Real quick content warning:
This chapter contains racial profiling and a negative encounter with police. There's no violence involved, but it's still a bad time all round. If you're not in a good place to read that, you may want to skip the middle section (between the first and second linebreaks)
Weiss didn't have long to worry about Blake's mysterious disappearance. She was soon too busy wondering—aloud, very pointedly—why Ruby kept checking her scroll.
Ruby glanced over her shoulder and waved. "You promised!" she whispered, as Weiss whirled around to find Penny hurrying towards them.
"A warning would have been nice," she hissed back. But Ruby was already rushing to meet her, talking rapidly and waving her hands for emphasis. Anything Weiss might have said got stuck in her throat. She only managed a quiet hello as Penny joined the small crowd of them ambling down the street, and there were too many others around to talk to her properly anyway. So they made their way to A Simple Wok, and Sun gestured for everyone to sit down.
Weiss stared at the stools in dismay. Only Sun and Neptune had seated themselves, and already it was starting to look a bit cramped under the awning. Yang glanced at her, patted the seat beside Ruby, and grabbed one for herself on Weiss' left. She wound up sandwiched between the sisters, her skin prickling where their arms were pressed together... but it was still much better to sit with two people who already knew than risk, say, Jaune accidentally elbowing her in the back.
"Alright!" Sun said cheerfully. "What does everybody want?"
The answer, it turned out, didn't matter very much. Weiss' attempts to get something a little less... heavy were ignored. Then the proprietor stopped in front of Penny, who went wide-eyed and started to hiccup.
"Oh, I doubt she wants any," Weiss interjected. "She can't eat gluten."
Penny's head turned. Weiss caught a glimpse of her startled, grateful expression and made a show of examining a pepper shaker rather than look at it any longer.
It got worse as the meal went on. She could feel Penny looking at her every so often, like an itch between her shoulder blades. Finally she couldn't take it anymore. She stood up. "I'm going to look for a bathroom. Does anyone else want to come with?" There was a pause. Ruby whispered something to Penny.
"I would!" she announced, a second later, and stood up. Weiss opted to ignore the confused looks on some of the others' faces. They'd known her long enough by now to shrug it off as Penny being Penny.
They wandered just far enough away to be out of sight, in an out of the way corner just in front of a defunct book store. Weiss turned, opening her mouth to say—
"I am so sorry!"
Weiss stared at Penny. "What?"
"You were hurt, and I did not know what to do. I thought that our friends would help you, but I also told them something you did not want me to." Penny looked down. "I understand if you do not want to be friends anymore."
She pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "No wonder you and Ruby get along so well," she muttered. Then, before Penny could misconstrue that somehow, "Stop. Just... stop. I don't want an apology, and I'm certainly not going to give you one. Let's not pretend it was anything noble or special. You told them because it made you feel better, and I retaliated because it made me feel better. It's... something people do. We get afraid, or angry, and then we hurt each other."
"...Oh." Penny looked at the ground. Then something occurred to her, and her head jerked back up. "People?"
Weiss folded her arms. "Don't do that."
Penny's head tilted to one side. "Do what?"
"Ask. Why are you waiting for me to call you a person when the evidence is right there in your aura? It's not like my opinion on the subject actually matters."
"Do you not want to be told that you are not a thing?"
Weiss flinched, and clenched her fists to stop herself from reaching into her pocket. "I want a lot of things I shouldn't," she admitted.
"I... do not understand you."
"Most people don't."
They returned to the noodle stand. Penny squeezed in next to Ruby and whispered something. A second later, Ruby hopped up from her seat and grabbed Weiss in a hug. She jumped, startled, and might have flinched away—but Ruby had taken great and suspicious care to avoid her wings, throwing both arms around her shoulders rather than touch her back.
"What did she tell you?" she demanded, keeping her voice hushed.
"Just that I should do this." Ruby gave her a last squeeze and let her go, bouncing back to her seat. Weiss followed, pointedly avoiding the gazes of the others who'd noticed the moment.
Things settled down. The sun set, and soon they were all crowded together in the patch of light cast by a small lantern set under the awning. Shadows deepened between the streetlights, and the sounds of the city faded just a little. Empty bowls sat in front of all of them—except Penny, who didn't need to eat, and Ruby, who was still only halfway through hers because the two of them kept chattering back and forth. After demolishing both her own bowl and a solid chunk of Ren's, Nora had passed out on his shoulder. Heads were nodding all around, but no one moved. No one seemed to want to get up to go back to the dorms.
