Okay. Not going to lie, I had way too much fun writing Weiss' dad, and honestly that entire family is my absolute favorite brand of fucked up. So here we are!

A few housekeeping things to start off with. This is six chapters, counting the prologue, and it's already written in its entirety. It's even been through a couple rounds of editing. With that in mind, I'll be dropping a chapter a day, after giving each of them a last brush-up. There'll also be two to start with, because what the hell, right? This first one is really short anyway.

Last thing, I swear. I don't normally put much personal life stuff in these notes, but in this case the world at large is mostly just lucky I don't know where to obtain a megaphone to shout it from the rooftops. Yeah, I wrote this entire thing during the wait leading up to top surgery*, and it was edited during recovery! I'm a little over a week post-op right now, and feeling a fuck of a lot better than I expected. So that's fun!

*Top surgery in this case is referring to a double mastectomy, wherein a trans person (in this case trans male) gets rid of a pair of unwanted boobies.

Anyways, without further ado...

Bad Joke

Yang didn't like Atlas.

For one thing, it was stupid cold. Yang was more weather-resistant than most people, but even she had shivered through their first day there. It was so cold that poor Oscar started talking funny because his face had gone numb. It was so cold that she'd slept under the blankets for the first time in years. It was so cold that Sun was wearing a shirt.

The environment wasn't as friendly as it had been in Mistral, either. People kept giving them mistrustful looks. They were strangers, and with the border closed that made them suspicious characters.

But the main reason she didn't like Atlas—or maybe it would be better to say that it was the reason she hated the place instead of just disliking it—was that being here was clearly driving Weiss insane. They couldn't just walk around with the easily-recognizable runaway Schnee heiress, so she couldn't go outside without a disguise and a chaperon. That, and being close to home made her restless. She had taken to pacing around the house they were staying in, muttering darkly under her breath, and staying up into the early morning reading textbooks she'd borrowed from Haven.

If there was one good thing to be said about this place, it was that it had something approximating a CCT network. The connection was slow and a bit unstable, and it didn't reach outside the kingdom, but being able to call when someone inevitably ran twenty minutes late on a grocery run instead of panicking was excellent.

There was also something else about Atlas, something she wasn't sure if she loved or hated. Namely, they were crammed way closer together. Space was at a premium, and Qrow and Ozpin didn't have nearly as much political clout as they had in Mistral. This meant that there were thirteen people all squished into a total of five rooms. They'd ended up mostly in threes—team JNPR; Yang, Ruby, and Weiss; Blake, Sun, and Ilia—with Oscar and Qrow and Blake's parents taking the last two rooms.

On the one hand, Yang had missed sharing a room with her team. On the other... she wasn't sure how to feel about Blake electing to stay with her new (technically old) friends instead. Sure, Weiss had told her half a dozen times not to be stupid and that she just wasn't sure if she was welcome, but still. She could have asked. Except then Yang would have said yes, because Weiss was right and she was definitely an idiot, and then they'd be stuck together all the time and the awkward silences would have swallowed them whole.

The way it had worked out seemed... not good, exactly, but the best thing out of a whole lot of bad options. Especially since Ruby dragged Blake into their room to hang out anyway, she was wonderful and stubborn that way, so they were getting all the benefits of sharing with none of the downsides. At least, that was what Yang kept telling herself.

This afternoon was one of those times, which meant that Ruby was on Yang's bed so that Blake had somewhere to sit, and she and Weiss were desperately trying to hold up a conversation on life support. No one wanted to talk about their time in Beacon—the void it left behind was still too raw. Everyone was sick of speculating about what Atlas' relic would be and how they were supposed to find it, so that was out. Bringing up what happened in the time since Beacon was just a reminder of how long they'd spent apart, and how different everything felt now. That left... well...

"So... you mentioned yesterday that you can see the northern lights here," Ruby said.

Weiss nodded, then hesitated. "Well, not this time of year. It has to be the dead of winter for that."

"This isn't the dead of winter?" Ruby asked, sounding horrified. Weiss smirked.

"This is autumn, yes."

"Doesn't feel like it," Yang said, mostly just to contribute something.

Weiss shrugged, waving a hand as if it didn't matter that autumn in Atlas was already worse than the worst winter Yang could remember on Patch. "We wouldn't be able to see them from here even if it were the right season. Too close to the city center. If there aren't Grimm breathing down your neck, you're too near civilization."

"I thought there weren't really Grimm on Solitas." Ruby started fidgeting with her cloak.

