A/N: Shout out to our reviewers from last chapter, Darkrai, Chaosrin, and Celestesky598! You guys totally made our days- it's awesome getting to hear what your favorite parts are. (Blake and Weiss really do need to make up, don't they? Yes? Yes.)
Also, for all of you folks wishing for side effects or for things to get worse... your wishes may or may not be about to come true. Hang on to your hats.
- Fiercesomest
Early evening. The time when most students upgraded from casually putting off work to honest-to-goodness procrastination, and when Team RWBY generally dissolved into chaos. That seemed to be the theme the past couple of nights, anyway.
Yang moved to her newly designated area in the center of the dorm room, too busy experimenting with breathing out puffs of smoke to mind Weiss's demanding tone as the heiress shoved the petal-shedding Ruby back onto the mattress. The brawler twisted her face every which way, trying to make new shapes in the grayish clouds she produced. Even if it was weird, it was kind of neat!
"Hey Ruby look at this!" Yang successfully blew out a couple of smoke rings. "Sweet! Hahaha!" Lost in jovial laughter, she inhaled an errant rose petal floating through the air. A hideous gagging noise followed shortly thereafter as Yang erupted into a coughing fit, white hot jets of fire spewing from her mouth and nose with each convulsion.
Just then, the door to the hallway clicked and swung open. Still standing in the hall, Professor Goodwitch narrowly dodged a stream of flames unwittingly aimed directly at her feet by her student currently doubled over and hacking her lungs up with a fiery vengeance. Literally. She raised an eyebrow. Apparently the brawler had somehow made her own way back to her dorm.
Mortified at having nearly singed a professor, Yang found the presence of mind to cover her mouth as she coughed, but flames spilled through her fingers anyway.
Glynda stepped inside without a moment's hesitation, giving Yang a cursory once-over before retreating from the human fire hazard and heading straight for Ruby. She leaned over to examine the young team leader, angling her head to address Weiss. "How long have they been like this?"
Weiss straightened, clutching her singed jacket sleeve and severely regretting not getting a wet towel herself. Hadn't she sent Blake to do it minutes ago? What was taking her so long?! Weiss kept an eye on Yang while she coughed fire, "Professor, it started around the time I messaged you. What's wrong with them?"
Ruby had leaned back as Glynda leaned in and had ended up toppling over into a veritable petal pile. "Uh, hi Professor Goodwitch, by the way."
Glynda ignored the greeting as she crouched down and gently took Ruby's face in her hands, turning the girl's head from side to side and scrutinizing each and every petal that fell, summoned by even the slightest movement. Fascinating. She wrapped an arm around the young girl's middle and rose to her feet, bringing Ruby up to her feet as well.
"That remains to be determined," she answered with a glance at Weiss as she pulled out her scroll to send a brief message to Ozpin.
Antitoxin Report - semblances compromised. Cause unknown. Investigating further.
Blake finally appeared in the doorway to the bathroom clutching two damp towels just in time to see Glynda put her scroll away and take out her riding crop. Feeling her exposed Faunus ears more than ever, she ducked right back into the bathroom without a word.
Fortunately, Glynda's attention was focused elsewhere. With a minimal flick of her wrist, two of the room's desk chairs came to life, flying over to sweep Ruby and Yang off their feet, carting them right out the door. Glynda followed her floating charges, pausing at the doorway to let her gaze linger on Weiss.
"Nooo," Yang's cough-worn voice carried from the hallway, pulling Glynda's eyes away momentarily. "Not - hack - not the infirmary!"
Glynda arched an eyebrow. "Oh, we're not going to the infirmary," she said with the barest hint of foreboding before returning her gaze to Weiss. "We'll be keeping these two for the night. Have a good evening, Miss Schnee." With a curt nod, she turned and shut the door behind her.
Weiss stayed quiet and formal under Glynda's severe gaze and didn't even have a chance to ask where she was taking her teammates before the door closed and they were gone. What had that last look meant? Was their condition serious? Well, obviously it was bad if Professor Goodwitch had to take them so quickly. And where were they being taken, if not to the infirmary?
Maybe the ER?
Hearing the front door shut, Blake slowly emerged from behind the bathroom door, casting a bewildered glance at Weiss.
The heiress remained frozen to the spot, her mouth going dry. Yang had been breathing fire. That... was a significant problem. Maybe it was nothing more than a very well founded concern for the dorm building and its occupants. Maybe Professor Goodwitch was taking them to the basement level, where everything was made of concrete.
Weiss shook her head, clearing her thoughts. There was no sense worrying. Surely the professor knew what she was doing. She took a deep breath, brushing bits of ash off her jacket, "Well, I guess they'll be fine."
"I hope so," Blake added after a pause, too occupied with worry for her teammates at the moment to be concerned about being left alone with the one person she was currently in the middle of a dispute with. Something didn't sit right with her. Brows furrowed, she looked to Weiss. "Why was Professor Goodwitch here?"
"Did you miss the part where flames shot across the room from Yang's mouth?" Weiss fired off the sarcastic remark before remembering that she was trying to not screw up her team's dynamics any more than she already had. Which... might be a difficult task. The heiress cut her eyes to Blake, "While they're gone, I think we should work this out."
Blake frowned in indignation at Weiss's initial sass, but found her ears perking at the surprisingly direct request for reconciliation that followed. She tightened her grip on the towels in her hands. Only Weiss could look so harsh while clearly trying so hard to be civil. Still... if she was willing to give it a shot...
