Special thanks to my buddy:

Pearl Darkness.


Yeah, I've been working on this for quite a while. I hope it turns out to be okay. Life's a mess lately.

Also, if you guys noticed, I mention a reader's name in my stories starting from 'Bees and a Rose'. That's my reward for my Patrons. They'll be mentioned on every story I wrote after they pledge me (And dedicate a story to'em). For now I only have one, and hopefully will get more support as I write. Thanks a lot, Pearl Darkness!

I do not own RWBY.

Pa-treon: The Tanker, FB Page: IBurn 'Tank' RWBY Fanfic Author

#

Chapter 24: Ice Queen

"I-"

"Nuh-uh princess. It's my turn now." Yang smirked, "You'll have to wait."

Weiss' face twisted with a mixture of dissatisfaction and anger. After a while, she gave up.

"Fine." The ice queen sat back on her chair with legs crossed.

She decided she wouldn't win this argument, so she backed down to prepare everything she wanted to ask and give the both of them a good round of lecture at the same time.

Not that she was any less guilty than Blake and Yang, but she was the only one outside the loop. A lot of things happened without her knowledge and almost all of them were closely related to her.

Naturally, she didn't want to be oblivious to these things.

Her eyes couldn't be kept off the pair of robotic limbs and the Faunus sitting beside her.

What happened without me knowing it? I can't even imagine how much they've gone through because of me…and Dust, I don't even know if I like them in a romantic way…

"Well…I'll just start with the very beginning." Yang cleared her throat.

Blake just nodded and Weiss scowled.

"Okay…" She turned to Ruby, "Sorry, Rubes, for not coming to visit you. I was a coward."

"Yang, you already apologized just no-"

"I know!" Yang interrupted Blake before she could finish the sentence.

Even Weiss had jumped slightly because of the sudden outburst – as well as the rise of temperature.

"I'm sorry…" Yang calmed herself down by taking a deep breath.

When her eyes finally turned back to lilac, she sent the both of them an apologetic look. They nodded to tell her it was fine.

"I…I know I did. I'm really sorry for yelling at you. I…I just wanted to properly do it."

Ruby showed no sign of waking up at all; she just lied there with a machine monitoring her body.

"Unrequited love is a really common thing." Yang continued, "I knew that back when I…before I snapped and…"

She touched her lips and gulped before continuing.

"And…kissed Weiss."

"You cunning little dragon." Blake smirked, but couldn't hide her jealousy. Yang got the message.

"Excuse me?! I'm the victim here! I just got kissed without any warning!" Weiss squeaked.

"But it sure felt good." Yang smirked, "Because it's my lips~"

Yang knew her best friend was purposely teasing the heiress to lower the tension, so she joined in.

"Well, how did her lips feel Yang?"

Weiss didn't even know how to react now – that kiss was the very first (well not exactly) of the reasons they all fell apart. And the fact that Blake and Yang joked about it was…irritating.

It tortured her for nine years!

How dare they joke about a serious matter like that?!

"Didn't pay much attention." Yang shrugged, "It was rough."

"Ouch."

"Yang Xiao Long, Blake Belladonna!"

"Tsk tsk." Yang motioned her robotic index finger left and right as she winked, "Feeling better now?"

"Yang, that doesn't count." Blake said.

"Aww, I thought the battle had already started."

"Wow, we didn't see each other for nine years…I mean, me and you both, and all we do right now is…oh I don't know, battling to gain my affection?" Weiss retorted in a sarcastic manner after she calmed herself down in time. Being the CEO of a company that big actually helped.

"Finally admitting that you're gay, princess?"

"Wha-" Weiss' face turned as red as Ruby's cloak; she bit her lips and looked to the other direction, crossing her arms while mumbling something inaudible to the both of them.

"Oh, means we have a chance." Blake smirked as she tilted her head.

"Took her long enough." Yang mimicked her friend, "Nine years though."

"Can we just get back to the talk?" The heiress whispered.

She wasn't sure if that was real yet.

If it was, then she wasn't sure if she was ready yet.

Probably not.

Things were going too fast for her.

"Say please." Yang teased.

"…"

"Yang, stop."

"Oh, you're standing on her side now? That's not gonna add points kitty cat!"

"Please."

"Oh, it worked."

"I hate the both of you."

"Aww, but we love you."

"Yang, for real, stop."

The blonde grinned slyly, but her expression became serious immediately afterwards.

