Date written:

(I) Feb. 10, 2016 – Feb. 13, 2016 (3 days) (2,428 words)

(II) Feb. 13, 2016 – Feb. 16, 2016 (3 days) (2,799 words)

(III) Feb. 17, 2016 – Feb. 19 (2 days) (2,047 words)

Chapter Word Count: 7,274 words

Total Word Count: 13,907 words

Posted on FanFiction: Feb. 19, 2016

A/N: After the last chapter, where it was narration-heavy, this one ended up being dialogue-heavy, and I've always struggled when it comes to dialogue, so this portion ended up taking way longer than my usual pace. There's just something disorienting about juggling the personality projection of multiple people at once. General action is all fine and good for me, but speech requires… well, as Leonardo DiCaprio has said, "We need to go deeper." That's what it felt like for me.

/ — — CHAPTER 2 — — \

Visitation

I

His Scroll vibrated in his pocket. He took it out and received the call without looking at the caller's identity. He didn't need to; Taiyang was tucking up the girls in bed and his current boss had already contacted him earlier today about an emergency job he'd been "volunteered" into, which meant an early rise in the morning (Joy…). No one else had his private number except for a few informants, and right now he only tasked one with a simple job.

The voice on the other end merely said, "Qrow, the woman woke up."

"Okay." He mulled the info over as he finished the half-empty glass of whiskey in his hand. Waking up after a dangerous case of Aura exhaustion just three days after the incident. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't impressed. "How is she?"

"Better than expected. In truth, she was only awake for about fifteen minutes before we had to sedate her."

"Trouble?"

"She reacted poorly to the loss of her arm."

The only sign of a wince on his face was the slight sinking of his right cheek as if he were sucking it towards the center of his tongue. He looked at the empty glass, tipped it a little to the side, and watched the two tiny ice cubes within skating to where gravity led them. The bottle next to him was opened but empty.

He let out a small sigh through his nose, set the glass on the counter he had been leaning on, and moved towards the living room windows.

"I hope that isn't the only reason why you called at this hour," he said, eyes on the curtained window that had a wide shot of the house's porch and the front lawn. It was night time now, but the time he looked through this window earlier, the orange tint of dusk made everything look like autumn had come early this year, saturating the area in a color he had a hard time looking at without being drunk first. He'd always hated fall. Bad things always happen during fall.

"No," Tushar said, sounding a little subdued, "it isn't, my friend. She had woken up at about ten in the morning. Fiona was the one to call it in. After sedating her, I still had paperwork to do, so I allowed Fiona to stay there and message me again when she wakes. At lunchtime, she was up, but silent. Fiona told me she never took her eyes off her stump."

"Uh huh."

He could understand that. When he came to the scene of the carnage, the girls were dazed and temporarily deaf from a nearby explosion, but other than a few scrapes and bruises, they were fine. The teen, however—the girls' savior, as Yang had immediately pointed out—looked half-dead after he took care of the Grimm infestation. Her right arm was badly mangled, and a quick check of her Aura level made it clear that there was no saving that arm. Her Aura would stop the bleeding, but that was as far as it would go.

She was young, but trained to be a Huntress. Her weapon of choice was a pair of gauntlets equipped with buckshot Dust shells. The design was simple, the end result was deadly, especially if the user was well-trained in martial arts. Yang had said she moved like her dear old dad. Losing that right arm would mean losing her fighting style as well.

"When I talked to her," Tushar said, "she called me by name, which I find to be quite an odd occurrence."

There was a certain tone in his voice that signaled a few alarm bells in his head.

Oh dear Lord, here we go, Qrow thought. The ass just loves hearing his own voice.

"Let me guess," Qrow said, "you never told her your name yet she knows it right away."

"… yes, though you could've at least—"

"Save the storytelling to someone who cares, Tushar. Just tell me what I asked you to do."

The Faunus sighed through the line. "Very well. Her knowing my name wasn't the only odd thing about her."

Oh gee willickers, Tushie, I never would've guessed.

"She said she's a first-year student at Beacon Academy and was on a mission in Mountain Glenn before all this. She didn't elaborate the specifics of said mission."

"Classified information."

"Yes. A popular saying with you Huntsmen, I guess."

Qrow looked away from the window and settled down on the nearest couch. "Anything else she said?"

"She asked for the condition of the two girls, and I informed her that they were all right. She looked quite relieved about that."

