RWBY: Legacies

Revelations

"So, Blake's secretly been hiding the fact she's a Faunus? And the reason you were all acting so weird was because she ran away, and you didn't want to tell anybody?" Jaune asks slowly, pointing at Blake, who has removed her bow, allowing JNPR to gaze in astonishment at her extra ears. "No wonder you guys had a long weekend..." He mumbles to himself, expelling a deep breath and scanning RWBY and MGTA.

Silence reigns in the classroom for a few moments before Blake speaks. "I wanted you to judge me for who I am, not what I am." She tells them finally, her amber eyes drifting away in shame as she anxiously runs her bow through her fingers.

"Do we truly seem so shallow to you?" Ren asks, his tone conveying nothing of his feelings, which Theodore takes as a bad sign.

"Yeah, how dare you hide your cute kitty ears from us." Nora adds, having lost some of her usual giddiness as a hint of genuine hurt flickers through her eyes. Blake coughs awkwardly, still avoiding eye contact.

"What Nora means, is that we wish you'd confided in us sooner. We wouldn't have looked on you any differently, we won't look on you any differently." Pyrrha explains, sending Nora a chiding look, which she responds too with a sigh and directing a cute face at Blake. "I'm sorry if we gave you any reason to think you couldn't confide in us." She adds, her team humming in agreement.

"No," Blake assures them hurriedly. "You guys were great, it's just... complicated." She stops short of telling them about her past in the White Fang, the revelation of her species is enough of a shock for them to take in right now. She decides to save her past for a later date.

"We only found out on Friday," Ruby tells them with an apologetic look.

"Yeah, you really had us worried, dashing off into Vale, leaving one woman short and with no explanation." Jaune says, recalling how they'd all hurried out of Beacon as soon as the transports opened. "When we saw the news report yesterday morning about you all and the White Fang, we thought Miss Goodwitch might actually kill you – she was mad." He chuckles, sliding his gaze to Theodore. Surtur puffs out a small plume of smoke.

"I thought so too." Theodore murmurs in a low sigh, replaying the moment his mother arrived in Vale to collect them. Her demeanour that night as she had stepped from the Bullhead could have scared death itself, arms crossed, eyes narrowed, with the most dangerous expression he'd ever seen on her face.

The return trip to Beacon had been silent, no one daring to draw his mother's wrath. But when they had touched down and he and his mother were alone, Theodore had explained everything, going to great lengths in an attempt to subtly talk his mother into a lesser punishment.

In Eliza's eyes, he'd seemed a little too eager to be away from her. She felt bad about what happened at the dock, pushing him for an explanation, and had thought that if she gave Theodore some space he'd come back to her on his own... but two days had gone by and he hadn't. The fact that he was still avoiding the issue was made all the more annoying by the fact that they lived together.

"She seemed happy with you this morning though," Yang perks up. "So that's good." She gives Theodore an encouraging smile but he only grunts in response. "And thanks to you we're not stuck in detention for a month," she adds.

"Yet." Eliza counters dully.

"Is there anything else we should know about?" Ren asks. There's a moment of silence, then RWBY and Eliza slowly shift their gaze to Theodore. Ren raises an eyebrow. The rest of his team look curiously at Theodore. He is quite still as he looks back at them.

"You're not secretly a Faunus too, right?" Jaune asks, shrinking in his seat a little when he sees Blake's frown. Blake's dislike of Jaune's foolish comment is shared by Eliza, though he couldn't figure out why it annoyed Eliza.