Nice, managed to get this done in two months, despite this, it still was extremely hard to write. I wasn't able to rely on writing combat as a crutch this chapter, for reasons which will make sense.
Yet still, this has been my only escape as accounting 001 is kicking my ass. My professor is likely to arrest me for failing my financial statements exam.
Enjoy the epilogue to Vol. 2, as we hope that I can muster the strength to do this again.
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There was sand in his mouth, god that sucked, this was what Kaiser had felt while facing the infinite void between consciousness and unconsciousness. No, there wasn't sand in his mouth, it was just drier than the desert.
Desert, that had meaning to him.
Why? Why? Why?
Desert? Sand… Vacuo.
The events of Vacuo were fresh in his mind, the oppressive heat beating down on him. The pressure he felt from that experience loomed over him like a phantom, subjecting his body to every single bruise and scrape sustained in the last few days.
Light creeped into his eyes as Kaiser slivered them open, white LED lights from further away dampened by the glassy sheen under his eyelids.
Kaiser was greeted by a dark room, an uncomfortable bed, and a crushing pain in his arm. Another infirmary room, great, he should have expected this.
He was the one who asked, or better yet pleaded, for medical attention after all.
So he survived, survived what exactly? His arm was propped up by a harness, encased in a white plaster cast, his other was splayed out and had tubes coming out of it. Experimentally, Kaiser flexed his fingers from his working hand, stretching them outwards. Kaiser jolted to a certain degree as he felt his fingers brushing against something.
Kaiser craned his head downwards to look at what he had touched, his eyes softened at what he saw.
It was Yang, her hair a mess from having rested her head on the edge of his hospital bed. She must've been sleeping there for a while, it was evident that she had been uncomfortably turning in her sleep.
Kaiser did as best as he could, reaching out, he gently swiped her hair out of her face. It revealed her soft features, slightly set into a worried look. He wanted to keep his hand on her face, to softly wake her up. Kaiser focused, tuning everything out except her breathing, making sure that she was relaxed.
There was a second set of breathing, not at all in tune with Yang's or even Kaiser's. This one was much easier, much faster, someone neither sleeping nor injured.
Kaiser quickly pulled his hand away, balling it up into a fist. He'd throw a punch if he had to, or more likely, he'd wake Yang up to deal with whoever was here.
"What do you want?" Kaiser called out, the question only a breath above a whisper.
"Morning princess." The swish of a curtain went off to Kaiser's left, once more, forcing him to crane his head that way.
Kaiser's mouth would've fallen open if he had complete control over his body at the moment, he was still going through the out of body experience of waking up from a serious injury. He must've also sustained an insane amount of head trauma, because it looked like Martin Kane popped out from behind the curtain covering another infirmary bed.
"You doing alright?" Kane's manner of speaking was low and smooth, careful to not awaken the girl laying near his friend. Kane's mask had slipped for a second, his worry for the boy shining through.
"Yeah."
"Good!" Kane had slipped on an easy grin, his playful mood returning. "I spent all night reviewing last week's reports, you've been busy, haven't you? Tore up the docks and a couple buildings in downtown Vale on Tuesday, we set off a couple small charges in a nightclub on Saturday. Finally, you wrecked both a lakeside bar by dragging it into the water, then destroyed a drug manufacturing operation."
"Don't forget…" Kaiser tried sitting up, he stopped trying as soon as he realized that it jostled Yang a little, and it strained his arm. "…I also picked a fight with Roman Torchwick."
Kane snorted, nodding briefly. "You just never stop, do you?"
"Not really." Kaiser was normally a man of few words, being hooked up to an infirmary room made him a man of fewer words. "Where are we?"
"Beacon, a lot of the hospitals in Vale are running overtime with people coming in injured. I figured a school designed to fight the grimm was the safest place to take you." Kane shook his head. "I asked the nurses to not put you on too many painkillers, just enough to take the edge off, not enough to leave you a drooling mess."
"Is that why I feel like shit?" Kaiser squinted as he reached out to the side console on the railing, the bed slowly creeped to life, delicately putting the boy in a sitting position.
