Blake nearly jumped out of her bed in surprise when Ruby burst through the door to her hospital room. "Blake, get up. We need to go."

"What is it, Ruby?"

"Remember that doctor in the video you found? The teams identified her as a woman named Dr. Shida. They found her working in a research lab in Vale, and they arrested her yesterday. They told her you activated her experiment, but she's refusing to say if she can help until she talks to you. Professor Ozpin asked me to get you and bring you there. If we want to figure out what's happening with your aura, this is our best bet." Blake quickly got up and got dressed. She desperately needed to figure out what was wrong with her, and if there was even a chance this would help, she was going to take it.

It wasn't a far walk from the hospital to the police station, and within twenty minutes they walked into the interrogation viewing room where Professor Ozpin was waiting for them. "Miss Belladonna, welcome. I know you're not feeling well, but I think this is the best chance we have of helping you. Go in and talk with her, see if she knows what's happening." Blake nodded, and they walked through the door. She saw the woman from the video sitting at a table in the middle of the room. There was a little more gray in her hair and a few more wrinkles on her face, but it was unmistakably her.

"Are you the two woman who walked through my experiment?" The woman asked. Her voice was weary and filled with guilt.

"My partner and I went through it. She's dead now." Blake couldn't keep the grief, or the anger, out of her voice. She knew she needed this woman's help, but she was also furious with her. Without her, Yang would still be alive. The woman's next words, however, caused that anger to disappear.

"No, she isn't. Not if she was in the chamber with you." Blake was too shocked to speak, but Ruby jumped in. From the tone of her voice, she was as furious as Blake.

"What do you mean? My sister is dead! Your Death Stalker killed her!" She yelled.

"It's more complicated than that. Sit down, and I'll tell you." She said. Blake collapsed into her seat easily enough, but Ruby looked like she was going to start screaming at her before visibly deciding to sit as well. "I'll start from the beginning, okay? The whole point of the experiment was an attempt to pacify the Grimm. An aura is part of your soul, right? The thought was that, if the Grimm could be given a portion of that, the human soul would stop them from being hostile."

"And how did that work out for you?" Ruby asked sarcastically.

"Great, at first." Dr. Shida answered. Blake wasn't sure if she didn't notice the sarcasm or if she was pretending not to notice it. "We developed a method to transfer aura, and the Grimm could successfully manifest it. The second phase is where it fell apart. Even with aura, there was no way to reduce the Grimm's aggression. I grew disillusioned with the increasing recklessness of the experiment and left the project, and that's the last I heard of it."

"How convenient for you." Ruby said, her tone again dripping with sarcasm.

"Not really. From what I've been told, it seems they continued to experiment before everything spiraled out of control. Most of my friends and colleagues from that project are dead." Even in Ruby's anger those words seemed to pierce through, and she looked guiltily at the ground.

This background information was useful, but Blake couldn't stand to wait for the important part anymore. "What about me and Yang? Why did you say she's not dead?"

"Because you went through the aura transfer process together, right?" Blake nodded. "We had two volunteers go through it together to see what would happen. Kastur and Pilos. And at first, nothing happened except for both of their auras disappearing. Then, a few hours later, Kastur collapsed. No matter what we tried, we couldn't wake him up. Pilos' aura started fluctuating wildly, like they said is happening with yours. He kept talking about having conversations with Kastur, despite the man being in a deep coma. Sound at all familiar?" Blake nodded. Exactly like her and Yang. Maybe she wasn't going crazy after all.

"What happened next?" Ruby asked. The anger in her voice was completely gone. It was replaced with something that sounded suspiciously like hope.

"A week later, Kastur woke up, and both of their auras returned to normal. When we asked him what he had seen, Kastur perfectly detailed conversations and events that Pilos had experienced while he was in the coma. For obvious reasons, we decided to never try that again."

"But you think that somehow it fused their consciousnesses together." Blake surmised. Dr. Shida nodded. Blake felt hope rising inside her. Sure, the whole idea didn't seem possible. But a few weeks ago Blake would have sworn changing aura in any way was impossible, and clearly she would have been mistaken.

Ruby didn't seem convinced. "It's been two weeks. If what you're saying is true, why would they still be connected?"

"Because if your friend is dead, then her aura couldn't return to her body. It's possible it would stay attached instead of separating with nowhere else to go."

