Chapter 7
"Blake! Blake! Blake! It's time to go!" Ilia chattered.
Blake just rolled over in her bed, pulling a pillow over her face to block out the sound.
"Come on, it's time to wake up." The chameleon faunus paced back and forth around the room getting her things ready for class after the long weekend.
"No." Blake gutturally groaned.
"Yes!" Ilia stopped at Blake's bed.
"I said no."
"Too bad!" Ilia grabbed and tried to rip away the covers, but Blake had made too thorough a burrito blanket out of it. "Damnit Blake!"
"Go to class Ilia." Blake rolled into the wall her bed adjoined.
"Blake, you need to go to class. I let you mope all weekend, but now it is time to get up."
"No." Blake grunted.
"Come! On! You! Have! Class!" Ilia fought to either steal the blanket or pull her friend out of the bed, willing to settle for either. Once more, her efforts got her nothing but a sore arm and ass as she fell back onto her butt.
"Will you please just go to your class and leave me alone?"
"No! I am not going to leave you alone!" Ilia huffed. "How long are you going to mope like this."
"Till I die, Weiss realizes I wasn't lying, or until it stops hurting. Whichever comes first."
"Oh my god! Stop being such a drama queen! You don't need princess anyways! She is a Schnee for fuck's sake. Two years ago you would have sooner sworn a vow to kill her than to love her!"
"That was then and this is now Ilia! Now leave me the fuck alone!"
"No! You! Don't!" Ilia lept to her feet and yanked once more, this time successfully yanking Blake all the way from the bed and tumbling down right on top of her.
"Stop it Ilia!" Blake simply grabbed the blankets back and rolled up in them on the floor.
"Are you really just going to skip classes? I know your grades are better than mine, but they aren't that good. Not so good that you can just ignore classes and not flunk out."
"Fine then. I'll flunk out. Go back to menagerie. At least there I wouldn't have to see her every day."
"A- Are you kidding me?" Ilia scrambled back to her feet. "Months! You spent months trying to convince me to come here with you!"
"That was back when I had a future here."
"'Come to beacon! You can do more good than in the white fang! Be a huntress!' That was what you said!" Ilia mimicked Blake in an overly cheery tone.
"I think I liked it better when you were pretending I didn't exist for the past two months." Blake simply rolled under her bed, making it all the harder to yank her back out.
"Fine then. Hide away, flunk out. See if I care!" Ilia lied, giving up for the morning, but far from for the whole day.
Blake curled up tighter in her own little hole, uncaring to anything else.
"Where is Blake?" Ruby scanned around the cafeteria.
Weiss huffed and rolled her eyes as she continued her meal, completely ignoring her teammate's question.
Penny, who had grown accustomed to sitting with team RWBY ever since she and Ruby had discovered their connection seemed to just retreat into herself without a word.
Yang shrugged and continued eating, not much off-put by the absence and striving to eat quickly so she could finish the day's… extracurricular activities.
"Weiss? You were the last one to see her right? Did she seem alright? Was anything wrong."
"Many things are wrong with her." Weiss snapped with a disgusted face.
"Huh? Is she alright? Maybe we should all stop by her room tonight and see if we can cheer her up or get her some soup or something if she is sick."
"Sick?" Weiss gave a dry and forced laugh. "That is certainly one thing to call what she is!"
"What got into you?" Yang spoke up.
"Nothing!" Weiss defended reflexively.
"You sure?" "Not true." Ruby and Yang talked over each other.
Weiss shifted uncomfortably.
"You are normally cold, but today you are full-on ice queen."
"Whatever Yang!" Weiss rolled her eyes and began to pack up her lunch.
"Weiss." Penny tried to stop her friend.
"What Penny!"
"Maybe it's time to tell-"
"To tell what?" Ruby yelped intrigued.
"Uugh! Can't you keep your trap shut!" Weiss lashed out at Penny unreasonably.
