Qrow Branwen is a bad luck charm (scareqrow) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2018-02-02 15:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, jaune arc, qrow branwen |
Who: Qrow and Jaune
What: Jaune comes to Qrow's aide
When: Last Thursday
Where: UC:Irvine, then local hospital
Rating/Warnings Mediumish for sickness
Status: Complete!
Qrow had woken up with injuries before. He’d done it even before these Dreams had started. Granted, it had been a few years since the last time he’d been involved in a fight. He’d worked hard gaining his reputation at the university and keeping his other profession well under wraps. Information brokerage and black market dealings was dangerous, often made even more so simply due to his own constant misfortune, but Qrow had the experience now to avoid unpleasant situations.
Unfortunately, his Dream counterpart didn’t have that luxury. Especially as things stood in Remnant now. Qrow had Dreamed about the Battle of Beacon and the Fall of Vale and had woken up with a few injuries as a result. Nothing serious, just a few bumps and bruises as a result of fighting Grimm and rogue Atlas robots. Nothing he couldn’t walk off as the day had progressed. This injury was different. Tyrian, Salem’s craized servant, had gotten him good. But it could have been worse. The scorpion tail had just grazed him across his torso. It had hurt worse than it should have and when he woke up with the injury, Qrow still had that pain.
The wound itself hadn’t looked too bad that morning. It certainly wasn’t bad enough to keep him from his classes that morning. His muscles were sore and joints started stiffening as he went about his morning, but that was no real surprise. Tyrian was a scorpion, there was probably a bit of venom in that tail tip, but again, it could have been worse.
And then it was.
It was around mid-afternoon when his aching muscles and stiffening joints turned into pain throughout his entire body and a fever and a nasty cough. Apparently, there had been more venom in that tail than Qrow had realized. Venom that was now coursing through his body mercilessly. Qrow was in trouble and he knew it. Like Ruby’s coma, he very much doubted that a hospital or a doctor would do him much good. Oz was still missing. The only option that seemed available to his fevered mind was Natasha Romanov. She, or someone in her “Agency”, would know something. They had better, otherwise…
He was making his way to his car. The building the history department was located in had turned into a maze he stumbled through trying to find the way out. His cough was getting worse and his chest felt as though it was liquefying from the inside out.
There was a land of dreams where Jaune knew that he was someone else. A guy who faked his way into a school for combat training, and he wasn't very good at it. He knew things, like that many of the friends he'd made on the network were also people he knew at the school. His team, or the team across the hall. Qrow Branwen was an alumni of that school just like Ruby and Yang's dad. He knew there were connections and that others in California knew more, though Jaune had decided it was better not to discuss that just yet. There was also that whole video game business he’d been dealing with that had made him do strange things and work for a very pretty man named Rociel. It was over, but...
Man, his life was a mess.
He was walking down the hallway to one of his classes, minding his own business, when he saw it. Professor Qrow-Branwen, Branwen, keep it professional Jaune-stumbling down the hallway. He didn't look good. Jaune was reminded of the times Cardin had come home from a night drinking, hungover as hell. Was Professor Branwen drunk?! That didn't seem right.
"Professor!?" Jaune walked up to him, ducking under Qrow's arm and bracing it across his shoulders to steady him. "Are you okay!? Because you don't- You are so not okay, are you?"
Qrow heard someone calling and looked up to see the Arc kid – Jaune – headed his way. At first Qrow was confused. The last person he expected to help him was Jaune Arc. Considering what happened to the poor kid’s teammate Qrow wouldn’t have blamed him if he had just walked right past the ailing professor without even a glance.
But there he was, getting a shoulder up under Qrow’s arm and pulling him away from the wall which had been the one and only thing that had been keeping Qrow upright thus far. That was when a moment of clarity hit a fever addled mind. Dreams. Jaune hadn’t dreamt that far yet. Hadn’t dreamt of Pyrrah or the Fall of Vale, much less the trek with Ruby and the others across Anima. Christ, this poor kid. Did he even have a clue what was coming his way? Someone should at least warn him.
However, all that Qrow could manage when Jaune pulled him away from the wall was a painful groan quickly followed by a rapid succession of coughs. No he was definitely not okay here. That much was obvious. “I’ve had a rough day,” he muttered once he was in control of his breathing again. He could just barely see Jaune out of the corner of his eye now. The kid was just a blur of gold blond hair lurking at his peripheral. “There was a fight. In the Dreams,” he tried to explain. “I let my guard down. Got stung by a scorpion-man.”
As he spoke, Qrow’s hand instinctively moved to his wound. He could feel something warm and wet seeping through the bandages under his shirt and the shirt itself. Not a great sign. Eyes tried to move up from the floor towards the blur of blond at his side. “Whaddya doin’ here, kid?”
"Oh I uh..." Jaune stammered, while trying to navigate the hallway. The corner of his eye caught the movement of Qrow's hand, and he stopped moving to glance down at the wound. A watermark of blood was forming around the man's hand, just slightly. Whatever it was that this guy was dreaming about? Jaune figured it was very serious. What kind of fight had this been... and wait a minute- "Scorpion men are a THING?"
