VII

Sunrise

After a moment of rest and gathering strength, the two huntresses climbed the remaining few meters to their freedom from that black pit.

Yang emerged first and collapsed a few feet from the rectangular hole, eyes blinking rapidly. Whether it was from the dust or the cold, the dry mountain air or from the acclimation to more light than she had seen for the past several hours, Blake couldn't be sure. The taller huntress laid her head down on her forearm, breathing deeply for several beats, before she allowed herself to fall on her side and roll onto her back. That same forearm stuck to her eyes, and a sloped smile emerged as she laughed. Relief filled the sound, which echoed off the stone walls of the cutaway the elevator was sheltered in.

Blake let herself fall in besides Yang, close behind in case the brawler's grip slipped in her fatigue. As the back of her head touched the hard ground, her gaze meandered across the room's details. Old scaffolding hung about, ropes and pulleys and other derelicts wearing the same signs of abandonment that adorned the rest of the mining operation. There were conspicuously no tracks for mining carts here, so it must have been a thoroughfare mainly for equipment and personnel, or gravity Dust-powered conveyors were employed by whatever forgotten conglomerate or concern that once ran this mine. Mantle certainly had the technology at the time.

Stealing a glance, Blake saw Yang was nearly covered with soot. Her face, jacket, just everything was coated with rust and grime. Even her hair was dulled by the dust of the underground. Blake imagined that she herself looked the same, and she took a glance at her hands. Sure enough, she had a few small cuts that would soon be healed by her aura, in addition to gritty rust and black streaks staining her sunkissed skin. Her white coat probably looked more like a calico jacket judging by what she saw.

She heard a click as Yang finally shut off the light on her scroll. The blonde sat up and forced herself to her feet, a precarious wobble in her step. Blake reached out, a cautious gesture, but Yang instead took it as an offer and hoisted the faunus to her feet with surprising strength. She made a small, surprised sound, and in the moment she was grateful for the blackening that obscured the heat she felt welling up in her face.

"Let's get out of here," Yang said, tugging Blake along for a few steps before releasing her hand. Wondering why she felt flustered worsened it and Blake willed herself to be silent to avoid embarrassing herself further.

A second (or third?) wind seemed to have hit her partner, but she could hardly blame her. With all the bad vibes and the Grimm that came with it, Blake was just as eager to be out of that mine as Yang was. Watching as Yang practically bounced out of there, she saw a glimpse of the girl she used to know. Blake forgot herself as her heart danced for a moment, and she quickly fell in behind the blonde.

An old metal shutter to a shedlike facade had long since fallen and been buried in forest detritus. The only sign that it was ever there was the loud banging that Yang's boots made on the metal just below the surface, sounds like a crooked cymbal bashed with a mallet that were vastly out of place in the tranquil predawn wood.

A few minutes' walking along a path that had all but been reclaimed by the forest brought them to a sight that left them both breathless. They'd arrived at a treeless clearing with a cliff that faced towards their destination, and before them the City of Mistral towered above a sea of clouds. Its darkened shape slowly took on color as the light grew, grandiose greens and resplendent reds and gold as oncoming sun chased away the predawn gray.

Yang strode up and wordlessly seated herself a few feet from the cliff's edge, a small sigh following. Blake flicked an ear, a familiar involuntary tic. She wondered if the blonde's second (or third?) wind was so brief.

"Are you okay?" she asked warily, slowly coming up on Yang's side. The blonde continued staring ahead, and Blake noticed what an awful, matted tangle her partner's beautiful hair had become.

"Yeah," she replied calmly, a gentle smile visible on her profile. "I just wanted to sit and… enjoy this."

Blake made an indistinct sound of acknowledgment as she looked out over the vista they alone were witness to. Idly she wondered how long it had been since anyone saw this side of Mistral. She considered the way the path and the facility looked, as well as the density of the vegetation and the lack of tracking, and she concluded that no one else had stood where they were since the time that the mine had been evacuated.

No, Blake's mind rebelled, —abandoned.

Not everyone had the privilege of escaping.

"What are you doing?" Yang's voice brusquely arrested her attention and dragged it by the chin towards the brawler. "Sit down. You gotta be tired, too."

Blake did feel a weariness weighing upon her now that the adrenaline high had worn away. The mountain air seemed much colder than she had initially thought, but that was probably a side-effect of her body cooling off after all the action.

