House Log 002: Be our guest

[payingfordeliverance]

Who: A pile of Pandoras and a pile of RWBYs and perhaps some assorted close attachments
What: A mingle log in which two houses alike in dignity have a slumber party for great CR kickstart justice
When: End of the first week in November, before the month becomes established as a horrifying shitshow
Where: Pandora House, which still needs a cooler name

Content Warnings: Nothing in the log prompts; mushroom monsters are present if we feel like being rude.



Somewhere around the end of September, Xerxes Break made a joke about slumber parties explicitly because he knew it would make Qrow Branwen's life difficult and that struck him as very funny. Now, he has to make good on this and throw a proper one. You'd think this would count as the joke backfiring on him but no, no, it most certainly does not -- Break and his pack of feral Victorian teenagers all thrive on a good party in their own way, and having come from an old-fashioned world they are already quite busy preparing to hunker down inside for the wintertime. Unused to being able to pass long, harsh nights with things like television and video games, they have many activities at hand to indulge in, and Break has already been hard at work stockpiling food like some sort of rabid hobbit.

The house itself is warm and pleasantly haunted and cozy in a way that only happens in homes that aren't accustomed to things like electric heat -- there are piles of quilts and blankets scattered around most rooms, free for the taking if someone wants to wrap themselves up, and all the communal rooms have fires going in their fireplaces. The heat that radiates from those spots is the kind that can thaw out frozen bones in a way that nothing else can. And the feel of the house itself is...well, despite the various struggles of its inhabitants, it just feels like the house is daring to hope that it can be happy. After all, it sat abandoned and empty for a long time, the more terrible of the ghosts that haunted it always inevitably chasing away anyone who dared try to settle down here. Those ghosts are gone as of last month, and the fact that every single person living here is now getting a second chance at simply being someone has already begun seeping into the walls themselves. Although it's still early enough in the month that the intense danger November brings with it hasn't yet become widely known, the house feels decidedly safer than the outside all the same, with a faint sense of benevolent sentience hitting as soon as one walks through the door.

That's what you get in a house full of darkbloods (and Oz).


Food: Probably it's no surprise to anyone who knows Break that the kitchen is where that sense of protectiveness is strongest; this is the room he's taken over as his personal territory. Feeling much better with last month's homesickness finally easing up, he spends the day of the party cooking enough to feed the whole crew -- he's been learning to cook mostly in restaurants, so this is no problem. Having been warned that beef in particular is about to become scarce for the season, he's gotten a hold of a good chunk of it and has put together a big cauldron of beef stew, with potatoes and leeks and many, many mushrooms and things to round it all out. This is one of exactly two proper meals that Break has mastered already, given that the basis of a stew is to chop up exactly the right things and then put them in a pot, and the house smells more and more exquisite the closer you get to the kitchen. There's fresh bread, too, and though the loaves are still a little misshapen they taste just fine, and he's recruited Lysithea to help out with her wonderful baked sweets. Break will sneak away for further baking when he's in want of a bit of quiet, too, so expect further treats all night. Of particular note, in the wee hours when the house is getting properly chilly, he produces a wonderful warm drink: A big pot of (non-alcoholic) spiced berry juice, rich and red and warmed up with cloves and cinnamon sticks and slices of the last fresh oranges he was able to snatch up at the docks floating about inside. Victorians know how to do winter food, and why wait for the snow to really get going?

Movies: This is something new and exciting for the Pandoras. Bereft of any kind of proper screen, they've been taught to pin up white bedsheets against the wall in the parlor, and someone's omni has been recruited to project things onto it. Given the recent spooky season and some of the kids learning about Halloween, many of the movies of choice tonight are themed thus, such as Hocus Pocus and The Others. But someone having figured out how to search the omni has resulted in Beauty and the Beast, too, for something a little less creepy. This whole thing is super great. Who knew you could go to the theater without having to get dressed and leave the house?

Arts and Crafts: The other thing happening in the parlor is the coffee table being taken over by art supplies. The Alices like to make things, and have been amusing themselves lately putting together decorations for the house. We have paints, fancy papers with pretty patterns on, scissors, glue, glitter, the works. The sorts of art supplies you'd expect from a couple of girls who spent the bulk of their early lives locked, in some capacity, in a tower. It's something fun to play with while the movies are running. It is possible that White Alice may be working on painting swirly bits on an animal skull of some sort. Don't worry about it, it's fine.

