Title: Trouble
Rating: T for Teens
Warning: Character death, Depression, lots of uncomfortable parental talk.

Summary:

Being a problem sometimes makes it difficult to look at yourself objectively and to not get in more trouble. Harry discovers this in a bit more personal terms.

Raven had been through a lot.

Anyone with two eyes and a nose between 'em could sniff out that information, even if the eyes didn't work. And Raven always dismissed it with a laugh or roll of the eyes. Sometimes a dirty joke. For the most part, he'd just keep it to himself.

He'd learned that little trick from Harry Whitehorse. The ball of energy was annoyingly optimistic at times, or he used to be. The bright fluffy ball of blond hair and bright blue eyes twirling around as he laughed and grinned, prodding to get a laugh out of the old man. (He'd claim Raven's lips were too pursed, that he looked like he was perpetually pouting.) Laughter was always the best trick.

And Harry knew it, too. Raven at first hadn't noticed it, because the brat was always grinning, and when he wasn't doing that, he was acting out.

He did, however, notice the shift one day after a brawl. Don was running thick calloused fingers through his hair. The statement: "I don't know what I'm going to do with that kid" coming up over and over again. Raven had thought it a silly thing to get worked up over, but when they went to check out Harry and saw the condition he was in, (bloody nose, busted lip, bruised face, knuckles, and bandages around his midsection,) Don could only stare in dissatisfaction. Disappointment.

And the boy's smile, a weak thing, twisted up at the corners of his mouth, wilted.

That was when he realized it. Harry's smile had slowly started becoming less sincere. Copying what he saw his peers do, and the reminder he was who Harry had the most common access too struck hard, making his old chest ache.

Rubbing at his blastia now and again, Raven watched the bright energy shift into nervousness. Something he knew would happen, but he never stepped out of his way to make it better. Wasn't his place, as a stand-in, to do anything. Though despite that, he found himself in strange places.

Standing at the kid's door and noticing he'd made too much food and nobody at the table. Finding him in front of the Guild Hall practicing. Sitting alone in Sagittarius, staring off into some weird corner. And Raven couldn't help himself.

Knocking on that door. Helping the kid with a few pointers. Sitting down with the kid and nudging the child, making him snort his drink a couple of times or huffing or just causing some other emotion. It worked usually and he got the satisfaction of seeing the kid relax, shoulders un-tense, a smile slowly spread, and a few jokes kicked back with a drink if he was lucky.

There was no joking at work. That meant in both senses of the term, too. The letters he received, calling him away, the jobs he took as Raven. All of it was very carefully calculated, both aware and unaware of the growing fondness for the family that kept him. Trying to keep them all at arm's length while unwittingly coming face to face with them.

Schwann would see little things, things in the way the Tweedles acted, (he had to call them that, it was too funny to not,) and relating it to similar experiences with the young Whitehorse. Bleeding over the two personalities in ways he didn't anticipate, didn't want, and he had to wrench himself away from becoming too caught up in it.

Distance himself.

Again and again, did he distance himself.

As Schwann, as Raven, as this weird mix between the two of them. The moments as he stared in a mirror, hair down, coat slung across his shoulders lazily. No hair tie to be seen.

Where did one personality begin and the other end, both farces he couldn't quite face.

And when the mistake happened, Raven cracked. Every piece in himself breaking piece by slow piece. A pillar that Raven stood on no longer able to hold upright, and the only thing left of it a sniveling child curled onto the ground, unable to look at his grandfather as he took the ultimate sacrifice.

It still did not make the life he lived any easier, so he reveled in it when he acquired a new assignment. Clung to it as he flipped through information through the personality that would allow him to pull away. Put up that happy mask. He hadn't even considered the Whitehorse's, hadn't even thought twice about leaving.

There was nothing left here.

Only the shadow of what once were good memories in a dead man's heart.

Once he had been saved, there was little else for him. He searched for his pillar (again, again, he needed somebody there, somebody to point him in the right direction,) and when he'd found it, the thought of the small child was far, far from his mind. He saved the world with them all, he'd finally built himself up enough, been through enough, he could finally stand alone.

So he'd gone back.

Everything was different. The atmosphere of the town, the way people looked at him, the feeling of being in Dhangrest. What else could he expect after his death. Even when he heard Harry's words, knew the child would work to try and do the things his grandfather could never do, Raven could scarce believe it. Which made when he walked into his first meeting with the child eye-opening.

Gone was, what he thought, a sniffling child. Harry held nothing back against his Union members. Snapping at them, bringing up logistics, ideals, philosophies, treaties, everything done within the last ten years. He was reckless, sometimes, shooting off at the mouth and Raven had to catch the fall, but it was night and day to what Raven had thought would happen.

