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Blake knew she made a mistake.

She was standing in the kitchen of a man she'd known for a day, with his daughter who she hadn't seen in five years, who may or may not hate her. She'd agreed to cook a meal for this girl simply out of the desire to spend time with her.

The only thing missing from Blake's plan was that she didn't actually know how to cook…anything.

Staring at the stove, she held a pan in one hand and looked at the contents of the refrigerator. There was a bag of lettuce, she knew Yang wouldn't have any of that. A few bottles of juice and a carton of milk which made her smile at the thought of Ruby. Finally, she found her target.

Meat.

However, when she pulled out the package, it was red and uncooked. She stepped back and stared at the offending raw food and sniffed. It didn't smell good—boar of some kind, if she had to guess. Blake was never a fan of red meat. She could only remember the last time she had truly raw meat. Those were memories she long wished to forget.

Still, this wasn't about her and she sat the package down on the counter and tore into it. The meat was cold and slimy, she resisted the urge to cringe as her hands dug through it and pulled out a chunk.

Peeking over her shoulder, she saw Yang studying her with interest as she put her feet up on an opposite chair.

"Any cooking preferences?"

Yang quirked a brow. "Over easy."

"R—right." Blake nodded as assuredly as she could, before returning to her task. What the hell does that mean? The burner clicked when she turned it and the flame below jumped to life. Blake put the pan down and grabbed the first seasoning she could find. It was salt. When she turned the shaker over, it poured out much faster than she'd anticipated and she nearly dropped it when she saw how much salt now covered the meat.

She tried to dust it off as best she could but the damage had already been done.

Defeated, Blake scooped up the meat to put into the pan. "Don't you want to grease the pan first? So it doesn't stick?"

"Oh," Blake stared at the pan, having no idea what kind of grease Yang was talking about. "Of course I do."

"Blake," Yang sighed as she stood up from her chair. "You have no idea what you're doing, do you?"

Her ears pressed down against the top of her head. "I do too."

Yang's lilac eyes were staring at her, a wonderful glint in them that made Blake smile. "You can't cook meat over easy, that's eggs."

"Oh," Blake stared at the meat she was still holding. "Then why did you say it?"

"Because I wanted to see if you'd keep trying." Yang stepped over and pulled a can from the cupboard above the sink. She then sprayed the pan down with it and turned down the dial on the stove. "Also, pepper and maybe some garlic salt is good for boar steak too. Gives it some life."

"You going to show me how it's done?" Blake asked as Yang took the meat from her and set it in the pan.

"Someone's got to. I learned growing up—learned and then burned the hell out of myself over and over again until I figured it out. Had no choice though, Despite what she says, Ruby couldn't eat cookies every day and once I started really getting into training I needed food too."

Blake stepped back and watched Yang grab a spatula from the pan before poking at the substance. It seemed like so much effort, the way she would put the spatula in her mouth to put a little pepper and spice on the meat before going back to breaking it apart.

"Summer taught you?" Blake asked and wondered if it was appropriate for her to bring that up.

Thankfully, Yang nodded and continued to work. "Yeah, Mom never wanted us to go hungry and I think she enjoyed having me in there. She made it fun - we'd sing songs and have sword fights with the spatulas. She could make anything exciting."

"You know," Blake couldn't help herself. "I see that in you. You're very good at soothing a tense situation."

Yang chuckled as the pan popped and sizzled when she pressed the spatula down onto the meat. Smoke billowed from the pan and filled the air with a new smell of searing boar. Yang's hair bounced across her back quite adorably as she swayed from one foot to the other.

"I've never been a fan of tense. My dad was not in a great place after Mom died and Ruby didn't need all that doom and gloom. So I would do stuff to make her smile and try to make things fun again. It wasn't easy, but she and I could get lost in our own world sometimes."

She knew that Yang missed Ruby - even though they had spoken it wasn't the same. From the minute Blake met Yang she saw how strongly Yang worked to keep her little sister safe. Knowing that Ruby was out there somewhere on her own had to be hard for her.

Still, she was enjoying the easy conversation far too much to let it end there. "You never cooked anything at Beacon?"

Yang chuckled. "I know how to cook, I just never really enjoyed it - not after everything. Once we got to school and the meals were made for us, I wasn't going to just…make food. Plus, Ren took up the mantle of making late night treats. My talents weren't needed."

