A/N: Feelin' pretty good, no tingly fingers or aching tendons.

Content warning: depression, mild suicidal ideation. Also, a sex scene.

White Knight Interlude II: The Invincible Blake Belladonna

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It didn't feel right. Blake wondered if it would ever feel right again.

At the end of her right arm, a glossy, black alloy socket capped the stump where her wrist had been. It was segmented, to accommodate roughly the same range of motion as her real wrist, and with the detachable lid removed, she could see the juncture where the connector jack in her prosthetic hand's plug would slot in. Her amber eyes narrowed in distaste at the detached artificial appendage as it sat innocuously upon the bedside table.

It wasn't that there was anything overtly wrong with the prosthetic, though Penny kept shyly insisting that it was something of a starter hand, and she could do better now that Weiss had helped get Polendina Cybermedical established. Still, while it lacked the bells and whistles that Penny was, even then, gleefully cramming into the upgraded model, her current prosthetic was, apparently, quite good, as such devices were rated. Blake had never had cause to consider such things before; she supposed that it would behoove her to get more acquainted with assistive devices, and soon.

She was maimed. Brain-damaged. Adam had...altered her, fundamentally and irrevocably, and nothing, no device, could ever change that. For all the literature that she read, Blake had no words for the sort of unspeakable violation that she felt.

The catgirl grimaced when she reached out and took the prosthetic into her hand, her real hand. It was made of cold, lifeless alloy, with a glossy finish that gleamed dully in the light of Team RWBY's dorm room. With a deep breath, she slid the plug into the wrist socket, her ears flickering flat at the sudden, intense feeling of tingling in her wrist. It was a half-second of sharp, intense discomfort, and then it was gone, just as suddenly as it had appeared.

With the tingles faded, Blake held up her mechanical palm to inspect it. According to her human friends, the device was virtually silent as it operated, a true masterwork. But for her, with her extra, and highly-sensitive ears, she could hear the faint whirring and clicking of components as she manipulated her fingers...and what she could hear, she could see. The waves emanating from her fingers and wrist as she moved the prosthetic...they were gray. Lifeless. Holding up her other hand, her real hand in comparison, she clicked her fingers, seeing the rich, deep purple waves that matched her Aura coming from them.

It seemed like a petty, stupid thing to complain about, but every time she moved her prosthetic hand, she could see a visible reminder that it wasn't her hand, not really. It was jarring, and try as she may, she just couldn't ignore it, and the device felt as foreign to her as the day she had received it.

Blake frowned, using her real hand to pull up her hood to cover her bald, scarred head. It was silly, how she had taken up some of the doctors' valuable time to ask if her hair would ever grow back. Since Mountain Glenn, everyone at Beacon, herself included, had far more important problems to consider, but even as she hated herself for fretting over such a superficial matter, she couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief upon learning that her hair would, in time, grow back.

There were so many real problems that she, and all of her friends, had to deal with now. They didn't need to see her crying.

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Her friends saw her crying.

Stupid. So stupid. Such a minor thing. She had gone to meet with Weiss and Penny for lunch at Penny's new office, touching up with her friends so they could keep tabs on her and ask about how she was adjusting. Without thinking, Blake had reached out with her prosthetic to accept a cup of tea from Weiss, and she'd misjudged the pressure with which she'd wrapped her hand around the porcelain cup. It had exploded into dust in her mechanical grip, sending hot tea cascading into the air before raining down around them.

It should have been nothing, a minor accident to laugh about with her friends. But what it was was the last straw, the final little catalyst that sent her spiralling, and before she knew it, she was crumpled against a wall, crying into her sole remaining hand. Weiss had knelt down next to her, but it was obvious that the heiress was at a loss for what to say to her.

"I'm so sorry!" cried Penny, distressed at Blake's distress. "I'll do better with the next iteration, Friend Blake, I promise!"

"...It isn't that, Penny," said Blake, her tone low. "It's me. I'm just...broken."

From beside her, Weiss took her hand, and her prosthetic, in hers. "There's not a one of us that hasn't been broken in some way," she told her, her voice creating pale, glacial blue waves in the air between them. "But things that have been broken can be remade, and all the stronger for it."