It was odd. Weiss was aware of her own discomfort, of the way her skin itched where it touched her teammates' arms... but it felt distant and unimportant. A hush had settled over them, a calm, dreamlike feeling that came from the dark and the quiet. Wedged between two people who knew what she was, she couldn't feel human—but she felt... easy. Relaxed. Almost normal, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Probably something to do with being too full and half-asleep. Even so, she didn't want to be the one to break the spell. She leaned on the counter and tried to ignore the warmth at her sides—which backfired immediately. Somehow, even with Ruby getting more and more animated talking to Penny and gesturing wildly with both arms, sometimes narrowly missing elbowing Weiss in the face, it was Yang she kept getting distracted by.
Did she always run this hot? The late-summer nights were getting cool, and this one was no exception, but Weiss felt downright feverish. It was like being squished against a radiator. This was something she recognized from living in Atlas—being warm in a cold room made it nearly impossible to stay awake. She nodded once, twice, fighting it with grim determination until Yang chuckled and bumped her gently with her shoulder. "Go ahead," she whispered. "We'll make sure no one gets too close."
Safe. That was the word she'd been looking for.
Weiss opened her mouth to reply, but before she had the chance she felt Yang stiffen and twist to look behind her. "Blake?"
All of them scrambled to look. Blake was walking briskly towards them—and if the fact that she'd just spent hours on a quick errand to pick up a book hadn't clued them in that something was wrong, one glance at her would have done the trick. Her ears were flat against her head, her arms were wrapped around her middle, and every few paces she looked over her shoulder as if expecting someone to start chasing her.
Yang nearly toppled over her stool in her haste to stand up. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?"
Blake shook her head. Her eyes darted towards Weiss, then back to the ground. "We have to talk," she said. "The four of us. It's urgent."
She looked even worse up close. Pale and shaky, her ears swiveling towards every sound. Everyone under the awning scrambled to their feet—Nora snapped awake from her nap as Ren moved and followed suit, her eyes widening as she took in Blake's obvious distress. They hovered there, wanting to help but not knowing how. Yang tucked Blake under her arm and let her lead the way away from the group, with Weiss and Ruby hurrying after them.
Blake walked for a long time. Every time she found someplace that seemed private enough, one of her ears would twitch and she'd take off in the opposite direction. "This is fine," Weiss said, after her fifth attempt led them to an empty bus stop shelter. "There's nobody but us in earshot."
"You're sure?"
She frowned, considering. "Could you hear us talking quietly from a hundred feet away?"
"Not in a city." Blake took a deep, shuddering breath. "Okay."
"What happened?" Ruby asked, and Yang gave Blake's shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
She was silent for another long moment. Then, she rallied. "Weiss, do you remember the girl who attacked you? In the CCT tower?"
Weiss raised an eyebrow. "She made an impression, yes."
"The way Penny described her, she sounded familiar. I wanted to look into it, so I went to talk to someone I thought would know more." Her hands clenched into fists. "Tukson. He owned a bookstore in Vale, but when I got there it was closed. I started asking around, to find out where he went, and they told me he—" Her voice broke. "He's dead."
Ruby's eyes widened. "What happened?"
"I think he was murdered." Blake pulled away from them, started to pace back and forth within the confines of the shelter. "He used to be a teacher, he homeschooled me when I was little, he wasn't in it to hurt anyone. So if they were planning something... maybe it was too much. Maybe he tried to leave, or warn somebody, and they—!"
Yang took her gently by the shoulders, stopping her pacing. "Blake, slow down. Who is they?"
Weiss already knew. She could feel the sick, dreadful certainty in the pit of her stomach. And maybe Blake saw that when she looked at her, because her shoulders slumped in defeat. "The White Fang," she admitted.
A ringing sound filled Weiss' ears. Blake kept talking, as if from a great distance.
"You have to understand, it was different when we were kids. Back when I met Ilia, the Fang was all about peaceful protest, and standing up for each other legally. It was only after my—our leader stood down that things started to change. Even then, it wasn't... it wasn't like this. We sat in restaurants and hotels that wouldn't serve us, protested out in the street where we'd block traffic, just being inconvenient on purpose so that people would actually pay attention to what we were saying."
Weiss could hear her own pulse.
"It got more intense—stealing and sabotage, that kind of thing—but it was working, and nobody was getting really hurt. Except us, sometimes. Then I got moved to Vale, with different people, and..." Blake's voice petered out, and she hugged her arms around herself. "I left when I realized what it was turning into. I guess Ilia didn't."
