They didn't find Ilia the next morning. Or that afternoon, or by the time the sun started to set. And after last night, none of them dared continue after dark.
Instead, they clustered together at a table in the library, trying to figure out what information might be worth stealing from the CCT tower. It turned out? Quite a lot.
Ozpin's terminal might contain just about anything, from plans of the school, to dossiers on every licensed Hunter in the kingdom, to top-secret information about Vale's military. "And that's only what he's supposed to have," Blake groaned, dropping a fresh stack of hastily scribbled notes onto the table they'd taken over. "It's Ozpin, I wouldn't be surprised if he has his own spy network."
"So they might have gotten hold of literally anything," Weiss put her head in her hands. "Wonderful. We're back to square one, and we need to find her if we're to have any hope of—"
Ruby kicked her under the table. Her eyes widened emphatically as she glanced over Weiss' shoulder, towards an approaching Professor Goodwitch. Blake paled, and her hands twitched towards the top of her head before she let them drop.
"Hey Professor," Yang said, with an obviously forced grin. "What's up?"
Goodwitch arched an eyebrow. "I believe you already know."
The table erupted. Yang's, "She didn't do anything!" mixed with Weiss', "They were being completely unreasonable!" and Ruby's, "Blake wasn't there! You can ask Penny!" Blake herself stayed silent. She looked like she might be sick at any moment.
Their professor stared at them for several long seconds. Then her lip curled in disgust. "Ah. You're thinking of the message we received from the VPD. No, you aren't in any trouble for that, though if their superiors are doing their jobs then someone will be." She glanced at Blake. "Not that it was any surprise. Miss Belladonna, I do hope you weren't operating under the assumption that none of the staff would recognize your name."
"I was trying to fool people like Cardin. Not Ozpin."
"Good." Goodwitch turned to address the team as a whole. "Now, back to the actual topic of conversation. Your end of year mission."
This time it was Ruby's turn to go white as a sheet. "Oh, no!"
"I take it your failure to sign up today was not, in fact, a clerical error?"
"If I said it was, would we get to pick now, or...?"
"Ruby!" Weiss burst out.
"I forgot, okay? There's been a lot going on!"
"Has there," drawled their professor.
"Uh." Ruby sank a little lower in her chair. "We were all really shaken up about what happened yesterday..."
To Weiss' shock, Goodwitch's expression softened slightly. "All the first-year missions have been taken," she said, "but fortunately for the four of you, Beacon Academy is also scheduled to perform a routine clearing of the Emerald forest this weekend. A duty that will now fall to you. Report to the cliffs at six o'clock sharp Friday morning. I will meet you there, and monitor your progress throughout your mission."
She waited just long enough for Ruby to stammer out an agreement—as if there had been a choice anywhere in that announcement—before giving them a cordial nod and striding away.
"What did she mean?" Weiss asked Blake, as soon as Goodwitch was out of earshot. "About recognizing your name."
"Um."
"Blake, I swear if this is another surprise—!"
"It's nothing bad!" Blake said quickly. "Just, um..." She glanced around, lowered her voice. "I never exactly joined... that group I told you about. My parents sort of... founded it."
"What."
An embarrassed flush crept up her neck. "My dad was the original leader," she explained. "The one who stepped down to become—" She stopped.
"Become what, Blake?" Weiss demanded.
Blake mumbled something.
Yang's eyes lit up. "Say what?"
"Yes, what! I didn't hear a word of that!"
Blake hung her head. "The chieftain of Menagerie."
"Oh my god!" Yang burst out, struggling to keep her voice low and not quite succeeding. "You're basically a princess!"
"No, I'm not! Ugh, I knew you'd get like this!"
Ruby cocked her head to one side, puzzled. "I mean, aren't you next in line to rule a kingdom? How is that not a princess?"
"Shut up, that's how!" Blake rested her forehead on the table and wrapped both arms around her head. "The next chieftain is elected. So there."
"Aw." Yang slung an arm over her shoulders. "Don't worry Blake, we're just messing with you! You're still super dark and mysterious." Blake's face was still hidden, so she might have been able to play it cool—except that her ears perked up at the contact.
