White.

That was everything that Weiss could see. Pure whiteness, everywhere her eyes could see; bland, featureless, unwelcoming. Sterile and unblemished.

White.

Am I...dead?

She tried to speak, to call out to her team, but a sharp pain lanced through her chest before she could do so. Her hand was too heavy to lift, her body too numb to shift even the slightest amount. Her thoughts were muddled, as though somebody had drawn out her brain and substituted them with wads of cotton.

Blinking once, twice, and three times, her vision eventually cleared slightly. There was an intensely bright light above her; bright enough to sting and cause her eyes to water. Her ears vaguely registered a slow, steady beeping to her left. Where exactly was she? Trying to recall what had happened previously caused her head to throb dully.

Blood. That was the first image that she recalled. Lots and lots of blood. All over her arms, all over her legs – and even more down her suit of armour. She vaguely recalled seeing a lot more blood on the floor, all over her teammates, and seeing the floor zoom past unsteadily, as though she were being carried. Then the image of her girlfriend, covered in a lot of blood.

Ruby! Was she alright?

The incessant beeping to her left sped up a little. Its sound was starting to grate on her ears; a persistent, tinny noise that she wished would just stop. Now slightly more alert, she could faintly feel the edge of a rubber cup of some sort over her mouth and nose. The stale scent of recycled air, while unpleasant, was a reminder that she was most certainly not dead. At least the thick pile of cushions under her was somewhat comforting to have.

"Hm. It appears that Corporal Schnee is waking up,"

"She is!? She is? Ohmygoodnessletmeseeher-"

"Sergeant Rose, if you are not capable of restraining your excitement, I will have to ask you to remove yourself from my hospital ward. Behave. You've got about a minute before I have to continue with the next stage of her treatment,"

"But-"

"No ifs, or buts. She is still in a critical but stable condition, and any movement or undue pressure might aggravate her healing injuries. And I insist that you take a shower after this. For the sake of maintaining proper hygiene in a hospital, to say nothing of...your unsavoury aroma,"

Weiss heard a muted raspberry, before a familiar face appeared in her vision. Ruby loomed over her, a wide, relieved smile on her face; though if the bags under her eyes and the dishevelled state of her hair was any clue, she had not slept or rested well for quite some time, if at all. Her eyes were thoroughly bloodshot, and there were the telltale trails of dried tears on her cheeks.

"Hey, Weiss," she murmured, "I was so, so worried about you. We all were. I...I wasn't sure if you...you were going to make it. Crescent Rose's blade almost broke through the other side of your armour, and Dr. Vahlen said that I nearly hit your...your heart. If Yang didn't...didn't take down that sectoid commander...I don't want to even think about what would've happened,"

She trailed off, at a loss for words. Eventually, Weiss felt warm fingers wrap around her own. Had she the strength to return the gesture, she would have; but for now, she would settle for letting Ruby do what she needed to do.

After all, the dolt did nearly kill her. This would be the least of what she would ask in return. Especially when she recovered.

"Alright. Time's up, Sergeant Rose. Please leave the ward, we're about to start the next round of reconstructive therapy for Corporal Schnee,"

Another soft squeeze on her fingers and soon Ruby left, leaving her alone with Dr. Vahlen. If Weiss had been any more alert and capable, she would have rushed out of the hospital room as quickly as her legs could carry her. But being unable to even lift her little finger, she resigned herself to whatever treatments the doctor had in mind for her.

Not that she would even be aware of anything, of course. A faint hissing noise came from somewhere to her left, and soon she felt herself drift off into a deep, dreamless sleep once again.

The next time she awoke, she found that she was still in the same room as before. At least the lights overhead were dimmed, and her eyes no longer burned from just looking straight ahead. The sharp pains in her chest whenever she took a breath were no longer as intense as they had been before, though the breathing mask still covered her nose and mouth. A quick look down showed that she had nothing on aside from a hospital gown.

When she tried to sit up, though, a hand grabbed her arm and held her down. "Hey, snow princess. Didn't think you'd be up so early," Yang said, yawning, "Don't sit up, or Rubes is probably gonna kill me,"

She moved her lips to reply, but even trying to speak was excruciatingly painful; as though someone had thrown broken glass into her lungs and left every piece behind after stitching her back together again. Thankfully, for Yang was actually being thoughtful for once and pulled out a scroll, with a blank notepad app on it. With a bit of help adjusting her cushions and pillows, she could finally rest slightly tilted, with one hand able to reach the scroll and still be able to see it out of the corner of her eye.

"There. You won't be able to speak or...well, eat or breathe normally for like a week. At least your fingers are still okay, so you can still write or type,"

'How long was I out for?' she wrote on the device.

