Kicking the Beehive (Formerly: In Vino Veritas)

by RWBY Order

In which a surprise snowstorm after an unnecessarily stressful mission forces Blake and Yang to take shelter for the night in a hunter's lodge. Their relationship is in a weird place where Yang is pretty sure she likes Blake and is pretty sure Blake likes her back, but she's terrified of messing everything up again. Last thing Yang needs to do is kick the beehive. Set in mid-V7.

2. On The Job

Yang watched the snow fishtail behind Blake's heels as they left the logging camp behind, running out into the stump-speckled snowfield and towards the sound of snapping tree limbs and titanic footfalls.

Blake naturally outpaced her, but about a third of the way to the treeline she slid to a sudden stop. Yang saw her ears flick, then stand on end in the way they tended to do when Blake was either excited about something, or really focusing. Yang's money was on the latter.

"Got a read on it?" Yang asked, half-winded. She had her cardio regimen, and she forced herself to hold to it just as religiously as she did for all her other workout routines, but that didn't mean she liked running- especially not in Atlas. Only one fight deep, and the cold air was playing hell on her mouth and throat. Nah, running could stay Ruby's thing.

Blake closed her eyes, focusing for a second before groaning and reaching up to rub at her ears furiously with the hand that wasn't holding Gambol Shroud, "It sounds…" Her brows scrunched up, and she shook her head, "...that doesn't make any sense."

Yang glanced back and forth between Blake and the treeline. She was obviously confused, but Blake was never confused out in the field. "What is it?" Yang asked, deploying Ember Celica across her arms in preparation and frowning at the way Blake was massaging her ears- Brothers know how uncomfortable this cold had to be on them. Blake already dealt with enough grief over being a Faunus, the last thing she deserved was-

Another mark against Atlas, she guessed. Focus on the Now.

Blake shook her head again, one hand still rubbing her ears while the other thumbed the safety on her pistol. She made a face, before hesitantly saying, "It...sounds like a Beringel."

A Beringel? "What's a Beringel doing in Atlas?" Yang wondered, eyes snapping again to the treeline. Some of the distant treetops swayed as the Grimm muscled past their trunks. It was getting closer.

But still, a Beringel! They were native to Mistral, and weren't really ever seen outside of Anima. Yang had run into one on the way to the Branwen camp. They were huge, impossibly strong, and unsettlingly fast to boot- fights with them tended to get nasty. Yang had only managed to kill the one in Mistral by blowing it's knee to pieces with a blasting cap from a local quarry and drowning it in a river with the help of a limestone slab and some locals. How one got to Atlas...Yang couldn't even guess.

Blake's lips pressed into a thin line, and Yang figured she must be thinking something similar, "I'm probably wrong, be ready for anything. It could also be a Geist." She paused, "A geist possessing something...meaty, and furry."

She did have a point, there. As far as Yang knew, no one had ever seen a Beringel in Solitas before.

But if Blake said it sounded like a Beringel, it was a Beringel.

Yang frowned, looking down at her guns. Buckshot would be basically useless. Beringel hides were thick enough to catch the shot before it made it to anything important, and it had bone plates on top of that (literally). Maybe if she got a barrel pressed right against one of its eyes, but there was no guarantee it'd be able to get through- a Beringel's skull was more stubborn than Weiss on a bad morning. Plus, if the shot didn't immediately drop the thing then there was no guarantee she'd be able to get away without getting her arm bitten off.

As much as she'd grown to appreciate the versatility of her prosthetic, she really would prefer to keep old lefty. One metal arm was enough for her, thanks.

Her bombs might do something, if she could get one tucked up against one of its joints. They were close enough in anatomy to a human that Yang could guess where it's skeleton was weakest. She could probably cave it's knee like she'd done in Mistral- though her trigger bombs weren't near as powerful as that blasting cap had been, they should be enough to dislocate that stubby joint at the very least. No chance they'd be enough to kill the thing on their own, though. Other than that, she had her blanks? Nada there. Her only other real weapon she had then was her semblance and her body.

She just about snorted at the thought. As if she'd be able to muscle around a Beringel. She was pretty sure even Nora with a foot in a transformer couldn't do that.

So that was a dead end on any kind of conventional way of killing it. She certainly didn't have a mob of locals or a four-ton block of limestone this time around. Didn't have any heavy equipment like Elm's launcher or one of those fancy high-velocity tungsten bullets Ruby liked to use for big Grimm like these.

But she did have Blake.

Yeah...thing was as good as dead.

"Got a plan?" Yang asked, panting to flood her blood with oxygen in preparation for the upcoming fight but being careful not to hyperventilate. She had to resist the urge to lick her lips as the cold dried them out, "How're we gonna put this thing to bed?"

Blake shot her a look, "We don't even know what it is yet."

"You said it's a Beringel," Yang replied, meeting Blake's bewildered gaze.

She shook her head, "We're in Atlas, Yang. Just because I think it sounds like a Beringel doesn't mean one somehow jumped over the White Sea." The teryx screeched in the distance, circling over the Grimm rushing towards the camp.

Yang shrugged, bouncing on the balls of her feet and shaking out her hands, already eager for adrenaline to wash the chill from her body, "You say it's a Beringel, it's a Beringel."

Blake rolled her eyes, her head tilting as she tried to hide a small smile. Yang grinned at the sight- that was the thing Blake did when she didn't know how to take a compliment. "If you say so," she murmured, only slightly louder than a whisper.

She split Gambol Shroud into its two fraternal-twin swords and rolled her shoulders, and it made Yang's grin widen. Anticipation filled her, it wouldn't be long now, "So, how are we gonna eighty-six this thing?"

Blake shrugged, "Assuming it is actually somehow a Beringel…? I dunno, go for the neck?"

Yang snorted, somehow feeling remarkably unafraid of the thundering footsteps rushing towards them, "You always say go for the neck."

"Most things have necks, most things die when you cut them?" Blake reasoned, looking back over her shoulder and shrugging lightly.

Yang snorted a small laugh, "That's fair, I guess." Still, she didn't know how it'd work against a Beringrel. Their necks were short, and thick as tree trunks. She'd wanted to get the blasting cap on the throat of the one in Mistral, but it'd seemed to know instinctively that was where it was vulnerable. She hadn't been able to get it to raise its chin, and any time she got close enough to maybe try and force it, it'd started freaking out too much for her to get a grip on it. Even if she had, though, its neck had been rippling in muscles as big around as Yang's torso. Might not be any dice there, either.

But it was a better plan than anything Yang could come up with right now.

Even as tension built in her arms and legs in anticipation of the fight, Yang couldn't help but smile and feel tension leak from her shoulders. She still had no idea what was going on between her and Blake, and it still made her just about have a fit, but this? Snarking back and forth about the job? It was easy. There weren't any crazy, emotional stakes, no weird gray areas, and the fact that they could still talk so casually meant that she hadn't completely screwed things up by trying to ask about what had happened up on the tower. Nah, that was a problem that could stand to be procrastinated for a little bit longer. Yeah, it left her with a bit of anxiety, but if there was one thing Yang was good at, it was ignoring problems and pretending nothing was wrong.

Probably not the most healthy attitude, she'd admit, but ah well. What can you do?

She'd half-thought another quip when the teryx screeched one final time. Then, a thick pine tree on the edge of the clearing burst into a shower of splinters as a fifteen-foot tall mass of black hide and muscle and bone and hate blew through it. Shards of wood and bark scattered across the snow as the massive creature burst onto the field, bounding on two titanic arms and two stumpy legs. It careened to a stop, its head whipping to the left and right for a second before it's beady eyes finally found the two of them. Yang felt her hackles raise as she watched it curl its lips and roar, the sound deep and bestial. It didn't wait for long before kicking off the ground, moving like a freight train in both speed and mass, bounding towards them.

Yang tensed in anticipation, and she watched Blake crouch down out of the corner of her eye.

This could very well turn nasty, but being anxious wouldn't help either of them, so instead of worrying about how they were gonna kill the thing, she half-turned towards Blake and shouted, "See! I told you you were right!" without taking her eyes off the charging Grimm.

Before Blake could respond, they both exploded into motion as the gigantic, gorilla-like monster leapt, arms like redwoods swinging over its head. Yang fired Ember Celica to propel herself to the right while Blake sprang out of her crouch to the left. Two fists - each easily the size of Yang and Blake combined - slammed into the clone Blake had left behind to take the strike, a cloud of powdered snow erupting from the ground.

Yang landed square on her feet, rooting herself and skidding quickly to a stop. The monster turned it's back to her as it lashed out towards Blake, and a flash of anger flinted off of something inside of Yang. She swung two wild swings in it's direction, and two shotgun blasts split the air in front of her. A pair of trigger bombs arced through the space between them - the lack of accuracy wouldn't matter with a Grimm that huge.

She saw them glint in the evening light, silver metal standing out against the black fur. She counted both hits before pulling the detonator. The small explosives burst across its back, fire singing fur and blast gouging the thick muscle that covered it but doing little to seriously hurt the thing.

But that was fine, she knew she couldn't kill it with those and hadn't been trying to. She just very suddenly needed it to focus on her and not Blake.

-Which was dumb, of course. She knew Blake could handle herself, and knew she needed to trust her to, but…well, she just felt better with all that mass and hate pointed at her instead of Blake.

It's eyes sought her out as it wheeled around, much faster than Yang thought something that big oughta be able to move. She stared deep into those empty red eyes with her own violet pair, and she felt her lip curl up in disgust. The Beringel roared at her, an angry shower of spittle flying from its lips, one massive arm coming up to pound against its bone-covered chest twice as it took Yang's gaze for what it was: a Challenge.

Her disgust morphed into amusement and that weird, soft sort of feeling she got whenever Blake did something cool, because she saw the sunlight glint off of Gambol Shroud as it arced through the air, spinning like a boomerang. She couldn't help but grin.

The sickle bit into the Grimm's deltoid, then twisted sharply as Blake yanked herself up into the air with it. She arced over the surprised beast's head, spinning like a gymnast with an effortless grace that belied the power behind the motion. Using her rotational energy, she lashed out with Gambol Shroud's heavy cleaver as she passed over its head.

