A/N: I swear Defenestrator drags Yang and Blake out of the dorm room half because of the plot, half because she wants me to write Ruby and Weiss being cute. So, well, here's this chapter!
- Fiercesomest
"Ok Yang, you can do this. One foot in front... of the other... Yeah-auhUG!" A slight misstep sent Yang sprawling face-first into the ground. "Nnnnnno." She pushed herself back up on her arms, then used the wall to stand again. Walking was hard right now.
Everything ached, her vision swam, and her limbs were wobblier than month-old gelatin. None of that mattered though - she was going to find Blake if it killed her. Ouch, and with the way each step made the halls spin, it might.
Slowly working her way along the wall, the brawler squinted down the hallway, blessedly empty due to classes being in session. She had lost sight of Blake almost immediately - that girl was fast when she wanted to be.
A grin worked its way across her face. Whatever, it was fine, she had a pretty good idea of her partner's whereabouts anyway. She finally reached the end of the hall, stopping to catch her breath. It was going to be a long way to the library.
The library in question was silent - exactly what Blake needed as her mind rand circles around itself. She sat quietly on the floor in her favorite hideaway, behind the last bookcase, where the walls met. Fortunately, since there were no books on this side of the bookcase no one ever bothered to venture back this far.
Time was a blur, but she was fairly certain that morning classes had let out over an hour ago. This gave her plenty of time to think, which, sadly, wasn't helping at all. Blake hugged her legs to her chest, resting her head on her knees. Her face burned at the still-recent memory of the video. She had acted like... like a degenerate, in front of her entire team.
And Weiss. Blake's anger spiked. That spoiled, hateful, ice queen. She should have pounced on her a few more times for good measure. Who in their right mind would even record something like that. She'd never expected the heiress to be the blackmailing sort.
Though, she certainly had her own blackmail on Weiss now. Person sized cat carrier - honestly. Of all the spiteful, venomous... Blake frowned at the memory of similar insults hurled at her during the protests she attended as a child. Shut it before I chain you to a tree in my yard. I'm gonna put you in a cage where you belong. Go back to the zoo with the rest of the animals. She shut her eyes tight and rubbed her temples, willing the images away.
A small part of her guessed that Weiss hadn't really understood what she was saying, but the rest of her refused to let it slide.
Blake nearly leaped out of her skin when a dusty, bandaged hand came to rest on her shoulder.
"Woah! Blake, why so jumpy?"
"Yang?" Blake stared wide-eyed up at her partner, who was kneeling over her with a lazy grin. She rushed to put her hand over the brawler's mouth. "Not so loud," she whispered tersely. It took her a moment to fully take in Yang's disheveled appearance, covered head-to-toe in dust, wearing nothing but shorts and bandages. "Oh for the love of - where is your shirt?"
Yang pushed Blake's hand away. "Aw c'mon, it's nothing you haven't seen before," the brawler cheerfully whispered back, wiggling her eyebrows.
A pencil clattered to the floor on the other side of the bookcase.
Blake didn't notice. She squinted up at her partner, taking note of her glazed eyes and shaky movements. "What are you even - how did you get here?"
"Air vents," Yang replied with a wink, motioning towards the open grate behind her. "Goodwitch was tailing me, and crawling is so much easier than walking you know?"
"I'm not even going to ask how you know your way through the school's ventilation system."
Yang crossed her arms. "It's common knowledge in my prestigious line of work."
"Pranks are hardly a prestigious line of work."
With a smile and a shrug, Yang moved to squeeze herself in between Blake and the bookcase. Throwing an arm around her partner to create a bit more room in the cramped space, she sat down, squishing Blake up against both herself and the wall. With one last grin aimed at her frowning partner, Yang closed her eyes and leaned her head against the cool metal of the bookcase.
Blake's amber eyes traveled slowly over the peaceful profile of the blonde sitting beside her. With the barest hint of a smile, she rested her head on the brawler's shoulder and shut her eyes as well, content to sit for a while in companionable silence.
