Chapter XVI - A Door Into the Dark
Blake
Six days.
It had been six agonizing days of forcing herself to stay away from Yang. Six days of fruitless research. Six days of sleepless nights as scrawled words and Torchwick’s taunting laugh ran circles in her mind.
And she was going to go mad.
Try as she might, every search of her father’s letter, each one more desperate than the last, yielded nothing. He had hardly known anything, and Aryan had still arranged his death for it. But she had to keep searching, she had to, there was no time to rest, there was nothing else for it…. she had to keep moving forward. And staying away from her team was her way of punishing herself for allowing this to happen — for not being a better person and seeing the monster she had become years ago.
She was aware of their worried glances, the way they would shut up when she entered a room, as if they were talking about her. And since the Bond — things were only worse, a pain and anxiety that were not her own always gnawing at her heart. She was falling for Yang, and hated herself for it. What was she supposed to do, when the monster was inside of her?
Suddenly, her Scroll gave a loud, sharp beep, and she jumped, startled— but it was not the notification for a message, but for herself. Frowning, Blake picked it up. Her haunted reflection glimmered back at her from the screen.
After the time she’d been on the run from the White Fang and spasmodically searching for Beacon, effacing any traces of her past and using spurious identities to hitch from one place to the next, she’d had to alter her appearance. She’d let her hair grow out to a dark waterfall of sun-lightened ebony, experimented with it from sporadic and choppy layers, twisting it up into all sorts of arrays that had always seemed false and forced. But the same dark smudge of shadows had remained under her eyes, like someone had taken the flat of their thumb and smeared a grayish fan of charcoal there. The same sunken, leeched-of-color look had returned. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days. And she hadn’t, if you counted sleep as a wholly uninterrupted thing, unscathed by any nightmares or obsessions. Her skin itself even seemed gaunt, pallid, angular over the sharp lines of her cheekbones, her eyes were lifeless, flat gold like the awful colors of a dying season. Exhausted and worn-down to the last thread, fraying. She felt a tremor go through her and she looked down at her Scroll; her Aura was in the red. Danger, the screen said in bold block letters. You are approaching critical levels of fatigue. The scarlet flickered mockingly up at her, the darkish-red rippling in a block of translucent blue. But she didn’t feel tired at all, just jittery and on edge.
She put down the Scroll and looked back to the computer, fingers resuming their frantic search into her past.
Yang
“You were carried here by hands
and now the wind has you, gritty
as incense, dark sparkles borne
in the shape of blowing,
this great atmospheric bloom,
spinning under the bridge and expanding—
shape of wind and its pattern
of shattering. Having sloughed off
the urn's temporary shape,
there is another of you now—
tell me which to speak to:
the one you were, or are, the one who waited
in the ashes for this scattering, or the one
now added to the already haunted woods,
the woods that sigh and shift their leaves—
where your mystery billows, then breathes.”
— unknown
Yang put the poem down, feeling sick inside, like there was a noose slowly tightening around her throat. She had not planned on this, hadn’t planned for her time at the school to be this way. Tell me which to speak to— the one you were, or are.
Blake was fading back into her past, stepping through a door into the dark. To a place where Yang could not follow— despite her desperate attempts, like ash, Blake was slipping and sighing away. In the library, her partner had been stoically expressionless, but her eyes were hollow and sick with misery, the pressing weight of it as jagged as lightning as it scorched through the Bond. As ashes; the ghost of that what once was. From whence you came, to the hands of the earth.
“Yang, I don’t mean to intrude, but… are you all right?”
Yang swung her head up from staring at her hands, mapped with a webwork of silver scars, to see Pyrrha of all people, blinking down at her.
“Oh. Hi, Pyrrha.”
Pyrrha pulled up a chair, the legs screeching slightly on the floor. “You look depressed,” was all she said. “I overheard your sister and Weiss expressing their concern for Blake, but also for you…”
“Did you? Damn little buggers can’t keep their mouths shut. Were they just flapping their gums aimlessly?”
“Well, no,” Pyrrha admitted. “They were playing Conquerers of Remnant with Nora and Sun in the library and it… happened to come up as a topic. You’re not the only one worried, you know. Sun cares about the both of you, and so do all of us. You can’t reproach us for our anxieties.”
