Sequel to Shattered Destiny! This fic was another request from the same patron/customer, my good friend beacontactics! It'll cover Yang and Pyrrha's time together in Patch.

Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY.

After The Battle

Chapter 1. Promise

After the attack on Beacon Academy, the school had been shut down for an undetermined amount of time. Major repairs need to be arranged, various people needed healing and recuperation, and their headmaster was missing, all of which combined to form hectic circumstances.

As such, the students had made their own arrangements to locate places to stay.

However, in most cases, the school authorities didn't know where their students disappeared to. With Beacon Tower in ruins, there were no means of proper, efficient communication at the present time.

Some students took air ships back to their homelands, whereas others vanished halfway across the kingdoms into unknown lands.

Much had been lost and destroyed due to the invasion of Grimm and the attacks of the White Fang.

But only a few people knew that, had it not been for a certain girl, the devastation and loss of life would have been ten times as great.

Yang never gave herself enough credit for what she'd done, for the deaths she'd prevented and the things she'd salvaged.

Once she had been discharged from the infirmary at Beacon, it had been crucial that she consult with Ruby and their friends, and decide what their next plan of action would be. At the time, Ruby and Yang knew that their father must have desperately wanted them home. Yang was willing to go, while Ruby seemed only half as eager.

Blake made it known that she wanted to return to Menagerie to see her own parents, show them she was all right, and consult with them on the affairs of the White Fang.

Weiss said she wanted to locate Winter and go to her, no matter where that might be.

However, Jaune, Nora, and Ren had decided there was an insatiable thirst for answers they couldn't ignore, and announced that the three of them intended to go out on a journey to find them. The others voiced their concerns about such an idea, all except Ruby.

But Pyrrha opposed the notion more than anyone. For the first time, she didn't want to go with her team, nor did she want them to go.

But it soon became clear to them all that some things were inevitable, and impossible to change.

It wasn't long before students were evacuated from Beacon on air ships that had destinations set for every kingdom and place on Remnant. But in the chaos of the bustling crowds and confusion of where some of them were going, they'd lost one another.

Weiss' father had come for her before she'd been able to figure out where to go to find Winter. He'd used the force of his authority in order to take her home, demanding she return to Atlas to recover from her extensive injuries. Though Weiss knew that wasn't why he wanted her back home at all.

Blake ended up heading for Menagerie along with Sun, but the ship arrived so unexpectedly and departed so quickly they never got a chance to say goodbye to their companions and teammates properly.

Jaune, Ren, and Nora made it known that they would be embarking on a journey of their own, but they never said where they would be going. Pyrrha just barely managed to pull them all into a hug and pray for their safety, promising she'd come find them soon if they didn't manage to find her first.

Due to the nasty gash Cinder had inflicted on her ankle, Pyrrha still had a limp to her gait, and she was in no condition to be walking foreign lands on a journey that had no concrete destination. Her weapon had also been destroyed, and she needed it to be repaired before she could even consider going out into a Grimm-infested world once again.

Nora and Ren seemed a little confused as to why Pyrrha wouldn't join them. But Jaune seemed to know something most others didn't.

Pyrrha understood why he didn't push her to join them in their expedition. He'd been in the basement with her and Ozpin. He knew about the Maiden's powers.

And considering Cinder had fled and Pyrrha was alive, he must've known she was rightfully hosting those powers once again.

Jaune was sworn to secrecy that he'd never speak a word about her powers.

Pyrrha herself had been pulled aside by certain persons, and it had been made absolutely clear to her that no one must know about her powers at this time, or anytime until she had properly consulted with all parties involved with this massive secret. She had understood.

And even though Jaune had never made a verbal oath to her specifically, Pyrrha saw that reassurance in his eyes; she dipped her head in thanks to him.

And so, she saw the three of them off before the crowds consumed them, and an air ship took them away.

Pyrrha cried as she waved after them, because even though she trusted they would be all right if they were together, some part of her still felt that unbearable sentiment that she was losing them somehow.

At the very least, she wasn't alone.

Yang was at her side, pulling her in and consoling her. Ruby hugged her from the other side.

Together, they offered to bring Pyrrha back to Patch with them for a while so she could recover.

