Brighter

by y8ay8a

It took that three day mission away from Beacon Academy, but if Yang looked back on the last months, their relationship was probably bound to change sooner or later. - Bumbleby smut. Starts in between V2 and V3, follows events of V3. May very well be continued with V5.

10. Chapter 10

Author's note:

When I started this story, it was meant to be just smut- at the time I started writing it, I couldn't find the type of smut I wanted to read, so I simply decided to write my own. If you've read this far, you've certainly noticed that what I was going for something very different in the first chapters compared to the later, longer ones. This story just took a life of its own. As I worked through the events that followed V3 and the fall of Beacon, I've strived to make the story as complementary to the canon events as I possibly could, filling it blanks. Given RWBY's nature as an action-driven show with limited airtime and a vast cast of characters, there's only so much that can be done on screen to explore complex emotions and trauma, and so... this is my working through behind the scenes, and offering that to similar fans of the show.

I think this is why it was this hard for me to finish writing this last chapter. The direction in which I wanted to go with this last chapter changed multiple times- I changed my mind multiple times about what I wanted it to be, kept feeling that things were missing, or that there remained things that I hadn't addressed that I wanted to address. I scrapped maybe a dozen scene ideas and near 30 pages of dialogue. I wanted to make sure I felt it was complete and that it did give a satisfactory ending. I feel pretty good about it and hopefully I managed that. Hope you enjoy the read :)

Oh! PS: You might or might not know that I have been working on another fic in a similar canon-immersive style call, this one focusing on Robyn and Winter. As the events progresses on screen and team RWBY makes it to Atlas, the timeline starts overlapping in my two fics- this chapter in Brighter, and stating in chapter 4 of Marble to Skin 4. Both chapters happen in parallel, and they somewhat impact each other, although one doesn't need to read either to understand the events of the other; I just wanted to mention it because I had a lot of fun getting it all together, and I think (hope) it's a neat experience for people who read both :) (and if you're not reading it but enjoy the way I write... maybe give Marble to Skin a chance. Robyn x Winter is a crackship, but I think I do an okay job at selling it! and I'd love to see that ship become more popular and get more art/fics hahaha)

Blake stirred to the buzzing of a scroll. She felt movement at her side and heard a groan before the offending alarm was silenced. At once, the previous evening came back to her. Yang put her scroll away and turned to face Blake again, wrapping an arm around her as she snuggled back in. Blake smiled to herself, readily welcoming the closeness. She was happier than she'd been in a long time. Yang's warm body against her own and her strong arm holding her tightly were heaven. And yet, the reason that there had been an alarm at all remained pressingly at the back of her mind. They had planned a heist, and respecting the schedule they'd arranged was of the essence.

Blake nudged the other woman's shoulder with her cheek. "Yang?"

"Hmm?"

"I'd also love to sleep in, but we can't."

Grunt.

Blake kissed the skin available to her. "Come on, wake up."

"I'm up," Yang murmured, not moving right away. She then took a deep breath and let go of Blake in order to sort of prop herself up on her elbow, eyes still squeezed shut. "I'm up."

Yang's features, crinkled from the light inundating the room, relaxed as she adjusted, and one eye cracked open to gaze down at her. Her expression softened to an incredibly warm one, and Blake's heart resounded throughout her entire body. It was the same warmth and fondness with which Yang would gaze at her a lifetime ago, back when Beacon was still a safe haven, and it took Blake back to the happiest days of her life.

"Hi," Yang greeted softly.

"Hi," the faunus breathed in return, admiring the woman towering over her. Yang's airy curls were messier than Blake remembered her bed head being, but their golden color shone in the morning light with the same gorgeous glow. She was so beautiful. And she was hers.

...She was, wasn't she?

Laying everything bare the way they had before going to sleep had been absolutely necessary to mend their relationship, Blake knew that, and though she knew that they were okay again, though she knew they'd made a giant leap forward, she still didn't know exactly where that left them. She felt that they had at least caught back up to the point they had reached in the last moment they had together before the Fall of Beacon, a point at which Blake had felt it natural to tell Yang that she loved her. Should she do so now, it would likely be well received, and the same as before, though she didn't know if Yang could say it back yet, Blake knew for a fact that they were something again. What that something was she couldn't say with certainty, but they were something. Blake reached up to comb some of the unruly bangs out of her love's face. "Are you rested enough? We didn't get to sleep much."

"Even if it wasn't much, I slept better than I have in a very long time," Yang smiled. "How about you?"

"Honestly… same." Even on those sparse dreamless nights during which Blake had been spared from plaguing nightmares, her sleep would typically be light and restless. The last time she'd slept this well was… at Beacon, of course. Although the number of times she'd been able to share the golden girl's bed could be counted on one hand, she distinctly remembered it being the best sleep she'd had as an adult, and this time was no exception. Sleeping with someone she so loved and trusted had been the only remedy for her fitful slumber, and such had been the case ever since she'd torn herself from the safety of her family.

Yang stared down at her in silence for a short moment, as if she might have also needed to process the reality of the point they'd reached. How they were fortunate enough to be together, to be okay, and that they were in a place where they could both say with certainty that they would be a part of each other's future. Yang slowly laid down again, facing her. "You think that Ruby and Weiss realized that we'd sort it out if we had a few hours to ourselves?"

"I don't know," Blake thought back on how the pair had been snooping on them as they'd been out looking for Oscar. "Possibly, if they heard what we said before coming back to the house…"

Yang shrugged. "I don't think they heard, they were a bit far. But… even watching from afar, they noticed that we were having a moment, and they knew we weren't done talking. So they might've decided that we needed to… uh... be locked up in a room together or something."

Blake smiled. It was true that she and Yang had been able to have this important conversation thanks to Ruby and Weiss being adamant that she should share Yang's bed instead of the prior arrangement of the sisters being paired up. And although their teammates hadn't locked them in; "We are locked in," Blake mused, "I locked the door to change. I didn't intend on keeping it locked, but… I got distracted."

Yang's eyebrows were perched high on her forehead. "So, no one can walk in on us, huh?"

The faunus saw lilac eyes trail down to where her uncovered skin disappeared under the bed sheets, and Blake had an inkling of what might be on the blonde's mind. For a second, Blake played with the idea of pulling the covers down and exposing her upper body, but given how precipitating things the night before had turned out, she abstained. She didn't want Yang to feel pressured into anything. Under the covers, Blake's hand found her partner's.

To her surprise, Yang took this as an invitation; she shifted closer, close enough to gather her against herself and Blake nestled into her embrace. With her forehead resting against her neck and her cheek pressing into her breast, the sound of Yang's heartbeat and the way her slow breathing lightly rocked Blake's head relaxed her such that she caught herself drifting back to sleep. "We should start getting ready," Blake said, her voice a tad sluggish. "We can't get caught up."

"We can't," the blonde agreed. "We should get out of bed."

"We really should," she murmured.

"Yeah," Yang gently pressed her lips to her forehead.

A sudden rattling of the door jolted them both out of their skin; Blake thanked every deity out there that she'd decided to lock it. As the handle jostled again, Nora's muffled voice came from the other side of the door. "Hey, ladies?" She called in apparent confusion— it'd be a bit odd for two people to lock themselves in a room overnight if the intent hadn't been… "OoooOOOooo," Nora hollered. "I knew it!" She bellowed through the door.

Yang, exasperated and her face quite red, shouted back; "What do you want, Nora‽"

"Fifteen before we leave!"

"Shit."

A laugh came from the other side of the door. "You had all night."

The blonde sat up at once. "Okay first," she shot argumentatively, "it's not what you think!"

"Right," Nora snorted.

Blake tugged at the hem of the orange pajama top to grab her partner's attention. "Honestly… what she's thinking probably isn't too far off from the truth, we did get… heated last night."

Yang stared down at her for an extended moment before she sighed, returning her attention to the door. "We'll be there in a minute, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Nora answered. "But when the heist is done, we are so talking about this in juicy details."

"Nora—"

"JUICY. DETAILS." Footsteps scampered off.

Yang pressed her hand to her face. "She thinks we had sex, doesn't she?"

"That's… not entirely wrong though," Blake murmured, the events of the previous night coming back to mind.

The way the blonde's features tightened, the way her body stiffened, instantly conveyed how uneasy she was with what had gone down. With Yang having admitted to having body issues, Blake knew that they should've eased into it instead of throwing themselves at each other this way. Or rather, Blake shouldn't have thrown herself at her this way. "I'm sorry that I went too fast."

Yang shook her head. "No, it's fine, I… wanted—... I-I wanted you. And I was totally turned on," she turned to her again and added ruefully; "I wish I hadn't freaked out."

Blake reached out to cup the other woman's cheek, caressing her skin with her thumb comfortingly. "It opened the door to talk about everything. We both really needed to finish clearing the air."

"…Yeah," the blonde smiled a faint, somewhat reassured smile.

With this, the faunus finally willed herself to also sit up. She saw the violet eyes swiftly travel down as the bed covers slid off, exposing her naked torso. Yang looked away almost instantly. For whatever reason, that made Blake want to hug her and kiss her more than ever. She wanted to tell her that she could look at her, that she could touch her, that she could do anything she wanted to. Yet, she had to remind herself that, though they might've talked a lot the previous day, it was all still nothing but groundwork. They had laid down a solid foundation, but they still needed to build again. Rushing things would mean making more mistakes, and there was no rush. It's not like they had time to get into it anyways— Nora had said fifteen minutes.

Without addressing how Yang made a point of looking away, Blake slipped out of bed. She gathered her clothes and went to fish in her bag for clean underwear. Ideally, she would have liked a shower, but they were very much in a hurry. She also justified skipping the shower with how cold the weather was— washing her skin too often in that weather would make it flaky and dry, besides… Blake couldn't deny that the vague hint of Yang's scent lingering on herself from how entwined they'd slept was something she was happy to bask in.

Out of the corner of her eye, movement grabbed her attention; Yang had got going too. Blake watched her engage her prosthesis and get to her own bag. As the brawler was about to remove her top, she paused and glanced her way.

Blake looked down. "Sorry," instead busying herself with getting dressed. "I won't look."

"...You don't have to look away," Yang answered, prompting golden orbs to find her features again; they stared at each other for a second before Yang seemed to find her nerve and pulled her top over her head. Blake stood clad in her underwear, her pants forgotten in her hands. The blonde took a deep breath, as though nervous about being exposed. Nevertheless, she took off her bottoms too, leaving herself completely naked. "I've been weird about my body, but I want to get comfortable again."

Blake realized that her mouth was hanging open at the same time as she remembered to breathe. It was challenging for her to wrap her mind around how such a gorgeous woman might feel insecure with her body, but then again… Blake would probably feel the same had she been the one to lose a limb. Her eyes traveled across the newly exposed skin. "You're really, truly beautiful, Yang."

Yang gave her an uncharacteristically coy look. The way she smiled was so cute that it made Blake's heart skip a beat. "...How you look at me makes me feel like I am," she said. "I've felt really gross, so… this is really nice." Yang started getting dressed, and slipping her underwear on, she seemed to remember something. "Uh… and I-I'll shave. I hadn't been doing it and I just wasn't expecting the… or… you know. I just— I don't tend to do it when wearing pants, and it's… a pain to do it with one arm."

It had indeed surprised Blake to feel hair as she'd caressed her —Yang used to be cleanly shaved, what with wearing such short shorts back in the day— but she would never be put off or deterred by it. "You don't have to do it if it's trouble, I don't mind."

"I mind," Yang shot back quickly, giving a quick glance her way. "I mean, touching was fine, but I know that you like...uh… giving oral— you do, right?"

Blake's cheeks burned a bit. She'd made that very clear as they'd started getting intimate, taking every opportunity she had to bury her face between Yang's legs. "…Yeah. I like it."

She nodded. "I mind letting you do that if I'm not shaved," she explained, quickly putting on her pants. "So I'll… manage it."

Blake had always waxed her bikini line and trimmed the rest. She'd always thought that if Yang had always been cleanly shaved it'd been out of a notion that it was less trouble. "Did you want me to shave completely too?"

"Oh no, the way you do it is perfect. I don't care about hair on you, I just don't like it on myself like that."

Blake nodded, and as Yang resumed dressing, she became completely engrossed with the view. The tall brawler grabbed her belt and buckled it on before bothering with her bra or top. Only when Yang was decent could Blake focus on getting herself ready. She hurriedly finished getting dressed and started on her make-up, still mindful of Yang's reflection in the mirror as the blonde distractedly checked her scroll while putting on striped socks. Yellow and black stripes, Blake noted. That was a theme with her, wasn't it? Her bike's name was Bumblebee. Idly reflecting on that, she put away her make-up and finished putting her bag together. Yang was doing the same, and so, the faunus decided it was time to go. The airship wasn't going to steal itself after all.

"Blake, wait."

Stopping in her tracks, her hand lingered on the door handle as she glanced back at the other woman. Yang paused, as if to steel herself, before resolutely marching up to her. She stepped incredibly close, entering Blake's personal space. Her left hand, the warmth of her fingertips, brushed Blake's cheek and glided down to rest at the base of her neck before she leaned in. Yang paused as their breath mingled, seemingly unsure of herself, but there was only a second of hesitation before her lips met Blake's in an incredibly gentle kiss. In that moment, everything was perfect, and it felt to Blake like the world melted away.

Yang drew back, their noses still brushing together. "I should've done that yesterday before sleeping."

Blake felt drunk and hypnotized, her eyelids heavy. "Why didn't you?"

"I thought maybe we'd get really into it and uh… end up not getting any sleep."

She felt herself smile. "I can see that happening," the faunus said. "But please… don't hold back. Do it whenever you feel like it— every time you feel like it."

Yang kissed her again, and this time, it wasn't timid at all. In fact, it felt like she poured in all the passion pent up inside of her, every single time she would've wished she could kiss her over the last year apart, into that one kiss. Blake's knees went weak, and she grabbed onto the brawler's tan jacket to steady herself. A shuddering sigh escaped her between kisses, she hadn't dared imagine that her partner would have this sort of ardor or boldness so soon. It brought her back to days when Yang would unabashedly and voraciously consume her like fire devours darkness. Days permeated by a happiness that had, until just recently, felt forever out of reach.

"Blake," she called, though she didn't leave her any room to answer, her lips greedily storming hers once more.

The faunus clutched her tightly, the tremendous heat Yang's voluptuous and muscular body gave off escalated her own body temperature, and the hammering of her own heart was echoed by Yang's pounding against her chest. Blake's fingers gripped at the back of her tan vest, through golden locks, feeling for a silhouette which she had seared every inch of into her memory.

"Blake," Yang murmured again, this time reining in the urge to just keep kissing her. "Ever since we first reunited in Haven, I've been thinking..."

Blake's muddled mind couldn't figure out what else the other woman had on her heart for weeks, what she might've held on to in silence.

"You look really hot in those boots."

Blake puffed out a laugh. "Really?"

"But you really do! And it's not like I could tell you before!" Yang defended, also laughing. "I mean, we were so awkward and… not okay and… I mean, what should have I said? 'Hey Blake, don't talk to me but you're really hot?' Mixed messages much?"

"You were sending me mixed messages anyways," Blake remarked.

"I guess, but I mean, I didn't know how to deal with everything," she answered. "You terrified me, you know?"

"That bad?"

"Blake, I… never knew I could feel like this about anyone," she murmured. "And back in Beacon, I thought it might be like… the honeymoon phase or something, but then… even after I got hurt, even when I was alone, even when I was majorly pissed at you… I still wished more than anything else that I could see you again. I still needed you just as much. So of course I was terrified when we were finally together again. I didn't know what to do with everything I felt."

"I'm sorry," Blake repeated again, earnestly.

"Don't be, I'm not angry anymore, it's okay," Yang said. "Now that I know what you had to sort out, I understand why you reacted the way you did. I understand that no matter what you wanted to do… your past catching up to you put you under duress. It came for you before you were ready to confront it, it's no wonder you crumbled."

Her ears flattened backwards as self-consciousness took a hold of her. She felt the impulse to apologize again, but swallowed it down. Yang must have felt her wavering because she cupped her cheek, holding her gaze steadfastly.

"But this time, you came for it," she reminded her. "You took your stand in Haven, and you made him back down."

"I did," Blake felt her heart swell.

"I'm really proud of you," Yang murmured, leaning in for another kiss.

Warmth and exultation washed over her as she kissed her back. Everything inside of her screamed to tell her she loved her. How inconceivably much she loved her. But maybe after having pushed her luck the way she had, after having imposed such an emotional evening on her, maybe it was best to allow things to settle and let Yang take the leap whenever she was ready. So for the time being, Blake was more than happy to simply relish in that kiss and in the knowledge that there were many more like this to come.

After this exchange, after all the baggage that had been purged from her the preceding night, she felt ready for anything. She could take on anything. She was unstoppable, invincible. Which was very opportune, as she had a tower to disable if they stood a chance of making it to Atlas.

---

The hilt of her broken sword clattered to the ground before her. Although relief flushed over her, she couldn't bask in it, such was it immediately replaced by extreme disgust. Disgust for what she'd done, but even more so, disgust for the relief she'd felt. Falling to her knees, her hands curled into fists shaking with exhaustion and emotion. Blake's eyes stung. How could she feel so positively about taking a life?

The ringing in her ears and the deafening thundering of her heartbeat almost stifled the pounding of boots hastily approaching. In the blink of an eye, Yang was on her knees next to her, gathering her in her arms, and Blake could not have been more thankful. They clutched each other harder than Blake ever remembered. Memories of the two of them cascaded vividly through her mind, from the first smiles and fleeting touches, to feverishly amorous embraces and penetrating gazes, to heart-wrenching tears shared and all that they'd sworn to each other. For a spell, she was terrified that Adam's words would fester and make Yang doubt her again.

"I'm not gonna break my promise," Blake managed between sobs. "I swear."

Yang broke away to look into her eyes. "I know you won't," she fervently answered, and Blake knew without a shadow of a doubt that Yang could affirm this so staunchly only thanks to having laid everything bare the day before.

As her fear of the doubts Adam might have wedged between them receded, emotion took hold of Blake, her sobs reaching a frantic pitch. Hiccups interrupted her already frantic breathing and she felt she might start hyperventilating.

"Hey," the blonde breathed gently, snapping her out of her downward spiral. Yang's hands cupping her face moved gently to dip her fingers into her hair, and comfortingly back to her cheeks, soothingly caressing as she shushed her. Holding her gaze, Yang inhaled a long breath, prompting her to do the same.

Blake zeroed in on the rhythm of her partner's breathing, forcing herself to emulate it. They breathed in synch, deep inhales and lengthy exhales, and Blake focused on the amethyst color of her lover's gaze. Though she could still feel warm tears streaking her cheeks, the faunus felt like she was slowly being pulled back together. The warmth and steadfastness with which Yang grounded her was the only thing that mattered. They leaned their foreheads together and Blake closed her eyes. Gone was the looming presence that haunted the back of her mind, but now there was blood on her hands. Blake didn't know if it would have been with relief or despair that she would have crumbled had Yang not been there to hold all the pieces of her together.

Loud rumbling in the distance brought them back to the present moment. The rest of the team were evidently struggling with their part of this heist, and of course they were; the tower hadn't been disabled. Blake's eyes fluttered open to meet gentle violet ones riveted on her. The sense of urgency to move, to attend to what was happening to their friends passed between them.

Yang's hands comfortingly rubbed up and down her back. "Do you need another moment?"

"Yeah," Blake admitted; she'd need weeks— months to truly come to terms with this. "But we don't have time. We need to go." Yang gazed at her unsurely, unmoving, so Blake willed herself to separate from her partner. "A couple of seconds won't change anything for me, but it might make all the difference for the rest of the group," she said as she stood shakily. "I'll… I'll deal with it when… when this is over."

The blonde gave her a nod, also getting to her feet. With a quick wipe of the blood off the faunus's broken weapon, they were swiftly on the path to reunite with their group. Truth be told, Blake was glad to have urgent matters to attend to; stopping for a moment too long would allow the vortex of emotion to suck her in, and… she'd really rather the heist be over before she was taken out of the equation. As long as she was moving, she could delay that downfall, and so Blake braced herself for action once again.

Having seen her share of Atlas tech didn't prepare her for the sight of what Ruby, Weiss and the rest had disabled, and neither did having fought her share of Grimm prepare her for what emerged from the sea— the kind of menace which that giant mech they'd just put out of commission had been built to counter. Boarding the ship to regroup, everyone turned to her and Yang to ask what had gone wrong, and although Blake felt her composure fray at the edges, she did her best to summarize what had gone down without completely falling to pieces. The next step was re-negotiating the plan now that everything had gone awry, and they unanimously elected to stay and fight the colossal Grimm instead of using the chaos as a distraction to vanish. They managed to hold it back until the Atlas military was able to take control of the situation and subsequently made their escape with their former foe's blessings.

The ride was quiet, the eventful day having taken its toll on the group, and everyone took the opportunity to get a little shut-eye. Blake, however, couldn't find any rest, no matter how cozily nestled into Yang's side she was. Now that there was time and space to assimilate what had gone down, it hit her like a freight train. Never would she have thought herself capable of taking a life. Over the years she'd remained at Adam's side, she'd witnessed him do so time and time again, and every single instance had been engraved with horror into Blake's mind. She remembered where, when and how it happened, she remembered their faces, the terror on their features as they were dying, as they realized that this was the end, and she remembered how tragic and harrowing had been the sight of their lifeless bodies. The first few times, she'd been sick. What she didn't remember, however, was when it was exactly that she'd stopped crying over them. There had been so many; one had to let go of the horror, or risk losing themselves. And now, despite having been marginally desensitized, never could she have imagined herself accountable for such horror. But that wasn't even the worst of it; the guilt over the relief of being liberated from his ever-present threat made the entire ordeal that much more wretched, and she felt like she was suffocating. She pressed her hands to her face, trying to keep it together.

"You shouldn't try to hold it in," Yang's voice startled her; Blake had thought her asleep. The blonde shifted slightly so they could look at each other. "You've held back enough already."

