Quick content warning for unwanted but non-sexual touching of faunus traits.
In the end, Weiss did actually go to the infirmary. Doctor Marigold met her there—looking rather harried with his glasses askew and his suit rumpled. Probably because he'd just come from a nine hour flight. She wondered what he'd done that Father had this much blackmail on him.
"Miss Schnee! It's a pleasure to see you again. Though I must admit that this is all... very irregular." He reached a door in the middle of the hall and held it open for her. "The staff here have been kind enough to let me borrow the room for a while."
Inside was nice. Cozy, even. There were murals on the walls, abstract images that reminded her of the trees in Forever Fall. Lots of cotton swabs and syringes and instruments of all sorts hung on the walls. An antiseptic smell burned her nose.
"Why don't you have a seat?" Marigold suggested. He adjusted his glasses and smiled. "I'll admit, all the cloak and dagger has me quite curious."
"Right." Weiss clasped her hands in her lap. Hairs bristled on the back of her neck, and she kept glancing at the door. She'd been telling the truth when she said she'd already had treatment from Doctor Marigold, but it hadn't happened often. She'd been uncomfortable in hospital settings ever since she was a child, and had avoided them whenever she could.
Marigold cleared his throat awkwardly. "Well, ah, can you tell me about your symptoms? I assume this is more than a wellness checkup."
"I have a cut," Weiss said. "It's gotten infected, I just—" She pressed a hand to her forehead and wrinkled her nose. Her brow was damp with sweat. "There's a reason why I couldn't go to the staff here."
Why was her heart beating so fast? Doctor Marigold was as safe as it was possible to get. Father had something on him, and was confident he wouldn't talk. And Father would never risk the world finding out about her.
She still couldn't say it. "It's probably easier if I show you."
And, really, she'd already done this twice. Her team especially had been complete wild cards—there had been nothing compelling them to be silent. There still wasn't. Except that they'd held their ground before an irate Professor Goodwitch for her, and Doctor Marigold was nearly a stranger.
"Let's start with the basics," Marigold suggested, when she didn't move. "I need to check your temperature anyway, so why don't I do that while you get ready to show me... whatever this is."
Weiss nodded, her shoulders slumping in relief.
Marigold poked a thermometer under her tongue, then frowned at the result. "Not bad," he mused. "Not good, either, but you're certainly not dying. My concern is more that your temperature has risen this much despite an activated aura. How have you been sleeping?"
It went on like that for a while. Clinical, impersonal, and soothing in its own way. Eventually Doctor Marigold stood back, clapped his hands, and said, "Well, that's about all I can do without seeing the injury. Shall we?"
If she wanted them gone, she had to do this eventually. He was polite and professional. It would be fine. Before she could think about it too much, Weiss unwound the bindings and pulled up her undershirt up to reveal the long slash in her side. But Doctor Marigold was not paying attention.
"My word," he muttered, walking around her to get a better look. "This would certainly be awkward to explain to the public." He snorted. "I'd never have pegged Jacques as the type to go for that sort of thing, but I suppose we all have our vices."
Her wings were not sensitive. The nerves were damaged enough that she couldn't feel light touches on them, but she could feel pressure... and temperature.
His hands were cold.
"What are you doing?" she burst out, whirling around and grimacing as her left wing started to cramp.
Marigold hummed thoughtfully. "They're deformed. Is that from birth?"
"It's from binding them," Weiss said. She turned with him as he tried to circle around her again, keeping her body between him and her wings.
"No wonder Jacques is so keen to get rid of them." Marigold frowned, inspecting the joints critically from behind his glasses. "Can't believe he left it this long. Look at the size of that bone, there—"
He reached out again, and Weiss flinched away.
"Come now, I'm not about to hit you."
"I'm not here for them." She gestured at her cut. "I'm here for this."
"Yes," he said, slow and deliberate, "but unless you want me to take a second trip all the way to Vale for a consultation, I'll need to examine your wings as well. Surgery is a lot more complicated than lopping them off, you know."
He tapped his chin, and his voice sped up and dropped to a mutter, as if he was talking mostly to himself. "A photograph would be best, but I doubt Jacques will appreciate me keeping any... evidence. Some measurements will have to do."
Weiss bristled. "That's not what I came here for," she insisted.
"I suppose we can take care of that first, if you're still skittish."
"I'm not skittish."
