At least you have good things in your life
Who: Blake and Yang What: Yang comes across Blake again, and there is dream discussion and also anxiety attacks When: Recently Where: A park Status: complete Rating: PG-13 for mentions of abuse and depression
Blake had started dreaming, but she’d been relatively silent about it. Except for her sessions with Harley. She’d needed an emergency one after the dream about Adam. It had set her off in regards to the things she’d suffered in this life, as well as what had happened between her and Adam in the dreams. While she’d calmed down from that, she hadn’t completely shaken it. And she’d been rather shocked when she’d discovered that Yang was in her dreams.
And suddenly all the cat references seemed to make sense. Except Yang didn’t know she was actually a faunus. Blake had intended to keep it that way, which was why she wore the bow in her hair, to hide her ears. That and she was extremely self-conscious of her cat ears.
Currently, she was seated on a bench in a park with her nose stuck in a book. She didn’t have to work today, and she needed the mental escape from reality.
Yang wasn’t stalking Blake, or anything. She’d decided to go for a walk in a particular neighborhood in the hopes of running into her, though. There was a lot on her mind, from the thin ice she was in with Evie to her dream issues and waking issues. She nearly walked past her, before stopping and looking at her in surprise. “...Blake?”
Hearing her name, Blake lowered the book a couple inches and lifted her gaze to see Yang there. She was starting to wonder just how coincidental these meetings with Yang actually were. “Hello, Yang,” she greeted.
“Fancy running into you again.” She flashed a grin at Blake, and ran her hand through her hair. She would run into her reading a book, and looking cute doing it. That seemed typical. It wasn’t a bad thing. She hedged her bet with the kind of obvious question that anyone who could observe another person would ask. “What’re you reading?”
Blake just looked at Yang. This was almost like when she’d first met her in the dreams. Except it had been Ruby that had asked what her book was about. Yang hadn’t really seemed all that interested in the story she’d been reading. “It’s not a fairytale,” she commented. Perhaps it was a subtle reference to the dreams and the conversation that had ensued between her and Ruby when Yang had dragged her over that first night at Beacon.
And it wasn’t a fairytale that she was reading. It was actually an autobiography. Leah Remini’s book “Troublemaker”, to be precise, which detailed her experience with Scientology. In fact, on the cover it said ‘Surviving Hollywood and Scientology’ right above Leah’s name.
“Sometimes you just have to be in the right mood for a fairytale,” Yang agreed. She didn’t know what to do with her hands and arms, and they felt awkward hanging at her sides. And sometimes you had to be in the right mood for scientology which left Yang burning with questions and unsure if it was rude to ask. “Is it, uhm… good?”
Truth be told, Blake would rather be nose deep in a fairytale right now. But this book was what she needed right now. She needed to hear the truth about Scientology from someone else who had been raised inside it. Most of all, Blake needed to know that she could, eventually, be okay on her own. Leah had gotten out and was managing to have a good life while also taking on Scientology, educating people as to what really went on inside the church.
“I think it is.” Though she had a feeling that Yang would find it boring. Scientology wasn’t exactly a good topic to delve into.
“Mind if I sit?” Yang asked. She figured it would be easier that way than making Blake stare up at her. There were few things Yang wanted more than Blake not feeling cornered or trapped. “You can talk about if it you want. Or keep reading, I don’t mind.”
“Go right ahead,” she said. Blake turned back to her book, but just to finish off the paragraph she was on. “This is slightly less bombastic than when you dragged your sister over to where I was reading at Beacon.” So much for trying to play it coy that she’d started dreaming.
She grinned, sitting next to Blake and trying not to snoop in the book. Usually she’d do that, or read on her own. Or play on her scroll most of the time. Which she was about to do, actually, when Blake dropped that bombshell. She had it half out of her pocket. “I uhm. Can get really bombastic. But I’ve learned to calm down a lot.”
She glanced at Blake almost shyly. “Had you to thank for some of that.”
Blake looked at Yang in disbelief. “I seriously doubt that. I don’t leave much of an impression on people in general.” She didn’t know about the friendship that would come later in the dreams, but based on what she knew of her dream life, and the life she’d lived here, she didn’t leave an impression on people. Except maybe her therapist, but that was different.
Yang smiled, the expression a little pained. “I guess you’ll find out, but spoiler alert, they pair everyone into partners and two sets of partners into a team. And you’re my partner.”
And Ruby was the leader which was honestly awesome.
“At least I’m not partnered with Weiss. You’re actually nice.” And not the heiress to a company that had problems with faunus. Blake would have preferred to slap Weiss when she’d been laying into Ruby, but that would’ve just proven Weiss’ family right about faunus. Assuming that Blake’s little secret ever came to light to anyone other than Ozpin.