He thought of the explosion and the Dust shells loaded in the gauntlets. A few pieces of the puzzle came into place.

"She also said she wanted to contact her superiors right away. Get debriefed, find out what happened to her team. Team RWBY, she said. And that's ruby with a W, not U."

"Did you ask her why she was there, at that abandoned house? If I'm following this right, she told you she was on a mission in Mountain Glenn."

"Yes, I did, and according to her, she doesn't remember."

How convenient…

"Said she was fighting a, and I quote, 'an annoying midget with an annoying grin and an equally annoying umbrella,' end quote. She got knocked out and when she came to, she found herself in the middle of the forest in Patch."

"You think she's telling the truth?"

"She looked uncomfortable telling me this part, because I think she suspected I wouldn't believe her."

Qrow really wished he'd be more to the point. "And did you?"

"I told her what she wanted to hear." Which was his way of saying, 'I lied to her to make her feel better.'

He leaned back on the couch and was in the process of putting his feet up on the coffee table, but caught himself from doing so midway. Summer always hated it when he—

Ah fuck. Fuck!

He took a deep breath through his nose, closed his eyes. Then he put his feet on the ground. And here he thought he was over it.

"Hello, Qrow? You still there?"

One elbow on the couch arm, eyes still closed, hand on his face, then using said hand to comb through his hair and stop at his nape. "Yeah," he said, and he realized his voice was gruffer than usual. In a more normal tone, he continued, "Still here."

If Tushar noticed something, he didn't bring it up. "She was walking the trail until she ends up in civilization. She didn't expect at all to find your nieces there."

"I figured that was the case. Foolish of her to play the big damn hero, though."

"You make it sound like you wanted your nieces to die."

His wince this time was a lot more profound, more noticeable. If it hadn't been for that mysterious Jane Doe showing up when she did, he would've returned to Tai to help with funeral processions than with taking care of the clearly traumatized girls. That fact, that he arrived late to save them, haunted him a little, so as was the case for every new thing that haunts him, he spent the last few days chasing the bottom of a glass. It didn't push the problems away, but it sure as hell made them more tolerable to deal with.

"That came out wrong," he amended. "I meant she should've been more careful."

"Isn't that a given when fighting Grimm?"

"Yeah, but some people are naturally cocky." It was a damn miracle Tai hadn't picked the short end of the stick with his asinine stunts through the years. He must be luck incarnate. "Well, did you happen to call her superiors, by the way? If she's telling the truth, then a simple inquiry at Beacon would be enough."

Tushar said nothing.

"Hello?" Feeling a little concerned, Qrow leaned forward on the couch, both forearms resting on his knees. "Hello, Tushar?"

"Still here," the Faunus said, though Qrow was quick to note the change in his voice. What was once so confident and theatrical was now subdued and unsure. Though a part of Qrow believed that he went silent because it added drama, probably thinking that if Qrow could do it, then he could as well. Him and his fucking theatrics. "There was just one more thing I hadn't mentioned. Hell, just thinking about it confounds me."

"Should I brace myself?" he said, with equal parts seriousness and sarcasm.

Instead of continuing the tension-freeing banter, Tushar went right ahead with the sucker punch. "She said her name is Yang Xiao Long."

Qrow stayed silent—time had become very subjective now, so he didn't know how long exactly—and so did Tushar, deciding to allow dead air between them, a moment of total silence for the tired, drunken Huntsman to process that little bit of intel. He thought of the woman, her bright blonde hair, the formation of her face. Looking at it—hell, just recalling it—feels like looking at a childhood photograph. A bit of nostalgia, a bit of pain, a bit of longing. But he disliked being reminded of that person, now more than ever.

"Bullshit."

"A lot of this sounds like bullshit, Qrow, I know. I even went ahead and inquired Beacon if they had a student in their roster with the name Yang Xiao Long, and the closest match they were able to pull up was your team member, Taiyang. No one named Yang Xiao Long is currently enrolled in Beacon."

"Her team?"

"None had that team name. And I didn't think to ask for her teammates' names when I talked to her."

"So she's lying, then."

Tushar said nothing.

Qrow sighed. "Do you think she's lying?"

"I know a liar when I see one, Qrow. It's what I'm good at, and my gut says she's telling the truth. Or at least she believes herself to be who she says she is."

A headache was slowly forming. He tried to nurse it with a gentle massage, but it wasn't enough. What he wouldn't do to be drinking again and pretend Tushar had never called him tonight. "A girl who has the same name as my niece and claims to be a student of Beacon, which apparently has no records of her whatsoever."