She found a spot a few feet away from Yang's right and cleared her coattail, took a seat, and folded her legs beneath herself. From the corner of her eyes she caught a quizzical look from the blonde, but whatever had caused that questioning look in those lilac eyes remained unaddressed. Like Yang, she also turned a contemplative eye on the Mistral skyline.

Its many levels and rows of structures built into the facets of the mountain towered and became gradually more detailed in the retreating dawn. The last stars twinkled high above in a canvas of watercolor blue and gray, the clarity of it marred only by streaks of wispy white cirrus clouds curled sharply by the Mistrali winds. The layer of fog around Mistral was dense enough to make it look as though the city were floating in the sky itself; it gave the impression of being higher than they actually were, which Blake knew not to be the case because the air was still easy to breathe—it was indescribably refreshing after the stale, damp air of the mines. In the small patches where the fog didn't completely obscure the vast forests around Mistral, autumnal shades clung to the maples and oaks of the valley, gold and red and spots of pale green—brilliant in the presence of the evergreens that stood unchanging on this mountainside.

Further beyond, off to the left of their vantage point past Yang, was the blue-black line of the inland sea against which the city was nestled. Blake had already known how the surroundings of Mistral had inspired its artists and artisans for hundreds of years, but knowing the history was nothing like seeing the inspiration herself.

"It's beautiful," she heard Yang whisper serenely, and Blake thought sadly on how it sounded like the first time she seemed at peace in the time since they'd reunited.

"Yeah," was all Blake could salvage from her vast personal lexicon, and she instantly blamed it on her fatigue-addled mind which wandered a library of thought where the numbers and categories were in constant flux.

"Why are you sitting all the way over there?"

Blake froze and peeked at her partner, framing her in her sight to make sure that she had heard that right. After a moment without response, Yang turned her head slightly and shot her an expectant look, brow raised.

"Um…" Blake was certain that between her flattened ears and the strained voice she couldn't hide her anxiety. "No reason."

She shuffled closer to Yang until she could feel the warmth that was radiating off of the blonde. Hers was a more powerful ambient heat than others; she never did decide if that resulted from the strength of her aura or the metabolism that allowed Yang to eat complete garbage and never gain a pound.

Blake bit on her lower lip and looked down the cliff at the churning fog banks, wondering why the silence bothered her when in a time not so distant she would have appreciated the break in the chaos and the noise. A potent mix of curiosity and longing swirled together in her brain and dulled her sense of caution. She angled her head, a furtive glance aimed towards her partner.

Blake caught herself in the beam of those lilac eyes, beaten at her own game, and she gasped quietly.

"Yang?" She felt her face warm up and looked just away from her partner's face.

"You've been trying to get close to me all night," Yang said, a coy smirk tugging on the corner of her lips, "and now it's weird?"

"N-no! It's just... " Blake's mouth hung open for what seemed like too many seconds as she searched for a way to complete that thought. "I thought you needed space. I didn't think you wanted me near." Or even around, she added in thought.

Yang stared for a moment, then she gave a rueful chuckle—a dry, staccato note—and looked back towards the brightening skyscape. Her brows appeared to bunch up beneath her dirty bangs.

"A lot happened tonight," said Yang in a ponderous voice, "and I'm not sure I understand it all."

Blake flicked an ear, never retracting her eyes. "You're talking about the hallucinations, aren't you?"

The blonde didn't seem to move, but then Blake saw her giving an unsure, almost imperceptible nod.

"I've never seen or even read about a Grimm like that," Yang continued. "Have you?"

Blake frowned. Though she was well-read, the hallucination inducing creature was a new encounter for her as well. She looked off towards the Mistrali sky as she went back through her years of reading in the event that she had come across some kind of folklore that resembled the creature of Grimm they stumbled across in the appropriately named Delirium Grotto.

"I don't know about Grimm," Blake began, her chin pinched between her forefinger and thumb, "but the people of Mistral have written about a creature that they say resembled a clam. The sailors of the time said that it would create illusions on the sea that would drive boat crews insane and turn them against each other, and that over time it could change its shape to a bird… or a bat." She glanced back at Yang. "Ridiculous. Maybe the stories came from an encounter with a Grimm like that?"

