Fevered Visions

"Tai...she's not...coming...Tai!" Qrow half yelled in his fevered state. He had slowly descended more and more into this state as the day had gone on. When they had woken up this morning he was coughing up purple tinted blood, now he was so caught up in hallucinations that the group couldn't even get him to take a drink of water.

As he rode on the cot in the outside world, his thoughts were changing rapidly, reliving some of the worst moments of his life over and over. Each one was getting progressively more and more personal, more hurtful.

As the group split into pairs Ruby became more and more concerned, barely able to concentrate on her forward motion, becoming distracted by the seemingly random segments of Qrow's life exiting his mouth in bunches.

"Do...you have any idea what he's saying?" Jaune finally spoke up.

"She, not...coming home..." Qrow uttered before going into another coughing fit.

"He's talking about..." Ruby began before she became unsure herself. "Honestly that could be about either of us..." he saw her shoulders sag, clearly losing heart.

"Man I am so ready for this walk to be over...I never wanna walk anywhere again," he grumbled, having grown tired of their trek across the continent.

"Ya know," Ambur began with a smirk on her face, "I'd tell you to stop complaining but you kinda deserve to complain. I feel good about our progress though. We gotta be close to catching up by now."

"God we better be," they heard Olivier sigh from behind them. "Which one of you jerks let me come all the way out here in heels...even I'm not trained for this." She groaned as she looked up to the overcast sky.

The other two couldn't help but bust out laughing, before long Olivier couldn't help but join in with them. "You're a big girl, you can make your own decisions," Ambur teased as she turned back and stuck her tongue out at her friend before reaching back and offering her a hand. Olivier took it gladly and Ambur pulled her along for a moment until she was now walking between her and Mydnight. "You could ride on my shoulders if you REALLY need to," Ambur joked.

"Ugh don't joke Ambur, that sounds so nice right now," Liv chuckled as she worked hard to walk alongside her two friends who both had much longer legs than she did.

After a moment of laughter and silence Mydnight spoke up, "All bitching aside, it was kinda fun wasn't it?" he smiled across to the two of them.

"Ya it was huh?" Ambur agreed before Liv too nodded her head with a smile.

"Nice to actually get away from it all. I know we had missions and everything before but we never had to come out this far from the school," Liv said.

"Ya, finally getting out there to see the world, exactly," Mydnight added.

"I mean, a few more months at school and we would be certified professional huntsmen and we would have been able to go wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted," Ambur thought aloud.

"I mean that's true except," Olivier began, "We still would have been working for Ozpin and wouldn't really have that freedom, we'd just have to go wherever he needed us." The group fell silent for a moment as they realized that she was right and got lost in their own thoughts. "Do...do you guys ever...think we may have made a mistake by getting into all this?"

Again they were all silent for several moments before Mydnight spoke up. "I guess it doesn't matter does it...we're in it already..."

"Of course it matters," Ambur shot back quietly as she looked up to the gray sky. "We always have a choice to walk away."

"Ya but if we did, then we don't have the protection from the group," Mydnight retorts. "And if we all spread out across the world then Salem will have a much easier time taking over the world and hunting us down one by one."

"Ya...that's true," Liv sighed.

As he walked down the path through the forest his shoulders sank, losing heart more and more with each step. He hadn't seen the house since he had gotten the news and with every step his journey became harder and harder. He had flown all the way out to Mistral just to try and convince her to come home to her family but nothing he could say to her had changed her mind. If he thought he could actually overpower her then he would have gladly dragged her back, but he knew better than that. He ran his hand through his stark black hair as he took in a deep breath, the house coming into view as he stopped in the road, seeing his closest friend outside in his garden, right where he had left him a week ago, as if he had never moved.

He could see his niece too, the small blonde one-year-old playing with some toys a few feet away from her father in the grass. As he slowly came closer to the house he saw Tai turn from his flowers to see him, sitting down in the grass as he approached, easily able to see that he was alone. As Qrow made it to the house he turned and sat down, back leaning against the tall wooden frame of the garden plots. The men were silent for several minutes as they watched the young girl play, barely even registering that Qrow had shown up, engrossed in her toys.

Finally Qrow was able to break the silence, "She's...not coming back Tai...I'm sorry," he let out gravely.

"I told you she wouldn't..." he smirked, "sometimes I think I know her better than you do."

"Sometimes...so do I," Qrow sighed as he reached into his shirt pocket, grabbing his flask and taking a long sip from it before offering it to Tai. However his friend held up his hand and shook his head, "No thanks I...I got someone to look out for," he smiled before looking back at his daughter.

"Hm," Qrow was able to smile a little, "fair enough."

"Hm?" He hummed aloud as he began to sniff the air. He stopped dead in his tracks as he tried again and again to place the smell, both of his friends stopping just a few steps ahead of him now that they had realized he had stopped.

"Myd? You got something?" Ambur cocked her head to the side as she questioned him.

"Shhh," he shushed softly as he went back to concentrating, looking around on the ground for any sign of activity. After a few moments the girls saw his form begin to shift and change, the pitch dark fur they had come to be used to taking over his body as he grew into his full wolf form. He began walking large circles as he smelled the air, trying to distinguish scents from random travelers and the party they were seeking. Eventually his intense golden eyes stared down the path intensely before he began to crouch down to the ground, looking over to Liv and Ambur and nodding.