It's roar of challenge turned sharply into one of pained surprise as it jerked, arms flailing wildly over it's head as the cleaver split its scalp and gouged the bone of its skull- but Blake was already past it. She landed with a roll, tugging Gambol Shroud's sickle back to her and ending shoulder-to-shoulder with Yang.

"Nice one," Yang quipped with that same grin on her lips, hands still up in a loose boxing stance.

Blake ignored her in favor of shouting in bewilderment, "What's a Beringel doing in Atlas?!"

"Let's worry about that," Yang shouted back as the monster's eyes found them again, "after we kill it."

It pawed at its head as thick, maroon blood drooled over the boneplate that made up its face before rearing back it's hands and roaring hatred at them again. It clawed at the ground to heave itself forward, gouging through snow and dirt to haul its mass forward.

"Go high!" Blake shouted as she leapt to meet it.

"Heard!" Yang called back, firing Ember Celica to supplement a jump.

It was only after committing to the quick plan that Yang got the logic behind it. It was the same principle she'd noticed when they'd been quote-unquote sneaking around in the woods: Blake's jacket blended into the snow, and her dark hair seemed to melt into the shadows cast by the setting sun and the stumps. She was easy enough for a person to spot - especially when she was moving - but Beringels had notoriously poor eyesight as it was, and with blood running into its eyes?

Yang, on the other hand, stood out like a street flare. Add to that her cracking off shots from her shotguns, hair coming allight with her semblance?

Well, she's always been good at catching eyes, for better and for worse.

"Hamstring it!" Yang shouted to Blake. The monster, uncomprehending, thought she was screaming at it- as if she was making some kind of suicidal charge at the much larger creature.

It took the bait, rearing up on it's stumpy legs to bat at her with both arms.

Yang sucked in a breath, bracing herself as she felt the frigid air whip across her. Adrenaline flooded her body as she watched its arms swing towards her with unbelievable, blistering speed. She rotated Ember Celica to gravity blanks and braced herself for the shortest but most intense game of chicken of her life.

All in all, it was a fraction of a second, but it felt like an hour as she sailed towards the Beringel's bone-shattering swing as Blake slipped around it's narrow waist.

Yang watched her out of the corner of her eye. She put Gambol Shroud's sword and sheath together to add mass and leverage to the cleaver, rearing back with both hands-

Yang couldn't wait any longer - not if she wanted to keep her spine un-powderized, anyway - she just hoped she'd bought Blake enough time. She fired both guns, knocking herself very sharply to the right. The sudden change in direction rattled her brain in her skull-

She felt the air whip past her, its arms coming so close that they buffeted her in the air. She sucked in a gasp as her heart thundered in her chest- she'd been millimeters from a wheelchair.

It's fists slammed into the ground, and the impact cratered a wooden stump, hammering it into the ground like a nail into a casket.

Scratch that, millimeters from a coffin.

Alright, no more playing chicken with the humongous monster, she could live with that. She didn't have enough airtime to right herself, so she tucked her shoulder and head in as the ground rushed up at her. Landing shoulder-first in the snow, Yang pulled her legs tight to her chest and let herself roll with the impact. Her aura flared, but she popped back up onto her feet without a problem, just in time to hear the monster let out an agonized, high-pitch howl.

Swinging her eyes back on target, Yang reoriented herself. Blake was already bounding away with her wetted blade as the Beringel began to slap the ground around it in thundering, open-palmed strikes like a toddler having a tantrum. Even with all the movement and the kicked up snow, she could see it's right leg hanging limply under it, twitching uselessly as it tried in vain to move it.

Professor Port had taught them that, Beacon had taught them that. It was a standard strategy with a Grimm that big. Heavy, bladed strikes to the inner parts of joints, sever tendons, and immobilize. Losing function in a leg would slow it down, and they'd need every advantage if they were gonna win this.

That damn Teryx screeched somewhere over their heads, flapping on bleeding, punctured wings- that thing, however, was a disadvantage they really didn't need. It swooped down at Blake as she pivoted back to press the attack on the Beringel, tucking its wings tight to its side and diving like a comet.

Even as she began to sprint back into the fight, Yang knew she was too far away to help, but that was fine. Blake would have heard it long before Yang had anyway. Even if the Beringel was a bigger threat than that horde they'd been fighting earlier, it was much easier to keep track of one big grimm than a hundred little grimm, which also made it a lot easier to react to the fight's X-Factor - the teryx and it's sneaky dives.

It also meant that, this time, they could actually counter-attack.

Seconds before impact, it flared its wings out, extending four razor-sharp sets of talons on its fore and rear legs. Its eyes locked onto Blake, locked onto its target.

It was crazy what Blake could do with her legs. Even at a full sprint forward, feigning a charge at the Beringel, Blake planted one foot in front of her, bending her knee and killing her momentum at a stroke, then kicking off the ground with that same motion to dodge backwards under the teryx's claws as they swiped through the space where Blake would have been. Instead of just dodging though, Blake caught her momentum on the opposite foot, bending and reversing her momentum again with a lithe, powerful extension of a single leg. It was the very same backstep-into-lunge counterattack they'd both seen Weiss do a thousand times, which gave Yang a bit of a '...huh…' moment.

Blake's version used a slash as a counter, though, instead of the stab Weiss used. It wasn't really all that rare for them to take inspiration from each other, but it was weirdly adorable to see Blake taking moves from Weiss. Mostly just 'cause of the 'unlikely allies' thing, but still.

She scored a hit along the Teryx's leathery flank, drawing out a shocked squawk as a reward. It hurried back into the air, leaking more maroon blood from the gash Blake had cut into it, quickly rising out of range of her swords.

Yang turned her attention back to the larger of the two grimm, cracking off another pair of trigger bombs as it turned to face her, coming back to its senses after having a leg hamstrung. One bomb caught in the fur of its stomach, but the second pinged off of the bone plate covering its left pectoral, spinning wildly into the air. Pulling the detonators, the first bomb's bloom rolled over the monster's gut as it heaved its way across the ground with its arms alone. The second bomb blew up harmlessly in the air like a miniature piece of flak.

Hate shined in its bloodied eyes, and Yang figured the small explosive just made it that little bit angrier.

It hauled itself towards her, and Yang knew not to look away from a charging Beringel, but she did see Blake running back towards it out of the corner of her eye. "Hit it high!" she yelled to Blake, running forward to meet its charge. Beringels hated when you fronted on them. They were big, angry, and stupid, and they could use that to their advantage.

When Yang got within arm's reach of it, one of its hands swung out horizontally to bat her away, accompanied by a throaty bark. It was easy enough to jump over it, feral and telegraphed as it was. She hit the ground with all of her forward momentum, kicking her legs out and falling backwards into the snow. She slid smoothly between its legs, rotating her guns to buckshot and cracking off as many shots as she could manage into its underbelly as she slid through it's guard.

The shots were basically like beestings to it, but hey, even grimm felt pain.

Blake seemed to agree. While the Beringel was trying to squash Yang, she'd lept up over its head, arcing gracefully over it and letting loose a cacophony of gunshots into its head and shoulders, lodging .40 caliber slugs into the thick hide and bone. It roared pain into the sky, swinging its great arms over its head like it was trying to swat a particularly aggressive fly, far too late to have ever hit Blake.

Yang rolled over onto her stomach, fingers and the toes of her boots digging into the frigid cold snow to halt her slide. Hiking herself up, she fired back at the Beringel as Blake did the same. From off to her right, he heard Blake's call out, "Yoyo!"

Oh, she couldn't help but grin at that. It was one of their newer team attacks, but it had quickly become one of Yang's favourites. "Gotcha!" she shouted back as the Beringel wheeled around, eyes finding Yang easily on the white backdrop of the snowfield.

She ducked under a swipe from one arm, and rolled deftly to the left of the other as it smashed into the snow. The timing was just about right, and- there!

Her eyes caught Gambol Shroud as it whipped towards her, and her hands caught it too, a moment later. She planted her boots into the snow, clenched the pistol in both her hands, and heaved.

The Beringel's eyes stayed on her, and it was completely oblivious to the elastic ribbon currently hauling a 160-pound ball of equipment, blades, and Blake at it's blindside.

Gambol Shroud's cleaver caught it across the shoulder, tearing through fur and flesh as she whipped by it, leaving a long, deep gash behind. The great monster cried out, whipping it's head away from Yang towards where it thought the pain had come from, oblivious to the fact that Blake had already flown to its opposite side. Rocking her hands forward, Yang cracked off two gravity blanks as she leapt up and back towards the Beringel. For a brief moment, her and Blake crossed paths in mid-air. Time slowed to a crawl for that millisecond as they passed each other by scant inches. Even with all the adrenaline in her, even as the world turned to razor-sharp glass around her, Blake's eyes stood out from everything else as she whipped by Yang. Their gazes met, and Yang couldn't help it- she winked.

That was 'Yoyo': Yang pulled Blake across the target for the first strike, then as Blake recovered from the maneuver, Yang launched into her own strike, crossing back onto the side Blake had started on and leaving her in the perfect position for Blake to yank her back for the final hit. It was a weird one-two-three combo with a staggered cadence that no person or grimm could really dance with the first time they saw it. They'd drilled the move a thousand times over the past couple of weeks, all so that when they did it now, in the field, their timing was clockwork-perfect.

The impact rattled through Yang's body as she caught the Beringel under the chin with an upwards, steel elbow-strike. It's massive head rocked up at the sudden, unexpected impact, it's frustrated howl cut off with a sharp bark of pain.

Carrying through her momentum, Yang was now once again on the opposite side of the Beringel to Blake, still holding Gambol Shroud in her left hand. For a half-breath, as Yang hung in the air past the Beringel's head, she tracked the line of the ribbon with her eyes. There, across the chest of the monster, her and Blake locked eyes.

Even with all the adrenaline, the fear, the excitement, Yang's heart did a little flip. Not just from the eye contact, but because, for the briefest, tiniest of moments, Blake returned her wink.

But then, before Yang could even begin to wonder what that could mean in the grander scheme of things, Blake wound Gambol Shroud's ribbon around her palm, dug in her heels, and pulled.

Stong, lithe, beautiful.