"Close to a week, now. Dr. Vahlen's kept you asleep for the whole time after the operation," Yang said, making a face, "I had the job of making sure that you were clean and your sheets weren't soiled. Nice ass, by the way,"

Weiss' cheeks burned at that comment. Yes, keeping a teammate clean when they were bedridden had happened to all of them at some point or another during their time in Beacon; but at least she had been careful enough to avoid that embarrassment herself.

'Did you really have to say that?'

"Yep! Totally worth it, just to see your reaction," Yang giggled, a shit-eating grin on her face, "Just kidding. I didn't see anything. Ruby insisted on looking after you when that time of day came about. Every single time, right on the dot. The only thing I got to do was lift you off the bed once she's done giving you a wash so that she can change your sheets,"

'And Dr. Vahlen has no nurses to do this? Are you still training?'

"Honestly? Bradford wanted to chew our ears off about it because Vahlen has people to help with her patients. But Dr. Shen and Papa Bear insisted that it was a good 'team building exercise', so...that's that, I guess,"

A few minutes passed without either of them saying a single word (or in the case of Weiss, writing on the scroll). Weiss, however, noticed that Yang was bouncing up and down on her toes anxiously while looking around the room, as if checking if anyone else was there.

"Hey, can I ask you something?"

Weiss considered whether or not to answer. But knowing Yang, refusing to answer was likely the worse of the two options she had.

'Go ahead...?'

"So, I heard from Blake that Rubes has a thing for you. Something about her cat-faunus side being able to smell my sister's...hormones or something all over you,"

Now her cheeks really burned in embarrassment. She knew that Blake had the excellent hearing of a cat, as well as the nightvision of one. But a cat's sense of smell, too? That was just too much.

'Pheromones might be what she was trying to say,'

"Hormones, pheromones, same difference. She smelled something of Rubes on you. Anyway, fact is, I think she's actually right, and my sister somehow fell for you, Snow Princess. Thought that you two were just sharing a bed to keep her nightmares away, but it's something more, eh?"

Weiss hesitated in writing her answer. Yang's protectiveness over her younger sister was legendary in Beacon, and everyone that did anything to Ruby – Grimm or otherwise – often found themselves face-first in the dirt within seconds. 'If I said yes, what would you do?' she replied, dreading the answer.

"If you told me after the first time I saw both of you in the same bed," Yang hummed thoughtfully, "I probably would've punched you. Hard. But now? I'm not so sure any more,"

'Explain,'

She sighed and ran her hands through her hair. "It's...different with you. Normally, I'd have thought Ruby was too innocent, and anyone that's trying to go out with her is trying to...well, abuse her innocence, if you know what I mean. But back in that mission? I heard that Bradford was ready to authorise the other two guys to shoot Ruby dead if she was threatening the mission's success. You probably know this too, right?"

Weiss nodded ever so slightly, knowing exactly the orders that Bradford would have given. The man was utterly convinced of the necessity to achieve results at any cost; particularly on such a critical mission. If Ruby were obstructing the mission in one way or another - even under the influence of mind control - she was certain that he would have ordered the others to shoot her.

"Yeah. I know what you're thinking," Yang muttered, shivering, "If you didn't step in and start to keep Ruby busy, I wouldn't have had enough time to drop that stupid mind-controlling alien. You stood your ground when you could've just run away. And that...well..."

'You know as well as I do that I wouldn't give up on a teammate, right? We're a team, and we don't let any one of us go down without a fight,'

"Yeah, I get that now. Wouldn't have thought you had it in you, Snowflake. But I guess I'm wrong...and...well, shit, this is hard for me to say. I thought that I was one of the only people looking out for Ruby full-time, but it looks like you're doing the same,"

Weiss wished that she could laugh, but stopped when another sharp pain racked her lungs. 'You didn't count Blake?'

The blonde puffed up indignantly. "Well, she is my partner, you know, in more ways than one. And she does look out for all of us as teammates. You do as well. And...what I was going to say is that if Ruby is going to have a partner – and a girlfriend – I wanted someone that would look after her properly,"

'I assure you that a Schnee does not lack for propriety when it comes to treating their partners well,'

"Pfft. Sure, Snowflake, sure. Just like how you dealt with Ruby for the first few weeks after our initiation. But now? I think as far as partners go, you'd be the first one that I think would be alright for little Rubes,"

'So your whole point was that you were trying to state your approval of my relationship with Ruby? I didn't think that I needed YOUR approval to date her,'

"Yeah, you don't need my approval to date her. You need my approval if you want to date her without ending up face-first on the floor, though. And right now, you've got my approval, and she's really head-over-heels about you. There's only one more small thing..."

Yang leaned in so that her nose was touching the rubber breathing mask, making sure that her eyes flashed red angrily close up. "...You make her miserable or sad, ever, and you'll be dealing with me. Got it?"

'That won't happen,' Weiss wrote back truthfully, hoping that her answer would placate Yang.

