Disclaimer: I do not own anything in the following writing except the characters and events I create.
Author's Note: So I put off the next chapter of Last Huntress to write this little thing as a sort of follow up to my other oneshot, Uncle Qrow. But don't worry, you don't need to read that one to understand this one. (Though I do recommend reading it. People like it) It's also my entry into April's Moncon, so that's fun! Hope you guys enjoy it, and I'll see those of you who follow it on the next update for Last Huntress! -Fox
Written on a Feather - Oneshot
Qrow Branwen let out a heavy sigh as he trudged up yet another ledge, the rock face buried under a ton of leaves in such a way that it made a couple of steps into something entirely more treacherous than they needed to be. Of course, it did not help that he had been drinking. Then again, he was always drinking, so the excuse was wearing a little thin after..
He quirked an eyebrow as he reached the top of his latest vertical challenge. How long had it been? Years, it had definitely been years. A decade? He could no longer remember the exact moment when his life had turned to complete and utter shit, and supposed that was a good thing. At the very least, it was a sign that after all this time, the drink was actually doing it's job.
Hm. Thinking about it made him thirsty. As he unscrewed the cap of a flask, he found he didn't really seem to remember pulling it from its place inside his jacket, a high pitched voice cut through the regular noises of the forest. "Uncle Qrow! Come on, come on!" A red blur flashed in front of him, and he fumbled the gilded silver as rose petals exploded right into his face.
Luckily for him, a small pale hand snatched out and caught it, not spilling a drop of the liquid as it was offered back to him. Ruby flashed him a vibrant grin as she held it out. "If we want to get there by noon we have to keep moving." The second he gingerly plucked the flask from the hands of the teenager, his free hand was taken up by another, and he was pulled along behind the caped girl.
"Right.. Where are we going again?" His voice was layered in suspicion and colored with a sarcastic tinge. He was utterly clueless as to what their destination was. They had been walking all morning, and the journey had been started with his niece prancing up and excitedly declaring she was taking him to see something. There had been so many loops, so many unusual paths cut through the dense woods of Patch that if had been anyone else, Qrow might have assumed he was being led out into the middle of nowhere to be killed. That thought brought a quiet chuckle to his lips.
Those were the kinds of impressions he usually had of people.
But not this girl, not Ruby Rose. To her, he was a certified badass whose cynical humor never frayed her eternally optimistic outlook, and whose footsteps were so confidently walked in, like he was anywhere close to resembling a good role model. To his niece, he was a hero. A Hunter who had cut down countless Grimm, the man who had taught her everything she knew about wielding the weapon that swaying comfortably in the harness beneath her cape.
A part of him had once been afraid that she would see him for what he truly was: A washed up old drunk who had become embittered to the world. But he didn't fear for that realization to hit her mind anymore, because he knew that it already had. She just didn't care. Ruby saw the best in him, took him as he could be. Were he younger, and had attended less funerals for close friends, it would have inspired him to be better. She had that effect on people, a trait she had inherited from her mother.
Because she sure as hell hadn't gotten it from him.
The march through the forest had been a frustrating one for Qrow, who was so much more accustomed to just soaring over the treetops without a care in the world. Every new ache in his feet made his soul cry out to feel the wind between his feathers, to see the world rolling beneath him as he took to the sky.
Being in the dirt also impacted his sense of direction, having grown too reliant on the ability to see from a bird's eye view, being landlocked was disorienting. He wasn't even sure what direction they were heading in. All he knew was that Ruby had a strong idea of where they were going, and that of all the youngsters currently enrolled at Beacon Academy, she was the only one he would trust to guide him anywhere.
It didn't help that he had never seen much reason to explore the woods of Patch. He hadn't been born here, he rarely visited on the few times he was not otherwise engaged with his work on the mainland, and there was nothing but a few scattered cottages.
A few scattered cottages, and the grave marker for the woman he had loved. Oh.