Yang barely had the wherewithal to curl her right hand into a fist to catch the Beringel's cheek as Blake pulled her back. She had to strain her bicep and force her prosthetic to lock, but she managed to land a solid flying right hook to the massive thing's face. For good measure, she cracked off a shell of buckshot into it, too, but doubted it did anything more than get stuck in the bone plate.

Spit and blood flecked from it's lips as she struck it. One of it's great arms had to lash out into the snow and dirt just to keep its balance, the hit dazing it for a moment. Eying the snow rushing back up at her, Yang kicked out her legs and bent her knees slightly. Hitting the ground, she ran with her momentum for a second, bleeding it off and skidding to a stop next to Blake, panting, "That was pretty cool, but I think we just made it angry."

Blake shook her head, "We aren't equipped for thi-" She halted midsyllable, her ears flicking as she otherwise froze solid. She spoke quietly and quickly, "The teryx is diving, five o'clock high. Three seconds, don't let it know we know."

Oh, oh! Yang understood, and tensed. Just for the sake of it, she strained her ears, but she could hear nothing but the Beringel's panting and the whoosh of the wind. "I'll catch it, distract the big boy," Yang whispered.

"Got it," was all Blake said, and she was bounding at the Beringel, leaping off clone after clone as the half-crippled beast tried to catch her with a runaway-freight-train of a punch. The sedan-sized fist hit Blake square in the chest with the kind of jab that would powderize every bone in her body. Instead of being crushed, though, the clone dissolved into shadow as the real Blake lashed out from over its head with a flurry of chain-sickle strikes.

As for the teryx, Yang felt it more than anything. A slight air pressure change, the quiet sound of air whistling through bullet holes in wings. She took a breath, used it to count.

A quarter second later, she torqued her torso explosively, whirling around on a dime and lashing out with her steel hand. Even before her eyes had gotten a proper look at it, her fingers were digging into the leathery flesh of the teryx's neck, its claws raking across her chest and stomach.

She grit her teeth as her semblance flared in response to the claws scraping her aura, her eyes bleeding red. It screeched at her, its jaws snapping wildly scant few inches from her face, but her hand held it tightly by its throat. She leaned heavily into a pull, drawing the great bird-lizard thing down against the strength of it's beating wings and torquing her torso again, heaving with her shoulders and throwing the teryx down into the snow at her boots. It was small for its species, Yang noted. She hadn't been able to tell with it flying round like it had. Most Teryxes were the size of a small car, but this thing was only about the size of a Beowolf- and that was just fine by her. It flailed wildly in the snow, trying to get its feet under itself so it could take to the sky again and fly out of danger.

Instead, Yang hurriedly planted her knee between its shoulder blades, growling out, "Oh, no you don't." With her knee firmly pinning it's chest and neck to the ground under her weight, Yang swung her right hand down. She caught the thing by its mouth, steel fingers forcing their way between razor-sharp teeth to fishhook it's jaw.

That was illegal in combat sports, Yang remembered with a hint of heated bemusement. Thankfully, there were no rules when it came to Hunting.

She pinned it's body to the snow with her knee, ignoring the weird feeling of it's leathery wings batting helplessly against her legs and sides. With the hand gripping firmly to the Teryx's jaw, she rowed her right shoulder back, forcefully extending and rotating it's neck. The joints of it's cervical spine resisted for a fraction of a second before, with a sharp crack, Yang snapped its neck.

Finally, she almost shouted as its wings fell to the ground. A part of her almost pitied it, but it'd tried to kill them too many times to win any real sympathy from her.

She dismounted it before it began to stink and ran back towards the Beringel.

Blake was most definitely keeping it distracted. The thing was roaring and swiping it's titanic arms through the air, batting at clone after clone as Blake darted from one side to the other, occasionally letting loose a slash or burst of gunfire to keep it hurting. She'd drawn it a couple dozen meters away in the time it took Yang to deal with the teryx.

Yang frowned as she began to run back towards the fight. It was working, but using that many clones had to be draining on Blake's aura.

A little drop of anger curled in her chest. Not much, not enough for her to worry about it clouding her judgement, but just enough to fuel her. The slashs and the bullets hurt, but they needed something more if they were gonna seriously stagger this thing.

"Bring it low!" She called out, her boots pounding her snow as she maintained a dead sprint towards the Beringel. She focused the bump the Teryx's claws had given to her semblance into her arms and legs.

"Can do!" was Blake's confident - if winded - callback.

She swung around it, standing right before it's eyes and letting loose six shots from Gambol Shroud into the bone plates and muscles of its chest. It roared in rage, rearing up as best it could on one leg, both arms coming up high over its head and swinging down with blisteringly fast speed.

Had Yang not seen the telltale blur of Blake dodging away, she might have screamed. Its fists struck like twin meteors onto Blake's clone, kicking up dirt and snow and shaking the ground under Yang's boots as she closed the distance. It'd come down with it's full body weight, and now for a brief moment it's massive head was both level with Yang and wonderfully perpendicular to the line she was running.

A grin pulled at her lips. She hadn't even needed to explain what she'd had planned, and Blake had set her up perfectly anyway.

She curled her right hand into a fist, boots pounding the dirt and snow beneath her feet. Bringing her fists up to her chest in cadence with her steps, she briefly tapped her knuckles against her left palm before turning to the side, throwing back her right hand and sucking in a lung-full of frigid northern air, loading a howitzer.

Five steel fingers came together, clicking as they curled. She poured what charge she had left of her semblance into the blow, braced her body, felt the muscles in her arm and chest tighten.

Then, the Beringel turned, and for a brief second they locked eyes.

And Yang smiled.

Then, she threw her fist around like a sledgehammer.

All that weight, all the momentum from the sprint, plus her semblance and her strength-

Right, square on the cheek.

The sound it made, a dull, meaty whunk-

Then a crack, and unlike with her previous punch, it's faceplate fractured.

Then, the bark of a shotgun blast.

Blood and spit flew from its mouth, and through her prosthetic Yang felt the telltale meaty pop of a dislocated joint.

She didn't have a word for the cry the Beringel made as she flew past it, only that it was high-pitched and loud enough to split the sky and chill her blood.

Her bones shook as the impact reverberated back up her arm, and were it not for her aura her shoulder definitely would have dislocated. She blew past it, punching through and carrying her momentum forward.

It should be stunned, at least for a second. It's skull was big and absorbed impact well, but with a strike like that? It should be at least slightly concussed, and the pain from the dislocated mandible and the shattered face plate should leave it dazed. She was supposed to get clear, hit-and-run doctrine, but if it was vulnerable then she might just be able to finish this fight right now - and not have to run the risk of one of them catching a bone-breaking punch.

Not have to risk Blake getting hurt.

It was stupid. She knew that, was well aware of it, but...Well, she did it anyway. Instead of getting clear, she dug her leading foot into the snow, killing her speed and spinning on a dime while she was still in-range for another attack. The window would be brief, but if she could get back into its space, she might be able to get at its throat. Blake could cut it, or she could leave a trigger bomb, or maybe-

Her plan was interrupted by a shrill, desperate cry of, "Watch out!"

The warning came not a millisecond too soon.

Swinging her head around, hair whipping through the frigid air, Yang's eyes widened.

She met two clear, hate-filled eyes.

How-

It's shattering faceplate must have ablated, absorbing some of the impact and lessening the concussion, Yang half-reasoned, not having the time to run the numbers in her head to see if that really applied here or not. The result was the same, anyway- It wasn't stunned, not in the slightest. No, one of its great hands was digging into the ground to anchor it, and the other-

It was hurtling horizontally through the air in a back-fist.

And it wasn't even a meter away from her.

Time sharpened again, too-slow and too-fast. It's eyes, red and full of hate, it's bloody lips, the unnatural angle of its jaw. Blake, on the opposite side of it, too far away to help, her lips pulled back in a wild cry. She could feel sweat on her skin, chilling in the frosty air, feel her clothes tug at her body with the momentum of her turn, feel her hair tugging at her scalp in the same way.

She couldn't dodge, there was no way she could ever move that fast.

Thinking quickly, she rotated her guns to a pair of dust blanks, and fired them off to send her in the same trajectory its hand was swinging. Maybe if she moved with it she could pivot out of line, or push herself out of range, or-

She wasn't fast enough.

Its fist smashed into her as she blasted herself to the right. The entire left side of her body exploded in pain, her maneuver softening the blow slightly by forcing her body to move with the strike, but that was just the difference between getting hit by a truck and getting hit by a car. The world became a chaotic blur of colors around her head and for an instant, the only thing she was aware of was the breath being violently driven from her lungs and the sensation of hurtling through the air.

It was all so much noise and color that there wasn't even enough room to feel any fear, just the beat of her heart and that too-familiar numb sensation of shock.

Then, her training snapped back into reality and took over. She tried to slow her spin by extending out her arms and legs, but it was no use. She skipped off the hard ground once, twice, and then came to a very sudden, very violent stop as she - for the first time in her life - found something that was just about as stubborn as she was.

Distantly, she heard an odd cracking sound as she impacted the whatever-it-was, and she honestly couldn't tell if the sound came from within or without her body, or if it maybe was the sound of her aura shattering. Whatever it was, the impact drove every single atom of air from her lungs in a painful wheeze and she sagged limply against whatever she'd hit. She gasped, vision blurring as she began to suck air- her vision doubled and her head throbbed and she focused on just trying to breathe.

And it hurt. Fuck, for all the words Yang knew to describe and diagnose herself, that was the word that kept echoing in her mind: Hurt, hurt, this hurts, I'm hurt, everything fucking hurts.

She wheezed, trying desperately to find her breath and staring unfocused at the snowy-white blur in front of her, not even trying to make anything of it. Just staring, breathing, and hurting.

Her ears were ringing and her mind was empty of everything but the Hurt, but then, somehow, she heard Blake's voice piece the steel-thick veil around her head, "Yang!"

She sounded…worried, scared. No, no, she sounded horrified. Yang's gut turned, and somehow that was more important in that moment than the pain. She couldn't let Blake be scared, she couldn't-

Her aura crackled as she tried to pick herself up, needing to show Blake that she was alright - even if she wasn't. Something snagged, tugged, and she grit her teeth. Trying again, it didn't give. Something was...tight, around her shoulders, and-

Her jacket.

