#file this under 'scenes for a canon prequel fanfic i'll never write'

[unofficialadamtaurus]

What We Bury

It’s 900 words of pure self-indulgence, folks. We see so little of Adam and Blake’s relationship, romantic or otherwise, in the series. I think his manipulation could, at times, have been much more nuanced and difficult to separate from good intentions than that depiction in the Adam short.

Adam heard her coming long before Blake sat down next to him. Her footsteps on the grassy hillside were quiet, not silent, and in the dead of night there were few other sounds to mask her approach. A slight shift in his breathing let her know that he wasn’t yet in the mood to talk.

This routine, old and familiar, soothed some of Blake’s agitation. Unlike their tent, no one else from the camp would disturb them out here. There would be no whispers or worried looks. For however long until sunrise, they could claim this small spot as theirs and theirs alone.

Blake laid out on her back so they could stare skyward side-by-side. Her gaze traced the myriad constellations splayed out in the cloudless heavens. The Rearing Ursa; the Howling Beowolf; and the Huntsman, Adam’s favorite, facing off against them both. A scattering of stars upon which the image of a single person holding a spear against two massive Grimm could be superimposed. Whether the Huntsman was man or woman, human or faunus, depended on the beholder. Adam, she knew, saw himself, for behind the huntsman huddled the Children, another cluster of points given new meaning by those searching for it. Blake could see him too, if she tilted her head, squinted - but it was getting harder.

Adam shifted. “How are you feeling?”

“Better. Tired.”

“You should get some rest.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight.” She said it lightly, but the words were heavy on her tongue.

“I can put you on night watch,” Adam offered. “Would that take your mind off it?”

Standing silent guard over the camp with nothing except for her thoughts and the shifting shadows for hours on end? “No, I don’t think that would help. I’ve just been reading.” Which did help, a little. Too bad she’d now finished all her books, the whole reason she had wandered out here to find him and occupy herself anew.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

His offer hung in the air. Blake rested her hands on her belly, fingers twined together and shaking. “I don’t think so.”

He turned his head towards her, but she refused to look. Her stomach was turning over itself again. She’d thought the nausea was done.

“You couldn’t have known he didn’t have aura,” Adam said. “It was self-defense, Blake.”

Her nails dug into the backs of her hands. “I didn’t have the right to kill him.”

“He gave you no choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

He sighed, turned away, let it drop. Blake swallowed down the burning in her throat. The hypocrisy in how she was seeking comfort for this from Adam despite the doubts that had begun to plague her every waking moment was not lost on her. Adam wouldn’t have hesitated; he wouldn’t still be able to see that man’s face; he wouldn’t have lost any sleep at all over murdering someone. In his mind, there were no doubts. In hers, there were nothing but.

She licked her lips. “Do you think some people are beyond saving?”

Adam breathed in long and deep, then let it out just as slow. “I think I usually don’t have the time to figure it out.”

“In general,” she pushed, heart beating faster as she approached the line they never dared speak about. “If it wasn’t a fight for survival. If you had the time.”

At this, Adam was silent for a long while. “In that case,” he eventually said, sounding out every word with the same slow deliberation he usually reserved for calls with Sienna, “I would know what mistakes they made to end up against me. It would just be context, Blake.” He pushed himself up onto one arm, abandoning the sky for her, and this time, she met him eye to eye. “It was survival. You can’t blame yourself for what they did to end up against you. They made their choice, and you made yours. You have to make your peace with that.”

Is that what you do? she wanted to ask, but the words stopped up on her tongue and something else came out in their place. “What if it was someone you knew?”

His eyes narrowed. “We aren’t still talking about the ambush today, are we?”

Her heart was in her throat. A lie fell from her lips. “The book I just finished - the protagonist has to kill her sister. They grew up together. The author barely spent a sentence on her grief.”

Coward, she told herself, at once the accuser and the ashamed.

“Then,” he said, eyes flicking between hers and that furrow in his brow fading while steel slid into his voice, “if we’re speaking in hypotheticals, I’d still put them down.”

Blake pressed her lips together, a force of will keeping her ears and expression steady against the waves of conflict lapping at her heart.

It wasn’t a perfect barrier, though. Adam softened his expression. “It’s easier to mourn when you know you did everything you could. You don’t need to question yourself, Blake. Let me take on that burden. I’ll bear it for the both of us.”

Blake woke in her Atlas bed with a start, tears streaming down her face and a broken blade twisting in her chest. Adam’s ghost fell away with her sheets, leaving a hollow chill in its wake.

Silently so she didn’t wake her team, she drew up her knees, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed.