We’re in this together
Who: Qrow and Yang, also ft Ahsoka What: Qrow talks to Yang about her arm, is supportive. When: Late July Where: Casa de Lisoka Rating: PG-13
It’s amazing how quickly one’s life can be turned on its head. Qrow had been aware of strange things that occasionally happened in Orange County, but had never given them much thought. Then literally overnight, all that changed. The things he knew now he couldn’t un-know.
And he really didn’t want to un-know them, either. A lot of what he’d learned, especially about the Dreams, bothered him. Well, bothered wasn’t really the right word. He was concerned – worried, even – about his nieces. Yang and Ruby had been in the first official Dream Qrow’d had regarding Remnant. He’d been led to believe that if he was Dreaming of them, they were Dreaming of the same world as well. That raised a whole bunch of questions. Questions that really only one person could answer.
Qrow had put off asking Yang about her Dreams. At first he kind of had hoped she’d come to him, but as the days passed to weeks, it became obvious to him that wasn’t going to be the case. He cursed himself for not being the Adult in this situation. It wasn’t as if he could talk to Tai about any of this either. Jesus. Tai on Valar? The thought alone made Qrow both laugh and shudder.
So, yeah, he was going to have to broach the subject with Yang himself. On the one hand, he was eager to do so and confirm certain suspicions he now had concerning her arm and the prosthetic she had acquired. On the other hand, he really didn’t want to be poking his nose in her business. Qrow was protective of his nieces, yes -- they were the only family he really had these days -- but he had gone out of his way to not be overbearing and let them live their lives as the competent and strong young women they had grown up to be. But the theme of violence and hardship that seemed to be a theme in these dream memories? And the violence that could -- and apparently often did -- cross over? Yeah, he couldn’t ignore that. Protective Uncle it was, then.
He was picking Yang up tonight. They were going to have this talk, possibly over food, Yang was either going to answer him truthfully, or not. No alcohol. Just talking. Sounded easy enough, right?
Qrow knocked on the door.
For Yang, she hadn’t wanted to bring it up. Seem crazy. So like with Blake, she was waiting for her uncle to mention dreams. She was doing the same with Ruby. Though part of her hoped Ruby never dreamed.
It wasn’t Yang that answered the door though. It was a tall woman with orange skin, white markings on her face, and brigh blue eyes. She had horns on her head and long tendrils that seemed to grow from them and hang down her chest.
Ahsoka generally didn’t bother with her glamour when at home, and unless someone was a dreamer they wouldn’t notice anyway. She did recognize Qrow, he’d helped Yang move in. “Hello.”
The alien who had appeared at the door was making Qrow’s vow of an alcohol-free night difficult.
Oh, he’d met Ahsoka before and recognized her voice, but if she’d opened the door and not said anything, he wouldn’t have had a prayer. He was also trying very hard not to stare, but he couldn’t help the way his reddish-brown eyes lingered on her head…horns?...a little longer than was probably appropriate.
It was also a little longer than what would be considered appropriate before he could recover his voice to answer her. “Hi…Ahsoka?” He hadn’t meant it to be a question because it was quite obviously Ahsoka standing there, but there you go. He shook himself out of his daze. “Sorry, I wasn’t…uh…is Yang home?”
Qrow’s hesitation and the shock Ahsoka could read through the Force told her enough. So it meant he was dreaming, which probably meant Yang was in for an interesting conversation. She let him off the hook though, and just nodded her head. “She’s in her room, the door is open, so you can just walk in.”
Qrow had come to Yang’s home to ask questions, but now he had all new questions, none of which would have been a good idea to ask at the moment (“Those things on your head? Is that hair or are they tentacles?” Yeah, let’s not piss off Yang’s roommate).
“Thanks.” To his credit, once he’d found his wits again after the initial shock of an alien greeting him at the door, Qrow did very well not to stare at Ahsoka as he entered the house. Still, couldn’t resist one more look over his shoulder at the alien before he made his way to his niece’s room.