Yang looked down and fell into thought.

"Yang," she said, willing her voice to be stronger than her usual susurrus, "whatever you—whatever we saw down there was a lie." Blake again held her chin. "Maybe not a lie… maybe just the things that we were most afraid of seeing or hearing out of each other."

She felt as though she was coming nearer to the truth by voicing her ideas aloud. Blake looked up. Judging by the direct stare and slightly larger eyes, she had gotten Yang's attention.

"What did you see?" Yang asked, her face a mask even as fear colored her words.

Blake had to take a moment to compose herself. The recollection rattled her. Despite acknowledging that it was an illusion, the blows exchanged and words endured were real enough. The cold, dead eyes of her partner's shade still pierced a vulnerable part of her psyche, the same part that flinched away from the blood red of Adam's sword.

"You," she said as though the word was fire on her tongue. "You were angry, and hurt." She took a shivered breath. "Then you—your copy—came at me, and she… it… blamed me for everything. For Beacon, for…" Blake found herself unable to finish, using a quick glance towards Yang's right arm to punctuate instead of words that became clay in her throat. She seemed to pick up what she meant. "And then," Blake continued, "there was the bit about bringing misery to whomever I meet."

Her words seemed to drift across the open air. Blake loosed a shuddering breath, and Yang remained mysteriously quiet, although her eyes bespoke concern.

"Maybe I do," Blake added in a despondent drone. "Maybe you guys are better off without me."

She couldn't believe herself. Not a few breaths ago she had reassured Yang that the things they had seen were false, and here she was unraveling.

Silence again had its reign. Blake was grateful for it this time. It felt like a pressure valve had released in her chest, and she sighed through pursed lips to further vent that heavy feeling from before she burst.

"Here's what I know, Blake," Yang began evenly. Blake drew herself up and tried to look composed, her attention on the blonde and her intense eyes.

"I wouldn't have made it out of there by myself," she continued, her voice slightly unsteady. "Without your eyes, your ears, the things you knew about navigating a mine, your skills… I would have been lost, at best. Another dead huntress, at worst."

Blake felt a chill tingling across her skin at how matter-of-factly, how evenly she made that observation. When had Yang become so resigned?

"I trained hard to get back into shape. I had to change a lot of my style. No more standing and eating hits, no more headbutting things until they die." Yang allowed herself an airy chuckle, one that made Blake comfortable enough to smile at. But her mirth was short lived, a sadness soon shadowing her otherwise bright eyes, and Blake felt the pit return to her stomach.

"I'm… not sure it's enough," Yang said. Her boots scuffled along the rocky ground as she put her legs out in front of herself and reclined on her hands.

"Enough?"

"To protect Ruby. Weiss." Lilac eyes darted back at her. "You."

Blake felt like her hardened heart had cracked like glass when Yang took an unsteady breath through her nose; she was not remiss of the way that Yang raised her chin and tried to look unaffected. She had always seen Yang as the passion and the power of the team. Strength, she described her to Sun, but it was more than just physical prowess she was talking about. Her heart was an aegis of fire, ready to shield and comfort any one of them at the first sign of need—and Blake had been the frequent beneficiary of the blonde's benevolence. Her partner seemed burnt down to the wick, alight for so long that only embers and oily smoke remained.

She had to guard the flame. If it went out, what hope did she have for herself?

"But that's exactly why we were sorted into pairs, Yang," Blake began after a moment, a masterclass in repressing emotions underway. On the other hand, she felt her feline features betraying her already, and she stopped short of wishing that she had the bow back. "We were always meant to look out for each other. One of us can't do it all, no matter how incredible her deadlift is." Blake gave a pointed look to Yang. For her efforts Blake caught a glimpse behind the clouded features, a soft scoff that was almost a laugh. The sound helped uncoil her nerves.

"That's something I still didn't get, until recently; I had to learn the hard way," she added lowly. "And even though our time at Beacon got cut short," she continued, her eyes gravitating back to Yang's face, "and the whole partner system doesn't mean much anymore… I would still pick you." She allowed a beat. "I still do," she said evenly.

Blake let out a breath through her nose; she had avoided breaking.

But she felt a renegade tear sliding down her cheek.

