Chapter Twenty-Six

My ears are ringing. Since my vision is cloudy and my entire body is numb, that's all I register. My ears are ringing.

My fingers seem to be vibrating in time to the ringing. That's all I can feel, but it's more than a moment ago. My sense of time is returning. My ears are still ringing.

Ow. Ow! My entire body is throbbing, now, especially my neck. Ow. I turn it, to try and ease the pain, and feel my face scrape across concrete. Ow. I blink, and blink again, and see a red light. I blink, and it becomes my scroll, attached to my wrist that is lying next to my face. My scroll is flashing red at me.

I turn my head a little further, but I've reached the limits of my neck. My ears are ringing. I try and turn my head back the other way, but the ground is in the way. I push my shoulders up. Now I can turn my head. I drag my arm under my body, lie on it for a second, then push up, and manage to roll myself over onto my back.

My ears are still ringing, but not as loudly. Thought's returning. I push my arms against the ground and manage to come to an upright position. All around me, I can see limp forms stirring. A dash of red is Ruby Rose, draped across Weiss Schnee's torso. Cardin – he's on his feet. So are Dove and Sky. Armour. They wear armour. Nora Valkyrie is curled up in a ball, her hands wrapped around her head, not responding to Sky's shaking. Ren. Jaune. Sitting up, groaning and looking around, asking questions that I can see but not hear. My ears are ringing.

Pyrrha Nikos, next to Coco Adel, bent over a dark form on the ground. Yang, staggering towards us. She was thrown away, but she seems alright. She seems alright. Pyrrha Nikos and Coco Adel, bent over a dark form – Blake.

I fall to my feet and manage to make it over to them, collapsing to my knees. Cardin joins us. Oh fuck, Belladonna. She caught the blast at point blank range, and oh god, her face, her neck, her chest. Not even her Aura could save her. She's alive, she's still alive. One eye is ruined, but the other is open, unseeing. She's making gurgling noises.

She's going to die.

'She's going to die,' I say.

'No!' Yang screams. 'No!'

'We have to help her,' Nikos begins.

'They can't.' I'm talking to Cardin. He meets my eyes. I stare at him, willing him to look at me and not my scroll. 'She's going to die.'

I lean over and press my hand to Blake's chest, trying to ignore the fact that it feels like mince and gristle rather than smooth skin. My hand sinks instantly into a pool of blood. Cardin reaches out, but he doesn't pull my wrist away; instead, he grabs Adel's wrist, preventing her from stopping me.

I'm so tired. It doesn't matter. She's going to die.

We're all going to die, sooner or later.

Not her. Not here. Not now.

I activate my Semblance as her eyes slide closed.

Oh, Blake. It hurts so much. I hold on, feeling the warmth of the blood under my hand, feeling my skin shift and flex. Red blood runs down my arm, my chest, my face, from cuts that are there one moment and gone the next. I've never tried anything like this. I can feel the both of us, one soul with two bodies, two souls merged. I can feel her heal. I can feel her skin close as mine opens; a warped mirror, a twisted twin. My vision in my left eye blurs. My shirt is a bloody mess, and all I can think is, I just got changed.

Her eyes open. Both her eyes open. They look up at me, and they blink once. She's confused and, I suspect, not too happy to find my hand pressed to her chest. Whatever. Her collarbone is the only thing under my hand. I'm nowhere I shouldn't be. Although, with her shirt ruined like this, I do have a good view of a lot more flesh than is usual for Blake 'Sexy Maid Ninja' Belladonna. It'd probably be more attractive if it wasn't covered in blood, though. Or if it was Yang's skin instead of Blake's. Yang is pretty. She has such nice hair.

Flashes of light are dancing in front of my eyes: sharp blots of red and blue. They're the only light I can see. I should go to clubs more often.

'Russel? Russel!' Cardin's voice sounds like it's coming from far, far away. The blots have expanded, forming a rippling carpet of fire over Blake's face. I can't see her anymore; they're far too thick for that. I can't see anything. My heartbeat pulses in my ears. It's all I can hear now, too. My heartbeat, and a grinding sort of noise, coming from a ways away. I can't seem to tell up from down.

'Russel!'

Somewhere there's the sea. I can hear it, a rushing noise that comes from my very blood. I must have fallen in: I feel weightless. Somewhere above me the tectonic plates themselves are grinding together. They separate, and a beam of light strikes me from – the sun? sunlight? Underwater? Does that make sense? How deep am I?

I collapse to the bottom of the sea, feeling the rough rocks press against my skin. Something warm wraps around me, and my eyes flutter open for a heartbeat – just long enough to see a wave of blood and beyond it, the sunrise.

