"Are you absolutely sure Mr. Xiao Long?"
Weiss fidgeted behind the tall blonde man, her eyes slowly gazing over the humble wooden house before her to distract herself. The cozy exterior reminded her of one of her family's old vacation homes in the Atlesian countryside. The entire boat ride and the subsequent rural scenic view through Patch she took with the pair of blondes had filled her with a warm comforting feeling, something about the serenity and peace in comparison to all the hustle of Vale was a comforting distraction for the heiress's darker thoughts from the recent days.
Tai chuckled, a jingling sound ringing out from his keys as he unlocked the front door with an audible click. He swung open the door to his home, shooting the worried girl a quick and reassuring grin.
"I told you, just Tai is fine. Ya don't need to be so formal with me, with how much my girls always talked about you in their letters home, you're basically part of the family at this point."
He paused for a few moments, before adding.
"Not to mention you're already here, it wouldn't be very Weiss of me to turn you away at this point huh?"
The blonde man shot his daughter a glance, hoping the pun would elicit some positive reaction from her.
The ice queen clenched her jaw for a moment, her body going rigid as she had to pause to process the unexpected pun assault she just received. She pinched the bridge of her nose, quickly realizing that her blonde teammate's love for those awful puns of hers had to come from somewhere, and unfortunately for her, she had just discovered from where.
"It was bad enough that I got them from her."
Tai seemed quite amused with himself as he turned back away from her, only for both him and the heiress to be surprised when Yang let out an audible snort and chuckle. Something neither of them had heard for the entire trip here.
"You can't be stealing my jokes already Dad, we just got back..."
The heiress could see through Yang's half hearted attempt to chime in, happy to see a hint of a smile playing at the Blonde's lips, but saddened that she was obviously attempting to make both Weiss and her own father not worry about her. Normally Weiss would've been quite annoyed at the pun, but considering this was the first time she had heard her teammate be anything remotely close to happy in the last couple of days she decided to count it as a win.
Though the thought did make Weiss almost long for her teammate to fling one of her own puns in her direction. As infuriating as they were to the heiress, Yang would always seem to smile or laugh afterwards, she didn't know if it was at her own reaction or at the actual contents of the pun, but she found she did slowly start to warm up to them overtime. Especially since they made Yang happy, though the heiress didn't quite understand why that specifically made her feel so happy herself. Though initially warm, the feelings grew strangely uncomfortable, the heiress felt as though she was bottling something in but she still wasn't quite sure what. She stewed on that information for a few moments, swallowing to push the uncomfortable and conflicting emotions aside, ultimately deciding that Yang's old ability to be a fun and positive light was simply too contagious.
Weiss did shift a little awkwardly as she returned her attention to the older man, as a Schnee it was always drilled into her head from a young age that she should never owe a debt to anyone. Of course anytime a lesson her father may have drilled into her head springs to mind, she'd quickly throw it into the trash as fast as she could. So Instead the heiress found her thoughts wandering to some of her own letters and updates about her team that she'd send Winter.
She was basically her equivalent, the heiress would never dream of sending a letter home to her father. Weiss knew her brother could not care less, and her mother probably wouldn't even be able to read it with how much of an intoxicated haze she was always in. She inadvertently scowled as the thoughts of her family floated through her mind, but she quickly wiped those thoughts aside and composed herself.
Truthfully she absolutely detested the idea of imposing, but it seemed Yang's father was insistent. To be fair, she had nowhere else to go after the fall. The only other home she had outside of the dorms at Beacon was on the other side of the world in Atlas. It didn't take long for the father to offer his abode to her when he arrived to collect his daughter, and she was buried in the feeling of gratitude.
She cleared her throat for a moment, and even though Tai insisted on a lack of formality, etiquette was Weiss's middle name.
"Still, I cannot overstate how much I appreciate this, if you need anything from me Mr. Xiao Long, you can absolutely ask."
Tai opened his mouth to respond, only to be cut off by the much welcome sound of Yang speaking up again, her voice still downtrodden but with a tinge of her old playfulness.
"Wow dad, haven't heard you called that since your teaching days."
Tai smiled, a fraction of tension releasing itself from his shoulders, simply happy to hear his daughter's voice a couple of times today as the three walked inside.
"Your father was a teacher? Combat I assume, or otherwise?"
The heiress inquired, her interest piqued at this new information.
Tai let out a laugh as he closed the door behind them, grinning with pride as he shot his daughter a teasing smile.
"Taught my little firecracker here everything she knows! You've probably seen tons of my techniques if you've fought together."
Which earned a quick eye roll from the younger blonde in response.
