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Shine bright morning light
Now in the air the spring is coming
Sweet blowing wind
Singing down the hills and valleys
Keep your eyes on me
Now we're on the edge of hell
Dear my love, sweet morning light
Wait for me, you've gone much farther, too far
Fake Wings by Yuki Kajiura from .hack//SiGN
It’s a muggy summer day when Weiss finds out she’s a princess. Her magic flares cold and volatile, and when the king’s knights corner her they see the magic glimmer under her skin. Her mother is arrested, bound in chains, and dragged from their home, and Weiss is led by knights to her new home. The journey takes three days and nights, but she arrives at the castle at the center of Atlas on the hottest day of her nineteenth year. The guards pay her safety no heed. She is ushered through the gates and shoved at the feet of the man who calls himself her father.
Atop the regal throne, he sits with his head propped up on a closed fist. He doesn’t bother hiding his disdain at the sight of her, clad from head to toe in white and gold. His eyes flicker over her form, knelt on his throne room floor scared and alone.
“She is adequate.” He rumbles, a pitch much higher than his eyes would convey. “Put her in the royal wing.”
A knight with yellowed teeth and eyes yanks her up and as she’s being dragged out the door Weiss catches sight of something odd. Seated behind her father is a girl. She’s tall and thin, with a wild mane of red hair, chained to the base of his throne. They meet eyes and she gasps at the penetrating silver that greets her as she’s removed from the chamber. A heat erupts in her chest, something desperate that calls to her. She feels like smoke fills her lungs, heavy and thick . The feeling follows her, stumbling and confused, through the high walls of the castle.
Three weeks inside the castle teaches Weiss how little her father cares for her. She’s disregarded almost entirely. As long as she doesn’t leave the castle she is free to roam without care and it only takes a few days for the staff to understand she’s nothing like her father. (The maids smile brightly at her in the hallway and she gets extra portions of her favorite parts of dinners nightly.)
It’s late in the morning when she thinks of the woman bound in chains with silver eyes. She’s in the library and a scholar’s brightly polished buttons catch the light glimmering silver. The heat that settled in her chest that day returns with each thought of the silver-eyed woman. Smoke doesn’t fill her lungs but her wrists ache and her stomach rolls.
It’s not so much a decision as an inevitability when she sets out to locate the girl. If she was given no wards to be restricted to, she may find out where the woman is kept within the castle walls. The difficult part is exactly where to start.
The dungeon seemed the best starting point; the lowest point of the castle and she’d work her way up. Her first real obstacle comes in the form of a faunus maid with amber eyes. Weiss catches sight of her as she rounds a corner, and the woman turns on her with a scowl.
“Schnee,” She growls, bitter and angry, but her eyes soften at Weiss’ fear. “Get lost princess. This is not your place.” Impossibly, she turns her back to the not-yet-crowned princess and continues to the deepest part of the dungeon.
“Wait-” Weiss faulters, standing determined in the passage. “I’m looking for someone.”
The maid stalls. Weiss can almost see her thoughts through ebony hair. When she turns amber eyes pin Weiss to the ground, cautious and curious. “Who could the Schnee Princess be looking for that she would not just ask a guard to find?” Despite her hesitance, Weiss can see a sparkle in the faunus’ eyes.
“I needn’t ask the guards for everything-” She flushes. She could have asked but a guard could tell her no . It was better to ask for forgiveness than permission she supposed.
“Something father might not approve of then?” The amber eyes woman almost purs, still keeping her distance.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“A lover perhaps?” Weiss remembers the churning in her gut at the sight of the woman. The sheer want to be near her, to run to her side and remove those chains from her wrists and neck.
“I never-”
“Peculiar…”
“I will just look on my own!” She snaps finally, haughty and red-faced. The faunus maid smirks prepared to continue her teasing but pauses at the sound of heavy chainmail.
Heavy armored footsteps pull both women from their discussion and Weiss sees the other woman stiffen. She has about twelve seconds before she rushes towards the woman and tugs her close. They’re face to face tucked close in a small nook of the hallway, but if the guards notice they don’t say anything. The dark-haired woman sighs, taking a moment to give Weiss a single once over before the princess steps away.
“What are you looking for Princess ?” All pretense of teasing is gone. the woman is taking her seriously now.