Yang said... something. Probably meant to be reassuring, by her tone, but Weiss couldn't make out the words. They were drowned out by her heartbeat pounding stupid, stupid, stupid against her ribs. How had she let one of them get this close? She knew what Blake was, knew there was a chance—and that should have been enough, should have warned her. How many times had she been told that it was dangerous to be around others like her? You were lucky, you were raised right and taught to behave, and now you're ruining it.
"Weiss?" Ruby's hand hovered over her shoulder. "Um... can you maybe say something?"
She had to go. Had to... to leave her team. Get herself reassigned somehow, or transfer to a different Academy, or go home. Her stomach twisted. She'd come so far, she didn't want to live with three more strangers. Not even if it meant they wouldn't know. Especially if it meant they wouldn't know. She couldn't go through all that again, and what were the odds, really, of keeping her secret if she did? She didn't want to blow up her life just because her teammate had been one of them—and it was had been, wasn't it?
But it didn't matter. She couldn't be around one of them, even if she was only an ex-member. An influence like that was too great a risk. She opened her mouth to say as much, but then she looked at Blake. Standing there tense, her shoulders hunched, like she was trying to scrunch herself into the smallest possible space. Her ears were flat. Her eyes darted up, meeting Weiss' for an instant before she dropped them back down to her hands, clenched around one another so that her fingers went white.
Her panic burned away. She couldn't help the way she was born, but she wasn't stupid. She'd already argued with Blake. She had almost eighteen years of practice fighting the animal part of her, she wasn't going to turn feral just by being in the same room with the wrong faunus. And if Blake was telling the truth, and she'd realized how awful they were...
"Prove it," she snapped.
"What?"
"You know her. You can figure out where she might go—and I know what she smells like." She glared at Blake. "You said you're not one of them, right? Then let's go stop them." And with that, she strode out of the shelter and into the street. Her teammates scrambled to follow her.
She wasn't like them. She didn't have to run away whenever she encountered a wild degenerate, they weren't carrying some disease she was doomed to catch. They were monsters, plain and simple, and fighting monsters was exactly what she was training to do.
Weiss was a Schnee, too—and she was going to prove it.
"Well?" she prompted Blake. "Which way? Would she go to the docks, the industrial district? Camp in the woods?"
Blake had to jog a few paces to keep up with her. "No. That's where the police will look, and Ilia knows that. She'll want to stick to a residential area where she won't draw attention. She passes, so probably a human neighborhood—less cops around. Old town, maybe?"
They forged on. Weiss tuned out most of the chatter—except when Yang started fretting about doing this unarmed, and Ruby offered to call their lockers. "Not yet," she said. "Ozpin will ask awkward questions." It would be a lot easier to sell the idea that the four of them had stumbled upon a White Fang operative wandering around Vale than Weiss just happening to break into the CCT at the exact right moment. Even so, that excuse would only work once.
Yang relaxed once they passed out of the commercial district and into the winding streets of old town. All of a sudden, instead of seeing the occasional shady person walking down the opposite side of the road, they were the shady ones. It wasn't until the third time someone crossed the street to avoid them that Weiss noticed the way Blake was shrinking in on herself.
"What is it?"
Her ears went flat. "Nothing. Let's just keep—"
A siren cut her off mid-sentence. Weiss thought nothing of it, at first—except that it kept getting louder, and Blake kept getting more agitated.
"What's going on?" she demanded. "Is that for Ilia?" Which was ridiculous, really, but she couldn't think of any other reason for Blake to be acting so anxious. Because it never occurred to Weiss that the sirens were for them.
"Hey! You kids! Hands where we can see 'em!"
Weiss turned, squinting into a pair of searingly bright headlights. Confused, she raised her hands.
A squad car pulled up in front of them. Two officers got out—one stood back, watching the four of them warily. The other marched right up to them, one thumb looped through his belt. He had dark brown hair and beard, all cut short, and a pair of dark sunglasses even though it was nearly eleven at night.
He stared them down for a moment. It was hard to tell with the glasses, but with the way his head was angled Weiss thought he might be looking at Blake. She stood with her ears pulled back, obviously tense. "What do you think you're doing out here?" he asked.
"We're students from Beacon," Yang said. "We were just taking a walk before we went back."
"Students, huh?" He took off the sunglasses, revealing his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Any of you armed?"
"No."
"This is ridiculous!" Weiss burst out. "We haven't done anything!"
Blake started to shake her head at her, then froze when the officer's hand moved towards his gun. "Turn around," he barked. "Hands on the car."
"Okay! Okay."
Yang bristled. "Hey! What the hell are you doing?"
"Slate, check for contraband."
The grey-haired officer moved over to Blake and started patting her pockets. Then he fished out her scroll and held it up. "Where'd you get this, huh?"
