Chapter Text
When Ilia is first born, her mother is scared. Life in Mantle isn't kind to faunus, and not all faunus are kind to faunus who can pass for human. On top of that, Ilia is special, she can tell just by looking at her. She only prays that they can give her a safe, normal life; that's more than most like her get, more than Ilia’s mother herself got. Ilia’s mother and father start saving up for their daughter’s future that day, seeing dreams built in the city in the sky.
***
When Ilia is 4, she excitedly tells her parents that she wants to be a Huntress when she grows up. She had met a real, live one when a classmate’s mother came in for Parent’s Day at her preschool that day. (Ilia was the only one whose parents were unable to attend; they were working overtime in the mines to pay for preschool, because seeing Ilia’s cheerful smile when she tells them how much fun she had that day makes it all worth it.) Ilia’s father tells her she’ll make an amazing Huntress and splurges a little to buy Ilia a small toy rapier on his way home from work the next day. Ilia’s mother doesn’t say it, but Ilia can tell she’s frightened by the idea of her daughter fighting Grimm.
***
When Ilia is 6, her parents have to choose between groceries and the power bill; their lights are cut for a night. Ilia is scared of the dark, and she can’t sleep, the blizzard winds rattling the window panes only making her more scared. Ilia’s father lights a candle (just one, to make sure they last if their overtime isn’t approved at the mine tomorrow, and the power stays off) and pulls out his treasured guitar, the only thing Ilia can remember him ever buying for himself. He treats it with the utmost care, but always obliges when Ilia wants to idly strum the strings, only stopping her if she accidentally gets too rough with it, and always doing so gently. He begins to tune the guitar while Ilia’s mother cradles her in her arms, allowing Ilia to burrow into her shoulder.
She hears her father play a chord to check that he’s tuned it properly, before he starts to play a song. He can’t sing a single note on key, but he plays like he was born to do it, and Ilia’s mother soon starts singing along, her voice beautiful and perfect in Ilia’s ears. Ilia doesn’t recognize the song, but she removes her head from the safety of her mother’s shoulder and shuffles in her arms, turning around and watching him play. She doesn’t know any of the words to this song, but it’s light and watery, happy and sad, and soothing in a way she can’t describe. She watches and listens, entranced as her parents create the most wondrous sounds Ilia has ever heard, illuminated by the warm glow of the candle filling the small bedroom that all three of them share. They look so content, Ilia begging them to play the song again when they finish. By the time Ilia falls asleep, she can join in, most of the words engraved into her soul. It is that night that Ilia realizes, while she may not have much, she will always be loved.
***
When Ilia is 8, she's called into the kitchen -which also serves as their living room and their dining room- by her parents. She's just come home from a hard day at school, some of her faunus classmates shoving her and calling her names for getting along with a human classmate, so she's glad to seek out the comfort of her parents’ embrace. While she gets comfort, she also gets news and rules to follow. She puts on a brave face, but cries for hours that night once she’s sure that her parents have fallen asleep. The next morning her parents begin teaching her how to prevent her color from changing. A month later she says goodbye, suppressing the urge to turn blue as she leaves for her new life at Atlas Prep.
***
When Ilia is 10, she sees some classmates picking on a faunus classmate. When her friends giggle at the names he's called, she keeps quiet, pushing down the faint urge to turn red. A week later, she giggles too, and has no such urges.
***
When Ilia is 11, she gets an unexpected call from her mother. The calls are usually limited to only once a month, but the last call was only a couple of weeks ago, and it's with no small amount of confusion that Ilia picks up her Scroll and answers.
She asks her mother if everything is okay, if something has happened. Her mother asks her if she has noticed anything strange lately. Has she been getting intense headaches recently, or noticed anyone seeming to pop up frequently when she’s out with friends. Ilia hasn’t, and her mother’s sigh of relief in no way alleviates her confusion. Her mother tells her that she just wants Ilia to be careful, and to mind her changes, to not let anyone see them. Ilia has been avoiding allowing her skin to change color for 3 years now, and is slightly offended by the suggestion that her mother doesn’t think she can follow such a simple rule, and she tells her as much.
