Chapter Text
Your meeting seems random, but you know it is Ozpin’s doing.
Qrow doesn’t pay attention to you at first. He has his own problems, and they are many. Very many. You have problems too, but you know that Ozpin orchestrated this whole thing, so you say,
“You’re Qrow Branwen, right?”
It’s the beginning of the end, but you don’t know it yet.
The storm is the worst Vale has seen in over a century (Ozpin can confirm). You and Qrow are “accidentally” left alone. You don’t really know him yet, not as well as you would like to, but when you realize that you’re snowed in, you expect him to leave. You’ve seen his… bird… thing, mostly in a stroke of luck, around a corner and out of the corner of your eye. He can leave anytime he wants to. He can go home.
He stays.
He actually talks to you, really, for the first time. It’s out of boredom, you suppose. But he’s surprisingly nice. Glynda and James are usually complaining about him, although not too seriously. You didn’t want what they said to affect your opinion of someone you barely knew, but it must have, because you are taken aback by how genuinely kind he seems. This is not the reckless drunk Glynda seemed so set against.
It’s hours later, when the snow is still beating against the windows and the power is flickering in and out, when you get up the courage to ask him something that’s been bothering you.
“Why haven’t you left?” you ask. You make a slight gesture towards the window. The door can’t be opened, but the windows are high and the panes can be rotated. A full grown man couldn’t slip through, but a bird could. "I know you can go whenever you want.“
And he looks at you, and something about his expression becomes, impossibly, both sharper and softer simultaneously. His eyes hone in with a focus that wasn’t there before and the skin around his mouth tightens, but there’s an emotion there that softens the expression.
Those red eyes are heavy on you.
"You used to people leavin’ ya?” he asks, and his tone is too careful and too soft and too sympathetic.
That stings.
“No,” you say, and you say it too quickly, too harshly. He’s caught you. “No. I just - I know you don’t have to stay here, and there’s no reason.”
“Well…” He smiles now, slightly more relaxed. The tightness has not quite left his face, and neither has that awful sense of pity, but it is not so intense, and so you can tolerate it. "Not no reason.“
You know then that you’re in trouble.
Sometimes he is fun, silly drunk. Too happy, too touchy, too much. You try not to mind, but you can’t help but feel some disgust when he is like this.
Look at what he has to do to himself to be happy.
But sometimes he is a sad, pathetic drunk, and you cringe from him.
He cries for a woman named Summer. The more you think about it, the more you’re sure that you might have known her. Well, not known. But she was a student and you were a student and she was a few years ahead of you, but you remember her name. You remember a white cape and rose petals scattered across the school grounds.
I went to school with Qrow, you realize. Summer and Qrow were on a team.
You don’t remember him at all. You do remember his sister. You remember that she made you uncomfortable, even when she was being nice.
He cries. You make him drink water and then keep him from stumbling into his own sick when he pukes. You let him sleep on the couch in your living room, and you bring him blankets even though your house is perfectly warm.
The next morning, you make breakfast for both of you. He tries to thank you. You pretend that you didn’t see him weep for a dead woman.
This happens again, and again, and again, and each time, he looks at you like you have saved him from drowning instead of alcohol poisoning.
"You knew this would happen,” you hiss at Ozpin. “Why would you do this to me?”
You temper has gotten away from you. Ozpin has deflected and avoided your questions for long enough, and things are getting dangerous. Not in the physical sense, but you are afraid for your heart. It is slipping away from you in the tiniest bits and pieces, like grains of sand, with every smile and kind word that Qrow offers you. You hate it. You are not a little girl. You know better than this. This is a crush, and you are too old for this.
You cannot love- be in love with- like- have a crush on an alcoholic who only ever noticed your existence because Ozpin forced his hand.
“Why?” you demand. “You know me, you know how I am. You knew. Don’t tell me you didn’t.”
“I suspected,” Ozpin says as calmly as ever. He sips his hot chocolate, the ass that he is. “And I still suspect that this will all turn out quite well.”
“Damn you, Oz,” you say, with less venom but just as much blame. “This is going to hurt. Did you not think of that?”
His amber eyes meet yours and they are filled with disgusting, offensive pity. “It will only hurt you if you allow it to.”
