, doesn’t it? “Tell me. You can tell me anything; you know that.”

His voice falters terribly when he finally speaks: 

“I mean, I feel like you already know. For the longest time, I wanted to be this... I dunno. This warrior, or whatever. And it never fit, no matter what I did, or how hard I worked, and I just—I resented it so much. Being...” He shakes his head. “I just felt useless. But when I unlocked my Semblance, I had to let that go. And it was hard at first, it took time, but for a second there it finally started to feel like... like I knew my place. Where I belonged; what everyone needed from me. I was good at it. But then Penny needed—” He chokes on a sob, and has to stop and take several deep breaths before he can continue. “Nothing’s changed. I’m still useless. The idiot stuck on the wrong side of the glass, out of his league and forced to watch because someone else has to be the Maiden now and there’s nothing he can do about it. Only this time it’s worse, because this time I actually—I—”

Unable to hold herself back anymore, she reaches for his hands; he squeezes her fingers tight, like a lifeline. “I understand,” she soothes, voice heavy like a vow. “Did you think I wouldn’t? I don’t think I have to remind you that I’m the only other person who knows what that feels like. To have been the one who killed her.”

He lets out an awful, cynical noise; a parody of a laugh. “Depends on who you ask,” he says in explanation, looking askance towards Ruby. Pyrrha sadly follows his gaze. Ruby’s shifted in her sleep, curled under her cape to be as small as possible with her head nestled in the crooks of Yang’s bent knees. Her arms are wrapped around Yang’s shins in a death grip, as though she fears her sister might fly away at any moment. Pyrrha’s heart aches for her; for the responsibility she carries. Weight Pyrrha could have helped shoulder... if only she’d been a little faster, a little more clever.

She shakes off the feeling; now’s not the time for regret. “But things have changed,” she says, bringing Jaune’s hands up to her mouth and kissing the knuckles. It will be a long time, she knows, before he believes there isn’t blood on them; maybe this small act can help. And if it doesn’t... she has other options. Maybe even a little levity, for once. “You’re not useless. You’re amazing. You’re a licensed Huntsman now; you’re accomplishing things you’d only dreamed of. All the mothers of Mantle adore you. You even got to go on a date with Weiss!”

He boggles at her, wrenching his hands away. “What?! That wasn’t a date, we were just hanging out with Oscar, we—” His jaw falls open, suddenly, and his eyes narrow once more. “Wait a minute. Are you teasing me?”

She grins, sheepish and caught. “I figured it was now or never to give it a go; I didn’t want to waste my last chance to try it. Nora always said it would be good for me.”

“To make fun of me?” he squawks, indignant.

She laughs. “To remind myself it’s okay to be a novice sometimes; that there are things I won’t instantly be good at.” She bites her lip, unable to stop her grin. “...And also to make fun of you, yes.”

He surges forward, then—wrapping a hand around the back of her neck and pulling her closer, pressing a fierce, grateful kiss to her forehead. Then he does it again; then once more, at the bridge of her nose. And then a final time, against her lips. Quick; intense. Filled with meaning.

She’s got no breath in her, and still she’s breathless.

“I miss you so much,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut and resting his forehead against hers. His fingers thread themselves into the hair at the back of her skull, tangled into the base of her ponytail. “So much. I think about you all the time. Every day. Wondering how different things would be, if only...”

“I know,” she says, because she does. There’s more that she should say, probably—that it’s good that he’s started to move on; that none of them can hold onto her forever. But she can’t quite bring herself to voice the words.

“It’s not fair,” he mutters, then sighs at the sound of it. “I mean, none of it is fair, but—I feel like a jerk, I guess. That I’m the one who gets to see you, of all of us.”

“You’ll tell them I love them, won’t you? Ren and Nora. They...” They’re doing things she never did, is the thing. Maturing in ways she’ll never have the chance to. Learning that responsibility doesn’t mean putting it all on your own shoulders; that love doesn’t mean giving all of yourself away. It’s overwhelming, how proud she is of them for that. “They were on the right path, in Atlas. Don’t let them convince themselves otherwise.”

He nods, the movement of it levering her own head in shared agreement. “Anything else? Anyone else you’d like me to...?”

So many; too many. But one rises above the rest. “Tell my mother to stop leaving flowers,” she murmurs, wishing she had more to offer than that. “Tell her they belong in the garden; that I like to watch them grow. That’s—the way it should be.”

“Okay,” he says, and relief rushes through her. “Okay. I will.”

Slowly, they both become aware once more of the gaggle of Huntresses sleeping just a few yards off. Pyrrha could leave dozens of messages with Jaune, if she wanted, but the people she most needs to speak to are right here, within arm’s reach. They need her guidance; it’s selfish not to provide it. She’s taken so long already. And yet...

Jaune beats her to voicing the thought: “I know we should probably wake them, but—can it be just the two of us, for just a little longer? Please?”

She smiles, and brings a hand up to caress his cheek. “I thought you’d never ask.”