"So how does that help us? My sister isn't really dead, she's only connected to my friend, unable to affect anything in the real world? Is that supposed to make it better?" Ruby yelled. Her grief had clearly overwhelmed her again, but Blake had to admit she had a point. If this was true, her sister was alive, but she could never see or communicate with her. Yang would essentially be living as a ghost, observing everything without being able to do anything. Blake wasn't sure if she would want to live like that.

"It helps because I can reverse the formula and separate your friend and your sister. Your friend here will return to normal."

"And what about Yang? Wouldn't this kill her?" Blake asked frantically, her sudden panic coming through in her voice. She wanted to return to normal, but not like that. Maybe it was selfish, but she didn't think she could live with herself if she consigned Yang to oblivion.

"Ordinarily, yes. As long as there's nowhere else for her soul to go. But I've continued working with aura even after I left that project. I went back to Atlas, and the next thing I worked on was developing a robotic skeleton that can hold an aura. It took years, but we did it. Of course, we never transferred someone's entire aura into it, but I know Dr. Polendina always wanted to do it." That name sounded familiar to Blake, but she couldn't place where she had heard it. Judging from how Ruby had stiffened up beside her, though, Ruby clearly recognized it. "Let me call him and see if he's willingly to help. If I'm right, we can have everything set up soon. Hopefully we can bring your sister and your friend back to normal, and I'll have one less tragedy on my conscience."

/

It all came together surprisingly quickly thanks to her teammates. The Schnee Dust Company had connections everywhere in Atlas, and Weiss knew exactly how to leverage that to get things done. As soon as they left the room, Ruby explained why she recognized the name, and her being friends with the scientist's beloved daughter sped everything else nicely. It only took a few days for Blake to be lying in Beacon's showers next to a robot who looked very similar to her dead partner. The only thing that was stopping her from breaking down sobbing was the knowledge that soon Yang would be alive, and everything could return back to normal.

"Are you ready, Blake?" Dr. Polendina asked. She nodded. "Okay, beginning liquid transfer now." The shower head above her starting spraying something down, and she gave a little shocked yelp when it hit her. The stuff was freezing cold, and she couldn't stop herself from shivering. Her shaking grew more and more violent, until she felt like she might break apart, before the cold completely vanished. Around her, a golden cloud was slowly condensing. The cloud settled itself in the air above her before shooting down into the body beside her. She felt the entire area rapidly heat up, heard a gasp from beside her, and passed out.

When she woke up, she was lying down on her bed. Cuddled up beside her was an incredibly warm presence. She looked over and saw Yang staring at her. Well, not exactly Yang; the mouth was slightly off, the ears were a little too big, and the lilac eyes were the wrong shade. But her presence, the light behind her eyes, they were all unmistakably her. "Yang, you're alive!" She cried out. She couldn't stop herself anymore; she broke down crying after everything. Yang pulled her closer until she was practically resting on top of her. Yang's body was hard metal now, but it was also as warm as it had been when she was in her old body.

"Thanks to you, Blakey. You saved my life."

"I just fixed a mistake. It was my fault your body died."

"You're being ridiculous, kitten." Yang suddenly got a sultry smile on her face. "We're going to have to come up with a fix for that." Blake felt heat, and desire, race through her. She had waited so long to act on her feelings before that it had almost been too late. She wasn't going to make that same mistake again. She pounced onto Yang and pulled her into a deep kiss. It was different than she had expected. Her lips were warm but hard, and as the kiss went on a metallic taste spread into her mouth. But despite that, it was unmistakably Yang, and that's all that really mattered. The kiss went on and on and on, each second sending a pulse of the most incredible feeling burning through her.

Yang suddenly pulled away, and Blake couldn't stop herself from letting out a low growl. She wasn't ready for this moment to end and, judging from the molten desire swirling through Yang's eyes and the sly smile on her face, neither was she. "Before we keep going, there are six little words I've been waiting years to hear you say."

Blake knew what she wanted instantly, and she was happy to say it. She was sure she would spend the rest of her life saying it. "I love you, Yang Xiao Long."

Yang stared straight back into her eyes. "Blake Belladonna," she said, her voice tender, "you need to wake up."

The desire instantly transformed to panic. "No, no, no, no, no!"

Blake woke up, staring at the hospital ceiling. She looked at the scroll beside her bed and realized with a shock that it was about an hour after Ruby had left her hospital room the night before she was supposed to be discharged. There was no Dr. Shida, no aura transfer, no robotic Yang. She had never left the hospital bed. She burst into tears, and she couldn't conceive of any reason to ever stop.