Chapter XVIII - Summer's End
She’s two again and her world is composed of bright skies and colors and music, an electric whirlwind of hope and possibility; concepts like heartbreak and loss and darkness are beyond her smaller mind.
“Daddy, when—”
Taiyang swings her up in his strong arms, laughing; she squeals in protest as he tickles her stomach. To her he has always seemed like a larger-than-life figure, one whom can protect her from everything, just like a hero in the books. “Not much longer, Yang. I promise.”
“I hope it’s a girl,” she chatters happily for the umpteenth time, “I would hate a gross little brother, he’d have cooties, ugh—”
Tai’s eyes cloud, lilac blue darkening to sapphire. “My little sun-dragon… you will be your brother’s or sister’s keeper, whichever it is.” His face becomes solemn, though she cannot grasp why. “The world isn’t completely safe, doll. Outside of Patch, there’s a whole lot of darkness. I know it’s in your future to help suppress it. I’m counting on you, Yang. You’re my daughter and you’re a fighter, you know that?”
“Of course, daddy,” she giggles, kicking to get out of his grip. “I’m gonna be a warrior. Like you!”
Summer Rose emerges from the doorway then, her mother— Yang’s grandmother— hovering behind her. Her face is flushed, tousled hair a halo of messy curls around her heart-shaped face. She’s cradling a swathed bundle— a bundle that lets out a thin, wailing cry. Yang’s breath catches in anticipation and excitement.
“Done,” she says softly, her face and voice radiant. Taiyang sets Yang down gently before hurrying over, his eyes bright.
“She delivered safely,” Yang’s grandmother croaks, her eyes suffused with pride and joy. “You have a beautiful baby girl, Taiyang.”
Summer, for whom Yang will think of her as mother until years later, when she learns a secret that the past was not strong enough to shield, blinks down at her newborn daughter with a love more profound than any. “We’ll call her Ruby,” she says. “The brightest color of them all. She will be strong and beautiful and unique like the gem, and a fighter like us.”
“Ruby,” Yang whispers, trying the name out for the first time. She scrambles up Taiyang’s arm, strong as a mighty oak, and looks down, at the screwed up little face, the tuft of dark hair on her head, and her heart swells with love and she swears then and there that she will always, always be there to protect her baby sister. “Ruby Rose. Welcome to the world, sister.”
“Can’t catch me!”
Yang backflips end over end, deflecting her father’s swinging blow and darting in to pummel him in the stomach. They grapple for a moment, fists flashing against each other, before she musters all her strength and strikes his gut. He doubles over, coughing, and she crows in triumph— completely off guard. His eyes gleam with a good-natured challenge and she yelps as he surges back upward like lightning, knocking her over on the soft training mats, one hand pinning her to the floor. His eyes, just like hers, flash with amusement. “Your form is good, little sun-dragon, but you need to watch out to make sure your opponent is defeated. Don’t let arrogance be the thing that finishes you off.”
“Dad,” she whines plaintively, wiggling out from his grasp and flexing her battered hands with their worn leather gloves, “when are we gonna find out my semblance? Fighting’s no fun when it’s just… boring.”
He raises a brow. “First you want to craft a weapon that’s a gun, but not mobile. Next you’re clamoring to know about Aura. Then you want to know all about Bonding. Now this?” But he’s grinning, and she knows he isn’t upset.
“Whatever, I’ll figure it out. Uncle Qrow promised to take me out to the kingdom forges to see how weapons are built and maybe craft one of my own,” she chirps happily, rolling her sore shoulders. “I can’t wait to go out there and be a Huntress.”
His face grows grave, the scars becoming more pronounced. “It’s not all fun and games, sweetheart. It’s a job to protect your world.”
“I know! They’ll be calling me Slayer of Grimm,” she promises. “You just wait. You and Mom will both be bugs compared to my skill!”
She trots out of the training room with a laugh, not seeing him turn his face to the ceiling, all his amusement vanishing in an instant as a look like thunderclouds rolls across his expression.
“Her semblance is speed, Mom? That’s so unfair! She’s always going to cheat in footraces and tag now!”
“Yours is fire and the basis of invincibility, Yang. I think you’re both fair, all things considered.” Summer smiles at the both of them, looking up from a book about Remnant, and Ruby sticks her tongue out at Yang. With a good-natured growl, Yang dives at Ruby, and they grapple on the lawn before Ruby flashes away in a flurry of red petals, laughing manically in triumph.
“Cheater, cheater, pumpkin-eater!”
“Haha! You can’t catch me!” Ruby speeds away and Yang follows after her as they disappear from view, ducking into a grove of silver birch trees.
“Summer, dear…”
Summer Rose looks up, her lightheartedness fading as Taiyang sits beside her. Their eyes meet: storm-silver against lilac. “You can’t hide it from her forever, love,” Summer Rose says, a little bit sadly. “Raven…”
“Raven was— is— an enigma. It’s not good to have her in Yang’s life.”
