Track 9: Flaws


You / have always worn / your flaws upon your sleeve
And I / have always buried them / deep beneath the ground
Dig them up / let's finish what we started
Dig them up / so nothing's left untouched


The front door slammed shut, a noise not unlike a crack or a bang. It shook the walls of the apartment, a low rattle. It wasn't anything new, so Weiss was not overly disturbed by the noise. She waited for one minute – which she knew from experience was enough time – and crept over to the door that had just been slammed. She got close, pressed her ear against the wood, just to confirm what she already knew was happening. She knew that Blake was pacing outside her door, and she knew that Blake was on her cell phone, calling someone – probably a mutual friend – asking for a place to stay for the night.

Sure enough, she heard the footsteps, the back-and-forth rhythm. She heard the frantic, whisper-hiss speech as Blake begged the unfortunate victim for their couch and shower.

"Get out of here!" Weiss yelled through the door. Immediately the pacing and dialogue stopped. "Just get out of here, Blake!"

"Fuck you!"

Then more steps. Weiss flung the door open. She saw Blake hurrying down the staircase, hair flying, her jacket half-on and half-off.

"What was that?!" Weiss asked, even though she'd heard perfectly. Someone in the next zip code would have heard perfectly.

"FUCK YOU!"

A symbolic gesture was made with one finger, and then Blake was gone.

Weiss shook her head, and went back inside the apartment. She was more careful with the door, but it still sounded like it might be loud for the uninitiated.

Well then, she thought, good thing everyone in this building is initiated.

She looked around her apartment, at the mess they'd made. Two shattered mugs, spilled contents setting in her carpet – she'd have to get the stains steamed out –; an overturned chair; couch cushions on the floor; a broken plate – thankfully clean.

She set the chair upright and tossed the cushions back onto the couch. The shards of the plate and mugs she was forced to pick up by hand and dispose of in the garbage.

It had been their third fight in four weeks. But it wasn't like the other two, which had seemed like they were about significant problems and then turned out to be just the opposite. It was important, she felt, even though she couldn't exactly remember it. But if it had cost 30 minutes of her time, then there was no way it couldn't have been.

None of this was new to her, to either of them. Did other couples fight as much as they did? Not any that she knew.

But Blake would be back. The separation wouldn't take long; it rarely did. Usually a day, sometimes a little more, but she would come back sooner or later, and things would be okay again.

Her friends pitied her. They didn't hide the fact that they thought she was ruining her life. They judged her, and they judged Blake. They would say that there were others, who would "treat her right". Sometimes she even wondered if her straight friends thought a man would be good for her. The idea made her want to gag.

Their advice was useless, and she had long since stopped asking for it. She knew what she wanted, and what she wanted had black hair and golden eyes and wore horrible sweaters. What she wanted liked to debate philosophy and read and cuddle under a tree in the afternoon sun.

How unfortunate that what she wanted also liked to antagonize her so. Belladonna. It was there in her surname.


Blake kept her head down, to both shield her raw eyes from the wind and to pre-empt any sympathetic or strange looks from passersby. She rubbed her sweater sleeve over her face and sniffed.

The 3.13 p.m. bus pulled up to the stop she was sitting at. She watched the exchange of passengers and watched as the bus left without her. She had no plans, nowhere to really go.

The message on her cell phone filled her relief. Asking a mutual friend to stay in her usually-empty apartment was embarrassing, but familiar. Eleven days ago, when last she fought with Weiss, she stayed with Pyrrha. The week before that with Yang. She didn't want to impose on Pyrrha again, and Yang's incessant questions made her uncomfortable; It seemed that her relationship was something of a sideshow attraction. She understood why, of course, but she hated feeling like a freak just because the situation with Weiss wasn't exactly ideal.

This time the S.O.S. was going out to Ruby, a friend who didn't ask questions, who told her she didn't have to explain anything. She was rarely in town, as a consequence of her work, and her apartment was lived-in for only a small portion of the year. Blake had her blessing to make herself at home, and for as long as she needed to stay. Overly generous and exceedingly kind of her, but Blake was going to make sure that she didn't disturb the place too much.

She didn't know when she was going to go back to Weiss. Or even if.

A scowl formed on her face.