Weiss rolled her eyes. "Yes, I'm sure you still have plenty more earth-shattering revelations in store. Now if you don't mind, when you were a child and your parents moved to Menagerie, why on Remnant didn't you go with them?"
It was perhaps the most effectively she'd ever killed a mood. The smiles vanished from Yang and Ruby's faces, and when Blake picked her head up to look at her, her ears were once again flat against her skull. "Weiss," Ruby whispered, "maybe we shouldn't—"
"No. It's okay." Blake twisted her head to look around.
"There's no one nearby." One of the main benefits to being in the library at nine pm when exams were already over. Weiss couldn't smell anyone but them, and the bored library assistant sitting all the way at the other end of the room.
Blake sighed and rested her elbows on the table. "I made a mistake," she said. "That's it. I wanted to help, and things were just... they were so slow, back then. We worked so hard, and barely anything changed. It was frustrating, and I couldn't imagine going back to Menagerie, where I'd have even less chance to do something that mattered. So I didn't."
"You went all on your own?" Ruby asked, her eyes wide. "How old were you?"
"Fourteen. But it wasn't like that, really. I'd known Sienna since I was born, and Tukson was the one who taught me to write, and Ilia was practically my sister. They weren't strangers, they were family."
Weiss wished she hadn't asked. "We should get back to work," she said, standing up abruptly. "You heard Professor Goodwitch. We have until Friday to find Ilia, or figure out what the White Fang are doing some other way, or else we'll have to wait until the whole mission is over. That leaves us four days."
Too little time, in other words, to restrict their search to daylight only. Weiss fretted about that all of Tuesday afternoon, as the four of them walked in ever-widening circles through old town. She still wasn't ready to give up once the sun started to set. "Let's go," Ruby said, "we should probably get back to the airfield before—"
"You go ahead."
All three of them started to protest at the same time. Yang was loudest. "You're supposed to be healing. What are you going to do if you do find her?"
Weiss scowled. "I'll leave, and the four of us can go deal with it in the morning."
"I still don't like the idea of you doing this all alone," said Blake. "You've seen how good Ilia is at hiding in plain sight. I'd have a hard time spotting her in the dark. And even besides that, wandering around Vale looking for her by yourself, in the middle of the night, while injured, is..."
"Dumb?" Ruby suggested.
"I was going to say reckless, but—"
"Yeah, no, it's dumb." Ruby clapped her hands together, cutting Weiss off before she could protest. "Which is why you won't be alone! You're right that we don't have a ton of time, so how about we split up the work? You and I can search at night, and Blake and Yang can do it during the day!" She paused, narrowing her eyes. "As long as you sleep in a bunch. You're still supposed to be healing and this isn't good for you. But I really don't want to make Blake deal with all that again and Yang and I wouldn't know if Ilia passed us on the street."
"That could work," Blake said, though she didn't look overly happy about it.
Yang winced. "Uh. I do think that's a good idea, but maybe I should go with Weiss instead?" She held up her wrists, and her deactivated gauntlets—which were much less conspicuous than Ruby's scythe or even Myrtenaster. "I'm the only one who's armed, so..."
"Wha—why do I need a bodyguard? I'm injured, not useless!"
"Yang's right." Blake made a face—probably wishing she could spend all that time alone with Yang instead of agreeing. "I should be able to talk Ilia down if we find her. If that goes wrong, Ruby can just run. She won't hurt me."
"Be careful anyway," Yang warned. "But Blake does have way better odds of avoiding a fight than you do, Weiss."
She couldn't argue with that, so she didn't bother. Instead she grabbed Yang by the arm and started walking.
They found nothing that night. Weiss would have kept searching longer, but Yang insisted that they take the midnight shuttle back to Beacon. Something about not messing up her sleep schedule too badly when they'd all have to be up and about ungodly early on Friday.
They found nothing the next day, either, or that night. Weiss started to wonder, as she struggled to sift through the heady mix of city smells for hours on end, if she'd even sense Ilia if she did get close. Different people did smell different, but it was a slight thing. By now she could tell which teammate had just walked into the room with her, but would she be able to tell Nora and Pyrrha apart? Maybe, but what if had been too long? What if she couldn't remember Ilia's smell well enough to recognize it?
