Chapter Text
Weiss shivered in her bed. “It’s too cold,” she muttered to herself. She scoffed at her words. Who would have thought that the Ice Queen could be cold? She certainly didn’t. If someone had told her she’d be saying that a year ago, she would have laughed at them. The truth is, Weiss was always cold before going to Beacon, she just never thought about it too much. Atlas’s artificial climate had never felt so wrong before. The heiress had traveled all over the world and never noticed how off her home had felt.
It was an open secret that her father barely paid for the heating in their home. Most of Remnant had some kind of heater powered by the Schnee Dust Company, and so did the Schnee manor, there was rarely anything keeping them on. It’s no wonder that Weiss had a minor coffee addiction. Having a fresh cup in her hand as much as possible was the only way to keep her hands warm short of wearing mittens and a scarf in her own home.
She missed her friends… She missed Ruby’s happy-go-lucky attitude. She missed Blake’s calming aura. She missed Yang – gods, she missed everything about Yang. She shivered again. She missed how warm Yang made her as she tried to wrap herself more in her sheets. The heiress let a smile crawl across her lips as she remembered that warmth. She thought about the first time she ever really got to feel the heat radiating off of her skin.
She had her nose in a textbook while she was coming out of team RWBY’s dorm room. They had an exam coming up and she needed to study. She couldn’t be the best in the class if she kept getting A minuses on assignments. She needed to be perfect. However, her obsession with her studies combined with a blind corner lead her face-first into Yang and that promptly landed her flat on her butt and the blonde brawler on top of her. The pale heiress cringed slightly as she remembered such an awkward memory, but it was worth it to think about Yang again.
The pale heiress couldn’t help but shiver again as she snapped back to reality. Remembering that the blanket around her couldn’t compare to her lilac-eyed girlfriend’s arms. She tried to wrap herself up tighter as she reflected on more fond memories. Like when Ruby “accidentally” forgot to pack Yang’s sleeping bag and insisted that it would be too awkward if she shared a bed with her older sister despite the fact that she had done exactly that barely a week before.When she asked Penny about it later, she revealed that her silver-eyed leader just wanted a chance to play matchmaker. She smiled again as she thought about sharing that, admittedly cramped, bag with the blonde bombshell. Weiss could barely sleep that night. It felt like she was lying against a radiator, but it was worth it and, in time, she learned she couldn’t sleep without that heat against her skin.
She shivered again. Memories weren't enough to keep her warm tonight, she needed something else. The half-frozen ice queen unceremoniously unwrapped herself from her sheets and wandered towards her closet. She opened the door and dropped to the floor so she could start digging through boxes. The tile of her room was cold against her legs, “I really need to get some of those flannel pants that Ruby has,” she muttered to herself as she pulled a maroon hoodie from a cardboard box she had stashed deep in the back of the large walk-in. Weiss never really cared for Pumpkin Pete’s cereal but she couldn’t help but take in the smell of maple leaves from the oversized garment.
The heiress knew she was getting desperate if this was what she was resorting too. What if this was the last time she’d ever get to be comforted by the sweet scent of the Mistrali champion? Weiss shivered again as she put on the hoodie, but not because of the cold – at least, not this time. With the CCT towers down, it was impossible to check on Pyrrha. She was worried enough about Yang but at least she knew she was alive. The last time she saw Pyrrha, she was being carried away on a stretcher with a massive hole in her chest. She felt tears well in her eyes. She had finally found people that could really understand her and now they’re gone – maybe forever.
The tears started to roll down her cheeks. “What if I never see them again?” she sobbed. Yang was back in Patch and Pyrrha was gods know where. “They need me, and I’m on house arrest!” she slammed her fists into her pillow. “I have to get out of here…” The words left her lips with a confidence her heart couldn’t bring itself to muster. How was she supposed to get out of the house, let alone Atlas? Her already small hopes were dwindling quickly. Her entire world had already collapsed once and the after shocks were causing the rubble to crush her.
“I wish I could talk to them…” she cried as she thought back to the last conversations she had with her girlfriends and her heart sank further. “I want to believe you, but I know what we all saw,” was the last thing she had said to Yang… How could she have said that? With everything that had happened in the hours after she had talked to Yang, it was impossible not to believe her now. Surely someone could have made some kind of illusion, if not to trick the entire stadium then to just trick Yang into hitting Mercury.
Then there was the last conversation she had with Pyrrha… The last thing she had said to Pyrrha was “Good luck.” That was it. She didn’t even say “I love you.” She was saving that for when she saw her again, but that never happened. She only saw the aftermath of the fight on top of Beacon. All of the rubble, all of the blood, all of the destruction. She was worried about Ruby, too. She saw what had happened to Pyrrha with her own eyes, she couldn’t imagine what she was going through right now.
The world around her was cold. That was one thing Weiss had known for almost as long as she’d known her own name. Everyone around her, even her parents, just wanted to use her to get something they wanted more. But, against all odds, she had found people who made her feel warm and safe. Tonight, the world felt like a different kind of cold. No number of blankets or sweet-smelling hoodies could keep her warm right now. She didn’t know when or even if she’d ever feel warm again. She didn’t know if she’d ever get to see her friends again. Weiss sighed as she wrapped herself further in her blanket, resigned to the fact that she was just going to have to be cold.
