Mission report; 345.56 x6, paragraph 2C.
The Grimm S + class search and capture mission was completed, we accomplished the mission and retrieved the specimen. Unfortunately I cannot say that the raid was a success...
One of our operatives, Summer Rose, was mortally wounded, the injuries suffered in her neck, chest and body were severe enough to cause her death.
As captain and commander in charge of the mission, my duty was to bring my entire team safely home, although the objective of search and capture was a resounding success, the truth is that I cannot feel proud.
A colleague died in the course of what was supposed to be a simple mission... so, although the mission was completed with relative success, the truth is that it was a failure.
The performance of my squad mates was exceptional, although Qrow broke ranks and almost jeopardized the mission. Although at this point I really can't blame him for trying, he could have avoided what is now one of the worst misfortunes of my career as a captain.
I promised her that I would bring her back home.
The Beowolf proved to have abilities above the ordinary, he was intelligent, methodical, strategic, we could not know if he could communicate with us or if he could understand us... we couldn't examine him... we tried to stick to the military code, but it was useless to follow it.
We didn't have the mental strength at that time. Upon arriving at Beacon's facilities, the main priority was to know if we could still do something for Summer, even if it was too late, we should try. It was our duty as with her as with her family and friends.
Needless to say, that by the time we arrived, there was nothing more to do, the team leader; Qrow Brawen, insisted until the end in trying to do something for her, but unfortunately that couldn't be.
If we had the necessary equipment and a field medic on our team was very likely to save her life, we didn't have the right equipment or personnel to perform a miracle.
We deliver the Grimm to the director Ozpin, for his future study, we expect immediate results of the investigation and if they can discover what makes this Grimm so special. If it is the next step in the evolution of the Grimm, it is better that the sacrifice was worth it.
Summer Rose; She was K.I.A, the time of death was at 06:17 in the morning, a few minutes before dawn.
She suffered her last moments of life, but she could leave in peace.
Me Captain: James Iron Wood.
I take full responsibility for what happened in the mission.
As for Summer's family and close friends, Qrow will take care of that. I told him that he didn't have to do it, but he insisted on doing this on his own, he said... He had a promise to keep.
End of the report...
Qrow was looking at the hospital floor, thinking with his arms resting on his legs, he had stopped making sounds, but tears were still falling into a small puddle. He wondered if all this was a dream or if it was some kind of macabre illusion.
His mind was elsewhere, very far from that place in those moments. He saw his hands and wondered, why were they covered by her friend's blood? Why did his face have a bloody print? Everything must have gone according to plan, all this had to be a dream, or a horrible, horrible nightmare.
But if it was, why couldn't he wake up yet? He wanted to imagine that he was still in that hellhole bar where Winter and James had found him. Lost and drunk, imagining everything he was living.
He wanted to ask for help and wake up in a damn way, but no matter how much he tried, he couldn't wake up from this dream where pain was the only real thing.
It was not until he felt someone beside him, who could finally look to another side that wasn't the ground. Just to see Ozpin who seemed equally worried like everyone else. Glynda was not by his side, just as everyone she wasn't prepared for such devastating and hard news as it was to know that a very dear friend had died in such a horrible way.
And Ozpin wasn't that he hadn't lived this before, but living it again and again didn't make it easy. It wasn't easy at all.
"Qrow how do you feel?" Asked the man with whitish hair, while the other just looked away.
"You know…? I couldn't understand it... I never really could understand it well... my mind was unable to rationalize it" Qrow said in an exhausted and hoarse voice, for all the screams he had given that night.
"I thought... I wanted to believe that you were to blame, I wanted to blame Tai, I really wanted to do it... I wanted to... Make you both responsible for my own misfortune. But in the end I realized that all this was my fault" He said staring into the void feeling nothing, but resenting everything.
"I thought wanted this... Wish for it so many times… more than anything in the world, I really wanted to hurt you and Tai, but not like that, not this way... and in the end it seems to be, you were right all along, she didn't needed me. She didn't deserve someone like me. to an damn bastard whose only good thing he has done in his life could be to get away. She was fine... she was calm, until I came back and destroyed all that, I destroyed her dreams. Just to show me at her door again... if I had known that this would have happened, I would have stayed out there, where I could not harm anyone but me..."
"Qrow…" Ozpin tried to give him comfort, but he walked away.
"Dont! You are not to blame for this, you kept her safe... you took care of her and tried to give meaning to her life. And Tai offered her a quiet life, gave her two daughters and all that away from me" Qrow spoke with deep sorrow through his chest ...
"I suppose... that this is what I deserve for seeking my selfish desires over others…"
"Qrow…" Ozpin then tried to approach him to place his hand on his student's shoulder. While he was still crying like an wounded animal.
"I... I'm sorry"
"No... Don't do it, I... I shouldn't have doubted from you" Qrow reply by nodding slightly.
