Chapter 2: We Don't Operate on Jars of Spaghetti Sauce

"God gave me depression, because had my ambitions gone unchecked, I would have bested him in hand to hand by the age of sixteen."

— 3 —

Blake was alone.

And it was all her fault.

Waking up in her own bed in the dorms gave her a weird sense of dysmorphia. It felt like a lifetime since she was here, instead of in some kind of alternate reality, or in the caves, or somewhere in a war-torn city. Or a hotel, head on her partner's chest. She stared at the ceiling, trying to parse out exactly where she was until it all hit her.

Usually, Jaune would wake her up. She knew he had a scroll alarm set, but he'd always woken up before it. Blake would hear the dim jingle of his necklace as left the covers and made his bed. She'd glare murder at him for daring to wake her up as he stretched, did calisthenics like push-ups, and eventually dressed himself to go out for a morning run. By the time he left, she had typically woken herself up and decided to just roll with being awake.

This morning, that had happened. And she'd just tried her best to ignore him and go back to sleep. She rolled over, facing the wall, screwing her eyes shut in the hopes that maybe she could drown out the sounds of clothing rustling against his body or the faint noises from his necklace.

She heard Weiss get up too, and tried not to think about it. She simply forced herself back to sleep until her alarm eventually got her. Blake had grown so used to getting it before it went off and preemptively snoozing it, that she was almost surprised she still had an alarm set for the morning.

Blake set up, blinking the sleep from her eyes, and looked around at just how empty the room was. For a moment, she imagined herself back on the night she punched Weiss, how she had slunk away to hide in one of the empty rooms now being occupied by the foreign students here for the Vytal Festival. As the last vestiges of sleep left her, she almost imagined the past month had just been a dream. That she hadn't told Jaune she loved him. Hadn't been so stupid as to kiss him. And hadn't tried her hardest not to cry what he pushed her away.

Shamrock came out of the bathroom, her hair a messy red mop. She almost didn't seem like she could see Blake, just carrying on like a zombie as she got onto her knees and started fishing under her bed for her backpack. That being the only thing really moving in the room, Blake watched with blank eyes.

"I can feel you staring, Blake," she said, pulling out her shoes and a crumpled school uniform in the boy's fashion. Shamrock gave it a sniff and seemed to find it acceptable.

Blake blanked. "Ugh, what? No!"

Shamrock sat under bed, slouching forward so she could rest her chin on her hand. "One of these days I'm going to be the one having an emotional crisis, and you're not going to know what to do because I'm the only one of us who is mentally stable."

"You're not even physically stable!" Blake said, and then briefly wondered if she had gone too far. She was about to suck in a breath and apologize, when Shamrock brushed her face and freckles appeared on her cheek.

"Says the girl who still wears a bow to hide her ears," Shamrock said without any heat.

Blake looked away, feeling her ears flatten. She hadn't worn the hairbow in Team BASS' room since last Long Night. "It's for personal reasons."

Shamrock kept her chin on her hand, nodding. "Look, I'm only like maybe thirty-percent awake right now? The doctor is only in after drinking a nearly lethal dose of morning coffee. So if I'm going to offer you some help, I can't legally be held responsible for medical malpractice. Even if the malpractice is really funny."

Blake stood up, feeling oddly clammy in her pajamas. The dorms didn't have the best heating. She suspected the school presupposed if you really were cold, you could use your aura, but she had no proof it just wasn't shitty HVAC. "What's funny? There's nothing funny going on. Just a perfectly normal morning."

"So you're not blue due to painfully obvious boy trouble?"

Blake made a noise in her throat. "No!"

"Ah. Trauma over your ex?"

"Stop it!"

Shamrock seemed to think it over for a moment. "Lingering results of a strained relationship with your dead parents?"

"They're both alive and I have a great relationship with my mom and dad, thank you very much!"

That seemed to catch Shamrock off guard. "Huh. Really?"

"Yes!"

"Weird. I'm pretty sure over half of the kids on campus will break down into their tragic backstory at the mere suggestion of their parents."

Blake considered. "Actually, yeah, that is kind of weird. It's like almost everyone here has the same dark tragic secret but it's also painfully obvious."