By the time she noticed it, Yang was already reaching out to wipe it away. Her eyes were filled with concern, and deep down inside Blake knew that she wouldn't be able to conceal her feelings from Yang for long. She stiffened and watched Yang's approach, but as though it had hit a barrier of perfectly clear glass, she stopped. Blake noticed the surreptitious look Yang gave to her prosthetic hand. The blonde relented and drew back, apprehension growing on her dirt streaked features.

Blake quickly seized onto her retreating hand, and she could not stop the way her feline ears shot up in surprise.

It was warm.

She expected the cold artifice of titanium and polymer composites, the ambient chill of a soulless implement, but instead it was like a comfortably warm surface—unyielding but… alive.

Yang was staring, her eyes as wide as blooming violet cosmos, and she was wordless like she understood what was happening but waited for Blake to say something about it. Their eyes passed over the sight, and instead of speaking, Blake gently guided her partner's hand to her face and closed her eyes.

She listened to the tiny mechanical motors turning in the prosthetic. If it hadn't been for her faunus gift, she likely couldn't have heard them at all; they were very quiet, even if she focused. The motion in the hand was natural and lifelike, nuanced and imperfectly genuine. She felt as the pad of Yang's thumb brushed over her tear-stained cheek with nostalgic gentility, and the warmth she felt from the palm guaranteed that it wouldn't be the last one shed.

She had thought that this was a connection that she had thrown away forever, that she would never again be subject to its comfort. Her heart slowed even though each beat felt like a hammer against her chest in a bid for escape.

"I can feel it," Blake said, her voice scarcely louder than the morning breeze. "Your aura." She felt her lips curving into a smile under their own instinct. "Of course. We treat our weapons like extensions of ourselves. We project our aura into them. Your hand is no exception." She opened her eyes and looked at the woman on the other end. "But this is effortless; you're not even trying."

"I didn't really notice," Yang admitted lowly. "I just did the first thing I thought of when I saw…" She trailed off, and Blake couldn't tell why; her eyesight was a bleary mess from the tears trickling down her face. "... I saw you hurting," she managed to finish.

She had seen that broken look on Yang's face again, a brief but unmistakable clouding, in the moment that she had reached out. Regardless of her own pain, Yang was still trying to give what little she had of herself to erase the smallest bit of sadness she detected. Blake couldn't stand to see the hesitation, how she saw her replacement limb instead of herself and felt incomplete.

Blake pulled away and sat on her heels. She avoided meeting Yang's gaze, observing her out of the direct line of her vision while she propped herself back up on her hands.

"You are not broken," she said suddenly, looking back towards the blonde. Yang's mouth came open, and Blake cut in before words could be released. "Injured, maybe, but you'll bounce back. You always do." Blake shook her head before her thoughts took a turn too dark.

"This isn't what hurts me most, Blake," Yang said, finally getting a word in. She looked at the prosthetic hand, its fingers—her fingers, Blake corrected thoughts—communicating contemplation with their idle flexing. For watching them, Blake almost became distracted from the storm clouds gathering over her partner's expression. Before she could voice concern, lightning struck.

"Why did you run?"

Blake felt like she had been caught barebacked in the freezing rain, and her breath hitched in kind. She knew this day was coming. For the better part of a year, she had gone over what she might say if the hour ever arrived. At one point, she was convinced that it never would, so sure she was that she would be in exile forever. Even in her somberness, Yang Xiao Long had a way of making one feel small by proximity. Blake did not even feel worthy to approach, and the fact that Yang deigned to talk to her first had some significance, but the meaning of that was lost to the seizing fear of how she might be judged. Blake knew better than to believe that it was done out of malice, or even intentionally, but Yang had the enormity of a Valerian hero; brash, smoldering, bravery without reproach.

She had stepped back into war with an injury that would have retired most professional huntsmen.

In the face of her partner's accomplishments, any reason or excuse that she had composed in her best mental rehearsals felt as inadequate as a glass of water in the parched Menagerie wilds. She ran from it, feared it, but still her Day of Judgment came.

Blake took what felt like her last breath.

"When you found me," said Blake, the vague sensation that she was stepping into a minefield at the forefront of her mind, "Adam had just finished telling me that he was going to make it his life's mission to destroy everything that I loved." Deferentially, she lowered her eyes. "And he saw when I noticed you. I was forced to watch in horror as he made good on his promise." A cottonlike lump rolled about in her throat, and she marveled briefly at how long they had both gone without a drink of water.

