AN: Hey guys! So, not as long between updates this time, but still a while! Thank you for the reviews, follows, and favorites, it's always really nice to wake up to those notifications. It's now summer vacation, but I still have work and a project and stuff going on, so while the next chapter might come out a little sooner, it probably won't come out in like, a week, you know? This is also the first time I've posted on FFN first, instead of AO3, but that's more for formatting reasons tbh.
Alternate title: where the pairing "Monochrome" finally becomes apparent.

Winter had not, initially, taken Qrow's news all that well. He had guessed this would happen, and was not entirely surprised, but the sheer, almost exaggerated force of her reaction only strengthened his feeling that this was a fucked up sibling relationship that put his various issues with Raven utterly to shame.

"What would a Schnee—what would Weiss be doing with one of them? Was she hurt? Was she a prisoner?"

She got to that point—the point of actually asking questions, after a good five minutes of wordless sputtering and an emotion that Qrow can't exactly get a read on.

"They were just walking. I couldn't hear them that well from above." Winter looked at him skeptically, which did not surprise him. She had never believed that his bird form had its limits, no matter how often he swore that he was telling the absolute truth.

It wasn't as though bird senses were all super-human. It was mostly his eyesight that improved, and he didn't exactly have the time to read their lips.

"Did she appear safe, at least?" Winter asked.

"I think so. They both had packs, and they should reach the next village by the morning." Qrow had hoped that he would not have to explain this next part to Winter, hoping that she would be able to connect the dots, but she seemed totally focused on her sister and her situation. This was understandable, but also made things more difficult. "Belladonna's daughter wasn't wearing any insignia. Or a mask."

"Are you implying she's left the White Fang?" Winter asked. Her skepticism visibly built on her previous skepticism. "That sounds rather unlikely. As you said, she has not been seen outside of the rallies in almost a decade."

"I'm implying that if she has left the White Fang, which appears to be a distinct possibility, she could herself be in grave danger. I would concern myself less with the threat she poses to your sister, and more with the threat her former companions might pose to them both."

Winter's expression went from unreadable to thoughtful. "It would be bizarre for her to be with any Schnee, if she were still with the Fang, but the former heiress of the company? I can't imagine her people would be all that happy with that."

"Do you know why your father has declared her dead?"

Winter winced. "My Father has been making… questionable… choices recently, especially with respect to our family's fortune. I could not tell you. She is, obviously, not dead at all."

Was that disappointment? The Winter Qrow knew would not show her emotions this nakedly. How badly had extended interactions with her father affected her? She was usually better at this.

"Yes," Qrow said. "We need to find them before the Fang does, at the very least."

Winter pursed her lips, staring at a point in space somewhere over Qrow's shoulder. "I am fairly confident my sister stayed at the Wayfarer's House in town," she said, "but the faunus woman at the door refused to let me inside."

"Did you call her 'faunus woman' to her face?" Qrow asked, biting back a sigh. Winter's prejudices were going to be problematic, to say the least, if they ever did catch up to Weiss and Belladonna's daughter.

"I was extremely polite. I don't understand why she would not let me in."

Qrow barked a laugh. "I'd say not giving information to a person's attempted murderer is a pretty good policy." There was no point in hiding his suspicions from her. He could defeat her in battle, and she was smart enough to know that. Especially out here, in what was pretty much his home turf.

The affected gasp was a bit much. "I would do no such thing," she said, her voice just a little too high pitched.

"How many times do I have to say cut the crap before you actually do it?" He used this awkward pause in the conversation as an opportunity to take a quick drink. It wouldn't do for him to be completely sober, not for this bullshit.

"What would be the purpose of my own sister's death? As you can very well see, my little brother is next in line, not I."

"Why would anyone assume that? Your little brother is, from all reports, just above utterly incompetent. You, on the other hand, are good at your job and know the company inside and out. And you aren't a child, unlike either of your siblings." He was being a little heavy-handed, maybe, but he was trying to hit what he was pretty sure what a major nerve for Winter.

Winter proved him right when she laughed and said, "Oh, why hide it if you already know? I regret my actions, for the most part, if that means anything at all in the grand scheme of things. And I no longer which to kill my sister. I want to find her, if only so that we can both appear at our father's doorstep and point out that the rumors of our deaths have been greatly exaggerated."

Qrow was glad they weren't going to fight. Today was not a good day to fight.

"I'm going after them," he said. "On the wing, I mean. You can follow me on foot, if you know the way to the next village over." He wanted to reach the two girls first, in case Winter abruptly changed her mind again and decided it would be best to kill them both. And he wanted to talk to Weiss without her sister present. Maybe then he would get some honesty, or something resembling that at least.

