Chapter XX - As Ashes
three years prior…
Blake
If she closed her eyes, she could pretend for a heartbeat that the world was not a vicious, cruel place, and that her destiny held more than just walls closing upon her, and pain, such pain. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, she could pretend that she was alright, but it never really was enough. Sometimes she felt like a fool, out on the edge, like she was screaming her name at the top of her lungs but no one was hearing; no one ever had.
“Blake!”
She fell down for the third time of the day, disarmed, Adam’s sword bearing down at the hollow of her throat. She felt the cold kiss of the metal at her throat, edging against her skin, hungry for her blood. “What’s gotten into you?” Adam snarled, jerking his sword away with a sharp movement. “How am I supposed to train with you if you’re not even paying attention? Why are you doing this to me?”
“I’m fine,” she muttered, rolling to the side and regaining her feet.
He had discarded his mask, and the scars around his eyes looked even more cruel and unnatural in the half-light. “That’s a lie,” he said sharply, but a faint smile played around his mouth, and she felt him lurking in the Bond.
Immediately, she shut him out and recoiled, stumbling against the uneven floor. “Stop doing that.”
“Well, what else am I supposed to do?” he demanded, his smile vanishing like mist under a hot sun. “I mean, hell, we get back from crashing a train and you go all silent and brooding on me— God, this happens every time! I thought you wanted to do more than just pointless rallies, and we can, but sometimes you act like you’re angry that Julian stepped down and Ayran’s in charge now!”
Blake felt hot and cold all at once, her veins thrumming like electricity. “That crew member,” she began, changing the subject with her heart beating fast. “The one who died in the train crash. The one we killed.”
“She had an instant death,” he growled, his face more feral than she had ever seen it, “I promise you, pet. At least that. No pain. Not like us.”
“That’s not true.” She jackknifed up, her heart feeling knotted up and sick and twisted and wrong. “And what is an ‘instant’ death anyway, Adam? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst, and her lungs collapsed, and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.”
He looked at her as if she’d started speaking in a foreign language, his teeth glittering in the dark as he bared them. He was no longer a boy. There was a darkness in him she could see, now, a restless shadow that consumed his mind. “What the hell, Blake? Why does it even matter?”
She stood up, pacing restlessly like a poison had raged out of control in her veins. “It’s life, Adam!” She was yelling now, words hurtling out of her mouth without her consent, disregarding the dangerous gleam coming to life in Adam’s eyes. “Can’t you see that? It’s life!”
Blinding pain exploded across her cheek, snapping her head around, and she cried out, jagged bolts of light flashing through her vision before fading from the blow. He lowered his gloved hand, eyes hot with anger, his voice murderous. “That’s quite enough out of you.”
Her jaw seared with pain, and she glared at him. He would not meet her gaze, and after a moment, he turned to go, slamming the door behind him.
“What do you mean I don’t need to know who they were?”
Adam stopped at the mouth of the tent, watching the three figures disappear into the darkness— a woman in a gilded red dress, a warrior with emerald-colored revolvers, a boy with ashy hair and strange gray eyes. “It was a failed transaction, Blake. They want what Ayran cannot give to them— our forces and our might.” He looked at her suspiciously. “I have half a mind to chase them out with their tails between their legs.” He didn’t seem to notice the phrase as he walked away, boots kicking up puffs of dust.
She followed, loathing the way the other lackeys bowed their heads in respect— or fear, she thought— as they passed. “Why did you talk to them, then? Why you, and not Ayran?”
Adam paused, his mask giving away nothing. “Ayran is feeling unwell. You know this. He did not want to waste his strength arguing with thickskulled humans hellbent on wasting lives.”
“Or did he not know they were here?”
Adam grunted as they passed two Faunus children who were running and squealing in joy as they raced past the pair of them, and Blake tore her gaze away from them with a shiver. “Ayran is… not as young as he once was. And his better days are past him now. As his Elite guard, it’s up to me to pick up in his wake.”
“So you’re saying if I were to speak to him— to tell him you had human visitors today— he would be perfectly content with it?”
Adam’s face stiffened and he stopped, eyes glowing with anger. “You wouldn’t dare.”
She watched him with narrowed eyes, and he looked at her, a tension crackling like storm clouds between them. But he must have seen the falter in her eyes, for he snorted, and turned away. “No,” he murmured, half to himself. “You wouldn’t, love, because you hate him more than you love the thought of playing a hero.”
She stared after him as he walked away, feeling as though her heart was tying itself into knots, falling down down down. “I don’t know what I am anymore,” she whispered, but he had already moved beyond her reach.
present day…
Blake is hurtling through nightmares again.
These are different. She is used to seeing Adam’s face in her dreams. She is used to seeing masks and corpses and death, so much death. But this is not a typical nightmare.