"Yes." Taking a second to hang the damp towels on the bathroom door to free her hands, Blake moved to sit cross-legged at the head of her bed. She took a deep breath, and patted the spot beside her. "...Come sit with me?"
Weiss moved to the corner of Blake's bunk and stopped.
This sort of thing was somewhat foreign to the heiress, as was the desire to spend any more time sharing a bed with her teammate than was absolutely necessary. 'Absolutely necessary' in all cases amounting to precisely zero hours, zero minutes, and zero seconds- a limit which had already been exceeded this morning. Her ears burned just thinking about it and if ever there was a time she cursed her pale complexion, it was now. "We can talk fine from here."
Blake leaned back against the headboard, slightly put out by the indirect refusal of her metaphorical olive branch. Still, the dull ache behind her covered eye was starting to build again, so the last thing she wanted was another heated not-quite-shouting match. Thus, in the hopes of picking up visual cues, she carefully studied Weiss's expressions.
The heiress was nervous, that much was clear, but the blush creeping up the other girl's neck caught her off guard. Head tilting slightly as though a different angle would somehow make the sight easier to understand, Blake scrutinized Weiss's profile. Snow white eyebrows drawn together just slightly, ice blue eyes narrowed, lips pressed together in a thin line, jaw set. Blake's own brows furrowed. Was this anger... or something else?
As she thoroughly studied her teammate, the slightest swish of Weiss's ponytail sparked an unbidden memory. Warm arms around her... white hair covering her face... Blake suddenly remembered exactly where she'd woken up at the start of the day. A mortified blush of her own raced up her neck, matched only by the speed of the thoughts racing through her mind.
She still had no idea how she ended up in Weiss's bed the night before, but now she knew for a fact that she'd been out of her mind on pain medication... What else happened after that video that she didn't remember? What had she done to Weiss to make her not even want to sit next to her?
Realizing she was outright staring at this point, Blake crossed her arms and looked away as well.
"Right, of course," she somehow managed to avoid stammering as her mind sprinted to change the subject. "I... your scroll - I really will replace it."
"That's fine. I'm still a little upset that you broke it like that, but I think I understand," Weiss would have done basically the same thing if someone had taken an embarrassing video of her. Though she might have asked for it to be deleted first. Once. After that warning, all bets were off. She nudged a pile of rose petals on the floor with her boot and crossed her arms, businesslike, "I want to know what I should do if something like last night happens again."
"Avoiding racially-charged threats would be a good start," Blake muttered darkly before she could stop herself. She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. It wouldn't do any good to put Weiss on the defensive.
"I don't actually... I don't know," Blake finally admitted with a sigh. The sheets beneath her rustled quietly as Blake brought her knees to her chest. "It's never happened to me before." She closed her eyes, ears flattening as she added, "I'm sorry you had to see me like that."
"Stop right there," Weiss held up a hand, giving Blake a sharp look, "We're teammates, right? And that means that sooner or later we're probably going to see each other at our worst. Maybe that was yours- maybe it wasn't. That doesn't make you sub-human, or whatever else you said, so don't apologize for it."
After a moment, Weiss tilted her chin and darted her eyes away, "... you may apologize for knocking me down and getting in bed with me in your delirium, however."
Blake's eyes widened bit by bit as the heiress spoke, emotions flickering by in rapid succession before settling on a mixture of relief and embarrassment. Hearing honest words of encouragement from the usually-icy heiress, no matter how stiff, dispelled the majority of her tension.
Not to mention, Weiss was hardly one for understatements, so if the only thing she wanted an apology for was sneaking into bed with her, then nothing else must have happened. Still mortifying, but bearable.
For the first time in what felt like ages, Blake felt a genuine smile tug at the edge of her mouth. Weiss never failed to sound autocratic during more serious discussions, but it was especially apparent when the heiress made requests. She really had taken a few hard hits though, from what the video showed.
In an effort to humor her, Blake held her head high, adopting a stoic visage. "I apologize for my inappropriate behavior," she stated formally. Her expression then melted into a tentative smile, ears perking the slightest bit. "Does this mean I get an apology for your... poorly chosen threats?"
"Apology accepted," the heiress acknowledged the gesture with a regal nod of her head, followed closely by a frown, "And my threats were expertly chosen, thank you very much. Though they were... insensitive."
Blake's smile faltered. So much for her earlier observation. Insensitive? "That's... an understatement," she said wryly, the irony not lost on her. She shifted slightly to look out the window, eyes distant.
"You know, I've heard enough threats like that to last me a lifetime. Usually from people who would rather see Faunus like me in a zoo, or simply dead." Slowly, her gaze drifted back, locking onto Weiss. "I'd rather not have to hear things like that from... someone I consider a friend."
Weiss's eyes flickered away from Blake. Wanting Faunus in the zoo. Hadn't she felt that way about the White Fang, more or less? The more of them behind bars, the better.
This was about her teammate, though, and Weiss might not be completely sure about the Faunus in general, but she did trust Blake, so long as she wasn't on heavy pain medication. And Blake... considered her a friend.
Well. That probably didn't say a lot about her judgment, but still. Weiss straightened her jacket, brushing her ponytail back over her shoulder, "Next time anyone says anything like that to you, just tell me."
Blake raised an eyebrow. "Even if it's you?"
