Chapter 2: Consider Phlebas

"I like the sound of that. They'll likely name this maneuver after you, so let's hope it works. No one wants their name attributed to a hilarious disaster."

— 4 —

Ozpin woke up, and for the first time in a long while, didn't hear it. The chords of that eternal song echoing at the fringes of his awareness as he sat up and shook the sleep from his head. That fucking song.

Winter Break had started at Beacon. The Holiday was upon the world. And while Beacon did serve students from across Remnant, most of its stock hailed from Vale and Atlas, where the Long Night was celebrated. It meant most of campus was empty. Fewer students around meant fewer problems. He could let himself relax, if only just.

He felt the stubble on his face as he stared at his floor, his eyes lazily looking at the scars across his arm. He'd built Beacon, in another lifetime. The Headmaster had his very own luxury apartment here on campus, with all bills coming out of the school budget. Just like any other dorm. Just, one with exceptional floorspace. He'd had more than enough time in his fifteen years as Headmaster to fill the room with clutter, from the record player to the wall-mounted TV to the radiocomputer terminal. Most of them were novelties from this life. New inventions to make life easier, lazier, because the happier the masses, the more starved the Grimm were. The entire room smelled like him, a hint of cherries and mustard buried under human musk.

Ozpin stared back at him from the bathroom mirror. No Ozma or any other faces of the Infinite Man. People had been a bit shorter when Beacon was built. A man his height needed to bend forwards to get a good look over the mirror. Brush his teeth. Use the straight razor to clean his face. Electric razors never suited him. They always reminded him too much of sleekly modern sports cars. He half-imagined himself one of the last men in the world who knew how to drive stick. He'd ordered his own personal '48 Kazinczy built with one just for that reason.

The record player outside clicked. And that fucking song started to play.

Of course it was that one. That fucking song kept showing up. In his dreams. And in the minds of artists from the Old World and this one. The same basic notes he'd once used to court a woman he once loved named Salem so long ago he sometimes doubted it ever happened. The lyrics changed from language to language as tongues evolved, but the meaning always kept. One version was currently charting #3 on the airwaves.

Go to hell, Salem, he thought to himself, before washing them away with his whiskers down the drain.

He found Glynda in his apartment, looking over his old records. Some overly clever student had hooked up his record player to stereo speakers Ozpin could control from his scroll. Technology called Gaptooth or something. Things he'd probably never understand until he died and his new host could explain it to him like the old man he was.

Glynda looked over at him, wearing the blue blouse and dark pencil skirt she just seemed to like, on or off duty. She folded her arms, cocking a brow. "You're naked. Am I intruding too early?" Her eyes pointedly flicked to the window. The sun was shining and snow was coming down in force.

Ozpin sighed, rolling his eyes. "Nothing you haven't seen before, Glynda."

She gave the barest hint of a smile with just a few too many teeth. "No, I suppose not."

Once upon a time, the two of them had been Huntsmen partners. You learned a lot about the other person out in the field. A lot of social mores had to go to be an efficient Hunter; among them modesty. He could still accurately pinpoint that mole she had on her left buttcheek, and never let her forget he knew it was there. Like she could name where he got most of his scars, and recite the tattoos he had on his body, over his arm and back. Like the exact number on his arm, not that she knew what it meant. No one did. It was better that way.

"I wanted to talk about the student population, or lack thereof," she said as Ozpin slid on his underwear. "And an update on the Jaune situation."

Ozpin rubbed his wrists. "Don't tell me we had another incident while I was asleep."

Glynda gave the smallest species of laugh. "No, nothing like that. Neither he nor Team BASS have done anything to warrant suspicion. They've been performing exceptionally adequately. I've even let them take part in a combat spar, to non-cheating results. And the soldiers in the towers apparently think Jaune's useful."

"So basically a perfectly normal group of students."

"Yes. Nothing to suggest anything untowards anymore."

