"Briar!" Blake calls, her voice catching in her throat.
"Blake! Behind you!" Yang calls, breaking into a sprint towards the cave entrance.
Blake turns around just in time to block an unbalanced strike from a towering Ursa Major, though the force still knocks her off of her feet. It was only because it wasn't used to missing its arm that it was so uncoordinated, so the damage was thankfully not as bad as it could be. Blake flies back but quickly recovers. She glances over at Briar, currently slumped against a tree in bad condition. She swallows her feelings and turns to face the culprit.
It was a routine mission. One for beginnings. A small town had increased Grimm attacks.
It was the reason why.
A massive, ages-old Ursa had made its home in a cave, where it could live and learn and grow. It's power brought out over Grimm as a lure. All of them were weak, but it stood strong in its cave, waiting.
And then Yang, Blake, and a fresh recruit showed up.
The Ursa Major slammed the ground with its remaining arm, creating a small earthquake. The cave behind it shook, several stones knocked loose from the ceiling.
"Careful jumping around Blake! It's what made you fall!" Yang says, throwing a few shells at the Grimm.
Blake didn't say anything. She couldn't. Not with what happened. Sure, she didn't know there was a Grimm strong enough to knock away her footing, but she was careless. She had let herself fall into a vulnerable position, which led Briar to take the hit for her. Twice. There was nothing to do but win and hope.
"Yang, grab its arm and pull it out!" Blake orders, peppering the Ursa. She slid her sheath onto Gambol Shroud, turning it into a cleaver-style blade. She loosed some of her ribbon and began spinning it around in an arc, gaining momentum.
"Bastard!" Yang screams, punching her fists together and igniting her Semblance. Using her gauntlets, she shoots forward and delivers a few stone-shattering punches that the Ursa shrugs off. She adds in an uppercut mixed with a gunshot, opening it up for a moment. Yang slides to the slide, grabs its remaining arm, and wrenches it outwards with all of her strength. Much like Briar had done with his newly awakened Semblance, she positions it in such a way where a powerful attack could sever it.
Blake ran as fast as she could while still keeping momentum in her weapon's spin. At the perfect moment, she ducked, made a clone, and used it to throw herself high into the air. Loosening her ribbon and adding more speed and length, she somersaulted in the air until she formed a massive spinning guillotine. Aiming for the weakest part of the Ursa's arm, she slammed her cleaver guillotine downwards with a gunshot. It sliced clean through the arm, detaching it.
Yang followed up Blake's attack by taking the Ursa's severed arm and jamming its claws into its rib-area. She gored the Grimm before the arm could even dissipate, then used her Semblance-enhanced strength to force the bony limb in as deep as it could go. The Ursa roared in pain before collapsing and fading into acrid smoke.
The second Blake saw the signs the Grimm before her was dying, she ran towards Briar, still unconscious next to a tree. Tossing Gambol Shroud down, she visually inspected his injuries. His Aura was gone, and the real damage was evident. The blonde's head had struck the tree, causing blood to bleed through his beanie. His back had several long, vicious claw marks scoring into his skin. Judging from the bruising, ribs had to be broken.
"Briar!" Blake says, voice cracking. "Briar, are you okay?" She looks back at Yang. Some of the weight lifts when she hears a stir from behind her; Briar's eyes open and move, but quickly fade again. He was alive, but not well off. "Brothers Grimm, this is my fault…"
"I'll phone help! Just do what you can," Yang says, running up and pulling out her scroll. She begins talking with another teammate requesting evac. "Is he okay?"
"He's alive, thank the Brothers." Blake hesitates. She could do something, but that meant…
Oh, screw it! What's a secret matter if you're dead?
Blake removes Briar's beanie to inspect the wound. Yang looks over and pauses her call, taken aback. For the first time, she spies the reason why the other blonde wore a hat at all times; he was a Faunus. He had a pair of cat ears atop his head, and was keeping it secret. Whatever. It's not like she cared. Briar was Briar. He was a person, and this new information changed nothing about how she felt about him. What mattered was that he was hurt, and bad.
Blake braces herself and removes the ribbons on her arms. Gingerly, she wraps them around Briar's head wound, staunching the bleeding and tying down his ears. Reaching into her pack, she pulls out some basic medical supplies and begins administering first aid on the back wounds. Careful not to move him too much, she grabs Gambol Shroud and carefully cuts away his shirt, then uses the clean sections to wrap up his back.
Blake calms down and starts to think. Now that Briar was stable, at least, she thought about when she first met him. Despite having Aura, he spent weeks with a black eye. He wrote it off as his body being too busy healing him from whatever incident happened that he was so dodgy about. That wasn't how Aura worked; Aura would heal wounds until depleted, but for it to target specific places wasn't a thing that happened without intention. Whatever wounds were healing also took weeks, far longer than anything she'd expect Aura to heal. His worked differently for some reason, at least for whatever that incident was.