"But I mean it. I know Blake very well and I can tell she loves you as much as I do." She confessed, "I couldn't bring myself to forget you ever since I left. I made friends with Junior…he's a club owner at downtown Vale. He has two hot female bodyguards and…once, I told myself that…maybe, you know, if I flirt with them…I'll eventually fall in love with them and forget you."

Yang took a deep breath.

"But yeah, I couldn't. I was really frustrated. I took on difficult missions in hope that I would die as a glory huntress on the battlefield, but I…I survived. All of'em. At first I didn't know why and I thought I was strong. But it turned out to be…y'know, the will to see you, Weiss."

The heiress' expression softened.

"I soloed an SS level mission before I saw Blake in Secret Base four years ago."

"SS level?! Alone? What are you, brainless?!" Weiss yelped.

"Look, that's not the point…so I made it back safe and sound." Yang ignored the angry Schnee, "Then I went to Secret Base to visit Topaz…and I met Blake. She was freezing and her clothes were torn. I genuinely thought that she was raped and I got really angry."

Blake recalled the time when Adam beat her – she was lucky that the man didn't do anything beyond that.

"We talked and…well, it didn't exactly go well."

"I ran…"

"Yeah. I went back to the club after that, determined to dig out that bastard. Junior then refused to tell me stuff about Adam because he said it was dangerous."

"He was damn right." Blake interrupted.

"I'm glad he didn't tell me. If he did, I would've been…well, it would've cost me more than an arm and leg."

"Yang-"

"Okay I'll stop. Anyway, the Malachites…ah, the two female bodyguards I mentioned…they talked some sense into me. And when I realized everything, Roman appeared out of nowhere.

"We talked and had come to a conclusion that if we wanted to bring down Adam…to bring down the White Fang, we'd need help. So he contacted Qrow and the Huntsmen Union while I went to gather intel. After that…it was pretty much the same as what Blake told you.

"So you don't have to feel guilty for anything, Weiss. We didn't join the operation solely to protect you, it was to protect Remnant and you just happened to be a part of it. In fact we're the ones to apologize because we used you as bait. Guess I paid with my limbs. It hurt real bad though, it took me around a year to properly recover." Yang played with her prosthetic arm, "The surgery of attaching these robotic parts took months too. I heard the arm surgery caused a lot of bleeding so it really took some time before I could get out of bed."

"I see…" Weiss mumbled; everything was clear as crystal now.

"Okay…that's all I wanna say." Yang crossed her arms, "Your turn now, princess."

Blake's cat ears perked up immediately; she knew both Yang and her were dead curious about Weiss' life after they left.

Weiss rarely appeared in the media despite being the CEO of the biggest company in the world. Little was known about her private life and there wasn't even a single gossip about her in any magazines.

Nobody dared to harass a Schnee.

The heiress took a deep breath before starting.

"First of all, I'm really sorry to the both of you." She said, "I did terrible things."

"Okay…" The bumblebees said at the same time.

"Second of all, I'm not quite sure how I feel about you two yet."

"We know that." Yang shrugged.

"Mmhmm."

"And third of all…how dare you joke about the…bad things that happened…that caused us…Team RWBY to fall apart!" Weiss pointed her index finger at Yang, then Blake.

"Well…the exact reason that we fell apart was because of Ruby." Yang answered calmly.

Weiss turned to Ruby and sighed before sitting back on the chair.

"I sometimes wonder…what would've happened…if Ruby wasn't sleeping in a hospital bed." The heiress said with a soft tone.

And that efficiently made the black and the yellow gone from a joking mood to a serious one.

"It would've been pretty much the same." Blake answered.

"Blake?"

"I don't know if you noticed…but the tension between us was strong. Ruby knew it…she knew about our feelings all along."

"Yeah…" Yang recalled Ruby asking her what was wrong when they were training with weapons in Secret Base for the first time.

"But, she's the best." Blake smiled gently, "She would probably help us out."

There was a moment of silent before a certain heiress broke it.

"Well…I have not much to say. Aside from regretting greatly what I've done and how I reacted back then…what left was the endless apologies I owe you two."

"Okay…we're all at fault. Let's just start new." Blake said.

"Yeah. And we can go back to what we once were. We can go back to Team RWBY. We can be with each other and…fulfill the vow we…made…" Yang slowed down, forcing her brain to recall an important memory, "Did we make a vow…wait…"

"Yes Yang, we did." Weiss answered, "We vowed to be friends forever. We vowed to stop running away, to trust each other. We also…promised to watch fireworks together in the summer festival."

Amber and lilac orbs shone brightly as the ice queen mentioned the fireworks.

