Chapter XI - Fading Echoes
Yang
It was hard to believe that it was the second semester already.
The Vytal Festival was soon. Missions were coming up, and other teams from Haven, Shade, and Atlas were flooding in. It still took some getting used to, seeing all the new faces in the halls, all of them different. Enough to make anyone really truly envisage the might and prestige of the Huntsmen and Huntresses worldwide.
Yang absentmindedly stirred the white whips of mashed potatoes on her tray. Already, so much had happened: she had gained a partner, learned more about herself, fought in more battles she’d ever endured at Signal, seen her team have rifts in itself more than twice, and found a friend— but more than that, someone who made her heart sing. It had been the night she’d found Blake, bruises on her arms and blood darkening her clothes, in the shipyard. The night they had reconciled all their differences as a team and all gained a common ground— together. Yang had seen Sun look at Blake a little too warmly and then— bam! Like the recoil of a gun, it had hit her all at once: the tightening grip of envy, the realization. She always had Blake to worry about; her partner was reckless, but now it was different, somehow.
Without thinking too much about it, Yang extended one hand and bushed a loop of black hair off of Blake’s forehead. Her fingertips lingered on her warm skin a moment too long and she jerked back, almost violently, but Blake was so lost in her book, she didn’t pay any attention. Yang turned so her back was to Blake, staring at the wall on the other side of the cafeteria.
Something was swelling in her chest. Something dangerous, she was sure.
Yang didn’t notice she was chewing her lip until the sharp, metallic taste of blood sliced down on her tongue. Grinding her teeth, she gripped the edge of the table, hard, like it was a precipice she was dangling off of.
She had had plenty of friends her whole life. Yang didn’t like to honk her own horn, but people had always seemed to like her, to gravitate towards her, so to speak, like moths to a flame. It wasn’t surprising, Taiyang had told her— she emitted a nurturing, soothing sort of warmth, just like Summer Rose. She knew what it felt like to have a friendship— warm and comforting and sweet, like what she had built with Ruby, even Weiss, and some of her other casual acquaintances around Beacon. She liked spending time with them, they made her happy, and she knew she could trust and rely on them whenever she needed to.
She also knew what it felt like when she had a crush.
Turning her head to the left, Yang tried to subtly observe Blake’s expression. All the stern lines that she usually had, even when happy, faded away while she was buried in a book. It was all smoothed out and relaxed. Blake liked to read; that wasn’t a secret, but Yang sometimes wondered if she loved all the fantastical, whimsical worlds, because they were an escape from her own.
It made Yang want to punch something. Good going, brainless, Yang scolded herself, picking the one person you know won’t want you back.
Because Blake was a hell of a lot more open with her now, at least, but it wasn’t as though they were a seamless team— a Bonded one. There would be instances when she was altogether too strongly reminded of how little she truly knew about her partner: Yang would ask Blake a question, and she’d get a glint in her eyes like a cornered animal. She would say something carelessly, and Blake would stalk from the room. Of course there was always the matter of Blake to attend to.
She rubbed her temples and plunked her head down with a groan, promptly jolting the table.
“You know, I don’t think remedying a headache is done that way, Yang.” Blake’s cool, unfazed voice was accompanied with a light tap to her shoulder. Yang turned her head around and peeled one eye open, glaring at the source of her current inner turmoil, who was sitting in a ray of sunlight and grinning fastidiously at Yang in a way that accentuated her pretty face and— ugh.
Grumbling at her inner soliloquy, Yang sat back up and knocked her elbow into Blake’s. “Your sarcasm really sucks, you asshole.”
“So I’ve been told by you,” Blake retorted tonelessly. “Multiple times, in fact.” She neatly folded back the edge of her book page and raised an eyebrow. “Oh, no— here comes the herald of our doom.”
Yang blinked and whirled around, spying a truly terrifying sight that could strike the fear of God into an entire army: Ruby, bouncing towards them with a manic grin plastered on her face and a thick binder pinned between her ribs and forearm. “Please,” Yang said, “God, no.”
“Gooooooood morning Team RWBY!” Ruby shrieked, slamming the binder down with a table-shaking crash. Blake let out a groan, slowly pushing her tray away and eyeing the binder like it was a feral animal that might attack at any moment. Yang glanced at her. She would have thought Blake would be reassured after the fight in the shipyard, if anything: she’d stopped a crime, gained a friend, reconciled her differences with the team, and been accepted as a Faunus. But that hadn’t happened. Blake seemed to grow gaunter, more tired; there was a darkness in her eyes that was new, nervous tremors that she’d picked up as habit. She would look around like someone was going to attack her at any moment. And most of all, it was very hard to miss the quiet, pensive attitude she had adopted; she always seemed to be lost in her thoughts now. Something had spooked her in the shipyard, but when Yang queried about it, Blake would brush her off with a simple, It’s all right; I’m just tired.