“My sister got to be paired with her. She’s not actually so bad once she grows up and stops being a bitch, but that takes some time.” Yang was pretty blunt about that. Weiss could be a bitch, but she eventually became their bitch. Part of the family of their team. Not having everyone together hurt, even if Yang was still afraid of what it meant now that they were all apart in the dreams.
She wondered how much she should warn Blake about. The dreams were honestly pretty good until Mercury, and the fall of Beacon. But, she could at least say something, “If we’ve just met, the next day is gonna be so cool.”
That fight, with their team and Jaune’s team before they were all actually a team, still stood out as one of Yang’s favorite battles. They’d all clicked, working so well together that it seemed like fate had somehow brought them together. For all that Yang seemed to ‘belong’ places and get along with people, that had really been the first time she’d ever felt it.
“I suppose I’ll believe it when I see it.” There was a lot for Blake to work through and to compare in both of her lives. She could see the parallels between what the White Fang had become and Scientology. She definitely saw the parallels between Adam and her ex-boyfriend. She saw the parallels between her parents in both lives. And here she was, afraid to get close to people, yet even more afraid of going home.
“I’ll take your word for it.” Blake didn’t know what to expect from the dreams. Would she find somewhere she could belong? That entirely depended on the fact if she could keep the fact she was faunus secret. She doubted that many people would tolerate her being around. Least of all Weiss.
Yang nodded, fighting the urge to put her hand over Blake’s. Instead, she rubbed at her mechanical arm. Blake seemed so sullen and depressed, and Yang didn’t know what to do about it or how to help, but she burned with the need to help. “Yeah, I guess you’ll see. It’s kind of how that works. Whether you wanna dream or not.”
It was a good thing that Yang fought that urge, Blake still didn’t react well to people touching her without her saying it was okay to do so first. It was one of the things that would undoubtedly plague her for a long time yet. “I guess the rate at which dreams come is different for everyone?” Blake definitely didn’t want to dream every night, especially if Adam were to show up at any time in her dreams. She couldn’t handle that well, especially right now. And she hated that Logan had to hear her screaming and crying when either the dreams or her traumas caught up to her at night.
“Yeah. Sometimes they cover a single day, or even a week or longer in a single night. And they might suck sometimes but be really cool other times. So if you ever need to talk about it…” Yang rubbed the back of her neck, turning her head and watching the way the shadows from the sun danced across Blake’s features.
“Yeah, they aren’t always pretty.” Which basically stated that Blake had dreamt something bad already. She knew sooner or later Adam would come back to bite her in the ass, but running had been what she did best, and felt that it was her best option at the time. Running had taken her to Beacon, for whatever good that might do. It was at least an attempt for a fresh start to things. She marked her place in her book and set it in her lap. “So, what do you do around here? For work or play.” She’d probably learned that before, but did it hurt to ask again?
Maybe someday Blake would tell her that story. Yang only had bits and pieces from the dreams and half of that was conjecture with what Blake had told her and what she’d had to figure out from that. “I’m trying to figure that out. I wanna help people. I used to do karate before the accident. I’m thinking some kinda social work. Something…”
She cracked her neck. “For fun, all kinds of things. Vidya games, dancing, parties…” She nodded at the book. “I like to read too. Just probably not as many books as you do.”
As of right now, Blake had no plans to tell anyone that story. Except her therapist, of course, because that was kind of crucial to dealing with her trauma. Blake didn’t like talking about it, didn’t like thinking about it, so she tried to keep the subject from coming up in casual conversation. “Social work is a good thing to get into.” Yang at least had a direction to go in, even if she was still trying to figure it out. Blake had no direction at all, and she was fine with working at a bookstore for the rest of her life.
“What kind of books?” She didn’t think Yang wasted her time on sappy romances or fairytales.
“Mysteries,” Yang answered. “I really like mysteries. They make me think and they’re fun to try to figure out. And like those… fantasy books with dragons and epic journeys where people become closer than family by the end of it all.”
“So like The Lord of the Rings type of fantasy? Or another kind?” Blake was a little behind in her reading as far as this life went. Scientology didn’t always appreciate people expanding their horizons. Still, Blake had read whatever she could while growing up.
“Kinda? Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones are like… really hard reads. But like… epic adventures where you can be a princess or rescue a princess or ride dragons or whatever.” Yang grinned. “Like... Tamora Pierce books, Garth Nix, classics like The Last Unicorn, which if you haven't seen the movie you really need to see the movie. Stuff I used to read to Ruby.”