"Then?" he asked, putting on a shirt. He went over to his dresser and pulled out a bottle of bourbon. The breed he saved for when the students were gone and he could drink without consequence.

"He's left for the Holiday," she said.

Maybe that was why he didn't wake up hearing that fucking song. If so, Ozpin wasn't complaining.

"Mm," he grunted, pouring himself a shot into a crystal tumbler. Once upon a time, he had a taste for beer and wine. But a couple centuries ago, somebody had figured out how to make alcohol even stronger in a monastery somewhere. Figures it'd be the bored religious types to figure out how to get completely hammered.

Bourbon held a certain appeal ever since it was invented. Just like cocaine briefly had upon its invention, when people thought it was still medicinal. Those had been fun days. Unproductive, but fun. Nowadays, he mostly stuck with coffee strong enough to kill a boarbatusk. He likes to lie and say it was simply hot cocoa, which people like Coco Adel still somehow believed.

Bourbon was the drink of kings. He still remembered the taste of it on his tongue as the self-administered poison melted his organs. King Ozymandias falling to his knees and choking blood, finally killing the age of kings once and for all. The sensation of decades passing in moments before his soul found a host in Ozpin.

"So that's one problem we won't have to deal with for a couple weeks, at least." Ozpin paused. "I hope."

"He left with Qrow," she said.

Ozpin paused. Before deciding to fill the tumbler up to the brim with bourbon. He knew he probably shouldn't. But, Qrow. Ironic that he was handling this turmoil with alcohol. Ozpin knew he'd been the one to introduce Qrow to the stuff, back when Ozpin was merely a highly respected Huntsman and professor, and Qrow just one of the rising stars of Team STRQ. He'd offered Qrow a drink to celebrate one of the deadly missions they'd gone out together while he was their teacher.

"Does he know?" Ozpin asked.

Glynda slowly shook her head. "Not unless he learned on his own somehow. Near as I can tell, it was Ruby Rose who invited Jaune with them. He lives on Patch and her house was along the way."

Ozpin drank. The first drink of the day, burning. As always they did. He held out the glass to Glynda, who actually took it and sipped. From the implacable expression on her face, she handed the liquor better than he did. She'd been the heavy drinking A+ student of their old Huntsmen team once upon a time.

Funny, how that worked. Soldiers and Huntsmen of all ages were always heavy drinkers. It was a culture of functioning alcoholics. No one could fault them. Killers of men and monsters needed ways to cope. Especially when therapy was still frowned upon as a sign of weakness, despite all he was doing to change that among the recent crop of students.

Ozpin let out a breath. "If anything comes up with that, let me know. Until then?" He sat down on his bed. "I'm not sure how comfortable I am with him being friends with our silver-eyed warrior out there. When the new semester starts, see to it that they are not together for any combat lessons. And any missions they go on aren't in the same area."

"And Qrow?" she asked.

"If that dusty old crow learns anything, I'm sure he'll tell us first. He knows about as much as I do, if just a little less to ensure he doesn't go beyond the mountains."

Glynda sighed. "So that just leaves our problem with what to do for the sophomore, junior, and senior teams, and preparations for the Vytal Festival."

Ah, yes, that. There were a lot more problems in the world than one particularly worrisome student. He was, after all, the Headmaster of the school. They had a couple of hundred precocious murder machines to train and handle out there. He only occasionally had opportunities to work with the fun and interesting ones, like Ruby or Coco. Most of his time was spent with everyone else, ensuring that nothing went wrong. Minimizing student deaths out there in this dangerous world. His raison d'être as far as anyone in the world was truly concerned.

The rest of his job often involved dealing with politicians, the lowest form of human existence. This year, the entire cause célèbre was Union-Labor and its opposition to the Vytal Festival. Once upon a time, men like the leader of Union-Labor, Twinred Sokolov, were just weirdos who followed some bizarre book by some outcast named Kara Mazov. "Scientific communism" and all its bastard descendants. And then the moment King Ozymandias steps down, the moment his perfect new world order is established, the Commune of Vale rises up to force a more just world into existence. As they sang Ça Ira and La Valéaise, the remnants of the royal government had come at them with fire and sword.

