Qrow sat in the Atlas prison cell starting at the ceiling, kicking his legs across the floor. His mind still reeled in shock and remorse over the events of the day that led him to this point.
'Just when I thought finally, something might be different...' he lamented as he stroked the pin that, until recently, had its home on his friend's lapel.
'... This sucks.'
Qrow, after a life of unshakable misfortune, had finally found his best shot against his own curse. A good luck charm. A foil by the name of Clover; even that stupid name of his all but rubbed in Qrow's face a taste of a life without the burden of his foreboding semblance. And yet, there was still such a softness about him. A genuine, earnest compassion and charismatic pull alongside his luck.
Qrow sank his teeth into his lips and he felt another wave of anger and grief briefly turn his heart to stone. A deep grunt escaped his lips as his fists balled up with all the strength they had left and trembled in his lap.
"Hey Qrow?" A voice called out from an adjacent cell. "That wasn't you. This is all Ironwood."
"Save it Robyn," he groaned.
As he sat there, with dangerously little to take his mind off of his recent companion's life slipping away in his arms, he ruminated in memories of the man.
"You win... Again." Qrow sighed as he tossed his hand onto the cargo container he and Clover had used for a makeshift table.
Clover grinned as he gathered up the cards and began to shuffle the deck for another round.
Qrow watched him and let out a laugh. "You know, pitting me against you in a game of pure luck counts as 'inhumane treatment' in the Atlesian military code, right?"
Clover laughed heartily as he began dealing the cards once more. "Not when my offer of a thumb war instead is still on the table," he teased.
"Right..." Qrow admitted, rolling his eyes. "That would be unlawful use of force."
The two carried on in jest as they drew their hands and played through yet another anti-climactic round.
"It's just not in the cards for me," Qrow sighed, tossing his cards down in futility.
Clover, now holding onto his uncontested lead even more strongly, gathered the cards up once again. "I meant it you know. We can stop if you want."
"Nah," Qrow shook his head. He grinned mischievously to his opponent. "I wanna see just how long it'll take you to loose one."
Clover laughed and re-shuffled. "It's all just probability after all, Qrow." He met his gaze with a sharp grin and began dealing out yet another hand. "I like a man who pushes his odds."
"Hey, tall dark and brooding!"
Clover approached the bar with a chipper grin and pulled up a wooden stool next to Qrow, who was sitting alone in a desolate corner of the otherwise lively establishment. "I thought you said you didn't do that anymore."
Qrow lifted the glass up to Clover's face and offered it to his nostrils. "... Soda."
Clover smiled and looked away, not even bothering with a waft of the beverage. He sat his own in front of him, a cup of coffee he'd walked in with. "Well, I hope I'm not intruding," he said as he sipped from his own drink.
Qrow shook his head. "It's fine. I just wanted to g- hey what are you doing?"
Clover had knelt down to the seat next to him and came back up with a coin in hand. "Heads up," he said with a grin.
Qrow simply laughed and shook his head. "Lucky you," he teased.
After a moment, Qrow turned to look at the coin as it now sat, face up once again, in front of his companion. "... Must be nice."
Clover's eyes flicked towards the brooding Qrow. Thinking to lighten his mood with jest, he turned to him and deflected. "Not really. I mean, most places in Atlas don't even take physical money anymore- and even if they did, this is hardly enough t-"
"Not what I meant." Qrow replied dryly.
Clover broke his gaze and turned down to look at the lid of his coffee cup. "... I know," he acquiesced.
In the distance the sound of a crash and thud burst out as one patron's bar stool collapsed from under them. Embarrassed, they shot up and began collecting their items from the ground as their friends laughed and workers rushed to help and to clean up the area.
Qrow pointed to the scene and faced Clover to illustrate. "That's what I meant."
"... What?" Clover turned back to him and blinked, visibly surprised. "Qrow," he laughed. "That wasn't you."
"Oh come off it, Clover," Qrow shot back, disinterested in hearing any contradiction. "It follows me everywhere I go."
Clover sighed as he blinked at the sullen man, staring into his crimson eyes. He wanted to speak, but by now he'd gotten a good enough read of Qrow's mannerisms to know when he would and would not likely be convinced by gentle persuasion.