"Huh," Blake hummed as she watched Yang work. It was clear by the way she moved that she knew exactly what she was doing. It upset Blake a little that she hadn't seen this side of her before, mostly because she never really asked. Yang was an open book back at Beacon, or so it seemed. She would never hesitate to tell anyone anything at any time. The things Yang Xiao Long loved were on full display for everyone to see. However, who she was seemed to be a bit more locked away. Blake wanted to know, she wanted to know everything, she just wasn't sure she had the right to ask anymore. "Did you ever teach Ruby anything?"

Yang's shoulders stiffened. "No, I probably should have but I didn't want her to burn herself," she seemed to relax a little and flipped the meat in the pan. Which caused an entirely new octave of hissing and sizzling noises to fill the room. "Ruby wasn't much for patience - at least not until she started building Crescent Rose. At that age, I'm pretty sure she would have gotten a lot of burns if she tried."

"I'm guessing that's a lesson you learned the hard way." Blake teased and was pleased when Yang smiled.

"It was, twice actually."

"Twice?"

Yang shrugged. "She made the best cookies, sometimes I'd try to take one right out of the damn oven when she wasn't looking. Not my shining moment." She started to flip the meat to cook the other side. Watching her work, Blake couldn't help but gaze at the remains of her right arm. It was strange how much smaller it made Yang appear. There wasn't a day that passed that Blake wished she hadn't gone with Weiss during the fall. She could have found Yang - they could have helped. Everything could have been different if she had just stuck with her team instead of doing what she always did and—

"Stop," Blake jerked her head up to see lilac eyes staring at her. "I know that look."

Blake narrowed her eyes. "What look?"

"The Blake Belladonna 'everything is my fault' look."

"Yang I just…I can't help it." She didn't want to go into these sorts of things right now. They were having a good conversation and Blake just wanted to stay in this moment with Yang—however fragile it might be. But she couldn't look at Yang and see her in this state and not feel the need to apologize. "I should have fought harder. I should have done more. I just—"

Yang turned away and began digging into the meat in the pan with a little more force. So much so that she broke right through the meat and was dragging the spatula along the metal. "You were hurt, Blake. I watched him stab you—I wanted to rip his head off." Her voice was grinding through her teeth. Blake swore she could see her hair spark.

"I should have stayed with Weiss. If I had then I wouldn't have been alone and you wouldn't have gotten hurt. It's my fault, Yang. It's—"

Her apology was cut off by the sound of Yang slamming the spatula on the stove. It snapped at the impact - the top half flying across the room. A heartbeat later, Yang grabbed the pan by the handle and threw it. Blake recoiled, watching as the sizzling meat scattered in chunks across the floor. The pan smashed against the far wall, the sound of impact was sharp and seemed to ring out long after the pan had fallen to the ground.

When she turned to Yang again, her eyes were shimmering red and Blake watched Yang stalk towards her. She didn't step back, a deep seeded part of her not afraid Yang would strike her. However, that did not lessen the intimidation those red eyes carried.

"It's not about you, Blake. I never gave a damn about what happened to me—how do you not get that?"

Blake instinctively touched her right arm. "I don't—your arm."

"Yeah, it sucks!" Yang barked. "I won't lie to you, Blake - it's completely ruined my life. I can't hunt, I can't ride my bike, I've spent years trying to relearn how to do almost everything and there are still things I can't do, but that is not the point, Blake!" Yang's left arm was gripping onto one of the chairs by her table and it splintered under the pressure. "I loved our team, all of you. You...you were my partner. You were my best friend. Blake, you meant the world to me. You saw me…you accepted me and never asked anything of me. You didn't want me to change, you put up with my bullshit and made me want to be better. More than that, you let me in and I cared about you so much." Tears began to roll down Yang's face—her eyes still red with fire. Blake had never felt herself shake as much as she was in this moment. She couldn't move a single muscle in her body—she had no idea how she was still standing upright. "I woke up every morning…knowing that I would die for any of you. That was my job; to keep you all safe. I could take the hits, it's what I was built for. All I asked in return was that if I took one too many hits, that my team…my family would be there for me. That you would be there for me!"

"Yang," Blake breathed desperately as her knees started to buckle.

