Emerald woke to a pleasant softness, suffusing her body. The eye of the storm, she assumed, before the brunt of the hangover hit.
Beep Beep… Beep Beep… Beep Beep…
Her alarm was less piercing than usual, though, which was nice. Drunk-Emerald must have remembered to turn the volume down for once. Thanks, drunk-Emerald. Judging by the color swimming in her vision, though, she hadn't remembered to turn the lights off before crashing. Probably best that she keep her eyes closed, then. With an effort, she struggled to remember the events of the previous night. The memories drifted back slowly and in fragments, like pockets of air rising through tar. Yet another clash with team RWBY, as per Cinder's orders, then… something. She remembered clashing with the faunus on their team, then… nothing. Just a lot of darkness.
Make sure they bring enough for two, Yang.
Emerald sat up with a jolt at the half-remembered words, and immediately wished she hadn't. A lance of agony shot like fire through her gut and tore a ragged cry from her throat. She pinned a hand to her side, gasping heavily with her eyes screwed shut. When the searing pain had died down to a dull ache, she risked a glance beneath her hand. Bandages were wrapped thick around her gut, with an angry red stain beginning to seep through. Probably not just a hangover, then.
She glanced around the room, trying to take stock of the situation. Thanks to her headfirst plunge into alertness, memories of the day before - assuming she had only been out for one day - were rushing back en masse. What she had taken to be an alarm was apparently a matching set of heart-rate monitors, one for her and one for that faunus from before - Blake, that was her name. She was either unconscious or asleep - it was hard to tell which. She looked peaceful enough, but that could just be the anaesthetic. Emerald flinched at another twinge running through her gut, and she lay back gingerly against the infirmary bed.
I betrayed Cinder. The thought made her blood run cold. I betrayed Cinder Fall, and she's going to hunt me down and burn my bones to nothing.
The door to Blake and Emerald's shared room clicked open, and a young huntress with worried silver eyes stepped through. That would be Ruby, the team's leader. Emerald had spent long enough dodging the business end of the girl's scythe to remember her name vividly. Their eyes met, and Ruby gasped.
"Oh! You're, uh… you're awake. That's… good."
"Try-" The words came out raspy, and Emerald was suddenly aware of how dry her mouth was. She swallowed hard, and did her best to speak clearly. "Try not to sound too happy to see me alive."
Ruby cocked an eyebrow, hands planted on her hips. "You've tried to kill my team how many times, exactly?" Her gaze flicked to Emerald's bloodied abdomen. "You must have re-opened the wound. I'll get someone to wrap it again." With that she departed, cape billowing dramatically behind her as she turned. The effect would have been very impressive, had the cape's tail not caught in the door as she swung it shut. There was a thump from the other side of the door, some muffled unpleasantness, and the last inch of the cape was tugged through.
She couldn't help but chuckle at the absurdity of it all. There went the fearsome Ruby Rose, peerless scythe-wielder and leader of Beacon's most deadly second-year team. Emerald herself had more than a couple scars from clashing with her. She was a prodigy, a spectre of death to enemies of Remnant, and she had just gotten her cape stuck in the door and fallen over.
Moments later a nurse entered, shot her a suspicious look, then set to changing the bandages without a word. In the moments when the wound was open to the air, Emerald made sure to inspect it as best she could without aggravating anything. It wasn't pretty. A jagged slice ran from her ribs to about an inch above her hipbone, where the blade had found purchase and driven home. There the flesh was still mangled, though Beacon's - probably Beacon's, though she supposed it could be any hospital, really - medical staff had done their best to clean things up.
Just as he finished reapplying Emerald's bandages, the nurse jumped at a soft groan from the bed across from them; it seemed Blake was returning to the land of the living. The nurse rushed across the room to check her over briefly, murmuring something that sounded a lot like "took you long enough." Satisfied after a brief check of her vitals, the nurse ducked out of the room, sparing Emerald only a sidelong glance in parting.
"Hey."
Emerald looked back to her stab-wound buddy, who by now was managing an unsteady grin. "Hey, yourself. Still alive?"
"Maybe like… half alive. Two thirds, tops." Her voice was like heavy footsteps on wet gravel. One Emerald's blades must have nicked her lungs.
