Disclaimer: I do not, nor do I claim to, own RWBY or any other media mentioned in this story. All rights go to their respective owners. The only thing I own are my OCs.
The rest of term before the first break went quickly and without much drama. Everyone in RRAYNNBW was progressing well with their training and studies.
Of course, holidays came with planning.
"Hey guys, who wants to spend break with me and my Uncle Qrow? He lives out on Patch, but he's really interested in meeting you all," Yang asks her squad mates as they all read through their mail.
"It's not like I'll be going home to Atlas over the break. Father would likely try to keep me there," Weiss comments. "I might as well join you. It would be less boring than staying here."
"She has a point. I'm not likely to be going back to my parents anytime soon. Don't really want to face them just yet," Blake mentions.
"Same. I did run away from home with the family heirloom to go and forge my way into a huntsman academy," Jaune jokes.
"Ren and I don't have any family to stay with anyways," Nora comments.
"So we'd be delighted to spend time with yours," Ren finishes for her.
"Sorry, Yang, I already made plans to go see my family in Argus. If I hadn't, I would have loved to spend the holidays with you and your uncle," Pyrrha laments.
"Do you think he'd be okay with Oscar and my Abuela joining?" Rosa asks.
"In his words, the more the merrier," Yang says with a smile. "His only rule is that everyone has to stay sober."
"Won't be an issue," Rosa says with a snort. "Oscar and I are too young, and Abuela hates the stuff, says it dilutes your senses and limits your abilities to fight."
"This'll be an interesting gathering," Blake says with an eye roll.
"What's that supposed to mean," Weis asks, her eyes narrowing.
"Well, the eight of us know each other fairly well, but adding in three extra people, one of which is a professional huntsman if Yang is to be believed, and one of which is kinda paranoid from what Rosa says about her grandmother, it'll be real interesting. Plus, even within our squad, we're a very mixed group," Blake explains.
"She's not wrong," Nora admits.
"It's not paranoid when they really are out to get you. Abuela has every right to be cautious," Rosa defends.
"You get her point though," Jaune says with a laugh.
"True."
"So, I should let him know you're all coming sans Pyrrha?" Yang asks.
After receiving a host of nods, Yang heads out into the corridor to call her uncle. Rosa sends a text to Oscar about the matter to let him know.
A week later, the squad - sans Pyrrha - meets up with Oscar, Rosa's Abuela, and Yang's Uncle Qrow at the docks.
"You kids, and ma'am, ready to go to Patch?" the battle-weary man asks them.
"Yes sir!" Nora laughs.
"Then get on the ferry," he jokes back. The group of ten settle onto the ferry, and the half-hour trip over to the island goes quickly. Oscar mostly spends it hiding from Nora.
"You raised two kids huh?" Qrow asks the elderly woman.
"Yes, I did," Maria replies shortly.
"How come you ended up doing it?" he asks.
"I found Rosa after her mother was killed. I searched the missing person's statements, no one matching Rosa's description was ever searched for, and I never could find out who her mother was. Besides, I promised that woman I would keep Rosa safe. Oscar on the other hand, I owed his birth family a debt. They took me in after I lost my eyes. His father was just a toddler at the time, and his parents helped me get back on my feet. When Oscar's parents died, his aunt was to be the one to raise him. She was young though, only barely an adult. So, I offered to take him in. What was one more child? It would allow Rosa to have someone her own age to interact with," Maria explains.
"So, not your own grandkids then?"
"They may not be mine by blood, but they are mine in every way that matters," Maria snaps at him.
"I feel ya. Family isn't blood - though that helps - family are the people who care about you no matter what. They're the people who drive you mad, but you wouldn't have them any other way," Qrow reminisces.
"That is certainly the case," she agrees.
The walk from the ferry terminal on Patch to Qrow's house was filled with Yang pointing out a variety of places that she had fond memories of growing up.
"You go out that way into the forest for about half an hour and there's a pretty decent clearing to train in. There's occasional Grimm to clear out though, but that just makes good Grimm killing practice," Yang points out.
"That clearing hasn't been cleared out since you left for Beacon, I've been on a mission," Qrow tells the blonde brawler.