"I can't even manage afternoon tea with it becoming a debacle," mourned Blake. "How am I supposed to fight like this? My hand is gone, and if there's anything louder than low talking, I get disoriented and confused. If I can't fight, then what good am I?" She sobbed, the gasp sending dark violet rings before her vision. "You should have left me to die."

A long silence followed her declaration.

"Is that what you would have said about me?" asked Weiss. Her voice wavered as she spoke, sending her rings shimmering.

"What?"

"You're not the only one Adam Taurus had it out for, you know," Weiss reminded her. "If he'd got the jump on me, and our positions were reversed, would you be saying that it would be better if I'd been left behind to die?"

"N-no! Never!"

"Then why do you think it's okay to talk about yourself that way?"

Blake looked up, and saw tears welling in Weiss's eyes.

"You're our friend, Blake, and we love you. It hurts to hear you say such things. We'll never give up on you, Blake Belladonna. Never. So please," Weiss pleaded, her voice barely over a whisper. "Please, don't give up on us."

Blake stared down at her hands, the both of them. "Even...even despite everything?" she finally asked Weiss.

"No. Not despite everything. Because of everything."

Blake looked to Weiss in astonishment. "How? I'm sullen and moody at the best of times."

"Eeyup," agreed the white-haired heiress.

"I'm argumentative and confrontational, and I'm ready to fight at the drop of a hat."

"This is also true."

"I'm harsh and unforgiving. I said horrible things about your boyfriend."

"Incidentally, Jaune respects you a great deal, precisely because of those traits. He admires your commitment to what you see as right, and how you're willing to fight against the whole world if you have to. He once wrote that he knew that, if he ever slipped into his old ways, you would be ready to hold him to account, by force if necessary." Weiss smiled sadly up at the taller Faunus girl. "We love you because of who you are, for better or worse. Are you sometimes an unbelievable pain in the ass? Yep. Have I wanted to throttle you before? Absolutely. But that's how family is, and that's what our little band has become now; a family."

Had someone told Blake, before her defection from the White Fang, that one day, she would derive great comfort and joy from embracing the bratty younger Schnee daughter, she would have thought that person mad. Who would have ever thought the infamous Ice Queen to be so...warm?

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"It's nice to meet you, sir."

Blake held out her hand for Mister Xiao Long to shake, only to realize that she'd taken off her prosthetic again, and was holding up an alloy-capped stump towards him. "Uh…"

"You've had a hard time of it, haven't you?"

"We all have." Blake shook her head, then moved to stand at Ruby's bedside. She placed her sole hand gently on Ruby's forehead. "Ruby's the best person I know. So many different, strong personalities, many of them violently opposed to one another, and this girl was the glue holding us all together. Jaune, another of our friends, he believes that she's going to save us all someday."

"What do you think?" the girl's father asked her.

"I think he's wrong. I think she's already saved us."

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"I know it sounds...stupid," said Blake, as she finished explaining the issue with her synesthetic sight and her prosthetic hand to Lie Ren. "A stupid, petty thing, when I should just be thankful that I have a device at all. But it just...it bothers me, even though I know it shouldn't."

Ren stroked his chin as he considered what Blake had told her. "Well first of all, you should know that it's perfectly fine and valid for you to have these feelings. You've been through a sudden and traumatic change, and one that was not of your own volition. Would you be okay with allowing me to read your Aura?"

"My Aura?" Blake echoed, startled. "Do you think that that was damaged too?"

"No, not in the same way that Jaune's was," Ren said quickly, seeking to reassure her. "I have a theory that might explain the phenomenon that you're reporting with your prosthetic, but I can't test it without reading your Aura, and I won't do that without your consent."

"What's involved?"

"Well, broadly speaking, it involves touching your Aura with mine. Ordinarily, this doesn't occur from casual contact due to our subconscious defenses, but I know several ways to prepare a patient so that they're receptive to the procedure. Jaune, for instance, responded well to touch - massage, to be precise. Actually, given your synesthesia, you might respond well to vocal induction. Finally, I can attempt to appeal to your Aura directly with reiki techniques, but...well, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure that I'm skilled enough to do so in a single, short session. The effortless use of that ability is generally a sign of high mastery in Auralogy."

