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i.
Qrow turns the plastic figurine over in his fingers.
It’s a token of arrogance, to pick a piece so far off the board; he’s leaned back in the shitty metal folding chair so far his spine’s basically parallel to the interrogation room table, eyeing up the cheap black horsehead as if he’s about to complain that they’re not playing with a better set.
Ozpin says, “Should we instate a time limit?”
Qrow has known him for maybe five minutes longer than the cop that’d brought him in, the dude with a terribly lopsided buzzcut that’s probably standing behind the one-way mirror with donuts and coffee or some shit. Maybe five minutes, but that’s long enough to be pretty sure of the look on the man’s face when he says that, the Headmaster of Beacon, hoity-toity with a pressed-linen manner of speaking.
“Nah,” Qrow says, and sits back up to make his first move proper, knight to F-6.
Ozpin, sitting calmly behind a pawn in E-3, fixes him with a Look; it’s the kind of Look Qrow recognizes from people who’ve made other people’s business their business, like Ozpin is picking him apart right now for every decision he’s making with stupid plastic figures on a stupid plastic board when his ass is getting sore.
“The cavalry,” Ozpin says - and only that.
Qrow scoffs. “This game’s gonna drag on for hours if we don’t bring out the big guns now, and my ass is starting to hurt. There’s no deeper meaning, old man.”
His expression doesn’t change. Instead, Ozpin rests the tips of his fingers against the peaked point of the bishop in F-1.
“Can’t we have a conversation?” he asks gently, depositing the piece in C-4, equidistant from every side of the square as if he’s got the board in his muscle memory down to millimeters.
Qrow regards the board. Why do that? His knight’s in range of the bishop, but if Ozpin takes it, then his pawns will just –
He thinks about his big guns remark. And then progresses to no deeper meaning.
Realizes he’s leaned forward in the shitty metal folding chair, at some point intrigued enough by the move to become invested in the game despite himself.
When he looks up like a kid with cookie crumbs on his lips, Ozpin’s got a tilt to his mouth that looks some kind of smug.
In sixteen moves Ozpin has him beat, stuck between a rook and a hard place and Qrow sits back rather than tip his king, going down with honor rather than surrender.
In sixteen moves Ozpin has him - if not quite figured out, then well on his way. At least, in his opinion. Qrow’s mouth pulls up in a half-smirk half-grimace at the thought, feeling some kind of unclean, stripped, though he comforts himself by thinking it was just a game of chess. A shitty one at that. It’s not like he can glean anything when it’s been rigged to hell and back by the context of the –
Sixteen moves and a spot in Beacon’s freshman class promised to him, sixteen years and with delinquency records to circle Remnant twice over. The cop from earlier stills at the words, fixing Ozpin with a Look like are you an idiot?
Ozpin takes the mug of coffee that had been brought for him. Sips it, makes a face.
“We’ll see you at Beacon,” he says to Qrow, who then finds himself on the precinct’s concrete front stoop with Raven’s number half-dialed and his breath fogging out before him, late winter not yet thawed to spring though he feels a kind of warm like a stolen double shot of tequila settling in his stomach.
She picks up on the second ring.
“Hey,” Qrow says, as soon as the ringing noise screws off, preempting whatever noise of irritation she might’ve wanted him to hear. “You’re applying to Beacon, right?”
ii.
Summer nudges his calf with the toe of her boot.
It’s a warning that comes about three and a half seconds too late, because Glynda’s snapping her crop against the far edge of his desk before he’s gotten himself up far enough straight-like to at least put up some pretense of paying attention.
“Qrow,” she says sternly. “My class isn’t for catching up on the sleep you’ve missed while getting up to shenanigans.”
He’s not awake enough to decide to pick a fight, so he responds with a grumble and sits back in his chair. Looks to his right as Glynda moves back to the center of the lecture hall.
Summer tucks her multi-tone hair behind an ear, smiling at him in that I wish you would get your shit together way. She’s that mother-henning type, and he appreciates the eye out for his back, but he’s – damn it, he’s a contrarian, and they’re partners but Summer can’t hope to protect him from his own personality.
Taiyang across the aisle flashes him a knowing grin when he glances over, feeling the weight of eyes on his neck. They conspire to work Glynda up, just three years out of Beacon and already stuffy and boring, but the appreciative glint in Taiyang’s eye when she gets fierce isn’t one Qrow mirrors, he knows that.
If Taiyang’s noticed, his sunny smile lies well.
His teasing eyebrows tilt. Keep at it, his look seems to say. I’m enjoying the show.
Qrow affects his face with disdain, marries it with a showy roll of his eyes.
They fall on Raven when he sees straight again – leaned back, arms crossed, eyes closed but not asleep. Hardly ever asleep.
As siblings they are alike and unlike. Qrow thumbs his nose at authorities. Raven simply wills them out of existence.
An errant thought, but one that comes to mind nonetheless; that night, a metal folding chair, a plastic chess set. A knight.
He wonders what piece Raven would have picked.
iii.
Ozpin’s kind of around on campus from time to time, but always in the midst of quickstepping from Point A to Point B.
