(ง •̀_•́)ง (ember_celica) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2018-01-01 18:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, blake belladonna, yang xiao long |
You should hate me. Friends don’t just run away and leave their friends alone when it matters most
Who: Yang and Blake
What: A long overdue talk
When: Recently
Where: Blake/Logan's
status: complete
Rating: Pg
The last thing that Yang ever wanted was for Blake to feel pressure from her. Her confession seemed to be behind them at least. But it hurt that Blake had reacted so negatively, and Yang thought it was probably worse than she let on. She couldn’t blame Blake or even be mad about it, and there was no one to talk to about it so she just kept it to herself. Even worse, the person she needed the most for her own trauma was the one person who was in no position to offer help because of separate-but-somewhat-related trauma.
All of this had been bubbling in her head since the Grimm attack, broken up by Blake being willing to spend time with her again, which had been like a salve on a wound and had slowed her own slide back into depression. Maybe with time her Beacon family could be whole, but both Blake and Ruby rejecting her had taken the wind out of her sails and also put a hole in her ship right around the time she’d started realizing that no, she wasn’t actually okay.
Blake’s text about being hurt had been both expected and dreaded. Blake not ready to see her had also been expected and yet painful. It left her chomping at the bit so much she’d gone for a long ride on Bumblebee until she’d been exhausted. She’d fallen asleep in a park, come back late, and then barricaded herself in her room for a full day. Still no texts.
She couldn’t exactly stay locked up forever, especially if she didn’t want Weiss to start asking questions, but she was consumed with worry and her mind doing that thing where it invented worse and worse scenarios that couldn’t possibly be true fuck you brain.
When after what felt like forever Blake had said it was okay to see her, Yang had … hopped on her bike and taken a circuitous route in order to calm herself down so she wouldn’t overwhelm Blake.
Her left hand shook as she knocked with her right, and she shoved it in her pocket.
Blake had gotten through the Grimm attack pretty unscathed, which had been rather monumental for her. But the Grimm and fighting didn’t bother her. She’d seen enough real life monsters that Grimm didn’t scare her. Which was why she’d been able to keep a cool head in the midst of it all. She’d been more concerned about Ruby, Yang and Weiss than about anything involving herself.
She was also deliberately refusing to think about the confession Yang had made to her. Blake couldn’t handle feelings like that, so she simply pretended it had never happened. Which didn’t always work. There were plenty of days where she felt pressured to return the feelings because that was what she’d been taught to do. If someone felt for her, she was supposed to feel for them, and she was trying to not do that. However, it was difficult to undo the damage and programming that had been done to her and it would take a very long time to undo it all. Especially as she had to go little by little in working through it all.
But then she’d had a very serious setback after dreaming about the fall of Beacon and the injury she’d suffered at Adam’s hand. And then Yang losing her arm on top of that had undone a lot of the progress that Blake had been making. The recovery from the injury and the surgery had been extremely easy. The anxiety attacks, night terrors, lack of sleep and everything in between.
Blake still wasn’t in the best of places, but she liked to think she was better than she had been the past few weeks. Which was probably a lie, she was most likely still absolutely terrible, but she couldn’t avoid Yang forever. It was probably better to just get the shock over with and deal with the inevitable trauma that would resurface.
After texting Yang to invite her over, she was nervous, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to look at Yang’s arm after what had happened. She didn’t even think she could look at Yang period after she’d just abandoned her in the dreams. Blake had thought there would be nothing for her back in Menagerie, that her parents would have turned her away, but she’d been proven wrong on that fact. She hadn’t understood how her parents could still have loved her after how she’d treated them when they’d left the White Fang. Of course, she didn’t understand how Yang and the others would be able to forgive her for abandoning them either. Friends didn’t just abandon each other in their time of need, after all. Yet that had been exactly what Blake had done.
