It works better than it should.

It's easy, to a degree that's almost alarming; two separate pairs of parts coming together, clicking in place, and restarting a forgotten machinery that still runs without much need for troubleshooting. Yang outlines her experiences in all her loops, Blake and Weiss modify their own plans based on them, and Ruby fills in the blanks, hands flying around her face as she postulates on movesets, weapons, and the ways in which their skill sets could combine to be greater than the mere sum of their parts. It'll become a familiar site, Yang knows, the four of them huddled around the table: Weiss already fluent in Ruby-isms, translating her ramblings into neat, concise bullet points; Blake sketching out Yang's words into diagrams and battleplans. Eventually, Yang will speed through it, will hurry them through the bits she already knows so they can continue to add and refine, but she doesn't anticipate the same fatigue to come with the repetition. It's a complex sensation, but she can put it simply enough: working with Ruby, Weiss, and Blake feels right.

This has little effect on Yang's restlessness that night, however.

They skip briefing and check-in, avoid bringing in anyone else at this stage, and spend the day (and a good part of the night) plotting out a simple strategy for the morning, a blueprint for Yang to bring into the next reset and then add to as a group, depending on how the battle goes. They've planned and trained and done all they can do, and Weiss insists on sleep for the four of them fairly early in the evening. She also clears things up with Ironwood, shifting Ruby and Yang's assignment to Blake and Weiss rather than Flynt and Ivori. And riding in with an Atlesian Specialist and a war hero means they have an airship that Weiss has complete command of, allowing them to modify their flight plan and avoid the bottleneck at the start of the fight, one of the larger problems Ruby and Yang have had to account for, already taken care of at the start.

It also means she and Ruby are here, each resting comfortably on one of the two ridiculously plush couches in the Officer's Suite that Blake and Weiss share on the top floor of the command center building. Blake had stumbled over introducing the extravagance (offering her bed first to Yang and then — after Yang had returned with a counteroffer involving sharing it — to Ruby, citing the importance of seclusion to the success of their plans) while Weiss had sunk into it (promising coffee the next morning and showing off the private shower that Ruby and Yang had furiously rock, paper, scissors'd over).

Yang is cleaner, more comfortable, and safer than she's been in years. And yet. She can't lie still, can't relax into it when she burns for more, something closer than it's ever been — just on the other side of a single door — but farther too, at the same time. Without any of the same issues, Ruby sleeps soundly, evidenced by her soft snores, and Yang considers — a thousand times or more — sitting up, walking to Blake's door, and knocking. There are lines she shouldn't cross now, probably, though she has a hard time coming up with a list of specific reasons for the caution (though she knows there are plenty). But, she can think of one, and it's enough to keep her in place; it wouldn't be fair to take so much of Blake and be able to keep it all — from life to life — when Blake would have to start anew. Anything more than what they've shared before would push this inequity too far, and Yang knows — completely, absolutely, without a doubt — that anything she did now, after all the truths they've shared, would most certainly be more.

But lying here — heart beating too fast at this train of thought alone — is more unbearable than anything else, and so she sits up, pushes back the too soft blanket, and pads over to the window. It opens easily, a latch that's clearly gotten a great deal of use. Blake's preferred location for self-reflection makes more sense now, seeing how easy it is to slip out of the suite and — with a single shot's worth of recoil — boost herself onto the roof. Yang's stripped down to shorts and a tank top, and (in a move only borne from knowing the lack of danger in her very immediate future) gone without her boots. She feels the wind more than she typically does, but finds herself soothed by it rather than chilled.

The view is as it always is, though it's later in the night and thus quieter, the party below having died out as reality kicked in. Maybe that has something to do with it, the tingling sense of anticipation that keeps her shoulders tight, even as she sits down at her customary spot at the edge, feet dangling below.

Or maybe she's just waiting.

"You said I always go to the roof tonight," Blake says from behind, and it's not even a surprise, not really. "When I heard you leave the room, I… wondered."

Yang leans back and smiles. It's lazy and crooked and pleased, and all the tension leaves her at the sight of Blake Belladonna — against all odds — climbing back up to the roof of the building, as she always does, despite Yang's interference. The world around her has shifted, all her plans have changed, and still, here she is. There must be something to it, Yang thinks, something about the both of them making the same choice, no matter how the world spins in flux around them. There must be something to it, but for now — for once — Yang doesn't care to speculate. She's far too glad, and wants to bury herself in the simplicity of that. Blake is here and she is glad and for the next hour (maybe two), she'll hold this small pocket of permanence in place, through sheer force of will.

"What'd you wonder?"

Blake sits next to her, clothing as altered as Yangs; battle vest removed, canvas pants gone, leaving only a singlet and leggings in place. Her hair is loose and wild, curls tossed by the wind, and that's not out of the ordinary, but paired with everything else, it leaves her unmasked, in a way Yang hasn't yet seen. (In a way that makes Yang ache, something blowing on coals and spreading ash and fire in her chest, a fierce desire for a world that is a little less cruel.)

"About this. About you. About what we did up here that had you coming back, time and time again." Her gaze turns from the rough ocean waves in the distance to Yang, and she blinks at the transition, like she's surprised at the difference, similarities, or both. "And I wondered why I let you stay. I come up here most nights, but never with anyone else. Not even Weiss."

"I guess I'm just special, then."

The words are thoughtless, a simple joke that falls off her tongue with the same ease most of them do. But the stare that follows — Blake eyes a bit too narrowed, brow a little too pinched, mouth far too set — speaks to something different, a careful and silent examination of intent.

"Maybe you are," Blake says eventually, the look fading completely, her brief smile mirroring Yang's teasing tone. "Will you tell me what we did? After I let you stay?"

The question's a dangerous one, though Yang knows she won't be able to avoid answering; the gold of Blake's eyes flashes like a hypnotist's watch, pulling the answer out onto Yang's face, though she holds back on the verbalization.

"Did it ever go well for you?" she asks instead. "When you told people about the things they'd done on your last go around?"

This time, it's Blake who gives herself away. Her lips twist and Yang reads the sadness there, as plain as words on a page. "No. Not usually."

Yang could have guessed, but she also doesn't care. She owes Blake this much, an equal share in the knowledge she possesses, a better understanding of the heat contained in the air between them, molecules bouncing around, faster than they should.