Her mother hesitates, and Ilia can’t help but feel that they aren't talking about the same thing; she brushes this feeling off when her mother apologizes, says she knows that Ilia is following the rules, that she just worries. Ilia doesn’t think about the question after that, but she does start to keep track of the people she passes while walking across campus or through the mall with friends. No one is out of place, but Ilia stays vigilant.
***
When Ilia is 12, she's sitting with her friends in the cafeteria when her world collapses. The whispers are the only hint she has that anything has happened until one of her friends receives a message with a link to a video. The girl shepherds them all in to watch over her shoulder, and Ilia sees a reporter outside of a mine and a list of names. Her parents’ names are included. Ilia’s friends start to snicker, joking about animals not being as easy to train as they thought. None of them notice Ilia has turned from white to blue to red until a bright red fist collides with one of their faces, sending the first of many teeth flying.
***
When Ilia is 12, she has lost everything. She stands for what feels like hours at the edge of Atlas, debating whether or not to do it. She's so deep in thought that she doesn’t realize her whole body has turned gray, doesn’t hear the man shouting and running towards her until he’s close, until she realizes that one of her feet is already hanging over the edge. She startles, attempting to spin around to face him before losing her balance, tipping backwards.
At first, she doesn’t even think to scream; looking up into the endless expanse of the night sky, the last traces of the purples and reds and oranges of sunset fading, the Northern Lights bleeding through, Ilia is mesmerized, and she can’t help but reach her hand out to try and grab those first few stars that have blinked into existence, amazed at how beautiful the sky can be over such an ugly place. Then the moment ends and she starts to accelerate, the stars falling further away from her grasp; she panics as she realizes that in a few seconds she’ll never be able to see any of this again, that she has no guarantee that she’ll see her parents again, either. Whether that will be because there’s nothing waiting for her at the bottom, or because when she hits the ground her soul will leave her body behind and keep descending as punishment for all the selfishness and cowardice she has shown in the last 4 years, for taking all of the gifts her parents gave her for granted, she's not sure.
She sees a line cast out, barely visible against the ever-shifting greens of the aurora, watching as it descends, wrapping around her waist and chest a few times, snaking around her legs, before the hook catches precisely in the small gap in her jacket’s zipper, locking into place and stopping her descent. The man who cast the line peers over the edge for a moment, relief washing over his features when he sees her hanging in place, spinning in slow circles, her body held roughly parallel to the distant ground. The man disappears back over the ledge, and Ilia can hear him grunting as she jostles back up towards Atlas, towards those stars, bit by bit, even if she is no longer able to reach out for them. She crests the edge, and the man hooks one hand behind her neck and the other one under her knees, standing on the line so it won’t move.
He pulls her over the edge, Ilia silent as he sets about untying her, doing so with practiced precision. She sees the man looking her over with a critical eye, before he settles on her scared eyes, the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the tear tracks staining her cheeks, and his gaze softens. In that moment, Ilia feels like she can trust him, and she lunges forwards, capturing him in a fierce hug and refusing to let go for a long while, bawling her eyes out into his chest while he just rubs small circles on her back, content to wait until she’s let it all out.
When Ilia finally pulls back, she can see her student ID photo on his Scroll, along with text in reverse that she can’t decipher in such a small amount of time. She jolts away from his pressed white uniform, her tears still evident by the small wet patch on his shoulder marring the uniform’s otherwise pristine appearance, the wet on the pin attached to his left side evident in how it catches the light. The man gives her a sad smile for a moment, before he tells her that she should be careful, that the authorities are looking for an Atlas Prep student who assaulted some of her classmates. He tells her that if she wants to stay safe, she should probably avoid going down to Mantle, as the student would likely have a much easier time hiding down there. He tells her she should definitely not go to the shuttle terminal, as the student might make the last flight of the evening down to Mantle if she’s fast and lucky enough. He tells her that he himself is going to have to go check the shuttle terminal, but that he needs to stop for food first, as working on an empty stomach is no good.
