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Weiss wakes before Yang. Not for any reason, not due to any sort of nightmares for once. She simply awakes and finds herself facing Yang, with intertwined legs and her nightgown hiked up over hips. They’re messy sleepers, but it doesn’t bother Weiss. The disorder feels much like Yang herself: haphazard but somehow in order. Proper, even. Her father’s voice tries to chide her to equating Yang to propriety, but she’s able to block it.
A chunk of long hair is flopped in front of Yang’s face. Without thinking, Weiss takes the strands between her fingers, rubbing them between her thumb and fingers. Soft, but coarse. Yang’s hair is such a mystery to Weiss—it’s so soft yet the strands rebel against each other. Her own hair is fine, straight, and so very Atlesian; Yang’s is something else completely. It isn’t hard for Weiss to separate the strands into three sets, and she begins weaving them absentmindedly as she hums to herself. Yang’s hair moves exactly how Weiss’ fingers tell it to, and Weiss wonders why she’s always been so averse to people touching it. Isn’t it just as therapeutic to receive the touch as it is to give it?
Yang makes a noise in her sleep, and Weiss smiles as she works her fingers down the strands of hair. There are no obligations today, nothing to do until later, when everyone convenes for lunch to discuss sparring schedules and plans for strengthening abilities. They have hours to lay here in bed, with Yang lightly snoring every few minutes and Weiss weaving her hair into something pointless.
Not a lot of her time has ever been spent where there wasn’t an anticipated product. Vocal lessons led to recording sessions and royalties. Sparring led to combat school. Learning womanly duties, which makes Weiss roll her eyes to herself, has led to her high ranking of “Atlas’ Most Desirable.”
The magazine makes her want to gag every time she thinks about it. Her father had been impressed with her ranking of third, but he’d suggested some improvements, “in case there’s a next time.” Naturally, he had plans that would dictate her life, and she was none the wiser. She’d had so many other things pressing on her mind up until this point, but now that they’re getting closer to Atlas, she’s reminded that she’s more than likely already been promised to someone if her father can get his hands on her.
She has to laugh, or she’ll cry at the absurdity of it all. Her fingers reach the end of Yang’s hair, and she slowly undoes her work, almost like how she’s undone the work of peacefully splitting from her family, her company.
Was it ever hers?
She starts again.
They are likely nearing Atlesian waters now, waiting for the military to flag their ship down once they cross the invisible border, and hopefully Qrow’s strings are as strong as he says they are, or else she might be plucked from her comfort here among her chosen family and sent back to her father, and much like take two of the braid in her hands, she’ll have to start again.
“Interesting thing to wake up to.” Yang’s voice makes Weiss jump, and she focuses on her face and the sleepily-soft eyes looking at her. “Your lip is bleeding.”
She touches it with her tongue and tastes metal. “I was thinking too much,” she admits, and Yang frowns. “I like your hair.”
“Were you thinking too much about my hair?” Yang teases, leaning forward to pinch her cheek, and Weiss squeaks in protest, and they both break into laughter as they tussle in bed. Yang’s cheek flush and Weiss is reminded of exactly why she has to stay.
“I was thinking about how much I don’t want to see my father.” It lingers in the air, dense like smog. Weiss wants to look away, but Yang’s eyes are lavender swirls that pull her in.
Yang hovers over her, and the juxtaposition of her silly braid and her serious face settles Weiss’ nerves. “I would rather be eaten by seven Nevermore than let that happen.”
“I know.” Weiss begins to undo the braid as Yang settles on top of her. “Do you know how to braid?”
Yang shakes her head. “Ruby’s always had short hair, and I never figured out how to do it myself.”
This is a welcome place to focus. Yang brings her back from the tipping point of a breakdown back to the moment, to the present where nothing will hurt her. She shifts and pushes Yang back, and she is pliant under her fingers.
Weiss draws her legs closer to her so she can kneel at Yang’s back, tangling her fingers in Yang’s wild hair. “Do you mind?”
“Absolutely not,” Yang tells her, tilting her head back to plant a kiss on the underside of Weiss’ chin. “Can you teach me Atlesian?”
“Hightongue isn’t so disrespected as people like to think.” Weiss imagines she must have some anxiety about crossing into Atlas, wondering if she’ll even be able to order food. She takes small groupings of Yang’s hair between her fingers to braid. “We’ll all be fine without a crash course in Atlesian.”
Yang laughs. “Maybe I just want to hear you talk in it,” she says, leaning back again, and Weiss moves her head to look forward. “That was the shutdown of the century.”
“I have shifted into hair mode,” Weiss tells her, “and I have no spare focus for your blödsinn.”
“What’s that mean? Tomfoolery?”
“Stupid reason, in a literal sense. Closer to nonsense. There are a dozen ways to say nonsense, but that one felt the best, and I figured you’d appreciate it. Keep your head straight,” she adds as Yang moves to look up at her again.
“Tell me more things to use against Ruby.”
