Author's Note:

So, my midterms are finished, and here I give to ye the last chapter in this arc.

Enjoy.

Blake had trouble concentrating in class that afternoon as she continually made an effort to block any thoughts that might stray to Yang, hoping that the lack of mental communication between them was helping her teammate's headaches. Blake found out after class that Weiss had woken up and been discharged with the only condition being she returns after a few days to run tests. Yang briefly explained that Weiss had simply used too much of her aura, causing her extreme fatigue.

As a celebration of her release, Weiss had taken Ruby out on a date that evening which left Yang and Blake alone in their dorm.

It's all for the best. Yang thought, making Blake look up over her ever-present book.

"What's all for the best?" She asked curiously as Yang paced up and down the room, moving their stuff around and piling books onto the desk.

"Well, the kids are away tonight and that gives me time to talk to you." Yang answered cryptically as she piled the books even higher as she cleared the floor more than it'd been since they'd gotten the massive amount of books.

"We don't have to wait for them to leave you know." Blake said, as she resumed reading.

"I didn't want to be interrupted… and I'll have to take your book too." Yang said as she yanked it out of Blake's hands and slipped a bookmark in before adding it to the pile on the desk.

"Okay…" Blake dragged out the word as she fumbled, not knowing what to do with her hands now that they weren't holding anything. "What now?"

"No rush, Blakey. Ride the wave, ya know?" Yang said as she bounced down beside Blake on the bed. Yang reached out and took Blake's hand to stop their fidgeting. "I think you need to calm down a little bit. You've been so twitchy lately. Is something bothering you?"

"Nothing, why?" Blake asked confused as to how twitchy turned into bothered in her teammate's mind.

"Just a hunch." Yang responded. "Anyway, I wanted to know if you wanted to come to Moonshot with me? It's a bar I've been meaning to visit for a while now."

Blake felt every muscle in her body go rock hard at the name of the bar. There was absolutely no way she was ever going back there, let alone allowing Yang to set foot within a mile of that place ever again. And how Yang hadn't remembered she'd already visited the place once, scared Blake even more. "No."

"Awww come on, Blakey. I wanna party a bit. It's been so boring around here after I got out of the joint-"

"It was the hospital Yang!" And how do you expect me to explain why I can't let you go near that place ever again?! Blake thought to herself, cursing her inability to find the right words.

"Whoa, calm down there. I just wanna have some fun, so lets go to the bar, okay? We'll get some fun juice and dance till our legs don't work anymore, then we can have a cat nap!" Yang planned, already thinking of the drink she'd order for herself when her head exploded in pain as Blake's thoughts flooded into her as Blake lost control over the barrier she'd worked hard to keep up.

Pain. That was the main thing Yang felt, and it wasn't just her head threatening to burst from the flawed link they shared. It was Blake's pain. And her fear. And sorrow, regret, longing, and a thousand variations of those and other emotions as they mixed together, mutating into a deadly ball of torture. Yang's eyes were watering from the pain of the connection that was staying solid and refused to drop no matter how hard she tried to close it off. She looked over at Blake who had tears flowing down her face, her eyes wide and terrified as they slowly got redder from the tears spilling forth from her silent crying.

The emotions stopped as Blake got her mind back under her control as Yang finally understood the lone message that was underneath them. "That's where we went that night, isn't it?"

Blake was wiping her eyes on a nightshirt she'd pulled from beneath the sheets. She nodded silently as she forced the connection to stay closed.

"It's okay. You don't have to keep it closed." Yang said quietly as she wrapped her arms around her teammate's neck. Slowly, she pulled the shirt away from Blake's face and kissed her forehead while whispering to her. "Shhh… we won't ever go there again. I promise."

Yang kissed Blake's forehead softly, making Blake close her eyes. Yang felt some small piece of her fall away as she enjoyed the warmth of her teammate so close and yet a lot closer than she was normally comfortable with. She kissed each of Blake's eyes, making them pop open in turn before moving so their foreheads touched and they were looking directly into each other's eyes.

"There's something different about you." Yang stated in a ponderous voice.

"I am a faunus, you know." Blake said, feeling a little awkward about Yang's choice of words.

"Yeah, but that's not what I meant." Yang said patiently. "You're not like any of the others. You're special."

"Um, thanks?" Blake said, her voice rising like a question. "You're special too."

Yang let out a soft laugh and gently kissed Blake, their eyes maintaining contact throughout. "I mean you're special to me."

Blake didn't have anything to respond with, so she just kissed the beautiful blonde girl in front of her, her eyes closing to enjoy the sensation of Yang's lips beneath her own, the prodding of her tongue against Yang's lips as she asked for entrance, and finally Yang's tongue as they intertwined, their saliva mixing, making the kiss feel very wet compared to the last time when both their mouths had been dried out from sleep.