"We talk about fate — funny, in retrospect — and the fabric of the universe. I flirt, you kiss me, you tell me you're not looking for any distractions, and I leave." She shrugs. "Simple as that."

Blake's not as subtle as she probably thinks she is, when her stare dips down to Yang's lips.

"That's probably for the best." She takes a bit too long to pull her gaze away, and overcompensates when she does, looking up and out, into the night sky. "Leaving, I mean. You shouldn't get attached. There's no room for that in your loops. You can't take anything with you."

It's an odd thing to say when Yang's opinion is something of the opposite; she'll take everything with her, but she'll be the only one. Blake would be right to caution, if only Yang wasn't already past the point where she might listen. (If only there'd been a point when she ever would have.)

"First, it was all about distractions and now this." She falls back on an easy grin and drawling words, staples of her particular brand of misdirection. "If you're not interested in all of this you can just say so, Blake. I promise I can take it."

There's no change to Blake's posture when she responds, still coiled up tight within herself, still too close and too far at once, still some kind of planet or sun or star with a gravitational field that won't let go of Yang (can't let go of Yang), entirely unaffected by Blake's (prudent) wariness of what might happen if she relaxes into the pull and crashes into the surface underneath.

"You know it's not that."

And Yang does.

Some forces exist without intention, can't be reasoned with or rationalized or altered, and this is simply one of them. But there's choice too, and today, Blake's is clear, and so she leans back onto her elbows (a precious foot or two of space) and keeps herself from falling.

-

Until later, when Blake makes a choice again, chooses to abandon a previous one and press against her, curl her fingers around the edge of Yang's jaw and pull her close enough that Yang can fill her lungs with her exhale, unhelpful by way of the body's necessity for gas exchange, but a perfect adaption too, a new means of survival.

"It's not fair to you," Blake whispers, and Yang falls back again on her easy grin, her drawling words.

"Fair is overrated," she says, the movement of her mouth brushing her bottom lip against Blake's, in the briefest of touches. "And besides, this is my favorite part."

(Falling is easy, after all.)

They slip into an easy ten step pattern, tried and true after not all that long:

Yang explains everything to Ruby

She and Ruby sneak into the training room

Yang (stares for a solid minute at Blake, at the curve of her back and the movement of the muscles in her arms and) tells Blake she's looping

Weiss is kind of a bitch until she isn't and Yang spends a solid five minutes teasing her with whatever new information she's picked up in her last reset

Yang explains what they did last time, catches Ruby up on the moves she's designed and the modifications she's added to Blake or Weiss's weapons, and all-around brings everyone up to speed on the state of things

They add to the plan, based on the events Yang witnessed before her last death

They go into battle

They make it a little further than the time before

They die

Repeat

There are highlights, of course:

Weiss — with more reluctance than Yang has ever seen anyone possess — tells a story involving a bottle of whiskey, three crates of Dust, a tightwire suspended between two trees, and Gambol Shroud, a story meant to be employed by Yang in case of an emergency where she has to convince Weiss to work with them and Blake isn't around. Yang, of course, uses this new power with utmost responsibility and brings it up almost every repeat.

Ruby adds a quick eject chamber to Myrtenaster, allowing Weiss to deploy two types of Dust in quick succession (ice followed quickly by fire creating a heavy fog to cover their quick movements out of the more crowded sections of the battlefield), and a gravity dust component to each half of Blake's weapon (sword and sheath).

And Blake. (Blake in general.) Against better judgement, sense, and odds, Blake finds her. Come nightfall, Yang goes to the roof — at different points of the night, using every alternative route, avoiding all the squeaking floorboards and ungreased latches she learns over the course of her endless loops — but Blake always follows. Yang keeps track of the differing excuses (I heard a sound or I needed some fresh air or I always come up here at night and obviously you already know that), but the end result is always the same: as long as Yang goes to the roof, Blake will find her there.

("Have you gotten tired of this yet?" Blake asks her one night, a particularly late one that ends with them lying on the roof, the back of their hands pressed against each other.

"No." An easy answer, really, all things considered. "This makes up for all the rest of it.")

And so Yang goes. Every time.

Because it makes up for the rest.

The first time she watches Blake die, these words are put to the test.

The beginning of the fight is always the same, mainly because it's such an effective starting point; they save thousands by stopping the Lancers from bombing the fleet alone, and the impact ripples, changing the flow of the battle. Their ship flies in early, and it's a tidy bit of work that Weiss manages, sectioning off the nest and sending her Arma Gigas to decimate the majority of the ambush before it takes off. After that, it's careful movements and timing, directed by Yang, shouting out reminders over the noise of the battle — stop and wait and five more seconds — surely nonsensical to the soldiers around them. It's a different way of fighting and not one Yang cares for; the precision required doesn't allow for any diversions or improvisation. But it's effective, leading along the only three people she can allow herself to concentrate on, at least until her memories run out. And by the time that happens, she's usually the first to die, out in front and absolutely fed up of counting her steps and leaving good people behind. The knowledge that they'll be alive and well the next day never helps; she's tossed out more than one reset by diving in to save a random passerby she hadn't noticed in the loop before. It's the small things sometimes, even the good intentioned ones, that can spell disaster later.

Her own death is far easier to take.

It's far and away her preference over being the last woman standing, regardless of how often she's reminded (by Weiss, mostly) that it's a tactical advantage she should aim for in each loop. She never does, and always favors those moments right before she's taken down, unbound by restrictions, to the rest of it.

But on Yang's forty-ninth reset, Blake is a little too fast, a bit too aware, and she jumps in and takes a hit that should have been Yang's.

There's no ambiguity in it; Blake's aura is low and the strike rips through the rest of it and part of Blake too, a high arch of blood spurting out of some vital artery as though done by the heavy flick of a paintbrush. Yang darts towards her before she hits the ground, only held back by another swing of one of the Mimic's tentacles and then, a second later, Ruby's shout.

"Yang! Finish it first! Center mass!" Things have spiraled fast, as they always do, and Ruby's lost half her cloak since Yang last saw her, not a minute ago. She looks bare without it, harder somehow, or maybe that's just the sharpness in her tone. "Weiss, Ice Flower!"