She shrugged out of it and came loose, falling forward and rolling through the snow, shivering as the cold bit into her now-bare arms and shoulders, sank through her canvas overalls and the thin tube top she wore underneath it that was all that protected her body from the frost. Pushing herself to her knees, she glanced back through watery eyes, a hand instinctively flying behind her to cradle the small of her back. Her chest hurt, but she continued to gasp and suck air, frantically trying to fill her lungs properly. The world slowly began to crystalize back into itself, the fog around her head thinning.

There was a stump jutting up out of the snow, the wood dented and splintered along the edge facing her, and even through her foggy brain and tear-blurred vision, Yang guessed that her back would fit perfectly into the deep, splintery imprint. Tangled in the mess of fragmented, frozen wood was Yang's jacket.

She must have slammed into the stump, she concluded three seconds slower than she should have.

There was a long, painful ache along her left side, and another one just as bad down her back, square between her shoulder blades and all the way down to her hips. Her vision doubled, and she had to force herself not to throw up as she pushed her feet under her and made to stand anyway. She needed to get up, needed to stand so that Blake could see that she was fine. She pushed her feet under her, grimacing through a wave of nausea and a rhythmic pounding inside of her head. She grit her teeth and stubbornly willed through it, and just hoped that Blake saw her stand back up. Hoped that Blake saw she was alright. Closing her eyes for a minute, she focused on herself, taking stock. Her mind cleared a touch more as she forced herself to think past the pain.

Training, right, she'd been trained for this. She needed...needed to assess herself, figure out just how injured she was, figure out if her aura was broken or not. The fact that she wasn't dead meant her aura had absorbed at least some of the impact. The initial shock of the pain began to fade, and she managed to stand up just about straight.

The sharp pain in her back and her side stayed, but that could be any kind of injury, she had to figure out what kind. She sucked in a slow, deep breath, bracing for a sharp lance of pain. When one didn't come, she exhaled a relieved sigh- it hurt, but she hadn't broken any ribs.

The ground rattled under her feet, and she heard the Beringel roar. The fact that she was standing meant she hadn't broken anything in her spine or pelvis either. She needed to expedite this, needed to get back into the fight. Needed to help Blake.

Had her aura broken? She couldn't fight without it but...if Blake needed help, she might do it anyway.

She rotated her shoulders quickly, and there was no extra pain there. She took a step forward, half-thoughtlessly staggering back toward the fight while still running injury checks in her head. The pain in her abdomen throbbed as she began to move, but it wasn't unbearable. No, not unbearable, which meant she probably hadn't broken anything else either. It hurt, but she could still fight.

Odds are, that meant most of the damage was just tissue damage. With any luck, just bruising and not any internal bleeding. She didn't let herself even think about organ damage, not right now. She had to get back into the fight, damn the risk-

Wait.

No broken bones, no major injuries? She felt like she'd be hit by a damn train- how could that be possible?

A shudder ran through her, then...a wave of heat. It jolted her, startled her, because-

Because she knew what that meant, and her eyes widened.

She felt endorphins flood her veins, numbing the agonizing pain down into an ache and flushing her skin as it mixed with the adrenaline already fueling her. Her legs firmed up under her, and her staggering evened out into a steady march. The heat lingered, burned- it felt like relief-

It felt like Dragon's fire.

And she realized-

The Beringel hadn't broken her aura.

It must have come within a hair, but she could feel it now, thrumming over and under her skin. It was paper-thin and cracked- but it had not broken. The two impacts must have been the perfect amount of punishment, must have put her right on the edge of breaking. She'd need an aura gauge to make sure, but she couldn't take the time to pull out her scroll- not now, not when Blake was in danger. This feeling...it was proof enough.

She could still fight. She hadn't broken. A hair's breadth, but not broken.

That would be the last mistake the Beringel ever made, because it meant all the energy from that hit and the impact after was now hers.

She felt her eyes run red, felt her hair begin to burn as she picked up speed. She went from a march to a trot, then a jog. The snow melted off of her bare shoulders in a flash as she began to Burn. Her injuries throbbed, her ears rang, but she didn't care.

The ice that'd caught in her hair sublimated directly into steam, hissing like vipers. Her boots gouged the snow and the dirt, and a grin tugged at her lips.

It hurt, but it was a good pain. A pain she could work with. Her jog picked up into a sprint. Her breath steamed as it poured from her lips, her hair wild about her head in unchecked curls, clinging to her and waving behind her like napalm-flame. In the distance, the sun kissed the horizon, Blake and the Beringel silhouetted against it.

She felt that old, familiar fire flowing through her. Felt it in her blood, like fuel and chrome and music and speed. She balled her hands into fists, her knuckles cracking and her prosthetic fingers clicking together. Her heart went from pounding desperately to thundering.

She took off across the field, adrenaline flooding her and her semblance fanning the flames. Her hair streaked behind her in the dimming light of the evening like the tail of a comet. The Beringel was thrashing it's arms wildly against the ground, thick grimm's-blood spilling across its face and body, painting the snow beneath it maroon from several deep gouges splitting its flesh. Its lower jaw and one of it's legs hung limp, twitching occasionally.

It was struggling to keep track of Blake as she dashed around it, fists pounding into clones and snow and empty shadows as Blake danced gracefully around the blows, dodging fists and flailing arms that rattled the world beneath her feet. Every dodge, every feint, every dash was another slash against its hide. A shallow wound for a Grimm that massive, but as they built up, it bled more and more, and it became more and more agitated by the no-doubt excruciating pain. It was like being killed by a thousand papercuts.

Yang closed the distance, accelerating with every step as the Beringel's eyes stayed on the snow, trying to find the huntress slashing at it's flesh.

"I dunno, go for the neck?"

Good plan, great plan.

It wheeled around, dragging itself with two arms and its one remaining responsive leg. Blake stayed low, where she could blend into the snow and the shadows, where she was just a white and black blur on a white and black canvas.

The beast was wild, was panicked, and it didn't see the little dragon streaking towards its back. It had probably written her off, probably thought it'd killed her. She'd show it just how wrong it was.

Yang didn't even bother using Ember Celica. In stride with her sprint, she placed a single boot on a firm, smooth stump of an ancient Altesian pine, and used it as a springboard. Her semblance flooded into her legs, reinforcing the joint of her knee and hip so they wouldn't dislocate as her quads and calf loaded. Then both muscle groups extended, powerfully, explosively, and Yang threw herself into the air.

Her right boot planted on the Beringel's shoulder, the left square and flat on its spine.

It howled in surprise, deep and blood-chilling. That sound would be the last thing many people would ever hear. The last thing that would fill their ears before the Grimm dashed their bones against the unforgiving ground.

Yang focused through the fear, focusing instead on the fury, on the soundless music in her ears, on passion and rage and a deep, burning need to protect. Snarling reflexively in anger and disgust at the hideous, evil, heartless thing, she steeled herself.

It's head was nearly as big as her torso, and she could feel titanic, rippling muscles under her boots, dense with Salem's curse. Her left hand found purchase by hooking into the holes in the Beringel's faceplate where it's nostrils were. She felt its humid, rancid breath rolling over her hand, felt its coarse, thick fur against her stomach through her overalls.

Her semblance flooded her right shoulder, her bicep, and the motors of her prosthetic as she threw her hand towards the sky. She felt the muscles tense and tighten, felt the tendons and sinew of her body sing. Her whole form rocked up as she loaded the motion, the steel fingers of her right hand crooked like lion's claws and her teeth grit and her eyes like Fire.

It wasn't anger she felt, not really. It wasn't bitter, or unpleasant, or vindictive- 'anger' was the wrong word. Anger wasn't a weapon, she'd learned that.

No, what she felt wasn't anger, but it was like it. It was Red, it Burned, it-

The Beringel had tried to kill her. It'd tried to kill Blake.

The feeling...it felt like ferocity.

They'd devastated the Beringel already. They'd hamstrung it, shot it, cut it, beat it-

This time, Yang was going to annihilate it.

With hand-grenade fury, her arm exploded downward, steel fingers streaking through the air before burying knuckle-deep in the slick, watery flesh of the Beringel's eye.

It squealed loud enough to make Yang's ears ring, and the sound made her nauseous.

It's arms flew up to paw blindly behind it, hands snapping at her. She needed- she needed-

Her heart beat wildly in her chest, adrenaline and her semblance sharpening the world around her like glass again as she watched those titanic arms flail around. As fragile as her aura had to be to make her burn this hot, she would not be able to take another hit from one of those things. The last one had nearly snapped her in two.

She needed to take one of those arms out of commission. Her ears rang with an echo- training, training. Beacon. With Grimm this big, you have to target weak points. Superficial tendons and blood vessels, joints. Joints.

She didn't even need to ask, didn't even need to call it out. She kept her right hand fixed securely on the Beringel's thrashing head by digging her fingers into its orbital bone, and raised her left. Gambol Shroud was already flying through the air.

The sickle landed in her hand, and Yang thanked Blake a million times in her head for teaching her how to work her weapon. The Beringel thrashed and thrashed, trying to shake Yang loose, trying to stop the agony filling it's brain, trying to-

Trying to do anything, as it staggered around the field. Her one saving grace was its confusion- she could only guess at how many times Blake had lacerated it's skin in the minute or two Yang had been out of the fight. Between that, the dislocated jaw, and the gouged eye- the sensory overload was all that kept it from snatching her from its head and making her the Belle of the Morgue.

But Yang flared her semblance, held on through all the thrashing, and as one massive hand almost managed to find her and get a good grip to unseat her, she spun Gambol Shroud around and extended the sword, point facing down. It was too short to reach any of the Beringel's vital organs, and she couldn't get at it's throat from here, but…

She eyed the spot halfway across the monster's rippling deltoid, and prayed the anatomy of its shoulder was the same as a human's.

