Chapter Text
He used to see it.
Qrow Branwen used to see so much color.
The color of the sky on Patch in the evening. The color of Tai’s vest. The color of Ozpin’s suit. The color of Raven’s eyes, and his. The color of Summer’s hair.
That had been the first color that made him realize he had gotten his Sight. Looking in her eyes didn’t do it, as it did for most people. They were just as sparkling a silver grey as always. But then he saw her hair.
Qrow had been astonished to hear that Summer had seen it first… a while back. She’d seen the vibrant rust of his eyes and, honestly, she wasn’t confused. She understood right away. Of course it was him. It was like a secret had been revealed and as soon as she’d seen it, she was amazed that she’d missed it for so long. Her telling Qrow that was one of those things that he kept stored away, as a rare, mind-boggling, comfort on particularly bad days.
Qrow was confused at first though. He’d known Summer for years. He loved her. He’d known he’d loved her for years. He’d known he’d love her in whatever capacity she wanted from him. She was the kind of important to him that meant it didn’t matter what the nature of their relationship was, as long as they had one. She was his best friend, and that bond was never ‘less’ than a romantic one. But she couldn’t be his soulmate. If she was, why hadn’t this happened before?
The thing was, Qrow and Summer weren’t the kind of match that most people pictured when thinking of soulmates. They weren’t two pieces, ready to fit together at the moment they met. They didn’t start out as soulmates. Because when they met, they were just kids. Their souls hadn’t settled, hadn’t grown enough, to have a match. People used to think that a soulmate was someone who completed you, but no. A soulmate was who fit you once you were completed. You did the completing yourself. (Completed doesn't mean perfect though, just formed.) And for Qrow and Summer, it just so happened that the person who helped them grow to that point, also fit together with their completed self.
No. Summer Rose and Qrow Branwen were not born soulmates. They became that. Their souls weren’t made for each other, they chose each other. During their time at Beacon, as their souls began to settle, as they matured into the adults they would become, they built themselves around each other, without even realizing what they were doing.
Summer had given Qrow color, and he had given it to her. But then….
Usually, when a person died - when it was actually ‘their time’ - their partner kept their Sight. Despite the common phrase of "giving" someone color, a soulmate didn't really give a person their Sight, but just unlocked it within them. They hadn’t been completed by someone else, but complemented.
But, trauma could change that. Someone dying young, or before ‘their time’ had a different effect on their partner. It differed in intensity, in scope. Some people lost shades. Some lost an entire color or two. Some kept only one.
No one really understood why, though there was a common theory: when the loss changed the person left behind so immensely that their completed soul was shattered, that was when their Sight was affected. It wasn’t that their loss was greater than those who didn’t lose Sight, it was just, different. Their Sight didn’t suffer because they lost their soulmate, but because in doing so, they lost a part of themselves.
Qrow lost all of it. It was the cruelest last twist of the knife to him. He didn’t just lose her, or his Sight, or himself. His pain wasn’t just a loss, but a new kind of awareness.
The grey of Sightlessness was no longer benign. Grey was silver. Grey was Summer’s eyes. And now, now that she was gone, it was all that he could see. The good, the bad, the poignant, the mundane. Her absence was in everything he saw.
He’d learned to deal with it, to ignore the all encompassing bite of the knowledge that Summer Rose, the source of color in his life, wasn’t just gone on a mission. She wasn’t just never going to see him again. She was gone. She wouldn’t smile or laugh or feel the wind in her hair. What hurt most wasn’t that he had lost her, but that she had ended. A world without her existence. A world where her daughters knew her more from stories than from experience. That was irreconcilable. So he pushed it away.
The alcohol helped. It took the sharpness off all of that incessantly mocking grey. It dulled the broken edges within himself too.
And the isolation helped as well.
It hurt. It hurt so much. But it was necessary. He couldn’t put his family in any more danger. And he couldn’t risk that kind of loss again. He knew he wouldn’t survive it again. But he was weak. He knew how selfish it was, but as much as he tried to convince himself otherwise, convince himself that he wasn’t worthy of it, that he’d had his chance and then let it die; he wanted love. He wanted family and connections. He wanted to watch Yang and Ruby grow up. He wanted to be a part of their lives. He wanted to laugh with Tai. Hell, he even wanted to fight with Raven if that’s all they could do now.
He wanted to be important to people. He wanted to be important to someone.
He wanted someone to love him like that again. That love that could never fix you like all the grand, unrealistic stories, but that made you want to get better. That love that made it a little harder to hate yourself, because if someone as amazing as that could love you, there had to be something there worth loving, right?
He wanted to be the key to someone’s color again. And he hated himself for how much he wanted that. He hated himself for being so selfish, again. So he pushed it down, ignored it like he ignored the reality of the extent of Summer’s absence.
Sometimes he thought he could see the smallest hint of red when he looked at Ruby, or gold with Yang. Like they were remnants of Summer - echoes of her through her daughters - gifting him tiny glimpses of color again. Even Tai could have a glow to him. And Raven, though these days he wasn’t sure if that was true Sight or just a figment of his rage. The people in his life, the people whose places in his life were entangled with her’s, could seem to almost bring her back. Like if they were together enough - if they were connected enough - she would just show up at the front door, smiling, apologizing for having been gone so long. But he knew that wasn’t true, and trying to pretend it might be, trying to find his way back to her through their family, and always coming up short, just hurt more. He lived for those special moments with his family. But, as with everything happy, the sting of loss, of absence, of worry always caught up with him eventually.
