A/N: AT LONG LAST THE FATED HOUR IS UPON US.
We're back! Wow, it's been like a year. Huh. Welp, we've been writing for most of it, so, have this chapter. Good luck. See you again soon.
-Fiercesomest
Blake hit the ground, hard, the wind completely knocked from her lungs as she laid on the grass for a moment, simply staring up at the tree where Weiss had been seconds before. Dazed and confused, Blake struggled to her feet, glad that the height of the tree had worked in her favor, giving her enough time to realize what was happening and call up her aura. Then again - what had just happened? Weiss in a tree, searing kisses - a bite? Blake's hand flew to her neck. Had Weiss bitten her? Pushed her out of a tree? Blake tried and failed to take a deep breath. Everything felt a little too surreal. Was the catnip making her hallucinate? "...Weiss?"
There was some crashing in the brush, and then the bright light of one of Weiss's white glyphs filled the air, the sigil circling near a tree ten feet to Blake's left.
Weiss struggled past the thick foliage of a low hanging branch to get out into the tall red grass of the small clearing. She swatted at leaves in her hair but had Myrtenaster up and ready, a line of silver in the dark.
"Where were you?!" she scolded, white knuckling her sword's grip. Something glinted at her waist. It was the hair ornament she'd lost the other day.
Her raised voice echoed in Blake's ears, all four of them still ringing from the fall, blurring whatever she'd said. Blake looked up at the tree, then back to Weiss, who looked angry, had her sword drawn, and had already called a glyph spinning as badly as Blake's head... but why? And why did this Weiss have her hairpiece on her belt? And now that she thought about it, that last Weiss hadn't had Myrtenaster... And the very first Weiss had been missing her hairpiece entirely... or - wait, hadn't she lost it at some point?
Blake groaned and rubbed at her eyes. Had her entire trip in the forest just been... one long trip?
There was at least one way to tell.
Sporting a frown of her own, Blake stormed towards this latest Weiss, right past her sword into her personal space, placing the palm of her hand flat against the fencer's sternum. She felt solid - but so had the last Weisses. This Weiss had the right shade of ice blue eyes though... Had the first one?
Weiss recoiled from the sudden too-intimate touch, her extreme concern for Blake dissolving as she sputtered, "What are you- how- how intoxicated are you, exactly?"
There was some kind of mark on Blake's neck, and her ears were half back, and suddenly Weiss was furious at Professor Peach. How could she send Blake out into the woods in this state? Not that she wasn't moderately formidable in the dark. Still. Weiss reigned it in and tried to tell why Blake looked so... confused. That was a little unusual considering the drug of choice. "Are you hurt?"
Blake shook her head, but her hand returned to her neck, and she squinted at Weiss even harder, as if that would somehow reveal her true nature. "...Are you real?"
"Of course I am," Weiss scoffed, but she kept her voice low. Her glyph circled in the air, casting moving shadows in the grass. It wasn't doing anything for her nerves at all. Finding her hairpiece in the middle of the woods like that... it could feasibly be a tactic by Goodwitch to put her on edge, but stealing a student's personal belongings from their rooms didn't seem quite her style. It could have been Blake- she'd teased her about it being an excuse for her to trade it for one of her black ribbons.
There was a third option, however, that made Weiss question why on earth Goodwitch and Professor Peach had brought them out to the middle of nowhere in the first place. She kept glancing to the trees, and though she kept her grip firm on Myrtenaster, her free hand strayed the short distance to one of Blake's, maybe in an effort to ground her. Maybe because she herself did not like being in the woods at night no more than twenty four hours after being informed that Torchwick's murderous henchwoman was on the loose again.
Of course, if it wasn't the teleporter, Weiss still needed to finish this test. She could turn on the emergency beacon on her scroll, but technically she hadn't seen anything. She wasn't a coward, scared of her own shadows. So she asked Blake, "Have you seen anyone besides me?"
Hallucination or not, at least this Weiss wasn't trying to seduce or kill her. Blake laced their fingers together. "Just you. Unless..." Blake hesitated. Either these Weisses were all different and possibly not real or they were all the same and... Blake wasn't sure which option was worse. "..Did you climb a tree?"
Weiss raised a brow at her, still keeping her voice low, "... secondary question, how do you feel about drinking a gallon of milk and singing the Vale national anthem?"
Blake stared. This Weiss was just plain weird. "No thanks...?"
