"Think about it; I'm in no rush."
Qrow gave a two-fingered wave from his temple as he walked through the door of Yang's dorm and closed it behind him.
Yang had no idea what she was supposed to be feeling right now. Her mom had never been closer, more present than she felt right now, not since she left her and Dad so many years ago. Only a few weeks ago, she would have taken Bumblebee and been gone tonight. But now, with Raven's message delivered and Yang's relationship with Beacon already feeling so precarious, ambivalence consumed her. On one hand, she had never had this opportunity, and with every hour that passes, Qrow's tip on how to find her becomes less likely to pan out. On the other, she had no guarantees, even if she found her, that her mother would speak to her, that she'd have a home to come back to, that she would be proud of who Yang had become. She clearly loved Yang with some type of love - a love that felt alien and cold to Yang, maybe, but love nonetheless. But could that ever become the thing Yang was looking for?
Thoughts of Raven brought stinging embers over Yang's skin. Thoughts of her rarely failed to burn themselves out, eating away at her aura like molten candle wax. If she had had any aura to spare, she may have sat there for hours ruminating, but she was already depleted. She needed rest. She needed a nap. And she needed, absolutely needed to not do is think about how much it hurt that Blake had doubted her when even Weiss hadn't, or how tenuous their trust now was.
She was asleep for such a short time she didn't think she'd fallen asleep at all. She blinked awake to the buzzing of her scroll beneath her pillow.
Neon =^.^=: how are you doing?
Yang: Shitty.
Neon =^.^=: were you disqualified?
Yang: Yes.
Neon =^.^=: damn. i'm sorry
Whatever. Yang wasn't in the mood to talk through things with yet another person. She knew that Neon was trying to be kind, to not make Yang out to be a monster like the media had been so quick to do, perhaps even give her the benefit of the doubt about her intentions. But if she had to feel her own feelings for a minute more, she was just going to melt like that wax, unable to hold herself together anymore.
Yang just stuffed her scroll back underneath her pillow.
A minute later, Neon texted again anyway.
Neon =^.^=: could you use some company?
That's exactly what Yang didn't want.
Neon =^.^=: we don't have to talk about the match or anything. just... company
Yang: Company?
Neon =^.^=: there's bad feelings in the air. I can feel them like a Grim, kinda, or i guess just like a person
And I know something that helps is being near someone
I don't know if you have someone with you, like blake or weiss, but
Neon =^.^=: like i could just be there with you for a while Neon was trying so hard. Yang couldn't fathom why she cared, why she'd bother checking in after watching her shoot Mercury's legs like that. But it softened her heart, just a little.
Yang: OK
Yang: but honestly, all I want to do is lie in bed and pretend nothing is happening. Can you deal with that?
Neon =^.^=: i think so
Neon =^.^=: wait like cuddling? or do i just sort of chill out nearby
Yang: I would be OK with being a little spoon if you're up to it.
Neon =^.^=: i am
Neon =^.^=: what's your dorm #?
It had been initially awkward, what with Neon showing up, glancing inside, asking, "No one else here, huh?", Yang feeling like she'd arranged a booty call, and them awkwardly configuring themselves on the bed. Now it was mostly nice with a large side-order of strange, both because Neon's body felt so unfamiliar and because Neon was a good head shorter that Yang. Her version of big spooning relied a lot on having her legs fit closely behind Yang's, but she couldn't get her head near Yang's in that case, instead setting her head against the back of Yang's shoulder.
They lay there for a long, quiet moment, probably close to half an hour. Yang easily could have fallen asleep (much to Neon's credit, considering how nerve-wracking it was to share her bunk - especially when the others would return as soon as Pyrrha's match was over), but some part of Yang couldn't ignore that this might be the last and only time she had to spend with Neon alone like this. Everything with her had been a blur - fun and exciting and charged and more emotionally intimate than she'd anticipated. Nevermind the whole mess of feelings she'd been having about Neon's quick perception of her ambivalence - ambivalence about her gender on one hand, and ambivalence about her feelings for Blake on the other. The fact that Neon saw what Yang felt, what she'd been feeling and been unable to say herself, made her so much more confident that it was all real. And if Yang didn't hold onto these feelings, these certainties, they would slip between her fingers. Just like these last hours with Neon.
