Date written:
(I) June 22, 2016 – June 27, 2016 (5 days) (1,119 words)
(II) June 28, 2016 – July 18, 2016 (20 days) (1,501 words)
(III) July 14, 2016 – July 19, 2016 (5 days) (3,277 words)
(IV) August 5, 2016 – August 10, 2016 (5 days) (2,884 words)
Chapter Word Count: 8,781 words
Posted on FanFiction: August 20, 2016
A/N: If anybody asks, yes, I'm very evil because of this chapter's cliffhanger. Mwahahaha.
/ — — CHAPTER 5 — — \
Residual
I
Taiyang found Qrow in the living room, a large brown bottle in his hand, half of its content most likely churning inside the drunkard's stomach already. The label on the bottle looked familiar.
"Did you raid my stash?"
Qrow, whose attention had been on the news anchor professionally announcing the improvements Atlas and Mistral are doing for the upcoming Vytal Festival Tournament, blinked and then looked at him with bloodshot eyes. He showed no frown, no smirk, no emotion. Just a flat stare that was downright unnerving to look at.
And then Qrow took a swig from the bottle, rotating it a little so he could better see the label, while the drink and drunk kissed without interruption.
He resisted his eyes from twitching. He refused to give his teammate the satisfaction. "You did raid my stash," he said, walking into the living room and sitting down next to Qrow on the couch. Both of them were silent for a while, him not sure what else to say, Qrow too busy feeling the liquid fire in his stomach to bother with any sort of response that's purely verbal.
Tai tried to listen to the news. The various clips of the tournament arena and the many battles brought to its floor flashed through the screen in rapid succession, like a video set to super fast-forward, before slowing onto an arena that suffered a brutish beating and then an arena occupied by dozens of Atlesian and Mistrali workers as the news anchor went on talking about something or other. Tai didn't really give a damn at the moment. The news's visual imagery more than compensated for the words that fell on deaf ears. And at the moment, his thoughts kept returning to a teen daughter he had not (yet) seen grow up and the state she was in when he came rushing back home after Qrow texted him a summary of what happened. A very brief and omission-heavy summary.
He saw her in bed, none the worse for wear, until he went about cleaning her muddied self up. Qrow didn't bother being thorough with her unconscious form. A change of clothes and that was it. Twigs and dried-up mud in her hair, various scrapes scattered all over her, as well as some slowly forming bruises. Yang had taken quite a beating, but she was alive. Thank God she was alive.
It was almost surreal to care so deeply about someone just a month after meeting for the first time in that hospital room. Surreal in the sense that, if you ignore the time travel shenanigan, Yang would be like a child he helped conceive in his pre-adolescent years. Surreal in the sense that there was barely any awkwardness between them after the first week, about a day after her failed jog and subsequent emotional breakdown.
Well… the lack of awkwardness wasn't entirely true. Raven really bloomed in Yang's features, and the few times she got angry, her eyes alight in red that for a moment, he thought he was gazing into his old lover's eyes. He did his best to control his reactions. Qrow had probably felt the same. It'd explain why he left her in such a state, but just because Tai understood didn't mean it excused him from what he did. Or what he did halfheartedly.
He closed his eyes, took one deep breath. Focus on the events and leave the neglect lecture for later.
"What happened out there, Qrow?" he asked, trying to bury the memories of a woman he thought would stay deep and hidden in his head. It was easy to do; he had practice. Plenty of it.
Qrow replied with nothing. His eyes gazed straight at the holovision, unblinking, but Tai knew he was looking without really seeing. He reached for his Scroll and tapped it a few times to deactivate the holovision, cutting off the news anchor's wrap-up spiel mid-sentence.
"Qrow—"
The drunkard put one hand up, inches away from Tai's face, and then took one more swig from the whiskey, cleaning it of spirit. He set it down loudly on the coffee table with his head bowed down and a sigh that sounded equal parts dread and relief.
Tai waited for his friend to get his thoughts together. The signs were piling up. His half-hearted cleanup of Yang, raiding his secret stash of alcohol (okay, maybe, he would've done that at some point anyway), the look in his eyes that tell of a soul lost inside his own prison of memories. Tai had seen Qrow acting like this before. Sometimes it even felt like he was staring into a mirror, when Raven disappeared for reasons only she was privy to, when Summer disappeared yet found evidence portray a common Huntress's demise. It always seemed like Qrow was on the verge of shutting down, almost mimicking the way he had been when news about Summer arrived at his doorstep, but he pushed on regardless, never letting despair get the better of him.
Unlike Qrow's weak and cowardly best friend and teammate.
"That place is cursed," Qrow said, shutting his eyes, thinning his lips. He started popping his knuckles with his thumbs one by one. Pop went the forefingers. Pop went the middle fingers. "Fucking cursed, Tai."
It was then Tai began to notice how really haggard his old friend looked. Emphasis on old, because Qrow appeared to have aged a decade since he saw last him this morning before setting off to Signal Academy. His skin was paler than normal, so much so that it made the bags under his eyes more prominent and deeper. Some bits of mud clung to the tips of his dark gray hair, and other bits smeared themselves at different spots on his usually immaculate clothing. Tai blinked twice, now also noticing that Qrow was without his red cape. More than any other abnormality on his present state, that particular tidbit stuck out like the CCT tower in Beacon Academy.
