I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues

"I'm really sorry, I'm truly, very sorry. It's just not working out Yang, it's not. I'm so sorry." Blake kept on preaching, calm as a cucumber while the invincible and unbreakable blonde was slowly succumbing to despair and crumbling to pieces on the inside. Dying softly and slowly as the sombre if not a little upsetting piano and drum beat filled the ears of the buxom blonde. Blake had asked her to meet at a small and empty bar downtown in New Vale, and now Yang knew why after avoiding her for a while.

To break up with her, after almost a year of deciding to date her. After all, they had been through.

In Yang's mind, it all seemed now for nothing. So much for nothing, as Blake had been explaining and confessing for about the past hour. She had not even ordered a drink. Yang meanwhile was sat still on the bar stool with her Strawberry Sunrise in her hand and nothing where her heart used to be, shattered before her. The girl felt sick, sad and utterly crushed all at once, and then completely empty if there was some semblance of survival after each emotion weighed fully on her. It was a conversation, unlike anything she had ever been on the receiving end of.

Hell, Yang Xiao Long, for all her muster and blunder about how cute said girl was, or what a specimen another was, had never even dated a person in her life. Blake had been her first. Her first crush that could crush even her semblance and aura, her first time having sex, her first date, her first real kiss.

Blake had been Yang's first everything, and now the dark-haired and shadowed-eyed, tanned feline faunus was stood up in her white duster telling Yang that it didn't feel right anymore. That she just wanted to be 'friends', as cliche and disgusting as it sounded. It left such a disdain in Yang's mouth it was as if someone had replaced her entire drink with salted water. It was horrible, like sand on her tongue.

"So you... You really think we should break up?" Yang asked, still trying to pick up the pieces of her usually bombastic voice. It had spilt all over the bar when Blake had actually dropped the atomical bomb of a breakup proposal before her and then continued to spout the evidence as to why it was the best idea.

Most of it, a lot of it, Blake's reasons were all for herself. That she still felt guilty and that she felt Yang deserved better than a good-for-nothing stowaway with a monkey faunus for a stalker and built-in third wheel. Another was the arm, which made Yang want to break the wood of the bar she was hunched over. And then there was the PTSD they both still had, the reason Yang woke up about four times a week on average screaming and with the nub of her arm burning with phantom pain. To top it all off was Blake trying to interject their lack of intimacy in the bedroom, considering neither desired to initiate sexual contact that much, as a reason for the break up being logical and mutually beneficial.

Yang couldn't see any of it. And when she saw nothing but emotional fog and tears in her already burning eyes, she realised that she needed Blake a lot more than Blake needed her.

That revelation was like a kick to her centre, right between her legs. It winded her.

"I... I think it'll be best for both of us if we end this before we both end up worse. I'm sorry Yang. I'm so sorry." Blake was still saying, albeit a little muted as Yang took another sip out of her drink. It was stale and old, and withered, like sand and water mixed together finely. She couldn't stomach another one and pushed it aside for the barkeep, clicking her fingers for service.

She could not look at Blake, and not because this was the end of their relationship and she could not accept that, but because it had all turned out to be wasted time, and now she was about to cry. About to cry, whereas Blake had done her crying before, and now she was as calm as ever. No fight in her at all, not like the Battle of Beacon. Not like standing up to Adam. Not like it at all.

Blake seemed like a shell of her former self, and it was making Yang all the sadder. All the more convinced that she was worthless, and that everything had been for nothing. So much for nothing.

The barkeeper got to her and waited for something. Yang pointed to the brandy and asked for a shot of it with lemonade. Strong, barely diluted, guaranteed to get her completely wrecked.

She didn't say anything to Blake, and then the faunus started crying again. She rested her hand on Yang's shoulder and reached in for one final kiss on the cheek. Yang was like stone to it, not doing anything to stop it and yet not even reacting. Her body temperature didn't even flicker - it remained a hollow and saddening lukewarm as if the dragon was normal, not special at all. It didn't feel special, it felt like a piece of used tissue as it drank.

"I'm so sorry. I'll see you around..." Blake said finally and left the bar solemnly and alone, leaving Yang haunched over the bar with her metallic fingers barely trying to hold the glass between them.

And Yang said nothing at all in the ensuing minutes. She just drank, sip after sip, in complete silence and not inviting any talk from the barkeep or any of the bemused and shadeless patrons around her, all so very insignificant she didn't even look at them. Everything seemed to blend together and melt away and Yang felt truly removed from all physical place of sensory stimulation. No noise, no movement, no feeling, nothing to smell and nothing to see. All that was there was the heartbreak, the fact that Yang had watched the best thing she regarded in her life to up and remove herself from it, making Yang feel so worthless she may as well not move from that stool at all, and simply die there.