She grit her teeth, reared up, and plunged the sword as deep as she could into the meat of its shoulder, like she was planting a flag. Down, down, as it howled fresh and new, weeping foul-smelling ichor across Yang's hand from its gouged eye and across her boots from the deep stab into its shoulder. She forced the sword down with as much strength as she could muster, her tricep burning with the effort. When the sword's tip glanced off something hard, Yang let go of it, bringing her hand up and then back down as a fist, using her grip on the Beringel's eye socket as leverage. She bashed her gauntlet against the baseplate of Gambol Shroud's magazine like a hammer striking a nail, and - with the help of her semblance - the sword very suddenly sank all the way to it's hilt with the familiar wet, crunchy sound of splitting cartledge.

It's left arm twisted at an unnatural angle and spasmed, and relief flooded Yang. She'd judged the location right- the narrow blade acted like a wedge between the ball-and-socket of it's shoulder. There was a meaty pop that Yang felt resonate through the Beringel's body as it tried to rotate it's arm, tried to brute-force through the pain.

She knew how to recognize an impending dislocation, how to cool her jets and fix her posture so the joint stayed in place.

It was an idiot, content to monkey-brain it's way through the problem. Its deltoid contorted unnaturally, and with a wet pop the joint rolled out of place and the Grimm's howl turned into a choked groan as the hardened steel proved stronger than it's flesh-and-bone.

And while she did this, Blake was not idle. She pounced, targeting the Beringel's other arm with single-minded efficiency. Without her primary sword, she two-handed her cleaver, dashing off of clones to deliver heavy swipes at the flailing, powerful limb, hacking at it like an axe to a tree trunk. Yang couldn't watch - too preoccupied with her own part in the slaying - but she knew Blake, and Blake knew anatomy almost as well as Yang did, if not more. The tendons of its arms were too deep to target effectively, but she'd attack the area around the tendons anyway. Weakening the muscles if not outright severing them.

One task, then another. The fight wasn't over.

Yang turned her blood-red eyes back to the Beringel's head, its one remaining useful arm alternating between ineffectually groping for her, pawing at it's left shoulder as it tried to fix the dislocation or pull Gambol Shroud from it's flesh, and slamming the ground fruitlessly as it tried to either drag itself from danger or land a lucky hit on Blake. Its attempts were growing weaker with every cut Blake made.

She didn't focus on that, though. No, her lip curled up in revulsion as she dug her left hand back in, finding the holes in it's faceplate once more, fingers scrabbling across the slick, bloody bone. It was nasty, so damn nasty, but it needed to get done, she needed to-

Her fingers found purchase, and so did her boots.

This was gonna be the hard part. She sucked in a few deep breaths, listened to the pounding of her heart, and focused. Focused on the monster, on her own body, on her semblance.

Endorphins, adrenaline, fear, and excitement all flooded her at once as her semplace went into overdrive, her aura stretched to its limit as she dug her fingers in. Her aura had been pushed to the breaking-point by the hit she'd taken and her impact with the stump. It might well have been as close as she'd ever been to her limit without breaking before. Another newton of force, and she'd have been out for the count.

Which meant her Semblance had more energy than it had ever had before.

And her body was redlining.

- And it meant that this was going to hurt -

She braced her boots on the massive, roiling muscles of it's shoulder and neck, bending her knees and bracing her back. Her fingers firming against her makeshift handholds, every muscle in her body bracing, tightening.

It pressed its chin to its chest, seeming to understand instinctively what she was about to try. She had to bend her knees more to keep her grip on it, and she envisioned herself lowering down to grab a bar on the gym mat just before a deadlift. A part of her mind wondered just how much weight she'd need to put on the bar to mimic what she was about to do.

It was gonna fight, she knew that. It was gonna fight with everything it had, like the desperate, cornered animal it was.

But she was gonna fight harder.

So, she took one last breath, and pulled.

She pressed down with her legs, pulled up with her arms and back. Every single muscle, every single joint - until their names ran together in Yang's head and became one - strained to their breaking points as her aura burned across her body, trying its best to make sure she didn't tear herself to ribbons. The muscles of her bare arms tightened and bulged, her bruised lats and glutes cried out- hell, even her bones creaked.

Years of work in the gym, on the training field, in the classroom: all of it was put to work in that one moment as she optimized the angles of her lift, as the aura she'd built up added an inhumanity to her strength, and as her body pushed itself beyond its reasonable limits-

Her skin burned from the intensity of it, sweat soaked into her clothes and rolled down her face but boiled away immediately as her semblance super-heated her skin, as dragon's fire poured into her muscles, thrumming under her flesh. She could feel the muscles of her lower back and legs rippling - the pull wasn't dissimilar to the deadlift she'd pictured, a part of her realized - and, after a moment, she could feel them beginning to tear as they bore the brunt of the strain. She could feel the rest of her body supporting the pull, feel the joints of her fingers and shoulders threatening to dislocate, hear the motors of her prosthetic whining loudly-

But, she didn't stop. Didn't yield. No, she gave more, dug deeper, pulled harder- with every single iota of strength she had in her body and soul, Yang wrestled with the Beringel, trying to force its head up even as muscles the size of suspension cabling strained against her to keep it's chin low, even as it roared so loud it rattled Yang's teeth, even as it tried with all it's might to oppose her. For a scary few seconds, it held firm, it didn't move, it's neck proving stronger than Yang.

She burned. She could feel the heat rolling off of her in waves, could feel the way her breath broiled the air in front of her. Just barely, the plating of her prosthetic began to glow, the Grimm's flesh around her steel fingers began to hiss and pop. She could feel steam rolling off of her shoulders and arms, feel the blood singeing her veins, smell burning hair as her body scorched the Beringel's fur. She'd never felt this before, didn't know if she'd ever feel it again. It was once-in-a-lifetime, winning the lottery on her semblance like she had. She could smell it, feel it- Summer's Sun, Dragon's Fire, and she was Infernal.

And with that fire, that strength, she pulled.

And, this time, it gave ground. Just a millimeter, just a fraction of a millimeter, but it was Victory to Yang. It meant she was stronger, meant she could do this, and with that, she dug down deep inside herself, pushing her body harder than she ever had before, and won herself another millimeter of progress. Each inch was hard-fought, each one a battle, but Yang kept fighting, kept pulling, kept burning. Slowly, it's head craned up towards the sky as Yang's boots used it's own back as leverage to force its neck up, forced the beast to do the one thing every single animal, person, and monster on Remnant knew not to do- It was instinct, in its purest sense:

She forced it to bear it's throat.

Every muscle in her body quaked as she felt it's massive head move, as it yielded to her strength. She could see the light of her burning hair shining in the air around her head like a halo, as her semblance burned away, as her nearly-broken aura struggled to repair the tears she was rending in her muscles in real-time. She didn't care, she just pulled harder, forced herself to strain more. Until all this monster's strength submitted to her own. She felt a sound tear from her throat as she muscled it's chin up, but her ears were ringing too loudly to tell what it was, or whether it was a sound of fury, pain, or victory. All she knew in that moment was the Fire and the Struggle and this strange, animal pride as the monster yielded to her.

And Blake-

Blake-

…

...Blake?

It was exposed, it was vulnerable, and Yang was shredding her body to do it. Blake needed to go for the deathblow, and she needed to do it now. But, Blake wasn't. She wasn't here, wasn't with Yang, wasn't doing her Job. The higher functions of Yang's brain were muffled by the impossible strain she was putting on her body, but all she could think of was her partner's name, as if Blake would hear Yang's cry for help if she merely thought it loud enough.

She couldn't be alone, some deep, animal part of her cried out. She couldn't be alone now, Blake wouldn't have left her, she wouldn't have-

It took a herculean effort, at least as much of one as just holding the damn monster's head back, but Yang forced her eyes open, looking for-

Crimson eyes met amber.

Blake was standing in front of Yang and the Beringel, still as a statue. Her eyes were on Yang, and her guard was down. Gambol Shroud's cleaver was hanging in half-limp fingers and her ears stood on end and her eyes were shining-

And Blake was staring at Yang.

Staring, as she forced a two-ton monster into submission. Forced it to rear back, forced it to bare its most vulnerable place. Staring, watching as Yang overpowered it.

Her pupils were as wide as her eyes - almost blotting out the amber entirely - and her lips were slightly parted. Yang watched the way her eyes moved, tracing Yang's bare arms and shoulders, her neck and her face and her hair, somewhere between hyper-focused and completely unfocused. In awe- she looked at Yang like she was looking at a Goddess.

Something inside of her fluttered.

- And it probably would have been tremendously flattering, if Yang wasn't so distracted by the feeling of her muscles threatening to wrend themselves free of her bones every second that crept by.

"BLAKE!" Yang yelled out through clenched teeth, voice strained beyond all imagining, "GAWK LATER, HELP!"

Blake startled, snapping out of it in an instant. Had the Beringel not been roaring and thrashing, Yang didn't doubt she'd have been able to hear Blake's teeth clack together as she slammed her mouth closed.

She sprang up the Beringel, climbing it nimbly with as much speed as she could manage, clinging to fur and bone as she scaled it, kicking off it's one functional knee to help. In a flash, and with the help of a clone, Blake mounted the thing's chest as Yang forced its neck to arch back.

She took her cleaver in both hands and swung the heavy blade like a guillotine into the Beringel's bared throat. All that weighty momentum, all of Blake's strength, pouring into a heavy, razor-sharp edge- and it still wasn't enough to cut through the thick hide and muscle of the behemoth, embedding into its flesh.

Blake lurched forward, pressing the heavy blade into its taut neck with all the weight she could lay against it, half-frozen fingers wrapping around the cleaver's handle with one hand and gripping two-thirds of the way up the blade with the other. Like that, she bored down against its thrashing, pulsating throat, pushing forward and to the left to saw the blade through foot-thick muscle and cartledge and sinew. It's roar wetted, turned to a violent, disgusting gurgle as the cleaver sank another few precious inches into its neck. It thrashed harder, weakly flailing it's half-butchered arm as it struggled to maintain balance with only one foot and hell's worth of agony wracking it's massive body. Yang couldn't see it from her angle, and her vision was blurred and foggy with strain besides, but she could feel the grimm's-blood bubbling up through its nose and over her left hand as its trachea flooded and it continued to howl into the sky.