High impact bombs of ice hit the four main limbs of the Mimic in quick succession, each blooming into a spiky flower that digs into the squirming, dark flesh of the thing. Two more shots pin down a couple tentacles and Ruby and Weiss, springing away from each other, pin down another two more with the blades of their weapons. It's simple to finish it off after that; Yang slides in front of the incapacitated Grimm, and blasts upwards with enough force to crack the ground under her feet and bring her fist directly through the face of the Mimic, nothing but ash before she's reached the peak of her trajectory.

Which is good, because another second later, she's propelling herself over to Blake's body, landing a few feet away and stumbling forward, landing on her knees alongside her. There's too much blood, enough to soak the knees of her pants and — when she rolls Blake onto her back and fits her palm to the back of her neck (carefully, carefully) — her hands too.

Blake's eyes are closed and her breathing is shallow, but she is breathing, and that's enough for Yang, enough for now, enough to shift her — as gently as she can — into a more comfortable position, head pillowed by one of Yang's hands. She doesn't notice the charging Grimm, not until it's ash in the air around her, but she's not sure she would have cared even if she had.

"Yang." Weiss lowers her weapon slowly (with a prominent tremor) and she looks anywhere else, at anything other than the dying woman lying on the ground in front of her. "We need to go."

The shaky breath Blake's lets out seems like her last, but then she takes another, stuttering but deep. Yang breathes too, and doesn't look up at the woman standing above her, nor at the oncoming footsteps, distinct and familiar enough that she knows they belong to Ruby.

"You can fuck right off if you think — "

"How many times have you gone through this now? How many times have we told you that nothing else matters but getting you as far as possible each day? She'll be alive tomorrow. Get up, Yang."

Ruby takes a step closer. Fires off a shot that surely takes out a wayward Grimm. She's silent, otherwise, but Yang can feel her gaze.

"Not for you." Yang finally looks up then, finds Weiss trembling everywhere now, and immediately regrets her words.

"That's the only person alive on Remnant that gives a single fuck about me." Weiss pronounces each word carefully, a weight hanging from every one or maybe a noose. (Either way, they sway.) "Don't mistake my sacrifice for callousness. But we need to go."

A wet cough silences both of them, but the soft wheeze — an approximation of a laugh — has Weiss dropping onto her knees, earlier words discarded.

"You act like you've... never seen me die before, Yang," Blake whispers. "That… can't be right. Been… over fifty loops. Hasn't it?"

Seventy-six, but it doesn't change her answer.

"I always make sure it's me first." The fingers of her free hand wipe at the blood pooling in the corner of Blake's lip (she'd never known the indent was so pronounced, until so much red congregates there).

"Idiot," Weiss breathes, laughs, or maybe sighs. "You complete and utter — "

"I bet you did the same." She's ignoring Weiss, of course, focused only on the woman who uses her last bit of strength to tilt her cheek into Yang's touch. "When it was you and Weiss, I know you did the same."

Weiss makes a noise, like this should be news to her, but isn't, like she's figured out long ago Blake had never practiced what she now preached.

"Blake — "

It might be a shushing noise that escapes Blake's lips, but it's probably simply a tortured exhale. Weiss responds to it like it's the former, and cuts her own words off with a guillotine.

"Maybe that's why," Blake murmurs. "I always… think you seem… so familiar. Maybe I just see… me."

That's not it at all. Yang would say it. Would tell her. But then Blake dies and the Grimm are upon them and she doesn't have a chance.

Next time, she thinks. At a different time, in a different place, next time.

She blames a lot of things on that moment. The recklessness that follows, the speed with which they make it to the training center the next morning, the way she nearly hyperventilates when she sees Blake again, stretching in the middle of an army of holographic Grimm. There's a new desperation to her that's too raw to hold back, and everyone must know it, though Yang does (in her opinion) an admirable job of laying things out when it's her turn to do so.

But it's not enough, and maybe that's why Blake knows, when she finds her on the roof that night. Maybe that's why her hands find Yang earlier than they should, less hesitant than they normally are.

"You shouldn't have gotten so attached," Blake says, but her fingers are already on Yang's skin, already under her shirt, already leaving the marks that Yang wishes were more permanent.

"It was already too late, the first time you told me that," Yang admits, and doesn't care, not at all, not even a little. Blake had been dead and now she's here and Yang's left arm trembles, can't find purchase on Blake's hip, can't find a way to separate the two versions of Blake, one with blood spilled and one with it held, for at least another several hours more.

"This makes it harder," Blake insists, but her lips find Yang's neck, her teeth dig into her pulse, her tongue runs along the bruises she leaves.

I don't care, Yang says or maybe thinks or maybe breathes. I'll bring you back every time. I'll choose you every time.

Blake has a scar running down the whole of her side, across her ribs and hip and thigh. That night, the first night she can see the extent of it, Yang kisses along its length.

"You'll end up with scars worse than this," Blake warns, tries, but still reaches, hands always reaching to drag Yang close.

"Cover my body in them," Yang murmurs, because she doesn't care, doesn't care, doesn't care. They use their shed clothing as a mattress, they fight off the cold by pressing close, and Yang doesn't care. "After all this, you can use them as a map. I'll keep them all for you. I don't care."

(She cares. Far too much.)

When the first vision hits, she should be prepared, but isn't. Blake had called it a pull, an invitation, and it's that and more. There's a rope around her neck and it's dragging her close, it's promising victory, it's showing her where she's meant to be. (A hallway with glowing purple lights, dozens of high arched windows letting in the unnatural light from the outside, stretches of cold floor with etchings carved into the stone.) They are waiting, defenseless, and the key to victory is there. She just has to push. Keep pushing. Make it there. She has to go. Now.

When she wakes, she's covered in sweat, on her feet before she's fully conscious, and apparently, she's screaming, loud enough to wake the whole of the suite.

"First vision?" Weiss drawls, but offers her a glass of water, which Yang drowns in one, long gulp. It does little to still her shake, does absolutely nothing for the pounding headache, but Blake's hand — gentle on her back, urging her to sit back down — manages both.

"The first one was the worst for me," she assures her. "It won't feel worse than dying, next time."

Blake is literally the only person on Remnant who can say this with any confidence, and so Yang nods, taking in another few long breaths in relief.

"Eighty-three repeats before your first vision," Weiss muses, and almost sounds impressed. "Maybe you'll get more repeats out of this than Blake did, for whatever reason."