Blake closes her eyes and focuses. A technique she'd picked up in her years of fighting was too focus a little Aura and apply it to someone else's wound. In all honesty, it was best for after a spar, where the worst damage was only a scratch or two; it didn't do much, mostly a patch-up, but it was something. And maybe, if Briar's Aura somehow knew to focus or whatever it was doing, then maybe it'd do a bit more. Blake channels her Aura into Briar's back and hopes it does something more than nothing.
Having done as much as she can, Blake sits up and turns. She spies Yang come out of the cave where the Ursa had made their home. "There's nothing more in there, thankfully," the blonde says. "That was the only big deal here, so we can get him out of here safely."
Blake lets out a long breath. "I've stopped the bleeding, at least."
"You think he's good to move?" Yang holds up a worn tarp of some description. "This was in the cave. Don't care to know where it came from, but we can wrap him up and I can carry him."
Blake looks at Briar, chokes up a bit, then says, "I… hope he's okay. His Aura is gone, but once it comes back, he'll heal. Right?"
Yang lays out the tarp and forces a smile. "He'll pull through. He'll have some war scars, but he'll make it." She looks at Blake's patch job before moving Briar. She sees the ribbons tied over his head wound and ears. "But I don't think that looks comfortable. Here, I'll help." Kneeling down, Yang removes the bandana above her boot and ties it around Briar's head, covering the wound and hiding his ears far better than the ribbons could. "Now, help me get him on."
"You didn't know."
"That he's a Faunus? No, I didn't. Doesn't matter." Yang grabs Briar and begins gingerly lifting him. Blake assists, lifting his legs. "You did, didn't you?"
"I did. He was going to tell–"
"And he will tell me. Because I didn't see anything and he'll be able to when he's up and about again." Yang wraps up Briar completely and fireman lifts him over her shoulder. "Come on."
Blake hangs her head and begins following Yang she heads towards the evac point. In a few minutes that felt like days, they arrive at the airbus and move Briar onto it as safe as possible. Waiting for them is the crotchety old man that had met them when they touched down and was severely disappointed in a bunch of kids.
The old man looked at Briar's limp body slung over Yang's shoulder and started to speak. "I knew a bunch of brats–"
"–Shut your damn mouth. Right. Now." Yang says, her eyes blood-red, fury burned into her face. Her hair ignites.
The old man cowers, fearful of the burning blonde. His pride ruined, he runs off. Yang and Blake move Briar to the airbus and wait the agonizing minutes until Ruby and Weiss show up. They run in from the woods, out of breath and as rushed as possible. They scramble onto the air bus and Yang begins telling the story of what happened. Though Briar seemed stable, there was no telling the severity of his wounds until they got him to a hospital.
The agony continues as RWBY flies back to Vale, uncertain of Briar's true condition. The mission was a success since Grimm would have no more reason to flock back to that area now that the Ursa was dead, but so what? Briar's first attempt at being a huntsman ended up with him gaining permanent scars at least.
Eventually, the airbus lands outside a hospital and Briar is wheeled into for serious medical attention. RWBY is forced to wait outside for an eternity until they get the news that he's stable. Though they all share a sigh of relief, there's still that sense of dread; "stable," doesn't necessarily mean, "okay." Plus, there was no telling when or even if Briar would wake up, nor if he suffered even worse damage than was visible. The emptiness sets in as RWBY realizes that they can't do anything to help past what they've already done. With leaden legs, they leave the hospital and start to head back to Beacon.
The four girls of RWBY sit. None can really think of anything to say, not that breaking the silence was the right idea. Even Weiss, being who she was, couldn't find a single thing to say, even after barely meeting Briar.
Eventually, the silence becomes deafening. Unable to handle it any more, Blake gets up and walks out of the room, with the only destination she could think of. In a desperate attempt to escape reality, she went to the library, hoping to lose herself in a book. The idea of sleep was far out of the question for her, especially now. Rather than wallow in self-pity, her idea was to bury herself in literature until she couldn't possibly stay awake. The second she was allowed to, she would be by Briar's side, hoping that her own failure wouldn't result in the loss of a friend.
Blake selected a book randomly from a shelf, hoping it would do something to help her current mood. As she found a table and opened it, she jumped right into the first page… about twenty times. No matter how much she tried, she just kept rereading the same sentences over and over again but failing to take in a single word. This was a feeling she had known before: the feeling of loss, of helplessness, of regret. She just wanted it to stop. She just wanted it to be tomorrow. She just wanted her friend to be okay.
Blake closed her book. Since reading was out of the question, she did the only other thing she could think of.
Blake searched around and found a children's fairy tale. She tried her best to lose herself as she looked at the pictures of princes and princesses and dragons and tried not to sob.