"That's something, at least," Weiss didn't exactly put a lot of stock in Ruby and Yang's Huntress sobriety tests, but it was comforting to know that despite Blake apparently seeing her in a tree she wasn't completely drugged out of her mind. "We should move."
The urgency in Weiss's voice seemed out of place, but Blake laced their fingers together regardless. Maybe if she stuck around this Weiss, the dangerous one wouldn't show up again. Drawing her sword, she nodded and let Weiss lead the way.
It took a few steps through the brush for Weiss to realize Blake was trying to intertwine the fingers of both her hands with her free one.
"Stop that," Weiss hissed, trying to walk and get her hand untangled from Blake's at the same time.
Somewhere further off in the forest, too far for Weiss to hear, the leaves rustled in a distinctly not-due-to-the-breeze sort of way.
Blake froze, pulling Weiss to a stop as the sound got closer. Whatever it was sounded big.
She was about to tell Weiss as much when it suddenly picked up far more speed than she expected and made a beeline straight for them. Fast enough that Blake barely had the chance to draw her katana just as a lone alpha Beowolf emerged from the nearby underbrush to their side, its nose to the ground, sniffing.
It paused upon seeing Blake and Weiss, then rose to its full height.
"Wait!" Weiss hadn't gotten her right hand out of Blake's intertwined grip, so she had to almost body-check her to get her to stop before she attacked. This wasn't a normal alpha. Weiss stood with her shoulders back and Myrtenaster partway up, defensive as she hazarded, "Professor?"
For far too long, the Beowolf simply stared at them, sending Blake into high alert.
Then it laughed.
"Lucky guess." Professor Peach's bone plating glinted blue in Myrtenaster's light as she pointed to the ground. "Stay here." She then loped back into the forest.
Professor or not, the sound of an Alpha Beowolf laughing made the hair at the back of Weiss's neck prickle up and stay there. The sound of the professor's long, four-legged strides faded and vanished.
Weiss glanced at Blake. They had to wait here? Why did they have to wait here? Was this part of the test? If it wasn't, wouldn't it be better to move?
Blake's mind was completely elsewhere as she stared at Weiss in open wonder. "How did you..." she gestured with her sword in the direction their professor had just gone.
Weiss tossed her hair, gratified by Blake's amazement and a little miffed that Peach had dismissed her newfound skill as mere luck.
"I've been practicing," she said airily. Grimm didn't have auras, so even halfway sensing it had been enough of a clue.
The wind sighed through the leaves overhead, causing some to fall tumbling to the red carpet in the forest floor.
For a while that's all there was, wind, leaves, and stillness in-between while Blake simply admired Weiss. Her thoughts had already wandered halfway to possibly stealing another kiss when her ears snapped towards a new sound... wings?
Before she could even string that thought together, an absolutely massive grimm crashed down through the treetops, landing on all fours with a fierce roar and flared black wings. A Sphinx - Blake had never even seen a Sphinx outside of textbooks, and the sketches of it did not do justice to just how supremely unsettling its eerily smiley skull-like face looked in person. A snake-headed tail whipped back and forth behind it and Blake's sword was already raised, she was ready to strike-
That is, until Glynda pushed aside one of its wings. She sat sidesaddle atop the Sphinx's back. "Honestly, do you really expect to fool them?" she chided Peach as she slid off of her to the ground.
Blake quickly hid her sword behind her back.
Grimm and aura and all that nonsense aside, Weiss was likewise white as a sheet and fully prepared to engage. And people wondered why she had a strong preference for written tests over practical exams.
Speaking of, was theirs continuing? Weiss mastered her aversion to getting any nearer to such a large Grimm and stepped forward, asking, "What's going on?"
Glynda brushed feathers from her skirt as she approached her students. "Have either of you seen anyone else in the forest?"
Weiss maintained her poise despite her nerves being balanced on a knife's edge. Was this about Neo? Were she and Blake running around the woods in the dark with a psychotic would-be murderer? Or was this part of the test? Was it all a test? Had they failed?! She realized she still had Blake's hand in a death grip and quickly tried to extract herself from it.
"I..." she hesitated, because Blake didn't seem to realize that she was clinging and it was difficult to get her hand free. Quickly she gave up and put her sword away instead so she could take the crystal hair ornament from her belt to show her professor, "I didn't see anyone, but I found this."
Goodwitch peered at the hairpiece and frowned. "Is this not yours?"
