Blake bumps into a young man as she weaves through the crowds at a faunus rights protest. She isn't alone- her family is nearby, and she's going to need to get back to them eventually so they can go home for the night. If she needs to, she can slip off for the night to one of the markets, or get herself away from the chaos for whatever time she can.
But for now, she has decided to stay there and to see how things go.
The boy is taller than her by more than a few inches. Blazing eyes, vibrant red hair with sharp horns that lie with the grain of it, and he radiates charisma.
"Sorry." She says as she edges past, but he looks at her, and she almost feels insignificant under his gaze.
He's attractive.
"Wait." He says calmly but there's an edge of something in his voice. He's taking a step towards her. Blake watches him. He's wearing black clothes, the same that she is, but instead of choosing white or purple to compliment it, he's wearing burning, violent red. It reminds her of fire, of blood, of flowers. "You're Blake Belladonna."
The recognition isn't entirely unfamiliar. In fact, it's something that she's used to at that point. When people look at her, they often only see her father. The great Ghira Belladonna. Former High Leader of the White Fang. Chieftain of Menagerie. The imposing figure in white and violet that leads their people forward.
Or stagnates them. It depends on who is asked.
They don't know him as Blake does. Surely this boy would never be able to imagine the great Ghira Belladonna having tea, or carrying her around on her shoulders.
In a way, the recognition only serves to set Blake on guard.
"I am." She confirms, watching the boy across from her. "Why?"
"No reason." He replies, watching her closely. "I'm just surprised to see you at a protest, after your father stepped down as High Leader."
Blake blinks, because that wasn't exactly an angle that she'd been expecting for this man to take. She glances back over her shoulder at the crowd. She's sure that Ilia will still be in there, perhaps she should go and find her. Blake isn't sure. Maybe continuing this conversation isn't such a bad idea because this boy seems… interesting.
"I still believe in the White Fang's cause. All of us do. Equality is something that we need." Blake says, hardening her voice and knowing that her ears were beginning to lie flat in irritation. "My father stepping down and taking the position of Chieftain hasn't changed any of that."
The boy reaches out for her with an open hand. He's wearing gloves, and while Blake could absolutely read into it, she's not going to. It probably doesn't matter. "My name is Adam Taurus." He introduces himself, and his eyes are ablaze with something that Blake can't quite identify.
She reaches out to return the handshake. "Blake." She repeats her name, the same way that he had earlier. "Though I suppose you already know that."
He smiles at her, and Blake feels a little surprised for it. There's a slight flutter of something in her chest that she can't quite identify. His hand pulls away for a moment, and Blake lowers her hand down to her side calmly. "Was there…" She starts. Stops. Watches his face. "Anything that you needed?"
"No." Adam replies, ever too calmly. "I just wanted to make your acquaintance." He takes a step back from her, turns, and Blake watches as he leaves.
For some reason, she can't get him out of her head that night.
Blake doesn't exactly mind.
Blake meets Adam again a week later at a different protest. This time she's gone without her father's blessing. There were reports the week before, about broken windows and fires that had been set long after she'd gone home. The fact that she'd gone home hadn't mattered- violence was violence and her family wanted her away from it.
The fact that she'd be kept from the protest feels like a misguided sort of punishment, so Blake slips out late at night and makes her way to the protest herself. After all, she knows that she won't be there alone. She'll have Ilia.
When she arrives, the docks are already full and clamoring. People have crowded on, all interested in hearing a message communicated that they all need to hear. It's a regular faction meeting, Blake realizes quickly. The sort of thing that would be arranged and set up with the intent of recruiting other faunus into the White Fang. She's never really been to one herself- being the daughter of two high ranking members of the organization has a lot to do with it.
For Blake, she can say that she was born into the White Fang and it's the honest truth. People that know about her father, about her mother, they would never doubt it.
Adam is there, and while Blake wasn't really looking for him, she's almost glad to see him. Ilia was going to be there as well, but if she was Blake wasn't exactly expecting to see her. Ilia knew how to hide better than anyone and she knew how to pass- Blake was jealous of her for it. There are other things about Ilia that Blake doesn't even begin to be jealous for.
But she's not there for Ilia. She's not even there for Adam.
She's there because Sienna Khan is there, and Blake wants to hear what the woman that technically removed her father from power has to say.
Blake falls into the crowd, and watches the stand at the edge of the docks where Sienna is probably going to climb up and speak. She's mostly focused on it, occasionally letting her ears swivel to listen in on the conversations around her.
That concentration is broken by the feeling of someone's arm bumping against her own.