When she heard the knock, she felt a pit open up in her stomach, and she swallowed hard. Moving to the door, she opened it and barely managed to look Yang in the face before she lowered her gaze in shame. Even her cat ears, which weren’t concealed, drooped.
“Hey, come in,” she said and moved aside for Yang to come inside.
"Hey, Blake." Yang smiled at her, then stepped inside. She shrugged her coat off, then hung it up on a hook besides the door. It took all her willpower to not simply wrap her arms around Blake and hug her. She wanted her to know she was all right, that Blake was all right too. She had to stop herself before she tried to scritch those ears, too.
"You're moving around, that's good!" She couldn’t help but feel happy to see her. That would never change, even if her dream self was still upset that Blake had left.
Closing the door after Yang stepped inside, Blake took a slow breath to keep ahold of herself. However, when she turned around and saw Yang’s metal arm, she flinched a little and quickly directed her gaze elsewhere.
“Yeah, it’s healing. No running or backflips yet, but I can move around. It’s still tender when I pick up boxes at work.” Because of course Blake had gone back to work as soon as her doctor cleared her to. She needed something to do to try and distract her mind from itself.
Suddenly she remembered her manners. “Please, sit down. Can I get you something to drink?” She was definitely refusing to look at Yang’s arm.
“That’s.. .good.” That Blake was working. It was better than months of depression and nearly flunking a semester but Yang knew better than to say that to her. Blake would just blame herself. She rubbed her real arm with her fake one to try to calm her nerves and shakes. “Just water sounds good.”
She noticed Blake avoiding her arm, and didn’t know how to approach it, only that she knew she couldn’t leave without addressing it.
Blake nodded and went to get some water, bringing it back and setting it on the coffee table. And of course, now that Yang was actually here, Blake didn’t know how to approach the subject of what had happened at beacon. She wanted to run away, but she wouldn’t get far with her injury still healing. An injury that was very carefully kept hidden under a shirt and a sweatshirt that was probably a couple sizes too big for her. But she didn’t feel comfortable in her own body, and even less so now with an elephant in the room.
Blake sat down in an armchair and pulled her knees up to her chest as a defense mechanism to try and feel more comfortable. And then, well, she just blurted out something to get the conversation started. “You can yell at me all you want to about anything that happened.” Blake was expecting anger, and so she was offering herself as an emotional punching bag.
It was what she was used to, after all.
Well, this was going well, really. Yang took a seat and picked at the label on the bottle. She wished that Blake was closer, wished they could just hug it out and get it over with.
And then there it was, blurted out and in the room and even Yang couldn’t hide from it. She looked down at the water, and took a long, deep breath. “I wasn’t angry about my arm. I’d do it again all over again, even if it meant he took my head off instead. My arm is nothing compared to losing you. And you need to know I’d do that for Ruby or Weiss too, so it’s not just the… you know, thing. You’re my family. But I was angry that you left. When I needed you most, you weren’t there. And then Weiss was taken away and Ruby left and it was just me.”
She’d started out generally calm and even as she spoke, but her voice broke a few times near the end and her eyes flashed, not red, but a pink kind of red like she was trying to make herself feel an anger that wasn’t actually there. Mostly it was the hurt, and the abandonment issues, “My mom left. My other mom left. My dad shut down for a long, long time. I thought I was used to everyone leaving me, but…”
She shrugged and finally looked at Blake, not a trace of red in her eyes. “I wasn’t even angry for very long. I tried to be. I wanted to be. I tried to make myself angry and I couldn’t. I just wanted everyone back together again. I think that’s why I dug myself out of my depression and let my dad teach me how to fight again. Smarter, less impulsive...and I know I’ve got impulse issues. But I dug myself out and I went looking for Ruby. She’s the only one I knew roughly where she was and I hoped that she’d be able to pull us all back together again.”
