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One small, black ear flicked forward as a light breeze brushed her face, carrying with it the sounds of children’s joyful squeals and the crashing of the ocean’s waves. Blake tensed, her back straightening and hands gripping at her knees as she dragged her gaze away from the horizon, expecting to see a group of kids rushing at her. She relaxed when she saw them in the distance instead, a group of five, small bodies playing and enjoying the warmth of the day. Two of the kids were taking turns running in and out of the smaller waves lapping at the shore, while the other three were gathered around something that was apparently all too fascinating in the sand at their feet. A faint, fond smile graced her features as she watched them play. She remembered those days well, when all that mattered was the feel of the sun against her skin, the sand between her toes, and the waves brushing against her legs.
Nothing is that simple anymore.
Her smile fell with the thought and she curled in a little tighter around herself, returning her attention to the horizon. “Going home,” that was how she referred to returning to Menagerie when talking with Sun. At the time, as they were sailing ever closer to the island, Blake fully believed those words too. Why wouldn’t she? She grew up in Kuo Kuana and her parents were there. Coming back to Menagerie after the Fall of Beacon—after every one of her own failures at the school—seemed like the only option she had to take the time she needed to heal…to rest. She was exhausted.
On the open sea, to be heading home was all she wanted. For the first time in weeks, she felt a sense of relief. Now though, now that she was actually back home on the island…now she wasn’t so sure of herself. When she left the house that morning to walk around Kuo Kuana and get some air, she hadn’t anticipated instead sitting alone on some rocks on the beach. She hadn’t anticipated feeling a crushing need to catch her breath and get away from everyone around her.
Blake didn’t know why every time she took a chance to look around the city she felt a longing she couldn’t seem to soothe. Nor did she know why she felt a subtle, nagging sadness nipping at her heart every time a local stopped to offer her condolences about Beacon, or to ask her how she was doing, or to welcome her home and exclaim how happy they were to see her back. It quickly became all too overwhelming, and she wished she could explain it. This was what she wanted; she wanted to be around her people, she wanted to be with her family, she wanted to be somewhere safe and welcoming so she could give herself a chance to recover.
Menagerie had been where she grew up, she knew it offered all of those things…so why did she feel like such an outsider now?
It wasn’t like she expected everything to go perfectly with her homecoming, she knew that was impossible with how she left. The fact her parents so readily welcomed her back with open arms and open hearts was a relief in and of itself. It was more than what she was expecting, even if her dad was still a tad awkward around her. She knew that was partially her own fault, both her own guilt for how she left them and her own inability to comprehend how they could forgive her in the first place were causing her to be just as inelegant. She still felt as though she owed them a thousand more apologies, and she couldn’t help but wonder if she even deserved their forgiveness so easily for the mistakes she made. They had tried to warn her after all, she had just been too ignorant to heed those warnings.
Look at where that got her, at all the destruction and pain left in the wake of her poor choices.
Not that it mattered, they had chosen to forgive her regardless, and while it wasn’t what she expected, it wasn’t necessarily surprising. If there were two things Kali and Ghira Belladonna were known for, it was their hearts for their community and their love for their daughter. When her mom answered the door and hugged her, it was the first time in a long, long time that Blake felt a sense of comfort and safety. Her family was still there, her parents still loved her, and for a moment that was all she needed. That was everything she hoped to find on Menagerie.
But while seeing her parents again was everything she hoped for, the rest of Menagerie was not. Blake expected it to feel a little odd to be back at her house—it was a far cry different and a far cry bigger than Beacon’s dorms after all—but she didn’t remember it ever feeling quite so empty. Rather, she remembered running through the halls, giggling with joy and shouting for her mom as her father chased her while they played. She remembered running home, far too excited to show her parents and any guard who would look at the neat shell or rock she found on the beach while playing with the other kids. She remembered listening to music in her room as she read or wrote or drew until someone inevitably came by and requested her to turn it down. She remembered the countless times she attempted to sneak into important meetings her mother and father were in regarding the White Fang or the state of Kuo Kuana. She remembered the love and joy and warmth she felt in the house when she was a little girl.
Those memories still existed, and they held a firm place in her heart, but they were different now. They felt nostalgic and far away, and in their place, Blake found herself instead longing for the quiet chatter and heavy footsteps she had grown used to at Beacon. She never realized how fond she had grown of the buzz of the students…the buzz of her team…and begrudgingly, she knew that was the answer she was looking for. The reason she couldn’t find the comfort she sought.
When she walked through Kuo Kuana, she could remember walking through it as a little girl and marveling at all of the trinkets in all of the stalls; she remembered saving up her allowance to buy that glass suncatcher for her mother’s birthday and the wallet for her father and the small, wooden cat figurine for herself. She recalled running through the streets or on the beach, playing with the other kids until it grew dark out and she had already been called home three times. There were thousands of memories she could conjure, but they were all just memories. Good memories, undoubtedly, but what good were memories if she had no one to share them with?
She might have wanted to remember, but if she were being honest with herself, she yearned to return to Menagerie with her new home. Her new family. She wanted to show Ruby and Yang a piece of the world outside of Vale. She wanted to show Weiss the beauty and culture of the Faunus outside of what she grew up with. Blake wanted to make new, lasting memories in Menagerie with the new people she had come to care an immense amount for…because that’s what home really was, wasn’t it? The people.
...That opportunity may have been lost for good.
Maybe, deep down, she had to admit she came back to Menagerie for the wrong reasons. Maybe she came back because she was hurt and scared and she was hoping to find that little girl and all her memories again. Maybe she wanted to be that little girl again, but she had to accept that was no longer possible. That little girl had grown up to see the cruel reality around her, and there was no going back after all that had happened.
And in that growing up, Blake discovered Menagerie was no longer the home it once was for her. Home now was the red of her team leader’s cloak, not the red of the flowers blooming in the underbrush. Home was the white Glyphs of a friend she never thought she would make, not the white of the sea foam on the waves washing onto the beach. Home was in the golden hair and violet eyes of her partner, not the burning yellow of the sun over Menagerie or its purple laced skies at sunset. And maybe, as she felt tears pricking the corner of her eyes, she had to acknowledge that even in all of her growing up, she still hadn’t learned the one lesson she needed the most.
She had to stop running away from home.