Blake's used to being invisible, to caving in her shoulders and moving indirectly, along with the crowds, never being seen. People look at her, but their gaze skims over and on to someone more interesting.
She remembers the route back to the waterfront, and walks along it until the neon is giving way to the sunrise and the masts of yachts form the skyline. She could leave for Menagerie, now the only sanctuary left for Faunus, and never look back. Live peacefully and free.
When the White Fang rescued Blake and her family, they offered a simple choice. A place on a ship to Menagerie or a place in the ranks of the White Fang, a risky and unstable job breaking out slaves and occasionally committing arson. Blake's parents chose safety, and they wanted Blake to make the same choice. They wanted Blake to have a good life, but Blake couldn't stand the thought of living in comfort while her brothers and sisters struggled and fought and died. She chose to stay and fight.
There's far too much left to do for Blake to leave now.
Blake moves through the docks, blending into the crowds returning from a night of partying and the fishermen heading out. Vale never sleeps, and that's to her advantage when her best safety is in numbers. There are a few Faunus among the dockworkers and tourists, but they all look a little too clean-cut to be seriously involved with the underground. It'll likely take Blake weeks or months to find someone who's involved in rescue, without the White Fang's network to guide her.
A scuffle breaks out on the shoreline, between two laborers hauling a crate and a man who's ducked between them and stolen a piece of fruit. The man is faster than the laborers and runs farther out onto the precarious gangways, where they soon give up chasing him. He settles down comfortably on a railing, tail twitching to maintain his balance.
Blake sets out after him, feet slipping occasionally as planks tilt under her. The larger pleasure craft and the utilitarian ferries are moored at proper docks, but Vale was a fishing town long before it was a city of vice, and the rickety piers and decrepit boats are unlikely to leave.
She approaches him and leans casually on the railing next to him, squinting out at the sunrise.
"Any chance you know about the underground?"
He turns to her and grins, revealing slightly fanged teeth, but there's no malice behind the gesture.
"Who's asking?"
"Blake. Escaped slave." She tugs her hood down so he can see her ears.
"Mind if I check?"
It's a reasonable precaution, Blake knows, and she nods but still winces when he tugs one ear, confirming that it's genuine.
"I'm not really involved with the bigger branches of the subtera," he says, switching to the Faunus patois with a heavy Vale accent. "Just help some folks onto ships once in a while. If you want safe passage to Menagerie, I'm your man. Sun Wukong, la unu kaj sola."
"I don't need to go to Menagerie," Blake insists. "I just have to help people here."
"Right, with no job, no place, and no documents," Sun says, snorting. "Your best bet is take a ship to Menagerie, claim asylum, and come back to Vale once you're a citizen."
"How long does that take?"
"Five years if you're quick with the paperwork." When Blake's face falls, Sun pats her on the shoulder in a gesture probably meant to be consoling. "I know a guy who can get you papers for ten thousand."
"If I had ten thousand dollars, I wouldn't be here talking to you," Blake mutters. It's a little mean-spirited, but Sun laughs anyway.
"You could head out to Menagerie for a few months until the hunt for you dies down, then come back, if the time is such an issue," he suggests. "Damnitaj lazy bounty hunters forget about you pretty quickly. There's a network out there, White Fang agents and everything, so you won't be out of the underground unless you want to be."
Blake turns away and pretends to watch the ships farther out to hide her face.
Not even Menagerie is safe for her, not with its White Fang presence.
Blake is iu perfidulo, just some traitor, to the Faunus. Even those who aren't part of the White Fang appreciate their work even if they don't agree with their methods, and they don't look kindly on deserters. Regardless of their reasons. Even if the deserters are doing nothing more than trying to survive.
Those who give up when things get rough were never on our side. It's an old proverb from the clan battles, before humanity's arrival, and it still holds regardless of how they've tried to break the clans and the family networks.
Nobody is treated more harshly than the collaborators. The overseers who take up the whip against their brothers to survive get burned slowly and strung up, to teach a lesson to the rest. Blake has lit the fires more than once. Watched good people who were just trying to feed their children die while the people she thought were on the right side laughed.
A hand rests on Blake's shoulder, and she jerks away from it, raising her fists instinctively before lowering them again. It's just Sun, looking worried.
"It's getting a little late to be standing around on the docks," he says. "Police start stopping by."
"I can't go to Menagerie," Blake says, keeping the shoreline in her peripheral vision so she's ready to run if she needs to.
"Got on the White Fang's bad side, huh?" To her surprise, Sun grins at her. "They're fighting, but they go too far. I'm not holding that against you, and some parts of Menagerie won't either."
On the docks, there are half a dozen police in gray uniforms. They're fanning out and approaching each boat, searching through the crates of goods. Just customs workers, not a strike force, but they're still working for the government and won't hesitate to shoot someone who looks like her.
Blake swears under her breath, glancing out across the ocean then back to the docks. At the very least, running will grant her a few more days of freedom.
"Get me on a ship to Menagerie," she says.
"I thought you'd never ask."
…
Yang sighs and accepts the video call, forcing a smile onto her face and trying to look less exhausted and worried. It doesn't really work.
Ruby's face pops up on the screen, and fortunately she seems a little distracted.
"I got into Beacon!" she squeals, waving the acceptance letter at the screen.
Beacon is a much more expensive school than one of the local polytechnic institutes, but it's the best university on the continent, good enough that even Atlesians send their kids there, and Ruby got in. Two years early, too.
"You did great, Rubes," Yang tells her, and she doesn't have to fake a grin. "I'm so proud of you."
They chat back and forth about her class schedule for a long time, until Yang can almost forget and Ruby reluctantly ends the call, saying that she really should get some sleep. Yang doesn't hear from her family that often, since the comms networks on Patch are out of commission thanks to the weather more often than not, and good news can be hard to come by. But Ruby made it. As long as they can keep scraping up the cash for tuition, Ruby's going to have a great life and a great future.
There's a knock on the door, and Yang calls "come in!" Pyrrha enters; she still knocks even though they share a room, and it gets on Yang's nerves once in a while but mostly it's just funny.
Pyrrha sits down on her bed, facing Yang, and twists her hands together nervously.
"What's going on?" Yang asks. Pyrrha deals with her own problems, so if she's even letting her roommates see that she's worried, things are bad. Yang mentally runs through their bills, and exactly how far they're behind on each.
"Nora mentioned to me that there was – briefly – an escaped slave in this space, whom we protected."
"You can't prove anything," Yang says desperately. "My word against yours, it won't hold up in court. Blake's long gone by now."
"Yang –"
"She's just trying to survive! She's trying to survive in a world that hates her for having the nerve to exist, and apparently that's a fucking crime now!"
"Yang, I'm not going to turn you in."
Yang stops. Takes a deep breath and unclenches her fists. She knows she needs to work on her anger. Pyrrha continues.
"That was a kind and a brave act. I wish I was brave enough to do the same."
Yang tries to tell Pyrrha that she isn't all that brave, not really, but Pyrrha holds up a hand to silence her and continues speaking.
"I was a part of Mistral, a part of the system that keeps the Faunus enslaved. I left Mistral, but I never really atoned for what I did."
"You were a kid, Pyrrha, nobody blames you for –"
"I'm still talking," Pyrrha says quietly, and that shuts Yang up quick, even though her tone is still gentle. It's not what she's used to hearing from Pyrrha, of all people. "I know that I've done terrible things, and I want to try to make up for them."
Yang doesn't know what Pyrrha's trying to say, so she waits.
"I think we should join the Underground."