"It won't be," Weiss's words were ice and steel. She turned, striding through the rose petals still littering the floor, "I'm going to sweep these up before they start to decompose."
Blake's eye tracked the heiress as she moved, expression thoughtful. Weiss's declaration wasn't exactly the apology she'd been hoping for, but it was a promise nonetheless - one that lifted her spirits, despite how severely it was delivered.
An abrupt pang of hunger brought her back to the present. Right - eating was probably a good idea. Blake stood, wincing only slightly at the spike in pain behind her eye caused by the sudden movement. Undeterred, she made her way to the sandwiches on her desk, taking care to avoid scattering the petals on the floor more than they already were.
She picked up one of the tuna sandwiches, staring at it for a moment before turning to look at Weiss with a genuine smile. Holding up the sandwich, she called to Weiss, "You remembered my favorite." She added with a smirk, "Or were these a fluke as well?"
Weiss had forgotten the sandwiches.
"They were out of peanut butter," she lied blatantly. Heat crept up the back of her neck. Beacon's cafeteria never ran out of peanut butter. That would be tantamount to the ocean running out of water. She gripped the broom she'd retrieved from the bathroom and focused very hard on chasing the petals into piles on the floor, "I mean, I just felt like it. You're not the only one who likes tuna, you know. "
Blake rolled her eyes. "Right," she said lightly, sporting a knowing smile as she passed by Weiss to sit back down on her bed. Letting the matter drop, she eyed her sandwich for a moment before diving straight in. Everything tasted ten times as delicious when hunger was in effect.
Hopefully she would be able to keep it down. Blake held fast to the sandwich to keep from dropping it as she shivered slightly from a wave of nausea rippling through her. Much to her dismay, the pain behind her eye had been slowly building since morning, and it was only getting worse. Still, she soldiered on until the sandwich disappeared. Nothing could keep her from tuna.
While Blake ate, Weiss swept up the remnants of Ruby's semblance and used a dust pan to dump the petals out the window. (The trash can was too small to hold them, plus throwing her partner's semblance in the trash felt somewhat wrong.) She cleaned up the candy wrappers around Ruby's desk, straightened her own belongings, packed the case of antitoxin, which she supposed someone on the medical staff would be coming to pick up, and mopped up the puddle covering most of the bathroom floor.
When her bout of compulsive cleaning was over, Weiss put away the cleaning supplies, chunked the sodden mop into a bucket, and leaned on the sink for a second. This was the first time in almost forty-eight hours when she hadn't needed to worry about Yang catching the room on fire, or Ruby hurting herself.
Well, she could still be concerned about those things, but since the sisters weren't here, there wasn't a lot she could actually do, and that was what counted. Also, she was tired. Extraordinarily tired. The sun dipped low in the sky, and all she wanted was to pull the curtain shut and curl up in bed and sleep for the next several days.
Unfortunately, the curtain was still ripped and when she crossed the room and sat down heavily on her mattress, she realized she'd forgotten to put the laundry in the dryer. Dust. That meant dragging herself to the laundry room, plus an hour of waiting for things to dry. She put her head in her hands.
From across the room, amber eyes tracked the heiress as she worked. Blake had seen Weiss go on these cleaning sprees once or twice before, usually when she was stressed over something. Normally Ruby would be around to jump in and try to help, which more often than not resulted in making even more of a mess, while Yang would discreetly toss things on the floor with a wink and a smile. Without the sisters around though, she had only just finished her sandwich by the time Weiss stopped.
Blake spared a glance at the door to the hall, eyes narrowing. Silence dominated the usually lively dorm room, tainted by the uncertainty of their partners' well-being and whereabouts. Her gaze returned to the other girl in the room with a sigh. Weiss may have covered her face, but her posture screamed fatigue. "Weiss," Blake leaned forward, expression as soft as her tone, "you should get some rest."
The heiress sighed without looking up, "My sheets are in the laundry."
"Oh." Blake's eyes darted to the floor and back. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
Weiss's stomach decided to answer for her. She dropped her hands at once, mortified. When had she last eaten? What had she last eaten? A couple of pancakes? An apple the day before? She looked out the window at the darkening sky to avoid looking at Blake, "I'll just... maybe eat and put things in the dryer."
Stubborn as always. The corners of Blake's mouth twitched at the indirect refusal, torn between stretching into an exasperated frown, or lifting into an amused smirk. If Weiss wouldn't accept an offer for help, she would just help. Blake stood slowly, deliberately, pushing back the pain in her head that flared up as she moved to her food-laden desk. With silent swiftness, she brought the plate of sandwiches to Weiss. "Definitely eat something," she said, leaning forward to press the plate into the heiress's hands before stepping back and crossing her arms. "I think I can handle dryer duty."
There were two sandwiches on the plate in Weiss's hands. She'd made them all tuna for the sake of convenience.
"Fine," the heiress agreed, taking one and offering the dish back to Blake with one hand, "but take the other one. You need the energy if your aura's going to function properly. I know you haven't been taking your medication." Her expression got caught between anger and embarrassment, "Plus I really don't like tuna."
Blake took the proffered plate, frowning slightly at Weiss's ever-astute observations, before slipping into a subdued smile. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, not moving from her position. She looked everywhere but the heiress, seemingly at a loss for words. "Um... my bow..."
"Oh," Weiss drew the long, black ribbon from her jacket pocket. She looked at it for a moment.