"No, you feel like shit because you have more enemies than brain cells." Kane walked over, setting a card down on the table next to the bed. Before Kaiser could ask what it was, Kane gestured to Yang, who's soft breathing let the two of them know that she was still fast asleep. "She a classmate of yours? She's been here by your side since 11 last night."
Kaiser lazily scanned over his words, before his eyes widened in shock, his voice restrained to not wake up his companion. "Have you been watching her sleep all night!"
"Of course not, don't be weird, Kai." Kane leaned on the wall, casting his gaze out into the hall. "I was watching you sleep all night, but then someone came in. I went ahead and hid behind the curtain, you know, to spare you the embarrassment of introducing your girlfriend to your best friend." Kane aimed a knowing eye at the boy, Kaiser himself wearing an uncomfortable blush.
"She's not my girlfriend! I think- I don't know." Kaiser may have looked to Yang just a bit too quickly for that denial to be concrete. "I mean- I'm not sure she feels that way about me." Kaiser lied, perhaps it was the combination of the painkillers, and the fact that it was a complete lie rather than a half-truth, but Kane quickly caught on to Kaiser's bullshitting.
"You know, she said a couple things to you before nodding off." Kane stuffed his hands in his pockets, walking back towards his place on the other bed. "I'm glad to know there's someone here who cares about you almost as much as I do. I mean, let's be real, I'm your best friend." Kane shrugged, pacing around the infirmary room. "But in my experience, anyone willing to keep someone company all night while you're essentially in a coma is just waiting to put you back into it, or…" Kane trailed off, leaving Kaiser in suspense, even though the boy already knew the answer.
"You know, you wouldn't be in this much distress if you didn't like her." Kane lowered his voice as he came closer, gliding gracefully like a phantom behind Yang. "In all honesty, I thought you were interested in batting for the other team, or at least not interested in either guys or girls."
"I'm not going to be swooning for people while I'm being shot at, Kane." Kaiser closed his eyes, intentionally avoiding the topic at hand.
"Do you like her?" This question had to be said, Kane had to ask directly if he was going to get a discreet answer. None of this was of any importance to Ross or the IPS, it was all so he could have ammunition to poke fun at Kaiser with. It was the simple joys in life, something that Kane: the assassin, learned to take part in at every opportunity he could.
"I fancy her." The words came tumbling absentmindedly out of Kaiser's mouth in an unsuppressed tone, unbeknownst to the boy.
Kane caught on quickly to what had happened, turning slightly to mask the grin on his face. "That's good to know, and are you going to do anything about it?"
"Absolutely not!" Kaiser's voice flared up a bit, suddenly feeling a shifting movement. Both Kane and Kaiser stood still, Yang had likely heard the boy, eventually she resigned herself to sleep without even looking around.
"Why not?" Kane countered, he crossed his arms, as if admonishing the boy. "What's stopping you?"
"I don't know." But Kaiser did know, he knew that Yang truly cared for him, and that made him uneasy. It shouldn't've been much of a surprise. With a long line of people ready and willing to exploit, deceive, or straight up murder him, Kaiser had a hard time believing that anybody could care about him to a capacity that Yang had.
Sure, Kane had been something of an older brother to Kaiser, but that had been the product of multiple operations where they had gone through hell together. Even after the shock of finding out Kane had faked his death, Kaiser still felt a rift between them, as if the year the assassin had disappeared had taken something else between them. For that exact reason, he had tried very hard to keep Yang at arms length, for fear of being left behind the same way.
But Yang had wanted to be closer than arm's length, according to her statements after the dance.
All Kaiser could think of was that same rift disrupting his current standing with Yang, either by his past still shadowing his every move… or through other circumstances.
Kaiser made a mental note to let Yang down gently, perhaps he may salvage their friendship without any of the awkwardness.
"I just can't, I don't know what can happen and I don't want to leave her in case Ross decides he's going to get me back." Kaiser knew he was playing for time, spouting anything that sounded halfway reasonable. This was how Yang had affected him, years of operating on logic, and Kaiser lost most of his ability to be reasonable. "It's risky."
"That's the concept of free will, welcome to the human experience, Kaiser." Kane walked over to the other hospital bed, beginning to organize the sheets to look unused. It was an old habit shared between the two of them, trying to leave places without a trace of themselves. "Plus, I thought you were free from Ross, from us. All this freedom, and you can't even bring yourself to do one thing for yourself."
