AUTHOR'S NOTES: A somewhat shorter chapter than usual, because I got a late start on it and I didn't feel like writing the big fight coming for Reaper Flight just yet. So enjoy Yang and Taiyang having a father-daughter bonding moment.

Over the Great Smoky Mountains

North Carolina, United States of Canada

7 June 2001

"Wow…" Yang could not resist saying it. Beneath the silver, bare metal wings of the P-51 Mustang was the majesty of the Great Smoky Mountains spread out like a green blanket, with bits of grey stone showing through. From where she sat at 15,000 feet, she could distantly see the cities of Knoxville, Tennessee on her right, and back to Asheville on her left. There was not a cloud in the sky, and the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine hummed just in front of her. Her hand—her artificial one—felt good on the stick, her real one on the throttle. The bubble canopy of the old fighter gave excellent vision all around, just like her F-15. Yang grinned. She was home. The sky was more her home than any land-bound house.

Technically, it was not a P-51. It was a TF-51, the Korean War-era designation for a two-place, dual control training version of the Mustang. The old bulky World War II-era radios were taken out, the canopy lengthened, and a second seat and controls put in. Taiyang was a little uncomfortable back there, but he could fly the aircraft just as she could. His hands had been on the controls since they had taken off from Asheville, but he'd released them when they reached cruising altitude. They could go much higher, of course, but neither was wearing an oxygen mask, so this was as high as they could safely go.

Yang had made great strides in only a few days. Two days in the Cessna 172 and she had been doing aerobatics. She found she had to occasionally grip the stick in both hands, but that was all right. Tai had been impressed enough to convince Pops to let them take the Mustang up this afternoon. They'd originally planned on spending two weeks in the Cessna, but Yang was getting too far ahead of the slow aircraft. She'd been flying high performance fighters for so long that it was muscle memory, even when certain muscles were no longer present.

Tai had been quiet since they'd made radio checks and been cleared to a block of airspace over the mountains. Yang didn't blame him: it almost seemed sacreligious to talk over the Merlin's sonorous sound and interrupt the gorgeous view.

"Hard left turn," Tai suddenly barked.

Yang executed the maneuver, snapping the stick over, but she was a little slow to react. "You stupid ass!" Tai exploded. "You took a whole second to move the damn stick! A second is forever up here! Get your head out of your ass and wake the fuck up!" The control stick was wrenched out of Yang's hands and it snapped side to side, the buttons and the grip hitting her knees painfully before Tai allowed his daughter to have it back. The P-51 wallowed drunkenly.

Tai then began snapping out swift and contradictory commands. Yang did her best to complete them, and occasionally did so quick enough. Many more times, however, she was still too slow, and many more times the stick slammed into the soft flesh of her knees beneath her flight suit. Yang wanted to scream at her father to stop it, but gritted her teeth and took the pain, and felt great satisfaction at shutting Tai up when she did it right.

Tai, for his part, hated to do what he was doing. It was how he had been taught by his father to fly, the crusty, cigar-chomping former P-47 Thunderbolt pilot, and it was effective, if a harder school. He felt pride in Yang for not losing control of herself or the aircraft. She said nothing but "Yes, sir!" if she spoke at all in response to his orders, didn't talk back against his tirades, and channeled her anger into flying rather than lashing out at him—or worse, the aircraft. A P-51 would not take a pilot's wrath long before it would kick back like its namesake.

After Yang had gotten three commands in a row on time and well, Tai spoke in a normal voice: "I've got the aircraft." Yang relinquished the stick. Tai yanked the red nose into the air and put the Mustang deliberately into a stall. The engine missed a beat, the fighter shuddered, and then fell over on one wing into a spin. Then he let go of the stick. "She's yours," he told Yang.

