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“It’ll be a regular journey to the East!” Sun rocks back on the railing and falls silent for a moment. “Yeah, I think I like the sound of that.”
The moon reflects over the water, even more fractured by the movement of the waves, and Blake sighs softly, letting her breath be stolen away by the breeze. In a rare moment, Sun still remains quiet. His head is tilted back, eyes flickering in secret patterns between stars.
“The stars are different in Vacuo,” Sun says, breaking the silence. Blake tilts her head softly, and Sun takes it as a sign to keep rambling.
“Well, I guess I mean that you can see more of them.” Sun continues. “Like you can see way more out here than you can in like Mistral or Vale, but you haven’t seen stars until you’ve stayed a night where I’m from.”
Blake glances up, the moon is bright tonight, and sits low in the south end of the sky. It always rises in the South, and sets in the North, disappearing over horizons no one has managed to chart. If one goes south of Menagerie, or far north above Atlas, they never return. The stars blink down at Blake, breaking through the black of the sky.
“What do they look like in Vacuo?” Blake asks.
Sun’s legs kick absentmindedly against the wood. “It’s hard to describe.” He begins. “I’m not sure why it’s different, but there are so many more stars, and you can see more than just that. It’s like…there are clouds in the sky, or like dust spilled all over.”
“Dust?”
“No—not combat dust. It’s like when you shake out an old curtain and dust billows out of it, or smoke. Sometimes it’s red, but I’ve seen it be purple, white or black.”
“It sounds beautiful,” Blake paints a picture of the scene in her mind and tucks it away.
“It really is,” Sun sounds uncharacteristically wistful and Blake studies him out of the corner of her eye.
“Do you miss it?”
“I miss my mother,” Sun states bluntly. “My aunts and my cousins too, I miss the heat—Mistral was hard to adjust too.”
Blake nods. “I know the feeling.” Menagerie had hidden the worst of faunus discrimination from her, after two weeks in Vale she had donned her bow—hidden away her identity.
“Mistral isn’t nearly as bad as Atlas would be,” Sun dons a smile, but his tail twitches behind him with irritation. “But in Vacuo, my ancestors literally walked out of the jungle back when the kingdom was a paradise—being a faunus has never been too much of an issue there.”
Blake faintly remembers reading short histories on Vacuo—the kingdom’s former glory is treated like a legend, the ancient culture of those people was desecrated and lost, of how the other kingdoms plundered and left the people with nothing but ash. Sun must have grown up among the ruins of that lost world, Blake realizes, a boy tracing sandstone carvings and symbols lost to time.
In the night, perched up on the railings—wind ruffling his hair and his eyes boring into her—Sun looks like he stepped out of history. A little fragment of the influential might Vacuo had once been hums in Sun’s soul, making him more ambitious, courageous, than most Vacuoans could afford to be today.
Suddenly, a door opens on the deck above them, and warm light spills out over the two of them. Blake jumps out of habit—hand already rising to Gambol Shroud. Sun spins around and slides off the railing with all the ease in the world and sends a lazy wave upward.
The captain leans over the railing and grins beneath his beard. “You two are still up?” He calls down. “Even I’m going in for the night, and you two deserve more rest than I do.” His tone is light, and his eyes twinkle softly. Blake is struck suddenly with the distant memory of her grandfather, who passed on when she was three. She fills slightly with guilt for her aggression and mistrust of the friendly captain.
In wake her silence, Sun calls back up to him. “Don’t worry! We’ll be sure to get some sleep and keep all of you safe!” He flashes a thumbs up, and his tail mimics the motion.
“You two have a good night!” The captain says, and then he disappears out of view.
“I think I’m going to call it a night,” Blake says quietly. The battle had been physically draining, but the emotional trials had been more so. Sun flashes a smile at her and bends at the waist, bowing low in a dramatic sweep.
“Shall I escort you to your cabin?” His tone is teasing, but Blake can barely find the energy to send him a smile.
“If you want,” Blake concedes. “What deck are your quarters on?”
Sun’s grin morphs more into more of an awkward grimace—it reminds Blake of Jaune for an instant, and Blake sends him, wherever he might be, a little prayer for his team’s safety.
“I’m not...actually staying in a cabin.” Sun nervously scratches the back of his head, tangling his fingers in his hair.
“What do you mean,” Blake says flatly.
“I may or may not have been camping out in a cargo hold for the past few days.”
Blake rolls her eyes and sighs, and Sun rocks back on his heels, laughing nervously.
“Are you telling me,” Blake begins. “That you are stowing away on a ship, again.”
“Yes…?”
She sighs, and grabs Sun by his wrist. As she turns to walk into the inside of the ship, Sun drags his heels insistently against the planking, trying to stop her pull. “Wait, what are you doing?”
“I’m not going to let you sleep inside a barrel for the rest of the trip.” Blake says, tugging Sun after her. “You’ll have to stay with me.”
