It caught Weiss' attention when she saw it. She would have been forgiven for missing it. Just the fact of Blake's return was overwhelming, never mind the circumstances of that return, on top of everything else that happened that violent night, like almost dying.
Exhausted though Weiss was, she still noticed the mark on Blake's abdomen.
There wasn't much occasion to talk about it in the whirlwind days that followed the Battle of Haven. There were a million tasks to occupy their little Save-the-World Squad. They knew they needed to get to Atlas as soon as possible to secure the Lamp. At the same time, they couldn't just abandon Mistral. With Lionheart a traitor and the extent of his treachery still unknown, with race relations in total upheaval, with the Kingdom largely denuded of Huntsmen, there was enough work to occupy RWBY for years to come.
Ozpin gave them five days.
That left scant "personal time" for the members of Weiss' surrogate family to catch their breath, decompress, and reconnect. Even having noticed the mark, Weiss never had an opportunity to ask her friend about it. (She hoped Blake was still a friend, at least; so many things were up in the air. One more thing to talk about, if they ever got the chance.)
The fourth night found everyone packing up and preparing to move on. This had taken Weiss an embarrassingly short time to accomplish. She'd escaped from the Branwen bandits with little more than Myrtenaster and the clothes on her back. The group had a small amount of lien to fund entirely too many world-saving activities; of the tiny portion allotted to Weiss, most of it went to Dust and a single set of pajamas.
She finished well before the others, especially since she didn't have the personal connections the others had. Not in this city, anyway. With her part done and the rest of the place in bedlam, Weiss decided to try to stay out of the way. This gave her an opportunity to check something that'd been bothering her.
She stood in the bathroom in her pajamas, looking in the mirror, intensely self-aware. At least there wasn't any makeup around (they couldn't afford it); the déjà vu would have been intense.
Slowly, she lifted the hem of her shirt, and looked at the reflection of her exposed skin above the waist on her right side.
Nothing.
Nothing but a smooth plain of seemingly untouched skin.
She let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding.
There was a knock on the door. "Anyone in there?"
"It's fine," Weiss called back, even as her fingers ran over her skin. Not even a hint of what had been, according to Jaune, a rather sizeable hole punched in her body.
The door eased open and Blake snuck in. She froze when she saw Weiss; her faunus ears flattened against her skull. "I'll come back later," she mumbled.
"I said already, it's fine," said Weiss with a dismissive wave. "In fact, I could use some help."
Blake's ears perked slightly. Weiss felt an urge to giggle. Blake had hidden more than her faunus heritage with that little black bow. "You could?"
"I can't quite see behind me," Weiss said, twisting in the mirror, trying to get a good look at her back. "Could you look back here and tell me if there's a scar?"
Her fingers circled an area of her back that—again, relying on her teammates' memories of the battle—had been the impact point of that blind-siding spear.
Blake frowned, but obliged. She entered the bathroom and shut the door behind her; Weiss immediately saw her lose some of her tension as soon as the door clicked shut. Obligingly, Blake walked to where she could see Weiss' back and peered closely. "Nothing," she said.
"Hm," said Weiss. "You know? I'm almost disappointed."
"With what?" said Blake, surprised.
"You'd think that, if you were impaled and survived, there'd be some lasting mark."
All color left Blake's face. "You were impaled?"
"That's what they told me," said Weiss, tracing her fingers again over her side. "I don't really remember it. It was a sneak attack while I was fighting someone else, and I passed out on the spot. When I woke up, it was already healing over, thanks to Jaune."
Blake goggled harder. "I knew I'd miss things while I was gone, and I'm sorry, but I missed how much? You got impaled and Jaune saved you? Next you'll be telling me, I don't know, that you can summon giant ice monsters, or that Yang actually found her mom."
Weiss smiled.
Blake groaned and let her head droop. "Which one?"
"Both." Weiss chuckled. "We have got to get you caught up. Those were the little things."
Another groan, followed by Blake partially lifting her head. "Next to all of that, you getting impaled four days ago and shaking it off is downright believable."
"It is funny how our minds work," Weiss said, looking at the wound point in the mirror. "Other bad things have happened to me, but I remember them. I had to smuggle myself out of Atlas, and my airship crashed after a grimm attack, and bandits picked me out of the wreckage. I had nightmares about all of that off and on for weeks. After the Fall…"
She paused, feeling like she'd gone too far. Blake had flinched, and her ears were once more dropping low.
Weiss skipped over it. "This time, though? I can barely remember it when I'm awake, let alone asleep. I know it happened, but I don't feel it." She looked at Blake curiously. "Have you been like that before? Where your head is telling you one thing, but your heart feels something else?"
Blake managed a wry smile. "I think everyone feels like that, sometimes."
"Ruby doesn't," Weiss said, as reflexively as the jerk of a knee. She opened her mouth to follow up, but hesitated, wondering if she should go any further.
