Work Text:
in a way, I need a change
from this burnout scene
another time, another town, another everything
but it’s always back to you
- o.a.r, shattered
⍱⍲⍱
On the battlefield, there is ash.
There is the ash of a fire finally dead. Its embers are guttering husks, and its heat, which once scalded everything it touched, is growing cold. Growing cold with the corpses. There is no one left alive. No one for them to burn, for their blaze has finally turned on them.
She knows that she’s a part of this carnage, Human against Faunus. Every slit throat, eviscerated corpse, cracked spine, gutted belly are a result of the fire, the inferno that broils below the surface, red-tipped tongues of hatred and bitterness. This blood, she has delayed it for so long. She thought she’d never see it, feel its hot pulse beneath her feet. Somehow, it sickens her, this presentation of gore.
Now, they share her scars.
In this red-and-grey landscape, stained with soot, hollowed with gullies and blood, it doesn’t matter that everyone is dead. They’ve fought with her, some against her, and all have died. Good for them. But she’s empty, horribly sorrowful, and that’s all she feels.
Moving, she stares down at the faces. Human, Faunus; some are frozen in expressions of loathing, some in a stupefied kind of horror. Maybe they found this ghastly, cutthroat violence shocking before they died— but they should know now that the world takes its inhabitants and just breaks them.
Some she knows, and most she doesn’t. She’s looking for someone. She’d like to know he’s dead. Beside her, she finds a little female, once pretty beneath her dusting of blood. Her wounds are stained a slowly-dulling crimson. Surely fatal gashes embellish her maimed appearance. Terror remains in what were her eyes.
None of them were indomitable in the end. None of them could transcend the hungering slaughter, the sharp claws of suppressed violence and strife. The ghost of a smirk twitches the survivor’s mouth. Death, in its own ways, is a game.
The victor continues down a path simply teeming with bodies, her ears swiveling as the wind howls its grief. In death, there are no differences, no alliances. One enemy lies with another, locked in lethal embraces. Blood pools in frothing puddles. The ground bubbles and spittles with scarlet.
The sky is thick with ash, the sun like a burned cinder. The blue sky above it weeps with it, and seems that the clouds will cry over the slaughter they’ve witnessed and wash away the sins. Cleaning the battlefield won’t be easy. In years, perhaps, this will again be a pretty, secluded meadow in Vale, the slaughter swallowed by the earth. Now, it’s only a cesspit of blood and demise, already reeking. She should really get out of here, before some carrion creature comes crawling out to lick up the scraps, to eke out a life from the bloodshed.
Maybe she’s the real scavenger, feeding off this deathly miasma, gorging the beast within she’s only just woken.
Then she finds a crumpled pale body, curled round itself, and she’s not sure who it is; if it’s the one she hates or the one she needs. She’s either too excited or dying of fearful anticipation. Before she can roll him over, or even think of touching him, she wakes.
This time round, Blake skipped the obligatory post-nightmare gasps, although she couldn’t control the flutter of her heartbeat. This was old territory she was navigating, but she was no more prepared for the dreams than she was in the beginning. They had gotten better over the months. At least now, where she went without waking, she was the one with the power. She had already won.
Blake was wrapped around Adam, the one that had made her what she was, far closer than she should ever have been. But he calmed her, with his touch, with the soft, gentle sound of his breaths. Adam seemed entirely innocent, his face smoothed in sleep, but Blake knew he wasn’t. He had scars, although they were hidden; together, him and her were a matching set.
Slowly, Blake eased out of his grip, wondering if he’d wake disappointed in the morning, or if he’d even have a clue what he’d done in the first place. It wasn’t proper, but once she settled her old scores and rectified the wrongs; Human, Faunus, she could love him all she wanted. Simpering, preening humans, diminutive of stature, but conceited, dreadfully ignorant. They were nothing- so the pragmatic White Fang claimed.
Blake could leave and forget he’d ever existed. She envisaged a world free of that- discrimination, war. Deep down, she knew Adam would never try to obtain that.
“Go back to sleep.”
Blake glanced back at him, a lazy dark slump in the darkness, and wondered if he was even awake. Just in case, she didn’t reply. Maybe she was hearing things. It wouldn’t be the first time. But then Adam reluctantly uncurled, sitting by her side. He was still too close- their skin brushed as they breathed. He shouldn’t have been distracting her, but every time, she would let him.
“Bad dream?” he asked gruffly, his side swelling against her own.
“As always,” she murmured, dragging her fingers over the scars that studded her knees, coiled around her skin. She was marred, inside and out, and things like that were what irritated her more than anything.
Adam smiled. It transformed his face, even more so than the horrid, vulpine Grimm masks did, the mask she refused to don. Suddenly he was no longer the quiet, calm Faunus who had taught her to fight and to survive in the outskirts of Vale. There was something feral behind his eyes, something vicious and cold. “We’ll fix that,” he told her, the same vow as ever. Dynamics were changing, the White Fang becoming savage, both of them turning to darkness to attain their nefarious ends, but his words weren’t.
Even now, they were striving to rise to the top, and Blake despised it. The White Fang was still planning and plotting and calling on old favours. It was not a question of if they could purge the insolent audacity of the humans from the world, but when. How bloody and brutal the affair could become. Who they would lose in the process; just what she would dream of when she had tasted the blood of the rising tide of war, and if Adam would still be there to smile and whisper with her in the aftermath.
Ditching the noble idea of propriety, unrequited things, she leaned against his solid scarlet shoulder, ignoring the fact that she knew she would abandon him in the tomorrows to come.
⍱⍲⍱
The fountains that towered in front of Beacon sent ribbons of glittering water arcing into spume-crested pools, rivulets of water snaking down the statutes. Blake’s lip curled at the images the statues perched in the centers of the fountains depicted- of human huntsmen and huntresses, not the Faunus, slaying the creatures of Grimm.
Soaring spires and glinting windows adorned Beacon, fissures dark between bricks. The turrets of the highest dorms stabbed the flawless azure sky, feathered with icy cirrus clouds.
The cold bite of her lashed weapons drove into her hips as she crossed a gaping threshold and entered the great academy. Within the expansive foyer, all was dyed golds and scarlets and silvers; she glanced around before turning to head upstairs. The towering pillars and the lattice of red framework was too familiar. This ornate place was empty, like a shell.
⍱⍲⍱
One, two. One, two. Foot forward— shoulders set— relax— now.
Blake shot forward, the air blurring past her as her weapons lashed out in front of her like extensions of herself. The Ursa whipped its head around, ugly maw curling in a bloody snarl before her whips coiled around its neck, and it collapsed, the light in its eyes abruptly going out.
One eyebrow raised as she saw Yang— was that her name? Blake hadn’t gotten much of an impression, only that she was annoyingly persistent, as she’d just wanted to read her book in peace— frowning down at the fallen Grimm before cocking her head and grinning at Blake.
“I could have taken him.”
⍱⍲⍱
A chilly wind stirred the leaves, whispering through the trees with a fluid rustle. Blake shivered, ears pricking behind her bow as she gazed down at the weed-choked temple ruins. Veiny, spidery cracks laced out from the center, some curling around the altars, the shrines on which glittering relics rested.
“Think this is it?” Yang said softly, eyes narrowing down at the deserted temple.
Blake shot her partner an incredulous look— of course it is, why else would there be an adorned temple?— before mutely stepping forward and plunging down the scree slope. She heard Yang trotting behind her, and she leaped down and landed with a whisper of earth on the corrugated stone.
She walked to the first shrine, and she tilted her head in confusion as the sun lanced down, illuming the relic that glittered faintly in the breeze. It was a black king, chipped and scuffed.