He’s brushed past Qrow in a hurry a few times with a quick greeting and a handful of words tossed at arm’s-length, always smelling faintly of coffee and something that Qrow thinks might be wheat, but in the times he can remember he doesn’t think the man’s ever invited him anywhere.
Except this time he’s left with a time and place, “if you’ve the time, that is”, and a frown only increasing in perplexity as Ozpin strides down the hall with a caffeine-induced spring in his step.
Taiyang scoffs at him an hour later when he spends a moment to glance in the mirror, run a distracted hand through his hair. “Prettying up? It’ll take more than one hand to salvage that trainwreck.”
Qrow flips him the bird, expertly steps over the irony of the gesture, adjusts the set of his uniform jacket and –
Finds himself fifteen minutes later having to explain to Glynda Goodwitch why it is he’s waiting outside Ozpin’s office door like a delinquent.
“Look,” he says, mussing his hair by sheer habit and with an unsteady hand, considers distantly how much caffeine it would take to get this level of quiver starting at a baseline of Taiyang’s level of unaffected, “Ozpin—”
“Is right here,” comes a voice from down the hall – and sure enough it is the bastard, with two clean mugs and a carton of half-and-half in his hands.
Glynda looks at him with a bit of a sinking-back, lowering her sharp chin, like she’s a guard dog calming at the supportive tilt of her master’s shoulders, and Qrow shoots her a triumphant look like told you so because he can see her fingers itching for her crop and he’s not going to let the opportunity for thumb-biting pass him up if he can so help it.
Look, he’s got a duty.
So Ozpin beckons Qrow up into his office, fields exactly zero of his questions – “why am I here?” “Do you invite students up just willy-nilly or did I pass the interview process?” “Does Glynda spend all of her free time hanging out in your reception?” – and instead sets to pouring them coffee and, as the mugs steam away, rummages in a nearby bookcase until he tugs out his prize by the tips of his fingers.
A chessboard. Blown glass, the light through Ozpin’s office windows catching through the piece-filled glass case, and Qrow looks from it up to Ozpin’s face.
“Care for a rematch?” Ozpin asks, eyebrows tilted up behind his dark glasses.
Qrow watches him for a moment.
Notes the shine of the light against his glasses, his hair. His fair skin, drawn but not terribly aged.
With an errant foot, he jerks the spinning chair before Ozpin’s desk to himself, settles heavily into it with his palms turned up and a challenging look on his face. “Bring it, old man.”
iv.
Qrow graduates Beacon with a diploma in one hand and his other on Tai’s shoulder as they watch Raven walk away, slip into the crowd like bleeding shadows.
He doesn’t have answers for Tai’s torn expression. Because he knows his sister but her mind’s got pitfalls and caverns he’s never navigated, never hoped to, never wanted to, never needed to; it’s obvious there’s something between Tai and Raven, that there has been for the last year and change but there she is, leaving STRQ the very moment circumstances permit, like a cat off to nurse wounds in the dark, lone wolf straying from the pack.
Summer’s off schmoozing.
She’d get pissed at him, most likely, if he called it that to her face – not that he ever would. She’s social, amiable, magnetic, and it probably does her favors in the same ways his inborn rebellious streak holds him back.
He kind of admires her for it. She’s gonna go far with that kind of temperament – gonna outstrip the rest of them in minutes, end up in the good graces of everyone worth speaking to in Atlas – Mistral – Remnant over.
Qrow’s left with a piece of paper and a question, as Tai jerks away from him to drown his mood in (not spiked, somehow) fruit punch in a crystal bowl.
What does he do now?
He’s a hunter. But what the hell does he do with that? He’s been climbing a mountain for the last four years and now once he’s reached the top he realizes he doesn’t know where to go now that he has.
“Keep heading up,” comes a voice from behind him and a little to his left.
Sounds like his conscience spoken aloud.
Sounds like –
Ozpin’s leaning against the balcony railing, looking out over the dark courtyard of Beacon. Doesn’t turn to look at Qrow though he’s definitely staring at him.
“After all.” Ozpin props one dress shoe against a wrought-iron vertical bar. “Unlike most, you don’t need handholds.”
Qrow knows exactly what he means by that, and hates that everything Ozpin says seems to echo his thoughts, if they were to progress in a slightly different direction, like river water bending around a rock in its path.
He waits.
Ozpin obviously has more words on the tongue, from the way he swills something a little stronger than punch in a thoughtful goblet, making bloody whirlpool waves.
“What I hope you kids will figure out soon,” he says, raising the rim of it to his lips, fogging the glass with his breath, “is that Hunter is still just another word for pawn.”
Pale as he is under the moonlight, red wine in a goblet millimeters from his lips, Qrow thinks Ozpin looks like some kind of vampire. Some kind of demon, immortal and terrible.
Terribly sad.
He blinks and then Ozpin is Ozpin again, still, drinking wine at a punch affair, the slightly eccentric headmaster of Beacon ushering another flock of Hunters and Huntresses out into the world with cryptic words that sound as faux-grand as they do actually wise, actually informed.
