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1: Yang
Yang is five years old the first time she wonders if she's hard to love. She doesn't think it that way to herself, not exactly, but it's when the belief starts forming.
Before that, love is inevitable. As obvious and essential and taken for granted as breathing. She's never even had to think about whether or not she is loved. Her parents tell her all the time; Ruby tells her too, once she learns to talk enough. And even when they don't say it, Yang knows, because they show it. Summer reads her stories and tucks her in; Taiyang cooks her favourite food for her; Ruby clings onto her with chubby toddler hands and looks up at her with adoration.
And then Summer dies, and nothing is the same.
It's not just that she loses her mom, even if she does cry herself to sleep, even if she finds herself asking why, Dad? Why'd she have to go? Uncle Qrow, why did Mommy go?. She's old enough to understand what death means, understand enough to know Summer didn't choose to never come back. Understand that it's not her fault.
But Taiyang isn't dead. He's still here. And yet nothing is the same. He doesn't cook her favourite food anymore. He doesn't play Huntsmen and Huntresses with her in the garden. Most days, he doesn't even get out of bed.
She knows he's sad, but she doesn't understand the depth of it; doesn't understand why he's left her, too.
And Ruby's too little to really get any of it, but she cries all the time, and she doesn't look at Yang with the happy admiration she used to, even when Yang helps her button up her clothes, hunts for her favourite snacks in the cupboards, gives her her own favourite doll to cuddle at night.
And then there's the day Ruby cries and stamps her foot at her, because Yang doesn't tell the stories the way Mommy did, because she doesn't want Yang, Yang's not Mom, she wants her mom, where's her mom– and Yang cries, too, not just because their mom is gone but because she's been trying, she's been trying to do the things for Ruby that their mom did for them both, and even Ruby knows she's not good enough.
So her mom is gone, and her dad doesn't talk to her, and Ruby cries and says she doesn't want her, and it's not that Yang was ever consciously aware of knowing she was loved; she knew it like an instinct, like breathing, and you don't think about breathing till you choke, till you drown, till you can't get air anymore.
She never thought about being loved until it was gone, and now she lies awake at night crying because her mom is gone, and she thinks her dad and Ruby don't love her anymore.
She is five years old when she asks her uncle about it. Qrow is around more often these days, and he's not very good at replacing her dad but he makes sure to check in on them, makes sure they have food on the days Taiyang doesn't get out of bed, makes sure other people in the community keep an eye on them, too.
He even plays games with her sometimes, teaches her his favourite, and it's one of those times, when they're sitting in front of the screen together, that Yang asks. It's been one of Taiyang's bad days, one of the days he won't get out of bed, won't eat, won't even look at her, and she wants to get good at this game, but she can't focus until she knows the answer to the question that's been eating away at her mind.
“Uncle Qrow, does Dad not love us anymore?”
And that's when her uncle explains why her father's so upset. That's when he tells her he's not just sad over one love, but two.
That's when Yang learns she had another mother, and that mother left and never came back, just like Summer, except she isn't dead. She chose to go.
Which means she didn't love Yang enough to stay, either.
And even though Uncle Qrow tells her that of course her father loves her, that he's just sad; even though Ruby still hugs her and looks up to her and relies on her; even though she remembers Summer loving her and Ruby just the same... it still sinks in, somewhere, unshakeable.
Yang Xiao Long is five years old when she decides, it must be hard to love me.
2: Blake
Blake doesn't know when she first learned love meant sacrifice. Meant redemption. Meant the giving of yourself, endlessly, even if it killed you. Maybe she was born with that knowledge, nested somewhere deep in her bones.
But she is fifteen when she first realises how hard loving can be, when it is demanded of you. When your own heart tears itself to shreds trying to give all that you think you must.
She's loved before, but Adam is the first time she's fallen, and she doesn't know, yet, that falling shouldn't cover you in bruises.
Don't you trust me? he says, when she questions what he's doing, his motivations. I thought you loved me. And she takes his hand and tells him, yes, she does, of course she does.
Tell me you love me, he says, one night after things have gone wrong, and she wants to tell him his hand is so tight on her wrist that it's hurting her, but she says I love you instead.
