Weiss stood around the apartment, feeling surprisingly awkward and relieved as she realized she didn't know any of the people there and that they didn't particularly care she was heiress of the SDC. Blake and her Blade had settled on the outdoor balcony, Blake reading a book and Perceval had joined her.
"So," Weiss said lamely, "How did your… Uh, unusual relationship start?"
"It started with my and Mythra," Pyra said, "Well, Nia was there at the beginning too, but it started with me asking Ruby an impossible favor. That, in typical Ruby fashion, she made come true."
"Hey, don't making me go sounding like some miracle worker here," Ruby said with a laugh, "I was just a really stubborn girl who had made a promise."
"And that makes you a miracle worker for us," Pyra said, kissing Ruby on the cheek, "anyways, by the time we finished the journey, we had both fallen in love with her, and as sisters we couldn't really take her for one- are you alright, Yang?"
Yang had been drinking from a bottle of root beer (at least, Weiss hoped it was root beer, she knew Vale had a younger drinking age than Atlas), only to start choking suddenly, grabbing her throat and coughing wildly. Glimmer, who was sitting next to her watching the news, slammed her fist against Yang's back until she spit out the liquid that had gone down the wrong pipe.
"You're WHAT!?" She demanded with, strangely, red eyes, still gasping for air, "Ruby, you married a pair of sisters!? What the fuck!?"
"Huh?" Ruby said, looking up from cutting the fat off Weiss's steak at her request, "Uh, yeah? Did that never come up? I know I told Mom… Anyways, yeah, Pyra and Mythra are sisters."
"No, no, we are not moving past this! Why the fuck would you both want to marry her!? I mean, I know it's my sister and that's a strange thing to ask but-"
"She made us feel whole," Mythra said, "We had… I had… Something traumatic happened, so I created Pyra as a coping mechanism and hid away. And Ruby never cared. She never doubted either of us's right to exist, and given the thoughts that were going through our head at the time… That was everything, and more."
"What do you mean "made Pyra as a coping mechanism"? Glimmer asked, looking away from the TV screen to look between her mothers and aunt.
"We call each other sisters," Pyra said, "but it's really closer to me being a split personality of Mythra that got her own body."
"How's that work?" Weiss asked, only to get a shrug from Ruby.
"Blades are weird, kiddo. Either they got a strange personality or strange biology or something else. When you're a Driver as long as I've been, you see all sorts of Blades. Blades that love their Driver, Blades that hate 'em, Blades that act like their parent, or kid, or anything in between. A Blade with two personalities splitting into two bodies so they could be separate and together with their Driver… Well, I'll admit it's stranger than most, but the Aegises never played by anyone's rules but their own to begin with."
—
Nia walked outside, subtly gesturing for Pyra to lock the balcony door behind her and taking her chair and wedging it in so the door couldn't be made to open, "So, what's your war?"
"My war?" Blake asked in confusion.
"A man Ruby really looked up to, a long, long time ago used to say that everyone has their own war they're fighting. A place they're trying to go, someone they're trying to stop, things like that. But he also meant up here," Nia tapped her head meaningfully, "Something that's got you fighting the hardest war, the one against yourself. You got one, I can tell. Don't worry, the only people I might tell are my girls, and they can keep a secret. I'll tell you the war I fought, if you tell me yours."
"Only if you go first," Blake said, stubbornly. Nia just laughed.
"So you can back out if you decide I don't know a whit of what I'm talking about, right? Fair enough. My war… Well, there's a big part I don't feel comfortable sharing about, it has to do with the nature of Blades and we'd prefer that information never get out. It was a mistake from the first to the last. So we'll start where, I'd bet you a pretty coin, our wars are very similar."
"Sure," Blake said, sounding like she didn't believe that for a second.
"It starts… With that thing I can't talk about. To do it is a mistake, from first to last, everyone who did it was a mistake that broke the rules of being a Blade. Which meant I was a mistake. So I joined a group of other Mistakes. Thought we were gonna carve out our own little piece of the world, only to realize the others were… Not as well intended as me. I took Ruby, who they had just run through, and ran. And that was my war, grappling with being a Mistake while also slowly coming to love a girl who didn't seem to have eyes for me… Course, I was wrong about that.
—
Blake quietly thought to herself as she cut into the steak, a perfect medium-rare, thinking about her and Nia. It was scary how similar they were in the past. Both a faunus, or faunus like Blade in Nia's case, that had joined a terrorist organization under the belief of them being anything but, before breaking away when they realized the truth.
And when she told Nia her story, struggling not to cry and Perceval's hand on her shoulder, all she had seen was understanding. Not pity, not judgment, but pure understanding of what it was like to know what Blake had come from.
And when it was all over, Nia had just planted a calming, motherly hand on her head and told her she was there, if she ever needed to talk, even if Blake didn't feel comfortable talking to her wives. Unwedged the door and knocked so Pyra would know to let them in, and went back to cuddling with Mythra on the bed.
Finally, dinner was ready, a small salad with steaks for them all. Pyra and Mythra had swapped positions, so now Mythra was leaning on Ruby and Pyra and Nia sat together to the side, doing the same to each other.
Blake swallowed as a thought ran through her head. If Perceval wasn't judging her for it, and Nia wasn't… Was it possible that…
"Do you mind if I eat quickly? I have a call I need to make."
"No, go ahead," Ruby said, "We're not trying to keep you hostage, if you need to be somewhere, you need to be somewhere. Who are you calling, if you don't mind me asking?"
"My parents, I- I don't- I haven't talked to them in a few years."
"Teenage rebellion?"
"Basically," Blake said, taking the convenient out from talking about her past.
"Well, I hope they're as happy to hear from you as I was to see Glimmer again. I know I might not be a very good mom, but losing contact with your children is always kinda rough-"
"What do you mean 'not a very good-' is that why you've been avoiding me!?" Glimmer demanded, standing up and marching to her mother, "listen, I'm your kid. I set the boundaries, and I might not really know what the spark having a mom is like, but I decide if we try to have a relationship with each other and I want to try before we both give up. Understand, mom?"
"Yes, Glimmer," Ruby said meekly, and Blake would admit it was funny to see the Master Driver, supposedly the strongest Driver in the world, practically cowering behind her wife at her daughter's tirade.