Game Room: The house does have an actual dining room, nice and long and with high ceilings. Given that the kitchen with its huge wooden table is plenty big enough to eat in, they haven't bothered to use it as such. Instead, there's a table set up off to the side for board games and jigsaw puzzles -- and, more importantly, the bulk of the room is totally clear for things like indoor badminton and a ball made for kicking about. Possibly this is because Break spent all of September trying to convince himself it was silly to worry that the Alices had been eaten by something only to have them turn up in October and tell him of having been eaten by a giant fish, and he freaked out and decided he doesn't want the kids playing outside where the beasts are unless they have to. He is not telling.

Training: That said, weapons training simply needs to happen outside, and it's entirely possible that sooner or later it will come up that this slumber party is full of weapons enthusiasts and at least four of them, inexplicably, are scythe users. If that happens, there's a clear space outside in the backyard that Break has been using for his own drills, grass already trampled flat and a few nice sturdy posts that a blade has clearly been whacking away at. There's a nice stone wall around the property that will keep a great many of the unsavory creatures out, as some of the back used to be a garden which has long since grown wild, and Break has taken a hint from Gaze and set up several tall incense burners, too. If anyone is feeling in want of a midnight spar for some reason, this is where they can go -- but keep in mind that the wall won't keep the poisonous floating mushroom creatures out, and given that said garden has proven to be a mushroom oasis, the horrible little shuffling ones that induce hellscape hallucinations may be about, too.

Comments

[bolstafir]

Oh. Oh no. Oh he sees where this is going. The expression on Qrow's face just gets this dawning horror about it, as though he were the character in a horror movie that's just discovered the plot and is about to be eaten by the monster.

"....Lemme guess. This Jack guy was pissed about her death, freaked out, tried to bring her back, and then it all went to shit from there?"

He's not sure how the twin situation is connected to that guy, but he is sure he will hate it when he finds out.

[payingfordeliverance]

This callout is so intense that Baltus, slinking about somewhere in the underbrush, sneezes violently.

However.

"...no, no, he managed to make it worse than that."



Break is arguably one of the most well-adjusted people from his canon, which he hates intensely.

[bolstafir]

...Welp. Qrow just. Sighs. Heavily.

"Did he want to kill the Core of the Abyss directly for revenge, or just end the whole world because she wasn't in it anymore?"

He sounds so fucking tired.

"Gotta say, my bet's on Door Number One, since you must've mentioned the twins part for a reason."

[payingfordeliverance]

"You lose! It was the second one. Except, you know, somehow even more warped than that? This guy was a real piece of work."

Break dances around a little so that he can wave a finger at him. Honestly going into sing-song mode is about the only way he has to cope with any of this.

"Here's the story as it was told to us all, for an entire century. One day, Glen Baskerville -- the second one I mentioned, the one who'd had the sister -- simply snapped. Went utterly bonkers mad. He sent his Baskervilles out into the capital city of Sablier, where they lived, with orders to kill everyone in it, as he meant to drop the world into the Abyss. Jack, his very best friend, killed him to prevent it, containing the damage to Sablier itself. Aware that Glen would be back eventually, Jack dismembered the corpse and sealed all the bits up in various scattered places to contain him, and wrote a heart-wrenching journal about all this. He established Pandora to handle the Abyss monsters in the Baskervilles' stead and died known as the Hero of Sablier, only for his soul to reappear a hundred years later in Oz, spouting warnings left and right about the Baskervilles' return and how we had to prevent Glen from finishing what he'd started."

Qrow has been following along very well here so Break bets he can see where this is going.

[bolstafir]

As Break tells this story, Qrow slowly drags a hand down his entire face. Brothers, this is a Whole Mcfucking Mess. For all that Salem is, at least she didn't jump straight to a fucking apocalypse until after she was trapped in an inescapable immortality having effectively broken up with her formerly-dead-now-equally-immortal husband in a fight that killed their children and thus the the last remaining thing she felt she had to live for. This guy sounds like he had a screw or fifty loose to begin with.

"....Except he switched the roles, huh."

