It wasn't easy. Blake wasn't far ahead of them at first, but they were moving slower than she was, and the confusion of a million other smells only got worse when they swerved into a more residential area. Weiss started guessing, and sometimes she guessed wrong and they had to backtrack.

The call came at an intersection. Yang had charged ahead where the light was still red, and Weiss could barely hear her scroll over the honking. She hesitated for only an instant before she turned it off and stuffed it back in her pocket. He could wait. If she was too slow right now, they might lose Blake completely.

By the time they got to the other side of the street, Weiss was beginning to think they already had—but just as the trail became so faded she was afraid she was imagining it, the smell started to get stronger.

"She's close," she told the others under her breath. They walked down a quiet street, passing two elderly women walking a dog, and then a man and his daughter. Then they turned left, and Weiss spotted it.

"There," she decided, pointing to the burnt-out husk of a small house near the end of the lane. It was in the right direction, and she couldn't see any other likely hiding places around. They sprinted a few paces, then hesitated, mindful of the few people still walking around that might see them.

"Let's go in through the back," Ruby whispered. So they walked up to the ruin and skirted around the side, doing their best to look like three completely normal teenagers cutting through backyards on their way to do whatever teenagers who weren't monster hunters did all day. The back door was locked, but it didn't matter much when there was a gaping, blackened hole in the wall just a few feet to the left. Glancing furtively around, they slipped inside.

Blake certainly knew how to pick a place with atmosphere. The house looked like a time capsule half-cremated. Ash and soot covered every surface, turning what had once been a vibrant living room cold and grey. Domestic bits and pieces were scattered all over. A melted holoscreen remote stuck out from between charred couch cushions. A broken necklace lay on the floor, with the bright yellow gemstone pendent that had hung from it scattered a few feet away. She wondered if this had been an accident, or one of the White Fang's arson attacks.

She had only a second to take in details before there was a noise from upstairs, like a muffled scream, and Yang hurled herself at the stairs. Weiss and Ruby followed hot on her heels, ignoring the way the weakened boards creaked under their shoes. They came out in a hallway with doors on either side, only one of which was closed.

Inside, Blake sat huddled against the far wall with her arms around her knees. When the door banged open she flinched and tried to press herself into an even smaller space. As one, the three of them scrambled to reach her—Weiss nearly tripped over her scroll, lying abandoned in the opposite corner of the room. Its screen was cracked. No Signal, it read, over a contact labeled Mom and Dad.

Once she realized it was them, Blake slumped bonelessly against the wall. She stayed that way when they hugged her. Like she didn't have the energy to hug back. "I spent so much time worrying about someone finding out," she said dully. "I never expected him to tell them. I'm such an idiot."

"Well..." Yang said, hesitant, like even she didn't know how to proceed from here. "It... sounds like you cared about him a lot. So I don't think it's weird, you know, to have a hard time—"

It was hard to tell if Blake laughed or sobbed. "No. That's not it. I knew he wanted to hurt me, I just didn't think he wanted it so badly he'd tell the Atlas Council anything." Ruby made a distressed noise, and Yang pulled Blake a little tighter into her side.

Blake's hands clenched into fists. "I thought—I don't know what I thought. I guess this was always going to come out somehow. I... I'm so sorry."

"Hey, stop." Yang dropped a kiss on the top of her head. "You don't have anything to apologize for. This wasn't your fault."

"Not for that." Blake stood up, disentangling herself from the three of them with shaking hands. "I have to go. I can't stay in Atlas, I'm already eighteen and if I get caught up in this—"

"What?" Yang grabbed her arm. "Blake, no!"

Blake pulled away. "I—I'll miss you. So much—"

"Blake, stop!" Ruby stepped in front of her. "There has to be something Ozpin can do, or... something!"

She looked over Ruby's head to meet Weiss' eyes. "Whatever you choose, please... don't give up." Then she opened her arms for a hug—maybe the last time anyone would ever touch her quite like that, like her useless wings were worth going to war to protect.

Weiss pushed her away. "What?" she demanded, lifting her chin in challenge. "Like you're doing? Right now?"

Blake recoiled like she'd just been slapped. "This isn't—I have to go."

Weiss might have started shouting, then—she was so furious at this conversation for happening, she could hardly think. But Ruby cut in front of her, voice quiet but firm. "One night. Just give us until tomorrow to figure something else out. If we can't, and you're not safe here? You need to go. But please, let us try."