"I don't know how I did it," Blake continued hoarsely. "I was wounded and angry and scared, but I managed to escape and got us to the evacuation zone. When I knew that you were safe… I left." She willed her eyes to become blank in fear of what Yang might find in their amber glow. "I ran, and I didn't look back. I was convinced that I had fooled myself thinking that I could build a new life at Beacon, that I dared to think that I could have friends, and leave my old life behind. When I started, I had no intention of getting close to anyone; but you all—" especially a certain blonde, "—changed that."

Blake felt her eyes take on a self-pitying mist, but her anger swelled and she condemned her tears to isolation; they had no right to reveal themselves. "I'm just sorry that you had your life ruined because of me."

She stared ahead at the city in the distance. The clouds. Mistrali lamps in the dawn gloom. Anything but Yang. She might as well have been floating in space the way her nerves had become deadened.

"You need to stop that," said Yang quietly, heated steel in her tone of voice. "You can't blame yourself forever for the crazy people that want to hurt you," she continued, her pitch elevated. "Even if they come at us to do it. You walked away from that life!" Yang roughed her face, finally smearing away some of that grime that had been clinging to her. "What I don't get is how you thought throwing us away was a solution. Why, Blake? Why didn't you trust us to help you?"

"I was… scared," Blake said after a moment of consideration. "Seeing you that way, I felt sick. I had to get away. If he wanted me to suffer, I would rather suffer alone. I felt like we only escaped because Adam wanted me to live with the regret," she said, flinching when she saw the beginnings of Yang's scowl. "I guess he succeeded."

A silence lapsed between them. Watching Yang from her periphery, she saw what seemed like a lost look in her eyes, as if the answers she had given did nothing to answer the questions in her heart. Her curiosity elevated at how Yang's eyes weren't the fireballs she had seen so many times in her guiltborne daymares; she almost wished that they had been, because at least that way she couldn't harbor false hope. Blake swallowed hard and spoke out of turn.

"I hurt you," she whispered. "In your darkest hour, I was selfish and I pushed you all away, and I hurt you worst of all," she continued quickly and in hushed tones. "I know that now."

"It wasn't because I failed you?"

Blake looked up, her eyes incredulous and scalding with suppressed tears. "What?" she said, uncertain that either of her four ears had heard right.

Yang glanced up at Blake from beneath tangled bangs, a look of sullen shame hanging on her normally bright features.

"Failed," she repeated, her words careful and low. "To protect you."

She let her mouth fall open. "No," she whispered, shaking her head softly. "It was never about that. Why would you think that?"

"Well. When you left, all I could think about was what I did wrong. I wondered what I could have done to change your mind." Her eyes scanned downwards. "If I gave everything that I had and it still wasn't enough, what chance did I have?"

If she hadn't exhausted her reservoir of tears there would be a fresh cry here. A dry pain in her chest was all she got for her heartache. "I didn't know," Blake said, her voice cracking in the dry air. "I'm sorry," she pleaded, eyes squeezed shut and head shaking. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"

"I know better now, too." Coming from Yang, those words could have been ominous if not for the strangely soothing tone she used. "I guess I could have been more understanding. Everyone tried to tell me that you probably had a good reason, but I was just… so angry, and hurt… and then lonely." She paused to take a breath, though most of it left her as a sigh soon after. "It's been a journey," she finished sarcastically, her hand flapping otiosely.

"Yang, I… I didn't know," Blake said again, her words lacking conviction, limbs and shoulders sagging. "I was such a coward. I don't deserve to be forgiven."

"I know," Yang said, her voice like the rustle and sigh of the nearby evergreens. Her chest rose with a breath, and released in a measured sigh. "I'm forgiving you anyway."

Blake sat up suddenly, her eyes widened to a point of discomfort and all her features electrified with the shock of her partner's words. Whatever she thought to try and say failed and left her throat as soft, strangled noises.

"But only if you forgive yourself," Yang added quickly, her gemstone eyes liquid with concern.

