A/N: For the duration of Volume 3's airing, I'm returning to posting new chapters of Belladonna Lilies every other Saturday instead of monthly. Enjoy!
~X X X~
"So what were those things?" Weiss demanded. She'd remained silent on the topic all the way back to the hotel, so Blake supposed she was entitled to a certain amount of emotion at this point.
"I don't know," she said, even as she gently ran the sponge over the length of her forearm wound, cleaning out any contaminating grit and dirt. She was lucky, she thought, that all the injuries had been superficial; only the one on her leg was likely to even scar, and that faintly. She'd done more permanent damage to Weiss's face than she'd likely take from any of these lacerations.
The fact bothered her more than it probably should have.
"Were they even human? The way they moved…it wasn't right. Like some of the Faunus I saw at Saulbridge whose legs weren't shaped like human legs."
"I don't know," Blake repeated. "If they were Faunus, they weren't of the White Fang. Those masks, they aren't anything we use."
"Something new of Hyde's, then." Weiss hugged herself, a bitter scowl on her face. "How many ways is he going to drag my family's name thought the mud before he's satisfied?"
"Or they could just have been human."
"Human?"
"The one I fought, the one who'd been driving the coach, he was definitely a man, not a monster or a living shadow. I could tell at least that much."
"It's more than I could. For all I knew, it was some kind of demon, except I don't believe in magic. You really do have better senses than I do."
Blake nodded.
"And knowing that at least some of what they do is deliberate, for the sake of effect, who knows how much more is? Acrobatic skills used to disguise their way of movement, for example." She shrugged. "But really, does it matter?"
"Of course it matters!" Weiss shot back at once. "If Hyde has made more Faunus or anything else, those are people, people he's turned into as good as slaves if they're following his orders. We can't let that stand."
Blake paused in her ministrations. She'd asked the question on purpose to provoke a response, but even so she hadn't expected such an immediate and forceful reply from the heiress.
One day, she supposed, she might stop underestimating Weiss.
"I hope they were human," Weiss added before Blake could say anything.
"Why?"
"Why do you think? I shot one of them. I kicked another off a moving carriage to probably be dragged to death. The one you were fighting was caught in the wreck and the burning oil."
How stupid can I be?
The kitchen of the former Jekyll house had been the first time Weiss had gone into a fight with the intention of killing. But the cab ambush was the first time she actually had. That stayed with a person forever, changed them as surely as their first time making love.
Momentarily, Blake wished that she herself had had that choice.
She was amazed Weiss had come this far, not only making it back to the hotel, but even now, when they were behind closed doors in the safety of their room, she hadn't broken down in hysterical shock.
"I'm sorry, Weiss. I'd hoped that after the house, you might have gotten lucky, that you wouldn't have to get blood on your hands. But it was your life or theirs, and—"
"That isn't it!" the heiress cut her off again. "That isn't it," she repeated, softer and less shrilly. "Or, it's not most of it. I just…it's not about me, it's about them."
Blake felt her ears twitch.
"How do you mean?" she asked, genuinely curious.
"Like you said, for me it was self-defense. They attacked us, they plainly wanted us dead, and we protected ourselves. If…if we waste our time feeling guilty over it, we're just being maudlin. But if those were Faunus or some other slaves of Hyde, they didn't have any choice. He was controlling them with his drugs or some other way. If they were human, then it's different, or probably so. They'd have had a choice."
"They could have deserved it," Blake finished for her.
Weiss bit her lip, nodding.
"It sounds awful of me," she said. There was a kind of little-girl helplessness in her tone, something that Blake wasn't at all used to hearing from her.
And yet, what should I have expected? When it came down to it, the thing that drove Weiss most powerfully was her pride. Not in the sense of arrogance or self-importance, but in the standards she set for herself, expected from herself.
"No, it's not awful," she told the heiress, her voice quiet.
"It's maudlin, though. I'm starting to sound like you, now. Regretting that we live in a world where a soldier for the enemy can be an innocent, not a monster."
"Do you really think those assassins were innocents?" She ignored the implied insult, recognizing where it had come from. "If they were Hyde's, he might have warped them, twisted them against their will, but they weren't innocent. Not any more." She lifted her head so that her gaze met Weiss's. "Whatever tragedy led them to that point, as far as it has anything to do with you, it doesn't make any more difference than if they were actually the monsters they appeared to be."
"Just like that?"
"I told you about Jack, didn't I?"
The question was rhetorical, of course. She saw it hit home in Weiss's expression, watched her turn it around in her mind to how she herself had reacted when Blake had told her about the maddened Faunus she had had to hunt.