Darkness lays in an endless plain around her. Blood is thick on the air, so curdling, so thick, she feels like she’s choking on it. And all around her, metal flashes and screams rise to the stars themselves, a fight whose blood will stain the earth for moons to come. Blake used to think of battle as an organized affair, but this is anything but: hands grab at her and seize her into the fray, like she has accidentally wandered into a riot. Chaos. Calamity. Death. As a warrior herself, she is in her element. But she feels blind and deaf as she’s tossed into the darkness.
Then, suddenly, there is gold in the dark, so bright Blake feels as though it can scatter sparks, sending them floating heavenward to the sea of stars. Yang appears, suddenly from the chaos, a spark born from a bed of fire. Deep in her mind, the ever diminishing part, Blake knows it’s a nightmare. But she can’t wake up because this all feels very real and very familiar: the blood, the darkness, the fear and pain. Suddenly she’s not in charge of her fate anymore— she’s just a scared sixteen year old in an organization turned to darkness, with no idea if she’ll make it out of the crossfire or die trying.
“Yang,” Blake says softly. Her partner sways on her feet and she can’t process, really, why she is here— unless she has come to life from her own fear. “What— why are you here? You have to get out!”
Yang opens her mouth to speak, before her eyes fly round with shock, two dilated rings of terror. The pupils of her eyes are so wide and dark Blake feels like she’s falling into them, into a never-ending black hole.
Blake looks down— and sees the sword sticking out of Yang’s chest.
Stabbed in the back.
A look of disbelieving confusion passes over Yang’s face; she glances down at herself, where the blade sticks grotesquely out of her chest—it looks more bizarre than horrible, like a prop from a nightmare that makes no logical sense. Blake chokes and the realization that it’s a nightmare, and not reality, flies away from her because this feels so real— and as if the suspension of disbelief was all that was holding her up, Yang goes to her knees. She looks at Blake in puzzlement, as if she has no idea why she is there, and no idea why she doesn’t know. She opens her mouth as if to ask the question, and blood pours over her chin, staining what is left of her ragged jacket to scarlet.
Yang’s head is thrown back, sword point jutting out in harsh relief as liquid rubies of blood spill down her skin in a ceaseless tide, the curve of her throat and her skin turned to saffron in the moon and starshine. She looks down, lilac eyes huge, burning with molten shimmering gold, like she is filling with light inside. She looks peaceful, the blazing hilt of the sword protruding from her chest, her arms thrown to either side of her, like the wings of a fallen angel, and amidst the carnage, her eyes are only locked on Blake, a still peace, a calm, in them. In that moment, Blake can imagine she is an angel, fallen, her bones turning to tinder through the flames that slowly catch to her skin. An amber aura blazes up about her.
And then she begins to burn.
Blake woke up violently, thrashing, coughing and trembling and shaking, always shaking. Her hair was plastered to her head with sweat, and she passed a hand in front of her eyes as if to make sure that it was over.
She let out a shuddering breath as she felt Yang behind her, arms wrapped around her waist, her breathing deep and even in sleep. Blake sank back onto the pillows, trying to control her own heart rate, but she kept seeing the awful image as if had been branded into her mind.
“Blake?” Yang stirred as she felt Blake trembling, and Blake blinked hard, trying to clear the sudden blur from her vision, as if from tears. Maybe they were; she didn’t know, but everything suddenly seemed very, very real, and very, very fragile.
How precious it is, she thought, to finally have something worth losing.
Blake’s eyes focused on her in the dark, unmarred and whole— she was alright, thank God. A moment later she had drawn Yang towards her with none of her customary gentleness; she pulled her onto her lap and kissed her fiercely, hands winding into her hair. She could feel the hammering of Yang’s heart with hers, and she felt her cheeks flush. They were in the dorms, she thought, and the others could wake at any second.
“Sorry,” she whispered, pulling away. “That probably was a lot to take in.”
Yang looked bewildered, but she traced her fingers down Blake’s cheek, cupping her face. “Is everything— are you okay? Did you have a bad dream?”
Blake shivered. “Yes,” she said, softly as a whisper in the dark. “I keep having them. Nightmares where I see you, and you die, always watching me with those bright eyes of yours— and I can’t lose you, Yang. I can’t.”
Yang looked puzzled— even startled— by her vehemence, and Blake shuddered again, remembering the confusion in Yang’s eyes in the nightmare. “You won’t.” She brought her hand down to Blake’s, twining their hands together. “I promise.”
She fell back, and Yang pulled her close once more, her head tucked in the curve of her shoulder. Yang tucked a strand of Blake’s hair behind her ear, and whispered softly to her.
“You don’t have anything to be scared of. I’m here.”
Blake took a deep breath, holding Yang’s hand closer, pulling it against her own. “I know.”
But as she lay in her arms, feeling Yang’s breathing smooth to a low, even rhythm as sleep claimed her, she couldn’t shake the persistent fear that ran circles in her mind:
What if it’s too late to turn back from who I was? What if I lose her, too?
Yang
Sunlight angled in thick gold shafts, laced with shadow, through the window. Yang blinked, yawning, and sat up, before bumping into an unfamiliar warmth on her right. She looked over, saw Blake curled up at her side, and the previous evening flashed back to her mind, filling her with an absurd happiness.
