They ended up ringing each other at the same time. Two in the afternoon for Qrow, five minutes after eight in the morning for Winter because of a six hour time difference and because she liked to have her clocks set a little sooner.

"Qrow. I assume that you got the letter as well, then."

"Yeah. Piece of shit is what it is."

"Well, with any luck we can get this thing sorted eventually. I'm sure if we bring this up to the Hunters Guild, we can begin the annulment process."

"That's the problem, Ice Queen. When was the letter issued to you?"

"... Two months to the day. Don't tell me - the appeals time frame has passed?"

"You guessed it."

"How come you didn't stop this sooner?"

"I was doing work for Ozpin. I sure as hell won't get shit while I'm out there."

"... And I was on deployment. Perfect. Does the guild not know when we're on a mission or deployment?"

"C'mon, Winter, you know the guild is just an old thing. And with our line of work, well…"

"Fine, fine, I get it."

A collective pause. A shared sigh. A growing headache for both of them.

"So uh… does this mean we're gonna need a lawyer?"

"I'll ask my father if he has any recommendations."

There's this thing called urgency. Some might describe it as the need to do something. More accurately, it is the need or desire to get something done so soon that a person must devote their whole being to completing the task, however minor it may be. And it was with this great urgency that Winter set out to try and find a good lawyer - one that specialized in divorce and other marital affairs.

(The kind of marital affair where two people hated each other, not the naughty out-of-wedlock kind.)

Qrow, on the other hand, decided that while it wasn't his task to provide a lawyer, it still fell onto him to do more research on the particular 'power' that this guild had. But try as he might, all he could find was the history of the rule. About forty years ago, someone wanted to get married.

And that was it. No real specifications. No desired party. The person just wanted to get married. This spurred some giant creation of a program that would set out and catalogue who was available. Soon, someone was found as compatible and they got married.

There was also another interesting fact that this was the only pair to have been married with this system over the span of forty years. Everyone else had quickly opted out of it as soon as it was in place. And while there was the caveat where if the person was on registry for seven years or more, they would be entered into the system for pairing. But usually the person got married on their own before time was up or they, well, died.

That was what probably got the two of them together in the first place. He clearly recalled being asked a strange question about marriage and vehemently marked no at the time. Perhaps it was just something that expired for the both of them.

In short order, however, Winter was able to secure a lawyer, who was said to have been the most meticulous and methodical that her father knew, for better or for worse.

"Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Branwen. So glad to see you today."

That was the sound of hell freezing over.

"Schnee will do just fine," Winter tersely said.

"Ah, I see. So it is Mrs. and Mr. Schnee then, like with your father."

That was the sound of hell freezing over a second time.

"No, no, just-" Qrow fumbled about, hands rising up just a little bit, "We're not changing our surnames."

"Hm, very well then." The lawyer took a seat, a bit perplexed by their decisions, but nonetheless continued with the appointment. "Winter, your father told me that you wished to obtain some lawyer services regarding your recent marriage. He was able to give me an overview, but those are not your words." Bespectacled eyes fell onto her, "I would like to hear your side of the story, if I may."

"There's not very much to say," her hands were neatly folded in her lap. "I was on deployment, so naturally I don't have access to my mail. So when I returned, I saw the letter and it said I was now married to Qrow."

"And then what?"

The line of her lips thinned. "That's it. There are no other details for me to add on."

"Uh huh…" a small nod, and then the lawyer turned to Qrow. "Now then, would you please share your side of the story?"

"What's there to share though? The exact same thing happened to me," he said. "Go here. Do this. Kill that. Come home and find out you're married."

"Mhmm… And for the 'Go here, do this, kill that' part of your story, could you go into more detail?"

He shot a quick glance to Winter, who could only shrug. "Uh… I can't tell you."

"What he means to say is that it's not important," Winter leaned over a bit, "Can you help us?"

"Well," the lawyer leaned back in the chair. "That depends on what kind of help you're looking for. You're being married by a fortysome-year old law that was put into place by a lonely person who used the excuse of fixing the birth-to-mortality ratio as a reason to get married."

"Alright then," she continued, "what are our options?"

"If you want a divorce, that's easy. But the problem is that Qrow gets half of your assets. And if you have any children, then that's also a-"

Qrow cut in, "We don't have kids."

"Alright, so it's just the assets then." The lawyer moved their body towards the desk, fingers resting on the keyboard and typing away. "That won't be too hard. I can get you a divorce within the month."

"We don't want a divorce," Winter interjected. "We want an annulment."

"Oh," their fingers paused. "Well, I have some bad news regarding that. Because the time to appeal this has passed, the marriage can't be annulled."

"Hey," Qrow leaned forward, his elbow coming to rest threateningly onto the desk. "You want to say that again?"

"I would appreciate some civility in this discussion, Qrow." For a moment they locked eyes, and he pushed off, crossing his arms and leaning back in the chair. She turned back to the lawyer. "What do you mean it can't be annulled?"

"Well, back when you first joined the guild and began to reap its benefits, you signed a contract. Regarding this law, the contract allowed you to opt out for a certain time period. During that time period you were expected to get married or die. Since you have failed to do either-"

"Can you believe it, Winter? We failed at fucking dying."

"Shut up, Qrow."

"As I was saying, because you failed at this task, you were entered into a pool of candidates to be matched for marriage. I imagine that Qrow was in the pool for longer, and Winter's grace period expired more recently, thus matching the two of you."

"I can imagine it now." Qrow's head reeled back, craning his neck over the chair. "Number of days since forced arranged marriage for the sole purpose of producing children: three."

The lawyer turned to Winter. "Are you sure you two don't have any children? I understand that Qrow said you don't, but I once had a case where-"

"Of all the-" Winter rose to her feet, hands slamming onto the table as she leaned over. "It's been three days." She closed her eyes, took a breath, tried to relax, and opened them again. "Three damn days of this stupidity. On the contrary, it takes around forty weeks for a child to be born from the day of conception. So please, just get on with it."

"Well, at the end of the day, there's nothing I can do for you outside of divorce. It's legally binding."

"Say," Qrow cut back in, a small lift in his voice. "How legally binding is this?"

The lawyer looked at him like he had two heads, and one of them had just detached itself to buy lunch. "Excuse me?"

Winter brought a hand to her temple. "I believe what he means to ask is if we need to actually follow through with it."

"Well, of course you do. In fact, according to your Atlas-Vale composition, you're legally bound to to produce a child or be pregnant by the end of the second year together."

Her groan was loud and fierce, akin to a dragon sighing. But before she could speak up, Qrow's scroll started to go off. As he started to pull it out, her own scroll vibrated and she looked at the screen. She gave one last look at him, just in time to see the color drain from his face. And she knew exactly what the reason was.

"Oh shit," a hand went to cover his eyes. "It's my nieces. They think we're married."

"They're not wrong. You two are married."

"Not. Helping."

A/N: Talk about reviving things from the dead. I put this on hold to finish Countess Dracula and other things, but perhaps it's time to return to this. Hopefully it was worth the wait :S Not a ton to say besides that this is pretty dialogue heavy - but the dialogue is the more interesting part of the story so far. Hopefully I got the satire feeling down.

Anyway, hopefully the wait between this and the next chapter won't be almost two years later. Cya for now though!

Beta'd by ImSoAwesome