She darted her eyes. “Well some of that I read to Ruby and some of that was probably a little too adult in places even for me.”
“I haven’t read Game of Thrones.” Blake admitted. It was one of the things that was probably on her list to read. She also made mental notes about the authors Yang mentioned. She’d noted some of their books while shelving books, but that was as far as she’d gotten on them.
“No, I haven’t seen The Last Unicorn.” There was probably a lot that she hadn’t seen.
Yang hadn’t actually finished the first one. It was a little too gruesome and bloody for her taste and as hard a read as anything that Tolkien guy wrote. Just a lot of details and thick text. Yang wasn’t stupid, but she had attention span issues. “Do you wanna? See it, I mean. It’s a classic, my mom had it on dvd and a bunch of other old movies and stuff like that. Fairy tales, fantasy, adventurous stuff.”
She meant Summer Rose, of course. Raven probably wasn’t into that kind of stuff.
Blake enjoyed hard reads, the harder the better, honestly. It tended to draw her into the world of the book that much more. And some days she really wanted to just disappear from the real world. Books were the best way to accomplish that. “Maybe? I don’t want to put you out or anything.”
“You’re not going to put me out. Not even a little. Even if I hadn’t met you in my Dreams I’d still want to talk to you.” She wanted to be Blake’s friend, complicated feelings or not.
“Why? I’m not that interesting.” Or eye catching, but she kept that part to herself. Blake didn’t quite understand why anyone would want to talk to her. It’s not like she was a people person or anything.
“But you are.” Yang pointed at the book. “You read interesting things, you like tea. There’s probably a whole lot more because I haven’t scratched the surface. Part of the fun of being alive is meeting new people. There was a time where I was perfectly willing to crawl into a hole and die, but then I wouldn’t get to meet new people.”
“I’m not exactly a people person, though.” Blake looked down at her book. She took a slow breath and looked up at Yang. “I’m no where near as well read as I am in the dreams. I was...sheltered, I suppose you could say.” Controlled was the better word for it, but sheltered worked well enough.
"That's okay. I can be a people person for both of us. I'm Yang, you're yin." She winked playfully. "Do you want to talk about it? Being sheltered and stuff."
Blake groaned at that pun and reference. Clearly Yang would never stop. She looked at her book again. “I was raised in Scientology. I recently realized that everything I had been told, everything I had believed was a lie. That’s why I’m reading this book. Leah Remini got out, and I need to know that there’s a way to piece my worldview back together, one that’s accurate to the real world, not just what some asshole wants me to see and believe. Though I didn’t choose to leave. I was more or less kicked out and cut off from everyone I ever knew.”
Scientology was in fact a crock of shit, but Yang didn’t say that. It was probably too sore a subject to joke about, anyway. “I’m sorry you went through that, and I hope that book helps. You should spend more time in the library. And on like wikipedia and stuff. But that’s kind of dangerous, you start by looking up something on World War II and click a link, and then you click another link and another and three hours later you’re neck deep in the migration habits of geese.”
There was some personal experience there. “That’s not a family, though. A family sticks with you, through the good times and the bad. My mom.. My birth mom, she left me as a baby. A friend that sticks with you is better than a mom that doesn’t.”
“Yeah, I’ve been spending a lot of my free time at the library. Or using Logan’s computer when I’m not reading.” Blake had had a few experiences of clicking random links that took her far away from her initial search parameters.
At the comment about family sticking with someone through the good times and the bad, a large pang of guilt ran through her and she hung her head. If she’d had her cat ears, they would’ve drooped right then as well. Blake hadn’t stood by parents when they’d been kicked out of Scientology. She’d hated them for turning against the church, and told them they were dead to her.
“I’m sorry, about your birth mom.” She didn’t need to bring up her parents, so she kept that to herself.
“Logan?” Yang raised her eyebrows. “Short, hairy, kinda grumpy but secretly a softie?”
It took everything she had to not wrap Blake up in a hug, but she couldn’t help it, “Uhm, you look like you need a hug. I’m super huggable. You know. If you need one.”
“Yeah. We crossed paths a little while after I got here. He offered me a place to stay.” It was way better than staying in a shelter. Though Blake still wanted to save up enough to get her own place at some point. If she even stayed here in Orange County, that is.
“I’m fine.” No she wasn’t, but it was her own fault. She’d brought all this down upon herself. Blake could’ve left Scientology with her parents, but she hadn’t. She’d stayed with her then-boyfriend. Things would’ve been better had she left with her parents. The mantra of not deserving friends and comfort and so forth started up again in her head and she closed her eyes, drawing in a slow breath to try and silence it.
