AN: So, I realize it's been forever, but I had exams and also a play and then more exams and then driver's ed and then... other things. All of life, happening, in all of its high school glory.
But I wrote the thing! Three thousand words of it!
They were still holding hands, a few hours later. Maybe it was just in her head, but Weiss felt her hand was warmer in Blake's.
"Do you hear that?"
They were an hour into the forest. The trees had not blocked out the light completely, yet, but already the shadows were growing longer.
The last time Blake had said "Do you hear that?" Beowulves had followed. The trees in this forest were packed more closely together than the last one, but there were still grimm who could attack in cramped spaces.
"No," Weiss said.
"It's not grimm," Blake said. "It's birdcalls."
A small, black shape sped past them in a flurry of wings in the direction of the village. "What was that?" Weiss asked.
"I'm not sure," Blake said. "Nothing good." Her ears flattened against her hair. "How are you feeling?"
"Pretty much okay," she said. She felt worse about getting Blake kicked out of the House more than about anything else. That, and her shoulders ached some, but that was probably just from the pack Naya and Aria had given them.
"Do you have crows in Atlas?" Blake asked. Was that what she thought the shape was? Her hand (the one that wasn't holding Weiss's) went to her weapon for just a moment.
"Sometimes," Weiss said. Most of the birds were either predators or didn't stay for long. "The winters are cold."
"Colder than now?" It was maybe a little warmer, and they were both more reasonably dressed, but there was still the snow, still the damp.
"Of course," Weiss said. "We're so close to the poles that in the north there are places where the days last for all of summer." She hadn't gone that far north very much. The wealthy mostly stayed in the cities, and the faunus and human laborers in the dust mines tended to not come south.
Not that the cold didn't bother her. She couldn't shake the feeling that what Aria had done wouldn't last.
"The whole summer?"
"Yeah. There aren't a lot of people who choose to live there." Weiss realized that she was speaking in the same circles her father did. "I mean, that's where some of the dust mines are, but there aren't any permanent settlements."
The conversation drifts, there. Weiss assumes Blake knows almost as much about the mines as Weiss does. Adam Taurus has always had, according to her father, an uncanny knowledge of where he ought to go to be the least appreciated.
"You still have your scroll on you, right?" Weiss asked. A sudden need to know whether her absence had been noted had seized her.
"Yeah," Blake said, "but I can't guarantee it's going to work."
"But Naya said—"
"There was some coverage," Blake said, "but nothing like in the cities."
"How much time do you spend in cities, anyway?" Weiss's original image of the White Fang as faceless monsters that stalked through the shadows had not entirely faded. Blake was just one person. The abruptness with which she had abandoned the White Fang pleased the part of Weiss that was still a little girl who read romance novels, but mostly it concerned her.
"Not too much," Blake said, defensively, "but enough. It's not as though the middle of the woods is… was our first choice to live." Despite her frustrated words, she did not let go of Weiss's hand.
"I keep forgetting people don't always grow up like me," Weiss said.
"What kind of bubble did you grow up in?" Blake asked.
"One made out of money," Weiss said.
Blake squeezed her hand. "I guess this is weird for the both of us," she said.
"Thank you for staying," Weiss said.
Blake smiled.
Weiss's stomach fluttered weirdly. "Do you know how close we are to the town?"
Blake checked the map, yet another convenient gift from the two Allmothers. "Maybe a half a day's walk, if I'm estimated these distances right. You hungry or something?" She looked over at Weiss.
"Kinda, yeah," Weiss said. She would be glad for a rest. It wasn't that she was weak, or anything.
Being sick had taken a lot out of her.
This time, Blake didn't need to go hunting for rabbits, thanks to those packs they had been given. They sat in the middle of the path, since it was well-maintained enough that the snow there was less deep and therefore easier to clear. "Can you make another fire?" Blake asked.
"With dust, you mean?"
There was a depression in the side of the road that overlapped with part of the "wilder" forest.
Blake pointed at it. "That might be a good spot," she said. "It's defensible, and I'd rather not camp out, even temporarily, off the road. It's not as though there are too many people looking for us."
"At least no one with superhuman speed, right?" Weiss asked. Winter was many things, but she had the Schnee abilities, which thankfully did not include the speed some people had for semblances.
Blake flinched. "I don't know how I outran Adam," she said, "when I was carrying you out of that clearing. He can run faster than anyone."
The vague anxiety that had been sitting in Weiss's chest since, honestly, the moment she had woken up, half-dazed, to find herself in the middle of a clearing in the snow, made itself even more known. "Oh."
"I don't know how he hasn't found me yet," Blake said. "He doesn't like deserters." Weiss felt Blake's grip on her hand tighten.
"Winter isn't very fast," Weiss said. "So don't worry."
"You're pretty powerful yourself," Blake said. She seemed sincere, too, which was strange for Weiss. She wasn't all that powerful, not compared to Winter.
"Thank you," Weiss said. She wasn't sure what else to say.
