Chapter XVII - This Guilty Blood
Taiyang had once compared heartbreak to the moment before a stone fell into still waters. First, there was the pause of the detonation above all that was tranquil; the disbelief, the unknowing. Then there was the crash; the event itself, the great upheaval of all you thought you knew was solid, pulled out under your feet. After that came the ripple effects, because hell— sometimes life was blinding and you didn’t know how lucky you were until you lost it all.
And then… silence. A silence as you sank to the bottom of the water, leaving behind nothing but whispering waves to mark your grave.
If that was so, then love must be when you took a breath after eternity of drowning; it must be heaven. And Yang was breathing in light, in love, in the beauty of all that was the world. As it went, becoming Blake’s friend was a choice. Becoming her partner was the hand of Fate. But falling in love with her was out of her control.
She looked up. Weiss and Ruby were tag-teaming to help her clean up the ballroom, along with Pyrrha and Jaune. There was a new spark between the latter, and Yang concealed a grin; it looked like Pyrrha had taken her advice and done something larger than vague hints.
“Hey, Ruby. Watch this.”
Yang ducked as a balloon shot past her head, missing her by inches, squealing loudly as it deflated itself with a whine. Jaune was laughing and Pyrrha was hiding a smile.
“Amusing, potato-child— just as amusing as this—” Yang picked up a rubber band and stretched it, letting it fly. Jaune ducked out of the way and it hit Weiss straight in the forehead, ricocheting off and flying into the shadows. Yang gasped and Ruby squeaked as Weiss’s eyes blazed.
“Yang!”
“Sorry, Weiss-queen,” she grinned, sweeping ribbons into a trash bag.
“Hey, where’s Blake?” Ruby asked, balancing on the tips of her toes to snatch a curl of ribbons from the pillars. “Didn’t she promise to help us clean up?”
“Let’s be real, Rubes— she’s probably in the library as we speak. Books call more to her than the promise of oh-so-fun cleaning.”
“Ah, oh well,” she said, “it was worth a shot. You sound disappointed about that.” Ruby slid down from the pillar and darted her eyes around before jerking her head to Weiss and Yang, lowering her voice so Jaune and Pyrrha wouldn't hear her. “I need to talk to you guys.”
Yang's brow furrowed at the grim look in her eyes. “Now?”
“Right now. It's important, I swear.”
Yang swept her bag aside and joined Ruby outside the hall, Weiss following after her. “What’s up, Ruby?”
Yang furrowed her brows as Ruby cast an uncharacteristically grave look outside before she squared her shoulders. “It's about last night. The dance. Some... stuff happened, and I didn't get to tell you about it because I didn't wanna worry either of you, and it was our night to just relax, but— I have to tell you Ozpin’s gonna want to talk about it because General Ironwood saw what happened—”
Yang held up her hands. "Ruby. If the headmaster wants to talk to you, then it means something really did happen, so you need to start from the beginning."
"Right, right," Ruby said, looking at her feet. "It was about twenty minutes to midnight, and I was kinda tired and I wanted fresh air because the hall was really crowded. So when the three of you weren't watching, I, er, snuck out the double doors. And once I was outside, I saw— this person. A dark figure dressed in black, jumping from rooftop to rooftop— and it wasn’t some wayward student pulling a prank. It was an woman - a Huntress, I'm sure of it. And she looked - well, I don't know how to describe it, but she looked dangerous, like she was up to something bad. So I, uh, I kinda went after her.” She glanced sheepishly at Yang, who waved her on.
“Wouldn’t expect anything less of you. It's our job to do that anyways. Go on.”
“I called Crescent Rose from the rocket-lockers, and continued on to the CCT. I saw a guard lying in the bushes— unconscious, not dead, I hoped— so I went inside the CCT and saw more guards knocked out. There were signs of a struggle. I went to the top of the tower. It looked empty at first, but then a figure rose up behind a desk, and she was masked and all dark. It was the woman I saw on the rooftops. And she attacked. She fought differently than anyone I’ve ever encountered. She had two glass swords and she moved with fire and these sweeping sparks - I swear, her clothing lit when she moved, like fire. She wasn't trying to fight me, either, at least not her hardest. I— she would’ve beat me, if General Ironwood hadn’t showed up. But when he did, she— vanished. I don’t know where she went but when I turned back around she was gone - and there was just a smoking crater in the floor where she had vanished, like the air just swallowed her whole.”
