Chapter Text
When the twins are born it is not a dark and stormy night, it’s a night lit by the broken moon, as full as it can ever be, hanging heavy in the sky. The heat is oppressive even so far in the forest where the tree’s should offer their protection from the sun during the day.
It’s bright, humid, and quiet.
Raven is born first and Qrow soon after.
They hadn’t thought Qrow would make it at first. He’d been born smaller than his sister and the absence of any crying was worrying, compared to his sister who had cried the second she could breathe. There was talk, of course, of letting the weaker of the two die so the stronger infant had a better chance at life.
The twins both survive much to their parents' relief.
Qrow is a fussy baby, he cries until he’s driven to sleep and then starts again when he wakes, like the world is already too much for him, like something is wrong and won’t ever be right. No amount of hushing and soothing seems to work, not the way it does with Raven.
Raven is quiet, in comparison and they try to keep them separate at night so she can sleep in peace, this doesn’t work out as she starts wailing the second she can’t find her brother so the two are kept together regardless of how cranky Raven gets.
Eventually, after months, Qrow stops crying as much and seems to settle, much to the relief of the entire camp who’d begun to mutter quiet curses under their breath from the regular disruption, and to a greater extent, the relief of his exhausted parents.
The second the twins start crawling is both surprising and terrifying.
They eventually find them both curled up under a table halfway across the camp. It’s not the last time the twins end up escaping by far and it is no less terrifying every time it happens.
Raven and Qrow both have grabby little hands and they end up grabbing at anything they can reach. Qrow likes to drop things to the ground and when the item is given back to him, or placed back where it belongs will gleefully send it right back down to the ground. Raven hoards. She stuffs things under her blankets and down her diaper and pretends she has not taken a thing.
It’s endearing until Qrow gets hold of a knife and slices his hand open. The wound itself is not deep but it is the first time he’s been injured like this and he makes sure they all understand that with the way his cries cut through the forest.
If the twins crawling had been terrifying, walking had been harrowing. At this point they were practiced at keeping the twins in their tent or within sight, but the added mobility is a challenge and the rest of the camp is ultimately unhelpful, and at times hindering, when it comes to child rearing.
It doesn’t take long to put their worries at ease, if only for a while, as Qrow refuses to leave his parents' side. Raven still hides away at times but she doesn’t go far without her brother and will usually poke her head out of wherever she is when he calls for her which makes it easier to keep an eye on them.
They don’t start worrying about Qrow’s unwillingness to leave their side until he’s older and Raven starts running off ahead of them. The prompting to leave their side and join his sister to check the traps only makes him cry. Which starts the rest of the hunting party whispering about how he was scaring off any and all game. That bringing the fussy child along was hurting their chances at a successful hunt.
His father singles one of them out and tells them that all they are doing is checking traps and to calm down.
“Yeah, but we won’t have any luck at bagging anything bigger if the kid keeps wailing like that.”
“We can’t survive off of rabbits forever.” Another says, gentler.
“Brothers, he’s probably alerted every single grimm left in the area.”
“And the children need to learn and adjust. Give him time.” His father growls. “There’s a proper hunting party going out in the morning.”
Qrow holds his breath until he can’t and nuzzles his face against his mothers neck until she reminds him to breathe a gentle hand stroking his back.
Raven bounds back and informs them of two successful traps up ahead. She jumps the space between where she’d skidded to a stop over to her mother and tugs at her brother's leg. He sniffles when he’s set back down on the ground and scrubs at his face, avoiding his sister’s piercing gaze.
“C’mon, we’re going.” She says, crossing her arms and stomping her foot for emphasis.
Qrow shakes his head, “I don’t want to!” He says, crossing his arms at her.
“Why don’t you want to go ahead with your sister, Qrow?” Their mother asks, settling a hand on each of the twin’s backs.
Qrow shakes his head again. “I just don’t.” He pouts, staring down at the ground.
“The area is safe from the Grimm, little bird. You will be safe so long as you stay on the path.” She ruffles his hair and he moves to push her hand away.
