Chapter Text
tactical ventilation: venting actions by on-scene firefighters, used to gain control of a fire building's internal environment to the advantage of firefighting and rescue teams working within.
Blake stays, and Yang is discharged from the hospital, and the three of them are called back to work. There’s a moment, when the emails hit their phones on their way back to the apartment complex, that all three of them start to protest in unison, but Yang scoffs and waves her uninjured arm with a frown.
“No way,” she says, firm even though her voice still crackles from the amount of smoke she’d inhaled, even now weeks later. “I’ll be fine.”
“But--” Blake starts, hands itching to reach for her, to hold onto her and not leave her side for an hour, much less the length of an entire on-call shift at a time.
“Nope,” Yang says, popping the p . “I know you want to play doctor, but I have Weiss’s girlfriend for that.”
“Hey,” Weiss says indignantly, nearly drowned out by the disgusted yelp from Ruby.
“Don’t worry, princess,” Yang says with a grin that’s undercut by a hacking cough that peters off into a groan when it jostles her right arm. Her free hand digs into Blake’s, squeezing through the pain until Blake’s bones creak, but Blake bites down on her lip and stay quiet. “I promise not to seduce you super amazing world famous athlete girlfriend with my super sexy muscles and sexier burn dressings.”
“I should hope not,” Weiss sniffs.
“I feel like I should also be offended here,” Blake says, playing with Yang’s fingers absently.
“You’re the only person I want to play doctor with, I promise,” Yang says, wiggling her eyebrows and grinning widely. Blake’s pulse trips over itself, half like it always does when Yang turns the full force of her charm towards Blake and half because she’s still drowning in disbelief that she’s still here, that Yang still wants her.
“Gross!” Ruby yells from the front seat. “Stop it!”
“Don’t yell at me, I’m wounded,” Yang throws back at her. Ruby turns around from the passenger seat to glare at her, and Yang immediately grabs Blake by the collar and drags her over until she can kiss her and make Ruby yelp and slam back to facing forward.
“If you three don’t behave we’re going to crash,” Weiss says huffily from the driver’s seat.
“Like you'd let anything mar your spotless driving record,” Blake says, pulling back just far enough from Yang to speak before leaning back in and pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth before settling back into her seat.
There’s still caution tape segmenting off Ruby and Yang’s apartment. In the weeks since Yang woke up, Blake and Weiss had gone through the whole apartment after it was cleared and packed up everything that was left. Blake hadn’t been able to cross into Yang’s room, where the floor was charred to nothing and the drywall burned away, the ceiling scorched and the rear wall Yang had escaped through torn down by firefighters during the clean up; Weiss had kicked her way through the rubble and dug out anything salvageable-- the clothes in the half of the dresser that didn’t burn up, the kettlebell set she kept under her windows, the half-full laundry hamper in the bathroom that had been saved only by a closed door-- to pack up into boxes until Yang and Ruby found a new place.
Yang lets Blake help her out of the car and stands unmoving next to it for long moments, staring over to what’s left of hers and Ruby’s home, the shell of an apartment that they had lived in. Her fingers wind between Blake’s automatically, finding her blindly at her side, and Blake presses a kiss to her shoulder.
“Come on, don’t be gross,” Ruby says with a huff. She has a duffel bag with Yang’s clothes hanging from one shoulder, leftover from Yang’s insistence that she wouldn’t walk out of the hospital in scrubs and that Ruby needed to bring her a selection of what’s left of her wardrobe to choose from.
“You’re just jealous I have a super hot girlfriend,” Yang informs her, even as she lets go of Blake’s hand so she can drag Ruby closer and ruffle her hair.
“Gross,” Ruby repeats, even as she leans into Yang for a moment. Blake warms, despite the overcast day and the fall chill in the air, because things aren’t set right yet-- the police have the fire department’s report in hand proving arson and Adam was arrested boarding a bus in Billings two days ago and the trial won’t start for weeks at the soonest; Yang’s doctors are optimistic but there’s still months and months of recovery ahead of her-- but they’re good .
