Prompt: Raven gets hammered after the V5 stinger and returns to Tai while drunk.

Raven knew she shouldn't be here. She had promised herself she would never come back when he was alone. When Yang or Ruby were around, it was easy to stay hidden. But when he was alone, it was so very tempting to pretend. Pretend she was gone minutes instead of decades. Pretend she didn't leave her child to grow up motherless. Pretend she deserved him.

It was a seductive thought. It was all she ever wanted on her darkest, loneliest, coldest nights. And it was more dangerous than any Grimm to her survival. She needed to leave, before she did something irreversible. She leapt off her branch to fly away and dropped like a rock to smash into the ground.

Huh. That never happened before. She figured it was probably the alcohol. She didn't think she drank that much, but she also couldn't exactly remember how many she had downed. She was sure it was in the single digits. Probably.

She was also much smaller as a bird. Did alcohol carry over with her transformation? Qrow would definitely know. She should have asked him before he betrayed her. Or did she betray him? It was so hard to remember through this haze. She would figure it out later. Then she would ask him, if he was still alive.

Right now, the ground was so warm, and she was so very tired...

She woke up to the sound of a door closing and took a second to take stock. She was human again, lying somewhere soft, and, while it had slightly lessened, the haze was still buzzing in her head. When she opened her eyes, she was staring directly at her ex.

"Hello Raven. Welcome home." Tai said. His voice was weary and filled with pain, and Raven felt a spike of guilt deep in her stomach.

"I shouldn't have come here."

"No. But you did, so we're finally going to have the talk I needed eighteen years ago."

"Tai, that's not-" she started to say before he cut her off.

"Why? Why did you leave us?" His voice was filled with anger, but his eyes were filled with tears.

"You already know why I couldn't stay."

"No, I know what you told Qrow, which was complete bullshit. I deserve the truth." Her mind flashed back to the Vault. Her arrogant, ignorant child, judging her. The tears that fell when she realized Yang was right. She was a coward.

"I was scared." She said before she could stop herself. "I was scared of dying fighting an unwinnable war."

"You didn't have to leave to stop fighting. Nobody would have forced you to do anything."

"After what Ozpin did to us, I was a target. If I stayed in one place, they would find me."

She expected Tai to respond with anger or pain, but his voice was filled with something else. Compassion. "If you had asked, I would have gone with you. We could have stayed a family."

A surge of anger shot through her. He talked as if she hadn't even considered asking him, as if she hadn't agonized over it for months. She didn't ask him to come because she knew Tai. Whatever he may tell himself, he could never leave a fight.

"I don't see why you care so much. It didn't take you long to find a new family, did it?" Raven said. She knew it was petty, but that particular wound never entirely healed.

"Don't bring Summer into this!" The anger she had been expecting was there now. "You left! Did you expect me to live alone? I needed somebody, Yang needed a mother." Tai abruptly stopped, took a few deep breaths, and waited for her reply, but she didn't say anything. How could she, when he wasn't wrong? The tense silence stretched for a few minutes before Tai's now calm voice broke it.

"Why did you come back? You're not the Branwen twin I usually find passed out drunk in my yard."

She knew how he would react if she told him about Haven. She needed to come up with some excuse, any excuse. But before she could, some part of her that was tired of all the lies started spilling everything. She watched the anger slowly grow on his face as she talked until it was filled with more rage than she thought possible.

When she finished, his voice came out unexpectedly quiet. "You endangered the relic. You endangered your brother. You endangered my daughters." She stared straight into his eyes, and they were filled with a look of betrayal. His voice suddenly grew into a shout.

"GET OUT!"

"Tai, please." She said quietly. He ignored her, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her towards the door. He pushed her outside and turned to leave. She wobbled but managed to stay on her feet.

"I never stopped loving you!" Raven pleaded. She knew she was being weak, and she hated it, but she needed this. She needed something, after everything that happened. After everything she lost. Tai slammed the door and walked away, but his last words echoed inside her head long after he left.

"I did."