Summary: Yang and Blake have been in love with each other since the moment they met, but neither could ever reveal their feelings. But now that they're entering their senior year and all the talk is on colleges and plans for the future, their friends aren't sure they can just sit by and watch as they lose each other for good. High School AU. Bumblby, WhiteRose, Arkos

Author's Note: Happy Valentines Day everyone! Just in time for the new chapter. I think with this one, I'll try to stick to a two week upload schedule for the foreseeable future. Mainly just with everything going on there's less and less time to write/edit and I really don't want to be pumping out garbage chapters just to stay on a tighter schedule. So anyways, here it is, hope you all like it!

Chapter 34: Choices

Weiss leaves the student council room with a frustrated huff and heads towards the cafeteria.

Her daily tutoring sessions with Yang these past two days since Yang had found out about Blake's past had been an absolute disaster.

Yesterday they'd spent the entire hour in the library doing nothing but enduring awkward silences and shooting quick, evasive glances at one another, only broken by the occasional question from Yang about a problem that she didn't understand. And everytime she opened her mouth to answer she'd had to fight the overwhelming urge to ask her about what she was going to do about Blake, only to crumble under the pressure and answer the question as quickly as she could manage.

And as if that hadn't been bad enough, today, the second their free period was over she'd had to run to an impromptu meeting called by the council treasurer telling them that for the dance next week they'd have to switch the entire decoration scheme for the main ballroom because there was a slight change in price.

It's honestly unbelievable how infuriating it is trying to make decisions when she has to juggle conflicting ideas being tossed to her from ten different people at once. Not to mention the fact that she'd had to sacrifice half of her lunch period to do it.

Thankfully in the end they were able to more or less arrive at a consensus, hopefully marking the last of the decisions that needed to be hammered out for the dance coming up just after finals. Now all she had to worry about would be making sure nothing goes wrong in the coming days, a doubtful prospect to say the least.

But she pushes that to the back of her mind because if she goes too far down that path she's pretty sure there'll be no turning back. She quickens her pace a little, hungrily eyeing her lunchbox and the grilled chicken salad that she knows is inside when she catches a familiar glimpse of black hair through the door of a vacant classroom.

She walks in slowly, initially hesitant to intrude on any meeting that Blake might be having with a teacher or something. But once she's actually inside, Weiss finds the dark haired girl completely alone, sitting up against the back wall with a book in her hand.

"Blake?" she says, breaking the silence and causing the girl to snap her head up in surprise, "what are you doing here?"

Blake's eyes go wide, darting back and forth as she tries to come up with an explanation. "Um…"

"Wait…" Weiss says slowly, spotting the half eaten tuna sandwich on the ground next to her, "is this what you've been doing for lunch everyday? Sitting in this classroom, eating by yourself?"

"Well… kind of."

She stops for a second, eyes scanning her friend's face before she moves to sit down in front of her. Of course she doesn't see much, with Blake maintaining a decidedly neutral expression, but it's still not nearly enough to deceive her.

"Blake…" she says hesitantly, "I know you're worried about Adam but you don't have to just cut yourself off from everyone like this."

"Actually…" the girl mumbles, "I've been meaning to talk to you about that."

Almost instantly she can feel her heart drop into her stomach. Her mind is already racing, running through all the horrible things that he could have done in the past day or so and she actually finds herself holding her breath in anticipation.

"My parents found out." Blake says finally, "they made some calls to the police back in Menagerie, and they confirmed that Adam is still in his cell. They even sent over a video for us to verify it yesterday."

Weiss's eyes stretch wide. "That's… that's great! That means he can't hurt you! But, then how did he get those messages to you?"

"The police are actually still looking into it to make sure, but they already traced the message back to a computer that they think belonged to one of his old cellmates that was recently released. They think Adam had him do it as a favor or something."

"That's… psychotic. Why would he do that? What would even be the point?"

"Because that's exactly what he does." Blake answers, voice filled to the brim with venom, "he messes with people, tortures them just for his own amusement. And it worked too."

With that Weiss's expression softens and she scoots up next to her friend to gently set a hand on her leg. She feels Blake tensing up the second they make contact, a reflex from spending so many days on edge with all of this hanging over her head, but then their eyes meet, and Weiss flashes her a soft, reassuring smile, and Blake finally lets the tension melt out of her body, sinking into her with an exhausted sigh.