Back in Team RWBY's dorm room, Weiss was her usual disgruntled self and having a breakfast of cold pancakes was doing nothing to improve her mood. Then warm pancakes probably wouldn't have either. She tended to take her meals with a certain degree of efficiency and so finished before Ruby (who only managed one pancake anyway. The second was reduced to syrup-soaked shreds).
"Hold still," Weiss used a stack of damp napkins to wipe down her partner's face.
Ruby tried to duck and get away from the heiress, but the combination of a bum leg and heavy painkillers severely hampered her escaping skills. "Weissss, quit it, it's fine. I'm not a kid."
"Ruby. You have syrup behind your ears."
"Adults can have syrup wherever they want."
"Fine," Weiss dropped the napkins in the younger girl's lap, "You finish. Better yet, go wash your hands and do whatever else you need to do while I clean up here."
While Ruby limped to the bathroom, Weiss stacked their plates and silverware on the edge of Blake's desk for easy transport later. She wiped the floor and the bookcase because somehow everything within Ruby's reach had gotten sticky, including the blankets.
Weiss pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger for a second. Why had she agreed to bring them pancakes? She added this to the list of poor decisions she had made in the past thirty-six hours.
Well, she needed to do laundry anyway. Only the top blanket had gotten the sticky-treatment, so she gathered it up and stripped her own and Ruby's beds of their covers and sheets. She couldn't exactly leave the room at the moment... in fact, considering every other time she had done it, leaving the room at all seemed incredibly unwise... she deposited the bundle near the door and resolved to figure out what to do with it after the rest of her team had returned.
"Bleah," Ruby, having stumbled her way back across the room from the bathroom, collapsed full-length on the mattress on the floor. Her words came out muffled by the pillow, "Is it bedtime?"
"It's not even noon," Weiss dusted her hands off and crossed to the bookcase to prep Ruby and the still-absent Yang's next doses of antitoxin. Ruby groaned a long, disappointed groan at her announcement, so the heiress relented primly, "For you, it can be bedtime."
"Will you tell me a story?"
"I take back my earlier allowance," Weiss focused on her work with the syringe to avoid Ruby's puppydog expression. She knew it was happening. And she was ignoring it.
"Pleeeeease?"
"I'm busy," she drew out the process of filling Yang's syringe with antitoxin. "And I don't know any good stories anyway."
"You could make one up," Ruby suggested, propping herself up off the pillow on her elbows. She thought for a second. "About the north pole."
"The north pole? There's nothing in the north pole."
"There's ice. And you're the ice queen, right? So you could definitely make a story about the north pole." After a moment, she added, "There's also snow."
Weiss capped the syringes, "Ruby..."
"Pleeeeeeeeeease?"
"Ugh, fine, but only if you'll shut up or go to sleep, or something," The heiress turned briefly to glare down at her partner.
Ruby snuggled into the bedcovers and waited.
Weiss gave an aggravated sigh and turned back to arrange the supplies on the bookcase. "Once upon a time, there was a lot of ice and snow, and nothing else. Because it's the north pole. The end," she latched the case of antitoxin shut.
Ruby waited for more, but it became quickly apparent that nothing else was coming. (The 'the end' took a second to register.) She frowned a little, "... that wasn't a very good story."
Weiss picked through Ruby's belongings, looking for her scroll while her partner 'demonstrated proper storytelling technique' from the mattress on the floor. The heiress had gone ahead and given her partner her dose of antitoxin; there was still no sign of Yang or Blake.
"... and then, instead of, you know, not saying anything, the mushroom started to sing," Ruby raised a hand into the air, motioned like a conductor- a drunken conductor, maybe- and sang a chlidren's nursery rhyme about huntresses dancing in a circle, facing out to fight the surrounding Grimm.
The lyrics were quite dark, but it was a common enough song for Weiss to know that Ruby was absolutely mangling it. Not that her team leader had an awful singing voice, but her lack of vocal training combined with her current mental state had her missing not just notes, but entire keys. Not to mention most of it came in a half-enunciated mumble. The result was... actually rather childish and sweet. But still terrible.
"Aha," Weiss exclaimed to distract herself from Ruby's singing. She drew the scroll out of the pile of Ruby's laundry and unfurled it. No password. Perfect. Now she had a way of requesting assistance should she need it, as long as Blake didn't decide to show up and go feral again, or something. The heiress set the scroll on her desk and picked up her Grimm studies book from the library.
