Chapter 11: Bananas Foster
It had been a relatively uneventful morning for Sun Wukong. He'd spent the last few hours sleeping in a tree in the park across from the hospital. After his was the last ship to return to Vale before dawn, there was not much for him to do. He had personally carried Blake to one of the emergency rooms available. She had been treated back at Beacon, but only with field dressings. Inside the hospital, a real doctor did the proper cleaning and stitchwork needed to treat a stab wound.
It made him proud to see his, as he called them, 'dumb' team manning the stretchers when his ship opened its bay door. Sage and Scarlet made sure that Yang was immediately taken to an emergency room. She was unconscious, and considering the nature of an amputation like the one she'd experienced, she would need the attention of a surgeon in a timely manner. Neptune was there too, working with Jaune to help his two teammates. Nora had insisted that she was fine and didn't need any help. But then she nearly passed out stepping down the ramp at the back of the ship. Needless to say, she got help.
As far as the safe zone itself was concerned, the Grimm attacks had died down after the flash of light, and the White Fang retreated from Beacon after that Dragon showed up. Sun wasn't really sure where they'd gone, but it was unlikely that they were done causing trouble. What they were now calling the 'Battle of Beacon' had been the climax of the night's activities. There were certainly still Grimm in Vale, but mostly outside of the safe zone. Unlike many others, his own team hadn't received any major injuries. He decided this was a minor miracle, considering the rest of his team was prone to mishaps and bad luck.
They had literally fought in the first battle of a new war. Sun thought about that for a few moments. "War. How can you fight a war when you don't even know what you're really fighting?" he thought aloud. It was true to an extent. "Sure, there was the White Fang, and the Grimm, but that woman on the loudspeaker at Amity… who was she? I fought a couple giant robots too, but they all shut down right when i was gettin' warmed up!" To him, none of the enemy combatants made any sense. "Why would the White Fang, the Grimm and giant robots team up?"
A low hum off in the distance caught his attention. Sun looked around until he noticed an armored transport ship moving closer to the hospital. The low hum slowly built into a noisy combination of swirling air and mechanical stabilizing controls, as the ship flew overhead. It eventually hovered over the building across the street, giving clear indications that it would land there soon.
The noise coming from the ship above covered the rumbling of Sun's stomach at first, but now he could feel it. So he reached into the cargo pocket on his jeans, retrieving a banana that he'd stolen from the hospital lunchroom during the previous night. As he began to peel it, he heard a bit of a commotion coming from the entrance to the building. Sun tried to ignore it at first. He'd spent enough time here to realize that there was always some fuss at the front door. He took a bite, chewed for a moment, then spit the starchy imposter onto the ground below. "PLANTAIN!? Who even eats these things?"
Now he was frustrated on top of being hungry. Sun rolled off of the branch he'd been balancing on, cartwheeling, before landing perfectly, feet first on the ground. As he began his march to the hospital, he noticed the coalition of nurses and civilians gathered in a circle on the steps leading to the entrance. Not wanting to be excluded from the excitement, Sun was quick to push through the small mob. After mildly irritating several members of the hospital staff, he made it to the front row of the crowd, where he found a doctor tending to… "Blake?"
"What the heck are you doing out here?" Sun asked, in his trademark, blunt mannerism.
The doctor responded, "She kept saying she just wanted some fresh air. A few of the staff members noticed her struggling to walk down the hall toward the exit, and when she made it out the door, she just fainted. I didn't treat her, but based on her injuries, she shouldn't even be out of bed. I've called for a stretcher to-"
"That's stupid. I can handle this," Sun declared. He then proceeded to kneel down, pick up Blake, and start to walk inside.
The doctor was speechless at first, but eventually he found words for his disbelief, "Hey! She's in no condition to be carried around like that! Bring her back here right now!"
"Pfffft, why? I already did most of the work. You can thank me later." Sun's quirks often came off as arrogant or rude, but he meant well. It was a difference of cultures that lead him to rub people the wrong way, more often than not.
In this case, the doctor was clearly not pleased with the assumed mistreatment of a patient with a serious injury. But he wasn't going to make a scene in front of everyone, so he just let it go. "Kids these days..." he muttered as the crowd dispersed and he walked back inside.
