AN: Like my other work, this one is going to be on an inconsistent writing schedule. To those of you reading Magic Mirror, I swear chapter 4 is going to come out eventually, I just want to get to a specific point in the story I haven't gotten to yet. I promise, not abandoned, I will always specifically signpost if something is abandoned.
"Do you like snow?"
It was too poetic, Blake thought, this girl in white with too-pale skin, holding a hand out to try and catch the snow falling in fat flakes all around them. It had been snowing for hours now, and she had to be cold. Even the corpse lying facedown in a drift, or the bloodied sword she held in her other hand, could not ruin the picture. It didn't seem real, Blake coming upon her like this.
"No," Blake said, watching the flakes fall. "The winter never brought any good for us."
To Blake's surprise, the girl cracked a smile at that. A small, weak thing that did little more than draw Blake's attention to the fresh looking scar on her face.
"I think I'm meant to kill you," the girl said, looking at her. She looked down at the sword in her hand, and back to Blake. "Or he was supposed to kill you." She sighed.
"Why?" Blake asked, making sure she knew exactly where Gambol Shroud was. If she had to, she could have a shadow clone prepared and both the sword and its sheath ready to defend herself with.
The girl looked up, all of a sudden bring her free hand to the side of her head. "I think," she said, "because you're a faunus?" She took a step closer. Blake tensed, unthinkingly bringing a hand up to her own ears. "I think we don't like them that much?"
Blake glanced at the girl's hand that held the sword, an expensive looking dust-sword that, considering the body still lying between them, the girl obviously knew how to use. She realized as she looked at how the girl was gripping it that even if she wanted to attack Blake, the way she was gripping it was all wrong. "Who are you?" Blake asked.
"Why would you be out here? The snow is falling," the girl asked instead of answering.
"I'm hunting," Blake said, unsure if she wanted to specify for what exactly.
That gave the girl pause. "Oh," she said, "strange, I thought I killed all the huntsmen they sent after me."
"Someone sent hunters after you? A person?" Blake asked, incredulous. If the girl was telling the truth, that was odd, to say the least. Blake had heard of less scrupulous hunters going after faunus for lien, but never humans. And never humans so obviously wealthy as this girl.
The girl shrugged. Her focus seemed to wander back to the falling snow, before she visibly made an effort to shift it back to Blake. "You weren't sent to try and kill me too? I was sent away, but that wasn't enough," she said, and frowned. She brought her free hand to the scar Blake had noticed. "I understand why she did, though," the girl said.
She sounded as though she were struggling to speak through something, though Blake still had no real way of knowing what exactly was wrong with her. "I don't want to hurt you. I wasn't hunting for people," Blake said. "Would you rather I leave you to deal with..." she could not tell the corpse's gender from this perspective, so she chose a pronoun at random, "her?"
"No, don't leave, I'm not sure where I'm meant to go," the girl said, "do you know how hard it is to use glyphs like this?"
"Do you want help removing her?" Blake asked, trying to see if she could get the girl to focus.
"No, leave her to the snow, it fits," the girl said. "I'm Weiss," she said, finally answering what was honestly the most important question. "I'd rather that my father thought me dead," she said. "It'd make things simpler."
"Do you have somewhere to go?" Blake asked. Considering the state that Weiss was in, whether it was from some kind of substance or just being in the cold for so long, Blake didn't think she could pose any real danger, even if this were some bizarre kind of trap.
The girl shrugged, "Don't you have hunting to do?" she asked, and Blake shook her head.
"Not anymore, with you in this state. Would you accept an offer of a place to sleep?" she asked. A flicker of confusion passed over Weiss' face, gone almost as quickly as it appeared.
"Yes, of course. Do you know who I am?" she asked, not in a haughty way, but out of genuine confusion.
"No," Blake said, though Weiss did look somewhat familiar, as she assumed seeing a relative of a celebrity would. "Come on, the snow is just going to keep falling, no matter what we do." She stuck out her hand. "To guide you," she said, "I can see better in the dark than you, anyway."
Weiss closed the last bit of distance between the two of them, and grabbed Blake's hand. "Where do you live?" she asked.
"A camp, for now," Blake answered. Weiss' grip was surprisingly strong, and Blake noticed how as they began to make a careful, treacherous way through the darkening forest, her grip on the dust-sword became much more like what Blake would expect someone intending to actually use her sword would hold it.
Weiss stumbled a few times as they walked, each time tightening her grip on Blake's hand for a few seconds as she regained her balance. Blake wasn't sure if it was from unfamiliarity with the terrain, or from the same thing that made her occasionally try and pull away, forcing Blake at times to tighten her grip on Weiss' hand.
The walk to the camp took a little under an hour. Blake could have run the distance, even in the current weather, in much less time, but short of picking Weiss up bodily and carrying her as she ran, there was no way for the other girl to keep up. Not in her current state, at least, but Blake wondered what she was like when her mind wasn't obviously under the influence of something . As they walked, it seemed to be slowly wearing off, but there were still moments where her focus would suddenly be somewhere else else.
Arriving at the camp, Blake noticed Adam standing near the entrance. He had his arms crossed. He was still wearing his mask, so she couldn't tell if he'd noticed her yet or not. She assumed he had.