Shamrock shrugged with one hand. "I think it's the superpowered equivalent of girls who grow up without their fathers becoming strippers, or boys who grow up without their fathers also growing up into being girls who become strippers. Just toss in an Aura into that mix and you get us."

Blake didn't really know what to make of that. "Uh, what? Are you—are you trying to tell me something? You okay?"

Shamrock tilted her head, and with one brush of her hand over her face, suddenly he was smiling. "No. What on Restavec would ever make you think that about me, Blake?"

Blake rubbed her arms. "You know what, this conversation is getting weird. I'm not sure if you're making a joke or—I'm just kind of uncomfortable."

"Oh, look at the girl who has both living parents who love her, being uncomfortable," Shamrock said with a friendly laugh, removing his nightshirt to put his official uniform undershirt on. "I bet you call them every night and they tell you how proud they are of you."

Part of Blake wanted to be offended, but Shamrock's tone was clearly not meant to hurt her. He was just, for lack of a better word, screwing with her. Which, although not exactly hitting the mark, did somewhat bring her out of her morning funk. Enough to remember to use the bathroom and her teeth, giving her time to collect her thoughts.

When she got out, Shamrock was fidgeting with the buttons of his suit jacket.

"Y'know," Blake said, trying to find her own uniform. She hadn't really had the chance to wear it in a month. "I haven't really talked to my parents in maybe a year."

"That bother you?" he asked, tying a bow tie around his hands so he could adjust it around his neck later.

"I don't know. I guess it kind of does. I've never really had the occasion. They have half an idea of where I went, but they don't know I'm at Beacon." She shrugged, trying to put on her uniform skirt, remembering the story Coco told her of the girl who went commando in order to make a point about their short length. "They live pretty far away. A good few time zones up. Whereas we've got some time before the cafeteria opens for breakfast, and they're probably out already enjoying lunch."

"You should give them a ring," he said simply.

"Huh?"

Shamrock made a circular gesture with his hand. "If you're willing to skip breakfast, you can probably get an hour or so of time to chat. We're kind of located at the base of the CCTS tower, which can literally call almost anywhere in the world. Montluçon looks like it was pretty big international news. There's a good chance your parents saw you out there and are worried."

Blake froze midway through buttoning her blouse. She remembered the way the Humming Lady had made pretty clear implications Adam had seen her on TV and that was the reason he had ordered her and the local White Fang to help her team out. The idea that he had been watching her from somewhere far away, and had gone out of his way to try to affect her life, gave her uncomfortable goosebumps. But the idea that people like her parents had seen her, and had no way to contact her, because they didn't even know where she was, and—

"I mean," Shamrock laughed, "if my own mom didn't consider me legally dead for Vacuan tax credits, I might have called her up. I don't really get this relationship crap, but maybe this will be one more little worry off your belt so you can focus on what's really giving you this embarrassingly obvious saudade."

Which was how Blake ended up skipping breakfast in order to go to the communication rooms in the CCTS Tower. It wasn't exactly the most coherent idea. Just a bunch of vague feelings of guilt pushing her forward, and a desire not to run into Jaune at breakfast. It was an ursa she was going to have to face one way or the other when class began, but putting it off, the necessity of being shoulder to shoulder with him until she had no choice due to mission or dorming, helped put her mind at ease. Teams typically sat together when they ate. Assuming Jaune was even going to eat breakfast at all, which he seemed to forget to do a lot.

The communications room was located pretty high up in the CCTS Tower. This early, the only people who seemed to be here were a rare handful of students who weren't wearing regular uniforms. She assumed they were Mistrali students trying to call home at a reasonable hour. Same reason she was here; Menagerie shared a time zone with one of Mistral's.

Of course, figuring out how to make a long distance call to Kuo Kuana wasn't the easiest task. The capital of Menagerie didn't have a major tower like this; it was more or less a communications spoke of the main tower in Mistral Prime. Calling someone who operated off the same CCTS tower was simple enough. You just needed their basic number. But calling outside your location region required knowing prefixes to the right tower, which went to another tower, And then dialing the prefix to get through that tower. You needed a map to understand which prefixes to call and a lot of power. If she just dialed her father's number currently in her own scroll, the result of a data transfer from her old model to the one that Beacon provided her, it would just dial some random person in Vale who happened to have the same number. That was the nature of a long-distance call.