These days, the socialists had only been unbanned and allowed to operate as a legal political movement at his urging. He figured having to deal with electoral politics would defang them. But to everyone's surprise, the Sokolov brothers had turned them quite quickly into the principal and incredibly successful enemy of Martin Gladstone's Tories. Next thing anyone knew, what many thought was a fringe movement had become the primary opposition party, displacing the Liberal Democrat party. They were a thorn in his side just as much as they were in the Council's. It wasn't that Ozpin opposed the socialists on principle, they were just incredibly annoying and non-compliant. Especially when it came to his allies in Damecrown, like the Prime Minister, Martin Gladstone, who on paper was the most powerful man in the world. Ozpin had influence like that down in Damecrown, seat of the governing Council of Vale, but his new world order was just a madman's conspiracy theory outside of it. He'd only managed to get his claws into Atlas by the sheer luck of James Ironwood.

Politics.

Ozpin patted the spot next to him, sighing. He was too old to deal with bigger politicians and hormonal murderous teenagers at the same time anymore. Not that he had any choice. He compulsively threw himself into these kinds of situations.

She cocked an eyebrow. "Headmaster Ozpin, are you trying to invite me to bed?" she asked scathingly.

He allowed himself a smile. "We both know how that would turn out."

She looked away, self-consciously adjusting her glasses.

"I was just asking for you to bring over my bourbon," he said conversationally, painfully so. Just to further tease her. "We have weeks before we have to figure out what to do. There's no sense making preliminary plans while sober."

She walked over to him and handed his glass back. "You never change, Ozpin."

If you only knew, Glynda. If only anyone knew.

"And would you please turn off that fucking song so we can get to work?" he asked, handing her back the glass.

And so the two of them spent the rest of the morning nursing glasses of bourbon together. Figuring out what to do just like they used to in the old days.

— 5 —

Blake watched the snow fall outside the window. And felt like a voyeur after having watched Jaune hauling his bags and leaving the school with Ruby. It was a weird feeling. This, well, what to call it? She felt oddly bitter that her partner, her friend, was leaving with some other girl to go back home, to his sisters and parents. It was like the feeling of wanting her mother, her father.

She propped her head on her elbow. She wanted to blame him, but couldn't do it. Valeans and Atlesians celebrated this time of year around the winter solstice. The longest night of the year was coming soon. It was a bit different in Menagerie. Snow didn't exist there except some of the inland mountains. Right now, it was the summer down there. She could go back, but, no. She couldn't. How was she supposed to face her parents and tell them she was wrong, and they were right, about the White Fang. About trying to change the wider world. She didn't have anywhere to go for the Long Night, not in any real terms. Beacon was her home until she graduated and had to figure out what to do and where to go from there.

In her mind's eyes, she imagined a world in which Jaune was faunus and she'd met him and not Adam. She wondered how stupid that world would be. Gods, she'd hated Jaune until, well, she wasn't sure when exactly it changed. But they'd practically always been together since his Aura, since they knocked out everyone in the school. It was just, like, just weird not having him to bounce thoughts off.

So much of her day had included her partner. Going to class. Training with him in the gym or sparring. Trying to figure out something dumb to do for the day together. She basically needed to figure out how to do without one of her daily constants.

"Saudade," Shamrock said, idly playing a game of solitaire on his bed.

Blake's eyes fluttered. "What?"

"Old Voortrekker word from Vacuo," he said, and frowned at the cards he was drawing. "It's all over your face. Nostalgic missing of a person. Vacuans have lots of words for obscure sorrows. One of our hobbies is finding new things to be miserable about."

She sat on her bed, laughing awkwardly. "Am I that obvious?"

Jet Shamrock looked over at her. With a flick of the wrist he produced a joker from his sleeve. "I mean, you're always brooding about something. The window just made it easier to guess."

