The bar's weirdly empty. You turn over a glass between your hands, hum along to the familiar jazz that plays through the speakers stored in the cabinets, and watch the door to see if any living soul will come and ease your boredom. You're used to Friday night jams with an abundance of eye candy and a steady stream of Lien and limoncello.

Nothing.

It's boring you out of your skull, so the sudden jingle of the door nearly sends you rocketing out of your chair. Weiss comes stalking in, shoulders uncharacteristically hunched forward. Her bag - a birthday present from Ruby - nearly tumbles down to the bent crook of her arm, but she hustles into a bar stool before anything dramatic can happen.

She meets eyes with you, and you just look at each other for a few moments before she snaps two fingers in front of your face and points you towards your extensive stash of liquor.

"Geez."

You toss a look over your shoulder at her attitude but pour her some cognac because you're feeling charitable today. She doesn't even sip it, slams it like it's a shot some creep bought it for her and she needs to get away quick.

"Jesus H. Christ. Who pissed in your Pumpkin Pete's today?" Weiss glares at you over the rim of her glass; she's draining the last few drops of brandy from the bottom and you snatch it away from her to fill her up again. She grunts thankfully and takes it slower this time, enjoying the flowered edges of the drink instead of looking for something sharp.

"Are you gonna say anything or are you just gonna drink my cognac and be mean?" You ask, genuinely interested in what's got the ice princess's britches knotted so tight. She usually doesn't drink, only when she's feeling frisky - sometimes you wish Ruby wasn't so open about her relationship, but your rambling thought process gets cut off when Weiss rolls the glass between her palms and sets it down with a pronounced click.

"Ruby and I… had a verbal disagreement."

"Why can't you just say fight like a normal person?" You ask, smoothing a printed label on a whiskey with your thumb.

"I knew it was a bad idea to come here." Weiss grumbles and starts to gather up her things but you're not willing to let your first conversation in a few hours get away so quickly.

"No, no, no, please, c'mon, I'm sure I can help. I'm good with relationships."

"And yet you're living by yourself, hung up on someone who left you four years ago."

You wince visibly at that, and even Weiss looks a bit stunned at the reaction you've given her, so she backs off a little, palms up.

"I'm sorry, that was a low blow."

You turn your back and wave a hand.

"Nah, nah, no worries. It's the truth and we all know it." You drag over a stool from behind the counter and sit so you're both eye level, which is laughable, because in your Beacon days, you had conversations with her from a bird's eye view.

"So spill."

Weiss lets her finger stray near her empty glass and arches a neatly groomed brow. You groan all the way from the back of your throat. You pour her another glass, unable to hold back one last jab.

"You're a real piece of shit, you know that?"

"Funny, not the first time I've heard that today."

Weiss and Ruby have been married for seven months by now, so you're surprised this is the first fight that's reduced them both to tears. As you sit and listen, you slowly pick out a few things that they've both done wrong. Weiss had been too invested in work, Ruby had been too rambunctious, they'd both blown up, and now Weiss was scared to face her wife at home.

"I know I'm acting childish. It's just been stressful and I wanted peace and quiet. All Ruby wants to do is go out for dinner, and next thing you know, we're both screaming at each other." Weiss's buzz has already hit and run, and it's pitch dark outside, so you're keeping the cognac out of her reach.

"Compromise, it's what makes the world go 'round." You add wisely. "You've fought before; what makes this different? Just go home and give her a hug." You've got your feet propped up on the counter, reasoning with a tiny umbrella clamped between your front teeth.

"I don't know. Maybe because we're married now? I don't want to screw it up with her." Weiss slumps her head onto her hands and sighs heavily. "Ruby is the best thing that's ever happened to me. I don't want her to be sad because of me."

"Then what are you still doing here? Go sweep my baby sister off her feet. She's missing you." When Weiss gives you a look, you spread your hands sagely. "Sister bonds are stronger than you think, princess."

Weiss flashes you a rare smile, the sharp outline of her incisor there and gone before you can really process it. She heaves her bag back onto her shoulder, but before she can get out the door, you slip her a nice wine for good luck.

"Lemme know how it goes." You grin at her, leaning across the bar.

"I will. Thanks, Yang." She hugs you, and you actually enjoy it because she's no longer brittle and bitter bones, but warm and soft in your arms. You're happy for her. She leaves, and you putter around for a few hours, serving some patrons who drop in to say hi or frequent the infrequent bar crawls of Mistral.

Closing time comes quick, so you flip the sign in the window, and make your way around the lounge to stack chairs. By the time you're upstairs, it's already two in the morning. You slip out of your clothes quickly, shedding layers like a butterfly emerging from a cloth chrysalis. After you finish brushing your teeth, you pause to look at yourself in the mirror.