"On the wing? Oh—that's unreasonable, Qrow, and you know that." She was getting upset. He was vaguely sympathetic. It was cold, especially if you were big and didn't have feathers. But did not feel enough sympathy to completely change his plan. Anyway, he was still far too sober to be human properly.

"There's a path," was all he said before he switched shapes.

He flew away to the sound of Winter's exasperating yelling.

They reached the outskirts of the village the next morning without further incident. This made Blake nervous. 'Further incident' was basically how forest life worked, events cascading into each other to form bigger events, and just because it looked peaceful didn't mean there was something hiding over the horizon.

As it turned out, the 'further incident' was an internally caused one, not external.

"Why would you ever join the White Fang?" Weiss asked, suddenly, as they were passing around a monstrous fallen tree of some kind that blocked the path and was too tall and slick with moss and rot to climb over.

Blake stopped mid-step, taking her foot off a moss-covered stone she had intended to quickly step over. She turned to face Weiss. "I thought you could guess." She was pretty sure they had already had this conversation, or at least ones similar enough to it that it was not entirely necessary anymore.

Or maybe it was the phrasing of the question itself that brought up the old frustrations from when the White Fang had been more focused on political action instead of attacking organizations like Schnee dust. It was a question human reporter after human reporter had asked Blake, one she had a nice canned answer to. "Because humans sucked, because we couldn't go on like we were." It's how she answered Weiss, too.

"So, you joined a terrorist organization?" The incredulity and disbelief in Weiss's voice hit Blake somewhere in the chest.

She exhaled, doing her best not to yell. Yelling would only attract Grim, and they were already treading dangerous ground with this argument. Well, proto-argument, but the way Weiss was talking it was heading in that direction. "Is it terrorism to not be confined to one island? To want to be treated equally, not just get lip service from laws that are then not enforced? Is that too much to ask?"

"Maybe not, but you do know what is terrorism? Killing people! With families! Do you think those board members the White Fang assassinated were faceless monsters?" Weiss was yelling, her hands clenched into fists. She was almost in a fighting stance. "I lost the closest thing I had to aunts and uncles whenever they died. They were my family!"

"The Fang were my family!" She decided not to tell Weiss that her father was the former head of the Fang. That would be too much for this conversation. "And you're one to talk about faceless monsters—you don't even think we're people!"

"I trusted you, didn't I?" Blake watched Weiss's breathing speed up. Her cheeks were weirdly flushed, throwing that scar into sharp relief.

"Yes! If you hate the Fang so much, why go with me?" It was something she had been wondering this whole time, probably, even if she had never thought about it in those words. "Why trust me to save you? I could have just turned you in!"

"I had nowhere else to turn! I wake up standing in the forest, in the snow, having just killed someone, and you… you show me kindness. You didn't hit me, or insult me, you saved me." Weiss took a step closer to Blake, her fists still clenched. Blake noticed that she had yet to go for her sword.

She was struck again by how pale Weiss was. She wondered how much she had gone outside when she was younger, how often she had been able to leave Atlas. It might not have been that often. But that didn't matter. "I couldn't just leave you in the snow! I didn't recognize you at first, and you were this—you looked so lost. I couldn't leave you."

"So, if you had recognized me you would have left me there?"

Adam had said something similar, three days and a subjective lifetime ago.

"No!" Blake was shouting too, now. She couldn't help it. She needed Weiss to understand the White Fang of the last few years was not what the organization was meant to be.

"Why? It would have made things so much easier for you, and then I would be dead and you wouldn't be homeless and…"

Blake closed the distance between them and leaned down to kiss her, cutting off the rest of her sentence. A few seconds at the most after their lips made contact, she dropped her arm where she had half-curled it around Weiss's shoulder and backed up a step.

"I'm sorry, I…"

She took a half step back to balance herself as Weiss pulled Blake's head down to kiss her.

Weiss's lips were chapped from the cold, dryer than Blake expected. She had her hand on the back of Blake's head, the other on her shoulder, over where the strap of her pack lay across it.

Blake put her hands on Weiss's back, trying not to lose her balance. That would break the kiss.

Weiss broke the kiss, but she didn't move away, instead pressing her face into Blake's chest.

"I don't mind, obviously," she said.

"I couldn't leave you in the snow," Blake repeated, maybe uselessly. "I was going to leave the White Fang, anyway, I think. You just accelerated that."