Blake had to consult a map of CCTS towers and their communication relays before dialing in through the radio computer.

Blake sat at the visual screen, before the camera, and dialed 00—the two numbers indicating you were dialing out of region. If she wasn't doing this from within the CCTS tower itself, her scroll bill would be enormous. It was more efficient and cost-effective to make these kinds of things from the tower itself.

Her eyes followed the map on screen, which handily gave instructions for the direction she wanted to make her call. Jumping from tower to tower across mountains, plains, and oceans via the endless elysium of airwaves.

00-14-14-44-71-11-73-61-45. And then finally, when she had dialed into Kuo Kuana, she rang her father up at 16-74-51-451.

Her heart pounded with anxiety. Fears that this wasn't the correct number and that instead she was accidentally calling some little granny in the backwater end of Solitas. Or that maybe her father would see this was an incredibly long-distance call, and decline to answer. Or just that this was a terrible idea, because they weren't worried about her at all and hadn't seen the news and giving them a ring would only ruin their day. She hadn't left under the best circumstances.

The windup was long. Slowly crossing wireless communications over an entire planet, long before it was even able to get the first call to her father. She sat there and waited, hugging herself, slowly rocking back and forth as she waited for it to connect in the first place.

The elevator to the communications room opened. Blake paid it no mind, rubbing her arms in her private little call booth until she heard familiar voices. Under her hair bow, whatever ears went erect. She poked her head up over the wall.

Weiss walked with the determination of a ballerina about to perform her seminal work, fists bald, and eyes dead set ahead. She walked with a very slight limp, softly glowing white with her Aura to compensate. But by god, what was she wearing? And that tomboy haircut! Blake wasn't even sure it was Weiss, but the scars on her face meant it couldn't be anybody else.

But walking beside her—

Blake ducked back down, hiding in her booth. Jaune. Of all the rooms in the world he could have walked into, and he walked into hers. She didn't want to think of why he was with Weiss, or why he was wearing almost matching sports attire, or the way they were both covered in sweat, or—

She forced her palm into her eye, willing the mental image away. The very moment she had them, she realized how ridiculous and petty she was being, and a wave of nauseous embarrassment crept over her. It wasn't a rational thought. It was a spinning hamster wheel in her head going to impossibly bad conclusions for its own painful sake.

Blake looked at her monitor again. The call was still routing through the entire world.

"But international calls are kind of expensive, yeah?" Jaune said. "Is this even going to be worth it?"

Weiss sighed. "Look, I don't have any better options. All of my banking is done through home. The last person I want to call is my father, but I'm not sure what else I can do."

"We can help support you?" he offered.

She scoffed. "With what money? You spend everything you have on not wearing clothes, and make up the difference by not eating food."

Blake listened as they walked past her booth towards one of the other call terminals. Once they were far enough, she poked her head up to watch.

Jaune made an expansive gesture with one hand. "Okay, fair point. But it still feels like we're rushing to an obvious conclusion. Besides, this call is expensive."

She gave him an annoyed look. "But they're a lot cheaper and economical if you do it here in the CCTS core instead of an ancillary tower, or God forbid a personal device."

The boy shook his head. "No, I mean, if the point is that neither of us have any money, how are we going to make a call in the first place?"

Weiss froze as soon as she got to one of the call terminals. "I… oh. That's… huh."

"That was what I was getting at," he said with a sign.

Standing there with a blank expression as she idly fingered her short hair, Weiss said, "I've… never actually considered a possibility where I couldn't buy my way through a thing. This is…" Weiss laughed awkwardly, cheeks suddenly going red. "This is actually kind of, aha!"

He put his hands on his hips, staring down at the monitor within the booth. "Hey, hold on. I think I have an idea." He vanished into the little cubby as Weiss stood outside, watching him and playing with her hands like she didn't know what to do with them.

"What?" she asked.

Blake just kept staring at Weiss' back. The little white sweater and those comically tight yoga pants made her look entirely wrong. Like she was trying to imitate the kind of fitness influencer that Blake hated as a rule. She scowled as she caught a girl passing by also staring at both their asses.