"You tried to join us again... and I screwed everything up... you were always very fair, with me Oz, all I just wanna ask of you…" it was so that he raised his afflicted gaze towards Ozpin
"It's that when you finish doing what you have to do with that thing... give me his damn head"
Ozpin looked at his student with surprise, those eyes... full of pain, he had received so many blows, he had been humiliated, despised and forgotten, even by the people he considered his family, the only beings who had shown him authentic humanity and brotherhood had It was him, Summer and Taiyang...
Ignoring his request would be like betraying his own son. Ozpin really didn't know what to do or what to answer, he just knew that he had to say something to his dear student.
"Revenge is not in our hands Qrow…" He said getting up from his seat.
"Revenge... is in the hands of fate" He finally walked in the opposite direction, Qrow looked up at his mentor, he couldn't understand what he said, or why he had said such words. Ozpin stopped breathing deeply and sighed.
"Rest son, tomorrow morning... it will be done, you now have to wash yourself... and give the news to Taiyang"
There was something about those old legends, where stories of heroes and villains are told. Where the heroes tell the story from their point of view, the truth is that those heroes of the legends told the story after they were victorious.
The winner was always the one who told the story, but this had not been a victory, it could not be. This victory seemed like a defeat, they had recovered the specimen, they had returned home and it was most likely that now the specimen was examined and opened while still alive.
But a friend had died, a mother who would never see her daughters again, a wife who would never return to her beloved's arms. And a woman who represented the best of humanity, perhaps in another story at another time, this story could be told as a fable where heroin died heroically sacrificing.
But what kind of sacrifice did it mean to die bleeding like a miserable dog? What could be the glorious thing of dying without being able to be with the people you love? Perhaps the worst would be to die alone.
Anyway, he had promised something and he couldn't back down, not now.
The next day he arrived at Summer's home, it was strange, the last time he had arrived he had a rather awkward conversation and now he showed up to give the news that nobody else wanted to give. But someone had to do it.
He knocked on the door a couple of times. Listening to the steps coming towards him and Tai's cheerful voice responding on the other side, Qrow had to bite his lower lip, he could assure that he had a good day, he could hear it in his words...
As soon as he opened the door, the first thing he saw was Tai, who was smiling, but his smile turned into a confused grimace, seeing Qrow standing in front of his door. Something told him... that something wasn't right.
It wasn't until Qrow handed him the Summer cloak that he could check. He looked at it and it had a thick crimson stain on the white cloth, he took it in his hands trembling as he did it and when he unwrapped it, he couldn't stand it. Her cloak had a huge red spot that stretched across the entire white cloth, it looked like... a rose made out of blood, with petals scattered throughout the whiteness of the cloak, the words were not necessary, it was clear what had happened, his beloved Wife had died.
For the first time in many years, Tai broke into tears, squeezing that beautiful cape in his hands, silent, like a sharp knife that had pierced a wound that had barely healed. And now he was bleeding, bleeding without stopping for a heart that had been hurt in the past.
"Tai ... She's not coming…"
"Dad, where is Mommy?" Asked a voice behind him, worried that she couldn't see her mother in the doorframe, only the same strange man she had seen before in the past. Tai could not show her the cloack for her fragile heart would break just by seeing something so horrible, so he quickly wrapped it up and then looked over his daughters over her shoulder.
It was difficult as a father to tell his daughter that her mother's was never going back, they finally had stability, they finally had love, they finally had something beautiful... And everything had vanished in the blink of an eye.
A short time later, a funeral was held, bringing together friends and colleagues from Summer .. from both Beacon and Atlas and Heaven. Saying goodbye was difficult and more when they were not prepared ...
Tai was devastated, lost beyond everything, this was what he had most feared. The possibility of losing everything again, perhaps it was that illusion of joy that had forced him to believe that an event as horrible as this would ever happen.
He wanted to deny it, but it was real, it was as real as the pain he felt, first the love of his youth and now the love of his life, all the women he loved ended up fading like dust in the wind, from his mother, to Summer .
Yang who was just a child had to forcefully understand what death meant, having to face such a painful situation at her young age, abandoned by her biological mother and losing her adoptive mother, she couldn't stand it, imagining she couldn't being with mom again, not being able to hear her voice, admire her beauty, listen to her stories... Or spend another minute with her, all that was lost.
And the one who could understand it less was Ruby, she didn't understand why they buried her mother, she had promised to come back, if they buried her she wouldn't be able to lull her again, give her comfort in the nights full of nightmares, sing to her, prepare cookies or be at her side when needed. She didn't understand why they were burying her, she was just asleep.
She was just sleeping, she was just a little sick, she didn't understand why they had put her in a wooden box and covered her body with white roses and less why now they buried her. Mom was just asleep and just needed to wake up, but Ruby didn't know that Mom was ever going to wake up from that dream.
