Ilia began to let out shuddering gasps, desperately gulping air as she sprinted through the dirt and flora of the forest. Her boots crunched and swished through the grass and ferns as she sprinted, keeping her fists balled in anger as she knocked errant branches out of her path. She could barely see the outlines of the trees whipping past her through her tear-filled eyes, and she very nearly ran straight into a tree as she wiped her cheeks on the back of her fist. Ilia let out a desperate, pained noise as she dodged out of the way in time, only to feel a heavy impact against her right foot.

The ground rose up too quickly for Ilia to brace herself as she crashed face first into the dirt. The faunus girl barely had time to put a hand out to lessen the impact, and found a sharp pain shooting up her wrist as her arm buckled beneath her and failed to save her from the hard fall. A pained whimper escaped her lips as she lay in the grass, seeing nothing but swirling water and patches of green and brown directly in front of her eyes. The pain and embarrassment only caused her to cry harder, and Ilia found herself heaving ugly, needy sobs as she pulled herself into a sitting position.

Ilia wiped her hands upon her vest before bringing them up toward her face to brush away the tears and dirt. She hesitated as she saw that even beneath the darkened midnight sky, her skin was clearly a deep shade of blue. The painful memories brought on by the sight only made her feel worse, and she dropped her hands to her sides in disgust as she screamed, no longer caring in the slightest who heard her.

With shaking hands, she pulled Sun's scroll from her vest pocket and opened her previous conversation with Blake. Messages enough to fill the entire screen and then some greeted her, each sent to Blake within the last twenty minutes, and none of which had received a reply. Ilia's thumbs danced across the touchscreen again as she sniffled, rocking slightly back and forth in some vain attempt to comfort herself.

Blake, PLEASE! You don't know what he'll do to me if he finds out that you have my scroll! I'll meet anywhere you want and make the trade, but you're sentencing me to death by ignoring me! DON'T DO THIS!

Ilia's lip quivered as she watched two droplets of moisture hit the screen of the scroll and turn some of the messages fuzzy. Her fingers flew across the glass once again.

Please. I'm begging you, and I don't beg.

Ilia's thumb twitched involuntarily as she held herself back, her stomach doing loops as she considered her last resort. She bit hard on her lip as she clenched her eyes shut, her heart pounding wildly in her chest as she forced her thumbs across the screen. The motions were slow and deliberate, and it felt as though she spent a full hour typing out the simple message.

Please. I still love you.

A cascade of droplets hit the glass like a sudden, ephemeral rain. Ilia snapped the scroll closed and brought it back to her pocket before she opened her eyes. Seeing the message would make it real. Making it real would be admitting far too much to herself, and Ilia knew that if she allowed her words, and his words any farther into her heart, her life would come crumbling down around her. Already, it was balanced on the edge of a brittle knife, and Ilia felt that a simple push in any direction could literally mean her death, or another great loss.

"…a most unbecoming look, for an esteemed member of the White Fang."

Ilia screamed in terror as she turned, scooting back through the dirt as she drew her arms in toward her chest. Her eyes flew open as she looked up into the face of Fennec Albain, stood over her and wearing a judgmental expression.

"H-h-how long have you been f-following me…?" Ilia stammered. She let her hands drop to the grass with heavy impacts, and began to knead the dirt and leaves beneath.

"…over an hour. Perhaps two," he stated plainly. Fennec took a step forward, his hands clasped together within the sleeves of his robes. "Your attempted combat against the Belladonna girl and her lover was admirable, though misguided. Stand."

Ilia narrowed her eyes as her skin shifted to a shade of deep red. "Why didn't you help!? With the other grunts, the two of us could have taken them!"

"Because doing so goes against my orders. My brother and I are the public face of the White Fang in Kuo Kuana. To assist you against them in anything short of murder would expose us. Stand." Fennec narrowed his eyes as he stared down at Ilia, his disappointment plain to see.

Ilia acquiesced, and dragged herself up from the forest floor with a sniffle. She blinked in surprise as she felt a trail of blood begin to snake down her lip from where she had bitten it moments before, and ran her tongue sideways to stem the flow. Fennec turned and stooped to open a small blue box atop the uneven tree stump, where Ilia had tripped. She eyed both the box and the stump curiously, taking note of how one side had been cut at an angle, while the other was straight.

