A/N: Hey guys! This is a prompt from user ilickboxes wherein the concept of how to live a good life is depicted in following three steps, which I decided to use in conjunction with catharsis. Let me know what you think! If you liked it, maybe send me a prompt of your own!
"I thought this was a hunt."
"I'm sorry, Blake."
Sun's voice rings out behind her, but she can't believe the sight in front of her. Before her are the two White Fang twins, Fennec and Corsac, dressed in their red, black, and white garbs, drawing from sheathes on their hips two matching polearms with blades on either end. She'd always been suspicious of them – but it was the betrayal of the man behind her that took her most by surprise.
Turning slowly, her widened golden eyes meet Sun's light blue ones. "You lured me out here?"
Sun stares back at her, his yellow tail sweeping slowly from side to side as he readies Ruyi Bang and Jingu Bang in their staff form. His lips press into a hard line across his face, the optimistic, cheerful gleam of his eyes dying. In the sun set, the darkness serves to make him look broader, his massive chest and rippling arms outlined in the remaining, burning violet of the setting star.
"Yeah," he replies. His voice now did not belong to the boy she'd gotten to know at Beacon, filled with chilly distance and apathy. "Sorry to say, but this has kind of been the plan all along. I'm surprised you didn't catch on."
Blake's ears press back against her head, her jaw tightening. There's pain like someone's pulling on either side of her heart, tearing it apart right in her chest. It's the kind of agony that makes her grit her teeth. Tears threaten to spill out over her cheeks. In a hoarse, strained hiss, she utters, "Sun."
"Get her," Sun orders, spinning his crimson staff in his hand. "And make sure you don't harm her! Adam will be pissed!"
It is by instinct alone that she is fast enough to draw Gambol Shroud into two parts, activating her semblance just in time to leave a copy of herself to take an explosive blow from the fox-eared Albain brother, Fennec, his spear smashing through her clone and into the ground. His blow creates a crater in the stone of the road. Gritting her teeth, she creates another clone in midair. The other Blake grabs her arm, spinning her in midair to fling her further away from the city.
She flies through the air, the wind whipping through her wavy midnight locks. The chill of the air above the ground makes her eyes water.
Damnit.
How could she have been so blind?
Hot liquid trickles down to her cheekbone before getting swept up in the wind.
Sun had been following her for months, only revealing himself when the giant dragon grimm had attacked the boat. She'd been so caught in the moment of his intentional heroism that she hadn't bothered to think too much about that fact. He'd been stalking her. It was right there in front of her face, and she'd just…trusted him. And not only now… But every single time she'd had a problem, he'd been there, like magic.
Even now, as she hears his sunny clones throwing him towards her, she wonders if he'd just acted every single moment they had together.
Damnit!
Hearing the twinkling of Sun's semblance, she twists in midair just in time to avoid one of the light clones' staff blows. He sails in front of her, and she slashes at him as he passes, destroying the clone in an instant. Sun is quick to follow up from behind, his real body sent flying as his clones throw him after her. As he flies towards her, the surreal idea that her close friend and confidant could be attacking her gives her pause. Jingu Bang slams into her side, throwing her back down to the ground.
Pain explodes through her rib cage, and she has to suppress a hiss as her body turns of its own accord to land on the ground. She manages to activate her aura just in time to absorb the impact of the landing, glad that she'd at least pulled them out from the city and to the foot of the mountain. Her relief is short-lived, however, as the Albain twins descend on her in the next second that follows.
Twisting out of the way of Corsac's twin blade, she just manages to block Fennec's next strike. His blade grinds along Gambol Shroud's sheath, shooting sparks between them before he swivels to strike her with the other end of the staff. He's so fast that she can barely clone herself in time to duck out of the way, but Corsac follows her with a brutal lunge that her aura deflects, his blade shooting past her cheek. With a guttural yell, Fennec follows through with a slash to her chest, but she backflips away just in time.
They're too fast!
Sun falls from the sky, and she leaps out of the way in time for Ruyi Bang to slam into the grass she'd just been standing in. Compared to the twins he is far slower, but faster than she's ever seen him still. She twists, slashing downwards at his crouched form, but her blade skirts along his aura – and she knows that she could've scored a real hit if she'd wanted to.
But he's Sun, and she can't hurt him. Even as he pulls his staff into two, swinging his gunchucks in rhythm with one another to fire off a series of shots that she parries with her katana, she can't bring herself to see him as an enemy.
And the result of this line of thinking is disastrous. The Albain twins take advantage of her hesitance. She can barely keep up, twisting and ducking and dropping clones when she can, but her aura is quickly depleting – and one strike from Fennec is enough to destroy it completely. They bring her to her knees, and she collapses with a gasp, her black aura rippling across her form as it breaks all around her.
Sun charges at her, slamming his gunchucks back into their staff form, yelling as he swings his staff down at her.
"Blake!"