She decided to plough onwards. She was not about to let this become a minefield, where mentioning her teammates' partners to their partners was hazardous ground. "Yang doesn't, either."
Blake looked like she wanted to say a dozen different things, except they all got jammed up on the way to her mouth. She stood still and squirmed instead.
Weiss valiantly resisted rolling her eyes. "Anyway, if I had a scar, I'd at least know that it'd happened, that it was real, and that I'd walked away from it. That's worth remembering, I think."
Blake's eyes went out of focus. Apparently without thinking about it, one of her hands went to her own side, to the strangely-shaped mark there. "You think so?" she murmured.
"Of course. It means…"
She stopped so suddenly she gave herself whiplash. Blake's look of surprise mirrored her own. "It means what?" she asked.
Weiss gathered herself. "I just realized," she said, "that I'm repeating words I've heard before. I guess, somewhere along the line, I started to believe them."
Blake swallowed. Weiss remembered enough about the "mentor" in Blake's past to know her worries, hearing Weiss say that. Blake had been a prisoner of words before, as much as Weiss had been a prisoner of her father. She wouldn't want anyone else to suffer the same fate.
"Is it… okay?" Blake asked, tentatively and ambiguously. 'It' could mean so many things.
The air around Weiss smelled of roses. "Yes," she said definitely. "This is a Huntress idea. I heard it from a reliable source."
Blake relaxed infinitesimally.
"Think how stubborn and strong you have to be," Weiss said, looking at her own reflection, "to take a hit bad enough to scar, and come back for more."
"Is that how you feel?" Blake asked.
"It wasn't at first," Weiss admitted, and her fingers traced down her face. "But someone changed my mind. Ruby Rose can be quite persuasive."
Blake gave a slight smile. "She can."
Weiss felt herself growing warm as the smell around her got stronger. This, she was amazed to realize, was how powerful Ruby was. She'd given Weiss strength, helped her to love this part of herself—so much strength and love that Weiss had enough to share with Blake when she needed it.
"I decided that she's right," Weiss said, and she turned to face Blake head-on. "So however you got that—and, just so we're clear, I don't intend to pry but I find it fascinating—it speaks well of you. I'm proud of my scar. You should be proud of yours."
"It happened during the Fall."
Blake had blurted out the words, and seemed to regret it; she shrank away, folding in on herself in the way that made her seem half her actual size.
Weiss nodded as she thought back. Yes—that was the wound Blake had been sporting as she'd laid by Yang's unconscious body, sobbing about how sorry she was. Blake must have run off right after, burning what little aura she could muster to flee rather than heal properly.
That told her when she'd gotten the scar, but not how. The way Blake was holding herself suggested that the 'how' was important—and was keeping Blake from feeling as positive about her scar as Weiss suggested.
"And it was after that," Blake said, stumbling, "because of that, that I… I ran off, like a-"
"Stop."
The word was out of Weiss' mouth before she'd let Blake complete that sentence, and a finger was raised in admonition.
"You are not speaking ill of yourself in my presence," Weiss went on, while Blake was still wrapped up in her emotions. "This is a No-Self-Loathing Zone."
Blake huffed mirthlessly. "Well, I guess I'd better leave, then."
"Only after you hear me out," Weiss said, her finger dropping to put a hand on her hips. "Yes, you left. And yes, that hit Yang right in the one soft spot in her tough-gal act. Maybe, when you see the scar, you think it's somehow a reminder of that bad decision you made.
"But!" she went on, not giving Blake a chance to interrupt. "You did something her mother never did, the one and only thing that could fix it. You came back." Exactly as I told Yang you would, she added to herself. "Whatever awfulness happened, whatever drove you to make that decision, you're past it now. You chose something different, something better."
She could see Blake wavering, uncertain. Was this how I looked? Weiss wondered. Was this how Ruby saw me? As someone who had the strength but didn't feel it? Who had done well but didn't realize it?
"That's what your scar means to me," she told Blake. "It means you're stronger than your fear."
Blake sucked in a breath, and Weiss recognized that this comment, at least, had hit home. As Blake's eyes went out of focus, she murmured, possibly to herself, "I wonder if she sees it like that."
There was only one 'she' Blake could mean. Weiss sighed. She wanted to tell Blake "Just ask and see what she says". She knew Blake wouldn't do that.
"If nothing else," she said instead, "you can count on her having the same education as Ruby, so she probably thinks the same way about these things. And if she does, then when she sees that scar, she sees one bad mother."
The words left Weiss' lips before she really thought about it. Mortification gripped her the moment her brain caught up. She could see Blake mouthing the words in confusion.
Weiss had no choice but to hide her face in her hand. "That girl must be rubbing off on me," she muttered. "She has me speaking in Dolt."
