A New Kitten Chapter 57

Chapter 57 

A week is far too fast, a week is far too fast, a week is far too fast. That was the only thought that Blake could keep in her head for more than a moment or two at a time. The thought only got worse and more incessant as the weekend flew by and approached an end. Blake had expected it to go slow, she expected everything to be agonizing, having Weiss close but not being able to really spend time with her. That certainly was an issue at times. Despite the sensation of it all flying past, trying to parse out her emotions was agony. 

Could she really love someone who did all that? Who had actually sat by while the faunus were enslaved and killed? Voted to pass it! Well, that question was somewhat redundant. She did love her, the only real questions were could she live with herself and would Weiss ever come around- not would Weiss come around. Would she come around before it was too late, before she ended up back in Atlas; before everything was back to normal and Blake was left striving to figure out what the hell she actually wanted to do with her life on an island away from all her friends. 

Blake tried to reach back out to Weiss, but the heiress was cold to every attempt. Though, Weiss did keep her posted on every update about how she step by step dismantled the SDC dynasty. Most of it was just above Blake’s head. Dust, weird kinky shit, even hypnosis, that was her alley, not this! The White Fang was the deepest her experience with bureaucracy, and it seemed to be that rebel organizations weren’t quite as complicated as the most profitable business dynasty in all of Remnant. 

Overly complex business talk aside, Blake understood that Weiss was doing well. Everything was more or less going according to plan, and the SDC was twenty eight points down on the market and each share was worth only fifty six percent of what it had been a month and a half ago. So as to say, the SDC and Jacques were hemorrhaging money? Blake couldn’t quite tell, but Weiss made it sound good. 

And it was good? Progress! If Weiss was to be believed, the Faunus would be freed by Thursday. That was… an outrageous idea. Blake had been doing everything she could since the first day back in Menagerie, but one weekend with the proper motivation, and Weiss had her completely beat. Motivation… yeah, all it took was the knowledge that burning down everything generations of her family had built to crate would get her free of Blake, and Weiss jumped to it. Yeah. She was willing to do it all, and just to get away from Blake. 

Weiss loathed sleeping alone again after everything between the two of them had fallen apart. She’d never been able to sleep with someone before; at least, not like that. Sure, she wasn’t a virgin when Blake found her, but no one had ever had the care to stick with her till the morning before Blake. She was still mad- livid! Furious! What Blake had done was unforgivable! Well… maybe not unforgivable… but! No! It had to be! It was unforgivable and… and her ongoing craving to cuddle up to Blake had nothing to do with that! 

She fought to ignore what that might meant… craving to be with Blake even now that things were over and the mind fuckery had been cleared. It had been a breathtaking moment of weakness to request to keep her collar. She just couldn’t handle the idea of losing it. It felt like the last tether to their time together. Weiss wasn’t ready to let that go. She idly played with it as she laid lonely in her basement bed. 

Would she be able to go back home at the end of the week? What would it be like without Blake in her life any longer? How would her father take to her being back home? What would he do about her ears and tail? The tail could be amputated easily, but faunus ears? Weiss had heard plenty of horror stories of even professional surgeons trying to remove faunus ears. So much sensitive tissue, inner ears, there were just too many problems ready to happen. Not to mention… honestly, she liked her body how it was. In retrospect, maybe not having Blake’s symbol would help in the long run. But… maybe she wanted that to stay on some level. Maybe she wanted to go back to the much simpler life of being a beloved Kitten. Lies and manipulation would be a part of her life regardless, wouldn’t the life of being tricked into thinking it wasn’t happening and that she was earnestly loved be better? 

Weiss gave it far too much thought. The ideation that even with recent revelations, this life with Blake might still be better than back with her family. Would Blake be able to bury her discoveries? If she could suppress the memory of finding out in the first place, maybe Blake could make her forget remembering? Could she actually go back to being fucked stupid and happy? It was actually an alluring thought. One she couldn’t forget as she played with the collar that lingered around her neck.  

On and on her brain went, weighing the pros and cons. On and on she went till Weiss hit the snag from which all her stray threads, and then her whole being began to unravel. 

She had no choice in the matter. It didn’t matter if Weiss chose she wanted to stay or if she wanted to go home. Her father would want her home. Announcing the Schnee heiress was going home would once more raise stock prices. As if that weren’t enough, at the end of the day, she still had a mountain of evidence for all the horrid things the SDC had done. If Jacques were to cave, to free the faunus, Weiss’s return would inevitably be a requirement. 