For the first time, when I think about her, I don't see her eyes. I see her hair. It's sunshine. The eyes are the windows to the soul; the hair is the – what, the window to the heart? Why not? You're stuck with your soul, but your heart can change. You can dye it, cut it, even regrow it.

Mine has, and I didn't even realise until now.

I'm such an idiot.

Then I'm gone, wrapped in sunlight and sinking deep into the depths.

'Russel!' Cardin yelled, seizing Russel as he slumped, keeping him from falling on Blake, lowering him to the ground instead. He was deathly pale, and barely breathing. The wounds he had absorbed were gone, but his chest was still covered in blood, just like Blake. His skin, when Cardin touched it, was ice cold and clammy. The scroll on his wrist was performing the tech equivalent of screaming, flashing urgent red to attract the attention of the stupid humans it was meant to help.

AURA DANGEROUSLY LOW.

SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION.

'Pyrrha, call Fox,' Coco ordered, surging to her feet. 'Yang, watch Blake, give her medical attention. Ruby, Jaune, Cardin, get your teams ready to move. As soon as Velvet, Fox and Yatsuhashi get here, we are leaving!' She fell to her knees and pressed her hands to either side of Russel's head. Her sunglasses were gone, lost in the blast. Cardin watched her eyes close, then her hands begin to glow.

He turned away from his partner. It was the hardest thing he'd ever done, but he couldn't help Russel now, and there was more than two people on his team. 'Dove, how's Sky?'

'Deafened,' Dove called. Sky was on his feet, but blood was running from his ears.

'MY SEMBLANCE WAS OFF,' Sky yelled. 'BUT I STILL CAN'T HEAR VERY WELL!'

Cardin held up his hands. 'Get our gear, then help the others pack up.'

He turned back to Coco and knelt, desperate to know what she was doing, but terrified to interrupt.

'Oh my god!' a new voice said. Velvet Scarlatina dashed into the building. 'What happened?'

'Velvet – plane,' Coco grunted.

'Of course!' Velvet turned on her feet and sprinted out. She could move incredibly quickly. Normally Cardin would have entertained a thought or two about how it was probably due to all her years of running away after stealing something, but right now, he really couldn't find the energy to care.

He glanced back, to check Dove and Sky were ready. Their bags, and his and Russel's, were stacked with the others and they were helping Nora and Ren pack what little of the cooking equipment had survived the blast. Ruby and Weiss were clustered around Blake, who was sitting on the ground, staring straight ahead. She seemed to be in shock. Yang was tossing RWBY's bags into the pile, throwing them with more force than was required.

Pyrrha and Jaune appeared out of nowhere, kneeling down next to Cardin. 'What is she doing?' Cardin whispered, turning his attention back to Coco.

'She's trying to feed her Aura to Russel,' Pyrrha whispered. 'It's a difficult technique–'

'So shut the fuck up and let me get on with it,' Coco growled in a voice very different to her usual polished boredom.

Cardin bit his lip and didn't move. He knew Russel was still alive, but – it didn't look like he was breathing…

There was the sound of engines outside, and Fox Alistair bounded into the building. 'Plane's here, Coco,' he yelled.

Coco opened her eyes. 'Get on board,' she ordered. 'Anything not packed gets left behind. Move, first-years!'

RWBY and JNPR hurried for the plane as Yatsuhashi Daichi appeared with a stretcher. Cardin watched the massive Huntsman lift Russel on, then seized one end before Fox could. As Cardin and Yatsuhashi trotted up the ramp, Coco and Fox darted ahead. Velvet was in the pilot's seat; Fox strapped himself into the co-pilot's seat. 'Quick as you can, Velvet, and this time we won't even threaten you with death.'

The mood in the cargo area was awful. Russel, strapped into his stretcher, lay in the middle of the floor. The trainees sat around it, ready to seize it if there was turbulence, sitting in the centre of a cloud of things unsaid. Coco knelt at his head, still trying to feed him her Aura. Yatsuhashi sat behind her, his eyes sharp and alert. Blake slumped between Yang and Weiss. Nora was huddled next to Ren, and Pyrrha and Jaune sat side-by-side, their legs touching. Sky, Dove and Cardin all sat in a row beside each other, their eyes fixed on Russel. Sky was turning Russel's spaulder over in his hands. He hadn't had a chance to return it before the bomb went off.

'Did anyone think to grab the bag?' Jaune asked finally.

Everyone shook their heads.

'Because it must have had a bomb in it,' Jaune began.

