Brighter

by y8ay8a

It took that three day mission away from Beacon Academy, but if Yang looked back on the last months, their relationship was probably bound to change sooner or later. - Bumbleby smut. Starts in between V2 and V3, follows events of V3. May very well be continued with V5.

8. Chapter 8

Hello! It's been a year and a half since I released new content for this fic!

I had been uncertain if I wanted to keep following the canon-verse or if I wanted to branch out from there, and I ultimately decided to branch out. As of today (10/19/2018) – V6 hasn't started airing yet.
The reasons I decided to branch out was that, first, I would eventually have to anyways. When actual romance starts developing on the show between them, then this story won't fit the canon. Second, I wanted to render my own version of The Talk, and I wanted to release this chapter before V6 airs because I know very well that I'd otherwise have been tempted to scrap everything and follow canon hahaha. I really wanted to write my own version because – and this is not a criticism against the show—I know that The Talk might be glossed over on in canon. After all, romance isn't the main point of the story, there's a ton of other things going on, and they have such limited time to accomplish it all. On my part, I also wanted to give avid bees fans the delicious pain of angst they've been craving that the show may not deliver.

That said, I hope I'm able to satiate that craving! I hope you enjoy :')

---

Haven was within half a day's sail.

As Blake made her way back to the quarters she shared with her friends, restlessness and trepidation permeated the air on the ship. The fighting-fit faunus of Menagerie, who'd previously been so reluctant, even loathe to get involved in the fight were now buzzing with fervent anticipation, avid for action and impatient to make their stand.

She'd spent the last day going through the crowds from room to room in an attempt to oversee the last of their preparations and in hopes of making herself available to anyone who needed more guidance or who still had questions. Though with the goal almost in sight, she felt the need to regroup herself; maybe try to get some rest, but mostly to get back to her friends for her own personal support. She might have turned to her parents, but between them dividing their attention to their troops the same way she had been and the vague thought that her friends might need her too, she opted to try and find them. She had to admit however, it truly was surreal to see her parents man the front lines again, showing this passion and dedication she'd feared they'd lost when her father had stepped from leadership of the White Fang to settle in a quieter life in Menagerie.

It was empowering and energizing to have not only found her roots again, but also feel like she was marching, no running full speed in the right direction for once and not only that, but things might actually be going her way.

She almost felt strong enough to venture into thinking about what would inevitably come next.

Once they'd stopped the coup on Haven -because they would absolutely stop it, she wholly believed they would-, once the faunus had shown they wanted to stand undivided alongside the human race, that they were willing to step up and fight the true enemy, the one who was festering inside their own ranks... Once all that would have transpired, in a matter of hours, then… the next step Blake would need to take to right the last atrocious wrong she was responsible for was—

"What do you mean, she was cool, she's a Schnee!"

The outburst coming from the room she was about to enter had Blake freeze with the doorknob in hand.

"But she's not like that," Sun's loud voice argued back through the manifestly paper-thin walls.

She held her breath. Her mother had made a point to inform her of how, unlike Blake herself, the friend she'd dragged along was delighted to retell every single detail possible about team RWBY and their adventures. Sun's enthusiastic tales of Beacon had, she'd been told, more or less painted them up to be children's books heroes. It was no surprise to Blake that with the emergence of someone new who'd be interested in her time away, he ended up talking more about them.

Up until then, however... Blake had done everything she could to avoid overhearing even just a single word of what Sun had to retell about her friends. Admittedly, she would in other circumstances have been very curious about the entire thing, but as things stood now… in the last weeks, Blake had been especially averse to reminiscing. Letting herself think about those she left behind was the most sure-fire way to send her down a catastrophic spiral of misery, which she'd been making progress steadily climbing out of in the past months. She really couldn't afford taking even one step back, she needed all the energy she could muster in order to be able to face Adam.

"All Schnees are like that!" Ilia's voice argued back.

It was a mix of longing nostalgia and masochistic curiosity that kept Blake standing by the door. She was not ready to hear about these girls she missed so dearly, but now faced with this fortuitous opportunity, she simply couldn't will herself to move away.

"Not Weiss," he retorted, the tone of his voice uncharacteristically combative. "She cares about who you are, not what you are."

"It's not because she was nice to you to your face that she wasn't really like all those snobs deep down," she vehemently pressed.

Sun laughed. "What, no, she wasn't nice with me at all," he said. "She didn't like me much, really."

There was an odd pause in which Ilia manifestly was taken aback enough to be unable to find an answer. After all, why would he defend her such when she wasn't even sympathetic to him?

He seemed to read the uncertainty because then he offered more details. "But that's because she didn't like me as a person, it had nothing to do with race," he explained.

'Do you really expect to convince Ilia by claiming something like that without any argument to support it?' Blake dully thought to herself.

"How do you know that?" Ilia insisted; Blake was impressed her long-time friend even considered inquiring. "She's from Atlas," she pointed out. "I've lived there, I know how hateful and bourgeois the people up there are. They only care about money, status and pedigree; if you think any of them is willing to overlook that you're not like them, you're dreaming."

Sun made a mildly annoyed grunting sound. "She might be from Atlas but obviously she didn't like being with these people, otherwise she wouldn't have gone all the way out to Beacon," he argued. "I'm telling you she's not like them. She was awesome with Blake and their faunus upperclassman. She didn't like me because—" He stopped to think for a second as if he'd never really taken the time to figure it out. "...Uh, I think she didn't agree with the way I did things."

Blake pressed her hand to her face. 'What an understatement.'

"The way you did things?" Ilia repeated disconcertedly.

"Yeah, I mean like… I don't really sweat it with some… rules? You know?"

Blake rolled her eyes to herself. 'Is that how you call your total disregard for the law, customs and traditions, social expectations, and proper etiquette?' Though her friend's personal code did revolve around general goodness and he did have a noble heart, Blake sometimes wondered how he'd managed not to be in real legal trouble given how liberally he broke the law.

…Not that team RWBY and Weiss herself never broke the rules either, but when it came to things like social conventions, stuff like being fashionable or behaving decently at a party, those were things Weiss would never overlook. And what to say about the way he'd unashamedly wedge himself into someone else's business or clandestinely stow away? Weiss considered behaviors like this to be unacceptable, it was no wonder she didn't like him.

"I'm a free spirit," he shot, still trying to justify himself. "Some rules are stupid, so I don't follow them. I guess she didn't agree with that. So yeah, that's one hundred percent on me, it's got nothing to do with race," he maintained.

His interlocutor gave a barely-convinced acknowledging grunt. She evidently wasn't very on board with his defense of the vilified Schnee family, but at this point she evidently had no argument left.

"And honestly," Sun continued anyways, "I think what would have been racist on her part would've been if she pretended she was okay with me even though she wasn't just because I'm a faunus," he indicated. "Weiss can be taken at face value, you never have to try and guess what's going on in her head. She's got solid integrity. Like also, when she's wrong she'll own up to it, I saw her apologize to Blake after a big fight," her retold. "I have mad respect for that."

Blake realized she was smiling to herself. She never knew Sun held Weiss in such high regard. But the more she thought about it, the more she felt it truly was absolutely like him to take a liking to someone unexpected and it did make sense, the way he'd explained it, that he in fact would see Weiss in a good light. It was nevertheless heartwarming to hear such praise for her good friend.

Ilia didn't seem to want to verbally concede anything because she changed topics. "You haven't talked about Blake's partner," she said.

There was a short pause before he said her name. "Yang."

Blake had expected that she would be brought up, but... hearing her name, like always, completely tore her chest open. She leaned her forehead on the door and exhaled shakily.

"Yang was..." Sun started before pausing, "unbelievable."

Blake's eyes fluttered open again and she realized she could see her two friends through the door crack. Ilia was sitting on one end of a three-person couch, hugging her legs to her chest and leaning her chin on her knees, while the blonde boy was sprawled on the other end of the same fixture.

Sun was smiling from ear to ear. "She was super friendly and outgoing and easygoing too. And she was funny. But then in combat, she had that awesome semblance where her hair shone, and it looked like she was on fire and she was so friggin' strong! She was just crazy impressive!" He exclaimed, his tail animatedly swinging around.

Blake was reminded how her mother had told her how he'd painted them to be larger than life, but… she truly thought all this was an accurate portrait.

The monkey faunus straightened up in his seat. "Through the Vytal tournament, they chose her to represent the team too 'cause as a solo fighter she was probably the strongest of them four. I mean, she can kick ass." He then paused and now only the tip of his tail lightly swayed. "Blake would be around her most," he then added, "but it was easy to see it wasn't just because they happened to be partners. They were obviously really, really close."

'You have no idea,' Blake thought.

Ilia was unimpressed. "If they were close, why are you here and not her?"

The blonde faunus sheepishly brought a hand to the back of his neck, rubbing it faintly. "...Well, Blake didn't exactly invite anyone to come along with her, I just… decided to follow," he admitted. Then there was a long pause in which his entire demeanor sobered up. Finding interest in the empty seat between the two of them, his hand slid from his neck to rest on his thigh. "While Yang..." he stopped once more, his enthusiasm also audibly snuffed. "During the Fall of Beacon… I don't really know how it happened because Blake doesn't really talk about it, but…" Sun sighed. His eyes found Ilia's again. "You've seen that scar on Blake's stomach, right?"

She hummed a low, affirmative sound. "She wears a crop top like she wants it to be seen," she commented. "So, I asked her about it, but all she was willing to say was that it wasn't fair for her to hide her injury when others have no choice but to live with theirs out in the open for everyone to see."

His expression softened to something a little sad. "Okay. Hum… that was cryptic, but… she was talking about Yang," he quietly revealed. "Yang also got hurt that night and… it'd be pretty hard to hide. Her dominant arm, up until here," with his fingers, he traced an invisible line over one of his biceps, "is gone."

Ilia's demeanor had lost her indolence and she'd straightened up slightly. "…Is she okay?"

He shrugged. "Well, she survived, that much I know for sure, but since I haven't seen her since that night, I don't know how well she recovered," Sun explained awkwardly before perking up anew. "But hey, she's a strong girl. Blake even said she was the strongest person she'd ever met. So, she has to be okay."

'She has to be okay,' Blake repeated the words in her head. 'But what if she's not?'

The thought of the golden girl not recovering, not overcoming the trauma, never standing back up to fight poisoned her to the point her stomach felt sick and she was spiraling down at a horrifying speed. It was her best effort to catch herself — this was why she didn't want to think of them. This was why she'd avoided Sun's stories, this was why she wasn't able to recount them to her mother herself. This… was something she couldn't afford and something she shouldn't be listening to. And yet, she stayed rooted in her spot, knowing full well how much pain doing so might entail.

"So, hmm," Sun's voice grabbed her attention again, "that's why Yang's not… here. With Blake," he resumed to why he'd brought all this up at all. "Actually. That's not really true because… Blake wouldn't even have gone to Menagerie if Yang hadn't gotten hurt, she'd likely still be around Vale," he speculated. "I mean… she blames herself for all that and didn't want to risk any more harm coming to her friends. When we talked, she sorta implied that's why she left them at all."

Ilia frowned. "Why does she blame herself?"

His tail twitched, and Blake could tell he felt slightly ill at ease with bringing this fact to her, given the close ties with the bull faunus the short girl just barely decided to cut. "Adam was there that night," he tentatively said and, from the way Ilia's expression disintegrated, it was easy to understand she'd already pieced it together without anything else needing to be said. Sun nevertheless continued. "He's the one who did that to the both of them. Blake told me he was so angry he might've killed her if Yang hadn't found them in time that night."

"…Are you saying the reason she got hurt at all was because… she stepped in for Blake?"

"That's what I understand," he offered. "Blake doesn't like talking about it, so I didn't ask for more details."

A contemplative stillness stretched between the two of them. Blake realized her hand was still on the door handle. She let it drop to her side, unable to will herself to enter the room. It almost surprised her to hear him resume.

"Once we've stopped the coup at Haven," Sun said, breaking the silence, "I'll try and get Blake to go find them. Or at least… find Yang."

'She'll never want to see me again,' she immediately thought.

"I told her that for sure Yang doesn't blame her for anything that happened. But I think Blake needs to hear it from her," he offered. "I don't think she'll truly be able to move on from what happened that night until she hears it from her that she doesn't hold it against her."

Ilia slowly released her legs from the way she'd been holding them across her chest. Instead she slid one leg down to the ground and leaned her elbow on her knee still propped up. "How do you know she doesn't?"

"…I just know. She would redo it too, no hesitation," he added.

"That's a huge sacrifice," she still argued. "What makes you so sure she would even go as far as redo it?"

He puffed up his chest. "That was Blake's life on the line," he emphasized. "There's no question between an arm and a life."

The freckled girl gave an uneasy shrug. "I… still don't know that there are that many people I'd give an arm for," she stiffly acknowledged.

This gave him pause. "Okay, I… don't actually know that Yang would for many people either, but… like I said, this was Blake," he reminded her. "I mean… the whole team was very close, but Blake and Yang were just… on another level. They were stupidly in synch. It was almost uncanny how well they read each other." With this, Sun leaned back as he looked up. There was a sort of nostalgic quality to both the way he stared into the emptiness and to the tone of his voice, making it clear he was reminiscing. "Total opposites and yet ridiculously complementary. Maybe like the two faces of the same coin? Or no, more like two matching puzzle pieces— I don't know how to describe it."

There was a pause in which it felt like Sun still wasn't done and Ilia evidently didn't know how to respond.

"Or maybe that's not quite true, maybe I could describe it," he finally rectified, a tone to his voice Blake had never heard before.

As if Ilia too picked up on this odd change in his intonation, the silence that ensued this time practically had palpable edge as both faunus women waited on what had induced this noteworthy fluctuation to his voice.

"I guess I'm just hesitant to..." he trailed off. The blonde faunus's gaze was fixated on the wooden floor. "If I use a specific word," he emphasised, "it's…" he sighed uncomfortably before glancing up at the brunette sitting across him. "You know how… some things, when you actually say out loud, when you actually choose a specific word to label something, it… it makes it like… you can't look the other way anymore," he carefully attempted to rationalize. "You can't… pretend you haven't noticed it or that it didn't cross your mind," he cautioned. His gaze on his interlocutor was now as if he was searching for a hint of understanding. "It becomes… real. I guess."

Blake's fingers rigidly clutched the fabric of her white coat and her blood chilled in her veins with a foreboding feeling. Sun's bizarrely extensive preface to one word he apparently wanted to use to qualify her relationship with Yang felt like it could only be one thing.

But it wasn't possible… was it?

Ilia held his gaze unsurely. "I'm not sure what you're getting at."

Sun's voice was unusually uncertain. "I mean, about…" he began, trailing off yet again. "You know when you said…" He paused. "…You said Blake used to look at Adam a certain way."

Heat flushed through her body in a sudden wave as it became clear that this was indeed what he was talking about. The silence that fell between her two friends was stifling.

It seemed an unreasonably long time before Ilia's voice gruelled through it. "…What about it?"

He stared back with an air of seriousness Blake had rarely seen on his part. "I think…" he glanced down, "…I don't know. I thought… I thought maybe…" Sun trailed off again, leaning back into his seat with an overall despondent body language. "I don't know if maybe I got it all wrong, I mean, maybe that night wasn't the best moment to judge," he allowed, as if what he was about to say needed yet another disclaimer. "Because really, I only saw her do it on that night when Beacon fell. So, I don't know if it was because… Yang had just lost her arm defending her and Blake was taken to her emotional limit, and that, maybe, how frantic and desperate she was made what she expressed look bigger than it was or if… …. If maybe exactly because she was at her limit, Blake didn't have any strength to hide it. Or maybe she didn't care anymore about hiding it," he gently explained. Sun looked back up at the young woman across from him. "But I had never seen her look at anyone the way she looked at Yang in that moment," he confessed. He then shook his head slightly. "No— I'd never seen anyone look at anyone else the way she looked at her then."

If the stiffness in the air around her hadn't already betrayed the tension in Ilia's body, the way she clenched her jaw or her fingers digging into the flesh of her leg would have. "…And it was…? That? Are you sure?"

Blake wondered whether the short faunus girl was having difficulty processing this possibility because of the implications that, had she not assumed Blake's sexuality back then, things just might have turned out very differently… or if maybe… her feelings were still alive and this was in fact jealousy.

"No, like I said, I'm not sure," he dejectedly said. "I mean… Yang, the definition of fire and energy, was just lying there, pale and lifeless as a result of a sacrifice she made for Blake," he reminded her. The way he painted the picture this time around vividly forced the horrendous memories back to Blake, nauseating her again. Sun shook his head. "I mean… seeing her like that, it's only normal Blake was a wreck and clinging to her. That's why I don't know if I can really say that… the look in Blake's eyes ... if it was really... that."

Ilia hummed understandingly. This perspective seemed to have alleviated her unease.

"It doesn't change the fact that I just can't stop thinking about it," Sun confessed. "Because, really… there's absolutely no question there was something there. And whatever it was, it was really powerful," he contemplated out loud, a thoughtful frown faintly creasing his features. "And so... real."