"Remember how I worked detention on the weekends here?" he asked. "I have network admin credentials. I think if I log in here, I might be able to jury rig a free call."

Weiss looked like she was trying really hard not to bite her fingernails. "It says access denied. Why can't you log in?"

A pause.

"I can read it too, Weiss," he said, puzzled. "Maybe the card reader isn't working. Wait, what? I can log in with student credentials, but I can't log in as an admin. Did my certs expire?"

"Search for what?"

He stepped out of the booth, shaking his head. "Cert, certification. All of our student IDs use a PIV system. It lets you plug them into a card reader and log in as yourself. Kind of a security risk that you can actually install multiple certificates for different login permissions onto one card, but whatever."

She stared at him. "You have officially lost me."

Tilting his head to the side, and looking out through the window, he said, "Lost the battle, maybe not the war. I got one last Hail Mary to play…" He took out his scroll, and after a moment of looking through his contacts—at least Blake thought it was; She wasn't the best at reading words backwards through the other side of a scroll—he dialed someone up.

Weiss looked like a little girl who had just lost her mother in a crowded store and didn't know how to cry. She kept shifting her weight from foot to foot, adjusting her hair as if she still had the hair to push around.

"Yo, Lance Sergeant Ozrick!" he said loudly. "Did I wake you up? Good, fuck you! Listen, I need a solid."

Jaune pressed a button, and the voice on the other end spoke through the speaker.

"Kid," the groggy, sleepy voice on the other end said. "Eat a dick. In fact, eat several kinds of dick. I'll bring in my favorite ranch and cheese sauces next time I see you at work so you can try them all out. I was happily asleep!"

Ozrick. The name rang an uncomfortable bell of familiarity to Blake. She'd once met a soldier with the First Cavalry by that name before the Army had blown the walls to the town she had been in and let the Grimm in. He had actually tried to warn her. But the voice on the other end of the scroll was uncanny. Sure, small world and all, but it couldn't possibly be him, and he couldn't possibly somehow be friends with Jaune.

"Okay," Jaune said happily as Weiss gave him a disbelieving expression. "But you're castrating the dicks to bring. But for real, I need your help. Trying to log in with my admin credentials and it says access denied. Not expired or anything. Specifically denied. You know anything about that?"

The sergeant grunted. "If I did, why would I tell you? You woke me up. I don't work the day shift and this is Ozrick time."

Jaune snapped fingers. "Because if you don't, I'll tell Eschweiler that lance sergeant isn't a real NCO rank. It's a double lateral promotion from E-4 due to a technicality, and that means he's actually your ranking superior."

"Bitch," the soldier hissed, but without any heat. He sounded too exhausted to be angry. "But for real, I wouldn't know. If it's denied, that means someone did it on purpose because you still have the PIV on your card. I didn't do it nor did the Atlesian nerd; he's got his own concerns about being deported alongside Ironwood. If anyone did it, it was the day shift boys. You can probably go talk to them and ask, if you still have swipe."

"Nah. Would take too long and I have class."

"Right. Fine. I'll look into it when I get to work tonight. I'll text you something. I'll know for sure when we see you Friday for your shift." He paused. "Oh, and I guess good job for not dying in Montluçon. Did you get to say hi to my old colonel?"

"Yeah, actually. I'll tell you all about it when I'm chewing those dicks like bubble gum."

The soldier laughed. "Sweet. Bye, bitch."

Click.

Jaune ran his hand down his face, sighing. "Okay. Well. That was a bust and now I'm just left with a lot more crippling problems."

"So now what do we do?" Weiss asked, throwing a hand up. It was uncomfortably close to her losing all of her cool.

"I don't know!" he said. "If we can't afford the call, then we can't do it."

"Then what am I supposed to do?"

"What are you asking me for?"

She looked at him like he was stupid. "I mean, technically, you're supposed to be our team leader who has answers and ideas to these kinds of things."

"Like half an hour ago you were berating me on my terrible people skills as a leader."

"I said you were passable as a leader, but subpar as a human being. Big difference."

Blake looked at her own monitor while the two argued and tried to work things out. Calls back home took forever, and she was going through several, several towers and routes. And that was before it even got to her father's number. And assuming he accepted the call, which was far from guaranteed.