Neon's arm hung loosely around Yang's side, neatly dodging her bare midriff. Despite all her forwardness, she was doing her best to not seem like a creep, especially right now. That was appreciated.
"I'm sorry," Yang said, "If this isn't what you had in mind when you asked me out."
"It's not," Neon confirmed. Her thumb stroked along the bottom of Yang's chest as she spoke. "But I wouldn't trade this, either."
Yang said, "You know, I don't really know what I was looking for when I took you out. Like, I wasn't trying to hook up with you, or date you, really. But I also wasn't really trying to become friends with you like I normally do. I think . . ." she trailed off for a moment, thinking. "I think I wanted to learn how to be more like you, maybe."
"Oh?" Neon asked, clearly flattered. "You wanted to be super pretty, but like, kind of a bitch?"
"Nooo," Yang groaned, much to Neon's giggling delight. She flipped around and propped herself up on her arm so they could actually look at each other. "Like . . . like, in our fight, you picked out how easily I get frustrated when things get hard. And how I kinda . . . just . . ."
"Punch until there's no more problem?" Neon offered.
Yang shrugged. "I mean, yeah? It's like you said, it's such a big part of me that it's my semblance. But you seem just like the opposite. Like you don't get bogged down in anything."
Neon offered a small smile, encouraged that Yang was finally talking. She reached up and pushed some of the hair in Yang's face back - there's no point in trying to tuck it behind her ear, but Yang recognized the gesture.
"It's how I know how to survive, I guess," Neon says. "Don't let anything stop me. Don't let anyone keep me down. Never miss a beat, and no one can find your flaws. Being a girl, being a faunus, being queer . . . it doesn't leave a lot of room for error. And when I make one, if I let that stop me, I'll only make more."
That whole framing was nonsensical to Yang. When there were problems she couldn't punch her way through, there was no such thing as 'not letting that stop me.' Being disqualified from the tournament, hurting Mercury (even if he deserved it, even if he had tried to attack her), Raven being gone and untraceable all these years - these weren't things you could just move past.
"I . . . I don't get that at all," Yang said, dropping back onto her back (Neon had to scoot back a little). She hummed for a second, thinking, then said, "You know, we found out my semblance when I was really young. Like . . . I started training when I was six, after some Grim nearly got me in the woods outside of Patch."
Neon was doing a poor job of hiding her rapt interest in this topic, but Yang was finally past caring about how weird it was that Neon was so interested in her.
"It was a few months after we unlocked my aura. My uncle, Qrow, he was helping teach me. And one night, he gets drunk, and he starts talking about his sister, my Mom. What she used to be like at Beacon. What a brat she was on missions . . . stuff like that. And for the first time she left, I didn't just miss her. I realized that she left me and Dad because she wanted to. When I heard how she used to treat Qrow, and my Dad, and Summer, I realized that she just abandoned us because she didn't care. And that just made me so mad. Like, Summer left because there were people who needed protecting, but Mom just left. And my aura . . . just sort of burst. I broke our porch, shattered the windows. I felt like my skin was on fire . . ."
Yang held a hand up to see it better in the light. Her aura wasn't burning now, but she remembered exactly what it was like that day, how freaked out Uncle Qrow was until he realized what happened, how sad Dad looked when he figured out what revealed her semblance.
"A lot of people who fight me, and my teammates, even - they think my semblance is all about rage. And that's part of it, yeah . . . but when I need to set it off, I don't think about losing. I just think about Mom. It's not the anger that makes me strong. It's the pain, inviting in again and again. I can take more every time." Yang rolled her hand over, remembering the giant mech Torchwick hit her with. And how she had just hit back. "But I can't move past it. If I did, I'd just be . . . empty."
Neon lifted her hands up and shrugged slowly. "I'm not going to say my way is right, Yang. I'm not you. But you're somebody whose feelings become much more than feelings . . ." Neon reached out a hand and lay it over Yang's. She squeezed tight. "And I think there might be other ways for you to be strong."
"Maybe," Yang said through a brief, fake smile. "Maybe one day I'll find another way, like you. Or, something . . ."
"And Yang?" Neon asked, her eyebrows raised.
"Yeah?"
"Thank you for telling me."