Marigold ignored that. He unwrapped the bandage and, after a brief examination, started tut-tutting about how she'd bungled the stitches. Several painful minutes were spent removing and redoing them, and by the time it was over Weiss didn't think they looked much neater than Blake's. He then redressed the wound and wrote her a prescription for a course of antibiotics.
"Make sure you take all of them," he warned. "You'll stop showing symptoms, and you'll assume you're all better, and if you don't keep up with the rest of the treatment you'll come down with a new infection that's resistant to antibiotics. We don't want that, do we?"
Weiss glared at him.
"On to those wings of yours. I'll need you to stand still for this."
She stood there, clenching her jaw as the doctor circled around her and started measuring her wings. The right one twitched and cramped the moment he touched it, and he clucked his tongue irritably. "I told you—"
"I can't help it," she snapped.
"There's no need for that." The tape measure tightened around the base of her wing. "You're being rather ungrateful, you know."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm doing you and your Father an enormous favor, agreeing to this. For that matter, he's been far kinder to you than most men in his position would. It would have been easier and safer to leave you with your mother, whoever she was, and forget all about you. Instead, he raised you like a real daughter. He even set up this surgery for you. I know it's difficult for you to understand, but it's for your own good. Acting like a brat just because it frightens you is doing a good man a great disservice."
It wasn't until she heard the sound of a glass cabinet shattering that Weiss realized she'd slapped the tape measure out of his hand. Marigold cringed away from her, wide-eyed, clutching his clipboard of measurements to his chest like a shield.
"My mother is Willow Schnee," she bit out. "And cutting off my wings is my choice."
His nostrils flared. "Well," he spluttered, as she scrambled to put the bindings and jacket back on. "It won't do you much good if you can't learn to control these irrational outbursts."
A wordless snarl ripped its way out of her throat. She turned on her heel and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her with enough force that the knob came loose in her hand. And, definitively, losing the argument.
"Hey!" Ruby approached her cautiously. Yang was just behind her, mirroring her concern. "What happened? Are you okay?"
Weiss didn't answer. She probably couldn't have even if her life had depended on it.
Yang's eyes widened as she spotted something over Weiss' shoulder. "Guys," she blurted, "Now isn't a—"
"Weiss!"
Weiss whirled around, and came face to face with Nora. She was holding an enormous plate of pancakes that spelled out We're Sorry! in chocolate chips, and bouncing up and down in nervous excitement. "We, um, we talked to your team," she said. "And..."
"We'd like to apologize for Thursday night," Pyrrha finished. "It was wrong of us to make assumptions."
Jaune grinned, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "We, uh, weren't sure what food you'd like, so Ren just sorta did what he does best."
A solemn nod from Ren.
"I'm so glad you decided I deserve an apology," Weiss said, without inflection. "As soon as you checked with everyone else to make sure it wasn't my fault to begin with."
Jaune's eyes went wide with alarm. "That's not what we—we just weren't sure what was going on, and obviously guessing wasn't getting us anywhere, so..."
"Not that they told us anything!" Pyrrha added hastily.
"Yeah!" agreed Nora. "Just that Blake was okay and you were disagreeing about something personal."
Ren's brow furrowed. "Weiss? Can you hear us?"
He reached out. Innocently, of course—probably to put a hand on her shoulder, because apparently some people found that reassuring. And remembered, just too late to abort the gesture, what had happened when he shook her awake on Friday morning.
Weiss felt phantom fingers on her wings and shoved him roughly away. He knocked into Nora, and the plate she was holding went flying. Shattered ceramic and pancakes flew in all directions.
There was a shocked silence. One that Weiss knew she was supposed to fill with an apology.
To hell with apologies. Everyone wanted an animal, didn't they? Maybe it was time she gave them one.
She shoved Ren again. But this time he wasn't taken by surprise, and she was still weak and feverish and missing her aura. He barely moved. She would have tried a third time, but Nora stepped in front of her before she made contact and pushed her back.
Yang caught her upper arm before she could fall. There were raised voices, from her and Nora both, but Weiss couldn't make out the words. She wrenched free and bolted, because that was what animals did when they didn't know what else to do.
Weiss shouldered her way into the room and pressed her back against the door, breathing fast and harsh. And maybe she would have been okay, maybe she could have pulled herself together if she'd had just a second alone.
