Right about the time I was putting the coffee tin back, the door to my team's room opened. I'd cut out from grounds-keeping a half hour early, there was something I needed to take care of. Granted, I was going about it in an underhanded way, but I hadn't wanted to approach from the front. Not before I'd made some moves to guarantee a more successful outcome.

Right as I'd finished my preparations, Blake and Yang came waltzing into the room. It moved my timetable up a smidge, but worked anyway, I could improvise.

Blake stepped into the room first, looking bedraggled and out of sorts. A look that was in danger of becoming her default, with how often she looked it. Her clothes were wrinkled and creased, bow almost ready to come undone, and heavy bags hung low beneath her eyes. Her appearance was put into even starker contrast by Yang, who was her otherwise unruffled sunny self.

I stood in front of the cabinet my teammates kept everything, and relaxed my stance. Making myself natural. "Ah, just the kitten I was looking for." I said "We need to talk."

"Oh, so I've got to take this from you too?" Blake asked snidely, giving me a sharp look and a raised brow.

"Too?" I asked, then looked to Yang "… Guess I'm not the only one who noticed."

"It's kinda obvious." Yang agreed "I was kinda hoping we'd be able to talk someplace nobody else was."

"A shame." I said "Given the effort I've been putting in, I'd say I have just as much a voice in this conversation as you do."

"Neither of you have a voice, there is no conversation." Blake said testily, trying to shut the conversation down before it began.

"There is such a thing as a one-sided conversation you know." I retorted "You might be talking to a wall, but at least someone is making the effort."

Blake grimaced at me and crossed the room. I sidestepped her, and allowed her into the cabinet. She reached in and retrieved a pitch-black tin: Deathstalker's Delight X-press Coffee, Vacuan Blend. She took the tin and began to storm back across the room. Same as me, Yang made no effort to stop her, and Blake stepped back into the hall. Unfortunately for her, Quitting is for suckers, and me and Yang stepped in tow with her. We started down the hall.

"Running away from an uncomfortable conversation doesn't change anything." I said "You're only delaying the inevitable."

"Whatever you want to say, can wait until we've stopped Torchwick." Blake answered curtly.

"What, a few weeks from now?" I asked "That ain't gonna fly Kitten, you'll be dead from exhaustion before that."

Blake turned, looking briefly over her shoulder, and gave me a sharp glare.

"I wouldn't go that far." Yang said "But he's right, if we actually managed to corner Torchwick right now, what good would you be like this?"

"I can still… fight." Blake said, barely suppressing a yawn mid-sentence. She grimaced and started walking faster.

"And you'd lose." Yang said, not sugarcoating the reality of things.

Ignoring her partner, Blake hurried along and we followed after her. The dorms had a common area in them that we didn't often use. I'd been to it once before with Weiss, back around the time I'd first gotten here, and I did use it on occasion. It had a communal kitchenette for everyone on this level of the dorms to use, but frankly it didn't see much use. I can only remember ever seeing maybe one or two people outside myself ever use it. Considering I have a hotplate to work with, I really didn't even need to use it. It had a coffee maker though, which saved us having to keep one in the room.

Blake strolled, more accurately stumbled, across the room. She popped open the funnel for the coffee grounds and began pouring them in.

"Blake, you need to rest." Yang gently nudged "I know you how important taking down Torchwick is to you, but-"

"But nothing, Yang." Blake said, pressing a button and setting the machine to brew. She turned and looked at both me and her partner. "I can't afford to rest, not now."

"Actually, you can." I said "That's half the reason I'm killing myself every night, remember? So, you're ready for when it's time to hit Torchwick where it hurts."

"I will be ready, because I am ready." Blake said, rubbing her eyes that, now that I could see them, were red as a Bighorner's ass. "I'm going to keep studying the information that we have. That way, no matter what happens, I can be ready for it."

I shook my head. "It doesn't work that way, Blake. All the book learning in the world can't prepare you for when the shit hits the fan."