Oh shit! Yang thought. Sky and ground began swapping places, and the horizon spun crazily around them. She stole a glance at the altimeter—okay, 12,000 feet, we've got plenty of air. Then she realized some of the mountains around the Smokies poked up to 6000 feet. She applied rudder to stop the spin, and pushed the stick forward, almost into the instrument panel. The propeller bit into the air, the Merlin howled as she pushed up the throttle, and Yang jerked back the stick. The P-51 pulled out of the spin and climbed with still two thousand feet to spare. Yang found herself breathing hard, and her stomach did a sickening flip. She fought down the nausea, but found that it was only from the spin—it wasn't fear. Throughout the whole spin, she hadn't been afraid. Okay, I was fairly concerned, but I wasn't scared. She took her artificial hand off the stick for a moment, and saw that it was shaking. Okay…maybe a little.

"I think that's good for the day, pumpkin," Tai said, now the happy father again. "I'll take her back. I want to get some stick time on this baby too."

"Just no aerobatics, Pops," Yang told him. "Unless you want to see my French toast again."

Tai was waiting for her out in front of the Happy Bottom Flying Club, leaning against Zippy, still wearing his flight suit. Yang came out with hers over one shoulder, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts. It was June in North Carolina, and she had no idea why her father didn't melt in his flight suit, even at dusk. He looked down and saw the purple and brown bruises on her knees. "Yeah," Yang said. "It hurts, Dad; thanks for asking."

Tai felt like a jerk. "Sorry, Yang. Really. That was how my dad taught me. You screwed up, you got a stick to the knees." He got in the passenger side; it was late enough in the day that Yang felt safe driving in the Asheville traffic. "I won't do that anymore."

Yang shut the door. "Thanks." She gave a little start of pain as her keys hit one of her knees. "Though I know why you did it." She started the car and backed up. "I didn't do all that well today."

"You did all right, for your first time out. You did real well on that spin recovery." Tai had his hand on the stick throughout the stall and spin, in case Yang couldn't bring it out, and regretted it. It had been taking a big chance, that his daughter was capable of using her artificial arm effectively, and knew instinctively how to solve the problem. If he had been wrong, he and Yang might be a smoking hole in the side of a mountain. "You feel up to going out again tomorrow?"

"Hell yeah!" Yang grinned at her father, which never failed to cheer him up. "I think in a week or two we could get Pops or Lance up for a little bit of hassling!"

"Well, we'll see, kiddo." He didn't want to rush Yang. The doctors had told him privately that they didn't know if Yang would ever get back in the cockpit; she'd already surpassed that estimate. But even the liberal estimates pointed to three months, if not more. And that was just the physical retraining; there was still the mental retraining as well. Tai knew that Yang still had nightmares; he'd heard her shouting in the night. She was always awake by the time he reached her, her hands shaking and her bed covered in sweat. The mental scars worried him far more than the physical ones.

"Hey, Dad." Yang's voice shook him out of his thoughts. "I don't think I ever asked you. Did you watch my fights during Vytal Flag?"

Yes, Tai wanted to say, and they scared the bejesus out of me. And Ruby was just as terrifying. "I did," he said instead.

"And? Let me guess." She pitched her voice low, imitating her father. "'You were sloppy, Yang.'"

"Sloppy?" Tai gave it some thought. "Not really. Reckless."

"How so?"

"When you fought that Tomcat and nearly hit the side of a mountain? More than once? I thought I was going to have a heart attack watching that."

"I like to win."

"Only an idiot likes to lose," Tai replied. "But Yang, you were trying too hard. You didn't leave a lot of room if you made a mistake. You crowded too much. It was only an exercise."

"But aren't exercises supposed to be realistic?"

"Not to the point of killing people, no." He pointed to her artificial arm. "And that recklessness and blind desire to win is what got you that." Yang gave him a nasty look, but Tai stood his ground. "Don't sass me, pumpkin. I read the report. Arashikaze sent it to me. According to Blake—" Yang really gave him a sour look at the mention of her former wingperson "—she had this Adam character dead to rights when you decided to jump him for a head-to-head gun pass. In fact, you came so close to the other guy that you almost rammed him, and Blake." He shook his head. "We've already got Ruby the Mad Rammer in this family, Yang. Let's not make it a family trait."