Blake felt her head grow fuzzy and she felt her hands move to tangle in Yang's hair. Blake was amazed when Yang didn't even react and instead continued the kiss as if it was the oxygen she needed to breathe. Eventually, both girls needed air and they broke apart, panting. A thin string of saliva joined them that stretched and broke as they opened their eyes to look at each other. Yang's eyes were slightly clouded as if there was a storm raging behind them, and Blake knew she was feeling the same.

A flash of a thought ran through Blake's mind as she remembered the link. She leaned forward, Yang met her half way and they began kissing again. This time, Blake tried to draw on her aura to either break or complete the link, at this point she didn't exactly know which she wanted and which she was trying for. She felt the familiar power course through her limbs as Yang broke out of the kiss.

"Oh…" Was all she managed to utter before she closed her eyes and fell asleep in Blake's arms.

Well, I'll have to wait till morning to find out what happened, I guess. Blake thought to herself as she rested Yang's head on the pillow then lay down beside her, pressing a kiss to her lips before pulling up the blanket and curling up beside her. What she didn't see as she closed her eyes was the faint smile that Yang wore as they slept side by side.

A loud crash echoed in the room bright and early the next morning followed closely by the screams of Weiss and Ruby.

"Shut up! I'm sleeping!" Yang yelled as she burrowed her face deeper into her soft… warm… what is this? She asked herself. Just then, an arm wrapped around her and pulled her even closer to the softness. The hand stroked her hair slowly and Yang felt a strange sensation of contentment and stopped moving.

Wait, why is there a hand touching my hair? More importantly, who's hand is it? Yang suddenly sprang out of the bed and landed on the floor, smacking her head against it with a loud crack. She opened her eyes, just to see the world swimming around her in a blur of color as she turned around to get her bearings.

Yang's vision returned to see Blake sitting up and yawning while she stretched her arms. Honestly, you act so catlike sometimes! Yang thought to Blake, but didn't receive a response. Huh, that's odd…

"I told you! Didn't I tell you?" Weiss was yelling at Ruby from the other side of the room. "What if I was under there? What if you were? Don't you see that we could've died?"

"I think that's a bit of an exaggeration…" Ruby responded as she looked over the mess of her collapsed bunk. "It probably wouldn't have killed us… only hurt a lot."

Weiss let out an exasperated huff. "Well, what now then? Are you going to put it back? Or can I just buy a normal bunk bed that was made specifically as a bunk bed?"

"I already told you, I don't want you're money!" Ruby yelled back. "I can probably fix this anyway…"

"I think Weiss is right." Blake piped in. "That bed is completely destroyed."

Yang was inspecting her bed with a confused look on her face as to why it was completely cold as if she hadn't slept in it. She rubbed her arm over the mattress as she tried to remember the previous night.

"What's wrong, Yang?" Ruby piped in, leaving her argument in concern for her sister's quietness.

"I'm not sure…" Yang admitted as she looked around the room at the still locked door and her three teammates. It was then that she took in the mass of destruction on her sister's side of the room.

Ruby's bunk hung from one of the four ropes that were supposed to support it and was lying through the middle of Weiss's bed that had cracked in half straight down the middle from the impact. Splinters of wood scattered more than a foot away from the epicenter of the destruction. "Are you okay?"

Ruby blushed and turned away. "Yeah… we were already out of bed." She ran into the washroom without another word.

"Wait, we?" Yang asked the room as a whole, looking to Weiss then Blake and back again, fixing Weiss with a look of suspicion.

"Hey, if you and Blake are allowed to sleep together, then I see no problem with Ruby and I doing the same!" She huffed in her imperious voice that she had been slowly losing since she'd become part of team RWBY. "Anyways, tell Ruby I went to the cafeteria."

Yang watched in silence, processing what Weiss had said as she left the room. Blake crossed the room, picking up her book from the desk where Yang had left it the previous night. Turning back to her bed, she started to open the book and then remembered what she'd tried the previous night. She closed the book and stopped in front of Yang.

She thought one thought with all her might. A command for Yang to kiss her. She tried her hardest to send it over the link like she'd done the previous day. She continued to keep eye contact with Yang for a solid minute before Yang started shifting under her gaze, breaking the eye contact and looking down and to the left.

"Um… why are you looking at me like that?" Yang asked shyly as she glanced back up at Blake.

Blake smiled as she realized she'd somehow broken their link, at least enough to be disjoint in their thoughts. "How do you feel about an early morning practice?"

It was half an hour later that the two teammates stood across from each other in the gym's sparring area.

"I'm a bit tired, so go easy?" Yang asked with a yawn. The bags under her eyes indicated how tired she was.