"Yikes, there'll be a build-up then," Yang winces.
"All the more practice. I'm sure you'd be able to handle it," Qrow jokes. "Here we are."
"Qrow's 'nest'," Yang informs the group.
"Hey!" Qrow smarts at his niece.
"You know it's true," Yang says with a raised eyebrow.
Qrow huffs. "I may have been named 'Qrow', but I don't act like one of those birds."
"Yes, yes you do, Uncle Qrow," Yang snickers.
"Do not."
"Do too."
"Do not."
"Do too."
"I do not act like a crow," Qrow shuts down the argument.
Yang leans over to Jaune who is walking next to her and whispers, "he so does."
"I heard that!" Qrow informs them without even looking back, unlocking the door.
Inside the house is a motley collection of knickknacks, memorabilia, and other items. Directly in front of them from the entrance way was a set of double-wide stairs that lead up to the second floor. To the left of the entrance way, a cosy fireplace is surrounded by overstuffed sofas and armchairs in a patchwork of colours. On the wall above the fireplace are a variety of photos; some old and have a younger looking Qrow with a range of other people, and some are newer with pictures of Yang throughout her life. The floor is varnished wood, with soft fur rugs thrown haphazardly around. To the right is a smaller living room - a TV on a stand with a long couch and two armchairs sitting in front - that leads onto a dining room just large enough to sit twelve people (though they only had ten people). Behind the dining room, just out of sight of the entrance way was a tiled kitchen that looked just a little tired and worn out. Curling from there and underneath the stairs was the only bathroom on that level of the house.
It short, it was cosy, warm, homely. Not what any of them had been expecting from the near-severe looking man that Qrow appeared to be.
"Come on, I'll show you guys where you'll be staying upstairs!" Yang insists, leading the kids up the stairs to the next level, leaving Qrow and Maria to sit and relax in the living room.
The second floor consisted of a hallway with 5 doorways leading off of them. "So, that's Uncle Qrow's room there, mine is next to his - Blake, Weiss, you're bunking with me - the two guest rooms are those two - I figured the Calaveras can share one room and Jaune, Ren and Nora can share the other - and the door down the end behind the stairs leads to the shared bathroom. It's gonna be squishy, but I reckon we can make it work," Yang explains, pointing to each door in turn.
"Ten people sharing two bathrooms, that's gonna be fun," Nora playfully comments.
"Four bathrooms actually. Uncle Qrow's room and my room both have ensuites. But yes, still going to be a bit of a squeeze," Yang corrects.
"Why don't we all go put our stuff away and then head back downstairs?" Rosa suggests.
"Please, carrying all our stuff around is starting to get tiring," Weiss... agrees. Not begs, not pleads (a Schnee is above that), agrees.
When they're done - which takes a while due to the pillow fight Nora started... and the minor Dust explosion they had to clean up when Weiss's dust case was opened to reveal roughly twenty very agitated dust vials... and Oscar's managing to get completely tangled in bedsheets, taking over half an hour to detangle him - they head back down to Qrow and Maria, who have very amused looks on their faces.
"Having fun up there?" Maria asks them. Oscar sheepishly scratches his neck while Weiss huffs indignantly and Nora grins unashamedly.
"Oh, Yang, I forgot to tell you before. Your dad wanted to see you over the holidays," Qrow tells his niece.
"What?! And you're letting him?!" Yang yells.
"I told him the same thing I always do. He can come visit so long as he's sober," Qrow begins to say before Yang storms out of the house. Qrow sighs. "Of course, she storms off."
"Why wouldn't she want to see her father?" Oscar asks innocently.
"It's... it's a long story, kid," Qrow tells him tiredly.
"Yang is our team and squad mate. This seems like a fairly important thing to know about her so that we can support her," Weiss says properly.
Qrow sighs. "Fine. This story starts long before Yang was born. It starts way back when I was still a huntsman-in-training at Beacon. I was on Team STRQ. We were the best of the best, popular, strong, got special attention from Ozpin and got extra training missions. Everyone expected us to be the team that made it the furthest. On the team with me was Summer Rose, Taiyang Xiao Long, and my twin sister Raven." He pauses to take a swig of his eggnog. "Raven had a very... unique way of looking at the world. She admired and respected strength and strength alone. Her philosophy was that the strong live and the weak die. Tai... well... he fancied himself in love with her. Luckily for him, he was strong, so he managed to catch her attention. Barely a year after we graduated, they got married. A few months later, Rae announced that she was three months pregnant. Six months later, Yang was born, and a month after that, Raven vanished."