"Ruby," she interrupted the girl's continued tale in the middle of the hero's fight with a monster that was half-deathstalker, half-nevermore and whose favorite food was human hearts. Where did this girl get such dark material?
She took a seat in her chair, which was still next to the mattress on the floor, "Ruby, If you go to sleep, I'll read to you again."
"Huh?" Ruby took a mental second to get from her story to Weiss's offer, rubbing her forehead with the back of her hand. Her silver eyes were dull with pain meds. It was sunny out, but the light wouldn't really hit their window till later in the afternoon so the room was drowsy and warm. The young team leader shifted onto her side, face half buried in Yang's pillow and words a hazy mumble, "You want to? That'd be okay, I mean, if you wanted to."
"Great. Let me know when you're asleep," Weiss cracked the book open to hunt for the page where she'd left off.
"Mmn," the younger girl was half unconscious anyway. The distraction from her storytelling was all it took for her to slip back into slumber.
A few minutes of blissful quiet passed. Weiss's attention strayed from her book to her partner's peaceful expression. The edge of her mouth quirked up in a brief smile.
"You dunce," she chided, leaning to gently brush the hair out of her partner's face. "That really shouldn't have worked."
But it had. Ruby slept on, lost to the world.
Small sounds permeated the relative quiet of the library, distant, but still audible to Blake's Faunus ears - the occasional scrape of a chair, the rustle of turning pages, hushed voices. Gentle scratching from what sounded like a pen on paper coming from the desk on other side of the bookcase nearly lulled Blake to sleep, but she fought to stay awake. There were... matters to attend to. Blake opened her eyes, took a deep breath, and broke the silence with a whisper.
"Yang."
The sleepy blonde hummed in response, shifting slightly without opening her eyes.
Blake fixed her gaze on her partner's face. "I need to ask you a favor."
One curious amethyst eye cracked open to meet intense amber. "Yeah?"
"Please... don't tell anyone about last night."
The gentle scratching of pen on paper immediately ceased, but Blake was too focused on her partner to notice, waiting intently for a response.
After a pause, Yang grinned. "Sure. It will be our little secret," she nearly sang, ending her sentence with a wink.
Blake rolled her eyes before lowering them to the floor. "I don't know what happened. I just... lost control." She cringed at the thought of dropping a solid wood bed frame on the already injured brawler. "I'm sorry if I hurt you."
Yang gave Blake's shoulders a squeeze. "Aw Blake, I can take it! Look at me, I'm fine." She ignored Blake's incredulous stare. "My bed though... man, we trashed that poor thing - well, actually it was mostly me I guess." she continued, looking thoughtfully at the ceiling.
The crash of a chair toppling over followed by hurried footsteps startled the pair.
Blake glanced at Yang, eyebrows raised and bow twitching slightly, her ears at high alert.
Yang reached over with her free arm and pushed a book out of the way to peek through the bookcase. All she could see was a desk, a pen and a piece of paper on the floor, and a chair upended beside it. She turned back to Blake and shook her head. Nothing was there.
They shared a glance, and shrugged.
The library entrance was quite a bit noisier as students filed out on their way to lunch, many of them swerving to avoid a particularly severe looking Professor Goodwitch standing just inside the doorway.
Her eyebrow twitched as she glanced down at her scroll - 12:25. Far beyond the 33 minutes she had allotted herself to find the missing members of team RWBY. Even after enlisting the aid of some of the medical staff to help her sweep the school, nothing. The library was her next target in the long list of places left to search.
It baffled her how two heavily medicated and injured students could elude her so thoroughly. Part of her, though she would never admit it, was proud of the high-level evasive ability her students were displaying. It would serve them well in combat.
A flash of color caught Glynda's eye. Her own evasive abilities kicked in as she sidestepped a particularly hurried student running straight past her. Golden eyebrows raised at the sight of Pyrrha Nikos sprinting away down the hall, face as red as the hair on her head...
With a quick adjustment of her glasses, Glynda temporarily ignored her student's strange behavior and strode into the halls of books to continue her search. There was little time to waste.