Your hair's still a mess, falling around your hips in odd, sporadic curls and choppy layers. When you were still traveling Remnant and looking for Blake, you'd gotten some sections braided and woven with thread from street merchants just for the hell of it, and you can still see some parts where you've chopped the colorful wraps after tiring of them.

The lines around your eyes have deepened with time and sunlight; when you were younger, you always thought that get a deeper tan from hanging around beaches, not trekking across deserts looking for a partner that disappeared in the night. Your eyes are still the same shade of lavender, edged with lashes and a ring of mascara smudges. The tattoo around your bicep is new, along with the tangle of piercings lining the edges of your ears. You suppose you can thank your dad for the familial good looks, but even you can see that you look tired and that your smile is too tight to be genuine.

The bar was supposed to be a new start, a way to leave the past behind. You can see the stupidity in that hope now. Alcohol always brought along memories like an unwanted demon, and selling it for a living seems like a death wish. The memory of Blake follows you around like a stain on your bedsheet, and after wasting four years of looking her, you can't help but feel like a half-dead fool.

You crawl into the bed that always feels too big for just you, and curl up with your Scroll. You have one text notification from Weiss, and when you open it, a selfie of her and Ruby fills your screen with the tagline, "Thanks.".

Your baby sister's holding the wine you sent along with good wishes, one of her eyes scrunched in a wink, and you can see the traces of Weiss's lipstick on her cheek. Weiss's smiling, and the edge of a new hickey on her neck lets you know she's been fully forgiven. You smile at how blissful they look, cheeks crushed against each others and lips parted wide.

The Scroll's light is starting to hurt your eyes so you send off a parting text and set it on your bedside table. Your sheets are chilled - you've been forgetting to close your windows when you leave the house, but maybe you're just hoping for the devils in your house to leave in the daytime.

Somehow they always come back in the night.

Blake's always been soft. She's always been fluid and quiet and gentle, and there's no change in her demeanor when she traces the line of your collarbone with her nail. It's tantric, the smooth rhythm of her heartbeat melding with yours, and she smiles down at you, Faunus ears flicking lazily.

You lean into her touch, arch closer to the rasp of skin against skin, and pleasure flutters through your veins like dim firelight. You can't help but sigh; Blake's there with you and touching you and rolling into the soft give of your hips and reciprocating and alive -

It's all you've ever wanted.

You wake up crying.

Hell, it's sure not the first time you've dreamt about Blake, but this one feels different, an omen of proportional size sneaking its way into your dreams. The feeling of being happy had been so real, and you had looked up into those bright amber eyes and felt the universe tumble and shake itself to its core, burn back to creation and death again.

Your bed is cold, so you huddle in on yourself, wrap the blankets and clench them around your heart in a heavy fist. The tears don't stop coming and they slide down the slant of your nose and onto the pillowcase. You bite your lip and will the chasm in your chest to stop growing so massive.

She's gone. You know she's gone and she left you behind because you're never enough, but you tried to be. God, you tried. You held her and kissed her and loved no matter how hard it was for her to allow herself to feel again - you were there and you loved her.

You fall asleep like that, cursing any higher being that's been making it a regular occurrence to fuck with your life.

You've been invited to a new club opening downtown, so Ruby's in charge of the bar tonight, cheerily pouring drinks while Weiss lurks nearby to make sure no one gets handsy. You haven't been out in a while, and when you slide into an old dress, you feel eighteen again. Everything was so much more alive when you were younger, and now the world is bitter and dusty, no matter how try to find the beauty in it again.

The club is loud and packed with people when you get there, so you stay off of the dance floor and order a drink. You're a people pleaser at heart, so you order something that's mostly made of the bottle nearest to the bartender. It doesn't take you a lot of effort to get noticed by a few old friends while you're leaning on the bar's countertop.

Coco and Velvet drift by after you've had a few sips of your drink and they embrace you warmly. Velvet's all dressed up in a short dress and soft leather, a thin tangle of gold necklaces wrapped around her neck. Coco's got her hand wrapped around Velvet's waist, gold-rimmed aviators tugging the neckline of her v-neck down.

"Heard you were around here these days." Coco says, eyeing you appreciatively after flagging down a new bottle of beer. "It's been a while, blondie." Coco's a few years your senior and even though she seems all bite, a few drunken lap dances during your last year at Beacon say otherwise.

"So it has." You arch an eyebrow over the edge of your drink when Velvet smiles coyly, eyes hooded and lush under the twisting rosary of lights that swirl behind her, backlighting her beauty in an ethereal stage setting.