Which made it when Harry got into a fight all the more damming. It was a bar brawl, something Raven learned wasn't as common for Harry as it used to be, but still did happen from time to time as he stood outside the infirmary.

Disappointment rang in Raven's chest as he stood outside the door. He couldn't face the child, even as he was mocked, pushed, attempted to get some sort of response out of him. Only when he was certain of why Harry did what he did, did Raven speak.

"...you attacked someone because you were angry at me."

There was no answer. The pause indicting guilt over the action. Raven went for the throat, snapping. Because it was his job now. Harry could not risk the entirety of Dhangrest over petty frustrations. But it was when the blond brought up something else, did Raven startle and he finally enters the room. Looking at Harry. Really looking at him now. Not for the first time, and he doubted the last. The boy with bandages wrapped about his chest and a bruise welling up on his cheek.

"...I didn' know what ta do. I thought ta ask, but you don't 'zactly seem ta stick. Hurryin' off after mission reports you need to be there on."

He hadn't visited Harry's house recently, had he?

Or sparred with him.

Raven hadn't done a lot of things, recently, and the way Harry curled in on himself confirmed he should have been. Things that he didn't think of meaning so much to someone else.

"So, what are ya gonna do about it?"

"...dunno." He sounded broken. "Sorry to have bothered you, I guess. You don't have to be here now. I can take care of myself."

Raven couldn't contain the sigh that spilled out as he shuffled in closer towards the teenager, gently patting his leg to scoot the boy out of way, and besides Harry, he sat. "...I figured we'd have ta do this sometime." Almost as an afterthought, Raven tacks on, "So much trouble on these ol' bones."

The silence between the two of them stands. Raven's own thoughts spinning quickly to try and come up with anything, anything for him. Justifying his disappearance. Excusing his behavior. Leaving the child alone in a street after his grandfather's … beheading. It would be so easy to blame the man who he was following orders for, it wasn't that easy to do.

It wasn't Alexei who had made him give up, after all.

Only after a handful of minutes, does Raven begin to speak. "The moment yer ol' man died, it kin'a left me, all'a us really, lost." Looking over the boy, Raven couldn't help but notice how Harry wasn't looking up at him. Nodding to himself, Raven returned to looking forward at the wall. "He was such an important figure, it left us in disarray, and personally? I couldn't stay here."

There was so much hope in Don Whitehorse. The man was such a big person, changing everything, everyone with just his presence. To lose him was like losing water or air. Things so vitally important that you couldn't exist without them.

"So I left ta figure myself out. It wasn't an intentional thing, I never thought about hurtin' you," he never even thought about this child afterward. Or, not except for the spare few people who had come to him. Asking him to take charge, that Harry wasn't worth it. And he'd told them to get the boy off his ass.

That had been the passing thought Harry had earned. "I disobeyed the laws, puttin' myself before Dhangrest, before Altosk, an' I left it to flounder till you took stride."

"Is that it?" Raven restrained a wince by a cocking a brow towards the blond's question. "No words, no nothing. Just because, what? You forgot?" There's hurt in his tone and Raven can't entirely blame him, but he didn't appreciate the way Harry spoke, almost disregarding what he'd said earlier.

"Yeah. That's it." Taking in a slow breath, Raven steadied himself. He had to be the adult here. "I know it's not a good reason," It's just an excuse. "I was in a bad place, Harry. That ain't right or fair to you, but it's what happens. What happened." He couldn't change it now. And, honestly? "I won't apologize for fer doing it…" He needed to. "I will say I am sorry I didn't think about your feelings." It wasn't fair.

And to have added onto the pressure Harry was under was never Raven's intention. If, perhaps, he felt justified in doing. "But you've got to understand too what you have ta do now."

He watched as the child's fingers curled up tightly in his lap. Head ducking to stare, glare at his hands. "...yeah."

"I'll try and...talk with ya more. Okay?"

Harry nodded.

Raven slowly wrapped an arm about Harry, pulling him in close to his chest. "I'm sorry…"

Harry had stiffened sharply at the touch. But had slowly relaxed as he shifted to sit in closer. His eyes closing, sighing. "Yer hurtin' my ribs, old man."

"Oh well."

"Asshole."

Raven laughed. He could feel the pricking of a smile against his shirt. "Love you too, squirt."

Hi so I uh. Low-key love exploring this dynamic.

Sorry about that.

Anyway! Hope you enjoyed this. It was a ton of fun to play around with.