Break My Fall
Ruby is beautiful, he realizes faintly.
Ruby Rose has grown up somehow in the blink of an eye, and all Qrow can do is bite his lip, bury his hands into his pockets, and hunch his shoulders, focusing upon the map before him. He cannot look at her- at her grace, her quiet, self-assured confidence, her poise and intelligence and cunning as she looks over the map projection and effortlessly explains how her team would be the most useful in this upcoming mission. She is succinct and clear, no lie within her words, and that strength makes her shine brighter than any holoscreen in this room.
She is his little niece, and yet… when has she become a Huntress? Where is the little girl he had once bounced on his knee, who he used to feed, who would light up every time he came home even though she could never pronounce his name?
…where is the little girl who needed him to protect her?
For she does not need him now, he realizes. As she speaks, self-assured and true, the other Huntsmen and Huntresses in the room look to her not as a child, but as a leader. She knows her team's skillsets, and she shall put them to use in the best way possible, and there is no way for Qrow to say it better himself.
Perhaps it is the pounding headache, the raw, digging knife edge slowly whittling away at his sanity that causes his eyes to grow blurry, filling with tears when he listens to her calmly explain their plan to breach a Grimm's nest. He blinks them away, hiding a sniffle with a cough into his elbow, allowing his hair to hang far too low into his eyes to hide the image of Ruby from his eyes.
...if he drank, he wouldn't feel this way. He knows this.
I won't do it.
He wants to. Everything aches.
It is not only Ruby, however, who causes him to shrink and shrivel within himself. On one side, she stands proud beyond measure. On his other side, however, is Clover, and Qrow cannot bear to look at the man whom James has so callously dubbed his partner. How can he, when even the briefest moments of eye contact that morning in the mess hall had been enough to send nausea crashing over him, phantom pains lingering within his bones, his heart thudding horribly in his chest as anxiety threatened to drown him from the inside out? Even now, as he stands in the darkened briefing room for captains and team leaders, his body is hyperaware of the man who stands but a few feet away from him, all built muscle and tan skin and knowing, cocky smiles.
He wants to cry at the thought. What sickens him even more, however, is the fact that he can feel Clover's eyes lingering upon him- curious, betrayed, confused. Green seems to glow almost ethereally in the light of the holoscreens littering the room. Qrow hates that even when he looks away, his body and mind automatically fixate upon those goddamned eyes that can see through everything, that have seen everything-
He has seen Qrow at his weakest barely three hours before. Qrow cannot afford to be weak. There is far too much at stake.
The kids don't need me to fight anymore, though.
He swallows dryly, sighing. His eyes feel dry, but they sting, too- a brief look into the reflective window nearby once the room lightens, screens fading now that their mission has been set, shows that his nose is red, eyelids puffy despite not having shed any tears at all.
A light touch on his shoulder grabs his attention. It is Clover, and Qrow has nowhere to look except for green, and it takes everything he has to choke down the bile shooting up into his throat at the very sight of confused eyes with all of their questions and their desires and their geniality and-
He remembers now when those eyes had been filled with lust for him.
Qrow turns around. "Let's go."
Clover does not touch him again. "Okay."
And so, their mission begins.