Back in Black

by Aetheling


As Bleiss' guards ditched her to go see whatever the fuck was happening in the camp, she got back to working on her escape. Kneeling briefly, Bleiss summoned her little surprise and set him to work. The miniature Black knight had been slowly weakening the bars in the rear of her cage, and Bleiss suspected in another day or two, she'd be able to fore them and hop the palisade. That, or go on a very satisfying rampage, but subtle was probably the better plan.

She could be subtle… when she needed.

Whatever was happening by the entrance certainly wasn't on the subtle side though; the shouting was growing louder. Hopefully, a fight would break out and buy her more work time. Her little man was adorable, but he wasn't exactly powerful on this scale.

"-end me to Qrow, damnit!" a voice shouted extra loud. Bleiss turned to face the sound, she'd recognize that angry bellowing anywhere!

"No way…" the dark girl mumbled, trying to peer past the tents and boxes in her way.

"That's enough! You watch your mouth in front of our leader!" Someone yelled back. The voices dropped just below discernable for a few moments, and then something crashed into the tent, collapsing the whole thing, and revealing… Yang surrounded by a mob.

"YANG?!" Bleiss screeched.

"Bleiss?!" Yang yelled back, just as surprised. The whole camp was staring at both of them now, however.

"Fuck it, subtle time over." Bleiss focused in on her knight again and the tiny form exploded upward, bursting through the roof of her cage until a twenty foot tall obsidian behemoth loomed behind her. She shouldered over the unstable cage wall and stumble-ran to her teammate, Knight lumbering protectively above her.

The idiotic bandits,dumbstruck by the sheer awesomeness of her, didn't even try to stop her.

"What is that?" Yang asked

"Not important, what are you even doing here?" Bleiss asked Yang, who was looking between her and the woman who'd curbstomped her last week.

"Well, she's my mom, and she can get us to my uncle and Ruby."

Bleiss looked at Yang, then to the bandit leader, then back to Yang.

How had she missed it?

"Your mom fucking kidnapped me?"

Yang whirled on her mother. "You kidnapped her!?"

Yelling at Saggy-tits Senior seemed to break the spell, though, as the bandits began to shout at Bleiss and Yang, creeping forward despite her Knight. Yang grabbed her elbow and began to lead her away from the big tent. Bleiss saw Yang's bike on the other side of the crowd, and willed her knight to clear a path.

Just as he stepped over them and raised his sword, he was halted by a bolt of goddamn lightning crashing down in front of them.

"Enough!" Vernal yelled behind them.

"If you all don't take a hold of yourselves, this place will be crawling with Grimm!" Senior warned.

Bleiss was fine with that: Grimm would take care of most of these losers for her, but Yang had stopped, looking back to her mother.

God, Bleiss hoped Yang would age better than that dust fire.

"Give the girl her weapon back." Bleiss only noticed Vernal was carrying Myrtenasty just as the older woman hucked it at her, but she snagged it from the air anyway.

"You two, in my tent, now."

"Why?" Yang demanded.

The older woman looked down for a moment. "If you're really going after your sister, then you need to know the truth." And without further ado, she turned around and went inside. Vernal followed her in, and all around the bandits dispersed.

"Sorry about tha-" Bleiss cut Yang off as she threw herself onto the taller girl, crushing her in a hug. She dangled off Yang, burying her face in a blonde mass of hair.

"I missed you so much." Bleiss sniffled, unapologetically crying onto her friend.

Yang squeezed her back. "I missed you too."

Bleiss had spent the last two weeks living in a cage, with one bucket to clean herself and another to relieve herself in, eating literal fucking gruel, having nothin to wear but the freakin ballgown her father had stuffed her into, or her birthday suit, and waiting to hear Daddy Dearest had either bought her or left her to die. The approximately ten seconds she'd been dreaming of Winter murdering the shit outta those bandits had been the actual highpoint of her month.

Going from that to being with Yang and Ruby, eating Ren's amazeballs cooking, and sitting hip to hip with Jaune -who wasn't even trying to run away- left her virtually drunk on joy. She was also a little drunk from Ruby's uncle's flask, but no one needed to know that part: the rest of her friends were lightweights, anyway.

"Easy there, Vomit Boy," Yang teased Jaune as he gathered up the dishes, "I believe in you."

"Oh, we're doing nickname throwbacks now, wonderful." He said wearily through an obvious smile as he started to leave the room. Bleiss called after him.

"Bet that fine ass we are, Tall Blond and Fuckable!"

Yang lunged over the table to clap hands over Ruby's ears and glared death at the dark-haired girl.

Nora did the same with Ren, oddly enough.

"Hey!" Qrow yelled, sauntering over with the kid, Oscar -or Ozpin whatever the hell the deal was-, in tow. "Knock it off."