“But.. What if it’s not?” He asks hesitantly, gripping her hand in both of his.
“Then I will be there to make it so.” Their father says, having circled back when he realized his family had lingered. He leans down and picks Raven up, settling her on his shoulder.
Raven pipes up, “I can protect you!” She grins and wiggles out of her fathers grasp, “I’m bigger than you anyways.” She says smugly as she’s set back down.
“Shut up .” Qrow shoves at her, she dodges and grabs his wrist, running ahead and forcing him to go with her. “Wait, Rae! No!” He squeals.
A flock of birds take flight at the disturbance, having only just settled a few minutes earlier.
Their parents exchange a weary look and sigh. At least he was running ahead with his sister.
It’s easier after that, to convince him to leave their sides, though he doesn’t stray far from Raven when he does.
It doesn’t take Qrow long to catch himself in a trap, he knows better than to pull too much past the initial panic. The teeth still leave nasty red gouges around his ankle, deep enough that he needs stitches.
Raven crouches next to her brother, looking over the injury with curiousity as their mother gently cleans and wraps it up.
Qrow cries and hides his face in their father’s chest but has since learned to keep silent, in case the annoyed whispers start again. He really doesn’t like it when people whisper about him.
~
Raven takes to life around the camp with a zeal and patience that ingratiates herself with a few members of the camp. They teach her miscellaneous skills necessary for keeping the camp running and Qrow is never far but he is shy and nervous and the whispers around the camp stick with him and while he tries his best, he is still a child and children are often reckless and prone to mistakes.
He is often compared to his sister. She is quiet and quick to take on tasks given to her, she listens politely and does not fidget when asked to sit and stay, to pay attention. She does not slouch and complain when they are learning. (This does not stop him from reading anything he gets his hands on. He avoids some of the reading like it’s actively trying to hurt him, however.)
Qrow decides early on that he does not like when people compare him to his sister. It makes something in his chest tight and he doesn’t like the sick feeling he gets when Raven wants to learn about something from the other bandits. Knowing they’re just going to be mad at him for not being more like his sister.
Their parents often take them to gather kindling while a few adults chop logs down into firewood. It is an easy task and helps get them into a routine with the rest of the camp. It’s also a good time for the twins to play without getting too underfoot.
They spend very little time actually gathering the kindling and more time play-fighting once they each find a suitable stick, darting around and giggling as they swing at one another with their makeshift weapons.
Raven swipes at him and Qrow dodges and goes to swing at her from over his head but the stick catches in the low hanging foliage and she wacks him firmly in the stomach and runs off laughing.
“Tough luck kid, gotta be more aware of your surroundings.” One of the bandits calls over to him.
He scowls and rubs at his stomach before yanking his stick free to enact his revenge.
The play-fighting is almost never discouraged. The twins are often instructed on form and how to swing for a more effective strike and in this the twins are equal. They are taught at the same time and instructed in the same way and for once Qrow doesn’t feel like he’s being treated like an inconvenience.
Oftentimes the twins are sent to check the traps alone. They are old enough to manage most of the ones near the camp now and the patrols keep the area safe from grimm. So there is no reason not to give them some responsibility.
Qrow still gets nervous around the empty traps but he has yet to catch himself in one a second time. Though, Raven has not let him live it down, she usually puts herself between him and where she knows the empty ones rest.
She loves her brother but he is not careful when he should be.
Qrow braces his hands on a fallen log and swings his body up on top of it, walking up the length back to where it was still attached to the trunk. Arms thrown out for balance, his head tipped back to look up at what he could see of the sky through the trees. Sometimes he wonders what it would be like to be above the canopy, if all you’d see is treetops and sky stretching out forever.
Raven doesn’t follow. She crouches down next to the trap and is too busy placing a rabbit into her basket to really take note of how the tree trembles before a snap echoes like a gunshot and the tree slams down onto the ground. She can feel the vibration of it in her chest and throughout her body, like it’s rattled her bones out of place, she loses her balance and her knees slam into the dirt.