She expected some scathing or sarcastic remark, or at least some friendly ribbing. That wasn't what she got. At first she thought there was no sound at all. It started to pick up quickly, though, becoming louder and less abashed.
Blake's laughter.
Not a shy giggle or a restrained huff like she'd made so often before, that Weiss had every right to expect, but an actual, honest-to-goodness laugh.
It was a minor miracle.
Against her will, Weiss caught the bug, and though she didn't laugh her mouth did quirk up. "It wasn't that funny," she said. "I wasn't even trying!"
Blake recovered herself enough to say, "Your not trying is part of what makes it funny."
"Whatever you say," Weiss said, but there was no bitterness there. This was easy. This was fine. 'Whatever' was the truth.
"It's been so long," Blake said, looking down modestly, as if embarrassed by what she'd just done. "I can't remember the last time I really laughed."
"Then it's been too long," Weiss declared. "I suppose it's just as well you're back."
"I… suppose," Blake said, and her face fell. Weiss could see Blake retreating into her memories once more.
Nope. Weiss was not letting that happen again. "That's enough wallowing," she declared, catching Blake's attention. "Let me share something with you, that I haven't shared with anyone else. All the time I was held captive in my own home, I didn't have anything else to think about but the past. I spent days, weeks even, doing little more than wading through my memories. On the day I realized I'd been gone from Beacon longer than I'd been there, I didn't get out of bed all day.
"But you did better than me," she said, taking Blake by surprise. "You kept moving. You kept doing. Even if you didn't spend all your time productively, at least you were able to keep in motion. And whatever did that—" she pointed at Blake's scar again, "—wasn't enough to stop you. I think that's awfully impressive, Blake Belladonna."
Weiss saw Blake rock back at the words. Trembling, Blake managed a smile. "Well, now I know I've truly made it in the world. I have the approval of the great Weiss Schnee."
"It's a precious commodity," Weiss said with a grin. "Rarely given and jealously guarded." She dropped the faux-haughty demeanor that had become a joke between the two. "You sounded almost playful there for a minute, Blake. It suits you."
The taller girl took a shuddering breath. "Thanks. I needed this. All…" she waved vaguely at the mirror. "…all of this."
"Happy to help. Now that you're feeling a little better, and have a little of your playfulness back, why don't you go back out there? There are some people who'll really appreciate that."
For a moment it looked like Blake would regress, shrink down again. Instead, she nodded once to herself and braced. "Right. No, you're right. I should."
She glanced up, as if looking at her own faunus ears. "There are times when I almost wish for the bow, though."
Weiss gave a put-upon sigh. "I completely understand. This crowd can be a bit much even for two ears. Why do you suppose I was in here? But," she added, "they are worth it."
Blake's response was a smile so full of fondness it almost made Weiss sweet-sick. "That they are. Excuse me."
She turned and left the bathroom.
In her wake, Ruby appeared in the doorway. She flashed Weiss a brilliant smile and a thumbs-up. Then she vanished.
Weiss thought she might never stop blushing.
It was late, Weiss was tired, and her head was pounding.
Something Winter had never mentioned—and which her own semblance training had never revealed—was how hard it was to maintain split attention after a while. Controlling her own motions and that of her summons simultaneously always took a lot of mental gymnastics. Doing so across multiple extended battles was the mental equivalent of running a marathon while juggling.
A headache, though, was such a trifling thing at a time like this. All around her, her friends were weary but triumphant. The small airship, plain and uncomfortable as it was, nevertheless felt full of emotion.
They'd done it. Giant robots, even larger grimm, and vengeful ex-boyfriends be damned, they'd done it. They were one step closer to securing the Lamp.
Even if it meant returning to Atlas.
Weiss shook that unwelcome thought away. She was going with her team, her family, and they'd promised her she'd never be alone. That was more than enough comfort for her.
It was funny, she thought as she watched them recounting their various roles in the day's battles. Weiss felt more damaged by her stay in her ancestral home than any fight she'd been in, and that damage was the sort that didn't leave a scar.
Speaking of scars… She looked to the side of the airship, where Blake and Yang sat together, partially wrapped up in each other. Somewhere along the line, Blake had lost her white jacket. Without it, there wasn't even partial concealment for her scar.
Yang's fingers were tracing over that old wound.
Weiss couldn't quite hear what Yang was saying to her partner. That was okay. Weiss felt it was a conversation they'd rather be having in private, only there was no privacy to be had.
Even so, Weiss could very easily get the gist. The tender expressions the two had, the way they seemed to keep an arm on each other as if afraid the other would fly away, and, of course, the way Yang's fingers flowed over Blake's scar.
Weiss just made out one thing Yang said to Blake.
She lightly blushed.
If it were Ruby saying those words, she would have said, "One bad mother". Seeing as it was Yang doing the talking, those were not exactly the words she said.
The meaning was the same.
Weiss smiled.
Next time: Risk the Fall