A streak of tan, gold, and fire flash before her eyes, temporarily blinding Blake as a crash resounds directly in front of her. Warmth radiates in her face, and she holds up her eyes, squinting only to conclude that she'd probably lost her mind. Wearing a long tan coat, with black pants, golden hair alight with tongues of fire, is Yang Xiao Long. Braced, she stands in front of her, a metallic grey and black arm extending from a golden metal cap on her right arm, its mechanical fingers gripping Sun's staff. Her left side is to Blake, Ember Celica cocked at her hip around her left fist. Bright violet eyes blaze as they stare down to the cat faunus' position kneeling on the ground.
"Yang?" Blake exclaims, eyes flying wide open.
Yang's eyes narrow at her, her lips twisting into an angry grimace before she yells, "Is this all you've got?"
The midnight-haired woman watches in awe as Yang's hair combusts, the waves and curls bursting with the power of her aura. A battle cry tears from her lips as she twists, her metal arm snapping Sun's staff where she caught it, slamming an aura-empowered punch straight into the monkey faunus' abdomen with a subsequent shotgun blast from her gauntlet. The blast is so powerful that Sun goes flying back with a loud grunt, and Yang acts like it was nothing as she turns to face Blake once more.
"Have you given up?!" the brawler demands just as the Albain twins descend on them.
Yang is a force of nature, catching Corsac's twin blade with her robotic arm and spinning him around into his brother, fighting them both off. Blake's eyes go wide, watching her former partner dodge and weave through their blows. The way she flows through the fight is a memory that comes crashing back to Blake, whose entire body lights up in response to watching the blond fight off her attackers. Something at the core of her gut screams at her to join her, to relive what it had felt to fight at the blond's side all those months ago.
And she gives in.
Diving in as Yang ducks beneath one of Fennec's swings, Blake supports herself on the blond's back as she swings a hard aura-imbued kick to the fox-eared faunus' head. Her muscles sing as memories flow through her, remembering how Yang twists underneath her as she fires up another shot – and with a bang, there it was. Blake flings herself off, flying at a reeling Fennec as the blond's shotgun blast knocks him back. Twisting in the air, Gambol Shroud transforms as it sails towards Fennec, a pulse of her aura through the ribbon attaching it to her firing the gun into the fox faunus' body. She sees his aura deplete, and spins once more, firing at Corsac just as Yang moves to intercept him.
Blake watches in shock as Yang's karate-chops through his twin blade like it's made of paper with her robotic arm, firing a shot with Ember Celica straight to Corsac's face without a moment of hesitation.
And it's over. The twins collapse into the ground, and Blake can only stare as her former partner straightens. Her right hand whirs as she rests it on her hip, cracking the knuckles of her left hand as she scans Corsac's still form for any sign of trickery. When she's confident he's not getting up again, she turns to Blake with a grin.
"Long time no see! Dig the new look."
Dumb-founded, she opens her mouth to say something but is cut off when she hears the yells of peopling coming to help. A couple of faunus dressed in officer's clothes rush towards them, and the two are immediately bombarded with questions. They're pulled away from one another for the subsequent hour, and Blake collapses to the ground when it's over, watching as several other detectives put restraints on all three of her attackers. Her golden eyes soften in hurt as she watches Sun struggle against his restraints while being dragged off.
She can't help but feel suspicious, her eyes turning to Yang, who's still talking with the detectives. They point fingers at her, and she somehow manages to patiently navigate any sort of accusation – which she's sure to get, being one of the few humans on all of Menagerie. Blake understands, wondering how it was her former partner had managed – much like Sun – to come and save the day just when she needed someone.
After a while, the detectives let her go. Yang's lilac gaze rises to where Blake's sitting, on a little slope under a tree overlooking their battle ground. She walks across the sandy soil and grass, a small smile playing on the corners of her lips. Watching her, the cat faunus lets out a slow breath, waiting for the girl to sit alongside her before asking, "How did you find me?"
Yang extends her legs out and props herself up on her arms, and Blake's cat ear flicks when she hears a mechanical hum to her side. Her gaze flicks down, her heart squeezing in her chest as she gets a good look at the foreign, very un-Yang robotic arm. Pangs of guilt wrack through her chest at the sight of the thing, taking her breath away.
Averting her gaze, she takes a deep breath, forcing the emotions down as far as they'll go.
"I went to Mistral looking for Ruby," Yang tells her. The blond scans the battle field, analyzing every place where the ground had been kicked up in the fray and where the bullet shells lay on the ground. "But I caught wind in Haven that Sun disappeared months ago to follow you, so I assumed the worst, and I thought this would probably be the place you'd come to."
"Why?"
"This is your home," Yang answers, giving her an odd look. "I just…had a hunch you'd want to be back home, with your people."
Blake frowns, her ears flicking back as she remembers just how attentive her former partner was. She stares down at her hands in her lap, her lips pressing into a frown. Whenever the black-haired girl talked of her past, though she seldom did, Yang was always listening – a good friend whenever Blake had asked for one. The blond must've truly cared, absorbing every detail in order to draw that sort of conclusion about the dark-haired girl.
The realization only serves to worsen Blake's guilt. How could she have doubted Yang, knowing the girl had spent more time than anyone in her life getting to know her? She'd been her closest friend and…maybe, just maybe, a little more than that. The girl had sacrificed an arm in attempts to protect her, a faunus, from a man that had problems that really didn't involve the blond at all.