Blake thought for a moment, trying to reach for the right words. "I'm not brooding. I'm just, what's the word, a drôle d'oiseau, as they say here."

Shamrock gave her a look. "They? I thought you were Valean."

"I'm from the northwest," Blake said by rote, an old faunus phrase. The Northwest was a vague direction, with a continent lacking any major kingdoms. It was a wild land. To those in the know, it signified you were faunus. To everybody else, it was just a random yet satisfactory explanation for any idiosyncrasies in your word choice or personality.

She knew about the place mostly from Adam. He had spoken at length of training there under a man called the Wolf who, according to him, "was more beast than man." To her, that just meant he was one of those rare faunus whose animalistic traits were incredibly pronounced. The entire head of a wolf instead of just the ears. Blake had been pretty sure those were just a myth too. But Adam claimed to have met two in his life, the Wolf and, briefly, someone he only would refer to as the Smiling Man. Blake thought it was just an excuse to add a the to your name.

In any case, Adam said the Northwest was haunted. Cities filled with ghosts; the people annihilated in the Great War whose shadows remained when their bodies turned to ash. He had called the place Misery. She'd always thought he had been embellishing, but talking to him later did reveal he genuinely believed in ghosts and the supernatural. Whenever you pushed him on odd topics, Adam always seemed to have a particularly strange perspective that made him fascinating to talk to over campfires. It had been part of the reason she had grown close to him, just listening to his stories about wendigos and skinwalkers.

She thought back to the faces she had seen when she activated Jaune's Aura. The fact that every now and again, his eyes looked like they belonged to an older man. It still gave her shivers.

A card hit her in the face.

"Ow!"

"Brooding," Shamrock admonished simply.

Blake stood up in a huff. "I don't have to take this from you."

"If we're not taking things from each other, can you give me my card back?"

Blake tried throwing the playing card, but all it did was circle in the air and land right back down at her feet. Suddenly trying to avoid looking stupid, she grabbed the card and gave it to Shamrock. But at the rate she was going, it would have been way too awkward to just turn around and go back to bed. So lacking any really good options right now, she just kept walking forward until at the door.

And then she was in the hallway. Where she had no idea what she was doing. At least she felt better about herself. No, not just better, she had totally stood up for herself!

But now she really wanted to go back to bed. It would just be too weird to go back in there right now. Trying to stand there and calculate the exact amount of time it would take for it to no longer be awkward to go back to the room was a bit of a waste of time. So, maybe she would just go down to the vending machine and get a drink and figure it out over some soda.

It would have been a really good plan, had she not found Weiss doing something in the kitchen. Weiss looked like she didn't belong there. She was using her scroll for reference, taking down notes on a piece of paper, occasionally mumbling to herself before bending over to look into the oven.

Weiss was probably her least favorite person in the world ever since she managed to get along with Jaune, excluding Adam for obvious reasons. Watching her work something in the oven, Blake kept thinking about a couple weeks back in the sushi bar. The way that everyone had almost been getting along. In truth, she wasn't sure how that had happened. She had absolutely zero faith that inviting the girl out to a dinner-lunch thing with them would solve anything. Jaune had somehow worked his witchcraft on that. And while the team wasn't exactly all friends right now, they could at least be civil.

In this kind of situation, Blake… kind of felt like the right thing to do was to talk to her.

"You're breaking my concentration, just staring at me like that," Weiss said, looking up. She was wearing some kind of loose silk camisole beneath an apron. It looked somehow wrong on her, without one of those pristine dresses she usually wore. More like a rich girl sneaking out at night to steal something from the cookie jar than anything else.

Blake swallowed. "I thought I smelled something cooking," she lied.

Weiss turned around, resting her elbows on the little island in the kitchen. "It's a cake."

"I didn't know you baked."

"I don't."

"Then?" She let the word hang there.

