Before anything else, I own nothing but the original characters, and content therein related to them. RWBY is owned by RT, and any mentioned creator's work belongs to them, and them alone. Rest in peace Monty, your vision lives on in us all.

Volume 4: Part Three, The East and The Atlas.

CHAPTER 1

In the Xiao Long household, Yang sat in her wheelchair, the living room TV off, lost in an absence of thought. Ever since she'd woken up, she'd found she could sit in place and watch as the day went by in a blur. She wasn't losing touch with reality, it was just… Easier to check out…

To the outside observer, it looked as if she was staring at her own severed legs, and maybe she was. She'd gone back to the hospital more times in the past four months than she'd ever gone in her life. General Ironwood had allegedly been so kind as to pay for the prosthetics, and her medical bills out of his own pocket, but that meant being measured, tested, and with her spinal injury, the legal notice that direct nerve to prosthesis surgery could lead to complications. Everything had already been fabricated and shipped to Vale. All it took now was a phone call, and an operation… So why didn't Yang want to do it?

There was a knock at the door. Halcyone came out of the kitchen with a dish rag and answered it. When she saw who was there, she nearly had a heart attack. "Is Miss Rose home today?"

"Black…" Halcyone trailed off. It took her a second to recognize the old man without his skull mask, but the clothing and belt buckle gave him away.

"Halcyone? What the fuck are you doing here?" Rot asked. "Oh and my name's... Not Black, that's an alias. Name's Rot… Figure you deserve to know that much." He said, as Halcyone stepped outside and closed the door behind her.

"Look, whatever you think I did, I ain't going back to the Cobras." Halcyone said.

"That's not why I'm here." Rot said, confusing the hyena faunus.

"Then… Whatta' ya' doin' in Patch?" She asked. Rot Sighed.

"I'm looking for Ruby Rose, a friend of yours. As I understand it, she lives here." Rot said.

Halcyone shrugged. "I… She left, back in early January. Far as I know, her and her boyfriend are in Anima right now." Halcyone said.

Rot nodded. "Thank you Halcyone… You know, you ain't half as bad as I thought you were." He said, before he disappeared.

Halcyone let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. Her former boss was looking for her girlfriend's sister, and here she was, helping around with housework. Halcyone re-entered the house, and looked at her girlfriend… If that's what they could be considered still. The two hadn't been intimate since Beacon… Not for lack of want of Halcyone's side, no amount of disfigurement could ever shake Yang's beauty, the blonds had simply… Lost touch.

Halcyone looked down at her hand, running her fingers against her palm. She hadn't tried to use her semblance since Vacuo… Maybe it could be used to heal as much as it could hurt. Walking over to stand in front of Yang, Halcyone crouched down so she could face her girlfriend. "Yang?" Halcyone asked, ensuring she was paying attention. When Yang moved her eyes to meet Halcyone's own she continued. "I've never told you guy's about my semblance… It's called Hearts and Minds… I can influence emotion… Dive into peoples heads… Make them forget things, or remember stuff they never saw, see what they've seen… I know the kind of pain that comes with an injury like yours… And… I can help you forget it." Yang looked up at Halcyone with a brief flash of anger, and for the first time that day, spoke.

"No."

About two weeks later, Yang couldn't remember anything. She couldn't tell if she was awake or dreaming. She felt the need to scream, but a silence stopped her. She was waking up, and couldn't see. She knew there wasn't much left of her, but the pain she felt in the phantoms of her extremities told her otherwise. Nothing was real but the pain. Unending pain. After the first few minutes of trying to yell for help, or even just in agony, she held her breath, trying to see if it would be possible to at least blackout, if death wasn't achievable.

It was like… Being unborn she guessed. No ability to perceive the outside world, no sensations but pain or hunger, and from some unknown source life was pumped into her. She just wanted to live again. After what felt like a month, Yang found that she was being kept alive in only a physical sense, being fed through a tube, and breathing through a hose. Tied to machines to live.

It was as if a year had passed in her own head, and eventually, Yang wanted out. With darkness imprisoning her, and all she could see the absolute horror of nothing, she no longer could live, or die. Trapped, her body a holding cell. It was Taurus, the bull faunus. He'd taken her sight, taken her speech, her hearing, her arms, legs… Maybe even her soul… But you can't truly cut a soul.

