A/N: GUYS, sorry this is late, yikes, studying for summer finals is a nightmare when you work full time, eheh, ahh, yeah sorry u.u

Also this is going to sound impossibly cruel but it was nice to finally see Weiss injured after leaving her mostly unscathed in literally every previous work in this timeline. Something so much fun about lavishing care on a pile of prickles.

Sorry again for the wait!

HUGS,
Defenestrator

The howling wind was incessant. Grating on the ears. Loud. Loud enough to wake the dead. Or in this case, Yang. Amethyst eyes reluctantly fell open, and the brawler pushed herself up into a sitting position, spluttering and brushing snow from her face and hair. She was buried in the stuff, as was everything else.

"Ruby?" Pristine white snow blanketed a flat plain all around her. Yang squinted at her surroundings, trying to piece together the last things she remembered before blacking out. She had been with her sister - they'd found...

"Weiss?" But this wasn't the bell tower. Wrestling her windswept hair out of her face, Yang got to her feet, brushing more snow from herself. She froze - looking back out over the ground. The wind kept on howling and raging, but the powdery white surface refused to budge. The sight was unnerving, and she whirled around, finding a pair of footprints leading away, out into the distance.

Goodbye.

The word darted through her head like a shadow, unspoken, but unmistakable. "Blake? is that you?"

Goodbye.

Not even the howling wind could keep her from hearing it again. She whirled in place, looking for someone, anyone. There was no one. Yang shut her eyes, hard, willing the world to make sense, but opening her eyes again only greeted her with a world that refused logic.

The ruins of an enormous tower loomed before her. Cracked, snow-covered gears littered the icy ground.

Goodbye.

"Stop!" Yang covered her ears in a desperation, unable to keep from hearing that blasted word.

Goodbye.

"Don't go..." No sooner had she spoken, Yang felt a presence appear behind her. She spun around to find herself staring down at a pair of very familiar teal eyes.

A hand reached out to touch her nose.

Boop.

Yang's eyes snapped open, and she shot into a sitting position - at least, she got halfway up before her body screamed in protest and forced her right back down. A wave of nausea followed soon after for having moved so quickly, but all Yang could do was cough, each spasm resulting in a searing jolt of pain as she tried to look at her surroundings.

It was dark, but she could just make out the shapes of bodies all over the floor. With a sharp intake of breath that spurred a second round of coughs, for one terrifying moment the brawler wondered if she'd been taken to the morgue by mistake. It was only when she caught sight of Weiss lying on a cot beside her, more specifically, the even rise and fall of her chest, that she realized this was probably the clinic.

Confused and disoriented, Yang opened her mouth to speak, but instead was overtaken by another coughing spat.

"Just get it out," a man's voice addressed her. Curtis. He was motioning for something, and in a moment Cyan brought him a towel and bowl of something warm. It smelled like soup. "You feel sick? We can get you a bucket if you need it."

The question didn't quite register with Yang, and when she shook her head, it was in an effort to clear her swimming vision. She hated the way it made the room spin. With one last resounding cough, she spat something dark and red into her hand, but ignored it in favor of slowly pushing herself into a sitting position. Focusing on her breathing, Yang placed her hands to her temples like blinders and shut her eyes, trying to force herself to think.

Everything was a disjointed mess. Liliac... lightning... bell tower... so much ice...

"Ruby," the brawler's mind latched on to the last face she remembered seeing before she blacked out - those silver eyes, wide with worry. Yang grasped at the arm hovering nearest to her, trying to focus on whoever it was connected to. "Where is my sister?"

"Out getting supplies with your other teammate," came the even reply as Cyan put her free hand on her shoulder, trying to avoid the worst bruises. "She'll be back. Just rest for now."

Yang completely missed the command, her thoughts already drifting in a completely different direction. "Other teammate..." Did she mean Blake? Well it certainly wasn't Weiss. But.. hadn't Blake been at the mines? A violent gust of wind rattled the windows, drawing Yang's eyes to the raging blizzard outside. Her heart sank at the sight. Blake and Ruby were out there? Her grip on Cyan's arm tightened a fraction, "How long have I been out?"

"A few hours," Cyan's hand moved to Yang's to gently loosen her already powerful grip, "You and... well, you're the first up."

