Having perfected our disguise, we spend our lives searching for someone we don't fool.
Robert Brault
Yang was rudely awoken by a rush of cold air as her blankets were suddenly yanked away from her. She rolled over, curling up into a ball and covering her eyes with her good arm. Still half-awake, she grumbled out something to the tune of "Why?"
"Wake up, sunshine, we've got a big day."
Yang reluctantly uncovered her eyes and looked up at Neo. The girl tossed Yang's covers towards the foot of the bed and smiled down at her. Yang frowned and looked at her alarm clock, then at the window. There was no sun streaming through the blinds - indeed, it looked like it was before dawn.
"Don't tell me it's before sunup?"
Neo let out a soft giggle and shoved her Scroll in Yang's face.
[It is! From now on, you're getting up early.]
Yang sighed and groggily considered going back to sleep, but figured that Neo wouldn't let her. She sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.
"Ugh, you win. Let's get started. Can you help me with the arm?"
Even as she said it, she felt a twinge of disgust. Despite everything it meant for her recovery, she couldn't help but feel some resentment. The arm was a constant reminder of her failure, her weakness.
It doesn't even work right, she thought bitterly. All that work, and its movements would still be jerky and slow for the time being.
Still, Neo's eyes glinted as she turned and picked up the mechanical arm from its resting place on Yang's bookshelf. Yang's eyes grew wide as she saw the changes Neo had made to it since the previous night.
"Neo, did you do that?"
The entire arm had been painted yellow, with black lines running down its length, and various other highlights like the knuckles and joints painted black as well. Neo wore a smirk, but glanced away in what Yang thought was embarrassment.
Yang looked from the arm to Neo. It was still the same arm, the same clunky, improvised prosthetic that she had to wear because she had made the worst mistake of her life…but Neo had helped her build it to try and get her back on her feet. She'd even gone the extra mile to paint it in Yang's colors, to try and make her happy.
And she had to admit, it looked kind of cool.
"Thank you, Neo, it looks great," she said.
Yang put on a smile and offered the stump of her right arm so that Neo could slide the harness onto it.
Neo fastened it on quickly and competently. Yang quickly flipped the switch above the elbow, and the arm hummed to life. She clenched her hand into a fist, then unclenched it, then extended her arm, inspecting the paint job.
"How long did this take you?"
Neo shrugged.
"A few hours. I wasn't up that late," she whispered. Yang still found Neo's voice strange. She wasn't sure what she had expected - a girly, high-pitched voice to match her size, perhaps - but it certainly wasn't her whispery, raspy voice. Yang found it strangely pleasant, like the rustle of satin. And even if she didn't always choose to speak, the fact that she spoke to Yang at all meant she had earned Neo's trust.
Yang looked back at the mechanical arm, tracing her fingers along the black lines.
"Well, I appreciate it," she said, smiling at Neo, "Really."
Neo brightened, then grabbed Yang's good hand and began hauling her out of bed.
"Good! Now come on, we've got work to do."
/
"I mean, it makes sense to me," Yang said as she watched the hashbrowns cook. Neo hummed contemplatively as she flipped through the newspaper.
"It's like..." Yang reached for an egg, "Of course I need to get used to the new hand."
She held the egg over the frying pan and, very carefully, tried to crack it. Instead, she crushed it between the metallic fingers, causing yolk, egg white, and shell fragments to splatter down into the pan, while also coating her fingers. She sighed in disgust and flicked her hand to remove the egg, then picked up a washcloth and began cleaning the hand.
"Why does it have to be something as frustrating as cooking?"
Neo looked up and smirked.
"You're going to need a lot of energy. You still have a good amount of progress to make, Yang."
Yang frowned and flexed her good arm. It was true that over the past two months (now close to three) that she had been in the grips of her depression, she'd gone a bit soft. She felt a stab of self-loathing at the thought.
Of course you gave up. That's all you're good for.
Yang quickly pushed the thought away.
Apparently Neo planned on a dedicated training regimen in order to get her back in shape. Yang was ready to do it. She wanted to be strong again, more than anything. She just hoped she could get there.
The first attempt at making breakfast was...rough. She made a smoothie easily enough, and fried sausage and hashbrowns well enough (though she burned them a little, thanks to some trouble flipping them over with a spatula held on her robot hand), but the eggs were ruined. At least there was no way to ruin the toast. There was a lot of food, though, at Neo's insistence, and Yang agreed - she'd stopped eating a lot after losing her arm, and she was planning to regain that lost weight in muscle.
As she ate, Neo outlined her new routine.
"You'll wake up before the crack of dawn, then make breakfast. After that, we're going for a walk."
She coughed delicately and gestured at the door out into the yard. Yang glanced out the window into the barely pre-dawn light and raised an eyebrow.
"In this season? At this hour?"
Neo shrugged.
"You'll be fine as long as you keep your heartrate up, and it'll build your endurance. Besides, eventually we'll graduate to running."
Yang sighed, then blinked in surprise.
"We?"
Neo smirked at her.
"Did you think I was going to sit here while you went running through the snow?"
Yang shrugged, but before she could answer Neo began speaking again.
"After your walk - or run - we'll come back here and do physical exercise. Today I want to just gauge how much progress we need to make, but in the future I'm going to start having you do more work," she said, followed by the sort of delicate cough that often followed when she spoke more than a short sentence.
Yang whistled.
"Sounds like you're planning to really push me," she said. It sounded like Neo was planning to start off slow, then ratchet up the workload until Yang was back to her strength level before the Battle of Beacon.
Neo smirked at her, her mismatched eyes glinting.
"I won't go easy on you."
Yang stared at the table for a moment. If she was being honest with herself, that seemed exactly what she needed - someone who wouldn't let her give up on herself, who would keep pushing her, even if her weakness held her back. Yang looked up at Neo and gave her a massive grin.