"F-fennec, I… I'm sorry. I thought I had it under control."

"Stop sniffling, like some infant who fell over. Your current state is pathetic to behold. Glass shards and a bloody lip do not warrant streams of tears. Adam will be most displeased, if I tell him of your emotional instability." Fennec approached with a gauze pad and pair of tweezers, and Ilia's heart stopped.

Had he seen the messages, or did he think the tears were only physical pain? Ilia folded her arms across her chest and whimpered as she considered the horrific notion that he knew, and found herself looking off to the side as she prayed that he mistook her actions for symptoms of her injuries.

"P-please. D-don't. I'm just… I'm… I-I'm having a rough night. It's more the shock of it all, than the pain… I think. I've never had puncture wounds…" Ilia tried, hoping for sympathy. Her skin shifted from deep red to a muted, sickly-looking pink to emphasize her embarrassment. To her surprise, Fennec let out a breath from his nose and softened his tone ever so slightly.

"…clearly. I remember my first encounter with such injuries, and they are not pleasant. Come, sit upon this stump," he said as he turned to move the first-aid kit. He stepped aside, and Ilia walked over to take a seat upon the sloppily-cleaved wood. "His combat abilities exceed your own. Every hit you landed was either a surprise attack, or an opportunistic strike taking advantage of his naiveté."

Ilia wanted to glare at him as he moved in to begin plucking glass shards from her outstretched arm, but found that she couldn't. She knew that what he said was true, and she also knew that if he had watched the confrontation, he had even more reason to doubt her intentions.

"…I know. I didn't expect him to be so… wild, in combat. I won't underestimate him again. I promise," she added. Fennec offered no reply as he worked, and Ilia sucked in a breath through her teeth as she watched a jagged shard stained with thick, partially-solidified blood leave her shoulder. "Was… anything he said true…?"

Fennec gave Ilia a sideways glance as he paused, tweezers gripped around another fragment of glass and ready to pull. "…what did he say? I was not close enough to hear the words exchanged in the confrontation. Merely to see it."

A small surge of hope rushed through Ilia's chest at the realization, and she thought quickly to come up with something that could dispel any suspicion.

"He said that… he said that our human allies specifically targeted the faunus in Vale behind our backs, at the fall of Beacon. The White Fang was deployed to a single area to keep the slaughter of our people out of our sight. I told him that it was a lie, and that I knew he was just trying to drive a wedge between powers," Ilia finished with a hiss as Fennec removed the shard. His brows furrowed as he contemplated the words while running alcohol-soaked gauze over the freshly reopened wound.

"Hm… that is the first I have heard of such a thing. I will consult with Adam to see if there is perhaps a grain of truth in the monkey's words. To be honest, I would not put it past our human 'allies' to do such a thing. Adam distrusts them, already. All of his letters have been replied to with excuses, delays, and increasingly more terse instructions from a woman named 'Cinder'. He is growing impatient."

"Delays? Delays of what…?" Ilia asked. The words left her lips before she knew her motivation for asking, and her innards began to feel as if they were being wrenched back and forth. Never before had she questioned orders or the intent behind them, and she didn't quite know why she bothered then, or why she thought Fennec would even tell her.

Fennec wrenched another shared of glass from Ilia's shoulder and earned a high-pitched whimper from the girl for his efforts. He reached out with his free hand and clenched her jaw painfully, while fixing her with a glare. "Silence, girl!" he intoned through gritted teeth before slowly releasing his grip. "You'll draw attention to us!"

Ilia nodded and whispered an apology, to which Fennec responded with an annoyed grunt. "I do not know the details, but I do know that we are on standby, currently. In time, our next order of business is to attack Haven Academy. Cinnamon has been deployed here and has long since completed her task, and yet, she is being told to remain in town. It would seem that the humans do not trust us enough to handle it on our own, despite our considerable contributions to the fall of Beacon. With the two of them leading us, Haven could be brought down immediately. Adam is quite annoyed."