Yang sank back in her chair, feeling the solid sadness from Blake pulse through her Bond. “I know. It’s not that easy.”
“You might well try to simplify it.” Her green eyes were sympathetic. “You’re always so… bright — it’s easy to see that you’re feeling under the weather. What is troubling you?”
“It’s Blake.” Yang chewed her lip. “No surprise there. She’s been running herself into the ground, she’s in the library day after day. She seems so— closed off sometimes. Like I can never reach her. And that’s fine, I mean, I know she’s…” Yang waved her hand to indicate a vague disconcertion. “She’s like that. But I just… I don’t know. Some days she’ll be whole and then the next day it’s like someone flipped a switch and she’s a completely different person.”
Pyrrha smiled slightly, looking at the patterns pressed into the armor on her wrists. “It’s no secret that you care for her.” And then, “Perhaps — have you tried locating the cause of her sorrow?”
“Yeah. No dice. And I— when you say care—”
“We’re all very much aware of the emotions that have, however unwittingly, transpired between the pair of you,” Pyrrha said, a hint of amusement coloring her voice as she warmed up to the task. “And the smitten expressions are no secret—”
Yang flushed a color that would put the shade of Ruby’s hair dye to shame. “That’s enough talk about me, Nikos. Are you trying to pretend that there’s nothing between you and Potato-Man Extraordinaire over there?”
Pyrrha looked offended. “Jaune is not — I’ll have you know he’s improved immensely. He just gets… doubtful, that’s all.”
Yang deflated at that, one hand gently following the curled line of poetry. “Don’t we all.”
Pyrrha touched her shoulder lightly, all motherly once more. “My mother was fond of a saying, once. ‘When you have hit rock bottom, all is not lost; you merely have a solid foundation to build up from.’ Perhaps what your partner needs is not to be pushed, Yang, but to have someone understand what she is going through. And you, as her partner, but also as her best friend, should be there to do that.”
Yang felt as though a weight had been removed from her shoulders. She grinned at Pyrrha. “Yeah— yeah, thanks. You ever thought about running a nice little therapist side-job?”
Pyrrha flexed her fingers against her narrow-spun gauntlets. “It’s always been my destiny to become a Huntress and to protect the world.” She looked up with a fierce gleam in her eyes. “It’s my destiny to live and follow my own path. Nothing will deter that.”
Blake
“Okay— yeah, yeah— stick the speaker there— ow, goddammit, not on my toe— by the windows, I said! Neptune! Stop touching the ribbons before you screw them up! Sun— no, no! Not the balloons, for the love of—”
Pop!
Sun let out an epithet that would have gotten him kicked out of class at Mistral, and a round of laughter rang out through the room, along with a sigh from Weiss.
Blake looked around the corner into the ballroom where the decorations were taking place. A lump seemed to settle in her throat as she saw her team and Sun and Neptune laughing and joking as they arranged the room. The sight of their happiness made her heart ache dully, as if it were a hollow implement and someone had struck her once, leaving her ringing with emptiness.
As if Yang sensed her, she turned around from placing a speaker down. But Blake had already moved on, through the hallways, out into the night.
It was cold and clear, almost dreamlike, as if she were swimming through the air. The sky was streaked with clouds, stars peeking out from the clear channels between. The moon grinned down at her like a skull, and Blake shuddered.
She stopped by one of the fountains, splashed the icy water on her face in the distant hope of wringing some energy from herself. The water rejuvenated her, somewhat, but her expression remained tormented and warped in the rippling surface. The moon was already at its zenith, and the water glared fiercely silver, detritus of leaves bobbing on the surface. It felt as if the chill of autumn had seeped right into her veins, chilling her blood into crystals of red ice, pluming clouded waves of chill through her very bones.
In the time since she had first stepped across the threshold into her Beacon— out of her old life, into the new— she’d hesitated, seen mirrors glancing her reflection back at her. She’d been flushed then, her eyes bright, put-together and guarded.
Now, she looked different, falling apart at the seams. Blake stared down at herself in the water, the moonlight drawing up sharp shadows under her chin and her cheeks. Her face was hard with a haggard, lean and drawn look. Her pensive expression matched only the new hollow shadows colored under her eyes. Her exhaustion was suffused with enervated desperation and a bravado that she did not truly feel.