"Don't think we haven't forgotten about the old days, Yang. I still wonder how you beat Coco at beer pong after all these years." She tips back her Screwdriver and hums excitedly. "Ooh, that's got a real kick."

Coco growls and tugs Velvet closer to her.

"She was lucky that night, babe." Coco points at you with one immaculately painted nail. "I'd schedule a rematch soon, but I'm pretty sure we're past our cheap beer phase." You laugh at that.

"I'd hope so. Though, I think what happened after beer pong is more interesting." You tease, slipping the frazzled bartender an extra bill for his trouble when he refills your drink. To your surprise, Coco and Velvet trade a meaningful look. "Oh, come on, don't tell me you guys forgot! That was quite the night."

"Quite the contrary." Velvet laughs, melodious and soft against the ninetieth bass drop of the night. She casts another look to her companion and Coco coughs and looks down. "When we heard you were back in town, this one got hopeful for a round two. Six years later."

Your eyes widen.

Coco's leather glovelets tighten across her scarred knuckles, her beer bottle threatening to shatter into pieces. Velvet smiles easily, like she's talking about the weather instead of a proposed threesome.

"I-I thought you guys were engaged?" You manage to choke out, feeling too hot all of a sudden.

Velvet really laughs at that, throwing her head back so hard that she has to clap her hat back on.

"Just because we're going to get married doesn't mean we don't know how to have fun, Yang. And if you think that this is our first threesome, then you're sorely mistaken. You're allowed to say no, and if you see us by the end of the night, the offer still stands." Velvet swoops in to kiss you on the cheek, and it's fleeting and soft. Coco grunts and tips her beer towards you, and the two of them are gone like they were never there in the first place.

You stand there, dazed and a little drunk, so you settle your tab and wish the bartender luck with the restless crowd. The club's one of those new age affairs, bright swirling lights tangling in the air and rearranging in harsh patterns to the beat of the songs playing. The DJ's up in a glass box, hovering above the dancing crowd, seemingly oblivious to the drunken chaos below him.

A few anonymous faces try to wrangle you into a group dry hump but you politely decline with a well-placed elbow to an Adam's apple. Your Scroll vibrates from where you've stuffed it into your bra - hey, if it can fit your boobs, it can fit anything else in it too - and open up a new text from Ruby.

She's sent a discreetly taken picture of a giant man taking up a quarter of the bar, and added the incredibly kind caption of, "he's p fat teehee". You roll your eyes and let her in on the fact that he's a dedicated patron who you've taken a liking to and that if you lose his business because of her, you'll melt Crescent Rose and forge it into a giant metal dildo.

She texts back instantly with, "NO YANG PLEASE DON'T", so you smile and tuck your Scroll back into your cleavage. The lights are playing tricky shadows on the mangled crowd, but once in a while, you see a girl with dark hair, and your heart catches in your throat.

Amber shadow plays on unfamiliar irises, and long black hair tangles across the mass. You mumble a hasty, "Fuck it," under your breath and start to stalk through the crowd, combing through blurry faces and grinding bodies. Coco and Velvet end up being further away than you'd thought, tucked away in a private booth, practically swallowing each other's tongues.

Velvet pulls away when you approach with a purr of excitement, but Coco drags her back in greedily, fingers tangled in her belt loops. They're putting on a personal show for you now, Velvet's raking her fingers through Coco's hair, thumbs digging into the line of her cheekbones. They're gorgeous in blinding white light, silhouetted as they part only to catch breath and drag you into their grasp.

Coco's hands aren't afraid to stray up the hem of your dress, but they always toy the edge, and she asks permission from you with a sharp look. You nod fervently and reach back to tug Velvet into a kiss. The Faunus kisses with an adept knowledge of teeth and tongue, lips more of an afterthought as she grazes your neck with one of her flat palms.

Coco drags her finger inside your thighs, her touch light enough to encourage goosebumps from your skin. The contact is teasing but purposeful, and you kiss Velvet harder, hoping to jumpstart Coco into action with some visual motivation.

It sort of works, because Coco steals you into a kiss and Velvet's hand replaces hers under your dress. Before things can get interesting, Velvet jingles keys in front of your face. Her cheeks are flushed and she's burning with everything at once.

"We're not fucking in a club. Coco and I made a pact when we first started dating." When you growl impatiently, she pouts sympathetically. "As gorgeous as you are, we aren't breaking that rule for you. Sorry, Yang."

You whine when the warm hands between your thighs slip away but stand up nonetheless.

"I expect you to make up for this tenfold."

Coco snatches her keys from Velvet's, trades a kiss for the gold-plated key fob, and you weave around crowds until you find the back exit. The air outside is crisp and cold, which does wonders to help the rest of your faint buzz disappear. Coco's car is easily placed in the parking lot.