He makes a show of going through his wallet and bobbling it, a 100 lien note falling to the ground before he picks his wallet back up, very pointedly not looking at the money that had fallen, and then turns and starts to stride away, loudly debating whether to stop at the food cart near the station, or to just get a sit-down meal and make it quick. Once she’s sure he’s gone, Ilia scoops up the lien and dashes for the shuttle station. She’s late for the shuttle’s scheduled departure time, but as luck would have it, the pilot got stuck when the bathroom door jammed, allowing Ilia to make the shuttle just in time.
***
When Ilia is 12, she stops by her home just long enough to collect her father’s guitar case, a family photo, some clothes she kept there for her visits on the holidays, and whatever lien and non-perishable food she can stuff into a duffle bag, only managing to avoid the police patrolling around in search of her thanks to her camouflage, which she has denied herself for so many years, and she leaves Mantle to head to Vale, where she spends a few weeks getting by on food scraped from dumpsters and the charity of an old man who owns a deli.
As she is walking towards the deli one day, hoping the old man has some just-past-date bread he can spare for lunch, she bumps into a woman, who loses her grip on her groceries. Ilia is helping her pick them up when she sees a tin of beans has rolled a little further away. Surely it won’t be missed, she thinks, growing desperate. It is immediately missed, the woman calling for help with a thief, and Ilia runs, can clutched tight to her chest, trying to ignore the fact that the shouts of what sounds like angry men are gradually growing closer.
She rounds a corner and finds a faunus rights protest going on. She tries to disappear into the crowd, but she's rebuffed, some of them yelling about humans needing to stop sending children to give them a guilt trip. She turns gray, darting into an alley in a final attempt to lose the men pursuing her, but finds that it’s a dead end.
The men begin to advance towards her, growling about the, “filthy faunus needing to be taught a lesson about stealing,” when a black shape drops down from above, landing on the closest man as he reaches out for Ilia’s wrist. Ilia watches as the shape -a girl- moves fluidly through the close quarters of the alley, dodging punches and hitting the men with the handle of a sword. She watches as a punch connects with the girl, and instead of being thrown back, she evaporates into black mist and appears behind the man, knocking him out. She turns around, and Ilia can’t breathe. The girl is beautiful, with her wavy black hair and amber eyes that almost glow, cat ears on top of her head. She offers Ilia a hand and a smile, and Ilia is gone. She knows that she will follow this girl to the ends of Remnant.
The girl introduces herself as Blake, one of her ears swivelling back toward the entrance of the alley just before a tall man with red hair, bull horns and a mask rounds the corner. As he gets ready to leave with Blake, Ilia asks if she can go with them. The man appraises her, watching as her skin changes from yellow back to its natural tanned color, before giving her a curt nod. As they are getting ready to leave, Ilia overhears the man, who introduces himself as Adam, refer to Blake as, “my love." Blake blushes, causing Ilia to scowl, just for a second, before she composes herself and hides it from prying eyes, plastering on her Atlas Prep Smile in its place. She brings them on a small pit stop to the alley where she has been staying to collect her duffle bag filled with her unwashed clothes and family photo, and her father’s guitar case, before she departs for her new life.
***
When Ilia is 13, she and Blake are thick as thieves. Blake goes with her to meet to a man named Tukson, who helps her forge her weapon, her timid nature not allowing her to go alone. He guides her through all of the steps patiently, and by the end of her first week with the White Fang, Lightning Lash is born, Blake there by her side throughout the entire process. They often request to go on missions together, which Adam only allows after Blake wheedles him about it and pouts. Ilia gets a strange feeling about Adam, but doesn’t voice it.
***
When Ilia is 13, Adam takes over her and Blake’s training regimen when he is named Head of the Vale branch of the White Fang. The training is gruelling, and Adam accepts nothing less than perfection, especially from Ilia. After she’s unable to complete the workout one cold winter day, Adam begins to spend less and less time on her training until he decides to focus exclusively on Blake.