"Qrow," he said, swallowing, "where's your cape?"
Qrow inhaled deeply, then exhaled out the air with a growl. His hands clenched. "The fire took it."
"Fire?"
"You have to see it to believe it, Tai. That place is just not right."
Tai caught himself before he could raise his voice at him. Teaching stubborn kids to be Huntsman helped hone his temperament. Qrow wasn't a kid, but he was avoiding a talk like one. Usually in the case with the kids, he would be backed up by the student councilor, but again, Qrow was no kid, and much less vulnerable to the easy going Aura the councilor naturally generated, something to help the kids be at ease and more loose with their lips.
In this situation, he was going to have to do things the common way.
"Focus, man," he said, touching his shoulder gently, but even then, Qrow was on the verge of jumping out of his seat. His friend blinked a few times, somehow getting lost again inside his own head. "Start from the beginning. Tell me what happened."
II
"Grimm got to us a short distance from that old place."
Tai knew right away what he meant by 'that old place.' It was—and pardon the pun—a placeholder name for the Branwen twin's old home. The name sparked memories of their younger years, some bad, maybe even some good, but the general agreement between Raven and Qrow was to never mention the name at all if they can help it. Tai only managed to learn of the house's name by accident back when he and Raven had lived there together while she was pregnant with Yang. Qrow had cut off all ties with the house, and the one time he did come back, after hundreds of times urging him to at least make a short-time visit to meet his newborn niece, it was the night Raven disappeared.
That place is cursed, Qrow had said.
If it was only Qrow who said it, Tai would've chucked it up to bad memories from a bad childhood—and in this aspect, he had no doubts whatsoever that it was bad with a capital B, A, and D—but he remembered an almost forgotten memory of him and Raven inside that house.
It was night, he and Raven were sound asleep, and Yang was two months away from being born. A loud scream jolted him out of sleep and he opened his eyes to the sight of Raven punching her own stomach. He lay on the bed, just staring at something he never thought he'd ever see, but after the second or third strike to the stomach—now realizing the presence of the baby—he sprung up and immediately took hold of her wrists. He was shouting alongside her now. He could no longer remember what he had said, but as Raven's psychotic fit subsided, he could remember his lover's murmurs, voice said with a tone of regret, of sadness, of anger, and of surrender, varying for every iteration as if she were saying a mantra.
"This place is cursed."
She had gone to sleep right afterwards and come the morning, after a tense questioning, she vehemently denied she had done anything to harm their child last night. And when he asked why she thought the house was cursed, she turned tight-lipped, unable to give him an answer that would at least explain her strange behavior.
But then again, strangeness was a trait Raven always had. It was what lured him into her life in the first place. There were ups and downs, he knew before he took the plunge, and he accepted her without fail. He thought that would've been enough for a happy ending, growing old together—
Tai closed his eyes, forced the memories into the back of his mind, and then opened his eyes again, concentrating on the present.
"Yang and I fought them off," Qrow continued, "despite limited visibility." Here, he sighed and leaned his back on the couch, which groaned loudly, as if it were articulating more of what Qrow felt than the man himself. "Then everything went FUBAR when the mist separated us. She just… propelled herself into the air and never went back down."
"Then how'd you find her?" Tai asked.
"Blind luck and a little help from a ghost."
"What?"
Qrow shrugged. "Best way I can put it. It sure as hell haunted me."
Tai mentally counted to three—then extending it to five—before replying, "I'm going to need some context."
Qrow opened his mouth, the look in his sunken crimson eyes seeming to say the words for him: It's your fault for not letting me tell the story from beginning to end. But he shut his mouth before he could make a sound and then moved his eyes towards the deactivated holovision. He pursed his lips, swallowed a mouthful of saliva, and instead said, "Fine. Shortly after we were separated, I mowed down more of the Beowolves. I thought it was a small pack, but I'm sure I counted at least twenty kills and there was plenty more beyond the mist. Maybe hundreds of 'em."
"That's—"
"Impossible, I know. If a high population of Grimm were in Patch, especially near civilization, then all Huntsmen would've been informed. I'm not drunk enough to embellish the story, Tai."
That was true. His voice was clear, if a little gruff, and although his eyes spoke of a man dead on his feet, there was a certain kind of clarity in them that continuously tries to break through the haze of exhaustion and memories playing (and probably replaying) inside his head. Memories, Tai was sure, that had left scars and in the process of reawakening them, the scars would eventually start to bleed again.
One particular scar must already be leaking like a flood, because Qrow smiled strangely, something that looked like a lopsided smirk—the sort he'd often display whenever his battle lust reared its ugly head—but somehow crooked. Tai was on the verge of telling his friend to stop; it was incredibly unnerving, more so than usual.
"I wish I was, though," Qrow said, putting one hand to his face, blocking Tai's view of the crooked smirk (much to his relief). "At least that sounds more sane than what actually happened."
He kept silent, hoping that was enough of a cue for Qrow to just get on with it already.
"Since I haven't seen Yang in who-knows-how-long, I decided to focus on finding her."
"You ran?"
Qrow exhaled through his nose, like a bull. "Tactical regrouping. Don't confuse 'em, asshole."