Yang wanted to look down again, but she didn’t let herself, “And I didn’t have any of that here. No one who understood my dreams, who could help and be a support group. Dreaming alone is not… fun. It’s awful. So I wanted to be there for you, knowing what was coming and wanting to give what I didn’t have. I’m not mad at you, Blake. I don’t blame you for my arm. I don’t even blame you for running. I’m...god I’m sorry for even dumping this much on you. You’ve got too much to deal with to deal with my shit too.”
Blake stayed silent and let Yang say all she wanted to say. She was surprised that there wasn’t yelling involved. She’d expected yelling and a lot of anger. Blake had even expected there to be anger about Yang’s arm, but there wasn’t any and that confused her. But she definitely took the anger for having left. That was her fault. All of it was technically her fault. Perhaps if she’d confronted Adam instead of having run to Beacon and attempted to become a Huntress, Yang would never have lost her arm. Or at least it may not have been Adam or Blake’s fault if it had happened.
She couldn’t quite meet Yang’s eyes as she was heavy with guilt. “You’re supposed to hate me. You’re supposed to be angry. All of you are. Every person I’ve known is supposed to hate me. Why do none of you hate me?” Blake didn’t understand, and she wasn’t even talking just their team. She meant literally everyone she’d ever known. Her parents. Adam. Sun. Everyone else she’d ever known or been close to.
“All I ever do is run from everyone and everything. All of you should hate me. I’m not reliable. I’m not a good friend. I’m a horrible daughter. I’m never there when people need me. So why don’t you hate me?” Blake was trying not to get overly emotional, even though her wound was healing, it was still sore, especially when she cried.
“You’re our friend,” Yang whispered. “My best friend. A part of our team, of our family. And you know what friends and family do? They forgive mistakes. They welcome each other back with open arms. And yeah, we might have to sit you down and talk and call you on your bullshit like before the dance sometimes, just like we might have to sit me down and talk and call me out on mine or Weiss on hers or Ruby when she’s being extra closed up. But that doesn’t mean we hate you, or that we want to see you hurt or suffering.”
She wrapped her robot arm around her own stomach, trying to fight the need to cry, “And that will always be true. Even if I didn’t dream, or you didn’t dream. Or it was just the dreams and not this world. Friends and family care for each other and they support each other. So yeah, you ran away. Yeah, it hurt. But I don’t wanna be the kind of person to hate you for it. So I don’t.”
“That’s not my experience. In either life. I expect to be hated, unforgiven and people not wanting me around.” Well, at least until she’d actually gotten home to see her parents and realized they didn’t actually hate her. Her father just hated Sun, but that was for entirely different reasons.
“You should hate me. Friends don’t just run away and leave their friends alone when it matters most. That’s the exact opposite of what friends should do. You deserve better people than me in your life.”
“Blake…” Yang shook her head. While she could have no knowledge of what Sun had said to Blake, or even if Blake had dreamed that conversation yet, she still echoed it. “What I should and shouldn’t do is up to me, isn’t it? Who I let into my life? You were scared. And when we’re scared we don’t always react well to situations.”
She put down the bottle and the stripped label from it, and scooted closer to Blake on the couch. Blake might still be on the armchair so there was a distance cushion, but she was still closer. Pulling her legs up onto the couch, she hugged them with her left arm. “I know what it’s like to be scared. To do and say things I regret, out of anger or depression or fear. I wasn’t fair to Ruby after she woke up, and I sure wasn’t fair to my dad for a long time after either.”
Smiling at Blake, she tried a different tact. “You love Beauty and the Beast, right? In the end it didn’t matter what the beast showed the outside world, he was still a good person inside, and Belle saw that. It just took patience and understanding.”
Sun had told Blake that same thing. Perhaps it was Yang’s choice, but Blake deserved the hate in her own opinion. She noted when Yang moved closer and she felt more edgy, but she remained in her chair with her knees pulled to her chest.
“Depending upon which version of the tale you are reading, he was kind of a terrible person in the past. Becoming a better person doesn’t erase the crappy things he did.” The terrible person aspect of the Beast’s history varied greatly, going from being a spoiled and rather horrible person in the Disney animated movie to being cursed because he refused an evil fairy’s advances on him.
