Chapter Text

Blake yawned as she sat down in the semi-comfortable chair that would be her new home for the next 12 hours. She knew when she’d booked the cross country train from Vale to Vacuo that it would be an excruciatingly long journey, but she had friends and business that needed to be done so really it was unavoidable.

Unless she wanted to spend months trekking across the undeveloped land that was crawling with Grimm. Yeah, this was definitely the best option. No matter what she told people about her childhood, Blake preferred the safety of the cities. After what she’d seen happen to so many villages, it was understandable as to why.

Still, 12 hours is a long time. The train hadn’t even started moving and Blake was starting to feel that dull ache she got whenever she was being unproductive. She reached into her bag to pull out her book, which should get her through about half of the trip if she was lucky, and tried to get into a position she could actually remain in for a while.

“Pulling out the book already huh?” The girl sitting across from her asked, grinning. She looked exceedingly enthusiastic and happy, which would probably steadily decline over the course of this train journey. Blake had been on enough of them to know how they worked. But didn’t the girl get the message that when on public transport you don’t talk to anyone? No eye contact, no acknowledgement of existence, no talking. That is not how solo journeys worked. The girl must be new to this.

“Yeah.” Blake nodded vaguely, she didn’t want to just completely ignore the blonde who was staring at her expectantly. That would lead to an awkward silence where Blake was bound by the rules of social interaction to respond. She had 12 hours, she couldn’t be in a state of an expectant answer for 12 hours. She could do it for 4, possibly 8, but not 12.

“Well, hope you have a few in there cause this is going to be a long ride.” The girl laughed, and Blake couldn’t stop the tiny grin from appearing on her face. Damn that laugh was contagious, and it seemed like the girl laughed with her entire body, not one cell didn’t feel that enjoyment.

“Right.”

There was a pause. Blake liked it. She opened her book to where she’d left it and started to immerse herself in these characters’ lives again. It was about a young boy living in Menagerie and it was fascinating.

“I’m Yang by the way.” Jeez, did she not get the hint that Blake didn’t want to talk? A nice laugh doesn’t mean the privilege of vocal communication, especially not on a train. “What’s your name?” Yang asked. Well, actually, it was nice to pair a name with a face. Yang. It suited her somehow.

Still, now Blake really had to decide whether or not she was going to answer this one. Telling Yang her name would mean that they would be having some form of real conversation, where information was shared and they started telling each other things. Blake really wasn’t one to get involved in those kind of discussions, she was more of a ‘business first, friends never’ kind of girl. And Yang seemed like she would get very annoying, very quickly. Who starts a conversation with someone they see on a train?

Years later, Blake never understood why she decided to go against what her mind was telling her.

“Blake.”

“Cool name.”

“Thanks.”

Yang grinned again, and settled down in her seat, staring out the window onto the platform. The train hadn’t even started moving yet. It seemed as if Yang wasn’t going to be saying much more for a while, so Blake settled back down with her book. Only another 12 hours to go.

~

“Hey look at this!” Yang said excitedly from her seat. They were an hour into the journey and she hadn’t said anything since the platform, Blake was hoping for an understanding of silence. Apparently that wasn’t going to happen. But the black-haired girl still ignored the blonde in the hope that she’d give up.

Blake Belladonna really didn’t know Yang. At all.

“Blake? Blake?” Great, now she’d have to respond.

“Yes?”

“Look!” Yang pointed excitedly out the window to the outskirts of Vale. Blake had seen it before; hell, Blake had crawled over that wall, half dead, and lived in those streets for her first year in the city, but Yang didn’t know that. From her reaction, Blake guessed that this was the first time she’d seen this edge of Vale. Surprising, it seemed like Yang would be the type to go and explore wherever she could.

“It’s pretty.”

“Pretty? It’s amazing, all those houses, different people in there living their lives, unaware of how close they are to the monsters outside the walls? I mean, I’ve seen it all up close but having a wider view just throws everything into perspective, you know? We’re all so tiny, living in our houses that look so similar to one another. And we all want something more out of life.” Yang’s eyes lit up as she spoke, the wonder in her voice encapsulating her attitude.

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Huh?”

“People don’t always want something more out of life. People can’t usually get more out of life. All we can do is hope to make some changes in the world.” Blake stared out across at all of the houses, trying to see what Yang saw. But she couldn’t. Blake didn’t want to let her pessimism dictate her view, but she wondered how many of those people had voted in favour of the latest anti-faunus bill.

“Woah this is getting deep.”

“You brought up our size in the universe, what did you expect?”

“For you to share in my wonder of the world?”

“You don’t know me very well.”

Blake didn’t let herself regret the harshness of her words. This girl needed to learn that you can’t just strike up conversations with people you’ve never met before. That’s not how society worked. Okay, sure, she seemed absolutely fascinating and had a beautiful outlook on the world and a smile that seemed to shine so brightly that Blake had difficulty looking at it, but she needed to learn boundaries. This was the right thing to do.

This book was really interesting and now certainly taking up all of Blake’s interest which was why she was staring at it so intently.

Suddenly a presence made itself known in the chair next to Blake. Daring to look over the top of her book, she saw Yang smiling widely at her.

“Let’s change that, shall we?”

~

Hour 4 into the train ride and Blake was participating in one of the most enjoyable discussions she had had in a very long time. Sure, she was passionate about her fight for faunus rights and yes, of course, she was happy to educate people so they could dig themselves out of ignorance, but she hadn’t really taken part in a conversation with a human which didn’t leave her worrying for the future of her people in what must have been a few years.

Talking with Yang was different.