Had loved, or still loved. It was hard to tell these days, with such thoughts buried so far beneath the surface of his conscious mind. Drink had dulled his senses, but the loss of pain had taken with it the memory of love's warmth. But it became quite clear where he was being lead when the trees began to thin, and he saw the fields of flowers ahead that adorned the cliff edge.
Qrow stopped in his tracks, and Ruby turned slowly to face him, still holding his hand as if she were afraid he would go running. He wanted to. She saw the shock on his rugged features, the primal fear that suddenly spiked through every vein. He was usually so careful with his emotions around her, lest she find a piece of truth that would spark an idea to investigate her origins more closely. But in that moment, it was all he could do to close his jaw from where it had fallen.
A part of him was even proud that the girl in the red cape had been so clever as to loop him senselessly through the dense woodlands so that he had no idea where she was taking him. "You said you had never been.. I thought it was time that you came by." Wide silver eyes stared up at him, as his mind recalled some drunkenly slurred words that had escaped him late last night. He didn't think anyone had been listening, as his drinking partner had passed out minutes earlier. "I think she'd like to hear your voice."
Those words twisted a grip on his heart, sending an ache through his limbs that radiated from his chest. Then the smaller set of hands that wrapped around his fingers tugged him toward the cliff, toward the confrontation he had avoided for a decade.
They stood together, the girl holding the man's hand and leaning against him, staring down at the slab of stone that marked the final resting place of the woman they had loved. Or at least, what had settled for a final resting was no body buried here.
'Thus kindly, I scatter.'
Words from her favorite poem set a deep ache in the pit of Qrow's chest as he read the words again and again, torturing himself with the repetition. Summer had always loved any work of art that contained roses. A painting of a rose bush, a maddeningly lovesick poem about the flower, a terrible literary recreation of a an old song that revolved around the age old concept of every flower having its thorns. Still, she had never gotten enough.
Summer had even forced one of their classmates, a Wolf Faunus with a tattoo of thorned branches that spiraled down her arm and ended in blooming roses, to sit for a few hours while the girl in the white cape had examined and questioned her about the ink incessantly. Of course, the Faunus had been more than happy to. Everyone always was happy to help Summer.
"Can you.. Tell me about her?" The words cut through the silence like a howl in the dead of night, sundering his revery and throwing Qrow back into the present and banishing the memories that had imprisoned his mind. He spared a glance down at the girl who stood beside him, uncertain of his answer until she continued. "I've asked my dad before, but he.. Well, he doesn't talk about her."
That idea didn't make him want to, but the nagging of a conscience got to Qrow, his own thoughts spouting off about fatherly duty. As if he were fit to fill in where Taiyang had failed. As if it were his place. He had given up that place a long time ago, and not because of selfish reasons.
Qrow Branwen had led a life of what ifs and dreams of what could have been, of opportunities passed and nightmares that haunted his every step. Originally, he and Taiyang had agreed not to pile on the truth of Ruby's parentage in the wake of Summer's death, but now.. Now he refrained from the truth because he didn't want this existence for the girl. He did not want her to look back on her life and wonder what could have been. He wished no thoughts of a happier childhood or inklings that her mother may still be alive if he had been at her side.
He did not want her to blame him, as he now blamed himself.
Fingers squeezed softly against his own calloused palm, a gentle and patient reminder that he had still not answered the girl's question. Qrow cleared his throat and untangled himself from Ruby's grasp, moving to the side of the tombstone and dropping down into a sitting position. So weary were his limbs that he sort of fell into the dirt, kicking up a cloud of dust and displacing a few flower petals.
The girl followed him, landing much more gracefully a few feet away. Pools of brilliant argent, far too reminiscent of her mother's eyes, watched him intently. She knew that he could not resist, that he would tell her what she wanted to know. He had always been exceptionally weak to her requests. But she had never manipulated that to her advantage. She wasn't doing it now.