Yang watched Blake have what was obviously some kind of anxiety attack and felt completely helpless. She realized two things just then. One, that she was still in love with Blake Belladonna. And two, that that fact meant nothing in terms of being able to help her partner right now. There was also a painful three in regards to a certain British assassin but she couldn’t let herself think about that right now.
“Okay.” It was the kind of ‘okay’ that meant she didn’t believe her but was still going to respect her space.
Blake was definitely not okay. She tried to take slow breaths, but it was becoming more and more difficult as she had some shortness of breath. She was also trembling, and she needed to get out of there. “I’m sorry. I need...I need to go.” Blake stood up, trying to decide where to go. She needed to be out of the public eye.
“Do you..do you need a ride?” Yang looked at her, violet eyes filled with concern. “I can get my bike?”
“Maybe? I just...really need to get somewhere private.” Blake looked around like one might look for the quickest exit. She was almost panicking and needed to not do this in public.
Yang jumped to her feet, then held out her hand. She thought of a place she could take Blake that was nearby and out of the public eye. “Come with me. I have an idea and it’s kind of stupid but it might work. Okay?”
“Okay,” Blake said, taking Yang’s hand and getting up. She didn’t care where they were going so long as it was away from here. She needed to calm down, and that wasn’t going to happen here.
Not actually expecting Blake to take her hand, Yang was momentarily surprised. She recovered quickly, and started leading her towards the … playground. There was what amounted to an enclosed tree-house, and Yang led Blake up into it. There weren’t any kids around, and the little play house was out of the eyes of onlookers and kind of comfortably enclosed. No one could sneak up on them, anyway, unless they climbed up the tube-slide. Yang sat at the edge of the ladder and dangled her feet, offering Blake one more barrier between her and the world.
“Ta-da!”
Blake didn’t even really know where they were going. It wasn’t until she was up in the tree house that she really realized there were walls. She found a corner and sat down, drawing her knees up against her chest, wrapping her arms around her shins and pressing her forehead against her knees. She closed her eyes and stayed like that for a while before she managed to get her breathing under control. But even then, she still wasn’t wanting to leave the tree house until she was fully past the episode.
“Sorry about this,” she mumbled finally. “You’ve probably got better things to do than sit here.”
“Nope!” Yang shook her head, still swinging her legs. She snuck a look at Blake, but otherwise kept space between them. She remembered her own panic attacks and flashbacks. “This is the best thing I can do right now.”
“If you’re sure.” Blake continued to just take slow breaths, trying to calm herself down. This had been a good day, but that was the problem with trauma, things came up and triggers happened without warning sometimes. “Tell me a story.” She said, needing something to focus her mind on that wasn’t what was going through her head.
“Oh. Hm.” Yang tapped her fingers on the floor. “Okay, okay. Once upon a time in a far away land, there was a princess. She wasn’t like most princesses. She liked to run and jump and play, and wiled away the hours dreaming of adventures and dashing knights.”
Swiveling to face Blake, Yang swung her arms out. “The Princess had a knight! Tough and strong and badassed, she would protect the Princess with her life. And then one day, she would have to.”
Blake did her best to focus on Yang’s voice. She stilled kept her forehead pressed against her knees and her eyes closed. It tended to help her focus better. She eventually turned her head enough to look at Yang. “A female knight. That’s quite a twist so early in the story.” Though she didn’t comment further, instead letting Yang continue on with the tale.
“In my ideal fantasy worlds, girls get all the opportunities,” Yang assured her. “Take our knight. She went to war, as knights do, and came home a little different, as soldiers sometimes do. But she still cared for her kingdom, and she cared for her princess. She was rewarded with the duty to protect the royal family, the princess in particular. Of course the princess was hot, so this wasn’t exactly boring duty.”
It was easier to calm down as she focused on Yang and the story. Blake could see where it was going, at least as far as the romance went. But even so, she just listened, letting herself calm down. It was relaxing to hear a story, and Yang’s voice was nice to listen to. So long as she didn’t get overly excited while telling the story, of course.
As excitable as Yang could get, she had a pretty even keeled story-telling voice. Though she spared Blake the part where she’d do the voices for Ruby. “There came a day when the castle was raided. An empire that wanted power at any cost. The king and queen were killed, and the princess captured. The Knight was forced to flee, but she vowed that she would return for her princess.”
Under normal circumstances, Blake wouldn’t mind if Yang used different voices for the different parts. But right now, she just needed the consistency of one voice to focus on. And it was working. She finally lifted her head from her knees and rested the back of it against the wall. “What happened next?”
