Juniper Bough Ch. 8

Weiss sipped her tea as she forced herself to loosen up and lean back in her seat. She could be elsewhere, could be at her apartment in the Upper Quarter, could be in a fashionable cafe and make a showing as a modern woman, could even call a carriage to go out into the cozy country home she’d purchased when she first moved to Beacon—an investment she’d been skeptical on at first, then found how invaluable it was to have a place to get away to. Something outside the city. And right now, that’s what she needed.

But she couldn’t let herself get away. Couldn’t let herself get fooled. Yang and Blake and Ruby were on a job and even though there was nothing she could do to help—and a lot she could do to hurt—them once the planning stages were done, she didn’t feel right stepping aside when the dangerous parts happened. She reminded herself a hundred times that they all had their talents and skills and responsibilities and trying to move outside her skillset just to feel like she was part of the “action” was how things went south, but… but she couldn’t stop feeling wrong when she retreated from this anxiety.

So she stayed at the temporary headquarters they’d taken up, a building Blake owned outright (shrewdly investing her earnings, a move Weiss respected) within what could be called the Ruby Masque’s “territory.” They didn’t hold turf like gangs—or the Juniper Bough—did, but around the Snowflake, Yang had done a good job making it clear where the criminal element wasn’t welcome. And this unassuming building, nothing at all like the gaudy casino Weiss had poured so much money into, became a secretive base of operations for them. It… It was as far from the action as Weiss’s apartment, but it felt like she was still a part of the work.

Maybe Ruby would come running back, breathlessly informing Weiss that Blake and Yang had been arrested by the Constabulary and they’d need her to…

No, no, she was fantasizing now. Imagining the worst case scenario that would at least allow her to be useful. She had started practicing with the pistol while out in the country, shooting targets and trying out the quickdraw she’d seen Ruby demonstrate. Just to pretend that maybe, somehow, she’d be in a situation where life and death were a heartbeat away, not out of envy of the excitement that… well, yes, it was a little about that envy. But Weiss mostly just wanted to get out of this agonizing waiting. She was a woman of industry, in the sense that she hated being idle, and a woman of industry, in the sense that her skills were most useful in matters of business. And illegal business was much the same as overseeing exports, plantations, and factories: well insulated from the dangerous parts of the business. The part other people suffered for.

Weiss idly wondered if this was how her father felt, before she banished that thought from her mind. She had little regard for her father, a fact exemplified by the fact that she was here in Vale rather than in Atlas. She despised him so much that she had no interest in even being in Atlas to undermine him, and what she hated about him was that… that yawning insecurity, the way he was so obviously dominated by the fear that people saw him as a man who married into a successful company, the hard work of his father-in-law coddling him. Sort of…

Sort of like how Weiss was feeling now.

The sense that, no matter how smart, competent, brilliant you were, the real work was done by someone else. But while her father was consumed with jealousy, Weiss wrestled with fear. Yang and Blake and Ruby had a different measure of “danger” than she did, embraced risky tasks that would leave a girl like Weiss quaking with fear, but they were all in agreement that the Bough was dangerous. That infiltrating their Temple was risky. And everything Weiss had done to mastermind their entrance and egress, every backup plan she’d forged, it all came with unknowns that were now staring Weiss in the face… and if she wasn’t lucky, unknowns that were staring her friends down in a far more literal way.

She was out of tea now, and the thought of brewing another cup seemed ill-advised, but she needed to stay active and not let these thoughts swallow her up. Sometimes, she really did feel like she was only a spoiled little rich girl, playing criminal until it got too scary for her, but Weiss reminded herself: she was a part of the Ruby Masque. More than just a funder, more than just the mastermind, she was a part of the team. Ruby and Blake and Yang, they were more than her employees or confederates, they were her friends. And she… she knew they didn’t want her beating herself up out of some sense of misguided guilt.

She could picture Ruby telling her to just go get pancakes, Yang laughing and offering to punch her in the face if she “needed a taste of the real thing,” and Blake… Blake getting quiet, like she always did when Weiss opened up to her, before suggesting that… that everyone had a place in the world, and that Blake so often wished she was more like Weiss. Just the bits and pieces of advice they’d given her before, reconstituted to the secret problem she faced now, but it did make her feel better.

If she had to do something to stay busy, she could at least be productive. She had business reports to look over—aboveboard business, tedious, dryasdust, ordinary business—and taking care of her professional concerns would help her feel like she was doing something. This work provided the cover and access for their more ambitious work, and taking a moment to appreciate the less dramatic side of their balance sheet might be good for her.