If Ruby were here, she would probably say something nice about Blake being part of the team no matter what and she should just be herself and not hide. But she wasn't, and Weiss didn't buy into all of that sentimental nonsense. In fact, she deemed Blake's choice to conceal her heritage to be incredibly practical.
Still. With Ruby out of commission, Weiss felt like she should at least say something...
... then again, she was worn out and knowing her luck whatever she said would wind up starting another argument. So Weiss just handed the strip of black ribbon over, scowling.
Wordlessly, Blake took the ribbon and temporarily set the plate down as she re-tied her bow, years of practice evident in the speed and ease of her movements. Calmed somewhat by the ritualistic action, she grabbed the plate once more and moved across the room, pausing with her hand on the door to look back at Weiss, who was still sporting her signature scowl. "Weiss," she called, hoping to catch the heiress's attention, "... thank you." With that, she left.
In the now deserted room, Weiss fetched a plate and silverware from her stash in Ruby's bag and ensconced herself at her desk to eat.
The cup of soup had gone cold by now, but she drank half of it anyway and poured the rest down the sink. It would be a while before Blake was back with the laundry, and she needed a way to stay occupied for a little while lest she fall asleep on her naked mattress. Reading was out- she had a fatigue headache the size of an Ursa Major- so menial tasks were the order of the day. Hm... she looked around the room, her gaze settling on the remains of the red curtain hung across the window.
Weiss climbed up on the bookshelf to take the ripped fabric down and got out some pins and a needle and thread. The sloppy fix her partner had done before had been driving her crazy anyway.
She pinned the two halves of the curtain and set up shop at her desk (her universal workspace) with the light angled across the red material. Giving it a proper stitching job would certainly help her stay awake while she waited for her sheets to dry. The heiress settled into the easy, practiced rhythm of her work.
... fifteen minutes later, she was dead to the world, her arms folded on the desk, head down. Her needle dangled from its thread off the edge of her lap, fallen from her fingertips. Her reading lamp shone, the warm gold light catching in the spill of her white hair over the bundle of fabric.
The trip to the laundry room felt like an eternity, each step leaden with the heavy discomfort weighing down Blake's head. Halfway there she realized she'd forgotten to ask which machines even contained their laundry. Well, she would figure it out... hopefully.
She found the place deserted, thankfully, and walked all the way to the farthest side of the room to set her plate down on the washer next to the wall with a window. Turning around and giving the row of machines a quick once-over, she began the arduous task of searching each washer.
Luck was on her side, and the second washer she opened contained Ruby's telltale red sheets. Assuming the sheets in the washer next to them were Weiss's, she placed both piles into separate dryers and started them up.
Blake watched the fabric tumble and spin for a moment before returning to the far side of the room and hopping up to sit on the washer that held her sandwich plate. Quickly fading remains of angled daylight poured in from the window, lighting the floor and the row of dryers before her, but obscuring her sitting place in darkness - not that she minded.
Taking a moment to enjoy the solitude, Blake leaned on the wall and stared out the window at the horizon. When she eventually tired of the view, her eyes drifted around the laundry room before finally coming to rest on the tuna sandwich beside her. She smiled again as she thought back on Weiss's small admission. I really don't like tuna...
The simple ordinary food item sitting on that plate had taken on a new importance, now bearing the distinction of being tangible proof that underneath all the stiff regal bluster, Weiss Schnee cared. Blake's smile curved into a smirk. She was starting to understand what Ruby might see in her icy heiress.
Voices from outside the laundry room interrupted Blake's thoughts. She turned her head as the door opened and two familiar students walked in. Her night vision cut right through the relative darkness of the room to recognize Nora and Jaune in the middle of a conversation about... something.
Blake strained her ears to hear over the din of two dryers, but could only make out useless snippets. Not wanting to butt in, she simply sat and watched from the shadows as they came closer.
"... so the entire field of sunflowers broke into song~!" Nora flung her arms wide, skipping into the middle of the laundry room. "They must have been speaking flower-speak because I didn't understand any of the words, but it might have been about ice cream."
"Why would flowers sing about ice cream? They can't even eat it," Jaune fumbled along the wall for the light switch. It had been a long day. Classes, combat practice, Pyrrha had never shown up for dinner. When he got back to the room, she'd been fretting over some letter she tried to write to Weiss, probably about the whole thing with Ruby. Jaune had no idea. He figured it was best to stick to his play-dumb routine and just go with Nora to get the laundry. He'd ditched his uniform's coat and tie but hadn't had time to change out of the shirt before his teammate had dragged him off.
Nora scoffed at him, "Of course flowers can eat ice cream. You just have to melt it so they can suck it up with their roots. One time, I fed this dandelion vanilla ice cream for a week. It grew into, like, a super dandelion."
"What? No way. Really?" Jaune couldn't keep back a skeptical smile. "Was it huge or something?"
"It was actually kind of shrively," Nora leaned towards him in a dramatic stage whisper, "but only because it was filled with such crippling power." She added, "Like mothballs."
"... the crippling power of mothballs?"
"Have you ever tried eating a mothball? Crippling power."
"Aha!" Jaune exclaimed as his hand encountered the switch. The fluorescent lights flickered on overhead, bathing the laundry room in harsh white light. Jaune squinted while his eyes adjusted.
Nora spotted Blake at once, "Hey!" she gave the Faunus a short wave, "Were you hiding? Is it your turn to cry in the laundry room? That must be a pain with that bandage on your eye."
