Chapter Six: Burning the Candle
Ruby's head rested on the table, a forlorn, partially-bored expression written on her face. Suddenly, someone slammed their hands on the table, startling the red reaper. She jerked up to see a smiling Weiss standing over her.
"I need you to pick a tablecloth," she said. The heiress slid over two squares of fabric. Ruby looked at them, trying to find a difference, but they both looked white to her.
"Aren't they both the same?" she asked in confusion.
Weiss sighed and closed her eyes. "I don't even know why I asked!"
Ruby put her head back down, but she jumped up again as Yang dropped a massive speaker next to the table with a loud slam. Yang rubbed her hands together. "So," she asked her little sister, "have you picked out a dress yet?"
"What's the point?" Ruby mumbled. "Who cares about the dance if Blake isn't going?"
Yang gave her a confident smile. "Oh, don't worry: she's going." Her gaze travelled over to Weiss and turned to annoyance. "Weiss! I thought we agreed: No doilies!"
Weiss pointed a finger at her. "If I don't get doilies, you don't get fog machines!"
The doors opened from behind. "You're dance is gonna have fog machines?" came Neptune's voice as he and Sun walked in.
Weiss gave a nervous smile and stepped towards him. "We were thinking about it…"
Sun cut in, to Weiss' frustration. "You ladies all excited for dress-up?"
Ruby groaned. "Pfft… yeah, right!"
"Laugh all you want." Her sister grinned. "I'll be turning heads tomorrow night!"
"What are you two wearing?" Weiss asked the boys.
"Uhh… this?" Sun said, gesturing to his shirtless torso behind his white coat. Neptune stepped forward and placed a hand over Sun's face. "Ignore him, for he knows not what he says," the blue-haired boy said.
Sun pushed the hand away. "Hey, I may have moved to Mistral, but I grew up in Vacuo. It's not exactly a shirt-and-tie kind of place."
Yang gave a sarcastic look that said, 'No, really?' "Yeah, we noticed," she said out loud.
Sun rubbed the back of his head awkwardly, which was out of character for him. "Soooo… what does Blake think of all this? She still being all, y'know… Blake-y?"
"Obviously," Weiss said with clear disapproval, arms crossed.
"I still can't think of a way to change her mind," Ruby said.
"Guys." They all looked at Yang, who tossed them a smile as she walked out. "Trust me; Blake will be at the dance tomorrow."
Blake was hunched over in a seat before a library terminal, eyes fluttering with fatigue as she tried to blearily focus on the information flashing across her screen. Suddenly, something caught her attention. At the right of the screen, a red dot of light had suddenly appeared. Blake found herself fixated by it, following it up and down until it fell on her hand and winked away. She looked around, searching for the laser's owner, but no one was around her. With an aggravated sigh, she turned back to her computer and began to type.
The dot appeared again on her hand, and she once again looked for someone with a pointer. The dot made little circles on her screen, hypnotising her with its motion, until she slammed her fists down in frustration. She stood up and turned, looking for a confrontation. The red dot was on the floor now, and she began to follow the rapidly moving light through shelves. The dot rounded a corner, and Blake blindly followed until she bumped into someone, startling her out of her intensive focus on the laser.
"He-llooo!" Yang said in a sing-song voice, grinning as she held the laser pointer and waved.
"What are you…?"
"We need to talk." Without waiting for a reply, Yang dragged the confused Faunus away, a slight cry of surprise escaping Blake's lips.
In the dormitory building, Ren gave a relaxed sigh as he came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. He walked towards his dorm room, but suddenly, Jaune appeared in front of him.
"We need to talk!" Jaune said. Quickly, he dragged the confused Ren away, a slight cry of surprise escaping Ren's lips as he dropped his shampoo bottle.
In the dorm, Jaune sat on his bed, looking down as he talked to Ren. "Ren… I'm just gonna say it. You are one of my best friends. These past few months, I feel like we've really bonded, even though you don't say much." He paused. "I mean, you're really quiet. To be perfectly honest, I don't know that much about you, personally, but darnit, I consider you to be the brother I never had!"
Ren sat beside Jaune on the bed, still wrapped in his towel and appearing a bit uncomfortable, but trying to remain supportive as he gave a slight smile. "And I, you," he replied with his typical short spokenness. He gave a furtive glance to his normal clothing, hanging by a hook to the closet door.
"Which is why I wanted to get your advice on… girls," the leader continued.
"Girls?" Ren asked. He began to reach for his outfit whenever Jaune looked away.
Jaune continued, heedless of Ren's efforts to reach his clothing. "I just… don't know… how to… girls. Um, I-I guess what I'm asking is… Well, how did you and Nora… y'know…"
This gave Ren even more pause, an awkward silence filling the air. "Uh, uh…," he stumbled over his words.
A nervous giggle explained his discomfort. He and Jaune both looked to the bed, where Nora, who had been in the room the entire time, had her headphones pulled down to the neck of her Boop! t-shirt and said, "We're actually not 'together-together…'"
"Nora, I said headphones on!" Jaune cried.
"Oop!" she said, hurriedly replacing them on her ears.