"Wei-"
"Tell Goodwitch I was feeling sick. I can't take any more of today!" Weiss stood with a loud screech of her chair before marching off and away.
"Huh, she seems… pissy?"
Ruby frowned and hid her head in her hands. "Why does everyone have to be fighting!"
"Aye, does this have anything to do with why you were asking me about dad had two soulmates? How it was my mom, then yours and mine, then just yours?" Yang's head popped up, eager and excited as she thought she had solved the incomplete riddle. "Hmm, no, that doesn't connect to Blake, does it?" She pouted and slumped in her seat, disheartened with her sister.
"I'm sorry, what?" Penny coughed on the food she ate but didn't need.
"Huh? No, I was just saying that doesn't explain why Weiss is all ice queen and Blake is gone."
"No! No! The other thing! S- Soulmates can really change? Like that? Come and go?"
"Oh! Yeah. Ruby might be a little young to remember, but when we lost Summer, and we were worried Tai would be alone forever, she always used it to comfort us… Come to think of it, that was when Qrow seemed to show up a lot more often…" Yang shrugged. "But yeah, he always told us not to worry. 'Souls are abstract, amorphous, and never uniform or not always the same. Soul mates are something precious, but not always something permanent.'" Yang mimicked with a low and aged voice. "Kinda nice, huh? I mean, sad too, but ni-"
"Oh god!" Penny dropped her fork.
"Hey, Rube, I adore you, but I'll be right back. I need to talk to Weiss, ok?"
"Yeah, sure. Date night again tonight?"
"Corse love." Penny kissed Ruby's cheek before rushing off in the direction she thought Weiss had gone.
"Oh, god, I'm sorry." Weiss apologized after bumping into someone on her way out of the cafeteria.
"It's ok." Velvet whispered back. "I- umm, but, are you ok?"
"Huh? Yeah, whatever." Weiss brushed off carelessly.
"I just, Ilia said you and Blake go-"
"I am fine, and I never want to talk about it!"
"Ok." Velvet's ears drooped, unsure if she should pursue the topic more or simply let it go.
The heiress only got another minute or two out of the cafeteria before another interruption came. "Weiss! Weiss!" Ilia called out after the heiress.
Weiss outright ignored the faunus, giving no care to her whatsoever.
"Weiss, please! It's Blake, I know you care about her!"
Weiss spun around, her hand rushing to the hilt of her sword. "That I what!"
"I- I know you cared about her." Ilia tried again, but at least attempted to avoid it sounding like an accusation.
"Cared! Past tense! I cared about her! As in not anymore! Not now that I know the truth! What she lied about, for how long!" Weiss huffed and rolled her eyes disgusted by just thinking about the faunus.
"Blake didn't lie!"
"What? Now she has you doing her dirty work for her?"
"Really, she didn't!"
"She didn't? And why do you believe her?"
"I- I don't need too, I've seen her… and beyond that, she is my friend."
"Yeah, well, that is what I thought too. But now I know I was nothing more than a toy for her to play with."
"Weiss, you can't really believe that… I…"
"Just leave me alone until you are done doing her dirty work for her." Weiss turned away. The exact moment Ilia attempted to grab the heiress's wrist, Weiss initiated her semblance, the eight-foot white knight towering between them and ready to stop Ilia if she tried to grab Weiss again.
"Please." Ilia attempted to appeal one final time, but Weiss ignored it. "Fine." The faunus angrily kicked the giant suit of armor, nearly breaking her big toe in the process. "OOuch! Fuck!" Ilia grabbed her hurt foot, hopping over to the wall to lean against it for support. "D- damnit!"
"Are you ok?" Velvet peeked her head around the corner she had been hiding behind.
"I- Velvet? You… you were listening?" Something told Ilia that the bunny faunus hadn't just randomly appeared by luck alone.
Velvet nodded, her gaze focused down at Ilia's food with a concerned expression. "Are you ok?" She repeated herself as she walked over.
"Yeah." Ilia sighed, looking to the conjured being as it faded away. "All that is hurt is my pride."