“Chess pieces?” she questioned, warily running her hand along the cool surface. She swiveled an ear, catching no sound on the breeze but the rattling wind and a distant shriek of the Grimm. Something’s… not right here.
“Some of them are missing,” Yang observed, walking from pedestal to pedestal. “Looks like we weren’t the first ones here.”
“Well— we should pick one.”
“Hmm,” Yang mused, before her voice turned chipper as she grabbed a saffron relic and swung it around with a lopsided smile. “How about a cute little pony?”
Blake tilted her head with a crooked smirk. “Sure,” she said lowly, faintly amused.
“That wasn’t too hard!” Yang said, holding the relic up as the clouds parted and the sun streamed down through the breaches in the sky.
“Well, it’s not like this place is very difficult to find.” She gave a self-deprecating smile before whipping her head around, smile vanishing instantly as a high, terrified scream reverberated through the air.
“Some girl is in trouble!” Yang gasped as the scream faded. “Blake— did you hear that?”
Blake didn’t answer, as something in the sky caught her view. She looked up, incredulous, as she saw a black and scarlet streak hurtling towards them, like the dark parallel of a falling star.
“Blake, did you hear that? What should we do?”
Blake tore her gaze away from the streak before grabbing Yang’s arm and dragging her away. “Get back!”
⍱⍲⍱
Blake hunched her shoulders, a chill buffeting her, ruffling through her veins despite the warmth of the room. Darkness lay heavy and thick around her, unrelieved by light. She could hear- dimly, as if underwater- the rasping sounds of the dilapidated buildings in the wind.
Faunus of the White Fang- they are scum, degenerates, cowardly, scoundrels, fiends, lower-than-dirt…
Blake drew her arms closer, the diamond-littered sky awash with wheeling spirals of stars that bathed the city in a brilliant silver glow. Weiss’s grating sneer reverberated in her mind.
Cats have always been creatures of little prowess, of letting others sacrifice while they run… They flee like you do from dangers, shadow-girl. They run and let others take the hit, compelled to turn tail.
It wasn’t that she was angry at Weiss, strictly; her anger was understandable. The smoldering feeling that flashed through her was only directed at herself.
She cared about her team, as much as that rankled her. She’d gotten close- she’d gotten too close, and her secrets had spilled just like that. Her team: determined Ruby, sharp-tongued Weiss, thrill-seeking Yang. Against her will, the image of her teammate burned against her brain: blue eyes splintered with hot anger, a spasm of molten, livid rage contorting her face and shattering her icy calmness. And then behind her, Yang, her eyes conflicted and torn-
“Did I miss anything?”
Sun’s voice shattered Blake from her reverie. With an inward sigh, she exhaled and swiveled an ear towards him. “Not really. They’ve offloaded all the crates. Now they’re just sitting there.”
“Cool,” he said, sounding rakishly disinterested. “I stole you some food!”
With scorn, she regarded him. “Do you always break the law without a second thought?”
“Hey, weren’t you in a cult or something?”
Her mouth twisted in the shadow of a suggestion of a snarl, eyes burning, and he hastily backtracked. “Okay! Too soon.”
At that moment, a shrill, keening wind swept across the corrugated roof, and Blake shrank back as a shadowy figure roared above them.
As it landed, a metallic screech pierced the air before a ramp unfurled from the Bullhead. Blake’s heart seemed to trip and tumble as a figure sauntered out, shirt embossed with a leering, crimson wolf.
“Oh, no…”
Sun peered intently at the figure. “Is that them?”
“Yes… it’s them.” She swore colorfully under her breath, jaw stony as more White Fang members flooded out from the summit of the ramp.
A ragged voice yowled out, breaking the silence. “All right, grab the tow cables!”
Sun sounded contemplating, a note of sympathy that she resented in his tone. “You really didn’t think they were behind it, did you?”
Despair broke over her. Adam, would you have ever stood for this? “No. I think deep down… I knew. I just- I didn’t want to be right.”
Adam… Sometimes I wonder if I’d be corrupted if I’d stayed. The nightmares have gone away… Did you cause them?
⍱⍲⍱
All around her, there was gold.
The sky was bleached a harsh, angry yellow, blindingly bright. The grass was a rolling, rippling sea of gold, dimpled with spurts of lavender heather; everything was dappled saffron, different shades of the same color. Blake stood on a hilly rise, a chill wind howling around her, and the air tasted sharp and metallic. Like blood.
Something crackled behind her.
She whirled, and saw an alabaster and blood-red— a startling contrast to the soft, starlight gold— shapeless figure striding towards her. Her heart seemed to catch in her throat as she recognized the dark horns that curled out over his head, and his countenance was a stoic, stolid thing; but as she watched, it twisted into an acetic grimace of contempt. He wasn’t wearing the Grimm mask, and his narrowed eyes glittered.
Adam. He looked taller, narrower, a malicious sense seeping out around him. His hair was longer, streaked with darker dapples, and more scars curled around his arms. Blake involuntarily took a step back, ears flattening behind her bow, a low growl in her chest.
“Blake.” His voice rasped, thick with jaggedness. “The gold, Blake. You see it. Do you know what it means?”
The gold—
She was unable to speak, or even move in her dream that was quickly devolving into a nightmare. As she watched in horror, Adam dissolved into shadows and tawny rose petals that were snatched up by the laughing, shrieking wind.
A vermilion tidal wave was cresting the horizon, swallowing the soft gold hungrily. Blake couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t run.
“There’s something coming,” a cold, amused voice that curled with disdain whispered, echoing about her, “and you, little fallible Faunus, you are woefully unprepared to the rising storm…”
“No!” She cried out, voice raw from the dust and blood that poured down in a choking deluge. Rose petals and gold spiraled through the air. Fissures raced out under her feet, her momentary elation extinguishing itself in excruciation. Cracks began spiderwebbing out through the moor, and her pulse slammed in her throat as all that answered was the sound of shattering glass, clashing metal, and the hungry whispering of the blood.
As Blake watched helplessly, Adam’s prone form was tumbled in the great swathe of the red wave, his face twisted in wrenching pain. The Grimm mask was thrown askew, dissolving away like the blood was acid. “Blake!” He shrieked, voice alight with agony. “Blake!”
Then there was Yang, joining the roiling clamor, and then her team- and, goddamn it, her friends- Ruby, Weiss, Sun, Ren, Nora, Pyrrha, Jaune, swallowed in the dark redness, thick as blood. And as she watched, they all cried for her help, but she was frozen, unable to run or do anything.
“Blake, Blake, Blake, Blake…”
One voice seemed to rise above the rest, shrill with panic and hurt.
“Blake!”
But it wasn’t Adam.
It was Yang.
Blake’s mouth opened in a soundless scream as the wave broke over her and then she was pitching forward into a crimson redder than Yang’s eyes and-
waking.
Blake awoke with a panting gasp, chest heaving, and heard the bed creak feebly above her. Wind whispered outside, and the gentle toned snores of her teammates rustled through the air as she gasped.
A shimmer of saffron flickered at her peripherals and her heart constricted-grinning lecherous leers and gold and coldness and sweeping scarlet waves of drowning- but then two pale lilac eyes were watching her in concern, and she recognized Yang’s face watching her through the gloom.
“Blake? Are you awake?”
Her mouth was dry as bones, heart hammering. You, little fallible Faunus, you are unprepared… “Yes.”
Yang swung herself out from her bed, breaching the rift between them. She landed soundlessly and approached Blake. “Hey,” she said, voice softening as she saw Blake’s wild eyes, disheveled look. “Are you… Are you okay?”
“Bad dream,” she managed, the clarity-sharp dream as pronged as a thorn in her mind. Her voice was thick with the fear she’d associated with the times she’d first had vivid nightmares. “I- I thought they’d gone away.”