Weiss flushed, fighting the urge to bridle at the mild insinuation that she'd just shown her professor her own hairpiece for no reason.
"I lost it yesterday, and found it out here. I suppose," she paused and couldn't help but glance at Blake, who could very well have actually taken it and dropped it in the leaf litter in her drugged haze. "... is there someone we should have seen?"
"I saw three Weisses." Blake stated firmly, but she shied away when Professor Peach's massive skull-faced head turned her way, fixing her with those burning red eyes.
"At the same time?" Goodwitch asked, both brows raised in alarm.
"... No?"
Goodwitch tilted her head, looked Blake up and down over the tops of her spectacles, then arched a single brow at professor Peach.
"Catnip," was the grimm-shaped professor's whisper-low raspy reply.
Glynda's jaw dropped. "You - you mean to tell me," she pointed to Blake, "She is - you gave her catnip before her combat exam? Out here? In Forever Fall?"
"Two exams in one."
The laughter of the Alpha Beowolf had been bad enough, and Blake was fairly certain she could die happy if she never heard the laugh of a Sphinx ever again.
Goodwitch slipped her fingers beneath her glasses to lift them so she could properly ground her palms into her eyes. "We will discuss this later, but for now..." She straightened her frames, facing both of her students. "Something distinctly human passed the perimeter I set up to detect Grimm. We tried to track down whoever it was, but we weren't able to."
Weiss kept a wary eye on the darkness out beyond the small ring of trees illuminated by her sword, waiting for the pronouncement of whether or not the exam was over. Obviously it was. Blake was in no condition to be out here with some unknown ne'er-do-well, not to even mention the possibility of Neo. Or Grimm, for that matter.
A beat of thoughtful silence passed, Goodwitch clearly turning things over in her mind.
Before too long, professor Peach stepped back and bowed forward, arching her back in a long catlike stretch. "Well. Back to the exam then?"
"Absolutely not," professor Goodwitch snapped back to the present, rounding on Peach. "We'll reschedule it. And next time, make sure she is sober, please," she threw a pointed glance at Blake, who looked about two steps behind everyone else present. "Weiss's opponent needs to be in top condition."
"Killjoy."
Briefly closing her eyes so that she wouldn't be able to roll them at her fellow professor in front of her students, Goodwitch motioned Blake and Weiss towards the towering Sphinx. "Professor Peach will escort you back to campus. I will clean up here."
As if on cue, Peach folded her flared wings and laid down, her snake-headed tail curling towards them as if to watch.
... as if to watch them start hiking back towards the school? Weiss hoped so.
"Thank you, professor," she said to Goodwitch, sweating under her collar as she started to pull Blake towards the woods in the direction of Beacon- not towards the sphynx.
Blake hesitated, noticing the way both professors were staring expectantly at them.
"...Weiss," Goodwitch called to her absconding student. "Professor Peach will fly you back to campus."
Weiss stopped in her tracks. Dust, she hadn't even gotten past the first tree. No one would believe her if she pretended not to have heard.
"Oh," she hid a grimace behind a forced smile. The Nevermore Incident during orientation came to the forefront of her mind. Not something she wanted to repeat. In an effort to pin her reluctance on something other than herself, she indicated the moderately confused looking Blake with a short gesture, "I assumed walking would be..."
"Slower," Peach supplied.
"An easily avoided risk," Goodwitch countered, giving Peach a look.
Blake simply watched the exchange, finding herself oddly at peace with the idea of riding her Grimm-shaped professor back to the dorms. She was a good professor. Surely it would be fine.
Forget fine. Being this high up was amazing. The rhythmic flapping of wings around them, Weiss's arms around her waist, the wind flowing through her air, pinning her Faunus ears to her head. Was this what Ruby felt like when she ran full tilt? Blake peered over the Sphinx's side, leaning a little too far in her quest to see the sights.
She started to slide groundwards but was checked by Weiss's grip, as well as Weiss's shriek of, "Blake Belladonna sit up straight or I swear-"
The flight was a nightmare. Weiss had allowed herself to be talked into Ruby's Nevermore plan but that hadn't involved mounting a teacher or making sure her girlfriend didn't plunge to her intoxicated doom. It'll be like riding horseback, she'd tried to tell herself before take off, but the very little riding she'd done in Atlas had involved a saddle and reins and stirrups and being on the ground instead of several hundred feet up, hurtling through the night at a hundred miles an hour.