"I was alone, Blake." Yang's fire seemed to die out as she lowered her head. "I woke up and…I asked about Ruby, then I asked about you. Because the last thing I remembered was you reaching out for me." When Yang sniffled, Blake felt her heart break. She wanted to close the gap between them and embrace her but knew she had no right. It just felt so wrong to see Yang cry. She hated it the first time she saw it and she hated it more now. Both times had been because of her. "I never got to see Weiss, she was gone before I woke up. Sun told me about her right before he told me about…you." Yang looked up at Blake again, her eyes back to their normal color. She didn't look angry anymore. The only emotion Blake could find in her expression was disappointment.

"I was scared and I…blamed myself for what happened. You got hurt and it was my fault and you can say it wasn't all you want but I wasn't thinking. I saw...him and I thought I could stop him and it was just too much." She took a step towards Yang, her body moving of it's own accord. Yang stepped back and disguised her need for distance by turning off the stove. "If it makes you feel better, I was miserable on my own."

"You know that doesn't make me feel better." Yang suddenly looked very tired as she sat down in the slightly broken chair. "Where did you go?"

Blake knew that she couldn't avoid the question forever. It was with one purpose that she ran away from Patch and from her team on that day. She had to make up for the pain she'd caused—had to make sure that…he could never hurt those she cared about again.

As long as he was alive, she would never be free.

"I went after the man who took your arm."

Yang looked up at her with piqued interest and wiped her nose. "Did you find him? He wasn't just a random White Fang member? Did you know him?"

There was no turning back now. "I was his partner…once." To her credit, Yang kept her composure and let Blake continue. "I told you after your fight with Mercury, that I had someone I care about change on me. That was him…that was Adam Taurus."

"The one you said changed...like you thought I might?"

Blake could see that it was still something Yang carried - this idea that she could lose herself in her own rage was something Yang genuinely feared before. After that fight with Mercury, when no one seemed to believe her, those fears came back.

"No, you're nothing like him and I was wrong to assume anything else."

Yang shrugged. "To be fair, the video sure did look like I turned around and broke Mercury's leg on purpose."

"Yang," Blake stopped her with a firm voice. "You are nothing like Adam, do you understand me? He is a monster and you are...you're...you've never treated me the way he did."

Those eyes darkened again. "He hurt you."

Blake sighed. "It wasn't the first time." Yang's body tensed and Blake rushed to continue. "Adam changed when the leadership role of the White Fang was handed to him. Everything changed—the mission was no longer a search for equality, but a quest for dominance. He wanted control. He wanted to turn what we'd suffered through into a weapon. Worst of all, it worked. Faunus flocked to the cause and followed him because he got results."

"Fear does that," Yang growled.

"It does. I did things with him—for him, that I'm not proud of. It was hard and when it became too much…I ran and Beacon was my salvation for a while. I could be a real person again. I could have friends and a goal in my life to strive for. A partner I cared about." Yang looked down at the floor but Blake powered on. "It wasn't enough, I wasn't as safe as I tried to pretend I was and he came back." She felt her own emotions rising, anger at the forefront. "When he hurt you, I knew. I knew had to stop him. It was my fight and dragged you into it." Unable to stop herself, Blake stepped forward and knelt down in front of Yang. "I ran because I knew if I saw you, if I looked into your eyes and you asked me to stay, I would have and that would have been selfish of me because he would have come back and tried to hurt us again." Yang wouldn't look at her but Blake could see her expression enough to know her words were sinking in. "Leaving you was the hardest decision of my life…but we're safe now." This got Yang's attention.

"What do you mean?"

Blake's mind slipped back to that moment—it had been so long since she'd had a flash. She remembered the way his eyes unfocused, how his breath caught in his throat as the warm blood spilled from the wound onto her hand holding Gambol Shroud. It was raining, she was soaked to the bone, but his blood was warm on her skin. She'd never forget that feeling.

"I tracked him, I stalked him, I got him alone…and I killed him."

"Blake," Yang was suddenly right in her face and she could feel the protective instincts kicking in on her partner. "You…are you—"

She found her smile. "For a while I wasn't—thank goodness for Sun. He took me in and gave me a place to stay. He and Neptune put up with a lot from me, I was not okay." Yang was staring at her, and Blake took her chance. "I didn't leave you because I didn't care, Yang. I left because as much as you'd give your life for me, I'd do the same for you. Maybe I shouldn't have ran, maybe I should have talked to you first but we were kids. We still are, I mean…we lost so much of our childhoods, both of us. I won't pretend I made the right choice by running away from you—but I'm not going anywhere. You're all I have left."

