Restless and Shameful
"Huhhhh..." she sighed as she rolled. Her eyes opened slowly, full of anger as she looked across the short distance to her bedside table, her scroll displaying the current time. "Are you joking..." she sighed as she rolled again, looking up to the ceiling and resting her hands behind her head. "Do we have to do this every night Weiss?" she asked herself, her anger for herself increasing, closing her eyes tightly as she shook her head.
"Just shut your brain up and go to sleep you stupid girl," she scolded herself, having been increasingly un-able to sleep lately. Her hair was ratty and unkempt, her eyes surrounded by purple and black bags. She hadn't left her bedroom in days and hadn't slept in even longer. Her limbs felt weak and her heart ached more than it ever had.
And the cause for all this pain and suffering? The little red menace that had been tormenting her, constantly invading her thoughts for months. They say that time heals all wounds but every day that Weiss found herself away from that silly girl she felt herself sink deeper and deeper into thoughts that would lead her straight to her final resting place. Sinking into the crater in her mattress, surrounded by a mess of blankets, used tissues and discarded and crumpled up paper. Half written love letters, apologies and attempts to explain herself, all of which ending the same exact way.
It was her stupid name.
She could sometimes get through an entire letter to little red but every single time it came time to write down that one silly word she froze up, crumpled the paper and tossed it aside. She couldn't even bring herself to say it out loud anymore. It was so short, simple, annoying, "just too...sweet," she mumbled aloud as she turned again and buried her face into her pillow, drew in a deep breath and let out a long and hard scream, trying to relieve her pent up stress.
She turned back over and sat up, shifting everything on the bed as a pile of tissues cascaded over the side of the bed, silently falling to the floor. She stood from the bed and nearly fell into her chair at her desk, staring down at a blank piece of paper for a few moments before reaching for the nearest pen.
As usual as she began to write she chose to omit who the letter was being addressed to. As she continued her hands began to shake violently, tears welling up in her eyes within the first line. After only moments the shaking became unbearable and her handwriting became so illegible that it wasn't even worth trying. She stood from the chair, grunting angrily, pushing her chair back so violently that it fell backward as she turned and hurled the pen as hard as she could at the far wall. "WHY IS THIS SO HARD!" She yelled, her voice shaky as her tears fell from her cheeks onto her nightgown. "WHY CAN'T I JUST APOLOGIZE TO HER?!" She yelled again, balling her fists and slamming them back down on the table.
"She's..." she began again as the tears began to take her over, her voice shaky and her breath hitching in her throat over and over as she tried to force the words out. "She's the only friend I've ever had," she wept, tears falling onto the wooden desk and onto her hands. "If I can't even apologize to the only person I love then what good am I...why..." she opened her palms which had yellowed from how tight she had been squeezing them. "Why did I leave her there alone...How could I do that to her..."
"After everything we went through, all the effort I put in to change for her...my dad shows up and suddenly I'm just a little helpless girl who can't say no...I...I loved her," she half shouted out to herself as she squeezed her eyes shut tightly, pinching off tears which fell to the floor. "I do love her! And I couldn't even leave her a note? Or do the right thing and stay there with her until she woke up! If she even woke up..." she cried as she fell to her knees on the cold hard floor of her bedroom. "I don't even know if she ever woke up at all," she sobbed, hands rubbing her stinging eyes. "What kind of person does that to their girlfriend?!"
Weiss looked over to her trash can, filled to the brim with tissues and balled up pieces of discarded paper, her previous attempts from the weeks before. "How long is it going to take me before I can just write to her that I am sorry..."
"Blake?" She heard from the hallway, her doorway slightly more ajar than she had realized. She grumbled, speaking up begrudgingly.
"What do you want, Sun?" she let out, still angry with his actions.
"I just...look I mean we are already on the boat there's no reason for you to act like I'm not here..." he pleaded from the hallway. A long silence fell between the two friends before Sun found it necessary to speak again. "Can I...come in?"
"...Fine..." she sighed as she turned toward the door and put down her book on the mattress, turning to find him already coming through the doorway, stepping inside and shutting it behind him.
"Thanks..." He said quietly, looking over to her with a small smile creeping on his lips. He slowly walked over to the desk and chair in the room and sat down facing toward her. "So...What's menagerie like?"
"Really...that's what you wanna talk about?" She scoffed.
"No...not really but..." he began as he scratched the back of his head timidly. "I figured you probably don't wanna talk about what I wanna talk about or...answer my questions about what happened so...ya."
Blake was taken aback by his words, she wasn't used to Sun speaking this way, not having given him the time of day many times. She only saw him as a man of action and words which she found to be far past the boundaries she worked so hard to keep up. "Well," she finally began, "Menagerie is...alright I guess. It's pretty, I suppose, the climate is nice, depending on what species of Faunus you are..." she answered before trailing off, her vision falling to the floor. "Why..."
"Well because I've never been, I was just-" He retorted with a smile before she cut him off.
"No, Sun. Why...do you do this to me?" She asked sternly as she looked back into his eyes. "Why do you chase me like this...you follow me around everywhere...across the world even. You Ask me to dances when you know I'm in a relationship, you haven't even asked me if I'm even into guys at all. Yet here you are, still running after me..."
Sun is silent for a long time before he finally came up with his answer. "Look I...accepted that you don't want me the same way I want you a long time ago alright?" He sighed before folding his arms across his lap as he leaned forward and returned his attention to the ground in front of him. "Is it too much for you to understand that even as just your friend I care about what happens to you?"
Blake's heart began to race as sadness and anger built within her. "Yes," she answered as she held back tears.