Weiss looked at the brawler, raising an eyebrow at the new nickname. This was absolutely information she'd use at a later date. To the heiress's dismay, Yang seemed thoroughly unimpressed, seeming to have slipped back down whatever slope she had just barely climbed up a moment ago. She was this way the entire trip here, very little emotion showing from her sunken and glassy lilac eyes. Sadly, arriving home and joking around with her father seemed to be having a non existent effect on her mood. This shot another pang of agony through the heiress's chest, Yang was always so strong, both physically and when it came to her emotions. She wore them on her sleeve most of the time, which was something Weiss could never do at her home. It was something she admired greatly about the blonde. Yet here she looked so hopeless, so devoid of that bright warmth she usually exuded, it was almost eerie and it deeply unsettled the ice queen.
Weiss painfully tore her eyes from her friend, to respond to the older blonde.
"You'll have to tell me all about it some ti-"
"Eh, he wasn't all that good, kid."
The new deeper and raspy voice caused her to jump slightly as it cut like a knife through her sentence, all three turning to see the taller dark haired culprit. Qrow, who she remembered Ruby remarking as her 'uncle' from the fight with her own sister, leaned against the inner door frame of the hallway, flask already pressed to his lips to take a slow drink after the dry remark.
She noted a deep sigh escaping Tai, his features changing very quickly to a more annoyed and exasperated look, his eyes moving to the flask as the man drank from. Still, his face softened to one of worry as he asked.
"How is she Qrow?"
The question was drenched in anxiety, the dark aura around it almost palpable to the heiress even without the obvious expression of worry the father wore.
"No change. Not even a little toss, she's as still as you left her."
Qrow dryly responded, emotions hardly readable as he sipped at his flask once more, eyes seemingly glued to a single spot on the floor.
Weiss didn't even need to think to understand who 'her' was. Their leader and friend, Ruby, who she hadn't seen since the night of the fall. The heiress recalled the night, watching the blur of her trademark red cape billowing behind her as she disappeared over the lip of Beacon tower. Weiss hoped with all her strength for the little redhead to wake up. Outside of her general concern for the girl, she couldn't think of many things that could improve Yang's mood other than having the two sisters reunited. The image of Yang's smiling face popped into her mind, and the corners of Weiss's lips turned upward into somewhat of a smile at the thought, a strange and familiar warmth spreading through her body at the idea of having her happy, warm friend back. Though quickly her automatic, almost robotic nature of bottling emotions took over. She threw that thought, and her own smiling away, as she returned to her postured and measured expression.
"Again with that odd feeling..."
The Heiress only pondered for a few moments, ultimately shrugging it off as a side effect of being so close to the depressed girl for so long, and wishing her friend to get better. Any amount of happiness would probably suffice, it just so happened Yang was the one she interacted with the most in the last few days. At least, that's what she committed to telling herself.
"I want to see her."
Yang's voice carried a specific guarded tone as it echoed from her, yet the feeling of those words held a deep and terrifying weight to all those in the room, especially the heiress. She stole another look at those sunken and sad eyes of Yang's. At the end of that sentence was a dark and all consuming pit, one that Yang was already dangling by a thin thread into.
Every member of the room seemed to understand in unison, and all unprompted walked into the hallway and down to Ruby's half open door with Qrow leading. Inside was a sight that Weiss had to force herself not to feel all of the emotions that welled up inside of her on instinct. Ruby was pale and sickly white, entombed to her bed with her hair messy and unkempt. She looked like she was withering away with how unnaturally still the usually full of energy girl was. The room was dead silent, the atmosphere seeming to have been sucked straight from everyone present's lungs like it was the depths of space. The adults, while clearly looking concerned, were apparently accustomed to this sight. Meanwhile Weiss could only look for a few seconds at a time, before finding a particularly interesting spot on the floor just to keep herself sane.
The room was silent for what felt like an eternity, her worried blue eyes slowly rising up to the other thing in this room that terrified her to look at, Yang's reaction. Of course, Weiss was surprised to see no change. Well, almost no change, she knew Yang well, and could easily spot the visible tension building in her forearm muscles, her knuckles growing white and strained from the tension of her clenched fist.
Eventually, startling everyone, Yang turned away sluggishly and stumbled into the hallway, a defeated sink in her shoulders.
"I need to sleep."
The simple sentence rang out hollowly from the blonde as she left the room, half tinted with genuine exhaustion, and the other being a dreadful clawing pain that hung from each of her words.
Weiss flinched as she heard another door down the hallway open and slam shut hard enough to send a vibration up the walls to the room the other three were still in. The air grew thick with an uneasy tension that branched between the adults and the heiress in the room as Tai grimaced visibly.