Ren gave his leader and friend a look. "Jaune, what is this all about?"
Jaune stared back at the floor, sighing before he said, "It's Weiss. I'm completely head-over-heels for her, and she won't even give me a chance. She's cold, but she's also incredible. She's smart, and graceful, and talented – I mean, have you heard her sing?" He sighed again. "I-I just wish she'd take me seriously, y'know? I wish I could tell her how I feel without messing it all up."
"Then do it."
"Uh, wha?" Jaune looked up at Pyrrha, who had appeared in the doorway. She walked in and addressed him directly.
"Tell her exactly what you said. No ridiculous schemes, no pick-up lines. Just… be honest."
"But what if I–" Jaune began.
"Jaune." she cut him off with a smile. "You can't get it wrong if it's the truth."
Jaune looked at her. A new wave of confidence manifested a smile on his face. "You're right." He stood from the bed. "Thanks, Pyrrha!" He walked out the room and looked back at the bed before leaving. "Good talk, Ren!"
The quieter boy smiled and waved to Jaune as he closed the door. As soon as the room clicked shut, Pyrrha's smile dropped, and she seemed defeated as she walked to her desk. Nora watched her, sighing slightly as she watched her depressed friend.
"Practice what you preach, Pyrrha," the orange-haired girl said quietly to herself.
"Yang, if you're going to tell me to stop, you may as well save your breath."
Blake was standing, cross-armed, in Professor Peach's classroom, Yang sitting cross-legged on the main desk. The professor had given Yang and Weiss free reign to the room's decorative supplies for the dance, so Yang had pulled Blake in to talk in private.
Yang regarded her cat-eared friend calmly. "I don't want you to stop; I want you to slow down."
Blake paced back and forth, her irritation building the longer she was away from her computer. "I don't have the luxury to slow down."
"It's not a luxury; it's a necessity," Yang corrected.
"The 'necessity' is stopping Torchwick."
"And we're going to . But first you have to sit down and listen to what I have to say." The brawler patted the desk, offering a seat to Blake. Blake hesitated for a moment, then slowly sat down.
"Fine."
Yang smiled, happy with her success thus far. She began to speak.
"Ruby and I grew up in Patch, an island off the coast of Vale. Our parents were Huntsmen. Our dad taught at Signal, and our mom took on missions around the Kingdom. Her name was Summer Rose, and she was like, Super-Mom. Baker of cookies and slayer of giant monsters." The cheer disappeared from Yang's voice as she continued. "And then… one day she left for a mission and never came back." Yang gazed at the wood, studying the scarred surface of the desk, and despite her annoyance, Blake looked briefly sorry for her friend.
"Ruby was really torn up, but… I think she was still to young to really get what was going on, y'know? And my dad just kind of… shut down. It wasn't long before I learned why. Summer wasn't the first love he lost; she was the second. The first… was my mom." Blake eyed Yang in surprise. She and Weiss hadn't known about this.
"He wouldn't tell me everything, but I learned that the two of them had been on a team together with Summer and Qrow, and that she'd left me with him right after I was born. No one had seen her since."
Blake asked a tentative question. "Why did she leave you?"
The brawler sighed. She turned to the chalkboard. "That question… Why?" Hopping off the desk, she picked up a piece of chalk and began to draw. "I didn't know the answer, but I was determined to find out. It was all I thought about. I would ask anyone I could about what they knew about her.
"Then, one day, I found something. What I thought was a clue that could lead me to answers, or maybe even my mother." Yang let her thoughts drift a bit, remembering how she had discovered the smashed glass frame and the photo inside, and the rash decision that had resulted. "I waited for Dad to leave the house, put Ruby in a wagon, and headed out. I must've walked for hours. I had cuts and bruises, I was totally exhausted, but I wasn't gonna let anything stop me. When we finally got there, I could barely stand, but I didn't care; I had made it." She remembered standing, tottering on her feet, in front of the abandoned wooden house. "Then I saw them. Those burning red eyes…
"There we were: a toddler sleeping in the back of a wagon and a stupid girl too exhausted to even cry for help. We might as well have been served on a silver platter." The Grimm had been ready to tear them apart. She sighed. "But, as luck would have it, our uncle showed up just in time." Qrow had materialized out of the forest and gone to work on the pack, protecting his nieces with his scythe, the emblem burned bright into her memory. She stepped back and finished drawing the sigil on the board, taking in its clockwork eye.
"My stubbornness should've gotten us killed that night." Yang let the statement hang in the air, waiting for a response.
"Yang… I'm sorry that happened to you, and I understand what you're trying to tell me, but this is different." Blake's voice was earnest and insistent as she continued, "I'm not a child, and this isn't just a search for answers! I can't just–"
Yang's fist clenched as she cut her off. "I told you, I'm not telling you to stop! I haven't. To this day, I still want to know what happened to my mother and why she left me," she said, remembering how she had searched for answers at Junior's club, "but I will never let that search control me. We're going to find the answers we're looking for Blake. But if we destroy ourselves in the process, what good are we?"
"You don't understand!" Blake cried in exasperation. "I'm the only one who can do this!"