Blake pushed against its throat as thick, foul-smelling ichor and smoke poured from the cut and over her fingers, making them warm and slippery. Still, she pressed in, cutting and cutting until it was all she knew, all she could think to do. She cut and she cut, and with every saw to the left and the right she made, Yang's job got just a little easier as Blake severed one muscle fiber after another.

When she hit one of its carotid arteries, a small jet of blood spurted out of it across the snow. She pressed in still, until she could feel Gambol Shroud grinding against its spine.

It made one final, wet gurgling sound from it's wrent throat, and then it was dead.

And Yang's fire extinguished.

Her fingers released, and immediately every muscle in her body turned to half-melted rubber. Her muscles, relieved, went slack in an instant, all the blood that had been rushing through her compressed arteries like firehose-water suddenly and sharply slowed down to a near-crawl as her arteries dilated. She knew that sharp drops in blood pressure like that weren't great- but knowing that didn't mean she could do anything about it.

She hit the ground before the Beringel did. The snow squealed as her sun-hot skin sublimated it.

"Yang!" Blake's voice pierced the fog clouding her mind. Her voice sounded...odd, strangely muffled-

-Then, the world winked out of existence.

She blinked her eyes open to the sound of the snow hissing around her as she rapidly cooled back down.

Gods, fuck, every single part of her hurt.

The pain from hitting the stump had nothing on this- She felt like she'd put herself in a torture rack, like she'd tied her wrists to one car and her ankles to another and dropped bricks on the pedals. It was an all-encompassing, mind-suppressing pain, and that was just the parts she could feel. She barely had the wherewithal to thank the snow for numbing some of it.

Somewhere, at the periphery of her senses, she heard Blake's boots crunching the snow as she stared bleary-eyed at the greying clouds covering the sky. She must have only been unconscious for a second or two. Blake would have already been here if she'd been out for longer.

Then, there was Blake, right in front of her. She had grimm's-blood on her face, and her eyes were wide and alarmed. Her breath came out as puffy clouds in the frigid air, and she was panting for breath. She'd leaned over to peer at Yang's face, and her hair was hanging down, framing her rosy cheeks and nose, and-

Yang couldn't help but smile as she sagged back into the snow, her heart pounding roughly in her ears. "Oh, hey Blake..." she managed to say between her heavy, laboured breathing. Her voice sounded ragged even to her own ears.

"Are you okay?" Blake's voice mixed with this loud ringing sound that was just about all Yang could hear.

And, off all the things Yang could have said, could have done, she laughed. Because the memory flitted through her mind again of Blake standing there like a knot on a log, staring-

-at Yang.

"Did I look good?" She found herself asking with a wheeze.

Blake's eyebrows shot up, and so did the center of her lips in a weird kind of thin pout. Yang liked to think that if her cheeks weren't already red with exertion and cold, they certainly would be now. She always liked making Blake blush. "Is that- Is that really what you want to ask right now?"

...Which brought her mind back to her own body, and she let out a deep, pained groan, "You know what, maybe...maybe not."

She made to sit up, but a harsh, stinging ache resonated across her back, tearing a gasp from her throat and putting a hard stop to that little venture barely a millimeter in. She felt Blake's hands fly to her shoulders and press her back down, but she hardly needed to bother. Yang slumped back into the snow like a ragdoll, even as Blake asserted worredly, "Try not to move yet."

Yang puffed out her cheeks and stared past Blake. She needed...jeeze, she just needed to breathe, didn't she? Just focus on that, and not how it felt like someone had put her erector spinae into a taffy machine. Yang wheezed out, "Yeap, yep, no moving- got it." She balled her hands into fists, and groaned again because even that hurt like hell, "I think...I think I'm gonna feel this tomorrow morning…"

"Just," Blake started, pressing her lips tight and wincing as she looked down at Yang. She looked...odd, worried, "Just hold still and let your Aura work, you should feel a little better in a few minutes."

It was hard to focus on analyzing Blake's expression over the pain, though, so Yang opted instead to sink back into the blessedly frigid snow and wait for the ache to fade a little.

Blake leaned back, kneeling in the snow next to her. Her head was silhouetted against the gray clouds, and her ears were pinned to her head. "I thought we agreed to keep the 'Yang does something dangerous' trope to one-a-day," she remarked, her voice wavering slightly.

"Whoops," was all Yang could bring herself to say back, trying not to gasp as a fresh pang of liquid ache echoed through her.

A moment passed where the only sound was the hissing of the Beringel's corpse as it began to disintegrate into smoke - thankfully downwind of them - before Blake asked tentatively, "How do you feel?"

It pulled a quiet chuckle from Yang - and a wince, because even laughing hurt - "Like...Like I deadlifted Vale's industrial district..."

Her vision seemed to swim, but she just made out Blake pursing her lips. There was a quiet hiss, and the dark grimm's-blood staining Blake's cheek turned to a black mist and rolled away.

She laughed lightly, winced because it hurt, but laughed again anyway. She didn't know if Blake looked prettier with the blood on her or not.

Gods, she was a mess. Such a mess, over this girl. She rocked her head back into the snow, and she closed her eyes. Not even all this pain could take that away. She'd about herniated her entire spine, and even then she couldn't get a break away from the 'will-we-won't-we's.

"All of that," Blake said, half-aghast, "And you're laughing?"

Yang just shook her head. She felt the snow rubbing into her hair, but she couldn't bring herself to care for once. It was a problem, she knew that. This thing between her and Blake. It was weird and vague, somewhere between being friends and being more. It was a problem, what Blake could do to her heart with the tiniest things.

But hey, it was a pretty good problem to have. Even if it did make her anxiety go off the charts sometimes.

"I'm happy," was what she thought to say, and was mildly alarmed at how true it was.

She heard Blake click her tongue, somewhere beyond Yang's eyelids, "Alright, you're delirious. I'm going to call the pick-up, and we're gonna have the medics look you over." Then, after a moment, "See if you somehow managed to dislocate your brain."

Even with the extra cup of snark, Yang thought she heard just a faint little note of concern in her voice. She laughed deeper, and it hurt again. She didn't know about her brain, but from the little flip-flop in her chest she certainly hadn't dislocated her heart, "Yeah, yeah, go ahead."

There was a moment where the only sound in Yang's ears was the hissing of the Beringel's corpse and the rushing of the frigid wind. Then, she blinked her eyes open, risking the pain to raise her head an inch to look down in curious confusion.

Blake's hand had found Yang's left forearm. Her fingers were frigid and cold, but still sent this…impossible warmth through Yang's body. She squeezed gently, careful not to aggravate Yang's weeping muscles.

She had her scroll in her free hand, but her eyes were on Yang's arm. There was a distant, unfocused look there. Still, her fingers arced electricity, chemistry, as they trailed up. Softly, gently, over the curves of Yang's bare arm, her fingertips gentle as feathers, until her very tender bicep rested gingerly in the cup of Blake's palm. Blake's thumb fitted neatly into the groove of Yang's deltoid, and the feeling made her whole body shudder in the snow.

Blake pressed her lips into a thin line for a moment and, without meeting Yang's eyes, flicked her scroll open and said very quickly, "Yes, you looked really good."

Before the words could even register in the pea-soup of Yang's brain, Blake was gone. Her scroll already pressed to her ear and their pilot already on the line.

After a second of watching Blake leave, a wide, toothy grin split Yang's lips. She rocked back into the snow.

Everything hurt, from her ankles to the crown of her head, every single muscle group torn until Yang was just one big blonde ache-

But Blake had thought she'd looked good. Really good, even.

Worth it.

So, so worth it.

She laughed, and the delight made her chest hurt a little less. The pain seemed just a little less important.

The ringing in her ears began to fade along with the worst of the pain. Thinking back, it'd been a small miracle her Aura hadn't shattered when she'd hit that tree. If it had, it would've been hours before it could do anything to fix her up. It might not even have come back quick enough to fix her up. Whatever, she was just happy the situation had worked out.

Wait, thinking back again, she really had Blake to thank for that, didn't she? Aura did wonders to protect you from getting splattered across the pavement like a custard pie, but getting hit still hurt. She'd been out of it for a while. Yeah, she didn't know exactly how long - on account of being in a pain-induced daze - but it'd definitely been long enough for the Beringel to walk over and flatten her if Blake hadn't been there to keep it busy. If she hadn't been here…

But Blake had been here. She'd been right by Yang, and she'd saved her. Not in any spectacular, cinematic way, but she had.

It made an odd feeling flutter in Yang's chest, and she leaned back into the snow, staring up into the sky like it held the answers to all of her questions. She closed her eyes, and a memory prowled to the front of her mind. Not an old memory, but not a new one either. It was...vague, strange, delirious - just like she'd been at the time - but it may as well have been carved into the backs of her eyelids for as easy as it was to remember.

She'd been nearly blind, dead to the world. She remembered feeling...cold. Even more cold than she felt right now. Impossibly cold, a cold that sank into her very organs and bones.

She had been Dying.

She knew the symptoms, knew the feelings. That chill seeping through her, the impossible pain piercing the right half of her body that hurt so horribly that it didn't hurt at all. The numb sensation of shock.

It was blood loss. She was bleeding too much, bleeding out. She remembered thinking that, making some pointless connection in her mind and rattling off the names of random blood vessels she'd memorized for class. Ascending Aorta, descending aorta, pulmonary artery - the one that's backwards, the only artery that flows towards the heart - left and right subclavians, the Brachial arteries-

The Brachial arteries. Left and...right.

The shock numbed the realization, numbed the pain, numbed her mind. She knew she'd lost...something. Knew she had some kind of open, weeping wound. Knew she was dying.

But she'd felt Blake holding onto her, felt Blake carrying her. Despite it, despite everything, she'd smiled.

Because Yang had found her.

Had found someone, someone who would Be There. Who Yang could rely on, who Yang could trust. Who wouldn't abandon her, who was right here. Helping her, saving her. Yang had thought it was impossible, thought it'd never happen. Thought she was Alone.

But she wasn't, because Blake was here. In the end, Blake was here. For every time Yang had lost, for every time she'd been abandoned, for every time someone she'd loved had decided that she was just trash and thrown her away...she'd had someone in the End. Someone had stayed, would be with her as she died.

And Blake was alive. Yang had saved her.

