It was a well-known fact that crows were drawn to shiny objects.

Another well-known fact was that Qrow bore more resemblance to his namesake than he would have liked to admit, and Raven seemed to be the only one who ever noticed.

Growing up in a tribe of nomadic bandits never really allowed for the collection of personal belongings. By an unspoken rule, each member of the tribe only owned two things: the weapon in their hand, and the clothes on their back. The twins tended to follow the rules, but that didn't stop Qrow from straying from the path every once in awhile.

It started when they were thirteen: too young to go on raids, but old enough to return to the ruins afterwards. It was their job to pick through the bones and ashes of the villages the tribe left behind in their destructive wake. They returned by themselves after the Grimm were long gone and pure silence echoed through the roofs of towns that used to be vibrant and thriving. Raven never really thought about it, and Qrow thought about it a little too much.

Raven walked through the village, hand on the hilt of Talon, which she kept sheathed. Qrow was up ahead. Claw had been fully extended into its scythe form that he hefted it over his shoulders; a reaper of lost souls. She watched as he stopped somewhere in the middle of the street, and crouched down, placing Claw next to him.

"Do you see anything, brother?" Raven asked, calling ahead.

"No, just the usual." He replied. Raven rushed to him to see what he had found.

Before her brother's crouched figure laid the two dead bodies of a young couple. The woman's face was set in a permanent picture of fear and her right arm was bent at an unnatural angle. Her partner's face was covered in blood, and his features couldn't be seen through the mess. Both of them had large gauges in their abdomens, where guts and gore had been spilling out to feed maggots and another manner of scavengers.

Raven covered her nose when she got a whiff of the stench coming off of the decaying bodies, "We should move along, brother." She told him. She placed a hand on her shoulder and tugged, trying to get him to move away. But he wouldn't turn around, stubborn as ever.

"Look at their hands," Qrow stated, gaze unshaken by his sister's interference.

The man's right hand had been bitten off by something, but his left hand reached across his body to hold the woman's left. They each wore a bright silver ring, tarnished by blood, on their fourth finger.

"They were married."

"Qrow-"

"Do you think they had a kid?"

"The others would have picked them up."

"Do you think this is what happened to-"

"Qrow." Raven interrupted him, already knowing what he was going to bring up.

He sighed, clenching his fist, "I know, we should go. Makes no sense to pity the dead," he said. She turned to leave, walking away from him. He took an extra minute to catch up. She didn't look back to see what had kept him.

It wasn't until several days later that she noticed the rings, bright glittering silver, on the index and fourth finger of his right hand.

Qrow kept the rings for many years, eventually adding a second one on his fourth finger at some point before they left for Beacon. During their second night at the academy, their new teammates commented on the fact that neither of the siblings seemed to have many personal belongings, or perhaps none at all. Raven remembered giving a nonchalant shrug, along with a weak explanation about her and Qrow's previous life.

The question of possessions didn't come up again until months later when it was Qrow and Raven's birthday. They had been out all day, first at class, then at the gym for sparring practice, and finally at the library to finish some homework. Neither of them gave much importance to the specifics of the date, and both were quite happy to let it pass unnoticed. Which is why they were quite surprised to see a present, wrapped in bright red wrapping paper, sitting on each of their beds when they walked into the room.

Raven turned her gaze to Taiyang, who was lying upside down on his bed playing a game on his scroll, narrowing her eyes, "What is the meaning of this?" She asked, scathingly.

It was enough to force Tai to stop playing, and direct blame onto his other teammate, "Hey don't look at me, this was all Summer's idea."

From her desk in the corner of the room, where the girl in question was pretending to listen to music while doing work, Summer began to fume, "Damn it, Taiyang." She snapped. Quick as a whip, she turned around, throwing the eraser in her hand straight at him. It landed directly in the middle of his forehead, and he yelped at the pain, bringing his hand up to the stinging red spot on his face.

"Not cool, Summer." He complained.

"I told you to stay quiet." She said to him, crossing her arms.

"How'd you guys know it's our birthday?" Qrow interrupted their spat. He walked over to his bed, and carefully picked up the present. He inspected it, turning it around and even shaking it a bit to try and figure out what was inside.

"It's not a bomb, Qrow," Summer smirked, "And Tai told me."

"In strict confidence!" Tai interrupted, "I didn't think you were gonna do this." He gestured to the present still sitting on Raven's bed.

"You told her," Raven accused, looking at Tai with a piercing glare.

Tai turned bright red and crossed his arms in front of himself. He suddenly couldn't look Raven in the eye, "Well, yeah. I figured if you told me, you wouldn't really mind… If I… told…" Tai trailed off as Raven quietly steamed in front of him, crimson eyes glowing brightly with rage. Raven automatically tried to reach for Talon, which she was so used to having with her at all times that she forgot it was still in her locker at the gym. Her next thought was to grab her scroll when she felt a hand wrap around her wrist to stop her. She turned to see her brother, a glare of warning on his face.

It was a silent argument like many of their arguments were if neither of them had their weapons at hand. Filled with raised eyebrows, rolled eyes, and crimson stares, it only took a couple of seconds for Qrow to get his point across.

They're trying to be nice. Be grateful. Stop acting like this is the end of the world.

She sighed and sat down on the edge of her bed, next to the present. As she lifted it onto her lap, she was surprised by the weight of it. It was much larger in size compared to Qrow's. Almost unsure of what to do, she looked for a seam in Summer's impeccable wrapping job. She then picked off the tape with the tip of her fingernail and took off the paper, careful to not rip anything. The red wrapping paper opened to reveal a simple cardboard box underneath. A postage sticker had been stuck to it, but most of the information on it had been blacked out with the heavy scribbling of a black marker. A red stamp bearing the warning 'FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE' piqued Raven's interest. As carefully as she had taken off the wrapping paper, she opened the box to reveal a tea set, including a teapot with two matching cups, nestled in an overabundance of packaging paper.