"And that's about it, Qrow. What do you want to do now?"

"What I wanna do? What are you asking me for?"

"I'm a doctor who does favors for his Huntsman friend from time to time. I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm just asking what you want to do now knowing what you know."

"Shit, I don't know." He only kept tabs on her because the circumstances of her being in the right place at the right time was suspicious. A Huntress-in-training, very low on Aura, just so happened to be taking a stroll—or at least in this case, heading back to civilization—and then be at the right moment to save his nieces from certain death? He was thankful, of course, so was Taiyang, but trust was another thing entirely. It didn't help matters that she looked somewhat like—

He shook his head. "Just… keep an eye on her," he said finally. "I wanna think about this a little more."

"Don't take too long now, Qrow. I can't hold her here forever."

The conversation was done. They said their goodbyes and Qrow ended the call. Whatever energy that kept him sitting upright for the most part had disappeared a second later, and the arm holding the scroll swung down to between his knees like a puppet arm with cut strings. His other arm stayed where it was, elbow on knee, while its hand tried to support his head and cover his whole face at the same time.

"First time I've seen you this slumped after only a half-bottle of whiskey."

On the stairs going down, Taiyang entered the room, a lopsided smirk on his face.

Qrow snorted. "Oh please. If anything, alcohol is my coffee. It sure beats the shit they call coffee over at Luntian."

"Should I know the details of that particular story?"

"Only if you tell me that time you've gone to Mistral and somehow lost your pants and all your money."

Tai, eyes wide, one eyebrow cocked, and lips smiling lopsidedly, crossed his arms and then leaned on the wall next to the bottom of the stairs. "I doubt that's what you would call an equivalent exchange."

He smiled, rolled his eyes. "There was this nice looking girl that had the shortest skirt I've seen there, too."

Smile turned to a full blown grin. "Oooooh, now we're talkin'. The girls are asleep so don't leave anything out."

"Let's save the stories for later, Tai. I need to let off some steam."

"The kids are asleep, remember? No call girls, please."

"Fuck you."

"I don't swing that way, either."

"Fuck. You."

"Language! There are children in this house."

"They're asleep like you said, asshole. Besides, I only need to talk this one out."

"Then go see a shrink. The last time I had to listen to your drunken tirades, Pixie-Mixie's bar got wrecked, we got banned, you got into a fistfight with a lamppost, and I never got to finish my beer." He said that, but he went back to the kitchen and inspected the empty whiskey bottle. "Well, at least you won't be drunk this time."

Qrow thought of the girls, that woman, her face, her face, the shotgun gauntlets, the mangled arm, the confusing information… and then that strange Scroll on the kitchen counter, a Scroll he just so happened to pocket after helping stop the woman from bleeding to death before he could get her to a hospital. Was it the face, was it the peculiar circumstances, was it the vast amount of Grimm in the area, that made him do what was amount to stealing private property? He looked at his best friend, whose eyes still twinkled, like the innocence of his teens had never really died.

Tai held up the said Scroll and tilted his head. "Huh. I'm not familiar with this model. Looks slick as hell."

"It's the woman's Scroll."

"Who?"

"You know who."

Tai blinked. "You… stole her Scroll." It was a sentence, not a yes-or-no question.

Sighing, he stood up from the couch. "You got any more whiskey, Tai? I think we're both gonna need it."

II

Taiyang did have more whiskey. He just had to procure one from a secret stash, something he made because raising Ruby influenced him to be very cautious of where he stores his unsafe-for-children things, more so once the little red riding hood started to walk around the house. That Qrow had sometimes procured himself a bottle or two from it without Tai's permission would remain, like the stash, a secret.

Qrow joined Tai at the circular dining table in the middle of the kitchen, sitting himself next to him, as he, Tai, poured each of them a very generous amount of whiskey. They clinked their glasses and drank. Qrow downed his in one shot. Sighing contentedly, he filled his blond friend in on this strange case. A strange unofficial case, which happens to involve a certain blonde woman who sacrificed an arm to ensure Tai's two children would still be alive. He told him everything, the familiarity, the name, the absurdity of it all. He went through three, maybe four or five, glasses already, while Tai was still sipping his second one.

"Well," Tai said by the end of it, looking at his half-finished glass, shrugging, and then chugging it. "That is one hell of a thing."