She leaned over. “Blake,” she whispered, “wake up.”
Her eyelids flickered, moving in dreams, and Yang nudged her shoulder harder this time. Blake gasped before her eyes did fly open, two wide rings of gold, before focusing on Yang’s face. Relief flashed through her eyes.
“Hi,” she whispered, feeling prickles of shyness now that it was daylight, now that it felt— real, somehow. More substantial.
Blake reached up and brushed hair from Yang’s eyes with a small smile of her own. “Hey, there.”
“So, last night…” She struggled to come up with something, and, upon failing, took a direct approach. “Not your dream, but— you and me. Are we— a thing now? Because I— I really like you, Blake. I like you a lot. And I know I’m probably rambling right now and it’s annoying and I’m really sorry, I just— I want to make sure we’re on the same page—”
Blake sat up, placing her hands atop Yang’s. “We are on the same page, Yang. It’s not annoying. It’s another thing I like about you. And yes, we are,” she pressed her lips together to hide a smile, “a ‘thing’, that is, if you want to be.”
She leaned forward and kissed Blake, a chaste press of her lips to hers. “More than anything. But,” she added, “you have to get up, because much as I would like it not to be, we have stuff to do today. Glynda called an assembly about the upcoming missions for Unity Day, and all that. I could probably pick you up if you don’t hurry.”
“Yang, I have seen you wield a giant speaker with perfect dexterity. Trust me, I have no doubt that, if the whim takes hold of you, that you definitely could pick me up easily as well. That’s not an invitation,” she added hastily.
“It probably kills you to admit that,” Yang said, but she was fighting back a smile as Blake sat up, fixing her bow with a deft practice. Yang felt a pang of sadness— so many months now, and still, she became distant and unreachable, like a camera losing focus— and there were some things she couldn’t relate to, like Blake’s past, some things she simply could not understand, things that were so knotted and dark it was like a labyrinth, uncrossable, with no way to navigate it.
“Don’t be sad for me, Yang. Please.” Blake padded over to her with soundless grace, and Yang smiled slightly at her. “Last night was just… a bad dream. That’s all.”
“How did you know?”
“I just felt it.”
She kissed Blake’s cheek. “Bad dreams or not, Blake, I’m always here for you.”
Blake didn’t smile, but the edge of her mouth lifted just enough to let her know that she wasn’t upset. “And I, you.”
“You know,” a new voice yawned from behind them, “I didn’t really believe it was possible for you two to grow even more sentimental and soppy, but lo and behold, it would seem I was mistaken.” Yang spun around to see Weiss blinking at them, a faint smirk playing on her mouth.
“You could say that, ice-queen. She’s growing on me,” Yang said agreeably, “like a disease, or a tumor.”
In unison, Weiss’s and Blake’s eyes narrowed at her, two terrifying sapphire and gold barbs of female rage. Yang swallowed.
“Okay, maybe not.”
“Remember that your missions start in a week’s time! Tomorrow, you will be assigned a reconnaissance mission in Vale to ascertain where it is you want to take your skills. Be sure to pay attention, and to choose wisely, because second options are unlikely, both here, and in your future endeavours.” Glynda’s last words were drowned out by the tolling of the bell announcing the end of class, and she rolled green eyes in clear defeat as a wave of students surged towards the doors. “This assembly is dismissed!”
The team congregated behind the cover of a pillar as the room slowly emptied. “So I think we all know where we want to go for our mission,” Blake said softly, but she leaned over, hooking her little finger through Yang’s. She smiled at the little gesture. “I think Mountain Glenn is the most likely place to search for criminal activity. It’s perfectly obvious. The White Fang could operate there in total solitude; it’s absolutely abandoned, and nobody ever goes there. And it’s where Sun and I heard Torchwick talking about sending more White Fang members. It’s probably the only opportunity we will have to investigate further into just what the hell kind of a long game Torchwick is playing, and I think not exploiting that opportunity would be ignorant.”
“Well, yes, Blake, if you want to make it sound so plain and woebegone, I believe—”
“It’s just a fact, Weiss. I just don’t believe we’ll find much heroic opportune in the ruins of a failure, especially a place like Mountain Glenn— it’s crawling with Grimm and now misguided Faunus with penchants to murder; we’ll have our work cut out for us trying to give the slip on whatever Huntsman that’ll be overseeing us—”
“We have to go there,” Ruby said firmly, cutting off both of their arguments with no room for protest. “Firstly. And we have to do it without making anyone suspicious.”
“Arousing their ire,” Blake said, “would be a grave error, indeed.”
Yang rolled her eyes. “Must you speak like a thesaurus?”
“Must you be consistently rude?”
“Guys,” Ruby said, but she was grinning. “These plans aren’t gonna amount to much if we don’t get out of here and get some sleep so we can board the airships to the reconnaissance missions without being exhausted, will they?”
Yang said an unladylike word, and the others sighed in unison as they all followed her, leaving the hall.