You want to hit him. To knock that beloved mug out of his hands and shatter it. To tell him to take his stupid platitudes and his happily-ever-after fairytales and shove them up his-
You don’t.
“Don’t give me that, Oz,” you say. “I didn’t allow any of this. It’s happening anyway.”
Ozpin has nothing to say to that and you leave his office with an ache in your chest and the pinching hints of an oncoming migraine.
Three days later, Ozpin tells you a secret. It isn’t really a secret, but you didn’t know and you doubt Qrow would have mentioned it unless you directly asked, which you probably never would have done.
Bad Luck.
That is just about the worst thing you’ve ever heard, because you can imagine it. You can imagine all the accidents. All the hurt. All the fear. How does he live? How does he spend time around anybody he cares about? How long has he been like this? You can’t ask him these questions, though. It doesn’t feel right. The answer would simply be that he learned to live with it, because he had to. It’s a very Qrow thing, to live with that weight around his neck and say, “Well, it’s this or death.” And that’s what he would say. You know it.
That is how he lives. You know that too.
You have never wished anybody good luck in your life. You’ve never needed to.
You become a tutor in school after getting an unusual number of perfect scores. You’re not sure what they want you to tutor, but your “students” suddenly seem to get everything that they had so much trouble with before, so it doesn’t really matter.
You like a boy. Your best friend likes the boy. He likes your best friend. He gets your best friend. They are perfect and happy together. You smile for them.
Your grandfather’s hundredth birthday comes and goes. He is happy and healthy with a full head of hair. He goes off his medication. He is in perfect health.
You pass Beacon Academy’s entry test without a single slip up. Everybody is performing wonderfully that day. It is madness of the joyous, baffling kind. They are all in top form. You are the best.
You get the partner you want during initiation. He’s nice. You like him. He is in love with another teammate. They always end up in romantic situations, and it is always in front of you.
You play games that you’ve never played before with a team you barely know and win. They say you must have played before. You swear you haven’t. You don’t even like games. They’re too easy.
You kill a Nevermore by yourself. You ask your team why they didn’t help you. They say that you were doing a fantastic job on your own. They’re not wrong.
Your partner who you liked and your teammate he is in love with are now engaged. You congratulate them.
At Vytal Festival, your team competes and wins. And wins. And wins. And then it is you in the Singles round, and you don’t even try, because you know how this is going to happen. It is all that has ever happened. You win.
You realize something is strange. You have always known, but never thought about it before the Vytal Festival. You go and sit in the waiting room of a hospital for three hours. For three hours, the healthiest babies are born, the sickest people recover, and horrible injuries are discovered to be minor and “not nearly as bad as they looked.”
You go to the hospital every day. That is where you do your homework. Your team doesn’t understand, but they don’t seem to mind. Nobody seems to mind anything. Everything is right and nobody minds a thing.
Your team is successful in so much. They are also successful in their relationships and their assignments. Two of them are married, and to each other at that. One has successfully maintained a long-distance relationship for three years without any trouble. They all have the assignments they want. They are reputable, sought-after Huntsmen and Huntresses, going into the world with the right foot forward. You are left alone.
This is all fine.
Ozpin calls you three days after graduation. He asks you several questions, all of them very serious. You focus on one, though, because that is the one you have most recently found the answer to.
“Good Luck,” you say.
It is a fact. Not a wish.
“This isn't a great idea," you tell Oz. You've said that before. You've usually been right. With that in mind, Oz usually listens.
He doesn't. Not this time.
It is not a combat mission. You are a spy of sorts, not a fighter. Not this time. You’re not sure why Ozpin wants you here for this, but you are here, and you are feeling useless as Qrow leads the way.
“Just fishing for information,” Qrow explains to you. He says things in a way that is a bit more natural than Ozpin. Ozpin is like feathers on the breeze. Qrow is like that scythe of his, sharp and ruining and precise. When he wants to be. “It’s good to have allies in foreign territory.”
Mistral doesn’t seem like foreign territory to you. It seems like a train-ride away from Vale. But you understand. Ozpin’s network cannot be held up by a handful of specially picked agents. There need to be filler pieces. There need to be huntsmen ready and on call. There need to be connecting lines of information being passed back and forth, without the CCT.