"Vanished?" Jaune splutters.
"Vanished, ran away, abandoning her family. It... it destroyed Tai. He turned to alcohol and he could barely take care of himself let alone baby Yang. Summer wouldn't stand for that, so she stepped in. She'd been in love with him for a while but had considered his happiness to be more important than her own. She took care of Yang, got Tai to sober up, and they became a happy little family. Tai was trying to get a divorce from Raven so that he could get married to Summer, but because no one could find her, he couldn't. When Yang was about, eighteen-months-old or so, they announced that they were having a baby. So, Ruby Rose was born. Summer hadn't seen her family in Mistral in a while, and they didn't know about her engagement or new-found motherhood, so she took Ruby with her to go see them. Tai and Yang were meant to go too, but Yang got sick and Tai stayed home to take care of her..." Qrow trailed off, closing his eyes as what they could all tell were painful memories came to the forefront of his mind.
"Summer was meant to call us when she got to the air-field. She never did. We found her body in a forest about an hour out from the airfield roughly a week later. We never found little Ruby's body. She wasn't even a month old. We knew people had been out for Summer's death, her wounds suggested that she'd been killed by people, but we couldn't understand what had happened to Rubes. Eventually, we figured that Summer had hidden her and - with Summer's death - the Grimm came and ate Ruby whole. That broke Tai all over again. He started drinking and he didn't stop, couldn't stop. I spent a year trying to get him to stop, trying to get him to get help, to go to therapy. A year of coming to his house pretty much every day to take care of Yang while he drank himself to oblivion. The last straw was a year later when - on the one day I was held up coming to check on them - Yang had left the house searching for Raven. I still don't know how that three-year-old learned about Raven, but I... I almost lost her that day. If I had been even a single second slower, she would have been sliced to ribbons by the Grimm. I held her in my arms and stormed back to Tai's. I put Yang down for a nap and then spent two hours yelling at Tai. He didn't listen to a single word I said. I knew he wasn't a fit father, so I took Yang away from him," he confesses.
"Over the years, Tai's tried to get her back a few times. In the beginning, he tried claiming that I had kidnapped her. That went through the courts. It was ruled that I, as her biological uncle and godfather, acted to keep her in a safe environment where she would get the care she needed, and that he, as a severe alcoholic, was unfit to raise a child. When Yang was five, he kidnapped her from her day-care while I was teaching at Signal. He went up to the staff, said that Yang was his daughter - which they didn't question due to their obvious similarities in appearance - and took her home with him. That got him hit with a restraining order. He broke his restraining order three years later when he practically stalked Yang at school - still drunk off his ass - and tried to fight security. Every holiday since Yang was... twelve I think, well, he said that he wanted to see Yang, that he'd agree to our terms. I keep making him getting sober the ultimatum, but it never works. He always turns up, drunk as hell and a bottle of alcohol open in his hand, and keeps expecting us to welcome him with open arms like he's done nothing wrong.
"He doesn't understand that he's just driving Yang away from him in the process. Every drunken appearance he makes in her life, the more she hates him. He expects her to love him and care for him, and he doesn't get that she's not a dumb kid who loves their family just because they share blood. He doesn't get that every single time I tell her he's coming to visit, she goes to her clearing and punches anything she can until her knuckles bleed and her body aches all over. He's missed practically every milestone of hers because he's mourning what he could have had instead of being grateful he's still got something, and that is something that I don't think Yang will ever be able to forgive him for."
"He can't accept that she doesn't need him," Blake murmurs.
"You're not wrong," Qrow scoffs, taking another swig of eggnog.
"A man like that should never have been allowed to become a father," Maria says coldly. "Family is such an important part of life. A father is meant to protect his family, and that man, even without meeting him, has not done that. I'm glad that your niece has you to take care of her."