Pyrrha nudged him sharply. Jaune shut up. In a distant part of his mind, Cardin realised that nobody had asked the obvious question: who had packed a bag with enough explosives to get through an Aura, and then put Blake Belladonna's name on it?

'I – don't understand what happened,' Blake said. 'He saved me. How did he save me? Why did he save me?'

'It's Russel's Semblance,' Cardin said. 'He can absorb injuries and then get rid of them. It's why he's bloody. But – with his Aura already so low…' He trailed off, shaking his head.

'That's his Semblance?' Jaune asked in a voice full of wonder. 'Wow.'

'Don't bring it up,' Sky said bluntly. 'It's a sore subject for him.' Because of course Jaune would have the chance to stick his foot in his mouth around Russel again. Of course. It was Jaune's Semblance, Cardin suspected, his unique ability to say the precise thing to raise Russel's hackles. It had to be. And he would do it again.

'Because…' Ruby quickly trailed off.

'He thinks it makes him a liability in the field,' Cardin said harshly and with finality in his tone.

'My heart stopped,' Blake said suddenly. 'I felt my heart stop. I was dead!' Yang, sitting next to her, wrapped her arms around her. Blake was shuddering, Cardin realised. He knew how she felt.

'You need more than that to be dead,' Coco said, startling them all.

'Not comforting, Coco…' Fox called warningly from the front of the place.

'She's right. You were just injured,' Sky said. 'If Russel's Aura wasn't low, you'd have both been fine.'

'But – why did he save me?' Blake asked desperately.

'Because you were bleeding to death?' Cardin suggested, some of his anxiety creeping into his tone as biting sarcasm.

'I don't think he could bear to let another Faunus girl die,' Dove said without thinking.

There was a very heavy silence for a very long moment. 'Guess the cat's out of the bag,' Yang mumbled, unable to stop herself if her life depended on it.

'You're Faunus?' Sky blurted, twisting to stare at Blake.

'How did you know?' Blake whispered, mortified.

'I just sort of worked it out,' Dove said with a shrug, carefully not looking at Cardin or Sky.

'And you told Russel?' Weiss demanded indignantly.

'Uh, no. No, he worked it out on his own too.' Dove was determinedly staring at the opposite wall, apparently oblivious to the burning glare Cardin was giving him.

'When?' Yang demanded.

'Me, after a couple of months. Russel, maybe, like… the very first time he saw you?' Dove said in a rush, screwing his face up apologetically.

'How?' Blake demanded, her eyes narrowing to golden slits.

'Well, to quote Russel…"Dude, she has ears."'

Ren surprised everyone by letting out a short laugh. 'Sounds like something he'd say.'

'He didn't say anything to me!' Cardin said. Coco was keeping her face carefully neutral. Fox and Velvet were staring out the window of the plane like their lives depended on it. In a corner of his mind Cardin wondered if Velvet had known Blake was Faunus. He wondered how she felt now if she hadn't.

Dove shrugged. 'You're really surprised? I mean, Russel kept his own secrets pretty damn well, you really think he wouldn't keep everyone else's?'

Cardin's eyes dropped. 'Makes sense,' he mumbled.

After a moment, Pyrrha said hesitantly, 'Will – will you let his family know?'

'No, he has none. His parents died. In the Ursai invasion of Vacuo, they were Hunters, I think,' Sky said absently.

'What?' Ren and Yang said at the exact same time. 'His parents died in the invasion?' Ren added.

Cardin looked at them, startled. 'But...You studied it, didn't he tell– Never mind. I just remembered who we were talking about. Of course he didn't fucking tell you. God!'

'He has no parents?' Nora repeated, her head coming up. Ren shifted uneasily, his eyes resting on her, but she just looked from Cardin to Sky.

'We're going to have to have a talk with Russel about the differences between privacy and paranoia,' Sky said, his voice trembling only slightly.

'He told me his parents were dead. He never said that they died in the invasion,' Ren said. Under the even tone, there was a shade of hurt.

Dove spread his hands, eyes full of dark humour. 'And that, in a nutshell, is Russel's approach to life. Why else do you think he knew so much about the invasion?'

'He studied the way his parents died?' Weiss asked, looking horrified and disgusted.

'They died when he was one and his grandmother died when he was four,' Cardin said sharply. 'How else was he supposed to find anything out about them?'

Sky toyed with the spaulder in his hand. In it, tucked in between the lining, was a photograph of the monument in Vacuo, erected after the invasion: a massive sundial, inscribed with the names of those who had fallen to the Grimm. On it, he knew, were Russel's parents.

