Who: Qrow Branwen & Sara Lance What: Qrow drinks, Sara serves him When: Mid-March Where: Paradise bar Ratings/Warnings: Low/noneish, probably some language Status: Complete
Quark’s was usually Qrow’s bar of choice, but sometimes it seemed like a good idea to mix it up a little. Sometimes he was just in the mood to hit up a place that was a little rougher around the edges. Some place where he wasn’t likely to run into someone he knew and could still claim he wasn’t drinking alone. After all, it wasn’t as if he was the only person in the bar.
All of that was the reason he shouldered open the door to one of the dive bars he occasionally frequented and made his way up to the bar. He nodded at the bartender as he took a seat on one of the stools. “Whiskey,” he said, and then added as a small after thought. “Please.”
“What, not even a hello from my favourite carrion bird?” Sara asked, turning toward Qrow, grinning a little, her tone light. “No, ‘hey Sara, how’s it going?’ I guess I should just be grateful that you said please.” Despite her criticisms though, she was already pouring him his drink, and once she’d poured out the whiskey, she slid the glass over to Qrow.
Qrow chuckled. “Hey, Sara, how’s it going?” He said before picking up the glass and taking a healthy gulp. With a satisfied sigh he lowered the glass and gave Sara a small smirk. “I’m your favorite carrion bird?” He asked. “Just how many do you know?”
“Well, it’s too late now,” Sara teased him. “You’ll just have to tip extra well to make up for it,” she added with a wink.
At his question though, she managed to look a little sheepish. “Just you, really. Hope that doesn’t hurt your ego too much.”
“Nah, my ego is well intact,” Qrow assured Sara. “Actually, I woulda been surprised if you said you knew any other ‘birds’.” In some ways, it was a relief. “I’m actually kinda proud to be the only one. Makes me unique.” he took another drought from his glass.
For some reason, Sara thought of canaries, though she couldn’t think of any reason whatsoever for the random thought. Except, “Well, I did have a canary when I was a kid, though I think you’d probably be able to outdrink her,” she said.
Canaries also weren’t a carrion bird, so it was probably excluded on multiple levels. She shook her head, feeling like she was missing something.
Qrow laughed. “Canaries aren’t known for their drinking,” he agreed. He noticed Sarah shake her head, as if to clear it. “You alright?” he asked.
Sara snorted. “I’m pretty sure she ate some rotten apple one time and acted drunk for the rest of the afternoon. I’m pretty sure my whole family wanted to release her into the wild after a couple of weeks.” Sara’d loved her canary. It got old for everyone else not long after her father had given it to her.
At Qrow’s question though, she frowned. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “Mostly. I just… You know that feeling when you’ve forgotten something you should have known? I just had that. Whatever it was, it probably wasn’t important.”
Qrow frowned a little as well. “Yeah,” he said slowly, “I know that feeling.” A little too well lately. He glanced at the cog on his forearm. Ever since it had shown up he’d been getting strange nagging feelings, some more aggressive than others. He’d be in the middle of class and suddenly he had a strange sensation that he used to do the same thing, only somewhere else. And it wasn’t history he taught but some other subject. Combat? Defense? Weapons…? Or there were other times he’d be talking with Yang and he’d feel as though the two of them should be somewhere else -- at a different house or even a dorm room.
He sighed. He’d like to agree with Sara in that these feelings and impressions weren’t important, but something told him that wasn’t the case. He shook his head. “Maybe,” he said with a shrug before reaching for his glass again. He glanced up at her as he raised it to his mouth. “You get feelings like that often?”
Sara’s eyes followed Qrow’s, and she blinked. She hadn’t noticed a tattoo on his forearm before. It didn’t look especially fresh, but she thought for sure she would have noticed it if it was older.
“Not too often,” she said, paused, and then added, “I mean, except when I’ve had a bit too much to smoke,” she said, grinning. “But I’m given to understand that that’s pretty normal. How long have you had the tattoo?”
Qrow was in mid-drink when Sarah commented about the mark on his arm and he nearly choked on it. No one else had seemed to notice it. Not his students, not his colleagues. The only other people who seemed to notice had marks of their own. Qrow looked at Sara carefully. Did she have one too?. “A little over a month,” he said slowly.
“Oh,” Sara said, frowning a little. She’d definitely seen Qrow in the last month. It was weird that she’d never noticed it before, but maybe she’d just been busy. “It looks good. It’s a gear, right?”
Kind of a weird choice to just get a single gear on your forearm, but Sara wasn’t about to judge him for it. Then again, maybe hadn’t been a choice. She rubbed her bicep.
Gear, cog, same thing, right? “Yeah,” he said. He noticed her rubbing her bicep and his eyes narrowed. She saw his mark and knew what it was. He thought he knew why she was just noticing it now. Keep it casual, Branwen. He rested his elbows on the bar top and raised his glass again. Keeping an eye on her he asked, “you got one too, didn’tcha?”
Sara probably shouldn’t have been surprised he guessed it so easily, though she kind of was. “Yeah,” Sara said. “I take it that means you didn’t walk into a tattoo parlour and request that, huh?”
“No,” Qrow said with a shake of his head and a light chuckle. “I didn’t go through some early mid-life crises and decide to get this inked on my arm.” He looked down at the mark on his arm. “Kind of a weird design choice if I did, though.” He turned his eyes back up towards Sara. “What did you end up with?”
