Hey guys. Sorry it's been a while. Been wanting to get back on a regular schedule, but my health is still shaky and my internet is out. (Actually posting this from an iPhone.) I'll keep doing my best to get content out, and I hope you all enjoy the chapter!
"If you're not hunting Grimm, get back to your dorms!" Coco shouted as she approached the school with many of the students that had headed down to the city during the first wave. She had less to be worried with at the school seeing as the students could defend themselves, but she didn't need drifters roaming about and adding to the chaos. "Just because I'm not the night watch doesn't mean that I can't give you detention, because I can and will!"
"We wanted to get something to eat from the cafeteria!" One student claimed. Coco stared into the night for a long minute before facepalming.
"There's no power! You aren't getting anything from the cafeteria!" She yelled back at them.
"Then why is there a light on in there?" Another called. Coco looked to the building, a faint light visible through the doors' windows, and she new immediately that it must be the light of a scroll.
"I'll send them to their dorms, now go!" Coco assured them. The murmured and grumbled as they left, Coco sighing as she headed towards the mess hall and wondered who she would find. If it was a student, they were either completely unaware to the situation, which she doubted, or they were panicking like the civilians down below. She could handle it, the odds of whatever she was about to face being more difficult than fighting Boyd were pretty slim to a definite none. She threw open the entrance, ready to reprimand the teen but was instead faced with a Weiss who sat in the dark, alone, at a table, using a fire infused glyph in her hand to heat her paper cup filled with coffee. She glanced up at Coco as cold air rushed into the room, startled by the woman and almost dropping her coffee.
"Coco!" Weiss exclaimed. Coco sighed as she walked over to the SDC President and sat across from her.
"In here trying to stay warm?" Coco inquired. Weiss stared into the dark liquid in her cup that she could barely make out, sighing as she attempted to shrug off whatever she was feeling with a smile.
"I guess that's one way to put it," Weiss offered thoughtfully.
"Isn't there still heat in Neela's room?" Coco questioned. Weiss nodded.
"Of course," Weiss replied. "Blake and Yang are there with Shadow, so I thought I would give them some time with her after the scare of losing the power."
"Right," Coco agreed. She knew something was off, but she wasn't sure that Weiss would be willing to open up about it.
"Is there nothing more I can do?" Weiss asked, her hand gripping the cup starting to shake.
"What more do you need to do?" Coco pried. "Your team has been doing an amazing job keeping her stable."
"But it's not enough, is it?" Weiss seethed. She put the cup down and ran her hands through her hair. "I have nearly infinite supplies and resources at my fingertips, but I can't do anything! I can't give them peace of mind until their daughter wakes up! Why can't we figure out what it is?!"
"You're being too hard on yourself, Weiss," Coco interjected.
"I just…" Weiss reached out her hands into the darkness. "When we had just gotten to meet her for the first time I gave her Dust for her bow. She reached out her arms and hugged me for a long moment, looking up at me with those wondrous eyes, telling me thank you and that she loved me. A girl that had lived the first years of her life, where hating humans was second nature to breathing, loved me without hesitation. It made my fear and hatred of the White Fang into my teenage years seem trivial. She had learned to accept us so quickly. I wanted to cast aside any and all of my ignorance and love like she could."
"And you did just that," Coco assured her, grabbing her hand. "Your daughter means the world to you and Ruby." Weiss nodded, though tears welled in her eyes.
"But I love Neela just as much," Weiss explained. "She has to wake up, she has to!" Coco nodded.
"She means something to all of us," Coco agreed. "She's tough. She'll wake up."
"This is all your fault," a voice echoed out among the parapets of her mind, echoing off of the void endlessly and reverbing back in on itself so many times that Yang could hardly make sense of what the voice was trying to tell her. The words lost all meaning, though the voice was her own and she knew all too well what they meant by it being her own fault. Everything that was happening to Neela as of late and had been happening to Neela was all her fault and no one else's. Who else was there to blame when it was so unexplainable, save one detail. A blow that had weakened Neela's body. Yang denied her mind its exclamation.
"No!" She fought back. Another reverberation to meet the others. It danced with the words from before, becoming overpowered and simply fading into one mess.
"Mommy!" Shadow yelled from somewhere behind her. Yang was lightning quick, turning on her heels and blasting through the hallway as her fist put a hole through the White Fang trash that was trying to rob her of her child. The mask disappeared, revealing a scared Neela and Yang melted.
"No! No! I didn't mean to!" Yang shouted.
"But you did!" Athena chortled. Yang spun around once more, this time to face Athena, sitting upon her throne with a child chained to her hip. No. With Neela chained to her hip.
"Give her back!" Yang demanded.
