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Summer had died far too soon for Yang to really understand it. Ruby, even less so. As she’s gotten older, she’s had waves of grief flood her for her foster mother. She’d watch one of her classmates get picked up from school by their mom, and she’d hug her child, and Yang suddenly felt so very sad for an experience she hadn’t had in years. Sometimes using one of Summer’s favorite mugs or watching Ruby smile struck her in such a way that made her chest ache.
“Hey, Mom,” Yang says, curled up on the couch, unable to sleep despite their past few days. Everyone has their doors cracked, and she hears everyone’s even breathing, letting the sounds soothe her frazzled nerves. “It’s probably stupid to just talk to you, out loud, from the couch, but I’m too far away to talk to your stone. I hope that isn’t a problem.”
She’s reminded of spending time at Summer’s stone, working on homework or simply talking at her stone. It’s silly, but it’s something tangible that she doesn’t have right now, and it leaves a gaping hole in her heart. She needs to talk at something, so the empty air will have to do. She’s so lost. “Things have been hard. We’ve made a lot of progress, but not without loss. Something tells me this has been the easy part, too. I feel like I’m staring down a canyon, waiting for someone to push me.”
She tugs the blanket up to her shoulders, trying to pretend that Summer is actually there, holding her, keeping her warm, despite her own efficient heating system. “I don’t know what’s next, and it scares the everloving fuck out of me.
“I wasn’t afraid of death for a long time. I knew it came for all of us one day or another. I figured that when it finally came for me, I’d be old, like Qrow, having killed hundreds of Grimm, doing my own thing as a huntress. I’d go out in style, but be yet another nameless huntress lost to the battle. I thought I’d be alone. I thought I’d be a whore, sleeping around and drinking in bars and fighting monsters and just doing that. Things have been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to update what my future looks like, and I don’t know what it looks like anymore, because I have no fucking idea what the end goal will be.”
She takes a deep breath, lets her tears gather. “I never thought I’d fall in love. I am so, so afraid, Mom, that I won’t be able to protect them.” The tears roll down her neck, to her shoulder. “We haven’t really lost anyone, just Pyrrha, and my arm, I guess,” and she flexes her hand to prove that, “and Nora lost two fingers, and Ren has a bad concussion. Weiss will pull through, and Qrow’s stopped drinking, and Ruby is so strong, and I can’t lose any of them, Mom.” She sniffs. “Life is good. If we step foot out of Atlas, I can’t promise that anymore, and it’s horrifying. We’re at home base, but the moment we step away, I don’t think things will go smoothly, and it will hurt.”
She rolls over, onto her back, no longer staring into JNR’s room and watching their dark forms. Instead, she stares at the ceiling, the back of her metal hand resting on her forehead. “I don’t know what I want. I want to keep fighting, I want to save humanity from Salem, but we can’t beat her—I have no idea how we’re handling that, that’s another thing that I have to think about—and I just want to pick up and run with everyone I love.”
A realization strikes her then, and she drags her hand to rest over her eyes. “That’s what happened to Mom, right? She realized she couldn’t protect everything she loved, and it scared the shit out of her, so she ran.” It hurts. It all hurts, thinking about how they were all injured, how they’ll likely keep getting hurt, and maybe dying, and it all feels like so much. “How do I be strong, Mom? How do I keep pushing forward, when it feels like we’re walking right into a boarbatusk den?”
She sits in the silence for a moment, moving her hand from her eyes so she can watch the ceiling fan spin lazily in circles above her. “On one hand, I know that running is the coward’s way out, but it would keep everyone safe, and we could fight our way out of almost anything. On the other, we signed up to do this. Maybe not fighting a supernatural being that viscerally hates another supernatural being that lives in a fifteen-year-old, but you know, we signed up to fight. And that’s what we’re doing—fighting with everything we have against everything wrong with this world. It just feels so heavy most days. I try to be positive about all this—my resume is gonna be so sexy after all of this—but we’re barely adults. This is hundreds of years of strife that we’re trying to end. There’s gonna be casualties.
“I don’t know what to do. What’s the point of all of this, if we’re just going to die?”
She doesn’t expect an answer. “Who says there’s a point to existence, firecracker?”
She turns her head and Qrow is sitting at the dining room table. “Didn’t know you were up.” She tries to suppress her embarrassment; it is just Qrow, after all. He’s not going to judge her ramblings. “How much did you hear?”
“Excited to see your sexy resume once we beat Salem,” he mumbles, and she flushes as she sits up. “Not much; just that you’re having a moral dilemma.” He crosses the living room and sits on the couch next to her. He crosses his legs, and she angles herself to fit against his side as much as possible. He drops his arm over her shoulders, and he’s just as warm as Tai. “Typically, loving people means they love you back. It’s easy to see that you’re not alone.”
His hand rubs up and down her shoulder, and she chokes back a sob. “I’ve already lost so much; I don’t know how much more I can lose before I break.”
“You definitely haven’t had it easy.” Qrow is also bad at pep talks. It at least gets a teary chuckle from her. “Hell, you’re all still kids.”
“I don’t want to lose anyone else, Qrow. I miss Mom.”
He tucks his arm under her knees and plops her in his lap. The last time anyone held her like this was when Tai brought her home from the hospital, one arm short. He’d been crying into her hair. “Sure she misses you too. Both of them, actually, for as detached from emotions as my sister tries to act.” That gets another laugh; she can attest to that from experience. “You’re allowed to hurt.”
“How did you handle losing her? I know you two were partners.”
“Didn’t handle it; ignored it with alcohol. But then I accidentally adopted ten kids, and I realized Summer would kill me if I let any of them die.”
She appreciates that he’s realized that they’re all a weird, messed-up family. “So the detox hurts in more ways than one?”
“You could say that, yeah.” He sighs before pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “You’re not alone, kiddo. I think I know what Summer would tell you, if that would make you feel better.”
“It’s better than me wracking my brain to find my own answer.”
“You have people you’re protecting, yeah? Lean on them. They’re going to support you as much as you support them.” Qrow squeezes her. “You’re not alone.”
“You aren’t either, you know,” she tells him, leaning her head back to look at him. “Like you said, you’re a dad to ten kids now. We can support you too.”
“Thanks, firecracker.” He kisses her forehead. “Go lay down with your sister. I’m sure her feet are cold.”
She’s reluctant to leave, but she does feel better enough to sleep. “I’m not going to warm her feet.”
“Yes, you will,” he tells her, and she sticks her tongue out at him as she climbs off his lap. “Thanks, Qrow.”
It’s easy to curl around Ruby and remind herself that her sister has a higher kill count than herself, so maybe they’ll all see the end. She hopes so, she thinks as she slips into sleep.