Then Yang was sinking into the bed beside her, quiet, so not to wake Weiss and Ruby. Blake stiffened as Yang’s hand came up and smoothed her hair, stopping just short of her crumpled bow. A shiver trickled down her spine. “You’ve had this kind of thing before, do you mean?”
Blake closed her eyes, feeling impelled to confess, a shudder going through her. “Yes,” she murmured. “Horrible ones, of blood and ash and death. They depicted the war. I saw mutilated corpses— raging infernos— awful things—“
“Blake,” Yang said, her voice appalled, hushed. “I didn’t know, I—“
“It’s fine.” Blake cut her off, disconcerted— rolling moors bathed in blood, a spangled skyline stained with gold— “They don’t really affect me anymore after the—“
“Doesn’t look that way to me.” Yang peered at her, eyes scrutinizing. “In fact, I’d say you look pretty stricken right now.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted, voice harshening, the faintest twitch of a snarl on her breath. “You’re going to wake the others up if you don’t—“
“Guys?”
Blake shot Yang a murderous look tinged with despondency as Ruby’s groggy voice broke the hushed silence between them. “Great, now look what you’ve done,” she hissed softly, and Yang frowned at her before swinging a hand up and lightly vaulting herself into her own bed.
“Go back to sleep, Ruby.”
Blake rolled over on her back and stared at the rafters of the bed’s underbelly, lost in shadow. She lost track of the time as Yang’s breathing steadied, slipping into an even, soothing tone, and Ruby fell quiet.
So she slept again, embracing her tangled nightmares of blurred lights and a myriad of screams, for in the morning, she would become one.
⍱⍲⍱
“Hello? Vale-to-Blake. You there?”
Blake tore her gaze from the yellowing pages of her notebook, snapping it shut on rough sketches of roses, dark wings, a sword, all coalescing into a blotch of sketches. “What?”
“I said your name five times,” Yang said, and Blake scowled, hand tightening on the rough cover. “Aren’t you going to help us tonight? The dance is coming up soon, you know— Team CFVY had to bail on decorations, so we’re doing them.”
Her eyes narrowed, a low growl in her throat. “We hardly have time to waste on a useless dance.”
On the other side of the table, Weiss bristled. “Hey! It is not stupid!”
“Says the Schnee heiress, who was likely raised on formal dances.” Blake rolled her eyes. “Not all of us are—“
“Excuse you,” she retorted, tone hot with anger, “at least I wasn’t a cutthroat ruffian, surviving on—“
“That’s enough!” Yang slammed the gauntlet of her weapon down on the table as Blake’s eyes blazed amber, regarding Weiss with a contemptuous anger. Her fury broiled to confusion as Yang shot her a disappointed look. “Look, we shouldn’t be fighting; that’s what Torchwick wants—“
“Damn him,” Weiss said with a chillingly finality before she rose to her feet and stalked off, her heels clicking coldly against the floor.
“Great.” Yang slumped back, throwing her hands up with a dirty look at Blake. “More discord. How nice.”
She plastered on a faux-cheery look as Ruby trotted up to the table. “You look awfully glum, what’s up?”
Ruby slouched into her seat, and Blake tuned out as she gently slid away and opened her notebook once more. Now, the rose she’d drawn looked wilted and fake; the shadowy figure of Adam looming and menacing, sunken and leeched of color.
Her apprehension followed her, like a dog, through the span of the sun and night. She brushed off Yang’s gentle nudges at conversation, something niggling at her that she couldn’t quite place. She had to stop them, foil their plans somehow, Torchwick and all the rest, this couldn’t be allowed to continue without hurting someone else she loved—
“Who’s Adam?”
Her head jerked up, eyes narrowing. “What?”
Yang’s eyes were clear, devoid of belief in erroneous ways, and her jaw was set stubbornly. “You’ve been ignoring me all day, and I caught a glimpse of a name scribbled in your notebook— Adam Taurus—“
“Stop.” Blake held up her hand, another wall hurtled up. “I’m not talking about this, Yang.”
“Not even—?“
“For you?” Blake took a minuscule step backward, breaching a rift, her shoulders stiffening. “There’s nothing to know—“
“Please.” Yang’s voice was whisper-soft, the stroke of a feather. “Blake, I trust you. But I don’t know if you trust me.”
Torn, she set her jaw, tugged her lip. “My partners,” she said, her voice like acid, “haven’t had a long running history of being trustworthy, Yang.”
“Think of me as a deviation from the norm, then. Look, I didn’t condemn you for being a Faunus, did I? We’ve got your back. You just need to believe it.”
Like a fire being snuffed out, Blake turned away, her voice sounded distant, like a stranger. “Fine.” Her hands tightened on the railings. “I was born into the White Fang. My parents weren’t really there for me, in the loosest sense of the word, until they went off to fight, and they died. And then…
“I met Adam. He was like a brother to me— my mother, my father, they’d both been killed in the war. So had Adam’s parents; we were orphans together, and we shared a familial bond. And then we grew up, became partners. We were inseparable, earning our renown through the White Fang. And then we—“
Her smile faded like fog burnt under the sun. “We fell in love. Like a fire— burning, hurting both of us, before juddering out just like that.”
Blake’s nails dug into her palm, scoring tiny half-moons across pallid skin. Her bones jutted out as her fists curled together. “Our infallibility aroused the ire of the lesser members of the White Fang, but we weren’t sabotaged, and we rose to the top, him and I. They were jealous. Jealous of the untouchable fighter and his shadow-copy, whom, together, could not be defeated.”
Her eyes closed. “Then Julian, the former leader, stepped down from his place of power in the White Fang. And Ayran, a new leader with tyrannical ideals and malicious ways, took his place. He created an Elite— an unorthodox honor ring for those who had nothing— and Adam was offered the position of the leader Ayran’s Elite, thus ensuring the loyalty of my partner and his unquestioning support. Adam and I were tested by that. We began to fight… Adam idealized Ayran. He couldn’t see the cruelty that Ayran possessed— the way he’d torture innocents, craft plans to slaughter those who opposed him, the—“
She broke off. “Can you imagine seeing an innocent human, crawling towards you, bleeding and having these horrific injuries inflicted upon them, wanting to be put out of their misery? I… There’s things you don’t need to know. But we began to drift apart, him and I. He’d be gone for hours at a time, and sometimes he’d return with this dark gleam in his eyes, and blood all over him… and I would be plotting. Horrified, because he’d become a monster. Planning an escape. And then we had the mission to jump a Dust train… and you know the rest. And that’s why.”
Blake felt her throat close, and the next words were almost choked out as Yang watched her, shaken. “It’s the reason, Yang. That’s why I don’t want to get close to you. To get close and be betrayed or hurt or something worse, because when I get close to people, they change. I don’t want to see your light dim because of me. I couldn’t see when Adam shifted from the innocent Faunus boy to a coldblooded killer. it was like I woke up and he was ruthless. I can’t see that in you, Yang, or any of our team.”
Yang looked shaken. “I didn’t think you’d gone through that.”
Blake gave a bitter grin. “He was arrogant, he was confident, viable in his protection, but… I believed in his own infallibility. I didn’t feel like a liability. But he held no regard for the lives of the innocents, even as he felt justified in killing and being powerful, for the wrongs the White Fang suffered.”
Blake clasped her hands around her weapon, the cold steel biting her hands, bitterness creeping into her voice. “His vision for the future didn’t include everyone, Yang. Just a select few. Those who he assumed deserved it. In his plans to obtain a perfect world freed of monsters, he became one.”
“Blake, I—”
“So I left,” she went on, “on our last mission to jump a Schnee Dust train. He wanted to bomb the crew— he didn’t care for their lives at all, these innocents just doing their jobs, and I realized. I… I cut the cables and let everything go.”
