Yang sighed, looking out at the night sky wistfully from atop the courtyard balcony. She couldn't deny that Mistral was a stunningly beautiful place, and the hotel that Ruby had found for them all to stay at provided an unbeatable view of the waterfalls of the city. She allowed herself a small smile, a moment of serenity falling over her as she sat in the pale moonlight. She'd spent so much of her travel time focused on both Ruby and Raven that she'd allowed the majority of the journey to Mistral to pass her by without stopping to take in the sights. Now that she had a bit of time to herself, she enjoyed it immensely.
Behind her the faint sounds of group laughter reached her ears, and in an instant her moment was suddenly filled with bitterness again.
She'd been doing so well for a while now, travelling to Mistral and being excited to see Ruby again. Her desire to track down her mother had also given her a good distraction along the way. When she'd arrived in Mistral and met up with Ruby, everything seemed like it was going to be ok. Then Weiss arrived and bumped into them, and things started to fall apart quickly.
She clenched her fists in frustration, trying to will her negative thoughts away, but as usual she merely found them gnawing on the edges of every thought she tried to supplant them with. She sighed again, this time defeated rather than relaxed.
"It's tough to see them together again, isn't it?" a voice asked from behind her.
It had been a little while since they'd seen each other, but she still recognized Jaune's voice well enough to know it was him. She lazily flicked her head back towards him, eyebrow raised.
"Hmm?" she asked half heartedly.
"Ruby and Weiss." he stated, "It's not hard to see that them hanging out is bothering you."
Yang was taken aback momentarily, both by the frankness of Jaune's statement and also by the immediate realization that he wasn't wrong.
"What? Don't be silly." she deflected, "I'm happy to see them back together again. Ruby was really worried about Weiss being dragged back to Atlas over the winter."
Jaune walked up beside her, hopping up on the balcony railing to sit. She eyed him curiously, unsure what to think of their current exchange. He turned his head slightly to meet her gaze, and gave her a small smile.
"Yeah, she certainly talked a lot about you guys on the way here. About how much she missed her big sister's energy, Weiss' attitude, even Blake's aloofness."
At the mention of Blake's name Yang turned her gaze forward again, immediately feeling the scratchings of negativity close in on her. She tried her best to keep it from her face, but couldn't help but feel the small frown force itself upon her visage.
"I'll bet."
A moment of silence fell over the two, both staring out over Mistral's vista without really looking at it. Jaune made a motion to speak but Yang cut him off.
"I'm fine Jaune. I appreciate you coming out here and all, I just needed some fresh air."
"Sure, sure. Didn't mean to intrude. I guess I just know how you feel is all…" Jaune stared vacantly into the horizon as he spoke, Yang could see him trying to steel himself. "I know how it feels to be missing a partner."
Again silence, now weighed down with apprehension on both youths' parts.
Yang initially wanted to refute him, saying that she hadn't lost anything, that Blake had left her, that they were nothing like him and Pyrrha. Anything to distance her current feelings from the idea that she was "missing" anything, let alone Blake. She turned her gaze back to his face and saw a familiar sight. A mask. Jaune had a collected face on, but one look at his eyes betrayed the maelstrom of emotion that churned beneath it. The sight shook her from her denial, if only momentarily, and prompted her to speak.
"How have you dealt with it?" she asked simply.
Jaune let out a rueful chuckle, dropping his head. "Mostly by not honestly. At least not until recently." He looked back up, meeting Yang's gaze with a weak smile. "It's been tough. Especially when we started out. Seeing Nora and Ren interact, all the little quirks they've developed, the ease of just being around one another. That hurt to see. To be so totally aware of how it was missing for me now."
Yang nodded subconsciously, her own thoughts immediately lining up. She'd been thrilled to get most of RWBY back together, but he was right. Seeing Ruby and Weiss fall back into their friendship routine had made Blake's absence impossible to ignore. Back on Patch she could find distraction, but when the two people she wanted to talk to most reminded her of everything that was wrong… Well that's how she ended up alone on a balcony tonight.
"I tried to throw myself into training," Jaune continued, "I wasn't sleeping much anyways so I tried to make the most of my time. But I never did so with a clear head, and it mostly just left me feeling unbalanced. Not to mention exhausted. It was Ruby that really saved me then. Gave me things to think about and talk about that had nothing to do with Beacon. Or Pyrrha."