He exchanged a furtive look with Cardin, who instantly shook his head. The mood would not be improved by producing the photograph. A thick, depressed silence had already fallen; if everyone in the room began to contemplate a situation where the only memory of their parents that they possessed was a photograph of a monument to said parents' deaths, Cardin was worried they'd start getting swarmed by Nevermore.

Yang wrapped a surreptitious arm around Ruby, holding her little sister close. After a moment, her second arm snaked out and secured Blake around the waist. Neither Ruby nor Blake struggled against the hold. Nora and Ren moved closer together, Pyrrha bowed her head and Jaune put a hand on her shoulder, and Sky and Dove reached out without a word and took each other's hand. Weiss looked away from them all, struggling to regain her composure.

'He told me once he didn't remember them,' Cardin said eventually. 'I don't think he missed them.' He rubbed his forehead. 'No, that's not true. But he's realistic enough to be able to accept that Huntsman and Huntresses die. He never felt like – like they threw their lives away. He could see… reason in their deaths.

'I'm still going to kill him, though,' Cardin said, raising his voice. 'He should have told us about his Semblance far earlier.'

'He never told you?' Jaune asked, startled.

'Only a few days ago,' Dove said bitterly.

'I'm starting to realise why,' Sky said, pitching his voice to his team.

Cardin shook his head. 'If she wasn't dead, I'd kill her.'

'Are you talking about – his girlfriend?' Ruby asked tentatively. In such a small space, there was no point in pretending they couldn't hear.

'You can't blame her for dying in a Grimm attack,' Blake said sharply.

'No, she–' Cardin began impatiently, then stopped. After a moment, he said in a more measured voice, 'You're right. I'm sorry. I'm just upset.'

'She did die in a Grimm attack, didn't she?' Ren asked suspiciously.

Cardin let out a mirthless laugh. 'Yep. Ursai.'

'Oh god,' Yang said, pressing her hand to her mouth. 'Just like his parents.'

'Ironic, isn't it,' Cardin said grimly. He rubbed his face. So much for improving the mood. 'Sorry,' he said randomly.

'So first his parents, then his grandmother, then his girlfriend,' Coco said, looking up. 'He's like an angel of death.'

'You know who'd probably agree with you if he ever heard you say that?' Dove asked with a deep and terrible patience. 'Russel. You know who you should never say that in front of? Go on. Guess.'

Coco sat back. 'Whatever. He's alive for now –'

'Coco!' Fox yelled.

'–but as soon as we get back to school, he's gotta go to the infirmary,' Coco continued. She got to her feet and swayed slightly, pressing a hand to her forehead. Yatsuhashi surged to his feet and caught her arm, but she waved him away and stumbled to the front of the plane to talk to Velvet and Fox.

'She's faded,' Yatsuhashi murmured. 'That technique is draining.'

'And none of you have any reason to like my team,' Cardin said flatly.

'There's that,' Yatsuhashi said. 'You all broke green when the rest sped white.'

There was a moment of total silence as the trainees thought hard. 'I can't argue with that,' Cardin said honestly.

'Yatsuhashi's from outside the kingdoms,' Coco said, returning. 'Nobody ever knows what he means. We're a few minutes away from the school.'

'That was fast,' Weiss said.

'Yeah, Velvet broke a lot of laws to get us here this quick, and I don't think they'll be able to use this plane again without a new engine. Still, now your friend has a chance.'

The plane touched down with a gentle thump and the door opened. A horde of medical staff, dressed in white, surged into the plane, descending on Russel and Blake like sharks on dead meat. As they hurried off towards the infirmary, Cardin hesitated, glancing back at Velvet, emerging from the cockpit.

'I need to talk to you,' he said hastily. 'But later. I'll find you later.'

With that, he, Sky and Dove sprinted off down the ramp after Russel. Yang was already a golden blur in the distance, walking alongside the stretcher that contained a protesting Blake.

'Didn't see that coming,' Jaune mumbled, putting into words what the rest of the group was thinking.

'Come on,' Ruby said to Weiss. 'Let's dump our bags and go to the infirmary.'

'We'll take those,' Pyrrha said. 'Go and be with your teammates.'

Ruby and Weiss sent her grateful smiles and hurried off.

'Blake will be fine,' Weiss said to Ruby, hiding her uncertainty under false confidence. 'Her scroll was bright green.'

'It's not Blake I'm worried about,' Ruby admitted.

'It's just Aura depletion,' Weiss said, her voice brimming with confidence. 'He'll be fine.'

They walked in silence for a few metres, then, without another word between them, they both broke into a run.

So since Russel's going to be out of it for a while (so to speak) I'm going to try something a bit different for the end of this and the next few chapters; let me know what you think of it. I did it before for the dance, but not at this length.