Weiss made a so-so gesture. "There are, but there are fewer of them. They don't have conventional cardiovascular systems, so they have to be quite big and very, very slow to survive up here."

It was more interesting than Yang would have expected, but they were still talking about the weather.

"Are you, uh..." Yang stopped, realizing that she might be about to kill the mood. But, then again... it wasn't like it was that alive in the first place. "Are you okay being back here? I know you didn't leave on the best terms, so..." It was a really, really stupid question, and she regretted asking it almost immediately.

Thankfully, Weiss didn't seem to mind. "As long as I don't need to get within a ten mile radius of the manor, I think I'll manage."

Ruby grinned. "All in favor of avoiding Weiss' dad like the plague?"

"Aye!" It was the first thing they'd gotten out of Blake in around half an hour, and she raised her hand so fast her shoulder made a little popping sound. Yang tipped her head back and laughed, and for about half a second the two of them were laughing together. Then she realized what she was doing and it trailed off into a tense, self-conscious silence.

Yang caught Weiss giving her a look, and mustered up an apologetic wince. It wasn't like she'd meant for that to happen, it was just... it was weird, and she couldn't help noticing how weird it was, which only made it worse.

Weiss sighed and said, "Well, I suppose if nothing else we can agree on—" and then there was a noise coming from her scroll. She paused, looking to the side. "Is that Qrow?"

"Uh... no?" Ruby scratched at the back of her head. "Unless he couldn't get me or Oscar for some reason."

It wasn't a call, either. Just a single buzz. Weiss picked up her scroll, opened it, and read the message. She went deadly still.

"...Weiss?" Yang stood and walked over to her. Wordlessly, Weiss handed her the scroll. The picture was of a young boy, maybe around Oscar's age, with the same white hair and blue eyes as Weiss.

"You have a brother?" It was all Yang could think to say. Then she glanced down and read the text. It was four letters, all lower case, with no punctuation.

― help

Yang passed it on to Ruby, then sat down next to Weiss. She was staring into space, with a little crease forming between her eyebrows. Then she got up, grabbed the scroll, now in Blake's hand, and typed out a response.

"I'm going home," she said, still paying more attention to the screen than anything else.

Yang exchanged a look with Ruby and Blake. For once, they were in perfect agreement.

"We're going with you," Ruby decided.

"You don't have to—"

They all gave her that, 'You're being an idiot' look. "Yeah," Yang said, heaping on the sarcasm, "because nothing should pull us away from the important work we're doing around here." Ozpin and Qrow were looking for the relic—the rest of them were loafing about, training, and looking pretty.

The place they'd been staying at wasn't close to the Schnee Manor. Not even sort of. In fact, it was so not-close that it was two hours from the city center by airship. Except they couldn't go there directly, because all air traffic in and out of the manor had to be approved by Weiss' father. Instead they got off at the nearest town, a tiny freckle on the map called Lingon, still a four or five hour car ride from the manor. Yang could see how agonizing it was for Weiss, resigning herself to not getting there until early tomorrow morning. She tried not to let herself imagine how that would feel.

Weiss directed the driver without telling him where they were going. When he figured it out, he balked a little. She took off her hood to glare at him. He shut up and drove. Yang made a mental note to give him a huge tip later.

"This is insane," Weiss decided, at around two in the morning.

"Very," Yang agreed, "but I'd be worried if you weren't doing something insane after a message like that."

"It might be a trap."

Ruby, who was riding shotgun, twisted her head around to stare wide-eyed at her partner. "He wouldn't do that, would he?"

"If father asked? In a heartbeat."

"It'd be a pretty stupid trap, though," Yang pointed out. "What, he locks four Huntresses in his manor and... oops, looks like they busted down the wall and walked right back out again. Guess he'll have to pay for repairs."

Weiss snickered. "Yes, well." The smile faded. "I just... I can't figure out why he'd message me."

"Well... you're his big sister," Ruby said slowly, like that explained everything. Yang beamed at her.

"Yes, but we've hated each other since he was old enough to read."

Yang winced. "Well... is there someone else you think he'd talk to?"

Weiss was quiet for a while. Then, "I don't know. He isn't fond of Winter either."

Thus began the downward spiral, as Weiss started to wonder aloud what could possibly have prompted her little brother who hated her to ask her for help. It was, according to her, at least as bad as the White Fang invading the manor.

Her scroll vibrated again. She snapped it open so quickly Yang was a little worried she might break it. Then she tilted it so that the rest of them could read the message.

― Ignore that. Bad joke.

"Drive faster," Weiss told the driver. He stepped on it.