"Ha!" Athena replied with brevity. "She was never yours to take to begin with. She didn't need to be loved. She needed to be honed like the weapon that she was. My predecessor, the savior of all Faunus kind!"
"She didn't want that!" Yang growled, finding her feet.
"Didn't want that? Was the girl not terrified of you when you found her? Did she not flinch at your touch?" Athena inquired. "I wonder where she learned such things?"
"You taught her to fear humans!" Yang barked.
"They did that themselves…" Athena spat.
"We taught her to love," Yang yelled. The words fell flat in the void before Athena stood slowly.
"Or did you simply teach her what you wanted her to feel as I did?" Athena offered. She smirked, the rest of her vanishing until nothing remained but her smile. When she came into view once more she was replaced with Neela, who clung haphazardly to a Fang mask.
"Humans killed my parents," Neela droned.
"It never should have happened," Yang cried out.
"You took me from the Fang," Neela replied as if her voice was nothing more than a recording.
"We saved you, Neela!" Yang pled.
"From a collapsing building…" Neela noted before falling silent. She jerked suddenly to face Yang. "Why was it falling to begin with?"
"Neela…" Yang stammered.
"Broken ribs that were still recovering…" Neela added.
"Neela," Yang stated.
"Paired with the heartbreak of losing Elli…" Neela continued.
"Neela!" Yang screamed.
"There's no way my aura could have taken a hit like that!" Neela rang out. Her eyes lit up, on Yang in a flash and as Yang swung up to block she stopped short. Neela wouldn't hit her. "Goodbye…"
"Yang!" Blake demanded, her wife waking from a dead sleep in her chair in Neela's room, chest heaving and eyes red with rage as she remembered where she was and the beeping and buzzing of medical devices snapped her out of it. Within seconds of the black out the SDC staff had repowered the equipment with Dust they had on hand, and had stabilized Neela like it was as simple as remembering to breathe. But on the short run over from the apartment, Yang and Blake couldn't have been more on edge. Yang looked at Blake, took a deep breath, and calmed down. This wasn't any better than the nightmare.
"Sorry," Yang apologized. "Bad dream."
"About Neela?" Blake questioned. Yang nodded and her wife sighed, putting her book on the table beside her. "This isn't your fault."
"But what if I hadn't broken her ribs that night?" Yang replied. Blake sighed.
"Whatever is going on with her right now, is bigger than us," Blake informed her. "I'm sure this is how your dad felt when you and Ruby left to fight an immortal deity." Yang rolled her eyes.
"She was hardly a deity," Yang scoffed.
"Yang," Blake scolded. "You know what I mean. Besides, based on Coco's description of that thing, I think Neela took that blow better than most of us would have." Yang sighed and looked across the room at her sleeping daughters, Shadow curled up on the bed next to her sister hoping to bring her comfort.
"She has to wake up," Yang stated.
"She will," Blake assured her.
"You sound so sure," Yang noted. Blake chuckled as she picked her book back up.
"If I don't, I'll fall apart," Blake replied. Yang looked at her better half for a long moment before covering herself with the coat she'd brought once more and trying to nod off again.
You're stronger than I am, Blake.
"I bet the two of your are excited," Tai noted as he brushed past Yang to grab eggs from the fridge for his cake, beaming at his daughter who wore a smile that was beaming from ear to ear.
"I don't think I've ever been happier in my entire life, dad!" Yang replied as she grabbed the eggs from him and cracked them, letting them sink into the dry batter in the bowl.
"Must be the same way I felt when you were born," Tai exclaimed, faking a sob. He wiped his nose and rubbed his chin. "And then Ruby came along…"
"Very funny!" Yang shouted, hip checking him. "How are things coming along in there?!"
"Almost finished!" Blake called back from Neela's bedroom where she was doing her newly adopted daughter's hair. "I think it looks amazing, Neela. The braids are quite a bit different from how it was before, but I think it's you, all the way." Neela nodded without really replying to the question and Blake paused for a moment, looking at her in the mirror as the girl avoided eye contact. "Is everything okay?" Neela nodded frantically but still seemed to be avoiding Blake, and so the woman stopped brushing her hair and walked around her daughter, kneeling between the girl and the mirror. "What's wrong, honey?"
"I…" Neela's eyes finally met Blake's, slightly glossed over as though she was doing her absolute best to hold back her tears. "I'm really nervous, Blake." Blake brushed her hair out of her face, stroking her cheek for a long moment until the girl was forced to hold back a smirk.
"About meeting everyone?" Blake pried. Neela nodded.
"Ya, kinda," she agreed. "But…" She stopped short and Blake inquired further.
"Whatever is wrong, sweetheart, you know you can tell me," Blake assured her.
