"Why did you do it?" Blake Belladonna asked, making the white-haired Schnee across from her pause in the sipping of her tea. That made Blake feel a twinge of jealousy, noting just how regal Weiss could look no matter the circumstances. Here Blake was, the daughter of a Chieftain and practically royalty to the island of Menagerie and faunus-kind as a whole, but next to Weiss whose family might as well be glorified merchants, she looked mousy and unkempt. Although, come to think of it, that might have had something to do with the extraordinarily fine robes she wore as a mark of her station in the new Ilmater church even as they sat in the Belladonna's estate taking their noon-day tea..
"Why did I do what?" Weiss asked after a moment, lowering the tea cup from her lips and frowning back at Blake. Blake fought the urge to flinch away from her gaze. Instead the younger girl looked down, staring into her own tea as she answered the question.
"Why save that girl?" Blake said, the confusion she felt marring her brow with a frown. "I mean, you're a Schnee, right? Your family has made its profit off of our suffering. I thought the Schnee's hated faunus." Weiss's frown deepened, but she said nothing as she slowly took another sip of her tea. Then the white-haired girl sighed.
"You are right, to an extent. My family… no, my father, is not a kind man, and he cares little for the plights of those around him. But…" Here, Weiss paused, eyes lowering to stare into the depths of her cup and hands tightening until the porcelain almost cracked. "It was just wrong. The weak suffering for no reason, it's wrong. And those boys were picking on her because seh was weak. So I stopped it."
"And if the weak suffer for a reason?" Blake asked quietly, wondering if perhaps this would be where the facade fell. Was Weiss as bad as her father, and just hiding it under pretty words and demure frailty? A long, long moment passed before Weiss lowered her tea entirely, setting cup and platter both upon the table. When she looked up to meet Blake's golden eyes with her crystal clear blue orbs, they seemed to almost burn with a soft white fire, warm and kind, but steady in their conviction.
"Only to protect those even weaker." The white-haired girl answered, voice tight, and for a brief, single moment, the air shivered with power at her fervent tone. "There's so much suffering in this world already, with the Grimm lurking around every corner, why should we create even more? It's foolish, and wrong. It doesn't matter what you look like, a person is a person, and we're all fighting for survival."
"Tell that to the humans," Blake retorted, though her voice was small and quiet as she flinched back from the semi-divine presence of the girl across from her. "They bicker and fight amongst themselves just as much as with us."
"You're right," Weiss agreed to her surprise, smiling slightly. "Why do you think Ilmater chose the Faunus as His favored people? More than most, you know what it is to suffer and struggle, and what it is to share your burdens. One nation, one people… even with the variety among your kind, you remain good and peaceful. I may be His voice, but the Faunus are His Children." Again silence fell between the two girls, and this time it was not broken for several minutes. Finally, Blake spoke.
"You're wrong." She said, making Wiess blink in surprise. Blake smiled back, wide and sincere. "You've suffered too, haven't you? We're both Ilmater's Children. Sisters, even." That gave the white-haired girl pause, but a moment later, she smiled back.
"So we are." And that was that.
OOC: ...Uh, hey there. So, first things first, I'm not sure if this means I'm back or not, but I felt really bad about promising an interlude here and never delivering, and recently it's been kinda lurking in the back of my head annoyingly, so here it is. I haven't precisely abandoned this quest, not really, but have been pretty busy with other things and I've come to the conclusion that I should probably get some actual official D&D books before going too much further. With any luck that might happen in the next couple of months, and I might pop things up here and there if the mood strikes me, but try not to expect too much. I'm still mostly focused on writing my original novel at the moment. Anyways, enjoy.