He put his hands up. In any other time, he'd continue egging his old friend on, maybe reminisce of other instances in their time as the complete Team STRQ where Qrow went backward instead of forward, but Tai wanted their focus to be on the recent past, not ancient history. "Right, right," he said, hoping his calm would carry over to Qrow, who just kept on glaring. On the bright side, he was somewhat placated for the time being. When Tai put his hands down, he asked "Then?"
"I dashed through the dirt path, killing Grimm along the way," he said, moving his eyes back to the front but what they see wasn't the living room's old, fading beige wallpaper. "Yang was nowhere in sight, but I kept searching. And now here's where things start getting really odd, Tai.
"I was sure—utterly sure—that I dashed in the direction away from that old place, but guess where I found myself at. It looked more broken and crooked than I remembered, you know. And… I don't know what came over me, but I just stood there, in that crossroad at the bottom of the slope, just looking at it. Trying to swallow every bit of detail. I don't know why. Then I asked myself, 'How the fuck is that going to help me find Yang? The clock is ticking.' I sure as hell have no idea. But it's like my relationship with alcohol. Sometimes I don't want to, sometimes I want to stop for tonight, but there I go downing another dozen shots."
But instead here you were downing precious seconds, Tai thought, nodding along, as if to say he understood but it was a meaningless gesture, all the same. Qrow's attention was on memories not reality.
"It sounds stupid now, in hindsight," Qrow continued, repeating his nervous tic of popping knuckles with his thumbs, "but in that moment, I thought"—he paused, shook his head—"believed that Yang went inside that house." Here, he sighed through gritted teeth, a rumble in his throat making the sigh sound more like a growl. Maybe it was, for all Tai knew. Repressed anger, hidden regret, there were layers upon layers of that piled inside Qrow. Some he decided to share with his team, some he thought to keep private, although most of them were already known by Raven, who deflected any inquiry that came her way, even when questions had come from her boyfriend.
The one thing Tai was certain of was that Qrow vowed to never set foot inside the house again. Never again. Broken so that he could come by and see his niece, only to make that vow once more after Raven left on that very same night.
He stared at the transparent holovision screen some more and then put his hands on his face, muttering about needing some more whiskey. The story was put on hold for a bit as Tai went to his stash and procured another bottle of booze. When he was about to close the compartment, he paused, contemplated about this new thought for a second, and took one more bottle from his stash.
One opened, half-empty bottle later, Qrow stared at the sliding ice cubes at the bottom of his glass.
"I hesitated going there," Qrow said. "I wondered to myself if I'm actually going to break my vow for Yang again. Then I said, 'Screw it,' and bit the bullet."
He swallowed.
"Raven was there. She was waiting for me."
III
He stood with his weapon down at the base of the hill, staring up towards the house that gave him equal parts horror and melancholy.
Usher, his granddad called the place, a name that was supposed to hold a kind of grand significance to the Branwen family, but for as long as Qrow lived, the Branwen name and the Usher House itself were nothing more than words tossed around inside his granddad's mental echo chamber. He and Raven were just unfortunately the ones forced to listen as the echoes slip through the chamber's several cracks, and these cracks were widening every year, as if in proportion to the gradual loss of granddad's sanity.
He couldn't say without doubt that living in the same roof as his grandfather was a nightmare given form—and how odd that if other kids were to say the same, they'd automatically be considered exaggerations stemming from a mind that had not yet seen just how shitty the world can be—but it was bad, of that there was very little doubt. There were more than a few memories he considered to be deep scars that refused to heal, just covered in a thin layer of skin to make it seem like it was.
It was those same memories that made him decide to turn his back on his childhood home completely.
Home?
Did he consider that place home?
Once. Maybe. Not anymore.
So why was he still staring at the place? Why focus on something inconsequential when his niece was out there, crowded in the fog by enemies she couldn't see? Qrow couldn't find an answer to that, but something within him was telling him to watch, to observe the destroyed roof, the busted down door, the rotting remnants of the porch railing, the glassless windows that seemed to stare back at him like the house had become alive and observing him in turn.
The grip on his sword tightened. He thought about moving on; there was nothing of note here, after all. But the compulsion in him was strong—eerily so, as if there were unfinished business he still had with the now crooked house. He thought about moving on, he really did, but instead of looking for Yang in the forest, his steps—slow and hesitant—took him closer to the house he had sworn twice to never set foot in again.
Eight steps on the dirt marked his slow ascent, but as the Usher House came clearer into view, Qrow could've sworn he saw something moving within its walls, almost unseen like a shadow. His first thought was Yang and his pace quickened, but when his mind had a moment more to process the thought, it immediately changed to more Grimm. His childhood home had become nothing more than a festering ground for malevolent creatures, as if the Grimm not only feed on human emotions but the residual of human emotions as well.
He had plenty of reasons to swear to never come back.
And yet here I am, he thought. The prodigal son has returned.
The floorboards screamed in anguish as he walked through the porch and stood just outside the doorless entrance. He scanned the interior, or at least tried to. The ever-present mist was unhindered in its spread. What barriers that could've stopped it from sweeping inside the house were either missing or broken. And the pervading shadows within made it all the more difficult for Qrow to be sure he wouldn't be ambushed. He could rely on his ears, but the mist messed with both visual and audio cues. If there were Beowolves crouching behind the old couch across the fireplace, growling in restrained anticipation, then he wouldn't be hearing it from where he stood.
