Ugh. I'm back. Sort of. Still very sick but forcing myself to get some writing done. I really thought this would just be a winter bug I'd get over in a few days, but I suppose part of growing older is being taken down by this stuff for longer. I really thought it'd be over in a few days – certainly by Thursday – but it absolutely would not go away. I still feel tired now, but tiredness is something I can work through.

On a bright note, I got to watch Arcane Season 2 and I loved it.

So much shipping!

Cover Art: Aristeo Storm

Chapter 58

Despite wanting desperately to tease the fuck out of his old teammates and Willow, it was hard to actually do so. Gretchen and he welcomed their return to Beacon with shit-eating grins only to see four teens looking so utterly wretched and miserable that their smiles died. Raven stumbled and wretched onto the floor, dry heaving in an effort to clear her empty stomach. Summer was no better, walking shakily down the ramp.

To mock them would have felt wrong.

And then Raven saw him. "W—What happened to you?" she mumbled, her voice distorted by pain.

"I got between a thug and an elder citizen."

"Oh. Okay." It was testament to how bad she felt that Raven accepted that. "Cool. I'mma… urk… f—fucking Taiyang," she hissed at him, on hands and knees. "I'd rather you won the bet and I had to date you than suffer this. Ughhh…"

Taiyang probably wished it was the other way around as well. He'd missed an open goal with this one, though in the man's defence it wasn't that easy to memorise plants over a single weekend. That was the kind of thing that took time and practice, and it was never as easy to pick out plants in the wild as it was in a textbook. At least Qrow assumed so. He'd never really needed to know given he could fly in and out of trouble.

"You came to welcome us back," Summer whispered, so painfully happy (in literal pain, that was) that Gretchen and Qrow shifted their feet uncomfortably.

"Y—Yeah," Gretchen lied. "We totally did. Um. Should you all maybe be at the infirmary?"

"The team has been cleared," said the pilot, closing the hatch behind them since they weren't able to. "They were checked over when we picked them up. They'll feel awful, but that's a good lesson to be careful in the future."

"F… Fuck you…"

The pilot turned to Raven and cocked an eyebrow. "You want me to make you clean the inside of the aircraft, kid?"

Raven grumbled something and flopped to the floor.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. You brats left my bird reeking of puke."

The man growled and stomped off, no doubt wanting to get a shower to wash off the stench of four teenagers hurling in a cramped space. Yikes. And he thought their field trip had been bad. Qrow knelt as best he could in front of Raven and said, "I'd offer to help you to your dorm but my arm is a little busted."

"I'll… I'll be fine." Raven rolled onto her back. "Leave me here to die."

"Is it that bad?"

"Apparently, we ate mushrooms contaminated with paralytic toxins," Willow reported. He raised an eyebrow and she explained, "W—When we reported our sickness, we had to show the teachers what we'd eaten via call. They made sure none of it would be fatal and then told us to deal with the consequences when it was clear we'd live."

"Oh, we've been dealing with them," Taiyang hissed. "We must have provided enough fertiliser to supply a whole ecosystem."

That was some tough love teaching right there. It never would have flown in Signal, what with the younger children and all, but by the time Beacon came along you had to be able to look out for yourself. There was only four years before it'd be life or death in the field. Better they poison themselves now than later.

Qrow and Gretchen ultimately gave up and sat with them, the other four not having the energy to climb stairs to their dorm. Gretchen stuck to his side, which for once Willow and Summer didn't seem to mind. They were either too sick to care or could tell Gretchen was doing it to cover for his arm and help him if he needed anything.

It turned out that the mushroom incident hadn't entirely been Taiyang's fault. He'd found and harvested them, but they'd accurately decided they were toxic and chosen not to eat them. The mistake came in them not cleaning the edible mushrooms thoroughly, so some spores and toxin from the former had collected on the latter, which they had cooked not quite well enough to boil it all off. Such a silly mistake, but easy to make for a bunch of kids used to having things like cookers and ovens to make sure food was cooked all the way through.

So, in the end, it hadn't really been Tai's fault. Though that also meant he hadn't succeeded, and so Raven held that she didn't owe him a date. The other man didn't look too bothered by that, being too sick to care. Eventually, they asked about their team and Gretchen filled in for Qrow by explaining it all.

"Man, both our teams had a crap time of it then," Taiyang said. "Geez. We must be cursed or something."

"How strong was the one you fought?" asked Raven, forever focused on the prize.

"Strong," Qrow said. "But she relied too much on her Semblance and it cost her. Didn't take me seriously for even a single second."