Weiss nodded twice, her ponytail bobbing.
"Yes, you did." She extended one pale hand; Blake let the sponge slip back into the basin and squeezed Weiss's fingers between her own. Neither one of them made mention of the fact that Blake was being a hypocrite of sorts, that she still hadn't fully exonerated herself in her heart for killing a fellow Faunus no matter how necessary it had been.
She definitely wasn't going to be to Weiss what some of the White Fang had been for her, though, the Vincents and Greys and Lucrezias. If nothing else, at least she could offer that.
"Thank you." Weiss's lips quirked into a smile. "Just don't get used to me crying on your shoulder. This is strictly a one-time event."
Blake chuckled.
"I guess I shouldn't expect anything else from the Snow Princess?"
"I hate that stupid nickname."
"Well, you are growing up now, so would that make you an Ice Queen instead?"
"You are not helping."
Blake laughed, and was surprised by how good it felt, regardless of how desperate the situation or their circumstances. Weiss sniffed and pulled her hand back, but the traces of a smile refused to be hidden away.
In her heart Blake knew it wasn't going to be that simple and easy for Weiss. To anyone with a vestige of conscience, taking a life for the first time wasn't something that could be just accepted and done with. But even though it would certainly return, she was also sure that it was a burden Weiss would be able to accept, as much as she'd come to accept the scar on her eye.
She didn't even notice, but it was at that moment she truly forgave herself for putting that scar there.
Smiling, she turned back to what she was doing, then dried her arm. Having gotten the wound clean, she treated it with iodine, then wrapped a bandage around it.
"You do that almost as well as a doctor," Weiss commented.
"We've had to learn to do a lot for ourselves. There aren't a lot of hospitals that would take Faunus, after all. At the very least, most of us know how to take care of wounds, sprains, broken bones, and similar common injuries."
"Well, I can see why it would be useful. I should learn basic first aid, myself."
"I doubt anyone thought it was the kind of skill the Schnee heiress needed to know. Though you could say the same thing about swordplay, if it came to that."
Blake picked up her shirt, pushed her arms into the sleeves, and started buttoning up the front.
"Speaking of which, did you say something about asking your automatist friend to fetch your sword back for you?"
"I did. And, while you were writing your story earlier, I had an ad placed in tomorrow's agony column of the Star telling him where to have it sent."
"Not here, I hope."
"I'm not stupid, Blake. There's a shop down in Engineer's Row that can hold the package until I call for it."
"Garnet could still have his men watch that shop."
"I know, but it's not unusual that Dr. Verhart would be in contact with a store in his field, so it shouldn't be suspicious. And we can check to make sure that no one has it under observation before I go in."
Blake arched an eyebrow at her.
"All right, you can check, since I wouldn't have much of an idea how to spot anyone who wasn't being completely obvious."
"If Garnet used someone like that, it would probably just be a blind, anyway."
"A blind?"
Blake nodded.
"A 'rough shadow,' someone who deliberately lets themselves be seen. Then, when you evade them and think you're safe, the real watcher, who's been careful and hidden, takes over, and finds out exactly what you're really up to."
Weiss shook her head.
"Security work is so much more complicated than I'd imagined. You have to be a detective, a thief, a bodyguard, a spy, and a soldier all combined into one."
"It's too bad that yours is working for the other side."
"Which I still don't understand."
Her eyes traveled down to the bandage wrapped around Blake's leg.
"And you're sure that you're all right?"
"Are you that worried?" Blake smirked. "That's the third time you've asked."
"Those people were scary! And right now, you're the only ally that I have. And after tonight, it's clear that Hyde wants me dead. The one who attacked me knew my name."
"You aren't exactly an unknown person, Weiss."
"That's precisely my point. That was a deliberate attempt at murder. So either they were specifically sent to kill me, or they were sent to kill you and considered me acceptable collateral damage, even though Hyde works for the Schnee family!"
Part of Blake wanted to laugh at how offended Weiss sounded, like she took the very concept as a personal insult. But really, there was a valid underpinning to her surprise. Weiss had been at risk before, from the White Fang and the Saulbridge fire, but there was a difference between that kind of thing and someone pointing a finger and saying "that person needs to die."
"And it has to be considered: did Hyde give those orders on his own, or did they come from his backer?"
"Blake, his backer is a member of my family!"
"You have to consider the possibility."
"I don't have to do any such thing! I can't believe it. We may not get along with each other, my father especially, but we're still a family."
