RWBY: Black Cat

Chapter Seven

"I often regret that I have spoken; never that I have been silent."
~ Publilius Syrus

Weiss was in the training room. It was full of harmless, wooden weapons students could use to fight each other, (generally they only used their own weapons with supervision from teachers,) and dummies they were free to hack apart with their own. There were several scattered across the school, and this one was furthest away from the main building, so few people came in. That was fine. She felt like being alone.

Yang had come around eventually. Well, she claimed she had, but she still did her very best to avoid her, and considering they slept in the same room, was doing rather well. So maybe she hadn't really come around, but at least she wasn't about to go off at Weiss every ten minutes.

At present, Weiss was using a wooden rapier on a dummy, affectionately called Winston by older students. There was a rumour that Glynda had demonstrated on Winston once, and the dummy had survived, so on the students' request, Ozpin had it restored. Now there was a silent rule to do as little harm to it as possible when using it. It was wearing armour, which easily deflected the wood Weiss was using to bat it with. A timer was on the wall, ticking away slowly. She'd set it for fifteen minutes. She spent 15 minutes fighting, then five minutes break, then go back to battering Winston.

There had been no sign of Blake for a couple of days now. And it was her fault. She was determined to take all of the blame, even though deep down she knew that it might have nothing to do with it. In her mind, if she and Ruby hadn't been arguing, then Blake wouldn't have left the train. It wasn't even clear if she got off by her own free will. She'd been standing close to the door. While no-one had been looking, some Faunus Hunter (this was what they were starting to become known as, White Fang or not, but this was all based on assumptions that it was people taking away the Faunus,) could have just grabbed her, and no-one would have noticed. Because they were all distracted. Because she'd lost her temper.

She still felt terrible about mentioning Summer Rose. Ruby had told her the story of their mother(s) a few weeks ago, leaving out the part about the time when Qrow had saved her and Yang. And Weiss had used that against her. Besides, Ruby would have been, what, somewhere between two and ten when her mother died? What was she meant to have done?

The timer buzzed, and Weiss stopped hitting the dummy, reaching for a bottle of water, in two minds about sitting down this break.

No. Push through. You can sit next time.

She looked up as she heard a knock on the door. "Hello?"

"Weiss?"

"Jaune?"

"Yeah."

Jaune Arc pushed the door open. Weiss put down the water, and stopped the timer.

"Hey," he said awkwardly.

"Hey."

"Any news of Blake?"

"None."

He nodded, and eyed Winston. "You've been being careful with him, right?"

"Of course, Dunce," she said sharply.

"How long have you been here?"

"A few hours."

He blinked, then wandered over to the rack of wooden weapon. A long silence fell between them. Weiss was considering starting the timer again when Jaune said, "Yang knows your sorry, you know."

Weiss swallowed. "You think so?"

"Well, yeah. She'll come around. Look, Weiss, I was wondering-"