But as Weiss got her pen and glanced to the window, seeing the sunny blue sky meet the jagged teeth of tiled roofs and chimneys spiking into the air, Weiss thought about Blake and Yang inside the Bough’s Temple. If everything went according to plan, they would be safe. And if it didn’t… they were two of the best in the business, who lived for opportunities to think on their feet. They’d be alright. They would be alright. Weiss was sure of it.

She just had to wait for them to come back and make her faith real.

“Ms. Schnee?”

She almost jumped. Glancing up, Weiss saw the only other inhabitant of the safehouse. Ilia Amitola, the Faunus journalist Ruby had rescued. “I’m sorry,” she said in a quiet voice, “I didn’t mean to startle you, but… the waiting was becoming a bit too much for me.”

“Oh, it’s- it’s not a problem,” she said, letting her heart restart as she realized she had a most unexpected confederate in her worries, “I think I’m… somewhat in the same way. I was just thinking of brewing a fresh pot of tea, if you’d like.”

“That would be lovely,” Ilia said, taking a seat across from Weiss at the table. How strange for the two of them to be seated together like this—not that many years ago and this Ilia likely would have only been in the same room as Weiss if she was there to kidnap her, not… share in the feeling of helplessness when all you could do was wait.

But is it so different with Blake?

The unbidden thought didn’t sit right with her. But… but there really wasn’t anything different between Blake and Ilia, not when it came to the White Fang, and yet… it felt strange to think about her like there was anyone else like her. Like she wasn’t…

Tea. She had to get tea. Getting the kettle, Weiss tried to keep up conversation with her fellow detainee. “You and Blake,” she began, using the one thing that was on her mind, “In the White Fang, you did… were you in the field with her?”

Ilia shook her head. “Not… not as often for all the missions she did. She was… fearless, back then. Anything dangerous, she was always there, the first to sign up, the one to take on anything. Her and Adam,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

“She hasn’t changed much,” Weiss said, a faint smile on her face, “It’s what I’m telling myself right now, that she’s been doing this since I… well, since I was still wearing ballroom gowns and imagining how my debut would be the talk of the Atlesian social season!”

“Was it?”

Weiss looked up from the tea she was pouring, seeing a faint smile on Ilia’s face. Weiss smiled back. “It was… particularly because I didn’t show up.”

Ilia gave a polite chuckle as Weiss finished pouring the tea, appreciating the levity added to the moment. But as the laughter faded, a silence settled over them, neither having much to say. Weiss took a sip of tea, hoping it might give her time to collect her wits and figure out what to say.

“You care for her, don’t you?”

The words caught Weiss more off guard than she had expected. She’d anticipated awkwardness between her and Ilia, the two of them from such different worlds, but Ilia’s voice was so pointed, and yet, not an accusation. Which almost made it worse.

“It’s not like that, no,” Weiss said, perhaps a little too quickly. “But in my time with the Ruby Masque, I used to… I used to think of this world as so exciting, every job just a new opportunity to execute some daring scheme, but I… I don’t know when I stopped thinking of them, of Ruby and Yang and Blake, as my employees and started thinking of them as… friends. Friends who had taught me so much of how limited my view was, and with it, how... How sending them against people who aren’t just… rich people with secrets they want to hide, it’s… it’s hard on me. But yes, I… I do care for Blake. I care for her dearly.”

Though if she cared for her more than she cared for Ruby and Yang… that was a question Weiss wasn’t sure she had an answer for. It was certainly one she hadn’t asked herself before now.

“I still love Blake,” Ilia admitted, “Even… even if I know she’ll never love me back. No,” she waved off Weiss’s words before she could say them, “It… it’s for the best. Even if she did have feelings for me, we could never… our fates could never be entwined. Too much pain, too much guilt. It’s… it’s funny,” she gave a weak laugh, “but I only just realized this after she brought me back here. I saw on her face how deeply she cared for me and I realized… if I took her compassion, if I drew out the love I saw in there, then we would just… we would both drown. I’d been clinging to an illusion of her to make sense of my life after the White Fang but that meant if I ever actually had her, I’d have even less than I had of her then. I wouldn’t have that illusion any longer.”

“I’m... glad you were able to come to some self-realization,” Weiss lamely offered, “It’s… it’s not easy to move away from the things that seemed so important in your old life… and, I assume, old loves are even… harder to move on from.”