"And families can't turn on each other? You Schnees are the royalty of industrialized Europe, and you know how brothers and sisters, parents and children have turned on one another throughout every dynasty in history when thrones were at stake."
"The entire reason we are 'royalty' is because we came together as a family, stayed together to support my grandfather against the political and business rivals that wanted to destroy us and exploit Dust for their own ends. I can't believe that in just one generation we'd go from that to…to a pack of starving mongrels fighting one another over scraps!"
Blake met her furious gaze coolly.
"Are you willing to trust your life to that, Weiss?"
"The honor of a Schnee still means something. Whichever one of my family is behind Pandora and Hyde, they didn't send those assassins after me. I could believe it of Hyde himself, or Ashton or Garnet if they were pressed, but not one of the family!"
She was so intent about it that Blake found herself wanting to believe it, too, just for the sake of not seeing that ideal dashed. It was the kind of thing Weiss was idealistic about, too, the importance of family ties and personal honor. She would believe in it.
Blake wondered just when seeing Weiss's hopes realized had become something important to her.
"I hope that you're right," she said. "And Hyde does have both the motive and the temperament to try to have you killed. You're not only helping me, but you represent the most danger to him."
"I do?"
"We Faunus want the secret of his drug and to kill him, yes, but that's ultimately a simple security problem and he has resources he can use against us. You, on the other hand, can potentially destroy him without ever coming near him."
Weiss folded her arms across her chest.
"Blake, you're not making any sense."
"No, you're just thinking in terms of reality."
Weiss unfolded her left arm so she could rub her temple.
"Look, I understand that it's late, but—"
"I know what you've told me about your father and Mr. Ashton and the company and all the relationships involved, but Hyde doesn't know that. Even with Garnet's insider information—if Garnet's passing it on at all—he can't be certain. If you went to your father and he was as outraged as you are, or even just angry that Pandora's been run behind his back, Hyde could find himself with virtually nothing in an instant: resources taken away, funding cut off, any staff who work for Schnee Dust Company that were lent to Pandora gone. There were soldiers on Ellespoint Island, before. They had to be Dust Company troops. If your father gives the order—and it's not unreasonable you might know how to get him to so that—Hyde's left twisting in the wind, a genius experimenter with no lab, no staff, and only what's left of his personal finances. And that's assuming that Schnee doesn't go one further and decide to have him erased to cover their tracks."
Weiss's eyes widened as she considered what Blake had said. The heiress may have weighed what her choice to defy her father and hunt Hyde personally meant for her, both before and after learning Blake's secret, but she clearly hadn't turned it around and considered what it meant to Hyde. The potential was always there for her to stop being Weiss Schnee, idealistic young woman on a personal quest, and start being Weiss Schnee, heiress and one-fourth owner of the Dust Company.
"I hadn't thought of it like that."
"I'm quite certain that Hyde has, right from the moment that you helped me to escape Saulbridge. I'm not surprised at all that he'd try to have you killed. Honestly, what surprises me more is how those…whatever they were…managed to find us to make the attempt."
Weiss dropped into a chair. She crossed one leg over the other and propped her chin up on her fist in an aggressively thoughtful pose. Blake found herself suppressing a grin, she found it so endearing.
"It wasn't just an attack, either, it was a well-prepared trap. That suggests some level of advance planning. But how would they have found us? They didn't stalk us through the city, or they could have attacked us here. Or tonight, if they were after me, they could have taken me out in the city when I was on my way to follow you, when I was alone and vulnerable. And I have to admit," she added with a scowl, making it very obvious she had no desire to say it, "that I would never have been able to spot them if they had been following me, like with all of the things you were talking about a few minutes ago? The fact that I made it to Jekyll's house alive is as good as proof that they weren't shadowing me."
"They had to know we were there, though. Nothing else makes any sense."
"I agree. They needed time to get the cab and prepare the trap."
"The trap itself could have been pre-arranged, but they wouldn't know they needed—ah!" Blake snapped her fingers. "They didn't follow us to the Jekyll house; they were waiting there for us."
"Do you mean that was a trap? Like the automata you stepped into?"
Blake grimaced, that not having been her finest moment in breaking and entering.
"Not exactly, but…similar to it? Imagine it like this: Hyde sends them to kill you for us, but they don't know where we are. So instead of, or in addition to, running around London doing legwork like an enquiry agent, they simply wait for us at a location they know we'll want to visit. Hyde knows where his own facilities are, after all, and he'd know I'd want to go there to search for his chemical or to free his prisoners. They would have been waiting and watching, and seen you arrive. I assume that you took a cab to, not right up to the house, but nearby, right?"
