"You're sure you don't want us to come with you?"
"I'm sure."
Weiss absolutely wasn't.
She tipped her head back to avoid Ruby's concerned look and stared up the polished facade of the Welsbach Inn. The building was old enough that it had been part of Mantle before the war, though now it sat a couple of blocks from the edge of Atlas. She'd found it on her scroll last night, after nearly an hour spent searching for a restaurant her mother might agree to visit, which would still let her inside. Neutral ground. Hopefully.
This would be hard enough without making her mother feel cornered. And if her friends got angry at her while they were talking, which she suspected they would... it probably wouldn't take much for her to give up and go home. "Klein will be there," she said, trying to feel as confident as she sounded. "And she isn't—she means well." Mother had insisted on inviting Whitley. Weiss might have worried about that if there was any chance he'd actually agree to show up. Another of her gestures. Maybe Weiss could convince her to follow up on one of them, for a change.
"We'll be right outside," Blake promised.
She nodded, rolling her shoulders and shaking out her wings as if she was getting ready for a sparring match. Her mother might feel better if she covered them. That was a compromise Weiss wasn't willing to make.
A hand reached out to take hers. For a moment Yang just stood there, grimacing as she struggled to form words. They never quite came together. Instead she squeezed once and said, "Good luck."
Inside was a clean and quiet space, softly lit with Dust candles set in the walls and hung from elegant chandeliers. "Schnee," she told the host distractedly. "The rest of the party has already arrived." He pointed her to a private dining area across the room.
The instant Weiss opened the door, Klein shot to his feet, eyes wide and brown and watery. A lump caught in her throat. She watched his gaze flicker over her face, her trembling hands, the wings he'd cared for that flared over her shoulders. His expression melted into a smile.
"You look wonderful," he said, and held his arms out.
Weiss stooped into the hug. He held her tightly, resting one hand between her wings. She took a deep breath. Childhood smells of chocolate and cinnamon and his earthy cologne washed over her. For an instant she was six all over again, fidgeting as careful hands wrapped her wings against her back. She wanted to tell him she was learning to be as gentle with them as he was. But she wasn't sure how to say it, and she didn't want anyone else to overhear. "I feel wonderful," she said instead, and hoped he would know what she meant. He beamed at her.
When she pulled away, she saw that her mother had stood up from the table. She watched them approach. As Weiss moved to take her seat, Willow spread her arms in an invitation she couldn't refuse—not when she'd come here to ask for her help. Not when she'd just hugged Klein right in front of her. Jaw tight, Weiss leaned in and endured a brief embrace.
"Whitley couldn't make it, I'm afraid. He had a prior engagement he couldn't get out of."
Weiss rolled her eyes. As if Whitley would have let mother get more than halfway through the invitation without remembering a prior engagement.
They sat. Weiss froze up when she looked at the menu—torn between avoiding fish because she knew it would bother her mother, and ordering it for the exact same reason.
Willow frowned at the entree list. "I don't know about this place. I'm sure it's... fine, but why not eat at Thalia's? You used to love their foie gras."
"They don't allow faunus."
"Oh." Her face fell. "Well... I'm sure we can get them to make an exception."
"Why would I want that?" Weiss snapped. The waiter, who had just poked his head inside, froze mid-step.
"I'll take the lunch special, if you would," Klein said into the tense silence. Weiss got the fish. Willow ordered a glass of wine.
It took a while for her fork to stop shaking. Once it had, she braced herself and looked up. "Did you see my interview at the mine?"
Her mother's lips pressed tightly together. That was a yes, even if she didn't say anything.
"A lot of people won't believe me if it's my word against his. Maybe you won't believe me, if it's my word against his. But you saw it happen."
"I... I know it was hard for you."
"He made it hard for me."
Willow looked down at her plate. "This really is quite awful. We can go somewhere else, can't we?"
"No. It took me over an hour to find this place."
"I'll find something. Or Klein could cook, and you could come—" She glanced at Weiss' face and winced. "We could have a picnic."