"That doesn't mean I shouldn't be ready." Blake bit back "I need to be ready."

"No, you need to sleep." Yang said gently "What happens when the time does come to fight Torchwick, and you pass-out midfight?"

"That won't happen." Blake said back, voice on the verge of a hiss.

"… Is there something wrong here Blake?" I asked "You're being irrational."

Blake's eye hardened into a glare. "I'm not being irrational, everything I'm doing-"

"How does running yourself into the ground seem rational?" I asked "As someone who does that more frequently than should be advised, it's not."

"Because I have to make this right!" Blake shouted, finally boiling over.

She flared her arms out to either side as she began shouting. Every word punctuated by a motion and flail as Yang and I stood back and watched. Acting as though we were currently standing somewhere behind closed doors. Where no one was going to pry into our private affairs.

Frankly, it proved my point about her irrationality.

"You just don't get it!" Blake shouted again "This is my fault. I helped make this whole mess possible. Everything I did, every stupid choice I've made, is why we're here. If I had just stopped then, had I realized what it was we were doing, none of this would be happening!" Blake's chest began heaving. The whole outburst was taking energy that, I was more than certain, Blake didn't actually have the reserves to sustain. Her breathing was getting heavier and more labored. "So I can't rest. Not until I've made this right. You just… don't understand."

"… So you're going to run yourself until you're dead?" I asked.

I let those words hang in the air for a moment. Blake didn't have the steam to immediately respond, and Yang seemed to be working something of her own. But I already knew the approach I was taking. I'd had this talk once before. Odds were, I'd probably have it again, given enough time and the company I kept.

"That's where the road you're going down leads, Blake." I said "You, trying to right every mistake you've made, and getting yourself killed. I'm sure in your mind, it makes sense, almost like you're balancing the scales, right?"

Blake didn't respond to that, but I saw from the shiver that went through her, I'd hit the mark.

"But here's the thing, Blake: bad things happen sometimes. The world's a harsh place like that. It's both arrogance and pride to assume it's all because of you." I said, trying to be as gentle as I could "The White Fang was going down the path it's on long before you ever got involved. You may have done some things you wish you could take back, but you're not the problem. Not anymore. You're trying to make things right. But in doing that, you've elected to sacrifice yourself so long as you can achieve some form of success. Tell me, at what point does you depriving yourself of rest keep any of the White Fang from committing war crimes?"

"I- I-" Blake stuttered, the drunken haze of exhaustion dampening her words.

"I can answer for you: it doesn't." I said "The only thing it does, is make it so that, when the time comes for you to actually do the good you so crave to do, you're only alternative is to fight valiantly and pass in a blaze of glory… Tell me, you can't seriously want that, can you?"

"N-no!" Blake coughed after a moment "I-I- I just…"

Then, Blake did something I wasn't expecting.

She started tearing up. The exhaustion must've started crashing down on her.

"I-I… How do I even make up for the things I did?" Blake asked, a few dewy tears rolling from the corners of her eyes. "I… I can't even tell any of you some of the things I did, that I wish I could take back. What else am I supposed to do?"

Almost as if on cue, the coffee machine burbled to an end, the pot full of restorative black elixir. Blake paused for a moment but, with reluctant motions, she poured herself a mug. She let it rest under her nose a moment, before sipping from it. She said nothing, just stared down into the coffee as its surface stilled, forming a black mirror.

"… Ruby and I aren't sisters." Yang said, after a long moment "Not full sisters anyway… We're half-sisters. But the only mom I ever had was Summer, Ruby's mom."

Blake slowly swiveled her head back up to her partner. Her red eye's now growing puffy too.

"Summer was basically super-mom." Yang said "She was everything you could've wanted from a mom and then some. She baked awesome cookies, told you stories when you were sick, and kissed your booboos better… But when I was, like, maybe seven, she left on a mission… and she didn't come back. She left my dad a mess, and left us all to look out for each other. I wound up finding a photo of his old team… Because of that, I found out Summer wasn't my real mom. My dad had been with someone else, once, but she'd left not long after I was born, and left me with my dad."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Blake tilted her head curiously as she sipped her coffee. I listened silently; I could see in Yang's eyes how important this was to her.