Sara was wearing a black, long-sleeved shirt with a low scoop neckline, and so it was easiest to just pull her neckline down to show her bicep. “A circle,” Sara said, and then frowned a little. “There had been more of it first, but that disappeared pretty quickly.” Nothing she’d been able to make much sense of, either.
“That seems to be what happened to everyone who got one,” Qrow said. “I was, uh, asleep when I got mine, so I didn’t see the whole thing. Doubt it would have made any sense even if I did.” He shrugged and wrapped his hands around his glass. “Those weird feelings of remembering something but not actually remembering it? I don’t know how, but I think it’s got somethin’ to do with the marks.”
“Mine didn’t,” Sara agreed. It looked as though it could have had wings, but who really knew what it had been.
She frowned a little. “And here I thought I was just smoking too much marijuana,” she said, her tone joking, even if she still looked a little troubled. “How do you think it’s related?”
Qrow shrugged. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “For me, at least, the feelings started shortly after the mark appeared. It’s more than just deja vu, it’s more like I’ve been somewhere else. I don’t know where, I don’t know what I was doing there, but it was something...important, I think.” He shrugged again. “It’s weird, and it only makes sense that it’d be related to a weird mark that randomly appeared around the same time.”
“I’m not sure that makes any sense,” Sara said, though there was a teasing gleam in her eye. “But it makes more sense than anything else.” Because ever since her mark had shown up, there had been something tugging at her memory. Something that seemed important, but also horrible. She felt almost better off not remembering it.
Qrow studied her for a moment before grunting something that sounded like a laugh and downing the rest of his drink. “Nah, I guess it doesn’t, does it?” he said as he set the now empty glass down in front of him. He nudged it forward slightly with the backs of his fingers. “Another, please, Sara.”
He leaned on the bar and watched her as she refilled the glass. “There’s a forum on-line,” he said. “A bunch of people there all seem to be going through the same thing. Have you seen it?”
Sara had already started moving toward the alcohol when she noticed Qrow finishing off his drink. Once he indicated he wanted more, she began to fill his cup.
“I have, yeah,” Sara said as she returned the bottle to its shelf. “I haven’t really made any posts yet, but I’ve talked to a couple of people. I didn’t know you were on it though. Does everyone there have these marks?” She’d seen a couple people talking about them, but until her own had shown up, she hadn’t known what they were talking about.
“I don’t actually know,” Qrow answered. “I think a lot of them do, but I can’t say for sure that everyone there does. What I can say is that we all seem to be experiencing something...weird, for lack of a better term.”
“Weird about sums it up,” Sara agreed. “As terrible as it probably is to say this, I’m glad it’s not just me. It’s kind of comforting to think that there are a bunch of other people in the same messed-up situation as I am.”
“Nah, it’s not terrible,” Qrow assured her. He picked up his glass. “Sometimes it’s hard enough going through life as it is. Having people who actually understand some of the shit you’re going through makes it a little easier. Besides, it’s not like any one of us caused these things to appear.” He paused before taking a sip of his drink. “At least I don’t think so.”
“If it was one of us, I’d sure like to meet them.” Even if only to figure out how and why. She still wasn’t sure if ‘free, mysterious tattoo’ was reason enough to try to kick someone’s ass or not. “I really feel like I should have read more comic books or something growing up. Maybe then this would make more sense.”
“Kinda does feel like we’re in the middle of some kind of comic book story-line, doesn’t it?” Qrow said. He grunted a laugh. “I did read a bunch of comic books as a kid and I still have no clue what’s going on, so I don’t think you’re behind the ball anymore than the rest of us.”
Sara laughed. “Well, at least I’m not too far below the curve,” she said.
“Nah,” Qrow said with a dismissive gesture of his hand. “Not any more than the rest of us. I bet some cosmic power is getting a big laugh out of it, though.” He paused for a moment, blinking at what he’d just said. Qrow was neither a religious or spiritual man, so it struck him odd that he’d use the term “cosmic power” to describe anything, even this weird-ass phenomena. He shook his head with an agitated breath. “Someone’s getting a laugh,” he muttered, draining the rest of his drink.
Sara hesitated for only a moment before she refilled his glass without him needing to ask. “This one’s on the house,” she said. If she thought too hard about this kind of thing, she certainly needed a drink.
“Hope it’s not some cosmic power. It’s a lot harder to kick the asses of gods.” Somehow, she felt like that was exactly the kind of thing she’d done before, but since that was obviously impossible she decided that it must have been something from a dream sometime. Then again, if it was just some regular Joe Blow, that brought up a whole lot set of questions.
“Gods,” Qrow muttered. Something tugged at the back of his mind. A story. About gods. Two of them. Light and Dark. Creation and Destruction. Where had he heard that story before? Some kind of norse mythology? No..no that wasn’t it. Some other creation story? Try as he might, no other details surfaced. If anything, the memory, as disjointed as it was, seemed further away.
Qrow grunted and shook his head to clear it before taking a hearty gulp of the glass Sara had just refilled for him. “Maybe it’s better if we don’t think about it,” he said.
“Yeah, I can get behind that,” Sara said. There was a part of her that was burning to know more, but Qrow obviously couldn’t provide to her the answers she wanted and there was no point in stressing him out over something neither of them understood.
“Got any interesting-slash-hilarious student stories for me tonight?” she asked instead.