"I can't stay that long. I have a surgery scheduled with Doctor Polendina this evening."
Willow's eyes lit up. "You do?"
"Not that kind of surgery. He's going to see if he can repair some of the damage in the joints."
"I see."
"Do you? Why would I ever go through with that now? The secret is out. There's no point."
"No. No, you're right. I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking."
Weiss scowled at her food. It was delicious, and she couldn't bring herself to care. Coming here was a mistake.
"Ahem." Klein's eyes blinked pink. "I d-doubt my word will be taken any more seriously than yours, but I'd be happy to help."
"What? I can't ask you to do that! You'd be blacklisted from every house in Atlas. Just... being here, right now, that's more than enough."
Pink flashed to red. "No, it isn't. Someone's got to speak up for you."
Her mother winced and gave up picking at her food.
"I don't want you to be punished for this." Weiss pushed her plate away with a sigh. "Either of you. Mom... I know I'm asking a lot. I know he'd do something vile afterwards, but that's why I'm doing this. It's not okay that he'd punish you for telling people how he acts."
"That isn't—he doesn't know. If we could just help him realize, then—"
"He doesn't believe I'm his daughter. That's not going to change, no matter what we do."
Willow drew back. She watched Weiss for a long moment, her hand shaking where it gripped the stem of her glass. "You believe me. Don't you?"
"What?"
"That you're his."
Weiss went quiet. She thought about the impossibility of her birth, how even Blake didn't know of a single other faunus with human parents. About the complete lack of Atlesian faunus with wings like hers who might have met her mother, and the possibility that her father might have had a completely different trait. "I don't know."
"You look like him. You have his eyes."
They were a slightly different shade of blue, one that looked more like her father's than her mother's. Doctor Marigold had assumed she was his child with another woman. But which was more likely? That she'd stumbled across a slightly greyish tint that happened to resemble him, or that her genetics had pulled a pair of wings out of nowhere?
Her mother grabbed her hand. Pleading. "I see so much of him in you."
She must have looked as insulted as she felt. Willow flinched again, but didn't let go. "You're brilliant. Once you set your mind to something, you pursue it with everything you have. You stand up for yourself. And you are... indomitable. You never give up. Never. You... didn't get that from me."
Weiss looked away.
"There's good in him." Cool hands squeezed hers. "And I see all of it in you. Please, tell me you see it too."
She felt her heartbeat in her fingertips. "I have his temper. Maybe I inherited that, or maybe I learned it from all the times he shouted at me." She yanked her hands away. "I told you, I don't know. I don't care! He's going to treat me like a mistake no matter what the truth is, so why would it matter?"
"Of course it matters." Her mother cupped her face in her palms, brushing a thumb ever-so-gently over her cheek. "I know it's hard, and I'm sorry. But you're his daughter. You can show him that, I know you can. You've always been such a good girl, and he sees that, I promise. Even if it might not always seem like it. He didn't like to hold you at first, but now... it's close, darling. It's so close. If you can just show him, then everything will be alright."
Weiss took her by the wrists and pushed her hands away. "Maybe you're right. Maybe if I tried really hard, if I were perfect, maybe he'd want me. But I don't care."
"You can—"
"I don't care if I can!" Weiss' wings flared out behind her. "I don't want him anymore! I'm not his pet and I'm not about to bow and scrape for basic decency from a man I don't respect. It's not up to me to make him see me as a person, and it's not my fault he doesn't love you!"
Her mother flinched back as if struck. "I never said—!"
"You didn't have to say it. You showed me. You picked him over me."
"I wanted you to be happy. It's unfair that you were born like this, I know. I wish I could change it, but I can't. What else was I supposed to do?"
Weiss gaped at her, incredulous. "What else where you supposed to do? You—you're my mom, you were supposed to protect me!" Her face twisted, and her vision blurred. "I didn't want you to fix me! I wanted you to tell me I wasn't broken!"
"I..."
