DISCLAIMER: All characters & settings belong to Rooster Teeth.
"Hold on Sun...just hold on."
Blake couldn't help the tears that formed at the edges of her eyes as she looked on the injured monkey faunus, the feeling in her hands getting warmer as blood continued to soak his shirt. She pressed harder against the wound he'd sustained from Ilia, trying to ease the bleeding as she frantically looked around to see if anyone was coming to their aid.
"Help! Please! Anybody!" she cried out as loud as she could in desperation.
From the moment she saw where Ilia had stabbed him, she knew it wasn't something even he could simply walk off. The chameleon faunus had struck him on the left chest, just below the shoulder blade but fortunately above the heart. Not to mention the fact that he was also shocked all over when he was hit by Ilia's blade, it wasn't surprising that he was hurt as much as he was.
It was the first time that Blake had seen him hurt in battle, and as she looked on as he slipped in and out of consciousness, she wished she had been the one hurt instead. "Dammit! Not again!" she told herself as tears fell from her cheeks and onto Sun's chest, and the utterly awful feeling that was making her sick right there was all too familiar. After all, it had only been a few months since she saw Yang lose an arm trying to save her from Adam. This time though, it was Sun who had gotten hurt trying to stop Ilia from getting to her.
Everything that had happened between her and Sun suddenly came rushing back to her. From when he suddenly appeared at the boat in the middle of the ocean to help her fight the Grimm Sea Dragon, to when they arrived in Menagerie and reunited with her parents, and up until the fight that they had that led to where they were at that moment. Her tears started flowing as she realized that everything might end right there, her not being able to do anything but watch him bleed to death.
His groaning then started to get weaker, and his breathing became sharp but shallow, something Blake quickly picked up on.
"No! Sun, please! Hold on, just please hold on!" she pleaded, bordering on outright panic.
Sun's condition was undoubtedly worsening, both Blake's hands were almost completely soaked in his blood. She wanted to just carry him back to their house, but she feared that without her hands to press on his wound, it would only cause his wound to bleed out more. What Blake didn't know was that Ilia's blade had struck through his chest, and when she saw blood starting to pool from under him, she finally started to panic. Fortunately, a few seconds later, she heard a familiar voice call out from the distance.
"Blake! Blake!" came Ghira's voice "Where are you!?" Blake hearing his voice getting gradually louder was an indication that he was getting closer to where they were.
"Dad! Over here! Hurry!" she called out, unable to lift her hands to catch his attention.
Ghira looked up to where his daughter's voice came from and saw her, not a monent later, he was on the rooftops with them. Before he chased after Blake, Sun still managed to tell her Kali about the spy that both of them had seen. Kali then immediately told Ghira about it, who quickly left to go after their daughter and her friend.
"What happened here? Are you okay?" Ghira worriedly asked as he approached Blake and the wounded Sun.
"I'm fine! But Sun-" For a moment, Blake found herself choking at her words. "He's hurt, dad, we have to get him out of here!" Sun suddenly weakly groaning in pain didn't help Blake keep whatever composure she had left "Sun!" she cried out.
Ghira quickly knelt down beside her and scooped the wounded Sun from the ground "I'll get him to your mother, just make sure you quickly follow back home!" he said before leaping away. Ghira, being the former leader of the White Fang during its peaceful period, was still very physically capable as a Faunus, and was able to get Sun back to the Belladonna manor quicker than Blake.
Blake also made her way back to their house after her father had left with Sun. On the way, she decided to pass through the woods they went through earlier, trying to find some other clues as to the White Fang's plans besides the chameleon faunus' scroll that they managed to get during the brief scuffle.
While the search for clues was for naught, she did manage to find Sun's scroll on a pile of leaves at the bottom of one of the trees around the Belladonna manor. She frowned as she remembered how the scroll got there in the first place. It was during their little fight earlier, that in a brief moment of anger, Blake snatched the scroll from Sun's hand and quickly threw it out to the woods.
Ironically, this was also the reason why they discovered Ilia's presence, as they had heard the scroll hit the chameleon faunus after Blake had thrown it. Blake then felt a little relieved when she saw that Sun's scroll wasn't damaged at all, figuring that the leaves must have softened the fall. If anything, it was the least she could do to make it up to treating him like she had.
"Please be safe." she said, clutching the scroll tightly to her chest.