It's Adam. He's wearing something similar to what he had been wearing last time, but this time he looks more like he's prepared for a battle. It's the first time that it occurs to Blake that he's probably trained to fight, possibly even in a somewhat formal setting.
For her, who learned out of her family's home, and who has never fought a proper grimm but is sure that will come soon, it's strange. Almost exotic. Blake looks at him, and she peels her eyes away to direct her attention towards the front where the great Sienna Khan is making an appearance.
Almost as soon as Sienna had started talking, Adam was doing the same.
"What brings you here?" He asks her, bracing himself against a stall at her side. It almost feels like he's trying to place himself in Blake's space directly, but the crowded area makes her dismiss that thought.
Blake doesn't look up at him. "I wanted to hear what she had to say." She said quietly, because that was the truth. "And I'm not here, officially."
Adam laughs, and it's a dark sort of laugh. One she's never heard before. "Daddy didn't want you to see the woman that made him fall?"
"She didn't make him do anything." Blake replied, keeping her voice down because she didn't want to make a nuisance of herself any more than she wanted to let people notice her. "The White Fang was moving past him. They needed a change in leadership, and he had a better opportunity to be there for our people."
"The White Fang is going to lead a revolution." Adam whispers, his gaze focused completely on Sienna, who stands at the front. "And show humanity what good they really are."
Blake glances over at him, and a question comes to her mind that she hasn't asked before. She's never seen him around the Albain Twins, and she's never seen him close to Ilia. A part of her wonders whether or not Adam was from Menagerie like she was. If he wasn't, he definitely wouldn't have been the first to come from the kingdoms.
But really, Blake doesn't even know if he's a member of the White Fang. Not officially, at least.
"It's a noble cause." Blake murmurs, still watching Sienna. The woman at the front is standing tall over them, an arm splayed out as she emoted through her speech. "Humanity needs to see us as equals."
"And you're going to fight for it?" Adam asks, his voice still down. "The Belladonna princess?"
"I'm not a princess." Blake bites back without any hesitation, feeling her ears flatten back against her head in irritation. "And I'm not the only one in my family that believes in this cause."
"Yet you're the only one here."
Blake sighs, and for the first time she peels her attention away from Sienna Khan so that she can look at Adam instead. "That doesn't mean anything."
Adam is watching her, his attention not leaving her where she was standing for even a moment. He smiles, and its devilish and handsome and Blake wants to remember it forever. "Doesn't it?" He asks her, and Blake pauses because….
Well, he isn't wrong, is he? Her parents had tried to stop her from coming.
Blake sighs. "I know why I'm here." She says, keeping her voice hard almost like she's trying to convince herself of it.
"Justice?"
"Equality." Blake corrects. "For the Faunus to be seen and treated the same just as anyone else." Her ears twitch at that, and Blake tries to ignore it. She glances back to Adam. "Justice?"
Adam stood there, his eyes glued to Sienna Khan as she spoke on the docks. He looked intense, like he was doing his best to think the words that he wanted to say before he decided to go ahead and say them. Blake watched, curious and unsure of what to do or think or say.
Finally, Adam decided to speak.
"Did you know-" He started, his voice dark and intense in ways that Blake couldn't easily quantify. "That there was another cave in at one of the Schnee mines in Mantle last week."
Blake blinked, because that was something that she hadn't heard about, not directly. In truth, after having heard about cave ins all of her life she was at a point where she was starting to feel desensitized to the news of them. There were some people out there, like Ilia who had lost people to those mines themselves. To them it would always hurt, but for Blake-
Well, the rage that she felt was hard to explain and harder to quantify. It was a more general thing, a greater pain and a longing for something better but-
But she didn't have a good way of explaining those things.
So when Adam asked her if she knew, Blake only had one answer.
"I didn't know about it specifically." She said, her eyes flicking up to the man at her side. He frowned and nodded, and the look did absolutely nothing to lessen how striking his features were. Blake glanced away as soon as she got the chance.
"Figures." Adam muttered, almost like he was growling the word out. "Do you think that their families will get justice?"
"For the cave-in?" Blake asked, pausing. "No. I doubt it. If it really was a Schnee mine, they will do what they need to make themselves look good and then move on."
"Exactly." Adam responded, his hand resting on the hilt of the sword at his side. Blake glanced down at his hand, watching the way that the man's thumb smoothed over the fabric that wrapped around the sword. It was almost loving, the way that he touched it. "I want justice for our people, Blake. I want for humankind to understand what they have done, and give us back what we are owed. The world is standing by while the Faunus are being exploited, and I refuse to stand for any of it."