Man, Qrow really wishes he could be drunk for the rest of this story. It's already exhausting. Alas.

"So was there some circumstance with his soul coming back? I thought only the Glens recycled their souls through reincarnations."

[payingfordeliverance]

"A circumstance, indeed. Mm -- all souls reincarnate, but -- it's the Glens who pass themselves down from host to host. They don't merge. When the latest one dies they all hop to the next. For this Glen to be killed shouldn't have been possible at all, but."

The property surrounding Break's house is not enormous; there's a wall surrounding it and Break keeps to the inside of that wall, for safety reasons. By this point in their walk they've already reached the bit of the garden furthest from the house, and Break has no desire to still be having this conversation by the time they swing back around. To that end, he hops up to sit on the garden wall, kicking his heels idly against it like a child.

"When Alice emerged, for lack of anything better to do with her, they imprisoned her in a tower on the grounds. Glen and Jack both visited her, and over time, Jack came to realize that 'Alice' was two different girls sharing the same name. They were able to switch bodies through their connection, and Jack realized that the other Alice was, in fact, the Will of the Abyss. Somewhere along the way he snapped, and got it into his head that because Lacie -- their mother -- had been properly obliterated and was never coming back, he would drop the world she loved down into the Abyss with her.

"To do this, he needed the power to undo the bindings holding the world together. So he befriended the Will with simple promises to bring her to his home to see the rose gardens...the sort of thing a lonely young girl kept prisoner would fall for. Eventually, when the time came, he asked her to make a special monster just for him, with the power to bring down the world. Because she loved and believed in him, she obliged...and created Oz."

It's troublesome to be dishing on Oz like this and Break is terribly uncomfortable with it actually, but. Mmmmmmmm. Mm. Oz has been keeping his feelings to himself since they arrived, doing his smile-at-everything thing again, and Break is growing increasingly certain that this might go wrong for him later. Burned by the way keeping important information to himself wound up leading to a great many deaths in the end, he isn't willing to let Qrow go into things unaware, if he's going to be around the boy at all.

[bolstafir]

"All of them?" He lets out a low whistle. "Must get damn crowded in there."

Qrow can't even imagine it, honestly. Ozpin's led what, at least a hundred different lives, minimum? If all those souls were still hanging around in their original state, how would any of them ever get anything done?

Break hops up onto the wall, and Qrow leans against it, resting his elbows up against the edge. But even with the casual, relaxed posture, he is paying close attention, and it's the next part that really has him irritated. It's one thing to use people; Qrow had been upset about learning he'd more or less been used to fight a war that had no end, yes, but for all he'd have wanted Oz to have gone about things differently, it was quite literally for the sake of keeping every living person in Remnant safe for just that little bit longer.

Jack, meanwhile, had used these children (these girls in a tower, the irony does not escape him) to bring about the end of the world.

"Remind me to punch this guy in the face if he ever shows up here."

Though he supposes he will have to get in line at this point but you know what, worth the wait tbh.

"So Oz is...a Chain? Huh. Guess that explains what he said about being able to just summon his scythe whenever he wants." If the scythe is part of him then it only follows that he should be able to use it at will.

Qrow doesn't sound horrified about this part, though. Honestly, there's precedent for making people-shaped weapons even in Remnant. That was how Ironwood had likely envisioned Penny Polendina when he approved Pietro's project, after all. Just a more advanced Atlesian Knight, with AI that didn't need direct commands, probably. But her construction had involved a piece of her creator--her dad's Aura, and she became much more than that. A real, living person -- the Winter Maiden for a time, even.

"What happened next?"

cw: vague reference to a child committing sacrificial suicide for great apocalypse justice

[payingfordeliverance]

"Oz was a Chain. I don't know what he is now exactly and I suspect he doesn't either and that's the only reason I am telling you this." This Break says very firmly. "I don't want to endanger whatever life he decides to make here by spreading such things around, but -- if he's already mentioned his scythe to you, that means he's already gone to you about training with it, right? Then, even if you're perfectly well able to take care of yourself, it's something you should know."

Oz's powers have been volatile in the past to the point that Break has spent the bulk of their relationship thinking in the back of his mind that he might have to kill the boy someday. With so many unknowns here in Trench still, for all Break knows Oz's ability to skewer Baskervilles may well translate to being able to knock out Aura people somehow, even if he's a vileblood rather than a darkblood like the rest of them. It is impossible to be too paranoid.