"Because it was just me now, taking care of Ruby who wasn't even walking yet, I spent every second I could trying to find out about her. Every scrap of information I could worm out of my uncle, every paper that wasn't hidden, and every picture that wasn't stuffed somewhere… it led to me finding out about a place on Patch that was important to my mom and dad. The first real clue I'd ever found… and it caused me to do something stupid." Yang's voice filled with shame "I put Ruby in a wagon and went to go find her."

A jolt of primal worry that I didn't even know I had speared my stomach.

"Just a kid, not even ten years old, and a toddler." Yang said, looking more ashamed with each word "I dragged Ruby with me for hours. Getting cuts and bruises, tripping on the road, and by the time we got there, I just wanted to fall over and sleep… but we got there." Yang said "… And my mom wasn't there… But the Grimm were." I saw something flash in Yang's eyes for a moment. Not fear, but something old and frightened. Like recalling an old nightmare. "I can remember, staring into their glowing red eyes, and crying. I'd walked us into that, just two kids on some harebrained attempt to find my mom. I might as well have served us both on a silver platter."

Yang closed her eyes for a moment, and took a deep breath. When she opened them, the look that'd been in them and the shame on her face vanished.

"But we were lucky. My uncle came looking for us. He saved us at the last minute. Took us home. Had dad tear into me for doing something so stupid… and I've never forgotten it." Yang finished, then looked Blake in the eye "It remains one of my biggest regrets. Letting what I wanted to do blind me, put myself and Ruby in absolutely pointless danger… I still want to meet my mom, and I'm still looking for her. But I'll never make that mistake again."

Blake didn't say anything. She just placed both hands on her mug and clutched it tightly.

Yang approached her, and gently rested her hands on Blake's shoulders. "It's ok to want to make it right. It's ok, that you feel guilty, and don't know if you can talk about it. It's not ok to put yourself in pointless danger. Because if Torchwick showed up, right now? You'd die. Then there'd be nothing you could do to fix it."

"…But I…" Blake stuttered "I can't just keep doing nothing. Because that's what we're doing, waiting for Six, we're doing nothing."

"Waiting and doing nothing aren't the same thing." Yang said "We're getting ready for when it's time to do something. So when it is time, to go find Torchwick, to stop the White Fang, to go find my mom, we're ready. Doing nothing isn't the same."

"But… But I… I don't even know…" Blake rubbed her eyes blearily as a yawn escaped her again. She blinked hard, and looked down at the cup in her hands. Like she was having trouble focusing. "Why… why isn't…"

"Because I switched your coffee for decaf." I said.

Yang and Blake both turned to look at me. Yang completely surprised, while Blake looking like she was suffering from input lag.

"Sacrilege, I know." I said "I figured if I couldn't reason with you, limiting your caffeine intake would at least help you gain a more meaningful catnap."

Yang paused a moment, before giving me an amused, appreciative smile. Blake, input lag growing worse, finally managed the look of surprise Yang had previously. Before she could actually manage anything more than that though, her eyes rolled back into her head. The coffee mug clattered out of her hands and onto the floor. With Yang guiding her, she fell forward, softly leaning her weight against Yang.

"You… dick." Blake managed to huff out.

"You can curse me out later." I said "Sleep now, I'd rather deal with an awake and catty Blake than exhausted and mewling."

Blake mumbled a response to that, but it was eaten by Yang's clothes. Blake nuzzled her face into her partner's shoulder, and was out like a light. Blake's full weight eased into Yang as she went limp, not that it bothered Yang at all.

"… Well, I think this actually went better than I thought it would." Yang said, looking to me "Thanks."

"Someone needed to do something, glad you were at least paying attention." I nodded "You need a hand carrying her?"