He could have gone right in, and had Yang still been living in Tai’s house, he probably would have, but instead he knocked the back of his knuckles on her door to get her attention. “Heya, kiddo. You got a minute?”
That alien chuckled to herself, before returning to the couch to continue binge-watching old cartoons.
Yang was tuning her guitar when her uncle knocked. She looked up at him and grinned. “Uncle Qrow! What brings you over? I’m not in trouble am I? I figure if Ruby was you’d have texted.”
Qrow chuckled despite himself. “No, neither of you are in any trouble.” At least not yet, but given all the things Qrow was learning about the Dreams and Orange County in general, that was likely to change at any time.
He stepped into her room and took a seat on the corner of her bed. “Your roommate -- Ahsoka -- she’s not human, is she?”
Yang darted her eyes, then shrugged one shoulder. “My roommate is an alien? That’s not the worse thing I have to worry about living here, trust me. Her and Li are like alien wizard rabbits.” She rapped on the wall behind her. “Soundproofing is a blessing.”
Probably all TMI but also revenge. Still, Yang was perceptive. She had a sense when it came to family. “Something’s not okay. So what is it?”
Definitely TMI and not wanting to hear much more about it, Qrow let it go. He had more important things to discuss with his niece. “I’ve had a couple of these Dreams they talk about on the network,” he said. “And I’ve talked with a few people. They’ve told me what they are. Windows into other lives. I can’t say I really understand it and it doesn’t seem as though anyone else really does either. But I do understand that certain things pass from these other lives into this one.” Here Qrow paused and leveled his eyes at his niece. “I don’t think I’m dreaming in time with you, or Ruby, so I have to ask, what really happened to your arm?”
“It kind of feels like a window,” Yang agreed, but not entirely. It was too real to be a window. It was like being there, actually being a part of it. Her stomach sank as he talked and she could tell where this was going and she didn’t want it to go there and yet there it was.
She looked down at her arm. “You can’t tell Ruby or Weiss and especially not Blake. I need to tell them, when they’ve dreamed a lot more. And Blake has… issues, so I’ve been waiting to tell her when it’s a better time.”
This time, she looked at him, violet eyes wet. “It happened during the Vytal festival. Everything went… bad so quickly. I was set up, live on tv, to be made to look like a monster. I still don’t know how they did it. And then … and then the next match, someone was killed. Another setup. All the emotions brought the Grimm, and the White Fang came in, dropping even more Grimm. In the chaos I went looking for Blake, and she was being hurt by the leader of the White Fang. I saw red and attacked. He just.. One swipe, and my arm was gone.”
Her hand gripped her arm tightly, and Qrow was the first person outside of Li and Ahsoka she’d really shared any details with. It was both exhausting and freeing. “I woke up here, my arm next to me and there was blood everywhere. I dreamed a little more, but then nothing for months. Then the arm arrived as I dreamed about it arriving. From General Ironwood. I… didn’t put it on right away.”
Looking at Qrow again, she added. “Beacon fell. The CCT was destroyed. Haven is in chaos, the last thing the rest of the world saw was Atlas’s tin soldiers attacking innocent people because whoever these bastards are they took control of those too. So many people died. Ruby did...something with her eyes…”
Qrow was a tough son of a bitch. There was painfully little in this world that could affect him deeply. However, his nieces’ tears -- even as full grown adults (or mostly full grown in Ruby’s case) -- always had a way to slice through that gruff exterior as though it was nothing and twist in his heart like a blade. Some people (or most people Qrow had associated with in the past) would consider this a weakness. Woe to the person who tried to exploit it, however.
But there was nothing Qrow could do about what Yang had already been through. Even if he had been on the network earlier, the Dreams weren’t tangible. They weren’t anything he could physically fight. Or fight at all. What he had feared from the moment Natasha Romanov had explained what the Dreams were had already come true. And to hear Yang talk, it was only the beginning.