"How can I forgive myself for breaking your trust?" Blake managed after her stunned silence. "You were there when I needed you, and when you needed me, I ran—"

Blake felt Yang's hand fall on her knee. Her eyes shot to it and followed its gleaming length up to her face, where she met an ardent stare, and at that moment the red sun crested the horizon in the east. Her dust-dulled hair caught the sudden morning light like a solar fire, and it was as though the golden pyre burned away her guilt and left only the thoughts about how breathtakingly angelic she looked in the sunrise and the Mistrali wind that fed the flame-touched curls. The power of her war-torn figure did not obscure the gentle light in her eyes, nor did the firmness of her voice subvert the kindness of her touch.

"That's the thing about trust, Blake," Yang said, her eyes refusing to stray from hers. "You give someone complete power over you, and they can just… destroy you."

Blake looked back down at the hand on her knee. She wasn't sure if she could do this again. It seemed too easy, in spite of everything they had just gone through. But at a glance, Yang's eyes shone with a kindness and warmth that she had been missing; it was the kind of look that she had longed for on many a sleepless night on her time away from her team. It wasn't as though Sun didn't do his best to fill in, but he wasn't the one that she needed relief from.

"I trust you, Blake."

The ears atop her head fanned forward before her eyes followed. The words echoed in her head a few times before she had properly processed them.

No hallucination. No delirium.

Blake looked at Yang as though she was offering up her heart in a box, and the guilt that she had dragged from one end of Remnant to the next was doing everything in its power to bind her hands and keep Blake from taking it. She felt criminal enough for daring to think that they could ever have a functional relationship again, but destiny conspired to bring them to this moment. From the moment they had reunited, Blake desired nothing more than the acceptance of her old partner, and now that it was being given to her she felt terror as her heart beat against her chest.

Terror that she might again injure her partner, this time irreparably.

She thought she saw a flutter of rose petals among the autumn winds in the valley below. A long distant memory of love grown poisonous passed idly in her mind, along with the shadow of a man that she used to believe had cared for her.

I won't let you control me anymore, she thought. And with that, it was as though a padlock fell from her heart, and it no longer hurt to breathe.

Blake looked at the space in between them, as if there were a literal offering to be passed between them.

"Are you sure?" the noirette asked, her voice oddly muted.

"Honestly, I'm not." A sorrowful cast crossed Yang's eyes. "But I guess there needs to be a starting point."

It felt like an incomplete thought. Yang had hitched her breath, her lips shaped as though in preparation of forming a new word. For whatever reason, she thought better of it. Blake saw the doors closing, and she felt a flutter of panic.

"Yang," she began, mustering all her strength in keeping her voice steady, "I will be here for you." She caught a doubtful glance from the blonde, what may as well have been a knife. Blake tried to ignore the hurt, feeling that the moment was not about her. "I know that that doesn't mean much to you right now. But whatever is waiting for us out there, I won't let you face it alone."

Yang's eyes were fixed on the faunus, attentive and, she knew, searching for any hints of dishonesty. Being under Yang's scrutiny would have made even the hardiest desert rose wilt, and it was exhausting to maintain her composure in the face of the blonde. But to turn away and not face the subject would have been even worse; she was not running. Not anymore.

"Blake," said Yang, her eyes aglow, "I'm just… glad you're here."

Blake smiled at Yang, misty eyes filled by the morning sun. Tacitly she leaned herself into Yang and hugged the blonde as though she might vanish with the morning fog. She felt her partner's eyes upon the side of her head and the sensation kindled apprehension; Blake was briefly fearful that she had taken a misstep and would find herself pushed away.

But that did not happen. It continued to not happen, and Blake soon discovered herself in a strong embrace. Blake was tired of tears, but the few that escaped from her amber eyes were a long time in coming. No longer did she feel like she was stealing comfort, tolerated only because she was a team member.

Even if they had to start over from the first step, Blake had hope.

This chapter was brought to you by repeat listens to Star-Stealing Girl and Delain's Scarlet. How emotionally exhausting. It virtually wrote itself, as I had a clear vision of what it had to be, but such an important scene demanded careful editing and consideration. I give special thanks to my dear friend A, an avid reader who beta read this chapter and always supports me in whatever I do. There was more that I wanted to include, but for the sake of not running overlong and damaging the poignance of this update, I believe that it is better relegated to its own chapter; please look forward to that. As always, feedback is highly appreciated, and I hope you all enjoy this update and stay with me for the next one!