Qrow Branwen [RWBY] (qrow) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2020-02-16 20:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread, clover ebi, qrow branwen |
ᴡʜᴏ: Clover Ebi & Qrow Branwen
ᴡʜᴀᴛ: Qrow wakes Clover up from a nightmare and they finally talk about it. For a certain definition of talking about it.
ᴡʜᴇɴ: Thursday, February 13, 2020
ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ: Their apartment
ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢs: More references to violence and death, discussion of trauma, idiots being idiots, and spoilers for RWBY vol. 7
Clover had started dreading sleep. He didn’t want to say anything to Qrow in case it was just the nature of what was happening with Maleficent. He couldn’t be sure if it was that or just a natural reaction to being killed and being around after the fact. There was no reason to bother Qrow with something so small. Even if his mind and body felt like it was something much bigger, much more serious. He was getting better and better at hiding his exhaustion and the reality of his feelings. He was also much better at working to ignore his issues.
Tonight the dreams started off much the same as they had every other night. The ship crashed, the General’s orders. Him versus Qrow. Qrow teaming up with Tyrian. Only in this version of things, Tyrian was just slightly more monstrous and Qrow was more intent on killing him. Sometimes Tyrian killed him, sometimes Qrow, sometimes both of them. The scenarios mixing together and playing over and over again.
He made a small noise of concern, breathing growing a little faster, limbs moving as he subconsciously tried to get away from his attackers. “Qrow. What…” But he wasn’t awake. Just words mumbled in the midst of a dream as he kicked Tyrian away, finding Qrow hurtling towards him. He continued to mumble in his sleep, the occasional shout mixed in as he fought off the things in his mind.
Sleep had never come easily to Qrow, not unless he was drinking himself into oblivion. Perversely, he slept even worse now that he was somewhere relatively safe. Somewhere they didn't have to worry about who was keeping watch, or if there was going to be an alarm rousing them in the middle of the night. He'd thought it was the quiet that did it. The peace.
It wasn't the quiet that woke him this time. It was a shout that had him bolting upright, reaching for Harbinger before he was fully awake. When his mind caught up to his body, he realized that was Clover's voice. Clover's yelling. There was no reason they shouldn't have been safe, but he took his weapon with him anyway.
He tossed Harbinger, still in sword form, aside once he'd flung open Clover's bedroom door. Qrow knew what a bad dream looked like, and this one looked even worse than the usual.
There wasn't really a plan when he rushed to the side of the bed. Just hands on Clover's shoulders, his knee braced against the mattress as he jostled him gently. "Hey—wake up, c'mon. Just a dream."
Clover’s eyes flew open, the sound of Qrow’s voice in the world mixing in with the one in the real world. He almost fought back. He forced his breaths even and peered up at Qrow for a moment, trying to gauge if he was real or if this was just another dream. Another dream that would end in him dying. He laid there for a moment, body tense before he started to coax his muscle to relax, too.
“Is this real or is this in my head?” It was a simple question. If it was real, there wasn’t anything that would probably save him from the reality that Qrow was here, in his room, waking him up to assure him it was just a dream. There was no pretending from here. “A little hard to tell right now.”
He felt his heart racing in his chest, both the dream and the potential of having just admitted that he wasn’t one hundred percent despite days of keeping that very thing hidden.
Qrow's jaw clenched; only so many ways to interpret that one and the most obvious was that Qrow had been in his dream, too. Since it had pretty obviously been a nightmare...
"Real as it's ever been." Still a chance this was all some big hallucination, Qrow guessed. Clover died and he snapped and made up a world where it somehow, miraculously, was all better. He'd admit, it seemed more likely than them actually being transported to some alternate universe, but he still believed it.
He should probably leave. Clover was awake, and Qrow had been in his nightmares. But… he settled at the edge of the bed instead. "Been having these often?"
Clover let himself relax the rest of the way, eyes closing as he did so. Not to go back to sleep, but because he was focusing on the way he was breathing and trying to get his heart back to a normal speed. Qrow was real. This wasn’t just a bad dream within a bad dream. He hoped.
“More than I’d like to admit,” he replied, opening his eyes slowly and peering up at Qrow again. He hadn’t expected him to stay now that his job was done. But here he was, sitting on the bed. Clover was torn between wanting to be alone and not wanting to be alone. “Sorry you had to see this. I’m pretty sure it’s just a side effect of this place. Someone mentioned bad dreams being an ongoing issue. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.” He gave him his best confident smile, which didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’ll be fine.”