It's getting harder to concentrate; Blake's fingers slide from her back to her shoulder to the nape of her neck, and then — after Yang sits back down on the couch — into her hair, short nails scraping gently against the scalp. The reflexive nature of the motion holds the ghost of memory, and Yang sinks into them, her eyes closing.

"Yang doesn't handle pain like most people do," Ruby says, voice quiet but proud. "She uses it to make herself stronger. Maybe that messes with the whole, headache-vision-mind thing."

"The more time we have, the better." Weiss's tone is odd enough that Yang forces her eyes back open; there's a pinch to the woman's brow that she doesn't recognize (not as anger or annoyance or superiority) and it takes Yang a moment to realize that Weiss looks confused, eyes darting back and forth between the figures of Blake and Yang. "I suppose the rest doesn't matter."

Blake hums softly, fingers not stopping or slowing, despite Weiss's stare. "Did you see the castle?"

"Yeah. The castle. The halls. The stone. The candles. We have to go there." The words slip out before she can process them and something beneath her skull pulses once, hard. "It showed me a path. Which, obviously, we can't take. Every step of it will be a trap. But there's no getting around the end game."

"No," Blake murmurs. "There isn't. But it sounds the same as what I saw."

Leaning up against the counter across from them, Weiss nods. "The plan stays the same. We keep pressing forward."

Always the same. Always pressing on.

Yang falls back asleep with Blake's hands still in her hair, just to try something new.

"Why did you do it?"

The room is the same, though the mist has scaled back. There is a vanity, a bed, a window, and — same as before — a woman. She is still beautiful, still young and ancient, and she still smiles in the same way when Yang asks her a question.

"I loved a man and he died. I went back thousands of times trying to prevent it."

This time, the woman is standing, looking towards the window that Yang can't quite manage to see out of. This is not a place for jokes, Yang knows, but makes one anyways.

"All for a man? We're not much alike after all."

She doesn't laugh, nor does Yang expect her to, but she does smile again; her teeth are straight and white, but sharp, too, somehow.

"No? He was a valiant hero. A protector of all of mankind. He spilled his blood for those around him without thought. He saved me, but not in the usual way; I tried to save him and failed, time and time again." The woman spreads out her hands, and Yang looks away on instinct, though there's no gaze to avoid. "He died of different things, but always died. Once it was from the sword of an enemy — I went back and countered the blow. Another time it was from an arrow, shot from afar — I went back and gave him a shield. He died of fire, drowning, the cold; I went back and brought water, a fleet of ships, a crate of blankets. Once it was sickness — I went back farther than I ever have and invented a cure. But he died. Always."

"How?"

A simple question, but one of the few Yang cannot answer. (The rest she understands: going back, trying thousands of times, the ache of watching a life lost over and over. She doesn't question why, only how.)

"My semblance." The woman circles her finger through the air and the mist turns into a vortex, a portal, a window to something new; time rewinds within it, slow at first and then fast, back to the beginning of a story Yang can piece together. (A beautiful woman cries, a handsome man dies, she waits at his bed, he grows ill, they share a picnic together under a clear sky, they return to the castle she'd grown up in, he offers her a ring, they battle monsters together, they fall in love, they run away together, they share a first kiss, they meet, the woman does not know him yet and she is alone.)

"It's not time travel, not as you may think of it," she continues, banishing the scenes with a flick of her wrist. "I called it Time Manipulation, but even that is a simplification. I could only go back, never forward, but there was no concern of running into myself. I lived again, you see. I took the place of those who came before me. I could change much, but never everything."

This, Yang knows. Over a hundred attempts in, and she's learned which strings to pull to get the result she needs, but only in minor ways; each tug shifted the fabric of the world around her, changing things just enough that the next pull was different, could have disastrous side effects. You could only change so much without upsetting the sequence of things, still somehow leading to the same result.

"Do you believe in destiny?" the woman asks, soft, but not hesitantly, as though she's following the paths of Yang's thoughts, tracking each individual line.

"I believe… we're given a chance to choose our own." Because she still does, despite everything. Because she must. "But I think there are choices that are better. That we're nudged toward, or something like it."

The woman sighs, and Yang sees she's not so much sad or even disappointed, but remembering the sensations of the emotions, now a concept more than anything else.

"You will learn otherwise." The fog starts to thicken, obscuring all but the form of the woman, eyes too blue, too bright, too wild to be benevolent. "There are some things you will never be able to change."

Progress is slow and hard and involves Yang dying another twenty times. Another fifty times. Another hundred times more. The visions continue to come, the headaches get worse, and she dies. She doesn't lose track of the number, not exactly, but she loses herself in the fog of repetition and looks for ways to rebel.

Today, she wears her bandana around her neck, tying it in the morning and breaking out into a stupid grin when Ruby notices the change with a scrunched up face and throwaway comment about hiding a hickey. (Blake almost never leaves them, but even if she did, they'd only get erased with the reset; this is a thought Yang pushes away, for the good of her mood.)

It's the little things.

Of course, by the time she's finished with the necessities (telling Ruby, finding Blake, catching everyone up on past ventures, planning for the next day, and an absolutely grueling six hours of physical training), the novelty has worn off, and she finds the whole thing unbearably itchy and restrictive, ripping the piece of fabric off and dropping onto the floor as soon as Weiss announces they're done for the night.

"You being allowed to go full Drill Sergeant is my least favorite thing about all this," she groans, stretching each limb out as far as they'll go, until she's spread-eagle on the hard light ground. "And that includes the dying, thank you very much."

"Did you start out as this much of a whiner, or has it only gotten worse?" Weiss fires back.

Somewhere, seemingly far away, Ruby groans, and her voice is muffled by whatever she's pressed into. Having witnessed this same scene many times, Yang would guess it's the floor; Ruby has a tendency to drop face-first onto it, towards the end of the day.

"How can you still have the energy to bicker?"

"I actually think it gives them energy, Ruby." Blake's voice — dry and amused — manages this more than any particular bit of snipping with Weiss, but Yang's not about to admit it, though maybe her smile does precisely that when she opens her eyes and finds Blake staring down at her, image flipped upside down by the positioning.

"That's only half true." She sits up a little, enough to knock her head into Blake's shin and nod to the spot next to her. "Whoever's winning drains energy from the other. So like, I get energy from it, but Weiss is an old, depleted battery by the end."

