Weiss stirred. The light was strange and dim, and the walls looked green instead of the dorm's familiar white. Blake slept on the mattress next to her, facing away. She could smell her lavender shampoo and conditioner. They must have fallen asleep watching that Mistralian drama at the end of the well-meant congratulations party her team had thrown for her and Blake.
I'll have to check our faces for marker, she thought as she began to drift back off.
A sound came from the end of the bed. Cloth shuffling... a door shutting? For some reason her heart rate picked up.
Probably it was just Ruby. Maybe she'd forgotten to brush her teeth. Weiss pushed the blankets off and tried to sit up to make sure, but something kept her pinned to the bed.
A narrow blade, glinting along one edge in the weird light as the girl Neo smirked. Her eyes switched colors from pink and brown to green, a deep green, like the walls. She drew the sword inch by inch from Weiss's stomach.
The heiress jerked, gasping at the pain as the blade came free, glistening with her blood. Neo turned to the still-sleeping Blake.
"No!" Weiss choked out, lunging to stop her as she raised the blade again. Something icy gripped her arm, though. She struggled to get loose.
"Weiss?" Blake's voice was distant, coming from somewhere other than the Blake lying on the bed. "Weiss, is everything okay?"
"No," was all she could articulate through her horror as Neo and the Blake beside her on the bed vanished- an illusion. An illusion like the ones Neo- Roman's henchman used to take him away, but this time she took Blake. She took Blake.
Weiss nearly made it out of bed before the weight of her limbs and the sticky, sick feeling in her head forced her to stop and just cling to the edge of the mattress. She fumbled at her hip for Myrtenaster, but the weapon wasn't there.
"Weiss stop, look at me," Blake's voice was closer now, insistent, woven with a fine thread of worry. Gentle hands took hold of the heiress's face, "What do you see?"
"What?" Weiss looked at Blake, who was steadying her with both hands. "You're... you're..."
She looked down at her stomach, which hurt, but not nearly as much as it would if she'd just been run through again. A fine trail of blood trickled from the spot where the IV needles were still partway taped to her arm.
"Blake?" tears caught up with her all of a sudden. She caught onto Blake's arm for support, because even in her drugged state she had nearly managed to fall off the bed. "You were gone. You're okay? You were-"
"I was brushing my teeth," Blake flashed her freshly cleaned pearly whites in a half-hearted smile, "I'm sorry, I didn't think..." she helped pull Weiss fully back onto the bed, minding her IVs, which while jostled, upon further inspection still seemed to be in place. Heedless of whether she got blood on the sleeves of her sleepwear, Blake leaned over Weiss to smooth the tape back down over her arm, keeping a close eye on her all the while. "The nurse wasn't kidding about those hallucinations..."
"Halluci..." Weiss stumbled over the word, her thoughts still a mess. As panicked as she'd been a second ago, she could barely keep her head up now, so she laid back on the pillow while Blake fussed over her. Her non-IV-ed hand found the hem of Blake's shirt and held onto it, "I thought that girl... I thought Neo..."
"Oh, Neo? She's still in the shower." Completely ignoring her girlfriend's eyes widening in shock, Blake continued, "She had a lot of blood to wash off after this," she calmly motioned to her chest, to the long, thin blade jutting out from between her ribs, dripping a steady stream of red onto Weiss and the sheets around her.
Blake looked over her shoulder to the bathroom door, her head turning just a bit farther than should be naturally possible to watch the scarred and battered wood slowly swing open, its hinges creaking like an old dead branch about to snap. "Actually, looks like she's done."
Blood roaring in her ears, Weiss threw herself back against the headboard, heedless of the IV in her arm as she called up her glyphs.
The blade in Blake's chest flashed and flickered in the blue light of the glyph spinning to life beneath her. "Weiss, what's going on?" She squinted and arched back, blinking rapidly against the glyph's blinding glare, eyes shifting from amber, to brown, to pink, and all combinations in between. "What are you doing?"
A low rumbling shook the bed and avalanche of hair care product bottles exploded into the room, pouring through the open doorway. They looked like Blake's and smelled like Blake's. The lavender scent filled Weiss's mouth and nose (all the while the panic in her chest shrieked, It's not Blake, it's not Blake), and the bottles swept in waves, crashing over the edges of the mattress and threatening to surge up to the ceiling.
Fighting through the rush of plastic containers, Weiss tried to bring her glyph up between herself and the Blake who wasn't Blake, but her grasp on her semblance failed and the blue light of it scattered across the bedspread like torrents of rain.
Rain... and as it fell, she lost her balance in the sea of plastic.
She fell hard, back against the pillows-
-and woke up.
The infirmary room was quiet. The lighting dim and peaceful, reflecting dully off the worn tile floor. A monitor of some sort chirped softly next to the bed.
Hazy with drugs and sleep, Weiss looked around for her girlfriend.
The Faunus in question suddenly popped up from the floor beside the bed, straightening out her yukata and bow. She had just finished rolling out her sleeping bag, pushing still-slightly-damp hair over her shoulder as she made a final visual sweep of the room for the night.
Blake's head snapped around in a double-take when she noticed Weiss. "What are you doing up?" she asked, sitting close to the bleary heiress with a look of quiet concern. Even her half-lidded eyes, no doubt weighed down by medication, couldn't hide the way her pupils had constricted to pinpricks of black amidst a turbulent sea of blue. Blake leaned forward. "Is everything all right? You... don't look well."