Ilia blushed, her Faunus trait suddenly revealing itself as her colors turned vibrant. “I’m- I’m sorry for putting all that on you!” she gasped, “I’ve- I’ve known you scarcely more than a few days and I’m already- I just had to tell someone and I’ve been so cooped up-”

This time, Weiss laughed. “I understand!” she said, feeling the relief of her anxieties finally breaking, “I actually… I understand. I’m here just waiting for Blake to- for Blake and Yang to come back and I feel so helpless and so much like my feelings will just swallow me up if I can’t get them out of my head that I… I understand. And...” she felt something airy and light in her soul as she smiled at Ilia, adding a small spoonful of sugar to her tea, “And I’d rather be useful right now. That even if I can’t be in the action, at least I’m helping someone.”

Ilia gave a faint smile back as her colors reset to what was, Weiss surmised, her natural skin tone. Finishing her tea graciously, she murmured, “Thank you, and- and I never thought I’d have a Schnee to thank for something like this.”

“Times like these,” Weiss murmured back, taking the last sip of her tea, “with living goddesses and burglarizing Temples, it feels like everything we used to know just isn’t how it is anymore.”

LINE BREAK PYRRHA

She moved along the winds of providence, guided by unknowable instincts in the flow of coordinated combat. To call this battle… no, it was a dance. A masterful choreography with the whole world coordinated around her, the prima ballerina, her steps in time with everyone around her, Nora and the faithful, the guards, the mercenaries, all dancing to the rhythm of unknown music.

Jaune’s music.

In every step, remembering what he’d coached her to expect, their language reduced to that efficient shorthand that even resembled musical notes, she could hear his voice, feel his presence… how strange it was that she felt closest to him while he was so far away…

But it was undeniably Jaune who was guiding her with every step and swing. His brilliance, his insight, the beautiful way his mind worked that never failed to leave Pyrrha, herself the living Vessel, awed at what he could do. Even though it lacked the compassion, the kindness of the boy she’d fallen for, Pyrrha could feel that essence of her beloved in everything she was doing, her partner in this dance, even in absentia.

She dropped a man with a blow from her shield, knowing that all eyes were drawn to the crimson trail of blood surely cast into the air, sparkling in the sunlight as it hung for a millisecond, as she pulled her shield back. This violence also had the echo of Jaune, the tragedy of what the Temple had done to the sweet boy who had been her savior as a child. But now, this violence was the cue for the guards to realize they were not being paid enough to battle a goddess proven.

The few men arrogant, foolish, or simply ignorant enough to keep fighting were informed of their mistake. She wished she didn’t have to, that they could just stop throwing their bodies against something they didn’t understand, but no one was more aware of the sorrows of this world than Pyrrha, and she was bound to bear them all. The arm that broke as she bent it until the snap, the gurgling, gasping cry of the man who suddenly found his windpipe closed by a solid blow from her elbow, the desperate swing that glanced off her blade and so unmanned her foe that he fainted in a heap… all that human suffering was what she would carry away in bearing the new world. But for now, it was brought in the service of her task as the Vessel, unmaking the opposition to the future she carried until there were none left to oppose her.

Which left only one man, foolishly trying to assert his authority to stop the rout rather than joining them. He, too, danced the steps Jaune had assigned him, though his steps now became a toppling fall, his legs giving way as he realized that there was nothing between him and the Temple’s Justice now in striking distance.

Few understood how Pyrrha could walk the city without sight, much less fight a dozen men. Even Nora, who knew Pyrrha better than anyone, only guessed at how the world “looked” in her cradle of darkness. What Nora didn’t know was that the fighting was easy, the noise and clatter so easily became music, written on the staff of Jaune’s plan, and once she knew the melody, even improvisation gave her little challenge. A trigger entering too early was an annoyance as she countered the percussive blast of the gun. A sword missing its cue to be drawn simply needed to be conducted back into its order. Jaune gave her sight with the same language they’d learned together as children, the clever, inquisitive boy so eager to share what he’d learned and practice what they could do together. But it was times like these where Pyrrha was most alone, with neither the music of Jaune’s plan nor the sound of the world to guide her, stepping forward across an empty yard with only the whimper of her target to guide her.

Looming above Cardin Winchester, Pyrrha could hear blood and breath together, a racing heartbeat, a ragged, gasping, wordless plea as a new score presented itself. One not composed by Jaune. One not endorsed by the Temple.

A single blow. A dozen different options presented themselves. She could shatter him in any number of ways, ways that would glorify the Temple’s might… and sate the dark, ugly part of Pyrrha that was of the Fallen World. The part that knew what this wretched, terrified man had wanted of her, what he saw when he looked upon her, the mask that separated her from all terrestrial desires… and inflamed his own. He thought himself worthy of taking her, of having an incarnate goddess be brought before him, naked.