The icy wind whipped past. Weiss clung to fistfuls of her flying professor's fur for dear life, her arms around Blake in her attempt to act as a human seat belt.
Somehow, they made it to the school in one piece, their professor depositing them on the roof of the faculty building, reminding Blake to take her chaser, and tasking Weiss with also reminding Blake to take her chaser.
Dark hair sticking out in several windswept directions, Blake watched professor Peach fly back towards the forest. "...We have to chase her?" She rubbed at both sets of her aching ears. Bedhead and icy fingers weren't the only effects she'd suffered from the wind.
Equally windswept, Weiss blew a few strands of her white hair out of her face and took Blake's arm.
"Just come on," she pulled her in the direction of Professor Peach's office. If Blake knocked over any potted plants or anything, she was not going to right them.
That was a lie. She grumbled under her breath as she tipped a heavy (and thankfully sturdy) terracotta pot containing some kind of venus fly trap lookalike back upright while Blake drank the odd plastic cup of green liquid left out on the desk. Weiss did not sweep the spilled dirt up, though.
Blake set the cup down, a vague sense somewhere in the back of her mind that maybe this drink was lacking its usual spice - its usual color - but she could hardly be bothered as she glanced up at Weiss and was utterly blindsided by an overwhelming urge to hug her. So she crossed the room and did exactly that.
"Hey," Weiss snapped, almost overbalancing. She couldn't exactly be mad, though, and she half-turned to return the embrace, letting Blake put her head down on her shoulder. "Hey. Are you okay?"
Blake's thoughts ebbed and flowed like a river of molasses taking all the wrong turns, sliding from tangent to tangent until Weiss's original question was lost to the ether entirely, replaced only with a general sense that she was supposed to say something. And if she was going to say something, she may as well voice the one tangent her thoughts kept stumbling over the most often. Blake smiled into Weiss's collar and squeezed her tight. "Love you..." is what she tried to say, but her words came out both mumbled and slurred.
Not quite slurred enough for Weiss to avoid blushing up a storm. She cleared her throat. "Yes, well."
Say it back. Did she even say that? She might not have. It wouldn't make sense to say it back now. Does it matter if it makes sense? The back and forth in her head passed in a fraction of a second and was promptly dismissed as she felt drool soak through her bolero.
"Okay, that's enough." she attempted to pry her way out of Blake's hug.
It took a moment for her girlfriend's squirming to register, but once it did, Blake loosened her grip and she pulled back enough to blink at Weiss, her brows furrowing in confusion as she did. She still felt slow. Everything felt slow. She also really wanted to kiss Weiss, which wasn't unusual, but something still felt off. Blake couldn't quite pin down what exactly, but maybe if she thought harder...
"Back to the dorm, please," Weiss turned Blake towards the door. The way Professor Peach's plants loomed over the pair, perched in pots on every conceivable surface like some kind of indoor jungle, was making her itch to get back to more civilized surroundings. Tiles. Drywall. Maybe a desk with some textbooks instead of an array of different colored liquids in different sized cups and vials. Normal indoor settings.
"Right..." Maybe that was it - Weiss was brilliant. Maybe it was the setting that felt off. Blake nodded, letting Weiss lead her... wherever it was she had just said.
The walk back seemed longer than usual, possibly because Blake couldn't stop being fascinated by the grass at the edge of the sidewalk, or something. Wasn't the 'chaser' or whatever it was supposed to mitigate the catnip's effects? Weiss wasn't sure, but Blake usually wasn't this... difficult... after her training sessions.
Probably it was because they had to cut the test short. The catnip would have worn off if they'd gone the full time. That must have been it. Weiss huffed, trying to get her scroll up to the sensor by their room's door with Blake hanging all over her.
The light from the scroll caught Blake's eye and she took hold of it, pressing the device to her face.
"Blake!" Weiss snapped, but couldn't exactly let go of the arm she had draped over her shoulders to stop her, tempting as it was to dump her on the floor of the hall. Instead, she sighed, resting her forehead against the door for a moment and hoping Blake would just lose interest. What an anticlimactic end to the day.
"Weiss?" The dorm door clicked opened from the other side, then forcefully flew open, smacking the person on the other side with the full weight of Weiss and Blake and the heavy wood itself.
Pyrrha stumbled back a step or two before catching herself and the door, propping it up so the pair on the other side wouldn't topple to the floor. "Weiss! Blake - where have you - are you two all right?"