And he had yet to Dream it himself. Beacon was still standing, the Vytal festival in full swing and Ironwood and his robotic cronies had literally just breezed in from Atlas and bringing with them an undercurrent of tension Qrow seemed to be the only one feeling. He didn’t want to Dream any of it, but as he told Ruby, it wasn’t as if he had a choice.
No, that wasn’t right. Looking at Yang sitting there with tears in her eyes he found that he did want to continue Dreaming, choice or not. He couldn’t do anything about what the Dreams held for either Yang or Ruby, but goddammit he wanted to know and do whatever he could from this side of things.
He wasn’t a particularly affectionate person, aside from playful hair tousling he really didn’t know how to be. Tai had always been better at that kind of thing. He reached out for Yang’s hand, but stopped, hesitated, and let his own hand drop to the bed instead. “I’m sorry, Yang,” he said.
It had all been so much. Yang ran her hand through her hair, ruffling it in lieu of Qrow doing it. Just... spilling it all at once felt like a weight had been lifted off of her shoulders. Qrow was from her world, he knew what the Grimm and the White Fang were capable of and from the letter she'd gotten from Ruby he'd known a hell of a lot more.
But she'd keep that part to herself for now.
"Blake can't know. Not yet. I have to tell her myself, and there's a lot of if that's her story to tell and not mine. And I don't want Ruby worrying about it either, not until she has to. But it's.... really good to say that outloud to someone besides my ex-girlfriend and roommates."
Keeping what Yang had told him to himself was a tall order. He hadn’t actually met Blake yet, so that would be easy enough, but keeping his mouth shut around Ruby? Ah, that was going to be a more difficult for Protective Uncle.
But Yang trusted him and he would not do anything to jeopardize that trust. So if she needed him to keep things to himself for the time being, then that was what he would do. For now. There was a lot he already didn’t tell his nieces…
“I promise, I won’t say anything to Ruby. Or Blake, if I ever meet her.” Which he probably would. It seemed as though these kinds of meetings were inevitable if his run-in with Oz was anything to go by. He paused a moment, “but they are going to need to know at some point. If you want me to be there when you talk with Ruby, I will be.” And he really kind of wanted to be there, if for nothing else than to field the endless amount of questions the girl was bound to ask.
“You’re right.” Yang was obviously reluctant. She didn’t want them to know, she wanted them safe in ignorance. She didn’t want Blake’s world to crash down and she was terrified of Blake leaving like she had in the dreams. And she didn’t want Ruby to have the world crash down on her either. She loved them both, and wanted to protect them. Weiss too.
“They need to know before it happens. When they dream of the tournament, I’ll tell them. Take Blake aside before she dreams of the fight with Mercury. Ruby probably too.”
Qrow nodded. “Good plan,” he agreed. “That’ll give me a chance to catch up. The Vytal festival just started for me.” He needed to witness everything Yang had told him for himself and he’d prefer it if he did so before the others. He gave Yang a rueful smile. “I’m proud of you, kiddo.”
“What for?” Yang looked at him quizzically. She wasn’t sure she’d done anything to be proud of. She’d spent a lot of time depressed, border-line suicidal in places, and part of that would never go away. She didn’t feel like she deserved praise.
“For keeping your head,” he answered. He’d have been fooling himself if he thought that everything Yang had gone through wouldn’t have affected her. But she hadn’t given into it or let it control who she was. Qrow had seen and known plenty who were nowhere near that strong. But, being strong didn’t mean she had to face everything by herself. “Think you can promise me something too?”
It hadn’t been easy. But Yang nodded and just accepted it. No use arguing and there were times she was proud of herself for that. “Probably, what?”
Qrow did know about the Grimm, more than he felt he should have considering he’d just started. The White Fang too. And the Schnee corporation. Stories and legends he’d never heard before teased at the back of his mind. “We’re in this together,” he told his niece. “Can you promise me that?”
“I promise.” She gave him a fist bump. “In this together.”