That was the thought that broke the heiress. Once more, she was faced with a false choice. The illusion of freedom where none truly existed. Maybe that was the thought that shattered her, that sent her back to sobbing into her pillows. Hate, frustration, loathing, exhaustion, betrail, and love; all things she felt towards Blake even despite it all. Her emotions were all still so jumbled, but now, knowing that she would never have the chance to figure out her emotions, whether or not she could honestly love Blake again… it shattered what was left of the poor heiress. 

Monday morning came, and Weiss was ready to hand the reigns over to Blake. The SDC's stocks had only fallen farther. Revealing a couple new secrets and having her father intentionally make even more abysmal business decisions did well to tank the company’s value. It was so much that apparently, the SDC’s board of directors had called a moratorium to the production line Sunday night. That felt like something akin to a victory, it meant that the faunus would have a small break before freedom finally arrived. Freedom… and the next step was to pass the reigns off to Blake. 

The heiress stood- well, paced really. She paced in front of Blake’s door, trying to push herself to face Blake again, to finish this and return to her hole downstairs to wait out the end of this. As she worked to build her nerve, Weiss anxiously wrung her hands. All she needed to do was explain to Blake how to drive this home and… and… and she’d be done, just a matter of time before- 

“Oh, hey Weiss! What’s up?” Blake greeted the moment she stepped out of her door to see Weiss still pacing. “You uugh, you know you don’t need me to make you breakfast or anything, right?” 

“I! I know!” 

“Cause, you aren’t Kitten or anything anymore, you can use whatever I’ve got in the kitchen.” Blake elaborated and tried to straighten her hair before noticing one of her cat ears had flipped inside out in her sleep. She winced as she corrected it. The sight was painfully cute. 

“I know that Blake!” Weiss snapped. 

“Alright? Then… uugh…” Blake groaned as she walked past Weiss and towards her coffee pot. “Then whatcha up to up here?” 

“I- well, it’s… it’s Monday and…” 

“And what? Blake shrugged and sluggishly threw together a pot. “You want some?” 

“I- no, I’ve been missing enough sleep. I don’t need the caffeine.” Weiss sighed. “I- I’m probably finally going to nap when I go back downstairs.” 

“Hey, you don’t need to be working that hard. I- I know you want gone and… and you feel guilty and all, but you don’t need to be done with your part by Mon-” Blake’s jaw dropped as she spun around to see Weiss. 

“It’s Monday morning.” Weiss reminded. 

Blake gave a shocked look. “Oh shit, and you’re?” 

“He should be ready to cave. If he doesn't, he’ll start defaulting on loans and ruin more than just his credit and credibility.”

“Interesting that anyone ever thought Jacques Schnee ever had any credibility.” Blake snarked.

“I didn’t mean that it was rightfully attained, just that-”

“No, no, I get it.” Blake offered. 

“Umm, but… yeah. The last step should be offering him a way out in exchange for the freedom of the faunus. I don’t know how you want to go about it exactly, maybe you want him to ship them all out here, maybe you want him to legally transfer property of some of the housing projects he keeps vacant to keep housing scarce and rent high in Atlas.” 

“Wait, what? He has empty homes? How the hell does that make him money?” 

“They aren’t homes really, it’s like a whole blocked off area of apartment buildings. He bought them out when a competitor saw how much could be made on rent rates. Keeping them empty means there is less to go around, and supply and demand in an empty city. He slowly opens one more up every year or two to match with population growth of the city, but it would be years before he-” 

“So there are just empty apartments sitting in Atlas where the faunus could have been living safely while they worked in his mines?” A vein grew visible in the furious faunus’s forehead. 

“I- yes, but he didn’t want faunus staying there because it could have lowered property values for the whole county, and-” 

“Then yes! That is what I want! I want the faunus to gain legal ownership of those buildings! There isn’t enough space on Menagerie for all that many people to suddenly show up here.” 

“I- well, I typed up the information for you. It’s all on your computer under ‘potential faunus housing dash in atlas’.” 

“Brothers…” Blake reeled. “This whole time…” 

“Yes, and the rest of everything is on there too, I really just came up here to tell you and to give you a quick rundown or explain it all if you need.” 

“Uugh, what are we offering him in return?” 

“Oh? For faunus freedom and whatever specifics you request, I had it in mind that we would give him information.” 

“Ok, yeah, but what info?” 

“I- so… he- he’s kind of been sitting on a literal gold mine- well, golden dust and gold, but… the dust is actually worth more.” 

“No shit, he and the rest of your family have been mining it for generations.” 

“No, no, this is a mine he doesn't know about. He doesn't know about this one, but he does know that his current mines are running dry; the last bit of information I leaked last night.” 

“He what now?” 