I could still turn back, Qrow thought. That shadow must've been my imagination. A trick of the mist maybe. I was too far to be sure of anything. I can still step back. Yang isn't here. She's top priority. His eyes narrowed. So move the fuck back, dammit! What are you waiting for?
A Grimm attack. Everything had gone quiet. The constant, quiet eeeeeeee of tinnitus buzzed in his ears. He could also hear his own heartbeat, could feel the rhythmic flow of blood pulsing into his head, could feel and hear the swallowing of his own spit.
The floorboards creaked once more. It came from behind him.
He whirled around him, brandishing his sword, done more out of instinct than calculated thinking. The blade cut air and nothing else. Because air was all that was behind him. His eyes scoured the porch, left and right, top and—finally—bottom, where his feet continued applying pressure and consternation to the old, rotting wood as it bellowed another groan.
It's nothing, his rational mind said, wanting nothing more than to leave this incident behind him and regain focus on the main task. But which was that? The outside or the old place?
"There's nothing," he said out loud. And then swallowed his saliva. "Nothing at all here, now get out already, Qrow."
"Talking to yourself is the first sign of crazy, you know."
That voice—
He turned back to the darkness of the house, and there it was. The shadow he saw moving within, more visible and discernible now than he had last seen it. Human in shape, probably a head or two shorter than him, various spikes on its sides—long, unruly hair most likely—and the gleaming blood color of Nepenthe's blade pointing towards the ground. He saw no features or color in the stranger's appearance, just a silhouette where the darkness seemed inclined to blend with it than the other way around. Despite that, he knew the figure was smiling. He could sense it. He could remember it.
"What are you doing here? Why do you have that?" he asked, his eyes gesturing towards the sword he thought they destroyed when their grandfather kicked the bucket. His voice was calm, too. It should be; he had something to really focus on now. Thoughts and worries of Yang were relegated to the wayside as the conversation he had been waiting for five years to happen was about to be realized. More than anything, Qrow wanted to know why she decided to return after all this time, in their old childhood home no less.
He was certain this place held as much nostalgia to Raven as it did him. Although she had decided to stay in the house for over a year with Tai before she decided to leave without warning. Something must've kept her here—and he couldn't be wrong about her distaste of the place, knowing what he knew—and something again must've made her come back. But what?
His eyes narrowed when her only response was utter silence and a slight tilting of her head to the left, an act he remembered included a growing smirk in her lips. He could already tell that was what she was doing, the same old childish 'I know something you don't' smirk, and now his temperament has gone past the point of patience and diplomacy.
"Raven, I don't have time for your games—"
He realized that, in his anger, he had started forward towards the silhouette, crossing the threshold of the Usher house, and as his foot landed on the living room's ashen-colored flooring, the whole world turned into hell.
Fire raged all around him, clinging and dancing to everything that was flammable, from the curtains framing the windows on the opposite side of the room to the upturned couch he remembered in his youth sitting alongside Raven as they read a picture book together. Bright light blinded him for a while, but he refused to close both eyes and lose sight of his sister—he wouldn't put it past her to take this opportunity to disappear again. She stood where she was, still, never moving despite the inferno that appeared all around them.
His survival instincts screamed at him to get the hell out now. He willed himself to stay after noticing the various oddities that made the whole situation feel more wrong than before.
Black smoke crawled on the ceiling, veiling it completely, and the air remained absent of the putrid ashen scent that would also have him coughing out a storm and crying from the irritation. His ears also picked no deafening noise of crackling and burning, like a fireplace video's volume set to low instead of mute. There was no explosion that greeted his ears, no insurmountable heat that started searing his skin. Sweat soaked him in a hurry, but the cause wasn't the fire... or what looked like fire. It was odd, to say the least, more so when Raven, with no shadows to help her with these psychological games, greeted him with a serious gaze. Her lips weren't forming the smirk he suspected, going down instead of up, and his new suspicions suggested that Raven had been using this expression from the very beginning.
Qrow lifted his sword and pointed the tip at his sister. He had entered an unknown place, with very little idea of how he got here, and his long lost sister had decided to show up out of the blue, with motives as mysterious as the motives she had for leaving five years prior.
"What did you do?" he asked simply, and he did his best to restrain his panicking senses. The fiery room was unsettling his very being. Something wasn't right.
Raven, thankfully deciding to skip unpleasant pandering, looked at him right in the eye and said, "Nothing, dear brother. Well, except for setting the house on fire. I've had enough with this place."
"You and me both," he said, "but the lack of heat would be enough to tell me this is an illusion. Not to mention the quiet. The clean air. The this-is-an-illusion vibe is painted all over, Ray."
Which was strange. Raven could project illusions if supplied with the right Dust to forge a blade imbued with that particular purpose, but no way would she settle with half-assed mind games. If she were serious, he'd be feeling the effects of the flaming room as if he were actually there, not like some… ghost numb from all the dangers.
Raven offered him a lopsided smile, but the meaning behind it eluded him. It was crooked somehow. Like the house.