“Is that my binder?” Weiss’s voice was indignant, and Ruby looked sheepish.
“Maybe once upon it time it was,” she admitted, “but now it’s the container of the best ideas I’ve ever come up with!” She shoved it forward, stabbing a finger on the red-scrawled cover for emphasis. “Ladies and ladies, four score and seven minutes ago, I had a dream that we— as a team— would have the most fun anyone has ever had— well, ever!”
“I had a dream that I was being chased by a giant, raw chicken nugget that had the face of Zwei,” Yang supplied. “Not all of our dreams come true. Fortunately,” she added hastily as three looks of disgust were turned on her, “I was joking. In fact, forget I said anything.”
Ruby brushed off her comment. “Guys, the second semester has started, and with more exchange kids coming and the tournament at the end of the year, we’re not gonna have a lot of time to, well, have fun. So we should start the semester off with a bang!”
Blake and Weiss immediately started to shout in protest as Yang grinned, a sure precursor to a pun, and Ruby realized her mistake too late, opening her mouth to either swear or scream for help, but Yang said, “I always start my semesters off with a Yang! Eh…. right, guys?”
“Please kill me,” Blake said with a long-suffering look, while Weiss whispered something that rhymed with “oh my ducking God,” while Ruby banged her hand down on the table. “SHUT UP, YANG. YOU’RE NOT FUNNY.”
“Hmph.” Yang frowned and rubbed her gauntlets before looking at Ruby, who had assumed a pleading look. “So what’s this stellar idea you’ve got, little sis?”
Ruby snatched the empty milk carton that Yang had discarded and held it up with a slow grin spreading across her face. “Food fight.”
“Pssst. Red flower to flaming banana and shadow cat. Testing. Testing.”
“We’re not using code names, Ruby. Roger that. And don’t call me flaming banana. It brings up images of a fiery, homosexual fruit.” Yang craned her head around and grinned at an uncomfortable looking Weiss, a sighing Blake, and a snickering Ruby. “Besides, I doubt Blake is fond of being called— what was it?”
“Shadow cat,” Blake mumbled reluctantly, her bow twitching, and Yang stifled a laugh, killed her grin, and peered around the veritable mountain of cafeteria tables.
“Okay. Positions,” Ruby whispered. “Check, Yang.”
“Nora’s cackling really evilly about castles, and she’s perched on the other tables. Ren looks like he wants to get her down, and he’s by the windows. Pyrrha’s staring longingly at Jaune— er, sorry, now she’s shoving vending machines to the front of the tables— she’s strong, wow— Jaune is standing around like a potato— sorry, Jaune.”
Yang shifted backward, letting Weiss slip to the front. Blake looked lost in her thoughts again— when did she not, nowadays?
“Hey.” Yang sidled up to her and met her gaze. “You alright?”
Blake swirled towards her, held her eyes in silence, hesitating. She looked like she wanted to speak, before she shook her head mutely and muttered, “I’m fine.”
“Really?” Yang poked her in the stomach, and Blake edged away. “Cause you seem broody to me.”
Blake opened her mouth to reply— probably a scathing diatribe— but before she could make a response, Ruby’s shriek rang out through the air, startling Yang and Blake so badly that they jumped, simultaneously crashing into each other. Blushing, Yang edged away before Ruby followed up with a more articulate command of “attack!”
Quite predictably, they got yelled at by Goodwitch.
She got as far as, “Waste of food— never in my life seen such immaturity— destroy our reputable reputation— ” before Ozpin interrupted her, and gently steered her from the room, but not before she’d throughly scolded them into a silence that lasted approximately ten seconds before Jaune had spat part of banana peel onto the ground, and they’d erupted in laughter.
Yang was sore because she had gone sailing into the freaking ceiling at the speed to shatter stone and accidentally crashed right into Blake in her descent, knocking both of them to the ground. All of them were smeared in various foods, though thankfully, Yang wasn’t nearly so bad off as any of JNPR. They looked, she thought wryly, like they’d been blasted with a rainbow bomb, not unlike the ones Nora fired from Magnhild. Pyrrha laughed it off, but Jaune was surly at the “irremovable” ketchup stain that had been smashed in his hair.