Mist curled off the water as she broke her hands into it again, sending a splash up that rippled angrily out in little rifles, shattering the thin ice that had begun to reform. If there is any hope for a change, she thought, scarcely knowing what deity she was sending a weak prayer to, send me a sign; please.
She held her breath, her blood singing in the strange whistling wind of the night. Utter silence pressed down around the courtyard, a depthless quiet, as if the world was holding its breath, before the tiniest rustle crackled above her head.
She raised her gaze, eyes searching, before she saw a tiny bird— a little, golden mottled partridge— spread its wings and soar off in a soundless flight. She didn’t follow its angle, because her eyes had landed on the bird’s perch. It was a thick trunk of an oak tree, the bark wrinkled and old. The autumn leaves on this branch were extraordinarily bright, even for Remnant, a shimmering, seething sort of saffron-gold. The bird’s nest was rimmed with light lilac petals, and Blake’s eyes narrowed. It’s just a bird, then, she realized, disappointed, though the color combo made her uneasy, for some reason she was too worn out to speculate at.
That doesn’t help anything, she thought, angry at herself for expecting some response, however meager. She had gotten so caught up in her fatigue and sleepless ghosts that now she was praying to things that didn’t exist and getting angry at the patterns of life.
With a new weariness curving her shoulders, Blake turned from the cold, thin laughing of the mocking night wind, and headed for home.
Yang
Yang twisted her gauntlets into a passive mode, and Ruby flipped her a double thumbs up, possibly seeing the stubborn determination lighting her gaze.
“You gonna go smack some sense into her?” Ruby asked as Yang passed her.
“I mean, hopefully I’ll be refraining from any force, but sure, that’s one way to put it.”
Weiss raised a brow, looking up from her studies. “I wish you luck, Yang, but you better have a flawless plan. Ruby and I have already tried talking sense into her. She won’t listen; she’s so hellbent on this mad search of answers.”
“Yeah, I know,” Yang muttered, feeling the dual weight of their stares: blue, gray. “I’m not a wizard. I can try to talk to her, but in the end…” Yang swallowed. “I hate this. I can feel her sadness now. And it’s awful. This kind of feeling should not be becoming a familiar thing to me, or to her.”
Ruby and Weiss exchanged unnerved glances; Yang wondered if they had ever considered Bonding, but she quickly dismissed the idea as soon as it had come. They were much better friends now, but Weiss wasn’t likely to give up such a monumental part of herself, even to her partner.
“Well,” Ruby said after a long gap of silence, “you could always try to tempt her with the dance again.”
An idea flitted into Yang’s head, as if Ruby’s words had reached over and yanked down a dark curtain over her vision, leaving a single glowing idea suspended there. “You know what, Rubes? I think I’ll try that. Thanks.”
Ruby called after her as Yang trotted out of the door, a spring in her step: hope. “You owe me! I’m not opposed to being paid in cookies, you know!”
Laughing, Yang swung the door shut and stepped out into the dark hallways.
Finding Blake was easy; Yang closed her eyes, groped around mentally while holding the thought of Blake in her head— what she looked like, how she spoke, the familiar feel of her emotion, her laughter— like a phone call connecting, like some invisible cord in her mind, she could sense where Blake was. The Bond is pretty handy even despite the whole emotional weight of it, she mused, turning a left and heading to the library. Though… God, I can really see how it could be abused, especially with her.
She wasn’t on the upper level, where the books resided. Yang wove her way through other teams and students catching up on sleep, clattering down the weathered stone steps and to the hologram area. Blake blended in among the other students frantically catching up on their homework, but the shadows under her eyes were darker, and the torment on her face was not because of slipping grades.
She didn’t look up as Yang approached, and Yang finally stopped at the edge of the table, crossing her arms over her chest.
Blake’s head jerked up, her chair skittering back with the sharp motion. Her skin was drained of all color, showing the dark rings around her eyes. She looked at Yang as if she were staring down the barrel of a gun.
“I… Yang. You scared me.” And then, her voice sharp as broken glass, “You shouldn’t be in here.”
“Really? Why not?” Yang folded her arms, cold seeping through her, as if she had swallowed ice cubes. “Is it the fact that you’ve been ignoring me and pushing me away every time I try to talk to you and to understand what’s wrong? Or is it something else?”
