A short time later

"So, how have things been going?"

"Better than I thought they would, to be honest. Your advice has helped a lot."

Tai let out a nervous chuckle, picking at his fries. The two of them had chosen a local dinner to meet at this time. "Really? Well, I'm glad to hear that my past mishaps have benefitted someone. The kids are doing well?"

"Yeah, they're great! You haven't seen them yet, have you? Here, I'll show you a picture…"

Jaune rustled through his Pumpkin Pete satchel, eventually pulling his scroll out. He tapped on it twice, bringing up his lock screen. The wallpaper showed Jaune kneeling on one knee behind two children, a boy and a girl, with one arm around each of them and a bright grin. Both children had a light brown complexion and black hair; the boy had dark brown eyes, while the girl had blue eyes. They were both smiling. The boy's expression was more subdued, not unlike Blake's typical smirk. The girl's smile, on the other hand, was earnest and wide, reminding Tai of Yang. Both kids were leaning towards Jaune; their body language made it obvious that the cared about him.

The picture brought a soft smile to Tai's face. The three of them really looked like a family, and he couldn't help but think back to when Yang and Ruby were younger. He was pretty sure he had a picture back home with the three of them in the exact same pose. "That's a lovely picture, Jaune. When did you get it taken?"

"This was yesterday! The three of us went to the zoo. We took this right after we saw the big cat exhibit. As you can see, both of them really loved it! It's a little easier to tell with Julianne, since she takes after Saphron. She really wears her heart on her sleeve. Adrian is more like Terra, so he's a little more reserved. It took a little more time for him to open up to me. Actually, that kind of brings me to something I wanted to ask you about."

"Fire away."

Jaune hesitated before speaking. "How did you support Ruby and Yang when they were just starting out at something? Like, they hadn't been doing it long enough to improve, but you didn't want to have to lie to them about how good they were?"

"Dad! Dad!"

Yang burst into Tai's study, shattering his focus into pieces. He leaned back from his computer, the paper he was reading forgotten, and turned to face his daughter. He took note of her hands, which were positioned behind her, like they were holding something. She was attempting to hide a smile – not something she'd ever been very good at.

"Hi Yang, what do you need?"

Yang swung her hands out from behind her back, revealing a plate piled high with freshly baked cookies.

"Remember how I said I was going to learn how to make chocolate chip cookies for Ruby, but I messed up the recipe? I gave it another shot! Do you want to try one?"

"Of course, Yang. Thank you." As he took a cookie from the plate, Tai's hearted warmed at his older daughter's thoughtfulness. Summer's birthday was next week, and Yang, knowing that Ruby tended to struggle around this time of year, had taken it upon herself to learn how to make Summer's chocolate chip cookies. While Tai usually made them anyways and had offered to help Yang, she'd refused, stating that she 'wanted to be the best big sister she could be'. Especially knowing that Yang was also affected by Summer's passing, Tai found himself amazed at the resolve she showed to care for Ruby.

While the gesture itself was admirable, Yang's past attempt at baking had been…well, suffice to say baking was not Yang's strong suit, at least at the moment.

Tai took a quick glance at the bottom of the cookie. Very dark brown, but not charred. It might be a little better than last time…

A quick glance at Yang's hopeful face.

He bit into the cookie.

Dense. Hard. Dry. The chocolate chips had been so overcooked, they were nearly devoid of flavor. No discernible difference from her previous attempt.

"They've gotten much better, Yang! I can tell you put a lot of effort into following the recipe more closely."

Yang smiled from ear to ear. "Really? Here, let me try one!" She grabbed one off the plate, taking a bit quickly. Immediately afterwards, a grimace crossed her face.

"Ew! I don't think they're very good, dad. Are you sure that I've gotten better?"

Tai eyed the glass of water sitting on his table. But he didn't take it.

"Of course, sweetie."

Yang rubbed the back of her neck. "Well, if you say so, I'll keep trying. I won't give any to Ruby until I think they taste good, though." Turning around, she carried the plate back towards the kitchen, shutting the door behind her.

The second the door closed, Tai lunged for the glass of water.

"Really? Yang's chocolate chip cookies are incredible, it's weird to think she could have ever been bad at making them…"

"It took her quite a few tries to get them right. The third time she cooked them, I had to go to the doctor the next day. While she didn't definitively say I had food poisoning, she advised that I refrain from eating whatever had caused my condition, as it was likely "a hazard to my health'."

"Did you?"

"What do you think?"

Jaune took a second to think. "No?"