Having her feelings acknowledged brought Blake to her breaking point; her vision blurred and her senses became congested as the succession of events that had led her up to this moment crashed down on her. Strong arms tightened around her and she clutched Yang with every ounce of strength remaining, stuffing her face into her chest, direly needing the world to be reduced to nothing but the woman she loved. Her grief poured out like a tsunami, racking her body with waves of painful contractions that left her quivering in their lulls. Her uncontrolled sobbing was somewhat muted by being wedged into her partner as she was, but somewhere at the back of her mind, she was aware that should anyone still be awake they'd undoubtedly hear her. She really couldn't bring herself to care. They might not have been aware of exactly what this meant to her, but they all knew she'd taken a life, which in and of itself was reason enough to come apart.

Her tears only stopped when she wasn't physically capable of them anymore. Her body was so dry that the inside of her mouth and throat felt like sandpaper and producing any sound was a strain. "I'm glad I told you everything yesterday," Blake nevertheless rasped. She separated just enough to meet the blonde's gaze earnestly, desperate to convey the depth of what she felt. "It means so much that you understand—... t-that I… I don't have to explain now, of all things, what this means to me."

Yang nodded. She reached out to wipe her eyes for her, taking an extra moment to smooth her smudged make-up. "I'm glad too," she whispered in return. "I can't imagine living through this with you and not knowing how massive this is for you."

Blake wanted to tighten her hug but found herself unable to muster the strength. Her fingers curled weakly around the fabric of her partner's blazer instead. Though in their time apart Blake had learned to find her own footing, self-trust, self-worth, and the will to live for herself, she didn't want to imagine what it would have been like to withstand this ordeal all by herself. She pressed her forehead to the other woman's strong shoulder. "...I'm sorry, this sounds awful but… I'm… I'm also glad that you're here for this. I don't know if I'd have been strong enough to shoulder that on my own."

Yang's cheek had been leaned on top of her head, and Blake felt her nod. "Don't be sorry. I wouldn't want it any other way." One of her hands burrowed in Blake's hair to gently massage her scalp while she idly stroked Blake's back with the other. "I'm here for you."

Blake huddled a little closer, feeling weariness weakening her further. "Thank you," she breathed. Yang kissed her temple, and Blake's eyelids suddenly felt unbearably heavy. She hadn't been this exhausted since the months she'd spent in the ruins of Beacon. Her body hurt, her heart was deflated, her mind was completely spent, and the only thing she could bring herself to focus on was the warmth of Yang's body enveloping her. She drifted to sleep in this solace.

---

Having left Argus at midday, it was only well into that evening that they reached their destination. Blake was roused by quiet voices; Ruby had gone up to the front of the ship to chat with Qrow and Maria while the rest of the group began to stir. She carefully disengaged from her partner's embrace, choosing to let her sleep as she idly conversed with Weiss until the continent of Solitas came into view. When it did, everyone on board was too febrile to get any sort of additional rest, the commotion finally waking Yang.

The kingdom of Atlas was splendid beyond anything Blake had imagined. Ilia had told her tales of its magnificence and one might have thought that the grandiose image painted would have made the real thing fall short, but… it seemed that it was Blake's imagination that had fallen short. Nothing she had dreamed up compared to seeing the floating city with her own eyes. Its grandeur, however, only made its sister city nestled in its crater appear that much more decrepit; an impression which was solidified into all-too-real fact as they descended through the old, ramshackle buildings and polluted air. Disboarding and walking around, it was to her surprise that Blake didn't feel entirely inconspicuous. She knew of Atlas's prejudice against faunus, but hadn't expected to need to brace for this in Mantle too, given that there seemed to be a substantial population of faunus living in the undercity. Adjusting to the lay of the land and the air around them as they went about, the class disparity made Blake's sense of justice rear its head despite her emotional exhaustion, enough to momentarily distract her from her sorrow as they followed Maria to her acquaintance's whereabouts. As they progressed down an alley, Blake was entirely taken with a large swath of graffiti adorning a rusting garage door.

Show your teeth.

A shiver coursed down her spine. Those words could very well have been the White Fang's slogan; what was brewing in Mantle hit uncomfortably close to home. The restlessness and conflict in the air overtook her again and, suddenly, the propaganda surrounding them sank in once more, brutally this time. The giant holographic projections of General Ironwood and Weiss's sister delivering would-be appeasing messages calling for calm, order, and cooperation contrasted sharply with the vandalism in the streets, the run-down buildings tagged with the population's outcry, and how the streets were littered with posters of Mantle's favored candidate; a dashing blonde with tan skin. Having a sense of what the woman was meant to represent, Blake had a reflexive inclination towards wanting to root for her, but as quickly as that bias surfaced, she took a hold of herself again; she knew all too well how deceptive charm could be, how wrong she'd been before about the people who'd portrayed themselves as heralds of change. She'd learned that lesson the harshest way one could, and she wasn't about to blindly believe a would-be revolutionary so easily again. She promptly decided to keep herself from investigating this; if she learned too much about what was going on, her sense of justice wouldn't let her keep away, and she had no emotional resilience at the moment to invest herself in a new cause.

The group entered what turned out to be an old scientist's office, and barely a few minutes into the conversation they were forced into combat by a sudden influx of Grimm in the city streets. Although the situation was quickly brought under control, things took a turn when Atlas military special ops showed up, and the whirlwind of stress didn't abate until the group were uncuffed and shown to the General's office. The man looked weary but genuinely happy to have them, exuding a calm, steadfast presence. Blake let herself be won over by his welcoming manner, vaguely contemplating the disparity between what he projected with them and how the situation had degenerated down in the poorest areas of the kingdom under his watch. Being made aware, the General seemed genuinely pained, but set it aside as a necessary, temporary grief; a sacrifice for the bigger picture. It was an unsurprising stance for a military mind, and fair enough; more often than not hardships and struggle were necessary to achieve grand aims. It occurred to Blake however, that such thoughts had been what had allowed her to keep herself in the dark as she'd watched the White Fang grow mountingly violent under Adam's covert takeover; rationalizing suffering under such a guise could be a very slippery slope.

As they settled into listening to the details of the General's master plan, Blake had the nagging impression of being watched. Scanning the room, she met familiar cool blue eyes framed by unfamiliar features. Winter made no pretense of hiding her staring; she maintained imperturbable eye contact for the fleeting moment in which the faunus found it in herself to stare back. Although Blake returned her attention to the schematics of Amity, she remained terribly mindful of that icy gaze unyieldingly boring into her. At the back of her mind, she couldn't help reflecting on how, although the Schnee sisters looked remarkably alike, there was a stark difference in what they gave off. For one, even back when team RWBY wasn't yet a team, Weiss had never felt unapproachable— Blake had been largely unruffled by the former heiress' then-pompous airs, even when she threw around her name in an attempt to get her way. Winter, Blake now realized, was an entirely different beast. The woman had no need of that name to be imposing; her steeliness was amply unsettling on its own.

Through the entire debrief, although Winter periodically allowed her attention to attend to practical matters, Blake remained acutely aware that she was of particular interest to the soldier. She couldn't decide if the woman's staunch scrutiny was simply an attempt at sizing up who it was that her sister had crossed half the world to reunite with, if it was due to racism, or if it was something else entirely. The soldier's composure was too meticulously forged to offer Blake any clues on what she might be thinking. Feeling herself being dissected by that piercing gaze, anxiety began to seep into her bones, and Blake moved closer to the one thing that never failed to assuage her: Yang. She spent the rest of the audience on her toes, repressing the urge to check again and again if she was still being watched. Walking out of the room was a relief, and Blake shook off her stiffness, very ready to be shown to their dorm room.

"Hey," Yang quietly drew her attention. "Did you notice that Winter was staring at us?"

Us? "I mean… she was staring at me point-blank for a while, so it was hard not to notice," Blake answered. "I wondered if it could be because I'm a faunus, seeing as Weiss had some hangups at first. But… if you say you noticed the same towards you, then… I don't know."

Yang scratched her head. "Uh… now I don't know. We were standing really close together, so maybe she wasn't looking at me at all."

Blake hummed thoughtfully; she would certainly rather Yang be right. If Winter had been watching both of them, then racism could be discounted, and Weiss wouldn't need to see her role model fall from her pedestal. "I could be mistaken."

Yang tugged at their friend's sleeve. "Weiss, did you notice? Your sister was staring."

"Oh, was she?" Their snow-haired friend didn't think it over very long. "She had already met Ruby, she must have been curious about the rest of my team."

Although unconvinced, Blake nodded. "That makes sense." It was certainly true that it was only natural for Winter, who'd been more of a parental figure to Weiss than their actual parents, to be particularly interested in her sibling's companions, but deep down, Blake couldn't reconcile that prolonged, analytic staring with unadorned curiosity. There had been something keen in the woman's gaze, something hard to decipher, that had made Blake feel vulnerable— exposed even. The worst was, Blake could swear that she'd had that very same experience before, but she couldn't for the life of her remember where or when, leaving her with the sense of missing a puzzle piece.

Penny led them through the pavilions, showing them the academy grounds in a short tour before leading them to the dorms. Though she mentioned that every Atlas Academy student had their own room, the handful of spare rooms had been reorganized with four bunk beds to accommodate the extra pupils from Beacon whom the General had invited.

The same as they had done on the train, RWBY intrinsically picked their bunks in the same fashion as they had in Beacon. As everyone tiredly flopped into bed, Blake had the inclination to slip in under the covers with her partner, but quickly reconsidered. She was too tired to start raising questions about their relationship. Plus, she believed that the two of them really should be discussing their status together first, not sorting it out in front of Weiss and Ruby. It was in an unspoken understanding of this that they both took up their respective, separate beds.

It was almost noon when Blake woke up, and she wasn't even the last one. Weiss and Yang were fully dressed, chatting quietly over a cup of coffee, but Ruby was still sound asleep. Yang speculated that the silver-eyed moment on the day prior might have drained her sister more than any of them had realized. Apparently, Ruby had slept almost four days straight after freezing the Grimm dragon at the Fall of Beacon. Blake got going, starting with a shower. Ruby was up when she was done with the bathroom, and once they were all clean, dressed and gathered, the first order of that day was promptly announced by their snow-haired teammate.

"All of us need to go shopping for some warmer gear," Weiss declared. "This won't do," she added, gesturing towards Blake's exposed midriff.

"Hey!" She covered her stomach with crossed arms, thinking back on how her father had also questioned her attire. Was Weiss the team mom now? "I won't be told how to dress, thank you very much."

"As the only person here who has experience with Atlas weather, I'll absolutely tell you what you can't wear," the short lady retorted. "Your current gear might be fine now thanks to the artificial climate of the city, but aura or not, the outskirts are no joke. And you're not freezing to death on my watch."

"Fair," Blake conceded, a touch surly.

As Yang slipped on her vest and Ruby attached her cape, Blake found herself feeling somewhat naked without her white trench. She had really loved that coat and found it downright deplorable that it had been torn to pieces. She consoled herself by reasoning that it wouldn't have been warm enough for this frozen tundra, as she made up her mind to replace it with something similar. A coat light in color and tailored in fit would be what she'd look for.

Together, they retraced the path Penny had led them through the previous day. The academy grounds were bustling with students, and to Blake's surprise, they didn't draw nearly as much attention as she thought they would. Receiving new transfer students had clearly become routine at Atlas Academy, and it was no wonder, with one of only four Huntsmen Academies out of commission and its entire student body needing to relocate. As they made their way through the city of Atlas, Blake didn't quite remember when she'd last been stared at this much; it was much, much worse than in Mantle, which had already been startling. Vaguely, she thought again of how Weiss's sister had stared at her. Atlas was undoubtedly the worst place in Remnant to be a faunus. In her younger years, such attention might've had Blake cower, hide her ears, but that wasn't who she was anymore. In all this, Blake found it quite interesting to see how each of her teammates, turn by turn, realized what the passersby were staring at.

"What the fuck, this is getting ridiculous," Yang remarked unnervedly. "You'd think they'd never seen a faunus before."

Weiss cleared her throat uncomfortably."Maybe some of them really haven't. At least… they'd have seen some on TV, but not in real life," she said. "There are but a handful of faunus up here in Atlas— I'm pretty sure they're all scholarship students. Atlesians tend to give a pass to promising Huntsmen, but… aren't very welcoming otherwise," she then explained ruefully. "Maybe we should take a shuttle down to Mantle, it might be worth the peace of mind."

"I don't care either way," Blake shrugged. "I feel conspicuous, but… oddly enough, I'm fine." In truth, she was somewhat surprised herself that said conspicuousness didn't have much of an effect on her. It made her delightfully aware that she had worked through her insecurities more than she had realized. "I haven't seen any 'no faunus' signs on any of the businesses here."

Her snow haired friend visibly cringed. "That's… that's not necessarily because you'd be welcomed," she said. "It's because it's pretty much taken for granted that there are no faunus around, so the signs would be nothing more than visual pollution. Shops might still ask us to leave if we go in."

"Really? Even if you're with us?" Ruby surprisedly asked. "I thought you were sort of a celebrity around these parts."

"I've been disinherited," Weiss reminded her, "Your run-of-the-mill Atlesian really cares about status and power, and, although my last name means something, I'm what you might call the black sheep of the family now."

"Wait a second," Yang interjected, "what about your sister?"

"What about her?" She repeated, puzzled.

"You're not the oldest and yet you were the heir," Yang pointed out. "Doesn't that mean she's been in the same situation as you?"

The assumption seemed to insult Weiss. "Absolutely not! No, no, no," she shook her head vigorously. "You're right, it was Winter's birthright, but it wasn't taken from her. She's the one who renounced her position and decided to enlist," she explained, allowing a second for the two sisters to grasp the difference. "It wasn't like when it was taken from me; unlike me, Winter had no fall from grace moment. If anything, it was my father who did. His eldest not wanting anything to do with him? It reflected horribly on him."

How smugly Weiss spoke of her father's misery amused Blake. That newly-recounted episode of the Schnee family's drama appeared to be just another line in a long list of reasons why Weiss revered her sister. Speaking of the devil brought again to the forefront of Blake's mind how closely Winter had scrutinized her. The impulse to ask her friend almost overcame her, but the underlying implications stopped her. How was she supposed to ask about it without insinuating to Weiss that her sister, her hero, might be racist?

Unaware of any of this, Weiss continued wistfully; "And even if committing to the military had had Father disown her, Winter quickly became a high-ranking Atlesians official. That's something people fawn over around here, so that alone would have been enough to erase any stigma. She's definitely not in the same position as me, she commands authority in a way I can't hope to."

Ruby frowned. "Are you saying that commanding authority is something you hope to do?"

"No, but… inspiring enough respect so that people don't whisper gossip as I walk by would certainly not be unwelcomed," she muttered.

Yang patted their friend's back. "You could see it like that: you'll know you'll have accomplished what you set out to do by becoming a Huntress when they've stopped."

Long ago, in what now seemed like a distant dream, they had been gathered around the fire on Mount Glenn. That evening, Weiss had spoken of her hopes of crafting her own place in the world and giving her name another legacy than the one of a big corporation. Blake was taken with nostalgia, what uncomplicated times they'd been.

Weiss smiled as the memory washed over her too. "After everything we've been through, it feels like we've grown enough that a lofty goal like this one might in fact be achievable," she mused.

Yang laughed. "What, so you said all that back then, but you didn't think you'd actually get there?"

The short lady reddened. "I hoped, but I honestly didn't truly know what I was capable of yet. It's hard to get a sense of it without having seen real combat," she defended. Thinking it over, Weiss exhaled. "As children, we all had romantic dreams of grandstanding, adventure, heroism— that's why we chose to do what we do, but no matter how I dreamed… I… I saw Winter take up the sword years before I was allowed to, and I saw her become the kind of warrior I wanted to be while I couldn't yet form a single glyph. Our age gap is not that large, but it is large enough that I always felt left in the dust." Her gaze went from her partner's silver to her sister's lilac, those two evidently hadn't had that issue. "I was left with a sense of inadequacy, and although I knew I wanted to be like her, it never felt within reach."

In that light, sharing the same semblance and wielding a similar weapon as her role model was almost a curse, Blake reflected; there was no avoiding comparing oneself to a goal post that was always being moved further ahead. Even someone with Weiss's outstanding talents would end up feeling somewhat lacking. Keen on giving her friend some encouragement, Blake laid her hand on her shoulder. "Turns out you had no reasons to doubt yourself," she smiled.

The gesture gave Weiss a swell of confidence, and she puffed her chest slightly. "That's what I realized ever since I've gotten over the hurdle of learning to summon," she said. "Adjacently, I've come to realize that not having the burden of the corporation's legacy on my shoulders is in fact a blessing. That is, if I really do wish to dissociate myself from its infamy and gain renown for my own achievements the way Winter has, which I really do." In a bout of theatricality she sometimes displayed, Weiss laced her fingers together, raising her gaze up dreamily as she let her imagination take her on a brief journey. "Oh, I can almost see it! How glorious would it be for us sisters to take back our name and be renowned as a pair of noble warriors!"

"Oh, like Yang and I!" Ruby exclaimed.

Torn out of her fantasy, Weiss turned a dubious gaze to her partner.

The silent but obvious skepticism rubbed Ruby the wrong way; without having been explicitly challenged to, she impulsively defended her claim. "I mean, everyone came to us all the time for our help back in Patch. So we did have that kind of renown."

One of Weiss's eyebrows twitched up. "The Schnee name has a legacy, we have a real reputation."

The short-haired team leader puffed her cheeks. "But Yang and I have a reputation back home."

Weiss scoffed. "No offense, Ruby, but a handful of townsfolk in a hamlet like Patch coming to you to scare a rat-sized Nevermore from pecking at their field isn't the caliber of what I was speaking of."

"Hey, come on now," Yang interjected. "We'd get rid of Ursa while still in combat school."

"Even so, that is nowhere near the same caliber of fame to contend with!" Weiss argued, starting to visibly display her exasperation. "The small army of bandits, thieves, and scoundrels that follow your mother knew Winter by name, and not on account of the SDC, but on account of her own valor as a military operative. Do you understand? For a random collection of miscreants in the middle of Anima knowing about one single Atlesian Huntress's prowess— people know her. That's orders of magnitudes beyond what you've got going," she said. "I'm sorry, but in comparison, you're nobodies."

Ruby was flat out vexed now, feeling the need to one-up her partner on some level. "Well, Yang and mine's teamwork would beat yours any day!"

At this, Weiss's features scrunched with distaste. Blake foresaw from a mile away what was about to go down.

"Winter and I would never lose to you two," the short lady immediately snapped back. "You're delusional."

"And you're way too arrogant! You've barely seen your sister in three years, while Yang and I have so much experience working as a team! And don't underestimate how much we've progressed in the last year!"

"I'm not underestimating anyone!" Weiss said. "But Winter would never lose to you, even if she were to take on both of you at the same time!"

Ruby was so offended that she couldn't even articulate an answer. Blake, on her part, couldn't understand how she would be offended by that at all. Winter was the highest ranking official under the General, and, as far as Blake understood it, was at least evenly matched with Penny. And… Penny? They'd seen her single-handedly defeat entire teams on her own in seconds during the Vytal tournament. Hell— Penny almost certainly could have defeated team RWBY all on her own back then. And sure, they'd all improved tremendously since, but Blake knew that none of them had quadrupled their skill, which is what would have been needed to hope to take Penny one on one. At the present time, none of them was remotely close to being any kind of evenly matched with Penny or, by inference, Winter. Blake looked on at her bickering teammates, wondering how her team leader could be so grossly overconfident.

"If you're so confident, then you're on," Ruby challenged.

"Fine," Weiss threw back, "we'll settle this the hard way!" Then, realizing she couldn't truly accept this challenge on her own, added a little more conservatively; "…If Winter agrees. I'll ask her."

Yang pumped her fist. "We're not scared of her!"

Blake's head snapped her way in consternation; in the flurry, she hadn't noticed the brawler's enthusiasm and was appalled to see that she had no better sense than her audacious team leader of a sibling.

Heedless to her partner's pessimism, Yang's arm swung around Blake's shoulders as she added; "Blake can be the referee!"

"Blake will not be watching this massacre," the faunus shot back, eyeing the blonde critically.

Said blonde was miffed. "Massacre? Do you have so little faith in me?"

"I'm being realistic."

"I'm glad that at least one of my teammates has some sense in her," Weiss commented.

As the monochrome pair watched the two sisters psych themselves up, Blake again felt the itch to ask. It seemed that it'd bother her indefinitely, so she decided that she might as well attempt to elucidate what the staring was about, it might save her some anxiety. She eyed her snow-haired friend. "Weiss, your sister, she… she's not—...She doesn't care that I'm a faunus… right?"

"Of course not!" Weiss balked, but however categorically she had answered, Blake saw doubt fleetingly color her friend's features. "Winter's not like that!"

Blake nodded; her mind's eye reeling back the tape on that moment. However piercing Winter's gaze had been, it hadn't felt hostile or judgmental. In retrospect, now that Blake wasn't caught in the moment, she found that it more resembled the sort of focus one would have while trying to read a convoluted map or decipher a foreign language. Thus, although Blake couldn't figure out what the soldier might have been trying to assess, she had already been inclined to discount racism. Weiss's adamance cemented that notion, and this was satisfactory enough for her. "Okay."

"She isn't," Weiss insisted. "Winter isn't prejudiced."

"I believe you," Blake gave her a reassuring smile. Weiss answered with a half-hearted smile, it was clear that her convictions had been shaken and that she didn't know how to reconcile that. Blake decided to urge the conversation along, to change topics. "For the meantime, however, you're saying that you, Weiss Schnee, are a pariah in your home city of Atlas."

"I wouldn't quite go that far," Weiss answered grudgingly.

"Let me enjoy the irony," Blake quipped.

"Maybe we should go down to Mantle," Yang volunteered, Ruby and she having cooled their jets.

It was a short walk to the air shuttle, and as they descended, the very air around the vehicle visibly changed. There was thick smog covering Mantle, and Blake was again struck by the state of ruin the city was in. It was all the more jarring after having spent some time in the grandiose city of Atlas. A quick search on their scrolls directed them to where the Huntsmen gear stores were clumped, and they were on their way.