Yang’s eyes widened. “This woman. Why - the CCT isn't really a place I'd pick out to be performing crime at, especially so late at night. Do you think she could be linked to Torchwick and the White Fang? They've been doing weird stuff, too...”
“There’s many people with ill intent these days,” Weiss said grimly, her eyes dark, and then:
“Anything is possible.”
After they had pondered over the dwindling possibilities for hours, Weiss and Ruby had gone off to search up more information on White Fang dealings and recent infractions of the law in Vale, leaving Yang alone with her thoughts. She didn’t go searching for Blake, however. She turned and headed for her favorite place— the balconies that lined the upper, and mostly vacant towers of Beacon.
Night had fallen by the time she reached the balcony. There was a feeling in her stomach, of mixed trepidation and a sense that something was about to happen.
Perhaps it was only her. She gently shut the door behind her, heading to the edge of the balcony. Below, she could see the gentle movement of the water, tugging to and fro in the breeze that breathed through the night.
For where there is darkness, there, too, is light. Despair cannot exist without hope. Night cannot be true without day.
She folded her arms and let out a shuddering breath. Yang heard the door click open, swinging and creaking ajar on its hinges, and the soft, feathery tread— one she’d recognize anywhere, clicked against the stone floor. “I thought I might find you up here,” Blake’s voice rang out in the stillness, and Yang closed her eyes, bowing her head and pressing her fingers against the cold surface of the balcony.
‘Is it even so? Then I defy you, stars!’
It had always been one of her favorite quotes, the idea of defiance of Fate itself. Fate— a thing that had marked out where she would go, a thing she could never escape, no matter what choices she made.
Of course, the whole ‘tragedy’ of Romeo and Juliet had always been laughable to her, because of the age gap, the fact that if Friar Lawrence had moved faster everything would have been fine, and the fact that it had all happened so fast. But it was the core idea of the whole thing, of love that could move mountains, love that could shake the forests, love that would sacrifice everything.
But even so: would she do that for Blake, sacrifice so much?
She looked at her partner, who was watching her. Her eyes were like the light of the sun as it sank into the sea, and Yang felt her chest give a painful constriction. She would, of course she would, she would do anything to keep her safe and close and loved. She loved Blake as deeply as the sea and as strongly as the oaks, to the stars, to the moon itself. Perhaps there was such a thing as soulmates, perhaps not, but either way, Yang had a feeling that every person was on their own in discovering their other half. Perhaps you forged the opposite side of you in your mind and met the person one day.
“What are you thinking about?” Blake came to the facade of the balcony beside her, a bar of moonlight striping silver across her face. The ground plunged away below them dizzyingly, the other lit towers of Beacon spiring into the air with soaring heights. The furthermost tower glowed with an emerald, rippling light, and Yang focused her eyes on it, took a breath, and steadied herself.
“Just— you,” Yang said, before flushing and gesturing to her partner, her blood thundering in her veins at her proximity. “You’ve been through so much, Blake, and I— well.” She rocked back on her heels, hands finding the windowsill again. “It’s admirable.”
“‘It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves,’” Blake quoted, mirroring Yang’s earlier thought. “It’s not me. Not really. I did only what I had to do, just like you.” Blake’s hand found Yang’s on the gritty stone sill, their fingers lacing together, almost absently, as the trees rustled musically in the night wind. “You know as much strength as I do, even more. They say that there are the realists and the dreamers and they need each other: the realist keeps the dreamer from flying away, and the dreamer helps the realist to soar.”
“And what are you?” Yang asked, every nerve pricking as Blake’s thumb passed over the back of her hand, tracing slow circles into her skin.