Summer’s smile is wistful. “She was on our team. I knew Raven once, and she used to be a good person, with a good heart. Fate just deals us poor paths sometimes. She’s not an enigma, Tai. She’s a Maiden. It’s that which you don’t want Yang to know. That this world has so many secrets to hide.”
Taiyang opens his mouth to argue, before Ruby and Yang burst into the clearing once more, laughing and yelping. “I just want to keep them safe, Summer. Is that so much to wish for?”
Summer sighs sorrowfully. “I do, too. But sometimes it is all we can do to help them grow up. And you know they will both have destinies that are so much larger than we can imagine.”
“Yang is the daughter of a Maiden and Ruby has your eyes,” Taiyang says very softly. “Both of them are in peril because of us. Both of them will have difficult futures no matter what. Sometimes, I think that they will never be safe wherever they go.”
“Mom, do you promise to teach me how to use my semblance when you get back from your mission?” Ruby asks, tugging Summer’s white traveling cloak.
Summer Rose gently detaches Ruby, ruffling her hair. “Of course, sweetie. You’ll be amazing.”
Yang sits on the counter, swinging her legs and fiddling with her very first prototype of her weapon— thin bronze gauntlets, grooved with a single pistol, empty, on the top. “You’re a lame amateur, Rubes,” she says cheerily, “I can already blaze my way through the friggin’ town, bam bam bam…”
“Yang,” Summer chastises her, sounding exasperated and genuinely parental for once. “Language.”
“Sorry, Mom."
Taiyang walks in the room, brushing metallic strands from his eyes, carrying Summer’s traveling bags. He ducks and kisses Summer on the cheek, swinging Ruby up in his arms. “Bye, love. You’ll be great on your mission. Just like the first day of initiation in the Emerald Forest. I believe in you.”
“Don’t you doubt it, Tai. I was the best of us all— you and Qrow and— ” Summer breaks off the sentence with a smile that, looking back, seems too wide and forced. “But. Anyways. I’ll be fine.” There’s a flash of something across Taiyang’s face, some faint strain that vanishes as quickly as it comes, and Summer pecks him on the lips before hugging Ruby; with a yelp of protest at being left out of the bear hug, Yang hops off the counter and wiggles in. There’s a moment before Summer Rose pries herself away, shouldering her weapon and smiling at them.
“I’ll be back in two weeks, tops.”
The first week passes with ease, but on the second week’s Wednesday, Taiyang begins to pace anxiously.
Then, on Sunday, it happens.
Ruby is playing with Zwei, dangling a raw turkey leg above the counter as Yang watches with amusement; Taiyang looks highly entertained as Zwei barks and leaps in the air, stubby paws pedaling madly as he strains his jaws for the food.
Then Taiyang lets out a choked little noise, and Yang’s head snaps towards him. His eyes fly wide, dark and stunned, before he lets out a scream and falls to the floor in the fetal position. Ruby drops the turkey with a cry of fright and Yang scrambles down from her chair. “Dad? Dad!”
He’s screaming, a strangled, long wail of agony that seems to go on and on, swelling and escalating into the day. He claws at his chest, eyes rolling back in his head, and Yang is choking on fear and panic—
then a flare of darkness, sparkling like obsidian, explodes from his chest. It comes together in a plume of black before hovering and shooting upward to the ceiling, where it vanishes.
Taiyang falls silent, shaking on the floor. Ruby is staring in shock at him before the back door flies open, and someone bursts in. Yang grabs her weapon and points it, shaking, at the person— before she realizes it’s Qrow, his usual passivity wiped clean with a horrible fear.
“Uncle Qrow— you have to help— he just fell and started screaming, I—”
Qrow doesn’t waste a second; he hurries to Taiyang and props him up, checking for any visible injuries before snapping, without even turning his head, “One of you, get me some ice-water. Quick!”
Ruby bustles to fill a pitcher and brings it to him, wobbling; Qrow takes it, and without hesitation, dashes it into Taiyang’s face.
Their father starts spluttering and coughing, his lilac eyes huge. “Qrow— my Bond. It’s— the Bond, I could have sworn—”
Qrow’s lined face becomes even wearier. “Brother. She - I’m so sorry.”
Taiyang’s eyes are huge, and he’s letting out a long, low groan of misery. “No. No! Not after your sister, please, Qrow— no, she can’t be…. Not twice…”
Qrow’s eyes are bright, looking back, Yang will realize that they are tears. “There were too many. Too many for her… too many for anyone, even a warrior like her…. I was too late…”
“Uncle Qrow.” Yang is surprised by the sharp clarity of her voice, hard and direct. “What happened? What happened to Dad?”