His eyes narrowed when she raised Nepenthe and made its tip touch with his sword's. He thought they'd be locked in that exchange, neither breaking it until the very last moment of their impromptu ceasefire, but his eyes narrowed further when Raven couldn't keep her hand steady. His eyes moved away from Nepenthe's crimson gleam to Raven herself. Sweat adorned her face as well. A flying piece of ash slapped onto her left cheek and stayed there, dampened by sweat. Her eyes were red, and he meant beyond the iris color they shared. Her chest moved very slowly. Controlled breathing, he realized, which wouldn't be out of place for when she was seconds away from enacting a powerful strike, but if he were to include this symptom with the others, it'd be undeniable that while Qrow was safe from the effects of the flames, Raven was not.
"You shouldn't be here, Qrow," she said. "Yang needs your help."
"How do you know about her?"
"Stop wasting time already. Go to her. Now."
He gritted his teeth. He hated this feeling, the feeling of not knowing which choice was the right one. This wasn't a game he was playing; what he decided at this moment could not be reversed, and although saving a life seemed more important than finding out answers, the hesitation in his soul refused to go away, refused to loosen up. He wanted to save Yang just as much as he wanted Raven to answer every question he had.
But he also knew he couldn't choose both.
"Qrow," Raven said, and he actually detected a hint of worry in her tone. "Yang will die if you don't go to her right now."
"Then why don't you go to her?" he found himself asking. He could've stopped right there, but he didn't. Wouldn't. "You obviously know where she'd be. You'd be right there in an instant."
"Do you trust me with her, then?"
He didn't, and damn her for that.
"You aren't going to abandon her again, are you?" he asked, wanting to get a rise out of her. It would at least give him a clue of where she stood in regards to her own flesh and blood, barring him, of course.
She schooled her features like a pro, but he wasn't her brother for mere show. She reacted from the accusation—just a little. Her eyes immediately blinked.
Something crashed above them. One of the rafters maybe. The whole place was coming down, but his eyes never left Raven.
Sighing as if she lost, Raven said, "You've always been this stubborn."
He arched an eyebrow. "And you've always been dodging questions."
That prompted a smile. "The answers will come in time. I'll assure you of that."
"Then excuse me while I assume the worst."
Raven tapped the tip of his sword with her own. The fire surrounding crawled on the ground, setting alight the old wood with a trail of smoke and a cacophony of never-ending crackles. Her breathing started becoming erratic.
It was hard to believe the tears that trailed down Raven's cheeks. But a second later, he figured it was the smoke getting heavier. He still couldn't understand why the environment focused on her, not on him, despite being in the same area.
She tapped the tip a few more times, as if testing it, and he decided to answer back with a taps of his own. The clang of metal resounded, almost as loud as a coin dropping on a tile floor. They met eye-to-eye again, and this time, it didn't last long.
Raven pulled back Nepenthe, but did not sheathe it. "You remember the tiny clearing I found when we were eight?"
"Can't say I do."
"Liar," she deadpanned, humor and patience gone. "Yang will be there. The Beowolves will have surrounded her by now. Get to her quickly."
"Raven—"
She thought the conversation over already and turned to escape through the windows on the opposite side of the living room. Qrow gave chase, meeting her halfway to her destination. She swung Nepenthe, he responded in kind, and as their blades interlocked in a more dangerous embrace, he would make sure she wouldn't leave until she give him answers.
Out of all the things she could've done, Qrow didn't expect his sister to spit into his eye and then knee him in the gut. The knee, he could've defended himself against, but as begrudging as it was to admit, the eye-spit was a nice, if very dirty, touch. His Aura hadn't saved him from either blow. He fell to the floor, groaning pathetically.
"Ugh," he said, keeping the afflicted eye shut as he wiped it off with his sleeve, "sister germs."
"Tiny clearing," Raven said, and his ears picked up several knocks on wood. "Get to her!"
She made a break for the windows.
"Ray!" He tried standing up, but something pulled at his cape. Several kunai were stabbing it deeply onto the wooden floor. "Fuck!"
When he looked back towards her exit, she had already passed through, never to be seen again. No, he wasn't about to let her go. Not now. He couldn't waste time; he removed his cape and gave chase, leaping over the flaming couch and dove straight through the open window on the right.
It wasn't open at all, and Qrow shielded himself with his Aura as various glass shards scattered at his passing. The mist returned to block his vision. He hadn't realized it was absent while he was inside, within that weird illusion. His feet landed on soft, muddy ground, and he quickly checked all around him. No Grimm, no Raven. And when he looked back towards the old place, the raging fires from within had disappeared like the illusions they were.
All of it illusions, Qrow thought. Nothing but illusions.
He wanted to pick a direction and head right off, eyes peeled for a hint of black or red while trying his best to not confuse them with Grimm—
He shook his head. Who was he kidding? If Raven refused to be followed, her Semblance would ensure she'd go to places even he couldn't follow. It was frustrating—utterly maddening—to admit that his sister got away from him again, leaving behind more questions than answers.
Why was she here? What did she know about Yang? Did she mean the Yang of this time or the Yang of the future? Was she telling the truth about Yang in that old clearing?
How he wished he could summon her right here and now, so he could strangle the answers out of her. Yes, strangle, because my God she deserved that much and more.
"Qrow!"
His eyes widened and looked to his right, and he saw Raven there, standing proudly and smiling. But—
"Come on, Qrow," she said, but not to him but at someone to her left. "Hurry it up or I'll leave you behind."
She had shrunk. She looked like a kid. A short, pony-tailed kid with a big grin on her face. And acting as tomboyish as he remembered.
What the fuck?