"Sorry, Uncle Qrow." The sisters murmured in unison. Her friends all focused on the guy, even her Jaune came back in from the kitchen. Bleiss suddenly had the feeling that the day was about to get way less fun, and she was not about to let Saggy Tit's Twin spoil her day.

Qrow opened his mouth, and Bleiss smacked her fist onto the tabletop. "Okay, this has been great and shit, but before we do anything else, I need to go shopping!"

"Wait, what?" Ruby said. "But we were gonna talk about tiny Ozpin and what happened at Raven's camp and stuff!"

Bleiss cracked her fist on the tabletop again. "Love ya, Ruby, but a girl's gotta have priorities! I can't get anything done so long as I'm dolled up like Daddy's perfect little girl: I'm a bad bitch, and I need to look it, damnit!"

"Look," Qrow interrupted, "we don't have time for you kids to go paint your nails an-"

"Enough outta you, Pedo! I've just spent four months in the closest thing to hell, this trip is happening!"

"The Schnee Manor is hell." He said flatly.

"Uh, duh. Ever been there?"

There was an awkward pause as Bleiss and Qrow stared each other down.

"I'm not getting paid enough to deal with this," Qrow mumbled as he fished for a flask she knew wasn't there. "Fine, kiddies can go play. But tonight, we got a lot to talk about."

"Damn right…" Yang grumbled.

Jaune was actually kind of happy to be shopping. Most guys would act all miserable and suffering on a shopping trip, but most guy's hadn't spent all winter and most of spring hiking across two continents with one change of clothes, and there was only so much Ren's sewing could do. The seven of them had found their way to a local department store and spent the better part of the last hour drifting in packs of two or three, finding whatever they needed or what they possibly wanted.

He'd gone boots hunting with Yang and Ruby, Ren and he had picked up some much needed changes of underwear, Nora and Bleiss had dragged Ren and he along as judges in the makeup section: aside from a couple kisses blown by Bleiss when she was trying lipstick, they seemed completely honest in wanting their opinions. Ruby had tried to get him into a new hoodie -like hell he was changing it, before Bleiss and he had run into each other again in the belts row. She'd co-opted him then after they both picked a couple, arguing that since he knew her makeup, he'd be the obvious choice to help assembly the outfit.

Which was how he found himself sitting in the Women's changing rooms as Bleiss tried out her ensemble. This one, he felt was a trap. Trying out the clothes with the boy you like was surprisingly classic tactic for a girl as… unconventional as Bleiss.

"Ugh, feels great to be out of that stupid dress!" The dark girl sighed as what he assumed was the dress flopped onto the floor. "I hated that stupid thing!"

"I don't know, Bleiss, I thought you looked pretty good in it." Jaune said before his brain could stop him. His Bleiss instincts were rusty after so many months of safety. The other girl began to chuckle though, a wolf's laugh if there ever was one.

"Well it's good to know where your tastes run, my Jaune, but that one came from Daddy, so it's going right into a big fuckin' fire." He heard a loud, mechanical cinching. "No… this one sucks."

A heavily studded belt flopped over the top of the stall. "No good?"

"Nah, too narrow. Need something bigger, something with more oomph."

He pulled the belt down for her, but she stopped him. "Oh, and chuck this for me!" She kicked the dirtied dress out of the stall. Jaune squatted down to pick it up, catching a glimpse of long, smooth legs behind the door.

"Hey, Bleiss?"

"Yeah, Beautiful?"

"Why exactly do you hate your father?"

He heard her lean against the stall door, but she didn't say anything back.

"I mean, he sounds awful, I've heard plenty from you and Blake, but it's just..." It was something he didn't understand. He'd been angry with his parents, but even then he still loved them.

"Bleiss?"

"My father wants a lot of things, Jaune." She finally replied, voice worn. "He wants power. He wants money. He wants everyone around him to do exactly what he wants and how he wants to do it. He wants to have everything he thinks he deserves. One of those things, Jaune, is to be Schnee.

"Not just to be a Schnee, to be a member of the family, but to be what defines it. When people think of the family, he wants them to think of Jacques Schnee, CEO of the SDC and patriarch of the most powerful family in Atlas. He doesn't want them thinking about whoever his heir is, he doesn't want them thinking about Nicholas Schnee, he doesn't even want them thinking about his wife. Above all those things, though, he wants them to never remember… Jacques Gele. To never remember he married in, that he isn't a Schnee, that it's all an illusion."

A blue and white jacket flopped over the stall wall, its snowflake emblem worn and battered by her journey. Jaune went to pick it up, but stopped when Bleiss resumed.

"My father stole the SDC from my grandfather and my mother. Gramps was old and sick, so I understand, but my mother… was… weak. She was stupid, and ignorant, and then she was a quitter. She gave up, let him have everything he wanted. And for a while, my father had exactly that. Nick was too sick, my mother was too pathetic, and Winter was his perfect little Schnee.