Back inside the library, Blake lapsed into silence for a moment, studying her partner. Yang looked about ready to drop at any given second, but here she was, smiling at her like usual. She really needed to get this girl back to their dorm. But... going back meant... Blake's face fell into a scowl. Weiss.
Deep down Blake knew she was going to have to deal with the heiress sooner or later whether she wanted to or not. But that didn't mean she had to be anything less than fully prepared. She needed facts. Blake locked eyes with her partner, the sole surviving neutral witness to last night's events. Perhaps not as reliable as the recording on the scroll, but still worth investigating.
"Yang. Tell me something."
"OK... something." Yang's briefly serious expression broke into a smile as her response earned her a light smack on the arm.
"Focus," Blake chided her obviously addled partner. "I need you to tell me all of what happened. The video showed me part of it but..." But how on earth did she end up in Weiss's bed.
Yang's entire face lit up. "Oh, last night? Man, it was great. You were so cuddly, but then you tripped me... Oh and Weiss was there... heh, you went after her like crazy. Well, until she freaked out. Then you knocked me out with a bed and I made an awesome pun!" Yang threw her arms in the air with a flourish as she finished her grand tale, completely forgetting to tell the pun itself.
Blake sighed heavily. She really didn't know what she'd been expecting, but this was hardly the detailed description she was looking for. She found herself severely regretting her snap decision to break Weiss's scroll in half. Her eyes widened a fraction. Without that video, the only way to figure out how she ended up in Weiss's bed... was to ask the heiress herself.
Maybe it was better not to know.
"Uh, Blake, you're looking a little pale," Yang's voice cut through Blake's fretting.
Blake rounded on her partner, expression strained. "I do not want to talk to Weiss."
After a pause, Yang placed her hands on Blake's shoulders and offered a sleepy smile. "You have to though. We're a team and stuff. Just kiss and make up and it'll be fine."
"Kiss and... what," Blake fought to keep her expression blank.
It took a minute for Yang's thoughts to catch up with her words. "Oh, wait no, don't do that, then Ruby would be really sad and -" Blake's hand suddenly covered her mouth, cutting her words short.
Blake's Faunus ears had picked up the sound of footsteps headed in their direction. She leaned forward and whispered, "Someone's coming."
Yang nodded, leaning back to peer through the bookcase again.
Professor Goodwitch stepped into view.
Blake felt her partner tense up. Just as she was about to say something, Yang's hand reached to cover her mouth, but missed and ended up covering her nose and eye.
The brawler held her breath as she watched her professor right the fallen chair, stoop down to pick up the paper on the floor, read whatever was on it once, twice, and then a third time, before immediately turning on her heel and stalking back the way she came. Yang blinked. "Weird."
Blake pushed Yang's hand away from her face. "Who was it?"
"Professor Goodwitch."
Blake started. "She really is tailing you."
"Yup!"
That settled it, they needed to get back to the dorm room sooner than later. Blake already had a criminal record in the real world - she didn't need one at school as well.
"Let's... head back," she whispered reluctantly.
"You got it! Follow me," Yang replied with wide grin.
"Follow - what?" Blake stared for a second as Yang moved towards the air vent and started to climb in. No - there was no way. "You know, we could just walk."
"Too late~ can't go backwards~" came the brawler's muffled reply. She was already crawling away.
Blake scowled fiercely at the hole in front of her. Against her better judgment, she followed.
Hasty footsteps echoed down the halls of Beacon's upper towers. Something was wrong. Something was going on in her school that Professor Goodwitch didn't know about and she didn't like it one little bit. Glynda glanced down at the paper in her hands, reading over the finely-penned words one last time as she neared Ozpin's office.
Weiss,
I've explained everything to everyone. Don't worry, your secret is safe with us. I've thought about things a little more, and I've realized that you're probably doing this to protect Ruby. Please rest assured we will do everything in our power to keep her safe as well. Hang in there.
Your friend,
P
The signature was unfinished, the pen's ink stretching down the page in a single line, as though the writer had hastily abandoned their work. Her emerald eyes flashed, glaring daggers at the otherwise beautifully-scripted letter P.