“I think I’m the dreamer of us two,” Blake replied, her eyes bright and reflecting the clarity of the frosted stars above their heads. “Because you keep me grounded. You always pull me back from the shadows like light. I don’t know how, but you do. Even when I’ve run, even when I’m scared, you always manage to bring me back to the world— back to you.”
Yang leaned her head against Blake’s shoulder as they both looked at the starry map vaulting far, far above their heads. Maybe there was a middle ground somewhere; Yang knew fires always burned brighter because of darkness. It was hard to keep her thoughts in such a poetic line, though, when Blake was leaning into her, too, her thumb passing little patterns and taps over Yang’s skin. She thought it was Morse code, the way Blake was drumming her fingers idly against her palm, but she couldn’t read it.
“Do you ever think about her?” Blake asked suddenly.
“About who?”
“Your mother,” was Blake’s quiet reply.
“Which one? Raven, or Summer Rose?” Yang said, straightening and passing her gaze over the distant courtyards. The constellations were clear tonight, mapping out in silver pinpricks of light in a velvety dark sky. Plumes of frosty smoke rose curled in misty tendrils off of the fountains. “I know… I know Summer Rose is still watching Ruby and me, somehow. There was always one place she fought like hell to get to and stay there, and that was by us. Wherever we go after life… she’ll be there. Watching. Waiting. Guiding.” Yang twisted around to look at Blake, and thought, if there is a life after this one, I will love you there. “I don’t think much about Raven anymore,” she admitted, and it was true. “I’ve learned that the ones who fight to keep in their lives are the ones who love you the most, and I don’t know— I guess she didn’t want me enough to keep me, but making peace with that is the most I can ever do. I don’t think I’ll ever stop wondering. Searching for her. Asking myself why she did what she did. But,” Yang blew out a breath between her teeth. “I’ve learned to let go. No person can truly say they know every secret about themselves, and aren’t some secrets better left alone?”
“If they love you, they will strive to stay by your side,” Blake insisted, before her eyes shifted, flickering downward. “I would fight to keep you.”
Yang blinked, looked at her. “You… would?” She said, feeling warm inside, as if someone had slipped a burning ember right into her heart and spread the comforting glow to her veins. This wasn’t the awful scorching fire she lived with, sleeping in her blood like a snake poised to strike: this was the gentle heat emanating from a bed of ashes, and it felt beautiful.
“Of course. You fight for me. I fight for you. Ever since I’ve met you, you’ve been by my side,” Blake said, as if was as simple as that, and maybe it was. “The cities. The forest. The fight against Torchwick and the Paladin—”
“But you almost got killed for me!”
“I wouldn’t have changed a thing,” Blake said, her eyes and voice steady and strong as she looked directly at Yang. “Not a thing. You are the one point of steadiness in a violent sea. The unswerving needle in this great, never ending compass of a world. When I came to Beacon, I never planned on this— having a family again. But it’s better than I could have ever hoped, Yang.”
Yang couldn’t bear to be this close to her— so close she could see the Cupid’s bow of her lips, see the flutter of her pulse in the porcelain curve of her throat— and yet so impossibly far. She was bathed in a silver moonlit glow, an enveloped spotlight, both of them. I want to kiss her, she thought, almost idly; she had wanted to be something more with Blake for a long, long time. To wake up and see her face, to fall asleep, curved safely beside her, to do all the stupid things that couples did, to be able to hold her and touch her and playfully banter with her, to touch her and not ache at all the times she could have her the way she wanted.
“Je te veux, je vous aime,” she murmured to herself quietly, breath smoking in the chill, and Blake’s eyes found hers again. Golden lights, amber skylines lined in darkness. There was an entire universe in Blake’s eyes, those old eyes set in a young face.
“What?”
“French. It’s nothing,” she said, and then she was aware of how close they were. Really close, if not closer than they had been at the dance. Blake’s elbow rested on the stone rim, touching hers, and Yang’s head was leaned against Blake’s. Blake was still watching her a little strangely, and Yang wondered with a brief spurt of panic if she knew French, knew what Yang had said. Blake read all those books, surely…?
