Who: Qrow & various people What: December catch-all When: Throughout December Where: Around town, in memories, Trench Silent Hill, etc [ooc: starters in the comments! if you'd like something specific, pls hit me up on plurk or discord to plot!]
Qrow can't help be a little endeared by how Paul reaches out to smooth Ruby's hair so it doesn't wake her up. He's never known the kid too well, beyond being caught up in all that mess with Oscar that he and the house got dragged into thereafter, but as far as proper first impressions go, his gentility with this young version of Ruby is certainly winning a good deal of favor in Qrow's eyes.
He smiles a little bit before he pulls his gaze away again, and for that brief moment he looks like a younger man. One less burdened by all the loss and grief.
The quiet lingers for some time, after that, Paul's words hanging in the air unanswered. It's simpler than that, yet also more complicated.
"Ruby was too young to remember," he answers, at length. "Yang...I don't know if she blamed anyone. Might not have given herself space to, really. Tai didn't...take it well, when we lost Summer. I did what I could, but I still had to be away sometimes, because of the war...She felt like she had to step up for Ruby."
There's a long, tired sigh.
"Nobody really stepped up for her, though. It was bad enough she wound up in a nest of Grimm looking for her birth mom. I should've talked to her before it came to that, but I didn't know how to deal with it either, when Raven left. Summer was her mom more than Raven had ever been, so it was just...easier, to pretend there was never anyone else. Until she was gone, anyway."
Edited (SORRY I KEEP NITPICKING lkjskd) 2023-01-06 01:01 (UTC)
So the shape of the family structure begins to emerge. It explains some things that weren't truly questions Paul had, shading in details that he had grasped as sketches instead of fully coloured in parts of the background.
The world of Remnant seems as shattered as their moon and disconnected as their stars, sometimes. Everyone builds their families out of the pieces they find at hand. It's a way of life Paul understands better now.
"If Yang is anything like her sister," Paul says, sitting back and looking up at the sky, "I don't know if trying to stop her would have made a difference. No offense to people from your world, but you tend to be...determined."
It's a diplomatic way of saying 'stubborn', and an even more diplomatic way of saying 'impulsive'. He's coming to understand that better too, though. Life can't be lived at arm's length. Sometimes you have to step onto the board yourself.
"And you lost them too." Paul lets his eyes half-lid. "It's easy to forget that when you're thinking about the things you should have done. You only can see it from the place you are not, not the one you were in then."
Determined is such a polite word for it. Qrow can't help a snort.
"None taken. Us huntsmen and huntresses...we sure are a certain kind of people."
The kind that risk their necks over and over fighting monsters who thrive on fear and negativity, which can't help but exist in a life painted with blood and danger. It's a vicious circle, an impossible situation even without the unstoppable apocalypse in the mix.
"But maybe she would've waited until she at least had an Aura, you know?"
It's not Yang walking into the Grimm's nest that's alarming; as she is now, he wouldn't even blink twice at it. It's the fact that she did it when she was so small she had to drag Ruby along in a cart behind her, that she went by herself with no Aura or semblance, and if Qrow hadn't been following behind her (at a misfortune-safe distance), she would've been killed there and then.
Paul's compassion hits him strangely, knowing that. He's heard it before, from the man who has since become his lover--that it took strength and courage for him to dig himself out of where he was, regardless of how he ended up there and how long he spent mired in it--but it's still a difficult thing to hear, sometimes, especially from someone he doesn't even really know.
"I mean, I spent over a decade in that place, so I dunno how much credit I can really give myself on that, but at the time ... yeah, fair enough."
He had been so ruined, at that time. Team STRQ was the first place that had ever felt like family, for Qrow. The first (and last) time he remembers having been genuinely happy without reservation, without the stain of grief marring it. He'd found a purpose and a place in the world and he'd thought maybe he could build a life around that, like he could contribute something to the world that mattered.
And then Raven left them with an infant girl and a shattered team and they'd almost put together the shattered pieces in a mosaic that resembled what was lost when Summer was gone too, and then they had nothing left to hold together the pieces with. He and Tai and Yang all mourned on private islands of grief, unable to show their pain to each other nor look too closely at anyone else's, for fear they'd come undone when they couldn't afford to.
Qrow can't begin to remember how many times he'd drank and wept before an empty grave on that cliffside in the dead of night, because it was the only time he could risk it. How often he settled on the bird form because it was easier than to look Yang in the eye knowing that he hadn't been able to stop her mother from leaving and spent years hiding it from her.