“The woman who sits at my father’s feet.” Her tone does not shake. It doesn’t give away the yearning in her heart. The way those dull silver eyes lit something inside her and melted her icy heart. “He keeps her in chains. I hate it.”
Amber eyes watch her unwavering. “Do you know anything about her?”
“She has silver eyes and dark red hair, but other than that all I know is she’s in pain.”
“In pain?” She cocks her head to the side curiously, arms crossed, back straight.
“I can’t explain it. When we locked eyes I could feel how sad she was. I need to speak to her.”
“There is only one person besides your father who knows where she’s kept.” The ebony-haired woman says slowly, shifting her stance to offer a dark hand to the pale princess. “Come with me, princess.”
Weiss rolls her eyes and brushes the other woman’s hand away. “Just Weiss is fine. Who is this mysterious other person anyway?”
“Follow me.”
Blake , the faunus woman posing as a maid in her father’s castle, leads her to the deepest part of the dungeon. The further down the women go the cooler the stone surrounding them becomes. At one point Weiss can almost see her breath but it doesn’t last long. On the next floor, the temperature rises and more so the following floor, till she’s sweating and huffing with excretion.
“Where-”
Blake holds her hand up with a quiet look, cutting Weiss off. Before them is an iron door, secured with locks the size of Weiss’s head. Blake retrieves a set of tools from inside a pocket Weiss wouldn’t have believed was there if she hadn’t watched the maneuver transpire. With skilled fingers, Blake drops to a knee and quickly picks the lock, it slides open with a soft thunk , and the door opens with a low groan.
Inside the only cell in the deepest part of her father’s dungeon is a single woman. Like the woman who sits at the king’s feet, she is bound at her wrists and neck. The room is dark, so deep beneath the ground, Weiss almost can’t see the way the woman shifts in her chains.
“Yang?” Blake whispers, still keeping her distance from the chained woman.
Lavender eyes blink open and Weiss watches as they lazily roam from Blake to herself. As deep purple takes in Weiss’s visage she watched as the shift from lilac and spring to vicious red. The heat grows as the woman tugs and strains against her bindings.
“Schnee!!” She roars, and Weiss stumbles backward. Fire fills the room within the iron doors, and Weiss realizes that it’s not just dark. The walls are caked, covered in silt and soot. It smells like hellfire and ash, and she feels true fear as the red-eyed woman snarls.
Blake rushes forward, past flame and fire, into the arms of the angry woman, and Weiss feels wave after wave of emotion surge through her. Anger and fear that ebbs into sorrow and failure. Smoke fills her lungs but not physically. Tears prick at her eyes and Weiss holds back a pained sob as the flames subside. The ghost of a memory feels just out of reach, someone has been taken, I couldn’t do anything…
“ The woman .” She croaks out, pained and choked as the would-be princess struggles to stand. She holds herself up on shaky legs as she looks into glowing red. “She’s your sister isn’t she?”
Red flickers purple and seethes. Limbs bulge and churn and Weiss sees scales shimmer, gold, and vibrant, like waves across freckled skin. Talons scrape across the soot-covered floor as Yang towers over her. Fear bubbles in her stomach sending a wave of nausea through Weiss as she holds her ground against the enraged dragon.
Shaking, Blake purs herself between her lover and the princess, rough hands pushing against Yang’s prominent chest plating. She’s frantic and worried, but Yang is inconsolable. She holds Blake close as she towers over the Schnee heiress, flickering flame and fury.
The onslaught of emotions storms in her chest and Weiss gasps as she clings to the emotions that she knows aren’t hers. Something clicks and suddenly it goes quiet. Weiss can see Blake yelling, she watches another snarl leave the morphing dragon’s maw, but there’s no sound. Instead, her eyes dance with light like she’s been struck, without the pain. She’s suddenly filled with a strength she didn’t know she could muster and pushes back.
“You can be angry at me all you want but I don’t even know you!” She snaps, only vaguely aware of the dragon’s indignant snort. “My father is who put you here right? So let’s think of a way to get you out and rescue your sister!”
“What do you know about my sister?” The dragon growls over the princess.
“I know that she needs us.”
There’s something more human in the creature’s eyes as she seethes, fire and ash fill Weiss’ lungs, thick and suffocating. “Needs us,” she spits a burst of flames in irritation, “She doesn’t need help from a Schnee.”