“The thing of it is that I make horrible choices and I never think about going back. I always just let people hate me or whatever it is they do in my absence.” It wasn’t like anyone previously had cared to go after her, and she’d never dared to go back. Why go backwards, after all? She needed to keep moving forward, even if that meant breaking friendships and being labeled a terrible person by others.
“I never said that he didn’t do bad things,” Yang pointed out. “But that people can change, and do better. In your entire time at Beacon you did wonderful, good things. And you did them because you’re a good person.” She put her hand over her own chest. “Right here. And the entire time I’ve known you here, you’ve wanted to better yourself. Bad people don’t want to make themselves better. Bad people just want to keep doing bad things.”
Her voice shook (and the other hand in her lap), and then she said the thing she’d been meaning to say all along. “I forgive you. For running away. And even though it wasn’t your fault, I’ll forgive you for my arm too, even if that was Adam and not you. But I forgive you.”
“Just because people change doesn’t mean the bad things are erased or should ever be forgotten. And really it’s just a matter of time until I ruin things. It’s what I always do, and then I end up running because I can’t handle trying to make them better.” Of course, Blake didn’t always ruin everything. In fact, she rarely ruined everything. She’d just been programmed her entire life to believe that anything that went wrong was her own fault. That was largely Scientology’s fault. Blame the victim and all.
Blake pressed her lips tightly together. “I don’t deserve to be forgiven. I ran because I couldn’t handle seeing you like that. That should not be forgiven. And it was all my fault. If I’d just decided to face Adam initially instead of running away from him and running to Beacon, maybe everything would’ve turned out differently, and been better for you. You didn’t deserve to lose your arm because I made a stupid decision to leave my team and stupidly think I could defeat Adam!” There were tears in her eyes but she was trying to hold them back. She didn’t want to cry because it hurt when she cried.
“You’d be dead.” Yang’s response was immediate and passionate. “If you’d faced Adam instead of run away from him, you’d be dead, and we’d never have met you. And you saved my life. He probably would have killed me, but you chose to stay rather than escape while he was distracted with me. You didn’t run that time, you stood your ground.”
She hesitantly reached out her hand, the metal one, wanting to take Blake’s. “Blake, look at me. Adam was there. Even if you hadn’t had found him, he would have found you. And even if our whole team was there and Juane’s team too and even CVFY and Sun, he could have kicked all our asses and killed most of us. Even if you’d never come to Beacon, Adam would have come there. You’re not responsible for the actions of that man, or his decisions, and you’re not responsible for the people he hurts.”
She was pretty sure the only student who could have maybe gone toe to toe with Adam was Pyrrha and she’d been dealing with someone even tougher, fatally. “I know you don’t believe me. And that’s okay. You don’t have to believe something for it to be true.”
“Then at least I would have died actually taking a stand instead of always running away because it was easier.” Blake felt that would’ve been a preferable fate to what had actually happened.
When Yang out her hand, she glanced at it and froze for a moment, again only seeing the flash of Adam’s sword cutting through Yang’s arm. She then pulled her hand away out of reflex and tried to keep calm, but it wasn’t working that well. Not that she’d anticipated that this would be an easy talk where their emotions didn’t run high, but that was a bit besides the point.
“No, I don’t believe you, and I didn’t believe Ruby when she said something similar. It’s always my fault. Putting the blame on anyone else never works. It’s easier to just blame me.” This one event had undone a lot of what progress Blake had made in working through the damage her ex and Scientology had done to her. She’d been pushed backwards towards where she’d started from.
Suddenly she felt exactly like Sisyphus having to push his boulder uphill for an eternity. It was a long way back up, and flight instincts were trying to kick in.