Qrow groaned a response. He was feeling the whiskey's effect, the warmth flowing through him as if he were relaxing next to a furnace during winter. His Aura started staving off the alcohol's effects, but with a little force of will, he could lessen that battle to a minimum. Sometimes it was a blessing—becoming sober in a few seconds helped in a fight—and sometimes it was a nuisance, like right now. No fucking way was he talking about this sober, not while he still had a hard time processing it.

"You got a picture of her, by any chance?" Tai asked.

Qrow looked at him.

"You always take a picture of someone you don't know but are suspicious of. Later cross-referencing, I guess. So you got one right now, right?"

He nodded and fished out his Scroll. He stopped his finger from pressing the Gallery icon, pondering. Tai still didn't know what the woman looked like—or rather whom she looked like.

Should I warn him?

His sister's sudden departure hit Tai hard, though he never showed it. A Hunstman's job has with it a lot of risks and the death rate is one of the highest for jobs in Remnant, so it wasn't as if he was unprepared for such an occasion where he'd have to wake up with the other side of his bed cold and kempt every night from now on, but that was about death. For Raven, it was about leaving.

In truth, Qrow was unsure how his friend would react to seeing a lookalike of his old lover but with blonde hair.

Hair just like his. Hair just like little Yang upstairs.

He pressed the Gallery icon, ignoring that stupid, crazy thought. But… maybe it was even stupider to go ahead with this without at least a warning. Except he needed someone else to verify for him, to know that he wasn't just trying to see something that wasn't there, and his warning would most likely color Tai's perception of the woman.

The woman's face appeared on the Scroll's little screen. It was taken after they got out of the forest, waiting for the ambulance to finally arrive. Normal procedures required that the injured party not be moved until paramedics arrived on the scene, but with their isolated location and the ever-looming possibility of another Grimm attack, getting out of there and entering the nearest town was the best option for survivability for all involved.

They must've looked pretty stupid to the townsfolk, him carrying two kids—the toddler in one arm, her head on his shoulder, sleeping; the blonde child piggybacking him, her chin pressing on his other shoulder, too shook up to even sleep—and the injured woman in the wagon, which was too small for her, so her heels drew a couple lines on the road between the deeper, more pronounce wheel marks the wagon drew. The woman had been bandaged up the best he could, using his old cape as both makeshift bandages and a tourniquet, but… well, he was glad the wagon was red, but it'd still need a thorough cleaning before the girls ever thought of using it again. In that wagon, bloodied but alive, the woman's face was anything but calm. Was it the pain or was it dreams? He was unsure.

Tried as he might to be objective, that face, somehow able to overlap with his sister's without trying, made him decide to snap a photo, rude as it was. Two small drops of blood still smeared the woman's right cheek and he had no doubt her skin was paler than what was normal for her. It was no formal photo, but it would do.

When Tai saw the photo, he went silent. His eyes narrowed and his lips became a thin line. He remained unmoving, staring intently at the photo, and only snapped out of it when the Scroll automatically turned off its display from prolonged idleness. The look on his face conveyed a man coming out of a hypnotism spell.

He blinked, looked around the kitchen, blinked, looked at the Scroll in his hand, whose grip on the device suddenly got tighter. Then those blue eyes turned towards Qrow. "She looks like Raven."

Qrow nodded, his eyes on his whiskey-less glass. He poured himself another drink, but the bottle ran empty after it reached halfway up the glass. Better than nothing, he supposed. "Yeah, I noticed."

"Her hair is blonde, though."

"Yeah, I noticed," he said again, with sarcasm upped to the next level.

Tai was silent for a while. Then: "I can see why she peaked your interest, but that doesn't explain why you thought to steal her Scroll."

Qrow drank till the last drop. "It's not stealing if I say I took it for safekeeping."

"I think it's still considered stealing if the affected party hasn't given you their consent."

"Details, details."

Tai pursed his lips, but decided to move the topic forward. There was no use crying over spilled milk. He took the woman's Scroll and observed it, like an expert inspecting the authenticity of a relic.

"I definitely have no clue about the model," Tai said, nearing his face to the rear camera. His eyes widened before his lips let out an amazed whistle. "20 megapixels. Real high-tech."

"You sure it ain't two-point-oh you're looking at?"

"No decimal point I can see, and besides, why would they put a zero on if it's just two megapixels?"

"Sleazy marketing strategy. Vacuo does it from time to time."