"Enough that it made you think there was… something… more," she carefully confirmed.

"... But I don't know that there actually was," he defended.

"But you think there was, don't you?"

"I don't know what to think," Sun unnervingly shot back. "Blake isn't very open about these things," he pointed out.

"And Yang?" Ilia pressed, undeterred.

The blonde faunus paused. "I… never knew Yang that well so it's not like I would've been able to tell what was just usual and what wasn't when it came to her," he allowed. He repositioned himself in his seat, his tail started swaying again as he reminisced. "She was really cheerful and lively person. And flirty and demonstrative with everyone. So, she'd do stuff like get Blake to waltz with her at the school dance, but no one found it unusual for her to do so because that's just how Yang was," he gave as an example. "I really didn't think anything was up when that happened, Blake even spent the rest of that evening with my bro Neptune and me," he offered.

He ran his hand on his hair, from the top of his head to the back as he thought things through. "...But then again, maybe I was too stoked she hung out with us instead of her team to pay attention to… hum…" he sighed. "That, or maybe because it just didn't cross my mind back then that Blake or Yang might be..." he trailed off uncomfortably. It was evident he didn't know what label to settle on. He met Ilia's gaze, as if looking for help, but she simply shrugged. Sun sighed. "What I mean is… Because I didn't think of the possibility, then I didn't notice… hints? If there were any? You know?"

She narrowed her eyes in concentration, as if she needed to piece together what he was saying. "You're saying that it might have gone over your head because they're both girls? That had Yang been a guy, you'd have seen it if there was anything to notice?"

He seemed a bit embarrassed by this. "Yeah."

'But there was nothing to notice yet, back then…' Blake idly thought to herself.

Her eyes fell to the ground as everything came back to her. That wasn't true. They might not have had started their affair, and Yang had yet to realize she was attracted to her, but… from what Blake understood, the blonde had very much been attracted to her already by then. And at that point in time, Blake was already senselessly in love with her. Dancing with Yang had been the entire reason she'd attended the dance. Those few minutes had made her giddy to the point she had opted to avoid spending any further part of the evening with the golden girl because she'd been certain that her exhilaration would betray her attraction. She'd been certain that if she stayed even a single minute too long with her, being on cloud nine as she was, Yang would see through her. It'd filled her with such unprecedented gleeful energy… it'd taken the entire night for her to work it off dancing to come back down to earth.

This meant that, in retrospect, had someone been looking for it, they might have seen the affinity and intimacy they shared. They might even have hazarded a guess at budding romance, which wouldn't have been completely wrong because it was only a little over two months after the dance that they'd slept together for the first time.

Ilia's voice brought Blake back to the conversation. "...So, when all this is over, in spite of everything, you're still gonna try and get Blake to go see her?"

The question implied was one Blake understood fully well: Why would you want to encourage their reunion if it might be synonymous with forfeiting your own chances at the romance you were hoping for?

Sun held her gaze for a moment, apparently deliberating how to answer this. Then his shoulders slumped slightly, looking somewhat defeated. "All I know for sure is that Blake deserves to be happy. And that it'll never happen until everything is fixed with Yang. Or at the very least, until she hears from Yang herself that she doesn't hold it against her that she got hurt," he explained resolutely. "Blake needs that to start healing. So, if we want to support her, it's not even an option to leave things how they are now."

There was a long silence, one in which Ilia appeared to be processing what'd been said. On her part, Blake realized her vision had gotten blurry. Sun had initially been invasive, and he'd very much misunderstood her journey, which, with her having not healed enough then to be patient with him, had aggravated her enough that they'd constantly end up squabbling. With all this in mind, she would never have expected him to have had any awareness of feelings she'd done everything she could to hide. She wouldn't have expected either that he would grasp this well how pivotal to her wellbeing Yang's forgiveness was, but she terribly thankful that he did.

"I want to support her," Ilia finally said, her voice so very quiet. "I haven't been there for her the way I would've wished," she admitted. "Being on her side with turning the White Fang around is one thing, but that's not just for her. That's for all of us. And I… really want to do something for her personally."

"You'll have your chance," Sun said with a grin.

She pursed her lips somewhat shyly. "Maybe helping her with this will be it," Ilia reiterated. "And I wouldn't mind meeting her team."

His grin widened inordinately. "Even Weiss?"

The brunette narrowed her eyes at him. "…I guess," she grumbled, earning herself a laugh from the blonde boy. With this, he jumped to his feet. Before the conversation ended and he went about whatever he was about to do, Ilia stopped him with a small motion of her hand. To his inquisitive air, she timidly asked: "Earlier, you said if you use a specific word to qualify… how… you know. But… you haven't said what word."

Blake felt her heart lurch against her ribcage. She too had wanted to know. What did Sun see in the way she'd looked at Yang that night? Enough to recognize the nature of her feelings, obviously, but… had it been enough for him to also grasp that something had been alive between the two of them? Because Yang had been passed out, so it wasn't like he'd witnessed a look they would've had exchanged. This was solely on Blake. Maybe he thought that had been unrequited love on her part? The exact word he would've wanted to use would tell a lot about how far he may have ventured his speculation. Would he go as far as to think… they'd been an item…? So then, what would he call them? Girlfriends? Lovers, maybe…?

He gave a soft sigh. "You know," he started, "since the beginning there was a vague impression of… something I couldn't put my finger on. At first, I tried to brush it off because it looked like they were best friends, but… it kinda always stayed at the back of my mind," he reminisced, surprising Blake slightly. She'd barely started coming to terms with her attraction to Yang when she'd first met Sun, yet he was saying he'd noticed something from the beginning?

The blonde boy frowned lightly, running his hand again from the top of his head to scratch behind it. "I tried not to let it bother me, but I couldn't figure it out," he said. "It took that night for it to really dawn on me what it was. And also, what it might mean," he explained with and odd serenity, his voice tainted with what Blake could only call resignation. Sun took a moment to observe the girl across him. "It'd been almost scary how it seemed like... they were meant to be by each other's side," he added, "so the only way I could describe the way they just… fittogether would be... 'soulmates'," he finally admitted. "If something like that exists, then they'd qualify— that's how perfect they looked."

Soulmates. The word crushed her so that Blake had to crouch. Her legs were terribly weak, and she realized the cloudiness in her vision had cleared up as tears now rolled down her cheeks.

That word had floated through her mind multiple times back when she'd been with Yang. She'd hurriedly ousted it, reasoning that she was being too sappy and melodramatic or that… Yang's feelings clearly weren't strong enough to justify the use of that word, because if they had been, then Yang wouldn't have been so reluctant about committing, right? Yang wouldn't have been so scared of telling her how she felt... right?

Though…Blake running the way she had truly had proven Yang right to be hesitant.

She found herself pressing her hand to her heart; Blake exhaled a shaky exhalation. Sun was right. It wasn't even an option for her not to see Yang again, she had to find her. She had to make this right, even if atoning took her entire lifetime.

---

Time had slowed to a crawl, everything was on mute. Sweeping the room with her eyes had her in disbelieving confusion. The helicopters and the police's sirens, the shouting outside and the clashing of blades, everything was silent. Blake couldn't believe she was witnessing the sight of her whole team together. Her team. Her eyes stopped on the blonde. Her whole team.

"Yang…?"

She was here.

She was here.

How? Why?

… What were the odds?

Crushed with emotion, unable to move, the dark haired faunus stood in the immense gash of the wreckage of the wall, unable to detach her gaze from what was nothing short of a miraculous sight to her. It was utterly debilitating how many emotions surged from her chest to overrun her body -the yearning, the love, the pain, the shame, the hope and the ache- and nevertheless, seeing her was so… invigorating. And how to even begin processing running into her by coincidence this way?

In return, it had been a range of unexpected emotions that had unravelled on the blonde's features. In a heartbeat, disbelieving shock turned into an unexpectedly marveling gaze, her mouth hanging open.

The black and yellow prosthetic limb of course didn't go unnoticed, but Blake was wholly engrossed with the violet of her eyes. Yang stared back at her with her eyes violet, not red. There was a definite sense of eagerness, of yearning… of hope, maybe? Whatever it was, it was nothing like the anger Blake had been certain to expect when she would find her again.

Ruby's voice tore through the silence, snapping them both out of it. "Yang, go!" She urged, pointing to a chasm at the back of the room.

The moment the brawler broke eye contact with Blake and turned around to start on a sprint was the moment the rest of the world accelerated to catch up to the present. The faunus became aware of where she was and what was happening again, and though her eyes didn't detach themselves from the woman who had occupied her thoughts for the last year until said woman was out of sight, Blake was able to return to the pressing events at hand.

She turned to her former team leader, exchanging in a short look the understanding that whatever events had brought the team to Haven needed to take precedence over the reunion. Blake couldn't help being impressed with how much more mature Ruby appeared. They nodded at each other in acknowledgement that they had to postpone explanations and rejoicing until their respective fights were wrapped up— which abruptly reminded Blake that Adam still needed to be taken care of. She promptly returned to the chaos happening outside.

Everything happened in a blur. Fighting alongside Sun to push that horned monster back, rounding up the remnant members of the terrorist faction of the White Fang in order to hand them to the police. Diving through what she had to assume was part of Weiss's renowned hereditary semblance – the wasp did carry her friend's aura– to come to the aid of her friends with the confrontation happening inside. Standing shoulder to shoulder with her team leader and performing against woefully familiar faces a team attack she had rehearsed so much she remembered it in her bones. The way Yang seemed to miraculously reappear with that glowing artifact. The way Yang glanced down at her with that incredible fondness in her eyes. The scream and that nightmarish vision of a monstrous being which allowed their foes to escape. Being in her parent's arms, Sun and Ilia joining them… talks of the future of the White Fang.

It was a whirlwind up until Sun noticed everyone at the back of the room. He waved at them buoyantly and, as he started heading towards them, he stopped himself and twirled Blake around with his tail. And that was the moment when everything come to a screeching halt. The blonde boy stared at her in expectant excitement and yet she could only gawk anxiously at her ex-partner, who slowly walked down the stairs of the grand hall with that strange lamp to hand it over to her uncle.

Her team.

Blake took a deep breath and made herself head towards them. As she got in speaking range, Ruby fell to her knees in exhaustion and Weiss knelt to her side in support. The faunus was about to kneel too but abruptly stopped herself in her tracks as the tall blonde unabashedly strode over and her plopped down next to her sister. Blake could do nothing but stand a foot away from them, her body wouldn't move her any closer; as she stared down at the three of them, her heart beat so hard in her head that she felt deaf and her blood coursed so fast in her veins it made her dizzy.

Yang stared up at her with a so very reluctant look of vulnerability, a look very unlike the incredulity and amazement or subsequent fondness and complicity she'd displayed earlier. This hesitancy was closer to what Blake had expected and she couldn't help but wonder if the anger would surface any moment now. Out of the corner of her eye, the faunus saw Weiss's attention wander to the back of the room, to the people Blake had been with. Ruby was staring at her as if she was trying to read her thoughts.

Suitably for her position as leader, she was the one who broke the silence. "So. Blake," Ruby gave a short laugh, "what are you doing here?"

How the chain of events that led her to Haven came to her all at once only to be completely blank the following moment was vexing. Not that she would've known where to start either way. "I was uh..." she trailed off, feeling in her discomfiture at being put on the spot an awkward need to take less space. She shyly grabbed her wrist, holding her arm in front of herself. "I was gonna ask you three the same thing," she said with a shrug of her shoulder, attempting a small smile.

Yang's uncertain frown stayed on her. Her lips were tight, and she looked excessively reluctant. What she gave off wasn't unlike a wounded animal ready to flee. Blake's chest tightened uncomfortably. Weiss and Ruby looked at each other before they both looked at her. Ruby attempted a small smile, as her sister finally detached her gaze from their newly reunited teammate.

"That's a loooonnnng story" Ruby started as she and Weiss smiled, seemingly in synch.

Yang's gaze dropped down.

Blake's heart felt compressed painfully tight. What would she have given to be able to take back all the hurt and pain she knew she'd caused. "Well… I'm not going anywhere," she tried, realizing as she spoke how closed off her body language was; she let both arms down her sides.

"That's all that matters," Ruby gave with a smile, glancing again at her white-haired partner; Yang was still obstinately staring down. "That we're all here together," she added, and Blake didn't fail to notice how the brawler's eyebrows twitched like she'd been stung. Ruby quickly turned to her sister. "Right?" she tried, seeking her support.

Yang finally phased back in to the conversation at hand and the violet orbs drifted from the ground to her smiling sibling. Weiss expectantly stared at her too, but Yang nevertheless remained unbelievably apprehensive. The faunus's heart sank in her chest.

Then, the golden girl finally looked back up at her, her clear gaze distressingly frank in its open scrutiny; it was obvious to everyone she was weighing the options and trying to decide how to go from there. Blake couldn't hold her stare. Her ears flattened down, and she felt her shoulders slump meekly.

The moment seemed to stretch forever, it was an unreasonably long time before Yang finally answered.

"Yeah," she agreed against all odds, her voice as gentle as it had been murmuring to each other a year ago.

Blake's gaze shot back up to her in hopeful surprise. Had she heard right? Could it really be? Was Yang not going to reject her? Her entire body perked in excitement to straighten up tall. She couldn't contain the wide smile that etched itself on her features as relief, love and exhilaration bubbled up from deep inside her.

Weiss extended her arm in an invitation to come down join them and Blake was on the verge of tears as she readily fell to her knees and into both her teammates' arms. Being hit with their so familiar and nostalgic scents as she burrowed herself in the group hug brought tears to her eyes. The mane of blonde curls amazingly soft against her cheek and the brawler's strong arm around her as well as the heiress's considerably frailer one, the familiarity of all those sensations, made it feel like time had been wound back up to a surreal dream of happy days. They stayed in the tightly huddled cocoon of a group hug for a long time. It was all at the same time that they finally seemed to be ready to release from it.

Everyone sat more upright and Blake's attention was on her blonde ex-partner. She was elated to be with her. To feel her. To touch her. To look at her. She'd been terrified that what happened may have broken something irreparable, extinguished the passion in her soul, that Yang may not have been able to stand again. But she should've known her fears were unfounded. The woman she loved was far stronger than she herself could ever hope to be. Of course, Yang wouldn't wither away, of course she wouldn't lie down in defeat, of course she'd refuse to let her flame go out. That flame was the brightest thing Blake had ever witnessed and the warmest thing she'd ever experienced, it wasn't about to burn out.

The faunus had barely registered her other teammates starting to move, it surprised her to overhear Weiss's voice come on such a flat tone.

"You're here too," she pointed out.

"Wouldn't miss the action," Sun answered with a grin.

"Is that so," the short lady idly retorted. Her eyes drifted from him to the back of the room again, towards that giant gash and the people standing a little further.

"Neptune's not here," he laughed.

"I don't care," she shot embarrassedly. "Your friend is a shallow clown."

With a sheepish grin, the monkey faunus was about to offer a comeback but was cheerfully interrupted by Kali's voice.

"The infamous team RWBY!" she merrily exclaimed, to which Blake's three teammates quickly whirled around towards her. "Thank you for taking care of Blake," her mother started before fussily gushing over the three girls.

Blake watched. It was a sight she'd never in her wildest dreams conceived the possibility of. Her family, whom not even a few months ago were out of her life, was now meeting her beloved team… whom she also feared she might've lost forever. Through all of it however… despite remaining aware and somewhat attentive to the shenanigans going down, her eyes kept straying back to her.

Her.

The conversation she overheard between Sun and Ilia only a few hours ago came to mind. Mostly about how the golden girl was strong, so she had to be okay. And she was. Or at least, she had recovered enough to be on the front lines again, in less than a year, no less. Blake stared at her with so many emotions filling her; pride, admiration, amazement… and once more, that profound love and need to hold her.

A large hand rested heavily on her shoulder and she sensed the towering presence of her father to her side. "I heard from your mother what the boy would say about your team," he gently said. "Is it true? About her arm?"

Her ears twitched and flattened a little. "It's true," Blake softly acquiesced.

Ghira had a low, understanding hum. "Is that why you're standing to the side, staring at her like that?"

'In part,' was what Blake wanted to answer, but how to start explaining the debacle that was her fault and how it had only been made worse by her immeasurably profound feelings for her golden ex-partner?

In her awkward lack of answer, her father's voice came again. "Or is it maybe because she's… the one?"

It took a second for her to properly assimilate that her father had indeed asked her this so unexpectedly casually. Blake had no will to try and cover up the truth. "…It's both," she admitted quietly, daring to venture peeking up at him.

He gazed back down at her contemplatively for a second before letting his attention drift back to the subject of their exchange. His hand squeezed Blake's shoulder comfortingly. "What's her name?"

She looked on to the tall blonde. "Yang," Blake murmured, almost as if to herself. "Yang Xiao Long."

With this, before she understood what was happening, Ghira briskly strode past her. "Miss Xiao Long," he called enthusiastically as he intently marched her way. "It's a pleasure to meet you," he declared, taking a hold of her arm and forcing her into a vigorous handshake.

