"Okay, fine. Let's try telling Ironwood."
She says it like it's the continuation of a recent conversation rather than the product of another life (another Ruby), which is something of a bad habit by now.
It's still not her favorite play, though Yang's considered it on every reset, but on her tenth life — after going through the basics with Ruby, a consistent choice now, because it always works out for the better (and makes her feel a little less lonely) — she suggests it before Ruby can (because Ruby always does).
"Um. I was actually just about to — "
"I know," Yang cuts in, but then offers an apologetic shrug. "You always do. And I always say Ironwood will probably lock me in some kind of padded cell or hook me up to a bunch of wires and have Atlesian psychopaths experiment on me in horrible ways. That always convinces you that we're better off playing it safe."
"Then why — ?"
"We're not making major progress. We're killing more Grimm, but without you being able to change the tactics of our attack on a large scale, we're just making dents, not punching any holes through the whole defense."
"So you think we should — ?"
"Talk to Ironwood, hope he doesn't lock me up, convince him to let you basically plan the attack with all the knowledge you now have thanks to me dying ten times, and then — oh, yeah — if he starts to take me away, kill me on the spot. I'll drop my aura and you put a bullet in my head."
"Yang!"
She's not sure if Ruby's outrage is more to do with the casual suggestion of murder or the constant interrupting; if Yang had to guess, she'd say a good mixture of both.
"Sorry!" She stops, holds up her hands, then steps closer to put them on Ruby's shoulders. "Sorry," she says again, this time softer. "I know this is all a lot to take in and it's — obviously it's your first time around, but for me, I just have to keep throwing myself against my own death until something sticks, I guess."
Ruby makes a face, but the smile appears anyways, forgiving and easy. "Or doesn't stick. Isn't that kind of the point? Not to make it permanent. Come on, Yang. At least get the lingo right if you're repeating all your conversations over and over."
"Hey!" She tousles Ruby's hair, delights in the way she squirms away. "This one is new! You have to cut me some slack on new ones."
"How am I supposed to know what's new for you?" she whines. "It's all new for me!"
Yang nods. "You're right. So you better just cut me some slack on all of it. That's a great policy. I'll be sure to remind you that you thought of it, next time."
Resuming their walk, Yang hitches her pack further up on her shoulders, and Ruby puts on a burst of speed to get ahead, blur of red passing by so close, Yang nearly stumbles.
"I don't think I like you talking about next time," Ruby admits, too casual to actually be casual about it. "How about we focus on this time."
"And not my inevitable death?"
Ruby zips back in and flicks a finger against the center of her forehead. "Stop it!"
"Fine, fine. Ironwood first, and then total and definite victory after."
She's not at all convincing, but Ruby let's her have it, their new rule already taking effect; she'll take it, even if it only works this once.
-
The good news is, Yang isn't immediately shackled and locked away. The bad news is that Ironwood ignores her concerns completely. It's a nice middle ground, in that Ruby doesn't have to kill her, but also it's a total waste of time. Since Yang has both unlimited lives and time, she marks it up as a wash and tries not to roll her eyes.
"I know you both traveled from the southern tip of Vacuo to make your way here," Ironwood says, calm and poised. "I cannot praise your bravery enough, to return to this place after the catastrophe three years ago. Both of your contributions to that battle and the one at Beacon cannot go unmentioned."
But, Yang thinks, and doesn't have to wait long.
"But that bravery — those contributions — come with a cost. They weigh on the mind, and there is no shame in that. Our brains struggle to process the trauma, this is a simple fact." His hands fold behind his back and it's an awful lot like receiving an automated response in-person. "We're lucky to have the resources to help and I urge you to look into them. We may not have much time before you're due to depart, but several of our Huntsmen with healing semblances have been able to help in quite drastic ways in very short periods of time. I will call ahead to the Infirmary and inform them you'll be stopping by before meeting with your new team. I would recommend speaking with Oliver; his semblance allows him to remove dreams from a sleeping patient. Very useful for a restful night's sleep."
It's not what she wanted, but it's not nothing. Or at least, this is the attitude that Ruby maintains as they leave, probably to counter Yang's stewing, which isn't at all helped by the headache brewing at the base of her skull. It's light, barely noticeable, but it's one more thing, and Yang grumbles about it as they walk towards the training room. She's earned a bad mood or two, and doesn't feel guilty in the least.
Not until Ruby frowns at her in that way she does and suggests that maybe they should visit the healing tent after their training today.
"Maybe when you reset the timeline you don't actually get to keep any of the sleep you started on before you got trapped in the loop," Ruby suggests, which doesn't make much sense at all to Yang, though she nods anyways.
"I… guess it couldn't hurt," she says.
Ruby, ignoring the hesitation dripping from her tone, only grins.
-
Her one regret for this particular go of things doesn't end up being telling Ironwood, or even visiting the healer he mentioned in the first place. It's that, by the time Yang makes it out of that place — her head clear and eyes bright, feeling like a million lien — it's the morning of the fight and she's missed meeting Blake. No one had mentioned knocking her out of commission for a full twelve hours, and it leaves her feeling like she's lost something important. In ten resets, it's the first time she's failed to go to that roof, and she feels the ache in her gut acutely.
Or maybe that's the now-customary gaping hole there, the result of another failed go at things in what Yang's coming to think of as a particularly nasty gauntlet of fun surprises, all involving her death, usually in a way pretty similar to this. But this time, Yang's not thinking of how she should have dodged left instead of right after she cleared the first two waves of Grimm and the seven Mimics interspersed. She's thinking of Blake and how she doesn't want to miss her again. She's thinking of how maybe, if she misses her once, she won't get so lucky the next time, and that thread will slip through her fingers and never return.
She needn't have worried.
The universe, it seems, is always finding a way. And as Blake appears above her, crouching down and placing a gloved hand underneath her neck, Yang thinks this must be her reward for going through all this, because what other explanation is there?
"Hello, again," she rasps, and smiles, even when a bit of blood leaks out with the motion.