It's a spectacle, painted snow white with gold rims, and the Beowulf crest on the hood surprises you a bit. The price of Coco's car is somewhere in the seven digit range. Coco lights a cigarette and tosses her pack to Velvet, unlocking the car with a swift hand. Instead of getting in the front seat, Velvet slides in next to you and laughs when you give her a surprised look.

"I'm not going to leave you alone in the backseat, silly." She pulls the cigarette out of her mouth and leans forward to kiss you. "Have to make sure you're being a good girl." She strokes your hipbones slowly, and you lean forward, eager to taste the rest of the ash on her tongue.

Coco clicks her tongue and meets your eyes in the interior mirror.

"Oh, don't mind me. Just horny and alone up here." She spits, taking a quick drag from her cigarette. She's whizzing down the freeway now, but Coco takes everything in stride, changing lanes almost instantaneously. A few cars display their distaste and Coco lets them know what she thinks by shoving her middle finger out her window.

"You're being a big baby, Coco." Velvet chides. "Besides, your car isn't exactly the most comfortable to have sex in." She ducks back in to kiss you, nipping the corner of your mouth playfully.

"You take that back right now!" Coco stubs out her cigarette on the back of her glove and tosses it out the window. "Don't listen to her, baby." She murmurs, patting the steering wheel lovingly.

Velvet's hands dip just under the straps of your dress and her fingertips ghost at the top of your cleavage. You gasp stiltedly and shudder when she mouths across your chest.

"How much longer?" You demand, leaning back against the window and pulling Velvet closer to you.

"We'll get there when we get there." Coco swerves onto a freeway exit. "I swear to God, if you cum on those seats, I'm dumping your ass on the turnpike. They're Atlesian leather." Velvet's fingers brush against the gap between your legs and you buck into her touch.

"Better hurry up."

Sunlight's already streaming through the blinds when you wake up, and you slowly find your bearings. Your dress is flung across the room, draped across the armoire like an art deco piece. Coco and Velvet are spooning next to you, and you shiver in the thin tank top Coco had tossed you last night.

Threesomes always do hell to your neck, and you can already feel the crick forming near the base of your scalp. You stand slowly, groaning and stripping off your borrowed top with one fluid motion. Velvet stirs from where she's cuddled in Coco's arms, and blinks at you.

"What are you doing?" She slurs out, pushing her hair out of her eyes.

"I'm gonna get going." You buckle your bra with one hand and slide your arms through the straps.

"You don't want to stay for breakfast?" Velvet croaks. Her voice is rubbed raw from its overuse last night. You shake your head, sliding back into your dress from last night.

"I had fun though." Velvet looks like she's going to protest again, but chooses to keep quiet, nodding. "Tell Coco that I said thanks." Velvet presses closer to her fiance and you feel out of place and cold, alone and odd.

"Okay. It was nice fucking you, Yang." She smiles at you from bed.

You laugh at that, and walk to the doorway.

"Oh, please. The day you top will be the day hell freezes over."

Liquor feels nice going down, but hell if it doesn't hit you like a god damn firetruck. You weren't planning on getting drunk after work, but you're still sitting on your apartment's floor, clutching a bottle of rum like a lifesaver. You remember when you used to be a happy drunk and when you always had someone to drink with.

There's something therapeutic about sharing a bottle of something nice with someone you care about, but you suppose you stopped doing that when you stopped being a happy drunk. Your skin is hot and flushed, thick tar running through your veins and you feel heavy and dumbed down.

Mistral's been getting shitty weather these days, just on the verge of hailing, and no one's coming around the bar, probably sheltered in blankets and getting drunk by themselves. LIke you. You're drunk right now. Like really drunk.

Usually you feel sleepy and warm when you're drunk, but you're restless and uncomfortable and your tongue feels too wide in your mouth. Before you can even think things through, you're pulling a beanie on and bundling into a coat. You don't have an umbrella, so when you walk outside, the chill soaks you down to the bone.

It's a faint wake up call - why the fuck are you even outside? - but you keep walking, stumbling into a lamppost and passing it haltingly. No one's on the roads and water sloshes into your shoes. There's something bitter in the air.

You pass a familiar building and backtrack towards the buzzer. You jam a couple of numbers into the call pad and when Ruby's sleep-laden voice crackles over it, concerned and confused, you mumble out her name and hold back a shudder. The awning of the apartment complex is helping you stay out of the rain, but you've been walking for a good ten minutes, and you're drenched. You can hear Weiss in the background, tone prickly and testy.

