Summer had been everything he had ever desired to have. It had been almost instantaneous in regards to how quickly he had fallen for her. But he was quite good at pretending, so he locked away the feelings to deal with later. That had been his mistake. That had been what made Team STRQ become Team STR plus Qrow.
They stood in front of him in different manners, he remembered. Summer was fidgeting in the spot she stood in, her thumbs twiddling together with her face turned towards the floor. Taiyang had a rather nervous look on his normally cheerful expression and Raven looked as stoic as ever, except for the fact that she wouldn't look him in the eye. It was all too much and he hadn't known it then, but the words that feel from Raven's lips suddenly sealed his fate to accompany misery wherever he may go.
"We're dating." He hadn't had time to process the information before his sister had added on more. "All of us are." Whatever hope he had of it being only Raven and Taiyang was quickly extinguished by he words. IT felt like they'd just dropped an H-bomb on him and were waiting for the imminent explosion. He swallowed and went to speak before Taiyang beat him to the punch.
"Is that okay, Qrow?" No. Fuck no it wasn't okay. It would never be okay with him and he couldn't just say that it was okay, because how could he give his blessings when the one woman he had fallen in love with had chosen his best friend and his sister over him?
"Yea, of course. Why wouldn't it be?" The lie tasted bitter on his tongue. "Congratulations, guys." He murmured as he got up from his seat by the window and, as he passed big silver eyes staring up at him, he pat his team leader's head before he was out the door. He called back a lame excuse of having to meet up with a girl, when in reality he was fighting back tears that couldn't be allowed to fall and forced back the overwhelming urge to murder Taiyang and Raven.
Their teamwork suffered after that day and Qrow tried to ignore the feeling in his heart that something much worse would be happening very soon, but it was always there, ready to nag him into guilt. Drinking soon became his new best friend, and one drunken bar fight had lead him to the discovery of so much power resting just below his skin. It was intoxicating to have so much power, and so he let the alcohol consume him, even if Summer had voiced her concerns about it on more than one occasion, even Raven making a quick quip about how it would rot away his liver. He didn't pay attention to them and started to carry around a flask on Beacon's campus.
He was so angry now. He couldn't let go of the agony he felt and his team (not that he could even be included with them anymore, because with no more sneaking around, they had been given an excuse to openly neglect Qrow Branwen.) was suffering for it. He couldn't switch out with Raven in time, attacks that once would have won them victory with Taiyang had little potency, and he openly opposed any orders that Summer tried to give him. He could tell that they were starting to catch on, but that they hadn't figured out what it was that had turned him into such a disgusting creature- Because that was what he was- and it was clear that Qrow was leaving them just as much as they were abandoning him.
Team STRQ had been a golden team. They were top of their class and they could handle missions normally reserved for veteran teams of Huntsman. They were expected to do incredible things and be great people. But to those that were witnessing the Fall of Constantinople, it was becoming exceedingly clear that tensions were high among STRQ and no one but Qrow Branwen seemed to know the reasons as to why.
In Team STRQ's first (and last) Vytal tournament, they made it through the teams rounds without much event, but doubles had been a complete mess. Qrow and Summer had been sent in- it made sense to anyone watching, but Raven and Taiyang wanted answers just as much as everyone else, and they assumed that he would be more compliant if they gave him a fight. They had been wrong, and Raven never learned why her brother had become such an indecent man and Taiyang didn't learn until after his second daughter had been born. Qrow nearly killed Summer in that fight. He was just so angry, too agonized, and could only think of completely annihilating the competition. He heard none of her orders, didn't see her weapon knocked away from her hands (because he wasn't exactly doing what he was supposed to be doing), didn't hear her shrieks of pain as he swung his scythe down on their remaining opponent. He didn't realize that he had cut Summer in the process of cutting down their opponent. He didn't realize that he was the reason that she clutched her dyed scarlet arm. He didn't realize any of this, until the announcer had proclaimed STRQ the victors.
His sister looked at him with disbelief, Taiyang with disgust, when he came to her hospital room. "You've become a monster, Qrow..." He left after hearing the first words out of Summer's mouth. Her lips were so pale and he couldn't look at silver eyes through crimson ones longer than two seconds and two seconds still seemed far too long.
He started to sleep around more than ever after that tournament, after he had won that damned competition and attained "glory" for Team STRQ. It didn't matter. There was no Team STRQ after graduation that year and no amount of partners in his bed would change that fact and no one could make him forget his love for Summer.