"Hello." She's heard Blake's voice go soft a few times now, but it's never been like it is now; tender and apologetic and with a genuine note of sadness, one that most people can't keep after being in battles like this, after seeing so much death in front of them. "My name's Blake."
Yang laughs, but she's not laughing at the joke Blake thinks she is.
"Yeah. I know." Blake doesn't bother trying to stop the blood from flowing out of her wound, and neither does Yang, reaching to touch Blake's knee instead. "I meant to talk to you before. Messed that up this time. So we're gonna miss out this time, guess. Things aren't looking good for me, huh?"
She's always given the woman a lot of credit, but she gives her even more now; Blake doesn't lie, doesn't downplay, doesn't try to make sense of Yang's rush of words, but she stays. She adjusts Yang's neck until it's at a comfortable angle, she brushes a bit of blonde hair out of Yang's face, and she stays.
"No. But I'll stay with you until you die."
"Blake!" White hair comes into view, and for some reason, Yang smiles at even this; even the unpleasant Atlesian is starting to grow on her, though she wastes some of that charity on what she says next. "We need to go. This airship isn't going to hold long. Now's not the time to chat up the random girl you thought was hot from across a fucking briefing room. Especially when she's half dead! Leave her!"
Another bit of blood spills out when she laughs, and a violet spasm of coughing follows. She would have figured that'd be the end of it, but she hangs on, what with something worth hanging onto to so close at hand
"You thought I was hot," she repeats. "Right from the start! That's handy, isn't it? Next time I'll just walk right up and ask you for drinks. You think that'll work?"
Blake's not fully paying attention, in the middle of trying to shoo Weiss away to watch the perimeter of the crashed airship they've taken shelter in. It'd been luck that had allowed Yang to crawl in here after a Mimic had thrown her halfway across the battlefield, towards the edge of the fighting, close to where she and Ruby had planned on making it inland. But none of that matters now, outside of the fact that it gives her this; a minute with Blake before she dies and starts anew.
"You shouldn't talk," Blake murmurs, shooting one last stern glare at Weiss before turning her attention to Yang. "Close your eyes. It'll be nice to rest."
Yang can't help but obey. It is nice to rest, though she knows she won't get all too much of it; she always feels like she wakes up right after dying, no period of time in between to regroup or catch a bit of sleep. But now, she closes her eyes and it feels nice, Blake's cool fingers on her forehead, her knee pressed up against her side.
"I'll need a story, then," she mumbles. "If I'm gonna sleep. Everyone knows that."
"Of course." She catches the hint of a smile in Blake's voice and it makes her respond in kind. "What sort of story would you like?"
Blake is kind. Yang hadn't realized that before now, but gods, she's kneeling on a battlefield soaked with the blood of a thousand soldiers and she's touching Yang's hair and she's staying until the very end of it all and she's so, so kind. Yang hadn't realized it before, but it fits into place easily, another bit of her colored in.
"Something about you." It's getting harder to talk, each word a quiet wheeze. "Something no one knows."
For a moment, there's only silence, and Yang wonders if she's pushed too hard, asked for too much. But Blake's fingers continue to stroke through Yang's bangs and the warmth of her doesn't move away. And after another second longer, she speaks.
"When I was a girl, a horde of Grimm came to Menagerie," she begins, her voice quieter and lower than Yang remembers it ever being. "You've heard the story. Everyone has. We were a small island, removed from the early stages of the war, still wary of humans. We didn't have much experience fighting, so it went about how you would think."
A nearby explosion shakes the metal plating of what remains of the airship and Yang's eyes fly back open; Blake hasn't looked away from her since she's closed them (at least, not that she can tell), and doesn't so much as glance towards the noise.
"I was only a girl. Obviously not very experienced in combat myself. But when they came to my home — my father was a strong man. He told us to run and we did. My mom got us out of the house and handed me off to an older boy I knew, kissed me on my forehead, and ran right back into the house. She didn't tell me she'd be back and I — "
Yang shuts her eyes again. She's slipping away, yes, but it's the desire to give Blake a bit of privacy that forces the action. There's no tremor in her voice, no tears in her eyes, but other, less obvious signs of mourning deserve the same respect; Yang knows this well.
"The guards outside had already been killed. I picked up one of their knives — to me, it was big enough to be a sword — and I thought I could do it. At the time, I think I did. I thought I could run in there with a weapon I'd never used and I would fight. I would save them." A soft breath escapes her lips, a half of a chuckle. "I didn't, of course. Adam — the boy I knew — pushed me to the ground before I could get anywhere and told me if I didn't follow him, I would die. So I did. Follow him, that is. We were taken in by one of the surviving families and hid with them for the rest of the attack, but we ran away after. Again. Later, he would always throw that in my face when he got mad; how it had always been my instinct to run. And he — I realized eventually that he was wrong about a lot of things, but not that. After Haven, people called me a lot of things. But Adam had always been the closest. I am a coward. I always found it easier to run."
The airship rattles again. Loud. Insistent. A warning. It should be quiet for a story like this, but the universe isn't always so kind as to provide for things like that.
"You didn't when it mattered." Yang hadn't thought she'd had any words left, but she pushes them out now. (If it means going into her next life with a deficit, she'll gladly pay that price.) "Not at Haven. And not now. Guessed you showed him, in the end."
Blake's fingers slide from her forehead to her cheek. "He's dead now. But maybe."
"Not maybe." The cough that overtakes her then nearly does her in. She's more of an expert than anyone else in Remnant by now when it comes to dying, and knows she has very little time left. But it's easy to come up with how she wants to spend it. "Anyone can — any idiot can run into battle. It's — harder to keep going… after you've seen the worst." She sucks in as deep a breath as she can manage. "Isn't that — what you — you do? Sounds... brave to me."
She's out of time. (For now.) But in the last moments she has, Blake leans down and presses her forehead to Yang's, warmth against Yang's cooling skin.