“There was to be a tournament,” Yang replied. “With people from far and wide coming to compete. And the grand prize? The Princess’s hand in marriage. Of course, the whole thing was rigged, the empire’s chosen son destined for victory and to seal the kingdom’s fate forever. They didn’t expect the Knight to return, or to win battle after battle. And they didn’t expect the Princess to disguise herself and fight in the tournament either.”
Well, that was a twist. Blake lifted her head and looked over at Yang. “Did the knight and princess have to fight each other?” It was a valid question. Now it seemed that either the knight and princess would have to duel and reveal themselves to each other. Or either the knight or the princess would fight the chosen son and end up winning.
“It came down to four. The Princess fought because she wanted the right to choose her own husband - or none at all. And the Knight fought to preserve the Kingdom, and because she loved the princess. In the first fight, the Princess faced a large man, who’d come from far away just for the joy of battle. He fought with a mace, and she fought with a stave, and natural agility.” Yang liked this part, but then she was kind of making it up as she went along, combining more than one idea into a single story.
“He couldn’t hit her, and she whittled him down until he collapsed from exhaustion. When the Knight’s fight came, it was exciting. The winner would obviously beat the agile man in the mask and become the King. So when the Knight and the Son clashed, the ground beneath them shook. The Knight was fast, though not as fast as the Princess, and she made up for it with strength and inner resolve. But the son, he was so cruel, his attacks trying to maim his opponent rather than just beat them.”
Blake didn’t know if Yang was making up the story as she went or not. Either way, she enjoyed the ride. The pace was picking up, and things were getting real. Especially as the cruel son was fighting to hurt, or even kill, his opponent. “I hope that son gets what he deserves for duelling that way.”
“The battle was intense, the Knight straining against exhaustion and pain from a few injuries. But she beat him, sliding beneath him and gutting him with a knife. It was a bit of poetic justice, because he’d done the same to his first opponent in the tournament, a young squire with barely any experience.”
Yang scooted closer. “Since both her and the Princess were equally exhausted, their battle was set for the next day. The Princess knew who she would face, and she didn’t know what to do about it. But when the sun rose and the people gathered, she was there with her mask, facing her Knight with a rain-soaked field between them. Neither moved at first, but when the battle was joined, onlookers lost track of who was who. Between the rain pouring from the sky and the speed of the fighters, it was impossible to keep track of who was winning.”
She lifted a finger and waved it. “The Knight knew she was fighting someone from her Kingdom based on technique, which was a huge relief to be honest. But she still wasn’t going to lose, not when the Princess’s hand was at stake. She got a lucky blow in, knocking the mask away. She laid eyes on her Princess, and froze.”
“Serves that bastard right,” Blake commented about the guy getting gutted. He certainly deserved it after all that. She listened, and almost felt a sense of dread at the knight and princess fighting each other. There was a moment where she felt one or the other might die without them realizing who they were fighting. But then the mask came off and Blake was in suspense, waiting for Yang to continue.
“She couldn’t fight. Not her. The Knight was about to lay down her weapon when the Princess knocked her to the ground, pointing her stave at her throat. Their eyes locked for several heart beats, before the Princess threw her weapon aside and helped the Knight to her feet.” Yang could imagine the sound of the crowd in shock. She pictured them falling silent, their hearts in their throats as they realized who the combatants were. “I am the Princess she declared! And I’ve won the right to choose my own destiny! And then she lifted her Knight’s hand and shouted I choose her!.”
That was certainly a good ending to the story. If it indeed was the ending. “I certainly hope they let them go and return home. Or wherever they wanted to go.” Blake said. She still had her knees up against her chest, but the anxiety attack had passed.
“The lady Knight became a Lady King, and they ruled that kingdom peacefully for a very long time,” Yang finished. Happy endings were something that she knew were needed. And it was a good ending.
While Blake was more than aware that happy endings were actually rare when it came to the real world, she was appreciative for the happy ending. “Good for them. And thank you for telling me a story.”
“You’re welcome.” Yang blushed a little and ducked her head. “Wanted to come up with something a little fun.” and it had been harder than she’d expected to not draw on her dreams. Blake would make an amazing warrior princess. They all would. “Glad you liked it!”
In all honesty, Blake didn’t know if she could ever fight the way her dream self did. The way she used her Gambol Shroud alone had taken years of learning how to use. She didn’t exactly feel like she was a warrior, and she didn’t expect those talents to cross over. “I like most stories.”
“Kind of makes sense.” Blake devoured books and it was kind of obvious that was a shared trait with her dreamself. Yang pulled her leg up and rested her arms on it. “Do you remember any of the dream books you’ve read?”
