!¡! BEFORE YOU START: I just posted two chapters together, so if you haven't read 25 you might want to go do that first !¡!

...FFN, why won't you let me put multiple exclamation marks? What is this for? Do you just hate joy?

Wait I found an exploit! SPINNY EXCLAMATION MARKS!¡! muahaha!¡!¡!

Watching Ruby step up to the witness stand was like going downstairs expecting one too many steps. Weiss was braced so thoroughly for a drop, it came as a physical shock when there was only solid ground. The hostility she'd expected was completely absent.

"Take your time, honey," Meringue said. "We know this is hard to talk about."

Ruby, who had charged head-first at a Deathstalker and beheaded a Nevermore on the first day of school, looked nonplussed. "Okay? I'm just trying to remember what order everything happened in. Um... he stole Weiss' scroll first, before we knew he was there. Then he texted us to come get it. I was going to do it by myself, because of my semblance, but Blake had a bad feeling and we went together instead."

"Do you believe this was a deliberate trap?"

"Definitely."

"Why do you think targeted the four of you?"

Ruby frowned. "I'm not sure. I didn't really question it when it was happening, he wanted to hurt Blake so we had to react. But it was weird, because we didn't know he was there until then. He could have just done what he was planning and we would have had no idea."

Well. That was disturbing.

The cross-examination held none of Meringue's simpering sympathy, which might have been a relief if the Albains weren't dead-set on one thing. "You said that Miss Belladonna had a bad feeling," Fennec said. "Is it possible she had recognized Mr. Taurus?"

"What?" Ruby cocked her head to the side. "No. He wanted to kill her, if she knew he was there she wouldn't have gone."

"She was keeping secrets from the four of you, was she not?"

"Well, um..."

"Is it possible that Miss Belladonna had recognized him, and was unable to warn the four of you without revealing her past?"

"No."

Fennec looked taken aback. "No?"

"One of the first things he said was that he'd let me go if Blake went with him." Ruby spoke clearly and evenly, though her grip on the stand grew tight. "Even if she surrendered, he was still going to kill everyone else. She wouldn't have let us walk into that if she knew."

"Your faith in your teammate is... touching," Corsac said.

It wasn't a question, but Ruby answered it anyway. "Blake didn't have her weapon, but she still stayed and fought someone who terrified her. If she hadn't... I might have lost my sister. I have faith in her because she deserves it."

Corsac's expression soured slightly. "No further questions, your honor."

She left the stand, and Yang was called. They hugged, briefly, when they passed in the aisle. "Thank you," Blake said softly, as Ruby sat bracketing her on the other side. "For saying that."

"I mean, I was under oath, so I sort of had to? But you're welcome!"

Blake floundered in the face of such disarming earnestness. Weiss had been on the receiving end of her partner's unshakable loyalty before—she knew first hand how overwhelming it could be. Not sure what else to do, she patted Blake's shoulder and tried to focus on Yang's testimony.

It was mostly more of the same, though with Yang they focused more on the fight itself. Had he said anything? What kind of insults? Did she remember any of them specifically? Were these all aimed at Miss Belladonna?

Then Yang was asked to give her own account of everything that led up to it. Weiss' attention wandered, and she found herself staring at Taurus. He'd gone rigid in his seat, glaring daggers at Yang, his teeth bared. She ignored him completely, focusing solely on Meringue and then, during cross-examination, on the Albains. This only seemed to enrage him further.

Like Ruby, she was finished in less than a fifth of the time Blake had stood up there. Weiss got up before the judge even called her, to make space, and then made her way to the front of the room when she heard her name. Her back prickled with the number of eyes on her—she wished she'd fastened the bindings a little tighter.

Father's words came back to her. I trust you'll ensure your testimony puts them both away. Blake was out of danger now, and Weiss was fresh out of sympathy for the man who'd put her there. If this was what she needed to do to stay at Beacon? She would do it. So she stood behind the stand with her back straight, stated her name for the record, and readied herself for the first question as if bracing for a blow.