As they walked, Blake's eyes stopped on one of those graffitied slogans again; show your teeth. That dreadfully familiar call for revolt permeated her bones. Knowing what could lurk behind an message of empowerment —her father's, Sienna's, and Adam's intentions having been so radically different after all— made Blake's discomfort ball in her throat. The malaise and this last thought had him lingering in the forefront of her thoughts again; his expression as he met his end and the blood on her sword… Blake reflexively wiped her palms on her pants. Her gaze traveled from the words that had triggered her anxiety to one of the hundreds of posters lining up the streets alongside the graffiti. In the next few weeks as the election approached, the fate of this kingdom in which they had found refuge would depend largely on this Huntress who had become Mantle's hero. Blake found herself gazing at the woman pictured on one of those innumerable posters as if it would offer her some clue as to what type of leader she really was.

Yang's voice interrupted her inner turmoil; "You're curious about her?"

It was no surprise that her partner noticed her interest. "Very," Blake admitted. "The hope she brings to Mantle reminds me of the hope the White Fang had brought the faunus."

"That's a good thing, isn't it?"

Blake's head swayed gently from side to side, as she attempted to decide if it was. As she deliberated, the red and white pair turned to listen, having taken interest in the conversation. Blake eventually responded; "I've seen first hand what the wrong leader can do to a desperate people."

Ruby gave a despondent hum. "Penny did mention that the General is worried about what Robyn could do to the balance between Mantle and Atlas."

"With reason," Blake said. "Whichever way the election goes, the fragile —and frankly unethical— status quo this kingdom has been maintaining will be thrown up in the air, and then who knows what we're in for." Ruby nodded, but her expression retained a degree of uncertainty. Blake could tell that politics were still a little beyond her, so she offered further explanation; "If it's Weiss's father who wins, then the outcome for the kingdom is pretty straightforward. We have an idea of what to expect, and that would probably be… riots over a stolen election. On the other hand, if Robyn Hill wins, I don't find projections so straightforward."

"You don't?" Yang asked, surprised. "Isn't she the good guy?"

"We don't know that," Blake remarked. "We don't know if she really is who she says she is, or if she's just saying all those things Mantle desperately needs to hear just to get herself elected and gain power. We'll only know her true colors if she does get her hands on that power." None of her friends seemed to have even considered this; having taken the message of Mantle's hero at face value, and as they started walking again, Blake could tell that her team was awaiting more of her thoughts. None of them had her experience with these kinds of conflicts after all, so Blake succinctly summarized the situation. "If she's a fraud and sides with Atlas the moment that she has power, Mantle may snap from the betrayal and the city could easily descend into chaos. If she doesn't side with Atlas, but she still turns out to be a forceful revolutionary, if she tries to use her power for a bloody revolt… we're gonna see the entire kingdom burn. But… if she is the real deal and wins… If she does try to make things better in a peaceful, legal way, then she's gonna want to try to restructure the entire kingdom and she'll have the support of Mantle in doing so. Which… it needs to be restructured, but… between Amity and Salem, she doesn't know that now's not the right time. We'll have to oppose her." Her eyes went from Yang's, to Weiss's, to Ruby's, seeing how they individually digested this breakdown. "That's what I meant when I said that whatever happens, there'll be a lot of turmoil in the next few weeks."

A short silence ensued as the team let all that sink in. The first one to break it was Weiss. "She's been in the public eye for a while, and my father hates her, which makes me think that she might be the real deal."

Ruby brightened. "So maybe, if she is elected, she could be on our side?"

Wouldn't that be nice. "Let's hope so," Blake breathed.

As they went about their shopping, she couldn't help mulling the situation over. She was inclined to want to root for Mantle's champion. Because if Robyn Hill was the real deal, if she truly was someone who cared about the ones no one cared about, someone who wouldn't be swayed by money and would be willing to enforce life-saving regulations against big companies like the SDC, then it meant that she could prevent catastrophes like the one that had taken Ilia's parents. Blake wondered if, had the woman been in a position of power just a few years ago, Ilia would have joined her instead of the White Fang. Would that have been a better path for her friend? Maybe Ilia wouldn't even have fallen into any sort of activism either, because had Robyn Hill been in power then, maybe Ilia's parents would still be alive, maybe they'd still be a happy family, and she would be an untroubled girl. Whichever it was, Blake was almost certain that should she have had any other options, Ilia wouldn't have followed in Adam's shadow. The thought turned Blake's stomach, and she remembered her initial decision to stay away from this, lest she get too emotionally involved. She really didn't have the emotional fortitude to get invested in any new activism.

Making a conscious effort to leave these ruminations behind, Blake instead focused on being present with her friends on this outing. She'd be damned if she let herself get in the way of enjoying the very first moment in almost two years in which it didn't feel as though the fate of the world rested on their young shoulders. Having that burden shouldered by an authority figure instead brought an unparalleled weightlessness. It was tremendously comforting to be simple students again, and, in that frame of mind, their little shopping trip almost felt like some merry celebration of freedom. The overall mood was buoyant as each of her teammates tried on new gear and bought pieces for their new, warmer Huntress apparel. The sun was setting when, with a copious amount of bags from different shops in tow, they headed back to Atlas Academy campus with plans to drop their loot at the dorm room before getting something to eat at the cafeteria with Jaune, Ren, Nora, and Oscar. Weiss was the only one who wouldn't be joining, opting to have dinner with her sister instead.

Ruby stabbed the up button and spun around to face her team as the elevator made its way to the ground floor. "All I need now is a haircut," she exclaimed.

"I was wondering about that," Yang said. "You never let it get this long."

"It's not like I wanted to let it grow. I didn't trust Jaune, Nora or Ren with cutting it. And we kept the money we earned for, like… food, dust, travel, weapon repairs and all. Not for haircuts." Ruby latched onto her big sister's arm, grinning from ear to ear. "But now you're here! And we have time! So you can cut it for me!"

The blonde brawler hummed in response, considering her sibling's style. "Maybe you should let it grow, it looks good on you."

Ruby shook her head vigorously. "No way, it gets in the way, I'm sick of it."

"What about tying it up?"

"I don't want to spend any time on it, just cut it for me, pleeaaaaase!"

"Okay," Yang laughed. "We'll take care of that after we get food."

Blake hadn't given it any thought before then, but as they stepped into the elevator, she spontaneously asked: "Could you do mine too?"

"Yeah, for sure. Your hair doesn't look damaged, but I can trim it if you want." Quite lovingly, Yang brushed locks of dark hair away from honey-colored eyes. "Your bangs really are getting in your eyes, huh?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Blake noticed her two other teammates perk up at the tender display. Affectionate gestures such as this had been commonplace back in Beacon days, but they had been missing since their reunion; their surfacing again was probably very telling for their two teammates. Blake contained her smile, focusing on answering her partner. "I was thinking… not just a trim. I want a different haircut," she said. "I think that I… I-I need a big change. I need the feeling of a fresh start, and a new outfit doesn't feel quite enough."

"I get it," Yang nodded. "And you're sure you want me to cut it for you?"

"If you're comfortable doing it."

"I mean, I've done Ruby's and my dad's for a while, so I'm pretty confident in my skills, but I never cut hair taking faunus ears in consideration."

Blake smiled. "I'm sure it'll be fine."

Having said that, Blake kept wondering if it was a mistake as they ate dinner with the group. After all… Ruby's haircut back in the Beacon days had been quite uneven. Were both sisters oblivious, or had it been asymmetrical on purpose? Watching as Yang got to work reassured Blake about what she was getting herself into. Yang took her time and followed Ruby's directions, removing length gradually until her sister was satisfied and carefully finishing up for the final look. It was in moments like this that Blake was reminded, although homemaking and domestic chores had been burdens Yang had shouldered out of necessity, mothering seemed to come incredibly naturally to her now, and she seemed to enjoy it. Or at least, she enjoyed cutting Ruby's hair, maybe because it was just another way to dote on and pamper her baby sister.

When it was done, a short photoshoot took place because Ruby wanted to show everyone now, and though her new look found its way to everyone's inbox, their team leader still stepped out to strut to Penny, who had just gotten finished with her Mantle patrol. Meanwhile, Blake stood in the bathroom, staring at her reflection with a towel draped around her shoulders, making a serious attempt at envisioning what her hair might look like at different lengths.

Yang eventually appeared in the mirror behind her, scissors in one hand. With her other, she gently started combing long strands of dark hair. "Have you made a decision yet? How short are you going?"

"Short-short."

Yang's eyebrows shot up; violet eyes finding honey-colored ones in the mirror's reflection. "Really? Real short? Like, Coco-short? Like I just did for Ruby?"

"Not that short."

"So…. how short?"

"Short-ish, I guess," Blake answered, aware of how unhelpful she was being. She really had no idea of what she actually wanted.

"How about if I remove half the length? Wanna go for mid-back?"

She took a second to reflect on the idea. Although it would be well over ten inches gone, it still didn't feel quite enough. "Above the shoulders," she decided.

"So, let's say, about the same length as Ruby before I cut it?"

"Something like that, yes. Maybe an inch shorter."

"Wow, really? That's longer than my arm you're cutting off!"

Although they'd been staring at each other in the mirror's reflection, Blake now turned to give the blonde a pointed look.

Yang stared for a second, then her own words caught up with her. She let out a laugh. "I didn't mean to."

"Sure," Blake shook her head, stepping out of the bathroom. There was some reddish dark hair still littered on the floor all around the desk chair she took a seat in.

Yang had followed. Once again, she finger-combed the dark tresses. "Are you ready?" She asked before she gave the first, irrevocable clip.

"Ready," Blake confirmed.

With this, she felt the scissor blades skim her hair, and long strands started tumbling down her shoulders. Blake decided to close her eyes, reveling in the hands gently sifting through her hair and the sensation of weight sliding off. At times she felt hair clips being moved, locks being released and other sections of hair being twisted before being clipped securely elsewhere. Yang's work was mostly done in silence, only now and then punctuated with vague hums or testy grunts, and all of them almost exclusively when trying to navigate the cut around faunus ears. At the back of her mind, Blake vacantly wondered if it in fact would have been best to find a hairdresser who specialized in faunus clients. Either way, it was too late now to backtrack. Worst comes to worst… hair grows back.

Finally, Yang fluffed the short black hair and pulled the towel off. "Tah-dah!" She exclaimed, looking exceedingly self-satisfied. "Come on, go check and tell me what you think."

With both hands, Blake felt around her neck, getting a sense of the new length. Her hair felt short. Her stomach dropped. In the moment, she was scared that making such a drastic change had been a mistake. As directed, she headed to the bathroom to behold her partner's work.

Seeing herself stupefied her more than she had anticipated. Her long black hair had visually enveloped her in darkness, and she only now realized how much that had acted as a security blanket. Had that been why she'd felt the insuppressible need to do away with it? She'd told Yang that she was done hiding in the shadows. Once the initial shock dissipated, the details of the actual haircut sunk in. The wavy bob framed her features in a lovely way, the style worked with the natural waves of her hair, and ruffling it didn't expose any unevenness, irregularities, or glaring mistakes. All in all, she was impressed with her partner's handiwork. The more she touched it, the more right it felt, and a smile drew itself on her lips.

"I like it," Blake finally said, still running her fingers in it, appraising the odd shortness. "You did a great job, it's exactly what I needed."

Yang looked majorly relieved. "Really?"

"Yes," the faunus's smile widened as she turned to face the other young woman. She rested her hand on her strong arm, fondly giving a gentle squeeze. "Thank you."

Mechanical fingers wrapped themselves around Blake's hand to give a light squeeze in return. "Don't mention it."

The moment of silence stretched as they held each other's gaze, and, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Yang softly tugged her closer and leaned over for a kiss. It was gentle and loving, and Blake savored it in length. Then, Yang's tongue prodded her lips to deepen the kiss, and Blake obliged, now feeling arms fully wrap around her body to engulf her in a tight embrace. With the feeling that she was losing control, Blake drew away to catch her breath again.

Flustered, the fear that she might do something too forward like that night at the Cotta-Arc residence overcame her and she fumbled for an excuse to get away. "I-I'm gonna shower," she released her partner quickly, "y'know… get rid of the bits of hair, and get it out the way so we're not all waiting in line when Ruby and Weiss come back."

Yang smiled warmly. "Sure, I'll go clean up the mess."

Honey colored eyes darted to the ground fleetingly. "Thanks."

It was almost a relief when Yang closed the bathroom door behind her. Supporting herself with both hands on the counter, Blake bowed her head, taking a hold of herself. It was imperative that she let Yang dictate the pace at which things progressed, she reminded herself. She'd be damned if she had a repeat of that night, if she tried to go too fast and pushed the blonde's limits again.

Hastily, she started the shower, threw her clothes on the floor and stepped under the hot water. Blake closed her eyes, basking in the warmth as it washed over her. How soothing. As she relaxed, she ran her hands across the back of her neck and head again, marveling at how the short hair felt so light and different.

The door opened again, startling her.

Yang's voice was dim through the sound of the running water; "You forgot your towel."

Blake awkwardly crossed her arms even though the shower curtain was completely opaque. "Oh, right, thanks."

"I'll set it on the counter."

"Thanks."

There was some light clattering, which sounded like Yang putting away the scissors, comb, and hair clips. The faunus tuned the sounds out, focusing again on the relaxing warmth of the water.

"Hey, Blake?"

"Hm?"

"Can I come in with you?"

Blake forgot to breathe for a second, having to urge herself to find her voice before responding. "I'd love that."

Through the drizzling sound of the water around her, Blake heard the door close and the lock click. It was followed by the sound of shuffling fabric, pieces of clothing dropped to the floor ensued, then the light pattering of naked feet on tiles as Yang approached. A hand pushed aside the shower curtain, and the blonde peered in. Blake made no attempt at covering herself; she was bewitched by this turn of events. She hadn't hoped for such closeness so soon, and her heart wanted to tear itself out of her chest.

Careful not to slip, Yang stepped in and drew the curtain behind her. Seeing that she'd kept her prosthetic gave Blake a sense of Yang's intent; she meant to be in full possession of her means for what came next. Accordingly, Yang made no pretense of making this about showering, promptly stepping under the jet of water with Blake and closing in. With both hands cupping her cheeks, she leaned in and kissed her once more. Blake's hands ran up and down her back under the wetter and wetter mane of blonde curls, pressing their naked bodies together. Yang's hands scoured her skin in return, massaging her back, inciting her to melt into her arms. The hot water running down her skin and the warmth of the other young woman's muscular body against hers made the faunus lightheaded.

"I missed you," Blake murmured between kisses.

"That's my line," Yang trapped her against the cold tiles of the shower wall. Her mouth found Blake's neck, her hands slid around her waist, and she pressed herself against her.

Blake's knees weakened, her head spinning; she hung for dear life onto the woman she loved. The sudden weightlessness brought by being able to express that love freely, along with the lingering sense of emancipation that the haircut had left her with culminated in a cathartic emotional release. Liberation wholly took hold of her just before its cost slammed into her like a freight train again. Her blood turned chill despite the hot water running over her skin and the warm body in her arms. The sudden emotion stunned her as it overcame her; her features twisting themselves with anguish and before she knew it, a sob threatened to choke her.

Yang must've felt the tension in her body and the change of mood because she stopped her attentions to draw back and meet her eyes.

Blake's throat suddenly hurt so much, she couldn't comprehend what had taken over her. "Sorry, I— I— I don't know what's—" Tears poured out on their own.

"Shhhh, it's okay, don't worry," the blonde hushed, her voice almost lost in the running water. She gathered her securely against herself once again, her demeanor abruptly shifted from its previously lascivious one. She caressed Blake's back again, this time comfortingly, and gave a soft kiss on her temple.

"S-sorry I'm ruining— but— I just—..." What was she feeling? "It's—"

"Blake, it's okay, let it out," Yang said soothingly. "I don't expect you to be over it just because you cried about it once, it's gonna take some time."

Her mind zeroed in on the liberation she'd felt; every conflicting emotion she'd felt as she had broken down on the ship ride to Atlas came crashing into her again. "H-how did you know th-that it's—…?"

Yang's hands continued slowly working up and down her back, she allowed for a time for Blake to finish voicing her question if she wanted to, or maybe mulling over her reasoning before answering. "You said you needed to cut your hair 'cause you needed a change," she said. "And he's like… he haunted you for years, and now that's finally over. So I figured you were sorta… literally cutting something loose from your past— letting go for good. Of course it's gonna be emotional."

Blake nodded. Emotional was the word. All the conflicting emotions she felt were a messy feedback loop; relief led to shame— shame over the relief of taking a life, that shame led to anger— anger over still granting him the power to malign her, that anger then in turn allowed her relief of being liberated to surface. It was a slippery mess she couldn't get a solid handle on, so nevermind trying to articulate any of it in the moment. It wasn't like she had the motor control to form coherent sentences or pronounce words anyways. Her blubbering was only getting worse, and her legs were starting to give out.

Clearly feeling her weakening, Yang reached out to turn the water off. "Here, come with me," she murmured. Holding her by the hand, she guided her out of the shower. She wrapped a towel around her shoulders, which Blake listlessly bundled herself in, still sniffing noisily. While Yang gently towel-dried her newly shortened hair for her, being oh-so-careful with the cat ears, Blake could feel her emotions abate. She wiped her cheeks with her palm, her gaze remaining on her partner's features as she tended to her. The blonde was satisfied once Blake's hair was semi-damp, and she wrapped her arms around her, enfolding her in another long, long hug.

"Sorry," Blake's voice was hoarse. "I didn't know I still had… that I still had so much to… hm…" Wording anything was so hard. "I just can't believe— I mean, I hadn't realized…" She trailed off, not quite sure how to begin voicing what she felt.

Yang slowly rubbed her back, up and down. "It's okay. Take your time. We can talk tomorrow, or in a few days, or whenever you're actually ready."

The faunus nodded. It took a long moment of being cradled in her partner's arms for her to finally relax. Yang's skin had time to completely air dry before she let go; she did so to slip on her pajamas, then grabbed Blake's for her. Although Blake didn't feel so distraught that she couldn't dress herself, it was soothing to be coddled this way, and she let her partner guide her and dress her.

Once that was done, Yang took her hand again and guided her to their room. "Let's go to bed," Yang declared, sitting Blake down on her bed before going to turn out the lights.

Blake watched her walk about the room. The prospect of finding herself alone in the dark with her thoughts was starting to swallow her, but, to her surprise, Yang climbed in her bed with her. The blonde patted the mattress next to her, signaling for her to come take refuge in her arms again. For a second, Blake wondered if it was really okay to; they had previously opted to sleep in separate beds after all… but it took only a split second for her to decide that she didn't care. In the end, Weiss and Ruby understood their relationship, and finding them snuggled together to sleep might in fact give the red and white pair a sense that they could consider things were back to normal.

Blake burrowed under the covers, seeking the warmth of the woman she loved, and Yang pulled her cozily against herself. "I'm right there," she cooed.

---

To her surprise, Blake woke up before her partner. The vague noise of the running shower and someone bustling about the room informed her that the other half of their team was up and getting ready. As Blake turned in her bed, the motion of a red cape being slung over a shoulder drew her attention; the faunus sat up slowly. "Good morning."

"Good mor—" Ruby's greeting was interrupted by her laughter. "Bed hair is the worst when it's short."

Both of Blake's hands went to her head; she'd forgotten about her new haircut, and by the feel of it, it was doing its best impersonation of an afro. Finger-combing it embarrassedly, she nevertheless smiled with her team leader. "You're already ready?"

"Yeah! Today we're checking out the blacksmithing department!"

Right, they'd all procured warm new attire, but their weapons were still in need of repairs and such. No wonder Ruby was in such a hurry to be out the door. In the background, the sound of running water stopped and a blowdryer started; it would be a while still before Weiss was ready, what with the length of her hair.

Ruby trotted closer. "Did you decide what you were gonna do about Gambol Shroud?"

Blake hummed ambivalently. "Aside from repairing the blade, I really don't know what else to ask for," she admitted, at which her team leader's enthusiasm crumbled. The faunus' lips split into a grin. "Don't worry, I know you've already mapped out all your upgrades and you're just dying to go get them done. I won't ask you to wait; you can go ahead if you want to."

Ruby looked relieved. "You sure?"

"I'm sure," Blake confirmed. "Not to mention, we all know that Penny has been counting the minutes until you're awake. Don't make her wait for all of us."

"Okay then!" She beamed before resuming gathering her things. Slipping her scroll into her belt's leather pouch, she turned to Blake again. "Can you tell Weiss I went ahead?"

"Will do."

Ruby didn't move towards the door; she approached the bunk beds again and pointed to the blonde curls spilling out of a bundle of Blake's bed covers. "Soooo… things are going well with Yang?" She asked mischievously.

The faunus felt herself blush, her eyes darting to her partner before she cleared her throat. "Very well."

In response, Ruby pinched her lips into a cute smile, it looked like she was trying to hold back her enthusiasm. "Are you… together, together?"

Blake considered the sleeper. Were they? It sure felt like they were. "I… think so."

Eyebrows shot up. "What does that mean?"

"Well… We haven't verbally confirmed it, but we… err… we seem to be acting like we are," Blake explained, hoping that her friend wouldn't press for details.

Ruby didn't, instead advancing a conspiratory fist to be bumped. The faunus softly touched her knuckles to it. "Sisters," Ruby sniggered before making for the door.

A smile lingering on her lips, Blake leaned back against the metal casing of the bunk bed. She was too awake to try to go back to sleep, but wasn't quite ready to get out of bed. Turning her attention to the mass of golden curls, Blake delicately brushed them away from Yang's features so she could gaze at her sleeping face. It was as divine as ever; long eyelashes and pouty lips framed by golden curls cascading around her heart-shaped face, a rosy tint playing across her cheeks. The young woman looked nothing like what one would expect such a brazen fighter might— or at least, her angelic features didn't look the part. Blake's fingers trailed from the outline of her features to the brawler's solid shoulder; Yang's stature did, however, unequivocally broadcast her power.

The bathroom door opened and their snow-haired teammate appeared. She was in the brand new dress she had gotten as part of her Huntress gear and was braiding her usual side ponytail. Giving Blake an acknowledging nod, she then glanced around the emptiness of the room. "Is she already gone?" Weiss scoffed.

"Today is weapons day, what do you think?" Blake grinned.

The short lady rolled her eyes. "Of course." As she slipped on her cropped navy vest, she added; "I told her I needed her input before I decide on upgrades, I thought she'd understand to wait for me."