As much as she didn't want to think it possible that one of her best students was involved in anything furtive, Glynda could only come to one conclusion - Pyrrha Nikos. The girl fleeing from the very library where the note had been lying discarded on the floor. But, if it was miss Nikos, why had she been writing this letter to Weiss Schnee? They weren't teammates. What secret were they protecting? How did Ruby Rose fit in?
A frown darkened the professor's face, her eyes narrowed into slits. Word had spread far and wide fairly quickly concerning their students' recent dispatching of a legendary Rat King. If this had something to do with the antitoxin they were developing...
Or worse, if an outside force wanted to get their hands on the Grimm rat toxin itself, still flowing freely in her students' very veins... Perhaps to use as a weapon... Glynda's mind raced, forming possibility after possibility, each progressively more outlandish and alarming than the last.
She reached Ozpin's door at last.
Paperwork.
If there was one thing Ozpin would prefer to ignore for the rest of his days, it was paperwork.
Fortunately, his sorting system was highly efficient: he had two sleek gray boxes set up on the edge of his desk. One was labeled in neat cursive "Absolutely MUST be dealt with" and contained the highest of the highly important details of the workings of Beacon. All prospective students' transcripts came to this box, as well as reports of his alumni and any write-ups of the notable exploits of his current students.
The other box's label read "To Glynda".
This latter box was currently stacked with minor damage reports, bills from orders of food and new equipment, complaint letters from parents, and the like. The mail had just come in. He stood over the two boxes and flipped through the stack of envelopes for any names he recognized and/or felt like dealing with (there were none) before stacking the rest in Glynda's box.
He evened the precarious tower of mail a bit- Ms Goodwitch did have a thing about being orderly, after all, and she was due to show up at his door anytime- and then he poured himself another cup of coffee and stepped to the window to watch over the combat class being conducted in the fields beyond the courtyard.
SLAM.
Ah, and there she was. Judging from the volume of his doors crashing against the backstop, it was something rather serious. Alas, he might have to do some actual work this time.
Ozpin took a long sip of his hot beverage before turning to see the glowering professor. "Something the matter, Glynda?"
Glynda wasted no time in shoving the fine stationary in her hand directly in the headmaster's face. "You tell me."
"Hm," Ozpin took another sip of coffee without moving to take the paper from Glynda's hand. He scanned the paragraph of text, "It seems one of our students has superb handwriting." he turned to stroll back to his desk, "We should consider offering him or her a position in admissions if they decide not to follow the huntress/huntsman career path."
Glynda squinted in exasperation. "Seeing as this was likely penned by Pyrrha Nikos, I don't think it will come to that." With a graceful step and twist, Glynda came to stand by Ozpin's side, holding the letter for both of them to see while she gave her report.
"Miss Nikos was acting strangely when I saw her last. I found this in the farthest corners of the library, abandoned on the floor in apparent haste. The contents suggest that the Schnee heiress is hiding something, and that Ruby Rose is being targeted - by who or what, or even why, I'm unsure."
Rather than launching into her theories, she paused, glancing at Ozpin to gauge his reaction.
The headmaster used his mug to guide the paper out of their line of vision, at the same time tilting his head to his friend, "Glynda, may I offer you some coffee? Or tea, perhaps?"
"No... thank you." Glynda reached out to place the letter squarely in the center of Ozpin's desk, directly in front of his chair.
Moving to lean back on the desk's edge, she tilted her head downwards and fixed the headmaster with a stern gaze over the frames of her glasses. "What you could offer me is your opinion on this situation."
"My opinion?" Ozpin's brow arched as he considered, "Well, it seems to me that if indeed Miss Rose is in danger, she possesses at the very least two formidable allies." Miss Nikos and Miss Schnee- plus whoever else Pyrrha had discussed the matter with.
He took a thoughtful swallow of his drink, "Though, I suppose if this is some sort of prank war, she would do well to recruit her sister if she hasn't yet."
Glynda paled at the thought of more pranks - it was not a prospect she wanted to consider. Releasing a small sigh, she crossed her arms. Ozpin did have a point, their students were no pushovers.