"There's no reason I can't learn to use a, uh, kitchen." She shrugged indifferently.

"How's that going for you?"

Weiss stared back at her with a blank expression. "It's not."

"Oh."

Oh was right. Just trying to talk to Weiss like this felt like some kind of interrogation, in the laziest possible way. Blake actually had been genuinely interrogated before, back when she was with the White Fang on the Sanus frontier. She had been lucky that she was rescued before anything got beyond the preliminary questions. You really didn't want to be in the custody of the infamous Colonel Bind, Torture, Kill Kornilov. He had a way of getting answers and rooting out insurgencies.

Soldiers still gave Blake goosebumps.

The two girls just kept staring at each other, as if waiting for the other person to say something profound. Give them something to bounce a conversation off. It was mutually expectant in the worst possible way.

The oven rumbled. At first, Blake was happy for the distraction. Until Weiss started backing away.

"Uh, that wasn't supposed to happen," she said.

Before the oven just flat out exploded. Blake used a Shadow clone to throw herself behind the island for cover. Weiss used her own Semblance to summon a glyph in the air, deflecting the burning projectile spewing from the oven. It bounced off and landed in the drapes.

Which immediately caught fire.

"Oh God, it's happening again!" Weiss screamed. "Why are drapes flammable? Who designed this!"

Weiss produced a kitchen knife and slashed at the curtains until the burning bits fell off into the sink. "Ow, hot!" she hissed, before turning on the sink. The water turned the burning drapes into a cloud of steam and smoke.

"Weiss, are you okay?" Blake asked, poking her head up over the island.

The girl was holding her hand, hissing in breaths. "I'm going to sue whoever designed these drapes. They keep catching fire."

"How? How do they keep catching fire?"

Weiss waived her scroll around. "I told you I'm not a very good cook, all right!?"

Blake hesitated, before coming around the island. "Here, give me your hand. Let me see."

She retracted her hand, making a face at Blake. "I can handle this, okay?"

"I've got some field medic experience," Blake said. "Stop being a bitch and let me help, okay?"

"I'm not—I said I can do this!"

"You can't even make a cake without starting a fire! If your hand is badly burned, either let me help or I'll drag you to the infirmary."

"Just let me use my aura for an hour or so and I'll be fine!"

"Weiss!"

"Blake!"

"Stop being a brat!"

"What did I tell you about calling me that, Blake!"

"Well, I, you—just let me be a good teammate, alright?"

Weiss glared at Blake for a very long moment. She was holding her hand like it was hurt, glowing softly with her Aura. After a tense little standoff, she slowly exhaled and held out her hand.

"Fine. But be quick," Weiss said, refusing to look at Blake as she took her hand and examined it. "If this cake was a mistake, I need to try to figure out something else I can cook. But I've kind of run out of stuff to cook with. Most stores are closing down for the Holiday."

The hand actually didn't look too bad. Some minor first degree burns from touching something hot quickly. It reminded her of her first time ever getting her hands on a microwave as a little girl, when it had been a relatively recent addition to Menagerie. As short as she had been, the angle she approached the microwave meant she couldn't read the display. She just kept pressing the six button for like a minute straight until giving up and pressing start, and was amazed it worked. Then she forgot about it until the microwave started to smoke. She'd burned her hand trying to get the leftovers out, because for some reason she was too panicked to realize she probably should have used a plate or a spoon or something.

Mostly, she was just looking at Weiss' acrylic nails. Blake had never had those. And it was kind of bizarre seeing them up close. They featured occasionally in her books, but for some reason she had always figured them to be fake. Just like how in the movies, every desert has cacti.

"All right, maybe I was overreacting," Blake said, returning the hand.

"I know," Weiss said, putting one of her singed fingers into her mouth. A moment later she seemed to realize what she was doing and quickly withdrew her hand, folding her arms together over her pristine white apron. "I know a lot of things. Just, cooking isn't one of them. Not yet."

"You're acting like it's a pretty important thing."

