Chapter 10
"Aunt Wiss!"
Quickly, Weiss scooped Türkis up, a big grin on her face. "Hey there, little one. How's it going?" She then turned to the three women in the hallway of the Rose house. "What gives me the honor of your visit?"
Blake chuckled slightly. "We just wanted to know how you are holding up." She approached Weiss and gave her a light hug, careful not to make her drop the fox faunus clinging to her neck.
"Well, pretty good. A little bit moody and tired, though. So, please, if I seem to act weird…"
"Don't worry about it, Weissberg", Yang interrupted, "It's the hormones. We understand."
Türkis looked between her blonde mother and Weiss, trying to understand what they talked about. "Aunt Wiss, are you sick?"
Weiss could not hold the small laugh escaping her as she saw the worry in those big brown eyes. She shook her head. "No, I'm fine. But thank you for your concern, Türkis." She gave her a kiss on those rosy chubby cheeks.
Blake and Yang looked at each other with confusion plastered over their faces.
"Oh, great idea", Weiss sing-sang, "How about you all stay over for dinner? It's been a while."
"Can we have fish sticks?", the little Faunus begged with sparkling eyes.
The snow head rubbed her nose against Türkis', earning a laugh, and said in a baby voice: "Of course we can, you little wittle puff of joy, you."
Carefully, every step calculated and eyes fixated on the pregnant woman, Yang stepped closer to Ruby and said: "I'm scared."
"She is like this all the time", Ruby whispered, as if she was scared that too loud of a sound would alarm Weiss of her presence and shower her with honestly annoying amounts of affection.
"Do you have that here or do we have to go get the food?" Blake might have sounded calm, but Yang knew her well enough to know that she was just as disturbed by Weiss as her.
"Nope", the snow-head replied way too chipper.
"Um, 'nope', what", Ruby asked confused. And slightly disturbed.
"We don't have it here, my silly pumpkin."
Yang snorted, but controlled herself enough to not burst out laughing. Who knows how Ruby's wife would react to that. "Well, then, how about the pumpkin and me go and buy them real quick?"
"It's 'and I', Yang", Blake deadpanned.
A quick wave of her prosthetic hand, as if her words were writings on a board. "Whatever, you know I don't understand when to say 'I' and when 'me'."
"Oh, that's easy, Yangy", Weiss stated, as she let Türkis back to the ground, "when you ask 'who', it is 'I', when you ask 'whom', it is 'me'. So, who is going shopping? Ruby and I. Easy, isn't it?" A weirdly eerie smile spread across her lips.
A delicate eyebrow arched on the raven-haired Faunus. "Yangy?"
"Okay", Yang replied, every muscle tense, like a spring waiting to bounce out of this situation. She grabbed Ruby's arm and pulled her out of the house without so much as a goodbye.
The fresh air hitting them felt like a wave washing the tension away, and Yang felt like she could finally breathe again. "Man, that was fucking nuts", she said, glancing back to the front door, actually a little scared of the possibility of Weiss following them.
Ruby nodded so fast, that her shoulder long hair flew into her face. "Are you sure you wanna leave your girlfriend and daughter in there with her", she joked. At least she told herself it was a joke.
Yang's laugh sounded a little forced as well. "Blake'll be fine, she is a trained huntress."
"Yeah, but so is Weiss."
Yang stayed silent.
(Line break)
"Thank you", Blake said as she grabbed the tea Weiss prepared for her. Türkis was sitting on the floor, flipping through one of Weiss' fashion magazines she liked so much. Blake was silent for a moment, internally struggling with how to approach the subject of the former heiress's euphoric attitude. Finally, she decided to just face the problem head-on: "Say, Weiss?"
She hummed, while taking a sip from her own tea.
"Please don't get the wrong idea, but you are surprisingly happy. Almost euphorically so."
Gently, Weiss placed the cup of tea back on the kitchen table. "Ruby said the same thing a few days ago. Am I not allowed to be happy?"
"I never said that. I was just confused, as I always knew you as the collected type, you know? Never one to let her emotions get the better of her."
"I am just happy, you know?" She gently put a hand on her abdomen. "I always wanted my own family, and now, finally, it is becoming a reality. I can give my child the love and care I got refused. And I can do it with the person I love the most in the entire world." Her eyes started to sting, and before she knew it, the first tears fell onto her lap. With cat-like reflexes Blake stood up and wrapped her arms around Weiss.
"Hey, hey, I'm sorry. I did not mean to make you cry."
"I… I don't even know why I am crying", Weiss sobbed.