"I am hurrying," a boyish voice replied, somewhere beyond the mist, getting closer. A feeling in his gut was telling him he knew who it'd be, but it was beyond illogical. It was downright insane. No way was it possible. Yet there was a kid Raven standing no more than three feet from where he stood, tapping her foot impatiently. And he was certain she called out his name.
When the boy finally came into his sights, Qrow held his breath. Impossible. It was impossible.
"Where are we going anyway?" the boy asked.
"I found a super ultra secret spot in the forest," kid Raven said.
"And?"
"Hurry it up and I'll show ya." Her grin grew. So did Qrow's urge to scream. Memories he thought forgotten were surfacing, as if they had spontaneously gotten lifejackets. He remembered telling Ray that he couldn't believe she dragged him outside—
"I can't believe you dragged me outside to look at another stupid hiding spot," the boy grumbled, crossing his arms. Strapped to his right wrist was a familiar emblem.
Qrow inadvertently clutched the pendant on his neck.
"Detective Noir was on," the boy continued.
"Eh," kid Raven said, shrugging, "it was probably a rerun." Pause. "Now come on! Before the old fart realizes we're gone."
Kid Raven started running, and all the boy could do was sigh through his nose. "We are so getting grounded for this," he said before giving chase.
Qrow remembered getting punished but not grounded for their prolonged disappearance.
The kids never looked at him, as if he wasn't even there. Or maybe there was something else at play. More illusions no doubt. All of this, illusions. It had to be. He felt no presence from them, no displacement of air, no audible footsteps marking their trek—and with the muddy ground they crossed, footprints should be present.
"And they're as see-through as holograms," he murmured, staring wide-eyed at the spot where he last saw them before the mist gobbled them up. Another, newer bead of sweat ran down his cheek. He swallowed a lump in his throat. "Or ghosts."
He let out a laugh, brimming with unreleased tension. "What the fuck." He rubbed his eyes with one hand and used the other to pull out his flask. Fuck sobriety. He couldn't process the bullshit in front of him without being drunk first.
IV
"I thought I was losing my mind," Qrow said as he downed another glass of whiskey. Tai paced himself, knowing that his alcohol tolerance wasn't in the same level as his liver-abusing teammate, but the contents of this story was making it hard for him to stay sober.
Raven.
It was unbelievable that she'd come back, and though he was relieved she still lived, he felt nothing else. He had thought he'd be angry that she dared to come back after leaving without warning, without a message, completely cutting any and all communications between her and her friends and family. He had even thought he'd be happy that she returned, despite understanding that after five years, their lives—his and undoubtedly hers as well—had moved on. His heart surely hadn't yet.
That was what he thought initially, but hearing the confirmation from Qrow's own mouth did almost nothing to him. Other than the small relief, Tai was numb to his old lover's comeback. Maybe the impact wasn't there because she never bothered to visit him or their little girl?
He couldn't figure out what was going on inside Raven's head. He managed to know some bits back when they were dating, and a lot more when he was living in the Usher House with her, but Raven always refused to open herself completely. She loved him, this he knew, and the feeling was mutual. Had been mutual, anyway, but there were plenty of moments in their time together where she could have mentioned anything that bothered her, memories that disturbed her, woke her up in the middle of the night silently screaming. Or desire to beat her pregnant belly with a reason known only to her, and even then Tai wondered if there was any reason at all, that she just felt like hitting their baby. Their baby...
The numbness in his heart grew. He had a hunch on why she came and went. He thought of Yang. Their daughter, who would be graced with Raven's beauty as she reaches her teen years. Then he thought of Ruby, the daughter of Raven's best friend—
Stop! his mind screamed. Don't think it's Ruby's fault. It's unfair to her. Besides, you don't know for sure she never checked in. And if she did? Would that change things between them? No. It won't. I moved on. She might have, too.
He poured himself a glassful of whiskey and chugged it down.
"What happened next?" he asked, after Qrow had gone silent for some time.
"You don't think I'm crazy?"
He raised an eyebrow at him. "Qrow, sleeping upstairs right now is my seventeen-year-old daughter Yang and attending kindergarten right now is my five-year-old daughter Yang. Both are the same person. Doesn't that sound crazy?"
Qrow laughed, its tone half-filled with mirth, the other was empty, almost soul-less. He rested his elbows on his knees and then leaned his face on his left hand, covering it. "It does," he said. "It does sound crazy."
"Yet it's real."
"Real," Qrow parroted, chuckling again. "Yeah. Real."
Silence reigned for a good ten seconds before Tai asked his question again. This time, his friend didn't go off on another tangent.
-o- -o- -o- -o-
"I drank the whole flask, of course," he said, repeating the motion as if what he held in his hand was a container filled with flask instead of a wide drinking glass that had been emptied for some time. He must've been too engrossed in the memory, because he paused from his story momentarily to stare at the glass and wondered why he was trying to swallow air. He then pursed his lips and set the glass down back on the table. "Didn't get me completely drunk, which I wanted. Not enough drink to do so. Pissed me the hell off."
Tai turned his head towards the empty bottles of whiskey on the table, then back to his old friend. "Feeling drunk now?"
"Not in the least." An eye roll. "Too agitated to let the alcohol do its work, you know. This whole day has left me being sober without my consent."
"Now if only that can be done every day..."