He sighs a little and kicks the wall again.

"Jack began his rampage. Glen did order his Baskervilles to kill as many people in the town as possible -- because he realized Sablier was lost, and any souls that fell into the Abyss alive would be transformed into Chains there. By killing them, he was setting them free to join the reincarnation cycle, to have a chance at another life. When Jack realized Glen was doing his best to contain the damage, Jack killed him, something that he shouldn't have been able to do without Oz's powers. Then, he went to the tower, for further help from the Will of the Abyss I think.

"Mm, but our more violent Alice had caught on. She forced her sister to switch places with her and confronted him, and ultimately destroyed her own body to deny him further access to the Will. Thrown back into the Abyss, the Alices shredded their memories for good measure, in the hopes of preventing Jack from manipulating either of them again. And then -- this bit I don't quite understand, we learned it all in a hurry -- through the bond Alice shared with Oz, she stole his powers into herself, becoming a Chain on her own and stealing the last of Jack's ability. Sablier fell, the Abyss permanently broken and the Glen cycle disrupted. But the world itself was saved and all of this happened a good twenty-five years before I was even born."

[bolstafir]

Qrow scrubs at his face. This story is complicated as hell and lowkey giving him a headache. He wonders if this is how it'd feel to hear Remnant's story told from the beginning.

He's silent some moments, absorbing this information. And then, he decides:

"Well, he doesn't seem like he's about to convince anyone to go on any murderous rampages anytime soon, so I don't think I need to worry too much about what he is."

What are any of them at this point, anyway? Not whatever they once were, even if they have many of the same abilities.

"You know, back in Remnant, the kids had this friend, Penny -- I don't know if you know what a robot is, but basically she was made instead of born, too. She was designed for combat, to be able to fight the Grimm without relying on a set of built-in commands. One that could learn, right? But when she was built, she was given a piece of her creator's Aura, a bit of a soul, and Ruby and her friends treated her like a person, more than a weapon. I don't know which did it, but--she was one, by the time I met her. In all the ways that count."

He is going somewhere with this. He's not always great at reassurance, or that kind of thing, but it seems like the matter has been weighing somewhat heavily on Break, too, and he thinks maybe it might do the man some good to hear it. Maybe if it helps, he can pass it on to the kid himself.

"But she was still a machine, too. And -- there's ways to wreck machines from the inside. She was going to be destroyed if the kids didn't do something. There was...a lot of shit going on, when I left Remnant, but long story short, there's a magical artifact that could make things. Just one at a time, so they had to find a way to save her that wouldn't tie her life to the artifact. The solution they found was to take the machine parts out of her, leaving just ... Penny. Just her Aura, her soul. I didn't get to see if it worked, but...I think it might be a little like that, for all of us. Just -- bits of souls, given shape by all the magic in the air here."

[payingfordeliverance]

"An automaton," Break agrees quietly, once Qrow's come to his conclusion -- just to acknowledge that the concept, or something like it, exists, and he's not totally lost. Neither of them realize it just now but this little tidbit of an idea Qrow has just given him will return again later, as he attempts to figure out how he can have a body that is supposed to be brand new here, a body that the Mad Hatter has never touched, and still be suffering from the scars Hatter left on him. The scars from the wounds he died with are there, he's felt them, but they were healed when he arrived, so isn't that -- isn't it weird...?

"...when you put it like that, it sounds kind of nice. Simply being what we are at the cores of us," he adds. "I'll have to pass the notion on to the pale Alice, if you don't end up doing it yourself. She's delighted that she is only 'just Alice', now."

Because of course, the white-haired girl who floats around Break's house -- who, indeed, Qrow may have seen leading Break around by the hand over the past month as he flies overhead, as he's been following her whims as she gets accustomed to the city -- was once the Will of the Abyss, and that's Break's life now. The child who once held the power of all of existence within her is now the one most liable to see straight through him, and despite their past history, Break's found himself doting on her like an idiot. So it goes.

[bolstafir]

"Heh. Might be a little weird to hear from a near-stranger, so I'll leave that one to you."