Thursday arrived with everyone in dismal spirits. They walked the streets all afternoon, speaking only long enough for Ruby and Blake to report that they'd found nothing that morning. Eventually they split up. Not so much for practical reasons, Weiss suspected, but because the tension was getting unbearable between her and Blake.
The sun set. Blake and Ruby returned to the airfield, leaving Yang and Weiss alone in Vale.
"We should head back early tonight," Yang said. "I know you don't want to, but we need to be up really early—" She saw the look on Weiss' face, and sighed. "Eleven at the latest, okay? I know this is important, but so is sleep."
"Tch."
"Hey, it's true!" Yang put her hands on her hips. "Sleep can't fix everything, but not getting enough of it can make anything worse."
They were finished with old town by that point, and were starting to explore some of the nicer parts of the artists' district—Blake's second guess for where Ilia might be.
Assuming, of course, that Blake did want to catch her. But when eleven o'clock came and went without a single hint of their target, Weiss couldn't help thinking. Maybe not.
"It's time to go," Yang said.
"No."
"Weiss—"
"She has to be here."
"No, she doesn't." Yang stepped in front of Weiss so that she had to stop walking. "Yeah, this is the most likely place for her to be, but she might be hiding inside. She might have gone somewhere completely different. We don't know, but we do know that we're going to be fighting Grimm tomorrow morning."
"We have to find her!"
"We'll do what we can, but it's not all on us, okay? The police are looking for her too."
"That doesn't matter."
"Of course it does!"
"No, it doesn't! She got away because of me, alright? Penny would have caught her, but I got one of those stupid cramps and she got away!"
"What?" Yang made to reach out, then caught herself. "If it weren't for you, no one would even have known she was in there."
"That's not the point. I should have done something, and now I'm going to."
"Weiss... what the White Fang does isn't your fault."
"Don't be ridiculous!" she snapped, bristling. "I know that."
Yang's face fell. "Do you?" she asked softly.
Weiss turned away. "I'm going to keep looking. Follow me or don't."
Yang followed.
And then, after nearly an hour with no luck, Weiss stopped dead in her tracks. It was so sudden that Yang bumped into her, almost knocking her over. She hardly noticed. "That way," she whispered, pointing.
"Wait, really?"
"Yes!" Weiss started to jog down an empty side-street, sweat pricking at her palms as she went. Yang hurried after her.
"Wait, hang on, we're not going after her now! We need to get the others, remember?"
"I just want to see where she's staying," Weiss hissed. "For all we know she's only passing through here on her way to some nefarious plot!"
They crept closer, the smell growing stronger as they approached a narrow alleyway. "What could seh be doing in there?" Yang wondered.
"Nothing good."
Weiss darted to the mouth of the alleyway, pressing her back against the bricks. This hadn't been the plan—but anyone hanging around a place like this at this time of night had to be up to no good. Granted, they were still in the nice part of the artist's district, but she was pretty sure that alleyways were universally bad news.
Yang must have realized what she was about to do. She made a face at Weiss, then reluctantly held up three fingers. Two. One!
They both jumped into the alleyway—Yang in front with her gauntlets armed, Weiss right behind her with one hand poised to form a glyph.
A teenaged boy screamed and dropped a can of spray paint.
There was a long, awkward silence.
"Uh," said Yang. "Hi?"
"What the fuck?" he shouted, clutching his backpack to his chest.
Weiss stormed down the alleyway, looking left and right for any sign of Ilia—but the closer she got to the boy, the surer she was. It was his smell she'd tracked here.
"Who the hell are you?" He gestured wildly, mostly at Yang. "What are you doing here?"
Weiss scowled at him. "What are we doing here? What are you doing?!"
He pointed a trembling finger at one wall of the alley, where he'd been painting what looked like a large cow on the wall.
Right. Artist's district.
Yang groaned and put a hand to her forehead. "Wouldn't that be easier during the day...?"
