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When Blake was eight, her parents took a section of the White Fang to Atlas. She and Ilia had tagged along, mostly because there wasn't anyone who was both willing and available to take care of them that week.
They were sat down in the hotel room every day, and told to not go anywhere past that block, and to preferably just sit inside and play while they were alone.
Of course, they hadn't listened. Why would they? This was Atlas. Racism central.
So like all kids who were given the choice of staying inside and watching movies all day or wandering out into a world of people more than happy to beat them up and claim self defence, they hid their faunus traits about as well as two eight year olds were expected to be able to and walked out of the hotel.
Nothing happened, which they would both later chalk up to pure luck, but when her parents returned that afternoon and found an empty room, they nearly panicked. About ten minutes later, Blake and Ilia walked back in, tired but alive and whole.
They got dragged along to the Schnee Manor the next day. Sat down in plain view of all the butlers (butlers!) in the living room, and very firmly told -- again -- to stay put.
As if it would stop them. The second that the adults left and the big doors slammed shut behind them, the two were off again. Ilia slipped around and blended into the walls, and while the guards muttered among themselves and stared nervously at where she'd disappeared, Blake nodded in her direction and sprinted up the stairs.
And it was huge. Paintings lined the walls, with that fancy carpet that she'd only ever read about in books and seen in illustrations and in her dreams. Big, light blue doors with fancy patterns sat between every few paintings, and the sunlight streamed in through blue-stained windows, taller than she was. Taller than her mom was.
Blake stared in wonder at everything, and glanced towards the doors. Everyone's downstairs, right? So it wouldn't hurt anyone if she just...
Slowly, very slowly, she pushed open a door.
An office.
Nothing of note was in there -- or so she thought, but her dad had an office. And his office was boring. It just had legal documents and pens and just about nothing else in there unless her dad was actually physically sitting in there, and even then the only interesting thing was him, and he was always doing legal stuff if he was in the room.
So she skipped it. And the next room, and the next, and the other one after that, because they were all bedrooms or more offices and she knew enough to stay away from other peoples bedrooms and offices were boring.
The fifth room down, another bedroom, had a girl in it.
She wasn't actually the first thing that Blake had noticed. The first thing she saw was the window, huge and patterned and looming above her head. The second thing was the bed, and then after a second, the girl. Sitting on the bed. Staring at her.
What was she supposed to do after walking into some girl's bedroom? Stay there? Apologize?
Or just run away?
Blake nodded to herself, slipped back, and slammed the door shut before sprinting back downstairs.
She made it, sliding to a stop next to where Ilia sat in the middle of the stairs, and dropping down just in time to see the big doors opening. Ilia leaned over to her with an expecting look, and Blake flicked an ear towards where the adults were streaming out of the room before leaning in and whispering, "You know the Schnee's have kids?"
Ilia gave her a weird look, before whispering back, "Yeah. Three of them. They told us about this weeks ago. Why?"
Blake flushed and ducked her head. "I think I... Walked into their daughter's room? And... Met her?"
Her parents called them over, and as they followed them out the front door, Ilia hissed, "You met one of them? Are you crazy? They're the most well know racists on Remnant! You're lucky to have gotten out of there!"
Her words sent a shiver through Blake. Both of them had already seen the things that humans did to them, without any hesitation or remorse, but she couldn't stop thinking about the girl in that room. She didn't look angry. Or hateful. She just looked... Sad.
-
She didn't try to be rebellious. Didn't fight back against Father.
She tried. Tried her best to be at least as good as Winter, because Winter was the best big sister she could've asked for, and if that wasn't good enough for him then she didn't think anything would, but that made her sad to think about so she didn't.
It was just that no matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried, it was never enough. He was just never satisfied with her. Nothing she did was ever good enough and she missed her mom and Winter was always so busy and she was lonely, and sad, and she remembered just four years earlier, when it was her and mom and father and Winter and they were all together like the families she saw outside her window, and they were all smiling and laughing and having fun, and she missed it.
So when her father just wouldn't shut up about her potential and her lessons and how much better things would be if she cut out her mom and Winter (and Weiss is eight years old but she's old enough to know that she just can't do that, she can't leave them behind, and it's not just her being whiney), and she came the closest to throwing a tantrum as she had since she could ever remember.
The noise had registered before the pain.
"Schnee's don't cry," he'd said. "If you can't separate yourself from unimportant things, go to your room, and stay there until I call for you."
And that's what had led to her, sitting up in her bed as straight as possible. Because, she reasoned, if she was good enough for him, if she just proved that she could be what he wanted with mother and Winter, then there was no need to distance herself from them. Then maybe he'd approve of what she did, and she'd be enough, and she'd have her family back! Just like in her old old old memories.
But... She was in there for so long. It felt longer than he'd ever made her sit in there, but that couldn't be true. After all, they still had to eat dinner. So she sat, and waited, and her back hurt, her stomach hurt, and then sometime after that her everything started cramping up, but she couldn't move. If she moved, then her father might walk in. And if he walked in while she was adjusting, then she couldn't prove that she could be good and have her mom and sister!
