Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I don’t need any help.

Good, because I’m not a very helpful guy, but that wasn’t what I asked. I asked if you were doing all right.

I’m fine.

What’s your temperature?

I said I’m fine.

Fine. What all do you have in the pantry? I know you don’t spend much time at that address.

Qrow, I swear by all that is sacred…

Go on. Swear away. Get it out of your system.

I set my Scroll down and went to empty the dryer. As straitlaced as Winter might seem, she’d learned a few things from her Atlas colleagues, and I’d been surprised when I first learned the full extent of her vocabulary. (Not shocked, of course. I’d forgotten more creative profanity than she would ever know, but it came across differently from someone like her.)

After hanging up the last of my shirts, I went back to check the Scroll. Not a word from Her Highness. I glanced back at the jumble of socks and pajamas in the basket, then sent another message.

I’m coming over.

Most of the clothes were folded before I heard a chime. I don’t have any patience for company right now.

I rolled my eyes. She was far from the only person I knew who would rather stew in misery than show any weakness, but she was probably the most stubborn. And considering I’d grown up with Raven, that was saying a hell of a lot.

The rest of the laundry could wait. I rifled through my own kitchen, collected a bagful of things that seemed like they might be useful, and stomped out into the snow.

Winter’s safehouse on Telares Street looked the same as it had the only other time I’d been there, down to the broken tiles at the corner of the roof. I sent her an update. I’m outside. You can open the door, or I can come through the window.

Her response was faster this time: It’s unlocked, you lummox. And remember the security circuit.

Admittedly, I had forgotten. There was a setup at Winter’s front door, where stepping directly between the porch and the foyer (or, presumably, shaking hands with someone on the other side of the threshold) would complete a circuit and set off some kind of security measure. She had never told me if doing this would electrocute me or just set off an alarm, or something in between, but I didn’t feel like finding out the hard way.

The snow on the steps was undisturbed, except for one rambling line of cat pawprints. There were a few boot prints between the street and the mailbox, at the base of the steps, but their details had been buried by the most recent snowfall. No one had come in or out the front door in at least several days.

After getting the door open, I tossed the bag of supplies inside, at a low angle so that it slid across the floor. Then I put my feathers on, flapped over the threshold, and changed back once I was inside, landing a little more heavily than I’d meant to.

“Shoes off,” came a call from the next room. It was followed by several muffled coughs. I closed the door and did as she said, then picked up the bag and went into the living room.

The curtains were closed, but their fabric was thin enough to let in a dull gray light from outside. Winter was curled up on the couch, in the middle of several heavy blankets, and gave the overall impression of a baozi bun with a red nose and a messy ponytail. On the table in front of her were a folded stack of tissues, a paperback book, a mug, and a couple of pill bottles. I took a step closer and saw that the bottom of the mug was dry, with a reddish tea stain around the edge. The wastebasket at the end of the couch had two or three stray tissues scattered around it, which I was pretty sure qualified the room as “slovenly” by Winter’s standards.

I was tempted to check her forehead, but I suspected that even in her current state, she’d try to claw my eyes out if I did. Besides, a rough estimate of her temperature wouldn’t give us any new information; it was already obvious that she was over the line into “pretty dang sick” territory. Instead I asked, “What have you had to drink today?”

“Qrow…” she groaned, before stifling another cough. I crossed my arms and waited her out in silence. “You’re not my father,” she finally grumbled.

“And we can both thank the gods for that. Now please, work with me here.”

She muttered something under her breath, but relented. “A few cups of tea. I drank some water when I woke up.”

“All right, that’s good. Have you eaten at all?”

“…Most of an orange.”

I sighed. You can’t nag the girl, it won’t do either of you any favors. “Are you feeling sick?”

She gave me a look.

“Sick to your stomach, I mean.”

“No, I just can’t muster an appetite. I got out of bed to try to fix myself lunch, but there was nothing in the kitchen that I felt like eating.”

“Not a lot of energy to make anything, either?” I asked, trying to show a little sympathy without being patronizing. Winter shook her head.

“All right. If I put a glass of water in front of you for starters, will you drink it?” She nodded. “Do you take it straight from the tap, or filter it?”

“There’s a filter jug in the kitchen, it should be full.”

I took the mug off the table, set it in the sink (next to a couple of others), and found a fresh glass in one of the cabinets. The jug was sitting on the counter, cool but not cold.

As I set her glass on the table I said, “I’m going to make us a real drink.”

“‘Us’?”

“Well, make you one.”

“Was it your intention to simply invite yourself over today and set up shop in my kitchen, on the assumption that you could take care of me better than I could myself?”