In a few seconds, Ruby pulls you into the lobby of their apartment complex, pushing your hair back from your eyes. Her eyebrows are furrowed as she rubs her thumb across your cheekbone. Weiss jumps out of the elevator, wrapped in a robe, and purses her lips.

"Ruby, what's going on?" She asks, approaching on quick, purposeful feet.

"I don't know." Ruby presses her hands against your shoulders and you shiver. "I think she's drunk." Your clothes feel like fifty pounds on your skin and you teeter on your feet. Weiss looks at you, you can feel her piercing gaze.

"Let's get her upstairs."

Ruby and Weiss's apartment is clean and bright with a panoramic view of the cityscape, but it feels like a hallucination when you trip over your feet and peer out the gleaming windows. You hold back a gag because the world is spinning and Ruby strips your coat off, trying to push you towards the couch.

Weiss brings a pile of blankets and a change of clothes, but all you can do is lie on the couch and shiver violently. Ruby and Weiss murmur to each other but stop immediately when you whisper under your breath.

"Blake…"

Ruby swipes at her eyes and kneels next to you, wringing out the rest of the rainwater in your hair. You look blearily at her, tears leaking out of your eyes despite yourself. You don't even know what you're doing anymore.

"Sis, you can't keep doing this to yourself." Ruby says, plaintive and pleading. "You can't." She squeezes your hand and the last thing you do before you fall asleep is lace her fingers with yours.

Ruby's slumped against the couch when you wake up. Her hand is still tangled with yours, and both of your wrists are twisted around, and you're pretty sure you've held hands throughout the entire night. You used to hold hands when she missed Summer, and sometimes she'd fall through the gap of your twin beds.

You look down at her from your seat on the couch. Her head's resting against one of the cushions, but she's practically asleep sitting up, knees crushed between the coffee table. There's a quilt draped over her to add an inkling of comfort to her position, but just looking at her makes your neck hurt. A lock of dark hair shadows her left eye, and she looks so much like Summer now that she's older.

She's almost as tall as you, but you've still got the height advantage by some luck of the draw. Time's carved out the curvatures of her cheekbones and jaw, pale temples outlined by smooth sections of her hair. Her first rebellious act had been dying her hair red, but the experiment had been a disaster and a half. You'd camped out in the bathroom with her and managed to even out the color in some patchy places.

She's still got some remnants of that memory left, but most of her hair is dark and soft now. You ruffle it and sit up. Rum threatens to crawl back up your throat along with some stomach acid and bile, but you cough it back down. Your clothes are still damp and you can feel the start of a headache budding in your temples.

Weiss walks out of the master bedroom, looking worn and weary.

"You're up." She says flatly, and walks over to start a pot of coffee.

"Yeah." You laugh nervously but she shoots you a dark look and you quiet immediately. "Look, I'm sorry about last night - I didn't mean to put you guys out - "

"That's not what you should be apologizing for." Weiss snaps.

There's still silence for a moment, and she has her back to you, tending to her coffee maker.

"When are you going to let her go?"

You press your lips together.

"I don't think I can."

Weiss whips around, fire and mirth in her eyes.

"You can. You know you can but you don't want to because it's easier for you - honestly, Yang, she left you behind, so why can't you leave her behind too?"

"You think it's fucking easy?" You spit, shoulders shaking with uncontrollable rage. Her lips purse. "You think I don't try? She left me because she didn't want me anymore, but I still want her. I'll always want her. I wasn't good enough for her and she left."

"You weren't the only person she left behind!" Weiss shouts, throwing her hands out, eyes gleaming. "She left all of us! God, Yang, the world doesn't revolve around you - you think that you were the only person who loved Blake. She was family to us - she was one of us. She's not coming back."

Weiss trembles in front of you, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Do you know how much it hurts Ruby to see you like this? All she wants is for you to be happy, but all you can do is live in the past. She's not coming back. Please, please, God, Yang, just let her go. Let her go."

Your mind feels funny and dark and something in the inner calibration of your mind shifts violently. Weiss is watching you, waiting for the telegraphed movement of your fist or for you to start breaking down, but you just look at her from across the kitchen's island, feeling oddly numbed.

You laugh.

It's so weirdly funny to you - Blake's still finding ways to fuck with your sanity and life after she left, and maybe you're a fool, but you're tired of pretending that you don't care about her anymore; you always will, you'll always hold on to someone who let you go.

The laugh that creeps up your throat is bright and sparking, an empty lighter against dry concrete, flickering across the roof of your mouth and flying out into phosphorous air. You clap a hand over your mouth, trying to keep your amusement in, but you just end up laughing harder.

Your shoulders are shaking by the time you've calmed down, but it doesn't stop the tail end of a giggle to follow the hastily crafted words that stun Weiss into a dazed silence.