Even still, it seemed questionable to ignore matters entirely. She raised an eyebrow. "The possibility of pranks aside, are you suggesting we simply let this go unquestioned? What if there are outside forces involved?"
Ozpin was silent a moment. There was an intensity behind his eyes, but his calm demeanor remained undisturbed, "Glynda. You know- perhaps better than anyone- that our students cannot remain shielded from the evils of this world. They've come here to learn to fight the creatures of Grimm, and very often this task entails facing the dark side of humanity as well. If Miss Nikos and Miss Schnee feel that they are out of their depth, I expect they know that they may always come to us for assistance," He walked to the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the school. He glanced over his shoulder, mischief in his smile, "That said, if you wished to take on a small amount of investigating as a side project... as your schedule allows, of course."
Glynda smiled in return. "I think I can make some time."
The trip through the campus air ducts was cramped, dusty, claustrophobic, but blessedly short. The air vent near the roof of team RWBY's dorm room suddenly flew off, and out tumbled Yang, landing in a heap upside-down. "Woah... when did we rearrange the furniture..."
Climbing down with far more coordination, Blake followed right afterwards, dirty, unhappy, and scowling. She stopped to take a rest, sitting and leaning against the wall, staring off into space. Never again. Never. Again.
Weiss, hearing the thumps and clangs coming from the ventilation system of all places, had placed her book on her chair and was standing near the end of her bunk when her two teammates came tumbling out.
"Of all the..." Weiss pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation before she turned to retrieve Yang's dose of antitoxin, scolding all the while, "Where have you been? We have a door, you know."
Neither of the dusty pair offered the heiress a proper response. Yang hadn't moved from her spot, content to drowsily watch an upside-down Weiss advance on her with a syringe.
Blake kept her eyes averted from Weiss, and instead tried to brush some of the dust off of her clothes and out of her now-slightly-grayish hair. Her ears flattened in anticipation, squashing her bow a little as she worked her fingers through the dust laden strands.
The library had given her plenty of time to cool off. She still wanted an apology from the icy heiress, but she really didn't want to start another fight. Blake's brows furrowed as she stared off into space, wondering if it was even possible to achieve the former without causing the latter.
"You're late for this dose," Weiss didn't bother trying to reposition Yang- she simply took her arm, swiped a spot clean with rubbing alcohol, and administered the injection to her as she was, "which means you may have hampered the antitoxin's effectiveness, and means we may need another dose to finish off the course."
The heiress shook the empty syringe (at a safe distance) in front of the brawler's face. "This doesn't exactly run out of the tap- Beacon's medical staff spends considerable time and money procuring supplies like these in order to aid students in proper recovery. So don't be late again." She cut her eyes at Blake as she added, "Granted it wasn't entirely your fault."
Blake felt her hackles rise at the obvious jab. Weiss clearly wasn't finished being unreasonable. She whipped her head around, frown set and eyes sharp, ready to speak her mind. Yang beat her to it.
Despite being on the verge of sleep, Yang hadn't missed the jab at her partner either. Her words came slurred and slow as she held her drowsiness at bay with all her might.
"Weisssssss, what... do you call the world's fastest reptile..." She paused, but only for the briefest of seconds before continuing with a grin brighter than the sun itself, "an... insta-gator..." Her ensuing sluggish laughter dragged out into a light snore.
Blake's scowl contorted, threatening to break into a smile.
Weiss stared at Yang a moment and then rolled her eyes. She shook Yang a little to wake her, her scowl deepening as she took in her teammates' general state, "You're both filthy. And Yang, that bandaging job was really never fit to leave the room in the first place. Are you lucid enough to at least clean up so that I can re-do it?"
The heiress didn't deign to address Blake at all- there was still the matter of the Faunus's behavior to be dealt with, but that took second priority to making sure Yang didn't die of rat toxin and/or infection and/or blood loss, and it would continue to take second priority unless Blake decided to do something truly idiotic.
Really, the cat Faunus did seem significantly saner this morning (considering that she had yet to try and physically tackle Weiss) but the incident with the scroll had not scored her any points. Neither had climbing into bed with her in the middle of the night. Honestly. What a mortifying position to have been in. Weiss crossed her arms, waiting for Yang to untangle herself.