Blake mouth thinned to a hard line, like chiseled stone. Yang could feel her reluctance and anger, crackling through the air, crackling through the Bond. “Something else such as I’m the only one noticing that peace is fragile and that we’re not as safe as we thought we were? I’m sure our enemies are loitering around, prepping dances and not trying to figure out answers just like—”
“You can’t get angry at us when all you do is push us away,” Yang said softly. She held her ground as a feeling of shame tingled through the Bond, and Blake swallowed, the muscles in her throat contracting slightly.
“I…”
“But that’s not why I’m here. Blake. I want to talk to you. Now.”
Blake’s eyes flashed back to the screen. “But—“
“No. Enough searching. Enough shutting yourself down. Come on.” Yang gripped her hand, pulling her — without resistance — up out of the chair, out of the library. Something told her that whatever she had done, Blake wouldn’t have fought back; perhaps it was her way of punishing herself.
She dragged them into an abandoned classroom, late afternoon sunlight pouring through the high windows. It was vacant, the air silent, as if holding its breath.
“Yang, don’t tell me to stop,” Blake said as soon the door swung shut with an audible click, her hands folded behind her back. “If you brought me here to tell me that, you’re just wasting your breath.”
“Not to stop, no.” Yang sat on the desk, beckoning her partner. Blake sat stiffly. “I want you to talk to me. To help me understand. Not as your partner or teammate. But,” she paused, Pyrrha’s words echoing in her mind, “as— as your friend. You promised me that, didn’t you, all those weeks ago?”
Blake stared down at her hands, like they would yield the answers. “I cannot make you understand, Yang. I cannot make anybody understand what is happening inside me.” Her voice dwindled, anguish filling it. “I cannot even explain it to myself.”
“Give it a shot, then.”
Blake turned away, her words shaking. “Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. It is my fault,” she said, softly, “my fault; my own most grievous fault.”
She looked up, and there was such an unguarded, raw pain in her eyes that it felt wrong to look at it, like it would cleave her in two. “None of this would be happening if it weren’t for who I used to be. If I hadn’t stayed in the White Fang like a coward…”
“Blake, no.” Yang caught at her sleeve, feeling as if her heart was cracking in two. She pulled her into a close hug, as if that was all that could keep her from falling apart. Blake didn’t resist, but she was shaking, and Yang buried her head in her partner’s shoulder, forcibly willing herself to be strong.
“You are the strongest person I have ever known, Blake Belladonna,” Yang whispered against her neck. “You forged yourself a new life and home by yourself. Most people would be shattered by that, but you weren’t. You aren’t most. Not to me.”
Blake’s heartbeat was unsteady and she detached herself, turning away, always turning away. “You don’t really know who I am,” she said raggedly, “or you wouldn’t say that.”
Yang set her jaw and faced her. Blake’s eyebrows shot up at the fire in Yang’s eyes; she felt a pulse of something— some constricting emotion— flicker through the Bond. “Wrong again. I know you. I know the girl who was beaten down at rallies. I know the girl who wanted someone to listen and treat her equal for once, the girl who doesn’t want pity, but understanding. I know the girl who walked out of her own life because she knew she deserved better. I know the girl who I met in the forest and the girl who almost took on death for me and the girl I Bonded with. But you know I don’t know?” She framed her hands, indicating Blake, who was watching her sadly. “This. Because I do know you — and this, the way you’ve been acting for the past week — that’s not you.” And then, softer, “tell me. Please. Tell me what’s wrong so I can help.”
“I trust you,” Blake said, her head bowed. “More than I ever—” She broke off. “God. Probably more than I should. You know that, right?” She turned around with a soft sigh as Yang blinked at her, rummaging for something before she held out a folded piece of paper. “Here.”
“I— what’s this?”
Blake’s hand was shaking slightly, sending the paper into tremors. She looked up at the windows, her gaze faraway. “You know I had a visitor,” she said. “In the infirmary.”
“Uh. Yes…?”
Blake’s jaw hardened. “It was my father’s sister,” she said, and Yang noticed her avoidance of aunt, anything to signify a relationship between the two. “And she gave me… she gave me this.”
“Oh,” Yang said, starting to understand the shadows behind Blake’s eyes. “I didn’t know your family…”
“Was still alive? They’re not. My father and mother… they were— they were murdered by Ayran when I was very young. She’s not family, just a stranger that happens to share my blood.” Blake shook her head at Yang’s muffled exclamation of sorrow. “That’s not the point of what I’m saying. That letter— it’s from my father years and years ago— read it.”