Raven was speechless.

"It's from Mistral," Summer spoke up from her corner of the room, "I found a place in town that imports custom tea sets from Anima. They also import Mistrali green tea if you want the name."

Raven barely heard her as she inspected the gift. First, she looked at the teapot, which had a handle on the side instead of the back for pouring. It had been painted a very dark brown, which was almost black in colour except when you looked at it under the light. The left eye of the Branwen emblem stared back at her, painted in bright crimson red. Inside of the pupil of the eye, instead of the normal gear, was the Old Mistrali symbol for 'raven', if she remembered correctly. She returned the teapot back to its packaging and then turned her attention to the two teacups. They were painted with the same colours as the pot. On the crimson red background, the shattered moon of Remnant was drawn with stark white paint. In front of the moon, the silhouette of a raven in flight surrounded by bare tree branches was done in the dark brown. Looking a both of the teacups, the little inconsistencies between the two revealed that all the work had been done by hand.

Raven suddenly realised that Summer must have been planning this for months. With quivering fingers, she put the teacups back down.

She was speechless, "It's… very nice. I'm… thank you." Raven stammered, moving her gaze to look at Summer, who had a small smile on her face. Raven nodded in thanks, and Summer returned the gesture.

"Your turn, Qrow." Summer said, turning to look at him.

Unlike Raven, Qrow didn't waste time unwrapping his present. He ripped off the paper with childish glee, scraps of it flying all over the room, to reveal a black leather gift box with a silver logo embellished onto the top of the lid. He opened it slowly, peering into it, the expression on his face completely blank.

The silence was too much for Summer to take, "Do you like it? I know it's not as... grandiose as Raven's-"

"I love it," Qrow interrupted her, a brilliant smile erupting onto his face as he turned to face her. Curious, Raven and Tai got up to look over his shoulder and see what was inside the box. On black velvet, lay a necklace with tilted cross pendant made of platinum, attached to a thin black leather cord. With reverent fingers, Qrow picked it up into his hands, feeling the weight of the ice cold metal in his palm.

"I got it from the jewellery store you always stare at when we go into Vale." Summer explained.

Qrow narrowed his eyes, still looking at the pendant as if hypnotised by it, "I don't stare at jewellery stores." He stated absentmindedly.

"Yes you do, brother," Raven commented from behind him.

"Every time," Tai said, backing her and Summer up.

Qrow didn't even mind the gentle teasing of his team. He tossed the gift box onto his bed, and excitedly tried to undo the clasp of the necklace with shaking fingers. After a couple seconds of failing to do so, Summer offered her hand.

"Here, I'll do it." She said. Qrow gave her the necklace and she undid the clasp easily She then gestured for him to turn around so she could place it around his neck. He bent down a little so she could get her arm over his head. She redid the clasp, and Qrow turned around again. Summer gasped as he brought her into his arms, hugging her tightly into his chest as he whispered his thanks into her ear. Slowly, she brought her arms out from being stuck in between their bodies and returned the embrace, glad that Qrow enjoyed his gift.

"You're welcome."


Woot! Here's a chapter to celebrate the final ep of RWBY V4! I really loved this season, and I think it ended on such a great note for the next volume. Now we just have to go through eight months of waiting, which I will be filling up with writing for this collection. Hopefully, by the time the next volume comes out, I'll be done with all this.

This was another chapter that got away from me. Still, I really enjoyed writing it. Raven is such a mysterious character that I really like writing from her perspective.

Some notes:

(1) I've talked about Raven's tea set two times before, once in the first chapter and then again in the sixth. I don't know why I have the headcanon that Raven enjoys drinking green tea, it's just something that popped into my head.

(2) One of my headcanon's about the tribe, which I kind of hint on in this chapter, is that the women of the tribe don't have children. It came from when Raven said in V04E04 that "the tribe raised us". I find this wording to be extremely specific. Then I really started thinking about it, and it makes sense. The tribe would need to maintain it's numbers, but having pregnant women wouldn't be beneficial at all. At some point they wouldn't be able to fight, and then the process of giving birth in the wilderness is dangerous enough, and then there's the Grimm that would probably arrive because of the possible negative emotions that come with it. Not to mention the fact that babies are another liability. Solution? Kidnap children from the families of the villages you plunder. Take them at a certain age, where they're young enough to eventually forget their parents but old enough to not be a total liability, and boom, you have population growth.

(3) On a completely unrelated note: Summer Rose is the Leslie Knope of gift giving in this scenario.

(4) When this prompt came up, I was genuinely pleased that it did. I like being able to have some sort of explanation behind a character's design. The things a character wears gives an insight to they are. For Qrow, being someone who seems to have a lot of nostalgia for the good ol' day of team STRQ, I don't think that continuing to wear the first birthday present he ever received is a far stretch.

(5) Also, this opens up the subject of birthdays, so here are the headcanons about that. Please note that since we don't have an actual calendar for Remnant yet, I'm just using approximations by season, because we do know that Remnant has four specific seasons. Also, the seasons that I'm going with are the ones that I'm used to up here in Canada, so take note:

(a) Tai: Spring (Equivalent of Late April, Early May)

(b) Summer: Winter (equiv of January), she was named summer because the winter that year was so bad

(c) Raven & Crow: Late fall, when everything is dead and the ground starts to frost (mid to late November)

(d) Yang: Middle of Summer, when it's sweltering hot (equiv of July)

(e) Ruby: Right at the end of Summer, when the leaves start to fall (equiv of mid to late September)