When Yang was five, her mother died and the world slowed to a stop. Yang could feel it the instant it did; the insects ceased chirping and her hair failed to fall into her face, held, for once, not by her pigtails, but by her utter stillness. She did not even breathe.
But Ruby's eyes continued to stare past her, to blink, confused and yet swimming with a clear, crystallised spark that meant she did not understand.
'Cook?' she asked. And turned her gaze to the batch of cookies that lay under a white gauze Summer had settled over them. But that's silly, her expression seemed to say. They'll get stale if Mom doesn't come back to tell us when it's okay to eat them.
Their father did not smile the way he usually did. But something still tugged at his mouth, refusing to let it lie in a grim, taunt line.
'We can eat them together, okay?' he said, sounding dreadfully unsure all the same. 'But Ruby, I'm sorry, really sorry, but I'm not lying. It may be difficult for you to understand, but your mother really can't come home.'
Yang started to breathe again; not because the world had changed and shot back into motion, but because Ruby was looking at her father as though she expected some sort of reassurance to play out in his tone. But no, there was just a waver present instead, shaking in his words and put in place by the memory of her mother's promise to 'come home, quick', a promise that she would now never keep.
Yang realised that there was nothing she could do, that the world would never spin back into orbit, that her mother's cloak would never again flare out through the doorway to fill her vision with white. Like a ghost or an overlarge curtain, she had joked, letting Ruby and Yang play within its folds and jump beneath its creases, allowing the ripples of fabric fall away over their faces as they shrieked like slain Grimm.
But she was gone now, the world had stopped, and it was up to Yang to get it moving again.
'It's okay, Ruby,' she said, already reaching for her sister's hand. 'Everything will be okay. I love you, okay?'
But it wouldn't be okay. And her sister's grip felt slack in her hand, loose and unsteady.
When she was six, Yang learnt that her dead mother was not her mother. Or rather, she was and always would be; memories of dough-licked spoons and half-knitted arm warmers would always see to that. For life was not like the stories Ruby so loved and the sound of Summer Rose's laugh would never shift and rearrange themselves within her memories as the cackle of an evil step-mother.
But the world, this world, the real world, still shifted and Yang felt herself slip, falling into the repeating question of why, why, why?
When she sprang free of Raven's womb, was she too ugly to love? Did Summer Rose collect her in her arms months later, coo over a lullaby, and heal her blistered squawks with her motherly kisses?
Yang knew she had a temper, remembered smashed chairs and floorboards in her rages over being denied chocolate or a new technique. She knew she stifled herself sometimes, all so that Ruby would not look at her with wide eyes as though she had hatched into a dragon from her storybooks.
But still, it hurt, the thought that she was too angry, too loud, too big for her biological mother to love.
Five hours after she had almost gotten Ruby and herself killed just because she couldn't shut up the questions in her own head, Yang punched a tree. The bark chipped, ripping into her wrist and bruising her fingers, judging by the delicate crunch of bones she heard, but still she drew her fist back, again and again and again. The skin before her ran red, the blood spilling like tatters over her knuckles, but Yang still swung, fury rising up and making her choke. It felt too big for her to keep inside.
Each smash of pain left her breathless, should have caused her world to halt, her lungs to shudder and protest at the twist of agony inside, but still she kept going, red in her breath, her vision, and though she could not see it, her eyes. Finally she punched so hard, that a branch snapped, flying forward to knock her in the teeth. With a bellow, her aura unfurled, rose, and caused her hair to dance out like a flame. Angered beyond measure, Yang's fist collided with the tree again. And then the world exploded.
Bark shattered, the oaken rings of life that had nursed inside, now crumbling into solid flecks finer than any wood-chipper might have provided. And inside the house, Ruby screamed as her bedroom window was suddenly pierced by the smattering green of fallen leaves, felled a season too early.
Yang breathed, unfurling her hand with both a crunch and a pop. And her Dad ran outside, only a faint look of surprise in his face.
That was the day she discovered her semblance. And also the day she first wore a cast, her father's fingers carefully weaving the bandage steadily round the chips in her flesh. And on this occasion, it took only seven days for the bones in her hand to fully heal.
More than a decade later, there was no hand left to heal. Nothing but empty air to hold the place it once took up, veins and arteries pumping under the aura Yang had first learnt to burn out against a tree.
Yang stared at the space where there had once been a little more of her, half of her fighting power gone, disabled, in a rush of blinding fury. Adam and fire, and he had wielded both perfectly. Better than her.
And now Blake was gone, Ruby was gone, even Weiss was gone. Part of her was gone.
Yang turned her eyes from the dip in her skin, away from the white of the pillow that glared out from beneath the bump of flesh that still felt longer than it really was. She stared down at the sheets saddled round her waist instead, ignoring the twitch of pain that came from tightly-curled fingers, the result of a punch that transformed into a ghost the second she threw it towards Adam. And it paralysed her, that sensation of being wound up, of never being able to open up that lost fist and allow it to relax.
And so she waited there in her bed, free of any storybooks, for the fury to burn, for her temper to rise up at what had been done to her. But nothing came. And from outside, the insects stopped chirping.
I love you, Ruby had told her.
But she wasn't strong enough to stay, to reach for her hand. The only thing she reached for was a pen and a note. Yang stared out, at her sister's rapidly disappearing footsteps in the snow. She could follow of course, but she wouldn't be able to punch away any threats that stood in their way. Not this time.
And subtly, she feared. That trying to reach out for Ruby, this time, would lead to her being brushed away.
