Alright, who needs a distraction? Because I sure fucking do.
Quick disclaimer that while there will be nothing at all graphic... well, it's a Blake backstory. So. Beware of non-endgame Tauradonna and Adam being a creep, particularly in his and Sienna's chapters.
Housekeeping-wise, I'm not totally sure how often this will end up getting updated, but very probably at least once a week. Most chapters already have rough drafts, so if I wind up finishing the last of them early I might speed things up a bit. Oh, and there will be seven total.
Is that it? I think that's it, but I have... not slept today tbh, so honestly who the hell even knows. I probably shouldn't be posting anything or, like, lifting heavy machinery or whatever but fuck it, i'm doing it anyway. (rest assured, the actual chapter here was written and edited while i was much more coherent)
Ghira
Blake is curious. Humans will make something of that, someday, Ghira is sure. Almost as sure as he is that she won't let that stop her.
It can be... challenging. She's not even crawling yet, and already knows how to roll around in search of new places to explore and new ways to give Ghira a heart attack. But he can never find it in himself to be angry when she looks up at him with her gold eyes wide with wonder.
Those eyes are what finally tip the scales. He and Kali have been building up the White Fang in Menagerie for years—it was already in its first stages when they met, with her fresh off the boat from Mistral. But when Blake toddles up to him and opens her hands, and a tiny iridescent beetle flutters out, he knows they have to expand. No matter how safe they make Menagerie, it'll always be a cage. His cub deserves a whole wide world to explore.
The humans are quick to make a show of support for this "new" movement. Never mind that any faunus could have told them the White Fang has been around for more than a decade, or that it's an amalgamation of dozens of smaller organizations, some of which predate the Great War. And of course, the humans' support never seems to turn into actual practical change. Ghira knows his way around this sort of thing by now. He's learned patience dozens and hundreds of times. Maybe one of these days it will stick.
He worries about Blake, though. She's only six when they reach Mistral, and she's the only child in their group. Sure, she gets along well with the adults, particularly Sienna, and she seems perfectly happy to listen to them talk politics—which is actually a little frightening all on its own—but there's also the matter of education.
They can't enroll her in a normal school. The White Fang tends to wear out its welcome quickly, according to the humans in the towns they visit, so they're constantly on the move. It's a damn miracle they meet Tukson, fresh from a job teaching young children in Argus. A damn shame, too. As far as Ghira is concerned, they prove without a shadow of a doubt he was fired because he was outed as a faunus, but the jury disagrees.
Ghira can't pay as well as his old job, but he's justifiably angry and ready to push back however he can. So every weekday, for somewhere between four and seven hours depending on how much they can squeeze in, Tukson sits with Blake in the back of a wagon and teaches her math, reading, history... and all of a sudden, she can never get her hands on enough books.
Kali does her best to track down a library card in each new town they visit. When she's turned away, Tukson waltzes right in and out and hands off the little plastic card to Blake. Ghira doesn't like that—it feels wrong to ask it of him, for one thing, and worse to sidestep the discrimination they're supposed to be fighting.
When he voices this aloud, Kali rolls her eyes fondly and pats him on the shoulder. "We can't spend months getting a library card in every town we visit, Ghira, or we'd never get anything else done. The bigger picture has to come first."
Tukson only smiles and says, "It's the least I can do."
"I still say Blake should get to keep a book," Sienna adds, with a devilish twinkle in her eyes. "They'd change their tune a lot faster if something went missing every time they decided to act like pricks."
Ghira chuckles and shakes his head.
On their first library visit, he tries to gently suggest to Blake that she should put a few of the books back. She's loaded her arms up with everything she can carry, and they're only staying here for a few more days. She hugs them protectively against her chest and insists she can read them all in time. And, to his astonishment, she does.
It's like a light switches on behind her eyes. Ghira finds himself sitting up in their camp long after she ought to be in bed, watching fondly and petting her ears as she flips page after page. He's never really understood the draw of fiction (except maybe the books Kali likes, but those aren't exactly appropriate for a seven-year-old). For Blake it's the exact same thrill as finding a hidden forest path, or climbing onto the roof of a wagon to see the road from a new vantage point. It's discovery.
Tukson has the sense to incorporate the books she's reading into his teaching, and to spin his history lessons into stories for her. Her attention drops off a bit in math and science, but Ghira considers it a small price to pay for finding a passion like that.
For a while, it almost looks like the books will keep her out of trouble. Ghira makes the mistake of saying this to Kali—she laughs harder than he thinks is warranted, until the next morning when Blake proves her right by proudly presenting them with a very interesting (and very venomous) spider.
It's his final and deepest fear. There's Grimm and worse out on the roads, and Blake is the sort of child who never sits in the same place twice. She explores caves, climbs trees and cliffs, often with a book to read once she's found a nice spot. And gods, but she keeps forgetting to tell them where she's going and he's not sure his heart can take one more frantic search.
When she's not wandering off in the wilderness, she's doing it in cities, which is almost worse. He and Kali tell her over and over that she shouldn't talk to strangers, but it never sticks. Ghira's almost glad of the times she comes back to their camp dragging another child along by the wrist. It helps him feel a little less guilty about how often they have to move her, that she makes friends so easily.
Sometimes the new friends aren't children, but rather bemused adults. Other faunus, usually, making sure she gets back to her parents. There's also the occasional human, which makes him anxious and wary despite himself, but at worst they turn out to be a little awkward and unused to meeting faunus. Blake's a good judge of character. Even so, she only has to be wrong once.
Ghira's almost always busy with something, and Kali isn't much better off, but the whole community chips in to keep Blake safe. Tukson has a knack for tracking down which bookstore she's wandered off to, and often comes back with a sheepish grin and an armful of beat-up paperbacks she's rescued from a bargain bin. Sienna teaches her what to do if someone tries to grab her, including screaming for help and a few targeted kicks that make him wince.
He never stops worrying... but he never tries to stop her, either. How can he, when she still carries that same spark in her eyes that inspired him to come out here in the first place? He can see it when he looks at her—himself as a footnote in some history book, two hundred years from now, remembered only because he was her father. She's going to do great things with that light of hers, and Ghira can't imagine a worse thing in the world than to snuff it out.