It was all for nothing, none of it, none of anything. All the strife and the grief, the pain and the blood, and literal body parts as Yang, drunkenly, traced her numbed fingertips down the seams of her robotic prosthetic. She felt like a joke - a used and sliced up joke.

Adam would have done better to have just cut her in half at the waist, kill her and be done with it. He didn't even care about killing Yang, and that was simply why he hadn't. He hadn't killed her because he wanted to just hurt and kill Blake. Again Yang had been used for something else. She would always be used for something else.

Did anyone at all care the for the blonde?

She took out her scroll, accessing her derelict photo album of the odd snap and picture she had taken with friends and family - what little there was on there. Yang seemed once upon a time to be the life and soul of the party, and yet in truth, she was so downtrodden and sombre that she never even took photographs of the moments that mattered. Better to let them happen and move onto the next amazing one. Photographs were for people that mattered.

Weiss? Did she care for Yang? She had left too, so quickly back to Atlas and had only come back because she was placed under house arrest. Nora? A plain and simple no. Ren? Had he ever even spoken to Yang? Had they even been in the same place at the same time? Yang could not even recall.

Jaune cared about only one thing - Jaune, and maybe his own sense of self-preservation. To the point of melting down the only woman who ever loved him for reasons unfathomable to make his shield better. Yang had determined, upon seeing his disgusting face on her scroll, that she would never want Jaune to care about her. Instantly she deleted the photo he was in.

Pyrrha? Did Pyrrha care about Yang? They had spoken a lot of times, shared sparring practice, eaten together. They had studied, gossiped, laughed. They had done a lot, and Yang liked Pyrrha a lot, but she was always trapped between her own amazing sense of kindness and Jaune's intolerable character.

Coco? Velvet? Fox? Neon? Reese? Arslan? May? Anyone? Did anyone even give a damn about Yang at all? Anyone? Even her own mother had abandoned her when she was only two, leaving her alone as an only child with Tai and Summer. To do what? Yang still didn't even know what.

And now she was ending up the same way as Uncle Qrow, the horrid and deceiving, useless man he was and had been. She was ending up a drunk, destroyed by a lifetime of PTSD and so many issues she'd drown in them and the booze.

Yang began to truly weep. The gently falling tears that had been streaming from her eyes since Blake had left now unleashed their ultimate sadness, and she was sobbing, crying hard and huddling over herself. The drink was away from her, the fourth of them in rapid succession and she was crying so hard and so profusely she couldn't stop. She just wanted Blake back already.

She had to leave, had to go find Blake, no matter how drunk she was getting, which she discovered was a lot more than she realised once she got up from the stool. Quickly wiping out her wallet she left the bartender a fifty for the drink and the trouble and then stumbled out of the bar and onto the street.

It was evening, the sun saying its last goodbye behind a thick layer of cloud as the weather front fully invaded the previous light of the day.

Thunder struck, and suddenly it began to downpour without a single care at all.

All of Yang's marvellous and fiery blonde hair was washed down and lost so much volume she looked as if an avalanche had hit her mane. She was a lion, a dragon and a raven and all at once, her fur had been shaved, her mouth taped and her wings clipped, and the rain was dampening more than her already spit upon spirits. Yang felt like rubberised and trodden on garbage, worse than the bottom of the world of society, she was the scum no one could see and no one could possibly care for. She was disregarded as rubbish, intended to fall down the gutters and fade from existence. It was not as if anyone cared for her at all anyway.

Blake had made it abundantly clear. But Yang needed her, she simply did, she needed to talk to her again, say the things she didn't earlier, and while she was drunk, and as bad an idea as it was. It was the only idea she had.

The bad idea, being the only one, still deserved seeing through, as the rain washed down on her like a thousand bullets and the cold wrapped around her flesh and already freezing core like a blanket of ice. She was trembling even as she made her feet move, one past the other until it was almost considered walking and not drunkenly stumbling.

Yang had no idea where Blake was, and she didn't want to call her, she did, and she didn't. The rain was coming down heavier and heavier, unrelenting as she slowly walked her way to the bridge.

The scroll rang itself.

"Yang? Are you there? Are you okay? Yang?" Came Pyrrha's voice, the familiar tones of the long lost redhead. But that was impossible. She was dead, she was dust in the wind, she was gone and she was never coming back.

How was she calling Yang's scroll? How drunk was Yang anyway?

"P-Pyrrha? What the-? What's-What's-How are you calling me? Pyrrha?"