Anger boiled within Ilia's breast as she mulled over the words, her feelings torn between the fury brought on by fact that Fennec was likely right about their 'allies', and uncomfortable responsibility for being privy to such exclusive knowledge. "…when are we going to break away from this 'benefactor' that Adam has mentioned? It's clear that they think little of us."

"When Adam deems the time right," Fennec replied matter-of-factly as he wrenched the final, largest shard from Ilia's shoulder without warning. She clasped a hand over her mouth and bit down hard on a finger to suppress the urge to cry out. As she pulled back, she found teeth marks embedded into her normal-colored flesh.

"A-and Sienna? How will we convince her to let us splinter off on our own?"

Fennec extended the gauze and gently dabbed at Ilia's lip to wipe away the crusted blood, and she shivered at the touch. "Worry not. Adam has a plan."

Ilia paused as a feeling of pins and needles tingled its way up her bare arms. Something about the way he said it filled her with an uncomfortable feeling, as if she knew exactly what the plan would end up being. The image of their fallen comrade, hidden hastily behind the flaps of the tent flashed briefly in her mind, and she looked away as Fennec began to bandage her arm with another clean roll of white gauze.

"…of course he does." Ilia paused, and found her lips working automatically. "I trust in Master Taurus. Whatever plan he has, especially if Cinnamon is involved, will be worth the wait." Despite her automatic response, the fiery passion for the cause that would normally swell in her heart with such words was suspiciously absent. Ilia felt hollow, and she found that she didn't like the sensation at all.

"As well you should," came the immediate reply. "Now, before I leave you to… clean yourself of this unsightly mess, I would very much like to know whether or not you found anything useful within that boy's scroll. You certainly spent enough time staring at it on the way back here."

Ilia's blood ran cold, and she knew that her answer had the potential to cause a chain reaction with any number of outcomes. She knew that she had to give him something, and she knew that it had to be true. With a distinct feeling of unease, she licked her lips.

"…nothing really immediately useful, but… there were a lot of pictures of a building. It had a white paint job, with a pale blue roof, somewhere in Vacuo. It didn't look like anything important in general, but it's clearly important to him. If I had to guess, given the number of kids in the photos, maybe… an orphanage? Foster home? A day care, even? Something like that."

A twisted smirk worked its way across Fennec's features as he tied off the gauze and rose, while clasping his hands within his sleeves once again. "Interesting. Very interesting. I'll look into it, once I am able. It could make for good collateral. He is becoming a pain for you, is he not?"

Ilia stood, and looked down into the grass. "He is. Keep me updated, if anything changes about our overall mission, or with our standing in this village."

"I expect you will do the same?" Fennec inclined.

Ilia offered him a curt nod, and turned. Far in the distance, she could see the outline of the Belladonna mansion. "Of course. I have some things to attend to."

Fennec followed her gaze and offered a chuckle. "As do I, Sister Amitola. Be careful what fights you pick, from here on. Some are not worth your passion, and it would be… a shame to lose you, over something foolish."

The undergrowth rustled as Fennec took his leave, and Ilia kept her gaze locked on the building in the distance. She spoke softly to herself as she began to walk toward it, considering her next move.

"…yeah. It would be…"

Author's Note:

…when I switched temporarily to an every other day update schedule, I resolved that I would never do it again because cranking out chapters that quickly was a huge hassle. I've spent most of today thinking about how badly I want this chapter out in the wild, and it's been written since last night, so you know what? I decided to just hit the button again. Considering the facts that it's a (relatively) short one compared to the last several chapters, how important it is to the overall story, how generous and kind people have been with reviews, and the fact that people clearly want this one, I think it's best to drop it now in an unplanned double update. I will still be posting the next chapter on the 23rd. It isn't even written yet, but I'll make it happen.

Ilia's got it rough, and it's a huge shame that she was dumped so unceremoniously from the show. Unlike Sun, I have a bad feeling she'll never return in canon, outside of maybe appearing in a background cameo two or three seasons from now and her skin changing as part of a one-off joke, or something. Hooray. Time to do her what justice I can here, instead.

Prepare for things to get a little wet and messy on the 23rd.

-RD