According to Qrow, this is usually a challenge. Mistral has some shady characters, and those are usually the kind who are actually worth talking to for this sort of business. Unfortunately, such shady characters are usually difficult to talk to, much less convince of something so… extreme.
And yet. You find them, and they are convinced.
“Whaddaya know,” Qrow marvels. “That went off without a hitch and everybody’s happy. That’s a first!”
Yes. Everybody is so happy.
With the expectation that the operation would last several days instead of this easy, miraculous one, Qrow reserved a hotel room. Double beds, of course. He’s not the sort to… well.
When he finds out the hotel doesn’t offer refunds, he turns to you and says, “We might as well. Call it a vacation?”
A vacation. You try to remember the last time you had one of those and you wonder if sick leave counts.
Mistral is a nice place. Mostly. There is the seedy, teeming underworld, but. Other than that, it’s alright.
When you turn away from a door with a “no faunus” sign on it, you don’t see the look on Qrow’s face. You don’t know what he thinks about that kind of thing. You want to assume that he shares Ozpin’s opinions, because Ozpin doesn’t tolerate utter stupidity in his little secret circle, but you don’t know. And you don’t care.
You really don’t care.
Really.
The hotel is nice. The beds are comfortable.
You feel a little bit like you’re suffocating.
“You okay?” asks Qrow.
“Fine,” you say. “What about you? You were weird all day.”
“Everything was going so well,” he says in his own defense, and you know what he means.
“You mean nothing went wrong,” you correct him. Because that is more accurate. You still spent most of the day haggling with bounty hunters and thieves. It just went better than expected, and you know why.
Bad Luck. Good Luck. What does that leave us with?
“Yeah, it was great!” Qrow exclaims, doing a happy little fist-pump and falling onto the bed he had claimed for himself. “You’re coming with me next time, too.”
“Yeah.” And, oddly enough, it feels like a good idea. “Sure I will.”
The second day goes well. Qrow shows you parts of Mistral that you’ve never seen before. You try new foods and watch a sunset made of lavender and gold. Qrow stays by your side, so close that you wonder if something is wrong. But there’s not. He just seems to enjoy bumping shoulders with you.
That night, Qrow sits at the edge of your bed, frowning at you.
“I didn’t have a nightmare last night,” he says. “Not one.”
“That’s nice,” you say.
“I always have nightmares,” he confesses, but it sounds like an accusation. “Every night.”
“That’s sad.” You mean it. You mean it too much. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?” he asks, and he’s not asking why you’re sorry or why it’s sad. “Everything’s going right. It always does. It’s not supposed to be like this. It’s never like this with me.”
“Why’d Ozpin stick us together?” you ask back.
Qrow doesn’t answer. He only seems dazed as he slips off of your bed and into his own.
On the third night, you come back to the hotel room laughing and giddy. You’ve had almost too much fun and Qrow hasn’t had a single drink since the previous day. No… the day before. Or… since before Mistral? You don’t remember the last time you saw him take a drink out of that stupid flask, and it is so, so good.
Qrow keeps swaying and grabbing your hand like he’s drunk, but you think it’s just been because he’s been laughing until he cries and he must be lightheaded because you’ve been running around Mistral like idiots for the past four hours. You’ve never been so happy to be stupid.
In the hotel room, you’re still giggling and so is he, but you’ve calmed down somewhat. It must feel nice for him, you imagine, to feel that happy buzz from a good day instead of an excess of beer. Or whiskey. Or whatever it is that he usually drinks that you suspect that he hasn’t been drinking for at least a week, maybe more…
“Today was good,” he says to you.
“Yeah.” Today was the best.
You’re exhausted from being happy. You think you’re going to settle in early for the night, but then Qrow is perched at the foot of your bed again. He’s not frowning this time.
“It’s safe with you, isn’t it?” he asks. His voice is full of hope and his eyes are alight with wonder. He is full to the brim with this feeling.
You reach out and take his hand.
“Yes,” you promise. “It’s safe with me.”
Qrow kisses you until the air is stolen from your lungs. You happily return the favor.