And for that Person? The one who would actually stay by Yang?

She'd smiled, because to her, that had been worth dying to save. She'd just been happy to finally have someone who wouldn't leave. She'd just been happy to have been really worth something to someone, in the end.

And consciousness left her, the smile fell from her face as she'd gone limp.

And when she'd woken up, she'd been Alone.

Again.

Again.

And for a long time, she'd wished she had just died that night. Wouldn't have had to see Blake's true colors- or, at least, what she'd thought were Blake's true colors. Wouldn't have had to go through all her trust being thrown back in her face...

Wouldn't have been left behind. Again.

The memory was...probably her Worst. Of all the awful memories that Yang had lived and re-lived, that one was probably the one she'd hated the most. It'd taken a long, long time to unlearn the awful things she'd thought back then, about Blake and about herself. The memory still came back to her sometimes, when she'd find herself dwelling on it, sinking into it.

But this time, a weird emotion bubbled up after it. She didn't know what it meant, but Yang reminded herself that she could trust Blake. That Blake had earned that. That she'd proven that.

Even if things were weird right now, even if Yang had hated her once, even if she'd tried to not care about her, not think about her- even if she'd tried so hard to forget her…

Blake had come back. Unlike anyone else, Blake had come back.

And they'd fixed things.

And that's all that matters.

Yang reminded herself that. Blake had come back, and for as complicated and confusing as the situation in Mistral had been between them - for as strange and tempting as the situation is now, in Atlas - Blake had come back, and that was all that mattered.

And now, she'd saved Yang. Again. Twice in one day.

And impossibly, Yang smiled.

Because she could trust Blake. Even if she'd once thought she couldn't. She'd been bitter and resentful and hurt, but she'd grown.

And now, she was happy.

So she rested in the snow, breathed, and stared up at the clouds. She was cold, half-frozen by the ice. She shivered, but was somehow so unbelievably warm, too.

She didn't need to sacrifice for Blake's sake anymore, and Blake didn't need to protect Yang from anything ever again. Now, they fought together, protected each other, shoulder-to-shoulder.

Yang couldn't have taken down that Beringel alone, and neither could Blake.

But that was exactly it, wasn't it? Equal opposites, better together.

She smiled, and hoped Blake would agree with that.

"No, don't- Don't do anything dangerous," Blake's voice cut through her reverie, and that was her queue to decide she'd had enough melodramatic introspection for one day.

Experimentally, Yang tried to raise her head again. The ache in her neck radiated down across her back, but it wasn't quite as bad as it'd been earlier- she could feel the warm sensation of her aura rolling across her, knitting her muscles back together. Blake was facing away from her, one hand pressing her scroll to her ear. She cast a glance back at Yang, before saying into the scroll, "Let me make sure my partner's alright first, give me a second."

"What's the matter?" Yang asked the second Blake turned fully towards her. The snow crunched under her boots as she made her way back, and once more Yang found herself on the floor looking up at Blake.

"Those clouds are a snowstorm," Blake explained, waving up at the gathering grey Yang had spent the past few minutes staring vacantly at, "It came in quicker than Air Command thought, and they're grounding any non-essential airships."

Yang winced, "I'm guessing we count as non-essential?"

Blake shuffled on her feet, glancing away and back again in a way that had Yang very curious, "Well, that depends on you."

On her? "What do you mean?"

Blake huffed, casting glance over to the shapeless, sedan-sized mass that was all that was left of the Beringel they'd killed, still leaking a black mist as it broke down,"Promise you won't pretend to be alright if you aren't."

If she was curious before, she was baffled now, "Uh, what? Why?"

Blake rolled her eyes theatrically before looking back down at Yang, "The pilot says he can come back around and pick us up if you need to get looked over by the medics, but it probably means flying through a blizzard on the way back."

The closest Yang had ever come to being a pilot was wearing her old pair of Aviators and quote-unquote 'flying' down the highway on Bumblebee, but she didn't exactly need a licence to know that flying in the middle of a snowstorm was probably not the smartest thing to do. "What's behind door number 2?" she asked, half-sarcastically. Experimentally, she curled and uncurled her hands. Her fingers and wrist ached, but weren't quite as stiff as earlier. Her prosthetic, on the other hand (literally) felt weird, though. Stiffer than usual.

The wind picked up, howling quietly through the clearing. A shiver raced through Yang, and even Blake in her longcoat crossed her arms to shelter from the gale, her ears flattening against her head again. "The logging camp has a shelter built for hunters to use in the annual clear-out," she explained, motioning towards the camp.

"I'm sensing a 'but'," Yang said in reflex, before adding, "and not the fun kind of butt."

Blake wisely elected to ignore that last bit, "But, no one knows if it's stocked or not. Medical supplies, food, water, beds...no idea."

Welp, she certainly wasn't gonna make that pilot fly through a blizzard for her sake. "MREs for dinner it is, then," Yang concluded, trying to sit up again. She pressed her hands into the snow and pushed, but halfway up every muscle in her back locked. She fell back into the frost with a wheeze.

Blake knelt next to her in a flash, the wind making her hair dance around her shoulders in a way that - even through the pain - Yang found very distracting. "Yang," Blake said, in her 'I'm trying to sound like Weiss' voice, "Don't try and act tough. I need you to be honest with me." Something earnest and pleading crossed her face, but her voice turned firm, "Do you need to see a doctor?"

Yang had to bite her tongue to stop the 'I'm fine' from leaving her lips. She wasn't made of Iron, and Blake didn't need a partner who pretended to be. She was only human, and she reminded herself that it was entirely possible that she did need to see a doctor. Dad always said that she had to know her limits, so she took another moment to take stock of herself. She was hurting - a lot - but her aura was active and thrumming away. If anything inside of her was hurt, her aura should be able to patch it just fine.

Yang breathed out, the numbing effect of the cold was nice, but it was starting to burn her skin, "No, yeah, I'm good. I'll be fine 'til morning."

Blake raised a single, suspicious eyebrow.

Yang pouted, "I'm not lying. I mean, yeah, I pulled a few...dozen muscles, but…" Yang shook her head, shivering. Imobile, half-frozen, with Blake looking down at her, she felt like an iced cod in a display case at a supermarket, "...but it's nothing serious. Scout's honor."

Blake's lips pressed together, her eyebrows turning up in worry. To say she didn't seem convinced would be an understatement. Her ears remained pinned back to her head, and Yang cursed the cold again because she didn't know if they were folded down from the chill or if Blake was upset. She chose to assume the worst though, and added after a moment, "I promise, it's nothing you can't help with. That guy doesn't need to fly through a blizzard for it, and besides," Yang paused, wondering if joking was a bad idea.

Wait, no, joking was never a bad idea, "If someone's gonna poke and prod at me, I'd rather it be you than some Atlesian medic."

Blake huffed, and whether it was at Yang's insistence or the implication that Blake would be 'poking and prodding' her was anyone's guess. "Yang, if you need a medic, you're not- It'd be worth the trouble of getting back to Atlas. Don't say 'no' just because you don't want to inconvenience the pilot. Or me." She paused, and her eyebrows turned up, her head crooking to the side just a little bit, "You're worth that."

She felt her lips press into a thin line. She wasn't going to inconvenience or endanger either of them for her sake, especially not Blake - even if she did need a doctor - but...gods, why did Blake have to go and say things like that? Didn't she know how hard it was to think when her heart was whirling around like a pinwheel in her chest? She couldn't come up with a joke to hide behind, and her voice came out sounding just a note too-vulnerable, soft, "I'm alright, Blake. Promise."

Blake heaved a sigh and shook her head, squatting back on her heels and tutting like she disapproved, but she said, "Alright, I trust you."

Even as the wind picked up, freezing cold and sore beyond belief, the phrase made Yang smile.

"Here," Blake said, holding out her scroll, "Tell the pilot what's going on. I'm going to find my swords, and then we'll see about moving you."

Yang took the little device without too much grief from her sore arms, though her hands were beginning to shake from the chill, "You mind grabbing my j-jacket too? It's over, uh, fused to t-the stump I hit."

Blake frowned at the shiver in Yang's voice. She stood to her full height and promised, "I'll be quick," before she was gone.

Wait, her hands were shaking? As in, plural?

She brought up her right hand, brows furrowing. Metal didn't shiver. Sure enough, the thing was twitching sporadically, and she doubted the steel had suddenly become sensitive to the cold. That probably wasn't good.

Yang huffed, before shaking her head. Whatever, it was listening to her well enough for now, she'd worry about it later. One last time, she pressed her hands into the snow and pushed.

It hurt, every single muscle involved in the motion cried out, from her triceps to her deltoids to her abs. Still, she pushed past it, panting slightly as she shifted her weight forward. She almost cheered in success as her stiff muscles finally let her sit up.

She considered shaking the snow out of her hair and off her back, but an ache radiating through her neck told her that thrashing around like a wet dog probably wasn't smart. She'd deal with that later too. For now, she raised the little communication device to her mouth with her left hand and flicked the mute back off, "This is Xiao Long, you hear me?"

Through the little speaker, a voice crackled, "We r-ad you- team." The storm was probably screwing with the signal. Still, she could make out the words well enough, "go a-head."

She knew the Military had some kind of radio etiquette she should probably be following, but she was too cold and too achey to really care. Besides, it's not like she even knew any of it to begin with, "Head back to Atlas, we'll w-wait out the storm here."

The speaker crackled, and the voice became even more garbled, "R-eat your last-?"

Yang tried again, speaking as loudly and as clearly as she could into the scroll, "We are staying here, go home!"

There was a moment of silence through the connection before the pilot responded, "Ro-ger, team. RTB, stay w-arm out- there."

Yang wasn't quite sure if you were supposed to say 'thank you' on a military channel, but she did anyway before cutting the line. She fiddled with the scroll for a bit, trying to work it around to hit the 'fold' button with her left hand. Her fingers were numb, now, but she managed to hit the button and collapse the device. Looking up, she found Blake by the Beringel's evaporating carcass, pulling Gambol Shroud from the vague lump of smoky muscle that once was its shoulder.

It'd be a bit before Blake was done, which meant she should probably check out the other issue. Grumbling under her breath, she brought her right hand up to look it over.