Yang’s recovery will be based out of Blake’s apartment until they find a new place for her and Ruby, and everyone will cycle through as necessary to be her right hand, someone always there and the rest of them in Weiss’s apartment raiding kitchen full of expensive food. Blake’s back on the jump team with Weiss and Ruby, Yang’s spot filled by one of Yatsu’s boot camp buddies from the Yellowstone base until the fire season wraps. The four of them are going to Austria in January, at Weiss’s insistence, to watch Pyrrha in the world championships. Yang’s hand is tangled with hers again and Blake’s isn’t sure how she’s going to be able to leave her side to go on call, but she knows that she’s staying right here.
Blake stays, and Christmas comes and she follows Yang and Ruby home to Sacramento. She meets their parents and their dog, and sleeps in the bedroom Yang grew up in, curled into Yang’s side, and trades presents with them on Christmas morning and they all call Weiss and mock her endlessly when it’s clear they interrupted her and Pyrrha.
The district attorney from Missoula calls her the day after New Year’s to tell her that Adam’s refused a plea deal and is going to trial in February. His chances aren’t good. Blake hangs up the phone and lays back down into Yang’s bed, curling around her carefully and pushing her face into the space between Yang’s shoulder blades as she sleeps.
“You okay?” Yang mumbles, still mostly asleep.
“Yeah.” Blake kisses her shoulderblade and smiles against her shirt. “I’m okay.”
Blake stays, and winter fades away. Adam’s trial comes, and Blake sits through every day of it with her hand locked tight around Yang’s. She’s not called as a witness-- the absurdly expensive lawyer Weiss hired specifically to make sure that not even the DA could call her sees to that-- but she shows up every day and listens while Adam’s attorney tries to convince the jury that she’s to blame, that Yang is to blame, that everyone but Adam is to blame. She goes home to her apartment every day with Yang and kisses her the minute they step through the door, pushes her face into Yang’s shoulder and holds on tight and tells herself that Adam can’t hurt them anymore.
The trial ends, and Adam is weighed for his crimes-- arson and stalking and assault, a whole plethora of violence and intimidation-- and found guilty. He’ll be in jail until he’s seventy. Blake cries after the sentencing, but it’s not like when she cried after her showed up in Missoula, heavy and wracking and burdened with guilt and terror; she cries quietly and smiles in spite of it, holding onto Weiss with one hand and Yang with the other, Ruby on Yang’s other side with a hand curled into Yang’s healing right hand.
He lost, and Blake won. She kisses Yang’s hand, her cheek, her mouth, presses her forehead against Yang’s and kisses her again as Adam’s led away in cuffs.
“It’s done,” Yang says softly against her lips, and kisses her again, quick and fleeting. “He’s gone.”
Blake nods and turns more fully into her, tangles her hand into the hair on the back of Yang’s head when her forehead pushes into Blake’s shoulder. Ruby sits on Yang’s other side and smiles at her, wide and warm, and Blake nods and holds onto Yang tighter.
Blake stays, and the next fire season starts. Two hours into their first shift of the year, dispatch calls in when Blake’s tying her shoes and about to head out on a run with Weiss, and she rolls her eyes and turns around, follows Weiss to the gear room.
There’s a new batch of rookies at the base, and Yatsu’s heading up a team of three of them. Blake takes her seat on the plane and bumps a fist against Ruby’s, grins at Weiss, rolls her eyes when Yang flashes a heart and a wink at her from the other side of the plane.
The spotter drops the streamers and then the crate, and Blake crams her helmet on. She’s between Yang and Ruby in the line to drop out, and she watches as Yang grips at her right arm through her kevlar when the door opens, reaches forward and covers her gloved hand with her own. Yang glances back at her, eyes sparking bright through the cage of her helmet, and mouths I love you .
When she joined the smokejumpers, she had nothing, just a lifetime of guilt to make up for and a need to do more good than the harm of her past. Now she has Yang and the small house they’re renting together next door to the one Weiss bought and Ruby moved into without asking, only leaving when Pyrrha shows up whenever her schedule allows it, a partner and a team and a family.
When she joined, she had nothing. Blake watches Yang leap out of the plane and counts, breathes, follows. Air rushes by her, the smoke of a growing wildfire cresting the treeline, the trees reaching up to catch her as her chute deploys and Yang letting out a whoop of delight that’s barely audible but that Blake would recognize anywhere, and Blake smiles. She crashes down through the trees and lands in a roll, popping up to her feet to see Yang to her left, Weiss and Ruby landing to her left, and she smiles wider, because when she came here she had nothing, and now she has everything.