“Woah, woah!” Sun cries. “I could never intrude on you like that!”
Blake turns and fixes him with an annoyed look. “You intruded on me the second you followed me on this ship.”
Sun’s mouth snaps shut, he looks cowed with guilt and embarrassment, and he concedes against Blake’s grasp. At his expression, Blake loosens her hold, and guides him through the decks, heading down several floors and down another hallway. When she stops in front of her door, the monkey faunus shifts awkwardly in the silence as the lock opens with a click.
Blake pushes open the door her cabin. The boat uses no electricity outside of the engines, unless you want to pay for a cabin with lights. Blake cannot afford any such human luxuries, and the tiny space of her room is black like pitch.
“The cabins are pretty small,” Sun eyes the space; the cabin is more bed than room.
Blake smiles sardonically. “Saves more room for artillery cannons, I suppose.”
They step into the room, and Blake reaches to light a small candle. The wick springs to life at the flick of a match. The light is weak, but illuminates the sharp corners and hard spaces that hid in the darkness. Behind her, Sun pushes the door closed.
“You know I—“ Sun trails off as Blake turns to face him, holding the candle between them. “Blake, your eyes are…”
She flinches back suddenly, and cups the flame away from her face. Instantly, the iridescent green of her Tapetum lucidum fades back away into her eyes. “I’m sorry, I forget some people can find it frightening.”
She remembers the first time Weiss had shone a scroll light too close to Blake’s face, and the panicked shriek that followed when Blake’s eyes had glowed that acidic green.
“What? No!” Sun exclaims, hands fluttering in placation. “They look amazing! I’m jealous, mine aren’t nearly as bright.”
He softly pulls the candle closer towards him. The flame casts strange patterned shadows over the angles of his face. Sun’s eyes refract the light lowly and the barest hints of the faunus tissue appears in his eyes.
“Yours are hardly there,” Blake says softly. His eyes refract a much more muted green than hers, but any human would still be able to pick out the difference. Every faunus shares this one trait. It’s a blessing to be able to see in the dark, but a curse as well, for humans use any excuse to label faunus as different, strange, predatory animals.
Sun shrugs. “I can still see better than any human, but monkey faunus don’t have prominent ones.”
“I had no idea,” Blake replies.
“I’m not surprised,” Sun says. “It’s not easy to find any of us outside Vacuo.”
He’s right, Blake muses. When the kingdoms decided to round up and send thousands of faunus to Menagerie, the monkey faunus of Vacuo—somehow, someway—escaped capture by fleeing deep into the desert.
Sun tugs the candle out of her hands and sets it into the alcove built into the wall. Blake sits heavily and sinks into what little of the straw mattress she can. The blankets are threadbare—reeking of musty fabric- and even through the straw stuffing, Blake can feel the hard wooden base pressing into her. It’s cheap, but Blake never had much to go on, even before she fled from Beacon.
As she toes off her boots, Sun props Ruyi and Jingu Bang up in a corner and plops down on the floor. He stretches, yawns impossibly wide, and lazily kicks off his shoes. Blake watches quietly as he settles on the floor, tucking his hands behind his head.
“What are you doing?” Blake asks, setting Gambol Shroud near the head of the bed.
One of Sun’s eyes peeks open. “I’m going to sleep? I’ll be quiet, don’t worry—it’ll be like I’m not even here.”
“You can share the bed with me.”
“What?” Sun blinks in disbelief and rockets off his back, crossing his legs over the other.
Blake shrugs off her jacket, folds it to the side, and stretches out her hand. “I’m not letting you sleep on the floor.”
“If you’re sure,” Sun trails off, and cautiously grabs Blake’s hand. She leans backwards, and pulls him up to his feet. He glances down at the mattress as if it’s some dangerous, forbidden territory he’s afraid to cross, but at Blake’s flat, insistent look, he slides into the side she doesn’t occupy. The thin blanket isn’t quite enough for them both, but it will have to do.
For several minutes, they lay together in silence. The boat, swaying over the water, is soothing in its motion, and Blake finds herself being slowly lulled to sleep like a child. Sun is stiff next to her, but having someone she trusts near her soothes the aching paranoia that has kept her up every night.
Blake drifts off slowly, tuning out everything except the slow sway of the cabin. Sun’s tail flicks into anxious movement, and she reluctantly returns back into awareness. “Is everything okay, Sun?”
“Are you okay with me being here?”
“Don’t worry, I’ve shared a bed with my friends before,” Blake replies, curling back up to chase sleep.
“No, that’s not what I meant,” Sun whispers. “Are you okay that I’m here on this boat with you?”
For one long, treacherous moment, Blake says nothing.
Sun can feel her tense beside him, tugging the blanket around her tighter. The fabric spills off him, and Sun almost moves to follow the tiny source of heat.
“I’m not sure yet.” Blake’s voice is small.
Sun exhales softly. “I understand.”