Blake turned her eyes up, narrowing them, voice hardening, like brittle ice. “Goodwitch made me talk to Ozpin to get information out of me. Professor Ozpin can pretend he understands, with trite sayings and empty words. But he’s only a human.” Blake looked up, ears flattening. “I fight the Grimm because within them, I see a part of myself that I never want loosed in Vale, and I see a part of myself that I already let out of control.”
She reached up, lightly touching the bow that perched on her hair, feeling bare as her ears twitched in the stiff, cutting wind. Yang watched her, silent, eyes sorrowful. “A part of me is afraid of monsters. A part of me knows I can be one— that I’ve been one before.”
“I don’t think you’re a monster, Blake.” Yang stepped forward, reaching up and gently removing the bow. It drifted away, tumbling to the ground, and Blake— nervous under the inscrutable light of Yang’s gaze— didn’t move away, heels digging into the carpet. “I think you’re you, and that it’s nothing to hide. Sun showed you that, didn’t he?”
Her fingers traced down Blake’s cheek lightly, eyes close, piercing. “You have to know that not all of us believe the Faunus are a cruel race, you know. You’ve shown Ruby, Weiss, and I that. You’re a wonderful person deep down, that just got a bad deal of things, that’s all. Blake Belladonna. Feisty, no less broken than any of us.”
Blake did pull away then, something strange and fluttering thrumming through her. Yang was still watching her steadily, eyes gleaming, soft and lavender.
“Belladonna,” Blake echoed gruffly, voice thick with wretched anger as she turned away and bowed her head, eyes shutting. “It’s a fitting surname that was given. Belladonna is another word for deadly nightshade… the plant that chokes and kills—“
“And can heal, Blake,“ Yang said firmly, before moving forward and engulfing her in a hug. Blake stiffened, chest tightening, before letting herself relax.
⍱⍲⍱
The shimmering glow of the hologram computer seared green behind her eyes when she blinked, and exhaustion was thrumming through her, evanescing her energy, but she refused to put off the search as she perused the words before her, taking in none of them. Just one more search. One more lead. Please.
They couldn’t be allowed to continue.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard and her heart was beating too fast and fatigue tugged her eyelids.
She wouldn’t let them.
A new list of searches scrolled down the screen and her teeth ground in frustration.
If she did, wouldn’t she be just as bad?
She jerked, torn from some daze, as a scarlet circle popped up on the screen, flashing like a beacon before her. A corona of white encircled it as it jovially darted around the screen, leaving a halo of crimson its wake as Blake blinked tiredly.
Angry, she jerked her head around, searching for the perpetrator; she would flay them, for intruding upon her dogged search for answers. But there was no one— only the humdrum commotion of the regular goings of the library. Irritated, she turned back around, resuming her search.
Then, the sphere of scarlet glowed upon her hand. She clenched it so hard the skin whitened, bones jutting out, before she shoved out of her seat, incensed. Her anger evaporated to a grim confusion as the laser point blinked again, on the carpet in front of her; she took one step forward, and then another, until she was stalking after it with a frustrated, restless prowl. It steadily swirled away, before veering abruptly around a great alabaster pillar—
and sent Blake skidding to a halt in front of Yang’s eyes, glittering bright with anger.
Her partner smiled, but it reminded Blake of the menacing grin of a wolf before it dove in and slashed with its claws; her eyes were hard and flat, slitted and glowing. “Halloo!” she sang, an undercurrent of a promise in her voice.
Blake, stunned, froze. “What are you—?”
Yang grinned before she dropped all friendly pretenses. Her eyes went narrow, a greenish catlike gleam shining in them, and her voice dropped. “We need to talk.”
She grabbed Blake’s wrist, and whisked her away as Blake let out a startled cry.
⍱⍲⍱
Blake circled restlessly, feeling Yang’s unrelenting stare scorching her back. She doesn’t know. She can’t know. “Yang, if you’re going to tell me to stop, you may as well save your breath.”
Yang’s voice was the glassy, calm surface of water, hiding dangerous undercurrents. “I don’t want you to stop. I want you to slow down.”
Blake let out an irritated growl, pausing to cut a glare towards Yang’s unmoved figure. Damn you, she thought, knowing she could never mean it. “I don’t have the luxury to slow down.”
“It’s not a luxury,” Yang countered, still unflinching as she pointed it out. “It’s a necessity.”
Blake stopped, hurling her arms down to rest stiffly at her sides as she regarded Yang with cold eyes. “The necessity is stopping Torchwick!”
I can’t let him ally himself with the White Fang and Ayran and Adam. You would get hurt. They all would.
I can’t let you get injured in something I had a hand in.
“And we’re going to.” She sounded so confident, so sure of herself. Blake knew the world could tear all that away in the space between heartbeats. The thought was sickening. “But first you have to sit down and listen to what I have to say.” She patted the desk, and, bridling in her mutiny, Blake looked away before relenting. “Fine,” she muttered in a growl, sitting on the rim of the desk.
Yang looked away, a gray shadow dipping down her chest as her skin glowed copper in the late sunlight. Her eyes clouded, becoming reminiscent, and Blake felt curiosity prickle at her, despite herself.
“Ruby and I grew up in Patch, an island off the coast of Vale. Our parents were huntsmen. Our dad taught at Signal, and our mom took on missions around the kingdom.” Yang’s eyes took on a tinge of sorrow.
“Her name was Summer Rose. And she was like, super-mom,” Yang professed a sweeping arc, and Blake tilted her head forward querulously, intrigued despite her exhaustion. “Baker of cookies and slayer of giant monsters. And then… and then one day she left for a mission and never came back.”
Blake’s eyebrows rose, and she felt a pang of sorrow for her partner as Yang went on wretchedly.
“It was tough. Ruby was really torn up, but… I think she was still too young to really get what was going on, y'know? And my dad just kinda … shut down. It wasn’t long before I learned why. Summer wasn’t the first love he lost; she was the second.” Yang heaved a stuttering breath, looking— for once, that Blake could recall— broken. “The first… was my mom.”
Amazed— dumbstruck, almost— Blake’s eyes widened as she processed that. Yang watched her for a moment, smiling a bit sadly before going on. “He wouldn’t tell me everything.” She raised an eyebrow, a small, musing smile playing around her mouth, laced with the dogged determination Blake had come to know so well. “But I learned that the two of them had been on a together with Summer and Qrow, and that she’d left me with him right after I was born. No one had seen her since.” Her voice darkened with despair.
Blake furrowed her brows. “Why did she leave you?” How could anyone leave you?
“That question… why.” She slid off the desk, hands clenching on the ruts that jutted out from the chalkboard. She hunched her shoulders, her back to Blake, like a stonewall. “I didn’t know the answer, but I was determined to find out. It was all I thought about. I would ask anybody I could about what they knew about her. Then, one day, I found something. What I thought was a clue that could lead me to answers, or maybe even my mother.”
As she spoke, she drew on the board: generous, curving lines that scrolled out and painted an image of a young girl, not unlike the Yang Blake knew to stand before her, and a toddler swathed in a blanket. She was drawing almost thoughtlessly, her words tumbling out with an air of pain and abandonment.
“I waited for Dad to leave the house, put Ruby in a wagon, and headed out. I must have walked for hours. I had cuts and bruises, I was totally exhausted, but I wasn’t going to let anything stop me. When we finally got there, I could barely stand. But I didn’t care; I had made it. And then I saw them.” Her voice shivered. “Those burning red eyes…
Her voice was bitter, flat with self-loathing, and Blake fought back the urge to say something to comfort her. “There we were: A toddler sleeping in the back of a wagon and a stupid girl too exhausted to even cry for help. We might as well have been served on a silver platter. But, as luck would have it… our uncle showed up just in time.”