"Why?!" He nearly yelled as his vision snapped back up to her. "Why do you do that?!" he stood from his chair looking down at her. "Why do you walk around all day acting like you are the worst person on Remnant? Why do you think that you don't deserve to be happy just like everyone else does?!"
"Because I don't!" She yelled back as she stood from her chair and got in his face. "I don't, Sun! You have no idea the things I've done, the people I've hurt or why! You don't get it!" But she stopped suddenly as he lifted his hand and pointed his index finger in her face.
"No! You don't get it Blake. All you ever did was what you thought was right! You're the only person who had the good sense to get out and stand up for what you believe in in the entire White Fang! The only person with a good enough heart to see that what they were doing was wrong, and changed because of it. Then you get a new team, new friends and in the end you just run away from them when things go wrong!"
Blake froze. Unable to blink or look away from him. She couldn't believe how Sun was acting. She never considered that he could actually blow up on her like this...or that his words would sting so much from the truth within them. Eventually her vision sank from him to the floor as her shoulders sank as well. Tears formed in her eyes as she stood still, unable to come up with a retort, Sun's posture slowly changing till it mirrored hers. "...Sorry," he breathed out.
"No!" She bit out as the tears flooded her eyes and began to fall to the floor. "You can't do that. You can't just...apologize to me after saying all that." His eyes flew back up to look at her, her voice shaky as her breath hitched in her throat. "You keep saying that I deserve to be happy, that I need to let go of the past and move forward but I can't! I've made so many mistakes in so many different ways. Why would my team want me to stick around after all that? Why would Yang ever want to see me again? Why do you act like you still want to be friends with me after everything I've done!"
"It's not an act you idiot!" He shouted back before taking a step forward and grabbing her hand, pulling her attention back up to his face, tears streaming down her face. "...It's never been an act and it never will be...do you really think I'd follow you halfway across the world just because I'm physically attracted to you? Really? Is that all you think I am? A tail hungry monkey? Why is it so impossible for me to actually see the effort that you put into changing and all the good you've done? You may think it's easy to focus on everything wrong that you've done but for me...It's the opposite..." He let out softly before lifting his free hand to her face and wiping a tear from her cheek. "I told you...I'm more than happy just to be your friend and be here for you. So stop running away from me," he smiled down at her.
Blake's heart pounded in her chest as the tears fell from her chin to the floor, once again rendered speechless by the most loyal friend she'd ever had. She could no longer keep up the act, she knew before long she wouldn't be able to keep pretending and continue to push him out. She stepped forward, her legs moving all on their own, forcing herself into his grasp, letting herself cry, no longer holding in the flood of emotions she had kept pent up since she had run away. "I...I'm so sorry Sun," she wept as she hyperventilated. Sun wrapped his arms around her and let her cry into his shoulder.
"Just let it out Blake...You're not alone...no matter how much you pretend to want to be alone, I will never leave you alone."
"Daaadddddd?" Yang yelled from her bed. She hadn't heard him walking through the house for a while now. On top of that she hadn't seen him walking around in the yard from her bedroom window either. "Huhhh...must be out somewhere."
She turned and swung her feet out from atop the mattress and stood up, walking from her room to the bathroom down the hall. The sun had come up, almost to its highest point she'd slept in so late. Again she called out, "Anyone in there?" She asked as she tapped on the bathroom door, which budged open as she knocked. "Man where is everyone..." She thought aloud before walking inside and closing the door behind her, turning the shower on and cranking up the temperature as she looked into the mirror above the sink.
She had found herself unable to look in the mirror these days, a stark contrast to how she used to be. Before all of this she could look in the mirror and brush her hair for hours, but now it was up in a messy tangled bun and she couldn't even look herself in the eye. Every time she tried she ended up looking away after only a moment, as if dodging her own judgment. Ruby had once told her how Weiss confided in her one night, telling her that sometimes when she had looked in the mirror she felt as if a completely different person was staring back at her. Yang had recently learned exactly what the heiress had meant by that.
As she once again was forced to look away from her own reflection she turned and slowly stripped her clothes off before stepping into the back of the shower, slowly getting used to the temperature as she moved more and more into the water. The bathroom quickly filled with steam on this cold spring morning. Before long, however, Yang realized that she once again didn't have the will to actually wash up. She let herself sink down in the shower until she was sitting on the bottom, hugging her legs to her chest while she spaced out looking at the swirl of water going down the drain.
She stayed that way for minutes, but to her it felt like hour upon hour had gone by before she heard someone coming up the stairs. Moments later she heard a knocking on the door. "Yang? That you in there?"
'Dad,' she thought to herself. "Ya...hey where is everyone?" She yelled back.
"Mind if I open the door?"
"Go ahead."
As Tai opened the door he leaned against the frame, looking straight through the room and out the window. Of course the curtain of the shower kept them from seeing each other but the awkwardness of the situation was not lost on him. "Sorry just..didn't wanna keep shouting...Mydnight woke up last night."
Yang's head perked up, "Oh? That's good news. Is he okay?"
"Well I assume he is because the three of them took off last night after your sister."
"What? They just...took off? What if Mydnight isn't ready? How could they do that?"
"Look Yang I'm sure they didn't force him. I'm sure he felt ready. Besides those two can keep him safe if something goes wrong. I think it's probably good for them to get back out there. Especially if it means that when they catch up with Ruby they will all be better off."
"...Loving the sub text dad," she grumbled as she heard between the lines, taking his explanation as a hint that she should be doing the same thing.
"Huhhh..." he sighs heavily, before turning to leave the room. "You know I didn't mean it like that."
Before Yang could muster up the words to retort however she heard the door close as her father left her to her shower. Yang's vision fell back to the drain, tears welling in her eyes before falling and being mixed in with the steaming water.
"You should have..."