***
When Ilia is 15, she has alcohol for the first time. They've just struck a massive blow against the SDC, stealing an entire shipment of Dust, and Adam decides that a celebration is in order. Blake seems hesitant at first, but Adam tells her to cut loose a little and have fun, to not put a damper on everyone’s else’s good time, and Ilia -having already drank a few of the tiny glasses, thinking they would be easier- joins in, telling Blake to stop being such a party pooper and then giggling uncontrollably for a few seconds about having said, “pooper." Blake finally relents, and goes to take a sip of the bottle Adam hands her before he puts his hand under the end of it, tilting it up and making her drink more.
At some point in the night, Ilia ends up cuddled up with Blake by the fire, tracing small circles on Blake’s forearm, the fire in her stomach trying and failing to convince her to tell Blake how she feels about her. Adam notices and sways over to them, some sort of glint in his eye that makes Ilia shudder slightly, before he brandishes his drink, loudly declaring to the group that he thinks it would be a wonderful idea to start daring each other to do things, that as leader he gets to go first, and that for his first turn, he dares Blake and Ilia to kiss. Ilia starts to sweat bullets, and Blake looks like she might protest, before Adam insists that it’s all just in good fun and she should loosen up and give it a try. Ilia’s not sure if she imagines the edge his voice takes when he says that to Blake.
Blake looks in Ilia’s direction, hesitant, and Ilia pauses from where she has unconsciously already begun to lean in when she sees Blake’s uncomfortable expression. Just as she is opening her mouth to agree with Blake that maybe they should not do this tonight, Trifa comes up behind Ilia and gives her a drunken, playful little shove forward, whooping words of encouragement as Ilia suddenly finds her lips on Blake’s, noting how Blake tenses for just a moment before relaxing into the kiss and letting out a little sigh through her nose, and when her hand comes up to caress Ilia’s cheek, she melts, and the world fades out for a moment.
Far too late and yet far too quickly, Adam clears his throat, and both girls fall away from each other with a start. Ilia, in that moment, takes note of 3 things: Blake won’t meet her eyes, although there is a generous blush dusting her face; her own skin is bright pink, which everyone has noticed; and Adam is giving her a mostly-unreadable look that Ilia thinks might border on suspicious, appraising, before turning to Blake. It’s then that Adam declares that they should probably all turn in for the night, and takes Blake by the wrist, pulling her back towards their tent.
***
When Ilia is 15, she decides to talk to Blake about what happened at the bonfire a few weeks earlier. She hasn’t been able to stop thinking about the feel of Blake’s lips on hers, and knows that she should tell Blake her feelings like she had wanted to that night. Adam is off on a mission without Blake (which is a rarity all its own), and Ilia appreciates the privacy this will afford her. When she enters the tent that Blake shares with Adam, she finds her reading one of those Ninjas of Love books that she always seems to have lying about somewhere close at hand.
Blake notices her awkwardly standing by the tent flap and puts her book down, sitting up and wordlessly patting the spot next to her on the cot. Ilia sits next to her, and musters up the courage to say what she has wanted to say from the moment she met Blake. She admits her feelings to Blake, and Blake just sits there, silent for long enough that Ilia thinks she’s made a mistake, and Ilia can’t look her in the eye right now. She stares at the ground, feeling her skin prickle, trying to turn blue, feeling her eyes start to well up, and she suppresses both sensations.
As she gets up to leave, an apology on her lips, Blake catches her by the wrist, and Ilia turns, stunned to suddenly find Blake’s lips on hers instead of the apology. Blake says that she doesn’t know exactly what she’s feeling, but wants to try to figure it out, and Ilia’s bones practically liquify when she feels Blake hum into the kiss a little, happy as can be. It’s clumsy, and leaves them breathless and wiping a little drool off of their lips and chins, and it’s the best thing Ilia has ever felt. Blake makes her promise not to tell anyone, especially Adam, because she doesn’t want to cause any drama and she cares about Adam too, and needs to figure things out. Ilia, remembering the strange look that Adam had given her that night and giddy that her crush has kissed her again, agrees.