It had been a ridiculous fight, over the brand of food they were feeding the cat, or something equally trivial. She tended to forget the details of their fights, like an immediate purge. It was something that she knew she had in common with Weiss, at least, because there was admittedly not much else.

She messaged Ruby, thanking her for the generosity. Ruby immediately replied, telling her not to worry about it, and where to find the spare key. Blake thanked her again, and boarded the 3.22 bus as soon as it pulled up.


The recording of Blake's voice telling her to leave a message played for the seventh time. After being in this relationship for fifteen months, Weiss was confident enough in her rote memorization skills to believe that she could recite it verbatim.

"Blake, please. I don't want to talk to your mailbox all night. The least you could do is text, let me know where you are."

She hung up and tossed the cell phone on the couch. It was approaching the usual dinner time, and she'd heard nothing from Blake since … earlier. The silence didn't worry her so much as it annoyed her, because it made her feel like she was being punished, either deliberately or unknowingly.

The microwave oven beeped; her boxed-meal was "ready". She pulled off the plastic film and turned her nose up at the so-called pasta – even after a year of the questionable food, she was no more enamored of it than when she was first including it in her meal plans.

If it wasn't for her parents, family even, then she would never have had to entertain the idea of "budget foods". She would never have had to find an apartment and move in to it with Blake. Disownment, however, had proven to be an insurmountable hurdle. Being stripped of access to her accounts, her stake in the family business, as well as her place in the family proper had rendered her essentially powerless. There had barely been time to pack a bag, but at least she made sure she didn't forget the money she'd managed to hide away, "just in case".

The experience of coming out, and everything that had happened in the twelve months since, had taught her one valuable lesson: anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Looking back on the entire fifteen months of their relationship, she only wished that she'd thought about cost-benefit.

And perhaps it was wrong to look at her entire relationship with Blake from an analytical standpoint. There had been good times, as most couples naturally experienced. Becoming "one of the people" was much easier to bear with somebody close to lean on, and Blake's arm had made for a sturdy balustrade. Very often after the "coming out" event, she would just lay with Blake. She wouldn't say anything.

Blake would sometimes ask what was on her mind, but she preferred not to go through the baggage. Why bother? she thought. It would just lead to an unproductive conversation that only interested one participant. And she knew that this was an irritating attitude for her partner to put up with. Sometimes she pushed it, just to see how much she could get away with.

Blake was an inquisitive soul, and it was something that she had never expected in the relationship. When they'd met, Weiss's initial impression was of a bookish, relaxed woman who didn't let anything bother her for too long. Of course, there was much more to a person than initial impressions, but it had still surprised her, the extent to which Blake always wanted to invest in her life. Could she be faulted for that? For caring too much?

Sometimes, when she was younger, Weiss had pretended to have all the answers. But after fifteen months of a relationship with this whole other being, she could pretend no longer.


Ruby's apartment felt more like a hotel room. Small. Sterile. Signs of previous habitation all but eradicated, despite Blake's knowledge that it had indeed been lived in at some stage.

She sat down, at a loss for what to do next. She could eat. But she doubted Ruby kept perishables, and she wasn't much in the mood to cook or prepare anything. On the other hand, she also didn't want to go out, so she was suddenly presented with a self-imposed impasse.

Then she yawned, and realized just how much the day's events had wearied her. Though it was barely past 6.00 p.m., she went to the master bedroom and climbed into Ruby's bed. She was already missing Weiss, but she relished the idea of sleeping in a bed that didn't feel like a time-bomb. Thinking about the heavy lifting could wait until the morning.


It felt ridiculous, trying to boil the relationship down to a listable format. Bullet-pointing, like she was compiling a list of pros and cons. Was she preparing notes for a speech?

But, as ridiculous as it made her feel, Blake believed it was necessary. Despite her active ignorance of the text messages and missed calls, she was planning to go back to the apartment the next day.

Only this time couldn't be like all the others. They couldn't just "make up" and sweep it all away again. Something fundamental needed desperately to change, for fear that the future of the relationship would be drastically shortened. It went without saying that she didn't want that to eventuate.

So arose the need to evaluate.

Every so often she would pause, and read back what she had just written. Points like we need to talk more felt silly enough to make her want to put lines through them. But she also knew what she meant, that what she was jotting down was a simplified summary. It wasn't intended for eyes other than her own.