The water bottle Weiss tosses across the room gets impressively close to hitting Yang in the face; she's only saved by Blake, catching it as she sits, as graceful as she is with everything else.

"I totally would have caught that," Yang says, and Blake drops the bottle directly onto her stomach without further preamble, the impact (and Yang's subsequent groan) loud enough to be heard. Weiss's resulting laugh echoes around the room, Blake's grin stretches wide, and Ruby mumbles something unintelligible.

It's the little things, sometimes, that makes the looping bearable, and somehow, Yang's found an awful lot of little things among the three other people in this room.

"You're both awful," Yang declares. "I'm going to Ironwood right away to request new teammates for my journey through the repeated apocalypse."

Only Ruby laughs at that, a half-hearted snort that sticks in the tension that's filled the room like a gas, and Yang sits up further still, searching for Blake first (her lips and gaze pulled down) and then Weiss (still as glass, and likely just as breakable).

"Alright, so clearly this involves a story that Ruby and I haven't been filled in on," she continues, words as droll as she can make them, carefully leaving room for a quick escape by either woman. "But I'm getting the sense that I was right when I told Ruby that bringing Ironwood in would be a super bad call."

Still a decent distance away, but no longer muffled by the floor, Ruby's voice once again rings clear. "What? You didn't tell me that."

"Really?" Yang winces, trying to pull apart the timelines that so easily fold atop each other, but eventually she waves it off. "Must have been another time. Cut me some slack! It's kind of hard to keep track of fifty billion lives."

"You aren't allowed to increase your number whenever you — "

"We told Ironwood once," Weiss interrupts, and Ruby cuts herself off so quickly, she might as well be using her semblance. "I suggested doing so every time, apparently, but after a hundred repeats or so, Blake decided it was worth a shot. About ten minutes after we finished speaking with him on a secure line, we were both court martialed, incapacitated, and put on an airship heading to Atlas."

"They told us it was for a greater good." Next to her, Blake hasn't moved, and still doesn't when Yang's hand fits to the curve of her knee. "I still don't know where they took us, but I do know it wasn't meant to be our final destination. I don't think they could fly us all the way into Atlas, not in the middle of the battle. But wherever it was, it was cold. And old. I was in some kind of hospital bed when I woke up. My hands and feet were chained to the posts, and there had stuck an IV full of some clear liquid in my arm. They must have guessed what I'd try to do, because there weren't any sharp objects in the room. If not for Weiss, I would have spent the rest of my life in rooms like that. Or worse ones."

Blake doesn't look up as she speaks, but Yang doesn't remove her gaze for a moment. It takes effort to still her hand, resting on the thick leather covering Blake's skin, but she manages it, even if she can't quite contain her erratic heartbeat in the same way.

"I don't remember any of it, of course, but Blake says I was quite drugged up when I broke into her room and slit her throat," Weiss says, crisp and prim, covering her distress with the products of her childhood. "So that's some consolation, I suppose."

Head shaking furiously, Blake looks up for the first time. "Don't. You saved my life. My permanent one."

It's a conversation they've clearly had many times, and Yang glances over Blake's shoulder towards Ruby who — despite knowing her for less than a day — has placed herself at Weiss's side, a light hand on her shoulder.

"Easy choice, really," Yang murmurs. "A life as a science experiment… I'd take death any day. Death isn't so bad once you've done it a few times. All of you remember that if I'm ever in a bad spot." She pauses. Then clicks her tongue against her teeth. "Or. No, wait. Sorry."

Blake's exhale almost sounds like a laugh; Yang will take it, since it comes with a hint of a smile, growing ever slightly when she picks Yang's purple bandana off the ground, winding and unwinding it around her knuckles.

"How about you keep working with me and Weiss, and we'll do our best to avoid any similar situation."

"Sounds like a pretty good deal to me!" Ruby chimes in, knocking into Weiss's shoulder and then zipping around her in three complete circles, red petals flying in the air.

It's not as obvious as Blake's (or maybe just not as obvious to her), but there's a small upturn of the lips there as well. Yang counts the unspoken mission as a success, and flips to her feet, pulling her left arm across her body and stretching out the muscle of her shoulder.

"Yeah, I guess I'll stick with you two." She offers a hand to Blake, grinning down at her. "I guess you're pretty okay to be around."

Blake ignores the gesture, instead rocking forward onto her knees, brandishing the bandana, and leaning in to loop it just above Yang's boot with a quick double knot. Only after this does she pull herself up, close enough for Yang to see the variations of gold flecked through her eyes, hand hot on the skin of Yang's palm.

"Good to know we've made such a remarkable impression, after all your loops."

Yang forgets to continue the joke.

(She also forgets her timelines again, misses out on the significance of the action, like fireworks overhead while she bends down to pick up a stray, dull coin.)

"Oh, you have no idea," she murmurs. "Not yet."

But the press of Blake's body seems to increase rather than abate, and her tongue darts out to wet her lips with a motion that's a bit too slow to be practical, so maybe not. Maybe she's picked up things just fine.

Blake couldn't possibly remember the conversation ten resets later, and so Yang doesn't blame her for her hesitation when the time comes where killing Yang would be considered a mercy.

This time, the killing blow misses anything vital, anything that might take her quickly, but does enough damage that she'll not be getting up without the help of a healer. Blake drags her out of immediate danger, behind the shell of a burned out truck that had been dropped in, seemingly unhelpful for any reason other than the one they're using it for now.

It's not the pain that bothers her — it's so rarely the pain — but her legs don't seem to work and Blake's breathing is too fast and too shallow and her eyes are wild and it's not an outrageous thought, to think this repeat might be a wash.

"Seems like it's about that time." She aims for a draw, falls short with a raspy whisper. The difference is enough that Blake shakes her head and pulls her closer, until they're both slouched against the trunk, Blake's arms around her, holding her up as much as the metal. It feels nicer than it should, face tucked into Blake's shoulder in the way she doesn't allow herself to do in other situations it might be considered far more acceptable (but in their case, isn't).

"Do you ever think about what happens to the world you leave behind?" she asks, instead of putting her blade to Yang's neck, like she's meant to.

"I try not to." It's the honest response; thinking about everyone else in each reset having to carry on until the Grimm killed every living thing on the planet puts a stone in her stomach. It blinking out of existence as soon as Yang has gone is maybe worse. (The quick death of a hundred and fifty worlds, and Yang sparked each one.)

