Here we go.

Cover Art: Aristeo Storm

Chapter 22

"So, was this to get back at her for something?"

Qrow glanced up at Summer, who was hovering around since Raven was off in a huff. A murderous rage, one might call it, but that was just how she sulked. Alone, moody, and ready to attack anyone who tried to talk to her. Qrow regarded Summer's question with a little confusion, which prompted her to sigh and explain.

"You threw that fight to force her on a date with that guy."

"Threw? Me? He bested be in honourable—"

"Qrow…" Summer's eyes narrowed, so alike to how she'd always been when he was lying to get out of trouble that instincts ingrained over twenty years kicked in and had him confessing on the spot.

"Okay, yes, I threw the fight. What's the harm, though? It's just a date."

"With a strange guy none of us know. Aren't you at least a little worried for her?"

The obvious answer to that was "no" because this was Taiyang they were talking about and he was an all-around great guy, but Qrow was the only one to know that, so it suddenly made a lot more sense why Raven and Summer would be less certain. He couldn't very well assure her it would all be okay.

"I think Raven could protect herself if he tried anything."

"I don't doubt that. But will she even know what to look out for? No offence but… well… do either of you know what happens on a date?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Qrow, you're the least sociable person in Signal."

"I'm better than Raven."

"You're kinda not." Summer's expression was pitying, which was fair because his was horrified. There was no way he was worse than his sister. "Qrow, she has friends – lots of friends. You have your sister and me. And you tune out whenever someone else is talking to you."

To be fair, people his age talked to him about the worst trash imaginable, so it was little wonder he didn't pay attention. It was like when a small child wanted to talk to you as an adult. You'd humour them and nod your head, but you weren't paying attention. Which was a big reason why Yang and Ruby had gotten away with so much around him; they knew they could trick him into agreeing to things he shouldn't.

I didn't realise that made me look so antisocial… oof…

There wasn't much hope of salvaging it now, and also not much point since he didn't think he could up and change his ways. His brain was that of a much older person. He could fake interest in boybands and school crushes, but he'd always feel awkward and uninvolved to the other person. He just didn't care about that stuff. At least in Beacon, the focus would turn to becoming a huntsman and then he could chip in.

"I'm honestly amazed you even talk to me."

"That's different," he said. "You're special."

"A—Ah…" Summer looked away in sheer panic, and Qrow wanted to throw himself off a building.

"Not like that! I mean you and Raven are different from the other idiots. You're more mature. You don't talk about cute boys and music and—"

"Qrow, I talk about that all the time." Summer was still blushing but also managed to sound exasperated. "You just tune that out. I'm the same age as everyone else, you know. I like that stuff just as much. Like that new band, the Crimson Huntsmen—"

"Don't call them that. They're not even real huntsmen."

Summer gasped and planted her hands on her hips, much like Yang had when he said the Achieve Men's music was garbage. "They graduated from Shade Academy!" she snapped.

"And immediately became a boyband," he replied, rolling his eyes. "Ergo, they're not real huntsmen. They're cowards."

"This!" she said, sighing. "This is what I mean. You're already dismissing what I say and losing interest." Guilty as charged. Qrow winced. "It's cool to not like what we do, but I'm no different from anyone else. Even Raven thinks the bandmembers are handsome."

Zero fucking taste. Call him bitter – because he was – but huntsmen should become huntsmen and shouldn't waste their damned time and all the money invested in them to chase money. Tournament fighting was acceptable because you were at least improving your skills, but only if those were at some point used on Grimm.

They were in a war for crying out loud, and even if most people weren't aware of Salem, they still knew about the Grimm and the threat they posed. Remnant couldn't afford for people to take up academy slots only to come out and jump into another career.

"I'm just saying there are people who didn't make it into Shade because of them, and those people would have risked their lives to protect others. Instead, four slots got taken up by a bunch of arrogant pricks who want nothing more than to make money."

Summer sighed, deflating. "Okay, I don't disagree, but they're— Wait, how did we even get onto this? We were talking about Raven!"