"Hmm. It's bigger than the usual Scrolls, too."

"It's about five and a half inches in height, two inches and some change across."

Tai gripped it like he would with his own Scroll, which he then took out of his pocket to compare them. He pressed them together, the knuckles of his middle finger butting each other like two rams fighting. "Bigger, longer, and—"

"Please don't make a dick joke."

Tai snorted. "Unlike you, I keep my language in check while the girls are here, asleep or no."

Qrow shrugged. "Could've fooled me."

Tai rolled his eyes and double-tapped the Scroll's screen. Through the gaps in his fingers, Qrow could see the yellow background of the lock screen and when Tai swiped his thumb from the center to the right, a new box popped up, and he frowned.

"Fingerprint protection?" he said.

"Unbelievably high-tech, don't you think?"

"Well, I heard Atlas is developing such a feature for future Scrolls, but most of the feedback I hear is that it's inaccurate. Kind of weird to see it here, though."

"I doubt she's with the Atlesian military."

"Uh huh. Have you tried it?"

"Yeah." The ice in his glass had melted a little, gliding about on paper-thin level of water mixed with whiskey. He wondered if he was desperate enough for more alcohol to drink even a tiny amount of the watered-down stuff. A second later, he decided he was and drank it up. Whiskey was whiskey, and as this conversation of theirs closed in on the climax—with the various clues he had already dug up but refused to admit lest he gives himself further proof that 'crazy' is a trait he shares with his sister—he wished he could go to Tai's stash and gulp down a-whole-nother bottle of liquid fire. "No go. It's locked up tight. Even tried seeing if there's some intact fingerprints on the screen, but it's clean. And I mean completely clean, as if it just came out of the box."

"A fully blown detective, you are." He tapped and swiped the screen some more. "Well, at least we know it's a Hunter Scroll. Civilian ones don't have an emergency mode."

It was an obscure feature for Huntsman Scrolls, bypassing security measures on a locked Scroll, but the downside was limited access. In emergency mode, the only utilities available to the unknown user were direct calls to a designated HQ contact and weapons summoning but with a much more complex procedure because it's being summoned on a different device.

"Hey, wouldn't you know, weapons summoning is as easy as reading a fingerprint," Tai said, still fumbling about with the device like a kid with a new toy. "No service, though, not even on emergencies."

"It's as if that Scroll isn't registered in the CCT account database."

Tai looked at him, one eyebrow rising.

"It's an assumption, Tai, not a fact."

"And here I thought you managed to access the CCT directly and searched its archives."

Qrow leaned back on his chair. "I'm not foolish enough to try that, even when drunk. But it's not a total leap of logic to assume that is the case." He let out a huge sigh, shoulders slumping. "Still, a lot of other things just don't add up about her."

But that was a lie. He already had his suspicions; he just refused to act on them, because it was so incredulous, impossible, that he had a better chance of landing a shot on the shattered moon with a Dust round than this stupid notion of 'future niece traveling back to the past.'

The face that looks similar to Raven? Coincidence.

A Scroll in her possession that looked to be far more advanced tech-wise than the most expensive Scrolls out right now on the market? Maybe she has a friend who hooked her up with a prototype.

The time stamp on the Scroll claiming it was 12 years in the future? Faulty software. Prototype, after all.

No, he was not crazy thinking about this. Definitely not crazy. And no, he was definitely not overly denying it.

"Qrow," Tai said, setting the Scroll on the table, looking at it with a suspicious eye, his head leaning on his closed hand, forehead on knuckles. He blinked once, and then those dark blue orbs turned towards him. "Just who is she, really? You have any idea?"

Yes, I do.

He shook his head. "Not a clue."

His friend smirked, and then leaned back on his own chair. "I think you do. And I also think you think that I might think it's crazy of you to think that idea."

"… huh?"

He rolled his eyes, sighing. "As crazy as it sounds, I think she's Yang from the future." He gestured at the Scroll. "Twelve years in the future, according to the date in there. She'd be, uh… seventeen by then."

"Tai, don't tell me you actually—"

His words were lost when they heard screaming from upstairs.

A moment of panic passed between them, mental images of death, destruction, decimation going through their heads, but then that moment passed and Tai stood up from his seat. It was with haste, but not the sort of haste used for life-threatening emergencies. He clambered up the stairs, two at a time. Qrow followed closely behind, forced to rely on the banister to keep from losing his balance as he climbed. When he reached the top, Tai had already disappeared into the farthest room on the right, turning on the lights and speaking words that helped calm the toddler so that her loud cries dissipate to mere sniffs, coughs, and whimpers. Words like "It's okay" and "It's just a nightmare, it's not real" echoed across the hall.