As it turned out, it was closer to evening than either of them had entirely realized, and setting up the camp to eat quickly turned into setting up a camp where they could stay the entire night. They might be close to the town, but it wasn't worth the risk of total darkness. Well, total darkness for Weiss, anyway. It was weird for Blake to remember that her companion couldn't see as well in the dark as she could. "Grimm don't really care about fire, do they?" Weiss asked. "It's all negative emotions?"
"Yeah," Blake said. "So be careful about that, I guess." She was unsure what else she could say. There was a pretty good chance that Weiss was either better at fighting than Blake, or knew more about grimm, or both. Blake had more practical knowledge of things like living in the woods, but it wasn't as though her childhood had been all that different from Weiss's. It just had taken Weiss longer, and more drastic circumstances, to run away.
"I can't tell what my emotions are, most of the time, anyway," Weiss said, in a way that was probably meant to be joking. The effect was ruined by the sudden tightness around her mouth, and the way her smile didn't quite reach her eyes.
"This food is actually okay," Blake said as a way of changing the subject. She had already revealed more than she had ever intended to Weiss, over the past… had it only been a few days? "I liked Aria." Weiss looked as relieved at the subject change as Blake felt.
"She was pretty cool."
Blake was surprised with her own lack of surprise at Weiss not saying anything bigoted. The other girl had picked up one of the sticks that hadn't caught on fire as was poking at the flame with it.
"When you make the fires—do you use your semblance?"
"Mostly," Weiss said. "The dust cartridges in my sword alter the effect of my glyphs, slightly, but yes, most of the energy is from my semblance." Her voice was flat as she described her powers, and she stared at Blake with an odd intensity.
"What kinds of dust can you use?"
"Any," Weiss said, "of any refinement—some are harder to use than others, and take more finesse, but this is what Myrtenaster is built for." She smiled as she looked at the sword. "I wanted to be a Huntress," she said with sudden emotion. She loosened her grip on the sword. "I don't know if that's possible, anymore."
"I can't plan that far ahead," Blake said. "I just want us to stay alive, for now. We can think about school later."
The 'we' took her by surprise. "Uh, sorry," she hastily amended, "I didn't mean to—"
"—no it's okay I didn't—"
"—are you sure?"
"Yes."
Blake exhaled. "I don't know if you've noticed but I'm not so great at uh… people."
"Humans?"
Blake should have been offended by the question, but like so many other questions Weiss asked there was an unintentional innocence that stopped the offense.
"Just… people in general," Blake said. "There aren't so many of us… of the White Fang at that encampment, and we all know each other pretty well. You're nice, but you're also new. And I don't know. I've talked more in the past few days than I have in a while."
"Am I hurting you?" Weiss asked. "I mean, is it hard for you to talk a lot?"
"I don't know," Blake said. "I'll tell you."
"I'll listen," Weiss said. It almost had the ring of a promise, and the words sat with Blake throughout the rest of their conversation and into the night. She took the first guard shift again, because of her eyes, and because there was something about Weiss that reminded Blake of a… a bird, maybe. Delicate, but also probably made of knives.
Winter had found herself a moderately not disgusting hostel of sorts to stay in. She had stayed in both better and worse places over the course of her career in the military, but it was always good to find someplace without, say, roaches. Or other insects. That it was currently winter in Vale likely helped with this.
She was, for the first time since she had left Atlas, uncertain in her mission. If the news reports she had finally managed to receive were correct (and why wouldn't they be?), Whitley Schnee was the new heir to the family fortune. Whitley. A pathetic excuse for a human being who cared for his sisters even less than they cared for him, who appeared to exist as little more than a younger clone of her father.
He barely even had a semblance, at least compared to his sisters.
This was not at all what Winter had intended when she had hired Echo. She had, perhaps foolishly, assumed that her Father would be reasonable, and that she would finally get the recognition she deserved. It seemed, however, that Jacque Schnee barely understood the family he had married into.
Nothing was as it should be, and it was all Weiss's fault. If she had just died when she had supposed to, and if Echo had returned with a tragic tale of inevitable accidents in the woods, Winter could be in Atlas, stacking events in her favor. Instead, she was here.
And what would she do when she found Weiss, anyway? It would be easiest, still, to kill her, but she was Winter's little sister.
Father had declared Whitley heir with no conclusive proof that Weiss was dead. He had declared Whitley heir while Winter was out of Atlas, in the part of Vale that was only mostly within range of the CCTS towers.
Had Father sent her out here so that he could get her out of the way? That was a distinct possibility, one that she ought to have realized from the beginning. In the moment, her desperate need for a pretense to go and solve the problem Weiss represented had apparently overridden her reasoning.
Winter sighed, realizing she had been standing by the door to the bathroom in her room for a good ten minutes, thinking about this.
She would go for a walk, she decided, and perhaps return to the Wayfairer's House to see if the faunus woman was any more willing to give her the information she needed.
Outside the hostel, she found herself blinking against the glare off the snow. It was later in the morning than she had realized. A black shape suddenly burst out of the nearby forest, transforming suddenly into the figure of a man.
"You!"
Winter started. She recognized the voice and the speaker.
"Winter Schnee, what in the name of the gods are you doing here?"