"I try my best," Qrow shrugs. "I never exactly expected to become the sole carer to a kid. Hell, that was the opposite of what I expected. Tai was... he was so excited to be a dad. I thought I would have ended up being the drunk uncle or some shit, but here I am; having sworn off alcohol and being the single parental figure in my niece's life."
"Should someone go after Yang?" Ren asks. Qrow shakes his head.
"She just needs time to clear her head. If she's not back in two hours or so, I'll go out and find her. I'd rather she didn't pulverise her knuckles again," the weary man tells them.
Sure enough, two hours later, Qrow heads out to go find Yang. Another hour and a half later, they come back, Yang rubbing bloody knuckles and pointedly ignoring the tear tracks on her face as her uncle steers her back to the house.
The rest of the day is spent quietly relaxing around the house. Ren meditates while Nora tries to distract him. Oscar chops wood for Qrow mindlessly outside, trying to tap into a semblance of any sort. Rosa looks through all the photos intently while Maria and Blake read the various books on one of the shelves. Qrow cooks up dinner, and Yang sits quietly on the couch watching TV with her knuckles cleaned of blood and bandaged. Jaune and Weiss join her on the couch, content to just sit in the silence.
The next day is more of the same, with a few board games played, and Rosa goes out into the forest to test herself against the Grimm on the island.
On the third day at the Branwen-Xiao Long house, a knock is heard on the door. When Qrow answers, he comes face to face once again with a drunk Taiyang Xiao Long.
"Let me see her," the drunkard begs.
"I told you, Tai, if you want to see her, get sober. I don't care if you aren't working or if you aren't getting therapy to deal with your shit, but if you want to cross the threshold of my house, you have to be sober. That's the bare fucking minimum," the red eyed man snaps at the blond man.
"She's my daughter, Qrow! I deserve to see her!" he slurs.
Qrow shakes his head with a sigh. "You got custody of her taken away from you fourteen years ago, you don't get to demand anything. I told you that you could see her if you got sober, and you haven't. Go home."
The blond growls and slams his empty hand on the door frame. "I'm not leaving until I see my daughter, Qrow."
Before Qrow can kick him out, Yang storms down the stairs and slaps her father.
"Go! Away!" she yells at him. Shock is painted all over his face as he clutches where she hit him. "I never asked to see you! You have never been a father figure to me, you just try to fucking barge into my life like you have a say in it! News flash! I! Don't! Need! You! I don't fucking need you, and I don't fucking want you in my life! You act like you were the only one to lose people back then, but news flash! So did I! I lost my mother before I could even remember her, and you fucking messed up until mom stepped in and cleaned you up. Then I lost her and my little sister, just the same as you did. You know what's worse though? I should have had you! You should have been there to take care of me, stop me from making stupid decisions that could've gotten me killed. But no, you were so fucking wrapped up in yourself that you couldn't even see that your own daughter needed you! You didn't care about me at all until Qrow took me away from you so that you didn't accidentally kill me from neglect!" Yang pushes him into the front yard and he falls backwards onto his butt, bottle of alcohol rolling away from him on the grass.
"So just fucking leave me alone! Don't you get it? I don't want you in my life! Even if you got sober, even if you got therapy and got your life back together, there is nothing that could heal what you've done! So! Go! Away!" she yells at him, kicking his bottle of alcohol at a tree, walking away angrily, not even caring to look at her shocked father.
Qrow sighs from the doorway as Yang storms past him and up the stairs, slamming the door to her room behind her. The rest of the guests in the house stare out the windows shocked. Yang was outgoing and fiery, but they had never seen her like that before.
"Qrow-" Tai starts to say.
"No, Tai. Just leave," Qrow interrupts. "I told you you could come if you were sober. You aren't. Just, please, leave."
The blond has tears welling in his eyes. "I just-"
"You just wanted to see her, I know. Well, you got that, didn't you? Not my fault that it wasn't everything you imagined. That's all on you. Please, leave. Don't make me call the cops on you," Qrow interrupts again.
Slowly, the drunkard nods and picks himself up off the ground. He walks off, slouched and stumbling, but not without numerous forlorn glances at the house of his only remaining family.