"It's okay," she whispers, "you're safe now."

They sit like that for a while, finally enjoying a moment of peace in what has been an extremely hectic couple of months before Weiss slowly sits back up.

"I should probably let Pyrrha and Nora know that everything's okay." She says, "they've been pretty worried."

"Yeah." Blake mumbles slowly. "And… you can let Yang know too."

Her entire body freezes halfway through typing out a message to their friends. Somehow in just the few minutes since coming into this classroom she'd forgotten completely about the fact that she'd spilled everything to Yang just a couple days ago.

"Oh um, yeah… I'm really sorry, she just heard us talking on the phone and…"

"It's okay Weiss, I'm not mad. In fact, I should be apologizing to you. I've put you through so much recently and… I'm really sorry. I've been such a terrible friend."

She can see the pain and the regret in Blake's eyes, so much so that she's pretty sure she can spot a hint of tears starting to well up and before she even knows it Weiss is leaning over to pull the girl back into her arms.

"You haven't been a terrible friend." She says softly.

"I should have listened to you. I was such an idiot thinking I could handle this on my own, I just…"

"Hey, hey it's okay." Weiss whispers soothingly, "you were scared, I get it. And besides, you made the right decision eventually."

"Actually, I kind of didn't."

"What do you mean?"

Blake takes in a deep breath, pressing her lips into a thin line as if just making this one admission is taking up all of her strength. "Yang was the one who told my parents." She breathes finally.

"What?" Weiss shouts, nearly jumping up to her feet.

All at once her mind is racing again.

She had been very deliberate when she'd told Yang about Blake's history, purposefully mentioning that the consequences of telling her parents could very well be never seeing Blake again after graduation. It's not exactly one of her proudest moments... okay so maybe taking advantage of the trauma of one of her closest friends falls more under the 'despicable beyond redemption' category but at the time she'd sort of been in a panic.

But all of that aside, the fact that Yang had ignored her own crippling abandonment issues like this… maybe there was more to Yang's unusually silent behavior than she realized.

"Yang really did that?" She asks, half to herself.

"Yeah." Blake confirms, another guilty look washing over her face, "actually don't tell her. I… really should talk to her myself. At the very least I owe her an apology."

"An apology?"

"Yeah… when I saw her in my house I kind of freaked out. The only thing I could think about was how dangerous it could be if Adam knew she was there and I just wanted to get her somewhere safe but… I panicked. And I said some really awful things."

She can see how nervous Blake is at the mere thought of yet another confrontation with Yang. In all the years they've known each other Weiss is pretty sure the closest they've ever gotten to an actual fight was disagreeing over whether or not pineapple belongs on pizza. It seems like such a far cry from the horrible depths they've fallen to now.

"Does this mean…" she starts carefully, "are you finally going to talk to Yang? I mean really talk to her."

"Yeah." Blake says hesitantly, "yeah I think it's more than a little overdue."

"What are you going to say?"

Weiss knows that it's not exactly a simple question. And there's certainly a part of her that just wants to put it all to the side and comfort her friend who's having such a hard time right now, but she can't. Because like Blake said, this talk is long overdue.

Blake lets out a deep sigh, falling back into the wall and running a hand through her hair. "I'm not really sure. At the very least… I need to explain everything about Adam."

"What about… everything else?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well," Weiss says slowly, "I mean are you going to tell her that you haven't actually confirmed to Mistral? For that matter are you still even planning to go to Mistral?"

"Well… I'm not sure."

"You're not? I thought the whole point of leaving was so Yang wouldn't have to get dragged into stuff like with Adam. Surely you realize by now that you don't need to protect her anymore."

"But Adam was only part of the problem." Blake fires back weakly, "the rest of it, all the fighting and the lies… that was all me."

And just like that, the trembling has creeped its way back into Blake's voice and she's sinking back into the wall with a defeated sigh. And as a whole it betrays exactly how shaken Blake truly is about all of this. Just the fact that it's enough to shatter her confidence to this extent is more than enough for Weiss to finally decide that she's seen enough.