The boy folded his arms and glared, though the way his whole body was trembling took some of the bite out of it. "None of your business. Now are you gonna mug me or what?"
"Wha—" Yang looked down at her wrists. She disengaged her gauntlets, and hid her hands behind her back. "No. Sorry. We, uh... thought you were someone we knew. Our bad!" She stepped aside, and he bolted out of the alley without a backwards glance.
Weiss deflated. "Let's go," she mumbled. "She's not here. He smells a bit like her, that's all."
"Oh." Yang walked up to stand beside Weiss. "Right. Um... are you okay?"
Weiss said nothing.
"We'll find her. It'll just have to wait a few days, that's all."
She didn't respond. Yang made a few halfhearted attempts to break the silence during the long walk back to the airfield, and during the tense flight. None of them stuck. By the time they reached Beacon, it was already half past midnight. Despite her exhaustion, Weiss' mind was whirling. Had Blake been wrong, or...
They entered their dorm. It was pitch dark, and silent except for a slight creaking coming from the ropes above Ruby's bed. She stepped forward—and out of the blackness in front of her flashed a pair of glowing yellow eyes.
Weiss nearly jumped out of her skin.
It was only Blake—her eyes must have caught some glimmer of moonlight as she spoke, and reflected it back tenfold. Weiss put a hand over her heart and gasped for breath.
"Blake!" Yang yelped. And an instant later, when she'd recovered from the shock, "What are you doing awake?"
"Couldn't sleep." Then Blake paused, apparently just now realizing what had startled them. "Sorry, I forgot you haven't seen that before."
Yang chuckled quietly. "That's... Is it bad to say it's kind of cool?"
"It has its moments." It was too dark to see it, but Weiss thought she could hear a smile in her voice. "Did you find anything?"
"No," Weiss said flatly. "We walked through all of old town and most of the artists' district. I'm starting to think she's not there at all."
"I'm not sure where else to look. She might have gone to the upper class district, but it would be a lot harder to lie low. She'd have to get a hotel, and those are expensive around there."
"Do you want to find her?"
"What?"
"It's a simple question. Do you actually want us to find Ilia, or not?"
"You think—" Weiss wished it weren't so dark. She couldn't see Blake's expression, but Blake would have no trouble reading hers. "I know I made mistakes, but you don't seriously think I'm... what, leading you in the wrong direction on purpose?"
"I have to ask."
"No, you don't!" Yang burst out. "Blake has done nothing except try to help this whole time!"
"Yang," Blake hissed, "you're going to wake—"
"Bwuh?" Weiss winced. There was a shuffling sound from Ruby's bunk, and then a muffled groan. "Why are we fighting now?" she slurred out. "And what time is it?"
Well. The damage was done, at this point. Weiss flicked on the light.
She wasn't sure what she'd expected, but Blake looked downright miserable. Her ears were flat, and she'd wrapped her arms around her middle. "I know you have no reason to believe me, but—"
"Yes she does!" Yang threw her hands up. "You're not responsible for what they've done since you left! And it's definitely not your fault we can't find a trained infiltration expert we only know is somewhere in Vale!"
"I want to believe that." Weiss kept her head high, and made a conscious effort not to put her hand in her pocket, where Blake's ribbon was still hidden. "I really do, but I can't afford for there to be any doubt. My entire life could be ruined by the wrong influence."
"The wrong..." Blake's face fell. "You think I'm trying to, what, corrupt you?"
"I think I've been ignoring the obvious," Weiss said. "Because I didn't want to acknowledge it. Maybe you aren't doing it on purpose, but you're teaching me bad habits. I've worked too hard to get past this. I won't let all that be for nothing."
Blake's ears flattened in anger. "I'm not a wild animal, I'm a person! You're a person!"
"You've already admitted you've given in to your worst instincts before. I need to know you've gotten better, and I just... I can't think of another way to be sure."
"So that's what all this is about? You have to make sure I'm one of the good ones so that you know I'm not a bad influence?"
"Precisely." Weiss started to pace. "I've been listening to you too much. I can't—I can't afford that right now. Not when I'm so close." She stopped dead, realizing a second too late what she'd just let slip.