"Shut up, and fuck you, Tai," Qrow replied, though there was no bite coming alongside his bark. He just said the words like a cashier greeting a customer for the millionth time in his long customer service career. "Anyway, since I was both half-drunk and morbidly curious, I followed the hallucinations to wherever the fuck that clearing Raven was talking about. In truth, I kind of expected to be ambushed by Grimm while on the way. Expected and welcomed, really." He shifted in his seat, pushing his body further into the back cushions and slumped down till his nape rested on the headrest and his eyes bore into the ceiling instead of the HV. "The way those two talked to each other reminded me too much of what we used to be."
"Weren't they you and Ray?"
He lifted his left hand, palm up. "On the one hand, I'd like to say yes. But on the other"—he lifted his right hand, also palm up, before crunching it into a fist—"I'd like to punch the asshole that decided to rummage through old forgotten memories." He dropped his hands back onto the couch, where they bounced once, twice, and settled in place. "To cut to the chase, they led me right to the clearing, seconds away from Yang getting gang-mauled by a pack of Beowolves again."
Tai's hands clenched, and he took a deep breath. She's fine, he told himself. She's in bed, none the worse for wear. Calm.
Qrow swiped the air with an imaginary sword. "Ended them all in three seconds, tops. The Alpha took another three, but it never managed to touch Yang." He smiled at him, to which he smiled back, and somehow Tai felt that it was as crooked as Qrow's. Their smiles faded, and Qrow continued, "It's hard to explain what happens after, though. But... I'll try.
"So I rushed back to Yang, and black Grimm smoke was rising all around us, and my mind suddenly flashed back to the old place, when it was on fire, when I was there shooting the breeze with Raven, and... I don't know, I guess I was thinking back on her warning and wished that I had listened to it earlier." He sighed heavily. "Yang didn't move. I thought she was already dead, but there was no blood, but even then, I just had to make sure. I went to her and lifted her up, checked her pulse and breathing. I let my guard down for only a few seconds, Tai. Just a few seconds.
"But it was enough for another Alpha to get the jump on us. It leaped from the branches above." Qrow sighed, shook his head. "You wouldn't have known it was there, waiting, till it decided to pounce on you. I got my sword ready, but then suddenly Yang gasped in my arm and there was this blinding flash of light."
Qrow turned towards him, probably wanting to know that he hadn't nodded off. Or maybe he was waiting for even a pinch of disbelief on Tai's face. Unsure of what Qrow was expecting, Tai just nodded, which seemed to be the response he wished and he resumed his recollection.
"I looked at the light without thinking. It was unbelievably bright. And I don't know if it was another illusion, but I swore I saw Yang's missing arm."
"The one she saw when she went jogging?"
He shrugged. "Could be."
"You're not sure?"
"Hey, with the day I was having, how could I be sure of anything? An arson that wasn't really there, ghosts of the past that aren't really there. How can this glowing arm be any different?" He paused, pursed his lips, and then shook his head again. "Anyway, this arm glowed like crazy. It was bright like a Dust shard gone critical or something. And as bright and sudden as it appeared, it vanished. Again, I guess. But that wasn't the weirdest part.
"The Alpha Beowolf stopped. Stopped midair, Tai. By a glowing hand grabbing its head. And I don't need to know what's going on inside Glynda's head to understand that what I was seeing was Yang's right arm. Somehow the arm managed to detach itself from Yang and just... I don't know what the fuck it wanted to do or what it had turned into. A flying, independent ghost arm? How the hell am I saying that while sober?"
Unsure if that was supposed to be rhetorical or not, Tai went for a straightforward reply: "Then?"
Qrow, instead of answering right away, rubbed his forehead with both hands as if he were fighting a distracting migraine and then slid his fingers through his fringe, the top of his head, and all the way down to his nape where they settled, intertwining, as he looked at his lap.
"Qrow. What happened then?"
"I can't get that sound out of my head."
"What sound?"
"Egg shells," he said gravely, and though he sounded as if it haunted him, Tai didn't feel the same. "Not breaking bones, no, not even close. The hand just grabbed the Alpha's skull"—he reenacted the action as he told it—"and crushed it. It sounded like cracking an egg in your hand. And it was loud. Fucking loud." He grabbed his ears. "And you know that feeling in your body, the one that feels like something's beating at your organs as the speakers went crazy loud?"
The old nightclub Team STRQ used to spend their Saturday night once or twice during their sophomore year. It had been Qrow's idea, though his attention was more on the bar than on the music or the people or the darkness, which was marred somewhat by bright colorful strobe lights scattered about the dance floor, or even the general unhappiness of their team leader, who always wondered why people would tolerate bursting their eardrums, torturing their livers, and clogging their lungs with unventilated cigarette smoke. It was as if their purpose in life was to die with a shattered body. The general complaint of the team was the loud music. Not even Qrow, the instigator of the whole thing, would go to the nightclub without earplugs.
"Yeah," Tai said, trying to recall just how uncomfortable he felt while trying to have fun in that nightclub. "Not a nice experience, but the booze was good."
"Amen to that, pal. But that odd feeling? Somehow it was worse here. It was loud, but it wasn't killing my ears. Yet my insides were feeling it twice, maybe thrice, over." He sighed. "I know it sounds underwhelming, but that's the point. How is something like the sound of egg shells break be so... excruciating to listen to?"