"What if…" Neela choked on her words as tears began welling in her eyes. "What if your family doesn't like me?" Blake immediately wrapped her arms around the girl and pulled her in for a hug, letting her finish crying on her shoulder and the warmth of her embrace calmed Neela down. She pulled away from the girl, looking her in the eyes once more with a gentle sternness.
"They would have no reason not to like you. You're a smart, beautiful and determined young girl. All things that Yang and I love about you, and all reasons for them to love you. They're all coming to your party because we keep telling them how happy you make us and they want to meet you too," Blake explained.
"Really?" Neela sniffled.
"Yup!" Blake declared with a smile. "Ever since you've been around we love sharing all the fun times we have together with others. They want to find out just how fun you are themselves." Blake paused before grabbing Neela gently by the shoulders. "And if, for some unbelievable reason, they wouldn't like you, it wouldn't matter to Yang and me. You're our daughter and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. You will always be the best thing that has ever happened to us, Neela."
"Okay," Neela sniffed again, Blake gently smiling while wiping the tears from the corners of her daughters eyes, as well as her own.
"Plus, I bet you can't wait to show everyone your new haircut once they get here!" Blake reminded her. She grabbed the hand mirror off of Neela's bed and showed the girl her hair, hoping that it would be a ray of hope for her daughter and not another issue to feel self conscious about. "Did it turn out okay?" Neela's eyes lit up and leapt up and down, running her hands through her hair and giggling.
"Yes! Better than okay!" Neela exclaimed. She threw her arms around Blake and laughed. "It looks amazing! Thank you, mom, I love it!" Blake's mind blanked as her ears rang and the girl's warmth melted into her. Thank you, mom, I love it! It was the first time the girl had called her mom, and something within Blake gripped her tightly. "Can we go show Yang and Tai?"
"Yes…" Blake choked back tears the best that she could. "Yeah, that should be done by now." Neela grabbed Blake by the hands and rushed her out of the room down the hallway to the kitchen, standing behind Yang and patiently waiting for her to turn around as she put the finishing touches on one of the dishes she'd put together. Blake cleared her throat, standing next to her wife and playfully nudging her as well as leading her with her head.
"Yang, I think someone wants to show you something," Blake noted.
"One sec, Kitty Cat," Yang offered before handing off the casserole dish to her father and drying her hands on a towel on the counter. "Okay, what's up?" Blake smiled at her and motioned for her to turn around, before Neela caught her off guard.
"Mom! Blake finished my hair cut! Doesn't it look awesome?!" Neela asked. A guttural sound left Yang's throat as she staggered, a tear escaping the corner of her eye as she beamed at the girl, picking her up with her left arm and running her right hand through her braids.
"I think it looks perfect on you, Neela. Blake did a great job," Yang rasped. Yang slowed her breathing to remain composed, kneeling as she set her daughter on her feet, her hand lingering in the braids. "Why don't you and Mommy Blake get washed up? It's almost time for the guests to start arriving and we'll be eating as soon as they get here."
"Okay!" Neela exclaimed happily. "I'll hurry!" She grabbed Blake's hand, dragging her down the hallway as fast as she could muster. "Come on, mom! We have to hurry and wash up before they get here!" As the bathroom door slammed Yang looked up at her father who smiled gently at her before she broke down into sobs. Tai wrapped his arms around her and pulled her up into his arms for a hug.
"She called me mom! Dad, she called me mom!" Yang gasped. Tai smiled, kissing her forehead and holding her until she calmed down. He looked into her eyes as he brushed the hair from her face.
"I've never been more proud of you, Yan. Seeing how that little girl looks at you, especially just now. She loves you, with all of her heart, and she knows you feel the same way. That's how every child should look at their parents. You're going to be a great mom." Yang wiped the tears from her face and laughed.
"I can't wait for everyone to meet her. Getting to see her feel the love of her new family is going to be great!" Yang declared. As the doorbell rang Neela raced across the house with Blake close behind, Tai shoving his daughter to go and join them at the door.
"Can I let them in?!" Neela asked impatiently.
"Are you ready, Little Bird?" Yang asked. Neela looked up at her for a moment puzzled at the nickname before smiling and grabbing Yang's hand.
"You know it!"
Neela has to wake up. Next time, Chapter 46: Inactive!
A big thank you to all of my readers, and to artists AG_Nonsuch, Helihi, Cadhla182, Carlomontie, Nliast, Y8ay8a, Sa-Dui, Diyaru4500, Demize00Zero, TheCipherNine, SketchHungry, Ookaminoki, Lightning-in-my-Hand, and Dishwasher1910. The artwork can be found at Deviantart, you can search Silent-Celica and under my favorites tab, I have a collection for NITE.
Until next time, stay healthy and stay classy!