If she's going to die enough times to be able to set up a ranking system, Yang suspects this will always be one of her favorites.
—
It's an easy pattern to remember, really. Simple, in a way:
Wake, sleep, wake, die.
Almost like a lullaby, now:
Wake, sleep, wake, die.
Or maybe a drum:
Wake sleep wake die wake sleep wake die.
Or the slowing of her heartbeat, right before the last step:
Wake, sleep —
"It's difficult, isn't it?"
Yang knows she's dreaming, but for once, she doesn't mind. She's spent the night before the battle in a variety of ways by now: training, partying, tossing and turning, locked in nightmares, in the bed of someone else, on the roof of the command center long after Blake's left, staring up at the stars, but this is new. Tonight, she sticks to an old standard, returning to her cot when Blake leaves for a place with less distractions, and stares at the ceiling until sleep takes her, and she finds herself here: alongside a woman, sitting in a room that could be anywhere, its features obscured by a thick, dreamy fog.
The woman is beautiful — blonde hair, pale skin, bright blue eyes — but she seems ancient, older than any one aspect of her appearance might indicate. Or perhaps it's the dress, old-fashioned in its impracticality, as though it's from a time before the Grimm had made such attributes (lacy, loose, gorgeous) rare. Still, her smile is kind, or at least knowing, which is close enough.
"What is?"
"Going back. Trying again. Failing again."
She waves her hand through the mist, forming a perfect circle that turns black, and then fades, leaving nothing behind. It slips away too fast for Yang to be sure, but she thinks she sees figures in the black, claws and blood and the dying and dead.
"Have you done it too?"
She's sure of the answer before she asks, but the woman doesn't respond right away. She swirls her fingers through the mist again, but this time, she leaves no images behind.
"In a way, yes. Thousands of times. But not as you have. I never had to die." For the first time, she turns to look at Yang directly; it's unsettling, the weight of her stare. "Does that make it harder?"
It's not the dress, Yang decides then; the woman's age is in her eyes, in the memories they hold (too many to be natural, too many for a single lifetime alone).
"I don't know. Maybe not." The trauma of dying will fade away, she suspects. It's everything else — the death all around her — that leaves a mark. "Does it get easier?"
Another useless question.
She knows. Gods, she knows.
"Oh, child," the woman sighs. She shakes her head. And she smiles, a horribly sad thing to see. "No."
— wake, die.
—
After about twenty attempts, she and Ruby have most of the kinks sorted out, at least for the terribly basic step of getting their team onto the beach unharmed. The key, it turns out, is stopping the Lancer attack before it can decimate the airships, and they find that they're able to manage this — or, manage it well enough — once they figure out the exact timing of jumping from the ship (once they figure out that convincing the squad with a dash of simple logic and a heavy reliance on camaraderie works better than anything else). After that, it's pretty much trial and error; getting as far as they had the reset before, fixing all the mistakes, and making new ones. And then, repeat ad nauseum.
With emphasis on the nauseum.
Or at least, on the headache, which has popped back up at the worst of times, in the middle of a particularly tricky bit that she'd fucked up last time, missing a single shot and getting Yatsu sliced nearly in half in the process. (Endless chances, but not a lot of room for error; she'd learned the tradeoff fairly quickly).
"Ruby! The — "
The plan relies too heavily on Ruby — on her remembering every detail of the fight that she's yet to experience — but her sister rarely falters, and she comes through now, not a second after Yang calls, scythe twirling in a perfect arc at the perfect moment, cutting into three burrowing Grimm just as they emerge from the ground. It allows Yang to roll forward, unobstructed, and clock the Mimic sneaking around the outcropping of crystals with an uppercut punctuated with a shotgun shell. After that, it's a simple clean-up, one that they've practiced for in the most general sense; Coco and Fox wear down the aura, Flynt and Ivori pin down its arms, Velvet climbs up its back and flattens it to the ground, and Yatsu lands the killing blow, a neat cut through its neck. Not three minutes of fighting, but it'd taken Yang three lives to master the series of events. The next part is easy, in comparison.
(Except.)
She's meant to use her gauntlets to burst through a brief clearing in the fight — the whole of the group quickly diving into various forms of shelter before a horde of Sabyrs can block the path and trap them in with the next Mimic — before taking refuge in the skeleton of an airship. A Grimm will burst through the shattered window at the top, another one will slink through a hole in the side, and a third will rush through the main opening, a straggler that catches sight of Yang before she manages to hide amongst the planks of metal.
Except. Today, instead of a small, empty shelter, Blake is there instead.
Everything else is the same and she acts without thinking, tackling Blake to the floor just as the Beowolf tears through the window; four precise shots to the forehead take care of it before it can rush them. The ash has only just settled when the Blind Worm crawls in through the side, and Yang fires directly into its mouth without looking away from the woman now underneath her.
"Wha — "
She tries to sit up, moves onto her elbows until Yang's all but straddling her lap. It'd be a nice reversal of the night before (or the fifteen or so instances of it, because Yang can't fucking help herself), if not for the screams and explosions and death and Grimm all around them.
"Wait," she says, and counts to three in her head before setting off the charges she'd placed at the entrance when she'd jumped through at the start. She knows she hasn't missed because she's still alive, but Blake stares past her, mouth slightly open. There's no time for it, none at all, and Yang pushes off the ground, holding out her hand. "We have to go. This airship's about to be flattened by a Nevermore dive bombing into it. Or — I think. I've never found you here before so maybe — "
Blake isn't taking her hand. In fact, she isn't doing anything at all. Except — after another second — laughing. It's not something she's ever seen Blake do before, not like this, and it leaves Yang off-balance and bewildered, arm still outstretched, but fingers curling into her palm.
"Fuck," Blake breathes. "Of course it's you. Gods." She lets her head fall back onto the uneven metal, hard enough to make a sound. Yang winces, but the laughter continues, up until the point that Blake pushes herself back up, just enough to look at Yang, a sharp tilt to her smile, the same slant of a broken piece of glass.
