Blake looked at her surroundings as she walked along the ocean floor. The wet sand squished soundlessly under her feet, some grains getting stuck in her black flats. Each time she turned her head, she would feel the water moving around her face and her hair slowly following her movements. Most of the time, however, she faced forward with her raven tresses fanned out behind her.
She remembered drowning in this ocean. The desperation, the need to breathe, the weightlessness. Now, she felt the exact opposite. She was serene, she could breathe without a problem and gravity kept her from floating away, instead making her feel as if there was no water at all.
Wait. I'm breathing underwater.
Was this the afterlife? She'd heard many tales of the subject. Some portrayed it as one continuous party: smiling faces, unlimited drinks, festive decorations, forgetting you were dead in the first place. Others depicted it as a horrible experience: the screams of eternally burning souls, tears of children outlived by their parents, the forgotten withering away and turning to dust. What she was experiencing was entirely different. She was alone, wandering the ocean floor surrounded by warm, comforting waters. No fish or coral, just her and the sunbeams slicing through the water.
Blake looked up and smiled at the sun's bright reflection, thankful for this afterlife. She didn't want an eternal party or eternal suffering, the only way she'd be happier was if there was a library with infinite books.
The sun. She wondered how Sun was doing. He was the first person she opened up to about being an ex-White Fang member. They were friends, yet she had this feeling that he wanted more than that. She didn't mind it, she thought he was handsome, but didn't think of him that way.
The water made her think of Neptune, who was Sun's best friend. She never got to know him very well, but she did know that Weiss had a slight crush on him.
The thought of Weiss made her reach up, feeling her naked cat ears. She remembered the argument they had about her heritage. The heiress wasn't all that bad, and seeing her reaction to Zwei made her think of Weiss in a more positive light. They'd gotten along and worked well together in battle, especially against the Atlesian Paladin. Their combo attack name, Checkmate, suited them both and she had to give Ruby credit for that.
Ruby was her optimistic leader. When the two officially met, she remembered her saying, "Well, that's why we're here. To make it better." The reaper thought of Remnant not as a world beyond repair, but one full of light begging for Hunters and Huntresses to keep that light intact. That's what Blake admired about Ruby and made her happy to be her teammate.
Yang, Ruby's sister, was her partner. She hoped that Yang wouldn't take long to move on after her death. Blake and Yang had been close, after all. She didn't want to be mourned for too long because she was just another star in the galaxy, an insignificant being.
Blake's thoughts wandered to Adam. They'd worked together in the White Fang and had been higher-class members. She and he hadn't been friends, but were close enough. She could still see the look on his face after she'd cut the link between train cars. His expression never wavered. His mind had been on the mission and likely didn't care whether or not she left. She was sure he cared just a little, but had forgotten about her.
She was glad to have left the White Fang. There were no regrets on that matter.
Although she left the group, she never graduated Beacon. She wished that she'd never died when she did and lived long enough to graduate Beacon with her friends, teams RWBY and JNPR. She missed them with all her heart and soul and just wanted to see even a glimpse of them again. Blake would do anything to see her beloved friends one more time, and the dress she wore only increased those feelings tenfold.
It was the dress she'd worn to her first dance. There, she'd danced with Yang and Sun and a few others. Her team had helped her pick that dress and the memory or JNPR doing a dance number together was attached to it.
If she hadn't gone to that dance, she would have regretted it. But she didn't. She went and had fun with her friends.
Blake lived her life with no regrets.