Two days later, Maria is looking through the photos and gasps.
Pulling a photo frame off the wall, she walks over to Qrow. "Who are these people?" she asks him.
Qrow lovingly takes the photo from her and strokes the frame. "Summer and Ruby Rose. I told you about them, remember?"
Maria sinks down into a nearby armchair and rubs at her forehead. "After all this time? Oh, what an idiot I've been," she mutters.
"Something wrong?" Qrow asks.
"No, yes, I... I don't know. This woman, I've never forgotten her face. How can I? How can I forget when that face begged me to look after her baby? Her rose? All this time, my Rosa still had family..." Maria brokenly whispers. If she could cry, she would be weeping for the opportunities her granddaughter had lost, weeping for the woman who lost her life, weeping for a family so broken apart.
"What?" Qrow asks, eyes blown wide, frantically making the connections and searching Maria's face for signs of deceit. "Are you sure?"
"Rosa even looks like her, Summer that is. And when she was a baby, she looked just like this one. I'm almost certain that my Rosa and your Ruby are one and the same," Maria shares quietly.
"Where... where did you find Rosa?" Qrow asks desperately, once again clinging to a hope he'd long ago.
"In a forest. It had snowed and everything was white. I heard crying, and it led me to her. She was wrapped in cloth, and it was splattered in blood, so I looked for the source. It didn't take me too long to find her mother, and she made me promise to protect her. She told me that Rosa would be hunted for her eyes. So I promised that I would raise Rosa as my own," Maria explains brokenly.
"Which forest? Please, tell me which forest," the man begs.
"I don't remember the name, I didn't care about the names back then, why would I? It was to the south of Vale, on the western side. It was parallel with the coastline. I found them... more towards the north-east of the forest, closer to the city," Maria tries to remember. Qrow slumps.
"That was where we found Summer's body. You were right. There is every chance that Rosa and Ruby are the same person." He feels tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, a grin slowly stretching across his face. He reaches out a hand and clutches Maria's. "Thank you. Thank you so much for keeping her safe all this time. Thank you. I'm just happy that I have a chance to have her in my life again."
"What's going on?" Rosa asks as she walks into the room.
Qrow stands up and wraps his arms around her in a hug, letting his tears fall. "After all these years, you're finally home."
Rosa, not knowing what to do, just stands there, letting him hug her and awkwardly pats his back. "Um... Abuela? What's going on?"
"My Ojos Plateados, I never thought I would find your birth family. It seems though, that you found them all on your own," Maria tells her.
Behind her goggles, Rosa's eyes go wide as she puts the pieces together. "I'm... I'm Ruby Rose?"
"We think so," Qrow tells her, pulling back from her. "The facts line up. When Maria found you and Ruby went missing, your appearance, everything. It all lines up. So yes, we think that you're Ruby."
By this point, the rest of the group have started watching the commotion and Yang - hearing that Rosa is her long lost, long believed dead, little half-sister - wraps her arms around her, crying into her hair.
"Welcome home, sis," the older girl murmurs.
Rosa/Ruby doesn't know what to think. In the end, she doesn't say anything, she runs.
She runs into the woods surrounding Patch and doesn't listen to her... her family as they call for her to come back.
She finds herself in a clearing before long, and she can tell it isn't the one Yang frequents by the hoard of Grimm lingering. Growling in frustration (couldn't she just spend some time figuring out what was going on in her life without having to fight for once?) she whipped out the daggers in her boots.
Oscar and Yang - who had chased after her - saw her turn into a storm given a faunus form. Daggers were flung like hail and she reached inside Grimm and ripped apart their skeletons. They could hear cracks as she collides with trees and the wood breaks from the impact. Both watch with horror as they see a new side of their sister. Neither had ever seen her like this.
When the Grimm had all been slaughtered, the dark haired faunus doesn't even seem winded.
"Rosa?" Oscar asks, not trusting himself to say anything else, but hoping that his tone conveys his meaning.
The girl whips around to see the fear in her brother's eyes. "I-I" she stammers. Her head movements betray her eyes flicking between the two, but Oscar grabs her wrist before she can flee again. "I don't know who I am anymore," she whispers. She pulls off her goggles and tears run freely down her face.