He was four steps from the open door when little Yang walked out of the room, head bowed, a small bead of tears ready to drop from the outer corner of each eye. She spotted him quickly and wiped away the traces that implied she was on the verge of crying like her sister.

Tai was too busy with calming Ruby down, so he guessed it was up to him. He doubted he'd do anything good, though. He always thought he'd be a terrible father—like right now, giving up before even trying—so he decided to just project the image of a not-so-useless uncle with a drinking problem instead. A stupid thing to do, really—why go through all that trouble to begin with?—but it did help him move forward, kneel down in front of Yang, and asked what was wrong. For whatever reason, it helped immensely.

"Ruby had a nightmare," she said, playing with her hair, which flowed down to her shoulders, some curling outward.

"Aah," he said, glancing inside the room. Ruby was on Tai's shoulder, still whimpering and sniffing but more subdued than a few seconds ago. "Well, why'd you leave the room?"

She opened her mouth, then closed it without saying a thing. A second passed, two, three, and within that time, Yang's eyes darted about: to the bedroom, to her pajama-covered feet, to him, back to the bedroom.

"Bathroom," she finally said, but she wasn't convincing anybody, not after that long pause, and some part of her must've known that already but she tried anyway.

"You still thinking about what happened at that old house?"

Yang's head bowed lower and her hands clenched into fists, tightly gripping the hem of her pajama top. She nodded her head, once, twice, then stopped.

"It's okay, Yang," he said, putting his hand on her head. "The good news is that you two are still alive. Now you know how dangerous it is to go out on your own. As long as you don't do it again, then all's forgiven."

"Still grounded."

He retracted his hand and snorted. "Of course you are! Just because all's forgiven doesn't mean you'll be skipping out on your punishment. You do a bad thing, you get punished. That's just how it is, kid."

She nodded. "What about the girl?"

"Hmm?"

"The girl who saved us? Is she okay?"

"She's… still in the hospital. Don't worry."

"I wanna thank her. Can I?"

"She's still being looked after," Tai said by the door. A glimpse in the room showed Ruby was asleep again and sucking on her thumb. "But you can visit her once she's a little better."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Really."

Neither adult told her what the woman sacrificed to save them.

"Now come on, let's get you back to bed."

"Wait a sec, Tai."

Both blonds stopped, looked at him. The woman's Scroll was in his hand and when he gestured it to Tai, he replied with a nod of understanding.

"We could use a little help, kid. Take a look at this," Qrow said.

"What is it?"

"A new type of Scroll, but we've been locked out. We tried unlocking it, but apparently it wants a girl's thumbprint, not us guys."

"Thumb Prince?"

"Prints, kid. Prints." He put his thumb up and pressed it on the Scroll. "Just do it like this."

"And then?"

"And that's it." He tapped the screen and the fingerprint reader popped up, a black box floating on a background of yellow. His first thought was of a bee. His second, a warning sign.

"Okay." She pressed her thumb on the black spot, and as the Scroll took its time to read the contours of Yang's print, he half-expected the software to reject it and splash the screen with red.

The Scroll vibrated, uttered a low sound like fingers snapping, and the simple yellow background gave way to a picture wallpaper that consisted of four young teens, one of which was the woman—the teenage Yang.

After Yang was tucked in bed and they were downstairs again, Qrow had to listen to his friend's annoyed tirade for a minute or two because he ended up cursing in front of his kid.

III

Qrow exited Tushar's office wishing he had smuggled in his vodka flask instead of surrendering it to lobby security. Damn the hospital rules, he wanted a drink right now. He stood there, hands on his face, eyes closed, trying to regain control of himself before he went to visit Yang—the older Yang, lying on a hospital bed, almost unresponsive for the next two days since she awoke. Even now, after knowing what he knew, the idea that the blonde woman just a few floors above him was his niece twelve years in the future boggled his mind far better and quicker than when he last spoke with Raven.