“If you’re not going to help me this was all a waste of my time,” Weiss says with a huff, disregarding the looming dragon as she moves. “Thank you for trying Blake, but I will find my own way to locate her.” She’s nearly through the door when she stops, two sets of eyes watching her back, “What’s her name?”
“Ruby,” The dragon growls, seething and angry.
She leaves a storm of fury and frustration. Her father was a bastard, a monster more dangerous than any dragon, but why couldn’t anyone see she wasn’t like him. She knew, logically, nothing could be done about preconceived notions, so she’d just have to change the way she was looked at herself, but first things first, she needed to rescue Ruby .
It takes another week of exploring the castle before she finds anything hopeful. In the library, past the reference books, she finds a key. It’s stuck in a carved-out book hidden between two enormous volumes of ancient history. With the key is a note:
Key to the king’s treasure, use it wisely.
It’s ominous, but Weiss pockets the key and moves on in her search.
Three days later she discovers an area of the castle covered in guards. It's close to her father's chambers, so she assumed that was the case till she passed a talkative guard. The bright redhead grins at her with a salute but doesn't try to direct her elsewhere.
"Salutations princess!" Weiss watches her with a careful eye, curious of her intention. "Off to see the King's pet?" Pet?
"Father isn't very good at directions I'm afraid." She offers a light shrug to punctuate her statement.
The guard shines with a bright smile, obviously just a little younger than herself, the woman leads Weiss through the clusters of guards to a hallway wrapped around a hidden room. In contrast to Yang's dungeon cell, they travel up the tallest tower facing the sun. The guard smiles before opening a thick metal door and gesturing inside.
"The king doesn't let us past this door, so you'll have to continue without me princess."
With a quiet nod, Weiss proceeds, tensing as the metal door is closed behind her with a slam. The first room in the chamber is huge and sunny, with big bay windows on either side to watch the sunrise and set. It would be a lovely bedroom if one was so inclined. Beyond it is another large metal door, covered in sliding slats and a large lock. Fishing the key from her pocket she tests it in the lock and smiles when she hears the mechanism click open.
The next room is dark. No sun reaches inside, but the room is presently warm in comparison to Yang's frigid cell. She shifts, trying to see past the darkness, but she can't. Movement scratches against metal, the shifting of chains as light ignites in the small room. Weiss lays her eyes on Ruby for the second time. It's been long enough that her hair is longer, but she's still tall and thin with moonlight eyes, seated atop a bed filled with feathers and pelts.
For a moment, Weiss can't breathe. Till now this had been her goal; find the girl at her father's feet and help her, but what next?
"Hiya!" The words shock her, and at her flinch Ruby giggles nervously. "Sorry! I'm not used to visitors!" She shyly scratches the back of her neck with a smile, "oh! You're the princess!"
Unlike Yang, Ruby doesn't look completely human, displaying thick horns and a massive tail, with freckles of scales down her neck and shoulders. Her hands and feet are draconian, scaled in vicious, but Weiss can only feel warmth.
"Ruby, right?" She doesn't sound like herself, almost shy in her tone, but something wraps around her heart and tugs at the sight of the grinning dragon.
“Yeah!!” She cheers, smiles, and sunlight behind moon drop eyes. “I was wondering when we would meet!”
“Let me get you out of here.” She needs to be quick. She’s not sure what the rounds for the guards are in this part of the castle, or how often her father makes his way into the dragon’s cell.
“What? No, I can’t leave.” Ruby’s voice is panicked, almost desperate as she pulls away from Weiss’ panicked hands. “I’m here because your dad will hurt my sister if I don’t help him!” Those moonlight eyes darken, pupils blown wide as she speaks.
“What?”
“I’m only here because the king will hurt Yang if I don’t help him.” Fear; ice-cold like the land outside the castle creeps through her body. The feeling is more intense with Ruby so close, the feel of her anxieties rolling like a snowball down a hill. She shakes, despite Ruby’s body remaining still, Weiss can feel how she shivers internally. She’s uncomfortable, in pain, and scared, but it would all be worth it to save her family.
Suddenly everything made sense. Ruby hadn’t been captured, she’d been lied to . She’d been told she’d be keeping Yang free if she stayed here in chains, but Yang had been chained and locked beneath the castle.