"You know Ross, never takes no for an answer. I may have tried to burn that bridge…" Kaiser stared down, keeping the harder hitting reasons close to his chest. "Even so, I don't want anyone to get involved when it happens."
"Shame." Kane smoothed out any wrinkles on the sheets, his eye flickering over to Kaiser.
"Mmmm." A soft groan came from the wild mane of yellow settled beside Kaiser.
"Guess that's my cue, a strange man watching over your bed doesn't paint a pretty picture, rather not alert an entire school full of huntsmen to my presence." Kane gestured to the card on the table next to Kaiser, waiting for the boy to pick it up and read the front.
"Congrats on your pregnancy?" Kaiser raised his eyebrow at the assassin.
"The pharmacy was out of 'get well soon' cards, I left some Lien in there, a late birthday present." Martin Kane stood at the doorway, looking around for any nurses. "You decide what to do with it."
"Are you leaving Vale?" The question floated through the room, catching the assassin right before he left the room.
"I'll hang around here for a while, train my team, maybe stay for the Vytal festival." Kane tapped his palm against the door frame, looking back at Kaiser. "Don't worry, I know you miss me already, so I'll make sure to drop in often." A sly grin adorned his face, causing the boy to scoff at him.
"I'll see you around, Martin." Kaiser turned his head to the side, relieved that the conversation had ended.
Now he had to contend with someone much more difficult, and it just so happened that she had just started to stir awake.
Bleary eyes cracked open, revealing a sliver of lilac. Yang's eyes soon fluttered open, surprise shone in them as they took in the information in front of them.
Kaiser, her classmate and close friend, was awake after hearing reports of the boy being treated for a fatal blow.
"You should've stayed in bed." Kaiser remarked, his hand itching to just run through Yang's hair. "You wouldn't have neck pain if you slept in a proper position."
All he heard was Yang dryly swallow, a tense silence followed. The sheets rustled as Yang climbed onto the bed, the mattress held firm under the weight of two people.
She was above him.
Strong arms wrapped around Kaiser's torso, the boy suppressed any gasp that might've escaped him.
"How could I?" Yang's words stuck to Kaiser's skin, as she had decided to nestle her head in the crook of his neck. "I couldn't sleep knowing you were here practically in a coma."
"I was just catching up on sleep." Kaiser let his hand rest on Yang's back, a limp attempt at comforting her. "Didn't get much during the mission, but I'm alright."
"You're far from alright, Kaiser." Yang's arm looped around the back of Kaiser's neck, a warmth contrasting the cold of the infirmary atmosphere. "Doctors said there's a chunk of bone that's missing from your arm."
"And a hole in my chest, I'm sure." Yang slowly glanced down at Kaiser's chest, it was covered in a hospital gown, the middle area tinged a rusty brown from where the blood had probably dried. Sheets rustled once more as Yang shifted to give Kaiser room for him, Kaiser's good hand tugged at her shirt, a small attempt to get her back where she was. "It's okay, you… you don't have to move."
"Sorry…" Yang draped an arm around Kaiser's torso, careful to avoid his wound, yet keeping contact as if he'd leave the moment they'd separate.
"You're not the one who shot me, no reason to apologize." Kaiser straightened himself out, leaving his hand open to touch, hoping for anything. "What else did the doctors say?"
"You have a second degree burn on your right palm, some bruised ribs, and a hell of a lot others that I couldn't remember." Yang had a frown that only began to deepen as she watched Kaiser squirm in pain.
"At least I still have my pretty face." Kaiser casually threw out the comment haphazardly, grim seriousness didn't quite fit Yang, as he had grown accustomed to her sunny disposition.
The appeal to her sense of humor didn't do much to draw her out, just a small response. "Kaiser, don't try to change the subject, are you alright?"
"I'm fine." Kaiser kept his words short and clipped, anything more elaborate would immediately alarm Yang to the lie.
"Kaiser, you were found almost dead." The severity in Yang's voice was still offset by Kaiser's seeming apathy.