“Qrow?”
There’s no answer and she leaps back up to her feet.
“Qrow, come on this isn’t funny.”
She climbs up onto the tree, heart in her throat. She spots him ahead of her on the ground and darts over to him, jumping down when the tree wobbles beneath her feet.
“Are you okay?”
Qrow groans and shakes his head.
“We have to get back to camp.” She says and pulls at his arm.
“I think I hurt my leg.” Qrow says, gripping her wrist and pushing away to dissuade her attempts to get him to stand.
“You could wait here while I get help.”
Qrow looks at her and shakes his head, “No, don’t leave me here.”
She frowns and crosses her arms, “Well, can you walk?”
“I can try.”
“Why’d you climb that tree, anyways, stupid.”
“You’re stupider. It was sturdy. I dunno what happened.”
“You’re stupidest.” Raven rolls her eyes and offers her hand to him.
He uses the log to balance himself on his uninjured leg and grabs his sister’s hand and tries to put weight on it, lifting it back up off the ground when pain shoots up from his ankle.
He holds his breath and tries not to cry, hand shaking in Raven’s.
“Ugh, here.” Raven says and ducks under his arm to pull some of his weight off of it.
“Thanks.”
“Just don’t cry. Nobody likes it.”
They leave the rabbits behind and head back to camp, Qrow gets his leg looked at and it’s decided it’s likely a sprained ankle and they wrap it up. He settles into bed for the rest of the day and reads one of the books their dad had brought back from a raid.
The rabbits are gone by the time Raven goes back to collect them.
Nobody says anything directly to Qrow but the tents aren’t exactly good at muffling sound.
“If the brat hadn’t been goofing off we wouldn’t have lost six whole rabbits.”
“It’s just shit luck. Something could’ve come by and eaten those rabbits when they were first trapped.”
“But they didn’t. It was after they were collected.”
“He’s like six, or something. Don’t you remember being six?”
“Barely. I didn’t fuck up like this, though.”
“You sound like you were a boring kid.”
“I was a good kid.”
Qrow huffs and covers his ears. He doesn’t like it when people talk about him and he can’t go anywhere to escape it with his ankle like this.
Raven ducks back into the tent and drops an orange onto his lap before handing him his dinner.
“Mom and dad are gonna be back late, they’re still out hunting.”
Qrow hums and peels his orange in tiny chunks.
“How do you always manage to get hurt anyways.” Raven flops down next to him on the bed.
Qrow shrugs and starts tearing the white bits off of the orange.
“I’m like, never hurt.” She pauses and shifts so she’s on her side, “Okay maybe I’m hurt sometimes .”
Qrow glares at her and she stares back.
“I guess you’re just unlucky, huh.”
“I guess .”
~
Eventually it’s time to move camp. Things are packed up and everything extra is discarded and they set out.
The trip itself is mostly uninteresting, more of the forest, more of the river, and a whole lot less to actually do other than think. The move itself goes about as smoothly as anyone expected, they’d stopped to raid a nearby village on the way out and a few bandits never made it back, but nobody the twins knew. The village itself was small and when they’re taken through with their parents to pick over the remains they get very little of actual interest.
Qrow tries to ignore when things go wrong, he does but he can’t quite shake the feeling that he’s bad from his mind. That he’s going to mess things up or things are going to go wrong because something always has to go wrong.
His parents try to coax what’s wrong out of him but it feels like something that’s too big for him to express. He worries that he doesn’t hold the words necessary to tell them properly and if they knew maybe they’d leave him behind forever. So it sits and rots away in his stomach.
He trains with Raven still, but he dodges other responsibilities when he can and Raven picks up his slack with only mild complaints. She’s placated when he shoves half of his lunch or dinner at her.
His parents notice after a while and they tell Raven not to take anymore of his food, that he needs to eat it himself. The problem is that he does not want to eat it but his parents watch him until he eats even though his stomach turns and he feels sick.