Staggered, she let herself be rattled as she stared up at his impossibly imposing build. Blake wondered which part of it was most mind-boggling to Yang; the fact that her parents were there at all, the concept of meeting Blake's parents given their ambiguous relationship… or maybe just his sheer size.

Her eyes jolted from him to Blake for a fraction of a second. "Mr. …. …Belladonna?" She tried uneasily.

"We've heard all about how well you've taken care of Blake," he said, to which Yang sucked in her lips for a second. His interest had fortunately shifted to her prosthetic arm, having him miss the blonde's odd reaction. Blake felt her face flare with a blush at the thought that her ex-partner truly had… taken care of her in more ways than her father would know. Ghira grabbed hold of her shoulder in an enthusiastically praising sort of slap while keeping her hand hostage in his other. "And of course, how brave you've been. You have our everlasting gratitude," he added.

Blake was so absorbed with the scene, it took her mother addressing her for her to realize she'd joined her.

"He likes her," Kali whispered.

"I see that," she allowed, decidedly somewhat impressed. Her father had somehow gone on to something about how solid the blonde was, apparently impressed with how unflinchingly she'd taken the impact as he'd grabbed her shoulder, and how respectable that was and… Blake lost track because of what her mother said next.

"I mean, he approves of her."

Time and her entire being screeched to halt and she had a blank moment of pause. Between both her parents catching on so immediately and the conversation with Ilia she had overheard a few hours prior, she couldn't help but inquire: "...Did you two know from what Sun told you…?"

Her mother had an amused smile. "Oh no, nothing like that," she merrily dismissed, turning just enough to look at her out of the corner of her eye. "Blake, baby, the way you've been staring at her could not be clearer."

This might have had Blake wonder if she truly was this obvious, but upon re-examination she quickly put a halt to her second-guessing. After all, Weiss, Sun… and Adam had also seen through her. Her stare stayed on her mother, realizing there had never been an opportunity to discuss unconventional prospects. How her parents had originally been tolerant of Adam when she initially had grown closer to him or how her mother had been excited about Sun couldn't have helped her gauge their reaction to Yang as they both were faunus males. And though the outcome looked very favorable, she still was a tad nervous confirming. "...And… that's fine?" she softly tried.

With a light, confused frown, Kali cocked her head to the side. "Because she's human? Or because she's a she?" She then looked terribly wounded. "Did your father or I ever say anything that would've led you to believe we wouldn't be fine with either?"

"No! Never!" Blake hurriedly defended. "It's not about anything either of you said, but I was still… a little anxious, I guess," she explained, pausing to give her mother a shy smile. "I'm relieved there's no problem."

The corner of her lips curled up in a cat-like smile. "From what I've heard of her, she's the furthest thing from a problem," she shot back, getting Blake's ears to perk up animatedly. Kali's smile warmed considerably at her daughter's clear excitement and she rested her hand on the small of her back, giving a gentle push. "Now don't let your father monopolize her, she's petrified. Go take over."

Ghira's imposing presence and exuberance as he interacted with the blonde appeared to have attracted her remaining two teammates.

"You're really tall," Blake heard Ruby comment in awe as she approached them, drawing his attention.

Though he did size them both up, his gaze quite unsurprisingly stayed on the small lady in pale hues of blue.

"Miss Schnee," he recognized, to which Weiss gave an overly deep bow.

This conversation, which might've been very interesting to hear, was completely lost on Blake as she approached her ex-partner. "Yang," she gently tried, stepping closer. "Sorry for my dad," she offered, attempting to start a casual chat, wondering how that would be received.

"It's fine," the blonde assuredly answered, not turning her way. Her violet eyes were on the monument of a man who had just rattled her. "Your parents seem like great people."

"They are," Blake immediately agreed, following her ex-partner's gaze to the so familiar figures adorning her lineage's colors. "I'm very blessed," she added more quietly. Her eyes fell on the ground as she weighed whether she should share the fresh exchange she'd had with her mother. It'd made her so ridiculously gleeful and, though it might have been completely inappropriate, she couldn't completely hold it in. "...They liked you," she added in a murmur.

There was silence instead of an answer this time. Blake made herself glance up at the woman who'd relentlessly occupied her thoughts day and night. Yang was gazing back down at her. Straight at her. With that same unbelievably gentle look in her eyes she'd graced her with earlier that evening, yet she wasn't smiling this time, additionally, her body language was cautiously distant. The portrait reminded Blake of the way the sunlight stubbornly spears through the cracks of a boarded window. Try as she might, there was no trapping the light and goodness Yang held inside of her, not even behind that uncharacteristic sullenness she presented.

"Yang," she gasped, emotion rising to crush her chest. A million words came to her in a jumbled disarray; apologies, regrets, pleas of forgiveness, vows of devotion, professions of adoration, everything she'd ever felt and things she might not even be able to put into words. She didn't know where or how to start, and she was mesmerized by those magnificent violet gems. "Yang, I—"

"It's okay," she cut in. "I'm okay," she affirmed.

As she said this, Yang unexpectedly seemed so awfully far away that Blake was overrun with the appallingly unambiguous certainty that something was amiss.

The blonde offered her a smile, but her eyes didn't smile along. Instead, they were imbued with a poignant mix of tenderness and sadness. "I'm better now," Yang insisted, "and you're here with us. Like Ruby said, it's all that matters."

Her throat was tied so tight she couldn't have uttered a word had she been able to formulate an answer to this hideous lie.

Yang had always been an open book to Blake, they both knew this, and it was undisputable the brawler would know how obvious the mask she'd opted to put on would be. Yet she had nevertheless chosen to don it and Blake stared at her in dismayed shock. The message couldn't be clearer; in a very clear effort to keep her at bay, Yang was erecting a wall between them.

Blake wanted to scream and yet she couldn't force the faintest sound past her lips before her ex-partner walked past her. The blonde hurriedly joined her uncle, busying herself with that strange blue lamp again while the tall man gathered a passed out freckled boy.

'No!' She thought in horror, wanting nothing more than to run after her. 'No, no, no! It's not okay! I need you to scream at me, to tell me how I hurt you, to be angry at me! I need to apologize, beg for forgiveness, make amends!' She almost despaired for the other woman to take some form of revenge, to hurt her back because she knew she'd hurt her so, so badly.

"Blake?" Ilia's voice interrupted her crashing spiral of an inner monologue. "You're needed outside." Her short friend then paused, evidently taking notice of her mood. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

Her entire body had tensed with the unambiguous rejection she'd had to swallow, and she knew the pain and disquiet were plain and obvious on her features. No matter how she might have attempted to put up a front, this hurt too much for her to have been able to convincingly put up a front for her friend. She found the other faunus's gaze. "Nothing's wrong that I didn't already expect," she shakily gave, doing her best to pull herself together and into business mode. "What's happening outside?"

Ilia stared up at her in silence for a second. "…Is it… because of your partner?" she gently asked.

Cat ears flattened down, she was unable to prevent her gaze from drifting to her ex-lover. "It's not because of her, it's because of me. I betrayed her, I can't expect her to welcome me," she confessed. "I've got a lot of work to do to earn back her consideration."

The dark blue eyes didn't follow the other's line of sight towards the golden girl, they stayed attentively on Blake's features, and there was a lingering moment of silence before Blake was finally able to return her attention to her interlocutor. Ilia still steadily observed her. "I was mistaken about Adam, wasn't I?"

What she meant didn't click. "Don't berate yourself over it, he's very charismatic and his assurance in his convictions are compelling," Blake allowed. "I too was caught up in his delusions for a while. He has a way of making them pass for righteous dreams," she softly added.

"That too, but I… I wasn't talking about that," Ilia quietly rectified. "I meant about… what I said. About the way you looked at him."

Being reminded of those words filled Blake with a self-conscious mix of surprise and discomfiture, both at the memory of being called out on the way she'd overly obviously favored him back then and for Ilia's confession which she could never have anticipated… but also for being reminded yet again how plain and noticeable her feelings for the blonde were.

"What I actually saw back then was you being caught up in admiration with his 'delusions passed as righteous dreams', as you just said, right?" Her long-time friend nevertheless confirmed. "I was mistaken when I thought that it was… love."

This wasn't a question. Had Blake wanted to deny it -which she really didn't-, she wouldn't have been able to convince the other faunus otherwise. Knowing full well what the answer would be, she nevertheless heard herself ask: "What brought this on?"

"It's just so glaringly obvious to anyone who knows you," she stated, corroborating what Blake had already gathered from her parents', from Adam's, from Weiss's assessment. Ilia pensively contemplated her for a short moment. "How you were with him… it just doesn't compare to how you are with her."

There it was. Blake's eyes fell to the ground. "I know," she acknowledged.

"...I never in my wildest dreams imagined that you could be anything else than straight."

Her ears twitched, and her gaze found her friend's features again. "If it's any consolation, I had no idea before I met her either," she gently offered. "...If I'd understood myself back then, maybe…"

"Don't, things wouldn't have been any different," Ilia sighed. "Not if she's any indication of what your type is," she pointed out, glancing at the blonde brawler.

For a second, Blake watched her from afar once more. Her tall stature and the way her athletic build still remained criminally voluptuous. Her exquisite features, her pouty lips and her brilliantly clear violet her eyes, and her cascading mane of golden curls and her — Blake had to slap herself out of her gawking stupor. "...No matter what one's type usually is, I don't know how anyone wouldn't be into her," she absentmindedly said.

There was a small silence. Ilia had followed her stare this time, and they both observed the subject of their exchange. "...You're not wrong," she eventually admitted.

This had them turn to each other again and the expression Blake must've been making had to have betrayed the possessiveness she'd felt surfacing because the shorter girl instantly gave an apologetic look.

"Don't worry, I didn't have any... weird ideas," she reassured. "It's just… I have eyes. I'm not going to tell you she isn't as attractive as you know she is."

Blake gave a discerning hum, maybe reddening slightly from her unexpectedly territorial impulse. Though she knew how much the blonde would get ogled, Blake had never been openly confronted with anyone expressing to her face potential attraction to Yang and she surprised herself with what fierce possessiveness she had inside her. She couldn't help wondering if it was because she felt that... and this was so ironic because she was the one who deserted her, but she felt right then that… Yang was slipping between her fingers. Blake couldn't help wondering if maybe, had something like this happened a year ago, when she was relatively secure in her rapport with Yang, if maybe she would've been unfazed by such a benign compliment on the blonde's looks.

She decided she would rather not dwell on it, moreover, there was plenty happening around them that she had more distractions than she knew what to do with to take her mind off all of it. "Let's wrap up the night," she urged.

With this, she joined the new White Fang out on the school grounds to regroup and organize the faunus they'd brought over from Menagerie. Priority went to the wounded and the prisoners they'd taken from Adam's White Fang. Blake wanted to lose herself into the work, stop thinking about that forged smile Yang had chosen to give her, but her parents quickly ousted her back to her team as said teammates along with their friends headed out to assess the events of the night and strategize.

Walking to the common room of the dorm the group she now joined had apparently been using allowed her some casual catching up with the three additional friends who'd also made the trip from Beacon. Though the question pressed her curiosity, Blake decided it might be best not to inquire about JNPR's missing teammate—she figured there must have been a reason Pyrrha wasn't with them and, the same as Blake being missing must've been a delicate matter for her own team, the redhead's absence might be a sensitive topic.

This led her to wonder if any of her three friends had inquired about Blake to her team — after all, it would only normal to. She likely would've asked about Pyrrha had she not been sensitized by her own circumstances. Her eyes wandered to Yang, a few steps ahead of her. How would she have reacted to being interrogated regarding Blake's absence…? Anger? Sadness? Sullenness? Or maybe apathy?

Soon they were seating themselves in the common room for the quick emergency briefing the tall gloomy man with a red cape had promised. Yang didn't sit next to her; she instead forcibly wedged herself between Ruby and Weiss. Her teammates' concerned gazes as well as their friends' more puzzled ones failed at being subtle, awkwardly going from one to the other. It was so painfully obvious how Yang went out of her way not to look at her, not to linger too close to her, that it made everyone visibly uncomfortable. The moment was thankfully urged along as the disparate party that had gathered went ahead and briefed Blake on the near-unbelievable behind-the-curtains of what had been happening.

They filled her in on everything— the maidens, the gods, the relics, Salem, Cinder… Yang's mother. Which then made self-explanatory the necessity of delivering the relic they had to the Atlas vault. Being subsequently filled in on the general chaos of current world events had Blake realize how out of touch she'd been with heading down to Menagerie while the communication between the kingdoms had remained severed. She didn't know Atlas had barricaded itself. She didn't know that since she'd left Vale, they still hadn't recovered Beacon's territory. She didn't know how scattered the people she had gotten to know at Beacon had become. And then it came up; the silver eyes. They were talking about the necessity for Ruby to control them when the implications of Blake not knowing about this either seemed to hit all her friends at once. Blake didn't know the frozen dragon on the tower had been Ruby's work and she didn't know what had triggered her team leader's powers either. The silence that transpired was so crushing that it filled Blake with a decisively foreboding feeling.

Learning about Pyrrha's fate was devastating. The way the room fell into a grieving stillness even nearly a year after the tragedy had happened showed how much of a mark she'd made. They allowed some time for Blake to recover before steering the conversation towards her own circumstances; mainly the army of faunus she'd brought to Haven. Going into the major developments concerning the White Fang, Sienna's assassination, the radical faction led by Adam and their intent on Haven, how it had brought her where she was, grounded her back into the urgent matters at hand and it was very welcome.

Once everyone's circumstances had been established, as if the night wasn't eventful enough as it was, as if there wasn't already enough to swallow down, they came to the inevitable 'what then'. Because there undeniably was a series of impending crises they would need to tend to.

Haven Academy's headmaster was nowhere to be seen and, with him being revealed to be an informant for the enemy, it would be wise to think of scrutinizing the staff…which had already been thinned out by whoever had been picking off Mistral huntsmen. Hundreds were missing, maybe even thousands. The city was in a bad shape, the people restless and defenseless, and with all this, it couldn't be discounted that… Haven might still fall should the Grimm be driven to push in when the citizens came to realize their precarious situation.

No, they couldn't in good conscience just leave. And yet putting off going to Atlas for too long wasn't an option— though they would still have to figure out how they would go about this safely, given that communication from kingdom to kingdom was still down and General Ironwood had completely shut down air traffic to close Atlas's borders.

On her part, Blake was also very anxious to make sure the people she was responsible for, the faunus who decided to stand and fight alongside her, were taken care of. She knew that for this one night, some might go about exploring Haven and all of them could go back to the makeshift quarters on the ship that'd brought them there; she knew her parents would be able to see to that. However, it was a short-term solution and certainly wouldn't be appropriate for more than a few days. But everyone was exhausted and laying out a solid action plan would require at least a good night's sleep, so they agreed to reconvene the following day.

Ruby quickly turned to her. "Were you going back to your ship with your parents? Or… did you maybe… want to stay in the dorms with us? Until we're ready to leave for Atlas?" she asked, voice and gaze full of hope.

"I'd love to stay with all of you." The prospect of sharing a room with her team again had her near-euphoric.

Her smile widened, and she whirled around to her sister. "Yang, do you want to show her—"

"I can't," the blonde cut in. "I told uncle Qrow I'd help look for Lionheart. You or Weiss should do it," she offhandedly shrugged. She quickly glanced at her sibling and then finally at Blake. It felt like she made herself look at her.

And there it was again. That smile. That un-Yang-like smile that was so hollow. The one with which her eyes told such a different story. It made it feel like she had barricaded her warmth inside of her.

With this, without leaving time for anyone to add anything, Yang strode off.

Blake's gaze stayed on her as she exited the room. All this was not what she expected and yet, though it might not have been as hostile a rejection as what she had anticipated, it wasn't any less painful.

"Come on." Weiss's voice brought her back to earth. "I'll show you around the dorm," she volunteered with a small sigh.

Blake acquiesced and followed her in silence, idly reflecting on the massive amount of information she was just fed and the pressing affairs to take care of in the following days. Or, not quite. Every interaction she had with her ex-partner that evening kept coming back to mind and shoving what she rationally should be analyzing to the backseat. She felt slightly guilty she wasn't taking this time alone with her snow-haired friend to catch up with her, but given the circumstances, neither of them seemed to know what to say. They found themselves walking through the main hall in silence for a while, Blake walking a step behind her shorter friend. It was a long moment before Weiss eventually spoke up.

"Sorry to be the bearer of bad news," she started, "but… the rooms are by pairs in this dorm. We're not sharing the same way we were at Beacon," she explained, glancing back at Blake. "Ruby, Jaune, Ren and Nora got here a few weeks before Yang and me, so Ruby's sharing her room with Nora, while the guys are together. The boy, Oscar, is with Ruby's uncle… and I've been sharing with Yang for the last month. You can have the next room over," she said. "I'd offer you my spot to let you be with her, but…" the snow-haired lady glanced her way, her frank gaze carefully searched Blake's. "Honestly, I don't feel she would appreciate that," she acknowledged.