"You're wrong Blake." Weiss says firmly, causing the girl to raise her head in confusion, "that was just the version of you that was so crippled by fear that you actually thought alienating yourself from your friends was your only choice."

"Weiss…"

"Adam can't hurt you anymore Blake. I know he did a lot of damage in the past and I definitely don't blame you for being scared, but it's over now. And unless you want to live the rest of your life haunted by his ghost and looking over your shoulder, you have to stop letting him dictate how you live it."

At that Blake seems to be rendered completely speechless, and for a while the two of them sit in a heavy silence, a million thoughts swirling through both their heads as they finally get a chance to eat some of their lunches.

And finally, after enough time that Weiss is surprised that the bell hasn't already rung signaling the end of lunch, Blake breaks the silence with a quiet but determined, "okay."

"Okay what?" Weiss asks.

"I'll think more about it… whether or not I'm looking at Mistral for the right reasons."

"Do you even have any other reasons?"

"Well…" This time Blake's eyes betray a different kind of guilt, one that's distinct from the fearful expression that Weiss has become so painfully used to seeing these days.

"Well what?"

"Well you know that I had those campus tours a few weeks ago?"

"Of course," Weiss answers, "what about them?"

"I don't know. Just… when I took the tour for Mistral U, I was able to really talk with some of the guides, one of them was even a Poli-Sci student and she answered a ton of questions and... I just really liked everything that I heard."

"So does this mean you're really not going to go into writing anymore?"

"Well," Blake says hesitantly, "maybe not?"

Weiss finds herself narrowing her eyes in concern. "Blake. Are you sure about this? I mean don't get me wrong, I think you would be great at basically anything you choose but… can you really tell me that this is what you're passionate about?"

"Kind of, yeah. I mean it's different of course. All of this is actually really new to me whereas writing is something I've been doing as long as I can remember. But… honestly it's kind of hard to just ignore all the advice I've gotten over the years about picking a more stable career."

Weiss lets out a sympathetic sigh. "I know what you mean."

"And if it doesn't end up working out I can still change majors and go back into writing. But I don't know, it kind of feels like this is something that I have to at least try."

And despite everything else going on, the thing that really sticks with Weiss is still the guilt on Blake's face, as if just the simple admission that she's really considering this for herself is some kind of betrayal.

"Blake," she says softly, "why didn't you tell me? You didn't have to go through all of this alone, and certainly not to the level of hiding on your own during lunch like this."

"Well, lunch is like the only chance you have to spend time with Ruby at school and…"

"Blake."

"Okay fine." The girl sighs, "maybe I was kind of worried that you were still mad at me about all of this."

"What?" Weiss says, "what gave you that idea?"

"I don't know..." Blake huffs, falling forward to bury her head in her hands out of sheer frustration, "everything's been so crazy recently and I just…"

Weiss lets out a sigh, shaking her head as she throws an arm over the dark haired girl's shoulders. "I'm not mad at you Blake, in fact I can't even tell you how proud I am of you. I mean you got into Mistral! It's literally one of the best schools in the country."

At that Blake lifts her head and the look she gives her is enough to make Weiss's heart ache. The sheer level of vulnerability in her amber eyes is on a level that she'd never seen before. "I… really?"

"Really." Weiss answers sincerely. "And I know that there's still a lot of decisions to make and it feels like there's so much up in the air. But as long as you're making it for the right reasons, you'll have my support no matter what."

Right at that moment the bell finally rings, bringing an abrupt end to what had become an all too rare moment of peace for the two of them after so many weeks of tumultuous drama. But despite hearing the thunderous sound of a couple hundred students hurrying to their respective classes outside, neither of them seem to be able to find the motivation to move, until Blake finally decides to fall forward to pull Weiss back in for another hug. And on some level Weiss knows that it isn't truly over, not even close actually, especially because there's still so much to worry about, particularly when it comes to actually making amends with Yang, but for the first time in months it actually feels like they have a chance again.

Author's Note: Kind of wish the Valentine's Day upload could be something crazy fluffy but that's just not really where we are with the story. That said, it's kind of a big moment, Blake can finally move on from Adam and see how ridiculous she was being, as well as finally admitting to Weiss that she's considering Mistral as a serious option which is a huge step. Anyways, hope you all liked it and as always, thanks for reading!