Weiss hated heights.

It wasn't that she was afraid of them because she might fall, or even because she might hit the ground and break her neck. What scared her was how easy they were, how natural it felt to walk on the edge of a precipice without so much as putting her arms out for balance. Even after seventeen years, she still hadn't managed to convince herself there was any danger in a sheer cliff.

That was what it was, really. The way her mind and her gut never matched when she was staring down a drop. That urge to flare her wings. She hated that.

So, naturally, she gravitated towards them wherever she went. And when she was angry, like tonight, she would find the tallest place she could and just sit, dangling her feet in open air. The roofs of the dorms weren't even all that high, really. She'd briefly considered the CCT tower before deciding she might actually get herself hurt doing that.

Weiss couldn't fly. She probably wouldn't have been able to even if her wings were healthy, which after over a decade of binding them down at least eight hours a day, they weren't. They were only a painful nuisance, one she'd have to put up with until she turned eighteen. She knew that. She knew that. The animal part of her could shout all it wanted. She was in control.

Right. So in control she'd gotten into a shouting match with Blake. And now her team would probably never speak to her again, and she'd have to leave Beacon. Because of how much control she had.

Weiss shouldn't have said anything. She'd known that, even when she looked around and saw the scuffle several tables away. Four boys surrounding a faunus girl. Laughing. Pulling her ears. Her sitting there with hunched shoulders, asking politely for them to stop.

"We should do something," Ruby said. She shifted so that she was halfway out of her seat, her head turned towards the commotion, ready to move. The others were talking, and the words blurred together. Weiss got the gist of it. Oh, the poor thing. How could they? Let's go save her.

She should ignore it. Speaking up would only risk giving something away. But she hated it, hated hearing them fret over something so avoidable. All that pity for someone who chose to flaunt those ears, and couldn't live with the consequences.

"Why?" she asked. "It's her own fault she's such a target."

Stunned silence fell. Ren gripped the edge of the table until his knuckles went white. Jaune's can of soda slipped out of his hand and landed in his lap. His yelp was drowned out by the scrape of a chair as Blake lurched to her feet and said,"What."

"This wouldn't happen if she would just hide them."

"Oh, come on!" Yang burst out. "That's like hearing somebody got murdered downtown and saying oh, well, if he hadn't gone out he would've been fine!"

"It'd be way easier for them to just not be a bunch of jerks," Nora agreed. "They wouldn't have to do anything."

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Well, I'm sure that would be nice, but that's not the world we live in, is it? Everyone has to accept reality at some point. It's like walking around in a desert with no protection from the sun, and then complaining when you get burned! Better to just buy a hat."

"Maybe she doesn't want a hat!" Blake slammed her shaking hands palm-down on the dining room table. People started to turn and stare. "Maybe she wants to be able to live her life without hiding like a coward!"

"Well, maybe she should consider that the rest of us might not want to see that."

"Maybe you should consider keeping your disgusting opinions to yourself!"

"How dare—"

"Stop it!"

Ruby's voice was sharper than it had ever been before, even though there was a slight sheen in her eyes that might have been tears. Her shoulders slumped. "You can do whatever you want," she mumbled at Weiss. "I'm helping."

Without another word, she turned on her heel and strode towards the faunus girl and her tormentors. Blake stood there for a moment, flushed and trembling with rage. Beside her, Yang reached out and took her hand, squeezing once before she followed her sister. Blake went with her, leaving Weiss alone at the table with a stunned team JNPR.

Not for long, though.

"I'm breaking his legs," Nora decided. Ren went with her, hopefully to stop her before she got herself and most of their teams expelled. Jaune was right behind them, though he didn't look enthusiastic about picking a fight with Cardin. Pyrrha was the last to leave the table. She paused just long enough to meet Weiss' eyes and say, "It's our duty to protect everyone. Not to pick and choose who deserves help."

And then, Weiss was alone.

After that, there wasn't much point staying where she was. So Weiss wandered up to the dorm roof, as if drawn by some magnetic force. Except that she knew it was nothing physical. It was that hated part of herself. Her animal instinct.

Her wings were still cramping. She curled her knees against her chest and clenched her fists while she waited it out. Eventually the twitching subsided, leaving only tingling and numbness near the tips of her wings. Sometimes she felt it in her nose and fingertips, too, when she was struggling to catch her breath through the bindings. That was normal, especially now that she was at Beacon and couldn't leave them uncovered at night. They ached constantly, as if to remind her of everything she had to lose.

Weiss would have killed to be able to hide what she was with a hat.

She would turn eighteen in just over nine months, right around the end of the school year. Just about three quarters of a year before she could finally get rid of them. It would have been sooner, if Winter hadn't insisted on doing what Grandfather had wanted. If she hadn't been willing to hold Weiss' future hostage in the process. What did she know, anyway? What did either of them know? They never had to drag all this dead weight around.

"You change, once you leave," Winter had said. "In ways you can't imagine until it happens. Just get out of here and think about it, before you make a permanent decision. That's all I ask."