"Do you want me to end it?"

She tries for clinical. Yang's been with Blake for nearly three hundred days now (half as many resets), and she's learned to trace the inflections of her voice, chart them against known data, put together a map of the things Blake says and doesn't mean, the careful defenses she lays out not for herself, but for the people around her. Today, she tries to do the same with a neutral tone that Yang dismantles with a soft huff, as much effort as blowing away a bit of dust.

"Never did much like the idea of you killing me. Like it less when Weiss goes on and on about it." A sharp pain lances through her stomach, and she can't quite hide her grunt of discomfort. "Any tips on making her sound a little less unconcerned about putting a bullet through my brain?"

Blake doesn't laugh at the joke, but then, it's not a particularly funny one. It's hard to mind, tucked into Blake's side as she is; if the blood blossoming on her shirt (red on a sunny background, a flower on a bright day) doesn't detract from the contentment blooming at the same rate, she suspects very little will. She's found contentment in stranger places, probably.

"I think we were meant to be different," Blake whispers, soft as a secret. "Whenever you tease Weiss or Ruby teaches us a move we've learned a hundred times before or you smile at me like I'm — " She's pressed too close to see the shake of Blake's head, but she feels it just as well. "Sometimes I swear I can see through the holes."

Tears in the universe's intricate weaving.

If there are holes, Yang's the one who has been ripping them apart, one thread at a time.

"Well if this is the universe's attempt at a course correct," she grumbles. "It's the shittiest one I've ever seen. Sending me back a measly day and a half? Come on."

She's bleeding into Blake now, red seeping into her vest. It's not her color, and for a moment, Yang wishes her blood could take on another hue, purple or gold.

"Do you have some notes, then?" Blake asks, mouth pressed to the crown of Yang's head, a trace of amusement in her puff of breath. "For the gods or fate or the universe at large?"

Yang doesn't have to think. Maybe it's the blood loss, or maybe she's thought about it before. The words spill out, regardless, faster than any Grimm converging on their location, than Ruby speeding around the perimeter and holding them off, than the minutes ticking down on this life and every other one.

"Send us back. All the way. All of us. We'll meet at school. Weiss will glyph her way out of Atlas and you'll still run away, but in the right direction this time. I'll win you over by taking on a hundred Grimm without breaking a sweat. You won't have to win me over because I'll be crazy about you at first glance. Ruby will hug Weiss into submission until she forgets she's supposed to be cold. The world will still fall apart, but we'll have known each other for a decade, from the start. We'll have had enough time to get it right."

She's exhausted her remaining words in one go, but it feels worth it. She usually feels cold before she dies, but not now. She coughs, once, and Blake's hold tightens around her, squeezing out a few more. "How does that sound?"

"It sounds — " Blake's inhale is staggered, steps rather than a ramp; it catches on each ledge on the way up. "You should be in charge. I think you've gotten it all right."

When the Goliaths finally overrun them, Yang finds she's smiling.

Some loops are easier than others, but there's one that Yang marks as the worst.

Her memories of Ruby go back to the roots. Take a scalpel to Yang's brain and you'd find an image of a baby swaddled in red at the core of it, the first visual a three year-old Yang had seen fit to file away. Stacked atop that like strata sits everything else; the first time Ruby had said her name (dropping the 'g', but beaming a gummy smile), Ruby's first attempt at putting together a weapon (a too-large sword of wood, cobbled together with twigs and twine), the hug Ruby had wrapped her in when she'd learned they could attend Beacon at the same time, the formation of ROSY with Ruby as their leader, the sobs that wracked Ruby's still-small frame when they'd lost it all. Yang had never considered the moment where she'd have to lay down the final layer, a handful of dirt over a metaphorical coffin, but she's forced into it now, Ruby's body clutched tight to her chest as she runs, ignoring everything else.

The strike hadn't been fatal. There's blood — there's always blood — but Yang has to believe this. It doesn't always have to be fatal. Behind her, Weiss swears loud enough to be heard over the pounding in her ears, but she keeps running. They're at the edge of the battlefield, further than they've ever gone, finally off the beach and onto rocky ground, covered in crystals and boulders and dried up pools of Grimm. She'd take comfort in the novelty if her sister weren't unmoving in her arms.

"Yang! We're far enough!" It's Blake's voice and so Yang stops, fast enough to leave a skidmark in the barren ground, dust puffing up from the heel of her boot.

The battle's behind them, a trail of Grimm — picked off by Blake and Weiss — leading back to it, though Yang's not sure how far she's run. Miles, maybe. She feels like taking off again, muscles of her legs twitching as Weiss and Blake stumble closer, both clearly without breath, but approaching with a caution not unlike that employed when coming near a wild animal (hands outstretched, eyes trained).

"Put her down," Blake continues, as gentle as she can manage, shoulders moving up and down with each gulping inhale. There's a cut in her forehead, blood smeared across her temple and dripping down the side of her face, and Yang finds herself thinking that it'd probably end up causing a scar, if any of them were able to retain the marks of the damage they'd suffered. "Weiss has some first aid training, remember? Put her down. She'll take a look."

She hesitates, but only because her thoughts refuse to be sorted enough to cause action, neurons darting about, skipping crucial pathways. Only Ruby's wheeze of her name, painful and breathless, kicks her out of it, clarity forming in the panic.

"I've got you," she says and lowers herself to her knees with care borne from concern for her sister rather than her own kneecaps. "It's alright."

It's not. That much is clear once Ruby has been placed gently on the ground. There's not as much blood as Yang had feared (a few scrapes and scratches), but Ruby's aura had broken before she'd been slammed into a solid wall of rock with the force of a whip crack, and the bruises already forming on her skin speak to worse problems. Weiss crouches down, removes some of the light armor, and pushes some of the remaining red and white fabric out of the way. The bruising on Ruby's chest is worse — much worse — and Weiss sucks in a breath.

"Yang," Ruby tries again, but has to suck in another breath before she can continue. It doesn't seem to do much. There's no lift of her chest, and there's a wheezing sound within the inhale that reminds Yang a bit of a tire losing air pressure.

"Just relax. Just stay still and… relax." She scoots in closer, lifts Ruby's head into her lap, brushes out her hair with her fingers, like she'd always done when they were kids. "Just — rest, and your aura will kick back in. We have time. It's alright."