Yang felt numb. Like the entire world was a haze. Days blended together like leaves on the trees outside her window. It was impossible to tell what belonged where but, as far as she was concerned, it didn’t matter anyway. The only thing that she could still feel was her arm. If she looked away, she could almost feel her hand twitch and shake. The few times she’d tried to climb out of bed she had reached for the windowsill beside her only to fall against the wall when nothing was supporting her weight.
It had been months since Beacon, since the world had fallen apart, since she had been carried by her teammate to a field hospital to bandage the stump where her arm had been barely an hour before. Blake was long gone, she had ran before Yang was even awake. Weiss was up in Atlas, taken away without even getting to say goodbye. At least Ruby had left a note, but there was nothing the blonde could have done to stop her little sittler from leaving.
A different feeling began to creep through to the front of her blurred thoughts, a feeling nearly as old as she was. She pulled her knees to her chest as her room began to shrink around her. “Why do they always leave?” she muttered to herself. She knew it wasn’t fair to say that about at least Weiss and Ruby. Weiss didn’t have a choice and Ruby had a mission she needed to complete. In theory, Yang agreed with her goal. The young huntress had to find whoever was responsible for the attack on Beacon… but why did she have to leave so soon? Why did Uncle Qrow have to go with her? Why was it that her dad was the only one left to take care of her? Why couldn’t she take care of herself anymore? Fear seeped deeper into her mind as she kept asking questions she didn’t want to answer until she threw her head back into her pillow with a frustrated grunt.
She wanted the numbness that wrapped her entire body to go away. She wanted to see her friends and make sure they were safe. She wanted to feel the breeze on her face without having to worry about the world outside of Patch. She wanted to be able to pull a knife out of the block in her kitchen without having a panic attack. She wanted to be whole again.
Yang knew that wasn’t going to happen, at least not anytime soon. She took a shaky breath as she failed to muster the energy to sit back up. It felt like the world had stopped turning. She wanted to go find Ruby, but how could she when she couldn’t even get herself out of bed? The former brawler’s fear faded away until it buzzed in the back of her mind like a humming engine, and then that numbing feeling from before overtook her again and she drifted off to sleep, the afternoon sun still shining through her window.
Pyrrha felt like her entire body was on fire. Her vision was hazy and she could barely register what was happening around her. Was someone yelling? Why were all of these lights so bright? She tried to reach for whatever was covering her mouth only to realize her arms were being held by something. As she got used to the pain and aches coming from her joints, she couldn’t help but feel the burning sting in her ankle. “That’s right,” she thought to herself, “I… I was fighting that woman with the black hair.” What had happened to that? The last thing she remembered was an arrow being loosed at her, and then a red blur, and then that blinding light. New thoughts came to her mind, “Did we win? Is everyone safe? Where’s Weiss? Where’s Yang?”
She mustered up all the strength she could to move but she couldn’t move. Every muscle in her body ached. Even if she hadn’t just been in a fight for her life, she had been training nonstop for a week so she could be in the Vytal Festival. Weiss had insisted she rest more but she knew it could have waited until the tournament was over with. She assumed she’d have plenty of time to relax now. If she couldn’t move on her own she could just lay down for a while, maybe even spend time with Weiss and Yang if they were around. Where were they? Surely they’d come visit her if she was in the hospital. Her eyelids started to feel heavy. “Maybe I could just rest for a little while.”
Pyrrha could have sworn she had only blinked, but when her eyes opened again she was in a different room – sitting up instead of laying down. Whatever had been on her face was still there, maybe some kind of mask? She wanted to reach for it but she didn’t have the strength to move her arms. She could at least move her head and managed to see her mother sitting next to the bed she was in. “That’s so strange,” she thought to herself, “Mom would have told me if she was coming to see the festival.” Then she noticed the blue sky in the window behind her mother’s chair. “It can’t be morning already. It was the middle of the night when I was fighting that woman with the black hair…” Had she actually fallen asleep? She couldn’t have. She would have felt more rested. Maybe if she could just rest her eyes again she’d feel better. She blinked slowly as a slow haze clouded her mind. Maybe Weiss and Yang would be here when she woke up again.
When she opened her eyes this time, she didn’t feel the mask she had been wearing before, but her body ached again and her chest felt like it was burning from the inside out. At least she could move her arms a little. She tried to form words but all that came out was a raspy breath. Nonetheless, it still caused her mother to shoot up in her chair. “Pyrrha, darling!” she seemed excited for some reason, Pyrrha had just assumed it was because they hadn’t met in person in a while. “Doctor, get in here! I need a doctor!” the older red-haired woman called out, causing a small host of nurses to quickly flow into the room. “That’s odd,” Pyrrha thought to herself, “Why are there so many people here? Where’s everyone else?”
Somehow the commotion and noise that had entered the room with the nurses caused the fire in her chest to burn harder. She vaguely heard what sounded like beeps coming from either side of her. The world around her became blurry as she drifted off again.