Of course scorpion men were a thing. He'd talked to a Jedi on the internet last month, anything was possible. Animal People - Faunus - existed in the dream world. "Okay, okay, we've got this, no problem, right?! You were stung by a scorpion man, that makes total sense. I was just here. You know? Doing... school things. Should you even be walking around with that? It's bleeding. Like... a lot. Maybe you need stitches."
Maybe he should call Ruby. Or Yang? Or... medical attention?
Jaune’s reaction made Qrow laugh despite himself. Yeah. Scorpion-men. Quite a shock, eh? The laugh quickly dissolved into another coughing fit. “Yeah,” he managed to wheeze between gasps for air. “Scorpion men. Are a thing.” The coughs took over again. They were deep and rattling and nearly caused him to double over, the hand that had palmed his wound moved to his mouth. The kid wasn’t wrong. He shouldn’t be out walking around. But what choice did he have? He had to get to The Agency. Had to see Natasha for...for…
Qrow was able to finally draw breath again and straighten a little once more. He lowered his hand and instantly saw the purple smearing his palm and fingers. Qrow stared at his hand, gears in his brain slowly grinding to a halt. “Well.” He panted. “That’s not good.” He slumped against Jaune’s shoulder like old rags before sagging to the ground with a thump.
"Oh geeze." Jaune couldn't keep a hold of Qrow once he started slumping towards the floor. He wasn't strong enough to hold the other man up, and he decided he needed to fix that. Obviously not at that moment, though, because purple. He laughed nervously as people around them gave them funny looks, but no one stopped to help out.
"Oh that's just... haha, that's just great, what do we do, Jaune? Do we call an ambulance?! Do they know how to treat purple scorpion-man poison!?! WHAT'S THE NUMBER FOR 9-1-1!?!" He shouted, while throwing his arms over his head for a few moment.
There were more stares at that point, and Jaune tried to take a few deep breaths. He needed to keep it together, a guy was possibly dying. He pulled out his phone and swiped over to make the phone call, then stared blankly at his screen. "...Oh. See, it's that easy. You're gonna be okay, Professor."
Finally, he dialed the three digits, and tried not to smack himself upside the head as he gave the necessary information to the dispatcher. The EMT's arrived in a manner of minutes, and Jaune directed traffic around Qrow until they could load him up and take him away. Of course, he couldn't tell them 'he was stabbed by a scorpion man', but he did manage to get out the words 'poison' before they drove away to the hospital. Jaune wasn’t far behind. He wanted to make sure Qrow was okay, and maybe figure out who else to call.
Qrow listened as Jaune’s voice increased in pitch, portraying his panic. The whole scene was funny in a way that was entirely not funny. There was a part of Qrow that wanted to laugh and another part of him that wanted to tell the poor kid to relax before he gave himself a heart attack. Unfortunately, neither of those things were going to happen. Qrow couldn’t even keep his eyes open, much less speak in a coherent sentence.
Then, for what seemed to be only a moment time was lost. When Qrow was somewhat cognizant again he was aware of moving without actually moving. It took him entirely much too long to realize that he was in a vehicle, but that was were the realizations stopped. There were different voices around him now and none of them belonged to Jaune Arc. That bothered Qrow. A lot. Jaune, panic and all, was familiar, at least. An ally. These new voices Qrow didn’t know and had no idea their intentions. He attempted to listen to what they were saying, but their words were like water, fluid and impossible to grasp. One of them was attempting to speak directly to him, trying to get him to answer (“Sir? Can you hear me?...Can you tell me your name?...Do you know what happened….?”)
Somehow in the midst of the chaos that Qrow seemed to be merely observing despite being in the center of, a strange thought occurred to him: he needed to call Tai. He always called Tai whenever he wasn’t able to drive himself home. He even had a card in his wallet with Tai’s name and phone number on it. He would just hand it over to whatever bartender and mumble something like “call’im. He’ll get me home…”
Time became fuzzy again and Qrow was lost. He didn’t Dream exactly, which may have been the first good thing to happen to him all day. However, what he did experience boarderlined on hallucinations. There was Tai, or rather a younger version of Tai. And Raven. And Summer. All four of them together, dressed like huntsmen and huntresses. Team STRQ. And yet...something was wrong. Summer. He couldn’t see Summer’s face. Raven. Her back was towards them. Both of them were just out of reach. No matter how much he tried to reach either one of them, they somehow only got further away. Further and further away until they were gone all together. Gone and never coming back.
The next time Qrow opened his eyes he was no longer in a moving vehicle. Instead he was in a room. It was quiet. Qrow almost preferred the voices.
The last time Jaune had been in the hospital, it was to carry his sister through the doors of the Emergency Room. They'd been out on a walk around the local base when her appendix had ruptured, and Jaune still remembered how it felt to sit there next to her, listening to all the machines. The rush of the staff behind the curtains, the background chatter of the medical staff.
Luckily, or maybe unluckily - after all, this was bad, very bad, and not for any good reason at all - the staff had put Qrow off into his own space. It didn't do anything to cure the feelings of helplessness, but at least there wasn't any noise to make the panic worse.