"She's punctured a lung," Weiss says quietly. "One of her ribs must have — "

"It's alright." This time, the word echoes, loud enough that Weiss turns her head away and Blake — standing behind them and watching the direction they'd come from — puts a hand on Yang's shoulder. "You just need a little time. We can — let's play the game, yeah? We can just — I'll start this time. I can start."

"Yang, we — " Whatever Weiss sees when Yang looks up, it has her cutting off her words. She nods, mostly to herself, and stands, brushing off her pants in a futile gesture. "I'll keep watch. Ruby, try to — just keep breathing."

Ruby blinks up at her and smiles; it'd be more reassuring if her lips didn't hold a slight tinge of blue. She's expecting Blake to follow Weiss, but she merely sits, face carefully blank as she takes Ruby's hand in her own and gives it a small squeeze.

"One day," Yang begins, but has to stop and start again when the words tremble. "One day, little Suzy Shoeman decided she would go to the store for cookies."

"Fortunately," Ruby rasps. "On her way there she — " A cough wracks her small frame, forces her to take another few laborious breaths. " — she met a giant…. friendly… bear."

Yang almost smiles at the reversal. Almost. "Unfortunately — "

"No." Ruby coughs again. There's liquid in the sound. "No. Fortunately."

She smooths out Ruby's bangs, tries to ignore how clammy the skin underneath feels, and continues as directed. Of course. "Fortunately, the bear was also going out for cookies, so they decided to travel together. His name was Bartholomew."

"Fortunately, Bartholomew was — was — was — " Ruby shivers, the whole of it rippling her spine. Blake tightens her grip and her expression, her free hand reaching out for Yang, cupping the elbow of the arm that Yang only realizes then is shaking. "Bartholomew was nice," Ruby sighs, once she settles. "He was so nice."

When Yang laughs, she feels like she might choke; her throat's too tight for the sound to escape unhindered. "We're not going to get anywhere with only using 'fortunately's."

"Says... who? Maybe sometimes it — " Ruby's eyes close and she sighs with the action, a terribly final sort of thing. "Maybe sometimes, everything comes up 'fortunately'."

Yang can't think of a time when that was a case. Can't think of anything she wants more, even if it's just the once (a single fucking day). The yearning makes its way into her voice, turns the question into a plea.

"When?"

Distant sounds from the battle hardly reach her ears, and so she's very much aware when the careful, rattling breaths start to slow. But still, Ruby smiles.

"Next time. Maybe next time."

Or maybe the next one, because it's not this: trying not to break down as she recounts her latest life, getting distracted every five seconds by Ruby's (open, alive) silver eyes, flying into a rage as soon as Weiss suggests it'd been a successful attempt.

The last one leaves a crack in the table where her fist lands and a pain — a soothing balm — lancing through her left arm. It hadn't occurred to her to use the prosthetic, though the damage would have been more and the hurt less, but perhaps that speaks to the state of her mind as well as anything.

"A success? My sister died in my arms and you're calling this a success?"

She pulls back at Weiss's flinch; it's slight, but clear — an instinct frozen in time — and after three-hundred days of similar ones Yang's sorted out the gist enough to know better. She can't quite quench the flame burning in her throat, fogging her mind with smoke, but she curls her fingers tight against her palm and tries. Her deep breaths don't particularly help, either, but Blake's knowing gaze, intense in the volume of its empathy, has just enough of a cooling effect that she's able to disperse the rest of the heat.

Weiss gives her that time, at least, though there's no mercy beyond that moment.

"Yes," she says simply. "Our mission is to make it off the beach and loop back around to the castle. We've finally made it past the hardest part. What could be more of a success?"

"How about all of us making it past the hardest part?" Yang grits.

"Obviously, that would be ideal, but at some point — "

"No. Not at some point." Her ire is rising again, her left hand shaking, and Ruby — who'd abandoned her typical fiddling with the gadgetry in the room after Yang had gotten into the details of her death — steps closer, her hand finding Yang's elbow.

"You don't get it," Yang continues, flatly now. "This wasn't a build up. We have to go back and redo the whole last part, because I'm not leaving my sister behind. I don't give a fuck if she's there when I wake up the next day. We're all making it to that castle or it won't work. Got it?"

For a minute, it's a staring contest, but Weiss breaks first, rubbing along her forearm, and avoids Yang's eyes for a while after. (What she'd seen there, Yang can't begin to guess, but she imagines it involves a combination of anger, desperation, and hopelessness that can't be easy to view. It's not easy to bear, either.)

"It's only in the last push that things went wrong," Blake cuts in, voice measured. "We'll tweak things, like we always do, and make sure we all make it off the beach alive. Yang's right; we've had far more success with a group of four, and even though there'll be less Grimm from here on out, we'll need everyone for the final push. They know we're coming."

Yang's shoulders lose their tension and — after a long moment — Weiss nods, settling the matter. One last squeeze from Ruby before she leaves her side pushes Yang back into a place of ease, and she settles into her chair, smooths her hands over the warped surface of the table in front of her.

"Very well." Weiss doesn't know her yet, and so there's no particular warmth to her tone, but Yang thinks of her kneeling down in the dirt, of the careful press of her hand to Ruby's bruised stomach, and inserts the inflection on her behalf. "Yang, walk us through it, please. From the top."

-

With each loop, the walkthrough and training take longer and longer. By the time they finish, it's dark, late, and far past the time they should have eaten. Blake slips away to grab food for the group, Ruby races to the shower, and Yang's left sitting on the too comfortable but now familiar couch where she'll eventually end up sleeping for the night. (Or lying down until Ruby's snores start and Weiss's light clicks off, until she can escape to the roof and wait for Blake, who still always finds her.) There's variation in the moment that follows; most of the time, Weiss adjourns to her room, though sometimes she stays, offering water, asking for clarification on a certain moment, or — only once — sitting with Yang in absolute silence until Blake comes back. Today, Weiss deviates from all of these options, leaning up against the nearest pillar and folding into herself, holding her crossed arms tight against her stomach.