Qrow halted only a few steps away from her, his weapon in sword mode.
"Looking for my sister," Winter said blandly. "Haven't you heard, she's disappeared. Father was very worried." She realized as she spoke that the false casualness of her tone would immediately make Qrow suspicious.
"I heard that you had vanished," Qrow said. "I don't know how much coverage you get out here, but that's the story out of Atlas. You vanished, presumably befalling the same tragic fate as your sister." He seemed almost entirely sober, which meant he was even more dangerously competent than usual.
"How did you find me, then? If I've vanished?" How would no one be suspicious of Father's announcements? They were, as far as Winter could gather, coming out one after another, in quick succession, drastic alterations to the running of Schnee Dust Company every one of them.
"A wealthy woman in white asking questions attracts attention, especially in small towns. I was in the area, Winter. You were never exactly subtle."
Winter snorted. "As though you are one to talk. Well, you have found me. Now what?"
"I want you to explain yourself," he said. He coughed into his closed fist, and drank something out of a flask Winter suddenly realized he had been holding all along. Was he as much of a threat as he had been when they had last seen each other?
"I'm looking for my sister," Winter said again. "There's nothing else to explain."
Qrow shook his head. "There's something else," he said. "There's a woman named Echo Regent who's gone missing. She's on Oz's list of mercs, and she's not the kind of person to just vanish. And she was last seen with your sister." He was just as hostile to her as he had been the last time they had seen each other, which did not surprise her all that much.
"Echo was a mercenary?" Winter asked, feigning surprise and hoping she could fool Qrow. "If I had known—what could she have done to my sister?"
"Cut the crap, Winter," Qrow said. His stare hardened. "Now, I know what it's like to have a problem sibling, believe me, but Weiss was a little girl." Qrow was smart. He must have put the pieces together, pieces which were obvious if one knew how to look. Winter had just hoped no one would one.
"Is," Winter corrected, despite herself. "She is almost certainly still alive, unless she somehow died of starvation quite recently."
"Walk with me," Qrow said, suddenly. The bottle was gone, and he held his weapon more tightly.
"Why should I?" Winter asked, raising her saber. Qrow was drunk. He was not a threat.
"I know she's not dead, Winter," Qrow said, "because I've seen her. And you know who I saw her with?"
"Who?" Winter asked, not letting go of her sword. She hid the little jump in her chest as best she could. Her plans were changing rapidly as is, perhaps if she found Weiss and explained she would understand. It would depend on who she was with.
"You have, of course, heard of the White Fang."
Winter snorted. "Of course," she said, "their kind and my family do not have anything resembling a good history."
Qrow grimaced. "You know the Belladonnas? Former head of the organization, stepped down a while ago?"
Winter nodded. The few defectors Father could tolerate had given the Schnees a basic sketch of the internal structure of the White Fang before being sent off to work in the mines. They had, if memory served, not remained defectors for long, but that was not important. "What of them?"
"She hasn't been seen outside of rallies in years," Qrow said, "but I think your sister was with Belladonna's daughter, Blake."
"Behind you!" Weiss called, raising Myrtenaster to cast glyphs blue with ice dust at the Creep that had suddenly burst out of the denser parts of the forest. There were now three of them, concentrating their attention mostly on the faunus girl. Weiss had not been paying attention, distracted by the feeling of Blake's hand in hers, when Blake had suddenly gone utterly still, standing and spinning around to face the first grimm that had come rushing out of the darkness in one fluid movement.
"Gods' sake!"
One of Blake's shadow clones exploded as the Creep that had just appeared swiped at her. Weiss suppressed a flinch at what her instincts interpreted as the certain death of her friend, especially as Blake appeared behind that Creep, whose back leg Weiss had managed to freeze to the ground, and slashed its head off by cutting first with her sword and then with its sharpened sheath. The grimm fell to the ground headless, body still squirming, before evaporating entirely.
Weiss gave herself one second to look at the two still living grimm. They were both closer to Blake, both on her right side.
"How do you feel about lightning?" Weiss asked, spinning the dust cartridges on Myrtenaster.
"You can use it?" Blake asked, dodging a strike from the second Creep. She stuck her sword through an eye and then into whatever it was grimm had for brains.
"Yes."
The decision was made for her as the grimm suddenly changed course and began running straight at her. Spinning the lightning dust cartridge into place, summoned purple glyphs right as it leapt at her.
She dodged out of its way, carefully avoiding the mostly nonexistent fire, as it fell out of its leap, screaming as lightning crackled from its head through its whole body. It was still screaming as it vanished in the same way its companions hard.
Weiss exhaled hard, dropping her sword suddenly as she tried to keep herself upright. "I'm still not at full capacity, apparently," she said. "Do you think it's safe to sleep?"
"I'll stay up," Blake said. "I don't mind it that much."
Weiss looked at her gratefully. "Thank you," she said.
She was asleep almost faster than she could pull out the bedroll-sleeping-bag-thing the women at the Wayfarer's House had given her and crawl inside it.
AN: Please review! It warms my cold, dead heart.