"What do you think I did so wrong?" You ask through a bright smile, laughing a bit again. "All I ever wanted was to be loved - I didn't ask for much. And yet, life just seems to fuck me over again and again." You bite back your smile now, fighting a grin by keeping the corner of your mouth clamped between your teeth. "I think I'm a good person. If I've ever hurt someone, I've never meant any malice behind it, but apparently, I've committed a sin so unholy that everything is being ripped from me."

There's silence - there's too much silence in your life these days; it feels like a trap; until you point behind Weiss and speak again, brightly.

"Coffee's ready."

You walk home after that, making sure that the sign in the window is still flipped to close. When you open the door to your apartment, everything inside you feels oddly at peace. The turmoil and spin of your mind has quieted into nothing more than a faint chatter, and your peace seems to be not so far away anymore. Deep down, you know that a life of complacency and apathy is no life at all, but perhaps it's better than a bone deep ache and the subtle drug of regret lancing through your veins.

You open the windows - all of them - and the aftermath of last night's rainstorm fill your apartment. It's all cold wind and the slightest hint of saltwater in the air, and it looms in every cracked area in your life, an open invitation for every sleeping ghost inside you to awaken and live again.

You take your place on the bed, stretch out in the middle of it, claim every part of the sheets with your skin, arms wide like a lonely corpse's, and listen. You listen to the hum of your heartbeat, to the traffic of Mistral, to the crashing cacophony as your mind wails at you not to sit still for too long. Your past few years of living have been filled with activity and endless walking and nurturing and seeking, but you've never taken the time to rest.

The air around you is cold, a sweet death to the token warmth that you're known for. It ebbs and flows, kisses your skin and pulls away when the vague unconsenting touch of your Aura pulses, trying to cast out the intrusion of cold in the air, but you let go.

You let go.

You allow the cold to violate and take what it wants from you, to rattle your bones inside out, to run prison keys along the cages of your ribs, to tantalize your heart with a gentle escape. There is a vast, endless freedom when you finally let go.

You are tired of playing the martyr, you are tired of clinging to what is gone, you are tired of only remembering the best of the worst. You are tired of wanting what you can never have, you are tired of seeking out cheap escapes, you are tired of delighting in sick and twisted things.

Above all, you are simply tired.

Ever since you were a child, fire was your saving grace. Fire was what kept you alive in all of the cold winters, fire was what protected Ruby when she'd come home bruised and scraped and crying. You are fire. You've always been rough around the edges and you fight on the fly, improvised and impulsive, and you suppose that's what made you fall in love with Blake - her collectedness. She was careful and quiet, gentle when others were violent, volatile when others were nervous.

If you were a flame, then Blake was the shadow, kissing your ashes into submission, leeching your light so that she could love you better. Now, you realize that all it takes is a simple gust of wind to tamp down a fire, to send it whistling into oblivion. Shadow was endless.

You've spent your life running from shadows, shielding your fire from the unknown, but now, you are pleased to feel the kindling of your soul fall apart. Every inch of your being is weak, and no amount of booze or sex could have mended all of your loose ends. You're pretty sure that you've been denying a burgeoning alcohol problem these days, and make an absent note to watch your liquor intake more.

Your father had slipped into the bottle after Summer had passed - in fact, he had been numb for most of your adolescence. You can't really blame him for that. Summer had been the light of his life, and even though you know that he loved you and Ruby with all of his heart, Summer had been the beginning and end of his soul.

Summer had raised you as her own, and you remain grateful to her even after all these years. You visit her altar with Ruby every year, at least when you're in town, and thank her for being a mother to you when no one would. Hell, she was the one who taught you how to line your lips with the fine edge of a lipstick and slipped you a sip of beer on your thirteenth birthday - your first drink.

Thinking back on it now, Summer must have been well acquainted with not being enough. In the beginning, you had pushed her away, sought out any trace of your real mother, but after you had almost died in the woods, Summer had tucked you under her wing whether you liked it or not. You're positive that is when you first fell in love with her, when she had jumped timid boundaries and loved you like you were her firstborn.

She had been a muse to your father during some late nights and shared drinks. You can still remember her laugh ringing through the foyer, traveling up the stairs, bringing you out of a half asleep trance into the warmth of pen scratching against paper as your father wrote love letter after love letter to her name.

You wonder if amorous courage is hereditary, if you would ever have the passion of your father, the part time poet, or the osmosed strength of Summer. You wonder if you would have the guts to paint pictures along Blake's bones if she was with you right now, yielding and warm.

You wonder if you will ever love someone as madly as you love Blake.