"Don't worry." Blake said as she took her combat position.

A digital beeping sounded from Yang's scroll and the two leaped at each other. Yang starting out with a single heavy punch. Blake saw it coming, but was determined to test her theory. She moved directly into the path of the punch, allowing Yang's fist to smash into her left cheek.

Her head exploded in stars as she fell backward. She felt the wind knocked out of her as she landed hard, rolling awkwardly as her momentum dissipated. As she stopped and shook her head, Yang was already crouching at her side.

"Oh, my god! Are you okay?" Yang asked, worry etched into her eyes.

"… Yeah… I'm fine." Blake answered. In fact, she didn't feel fine. She felt like she'd been punched by a brick, although that had been her plan to begin with. Nothing felt broken, so she pulled out her scroll to check her aura level. "Yang, take a look at this…"

Yang took Blake's scroll and looked at the aura levels for her team. Ruby's and Weiss's levels were both glowing bright green at the top. Yang's eyes widened in surprise at the bottom half of the screen. The bottom, Yang's level, was a darker green than Ruby and Weiss, but it was Blake's readout that interested her. Blake's was flashing an orange that was almost red with a caution symbol turning on and off beside it. "Did I actually hit you that hard?"

"Yeah, but that's not what I mean." Blake said with another shake of her head before she jumped to her feet. She took the scroll back from Yang and pulled up a screen-shot she'd taken just before their match. "At the start, we both had the exact same aura levels." She pointed the readings out to Yang who nodded as she tried to figure out where Blake was going with this. "Anyway, when we fought in the tournament, our aura dropped at the exact same pace, no matter who got hit, because we shared our aura through the link the way we shared thoughts."

"Okay, so it doesn't work anymore?" Yang asked, hoping she wasn't missing anything.

"No. It's broken!" Blake exclaimed joyfully. "You couldn't hear my thoughts this morning and I couldn't hear yours! That means what I did last night actually fixed our problem!"

Yang noticed how excited Blake was about it, but couldn't help but feel hurt at the implication that she was happy to be rid of the bond between them. It must have showed on her face, because Blake suddenly stopped. Her smile vanished as if she had never been smiling to begin with.

"Yang, I don't need a mental connection to tell there's something bothering you." Blake said, crouching down to Yang's level where she still sat on her knees. "What is it?"

"It's nothing…" Yang responded sounding depressed, looking away and starting to stand up to leave.

"It's definitely not nothing!" Blake asserted, placing her hand firmly on her teammate's shoulder and forcing her to remain seated.

The two stared at each other in a silent battle of wills, until Yang gave up with a huff. "Fine! Fine! Just quit it with the eyes already! I feel like you just want to be rid of me, and that's fine! I'm not one to get emotional just cause I misunderstood how someone feels about me!"

"What are you-" Blake started, not knowing what Yang was talking about.

"Don't worry. I get it. You can go now. You don't have to pretend to like me anymore. I know I deserve this anyway because of how I tricked you into the bond to begin with!" Yang continued, her voice slowly rising in volume.

Blake watched as her teammate's face flushed red and her eyes glistened with unshed tears before she jumped up and walked away. "Yang, wait!"

"I'm going to the bags. I'll see ya later." Yang called back shortly before entering the next room.

Blake felt liquid warmth run down her cheek. She wiped the tear away and looked after Yang. What did I say?

Yang seemed to be in a bad mood because it was late at night when she finally returned to the dorm. She told Ruby she'd been in the gym practicing, and joked with Weiss about leaving hot water as she entered the shower she'd just left. Blake sat in the dark corner of her bed, looking over the top of her book, but Yang didn't even acknowledge she'd seen her.

Blake felt heat prick the corners of her eyes but she refused to cry. She must have been staring because suddenly, Weiss was beside her.

"You broke the aura bond, didn't you?" Weiss guessed, shaking her head.

"Y-yeah…"

"Well, then you just have to replace it with something else, right?" Weiss pointed out. "You should know how Yang might act tough but is really being ripped apart inside. She probably was happy to have something that made you two more than just teammates. Now that you've gotten rid of it though, she is probably feeling a bit rejected."

Blake was shaken at how observant the white haired woman beside her was, and thought about what she could give Yang to fix it. She had a hundred thoughts but only one really stood out, but that was taking things a bit too far…. Or was it?

"Anyway…" Weiss said slowly as she got off of Blake's bed. "Wanna go for a walk, Ruby?"

Ruby who was trying to avoid her bed that now served as the only bed for both her and Weiss, jumped as if she'd burned herself. "R-r-r-right! Let's g-go!" Her face was beyond the normal shade of red as she cast one last glance at her bed before racing out of the room in an explosion of rose petals.