Tai didn't have an answer to that, and he would've shrugged if Qrow had looked at him, if Qrow had wanted a definite answer to this conundrum.
"After that," Qrow continued, "I just carried Yang out of there. Got her back here, patched her up—"
Oh yeah, you did a splendid job on that front, asshole. He swung the thought away like an annoying fly.
"—and I just... I don't know, wanted to forget everything. This bundle of bullshit was one too much for me to think over. So... I drank."
A lot, Tai thought with a raised brow, and he let that matter rest for now. He used the returning silence to mull over the story, wanting to be sure that Qrow had not left any detail unsaid, trying to find some semblance of rationality was completely thrown out the window when he started talking about illusions, ghosts, and an old friend. Stranger things had happened, of course—Yang, as he already pointed out, was a testament of that—but that didn't mean every ounce of fiction in the world had a gallon of truth in them.
"Qrow," he said.
His friend grunted.
"Why do you think—"
Both men heard the creaking staircase, followed by bare feet gently stepping on aged wood, the stride out of rhythm and slow. Tai stood up, but Qrow stayed where he sat, but both of their attentions were on the left archway leading out to the corridor.
Yang came into view, hand on her forehead. She took a glance at the living room, saw them sitting in the couch with a bunch of empty whiskey bottles on the coffee table, and didn't ask. She just waved her hand in greeting at them and sauntered into the kitchen.
Tai looked at Qrow.
Qrow looked back and continued leaning on the couch. "Hey, she's your kid, not mine."
Goddamn asshole, he thought and walked towards the kitchen. Acting like this is my problem now.
He could've forced the issue, have Qrow talk with Yang since he knew more about what went on in that forest than Tai did. All Tai got was secondhand information relayed to him by a man who had been chugging whiskey for the past hour or two.
When he got to the kitchen's entrance, Yang had procured a glass from a top cabinet and was filling it with tap water.
"Yang?"
She turned off the tap, grabbed the glass, and looked over her shoulder. Haggard and fatigued. They were what described Yang first and foremost. There was also a slight dullness in her lilac eyes and the haggard, dark skin prominent under those same eyes made Tai recall the blackening ends of a fluorescent tube on the verge of giving out. "Yeah?" she said, her voice a little rough and dry. She coughed lightly.
"Are you feeling okay?" he asked. While he knew it sounded quite rhetoric, he couldn't think of anything else to direct the conversation towards that particular topic.
Yang answered with a bit lip, a momentary glance to the ground, and then, "Nothing like some food, some water, and a night's sleep wouldn't help. Oh, and a truckload of aspirin."
"Yang, you know you can talk to me."
"Yeah," she said, pausing to finish her glass. "I know."
Yang said nothing else. Tai waited.
She placed the glass on the sink and turned on the tap. The water poured into the glass till it was full. But the water kept pouring and overflowing, pouring and overflowing, and she had yet to remove her hand from the tap.
"Yang."
She acted like static jolted her spine, and though he could see just her back and the noticeable patches of dried up mud spots on her hair, he somehow knew the kind of expression she wore when he called her and when she immediately closed the tap.
"Dad, I—"
Before their conversation could continue, his Scroll vibrated in his pocket. A pleasant tone reverberated around the silence, and he had a momentary debate on whether to take the call or continue the talk with Yang.
"You going to get that?" she asked, a close enough indication than he should answer the call rather than get her to answer to him.
He fished out his Scroll to check the caller's ID and saw that it was Mrs. Ivory.
His eyes narrowed. Ivory rarely called his Scroll, unless it was about an urgent last-minute faculty meeting or a rowdy student who bit off more than they could chew in their games of "I'm better than you and I'll prove it!" where a few, if not some, dunces decided hunting Grimm unsupervised was an excellent measure of strength and skill.
"We'll be talking about this later, Yang," he said, finger on the phone-shaped icon in the center of the screen, ready for sliding, "so go wash up and get some more rest."
"Okay," Yang said, her voice sounding relieved, if a little subdued. "I wasn't joking about the aspirin, though."
"Right, top shelf in the medicine cabinet." He accepted the call. "Hello. Ivory?"
"Taiyang," Ivory said, pausing for some reason.
"What is it? Problem at the school?"
"Not at Signal, no, but there is..." She paused again, stumbling on her own words.
Tai hurried it on lest Ivory spends another fifteen seconds being tongue-tied. "If not Signal, then why'd you call?"
"It's... It's about Yang."
A pit suddenly formed in his stomach. "Wha—"
"I came to the kindergarten to pick up my grandson when I saw Yang talking to this strange-looking woman. Never saw her before. She wasn't a teacher here. She felt dangerous, like a Huntress fresh from a Grimm excursion."
"Ivory," he said, doing his best to keep calm and the panic from seeping into his speech, "where's Yang?"
"Still with her here at the front ga—"
Silence, but the line hadn't been cut. He could hear a buzzing cacophony of excited school children happy that school was over for today.
"Ivory. Ivory, you still there?"
"Y-Yes, I'm still here, but I lost sight of Yang and the woman."
The pit widened.
He could feel his blood boil, the power hidden within his fists slowly building. "I'll be there in a flash. Tell me what she looks like."
"All black attire with strips of red. Long black hair past her waist. And... I think her eyes were red like roses."