Weiss looked into the sink, at the waterlogged and formerly burning bits of drapes. And the thing that Blake supposed might have been a cake in another universe.

"I never really had the chance to cook on my own," Weiss said. "We always had professional chefs and bakers do it for us. And even then, I barely got to enjoy it. When you're at the top, you have to carefully manage every aspect of your appearance, and that especially includes what you put into yourself."

She made a gesture to the army of measuring equipment on the kitchen counter. Holding up her notebook, she said, "If the recipe had been right, it would have come up to 342 calories in a single slice of cake. That's before I try to add frosting. But I was focused mostly on just making sure the bread was right."

Blake scrunched her eyes. "Is that a lot?"

"You don't know?" Weiss asked dubiously, like she wasn't really sure she heard that right.

Somewhat self-consciously, Blake shrugged. "I never really paid attention to that. I just kind of ate what I had on hand."

Weiss shook her head. "I can't really imagine that. I tried eating a lot one time when I was a little girl. I think that was the first time I was ever really full. That feeling in your stomach like you can't put anything more inside." She rubbed her wrists. "My father found out and had me whipped until I threw it all up."

"Oh my God, that's terrible!"

Weiss looked around the kitchen, before her shoulders slumped and she sighed. "I don't know. In some ways, I think it was a necessary evil. If I just eat like some animal, then I'm not really a Schnee. It's people with no self-control that get fat and lazy, and someone of my family can't do that."

Blake suppressed a scowl. Of course the girl had to drop in some casual racism. You couldn't just have a normal conversation with her, could you? But she had to keep that down. She was on a team with this girl. An unpalatable bitch though she might be, Blake had to work with it.

"I could always help you?" she offered.

Weiss put her hands on her hips skeptically. "I think I've got this covered."

"Says the girl who burned the drapes."

"It's called learning, Blake! Try it sometime."

Blake's eye twitched. She thought back to the way Jaune had somehow convinced this girl to go out with them to a sushi dinner. Blake had abandoned the idea as a lost cause the moment he had suggested it. But then there he went, just somehow making it work. Just like he had clawed himself out from his alcoholic pit and become an actual person in her eyes. Jaune didn't quit, even when things looked stupid and nothing would come of them.

And he somehow made it work.

If he could do it, so could she. And do it far better. Even if she couldn't figure out his witchcraft people-fu.

"There's no shame in asking for help," Blake said.

"It's just some simple recipe," Weiss said, walking over to the oven. She examined it with a frown. "I can do this without help. You don't have to be condescending."

"But I'm not!" Blake said, following her. "If you're not good with something, ask someone who is. I mean, you're trying to bake a cake."

"I said I'm good! Stop being so pushy about this."

"Why do you have to be so defiant?"

"Because if I can't figure out something so stupid on my own, what good am I?" Weiss snapped.

Blake tried her hardest not to growl in irritation. "Just a girl raised with more money than sense. Literally. Someone once calculated the value of the SDC fortune. You literally have more cents than you do brain cells, girl."

"Ha!" It was a bitter, mocking sound. "My family is a part of me, but it doesn't define me."

"Does it? Because if it doesn't, then let me help. Be a teammate. Jaune said I had cake, so whatever that means, I'm pretty sure I can figure out how to put some batter in an oven and turn it into food." She put on her best smile and it felt fake.

Weiss made a face. "I'm pretty sure he was talking about your butt."

With a startled expression, Blake looked over at her bottom. "I don't even see how that makes any sense."

"I don't either, but we both know how he talks." She folded her arms as if she had won the conversation. As if winning and losing was something you did when talking to somebody.

"Look, get off my dick. I'm just trying to help. Because that's what a good teammate does, in my very limited experience."

Weiss mouth the word she had just said, disbelieving. "Get off your what? You don't even have those parts. Not unless you're like Shamrock."

Blake waved her hand as if getting rid of a bad smell. Kind of like the smell of the burnt cake waterlogged in the sink. "I don't know, just something I picked up from Jaune."