Ghira had managed to carry Sun back to the manor minutes before Blake, and while the hasty retreat had proved really important in keeping Sun's condition from worsening, it didn't change the fact that he was in bad shape. Ghira quickly brought him to one of the guest rooms, where Kali went to treat his wounds. Kali quickly went to work on treating the wounded Sun, taking his blood soaked shirt off to get a better look at where Ilia had struck him.
Having already lost a considerable amount of blood, Sun was now unconscious, which made Kali worry a bit as she cleaned the area around his wound.
"To think you'd go this far for my baby girl...you know, she's really lucky to have friends like you." Unlike Ghira, Kali had been approving of the boy ever since they arrived, but she never realized just how much Blake meant to him until now "I'll get you patched up, don't you worry. I know Blake would want that."
The moment she got back in the house, Blake saw her father outside the guest room, and she quickly went to see how Sun was doing. Kali, who was a well-known Faunus doctor in Menagerie during her youth, was more than capable of patching Sun up, but it didn't stop Blake from being openly worried.
"Dad, how is he?" she asked, her voice reflecting how worried she was for her friend.
"I don't know yet, your mother just started treating him in there, so we'll have to wait 'til she's done." replied her father.
"It's my fault...if I was just quick enough...it should have been me!" she said in between sobs, slowly losing control of her emotions.
Ghira, noticing that his daughter was trying so hard to put up a brave face, put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her close to him. "He's going to be fine. Your mother will make sure of that." as much as he didn't like the first impression that the boy had made on him, he could see that he meant a lot to his daughter, and that he was willing to put himself in harm's way for her. "Besides, he wouldn't want to hear you blaming yourself for what happened to him now, would he?" he said, giving her a reassuring look.
One look at her father was all she needed. It was more than enough to open the floodgates and whatever restraint that Blake had been keeping on her emotions complete vanished, and she could only cling to her father as she broke down in tears. She was never one to even shed tears, but everything that had happened from the time she left the White Fang, to the fall of Beacon, to what happened to Sun, everything just finally took their toll on her.
Ghira frowned as he held his crying daughter, feeling her pain as would any caring father would, as he gently rubbed her back to comfort her. "It's going to be alright, sweetie."
"Everyone gets hurt because of me!" Blake cried out "Even home isn't safe! I...if I stay here, then you and mom would get hurt too!" besides her guilt, Blake was now also crying her fears out.
"Dear, don't say that, and don't blame yourself." Ghira tried to keep his voice calm, despite the fact that he was hurt by Blake's words. "We are your family, this is your home. We watch over each other...we watch over our friends. I am not going to let my daughter come home from a dangerous place to just watch her leave again." Ghira was grateful that Blake couldn't see his pained expression right now.
Blake furiously shook her head "But you've seen it yourself! Sun was hurt simply because he was with me! He wasn't even supposed to get dragged into this mess but look what happened to him!"
"And do you think he'd rather be elsewhere?" Ghira's question sent Blake into stunned silence, and he knew he had hit the nail on the head "The mere fact that he, like you, left his team in Mistral to follow you to wherever you'd go tells me that this was something he really wanted to do." more silence from Blake told him he was right "I would not want to be the one to deliver the bad news that the girl he got hurt trying to save left him alone to go to some other place while he was out. Believe me, he wouldn't even mind reopening that wound of his to chase after you."
It took a few more moments of silence from Blake before she spoke up "Why?...why would anyone even go so far..." Sun was more than just a friend she'd made back in Beacon, he was the only other person she'd told about her past to, and outside of Team RWBY, he was the one person closest to her.
"I'm afraid that this is something only he can answer." Ghira replied "But if you were to ask me, it would be the same reason why I would cross the whole of Remnant to find your mother." and while he wouldn't say it straight up, Ghira was now starting to warm up to the boy that had tailed his only daughter from the chaos that was Vale all the way to Menagerie. "But if you ask me, he's still pretty sloppy to get hurt so easily."
"Dad..." Blake trailed off, realizing what her father was getting at. In a way, she was actually glad, as opposite reception from her parents about Sun weighed a bit on her mind, but why she was even concerned about her parents' opinion for a friend in the first place was beyond her.
Kali soon came out of the guest room and Ghira and Blake quickly came up to her, looking to find out how Sun was. The simple smile and nod that she gave her husband and daughter told them all they needed to know, Blake releasing a relieved sigh. The older cat faunus then turned to her husband "Dear, can you move him to your study? The bed here in the guest room is quite hard so it's not as comfortable as I want him to rest up." she requested, to which Ghira simply nodded and stepped into the guest room to get Sun moved.