The smile was more real this time: "I told you, I can adapt to high-speed friendship."
"And you've done so beautifully," Neon said, planting a quick kiss on Yang's cheek. "Queer kids. Talking about childhood trauma is basically second base."
Now it was Yang's turn to quirk her eyebrows curiously. "Is that so?"
Neon nodded. "I speak from experience."
Yang said, "I think that means we missed first base."
Neon looked confused. "There isn't really a queer first b- oh."
Realization struck Neon once Yang lifted her hand, imitating the same brushing-hair-back move Neon had done to her, and Yang did her absolute best to make The Face. She hesitated for only a second, then rolled over, sliding one leg up between Yang's thighs as she pulled herself closer, and they kissed. It was warm and soft. Yang had never kissed anyone else as anything other than a girl (even if being with boys, she felt like so much more of a boy than she did with Neon), but Neon was the first person to make her want to be a girl, to not have her defenses up as she felt another person on top of her.
Yang was more eager than she'd expected though, and when Neon broke their kiss, Yang grabbed her hips and pulled her back close, fingers tracing her sides. She did her best not to giggle once Neon's tail began to swish happily back and forth, tickling her a little.
Eventually, Neon sat up, straddling Yang's leg, panting quietly. "I wasn't expecting that, she said."
Yang shrugged. "I just wanted to smooch a babe, y'know. Sue me."
Neon slipped back into her higher, sarcastic voice, "Oh my god, what a coincidence - me too! Do you know where I could find one, I was just looking for-"
"Oh, shut up," Yang said, and Neon immediately cut off to kiss her again.
After kissing a little longer, Yang felt flushed, finally distracted, and more than a little turned on. She asked, "Is there . . . anything else you were hoping to accomplish when you asked me out?"
It was bait, and it was obvious bait, but what Yang did not expect was for Neon to blush, quickly descending into genuine embarrassment. "Um . . . actually . . . yeah."
Yang had been expecting she'd get seduced after that, but Neon looked like she had other ideas. "Such as?"
Neon bit her lip, which was honestly just adorable. After a moment more of hesitation, she pressed her hands together as if in prayer and said, "I'd actually really like to brush your hair. Like. If you'd like that."
Neon was, underneath it all, actually kind of a cute dork. Yang wasn't sure if it was the kiss, or the invitation, or if she'd just been thinking about this the whole time, but the veer into hair brushing was hilarious, and she couldn't help but laugh. That only made Neon redder, but she just stuck her tongue out at Yang for her rude response.
When Yang settled down a little, she smiled and said, "You know what, though? I'd love that."
Yang looked off the side of the bed - "I think I've got a brush down-"
"I BROUGHT ONE!" Neon exclaimed, rolling off of Yang and catching herself on the ground. She went straight for her backpack and pulled out large red hairbrush with bits of Neon's dyed hair tangled along the bottom.
Yang just blinked. "You . . . brought your own?"
"Look, your hair is like, really pretty. And a lot of faunus have grooming instincts so you can't even pretend it's that wei-"
Yang waved Neon's excuse away before she could even finished, giving a good-natured grin as she sat up. "No, Neon, you're adorable. And I'm flattered." She bunched her hair up behind her back as she turned around, laying back down on her stomach.
Neon straddled Yang's back, laying the brush down on the bunk. She asked, "Is this comfortable?" softly, in that voice Yang hadn't known existed until last night. Yang nodded, then felt Neon's fingers along the edges of her scalp, trying to get all of her hair going the same way. Once she was satisfied with her work there, she dragged her fingers through the last few inches of Yang's hair, carefully undoing the tangles along the ends. Once the worst of them were out, she brushed the ends until they were nearly straight. It had always annoyed Yang that she could get into an honest-to-god fist fight with Grimm without pain, but brushing her hair always ended up tearing some out painfully. She tried to keep a straight face for Neon anyway.
Finally, once Neon had gotten through the prep work, she brought her brush up to the middle of Yang's hair and started to brush more slowly. It still caught occasionally, but once Neon ran through a section with her brush, she'd run her fingers through Yang's hair, gently, until there were no more tangles. Then she'd keep stroking anyway, petting sometimes accompanied by her nails dragging along Yang's back (though usually over her shirt).