"I did." Weiss looked downcast. "I didn't think of the things you said on the way back about being followed, changing cabs, any of that."
"So, seeing that, the assassins probably assumed that you'd leave in a cab as well. They got one, and one of them waited for you with it while the others went off to prepare their ambush at a spot they'd probably already scouted."
"It's my fault, then. I played right into their hands."
"It's as much mine as yours. I didn't see them watching, I didn't notice anything amiss about the cabdriver, and I didn't even realize that he wasn't driving us to Victoria Station—and I'm supposed to be the one of us who actually has skill in this kind of tradecraft. They were better than me, right down the line, and we got lucky that you got the carriage moving. You saved us both by doing that."
"But you pulled me out of the wreck. Without you I'd have been seriously hurt, probably killed." She glanced aside and added, "It was actually kind of amazing."
Blake's lips quirked into a smile.
"I guess by now we should stop keeping count of which of us has saved the other from what." She got up from her seat and took a couple of steps towards Weiss, then laid her hands on the shorter woman's shoulders.
"Look, there's plenty of blame and plenty of credit to go around for both of us, all right? I'm just saying that the mistakes you made were no worse than mine, and the things you did to help us were as good. And whatever else happened, we're alive and free now, with only a few nicks and bruises to show for it." She looked again at Weiss's throat, where her pale skin made the bruises stand out all the more lividly. How close, she wondered, had she come to being killed?
For the barest instant, a wave of guilt seemed to rise up and nearly suffocate her. Weiss had been an innocent—no, more than that, Weiss was a good person, and Blake had dragged her into this to the point that she was now at war with her own family, the specific target of assassins being sent by Blake's enemy, and unable to turn to the immense resources of the Schnees because she wanted to protect Blake and the Faunus.
If Weiss's life was like a fairy tale, then Blake felt like she was the village mob who had chained the princess to a stake as a sacrifice for a marauding dragon.
In the next instant she snarled at herself. She wasn't being fair, not to herself, but more importantly not to Weiss. The heiress might have gotten involved because of her encounter with Blake, and was certainly at more risk because she wanted to help and protect the Faunus, but Blake wasn't forcing her to do any of that. Weiss's choices were her own, made for her own reasons, her sense of honor, her pride in herself and in her family name. For Blake to feel guilty over it was to deny the strength of Weiss's feelings and the validity of the forces that drove her.
"And just what are you scowling about, all of a sudden?"
"I just wasn't happy with something I was thinking."
Weiss quirked an eyebrow at her.
"Oh, and what would that be this time?"
"Excuse me?"
"You do do that a fair amount, I've noticed."
"That isn't—" Blake thought it over. Was it really that obvious that even Weiss was seeing it?
She wasn't used to this. Ever since she'd left the White Fang's home to take up her role in human society, she hadn't had the chance to be alone for any extended period of time with anyone who knew her for herself. With humans, she always had to be on her guard so as to keep hidden her true nature and intentions, while her interactions with Adam and other Faunus had been limited for the most part to mission reports and briefings. Even her occasional visits home had been tainted by the rising opposition from those who felt she was becoming too human.
The talks she'd had with Weiss, back at her flat and here at the hotel, were the first time she'd been able to let down her guard and talk freely with someone else in a very long time. And the need to explain her history and the other circumstances of the situation had required her to go deeper, divulging things she otherwise wouldn't have. The extraordinary circumstances, the violence, the danger, the desperation were forcing things that otherwise would never have happened.
But they had.
Intimacy. To know a person's heart, the innermost self that they do not show to outsiders.
Trust. To be comfortable with a person, to know that whatever one places in their hands will be kept safe.
Finding those things had filled an aching need in Blake she'd carried for so long that she'd all but forgotten what the pain meant. It wasn't just the separation from the White Fang, their distrust that she'd resented, but even more that she'd had nothing to replace it with.
Perhaps she'd never had. Until now.
Until Weiss.
"Blake? Are you all right?"
And how long was I just standing here this time?
"Look, Blake, I don't know what it is that's bothering you, but it isn't helping if you just stew over it."
She let out a long sigh, then let her hands drop.
"It isn't important," she said, then turned away to go back to the bed.
Or at least she tried to, before Weiss caught her wrist.
"Blake, right now we're all each other has. If there's something bothering you, I need to know about it."
She shook her head.
"It really doesn't matter."
"I think it does. One minute you're trying to comfort me about the things that just happened this evening, and the next you're staring off into space. Which, I may point out, is not what I would call particularly comforting."
Blake let out another sigh.