Yang didn't answer. She realized she'd stepped on the accelerator in rage, and slowed down; she'd nearly missed their exit. It wasn't so much her father's criticism—he was right; she had no business making that gun pass on Adam Taurus. It wasn't even the mention of the man who had taken her arm and nearly her life. It was the mention of Blake Belladonna, and that opened up a box that she had no intention of opening for a long while. Fucking bitch just left me—left us, all of Ruby Flight. Just ran.

"Yang, if you don't slow down, I'm going to make you pull over and switch places."

Yang forced herself to relax, and shoved Blake back in her box, stomping on her kitty ears to make her fit. "Sorry, Dad. Just something I don't want to talk about right now. Blake, I mean. Okay?"

"Okay." He watched her as they drove. There was the same burning intensity in the eyes, the same angry grip on the steering wheel and tendency towards speeding, even the same way the muscles in Yang's jaw bunched in anger. It was Raven to the life. When Raven had left, probably the only people who were thankful were the residents and local sheriffs of western North Carolina. A good portion of Raven's salary had gone to speeding tickets when she was angry—and she was angry a lot. "You're so much like her," Tai said wistfully, without realizing it.

"Who?"

Tai sighed. "Your mother. Raven."

"Summer was my mom, Dad."

"Okay, okay." He didn't feel like an argument. He'd already gotten his daughter angry, and this wasn't the time for it.

There was silence for about five minutes, but as Yang pulled onto the highway that led to Patch, she suddenly spoke. "How am I like her?"

"Raven?"

"Yeah. Now that it's okay to talk about her, apparently."

"I've been informed that you're a grown woman, so I assume you can handle it." Tai might not want an argument, but Yang could only push him so far.

Yang still bristled. She didn't feel like backing down from her father. First Blake, now Raven. "I'm sorry I remind you of her."

"Don't be." Yang looked at him when Tai said it; his tone was no longer one of the stern father, but of the husband who missed the wife that could have been. "Raven was great in so many ways, Yang. Her strength, her ambition, her dedication to whatever cause she thought was right. And she was a damn good pilot…and for awhile, a damn good wife." Tai stared out of the window. "I loved Raven, Yang. The day I proposed to her was, at the time, the greatest day of my life. I've only seen her cry twice. That was the first time." He turned and reached out, lightly brushing the blonde hair, just as unkempt and wild as Raven's had been, if gold instead of coal black. "We made a beautiful baby together. I'm proud of how much of her I see in you. But I'm also really glad that I don't see all of her in you."

Yang smirked. "Yeah, I can agree with that. But why not?"

"Your mother—Raven—was a complicated woman. Like everyone, she had her faults. She was stubborn, vindictive, too damn easy to piss off, and reckless. And immature. Those faults tore Strike Flight apart…not to mention our family." He sighed again. "Both of you act like the only way to tackle an obstacle is to go right through it. Summer said that Raven would put her head through a cement block if there was something she wanted on the other side. Raven's never learned otherwise. I hope that you, now…have learned."

Yang looked at her steel arm. "Yeah, well…it's going to be hard to forget." She then glanced at her father. "Why did she leave us, Dad?" She regretted saying it. It occurred to Yang that, just as Blake needed to stay in her box for now, Tai might not want to let Raven out of hers.

However, Tai had long since come to terms with it; the wound still hurt, but it was old. Still, it took him a few minutes to respond. "Like I said, Raven always was singleminded about a cause she believed was right. For awhile, it was this country. Then she got disgusted with it. She complained a lot—another trait of hers that I'm glad you didn't inherit. Raven felt like Strike Flight was being used, that Ozpin just figured we were expendable. She was wrong, but it did feel like shoveling sand against the tide sometimes, because we didn't seem to make much of a dent on the GRIMM. Raven felt like we weren't doing any good. We weren't winning...and like you, Raven liked to win.

"She used to talk a lot about quitting the service and going back to her home—that's the Branwen 'tribe' out in California. She felt like clearing out a spot far away from the American government and making it our own was a lot better than fighting the 'endless hordes' of GRIMM." He chuckled. "Yeah, she used that term—endless hordes. For awhile, those were Raven's favorite two words."