"Do you come to the roof because you want to?" she asks. "Or because you're afraid of changing things too much?"
"What?"
The question is entirely incomprehensible to Yang, but impossible to ignore. She wastes precious moments sorting through the possibilities until she remembers. They don't have time for this. She shakes her head and continues, words spilling out in a jumbled rush.
"Look it doesn't matter. We've got to go."
They have ten seconds at most, and Yang's not entirely sure how well she's kept up on the timing, given all this, so she'd definitely bet on less. But Blake, entirely unconcerned, continues to stare, her smile softening into something different. Something understanding.
"Yang," she says, sure and simple, and Yang forgets to breathe. "Come find me when you wake up."
There's a smear of blood across Blake's cheek, ash in her hair, her wrist is cradled to her chest, and just before they die — the Nevermore finally slamming into the structure and flattening them within it — Yang thinks she looks relieved.
—
It's not as though she hadn't thought about it before, bringing Blake in on the secret.
Blake Belladonna — the only person to kill and Alpha, the most celebrated Huntress of their era, the Hero of Haven — obviously had a decent amount of knowledge when it came to killing Mimics and navigating a battlefield. And every time Yang woke, she went through these points — in a careful, logical manner — until Yang's own selfishness overruled each and every one of them. The simple fact is this: Yang didn't want to lose the one thing she didn't mind repeating (or, more than that, liked repeating, looked forward to repeating). If she's pulling on the same thread each time she climbs up that roof, maybe she's coiling it in her hand, small loops outside of the tangle of time, the only thing that remains untouched by the horror of her repeated deaths (and those of everyone around her).
But now there's another factor, one that can't be denied: Blake knows she's looping.
"She's done it before," Ruby says, after Yang has explained (again) with the new bits added in. "That's the only thing that makes sense. She must have done it before. Which would explain Haven. You know what the reports were like; everyone said it was like she knew exactly where the Grimm were going to be, like she could anticipate all their moves. It makes sense that whatever you're going through happened to her too."
They're just outside the back training building, watching the two guards posted outside. It seems silly to waste the resources on it, but maybe that's the sort of privilege heroes get: things they don't need (or maybe even want) just to set them apart.
"But that's good news, right?" Ruby continues, nudging Yang's shoulder with a gentle headbutt. "She survived and found a way to kill all those Grimm, and so can you!"
"Maybe," Yang mumbles.
It's the same conclusion she's come to herself, mainly because it's the only one that makes sense. How she feels about it all is less certain, though her optimism doesn't quite reach the same heights as Ruby's (not that this isn't often — or maybe always — the case). Someone's gone through this before, gone through it successfully, and that's a good thing; there's no denying this, and so Yang focuses on the positives, and not the thought of losing something to the shifting timeline, vanishing in the worst sort of quicksand.
"Definitely!" Ruby chirps, and claps her hands together. "So how do you want to do this? I was thinking I could use my semblance to zip behind them and then maybe, like, steal one of their little hats? And then I'd put it on and be like 'come and get me!' and then I'd go through the middle part of the base right when the final bell for breakfast rings and get lost in the crowd. And then I'd duck into the barracks and go through someone's locker to get a common uniform and pop out the other end like, 'oh, hi, are you looking for someone?' and do a little salute and they'd be like, 'have you seen a girl in red? She was very clever and very fast so we don't know where she's gone' and — "
"Or we could just go right through the door when they step away for a smoke."
"Yang," Ruby groans. "They're not just going to — oh, they're doing that right now. Okay." She tilts her head, eyes narrowing just enough to get her point across. "How many times have you — "
Yang — who absolutely has no intention of admitting she's stared at this building on several separate occasions, tired of waiting until nightfall to catch Blake alone — shakes her head and interrupts before Ruby can get much further.
"Not that many. Just burst us in there in three, okay? They'll look away for a minute, so if you time it right — "
Ruby doesn't wait for further confirmation, tucking against Yang's chest and then… dissolving. It's hard to describe the sensation — not quite like teleportation or normal travel, but something in between, both weightlessness and awareness of the distance at once. It's not something Yang will ever be used to, and not something Ruby uses particularly often as a means of travel for more than herself, given the strain on her aura, but it works well now; they traverse the clearing without fuss, and slip through the door quickly after, a total of five seconds at most. They wait — just on the other side of it — for a few additional moments, listening for any commotion, but everything's quiet, almost unsettlingly so.
The building is the same one they had used (and would use) with Flynt, Ivori, and the members of team CFVY, and the layout is much the same as they walk through the narrow concrete halls — sparse decoration and few means of relaxation — but the quiet is new. In the common areas, the sounds of fighting, shouting, laughing, and everything in between rings off the walls, echoed throughout the building. But here, in the back area where there's a single hallway with only a few doors, the silence has a weight that feels entirely counter to the sort that a person might experience in battle. Yang can't imagine how anyone would find such an environment productive in terms of simulating the pure chaos of the field, but then, maybe something happens after hundreds of loops of the same day. Maybe she'll start to crave silence too.
"What now?" Ruby whispers, too loud even then, and Yang winces, creeping further down the hallway as best she can. (Stealth, maybe, isn't exactly either of their strong suit.)
"She should be here," Yang murmurs. "They block off a training room for her and her partner; I've heard from a few people that she's pretty much always here and the middle room looks like it's the biggest so… " She trails off, hand hovering over the touchpad. "You wait out here. This shouldn't take too long. One way or another. But if someone comes in before I come back out, just get out of here, alright?"
She's faced with skepticism once more, the same tilted head and narrowed eyes, but she waves it off again, testing her luck. For a moment, she doesn't think Ruby will let it go this time around, but in the end, her shoulders drop as she lets out a sigh, and her nod, while hesitant, is clear. Yang presses a kiss to her sister's forehead, taps her palm to the pad, and steps into the room before she gives herself (or Ruby) any further time to overthink the whole process.