But he liked to push his odds.
Suddenly, an idea seemed to take hold over Clover as he shot his head to the bartender and waved him over. "Hey barkeep. Question."
The stocky, middle-aged man obliged and walked over to the pair. "Hm? How can I help ya?"
"This bar- how long has it been operating in Mantle?"
"Eighty-seven years as of... last month, I believe." The man nodded back.
"And in that time, how many of these stools have the owners replaced?"
The man smiled and shrugged in response. "Not a single one in the few decades I've been working here."
Clover nodded. "Thanks. That's all."
He turned to face Qrow, wearing a victorious grin. "... Still think your semblance was the culprit?"
"Oh don't give me this crap, Clover." Qrow shot out of his seat in frustration. "Of course it was!" He glared back and pointed a finger at him. "You have no idea what it's like living with this... curse!"
That's what it was. It was an unavoidable, inescapable draw towards unfavorable circumstance. And here Clover Ebi was, a doofus blessed with nothing but good luck and happy accidents, lecturing him on his own semblance?
Clover leaned away from the argument and raised his hands incredulously. "Listen to yourself," he pointed out. "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all of Remnant," he began, gesturing his hands to the rustic establishment they sat in, "an old bar stool breaks, and you blame yourself for it?"
Qrow's mouth eased for a moment as he tried and failed to conjure an answer.
"Qrow, I'm sorry but the only 'curse' you have," he emphasized with air-quotes, "is your own outlook."
At that, Qrow's face twisted in anger. '... Who the hell does he think he is?!' He was not about to let this naive, annoying kid condescend to him on top of all of the misfortune his everyday life brought.
"Bullcrap!" He shot back. "I bet you think it's just like that for everyone, huh?" Qrow's hand gestured to the coin at the table. He threw his arms out as he stormed about the area they sat in and continued his own lecture on luck.
"Everywhere they go, people just walk around covered in sunshine and rainbows! Cars stop on the street for them to pass, coins fall out of sky and into their pocket and nothing bad happens, ever. Is that how you think the world really works?!"
"I think..." Clover started plainly, "you let your blessings go unappreciated," He looked into Qrow's eyes, dressing him down with earnest sincerity and watched as the man stood motionless for a couple seconds, sighed heavily and sat back down with a grunt, seemingly lost for any rebuttal beyond a simple dismissal.
"Tch... Typical."
Clover let out a light sigh as well and pouted his lips to the side. He turned his glance away from his companion and towards the bar table. "But... if you do want to know how I think about my semblance, I'd be happy to oblige."
Qrow, otherwise unmoved in response, shook his head. "You're going to tell me no matter what I say... aren't you?"
"Sounds like a 'yes' to me!" Clover laughed and a smile lit up across his face once more. He took another sip of his coffee- the action of it had always felt like it helped jog his thoughts.
"Luck affects... the random chance of an outcome taking place," Clover explained, pausing to search for his words. "How we rationalize that outcome, however, is up to us." He produced the coin he happened to receive a few moments ago. "You flip a coin." He pointed the coin at Qrow, captivating his gaze. "Heads, I win; tails, you win."
"... And it'll come up heads." Qrow responded, lost on the point of what the man was trying to illustrate.
"It very well may-..." After a second's hesitation Clover amended his reply. "Okay, it probably will," he conceded. "But if I ask every single person in this bar to flip a coin..." His lead angled forward as he approached his point. "Are you going to tell me you think that every single one of those would come up heads? What about all of Mantle? All of Solitas. Of Remnant."
Qrow's gaze softened, his eyes growing less narrowed.
"Luck has its limits. At a certain scale, probability takes over and everything averages out." Clover tossed the coin back onto the floor behind them, neither huntsman bothering to investigate its face. "On the scale of our lives as a whole, Qrow, it's just a coin toss."
Qrow shifted in his seat with a stubborn eye roll. Though he wanted to summon a facetious reply, he drew blank and opted simply to slouch and nod along. He had to concede, the man had a point. That naive, annoyingly chipper doofus had a point.
"Luck plays a part, true, but it's not what governs our lives." A steady hand rested itself on Qrow's shoulder and Clover caught his gaze once more. "Qrow, we govern our own lives. Your semblance is a tool, not a death sentence. And fortune isn't what happens to us- it's what we take those events and turn them into."