Qrow looks over, his rough throat bobbing in a swallow, his eyes shining. “I’m so sorry,” he says, before words that will forever sear into her mind fall from his mouth like a tree being felled. “Summer Rose was killed.”
Years after, Yang will not remember Ruby’s long, low wail of heartrending grief, or her own heart stopping in its tracks, in silence. She won’t remember flying past her sobbing father or yanking open the back door. She won’t remember streaking out of the house, through hills and woods, to the shores of Patch, wishing the sea would swallow her whole so this moment would be over.
But she will remember the day everything fell apart.
She’ll remember the light of joy in Ruby’s eyes fading, the way it takes years for it to come back. She’ll remember the day Summer Rose died because that was the day a part of Taiyang died, too. That was the day the family tore itself apart. The house always feels like a mausoleum: a family perished there.
“Tai. Tai, brother. Listen. You must shake yourself out of this.”
Qrow’s rough voice is pleading, and Taiyang’s eyes are still glazed and dead inside. The scythe-wielder’s ruby-colored eyes flicker angrily.
“Taiyang, how long will your children suffer while you cannot be strong?”
Yang’s father raises his head, voice hoarse. “She’s gone, my love, my light…”
Qrow’s mouth goes to a hard line and he shakes him roughly. “Wake up. It’s time for the truth about what blood runs in your eldest daughter’s veins.” Qrow’s grizzled face turns toward Yang, and then to Taiyang, his eyes hard and flat as polished river-stones. “It’s time she knew, Tai. You can’t hide it forever, much as you may want to. Yang will find… her… one day. Or she’ll find Yang. Better she hears the truth from you then from someone else.”
Yang feels a sinking feeling in her chest, like she’s hurtling towards a void, an answer tickling at the edge of her mind. “Hide what?”
Taiyang sits down heavily, shaking. He no longer looks larger than life. He looks painfully, painfully human. “Qrow…” His voice is soft and pleading. “Must it be now?”
Qrow’s face shifts as if he’s taking a painful hit. “I’m sorry, brother.” He turns and limps out the door, disappearing in a gleam of silver with his broadsword. Yang watches him go, baffled, before turning to her father.
“Dad…?”
He forms a word with shaking lips, his shoulders hunched. “Yang, please, please— go make sure Ruby is asleep.”
Too startled, too stricken, to argue, Yang hurries down the hall. Ruby is in her bed, whimpering in her sleep; her eyes are puffy, as if she’d been crying before sleep claimed her. Yang pulls up the covers around her before turning and leaving, closing the door behind her.
“She’s asleep.”
He turns his face, looking as if he’s warring in his own mind, before he looks back at her sadly. “Before I tell you anything, daughter, you must know that I love you. Nothing will change that.”
“Dad, you’re scaring me…”
He swallows, his throat moving with it, scars rippling. “There is a reason, Yang, that you— that we— are not… that we have different names. Your sister is Rose. You are—”
“Xiao Long,” Yang interrupts, her mind straining for why, why on earth, he is telling her this, and why there’s a look of such profound dread in his eyes. “Dad, I don’t—”
“Summer,” he says, his voice like shattered glass underfoot, “was not your true mother.”
There is a moment when the Earth will stop turning and the world will shake under her feet; there is a moment for heroes to rise and the damned to fall, for the air to be ripped from her lungs, and there is a moment where Yang cannot see the light anymore. “She’s… she’s not? You’re… not lying…”
The hope dies as soon as it swells. Taiyang’s face looks like it’s chiseled from stone. And it is at that moment the first fire that will ever be kindled inside of her bursts forth.
“You lied to me!” she shouts, her heart aching, threatening to spill over with misery, like a flood of torrential rain brimming over a hollow. “Summer wasn’t my mom at all? Ruby’s— she’s not even my sister, really.”
He looks sick with misery, his face ashen. “She is, Yang, don’t say that. Family isn’t— it’s not blood. It’s bonds. Yang, I’m sorry. I thought it would have only hurt you to know—”
“Let me tell you something, father. Knowing is better than not knowing. Every time.” Then, abruptly: “Did Summer know my real mom? What about Qrow? Who else knows about what you’ve hidden?”
His shoulders shudder. “She knew,” he says, his voice catching on the past tense. “And Qrow— he knows. She… she is his sister."
“Raven,” Yang breathes, the name clicking instantly. Qrow’s elusive sister has never been a part of her life, and Summer and Taiyang never talk about her; she has assumed they had a feud of a sort and had all gone their own ways. But now Yang knows that it’s a lie. “Team STRQ. The missing teammate.”
“Yes,” he says, so soft he’s barely audible. “Raven. Raven… is your mother.”
Ruby finds Yang sitting alone by a lake, angrily flinging stones across the water, hidden by the whispering willows. There’s a venom creeping through her, but it’s only partially directed towards her father; the rest is a bitter hatred towards the mother that abandoned her so long ago.