He couldn’t be sure if he was lying for himself or for Qrow. He didn’t feel fine and his mind felt like it was all over the place. He didn’t know how to plan for this. “I’m sure one of the magic people can find a way to keep the sounds contained better. I’ll ask in the morning.” He stared past Qrow and up at the ceiling. “It’s probably…” He trailed off, trying to figure out how to even say what he wanted to next. “I’ll be fine if you want to go. Just have to let my mind relax a little. But if you want to stay, that’s fine. Hard to know what you’re stubborn about.” Yes, because this wasn’t a subtle way of asking if he would stay. Not at all.
Not even Qrow was thick enough to miss that kind of message. That, and... he'd woken up from enough nightmares, himself, to know you never really wanted to be alone after them, even when you didn't have a choice about it. "I'm good here. And if you try to get someone to magically muffle the sounds, I'll be good here every night."
He didn't believe for a second that Clover actually thought this was about him waking him up. And yeah. He got it. He'd do the same damn thing. This wasn't about Qrow though.
"You gonna tell me what was in it now, or am I gonna have to keep annoying you about it? Because I'm not buying this being some side effect from knock-off Salem." Sure, no reason why it couldn't be, Qrow guessed, but that had sounded a little too rehearsed and not quite sincere enough, not for Clover.
It felt like his heart constricted slightly and he couldn’t help the warmth he felt at the notion that he’d end up sharing a bed with Qrow every night if he got someone to muffle the noise. It was almost enough to make him get it done immediately, but that was a dangerous line of thought to go down, so he pushed it from his mind. Tricking someone into sleeping next to you at night was probably in poor taste. If Qrow wanted to be there because he chose to be, that would be different. Still, he was fairly certain that his luck didn’t stretch that far. It was just guilt mixed in with the feelings of friendship. He could live with that. He just couldn’t let himself cross the line between that and something else.
“I just…” He took in a breath and let it out. “We don’t know that it’s not because of her. Everyone else has been having bad dreams because of her.” A pause. “Okay, not everyone. But it’s still possible.” He sighed, turning over on his side, facing away from Qrow. He couldn’t look at him. “It’s the same thing every night. I’m dying. Only the details change. Some nights it’s still Tyrian. Some nights, instead of staying, you leave. Some nights it’s you holding Harbinger. Sometimes it’s both of you.” He counted down from three before glancing over his shoulders. “I know...I know it’s not real. I know it’s not. But my mind’s not trying to listen to reason.”
He shrugged slightly. “I’m sorry. I know that’s a lot to ask you to sort through. And I know this means I’ve been keeping things to myself, but I didn’t know how to broach the subject and I figured it was something I needed to work out on my own. I didn’t want you to feel bad for what happened. It wasn’t your fault. I should have been more aware of what was happening. I should have listened. Or at least anticipated what happened.”
"And I shouldn't have agreed to team up with that psychopath even for a minute," Qrow told him. Didn't matter what Clover wanted. Qrow was going to feel bad about it anyway. Clover had seen Qrow kill him in his dreams; how the hell were they supposed to get beyond that? Qrow wanted to know who'd been holding Harbinger in the dream he'd just woken from. At the same time...
Yeah. Here he was, offering some poor excuse for comfort when Clover might have just woken up from seeing his face on the other end of a blade.
"If you should've known what was coming, I should've known it even better. I'd fought him before. I knew..." Qrow shook his head. "You need to blame me, you blame me. I'm not innocent here."
He hadn't been the only one at fault, but... but he could have done better.
Clover’s brows furrowed slightly. “You shouldn’t have, but you did.” There wasn’t any heat behind the words, but he didn’t deny it. It didn’t help to act like everything was okay. He wanted to, but it hadn’t helped him yet. It only made things...complicated. And he knew he should have said something, should have talked it out, but he couldn’t.
“I’m not saying that you were right about what happened,” he started. “But I’m not going to hold it against you.” He reached for Qrow’s hand. Qrow froze, looking down at Clover's fingers on top of his own; he didn't say anything, but he didn't pull away, either. “We were both wrong, but nothing’s going to change what happened there. That’s why we’ve got to work on here.” He sat up slowly. He’d healed from the physical aspects of the trauma, but the psychological and emotional ones were more complex, more difficult to move past. “I’m working on it. On this. Or…” He frowned. “I will be.” His gaze dropped. “I...I need to know you’re on my side. And I’m on yours.”
He needed them to be on the same side. He needed something to go right. “I don’t want to repeat the same mistakes as we did back home.” He was opening himself up, making it easy to get in past the walls that had been up before. He knew that whatever happened here, there wasn’t an easy way through. I need you with me. But he couldn’t say it. There was something he had to say, though.