"I'm sure she'll be with the weaponmaster for a while, you'll be able to meet her there."

"True." Weiss slipped on long, midnight blue gloves. "Since we have some time, do you want to grab something to eat at the cafeteria?"

Blake considered briefly, but opted against it; "I haven't taken any time to reflect on what I was going to do with Gambol Shroud, and I won't be ready to leave anytime soon anyways. I think I'll stay in and take my time."

"Suit yourself," the ex-heiress continued getting ready. She slid her tiara-like hair accessory into the base of her oversized braid, then started on her make-up. Blake could see her pale blue eyes glance over to her through the mirror's reflection once, and then again. "It's pretty, by the way."

"What?"

"Your hair."

"Oh," Blake's hands went to her naked nape. "Thanks."

"Yang cut it for you?"

"Yep."

"Huh," Weiss mouthed. She looked somewhat impressed. "Maybe I'll ask her to trim my bangs sometime."

This gave Blake the impression of a lack of faith in the blonde's skills. Had Weiss let Blake walk into what she had expected to be a disaster? "Did you not think Yang capable of doing a good job?"

Weiss gave her a pointed look. "Can you blame me? Ruby's hair was pretty uneven back in Beacon."

Blake slid her legs out from the covers and turned to set her feet on the ground. "Asymmetrical cuts do exist, you know."

"Yes, but after learning that Ruby's style was her sister's doing, I began doubting that it had been on purpose."

"And so, you let me walk into this without a word of warning," Blake remarked.

Weiss shrugged. "I didn't think you needed one; you have eyes too. I thought you had decided to trust your partner regardless."

Opting not to grace that with an answer, Blake shook her head and, with a smile, got out of bed, stretching tall. Between all the emotion that'd been unloaded the previous evening, and the deep, restorative slumber that being snuggled up to her partner had granted her, she felt incredibly light and completely reinvigorated. Her smile grew. Being in Atlas, going back to being simple students, getting their gear and weapons in order at no cost, not having to watch over her shoulder for his shadow around every corner, having mended her relationship with Yang… she didn't know how she could ever feel more unburdened and happy.

Evidently sensing her mood, a smile spread across Weiss' face as well. "Were you able to finish talking it out?"

"You mean back in Argus when you and Ruby were adamant I be the one to share beds with Yang?" To this not so understated inculpation, Weiss stuck her tongue out at her; Blake grinned. "Yes, we talked. It was… very emotional, and exactly what we both needed."

Weiss turned around in her seat, watching Blake start getting ready. "If it's not too personal; how did you convince her to open up to you again?"

"Mostly… patience, I think," it was the first thing that came to mind. And it had been patience that had allowed them to get used to each other again, but that wasn't what truly had cemented the mending of their relationship. "But really, I just… I told her everything I'd never been able to," Blake said. "All the mistakes I've made, the hardships I lived through as a consequence, and the darkness that came with it— everything I carried." Honey-colored eyes drifted back to the sleeping form of her partner. She didn't consider whether or not she wanted to continue, words seemed to flow out on their own as she turned back to her snow-haired friend. "After hurting her the way I did, I had to bare myself to her entirely; I don't think I could have earned her understanding and forgiveness any other way. She had to know what had gone through my mind, why I did what I did, and what it took for me to find my way back to the team and back to her."

"Huh… I didn't think you two had any secrets from each other," Weiss mused. "I assumed that what Ruby and I didn't know… at least Yang did."

Blake shook her head faintly. "Back then, I was still processing all that happened in the White Fang and with… him— Adam. I had always meant to tell Yang everything, but I just… had never found the courage to while I still had the opportunity." Her hands had grown a mind of their own, and, as they idly rearranged her new Huntress outfit, her attention first drifted to recollections of those days, then to that very emotional night back at the Cotta-Arc residence. "Honestly, I'm not sure I truly had the courage this time around either, but I knew it was the only way to heal us," Blake admitted, her gaze finding her friend's. "I thought that if I didn't open up, I wouldn't just be letting her down, I'd be letting myself down too— I'd be running and hiding again, like I promised myself I wouldn't anymore. But worse… I knew deep down to my core that if, after all that happened and all the pain I caused her, I still put up a wall when it came to being vulnerable, then… we wouldn't make it."

"So it was do or die," Weiss summarized.

A smile tugged at the corner of Blake's lips. "Basically. And in a way, it was a blessing— I'm… glad I was able to break the silence."

They hadn't much paid attention to the volume of their voices, and it was inevitable that they would rouse the last member of the team. Yang stirred slowly and shuffled with the bedcovers for a second or two before emerging from them, pulling herself from underneath them into a sitting position. Rubbing her face with her hand, she seemed to find her bearings; her gaze found the monochrome pair and her features lit up. "Good morning!" She exclaimed jollily.

Weiss looked just as surprised as Blake felt, and just as delighted with this newfound enthusiasm. The Yang who had reunited with the team had been a much less jovial and carefree person compared to whom she'd been back in Beacon; this morning's buoyant mood felt not only like a blast from the past, but also like a fog had lifted. It took them both a second to shake off the amazement, watching as Yang rolled out of bed and engaged her prosthesis.

"Geez, you should always sleep in Blake's bed if your mood's—" Weiss's face suddenly fell. "You didn't….? Not while we were sleeping right there?"

"We didn't," the blonde hastily shot back, mortified.

With a hand over her heart, their teammate sighed in relief. "Now don't get me wrong, it'd be lovely to hear that you two are back in that honeymoon phase, and… a-and it's natural and healthy to want… but—"

"We get it, Mom, geez!" Yang cut in. "We don't need to have that talk. We know not to do it if you're in the room."

Now Weiss's mouth had turned into a tiny little dot. Blake's best guess was that the short lady was torn between arguing further or admonishing her teammate for rudely cutting her off. But the reason for her pause was something entirely different, and what came next was a surprise; "So, then… before Ruby and I came back home?"

Yang frowned; furthering the conversation about that kind of topic was so un-Weiss-like. "No, that's not why I'm in a good mood."

Weiss crossed her arms awkwardly. Her skin had taken on a pink-ish hue but she still inquired; "...So… you're not… intimate?"

Blake and Yang looked at each other, both a little disconcerted. As far as they both understood, their friend wasn't especially interested in sex talk; seeing the same perplexity in the other's gaze confirmed their own assessment. Blake could then only deduce that Weiss was progressing in this line of questioning with an underlying motive, perhaps looking for indications as to how near they had come to the way they used to be, and perhaps trying to gauge if they were officially a couple now. Blake decided that it wasn't completely indiscrete of their friend to ask. But as to actually answering the question of whether or not they were intimate…? Between what had happened in Argus and how the last evening in the shower had turned out, it was hard to answer. "...Not exactly," Blake said.

"But we're okay, it doesn't mean that we're not," Yang pitched in, "we're pretty much back to normal." With this she glanced at the faunus for a fleeting second, flashing an adorably bashful smile. "It's just that, uh— uh, we just haven't yet."

"Oh. Okay." Weiss cleared her throat. Maybe in an attempt to be encouraging she added; "I'm sure it'll come."

Yang's grin split from ear to ear. "Yeah, we both will," she snorted. Blake swatted her arm instantly.

Weiss's face had gone blank. Manifestly, the crude innuendo had stumped her, but then she blurted: "Congratulations."

Silence ensued, which was cut short by Yang's burst of laughter. "Congratulations?" she repeated. "Really‽"

The ex-heiress turned beet red. "I don't know!" She exclaimed, mortified. "What am I meant to say? I meant congratulations on being… compatible! And— I don't know, having a healthy… private… err— "

"It's fine, Weiss," Blake said, graciously cutting short their friend's clumsy rambling.

Yang wasn't so accommodating; "Remind me to congratulate her when she has satisfying sex."

Weiss visibly cringed, turning even redder. "Oh my god, please don't."

Yang wasn't listening, she snickered as she went to gather her clothes and headed to the bathroom, and before she disappeared, the faunus indicated amusedly; "I'll remind you."

In that small lull, Weiss opted to leave, maybe driven by the desire to avoid any further teasing on Yang's part. Blake got dressed, then brushed her newly-short and easy to maintain hair. Her eyes then found her weapon resting on the desk across her bunk bed. She had almost forgotten she should be meditating on what new features she might want. It was with a bit of dread that she picked up Gambol Shroud. Drawing it expectedly only revealed half its length, the other half; the broken piece; abandoned at the bottom of the scabbard. Her insides knotted themselves with dread, but she nevertheless tilted the scabbard to let the severed piece slide out; it dropped on the desk with a tink. In the frenzy of emotional events and the fast-paced whirlwind of reaching Atlas, she'd barely been able to assimilate what had gone down. Her fingers found remnants of dried blood on the broken blade which apparently hadn't been wiped properly in the rush. His blood. Her stomach turned. It had barely been two days.

Feeling cool mechanical fingers rest on her shoulder, Blake closed her eyes for a second. She gathered herself and then turned to face her partner. Yang had donned her new outfit, all except her thick leather jacket. She almost looked like a mechanic in those overalls. Blake leaned back a few inches to half-sit on the desk. "I can't believe he's gone," she murmured under her breath. "I've always felt this… looming presence. Like catastrophe was lurking just around the corner; danger following just a step behind me… like it might catch up to me any moment." Describing this feeling that had accompanied her for years as something past tense felt surreal. "And now, it's just… not there anymore."

Yang gave a small nod, her hand previously on Blake's shoulder had drifted down her arm to lace their fingers together. "You're free," she said, attempting to be encouraging.

Blake's eyes were cast somewhere down. Maybe the purple of the bandana half-tucked into the other woman's boot, maybe their joined hands. "I'm… yeah. Free," she mumbled grimly. The warmth of Yang's other hand joined over the mechanical one that already held hers, and it drew the faunus's attention up to her partner's features again. The way Yang's eyebrows crinkled had Blake reconsider how ambivalent her answer sounded, prompting her to elaborate; "I know that we only did what we had to, but I guess I just… I wish there'd been another way."

"It's not like he gave us any choice," Yang reasonned, and, though it looked like she was trying her very best to keep her cool, her voice got progressively more heated as she continued; "He stalked you across an entire continent and ambushed you the second you were alone— and not to chat either! He meant to murder you!" As she'd vented, her eyes had briefly flickered red, though she'd gotten a hold of herself almost immediately. She sighed in consternation. "If somehow we'd have gotten away, he'd just have come after you again and again until one day he'd—... He'd finish what he started," her fingers brushed the scar on Blake's stomach.

"I know," the faunus acquiesced, shaking her head again. All that Yang had said, she'd already told herself over and over again. It wasn't like she didn't know this… it was simply that she couldn't help but deplore the outcome anyways. "I know, but… still. Despite everything, I… I keep thinking that no one needed to get hurt."

"That would have been true if all parties wanted peace," Yang countered. "But he didn't want that. He didn't want to fix anything, or get closure, or anything reasonable like that. He just wanted to lash out— he didn't care about how you felt or what he'd done to you, and he certainly didn't care about hurting you."

Given her grief over the whole affair, it was almost laughable how all Blake was able to answer was: "No, he cared about hurting me— that's all he cared about." Yet that wasn't quite true. "He also wanted to hurt you," Blake said, her eyes riveted to the violet ones she loved so. "And not just as another way to torture me either, he genuinely wanted to hurt you for his own satisfaction. He was jealous of you."

Yang nodded; obviously, she'd understood that much, what with the way Adam had been hollering his man-child tantrum. "I think I'd have gotten that even if you hadn't explained anything about him."

Blake gave her a wry, dejected smile. Parts of what she'd explained that night floated through her mind. It had all been corroborated by what he'd said as he cornered her. How he couldn't reconcile his feelings for who he wanted her to be with who she actually was— claiming it was her fault that he was brought to violence— that none of this would be happening if she just 'behaved' and submitted to what he wanted her to be. Or how she was ruining his life, even though he was the one obsessively hunting her down. It was always her fault, never his. It was always everyone else's fault, never his. "He just couldn't accept who I was or how I felt. It was easier on his ego to find a scapegoat for all the resentment he felt," Blake mused sadly. "He did that a lot, not just when it came to me."

Idly stroking Blake's hand; still in hers; with her thumb, Yang gave a pensive hum. "I don't understand how someone would want to live their life with that outlook," she reflected out loud. "I mean, how someone would be willing to so thoroughly believe that everything and everyone else was the problem. And I really don't get how he thought that could ever entitle him to the destruction he sowed."

Blake's cat ears twitched. Once she had noticed that pattern of his, it was something she too had wrestled with understanding. She couldn't help but think that it took extreme narcissism for one to believe that they were always blameless; that no matter the problem that arose, it was someone else or something else that was at fault. Even when it came to how violently he acted, he still chose to blame others, claiming that they drove him to act in such a way instead of taking responsibility for reacting in the way he did. Pegging himself as the perpetual victim allowed him to lash out all the while still feeling righteous about his behavior. "I guess that he needed that sort of narrative to justify his actions to himself."

Yang made a face. "How anyone would ever choose that narrative is beyond me— I mean, I fought my damnedest not to let that be mine; it's so disempowering."

Disempowering? Having concluded that his choice of seeing himself as a victim was what in fact had made Adam feel entitled to act the way he wanted without any remorse— it had freed him from any accountability— meant that Blake found this an extremely odd qualifier. "What do you mean?"

Yang rubbed the back of her head, taking a second to sort her thoughts properly. "I mean… if you believe that all your problems are always caused by something outside of you, if you're never the reason for anything going wrong in your life, then that's the same as saying that everything always just happens to you and you've got no power to affect anything in your life," she said. "You're literally saying that you're not in the driver seat, but in the passenger seat."

"Sure," the faunus agreed, starting to envision what her partner was trying to convey.

Yang's gaze dropped to her mechanical hand, idly stretching her fingers and curling them again. "For my part, whenever something goes wrong, I want to figure out where it could possibly be my fault. Because if there was anything I could've done differently that might've changed the outcome, if any tiny bit of it was my fault, it means that I wasn't helpless to stop what happened. And that means that I can learn from it, do better next time, and that I won't ever have to live through a similar situation ever again," she explained. Her left hand had wrapped around the black sphere that served as her right wrist, and she pensively stared at her prosthetic for another moment. "On the other hand, if nothing's my fault…" she met the honey colored eyes, "well, sucks to be me, I guess."

Blake hummed quietly, letting everything sink in. That was how Yang had avoided being consumed by darkness after her injury. That was how she not only overcame it, but also came out the other end a better and stronger person; she'd taken power back by being accountable for the role she'd played in her own ordeal. She had been able to admit to herself that her temper, along with rushing Adam in blind rage, had been reckless, and that things might've turned out completely differently had she had a cooler head. It was a terribly hard thing to do, but Yang had taken stock of where her fault lay, and accepted responsibility for the part she'd played in her ordeal. And the lesson she'd learned paid off; she'd fought smarter this time, and that was how they'd triumphed.

"That's one of the many places where you couldn't be more different from him," Blake reflected out loud, "he was never big on taking responsibility." As the words left her lips, the atrocious scar he sported floated across her mind. "I mean… of course he wasn't responsible when—he was a victim for some time… you've seen what he hid behind his mask."

There was some form of recognition in Yang's eyes, but no compassion. "Are you sure about that?"

Blake almost recoiled; she didn't like the implication there. "What, do you think he could've deserved something like that?"

"No, no— no one deserves anything like that," Yang immediately defended. "I just… keep thinking; the SDC miners aren't usually branded at all, are they? So… to start with, him having been was really unusual. And on his face? It's really fucking cruel, it honestly kinda makes it feel like it wasn't done at random."

Blake frowned in thought. She'd never gotten the real story out of Adam, but for the sake of this conversation, it didn't matter much what the truth was; she knew where Yang was going with this. As someone who had also gotten horrifically injured, Yang found herself partly accountable for it. It went without saying that she would surmise he also had some part of responsibility in his ill fortune. Whether it was excessive punishment from SDC security for speaking up or for acting out while working the mines, chances were that he had made a choice and paid for it. But, all things considered, even if it was more than likely that it was such a case, there was still an infinitesimal chance that Yang wasn't right. There was still a chance that Adam had done nothing to instigate such a heinous act against him. Blake glanced at the dried blood on her sword, then again at Yang. "Going down that route, doesn't it become too easy to blame the victim?"

"I'm not doing that— blame's always with the one who set out with intentions to hurt," the blonde answered. Her gaze then also momentarily found the broken blade piece as she searched for the right words to make sense of what had underlined her previous train of thought. "What I'm saying is that… in my experience, perfect storms of shit in which someone has had no hand at all in their hardships are the exception, not the rule. Most often, most of us have had some part to play when it comes to the problems we have— even if just a tiny part. And it's important to be accountable for that because that's where our power lies; that's the only thing we can affect."

Just a year ago, Blake would have flared up defensively at the mere insinuation of anything less than unilateral responsibility falling on the aggressor, but… over the last months, dire insight had changed her outlook towards the idea. After hitting rock bottom in the ruins of the Beacon dorms and having cried until her body was completely dry, the need to get a hold of herself, to do something to make anything better had her scrambling to stop her free-fall and take back some semblance of control. Brutally honest introspection had led her to conclude that there had been a part she had played: she had closed her eyes to the, at times unethical, at other times downright vile things unfolding around her. She had lied to herself and rationalized what she knew wasn't right, and she'd stayed silent, thus sanctioning both the White Fang's bloodthirstiness and her 'relationship' with Adam growing further and further out of hand. She'd known deep down to her core that she was witnessing undue violence— even at times participating in it— but it had been easier to turn a blind eye, keep her head down, and remain committed to an ideal that was slowly receding into the background. And… it had been easier to bite her tongue in the face of Adam's escalating verbal abuse, even as he pushed and pushed her limits, even when he finally put his hands on her. It'd been easier to simply dissociate than to stand up to him. Taking the easy way out was how she let it go on for almost a year. Had she walked when her alarm bells had rung their first warning, she would have avoided much of that pain. Had she only recognized that she didn't have the life experience her parents had, had she listened to them and left the White Fang when they did, she could have even prevented all that pain.

Of course, she'd been young; she couldn't berate herself for not being wiser or more courageous, but… it remained that inaction and self-deception were things she'd been accountable for, and they'd yielded costly lessons. It was recognizing all this that had allowed her to start her road to healing, to find her way back to her parents, and start mending all her broken parts.

With this in mind, although Blake understood pretty clearly what her partner meant, she nevertheless was curious to hear where and how the blonde drew the line. "Would you say it's my fault, what happened to me?"

Yang's face fell. "Of course not!" She instantly balked. "I'm just—" As she was about to start justifying what she'd been saying, she seemed to come aware of how delicate of a matter they were addressing. Pensively gazing into the honey colored eyes for a short moment, Yang then sighed lightly. "It's not your fault," she said firmly. "And it's not my fault what happened to me either." She maintained staunch eye contact, like she was gauging for trust that Blake believed what she was saying. "The decisions we made; that brought us to the point where he was able to hurt us; we made them trying to accomplish something good— change things for the better or defend something dear to us. Intentions matter. He was just on a vengeful rampage, feeling entitled to use any means to get whatever the fuck he wanted. He was the one who was out to make things worse for everyone, so of course the blame's on him."

The way those gorgeous lilac gems forthrightly shone with so much earnestness was mesmerizing. How Yang wore her emotions on her sleeve was just one of the million things that Blake had always found endlessly endearing. She reached to gently cup her partner's cheek. "Don't worry, it's not that I actually think you'd blame me," she said soothingly. "I was just trying to probe your reasoning because drawing the line isn't easy; I wondered how you went about doing it."

Relief visibly washed over her face and she pressed into Blake's touch before tilting her head to give a kiss inside the faunus's palm. Yang then enfolded that hand with both hers as she took the time to think over concepts that she'd probably never had to verbalize before. "It's hard," she eventually puffed with an unamused smile. "Most of the time, there isn't always a right answer either. Because on one hand, we're fallible, we're gonna fuck up, that's just a fact. So we can't rue ourselves endlessly for that; trying to take all the blame, trying to say it's all your fault and being a martyr would drive anyone into the ground." She cocked her head to the side, her eyes wandering up for a second before falling to her prosthetic again. "But on the other hand… we have to be self-aware that when shit happens it's always more tempting to take any excuse to put all the blame somewhere else and mope around being sorry for ourselves. I… did that for a few months. It was useless."

"You needed time to heal," Blake defended, "and not just physically, from the shock too, it's not like—"

"I know," Yang cut in. "It's just that, after the first few months, I realized that I was really only focused on the past, on what happened. Even though I was over the shock and had gotten used to my new reality… still, I wasn't doing anything but sitting there feeling sorry for myself," her expression turned a bit wry; a jaded sort of unamused half-smile that Blake hadn't seen her wear before. Yang hesitated, but finally voiced its reason. "...I didn't want to turn into Dad. He neglected us for years." With this, she shook her head as if to clear it. Visibly, this was another can of worms; echoes from the past that she didn't want to derail the present conversation. "You can't get better if you don't want to," she said, almost forcefully. "And sure, not everyone can do it at the same speed, or with the same time frame, but you can't lose your grip on wanting to get better, because then you stagnate for years, or… drown completely." She gave a short sigh, staring back into Blake's eyes pensively. "No, I… I knew I had to start moving forward, even if I wasn't completely ready. I had to stop feeling sorry for myself, and I had to build back up. And— yeah, it's hard to draw the line, figure out what I could've reasonably expected of myself in that moment; because there were lots of places I just couldn't have known better. But… my temper? That was something both my Dad and Uncle Qrow had already warned me would bite me in the ass. I knew I should have worked on it, so I can't put the blame anywhere else."

A small silence followed as they both thought over what had been said. In that silence, Yang still didn't look satisfied. Opting not to disturb her partner's reordering of her thoughts, Blake waited patiently.

