Allos, sorry this took so long, but I've been on a bit of a hiatus. This chapter was a long time in the making, but I hope it was worth the wait. As a heads up, the next few chapters will probably also take this long to finish, just because I'm quite busy. Still, I hope you enjoy, and don't worry, I'm not dead, and neither is this series. Oh, and guess what citrus fruit is coming back? Thanks to Connor Metz for looking over my work. I hope you enjoy, and as always, comments, reviews, requests, and general questions can be sent to et111thompson or blacklusterheart . Enjoy.
Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY, or have any legal rights to its characters, world, story, or anything else related to it. This story is for the purpose of entertainment only. RWBY belongs to its respective owners, please support the official release.
The sky had turned the color of slate before Wiess stirred, and little flakes of snow had built up on her exposed back, nearly burying her. The rusty taste of blood filled her mouth, and she could feel dried patches of the stuff on her lips and in the corners of her mouth. She had been unconscious for a while.
She moved her neck experimentally, and pain fired up her skull, pushing in on her eyes oppressively, and drawing a whimper from her blood filled mouth. As feeling began to return to her limbs, she became aware of a multitude injuries across her body, some small, and some not so much. After a quick assessment of herself, she figured that she had a fractured sternum, several broken ribs, internal bleeding in addition the web of cuts, scrapes, and road rash that covered all of her exposed skin.
Wiess gave herself to the count of ten, and tried to push herself out of the snow, but nothing going. The pain of even trying to mover her arm was too much. She coughed into the snow, and it came away red, steam rising the half inch back into her eyes. She wasn't going anywhere under her own volition for quite some time.
"Wiess?" She heard the voice, muffled through the blanket of snow that covered her. "Are you awake?" It was Yang.
"I'm alive, I guess." Wiess wheezed into the snow. Her chest hurt with the effort of talking. Definitely broken ribs.
"Good, now, whatever you do, don't move." Yang spoke quietly, and in a monotone, making as little enunciation as possible.
"Please tell me the damn thing isn't still here." Wiess pleaded, flexing her calves and trying to put some life back into her sore and frozen muscles.
"It, is called Chell, and she is very much still here."
'Joy' thought Wiess, trying to think a way out of this situation, but coming up completely dry on ideas. "Where is it?" Wiess asked, trying to remain clam, despite what looked like a hopeless situation
"Asleep on my chest." Yang answered frankly, and Wiess almost laughed. It was kind of morbidly comical.
"I thought it was funny too." The voice was a man's and came from behind Wiess. "But then again, I woke up when she was snoring."
"Norton or Fox?" Wiess asked into the snow.
"It's Fox, Norton's still out of it." Fox replied.
"Anything else I should be made aware of before we all die of hypothermia?" Wiess asked, ignoring the pain in her chest.
"I don't think Norton's doing so well," Fox replied softly, "Yang said he hit a tree pretty hard, and even though he's breathing, I think he might have a ruptured lung, he's been coughing blood for the last hour, but still hasn't woken up yet."
"How long have I been unconscious?" Wiess asked, swallowing a mouthful of blood. It burned when it hit her empty stomach, and she realized how hungry she was.
"About four hours." Yang informed her.
Wiess thought through their situation; if Norton had a punctured lung, he would bleed out internally within two hours, even if his aura hadn't been drained and was there to slow the bleeding. That meant that they had to sneak away from a from a highly dangerous creature, which was currently asleep on top of one of their party, and carry away an unconscious guy bleeding out from his lung, and do it with two people who were also pretty severely injured.
"Fox, how badly injured are you?" Wiess asked, trying to think her way out of this seemingly unsolvable situation.
"I think I have a broken collar bone," He answered unhappily, "and my chest really hurts, but I can move my legs just fine."
"Do you think you could get out of here and back to camp to bring everyone else before Norton bleeds to death?" Wiess asked, hoping beyond hope he could at least go for backup.
"If I can get out of the clearing without her killing me, than yes."
"I think you can sneak away," Yang whispered, "She hasn't budged in like, 2 hours, and when we first got here, she didn't wake up the first time until we yelled at her, so you should be able to just walk out, and if you can't, we're all dead in a few more hours anyways."
"Should I just, like, stand up and walk away now?" He asked, a little put off.
"I don't see why not." Yang answered calmly. "We don't have anything better to try."
"Alright, I hope I'll see you in a little."
There was a muffled grunt, and the slow crunching of someone trying to move silently through the snow. It faded after a minute, and everything was quiet again, except the occasional weak couch from the unconscious Norton.
"Now what?" Yang asked, sounding more bored than she was worried.
"We wait." Wiess couldn't see anything else that could be done, except to pray.
Wiess' hands and feet were freezing, and the snow atop her head had melted and refrozen as ice in her hair. She had lost a glove somewhere along the line, and even after carefully pulling her hand into her sleeve, her fingers were numb and it pained her to move them.
"Wiess," Yang whispered, "Do you think we survive this?"
"I hope so, there's a shit load more stuff I want to do before I'm ready to die."
"Like what?"
Wiess paused, she had never really thought about how to answer that question, she just knew that there was more stuff she wanted to do. "I always wanted to be able to protect people," She answered after a pause. "I wanted to have someone look at me and say, 'that person, right there, she's worth having around.'"
"I think your worth having around." Yang replied quietly.
Wiess would have felt embarrassed, but the pain in her chest and the situation at hand wouldn't really allow it.
"What about you, what do you want to do?" Wiess whispered.
Yang was silent for a long time, She watched the snow drift lazily down on to the forest floor. What did she want? She loved Blake, but that didn't seem like it, she wanted something else too.