His life was so grim and dark now that he wasn't actually sure if he was allowed to even try to touch them again. Ozpin approached him in a bar during this time, now a soon-to-be colleague rather than his Headmaster, and offered him a place among his team. He had accepted and soon found some semblance of comfort in the friendships of Ironwood and Glynda. He was away on so many missions for them, and with them, that he had almost completely forgotten about Summer and Raven and Taiyang. At least that was until Raven had Yang and disappeared shortly afterwards. He stayed and helped raise Yang, and soon enough, the anger rose up again inside of him as he watched Taiyang kiss and hug her in his sights once again. He should have known to stay away from Summer, because this was not a kind of love that one could just forget, but she had needed him, monster and all.
They began to have an affair a year after Yang's birth. It felt so dirty and wrong. He was cheating with Summer. She was cheating on Taiyang and neither of them could take that back. It was wrong in so many lights, but to Qrow, the feeling of her skin against his own was so incredibly right that he couldn't will himself to put an end to it all. He knew that he would be labeled a "home wrecker" if this ever left his bedroom (Because God, he would never be so bold as to sneak into the side of the bed that belonged to Taiyang) but that still wasn't enough to stop him from continuing this.
She told him that she loved him only one time, but it was more than enough for him to be satisfied enough to stay. To an outsider, it probably looked like he was incredibly dim witted and that he had no idea what it was that he was doing exactly, but he was keenly aware of it. He was drunk off of the fantasy that Summer had allowed him to bring into the reality of the awakened world. The three little words so clear in his mind and they were engraved over his heart, along with the words that had escaped her lips immediately afterwards, "But I'm pregnant." That had been what had willed him to inform Taiyang of what they were doing.
He thought that Ruby was his daughter just as Yang was also his. Summer let him go on believing that for a month after Ruby was born, but it had driven Qrow halfway to insanity that there was a distinct possibility of Ruby being his child. He told Taiyang that day that Summer had left on a mission.
"She could be mine, Tai," He remembered saying in a slur. He'd been drinking more than usual that night.
"The Hell are you blabbing about?" Taiyang had been laughing then.
"Ruby could be mine." Taiyang had not been laughing then.
He'd been beaten so badly that night that he could have sworn he'd die if it hadn't have been for Yang coming into the room and beginning to cry at seeing her father beating her beloved Uncle Qrow. His broken and battered body had been Taiyang's only source of comfort when a message was delivered saying that Summer had been killed on her mission.
There had not been a body for the funeral, but he swore that Taiyang, with such an empty and broken and hopeless expression, could have passed by for one if they had actually needed it. That had been the day he'd been forced to become a father and an uncle and a teacher and a Huntsman. He was constantly traveling between three lives, and it was so hard on him, but he couldn't leave Taiyang to raise Yang and Ruby in his current state and to raise children it cost money that he had to earn through his teaching job at Signal and he couldn't just stop protecting the maidens for Ozpin and- it was just too much. It was too much and he was barely twenty four.
He found out rather quickly just how much trouble his two nieces caused. They were exactly like him and Summer. Yang was shaping out to be as much of a spitfire as he and Taiyang and God, she was so stubborn and he could only blame Raven for that one, where as Ruby was as full of spunk as her mother had been. And Ruby looked like him and not Taiyang. He could tell that it hurt Taiyang to see this. He loved them though, more than he would ever care to admit out loud and at night, when he used to tuck them into their beds and kiss them "goodnight" he really did feel like a single father.
He stopped being around as much when Yang was fourteen and Ruby was twelve. Ozpin was asking for too much and Signal was begging for him to come back to work more than just a few times a week. He ended up resigning from Signal when he had heard Ruby and Yang had entered Beacon and when Ozpin had offered to begin paying him for his services. He became almost a sort of professor, he supposed, because he couldn't just come and go to Beacon as he pleased, and with the excuse of being a teacher, Ozpin had to answer no questions. He wanted to be closer, because his enemies were beginning to become rather restless. He had already rescued Amber from them, a team of three, but he couldn't identify them if asked to do so. One had been like a trickster, and he knew that illusions were on their side.
The world was wilting around him as he worked harder to bring down the force that seemed so intent on targeting the Fall maiden, but he knew that there was some hope, because Taiyang was actually healing and he was angry with (a sign of life to Qrow), and his nieces were actually doing well at Beacon and- and yet he felt no happiness at all. And yet, he felt as if the world was still spiraling towards Hell. There was just so much and he was powerless to stop it and he knew it.
Ozpin often reassured him that what they were doing was right (and honestly, what "right" thing had to be clarified so often?), but everything that had been "right" in his life had been so wrong. There was nothing right about keeping Amber locked away below Beacon and living in an induced coma for the rest of her life, because when they opened up that machine, it would be her death bells ringing, until they could find someone suitable to take her powers from her. There was little right about the way he had to gather information. There was little right about using Beacon as bait when there were so many students and teachers living on these school grounds. They were dong so much wrong for "the greater good."
For the greater good, he would become a monster, all over again, and for the greater good he would hurt so many and care for so few and for the greater good, he would die.