Whatever went through her mind made the blonde scoff, and resolve ignited in her lilac eyes. "Anyways, I don't even know if any of that really matters— where the blame goes, I mean" she said, almost in consternation. "Because what use is it really to know who to blame? We can point fingers all we want but it won't change anything; other people's choices, how they might want to do evil, that's out of our control— I can sit there and wish things were different because ninety-nine percent of it was out of my control, or I can roll up my sleeves and throw my energy at the one percent that I can do something about." Yang's gaze wandered to the grandiose and ornate floor to ceiling window, which somehow didn't feel out of place in this otherwise sterile dorm room. The clear, unclouded blue sky reflected in those lilac eyes, striking Blake as somehow rather appropriate. "I just keep thinking… it doesn't matter that it's his fault; I can't do anything about him being malicious. But I could have handled myself better. I let myself be blinded by rage, I fucked up, and I—... I might not have lost my arm if I'd had a cooler head," Yang said. "Making myself better is the only thing I can do in the end, so that's what I need to focus on."

In this complicated, wandering answer, Blake still felt she understood her partner's reasoning on accountability. Above all though, she now completely understood how, although being a victim had been the excuse Adam used to justify his rampage of a tantrum, Yang had still qualified that self-perception as disempowering. "So, to you, drawing the line between where to be accountable and where to attribute the blame outside of you is just… figuring out where you reasonably could have done better and didn't rise up to that," she summed up. "I'd say that's pretty fair."

Yang gave a half-smile. "I try," she shot.

Blake hummed. Although Yang's short comeback had been insouciantly thrown, trying to be fair certainly was one of the puzzle pieces. "Another thing that certainly never had occurred to him."

"What?"

"Trying to be fair."

"Oh." The blonde didn't have to think that over very long. "Oh yeah. I mean, even if it was random cruelty that got him scarred, even if he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time and nothing he could've done would've prevented him getting hurt… his response to it was still totally out of control. There's only so much 'retribution' one can inflict while still retaining their victim card." Yang didn't need to say it; nothing warranted the hundreds of deaths— both human and faunus lives— that followed in his wake during White Fang operations or during the Fall of Beacon. But what Yang focused on was something else; "You'd think that being the victim of random abuse wouldn't turn someone into an abuser in return," she said in disgust.

With so many lives lost in the balance, the pain she'd experienced had taken a back seat, but her partner was right. What had happened to her counted too. That too was an aftermath of his pathological rationalization of what his pain entitled him to. "Even through all that violence, even through what he did to me, he never once thought that he might be doing anything wrong," she mused sardonically. And she really wished this wasn't true, it sounded too preposterous to be true, but his words as he slashed madly at her resonated in her head like she was hearing them out loud again. "Even after he hunted me down the way he did, he accused me of being the one interfering with his life and ruining everything." Blake felt fingers interlace with hers again, and she latched onto them, curling hers tighter into her partner's hands. She sighed; it all boiled down to one thing. "I think… it's not as complicated as it looks. It's simply that… he was selfish," she said. "I don't know if having been hurt just served as a convenient excuse to do anything to anyone and claim that the world owed him payback in any way he wanted, or… if he truly was so completely consumed by his own pain that nothing mattered to him but quenching his resentment. But either way… he was all about himself. And staying wrapped up in his narrative of being a victim allowed him to feel righteous while he lashed out."

"You think he did that consciously?"

"...No, he wasn't self-aware like that, he genuinely felt righteous," Blake said quietly. "The thing is, I… just keep finding myself wondering if, in time, he would've… grown out of it, if there had been anything that could have been said or done to open his eyes."

Yang's cool mechanical fingers brushed dark bangs from Blake's forehead, maybe so she could see her eyes better. "You can't make someone see something they don't want to see."

With a nod, the faunus pensively let her gaze drift to the gloved hand that held hers. "I know. But he could've made such a difference in the world. He really would have been able to make this world so much better," she deplored, giving a dejected shake of her head.

Silence stretched between them as they considered a future that could never be. The blonde's features were hardening somberly by the second. "…Would you have forgiven him?" Yang's tone was cautious, almost as if she apprehended the answer. "If he'd realized what he'd done wrong… would you have forgiven him?"

Blake stared at the floor. Forgiveness? That was a monumental bid.

Although she was no longer trapped in the nightmare of him, although she had managed to make peace with her past and move forward… she couldn't absolve him of what he'd done; there was no forgiving what he'd done to her. Forgiveness wasn't the right word. Is there ever a time where forgiveness could truly be given to someone who hasn't paid the price of their crime? Weren't there things that were simply unforgivable?

At the bottom of it, through this road to healing, what Blake had wished for wasn't for him to strive to make it up to her— in fact she'd rather never have had to see him again. What she did wish for, what Blake had even despaired for, was for him to somehow grasp the weight of his actions and to want to make himself better. To make amends by going out there and doing some good in the world, some good tenfold in an attempt to balance out his heinous deeds. And that was the key to it; she'd wanted him to do good, way out there: far, far away from her. Blake felt that maybe, just maybe, if he'd been able to grasp what evil he'd done, if he'd been able to put himself on a mission attempting to generate enough good in the world to outweigh the pain he'd inflicted, then… she might have been able to view what she'd endured as something other than pointless. If her suffering could have driven someone with such an influence as him to feel that he needed to make the world better with as much intensity as he'd attempted to make it worse, then that pain she'd been put through would have served to help hundreds, maybe thousands. She could have found a way to reconcile with that. But of course, that hadn't been how things had played out, and she was left feeling like she'd suffered for absolutely nothing aside from curing her own blind naivety.

"No," Blake finally said, "I can't see how I would've ever been able to forgive him." With this, she inhaled deeply, closing her eyes. "But the thing is… it's not what I wanted anyways. I didn't want him to seek forgiveness. I just wanted… I wanted him to… just stop hating so much." Saying that aloud made her feel suddenly incredibly heavy, and her head hung forward, her forehead resting against the blonde's shoulder. "I wanted…" Blake trailed off. She had no idea what else she might've wanted. "I don't know," she groaned. "But I didn't want that."

After a long silence, the blonde's voice rose. "I did," she murmured, drawing the golden orbs to her face.

"You don't mean that," Blake disputed cautiously.

"But I do," Yang said. Her expression was impassive, aside maybe from a hint of sadness. At what, Blake didn't know. "After learning what he did to you, I—... There's… there's just no way I could ever have compassion for him, no way," she said, and her gaze drifted from Blake's face to somewhere down to her side, on the desk the faunus was leaning against, to the broken weapon resting on it. "I mean… I wouldn't have gone out of my way to go after him for the sake of revenge, but… I'm just… I'm not sorry either that he had this sort of ending. I can't help but think: good riddance."

There was no faulting her for feeling this way, Blake knew. It didn't, however, change that she did not much like hearing it. It probably showed on her face, because Yang sighed quietly in a resigned sort of way, having evidently picked up on what she felt. "You have a better heart than I do, Blake," she said. "Me, I can't find it in myself to wish him a better ending; I don't have it in me to wish someone well when they've caused so much hurt. I just end up thinking that karma's a bitch, they got what they deserved, and I don't think that's sad. I don't have this boundless compassion like you do." The gentle squeeze of her hands still holding Blake's almost felt like an apology.

"Maybe I'm the one who's too charitable," Blake proposed.

"No," the blonde instantly shot. "It's one of your biggest strengths, Blake. It's something I've always admired in you," she affirmed. "The way you're able to always hold out hope for everyone, to believe in their potential for good— it's just beautiful and inspiring." Very gently, she brought her fingers to Blake's cheek, brushing her skin with her knuckles lovingly. Yang smiled warmly. "Ruby's like that too, and I think that's how people like you two are the people who end up leading others. Because we all know that you're the best of us, and you're inspiring us to do the right thing, to live up to the best version of ourselves."

How hot her face suddenly seared let Blake guess how red she'd gotten from the praise. "How am I supposed to answer that," she mumbled bashfully.

Yang laughed. "You don't have to answer. But you needed to hear it," she said, and her knuckles caressing the outline of the faunus's jaw became her full palm as Yang cupped her cheek. "You're so good, Blake. After everything he did and despite him throwing his worst at you up until the end, you still wished the best for him. You still wish he too could've had a good life and a happy ending... it really blows my mind," she said in awe. "You're absolutely amazing."

Knowing better than to try to deflect her partner's compliments — Yang had a way of doubling down — Blake decided to, although unassumingly, accept it. "Thank you." With this, she couldn't repress the need to hold her, so she drew her closer.

Without skipping a beat, Yang returned her embrace with the same devotion. How right this felt. It heightened her awareness that any restraint or lingering fear that'd pervaded their interactions in the last few weeks had completely vanished. Not only that, but there was not one shred left of the veil of darkness that had clung to Blake for years and years. The looming danger of him and the sickening anxiety that would grip her, her self-loathing and the contemptuous internal monologue that came with it, the feeling of being adrift that had been ever-present since she'd cut ties with her family… all of it was gone. The limpid clarity that had taken its place was warm and safe, and the light she felt inside of her was only made brighter by the love she could finally share again with the woman in her arms— Brighter… it had always been how Yang had made everything feel.

Blake nuzzled against the bare skin of her partner's shoulder, her nose tickled by the golden curls and their honeyed scent. Nostalgia hit her all at once, and with it all the intimacy they'd shared. And again, she wanted to tell her. Could she tell her she loved her? Or was it better to still be patient, to wait until Yang said it first this time? Unlike then, Blake had no uncertainty about it now. She knew Yang loved her back, she knew it consciously just as she did deep in her heart. She could feel it in the overt tenderness with which Yang gazed at her, she could feel it in the warmth with which she talked to her, she could feel it in her body with the care with which she held her, and Blake basked in it all. It was inexpressibly blissful and it gave her complete faith that, in time, Yang would tell her. So, for now, Blake held her tongue; she didn't want to rush her. Plus, their team might be back anytime, and she'd rather they not interrupt such a momentous milestone.

As if on cue, the door clicked open. Yang straightened up slightly but didn't move from their hug, while Blake herself couldn't move away, as she'd still been half-sitting on the desk. Ruby and Weiss both froze in the doorway; both of their expressions shifting from surprise to disbelievingly hopeful. Penny imitated them, although she didn't seem to know why they'd all stopped moving.

"Are we interrupting again?" Weiss asked, scared they were interfering with the progression of their reconciliation the same as they inadvertently had when everyone had been looking for Oscar. Promptly, Weiss grabbed Ruby's sleeve and started to back out of the room, blocking Penny with her other arm. "We can come back."

"We were done talking, we were just hugging," Yang said, smiling.

The trio still remained at the door, Weiss and Ruby staring at them intently. Were they waiting for an invitation, or was it that they were expecting some sort of announcement? Regarding the latter, although Blake did feel that Yang and she were now a couple, she still thought it better to first voice it to each other before making any sort of public announcement. "How was the Academy's armory?" she asked in an effort to usher the stillness along.

Taking that as free license to enter, Ruby barged in. "The blacksmithing department is awesome! I can't believe all the options they had to offer!"

"Atlas is at the cutting edge of science after all," Penny added proudly, trotting behind her; she didn't seem to realize she'd stolen that retort right from under Weiss—their snow-haired friend closing her mouth and shutting the door behind them.

Ruby was almost vibrating with excitement. "Have you decided what you're gonna do with Gambol Shroud, Blake?"

Though Yang had moved away, Blake remained seated on the desk, her eyes finding her weapon beside her. "I think so. Sorry to disappoint the techie in you, but I don't think I'll go for any sort of flashy features. All I really need is for them to fix the blade."

As a weapon geek, it seemed inconceivable to her. "Really? I mean, they've got all the equipment you could dream of down there, are you sure?"

"I'm sure," Blake said. "To be honest, I think I'd even prefer that it shows that the blade was broken once and then mended." Their weapon was a reflection of their souls after all; honey colored eyes briefly found her partner's, understanding emerged in them. Blake shook her head faintly, returning her gaze to her team leader. "I don't want to just erase what happened… that damage is a symbol of what I've overcome, and a reminder to be grateful for everything and everyone that helped me overcome it."

Ruby nodded in understanding, and there was a short moment of silence that passed between the group, maybe an unspoken mark of respect in acknowledgement of Blake's response. Then Penny nudged her friend, and Ruby shook the solemness off; "Oh! So are you ready to head off? Apparently, the General has something planned for us after lunch!"

"Yeah, we just need to grab our stuff and we can go," Blake said, and Yang nodded, moving to don her brand new bomber jacket. After a quick check for her scroll, wallet and other essentials, it occurred to her that she really shouldn't hand the blacksmith a weapon marred in blood, and she quickly went to dampen a hand towel in the bathroom sink. Yang peeked in.

"Hey, Blake?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you still have… Ember Celica?"

This interrupted the background noise of the red and white pair's conversation.

Blake didn't know why the question knocked the air out of her too, but she hurriedly took a hold of herself. "...Yes, of course." She went to find her bag. Fishing through her personal belongings, the metal spires of the cuff's design made it easy to locate by touch even through heaps of fabric. She pulled out the makeshift package made from a pillowcase she'd retrieved from their old dorm, and solemn silence fell as everyone became completely still; not even the shuffling of clothes could be heard. The white fabric might have looked undistinctive to the average onlooker, but the subtly embroidered sigil on it was unmistakable. Seeing this relic of a more naïve, carefree, happy time of their lives didn't leave the team unaffected. Blake unwrapped the golden cuff and cleared her throat. "There you go," she said, handing it to its owner.

Yang hesitated, but did carefully pick it up. She examined it almost apprehensively, like she might still find it marred in blood.

"I cleaned it and polished it," Blake explained.

The air was so thick, Crescent Rose might not have been enough to slice through it. Yang had already had time to assimilate what had to be done to retrieve the other half of Ember Celica, but not their two teammates, and Blake could feel their gazes on her.

Yang exhaled shortly; "Right," she said, still looking not quite right, but decidedly intent on shaking off the dark mood.

"I can hold onto it longer if you need me to," Blake offered.

"No, it's fine, I want to use it," her partner answered. "I think I need to. I feel like… it's the last piece."

"I understand," the faunus smiled.

Yang smiled back, and that seemed to release all the tension remaining in the air. Ruby excitedly launched into ideas of how to integrate it into her sister's prosthetic arm, ways for her to be able to use it as organically as she used to, and what kind of upgrades could be added. Still smiling to herself, Blake finished wiping the remnants of blood off her broken blade and sheathed it, ready to move on.

---

Becoming a licensed Huntress had not been something she had counted on happening anymore; this initial dream of theirs had taken such a backseat, given the magnitude of the threat at hand, one could even say that both RWBY and JNR had forgotten about it entirely. There was no question that their current level of fitness as Huntsmen and Huntresses was superior to the average student coming out of any Academy— arguably even better than the average Huntsmen; what they'd weathered had seasoned them more than any academy course could ever hope to, and they had already pulled through more death-defying situations than most Huntsmen did in their lifetimes. Yet, when all was said and done, it felt deserved… this recognition of how far they'd come had still blindsided them all.

Whatever the case, after a short celebration and a sortie with the Ace Ops, both RWBY and JNR started settling into a new routine. This led them to here and now; standing in front of the immense, blue light hologram of the mission board. As Yang stared at the display, Blake couldn't tear her eyes away from her.

On that specific morning; Ruby, Penny, Qrow, and Clover were serving as escort for the dust shipment bound for the Amity launching site; Weiss was with her sister again; Jaune had his daily crossing guard route; Oscar, having taken to spending much of his time with General Ironwood, was with him; and Ren was off with some of the other Ace Ops conducting triage at an immigration control point. This left them with...

"Can I join you guys or am I gonna be a third wheel?" Nora joked.

Yang put both hands on her hips. "Don't say that like you're crashing anything, it's not like we're on a date."

The redhead perked up, taking the opening and running with it; "You go on dates?"

"We will when we have a day off," Yang declared, then eyed her partner with less confidence. "Right? Blake?"

The faunus smiled. "If you want to take me on a date, I'd be delighted to oblige."

At this, Nora drew in obnoxiously close, a mad grin plastered across her face. "So can we finally talk about it?"

Yang exchanged another look with Blake. They'd known that the intimacy between them had been recognized by their entourage for what it was, but it hadn't been quite as evident to either of them that this unaddressed open secret had also been itching at their friends. Nora, with her hands curled into fists and green eyes wide in anticipation, seemed so near to exploding that she was all but vibrating.

Yang returned an amused snort. "Sure, we can talk."

Their friend threw both arms to the sky dramatically — "THANK YOU!" — she bellowed so loudly they both recoiled.

The blonde shook off the surprise. "Geez, what, was it painful for you to hold off?"

"Yes!" Nora groaned. "We've known for so long— everyone could see it wasn't even a will-they-won't-they thing, it was a when-the-hell-will-they thing, and it's been years! Give me a break!"

Blake made a conscious decision not to comment on the irony of this being their exact point of view on Nora and Ren's situation. Although, it had just occurred to her… what if there had been, just like with Yang and her, something happening behind closed doors unbeknownst to the group? People really can surprise you sometimes. "Well, now we're here," Blake said. "You don't have to tiptoe around it anymore."

"Thank. You." Nora puffed, comically exasperated. She took a second to breathe deeply, and then her composure returned. "So. Did you have sex yet?"

Yang balked. "Oh my god, what's with you all!"

"You promised me juicy details," Nora claimed.

"No one promised you any of that!" The blonde countered.

"But, did you or didn't you?" She insisted.

"Did you have sex with Ren yet?" Yang countered; it seemed like she had the same thought as Blake.

"I wish," Nora unashamedly bemoaned, surprising them both. "I wish Ren would find his nerve, loosen up, make a move already, something— I mean! You'd think it wouldn't be this frickin' hard, I've made sure he knows all lights are green and all doors are open, all he's gotta do is walk through!"

"Maybe you need to take matters into your own hands," Blake suggested.

The short redhead crossed her arms, her features settling into uncharacteristic doubt. "I don't know, I've pushed a lot already… I don't want to push him away."

"Weiss said you called him 'my man' when y'all were fighting Cordovin's Colossus," Yang grinned, visibly taking the opportunity to retaliate their friend's prying.

Nora's cheeks took on a pink tint. "I did!" She exclaimed nevertheless. "We had… moments on the journey from Vale to Haven; we were getting closer and it felt right to call him that! But then… ever since we got here, things… changed. I don't know if it's getting our licenses, or just being dazzled with Ironwood, but Ren's all wrapped up in playing soldier, and he's been more distant. More aloof," Nora retold. "He used to be warm and caring and attentive, but suddenly he's all clammed up."

This kind of standoffishness was something Blake was deeply familiar with. "Did anything happen that he might feel down on himself about?" To which she obtained a shake of her friend's head and a disheartened shrug. "Then it might just be… the Salem situation. Maybe there's just too much going on for him to be thinking about romance right now."

"Right now? You mean ever! I've been waiting years for him to be ready and we were almost there and now he'd suddenly rather be an Atlesian private or something!" Nora complained, immediately starting to spiral; "What if he's pretending to be interested in being a soldier to avoid me! Because I pushed too much!" She slapped both hands on her cheeks and dragged down her entire face. "What if he was never interested in me like that? What if he always saw me as a sister? What if he's gay‽"

Yang snorted. "Ren's not gay."

"Oh right! You'd know," Nora puffed out, wiping her brow, "gaydar and all."

That threw them both off a bit, and the pair exchanged a brief glance. "I… don't think either of us have one," Blake said unsurely. "We couldn't tell about each other for the longest time."

"Uh, to be fair, I didn't even know about myself," Yang remarked. "I didn't know I liked you like that 'til—" she bit her tongue. Explaining how they'd first found out about their mutual attraction wasn't the most PG-rated story. "Anyways, does it even work if I don't know?"

"Which way?" Blake asked. "Do you mean, could someone tell about you, or if not being in touch with this part of yourself, you would also not be able to tell about other people?"

"Both ways, I guess," Yang scratched her head. "Doesn't it… unlock when you come out? Or at least when you figure out you're queer or something."

"Yang, it's not like a videogame skill, it's not something you earn or unlock when you level up," the faunus shot back. "I think it's more like an instinct you can hone."

Yang squinted one eye dubiously. "So, what, ours weren't honed enough to tell about each other?"

Blake hummed; that take didn't feel quite right. Thinking it over, even at the very start of being paired up… it wasn't like she hadn't sensed a peculiar chemistry with the fiery blonde. In fact, from the moment Yang had dragged Ruby across the room to accost her the evening before the Beacon initiation, Blake had taken notice of… something. But had that been something she'd sensed from Yang, or had it been the first flickers of her own desires…? Without discounting that the latter was almost certainly part of the reason she'd chosen the blonde brawler as her partner, it didn't account for the sense of… recognition that had also been present. "I… think I knew," she finally said, in awe at this insight. "I think I knew from the very second I met you that you weren't totally straight."

"Really? Even though I didn't know myself yet?"

"Yes."

"Wait wait, it's the second time you've said this—" Nora interrupted, "how did you not know, you were all over her!"

Yang's head had receded so low into her shoulders that she'd lost an inch of height. "It's just… " she trailed off sheepishly. "Honestly, I— I don't know, I touch people I'm close to a lot. I just didn't realize it was different with Blake."

Nora turned a very pointed, almost Weiss-like gaze to Blake. "And you. You only realized now that you knew back then? Which means that then, you didn't know that you knew?"

Hearing it outlined like that, it sounded so stupid. Of course the way Yang had gushed over her and honeyed up to her had always felt like infatuation, but she had simply refused to believe it. "I tried to rationalize her behavior as something it wasn't;" she explained awkwardly. "I was trying to tell myself she couldn't possibly be into me— that it had to be wishful thinking. I didn't want to get my hopes up."

"Huh." Nora seemed satisfied enough. "So you do have a gaydar," she established, bringing the conversation back on its original track.

"I guess so."

"Oh!" Yang snapped her fingers then nudged Blake's arm with her index. "Did you know about Ilia?"

"I had a feeling," Blake admitted. "But it's not the same. I could feel that she had a thing for me— and that gave it away. You can tell when someone's into you."

"But you just said—"

"When you're not into them, it's easier to be objective about it because you know for a fact you're not conflating with wishful thinking."

"What about Coco?" Nora piped up. "Could either of you tell?"

"That doesn't count, we knew before we met her," Yang said. "She kinda has a reputation."