Yang shot up in her bed screaming, attempting to grab at her own arm with a hand that wasn't there. Still unable to remember what happened to her the night Beacon fell, she felt as if the universe was toying with her. Every waking hour she wished to be asleep, as to no longer feel the phantom pains and see the absence of what used to be her, only to be rudely shaken from sleep whence she found it, by the disturbing and recurring night terror of what must have been her lucid coma at the hospital. Resting her head back on her pillow, Yang attempted to go back to sleep. Only for Halcyone to gently knock on the door and make her entrance known. "Yang? Are you alright?" She asked.

Yang closed her eyes and sat up as best she could. "Yeah… Can't sleep." She said.

"Can't or don't want to?" Halcyone asked as she entered, earning a glare from Yang, as she sat down on the edge of the bed. "Look, I know you've been having nightmares… And I know you're still… Uhhg. Yang, why haven't you gone and got the prosthetics? Why haven't you let me help you?" Halcyone asked, forgoing subtlety.

"Because you. Can't. Help me… You can make people forget things, but you can't make me forget what I don't remember… It's all just… Darkness." Yang said, trying not to cry.

"Maybe I can't help you forget what happened… But, that's not all I can do… Your feelings, how you perceived the entire event. I can change those too." Halcyone said, extending a hand to her girlfriend.

"As if the pain meds aren't already dulling enough." Yang said, her tone laden with dark sarcasm.

"Not dull… Enhance… Shift and flow. I've made men enraged to homicide happy as a clown… and I've made men cry themselves in fear… I can help end the suffering Yang, but only if you let me." The short haired blond said. Yang looked up at Halcyone, then down at where her feet would be under her blanket, then back to her girlfriend. She was afraid. Afraid of what she might see. Afraid of what it might mean. The only other person she could think of that had survived an injury so similar to her own was Ironwood himself… And maybe that was part of the reason he was willing to pay for her medical bills. What would that make her? One of the two near full body cyborgs on the planet? A freak? Ruby used the word augmented… But augmentation was when someone chose to cut a piece of themselves off to replace it with cybernetics, and that was almost as rare as cybernetics themselves were less than 20 years ago…

Wiping away the single tear that had fallen to her cheek, Yang nodded her head. "Do it." She said, and with a deep breath, Halcyone placed her right hand on Yang's forehead. From there Yang was only able to see a bright white Light.

Author's note.

Yes Yang's dream state is a clear reference to the lyrics of Metallica's One. Great song about a soldier in nearly the exact situation Yang would have been in at the hospital immediately following her injury. Comas are not a fun experience as far as all I've read about them, the medically induced ones especially, and I wanted to make that very clear.

Yang in cannon lost an arm, was mopey for a time, and had flashbacks to Adam, and while sure it seems plausible that Yang's personality just handled that event super well, the reality of the situation was that she was a 17 year old girl who nearly fucking died in RWBY's version of a 9/11 terrorist attack. She's not some battle hardened soldier who just watched people die, which even among the veteran community is one of the most common sorts of people you'll see with all the signs of PTSD the original Yang had. We should have been shown her road to recovery take longer, or her symptoms be more severe.

In an over corrective fashion, my version of Yang is in a constant state of agony from phantom pains and her spinal injury, is paralyzed from the lower back down, so she's pissing and shitting in a bag, can hardly move without assistance, has a slew of mental issues due to not only the psychological trauma of being blown into hamburger meat, but has physical brain damage due to the shrapnel that penetrated her skull. Not going to lie I don't know what I'd do with myself if this was me. Real world PTSD, especially cases involving such injuries, can be mentally crippling, and as it seems the world of RWBY doesn't have the massive support groups and programs that real world trauma survivors have access to. So I wanted to emulate the effects of that as best I could.

IE, what I've already been doing with the others.

In all seriousness though, with this chapter being the first to dive into Yang's injuries and how she's dealing with them, I want to give my support to the disabled veteran community more than anything else. The men and women who've served their time in Hell, who've given more than was ever asked of them, some never coming home, be it physically or mentally, you aren't just survivors of war, or retired soldiers, you are god damn superhumans for enduring all that you have. God bless you all, and I wish you only the best out of life.