Yang unfolded it hesitantly, as if it might detonate. Acutely aware of Blake’s eyes on her, Yang skimmed the letter, horror enveloping her nervousness as she read on. Rule over all of Remnant? So this goes beyond robbery and troublemaking…. oh, hell. This isn’t good.
“Well, damn,” Yang said, folding it up and handing it back to Blake. Her partner snorted.
“That’s an understatement.”
“Blake— I know it looks like we’re hurtling towards hell in a handbasket, but— we’ll help you,” she said, finally. “I thought you knew that. That we would never judge you for wanting to make the world a better place. And that whatever we do, we do it as a team. You don’t have to be alone.”
“But you—”
Don’t understand, Yang thought with a mingled mix of anger and exasperation. She felt as though the words would choke her, but she forced them out anyways. “You think I don’t understand your search for answers?” She spun around, hand clenching on the rim of the chalkboard. “Did I ever tell you about mine and Ruby’s childhood?”
Mutely, Blake shook her head.
“People think so often that kindness and happiness equals softness,” Yang said. “You used to think that. That I was just another stupid, optimistic initiate who had no idea of life’s harsher aspects.” She turned around and fixed Blake with a firm gaze. “Didn’t you?”
Blake bit her lip. “The thought may have been there once upon a time,” she admitted. “But—“
“But nothing. You’re gonna hear me out.” She turned, rolling the nub of chalk between her fingers, the etched symbol of Raven— the one on Qrow’s flask— dancing in her mind. “Ruby and I grew up in Patch. It’s a small island off the coast of Vale— only a few Hunting families ever live there; it’s one of the few places that’s devoid of Grimm. And we lived with our dad and,” Yang swallowed, “our mom. Her name was Summer Rose.” The memories came, painful and soothing all at once: she missed Summer Rose, missed the way she had been there when Raven hadn’t; she had taken Yang under her wing, even though she wasn’t her child. And that was a debt she could never repay.
“She was the textbook definition of mom. Baker of cookies, badass at times, and could beat us all out in Conquerers of Remnant without batting an eye. She and Taiyang were great parents— Bonded, from the same team; they knew each other well and they were the perfect example of lasting love. It was always something I could look up to, this pinnacle of security and family. And for the first two years it was three of us— until Ruby came along. She was the perfect baby sister and six years passed. We grew up, got into shenanigans, got out of them, and Ruby and I both began to realize that we wanted to be just like our parents: Huntresses. So we trained, and it was then that we began to understand the dangers of Remnant, the ongoing struggle between dark and light and gray. And then Summer Rose was called out on a mission.
“I don’t know what happened that day. I don’t know why she didn’t come back and I don’t think I’ll ever know. Maybe there were just too many of them; maybe she was too determined to play the hero. But she was killed.” Yang’s eyes burned as if from sand or salt spray, and Blake’s eyes widened. “Our uncle Qrow came back and told us. But I knew because I saw Dad’s Bond break. I think the pain of it, like you told me… it almost killed him. And I think a part of him did die, that day. He was never the same…”
“Yang, I—”
“It was then that he shut down, started drinking and mumbling in his sleep, and became neglectful,” Yang said softly. “But Summer Rose wasn’t the first love he lost. She was— she was the second. The first—” Yang’s hands curled into fists at her sides. “The first was my mom.”
A pulse of electric shock flashed through the Bond, from Blake. “Your— mom? Ruby— Ruby is your half-sister?”
Yang tasted bitterness on the back of her throat. “Yeah. Yeah, she is.” A dark laugh found its way from some cold place within her. “Doesn’t matter, anyways. We both lost two parents, in a way. And she had no one after Summer Rose died, because after she was killed, Dad told me I wasn’t Summer’s kid, went off the deep end, and was out for the count. I was consumed with a maddening desire to find my mom and why she abandoned me just after I was born. I should have been there for Ruby, and I wasn’t. I was selfish. I heard her mourning sometimes, you know, crying through the walls at night, whimpering for her mom in her sleep— but I couldn’t do anything, so buried in my own emotions, because hell, sometimes it was just too much and I forgot to look. She knew love for her mom, but I didn’t. I was so consumed with my own wants that I left her when she needed me the most.” Yang looked down, forcibly willing herself not to cry, a lump in her throat. “It’s all my fault. Both of us act so happy that you’d never know what happened years ago. God, I— I just wish things could have been different. I wish that my own need for answers hadn’t blinded me to the people I cared about that were suffering around me. And that my obsession hadn’t driven my life.”