“At least it wasn’t a container of sauerkraut,” Nora had snapped at him, soaked with the stuff, and they had filed out in a very interesting, drippy procession.
RWBY had gone back to their room, with Ruby fussing over Weiss all the way over her supposed ‘grievous injury resulting from smashing into a freaking pillar, seriously how are you still walking’ and so, Yang was left to shuffle along with Blake, who had a piece of tuna stuck to her arm, which she didn’t look all that bothered about. More cat genetics, Yang supposed.
It was hard to ignore the butterflies in her stomach ever since she’d come back from the shipyard. Hard, but doable. But then one look from Blake, one turn of phrase or grin, and they’d be all aflutter again, swirling and rustling wings.
It wasn’t like Blake wasn’t worth it. Of course, superficially, she was beautiful; no one could dispute that— dark amber eyes, angular visage, chasing hair like the flapping of raven’s wings. But she was so much more than that, of her looks and icy attitude. Under that exterior was someone Yang wanted to know, someone warm and full of life.
The butterflies when Blake’s proximity was less than a foot away and grinning at her with a glitter in her eyes? They weren’t butterflies. More like rumbling aircrafts, jet planes.
“I could shower for days and I still wouldn’t get all this out of my hair,” Blake grumbled.
“At least you weren’t hurled into the ceiling at terminal velocity.”
“Oh right, I forgot. Did you tell the birds hello for me?” She grinned, a grin that crooked higher at one side of her mouth than the other, and Yang was acutely aware of the expanding warmth in her chest.
“Yeah, real smart, tell the birds hello from a freaking cat. I was a little too busy screaming my head off,” she retorted before entering the baths. They were thankfully vacant; though one of the faucets was dripping annoyingly, and Yang crossed to shut it off, glimpsing herself in the mirror. Blake snickered as her jaw dropped.
“All those looks,” she said, “down the drain. Must be pretty disheartening, Xiao Long.”
“Shut up, you absolute fiend.” Yang turned around, and oh no, that was a big mistake, because Blake was undressing to get into the shower and— dammit.
She spun around quickly, so that Yang could see the sharp and angular movement of her shoulder blades and the roll of muscles rippling down her back. Yang’s eyes seemed frozen, unable to look away, from the golden kiss of the dying sunlight on the slopes of Blake’s shoulders to her collarbones and the flat plane of her stomach, lightly layered with muscle. Her heart felt odd and wrong, lightly tripping and pattering, and she felt something like sickness drop into her stomach. There were two sharp indentions below Blake’s hipbones, like someone had pressed their thumbs hard there; the narrowing of her hips and the hollow of her solar plexus were alive with an interplay of light and dark. When Blake turned around, eyes two molten coronas of gold, Yang felt her tongue heavy and awkward in her mouth.
“You’re staring at me,” Blake told her, a fine line of a furrow creasing her brow. “It’s not like you look any better. We are covered in a veritable mix of toxins, after all.”
Yang quickly averted her eyes, coloring along her cheekbones. The sick feeling intensified. “Hilarious. I wasn’t staring.”
Blake’s frown was flitting, barely a shadow and easily missed if you didn’t know her well. Yang saw it anyways. “Well, good luck with your agonizing on your own time. Try not to philosophize too much, okay?” She tossed the towel over her shoulder— a deft movement, and Yang closed her eyes and took a calming breath— and then vanished into the shower. As soon as the lock bolted home, Yang sank back against the rim of the sink, a sigh escaping from somewhere deep inside of her, loosing the tight knots and unravelling a ball of tension in the pit of her stomach.
This crush thing is really legit, then.
“Well,” she said softly with conviction, aloud to herself, “You, Yang Xiao Long, are absolutely and utterly one-hundred percent screwed.”
Blake
The pencil darted across the paper, trailing smooth, curving lines blossoming in quick succession, before Blake stopped and frowned at the drawing.
Of Yang, of course. She was all Blake could think about. She filled her mind like a goddamn tree, branching out and fanning wide boughs of life into her thoughts. Each stray thought was a replenishment. But she didn’t want to think about Yang because that would make this— this feeling— whatever it was, real, and that, above all, was something that frightened her the most.
She tried to look at Yang with an artist’s eye, to capture the life in her face, the slightness of her grin; but she’d always get lost in little details: the fine curling gold of her hair near her neck, the curve of her mouth, the slivers of darker color that peppered her eyes. She just couldn’t get it right, and it was probably because nothing really could capture what made Yang who she was: that sense of gold tempered by fire, of hardships and secrets. Blake let her pencil fall and shut the sketchbook, shoving between the frame of the bed and the mattress.