A golden hand in place months later, that could crush and punch and would refuse to tremble when everything else in her body did, and Yang felt ready to at least attempt to push back against the world. All her life, it seemed to have been trying to drive her to silence. To hell if she would let it.
Now all she cared about was bridging the gap between her and the sister who had refused to let the world stop for her, who had walked out of the door, just like their mother had, to try and make the world move again, translate into something better.
A good motto, to hold onto, Yang thought, as she stared her other mother in the eyes, as she listened to her praise her strength and tell that she belonged among a bunch of killers who would take one look at Ruby, and probably plot how to rob her blind. Or maybe even worse.
We don't try to move the world forwards, is what Raven's words said to Yang. We stay with it when it stutters, and stagnate. We try to thrive in its cracks, away from everyone else.
Screw that, Yang thought angrily.
'Did you not hear me?' she demanded, staring at the back of a woman who seemed determined to leave her behind. And, as her mother turned round, to give her a look that was surprisingly free of irritation and malice, Yang realised that, no, no, she hadn't.
Raven probably hadn't really heard anybody other than herself for a long, long time. She had brushed all their words away.
Ruby choked on her words, couldn't look her in the face. Couldn't even look at the mess she had spilled on the carpet, the broth soaking into the leather lining of her boots. And suddenly, Yang couldn't bear one more moment of stupidly thinking that maybe Ruby would look down on her. Not when there was terror in her little sister's voice, sobbing, choked-up terror, that Yang would hate her, would be the next member of their family to walk away.
So Yang let her arms have the first word, and allowed them to cut off the next ones Ruby was frantically trying to spill past her lips.
'I love you,' she said, to put the final nail in the coffin of Ruby's stammered excuses.
Because she wasn't Raven. She wouldn't brush anyone's words away, not exactly. But she would still bring both them and their world to a halt, if she needed to.
And later, she was amazed to find that Weiss possessed the same gift.
Out it spat, her story of loneliness and family dinners that were quiet battlefields, with sides drawn and territories filled by two parents who had never been able to really talk to each other. It filled the room with a void that Yang couldn't identity and her hands settled away from her, on her lap, the press of her left fist producing a pool of warmth, while her other seeped coldness through her trousers, leaving behind a tiny lake of ice on her skin
The world had halted as Weiss sighed, a silent criticism to Yang for assuming that Weiss had a happier childhood than her own. And she wondered, maybe, if the part that still felt frozen, that still waited for the world to turn properly, was also waiting with bated breath for Blake to appear, if even as a ghost.
Maybe that part wanted, more than anything, for one of the people who had left, Summer, Raven, Pyrrha, or Blake, to step back into her orbit.
'Yang.'
That word, her name, from a voice not quite dead. Yang stared at someone who had run away and come back, without even a note. Blake was here, with nothing more than her mournful gaze to fill in the blanks.
The world. Stopped.
'Yang. Go!'
Ruby, her commander, her sister, her world reminding her of her place in it.
The world started. And Yang didn't hesitate to leave a part of herself behind.
'I see a lot of her in you,' her Dad had said. 'But I'm glad I don't see all of her.'
And Yang looked at her mother for the second time in her life, saw pink flare from eyes in a twin set of flames that couldn't burn away any of Yang's accusations, and wondered at this, at her, at them both. Raven had more power, could produce more fire and pain than one swipe of Adam's sword ever could. She could hollow out Yang's world completely, and indeed had left a silent indent in it for years, filled it with questions about her absence.
And Yang wasn't too impressed with any of the answers she had now found.
Raven accused her of shaking like a scared little girl, even as she made the dramatic clawed gestures of an overacting woman, caught on the edge of hysteria, lashing out in the same way a terrified child would. Yang recognised the behaviour. She had had to deal with Ruby's terrible toddler tantrums after all.
'I'm sorry,' was all she eventually won from their final confrontation, so different and small compared to the heartfelt ones Ruby had babbled out a day earlier.
Yang wasn't surprised, when she turned round to see a feather drift to the floor, in place of her mother's boot. But it did surprise her that the world didn't drift to a halt, not until she held the relic in front of her and felt the eerie blue glow within it's mesh-like cage whisper to her of 'finality' and give her a strange sentiment that perhaps, the wrong mother had died.
Yang fell to her knees a moment later, the gold sand of an impossible desert shifting to allow indents that felt like the plush of a pillow, rather than the nit and grit of real sand.
And the world did not stop. It simply allowed her time enough to cry.
The colour of the desert was nothing compared to the yellow of Blake's eyes. Nothing compared to their soft, sorry gleam.
And now everyone was waiting for her to forgive, to say everything was okay.
'Okay,' her Mom had told her when she was four, and stamping her foot against the kitchen tile. 'One more cookie. But in exchange, you'll have to help sweep leaves from the yard.'
'Alright,' her Dad had said, when she had stepped out for the house to feel the world beat again, to let the sun play its way over her new shiny fingers. 'Let's get to work.'
Her other mother, of course, had never told her things would be 'okay' or 'alright,' in her life. In fact, she had always told her the opposite.
Yang wasn't sure if she was sturdy enough to form a compromise between everything these three parents of hers had taught her. But the world wasn't stopping for her to have the time to learn.
So she opened her mouth to speak. Spat out a soft cough of a 'yeah.' And waited for the world to continue to turn.
Let it stop where it may. She'd be ready to force it back into orbit.
Notes: So Yang mentions that 'Ruby couldn't even talk yet' by the time Summer left their lives; but most toddlers I've met can at least make sounds that imitate words. Hence Ruby's little venture at the word 'cookie' in the beginning.