She closed her eyes and let out a breath. Then she felt out with her Aura, bringing to life a shadow clone of herself to hold down the booth. It was supposed to be a perfect copy of her, and at least her last actions. But the girl she was staring at, her reflection, looked like she was about to break at just the slightest touch. It left Blake uncomfortable. And further spurred her to approach her teammates.

"Hi!" Blake said, staring aggressively at her feet or to the side, keeping Jaune barely a ghost in a peripheral vision.

The two stopped arguing.

"Oh. Uh," Jaune tried. "Blake. Fancy seeing you here."

Blake swallowed. "Look, Weiss, you need to make a call back home? It sounds important. Is it?"

Weiss looked at her with wide eyes, and then rolled her eyes at Jaune. "I do. Complicated political reasons mean I don't have any money right now and need to call home and try to figure out how I'm going to avoid starving to death."

Jaune's shoulders were bunched up, but he still tried to roll them in a kind of shrug. "You could join me in not eating?"

"Jaune, have you seen me?" she asked. "I can't afford to miss a meal. If I don't eat just once, then poof! I wither away and die. Is that what you want from me, Jaune?"

Blake continued trying not to look at the boy. Grimacing, she said, "I… don't really know what's going on at all, but if you need money to call home, I have some Lien lying around. I could spot this one time, I guess, y'know?"

Weiss looked completely frazzled. In a toneless voice she said, "Is this really what my life has come to? Begging my friends for money just to make a simple call?"

"Huh," Jaune said, perking up. "Hey, Weiss, I think Blake found your pride. I think you owe her your unending love and admiration now!"

Rubbing the scar on her forehead that Blake had given her, Weiss said in that same voice, "Yes. You are right, Jaune. Blake, please accept this humble request for marriage and to bear my children."

"Uh, hard pass?" Blake said, taking a step back.

"You're right," Weiss said. "I don't need any more children. I'm already this team's thankless single mom, and all my kids are ungrateful brats."

"I'm not ungrateful," Blake said, folding her arms. "You're my friend, Weiss. And, y'know, it's whatever. I know you're making a joke, but I'm really trying to help. I've got a little money saved up from here and there. Please don't make this awkward."

Weiss inhaled deeply. With a slightly manic edge, she said, "You know what? Deal. Blake, it would really mean a lot to me if you could lend me some money to make this call. In exchange, I'll make double sure that the birthday cake I'm planning to make you in secret will be the best you've ever had. And I'll force Jaune to help me make it. Deal?"

Blake blinked. "D-deal?"

"I'm game," Jaune mumbled. "Sounds fun."

Blake tried to get past Jaune into the booth. He didn't step to the side, and she felt goosebumps on her flesh where she slid past him. Weiss was already logging into the radio computer with her student idea. As Blake scanned her own ID to pay for the call, she said, "Look, don't make a big deal about it. Whenever the pay gets through from the mission, you can comp me."

"If I can even access any bank to pay with," Weiss said, sitting down. She dialed 00 before looking through the directory to find the numbers she needed to call home.

"What mission payment?" Jaune asked.

Blake looked over and met his blue eyes, and averted her gaze. "We're Hunters; even as students, we get something for taking mission contracts."

Jaune made a face. "Wait, we do?"

Weiss stopped dialing just to stare at him. "Yes! My god, did you somehow not know this? We have to eat somehow, fighting Grimm! The free market can figure it out in the real world, but if they come through Beacon the school pays us a sort of commission. Remember that night we spent looking over the contract? The pay was right there, and really good, because it was deemed pretty dangerous."

The boy blinked. "Oops."

"Jaune!" Weiss snapped.

He shrugged helplessly.

Weiss shook her head, grumbling under her breath as she kept dialing.

Blake didn't have anything to say to that. She really didn't know where to bring this conversation. She tried to say something, only to remember Jaune was there. With a hot flush to her cheeks and something less than comfortable in her guts, she shut her mouth and watched Weiss work.

The one time she looked at Jaune, he was just standing there, hand half-raised like he wanted to do something. He looked suddenly ashamed and stopped. All he could do was awkwardly shuffling in place like he wanted to leave, but had nowhere to go. Picks at his fingers seemed the most interesting thing in the world to him.