“…Maybe not in those exact words. But if you’re not going to take care of yourself, someone damn well ought to step in.”

“You know, sometimes it’s easy to forget that you’re related to—”

“Could we not? She and I stopped bothering with that debate years ago, and I don’t feel like relitigating it today.”

“Fine. What will it take to get you to leave me alone for a few minutes?”

“I brought two liters of cider—non-alcoholic—and some spices, just need a pan to heat them up in.”

“The small cookware is under the counter, just to the left of the sink.” As I went to look, I heard her shaking out a pill bottle in the living room.

While the cider was heating up, I poked around in the cabinets looking for more seasonings. No sense in using a bunch of my stuff, if she’s got some of her own. The search turned up a small canister of cinnamon sticks, a jar of honey that had crystallized completely solid, and a square silver box that turned out to be an old-fashioned nutmeg grater. The lid was engraved with a pattern like window frost, forming the letters “N.S.” I added a little of each, and a few cloves from what I’d brought—figured it would be easier to add more if it wasn’t strong enough, than to try and take anything back out.

All in all, Winter’s kitchen was stocked pretty sparsely. I wasn’t surprised, considering the life we both led and the fact that she didn’t normally call the place home, but I couldn’t help noticing it. The pantry held a few boxes of noodles, a few jars of vegetables, a mostly-empty bottle of cooking oil… and one shelf that was stacked with packages of Atlesian military rations. For a moment, I wondered if she actually liked the stuff, but forced the thought away. In the Koldkase, just inside the door, were some onions and garlic that looked passable, one lemon, and a couple of mystery vegetables that might have been leafy and green at some point in the past. Those went straight into the trash.

“What the hell was that?”

“Triage.”

“That is not your kitchen—”

“Unless you’ve got a garden out back that needs compost, it wasn’t going to be of any use to you.”

I took the pan off of the heat once it started to boil, but let the spices steep for a little longer before pouring some into a clean mug. A few spare drops ran down the side of the pan and hissed on the stovetop. I think they make pots with a pouring spout set into the rim—Tai probably owns one—but if something like that ever showed up in Winter’s kitchen, it’d be by accident. I walked the mug out to the living room.

She dropped the blankets to reach up for it, uncovering a pale blue, extremely fluffy sweater. “Tell me you brought some whiskey.”

“Guilty as charged—but it’s for me. Be a good girl and drink up, and maybe you can have some later.”

“Qrow, I swear if I could get off this couch—”

“I know, I know. The swords would be out and your neighbors would be calling the cops—but until you’re on the mend and you can push me out the door yourself, don’t expect me to go anywhere.”

She growled into the mug, but took a sip. Then a bigger sip, which was encouraging.

“Is it all right?”

“It’s… it’s good, actually. What did you put in it?”

“Oh—sugar, spice, you know the drill.”

Winter rolled her eyes. “From you, I would have expected a hot toddy, or something similar.”

“I’ve been known to enjoy those once in a while, but I don’t only drink alcohol. And Taiyang and I used to make cider all the time in this kind of weather, when his girls were little.”

The girls…

They were doing all right, considering the situation (although the word “considering” was doing a lot of work there). It hadn’t taken long before Ruby was up and running around again; lately she had started sneaking out of the house to meet with Nikos’ teammates. They clearly had a plan brewing, and I could make an educated guess as to what it was.

Yang… well, she was spending more time out of her room, although it didn’t seem like she’d be running anywhere anytime soon. Tai had roped me into coming over “for supper” a couple of times, during the fall. After Zwei and the girls called it a night—but before the wine was all gone—we would stay up talking, trying to figure out what we could do for her.

I realized that I had sat down without thinking, at the far end of the couch from Winter. I had also been staring at her bookshelf for no reason, maybe for several minutes now. I glanced over to see if that was weirding her out, but her attention was somewhere at the bottom of her mug. Probably focused on her own sister, now that I thought about it—although I didn’t plan to ask.

“I’m heading out.”

She blinked, but didn’t say anything.

“Now—if you want me to just go home and stay out of your hair, I will. Say the word. Or, I can find a grocery somewhere around here, and come back with a few things to stock your kitchen. So we can get dinner taken care of, and you won’t have to go out in this weather for a few days, what with the shape you’re in.”

“Dammit, Qrow…”

“Dammit, Winter…” I was pushing my luck, but I doubted she could come up with a serious rebuttal.

“You don’t have to do me any favors.”

“When I start doing you favors, you’ll know about it. But here and now, it’s dinnertime for me, and even if you’re not hungry, you need to start eating some real food again.”

She crossed her arms and glared at me.