"So why didn't you?" Yang asked.

"Well, Summer thought it was crazy—everyone knew California was long gone, just radiation and ruins. That was a lie, of course, at least somewhat. Qrow didn't want to go back; he hated the place, said he liked eating regularly. I wasn't crazy about it either." Tai smiled. "It sounds rah-rah, I know, but I love this country. My family's served it since your great-great-grandfather stepped off the boat from China to help build the Transcontinental Railroad. He loved this country even when the whites called him nasty names and treated him like shit. But the Xiao Longs stayed. And we're still here. I wasn't just going to up and resign my commission because Raven had a chip on her shoulder."

Yang took the turn to drive towards their house. "So were you guys going to get a divorce?"

Tai thought about that for a moment, as well. Certainly he and Raven had some horrific arguments, that drove him out of the house to go drinking with Qrow, more than once. They'd always patched it up. Raven would apologize, and they'd usually end up having makeup sex, which almost made the argument worth it. But what caused the argument always simmered under the surface, unsolved and ready to explode. "I don't know, Yang," Tai finally answered. "I don't think so. We still loved each other. And when she got pregnant with you, well, that was the second time I saw her cry. She was so happy, Yang, even though we really didn't plan for you. Ruby—Summer and I planned her. In fact, Summer used to do exercises that would help her conceive."

"I was an accident?" Yang wasn't sure if she liked that. Plus Ruby would never let her live it down.

"Nah, but we hadn't really talked seriously about kids. You were a hard pregnancy for Raven, and Raven didn't like being tied down with a big belly. She had to be given a direct order not to fly when she was four months along. I think…" Tai took a deep breath. "I think she started hating you, Yang. You were preventing her from doing what she wanted. And Raven realized that, once you were born, it would be years before she could ever really go back to California. It's no place for a newborn, or even a toddler. So after she made sure that you were healthy, she left."

"Huh." Yang pulled into the driveway. "You forgot one more of her flaws, Dad."

"Which one?"

"Selfish." Yang put Zippy into park, a little harder than she'd meant to. Gears crunched alarmingly. Yang winced. "Sorry."

Tai worked the automatic shift for a moment to make sure it wasn't broken. "Yeah. She was very fucking selfish when she left." He leaned back in the seat, drained. It had been a conversation he'd meant to have with Yang for years, and was glad now they'd had it. "I don't know, Yang. Maybe Raven realized she wouldn't be a good mother. Maybe she even thought she was doing us a favor by leaving."

"She does think that. She told me. She said she knew Summer was waiting, and that Summer would take care of me. And you." Yang shook her head, hating Raven…and yet, understanding her in some weird way. "And Summer Rose was a real mom."

Tai laughed softly. "She sure as hell was. God, Summer loved you. She used to just sit there and rock you to sleep, right under that old oak tree over there. Even when she was pregnant with Ruby." Tai felt the tears coming. Yang leaned over and hugged her father. He wiped his eyes, willing the tears to stop, but they were persistent.

"Dad, can I ask you a really personal question?"

"Sure, pumpkin."

"Was she good in the sack?"

Tai broke loose of the hug and stared at his daughter in shock. "What? Who? Who was good in the sack?"

"Mom. Raven. Both."

"Why the hell do you want to know that?"

Yang's eyes were alight again, but this time with mirth. "Because I'm great in the sack, and I want to know which side I inherited it from."

Tai's mouth dropped, but then he started laughing, which had been Yang's intention. "You…oh, you little shit."

"Hey. Ruby's the little shit. I'm the big shit."

"Keep asking about your parents' sex life and you'll be in deep shit." They got out of the car into the soft Carolina night. "Want to know which side…well, it doesn't matter, because you're never having sex, Yang."

"Shows what you know. You gonna put me in a convent?"

"Or the Air Force, same thing."

Yang laughed and put her real arm around her father. He was still laughing as they walked to their house, together.