Blake glanced past Yang, to the dark green of the chalkboard. The gear-shape of a clockwork eye jumped out at her. It was scrawled, like Yang hadn’t even intended to profess it there; then Yang let the chalk fall with a clatter as she bowed her head. “My stubbornness should’ve gotten us killed that night.”
So that’s what you’re trying to tell me, that my search isn’t paramount. You’re being arbitrary, confiding in me and then urging me to do this… Blake edged backward, something twisting inside of her. A bitter, vile taste was on her tongue, but she forced back her stiff anger, trying to be calm.
“Yang… I’m sorry that happened to you, and I understand what you’re trying to tell me.” She couldn’t keep the anger from her voice as the sneering image of Torchwick burned behind her eyes, followed by a cold-looking Adam. “But this is different. I’m not a child, and this isn’t just a search for answers— I can’t just—“
Yang stiffened, and Blake’s jaw clenched. “I told you, I’m not telling you to stop. I haven’t. To this day, I still want to know what happened to my mother and why she left me— but I will never let that search control me.” Yang’s voice softened. “We’re going to find the answers we’re looking for, Blake. But if we destroy ourselves in the process, then what good are we?”
Blake shut her eyes, jaw working, before she exploded. She doesn’t understand how Adam thinks, what makes him tick, how they can crush us.There was anguish in her cry— and that made her even angrier. “You don’t understand! I’m the only one who can do this!”
Yang spun around, her eyes brimming with burning red fury, and Blake, daunted, shrank back. “No, you don’t understand!” she spat. “If Roman Torchwick walked through that door, what would you do?”
What a stupid question! “I’d fight him!"
Blake stumbled as Yang lashed out, hands shoving her into the desk. She struggled back up as Yang snarled, “You’d lose!”
“I could stop him!” She lashed out, but her exhaustion caught her, then, her blow feebly connecting, not even budging Yang.
There was anguish on Yang’s face. “You can’t even stop me!”
She shoved out at Blake again, and Blake went backward, elbows hitting the wood hard. Pain lanced up her arms before fading as she hauled herself up, numb, and then she flinched as Yang padded towards her, and then embraced her.
“I’m not asking you to stop.” Yang’s voice was soft, muffled with emotion as Blake stiffened, bemused and utterly at a loss as her partner’s arms tightened around her. “Just— please. Get some rest. Not just for you, but for the people you care about.”
Blake watched, still numb, as Yang shifted past her, passing as she padded up to the summit the deserted stairs, through spars of dusty golden sunlight that rimed her in auburn. A deluge of dappling light surged down, spider-webbing fissures across the rows of seats. Blake’s ears flattened behind her bow as Yang tilted her head around, the ghost of a smile on her face.
“And if you feel like coming out tomorrow…” she said, voice strangely warm, and tingling with something that made Blake’s skin prickle, “I’ll save you a dance.”
With a sauntering wink, like the stroking touch of a cat’s paws, and a flash of golden hair, she was gone.
Blake let out a breath she wasn’t aware she had been holding. Her chest was thrumming with something foreign, and with a sigh of disconcerted defeat, she closed her eyes and tried to stifle the incessant race of her heart.
⍱⍲⍱
As she walked down the halls aimlessly, her thoughts battered her, as if Yang’s outburst had broken something in Blake, too. Voices swirled in her mind, lashing, bitter and soft and loud alike.
You can’t trust them. You can’t trust anyone! Adam’s harsh voice, intoned and heavy with resentment, rang in her mind, and she drew away, ears flattening to her head. We’re Faunus, Blake. You do know what that means, don’t you? It means we’re the enemy. That we’re the ‘instigators’ of the oppression, while the pitiful humans are commended— vindicated; lauded, even— for smothering us on their stupid little leash. Humans are vulgar creatures, flippant and pompous. Because of them, Belladonna, it means that we can’t trust anyone. We have to surreptitiously sneak around as Faunus, lower beings— we’re vilified. We’ll always be the enemy to them— the odd ends out. Humans fear what they don’t understand, and what they fear, they ostracize and eliminate.
Coward! There was the former leader of the White Fang, his rasping voice sharp with a chilly reproach and a sinister delicacy. You’re under obligations. Blake Belladonna, our voice of reason. Adam Taurus, our backbone… how dare you presume to disturb tranquility and raise strife? I expected better of you. You are only to use peace to meet your ends, do you understand? Blood was our inheritance, not our future. I won’t have you threatening the peace we’ve restored to the Kingdoms…
Blake stepped back, as another image rose above; swinging her head in frustration, futilely trying to banish the image of Yang’s eyes round with anger from her mind, she sucked in a harsh breath. No, you don’t understand! A sharp pang echoed through her chest as she saw Yang’s enraged face, a tawny light burning at the backs of her eyes. Crimson eyes— just like the forest of Forever Fall where she had cut that train cart and cut her life in two, where she had betrayed Adam and let everything she knew slip away on a rattling cart. I failed you, and your advice, and everything you taught me. Just like the runaway coward I am.
Somewhere, someplace along the line, she’d gotten too close to Yang; she had crossed from a hesitant mistrust to a wary acceptance to this— a reliance, a need. It was there, it wasn’t doubtable.
And for that, she hated herself.
All her life, she had gone by a code of silence, of independence, of the avoidance of indolence. Yang was contrary to that, the very heart of it. The light to the dark, she thought, with a sort of bitter helplessness; because wasn’t that the core of it, that Yang held impunity from these tightly held restrictions she’d exerted over herself ever since her mother and father had perished in the maelström of war?
She’s my partner. She should be special, shouldn’t she? She’s not Adam. She’s not a monster. And I won’t run, not again.
⍱⍲⍱
The dress swirled about her ankles like a veil of fog, woven of dark, shimmering thread. A bracelet laddered up her arm and two slits fluttered on the sides of the dress, sending wind tickling her bare skin. Above her, the night was clear, the stars winking down, and she took a deep breath and let it go, feeling a portion of the strain in her chest unravel itself.
So she’s the catalyst for this, Blake thought with a sardonic smile. I can’t say I’m not the least bit stunned by what she’s told me.
And it was, in a way, brazenly strange; even throughout their altercation, Yang hadn’t been hurtful or used her words as weapons like Adam had. She’d confided in Blake, even. Trusted her. It was a latent thing, trust, this trust that she hadn’t come to realize she’d still possessed.
Brushing the thoughts away, she strode forward. A low, grumbling complaint drifted over the wind to her ears, and a small smile caught her lips as she saw Sun. He was one of her best friends, as a Faunus, even if a bit brash at times, he got it.
Still, he wasn’t Yang.
“I knew you’d look better in a tie.”
He spun around, kicking up a swirl of copper and auburn leaves that rustled to the ground. He looked baffled as she took his arm, and then slightly pleased as she led him forward, the cobblestones clicking under her feet. “So… does this mean we’re going together?”
“Technically.” Yang’s face flashed through her mind, and her lips curved in the barest ghost of a smile. “Though my first dance is spoken for.”
Within the great hall, it was abuzz with prisms of color and sound, the low thrum of music whirling in light, shimmering cadences that fell like stones through laughter and talk. Lightly veiled lace spiraled up pillars, and the rafters were lost in the low, sultry shadows from the dim light. The din was cheerful and balloons flowered up along every wall. Blake breathed in the spicy scents and the warmth of the hall.
Partners spun lazily through the hall, as enraptured in their own worlds as Blake was engulfed in her own; the music coiled higher in the night, going straight to her heart with a painful pang.
She spotted Yang first, and broke away from Sun with the excuse that she would return soon.