"We just told you," Yang snapped. "We're students! You can check our IDs if you want."
Sunglasses-at-night nodded at his partner, who started fiddling with Blake's scroll. Then he turned on Yang. "We gonna have a problem, blondie?"
"That depends," she shot back. "Are you planning on telling us what this is about?"
"A call came in, said some punks were prowling around in the middle of the night." Blake flinched. "Want to explain why you decided to take a late-night stroll through a residential neighborhood?"
"We got lost," said Ruby. "That's all! We had a ton of these really good noodles so we wanted to walk around and digest, you know? And then we realized we weren't sure where we were."
Slate finished studying Blake's scroll and held it out. "Take a look, Tanner."
Tanner took it, squinted at it a moment, then scowled. "This you?"
Yang's eyes started to take on a dangerous reddish tint. Blake only nodded, still keeping her palms flat on the car.
"Says here you're human. Why's that?"
Blake hesitated, her eyes darting frantically between the two police. "I—that question wasn't required."
"Is that so?" Tanner leaned against the patrol car, his finger tapping on his gun. "Nobody ever told me you're allowed to lie when the question isn't required. Did you know that, Slate?"
"Sure is news to me."
"Where were you last night, about this time? Hm?"
"I was at the dance," Blake said firmly.
"She was with me the whole night," Yang added. "We never went near the CCT."
Tanner turned his suspicious glare on her, instead. "I never said anything about the CCT."
"We're friends with Penny," Ruby explained. "The girl who caught the intruder. She told us what happened, and she knows Blake! If she'd had anything to do with it she would've recognized her. You can ask her!"
"Are we done here?" Yang asked. "Or are you actually going to charge us with something?"
Tanner walked up to Yang, squaring his shoulders and looming over her—which might have been more effective if he'd been more than an inch or two taller than she was. "I don't like your tone."
"Yeah, well, I'm not a huge fan of yours either."
"Arms out."
"Seriously?"
"Now!"
She put her arms out. Slate patted her down, pulled out her scroll, checked her ID. Tanner gestured at Weiss. "Come on. You two are next."
Her insides went cold. "Excuse me?"
"Arms out."
"Absolutely not!" Weiss backed up a step. "None of us have done anything illegal. This is absurd and I will not humor it any longer."
Blake's eyes widened. "Careful—"
"Shut up," Tanner snapped at her. "Look, miss, we just want to get this over with so we can make sure this neighborhood is safe. It's nothing bad, I'm just going to check your pockets."
Her eyes flicked to the side, where Slate was patting Yang's back—probably checking for any hidden sheaths or holsters. "No."
"You can do me!" Ruby said, stepping in front of her. "She doesn't like to be touched, that's all! We really don't have any of our stuff, it's all in our lockers at Beacon."
"We're having a nice conversation right now." Tanner took a step closer. "The kind that doesn't have to go on anybody's record, you understand? I don't want this to turn into an arrest."
Weiss felt sick. If Father heard about this—
"Step back," Yang warned.
Tanner drew his gun. "Are you threatening me, kid?"
"Weiss!" Blake blurted, "Show them your ID!"
She handed it over, shying away when Slate snatched her scroll from her hand. His eyebrows shot up.
"You can arrest us if you want," Blake said. "As long as you're ready to explain why you thought Weiss Schnee decided she needed lien badly enough to burglarize suburban Vale."
Tanner scowled at her. "You think you're real funny, don't you?"
"No, sir. I'm just trying to get back to school."
There was a brief stare-down, before officer Tanner finally relented and gestured to his partner. "I've got my eye on you," he told her, as he swung open the car door. "I think I'll be checking in with Professor Ozpin about that optional question."
The four of them didn't wait for the car to dwindle into the distance. They walked briskly out of old town, not stopping until they reached the airfield. The moment they were back on familiar ground, Blake deflated. She took deep, shaky breaths, shoving her trembling hands into her pockets and then snatching them back out again. "Hey," Yang said, slinging an arm over her shoulders and tucking her into her side. "It's over, okay? Just breathe. That's it."
"What just happened?" Weiss burst out.
Blake sighed and rested her chin on Yang's shoulder. "Someone must have called them when they saw us. Well, me."
"This is absurd, you were clearly with us!"
Blake stiffened. "Why does that matter?"
"It should have been easy to tell that you're, well—"
"One of the good ones?"
Weiss noticed Blake's glare and met it with one of her own. "Exactly."
"And if I were out here with Sun? Then would it be okay for them to harass us?"