Under her bow, one of her cat ears twitched, listening for her own call. The booths were designed to give callers some privacy, but whoever had designed this place must have been human and didn't account for how well some faunus could hear. She looked over her shoulder, the one that didn't force her to pass her eyes over Jaune, and did nothing.

She looked back to see Weiss glaring at Blake's reflection in the monitor.

"Don't you have something to do?" Weiss asked.

"I don't know," Blake said.

"I think she meant me?" Jaune suggested.

"I, uh, yeah, maybe," Blake said. Then she cringed, expecting Jaune to say the thing. About maybe and the baby. But he didn't, and for some reason she couldn't explain, that kind of hurt. She felt part of her heart sinking.

"Both of you," Weiss said sufferingly, turning around. "You're both making it really hard to concentrate. In fact, leave. Both of you. Right now. It's going to be awkward enough calling my dad wearing this. I don't want you two making it even more complicated."

"What am I supposed to be doing?" Jaune asked.

Weiss shoved at both Jaune and Blake. "I don't know. Not my problem right now. Go ask her to the school dance like we planned."

"The dance? What?" Blake asked. "Me and him?"

Weiss ignored her. "Just stop awkwardly standing behind me and actually talk or something. I can't focus like this!"

She ejected Jaune and Blake out of the little cubby. Then, with one final glare, returned to her radio computer.

Blake stared up at Jaune. From the little scar on his cheek to the hints of the healing burns on his arm from when Weiss and Coco set him on fire. Neither of them could directly look at each other. And oh god, this was awkward. They hadn't really talked since she kissed him, and, well, yeah. Stuff. Bad stuff. Lots of running away, only to get an airship ride back to campus and sleep in the same room again. It was really hard to avoid looking at or talking with someone you had to be so close to every day as a matter of course.

And then she heard it. The little click of a calling connected. Her cat ears twitched and felt hot.

"Ghira Belladonna speaking," her father said dubiously yet professionally. His voice was just a little tinny from the far end of Remnant. "To whom am I—my god, Blake? Blake, is that you?"

Her shadow! "Oh my gods!" she hissed in panic. Blake spun from Jaune, thankful for the excuse, and sprinted. A moment later she was sliding into her booth, hitting her stationary clone and dispersing it to shadows.

"Dad!" she said.

Ghira. The Lion of Belladonna. The former leader of the White Fang. Elected representative of the Faunus people of Menagerie. Her father. He looked so different from the last time she'd seen him. Sitting in front of a desk to take the call in the office she had spent countless hours in as a girl, wearing reading glasses and robes that served the same role as a suit here in Vale or Atlas. He had lines around his eyes that she didn't remember, and his black hair was flecked with the barest hints of salt and pepper. But even with glasses and scrunched over a desk, she could tell he was still the imposing man who had always been there for her growing up, who tried to teach her right from wrong, and who failed to stop her from leaving home to follow Adam.

She tried to speak, only to find a lump in her throat. She choked something out, smiling an expression that was mostly teeth. Her cheeks felt hot, and she was suddenly incredibly conscious of the weight of her hair bow on her head covering her ears. She could only imagine what Dad thought of her, seeing her as an adult in this school uniform, on a call that must have just said it was coming from Vale.

Blake looked into his eyes, and for a moment thought she saw a flicker of something angry. She thought her father might scream and yell, ask why she left, how she could do something like that to her parents, and why she hadn't even tried contacting until now.

Instead, he calmly removed his glasses and folded them up, with just the barest hint of shake and his hands. With a smile, he said, "Look what the cat dragged home!"

She snorted. "It's been over a year—can you please find new material? That joke wasn't funny in the first place."

Dad laughed. "Your mom still laughs at it."

"Yeah," she said, rolling her eyes. "But Mom has the worst sense of humor in the world."

He nodded seriously. "Yeah, I'll say. She married a joke like me."

Blake couldn't keep the smile off her face, even though she tried to hide it beneath her hand. "God, Dad, I love you. I missed you so much. I—I don't know. I'm sorry I never called. I haven't really been able to for so long. And now."

"Ghira!" she heard her mom call from off screen. "Are you going to be long?"