While Yang had been rather the social butterfly, Blake had spent most of that period of their lives with her nose in books, and, as such, hadn't heard any of the gossip about Coco. Nevertheless, when she'd first met Coco, she did remember recognizing something familiar about her. At the time, she'd chalked it up to the fame surrounding team CFVY. Interestingly, she remembered that their upperclassman had tilted her shades to look at her, and sized her up in a way that had made Blake feel somewhat vulnerable, as if being exposed, seen through. In that moment, she'd wondered if Coco had somehow noticed that she was a faunus, but… now Blake realized that Coco had likely picked up on a queer vibe. It seemed Coco had suspicions that Blake was gay before Blake herself had realized that she was. As that memory and the feeling it evoked passed through her mind's eye, Blake realized how very similar it was to more recent experiences. Saphron had sized her up in a very similar fashion, and so had… Blake brought her hand to her mouth. "Oh."

"What's up?"

Eyes wide, Blake turned to her partner. "...Winter's gay."

Yang's eyebrows knitted themselves together. It looked like she was doing her very best to find the same series of mental hoops by which Blake had established that. "Huh?"

"Yeah, okay, I could see it," Nora nodded, accepting the guess without reservations.

Yang wasn't quite ready to do the same. "No, wait, how did you come up with that all of a sudden?"

"Yang, remember that first day, when we noticed that she was staring? Now that I think about it, it reminds me of other times I've been clocked," Blake explained, still reeling from her 'aha' moment. She suddenly felt so vastly better about the entire thing. "I'm sure she picked up on something, and her staring was just… paying attention to see if there was something between us."

Nora put her index fingers up on her head like antennae. "She used her gaydar on you?"

"Well, no— or… I guess." It was something quite involuntary, but without having the experience, one wouldn't know, so Blake made an attempt at clarifying this for her friend. "It's not like you turn it on or off; it's just… it's… hard to explain what exactly we pick up on, but you end up noticing whether you want it or not."

Yang cocked her head, still ostensibly skeptical. "Weiss would've said something about it at some point, if that was the case, there's no way she wouldn't have— Hell— you said she told you she didn't know anyone who was gay when you came out to her, right?"

That did nothing to dissuade Blake from her newfound epiphany. "Weiss wasn't very open-minded when she started at Beacon— in fact, the kingdom of Atlas as a whole isn't the most liberal place… it wouldn't be surprising that people around here would be… private about this kind of thing," she rationalized. "Remember how nervous you were about coming out to Ruby? Even though Ruby's so accepting and unprejudiced?"

"I see what you mean," Yang crossed her arms, finally starting to get on board.

With the sense of having glimpsed past the soldier's stoic front to something vulnerable, Blake couldn't help feeling for her, and found herself a bit dejected as she outlined what emerged as the most plausible scenario; "Weiss just doesn't know. Chances are, Winter's not out."

"Wow," Nora puffed out. "Why does she not seem so scary anymore?"

That was a no-brainer to Blake. "Because it's so human to be worried that someone dear to you would love you any less if you told them who you really are," she voiced gently. That was an experience she had known too intimately— she'd lived it so many times over. Sympathy wholly took hold of her, as it always did when she felt there was lurking injustice— which, a misunderstanding causing a rift between sisters definitely was akin to— and with it, resolve flared up. "We need to say something," she decided. "If she hasn't come out to Weiss because of the social climate they grew up in, then we have to make sure that she knows that Weiss would unreservedly accept her."

Yang blinked rapidly in surprise. "Wait, but there isn't even any proof that your hunch is anything to go on. Plus, if she is, then wouldn't going up to her and telling her it's okay to be gay be, like, putting her on the spot and dragging her out of the closet?"

"I didn't plan on doing anything like that," Blake shot back, giving the blonde a look. "But I don't think it'd be very hard to make sure she sees that Weiss knows about us and doesn't have any issue with it."

Yang 'ohed' silently in response. "Right, gotcha." A smile emerged on her face.

"If my hunch is right, then it might be a real relief for her," the dark-haired faunus continued, although her partner already seemed on board, "and if I got it wrong, what do we lose?"

"Yeah, okay, sure." Yang's smile grew, it was very fond, yet she seemed almost amused.

What was so amusing? "What?"

"Nothing."

Blake squinted at her. "What?"

"Nothing," Yang laughed, raising both hands defensively. "It's just… you've always been really empathetic like that. You put yourself in others' shoes and you're always looking out for everyone's well-being, even people you don't know or people who haven't asked for help," she outlined. "It makes me smile."

Her cheeks burned and her cat ears might've done their best to hide in her hair. Yang had always noticed the best in her, even when Blake hadn't seen it for herself, and she'd always made sure to let her know about all those things she esteemed in her. Shouldn't she be used to the golden girl's sweet-talk by now? If she wasn't now, she'd probably never get used to it entirely. A coy smile grew on her lips; it remained something she truly was grateful for however, as it helped stave off her self-critical tendencies, and—

"GAAAAY," Nora hollered, smashing the lovey-dovey mood. The redhead threw both hands into the sky, letting out a relieved sort of unintelligible vociferation before pointing an accusatory finger their way. "Y'all have no idea how good it feels to not have to dance around it! Watching you two go and having to pretend we didn't see it was a pain in the ass."

"Geez, sorry we had some stuff to figure out, huh?" Yang commented.

"Apology accepted," Nora shot, refusing to recognize the sarcasm in the 'apology'. "Come on! Doesn't it feel better for you lovebirds to not have to be careful about it?"

"Don't we, though? Have to be careful about it, I mean. 'Cause we just established that Atlas might not be very accepting," Yang reminded her. "That people who live here hide it."

Oh, they had, hadn't they? If someone as unflinching as Winter felt the need to hide it, then it really might be better to be careful. Blake felt her heart sink. After all that'd happened, now that they were finally okay? They still had to mind themselves? "I guess it might be better to be discreet, but I don't think I want to go back in the closet," she uttered.

"Me neither," Yang rejoined.

The tiny powerhouse planted her hands on her hips. "You can't let what strangers think stop you. You should do whatever's right for you."

"There's something to be said about not attracting unnecessary attention," Blake remarked.

Nora stared at her blankly, as if the concept was hard for her to process.

"We can just… keep it on the DL when in public," Yang suggested. "We can be ourselves when around them though," she said, designating Nora.

The inherent trust in that sentiment pleased the redhead; a grin split her features and she chummily slapped the brawler's back. Had anyone less solid than Yang been on the receiving end of that strike, they might have suffered. "It's not like any of us have a problem with it— everyone kinda knows something's going on— we've known for a while."

"Really, huh?" Yang laughed, and since it was the second time Nora insisted that they'd known for some time, she decided to indulge her; "How much of a while?"

"You were acting pretty gay with each other already in the first year at Beacon," she shot. "Yang was flirting with you all the time," she rolled her eyes as she pointed at Blake. "And somehow even though you had a short fuse and couldn't handle people, this one fawning over you all the time was just peachy with you. And then there was the dance—"

"Yeah, okay, you can stop," Yang cut in, she'd reddened a bit. "We were obvious, we get it."

Fondness for a time past surged through Blake. It was somewhat a surprise to her that something as innocuous as her permissiveness towards her partner's habit of invading her personal space, had already betrayed her to her friends. Back then, she had barely just realized she was attracted to Yang, and had been very far still from having made peace with and accepted it. Should she have known back then that anyone suspected anything of her yearning for her blonde partner, she'd have been mortified. What was less of a surprise was that Yang's flirting like she was breathing had been interpreted for exactly what it was. Although Yang still hadn't caught onto what laid behind said impulse to flirt, in hindsight… it had been exactly what it looked like.

"So," Nora piped up again, "did you have sex or not?"

She wasn't going to leave it alone, was she? "We already were back in Beacon," Blake sprung. Nora gasped in delighted drama. "Now drop it," the faunus added sternly before their friend could embarrass them further.

Nora painfully swallowed down her mischievous expression as Yang awkwardly adjusted her orange bandana. They all returned their attention to the mission board, or so Blake thought. Nora nudged her lightly with her elbow, asking not-so-under-her-breath; "So… I guess you top, huh?"

Blake felt herself blush from toe to the tip of her cat ears. "Nora," she muttered in sharp warning.

"Sheesh, okay."

Yang stopped the mission board scrolling and tapped to enlarge one of the posted jobs. "What about this one?" She said, already entering the trio's credentials. "We'll be done before lunch."

Right— Blake almost cringed. After lunch today was that absurd sisters match set up by their teammates. Having absolutely no desire to watch her partner get obliterated, she quickly scrolled through to select something to keep herself busy in the afternoon before they all headed to a transport ship.

Their trip to the Mantle perimeter wall was short, and the Grimm clean-up assignment they'd selected even shorter. Admittedly, it was largely because of Nora being extra-smashy; either due to her woes concerning Ren's state of mind, or her excitement about having been looped in; but all in all, everything was handled in what might be called record time.

Upon return, Blake checked her scroll for details on her next mission as they got off the airship. It seemed Marrow would be working with her. He hadn't checked in yet though, so she'd have time for lunch before moving on. She eyed her partner. "When's your thing?"

"I got time to grab a bite," Yang answered, signaling to walk with her.

Blake followed down the hall of the military complex to the adjacent building where the student dorm and cafeteria were. "...You could still bail on that match, you know."

"Like hell I would, Weiss dissed us, I won't let her get away with it."

The faunus repressed the urge to facepalm. Refraining from further comment, she instead turned her attention to more promising matters. "Say, were you serious about going on dates?"

"Huh? Why wouldn't I be?"

Blake couldn't come up with an answer on the spot. Why did she feel any sort of disbelief about the prospect? "I don't know," she admitted. Maybe part of it was some lingering incredulity that they were finally back together, that they were finally good, and that things were finally looking up. "I guess… we just never really made plans like that before— not as anything else than friends anyways."

The blonde's expression softened. "Sorry. I haven't romanced you nearly as properly as you deserve. I'm gonna remedy that."

Was that Cupid's arrow that struck Blake once again? Was it because it felt so novel to be able to talk about their relationship so openly; without all the excessive maneuvering around romance; that butterflies fluttered in her stomach? This thought stopped Blake in her tracks— their relationship.

Yang, halting a few steps ahead of her, turned to her. "What? Too much?"

"No— no, I… I'm just…" She had resolved to, this time around, not voice her feelings until Yang did, but as the question Ruby had asked the other morning floated through her mind again, she was keenly aware of the answer she'd given then. They were acting like they were a couple, this was just reinforced tenfold by what Yang had just said. Assumptions be damned, now was as good a time as she'd get: "Are we…? I mean, we're..." She realized her heart was pounding; why was this hard? She breathed out nervously. "It's just, we're… together, right?"

Violet eyes were wide as saucers. "Uh," Yang's hand had found its way to the back of her neck, rubbing in a nervous gesture. "I mean… I assumed we were?"

"I assumed too, but I just needed to… you know. Verbally confirm."

The smile that immediately split Yang's features was utterly precious. "Oh. I see, okay," she bashfully stepped closer again. "I'm happy you did, I think I needed it too."

There was a moment of stillness in which they both seemed to bask in the recognition. Lacing their fingers together, Blake relished in that warm glow. Had they not been in the middle of the academy complex, she would certainly have stolen a kiss. The bustle of students around them urged them along, and they made their way to the cafeteria. Blake was completely dazed as they stood in line to get food. How could all of it just feel so normal, yet so unbelievable at the same time?

Yang turned to her with a bit of a start. "We should make it official to Ruby and Weiss, huh? They'll be mad if we don't."

Blake's insistent smile almost hurt her cheeks. "Definitely."

They ate mostly in silence, due in large part to a need to soak up the moment and appreciate the milestone they'd reached, but the bustle and noise of the lunch hall didn't help, and neither of them really wanted to yell over the noise; either to discuss their happiness or to make plans for a future date. When they were done, Yang volunteered to walk her back to the ship hangar; that was when she truly came alive. Blake didn't know why her partner had set her mind to it, but Yang absolutely wanted to take her dancing, so with enough nagging, she ended up giving into the idea. Loud noise and crowds were not her thing, but… at least she'd be able to enjoy Yang's body against hers.

Standing by the ship she'd be taking to Mantle, Blake glanced at the time. "Aren't you late?"

Yang shrugged nonchalantly. "They can wait a few minutes." She then gently bumped her shoulder to Blake's, grinning. "You sure you don't want to watch the match? Cheer for your girlfriend?"

However much she loved hearing Yang calling herself that, it didn't change Blake's expectations of the outcome. "You're cute, but still no. I don't enjoy watching you get hurt."

"You're really convinced I have zero chances of winning this, huh?"

"Totally convinced."

"Oww," she mocked, pressing a hand to her heart. "I thought you had faith in me."

"And I thought you had learned to fight smarter."

"I did!" She disputed. "It's not like I'm going into this blind; Winter's gotta be basically the same as Weiss, right? Since she has the same semblance and she taught Weiss how to fight, and Weiss idolizes her; chances are she copied her techniques. And Ruby and I know Weiss's semblance and moves inside out," she explained. "We've got an edge on them!"

Blake decided it wasn't a completely crazy rationalization, but some part of it still didn't sit well with her. Heredity and tutoring weren't to be discounted, but when it came down to it; weapons, fighting styles, semblances… they were all the product of every combatant's individual personality and experiences. Just a glance at Weiss's ostentatious tendencies compared to her sister's asceticism was enough to hint at fundamental disparities. "Be careful," she warned.

The fiery blonde nonetheless remained completely confident. "Gotta risk big to win big," she shot back.

Win big? Knowing her team, she should've expected it but… "...Are you telling me that there's a bet going?"

"...Just donuts, y'know. Loser buys," she said.

"I wouldn't call that winning big."

Yang couldn't completely suppress the mischievous grin that threatened to break out. "Well, do I win something if I prove you wrong that I can't win this?"

Cat ears twitched. Yang countered with this so fast, it almost felt like she'd meant to lead them to a place where she'd have the opportunity to propose their own bet. "What do you want from me?" Blake asked curiously.

"Can you take a sexy selfie for me to put as my scroll wallpaper?"

The back of her neck flushed with heat. Yang had that one ready, hadn't she? This had definitely been a setup. "...How sexy are we talki—" the rest caught up with her, "wait, for your wallpaper?"

Yang simply grinned wider in response.

Although somewhat destabilized by how silly this was, Blake was pleased to see this resurgence of her partner's playful side, and she decided not to extinguish its revival by shooting her down. "Sure. I'll do it if you win," she said. There were zero chances of her winning anyways.

The blonde brightened with delight. "Really?"

"Really."

"And if I lose, what do you want?"

"Aside from the bragging rights of telling you I told you so?" Blake posed, deadpan. "How about a promise to listen to me next time I tell you you're about to do something stupid?"

"Deal, I guess," Yang laughed. She stuffed her hands in her leather bomber jacket, fidgeting more animately than unusual. "Sooo… no sexy selfie from me in return?"

Maybe it was how this interaction felt straight out of their Beacon days that emboldened her such, but Blake didn't otherwise know where her confidence came from as she affirmed: "I don't need a bet for that. The second I ask you for one, you'd send me a bunch, bet or no bet." The devilish shift in the way Yang smiled spoke loud and clear. "...And you're thinking about doing just that, aren't you?"

"Kinda," she admitted. "Want 'em?"

Heat coursed through her. "...Kinda."

Yang leaned over closely, smugly eyeing her. "If I win, you gotta put one up as your scroll wallpaper too. We do it both ways."

Blake did her best to not let herself be distracted by how amazing she smelled. Important negotiations were taking place. "...Sexy selfie, but nothing explicit, right?"

"I'm not crazy, Blake."

Acceptable terms. "Sure then. Send away, and I'll put one up if you win." Which she wouldn't anyways. Blake didn't actually have to worry about embarrassing herself with a half-naked picture of her blonde bombshell of a partner as her scroll wallpaper.

Yang responded with a victorious laugh. "I'll hold you to that. I expect to see it up when I win," she affirmed with delusional confidence. With this, she gave Blake a peck on the cheek and bouncily trotted backwards, about to set out to her impending ruin. "Wish me luck!"

"You'll need more than luck," Blake countered. "But good luck."

She grinned cheekily. "Thanks, Kitten."

The pet name startled them both— what a blast from the past. Blake could barely find her voice. "...You haven't called me that in a while."

"Yeah," Yang breathed, bewildered at how naturally it had come out. They might've stayed frozen staring at each other for a while longer if it wasn't for the beeping of the brawler's scroll. She fumbled to find it in her pocket, and though Blake couldn't see the message displayed, the red overtones of the picture next to the message let her know that Ruby was urging her sister. "Okay, I gotta go," Yang gave her a flirty wink before jogging off.

---

The assignment Blake had selected was a simple escort mission; get Dr. Polendina from his Mantle office to a warehouse in a derelict part of town, wait for him to finish his overview of the manufacturing of the parts for the Amity communication tower, and then escort him back. Said warehouse had been chosen as a manufacturing location in virtue of its location being mostly deserted thanks to being too hazardously close to a breach in the Mantle perimeter wall. Soldiers had been posted in the area with the pretense of guard duty until repairs could be done on the wall, but their true purpose was to protect the labor force in the warehouse— both from Grimm and from prying eyes. Even with the military on the ground, it was still somewhat reckless to have the old man commute on his own, thus, the escort.

Blake's mind was elsewhere as they rode through the city. Now that they had stumbled upon the realization that homophobia might be just as rampant as racism in this kingdom, the blatant lack of queer presence jumped out at her. In the kingdom of Mistral— not even only in large cities, but also throughout the continent of Anima, seeing same-sex couples on the street, casually referred to in the papers, on the news, or pictured in advertisements had been run-of-the-mill. The kingdom of Atlas, on the other hand, was entirely devoid of any of that, Blake now noticed. She may have been too taken with the wretched state of Mantle, both the faunus rights situation and the political propaganda to pay any attention to the queer acceptance situation upon first arrival.

Marrow and she hadn't exchanged much conversation through the ride, but once Dr. Polendina had disappeared inside the warehouse, it evidently didn't take long for him to grow bored out of his mind. He twirled his weapon, pacing about in the ship's vicinity. "You've finally taken a mission without your partner, huh?"

Blake had perched herself atop a giant crate to sit by the warehouse door. She squinted a dubious eye. "What's wrong with wanting to be with her? We work well together."

"Yeah, true," he conceded. "Where is she anyways?"

Blake sighed. "Getting her ass handed to her," she answered wryly, and seeing the young man's puzzlement, she explained; "Yang let herself get swept up in one of Ruby and Weiss's arguments. It was about which sisters duo would win a pairs fight."

Marrow eyed her hesitantly. "She's fighting Winter?"

"...Yep."

A pained expression formed on his features. "The General's right hand? His superstar Special Operative?"

"I tried telling her that Ruby and she were obviously outmatched, but they wouldn't hear it."

"Are your friends always so delusional?"

"I'd call them optimistic," Blake said. Although she'd liberally criticized her partner herself, her instinct was still to defend her team. "And anyways, don't we have to be, to enterprise such a fight against Salem?" she pointed out. "Their optimism and hopefulness are some of the things I love most about them."

"Kids," he rolled his eyes.

"You're not that much older than us," Blake groused.

"Yeah, but old enough to be pragmatic about the outlook of things."

Blake wasn't impressed. "It's a sad world you live in, if being pragmatic has to mean being cynical and pessimistic."

Along with his frown, his tail swished in a stiff sort of way, and maybe it was discontentment with her answer that made him want to bite back; "I guess that blind optimism is what you'd need to lead an organization like the White Fang, huh?"

That her name preceded her was no surprise, but Blake was somewhat taken aback that he seemed to think that this was a gotcha moment. "Is that some not-so-veiled criticism towards my father?"

His eyes bulged. "Wait, Ghira Belladonna really is your father?"

He'd thrown that out without knowing for sure? Blake was amazed. "...Yes."

Marrow was very still, seeming to have forgotten himself.

"Any criticism you might have of his life's work, I can relay to him."

"Uh, no, sorry, didn't say anything," he cleared his throat awkwardly and finally stopped meandering; coming to join her and flopping to a seat on what looked to be an overturned trash can. "How did that go at first, being teamed up with a Schnee?"

"Better than you might expect," she mused. "Although that shouldn't surprise you, now should it? You're a faunus working as an Ace Op; you're no stranger to working with the Atlas elite."

Marrow tsked. "It's not the same. Not everyone on the Ace Ops is even from Atlas, and none of them are literal aristocrats aside from, well, our Schnee. And I don't even really work with her ever to be honest; she and Penny have the— well, other duties going on. On the other hand, your dad was basically the king of the faunus, while her dad's the king of abusing faunus; that's like, the most extreme contrast there is."

"My dad was king of the faunus?" She derisively shot back.

He was suddenly on his feet again. "Might as well have been," he threw, incredulous that his hot take caught her off guard. "Growing up, I heard about him so much, felt his presence so much, that I didn't even realize he didn't live in Mantle— I thought for the longest time that he was, like, a community leader here, that he was someone my parents knew personally. It took me a while to understand what was up with him and the White Fang." He shook his head. "By the time I was at Atlas Academy I was actually sick of hearing about the White Fang— although it wasn't him people were talking about anymore, it was Sienna Khan." He plopped down to a seat again, something softer coming over him. "But as much as I was sick of it… I can't tell you what they all meant to my parents and the other mining families around here."

Something heavy crumpled her stomach. "Your parents are dust miners?"

"Were. They're too old now, and with the job I have, I make way enough to take care of them."

Blake gave a short nod. It shouldn't have come as much of a surprise; a very large portion of the Mantle population worked for the SDC to start with, and of course, most faunus ended up in the mines. "...A friend of mine who was part of the White Fang had the same upbringing as you," she said. "Mantle miners… managed to get her into Atlas Academy. Learned to become a Huntress, did really well while she was there."

"While she was there? Meaning she didn't graduate?"

Instinctively, Blake balled up, tucking her legs to her chest and resting her chin on her knees. "Her parents died in that horrific collapse that happened six years ago," she said quietly. Although dust explosions weren't uncommon in those mines, that particular tragedy had been unprecedented; hundreds of casualties and damage so irrecoverable that they had to condemn that section of the mines. There was no need for her to say more for the young man to know exactly what disaster she was talking about. Blake eyed him interestedly. "She lost everything because no one cared about safety regulations when it was faunus lives on the line. So… grief made her hungry for revenge— she dropped out, joined the White Fang and stayed with them even when they lost their way. She did pretty awful things for them until recently." Blake shook off the despondency that'd taken her over as she recounted this; she unfurled, letting her legs dangle down the crate side. "But she's doing better now. She's working on undoing some of the bad decisions she made in the wake of it all."