Blake kept her eyes on Sun as her father carried him out of the guest room, she could see that while her mother had managed to get him bandaged up, his wound hadn't closed up well enough as the bandage itself was soaked in blood. She found herself clenching her fist as she looked on at his weakened state, but felt a certain sense of comfort and relief that she had not felt in quite a while.
"He's a tough one, I could tell you two had it rough out there." said Kali as she walked beside her daughter, putting a hand on Blake's arm "It was a close call, whatever struck him went completely through, but fortunately, it didn't hit anything vital. It's a good thing your father found you as quickly as he did...any later, and...it could have been worse." Kali could feel Blake shaking as she told her just how dangerous Sun's condition was, even when she didn't explicitly told her of the worst case scenario, Kali knew Blake had realized it already.
"Mom...will he be alright?" Blake asked, her voice cracking as she spoke.
"He'll make it." Kali saw Blake breathe a relieved sigh once more "Plus, that boy has a really powerful aura, his wounds should heal pretty quickly once his aura is replenished."
Blake then promptly hugged her mother "Thank you, mom. Thank you so much." Blake tearfully said in pure relief, finally being able to cast aside the thought of losing probably the only person left who could still consider her a friend.
"It's nothing, dear." Kali told her daugter as she returned the hug "With the way he put himself out there for you, Sun is already family in my eyes." while she had already taken a liking to the boy ever since he and Blake arrived, this incident now completely won her over.
"Mom, this isn't the time for that, you know?" said the slightly embarassed Blake, who was thankful that her mother couldn't see her blushing cheeks at that moment.
Kali took a deep breath before she spoke "He kept calling your name." her words made Blake instantly pull back from her, a surprised look present on her face "You should watch over him, he would want you to be the first thing he sees when he wakes up." her soft, yet serious tone was a far cry from the time when she teased her daughter about the monkey faunus "I could hear you and your father while I was inside, and all I can say is that you shouldn't blame yourself for everything that happens to the people around you. Everybody makes their choices and I'm sure Sun and your friend Yang didn't even have to stop to think when they made their decisions to protect you."
Blake once again, found herself in stunned silence. Deep down she knew her mother was right, but at the same time, she simply couldn't shake off the fact that Sun and Yang had gotten themselves hurt for her sake. She was training to be a huntress, and even in her cynical eyes, huntresses are supposed to be the ones protecting people, and yet here she is, living on as the protected one. Not one bit of it sat right with her.
It hurt her pride, but most of all, it hurt her heart so much it was almost unbearable. It hurt that she had to abandon her best friend right after she had lost an arm trying to save her. It hurt that the boy who had stubbornly followed her home now had a hole through his shoulder trying to watch her back. It didn't help that she had been trying to push him out of her life not too long ago, all because she had been angry with him for being too imposing. Sure, he hadn't been the most tactful person when they arrived, but remembering that his intentions have always been well-meaning only served to make Blake feel worse about herself.
Kali, after watching Blake's lips slowly turn into a frown and her fists clenching tight, put both her hands on her daughter's shoulders. "I don't know what happened between you two before all this, but I'm sure it's nothing a sincere talk wouldn't fix." she began "Knowing him, he'll be more than willing to listen to whatever you have to say, just as you need to stop and listen to whatever he has to say as well."
Blake nodded and hugged her mother once more "Mom...can you do me a favor?" she asked, and noticing her mother had an expectant look on her face, she continued "Can you put in a good word to dad for me?" she asked.
Kali just chuckled, she didn't have to ask for more details to know what her daughter was talking about. "Sweetheart, your father might act like that, but I know he's reasonable enough to already see how nice that boy really is." she had an amused expression as she watched Blake blush, looking away in vain to try and hide it "But I'll do as you ask, I'm pretty sure he'll at least listen to me."
For the first time that night, Blake managed to find it in her to smile "Thanks, mom. I'll be on my way." Blake then hurried to her father's study, where Ghira had laid Sun down on the sofa, his head resting on the armrest on one end. After handing Ilia's and Sun's scrolls to her father for him to see if they could find any leads to what the rogue faction of the White Fang was planning, Blake sat down on the smaller sofa at the foot of the one Sun was lying on.
"My hero...thank you...and I'm sorry." she said weakly as she watched his sleeping form. Blake couldn't help but cringe at the stained bandages that stretched from Sun's chest all the way to his back, going over his shoulder. "When you wake up...I promise to be honest with everything. Why I acted the way I did...and why I left them behind like that. You deserve that much after everything you've put yourself through...for me."