He breathed once, twice, and slid his hands down to his chin, his neck, and quickly dropped them to sway at his sides as he let out one huge sigh. Passersby who looked at him were either sympathetic or indifferent, but none voiced a thing, asking him if he was okay. They just moved on without another glance and maybe within the next minute, they'd already forgotten about him, too busy with their own problems and woes to give more thought on a complete stranger they saw right outside a famous (or infamous) doctor's office. He was certain they mistook something from his demeanor. Oh sure, he stood right outside a doctor's office looking downtrodden and tired, clothes unkempt from a long day of serving the greater good, and his eyes probably sported dark circles under them and a bit of bloodshot red in them, but that didn't mean he was diagnosed with a terminal condition or something.

Fuck it, he thought, let 'em think what they want to think.

He, however, couldn't express that sort of freedom of thinking on himself, because if he did, then he'd still be in denial. Despite the many attempts he tried to debunk the notion that this new Yang wasn't really Yang, he was surprised to discover that when the ironclad proof of Yang's identity was presented to him, surprise never once came to him. Some part of him had already believed. Believed like Tai fully had, since that night they perused the various pictures in that Scroll's gallery.

Retouching some pictures to make it look like this Yang was a student at Beacon Academy wouldn't be difficult to do, but the gallery was loaded with hundreds of photos in Beacon, each telling a story that slowly played out the pre-initiation meetups, the post-initiation partying, first-day classes, normal teen girl hijinks, and lots of group photos and self-shots (it explained the need for a Scroll to have a front camera, too). And none looked retouched, if at all. Except for a few, but those ones only added captions that further included details of the who, what, where, when, and/or why for the picture. The need to include a hashtag before each word confused him, though. Was that a future trend or something?

The fuck does #selfie mean anyway?

Anyway, what truly put doubt in him was the presence of Ruby—because nobody other than Summer could capture the unique color of those silver eyes—in those pictures. Four girls, including Yang and Ruby, were the main cast of the gallery. A black-haired bookworm who rarely smiled but was subjected to quite a few inopportune photoshoots and a primly girl with white hair and very pale skin that left little doubt she was a Schnee. Four girls, which meant they were a team, which was named RWBY according to what he remembered from Tushar's info-gathering. But Ruby and Yang were both on the same team. He could understand if Yang was supposed to be a third-year and got held back twice, but the thought of the little ball of sunshine being so inept to be at that level was ludicrous. It wouldn't explain how well coordinated she had been when fending off those Beowolves with a very low Aura, either.

That left Ruby getting enrolled to Beacon two years early. Maybe.

There was a story behind it, but that would have to come later. Because he still had some doubts, he had Tushar perform a DNA test, which took both time and a huge chunk from his savings, but if it was to have ironclad proof of a time-traveling relative, then that was money he'd be glad to spend. The results were as he expected already: an exact match with his child niece.

Should I show Tai the results, though?

As he made his way to Yang's hospital room, he pondered over that thought. It was not as if Tai needed more proof to be convinced that he now had two daughters with the same name but with an age gap of twelve years, give or take a few months. Qrow kind of wished his friend would be more cautious like him, but he also kind of wished he'd stay the same, as contradictory as that sounded.

No, he supposed the DNA test would be his little secret. Just something he went the extra mile to help cement the fact into his head that there was a time-traveling person right inside that room where Taiyang Xiao Long just exited and—

Say what now?

He blinked. His eyes weren't playing tricks on him, and at the moment he was mostly sober. Tai really did just come out of Yang's hospital room, closing the door behind him, smiling and looking so at ease, and when the blond saw him down the hall, the smile morphed into a grin and he waved him over.

With a sigh and feeling stupid for not foreseeing this, he briskly walked towards Tai.

"What are you doing here?" Qrow asked, as if things weren't obvious enough. Taiyang plus Yang in hospital equals worried parent visiting his child who's twelve years removed.

And acting like he knew the question was rhetorical, he said, "Nice meeting you, too, Qrow. Didn't expect to bump into you here. Visiting hours is almost over, though."

He gave another sigh. "Is this your first visit, Tai?"

Tai nodded. "Yeah."

"What about the girls?"

"Came here alone. Hired a babysitter."

"I'm guessing you still haven't told Little Sunshine about Teeny Sunshine's arm… and the other thing."

Tai shook his head and crossed his arms. "No on both accounts, but really, Qrow? Teeny Sunshine?"

He shrugged. "Teenager, teen, teeny. It makes sense." A random thought suddenly came to him and he voiced it out without thinking, "Huh, maybe I should change the Little to Tiny."