Qrow worries more than Raven does when their parents go out on hunts or raids. He spends the nights they don’t return awake and runs through every worst case scenario he can. The things that could go wrong, the people that might attack them, the grimm that might show up, the ways they might die.
He turns to sword work with Raven and they practice until they’re both exhausted more often and she seems to relish in the challenge.
Raven’s Aura ripples to life one night when both of them are trembling from exhaustion, the wooden swords unsteady in their grips but unwilling to stop until one of them wins.
Qrow gets a strike in and Raven slips on a patch of ice and falls back on her butt with a grunt before she’s swiping at his feet and pushing herself back up. It’s a sudden thing, unexpected. She hits the ground and something red sparks up around her and laces over her body as she moves, not even registering it until her brother blinks at her and barely gets his sword up to block her strike. She notices it when it arcs down her arms and snaps into place over her hands before vanishing entirely.
She drops the sword and Qrow slips at the sudden change of pressure and takes them both down.
His own aura races into place around him seconds later.
They stare at each other in shock before they burst out into laughter.
Their parents are surprised when they run over to tell them, it’s a little young for aura to awaken on its own but the twins are stubborn and willful.
~
Qrow lets curiousity get the best of him, one day, and grabs a nearly empty glass, its owner is passed out at the table and he figures it’s worth the risk. He takes a sip and promptly puts it back down, scrunching his nose in distaste with a muttered, “ Gross .”
Rats get into the grain stores that year and Qrow shrinks in on himself and hopes desperately that nobody finds out he left the door open after a game of hide and seek with Raven. Nobody finds out. In the end they chalk it up to plain misfortune and plan a raid to mitigate the loss and people complain and make threats against the mysterious culprit which does nothing but scares Qrow further.
Qrow feels sick about it for weeks until he tells Raven in the dead of night when their parents are out hunting.
She grips his hand tightly, “I know.”
“Please don’t tell. They already hate me.” He whispers, squeezing her hand.
“I won’t.” She promises.
“Thank you.” He sighs in relief.
It’s not until they’re older that Qrow’s fears are brought to life, unexpectedly so.
It’s their first real hunting trip. Their parents had given them each a bow and some arrows, thinking they were still a bit young for guns, even if they had gotten bigger.
The expectations are both high and low. Qrow and Raven are expected to actually pull their weight and involve themselves in something far more delicate than fishing or checking traps but nobody is expecting the hunt to be wildly successful, either. Some of the bandits had whispered amongst each other that the trip was doomed to fail with an air of indifference.
Qrow is unsurprisingly nervous. He fidgets with his bow, tugs at Raven’s hair until she snaps at him so he braids it instead, plays with his mothers rings, taking them on and off of her fingers, or his fathers knife when he can get his hands on it.
He nicks himself with the knife by accident, his aura bright in the overcast weather as it absorbs the damage and his father lifts it out of his grip with a small click of his tongue and a warning about being careful.
They set up camp and he and Raven wrestle until they’re told to knock it off and get some rest.
In the morning they are given breakfast and told that if they want to eat again they will find it themselves.
They almost get a rabbit a few hours later but Qrow steps on a branch and the thing runs off.
“Sorry.” He says, sheepishly rubbing the back of his head.
“Better be.” She grumbles. “I really don’t want to starve to death.”
“I doubt they’d actually let us starve.”
She shoots him a doubtful look and goes over to yank her arrow out of the grass.
“I just think it’d be more trouble than it’s worth. You’re the worst when you’re hungry.” He says, shrugging his shoulders.
She shoves him, “No, you’re the worst.”
He shoves her back and runs off, sticking his tongue out at her, “Nope, still you!”
She huffs and flips her middle finger up at him like she’d seen people around camp do and Qrow gasps and clutches his chest in mock indignation, falling into a snowbank.
“I can’t believe you’d do something so rude to me, I thought we were family?”
“Oh, shut up.”
They catch a rabbit a little past lunch and run back to present it to their parents; it’s better than nothing.