The room holds the same hush as the hallway, but maybe that's just Yang holding her breath. It isn't silence she steps into, though; the quiet hum of holographics echoes around the large room, the sheer number of projections making the hair on Yang's arm stand on end, goosebumps appearing on her flesh. But in the middle of the room, there's only one occupant among all the dark shapes, and she appears completely unfazed by the dozens and dozens of silent, unmoving, holographic Grimm poised to attack all around her. Blake's weapon lies on the floor next to her — sheathed but not out of reach — while the woman herself balances the whole of her weight on her palms, body fully off the ground in a horizontal plank. It's more than a little breathtaking, and Yang forgets about pretty much everything — the hard light figures around them, the fact that she's walking forward, the hellish loop she's caught in — as she watches. She's been at this for a while, most likely, based on the amount of sweat that's collected on her bare arms, the number of locks of hair falling into (and sticking to) her face, and the warm glow to her dark skin.
How many lives will it take before seeing Blake for the first time doesn't suck all the air out of her lungs? Yang wonders.
And then Blake looks up and Yang knows it'll be more lives than she has to live, even if they stretch into the thousands.
Her feet drop to the floor without a sound, the muscles in her arms flex as she pushes up, her back arches in the sort of curve that would turn a mathematician into a poet, and then she's upright, faster than Yang can blink.
"Can I help you?" Blake asks.
It only occurs to her then, how absolutely ridiculous every single line she might say in response might sound. She should have prepared more, should have choreographed her plan of attack like she would any other, should have been ready for the effect Blake has on her, the same effect she has on Yang every time.
Blake waves her left hand and the holograms flicker off, leaving the room emptier, quieter. It doesn't help though, because she steps forward with the same motion, head tilting in question, eyebrow lifting in half amusement. This is not a woman who is often disturbed, this Yang doesn't doubt, but the corner of Blake's lips still turns upwards, still her tone is more curious than hostile (still her eyes trace the curve of Yang's hip, side, jaw).
"Did someone send you?"
That, at least, gives an opening, and Yang lets out a soft laugh, shaking her head and hoping that clears some of the stupor away.
"Yeah." She finds a smile of her own, though there's an apologetic tilt to it that she can't account for. "You did. Tomorrow."
On reflex, Blake's mouth opens to form a response, but she closes it quickly, sucking in a breath and doing nothing with it. Yang shifts her weight onto her right foot and waits while Blake stares, eyebrows pinched, absently reaching up to push her hair out of her face. (She's happy to wait. Happy to watch. Happy to be here, a small moment of calm before everything else.)
"You always ask me about underwater life," Yang continues, softer than before. "About how 94% of life on Remnant lives somewhere down there. You always go to the roof tonight. You always stand in the back during the briefing. You always go after the Alpha. You always — "
(Kiss me, Yang nearly says, but can't bring herself to finish.)
Blake takes one step closer, close enough for Yang to see those faint scars and taste something of her on her tongue when she takes a deep breath. For a moment, she thinks maybe Blake's read her thoughts, and has decided to keep the trend going, a little earlier on in the day than usual. (Yang wouldn't object. Obviously. She'd never think of objecting.) But instead, Blake only stares, irises flickering back and forth in short, quick motions, like she's reading the world's smallest script, right there in Yang's eyes.
"I thought you seemed familiar," Blake murmurs, but then blinks, like that wasn't what she meant to say at all.
"Is that how it works?"
Before Yang finishes, Blake's shaking her head, stepping away, running her fingers through her hair to collect the wayward strands. She's turning away and then looking back and then turning away again, arms crossing over each other, shoulders hunching, all of her folding in on herself.
"No! No, that's not what I — "
"Blake!"
The interruption — a sharp shout, a commotion at the door, Ruby's shrill voice — disrupts the moment, much to Blake's clear relief. And maybe Yang feels something of the same, because she's gone through about fifteen emotions in the past three minutes, and her sister causing some kind of clamor feels like a comforting constant in the middle of it all.
"Blake, we have an intruder in the building and she claims her sister is — "
Weiss's face is flushed, her sword drawn, and her fingers have the neck of Ruby's cloak clenched so tightly between them that she's clearly losing circulation.
"Hello, Weiss," Yang says simply, then leans to the side. "Hi, Ruby."
This, apparently, is not an acceptable greeting, given the way Weiss blanches.
"Excuse me? Have we met?"
Yang shrugs, gestures towards Blake in what she knows is an unhelpful manner. "Unfortunately."
"How dare — "
Blake groans, not particularly softly, loud enough to (mostly) cut Weiss off.
"Come with me." She doesn't break her stride when no one follows, leaving the three remaining women to glare at each other at various intensities as she calls over her shoulder, "All of you. Now."
-
"Her?"
It's the first question Weiss asks when Yang is finished with her explanation, which doesn't do much to raise the woman in her esteem.
"Weiss," Blake sighs. "Did it occur to you that you might want to make a better first impression, given how many times you'll be giving it?"
"Yes," Weiss says, her nod sharp. "And you'll be happy to know this response was firmly middle ground. I invoked disappointment and rationality in equal measure and employed this response as a happy medium."
The room Blake's pulled them all into is clearly familiar to Weiss (who'd dropped into a plush chair at the head of the table as soon as they'd entered), but Ruby's spent the duration of Yang's truncated summary of the situation poking at the various bits of tech spread around it. She only looks away from her current preoccupation — a device that looks like a combination of a remote and drone — to exchange a synchronized eye roll with Yang that neither of them attempt to hide from Weiss's view.
"You're like, super fun at parties, huh?" Yang vocalizes, for the both of them.
"We've trained for this for years, you absolutely buffo — "
"Weiss," Blake says again, this time a little more sharply, and the woman cuts herself off, jaw tightening as she turns away at the rebuke. "They don't know," she continues, softer now. "How could they know?"