"No, you don't understand!" Yang said sharply as she turned. Her irises burned red as she asked the Faunus girl, "If Roman Torchwick walked through that door, what would you do?"
"I'd fight him!" Blake said, standing.
"You'd lose!" Yang corrected, pushing Blake forcefully back onto the desk.
"I can stop him!" Blake replied, trying to do the same to Yang, but being as deprived and weak as she was, Yang didn't move an inch.
"You can't even stop me!" Yang pointed out, pushing Blake back onto the desk. Yang stormed forward, eyes blazing, and pulled Blake into an angry hug. Blake, surprised by the movement, was taken aback.
"I'm not asking you to stop," Yang repeated, eyes returning to their default lilac color. "Just please, get some rest." She looked Blake in the eye. "Not just for you, but for the people you care about."
She took a step back and walked past Blake, who looked after her in tired surprise. "And if you feel like coming out tomorrow, I'll save you a dance," the blonde tossed over her shoulder with a grin. She winked before walking out the door.
Blake gave a heavy sigh and quietly walked out the other door, Yang's sketch on the board a silent testament to their meeting.
Jaune confidently walked along the sidewalks of Beacon, searching for Weiss Schnee. In his hand, he held a single, white rose, which he intended to give to the heiress. he had been searching for Weiss for the past half hour, when her voice suddenly carried around the corner, prompting him to duck behind a column. He peered around it cautiously, and his smile fell as watched Weiss approach Neptune.
"Neptune!" she called out as she walked up to the blue-haired boy.
"Oh, hey! What's up?" replied the suave young Huntsman.
"I know this is a little unorthodox," the heiress began, "but… I wanted to ask you something." She sheepishly placed her arms behind her back. Would you… like to accompany me to the dance tomorrow?"
Without waiting to hear Neptune's reply, Jaune threw the rose to the ground and walked away, hating himself for taking Pyrrha's suggestion too late.
Yang was garbed in a stylish white dress and black heels at the podium allowing entrance to the dance the next day. The door swung open, and Yang let out an excited squeak at seeing who was there. "Ooohh, you look beautiful!"
Ruby groaned from within a tight red and black dress and belt, stumbling slightly
on her heels. "Can we have a serious talk about how Weiss fights in these?" Yang laughed as Ruby wobbled forward to the podium.
Outside, Sun walked up to the dance hall in a black jacket and a white tie, struggling with the tie around his neck. The dress code may have forced him into dressing somewhat presentable, but he didn't have to like it. "Stupid… dumb… neck trap!" he muttered to himself.
"I knew you'd look better in a tie," came a soft, playful voice behind him.
He turned and paused in astonishment as he took in Blake. She had rested, ridding herself of the dark circles, and was sporting a dark purple dress with a blue bow. She strode forward with a smile and took him by the arm.
"So, does this mean we're going… together?" Sun asked.
"Technically," she replied with a smile, "but my first dance is spoken for."
The ballroom had been completely decked out with streamers and balloons. Students left and right were dancing together and enjoying themselves, cracking jokes and having fun as a last hurrah before their first mission as Huntsmen and Huntresses the next morning. Blake took part in a three-person dance with Yang and Sun, spinning from Yang to Sun as he took over and Yang walked over to Ruby and Weiss at a nearby table. The other members of Team RWBY watched with relieved smiles as Blake laughed in her dance with Sun. She caught their glances and smiled.
"I told you she would come," Yang said with satisfaction.
"Mission accomplished," Weiss concurred.
Ruby looked amongst her teammates. "Soo… what do we do now?"
"Just have fun!" Yang told her sister as she walked back over to the podium for some late arrivals. Weiss walked in the other direction to put the finishing touches on a few of the table's floral arrangements.
"Does that mean I can change out of these stupid things and into my hood now?" Ruby called desperately after her sister. However, when Yang didn't reply, she shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. "Stupid lady stilts."
"Not enjoying yourself?" came an older, male voice from behind her. She turned as Ozpin walked up beside her and gave a sheepish laugh. "Oh, no, everything's fine. I'm just not much of a fancy pantsy… dancy girl."
"Well," the headmaster chuckled, "you can't spend your whole life on the battlefield, even if you may want to."
"Yeah, that lesson's been floating around a lot lately," Ruby said as she crossed her arms, slightly annoyed.
"If you think about it," the professor said as he stared thoughtfully out at the swaying and twirling figures on the dance floor, "fighting and dancing aren't so different. Two partners interlocked, although one wrong move on the ballroom merely leads to a swollen foot."
"Or a twisted ankle," the young leader muttered towards her painful footwear.
"It's not every day that friends are able to come together like this. Time has a way of testing our bonds, but it's nights like these that can keep them stronger than ever. Nights like these are ones we'll never forget." Ozpin came close to a smile, one that Ruby reflected as they gazed at happy friends and students.
She turned as the sound of the door opening carried over the sound of the music. Yang looked up as two late arrivals strode into the ballroom. She gave them a friendly smile. "You guys are just in time!"
Clad in a tuxedo and dress respectively, Mercury and Emerald let the door close behind them as Mercury said, "Wouldn't miss it for the world."