And she gratefully accepted, and hugged them both as she wept.

So the three of them and Zwei had taken a ship to Patch. The flight was long and lonely, but not as lonely as it could have been. At least the three of them had each other – sisters, friends, and saviors.

Once they had landed, it was necessary to take a carriage back to Ruby and Yang's home, for the sake of keeping Pyrrha off her bad ankle and to speed up their arrival.

Of course, their father had been a mess. He was so relieved to see his daughters, but distraught to discover what had happened to Yang. She made it very clear she didn't want his pity or anyone else's. She just wanted to rest and not think about things for a while.

She was still hurt by how abruptly they'd lost Weiss to her father, how they'd lost Blake and Sun in the crowds, how they'd lost everyone else but each other.

Yang was just glad she still had Ruby and Pyrrha, at the very least.

Or so she'd thought.

Tai had been pleasant and inviting to Pyrrha, more than willing to accommodate her, despite her arrival being unexpected. She apologized profusely for that, to which he casually waved it off.

Ruby let down Zwei, and he went scampering over and jumped into her father's arms, while Yang entered their home almost wordlessly. Everything still felt wrong to her.

Well, all the things she could still feel, anyway.

Dinner that night was a struggle for her. She had to keep asking Ruby to cut her meat for her, and for Pyrrha to pass her anything from the right side of the table. They could all see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice, how helpless she felt, how useless...

And they all did their best to help her with it by not drawing attention to it. They just acted like everything was normal, even though Yang knew they understood full-well that it wasn't.

That irritated her for some reason she herself couldn't understand.

Part of her wanted to shout at them and tell them to treat her like the invalid she was.

But the other part of her was too defeated for that, too exhausted.

And still, another part of her had to admit it was grateful for all they were doing and trying to do for her sake.

Other than that, dinner consisted of relaying news and information to their father. When he asked Pyrrha why she had come to Patch to stay with them rather than anywhere else, she merely told him she was indebted to his daughters and longed to stay close to them.

It was an answer that left much more unsaid than it left out in the open, but Tai accepted it nonetheless.

That night, he offered Pyrrha a guest room on the second floor in between Ruby's and Yang's rooms. Yang lent Pyrrha a set of sleepwear clothes, and received a gentle hug and even gentler words of gratitude in return. Ruby was sure to hug Pyrrha goodnight as well before turning to Yang and squeezing her tightly for a long, long time.

At the time, Pyrrha and Yang both interpreted Ruby's embrace as the embrace of a girl who was just relieved the worst of it was over, a girl who was willing to settle down for a time and recuperate.

The next morning, when they found nothing in Ruby's bed but a letter, they realized how foolish they'd been for making such assumptions.

Of course Ruby Rose would never sit still during such times, not unless she was literally chained down, and even then they knew she'd find a way out.

But this was just too much for Yang. She'd been upset about losing Weiss and Blake as it was, so to lose Ruby the very next morning...

That sorrow, compiled atop the depression that came with the loss of her arm, nearly broke her.

Suddenly, that long hug Ruby had given her last night made all too much sense. The only comfort in it all was the fact that she'd told Yang she loved her, and Yang had said it back.

But now, she felt more alone than ever, more so than she'd felt being locked up and isolated in that detention cell in the middle of the Tournament.

Things only seemed to be getting worse for her, even after the worst of it all was supposedly over.

She couldn't take any more of this.

Yang locked herself in her room all day and cried. She was deaf to her father's hapless attempts to console her and to justify Ruby's actions.

She refused any voice of reason, internal or external. She just needed to take some time to be miserable by herself.

Tai seemed to understand.

But Pyrrha couldn't bear it.

She stayed outside Yang's room all day and talked quietly to her, about anything and everything. She stayed there until nightfall, by which time her voice was as raspy from speaking as Yang's was from crying.

And Pyrrha made a promise to her then.

"I won't leave you, Yang."

She stayed outside Yang's door all night long, until the crying on the other side finally stopped.

And on the quietest, darkest hour of the night, Yang opened her door and let her in.

A/N: Just something brief to start us off here. I wanted to give Yang a bit of a bitter kind of tone/feeling, because she's still guilty/resentful of her injury.

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