"Alllright I guess we must be close if you can actually smell them," Liv shrugged.

"Bout damn time," Ambur rolled her eyes before the girls walked over to their friend and straddled his back, leaning forward into the back of his neck, getting ready for him to begin running. As he began, he started slow, having learned very quickly that he couldn't just go all out at first or they would struggle to hold on. He had never given anyone a ride on his back before this little adventure so it had been a steep learning curve.

As they rode down the dirt road, the girls began to catch glimpses of footprints in the muddy road. It had rained a lot recently, and the ground hadn't had a chance to dry up with all the cloud coverage.

Qrow tossed and turned in his bed, the moonlight shining through his window and onto his body. Blankets thrown off, sweating and clearly distressed. Eventually, he jolted upright, breathing heavily, looking around the room frantically, he was drenched by this point and very familiar with the situation. As he began to calm himself, his vision drifted out of his window, looking up to the shattered pieces of the moon hanging in the sky.

This had become normal to him at this point, waking up in a bed that he was unfamiliar with, unsure of how he had gotten into it or when. He looked down to the bedside table and found his personal effects, and his clothing strewn about the room in a line to the door. As he reached down to the table his hand grasped hi flask, glancing at the alarm clock behind it as he raised it to his lips, taking a solemn swig before returning the cap. He shook his head quickly for a moment in reaction to the strong drink.

He swung his legs out from the top of the bed and slowly got to his feet, lifting a blanket with him and wiping his face dry before reaching down and pulling his pants on. The more the minutes passed by the more and more holes in his memories were filled. More and more of the foggy night became clear, as it often did, the story always being the same. He would drown himself in the local bar until he was kicked out, wander the streets, pick up a hotel room and crash, only to wake up hours later and stumble to the only place he could have ever called home.

The Xiao Long house, buried in the forest's of Patch, had been the only place that Qrow ever truly felt rested, at peace, like he belonged there. As of late however he had been struggling to stay there as well, the weight of his mistakes taking its toll upon him, and his self hatred growing with each passing day. He moved to the bathroom of the hotel room, having fully re-dressed himself, flicked on the light and starred at the man looking back at him in the mirror. He didn't even recognize himself at this point. Qrow had never been a happy go lucky kind of person, but he had still managed to sink so much lower than he ever thought possible. Every time he made a mistake he blamed it on his semblance and moved on, never accepting responsibility for anything bad that had happened to him. This was what had started his drinking, and after a few short years it was beginning to show. His hair was graying with stress at the ripe young age of twenty-seven. Around his eyes had blackened from lack of sleep and his eyelids always felt heavy, spending days somewhere between hungover and buzzed.

He knew if he continued down this path there was no coming back, but at the same time, he couldn't convince himself that there was a better way to cope. After all, his sister had left them, leaving her child behind to be raised by his best friend, and of course, "Summer," he breathed out, feeling tears welling in his eyes before he flinched. Qrow slammed his fist into the mirror, the glass fracturing and falling into the sink and all around him onto the floor. His aura had taken the impact of course, but the pain inside outweighed anything he could ever hope to feel on the outside. He looked back up, trying to look at himself through tear stained eyes, seeing several smaller images of himself in the fractured remains of the mirror.

Minutes later, as he finally left the hotel, leaving extra cash behind to pay for the damage he hadn't bothered to tell them about, he wandered the streets toward the house. However as the night droned on, he found his destination changing, headed into the woods, away from the path and out towards the cliff where she lay. As his feet drudged through the fallen leaves, stumbling over roots and rocks he couldn't see in the middle of the night, his mind wandered. He would try to keep his mind focused, but every time he tried he could swear he heard her speak to him, words she had said before, just days earlier or even years ago. "Qrow...what are you doing," the words washed over him, her gentle voice giving him goosebumps, stopping him in his tracks. He looked all around him to see where the words had come from.

After a few moments of panic his shoulders slumped, realizing that the voice had been in his head. As he continued out toward the cliff, the moon light began to shine through the trees, lighting his path out to her grave. The funeral had been days ago, nearly a week, and every night before and since he had gotten into this state of drunken wandering, having lost the person most precious to him in the world. His sister running away had been one thing but this, this was something entirely different. He had wondered often in the last few days if this was how Tai had felt when Raven left him and Yang behind. If it was, then how on Remnant had Tai been keeping it together so well, how had he been able to keep his thoughts straight and function as a father.

He thought perhaps it was because Raven had only left, not died in Tai's arms, as Summer had to Qrow. As he reached the clearing he looked out toward the cliff, seeing the large tombstone poking out of the leaves. He wanted to go closer, but just as every other night his body would not let him. His tears flowed out, his brain screamed at him to move forward but his legs just wouldn't budge.

"Either of you?" Jaune asked as they walked Qrow down the road on his stretcher.

"Ya..." Ruby let out quietly as she tried to quicken their pace. "Me, Yang, or even Raven..or..my mom."