"What are you doing with her ?" he asked, and Blake felt Weiss tense. It was nearly full dark now, and Blake realized she probably could not see Adam all that well, nor would she know who he was.
She also realized that she had brought a human to a White Fang camp. Shit.
"You know her?" Blake asked.
Adam nodded sharply. "She's a Schnee heiress," he said, "don't know why she's been let out of her gilded cage, though. You get bored with lording over all of us freaks , Princess?" he said. The derision in his voice wasn't directed at Blake for once, but she still flinched.
Weiss dropped Blake's hand. "You're White Fang," she said. She turned to Blake. "Why didn't you just kill me?"
"Yeah, love," Adam said, "it would have made things a lot easier for us."
"She's more with it now, but she was almost incoherent when I first found her. She didn't try to hurt me."
"Then why didn't you kill her?" Adam asked. "Don't tell me you felt pity for a Schnee."
"I didn't know who she was," Blake said. She realized she was clenching her fists, so she forced herself to open her hands. "And I thought we agreed we wouldn't kill people who don't attack first."
Adam laughed, and Blake saw Weiss tighten her grip on the dust-sword. "What world are you living in? She's a Schnee, she might as well have attacked you already."
"He's right, the company is... cruel. Or it was, and I doubt much has changed in the days since my access has been removed." To Blake's surprise, Weiss sounded about as contemptuous of her family company as Adam.
"Well then, they won't mind if their little princess is killed then, will they?" Adam said. "Sweetheart, would you like to do the honors?"
"What the fuck, Adam?" Blake asked, staring at him. "I came back so you could give her shelter, not so that you'd ask me to kill her ."
"Give that bitch shelter?" Adam asked, "and why are you so sympathetic to her anyway, she's human ."
"I thought the point of all of this," Blake said, gesturing at the camp behind Adam, "was for us to gain equality ."
"Why should we, when we're better than humans. She's just human, Blake, killing her should be easy," Adam said. He sighed. "Look, love, if you won't, then I will. Who knows, she might be a spy."
He rushed at Weiss. Blake immediately grabbed Gambol Shroud and unsheathed it, but to her surprise Weiss shifted into a fighting stance, using her sword to summon swirling, orange glyphs. These exploded with enough force to send Adam sprawling.
Before, Blake had decided against picking Weiss up and just running, when she'd still been functioning under the apparently inappropriate assumption that the camp would be safe for her to go to. Now, Blake assumed that Adam would not let her enter the camp proper unless she killed Weiss, so she grabbed the other girl in a fireman's carry and fled, feeling one of her shadow clones break apart as Adam swung at them.
"You can't leave!" he yelled. Blake ignored him. "You're nothing without me!" he yelled again, and Blake kept running, ignoring both him and the surprised protests of the girl she was carrying.
It was a terrible idea to just flee deeper into the woods again, but for the first time in a long time, Blake had no idea what she was supposed to do, or where she was meant to go. As soon as she got far enough away , she'd see if Weiss knew anyone they could run too.
The snow stopped some time after midnight. It took Weiss a moment to notice the flakes were no longer falling. "Put me down," she said, doing her best to not sound like a petulant child (difficult, with how tired she felt, though the fog was slowly clearing from her thoughts). "Please?" she added, not really thinking about it, old training in politeness kicking it.
Part of her was frustrated that - Blake, that was what the masked man had called her - that Blake had picked up like this, insisting she could have won against that man like she had against the huntress. Most of her, the sane, actually intelligent part of her, assumed that Blake knew the masked man well enough to know his power level, and considering the other girl was aware of Weiss' less than optimal state of mind, her decision to flee was probably the correct one.
This didn't make being carried any less weird, though.
"Oh, right," Blake said, and she stopped running. Through a combination of Blake letting go but not entirely and Weiss moving, Blake managed to drop Weiss so that she landed on her feet.
"Thank you," Weiss said. She tried to smooth her skirt out.
"What are you doing out here dressed like this?" Blake asked, and Weiss considered making a snarky comment about the other girl's outfit, but she was still sort of convinced she might kill her at any moment. Even though she hadn't yet, even though she'd just run for Oum only knew how long through a forest in the snow to save her life.
It had been a bad day.
"I didn't exactly plan this out," Weiss said, gesturing vaguely around herself. "I woke up with Myrtenaster in my hand, a woman I did not recognize pointing a similar weapon at me. I fought her, she died. You found me."
"So you were drugged," Blake said, sounding not terribly surprised.
"I would assume so," Weiss answered. It fit with what she had been experiencing for the past several hours. It fit with what she was currently experiencing as well, though to a much lesser degree. "I assume it was to make me easier to kill." She smiled grimly, "That didn't happen."
"I'm sorry about Adam," Blake said, resisting the urge to explain the White Fang leader's actions. They were strange, even to her, but in retrospect, not all that surprising.
Weiss shrugged, "It's alright," she said, "though I'm sorry you've lost your home."
Blake sighed. "I don't know how long I would have stayed with Adam, anyway, if he's gotten that bad," she said. She reached out her hand towards Weiss. "Do you know anyone near here?" she asked, "or should we go looking for the few non White Fang I know near here?"
Weiss gave her a tentative smile, grasping her hand. "Let's do that. Lead the way."
The faunus girl grinned, and the two girls began to walk, hoping to both avoid Grimm and reach a place of safety.
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