Curtis set the bowl and towel down on a low table at the edge of the cot and touched the back of his hand to the heiress's forehead.

He shook his head, "Still cold."

Amethyst eyes finally returned to the girl in white. Well, white and red. A whole lot of red, actually, from what she could see peeking out from underneath the double-layered blankets she'd been covered in... "Weiss..." Yang reached an arm out to grip the edge of her teammate's bloodied sheets, grimacing as she pulled herself to stand beside Curtis.

She took hold of one of Weiss's disconcertingly cool hands - no one should still be this cold. "Hey..." fear edged the brawler's soft words, "Hey come on, princess. No sleeping on the job..."

The heiress remained quiet and still beneath the covers. She was very pale, and her white hair still had dried streaks of blood in it.

"We've been having trouble keeping her warm," Cyan cast a glance across the kitchen, which was littered with injured townsfolk, coughing, sniffling, huddled together. Despite the ice and wind outside, the space, packed so close with people, wasn't too cold. They'd run out of blankets, however. A kettle started to rattle a bit and Cyan had to pick her way across the floor to attend to it while Curtis remained with the two girls.

"Your sister patched her up some," he offered, drawing the blankets back a few inches to show the smooth mark on Weiss's shoulder where the bite used to be. "She lost a lot of blood though. You don't look so great yourself, if you don't mind me saying."

Though Curtis's words were probably well-intentioned, Yang had stopped listening the moment she'd looked across the clinic to Cyan. The brawler stopped moving altogether as her slowly-widening eyes wandered from person to person. Survivor to survivor. There were so many - so many injured - all terrorized by the Liliac she had set loose. Guilt crashed over Yang in a wave of suffocating regret, but she stood her ground.

At least, until she looked down at Weiss again, deathly still underneath a mountain of apparently useless blankets. Seething, Yang made a silent vow to personally exterminate every single Liliac that dared cross her path ever again. How many of those things had Weiss fought, trapped in that bell tower, alone? Yang's expression darkened, clouded by hazy memories of a cavern filled with an impossible number of blood-red eyes hanging above her, by the way her own eyes had shifted to red to match...

How close had they come to losing a teammate because she couldn't control her temper? How many townspeople... Yang sat heavily on her cot, covering her face with one hand and keeping hold of Weiss's with the other. She needed to stop thinking. She needed to do something - anything helpful, but Curtis was right, she was just as much of a wreck as the literally-icy heiress lying before her.

Moving at all was an exercise in concealing agony, one that she was admittedly skilled at, but she could only keep up an act for so long, and she refused to let herself go down in the thick of things again. Yang's gaze, which had been resting absentmindedly on Weiss's eerily peaceful face, trailed down the once-white sleeve of her bolero, finally coming to rest on the pale ice-cold hand still gripped in her own.

Maybe... she could still be useful. Earnest amethyst locked onto Curtis, flicking briefly to Weiss. "Can she be moved?" Seeing the questioning look in his eyes, Yang released Weiss's hand, dragged herself onto her cot, and leaned back on one elbow, motioning with her free arm to have the heiress laid atop her, "You can't keep her warm, right? Give her to me, doc. I'm basically heat incarnate."

His tired eyes lit up. Apparently he hadn't forgotten the bursting-into-flame thing from the other night. "Are you...?"

He put his hand close to the fiery blonde. Sure enough, if he hadn't known about her semblance he would have sworn she had a fever.

"It's worth a shot," he wiped his face on his sleeve and resettled his glasses.

When Cyan returned, the two of them rolled Weiss's coat up and stuck it between Yang's pillow and the wall so she could prop herself up more easily. Then, carefully, carefully, they transferred the heiress to the bigger girl's arms, and covered both of them with a couple of the thicker blankets.

"How's that?" Cyan asked, tugging the blankets so they were even, her brown eyes searching for anything she could do to make them more comfortable.

"Cold," Yang bit out in surprise. The heiress was a block of ice in her arms, soaking up every ounce of heat she was given. It was fine though - Yang had plenty of warmth to share, not to mention it helped offset the stifling heat of the blankets. It certainly didn't hurt that Weiss was also more or less acting like a human ice-pack for the brawler's endless injuries. Yang gave the smaller girl a light squeeze, "But fine. She's going to be fine."