Emerald managed a sad smile. "Before anyone else shows up, I just…" She tongued her cheek for a bit, searching for the words. "Thank you. For… convincing me to get out. I don't know where this is going to lead for me, and it might just get me killed, but… thanks for letting me see there was an option. I don't think I would have figured it out otherwise."
Blake opened her mouth to respond, but was cut off by the door bursting open hard enough to put a hole in the drywall behind it. The whole of team RWBY, plus several others Emerald didn't recognize, burst through and rushed to Blake's bedside. Amid the various cries of relief, she could just make out Blake's voice, pleading for a bit more space. Emerald couldn't help but chuckle at the havoc. Somehow, some way, an environment like this was responsible for producing some of the most deadly beings on Remnant.
"Give the girl some space, guys, yeesh."
The instant the words passed her lips, every head present swiveled to fix Emerald with a venomous glare. Not quite among friends, then.
Blake's voice, still hoarse, rose from somewhere behind the press of bodies. "I'd... like to talk with my team, if that's alright."
Several of those assembled filed out of the room, mumbling goodbyes and shooting daggers at Blake and Emerald, respectively. Once they had gone, Blake's team took up places on and around her bed, eyeing Emerald with that dubious look she'd become oh so familiar with recently.
Yang was the first to speak up. "Alright, Blake, you've gotta fill us in. Why exactly did we bother saving… her?"
"She wants out. From what she told me, working with Cinder isn't something you just… walk away from. I… I know the feeling."
From a chair by Blake's bedside, Weiss sighed, with a hint of irritation. "Blake, I respect your feelings on the matter, but this is Emerald Sustrai you're talking about. Master thief? Helped plan the attack on Vale? For dust's sake, she's tried to kill us nearly a dozen times! Why are we helping her?"
"Do you want her to keep trying to kill us?" Ooh, good one.
"I- no! Of course not, but… how do we know, Blake? How do we know she isn't just waiting for a chance to slip a knife between our ribs?"
It was Ruby's turn to pipe up. "Yeah… She kinda already did that to you, Blake. Twice?" She glanced at Blake's wounded side and shoulder.
"Hey, technically that wasn't me."
"Oh really?" An unpleasant smarmy note entered Weiss's tone. Emerald got the feeling she was going to be hearing it a lot. "Then how, pray tell, did your swords end up where they did?"
Blake raised her good hand. "I can answer that, actually. We were fighting on the roof of the building you guys found us in, and I strafed a supply cabinet with red dust rounds. After that…"
"You hit that? Oh man, Mercury had like, ten kilos of black dust in there. Refined, too." A trio of understanding nods answered her.
"Still, we can't just trust you like that," Ruby mumbled, scratching at her sleeve, "Maybe you didn't do it this time, but you were still trying to stab Blake. I don't like the idea of keeping you this close."
Of course it was too good to be true. Blake had accepted that Emerald wanted out implicitly, but that had no impact on what her teammates thought. A note of desperation entered Emerald's voice. "Look, I-I know it's not fair of me to ask this of you guys. I've never done anything right by any of you, and you have every reason to want me dead, but… I need to get away from her, and if I try to just… run? I'll be ashes inside a week. You guys are my only shot at getting out of this alive, y'know? Blake gets it, just ask her-"
"Them." The whole team had spoken at the same time. Emerald raised her good hand defensively.
Blake sighed, her- their eyes downcast. "It's not her fault, guys. There's no way she could have known." They glanced back up to meet Emerald's eyes. "I'm agender, if you hadn't guessed."
"That's not going to be a problem, is it?" Yang's eyes were slowly shifting to crimson.
Emerald just gave a lopsided shrug. "Should it? Without naming anyone, I've been living with a few trans folks for a long time now. I'm not about to give you any trouble there."
Blake flashed her a grateful smile, though Emerald swore she caught a "better not" growled under Yang's breath.
Ruby looked thoughtful, then spoke up, slowly at first, but with building confidence. "I think… Blake seems to trust you, and their trust is a lot harder to earn than most people's. If they think you're being honest… I don't know if we're really qualified to disagree. It's not really up to any of us, though; we're just second-year huntress trainees, and you're a wanted criminal. I let the headmaster know you two are awake, he said he's on his way down. What happens next is… up to him, really."
"You mean Ozpin? He tends to be… sneaky. Knowing my life is in his hands… doesn't exactly fill me with confidence."
Weiss grinned sardonically. "It really shouldn't."