A/N: Thank you so much to those of you who left feedback on the last chapter. I know it was a bit of a slower pace, but it was setting up some important stuff, and it always means a ton to me when you guys take the time to read and review/comment. ^u^
My thanks and gratitude to my beta, Masterpick. This is an unbeta'd chapter, but hardly the first draft. Masterpick and I are both extremely busy with end-of-the-semester push, but so I thought I'd let him off the hook for this one. Wanted to get this out there for y'all.
I've kept you guessing on quite a few things thus far, friends. But lots of answers lie in the chapter ahead of you. Also more questions. It's dense, but hopefully well-anticipated. I am at once excited and scared for y'all to read it, but either way here it is.
***Edited 12/5/2017. See note at the end of the chapter.
Comfy?
Good. Lezzgo.
…
The granite countertop feels cool against Yang's forearms as she leans against it. The window above the sink shows an overcast night sky, like dark milky ink. The outline of tree tops blend into the night sky in a blur. Inside the cabin, the overhead kitchen light offers a warm, soft glow. Weiss and Ruby are seated on the barstools in front of the kitchen island to Yang's right. Sitting on the counter beside the sink is Blake. The darkness of her bow seems to be accented by the darkness that bleeds beyond the window.
"So what's this about?" Yang asks to the room, breaking the momentary silence.
Taiyang—straddling a kitchen table chair with his arms folded over the top of the back of it—sighs. "We know you have a lot of questions. All of you." He glances at Ozpin. "We… disagreed on how best to address everything. We wanted to give you all a chance to relax and rest first." From the look in her dad's eyes, Yang was pretty sure that 'we' really meant 'I'. A part of her is grateful that her dad wanted to give them a break. Another part of her is frustrated that he kept something from them.
"But necessity has sort of forced our hand," Qrow adds as he unscrews the top of his silver flask.
"Necessity?" Weiss asks, the slight lilt in her voice betraying her curiosity.
The jingle of Zwei's collar cuts through the pause that follows Weiss's question. Ruby pats her lap and wraps an arm around the corgi as he happily jumps up into her lap, her other hand ruffling the fur between his big ears.
Taiyang runs a hand across his eyes. Ozpin is the one to speak up. "I suppose it would not be unfitting for me to begin by addressing my leaving the precinct at the same time that Yang brought Blake into custody. It was an… unfortunate last minute decision."
Yang frowns, thinking back to the conversation she'd had with him a few hours ago. "Earlier, you hinted that you knew who Blake was. Not as 'Black', but as Blake. And you were the one who put her on my caseload from the beginning. But when we finally caught her, you left."
Ozpin nods, folding his hands over his staff. "Indeed. I knew quite a lot about her from the beginning, including her defecting from the White Fang prior to her criminal activity in Vale that got the Vale Police Department's attention. I also knew that the White Fang has been after her ever since she left."
"How do you know all of that?" Blake asks, straightening up slightly. Yang sees the bow on the top of her head twitch.
The corner of Ozpin's mouth pulls into a faint, knowing smile. "I think you'll all come to find that my contact network is rather extensive."
Yang's gaze narrows at the man across the counter from her. "You have contacts in the White Fang?"
"No," Ozpin says, simply and assuredly. "But word of Blake's defection was quite the news, particularly in Menagerie. It reached ears beyond just the White Fang."
Yang spares another glance at the girl to her left. Blake opens her mouth like she's about to ask something, but she stops. Her honey eyes flit away from Ozpin to Yang, and then down at the dusty wooden floors. Yang doesn't understand it, but she can't help but want to walk over and take her hand. Assure her that whatever she's worried about is okay.
She doesn't. Yang is all too aware of the room full of other people around, and all the questions she has yet to get answered.
Weiss's inquisitive soprano voice cuts in. "Why didn't you tell what you knew to the precinct? We—They might've caught her sooner if they'd known all of that."
"It wasn't a risk I could take," Ozpin explains. "Announcing to the precinct of Blake's previous involvement in the White Fang would only put her in more danger, and likely would increase the chances that the White Fang would get to her before we would be able to."
Yang doesn't buy it. Not fully, anyway. Ozpin's explanation makes it sound like his intention in having Yang track her own and bring her into custody was about protecting Blake, but that didn't line up with him then leaving when she was at her most vulnerable. Whatever Ozpin had in mind, Yang didn't believe that it was about protecting the girl beside her. Or at least, that wasn't the full story.
"If you were so concerned with the White Fang getting to Blake first," Yang replies, doing her best to keep the growing anger out of her voice, "then why did you leave as soon as she was brought into custody?"
"Yang," Taiyang speaks up in a quiet, placating voice. Yang recognizes that tone. Calm down.