"You're supposed to wait for me!" Weiss yelled, grabbing both her and Ruby's jackets before walking out the door. "And you have to stop doing that in the room! I'm getting tired of cleaning up the petals!"

The door slammed and Blake heard the water turn off in the washroom. Yang came out in her towel. After glancing around the room quickly, she went to put her nightclothes on. Blake came up behind her and cleared her throat to get some attention.

"What is it?" Yang snapped, clearly in a worse mood than Blake had realized.

"Um…" Blake couldn't find any words that she felt would fix the situation, so she placed her hand on Yang's cheek, turning her head so they were looking into each others eyes.

Blake had a feeling that Yang was about ready to punch her, so she did the only thing that she could think of. She closed her eyes and kissed the golden haired beauty, catching her off guard.

A loud slap echoed in the room as Blake's head snapped to the side. Yang's eyes were glowing a dark red and her hair seemed to be alive like yellow flame. Blake felt her repressed tears burst forth and tried to turn away from her teammate. Yang was quicker however, and caught her by the shoulder, forcing her to turn back.

Wiping tears from her eyes and desperately trying to get free of Yang's iron grip, Blake didn't notice the other hand of her captor reaching gently for her still stinging cheek.

Yang guided Blake's face up to look at her. "That was for making me believe you didn't care about me…." She whispered gently, her other hand leaving Blake's shoulder as she froze in place, captivated by the fiery blonde. "And this is for getting me to realize how stupid I was…."

Blake braced herself for another smack, but was pleasantly surprised by the soft lips that pressed at first gently, then firmly against her own. She felt her mouth open and was immediately invaded by Yang's tongue. She felt herself respond like a mirror as her eyes fluttered shut. She'd kissed Yang before, but it was absolutely nothing like this. She heard rather than felt herself moan as Yang's tempo changed. Blake felt the girl smile at the sound and started to push Blake back to her bed.

The couple collapsed like that, Yang sucking on Blake's tongue as her hands touched places Blake felt that even she hadn't touched. A fire was burning somewhere and Blake was gasping for air as Yang moved to nibble on her ear.

"Oh god! Don't stop!" Blake moaned as Yang bit down hard on the girls ear while running a hand through her hair. Blake's hands flew up and pushed Yang's head even closer to her ear as Yang's tongue licked around the outside and moved down the faunus's neck.

Blake was panting heavily as Yang kissed and licked and nibbled her neck in a way that felt like animal instinct. Blake was lying if she said she wasn't feeling completely lost in the amazing sensation Yang was giving her.

A loud bang announced the re-arrival of the rest of the team and Yang jumped away from Blake as if the latter had caught fire.

"Oh my god!" Ruby squealed, spinning just to run straight into Weiss who was directly behind her.

"For goodness sake! I didn't mean to go that far! I meant to apologize or something!" Weiss said, her face glowing red as she hung onto Ruby who had almost tackled her.

Blake was busy catching her breath, so Yang answered for them both. "I thought you two'd left."

"Yeah well, it's minus thirty outside! Not exactly prime walking weather!" Weiss shot back.

"Well that's your fault for not checking first." Blake piped up, still breathing as if she'd been jogging.

"Whatever, let's just go to bed." Ruby said, avoiding looking at the other half of her team, but stopped short as she noticed the single bed on her side of the room.

Yang started to chuckle at the look on her sister's face and Blake had to smile as Weiss walked up beside Ruby, placing a hand on her shoulder.

"It's not like we'll be doing anything with others in the room." Weiss said pointedly.

"R-right…" Ruby was back to stuttering.

"You can always share with Blake and Yang if you don't like me that much." Weiss teased, her joke lost to Ruby.

"No, I'll share with you…" Ruby said, grabbing her nightclothes and running to the washroom.

"Cool move, slick." Yang laughed before laying down on Blake's bed beside her. "Maybe I'll have to get rid of my bed too…"

"You wouldn't dare!" Blake answered, smacking Yang lightly on the arm before cuddling up beside her.

"You can't control what happens in the heat of the moment…" Yang replied slyly, her eyes unfocused as she looked up at the bottom of her bunk.

End Note:

Hello again, thanks for reading!

My brain is a bit melted right now (Points if you can explain why a programmer would ever need to know strong induction when while(true) is good enough), but I'd like to announce that I will be posting every other week in November because I'll be busy cranking out as many words as possible to finish this story, and resume posting as normal in December. As I have (had? Don't know just now. I might have to rework something.) planned, the final chapter will release Christmas Eve (It's a Christmas chapter, so I thought it was appropriate.).

And now we go to the last arc: Arc 6: Das Weiße Weihnachten.

Hope to see you all back next Wednesday!