"You stood up for Blake?" Velvet noted, half observantly, half distractedly.
"She's stuck under her bed lamenting their… break up?" Ilia couldn't decide if that was the right term, but she figured it was close enough.
"What happened?" Velvet fished for information, gently ushering Ilia to throw an arm over her shoulder and use her as a crutch till they could find a place to sit.
"Thank you."
"For what?" Velvet returned honestly.
"For pretending to care even after I made an ass of myself." Ilia sighed, leaning into Velvet as the other woman assisted her in hobbling off. "And, and for helping me stand despite me being an idiot."
"You aren't an idiot, and I'm not pretending." Velvet seemed to snuggle into Ilia, but that couldn't have been the case; it must have just been her readjusting the other woman's weight on her shoulder.
"Eh, almost breaking my foot against a big ass knight that was going to disappear in a minute does not particularly strike me as intelligent."
"Maybe not, but you were sticking up for your friend. You cared." Velvet's ears drooped and rested against Ilia as she wrapped an arm tighter around her.
"Fat lot of good it's done. I think I just made Weiss more mad, if that was even possible."
"Maybe, but you tried. You tried to help your friend. And I'm going to go out on a limb and assume it was actually because you cared about her, not just because you wanted to get on her good side or something."
"Not sure it matters if I don't get anything done either way." Ilia lamented as Velvet helped her down and onto a couch in a common room.
"It matters." Velvet settled.
Ilia shrugged and sighed, much less certain.
"It does." Velvet leaned over and kissed Ilia on her cheek.
"I! I! V- Velvet!" Ilia stammered, turning a flustered pink or light red.
"It matters." Velvet repeated with another, slightly more passionate kiss that involved wrapping her arms around the brightly colored faunus.
"I! Vel- I-" Ilia's skin shifted back and forth between an embarrassed purple and a flustered red.
"Your foot ok?" Velvet moved the topic along as if nothing unique or out of the ordinary had occurred.
"I- what?! My foot! Huh?" Ilia had completely broken down into a gay mess.
"You hurt your foot, remember?"
Ilia looked to Velvet, still almost entirely dazed by the kiss.
"Are you ok?" Velvet found the same strand of hair straying away from Ilia's ponytail and tucked it behind her ear with another soft caress at the faunus's cheek.
"I- stunned." Ilia strived to put her feelings into words.
"Was it not ok that I ki-"
"It was perfectly ok! More than ok! So much ok!"
"You are sure?" Velvet pulled her hand back, fingers tracing delicately over Ilia's soft cheek only to be caught a moment before they left completely.
"I'm sure! So sure! Incredibly sure! I- I just…" Ilia's voice caught in her throat. "I just didn't think… didn't think you wanted-"
"I didn't, because you weren't ready."
"I'm sorry. I can get out of your hair th-"
"Weren't, past tense." Velvet caressed Ilia's cheek once more.
"I-"
"When was the last time your soulmate… you know?"
"Last week? I think-"
"Wednesday night? Seven times?" Velvet blushed a deep crimson. "Around nine o'clock?"
"How did you kno… You?"
"I've known since monopoly. Apparently wanting or needing to go… a number of times in a row can be a bunny faunus trait sometimes. And I most often go for ten."
"And you didn't… you didn't tell me because I was still hung up over Blake."
"I wasn't ready to fall for someone still pining for someone else." Velvet admitted.
"To fall for?"
"Maybe, if you play your cards right." Velvet lowered her head to boop Ilia with her long ears. "And if you pose for all my photos." She flashed a wide smile before snapping a picture of the stunned faunus next to her.
Ilia felt a dumb grin growing on her face, taking her over and winning her expression.
"There, just like that." Velvet leaned in and turned the camera to face the both of them, all the while throwing up bunny ears behind Ilia's head with two fingers.
"Hey! Have you two seen Weiss? I can't find her anywhere!" Penny half yelled as she dashed past the duo on the couch.
End of Chapter 7