***
When Ilia is 16, she starts to notice things gradually changing. Adam is letting Ilia go on missions with Blake less and less, giving her more dangerous missions. At first Ilia thinks her skills are finally being recognized, but then a mission goes wrong and her extraction isn’t where Adam said it would be. Ilia barely makes it back to camp, and when she confronts Adam about it, he tells her that she must have misremembered the coordinates for the extraction.
Ilia almost believes him.
***
When Ilia is 16, Blake sneaks into her tent one night, wordlessly climbing under the covers with Ilia and burying her face into Ilia’s shoulder, immediately dampening her skin. Ilia sits up a little to get a better look at Blake, and she can see the bruises starting to form on her wrists.
Blake tells her that Adam had wanted to take their relationship further, had told her that she’s not a child anymore and she should start to act like it, held her wrists too tight when he was inside her, went too fast when she asked him to slow down, and held her, whispering apologies in her ear when it was over, saying he’s sorry, and that she just felt so good, that he lost himself in the moment and it won’t happen again. Blake tells Ilia that she feels like she’s betraying Adam by feeling regret about it. Ilia tells her it’s okay, holding Blake while she cries herself to sleep, right up until Blake leaves to return to Adam’s tent just before dawn.
***
When Ilia is 16, Blake comes back from a mission arguing with Adam, whose jacket has a large red stain on it. They continue their argument all the way to their tent, Adam’s expression reminding Ilia of a teacher’s when a kid in class gave a particularly stupid answer to a question, all disappointment and condescension. Ilia goes back to her tent, knowing that intruding in Adam’s tent would bring nothing but trouble for the both of them.
Blake finds her later, with a fresh bruise on her cheek this time and no more excuses on her lips. She tells Ilia of how Adam had killed a human on the mission, an unarmed human who had surrendered and posed no threat to him, how he claimed he thought the human was going for a weapon. She tells Ilia of her fears that the White Fang is moving away from their mission to help the faunus, that they're becoming dangerous to faunus and humans alike. She tells Ilia that she wants to leave, to do something to make an actual difference, to help people, faunus and human, rather than harm them.
Ilia looks Blake in the eyes, and at first doesn’t find herself entirely agreeing. She thinks of her parents, dead in a mine, buried in a mass grave after having worked themselves to the bone to get by and give her a real education. She thinks of her “friends'' from Atlas Prep, who could hear of such a tragedy and snicker about it. She thinks of the woman she took the tin of beans from, who would see a small, dirty, skinny child who was desperate enough to steal, and send grown men after her instead of helping her. But she also thinks of the deli owner who gave her what he could even though he himself was barely scraping by, thinks of the doctor in Mantle who gave her parents medicine for free when she was sick. She meets Blake's eyes and says, “Okay," before Blake locks her in a fierce, hungry kiss, tongue slipping into Ilia’s mouth.
Ilia dies and goes to heaven before returning back to Remnant; they start planning that night.
***
When Ilia is 16, everything goes toes up for the second time in her life. Adam insists that Ilia can’t come on the train heist with him and Blake, that she's needed at camp. The whole time they are gone, Ilia is a mess of anxiety, wondering how they're going to plan their next attempt, when they'll get another chance as good as this one was.
Hours later, Adam returns alone, and Ilia’s heart drops to somewhere deep underground. She can’t have left, she can’t. She would never leave without Ilia. Adam is in a fury, and locks right on to Ilia, stomping over to her and grabbing her wrist in a vice grip, dragging her into the tent behind him, not caring when she stumbles and hits the ground, not caring that he’s bruising her already. He accuses her of having planned this betrayal with Blake, demands to know where she went. Ilia doesn’t know herself; they had been so confident that they would leave together they had never planned past the leaving part, never thought of a destination. She tells Adam that she doesn’t know, which is true, and it’s only after the 6th or 7th time he hits her and receives the same answer that he seems to believe her. Adam tells her that he’ll find out who helped Blake defect, implies that bad things will happen to whoever it was, that he'll hunt them to the ends of Remnant for taking his love away from him. He stares at Ilia for one more eternal moment, before allowing her to slink back to her tent to nurse her wounds and sort out her maelstrom of emotions.