The commotion spurred Blake to finally pry her face away from the bright screen and stare around the otherwise empty dorm room before landing on Pyrrha's worry-lined expression. She seemed taller than usual. Or maybe that was just because Weiss was crushing her into the half-open door. "Hi."
"I wouldn't object to some assistance," Weiss ground out, now supporting all of Blake's weight.
"Of course-" Pyrrha swept in, taking Blake's weight from Weiss and leading her over to her own bed. She tried for about five seconds to help Blake sit up straight before letting her face plant into her pillow since she seemed to really really want to. "Is - is she okay?" She looked back at Weiss who seemed exhausted but otherwise fine, which seemed to ease the tension in her posture. "Where were you two?" Brows furrowing as though she'd just remembered something, Pyrrha quickly reached for the scroll lying on Yang's mattress.
"Just training, like we do every night. Why?" Weiss collapsed into her desk chair, brow furrowed at the scroll in Pyrrha's hand. She glanced at Yang's bunk. Why had her scroll been up there? Actually it was Yang's, it looked like. "Where's Yang?"
Pyrrha bit her lip as she dialed someone. "Ruby - yes, they're here. They're fine. Training. ...I'm not sure. ...Okay," with a nod, she closed the scroll and offered Weiss an apologetic smile. "Yang and Ruby and the others... were out looking for you." She held the scroll in both hands, as if it could serve as a tiny shield between her and Weiss. "Ruby thought it would be fun to pick you up from your lesson with Goodwitch, but you weren't there, and your scroll was out of range, and so was Blake's, and we couldn't find her either, but we could see your aura trackers taking damage and... and we panicked?"
Weiss sat frozen for a second. Two nights ago, the rest of their team and at least most of JNPR had seen news reports of a building falling on them, and last night she'd delivered the news about Neo. They'd been looking out for them, and then Goodwitch had announced this test and they'd trekked out to Forever Fall without telling anyone. Of course they would panic. She would have been methodically tearing the school and/or town apart if Ruby and Yang were the ones in their position.
Suddenly she went pale, gripping the back of the seat. She would have been metaphorically tearing the school and/or town apart. "Pyrrha, where's Yang?"
Pyrrha tapped her fingers lightly along the scroll's edge and looked away. "She ah... she took Bumblebee and Nora down to search the city..."
Weiss leapt from her chair to the window, undoing the latch and cracking one side open to the night air. It let in the cold... and also the faint sound of sirens.
Weiss shut the window, turning her back to it and resting against the low shelf as she pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and middle finger. Fine. It was fine. Probably they were just testing the Grimm warning system, or something.
"Weiss... your alarm," Blake mumbled into her pillow.
Pyrrha stared, then arched a brow at Weiss. "Is she...?"
"Yes." Weiss said without removing her hand. "Yes, she is."
Pyrrha put a hand to her chin, her other hand pocketing her scroll. "But I thought - at least, Yang mentioned she usually took something after training to-" she paused, glancing down to see her newly emptied hand had been grasped. In the second it took to register that it was Blake who had taken hold of her, the Faunus in question was already slowly pulling her down onto the bunk. "Um - ah, Blake, wait, uh-" Pyrrha sputtered the whole way down, throwing a desperate look at Weiss as she did her best to remain sitting upright while Blake, practically half-asleep, coiled herself around her.
Weiss watched, her hackles rising in spite of herself.
"Pyrrha," she said, her voice very carefully measured.
Sensing she was about to suffer an untimely death, Pyrrha gently placed a hand against Blake's face and pushed her as far away as she could while maintaining proper posture.
Bent half backwards, Blake blinked her eyes open in confusion to stare at... not Weiss.
"Hello," Pyrrha waved.
Blake squinted, her grasp already loosening, "You're not..."
"Oh! If you're looking for Weiss, she's over there," Pyrrha very helpfully gestured towards the girl in question.
Blake's sleepy amber gaze slowly traveled what felt like a million miles to get to the right place, but once she got there her confusion blossomed into a smile, despite Weiss's murderous glare. That was a normal expression for her after all.
Weiss's glare softened in the face of Blake's smile, and she shook out her hair lightly, removing her hair ornament from her belt and setting it on the bookshelf near her alarm clock. Her scroll started pinging with messages, and she cut the volume off and glanced to see Ruby's icon and a time stamp of 'now'. She put the scroll down. The situation with Blake and Pyrrha came first.