“Do you ever wonder why I chose you in the forest?” Blake said softly.
Yang looked down. Some part of her wanted Blake to know, to end this charade. It had been so long. Friends, Bonded, and now… this. She looked at Blake, who was watching expectantly, waiting for her to speak.
Yang cleared her throat nervously. “Because— well, I was the only one, wasn’t I? The only one left. You just act so different around me. So much more… real, I guess. And I know the things you do—”
Blake regarded her with glittering gold eyes, like deposits of mica. They were alive with light, sad and measured. “Stop, Yang. The things I do for you— well, why do you think I do them?”
“I’m your partner. I— ”
Blake turned her face away. “I used to have a partner, and I didn’t do half the things for him I would be willing to do for you. Sometimes it takes me by surprise how different you are from Adam.”
“I hope that’s not factoring the obvious despotic personality in. I was really trying to hide it.” She frowned as the joke fell short, Blake’s eyes still cast down. “Blake…”
Blake pulled her arms in. “I don't know who I am,” she said. “I look at myself in the mirror and I see Brian Belladonna, but I act like a Huntress and talk like a member of the White Fang—like Adam. So I see who I am in your eyes, and I try to be that person, because you have faith in that person and I think faith might be enough to make me what you want.”
Yang’s heart went out to her partner. “You’re already perfect the way you are.”
Blake looked at her hands. “The blood in my veins is not perfect,” she said quietly. “This guilty blood, of a Faunus turned traitor.”
Yang was quiet. What could she have said, anyways?
Blake didn’t reply for a moment before looking back at Yang. “What about you, my partner? What lies under that armor of yours?”
Yang’s shoulders slumped. “I’m sure if you pried hard enough into that nifty Bond, you could find out.” Sorrow, worry, and all my love for you.
A surge of emotion crashed through the Bond like thunder. Yang looked over at Blake in surprise. She was staring at her hands as if they held the secrets of the universe, before she turned towards Yang, their faces only inches apart.
“I don’t know what it is,” she said. “Sometimes you’re unreachable. But sometimes I think I might know you.”
“What do you want, Blake?” Yang whispered, breath catching. She could see a small white scar on the bridge of Blake’s nose, could see the light halo of sunbleached freckles that danced across her face. In that single moment, a single image flashed before her eyes: Blake smiling down at her for the first time, close-lipped and amused, her eyes two coals of sun.
And she knew what Blake had meant when memories blurred when you loved someone, the way you remembered only what you felt, and not the details of the scene. But she remembered the moment this whole thing had been set into motion with startling, breathtaking clarity, the moment she had met Blake and her whole life had been changed in ways she hadn’t even known yet. That the only person who had caught up to her and trusted her and given her all to her— that was Blake. The one who had loved her, despite her flaws and errs and wrongs.
The love she had always missed in her own blindness.
Je vous aime.
“Since the day we’ve met I’ve only ever wanted to be with you,” Blake whispered in the space between them, before their lips brushed, a butterfly of a touch that sent a jolt as powerful as lightning thundering through her bones. Yang leaned forward to meet her halfway and they were kissing and they were kissing and Blake was kissing her, kissing her deeply and fiercely, as if she would drown, die if she didn’t.
The kiss was the wind singing its untamed song in her veins. It was the sheer spinning dizziness of untethered life within her blood. It was the fine cool clearness of starlight on the water. It was the sparks of an unfettered fire catching along her bones and igniting a blazing inferno in her chest.
The kiss was everything.
Yang didn’t know if she was kissing Blake or if Blake was kissing her; but she decided it didn’t matter. She pulled her closer, hands resting on her waist. Blake’s hands tangled in her hair. She tilted her head to the side, fitting their lips together as Blake held her close. The pounding of her heart through her shirt made her dizzy with joy. No one else’s heart beat like Blake’s, or ever could.