God, what was wrong with her? What had changed? When had she stopped seeing Yang as a partner, but as something… more.
It didn’t matter, she told herself firmly, turning over and staring at the blank wall, her hands drumming, folding, crossing and uncrossing over the sheets. Yang was… light, if anything. She didn’t need darkness to drag her down. She had everything and Blake could not offer her more; had she not proved already that she hadn’t trusted Yang once?
There was certainly a lot more than her partner to be worried about, anyways. The White Fang, the robberies, the fleet of militia aircrafts she’d seen in the sky that very morning… Something was happening. A tension in the air had fallen over Remnant, the way air stiffened before a storm began and all hell broke loose. But she had no idea what it was. What use was preparation when you had no idea what was going to attack?
“Blake? Are ya awake?”
She grunted a passable ‘yes’ before blinking up as an upside-down head bobbed in front of the bunk bed, blocking out the light. “Can I help you?”
“Whatcha doing?” Yang drew out the o in a croon and Blake rolled her eyes.
“Breathing. Sitting in my bed, which is more than you can say,” she said with the slightest grin, poking Yang in the stomach. Yang yelped and slipped a few inches, throwing a frown at Blake, which looked like a smile when it was upside-down.
“I could,” she puffed, “have fallen.” Her shirt fell a little bit. You rarely saw a body like that outside of magazine spreads. Some people had six-packs; Yang appeared to have a twelve-pack. It didn’t look humanly possible. Blake swiftly averted her gaze. “Look, I have a question.”
“Fire away.”
“Could you give me a lesson on how to use blades?”
Her tone registered her disbelief. “Come again?”
“No, Blake, I’m serious! Taiyang always told me it’s good to be efficient in all forms of fighting. Like, what if I was stuck in a tight corner and I didn’t have Ember Celica?”
“So why would you so happen to have a blade?” Blake smiled at her and Yang pouted. “Alright, conceded. I see your point. Are you sure that this isn’t just an excuse to spend time with me?”
“Well, that’s a bonus, of course,” Yang said brightly, before flipping herself upward and out of sight, leaving Blake to stare, dumbfounded, at the place she’d been moments before.
Yang
“It’s pretty late to be up here. What if we get caught?”
“Quit worrying, Blake,” Yang huffed, shouldering open the door. “Jeez, you’re worse than Weiss.”
“It’s not worrying. It’s a valid concern.”
“Well, shove those concerns away.” Yang grinned at the circular, abandoned training room, the dim red light of sunset bathing it in a crimson glow. “Throw ‘em off this topmost tower, as it were.”
“This is a turret, not a tower,” Blake pointed out, looking up at the conical ceiling, encircled with beams. She was frowning. “Besides, there’s a curfew. Don’t you know that?”
“That’s just so the foreign kids and Beacon’s students aren’t sneaking around canoodling after hours,” Yang scoffed, kicking the door closed with a loud snap, the sound reverberating in the dusty room, sending dust motes swirling up and up like tornadoes in the shafts of autumn light. “They can hardly chastise us for practicing combat, anyways.”
“Canoodling?”
“Yeah, sure. It’s a dictionary word, look it up sometime. Though I would have thought you might have run across it in that smut-galore fest of a book — Ninjas of Love — ” She turned around and raised a brow as Blake withdrew her Scroll and began tapping something into it with a determined look, completely ignoring Yang’s comment. “Are you for real?”
“Quite. And it would seem that you are as well. I see I am misinformed. It is a word.” She cleared her throat. “Canoodle: to kiss and cuddle amorously.”
“You are the worst,” Yang groaned. This was probably a terrible idea.
“You love it anyways,” Blake countered, and Yang grinned at her, because she did. “So,” she continued casually, unsheathing Gambol Shroud, “which one of us is the foreigner, then? Just so we’re clear.”
Caught off-guard, Yang struggled not to flush. “What?”
Blake burst out laughing at the horror-stricken expression on her face. It was an great sound, Yang decided — like audible sunlight. “Only joking. Is the thought of canoodling so fear-inspiring to you?”
What’s horrifying is the fact that I might actually just die from embarrassment or swoon down, that’s what. Yang muttered an insult before walking to the dusty rack of bows, machetes, and daggers before picking a simple blade, bound in leather at the pommel, a single dark stone sunk into the hilt. “Try not to chop my arms off,” she said. “I like my arms. I need my arms.”