Her partner looked, for lack of better word— stunning. The shadows of the room picked out the curve of her cheekbones, the dark hollows of her temples and the golden glints of her hair. Her eyes were deep-set, luminous and mysterious; a shimmering white dress fluttered down to her knees, and her skin seemed to glow like light lay just underneath. A radiant smile broke over her face as Blake found her way through the crowd, feeling like the warmth of the room had fractured into her chest.
“Blake,” Yang said with a curving, lovely smile as she emerged from the crowd. Her eyes shone in a way that was hard to ignore, hard to look at. “You came.” I was afraid you wouldn’t, for me, she didn’t say, but Blake knew she was thinking it all the same.
Blake offered her hand. “Shall we dance?”
In answer, Yang took her hand, lacing their fingers together, sending a thrill of something resembling liquid fire careening through Blake’s chest. She smiled, tilted her head so burnished strands of golden hair fell into her eyes. “We shall,” she rejoined with a softness to her voice, and spun her partner into the crowd, her eyes still glimmering in a very new way.
⍱⍲⍱
The sharp, icy fangs of the dawn wind howled around her, rattling through the stones and blazing the clouds into feathery plumes. The chilled scent of autumn was thick like smoke upon the air, and Blake spun backward, muscles burning with the pleasant fire of training as dust billowed up under her feet. Sparring was one of her favorite things to do; in the quick thinking of battle, there was no time to muse over pointless feelings and softness of the heart—
Yang shot into her, knocking her into the dirt as her mind wandered for a second: only a heartbeat, but it was enough to catch her off guard. “Got you,” Yang smiled, pinning her for a moment before rolling off to let her up.
Frustrated, Blake scrambled to her feet and shook off the dust. “Let’s go again.”
Yang set her shoulders, all traceries of humor fleeing her face. There was the huntress in her, deadly and intent, and Blake almost smiled— when had they become so in tune?— before springing.
When they struck, it was all sparks and storms; like thunder clapping, before they broke apart in some deadly dance that swayed to no music of its own. As soon as Blake had swept her feet out from under her, Yang had already recovered from the move and countered with one of her own, and Blake veered to duck it, and they were interlocked in the utmost concentration. Blake could see the perpetual lights that seemed caught in Yang’s eyes, the angular curve of her face, just as they sprang apart; they were too good to outmatch the other, and remained interwoven. Blake was too quick, too full of finesse, to be caught off guard by Yang; yet Yang was too strong, too full of prowess to be given any wounds of consequence by Blake.
And yet Blake found herself slammed into the dirt again, for the second time of the morning; Yang grinned down at her. It was the crooked, lopsidedly endearing smile that let Blake know it was genuine, as it curved higher on one side than the other.
“Got you again,” she said smugly.
“I’m beaten.” Yang didn’t move, and Blake rolled her eyes, despite herself. “Let me up, you dunce.”
It seemed that, since the dance, the glimmer of the ballroom lights had left their shining imprints on Yang’s expression. Or so it seemed when she was around Blake; the Faunus hadn’t taken much notice of it, as under duress as she was from the looming threats of the White Fang. But on moments like these, she was hard-pressed not to see the look on her partner’s face.
“Your footwork is good,” Blake conceded grudgingly, “good enough to get—“
“—the best of you,” Yang finished with a laugh.
Blake turned to lean heavily on the railings, hands dangling over open air. Wind shrieked around the open-roofed training tower, and the erected rails were savagely cold, rimed with frost.
“Do you ever think about him?”
Yang’s question caught her by surprise, as serious and weighted as it was, unlike her usual good humor. Speaking carefully, like she was treading on ice, Blake turned her head as Yang came to look over the railings too. “Who?”
“Adam.” Her voice was carefully neutral. “Your… old partner.”
“Not as much as I used to,” she said honestly. “He seems a bit inconsequential now, with everything that’s been happening.”
And there’s the fact that you’ve been occupying my thoughts much more than he ever has. Blake felt a shiver trickle down her spine and she cast her gaze out over the land ranging out from Beacon: the fountains, spilling rippling ribbons of clear water, the whispering forests wrapped around it, the patchwork city of Vale waking in the distance, and the sparkling expanse of the sea to the south. Yang’s arm was brushing hers almost absently, the only warmth in the bitter wind. She seemed as lost in contemplation as Blake was.
“Why did you interfere on that day?” Yang’s voice broke into her thoughts again. She sounded oddly distant, her voice a shell, flat and dead.
“What day?”
“On the initiation— the chess pieces, Ozpin’s plans. I had the Ursa covered, I could have killed it easily, but you jumped in anyways. You could have just gone on until you found another person. But you picked me.”
“I did.” Blake tented her fingers, wind whisking her hair back. Like ants, she could see the roving dots of students far below. “I picked well. I don’t regret my choice, if that’s what you mean.” A small smirk played across her lips. “Your sister already had Weiss. Jaune would have been a terrible choice. Pyrrha— I wouldn’t be able to stomach her. Ren and Nora were already partners from the get-go. And Carden and his lackeys were out of the question. But you…” Blake felt oddly shy under the scrutiny of Yang’s stare. “Well, you seemed like the better part of the dilemma, so I picked you.” Of course I picked you.
Yang didn’t reply, but Blake thought she glimpsed the smallest smile on her face, and a glint of happiness in her eyes, and somehow, she was content with her choices, with all of them.
⍱⍲⍱
“Blake. Wake up. Wake up.”
Blearily, she cracked open an eye as a low whisper brushed her ear. The windows were dark, barely glowing with a faint veil of light, and from the low snores from Weiss and Ruby, she guessed it was just before dawn. Yang was leaned over her, eyes wide. “Wake up,” she said again, lowly, poking her in the side. Grumbling, Blake lifted her head and glared.
“You,” she growled, surly, “better have a reason for waking me up, and a reason that circumvents the usual don’t wake someone up really early pointlessly rule.”
“I do. Come on, Blake, or you’ll miss it.” Yang tugged her hand, bouncing on her heels, and reluctantly, Blake swung her feet out to the blast of chilly air. Yang was already hurrying out, door swinging shut behind her, and untangling herself from the warmth of sleep, Blake loped after her.
She found her partner standing in the middle of a grove— or, more accurately, she was crouching, a halo of shimmering silver fog swirling around her. The grove was chilly and the leaves rattled like husks, the grass stiff and glittering silver with rimed frost. The sky was steely gray through the branches, and as Blake crept over the grass and sank to her haunches near Yang, her partner looked up at the arching web of entangled branches with shining eyes.
“Why are you out here?” she grumbled mutinously, still longing for the warmth of her bed. Yang batted her and hissed a reprimanding ‘hush’, before nodding her head towards the branches. “Look.”
Complying, Blake tilted her gaze to where the branches coiled together more thickly. A little nest, rimmed in mud and dripping strands of grass, was snagged in the arches of the boughs, and it was this that Yang was watching intently. As they watched, the clouds parted in a rift, and a single ray of sunlight streamed through the breach and lit the nest up in frosted gold.
A small scarlet bird with black headcrests fluttered its wings and hopped on the rim of the nest, fluffing its feathers. Yang was staring at it before she glanced at Blake.
As they watched, it parted its beak and gave two chirruping, clear calls that hung in the air before fading away. They echoed like crystal drops in the silent morning before somewhere in the distance, another three chirrups called back.
Like a dam broken, the forest erupted in the music of birdsong. Yang was smiling, and Blake frowned at her.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“It’s the first bird,” she responded, “to sing in the morning. The one that wakes up all the others. That’s neat, don’t you think?”