The cold still runs through your veins like currents, crystallizing on the edges of your arteries and bleeding out along the long gone pyre of your heart. It's ethereal, heavenly, ritualistic almost, how you can feel the snapped chains of your soul disintegrating inside of you to dust.

You let go.

It's already dark when you wake up. Your clock reads close to midnight, and you're pretty sure it's been raining for a few hours, judging by the steady stream of water that's dribbling down the windowsills of your bedroom. You start to clean up, walking along the hardwood floors with a towel below your feet.

When you make your way over to close the window, there's a couple in the alleyway outside, caught in the rain and kissing like they're the only people in the world. Streetlights shed some incandescent highlights against the press of their bodies. It's cinematic, and you catch yourself in the middle of your observant moment, chastising yourself for being such a god damn creep.

You close the window and draw the blinds, smiling a bit faintly when you do so.

The past few days have been a bit too calm.

It's throwing you for a loop, the steady flow of Lien and benevolent customers and the full, uninterrupted nights of sleep that you've been getting. Maybe you're being paranoid, but you feel like you're on the cusp of a disaster that's just about to happen. When you go to bed that night, you make sure to keep Ember Celica on your bedside table.

The first rumble of movement downstairs wakes you up in an instant. Most of you is pretty damn excited for a fight and the fact that you're not going twitchy and senile already, but the other part of you is a bit pissed that you're going to have to go get more ammo in the morning.

You slip on a sweater over your thin tank top and slide Ember Celica down your forearms, bringing them to full shotgun capabilities. Whoever's trying to rob you is failing horribly at keeping quiet, and you can hear the clinking of bottles in bags.

"Fucking assholes…" You grumble and creep down the stairs. The back room that leads up to your apartment has thin walls thankfully, so you can hear the intruders discussing amongst themselves. They all sound like boys, probably not even past pubescence, and one of them is still trying to talk the others out of it.

"This is a bad idea!" One of them whines. "We're gonna get caught!"

"Shut up! We're only gonna get caught if you keep talking!"

There's a grumble of annoyance on the other side of the door, and you can hear the assholes opening cabinets and robbing you of your good liquor. You're not really sure when you're going to burst out and shove your fist up their asses, but the right time comes when one of them makes the terrible mistake of talking shit.

"Besides, some dumb blonde whore runs this place. She's probably upstairs fucking her john of the night."

You drive your fist through the door, firing a round and splintering the flimsy piece of wood underneath your knuckles. Fuck, you're going to have to fix that tomorrow; there's a price to pay for your theatrics, you suppose.

In an instant, you're in action, grabbing a shitty kid and another shitty kid and smashing their foreheads together. There's two more you have to get rid of, and by the looks of it, they're going to piss their pants.

The one who's holding most of your alcohol is staring wide eyed and terrified, so before he tries to run, you hop over the counter and shove your armored fist into his jawline. There's a familiar clatter of teeth and a spike of adrenaline that jumps your heart rate tenfold. The other one is gone, but when you run out of the bar, he hasn't even made it down the street.

You catch up to him in two bounding leaps and bring him down with an elbow to his skull. He falls with a collapse of bones and limbs and a last huff of, "Oh, shit!", and you smile. When you look up, one of your neighbors - the owner of the cat cafe down the street - is poking her head out of her door, bleary-eyed and confused.

"Hi!" You chirp out. "Would you mind calling the police for me?"

After the kids are handcuffed and carted away and the Mistral Police jot down some of the shattered bottles of your liquor and leave, you start to rearrange your liquor cabinet. The officers who stopped by have promised replacements for the missing bottles in your collection.

It's four in the morning so obviously you're organizing your liquor by the colors of the rainbow, and you make it a point to buy some more strawberry liqueur later on to add to the aesthetic appeal of the bar.

The boîte that you have under your name is probably the nicest in Mistral, more of a sleek lounge than the beer-sticky bars that line the boulevards. Yours is a diamond a dozen, spacious and warm, a bit rustic and cavernous rather than glitzy and glamourous. It fits your tastes to a tee. Ruby and Weiss had donated some money for the counter, a thick slab of granite veined with gold and sapphire Dust crystals that you'd had your eye on since the lounge had become a reality.

You keep your glasses and tumblers in a refurbished cabinet, the glossily painted wood framing bright glassware. It's a hell of a job, but you've always been up for a challenge. You'd learned the art of mixology nearly overnight, and soon, the hipster blogettes of Mistral were doling out praise for your remastered row of cocktails.

You've never been one to half-ass things, but you're happy with your job, and you meet people from all over. There's a few retired Huntsmen and Huntresses who pop in to drink the night away. They've got battle scars, Nevermore claws leaving behind blinded eyes or Ursi's bone armor piercing through flesh and bone.