"Of course people would be concerned, but the detectives could have just checked your Beacon ID—"
Blake stepped away from Yang and folded her arms. "I know you're dealing with a lot right now, and that this is hurting you more than it's hurting me. So I'm going to try to explain, and not get angry, even though you're making it really, really hard. Sun and I, alone? They wouldn't have left that easily. They'd have looked for any excuse to hold us, and we might have been arrested. All because some human was concerned that a couple of faunus were walking around in a nice neighborhood. That is not okay. Making excuses for that is not okay."
"They're probably just being reactive," Weiss insisted. "We had an attack by the White Fang yesterday!"
"Stuff like this is why the White Fang was founded! I know it's gotten twisted, but I got screamed at more than once when I was just a kid with a sign. Blaming them for how the VPD acts is like blaming smoke for the fire." She clenched and unclenched her fists, then tucked them under her arms. "Weiss, if this had happened in Mantle? It would have been worse. If I'd acted like Yang did, if I didn't have an active aura? I might not be here right now."
Yang reached out to grab her hand, and Ruby made a small distressed noise. A thick silence fell. One that only Blake dared to break.
"Of course they should be looking for Ilia," she said softly. "But that's not what that was. That was someone deciding I don't belong in their neighborhood, and using a system that's supposed to be there to protect people to try and put me in my place. You don't know what that feels like—and I know, I know that doesn't mean you've had it easy, either, but just... try to understand why it's wrong."
Weiss felt sick. Imagining Blake in Mantle was bad enough, but the picture she'd painted of it had been just as bad of a shock. In Atlas she always heard about how dangerous it was down there, but she'd never felt so close to the hypothetical fear before. There was something tangible in her mind now, the same scenario playing out without any of her team present, just her and the headlights, and her own rising temper spiraling out of control. That's what Winter threatened to toss me into, to keep a promise to a dead man.
"I never said it wasn't wrong." She couldn't look at Blake, so she looked up instead. Still no sign of the airbus yet. "This was clearly a misuse of the system, but there still has to be a system in place." She sniffed the air, and confirmed there was no one close enough to listen. "To deal with us if we fail to control ourselves."
"If we what?" In any other circumstances, she might have been a little proud of how blindsided Blake looked. "We're not wild animals, Weiss!"
"Then why do I keep trying to take off whenever I come near a drop?" Weiss demanded in a harsh whisper. "I know perfectly well it's only going to give me another cramp, but I can't stop. Are you really going to tell me your body never does something ridiculous all on its own?"
"First of all," Blake said, "those are just instincts. It's exactly the same as flinching when you touch a hot stove. And secondly, anyone who called the police on you for acting on them is a bigot, and I can't even imagine someone saying they were threatened by that with a straight face."
"It's an example," Weiss gritted out. "But fine. Since you seem so keen to ignore it, let's talk about threatening, shall we? Let's talk about how sometimes I get so angry I just want to—!" She cut off, her jaw clamping shut.
Blake flinched. Weiss was caught between hurt and satisfaction—but before she could decide which to feel, Yang did the unthinkable. She chuckled.
Both of them whipped around to stare at her. "C'mon," she said, grinning. "Are you really gonna tell me you think humans never lash out when we're upset?"
"I did," Ruby added. "After the thing with Penny, remember? I got mad and I yelled at you. I wished I hadn't after, but it didn't mean there was something wrong with me. It just meant I needed to apologize."
Blake took a deep breath, and nodded. "Getting angry isn't a sign you're some wild beast. It's a tool being used against you. Everyone gets angry sometimes, and if every time it happens you're told it means there's something wrong with you, if it's taken as proof that you're less than human... sometimes it feels like all you can do is bottle it up until it eats you from the inside."
Weiss shivered. "That's..."
"Not the only thing you can do with it," Yang assured her. "Anger is just a feeling. It's natural. There are good and bad ways to express it, but feeling it doesn't make you a bad person. And it definitely doesn't mean the people telling you you're not allowed to feel it automatically win." She winked. "Trust me on that one."
She was saved from having to respond by the distant whirring of the airbus. Yang glanced up at it, then down at Weiss. "It's okay to feel stuff," she said, bumping her shoulder lightly. "If you're freaked out, that makes total sense. And... if you're mad at me, that's okay too. I wanted to help, but I wasn't sure what to do except get loud and get their attention, which... backfired. I messed up, and I'm sorry."
"I'm not angry at you." Weiss was fairly sure that was true, at least. "I'm just..."
There was a difference. She was sure of it, something important that distinguished the inner animal lashing out from Ruby's outburst. But every time she tried to put it into words, it slipped out of her reach.
"...Confused."