To her relief, the blonde smiled in return. "Good. Glad that's sorted out. I think Dr. Vahlen should be coming back in to check on you in a bit. Have fun!"

It took another week before Dr. Vahlen was willing to discharge Weiss from under her care, after a regimen of relentless reconstructive therapy and countless injections of strange chemicals. Her ribs were still tender, and on occasion spikes of pain would still surge through her back; but at the very least, she could finally be free of the indignity of being sponge bathed and tube-fed every day. She still wasn't permitted to rejoin missions for another week.

However, that did not mean that she was idle. For a Schnee would be caught dead before she would be caught lazing about.

"Test batch sixteen. Ninety-nine-point-five percent Elerium, zero-point-five percent Burn Dust. Testing efficiency of conversion," Weiss muttered into her scroll, recording the experiment in the armoury. She had reforged Myrtenaster's original Dust cylinders with Ruby's help, and had now set it up on a heavy lead sled, fitted with a dummy steel blade aimed at a wall of metal plating. A small sample of Burn Dust-infused Elerium sat on the bench beside her, safely stowed inside a large cylinder of liquid nitrogen.

She carefully adjusted the Dust dispenser on the rapier to add a mere drop of blended Dust on the weapon's blade. Where normal Burn dust would use a rather large amount to produce sufficient power, an Elerium blend was exponentially more powerful while retaining the original properties of the Dust infusion. So much so, that her original blade had suffered a catastrophic meltdown. Even now, a one-gram mist applied to the rapier was sufficient to produce a directed blast of greenish-white flame sufficient to incinerate metal plating and leave its blade glowing red-hot immediately after.

"I must admit, this line of research is...fascinating," murmured Dr. Vahlen, quickly typing down her observations, "The sheer variety of possibilities that Dust blending opens...it's mind-boggling. Noted, four armour plates vaporised, fifth heavily melted. Blade does not appear to have sufficient structural integrity to sustain another charge. Suggest reducing quantity of Elerium blend used,"

She had taken interest in Weiss' side project after she had run out of alien corpses to carve apart, and walked past Dr. Shen's armoury while a live test was ongoing. She had persuaded Bradford that the line of research had promise, and requisitioned several canisters of Elerium recovered from a few alien ships by Strike One. With the help of Dr. Shen and Weiss' extensive knowledge of safe Dust handling and use, they had produced a few new weapons.

The first had proved immensely useful for causing alien space vessels to crash. They had found that mixing a minute fraction of Gravity Dust with some Elerium – and then triggering it with a sharp jolt of electricity – caused a small, short-lived singularity to burst to life. While the first time they had discovered the effect had very nearly caused half the Foundry to be sucked into the miniature black hole, the results had been spectacular in space. Battleships could be severely damaged with a single missile, while scout vessels' engines could be overloaded to shreds with the same charge. Just five had been produced so far, resulting in five rather violently disabled alien ships with no survivors on board – and rather gruesome wall decorations where the crew once were.

The others, however, had proven too volatile to use for infantry weapons. In minute quantities, Dust-Elerium blend explosives had issues detonating, while in larger quantities they threatened the safety of the user with their immense area of effect. And so Bradford reluctantly relegated the use of the weapons for space-to-space combat, where collateral damage was negligible.

"Test batch seventeen. Ninety-nine-point-five percent Elerium, zero-point-five percent Burn Dust. Eighty percent quantity," Weiss said, carefully unscrewing the red-hot blade from Myrtenaster and replacing it with another steel blank, "Dr. Vahlen, how are my friends doing...?"

"The rest of Strike Six is on a mission, and I believe that Central Officer Bradford had said that they were returning at this moment,"

Scowling a little, Weiss flicked the trigger on Myrtenaster and frowned when a thin, feeble needle of dull red embers fell onto the steel blade. "Failure. Larger quantity required for sufficient effect. And no, Dr. Vahlen, what I meant was my friends who were recovered from the alien base,"

For once, the German scientist did not reply immediately. Weiss looked up from her scroll, only to find that Dr. Vahlen was biting her lip. "Your friends are in a...stable condition," she spoke carefully, "They are in no immediate danger, but neither can we resuscitate them yet. The aliens have subjected them to some unknown compounds, and we will not risk reviving them with the usual medicines that I normally use,"

Sighing, Weiss loaded her rapier again. So they had recovered Team JNPR, only for the members of said team to be left comatose until Dust knows when. It was not an ideal situation, but at the very least she could be content that the aliens had not butchered them or experimented upon them in some way or another.

A/N:

A bit of a filler chapter here. Easing off the missions for a bit.

A special thanks to Playwars5 for beta-reading this chapter. Catching mistakes is much easier with a second set of eyes looking through your work. ^^

It's been a while since I last updated this, and honestly I blame Civilisation 6. Somebody please stop giving Gandhi the uranium :/