He was in full control of his choices, but this one was an easy one as he was caught up into a riptide of emotion. He had never come to this cliffside before, and somehow being here brought it all slamming home. Drink no longer shrouded memories of pain, and no vain hopes that the lack of a body meant the chance of survival lingered in his mind as he stared at that rock.
"Your mom, she was.." He let out a soft chuckle, fingers raking through his hair in an attempt to tidy it's perpetually messy state. They did not have much luck. "Summer was the very best of us. She was our leader, and not just for the team. For all of our friends. She was always there for us, no matter what we needed, no matter what she was going through at the time.
"An unstoppable fighter, not because she always won." He let out a laugh, looking up into the beautiful blue sky of Patch as he spoke. "She just never gave up. I saw her get knocked down more times than I could count, but always she was right back up on her feet. Always looking to improve, always doing her best. But she wasn't perfect.
"She was too kind, sacrificing her time and effort in order to make other people happy. She put aside a lot of things to try and help people, even when they never asked for her to. Which, wouldn't be such a bad thing if it wasn't constantly getting in the way of her taking care of herself. Luckily that mellowed out with age, and the rose thing. Oh, Sum was obsessed with roses when she was your age. Every book, every song, roses. It was the craziest thing to the rest of us."
He could feel the silver eyes boring into him from the side, where Ruby sat. She wasn't just hooked on his every word, her every sense had tunneled, her entire existence focused, to him and the sound of his voice. No one had ever talked this long about her mother before that awkward silence came. No one had ever spoke each word about her as if cradling a frail child, as if life itself depended on showing the sheer amount of love possible to each and every syllable. It was obvious to her, as it had been to so many before, that Qrow Branwen was hopelessly and eternally in love with Summer Rose. It confirmed something she had suspected for some time.
Qrow, of course, rambled on. He spoke each thought as it came to him, allowing no filter to overpower the rush of emotions that were threatening to overwhelm him. "She couldn't ever walk away. Not from a problem that she saw that she could do something about. Led us into all sorts of trouble. Never listened to us, especially when it was about minding our own business." His expression faltered, suddenly becoming downcast as he returned his gaze to the stone. "She was.. The perfect Huntress."
A somber air of sadness settled over the two, as the thought that even the perfect warrior had fallen in the conflict that had spanned centuries between humanity and the Grimm settled in. But Qrow looked over to Ruby and saw what he had always seen within his daughter. He saw hope. "You are.. A lot like her." A rough chuckle, something to disguise the sniff as he hid the beginnings of tears from her. "Honestly we're really lucky you don't take after your dad so much."
The subtle confession hung in the air, his worry growing as he thought of the numerous ways that she could take it, but all that awaited his quick glance in Ruby's direction was a smile. A small, far too innocent, knowing smile. It spoke without words as she grinned at him, told him of acceptance, of acknowledgement.
Things he had never known he craved from her, that he had promised he would never ask for. Strange then, that he and his friend and never counted on her being more clever than both of them combined.
"Did Mom ever do anything crazy?" Ruby spoke up after a long minute of quiet, moving past their silent conversation as if it needed no further discussion. "She looks so.. Shy, in that picture you have."
"She was shy.. At least at first." Qrow let out a loud laugh as he thought back to his days in school. "My sister and I are to blame for bringing her out of her shell, and before long she was running the craziness. There was one time in our third year where one of the first years was bullying some new girl, and Summer stole a whole baguette from the kitchen in the cafeteria and ran up and hit him over the head with it."
It wasn't hard for Ruby to envision such a bizarre scene. After all, she had participated in a brawl that had nearly leveled the cafeteria at Beacon, a fight of epic proportions where food had become their weapons. "So here's this guy towering over Summer, who is holding a loaf of bread and everyone is watching them, it's dead silent. And then your mom, serious as can be, tells him to 'Unhand the maiden, lest you feel my terrible wrath' like she's a knight from the old fairy tales!"
Ruby's grin at the mental image only grew as her uncle threw back his head and howled in laughter at the memory, the sight of him enjoying being lost in the past bringing a happiness to her heart that nearly made it ache. "What did he do?"