Most of the people who you get along with best are lonely, like you. They just want someone to hear their story, and you're more than happy to listen, slowly warming up under a nurturing voice and a bottomless bottle. The younger kids that file through with newly minted IDs make you laugh a bit, and you'll flirt and tease back when they fumble with clumsy mouths, but you've never taken it further than a chaste, over-the-bar kiss.

You've gotten endless offers of a warm bed and incredibly talented mouths, but you just smile and turn them down with a coy little promise of, "Next time, if I'm in a good mood.". In all honesty, you've been spending nights with a soft, hazy memory and a stray hand beneath the sheets instead of strangers.

You're grateful that you have a job that carries you on some crazy adventures - that's all you've ever wanted out of an occupation, and as long as there's danger and people involved, you're set - and it's almost like a shift in identity, to become others through their stories, their mannerisms, their time. You know what it's like to run. You know what it's like to shed masks and get caught up with a past that refuses to stop giving you shit.

So you pour drinks from behind a glass barrier, nod and sing and laugh and join in a fucked up camaraderie with black souls just for a few endless moments. It's lovely and odd and familial. You're an optimist at heart, and you can always see the best in others when they're alone.

You belong to everyone, and they belong to you.

Ruby sips at her sangria and widens her eyes as you dole out another serving of maraschino cherries into her little empty bowl. Ruby's not one for bar food but she has a weird infatuation with the cherries practically dripping in syrup. You always order a couple extra jars when you put your orders in for her.

Personally, she's ingesting way too much sugar for your liking. In the next few hours, she's either going to be bouncing off the walls or crying from a deafening headache. There's a steady stream of people coming into the bar, but there's a comfortable lull in between where you can talk to your baby sister.

She looks especially darling today, hair ruffled from your affectionate hand. She'd dropped by with a neatly addressed note from Weiss. It had taken you off guard, but Ruby had rolled her eyes when she had handed it to you.

"She felt awful about yelling at you. She stayed up all night writing this." Ruby presses her thumb a bit absently against the fancy wax seal that Weiss pressed to shut the envelope.

"Next time, tell her to write me a text message." You grumble, refilling her glass and adding a mint sprig for flourish. Ruby likes to test drive new drinks because she has a liver of steel, and has found a new love for mint in her liquor.

"You're terrible!" Ruby cries, plucking a little green leaf from its stem and chewing on it thoughtfully. She gives you a look now, a real pointed look through long lashes. "You know that Weiss loves you, right?" You screw up your face now.

"I wasn't aware the Snow Queen was capable of feeling."

Ruby smacks you over the head before you can even see her coming.

"Hey!"

"You stop that right now." She frowns at you. "Weiss just wants the best for you. And she's not good with feelings, so most of the time she… yells."

"Oh, really? I think she just likes to yell." You toss the remark over your shoulder as you mix another drink for a customer. You can practically feel Ruby's glare pinning between your shoulder blades before she starts up again.

"Anyways. I know that she's difficult." When you try to open your mouth again, Ruby squints. "Yang, I swear to fucking Christ, if you say one more thing, I'm gonna punch you in the tooth." You relent now, choosing not to be difficult. "She loves you a lot. We both do. We worry about you. And Weiss only yells at the people she really cares about."

You walk over to the edge of the bar and pour a new martini with a steady hand. The customer you're serving smiles at you thankfully, her eyes a bit tight around the corners. She looks like she's holding back tears, so you decide to keep her next refill on the house.

"I know, I know, sis." Ruby nibbles on the skin of a cherry, still looking at you a bit skeptically. You sigh and cock your hip against the bar. "I love that little shitstain too. No matter how aggravating she can get." You don't get clouted in the ear so you count it as a win. You turn over the pure white envelope in your hands, fingers straying near the edges of the fine cardstock.

"I'll read this later." You tuck the note into your pocket and grin as a passing patron drops his change into the tip jar. When you look back, Ruby's looking at you again, peculiar and sharp. "What?"

Her eyes soften around the edges, and it gives you chills because it's like Summer's there, fixing you with her bright eyes, prodding you for some more information.

"Are you happy?"

You glance at her, elbows propped against the counter, and nod a bit.

"I'm getting better. I'm almost there."

Ruby smiles at you, teeth and eyes flashing like white gold in the bar's lighting, and pulls you into a hug. She holds you like she's older than you and squeezes your forearm with a warm, reassuring hand.

"I love you, Yang." She whispers into your hair.

"I love you more." You murmur back and you can't hold back the smile on your face.

For once, you believe that your happiness is almost there. For once, you're excited to meet it halfway.