RWBY: The Immortal

Chapter 36: The Journey V

But still, memories can be made and training can be started again. Weiss, during the times she could in secret, worked on her new form. Some nights she'd find white Beowolves, her sister's summons, sneaking onto the grounds of the manor. Days of training would turn into weeks before becoming a month. Her sister relayed one final note to her, asking only one question, 'why did you want to become a Huntress'. It stopped Weiss, she hadn't expected such a question, but the more she asked herself the more she was unsure. Perhaps it was to not accept her father's will, an act of rebelling. Perhaps she wanted to believe in fairy tales like her leader, or perhaps, the worse, she didn't have a clue.

Far from the snowing land of Atlas, a young girl wandered from the shadows of an airship into the busy streets of Mistral. Even with her hood up, she didn't stick out much as her robes made her appear like an average person. She made her way to the lower levels of the city. She aimed for the place she once called home, having left it long ago in order to follow the footsteps of another. That person was once her mentor, but that title was lost now. Everything that had happened felt like a nightmare, only worsened by the fact that there was no waking up from it and that there was nowhere to run. Just like the alleyway she called home, her life was empty, anything that was there had no value. At least, that's what Blake thought to herself as she questioned her life.

It all started for her with a meeting that almost seemed fated. Blake, at a young age, with both her parents gone, lived on the streets, surviving not on the kindness of strangers, but whatever food she could find in the trash. Being the lower section of the city, people weren't well off, and those that were made it clear not to cross them. For Blake it was a constant game of avoiding people, keeping out of sight, and making it through the day. Her willpower could only take her so far, one winter when it turned especially cold, Blake found it impossible to keep warm. Unable to rest near a fire without drawing someone's attention and risk being attacked or worse. At the time she would have rather died then fall to a fate like that and so she sat in the shadows, cold and alone.

But one young girl, with short red hair, happened to see her when no one else did. When the young red-haired girl spoke up, it caught Blake off guard, scaring her for the first time in a while. That was the day Ada and Blake met. The two were ten years apart from each other, though they shared miserable upbringings, they were like night and day. Blake was quiet and to herself, always lurking in the darkness of the White Fang, which she joined alongside Ada who was charismatic yet not in a friendly way, but instead like a leader with a strong resolve that stood forward. Over time, as the White Fang moved towards violence and after she did something horrible, Blake started to see that they were turning into what they hated, what they claimed to stand against. She left that life, she told herself that she would help everyone, but she knew that was impossible, she tried to be realistic about it.

Then she encountered Ruby, that child inside Blake, that small piece of her that was alone and cold, that lurked in the shadows, saw a small flickering light. Though she kept quiet, she was glad to be on team RWBY, emphasis on was. The day Beacon fell, when the White Fang showed their faces, when Grimm stormed in, it was all shattered. Then when she saw Ada, when they met face to face and Yang joined in their fight, Blake accepted it. After seeing the gap in their strength she felt powerless, useless, and those feelings hadn't left since she was a child, she had just been running from them. Then Yang lost her arm, all Blake could do was take her and run. That was the only thing she was good at, running away. If an angry human found her as a kid, she ran away, the White Fang started to change, she ran away, Ada appeared, all she could do was run away.

It made sense that Blake would run from her team, she lied to them, was arguably responsible for what happened to Yang, and she feared what they'd think, especially Weiss, about her after learning she was once a part of the White Fang, but all the problems that could come from such things can just be avoided, right? That's what Blake wanted to believe, because despite how she displayed herself on the outside, on the inside she was still a child with childish beliefs of the world. When she finally faced that, she sat down in the alleyway and started to cry into her arms, wishing for someone to help. The only one of the four girls who could be in possibly worse shape was Yang, having not slept peacefully every since (F/N) and Ruby left.