"Blake, do you want another blanket?" she asked. Maybe she was cold, or the increased catnip dosage made her feel cold. Or just clingy. All things a blanket might solve.
Blake seemed to consider the question for a while, her arms going entirely slack as if to divert all of her power to thinking. "I want..." Suddenly the answer appeared, and her smile brightened, "...you."
Blushing to the tips of her ears, Pyrrha chose that moment to make her escape, quickly, to the desks on the opposite side of the room and well out of arm's reach. She then proceeded to politely look anywhere but Blake or Weiss.
Weiss, who was similarly red, cleared her throat as she gathered the top cover off of her bed.
"Here's a blanket," she pushed it into Blake's arms from a serviceable distance.
Blake's ears folded back in dejection as her hopes for cuddles from Weiss were crushed by the warm and snuggly comforter that she nevertheless hugged onto.
Pyrrha still looked like she thought both of them were about to start... well, Weiss wasn't certain, but she crossed her arms and informed her classmate archly, "You can relax. Blake just gets a little cold."
It probably wasn't entirely fiction, and she wasn't going to call her 'clingy' when she wasn't coherent enough to defend herself against the accusation.
"Oh-" Pyrrha's gaze snapped from the door to Weiss. "I'm- I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply- that is-" she paused, took a second to collect herself with a nice, soothing deep breath, and let her mangled attempt at a sentence drop. "I'm glad you're both all right," mid-sentence her eyes drifted to Blake, who had buried her face in the balled up comforter she was hugging to death. She managed to stifle a giggle, but an amused smile slipped through anyway. "...Mostly all right."
Weiss adjusted her collar in an attempt to relieve some of the heat garnered by Pyrrha's implications. "She's fine. "
A beat of awkward silence followed. Weiss knew she had studying to do, especially since the trek to Forever Fall and the ensuing running around in the dark had taken slightly longer than her normal training hour with Goodwitch. Also her hair was still a disaster after the flight back on the monstrous Professor Peach's back. She shuddered at the memory and moved to retrieve her hairbrush from her dresser, addressing Pyrrha as she did so, "You're welcome to stay, but I'm going to take a few minutes to fix this," she gestured to her windswept hair situation, "before the others get back."
Pyrrha shook her head. "I think I'm going to go make a round of hot chocolates for everyone. Would you two like some?"
"If you don't mind," Weiss gave a slight shrug to belie the perhaps unwarranted bolstering of her confidence that stemmed from the plan she'd made earlier in the day including one (1) dessert. She'd figured she would take advantage of it in the evening after training. Perfect timing and planning, as usual.
With a nod and parting smile, Pyrrha took her leave.
Just in time for Blake to roll off her bed, crash to the floor, and continue sleeping.
Weiss jumped at the sound, clutching her brush. Dust, had Blake hit her head? The cold dorm tile was hard enough to hold up under decades of combat student abuse. She herself had witnessed Ruby about to drop a bowling ball out the window for someone (maybe Sun?) to catch in the courtyard below. Who knew what kind of chaos occurred in the rooms themselves?
Regardless, she worked her hairbrush the rest of the way through her hair as quickly as she could and hurried over to the bundle of red blanket that was Blake, leaning carefully to see if she could tell if she'd hurt herself but not so close that she could get caught if this was some kind of catnip-induced ploy.
One of Blake's ears flicked, but all she did was mumble something about being cold, her arm blindly reaching for anything that might impart some additional warmth to her newfound position.
Weiss raised a brow and glanced towards the door, surprised that she had in fact been telling the truth. Still, she hesitated at the edge of her girlfriend's reach. "Blake, I'll get you a sweater if you can sit up."
With a small groan of protest, Blake un-buried her face from the warm cocoon she'd made and stared up at Weiss. She was too far away. Also she had said... something. Did she realize she was too far away? How was she supposed to hug her if she was that far away? Blake huffed, releasing the comforter. The herculean effort it took to sit up almost bested her, but Blake persisted, resolute in her quest to stand and hug Weiss.
There was a determined look in Blake's amber eyes, and Weiss took it as a cue to back up, both hands partway up like a barrier. She preferred to not be in a compromising position when Pyrrha came back, so she directed Blake while she continued to give ground, "Okay, just... sit on the bed."
Fully up on her feet now, Blake took a step towards Weiss and promptly tripped over the comforter.
It was like a reflex. Weiss ducked forward to catch Blake before she could hit the hard tile floor a second time.