***
When Ilia is 16, she starts to notice that everyone in camp seems to be watching her more closely, giving her strange looks that seem to border on disgust; that she isn’t given any solo missions anymore, that the only times she's left unwatched are in the bathroom or when she’s asleep, and even then, the patrols seem to pass her tent more often than they used to.
If Tukson were still here, he would still talk to her, but he was transferred to the Mistral branch a few years ago, never arriving there. The Brothers and Sisters who went with him said he slipped away while they were buying tickets for the boat between Sanus and Anima.
Ilia spends her nights crying, upset at Blake and longing for her in equal turns, unsure why she hasn’t come back for Ilia, or communicated with her at all. Ilia wishes she could leave and go find Blake, get the answers for herself, but she’s too afraid of Adam to try running away alone; even with her faunus trait, she wouldn’t get that large of a head start, knows she's under too much scrutiny to slip away undetected for very long. Adam’s mood seems to begin to dictate the rest of the camp’s attitude toward her, and she finds herself either being left alone, watched from a distance and with no one to talk to, or spoken to with a mixture of condescension and latent hostility.
Ilia is surrounded by people she once called her Brothers and Sisters, yet she finds herself crushingly alone.
***
When Ilia is 16, a strange human woman in a red dress comes to the camp, wanting to speak with Adam. She's turned away, but returns with backup and burns part of the camp to the ground before Adam relents and extends their aid to her plans.
Ilia’s tent is one of the ones that was lost; she only manages to save her father’s guitar, losing her duffle bag with her clothes and photo of her parents when the tent burns, and she has to sleep outside in a sleeping bag because no one else wants her in their tent, although Trifa (whose tent is one of the ones that is actually full, unfortunately for Ilia) does sneak her an extra blanket when no one else is looking. It’s a nice gesture, but Ilia wishes she had more when the winter sets in.
***
When Ilia is 17, she manages to get out of participating in the attack on Beacon by faking an illness. She has to do the somewhat painful job of forcing only a small part of her skin to turn while suppressing the rest in order to create an acceptable illusion of a very pallid appearance. She's wanted out of the Fang ever since she and Blake had started planning to run, and that desire has only grown since Adam allied with Cinder. She knows what they are doing is wrong, but between being accompanied on every mission she's ordered to carry out, and how bone-tired she is after all the work she's given every day, she can’t see a way out.
A few days before the attack is set to be carried out, Ilia manages to get some alone time in her new tent, which took far too long for Adam to procure, under the guise of needing sleep and not wanting to get anyone else sick. The guilty part of her mind (which is most of it lately) says that she shouldn’t have the luxury of not seeing the people that she knows are going to die but cannot save, shouldn’t have the luxury of blissful ignorance to their presently happy lives, so she pulls up the live coverage of the Vytal Festival, and watches as Pyrrha Nikos and a short redhead decimate their opponents in the doubles round.
The next match is announced, and Ilia is hooked: Weiss Schnee’s team is up next. Weiss fucking Schnee, whose family is responsible for all of her suffering, whose oppression of the faunus has led her to where her life is right now. She sees that Neon Katt, a girl she remembers from Atlas Prep who attended on a full scholarship, is one of her opponents. Ilia remembers Katt as self-assured, impervious to the barbs the other students threw her way for being a faunus. She also remembers Katt as being a very competent fighter who had been obnoxiously vocal about her desire to be a Huntress from Ilia’s very first day at Atlas Prep. Ilia can’t wait to watch her kick the Schnee’s ass. So imagine her surprise when not only does the Schnee sacrifice herself in a desperate gambit that ends up winning her team the match (Ilia almost cackled when the geyser took out the Schnee), but then Blake of all people is rushing onto the field, sliding to her knees right by the Schnee and cradling her in her arms. Ilia’s disbelief grows and turns into outright anger and disgust when she notices the bow Blake's wearing over her ears.
She can’t believe it; fucking Blake is curling around the Schnee like some sort of loyal, Schnee-loving lapcat now, is that how it is? That’s why she left Ilia behind, to go become a Huntress and cozy up to a fucking Schnee? Ilia no longer misses Blake; no, Ilia hates Blake for those few seconds before the coverage goes to commercial, and Ilia decides she can’t watch any more.