He nodded with apparent relief; Ilia's story seemed to really affect him. He took a moment to let it all sink in before saying his piece. "I guess I was lucky. I saw the other side of the coin," he began. "My parents worked in the east area— super far from the mine that collapsed. Still being part of the SDC, the corporate ethos was the same, but… the actual labor conditions were incomparably better. The management and guards who worked there were good people; humans, all of them— y'know the SDC wouldn't have hired faunus for any of these positions. Anyways— they treated everyone fairly, made sure to enforce safety regulations, security personnel actually protected us from the Grimm instead of being there to serve as prison guards—" He glanced her way quickly, "when I say us, it's not that I ever worked there, it's… when I started saying I wanted to be a Huntsman, my parents brought me along sometimes because the guards had all been to combat school— some of them had even done some time at Atlas Academy— and a few of them accepted to help me prepare for the Atlas Academy entrance test," he explained. "Helped me craft my first weapon— even got me parts on their own salary. I wouldn't be where I am without their help." In that light, it was no wonder that Marrow had ended up with a diametrically opposite view of the world and life path than Ilia's. It was no wonder that he had embraced Atlas and what it stood for; if its people had helped elevate him such. Marrow leaned back against the corroded metal of the warehouse wall. "Some faunus will condemn my taking the position I have, saying that we aren't welcome in Atlas and we shouldn't try to be part of that system, but… I disagree. Sure, I've experienced racism too, but less and less everyday. And the people I work with are amazing. Things are changing— we can take our place in the city in the sky," he said. "So I'm proud of being an Ace Operative, and not just because it's a prestigious rank. I'm proud of serving the city of Atlas and the people who make it great."

Blake's gaze dropped as she considered what had been said. How two individuals coming from the same circumstances could turn out so incredibly different, living such different truths and believing in such different values, was a testament to the power of the community. One had been crafted by kindness and support, and the other broken by vileness and ill luck. Blake idly wondered if Ilia too would have turned out Atlas military, should she have had Marrow's fortune.

All this talk around faunus struggles and personal stories made him seem incredibly approachable, and, in line with this candid bonding moment, Blake felt compelled to open up further, inquire about the other social norms that had come into question that morning. "Hey," she drew his gaze again. "How… hmm. How progressive is this kingdom? I know where both Atlas and Mantle stand when it comes to faunus, but I'm not really clear on… other social issues."

He raised a confused eyebrow. "Like what?"

Blake hesitated for a second, but now that she'd opened the box, might as well come out with it. "Same-sex relationships," she specified, seeing his eyebrows perk up. Here went nothing; "...Yang and I were wondering about it."

There was a short silence in which they stared at each other. On the plus side, Blake felt no resistance or discomfort from him, but he did seem to be thinking about it very hard. Was this a complicated question? His mental gears eventually came to halt and yet he continued to stare at her blankly.

"...So…?" Blake pressed.

"You have people in your group who are…?"

Her face fell. Had the long pause been him trying to figure that out? When she'd outright volunteered the answer? "...Yang and I, Marrow."

Understanding colored his features. He then hit his forehead with his palm. "Oh my god, duh. Now I feel so dumb for commenting on you two being together all the time."

"You don't say."

"You should've said something then!"

"I'm telling you now," she said instead of going into how they hadn't been quite official yet at the time he'd made that comment.

"Okay, but what for?"

"Yang and I were talking earlier, and realized that, given the generally more conservative attitudes people here in Atlas have… well, it got us wondering if it's best to keep a low profile about it," she explained. "Atlesians tend to hide it, don't they?"

"Uh, I guess they do," he said, like he'd just realized. "You're probably right, 'cause I don't think I know someone who's out. I mean — there's some gossip here and there— but I don't know that I've met someone who's gay for sure 'til you."

She hadn't been fishing for it, but since he brought it up… "Gossip?"

"Eh. I don't know. It's not like—..." he emitted a sort of unconvinced grumble. "I don't even know if there's any truth to— … people like to talk, that's all. It's probably not even true." Marrow crossed his arms and puffed out his chest. "Anyways, I don't gossip, so forget it!"

A shame. "You're the one who brought it up."

"Yeah, well, too bad, I don't gossip, especially not about my superiors," he loudly declared.

Blake blinked. "Do you have any other superiors than the General, Clover, and Winter?"

"N—" he slammed his hand on his mouth in shock.

If she hadn't already been certain, this would have undoubtedly done it. "You're pretty good at sticking your foot in your mouth, huh?"

His tail again did its own thing, swishing madly, as he scowled at her in embarrassment. "I'm gonna do a perimeter check," he declared before storming ahead.

Blake went after him. "You didn't answer my original question."

He slowed his stomping. "Oh—" His tail twitched, indignity forgotten. "...Honestly, If I were you, I wouldn't be as worried about being both women as I'd be about her being human. Around these parts, if someone's gonna be bigoted… they'll whisper behind one's back about being gay, but they won't think twice about being openly hateful to faunus." It shouldn't have taken her aback to hear this, but with everything else that had come between her and Yang, Blake had forgotten that this had ever been a worry of hers. Marrow glanced back at her. "And that goes for Mantle just as much as Atlas; we'll get told outright to 'stick with our kind'."

Blake was still mesmerized by what she'd just realized. Once upon a time, hearing that she should be concerned about their respective races would have been a 'no duh' moment, but she'd become so confident in Yang's love, and had transcended her insecurities such that she'd forgotten entirely about this would-be concern. She no longer felt any different from her team; she didn't feel any type of way about being a faunus anymore. She'd come a long way from hiding her ears under a bow. A smile drew itself on her lips.

"That sounds good to you?" Marrow shot, disgruntled.

"Oh no, sorry, I was just…" How to explain without plunging into her past self-deprecation? "You saying that made me realize how lucky I am to have the people I have. They made me forget it could even be an issue."

He hummed. "Your parents too?"

"My parents?"

"What do your parents think of you dating a human? Do they know?"

Blake frowned. "They don't think anything of it, they both liked her."

Marrow stopped in his tracks, fully shocked. "They did? Didn't expect that of the White Fang."

Its nature really had been twisted, Blake was forced to reckon. "When my father led it, what they were advocating for was equality— coexisting in peace," she reminded him. "Sienna thought we'd never get respect without being feared, so when she took over, she made herself threatening — which I don't agree with — but at least she… she didn't actually enjoy violence, not like… Adam. He was… spiteful and cruel, and he just wanted to hurt humans," she stated, walking; taking the lead on their perimeter patrol. "Maybe Sienna, and definitely Adam are why you'd have that impression of hostility from the White Fang. My parents have no issues with humans at all. What they always championed was simply… what you and I have with our teams today. Normalcy."

"Might've misjudged what they stood for then," he said reluctantly. "Sorry about that."

"It's okay; they know the White Fang grew into a monster. They've begun working on restoring it to its previous ideals— the friend I told you about is helping them."

Hearing that last bit seemed to make him especially happy. It was pretty sweet how he'd immediately taken to rooting for Ilia. "Can't wait to start hearing about them again when we reestablish global communications. I used to think it was corny, but now I sort of miss the hope they brought people around here. And maybe we'll see things change faster." Although he had volunteered that all on his own, having said it seemed to embarrass him, and he cleared his throat. "For the time being though— I'd be careful if I were you. I know for a fact that everyone in the Ace Ops and all will be cool with it but, really, don't make it too obvious when out in the city."

Blake smiled. "Thanks for the heads up."

The way back to Dr. Polendina's office and then back up to Atlas was pretty uneventful. The conversation with the kind old man was mostly about his project, and Blake let her mind wander to what had been said with the other Faunus. The potential homophobia had been something she and Yang could certainly have broached with Weiss, but something told Blake that nowadays-Weiss, who wasn't particularly concerned with social norms or avoiding stirring the pot, might not give her a practical answer. Moreover, their friend might've entirely forgotten about the interracial aspect too, as it wasn't her direct reality. All in all, Blake was very glad that she'd found the nerve to broach this topic with Marrow.

Not finding Yang waiting for her in the ship hangar spoke to Blake's prediction. She texted their team group chat, and Weiss was the one to answer, pointing her to their dorm room. Without further ado, Blake made her way there, where she found the blonde brawler lying stomach-down on her own bottom bunk, an ice bag on the back of her head. The dark-haired faunus sighed. That had turned out exactly as she'd expected. "Any regrets?"

"So many," Yang groaned.

Blake took off her boots. "Honestly, what did you expect?"

"I don't know," she whined. "We thought we knew what to expect, but… joke's on me because Winter doesn't fight like Weiss at all. Forget the fancy-dancy stuff, the woman will just slam into you," Yang turned on her back, keeping the ice on her neck under her hair as she moved the pillow to prop her up into a half-sitting position. There was a nasty bruise on her jaw that looked half-healed by her aura.

Blake walked up to her, taking a seat next to her on the bed. "Is that what happened?"

"No," Yang instantly said, but before Blake could comment on her defensiveness, the brawler back-tracked, grumbling; "...more or less."

The faunus gently checked for a bump under the ice pack. "You wanna elaborate?"

Yang pursed her lips, making a bit of a show of considering not recounting what has gone down, even though Blake knew her well enough to know that she burned to get it off her chest. "I figured I'd have the upper hand if I made it hard for her to keep me at sword length. 'Cause, like, that's how I'd fight Weiss, right?" she prefaced. "So; match starts, I get up in her space, but before I can touch her… she punches me in the teeth." Yang looked downright aggravated by this; her ego as a melee fighter had to have been bruised from not landing the first punch against a sword fighter. "Not only that, she must've known to take me out before my semblance charged up 'cause she didn't play around. Doesn't miss a beat, throws a roundhouse kick— nearly cracks my skull— knocks me out cold for a few seconds there. Match over." Blake winced in empathetic pain. Yang repositioned her ice pack. "A roundhouse kick," she repeated, highly indignant. "Could you imagine Weiss trying that out? If she even managed one, she'd probably break her leg on my head."

That mental image was funnier than Blake wanted to admit, but she didn't let herself get distracted by it. Yang basing her entire attack strategy off of Weiss's capacities had been a horrible idea, and not only that, but assuming that an opponent was solely proficient with the weapon they happened to wield was such a glaring oversight. And, why was Yang even surprised that Winter would know about her semblance? If Weiss hadn't told her— which she certainly would have— the woman must have witnessed it during the televised Vytal tournament matches. All in all, Yang's reasoning had been full of holes. "I don't know what to tell you except… I told you so."

Yang threw her a wounded look.

Blake wasn't moved; she'd earned the right to say exactly that. And in her estimation, she'd also earned the right to sermon, so she proceeded to do just that. "How could you ever think that being sisters would mean they'd be a copy of one another? You of all people should've known better. You helped train Ruby yourself and Ruby still can't throw a punch to save her life."

"Ruby and I have totally different weapons, and we don't have the same semblance the way they do," Yang argued. "It's totally obvious Ruby and I would have different styles, but… those two? Come on."

Sure, this much was undeniable, but Blake still couldn't comprehend how her partner had overlooked the blatant evidence that remained; "Winter has military training, it's a given that she'd be able to hold her own in hand to hand combat. You can even tell that she's conditioned by different combat abilities than Weiss just by looking at her— she's clearly so much sturdier than Weiss."

"Sturdier, huh?"

"Yes."

Yang moved the ice pack, leering at her. "Her body?"

"Well… yes."

Yang gasped. "Are you looking at other women?"

Blake swatted her arm, unamused.

"I'm kidding," she grinned impishly. "It's hard not to notice that she isn't scrawny like Weiss— I mean, even having different moms, Ruby and I have more similar builds than they do."

It wasn't wrong that, although her proportions were less generous, Ruby too had an hourglass figure, and, though shorter and more svelte than her sister, she indeed looked similarly solid. Blake's eyes scanned down her partner's body; Yang nevertheless remained in a league of her own. "You think that Ruby could put on muscle mass like you, if she tried?"

"I'd love to see her try," Yang laughed. "Can you picture her with guns like mine?" She took advantage of her lack of a leather jacket to flex for emphasis, shooting Blake a saucy grin.

Blake might've bitten her lower lip. Was she basic for enjoying it this much? "I really can't. I doubt she could ever match you," she said; her finger tracing from the brawler's naked shoulder down her arm to feel her bicep. "You might have similar proportions, but you're just… built bigger. In all metrics."

Violet eyes twinkled in amusement. "You mean my height?"

"Sure."

"Bigger hair?"

Although she knew what her partner was playing at, Blake remained impassive. "Also."

Lacking the patience to attempt to goad her further, Yang gave an exaggerated gasp. "Were you talking about my boobs?"

Blake's attention strayed to that sliver of exposed skin between her partner's orange scarf and her overalls. "I wasn't, but we can talk about them."

"Did you have something to say about them?"

"I could say a lot of things about them."

"Could you now?" Yang smirked.

"Paying full homage."

"If you need inspiration, maybe seeing them would help."

Blake's eyes snapped to her partner's. Yang maintained eye contact. The light, bantering air about them was being overtaken by burgeoning tension. How Yang had joined her in the shower some days ago floated through Blake's mind. That night before the heist, as things had gotten heated, Yang had cut intimacy short, but between this week's shower episode, her saucy bet earlier, and this now… she was clearly making efforts to venture into intimate territory again. "What about Ruby and Weiss?"

"No, only you can see them."

Blake couldn't possibly have rolled her eyes harder. "Idiot." Even so, she shifted closer. "I meant: isn't it risky to start down that road? Where are they anyways?"

"Donuts, remember? They went to get them— Ruby's treat because we lost."

"They went without you?"

"I was told to get some rest; they'll bring some back for us too," Yang explained. "They just left like, fifteen minutes ago. They're probably not even off campus yet, nevermind anywhere close to the city." She sunk deeper into the pillow, her voice was huskier as she concluded; "It'll be a little while still before they're back."

Instigating like this knowing they'd have plenty of time ahead of them? The very air around them was charged with anticipation. Although tugging at the back of Blake's mind was the memory of how horrendous she'd felt when she thought she'd infringed on her partner's boundaries back in Argus… going down that road had to be fine as long as she followed the other woman's lead, right?

"So…? Are you gonna go for it?" Yang coaxed quietly.

Blake's breathing might have deepened; she definitely felt warmer. "I'm undressing you?"

"I'm wounded," she mocked, pushing her head back into the ice pack for emphasis. "And this Huntress attire is sooo restrictive, it's uncomfortable."

"Oh, and we certainly can't have that, now can we?" Blake mused, already reaching to unfasten the overalls' suspenders. "Did you need to be nursed back to health too?"

"Now you're catching my drift," Yang winked.

Hands wandered across strong shoulders, gliding around her partner's neck, under the blonde hair; Blake unhurriedly untied the orange bandana before discarding it. She moved on to slowly unzip the overalls down to her midriff, and Yang's stomach quivered in tangible anticipation under her light touch. Blake hummed in appreciation, feeling her own appetite roar. Under the white tube top she now tugged down, there was a strapless bra with a zipper at the front that offered some light compression. Peeling back that last layer, her breasts spilled out, released from their constriction.

Blake took a moment to appreciate the sight; seeing her topless had always been quite a view. Her heavy breasts were nevertheless round and perky, small pink nipples gloriously on display at their zenith. They were already erect—from the cold air or in anticipation of Blake's next move? The answer was plain to see; the way the skin of her neck, around her clavicles, had flushed with red undertones spoke of her arousal. Blake's heart thumped so hard it might've torn out of her ribcage. Yes, she'd seen her laid bare time and time again, but her incredulity in what was at last taking place almost had her unraveling. Blake's eyes slid up to meet her partner's again. There was that telltale gleam alight in her gorgeous lilac gems, and it drew Blake in to kiss her burningly. Yang's hand found her cheek and Blake leaned closer, whilst not quite getting in bed with her entirely yet. Although it was pretty damn clear what was happening, although Yang had put efforts over the last days to rekindle intimacy, although it was with a no-qualms-left playfulness that she'd led them to this point, a tiny voice at the back of Blake's mind cried to obtain explicit consent if she were to act on the desires bubbling up within her. She released her lips but didn't move away; their noses still brushing as Blake murmured her unassuming question; "How far did you wanna take this?"

Yang, eyes half-lidded and totally dazed, was already breathing deeper. "What do you mean, how far?"

"I mean… can I— a-are we…?" It was suddenly incredibly difficult to look at her. "I don't know what you're okay with, in Argus, you—"

"I'm ready, Blake," she cut in, drawing her eyes again. Yang leaned her forehead to hers and gazed back at her unreservedly. "I want you," she murmured burningly, "I want you like we were never apart— like nothing ever changed. I want it to be just like before." Something shifted almost tangibly in the air around them as the last remnants of Blake's doubts went up in smoke. Yang wore a slightly sheepish smile. "Over the last few days I've been trying to… y'know, make a move. Get close again."

Blake couldn't help a short, incredulous laugh— did she think it had flown under the radar? "Yes. Sorry, yes, I noticed," she said apologetically. "But I— I don't know; it's so surreal that we're finally… I almost can't believe it, and I guess I needed… I needed you to say it."

"I get it," Yang smiled back. "Now I did though…so don't hold back anymore, kay?"

In lieu of an answer, Blake shifted her weight to fully climb on the bed, getting astride her on all fours. Seeing her partner under her this way, blonde curls spread around her like a halo of gold, eyes darkened with enticing lust and a smile that wasn't leaving her lips, Blake was thrown back to those happy days she'd dreamed of more times than she could count, and was simply rendered breathless. It felt like a lifetime ago since she'd been able to drown in her, and she felt unspeakably fortunate to again receive that privilege. Without further pause, Blake moved in again, drawn to her lips like a bee to honey. The feeling of them was so divine, the taste of her tongue so intoxicating, it inflamed her desire for touch. She shifted her weight from all fours to sit on her hips, freeing her hands to massage her shoulders and arms, but not lingering there very long— how could she not instantly make for her exposed breasts? She contoured their shape with her fingers, relishing in her soft skin, in its warmth, in its give as her fingers dug into her flesh. She could only linger to toy with her nipples for a few seconds before she was inescapably drawn to move her mouth to one. Sucking and biting greedily, she felt hands in her hair, holding her closer as Yang faintly arched her back, offering herself more blatantly. Blake moved from one to the other, eliciting gasps as she feasted, as she dragged her mouth across her flesh; it seemed that no amount of skin could quench her soaring thirst. The air between them, around them, had grown warmer; Blake was starting to feel her catsuit stick to her increasingly more humid skin, and yet she was too invested in what she was doing to remedy that. Nothing mattered but the drug that was her kiss— Blake went for it again; she captured her lips again and again.

"Blake," Yang managed between kisses, "I actually— " she cupped her face with both hands, keeping her still as she drew away to gaze at her. "I— not exactly like it was before," she said, taking a moment to hold meaningful eye contact. Blake was so completely entranced that she could barely hold it together. Still, she listened. "I don't want to hurt you the way I did when I couldn't tell you how I felt." Blake felt her eyes widen. Yang's clear violet orbs stayed riveted to hers. "You know I love you, right?"

At once, her eyes watered with searing emotion, and the love that burst forth inside her seemed to suffocate her. "Of course I know," she breathed shakily. Abruptly weak, she crumpled forward, her forehead to Yang's shoulder. Delicately, fingers glided through Blake's hair, finding their way to gently hold her head as Yang laid a kiss between the quivering cat ears. A sob stuck in her throat, yet her lips stretched to their limits in an incredulous smile. "Sorry, I don't know why I'm crying, I— I thought I'd be more ready than that when you'd…" her breath caught, and Blake promptly abandoned her brewing rant; more urgently, her heart swelled and she needed it out; "I-I love you too," she blurted. She couldn't believe how weightless she felt being able to say it, being able to let it out, to let it free. Blake laughed. "God, it feels so good to say it."

"Were you holding back on that too?"

"I didn't want you to feel pressured," she explained apologetically.

Yang's arms tightened around her, her cheek pressed against the top of her head, and Blake felt her nod. "Sorry you had to hold back. And I'm sorry it took so long," she said gently. Her breath tickled a cat ear, making it flicker, and Yang touched her nose to it, nuzzling faintly. "I really, really, really love you, more than I can tell you."

Blake returned her embrace. Nestled against her this way, she could hear her heart. "Thank you."

Yang laughed. "You don't need to thank me for that."

"I really feel like I do," the faunus muttered in return, peeking up at her partner. "After everything I put you through, after how difficult the road's been…"

Yang gently cupped her cheek, rubbing affectionately with a mechanical thumb. "Maybe it has, but…" she shook her head. "Blake, you're so fucking worth it. You're the most amazing person I've ever met, I don't think I would have been able to feel any other way about you, no matter what."

There was a time when Blake would have done everything to deny that sentiment, back when she rued herself for everything that'd gone wrong, for everything she could have done better, for every instance in which she had lacked the bravery she'd wished she had. She'd had a long way to go when she'd first met Yang. But she had come that long way, and today, she didn't want to deny this sentiment Yang expressed. She didn't feel like she wasn't worth Yang's esteem. She didn't feel lacking anymore. Blake shifted her position to more comfortably be able to gaze at her. "You saw something worthwhile in me long before I was ever able to, and it's a big part of how I was able to find it in myself," she told her. Tilting her head, she kissed the hand still on her cheek. The metal was warm, maybe from having drawn Blake's body heat. "I can thank you for that."

A smile drew itself across Yang's lips in return. "...Sure, okay."

Simultaneously, they leaned in, resuming their making out. Blake reached between their bodies to finish unzipping the overalls, tugging at them had Yang raise her hips to get them down past her ass, and she kicked them off hurriedly, her underwear gone alongside them. They only separated enough to rid Yang of the tube top that'd been abandoned like a belt around her waist. Now entirely naked, Blake didn't fail to take notice that she'd shaved the way she used to; another indication that Yang had been ready and prepared for this. The scent of her arousal was strong, and desire washed over Blake in what felt akin to a cataclysmic tidal wave. She lost control of her hands as they touched everywhere; thighs, hips, gliding up her sides, breasts, muscular arms, her lips barely left Yang's as she spoke. "I want you so much," she managed, pressing to her. Heat ragingly spread through her like a wildfire and it was definitely contagious— Yang reciprocated with matching passion. In that instant, she internally cursed the fabric still getting in the way, still hampering skin to skin contact; why couldn't her outfit have just peeled itself off on its own already?