She broke away first, heart leaping in great bounds against her chest, breathing as if she’d just finished a long, long race and broken through the ribbon, first, at the end of the finish line. Her tongue darted across her lips, incredulity in her heart. She could taste Blake there, a cool sharpness that was like starlight, like the moon dazzling across nighttime snow, like freedom and soaring lights.
They broke apart, staring at each other in surprise for a moment, before Blake— impossibly, beautifully, wonderfully— smiled at her. “Your heart is beating so fast,” she said, her hand resting on Yang’s sternum.
I know.” Yang admitted, wondering if she were dreaming, but the look on Blake’s face was more real to her than anything she had ever known. “I may have wanted to do that for a while.”
Blake’s hand slid through her hair, curling around the back of her neck. “Then do it,” she whispered, fingers lacing around her neck. “Kiss me.”
She kissed her softly, barely a whisper of their lips together this time, but it was still enough to send jolts like lightning through her blood.
“I think I might be in love with you, Yang Xiao Long,” Blake said softly, and Yang was unable to keep the grin off of her face as she pulled her close, their foreheads resting together, separated by nothing by the rays of moonlight, beautiful now in a world that suddenly seemed full of color and possibility and love.
Stay near to the light.
“I think I know I’m in love with you,” Yang whispered, “but I’m waiting for you to kiss me again to be totally sure. It’s… it’s basic security. You know?”
“I shouldn’t find you endearing. But yet, here I am,” Blake said, and she was grinning. It lit up her face. She was beautiful. “Perhaps that’s why you mean so much. I never thought… I never thought someone could make me feel this way again.”
She kissed her, soft and slow this time, sparks flaring up into a fire. It deepened as Yang tilted her head and Blake’s hands slid into her hair, curling around the nape of her neck; breathless, weightless.
Eventually, they had to break apart. Yang took a deep breath, trying to calm the race of her heart.
Blake finally swallowed nervously, one hand coming up and tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. She took a shaky breath as a smile bloomed on her face, a nervous laugh bubbling up as she met Yang’s eyes. “Is there a formal way to do this, or…?”
Yang grinned innocently. “Do what?”
A huff. “Yang.”
“Blake.”
Another bubble of laughter. It was great sound, Yang decided— like audible gold. Blake took a deep breath of determination, eyes fixing on her face, those amber eyes like lights. It was like waking up from ages of darkness to the sun. “Asking you to be my— my girlfriend.”
In answer, Yang reached up and pressed her lips to hers. Blake murmured softly against her mouth as she kissed her back. If their first kiss had been a fire flaring, then this was like a star going into a supernova: she gripped the front of Blake’s shirt, gasping, before pulling away and cupping Blake’s face with an almost dreamlike intensity, before a startling thought occurred to her. “Blake… am I dreaming?”
“No,” Blake said. “No, you’re not.” She bent down to kiss her again, her forehead leaning against Yang’s, and whispered, “I’ve never been more awake.”
“Do you think,” she batted Blake’s hands away as they drifted up her torso, laughing at the injured look on her partner’s— no, scratch that— her girlfriend’s face, as she did so. The thought sent an insane thrill racing through her, like a warmth she carried inside her chest. She was her girlfriend. The thought alone made her smile. “Hold on. Do you think we should tell the team? Or anyone?”
Blake’s eyes flicked over her face, considering her. “Do you want to wait?”
“No,” Yang said, wholeheartedly; she was grinning, a grin that stretched broadly across her face and made her warm inside, extinguishing the chill of the world outside, and she relinquished the iron grip of constraint in her chest, reaching forward to trace the lines of Blake’s face, pressing her hand against her cheek. Blake leaned into her touch, eyes closing before she smiled, a smile as bright and beautiful as the stars above. “I think we’ve waited long enough, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Blake said. “But that doesn’t matter. I would have waited forever to know you again like this.”
It was with Blake’s hand entwined with hers, a feeling like sparks flowing between them, that she pulled her back into the hall: into warmth, into love, into light.
AN / For those curious as to what Blake was tapping on Yang’s hand, it was ‘yet is is only love which sets us free’, Maya Angelou.
So. How about that angst for you, eh?