Oscar wraps his arms around her and hugs her tightly, Yang joining them after a moment.
"I know who you are," Oscar tells her.
She swipes at the tears on her face. "You do?" Her silver eyes meet his mix of hazel-orange-green, practically begging him to tell her.
"You are Rosa Calavera, born Ruby Rose, my Ojos Plateados. You are the daughter of Summer Rose and Taiyang Xiao Long and half-sister of Yang Xiao Long by birth. You are the granddaughter of Maria Calavera and the sister of Oscar Calavera-Pine by up-bringing. You are the best sister I could have ever asked for, and you are the strongest huntress I've ever met. You are the leader of Team RWBY and the captain of Squad RRAYNNBW. A name change does not change anything, your parentage changes nothing. You are your own person, you just have an even wider support base than before," he tells her.
"Thank you," she chokes out.
Yang speaks up next. "Look, I know I've missed a lot, but, I want to be your sister. I'm not trying to replace Oscar, but, please?"
The black-haired huntress nods. "Yeah. Sure. I mean, we're on the same team and squad. I'm not going to drive you away like that."
Hours later, the three walk back to the house (after Rosa/Ruby had put her goggles back on), and begin the long debate on who has custody of Rosa/Ruby, and what to even call her.
Eventually, it is the girl in question who snaps.
"I'm not going to be either Ruby Rose or Rosa Calavera. I'm both. I was raised as Rosa Calavera, and I am proud of that name. Yes, I want to honour my birth family, but taking on Rose doesn't work as I'd either be Rosa Rose or Rosa Calavera-Rose, both of which sound stupid. Yes, Ruby Calavera or Ruby Calavera-Rose would be okay sounding, I would like to keep the name 'Rosa'. As such, it's going to be first-name Rosa, middle-name Ruby, last-name Calavera. Rosa Ruby Calavera. As for who has custody, don't ask me, but I'm not just going to leave behind Abuela and Oscar, they are my family."
"Your dad isn't going to see it that way," Qrow points out.
"I. Don't. Care," Rosa grounds out. "He's a drunk and he hasn't been in my life for over fifteen years. He doesn't even have custody of my sister. Abuela has raised me exceptionally well, to the level that I'm considered a prodigy in my chosen field. She hasn't abused me or mistreated me. Qrow, you aren't even related to me. Let's just not go into a custody battle to begin with because I'd likely end up going into care, and, let's face it, that is not the place for me."
"It isn't me you have to worry about calling for a custody battle. Its Tai," Qrow informs her.
"Then we don't tell him," Rosa suggests.
"He's your father, he deserves to know that you're alive," Qrow tells her, a scandalised tone creeping into his voice.
"No, he doesn't! He has done nothing to prove that he deserves to be in my life at all! I haven't even met the man, but just hearing about what he's done makes me want to keep it that way. I don't need him in my life, and him being in mine is just poisonous to me. What he doesn't know can't hurt him," Rosa says with finality.
Silence rings through the room for a few moments before Qrow speaks up.
"Okay. If that's what you want, then that's what we'll do."
A/N: Welcome back to the Grimm Reaper. We finally got the family reunion, also a name rationalisation (because always referring to Rosa as Rosa/Ruby is a pain and I'm not doing that for longer than I have to). Quick statement that I don't think spoils anything, this is not the last we see of Taiyang, so don't worry about him disappearing forever.
On another note, I still don't have my computer, but I've managed to get on my mum's while she's dealing with the plumber. I have finished the blanket I was sewing, and have thought up more sewing projects (woo, no boredom!). Also, animal crossing gets updated in a few hours at the time of typing this AN, so I'm hyped. However, disregarding all that, if you need someone to talk to, feel free to PM me, I'll get back to you when I can. Otherwise, I'll see you next week with another chapter.
EDIT: got to this before posting, and I just want to quickly say, thank you all for so much support. Over 130 follows and nearly 100 favourites! This means its blown all of my oneshots out of the water (not surprising) and is fast approaching my two other multi-chapter works (yikes I haven't updated those in a LONG while). Hopefully you all keep enjoying this, because it is such great motivation for me to keep going.
- RebeccaMagic9