Yang must've had the same thought because her fingers fumbled to find the zipper on Blake's neck, and she gauchely started trying to peel the catsuit off. "You need to get rid of that before I tear it to pieces," she urged.

What a pain— Agonizingly, Blake tore herself from her lover, unbuckling her wrist cuffs while Yang unbuckled her belt. In seconds her white overcoat was off, but the catsuit provided more of a challenge. Why did she ever decide on this piece? Once peeled off, once entirely naked, Yang barely waited for her to climb back in bed; she caught her and hauled her into her lap, breathing out a quivering, lustful sigh as their naked bodies came together. The feeling of her skin against skin was downright criminal, Blake was dizzy with both lust and nostalgia; everything she'd ever wanted to do to her, everything they'd done before, all her fantasies came flooding in at once.

With no time to recover, she felt Yang's mouth on her neck and collarbone, and Blake wrapped her arms around strong shoulders, intoxicated by the mingling scent of their bodies. Both Yang's hands grabbed her ass and forced her from position sitting in her lap to instead stand on her knees, putting her naked chest at face level. Yang took a nipple in her mouth, avidly sucking as she sensually caressed her other breast with her hand. Blake's fingers dug in her hair, holding her head closer and encouragingly scratching her scalp. The blonde left her nipple reddened, swollen and rock-hard as she moved to the other to give it the same treatment. However greedily Yang had latched onto her, she always paid mind to not hurt her; she'd always been careful that way in how she handled her. Blake's arms around her tightened, her fingers started searching her partner's powerfully-built back under that cascading mane of hers. "Wasn't I supposed to be the one taking care of you?"

"You said 'nurse me back to health'," Yang reminded her, wrapping her lips around a nipple again as she peered up to her. "See?"

Although tempted to roll her eyes, Blake felt herself cracking up. "Idiot."

With a surge of playful aggression and a laugh —the sort that made Blake completely melt— Yang flipped them around, trapping her under her. "Yeah, but I'm your idiot," she grinned proudly.

Could her heart hold this much bliss without tearing asunder? Blake reached up, cupping her cheeks with both hands. "Mine," she breathed.

What mischievousness had briefly invaded Yang melted away, leaving untold fondness. She laid herself down over Blake completely, the weight of her body familiar, reassuring, and yet so sensual. Yang caressed her naked skin longingly, like she was rediscovering her, and her hunger could be felt through her fingertips— that same all-consuming hunger with which Yang had once claimed her entirely. How Blake had missed it. She'd missed her so. In a fervent impulse, she cradled her partner closer, and Yang pressed herself closer in return. She loved how Yang pushed against her, she loved how she took control of her, gripping her thighs, inciting them apart to make room. Blake wrapped her legs around her waist and promptly felt a caress between them. Warm fingers slid between her wet lips without yet entering her, Blake shivered in pleasure at the sensation of them. It felt like Yang was reacquainting herself with her shape, exploring again the folds, contouring and teasing the opening. It took Blake a second to pick up on it, but her touch felt clumsier, and only then did it dawn on her that Yang wasn't using her dominant hand. That didn't matter— the fiery blonde's naked body against hers was the only thing that mattered. Blake took her lips again, kissing her deeply; she was so incredibly turned on, she wouldn't need an expert touch to be pushed over the edge; the way she touched her was more than enough.

Yang broke from the kiss, halting what she'd been doing. "It's… a bit more difficult with this hand," she admitted awkwardly. "Haven't done anything like this since my arm…"

Blake shook her head. "It's okay." Even if it was more challenging, she could easily guess why Yang would have elected to use her left hand; heat, warmth, and wetness were things that she couldn't feel with her right. But there was a chance it was self-consciousness, and Blake didn't want her to feel like she wasn't allowed to touch her with her right hand just because it wasn't flesh. "You don't need to use your left, you can use either hand, I don't mind."

Yang blinked. "Or… I could use my mouth." She was already moving herself down.

"Or your mouth," Blake repeated, suddenly febrile.

She watched spellbound as Yang trailed her way down, kissing her skin with burning reverence. Her mouth followed the faint outline of her abs down the middle of the faunus' stomach, making a stop for her tongue to impudently prod her bellybutton, invoking the vision of it soon burrowing elsewhere. That promise had Blake whining needily in spite of herself; Yang hummed amusedly, but still complied in moving along. Her hands caressed Blake's thighs, gradually pushing them apart wider as she settled between her legs. Yang's lips touched the inside of her thigh, trailed around on her pelvis, inside the other thigh, teasing all the skin around her real target. Anticipation built up and welled inside of Blake like a roaring beast; what a challenge to resist the urge to pull her head against herself. Yang's moist breath warmed her and blonde curls tickled Blake's skin as she drew closer, flushing her with a new wave of heat and lust. Feeling the tip of her tongue slowly part her was almost a religious experience. Her mouth fully connected in the next moment, and Blake's eyes might have rolled back as she involuntarily jerked her hips against her. Yang wrapped her arms around her thighs as she shoved her face closer, now eagerly digging in. Her mouth searched every inch of her, lapping up all of her arousal, kissing and sucking her clit with devotion. Blake's skin had gotten damp with their heated making-out, but sweat was now starting to roll down her back and between her breasts as she writhed with pleasure.

Yang inched a bit lower to push her tongue inside her and Blake bucked her hips again, wholly consumed with her desire, so saturated with unfathomable lust her body could barely withstand it, and somehow still, her flesh burned even hotter as Yang teased her opening, kissing it with an open mouth, gliding her tongue in and out. Her face, head, and tip of her ears felt like they were overheating, her entire body was flushed, she was dizzy, and she didn't know when she'd started purring. Two fingers slowly penetrated her, freeing Yang's mouth to move back up to her swollen clit. She started pumping her fingers as she resumed sucking, and the feverish moan that escaped Blake was a sound she didn't even know she could make. Spreading her legs wider, she was powerless to stop the thrust of her hip meeting the thrusting motion. The faunus pushed her back against the cold metal of the bunk bed casing, her blood boiling, her breathing was becoming ragged, and she couldn't make herself relax her grip on Yang's head as she ground against her. Her mind unraveling, it was a real struggle to articulate her appeal for more. "P-put another one in," she begged between gasping breaths, feeling her oncoming climax just a heartbeat away. It felt so much tighter as Yang complied with her request, pushing a third finger in, penetrating her a final time. Blake felt herself clench rigidly as her hips forcefully jerked in a prolonged push against her mouth. Heat overcame her, immediately followed by the most wonderful free-fall as her body was shaken by a powerful orgasm. Euphoria. She might've faded out entirely.

When that visceral high started to dissipate, the tension in her muscles and her insistent purring evaporated with it. She thought that she'd remembered how satisfying sex had been, but basking in its afterglow was incomparable. Blake rolled her head on her shoulders, it felt so heavy. Her eyelids weighed a ton too, but she still made herself focus. It was only then that she noticed that Yang hadn't moved, her mouth still enveloped her sex, and her fingers remained inside her, waiting for the contractions around them to stop. Blake carefully combed back blonde bangs away from her damp forehead, and drew her gaze doing so. It might've been a mistake, because Blake felt robbed when the other woman took back her hand and lips.

Thankfully, Yang had the grace to not pull away entirely, and her warm breath against Blake's quivering stomach as she kissed her way up was delightfully comforting. Blake wrapped her arms around her shoulders, inciting her to lay on top of her; which she did, resting her head over her heart. The heat of Yang's body over her rapidly cooling one was the best thing in the world, and Blake had to fight herself to not drift to sleep.

Yang's voice pulled at her attention. "I want to live between your legs."

"Oh, you're welcome to."

The tone of her voice was playful. "Should I head back down?"

Blake refused to open her eyes. "That's your prerogative."

The blonde laughed, rubbing her cheek affectionately against her breast. With a satisfied sigh, she settled again, her nose pressed to her skin. The faint warmth of her breath made it seem like she might have been savoring the smell of it. A lull fell over them, leisurely and comfortable. Blake hadn't realized her partner had actually been thinking about it until she unexpectedly decided; "… Maybe just to clean you up."

Honey-colored eyes fluttered open as her living blanket dislodged itself from her arms. Both of Yang's hands found her knees as she sat up again, but she didn't hunker back down between her legs just yet. As if she'd forgotten herself, she sat there motionless, contemplating Blake's naked body. "Everytime I see you like this, I just… I really love it."

It wasn't the first time she mentioned that. "What do you like so much about it?"

Yang grinned. "Besides how hot your sexy-ass looks all sexed up like that?" She playfully shot back, obtaining herself a full-body blush from the dark-haired beauty. A more genuine, softer expression painted over her impishness. "How peaceful and fulfilled you look." Yang leaned her cheek on one of Blake's knees, observing her pensively. "Because I've really seen you... Not okay. Brooding back in Beacon, nightmares, or anxiety… but when you've just cum, it's always been like… all your demons have gone up in smoke, and you're just glowing and at rest," she explained, her fingers idly stroking up and down her legs. "I love seeing you looking so peaceful; my heart soars, and it makes me want to scream from the rooftops how you make me feel."

"You said that back then too," Blake remarked, watching her partner lower herself again. "Our first— well, on that mission, when we did it again on the second night. You said the same thing."

"I remember."

"I couldn't tell what you meant," she mused, letting her thighs be guided to rest on Yang's shoulders.

"I honestly didn't know what I meant either," Yang admitted, tucking her hair behind her ears. "But now, looking back…" Her hands moved from Blake's thighs to her hips, caressing absentmindedly as she deliberated with herself. "What I felt then… it's exactly what I feel now. I feel like that because of how much I love you," she softly said. With a smile, she laid a gentle kiss on her lower stomach before moving further down.

A shiver coursed through her at the sensation of her mouth warming her sex again. Blake however didn't let herself get distracted from what'd been said— something too important had come to light. "If that's the case, then you're saying that… you were already in love with me back then. The very first time we did it."

Yang hummed in approval; the vibrations emitted against Blake's flesh felt hazardously good. "Looking back now…" Long lick. "I think that I… was already in love with you way before I ever realized I was even attracted to you. Hell— I knew you were special from the first time I saw you."

"Stop it," she scoffed.

"No, I'm serious," the blonde chuckled. Resting her cheek against the inside of her thigh, she gazed up at her adoringly. "I liked you right away. And I really wanted you to like me too— I was hella nervous about you picking me as your partner. I really hoped I wouldn't screw it up and you wouldn't regret it."

"But that wasn't love," Blake countered.

"Maybe not yet," Yang acknowledged, momentarily going back to her self-appointed task. Her tongue dove inside her, eliciting a short gasp from Blake along with a jerk of her hips. Hadn't she claimed to be doing nothing but a cleanup job? She slowly swirled it around inside her, evidently taking deep pleasure in what she was doing, before she withdrew her tongue. Yang licked her lips before meeting Blake's gaze once more. "… I think I really, truly fell in love with you after you told us about leaving the White Fang. I remembered thinking to myself how noble you were, and I admired how headstrong, and driven you were," she said, disentangling herself from Blake's legs and hoisting herself up to advance over her on all fours. "And I was worried sick because you weren't taking care of yourself. And… I just wanted to hold you, take care of you, be there for you. Remember when I told you about my mom for the first time? Trying to convince you to take care of yourself?"

How could she ever think that Blake would forget that sunset-colored classroom? "That's when you convinced me to go to the dance."

"Uh-huh," her smile was obscenely cute. "I wanted to dance with you so badly," Yang set herself on her stomach. "And like a moron, I didn't realize why I wanted to dance with you that badly."

Blake smiled back; something told her that this was why Yang had done everything she could earlier to convince her to go dancing on their first date. "I feel like there's a joke to be made about doing the horizontal dance."

"Turns out I did want that too!"

They giggled together, and Blake's heart filled to the brim with so much adoration. She couldn't comprehend how a single being could possibly feel so much love, how she could possibly hold all of this inside of her. All she knew, and she knew it for a fact, was that she needed to express it so urgently that the sheer magnitude of what coursed through her might make her lose her mind if she didn't. "Come here," she murmured, taking her hands in hers, trying to guide her to move herself up.

Yang gasped in delighted fake-surprise. "Is it my turn?"

"Oh yes," Blake huskily breathed. She already salivated at the thought of tasting her again. "I'm giving you a change of seats— I got the best one in the house just for you," she said, gesturing to her face.

Yang didn't move; she had a bit of an apologetic look. "I… it's just that...I want to be able to hold you," she explained. "Is that okay?"

How ridiculously precious. "Of course," she cooed, propping herself up and opening her arms.

Yang's hands found her shoulders as she repositioned herself in her arms, straddling her. Airy golden curls tumbled off her shoulders to dangle inches from Blake's nose, their heavenly scent completely taking hold of her. Her cheek was pressed to her breasts as she gathered her closer; Yang's body in her arms was at the same time a refuge and a temple to worship. Blake's eyes fluttered shut, she thoroughly enjoyed her senses being filled with her. Her hands had a mind of their own as they coursed across the fiery blonde's smoldering skin; they caressed her ass and thighs, her back and arms, and her ass again, this time gripping both cheeks and spreading them a bit. Her partner moaned quietly, very quietly, yet it sent fire coursing through Blake's veins and she needed to take possession of her. Having just obtained release moments ago, the depth of her lust fleetingly confounded her, at least until she remembered that Yang's tongue had worked her up again; Blake suspected that her partner had wanted her riled up, she'd wanted to feel starvation in her fingertips and scorching lust on her lips.

"Well played, Xiao Long," Blake exhaled hotly, her teeth grazing a nipple.

This elicited a cheeky laugh. "Did I do something?"

Rather than gracing that with a verbal answer, Blake made good on her unspoken threat and bit down on her breast— just enough for it to sting a little. Yang had a delighted gasp, and then a frisky growl, with it came a light thrust of her hips against Blake's body. Desire surged through her again, and although Blake would have loved to have the patience to torture her right back, she could only succumb to her own lust for touch. How drenched and hot she was; the faunus was impressed that her partner risked playing games when she was this desperate for release. She slowly slid her fingers in, and the way the blonde pushed against her hand was nothing gentle, so Blake readily answered that silent plea, promptly picking up a steady rhythm as she pumped her fingers. The way they slickly slid in and out, the way contractions inside of her seemed to be sucking Blake's fingers in, the timbre of her voice as she sighed lustfully, it galvanized the blaze raging under Blakes's skin. She didn't mean to, but she already dictated a strenuous pace as she pumped her fingers, and the other woman was collapsing over her.

Yang's grip around her shoulders was unsteady and Blake could feel her hot breathing on her scalp as the blonde pushed her nose and mouth to her head. "Oh fuck," she groaned heatedly, meeting Blake's motion with her hips.

Exhilarated, Blake slanted her fingers to push against her front wall as she maintained her in-and-out motion. This new angle upped the stakes drastically, and Yang's head rolled back on her shoulders with a guttural moan, something primal seeming to have unleashed itself as she rolled her hips with renewed vigor, as she grasped febrilly at the faunus' skin. Her face grew red from the exertion, her blonde bangs stuck to the damp skin of her forehead and cheeks, and her half-lidded eyes glazed with her pleasure. Yang puffed out a half-moaned excited chuckle, sounding feverish with lust, and however much she struggled to breathe, her mouth found Blake's again. On her tongue was a hint of sex, only an aftertaste, but enough to send an almost painful throbbing between the faunus' legs as she avidly attempted to steal her taste back from her partner. Yang crushed her into a desperate embrace, devouring her lips, and it was only a few seconds before she tensed up. Blake felt her fingers being squeezed tighter with pulsating contractions, and she pushed them deeper. The sound Yang made against her lips was an assault on Blake's sanity. The blonde threw her head back, arching into her climax, and golden eyes stayed riveted to her lover's features, watching the pleasure wash over her. Yang's expression of bliss, with her lips slightly parted, her eyes shut tightly and her eyebrows high, was just divine, and Blake seared it in her memory again.

Yang curled back over her to bury her face in her shoulder, in her hair, holding onto Blake's body like her life might depend on it. "Oh my god," she murmured under her breath, "I feel so light."

After all this, Blake needed to regain control of herself too. She carefully withdrew her fingers and wrapped her arms around her partner's waist, holding her so close, waiting for her own body to start settling.

The blonde was reeling, the way her chest shuddered betrayed her emotion. "I haven't felt like that in so long, I-I hadn't wanted this in so long— last time I came, it was when I was with you," the words were strained, and the tone of her voice somewhat incredulous. Her quivering hands ran everywhere across Blake's back, almost as if she needed to make sure she was real. "When I was— when I was recovering I—... it felt like I'd never want— that I'd never desire ever again, but being with you, I just… I want to feel your skin, and touch you, and I just… something is awake and alive in me again." She shook her head, burrowing further into Blake's neck. " You make me feel so good, and sooo… like myself again," she sniffed. Yang sucked in some air, trying to regain control somewhat. "Sorry— I'm sorry, I'm rambling."

This heartfelt outpouring of emotion stirred her deeply. Yang had previously confessed that her sex drive had pummeled to zero during her recovery; Blake couldn't imagine how it must have felt like to go from that to such a cathartic release. "Don't apologize," she rubbed her back comfortingly. "I can't tell you how happy I am that you're feeling all this."

Yang moved to kiss her temple, then leaned her cheek on top of her head as she enveloped her in a hug again. "I love you."

Blake nodded faintly, her voice was muffled by how her face was stuffed in the other woman's ample chest; "I love you too."

"I love you so much," she repeated, adamantly, burningly. Blake felt her shake her head faintly. "I should've told you a long time ago," Yang added quietly, almost more to herself. "I should've told you before everything went to shit. I regretted it so much."

"It's okay," Blake soothingly hushed. Very carefully, she started shifting their position, inciting her partner to lay with her. Yang complied, making herself comfortable with her head in the crook of her neck, bodies entwined. Blake started tenderly combing golden curls with her fingers, when something occurred to her. "You regretted it even with me being gone…?"

The blonde exhaled quietly. "Because I wondered if you might've stayed if I'd told you."

"Right." They had indeed broached that idea, as Yang had point blank asked her about this when they were scouring the streets of Argus, looking for Oscar.

"It wasn't because I wasn't sure how I felt that I wasn't ready to tell you, you know?"

"I know," Blake softly answered. Telling her would have meant plunging head first without a safety net, and then-Yang's abandonment issues denied her the ability to trust like that. Blake hadn't been the only one with demons to vanquish before they could truly stand strong together. She tilted her head so she could see her. "Don't worry, I understand now what you were going through."

Yang stretched her neck to kiss the tip of her lips. "I was an idiot."

"You weren't ready," Blake said.

"Still an idiot." She returned her head to the crook of her neck, and again, Yang squeezed her tightly.

Blake closed her eyes, relishing in her embrace, and let her hands wander her back, shoulders, arms so slowly, very absentmindedly. They stayed nestled in each other's for an extended moment of silence. It was so serene, and so blissful. Nothing existed but the weight of Yang's body and the way her breath warmed Blake's skin. Soon, Blake caught herself, realizing she'd been drifting to sleep. She made herself raise her head, trying to shake off the lethargy— it was still only late afternoon, and the second half of their team would be back sooner or later. "Do you want to shower first?"

Yang glanced up at her, pouting. "You're not going in with me?"

"We'll get distracted if we go in together."

"And?"

Cat ears twitched. "How long does it take to get donuts?"

Yang groaned. "Right." With this, she begrudgingly moved her weight from over Blake.

Before she could succumb to the magnetic force that drew her to her partner's arms, Blake made herself roll out of bed. Better get dressed for the time being.

Yang still didn't move; watching her slip on her underwear and seeming quite amused with how painstakingly long it took to get the catsuit all the way up her legs. "You really made a choice with this, huh," she commented.

Blake hoisted her garment over her ass, wiggling into the clingy fabric. "Don't say that like you disapprove, I've seen how you look at me," she threw her a knowing look.

Yang laughed. "I mean, can you blame me? That thing's basically a second skin, it's so tight."

Abandoning her endeavor of pulling her one piece all the way up, Blake started gathering the scattered clothing, letting the top of her catsuit dangle around her hips. "Maybe next time I'll buy something baggy and shapeless."

"Aww," the blonde pouted, still doing nothing to help or get going, "and take away my eye-candy?"

"Do you really need it?" Blake mused. "You can have all the eye-candy you want when we're alone."

A wide grin split her lips. "Is that why you're not pulling it all the way up yet?" She said, finally getting up. Yang strolled up to her and wrapped her arms around Blake's still naked waist. "Letting me feast my eyes a bit longer?"

Blake smirked in return. "Maybe."

"That's dangerous," Yang warned, hands sliding down to grope her ass liberally. "What if I lose control?"

"I guess that would be round two," Blake answered, her own hand straying to her lover's breast, thoroughly fondling it while she still had access to naked skin. "But it's not my baby sister who risks finding out what we get up to when we're alone."

Yang made a sore face, and, with a sort of unintelligible bleating sound, released her.

Repressing a laugh and with a shake of her head, Blake grabbed some Atlas Academy sweats they'd been issued and pushed the clean apparel into her partner's arms. "Go shower."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Blake snorted. "This academy is getting to you."

Yang laughed. "When you get kicked hard enough, it'll get through even a thick skull like mine," she said; evidently, that had to do with that afternoon's match.

Sharing one last indulgent kiss, Yang made for the bathroom, singsonging. Blake waited for the door to click shut before she pulled out her scroll and angled for a selfie, covering her chest with one hand. Yang hadn't won said afternoon match, but she could still get that selfie… as long as it didn't end up as her scroll wallpaper. Blake finished squeezing into her catsuit and zipped it up.

She plopped on her bed with a satisfied sigh, dreamily letting her eyes wander to the ceiling. In the background, the homely sound of running water started. A little over a year ago, what she had attained now would have sounded like a grandiose pipe dream. Everything fell together, everything felt right. Everything was right. Herself. Her parents. The team, her second family, back together. And most of all, Yang's smile, her love, her commitment. Hope swelled in her chest; there had never been a time in her life when she had such faith in the future. There had never been a time in her life when things were brighter.

The End