Her lips twist in discomfort, but Weiss nods eventually, after a long moment of silence full of tension. "I… apologize. We'd hoped to avoid someone unfamiliar with the concept gaining the ability to repeat. It isn't personal. I'm sure you're perfectly competent."
Sprawled out in a chair of her own, legs dangling over the armrest, Yang drops her chin onto her palm and grins.
"Always with these over-the-top, extravagant compliments, Weiss," she drawls, and Weiss sits up a little straighter — a picture perfect contrast — whip of a reply clearly ready, which Yang starves off with a wink. "Gods, you flirt with me in every repeat. Can you try to be at least a little professional this time around?"
"That's — I — " Weiss's face turns a color of red that Yang hadn't known existed in natural spaces. "You said this was the first time we've really spoken."
"Maybe I was trying to spare your feelings." Yang sucks in a breath through her teeth. "Rejection hurts, darling."
Across the table, now seated but still fiddling with the mystery device, Ruby snorts loudly; the sound ratchetts Weiss's irritation up to eleven, her fingers creeping towards the handle of her weapon — a thin, well-maintained blade — and Yang spends a solid two seconds considering how much fun it would be to best her in a fight, no matter how many repeats it took.
"Blake," Weiss grits out. "I'm going to kill her."
Yang cracks her knuckles and throws her hands behind her head, stretching out in the most obnoxious way she can manage. "Just another notch in my bedpost, sweetheart."
Weiss's hand actually curls around the handle of her weapon; Yang nearly bursts into laughter.
"Perhaps we should focus on the task at hand."
She might be imagining the amusement in Blake's tone, but Yang doubts it. Her mouth remains in a tidy line, her expression calm enough that Weiss settles back into her seat, but there's something to the eyes, a glint in the gold that feels as pronounced as a full grin.
"Sure. We better hurry up." Yang rolls two fingers in a tight circle in the air in front of her. "I'm really short on time, after all."
The amusement (imagined or otherwise) fades from Blake's countenance. Even Weiss loses her fight, lips pinching downwards into a sharp frown. It's hardly the reaction anyone wants to one of their jokes, but doubly so when the joke centers around her own (apparently) very temporary immortality.
"Fuck," she sighs, before anyone says anything. "Okay, what is it then? I hit a hundred repeats and I die for good? There's a little bomb inside me that counts down every time I jump back? I turn into a Grimm at the two hundredth stroke of midnight?"
Blake curls a bit further into herself, planting her elbows on the table and leaning in, hair falling down around her face, bangs obscuring her eyes.
"Nothing so drastic. It seems to be tied to the headaches." Blake lifts her head and meets Yang's gaze so suddenly that Yang drops her hands back into her lap. "Have they started yet?"
"The real question," Weiss cuts in, "is if the visions have."
"She had a headache this morning," Ruby supplies, face pinched in a way that makes her (for once) look her age. "What does that mean?"
Shifting in her seat until she can drop her feet on the floor, Yang does her best to focus on each piece of information separately. "I didn't say I had a — it was barely a headache anyways and — wait, visions?"
She is not particularly successful.
"You were doing that thing you always do when your head hurts." Ruby demonstrates, pinching the skin between her thumb and index finger. "Right after you woke up."
Yang can't recall performing the action, but has to prevent herself from doing it now on reflex, though the aforementioned headache has long since passed.
"It's not something to be worried about," Blake says soothingly, more to Ruby than Yang. "Mine started after only a couple loops. But they do get… " Her lips twitch in the ghost of a wince. "Painful."
"After a few hundred resets, the headaches were so bad that they rendered Blake unconscious," Weiss continues, matter-of-fact. "When she woke up again, she had lost the ability to loop. We assume the two are connected."
"Though there are other factors." Blake's hands are still, her voice calm, but her ears flick to the side. "After I passed out, Weiss was able to get me off the field, but — " (Out of the corner of Yang's eye, Weiss shrinks in on herself, bracing against the memory.) " — not unscathed. I lost a lot of blood. A healer saved my life with an aura transfer. It's possible that either of those things — blood or aura — has something to do with it."
"We're not exactly working off of a large sample size," says Weiss, who's peering at Yang in a way that makes her feel like an ant under a magnifying glass (and whether it'll be used for study or to burn her to a crisp, Yang's not sure). "Blake's visions started around the same time her headaches did, yours apparently have not, given how mystified you appeared at the very mention of them. I suspect we'll be working on a different timetable. You seem to be… fairly different individuals."
Yang lets that one go without further comment.
"So what do you know for sure?" Ruby asks, sounding so unlike herself that Yang's eyebrows lift into her bangs; Ruby notices the surprise about the same time as she registers her own tone, and waves her hands wildly in front of her face, her panic clear. "Oh! Not! I didn't mean! That sounded mean, but I just — " Her eyes dart over towards Yang and then back again towards Blake; it's not difficult to figure out the source of her concern. "I just want to know as much as possible. So I can help."
"Clearly, you've worked out a fair amount on your own," Weiss begins begrudgingly. "From what we understand, killing the Alpha Mimic in a certain way results in some kind of transference of energy. It can't be killing one in general, of course. We always thought it may have something to do with swallowing the ash of the Alpha, but — " She sighs. "Again, that's conjecture. Either way, this suggests that the ability to roll back time — or however you might like to describe it — is something that's innate to these particular Grimm."
"Which explains why they're so successful in defeating us," Ruby pipes in. "Yang and I have always wondered how they could react so well in the big battles; they always seem to know where we're coming from and what we're going to do. You said transfer of the ability couldn't be killing an Alpha in general, so that must be the trigger for the reset on their end too, right? Yang took that ability and now she resets time back to a specific point whenever she dies. If that's what the Grimm have been doing all along — all throughout this war — repeating the battle with adjusted tactics whenever we're successful enough to kill their commander, then that's…. bad. That's really, really bad."
Weiss doesn't try to hide her surprise at Ruby's (correct) assessment, but when she continues, it's with a little less of the overlay of superiority smeared over each of her words.