As Sun carried Blake up the stairs to nowhere in particular, she cracked open her amber eyes, as if coming out of a daze. She looked around for a moment, before turning her head to see who was responsible for carrying her. Sun noticed her movement, and then that she had opened her eyes a bit. It seemed like a good time to inform her that "Y-know, you can be pretty stubborn sometimes."
Blake knew that she wanted to trade verbal blows with Sun, but her current condition only allowed her to babble a few senseless syllables, "...hill… ert… yang…" before returning to her sleep.
"Good one," Sun said to the once again unresponsive Faunus in his arms.
When he made it to the second floor, Sun began to consider that he had no idea where Blake's room was. He had taken her to the emergency room during the previous night, but he hadn't been allowed to stay there with her, so he went to his tree. He knew where Yang's room was. Everyone knew that. She got constant visitors and well wishes, even though she hadn't woken up yet. That would be a good place to start.
As he neared room 226, one of the hospital staff noticed him carrying Blake. As it turned out, he was one of the nurses who had bandaged her the night before. Sun was informed that Blake's room was 225, across the hall. She was kept apart from her teammate because the doctors weren't sure what kind of emotional state Yang would be in when she didn't want to create a situation where either patient would be adversely affected by the stress of the other. Sun didn't really understand the psychology of what he'd been told, so he decided that it was dumb. Even still, he agreed to bring Blake back to her own room.
He opened the door with his tail, only to find all of the blinds and curtains pulled closed. "This must be the place," Sun declared. He walked into the room and carefully lowered Blake onto the bed with the already ruffled sheets, assuming it was hers. In the time it took him to pull the covers up to her neck, he realized that Blake was now in bed in her full combat gear, save for her Gambol Shroud, which she'd left at Beacon somewhere. The thought crossed his mind that maybe, just maybe, she should be in some kind of hospital gown, but the possibility of her waking up during the changing process made Sun consider his own mortality, and therefore decide against it.
"What were you doing out there?" Sun asked the sleeping girl. "You know you have to get better, right? I mean... You HAVE to get better. It's bad enough I couldn't help you at Beacon, and now you go and get into trouble at a hospital? Seriously, don't make me babysit you. I hate kids." He stopped his monologue, recognizing that it was going off on a tangent.
The quiet meant he heard his stomach rumbled again. This time though, Sun could see a bowl of some kind of edible material on the nightstand between the two beds. He pulled the curtain open slightly to cast enough light that he could identify the food. There were apples, oranges, grapes and a can of tuna. "This is definitely the place," he reiterated. The choices weren't ideal for him, but Sun was concerned that Blake might attempt another jailbreak if he left her alone to go get something else. So, he took a seat on the chair, which he then began to balance on one leg.
A few hours passed before there was any activity in the room. But in the early afternoon, Blake began to stir. Sun stopped his meditation to see what was going on around him. When he did, he noticed the beads of sweat on Blake's forehead, and the twisted expression on her face. Sun wasn't an expert in analyzing sleeping patterns in faunus, or humans… or anything really. He decided to try to wake her up, as whatever was on her mind was clearly distressing her.
He put a hand on her shoulder and carefully shook. When there was no reaction, he shook a bit harder. The next thing he knew, his arm had been parried, and a quick jab landed somewhere on the side of his head… he was unsure exactly where. Sun stumbled back, caught completely off guard. His usual unfiltered stream of words came to the fore, "Wha… why?... Blake, it's me! Calm down!"
Her eyes opened wide, revealing some combination of terror, shock and remorse. She was breathing heavily, eyes darting around the room as if she expected something to materialize out of thin air. Blake opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but the words didn't come out.
Never at a loss for words, Sun filled the void, "It's ok Blake, I'm here, you're gonna be fine."
Her eyes were still wide open, as was her mouth. She started to babble again, "...hill… ert you..."
Sun could tell she wasn't thinking straight yet. "Yeah, I got that part before, still doesn't make any sens-"
"No..." Her interruption created a delay that allowed her to organize her thoughts, and speech patterns.
"...He'll hurt you too."