She finally spoke. "I want to marry Blake."
Wiess was silent. She knew that Blake and Yang were serious, but for Yang to talk about getting married, that was just weird.
"Not while we're in school, and maybe not even for a while after that, but I want that." Yang finished, and there was an air of finality to the whispered conversation, like nothing else should be said. And nothing was.
The landscape that flowed out in front of Blake looked the same as it had for the fifty miles, trees, snow, and the occasional frozen lake. To her right, the Peaks of the Rooth Mountains towered above her, white capped and jagged, like the teeth of a saw, and to her left, forest as far as the eye could see. She climbed as high as the tree she was in would allow, but still could see no discernable land markers. It was like the place was trying to get them lost.
Blake sighed irritably and jumped out of the tree's upper branches and onto the thicker ones where the rest of her team waited. They had realized that they made better time jumping through the trees rather than trying to avoid or fight the Grimm that infested the forest floor below.
"Anything we can use as a marker?" Osswald asked without much enthusiasm.
"Do trees and mountains count as a land mark?" Blake asked sarcastically, signaling for the rest of the group to fall in and keep moving.
Osswald jumped from branch to branch with much more agility than someone of his size would usually possess as he spoke.
"Under normal circumstances, I would say yes, mountains would count as land marks." He answered as the branch under him bent to an alarming degree before he was on to the next one.
"Well they all look the fucking same to me." Blake snorted contemptuously.
"Why are you in such a bad mood all the time?" Osswald asked.
Blake picked up the pace, trying to get away, but he easily kept pace with her.
"Answer me," he insisted, "You've been getting more and more irritable this entire trip, why?"
Blake pursed her lips, scowling. "Because I'm not getting any you mountain of a man!" She snapped at him. "You try and go this long without seeing your girlfriend and then come and talk to me."
Osswald sighed. "We've had this conversation before, still single, still gay."
"Forgot." Blake muttered, embarrassed. How did she keep forgetting important things like that?
"I can empathize with what you're going through though," Osswald kept going, "No one on this team has gotten any in nearly ten days, and some of them are getting pretty antsy."
"As long as I'm not stepping in puddles of cum in the middle of the night, they can do what they please."
Osswald laughed. "Cum would freeze at this altitude, you'd just slip on it."
"Oh Jesus Christ." Blake muttered.
Osswald jumped away laughing, leaving Blake alone.
The trees ahead looked the same as the ones behind, and nothing ever seemed to happen. The most excitement she had gotten recently was taking out some unsuspecting Grimm, and even that hadn't been very interesting. She missed Yang more than she like to think about too. She knew it would be hard to be separated, but this was something else. It felt like she was always depressed, her food tasted like sand, she awoke unrested, and there was a dull ache in her navel that refused go away.
At first she had fantasized about the two of them, but that was too painful, so she tried not to think about sex anymore. It didn't work.
Lost in thought, Blake failed to notice that the tree ahead of her was dead, branches brittle and weak. She landed, and it cracked underneath her, throwing her off balance and sending her tumbling to the snow covered ground below. Her instincts kicked in at the last second, and she twisted her body around, landing on all fours, but still pushing a considerable way into the powdery snow.
She struggled for a moment in the snow before there was another crunch besides her, and Eli alighted besides her.
"Here." he offered his hand, which she took, and he pulled her onto the exposed and solid roots of a tree.
"You seem a little preoccupied, is something wrong?" Eli asked, as they climbed back into the trees and started moving again, picking up the pace to catch up with the group ahead.
"It's….," Blake struggled for words. "Complicated." She settled on after a moment. It was a poor excuse, but it was kind of true.
"Shot in the dark, you miss your girlfriend?" He was blunt, and straight forward, and it kind of pissed Blake off.
"Yep, and there's nothing you can do." She quipped back irritably.
"Actually, you may be wrong about that." Eli retorted coolly. "What do you know about me?"
"Aside from that you're weapon is a whip," she thought about what he did back at Beacon. "That you take all the advanced aura manipulation classes, and you're gay."
"Bi, actually, but yes, I'm good with auras."
"And this could help me how?"
He smiled at her and stopped, alighting on a branch. Blake came to a stop ahead of him and turned, what was he getting at?
"I'm very good with auras, and my aspect is deception, I can make people see things that aren't there without them knowing it."
"…And?"
He cleared his throat. "Ok, this is gonna get a little technical," he held up his hands, making two circles with his fingers. "So, all people have aura's which usually rebuff each other, just as default, but when two people share an intimate connection, the two aura's often sync up and neutralize each other." He brought his two circles together, and opened his fingers to make one big circle. "
"Just, get to the point." Blake pleaded, getting impatient. The group was getting farther and farther ahead.
"Ok, so, I'm good enough with my aura to match it to your frequency, creating the same kind of bond that you had created with your girlfriend, that pain you probably have in your stomach is a result of the shock of not having familiar aura's in close proximity, by the way."
Blake put her hand on her navel and nodded for him to continue.
"So, I can sync with you, and use my aspect to basically let you relive events in your past, catch my drift?"
She did, and was simultaneously thrilled, and very weirded out by the proposition.
"What's in it for you, why would you bother to do this for me?" She asked, gesturing that they should get moving again.
"Honestly, and don't get mad at me, but you've turned into kind of a bitch, and I figure that this would make you relax, and be a better leader."
"I am not being a bitch!" Blake snarled.
"Point and case, thank you for proving my argument," He sped up, and she raced to keep up. Little bugger was fast. "I'll come find you tonight after we make camp, trust me, it'll make you feel much better."
Sorry to end it right here, but it's long, and I wanted to post something sooner rather than later.