Mantle loves white and gray, Atlas even more so. Maybe it was the drugs, delirium in liquid form coursing through my veins, but I swear the city was built on ice bricks and snow sheets. Still I felt safe for the first time that day. The ships above so many, so immeasurable. I knew they couldn't stop what lurked in shadows, but maybe they could do the fighting, the dying, the limb losing for me.

Say what you want about military dictatorships, but they are efficient. Refugees were ordered and set up in former hotels and empty apartments. Some in ready made camps to be shipped off to Vacuo and Mistral when they were ready. The huntsmen and huntress, they got the real deal. All packed into the Atlas school, like real students, pretending to be normal. Ironwood made it happen, democracy never seemed so silly to me, but I like my freedom, I intend to get my Vale back. Another time.

I slept through most of it, or at least no one could argue I was really there. Certain blurry photos appear in my mind. A lot of Ruby, some of Weiss, but the only voice is Blake's, her voice calling my name as a whining siren blared and hurt my ears. Her whispering to me "Be okay," as I walked an endless white abyss, shades stared at me, but I swear I felt her arm pull me along. I also felt my other arm.

I guess I'm crazy too.

The drugs fucked me up, distorted everything. Apparently they took me off it and I started screaming, trying to rip off the metal of my prosthetic. I screamed how it hurt, apparently, I screamed it was crushing my arm. Apparently I knocked someone's tooth out and then they put me under.

For a week.

The hospital I woke up in might as well been made of fluorescent light. It scorched my eyes, cauterizing my dilated pupils. Didn't need them I guess. I heard Ruby and Blake before I saw them, just outlines of Red and black blurred by the incoming light.

"Yang, Yang it's me!" Ruby called, so excited, the horror absent in her voice. Relief. God, the world was cruel to her and yet the little things, like eyes fluttering in a white smeared hospital, that made her giddy like a puppy. I love her so much.

"Hey Rubes," I tried to say, but gargled wheezes replaced it. I needed a fucking drink.

"Yang, do you remember anything that's happened? Can you look at me? Nod if yes, shake if not." I figure she means since we got to Atlas. I might have been high as hell, but I got her meaning. I shook no. Honestly I figured it was Mantle's clinic, but I didn't even know then. I still felt my arm. I still do. "Yang listen, something happened, the doctor says it's best for you to see it yourself. Please breathe, and look at your right hand, and Yang, I'm here with you okay?" I could feel her skin on my left, the tenderness of her grip. My eyes permitted me to see her face, the exhaustion in her yellow eyes, the sweetness pulling on her smile. I knew I was fucked.

That was my first time seeing the new Ember Celica. It was beautiful, black and gold, fiber cloth shielding the inner wires, yellow plates of metal forming the joints and palm plates. They moved when I tried to move them, but I could not feel what they felt. Only the tingling from where my hand was meant to be. I screamed.

Two weeks in, it's better now. Well, it's less shit now. I moved from Mantle General to the Atlas school clinic. They keep me under watch now. Arm's still calibrating, the physical therapy just to get back to a normal person, much less a fighter, is a never ending cycle of disappointment. They want me to peel an apple. I fucking hate apples. I am going to smash Adam's head in with a fucking apple with this fucking hand before I peel it.

"Your turn," Blake's come into the habit of playing chess with me. Ironwood's idea. It helps the hand practice, it lets me take time. I suck, but Blake lets me win. I just mess around with knights. Occasionally stumbling into victory, but I'm a stumbler.

"Take this ye heathen!" I announce in my fake feudal accent, sending a bishop to wipe a pawn. I let go, notice her knight and I'm already saying goodbye. Blake smiles. moves a rook forward instead. A good move, but a shittier one.

"Yang you go after every kill, can't do that in chess." I smile. I'm so happy she's here. Ruby comes a lot, but tries to keep training. She's obsessed with taking back Vale. Still I see her daily. Weiss is rarer, she tries, but her dad's being an overprotective asshole. Plus, she tries to see Ruby whenever she does escape. The lovebirds didn't get it yet.

"Like hell I can't, your army will fall before me!" I moved my own rook like a battering ram right at Blake's knight. Once a week another visitor came, one that actually meant near the most. Ironwood. First time he came in, I thought I was getting a lecture. Instead, he pulled up his shirt and demanded an arm wrestling competition, metal on metal. Who was the best cyborg. It was the first laugh I had since this all happened. Ironwood just, he got it. Even when I didn't. He told stories, gave Yang these little bits of advice, how to ignore the phantom pains, how to deal with the irritable itch under the prosthetic. He just; no one else understood. Old fart was cool in his own way.

"You really suck at this," Blake admitted knocking the rook down with a bishop right to the diagonal of it. Blake, God damn Belladonna. Ironwood may have gotten it better than anyone else, but Blake. She didn't just visit daily. She lived. Crashed on the visitors couch, went to physical therapy. She loved. She is beautiful. I want her. I want her to want me. I want her to make me whole. She feels guilty. Fucking hand poisoned it. She's here to pay a toll for adam. Not to love me.

"Check," A brilliant trap I retroactively set after noticing my other knights convenient placement. Picking the piece up with the metal hand, I couldn't feel when the fingers touched the wood, had to guess. Guess wrong. It slipped and I held in the sharpest scream in my life. This fucking thing, this fucking thing can't play chess. What huntress can't pick up a two inch piece of wood?!

"Hey," Blake mumbles, picking up the wooden piece, her fingers scrape against my metal. I can't feel them, but I watch. Her hand folds into mine. She trusts me, not to squeeze too tight, not to hurt her. I do my best, I can't tell when to stop. It doesn't hurt, or she's really good at hiding a wince. "It's getting late, can I forfeit?"

"Yeah," I mumble, the beginning love me is tight in my throat, "the dorms are kind of a ways."

"I'll sleep here," Blake states as fact. "The couch hurts," she licks her lips and shoulders droop for once big breath. Is she tired or nervous? "The bed fits two, would you mind?"

"No," I answer, holding in so much. I want to cry, cry for me, cry for my arm, cry for my city. "If you aren't scared of a cold metal pump at night, I'm a perfect cuddle buddy." Cry for her.

Love me, I want to scream, don't feel guilty anymore. Just love me, the phantom feeling simply roars.

*** they cuddled a fuck ton.