“I don’t...want you to think less of me. I don’t want this to be something else you add to the list of reasons you need to isolate yourself from other people. So stay. We’re a team now. You’re not alone.” But he’d still do everything in his power to get him back to his nieces. They needed him more than Clover did and it wouldn’t be fair to keep him. Even if it was all he could do not to linger on the thought of being actually alone. “You can go once I’m asleep again.”
"Damn it, Clover. I'm not gonna think less of you because you're having trouble handling almost dying." Qrow wasn't going to make any promises about blaming himself, or about thinking it meant everyone was better off without him there, but... "Yeah. I'm on your side. I'm here as long as you need me."
As long as he was going to be better off with Qrow than without him. Clover... he'd be fine here. He was gonna fit right in, make friends, pretty soon he wasn't going to need Qrow around at all and that was—it was fine. Probably better for him to have someone who wasn't one of the guys who'd killed him hanging around, but Qrow wasn't just going to leave him until he was sure that he was gonna be alright. Maybe even longer than that; Clover was the kind of guy that made someone like Qrow want to be a little selfish. Think that maybe what Clover was seeing in him was actually there.
The thought was addictive, that maybe they could start over here. Erase all the mistakes they'd made and just go back to the way things had been before. No one else calling the shots. No one making either of them choose between what was right, or what their orders were, and each other. And Brothers, Qrow was never going to escape being an addict, but he knew that just because he wanted something so badly he could taste it, it didn't mean it was right. It didn't mean it wouldn't hurt someone.
"Get back to sleep." Qrow raised a hand, almost reached to smooth Clover's hair back before he dropped it to his shoulder instead. "I'll keep watch."
No promises about leaving. If Qrow needed to stay awake all night to make sure he shook Clover out of any nightmares he had, he could do that. It wasn't like he hadn't gone a night without sleep before. He'd be fine.
Clover felt a little bit more relaxed as Qrow spoke. “Hard to tell what people will think these days.” And it was more than the bad dreams and the trouble coming to terms with his own death that had him worried about Qrow thinking less of him. It was funny how almost dying made you realize you may have made the wrong choices. But he wasn’t sure if he’d have done the same or changed his mind. If he knew what he knew before, he’d have killed Tyrian before he’d even gotten a chance. He didn’t voice that, however, because it probably wasn’t the right course of action. It’s what Ironwood would have done, but he wasn’t a murderer. Not exactly.
He watched Qrow’s hand, ignoring about a hundred ridiculous ideas in his mind. “I’ll do my best.” He moved, pulling the covers up just a little. “If you, for some reason, end up staying in here all night, I don’t have extra covers and I wouldn’t suggest sleeping on the floor.” A pause. “Doubt you’d feel good about it in the morning.”
"Slept on worse," Qrow told him; it felt awkward, but he slid his legs under the lifted covers anyway. He wasn't gonna... he'd move, as soon as Clover was asleep and wouldn't worry about it anymore. Qrow hadn't shared a bed with anyone overnight since Team STRQ. He'd ended up piled into a bed with all of them at one point or another, when there weren't enough to go around or Qrow was just too wasted to make it to his own and one of them had taken pity on him.
This was different. Qrow wasn't a kid anymore; Clover wasn't close enough that he might as well be family. It was...
It was fine. He was just looking out for his partner. His teammate, in the weird little two person team that was all that they had. It didn't mean any more than that. Why would it? Clover probably wasn't thinking anything about it at all.
Qrow didn't think about how little he'd have to move for the two of them to be touching. "Stop fussing and close your eyes."
Clover knew he’d basically invited it, but it didn’t mean he’d mentally prepared himself for it. He cursed internally before forcing himself to act like a normal human being that wasn’t trapped in a never-ending loop of growing attraction to a man who definitely wasn’t interested. This was totally fine and normal and people had definitely done this before without it being awkward. Right?
As for Clover, he’d shared a space with his team, but that wasn’t the same. He’d never found himself overly close to them or spent any real time with them outside of work. It just wasn’t the way they did things as a team. The Ace Ops was work. That didn’t make them friends.
This was very different. Qrow was...a friend. In a weird way. But he couldn’t really bring himself to ask him to move, though. “You sound like someone’s grandmother,” he said after a moment, but he closed his eyes anyway. “Goodnight, Qrow.”
"Night, Clover." And Qrow wasn't leaving it up to luck whether the rest of it was good. He was gonna make absolutely sure.