"Sure."

It was from him saying Summer was special, but he didn't remind her. Summer probably remembered but also wanted to pretend it hadn't happened. Did she think he was crushing on her? It would be a reasonable thing for a teenage girl to think when a guy treats her different from everyone else and tells her it's because she's "special to him". If he had even a remotely believable answer to it, he'd give her it.

Lucky for her, she didn't need to worry about him being like that at all, since he'd never step in on Taiyang's woman. In fact, the bigger danger would be juggling the love triangle that had consumed Team STRQ. And which, in all honesty, probably should have been a lot messier than it had been. Shit like that destroyed teams, but theirs had found some weird way around it. Mostly because Summer had been content to give him up to Raven in Beacon and suffer in silence, averting her eyes and blinking back tears whenever Raven and Taiyang had their lovey-dovey moments.

I'll be a better friend this time and distract her when that happens…

Summer hit his arm. "Qrow!"

"What?"

"Stop blanking out and ignoring me!" Uh-oh. Summer was upset. "I wasn't even talking about boyband stuff! Raven. That guy—"

"Taiyang."

"Whatever-his-name-is!"

"It's Taiyang, though."

"We need to make sure she's not being taken advantage of."

"Do we, though?"

"What if he touches her without her consent!"

"Then we put his hand in an ice bag and call an ambulance?"

"Be serious!"

"…Do you think Raven wouldn't do that…?"

Summer slammed her hand down on the desk, causing it to rattle. "I'm serious!"

As he had been. Taiyang wouldn't try anything, but in the slim event he did, or anyone else for that matter, his sister was more than capable of turning their insides into outsides. But it was obvious Summer was worried, and his faith in Raven was being taken as a cavalier attitude toward her safety. That or… Qrow's eyes widened.

Was it happening already? He'd thought it had taken a year or so for Summer to really fall in love with Taiyang, but then what did he know? He'd been pretty useless socially back in Beacon, so maybe Summer had been crushing from day one and Qrow just hadn't been apt enough to notice it.

"Summer… Are you jealous? Do you also like Taiyang?"

The reaction he got was not what he expected. The entire left side of Summer's face pulled up in a cringe, and she looked at him like he'd just told her he ate his own toenails for breakfast. Disgust mixed with disbelief.

"Is that what you think this is?" she asked. "In what universe do you even imagine this is a thing?"

"Um." The universe where she married and had a baby with that man. "I mean, he is good-looking, and he's charismatic and friendly…" He trailed off when Summer's eyebrows rose. "What?"

"Qrow, do you have a crush on him?"

He choked.

"Because if so, then setting him up with your sister is the wrong way to go about it. People aren't even bothered by homosexual relationships nowadays. You can just come out."

"I'm not gay for Taiyang!" he howled. "I can just acknowledge he's a very handsome man."

Summer crossed her arms.

"What? A man can look at another man and acknowledge he's hot."

"No, he can't."

Qrow's jaw dropped open. What bizarre and backwards nonsense was that? Wait, they were still in school. Men could acknowledge the looks of another without issue, but schoolchildren were idiots. They were above the age where guys stopped shouting about cooties and saying "no homo" like it was some "get out of jail free" card, but only barely. And this was still twenty-something years before Yang and Ruby's more open time.

Damn teenagers and their immaturity.

"Just forget I said anything," he groaned. "What do you want to do about Raven? There's no way you'd bring this up if there wasn't some plan you were angling for."

"I have a great plan!" Summer grinned. "We follow them on their date!"

"…"

"What…?"

Qrow stared at her. "I thought you said you had a great plan."

"This is a great plan!"

Bloody teenagers. This was the kind of dumb crap Yang would have pulled at fifteen, which was fitting given their ages but no less stupid. He wanted to explain all the ways this was stupid, but he was the antisocial one and she was the smart one. Or so the legends went.

"Can I back out now?"

Summer's eyes narrowed to slits.

He had a feeling that was a "no".

/-/

What constitutes a successful date?