Blake hesitated, for the longest moment of Weiss' life to date. Her ears drooped. "Okay," she said. And then, "Oof!" because Ruby had plowed into her stomach for a hug that nearly knocked her over.

This time, when Blake held an arm out to her, Weiss stepped into it. She was anxious and unsettled, and it was one of those moments where being touched made her skin crawl. But she couldn't let both of the maybe-last times Blake would hug her pass, so she leaned in and bore it, and decided then and there that it would not be the last time. She refused to lose this right when she'd started to get used to it.

Blake let go and turned to Yang. She was still standing right where she'd been when Blake had pulled away. Motionless. Staring blankly at her partner, like she wasn't actually seeing her.

"I'm sorry," Blake said again, softly this time. She leaned in to press their foreheads together. A tremor ran through her, and that seemed to wake Yang up.

"It'll be okay," she promised, wrapping her arms around Blake. "Whatever—" Her voice broke. "Whatever happens, we'll make sure you're safe."

It was a big promise—so they left, soon after, to go an fulfill it. The walk back to their hotel was as fast as they could make it, while still keeping an eye out for anyone who might be looking for Blake so that they wouldn't accidentally lead them to her hiding place. Fast wasn't really the word, though. It was already dusk by the time they got there.

Weiss was burning to get to the room she was meant to share with Ruby, to finally sink into the stack of books she'd brought with her and look for solutions. The sooner this turned into a practical problem, one she could work to solve, the better. So when they stepped inside and saw the Albains loitering in the lobby, and one nudged the other to point them out, she had to suppress the urge to scream.

"What," she said testily.

Corsac raised an eyebrow. "Our apologies," he drawled. "I believe we've made an... error of judgment, coming here."

Fennec's ears twitched. Then, his tone carefully neutral, "Have you had any luck locating young Blake?"

Yang folded her arms. "Can't say we have."

They glanced at one another. Corsac's mouth twitched—a flash of contempt, there and gone in an instant. But then he nodded, and Fennec held a slip of paper out to Yang.

"If you do, tell her an old friend would like to offer some assistance."

"What?" Yang blurted. And then, when she unfolded it and revealed a random jumble of letters and numbers, "What?"

"She will know what it means," Corsac said. And then, without another word, or any explanation whatsoever for any of this, the brothers walked out of the hotel.

"Cool," Yang said irritably. "Thanks for clearing that up."

Weiss stared at the slip of paper in Yang's hands like it was a live tarantula. "You know what this means, don't you? Who else is going to write in a secret code that Blake happens to be able to understand?"

"Yeah." Ruby made a face. "But... this definitely isn't the same group that Adam led, right? It wouldn't make any sense for them to help her."

"Unless it's a trap!" Weiss burst out, then winced when the others both shushed her. She stayed reluctantly silent until they got to their rooms, at which point she erupted into fierce argument. "This is the White Fang. We can't just deliver one of their messages and hope nothing goes wrong! Even if it isn't his group, the White Fang in Atlas kills people!"

"Atlas kills people too," Yang shot back. "It's literally the entire reason we're here right now. If whoever sent this can help her, we can't afford to dismiss that."

Weiss spluttered incoherently for several seconds, her outrage completely overwhelming her ability to form words. Accepting help from the same people who'd been doing their level best to burn down Atlas for the past several years was insane. The Albains had been one thing, back when Weiss thought they were only connected to the White Fang in Menagerie—but clearly, their involvement went deeper than that. The right thing to do would be to report them to General Ironwood... and destroy any hope Blake still had of staying at Beacon.

Even if Weiss couldn't do the right thing, she could at least avoid actively collaborating with a pack of murderous arsonists. "How do we know they're telling the truth? They're criminals, Yang. They lie!"

Yang's eyes flashed red. "So, what, you want to throw out our only lead?"

Ruby butted in before Weiss had the chance to reply. "Okay, okay. This isn't helping." She looked at Yang, "I don't like this either." Then at Weiss, "But it's for Blake, so I think we should at least ask her what she wants to do about it. Besides, it's not like we have any better ideas."

Weiss squared her shoulders. "Fine, then. Let's stop standing around and find one."

They decided that Ruby would be the one to talk to Ozpin, to see if there was anything he could do. In the meantime, Weiss occupied herself with making plans. What would they do if Taurus claimed that Blake had been an active part of all the awful things he'd done? What if the trial went through in Atlas? At what point would Weiss have no choice but to call Winter and ask her to speak to the General? Would she even do it, and would he listen to her if she did?