"And just like him, maybe you should learn when to leave well enough alone. I can do this by myself, Blake. I don't need you. I don't need anybody."

That distinctly did not sound like Jaune. He kind of just pushed and did his own thing until it eventually worked. A talent she was still trying to figure out how to work. She supposed it was something she was vaguely envious of.

"You don't want anybody. There's a big difference. You need us. You need me, Shamrock, and Jaune."

Weiss scoffed. "Why do you always bring him up?"

"Because he's my best friend and partner, I don't know?" Blake said with a mocking edge.

"Gee, if you like the boy so much, why don't you just marry him?"

"Because it's not like that between us. How many times have we told you this?"

"Enough that methinks the lady doth protest too much."

Blake threw up her hands "What does that even mean?"

"It means you two are always attached at the hip, always talking about each other, always talking like each other," Weiss said sufferingly, closing the oven door. "Denial might just be a river in Vacuo, but it doesn't flow through here."

"And common sense doesn't flow through your head!" she shot back with. She pulled up her scroll and brought up a recipe for cakes. Showing it to Weiss, she said, "Look, you and me, we can do this together. Bond over cooking or something stupid. Jaune and I—"

"Stop bringing him into everything. Stop trying to be him. He's the worst with only the occasional spot of decency." She gave Blake a scathing look. "Even if I wanted help, which I don't, I'd want it from Blake, not from Jaune. And certainly not Blake pretending to be him. You're your own person. Be her."

Despite herself, Blake winced. She wasn't doing that, was she? Adam used to—and she stopped herself mid-thought. Adam. Jaune. Blake did do that a lot, didn't she? Often thinking her thoughts using the words of the boy she was very close to in her life. Often learning how to view the world from how they spoke, how they perceived it. That was just because she was learning from them. It wasn't like they had any special influence over her. She was her own person. She wasn't trying to be anybody else.

I wanted to kill Cardin because that's what Adam would have done. And I left him because I was afraid I was becoming him.

Blake took a step back. It was a ridiculous thought. Blake had always been her own girl. Always forging her own path through life. Never letting anyone else's burdens become her own.

Except the burdens of her people. And look at how she had screwed that up. She couldn't even figure out how to talk to Velvet about the very thing she was most passionate about. And here she was, trying to reach out and extend an olive branch to Weiss because that was exactly what Jaune would do, and she was failing miserably.

No, she wasn't doing this for Jaune. Just like how she wasn't dedicated to the faunus cause because of Adam.

Blake was doing this because she was Blake, because this was the right thing to do, and that was what she felt in her gut.

Weiss had already turned away, and was going back to her measuring devices. Looking at her notepad and occasionally scribbling things down as she tried to figure out how to rebuild the cake.

Blake could do this on her own. She could reach out to her bitch of a teammate and make friends. In the exact same way she couldn't do with Velvet. Without any help. Just being herself.

She reached out to take Weiss' notepad. "Here, let me see what you're doing."

"Give that back!" Weiss said, whirling on her and reaching out.

Blake made a shadow clone to duck back and away. She tried her best to speed read the pad, and was at first distracted by how neat and pretty the handwriting was. It was downright miniscule and perfect.

"Hold on, I think I know what you're doing. I think your measurements are in the wrong system. What website are you taking the mixture from?"

"I said, give it back, Blake!"

Blake turned away from the girl, not letting her grab the notepad. Ducking away to ensure she could keep reading it and talk. She had a unique opinion on this and could totally fix everything.

"A cup means something different between Vale and Atlas," Blake said. "One of your ounces is like an ounce and a half here in Vale. Like how a mile in Menagerie is one point six Valean miles."

Blake brushed Weiss' hand away. "Look, I've solved it. I figured it all out."

Weiss kept grabbing at Blake. But turned away as she was, it made it hard to grab at the notes. "Shut up, I can do this on my own!" Unable to get the book, her hand started grabbing other places. Her arm, her back, and finally towards her hair. Weiss hand grabbed Blake's bow and pulled.