Qrow found himself reflecting on the question in the context of time travel as he followed Summer, who was following Raven and Taiyang. The answer obviously depended on a lot of different factors including age, expectation and the people involved.

For Qrow, at forty, a successful date was one with sex at the end – which sounded cynical, but when you were in a job with low life expectancy and you were getting on in your years as he had been, you really didn't have time to dance around one another's feelings. There was an expectation when a huntress and huntsman dated that they were already quite serious. Most huntsmen (professional ones outside academies anyway) were sleeping together before they even dated, so the term was really just putting an official name on what they were already doing.

For a civilian, dating could take its time, and the same could be said when you were younger. Taiyang and Raven weren't going anywhere, so in Tai's mind, a successful outcome to this date was probably a kiss, but knowing his best friend as he did, he suspected Tai would be over the moon with a bit of handholding, or even just the suggestion that they could do this again.

When you were a kid, you had a lot more of your life ahead of you (hopefully, anyway) so the idea of dating someone for months or even a year before anything serious happened wasn't so troublesome a thought. At his age, if a woman had told him she wanted to test things out for twelve months, he'd have softly pointed out one or both of them might not survive to see the end of that.

"You're daydreaming again," Summer said, slapping his arm.

"I'm contemplating romance and dating."

"Yeah, well, you can come up with deep philosophy later. Contemplate what's in front of your eyes. He's buying her an ice-cream."

Qrow rolled his eyes. "The fiend," he said, voice thick with sarcasm. "How ever will Raven survive this sordid situation?"

Summer hit him again.

"Buying ice cream for a girl is a big deal!"

It really wasn't to anyone but a young girl who had never been on a date before. Aka, Summer Rose. Qrow looked to the heavens for help but found none. The Brother Gods were assholes anyway. "Summer, it's ice cream."

"What if she has some on her chin and he rubs it off?"

"And…?"

"That's a big deal!"

"Is it?" Qrow rolled his eyes and, before she could stop him, cupped her chin, and pressed his thumb to her lip, brushing it to the side before letting go. "There. Was that such a big deal? It doesn't mean anything, Summer…?"

Summer Rose was frozen solid, eyes wide, skin heating up.

"Summer, no. I was proving a point. That point being that there's no reason to get embarrassed. Don't get embarrassed and prove me wrong. It's a touch. It doesn't even mean anything other than that you're a sloppy eater."

Summer squawked and slapped his hand away, crossed her arms and turned her back on him. "You can't just touch someone like that!" she hissed. "W—What if they get the wrong idea?"

"No one is going to get the wrong idea."

"They might!"

"They'd get it more from your reaction just now—" Qrow glanced over. "Aaand it doesn't matter anyway because Raven just made a child cry."

"What!?"

Sure enough, a child was crying because Raven had bumped into her and made her drop her ice cream. It was just an accident, but the kid was wailing like she'd been shot through the leg. Qrow rolled his eyes. Raven rolled hers, too. But, of course, Taiyang was Taiyang and immediately knelt and offered the girl his.

"See," said Qrow. "He's a great guy."

"J—Just because he'd give his ice cream to a child doesn't mean he's a nice person."

Qrow raised one eyebrow.

"Okay, so maybe he's a nice person, but nice people can still be creeps. My grandpa said nice guys are the ones you need to be careful of!"

"I think he meant that as in nice guys. Not guys who are nice."

Summer tilted her head. "What's the difference?"

"One is a nice person, and the other is an angry misogynist who thinks a woman should go out with him because he said a few nice things to her. Taiyang is the former, if you couldn't' figure that out."

"Are you his wingman or something?"

Yes. Yes, he was. Summer might have been here to protect Raven, but he was here to protect Taiyang. From what, he wasn't sure. Raven, probably. They'd fall in love eventually, but Taiyang had met Raven at seventeen, and there was always the chance he'd be turned off by her younger, less mature self. It didn't look that way, thankfully. In some ways she was more mature now than she had been at Beacon before, thanks to not growing up in a tribe of thieves and murderers. Signal had been a mellowing experience for her.