Little Ruby stirs in her sleep, maybe affected by some dream, and curls in closer, and Qrow's reminded of what kept him going, but there's something terribly raw about being brought here and reminded of when that grief was fresh, rather than an old aching scar.
"...We never found her body," he admits, suddenly and unprompted. He chooses to blame this on the Mourning, rather than any specific feelings of vulnerability this time and place evokes. "It wasn't a clean thing, all at once. She just went on some mission and never came back."
no subject
He smiles a little bit before he pulls his gaze away again, and for that brief moment he looks like a younger man. One less burdened by all the loss and grief.
The quiet lingers for some time, after that, Paul's words hanging in the air unanswered. It's simpler than that, yet also more complicated.
"Ruby was too young to remember," he answers, at length. "Yang...I don't know if she blamed anyone. Might not have given herself space to, really. Tai didn't...take it well, when we lost Summer. I did what I could, but I still had to be away sometimes, because of the war...She felt like she had to step up for Ruby."
There's a long, tired sigh.
"Nobody really stepped up for her, though. It was bad enough she wound up in a nest of Grimm looking for her birth mom. I should've talked to her before it came to that, but I didn't know how to deal with it either, when Raven left. Summer was her mom more than Raven had ever been, so it was just...easier, to pretend there was never anyone else. Until she was gone, anyway."
no subject
The world of Remnant seems as shattered as their moon and disconnected as their stars, sometimes. Everyone builds their families out of the pieces they find at hand. It's a way of life Paul understands better now.
"If Yang is anything like her sister," Paul says, sitting back and looking up at the sky, "I don't know if trying to stop her would have made a difference. No offense to people from your world, but you tend to be...determined."
It's a diplomatic way of saying 'stubborn', and an even more diplomatic way of saying 'impulsive'. He's coming to understand that better too, though. Life can't be lived at arm's length. Sometimes you have to step onto the board yourself.
"And you lost them too." Paul lets his eyes half-lid. "It's easy to forget that when you're thinking about the things you should have done. You only can see it from the place you are not, not the one you were in then."
no subject
"None taken. Us huntsmen and huntresses...we sure are a certain kind of people."
The kind that risk their necks over and over fighting monsters who thrive on fear and negativity, which can't help but exist in a life painted with blood and danger. It's a vicious circle, an impossible situation even without the unstoppable apocalypse in the mix.
"But maybe she would've waited until she at least had an Aura, you know?"
It's not Yang walking into the Grimm's nest that's alarming; as she is now, he wouldn't even blink twice at it. It's the fact that she did it when she was so small she had to drag Ruby along in a cart behind her, that she went by herself with no Aura or semblance, and if Qrow hadn't been following behind her (at a misfortune-safe distance), she would've been killed there and then.
Paul's compassion hits him strangely, knowing that. He's heard it before, from the man who has since become his lover--that it took strength and courage for him to dig himself out of where he was, regardless of how he ended up there and how long he spent mired in it--but it's still a difficult thing to hear, sometimes, especially from someone he doesn't even really know.
"I mean, I spent over a decade in that place, so I dunno how much credit I can really give myself on that, but at the time ... yeah, fair enough."
He had been so ruined, at that time. Team STRQ was the first place that had ever felt like family, for Qrow. The first (and last) time he remembers having been genuinely happy without reservation, without the stain of grief marring it. He'd found a purpose and a place in the world and he'd thought maybe he could build a life around that, like he could contribute something to the world that mattered.
And then Raven left them with an infant girl and a shattered team and they'd almost put together the shattered pieces in a mosaic that resembled what was lost when Summer was gone too, and then they had nothing left to hold together the pieces with. He and Tai and Yang all mourned on private islands of grief, unable to show their pain to each other nor look too closely at anyone else's, for fear they'd come undone when they couldn't afford to.
Qrow can't begin to remember how many times he'd drank and wept before an empty grave on that cliffside in the dead of night, because it was the only time he could risk it. How often he settled on the bird form because it was easier than to look Yang in the eye knowing that he hadn't been able to stop her mother from leaving and spent years hiding it from her.
Little Ruby stirs in her sleep, maybe affected by some dream, and curls in closer, and Qrow's reminded of what kept him going, but there's something terribly raw about being brought here and reminded of when that grief was fresh, rather than an old aching scar.
"...We never found her body," he admits, suddenly and unprompted. He chooses to blame this on the Mourning, rather than any specific feelings of vulnerability this time and place evokes. "It wasn't a clean thing, all at once. She just went on some mission and never came back."