She heard Blake’s sharp intake of breath, and Yang’s hands knotted in on each other. So she had gotten the message. “But— your mother. I don’t… why did she leave you?”
Yang shivered. “That question. Why. I didn’t know an answer; Taiyang refused to talk about her. So did Qrow. It drove me up a wall. So I grew determined to find out; it was all I could think about. I would ask anyone— an old classmate, a former friend, alumni from Beacon— what they knew about her, if they had any idea why she had done what she did. And then one day… I found something. What I thought was a clue that could lead me to answers, like the clues you’re searching for, or maybe even my mother herself.”
Blake made a soft noise, but Yang went on. “I waited for Dad to leave the house, put Ruby in a wagon, and headed out. I must've walked for hours. I had cuts and bruises, I was totally exhausted, but I wasn't gonna let anything stop me, no matter what debt I might owe, whatever heaven or hell could make me pay. I was so— consumed by it. When we finally got there, I could barely stand, but I didn't care. I had made it.” Her voice shivered with self-loathing. “And then I saw them— Beowolves, at least a dozen, glaring at us with those burning red eyes…” She closed her eyes, a scene painted on the back of her eyelids—
She’s nine again and Ruby is only a few days shy of turning seven. Her baby sister, her ward, is asleep, finally exhausted after one of her bad days. Those are the worst, when Dad leaves the house and doesn’t come back for hours— and when he does, he is in a liquored stupor, his eyes bloodshot and his voice always moaning, moaning for Summer Rose. Or sometimes Raven. Ruby cries and cries but Yang has learned she cannot do anything about it: she can’t heal this wound, cannot bring Summer back.
He’s gone, presumably to a bar, and Yang piles Ruby, who is knocked out with sleep, into a rickety red wagon. She covers her sister with a hood and a blanket that Summer Rose knitted once. Her foster mother’s scent of soft wildflowers and pine trees is already fading from the worn cloth; Yang fears for the moment she will have to let go completely.
It’s cold outside, a brisk autumn chill saturating the air. Yang takes to the trees, the faint scent of the salty sea mingling with the wild cries of wolves from far away. She feels so, so alone. The paper shakes in her numbing fingers: a picture of team STRQ, an address hastily scribbled on the dog-eared back. She pulls the wagon along with ease, Ruby’s soft whimpering cries in her sleep make Yang choke with sadness. Nightmares, predictably. Her training will aid her here.
She trudges through what must be ages of a dying forest, through streams and fallen logs and curious animals, through whistling wind and the patter of rain. And still, the wagon bumps along, Ruby tossing in a fitful sleep. Yang’s eyes remain deadlocked ahead of her. This is one mission in which she cannot fail.
She finally— finally— arrives in a shadowy clearing. There’s a dilapidated, broken down building in the clearing, with peeling paint and gaping, shattered windows. Fear coils around her spine, cold, but she will not back down.
And then the eyes glare out from the darkness. Yang’s fear rises up and blocks off her throat as a horde of Grimm pour from the broken doors, galloping towards her with hungry, excited yelps.
And then, intercepting her and death for the first time in her life, a flash of silver descends from the trees with a shout of anger, and blood spatters the sky.
Yang shuddered, coming back to the present. “There we were. A toddler sleeping in the back of a wagon and a stupid girl too exhausted to even cry for help. We might as well have been served on a silver platter… but, as luck would have it… Qrow showed up just in time.” She bent her head, heart aching. “My stubbornness almost killed me and my sister that night. My own unwillingness to listen— or understand.”
Yang heard Blake’s softly padding footsteps, but she was shaking, her knuckles white as she gripped the ledge of the chalkboard. Raven. I just told her about Raven.
“Yang,” Blake said at last, before her hand pressed softly against her shoulder. “Yang, I’m sorry. I understand and I’m sorry.”
“That search for answers did consume me once,” Yang said, voice breaking, “just as it has consumed you. But seeing the people I loved suffering as a consequence of my own actions— that woke me up. And I think that surely— surely— you can do the same.”