"Could you have taken her alone?"

"Not a chance. This is what I got with her not taking me seriously. If she had, I'd be fucked." Sixty seconds was a long time to hold against someone that much stronger than you. "Luckily, I didn't have to. I just needed to distract her from the huntress."

Raven nodded. His sister was recklessly aggressive at times but it was always an intentional thing. She wasn't actually stupid, much like Yang hadn't been, and both of them knew when it was best to back out a fight. It was just that they both enjoyed fighting so much that they looked like battle-hungry idiots.

They talked for a little longer. The four of them were understandably much more interested in his team's trip than their own. Food poisoning was embarrassing but mundane, whereas two huntresses trying to kill one another was prime gossip material. Raven wanted to know everything about the fight, Taiyang about the Semblances, Summer about the weapons and Willow the politics of it all.

"I don't know the reasons behind it," he said in answer to Willow. "I've had a meeting with her and Ozpin after to give my side of the story, but all I got from them was that I should focus on lessons and leave it to the adults." He shrugged his good shoulder helplessly. "You know how it is with teachers."

They all grumbled their agreement, very much used to the "need to know" mentality every teacher used around them. You couldn't get so much as an answer to why a fire alarm had been sounded if they didn't want to tell you.

Finally, after an hour, Raven noticed what no one else had.

"Wait!" she blurted out, pointing at them. "You said you got back to Beacon yesterday!"

Qrow winced. "Yeah…"

"That means you failed the exercise!"

He blushed.

Gretchen pointed, and casually threw him to the wolves. "Technically, he failed. We were fine."

Raven burst out laughing.

"Fuck off, bitch," he grumbled. "You poisoned yourselves."

"But we – ha! – we still – snrk – we still got a passing grade! We still lasted the full weekend!"

"She's not wrong," Taiyang said, grinning like a loon. "We may have puked our guts out but we won."

Qrow scowled. "It was never a competition."

Apparently, it very much was, because every member of Team SWRT burst out laughing and pointing at them. Great as it was to see the four of them agreeing with something and getting along, Qrow couldn't help but feel Gretchen's plan of coming and laughing at the four of them had backfired somewhat.

/-/

As all the teams started coming back, Beacon fell into a strange out-of-sync routine where the first years had the Monday and Tuesday off but no one else did. The teachers had implied they should all go out into the city if they wanted to have fun, probably because they didn't want a whole year to run around making noise while others worked.

That was fine with them. After a weekend eating foraged food, Team SWRT were dying to eat out, and while Qrow did invite his whole team to go, Peter had promised to visit his family in Mountain Glenn, and Nessa had similarly promised to hang with some friends. Gretchen had come along, but only to Vale, having also promised to spend some time with Hazel.

It was a strange reminder that everyone on the team had more of a life than he did. They all had someone waiting for them, be it family or friends, whereas he had nothing outside the old Team STRQ. He didn't have friends from Signal, having forgotten about them almost the moment he graduated. It wasn't like they'd slipped his mind – he could still remember Rosebud, and it was a shame the guy hadn't made the cut for Beacon – but those people just hadn't been important in his mind.

They weren't Team STRQ.

It was probably a little callous of him to think like that but the truth of the matter was that friendships got harder to hold onto as you grew older. Kids could have twenty friends and remember everything about them, not to mention balance time spent with each, but that just wasn't feasible when you grew up and had life and a job. Qrow had always struggled to balance commitments like that, only really holding to Taiyang and his nieces. Even visits to see Raven had been maybe once or twice a year, and rarely pleasant. Outside his best friend and nieces, he'd known maybe one or two huntsmen by face and name, but they were colleagues and comrades rather than friends.

Qrow didn't think he was alone in feeling that way, either. It was just something a lot of people went through. Glynda hadn't had any friends outside Beacon from what he knew, and neither did many of his colleagues back in Signal.

Being a teenager is exhausting. I've gone from having one living friend and two nieces to having at minimum seven people I need to think about.

Eight if he considered his new sparring partner, Roman. That was eight times as many friends as he'd had back home, and finding time for them all was exhausting. Not to mention Kali and Ghira, and his promise to meet Peter's family with the rest of his team. That was so many more people than he was used to dealing with.

And every member of Team SWRT made it look so easy. They chatted and laughed and joked and just gelled together. It had been the same for Team STRQ, but Qrow for the life of him couldn't remember how it happened.