It was no surprise that her friend had also picked up on how Yang behaved towards her. "Of course. I understand," she gently offered, deciding to use this opportunity to probe the topic. "…How is she?"

They seemed to at once stopped walking, an unspoken understanding coursing between them. Weiss manifestly recognized that the faunus wanted to address that uncomfortably forced distance the blonde had clearly set her mind to maintain.

"She's…getting by," Weiss carefully started before giving a dejected sigh. "Our friends don't see it, but…" she trailed off, her gaze drifting down as she manifestly made sure to think through what she was about to say. Her cool blue orbs found Blake's again. "I know she wouldn't be happy with me telling anyone this, but I'm telling you this because it's you," she added in what could only be a disclaimer. "She's… really not doing as well as she'd like everyone to think. Or really, as well as she's convinced herself she's doing—because she's somehow fooled herself into imagining that all this…is fine."

Blake hummed gently. "…But she didn't fool you," she indicated.

Weiss shook her head no. "No, she did," she disagreed. "I knew she wasn't fine, but she did fool me in the sense that… I hadn't realized just how much she was covering up until I started sharing rooms with her."

A short silence followed, as Blake was uncertain how to respond. She couldn't quite figure out why specifically sharing rooms made anything different.

Her hesitation evidently had Weiss realize she would need to state plain and clear what she meant because she continued. "She regularly has nightmares," she tersely clarified, to which Blake's blood at once drained from her face. The cool blue eyes found hers again. "And I don't mean simply the jumping-waking sort. I mean the... crying and screaming sort," she added.

Her heart plummeted in her stomach. Though it was more than obvious what may be causing them, the faunus still found herself inquiring. "Do you know what about…?"

It was with a dejected shake of her head that Weiss shrugged. "She refuses to talk about them," she explained. Her piercing blue orbs slid back up to lock together Blake's with an unsettling sharpness. "Though I'm sure you can venture an accurate guess at what they're about," she mused more quietly, "after all, she didn't have them before that night."

Unable to sustain the unforgivingness of the icy color, Blake's gaze dropped to the floor.

Weiss's voice was distinctly caustic this time. "Would you be surprised to know she keeps calling out for you in those nightmares?"

At this point, the blood had chilled in her veins such that she might've been quivering a bit. She balled her hands into fists to help steel herself, but her cats ears were nevertheless rigidly down. All this was no surprise at all—not if Yang was reliving that night over and over. Not if… in reliving that horrendous night, Yang kept searching for her in those nightmares the way she had then. And… Blake didn't want to allow herself to form the thought, but it still broke through anyways: not if Yang still yearned for her the way Blake direly hoped she did.

What however did take her aback was the overall impression of hostility her friend was projecting. "…Are you… angry with me?"

At this, the snow haired lady seemed to come aware of her demeanor and it promptly softened. "…Not...angry," Weiss sensibly rectified, evidently searching for a more accurate word. "It just… it's…" She gave a heavy sigh and turned to her, crossing her arms. She took a moment, staring up at her a contemplatively. "Remember when you first told me about you two? How emotional you were about your situation with her?"

The sudden throwback took her by surprise and the way her face burned let her guess how much she'd reddened. Blake nevertheless gave a small nod.

"Then, I was angry. With her," Weiss conceded. "I didn't understand how she could be so timid and indecisive, so reluctant to just... go for it when you two were so crazy about each other, when her apprehension was hurting you so much. I wanted to slap some sense into her and make her fix the situation, like, yesterday," she explained, gesticulating heated as she manifestly let memories get the better of her emotions. As what she was about to say next came to her, her eyes fell on the floor and her arms very slowly dropped to her sides. "I didn't understand back then that she had… underlying issues. That there was a reason she was this scared of allowing herself to embrace what you made her feel and how much you meant to her. Or how much she needed you," she softly acknowledged, "and that it's probably the same reason she still doesn't want to rely on anyone either."

The clear blue of her so frank gaze had found Blake's again, Weiss took another moment to observe her pensively before she exhaled a quiet, so weary sigh. "That's why this time, instead of getting angry with you the way I'd been with her, I considered that you must have had reasons," she said, searching the faunus's features as if those answers would be readable plain and clear. "I know you've had a complicated life and that you've been haunted by past demons. And though I don't know anything about them, I assume they have to be bad…" she gave with a firmness that quickly melted into a sympathetic tone. "Because otherwise you wouldn't have done what you did. Because I know you loved her," Weiss added before she paused once more.

She didn't know when her heart had accelerated this much, but now her ears had perked with firmness and Blake felt herself filled with the need to assert, "I still do."

To which Weiss's gaze softened all the more. "So, you did have reasons to leave," she confirmed

Blake couldn't have explained why, but shame washed over her as her friend established this. "I did," she nevertheless confirmed.

There was another silence; her friend clearly was allowing her the space to open up about it if she wanted to, but Weiss didn't actually ask anything, apparently opting not to pry. She didn't let this gap stretch too long, having not been intending to pressure her; Weiss despondently resumed walking. "And see…. That's why I just can't be angry with you the same way I was angry with her. But I've…" she gave an unamused laughed. "It might be funny to hear but… given what pain I know she's in, I feel protective of her."

The faunus followed her friend down the hall and up the stairs. "I never meant to hurt her, you know that, right?"

"It wasn't the intent but it's still the outcome," Weiss painfully pointed out, slowly climbing up the stairs; she didn't glance back at her. "And no matter how many months it's been, the wound is still very wide open to the point that, just a few weeks ago, when she and I first met up again with Ruby, Yang was livid just at the mention of your name."

Blake was first sidetracked that Weiss and Yang would've been traveling together without Ruby, but her mind quickly made the leap to the essence of her friend's revelation. It was to be expected that, upon reuniting, her three teammates would inevitably have talked about their missing link. It wasn't surprising for Yang to have expressed anger then, in the privacy of a moment with just the three of them, and it seemed right that her doing so would've allowed her to subsequently gain better control of her emotions. Enough to, quite clearly, be able to face Blake again without blind anger anyways. The way Yang had faced her however was so far ahead of the anger Blake had expected, she couldn't help wondering what had been said between them for Yang to accept her so deceptively seamlessly.

Weiss's voice brought her back to her account as they reached the second floor. "Honestly, her anger seemed better after I talked to her, I thought she was going to be mostly fine," she retold as they walked down the hall. Blake noticed they passed four rooms before her friend stopped in front of the fifth; she assumed those were the ones occupied by the party of eight she was now joining. "But obviously, those nightmares quickly made it obvious I had only grazed the surface with her," she explained, as she let them into what would be Blake's room. The faunus took in the different set-up of this dorm room as Weiss simply leaned against one of the desks. "I don't know what it is," she thought out loud. "I don't know if it's her pride or some sort of fear that she's a burden, but it's… she just won't allow herself to lean on me."

Her friend's assessment wasn't entirely wrong, Blake idly reflected. What seemed like a lifetime ago, Yang had confided in her the reason it was that, though she would give selflessly to support the people she loved, she remained so insecure about allowing herself to need someone else in return. Blake knew it wasn't quite pride, while feeling like a burden might have been a consequence of it, but it nevertheless wasn't entirely wrong.

"What about Ruby?" She heard herself ask, wondering if, with how much their team leader seemed to have matured, if it might've changed the blonde's perspective with at last depending on her. "Did you ever get Ruby when…?"

Weiss shrugged. "Whenever I'd get woken up, Yang would be adamant we not disturb Ruby," she revealed. "In all honesty, I wouldn't be surprised if Yang kept so much from her that Ruby doesn't suspect her sister is still struggling at all," she then absentmindedly reflected out loud. Her gaze once more found focus on Blake. "In the end, all she ever let me do to comfort her is sit by her until she was asleep again."

Learning this, Blake's heart squeezed in her chest. Her eyes went from one of the tidily made up beds to the other one, picturing her two teammates. She didn't know if it would qualify as jealousy or resentment, but the thought of Weiss getting up in the middle of the night to attempt to comfort her blonde ex-partner made her shamefully miserable. Oh, not because she feared they might develop that kind of relationship, it was simply because… despite being responsible for this debacle in every way, she wanted to be the one, the only one, to share intimate moments like these with Yang. No matter the appalling situation she was responsible for bringing on the two of them, she still felt it was her rightful place and no one else's to be the one whose arms Yang would take refuge in.

"She would do that for me," Blake murmured, attempting to brush the undesirable feeling away.

"I know," came Weiss's unexpected answer.

Her head snapped towards her in surprise.

"What?" She pursed her lips. "Granted, I sleep more heavily than she does, but do you really think you never woke me up when you'd be that restless?" The snow-haired lady asked somewhat skeptically, to which Blake felt more than a little foolish. Weiss sighed gently. "I've seen her sit by you in the middle of the night," she nevertheless confirmed. "…And I hoped that having done it for you, she'd understand how deeply frustrating it is to see someone you care about so obviously struggling and yet still refuse support. I hoped that having been in my shoes, she'd open up, tell me what happened, what's tearing her apart this way, but… no," Weiss added more softly, almost instantly catching herself with a scoff. The gentle look of concern that had been subtly tainted with melancholy developed into something deeper as her eyes fogged up with sorrow. "No, instead I'll wake up to her trying to muffle her crying because she didn't want to wake me up, because she didn't want me to try to console her."

The scene painted itself so vividly in her mind that a vile mix of grief and shame nauseated her. She felt responsible, of course she did, because she was absolutely responsible.

"It's like she believes she has to shoulder everything alone, like she can't rely on Ruby or me or— ..." Weiss halted her thought abruptly.

"Or me?" Blake finished the sentence, voicing what her friend evidently didn't to have the stomach to. "But I really proved her right on that one, didn't I?" she grimly muttered, almost more to herself than to her interlocutor. The awkwardness in the silence that fell between them was such that it couldn't be clearer that Weiss knew enough that she couldn't disagree with her. She knew enough that it made her uneasy—and that was without even knowing the entire picture!

It might have been impulse for penance or maybe she simply needed the weight of her failure off her chest, but Blake found herself continuing. "...Not only that—she was already fragile in that respect and I…I knew. And I made it worse," she confessed in a murmur, feeling her throat tightening painfully. "She'd told me before how she'd been let down and left behind by people she loved more times than anyone deserves, and I… promised her she could rely on me, that she could trust me and I would be there for her," she admitted. Her stomach turned with the emotion that now acutely blurred her senses. "She trusted me," she breathed, "and I… completely failed her."

The expression that unfurled on Weiss's features went from incredulousness into something akin to betrayal as she seemed to finally be piecing together why Yang was this upset and why she came to refuse any help anymore.

"...I couldn't put her in any more danger," Blake found herself justifying her actions pre-emptively. The words she heard herself say felt incredibly hollow for a reason she couldn't quite grasp.

This give her pause. Weiss frowned. "Are you saying her injury was your fault?"

"It is," she confirmed. "And who knows what more harm she would've—... or you all would have risked had I stayed," she defended.

It was another moment and an increasingly puzzled frown before her snow-haired friend spoke again. "What are you saying? What happened?"

In a second, Blake seemed to remember how neither she nor Yang had been in any state to explain what had happened when she'd brought her back, Yang being unconscious, and Blake having been a frantic mess. Only moments after had Ruby and Weiss left to find Pyrrha… while as soon as she could muster some strength to move, Blake had made herself move and go.

The faunus now wondered… had her ex-partner told anyone how it went down? Did she retell the events to Ruby or her father? To her uncle? And if she did… what was her version of the story? Did she tell it with regret? Or anger? What had gone through her head when she'd seen Adam standing over Blake this way? Did she ever speak of that? Or had she buried that nightmare deep within herself? …And kept silent the magnitude of the sacrifice she'd made for Blake?

Disconcerted, she felt her fingers curl around the fabric of her white coat. "Did… Yang not tell you what happened?"

"No," Weiss promptly answered. "And it wasn't exactly easy to ask after a year separated, especially with how tormented she's been," she added, crossing her arms. "All I was able to gather was that…" she paused for a second, clearly discontent to have to verbalize this. "From the way you were apologizing to her then, that you felt responsible for what happened."

"That's because I am," Blake insistently reiterated.

The other woman, arms still crossed and in stern silence, evidently waited for her account.

Exhaling shakily, she braced herself to retell events she had fiercely kept to herself up until then. "Among the people from the White Fang who were helping Salem's agents… my… ex-partner was there," Blake started carefully.

"The one who you explained earlier overthrew the White Fang leader to go rogue?" Weiss established. "He was the one you compared Yang to when she was disqualified from the tournament, wasn't he?"

So ashamed to have ever thought there could be any sort of remote resemblance between the golden girl and that masked demon, Blake's head had dropped. "Yes," she nevertheless strenuously acquiesced. "Him," she muttered with profound disdain. "He was there, and he was… he was slaughtering humans," she divulged, eyes sliding to the blue ones. "Huntsmen trying to push back the Grimm, but also civilians and students," she specified, to which Weiss's shocked consternation progressed to plain horror.

"I know," Blake acknowledged before her friend could say anything, "I told you he's a monster," she pointed out quietly. Blake felt herself frown as it all started to come to her again. "And I couldn't let him just… run amok like that, so I engaged him. And I shouldn't have, I knew I shouldn't, but I couldn't just idly stand by and watch him inflict merciless carnage and destruction, watch him butchering innocents," she explained, now searching her friend's features for some understanding, which unreservedly arose.

Blake gave a pale, mirthless sort of derisive laugh. "You know, he hasn't climbed the ranks of the White Fang solely on his hatred. He's powerful; his semblance is ludicrous and he's ridiculously skilled. I was technically his partner, but I've never been his equal, not even close. That's why I'd previously described him as my mentor," she clarified, explaining to her friend what she'd only vaguely glossed over a year ago. "I tried fighting him, but… when Yang found me... he… h-he had his sword buried in me," she quietly said as she rested her hand on her stomach, where she knew Weiss would remember she'd been wounded during the Fall of Beacon. Her fingers idly stroked the scar that visibly remained. "So, she… Yang lost her arm trying to rescue me. It was for me," she murmured. "I'm alive because she recklessly threw herself at him."

"How can you blame yourself for this?" Weiss shot in mixed empathy and incredulity. "Yang would—"

"I know she would've stepped in for any of us," Blake cut in. "As…I think, any of us would've done for each other."

The question left up in the air was written all over her friend's face; why agonize over this if you know we all reciprocate this devotion?

"If I hadn't engaged him, she wouldn't have had to put herself at risk this way," she started, and Weiss looked like she wanted to argue, but Blake continued. "That's not all there is," she warned, silencing her before she could challenge her further. They stared at each other as Blake gathered both her words and guts. "Above all, the circumstances were…" she picked up again but trailed off, unable to accurately describe how terrifyingly orchestrated by destiny said circumstances had felt. "Adam is…cruel," she carefully gave. "…And spiteful, and hateful and—… and… jealous," she added, maintaining her friend's piercing stare.

"Jealous," Weiss noted.

Blake knew what the insinuated question was, but she didn't want to get into this. She didn't want to start explaining how foolish she'd been or how much he'd abused her. "Yes," she simply gave.

In a lingering silence, the unspoken understanding that Blake wouldn't open that box now passed between them. It wasn't the story she was telling right now, and if she had to be completely honest, Blake wasn't quite ready to tell it.

Her gaze dropped again, absentmindedly glaring at the tip of her feet. "He wanted to torture me and beating me down wasn't enough for him, of course not," she muttered. "No, he's so vicious and bitter that he needed even more and… he…" she exhaled shakily. The sharp and chillingly clear memory of that night, of him leaning over her came to her vividly. The smell of blood and burning in the air, its scorching, suffocating heat, the sharp pain in her stomach and the vision of a demonic, looming figure. As the horror of it all made her body numb and her senses hazy, she felt her heart crushed with anguish. "He stared down at me that night and vowed he would destroy everything I loved," she whispered achingly. "And… like fate had served her on a platter, Yang found me the very moment he uttered these words," Blake explained, struggling to push her wavering voice through her tight throat. She gasped gently, feeling a tear roll down her cheek and, quickly wiping it away, she sniffed.

"Weiss," she called, glancing up to her friend. Weiss was indubitably caught up in her story, with the pain, concern, and emotion plainly visible on her features. "I don't think anyone could've misread how I looked at her then," she revealed. "In a second, he went from not knowing who she was to absolutely abhorring her. Everything about him told how much he wanted to torture and… brutalize her, both for his own begrudging self-satisfaction and to torment me. He knew making her suffer would hurt me more than any abuse he could inflict on me." With this, Blake exhaled shortly, taking a proper hold of herself. She wiped her cheeks and eyes once more, though there hadn't been more tears. Her voice sounded much clearer when she was finally able to speak again. "Once we'd escaped him, I... was terrified he'd put his mind to hunting her down. To killing her. I couldn't be around any of you, I didn't want to put you all in danger," she concluded, wrapping up her account in order to go back to what had originally prompted her to relate it at all. "He… even tried to have my parents killed."