"And you think that she's the way?" Blake asked, turning and staring forward to Sienna Khan once more. She had just finished speaking, and Blake hadn't managed to hear even a word of it. She'd been too busy talking to Adam, and so there was a part of her that was disappointed, but at the same time-
She couldn't be.
Adam stepped away from where he was standing, turning and watching her as she took a step away from the stand where she had arranged herself. "I think she is a start." Adam finally said, his voice as icy as ever. "She sees the way that things should be. Better than anyone else has."
Underneath all of that, there was definitely some sort of insult that Blake didn't want to let slide. She believed in her family, and what they stood for. It wasn't as though Sienna didn't stand for the same things, or even that Adam stood for different things.
They just thought that it could be dealt with in different ways.
Blake sighed. "I want to see justice too." She said, after a moment that lasted for far too long. "For our people."
"As you should." Adam muttered. "I'm just trying to figure out what the best part to attack is. I think that the top is a good one. Businesses that won't serve us. Academies that won't accept us."
"So Atlas?"
"No." Adam muttered. "Man."
He took another step away from her, pushing his burning red hair away from his face as he began to prepare to leave the docks. "It's late."
"It is." Blake replied, not exactly wanting to think about how she had snuck out that night. She would have to get back into her family's mansion, past the guards and without alerting any of them to her absence. It would be difficult, but if there was anything that she was getting good at, it was moving in shadows. "I should head home."
Adam nodded. "You should come to the next faction meeting." He said, keeping his voice down. Almost like he was afraid to let anyone know that he was speaking, but all that Blake could think was that 'fear' wasn't a word that she would have associated with Adam. It felt wrong.
"I'll try." Blake murmured without thinking, already turning to begin the walk back to her family's home.
As she left the docks, she couldn't avoid the feeling that there was a pair of eyes on her back the entire time.
Adam's eyes.
The White Fang had official offices within Kuo Kuana, that occasionally acted as a sort of combat academy to the people of Menagerie. Most people chose to forgo this sort of training, all more interested in living their peaceful lives than they were engaging in battle of any sorts. Most were too tired to even want to bother.
The official story that the academy, run by the Albain twins gave was that they taught young faunus the best ways to utilize their gifts in defense of their homes. After all, they lived on an island that was mostly desert, and the things that lived in the desert would gladly take the opportunity to tear them apart as soon as someone strayed a bit too far.
Going to the academy for any reason had been Ilia's idea. She had been looking for a good way for her to better hone the use of her color shifting, and the Albains had been willing to give her an outlet in the matter. Blake wasn't completely sure as to why she was invited along but she was willing to take the chance to get out of the house anyways.
Besides, it was a chance for her to see the way that it had changed there since her father had left the White Fang. Blake couldn't think of the last time that she had been to any official facilities since. All that she had managed to attend were the faction meetings and the protests that had been within her ability to attend.
The building was grand. Huge and clearly built with the idea of showcasing the White Fang's strength in mind.
When Blake and Ilia went inside, the only thing that she could see on her friend's face was the obvious look of awe at her surroundings.
Blake can't act like she doesn't feel the same way about being in the building. It almost feels like she is meant to be there, like she had always been meant to be there because the building had been constructed in the same year that she had been born. Even though she didn't get her combat training for the White Fang, there was a part of Blake that almost yearned to be able to do the same for herself as Ilia now did.
"It's amazing, isn't it?" Ilia asks her. She takes a half-step back, tilting her head back at the same time so that she can get a good look at a banner that was hanging above the two of them. Blake took a look for herself, and paused when she realized what it was.
It was her father's banner, but it was different. While the logo was mostly the same, the colors had been changed. The white and blue that her father had chosen had been replaced with burning red and inky black. The circle that had once surrounded the beast's head on the flag was gone, replaced with three slashes through it.
The sight of the changed flag was more than enough to leave Blake feeling like her stomach was churning.
"Yeah," Blake said, bringing her gaze back down to her friend. Ilia had a small smile stretched across her face, like she didn't have anywhere else in the world where she would have rather been. "It is."
Ilia nodded and turned towards Blake, her skin beginning to shift to a vibrant green for just a moment before Ilia forced it back. Seeing Ilia hide herself the way that she did had always inspired a certain sadness in Blake, because she knew enough. Ilia had already told her about Atlas, about hiding herself.
Ilia had the power to pass as a human, and she chose not to, but Blake still watched her friend force her traits back almost by habit because that was what felt safe.