Her father stood up suddenly. "Kali, Kali! Come here. You're never going to believe it! Kali, quick!"

Seeing her father get so excited and giddy made Blake laugh. It just seemed so unlike her dad. As if he had suddenly gotten thirty years younger.

Mom pushed the door open with her hips, walking in backwards as she carried a bag of something. "Please don't remind me of our first time together," she teased, only for the noise to stop as she saw Blake.

She dropped her bag and sprinted towards the screen. Nearly knocking Dad's office chair over, she said so quickly it was hard to understand, "Blake! Oh my gods, Blake! Are you hurt? Are you alright? Someone said they thought they saw you on the news from Vale, but I didn't believe them! Why are you wearing that bow? What's with the school girl outfit? Have you been eating right; you look thin. Oh my gosh, we missed your eighteenth birthday! Blake!"

Shaking her head, Blake waved. "Hi, mom. I just—" She swallowed another lump in her throat. "Gods, I don't know. I don't know anything. But I'm fine. I'm in Vale now. I kind of forgot it was my birthday already."

Her mother's eyes went wide. She looked too excited for her age, and she already looked really good. Blake wished she would age that gracefully. "Wait, you're in Vale? With humans?" Suddenly lowering her voice, she asked, "Do you need help? Ghira, we can get her out and help her, right? I swear to God, if anyone hurt my little girl—"

Blake held up her hands. "Mom, Dad, I'm fine! Really! I mean, the most part. Things have been rough recently. But I'm managing, and for the most part, I think things are going good. You don't have to worry about me; I can take care of myself."

Her father tried to get control of the camera again, but Mom kept him pushed to the side. "Are you sure?" she asked. "I mean, Blake it's been so long, and we were so worried, but we always thought you could handle yourself, but I'm still your mother, and now you're in Vale, and you look weird, and who is that human boy behind you and why can I see his nipples?"

A length of ice shot through Blake's heart. She had been so focused on the conversation, seeing her parents, that she had utterly forgotten Jaune. She turned around slowly, trying not to look terrified as she realized that he must have just followed her here.

And yeah, you could see Jaune's nipples poking through his obscenely tight shirt.

Jaune looked a little startled to be called out. "Oh, uh, me?"

Blake shook her head rapidly, making a cutting motion across her throat that he didn't seem to notice.

"I'm basically Blake's human thermometer. She judges based on my nipples whether or not she should wear a coat outside." He adjusted his chest like a dial. "It is currently thirty-eight degrees. Solid sweater weather."

Blake tried to speak, but nothing came out. Her throat was dry. She could feel her stomach falling into a black hole. Despite the vague chill, she realized she was sweating bullets. All she could do was make half coherent gestures, trying to implore him to do anything but talk to her parents.

Jaune had a similar expression, but less desperate. More confused. Someone who had no idea what he was doing, but didn't know how to back out in any case. "Uh, Blake? Who is—I mean, is she—like, I didn't know you had a sister."

Mom scowled. "Her mother, actually."

He blinked. "Oh. Well. Huh. I didn't really intend to get dragged into this, but at this point I'm too invested in the conversation to just leave, and I don't know how to gracefully exit in any case."

Her legs feeling numb, she managed to stand up and start trying to push him. "Jaune, please!" she said.

Jaune twitched, deflecting her hand. And suddenly she remembered being back in the reality marble, trying to punch him, and the way he shoved her against the wall with his hand on her neck. But instead of going on the attack, he just stepped back, hands raised in almost playful defense.

"Whoa, Blake, whoa!" he said. "Now's not the time to get physical. Your mom is right there!"

Dad finally managed to get back onto screen, his face nearly pressed up against Mom's. "Blake, who's this?"

Both of them stopped trying to wrestle each other and looked at the screen.

"Wait, if she's your mom, then that means he's…" Jaune said.

Blake put her hands together as if in prayer, or begging. "Jaune, no. Jaune, no!"

"Because your daughter and I were talking, and realized we had something we wanted to tell you."

And instantly she knew exactly where he was going. She tried to grab him and force him out of the booth, but he was bigger and heavier than she was, and she couldn't make him budge.

A shadow fell over Dad's face. "Blake, human boy, what is it you both wanted to tell us? Why are you acting like it's some big secret? Blake, are you okay? Sweetie?"

