Qrow was always gentle with her. Their first day together as partners he protected her. When her powers, mysterious and terrifying, began to develop, he comforted her. When she fell in love with him, he tried his best to love her back.

A bird with bloody eyes swoops down on Summer Rose, plucking the earring right out of her grasp. It had fallen out; she was trying to finagle it back into her earlobe. "Hey!" she shouts, raising a fist at the bird. "Give that back! Jerk!"

They're alone in the park, so no one can witness her shouting at a raven. Or the raven laughing uproariously at her attempts to catch him.

The raven swoops down again, but this time he lands on two feet and his wings wrap around Summer in a crushing hug. He's a man again, laughing at her, and she's laughing too because she could never stay mad at him for long.

They are both so lucky, the Branwen siblings. So lucky to find the humans who can't stay mad at them, who understand the lack of malice in a predator's actions.

He kisses her sweetly, smirking when she nips at his lower lip with her teeth.

"You're early for our date, partner," he says, taking pleasure in the way her hair feels between his fingers. He strokes through the length of it, taking pleasure in the sensation, the silky feeling, the trust in her letting him touch her at all. Qrow takes the earring and fastens it back where it belongs, and then kisses her again for good measure.

"So are you," she points out.

He wants to love her, in that moment, even though he can't. Both he and his sister share the same mentality- they can be loyal, viciously so. Taiyang is his sister's man, Taiyang is his man. Summer is his woman and she is Raven's woman- sort of, when they aren't trying to tear each other apart. The women are too similar in all the wrong ways, arrogant and aggressive and ambitious.

Mine, they think, staring at their partners with hunger that lies beyond a human's ken. It goes far beyond the magpie habits, the dozen rings on his fingers and the quills rattling on his sister's hair and the time Ozpin found them both outside the walls, scouring the dead for trinkets and pulling their boots from blue feet, past the first stages of necrosis. Mine.

He'd follow Summer to the end of the earth if she asked him.

But love?

He isn't sure he knows what it means, what it feels like. He's never felt it, or wanted it. He just has people that are his, that he doesn't want to share with anyone else.

He asks Summer if she understands it.

Arms linked together, they stroll through the park like any other pair of lovers. "Your sister said the same thing," she says, sounding rueful. "I'm not going to pretend I understand how your sibling rivalry works-"

"Calling it a rivalry is a little unfair to her, since I'm so obviously winning."

"But I know I like you a lot. I don't know if it's love, but... well, I'm not asking you to marry me, Qrow." She looks up at him. "But I want to stay with you. Just for a little longer. Can we do that?"

"Of course."

He leans down and kisses her, one more time.

Ruby was born a little bit after that, with the hunger for shiny things, eyes gleaming like the edge of a blade, or a silver ring.