Not much of one, he was forced to admit when the child pointed an angry finger at Raven and she responded by swatting Taiyang's ice cream out the child's hand, sending it into fits of tears again, but even a 1% mellowing was still a 1% improvement.

"Damn it, Raven," Summer groaned, head in her hands as Taiyang rushed to buy the child another ice cream and then shoo her away before Raven could throw that one away as well.

In Ray's defence, a child bawling over an ice cream in the tribe would have been thrown to the outskirts, if not beaten by its parents. If you wanted food, you earned it, and you didn't rely on the kindness of strangers. It was a good lesson. Not well delivered – the tribe was cruel and harsh – but the lesson itself wasn't bad. Qrow had no issue with the idea of being taught to look out for yourself. It was more their methods.

"I'll give him points for effort," said Summer, as they followed the date on to a new location, a carnival and fairground that had cropped up for the Vytal Festival. The many rides and clowns and such were there to take advantage of the increased foot traffic. "And the carnival is a good idea. Don't you think?"

"I mean, for a normal person date, sure."

"Ugh. This isn't another one of your deep philosophy moments, is it?"

"No. This is a `uh-oh, it's Raven` moment." Qrow pointed, and Summer gaped. "This is the first time she's ever seen a clown."

And Raven was clinging to Taiyang like a civilian who'd seen a mouse, practically mounting Taiyang in an attempt to get away from the six foot man approaching with a stretched-wide smile, bright red nose, painted face and garish outfit.

"Is she… afraid…?" Summer was in awe.

Qrow, less so. Raven might have looked like an unflappable badass in Signal, but he knew she had a bit of a cowardly streak deep inside. It was what made her flee Team STRQ and the fight against Salem. In fact, part of the reason she was so aggressive in general was that she attacked things that frightened her and ran away when she couldn't.

And Raven hadn't taken Omen out on a date, obviously. Qrow had put a stop to that lest she kill Taiyang before Yang and Ruby could be born.

"I didn't realise she had a phobia of clowns," Summer said.

"I don't think she did either. Poor Taiyang really isn't having much luck." Though Qrow imagined he wasn't too unhappy about having his arms around Raven at that moment as he steered her toward a different ride. "Uh. Come to think of it, Raven has never been on a roller coaster either. It's not like rides like this existed where we lived."

"Then it'll be a fun experience for her, right?"

"Yeah…" Qrow winced. "Let's go with that."

Ten minutes later, Taiyang was holding open a bag for Raven to spew her lunch into. When your primary experience travelling was walking everywhere with the occasional Bullhead ride, the twist and turns of a roller coaster were a little much, especially when Raven – determined not to be underestimated – had obviously told Taiyang she'd be completely fine on a ride called "To Oblivion and Beyond".

You couldn't expect Raven Branwen to go on a ride for kids, tough. Not a chance in hell.

"This is a disaster!" Summer whined.

"It's hilarious."

She punched his arm hard. "Qrow! This is your sister's first date! It has to be special!"

"Wasn't the main objective of us following them to make sure Taiyang doesn't try anything?"

"There can be more than one objective."

Qrow sighed. "I'm no confused."

"What's there to be confused about? This is all super obvious!"

It really wasn't, and he was forty. If he couldn't understand it, there was something eldritch going on. That or this was a period of life he'd just skipped. A fact he was feeling increasingly pleased about.

"Qrow Branwen? What a surprise to see you here!"

That voice. Qrow wouldn't say he knew it by heart, but he could remember a voice from not one day ago. Sure enough, Willow Schnee was approaching him, dressed rather nicely today but also, suspiciously, alone.

"Qrow. What a surprise for us to bump into one—" Willow noticed Summer and instantly frowned. "Who is this?"

Summer's eyes narrowed. She didn't like the tone of voice.

"This is Summer, my friend from Signal. Summer, this is Willow, who I made a weapon for yesterday—"

"The one that you made out with."

"I did not touch that child."

"What?"

"What?"