"Oh, hey, Blake, didn't see you there. And, Nora, she's not crying. Why would Blake be crying?" Jaune rolled his eyes, glancing at Blake and circling his finger near his temple in a good-natured signal indicating Nora's lack of sanity. Nora copied the gesture, pointing at Jaune. He laughed, "Look, she's just... uh... eating?"
Yeah, that was a little weird. But whatever.
After taking a moment to recover from the sudden blinding light forcing her pupil to constrict into barely a slit, Blake rubbed her eye and shifted against the wall, trying to appear nonchalant. "I see I'm not the only one doing laundry at strange hours." She tried to mentally catch up with Nora and Jaune's conversation, which had finally become clearer due to their close proximity. Flowers? Ice cream? Moth balls?
On second thought, she instead focused on the questions they had directed at her. Her gaze flickered between the two. "I wasn't hiding," she replied evenly, motioning pointedly to her amber eye, "I don't need light."
In an attempt to quickly move the conversation away from her Faunus heritage, and because she was genuinely curious, Blake continued with a questioning glance at Nora, "Who was crying in the laundry room?"
"It was Weiss~!" Nora sang out as if she were in some kind of laundry room opera, flinging Ren's sodden green coat out of the washer dramatically. She pulled back abruptly, placing a finger to her lips, "Actually, that was probably supposed to be a secret, so shh."
Blake blanched at the immediate and unfettered response, then paled as the melodically delivered name finally registered. "Weiss?..."
The coat flopped over Jaune's face. He pulled it off and stared at his teammate in open shock, "Wait. Weiss? As in Snow Angel? Ice Queen? Whatever-else-we-call-her? That Weiss?"
"Yep!" Nora chirped in complete disregard to her earlier suggestion to 'shh' while she plucked the rest of the laundry from the washer and carted it over to shove into a dryer on the far wall. "Let's dry it over here. I'm getting a good drying vibe from this one."
Blake crossed her arms, sharing in Jaune's initial disbelief. She admittedly knew very little about Nora, but the girl's tendency towards exaggeration was high on the relatively short list of things she did know. Weiss had probably scowled a little too hard, or made some other benign facial twitch that was now being blown out of proportion.
...So she hoped anyway. A scowl darkened Blake's features as a nagging sense of uncertainty refused to leave her. Weiss had taken an exceptionally long time to come back from "doing laundry" - an obvious excuse to flee what had been a... tense conversation. But crying?
Exaggeration usually required at least a grain of truth, and the unpleasant possibility that Nora wasn't exaggerating remained as well. Blake's eyes never left Nora, burning with a question that she feared she already knew the answer to. "Why was she crying?"
"I dunno. Probably because of the other super-secret thing we're not supposed to talk about," Nora shrugged, jamming the load of wet clothes into the dryer.
Blake's eyes narrowed, finding little reassurance in the non-answer. Well, whatever it might have been, Weiss seemed fine now, so she supposed there was no sense worrying over it.
Jaune paled, glancing at Blake when Nora mentioned 'the secret'. Ohhhh he was out of his depth here with these two. But no problem. He could be chill. He could avoid getting sucked into any talk about whatever was going on with Weiss and Ruby. (Talk that would undoubtedly get him killed sooner or later, however interesting it was.)
All he had to do was re-direct the conversation, which he did loudly, "So, Blake, I guess your eye's doing better, huh? At least it doesn't look like it's still bleeding, or anything, or... do eyes bleed even? Haha, yeah..." He held Ren's coat out to Nora helplessly, "Uh, does this just go in the dryer?"
Nora balled it up and tossed it in, "Sure, why not?"
Blake's hand subconsciously lifted to touch her eye patch at Jaune's remark. "Yes, actually, I've discovered eyes do bleed. Mine is... recovering nicely," she stated flatly, taking care to avoid any mention of the substantial pain still plaguing her covered eye.
She lapsed back into silence. At this point Blake would normally be content to drop out of any further conversation, but the sight of Ren's coat sparked a sudden curiosity in her. As far as she knew, he was taking the same antitoxin as Ruby and Yang, both of whom had developed bizarre side-effects and had just been mysteriously carted away to who-knows-where by their professor. She tilted her head, looking between her classmates as they struggled to figure out the basic steps of laundering clothes. "How is Ren doing?"
"Oh, uh, he's fine! Totally, one-hundred percent fine," Jaune fake-laughed for a second and gave Nora a thumbs-up while she figured out the dials on the machine. Then he leaned in close to Blake, "He's got some kind of a... kind of like a force-field thing happening. Something to do with his semblance. Pyrrha explained it. Anyway, someone on the medical staff came to check on him and couldn't get past it to take a blood sample."
Jaune rubbed the back of his neck, "I mean, he's hurting, what with the anti-toxin and not taking any pain meds and all, but he's got us three to look out for him and he's been doing fine before this... whatever it is. The doctors want to check it out, I think. I'm just the Nora-distraction squad while Pyrrha and the med staff try to get him to the special-cases ward.
"So I guess, um, stuff across the hall has been... interesting?" Jaune grimaced at his lame finish. He looked over his shoulder to check on Nora. She was riding the dryer, it seemed, standing on top of it and urging it towards greater feats of dryness. "Somehow I always think of you guys as the sane team."