Before Blake could gauge Yang's reaction, an arm was pulling her in and she found herself pressed against Yang. She clung onto Yang with everything she had and buried her face in blonde hair.

"I missed you." Yang whispered against her neck and Blake choked out a sob before repeating those same words back to her. They held each other for a long time. Blake savored the feeling of being close to her partner again. The emotions of knowing that Yang didn't hate her, that her coming back had been the right decision, was blissful. They weren't through it all by any means, but it was a start, a chance—and that's all Blake ever wanted.

When she finally pulled back, Yang's face was streaked with tears and her bottom lip was trembling, but she looked okay. "You're a mess." Blake said with a smile before using her thumb to dab at Yang's cheek.

Yang exhaled slowly and nodded. "I'm still hungry." Blake found herself laughing uncharacteristically loud before staring affectionately at her partner.

"You threw the food against the wall."

"Made my damn point though, didn't I?" Yang said with a lighthearted grin.

Blake rolled her eyes. "You did, but you also ruined all my hard work. I was doing some serious cooking."

"You'd think with all those books you read you might have stumbled across a cook book or two." Yang stood from her chair and Blake followed suit.

"There's no romance in cooking." Blake helped Yang pick up the mess on the floor.

She heard Yang chuckle as she knelt down to grab the fallen pan. "You never saw my dad and mom cooking dinner together. They would really get into it. Feeding each other and dad coming up behind her and hugging her, kissing her, I would always have to remind them that I was still in the room. As was my very little baby sister."

"They really loved each other huh?" Blake asked as Yang found the last of the scattered meat and threw it in the trash. From there she moved to take down two bowls from the cabinet and a box of cereal.

"Yep, though he's told me that he and my mom were the same way. The Xiao Long's have a history of making people fall in love with them." Yang poured a bowl for herself and for Blake who took the chance to retrieve the milk from the fridge. "Summer she was…she was a catch though. She'd hate it if she heard me call her that." Yang laughed quietly to herself, clearly lost in a memory that Blake was hesitant to press for—but she knew where Yang's mind was going.

"Where is Ruby?" Blake saw the look of guilt wash over Yang's face.

"I don't know. Time just…kept going and before I knew it five years had passed and I hadn't seen my sister. She stopped telling me where she was about a year ago, the last few times we talked were pathetic attempts by both of us to pretend we still cared. Mostly I just liked hearing from her to know she was still alive, other than that…it hurt knowing she was out there fighting and I wasn't with her. I don't know what she's doing but it doesn't sound like she's planning on stopping anytime soon."

"Yang!" The front door burst open and Yang jumped to her feet with Blake a few steps behind her. They rushed into the living room where Taiyang was frantically running towards them—clearly out of breath. "You're here, you weren't at your house…that hill…is awful. It's so steep. Why is it so steep?" He then pulled out his scroll and started flipping through it. "He found her." He said and though Blake was slightly confused, Yang seemed to tense up immediately.

"Ruby?" Taiyang nodded.

"Yeah, Qrow says she slowed down for a few days and he was finally able to track her down. She's in Atlas and apparently she's in a lot of trouble."

"Is she okay? Is she hurt? Did he talk to her or help her?" Yang's questions came out in a flurry and Blake instinctively put a hand on her partner's back to settle her down.

Taiyang shook his head. "Yang, I don't know, he just told me to get to Atlas as soon as possible. He found her in the woods, she wasn't alone and she's…not exactly in a good frame of mind."

"What does that mean?" The once frantic tone of her voice vanished, now replaced with dreadful concern.

"He didn't have a lot of time for specifics. I just…I have to go and I want you to come with me. She needs us, Yang."

"Of course." Yang nodded in response and Blake dropped her hand from her partner's back. Yang seemed to notice the loss of contact and turned to face her. "Blake, I know you just got here and I know we're not completely okay but if you really are committed then I -" Yang chewed on her bottom lip and shook away her doubts. "Come with us...I want you to come."

Blake's heart swelled at the words and she smiled. "Let's go get our leader."