"No, it's quite all right," Ozpin says, lifting a hand towards Tai. "She's right of course. I assumed that Blake likely had very important information about the White Fang, hence why they were pursuing her whereabouts. I should have had enough foresight to know that as soon as she was brought in, they'd find a way to usurp me and take control. I hadn't realized that they'd been so prepared for it. I thought I still had enough time, but that was a mistake on my part." He bows his head slightly.
"Who is 'they', sir?" Ruby speaks up quietly. Her hand still rests in Zwei's fur, scratching absently at the scruff of his neck.
"The White Fang."
"Hold up," Yang says, shaking her head. "You mean to tell me that the White Fang had enough of a presence in the Vale Police Department that they could just… take your position whenever they wanted? You were the chief. You ran everything in there." Then again, hadn't Blake had similar suspicions? Yang glances at the girl sitting on the counter, noticing the way her slender brows were drawn together in thought.
Qrow's drawl slurs together a little more than usual as he takes another sip out of his flask. "With the right people in the right places, Yang, you'll be surprised what kind of mountains can be moved."
Yang's brow furrows slightly, the puzzle pieces sliding together. Was that why he didn't say goodbye? He was forced out of his position as chief? Did they force him out of Vale somehow, or just out of his position in the precinct? And what kind of political reach did that mean they have? What else did they secretly control?
And then there was the question of 'they' in the first place. If the 'they' that forced Ozpin out were affiliated with the White Fang, did that mean that the person who replaced him was put there by the White Fang in the first place? Hadn't Mortroach been human?
Yang remembers the way that Nancy's eyes had flashed from hazel to two different colors: one pink, and one brown. What else might've been different about her appearance, if she was somehow hiding it? And did that mean Mortroach could also hide his appearance, perhaps with Nancy's help? If that was the case, he could be anybody.
Yang's head is spinning so much she grips the edge of the counter as if it might ground her.
It takes her a second to find the words, and she asks the next question very carefully. "You seem to know a fair amount about the people who got you to leave. What about the man that came in to replace you? Nick W. Mortroach?"
To Yang's surprise, it's her dad that answers. "We believe the name is an alias. We're fairly confident that Mortroach is actually Roman Torchwick."
So that's what my dad and Qrow had been talking about, Yang realizes as she remembers the name from overhearing them a few nights ago. When Tai had mentioned him replacing someone, that 'someone' had been Ozpin.
"Torchwick? As in Torchwick Bank?" Weiss asks, stunned.
"Didn't they have that Faunus Equality scandal a few weeks ago?" Ruby asks. "Why would a Faunus extremist group partner with the owner of a bank whose practices go against Faunus rights?"
Taiyang shifts in the chair, the legs of it scraping against the wood floor. "Honestly? We don't know."
"Yet," Qrow adds emphatically. The flask almost slips clumsily from his hand, but he catches it before it hits the floor.
Suddenly, another detail sparks in Yang's memory. "Blake," Yang says, turning to her. "You targeted Torchwick Bank clients. Did it… have anything to do with a connection to the White Fang?"
Blake purses her lips, then shakes her head apologetically. "I pulled from them because the bank's practices have always been questionable in their treatment of the Faunus even before it got thrown into the limelight. That, and Torchwick Bank tended to attract more... well-off clients who could take the hit to their accounts while I helped families in Menagerie. Torchwick's relationship with the White Fang has to be recent. I hadn't heard anything like it when I left."
Yang purses her lips in thought and nods. As the pieces started to fall into place, forgotten puzzle pieces started to pop up and she can't help but feel an old nostalgic eagerness to get every nook and cranny out in the open.
"What about Mortroach? Did you know the White Fang was going to replace Ozpin?" Weiss asks her after a moment.
Blake swallows, glancing at her shoes before her honey eyes lift slowly to meet Yang's. One glance and Yang knew that she remembered telling Yang the suspicion she'd had about the new chief's involvement with the White Fang. Back then, she'd said it had been mostly paranoia. A gut feeling. Yang had always trusted those.
Blake lets her gaze fall back to Weiss as she responds. "I knew that the White Fang had… extensive reach. More than you know. They had started some of those initiatives when I'd left, and I knew my leaving had only spurred them to push those plans harder. I was… paranoid, when I heard that the Vale PD had a 'new' chief. But I didn't know anything. Not for certain, anyway."
Yang still feels a faint sense of disappointment at the dead-end she already knew existed, but she offers a faint, reassuring smile to the other girl anyway. It's not Blake's fault she doesn't know anything more than that. It's surprising, to say the least, that the three men in the room know as much as they've indicated they do. Ozpin had mentioned something about an extensive network of contacts, but that didn't explain her dad or her uncle's involvement.
"How do you know all of this?" she asks, the 'you' open ended to the three adults even as her lilac gaze falls squarely on her dad.
"That," Qrow says, pointing the open mouth of the flask in Yang's direction, "is another story entirely. But the short version, when it comes to your dad, is that I'm the one who dragged him into it."