"I'm not too keen on dying anytime soon, so I'm prone to avoiding it when I can." Kaiser grunted in discomfort as Yang tightened her hold on the boy, he looked up at the ceiling. "You're not getting rid of me that easily, Yang."
Finally, a light chuckle.
The moment had passed though, he couldn't really divert the subject.
"It's just that… I don't know. I was scared." Yang turned her head, settling herself on the corner of Kaiser's pillow.
The boy scooted over a bit, offering a bit more room for Yang to lie down a bit more comfortably. All things considered, he was able to fit her next to him on the bed without aggravating his cast.
"I was scared of losing you. When I heard that you were sent to the infirmary, I thought they were going to tell me that you didn't make it." There was a lump in her throat, causing her words to come out with a little more struggle than expected. "Then I saw your scars, it just makes me think that everytime you leave, a piece of you doesn't come back. God, this time a piece of you literally is missing. It just hurts to see you like this."
Kaiser froze at this, her words, his heart started beating frantically. "Do you want to touch them?"
Everyone had a morbid curiosity toward him, some people masked it under the guise of the same concern one would have for a wounded animal. The only difference between Yang and most everybody else was the fact that she had cared enough to view Kaiser as a person rather than an enigmatic fantasy. Only she would get to see him like this, only she could be this close.
Yang swallowed dryly, "Can I?"
Kaiser gently took her hand with his, quietly noting how soft it was, guiding it toward his neck. He slowly dragged one of her fingers to a neat white line across his neck, something he'd received as a result of not backing up enough away from a swinging knife. The warmth of her hand made the boy shiver amidst the cold sterile air of the infirmary, his eyes following Yang's every move.
Yang's fingers trailed delicately down Kaiser's left arm, the one not bound by a cast. She gazed at the criss cross of marks adorning the offending appendage, yet she regarded Kaiser with a soft empathetic smile. Her fingers went back up his arm, following a patch of splotchy red marks trailing from his bicep to his shoulder. She was nearing the opening of the arm of his hospital gown, he didn't want her to see the deeper, uglier scars he hid down there. With a slight shake of his head, Kaiser redirected her hand before it could travel beneath the gown.
"I'm not that kind of guy, Yang." Kaiser added a minuscule smile along with his mutterings, to soften the blow of her discouragement.
"I don't think you're like any kind of guy I've ever met." Yang responded with a light huff, her smile mirroring Kaiser's.
A quietly tender moment only ruined for Kaiser as a thought kept hanging over his head, he needed to get this off his chest no matter how much he wanted to not be doing this.
"Yang, can I ask you something?" Kaiser felt uncomfortable at the way she hung onto his words, looking at him with those deep lilac eyes.
"Shoot."
"I want to talk about us." Kaiser huffed out, breaking eye contact as he hesitantly continued. "About what you asked me on Sunday morning."
Silence hung in the air, tension so thick that it suffocated the boy. Several possibilities ran through his head, some of them neutral, most of them bad. Yang seemed to have the uncanny ability to always do the thing that Kaiser least predicted.
A snicker cut through the air, drawing Kaiser's attention to Yang, her lips formed into a teasing smile.
"God, Kaiser, you were shot, stabbed, and set on fire in the past few days, and you want to talk about me asking you out?" She playfully swatted his good arm, a stark contrast to what Kaiser thought of as a serious conversation.
"It has to be said now, or else I won't ever be able to say it." Kaiser made his tone slow, his words coming out measured and refined. "These past few months, you've been nothing but the best friend I could have asked for, even when I don't ask for it."
Kaiser cringed even as he said it, he wasn't accustomed to talking about things like this, but from what he gleaned off of Jaune, he may have unintentionally just put Yang in the "Friend Zone".
"You always make my days just a bit better, even though I don't always show it, and I can't thank you enough for that." Kaiser turned away, red tinting his cheeks, painfully aware of the warm feeling of Yang's hand on his arm. "And I've given your proposition a bit of thought."
Lies, all lies! Every free moment Kaiser wasn't fighting for his life in Vacuo, he had been consumed by every possible way he could approach this conversation. He knew what he had to do, he had to let her down. They could still be close, right? Even though he wanted to, he could be fine not being in a relationship with Yang, right?