Mom looked like she would probably be strangling Jaune if only she could get her hands on the boy. She kept flexing her hands, powerlessly, glaring.

"Jaune, please, don't you dare!" she begged, practically falling on top of him.

Her parents exchanged glances, and Blake could read all of the thoughts they were having. Was their daughter in danger? Was she here against her will? Was she lying to them, and really did need help? Or, worst of all as their faces darkened, was Blake pregnant? With a human child?

"Boy," Dad said dangerously, leaning over his desk. "What did you do?"

Jaune held his hands up so as not to touch Blake. Looking awkwardly at her parents, he said, "Oh, uh, I mean, nothing, Mr. Belladonna, it's more—well, fact is, you see… we realized that we both think you're gay and your wife has the right to know."

"What?!" her parents said in mortified unison.

Blake felt her entire body shudder. Every single nerve was on fire. She could practically feel herself internally bleeding below her cheeks. Her muscles practically gave in, barely able to keep her standing. Jaune actually had to catch her, holding her softly in his calloused hands. She tried to speak, but all that came out was an incoherent slurry of sounds.

"Blake?" Jaune asked with genuine concern. Still holding her, he gently let her down into the chair before the radio computer. "Wait, you all right? Did you have a stroke? Do you smell toast?"

"Yes," she mumbled pathetically. "Me."

Somewhere in the background of her mind, she could hear her parents screaming and yelling.

Jaune continued touching her with care. When he was sure she wouldn't fall over or anything, he let her go, and for some reason a part of her was almost annoyed he had. He stared at the monitor for a long moment, before saying, "Y'know what, I only followed because you ran off and I was worried. But, uh, yeah."

"You were worried about me?" she asked dubiously.

"I thought you were in trouble," he said awkwardly. "Got scared for you. But I kind of think I made things worse."

"Yeah…" Blake said, slumping.

He reached his hand out towards her, and then stopped as he watched her parents scream and yell at him. "I'll see you in class, yeah? Sorry."

And then, mostly, after making things as bad as he possibly could, Jaune just left. And what was left of Blake was just a hot, sweaty, deeply embarrassed mess. She couldn't even bring herself to look at the monitor. She just covered her eyes with her hands, sighing deeply into it. Even as her parents asked her if he was okay, and ran through the litany of concerns they had, she couldn't really address them. Not until she got her wherewithal back.

After everything that had happened, with just the slightest implication of trouble, Jaune had apparently panicked and ran after her to make sure she was okay. After everything that happened, and it was almost like he was still thinking of her like, well, like he always had. In his stupid, idiotic, boyish, zero-long-term-planning way. He had just rushed headlong into the unknown for her sake, and then proceeded to ruin everything by acting exactly like he always did.

Like nothing had really changed between them. Sure, they had changed, but it was like he wasn't acting that way. As if who they both were, what they meant to each other, was the same as it ever was.

Which naturally meant he was going to horribly embarrass her in front of people, and only realize too late what he had done. With absolutely no malice intended, just plain idiocy.

She didn't know what would happen tomorrow, or even later today at class. But some weird part of her thought that maybe things would be okay, in a completely lopsided way. That somehow, they could figure their problems out and deal with them, or all walk away equally traumatized for trying. It was the only way things had ever been for her friends, her team, the people she loved.

It bubbled up from her guts. A quick rush of air that slowly turned from a rumble into laughter. Until the hands she had been holding her eyes back with had to go down to her stomach as she doubled over, unable to contain herself. Until her eyes were wet and her stomach hurt. She gasped for breath, and that only made it funnier, the suffering, the look on her parents' faces.

"Blake? Sweetie!" Mom asked, eyes frantic. "Honey, are you alright?"

"No," Blake said, trying her best to breathe. To get her rosy cheeks and shuddering lungs under control. "No, I'm not. Things are freakin' awful. But I don't think I'd change it for the world. Mom, Dad, I love you guys. It's been a terrible year, and there's some things you should probably know."

"You're not pregnant, are you?" Mom asked, biting her fingernails.

"Kali!" Ghira snapped. "But—you aren't pregnant or anything, right? Just between us, I mean."

And Blake completely lost it all over again.