"I'd be insulted if you did."
/
Yang shoved her good hand deeper in the pocket of her black-and-yellow track suit and stomped through the inch of snow that had fallen overnight. The woods were quiet, all noise muted by the snow that had been falling for months, with the area only lit by the barest predawn light. Beside her, Neo strode across the snow with a spring in her step, occasionally looking over her shoulder to give Yang a smirk. Yang wasn't sure when she had bought a brown tracksuit with pink and white stripes, but it fit her very well, and Yang was convinced Neo wanted to be in front of her for a reason. Yang rolled her eyes and watched her breath curl through the air.
"How do you feel?" Neo asked her. Yang scoffed and kicked at a snowdrift.
"Cold. I think my toes are going numb."
Neo skipped over a fallen tree branch and shrugged.
"Tell me when you get tired and we'll turn back," she whispered, her words coming out in little puffs of cloud. Yang nodded and followed Neo down the snowy footpath through the woods. In truth, she felt fine - uncomfortably cold, sure, but walking for at least a mile wasn't exhausting or anything. That was a good sign, Yang thought.
"So Neo," she asked, as a way to cut through the stifling winter silence, "Tell me about Roman."
A faint smile appeared on Neo's face.
"He was kind," she said, and Yang was surprised to hear her voice rise above a whisper.
"Really?" Yang asked. Somehow, the man who tried to punch her in a mech suit didn't seem like the caring sort.
"Well...to me he was," Neo said, "He was caring and protective, and he was a good listener. He didn't have a lot of patience with other people, but he always had time for me."
Yang pursed her lips thoughtfully. He would have had to have taken good care of Neo, for her to be so dedicated to him. Roman had had layers to him, she supposed.
"And he was funny! I think you would have gotten along great."
"Well, probably not," Yang said grimly "On account of the times he tried to kill me..."
Neo stopped walking and cast her eyes on the ground solemnly. Yang stopped as well, suddenly wishing she hadn't been so blunt. Roman still meant a lot to Neo, it made sense that it would be a sensitive topic.
"Neo, I'm-"
"No, it's fine," Neo replied, voice returning to a whisper.
Yang sighed, exhaling another puff of breath, and looked around the bare trees.
"Neo, just because someone does something good, doesn't mean they're a good person."
Neo nodded dully. Yang shuffled her feet and turned, hoping to continue the walk, when Neo spoke again.
"Do you...think I'm a bad person?"
Yang paused, swallowing. The cold air stung her throat and made her mouth dry.
"I think...you've done a lot to help me. Really. But that doesn't change what you did," she said firmly.
Neo didn't answer. For a moment, the two stood in the snow in silence, until Yang felt herself shivering as her heartrate slowed.
"I think we should head back," Yang said, once again breaking the silence.
"Yeah. Let's go," Neo snapped. She turned on her heel and marched off through the snow.
/
Panting, Yang wiped the sweat from her face and neck with the towel Neo offered her. It was warmer in the garage than it was outside, and even though she had exchanged her track suit for athletic shorts, a sports bra, and a tank top, Yang had still been working out for over an hour. Locks of blonde hair were plastered to her face with sweat, and she hissed in pain as she stretched after her long workout.
She did well, Neo thought, Better than I predicted.
She suspected that part of that was Yang's stubbornness, her refusal to give up, pushing her past her limits. She was probably furious with herself, raging against her own perceived weakness.
Neo thought that was good. She needed to reawaken that fire, use it to fuel her as the training grew more intense.
She'd been watching Yang carefully during her workout, using her trained eye to analyze her, focusing on which areas she needed to work on most, inspecting the way her muscles rippled as she pulled herself up on the chinup bar or lifted a set of weights...
Neo blushed suddenly and turned to pick up her scroll.
"So," Yang said between deep drinks from a water bottle, "How did I do?"
Neo scrolled up the list, nodded, and typed out a message on her Scroll.
[I was keeping track. I think I'll use this as a baseline. We'll move up from there, increasing your reps every couple of days.]
She showed Yang her list, and Yang hummed thoughtfully as she glanced over it.
[How do you feel?]
Yang sighed and sat down heavily on the workbench.
"Like every part of me got run over," she groaned.
[Well, it's going to hurt more in a few days]
Neo shrugged and leaned back against the wall. Yang stared at the ground.
"Thanks for that reminder," Yang muttered, shaking her head, "I feel so…pathetic right now." Neo looked at Yang's obviously downcast face and stood up. She walked over to Yang and looked down at her, hands planted on her hips.
[Hey. You are Yang Xiao Long. You literally get stronger the more pain you take, right?]
Yang looked up at Neo and furrowed her brow.
"Yeah, but-"
"But nothing!" Neo hissed, "It's literally impossible to keep you down. You're going to get up tomorrow and do the same thing, and the day after that, until you're stronger than you ever were before!"
Neo's throat stang, and she let out a short, hacking cough into her hand. When she looked back at Yang, the blonde seemed uncertain. Neo poked her in the chest with her finger.
"Remember that!"
Yang nodded once.
"Right," she said as she rose to her feet, "I will. Thank you, Neo."
She patted Neo on the shoulder with her good hand and made her way to the door. As Neo watched her go, she remembered the conversation they'd had during their morning walk.
"Yang?" she whispered. Yang paused in the doorway and looked back over her shoulder.
"Yeah?"
Neo shuffled her feet.
"So...what are you planning to do now?"
Yang shrugged and rolled her eyes.
"Take a shower, obviously, then I guess I'll lay around and try to ignore the soreness," she said.
Neo titled her head.
"Want some ice cream? You know, to celebrate your first day of training?"
Yang grinned.
"Yeah. That sounds great."