"The twins are going to train me." Ilia begins to explain, her eyes bright. "I don't have a weapon yet, so I am going to have to borrow one of theirs but-"
"You're excited?" Blake asked, still watching her friend and feeling herself smile just the same way.
"I am." Ilia sighed, smiling almost sweetly as she looked down at the ground. "This is my first chance to start standing for our people. And my chance to learn to defend myself."
"I'm sure it'll go well." Blake said, thinking back to her own training sessions that she'd been to at her father's instruction. "Your trait-"
"Makes me well suited for stealth." Ilia finished before Blake got a chance to finish what she was saying for herself. "At least, that's what Corsac said about it. And Fennec agreed."
There was a thought that occured to Blake, that if she wanted and she asked nicely enough it would be possible for her to undergo training with the White Fang herself. Even if her parents didn't necessarily approve, that didn't mean that she couldn't ask. Besides, they would probably be glad to know that she was undergoing training with friends and others her age, the White Fang be damned.
Ilia turned to Blake, her eyes bright and excited. "I'm sure that I'm going to be good here." She said, smiling. "At the very least I figure it'll be better than prep school in Atlas."
"I think that anything could be better than that." Blake said, smiling and joking along.
"Exactly." Ilia paused, her eyes widening for a second, and Blake glanced over in the same direction that her friend was looking to see that one of the Albain twins had wandered into their view and was looking at Ilia in a way that was almost expectant. He hovered there, and Ilia sighed before looking at Blake. "I think that I have to go..."
Blake watched the man at the door, recognizing him as the taller of the twins, Corsac. She sighed and looked back to Ilia. "Go." She said quietly, relaxing slightly and taking a half-step back so that she could put some space between herself and Ilia. "I'll be here."
Ilia smiled and then she was going off on her own, and Blake was left alone. Ilia and Corsac dipped back out of view and Blake closed her eyes, concentrating on what she could hear for just a bit to see whether or not she could listen in on anything that the two of them were saying.
But that wasn't easy, when she was in a building that had been constructed with people being able to listen in in mind. Faunus knew faunus better than anyone else, and they had learned to work around individual traits generations before. Some things, like being able to see in the dark and enhanced hearing were universal enough that nearly all buildings in Menagerie were built with them in mind.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps against the wooden floor. Blake wasn't able to stop her ears from twitching before opening her eyes and turning slightly. What she saw was Adam, taking a step into the same room that Blake was in. He was dressed in what appeared to be his combat gear once again, and while Blake wanted to react to that, she didn't feel quite right doing so.
"Blake." He greeted her, a sly smile stretching across his face all at once. "What brings you here?"
Blake let her eyes flick back down to the floor before she allowed herself to answer. "I came with a friend." She explained herself calmly. "That's all."
"So you are just here so that you can be here for someone?" Adam asked, stretching as he crossed the room before leaning against a wall directly in Blake's line of sight and crossing his arms over his chest. "Not to fight?"
Blake hesitated, because she wanted to be involved in the fight. She wanted it so badly that she didn't even know how she wanted to deal with it. In theory, she could have gone ahead and taken her place among the ranks of the White Fang and seen no trouble for it. If anything, if she were to go with them she was likely to be treated exceptionally well.
Even if the White Fang was changing its methods, and its leadership had changed, there was still respect for her family.
"I don't know." Blake finally said, hugging herself and gripping her elbows a little too tightly in the process. "I want to."
"So why don't you?" Adam asked, tilting his head to the side a little bit and staring at her in a way that was able to bore into her very being. Blake couldn't do all that much to suppress the shiver that ran down her spine at it.
She shrugged, unable to think of any good reason that she could give which wasn't going to come back to her family in the end. No matter what, it always went back to there because Blake didn't really know that what she wanted to do was go ahead, take her things, and leave her family behind entirely.
"It's complicated." Blake finally answered, holding her head up high and meeting Adam's gaze. "I want to."
Adam nodded, understanding. Blake felt something in her do a flip, but she didn't want to have to move forward and think about it too much. It was too complicated, too messy for her to focus on that entirely. "You could be making a difference, Blake." Adam said, stretching just slightly and making himself more comfortable. "Our people need justice."
"And I want justice for our people."
Adam pushed off from the wall and crossed the room, drawing closer to Blake with every step. He removed his sword from its sheath at his side and stood in front of Blake, holding the weapon out for her with more than enough space for her to take the hilt from him.
"Then act."
Blake hesitated for a moment, reached out, and grabbed Adam's sword by the hilt.
Their hands brushed together, and she tried to think nothing of it.