Weiss finally seemed to be able to find her voice. "Does Yang know about any of this?"

Blake shook her head with a defeated shrug. "It doesn't matter anymore," she answered in resignation. "She's agreed to let me be around her, it's more than I could've ever wished," she admitted. "I thought if I was ever able to see her again, I'd never see anything else than her angry red. I won't dare hope for anything more than the truce she's offering me."

"You can't seriously want to settle with that," Weiss disapprovingly interjected.

"I don't want to," Blake corrected, "but it's not like I have any other choice, do I? I have no right to ask for another chance after hurting her the way I did— I mean, I don't know how I'd even get another chance. Yang has obviously set her mind to burying this and whatever had been between us along with it."

"Are you saying you think she moved on?"

This somehow stung so massively that Blake's already deteriorating mood abruptly crashed. "Moved on?" she repeated. The term sounded like an attack because, after all, what had been between them ended up being nothing more than 'almost'. With her distress, she felt negativity permeate her mind like shadows unfurling before a storm and she couldn't help the words that passed her lips. "She would need to have loved me to start with to move on from anything, wouldn't she?"

Weiss jolted upright, stomping her feet as she did so. "Don't you dare," she sharply warned, the tone of her voice so vehemently uncompromising, it cut straight down through Blake's imminent plummeting into old patterns of sardonicism. If Weiss hadn't been angry with her moments earlier, she undeniably was now. "Are you hearing yourself?" she scolded, "Don't you have any idea how much you mean to her?"

Though her friend's reprimand undeniably had smitten enough sense into her that Blake was able to hit the brakes on her downward spiraling, she remained pitifully diffident. "Did she tell you she loved me?"

At this, Weiss wordlessly stared her down. She obviously didn't want to answer, and Blake couldn't tell if it meant yes or no. She squinted her cool blue eyes into that piercing stare only she could give. "It's indisputable that you mattered more than anything to her," Weiss argued, avoiding the question.

The faunus knew there was no point in what she was about to say because those two types of love couldn't be fairly compared, but she still couldn't help pointing out: "You're forgetting about Ruby."

"Oh, I'm not," Weiss sharply objected, "you unquestionably were Yang's number one priority."

Blake frowned. "But—"

"If you weren't," Weiss cut in, "how do you explain that on that night she went to search for you and not Ruby?"

Completely blindsided, she couldn't even seem to comprehend what had been said, to which her friend had the oddest pause, as she evidently came to realize Blake had been missing an important piece of the puzzle.

Weiss carefully leaned closer, examining her. "You didn't realize she'd…?" She blinked rapidly several times in confusion. "Remember, we went for coffee and watched from there Pyrrha's match against… Penny? And how when everything collapsed… none of us could reach Ruby on her scroll?"

Blake nodded silently. Of course, she remembered. There was no part of that night that hadn't been indelibly seared into her mind.

"When you spoke to Yang," Weiss resumed, "she told us she'd be heading to the docks, where I stayed to fight the berserk Paladins with everyone else. You went off after some members of the White Fang," she recapped. "By the time Yang met up with me, we didn't know whether either of you were safe. And yet she told me to look for Ruby before she went after you," Weiss revealed. "I didn't make that choice. She did."

As her friend retold this last part, the part Blake hadn't been there for, the one there was no way she could've known, her shock and incredulity deconstructed itself on her features. She could barely assimilate the concept on account of the sheer magnitude of its implications.

"Blake," Weiss called, holding her gaze intently. "Our world was ending, and Yang still felt the need to make sure you were safe before making sure Ruby was safe," she reiterated. "What do you think this means?"

Shakily finding her voice again, Blake tried to regroup her thoughts. "I… We—I…. I mean, when I dragged her back, you were all together. I thought she entrusted Ruby to you, that she left her with you before she came for me."

With a shake of her head, her friend still steadily observed her. "Ruby was nowhere to be seen" she reconfirmed. "She nevertheless chose you."

Blake's gaze fell to the floor again, this time in shocked realization. It had always been an incontestable, inflexible fact to her that Yang would always choose Ruby; after all, since childhood, Yang's entire life had always revolved around Ruby, and, as Blake had gotten to learn about her ex-partner's past trauma, she had come to understand it was very much a self-defense mechanism…but she had nevertheless made her peace with coming second to the woman she loved.

Learning that Yang had allowed herself to prioritize her over Ruby… It had not only been an indubitable first step in making her life her own, in finally moving past her trauma, but it also spoke to just how much Blake had meant to her.

And Blake had wrecked everything.

"She chose me," she whispered, as if she needed to say it out loud to be able to digest the information. It put in perspective the wall Yang had now erected between them and, along with it, the utter betrayal it must have been that, after making such a leap of faith, after overcoming her hard-wired response of always prioritizing her sibling… Blake, in return, had abandoned her. "She chose me," she repeated, feeling the shame of her actions hastily disintegrate into wretched misery, "and now she sees it as mistake."

"Even if she did, you can't blame her!" Weiss countered, not allowing her to sink back into self-pity. "The one time she chose anyone over her sister, you said it yourself, she was proven wrong to do so! Not because she got mutilated but because, the way she sees it, she chose you and you didn't choose her back! You left her!" she vented in utter disbelief, reminding her that it wasn't her place to mope in all this. "Of course, she's trying to protect herself now! She doesn't want to risk exposing herself to the same heartbreak you put her through— who would?" Weiss stared at her incredulously as she paused to let the concept sink in.

The concept did sink in, exceptionally brutally at that.

Heartbreak.

It felt like her own heart collapsed in her chest. Had she broken Yang's heart…? Simply for having been scared? Scared of Adam?

No, it didn't feel quite right… and she was taken with the growing awareness that something else was lurking within her. After all, wasn't it too convenient to solely project on him the blame for a decision she'd taken? It wasn't like running away had been a new response for her—it was in fact a very clear pattern. Then… the question arose again; was it without argument, wholly and exclusively his fault that she hadn't been there? Because if it was, then she shouldn't be feeling accountable for Yang's heartache, and she'd have no reason to be passive or meek in her presence, right? Yet the simple idea of not feeling a guilty for all of it was ludicrous because… she was guilty. For that, as well as Yang's injury. In fact, she was so guilty and so focused on the guilt and what shame it all brought her, that she hadn't thoroughly conceptualized the ramifications of her leaving at the moment she'd taken that decision.

This last thought brought with it ravaging clarity. At the back of her mind, she'd certainly known it wouldn't be painless for her ex-lover, but she had rationalized her actions by reminding herself of Adam's threat, or that Yang must hate her already anyways because she'd blame her for the maiming. And Blake wondered… had she been aware of the choice Yang had made on that day, would it have prevented her from relaying to the back of her mind the pain she knew deserting would cause? Because being face to face with the fact that Yang had chosen her against all odds would certainly have given her some perspective on how much Yang was ready to sacrifice for her… and she wouldn't have been able to convince herself that Yang would hate her over her injury. And so, she'd have been unable to ignore how leaving would mean… destroying her.

So… would knowing have prevented her from leaving? She couldn't tell. And the very fact that she had doubts about this horrified her. Because if she couldn't securely affirm in all honesty that had she known, she'd been able to overcome her urge to run…then it brought her back to her own deeply ingrained flaw.

So, what? Had she broken Yang's heart over being scared… and weak?

Was this debacle's main culprit in fact that weakness of hers which she loathed above all, the thing she had resolved to eradicate? The very thing that she'd fought so desperately fiercely to overcome as she faced her past—her parents, the White Fang, Ilia…? The very weakness she was well on her way to smother and annihilate? The same one that had been creeping on her even in this very conversation? That revulsive mix of spinelessness and unworthiness that had only ever amounted in bringing her shame and guilt? Her inexcusable cowardice?

As she grasped this much-needed insight, again that feeling of resolve sparked deep within her. She couldn't let that weakness win, she'd dedicated herself to breaking the pattern, to atoning for her mistakes and to finding peace—she couldn't lay down and surrender to it now, not when she'd just reached her most important challenge.

Blake felt herself wholly ablaze with fervent determination. Yes, she would conquer that challenge—she'd show Yang that she was strong enough now to stand with her. She wouldn't crumble again. Never again.

"I'm sorry," Weiss gave more gently, drawing her attention back to the conversation. She gave a dejected sigh, staring at her hesitantly. "I didn't mean to attack you… It's just..." She trailed off, not knowing how to finish her thought. Weiss shook her head almost imperceptibly. "The point is… It's only expected that she's trying to protect herself," she tried.

"...But," she stressed, her manner at once losing its dejection and lassitude in favor of sharpening with Weiss's more characteristic decisiveness. "Blake, no matter what, don't let her push you away," she pled. "She can't nurse that wound by herself and... I've tried helping her, being there for her, but… that mask she's wearing, she simply refuses to take it off. Even though it's dreadfully fissured and she knows I see through it. She just won't remove it…" she trailed off. "… not for me," she then underlined, implicitly allowing the notion that Yang would for someone else. The pale blue of her eyes as she searched Blake's golden seemed almost grey with empathetic sorrow. Weiss's shoulders slumped slightly. "She… needs someone to save her for once. And we both know it's you she's been waiting for."

Without daring to linger on it, without daring to give herself so much importance, it was something she'd nevertheless known deep down. Yang was waiting for her. Yang wanted her to come to her. Hearing it from someone who knew them both so very well fed the flame that had ignited inside herself and Blake's entire body, up to her cat ears, straightened with determination. "I'm done running," she avowed. "I've set my mind to show her she can rely on me. I'd rather die before I let her down again."

Her firmness seemed to take her teammate aback and Weiss stared back a little blankly. "Please don't die," she flatly answered. "I won't forgive you if you die."

"It won't come to that," Blake offered.

"It better not," she sourly shot back.

---

She'd barely gotten any sleep; how could she? How was she expected to, with everything that had happened? With everything she'd learned? With her friends on the other side of the wall…? With Yang… so close for the first time in a year yet further than she'd ever been? Blake couldn't help keeping an ear out, wondering if the walls of this dorm were thinner than Beacon's… if per chance she'd hear her, were Yang to have a nightmare. She'd braced herself for it, running about a thousand scenarios in her head. Wondering… if she did hear her, should she go see her? How could she resist attempting to comfort her if she were to hear her? Would Yang be angry if she did show up to comfort her? She'd be in the middle of a storm of raw emotions, so it wouldn't be farfetched to think she'd blow up at her. But at least that atrocious mask would be taken off. Would it therefore prompt the talk they needed to have? Blake was preparing herself for it, trying to think of what millions of ways Yang could blow up at her. Trying to think of what she could tell her, of how to apologize.

But she didn't hear Yang. The only thing there had been to hear that night were quiet footsteps unhurriedly pacing the hall, which, hearing them several times that night, she'd dismissed as someone posted as on-watch.

Blake twisted and turned in her bed, listening to those footsteps and the lack of agitation in the neighboring room. She wondered if Weiss would come and get her, were Yang to have a nightmare. Or would she not want to upset the blonde any further by bringing in the object of her torment? Though Weiss did say Yang would likely only open up for Blake. Which meant that chances were, if anything happened, Weiss would come and get her. Blake stared up at the ceiling of this unfamiliar room.

She gave up on sleep as the sun rose, opting to busy herself with one of the million tasks ahead of them.

Until it'd been time for part two of their meeting, the one in which they'd set out to solve the logistics of stabilizing the unrest in Mistral while leaving for Atlas as soon as possible, Blake spent the morning helping her parents reorganize the trip back to Menagerie. The supplies, the people, the prisoners… there was a lot to do. What came as a pleasant surprise in all this, were the faunus who volunteered to stay, an effort to fill in the thinned-out ranks of Mistral's Huntsmen and help in its protection. It was information she was glad to be able to bring to the meeting, as it alleviated a lot of the concern of them leaving for Atlas. As they wrapped up, what ended up being decided in short was that they'd wait a week or so before leaving, it should be enough time for the unrest to stabilize and the population to feel safe. This would also allow them time to help reinstate some form of trustworthy authority over Haven academy and help a bit with cleaning up the damage, all the while preparing for the dangerous journey ahead.

In other news, she was delighted that Sun had found his team, both because they needed all the help they could get, but also because she admittedly wanted to devote all the time she could to her own team to bond again. Which she did; after the meeting, she tagged along with her team leader. Ruby briefed her on how they had been running things since they had taken residence in the dorm. She explained everything from how they'd taken turns in training for the impending showdown to how they'd separated chores. As it turned out, it was the red girl's turn to prepare lunch for everyone. Well—she was to cut and prepare the ingredients. Actual cooking would then be taken over by someone who… wouldn't burn and over-flavor everything. Blake swiftly volunteered to give a hand, happy to be of any sort of service.

"Thanks for helping!" Ruby exclaimed, laying out a variety of ingredients.

"It's only natural I pull my weight," Blake offered in return, busying herself tying her hair up into a ponytail. As she washed her hands, she also started rinsing the vegetables that her friend had produced.

In turn, Ruby set up cutting boards and grabbed freshly washed potatoes and, as they settled into their tasks, it wasn't long before she dove into casual chat again. "So…" Ruby started with what sounded like a feigned air of indifference, "…you went home? …With Sun?"

Up until here, conversation had been on practical points, on catching up, on reminiscing. Blake felt that this seemingly innocuous question wasn't as purposeless as her friend wanted to make it appear. "I did," she confirmed plainly.

The odd silence from the short-haired team leader drew her gaze again.

It indisputably looked like she wanted to inquire further, and it wasn't hard to figure out what that might be. "He followed me, I didn't invite him," she offered, certain Ruby was bothered with the possibility of Blake favoring him over her team.

"He did, huh," she mused out loud, frowning thoughtfully as she peeled potatoes.

It was somewhat of a surprise that her clarification hadn't satisfied her friend's interest in Blake's unintentionally accompanied journey. Ruby looked like she was ruminating either the notion, or something else she wanted to ask about. Or maybe if she wanted to inquire any further at all? Blake was terribly surprised by her next question.

"He followed because he likes you, right?"

To Blake's knowledge, this was the first time her younger friend showed any sort of interest in matters of the heart. She had to wonder if it was because Ruby had grown in the year that had gone by, if she'd started developing personal interest in romance... or if maybe there was another reason she would be concerned with Blake's love life.

The dark haired faunus hummed uncommittedly. "He said it was because he wanted to help me on my 'one-woman rampage' against the White Fang," she explained, "but that admittedly might also have helped motivate him."

She nodded, returning her attention to potato peeling for what was bound to be a very short moment; Blake kept staring at her, expecting the inevitable follow-up.

Ruby cleared her throat. "...And uh…so… are you two…?"

"There's nothing of that sort between him and I, Ruby," she affirmed, to which her friend seemed downright relieved. It wasn't too hard to connect the dots; Blake concluded Ruby had to have been aware of the nature of Yang's feelings towards her. Either because the blonde had talked to her sister as she said she would before everything collapsed, or because… following those very events, some feelings might have been made obvious by Yang's reaction to Blake's absence. Determining this might be a good opportunity to probe the topic, the faunus volunteered a bit more information. "And there won't ever be either," she revealed, "I'm not into guys."

"You're n—...Oh!" Ruby looked undeniably delighted with learning this, which only confirmed Blake's speculations. Her younger friend turned to her in excitement. "Is that new?" she eagerly pressed, but quickly caught herself. "I mean—is it new that you know, because obviously it can't be new-new, I know that's not how it works," she blabbered.

Having finished rinsing the vegetables, she elected to start helping her teammate with the peeling part. "I've known since about sometime through our first semester at Beacon," she admitted.

Her eyebrows went up in keen surprise, potatoes forgotten. "Even as far as back then?"

Blake started peeling. "I wasn't as comfortable with it being known, but yes," she confirmed.

Ruby scooted conspicuously closer. "So," she started again, manifestly trying to suppress her giddiness, "had anyone caught your eye, maybe? Back then?"

Blake turned to look at her. "Ruby, you really don't have to take detours if you want to know about what's between Yang and me. I'll answer your questions."

Her blank stare was accompanied by an embarrassed blush for being called out on how blatant her questioning was. Silver eyes darted to the kitchen counter. Blake found it terribly amusing.

Quickly, an incongruously wide smile spread on her features. "How did you know this was about Yang?"

"Did you expect any other name than your sister's to come up when you asked me if I was interested in anyone?"

"...No," she admitted sheepishly.

"Then it shouldn't surprise you that I knew this was about her, shouldn't it?"

"Right," Ruby embarrassedly acknowledged, quickly returning to her task.

There was a small silence as they both worked. The shorter girl was fidgety and decidedly looked like she was gathering up her nerve and Blake very much expected this not to be over.

Eventually, she dared to glance at the faunus again. "This means you… like Yang, right?" she confirmed.

"Yes, very much," Blake conservatively offered.

Ruby stared at her more openly now, with what could only be called hope. "You mean for real, right? Like romantically?"

She paused what she was doing to return her gaze. "Extremely romantically."

Reddening even more, she gauchely busied herself once more with the food, an unabashed smile stubbornly stretching her features.