"Plus, I thought you were free from Ross, from us. All this freedom, and you can't even bring yourself to do one thing for yourself."
Kane's words rang like a bell in Kaiser's head, perhaps… the assassin had a point?
Thoughts to his past week creeped into his head, facing off against Jasper Greene, Evon Argent, and Hank Hammers with little rest in between, all under the orders of the man that Kaiser swore he was done with. He had promised himself a normal life after Ross, and he still withheld that from himself.
Regret began to crush him, for god's sake he almost died!
Laying down in the street, a hole in both his arm and chest causing him to bleed out, Kaiser remembered every excruciating feeling. Every wave of pain, every single curse as he had realized that his life had ended before he had even begun. And as his life nearly ebbed away after that last battle, Kaiser wished for a feeling of comfort and safety. The feeling he only ever got when Yang was beside him, which only fueled the boy into speaking without thinking about what he was saying.
"I want to be with you!" Kaiser spouted off a little too hastily, but was nudged by his old pragmatism into denying himself. "But I can't!
Yang looked back at Kaiser pensively, throwing his whole world into a panic with a single question. "Why not?"
"Because…" Kaiser was looking away from Yang and towards his arm covered in the cast, unwilling to face her. "I've made a lot more enemies than friends, and even the people I worked with want to use me, they'll react terribly if I say no. I don't want to involve you with their rubbish if I can help it." Something about that last sentence didn't feel right to Kaiser, if Yang's sudden smirk was anything to go by.
"You know, I always found it strange that you didn't have an accent." Yang leaned into Kaiser's side. "I thought all Atlas boys had fancy accents."
Recognition sparked in Kaiser's head a little too late, it was the same look that Kane had given him earlier when he had something equally as off. Clearly, the painkillers that he was hooked on were lowering his inhibitions, just enough to lower his guard. "Yang, I'm being serious here."
"So am I, only now am I finding out that you've been faking your accent around me this whole time." Yang snickered, beckoning Kaiser to look at her. "And I've always loved those cool sounding accents."
"I've never faked it, I just don't want to bring attention to myself, so I cover it up." Kaiser quickly explained, wanting to prevent any further sidetracking.
"I think you should talk with it more often, sounds really nice, you know?"
"Can we get back to what I was talking about?" Kaiser finally faced Yang, her lilac gaze overpowering Kaiser's red eyes. "I feel like you're not taking this seriously."
"I am, it's just that I'm not taking your reason seriously." Yang thought to herself for a second, her finger tapping at her lower lip. "If you'd told me that you didn't want to get together because you didn't like me, I would've accepted that. But now you're just purposely sabotaging yourself after you said that you want to be with me."
"You don't understand, Yang, I have ene-" Kaiser was cut off by Yang.
"Yeah yeah, you've got a ton of enemies, join the club." How Yang was so laidback, Kaiser would never know. "My team is constantly being put up against Roman Torchwick and the White Fang, I'm not too worried."
"That's different-"
"Kaiser, wasn't it you that told me that I'd always have you to rely on, remember that night?" Yang, now gave Kaiser a soft look. "I didn't get to tell you back then, but I wanted you to know that I'd always have your back as well. You'll always have me, and I mean always. Doesn't matter if it's detention, or an infiltration mission."
It was the sheer earnestness that he saw in her eyes that had left him speechless, her words cutting through Kaiser like a knife. He swallowed hard, his nerves on edge, more than any stressful situation he had been in before.
"So if you really believe that you're going to keep getting into trouble, I don't mind getting into trouble with you." Yang began to get up, not leaving the bed, but hovering a couple inches above Kaiser. She tilted her head to the side, noticing how Kaiser shivered when she looked directly into his eyes. "Does that help you make up your mind, Kai?"
Kaiser nodded, nervously.
It did, it gave him a small push of confidence he needed to tell her what he wanted to say. Unfortunately, the words for anything structured or poetic were caught in his throat. Instead, a low whine escaped him, a combination of his embarrassment and the residual pain from his injuries. "Can you kiss me… please?"
Yang was glad to oblige as she dipped down to meet Kaiser, her lips pressed to his.
Kaiser couldn't help but think of how much warmer and softer her lips were than her hands, it almost felt like she was burni- Ouch!