The minutes (hours?) passed by, stretching longer and longer, and Weiss had almost completely zoned out when the door creaked open.
She snapped her head forward, but when the shape that crept in was small, short, and exactly the wrong colour, she glanced over to look closer.
It was a faunus. That was the first thing she noticed. A small faunus, maybe a bit bigger than her, with pitch black hair and darker ears sticking right up on her head.
She'd never seen a faunus before, but it wasn't like she could just step off the bed, so Weiss peered over as closely as she could.
A second later, though, the faunus' gaze went up to hers, and with a squeak and a slam of the door, she was alone again.
Another month, another performance. Another week of being put on a stage to be admired by every rich bastard her father wanted to keep in his pockets.
She hated it. One month, back in Atlas. The next, out over in Vale, in the stifling heat and the people who just wouldn't stop bumping into her. Vale, she decided, was the worse kingdom. Full of people who didn't know anything about personal space, and filled up all of it with even more people.
Every night, she was dragged into a room to have makeup done, and prepare herself for the performance. Every morning, she was set out into the city to set an example for how kind and how available and approachable the Schnee family was, and every day without fail she walked fast and far to whatever hidden spots presented themselves.
One day, she found herself almost 3 hours out. No one in sight, just Weiss, the trees, and the birds fluttering around above her head.
It was perfect.
What she hadn't been able to see through the fog and the trees, though, was the girl in the clearing several metres away. She sat with her back to Weiss, sitting in the dirt and leaning back on her hands, long blonde hair brushing against the ground. Just the idea of being in the dirt like that made her wrinkle her nose, and especially her hair picking up dust like that.
Just another Vale citizen who probably had no concept of personal space and spent her time filthy. Just like all the rest of them.
Still, as Weiss made her way back to the hotel room for dinner and prep, she thought about that girl, and how freeing it must be, to be able to live without worrying about public appearances and pleasing her father.
-
It was the one place where Yang was completely fine with her hair getting dirty.
Sure, it was almost guaranteed that Huntress work was going to wind up with her getting some branches, some Grimm goop, and probably more than a little dirt in her hair, and she absolutely wanted to be a Huntress. But outside of fighting, out here in the woods, alone, was the only time she loosened her careful watch over her hair and let it brush the ground, picking up dirt and maybe a bug or two.
It was her place, where Tai didn't know to go look, and Ruby promised not to without some kind of emergency.
So when footsteps sounded from behind her, Yang took a moment to listen, not bothering to sit up where she was leaning back on her hands.
Too slow to be Ruby, check.
Too quiet to be her dad, double check.
Too cautious to be a Grimm, triple check.
No danger. Quadruple check.
With a mental thumbs up to herself, she figured it was safe enough and stayed on the ground, eyes closed to better hear what was going on.
The footsteps slowed, somehow. Stopped a few feet away, and she could almost feel the presence holding its breath.
A rustle in the dirt, pine shifting on ground, and they faded out. Yang sat in the dirt until the footsteps were completely gone, waited a few minutes longer, and then relaxed back into her position.
She was young when Summer got pregnant. Barely even a year old. But maybe she preferred that, being able to remember the moments after. Maybe it really was better that way.
There wasn't a day that went by that she thanked how convenient their age difference was. Her first memory was waiting, waiting for her mom to just get home, and then being sat down in warmth and having a heavy little ball placed in her arms.
Her first memory was of that feeling of protection that she'd get to know intimately. The need to hold that little ball close, staring into the scrunched up face, her parents behind her telling her this is your baby sister, Yang. Her name's Ruby. Say hi to her?
Her first memory was of her sister, and from that moment on, she knew her last would be as well. There wasn't a world where she'd let Ruby get hurt before her.
And by the Gods, when Yang made a promise, even at the age of 2, she kept it. From the second Ruby could walk, the second that Yang started getting into trouble herself, she followed their dad around relentlessly and begged him to teach her how to fight.
Three years came and went. Yang pressed on, learned how to fight, learned how to cook, to shove down her emotions and be there for Ruby. Three years ago, she made a promise to protect her, and she would stick by that promise forever.
She unlocked her aura by age 7, and set fire to herself when she was 9. By the next year, she was 10 years old and everyone knew not to mess with Ruby anymore. The girl without a mom, whose drunk uncle was constantly away from school and had no sense of formality. Whose older sister could beat them up without a shred of hesitation and walk away completely unscratched.
And so no matter what happened, with every discovery about Raven and the return of Tai, the one thing that remained constant was that Ruby was her life, and not even the Gods themselves could keep Yang from keeping her safe.
-
The thing that always made sense was that Ruby's earliest memory was of Yang.
Sure, there was her mom and her dad, and she'd learned to treasure those memories closely. But mostly, in the foreground of her oldest one, and through the entirety of her childhood, it was Yang.