Yang liked adventure, Yang told stories, Yang shared jokes that didn’t end with forced laughter. She understood Blake’s quiet nature and compensated for that within the conversation without taking over. They never talked about faunus rights directly, it isn’t usually something that people bring up in a casual, get-to-know-someone chat, but some throwaway comments immediately told Blake that Yang had a viewpoint very similar to her own.

And the stories that girl could tell? Blake thought she was good at first impressions, but she was definitely wrong here. The blonde had been all over Vale, and even taken a couple of exploratory trips out to Atlas and Mistral as well. She had fought Grimm whilst hiking outside the walls, who went hiking outside the walls, and had completely destroyed a nightclub on the shady side of Vale.

The stories seemed to be wild, and unbelievable and yet Blake ate them up and let herself get lost in the tales. She could imagine a younger version of the girl sitting beside her going out with her friends and chasing a mugger across town in order to subdue him. She could see the tiny blonde with her even smaller sister running around the Vytal festival playing all of the games that they could find. For Yang, it didn’t seem like much of a stretch.

“This is my first time going to Vacuo though, I’ve always wanted to see it.” That was another thing, she was always sincere, there was nothing about Yang that felt secret or hidden. Everything about her was out in the open, easy to see.

“It’s really laid back there, not much to look at with the architecture but the people are certainly interesting.”

“How many times have you been?”

“A fair few.”

“Nice, how come? Why do you go…vac there?” Blake let out an exasperated sigh.

“That was awful.”

“That was brilliant. Now come on, answer the question.” Damn girl looked so proud of herself.

“There’s a group of people there that I work with on a regular basis, we don’t have a constant CCT connection so normally we have to talk in person. It’s just work.” Blake tried not to make it sound suspicious. Considering how she’d managed to keep up a certain air of mystery, she figured that she’d succeeded. Didn’t hurt to be cautious though.

“Oh, cool. Must be nice to get a change of scenery.”

“Sounds like you know that very well.”

Yang let out a deep breath and relaxed in her chair.

“Yeah I do.” She murmured, actually looking rather sombre. “I wonder when it’ll be enough.” She had said it so quietly that Blake almost didn’t catch it. She decided not to question it further, Yang had respected her boundaries and she was going to return the favour. But this girl obviously had something on her mind, and Blake couldn’t help but be curious. Letting it rest was more difficult than she thought it would be, for some reason Blake wanted to learn everything she could about this girl.

Neither of them said anything for few minutes, indicating that the conversation was over. That was fine; it had been nice whilst it had lasted.

Wait, was she falling asleep?

~

Yang had been asleep for a few hours now and Blake didn’t know how much longer she could cope. To begin with, it had been okay, she’d just been dozing calmly in the seat looking far too adorable to be fair, but also easy enough to ignore and so Blake went back to her book. Then the dreams started, they didn’t appear to be nightmares per se, but Yang was reacting rather animatedly to them. She was kicking the chair in front of her, her eyes were twitching a lot and Blake swore she could hear Yang say “Ruby.”

But again, this was manageable, it stopped almost as suddenly as it had begun and Yang was back to her peaceful slumber that looked too tranquil for Blake to interrupt for anything.

After that was when Blake started to panic a little bit. Apparently, Yang’s neck was tired of supporting Yang’s head and thus, independently of its owner’s conscious decision, decided that Blake’s shoulder was going to take on that role. The blonde was leaning on Blake’s shoulder, very content, and sleeping. There wasn’t an arm rest separating them, and Yang was starting to get a little…clingy…

Blake didn’t mind the sleeping girl wrapping her arm around Blake’s waist, it actually felt rather nice, but she couldn’t help but wonder what Yang’s reaction would be when she woke up. Therefore, Blake tried to disentangle herself from the arm that was holding her close to a practical stranger’s body. Tried being the key word here.

This girl was strong, unbelievably strong, and her grip was like a vice; only getting tighter the more Blake tried to free herself from it.

Eventually, the black haired girl gave up, and accepted that she was now Yang’s equivalent of a teddy bear. Come to think of it, this was rather comfortable, the blonde seemed to be emitting some form of heat that made Blake feel like she was under a duvet and she had been awake for a really long amount of time.

Closing her eyes for a minute wouldn’t hurt. There was still 5 hours left to go on this train, it would be in Blake’s best interest to get some shuteye.

~

“Blake? Hey Blake.” The faunus tried to fight the force that was attempting to awaken her. She was so tired, and comfortable, and really did not feel like moving. In fact, snuggling closer to the warm presence was what she wanted, not turning away from it. The warm presence laughed, it felt amazing to be so close to that laugh. “Come on, wake up. We’re in Vacuo.”

Blake was awake. It took her a couple moments to remember her situation. Train. Vacuo. Business. Yang.

Oh god Yang. Blake had almost started purring just from being close to that girl, that would have been embarrassing. This was embarrassing, they’d only known each other for twelve hours.

“Sorry I…”

“Don’t apologize.” Yang smiled, starting to get out of her seat. Giving herself a few more moments to collect herself, Blake had to be in prime condition to meet with her friends here, the black haired girl stretched and let her muscles ready themselves for movement. “Here you go.”

Yang handed her her bag with another grin, and then headed towards the exit.

“I gotta dash, lots to see here. But hey, I’ll see you around, Blake Belladonna.” And then she was gone. This fascinating girl who, despite what she said, Blake would probably never see again in her life. She couldn’t let herself feel disappointment.

Wait, when did Blake tell Yang her last name?

It was a long shot, but searching quickly through her bag Blake found her scroll and checked her contacts, and there, practically glowing amongst all of the names of Blake’s acquaintances, was one that wasn’t just scroll details, but an unwritten promise.

“I’ll see you again Yang Xiao Long. Definitely.”