Qrow's seen her around, certainly, but he hasn't actually gotten a chance to speak with her before. He can't just go around talking all soppily existential for a first impression, okay, that does not fit his image at aaaall. (Or so he thinks)

"To be honest, before you told me this story, I would've guessed she was your daughter or something."

He's just saying....look at y'all...

[payingfordeliverance]

"You're not the first to say as much here," Break drawls, pulling a face. "The first time it happened I panicked and claimed to be her uncle, as that seemed more believable than denial. She thought it funny, so I suppose that's that."

It has solved the problem of what he is instead of her knight, Break supposes? Whatever, we are all a big happy squid family now.

[bolstafir]

"Hey, whatever works."

Honestly, it's kind of cute. Qrow is the first one to believe family isn't necessarily blood, so he has no comment on that.

(Qrow might be a little glad Break can't see his expression, because he's sure it's embarrassingly soft at that notion)

"So...were you getting to how you actually came to know her, or would that be one of the questions you're not going to answer?"

[payingfordeliverance]

Break hums a little -- a brief snippet of Tale As Old As Time, incidentally, simply because it's the most recent thing he heard. Obviously he doesn't want to talk about his distant past, he never does. But Qrow is well aware that Break died for the ending of this story, thanks grody corpse boat, and erasing his own involvement except for that ending won't make a lick of sense.

After a few quiet moments reviewing the story so far in his head, Break decides he has a good enough setup here to go halfsies.

"...before that...the Abyss was so displeased with Jack that it cursed him, robbing him of the ability to die and reenter the cycle. His body would reverse itself down to infancy and back again to his age at the time he attacked, back and forth, existing outside of time. Jack established Pandora to take over for the Baskervilles and faked his own death to get away, having planted enough lies to style himself firmly as the Hero of Sablier. Over the next century his soul splintered away, leaving Oz as the dominant consciousness in that body thanks to the Contract. Before his age reversed too far Jack saw to it that his helpless infant body would be planted in the Vessalius household, and Oz was subsequently raised believing he was a normal child. After all, he had no powers."

It looks as though Break is skipping over his own part after all, no doubt. He isn't. He's merely giving himself a landing point, of sorts, since he came into the story squarely in the middle.

"Mm. Meanwhile. As it turns out, I am one of those people who can reach the Abyss on my own. Had the Baskervilles still existed when I was born I'm certain I would have been collected and tossed in, but -- with everything broken down, I grew up as a simple swordsman, believing the Abyss to be a fairy tale as everyone else did." This is not a lie. Break didn't know it meant anything real to be a Child of Misfortune. Not until right before his death. "Because I was an exceedingly stupid young man a series of misadventures ultimately led me there anyway, and I crossed paths with Alice at that time."

He leaves out, you know. All the murder. And the bit where it was Alice who took his eye. No one needs these details.

"Time doesn't -- it doesn't flow in the Abyss, it's all wadded up like a crumpled bit of tissue. Although I was born after the Tragedy of Sablier, somehow it still happened while I was there. Our conversation was interrupted by her incredible pain when myriad souls came pouring into the Abyss all at once. And then, a couple of kids showed up, one of them like me and carrying his brother over his shoulder. She knew them, from Sablier. They got into a terrible screaming match over Jack and whether he would ever come for her or not, and when he mistakenly told her Jack had been killed her grief was so great the dimension crumbled around us, but...before she let me fall away, she told me that her one wish was that she wouldn't be the Will of the Abyss anymore. She begged me, 'Save me -- save her -- save Alice!' And, although I couldn't have been there longer than a quarter of an hour, when the floor under me fell away and I plummeted through the Abyss and back out of it again...I found that I'd been dropped into the Rainsworth household, thirty years ahead of the time I'd originally come from."

cw for vague SI ref

[bolstafir]

Honestly, he was half-expecting Break to tell him that one was off-limits, actually, and that would be that. It's a bit of a pleasant surprise to get a proper answer. Even if it is ... a strange one. The Abyss, he decides, is very, very weird. And given all the rest of the similarities between himself and Break, he honestly kind of hopes whatever void of time and space the kids fell into is not related to this Abyss, because even if he's forsaken Remnant to make a new life in Trench, he does occasionally let his mind drift to thoughts of the version of himself left in Remnant, and cannot imagine having to last thirty years without the girls. He's pretty sure he and Tai would destroy each other in their grief, if he were even able to tolerate himself long enough to get back to Patch and relay the news.