The blow never came.

Oh, there were questions. Many of the same ones Yang had been asked, and more about when her scroll had been stolen. Had she known who he was at the time? Was this when he took her scroll? And when did she realize it was gone? But Meringue didn't badger her. Didn't push, when she said she didn't remember exactly where in the arena she ran into him. She gave Weiss the time and space to answer at her own pace.

Which was good. It was a good thing. It made it easier for her to do what she was supposed to. Except that she could hardly hear the lawyer over the thundering of her own pulse.

"When Miss Rose ran for help, where did you go?"

"I went looking for the other attacker. We knew there had to be one, since Taurus didn't break into Beacon Tower."

"This other attacker was Ilia Amitola, correct?"

"Yes."

"Did Miss Belladonna warn you about Miss Amitola beforehand?" Meringue's voice dripped with sympathy, because she thought she knew the answer already.

Weiss stood behind the witness stand and watched her hands clench and unclench.

"Miss Schnee? We understand that this is difficult, especially given how recently—"

"Oh, now you care if it's difficult?"

Meringue drew back, startled. "I... apologize if this has caused you any distress, but these questions are important."

She was being so fair. So considerate of Weiss' feelings. She wanted to throttle her.

"Yes," she snapped. "Blake warned us about Ilia."

Weiss took savage delight in watching Meringue's face contort with shock. The room erupted into muttering, and started to spin all around her. She didn't care. A seam in her had ruptured, and there was no stopping the pressure from escaping. "We knew the whole time, since a few days after the tower. I went looking for her, and I found her on the lower level, and I fought her unarmed and I lost. Obviously. I'm not Yang, I can't bring fists to a swordfight and win."

"Miss Schnee," the judge warned. "I have to ask you to please curb your hostility."

She sneered at him. "Oh, I'm sorry. Am I not being good enough for you?"

He looked more baffled than insulted. "I'm just trying to understand what you're saying. In your statement to the police, you suggested that you may have summoned, and that was what ended the fight."

They were still acting reasonable. After picking Blake apart for hours, asking every intrusive personal question in the book, each more irrelevant than the last. And now they had the nerve to treat Weiss like this?

Her entire life, she'd tried to be good. Fought with herself every single day to act polite, act intelligent, act human. She'd given up free time and fish and flight so that she could be what she was supposed to be, and here she was. She'd blended in. She'd acted right, and here was her reward! Finally someone deigned to treat her like she hadn't committed some terrible crime!

She wanted to cram it down the judge's throat.

"I lied," she spat. "Ilia knocked me out. She could have done anything she wanted, and she decided to sabotage the arena instead of the engines. If you want your hero of Amity, there she is!"

"Miss Schnee," Meringue began—but she didn't snap the way she had at Blake, so Weiss ignored her.

"And how dare you talk about causing me distress! I'm not the one he hurt, and the way you've been treating her is nothing short of disgraceful—!"

"Miss Schnee." Ironwood's voice cut through her tirade, and she caught and crushed the impulse to shrink back. "That is enough. Miss Belladonna was offered an extremely generous deal in exchange for her cooperation, and she won't thank you for endangering it by disrupting this trial."

She was briefly transported. There was a buzzing feeling in her fingertips, a crystalline ringing in her ears. For an instant, she wanted to break this room. For an instant, she felt like she could. Then the moment passed and she was small and singular again, too terrified of being the reason Blake had to run to say another word.

Corsac and Fennec tore her side of the story to shreds on cross, and Weiss didn't care. If anything, she relished in it. Yes, she'd told the police she was hit on the head. No, that hadn't actually happened. Yes, the prosecution had taken her word for it. They were loathsome, as was just about everyone involved in this farce, but they didn't have any real power here. Their case was a lost cause from the beginning, and if they wanted to use her to make the court look bad then they were welcome to it.