Tai nodded. "I ate two more batches before I had one that I could honestly say I enjoyed eating. One time, I even threw up after she'd gone to her room. But I knew I couldn't let her see that. Could you imagine the effect that would've have on her confidence? Of course, no one's a baking master when they first start out, and the first few times you might not even improve, since you're just getting used to things. The most important thing is for them to keep trying.

However, a kid probably doesn't have the life experience to understand not being good at something initially doesn't mean you can't improve with practice. So, you need to build up their confidence until you know they'll be able to handle direct criticism without being deterred. Up until that point, it's best to let them be their own worst critics."

"Right, otherwise they'll take it personally," Jaune replied. "My youngest sister, Marie, is a fantastic poet now, but her first few poems certainly weren't masterpieces. I made the mistake of telling her I thought the grammar could use some work, and she didn't write anything for two weeks! Even after she got the confidence to start writing poems again, it took another month before she felt comfortable sharing her work with me again. Kids are so impressionable."

"Ah, so you've learnt that lesson already." Tai smiled. "Why are you asking me for help then?"

"I suppose I just wanted a second opinion," Jaune said. "Even though things have gone well so far, I'm still not very confident with this. It's also a rather timely topic; Adrian has been making drawings for a few weeks now. Being honest, he hasn't improved much for the amount of time he's been spending on it, even by the standards of someone his age, but I've been trying to be supportive regardless. Even though I know it's the right thing to do, it still helps to hear it from you.

"Don't worry, it's natural to feel that way." Tai's voice was full of compassion. "Impostor syndrome is something every parent goes through, and I feel like it goes double if you're on your own. I struggled with it a lot when I was raising Ruby and Yang, and I don't think it ever really went away. I just had to trust myself. Something I found helpful when I wasn't sure about a decision was to ask myself, 'Did I give it my best effort, with what I knew at the time?' If I could say yes to that, it usually helped me not dwell on things."

"As for whether or not you're doing the right thing with Adrian's art, you definitely are. Just keep supporting him and be patient. It's all worth it when they succeed."

"Uncle Jaune?"

Adrian's quiet voice echoed through the kitchen, even more timid than usual. Jaune turned around and walked over to him, having just put tonight's dinner in the oven. He noticed the piece of paper Adrian's hands, held facing down.

"Hi Adie, whatcha got there?"

"A drawing…"

He hadn't shown Jaune any of his art in a couple of weeks, so Jaune was curious if he'd improved. Carefully taking the piece of paper from his hands, Jaune flipped it over and examined the drawing on it.

The perspective was much better, the colours more realistic. Adrian had clearly been studying his art fundamentals, likely with the online courses that Velvet had suggested.

But it was the subject of the drawing that caught Jaune's attention.

"…I've been working on this one for a really long time."

"…"

"Uncle Jaune?"

Jaune felt tears beginning to form at the edges of his eyes. The drawing showed the three of them together at the zoo, just like they'd posed in their picture. Adrian had also drawn Saphron and Terra, kneeling on either side of the trio. Everyone was smiling.

It was titled My Family.

"Adrian, this is…. this is amazing. Can I keep it?"

For a second, Jaune caught a glimpse of a smile wider than he'd ever seen on Adrian's face.

"Yeah. Um…I'm really happy you like it."

His face had settled back to his typical neutral expression, but Jaune knew that he'd seen how happy Adrian really was about Jaune's reaction. As he watched Adrian leave the room, he thought about how he'd almost told Adrian that he might want to consider a hobby other than drawing. I'm so glad I didn't.

Using a couple of magnets, he put the drawing up on the fridge. A lovely drawing of our little family…

Sorry this took so long to update; life got a little messy for me. Things are better now, though! I'll do my best to keep roughly weekly updates, but it might not be possible every week; I hope you all understand. Trying to force myself to keep up with a schedule was starting to get stressful, and I felt like it was compromising the quality and creativity of my writing, plus I wasn't really enjoying it. I'm had fun writing this chapter though, and I'm pretty happy with it too! Not having to restrict myself to having all of Tai and Jaune's conversations happen over a single meeting really helped me come up with ideas for the chapter theme, so I'll probably switch the setting every few chapters or so.

Having confidence in your past decisions can be tricky sometimes, yeah? Tai's 'Did I give it my best considering the circumstances?' is based on my personal strategy for when I find myself dwelling on choices I've made in the past. Do you all have any tricks you use for dealing with that sort of thing?

Thank you so much for all your support! See you all (hopefully) next week!

-Linen