"Your funeral, then," Tai said, but a second later, he chuckled, saying, "Did you actually make a joke?"

He shrugged again, but he felt a ghost of a smile on his lips.

"But seriously, Tai," he said, his voice now somber. He leaned his back on the wall beside the door to Yang's room, crossing his arms as well. "Why are you here?"

"Visiting her, of course," Tai replied. "I still had to thank her for saving the girls."

"And you didn't tell me, because…?"

"You were busy with a mission and I thought it'd be obvious I'd visit her."

Qrow opened his mouth, but then closed it, sighing a third time. "Yeah, you got me there."

"To be honest, I wanted you with me when I visited, but you weren't answering my calls, and I couldn't wait any longer and… you know."

"Yeah… I do." Glimpsing the door through the corner of his eye, he asked, "How'd she take it?"

"About the whole other stuff?" he said with air quotes. Tai caught on quick to keeping the time-traveling aspect a secret, although they should really think of a better code word than that. "Well, she was shocked to say the least, but I guess she already had her suspicions so she wasn't all wide-eyed and calling bullshit. Heck, I think she was more shocked I knew already."

"And you told her how you knew."

"I had to. I couldn't lie to her about that."

"Didn't expect you to, but…"—here, Qrow looked away, rubbed his nape—"it's gonna be a little tougher talking to her now."

"I don't know. I expected her to be more than a little pissed at me with looking at her Scroll, but she must've understood I had to be sure she was who says she was."

"I see."

"So go on in and talk to her. Like I said, visiting hours is almost over. I believe she'll be happy to see you."

Yeah, she's sure to be happy meeting an uncle who's known her for only five years, but not yet the other twelve.

Qrow said, "If you say so. And visiting hours don't really matter to me. I have a special arrangement with the doctor assigned to her."

"Oh." A pause. Then: "What sort of arrangement?"

"That's up to Teeny to decide. I want to ask her some questions about her circumstances, what she intends to do from now on, the whole nine."

"For what purpose?"

"Tai, whether you accept it or not, Teeny is an anomaly. Her identity is practically a mess right now."

The words at this time remained unsaid, but he got the point across regardless. How her time-traveling came about was a mystery, especially to Yang herself, and because of that, there was no telling if she could return to her own time. Maybe she could, maybe not, and if the latter were to be the case, Qrow wanted her to fall on a safety net than towards an uncertain bottom. He knew he'd feel lost if he ended up time-traveling to the past and meeting familiar faces who meant shit to you because they wore the faces of the people you grew up with yet they would never feel like they did grow up with you. Sure, they could pretend on some level—Tai was determined to make her feel welcomed, if not part of the family as she always was in her old world—but the knowledge that she didn't belong here might forever haunt her. You're the unnecessary cog in a machine, her mind would say; the extra line unneeded in a drawing, it'd say; the novel scene that does nothing but bloat the story as a whole, it'd say; you're something alien, something disposable, and the world will still turn even with you gone. Someone already had her place in this world, and that someone was her younger self. What was her purpose here, then?

Qrow continued, "But I'm here to help her."

Tai most likely hadn't thought that far ahead. His face looked kind of lost, uncertain. Then he nodded. "All right. If there's anything I can do to help, just ask."

"You got two kids to worry about, and I only have to look out for one teenager. I'll be fine, Tai."

"You've never raised teens before, though."

"I teach part-time at Signal, remember? I got experience."

Tai frowned. "Let's just hope that's enough. I'm going on ahead now. I'm leaving her to you, bro."

Tai took one final look at the door, patted him on the shoulder, and walked away. Qrow watched him go, all the way to when he came to the stairs and descended them. Still, he stayed like that for a second, then another passed, a third, fourth, fifth, listening to the whispery background noise of feet shuffling on the concrete floor and the voice of a news anchor shilling out the latest incidents from the world in the nearby rec room. He then gave out another, longer sigh before facing the door next to him. Pushing himself off the wall, putting his hand on the knob, but hesitating to turn it, he thought of what expression he was supposed to have when first meeting Teeny.

He shook his head. Such an irrelevant thought. It probably mattered little at this point. He checked his backpocket and felt the familiar lump of paper that told him the teen behind this door was his niece. He didn't know why he took strength from that. He honestly didn't know.

Really regretting not smuggling that flask in here.

With that thought circling his head, he turned the knob and officially met with his third niece.

"Uncle Qrow! Please tell me you smuggled in some alcohol."