“…You know this is the best way to handle it, as long as I’m offering.”

“In the abstract, yes, but it’d be an easier decision if it weren’t you making the offer. And I’m not letting you pay for it.”

“Fair. What am I getting?”

She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. “I’ll get some cash together. If you can find a pen and paper, I’ll meet you in the kitchen and we can make some decisions.”

Chapter Text

The clouds overhead were as gray as before when I got back to Winter’s place—maybe a little more so—but the night was starting to filter up from the eastern horizon. I held onto the shopping bag this time, to keep from spilling anything, and jumped across the threshold without changing.

I’d gotten the last roast chicken of the day from the d’Hivers’ shop, and some reasonably fresh carrots and celery. (Mushrooms had met with a hard no from Winter, but she’d asked for a bundle of kale instead—“Of course you eat that stuff”—and the biggest box of tea I could afford with the cash she’d given me.) Mrs. D’ clearly hadn’t forgotten the times I’d stumbled in hungover to buy orange juice, long before learning that Winter had a place in that part of the city. She had given me a Meaningful Look, but hadn’t asked what I was cooking up, or for who.

There was lamplight coming into the foyer from the living room. Winter had stretched out on the couch with her back to the light, rearranged the blankets, and picked up the book I’d noticed earlier. She looked up when I came in, and for a moment there was something gentle in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before—or at least, never from her. I hoped it had something to do with what she was reading.

Then it was past, and she snapped the book shut. “I should be helping you.”

“You stay right the hell there. Do you really want to help me?”

“It’s only fair that I do—”

“Then rest, Winter. The whole reason I came over here at all was to make sure you were getting better, and that’s not going to happen if you’re fretting over me. As long as you aren’t bored?”

She waved the book at me. “I’m not bored.”

“Good. Sit tight, I’ll let you know if I need any... Actually, do you have a large pot I could cook this in?”

“Under the counter again—the large ones are on the far left. Pick whichever of them suits you best.”

I found a sturdy one with insulated handles, and guesstimated about three liters of water into it. The onion and garlic went in first, along with some ground pepper that I found in a cabinet, and the juice of that solitary lemon from the Koldkase. From my own things I’d brought, I added rosemary, thyme, a few spoonfuls of stock concentrate, and some queensblade leaves. While all of that was coming to a boil, I pulled the meat off of the chicken and cut it across the grain, dropping it into the pot as I went.

The legs and wings, and a few snips of meat from the bird’s back, weren’t practical to cut up, but I didn’t want to waste them. “Do you keep containers for leftovers?”

“Above the counter, third cabinet from the left.”

I washed my hands and started looking. Unsurprisingly, she had them organized perfectly. Once the chicken was put away, I started cutting up the other vegetables. The carrots went straight into the pot, and the celery got set aside for later, but... “How long should I cook the kale for?”

“How thoroughly do you intend to cook it?”

“Soft, but still green if possible.”

“I’d suggest ten minutes, at a simmer. It’s not as tough as people tend to assume.”

“Great, thanks.”

I cut it into short strips, left it on the cutting board and dug another pot out from under the counter, this one a little smaller. As I was setting that on another stove burner, to cook one of the boxes of noodles I’d found in the cabinet, the overhead light came on, and I felt a pair of eyes on me.

She was leaning against the doorway next to the light switch, with the blankets wrapped around her shoulders. “Thank you, Qrow. I mean it.”

There was a strain in her voice as she said that, and I fought off the urge to say something facetious. “Well. I’m not going to kick somebody when she’s down.”

“I have literally seen you do that.”

“…Fine, but I’m not going to do it to you. Call it professional courtesy.”

She smiled with one corner of her mouth. “So, were you planning to use up all of my cookware today?”

“As much of it as I can figure out a use for, I guess. You got anything that’s a real pain to clean? Maybe a cheese grater or something?”

Once the onion had turned clear, I stirred the celery into the boiling pot, and set the cutting board with the kale in the “on-deck” spot next to the stovetop. The noodles finished shortly after that. Winter helped me find a colander, and I drained them and rinsed with cold water to keep them from turning to mush.

I shooed her back to the couch after that, and hovered over the soup pot until I figured it was time to add the kale. Shortly after that, I called out, “All right, it’s ready if you are.”

“Give me one moment.” I set out a bowl and spoon and turned to see her shuffling back in—without the blankets, but with her mug dangling from one hand. In addition to the sweater, she was wearing black leggings, and socks with non-slip treads on the soles. Her shoulders and arms were hunched up close, in spite of the heat from the stove—and instead of picking up her bowl, she made a beeline for the saucepan of cider, which was still half-full and giving off a few threads of steam.