The memories of that day were very fresh in their mind – Ruby trying out all the sweets; Weiss trying to destroy Yang in the mathematics game but got backfired instead; Blake trying her best to scoop for goldfish instead of eating them.

"We promised to watch the firework ten years after no?" Blake tilted her head.

"Mmhmm. Hey, we still have time left!" Yang threw up both her hands and turned to Ruby, "Hey Rubes, better wake up soon! We still have to watch fireworks together!"

Weiss looked at her friends talking to the sleeping beauty in excitement as her mind drifted to her busy life years ago.

And that she had rejected Neptune Vasilias although she was interested in him.

Blake and Yang had gone through nine years of adventures, suffers and pain, but Weiss' was mundane.

Eat, sleep, work, thinking about her feelings towards the both of them, thinking about the past and the team, losing her sleep and decided to work again, rinse and repeat.

And all of these went on for nine years until she finally made a decision to visit Secret Base just hours ago – and met the people she loved the most.

A rush of insecurity washed her heart the more she thought about it.

What if the scene in front of her was merely a dream?

When she opened her eyes, Blake and Yang would still be missing and she was still so afraid to step out from where she stood all along.

"Weiss?"

The heiress blinked, then turned to Blake who had been calling her for a while.

"Are you okay?"

"I…I'm not dreaming…am I?"

"No you're not, princess." Yang grinned, "We're here now. We're back together again. Hey, I think we should celebrate this reunion."

Weiss held out her hands subconsciously as the blonde laughed merrily after saying that they should visit Junior's club.

She needed to touch them; she needed to feel them to make sure that she wasn't dreaming.

"Hey hey, we're here." Blake took her hand and smiled.

Tears spilled out from Weiss' eyes as she let out all the pain that she had been feeling. Blake hugged her and she reciprocated, Yang soon joining them in a big group hug.

The heiress could feel their heartbeats and warmth – although the metal arm was icy cold, she could feel the mighty dragon's aura surrounding it. And Blake's scent…Dust, how she missed her friends.

#

"I'm…just glad that they're back together…again…"

"Sssh. C'mere love." Qrow hugged his wife.

Summer tried her best to control her volume so that the girls wouldn't spot them standing just outside the room.

They didn't want to disturb that wonderful atmosphere inside with their daughter.

"Let's come back later." Qrow smiled and kissed the top of Summer's head.

#

After spending some time hugging the weeping heiress, both Blake and Yang had been influenced by her and started crying too.

All of them ended up sobbing in each other's arm for quite a while.

When they were finally settled down, Weiss suggested having a nice shower and breakfast at her house. The bumblebees affirmed immediately.

#

They were disappointed.

Weiss' house wasn't the great Schnee mansion that could fit twenty airships inside.

It was a normal apartment with only one bathroom.

Apparently, that huge mansion belonged to her parents and Weiss didn't want to share a house with them.

Yang guessed it was because she couldn't do whatever she wanted to with her parents present. Especially things that were related with…a box of tissue.

And a scroll.

Blake on the other hand guessed it was because Weiss didn't like her privacy to be invaded.

They came to an agreement that Weiss should be the first one going into the shower, since she was the owner of this house.

While she was enjoying the hot shower, the bumblebees took their sweet time touring this fancy apartment.

It wasn't as luxury as the Schnee mansion, but boy this apartment wasn't something an ordinary resident of Remnant could afford.

The bedroom alone was twice Yang's apartment size. It was beautifully designed with various Schnee-related logos and themes surrounding it; the white and blue themed wallpaper had made the whole place felt very cooling. Or it could be the air-conditioning.

"Say…" Yang sat on the soft couch as Blake settled beside her, "Do you think we're a bit…y'know, forceful on Weiss?"

Blake's eyebrows furrowed and a little while later she sighed.

"I think we were."

"Do you think we should talk…?"

"No."

"Huh?"

"Just…just let go of the past Yang. We promised to start new." Blake smiled.

The blonde paused for a moment.

Everyone thought that they were at fault and when they confronted each other, everyone thought that their fault was the heaviest.

This angst had to end.

"Yeah. I get it. Also, Blake?"

"Yes?"

"If…I mean, I think we should set some rules with this…battle."

Blake nodded; she understood what Yang was trying to say. She knew that men had their 'code' when it came to pursuing the same girl, and that was what Yang meant.

The only difference was that they were both girls.

"I don't think we need to explain it out loud." Blake shrugged, "I think you and me both understand this very well."

Yang tilted her head and smiled smugly.

"I will be winning this."