Ruby returned a few hours later, looking wilted. "He says he'll try, but he can't really do anything except make suggestions while we're in Atlas." Weiss wrote this down in her notebook, in a shaky approximation of her usual handwriting. Ruby joined her and Yang in paging through the books for anything that seemed like it might help.

Yang got progressively more and more restless as the night wore on. She disappeared several times, coming back with dinner and then coffee and then glasses of water. Weiss could accept this in the name of better efficiency. But after she'd been beating her head against the brick wall of what if none of this works for over an hour, Yang nudged her and said that maybe she should get up and stretch for a bit, because she was going to get a crick in her neck if she kept sitting like that.

"I don't care," she snapped. "So would you please stop distracting me?"

Weiss immediately hated herself for saying it—Yang flinched, and got very quiet for a long time, and eventually moved to fuss over Ruby instead. Her little sister bore it with much more grace.

It was Ruby who finally broke the tense silence. "It's past midnight," she said. "We need to go to bed."

"Go, then."

"That means you too, Weiss."

She ignored that.

Ruby reached over and gently closed the notebook she was writing in. "We're trying to help Blake, right?"

Weiss scowled. "Obviously."

"So, if you show up looking like a zombie tomorrow it's going to scare her."

"But—!"

"Bed," Ruby insisted. "If Blake decides to stay, we're going to have plenty of time to work on this stuff, okay? And if she doesn't... we should be well-rested, right? So we can say goodbye."

Yang turned on her heel and abruptly left the room.

Ruby's shoulders slumped. "I'll be right back."

It was the fear of either of them having to take care of her, on top of everything else they were already dealing with, that convinced Weiss to put away her notes and crawl into bed. She was still tossing and turning some time later, when Ruby returned to the room. "It's okay. I think. She said she was going to blow off a little steam and then go to bed."

Weiss rolled over onto her stomach and tried to sleep. At some point she must have managed it, because she dreamed they were back in the courtroom. Almost everyone was gone—the crowd and the reporters, the lawyers and the other witnesses, even Taurus himself. There was just Blake on the defendant's bench, and Father sitting where the judge had been with a gavel in his hand.

And, well, Weiss could take a hint. She got dressed in the dark, picked up her notebook and pen, and slipped from the room, because more sleep was obviously a lost cause at this point. Out in the hall, she paused and furrowed her brow. Pressing an ear to Yang's door, she heard... nothing. Not even the faintest hint of a snore.

"Drat."

What was it Ruby had said? Yang was blowing off steam? Well, there weren't exactly many places to do that in a hotel at two in the morning.

Weiss made a beeline for the gym. It was closed, technically, but the door was unlocked so she ignored the sign telling her to come back in four hours. Yang was near the back, attacking a punching bag like it had insulted her entire family. When she paused to wipe sweat out of her eyes, Weiss took the chance to step up beside her and say, "Ruby thinks you're asleep."

"Tried." Yang punctuated the word with the dull thud of her fist hitting the bag. "Couldn't. Figured I'd tire myself out some more first."

Weiss considered the punching bag dubiously. "Mind if I try?"

Yang was breathing hard—how long had she been down here?—but she managed a small snort of laughter. "Do you even know how to throw a punch?"

"Fist," Weiss said. "Bag. How hard can it be?"

"Depends how much you care about breaking your thumb. Or your wrist."

"Better not, then," Weiss decided, because she cared a lot less about either of those things than she should, at the moment. "I'll just watch you."

"Aren't you tired?"

"Very." Weiss sighed and sat down cross-legged on the floor. "I just don't want to go back to sleep."

For a while, the only sound was Yang hitting the bag. Smack-smack-thud, over and over, mixed with the occasional grunt. A drop of sweat fell to the floor. Then another. Then Yang's breathing hitched, and Weiss realized it wasn't sweat.

"Are you okay?" she asked tentatively.

"Fine." Yang slammed a fist into the bag. "Just worried about tomorrow. Obviously." Another flurry of blows, each one coming faster than the last. "But we can give Blake that paper, and whoever sent it can help." She spun on her heel and kicked out, making the punching bag rattle and swing on its chain. "Or maybe they won't, and she can just fuck off somewhere we'll never see her again!"

Flames flickered to life, scorching down the length of Yang's hair and throwing twisted shadows across the walls. She lashed out, and this time the punching bag split under her fist and burst, scattering plastic bags and loose sand in all directions. One skidded halfway across the room and landed in a sad little heap beside the treadmills.