Weiss remained still, breathing softly. She was light, and very pale.

"Try to eat something if you can," Cyan instructed, again making Yang aware of the bowl of soup on the bedside. Curtis had already moved to see to a man with a bad cough and a gash in his arm. Others were hungry, a kid by the door started crying and someone, one of his neighbors perhaps, took him on her lap to try and quiet him down.

Outside, the storm howled.

It was going to be a long day.

"Do you think it'll stop soon?" Ruby scooted a little closer to the hearth, hugging her knees to her chest. She was wearing her red hat now, and a white scarf she'd found in Weiss's bag. The fire crackled in its place, flaring some when a bit of wind got down the chimney.

She and Blake had slid the couch up close to the fireplace to help catch the warmth it gave out, but it was still freezing cold. The pipes were frozen solid. None of them had thought to leave the water dripping overnight, but the temperature had dropped so low it might not have made a difference.

Blake opened her eyes, pulled from her brief catnap by Ruby's hushed question. Her Faunus ears swiveled away from the crackling fireplace to focus on the sounds of the raging storm outside. If anything, it sounded worse than it had earlier. "I don't know," she sighed, feeling the weight of uncertainty press her back into the couch cushions, crushing her attempt to sound neutral. One thing she did know at least, was that the storm, despite its harshness, was truly a blessing if it was keeping the Grimm at bay.

"Ruby," she caught a glimpse of silver looking her way before continuing, "I wasn't completely honest with you at the clinic." At Ruby's confused expression, Blake averted her gaze, returning to staring at the flames dancing in the hearth. "I didn't want to say anything in front of the townspeople but... That swarm of Liliac - that was just the one den Yang and I found."

The dim light of the fireplace flickered within haunted amber as Blake recalled the image of Yang standing beneath an inverted sea of red and black. "There were tunnels in that den that led deeper into the mountainside," her ears flattened a bit at the results of even the most basic calculations to derive the sheer numbers they were dealing with. "This entire mountain range could be filled with those things."

Ruby didn't say anything. Instead, she watched the fire, searching the patterns in the orange-hot coals for a way too fix this.

"Chuck will be back with the plane pretty soon. Just a couple of days," she tried to sound like days weren't a big deal, but when things had gone from bad to worse in minutes... She got up and grabbed a couple of blankets and joined Blake on the couch, "If this lets up before then, maybe we can seal the entrance you found. If this whole place is... it might not help a ton, but... I mean... something's better than nothing, right?"

Blake offered Ruby a tired smile of thanks at the blanket being placed around her shoulders and pulled her legs up underneath the cocoon of warmth the younger girl was fashioning for them. Truthfully, she wanted nothing more than to give in to Ruby's optimism, but visions of her bizarre nightmare nagged at the back of her mind. The screams, the debris, the ruined desolate town...

James Point was already in shambles from one attack. How would it fare against a second, with two of their team down for the count? She thought of Yang and Weiss, lying motionless in the clinic filled with countless injured. What had even happened to the people she had left behind at the mines? She thought of Gale... or what was left of her.

Blake shuddered. "Something might not be enough." Heaving a deep sigh, she turned tired, imploring eyes to her team leader, "Ruby... we need to call for backup."

The younger girl drew into herself, sitting a little apart from Blake as she pulled out her scroll. "Yeah. I've been trying."

Failed message delivery.

Failed message delivery.

Failed message delivery.

Ruby's notifications were full.

She hadn't really wanted to show anybody, but now she tilted the screen so Blake could see. She'd been sending periodic calls for help ever since they got to the cabin.

"Someone mentioned an emergency radio set someplace in town. Before the snow started, I thought we could give that a shot," Ruby mumbled without a lot of conviction. If her scroll's signal couldn't get through, a crusty old radio didn't stand much of a chance.

Blake shut her eyes, both due to sheer fatigue and to keep Ruby from seeing the anxiety that was creeping up on her. The storm had cut them off. "Let's... get some sleep, then. No sense looking for an emergency radio while we're exhausted, right?"