Still not really understanding, but not wanting to disappoint Yang— this must mean something to her, for dragging Blake out here at the crack of dawn— Blake nodded. Yang crooked a grin at her, eyes softening until they gleamed like newly minted coins. “Thanks for coming out here, Blake.” Then, so quickly Blake only had time to blink, Yang leaned forward and pressed a light kiss to her cheek before flouncing out of the brush and disappearing.
It wasn’t much— merely a whisper of Yang’s lips on Blake’s cheek, like the wings of a butterfly— but Blake stared, mystified, at the gently swaying ferns where her partner had vanished and the clear song of the morning’s first bird, her heartbeat unsteady, wondering why her skin tingled as if it had been touched by a star.
⍱⍲⍱
The night was young, and Blake was feeling the chilly air like it had seeped right into her bones. Thoughtlessly, reflex, almost, her hand came up and two fingers lightly traced the line of her cheekbone before she slackened her arm and her hand fell back to her side. She felt almost sick. She was jumpy, unsettled, and the night seemed to echo with voices and memory.
And she knew why.
That was all the worse, the knowing; she’d only ever felt this way once, and that time was a time she’d vowed to put as far from her realm of thoughts as possible. That time had been a time of whirlwind terror, of a vulpine boy with dark eyes and ruddy-opium hair, of cruel acts, of darkness. That was all she’d associated with love with, as long as she could remember. That to love was to destroy. To love was to be destroyed.
Now, she wasn’t so sure of her code of harshness and diplomacy, and that terrified her on a visceral level. That even her old scars hadn’t exempted her from feeling this— a dizzying, plunging sense of losing control. She had frozen her heart, but Adam had thawed it; just as ice melted once, it would never be as strong as it once had. And now, cracks were lacing out again. She didn’t slip, but she fell, and it was Yang’s fault.
Shaking out her shoulders, letting loose a breath that puffed white in the cold air, Blake looked out through the windows of the hall.
“You startled me.”
Swearing colorfully under her breath, Blake turned her head slightly, almost sullenly. And there she was, standing in a pool of moonlight, bleached white and gold. Her hair swept against her temples, in elegant, close curls that made Blake itch to draw her in dark sharp colors. Against her better will, Blake’s heart took a single, painful slam against her ribs.
Starlight filtered down through high-paned windows, shafting in silver spars onto the shadowy floor below. Yang’s eyes were tinged like chips of gray flint in the dim gloom, the glint of moonlight bathing her to silver. “Blake? You’re out late. You’re not studying overtime again, are you?” she asked, worry in her voice.
Blake glanced up at the clear sky through the dusty windows, amusement coloring her voice. “Not after last time, no.” The shattered moon dimmed as clouds drifted over it. “I was—“ she groped for an excuse, anything, anything not to tip off Yang that she’d been distraught over her— “meeting Sun.”
“Oh.” Yang said. There was a slightly crestfallen edge to her voice, but Yang’s next words were chipper, and Blake dismissed it as paranoia. “Well, it’s a beautiful night tonight!”
“If you like that kind of thing.” Blake flicked her gaze to the swirling fire of the stars, lost in the vast darkness of the night sky. Don’t let her see. Don’t. “Why are you out here?”
Was that a blush flaring on her cheeks? “I was looking for you. Last time I woke up and you were gone, you’d run off to Vale-knows-where in the city—“ she waved away Blake’s faint protest— “and I couldn’t sleep anyways. It seems— troubled, I guess. Like something is coming.”
A warmer wind swept the hall, rattling through lacquer vases. Blake smiled, a wry, grim twist of her mouth that was more like the frozen shadow of a grimace. “‘Yet man is born to trouble’,” she quoted, “‘as surely as sparks fly upward’.” She twitched an ear. “Of course trouble is coming, but it doesn’t matter if it’s from the Faunus or humans, Yang. Strife is born from those who fester in the shadows of peace. It always is. It always will be. It’s how life is.”
“I don’t look at life that way,” Yang’s eyes travelled to the rafters, lost in shadow, suddenly an uncertain look to them. “Every day presents itself as something unexplored. You have to take it.” Her words grew gentle. “We aren’t given good lives or bad lives, Blake. It’s our duty as huntresses to make them good or bad.”
Quailing upon herself, Blake looked away. She heard the brush of feet as Yang padded closer; she was rendered in soft hues in the gloom, the shimmering lattice of moonlight. “Think it that way, if you like.”
She was close now, too close; Blake was aware of her in new ways, the sliver of darker color in her lilac eyes, the slight dusting of freckles on her nose, this new gleam in her expression—
“Blake…”
She couldn’t stand the way Yang said her name- like it was something cherished, a prayer, like Blake was special and beautiful to her.
And that was how Yang saw her, somehow. Beautiful.
Her mind winged back to the spar under the pool of amber streetlights, but even that seemed less real than what she saw in Yang’s eyes. “Blake,” Yang said again, her expression strange. “I—“
“Is something wrong?” She moved as if to go forward, but Yang shook her head slightly, warning her back, something— fear?— on her face.
“I came out here to clear my head. I couldn’t sleep. But—“ She seemed so unsure, so like the girl that had toted her sister out in vain pursuit of her mother, and Blake blinked. “No matter where I go, I keep finding myself wandering back here. To you.”
Blake could only stare at her, bemused, her heart dully aching, like it had numbed under repeated blows. There was brackish taste in her mouth, coppery metallic. “What do you mean?”
“I need you,” she said. She looked woven ethereally, like the fabric of dreams, close enough to touch, farther than the distant stars. “I do. Blake— I care for you a great deal. I think you know that. And I—“ She shook her head. “I can’t pretend anymore, Blake.”
Blake stared at her, struck, for the first time in her life, speechless. Yang’s eyes were unblinking, bright and very wide in the darkness.
“There is no pretending,” she declared, eyes burning like twin flames in the gloom. “I love you, and I’ll love you until I die, and if there’s a life after that, I’ll love you then.”
Blake’s breath caught, and she was just struck by the absurdity of it— she had said it, then, words that couldn’t be erased— the sheer resolution of resignation, Yang’s unguardedly open face, with nothing to lose.
“Yang, you can’t— I just—“ Blake closed her eyes, steeling herself, gathering her thoughts. She thought of all the ways Yang had made her heart feel like it was skipping a beat or taking one too many, the way she looked at her when she thought Blake wasn’t looking, that soft gleam of home in her eyes that Adam had never possessed.
And with a quiet exhale, she let Adam go.
Blake let go the memory of his wan smile and rictus grin, the way he had once fought unflinchingly by her side, the way they’d burned and incinerated their very sense of morality. She let go of his austere disposition and the auspicious way things had swung for them until she’d dropped out of her whole life, and she moved forward and only had time to blink into Yang’s stunned face before she was kissing her and she was kissing her and she was kissing her.
It was at first almost as if Yang was stunned into immobility, and Blake felt a flutter of panic— oh God, what if I’ve just messed it up?— before Yang was kissing her back, fiercely and passionately, banishing her thoughts into a warm haze of something right, something warm like the soft croon of a flame. Sparks seemed to prickle to life, starting in her chest and blazing outward in a supernova like moonlight. Yang’s hands came up, winding into Blake’s hair and pulling her closer before withdrawing them and flattening them, splayed, against Blake’s chest. Her lips softened. Blake could feel the rapid beat of her heart, taste the slightly-sharp sweetness of apples still on her mouth. She tangled her hands into Yang’s hair, as she’d wanted to do since the first time she’d seen her. Her hair curled around Blake’s fingers, light and silky and fine, and she brought her hand up to cup Yang’s jaw, thumb brushing across her skin. Blake breathed her in, raggedly— the edged, smoky scent tinged with something like starlight, something warm she couldn’t quite place. Her heart seemed to thud into overdrive and there was a whirring in her ears, like the beat of wings.