Yang looked at her own hand and sighed, retracting it. That had probably been stupid but she also thought that Blake couldn’t ignore it. “It’s a part of me. My new normal. It’s okay. It’s been there as long as you’ve known me here, do you really think I’d have even approached you if I thought this was your fault?”
“Ruby isn’t gonna blame you. I’m not. Weiss won’t. You believed me when I told you it wasn’t me with Mercury. You can believe me now. Remember, everything Scientology told you was a lie. Remember that.”
“How could I know? It’s not like you could’ve yelled at me for it right away when I hadn’t even started dreaming yet.” Blake took some slow, deep breaths.
“Believing you about Mercury and Scientology’s brainwashing are two very different things that are mutually exclusive of each other. It’s a lot harder to rewire the way I think than it is to believe the facts laid out about something completely unrelated to brainwashing.”
It was so frustrating, knowing the truth and seeing how much Blake had suffered mentally and was thus unable to accept the truth, even if she tried. Yang didn’t know how to deal with that, even with her new improved less-punchy approach to life. She just wanted to hold her and let her cry on her (and okay cry on her too), but feared moving too close to Blake would trigger something bad.
It was so unfair, and Yang knew she felt too much, emphasized too much, which only amped up her own feelings and pain. She looked at Blake with an unguarded expression. “I’m sorry I can’t do more for you. I want to. I think it would be good for both of us, I just don’t know what to do or say. But I’m here, and I always will be.”
Blake sniffed and wiped at her cheek. Her cat ears were still drooping and had not yet perked upright. It was frustrating to Blake to get knocked back so far. It made her want to give up, but she knew she couldn’t actually give up. It would just take a lot longer to get to where she ultimately wanted to be.
“They say time heals all wounds. But I’m starting to think that’s just full of shit. A lot of this I will never be fully rid of. Some wounds I will have until the day I die no matter what. I hate it, but that’s simply how it is.”
“Some wounds are hidden,” Yang agreed. “Ones that aren’t physical. But I think they do heal. It’s just… not always easy and there will be setbacks and they’ll reopen sometimes. This is one of them. I’ve had a few of my own. But we can get through it. We don’t even have to do it alone.”
Yang couldn’t, do it alone and she didn’t think Blake could either. Her voice wobbled, “It’s not… selfish to lean on your friends when you need to.”
Now if only she let herself believe that - Yang hadn’t exactly leaned on any of her friends lately herself, but she also was still trying to treat Blake lightly. This information dump hadn’t actually been intended.
“No, some wounds will always remain in some way. There are triggers and memories that won’t ever really go away.” Blake was coming to understand that victims of abuse would always suffer some sort of effects from it. Even her therapist still had her problems with it.
“No, but I don’t know what help I can be to others. I’m not exactly strong or good at being a friend.” She also had a thought that had been drifting through her mind very recently about trying to find her parents. After all, the ones in her dreams had welcomed her home. But she had pause because she didn’t want to have to explain the cat ears to her parents here. Perhaps it would be better if she remained lost to her parents here.
If asked, Yang would tell her to seek out her parents. She could wear a bow or just say the ears were a gift from a friend. Or it was cold, so beanie. But she wasn’t asked so she couldn’t offer suggestions.
She gestured between them. “This..this helps me. Us talking. Me helping you, or at least trying to. And you’re a better friend than you think you are”
For the time being, it was better that she didn’t try to find her parents. Let them believe that she was still a Scientologist. There were a lot of things from this life that she wasn’t ready to tell them about, mostly involving the ex-boyfriend of hers.
“No, really, I’m not. Everything in me is screaming at me to run away. I’m not good at the whole people thing, and I’d prefer to just be alone most of the time. Not to mention the whole leaving in the dreams thing. Friends don’t actually do that kind of shit, yet I did.”