"What could he do?" Qrow asked the question incredulously, tears in his red eyes as he looked back at her. "Summer had hit him hard enough that he knew, he really knew, that if he stayed put, the whole school was going to watch a girl a foot shorter than him kick his ass with a piece of bread. So he shuffles off quick as a bunny and your mom waits until he is gone and immediately drops the act, back to normal like nothing had happened and introduces herself to the girl while some cafeteria worker storms over and snatches the baguette from her."
For several minutes after the end of the story, both of them were doubled over laughing. In some part because of the inherent humor of a girl beating up a bully with a thin loaf of bread, but also in part that it kept the reminders of how the whole story ended for Summer in the back of his mind, giving him a few precious moments of peace.
Eventually, their laughter died down into controlled giggles, but the odd chuckle snuck in as Qrow wiped at his eyes. It had been years since he had thought back to the antics Team STRQ had gotten up to, years since he had laughed that hard. It felt good. Not just to be laughing, but to be laughing with someone else. Especially Ruby, who was an oddball just as much as her mother had been, in such a way that just set his mood to happy whenever they talked.
"Ah, thanks, kiddo. I needed that." He grinned over at her, receiving a nod in return as she stood and offered him a hand to help him up. As he took it, his gaze wandered over to the gravestone that marked a place where Summer's loved ones had said goodbye. "I needed this.."
"I thought you might have." The sly words were accompanied with the sound of her footsteps drifting away, causing him to look back with a raised eyebrow. "I'm going to.. Give you a second. You should talk to her. She probably misses you."
She probably misses you.
Qrow caught the mischievous wink the girl in the red cape had sent his way before she sped off to the treeline, giving him a moment of privacy with the silent cliff side, and knew what she expected of him. He turned back slowly to face the gravestone, raising a hand to scratch at his neck in an awkward habit. "So, hey Sum.."
He groaned at himself, shaking his head. "Ugh, this is weird. I don't do this. Sure, the odd drunken rage and screaming at the wall, you know me, but I'm not good at.." Qrow gestured wildly into the air, acting out like a petulant child as the maelstrom of frustration inside him met the growing mass of guilt. After all, it had been years. He should have come here before now. "This."
"But if you can hear me, I guess you heard that story. You heard me speaking about you to ou- Your daughter. Hope you don't mind, I love that one. It's a good memory." He flinched at the slip up, grateful that Ruby had left him alone. It had always been a challenge to talk to Summer, ever since he had realized that he loved her. But she had always been patient with him. "Ruby is.. Well, she is something else. We were lucky, she's got all of your good, and none of her father's bad. I guess.. Tai did a good job, Yang too."
Silence lingered after those words, for a long couple of minutes before Qrow kicked at the dirt in frustration. "I don't know if you can hear me, Summer. I don't think you can. I'm talking to a rock because Ruby told me to.. The things I do for that girl." Even in his disbelief, he could feel the weight beginning to lessen on his mind. "She's good, Sum. Better than either of us. She's going to do incredible things in her life, I can just feel it. I'll do my best to help her."
A warm breeze came against the cliff edge then, causing the flowers to sway and the tattered remnants of the cloak he wore to flutter briefly. It whistled in his ears and played across his hairline, brushing back the unruly bangs into a more tidy position, immediately bringing to mind a memory of fingers raking through his usual disheveled mess. Qrow had never been one to put stock in random acts of nature being proof of a soul lingering on, but if anyone could linger, it would have been Summer. He wanted to believe that just this once, it could mean something. He wanted to, but he didn't. Or he did. He couldn't make sense of any of this. "I love you, and I miss you."
As if on cue, the wind kicked up again, and this time the last vestiges of a hot summer season spread warmth through his limbs. Qrow Branwen smiled, and took a step back. He let his eyes linger on the gravestone for a one last word before he turned around to join Ruby on their trek back to the house.
"Goodbye."