"So whatever it is," Weiss continued, "it obviously is important, even if only because it's getting in your way."
Blake ran her hand through her hair.
"All right."
She sat down on the bed and patted the coverlet. Weiss took the invitation and sat beside her. It was easier that way; Blake didn't have to look at her.
"You said that we're all each other has," she began. "That's what I was thinking about."
"That's hardly a revelation."
"Isn't it? I've only known you for a handful of days, and all but the last two with crossed swords between us. Yet right now, I'm closer to you than I am to anyone on this Earth, closer than friends I've known for years, closer than my fellow Faunus that I've fought alongside for our very survival as a race. Do you know how unspeakably lonely that feels?"
It burst from her lips, almost an anguished cry rather than speech, and that made the cool, even crisp tone of Weiss's reply slice through her like a dash of ice water.
"Yes."
She blinked in surprise at the simplicity of it.
"Yes? That's it?"
"Yes, I understand." Weiss folded her arms across her chest. "Do you have any idea what it's like to be the heiress of the Schnee Dust Company? Everyone wants something from you. I was raised by nannies and governesses and tutors. I was never allowed to go away to school; there was too much risk of kidnapping or assassination—and, I think, too little direct control by my father over what I would be exposed to. When I was introduced to girls my age as a little child, it was because their parents wanted to build a tie they could use to curry favor. When a man asks me to dance, a woman offers a hand in friendship, I have no idea whether they're sincere or out for some advantage—and it's usually the latter.
"They don't call me the Snow Princess because my name is Schnee, they call me that because I'm cold and aloof, never letting anything really touch me."
"Aloof?" Blake exclaimed. Oh, she knew the stories, superficially, from the gossip around the Star. It still didn't sound at all believable. "You hunted me down in person with a sword!"
"It isn't because I want it. It's because it's the only way to keep from doing something foolish. There's no point in investing anything of myself in things that don't matter. I don't have friends; I have polite social acquaintances. Even people like Gertrud and Dr. Verhart work for my family. I can't call them friends with that kind of power difference in our relationship."
It made sense, in those terms. It wasn't that Weiss was a cold person, but rather that the cold was what surrounded her—not a magical "Snow Princess," just a young woman standing outdoors in wintertime.
"So yes, Blake, I genuinely do understand. At least with you, I know your intentions. You didn't show me any artifice. I don't need to hide myself or play games around you in a way that doesn't apply to anyone else in my life, not even my family."
It was so like what Blake had just been thinking about that all she could do was stare and shake her head.
"I guess we really are two of a kind," she finally said. "We escape a murderous attack by the skin of our teeth, we trade guilt over who got us in more trouble, and we end up playing who's-the-loneliest-of-all."
"Obviously, I am," Weiss said at once.
"You sound sure of yourself."
"Your one close person in your life is me. That's the best that anyone can do, so plainly I'm lonelier than you are by that measure." She actually managed to keep her arch tone all the way to the end of her statement before she dissolved into laughter and took Blake with her. There was as much of hysteria in it as humor, an expiation of the tension, the fear, and the very real pain that underlay what Weiss had said, regardless of how matter-of-fact she'd been about it. It went on for long minutes until both women were gasping for breath, sides aching, clinging to one another to keep from toppling over. They drew in huge gasps of air as the laughter faded at last, the look of their reddened faces nearly setting them off again.
"I needed that," Blake admitted, wiping tears from her eyes. "I really did."
"My face hurts from all that," Weiss complained. "I'm glad no one else was here to see me cackling like a…a…"
"Commoner? Peasant?"
"I shan't dignify that with a response."
"At least you didn't say hyena."
"Of course not. The truly elegant lady does not insult someone's background; that is the mark of the undignified rabble."
Blake just rolled her eyes—or tried to, but a snicker escaped her.
"At least your sense of humor is improving, or my taste is decaying under the strain."
"And if this is what we've descended to, I think it's time for me to change for bed."
Weiss rose from her seat and crossed to the door that connected their suites. She turned the knob, then looked back over her shoulder with the door half-open.
"Blake," she said, all trace of humor gone, "would you stay with me tonight? I'm…tired of being alone."
And because regardless of how absurd it was that Weiss had found herself that close to her, Blake, too, was tired of being alone, she nodded and rose to follow.
~X X X~
A/N: My first draft of this chapter had Weiss's seated pose with her chin propped up compared to Rodin's The Thinker…until I looked it up and found that the first castings of that didn't appear until 1904. That's one I can't even justify getting around in alternate history since there's no reason for him to crank one out fifteen years early, drat it all.