Yang, making their breakfast, making sure she had enough to eat of their weird cafeteria food. Her memories blurring, Summer's voice fading into Yang's whenever she thought back to the old fairytales and bedtime stories she'd been told.
So, really, she hadn't really known that it wasn't how things were just supposed to be. Couldn't understand why, in grade 2, she'd gotten a strange look and a talk after school about her family. Her family was great! It was her, and Yang, and sometimes Uncle Qrow, and if they were really lucky then dad would come out and play something with them!
She didn't know what she did wrong, and it took almost a year for it to hit her. They didn't know. She hadn't been supposed to write about Yang. She hadn't been supposed to talk about her sister in a project about her parents.
How was that so wrong, though?
Ruby didn't get her parents. Not the way that the other kids did, and she didn't lose the both of them like some of them did either. As far as she was concerned, though, the closest thing there was was Yang, and that mattered more for a grade 2 caretaker presentation than lying about her dad or uncle or grandparents.
It wasn't unknown that Ruby liked books. Sure, she liked comics, and could recite every single old fairytale perfectly from memory, but she also liked books. Books with words, and paragraphs, that she could pick up and read through and wouldn't finish for hours. It was how she found herself in a bookstore every weekend, crouched in a corner somewhere poring over the newest release of anything that caught her interest. In other words, just about every single book in the store.
Vale didn't have many bookstores, though. Not in their little corner, away from all the royalty and riches and especially not other kids who liked spending their free time in a nice little corner with a book in hand. So whenever someone else walked in, she noticed.
At least, she noticed whenever she was between books and didn't have music blasting through her headphones as loud as she could stand. So she didn't really know how long there had been someone else sitting in the store, but she definitely knew it was shorter than an hour, because that was how long Ruby had been in there.
She hopped over to get a closer look at the book that the other girl was holding -- purple cover, she rarely read things with plain covers -- but was stopped a few feet away.
"Ruby," Tukson called, from exactly the opposite direction, and Ruby spun around to meet him. He held up one of the books that she'd been waiting for for a while, and she walked about as fast as she could without spreading roses everywhere before spinning back around, only to find the girl... Gone.
Her book laid on the spot she'd been sitting, and Ruby walked over to take a peek at it.
The Corpse Doctor.
It wasn't really her style of book, and it looked really, really, really gloomy, and kind of just... dark... but like Yang always said. You don't know anything about what other people like, until you try it yourself!
So Ruby picked up the book and walked up to Tukson, who glanced down at it with a weird expression, but let her buy it anyway, and when she got home, she told Yang all about what had happened.
Yang laughed, ruffled her hair, and cracked a joke about how something like The Corpse Doctor was a bit dark for her, and Ruby forgot all about the experience for about a year.
-
All you can do is run.
Was it survival? Had it truly been for survival?
Her hands trembled from where they gripped the book, barely even able to properly focus on it. Did she really run because she had to? Was he right? Had she been forced out for her safety, or was he right all along?
Maybe he was. She didn't have much more in common with the creature in the book than having left, and even then, she'd gone out of cowardice. She'd left because she was too scared to stand up for her people.
No.
No spiraling.
She let out a shaking breath, willing herself to breathe normally as Tukson glanced over.
Before she'd really had a chance to calm down completely, though, a head of dark red and black (oh no oh no oh gods he's here) popped out from around the corner. Blake slid down in her seat against the wall, curling her book up further until she almost felt safe enough to peek up at the black and red heading towards her.
If she'd been just a little more observant, she would've noticed how much longer this hair was compared to his, but that's just what he did. Stripped her of everything she had until she shut down and submitted.
He came closer. Closer. Just a few feet away, and she braced herself for whatever she'd get for running, heart in her throat, and distantly, Tukson's voice came through, calling out.
You can't stop him, she wanted to tell him, but the head-
The head turned, it bounced back, and she fled. Dropped her book, shot up, and scrambled into the back room and out into the street, heart pounding, sprinting down the sidewalk as fast as she could handle and more.
After a bit, the sheer panic mixed with sprinting as fast and as long as she could clawed at her to stop, and finally, she stopped and properly took a look at where she'd ended up.
Beacon Academy.
Internally, she let out a groan. The past week that she'd been living with him, Tukson had been near constantly asking her about school, and it was apparently getting to her.
You've always wanted to go to Beacon, he'd say, as she rolled her eyes.
Yeah, she'd point out in return, every time. When I still went to school and knew more than reading and fighting.
Then you'll ace their entrance exam. They used to be all about fighting, not so much about math.
Blake would walk away, he'd let her go for a day, and the next day, he'd go and ask again.
Would be a good chance to get him off my back, she mused. And it wasn't as if he were wrong. She had always wanted to go to a Huntsman academy, especially Beacon. Now, there was even more reason. What better way to repent for all the things she'd done in the Fang than to become a Huntress?
So without giving herself the chance to back out, Blake stepped onto the campus to schedule her entrance exam.