IV
Delirium
Yang stared, completely nonplussed with Blake's sudden shift in attitude. Her hasty analysis noted how her partner's voice had gone flat and the dimness in her eyes, which lacked the empathetic shine she was used to.
"What?" Yang said, managing to keep her voice from rising angrily.
"Pathetic," Blake repeated, using a tone so identical it might have been a recording. "You always were more emotion than thought," she added evenly. "I mean, look at us. If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't be stuck in this cave to begin with."
"You didn't have to follow me," Yang responded from behind clenched teeth.
"But you wanted me to," Blake quickly retorted, almost cutting her off.
Yang cast her eyes around as she found that she was unable to disagree. Hardly believing the confrontation they were having, Yang looked back in the direction that she came from. There was the breach through which they had entered, a route she created through force. Nothing else seemed new about the chamber.
"I don't know what's gotten into you, Blake," Yang said with an effort at not sounding upset, "but we can deal with it when we get out of here." Trying not to let her rage boil over, Yang brushed past Blake and pushed towards the other end of the cavern. The light of her scroll, however, revealed no egress; instead another wall glittered back from the darkness. She stood there, dumbfounded, and gradually she became aware of the approaching clicks of Blake's heels.
"It's a dead end," Blake said.
Yang deployed Ember Celica and drove it into the wall, breaking the silence with a loud ringing impact of stone on metal. Had she the shells, there would have been a report of shotgun blasts as well. Cracked crystals tinkled across the rocky ground. Blake, arms akimbo, waited until the last clatter of tumbling stone echoed into the deep to speak.
"You're just like Adam, you know," Blake whispered, her words practically steaming with venom. "Always letting your anger control you, using violence to get your way."
Yang whirled in place and locked glares with Blake, Ember Celica compacting into its shroud. Blake's stare did not waver, and she began to felt like those eyes had pierced her and pinned her like an insect to an exhibit board. Yang's lips gradually split into a grimace, teeth tightly grit.
"What are you thinking, Yang Xiao Long?" Blake asked, head tilted condescendingly. Her smoldering golden eyes finally averted from Yang's own, only to behold the tremor building in her remaining hand. Yang brought it up to her chest and stilled it, and she suddenly felt exposed.
"Do you want to hit me, Yang?" Blake said slowly, every syllable carefully enunciated. It didn't even seem like a real question.
Yang raised her eyes. There was a rumble in her ears, a subsonic tremblor, like the earth was shifting in the darkness further below. It wasn't another collapse opening up, but the sound of her heartbeats overlapping, the rushing blood in her veins which could very well have been magma judging purely from how very furious she felt in that moment. Her hands clenched into fists, and though her prosthetic had its rated limits, her left hand did not; weren't it for her gloves, she would have dug her nails into her palm until they drew blood.
Misguided? What in the world was Yang going on about? Blake's confusion was written on her face in its incomprehensible totality as she tried to read Yang's sudden mood swing.
"It's what the map says," Blake calmly retorted. The folded parchment seemed to radiate a presence in her coat pocket, the effect perhaps a byproduct of her increasing hyperawareness. Her feline ears strained anxiously as she thought she heard a dull bang from no clear direction, like a metal door hitting the stone ground.
"A map that's like a hundred years old," Yang said as she shrugged off the wall she leaned against. "Didn't occur to you that it could be wrong though, did it? Heh, just like you. Always trying to assume you know what's best for everyone else."
Blake's confusion melted into a slight wince, brows furrowed. "I'm just trying to help!"
"Help!" Yang barked, an ugly sound that segued into a dark chuckle. Her expression went deadpan in the next moment, and her lilac-shaded eyes looked off through Blake like she was nothing. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Just like you helped when the White Fang came calling, huh." Yang folded her metal arm out of its entanglement and gazed at the open palm sorrowfully.
Blake opened her mouth to argue, but found her words alarmingly inadequate and, moreover, impossible to voice. A horrible twist in her chest reminded her of the scene that fateful night, Yang's anguished, desperate screaming as she cleared an impossible distance in the space of a second and was more swiftly cut down.
The memory of her limp body landing beside her made her heart beat out of time.
"There you go!" Yang said merrily, clapping twice while her face lit up with mockery. "I wondered how long it was gonna take you to remember what you put me through."
"Just because I don't recall it willingly doesn't mean I've forgotten," Blake retorted, barely steadying the quiver in her voice.
"Of course not," Yang droned, her mirth fading back into a depressed monotone. "That doesn't mean you haven't buried it. You don't want to deal with it. Seems like a common theme for you, Blakey." Yang loosed her arms to her side and started taking measured steps towards Blake.
In that instance she felt something rare, something familiar and unpleasant. A flutter of panic danced against the walls of her stomach. She knew that Yang could be unpredictable in the flare of her anger, but was she really capable of what Blake began to fear?