The light faded. Yang stared down at the mess, her shoulders shaking, her breathing jagged and shallow. And Weiss sat there, watching one of the pillars of her world crack right down the middle, because she couldn't think of a single thing to say.

"Sorry," Yang muttered. She knelt down and started sweeping the sandbags into a pile. Weiss scrambled to help—that, at least, she knew what to do with. "I'll be fine, really. It's just a weird night."

Weiss had never thought of Yang as a good liar—because usually she wasn't—but this one came out so easily, she might have believed it if she wasn't right in the middle of clearing up the evidence. She reached for her shoulder. "Yang, if you want to talk—"

"Nah." Yang grinned at her, as if to prove that she was, in fact, fine. "I shouldn't have dumped all that on you in the first place."

Weiss' eyes narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I, uh," Yang stammered, sounding slightly panicked. "You have enough to deal with already, alright? I don't want to add to that."

"Oh. Alright," Weiss said airily.

Yang froze, sensing a trap. "Um... good?"

"That means you're going to talk to Ruby about it, right?"

"What? Weiss, she's my little sister. I'm not going to wake her up in the middle of the night just because I'm having issues."

"So Blake, then?"

"No!" Yang burst out, sounding horrified. "That is literally the worst idea I've ever—she's already freaking out!"

"Well." Weiss folded her arms across her chest. "I suppose you're stuck with me, then."

Yang gaped at her for a moment, looking downright poleaxed. Then she shook her head and sighed. "Well played, Snow Angel."

Weiss filed her reaction to that under the growing list of things not to unpack until after Blake and Yang are happily married and cleared her throat expectantly.

Yang shrugged. "I don't know. I just... I don't want her to go, that's all." She hung her head so that a curtain of hair obscured her face. "And I know she might not have a choice, but I keep hoping she'll stay and try to fight this even though I know it's dangerous, and I get that it's selfish but I can't stop—" She cut herself off and jerked to her feet, abandoning the pile of sandbags.

"I don't want her to go, either," Weiss admitted, "but..." She clenched a fist, and put all the fire she could into it when she said, "She won't have to. We'll make sure she can stay."

"But what if she doesn't?" Yang started to pace. "What if—what if we go to talk to her tomorrow and she's just—"

This was too much to sit there and watch. Weiss cut in front of her, stopping her mid-stride, and gingerly wrapped her arms around Yang's neck. She had to stand on her toes, and Yang had to stoop a little to rest her chin on the top of her head. "Then we'll find her. And if she does decide to run... we could always go with her."

Yang pulled back to stare at her. "Wait, what?"

"Why not?" Weiss asked—which was a question with far too many answers. "We could live outside the kingdoms as dashing rogues. Ruby would be our leader, and Blake would scout, and you could be the cook or something. And I'd handle navigation."

Yang burst out laughing. "Oh my god, Weiss, why do you have this all planned out—also I'd be the mercenary with the heart of gold, thank you very much."

It was definitely selfish—but for a moment, Weiss wished that she and her team could just... fall off the face of Remnant. Go somewhere far away, where they'd have no one to answer to but each other.

A strange, wistful smile appeared on Yang's face. She ruffled her hair—("Excuse you!")—and said, "You care about her a lot, don't you?"

Weiss wasn't about to answer that right now. So she grabbed Yang's arm and started tugging her towards the exit. "We should go to sleep."

"Right." Yang's voice was odd, almost wobbly. And then Weiss actually thought about it for more than a second, and realized that she'd been trying to sleep alone in a room that was supposed to have been Blake's, too.

"Come on," Weiss said briskly, and half-dragged her back to the rooms. And then, when Yang made to open her door, she pulled her back.

"What?"

"Do you want to stay with Ruby instead?"

Weiss ignored whatever Yang said—if nothing else, today she had learned to get suspicious the moment Yang said the word fine—and watched her eyes instead.

Oh. No, she was not sleeping alone tonight.

"We're switching," Weiss said, in tones that brooked no argument.

"But—!"

"I will sleep just fine in this room, and you will not." Weiss folded her arms and glared at Yang, until she couldn't keep it up any longer and she felt her expression soften. "Look, just—let me do this for you. Please?"

It took a moment, and Yang's voice was a little hoarse when she said, "Okay."

Weiss nodded stiffly. "Goodnight."

"Night. And, um... thanks."

"Anytime," Weiss told her—and meant it.