"And that's how you started looking into all this stuff, right? About the Baskervilles and Juries and such, fifteen years ago."

Speaking of similarities, it doesn't escape him that they've spent a comparable amount of time on their individual missions without learning the truths of their worlds until very recently. Qrow had spent the last twenty years as Ozpin's eyes and ears, gathering intelligence on Salem and her people under the impression that the war with her could be won, that Oz had a plan to save the world. This, he doesn't verbalize.

"...Is Jack dead for real now, or is he still lurking in the kid's soul somewhere?"

Brothers, Qrow hopes not. The situation with Ozpin and Oscar wasn't great even when the extra consciousness in Oscar's head wasn't actively malicious and possibly an entire sociopath.

[payingfordeliverance]

"Just so. Everything I'd ever loved was gone, and on top of that, I discovered that the kids from Sablier had fallen out of the Abyss at the same time, each of them adopted into two of the other great houses. For lack of anything better to do, I devoted myself to Alice's wish. However, what Pandora knew of history was corrupted by Jack's lies and virtually nothing was known of the Will. Because of that, for a great deal of those next fifteen years, there was a lot of time to wait around for things to happen. Things didn't truly get going again until very recently."

If Alice weren't here, the Will -- if she weren't here Break would be keeping his secrets. Telling this much, he thinks, is for the best. There's simply too much that's impossible to skirt around with her present, and Trench itself has already been terrible about bringing things to light that Break would much rather leave hidden. Qrow has already promised he won't push for details Break doesn't want to give. Hopefully Break can trust him as much as he suspects he can, and thus trust that Qrow also won't think too hard about putting Break's puzzle pieces together, content with what he's being given.

"Jack is quite thoroughly dead, I'm happy to say. If he ever shows up here, it will be in his own body...and I imagine at that time we'd take turns hurling him back into the ocean."

[bolstafir]

Good news for Break, Qrow only assumes that the other means his parents died of old age in the timeskip or something to that effect, rather than anything resembling the actual truth. Thirty years is a long time, anyway. Any number of awful things could've happened to the people he'd cared about in his original time in that span. Break had mentioned having lost everything before once, back on the corpse boat, and Qrow hadn't pushed for details then, either. He understands what that kind of grief does to a person, even if all he has is a broad outline. It's hard enough to keep yourself afloat without having to worry about well-meaning hands pushing you back under.

"Would you believe Remnant was in a period of relative peace that was just recently disrupted too?"

Distractions are good, he thinks. Just as Break had hoped, Qrow does not touch on his situation at all whatsoever.

"I mean, there was still trouble going on in the background, of course -- but mostly it was a game of gathering intelligence, trying to keep the stability in place and figure out where the next moves against that peace would land."

But Salem outplayed them, and struck at an exposed weak point in the Vytal Festival. Everything's gone spectacularly to shit since then, and culminated in the glorious discovery that it was actually little more than one dip in the power struggle between Salem and Ozpin that had been going on for literal millennia. He's not sure if this is the night he wants to tell all of that, though. It's still something of an open wound, given how he'd left things. Boggling at the surface similarities between their situations seems easier, and a nice way to wrap up the heavier parts of this conversation.

"Heh, fair enough. Could be an excuse for a nice calamari dinner, too."

You can push him off the wall for his terrible joke now. Worth it tbh.

[payingfordeliverance]

"That's the worst idea I've ever heard. A guy like that? You'd be trapped on the shitter for days."

Here, for Qrow, a somewhat new side of Xerxes Break. Out of sheer habit, he still carries himself as someone who is typically surrounded by children and fancy noblewomen, but the truth is that he spent his adolescence in a barracks with other sword guys and even at home would drop snide comments about Vincent Nightray's general existence making him physically ill with very little provocation. He absolutely has a vulgar streak under the fancy exterior and sometimes even enjoys saying a swear.

Who knew.