Blake was already inside, wearing her right arm in a brand new sling. As if that wasn't enough, Yang and Ruby soon tumbled into the room behind her. They must have chased her all the way from the infirmary.
"Weiss?"
People kept saying her name like that. Like they were expecting her to explode. And they were right, and she hated it, and the more she hated the more she felt that something deep inside her was ticking down.
"Let's go," Weiss said. "To Vale. Find Ilia." She could feel Yang and Ruby staring at her, their concern burning at the back of her neck.
Blake looked at the floor. "Um. About that."
Say it, Weiss thought. Go on. Say you don't want to. I dare you.
"I talked to Ozpin. Just now, after I left the infirmary. I didn't mention anything about you, but I told him I recognized Ilia from Penny's description, and who she is, and where I think she might be hiding. Everything I know, and... how I know it."
"You—" The sudden shift of gears left Weiss dizzy. "You told him? About—about being one of them?"
"Yeah." Blake let out a shaky sigh. "Which, um. He... already knew?"
"What?!"
Wincing a little at the volume, Blake managed a wry grin. "My thoughts exactly. He also said something about not keeping anything 'truly sensitive' in writing, which is... terrifying, but I'm mostly just glad I didn't get thrown out of Beacon. Or arrested."
"But... why?"
Blake looked up, her ears half-perked. "Because I care more about helping you than keeping secrets."
"Right. You're just trying to help, no ulterior motives whatsoever!"
Her face fell. "I am, Weiss. I know you don't trust me, and you don't want to hear what I'm saying, but I'm just worried about you. This... this thing you're about to do, it's not something you can take back."
Enough. Enough.
"I know you think you need to get rid of them to be happy, but you don't!"
She couldn't do this anymore. She couldn't keep pretending she had a handle on her impulses when clearly she didn't. If she started hitting Blake, eventually she'd have to hit back. Eventually she'd have to—
"Stop!"
Yang stepped between them, her hands held out.
Blake stared at her with her ears pinned back. "What? You can't seriously be okay with this!"
"I'm not." Yang let her arms fall to her sides. "And I know this is awful for you in a way I'm never going to understand, but... I'm sorry Blake, it's still not about you. It's her body." She managed a weak grin. "Besides, I don't exactly have a leg to stand on, telling someone else not to get rid of bits that make them miserable."
"If you're also somehow a faunus," Weiss said, feeling slightly faint, "I will have some sort of cardiac event, and I will blame you for my death and haunt you for the rest of your natural existence. Just so you're aware."
Yang chuckled nervously. "Well, uh... it's not that." She hesitated, tension rising until Ruby grabbed her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back, took a deep breath, and said, "I'm trans."
"Oh." Weiss remembered hearing about this once before—when Doctor Marigold's now-niece had caused the scandal of the decade by running off to Mantle to be a Huntress. She'd been briefly amused that someone else had completely overshadowed Winter's defection to the military in the eyes of everyone but Father, and hadn't thought about it since.
She had, at the very least, been thrown for a loop so thoroughly that the urge to snap at someone had receded. "I don't know what I'm supposed to say," she admitted.
"You don't have to make a big thing out of it," Yang said. "I'd rather you didn't, honestly. I'm still just me. And, uh, I'm about to talk about a lot of personal stuff. Stuff that I hate strangers asking me about out of the blue, so like... if you meet somebody else who's trans, don't do that."
Weiss nodded slowly.
"Cool." Yang took another breath. "So... I guess what I'm trying to say is, I get not being happy with your body."
Blake scowled. "Gender and species aren't the same thing, Yang."
"No, they're not." Yang flashed her a smile. "I'm getting there, I promise." She plunked herself down on Blake's bunk and patted the spaces beside her. With a little roll of her eyes, Blake curled up on one side, while Ruby took the other. Weiss sat on her own bed.
"The thing is... ever since I was a kid, I had everyone around me telling me there was nothing wrong with the body I was born with. I had my dad getting so excited when I told him I wanted to learn to fight like he did, telling me I was gonna grow up big and strong just like him.
"And our mom. Summer..." Yang faltered, and Ruby hugged her around the middle. "Whenever I heard something awful at school, or on the holoscreen, she always told me it was okay. That I could be whoever I was, a—a little boy with long hair, or... someone else." She swallowed hard. "I think she knew. At least, she tried so hard to make sure I never thought I was wrong for what I liked, or how I dressed, or what I wanted to look like, so... I like to think she did, and she was just waiting for me."