"It's the hormones, don't worry about it."
They stayed like this for a while, Weiss crying hot tears into Blake's shoulder. After a minute, she calmed down, and Blake thought it to be a good moment to change the subject: "So, when are you going back to work?"
Weiss wiped a loose tear from her cheek. "In a month. You know I can't stay away from work too much."
"Seriously?" A delicate eyebrow raised on the faunus' face. "I always assumed a company like yours has a lot of chairmen to take over when you are… indisposed, so to speak."
"That's true. And that's not how I meant it. It's not that the company will collapse because I am not there. It's that I don't know what to do with myself when I don't work."
"A workaholic, huh? Yeah, you strike me as one", Blake replied with a slight smile on her face. "But keep in mind that you can't push yourself as much as you are used to, now that you're pregnant. You'll have to learn to take it easy."
A sigh. "I hope I can do that."
"You'll have no other choice if you don't want to put yourself or the child in danger." For a moment, Blake contemplated a question. A risky one, because she was not sure how Weiss would interpret it, especially now, in her state of hormonal turmoil. She decided to risk it. "So, I reckon you don't really have hobbies then?"
For a fraction of a second, Weiss' eyes narrowed. It seemed to happen involuntarily, because her face softened just as quick. Internally, Blake sighed relieved. "You… you are correct. I just don't know what to do with myself without work. I mean, when I come home I listen to music or read a book, and when Ruby is home we cuddle or talk. But I don't really do stuff."
A slight smile spread over Blake's face. Helping Weiss find a hobby sounds right down her alley.
Yang felt like she is going crazy. Being a passenger while Ruby drove was a test in physical torture. Especially when she had control over the radio, as it was the case right now. How in the nine circles of Hell can something like this be considered music? It sounds more like a guy escaped a mental asylum and is now raping a steel drum with a jackhammer. Every single one of the 115 beats per minute seemed to blow her eardrums apart and worm their way straight into her brain, jumping around in her skull. She turned the volume knob all the way down to zero, afraid of her brain leaking out through her nose. The silence following was almost unnaturally comforting.
"Hey", Ruby protested, "why did you turn that off? That was my favorite!"
"Honestly, Ruby, I love you, but this electronic excretion you call music is making me ill. Don't you have something… I don't know, with melody?"
"Ha, ha", Ruby retorted, "you just don't understand how much work and effort went into making this kind of music." She turned the song back up, but not as loud as before, as to nor drown out their voices.
"How much effort someone put into something is not indicative of the quality of the work."
"Yeah, yeah. We arrived, by the way."
Ruby steered her car into the parking lot of the super market. It was big enough to hold 4500 cars, according to the sign they passed as Ruby entered. Yang was taken aback by the sheer magnitude of this place. The market itself was just as big, towering in the horizon like a monument, the wide exterior reminiscent of walls of a castle belonging to a king.
"It's impressive, isn't it?", Ruby said. She must have noticed Yang staring.
Yang just kept staring, even when Ruby pulled her car into one of the few empty parking spots. It was a rather amusing sight, Ruby thought, as she remembered her first time seeing the building, shortly after she moved together with Weiss into their house. She must have had the same look on her face.
The interior was even more massive, as if it ignored every conceivable law of physics. The ceiling was at least 10 meters high, with huge signs pointing the desiring costumer to every consumable imaginable, and even some unimaginable. Shelves filled to the brim, almost threatened to burst, people running to and fro, a wall of noise hitting anyone in the face who dared to enter this Taj Mahal of greed and capitalism.
"How the fuck do you find anything in this place?", Yang yelled, as if she was scared that the sheer magnitude of the building would swallow her voice, and, to an extent, her entire being.
Ruby threw Yang a smug grin. "Stay close, little one, we don't want you to get lost."
Ruby knew the place, maybe not like the back of her hand, because that would mean she had pretty big hands. She doesn't. But she knew the place well enough for them to get the fish sticks in a little over five minutes. And most of the time was just wasted walking to the corresponding isle. They assumed, almost hoped, to be out of this place quickly, when Ruby's scroll rang.
"Hello", she answered.
For a few seconds she stayed silent, listening to the person on the other end of the line. Yang watched intently, as if trying to decipher what her colloquist was saying simply by Ruby's reactions. After a few "yes" and "uhu"s she ended the call without any form of goodbye.
"Who was that?"
"Weiss", Ruby sighed. "She asked me to bring her a watermelon and gummy bears."
"I did not know she likes watermelons."
"She doesn't."