She just bit me!
Kaiser, out of pure surprise, opened his lips just a little more. Yang deepened the kiss, further overwhelming Kaiser. He was faintly aware of the heart monitor beeping as Yang took the chance to gently probe inside his mouth, something Kaiser allowed until they both separated.
"Are you alright, Kaiser?" Yang looked down at the breathless and flustered mess of a boy who was going through a lot of firsts today, and another snicker escaped her. Between his shy demeanor now and the revelation of his accent, Yang had stockpiled a good amount of ammo to tease him with. "Deep breaths, Kaiser."
Kaiser did as she instructed, eventually getting his breathing to an acceptable pace, a question still burning into his mind. "Does that mean…" he took another deep breath, that first kiss really did a number on him. His good hand reached to his lip, feeling the slight swelling from where Yang had bitten him. "… are we a couple?"
Yang laughed heartily this time, something Kaiser found that he liked to hear, not that he'd never admit it, as her laughter came along with endless ribbing.
"Get a clue, you little dweeb." Yang poked Kaiser right on the nose, giving him a playful smile. "I slipped my tongue in your mouth, and you're still asking if I want to be your girlfriend?
"Sorry." Kaiser looked away, embarrassment creeping up his neck. "… I'm new to this sort of thing."
"I can tell." Yang found it amusing that the normally stoic Kaiser was squirming, both figuratively, and literally. "Am I the first girl you ever kissed?"
"Yeah." Kaiser was told that as part of his training, he'd be taught social engineering when he reached the appropriate age, the arts of both persuasion, and seduction. Which was a pretty weird fucking thing to explain to a 15 year old, it didn't matter anyways, as Kaiser left the IPS before he reached that age. That is to say, Kaiser had little to no experience with intimacy. He didn't think much of this then, but wished he would have known anything to make this a bit more enjoyable for Yang, instead of just laying there like some kind of a fool. "Is it that obvious?"
"You're really tense, and you fumble around like a 12 year old playing spin the bottle." Yang sat up on the edge of the bed, looking down at Kaiser with a mischievous grin. "Don't worry too much, you'll get better with practice."
He had to quickly divert the conversation to keep from embarrassing himself even further. "Breakfast."
"What?"
"You said we'd split a breakfast if I wanted to go out with you." Kaiser nodded, remembering the morning after the dance. "We should do that, you said you knew a good place."
"I don't know what to tell you, Kai." She looked around the room, then looked at Kaiser's sorry state. "But you're gonna be stuck here for the next couple days, and they stopped serving breakfast a while ago."
"I'm sorry you missed breakfast because of me."
"No worries, I'll just wait until lunch." Yang pressed one arm down onto the bed, it was right next to Kaiser. She was face to face with him again, Kaiser had no choice but to look her in the eyes. "I've got the perfect way to pass the time, if you're game, of course."
This time it was Kaiser who initiated, desperate for that comfort she offered him. Kaiser strained himself in sitting up to meet her lips, responding with a kiss much more tender and soft. He didn't care that his wound had been severely aggravated, he didn't care he didn't care about the pain his broken arm was sending to the rest of his nervous system. All he cared about was the warmth of Yang's body pressed against his own. At this moment, all he cared about was Yang Xiao Long.
And if it took going through a whole year of the shit he'd been through this week to be able to be with her like this, then Kaiser would gladly do it 100 times over.
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For anyone confused on the timeline, chapter 17-27 takes place within the span of one week. The fight with Jasper Greene happened during the start of the week(Tuesday). The fight with Evon Argent, Hank Hammers, and Roman Torchwick having taken place during that same weekend Monday/Tuesday of the next week.
(You know the writing is convoluted when I have to write the timeline out so I can keep track of it)
Anyways, I hope I capped off this volume with a satisfying ending. Not really used to writing anything other than action scenes, so I really hope I managed to do justice to a much slower paced and relaxed chapter.
It's only reasonable that I make this a bit more comforting after I wrote 218k words about the world's snarkiest punching bag.
I appreciate the reviews and the people who take the time to read this spur of the moment project, I hope to get back to this story soon. For now, I'd like to experiment with a much smaller project.