Ruby's eyes widened. "Close to what?"
"Nothing. Forget I said anything."
"Weiss!"
"Please," Blake said. "We want to help."
Weiss whirled on her. "And what part of any of this has been helping, exactly? Reminding me of everything I can't do? Pretending those things are anything but freakish? Acting like—like the animal isn't here?" She gestured wildly at her chest. "I'm so stupid sometimes, I honestly almost believed you! But it's becoming increasingly clear that I can't trust you. I have my own plan for my future—I do not need or want your help."
"What plan?" Blake demanded. "Keep binding them until we graduate? And just hope you don't get a cramp in the middle of fighting a Deathstalker? You can't keep going like this, Weiss! You can keep it secret, that makes sense, but you'll always know. At some point, you're going to have to face the fact that you're a faunus. Hiding can't change that. Blocking me out won't change that. And no matter what you do, no matter how good you are, no matter how many of their rules you follow, some people will never let you forget it."
It was obvious from Blake's expression—she knew exactly what she was doing. She knew exactly who she meant. Weiss' insides twisted. "I'm not going to hide them," she spat. "I'm going to cut them off."
There was a horrible satisfaction in watching Blake's face as it sank in. "You—you can't just—!"
"So much for respecting my choices," she said, and stormed out of the room.
Out in the hallway, reality set in. Weiss swore viciously under her breath. What if Blake decided this called for drastic measures, like blabbing her secret? And where was she going to sleep?
The door across the hall slowly eased open, just wide enough for Jaune's head to poke out. "Um, hi?" He glanced at RWBY's door. "Is... everything okay?"
Weiss arched an eyebrow. "It's absolutely wonderful," she said, "Which is why I'm standing in the hallway in the middle of the night."
"Do you... want to come in?"
She looked down. "Yes. Thank you."
Jaune opened the door all the way. Weiss slipped inside, cringing slightly when three other pairs of eyes fell on her. Nora scowled when she walked in, and Pyrrha shot her an uncharacteristically cold look.
"You can take my bed," said Ren. Polite, but not quite looking at her.
"Ooh!" Nora perked up and patted her mattress. "Over here! It's been way too long since we had a sleepover!"
Weiss had neither the energy nor the inclination to unpack that. Instead she lay fully clothed on top of Ren's bed. Since it was in the middle of the room, there was no way for her to keep her back turned towards the wall. She forced herself to take deep breaths through the bindings, and relax. They wouldn't notice. It wasn't actually any easier to tell her wings were there when she was sleeping.
Jaune cleared his throat. "So. Um. We sort of heard you arguing."
Her stomach went cold. "You what?"
"Well, you and Blake were yelling a lot? I mean, we couldn't hear what you were saying, but uh..."
"We can guess," Pyrrha said, her expression darkening.
Ah.
That explained the tension.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Yeah, I bet you don't." Nora flopped down on the bed—with Ren, which was apparently a completely normal occurrence that didn't even warrant a raised eyebrow around here—and pointedly turned her back on Weiss. "You're staying here because even jerkfaces don't deserve to sleep on the floor, but you'd better apologize to Blake tomorrow."
A lump rose in Weiss' throat. She swallowed it down, clenching her hands into fists. This was ridiculous. She was used to hostility. She'd thrived on being hated in the beginning of the year—part of her had even relished the barbs tossed her way. The chink in her armor had been buried so deeply that no one could use it against her, and that power came with a kind of rush.
Why did it hurt so much, now?
"It wasn't about that," she mumbled, even though it shouldn't matter. She shouldn't care.
Her eyes stung.
"Oh." Nora's face fell. "Um. Look, if you weren't actually being a jerkface, I'm sorry. It's just that last time you and Blake argued like that..."
Weiss started blinking rapidly. "Would someone turn off the lights already?" she snapped. "I don't care what you thought, I just want to go to sleep."
The four of them glanced at one another. Then, at last, Ren got up and flicked off the lights.
At least in this room, there was no one to see Weiss wipe her eyes in the dark.