It also clued him in to when Qrow woke up. He glanced up from his phone and awkwardly waved at Qrow. "Uhm... hi. There was a card, I've been texting a guy named Tai for you."
The Arc kid was back and for some reason that was a comfort. At least there was someone familiar in this otherwise unfamiliar and sterile place. Without moving his head, Qrow’s eyes moved around the room. The white walls, the very specific style of bed and the machines next to the bed obviously monitoring his vitals. It was quiet, no obnoxious beeping noises. Qrow was somewhat relieved he didn’t understand what the lines and numbers on the screen meant. He knew he wasn’t doing well, he didn’t need the emotionless reminder from a machine to tell him.
Red eyes moved back towards Jaune when the kid spoke. He’d said something about Tai. About texting Tai. He must have found the in-case-of-drunk-please-call card in Qrow’s wallet. Smart kid.
“Tai’s my brother-in-law,” Qrow murmured. “Yang and Ruby’s father…” Jaune had met Ruby and Yang, right? Qrow wasn’t entirely sure what was the Dreams and what wasn’t, but he supposed it didn’t matter. And technically Tai wasn’t really his brother-in-law, but it was just easier to refer to him that way, especially with how sluggish Qrow’s mind was currently being. He closed his eyes again for a moment. “Thanks, kid,” he said, “for not leavin’ me in the hallway.”
"Where I come from, you never leave one of your people behind," Jaune replied, sounding a lot more confident about that than he did about literally anything else. He wasn't good enough for the Navy, he'd never even passed the tests for any of the military branches. And the phrase wasn't technically Navy, but his parents still liked to quote it. "And you're one of my people, though... maybe you don't want to be. Not many people usually do. I'm kinda hoping that he takes care of telling Ruby and Yang, because I have Ruby's number but-"
He cut himself off, thinking maybe his nervous rambling wasn't what Qrow needed to hear just then. "Tai thought you were drunk, but I'm convincing him it's more serious than that. He'll probably be here soon. They don't... really know what to do. All I know is they're trying to keep you alive, so that's... positive, right?"
Qrow wasn’t entirely sure he’d heard Jaune correctly. First off, this version of Jaune never sounded confident about anything, always following up his statements with something else that sounded as though he was second guessing himself. When he’d had the poor kid in his class it had driven Qrow absolutely insane, especially since nine times out of ten, Jaune was right on the money with the first thing he said. Secondly, only Ruby, Yang and Tai had ever claimed Qrow to be one of their people…person. Uncle? Whatever, the point was Qrow had never heard anyone claim him as one of theirs quite like that. Outside of the tiny Xiao Long family, no one had ever wanted him.
And here was Jaune Arc, of all fucking people, claiming that Qrow was one of his? No. No he must have heard that wrong.
…Then came the self-depreciation that had driven the professor crazy the previous semester. Yup. This conversation was definitely happening and not a figment of a fevered imagination. Qrow made a noise that could have been a chuckle, but could have been a cough too. “You an’ I have that in common,” he murmured. “Not many people want me around…long story. I’ll tell you later.” Provided there was a later.
“Ya might not feel the same way once ya Dream a little more,” he went on tiredly. The next noise he made was definitely less of a grunt and more of a laugh. “I’ve been known t’ spend my evenings at bars,” he explained in that same tired murmur. “Assuming I’m drunk is kinda an automatic response for Tai at this point.” Not something Qrow was particularly proud of, but it was the truth.
It came as no surprise to him that the hospital staff had no idea what to do to help him. He was willing to bet whatever venom Tyrian had in his tail wasn’t like the usual scorpion stings common in the southwestern portion of the United States, or anywhere else for that matter. Much like when Ruby had fallen into a coma after the fight with the dragon, one of two things was going to happen here: either Qrow would get better, or he wouldn’t. Whichever the outcome it wasn’t fair for Jaune to sit there and watch. “Yeah,” he sighed, fighting to keep his eyes open. “That’s positive. Ya don’t have to stay, Jaune.”
"I'm gonna stay." Jaune replied, sounding confident again. "I'm not leaving you here alone, and you're not, you know, really in a position to fight me on it. Maybe I'll leave when Tai gets here, but until then I'm staying."
He looked over at Qrow with a particularly stubborn expression on his face, one that Qrow had probably seen in his dreams at least once or twice, though Jaune had no idea. "So just get some rest, alright? And know that someone's always going to be sitting right here."
Which, Jaune figured, might be incentive to hang on long enough for them to find a way to cure him.
Jaune was right. Qrow was in absolutely no position to argue with him. Qrow cracked open an eye to look at the kid at his bedside, taking in that stubborn expression. This time he couldn’t help the painful laugh-cough that escaped him. “The hell was that determination when I had ya in class?” He breathed. He closed his eyes again and let his body relax, giving into the painkillers that apparently were in his IV drip. Having Jaune stick around may not have been so bad, really. Wouldn’t have been the first time he’d watched over him, though the kid didn’t have any memory of that. Yet. And besides, as much as Qrow didn’t want to admit it, he really didn’t want to be left alone, either.
Qrows eyes closed again and before he could even thank Jaune for staying, he’d passed out again.