"What's with the long look?" asked Taiyang, coming over to him while the girls gossiped about girly things – like firing chambers, dust ballistics and what rounds could penetrate steel plate. "You've been quiet all morning."

"I'm just thinking how easy you all make it look."

"Huh?"

"Gelling as a team," he said, lamely.

Taiyang looked worried. "Are things bad with your team? I thought you all cleared that up."

"We cleared up me being a selfish prick and letting my disappointment on not making it onto your team almost destroy this one." Taiyang winced at the memory, or at Qrow's annoyed tone. He was mostly angry at himself for being such a bastard at the time. "And I like to think we're on good terms. We all get along when we hang out and the field trip was smooth up until the huntress. Real smooth. We handled everything like a well- oiled machine."

"Then what's the problem?"

"I guess it's that we don't do anything beyond that. We work well together, but we don't…" Qrow waved a hand lazily at Raven, Willow and Summer, who were laughing at some joke shared between them. "We're not like that. We get on when we hang out, but we never make any effort to do that outside of when it's strictly required."

Taiyang hummed. "Do you feel like you're avoiding one another?"

"No. That's the thing. I'd be able to see there was friction if that was the case. It's not that we don't get on. It's that we… well… we don't do anything more than get along. We're not close. It's like we're all just friendly colleagues at work who chat and talk during the lunch hour and give one another shitty secret Santa presents once a year, and that's it."

Taiyang struggled to get the idea, mostly because this Taiyang was seventeen and had never worked a proper day's work in his life, so he didn't really understand the office atmosphere from working at Signal. It was a shame too, because the analogy was a good one. Qrow had lots of colleagues at Signal, and he knew their personalities and bits about their families from casual conversations in the staffroom and at meetings, but he'd struggle to call them friends. He knew about their pets and family drama, but he didn't know their hobbies or passions.

"I'm not really sure I know what you mean. You're all friends, aren't you?"

As expected, a child couldn't understand the nuances. Friends were friends. You had best friends, good friends and then pals. There were no in-betweens. He wanted to ask Taiyang how he did it, how kids were meant to just "hang out" and get on, but he doubted they were aware of the methods behind it. Kids were just kids, and they could just sit down with strangers and become friends within a few sentences. Qrow blamed it on the lack of worldly worries. None of them had to contend with thoughts of Mountain Glenn, Salem, and temporal paradoxes.

Bloody hell, he needed a drink.

"Maybe I should just drag us all out somewhere," Qrow said.

"That could work," Taiyang said, sensing the us in the comment was about Qrow's team. "You don't really do much outside classes and training as a team."

"That's what the field trip was meant to be about."

"Huh?"

"A weekend alone in the wilderness." Qrow nursed his cola like it was a beer. The damn thing was too sweet for his liking. "You didn't think it was just to test survival skills, did you? We've barely had any lessons on that. This was about putting teams out in the middle of nowhere so they'd be forced to rely on one another. It was a teamwork exercise."

"Aren't you reading into it too much?" asked Summer. He hadn't realised everyone had stopped to listen. The girls were looking at him like he'd said something crazy. "Do you really think the teachers have these huge plans and schemes?"

"Do you think they don't…?" he replied, more amazed than anything.

Had the kids back in his time been so dumb as well? What, did they think Qrow and the other teachers at Signal were just throwing random lessons around and hoping for the best? They probably did and all. It reminded Qrow of when he'd read those YA books to Yang and Ruby when they were younger, worlds where kids had to do everything and adults were useless in every capacity.

Geez. I didn't realise we were such blind little shits…

And now he felt even older.

"Maybe I'm wrong," he surrendered, knowing he wasn't but feeling too fatigued to argue the point. The whole point of coming back was to relive his glory years in Beacon, and yet it was feeling increasingly impossible to do so. "Guess I'm just in a mood."

"You're always in a mood," Raven pointed out.

"It's called maturity. Look it up."

"Sure thing, old man."

They had no idea how accurate they were with that little quip. He was an old man, and no matter how much this mirrored his childhood, he wasn't child enough to enjoy it as he once had. He still loved the people, and would die for them, but he was an old man. School had been a golden part of his life but going back to it…?

It sucked.

He just hadn't noticed it in Signal because he'd kept himself going thinking how everything would just be perfect the moment he got into Beacon and Team STRQ was a thing again. He'd always had an objective, a goal, and he'd told himself any effort putting up with kiddy nonsense was fine because it'd only be temporary, and things would be perfect in Beacon. It'd be them again, back to how it was, and he'd slot into it as easily as he had in his memories.