“I’ll try not to,” Blake said, scowling. “I do wield a fair bit of control over my weapon, you know. Enough to know that this is a bad idea, but if you insist…”
“I do.” Yang frowned down at the dagger. It felt unfamiliar, like another limb not responding to her. “Throwback — so how exactly do I do the swingy-swingy sword gun thing?”
“I wish you would forget that,” Blake said with a long-suffering groan, clicking the weapon into the double-edged blades before crossing them over her chest. “It hurts the intellectual in my soul.”
“You haven’t answered my question, and for your information, I have a high grade in linguistics, so ha — take that, nerd.”
Blake rolled her eyes. “First of all, you’re holding the knife wrong. You just have it in a loose grip. Anyone could knock it out. Press your thumb to the pommel, so the tip is pressing the hilt, and curl your fingers around it. Yes— there you go.”
“This feels weird.”
“It’s bound to do so at first, but trust me, Yang.”
And so they went on, with the measure of Yang horrendously failing as Blake had successfully disarmed her ten times in five seconds flat. The eleventh time, she put up a better fight — succeeding in dodging Blake— but nevertheless, it was still over in seconds: Blake did a twisting motion with her arm, sending the knife clattering to the floor. Yang huffed with breath before she realized how close Blake was, and that, of course, made blood rush to her cheeks. “You’re used to a brawling style, Yang, going straight in and relying on strength alone to ensure victory. It’s a decent approach, but with this — you need subtlety.”
“That’s not my forte, Blake.”
“That’s why I’m here.” The smile that flashed across her face seemed laced with something — tiredness, a tint of sorrow. “Weapons must be used like lines of poetry, straight and true, never missing.” She turned and nodded at a seam in the wall. “Accuracy isn’t so hard. Go on. Give it a try.”
Yang drew her arm back, pausing as she felt her muscles align. Now, a voice within her seemed to whisper, and she tensed before arcing her fist downward and unfurling her fingers, the knife hurling itself end over end out of her grasp. It flew past, a darting flash of light singing like a teardrop of fire before it sunk, point in, quivering in the seams of the wall. A splinter of wood flaked down.
Blake didn’t smile, but her slanted eyes fixed jarringly gold on Yang. At this angle, she could see the darker shadows hazed in her irises, the glittering flecks of amber and copper that were scattered in the coronas of color. Blake was just an inch shorter than her, but there seemed to be miles between them, a slow ascension that would never quite be evenly matched. “Well done.”
“I think I’ll stick with my own semblance,” she joked, walking over and yanking the knife from the wall before sheathing it in its own scabbard. “Fire never fails you.”
“In the cold of night?” Blake’s grin was flitting, but there was still a sadness in her eyes; it lurked there like a promise. “What about in the rain, what about winter—“
“If that’s a jibe on Weiss, I’m sure she wouldn’t be happy to hear it.”
“It’s a simple fact, Yang. Shadows will always be there.”
“Okay, Socrates. That’s a very profound thought. Do feel free to enlighten me again.” They shared in laughter for a few seconds before Blake’s gaze became serious again.
“There’s a day coming when you may need every skill to keep yourself alive.” She got that look in her face— it made Yang wonder, at how she’d known Blake long enough to identify certain shifts in her moods— that impossibly remote look she got when troubled, and she broke off, biting her lip before saying quietly, “Yang, I just—“ She struggled, her voice breaking. “I’ve never been afraid of anyone like this before.”
“The White Fang?”
Blake’s face grew stormy. “No, they’re… they have emotions and humanity, if only just so. There’s a fear greater than emotion building in the air. Something’s happening. Someone. I didn’t get to pry it out of Roman before he shot me halfway across the shipyard.”
“Something more than the White Fang stealing Dust, do you mean?”
“I’m sure of it,” Blake growled, before she peeled away and stalked to the door, looking over her shoulder. All at once, walls slammed down between them. “Anyways. I’ll be in the library.”
And Yang was left staring at the gently vibrating door, humming from the fading echoes of how she still was unable to comprehend who, exactly, Blake was. After all, Blake had that look on her face. One that was a streak in some people that Yang had seen all too often: self sacrifice. Blake wouldn’t rest until she’d figured out the mysteries, Yang was sure of it. But to stop her? Easier said than done. Trying to dissuade her from being all nobly self-sacrificial would be like trying to single-handedly move the statue in the courtyard. And Yang had tried. It simply couldn’t be done. Not without severe determination and an uncanny ability to scope out the weak points of the whole matter.
But Yang was privy to Blake’s innermost emotions, and she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to give it a shot.
After all, Taiyang had always impressed upon her that her worst flaw and her best trait was her relentless determination.