His base lust inspired base thoughts in Pyrrha. A desire to see him bare, to see everything stripped away and revealed in the light, the small, desperate man whose body was as fragile as any others, the sound of his life unmade as his blood and body were parted…

But those desires were not of the Vessel.

Instead she merely pointed her sword at him, suggesting what she might spill from his body and parting a different fluid entirely as Winchester spun apart into his constituent elements all on his own. The lies were unlocked, the truth pouring out, and the image of aristocratic pomp firmly undone.

“I- I- I can tell you everything! Whatever you want, I swear! I- I didn’t- I was misled! Deceived! W-Weiss Schnee, she’s the one-”

“Enough.”

He stopped speaking, but Pyrrha still heard the fear in his entire being. His heart was beating so loudly, Pyrrha wondered if he might pass out. But Pyrrha could feel her place in the universe, returning to Jaune’s composition as she heard the two notes of “Weiss” and “Schnee” in her own voice, sung to Jaune before they became a flowering sonata of his own plan. She raised her sword like a conductor’s baton, raising his voice in volume and tenor until the final shriek of truth burst forth:

“The- the Ruby Masque! I- I hired th-them to r-rob the Temple! They’re the ones you want- They’re the ones you want!”

LINE BREAK YANG

“Whatever you’re thinking,” Yang said, “Just remember, one gang’s no different from another. Cults, revolutionaries,” she put a little extra emphasis on that word, “gangs, and, yep, even us professionals, we’re all in the same business here.”

But Blake shook her head, rifling through the documents in front of her. “You know the street,” she said, bringing back their conversation from a few weeks ago, “but I know politics. This isn’t how anything operates on a gang level. This kind of coordination… it’s no wonder they took the Quarter so easily. They’re practically a government.”

“Forgive me if I don’t see the distinction,” Yang cracked, but she had to admit, there was something… weird about how organized this all was. Why did they care about half the things they had written down and meticulously filed away. Street gangs didn’t generally write things down—how many thugs could actually read?—but even the guys at the top didn’t need everything so neatly categorized and recorded. People handled stuff through memory and conversation, passing around the lore when needed and valuing a good head for numbers over just about anything when it came to a dealer.

She sighed. “If they’re good, they’re good, but do they have anything on us?” she asked Blake, trying to get her back on focus.

Blake shook her head. “They… they have information on you, me, and Weiss, but Ruby’s a blank-”

“Surprising,” Yang said with a raised eyebrow. Ruby wasn’t loud like Yang was, prominent like Weiss, or with a history like Blake, except… and then she grinned. “You mean they don’t know anything about the Masque!”

Blake gave a weak smile to that, regaining a bit of her confidence. “Well, no,” she said, “and they don’t realize that you and I work for Weiss, or even the exact nature of our relationship.”

“They think we’re fucking?”

Blake shrugged. “Everyone else seems to.”

Yang chuckled. She knew she had a shot with Blake the way she had a shot with most anyone, but it was good to keep things in the flirtatious friends phase. Kept people off the scent, and besides—Yang knew when it was right and when it was wrong to mix business and pleasure. Might be a good lesson for Blake and Weiss to consider, before the whole star-crossed lovers bit became nauseating. But that was for later. They had work to do.

“Alright,” Yang punched her fist into her palm, “Let’s start blinding them, if we take what they’ve got on us, they’ll have to-”

Blake shook her head. “They almost certainly have some method of indexing what files they’re supposed to have, so they’ll notice what’s missing...” she mused, “So if we start taking things deliberately...”

“We can frame someone else?”

“Exactly,” Blake nodded, “But they’ll be expecting something like that, so...”

“Just steal stuff at random and leave them going crazy trying to spot a pattern?”

Blake grinned. Yang opened files and started snatching up papers, cramming them into a folder as Blake did the same in a much more careful fashion—probably grabbing whatever dirt they had on Winchester. She’d explained this once before to Yang, how in her time in the White Fang part of her work “acquiring funds” was figuring out when shipments were being made, along which routes, and when they’d be most vulnerable. And how people—like Weiss’s daddy—did things to keep her from figuring stuff out, leaking fake rumors, typing up decoy orders that’d get intercepted, things that Blake called noise. It wasn’t enough to be a good spy, a ghost on the wind, she had to know how her targets thought, how to discern what was real and what was just there to baffle ‘em.