Blake blinked. One second she'd been standing, the next she'd been falling, and now she was in Weiss's arms. The details hardly mattered though, not when she was wrapped in the warmth she'd been searching for this whole time. A pleased hum escaped her as Blake wrapped her arms around Weiss in return.
"Fine," Weiss rolled her eyes, but she was smiling as Blake slumped against her. She was warm, and halfway on the floor anyway so it was no trouble to support her weight. Still, Weiss's smile disappeared, "but why on Remnant are you this..."
Blake nuzzled Weiss's temple, releasing a sigh of content mixed with a small, choppy sound, like an engine revving up for the first time in a while.
Weiss's throat constricted. Blake was purring. Dust, what was she supposed to do now? Why was this happening? Not that it was a bad thing for Blake to purr, but the sudden rush of just... she just loved Blake so much, and it made her chest seize up with panic because she didn't know what to do about it.
"Okay. Well. Okay," she managed as she tried to get ahold of herself, "let's just sit down. If you're not opposed."
Blake happily complied with whatever direction Weiss guided her, her only real cognizant plan being to follow this warmth wherever it went.
Weiss only took half a step, though. She didn't want to be on the bed when Pyrrha came back in. But they couldn't sit on the rug. So she just kind of stood there with her purring girlfriend half in her arms, half tangled in the red blanket on the floor. Blake was… very warm. And adorable. Weiss could feel her blush burning all the way up her neck to her ears. Maybe it was fine. Just standing here was fine.
One person making eight mugs of hot chocolate might have been an unusual sight in Beacon's common room, but it wasn't like any of the students passing through were about to question Pyrrha Nikos about it. Most students didn't dare to approach her anyway, which normally ate away at the Mistral Champion, but since she actually hoped to make it back to RWBY's dorm quickly, for once it was nice to be able to work in peace. That is, until a girl with pastel green hair caught sight of her from the hallway and changed course straight for her.
Pyrrha blinked down at a pair of disarmingly red eyes staring up at her, completely unfazed.
"Pyrrha Nikos, right?"
"...Yes," Pyrrha's smile strained. Of course, everyone knew who she was, but at least this girl didn't seem to care, which was refreshing in a way. "And you are..." Pyrrha's brows furrowed. She definitely remembered seeing Ruby hanging around this girl more than once, but it took every scrap of her brainpower to recall the one time Ruby mentioned the girl's name. "Emerald?"
"You're the champion of remembering names too, I see," Emerald smirked, crossing her arms and eyeing the ridiculous number of filled mugs on the counter. "So," she tilted her head at the hot chocolates, "does this mean you guys found Weiss and Blake?"
Pyrrha arched a brow, but before she could even open her mouth to ask how Emerald knew the pair had been missing, the other girl waved her question off.
"I heard from Ruby. Messaged her an invite to hang out, but she said her and her sister's partners had gone missing, so I figured I'd try to help look around the school."
Her reply was casual enough, but Pyrrha's heart warmed nevertheless. Ruby really had a habit of befriending sweethearts. "That's very kind of you. None of us found them though, they actually just showed up out of the blue back at the dorm," she giggled.
"Oh my god are you serious?" Emerald laughed along with her. "What, were they just off making out somewhere?"
This time it was Pyrrha's turn to wave a hand as she filled the last mug. "They were training," she corrected Emerald, happy to help dispel that particular rumor before it spread anywhere.
"Training huh?" Emerald's sly smile showcased just how much she believed that particular explanation, "Do they always vanish in the evenings to train together?"
"Not at all," Pyrrha insisted with a smile, "I'm not sure what exactly happened today, but usually they train with separate professors. Every evening, those poor girls." A flash of red streaking past her view into the hall caught Pyrrha's eye - a smattering of rose petals fluttering to the ground. "...I'd better head back."
"Oh, sure, do you need help carrying those, or...?" Emerald gestured to the eight very full hot chocolates as she stepped out of the way.
"Oh! No, I've got it," Pyrrha quickly placed the steaming mugs into the metal baking tray she'd pulled out earlier. She picked the filled tray up with both hands, reluctant to show off her semblance to a relative stranger, despite how nice she seemed. "Thank you though!" she called on her way out.
"No..." Emerald said softly, smiling at Pyrrha's back as she rounded the corner. "Thank you."
A/N: I'm still here too! HUGS FOR YOU ALL
-Defenestrator