A deep, discontented groan accompanied Yang's halting movements as she righted herself, crawled her way to the bathroom, used the doorknob to help herself stand, then slipped inside.
As the door shut behind her partner, Blake quietly took a deep steadying breath. Expression neutral, she looked up at Weiss, and waited.
Weiss kept an eye on Yang till she'd successfully navigated the open space between her and the bathroom. Ruby continued to slumber over on the mattress by the bookcase. Both seriously injured teammates accounted for, the heiress turned her attention to Blake.
"Don't look at me like that," she frowned down at the dusty, bandaged girl, her demeanor ice cold, "Unless you're going to apologize?"
Holding fast to her neutral expression, Blake averted her gaze. Dust clouded around her feet as she stood and continued brushing herself off. "For what it's worth, I do feel bad about breaking your scroll," she said evenly, eyes trained on the floor.
The thing she truly regretted destroying was the video itself, her easy out to the answers she wanted, lost forever... but it was definitely for the best. Finished with her clothes, Blake readjusted her eye patch and dusted off the square bandage on her forehead before dragging her gaze back up to meet Weiss. "Forgive me if I wasn't exactly feeling very happy after seeing your little home video of me."
Weiss stood back closer to her desk while Blake brushed herself off. She could understand wanting to destroy embarrassing footage of oneself; it even crossed her mind that this could be particularly the case for Blake, who worked so hard to hide her heritage as a Faunus.
Still, it wasn't as if Weiss would have actually shown the video to anyone who didn't already know. And besides...
"You attacked me," she crossed her arms a little harder, lifting her chin. "Twice."
"I was under the influence of medication designed by humans with little regard for the possible side effects a Faunus patient might suffer." Patience already wearing thin, Blake's gaze sharpened alongside her words. "I'm sorry if I hurt you, but I also knocked my own partner unconscious, and you don't see her threatening me with cat carriers like I'm some kind of animal."
"You were certainly acting the part. Yang's being too drug addled to comment doesn't change the fact," The heiress tossed her snow-white hair over her shoulder, "And are you saying that you knew about these 'side effects'? Why didn't you warn us?"
"There was no way I could have known what exactly would happen," Blake snapped, clenching her fists. "But as the sole person who wasn't drug addled, you should have been the first to figure out something was wrong."
"Oh, I figured it out," Weiss shot back, flushing at the memory of Blake hanging from a very inappropriately dressed Yang. The heat in her face did nothing to improve her mood, "Why are you trying to make this my fault? I'm not the one who assaulted her teammates and deliberately destroyed people's personal belongings. I've never even heard of pain medication having that sort of effect on the Faunus."
The thought crossed Blake's mind that this particular effect might be largely unknown because the affected Faunus had killed any witnesses. She was certainly feeling a hint of that desire herself at this point.
Her visible eye flashed dangerously. "This is no one's fault, but for some reason you feel compelled to blame everything on me. Do you think I wanted to do any of that? You think I woke up this morning and thought to myself, 'I should attack Weiss today, that will be great'?"
"I don't know. Did you think that? I appreciate the warning," This was just venomous, spiteful mocking and Weiss had enough presence of mind to recognize that. She tried to take a breath and cool off a bit, so to speak. "In any case, I'm quite sure that you were rational when you shattered my scroll this morning. That's just unacceptable."
"Unacceptable?" Blake straightened her posture, radiating quiet fury. "What's unacceptable is that I trusted you with this," she whipped her bow from her head and threw the unfurled ribbon at Weiss's feet, her uncovered ears flattening, "and you've returned it with insults, threats, and blackmail."
Weiss looked up from the ribbon to Blake, her brow furrowed, staring as if the Faunus had just grown a third eye in the middle of her forehead. "What on earth are you talking about?"
Blake's hands unclenched, and her shoulders fell with a quiet sigh. Weiss didn't understand. Of course she didn't, how could she, coming from such a presumably sheltered background?
"Weiss," all the heat of her earlier words vanished, replaced with exhaustion, "why do you think I hide my Faunus heritage? Because I'm ashamed?" Blake closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head, as if to answer her own question.