"I've got her, she's actually pretty light." Yang said, reconfiguring herself so she could load Blake onto her back. "Get the door for me?"

"Gladly." I nodded, pointing to Blake's spill "Just let me clean the mess up first."

I wasted a moment, swiping up the spilled fake bean juice and then started back down the hall to the room. As we went, Blake naturally positioned herself on Yang's back, moving her arms to drape over Yang's shoulders and matching Yang's posture to make walking easier. Not that I was anyone to comment on the sort of thing, but she actually looked cute asleep, peaceful.

Then she nuzzled her face into the crux of Yang's neck, and I saw Yang straighten slightly, her eyes widening. I could just barely hear why. Blake was making a faint sound that could almost be mistaken for snoring. But it was too soft, too throaty. It was continuous too, rising in intensity as she exhaled but continuing as she inhaled regardless.

Yang and I looked at each other.

"No way." Yang said, eyeing Blake "Is she?"

"I think that's what it sounds like, yeah." I said "That. That is just precious."

Yang chuckled, and we carried on to the dorm room. I opened the door and closed it behind us as Yang laid Blake into bed, rolling her in a blanket. Blake snuggled in and dreamed a peaceful dream. Probably about a library filled with unlimited fish and catnip or something.

'Note to self: find catnip and mix into food.'

"You think we should tell anyone?" Yang asked.

"Like who, Nora?" I asked "That sounds like a catastrophe waiting to happen. Let them find out in their own time."

Yang chuckled warmly at that. "Why can't you just admit you like puns?"

"I don't." I answered.

"… She's not wrong." Yang said "We can't keep waiting for you to find something."

"But that's the plan, Yang." I told her "I'm doing my part, and doing it diligently. You just need to trust me."

Yang nodded at that, but said nothing. Instead, just turning to look out the window of our room.

"… Was that all true?" I asked "What you did?"

"… Yeah." Yang answered, still looking out the window "I was a stupid kid."

"You were a stupid kid who lost her mom, and wanted to go find her." I said "I side with your dad and uncle, but I understand why you did it."

"… Do you think it was because of me?" Yang asked.

"… Say what?" I asked.

"Do you think- Did I drive them away?" Yang asked "First my mom, then Summer… did I-"

"No." I said, flatly "If you're responsible for them leaving, then I'm missing a finger…" I raised my hands up and did a quick digit inspection. "… Nope still here."

Yang chuckled again.

"If Summer was the super-mom you say she was, then there's no way she left because of you." I said "Your mom on the other hand? Don't even give her the time of day. She's an idiot who abandoned probably the best thing that ever happened to her."

"Careful Six, you might make a girl blush." Yang joked.

"You're not responsible for their choices." I finished "The world's a cruel place, and sometimes, bad things happen for no reason. Sometimes the only thing you can do is keep moving."

"… I still want to find her." Yang said.

"Then I've no doubt you will. You managed to walk across Patch as a toddler, right?" I said "I'm pretty sure you'll track her down eventually."

Yang huffed a laugh still looking out the window. I had to wonder what she was thinking about, just a little bit. Was she thinking about Summer? Her mom? Blake?

Or was she thinking about that day, when she dragged Ruby into the woods?

I could see the way it had stuck with her. Making such a stupid mistake so young. She'd dragged someone who'd trusted her into danger, and hadn't even realized she was doing it. She was too young, too naïve. Recognizing danger can be hard sometimes, especially if you don't know to be looking for it. Like a kid lost in the woods. Like a Courier delivering the wrong package to the wrong place.

Like a pair of idiot teenagers, going into the bar of a notorious criminal…

"… Hey, Yang?" I started.

Yang turned and looked over her shoulder at me. Her face was warm and rosy in the summer sunlight, streaming through the window. She smiled softly and sweetly to me. But her lilac eyes were clouded and misty. The same as when she'd been talking to Blake. "… What's up?"

"… Nothing." I said "I'll tell you later."