Weiss groans. She knew that Yang would use this for evil, but she finds that she won’t stop. Yang sounds pleased, and it makes her heart do flips. “I can’t just come up with words on the fly, Yang.”
“Nora can.”
“Nora lives and breathes insults in the other languages. We have quatsch, which we could use for her plots.” She hums in thought. “I would call Jaune a,” she pauses, trying to remember the word that Whitley had been called in school once, which caused him to be homeschooled, “Hosenscheisser? There are a lot of words I have used to describe Jaune in my head.”
“Which is?”
“He poops his pants, to put it in more appropriate terms.”
Weiss knew that it would elicit the response it did, and she’s prepared for the raucous laughter from Yang. “That’s a grade-A insult. Thank you for enlightening me.”
“You’re welcome. Stop moving so much.”
“Okay, okay.” Yang attempts to sit like a statue, but it’s not her strong suit. “You mentioned your mom before. What do you call her?”
“Mutter. If I’m talking to her, maybe Mutti, but if I’m referring to her in front of my father, she can’t be anything else or I’m scolded for not respecting her.” It’s easy to talk to Yang about family matters. Maybe because she struggles to see the manor as home anymore. Yang pats her hand.
“That sounds about in line with how Atlas is painted. Stern, stiff, formal. Is that the norm, or is that just rich people problems?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Weiss tells her as she brings the small braids together along with the rest of Yang’s loose hair. She twists it all together and wraps it around itself. “Do you have a hair tie?”
Yang lifts her arm so Weiss can pull it from her wrist. She only barely manages to get it around the blob of hair resting on top of Yang’s head, intertwined with small braids. “How do I look?”
“Like you’re ready to work out, but it also works as a casual look.” She’s wore this look a million times to go shopping with her “friends” from a few years ago. They used to talk about their ideal men, what he would wear, how he would treat them. “He” was the default; nowhere was there room for any pronoun variation. They’d painted their futures, and surely theirs have turned out exactly how they predicted, but Weiss? “What does your happy ending look like?”
Yang hums. “One where I don’t want to run anymore.”
Weiss likes that. It reminds her of the first time they’d bared their hearts to each other as a team and what their ambitions truly were. Yang was a free spirit, of course, but eventually all souls must tire of running. Either they tire of running, or they wish for others to stop. Weiss continues to make minor adjustments to Yang’s intentionally messy hair, picking at loose strands to let them fall. “I think that’s a fitting answer.”
“Yeah? What about you, snowflake?”
She’s come to like the nickname. It makes her feel unique. “I’m still not sure, really. I’d like to be able to tell my father no to his face and not be afraid of the consequences.”
Yang pulls Weiss’ hand from the top of her head, and guides Weiss onto her lap. It’s a safe place to be; warm and cozy. “You’ll get there, and I’ll be there to support you.”
“I didn’t want to do an interview with a magazine, but he pressured me into it. He said it would be good for publicity, before he wrote me off. I’m apparently the third most popular bachelorette in Atlas.”
“You might want to write to them to have them take you off that list.”
It’s joking, it’s lighthearted, but it reminds her of how much she’s not supposed to be doing this. She doesn’t think she could face her father and denounce her feelings for Yang; not yet. And again, she’s plagued with anxiety, but now she doesn’t have Yang’s loose hair to play with.
She doesn’t realize that she hasn’t answer, and Yang worriedly looks down at her. “Is that too fast? I’m sorry—”
“It’s not that.” She’d be lying if she hadn’t pictured them in white dresses, an optimal ending, despite it being a quick fantasy. It’s just the goal—live long enough for that to be the possibility. “There’s a lot that could happen if my father takes me back.”
Weiss watches Yang’s face work through emotions, before her eyes shift to some sort of violet. Darker than Weiss is used to. “I—he’s gonna marry you off, isn’t he?”
Weiss won’t break the eye contact. She can be brave with this. “One of the girls I used to play with already has a baby. Before I left, my father kept meeting with me about the best matches for the growth of the business.”
Yang sighs. “Can you grab my arm?” Weiss twists to grab her arm from the nightstand and promptly pops it into place. The moment it’s attached, Yang wraps her tightly in both arms. Weiss sighs, burying herself in Yang’s warmth, pulling her knees to her chest. They stay like that for a while, Yang’s nose buried in her hair and Weiss breathing nothing but Yang’s smoky-sweet smell. She can pretend there’s nothing outside of this embrace.
With Yang, she’s never felt anything but comfort and warmth and trust.
There’s a word for that.
“You’re my Geborgenheit,” Weiss whispers at some point.
“Does that mean love of your life?”
“Closer to my comfort, security, and warmth.”
Yang presses her nose deeper into Weiss’ hair. “I’ll be your sleeping bag.”
“We have different ideas of what comfort is.”
Yang laughs, and it feels like home. No matter what happens, Yang will be there to pull her back from the brink, and it’s all she needs. She doesn’t need the money, the fame, the prestige. All she needs is her.