Experimentally, she tried to ball her hand into a fist. Her fingers moved more sluggishly than she felt they should, and they clicked together awkwardly. She tried the opposite, splaying her fingers out, and they twitched way more than normal. She extended and retracted the elbow of the prosthetic a few times and listened to the motors whining. They were usually whisper-quiet, if audible at all. Definitely not good.

There was a dexterity exercise in the manual that'd come with her prosthetic, it was supposed to help sync up her intention with her movements and help her hand-eye coordination. She'd done it probably a million times since she first opened the box the Ironwood had sent after the Fall. It was the best test she could come up with, so she tried to tap the tip of each finger against the tip of her thumb quickly, one after another, but she frowned as she only really managed it with her index finger. Her middle and ring fingers glanced off, and she couldn't even get her pinky to reach far enough to meet her thumb.

She changed the mental status of her prosthetic from 'not good' to 'very not good.'

Before she could even begin to worry how she was gonna fix it, though, she heard Blake's boots crunching through the snow again. Turning to face her, she was struck by a sudden, powerfully distraught feeling, "Aw, man!"

Blake had Gambol Shroud on her back, and spread out between both of her hands was Yang's jacket- if it could even still be called a jacket. It looked like she'd fed it to a beowolf. The cloth was torn in several places, holes shorn clean through. There were still bits of wood and ice clinging to the cloth, and the inner lining hung loose from the rest by barely a thread. Blake pouted sympathetically, "Sorry, I know you loved this thing."

Yang heaved a sigh- why was it always her things that got wrecked on these missions? Not that she wanted any of the rest of the team's things to get destroyed, but still, the fact that it was always hers was uncanny. First bumblebee, then her prosthetic, and now this. Heck, maybe even her arm, too, if a part of her body counted as one of 'her things'.

Ugh, well, she guessed there was no use crying over spilled milk, "It's a-alright. Let's just get inside before I f-freeze my other arm off."

She didn't even think about the quip before she said it, but kicked herself immediately.

Seemed she was remarkably good at making problems for herself today.

For a moment, Blake paused, her ears still folded down to her head. Yang hoped it was just to shelter them from the cold, but this time she doubted it. Something shifted in her eyes, and the word that Yang thought of was 'forlorn'.

She'd never blamed Blake for what had happened at Beacon, and she'd forgiven her for running a long time ago, but she also knew that Blake probably hadn't ever forgiven herself.

And now she'd gone and brought it back up.

Gods, she hated how awkward it felt. She was past it - she really was this time, not like when she was pretending to be over it in Mistral - but Blake wasn't, and now Yang felt guilty for maybe-probably making Blake feel guilty again and-

A beat passed, then Blake held Yang's jacket out to her, which Yang wordlessly traded for Blake's scroll. After a moment too-long, Blake stooped down next to her again, seeming to ignore or push past whatever she was feeling in favor of asking, "Can you walk?" over the faint howling of the wind.

She ought to apologize for bringing the Fall back up, accidentally or not. She hadn't meant to make Blake feel bad, but she knew trying to say sorry would only make all this more awkward. Better to just ignore it and move on, right?

Even if 'moving on' meant trying to stand on her dead legs. "Here, lemme try," Yang started, bracing herself for the inevitable pain and trying to-

Nope! Nopenopenope! Not happening, definitely, definitely not happening. Her legs felt like they were made of wood, and her whole nervous system became an untuned TV the second she tried to put weight on them. Her hamstrings felt like frayed rope and her calcaneal tendons were like gnawed bubblegum and that wasn't even mentioning her quads or her whole back.

She sucked in a harsh breath past her chapped lips as her butt hit the snow again, both of Blake's hands snapping out to her shoulders to help ease her back down, eyes immediately beaming this selfless worry that Yang found at once heartwarming and wholly embarrassing.

"Ah, uh," she began, with a wince, "My l-legs and back got the worst of it, I think. I don't...don't think that's gonna p-play, Blake."

Blake was so close that, when she huffed, Yang felt the warm breath roll over the nearly-bare skin of her shoulder. A shudder raced through her, completely different from the cold-shivers. "Do you need help up?" she asked over the growing wind, her voice eternally patient.

Yang met her eyes with a sheepish look. She hated feeling like this, all weak and needy. It reminded her unpleasantly of those months she'd spent back on Patch, after the Fall. But hey, at least this time she had Blake to help her around. That was a lot less embarrassing than when Dad had to do it, made her feel less like a child in an adult's body. "Y-yeah," Yang managed to say, the cold sinking into her skin to mix with the embarrassment already there. "Sorry," she added after a second, clutching her jacket with her too-fiddly prosthetic and raising her left arm so Blake could get under it.

Electricity raced through her as Blake stepped into her space. Even for such a simple, utilitarian purpose as helping Yang walk because she's injured, she couldn't help the way her heart seemed to race when Blake's right arm wrapped around her abdomen. Yang slung her arm around Blake's shoulders securely, and Blake's left hand found her wrist.

Together, slowly, they stood, as Blake assured her, grunting slightly with strain, "It's fine, I don't mind."

It hurt, but Blake was strong in her own right. She bore the brunt of Yang's weight, and that seemed to be enough that Yang's legs didn't immediately lock up or explode. Once she was on her feet, they started to slowly make their way back to the logging camp, shuffling along at the pace of Yang's stiff legs.

The pain wasn't insignificant, but Blake was almost like a salve for it. This close, practically pressed into Yang's side, well, Yang's body seemed much more interested in that than any of the host of micro-injuries she'd given herself. Even through her longcoat, Blake radiated this kind of…magnetic warmth. Yang didn't know if she craved it because she was half-frozen to death, or because it was Blake.

Either way, it was just...for as much as Yang could psychoanalyze why she liked the feeling of Blake being so close to her, if there was anything she should have learned from today, it was that the last thing she needed to do was overthink herself into a tizzy.

So, instead of that, she admitted to herself that it was just...Nice.

And even with as awkward as things still were, this weird relationship they had was still just so nice.

...

But still, she couldn't leave things completely comfortable, could she? "Of c-course you don't mind," Yang pressed, just barely keeping the grin out of her voice, "Since you g-get to feel up my arms again."

Blake missed a step, and they both almost tumbled into the snow. "Yang!" She hissed, but there was no real venom in her voice. Just embarrassment. Just this wonderful, adorable embarrassment.

It made Yang laugh again, and she didn't care that her ribs complained. Her left arm was thrown around Blake's neck, and Blake's arm that wasn't wrapped around Yang's torso was holding tightly to Yang's wrist. "Oh come on, Miss 'You looked very good' " she teased, stressing the 'very' and making a point to flex the arm wrapped around Blake's shoulders. Her body cried out at her for flexing her already hyper-sore bicep, but flex it she did. Her arm was bare against Blake's neck, and the motion had the coincidental effect of pressing Blake closer to Yang's body too as the muscle stiffened. Blake's ears, level with Yang's cheeks, flicked at the feeling, coming off of her scalp for the first time in a while. She took that as a sign to press her advantage, losing herself in the familiar easy thrill of saying slightly-flirty things to Blake, "Tell me you don't wanna cop a feel."

Blake's ears flicked again, and she huffed. Then, her whole body seemed to vibrate, and she almost missed another step.

When she spoke again, she had this strangely emboldened tone to her voice. Her ears stood on end like she was alert and her eyes squinted slightly and stayed fixed forward. "You keep teasing me," she grumbled, "and I might just take you up on that." Her voice was razor-wire sharp, and she sounded completely, entirely serious.

A rush of blood hit Yang's face, and even Solitas's chill couldn't dampen the heat burning in her cheeks. "O-oh," was all she could think to say.

They trudged on, closer and closer to the camp in a silent, awkward shuffle.

Now what the heck did that mean? It wasn't like this was the first time Yang had tried to fluster Blake with a bit of playful flirting. Sometimes, when Yang was lucky, Blake flirted back, but never like that. Never so...frank.

On any other day, Yang could've taken it in stride, but today? After what had happened on the CCT support tower, then afterward when they'd cleared the camp? How did this tie into that? What did it mean about Blake? What did it mean about Yang?

She didn't know. She just had questions without answers. Maybe Blake would bring up their unfinished talk again later? She might actually explain what had happened up on the tower-

-But Yang didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing! Did she want to finish that mistake of a conversation, did she want Blake to explain why she'd almost kissed her? What if Blake thought it was a mistake? What if, by confronting Blake about it, Yang chased her away again? What if trying to mess around with this comfortable, more-than-friends place they'd found made Blake retreat, and they went back to just being your average, every day teammates? Could Yang even bear to go through that?

She could hardly even bear to think about it.

But then again...what if the opposite happened? What if they broached the topic, and Blake was the one who was pushing for them to go further, into that dangerous, uncharted territory of 'More'? Would Yang be ready for that?

And if Blake didn't run and Yang was ready too, what if they tried out the whole 'dating' thing and it just, didn't work out? That'd happened to plenty of close friends before, right? What if they just didn't really fit, romantically?

-Something in Yang's chest cramped, and she had the distinct feeling it had nothing to do with her muscles.

She didn't know, but after a second, Blake's hand shifted, sliding down Yang's forearm until their fingers tangled together.

And Yang just resolved to stop thinking about it. Not shake up the status quo. It was easier that way.

So, she just held Blake's hand as they shuffled back towards the camp.

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A/N

And only a small Infinity later, I've actually finished editing chapter 2! Seriously, rough draft for this was done in, like, July or early August, and only now in late September am I happy with it. Still! The benefit of that is chapter 3 is almost done and, as with The Leader, it's way longer than I thought so I'm splitting it into two chapters.

Anyway, I know no one really reads bee stories for the fight scenes, but I wanted to try my hand at using the fights as a way to characterize the two of them kinda like the show does, and trust me, this story is not just an action fic. All this is meant to pay off in the next two chapters with lots of non-fight stuff, so stay tuned! :P

Hope you liked it, don't forget to leave a review so I actually finish chapter 3 within the next decade! Can't wait for it to get cold again, writing the snowy scenes makes me wish for hot cocoa weather.

Anyway, see y'all next time!

-Order