As Neon was slowly working her way up through all of her hair, Yang relaxed again. Maybe not sleepily like before (the feeling of Neon on top of her didn't really give her 'sleepy' feelings), but still, the process was soothing. There had been no one who would just sit and brush her hair like this in so long . . . not since Summer died. At another time, those soothing memories might have been another breakdown about another lost mother, but right now, Neon felt too present for Yang to slip back into the past like that.
"You know . . . ever since the first night we went out, I've really wanted to play with your hair . . ." Yang said quietly. "I just . . . didn't want to be creepy."
"That's appreciated." Neon stopped brushing for a second, leaning down to whisper just behind Yang's ear, "But I'd be down if you wanted to play with my hair when I'm done with you."
Yang shivered in anticipation of something that was almost certainly just her imagination while Neon went back to brushing her hair.
Neon kept brushing until she could run her fingers smoothly through all of Yang's hair, then took a few minutes, delighted, to just pet her. "It's so pretty, how it catches the light," she'd say, or "How do you keep it so soft?" - but these didn't demand any sort of response. Yang loved her hair. She put a lot of time into it. People were quick to pick up on that, and quick to be creeps about it. But in a safer context, having someone admire it so much, and touch her so softly . . . it was nice. It was very nice.
Eventually, Yang said, "It's your turn."
Neon cleared some of the hair away from Yang's face, kissed her cheek, and said, "Okay."
Neon climbed off her while Yang sat up, running her own fingers through her hair. It felt so much softer when someone gave it serious attention. Yang hadn't found the time for it in years.
It took Neon quite a while to get all of the clips and hair ties out of her hair, but when it was finally down . . . it was kind of hilarious. Neon's hair was long, for sure, about as long as Blake's, but it had more volume than Yang was sure she'd ever seen. It was a lot frizzier without all of the tension in it, and it just sort of ballooned out half a foot behind her neck. It was every bit as floofy as Yang had dreamed and more.
"Oh my . . . your cool vibes just vanish right into thin hair, don't they?"
Neon glared.
Yang continued, "For real, you're adorable, you're in a league of hair own. You're a cut above the rest."
Neon put her hands on her hips and said, "I'll put it back right now if you keep making all these hair puns. I'm absolutely a-paw-lled at your behavior."
Yang pouted. "But - but Neon! I'm hair-larious."
Yang's face froze in utter delight while Neon's eyes rolled into the back of her head.
Neon said, "Alright, the hair's going away, privileges revo-"
But Yang pounced as Neon raised her hands to bunch up her hair, taking advantage of her exposed belly to start tickling her sides, which made her absolutely jump. "No - no I'm so ticklish you can't -" but by then she was already doubled over, and words just gave way to frantic giggling.
"Nooo, let me brush your haaiiirr," Yang whined, until finally Neon caught her wrists and made her stop.
"OKAY you JERK!" Neon complained. She sat up, placed her hands on Yang's cheeks, and pecked her on the lips before turning and falling back down on the bed.
Neon's hair was a lot harder to work with than the few girls whose hair Yang had done before, but she started with the same approach, getting the ends straighter and smooth, working out the knots. Unlike her own hair, though, Neon's didn't really sit down better when it was straighter - the poof was insurmountable. Yang couldn't wait to run her fingers through it . . . but patience.
"Do you have any more claw-some cat puns?" Yang asked, keeping a normal speaking voice, absolutely avoiding the sultry bullshit Neon had pulled on her.
"Hmm," she hummed, "Not really. I'm such a terrible pro-cat-stinator, I never follow through on making one." She paused for a second, then asked, "What's Blake's favorite cat pun, then?"
Yang shook her head. For once, she didn't feel weird talking about Blake - the tension between her and Neon felt so much easier to manage now, since they kissed. "Oh, Blake doesn't hold a very paw-sitive cattitude about cat puns. Or puns at all."
"Oh? Then this must be a very special mew-ment for you."
Yang snorted, swiping hair away from Neon's face to look at her more closely. "Mew-ment? That's so cute." And she pressed a kiss against Neon's cheek, leaving a smirk on Neon face when she sat back up. As she started brushing again, she added more softly, "Also . . . it kind of is."