“I remember all of them, yes.” Blake never forgot a book, no matter how good or bad it was. She kind of missed not having the books from her dreams. There’d been some interesting stories she’d read over the years there.
“Which one was your favorite? I mean besides Ninjas of Love.” Yang had enjoyed that one too. She’d snuck a few books here and there when Blake was distracted. “You went through books so fast it was hard to keep up.”
“I always had a soft spot for the one about the guy with two souls in him.” Blake said. She also liked fairytales, though she more than understood fairytales didn’t work in the real world. She eyed Yang, wondering if she’d raided her book collection.
“I don’t think I got to that one yet.” Yang was pretty much admitting she’d raided Blake’s book collection. “It was propping up the bunk beds and I was gonna swap it out next.”
That probably required explanation but Yang only added. “Uh that’ll make sense pretty soon actually.”
Blake eyed Yang curiously at that statement. Books propping up bunk beds? That both sounded hazardous to someone’s health and like something Blake would do. After all, books that weren’t being read could be used to add balance back to any type of furniture. “I’m sure I will. Hopefully the books were stacked correctly so the top bunk didn’t wobble at all.”
“Didn’t wobble, not even a little,” Yang assured her. Of course, she was the one that was the one in the top bunk so she’d know better than anyone. “Luckily I’m a top!”
Of course she was probably about as much a top as Weiss was which wasn’t very much and also Yang that was inappropriate. “Uh. Anyway. What about here? What’s your favorite book here?”
At the comment about being a top, Blake just looked at Yang, wondering if she’d actually heard her right. And, well, she had. “That’s a bit harder to say. Most of what I’ve read is about Scientology. But I liked The Lord of the Rings. I also like some fairytales.”
“Got a favorite fairy tale?” Yang was thinking maybe they could find a movie about it. Or something similar. What was that one with a young Tom Cruise again?
“I’ve always liked goldilocks and my sister is way into red riding hood, but I’m not sure if those count?”
“Beauty and the Beast.” Blake said it without any hesitation. When she’d been younger, she’d identified a lot with Belle. At least as far as the Disney animated movie went. But when she’d gotten older, and especially now, she identified with the Beast.
And suddenly her love of that fairytale seemed exceedingly ironic, considering she was faunus in her dreams.
It really was ironic. But it made a sort of sense to Yang. But was Adam the Beast, or was Blake? From the way Blake seemed to look at herself, there wasn’t exactly an immediate answer. “That’s a good one. I always liked that Belle wasn’t helpless, and could put her foot down with the Beast.”
Considering that Adam’s sigil was a rose, Blake tended to think he was more the rose. Or at least that’s what she was thinking currently. But she didn’t let herself dwell on it. “I like that Belle liked to read, and was obviously smart.” Also Belle hadn’t exactly wanted much to do with the people around her. Which Blake could relate to in a sense. But she still saw herself as the Beast. Her self-esteem was basically non-existent.
“Like you, huh?” Yang wanted to reach over, touch her and brush her hair back behind her ears. If Blake had cat ears, she’d want to scritch them. It just seemed like an appropriate moment, but Yang refrained for several reasons, not just that Blake wouldn’t welcome it. “Smart, likes to read, looks good in blue and purple.”
“Not really. I have much more in common with the Beast.” Dreams notwithstanding, Blake had similarities there. The faunus thing just added to the Beast aspect of herself. She was an outsider in the dreams simply because of an accident of birth and how people tended to view faunus. Blake did her best to blend into normal human society and pass herself off as a normal human. But she was anything but normal, and didn’t know which people would actually accept her being faunus and which wouldn’t.
“Well you both have expressive eyes and I’m sure Beast has a fondness for fish,” Yang joked. There were some other things she could think of, whispers of memory and assumptions she had no basis for, but she didn’t know how to say all that. Her eyes flashed. “But you were never a monster. The only monsters-” The only monsters were Adam, Cinder and Torchwick.
She cut herself off, and looked away. “We have that on dvd too. If you ever wanna see it again.”
“I think Beast would eat anything put in front of him.” Blake eyed Yang when she made the monster comment, then she lowered her gaze. She knew she was a monster here in this life, and she had some moments in her dream life. “You’d be surprised,” she murmured. She’d pushed her parents away. She’d left Adam. She’d left the White Fang. Running was what she did best. And she was running in this life. Clearly she was just doomed to always be on the run, leaving when things got tough.
Not that she’d actually had a choice about leaving Scientology in this life. It had been made for her. But even so, she was still running, wanting to put as much distance between that and herself as she possibly could.