And whoever the Temple had as their Blake, they were going to see a pattern of nonsense hiding a clear, strategic attempt to blind them… that had nothing at all to do with the Ruby Masque. Yang knew to take pride in being dumb as all hell—it was when you were smart that you really got rooked.

“Okay,” Blake whispered, “I’ve got the… dirt they have on Cardin—you don’t- even you don’t wanna know—plus some stuff with some old Malachite associates to make it seem like they’ve got a target to figure out, but-”

Yang saw the flicker of her ears, the faintest constriction of her pupils to signal Blake had heard something. She’d seen it before and knew what happened next.

Blake yanked her out of sight, leaving Yang briefly lamenting how her build made her hard to conceal, but the tangled sight lines of the records room gave Blake a sense of where to hide the both of them. As they held their breath, trying not to make a sound, they braced themselves to hear the sound of shuffling footsteps, the sigh of a low-level clerk in the midst of their job—one who, mercifully, wasn’t expecting the presence of his currently-unconscious colleague—the click of a drawer, the shuffling of paper… and soon the sound of footsteps as their would-be problem left the room, shutting the door behind them.

With the faint exhalation of danger having passed, Yang knew it was time for the two of them to move on to egress. From the plan Weiss had put together, Yang figured their best bet, in terms of patrol routes and visibility, was the same as the one they’d come through. A glance at the clock confirmed that they were in their window, and it would soon be time to-

Which was when the wall opened up, an utterly seamless door even Blake had missed appearing out of nowhere as another cleric, as blond and Valean as Yang herself was, walked into the room and glanced up from his papers… to see the both of them.

Blondie’s eyes went wide as he saw them, both the look of someone who was seeing someone where he shouldn’t be seeing someone… and that little glint of recognition that Yang, who had plenty of experience evading debt collectors and toughs, knew meant that she’d been found out with one look.

One look… before he turned to flee, to get backup and really cause problems for the both of them.

Smart boy. But Yang knew not to tear after him in a panic. No, he knew the building and its secret passages and from the way he was moving, without pausing in startled surprise or confusion at seeing an intruder, he was one of those sacristans, the men who wore the clericals but had a lot more in common with Yang and Blake than any priest. Flipping her truncheon in her hand, she threw it like a missile with long-practiced accuracy.

It struck him in the back of the knee and the cleric went down hard, a wild cry of pain interrupted by the thump against the floor. Attempting to move his leg in a panic, he howled as his injury asserted itself on him. Loudly. Not surprising, considering how Blake winced in subconscious sympathy for his leg, but in terms of “not being noticed,” a guy screaming his lungs out was universally bad news.

Yang closed in, knowing she had to shut him up in a hurry—the clock for their discovery was not long now, and every small advantage she could get mattered for their extraction. Fortunately, the man on the ground was-

A fraction of a second before Yang could grab the man, the hollering quieted, and she saw a movement from his arm she very much didn’t want to see. A fakeout? He was smart… and more disciplined than most gang members and also more cunning than most religious types. A dangerous combination, but...

Yang was just more dangerous.

The flash of his blade sent her reflexes into action, her hands moving without thought to catch his arm mid-strike, pressing her thumb on the pressure spot faster than he could realize, causing his hand to seize up… and letting the knife tumble from his grip. A quick jerk pulled his arm down, keeping him from being able to make a strike, just in time for his mind to catch up with what was happening. He looked to Yang with wide, startled eyes—evidently, he was coming to terms that Yang was the sort of opponent he didn’t expect to fight.

“Oh, hell-” he began to say, but a sharp blow from Yang dropped him like a sack of potatoes.

“We gotta go,” Blake said, as Yang scooped up the fallen priest. “Wait, what are you doing?”

“Taking him with us—they’re either gonna come back and he’s gone with no clues to who took him or they’ll come back to this guy waking up with way too good a description of my face. Either way,” she nodded to the crumpled cleric, “I think he looks like someone who knows what we’re looking to ask, and he moved like someone who knew the other side of their business.”

Blake peered down at him. “Isn’t this… aren’t we escalating things?” she asked.

“Yep,” Yang answered, “but we’re escalating things either way. Might as well see what we can get from him to make it worth it.”

He didn’t look like much, but Yang saw firsthand that he had a lot more to him than what he looked like. But getting him back to their safehouse… Yang had a feeling Weiss would know how to figure him out, get what she needed using her mind.

And if that didn’t work, well… Yang knew he wasn’t that much seasoned for fighting. So he might be amenable to other means of getting him to open up...