Think about it. Weiss scoffed and kicked a nearby pebble off the roof. Because there was so much to think about. Did she want to get rid of all visible evidence that she wasn't human, so she might have half a chance at challenging Whitley's claim and taking back the family name once Father was gone? Or did she want to show the world that she was some freak of nature, have everyone make the obvious assumption that she was a bastard, lose any hope of claiming her inheritance or taking back the company, and probably end up in a Dust mine somewhere? Such a difficult decision. How could her tiny adolescent brain possibly be expected to handle it?

She didn't talk to Winter anymore.

If she was relieved that the sound of footsteps pulled her out of her thoughts, she wasn't going to show it. "Go away, Ruby."

The footsteps stopped. The silence stretched. Then her partner walked the rest of the way to the edge of the rooftop and sat down beside her.

"Y'know... sometimes you make it really hard to want to keep trying with you."

"It's a talent."

"You have to apologize."

She bristled. That made her wings cramp again, and the pain put something sharp into her voice as she snapped, "For what? Telling the truth no one wanted to hear?"

Ruby glared at her. Before today, Weiss wouldn't have believed she was capable of putting that much heat into it. "Stop doing that."

"What?"

"Pretending you're dumb. Or we're dumb. Whichever. We know it would be easier for Velvet if she hid her ears, that's the whole point! She shouldn't have to."

That... wasn't the direction Weiss had expected this to go.

"Did you really mean that stuff?" Ruby asked, when she didn't respond. "About not wanting to see them?"

Weiss should lie. The less attention brought to this, the better. She should tell Ruby what she wanted to hear, but... "Yes."

"Why not, though?" Ruby hugged her arms around herself. "I just... I'm trying to understand you and I just can't."

"It's gross, that's all. Seeing people flaunt them."

Ruby made a helpless, pained noise. "You know that's horrible, don't you?"

"It is," Weiss agreed. Watching all those ears and tails sticking out, tall and proud and unbroken in the open air, was a horrible, horrible thing. She just wasn't sure why.

"You have to get better about that," Ruby told her. "If our team is gonna work, I mean. Blake's really upset. You're my partner and I want to help you, but..."

Weiss laughed. It was an ugly, bitter thing, which was appropriate. Apparently even hope incarnate was getting sick of her. "I'll apologize," she said dully, when she was done. Because she'd gotten enough of it out of her system to start lying again.

"I would like to apologize," Weiss said, into the strained silence of the dorm. It came out smooth, because she had practiced—over and over, until she could say the words without it sounding like they were being extracted with pliers.

Apologies were the human equivalent of baring your throat to submit to an opponent. Weiss hated them, and after years of practice she was still no good at pretending otherwise.

"Seriously?" demanded Yang. She was sitting on Blake's bed. Next to Blake, actually, with their hands linked. A wonderful show of solidarity Weiss could no longer expect from Ruby.

"Yes."

"That's it?"

What more do you want? she wanted to shout, but stopped herself. "Cardin is scum," she said instead, because at the very least she was fairly sure they could all agree on that.

"And you're a—"

Blake squeezed her hand, and she cut herself off. "You don't seem very sorry to me."

"We disagree. I won't bring it up again." Shouldn't have brought it up in the first place. They're beneath your notice, Weiss. Gawking draws attention.

"Not good enough." Blake took a deep breath. "I can't work with you if you keep acting like this. But I don't want to leave Beacon, either, so..." She glanced at Yang, who smiled encouragingly back at her. "I'm a faunus."

Weiss' thoughts came to a screeching halt.

"I told Yang earlier, and... I'm trusting you, Ruby. She said you'd back me up on this."

"Definitely!" Ruby didn't miss a beat.

"I'm not going to sit there in silence while you talk like that. I'm not going to let you treat me, or Velvet, or anyone that way. Either you can learn to deal with that, or... not." Blake clung to Yang's hand, not nearly hard enough to hide her shaking.

"I need to think."

Weiss didn't even decide to say it. A familiar cold feeling settled over her, putting a pane of glass between her and the world, and she let her body take over. It spoke automatically. It turned on her heel and strode into the bathroom. The door shut and locked behind her.

Her hands clasped the edge of the sink until the crackling in her ears subsided. She did and did not want to look up. She knew it would hurt and wanted it to, relished the feeling of raising her eyes and glaring into them. Her thumb brushed over her scar.

It was just about the only thing she still liked seeing in the mirror.

She shrugged off her jacket and shirt. Then the bindings, layers and layers of straps and velcro and stiff fabric that would take ages to do up again. They pooled at her feet on the tile floor. All that was left was her undershirt—backless, so that she could finally turn and look at the things on her back.

When she was born, her mother had told her once, they were covered in fuzzy down. These days, they were more or less bald. Stray feathers poked out here and there. Most had long since been rubbed away by the bindings, or fallen out due to poor circulation. They were warped, gnarled things, full of joints that didn't bend anymore and skin she couldn't feel because the nerves were dead.

She wondered what Blake's trait was. Probably ears. That bow was suspicious, and she doubted there was room for a tail in those leggings.

Without support, the joints in her wings started to ache. She bent to grab the wrappings, much too late. The cramp drove her to her knees. She clutched at the place where they joined with her back, squeezing and twisting and hating, hating, hating Velvet and Winter and Blake most of all, for that little black bow she could slip on and off as she pleased.

Blake: I'm a faunus

Weiss: *internet dialup noises*