Was Blake's hair damp with water? Weiss's gaze slid to the front of her yukata, looking for red stains. The fabric was black, though. She watched a droplet hit the sheets as the Faunus leaned forward. It left a damp spot. Not red. Water, not blood.
"I'm alright," Weiss mumbled, heart still going kind of quick in her chest. Her aura settled back into a gentler glow as she took a deep breath. It felt like she should say something else, and the first thing that came to her mind was the absurd waves of shampoo bottles, "I need to wash my hair. It's been... three days?"
At this, Blake's smile returned, but amusement at Weiss's pout stretched it into more of a smirk, which she would have done more to hide if Weiss wasn't too heavily medicated to care. "I wasn't going to say anything but yes, it's been a while."
Amber eyes flicked back to the bathroom door. The shower was small, had a railing to grasp, and even a place to sit, but Weiss still seemed shaky at best. Blake bit her lip, taking a moment to consider her wording before she spoke.
"Do you want help?" Though the lightest of blushes still dusted her cheeks, the majority of her embarrassment was thoroughly quashed beneath the sobering reality that the only reason she was even making this offer was because Weiss had been brutally stabbed in the back by a pint-sized psychopath.
Weiss couldn't keep her thoughts straight. She gave Blake a blank, sleepy look, brow furrowed, "Help with… what?"
"With-" Blake stopped short of using the phrase taking a shower, hoping to avoid all the connotations that went with it. After another moment or two of consideration, she settled on, "Help with washing your hair?"
"Now?" Weiss groaned, rubbing her eyes. She'd never intended to actually get up and shower, and the painkillers quickly unraveled all remembrance of her earlier statement. "Blake, it's the middle of the night. And I've got this... this..." words failed her for the IV, so she gave up, settling on a simpler complaint as the drug-induced fatigue caught up with her, "I'm tired."
"But you just said... you need to..." Blake squinted at Weiss. She'd forgotten. She could see it in her eyes. As tempted as she was to just leave it, she decided to offer one last time, just in case past Weiss and present Weiss were in disagreement about just how much she valued sleep over personal hygiene. "It's been three days... Are you okay sleeping with messy hair?"
Weiss tried to think, "No...?"
Progress. Future Weiss would probably thank her for her diligence. Blake slipped off the bed and to her feet, offering her hands to Weiss. "Can you stand up?"
Could she stand up? Weiss scoffed. Of course she could! Taking one of Blake's hands, she dragged herself up into a sitting position.
... where she felt distinctly sick. It also felt like someone had punched her in the stomach. Disoriented, she crumpled back down to the mattress, eyes shut to keep out the way the room was spinning.
Okay, so standing up wasn't a great plan. Her aura righted things pretty quickly, but she still felt like she'd tangled with the wrong head of a King Taijutsu. (Actually, they were both wrong heads, which meant she felt pretty bad.) She whined, "What time is it?"
Blake glanced at the monitor giving a readout of Weiss's aura. The time stamp showed that it was nearly 1 AM. Judging by the pallor of Weiss's features after her valiant attempt to move, Blake guessed that future Weiss would probably also thank her for kindly avoiding anything that might result in vomiting.
"It is pretty late." She released Weiss's hand, briefly dipped down to grab Water for Goliaths from the sleeping bag. Book in hand, Blake sat beside her girlfriend on the bed, flipping to the page she'd bookmarked. "You should sleep," she added, though she had little intention of doing the same any time soon.
Blake got settled in, and Weiss looked up at her, brow creased in mild bewilderment. Everything seemed warm and slow, like she could just sink into sleep easy as anything. She looked at the book in Blake's hands. Some kind of novel. Was she going to read to her? Weiss wasn't sure what to think of that, but she did like having Blake close.
Bits of that dream, or hallucination still nagged at her. She would protect Blake from Neo this time. Neo, who had stabbed her at that diner for... for some reason... how had she and that Roman Torchwick even found them?
She'd figure it out later. For now, she would stay here and guard Blake. Though that job would probably be simpler if she had her sword. Weiss managed to reach and took one of Blake's hands away from the book, gripping it as she shifted to lean her head on Blake's shoulder. Her eyes were already drifting shut, as she yawned, "Where's Myrtenaster?"
"Under the bed," Blake answered softly, keeping her eyes safely trained to the words on the page, rather than risk looking at Weiss for fear of wanting to drop a kiss to her forehead. The heiress's blade was lying right beside Gambol Shroud, both weapons having been lovingly cleaned and reloaded for them by their very own team leader.
Weiss hummed, satisfied with the information. Blake was warm beside her, and it felt good, holding onto her hand. After a quiet minute or two, Weiss's breathing deepened in sleep.
Blake chanced a look down at Weiss... then set her book over her face, worried that the rush of affection currently assaulting her had turned her red enough that it would be visible to the surveillance camera even in such dim lighting. In this position, she too eventually drifted off, the pages of her novel hiding a smile.
A/N: A successful night! Sort of! Definitely mostly. Dreams that trick you into thinking you've woken up are the worst. C'mon Blake, just ignore that camera and give Weiss all the hugs and kisses - she clearly needs themmm
As far as the continuation to our other story, that's coming super soon! We uh, we were going to start posting it last Tuesday, but then work tried to kill me that week, and I more or less begged Fiercesomest to wait to post it on this coming Tuesday because... because puns. She is too good to me.
So, keep an eye out for the new fic on what shall be RWBY Tuesdays from here on out, in addition to catnip shenangians on saturdays. :3
HUGS,
Defenestrator