"And stuck in the middle of a blizzard," Ruby shoved her scroll back into her pocket. The fire crackled, making her think of Yang and how beat-up she'd looked once her semblance had cooled off.

Worry gnawed at her, and she tried to think back for a way they could've done things differently. She was the leader, after all- there had to have been a way to keep everyone safe. She'd just messed things up, splitting the team. Leaving Weiss. Ruby gripped one end of the snowy scarf she'd borrowed. Maybe she could... well, it was a little late to actually fix things, but she could do some major damage control. Or at least try to. That couldn't really happen till the storm died down, though. Fatigue caught up to her at last, and she huddled closer to Blake under the blankets, murmuring, "Wake me up when the fire burns down and I'll go and get some more wood off the porch."

Back at the clinic, the fire in the wood stove burned low. Someone had taken the liberty of hanging thick clothes over the window to help keep the heat in- possibly Cyan, or Curtis. The former slept with her head in her arms at the table, a coat draped over her, while the latter dozed against the low cupboards closest to the stove.

If they or any of the other townsfolk taking shelter there had thought to look at the clock ticking softly in the hallway, they would have known it was four o'clock. In the afternoon or morning was hard to tell, because it was dark, and what was the use of keeping track of time in a blizzard? Regardless of the hour, the wind moaned, and the snow continued to fall.

Such was the scene when Weiss stirred from her sleep.

She first became aware of the warmth, and then the darkness, and she had some vague notion, leftover from her dreams, that the heavy arms around her belonged to someone taking her away- from Beacon, from Ruby and the others. The threat she tried to growl came out as a soft, unintelligible whine.

Amethyst eyes snapped open at the muffled sound. Yang stifled a groan, woken from the restless sleep she'd finally drifted into after finishing off the soup Cyan had left for her. She tried to blink the sleep from her eyes, but any leftover bleariness was instantly replaced by adrenaline when she felt Weiss shift in her arms - heard another small whimper.

"Weiss-" Yang leaned forward, biting back a wince when the heiress's head brushed past one of the larger gashes on her shoulder. She shifted the smaller girl in her arms to get a better view of her face. Carefully, she brushed away the red-tinged strands of hair covering Weiss's forehead, just in time to catch the barest twitch of her scarred brow.

"Weiss, yeah, that's it - come on," the brawler implored in a low voice, cupping the heiress's cheek to help support her head. "I've got you."

Weiss's thoughts were sluggish, confused, like her head was stuffed with molasses and cotton. Her shoulder ached. Her throat and mouth were dry and thick with a stale copper taste.

"Yang?" she rasped.

A pulse of relieved warmth radiated from the brawler, her posture relaxing at once. "Yep. The one and only." A cursory glance over at Curtis and Cyan revealed the two were finally down for the count. Fortunately, a quick check of her near vicinity revealed a mug of what looked like tea sitting next to her empty bowl.

"Here," Yang slid her hand from the heiress's face to grab the mug, finding it room temperature, which simply wouldn't do. She released just enough heat into the cup to make it and the liquid comfortably warm before gently pressing it to Weiss's lips. "Try to drink, okay?"

"Mmn," she took a little. Some ran down from the corner of her mouth. If it contained whatever herbs stimulated the drinker's aura, they were too diluted to have much effect. She was weak as a kitten, and choked trying to swallow.

When she'd gotten a little of the tea down, she turned her head from the drink, bleary and sick. Her words slurred as she struggled to remember what had happened, "Where's Ruby?"

Yang set the tea back down and tried to brush some of the stray liquid from the heiress's face, keeping busy to better hide the way her heart had seized at the mention of her little sister. "Ruby is... with Blake." That thought alone offered at least some reassurance, but her expression darkened when she cast a glance at what was visible of the window through the boards, clenching her teeth at the unwelcome sight of the very same storm that had been present when she'd first woken herself. "They're getting supplies," she simply repeated what Cyan had told her, absolutely needing her next words to be true, "They'll be back."

Weiss acknowledged Yang's words with a short hum, shutting her eyes against the dull pain in her shoulder. Her aura was low, so she would just have to be patient for it to heal. Rousing herself again, she tried to sit up, her left hand going to her side where Mytenaster should have been, "The Liliac. Where did..."