Blake smiled ruefully. "If I suggest massage, am I going to have to worry about an angry Nora smashing me into paste?"

"Not at all," answered Ren with a chuckle. "She used to be a little jealous when I would practice on Pyrrha, but our relationship is strong enough now that she's over such insecurities. In any event, she understands that my work sometimes involves touching other people, and she trusts me to be professional in my actions."

"I guess we should try vocal, like you suggested."

"Of course. Give me a moment to get some tea. I'm afraid I'm unused to speaking so much," he admitted.

"I know the feeling."

After a few moments, Ren returned, sitting across from her on his bed. "Lean back against the pillows and relax," he told her. "Focus on your breathing. Deep breath in...and hold it...and out. And in...and hold it...and out. Can you see me as I speak?"

Blake nodded.

"Good. Focus only...on...the rings," he told her, speaking in a particular cadence. It made the vibrant green rings of his voice appear in an undulating pattern. Blake stared, fascinated, as Ren continued to speak. "Relax...go deeper...and deeper...into...the rings. There's no pain...no fear...only...my voice. You are safe...secure...and able to go deeper...and deeper…"

She wasn't sure how long she spent gazing into the patterns that Ren created with his voice, as time lost all meaning to her. Distantly, she recognized that Illia would have had a heart attack at the notion that she would have willingly let a human man lull her into such an utter state of vulnerability, but Blake found that she trusted Ren completely.

"Okay Blake. I'm going to touch your forehead with two fingers now. Everything is going to be fine."

Blake shivered as she felt him gingerly touch her forehead, and a second later, she felt...well, him, his essence, just pure, concentrated Lie Ren.

"Oh Nora, you lucky girl," she breathed.

"Erm," Ren mumbled, thrown for a moment at the cat Faunus girl's reaction. He quickly recovered his composure. "I'm going to trace the flow of your Aura down your arm now," he said, maintaining his stoic, professional tone. "Is that all right?"

"You can touch me anyway you like," she purred at him.

"Then it's a good thing that I just want to help you recover," he shot back. "I should have brought a spray bottle," Ren muttered. He ran his fingers down her right arm, pausing at the junction between the end of her stump and the nerve conduction socket. "Right...just as I thought. Okay Blake, I've found what I needed to. Give me a moment to consult some texts."

"Mmmkay," she agreed happily, still in her dreamlike state. Over the next few moments, she gradually came out of her trance, feeling like she'd just had the best nap of her life. She stretched her arms and back, giving a great kitty yawn.

"Hello, Blake. Are you back with us?"

"I am," she answered, as Ren sat down across from her. "That was sooo comfy…"

"Well, at least one of us was comfortable," he said ruefully.

"Huh?" She flushed as she remembered what she had said to him while under a trance. "Oh my gods, I hit on you."

"That's not unusual. The entire point of the procedure was to get you to lower your normal defenses and...inhibitions, as it were."

"Are you saying that my innermost self is sex-crazed?"

"Are you really surprised?"

"Oh gods, I'm a pervert!" she mourned, burying her face in her hands.

"There's nothing wrong with, you know, a libido. You may even find it helpful to take care of those needs. With someone else," he added quickly. "Not me. Nora's not that understanding."

An awkward silence descended between the pair.

"Moving rapidly on," Ren continued. "Like I suspected, your Aura isn't circulating through your prosthetic hand."

"Is there something wrong with it?"

"Unlikely, given who made it. No, I think the problem is with how you're perceiving it. Like you said, you're seeing it as something apart from yourself, something foreign. You're holding that notion so deeply that your Aura is responding to it, withholding itself accordingly."

"Can you blame me?" she demanded, holding up her prosthetic hand. "A part of me is gone, Ren!"

"No," he answered. "A part of your body is gone, and has been replaced."

"That's the same thing!"

"Do you think yourself a body? A mere construct of meat and bone?" Ren shook his head. "You, me, all of us, we are so much more than that! You aren't your body, Blake. You are a soul that's piloting a body. The meat, bone, and now metal, that's merely how we interact with the physical world around us, but that isn't who we are. We are spiritual beings, luminous and indomitable, and in that, no one, not Adam Taurus, not even Salem herself, can truly harm us."

"In that sense, Blake Belladonna, you are invincible."