Blake watched her curiously. It was obviously very much out of Ruby's comfort zone to be conversing about matters of the heart, but it also was very much like her to keep pushing herself outside of her comfort zone. It nevertheless was massively different to be discussing this with her compared to Weiss. Blake didn't even want to think about how her younger friend would react were she to learn that her sister and she had in fact been much closer than she could imagine. Golden eyes drifted to the vegetables she'd washed, and she absentmindedly resumed cutting.

As she thought through the exchange that had just taken place, there was one question that she just couldn't seem to dismiss. Blake thought it might not be too inappropriate to ask. "Is it that my feelings for her are just that obvious?" Others had seen though her, so it wasn't implausible Ruby had too… but there was however an explanation far likelier here. "Or… is all this about something Yang said or did…?"

"Oh, it was something she said," Ruby nonchalantly replied. "Way back. Right before her match in the Vytal tournament."

This took her back to that day in their dorm room, that blissful day they'd shared before everything went downhill at horrifying speed, and a wave of decidedly tender warmth washed over her with nostalgia. "So, she did talk to you," Blake mused out loud.

Ruby turned to her in surprise. "She told you she would?"

The soft smile she'd retained only got gentler. "She did."

A thoughtful frown cutely crinkled her forehead as she evidently was adding up what she'd just learned to what she knew. "…So, back then, you were already dating?" she tried.

"We weren't dating or anything official like that," Blake corrected quietly with a disconsolate shake of her head. She gave a pause, re-evaluating how her answer implied that they did have something, albeit unofficially, and decided it was only fair that she voiced it. "We weren't dating, but there was something. It'd be a lie to tell you there wasn't," she gently added.

"So that's why Yang said that she was on her way to seducing you!"

That Yang would've claimed this amused her more than it should have. "Maybe I was the one who was seducing her," Blake countered, to which Ruby laughed.

"When was that happening?" she playfully shot.

"When we were alone."

Blake had answered without thinking and heard her own voice waver as memories of their alone time filled her senses. The fluctuation had been marked enough that her teammate paused to glance at her. Blake stayed very focused on the carrots she was chopping.

After another moment of silence, Ruby hummed lightly. "Now that I think about it," she started again, "you two really did spend a lot of time alone together."

They truly did, and most of that time had been very innocent. It'd only been a bit over the last month that they had together that things had escalated beyond friendship. Before that time… they just somehow ended up secluding themselves to be in each other's company.

"When you have feelings for someone," Blake began, "you want to spend as much time as you can with them, whether your feelings are unrequited or not," she gently explained. "I was happy just lounging around with her, talking with her, being silly together," she added, finding herself smiling at those precious memories. "I didn't linger on it then… or I didn't want to linger on it because I'd yet to own up to what it all meant to me, but looking back, it seems so obvious that if I would make this much time and room for her, it was simply because I was crazy about her."

Thinking back on all those days, on all those times they'd somehow found themselves alone, on how cozy, warm and downright intimate these moments had been, Blake could only be amazed she'd never noticed what was brewing between them. "Looking back, I also see… it probably meant something that she too made that space for me," she reflected, feeling nostalgia constrict her chest. "I guess we needed to be together, just the two of us, so we could learn about what… what was happening between us. And, as things progressed further…what we wanted from each other and for… maybe, for the future." The more she thought about those days, the more she realized it really shouldn't have been a surprise to her that they'd reach a point where things naturally escalated to physical love. "…And we…" she tried again, "we…" But now she seemed to at once come aware of the word she was using. "There certainly was a 'we'," Blake gently mused out loud. "Only it was really blurry what that 'we' was or what it meant."

Ruby had stopped her work again to listen to her, openly invested in what Blake had been recounting. She sported an incredibly cute expression; her mouth had tightened into nothing more than a small dot of a smile. "You said… 'things progressed further'," she repeated.

Blake wondered if what that suggested was clear enough that the other girl would understand. "…Yes, to say it graciously," she gave.

But no, she was still far too innocent in this respect. "Does this mean you kissed?"

'Among other things,' was what came to mind, but Blake wasn't about to offer this answer. "What do you think we liked being alone for?" She teasingly gave, earning herself a disbelieving sort of entertained gasp from her friend.

"I had no idea!"

Blake laughed. "And yet we weren't being subtle at all," she shot back. A certain morning came to mind, when Yang had enthusiastically had her way with her in the bathroom, nearly getting themselves caught by Ruby herself.

They settled in a pleasantly comfortable silence, both of them evidently contemplating those worry-free days. They leisurely kept peeling and cutting vegetables for such an extended moment that were almost done when Ruby addressed her with another question.

"Did you wanna try again? To be with her?"

Blake nodded, though her friend wasn't looking at her. "It's my intention."

"That'd officially make us sisters wouldn't it?" she excitedly pointed out.

"…Depending on whether she's still interested," the faunus allowed. "You think she is?"

"I don't know for sure," Ruby energetically gave, "but with how special you were to her, I can't imagine it being gone."

Blake couldn't tell if that was Ruby's interpretation, her wishful thinking… or if perchance Yang had told her something that allowed her to affirm this. She kept staring at her expectantly, waiting for her to expand on her thought, but the younger girl just busied herself cleaning up. Unable to let it, go, Blake eventually cleared her throat. "Would you mind…telling me why you think I was… special...? To her?"

Ruby paused to turn her way. She wiped her hands of the water on a dishcloth and leaned against the kitchen counter. "Yang's not really open about the way she feels," she began, taking a moment to consider what she was about to say.

"It took me a while to notice because she's always been so cheerful and easygoing. And, to me, she's always been… just always there. Like the sun; bright and warm and constant," she explained, her clear silver finding golden. "I know some people would find it sad that my sister was the one who mostly raised me and that I didn't really… have my parents present the way most other kids do, but I really couldn't have asked for more. Yang was perfect. When I dreamed of something, she'd make it come true. When I needed anything, she'd make it appear. When I was sad or scared, she'd chase it away somehow. She took care of me and supported me and has always been there for me." Up until here, Ruby's manner had been earnestly inspired and positive, but then something in her gaze gave, and she stopped smiling. "She always made everything about me." She then seemed to catch herself and looked to Blake again. "It's not that I'm ungrateful or anything! I'm very grateful for everything she's given me!"

"You didn't come off as ungrateful," she reassured. She could start to see what Ruby wanted to say. "She made everything about you, so you felt she didn't leave room for herself?" That sounded like Yang alright.

She hummed in approval. "Growing up, I hadn't stopped to think about it but… back at Beacon, I'd started to notice how she didn't really… or didn't ever talk about her own dreams or hopes for the future or… just what she wants. And I was starting to get worried," she admitted dejectedly. Her smile then promptly returned, stretching her features very warmly. "But then she told me about wanting to be with you!" she exclaimed excitedly. "I think it was the first time Yang brought up her own happiness to me. Before that, she'd never really… asserted anything she wanted. She'd just shrug and smile and casually go with what I wanted or what was best for me. But not this. This… it was something she found she wanted, and it was for herself and only for herself," she said, a sort of knowing sparkle to her eye. "Her very own treasure."

Blake didn't know when she'd stopped breathing, but she knew she was red to the tip of her cat ears. She embarrassedly turned her stare down to the chopping board under her hands.

"You made her want to live her own life," Ruby pointed out, drawing her attention again. The red-hooded girl was smiling even wider. "That's how I know you're special."

She didn't quite know what to say to this. This corroborated what had come out of the conversation she'd had with Weiss—that Blake held unique importance to Yang— only with a different, very tender perspective to it. She watched as Ruby resumed cleaning up, throwing away refuse and putting away what they didn't need. Blake silently went back to work too.

It wasn't too long after that Jaune trotted into the kitchen. "We're here to take over," he announced, tying Ren's pink apron around himself. "Thank you for the prep," he added, to which Ruby gave a vigorous nod and a smile.

"Who's on duty with you for lunch?"

Jaune gave an uncomfortable pause in which he not so furtively glanced at Blake. "Hmm. Yang is. She should be here any minute."

It didn't come as a surprise that the blonde brawler would be left in charge of the kitchen; she and Ren were probably the only two competent cooks. It only made sense that they'd take different shifts overviewing the food preparation. Blake wondered if, with the way he'd said it, Jaune had meant to give her leeway to leave before Yang arrived. He, like everyone else, would have been aware of the tension between them, but… he had no way of knowing that Blake had set her mind to not let that dishearten her and push through it. With the firm intention of waiting for her, Blake simply resumed busying herself with chores.

"Alright!" Yang's voice energetically boomed as she waltzed into the kitchen. "Fire up the ovens, we—" Her eyes fell on Blake and her million lien attitude took an abrupt dive. Without another word, Yang simply strode to the cupboards for pots and pans.

The faunus's gaze followed her ex-partner, but she could see out of the corner of her eye both her friends exchange an awkward glimpse. Undeterred, Blake stepped towards the tall blonde. "Would it be okay if I stayed to help?"

She shrugged. "We don't need help," she said. "We'll be fine."

Jaune clearly didn't agree. "Really? I mean three would—"

"It's fine," Yang sternly stressed, "they don't need to stay, they did their part."

Her uncompromising rebuttal drove him to drop his argument before he even made it, and the young man hurriedly busied himself with greasing pots and starting the cooking process.

She then swiftly turned to her sister, waving her hand in an ousting gesture. "Now go, Ruby, out. Get out," she ordered her with a smile.

Ruby glanced to the faunus. "We could—"

"Just go," Yang pressed. It was a small pause, and, for the second time, it felt like she forced herself look at Blake. "You too," she said with that horrendously hollow smile. "You're free. You don't need to stay."

It didn't go unnoticed to her how Yang not only avoided to say her name again… she also hadn't ordered her to leave the way she'd done with Ruby.

"I want to stay," Blake maintained.

"You really don't need to."

"But I want to."

"We're good."

"Let me help."

"There's no need."

"I want to help you," Blake insisted.

Her smile fell. "I don't need help," Yang vehemently asserted.

The hostility in what she projected had a sudden silence fall on the room. It took a couple of seconds for the tension to drop, and Ruby gently rested her hand on her arm. "Come on, Blake," she urged. "We should go."

Deciding it might be best to try again later, when they'd be alone, the dark haired faunus complied. With a last look to the brawler, who'd gone on to busy herself with the meal, she followed her younger friend out.

"It's okay, it'll get better," Ruby encouraged. "Right now… I think she's just a bit weird 'cause she doesn't know how to be around you after all that time apart. But it'll get better."

Blake hummed in acknowledgement even if she didn't agree. After all, she knew the distance wasn't all there was, and things would certainly not simply get better, not without talking it through. But they would get better, because Blake would make it better. And that started with tearing down that mask Yang was wearing and treating the wound instead of attempting to cover it up and ignore it.

It was late into the evening that Weiss pulled her to the side to inform her the blonde had retired to their room to do her periodical maintenance on her prosthesis. Blake didn't need her teammate to spell it out; this was her chance to talk to Yang alone.

With a deep, nervous breath, she made herself head to the second floor of the dorm. She had wanted this opportunity, nevertheless, she knew very well how hard it'd be on the both of them, and the anticipation made her stomach tighten and her fingers cold.

The door to Weiss and Yang's room was only half-closed, enough to allow her to concentrate on what she was doing without completely secluding herself. Blake leaned in the doorway, watching her in silence for a long time. Eventually, Yang seemed to be done with whatever maintenance she'd been doing; she quickly drummed her mechanical fingers on the desk and then testingly twisted the wrist before moving the entire arm. Her prosthesis' response must have satisfied her because she then quickly put away the small kit she'd been using to care for it. It was as she stood from her seat at that desk that the blonde finally noticed her. Her entire body language and demeanor changed from insouciant and relaxed to something cautious and guarded, not unlike what it had been when everyone else was around… but now that they were alone, it was unequivocally somber. It was unlike it'd ever been around Blake.

She straightened up too, willing herself to grasp the moment before Yang slipped through her fingers again. "What was that earlier?"

"What was what?" She reticently muttered, evidently playing dumb.

"You know what," Blake frowningly retorted, to which Yang's gaze fell to the floor. Her lips tightened for a second, her ears twitching as she shakily inhaled again. "Look… I know you're trying really hard to make this reunion painless for the team," she said, acknowledging the other woman's efforts in keeping encounters as civilized as possible. "But this... isn't going to fix itself. It won't just go away. We need to talk."

The brawler quickly turned back to the wooden desk, evidently looking for something to busy herself with; she had to settle with needlessly rearranging the racer vest she'd hung off the chair she'd been sitting on. "There's nothing to talk about," she answered.

"You know that's not true," the faunus countered on a quiet, pleading tone.

Yang shrugged, still committed to the distance she tried to create between them. "We're all gonna work together, aren't we? ...We're all here… aren't we?" she reminded her. "That's all that matters."

Blake exhaled softy. She'd truly hoped that as soon as they'd be alone, the other woman would blow up at her. Because at least if she'd say something, anything to acknowledge that things weren't fine, then there would be substance to work with and Blake would be able to make some progress in healing whatever may be left of… … well, at the very least, their friendship. Her hand was on the doorframe, as if leaning on something stable would help provide her support as she headed into what promised to be a difficult exchange. "You saved my life that night," she stated, trying to force the conversation to somewhere her ex-partner would finally feel challenged enough to be authentic.

"You saved mine when you brought me back to where our friends were," Yang shot back, stubbornly refusing to take the bait. "There's nothing to talk about. We're even."

"We're not," Blake maintained. "That's not the same and you know it; being able to pull you from immediate danger is nothing compared to the way you dove towards it to rescue me," she uncompromisingly argued. "Had you not done what you did, he might've killed me."

The blonde didn't answer this time. Both her hands were tightly clamped onto the back of the chair her vest was draped over, her gaze obstinately riveted to the desk.

"You saved my life at the risk of your own and paid a price I could never repay and I—..." Her voice died in her throat, Blake had to push through to keep talking. "And in return, I failed you," she conceded unsteadily. Intense shame washed over her as she was hit with the awareness of how much of an understatement that was, and Blake steeled herself; she had to say it before she lost her nerve. "No, not just failed," she acknowledged "I… I did the very worst thing I could do to you."

Her jaw was tightly clenched, and it almost looked like she was about to crush the chair with her hands so rigidly she held onto it. No matter how she might have wished to appear unaffected and indifferent, her emotions were clearly getting the better of her, though the color of her eyes had yet to change. She still obstinately held her tongue.

Blake realized she'd been holding her breath. She wouldn't let up simply because the other woman had opted to barricade herself in silence. Without taking her eyes off the blonde, she cautiously shut the door behind herself to form a private space for this conversation. "I need you to know… despite what you may think, you've been on my mind all this time," she tried, hoping to get the conversation going.

It didn't. However, that fearsome red dyed her irises and it finally felt to the dark haired faunus that whatever pretense Yang had been trying to maintain was starting to crumble. At this point, all she wanted was to prompt honest words from her ex-partner. "I can't begin to tell you how happy I am to be around you again."

Her red eyes slid towards Blake to spear into her.

Yang used to dislike for her to have to stare back into that aggressive color; after all her eyes were ever only red when she used her semblance or when she was angry— which translated to either danger or negative emotions. Blake herself never had been bothered by it before, but then again, that color never had been directly addressed to her before either… and though it didn't make her feel threatened at all, the color's connotation and its implications did succeed in troubling her. Which brought Blake to wonder if, as she unyieldingly glared at her with that piercing red, the blonde found any satisfaction in the small vengeance of gouging her with it.

"Yang… please talk to me," she finally begged, at a loss with how else to get her to talk. She took a few steps closer and the other woman's brow twitched into a frown, but she didn't move otherwise. "I want to know what's on your mind, even if you think it'll hurt me—especially if you think it will," she pled. After all, she knew whatever sincere words Yang would have to say would be painful. If they weren't, it would mean she was holding back her true thoughts and torment. "We can't leave things as they are! It's not just for my sake, it's obvious you're not okay either!"

Yang abruptly turned to face her fully. "And since when do you even care about how I feel anyways?"

More than taken aback, Blake blinked quickly in confusion; this one wasn't an accusation she'd been expecting. "What do you mea—"

"What are you trying to do, huh?" the blonde sharply cut in. "What do you want?"

At a complete loss, unable to grasp why she was questioning this, the faunus scrambled to articulate an answer. "I'm just— I'm trying to open the dialogue, tell you where I stand and—"

"How can you say all these things so lightly?" Yang accused with pained disbelief.

She had to pause as it seemed to all come together—the shape of her sorrow. Blake somehow slammed the brakes on her frenziedly overloading brain in an attempt to focus on what sentiment could be read through the way Yang chose to answer. Why was she dismissing Blake's words as nothing but sweet talking? Was Yang… doubting the authenticity of her feelings? Did she come to believe Blake had no investment in those feelings?

"Yang, I'm not saying any of it lightly," she very cautiously but very solemnly gave.