“Not completely dry, but the further he goes, the more it costs to get the same amount of dust. That rising cost has mostly been being offset by the faunus labor he gets for free, but yes, his current mines are low on resources.” 

“Ok, but if he was running out, wouldn’t he be losing his shit to find new ones?” 

“He would, but he has also been increasingly lazy ever since I got out of the- ever since I started working for him in earnest.” 

“I’m still not following Weiss.” Blake pulled the coffee pot, freshly brewed and poured herself a cup all without her eyes leaving Weiss for a moment. 

“It’s a big mine Blake. When I saw it… when I got the reports… I hid it from him. I knew that he would ramp up his internment to keep up with the new mining operation. I- I was scared he’d see it as making a long held dream of his fiscally viable.” 

“What fucking dream?” Blake’s tone was apprehensive and guarded. She must have sensed the graveness in Weiss’s voice.

“Of dealing with the faunus by sending troops to collect those from Menagerie. With new, more profitable mines, and at the height of his power like he was then, there would have been nothing to stop him.” 

“Fucking bastard.” 

“That’s why I had to trash his perceived business acumen first. If not, he might have actually thought he had a chance at pulling all his power back together once this was all done. But… he’s on his way out already now. The board will be fighting to oust him for all of this as soon as this evening. Without confidence in his wealth, the Atlassian council will want him gone. His, Whitley, my mother, and my presumptive vote which he has control of now will be enough to sway the council to overturn the bills. They’ll only be more eager to do it if he offers to back down from his position in exchange for an expedited process.” 

“Oh- ok, but how does a mine convince your father to do all that, even if his power is cripled?” 

“Because, the stocks will continue to tank the rest of the day, hit an all time low from lack of confidence. Then, you tell him to buy it all; all the stray shares he sold to keep living his lifestyle. He buys them all back at dimes on the lien, then the news comes out that he has a more profitable mine than ever, all with the vote in the background but not in the public eye yet. People will be chomping at the bit to get their shares back, and he will make more money that the SDC was looking to make over the next decade; hell century with how his mines were looking.” 

“So we pretty much give him insider information for how to buy low sell high?” 

“Pretty much, yeah.” Weiss shrugged. “It’s fucked, and yes, it ends up with him winning, but at the end of the day, it gets the faunus freedom, maybe housing too. The mines will open back up; the new mines, they will be profitable even paying workers a living wage, and the faunus will no longer be in a position where they can’t refuse.” 

“Shattered moon in the sky that’s fucking genius.” 

“I’m glad you think so. Take credit for it when you talk to him. He should be blowing your inbox up any minute now. The news of his mines running dry should be in his morning paper, and he reads that at nine ten sharp.” 

Blake visibly paused to do the time conversions in her head. “That’s in five minutes!” 

“That’s why I came to tell you. Good luck… if you need anything I’ll be downstairs.” Weiss offered and stepped back.

“Wait! Weiss! You, you don’t want to stay and have some breakfast?” 

“No, I’ve been up all night working on this. Weezy stomach already.” Weiss declined as politely as she could.

“You- you sure?” 

“I’m sure. I just want to sleep now. Wake me when it’s over?” Weiss considered adding ‘when I have to leave’ but, that sounded to broken and desperate. 

“A- alright Weiss. Take care. Rest up K- rest up Weiss.” 

“Thanks.” Weiss faked a grin and headed back down the stairs. 

Weiss collapsed down on her bed the moment she reached it. She was exhausted. She’d be up and down most of the night with work, and the time she actually had tried to sleep ended up being spent lamenting about her collar and how it was her last tether to actually being happy. Weary eyes watered up and she curled in on herself. Weiss just wanted to feel safe again, comforted the way Blake once made her feel.

Limply, Weiss pulled a blanket over her with her teeth the same way she had when Blake bound her hands and legs. There was something horribly fucked with how she longed for that again; the pressure of a loving Owner’s bindings keeping her good. Weiss whined and rubbed her eyes free of tears. It was false, but playing Kitten again, even just with herself actually did something to simulate the comfort that had been Blake tucking her in tight. It did something, but it was far from enough. 

That was when her old cage caught her eye. Admittedly, most of her memories from the cage hadn’t been all that nice, but with the rose tinted glasses of hindsight? It was completely understandable how she could be slowly carrying her blankets back into the cage by her teeth. It took her a couple trips back and forth, crawling and picking blankets, pillows and sheets up with her teeth and carrying it back to her cage. It took a while, but by the time she curled up in the cage, she cried for how happy it made her feel; how it wouldn’t ever happen again, how even this was just a hollow simulacrum of what she longed for. 

End of Chapter 57