In any case, the subject matter was taking care of itself. What she also needed was an approach.

Of course she would knock on the door at some odd hour, during what Weiss called the annoying hours of the morning.

She set the papers aside in favor of breakfast, with ingredients purchased from a nearby convenience store. In between bites of egg she wondered what Weiss was doing, what she would likely be doing later on that day. She wondered if it was too much to hope that Weiss was thinking along the same lines. And then if to prejudge her girlfriend was unnecessarily harsh.

Perhaps so. Or perhaps it was a thread of wondering better suited for dinner entirely.


She didn't want to think about how eerily familiar it all was – a soft knock on the apartment door during the annoying hours of the morning.

Had she been expecting it? Counting down the minutes during a sleepless night?

She shuffled out and swung the front door open without bothering to ask who was there or even to look through the peephole.

Blake was right on time, after all. Weiss smiled, despite herself.

"Hello," she said.

"Hi."

"How are you?"

Blake gave her an odd look.

"I've been gone for a day and a half."

"I know, but it's not like you were keeping me updated."

"Fair enough. I'm sorry I kept you in the dark. Did you worry?"

"Of course I worried. Where did you end up?"

"Ruby's."

Weiss raised an eyebrow.

"She's home?"

"No, not for another month. She told me where to find the spare key."

Ah. "Go on, sit," Weiss said. "This is your apartment as well. Do you want something to eat?"

"I'm fine."

"Okay." Weiss crossed her arms. "What did you get up to?"

"A lot of thinking."

"I'm guessing it was about us."

"That's right." Blake stared at her, as if in examination.

Weiss wasn't yet sure what to feel. Her girlfriend seemed calm to the point of a measured coolness, which she could maybe see as a reason to worry. Her smile, lukewarm as it was, faltered.

"Are … Do you want us to break up? Because … I don't, you know. I was thinking about us as well-"

Blake held up a hand, keeping her from saying anything further.

"I don't want to break up either. But … we can't keep going like this."

Weiss tapped her foot, and then sat just within Blake's reach.

"I know."

"We're not getting mad about this trivial B.S. It goes way deeper than just the insults and the screaming at each other. I feel like I'm always having to dig up what you're really thinking, or what you're really feeling. It's … exhausting. And it's not all you, I know. I have problems as well, and I know what they are. We both make sure of that. But you … you just keep things hidden away, all the time."

"I know."

"When was the last time we had a real conversation? A mutual dialogue?"

"I'm guessing a long time."

"Weiss." Blake's tone was stern.

"I know what you're saying, okay? But you know it's not easy for me."

"Yes, I do know." Blake fell back onto the couch with a sigh. "You don't like to talk about those things. But Weiss, if we don't have an open understanding, all the stuff we can't talk about will just come back one day and bury us." She hunched her shoulders and looked up at Weiss. "Do you like being a brick wall? Because I don't. And I don't like talking to one."

"You didn't even let me know where you ran off to the other day."

"I thought we were clear that that was different. I was mad, and hurt, and tired. Hey, I just want to be part of your life. We live together, after all. And would you have ever come out if you hadn't been with me back then? You can't just pretend that I don't know you."

Weiss slumped against the couch, her posture losing its usual rigidity.

"What should I do?"

The weight on the couch shifted as an arm made its way round her shoulders. A brace, rather than the balustrade she was used to.

"I think you mean, 'What should we do?' I have my problems too; we're in this thing together."

"You aren't afraid of your problems, though. You fuck up, and you wear them, because you don't care. And you're right; I bury mine, because I hate those memories. Is that wrong?"

"That's not for me to say; as far as we're concerned … us … we just need to find a balance somehow."

"Okay. How, Belladonna?"

Weiss heard a slight groan from Blake.

"That's a very good question, Schnee."

They sat in silence. When Weiss looked up, Blake looked thoughtful, like she was biting the inner wall of her cheek.

"Do you have an answer to my very good question or not?"

"That's another good question."


This was Track 9, and the end of the third release.

The fourth release, containing Tracks 10, 11, and 12, is all that remains. Stay tuned for it!

Truly Yours, Kalico.