***
When Ilia is 18, Adam transfers her over to the Menagerie branch of the White Fang, to take orders from Fennec and Corsac Albain, and to work to keep Blake’s father, the Chieftain, in check. She wishes that her first time coming to Menagerie was under better circumstances, but she marvels at the beauty of Kuo Kuana all the same. She doesn’t trust Fennec and Corsac, and has a feeling that Adam has told them to keep a close eye on her, as she finds herself in the company of at least one of the twins or Yuma, their trusted deputy, more often than not.
She wishes she could leave, especially after seeing footage of the horrors of the Fall of Beacon that Adam paraded around to tout his great victory for the faunus after that night. She remembers hearing that the Nikos girl had almost died, would almost certainly never walk again after Cinder shot an arrow into her spine, and feels a crushing sense of hate for herself, for what the Fang has turned into. Pyrrha Nikos, who had used her celebrity status to advocate for fair treatment of the faunus, and Ilia had been a part of the giant machine that had ruined her life. She remembers seeing that girl from Atlas being torn apart, the horrified look on Nikos’ face before the stream cut out. She wants to leave, desperately wants to, but doesn’t think she can.
When Blake arrives back in Menagerie with some monkey faunus boy in tow, Ilia puts that desperation on the back burner and lets her anger at being left behind in this hell take hold. She lets it drive her as she spies on Blake’s family, lets it drive her as she fights Blake for her Scroll, lets it drive her when she stabs Lightning Lash right into the monkey faunus' shoulder. Upon hearing his scream of pain, seeing the blood on her weapon, the horror on Blake’s face, the sadness in her eyes, all of Ilia’s anger dissipates.
She runs.
***
When Ilia is 18, Fennec and Corsac report on her failure to Adam. Ilia is horrified to learn that Adam plans to assassinate and usurp High Leader Khan; she’s even more horrified when he orders her to participate in an attack on the Belladonna mansion, with the goal of silencing Blake’s mother and father and capturing Blake to return her to Adam's clutches.
Ilia, in desperation, leaves a note for Blake, telling her to meet her alone so they can talk. Ilia doesn’t realize she’s been followed until it’s too late, and Trifa catches her and Blake in webs, ordering the two Fang grunts who came with her to load the both of them onto a ship to bring to Adam so that he can deal with them personally. Blake looks Ilia in the eye, and Ilia can see the flicker of fear there at the thought of going back to Adam, before Blake starts mouthing a short countdown to Ilia, then shouts “Now!”, prompting the monkey faunus to drop down and knock out the grunts, freeing Blake and Ilia. Ilia dusts herself off, finding that she can’t look either Blake or the monkey boy (whose name she finally learns is Sun) in the eye.
The three of them rush to the mansion, already under attack, joining the guards in attempting to repel the intruders. After the fighting is done, Ilia confronts Blake about why she left without her, and Blake tearfully tells her that Adam struck her again, threatened her, after she protested against harming the crew during the train heist. She apologizes for running, for being too scared to help Ilia, and Ilia forgives her, apologizing for her own role in all of the chaos on Menagerie. Ilia, deciding that she wants to try and fix her relationship with Blake, joins her defense of Haven Academy.
***
When Ilia is 18, she’s on a ship for a few weeks, helping to train the faunus militia for the coming battle at Haven, and it feels just like old times. Blake and Ilia are having a few drinks one night, the two of them reminiscing about their years in the Fang together, recalling old jokes and good memories made, when Ilia is overcome by a sudden urge and kisses Blake, just like she had that night by the bonfire years ago. This time, however, Blake tenses up, and pulls away. It’s then that Ilia learns the painful truth, that Blake has been dating the Schnee, of all people, since the night of the school dance at Beacon.
At first, Ilia is furious all over again, but that's quickly stripped away when she remembers the night Blake came to her in tears after Adam took her first time and compares that to how tenderly she saw Blake holding the Schnee after their tournament fight, how much adoration was written all over Blake’s body language, and finds that more than anything, she wants Blake to be happy. She excuses herself for the night, feeling awkward about having kissed Blake when she’s dating someone who actually seems to make her happy.