“Ruby,” Weiss cups the dragon’s face in her hand, feels the warmth of her cheeks, and her heart swells painfully. “Yang is being held deep beneath the castle, so she can’t rescue you.”
Something snaps in Ruby’s silver eyes. Weiss can feel her dragon magic pulse painfully as her hands twitch at her side. “What? No. Yang is just mad at me…”
“She’s not mad at you Ruby, she’s mad at my father, he locked you here and her there to keep you away from each other.” She shakes more, something like vibration as her fists clench and unclench.
Ruby’s form, much like Yang’s, swells. Her claws lengthen as her body expands. Her teeth grow long and sharp, fangs made for killing snap as the room creeks to accommodate her larger figure. “ Where- ”
Something within Weiss hollows, a hole made by Ruby’s sorrow and pain. It ignites something else, a latent power that heats the ice-cold fear from her bones. “ In the lowest level of the castle dungeon. ” The room explodes. Ruble rains around them as Ruby roars, but Weiss can’t feel the rocks as they bounce off her. Her latent magic swells with Ruby’s emotions and on reflex, she climbs atop her dragon’s back and coos. “ I will show you.”
Then they fly. Ruby’s wings unfurl and they take off, clumsy and out of practice, but Ruby gets a hang of her wings again after two circles around the demolished tower. They descend to the castle garden, just above the staircase to the lower dungeons. Ruby smashes the ground with a heavy slam. The ceiling of the staircase crumbles, but they’ve only just begun. Around them knights crowd around to watch the king’s dragon dig further into the dungeons, releasing prisoners as they sink further down. Before the last few levels, there’s a violent roar and Yang breaks through the ground and the sisters are finally reunited.
Glittering crimson scales fill her dreams. Fitful sleep breaks way for the desperate cries of a creature Weiss wasn’t certain still existed. In her dreams, she walks the halls of her father’s castle, alone and desperate, searching for something that pulls her heart painfully. She finds her chained and smiling as if waiting for her in the tallest tower of a castle Weiss can’t control. It’s violent, a struggle that lasts hours as they break free together and flee to a nearby Chapple, Ruby’s sister, and Blake in tow.
Even now, beneath the cool moonlight things don’t feel right. Weiss freed the tortured sisters, but her chest feels hollow as if nothing she did could heal the hole her father placed here.
“Princess,” Ruby’s words are soft, filled with something Weiss can’t quite place.
The moonlight streams in, and Ruby’s form is more human. Claws and talons are replaced by my tan hands and feet, horns barely visible behind barely pointed ears. She smiles, and her sharpened canines are just slightly bigger than they should be, it sends a thrill down Weiss’ spine. “Weiss is fine, Ruby.”
“ Weiss, ” The heiress can hear the subtle Valien accent in her voice, and it makes her shiver. Has her name ever felt so right said any other way? “Yang brought back some food if you’re hungry.”
“I think I’m alright for now, thank you, Ruby.”
They fall into silence. Weiss curls around herself, anxious about the future they would have now after what has been done. Ruby shifts where she stands, then creeps closer to sit next to Weiss. Even in her more human form, she’s taller than the former princess, and Weiss tries not to focus on it. Seconds tick into minutes before either woman speaks, but it’s Ruby who breaks the silence.
“My mom always said that dragons speak for Remnant, that we’re the closest things to god humans could get.” She’s quiet, almost shy about the admittance, “She said that there would always have to be a translator between us and humanity.” She’s cautious, but she reaches for Weiss’ hand gently. When they touch Weiss turns to her, curiosity written all over her face. “I think that’s you.”
It made sense, after all, Weiss could feel Ruby and Yang’s emotions as if they were her own. “What then?”
The pull between them is stronger here, beneath the moonlight, so close together. She’s drawn to Ruby in a way that pulls at her soul. “I have felt you since you entered that castle. I felt you when you met Yang, and when you told me the truth I felt your soul cry out for me, Weiss.”
The princess can’t move, she’s filled with emotions that confused and enlighten her. Love was a fairytale, something she’d never thought she’d achieve, but something inside told her that’s what this was, or could be. She scoots closer, snuggling into the dragon’s warmth. “I felt you as I slept, and I feel you now, honest and bright.”
Nothing more needed to be said. Whatever this was, they would watch and see, but Weiss felt this connection would never fade. In the morning they would take the next step, but for now, they could rest, side by side, and hand in hand.