The black hair bow came off in her hand.

And her ears poked up.

"Wait, what the hell!" Weiss exclaimed.

Blake whirled on Weiss, throwing the notebook to the side so she could free her hand to snatch the bow back. "Don't touch that!" she said, but it was already too late, too useless.

Weiss' blue eyes were wide, staring up at Blake's ears. Blake very quickly put it back on her head, tying it together. But too little, too late.

"You're… you're one of them," Weiss said, saying them almost like a slur. Like one would say talking about something distasteful.

For the briefest moments, Blake allowed herself to feel a spark of hope. Maybe Weiss would see and she wouldn't judge. Maybe she would be different, knowing that her teammate and the person that tried to help her right now was faunus. Maybe they could bond over this, a shared secret together, like she and Jaune had the night in the hospital, and then again trying to figure out how to deal with Cardin.

And then her heart sank into her stomach, and then straight down into her ovaries, impregnating her with a feeling of intense dread as Weiss' startled, surprised face turned into a harsh glare.

"Is that why you were so sympathetic to the White Fang?" Weiss accused. "Oh my God, it all makes so much sense now! You actually empathize with those animals and terrorists!"

Blake could only stare, and think panicked thoughts. How the hell do you handle something like this? When it had happened with Jaune, he apparently had already known, already figured it out, and had already accepted her for it.

But she really didn't have any frame of reference for someone who wouldn't accept it. The exact thing she was terrified of. The kind of bullying shit she was afraid of if found out, and so she hid that part away from other people. Everybody but her best friend. Somebody who would see it, and judge her, and be disgusted.

She thought of Jaune. The way he had dealt with that racist bastard Cardin, before the two of them had somehow bonded and become friends over that. Respectful violence. Understanding and being willing to deal with someone with a radically different worldview than yours. The kind of thing she had watched happen and still couldn't understand.

That was how almost everything Jaune did worked. She had failed connecting with Weiss over cooking and other girly stuff. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe she was going about those the entirely wrong way. Maybe she really did need to think like Jaune.

Before she knew what was happening, Blake was cocking her fist back. And then she punched Weiss straight across the face, over the scar on her eye. She expected Weiss to be surprised, maybe pull up her aura and then the two of them to talk about what just happened to figure it out. Instead, the blow seemed to take Weiss entirely off guard. The girl went stumbling backwards, her head hitting the edge of the counter. She screamed in angry pain.

She stepped over to try to grab Weiss, but she slapped her hand away. When she stood up, the girl was furious, a nasty gash on her forehead bleeding all across her face.

"What did you do! Why did you do that, you, you wild animal!"

Blake felt her ears flattening, and she didn't know what to do. Why wasn't this working? Why couldn't she just pick Weiss off the ground, brush themselves off, and then talk about this and become friends?

"I—can we talk about this?" Blake asked, taking a step towards her.

Weiss brandished her knife at Blake, forcing her back. "Get away from me, you bitch!"

It was the first time Blake had ever heard Weiss swear, and it was terrifying.

Shamrock walked into the kitchen, holding a bag of chips. She tossed one into the air, and then noticed what was going on. The chip hit her on the top hat and bounced onto the floor.

"Uh, Weiss, Blake, are you two okay?" Shamrock asked nervously. "I heard shouting—what's going on?"

When Weiss turned her furious attention towards Blake, still brandishing the knife, Blake just… she just…

She evaporated into the shadows and ran away, like she always did. Like she always fucking did when things fucked up. Because she was a colossal fuck up who couldn't do anything fucking right.

It was all she was good for. The only thing she could do. She could run. She could hurt people.

She could cry.

a/n Blake punching Weiss was originally going to happen at the climax of vol 3. But we decided to cut the fight scene that would have resulted in that. So witness it happening now, without Jaune to act as a mediating team leader figure.