"The worst part is that you're right, you had a point. And then you blew it by killing innocents." Blake realized that Weiss was almost using a general you there.

"The Fang is sick now," Blake said.

"Can I kiss you again?"

She would have been bothered by how Weiss was changing topics, but the two things were also looping through Blake's head, tangling into each other.

"Sure," Blake said.

This time, she opened her mouth, just a little. She'd kissed a few people before, so she had some idea of what she was doing, but still couldn't help but accidentally knock her teeth against Weiss's.

"Whoops," was probably what Weiss said, though it was obviously rather muffled.

Fireworks didn't exactly go off as they kept kissing, not that Blake expected any, but it was still nice. Really, really, nice, in a way that filled her chest with a strange warm feeling.

Blake was the one who pulled away, this time. Weiss looked up at her. "We should probably not resolve all our arguments like this," she said.

Blake snorted a laugh. "Yeah, probably not," she said. "We should probably continue walking." She suddenly realized they were still right by the tree, and still carrying their packs.

"Ah, yes." Weiss said. "That was nice." She smiled. That warm feeling returned to Blake's chest.

"It was," Blake said.

They completed their detour around the tree, finding the path again.

Blake wasn't sure how to bring up the kiss, especially since it had happened in the middle of an argument. Weiss fixed that problem by bring it up for her, about fifteen minutes later.

"I think we should do that again," she said. "Hopefully somewhere warmer, however."

Blake turned around again to look at her. "I'm sorry for screaming at you. Not entirely sorry about what I screamed, though." It was a miracle they hadn't been set on by grimm again. Maybe it was their proximity to the village.

"Thank you for not leaving me behind."

Blake exhaled. Weiss needed to stop doing that, because it acted a pretty significant derail and Blake thought she had made it pretty clear by this point that she wasn't going anywhere. "I'm not going to," she said. "That would just be cruel." It had been only what, a day, since she had been healed the Wayfarer's House?

"I would have been fine, eventually." The resignation in Weiss's voice was not what Blake was expecting.

She, and the rest of the White Fang people she had spent most of her time with, had assumed the Schnee kids were pampered assholes with no real-life skills. It made sense, considering just how rich and frankly downright evil the Schnee Dust Corporation could be. What little they knew of Winter Schnee seemed to mostly confirm this. Adam, at least, had assumed she only had a place in the Atlesian military because of nepotism.

It was true that Weiss seemed to be missing many necessary skills such as camping and not getting kidnapped and getting left for dead in the middle of the forest (though that last one was not necessarily under her control). It was also true that she had a rather one-sided view of the conflict between the White Fang and Schnee Dust, though that was to be expected.

But she was also weirdly willing to listen to Blake's point of view, at least to a point, and she appeared to have an underlying expectation that something would go terribly wrong and Blake would just up and leave. And she had never really brought up going home, had even mentioned hiding her continued from her father.

And if her sister was pursuing them, and was really behind the assassination attempt? Then that spoke to more problems in the Schnee family than Blake could have ever imagined.

At least Blake had the knowledge that even though her parents were probably incredibly disappointed with her, they didn't want her dead. That was Adam. Which she wasn't thinking about right now, because she was thinking about Weiss's much bigger problem.

Also, Weiss was pretty. And nice, when they weren't fighting, and could handle herself against grimm and could use dust to summon lighting.

"That's not what I meant," Blake said. Going off an instinct she wasn't entirely sure was the right one, she asked, "Would you like to hold hands? There isn't much path left until the village."

"Sure," Weiss said. Was that gratitude? That couldn't be gratitude, why would Weiss be grateful for something as small as that?

Weiss grabbed Blake's hand, who turned back towards the direction they were going.

"I wish I had tried to change things more," she said. "Or thought more about what I had been taught about the faunus."

Blake looked at her. She felt something like a realization. "You're just a kid," she said. She felt something stick in her throat. "I'm just a kid."

AN: Please review! They bring me life, or sort of life, and are generally nice to read! Thank you!
This chapter was weirdly difficult to work on, because kissing scenes can be weirdly difficult. Not because of the actual kissing, but because of things like "where are their arms" and "can they do this while wearing backpacks?"

I didn't originally intend it to go that way, but Weiss and Blake were like you realize it's been ten chapters and it's been barely shippy, right.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

[[Obligatory plug: a friend, CuChulainn X19, has written a pretty awesome OC team au fic, called Rising Dawn. You should check it out! His RvB and Star Trek/Mass Effect stuff is also pretty great, if those are fandoms you go to]]