Was she going to hurt her?
If she tried, could she fight back?
Did she even want to fight back?
The grinding of Yang's heavy boots stopped a foot and some inches away. The blonde leaned in towards Blake until they were less than a foot apart, face to face. Blake averted her eyes, feeling like the very gaze of those molten eyes could strike her dead.
"While I lied broken in a bed for months, you went off gallivanting on some personal quest." The quiet hum of the prosthetic's inner workings was the only thing interrupting the echo of Yang's words and the heave of Blake's shallow breaths. "Would it have hurt you to say 'see ya later'? If we hadn't been in Mistral when your quest brought you through, would you have even come back?"
"Yes!" Blake shouted, the desperation pushing her to finally exert all her energy into a response.
Yang pulled back, finally out of Blake's personal bubble. She allowed herself a deeper breath, and although she felt relief, the thought that she was so frightened by Yang being that close caused her to sob suddenly. The memory of a time where she was more than welcome to be so near burned like a stray ember on the skin, a warm thought that was now more like a bee's sting. And why, now, the difference?
Because she had pushed herself away, she concluded. That pleasant memory was a bitter reminder of what she had lost. What they had lost.
Because of her.
"I'm sorry," Blake whispered. She could not stop the tears from flowing, looking at Yang and her unimpressed demeanor as two large drops rolled down her face. "I didn't want to leave you. I didn't! But what if they followed me to you? What if you or Ruby got hurt?"
"We did just fine up to when you conveniently showed up," Yang said, her voice hissing through her teeth like a volcanic vent. "You clearly didn't think we needed you. Maybe this time… you were right."
Blake turned and walked away from Yang, past the crystalline flower in the center of the chamber, towards the end where the exit from the cave allegedly was. She was confronted by the wall as seen from afar, but Blake was not convinced that a wall could simply appear where none had been. Even if they had sealed up this entrance years ago, the collapse would still be evident.
She attempted to clear her vision as she walked when she hit something unexpectedly, her whole body halting as though she had just run into a wall.
A ghostly image of Yang, just as bewildered as she felt, crossed her sight.
"Would you like me to hit you, Blake?" Yang asked unironically, her voice raising in volume. "Because maybe you're right, maybe I should knock some sense into you."
"Nothing would make you happier right now, would it?" cooed Blake, folding her arms and walking slowly around her partner. "You don't hesitate to let people know about themselves, Yang. But as soon as someone does the same to you, you're ready to throw fists."
"That's not true!" she yelled, doing her best to keep her hands at her sides.
"Then why are you holding back so hard that your whole body is trembling?" asked Blake as she paced like a predator looking for a blind spot.
"I'm so mad I can barely think," she admitted. "But I… I don't hate you." She looked up, her eyes ablaze yet listless. "I couldn't ever hurt you," she said, her voice quiet but still lacking calm. "So why did you hurt me?"
Blake smiled, the kind of smirk she had seen only once before on Torchwick's leading henchwoman. It was uncharacteristically cold of her, Yang thought.
"Everyone leaves you eventually, Yang. Your mother, Ruby's mother, even Ruby, too."
Yang looked off to her side, away from where Blake was prowling. If she had any murderous intent, here is where she could have pounced. But she seemed insistent on needling Yang instead.
"Why do you think that is?"
Yang couldn't form the words for an answer. A sense of defeat began to creep into her limbs and it made her feel weak, as though she were caught in the throes of a flu. Now that she relaxed, she felt just how tense she had been; her whole body ached.
"I can't speak for them," Blake continued, "but I can tell you why I left." Blake leaned in, inches from Yang's ear, and whispered:
"It was because I couldn't depend on you."
The sound of a sword drawn maliciously sent an icy blade up Yang's back. She gasped for air, suddenly feeling as though the walls were too close. She took a few hasty bounds towards the breach she created, determined to find a way out whether it was with or without Blake.
She hit an obstacle as if she were walking into a pedestrian on the sidewalk, but invisible, mid-stride.
Yang stumbled back in surprise, the air rippling before her.
Blake's face peered from the dark, wearing a stunned expression, before it faded away in a blink.
Yang stood still for a long moment, doubting for the first time the evidence of her eyes and ears. She looked back over her shoulder and saw Blake there still, approaching her now. Yang's lips peeled back, her teeth bared like an Ursine threat.
"Don't you worry, Yang," said Blake. "I'm not leaving you again." Her sword slithered out of its scabbard. "I'll be with you till you die!"
Yang led with a scream, her fist close behind.
Blake turned away from where the apparition of Yang had played across her sight. There behind her she supposedly stood, with her arms crossed and expectation on her inexpressive face. She didn't so much as narrow her eyes when Blake fixated upon her.