A day out at the mall with his old team didn't improve his mood any.

/-/

Qrow raised his glass. "Another."

"You sure you're good for it, kid?" The man glanced down at the lien pushed across the counter. "I wasn't talking about money."

"What, you want my ID? Bit late for that after three drinks," Qrow sniped. He didn't mean it to come out as aggressive as it did, enough to have the burly man backing up. It was just driving him up the wall to be underestimated so much and so constantly. "I can handle my alcohol; I'm not some greenhorn that's going to collapse over your bar, boss."

"I can see that." The man shook his head and poured Qrow another drink from the tap. "It's just that we don't get your kind here normally. Your lot stick to the clubs and bigger bars."

And this was a dinghy little dive bar. It was one of those locals with a gloomy atmosphere, cigarette smoke (the laws around that wouldn't come in for another decade) and a stained pool table in the corner alongside a darts board. Qrow hadn't so much picked it out as been drawn there, and mostly because it was his local in the future. Except that the faunus who ran it then was nowhere to be seen. Even that had changed.

"I'm not one for strobe lighting and garish music," Qrow grunted.

The man nodded and slid the drink over, taking the money. A few locals had shot him confused looks when he arrived, and he was getting a few more now, but they'd soon realised he wasn't some arrogant tween looking to make a scene. He'd taken to the bar with one arm in a sling and started necking drinks, and they'd soon realised he was one of them. Just another lush looking to process a shit day with some chemical assistance.

It wasn't just to sulk, though. Drinking helped him focus – as crazy as that sounded. It let him slip back into the forty-something man without having to worry about teenage drama. Instead, it was adult drama. Melodrama.

Did he regret coming back and trying to relive his life? It was a definite "no" to that since he could save Summer's life and keep Raven from bolting. What he absolutely did regret was repeating his childhood verbatim. He'd up and figured life would be as fun the second time as the first with no changes, and casually forgotten he'd been there, done that, and gotten the t-shirt. Nothing was as fun the second time around as it was the first.

Qrow took another drink.

The difficulty fitting in with kids was something he'd noticed years ago but pushed off. Easy to always tell himself it was just because they were in Signal, and that things would suddenly be that much more mature once they hit Beacon. As if getting accepted was some shot in the arm that vaccinated them of their juvenile nature. Stupid in hindsight. The only reason Beacon had seemed mature to him back at the time was because he'd been immature. It was still a school full of teenagers, and it wasn't any different from Signal other than that the teachers were better.

Should have realised it was a problem when I spent so much time focusing on Mountain Glenn, he thought. And I was enjoying it too. Dealing with these spies and issues with Salem. I've been having more fun outside Beacon than in it.

No great surprise there. He was a professional huntsman and he knew the truth of Salem where others didn't, so being told – literally by Ozpin – to ignore the problems and focus on his studies…? Well, it was insulting. Not that Ozpin meant it to be, but that was how it came about. He was forty, for fuck's sake, and he'd been told to focus on his homework while the adults dealt with the situation. How was he meant to take that?

Qrow downed his drink and flipped some lien onto the counter, accepting another. The booze dulling his mind helped ease the pain in his shoulder as well, which was nice. Normally, his attitude would have drawn a few drunks looking to start trouble, but even the thugs in the bar didn't want to be seen picking on an injured guy.

The solitude suited him just fine.

Raven and Summer would be worried if they knew I was drinking. He took a sip. Then again, they'd be even more worried if they knew what was really going on. Should I leave Beacon? Is that what I want?

He didn't think so. Tempting as it was to just up and test out now, he didn't think his young body could handle it. Not to mention he'd be too worried about them all. Qrow took another drink, nursing it and the idea in his head. What he needed was a way to keep himself active, because dawdling along for four years in school was going to kill him. The business with Mountain Glenn and the spies was already doing a good job of that, and it was probably why he kept pushing it, unconsciously wanting more.

That made him remember the fight with Tock, too.

Short as it had been, he'd felt more alive than he had for years during it. The adrenaline, the spikes of fear when he'd been unable to beat her, and then the sheer rush when he'd buried his sword in her chest and claimed victory. He'd been beaming ear to ear after, even with a ruined shoulder, and he'd teased and quipped with Maria like he and any other huntsman might have after coming out a hairy situation alive.

Maybe it wasn't adrenaline at all that had me in such a good mood. Having a good fight with my life on the line finally took the edge off.

An edge he hadn't known he'd been riding.

