Yang grunted in pain as she tried to do another push up. Sweat completely coated her. Her real arm was fine, but the pain in her other arm was deep, aching, and fresh. The new robotic prosthetic that Ironwood had seen fit to provide her after loosing the real one to Adam. It mimicked the movements of a real arm, elbow, and hand perfectly. A soldier had found her gauntlet among the ruins of the school, and had taken it to Ironwood, who had it integrated into the arm itself. Yang didn't care. she had no need for the weapon any more.
The limb grafted to the bone, with a sheath like section with a deployable shoulder guard over her actual flesh, with a metal rod fused to the bone. The doctors had assured her the prosthetic would soon operate without pain, but her body needed time to accustom itself to the foreign limb. In order to increase her body's tolerance for the limb, they had assigned her multiple exercises meant to put stress on the limb and force the body to accept it.
She shifted her weight, deciding to do one armed push ups to take the stress of the joint. She would need to get it checked out to make sure the seams had held. After hitting 500, she straightened, huffing and wincing. She worked both arms, cringing at the twinge centered on the connection. She stood, stretching, and giving the arm a practice swing. She curled it in front of her, unaccustomed to the weight difference, though the doctors told her that since it was her main arm, that would also go away.
The doctors had told her a lot of things.
She began to go through several practice motions on a sand bag, wincing as every shot that was once effortless now sent pain jarring through the bone in her arm. She could feel her anger rising, and her swings became stronger, until, with an incredibly painful hit, the sand bag split, spilling out onto the practice room floor. Her arm was now throbbing. But her anger leveled and then bled off quickly, and instead of leaving her raging, she felt only apathy.
"How bad is it?" said a harsh voice. She turned to see her uncle leaning against the wall to the training room.
"It's not the same." she said bitterly, standing. She glanced down at the metal fingers, flexing them. They moved fluidly, effortlessly. She could almost imagine they where her's. "I can still feel MY arm, still feel the fingers, the elbow. If I close my eyes, I almost, almost, can't tell the difference. But it's not there." She rotated her arm. "It's heavy, and it's painful. And it makes me angry."
"It was never meant to be the same. You lost the real one, and you aren't going to get it back, even if you don't like it. So you need to make do with what you have." Yang growled, turning away and clenching the metal fingers. They flexed fluidly at the joints. "Do you think I don't know that?"
"Honestly? I don't know what to think. You don't talk to anyone. You spent a good number of days in bed. You barely eat. Then you find out you can get another arm, and how do you deal with it? You brood, skulk, and complain." His voice was filled with disappointment. "How do you think Blake would feel? Seeing you like this." He shook his head with a hint of condescending.
Both her fists clenched, and she spat through clenched teeth, "She wouldn't care. She left without a word, any sign, not even a note. She abandoned us. She wouldn't care if I was dead, let alone brooding." Qrow raised an eyebrow. "You really believe that?"
She breathed, her anger again beginning to drain, and said, "What do you want?"
"I want you to survive. I want you to get your life back together, and get your head out of your ass." She tensed, feeling the anger rise into her throat. She whispered, "Do you have any idea what happened to me? Do you have any clue what kind of hell I've been through?" He waited, quiet. "In one day, I lost my home, my friends, my," she swallowed, not able to voice what Blake had meant to her, "my.. Partner. And my arm. and then, after everything, my sister decides to take off with my dead friend's team." Her throat ached, tight with emotion.
"And you got left here, all alone." Qrow walked all the way into the room. Sarcasm colored his voice, and he said, "and, because now you're all alone, you're just gonna skulk, moan, and complain about everything. Because that's going to fix it." Yang wanted to storm away. She could feel the spark that had once driven her ignite in her chest.
Qrow kept on. "And your mom, good gods, what would she think? She saved your ass, making herself known for the first time since you were born, and guaranteeing you got to fight another day. And yet, here you are."
'He wants you to get angry.' she realized. Her mentality reared, wanting to stay numb, to stay in the slump of sadness and self loathing. But she couldn't stop herself from saying, "Then where is she now?" her voice was still soft, dead.
"What, you think she is just gonna show up out of no where because her little girl doesn't want to grow up?" Her entire body clenched, her fists drawing up. The smell of singed cedar filled the air around her. Her mind struggled to hold onto the lethargic funk that had developed, but the fire in her chest was too hot. It burned through the chains that her mind had built, and a flood of pure raw emotion filled her.
To say she burned was an understatement. The air around her became instantly dry. A wave of heat blasted outwards, and she screamed, feeling fire suffuse her limbs. In a way, it felt good, it felt right, but she couldn't focus on that. "WHERE THE HELL WAS SHE?! WHY DID SHE LEAVE ME, ALL ALONE, WHY DIDN'T SHE CARE? WE COULD HAVE HELPED HER, BUT SHE LEFT, WITHOUT A NOTE, WITHOUT A SIGN, NOT A WORD TO ANY OF US!" Yang started swinging at things. One hit, and a punching bag split in two, sand spilling everywhere. Another hit broke a barbell in half, the edges of the break melted.
"I LOVED HER! I WOULD HAVE GIVEN UP EVERYTHING FOR HER, I WAS WILLING TO DIE FOR HER, AND SHE LEFT ME THERE, BLEEDING, UNCONSCIOUS." She didn't even realize she wasn't talking about her mother any more. The pain in her arm was gone, replaced only with the need to break something. Qrow watched, impassive. Tears formed, but evaporated as soon as they left her eyes. Her temperature continued to rise.
She stopped swinging, and began shouting at the top of her lungs, obscenities, curses, incoherent screaming. It didn't matter. She raged for almost an hour. At one point, she swung, meaning only to push her fist against a cinder block wall, and instead brought the wall down crashing down. The edges of the bricks were glowing red, the wooden floor beneath her burning, threatening to catch fire. And still Qrow watched, almost disinterested. She dropped to her knees, screaming at the ceiling as the very air around her trembled, the ground shaking. She kept going till her throat was raw, and her arms and legs were lead.
The air cooled. her head hung. The smell of burning wood and melted metal surrounded her, but she was tired. Her whole body ached. Tears fell, and she cried shamelessly. "She left us... I loved her." She didn't bother to clarify who. In the end, it didn't matter. The list was too long.
"And she loved you, I'm sure of that much. And, from what Ruby told me, she loved someone else, before she met you. Someone that hurt her, and you." Qrow chose one at random, deciding Blake was the one that hurt the most. Her real arm came up, stroking the seam between the prosthetic and the flesh. "Then why did she leave? I could have helped..."
"She saved your life. My guess, she felt that the only way she could protect you was by leaving."
"I just... It hurts..."
"I know, kid. But do you think she would act this way if you where in her position?"
Yang shook her head, ashamed. "Exactly. so, stand up." he hauled her to her feet, and embraced her. "And get your blond head out of your ass, okay, kid?"
He smelled like alcohol, smoke, and gunpowder. And his arms where strong around her as she embraced him back. "Okay, old man." Qrow chuckled, "alright smart mouth. It's a good thing you where in the holo-room, other wise this would be hard to explain." He withdrew himself, and waved to the room around them, modeled after a 60's boxing gym.
The place was trashed, weights, half melted, sat in sad looking piles. A weight bar was jammed through a sand bag, and one wall was completely collapsed, revealing the holographic projection wall behind it. Scorch marks showed where her feet had stepped, and when she had stopped moving, She had burned through the wooden floor.
Yang looked around, somewhat impressed by the carnage she had caused. Unlike before, she could feel that spark in her chest. It was weaker than before, but it was there, and that was more than she had felt since being taken away from Beacon.