“I don’t know what you did here, and I don’t really care,” Yang whispered. After everything that had happened to her, she could have avoided Blake. Hated her, gotten angry with her for something she hadn’t dreamed yet. But here she was trying to make her feel better, despite all that she knew. Yang hadn’t realized how much Team RWBY had meant to her until she’d seen Blake again.
“There’s a good person inside you and I don’t need to know you in our dreams to be able to see that.”
“You should care. If you want to know me, then you should care.” Blake was certain it would color Yang’s vision of her, and it was important that her past wasn’t ignored. She had no idea what would come in the dreams, but if Yang truly wanted to be her friend, then she needed to know and care about the things she’d done in her past.
“You should never look at someone with a narrow view of who they are. You should know their past as well to give you a better view of the kind of person that they are.” She took a breath. “I am not my dream self, so don’t even start holding me up to her standards.”
Yang hugged her leg. “That’s not what I meant. I mean if you’ve done bad stuff, that it won’t change anything. I guess you could call me an optimist. Too much like my sister that way.”
It really did take fundamentally life altering events to actually bring Yang down for very long. Or her friends going through difficult times.
She wanted to tell Blake that there would be some bad things, and that when they happened they needed to talk, but she didn’t know if that would scare her off sooner, or keep her from taking off when she dreamed of the fall. She really needed some advice on how to handle that. ‘By the way your ex took my arm but it’s okay’ was probably not it.
“Even if I had killed good people, that wouldn’t change how you view me?” Not that Blake had killed anyone, but she seriously couldn’t believe how someone could have that much faith in another person that nothing would alter how they viewed someone else. Blake wasn’t optimistic, and she certainly didn’t have faith in people, especially after having seen some of the worst humanity had to offer.
Blake didn’t want to know what was coming in the dreams. If she knew, she’d definitely leave before getting to the bad parts. When the tough got going, Blake didn’t stick around, especially when she felt responsible for what had happened.
“There’s always a reason for something,” Yang replied, conviction in her voice. She’d wallowed so much about her arm and the team falling apart and there had to be a reason for it. She’d just have to find it. Maybe she’d find it here or maybe she’d find it in her dreams, and she’d certainly get really angry at Adam over it. But there had to be a reason.
“You get in a car accident, someone dies. Maybe the accident is your fault. Still doesn’t change much. Might make things hard for a little bit but it doesn’t change the underneath.” Her girlfriend was a soldier and an assassin, and she killed people. Yang didn’t know if they were good or bad and honestly didn’t want to ask.
Though thinking about Evie made her feel guilty and confused. “If someone is a friend and cares about you, they should stick through it.”
“There isn’t always a reason. Sometimes people just do things because they’re fucking assholes that only care about themselves.” There was more anger behind that statement than Blake had intended, but none of it was directed at Yang. It was directed at everyone else she’d known in her life previously. Including herself.
“I wouldn’t know. None of my friends stuck by me. All I know is people don’t actually care. They just use you for whatever they want, then they cast you aside with the trash.” And then there was the fact she hadn’t stuck by her own parents, so what did that make her?
Yang almost wanted to run away. She wanted to cry. Seeing Blake again, she’d never thought things would be easy but Blake seemed so hopeless that it gave Yang doubts. Instead, she blinked her eyes clear, then crawled over next to her, leaving about two inches of space between their shoulders. “You haven’t met Ruby. She’s more optimistic and hopeful than I ever was on my good days. And you haven’t met my roommates, who’d move heaven and earth for each other and for me. I’m sorry you’ve had shitty friends.”
She looked over at Yang when she moved to sit next to her. Blake rested her chin on her knees again and drew in a slow breath. She did wish she was more like her dream self. That Blake was strong, she was a fighter who fought for what she believed in. In this life? Blake didn’t have anything to believe in anymore. Her world had been shattered and she was faithless. She’d been told to let others help her, but that was easier said than done.
“At least you have good things in your life. No one deserves to be broken the way I have been.” That last assertion was definitely Harley’s influence from their sessions. Blake was broken and it would take time to put her back together. The trick was having the patience for that to happen. Blake, of course, didn’t expect Yang to be able to stick it out despite the dreams they shared.
But again, everyone she’d ever known had let her down in some way, so that’s what she expected.
“Yeah. No one deserves that. But.... it’ll get better. No matter how bad it looks, it’ll get better.” She leaned her head back against the wall of the play house. “Even if you have to keep telling yourself that until it sinks in.”