He told himself he accepted it. He accepted living the rest of his life with only those tiny moments. Those tiny moments that he knew he might have to give up at any second, in order to keep the people he loved safe. That was what mattered now. Keeping his family, Summer’s family, safe. His happiness was a small price to pay for their safety. His happiness wasn’t a priority.
He told himself that over and over. Until he could trick himself that it was okay, that it didn’t eat away at him everyday. That he was fine with not having a happy ending. He was never meant to be truly, safely, happy, and he was okay with that, it didn’t bother him. That was the lie he drove into his head whenever his chest ached. Whenever he just wanted someone there to help him shoulder this huge responsibility. Whenever he woke up from nightmares and laid there, wishing that, for once, he could stop feeling so alone. Whenever he just wanted everything to simply feel empty, but that gods-damned grey surrounded him constantly.
He’d adapted. He’d pretended to accept. He’d settled into the idea that the rest of his life would be for his family, for the world, for Summer. For everyone else but himself.
But then - Atlas. The streets of Mantle. His chest hitting the ground and a pair of dark grey boots standing in front of him. Looking up in anger. Opening his mouth to protest. And suddenly his world was falling out from under him in an utterly new, terrifying way. A way he had never even thought to prepare for.
Teal. Seafoam. The calmest green. He knew those colors. They weren’t the ones that his family had ever given him glimpses of before. But they came back to him so easily. He’d expected to never see them again, much less so vividly. But there it was.
It was familiar. Or rather, so close to familiar. He knew that was teal. But it wasn’t the exact teal that Summer had given him. It was… it was a different source, a different context. He knew if you held the two colors up beside one another, they’d both read as teal. But he’d immediately know which one was from Summer, and which was from....
And by the look in the other man’s teal, it wasn’t one sided.
It was a nightmare Qrow hadn’t even realized he should fear.
Everyone knew you could have multiple soulmates, especially when your first wasn’t necessarily your ‘born’ match. But the likelihood of ever actually meeting more than one?
It was incredibly rare.
Qrow wished it were even rarer.
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Clover froze.
Crimson. Dark, enveloping, soothing, suffocating crimson. He’d never seen it before, but he knew instantly that that was the color of blood, of roses, of the flush of life in your cheeks. His heart leapt and he knelt down, hand reaching out to help the restrained man…. To his soulmate.
He’d talk to the General, explain the situation. This… this changed things, right? He wouldn’t actually have to take his soulmate in cuffed, right?
“Sorry… about this… I...I’ll get it worked out as soon as we get back to the General….I…”
He took a deep breath as he helped the man to his feet. As much as Clover wanted to remove the bolas from his wrists he knew he couldn’t, not yet.
“Okay, sorry, I was very much in one head-space and it was not... This. I need to... regroup for a second… I… I’m Clover.” He didn't know how to introduce himself right then; to the most important person he'd ever meet, who was currently restrained at his own order, without feeling a little awkward. He tried to keep the excitement, the relief from his voice. He was on the job. He couldn’t let this get in the way of doing his job. Even if it was what he had waited for, had told himself he was fine without, for years.
The other man didn’t speak. He didn’t look at him. Clover had gotten that one glimpse of crimson and now all he wanted was to see it more, to memorize every angle of it in the light. But those eyes had stayed screwed shut ever since that first look. For a moment Clover worried that it was one-sided. It happened sometimes, he was all too familiar with that fact.
Clover knew that his good luck couldn’t protect him from all poor outcomes. But two? Giving him two unrequited soulmates? That was a stretch. It had to be. He’d never prayed for his luck more than in that split second of doubt.
But no. The worry passed. He’d seen the shock in his eyes, the realization….
It hit Clover suddenly that it was just that. Shock. Not surprise or joy…. Shock… maybe even… fear? Heartbreak? He didn’t understand.
The world was so vibrant now. There were so many colors. So much beyond the years of that melancholy silver. That silver that he’d somehow never been able to bring himself to fully resent.
But now there was more than that complicated shine. Now there was red. So striking and calming, warm, all around him. He understood why it was usually your soulmate's eye color that became your favorite, that made you feel something so powerfully that it was able to echo into the core of the person matched to you. He understood how important that silver was. A part of him always had. He'd felt that joy, that pain, that uncomfortably heady mix of both conflicting emotions, for too long to ever forget it's strength.
But now he had something beyond that. Now, he had red.
For the first time since he was a teenager, he saw so many colors, more than an unknowable shining silver.
But for the first time in his life; he felt a striking, colorful, emotion building in his chest, that was purely his own.
It was breathtaking.
And now his new, truly matched, soulmate wouldn't even look at him.
That wasn’t how Clover had pictured it all those years ago, before he had stopped letting himself hope it might one day happen.
He’d told himself for so many years that he was fine without a soulmate, that he was more than that. That he didn't want it so badly.
But to have it, once more, dangled in front of him and then make him face the possibility that something could still go wrong?
He almost felt silly at how quickly that put an aching pit of sadness in his chest.