"I was so angry at Winter!" The words bubbled up hot and scathing. "She didn't know what to do either! She never knew what to do! She was younger than I am now and she messed up over and over again, because she had no idea what she was doing and you wouldn't help her, but at least she tried! She did something!"
She was crying now, trembling with rage. "I had to go to her when I was scared of him. I had to go to Klein when I wanted someone to hug me. I had to go to Whitley to pretend I wasn't different. He was a child who didn't even know what I was, and he helped me more than you ever did!"
"I did everything I could to help you and your father—"
"No! There is no helping both of us. He's hurting me. He's been hurting me my whole life, and he doesn't want to stop. And every time I talk to you, you try to drag me back to him like that's going to do anything but make it worse!"
"I—I didn't—"
"Yes, you did! You always do this! You try to make me talk to father, then you try to make Whitley talk to me like that's going to make him hate me less instead of more, like we could be a perfect happy family if everyone just tried harder! Like it's somehow my fault because I wasn't willing to mutilate myself to make it easier for everyone else to look at me—"
"What? Weiss, Whitley doesn't hate you! He's your brother, he misses you."
Weiss turned away, rubbing her temples against the beginnings of a pounding headache. "I don't know why I bother. You obviously aren't listening."
"Weiss..."
Her wings snapped out, putting a barrier between them as she walked out into the main restaurant. Willow didn't follow.
Someone else did. She heard his footsteps, and by the time she turned to face Klein she was losing a fight with tears. "Don't say anything. Please. I don't want you to lose your job over nothing."
His eyes flashed red as he folded her into another hug. "I'll speak with her. And I'm sorry it happened like that. You did the right thing getting away from that bastard."
Weiss pulled back in shock. "Klein!" she burst out, scandalized and delighted.
"I won't take her side. It wasn't alright, pushing you to go back to how things were when you're so much happier now." He blinked back to brown. "But I'm glad you tried."
"Mm," said Weiss, who wasn't sure if she was or not. From the sad look he gave her, he'd noticed.
"I hope she makes you glad too, someday."
Swallowing hard, she managed a sharp nod.
"You'll be alright? You have a place to stay?"
"Yes. My team and I found a hotel."
"And they're good for you?"
There was no fighting the grin that took over her face. "The best," she promised.
"Good." He reached up to squeeze her shoulder. "I'd best get your mother home."
It was harder than she'd realized it would be, to let him go. But she put on her best brave face as he hugged her one last time. Then she left the Welsbach Inn and hurried to where she knew she'd find her team waiting.
One look at her expression, and Yang was already opening her arms. Weiss threw herself into them, burrowing her face into the crook of her neck, trembling slightly with relief. There was no need to put words to her disappointment—it was understood.
"She won't help?" It wasn't exactly a question, though Ruby's voice was gentle.
Weiss shook her head.
"We'll talk to Robyn. I think her team is planning to go around the crater making sure people have all the paperwork and stuff they need to vote. We can probably help with that."
She lifted her head. Her partner flashed her a grin. "There's still lots of stuff we can do."
"Right." Weiss took a deep breath and stepped back out of the hug. She could breathe easier, now—but there was an ache between her ribs that hadn't gone away.
Blake put an arm around her and leaned their heads together. "One of us needs to call my parents," she said. "I don't think my dad was kidding about starting an international incident."
A lump rose in her throat. "Is it alright if I...?"
She could tell by Blake's pleased smile that she'd been hoping for that. "We still have a couple of hours before your appointment. Maybe we could head back to the hotel and you could let my mom know how we're doing?"
"That sounds—" Wonderful. Impossibly so. "Thank you."
"You don't need to thank me. She told me she was hoping to hear from you."
Weiss couldn't dwell on that too much without bursting into tears again—so she started walking towards the shuttle back to Mantle.
She didn't relax, once they were in the air. Couldn't. Not when she'd be on an operating table in less than two hours. Even so, she was calmer now than she had been walking into the Welsbach Inn. It probably said something terribly sad about her birth family. But she liked to think it also said something about the one she'd picked up along the way, that everything was a little easier to face when they were with her.