"She's good for that." Yang said, a small smile appearing on her face, "She can be dense as a brick sometimes but she'll always find something interesting to talk about. Well, at least interesting to her. So what changed?"
"I did. I realized that part of why I was stuck in a bad cycle was because I had built up resentment towards Pyrrha for how things had gone. For how I'd been willing to fight alongside her and she hadn't let me. I'd been too weak, would have been too in the way." Jaune's voice caught and he rubbed his neck sheepishly. "Man, you'd think after all this time I could at least talk about this by now."
"Well you've managed more than I have so far, so you have that going for you." Yang suggested, a somewhat bitter smile on her face, "I haven't said two words about this since Ruby left Patch."
Jaune gave a small nod, understanding where she was coming from. "The thing that I realized though was that all of those feelings that I'd had were things I'd put in my own head. That Pyrrha did what she did because she thought she was protecting me, not because I was going to hold her back. I'd let my negative mindset color my memory of who she was and what she did, and it set me down a bad path."
"So you're saying I need to just forgive Blake for bailing after what happened because she didn't mean it?" Yang's tone had an angry edge to it, which Jaune was quick to respond to.
"What? Hell no. Yang, if Pyrrha was here right now I'd give her a piece of my mind for locking me out of what happened. The point isn't to just forgive and forget, the point is to remember that what's going on in Blake's mind isn't the same as what's been going on in depressed Yang's. You can still be angry about what happened, but don't let it poison your memory of what you miss when you see Ruby and Weiss. From what Ruby said, it seems like Blake runs to try and keep people from being wrapped up in her problems. She didn't leave because she doesn't care, she left because she does, and she has a really sucky way of showing it."
That got a laugh out of Yang, piercing through the morose cloud that had been surrounding her. "Ok, oh wise one, so are you magically fine now that you've realized this?"
Jaune scoffed, looking away. "Please. I'm not even close to fine. I still miss her like crazy sometimes, seeing Ren and Nora interact still makes me a little sad, and I still have trouble sleeping. But I've moved past the detatched numbness that being angry all the time brings. I can laugh at things, enjoy my friends' company, and remember the things I like about Pyrrha instead of bitterly feeling cheated out of it."
Yang heard a quiver in Jaune's voice and turned to him. He was still staring out over Mistral, but she could see the soft glint of moonlight reflecting in the tear that was rolling down his cheek. She reached a hand out and placed it on his shoulder.
"Sorry." he mumbled, wiping the tear away and awkwardly looking away, "Wasn't trying to come out here and just… blah all over you."
"It's fine. It's kinda nice to know that I'm not the only one thinking about this stuff I guess."
"Well never fear, you have at least one emotionally unbalanced friend to join you." Jaune struck an awkward pose, leaning away to raise his fist up towards her. Yang giggled and fist bumped him.
They returned to silence, both lost in thought in the moonlight. Yang considered Jaune's words and reflected on her own feelings. She recognized some of the patterns he'd mentioned for sure, how exhaustion and resentment had drained her for so long. She also couldn't escape the truth of her anger at Blake and how a lot of it had been self constructed by forcing a personality on her that Yang knew she didn't really have. The knowledge wasn't some magical key to release her from the condition she was in, but she took a deep breath and took a moment to try and internalize that the Blake she missed hadn't been supplanted by the Blake she was angry at. She still wanted to give the faunus an ass whooping for running away, but for the first time since Blake left Yang imagined meeting up with her and it not ending in more rejection and hurt feelings.
It was a small thing, but at the moment it was enough.
"Hey Jaune. Thanks for coming out and talking to me."
"No problem Yang. Thanks for hearing me out."
Yang returned her gaze to Mistral's view, the slight lifting of her mental weight enough for her to appreciate the sight once more. It was a nice night, certainly too nice to spend brooding alone, so she was grateful for Jaune's company. She appreciated the feeling of wanting to be social again.
"So what's the dumbest thing Ruby said in the time it took you guys to get here?" Yang asked.
Jaune thought about it for a moment before slapping his knee. "Oh, wait, you've got to hear about how far she thought we'd have to walk!"
The pair chatted idly into the night, glad for the reprieve of their issues and for the chance to just interact normally with someone. Neither knew how long had passed before Ruby stuck her head out to check on her missing teammates. Both blondes greeted her with a wave and a smile, and Ruby was struck by how both seemed a little more alive than they had in a long time.
"They'll be ok," she thought to herself as they both came over to rejoin the others, "They'll be ok."