“Here, I’ll make room.” I moved the soup pot over, and nodded at the still-hot burner. Winter set the pan on it after refilling the mug. “If you just stand here and warm up, you can tell me how much you want.”

I skimped a little on her serving of noodles, and tried to dig some extra meat and vegetables up from the bottom of the pot. If she noticed, she didn’t say anything. But then again, it took a little restraint on my end, not to push her to start eating while I served myself. Some habits from her upbringing apparently ran too deep, and it wasn’t worth pushing back against them now.

Once I sat down, I focused on my own bowl. Where I came from, watching someone while they ate was a quick route to a black eye, but I knew that even in the kingdoms it was still considered “rude.” Besides, after a few minutes I started to hear a lot of sniffling from the other side of the table, as the heat from the soup started to get into her system. She excused herself, and after a minute I heard water running from a few rooms away.

She was shaking her hands dry when she walked back in. “Need any more?” I asked.

“Just a bit, please.”

I got us each a smaller serving, and sat back down. We both retreated into silence again… for a few minutes.

“Who told you that I was sick?”

“It wasn’t your boss, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Not ‘worried,’ but the thought had crossed my mind. With the CCT out of commission, we’ve had limited opportunities to communicate, but—” She broke off into another bout of coughing, and set her bowl down to cover her mouth. Once she’d caught her breath, she muttered, “He’s going to be furious that I haven’t seen a doctor.”

“After seeing the shape you’re in, I am too. There isn’t some scoreboard that lights up whenever you ‘tough it out’.” I shut my mouth before I could add, And Daddy wouldn’t care, even if he knew.

“It isn’t serious enou—”

“Bullshit. Two months ago, yes, the hospitals were filled with people who needed help more than you do now, but they aren’t anymore. The only reason I haven’t rolled you up in those blankets and bundled you out the door, is that Glynda made me promise to be nice about this.” I thought it over. “...Also, I don’t drive, and I’m too cheap to get us a cab.”

Winter took a sudden interest in the bottom of her bowl. “...So Glynda knows that you’re here.”

“Yep.” I tried to soften the tone of my voice. “She’s keeping pretty busy, like always, but I figure she’ll check in at some point to make sure we haven’t killed each other.”

“And there go my plans for the night.”

“Schnee, I believe that was a joke! Nicely done.”

“I yield to your expertise, when it comes to not taking things seriously.”

“Two in a row!” I mock-applauded, and she stood up and bowed smugly before taking our bowls over to the sink.

“Were you reading anything good, earlier?”

She glanced out to the living room as she sat down. “It’s... well, it’s rather childish, really. A story about a world without Grimm, where the boundaries between right and wrong are simpler. A world that doesn’t know about Dust, and doesn’t need it. …A world that rests on the back of a colossal turtle, for reasons I have yet to understand.”

“Just another improvement over Remnant, I guess.”

She shrugged and nodded, in a “sure, why not” way. “Are you much of a reader?”

“On and off. I get some downtime between assignments—and sometimes I have to settle in someplace for work, either for surveillance or infiltration. Places where the network broadcasts don’t reach, and using a Scroll to entertain myself would raise suspicions.”

Winter laughed quietly, then fought down another cough. “I just pictured you perched on a tree branch, holding a book open with one foot.” She demonstrated with three fingers and a thumb.

“I’d be lying if I said I’d never done that.” She laughed harder, but the coughing came back with a vengeance, and she turned away. I went to get her water glass from the living room, and refilled it. “And I am still officially a teacher, so I try to stay up to date on new information that aspiring Hunters might need to know.”

She dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve. “...Do you stay up to date on the trendiest youth-drama novels, too?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, in the primmest tone of voice I could manage.

“‘Oh, Trent Crudboots! I know that it’s wrong, and I hate everything you stand for, but your rugged anarchist charm is wearing down my resolve. I tell myself that I’m pursuing you purely out of a sense of duty, but—’”

“That’s surprisingly on-brand, for some of the authors out there... You know, Jimmy figured it was one of the students who was returning books to the Atlas library with all the good parts highlighted. I was just surprised he let them stock anything besides tech manuals and military history.”

“I think you’re making that up.”

“Eh, I might be.”

Winter yawned, and I snuck a look at the clock. “I should get out of your hair. Will you be okay tonight?”

“Qrow, I don’t want to ask any more of you...”

I made a “get on with it” motion. “The worst I’ll do is say no.”

“Would you fix me another drink before you leave? A real one, if you have any of that whiskey left.”

“’Course. I’m not tucking you into bed, though.”