Weiss tucked her arms around her stomach. "That sounds nice," she grumbled, and hated herself for it. She was so tired of envy.
"It wasn't all nice. Our parents were, and Uncle Qrow, and Ruby was super excited to have a sister—"
"Yeah!"
"—but a lot of people thought I shouldn't be a woman. They told me I could just be a feminine man, and that's the thing. I know there's nothing wrong with that. It would be easier if I was, a lot of people would prefer it, but I'm just not. They can talk all they want, but they can't change what's true.
"That's the difference, I think. Because... I could be wrong, but... I'm guessing people have been telling you that you shouldn't be a faunus for a long time."
Weiss set her jaw, and said nothing.
"In the end, they're you're wings. You decide what happens to them. But first, you should know. Nnot just up here—" she tapped her temple, "—but down here." She poked herself in the gut. "There's nothing wrong with them. Nothing. That's a lie the world told you. They don't make you wrong, they don't make you less, they're a part of you and that makes them beautiful."
Weiss' hands clenched into fists. Her shoulders started to shake.
"When you know that? Really feel it, deep down? You'll know what you want. It'll be so obvious how you're supposed to be, you'll have no idea why everyone else can't see it. And when you do... whatever that is, we'll listen. Okay?"
"I can't."
Blake's face fell. "I'm sorry if it felt like I was trying to force you into something. I... I promise I won't say anything right now, okay? Not until I hear you out."
"No. That's not—I meant that what I want is impossible."
Ruby smiled at her, undaunted as usual by that word, impossible. "You can still say it. If you want."
Weiss choked on dusty childhood memories. The ones where nothing hurt, and nothing was numb, and an old man called her Engel. The faded reminders she'd pushed away for so long, because they only ever made her feel empty.
Except they didn't, this time. This time, they made her angry.
"I want them the way they were supposed to be," she spat. "But it's too late for that, and I'd rather have nothing than all this dead weight. They're useless and broken and they hurt all the time, and you can lie to me all you want, Yang, but I know they're disgusting. Stop comparing them to everyone else's traits like you haven't noticed they grew all wrong!"
She lurched to her feet and started to pace. Her wings reacted to her agitation like they always did—a familiar lurch as they tried to flare out, to protect her, and then a cramp that made her double over in pain. She whirled on her teammates, glaring. Ruby flinched, Yang reached out instinctively... and Blake glared right back.
"How do you know?"
"Excuse me?"
"How do you know it's too late?" Blake lifted her chin in challenge. "You've been tying them down all year. I bet you haven't let them breathe for more than an hour at a time since you got here. Do you know what would happen if you actually tried to take care of them?"
"Oh, of course! How haven't I thought of that already! It's not as if every second they're uncovered is a second someone might see and tell the entire world I'm a bastard who can't inherit the company."
"Then I guess it's a question of whether or not you're willing to take some risks."
Weiss stared at her. "That's—this might not even work!"
"It might not," Blake admitted. "I'm not going to pretend to be neutral about this, because I'm not, but I won't lie to you either. I have no idea if all that damage is reversible. But if you don't try, I know it's not going to get better."
"Fantastic."
Somehow, against all logic, Ruby kept smiling. "Whatever happens, we're with you."
Two options. She could them her mind was already made up, and ask them to drop it—and even Blake seemed like she might finally get the message this time. Then it was just a matter of getting through the last few weeks, and of gritting her teeth through any interactions with Doctor Marigold. Despite all the complications she'd had to deal with, she knew she could handle it. She could do the smart, cool-headed, sensible thing.
Or she could play with fire, just to see what would happen.
The rage of her twisted wings settled somewhere in the pit of Weiss' stomach, curling up there like a hot coal. She decided she rather liked being angry.
She decided she was sick of being sensible.
She decided she was in a fire starting mood.
I may have projected a little bit of repressed bitterness left over from a shitty top surgery consultation onto Doctor Marigold here. Just. You know. A very small amount that is not making me twitchy at all.
I will also mention that, RE: Yang in this chapter, I am trans myself but transmasc and transfemme folks often have very different experiences so... if I did a dumb, feel free to let me know! That goes for other stuff, too, especially since like... I've been trying to reference lots of different ways real life humans are awful to one another when writing about the faunus, some of which I've never been on the receiving end of.