Blake withdrew her hand and her chin came down, resting upon Yang’s shoulder. A feeling of warmth, like sitting in front of a roasting hearth on a bitterly cold day, went through their Bond, and Yang leaned back into her touch, knowing Blake couldn’t see the smile on her face as her eyes closed. “I think so too,” she said quietly, a hint of amusement coloring her voice back to life for the first time in days, and it was that which convinced Yang that Blake was back to normal once more, “but as much as the idea of crafting a master plan to rectify all these wrongs is enticing, I’m going to need some rest first.”
“And after that,” Yang said, her heart thumping in her chest, “I don’t know if you’d forgotten, but— we’re kind of, you know, planning a dance.”
“The one that you all kept pestering me to attend. Yes, I remember.”
Yang slipped out of her grip and trotted up the stone steps. Blake watched her go, her face raptured in the failing light.
“I’ll be waiting if you make it out tomorrow,” Yang told her, grinning, “and I’ll be sure to save you a dance.”
As she turned and left the room, so light she almost felt like she could fly, a shared warmth flickered through the Bond, steady as a flame, warming her always from the cold outside.
“Ruby, for the love of all things holy, hold still.”
Ruby squirmed, glaring as Yang brushed a wing of eyeliner on her left eye, finishing them both off. “There, perfect.”
“I don’t like this,” Ruby complained, sliding from her seat and giving a longing glance to where Crescent Rose lay dormant against the wall. “I wish I could wear my hood. I hate feeling like a dressed-up frilly girly girl.”
“That girly girl is all of us, thank you,” Yang said, drawing a brush through her hair with a precision known to many nights of swiftly readying herself to go out on quick notice. “Besides, this is, like, the one night we can actually relax without being attacked by evildoers, or forging plans to wreck the baddies’ plots, or worrying over one of our teammates running herself into the ground. You should be happy.”
“That’s right! Did you manage to talk sense into Blake?”
Yang’s chest rose and fell quickly. “I told her about how I almost got us killed when we were kids and made some analogies to her current situation. It seemed to knock some sense into her.”
Ruby’s eyes narrowed, glinting gray. Yang knew she had never liked mentions of Raven, of the figure shrouded in mystery who had abandoned Yang when she was less than a day old— of anything to hint that they were anything less than family. “At least she’s okay now.”
“Yeah, yeah. Now we can all enjoy the dance in peace.”
“Speaking of which,” Ruby continued, tousling her just-done hair as Yang scowled at her, “you never told me who you were going with.”
Yang smiled absently, fluffing her hair over her shoulder. I’ll be sure to save you a dance. “Someone special.”
“Weiss is all sad because of Neptune,” Ruby said, a scowl in her voice. “I don’t understand what she sees him, sometimes— I like all of team SSSN, but I mean— they’re so different. He’s easygoing and disorderly sometimes, really laid-back, and Weiss is— you know.”
“Perhaps it’s because he’s disorderly? Maybe she wants something that really challenges her childhood. Maybe it’s a statement. I don’t think she really likes him— just what he represents, you know?”
Ruby nodded slowly, a thoughtful look on her face. “Yeah, I can see that.” A grin uncurled across her face. “Enough about Weiss, sis— what’s going on in your department with partners? I heard about your Bond, that’s some pretty big stuff…”
Yang busied herself with leaning forward to apply her own makeup, noting with a frown that she was flushing, staunchly refusing to turn around and meet Ruby’s sparkling look of amusement. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Please. You’re more transparent than Professor Port’s lies on his heroic exploits! Spill it.” She bounced on the bed, making it creak. “We all know that—”
“No. Nero. Nada. Zilch. Zip. That means no, Rubes.”
Ruby sprang off the bed and headed towards the door with a humph of disapproval. “Sure, sure. I promised to meet Jaune and Nora by the front doors— good thing for you, so you can go greet whoever this oh-so-mysterious date of yours is without me tagging along.”
Yang stuck her tongue out at her sister. “Get outta here, Riding Hood.” She grinned at herself in the mirror as the door shut, with Ruby grumbling about how she was being third-wheeled, and reached around, grabbing her dress.
Time to solo this thing.