“Hey, Yang.”
Yang softens her erratic throwing, letting a stone arc from her fist and splash far out in the distance. Ruby picks her way down the slope on her six year old feet, sitting down beside Yang and watching her sadly. “Hey, Rubes.”
“Dad told me… about what happened.”
Yang’s mouth thins to a stern line, feeling ill with despair and anger on her small eight-year old shoulders. “Yeah. I’m sure he did.”
“You’re still as much my family as anyone,” Ruby says, picking up a rock and throwing it. It clumsily glances off a log and sinks below the surface without a trace. Her voice wobbles. “You know that, don’t you? We’ll be together forever.”
Yang hunches her shoulders. “You’re always my sister. No matter what, we gotta stick together. But… neither of us have moms now, Ruby. I don’t know what to do.”
Ruby starts crying silently, and Yang reaches over and hugs her, her heart feeling like it’s cracking silently.
“I miss Mom,” Ruby croaks, sniffling. “I miss her so much. I can’t believe I’m never gonna see her again…”
“I’m so sorry, Ruby. I’m sorry. I miss Summer, too.” She looks out over the rippling lake, setting her jaw, and makes a vow: I will find Raven, no matter what.
“We have to do what she would want,” Yang continues as Ruby swallows back another round of tears and looks up with heartbroken silver eyes. “She would want you and me to get through this and to continue as Huntresses. To save the world, just like the heroes you’ve always loved. So we’ve gotta be strong. For Dad, and for each other.”
Ruby sniffs, nods. “I know.”
“Makin’ my way down to Signal, walking fast, faces pass, and I’m school-bound,” Yang sings, balancing on top of her luggage. Ruby picks up in an off-tune falsetto:
“Starin’ blankly ahead, just makin’ my way, making a way through the Grimm,” she warbles.
Taiyang hauls out one last duffel bag and sets it down in bed of the rickety truck. “Well, kiddos, it’s time to go.” Yang pretends not to notice the over-brightness of his eyes, the scruff on his chin, and the bitter edge to his scent— one of whiskey. Summer’s death shows up in the smallest ways; all of them still hurt.
“You’ll be good at Signal,” Taiyang says. “I teach there now. I’ll make sure you pull through with flying colors.”
“I know, Dad.”
Ruby bounces in her shoes. “Uncle Qrow says he’ll teach me to craft a scythe like his this year.”
“I’ll hold him to that, kiddo.” Taiyang helps Ruby clamber in the truck, and Yang follows after, sliding into the passenger seat with a cry of “shotgun!”
Then they are on their way, to a new chapter of life, a new page, a new beginning.
Yang - present day
It was in a meandering fashion that they made their way back to the dorm, fitting together now where they hadn’t before; Blake’s hand was clasped with hers, the same feeling of electric energy crackling where their skin met. More than once, they stopped, distracted simply by one another; Yang had forgotten how thrilling it was in the beginning, how every movement of Blake’s caught her eye: the glint in her eyes, the way she walked, the way her hands stroked through Yang’s hair as she kissed her.
They hurried, laughing, as a distant noise in the hallways heralded the fact that they could be caught for breaking curfew. They ran back to the dorms, Blake laughing as Yang pulled her faster and faster, both of them holding hands all the while.
They stopped outside the dorm, and a sudden shyness washed over her as Blake watched her with luminescent eyes. “I’m really glad that you decided to come out to the balcony tonight.”
Blake’s smile was glittering in the darkness. “I am, too.”
Yang leaned forward on her tiptoes, pressing a chaste kiss to her cheek. “So… about our team and the others… I’d guess that they would be pretty surprised at—”
“At what?”
“Damn you, Blake,” she said, but she laughed. “You know what. But none of them will be surprised, and I can’t say they will, or I’d be lying.”
“Oh?”
She giggled. “Well, I don’t know if you knew, but you and me— well, we’re not exactly subtle.” She was rewarded by Blake coloring along her cheeks, before she dipped her head.
“I know.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, and she leaned close, her lips brushing Yang’s ear. Sparks whisked through her veins. “But we’d better get to sleep. The missions start fairly soon. And as much as tonight was exciting, I’m pretty worn out.”
“‘Course, kitten.” Yang laughed as Blake groaned, before she cracked open the door quietly, her other hand tightening in Blake’s. Weiss was already asleep, but as they walked in together, Ruby’s head raised, her eyes gleaming like a cat’s in the moonlight. She looked surprised before she saw them holding hands, a lack of distance between them where, before, there had been chasms.
“Are you two together?” she asked, her voice thick with sleep. Yang and Blake exchanged glances, before turning back and nodding as one. Yang felt warmth seep through her entire body, tingling through her from head to foot.
Ruby only rolled her gray eyes. “Great Vale, it’s about time,” was all she said in exasperation, before curling back into a slumbering ball.