Summer and Willow both stared at him, while Qrow sighed and looked away. "Nothing."

"I should think so," said Willow. "And I'm no child! We're practically the same age." Her arms were crossed, and she was pouting off to the side. "A—Anyway, it's a surprise to run into you like this. You're not on a date, are you?"

"No."

"What if we are?" asked Summer.

"What?" Qrow stared at her.

Summer latched onto his arm instantly, tugging him against her. "What if we are?" she asked again, smiling at Willow. "Qrow and I came out today to spend time together. You understand, right?"

"Uh…"

"Qrow." Willow glared at him. "Is that true!?"

"I mean…" He felt Summer grip his arm and growl but refused to lie. "Summer and I are just friends. We're keeping an eye on my sister's date to make sure it goes okay." Summer stepped on his foot. "Ow."

"That's fine, then." All smiles, Willow came to his other side and took his other arm. "Then you'll look after me while I'm here, won't you? I seem to have lost my bodyguard detail in the crowd and father would be worried sick if I were alone—"

"You have a scroll, don't you?" asked Summer. "Just called and asked to be picked up."

"But then I'd miss the carnival."

"That's BS and you know it! The carnival is here all week!"

"So? I want to visit it now, and why not with my good friend?"

"He's my friend first!"

"How selfish of you. Can't you share?"

Qrow was yanked one way and the other and was left even more confused. He knew for a fact Summer didn't have any romantic interest in him so where was this jealousy coming from? Was she worried he'd replace her? Or maybe she just didn't want to be ditched to wander the carnival alone.

Or she might still be upset he'd made Willow a weapon but not her.

"Girls. Girls!" He had to raise his voice to draw their glares away from one another. "Taiyang and Raven have vanished."

Summer gasped. "What!? No! Damn it, Schnee! This is your fault!"

"My fault? I'm not the one who wasted time pretending to be Qrow's girlfriend when he's clearly not interested."

Summer bristled. "He'd be interested if I wanted him to be!"

"Is that so? Hmhmhm. I admire the confidence you have in yourself. You're an inspiration to women everywhere."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what I said. Come on, Qrow. Let's go and play on some of these stalls. I've always wanted to see someone win a toy instead of just buying it."

Summer yanked him back. "Nuh-uh. Qrow and I already have plans—"

"Take a hint, you—"

"Qrow…" He winced. That was a voice he could by no means mistake. Sure enough, Raven was staring at him, lips dragged down, eyes narrowed, arms crossed. Summer froze on the spot. "What the fuck are you two doing here?"

"Nothing!"

"Nothing!"

Raven narrowed her eyes and looked at Willow.

"The girl said something about following someone on a date."

"You bitch!" Summer hissed.

"Did she now?" Raven hooked an arm around Summer's neck and dragged her away. "One second. Summer and I are going to have a few words off to the side. You and… whoever-the-hell-that-is hold the fort."

"Erk! Q—Qrow! Save me!"

Qrow stared down at his scroll as if the secrets to life were in there.

"T—Traitor! Ack—"

Raven yanked her around a corner.

"So, how's your date going," Qrow asked Taiyang.

"I think it's going okay. Not got much to compare it to, but I've held her hair back as she threw up, and my mom says that's how you know when someone truly loves you."

Qrow nodded. "Sounds legit."

"Are you both idiots?" asked Willow. "Look, Tang—"

"Taiyang."

"I don't really care." Willow stuck a hand in her pocket and threw a huge wad of lien in his face. "Go spoil her with sweets and gifts on me. Just keep the other one out our way while Qrow and I hang out."

"Eh? You want me to date both Raven and her best friend? That's a little beyond me."

"You got this," said Qrow, giving him a thumbs up.

"Whoah! Whoah! You're both overestimating me a little here! And I can't just take your money – there has to be a thousand lien here!"

"Yes, yes, it's just my lunch money—"

"Who needs this much for lunch!?"

Taiyang got no answer since Willow had already dragged Qrow away, leaving him to somehow deal with two girls at once.

Next Chapter: 16th March

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