As was becoming routine, they were escorted back to their hotel—by Clover, this time, who insisted on trying to make friendly small-talk despite the fact that they were all obviously not in the mood. Once they were in the hallway outside their rooms, Weiss made a beeline for the bathroom with a muttered excuse about needing to take off the bindings.

She knew she had to talk to Blake. It was just that she was dreading it, and she... she needed a moment. That was all. So she did what she'd said she was here for, and paused for a moment to stare at her wings in the mirror.

Her skin had gone red in large, angry patches, and some of the keratin sheaths had come loose. The feathers they'd been protecting stuck out at odd angles, crumpled and split apart. A few of them fluttered to the cold tile floor.

Weiss' heart sank. She'd gone back to binding them all day for less than a week. How did any bird faunus do it, if this was the result? Was she tying them too tightly? Too long? Or were her wings simply too fragile to handle it?

She grimaced and turned away from her reflection. It didn't matter. She had an apology to make.

"Blake." She straightened up, her posture uncomfortably stiff because somehow after months of screwing up in every conceivable way, she still wasn't used to this. "I apologize for my behavior this afternoon."

"What?" Blake stared at her like she'd just grown a second head. "Why? I've been wanting to do that since we got here."

"But—your deal."

"They can't retract it for something you did. Not with this much attention on us, anyway." Blake's brow furrowed. "Though I... am a little worried that you just admitted to lying to the police in front of a judge."

Ruby cringed. "And the council."

"And on live television," Yang added.

Weiss froze.

It had not, in fact, occurred to her that admitting to... perjury? Was it perjury in a police statement, or was that something else? Admitting to lying to the police might have been a fantastically bad idea. It also had not occurred to her that she should probably avoid insulting the council of her home kingdom to their faces. And it especially had not occurred to her that her entire outburst had been broadcast to all of Remnant.

"Oh, god." She sank down to the floor and put her head in her hands.

"Whoa, hey." Yang knelt in front of her and held her by the shoulders. "Deep breaths, okay? In and out." She demonstrated a few times, while Ruby and Blake hovered on either side of her.

"That was so stupid," she burst out. "I was so angry, and it felt really good to yell at him, and I didn't think."

"It's going to be okay," Ruby promised. "Really! I mean, the whole crime thing is... bad, but, um..." She grinned sheepishly. "At least you didn't admit to being in the White Fang?"

Weiss could not have cared less about the crime she'd accidentally blurted out in front of a judge. He'd asked her to do one thing, one thing, and the half of it she had a problem with wasn't even relevant! Literally all she needed to do was repeat what she'd already said to the police and sit there while the obviously guilty Taurus was convicted, and...

And he still wouldn't have let her stay at Beacon with an ex-White Fang member. This was already over from the moment Taurus opened his filthy mouth. From the moment her team was dragged into the public eye, and father saw the ears on Blake's head.

She made a despairing noise, and Yang pulled her the rest of the way into a hug. Blake's arm settled across her shoulders, and Ruby squeezed one of her hands. Her fists clenched. It wasn't fair, but she was angry at them. A year ago she could have survived Atlas Academy. Now they'd gone and exposed all her raw nerves, bringing feeling back to places she couldn't afford it.

As if drawn to her fear like a tiny Grimm, her scroll started to vibrate. Her body shook, too. Her wings cramped as they twitched and tried to curl inward, and her stomach churned with nausea. "I can't do it." She clutched at her arms. "I can't pick it up."

"So don't."

She looked up, startled, and met Blake's eyes. "I can't just..."

"Well..." Yang hesitated. "After what just happened in court, can it get that much worse if you ignore him for a bit?"

Yes. The answer was always yes.

Weiss turned off her scroll. She knew what he was going to say, and she... she didn't want to hear it right now, much less repeat the message to her team. Let it make things worse for her later. Let him scream at her when she finally picked up. If these were the last days she was ever going to feel okay, she wanted to live them unspoiled by their expiration date.