How could I have ever trusted Sun over you? she wonders, her ears flattening in shame.
In the silence that follows, Yang grins. "Don't worry, I don't expect you to remember everything I've told you."
The joke makes Blake shake her head.
Throwing her arms up behind her head, Yang plummets to the ground in a heap. She nudges at Blake's calf with her foot, loudly proclaiming, "And if you think you're running away again, you better think twice! I'll kick you right on your kitty ass."
Blake scoffs, but can't help but smirk at that. "Seems you've recovered."
Yang, who she'd abandoned after being the sole reason for her loss, is still, somehow, reminiscent of the cheerful and gallant girl she'd chosen to be partners with. But Blake can't help but hear the whirring of her mechanical arm. The noise of it makes her curl up into a ball, the guilt so powerful she controls her emotions by gripping her arms, burying her face into her wrists.
"Blake?"
Her first partner had betrayed her. A boy she'd come to trust had deceived her. Both had nearly taken her life, both would've had it not been for…
A warm hand rests on her shoulder. Lifting her head, Blake turns to see Yang's concerned gaze meeting her golden stare. Her florid lips draw into a little frown as she asks, "What is it?"
Taking a breath, Blake whispers, "I don't know how you… How you can just sit there and act like it's all okay."
Yang blinks at her, lilac eyes widening.
"I'm the reason for this!" she continues, gesturing to Yang's robotic arm, resting on the ground between them. "I let you get involved in…in my past, and it came back to hurt you! How can you still be here? How…" Blake swallows, her throat constricting with emotion. "How can you still…"
"…Care?" Yang finishes, one blond eyebrow arching.
The cat faunus nods.
Yang's left hand tightens on her shoulder before she pulls the dark-haired girl into a full out hug. The move is so sudden that Blake is unsure what to do, her eyes flying wide open and her body going stiff as Yang murmurs to her, "I'm not going to lie to you and say that everything's okay. It's not. I have a lot of emotional crap I'm dealing with, and I'm still a little pissed that you ran off, but that's okay – I can live with that."
"But how?" Blake croaks, her ear flicking against Yang's cheek.
"I try to do three things," Yang replies, loosening her hold a little. "I smile, I let myself feel the crap I need to feel, and then I try to make someone's day. And, little by little, it gets easier to…y'know, cope."
Blinking, Blake looks into her eyes as a few inches of space come between them. Violet eyes crinkle at the corners and the blond's lips spread into her amazing, toothy, lopsided smile. It melts the dark-haired girl's heart, burns through the walls and the chains that she used to hold everything back, tears welling up in her eyes and spilling across her cheeks in an instant. Her voice trembles and she hiccups as she accuses, "Yo-you're so silly. That's so incredibly, incredibly silly."
But she breaks down, and Yang pulls her in close so that her head rests on the blond's shoulder. Blake's fingers slide up to cling into the blond's tan leather jacket, sobs wracking through her body. The emotions rush through her like a tsunami crashing through her, hoarse cries reverberating through her throat. Yang holds her tight, one arm wrapped around her shoulders and the other around her waist. Comforting warmth surrounds her in Yang's embrace, a catharsis overtaking her as she weeps to her heart's content.
"You never have to be alone again," the blond murmurs into Blake's hair. The faunus' heart wells up at the words. "I'll be right by your side. Always."
A whirlwind of emotions swirls through her being. Yang's words grant the relief, stripping away the loneliness she's surrounded herself with for years. She pulls away from the blond to look into her eyes, her hands cupping the base of Yang's neck as she admits, "I'm so happy you found me."
Yang grins. "Same. I haven't had a good fight in ages."
Blake can't stifle a sharp burst of laughter, and she slaps the blond's shoulder. She felt as though she were slightly hysterical, tears still running down her face her mind mingles joy and betrayal into one huge, odd concoction.
"Oh, and I'm glad to see you again," Yang says, realizing what the smack was for. The blond flushes. "Of course I am. Does it even need to be said?"
"It's nice to hear," the faunus answers, wiping at her face. "I wasn't exactly a great partner."
"Yes, you were," Yang argues. "The best."
When Blake rolls her eyes, the blond immediately justifies herself, "We click, Blake. You…complement me, and I like to think I do that for you, too. Going back to being without you just didn't work for me, so, of course, you're the best partner."
"Getting cocky," the faunus murmurs, giving up on wiping her face.
Yang's hands rise to her cheeks, lightly swiping the tears away. Even the blond's robotic arm breathes life, her metallic finger tips vibrating with warm energy. The touch calms the turmoil in her mind, ceasing the storm of emotions that occupied her mine. She relaxes slowly, leaning her face into Yang's finger tips, allowing the blond to console her.
Taking a deep breath, Blake looks up into her eyes. Yang's just inches away, her beautiful lilac eyes sparkling back at her. She smiles up at the girl, and softly asks, "Would you be my partner again?"
Her response is a radiant beam. Yang lights up in her elation, throwing her arms around the faunus once more.
"I thought you'd never ask!"
A/N: A little disclaimer, I seriously don't have an anti-Sun agenda. I like him as a character, really!
