𝐈𝐧 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 (English)

Chapter 71

Jaune kicked Nora's foot under the table.

It didn't accomplish anything.

"Your father and I are disappointed in you," she said, in what Jaune could imagine was an accurate representation of what Blake's mother might have said, but which, at the same time, wouldn't calm this nightmare of Blake's down any. "We didn't raise you like this. At least I don't think we did."

"You raised me to be weak," Blake argued. "You raised me to imagine the humans would befriend us and let us be if we showed them that we weren't a threat." Blake smacked her smaller fist on the table. "That! Isn't! Working!"

"Don't you raise your voice at me."

"Blake, N—Kali. Why don't we both calm down?" Jaune, in the guise of Ghira, leaned over the table between them with an awkward smile. "We're supposed to be talking this out as a family and—"

"What do you think I'm doing?" asked Nora. "We're talking!"

"You're shouting at me is what you're doing."

"I am your mother!" Nora cried. "I gave birth to you!"

"I'm an adult!"

"You're a teenager! And you're making a stupid decision to join a bunch of psychopathic terrorists because... because I don't even know why! You live on Menagerie. There aren't any humans here who could have been cruel to you."

"But there are humans on the mainland. Faunus, too. And they don't have anyone to protect them. I won't sit back and abandon them. I – we – owe them more than that. If you won't do something about it, I will."

"What you'll do is end up massive regretting this!"

Jaune groaned. Nora was going overboard in browbeating Blake for mistakes she already accepted were mistakes in the waking world. He'd accept this if Blake still held to the White Fang's creed, but she didn't. "Blake, daughter, give me just one second with your mother. Okay?"

Blake snorted. "Yeah. Whatever. Maybe you can pull the stick out her butt—"

"Blake!" Nora snapped. "I'll have you know your father has never been in my butt! We only have missionary sex, and only—"

"Ewww! Mom!"

"One moment!"

Jaune picked Nora up by her armpits and dragged her out the room with her feet trailing on the floor. He knocked the door closed with his hip and stood her up. "What was that?" he asked. "I thought we were going to act natural!"

"That was me acting natural."

He didn't know how to process that. "What?"

"Isn't that how a family would act?"

"No!"

"Really?" Nora sounded more surprised than upset. "Huh. I always imagined this is how it'd be. Is this a good moment to remind you that my family is dead and I'm an orphan? Because I'm winging the hell out of this."

Right. Orphan. Jaune slapped his hand to his face. Of course Nora would have to make up what she thought a real family would act like, and of course she'd take ideas from trashy TV shows. Just his luck.

"First of all, your parents aren't dead. I'm right here."

"Ew. And I thought we agreed to never acknowledge that fact. I can't call a guy my age daddy. People would think we're a thing. A kinky, weird thing."

"Secondly, Blake did have parents, and the more out of character to them we act, the more likely she is to realise something is up. We need to blend in with how they would have acted."