"Right," she shot. Her frown paired with the look in her eyes as they quickly scanned her up and down read blatant disbelief. Yang had lost so much faith in her, she couldn't even bring herself to trust the sentiment.

It was so unbelievably painful that, had Blake not been so prepared to be hurt, so resolved not to fall back on her old patterns, she might've crumbled and been defeated right then. She had to swallow down the lump of grief gagging her. "I don't blame you for not believing me," she conceded, though it was everything she could to keep her emotions under control, "but I hoped… you would at least see that I'm genuinely happy to be around you again," she quietly attempted. "Do you believe at least that…?"

Some of the hardness in the other woman's features melted to allow some the flicker of despairing yearning show through. "I don't know what to believe," Yang miserably admitted. "I mean, what do you want me to say?! After everything, I thought I could've counted on you for at least a little support but you, you just left."

"I had to," she found herself saying. In spite of knowing he wasn't the entire reason, she'd nevertheless blurted this almost as an involuntary impulse.

There was a spark of incredulity in her expression. "You had to?"

Something flared inside of her, and Blake didn't know if she could quite call it hope because it truly was nothing but a dim glimmer of motivation, yet as she willed herself to bury the nagging reminder of her own role, her own part of culpability in all this to instead latch onto the thought that maybe, just maybe, if the way Weiss had reacted to learning what had gone down that night was any indication of how someone else might react, then the crimson color might dissolve from Yang's eyes were she to learn about this too. Before she could even make sense of how she wanted to relate his threats, Blake was already talking.

"He told me—before you got there, right before you did, he realized he… he—he had lost me completely. Adam was so furiou—" Blake abruptly stopped as the mention of his name had the other woman suddenly stiffen. In this short pause, Blake collected herself a little better. "He told me," she started again, more evenly, "he said he would destroy everything I loved, Yang…"

For a fleeting second, her eyes flickered back to violet as a heartbreakingly forlorn expression crossed her features. Blake had known very well her ex-lover had missed her, she also knew very well that the other woman was doing everything she could to put up a wall between them, everything she could not to get emotional, but this small crack allowed Blake a glimpse at the aching pain and longing the blonde was trying to push down and it made it so very hard to breathe.

"That's when you got there," the faunus continued. "I glanced at you… just a glance! But it was enough and… he knew, so he… turned back to me and added… 'Starting with her'," she quoted in a whisper, earnestly searching her features.

Yang's thought process deconstructed itself on her face as she was evidently piecing everything together. She looked confused and incredulous and her red orbs fell to the floor, searching the wooden boards like she was reading the information she was given all over again. Her jaw in turn relaxed and tightened as the gears seemed to spin a million miles an hour in her head. She exhaled a shaky breath.

It looked to Blake like she just may come around. Incentive made her heart swell and her blood race even faster and she stepped closer. "He hurt you so much already, and he could've come back… would've done worse," she explained, anxious to see the other woman's features soften, desperate for red to irrevocably give way to that gentle violet color she loved so much. "I—I… I couldn't risk—I couldn't stay," she rationalized, "I left because of him."

Those last words unexpectedly sparked anger; her expression hardened in a split second and— "Bullshit."

Yang spat the word with such startling disdain that anything else Blake would've wanted to say went up in smoke. Before she could attempt to grasp why the other woman had responded this disconcertingly, the blonde continued.

"If that was it," Yang started again, "if you'd left because of him, to protect us—to protect me from him, then there's no reason you had to disappear in silence," she argued. "You could've told somebody. Or you could've waited for me to wake up to tell me you had to go, or just—just I don't know, tell someone, anyone, something," she countered.

Massively uneasy and completely destabilized, Blake was still trying to find her bearings after the shock of being shot down so brusquely. "I didn't want to be convinced to stay," she heard herself say; it felt mechanical, unconvincing, empty.

"You could've left something—a message! A fucking note!" she heatedly argued. "Even just a few lines! Something! Anything!"

Blake had no answer this time. She indisputably could have, and somehow only now did she realize she should have. She dropped her head in consternation with herself, her fingers were cold as they dug in her moist palms and the looming sensation of something just out of her grasp took over her. Why hadn't she taken the time to jot down even just a few words?

"You could've—" Yang attempted before giving up on her sentence. "Anything would've been better than this," she agonizingly pled, designating their situation with a sweeping motion of her mechanical arm. Blake couldn't tell if she'd used it for even more emphasis, or if the prosthesis responded well enough that Yang instinctively used her right arm simply because it'd been her dominant arm.

"It didn't even need to be words," the blonde then added. "Even just… your ribbon. Something of you— anything to let me know you cared, to let me know you didn't just… throw me aside," she managed, her voice unbelievably strained.

The way her own words had seemed hollow as she'd rationalized her actions to Weiss came to mind. She now couldn't help thinking that… maybe it'd felt this way because deep down she knew she didn't do things right as she left? Because she'd always known that her absence would make Yang feel this way, and she had no way of justifying the way she'd left? The way she'd left in silence, like a thief in the night… that'd made it look like she had simply run away…? And she hadn't simply ran… had she?

"I never wanted to make you feel like that," Blake whispered, not knowing what else she could say.

"Then why? Without even a trace?" Yang pressed earnestly. Her eyes, still as piercingly red, searched Blake's golden as if desperately looking for another answer than the one she'd had months to mull over as she recovered from her injury. She didn't seem to find what she was looking for and the tension in her body at once released. She gave a silent, despondent sigh. "…All I needed was to feel like I'd get to see you again someday," she added in defeat.

"But I… I couldn't even promise that," Blake heard herself argue; it was like her body reacted without her willing it to make any sounds. Listening to herself, her words seemed to tear themselves apart as soon as she'd utter them; nothing she could muster seemed solid enough to hold any weight against how she'd abandoned her then lover. And at the back of her mind, she knew that the reason was simply that what she was offering wasn't the entire truth, yet she found herself stumbling into justifications anyways. "I couldn't endanger you more than I already had, and I didn't know if I'd ever be strong enough to defeat him. It was better if I wasn't around. I didn't know–"

"Fuck that!" she roared, abruptly silencing her staggered ex-partner. "You're stuttering excuses about protecting me –us, your team, your friends– and this being for the best, but you—" Yang's breath caught in her throat and she inhaled deeply in an apparent attempt to calm her nerves. She only opened her mouth again when she appeared to have taken hold of herself. "You went back to your parents!" she loudly reminded her. "Are you telling me it didn't matter if you put them in at risk?!"

"No," Blake immediately answered, her mind reeling. "That's…that's—just…" But she didn't know how to describe the gruesome and nightmarish days she'd spent fighting Grimm in Vale in a destructive attempt at 'redeeming' herself andthe subsequent internal revolution that had led her to head back home.

Yang scoffed with incredulous disdain. "Okay. So, tell me. Explain. Why didn't you go to— I don't know, fucking Vacuo, where no one knew you?"

She wanted to tell her how hitting rock bottom, actual rock bottom, had her realize she had been letting herself fritter away and die in the ruins of their happy days, in ravaged, war-torn Vale. How it had left her no choice but to change. It had left her no choice but to find the strength she'd been lacking in all those moments she'd opted to run away. It had left her no choice but to resolve building herself back up, which could only be done right with going on a mission to right all her wrongs. A journey that had to start where she first went wrong. Finding herself, rebuilding herself… had to start back home.

But all this… even if she could somehow explain all this, even if she could somehow convey even a fraction of this… it held no weight against her original offence. It didn't make the way she left fair or acceptable, all it could do was serve to explain her subsequent decisions. Which would still leave a vast abyss in lieu of an explanation to excuse how she'd disappeared without a word. Or how, deep down…. Blake had told herself Yang should hate her for what had happened. And both these points… had nothing to do with Adam.

Doubts that had been festering inside herself started to bubble up again. The flash of heat that dizzied her didn't help with the chills running down her back. Her previous justifications that'd felt so dull and empty, like pre-rehearsed answers, crumbled inside herself and it brought her back to what she'd realized as she'd spoken with Weiss. That weakness of hers.

"His threat," Yang's voice drew her attention, "it's just a convenient excuse you've latched on to," she said, voicing something that Blake had done her best to avoid facing within herself until the prior evening. Her tone was calm but Yang's stare was a mix of betrayal and incredulity. "The real reason you ran, it wasn't keeping him away."

With this allegation, the faunus stood in silence, completely motionless. She had an impending suspicion of what Yang might've concluded her true motive might have been, as she'd ruminated over it all those months it must've taken for her to heal. The faunus stared back into those red eyes, dread gripping her frighteningly quickly as the awareness that the woman in front of her knew her so well… she'd known from the beginning what Blake had repressed from her own awareness—what she'd only recently started to recognize… what she hadn't been strong enough to accept she'd done.

This very moment, as Yang stared her down with disbelief and resentment, seconds from exposing her horrid truth, was when, in another life, she would've run. But she had resolved to stop running, hadn't she? And now, time was up. So, Blake stood grounded as she waited for the ugliness that had slumbered deep inside of her to be torn out and dragged into the light.

"It's so simple," Yang flatly said, shaking her head in an almost imperceptible movement. "You blame yourself for what happened, and you just felt too guilty, too ashamed to face me." The blonde inhaled quaveringly, as if to stay calm. "That's why you couldn't even write me a couple of words, and that's… why you could be around other people but not me," she rationalized, dejection saturating her tone. "You were just scared of facing me." The piercing red of her irises seemed to be dissolving into the white of her eyes as it and the skin of her face reddened with how she was starting to visibly struggle with holding back tears. "You know what that means?" she then murmured.

Blake didn't want it to be voiced.

"You didn't run to protect me," Yang nevertheless uttered, "you ran from me."

It felt like a Grimm mauled her stomach.

This… was what she hadn't been able to face inside herself. That night, as she'd left the blonde with their friends, Blake had managed to talk herself into believing that the best way -the only way- to protect her would be to lead Adam away from her. She had kept repeating this to herself, but...honestly...? Yang was absolutely right. Adam's threat had only allowed for a convenient excuse not to face the woman she loved after what she'd had to endure because of her. Because how could anyone bear looking in the eyes of the one they love above everything knowing that because of them that person had been hurt like never before? Knowing that because of them… their life is never going to be the same? And as if she didn't feel guilty enough... she knew Yang wouldn't have resented her, not one bit, even if it was unquestionably her fault.

Blake had been afraid of the way she'd look at her when she'd open her eyes, and now as golden orbs drifted back up to her, Yang stared back with a heartbreaking look of incredulous pain and it was worse than anything Blake had ever had to endure. In that moment she reflected to herself… had she been willing to admit to herself how scared she'd been to face Yang, had she been willing to admit to herself how terrified she was that Yang wouldn't be angry with her or resent her, when all she wanted was to be chastised, to be punished, when all she wanted was to suffer for the suffering she'd inflicted on the woman she loved… then she might've been able to resist the urge to flee. She might've been able to tear through what clouded her mind and see that leaving would not only worsen things for Yang, it would be even worse than anything that had happened until then.

Yang's eyes were filled to the brim with tears. "How could you run from me?" The way her voice cracked fissured Blake's heart. "I never blamed you for what he did to me."

"…I deserve to be blamed. I deserve hate and anger, I—"

"I am angry with you."

"But not over your arm," Blake found herself retorting.

"So!?" she exploded, finally breaking from her until then mostly collected demeanor. "What, you thought since I'd blame him for that, you should find a way for me to be angry at you too?!" She seethed as she motioned to herself, all red eyes and glowing hair. "Congrats!"

Her mind reeled and water clouded her vision. "No, Yang, I—"

"You turned your back on me!" She accused, tearing into her feeble attempt at pleading a defense she had no argument for. "You blamed yourself and just couldn't handle that I wouldn't blame you too, so you ran!— And from what!? Not being made to feel like shit!?" She disbelievingly shot, driving in how appallingly diffident Blake's self-image had been. "Do you hate yourself so much that you can't stomach not being blamed!? Do you hate yourself so much that you were blinded by it this fucking bad?! To the point you couldn't see that leaving me like that was the one thing—…. And you knew! You knew that was one thing I— I— The one thingI couldn't take, and—and, and, still—" She had to stop, as her near-hyperventilating had her stumble into stuttering half-sentences, and she inhaled sharply. "That's so fucking messed up!"

Hearing it put in perspective so ruthlessly was nauseating. Mostly because in all its brutality, this assessment was appallingly spot-on, or at least, it had been… she truly had immeasurably loathed who she was.

Yang sniffed loudly; the way her bitterness had taken the better of her had obviously blurred her senses with emotion; it looked like it was everything she could to keep it in. "How do you expect me to ever trust you again, huh!? When you knowingly—… when you'd promised I could count on—…" she trailed off, her breath short and weak. The aggressive color of her eyes dissolved into violet as the same memory evidently passed through the both of them. The picture of them intimately standing together in their dorm room, clumsily trying to sort who they were to each other after Blake had finally confessed. "You had promised me!" she reminded her, Yang's expression contorting with genuine pain. "I'd have trusted you with my life, and I'd let myself… I-…I'd let myself need you... a-and I…. I…" In what seemed to be an intuitive motion, she pressed her hand over her heart.

Blake stared back at her with wide eyes, her accelerated heartbeat pounded through her body, pulsing in slow motion. This vulnerability Yang exhibited and what remained unspoken behind the words she chose, behind her body language had Blake so completely paralyzed, she didn't even dare inhale another breath.

Yang's fingers shakily dug into her chest, gathering the fabric of her orange top into a weak fist. The expectant air on Blake's features likely betrayed her having guessed what the blonde meant to say, and Yang's eyes, glassy and reddened, the violet color seemingly almost grey with the sorrow, stayed on hers. Something gave in her gaze and it appeared to Blake that the other woman was just so weary and… done. When she spoke again, it was to utter pained words that the faunus had given up on ever hearing. "I was in love with you," Yang finally said before she shakily exhaled something of a dry laugh. "God, I loved you so, so much…" she sniffed, the tears finally starting to get the better of her. "A-and you…"

Love. The word resonated through her to nearly shatter her. Yang loved her back. Of course, Blake had ventured to presume it might've been the case, but… after that fateful night, she hadn't dared hope for this word to ever pass her ex-partner's lips. But as the rush seemed to suffocate her even more, she realized…Yang said she'd loved her. Past tense. And before she knew it, the tears Blake had managed to hold back through merciless denunciation and well-deserved accusations up until this point began streaking heavily down her cheeks. "...Love...d...?" She repeated in a whisper.

The red color flared to obliterate the violet again as Yang took an assertive step closer. "How are you surprised?!" she harshly cried out, misinterpreting Blake's question about whether it was still the case with her never having understood Yang had reciprocated her feelings. "Blake! Nothing mattered more than you!" She blurted in a sob. "I put you before Ruby! I'd never chosen anyone over her before! And I— …I would've gladly given my life that day because for you, it was worth it," she unashamedly affirmed. "Any cost was worth it to protect you. And you," she stressed with contempt, anger flaring, "you couldn't even—" Her breath caught in her throat with the emotion, forcing her to stop. "You couldn't even—" In her agitation, she was unable to complete her thought. "Fuck—!"

Blake was quickly being engulfed with the sinking realization that… even if the team was working together, Yang may have been hurt enough for the pain to shatter her feelings. That, because Yang accepted to work together as team RWBY, because she had let herself get swept up in this conversation... didn't mean she'd ever trust Blake again, or that it'd revive what they had. It didn't even mean that Yang had any desire forgive and move past all that had happened; Yang may only be spilling her guts to her now because she needed closure, nothing more.

Letting her own tears dry on her cheeks unattended, Blake could only watch as the blonde paced back and forth as she ran both hands on her head through her golden hair to rest on the back of her neck; Yang didn't seem to know what to do with herself. It looked like she was doing everything she could to gather herself, to get herself under control again – to tamper any further outbursts or possibly even an ensuing meltdown. For the first time since Blake gotten to know her, being in her golden ex-partner's presence didn't help the shadows closing in around her. The midnight-haired faunus was gripped with a very specific sort of fear, one that was born out of helplessness and desperation. She couldn't stomach it.

The longer the silence stretched, the stronger the impression was that no part of what they had was recoverable, and so the urgent need to say more gripped Blake, just anything more to carry the conversation further, to maybe carry it past the pain and regret in hopes that they might be able to reach a place they'd find themselves talking about how to handle the future. "Yang, if I could go back, I'd—"

"But you can't," Yang cut in, wiping her nose as she regained some her composure. Red eyes slid down her shape, then back up once more to lock on her golden ones. "You left. Nothing can change that."

Her abrupt rejection was like a punch to the stomach and, though earlier she had wished for Yang to hurt her, to take retribution, to punish her, though she felt Yang's retort was entirely deserved, it nevertheless had nearly smashed her to pieces. The faunus strained to swallow it down and push forward, but no sound could make it past the rigidity of her throat.