Blake squinted. Sane was that very last word she'd use to describe team RWBY as of late. She leaned slightly away from Jaune out of a habitual need for personal space, rather than any sort of personal distaste. "Interesting is... one way of putting it, yes. Yang nearly setting me and everything else on fire was interesting. Ruby redecorating the room with endless rose petals was also interesting..." Her words tapered off as she lost herself in thought, considering the sudden influx of new information she'd been handed.
If Ren was having these same problems, then something was definitely wrong with the antitoxin Beacon's medical staff had provided. Either it just didn't work, or it made things worse. Neither possibility sat well with her. Blake's expression darkened further at the thought of Beacon's special-cases ward. Without books to read, her time in the infirmary had mainly been spent listening in on small talk and gossip from the medical staff, and the ward in question was almost never mentioned positively.
From what she'd been able to gather, that was where they housed cases with no clear-cut diagnosis, or, and her heart sank at the thought, cases with a low probability of recovery. She didn't want to think about it, but it was highly likely that if Ren was being taken there, then the special-cases ward was probably Professor Goodwitch's destination when she'd dashed off with Ruby and Yang earlier. Blake trained her hardened gaze on the tuna sandwich and let out a small sigh. Weiss was not going to be happy about this.
"Gee, sounds like it's been rough," Jaune's blue gaze dropped to the floor. His team had been able to pretty much go on as usual- no risk of burning down the dorms, and no high-stress romantic entanglements. (Anything that had to do with Weiss Schnee was pretty much guaranteed to be high-stress.)
Sure, Nora and Ren were childhood friends and all, but so far Ren's condition hadn't made too much of a dent in the hammer-wielder's happy-go-lucky demeanor. She hadn't been destructive or anything, at least. Well, not more so than usual. Jaune scuffed his boots on the concrete floor, "If there's anything we can do to help... I mean, we could watch your laundry, or something. We'll be here a while anyway."
Blake eyed Nora apprehensively for a moment - there was now a large dent in the dryer she was riding. "I think I'll stick around," she finally answered. She leaned against the wall once more and closed her eyes. "Thank you though."
A cool night breeze blew through the nearly-empty dorm of team JNPR. Standing by the open window, Pyrrha tried to make sense of the whirlwind of events that had just occurred. She pulled out her scroll and began to write a message.
Jaune,
The medical staff is gone now. As is Ren. Also his bed. I'm worried - none of them seemed to have any inclination as to the cause for the sudden complication in Ren's condition. He did not seem well as he flew out the window. Though, that may have merely been due to the sudden nature of his departure. Professor Goodwitch was very expedient in using his bed to carry him away - not unlike a carriage, come to think of it.
What should we do about Nora?
- Pyrrha
She hit send.
Jaune snapped out of his doze- it was Nora's shift on 'guard duty' over the laundry. He dug his scroll out of his pocket and scanned Pyrrha's message. His response was brief:
No worries. I've got this.
- J
He closed his scroll, tilting his head back to look up at his teammate, who was currently perched, bright-eyed and vigilant, on top of the dryer. "Hey Nora, the, uh... the doctors wanted to take another look at Ren, so he's off seeing them."
Something flickered behind her eyes. "Yeah, he has been getting kind of worse."
"Oh," Jaune winced. He ran his hand over his hair, "You knew?"
"Well, duh, we're partners," Nora hopped off the top of the dryer with a little less enthusiasm than usual. She thumped the corner of the machine lightly with her fist, her smile absent.
Blake, who had been listening from her position against the wall up to this point, finally opened her eyes upon hearing the subtle shift in her classmate's tone. For a brief moment, the look on Nora's face made Blake want to say something encouraging, but that idea was quickly dispelled when she realized that she couldn't think of anything positive to say about the situation. Instead, she simply frowned in sympathy.
Deep within the basement levels of Beacon, one solitary pane of polished glass reflected a pair of darkened green irises sharpened in concentration. The soft hum of machinery broken by intermittent blips of light and sound from the countless display screens around her did nothing to improve Glynda Goodwitch's already soured mood. She glanced up from the chart in her hands, filled with frustratingly inconclusive data, to look through the protective glass barriers at the ward rooms beyond.
In the first room lay Ruby Rose, surrounded almost poetically in a cushion of her own rose petals, blissfully unaware of the handful of nurses flitting about her bed thanks to a heavy dose of sedatives to keep her from moving. In the second Lie Ren, bleary-eyed and visibly hurting, was still doing his best to answer the sporadic questions thrown at him by the engineer, medical technician, and aura expert who were currently locked in an energetic discussion on how to best monitor a patient through an aura-based barrier. Glynda's eyes narrowed into slits. At least he wasn't on fire.
'Hellish inferno' was the only descriptor that seemed to fit what had become of Yang Xiao Long's ward room. Initially, the sisters had been roomed together at Yang's request, but the same sedatives that kept her younger sister immobile had done nothing to quell her own condition - she simply burned in her sleep, a relentless conflagration that grew with each passing minute. Once imminent containment failure became apparent, Ruby Rose had been evacuated to her present location.
Yang Xiao Long was now resting on the floor of a room devoid of anything but swirling flames, cushioned by a makeshift pile of dust-infused fireproof blankets brought in by a courageous medical staff member wearing full-bodied protective gear made of the same material. Everything else in the room had been incinerated.
A light beep and swish alerted Glynda to someone entering through the door behind her. She didn't need to turn around to know who it was. Ozpin always had a way of showing up whenever she felt she was nearing the end of her rope. Her eyes remained focused on her students as she spoke to the familiar figure that had come to stand beside her.