"Hey, woah, relax," Yang tried to help Weiss shift into more of an upright sitting position, ignoring the pressure it put on one of the scorch marks marring her leg. "Those things are toast - actual toast. Gale fried them like crispy critters." It occurred to her then that she hadn't seen hide nor hair of the elderly woman since leaving her atop the roof of town hall. She made a note to ask about it later. "Anyway, If there's any left, there's no way they're getting through that storm," she motioned with her head towards the boarded up windows.

Weiss listened to the wind howl. Had Ruby and Blake gone out in that? Idiots. Ruby didn't even have gloves. She slumped against Yang, too tired to be overly concerned. Dust, her shoulder hurt. The ache had turned into a steady throb.

"Let me try the tea again?" The pain made her voice shake. She swallowed to steady it. "I can hold the cup this time."

"Yeah, sure," Yang retrieved the tea once more, pressing it into Weiss's waiting hands, only letting go once she was sure the other girl had a decent grasp. Keeping a loose hold around the heiress's middle, Yang leaned back a bit, fighting back fatigue as best she could.

"Curtis and Cyan are asleep right now but if you need anything at all just tell me, okay? You can poke me in the eye or something if I fall asleep too. Do it gently though. I still need them to see..." As she spoke, she reached out to the heiress with her aura, hoping the distraction might help her circumvent the barriers she usually encountered.

She really didn't have much aura to work with, and it was always a long shot with Weiss - they'd had nothing but trouble when trying to heal each other before - but without Ruby and Blake around... Yang eyed the heiress's shoulder, frowning at how the smaller girl winced any time it moved so much as a fraction. If nothing else, she had to at least try.

The mug of tea spilled on the covers as Weiss hissed and curled forward, away from Yang, "No. No, you don't have aura for this."

Yang swore under her breath, grabbing the mug before it could crash to the ground and setting it back on the bedside. Trust Weiss to always be perceptive, even when half-dead. "Weiss, it's fine," she soothed, leaning forward as well but taking care to keep her grip around the other girl's waist loose - the last thing she wanted was for this to turn into a struggle.

"Whatever I've got, you can take. I'll just... I can sleep it off, no big deal," she tried to sound reassuring, tried to keep the still-cooler-than-optimal heiress close to her chest without caging her.

What was the harm in knocking herself out for another day or two if it meant securing Weiss's recovery? She knew Ruby understood how her semblance worked - Ruby would expect to find her asleep for at least another day or so. But Weiss... Ruby would want to see Weiss awake and well when she returned.

"But you-" the brawler grimaced at the way her voice hitched at the memory of the heiress's silent, still form, "you looked like you might never wake up, you know?" Yang dropped her gaze to the sheets, guilt eating away at her more thoroughly than a horde of Grimm.

She was the reason Weiss was such a wreck in the first place. She was responsible.

When Weiss didn't respond, Yang ducked her head down to touch her forehead to the back of the heiress's matted hair, once again trying to reach out with her aura, gentle and inviting. "I have to make sure that doesn't happen."

If Weiss had been in a better state, she would have told Yang that it didn't make sense to dump aura on her- she was a notoriously slow healer and even if the Liliac were gone James Point would need every active huntress they could get. Those thoughts came to her only half-formed, though, and she was too muddled and hazy to be able to articulate any of them.

"Half," she murmured, her grip on consciousness slipping. She closed her eyes, "Don't use it all."

"Roger that," Yang smiled as she felt the heiress relax back into her embrace. Slowly, smooth as flowing molasses, her aura completely enveloped the heiress's own, finding the usual spear-like prickles and barbs replaced with a yielding softness that that peacefully accepted any offered warmth. Whether it was due to Weiss finally accepting her on some level, or simply because the smaller girl was already starting to fall back asleep, Yang wasn't sure, but it was heartening all the same.

The brawler ultimately kept her word, sort of, giving maybe just a little over half (probably closer to three quarters, if she were to be honest), before cutting herself off. The room itself seemed to grow darker as she slumped back against the wall and pulled the covers up and around them, taking care to avoid Weiss's shoulder. Even as fatigue finally won the battle and her eyes began to drop shut, she looked to the window, waiting, watching for a flash of color within the endless swirling white.