"When I was younger, I always dreamed of going to Beacon," she says. There's no lead-in and she knows it, diving in and focusing on the ground. "Life in Atlas was… difficult. My father had high expectations, ones that involved me profiting from the war rather than protecting people from it. I was the heir to the Schnee Dust Company, you see; my sister had disobeyed my father when she joined the military and my brother was still too young. I thought if I could leave I might gain a modicum of independence. I thought I might make a name for myself outside of my… name." She smiles, weakly and still at the floor. "But before I was able to join a school of my choosing, Ironwood came to the Estate. He told me that if I came to Atlas Academy, he would accept me a year early. He would fast track me through the program. He would help me rise in the ranks quickly enough to join my sister, his most trusted Special Operative."

There's a new honesty in the tilt of her lips then, wistful and sad, but earnest. "How could I say no to that? Winter was — out of everyone involved in my childhood — Winter was the one that cared. Not… traditionally. She was hard on me and never held back criticism, but she… taught me what I needed to know. To survive. Not only my father but everything else. When we were young and my father had a bad day, she would always — " Weiss bites her lip and sinks a bit further into herself. Her hand lifts towards her face — as though reaching for something — but she drops it before her fingers can linger, only just brushing along the marred skin under her eye. "She always tried to protect us. I owed her everything. Being at her side, watching her back, protecting her like she'd always done for me — I gave up Beacon for that in a second. I barely had to think."

Air conditioning runs in the suite, a rare luxury that Weiss doesn't appear to appreciate in that moment; she shivers, and Yang has to keep herself from lifting off the couch, from pulling the woman into her side. It's the same instinct that might rise up when faced with a lost child; Weiss looks terribly, terribly small, and terribly, terribly alone.

"Specialists mostly work separately, going where we're needed, but we were paired more often than not. Ironwood kept his promise on that, at least. We were both here three years ago, too, when everything fell apart and we had to fall back. I was too slow to keep it from happening. That's what I always think of, somehow, not the things I could have done after, but — " Her first swallow does little, and she repeats the action before she can continue. "She was injured. Fairly badly. She shattered her ulna, a clean break, but — I took her back to command. Maybe that saved our lives, because we were there when the evac order came, and flew out in the first wave. I think it's why Ironwood sent me to Mistral, though. He kept everyone close and shored up the borders and I was sent to Mistral for a year, so I always figured it was a punishment. We aren't supposed to be attached to anyone more than the mission, and I should have stayed in the field and trusted Winter to get back fine on her own. That's what loyal soldiers do, right?"

Yang's fingers curl around her knees. She shakes her head, though Weiss, who hasn't looked up once, can't see. It's the best she can do. She's heard this story — not Weiss's, not this exact one — but she's heard this story and she knows how it ends. How it always ends.

"I didn't see Winter again. Somehow, there was always a mission that kept me away, and her recovery was… long. Painful. And then the Grimm attacked again, hitting all the Academies at once and — well. I was in the middle of fighting when she called me. I almost didn't pick up. It's only the last of Blake's loops that I remember, obviously, so at that point, there was so much to keep track of. The timings and movements and critical moments. But Blake told me to answer. She told me — " Her breath catches on itself, a carefully contained half-whimper. "She knew, of course. That it was Winter. That it'd be my last chance to talk to her. Sometimes, I think that must be the hardest part. Not all the dying, but... knowing. Because I apparently always did the exact same thing after Winter hung up, after she rushed out to her death trying to defend Atlas without anyone there to watch her back; I told Blake that next time, she should let me know at the start of the day, so I could get on an airship, fly to Atlas, and save my sister's life." Her lips curl, a snarl rather than a smile. "And Blake told me what she'd apparently told me nearly two hundred times; that I'd tried that once, that I'd made it all the way to Atlas. But that, in the end, I'd called Blake and told her to never, ever let me do it again. That it would only make things worse."

Weiss presses her palm to the pommel of the weapon strapped to her side; she doesn't sleep without it, Yang's pretty sure, so it's not a surprise she finds some comfort in the familiar, cool touch of the metal. They've all picked up on small comforts like these, every one of them, but Weiss leans into them more than most (rather than into the people around her).

"Even after all that, I thought maybe the last time would be different. We'd won at Haven; maybe — even with the call and Winter telling me she lov — even with Winter saying goodbye, maybe our victory would have ripples. Maybe I'd managed to do both, somehow." She sniffs, but her eyes are dry, so maybe it's a laugh, a mark of derision, a difficult inhale. "I didn't. There were too many bodies for proper funerals, but I made it back to Atlas in time to be there for the cremation. Ironwood flew us back on a priority airship." This time, the sound is more clear, an obvious snort of disgust. "Such a favor he was doing for us, the Hero of Haven and her Atlesian partner. Bringing us back into the fold with a polished jar of ashes. Have I told you any of this before?"

The question catches Yang off guard, more in that a question is asked at all rather than anything to do with the content of it.

"No," she murmurs. "You haven't."

With a lurch off the pillar, Weiss moves closer, dropping onto the couch with an expression of satisfaction that feels out of place.

"Good. Blake always said the best part of the repeats was finding something new." She's still stiff when she sits, full of too much bitterness (or sadness or regret or all of the above) to rest easy. But there's something underneath it all, too, appreciation, perhaps, or a transference of warmth from her past experiences with Blake to Yang's current ones. "I thought you should know, if you didn't. After the things I've said and have already said, I'm sure. I don't — I'm not uncaring. I look at you and I see..." Her lips press together in the approximation of a tight smile. "Well. I'm sure it's obvious now. I know what it means to sacrifice. Not like Blake does. Not like you do. But I know how to sacrifice in the one life I have. And when I tell you to keep going, I don't do it lightly. I do it because I have too. I wouldn't ask for anything I wouldn't do. That I haven't done."

Any moment now, Ruby will barge back into the room, or Blake will return with a bag of rations and probably a few luxuries, and the moment will fade, but for now, Yang places a hand on Weiss's knee, a gentle acceptance of the sort of apology Weiss will never offer.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs, because it's all she can say.

"Me too," Weiss returns, because it's the only possible response.

How many times has it been? Ruby asks.

Not enough to get me down, Yang replies with a wink.

-

How many times has it been? Weiss asks.

I lost track a while back, Yang lies.

-

How many times has it been? Blake asks.

(Her hand hovers just over Yang's bicep in the ghost of a touch, careful with the comfort she offers, like she already knows.)

One hundred and ninety-one, Yang says, and her voice shakes.