Tai hugged her daughters tightly, feeling for the first time in years defeated. He had lost her and with her he had lost the dream that they had shared for a long time, she was gone. Now there were only the ashes of that beautiful story.
Qrow, Ozpin and Glynda saw the widower at his worst, the only thing he really had left in this life were his daughters. Everyone was mourning, including a small raven that he saw from a distance, believed that by separating from them she could simply live her life, disassociating hier feelings, despising her and giving it little importance.
But even she didn't have a heart of stone and it hurt to see the departure of someone who had meant a lot to her life, of the two she was always the best, and so even if she had felt betrayed in the past, she was still her best friend, and couldn't have chosen another person to be the mother of her own daughter... she was the best of the two and always would be what Raven could never be, a good mother.
And now the place where she used to meditate became her place of eternal rest, the only place where she felt calm and peaceful. An appropriate resting place, in front of a golden dawn.
And the tombstone, marked with a flower, said;
Summer Rose, Thus Kindly I Scatter.
It had been a while, Qrow was in a bar, except for what he usually went every week, this time he was going because he needed to talk to someone who was there at the bar, suffering in silence with a glass of wine in one hand and another on his forehead.
"Tai…" Qrow knocked from the door, forcing the blue-eyed man to see him, but quickly averted his gaze.
"Go away Qrow... I don't want to talk to anyone," he said, turning his gaze to the bar, but that didn't keep Qrow from approaching.
"What are you doing here?" Asked the dark-haired man sitting next to him.
"A better question... Why do you care?" Tai asked back taking a drink from his glass.
"I don't know... Maybe because of the fact that your daughters need you…" Qrow replied, resting his arms on the table.
"Listen... this has to stop, I know what you feel... I…"
"No... you don't know what Qrow feels…" Tai replied drinking all the liquor from his glass.
"You... you don't know what it feels like, you don't know what it feels like to see it happen in front of your eyes twice…"
"But I do know Tai... I've already had to face... that pain, the problem is that nobody was by my side then" Qrow commented quietly, calling Tai-yang's fury.
"Don't you dare to say that! When you needed help, I held out your hand. And what did you do, Qrow?" He asked him, holding his old friend's coat tightly.
"What did you do?" Shouted for answers by moving it furiously from side to side.
"You told me that I've had ruined your life and that I was a piece of shit. You have nothing to do here and less come to reprimand me"
"Tai... listen to me…"Qr ow asked quietly trying to calm him down.
"I wasn't thinking well, I was lost and couldn't rationalize, just as you cannot reason right now, you know"
"I know? If I know!" Then Tai pushed Qrow away.
"I only know that you loved my wife. I ruined your life, remember? Leave, you said it yourself... I am nothing for you…"
"Tai, please this is important" The red-eyed man then hurried to try to speak to him again.
"No... it is not, you are nothing for me... so I will tell you the same thing you told me that night" Tai spoke to him rising from his seat to face him.
"You and I... we are not brothers... you and I, WE ARE NOT…"
It was then that Qrow grabbed him tightly from the shirt, trying to lift him off the ground in anger.
"Ruby and Yang were about to die today!" He shouted loudly into his face silently instantly.
"I have been taking care of them in your absence these last weeks, Yang knows that Summer wasn't her real mother and went to look for Raven, took Ruby with her and some Beowolfs almost killed them both
"I don't give a shit what you think of me, curse me, yell at me and insult me if you want, but I won't let you leave them. I will not allow you to abandon those poor girls. They already lost their mother's, I will not allow them to lose their father now, not when they need it most" He said with fury, but at the same time with so much sadness, something that Taiyang noticed in his gaze.
"Summer made me promise that it didn't matter what will happen... that I would take care of Ruby and Yang. If you are not able to do it, I do. Because I made a promise to my best friend, you can give up if you want, but I still have a promise to keep her"
Tai then lowered her afflicted gaze to the floor, while her tears began to overflow from her eyes once more. It was so that he raised his fist towards Qrow, who hoped he would strike him with all his anger, but instead, it was sadness that accompanied that slow and weak blow. Which stopped easily.
"It's not fair Qrow, it's not fair…" Tai told him in a broken voice, clenching his eyes and teeth from crying.
"It's not fair brother... That shouldn't had happened, it goes against the… fucking rules of the universe, we finally had something beautiful, we were finally a family and they had to take that away from me again... why did this happen, brother? Why me? That's just not fair…" He said to finally look up.
"Now what am I going to do?"
Qrow could not say anything, but in his voice and in his gaze he could see himself not too long ago, so he approached him to hug his brother tightly.
"We need comply with the last will of Summer... brother" He responded by enduring hard not to break like Tai.
It was with this that the two men decided to leave that lonely bar, where there were only sad memories, to return home where the girls were waiting for them in advance, they had already lost their mothers, they couldn't lose their father now.