The cabin is silent apart from the creaking of machinery and the soft crash of the waves.
“How did you even find me?” Blake asks. Beside her, Sun rolls onto his back—Blake frowns slightly as he puts distance between them—and the monkey faunus sighs heavily.
“I spent weeks looking for you in Vale,” Sun’s voice cracks in the darkness, and Blake can’t identify the emotion that is woven through his voice. She can barely comprehend the meaning of the words that have shattered into the air in tiny fractals.
“Why?” Blake whispers—the words are hushed and rest between the two of them.
“When Beacon fell—you remember—there were Grimm everywhere. I know you wanted to go off alone, but,” Sun swallows. “Pyhrra died because she went alone, I know you can protect yourself but it’s not safe out there for someone to go on their own.”
“I didn’t realize you had skipped town,” Sun continues. “Until I asked some shopkeeper if they had seen you. She said you were heading east.”
“Was it the owner of the tea shop?” Blake interrupts. She remembers finding her crumpled in the middle of her store—collapsed amongst shattered porcelain teacups and kettles—and how Blake pulled her off the ground and pressed what little lien she had into her hands.
“It was,” Sun answers. “She pointed me the right direction and I ended up lucky enough to arrive at villages days after you had been there. When you crossed into Mistral, I thought I lost the trail, but I picked it back up in Kuchinashi.”
“Kuchinashi? How’d you manage that one?” Blake lightly prods.
In the dark, Sun grins wryly. “It’s not easy for a faunus to get a ride out of Vacuo, but I made some friends who were able to get me to Mistral in time to start school.”
“So the first time you caught up with me was when I boarded the boat?”
Sun hums. “Yup, it was quite a game of cat and mouse—or wait, cat and monkey?”
Blake kicks him under the blanket, and Sun barks out a short laugh. “Yeah, sorry, that was bad.”
They lie in silence for a moment until Blake shifts. “You know,” she says, breaking the quiet. “I’m still mad that you followed me, and I’m upset that you thought I would leave my team just to chase down The White Fang. But, thank you for being worried about me.”
“No need to thank me,” Sun coughs. “It was, uh, nothing. Just being a good…friend and all.”
Blake snorts softly at the forced casual air of his tone, and burrows further into the blanket. “Is there anything else you want to say before I go to sleep?”
“What is Menagerie like? Y’know, since I’m going with you there and all?”
Blake blinks, there are not enough words to describe her homeland, Menagerie—where there are two families to a house, children sleep back to back on a shared mattress, a place that thrummed with hope for a better future.
She hopes the White Fang hasn’t ruined her home the same way they ruined her.
Sun breathes in the darkness, waiting for an answer and Blake sighs, the sound tinged with wistfulness. “It was my home for years, I haven’t been back since I was thirteen or so.”
“Why’d you leave? Needed a change of scenery?”
Blake stiffens, and when she speaks, her voice is flecked with shame. “I joined the White Fang. I said goodbye to my parents, promised to write, and I was whisked off to Vale.”
With a slow start, Blake wonders when the last time she had remembered to write. Menagerie, along with many other things, lacked a broadcast tower, there was no other way to keep up with the rest of the world outside mail and travelers.
“Your parents?” Sun asks; his voice is hesitant – treading slowly as if the subject is brittle ice.
Blake hums softly. “Yes, they still live in Menagerie as far as I know. Near the coast.”
“You obviously take after the more feline of the two, don’t you?”
“Both of my parents are cat faunuses, actually,” she answers.
“Who’d you get the ears from?”
“My mom. My father just has claws.” Blake purrs wickedly as Sun involuntarily twitches.
“…Claws?” Sun’s voice is almost comically high pitched and choked.
Blake grins into her pillow. “Goodnight, Sun.”
“What kind of claws are we talking about here, Blake?” Sun sits up on the bed, his voice tinged with barely suppressed panic.
“Goodnight, Sun.”
Sun falls limply back on the mattress, and settles beside her. His back presses against hers, and his tail flickers against her thigh once—then twice, and finally rests. “Goodnight, Blake.”
The waves move the boat like a cradle—for the first time in years, Blake feels like a child again, being rocked in her mother’s arms. Sun is a steady heat next to her, and miraculously, Blake knows she is safe for the time being. She drifts off into a dreamless sleep—the days of exhaustion finally taking its toll.
The next morning, after the sun has long risen, Blake reluctantly falls into consciousness and finds herself entangled in Sun’s limbs—fingers tangled together and a tail wrapping itself around her leg. Blake extricates herself from him slowly, unwilling to rouse him from sleep. For the rest of the morning, she sits cross-legged on the floor of the cabin and watches Sun sleep—unable to find the will to rouse him. Sunlight streams through a tiny porthole and bathes Sun in light that catches in his hair and sets it aflame like shimmering gold.
For the first time in a long time, Blake starts to think that she’ll be okay.