"Fuck," he mumbled. "And I called Yang and Raven battle maniacs earlier. Talk about ironic."

Just thinking of it had him smirking into his drink. It had been a close one, him being utterly outclassed by that psycho, and he'd been forced to work his mind like no spar with a kid his age had ever required. He'd won not by skill or by outclassing his opponent with twenty years of cheating knowledge. He'd won by taking a gamble and having it pay off.

And he'd never felt so alive.

"I think I've got a problem…"

"I'll say, brat." The familiar voice clued him off before the stool next to him slid back and Maria Calavera took her seat. She placed one of her crutches against the bar. "The hell are you doing in a place like this?"

"Contemplating life. And you, grandma? Isn't it past your bedtime?"

"That kind of insult is meaningless from a kid like you." Maria accepted her drink and took a long swig. "Ozpin would be disappointed to know you're out drinking like this."

"That's why he doesn't need to know."

"Feh. Whatever. Not like I don't enjoy a drink every now and then." Maria settled her elbows on the bar. Without the mask, she looked hot, but Qrow forced that away. This woman must have been sixty to seventy in his time.

Also, he had his beer goggles on.

"What's got you driven to drink? Is it taking a life?"

"Nah. Done that before."

"At your age!?"

"In my defence, the guy was a bit of a dick."

"I'd fucking hope so."

"Bandit. Took pleasure in people being helpless. He liked to kill people slowly so he could watch the despair slip out their eyes. Also took prisoners and ransomed them back, after he'd had a little fun with them."

"Fuck me. And you met a person like that?"

"Met him? I grew up around people like them. That was my childhood."

"Before you struck out with your sister?"

"Yeah." He took a long drink. "Decided I didn't want her growing up in a place like that."

"I notice you said her growing up and not you." Maria watched his one-shoulder shrug, then sighed. "Not that I can blame you. As a huntress, you always hear of kids who have had to grow up quick because their parents died. I never thought it was this literal, though."

"I'm not always like this. Today is just a rough day."

"If any other kid your age said that I'd laugh and tell them they don't know what a rough day really is." Maria raised her glass. "Another for me and the brat. My treat." The bartender looked happier to have a responsible adult with him. Qrow hated it. "What's set you off today, then? If it's not the taking a life thing. Is it the injury?"

"Nah. Stuff like that happens. Injuries are normal." He accepted the new drink. "Thanks. Today was just me realising I don't know how to connect with people my own age, and then I felt miserable about it because everyone else is able to let loose and just be kids, and I'm… well…"

"Out sharing war stories with a veteran in a bar," Maria finished.

That was a very accurate way to put it.

"Yeah…"

"It does sound shitty when you put it like that," she said. "But I can see where you're coming from."

"Can you?"

"I had my fair share of friends as a kid, you know. Didn't come out the womb masked and kicking ass. I've lost contact with a lot of those. Most aren't even dead; they've just moved on with their lives while I've been running across Remnant doing work."

Work for Ozpin. He knew the feeling. Ozpin's work was deeply necessary and Qrow never regretted it, but it sure as hell took a toll on your social life. Maybe that was why he found it so easy to chat with Maria. Not only because she was an adult around his real age, but because she was his parallel from this time. She was the Qrow Branwen to his… well, Ruby, he supposed. That was what he was right now – Ozpin's future investment yet to pay off.

"Tell me about your team," she requested.

"Only if you tell me about your old one after."

"Deal." Maria flipped out her purse and let some lien spill out. "Keep them coming," she told the bartender. "The kid and I are going to be here for a while."

The man sighed. "Aren't you supposed to tell him drinking his sorrows away at seventeen is wrong and that he should go home?"

"Eh?" Maria shot the man a dark look. "Do I look like a responsible adult to you?"

"You're looking less and less like one." The man sighed. "On your livers be it."

"Tch. Business must be booming for this guy to try throwing customers away," Maria groused.

She twisted on her stool, her broken leg hanging limply off it, while Qrow's dislocated shoulder scraped the bar. Two wounded huntsmen on their break, talking shop over booze. It was almost comical how he'd spent his whole life feeling nostalgic toward Team STRQ and Beacon, only to finally get what he wanted and now feel nostalgic for this.

The two of them stayed out for hours, and between them drunk almost every other patron there under the tables.

God, he missed his nieces.

That's the funny thing about missing people and wanting to go back. You end up leaving a fresh bunch of people and missing them. But really, what I wanted to show was Qrow's continued struggles to be a teenager. He's just too old and set in his ways.

Next Chapter: 7th December

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