"The antitoxin is not working."
"So it seems," Ozpin watched the medical team work beyond the glass, both hands resting on his cane.
He and Glynda made it a point to stay well acquainted with Beacon's medical staff. Ozpin had spent enough time in the infirmary back before his appointment as headmaster for him to more than appreciate the value of the doctors and specialists he had on hand to patch up the gashes and broken bones that came along with training to be a huntsman/huntress.
Ozpin allowed his attention to stray across the screens monitoring the trio of students in the adjacent rooms. This was somewhat more serious than broken bones.
Of course, they would make adjustments. Alter certain chemicals, analyze the effects on the toxin in the students' blood; however, this was not the sort of poison you simply found the right antidote for. Dire complications were to be expected when anything of Grimm origins came into play, and Grimm toxin was no exception.
Even with the right formulation, there were often... difficulties. Ozpin's expression remained grave as he turned to the door, "I believe it's time to inform their partners. Have them gather in the waiting room upstairs."
Glynda watched him leave the room. Mouth set in a thin line, she set the chart down and pulled out her scroll, fingers hesitating over the message function as she deliberated on how exactly she would phrase this unusual order.
An uneasy silence had fallen over the laundry room. Blake glanced between Nora and Jaune, both seemingly at a loss for words. Shifting restlessly, her fingers brushed against the empty plate beside her - she'd soldiered through her sandwich a little earlier, an arduous undertaking with the pressure in her head, but she felt better for it. Her head was even starting to clear a bit.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZRRT
Well so much for that. It took all of Blake's conscious willpower to keep from flattening her ears at the sudden unholy cacophony that blared from both of her machines in tandem, signaling the dryer cycle's end. With a quick shake of her head to dispel the ringing in her ears, Blake hopped down from her washing machine, taking care to avoid stepping on Jaune and giving the tense blonde a passing glance as she headed over to pull the sheets from her dryers.
After a quick inspection - everything was indeed warm and dry - she paused, suddenly inspired by Ruby's signature red sheets. One amber eye drifted sideways to rest on the uncharacteristically silent girl standing just a few machines away. "If your partner's gone to the special-cases ward, he at least has good company. Ruby and Yang are there too." ...So she assumed, anyway.
Nora looked up and levered herself so she was sitting on top of her dryer. She grinned, "Sounds like we're missing the party then, huh? Or at least half of it. Geez, they must be bored without our half. Do you think they allow balloons in the special cases ward? They weren't crazy about them in the regular infirmary, but psssh, balloons are an important part of recoveries everywhere."
Jaune half-smiled up at Blake from his seat on the floor against the dryer. It was good to have Nora chattering again, but not good to hear that half of Team RWBY was in as bad shape as Ren. At least he wasn't alone down there, though, wherever the special cases ward was.
"They can't be too bad off, right? We already all made it through the whole Grimm rat thing," he plucked at the edge of his own jacket sleeve, forcing memories that made the hair on the back of his neck prickle up- teeth and black fur and Pyrrha's spear drenched in red ichor- back into his subconscious. "They'll probably be alright, I mean."
Blake kept her thoughts to herself. It was one thing to stay positive, but it was another to spread false hope. Instead, she gathered the sheets in one arm and offered her classmates a half-smile. "I should go. I'll see you later." With a small wave, she left the laundry room.
Back in Team JNPR's room, somewhere in the bottom of a dresser drawer, Nora's scroll blipped.
New message.
Pyrrha paused and looked up at the small sound. She cast a quick glance over at her own scroll lying on her pillow. Nothing. Brows furrowing slightly, she shrugged and went back to pacing.
Ruby had programmed her scroll to play the sound of one of her favorite, premium-quality dust-core sniper rifle rounds being chambered in Crescent Rose whenever she got a message. (She only bought them every once in a long while because they were so expensive but they were completely worth it every time. It took a lot of recording and re-recording to get the sound just right.)
Click.
The heavy, meaningful sound that so often preceded a Grimm's head getting chunks blown out of it played from Weiss Schnee's jacket pocket. She stirred in her sleep, turning to bury her face in her arms atop the bunched-up curtain, but she didn't wake.
The trip back to the dorms felt like no time at all, and soon enough Blake found herself at the door, pushing it open with her free hand. "I'm ba-" she froze mid-sentence as she spotted Weiss, curled up on the ripped curtain draped over her desk, sound asleep. She stared at the rare sight, amused at seeing the proper heiress in such a decidedly improper sleeping position. Nevertheless, she was glad that Weiss had taken her advice to rest.
Stepping lightly so as not to disturb her teammate's long-overdue nap, Blake quietly shut the door behind her, moved over to the beds, and set to work putting the sheets back in place. Well, Weiss's sheets at least, she just sort of tossed Ruby's sheets up onto the bed hanging above. She wasn't about to risk re-injury climbing up there. Then again, apparently she could jump up there no problem when she was hopped up on pain medication. Blake's eye twitched. Never again.
With the bed properly made, Blake turned to observe her new dilemma - Weiss. She couldn't very well let the heiress spend her night hunched over on a desk, but she wasn't too keen on the idea of waking her either. Slowly, quietly, Blake approached Weiss, hesitating as she leaned over to examine her sleeping teammate. She had to admit, the heiress actually looked quite peaceful when she slept - almost sweet, even. It was hard to imagine Weiss's signature icy glares coming from the face before her now.