"Sooo..." Qrow's slightly slurred speech finally pierced the silence like a needle sharply slicing into a balloon, releasing all the air at once in an unceremonious and completely unpreferred way, much to the heiress's dismay.
"Lettin' the ice queen bunk up eh? Where ya even gonna put her?"
She couldn't stop herself from shooting the older man an icy death glare, to which he simply shrugged back at her in response, droning out a simple.
"Whaaaat? It's a fair question."
He glanced in the remaining blonde's direction.
"Ya don't exactly have a spare room, Tai."
To this, Weiss switched her eyes from Qrow to Tai, an eyebrow raising in surprise.
"I had assumed you had a spare room or something..."
The heiress posed the statement more like a question, pondering to herself for a moment with a furrowed brow before gasping out loud, a realization dawning on the ice queen as she covered her mouth.
"I don't have to sleep on a couch do I?!"
The blonde man let out a quick chuckle in response, running his hand through his hair and rubbing the back of his head for a moment at the heiress's desperate plea.
"No no, well at least that wasn't entirely the plan. Yang's got a second bed in her room, Rubes used to insist on sleeping in the same room as her sister when she was young, despite the fact she had her own room."
He gestured in the direction of his other daughter's room with a thumb, an embarrassed grin on his face.
"Though you might be stuck with the couch tonight, I don't think we should wake the slumbering dragon, sorry."
Weiss hastily agreed as much as it pained her, though she was a bit surprised by this proposed sleeping arrangement. She supposed it was somewhat better than the makeshift bunk beds they used to have, even if she did thoroughly enjoy them. Not that she'd ever openly show that her love for them was a childhood wish fulfilled. With one last glance to her partner's unconscious face she nodded and left the room, Tai seemingly also finished with this visit left with her. Qrow simply grunted at the two as they left, seeming to return to his vigil at Ruby's bedside.
Tai briefly showed her around the house in order to distract from the rather somber mood that had set in, motioning to each of the bedrooms, the bathroom, and finally stopping in the spacious kitchen. The Heiress's eyes went wide in horror as she stared up at the kitchen cabinets, seeming as though they towered miles in the air above her like haunting sky scrapers. She was painfully aware Yang was taller than her, a playful jab the blonde used to often make whenever the situation would arrive for Weiss, much to her dismay, but this sight truly put that height difference into perspective for the girl.
Tai, noticing her stare, looked between the girl and the kitchen in confusion for a few moments before seeming to realize the problem.
"Oh, uh… sorry. If it helps, Ruby also has to get on the counter sometimes to reach the top ones. So don't be afraid to climb or sit on em'."
The very notion of climbing on kitchen counters was appalling to the heiress, and she had to do everything she could to not audibly groan.
"So this is where that brute and her dolt of a sister get their demeanor and lack of etiquette from..."
Weiss decided to turn away from the kitchen, concluding that it was very much not her priority at the moment, pale blue eyes flicking her attention towards the window. The sun had nearly set completely, hues of burnt oranges and slight shades of pink streamed softly through the glass, the colors being slowly blotted out by the darkness of the coming night.
"Bark! Woof! Bark!"
The heiress's train of thought was very quickly thrown aside at the sound of a familiar barking dog, which caused her to whip around with a gleeful smile coming to her face. She crouched down, arms open happily as the dog bounced up and down, energetically yapping up at her and licking at her outstretched arms.
"Zweeeiii! Oh my gosh I missed you so much! You're just as adorable as I remember! Yes you are!"
Tai chuckled from the doorway, having grabbed a selection of extra blankets and pillows from the closet and tossing them onto the couch in the living room. Content to see the family dog he mailed to his girls was received well by their friend.
"You'll be stealing his bed tonight, so I hope you don't mind a little company while you sleep. Though based on the letter Ruby sent me, I have a feeling you won't mind at all."
The only response he received was an array of coos and happy giggles from the amused heiress, causing the man to simply shrug and give a half wave as he silently made his way to his own bedroom, deciding to turn in for the night.
After a few minutes of situating herself and fighting with blankets, she managed to get as comfortable as she could. Weiss settled in with Zwei firmly tucked under the blankets on top of her. She absentmindedly let one hand slowly stroke the canine's head, her eyes tiredly wandering towards the window as she gazed into the darkening night with a soft yawn. Her mind drifted to the two sisters in the house with her, she found herself only worrying more about the pair, hoping Ruby would wake soon and that Yang would slowly be able to start feeling at least a little better. She sighed as she tried to push the worry from her mind to get some small amount of troubled sleep, eventually succeeding despite her discomfort on the couch. The heiress was actually quite excited to sleep in a real bed tomorrow night for the first time in far too long.