I love you, she says, when she pleads with him to refocus on the true purpose of the White Fang, their true goal. I'll stand with you. Just, please.
Adam hurts people who don't deserve it, rages at the people around him, and she holds his hand and consoles him about his own violence, because that is what love is meant to do.
He hurts her, and he tells her it's only stress, it's only all the pressure he's under, he didn't mean it, and she forgives him, and consoles him about her own pain, because isn't that what love is meant to do?
Love me, he demands, a thousand different ways, and she does, because she can't stop herself. Because he's all she really has. Because girls are supposed to do that for boys, aren't they? Love them through everything, redeem them, save them from themselves.
Blake doesn't know who taught her that. It wasn't her mother, it wasn't her father. Maybe it was just society itself.
By the time she finally unlearns it just a little, just enough to leave, she's resolved never to love again the way she loved him. Never to love someone enough to let it break her open, make her vulnerable. Because loving bleeds you dry.
She's fifteen when she first really learns it, and by seventeen she knows, without a doubt: it's hard to love.
3: Yang/Blake
Yang is seventeen when she first realises she loves Blake Belladonna. Or, really, she's seventeen when she meets her and loves her like a friend, and still seventeen when she realises the way she loves her isn't friendship after all.
She's not sure when it starts, the knowing. It dawns on her slowly, a spark lit when she first saw Blake across their dorm room, reading by candlelight.
Yang went to Beacon believing she'd date boys, even if the thought had only ever been abstract, and then she found herself watching Blake, instead. Inviting Blake to dance and taking Blake for Sunflower Pop and trying to read Blake's favourite book just to understand her better.
And there's a quiet ache inside her that she finally names, half-ashamed, because she looks at Blake and something inside whispers love me. It's not a demand, just a wish. Just a hope.
She puts the pieces together too late.
Blake is seventeen when she first realises she loves Yang Xiao Long, in that dangerous way, the way that makes her give too much of herself. The way she swore to herself she wouldn't fall in love again.
But Yang is so, so easy to love. The way she can brighten the worst of situations. The infectiousness of her smile, the way Blake finds herself smiling back so hard her cheeks hurt. Yang's bravery, the way she fights for the people she cares about. Her sincerity, the way she gives all of herself, follows through on every promise.
Blake finds love hard, but she loves Yang easily as breathing, and maybe that's why she doesn't see the warning signs until too late, until she's already let her in.
Blake is eighteen when she realises Yang loves her. Maybe not the way she loves Yang, maybe not, but– enough. Too much.
It's not until Adam comes back and Yang throws himself in front of his sword for her that Blake knows it. It's not until Yang's on the ground unconscious, bleeding for her, that Blake realises what she should've known all along. Her love destroys people. She won't let it destroy Yang any longer.
Yang is eighteen when Blake leaves, and any tentative hopes of being loved back die, flaking away into ashes.
She should never have let herself think it, that someone like Blake could love her.
She stares at the book on her bedside table, the book she tried to read because Blake liked it, and wonders why she tried, when she knew, she knew, anyone who loved her wound up leaving.
She is five, and she is eighteen, and nothing has changed, not really. She's still too hard to love.
But Blake comes back, because maybe loving doesn't have to bleed her dry.
But Blake comes back, so maybe not everyone who loves Yang will leave, after all.
4: Yang and Blake
They stand on a bridge in the Ever After, wind-whipped, swaying back and forth, and Yang is scared. She's scared to say it, scared it'll make everything change. Scared, because despite everything Blake's told her, there's still a little part of her that can't quite believe Blake could love her this way.
But Blake tells her to say it, and Yang looks at her and believes she'll hear it in return. Because in this moment, it's easier than it ever has been, to tell herself she isn't hard to love.
The sky lights up in their colours around them, and Blake looks at Yang, and some tiny part of her is still scared. Scared of pouring her feelings out into the world, scared of loving.
She tells Yang to say it first. And Yang takes a breath, and she does.
I think I love you.
She says it first, and Blake says it back, before she's even finished, because in this moment, it's easy as breathing, to let herself love.
Yang is nineteen when she realises it isn't always hard, to love her.
Blake is nineteen when she realises it isn't always hard, to love.