She locked her gaze on the heiress, looking genuinely tired. "It's because, even when I'm at my best, the second people see these," she gestured to her cat ears, "they treat me like some sort of subhuman, lesser being." Her eyes dropped to the floor. "Just like you did, when you saw me at my worst last night."
"I didn't..." Weiss paused. She hadn't really treated any of her teammates particularly well, at least not compared to when they were fully functioning. But Blake, sub-human? She let her gaze slide diagonally down to the books on her desk while she collected her thoughts, and then offered, "I was... upset. I didn't mean it like that."
Blake crossed her arms, gazing quietly at her ribbon on the floor. "Just because you didn't mean to stab someone doesn't mean they won't still bleed."
"Well excuse me for not wanting to spend the evening wrestling with an insane-" Weiss snatched up Blake's ribbon, glaring at her in lieu of another Faunus-themed insult, "... with you." She stood awkwardly at the edge of her desk, stiff and formal and bristling at Blake's platitude.
How did you stab someone accidentally? Either a) the someone was in the wrong place at the wrong time or b) the person with the blade was clumsy and clearly not ready to be in possession of a weapon.
Knowing this, Weiss gripped the black ribbon in her hands and made a weak defense, "You chose a terrible time to lose all rational thought, anyway."
Blake listened quietly, still staring at the spot where her ribbon had been. Weiss's words ran together in her head - excuses, nothing but excuses.
About this time, Ruby stirred, groaning from the mattress on the floor, "Mmrrrrg, is the story over?"
Blake tilted her head slightly at Ruby's question. "Yes, Ruby," her voice was soft as she turned away from the smaller girl to lock eyes with Weiss, "it's over."
Tearing her gaze away, Blake retreated to other side of the room and easily hopped up into Yang's bunk, curling up on her side. The lack of a mattress or any kind of bedding didn't faze her - all that mattered was getting as far away from the stubborn heiress as she possibly could.
Weiss slipped behind a mask of cold detachment as she watched her teammate retreat to Yang's bunk. "Fine then," her tone was clipped. She shoved the ribbon in her pocket, striding to gather up the sheets and bedclothes from beside the door, "I'm taking the laundry."
Ruby struggled up into a sitting position just in time to see the door slam shut. She rubbed her eyes and shoved the blankets off her legs. The room appeared to be empty, but the bathroom door was shut and the shower was running. Ugh, a shower sounded nice. She was all sticky with sweat for some reason.
Ruby collapsed back onto her side. Why had Blake and Weiss been yelling? Why was the room so warm? Her thoughts came all tangled up. Ugh, she hated being on painkillers. Except for the not feeling pain thing. That was kind of awesome. Still. She wiped the hair stuck to her forehead out of her eyes, "Bleah..."
Up in the safety of the solid wood bed frame, Blake listened to the smaller girl move around. She shut her eyes but kept her ears open, resting as best she could. Eventually Ruby settled back down, so with nothing to listen to but the white noise of shower water coming from the bathroom, she let her mind wander.
Much to her chagrin, it kept wandering back to Weiss.
"You're going to wear a hole in the floor."
Pyrrha stopped pacing mid-stride and looked over at Ren, who was all-too-calmly staring back at her over the book in his hands. She had taken over keeping an eye on him for the time being while Jaune was in class and Nora was away doing the laundry.
Ren had protested of course, since he was normally in charge of his and Nora's laundry, but as usual Nora wore him down in the end. Pyrrha wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.
She sat down on the edge of her bed, willing time to move faster so that Nora would return and she could go meet Jaune at dinner. Then she could focus on something other than her letter to Weiss. Or rather, the dubious fate of said letter.
Pyrrha put her face in her hands. "I'm sorry - I just, I can't believe I lost the letter." She had thoroughly scoured the library after the class she'd run to, but her carefully crafted letter was simply nowhere to be found. Her eyes squinted shut as she fought to keep her blush down at the memory of the secret conversation that she'd run from - things she should never have overheard.
Ren turned a page in his book, flinching slightly as he moved. "It will turn up."
Pyrrha paled, instantly solving that pesky blushing problem. "That's what I'm afraid of."