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She gasped as she ground herself against Sun's hips, letting out a low, throaty growl as she felt him deep within her. With Sun seated on a bed in one of the unused dorms and Blake straddling him, they were pulled tight against one another, her arms around his head, pressing his face into her bare breasts, while his hands roamed the tight musculature of her back and his powerful tail snaked around her waist. Working in sync with his strong, deliberate thrusts into her, Blake worked him against a particular spot inside of her, stoking a fire below her belly that was threatening...or promising...to explode into an all-out inferno.

Almost...almost...she went stiff, toes curling, limbs shaking, clenching down on him like a vise as she reached the peak of sexual ecstasy. Blake pulled away from him, letting her red-faced lover catch his breath, lest she smother him in her bosom. She pushed him onto his back on the bed, running her hands - both of them - over the powerful muscles of his chest and abs. She didn't know what they fed the boys over in Vacuo, but Sun certainly had staying power. That hadn't been her first orgasm of the night, or even the first since she'd climbed off his face and onto his manhood, but Sun had been gamely servicing her needs, and it was time for his richly-deserved reward. Blake leaned forward to kiss him deeply as she resumed riding him like a woman possessed. It wasn't much longer before her efforts were rewarded with the sensation of him releasing within her.

Blake rolled off of him, the couple panting heavily for breath. She curled against him, giggling softly as she saw that she'd just fucked him insensate. Words may have been a bit beyond poor Sun at that moment, but even as he began losing his struggle to stay awake, exhausted from the superhuman effort of satisfying her raging sex drive, he pulled her close to him with an arm, his tail curling around her again out of instinct.

Blake was surprised to see small waves of rich violet emanating from her. She was purring in her contentment.

Well. A hot fuck and a loving cuddle turned out to be exactly what the doctor ordered after all.

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"Hello, Friend Blake. How are you feeling today?"

"I'm feeling much better today, Penny. Thank you."

"So," the robot girl began. "Weiss and I were thinking of how to help with sensory overload, and I came up with an idea that might help. Would you be willing to try it out?"

"Sure. What is it?"

Penny brought out what looked almost like a set of headphones made of white and black plastics, with thick padding for the ear cups. "These work off the same sort of basis as sound-canceling headphones, but for brainwaves."

"My...brainwaves?" echoed Blake, quietly alarmed.

"Oh, don't be afraid, Friend Blake. Just like headphones don't make you deaf, this device isn't going to cause a permanent alteration to your function. It's just going to introduce interference that will, hopefully, cancel out the synesthesia."

Blake sighed, forcing herself to relax. "I'm sorry, Penny. I guess it's different for you, as you're more used to altering your body."

"That's true, but Miss Nikos has been helping me to understand what it's like for organic people. I'm not sure that I entirely understand it, but I think I have some idea."

"Well...this isn't a prosthetic. It's just a device, like glasses," Blake reasoned. She took up the headset. "So, how does this work?"

"The metal band goes across the back of your head, like this," said Penny, helping Blake to adjust it. "Each of these cups goes over your human ears. Now, it doesn't do anything until you turn it on. Reach up with your left hand - there's a large button on the left cup."

Blake did as instructed. As she pressed the button over her left human ear, the device made a cheery beep, and a purple-tinted visor of some translucent material extended from each ear-cup to form over her eyes.

"Friend Blake?" Penny asked. "Can you hear me?"

Blake stared at Penny...and how there had been none of the gleaming emerald rings that she had come to associate with her voice.

"Penny?" Blake's own voice sounded distant, as if she were underwater. Was this how humans heard the world? More importantly, she couldn't see her own soundwaves. "I think it's working. Speak again?"

"I hope that it works, to keep you from sensory overload," Penny said. "What do you hear? What do you see?"

"I can hear you, Penny, but I don't see your rings anymore."

"Do you feel...nauseous at all? Or disoriented?"

Blake shook her head. "No. Let me try moving around."

Over the next half hour, they put the device through its paces, making sure that its fit would remain tight even through Blake's more acrobatic antics. Looking through the visor was like looking through purple sunglasses, but it was an easier adjustment to make than trying to deal with the influx of soundwaves that would be coming at her in a combat situation. She didn't even see soundwaves when she shot Gambol Shroud at a firing range.