Yang had an unamused, despairing sort of half-laugh. "This is why I didn't want to talk," she pointed out. "I didn't want to get angry again. I didn't… want to feel all this again. I didn't want to get into this when we have so much on our plate in Atlas already," she mused dejectedly. The vividness of the red was dulled, but it hadn't turned back to violet still, and Blake wondered if Yang was saying all this in an attempt to convince herself, in an attempt to reason with herself enough to tamper what emotions she'd allowed to emerge. "We don't have energy to spare for things we can't do anything about. It would've been better to just burry everything."

It was beyond her power to stop herself; a pale, disbelieving scoff escaped her. "And be all fake smiles and walking on eggshells forever?" Blake pointed out. She couldn't even believe the other woman was proposing such an arrangement. "That wouldn't have worked for long."

"As opposed to tearing everything open when there's nothing that can be done to make it better, huh?"

The profound certainty, no—knowledge that she was right at least with this, with forcing this conversation and carrying it through, imbued the faunus with boldness. "Making it better starts with acknowledging the pain, not burying it," she asserted.

"Burying it has always worked fine," Yang stubbornly muttered.

To which Blake frowned deeply. "Yeah, right. It hasn't worked any better than running away has."

Anger seemed to ignite her again in a jolt; her entire body tensed, and her red was explosively vivid. "Oh so, now that you're set on doing things differently, everyone should, right?"

"I'm just saying we couldn't have pretended!" Blake argued. "Things are not fine!"

"Fucking right they're not!" she screamed back.

A sudden silence followed in which they stared at each other.

Yang's entire demeanor softened, her eyes dropped to the ground in apparent dismay at her own outburst. She evidently hadn't wanted to own up to this. After all, doing so meant that 'I'm fine' and 'I'm okay' weren't viable answers anymore. This plain admission was one that implied that she was fully aware this needed to be taken care of, that it couldn't be buried the way she'd just claimed.

Blake was briefly thought back to what Weiss had said the evening prior. Something about how Yang refused to show her true face… something about how if she would end up showing it to anyone, it'd be Blake. In all this, though it seemed the blonde was still restraining herself, though it looked like more than once Yang had hit the brakes to contain the magnitude of what was weighing on her heart, it nevertheless felt like a victory that she was acknowledging the nature of her emotions. All of them. Her pain, her anger, that she was not fine… and even going as far as confessing having been in love.

How subdued and fragile the golden girl suddenly looked imbued Blake with terrible yearning. A yearning that drove her to want to keep moving forward so they might finally make it past the resentment… so maybe Yang would let her hold her. The dark haired faunus stepped closer. "...I know I let you down," she acknowledged in a whisper, to which the other woman's lips tightened. With her brow furrowed and with the way the usually so bright blonde seemed to be closing in on herself, Blake wondered if she'd be receptive to anything she'd say. Nevertheless, she made herself persevere. "Had you not intervened that night, I very much doubt I'd be standing here today," she reminded her. "And… I… you're right. I've hated myself. For what I brought upon you, for how I abandoned you," she admitted, knowing that conceding her own weakness, recognizing her partner's assessment had been impossibly accurate, was absolutely necessary in order to progress. "I've hated myself to the point I almost let myself be swallowed by it and by my regrets."

Those interminable nights fighting Grimm in the vestiges of Beacon Academy came to mind. The beasts were endlessly drawn to her, given how guilt, shame and self-loathing had been festering inside of her. And on nights she might have been able to rest, she'd instead lay awake, tormented that her ex-partner had to suffer so immeasurably because of her. On those nights, she'd been so consumed with hate and regret that she had genuinely wanted to die. Oh, never did the idea of doing the deed herself cross her mind, or rather… a coward like her couldn't realistically go through with suicide. No, instead she'd found herself unceasingly fantasizing about how easily she could slip and get butchered by Grimm; it'd obsessed her. It had only been when she'd reached her lowest point, that night she'd finally gone back to visit their dorm room, that night she'd finally hit rock bottom, it was only then that she'd been able to shake herself out of those morbid fantasies. It was only then, that she'd been able to remind herself how… her life had meant something to other people. And that even if she felt she'd been unworthy of their consideration, of their love and care, it didn't mean that things had to remain this way. As long as she was alive, it was never too late to make herself worthy of it, to make something out of the gifts and opportunities she'd been given, to make the people she loved and who'd given her so much proud. And she refused to let Yang's sacrifice be in vain.

Blake felt an urging impulse of motivation course through her again. "Yang, I—… I'm determined not to be that person anymore and I'm doing everything I can to face my fears and weaknesses and… make up for how I've been," she explained. Golden eyes were keenly observing the other woman… how she indubitably looked like with every second, with every word, she was retreating more and more into a shell. Like she was giving up on them. The anxiety that gripped Blake was sickening. "I'm here now. With you," she keenly pointed out. "And I won't walk away from what you have to say or how I hurt you," she added more quietly. They both knew there was a time Blake would have. "I'm done running."

Her red orbs snapped to her. "Is that a promise?" Yang wryly griped. "Because your promises don't seem to mean much."

This second rebuttal felt like a merciless stab. It cut much deeper than a red blade could have, and, unlike the scar left on her stomach, this wound was entirely deserved. Blake didn't know where she found the strength to swallow down a new wave of tears, but she did. Maybe it was plainly because crumbling was simply not an option. It just wasn't in. Because if she let the conversation end here, if she let Yang go ahead bury her anger and pain in spite of what had been said… then, something deep within her told her that Yang would also be burying them with it. That it would be over. That there would be no salvaging it.

"Take it as you will, but this is a promise I'm making to myself," Blake unsteadily answered, reminding herself that she'd already proven it to herself multiple times. Mending her relationship with her parents, taking a leading role in turning the White Fang around, saving Ilia…. facing Adam again. All these instances were concrete proof of the strength of her will, of having overcome her weakness. They were concrete proof that her words were not empty promises. She was done running, and she reminded it to herself again because she needed the strength. Her voice sounded dreadfully fragile as she forced herself to continue. "So, if you could just… just… please don't shut me out completely..." she implored, "Please… watch me be better."

The blonde didn't answer this time. She didn't even glance at her.

Yang, standing only a few feet from her, seemed so awfully far away and it felt to Blake as if every second of silence was tearing them apart even more. Desperation seeped in her bones and Blake stepped even closer. "Yang…?" She gently called, attempting to at least draw her gaze. "Please… I'm really sorry…" she miserably tried, at loss with what else she could say, what else she could do.

"Yeah, you're sorry. You've said that already," she dryly, emotionlessly droned. "I don't even know why I'm still listening to you, I don't know," she added, quite obviously more to herself than to Blake. With this, the blonde pressed her hand to her face in an apparent effort to regroup, to take a hold of herself. It looked to Blake like the same motion someone would do to put on a mask. "It's not like I care anymore."

Every single fiber of her being screamed not to allow Yang to put on that mask again. "Of course, you care," the faunus heard herself counter without having taken the time to consider her words. Challenging her this defiantly probably wasn't the best idea, but Blake simply could not let her slip between her fingers, especially not on account of lies and pretenses. "You care," she repeated more forcefully, having somehow found some vigor. "About me. About us. It's why you're so upset, and it's why we're here now."

At this, her expression disintegrated from controlled and scornful to positively furious. It made it feel like the distance Yang had maintained between them in these last moments at once completely collapsed.

"Cause you're the fucking expert on how I feel, huh?!" The blonde retorted incredulously, incensed. "We wouldn't be where we are right now if you had even the slightest fucking clue how I feel!" With this, something abruptly hardened in her gaze and Yang brusquely disengaged the prosthesis from her right arm. "Look at this!" she exclaimed. The unnatural void on the right side of her body had Blake instinctively avert her eyes—she wasn't able to figure out if it was her own accountability or an inherent reaction to disfigurement before Yang's voice rose again. "Look!" she barked, forcefully drawing the golden eyes to her again. "I'm crippled! Nothing's the same anymore! It's never going to be the same," Yang vented, brutally driving in the notion that what happened had radically and irreversibly changed her life.

"But you know what!?" she earnestly continued, barely pausing for an answer; Blake knew she wasn't expecting any. "Waking up, I felt like... ...like somehow, if we stayed strong, all of us, I could... I don't know! Just that it wasn't the end! That we could somehow make it okay and I wasn't gonna just… lie there and surrender," she explained, her voice distinctly tinted with yearning as she retold this. Her red eyes, until now glassy with her sorrow, cleared as the tears started rolling down her cheeks. "But you weren't there," she flatly stated, and her own words seemed to onset her anger again. "You weren't there!" She repeated much louder, having evidently given up on containing the storm inside her. "You chose not be there! What you felt for me wasn't enough to win over whatever fucking self-loathing or bullshit blame you put on yourself!" Yang furiously accused through her tears. "What we had wasn't enough that you'd —… it… wasn't enough to give you strength to—…" she trailed off, her struggling to simply breathe had her almost incapable of finishing her sentence. "It wasn't enough th-that—…" she strained, sobbing, "…I wasn't enough."

Blake pressed both her palms to her mouth, either in horror that Yang would ever think that, or to muffle her own crying, she didn't quite know.

It was only then that the blonde seemed to notice the tears that streaked her own cheeks and she made a futile attempt at wiping them away with her forearm. "You didn't have to do anything… just… be there," she pitifully managed to articulate through her crying. "But I… I—I didn't matter enough that you'd find some strength t-to…–While to me, losing you..." she exhaled in a harsh pant. Her voice had died in her throat again as she evidently struggled with both the notion she was trying to convey and her uncontrolled sobbing. "To me, losing you… it felt even more like losing a part of myself than this," she confessed, raising her stump to designate her maiming. Admitting to this had her oscillate again towards anger and her brow contorted in a mix of agony and irritation. Her wrathful red orbs seemed to flare with the ever-increasing hurricane of different emotions subjugating her. "Losing you, Blake—" she was forced to stop mid-sentence as another sob caught in her throat, which appeared to make her even more aggravated with herself. "Do you even realize?!" she cried out. "It was easier for me to lose my fucking arm than to lose you!" Yang spat this confession like it was an accusation. "And I hate that!" The aggrieved red pierced into Blake, but the tears weren't stopping, and Yang's unreeling mess of feelings quickly kept pouring out. "And I hate that I still wished you were there every single fucking time I woke up," she added, pressing her one hand to her face. She'd evidently lost control of what she meant to keep for herself versus what passed her lips. "And I hate not being angrier with you—ugh!" Her fingers curled a bit over her face, her bangs getting caught up between them. "I hate how fucking happy I was to see you!"

As Yang sobbed, spewing in anger the last remnant of what she'd kept bottled up until now, the last of what she needed out to be able to heal... Blake was very aware of what the blonde was truly saying.

'You're more a part of me than my own flesh. I missed you. I'm happy to see you.'

"And I hate how," Yang had to inhale abruptly, swallowing another sob. "I hate how, in spite of all this fucking mess, you're still all that matters," she finished, almost choking on her tears.

'I still love you.'

Having all but given up keeping any semblance of composure, the blonde then brought what remained of her right arm over her face, over her left hand she was already crying uncontrollably into.

How utterly ripped and torn by emotion Blake felt was indescribable. The guilt, the shame, and the remorse over how badly she'd hurt her… and yet… nevertheless, Yang still felt something for her, and that brought inconceivable happiness and bottomless yearning that brought a debilitating surge of hopefulness and with it the overwhelming need to hold her. It wasn't like she could bear watching her fall apart anyways and, though she knew she had no right to, though she believed it'd be more than deserved were Yang to violently reject her touch, she still dared stepping up to her. The warmth emanating from her body and the smell of her, of her hair, had Blake's heart pulse in her throat. Her stomach was sickeningly tight only from standing a few steps from her, from the thought of chancing holding her.

As one hand slowly grazed the orange fabric of the other woman's top to find her waist, Blake delicately laid her other one to her ex-partner's left arm. It was a tremendous relief that Yang let herself be touched and it encouraged the faunus to dare further. She gently tugged on her arm to guide it away from the blonde's face, away from the way it had almost served as a barrier between their bodies, as she slowly moved closer, very slowly closing in to embrace her.

Yang collapsed around her all at once. Blake couldn't tell if the other woman was crushing her into a hug or if she was holding onto her, so she didn't crumple to the ground, but, all the same, they were in each other's arms and Blake clutched her like allowing any distance between them meant leaving her again. Burying her face in the golden locks somehow magnified the already debilitating powerful feelings that'd overtaken her. And additionally now, her love, how right it felt to feel her body against hers, brought with it an immediate flood of memories and the visceral need to touch her lips to her skin, to kiss her pain away, to love her–… Blake managed to resist everything. She had no right to any of it anymore.

"I'm so sorry," she croaked once more, "I should have been there for you." Her hand buried in the golden locks carefully held her head to her shoulder and Yang pressed her face to her neck, wetting it with tears. The faunus did the very best to swallow her own and keep talking. "I convinced myself you couldn't possibly still want me around after how you got hurt because of me, that I was doing the right thing… but… you're right, I was afraid," she admitted. She pressed her cheek to the side of her head, into messy blonde curls. "You being angry at me scared me," she breathed in a whisper, "but you not being angry at me terrified me," she added with a sob, "because I didn't believe I deserved your kindness."

In response, the other woman gripped her even closer. "I needed you," she breathed shakily, tears unrelenting.

"I know," she acknowledged in a whisper, guilt suffocating her. Her ex-partner's body was violently racked by her sobbing, and Blake shut her eyes tightly. The raw emotion that lingered, along with all her regrets flooded her at once. She knew very well she couldn't in all fairness tell her how much she loved her the same as she couldn't take back the horrible decision she'd made… but she nevertheless needed to say her peace.

"Yang," she called in no more than a whisper. "I need you to know… I'm eternally grateful and I know I'm forever indebted to you," she tenderly murmured in her hair. "You saved me. More times than you know," she admitted, her gaze drifting to the discarded prosthetic limb. "That night, but also with every caring word you've said to me, every time you held me after a nightmare, every one of those innumerable times you've been patient, compassionate and… loving with me." Blake ran both hands down her back and Yang gasped quietly. "So please… please don't think you weren't enough. You were more than I could ever have dreamed," she whispered, daring to brush her lips to her ear as she gently laid a kiss on her head. "I simply didn't know how to accept your kindness then, I didn't think I was worthy of it."

The blonde hung onto her and her shaking, quivering body only reminded Blake that no matter how strong her ex-partner was, no matter her semblance, she truly wasn't was impervious to pain as she wanted everyone else to think, and in that moment… Yang genuinely felt incredibly fragile in her arms. Blake's determination ardently re-ignited deep within herself and she clutched desperately closer. "I know I don't deserve forgiveness or another chance," she whispered, "and I'm not brazen or shameless enough to ask for any of it, but… …I won't let myself fail you again, I promise."

Yang seemed for a second to want to answer her, but she gave up before even attempting. She leaned heavily onto her, and the dark haired faunus realized that the emotion, her tears, all of it, had exhausted her to a point her ex-partner couldn't even stand by herself. So, Blake sat them on the bed, and Yang immediately curled over herself, forehead to her knees, still hiccupping from her uninhibited crying. Blake sat very close, thigh to thigh, and remained silent, slowly rubbing her back. Every interminable minute of listening to her multiplied Blake's resolve be stronger for her sake.

Eventually, the blonde cried herself to exhaustion; her head leaned limply into Blake's lap instead of how she'd been folded over herself. Blake sniffed, slowly combing the golden locks with her fingers, observing her ex-partner's crumpled form as she'd passed out in her curled-up position. Not wanting to disturb or wake her, it took her a while to decide to drag her ex-partner as carefully as she could into the bed to a normal sleeping position. She pulled Yang's boots off her and managed to drape the bedcovers over her to tuck her in. A year ago, she wouldn't have hesitated before stripping her of any other item that would be uncomfortable to sleep in, but in that moment, she felt it would be intrusive to undress her beyond this point.

Blake then sat on the edge of her bed in silence, gaze riveted on her silhouette, relishing in simply… being able to be with her. Yang's eyes were puffy and red from the tears, and her golden hair was an absolute mess, and Blake couldn't remember a time when she had felt so blessed to be able to enjoy the sight of her. She still couldn't believe they'd run into each other this way on another continent – fated… soulmates, came to mind again. All of it was so incredibly surreal and Blake couldn't wrap her mind around it, but the undeniable fact was that they were there. Yang was there. Yang was sleeping just there, and she was real, and Blake could touch her. As if she'd needed to make sure, she had the compulsion to lay her hand on her upper arm, which leisurely rose and fell with her slow breathing. And Blake realized she couldn't bring herself to step away from her, not even to go tell her awaiting teammate whether or not the situation was mendable now that they'd talked. Because not only did it feel wrong to be away from her, but what if it woke her up were she to open the door and exit the room, if only for a few minutes? The idea that Yang might wake up to an empty room again, that Yang might open her eyes to find herself alone, for her to think for even a second that Blake had left again, was one she simply couldn't stomach. And so, after well over an hour of sitting there in silence, she eventually found herself lying down next to her. Blake laid above the bedcovers, still fully dressed, not being as presumptuous as to assume it would be okay to get any closer or get comfortable. She was amply satisfied with being able to see her. With just being with her.

tbc