"Oh you wish."

The bumblebees remained silent then, both thinking of ways to win Weiss over.

Yang was certain that she would win this time. She looked at her right arm, thinking about that new feature she had planned to add in that would make Weiss go mad and scream her name with pleasure.

Blake on the other hand was feeling lucky because of the library inside her brain. She had read a lot of books; romance was one of her favorite genre and she had a pretty good idea of what romantic things that girls would absolutely love.

Just as they were plotting their crazy plans, the bathroom door opened and a certain heiress emerged. She wore a casual T-shirt that was white and yellow in color, as well as a black colored short.

Yang and Blake was amazed.

Firstly, they had never seen Weiss in casual clothes.

At least not as casual as this one.

Ever since Weiss started taking combat lessons from Glynda, she only wore her combat attire. Save for the 'date' of Yang and Weiss in the central shopping district, they had only seen her in suit.

So seeing the heiress' current attire had stunned the bumblebees.

And secondly, she was absolutely gorgeous.

She still maintained that petite figure of hers, and her breasts weren't considered big either, but the dancer's muscles that grew intensely on her body was what made her different from the past. On top of that, Weiss with her hair down was a major turn on.

The heiress was wiping her hair with a soft white towel when she walked straight towards the duo.

"It's your turn now." She stopped right in front of them, then bent her body a bit so that she would be eye level with the both of them, "Blake? Yang?"

They were snapped out of it at exactly two seconds later.

"Wow, princess, you really had grown up over the years." Yang raised one of her eyebrow.

Blake blushed because of her Faunus smelling picking up the scent of Weiss' shampoo way more intensely than normal. She could tell every ingredient that was used to make that specific shampoo.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Weiss, you're really pretty." Blake said calmly after regaining her usual posture.

"Hey, no fair kitten, you stole my line!" Yang pouted.

"The both of you, stop!" Weiss half shouted as she put both her hands on her waist, "What's with this battling to gain my affection thing? If I recall it correctly, I have never approved of such silly competition!"

"But you like us!" Yang grinned slyly, then proceeded to unbutton her shirt a bit, "And you like these~"

Weiss tried.

She tried really hard not to look, but her eyes acted faster than her brain, and-

"Ha, caught right in the act!" The blonde pointed at her with her index finger.

The heiress was about to hang her up using her glyphs, but Blake spoke before she managed to grab Myrtenaster.

"Weiss, please give us a chance?" Blake said; her eyes were full of emotions.

"Yeah. You don't have to force yourself to do anything that you don't like to." Yang continued, her expression became serious, "But we would like to try. And we would like to ask you to give the both of us – to give yourself a chance. We love you, Weiss. We love you."

The heiress looked at them.

She knew they weren't joking at all. They were dead serious, and Weiss herself could tell that they really love her very much. It had been nine years, and their feelings had never changed; they sacrificed a lot for her and never asking anything in return.

If it wasn't love, then Weiss didn't know what it was.

But she was afraid.

If she agreed to give them a chance, that also meant that she would have to choose one and potentially break the other one's heart. They were already wounded in the past, and Weiss wasn't sure if they could take another hit. What if they just shattered and were impossible to be recovered anymore?

"Hey, it'll be fine." Yang said after sensing her insecurity, "It's fine, Weiss. We understand."

"That's what love is." Blake said, "Whether our feelings were reciprocated or not, it doesn't matter. What matters is that we properly conveyed them to you. We'll have no regret no matter what your decision was."

Weiss gulped, frowned, narrowed her eye and finally, sighed.

"Alright then. But in all seriousness, I'm not responsible for any…incident in the process. You promised me this."

"Aye, ice queen!"

"Minus one mark for Yang Xiao Long."

"Nooooooo!"

#

I started writing this chapter like…I don't know, a month or two ago? And it's only completed now. It's super hard to continue a story that I've left untouched for so long. I hope I didn't screw up.

The next chapters would be bumblebees competing for Ice Queen's affection and although I didn't plan anything (I always plan for each chapter of the stories I write), I can assure you that it'll be incredibly silly.

Anyway, that's it. I'm sorry I took so long to update this.

If you're wondering what story is coming up next, visit the 'Coming up next' section of my profile. I update'em after I posted every new chapter/story. If you're wondering what's going on with my life, you can visit the 'Announcement' section too.

And done, bye!

I do not own RWBY.

Pa-treon: The Tanker, FB Page: IBurn 'Tank' RWBY Fanfic Author


Special thanks to my buddy:

Pearl Darkness.