"...mm. Peace is something to be grateful for, even if you know it won't last," he says, once he's done looking at Qrow scornfully with his extremely blind eyeball. If Qrow is watching him in turn, he'll notice slightly less tension in Break's thin shoulders, now that they are moving past some of the more dangerous bits of his own history. "It reminds you what you're doing all the annoying things in the background for at all, right? What you're fighting for."

[bolstafir]

Qrow lets out a slightly shocked laugh. He was aiming to be a horrible goose here, but Break riffing off his bad joke is a pleasant surprise. He truly did not expect appreciation of vaguely gross nonsense from someone like Break.

"Good point. Feed him to someone else you don't like, maybe."

Break seems to relax, and Qrow himself leans further back against the wall, staring up at the moon. He never really gets used to seeing it like this, whole and unblemished. He's come to see it over time as a symbol of hope, for better days ahead.

"...Yeah." He's quiet for some moments after that, and then he adds, softly: "Did I ever mention Beacon before? It was the Huntsman Academy I went to. And even though it was a place to learn how to do the kind of job I did, it was also....a safe place to grow into being an adult, y'know?"

For Qrow, it was the first--and honestly, the last--time he'd ever known a truly safe place to land. Somewhere he would not be rejected for what he was, where his existence mattered and always had the potential for more. Beacon and Team STRQ were the first real home and family he ever knew.

"I still think of those years as the best of my life. The kids--they only got to be there for a year before everything went to shit, but even that...working for them to have even that much--...yeah, that's worth it."

For all that his efforts and sacrifices for the sake of the war feel...more futile, in retrospect, he doesn't regret becoming a Huntsman. He doesn't regret being able to keep everyone safe a little bit longer. It's -- why he was able to forgive Ozpin, in the end. All he'd ever done, all the mistakes he'd made, had always been for the sake of preserving those little stretches of peace. He understands better now.

[payingfordeliverance]

Break starts looking a little distant as Qrow speaks. Not because he's upset, but because hearing something like this is unexpectedly validating. They have so many shared experiences, and here's another one -- years and years after the fact, it matters to the both of them still that someone gave them that sense of security, at times in their lives when there was a whole lot of growing to do. It's one thing for Break to translate that time of his life into the decisions he makes here, but another thing entirely for someone his own age to tell him that the memories he's hoping to make in this place really are the kind that stick.

"...that's what I want to do here. Not -- not an academy, but merely -- a safe place to grow up." He gestures at the house with the cheery golden lights he can't see glowing steadfast in the windows. "These kids all died to fix problems they would never have dreamed of causing, and I think...I'm almost certain I'm the only one of all of us who's ever known a truly loving home. This place is going to hurt them in ways I can't fight by waving a sword about. But if I can give them a soft place to land, and sleepovers and tea and warm blankets and full bellies to see them through, then..."

He is well aware that all the good parts of the person he's become exist because when he was at his most wounded and vulnerable, seething with grief, it just happened to be the ladies of Rainsworth who reached out and pulled him up and loved him until he was ready to smile for them. Break is probably the most mediocre Rainsworth woman they are ever going to get. All the same, to pass that forward now feels almost like a duty, a calling.

v8 rwby spoilers if anyone still cares lmao

[bolstafir]

These kids all died to fix problems they would never have dreamed of causing.

Qrow can't help but think of the state of things, back in Remnant. He tends to make an effort not to do so, because the despair threatens to swallow him whole whenever he lingers too long in those thoughts, but it really hits him here. He thinks of Atlas crashing into Mantle, of being unable to contact the girls when it happened. He thinks of Ruby telling him what happened with Cinder and Neo and the portals to Vacuo, thinks of them falling endlessly into a void of time and space.

Thinks of Oscar, and his inevitable fate to become the next Ozpin.

"...Then at least all the bullshit you went through up till now will have meant something, right?" he finishes, as Break trails off. "Instead of just being a lot of misery in the wash."

Yeah, he gets it. In Deerington, he spent nearly an entire year set in the conviction that he would go home with Ruby and Yang as soon as the option presented itself, regardless of how he personally felt about it. Watching Ruby's back as she fought for what she believed in, as she didn't give up despite the quite literally insurmountable odds--that was more important than his selfish desires to live peacefully (insofar as one could, in Deerington) and leave the war behind.