"Yes. That's precisely our theory. It explains our losses when an Alpha was present. And why the Battle at Haven was the only major one we were able to win."
"Because Blake stole the ability." Yang traces a nonsensical shape into the table's surface, something of a mix between a heart and an explosion. "And now I have too. Only one mind can hold it at once, otherwise, you'd get a mess of conflicting timelines, I guess. So if we have it, the Grimm don't."
Blake nods slowly, leaning back in her chair, posture temporarily straightening until she falls all the way back into it. "That's the short of it. As long as you're looping, the Grimm won't, and we still have a chance. We don't know how the Alpha Mimics gained this ability in the first place, but we know there's only ever one of them on the battlefield, and we know the other Mimics don't seem to have the same ability. Once you take it from an Alpha, it's yours. At least for a time."
She wants to ask how many times Blake went back, wants to ask how she survived, wants to know what it means to hold hundreds of versions of your own death in your hands, but doesn't. It feels like too much, not necessarily to ask, but to learn. There's a limit to these things, to the capacity of a person's mind for comprehension; Weiss had said that Yang and Blake were different, and Yang's not ready to find out the specifics of what that means, our how it corresponds to how long she'll be able to carry a burden like this (outside of as long as she can, because this, Yang already knows).
"Tell me about the visions." She means it as a request and Blake takes it as one, considering it for an extended pause — short nails tapping against the armrest of her chair — before speaking
"This is where it gets complicated," Blake admits, and Ruby snorts in laughter.
"Now? Not with the time travel? I'm sorry! But can we talk about that?" In the blink of an eye, a microburst of red, Ruby tucks her legs underneath her, no interruption to the building rant. "Because my sister is a time traveler and she apparently keeps dying and hello? What's happening to the other Yangs and Blakes and Rubys and Weisses that do die? Does this whole thing make a million new universes where some of us are dead? Is it literally like a rewind button that just goes back without any consequences? Does this mean the Alpha Grimm have semblances? A shared semblance? Can something share a semblance? Who decides which Alpha gets it? Or is it like, a new one is created when an old one dies? Is this the result of them getting aura? Did you figure anything more about that? Because from our perspective it was like, oh, one day the Grimm don't have aura and the next day some of them do, and I'd really like to avoid another surprise like that! It kind of sounds like — "
"I'm sorry, but do you need to breathe?" Weiss cuts in, and despite herself, Yang laughs at the incredulity laced in every word.
"Maybe one at a time, Ruby," she murmurs, and Ruby flushes a soft pink.
"Right. Okay. We can get to all that… later. Just had a little… moment. Carry on." She rolls her hand and offers a crooked, awkward little half-bow from her seat. "Please continue."
This time, Blake doesn't mask her amusement, lips curling fully at the corners. "Thank you. And yes, everything is tremendously complicated, but with the visions I started having… " She trails off, any trace of mirth fading, a familiar sort of shadow overtaking it. "It's difficult to explain. I've tried with Weiss, but it's — it's almost as though there's another presence in your mind. Something pressing on your memories and emotions and — " Blake runs a hand through her short curls, musing them enough that several strands remain sticking up, out of place. "It showed me places. The Land of Darkness. A castle. A room that looked like — it looked just like a throne room. I saw where it was."
A chill passes down Yang's spine, a wisp of a memory that flies across her face with a soft buzz; she should reach out and grab it, but finds her attention drawn elsewhere: to the hollowness of Blake's eyes, the tension pressing on her shoulders, and the downwards turn of her lips (and then, momentarily, a flickering and distracting light: the glide of Yang's tongue across the surprising softness she'd found there, the slightly off-center divot at the cleft, the fullness of the lower half where her thumb had found purchase).
But it's Ruby who asks the question for her, after a long beat. "Where what was?"
Blake only shakes her head and Weiss leans forward, her gaze not straying from her partner as she speaks.
"We don't know. We never found any concrete evidence, but Blake always believed — and I came to believe as well — that there was something behind the Grimm. A… force of some kind. Something to give them purpose and direction. How else would humans and Faunus have worked with the Grimm at the start of the war? Ironwood's claims that these groups were independent subsets never sat well with me, even before everything that happened at Haven. It makes sense that there would be something else. And then Blake's visions had such direction. Almost as though…"
Weiss trails off and Blake steps in, tone flat.
"It was inviting me there. Whatever it is, I always felt like it wanted me to come."
The same gnat of a thought passes across her face and this time, she reaches for it. (A force. A woman. A kind smile. Or perhaps just a knowing one. Simple words outside of time. 'It's difficult, isn't it?' she asks.)
"I haven't felt anything like that," Yang begins slowly. "Nothing to do with places. Or… summons. But I can't imagine that's a good thing. Getting a call from this — whatever — the central controlling force of all the Grimm or something. Why would it want you to come over for a visit if not to kill you? I assume it wants its invicible time traveling power back, right? Like, no thank you."
The intensity of Blake's stare has her dropping the joke and her shoulders, sighing into the silence.
"But we don't have a choice, do we?" Yang continues, the question more rhetorical than anything. "If this thing controls the Grimm, or commands them, or anything like that, killing it is our only choice. Otherwise, they'll come back eventually. Ironwood has always said there was a plan for containment, once we thinned them out and pushed them back to the source, but that was always a little thin, right? We all saw how fast the Grimm can repopulate. Yeah. I get it. You're ready to walk into a trap because you don't have another choice. We've gotta kill the thing inviting you over for tea with a little death sprinkled in your cup."
Ruby shifts again, tucking her knees against her chest, wrapping her arms around them. "So we kill the brain instead. We walk into the trap and kill it before it can kill Yang. And hope that will make it easier to mop up the rest by getting rid of the coordination and the time traveling. I'm guessing that's part of your theory too? That the… Big Bad, or whatever we're calling it — "
"The Omega," Weiss cuts in, though she looks a little embarrassed. "Going along with the theme."