When she pulled away, her partner’s eyes were wide, uncertain, like she’d hurled them hurtling end over end over a plummeting precipice. Blake traced with one hand the slant of her cheekbones, the curve of her jaw, seeing something melt in Yang’s eyes.
“I love you too,” she said, softly, but the most sincere words she’d said in a long, long time, the ghost of a whisper in the still, moonlit air.
⍱⍲⍱
“You’re looking at me weird,” Yang said, propping her head in her palm— unsmiling, but she looked happy, a weight that Blake hadn’t even realized straightening her shoulders. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
She reached out, idly tracing the golden strands of hair that tumbled down in helixes, framing Yang’s face. She was familiar, every part of her, from the contours of her face, the narrow muscles cording her arms, the tracery of slim scars mapping her arms from life as a huntress. “I’m just thinking,” she said softly.
“Oh yeah?” Yang poked her, grinning lopsidedly. “What about?”
“You,” she said, before kissing her. Yang let out a little gasp— that endearing habit she had, like she was surprised Blake was kissing her— before winding her hands into her hair to pull her closer, the way she always did, and Blake ran her fingers along the slim lines of Yang’s shoulder blades through her shirt, wandering her skin before settling above her hips. Blake could feel Yang smile against her mouth—
Bang!
“Oh my God! I did not need to walk in on that. Get a room. Or at least not our dorm!”
Blake scowled, drawing back as Yang burst out laughing at Weiss’s recoiling, admonishing chide.
“At least you walked in first,” Ruby tossed over her shoulder cheerily at she vaulted into her bed, the ropes creaking ominously as the bed swayed. Weiss narrowed her eyes.
“And why is that?”
“It means I didn’t have to see it,” Ruby grinned. At that, Blake cracked a smile, and the other two burst out in laughter at the flash of haughty anger that crossed Weiss’s face. She let out a contemptuous ‘huff’ before slinking to her own bed.
Blake leaned back, feeling a strange, calm sense of contentment steal over her as Yang bounced over to Ruby, querying about her day. It was a calmness she hadn’t known at all during the White Fang’s reign, a persistent voice that seemed to flare to life, one that whispered it will be okay, everything will work out.
Night fell swiftly after that. The stars jeweled the sky, a great map of silver and onyx that swung out through the heavens, littering the sky with diamonds and wisps of clouds. A soft, balmy wind breathed through the window— Blake retired early, exhausted despite herself, and had only just closed her eyes when two soft thuds broke into the silence.
Her eyes snapped open as she felt a soft weight thump into the bunk bed, beside her, and she blinked over at two hooded lilac eyes glinting through the shadows. A very Chesire-cat-esque smile spread over her face as Yang scooted closer, burying her face against Blake’s shoulder and wrapping her arms around her, her warmth comforting in a way Adam had not been. She was comforting, not pressuring; yielding, not unmoved.
She didn’t say anything, and neither did her partner, but that was okay; in a way, she could read Yang better than anyone. She was silent for a long while, a period during which the only sounds in the dorm were Yang’s steady breaths and the wind rustling through the curtains.
Finally, Blake sat up a little, Yang’s arms sliding down as she shifted. “Yang. Are you awake?” she whispered, feeling tense.
Yang’s voice came back, groggy and heavy with sleep, her words muffled by a yawn. “Yeah.”
“I’m worried.”
“Why?”
Blake shifted, eyes closing, sighing as Yang pulled her closer until they were flush against each other, two pieces of a puzzle. “They’re out there, Yang, preparing their next attack, acquiring new allies, whether we like it or not. The White Fang, Torchwick.“ And Adam, she added silently, ears lowering in consternation.
Yang shifted, her breath tickling Blake’s ear. She draped an arm over her side, fingers tracing swirling whorls on Blake’s stomach. Blake leaned into her heavily, body responding with a low heat in her stomach despite the quelling fears that haunted her. “We won’t be able to defend ourselves if we defer to exhaustion.” She lowered her voice. “That’s not why you’re worried though, is it?”
“I’m worried for you.” Blake faltered. “If something happened to you…”
“I plan on sticking around, Blake.” Yang dropped a kiss on her shoulder, so light it could have been the caress of the wind. “I’m not going to leave you. Not like the rest. I think, the things you’ve dealt with before, a dark type of love—“
“Love isn’t moral or immoral,” she said, thinking of Adam. “It just is.”
“Right,” Yang agreed, her voice heavy. “But the actions we take in the name of love, those are moral or immoral. You know that it’s not a path we just follow blindly. Love is a choice. And sometimes the heart speaks loudest.”
Blake turned, head falling back on the pillow with a dull whoosh of air. She could feel Yang’s heartbeat, strong and steady on the curve of her back, the ripple of her arms as she pressed closer.
When she finally succumbed to the tangled web of sleep, no nightmares darkened her night.
⍱⍲⍱
[ three months later… ]
The dusk was striped with streaks of flaming clouds, purple and navy and gold and orange. The fountains were rushing, the last sliver of autumn’s light growing dim, like the battlefield. Blake stood apart from the surging crowd of students— Mistral, Atlas, Vacuo, Vale.
“You look lonely.” Blake smiled as she heard Yang before two strong arms wrapped around her from behind. “Not joining in the festivities?”
“No. I was looking for you.” She looked at the sky.It was darkening, the myriad of colors blurring into a navy-black. “The fireworks start soon.”
“Mhm,” she hummed, her mouth close to Blake’s ear. She smelled of smoke, of warmth. “I left Ruby and Weiss bickering over who got to hold Zwei during the fireworks, but believe it or not, I think Weiss was smiling. Zwei hates them.”
“Horrid little creature,” Blake muttered, and she felt something glow in her chest as Yang laughed aloud. She turned, swinging them so she was hugging Yang from behind, feeling safe, secure. Blake rested her chin on Yang’s shoulder, coiling her whip so it laddered blackly up her arm. “I love you,” she said. “So much. You know that, right?”
Yang smiled and took Blake’s hands; she could feel her intrepid partner’s heartbeat, a steady and strong promise. She traced the line of her cheek, to the curve of her mouth, the slant of her jaw, and Yang gazed at her. “I know,” she said, before turning to kiss her.
Blake felt the same feeling she always got, kissing Yang, a prickling warmth— like a low flame starting in her chest and radiating out over her skin.
“Wait,” Yang murmured, laughing against Blake’s mouth before pulling away. “Blake— look, you’re missing it.”
She turned and looked up, past the glimmering, illumined windows of Beacon, past the soaring spires of the turrets, past even the edifices and battlements that scaffolded the academy. Up in the clouds, the first stars were coming out in a forget-me-not blue sky, dawning in silver. Over Beacon, an explosion of fireworks flowered out in amber and emerald, and the spires of the academy seemed to frame the goldness of the sky like a perfect picture. They faded out, like falling angels, leaving the imprint of sparks just like what she felt for Yang. It left her with a secure feeling, like the darkness had given way to light, that things were going to be okay.
I love you, Yang had once said, and I’ll love you until I die, and if there’s a life after that, I’ll love you then.
I love you too, Blake thought back silently. The love that moves the sun and the stars. I’d do anything for you.
In the distance over the spangled mountains, the darkening sky shimmered blue, and the grass was bathed in copper and the sky was awash with platinum flowers of fireworks. The wind rose and the other students of the Kingdoms shrieked in delight as the firework motif of dust burst above their heads, and Yang turned to smile at her in that way that made her heart skip a beat.
“I love you, Blake,” Yang said, breaking her from her reverie like she always had, grounding her to the gravity of reality. Yang’s eyes sparkled with a tawny light from the sky, more beautiful than the stars and the world unfolding to spring around them.
And this time, Blake kept her eyes open, so she could see it all.