The night was pleasant outside, not cold and not muggy, either. The stars glimmered down, and the moon was full, the broken shards glinting like sharks’ teeth. Silver lay like a gild over everything, and Yang felt a buoying happiness bubble up inside of her. Despite the turbulence of life, some things could never be undermined.
She heard the laughter emitting from the ballroom long before she saw it, and when she finally came into view of the propped doors and spilling light, she paused, readying herself.
But there was already a figure standing in the shadows, her eyes glowing brighter as Yang rounded the corner.
Yang could see Blake, leaned up against a plinth, standing in the thick shadows that pooled about the pillars of the school. She was at the corner of the dais, and she was staring up, through the edifices and battlements of the walls, at the constellations that webbed and laced out across the sky in silver fissures. Her head raised as Yang mounted the last stair, dress tickling her legs in the wind, her golden eyes sparking in surprise. Her hair swirled to the side in the breaths of wind ghosting across the courtyard. Yang felt something like a spark of fire shoot through their Bond.
She was dressed sleekly, in a diaphanous dress that was adjacent to a shadow, and the dark dress fluttered around her knees and curved in slits on the sides, showing bare skin. For the first time since Yang had met her, she seemed to be lacking any weapons; she had forgone the dark bracelets that laddered her forearms, and donned a simple dark coil on her wrists. Her hair, curling close to the back of her neck, was brushed down over her shoulders in a tumbling, crimped black waterfall, glimmering and shining in a helix of tresses. Her skin was all pallor and shadow, but the bruises and restlessness were gone. Light seemed to shimmer out from beneath her skin, picking out the hollows of her temples, and the curve of her collarbones. Her eyes were the same jarring amber-gold, flecked with light, but they seemed more iridescent now, like they jumped with the edge of flame. And they were full of life, not sunken and dead like they had been a night before. She was beautiful, Yang thought, absolutely breathtaking, an effigy like a statue, all sharp planes and angles, accented with demure colors of gold and black and white. She looked just like the drawings she had always sketched up. She looked more distant than the farthest stars.
And despite it, despite the paradoxes of it all, Yang knew she was falling, falling hard for her. How curious to fall, and feel no fear.
“You came! I was— I dunno, I guess I thought maybe you might not show up.”
Blake’s lips curved in the faintest of smiles, curling up higher at one side— her genuine, lopsided smile, Yang noted with relief, even though it seemed darkened by something. “You asked me to come,” she said simply, quietly. “Of course I would be here.” She was leaning against the pillar, and her eyes returned to the stars; Yang saw that they were reflected, burning, in her pupils. Just as Yang was about to say something to shatter the fragile silence— it was more than that, she was afraid to break it— Blake turned and spun towards her, proffering her arm. She seemed less burning with a kinetic energy now— seemed more grounded, like a camera lens finally focusing properly, her remoteness gone.
“Shall we go?”
Yang felt her smile return, beaming across her face, and she flicked her hair over her shoulder, slipping her arm to interlock with Blake’s. A jolt of electric energy washed over her as they touched. “We shall.”
Within the interior of the hall, the rafters were lost to shadow. A gilded overlay of glimmering lights seemed to sheen over everything within the dance. Close-curling ribbons ruffled the pillars along the hall, and flourishing bouquets of balloons festooned the walls. Laughter and the light, harmonious cadences of music twined in the hall; her happiness returned, and Blake was happy, too, a current of warmth in the Bond; it was like holding her hands over a comforting flame, whenever the cold of night threatened.
“Where’s Sun?” Yang wondered aloud, her eyes passing over the crowd.
Blake grinned. “I think he said something about soloing the dance.” She ducked her head and whispered in Yang’s ear, “Truthfully, he asked me to go with him, but I had to decline. Something about my dances already being spoken for.”
“Touching,” Yang said.
“It really is, at that.”
Blake grinned at her. And then there was that feeling again, of rain falling on a summer’s day, of the first snowfall, of a fire in a hearth; warmth and safety and dizzying. Yang’s heart skipped a beat in her chest as the music slipped into a slower, smoother tone, promising safety and security and love, and Yang held out her hand to Blake. “Blake Belladonna, may I have this dance?”
In answer, Blake took her hand, her agreement almost lost in the chatter all around them. Music soared through the room, and they danced. They danced to the song of the stars shining overhead.
They danced as if it was the last time they would be happy again.