"You're not real," Blake whispered, a realization dawning on her with a mixture of relief and anger.
"Well, you treated me like I wasn't, anyway." Yang took a lazy step forward, Ember Celica and the gun on her arm deploying with casual menace.
Blake had no reason to assume that the threat wasn't real; she took Gambol Shroud and flipped it into an underhanded grip, eyes never leaving what she now knew to be a conjuration of Yang. She waited for it to make the first move.
Yang took another step and pushed off, leading with a punch. Blake stayed grounded for the moment, sidestepping the linear attack with ease, bringing her blade down as she dodged. It was easily deflected by Yang, a metallic noise and sputter of sparks ringing out. This time, the impersonator didn't wait for Blake to regain her balance and pressed the attack.
Blake moved around the attacks with ease, predictable as they were, and she only grew nervous when shots began to be incorporated into the attacks. The heat of the blasts singed her hair and reassured her that this danger was very real.
An unexpected sweep hooked her leg and sent Blake tumbling backwards. As she fell, the impostor Yang, mimicking the genuine article, wound up her right arm over her shoulder and brought it hammering down towards Blake. The faunus shifted, and Yang's iron fist drove her shadow clone into the ground with a loud thump. As the broken body disappeared, Blake flew in from a blind angle, yelling as though the exertion would help her drive through any defense the impersonation put up—and it did.
Gambol Shroud bit through Yang's prosthetic, cutting cleanly through it. It continued its path into Yang herself, and to Blake's surprise the edge bit deep.
No aura, Blake thought to herself. She looked at the fabrication of her partner sorrowfully as she seemed to struggle for air, wondering how she didn't see through the illusion sooner.
Black mist poured from the lethal wound, and Yang, the charade exposed, fell to the ground and scattered.
Yang withstood the edge of the impostor Blake's sword, her aura flashing as she landed her straight punch square on her target's face. A lesser fighter might've had her head turned around by the force, but Blake spun with it and threw her blade out.
Yang weaved to a side, the large sword cleaving by. Yang was not ignorant of the ribbon and caught it, using it to yank Blake close enough to deliver a turning back kick into her abdomen. The blow landed square, seemingly knocking the wind out of Blake. Yang followed it relentlessly, landing a combination of jabs and hooks that sent her foe reeling, each hit raising a pang of guilt that she quickly buried with subdued fury. Yang went for the big finish, reeling her arm back for a massive overhead punch.
And at the last split-second she aborted, baiting out the dodge. Yang fired her cannon and spun herself around, turning her fist so that it landed backhand into the side of Blake's head. There was a crunch on impact, and the body hit the ground as a pile of black ash that scattered into the cavern air.
Thoroughly distressed by the mere appearance that she had killed her partner, Yang took a few ragged breaths and steadied herself. Her ferocity began to ebb, her eyes cooling back to their native lilac tone, and she caught Blake's stunned stare from across the grotto.
"Yang!" Blake screamed, "That thing is a Grimm!" she said, her finger jabbed out towards the centerpiece of the grotto, the crystalline lily.
Yang acted on the intel swiftly and leapt at the formation, her hand cocked back for a destructive impact. But as she came within striking distance, a wave of black energies hit her and sent her to the ground.
A bat-winged figure sprang out of the formation, a single red eye as its central feature, framed by toothed eyelids. It emitted a chitter that was beyond Yang's range of hearing, but Blake covered her ears as though someone had driven hot needles into them.
Yang retaliated, firing a shot from her arm cannon in a flare-like permutation. It whistled through the air and burst near the unknown Grimm, sending it off-balance. Blake had presently recovered enough of her faculties to aim and fire her gun at the bat.
It seemed to dodge every shot, fluttering erratically in a way that would present a daunting target for even Ruby and Crescent Rose on their best day's shooting.
Yang launched herself into the air beside the creature and swung her heel out at it. This it dropped under as Yang's kick sailed free, though it was seemingly unable to retaliate. Blake meanwhile tried to catch it with Gambol Shroud, thrown in an arc after a swift windup.
The batlike Grimm saw this attack coming and dropped further, and it was here that Yang saw the opening; she threw out her fist and struck Gambol Shroud with the momentum from her kick, spiking the sickle-form blade like a volleyball. There was a loud metallic ring as the weapon cut through the murk, and an eerie screech that could be felt in the spine that suddenly cut out.
In a blink, Blake's blade protruded grotesquely from the creature's body, out from its eye, and following a stunned instant it dropped to the cave floor like a lifeless stone. Its remains hissed away until nothing of was left, and the crystalline flower crumbled, wilting into black sand that evaporated silently.
Yang picked up Gambol Shroud and looked to for Blake, only to find her partner already throwing her arms around her in a desperate embrace.