“It can’t get much worse than this.” It could, of course, but Blake liked to think that by living with Logan, things weren’t going to get worse. Unless, of course, she screwed it up. Which was possible. “My therapist tells me that, too. That it’ll get better.” Though she didn’t know how much of the trauma would ever completely heal. There were things that people never recovered from no matter what they did.
Blake was seeing someone? That made Yang feel a lot better. At least she was getting help. She ran her hand down her right bicep, to where her arm ended. There were definitely things that people never fully recovered from, but it could still get better. Getting to a new place instead of the old place was still a victory. “Looking forward, there’s always hope.”
It was something Ahsoka would say. It was probably something Yang had overheard once, and she liked it.
“I guess I’ll see if that’s true. I’m more than a little short on the ability to believe right now.” Which wasn’t surprising given the Scientology stuff she’d gone through. Figuring out the world again at twenty-one years old was not exactly easy.
Yang pat her hand on the ground between them, and left it sitting there, her fingers twitching ever so slightly. She believed that Blake didn’t believe it. But she also believed Blake would. Eventually. At least she hoped. “I guess.”
Blake drew in a breath. “So, considering my Scientology upbringing, I need an education on what the world is actually like. Care to help me with that?” She asked, looking at Yang. It was daunting to do it all herself, and Yang was nice and smart. Perhaps she’d help her.
“I want to help if you’ll let me,” Yang answered. “I can show you the good stuff, the fun stuff. The way people help each other. You might see some of the bad when we do that, but the world isn’t perfect or anything. But we can help people and turn bad into good.”
Her mind echoed the field trip with Professor Oobleck and her being forced to confront why she wanted to be a huntress.
“I will. I’d rather not break social customs just because I’m ignorant or don’t know things that the majority of people should know.” Blake didn’t want to feel stupid in front of others. Yang seemed to have a good grip on pop culture, as far as she could tell at any rate.
Yang had to exist the need to put her arm around Blake, and the effort was Herculean but she succeeded. “Most people aren’t gonna care. Some might look at you funny. It’s the jerks and assholes that you might run into, especially online. Just be careful where you go and never let some guy on a computer screen get to you.”
Reddit. Yang was never letting Blake on Reddit.
“I’ve had people look at me funny before. Learned a long time ago that skin color tends to matter to a lot of people.” It didn’t matter to Blake. What mattered to her was what people did. If they were assholes, she would judge them on that. She didn’t judge on skin color or other superficial, stupid things like that.
“It’s so stupid, but … well my room-mate Li is terrified of being deported. Honestly she and Ahsoka should just get married, that would keep her in the country pretty easily.” Yang hated the idea that people judged on appearance or race. She was on the same page as Blake on that.
“Where is she from?” Without seeing the name written out, Blake couldn’t make a guess at where Yang’s roommate was from. And even seeing it written out would only narrow it down to a few Asian countries without actually seeing her.
“She’s Chinese, she attended music school in Shanghai.” Come to think of it, Yang had never asked where Li had grown up. “She was in the States on a student visa but with all the anti-immigrant stuff…”
Unsure of how much to say, Yang settled on what Li would hopefully be okay with. “I don’t think she’d have a place waiting for her if she was deported. Her parents didn’t take the whole dating a girl thing well at all.”
“That’s definitely understandable how she’d be afraid of that. Hopefully she can stay here. Sounds like it’d be worse to send her back somewhere she’s not welcome in and separate her from her girlfriend and friends here.” Not that some people here weren’t welcoming either, but that was besides the point. “Either way, she’s clearly strong and brave to go against her parents and stand up for herself.” Blake could admire that, and wondered if someday she’d be able to stand up for herself.
“Yeah, they cut her off completely. That’s why she moved in with us, we all thought it would be easier to split things three ways. Give her a chance to finish school without worrying about the roof over her head.” Yang threw her head back and laughed. “Gave them lots of opportunities to make me turn the music up too.”
“She’s lucky to have a friend like you.” Blake didn’t know where things would go, or if she could trust someone again. But Yang did seem like a good person. She looked at her, wondering if that was an accurate appearance, or if it was simply a facade to hide something terrible beneath the surface. She supposed only time would tell.
For someone who wore her heart on her sleeves, Yang had to swallow many of her feelings. Blake could be overwhelmed even in their dream world and Yang didn’t want her to feel like she was under any kind of pressure, even friendship. She also didn’t want Blake to feel like she wasn’t important either. “Yeah well...I’d do that for any friend. Even if we’d have to share a room and a bed or a couch or something.”
Blake gave a little nod. It seemed like that’s what made someone a good person, doing anything they could for friends and loved ones. At least in an ideal world, that’s what Blake would think someone would do for those they cared about. “Your friends are lucky to have you.”