To protect Ruby's hopes, her ideals, her endless optimism, he'd already decided back in Argus that would throw himself at that impossible task again and again. So when they chose instead to step into the unknown, to build a new life here in Trench -- it'd been to salvage something of that meaning, when it all seemed so bleak and hopeless. It's like he'd told Break, back on that boat; no matter what this place had to throw at them, at least they'd be together.

[payingfordeliverance]

"It meant something," Break answers easily. "After all, we won. That's the end of the story. The loved ones we left behind have a world to live in now where the Abyss has been restored, the truth is known, and the new Glen has very little tolerance for nonsense."

And here, then, is a place where Break and Qrow differ. Break's war was winnable, and he and his kids didn't give their all for nothing. He's heard many people speak the same sentiments that Qrow has, that this new world despite its faults is a gift in comparison to the lives they left behind. For himself and his own kids, Trench is not at all the superior option for anyone but the former Will, who is having a grand time doing things like having her own body and not being imprisoned in solitude in another dimension.

"Rather...the misery we're going through now has to mean something. To go through all that only to be robbed of the chance to join the hundred-year cycle and be reborn in the world we fought for, and instead to end up thrown into a place where our worst griefs can take physical form and follow us about -- ah, it's a slap in the face, Qrow. This is the only way I've thought of so far that won't allow Trench to win."

[bolstafir]

It is very jarring to suddenly find a difference when nearly every twist and turn of conversation uncovered a new similarity, but Qrow doesn't find himself getting mired in it. Perhaps if they were still in Deerington, with the threat of a crumbling dream and a vast unknowable future on one side, and the obligations of an endless, unwinnable war on the other, but...Trench is a new place. Remnant is over, for all of them.

Even so. Just the very fact that he and Break do share so very many things in common almost gives him a little bit of hope for the future. Maybe he just hasn't reached that part of his own story, yet. It'll be a comforting thought, next time he feels bleak about Remnant's abandoned fate.

"Makes sense. If this place is gonna write over the ending you fought for, might as well make sure it's a good one."

Speaking of which, actually--

"Should we go back in? We don't come back soon, the kids're gonna start wondering if their party host got eaten by mushrooms by now."

[payingfordeliverance]

Break snorts, and favors Qrow with a grin that is downright fiendish.

"Is that what they think we are doing?" he drawls sarcastically. At this point he legitimately can't tell if they kids are just very excited shippers who want their beloved uncle to be happy, or if they're at that age where many kids discover their own horniness and are projecting it onto everyone else.

When he bothers to think about it, though, he'll decide it's the former. Ruby and Oscar are involved and it's clear they love this man intensely, and Break imagines it's not truly a secret that things with this Clover fellow ended poorly. Out of respect for Qrow, however, if confronted he will tell the kids they are all perverts. That always threw Sharon off her game for a whole day.

gently timeskipping ahead...!!

[bolstafir]

Qrow snorts in return.

"Oh, if they thought we were doing anything else, they'd already be in the bushes spying."

And with another short round of teasing banter like this between them, they make their way back indoors, where everyone's continuing to enjoy the party. At some point, Beauty and the Beast is replayed, and he passingly makes a grumpy remark about the beast that draws the darker Alice's attention. It's lighthearted until it isn't, and all at once, Qrow's nursing a couple slightly bruised feelings and needs to escape from the Cheerful Vibes everywhere before he brings down the mood. He can't exactly just go home without explaining himself, so instead he flutters out an open window as a bird and resettles as a man on the roof, swinging down long legs from the edge.

He knows it's stupid, to get upset over some random pointed comment from some kid who doesn't know anything about him, but the thing about self-loathing is that it's hard not to let it morph into your own voice telling you those things, pointing out how true they must be. Bad at friendship, huh...well, here he is on the roof of Break's house instead of getting over himself like an adult when Break's gotten on perfectly fine with Ruby and the others. She isn't wrong.

Qrow stares out across the sky and its unfamiliar stars and unbroken moon, lost in his own head, when he hears footsteps behind him. He turns, and finding Break back there, looks faintly surprised.

"...Hey."

He turns away back to the stars a moment later, shifting slightly in case Break would want to sit down next to him.

"How'd you find me?"

He may or may not have forgotten that sneakily flying out a window means leaving it open when you have replaced your fingers with wings, whoops.