The final test came when Blake turned off the device. The visor retracted into the earmuffs, and the headset beeped cheerily once more before going inert. Blake's hearing was restored to its normal state, and she could see small rings of sound waves in the distance from the ambient noise of the city of Vale.

"How are you feeling?" Penny asked her, emanating her normal gleaming emerald rings.

"I'm back to normal...well, for a given value of normal, I guess." She beamed at the robot girl. "Penny, this is amazing! It worked perfectly." She surprised herself by hugging her. "Thank you so much," she croaked. "I don't know what I would have done without your help."

"D'aww, hugs are nice," said Penny. "You don't have to thank me, Friend Blake. Helping people is what I was made to do."

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"Wait," asked Sun as Blake cuddled against him. "If this device means that you can't see sounds anymore, then why don't you have it on all the time?"

Ah. Caught.

Blake flushed. "Sometimes, I...like seeing the rings, especially from people that I like. They're pretty."

Sun stretched, putting his hands behind his head with an unbearably smug, simian smile.

"Maybe I like you," she admitted, unable to look him in the eye.

"Just like, huh?"

"Maybe I like you a lot."

"Uh-huh."

"Hey," she said, pointing her mechanical finger at him and narrowing her amber eyes in mock-threat. "Don't push the maybe, baby."

Sun snorted in amusement. "Wouldn't dream of it."

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The faculty had been quite understanding of the circumstances with Teams RWBY and JNPR, but Blake didn't want to fall too far behind in her scholastics. Typing up a history report was also good practice for her new hand, but more to the point, she felt like she owed it to Doctor Oobleck's memory. From what Yang and Weiss had told her, the odds that her having gone with them into that room probably wouldn't have made the difference between the excitable historian's life or death. Though she didn't remember the events surrounding his death and her mutilation, she couldn't help but wonder if things would have been different had she been there as well. Still, that was the past, and neither she, nor anyone else, could change it. What she could do was to take her studies seriously, as he would have wanted for his students.

She didn't have her visor activated, and as such, she was taken a bit by surprise by the small, violet soundwaves that teased the lower right of her peripheral vision. Looking down, she saw them emanating from her hand as the mechanisms sent her fingers skittering across her keyboard.

Oh. Ren was right.

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Blake had her hood pulled up as she made her way to Ozpin's office. It wasn't an update on Ruby's condition - there would have been an alert sent to her Scroll for that - so perhaps he had been monitoring her recovery from Mountain Glenn and had some new, subtle mission for her particular talents.

She emerged from the elevator and strode into his office. She was about to ask what he wanted of her when she saw that the Headmaster had a visitor. The woman turned around and -

Blake could hardly breathe. "Mom?" she asked, her voice wavering.

"My baby girl."

Kali Belladonna crossed the antechamber in two great, bounding strides, and gathered her only daughter to her in a tight embrace.

The younger Belladonna was overwhelmed with the torrent of emotions raging through her. Regret, relief, shame, and a great, all-consuming need for her mother's comfort crashed and warred within her. Tears fell freely from her eyes.

"Shh…" Kali soothed her. "It's okay, kitten. Mother's here."

In that moment, held by her mother, suffused with her love, Blake felt truly invincible.

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Endnotes: Contemplations on the phenomenon of consciousness and its relation to the physical body. Also, a dedicated arc to Blake coming to terms with what happened to her, and accepting the assistive devices that she needs to continue in her quest to become a Huntress.

Blacksun is go, I repeat, Blacksun is go. Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention "Don't push the maybe, baby," is a line from an old comedy movie, "Major Payne."

There hasn't been a point in this story where one or the other of the cast hasn't been just a complete pain in the ass for the others to deal with. As Weiss said, that's family.

Blake: But I'm an insufferable bitch?

Weiss: Yes, but you're our insufferable bitch, and we love you.

Penny didn't quite understand how Blake was feeling, but she tries. She always tries so very hard to be a helper, and I just adore her to bits.

Speaking of hands, my own has been recovering well. I'm thinking one more interlude chapter, either for Weiss or Yang, and then I'll be able to resume normal updates. This one was typed out over about three days or so, with frequent pauses.

Thanks for reading!

Love,

Mahina