"And then I was born. With black hair. His hair."

"Black hair," His mind stupidly pointed out, "pitch black, black as night."

"No else had that color in the family. Hell, even he dyed his hair as soon as he could get away with it. He probably danced when it went white naturally! But me? Pure black, and every second of every day he had to look at my hair, he couldn't help but remember he's not a Schnee. I look just like him, daddy's little girl. And he. Can't. Stand. It."

"He hates you for it…" he whispered, giving voice to a thought best left silent, but Bleiss only snorted.

"He sure fucking does. He's that petty about it. I didn't understand why my father was the way he was when I was little: he didn't glower at Winter or Whitley like that, not all the time. He wasn't exactly father of the year material, but he still put in some token work for them, at least he pretended to be interested in their lives sometimes. But me? When I was little, he used to make them dye my hair.

"I finally figured it out on my tenth birthday. Mom was drunk, drunker than usual at least, and picked a fight. Daddy let it all hang out: he only married her for her money and her name, he didn't care in the slightest what she thought of him, and he had no interest 'in that one'. That's me, if it wasn't obvious."

"...fuck."

"Mhmm. That was the day I found myself though, found a goal, a reason. To shove it in his face. To never let him forget, or to let anyone else forget who I am, what I am, and what he must be. When people talk about me, Jaune, what are they gonna say?"

"... She's terrifying?"

Bleiss laughed.

"I hope so, I hope so! But, they're also gonna say 'Oh, Schnee? Well she doesn't look like a Schnee.' 'Black hair? Red eyes? She doesn't look like Nicholas Schnee, or Winter Schnee.' But then someones going to remember, or someones going to look it up. They'll think it, they'll say it."

"Her Father isn't a Schnee."

"Exactly. I won't be my mother, pushed aside and forgotten, and I won't let him dress me up in lies to keep his ego sated. I keep my hair long and our natural color. I wear black and red so everyone has to see. I swear and scream and pick fights so everyone knows I'm there and has to acknowledge me."

She didn't speak again for several minutes, leaving him to listen to cloth and leather and metal as she continued getting dressed.

"One day, I'm going to destroy him. I'm going to tear every one of his pathetic, vain delusions down around his head."

There was something new in her voice. Deeper than hatred, colder than fury.

"I will shatter all his dreams, I will bring his world to its damned knees. For all his cruelty, I'll fucking match him: daughter to father."

Her voice was blacker than the greatest cruelty, and emptier than the void.

And Bleiss would give herself to it. Give all of herself, like for everything she did. She would destroy herself for this.

"I'll ruin him, I will smash his pathetic dreams into tiny little pieces."

"Bleiss?" He licked his lips in fear.

The door opened, and Bleiss peeked out at him, curious. "What?"

"Well, it's just… I thought you wanted to smash me?" He tried for a charming smile, but he imagined the raging fear made it more a death's head grin.

There was an awkward, terrible pause, as Jaune's words penetrated her mind. That cloud of horror seemed to drift closer.

And then, Bleiss laughed.

A deep, snorting, boorish laugh barrelled out of the small woman. She nearly fell out of the stall, laughing so hard she seemed to be holding onto the stall's walls for support. Yet as she laughed, the darkness cracked, and Bleiss was merely… Bleiss. He started to laugh with her. At first, just a nervous chuckle, unsure if he was safe.

Soon he was snorting and giggling right along with her, out of both relief and sheer disbelief. Bleiss shoved a thumb into her mouth as she laughed, biting down to try and rein herself in. There was something he found inordinately funny about that though. So he laughed harder, which made Bleiss laugh harder. By the time they'd gotten control of themselves, he felt lightheaded, leaning against the changing stall to prop himself up, just as she was.

"Ah… oh fuck," she wheezed, "that's what I like about you, Jaune: you know just what to say." She pulled back into the stall again. "Now, tell me lover boy, how do I look?"

The stall opened all the way then, and Bleiss stepped out.

Knee high black leather boots, with spike-like heels. A black skirt, short in front but long in the back, with a blood-red waistcoat atop it, held in place with a row of studded black leather belts. She'd found a red and black bolero like she'd worn in school -and like back in school it left more than a little cleavage hanging out- but this one closed tight at the throat with some kind of red gem

She looked great.

"Like a real bad bitch, Bleiss."

She winked at him. "You know it. And you can find out what I've got on under this any time you'd like, babe."

They laughed again, and this time he was sure it sounded like a wolf having a wonderful time with her favorite rabbit.


A/N: It's back, bitches! Again! I went to RTX this year, which was pretty fun... and then I met a Bleiss cosplayer and that was just the coolest moment ever XD