Everyone shoots Yang a look when she laughs, with varying degrees of fondness (or in Weiss's case, an entire lack thereof).
"Okay, that the Omega is the thing with the ability to reset, right? It never really made a lot of sense that the Alphas themselves controlled it, because there's more than one of them. So you think it's this Omega and if we kill it, the Grimm can't keep resetting the day."
Weiss's eyes narrow. "You are more perceptive than you look."
"She gets that a lot," Yang drawls. "But alright. Simple enough plan, yeah? Fight through the billions of Grimm to get off the beach, make our way inland, and then kill some horrifying creature that no one has ever seen and may not even exist. What could go wrong?"
"And you're less…" Weiss roots around for the word, mouth twisting. "Cheery than you look."
"Dying a couple times will do that to you," Yang returns, tone still droll. "Why don't you try it out and see how it goes for you, Ice Queen?"
"That is precisely what I was trying to do before you interfered, apparently!" Weiss's hand all but slams into the desk, opening a control panel underneath the wood in the most dramatic means possible (no such force needed to start up the mechanism). Her fingers fly across the keyboard with a bit more delicacy, though not much. "Look," she says flatly, and every holographic projector in the room hums as it comes to life.
One thing is certain, Yang can't fault Weiss for her preparation. Every screen shows detailed plans, research, diagrams, all showcasing the knowledge she and Blake had collated and turned into a careful strategy for taking down an Alpha, and gaining the ability to loop. But this time, apparently, with Weiss at the wheel. Ruby springs out of her seat and leans closer to the central screen — where someone has drawn up thorough, step-by-step instructions for killing an Alpha in the upcoming battle — then paces down the length of the table to take the rest in. Yang finds her eyes wandering over to Blake, who's already staring in her direction, ignoring the information on display entirely.
"I would have done it again," she says, voice cracking somewhere in the last word, but only just. "We knew our only chance of winning was to force it to happen again, but — "
When Weiss cuts in, her entire countenance has shifted towards something Yang hardly recognizes, but understands must be far more common than their limited interactions would lead her to believe. There's a reason they've stuck together throughout all this, and it has nothing to do with Atlesian glory or obligation. Because when Weiss speaks, it's with a fierce protectiveness, only muted by the gentleness she wraps it in.
"We didn't want to take any chances," she says softly. "Perhaps it wouldn't have worked again, for the same person, given the strain involved. So we thought it safer to plan on my blow being the final one."
Yang smiles, tight and grim. "But you got me instead. No wonder you don't like me." It's not said with the same harshness she would have employed before, new understanding sanding down the sharp edges.
And Weiss responds in kind, caution without vitriol. "It isn't personal. But we've been working on this for some time, as you can clearly see." She waves at the screen around them (Ruby, still peering closely at one, muttering under her breath all the while, doesn't look up). "We hardly accounted for you."
"That's an understatement," Blake mumbles, loud enough for Yang to hear, but probably not intentionally, given the way she quickly looks away at Yang's half grin. "That's to say — " She clears her throat. "Based on what you've told us, you went about this far differently than we planned. You haven't told anyone other than your sister — and Ironwood, who was thankfully too wrapped up in his ego to do anything about it — "
"Ouch," Yang hisses, shifting from half to full grin. "Love a girl who knows when to be feisty."
" — But you still were able to convince six others to follow you, to change their actions in drastic ways," Blake says, mostly ignoring the interruption (though her small smile indicates otherwise). "How?"
It's not the question Yang expects, and her first response to simply shrug, only adding to it when Blake continues to stare, head tilting half an inch.
"They know me. CFVY especially. We went to school together at Beacon. We fought together there too. They know — for both Ruby and me — they know we're good at what we do and that we wouldn't ask them to jump out of a plane for no reason. It's not really more complicated than that."
For the first time, Weiss smiles at something she says, thought it's still not one that's full of much humor. "It's not quite as easy as that for some of us. I'm generally despised due to my family name and… admittedly difficult personality. And Blake could lead a battalion, but refuses to put people in danger unless they all but beg for it." She rolls her eyes. "Besides, I'm an Atlesian Specialist. And Blake never went to one of the Academies. We were taught to fight alone. It's our preference to fight as independent units."
"And that's your problem." Ruby, for the first time in what feels like ages, finally speaks up, standing up straight and waving towards the screen she's only just pulled herself away from. "All of these plans are for two people. If you had a bigger group — even just a standard Huntress team of four — you could cut these steps in half, maybe more. You're basing your victory on working alone, and that makes everything so much harder."
Neither woman appears particularly insulted by Ruby pretty much ripping into the strategy they've apparently spent years putting together, but Yang's not surprised; Ruby's always had a gift for making people believe in new things (or maybe just believing in her). The smile that grows on her face watching her sister is a proud one, and not one she thinks to mask.
"It involves relying on more people to get the steps right," Weiss cautions. "Perhaps Yang can already attest, but navigating people through a battlefield where only one person can see the moves ahead is no small feat. It will likely take us more attempts to get things right. More people means more coordination. We would have to prepare all day — and most of the night — before the battle tomorrow."
Blake's fingers tap against her elbow, arms folded against her chest. "But with four people, we could perform more complicated moves. We could tackle Mimics — even the Alpha if we needed to — with a lot less difficulty. And a lot less resets. It could balance out, in the end. We had considered bringing more people in at Haven, but our options… we didn't have too many people we could trust. Even with Weiss, it was more of an accident than anything; we didn't know each other at all before the day of the battle, and both of us were there based on happenstance. But in each loop she assisted me without knowing, and I decided the potential benefit of having a partner with her abilities outweighed the risk and effort it would involve."
"And look how well that worked out," Yang chimes in, adding a wink for good measure. "Now the both of you are codependent, or something."
"We're not — "
"It isn't — "
"Sounds like everyone's onboard, then!' Yang barrels onward, ignoring the loud jumble of protests at her wording. Ruby laughs over the noise, because she knows exactly what comes next.
"What's the plan, Ruby?"