A small flashing light caught the corner of Blake's eye. She glanced down at Weiss's pocket to see Ruby's scroll, blinking to signal an unread message. Well, so much for letting her sleep.
"Weiss," Blake reached out to place a hand on the heiress's shoulder, but stopped herself short of actually touching. "Weiss," she tried again, a little louder. The heiress slept on, dead to the world. Setting her teeth and bracing for the worst, Blake finally reached those last few inches to grasp Weiss's shoulder, giving her a gentle shake. "Weiss, wake up. You have a message."
The heiress shoved blindly at Blake, her words a low groan, "Fine, stop touching me."
Blake immediately stepped back, barely avoiding a hand to the face in the process.
Weiss dragged herself out of sleep and sat up, disoriented. This wasn't her bed. She blinked blearily down at her hands. Why was she still in her school jacket? Her eyes skated over her unfinished sewing project. Not even two feet down the split. It was dark outside. "What time is it?"
Blake glanced at Ruby's alarm. "It's almost nine."
Weiss ran a hand over her face. Nine o'clock. The laundry must be dry. In fact, it looked like Blake had gone ahead and made her bed. Well, mostly. At least she had sheets. That was good enough. She got up, shedding her jacket on her way to the bathroom and grumbling, "I'm going to bed."
"But you have a-" the door to the bathroom shut before Blake could finish her sentence. She rolled her eyes, eventually letting her gaze fall back to Weiss's jacket draped over the chair. Ruby's scroll was still flashing. Stifling a sigh, Blake took the scroll, eyeing the small device with trepidation.
Who would be messaging Ruby this late anyway? It would be rude to read someone else's messages, but if it ended up being important, with Ruby out of commission there was no telling when it might get answered. Might as well respond to tell the sender as much.
Satisfied with her reasoning, Blake ignored the nurses' advice to avoid reading for the time being and pulled the scroll open to look at the new message. A shock of adrenaline ran through her upon seeing the small icon of the sender: Professor Goodwitch. She immediately opened the message.
Remaining members of team RWBY and JNPR report to the waiting room above the Special-cases ward at once.
Dread pooled in her gut as she reread the terse message twice more, fingers tightening further and further around the edges of the scroll each time she hit the words remaining members. The message came with an attached image—a map of the school's basement levels from the looks of it—but she pulled her eyes from the screen, forcing herself not to jump to conclusions. Slowly, her gaze lifted to the bathroom door. Weiss was definitely not going to be happy about this.
That was probably an understatement. Weiss had already taken down her hair and was in the process of unbuttoning her school shirt when she emerged in belated search of her nightgown.
She noticed Blake's stillness more than anything else. Like she wasn't even breathing. Weiss replaced her nightgown and started redoing the buttons on her shirt. "What's the matter?"
Blake's eyes cut to Weiss, widening slightly in anticipation as amber locked with questioning blue. Temporarily at a loss for words, she loosened her grip on the scroll and simply handed it over.
Weiss took the device and stared at the message for a second. Her mouth settled into a thin line as she handed it back. She snatched up her jacket and a hair tie from her desk, "Let's go."
Blake nodded, pulling up the map as she followed Weiss out the door.
Within a quarter of an hour, the two stood in the waiting room of Beacon's infirmary. The walls were a sea green color that went out of fashion years ago; the tiles polished to a shine that didn't quite hide the marks of traffic from the door to the reception desk. Overhead, the fluorescent lights buzzed softly.
Weiss glowered impatiently. Her white hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, and she was tired, and worried, and was most certainly not in the mood to wait around.
The door behind to the hallway opened, admitting three-quarters of Team JNPR.
"You guys get the message too?" Jaune entered first, offering the two RWBY members a half-hearted grin as he held the door for his teammates. It faded quickly. He'd noticed the message on his scroll sometime after Blake had left and had gone to make sure Pyrrha had gotten one as well.
Nora was more subdued than usual. Most of her boundless energy seemed to have been converted into a more nervous sort. She fiddled with the cuffs of her sleeves, darting glances at the empty receptionist's desk and the analog clock hung over the door.
Pyrrha entered the room last, looking distressed, but still the most composed by far. She stopped to stand shoulder to shoulder with Nora, or at least, as close as she could get considering their height difference.
Blake fought to keep her ears from flattening in anxiety as she watched the door that led into the infirmary, so caught up in wondering what had become of her teammates that she completely missed Jaune's remark. She stood a little straighter when she heard footsteps coming from beyond the door.
Shortly, it opened. Glynda stepped through, followed closely by Ozpin. The first professor's piercing green eyes swept over the frazzled group. "Good, you are all here." Glynda stepped to the side, glancing at Ozpin.
The headmaster stood, surveying the members of the fractured teams a moment before drawing up a chair and taking a seat. He set his cane against the desk behind him.
"Please," he indicated the assortment of marginally upholstered waiting room chairs, plus a worn-out flower patterned couch.
The invitation to sit did not brook refusal, so the students shuffled to arrange themselves, Jaune and Pyrrha and Nora all fitting on the couch while Blake and Weiss took chairs near the door into the infirmary.
Ozpin leaned forward on his elbows, gathering his students' attention close. He could see the tired lines in some of their faces, the uncertainty, perhaps a bit of masked fear. That was appropriate, given the situation. He removed his small, dark spectacles. Rubbed his eyes. Replaced his glasses.
"Your teammates are dying," he said.