"Yang? Are you okay? Are you okay, Yang? Where are you, Yang? Is it raining really badly? I heard you were at a bar? Are you safe, Yang?" Pyrrha kept asking as if she couldn't even hear Yang. Just how drunk had she gotten?

She stumbled some more, her head pounding and her tears continuing to come. Hearing Pyrrha's voice again made her sadder still, either she was so drunk she was going insane from the PTSD manifesting as the voice of the dead redhead. Or someone was playing a very very bad prank.

Still, Yang could not stop her tears or the feeling of inadequacy and desire to be removed. The blonde rested her head against the brick wall of a building, the rain still streaking down the wall and wetting her entire face - it was what she needed but made Yang feel all the more like dirt. She even drank some of the pouring rain water as it came down and washed over her face. Needless to say, she had slipped into a bad way. A perfect storm of sadness over the breakup and then utter sodomy of the drink. She must have had more than four of them.

"I'm going to the bridge Pyrrha. I-I'll-I'll-I guess I'll be-be wi-ith you soon." Yang hiccupped and stammered the whole way, still crying uncontrollably before deciding she didn't want or need her scroll anymore.

She tossed it aside like the garbage she saw herself as and continued forward, stumbling her way to the bridge. There was no way she was going to make it without Blake, not that she could see, no way. Blake was the only thing keeping her together anymore. She couldn't do it herself, not since she was broken. Without the faunus, Yang knew she was useless, she knew her story was the most pathetic that could be told. She had been written into an impossible corner, that when combined with the fate of the team and their own stories, left her out to dry and left her out to fail. She was stuck and without Blake…

Without Blake, Yang was better off like Pyrrha. Dead and out of the world and a story, that simply didn't care for her.

She made it to the start of the arch before giving up. Yang couldn't do it anymore, what was the point at all? In her drunken state she sat down on the soaking ground, the rain still pouring down upon her and she waited, resting against the concrete of the support block that held the arch in place. Whatever happened, she didn't care.

All Yang wanted was Blake, that was it. She couldn't operate without her. She needed the care now.

Just as her eyes began to close, Yang could see something red, something red in the distance, coming very slowly towards her. She couldn't stay awake long enough to see them, to see who it was coming for her.

"It's okay Yang, it's going to be alright now. Let's get you home." A sudden and ethereal voice called out so subtly as Yang slept. "Let's get you home."

When the blonde did finally wake, albeit a whole day later, she was tucked in bed in Ruby's apartment, with the girl herself alternating between the kitchen, the bathroom and then Yang, and she was tending to the blonde. The room was warmer than anything, warmer than Yang's old bedroom back in Patch, and the windows were even open. It was still amazingly warm. Yang was tucked in, by Ruby presumably, and her robotic prosthetic set aside on the counter table, to let the blond sleep comfortably.

The room was layered so estranged. It looked like an old infirmary, and there was even a bowl of warm water on the floor with cloths. Maybe Ruby had been trying to warm Yang up - the blonde had been in the pouring rain for an unknown amount of time and she must have been freezing.

But Yang could not remember how she even got to be at Ruby's.

Ruby... Ruby... Ruby. That was one person who cared. One above all the others. Ruby cared, had always cared and would always care. Sweet little Ruby.

"You're awake!" Ruby cried as soon as she peeked her little head around the corner of the doorframe like a little girl. The autistic Ruby looked the happiest she had ever been, even with the soft rubbery-plastic chewable necklace charm dangling from her neck.

And with Yang looked, it was still Ruby's sweet and little head poking out. She was beaming with smiles, and Yang could already feel the love reach across the room, the warmth, and it all made sense as to why it was so snug. Ruby wanted it this way for when Yang woke up. She wanted her comfortable and snuggled up in bed.

Just like Yang used to make it whenever Ruby was sick or was sad.

The blonde smiled and had to chuckle to herself as she sat up a little and lay on her side, looking across the empty space to her darling sister. "Yeah... I'm awake."

Ruby smiled a little more. "I'll be right in, just making the soup. Remember the chicken soup Mom used to make and then you too for when I got sick every single winter? I'm making it for you, then we can snuggle up and watch a movie?" Ruby asked, not needing to say anything about why Yang was now sick, about what had happened, Ruby didn't need to know. It didn't matter, all that mattered was that it had happened, for one reason or another, and now Yang needed her little sister, so the little sister would be there. With chicken soup and a collection of movies to snuggle with. Yang sighed and chuckled a little more. She was tearing up again, weeping to come later. And she slid back under the warmth of the blanket.

"Yeah, movies and chicken soup. Just the two of us Rube Cube. Just the two of us."