"But—,"
"I was doing some intel gathering in Mistral for Oz and your uncle around the time you brought Blake into custody," Taiyang interrupts, his voice calm and solemn. His dark blue eyes meet Yang's for a moment before floating to the other girls in the room as he continues, "It took some digging, but rumors started circulating deep in the slums about the White Fang partnering with the owner of Torchwick bank. A few days later, Ozpin got into contact with me again and told me he'd been removed from his position. It didn't take too much more for us to put it together, in light of everything else."
There's a brief moment of silence that settles over the cabin, interrupted only by Zwei's obliviously happy panting and the creak of floorboards as Qrow shifts his weight. The quietness only seems to add to the weight that hangs over the room.
Yang barely notices. So many disjointed thoughts and memories swirl together in her mind in a jumbled blur. She had been a detective: fitting puzzle pieces of information together had been her passion and livelihood for several years. A part of her could feel a thrum of familiar excitement, another part entirely felt faintly dizzy with the onslaught of new information.
"Gambol Shroud," Blake says suddenly, breaking the momentary silence. "My weapon that came here in the mail a couple days ago. Was… that you?" Her eyes glance to Ozpin.
He arches a dark eyebrow, mirroring the surprise that Yang feels at the question. "Me?" he asks. "I'm afraid not. I haven't been back in Vale since I had to leave. Whoever sent you your weapon, Miss Belladonna, it was not me. My best guess is it was probably someone in the precinct. I do still have a few loyal contacts there."
Yang frowns. Someone in the precinct who knew about the secret cabin, and knew that Blake was staying here? She shares a glance with Blake, and can tell from the crease between her slender brows that she's thinking along the same lines.
"I still don't understand why you're telling us all of this now," Weiss speaks up. "You said it was a 'necessity'. What makes it a necessity?"
Taiyang purses his lips. "I think that's enough for one night—,"
"Dad," Yang interrupts.
Taiyang gives his daughter a long, unreadable look. Then, as if relenting, he sighs and stands up. He slides the wooden chair he'd been straddling back under the table as he answers. "Ruby, Weiss… you girls mentioned seeing White Fang members while you were on your way here, right?"
Ruby nods, Zwei still in her lap. "Twice, I think."
Yang and Blake had run into White Fang themselves, even if she hadn't mentioned it with anybody but Blake yet. So much White Fang activity in a relatively remote location certainly raised some flags. Rarely would White Fang members travel with anything to denote them as members of the group unless they had power in numbers. Which meant…
Blake speaks exactly the same conclusion Yang reaches. "There's a White Fang encampment nearby, isn't there?"
"We think so," Qrow says. Taiyang pulls his scroll out of his pocket, opening it and pressing a few buttons as he steps up to the kitchen island. With one more press of his thumb, a map of Forever Fall projects outward from it across the counter in a neon blue.
"We are here," Taiyang explains, typing on his scroll as a red marker appears above the map to pinpoint their location. "With the help of some contacts—Goodwitch and Ironwood, especially—we're pretty sure the White Fang encampment is about here." Another red marker, a few miles northwest of their current location.
Yang looks over at Blake, who shifted forward from where she'd been leaning against the wall sitting on the counter. Now the map had her full attention, her elbows propped on her knees as her honey gaze flits calculatingly over the map. Yang can tell just from looking at her that her mind is probably going a mile a minute. She looks… ready. Eager, almost.
Blake seems to sense that Yang is looking at her, because a moment later her gaze tears away from the map and meets hers. Not eager, Yang realizes in that instant. Hopeful.
"So you want us to go and… do what, exactly?" Ruby asks. There's no bite in the question. It's asked with the same careful calculation that makes her sister such a great weapons engineer. Yang always had always trusted her younger sister's judgement for that very reason.
"Giving Torchwick a job promotion was just the tip of the iceberg," Qrow explains, sounding to Yang abruptly sober. "We know something big is in the works, but we need inside information. The White Fang encampment so close to Vale should have some of the answers we need about what they're planning, when they're going to implement it, and who is involved."
"We want to send in a small infiltration team," Taiyang continues, his gaze shifting to look at each girl individually. "Get in, get the information, and get out. Ideally, nobody is going to know we were even there."
Yang pushes off from where she'd been leaning against the counter, crossing her arms over her chest. There are seven of them, and she has a feeling that they aren't planning on all seven of them going. It's too big of a number. Which really left one question.
"So who gets to be on this team?"
…
A/N: Some of you knew immediately who Mortroach was as soon as I said his name. Others, this may have been a bit of a revelation. Lots of answers for you all. But lots of questions too. Scary to post, to be honest with you, friends. What did ya think? Lemme know!
***Edited 12/5/2017: As I was rereading the last few chapters, I stumbled across a major error in this one. Somehow, in all of my notes and planning, I'd forgotten that I'd already revealed something in a previous chapter, and it made no sense in how it was introduced again in this chapter. I have done my best to fix it. My sincerest apologies for the mistake.