"I get it, I get it..." he whined, nonetheless bearing an appreciative smile to his friend. "You win... Again."
Qrow leaned back in the bench of the locker room used by the Ace-Ops and their new trainees. Clover, finishing up settling in his uniform for today's exercises, stood just feet away from him.
As the elite huntsman was putting on his socks, Qrow's eyes narrowed in on a mark crawling up the side of his leg from behind.
Catching his glance, Clover spun his leg around to reveal a large, discolored indentation snaking along a diagonal path up the back of his thigh, ending just below his knee. "My mistake," he laughed. "I forget when people aren't expecting to see it."
"The hell happened...? It looks like you tried kickboxing with Nora spitting lightning."
Clover laughed off the remark. "It was just a glancing blow."
"That doesn't look like a glancing blow," he replied more intently eyeing the indent around the scar. Any 'glancing blow' surely would have left no trace after the healing effects of his aura had patched up the injury. It had to have been broken.
"You should have seen what glanced me, then." Clover replied simply with a wink.
"Clover Ebi, man of mystery," Qrow teased.
He sat down and pulled the sock up his leg then slipped it into his boot. "... I got sloppy."
In one of the rare moments when that confident smile of his was buried, Qrow could detect an uncomfortable memory pain Clover's face.
"It was in my younger days... Third year at Altas Academy, fifth semester. My team and I set out for camp in one of our field training missions. I couldn't sleep."
He began to work at his laces as he told Qrow the story of his scar. "I went out to scout out for any danger... and. Well," he trailed off, pausing halfway up his boot.
"You found it." Qrow guessed, eyebrows furrowing as he watched the face of Clover Ebi.
"It found me." He returned to his boot. "And it followed me back to camp- A megoliath versus four green huntsman hopefuls on a training exercise," he recanted, shaking his head. "By then Atlas guard were on their way, but still..." He bit his lip before continuing. "I'm just glad I was the only one it trampled."
Qrow watched silently for minutes more before he spoke. "Geez..." After a moment of consideration, he opted for praise. "And at that age, you survived a megoliath encounter?"
"That doesn't matter." Clover replied sharply as he hastened his work on fastening his boots.
"You're strong, Clover."
"My team could have fallen apart! People could have gotten hurt."
After a long pause, Qrow shook his head and rested his hand on Clover's shoulder. "Didn't you tell me once never to deflect a compliment?" He stared him down, a look of smug satisfaction splaying across his face as he smiled.
Clover stared at him for a moment in contemplation before rolling his eyes and returning to finish up his laces. Lightly, he sighed a defeated breath and rose from the bench seat, turning back to offer his hand to Qrow. "You win," he admitted in a teasing voice.
Qrow took his hand and stood up. As they walked side by side in the halls of Atlas Academy, Qrow could still picture the gash and the events that caused it as Clover described. 'Guess it's not all about luck,' he reflected.
Qrow focused back on the ceiling of the Atlas prison cell, still kicking his legs across the floor.
After a life of hidden fortune and buried blessings, had finally met his best shot at overcoming his curse. A reminder. A friend by the name of Clover, who had had left him with a lesson: Fortune isn't what happens to us- it's what we take those events and turn them into.
He chipped away at the silence that had permeated their holding cells with a sigh. "Hey, Robyn." He called out. "... Thanks."
After a moment suspended in silence, the huntress responded. "Don't worry about it." A second later a heavy sigh escaped her lungs.
"It was Ironwood. Not you."
Qrow exhaled a sharp puff of air. "I know."
And James would take the fall.
For right now though, he needed to regroup. His mind shifted and he no longer focused on the tragedy of the earlier events, moving instead to his short-term goals: escaping the Atlesian prison holdings with Robyn, finding Ruby and her friends, and - possibly - even finding Ozpin once again. He would need all the luck he could get, and the more friends he had on his side, the better their odds would even out.
"Really. Thanks, Robyn."
Clover Ebi, his off-the-books 'partner' in the cold winds of Solitas, was gone, but he'd taught Qrow to find his own fortune in the people around him, to cherish the relationships he'd made and to never again let a blessing go unappreciated.