They both smiled softly, but let the conversation die into near-silence while Yang slowly brushed Neon's hair. It took a long time (and a lot of loose hair thrown into the garbage) before Yang was able to draw the brush from Neon's scalp down to the tips, but no sooner had she done so then she let her fingers gingerly settle on the back of Neon's head, running them smoothly down the length of her hair.
After a few more minutes of brushing Neon's hair out, of soft petting and small kisses in her hair, Neon finally said, "Y'know . . . I'm . . . sad this is ending so soon."
Yang kept brushing. After a delay, she nodded and said, "Yeah . . . me too." She hummed to herself for a moment, then said, "But, you know, you have my Scroll, we can keep in touch . . . and there's another festival in two years."
Neon nodded back. "Mhm. And, like, as soon as it isn't a literal crime, I'll send you so many nudes. But like, exclusively in class so it's really inconvenient."
"Oh yeah?"
"Mmmhmm," Neon replied with a self-satisfied smirk.
A few quiet minutes passed, and Yang watched as worry grew on Neon's face. Then, worry twisted into sadness, and Neon became more and more unresponsive to Yang's touches.
Finally, Yang asked, "What's wrong?"
"I just-" Neon started, but immediately cut off, as if struggling to get the words out. She suddenly looked like she was about to cry. "I just get this terrible feeling that this is the end of . . . this." Neon rolled over, looking up at Yang's face. "I feel like I'm never going to see you again - and that . . . that kinda sucks, you know?"
"Hey . . . hey," Yang cooed, although Neon's fear was quick to seep into Yang as well. She leaned down, and Neon wrapped her arms around Yang, and they held each other tightly. "We've still got a week . . . and even then, you'll see me again, I promise."
Even if she didn't believe it was true, Neon's fears for the future made Yang feel more sick than she felt was reasonable. She was going to miss Neon. There was some possibility here that would, almost certainly, never be realized. She was just doing her best to deny it while she still could.
Once Neon had checked the time and realized that the later rounds were starting, she put her hair up, while Yang just sat and admired the precision she had with her hair. She was just finishing the touch-ups on her makeup as well when she paused and said, "Something is wrong . . ."
Yang looked over from where she was sitting on the bunk and tilted her head. "Why, what's up?"
Neon turned around, and Yang realized she'd misjudged the severity of Neon's words - her eyes were wide with fear, and she was trembling. Unlike her flashbacks, though, she was looking around the room, looking for something. She said, "I think . . . I think my team is in trouble." She finally looked at Yang and said, "I'm sorry, I have to go."
"Oh - oh, shit, okay, if you give me a second, I can-"
Neon shook her head. "No, like, I have to go right now." As soon as Neon had her shoes on, she opened the door and waved, "See you, Yang."
"See you late-" but Neon had already closed the door behind herself, and an instant later Yang could hear the rush that came with Neon's semblance.
It took Yang a few seconds to pull herself out of a daze and think. Then, If team FNKI is in trouble . . . something could be going on at the stadium.
Yang pulled out her scroll and just typed in 'Vytal festival news.' She found a livestream and tapped it.
"-This was not an accident.
This is what happens when you hand over your trust, your safety, your children to men who claim to be our guardians."
The stream showed a wide frame of the stadium. In the center was one fighter, who looked like Pyrrha. There was something else on the stage, but Yang couldn't see what it was clearly. Rubble from the previous match, maybe?
"But are, in reality, nothing more than men.
Our academies' headmasters wield more power than most armies, and one was audacious enough to control both.
They cling to this power in the name of peace-"
Who in the hell was talking? She sounded so familiar. She definitely wasn't one of the typical announcers - she spoke more slowly, so . . . sinister. What was going on? Why was Pyrrha just standing there?
"And yet, what do we have here?:
One nation's attempt at a synthetic army - mercilessly torn apart by another's star pupil."
The camera switched to the other side, and much closer. And that camera zoomed in, closer and closer, until Yang could finally make out what the debris on the stage was.
Her clattered harmlessly to the floor, while the woman on the stream kept talking.
"What need would Atlas have for a soldier disguised as an innocent little girl?"
"Penny . . . ?"
It was just a flicker now, but Yang could feel her skin burning, melting away like molten wax.
And that was the last time she would see Neon for a long, long time.