“Take care,” the moonlight man tells him, still not looking – never looking at Qrow, as if doing so is an admittance, some sort of secret passed – and instead pulling back from the railing, half-drained goblet and all, “to choose your king well.”
He wanders back inside with slow, clacking steps.
Probably to schmooze.
Qrow breathes for the first time in what feels like an hour, twitching the numbness out of his fingers and his feet, rolling stiff shoulders that ache in either form as a general rule.
After all of that, he doesn’t want to think much anymore.
–He backs against the railing with an unseen thoughtful tilt to his lips.
Actually, he wants to go out.
Actually, he wants to go flying.
v.
He takes out the entire damn window.
That’s what he gets for colliding with its centerbeam, wrenching one wing hard back and nearly tearing the limb from its joint.
Already bruised and battered and bloody, glass shards raining down on him are pretty and numb like cold snow blowing and then he’s human-sprawled on Ozpin’s office floor, three hundred and seven broken ribs and lungs that won’t expand.
If Ozpin shouts his name he doesn’t hear it.
His ears are ringing.
But he feels the crunch of glass in every nerve bundle that’s not already shot to hell as Ozpin tries not to run over the shards, as Ozpin sinks to his knees unheeding of pinpricks and jostles Qrow –
Fuck! he thinks he yelps but isn’t sure because everything is kind of gray and bleeding away but there’s a crumpled note in his pocket and that’s what he’s about to die delivering, capacity for language leaving him as he fumbles for it with weak good-arm fingers and brandishes it limply into view.
There. Did it.
Did it, he can exhale, blood in his mouth and on his lips and damn if he ever expected to die staring into Ozpin’s face but he’s not too bad to look at, all things considered –
Sleep is coming for him in a swelling dark tide and maybe he feels Ozpin’s hand in his hair before he sinks, but then it’s gone.
Gone.
Qrow drowns.
vi.
He wakes up coughing.
Half-expects water to come spewing out of his system in rivulets, doubles over with throat and nostrils burning and he’s shaking and crying and fuck if that wasn’t a shitty nightmare –
There’s a pressure on his hand and he blinks the tears away, looks about himself.
Ozpin is a smudge of charcoal against all the white of Beacon’s infirmary, bedsheets and curtains and sterile tile.
His hand is on Qrow’s and then he can breathe, like his throat’s gone lax and the air’s turned to pure oxygen and his brain goes a little hazy with the clarity, suddenly, when a second ago he’d thought he was drowning and before that…
He puts two and two together and ends up with seven. “Oz—”
“Does anything hurt?” Beacon’s headmaster asks him, then, face looking drawn and pale like it had under the moonlight and Qrow can’t place the tilt of his lips without a wineglass against them, feels for a second yet with utter finality that he’s looking at a man he’s never before met in his life.
Two plus two makes seven. Apparently.
“What day is it?” Qrow asks, his voice husky and rasping with the afterthought of a cough, clearly psychosomatic because no, nothing hurts and he feels better than he has since he started at Beacon. And Qrow knows he knows that.
They make shifting-then-still eye contact.
“You’ve been unconscious for two weeks,” Oz says, pushing his glasses back up his nose with one hand.
Qrow levels him a glance that could wither a bed of roses. “You mean dead,” he corrects, too caught up in 2 + 2 = 7 to consider the second silent syllable of the name – there’s a bit too much going on all at once and all of it is in his head, and he runs a shaking hand through his hair to calm himself, his free one since the other is –
His rescuer squeezes Qrow’s hand before pulling back, sitting back in his shitty metal folding chair, and Qrow watches him draw into himself as if finding the steel for the conversation.
A mug of half-cold black coffee sits on the small end table next to Qrow’s IV, drip-dripping away, and he’s not surprised when Oz reaches for it to knock it back like a bracing shot of tequila.
First: “I’m going to tell you everything.”
Second: the man rises from his seat, stalling in clenching fingers like he’s working through several plans of attack, sifting through his options.
Qrow watches him stride to a cabinet set into the far wall, one-sixth of a small kitchenette, and stares as he pulls out that same crappy plastic set from years ago, in a room that smelled of iron and muddy coffee and leveled, unsure glances.
He knows Oz hears the way he exhales through his nose, unable to find it in himself to be surprised.
There are no words exchanged until Qrow touches his first piece, the chessboard balanced on his thighs and Oz sitting more beside him than across from him, the reach of his arm at odds with the range of the board.
It’s because of his proximity that Qrow can see his face change. “What?”
His thumb and middle finger rest against the knight nearer to his heart.
A raised silver brow. “Not pawn to queen?”
Qrow’s breath leaves him.
A handful of years and Oz remembers how he had started the last game.
Though he can’t help but let his mouth quirk up.
“That’s all Raven,” he says quietly. “I tried her way once. Wasn’t mine. So I’m doing it my way.”
Oz considers his words, gaze roaming over Qrow’s face, and Qrow feels warm under the stubble that he can feel has taken residence there, in his time – unconscious.
Pale fingers move from white king to white rook, cautious.
Then, quietly:
“Do you know the legend of the Four Maidens?”