They were going around in circles, and Yang wasn’t sure how she wasn’t bawling her eyes out right now. She fidgeted, rubbing the palm of her hand with her thumb. “Yeah, you did, you left. But I’m not gonna do that to you. I’m gonna show you what it’s like to have people who stick by you. Because I don’t think you’ve ever had that. The only thing you know is what Adam and your ex did to you. They hurt you, bad. They’re the monsters Blake. They always have been and they always will be.”
She was still pretty sure Adam and the ex were the same person, just the latter hadn’t dreamed. She lifted her eyes, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “I’ll never, ever hurt you on purpose, Blake. I won’t raise my hand, I won’t hit you. I won’t tell you things to manipulate you into doing things I want you to do. I’ll always tell you the truth. I’ll give you space when you need it, I’ll be there when you need it.”
Because that was what love was supposed to be. Romantic or familial or platonic, that was love. Though Yang doubted she’d ever be able to shake the need to cup Blake’s face and kiss her cheeks and nose and lips all tenderlike. And her eartips. Especially her eartips.
Collapsing her hands into her lap, she suddenly remembered. “Crap, I was supposed to bring you jello…”
Adam and her ex were actually two very different people. They looked absolutely nothing alike. They had similar patterns of abuse, but the ex in this life was worse. Logically, she knew Yang was right, that Adam and her ex were the monsters. But right now it was impossible to think rationally. She just nodded a bit at what Yang said, not really having anything to respond with.
“It’s okay, I’d forgotten about the jello as well.” Which wasn’t such a surprise given everything Blake was dealing with and trying to work through.
Jello didn’t make everything better, or anything better, but it had still been a promise. Not that it mattered in the long run. Or the short. Yang felt like there was a vice in her chest gripping her heart. She felt so helpless in the face of all of this. But she wasn’t about to give up on Blake and helping her get better. And not because she was in love with her, but because she loved her. There was a difference, like the difference between loving Weiss and Ruby, but it was a subtle, thin line and judging by how Blake had reacted when she’d confessed Yang decided she didn’t want to try to argue semantics.
“If I could have anything for Christmas,” Yang finally said. “It would be peace and happiness for you. And Ruby and Weiss too, but mostly you.”
And if she could have two things, she wanted her ‘family’ whole and together, but after even Ruby had rejected her, Yang had been heartbroken given that up for now. And that New Years Kiss she occasionally thought about was out.
So she’d take them being happy and at peace. In fact she’d take all their pain and suffering onto herself and if she kept thinking about that she was going to start crying and that wouldn’t be good for Blake so she blinked her eyes to try to dry them.
“Christmas...I keep forgetting about that.” Christmas hadn’t exactly been something that Blake had properly celebrated since before her parents had left Scientology. It wasn’t a holiday that she really felt much of a connection to due to her ex and his family. They hadn’t been that big on Christmas.
“I think all of us could use peace and happiness.” Suddenly she wondered if she’d have to get presents for anyone. Or go to any celebrations. The latter would be problematic just given her extremely skittish nature currently. Even being around people she knew could be difficult.
“Probably,” Yang agreed. She knew better than to invite Blake partying, and if she was honest with herself she didn’t really want to herself. She shifted her head, allowing her hair to obscure her face a little. It was kind of childish, but she felt suddenly vulnerable. “I’m gonna see if Ruby wants to go caroling or something soon. But do you want to do something too? I could bring over some of my favorite holiday movies. You’ve probably missed out on Rudolph and company and we should rectify that.”
“I’ve seen some Christmas movies, the non-religious ones, but it’s been years. I wouldn’t be opposed to that.” Blake was suddenly hoping that no one would give her any Christmas presents because she didn’t have time to go out and get any for anyone else. Especially since Christmas was in a couple days.
“Cool! Cool…” Yang let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, and sank back into the couch. “I have this entire collection of the old school stuff. I think you might like ‘em!”
“I’m up for watching them.” It was low-key and Blake assumed there was no violence or anything in these movies. Which would make it better to sit and watch.
Maybe they could even sit on the same couch, Yang thought. Small victories!