Ilia avoids Blake as much as possible for the next few days, but eventually Blake tracks her down and forces the conversation. Blake tells Ilia of how alone Weiss seemed to her when they first met, how much she felt she had in common with Weiss. She tells Ilia that after their friends helped Weiss break her father's programming, Weiss had no issue with her being a faunus, and how horrible she felt at seeing the fear in Weiss’ eyes when she learned that Blake was ex-White Fang; how the White Fang had made attempts on Weiss’ life as early as 10, once she was named the SDC heiress. Eventually, Blake convinces Ilia to give Weiss a chance when she meets her.
***
When Ilia is 18, she has to separate from the rest of the group arriving to defend Haven, defusing the explosives before they can level the academy. She gets done before the fighting is over, and moves to go help the group fighting in Haven’s lobby. She arrives just in time to see a one-armed girl (one of Blake’s teammates, the one who went to the Vytal Festival finals, she recognizes) emerging alone from a lift carrying a strange blue lamp. She arrives just in time for a girl with mint-green hair to drop to her knees, screaming and clutching her head as a giant monstrosity, a Grimm in the shape of a woman, raises up from the ground with a shriek, red eyes piercing Ilia’s being. As the woman swoops down towards Ilia, she feels a primal fear fill her, and pressure suffuses her head before settling in, feeling like it’s going to burn right through her. Ilia collapses onto the floor, holding her head as the pain surges through, one last pulse flooding her face before it abruptly fades away.
She comes to with someone shaking her shoulder, and finds herself face-to-face with the Schnee (Weiss, she corrects herself). She pushes down her initial impulse to hit her, remembering that she had promised Blake to give Weiss a chance, and so she hesitantly allows Weiss to help her back to her feet, noticing a blood-soaked hole in the heiress’ dress, along with a large scar underneath it. She scans the room, looking for Blake, only for her eyes to settle instead on the mute girl with pink and brown hair who worked for Torchwick, and that is now clinging to the blonde girl’s arm like a koala, refusing to let go when she tries to take what appears to be her prosthetic arm from Blake, extended like an olive branch, hoping to cut through the clear tension between the two. Blake also seems surprised to see the mute girl, but appears to be ignoring that for the moment.
Ilia, seeing no one else appearing particularly worried that a violent mute assassin is latched onto Blondie (Yang, she remembers), swallows her pride and corrals Weiss towards her, whisper-shouting to ask Weiss what Neo is doing here. Weiss tells her how Torchwick died during the Fall of Beacon, and how, blaming Ruby, she had gone to Patch to get revenge on her, only to find Yang instead. Yang eventually had set Neo straight, proving to her that Roman had died to a Nevermore, that Ruby had tried to save him, and that he wouldn’t have died if Cinder hadn’t caused the Fall. Neo, in return, helped Yang recover from her depression after losing her arm, and helped her get used to her new arm, with Yang helping Neo become a kinder, more well-adjusted person (though it was still a work in progress).
Satisfied that she isn’t in danger of dying to a parasol, Ilia approaches Blake, who is glad to see that she's awake. She and Ruby had both apparently passed out after the mint-haired girl (Emerald, Yang informs her) had used her Semblance to create the illusion of that horrifying Grimm woman. Exhaustion starts to catch up to Ilia, and she ends up following Weiss and Ruby to where they’ve been staying in Mistral, Blake heading off to talk with Yang some more, trying to ease the tension between them (Jaune, the tall blonde boy, has become fast friends with Neo due to their mutual desire to kill Cinder; he ends up having to pry her off of Yang’s arm, carrying her away while she pouts over his shoulder so Blake and Yang can talk privately).
Ilia is falling asleep almost before she hits her pillow.
***
When Ilia is 18, she learns that Blake is going to be rejoining her old team to take that weird lamp to Atlas, and can’t help but feel like she’s being left behind again as she walks to the train station to see Blake off.