They are walked through how to prepare the meat and cook it and it’s good, if a bit chewy. Skinning and preparing the meat for cooking is nothing that’s new to them but actually cooking their own food is .
“Tomorrow, try to catch two rabbits before returning.” Their father says, ruffling their hair. “One rabbit is not going to be enough for the whole day. Not for the two of you.”
“Maybe if Qrow didn’t scare them all off we could’ve had more!” Raven says, poking her brother in the side.
“I didn’t scare all of them!” Qrow says back, swatting at her hands. “It was just the one!”
Their father grabs their hands and gently separates them. “Who scared what does not matter. All that matters is that you have enough to survive.”
Raven pouts and Qrow slouches.
“Do not forget that you have to depend on one another, especially during the lean months.” He says. “You are stronger together.”
The twins look at each other for a long while before nodding at their father.
Later in the dead of night Raven turns to look at her brother and whispers, “I think it matters a little.”
Qrow blinks at her sleepily.
“Who scared what.” She says.
“Ugh, whatever.” Qrow grumbles and turns over to sleep.
The next day they aren’t given breakfast and are unceremoniously turned out into the woods.
They find some berries they know are safe and eat those. Eventually Qrow gets a rabbit and they scramble forward to collect it. It’s still morning and they have until the sun starts to set to catch one more.
“I bet we could get three.” Raven says.
“Dad said two .” Qrow says and kicks a rock. “If we try for three we’ll just get hungry and tired and everyone will be mad at us.”
“Yeah, but if we get the second early enough we could stay out until we know for certain.”
“I don’t want to starve, Rae.” Qrow says, voice pitching up in frustration. “I want to eat soon.”
“Fine.”
“Just cause you want to impress them doesn’t mean I have to suffer.”
“I don’t want to impress them.”
“Yeah. Sure.” Qrow rolls his eyes.
By the time they get their second rabbit it’s getting late. Qrow gets this one as well, as Raven’s aim has started faltering and her patience has worn thin.
Qrow grins at her. “Maybe it does matter.”
She glares at him, growling out a quiet ‘Don’t .’
“Who scared what.” He says, smugly.
She shoves him and they grab their rabbits and scramble back to the camp.
It’s silent, unnervingly so. The forest was never silent like this unless a bad storm was rolling in, or grimm were around. They move slowly, suddenly unsure of themselves.
They get half way back before they notice signs of a fight, a new slash in a tree, a few stray shots littering the ground, and when they get a bit closer, a bloodied spot on the ground.
They exchange nervous looks and reach for each other.
Qrow shifts his backpack and inhales slowly. “What if?”
“No. Shut up.”
Qrow swallows and nods. His mind whirls with worst case scenarios regardless.
They move slowly and carefully through the trees. Qrow keeps one eye on his feet and the other ahead of him, he’s got his bow clasped in one hand and Raven’s hand in the other.
Raven leads them closer. The wind ruffles the leaves around them and Qrow shivers, walking closer to his sister.
The air seems to freeze around them like the forest is holding its breath alongside them as they tread cautiously up to a bush they know gives them a view of the makeshift camp.
They hear the wet sound of something tearing and a thump as it falls back down, a crunch that makes them both shiver in fear echoing out and the twins look at each other in dim realization.
Qrow looks over first and freezes. Raven tugs at his sleeve and he looks at her, the blood drained from his face and shakes his head.
She goes to look and he presses down on her shoulders, tears welling up in his eyes that he blinks away, shaking his head again, teeth bared in a warning.
There’s a snuffling sound and then there’s a thump that makes the ground tremble beneath them and Raven gets a clear view of the grimm.
It sniffs the air again and looks around, tail swaying as it’s ears twitch, the clear white of it’s face splattered red and reflecting the light of the setting sun, its bright red eyes alert and searching.
The beowolf steps closer to where the twins are hiding, snout pointed down to the ground before sniffing around in the air again.
Raven grips Qrows hand hard enough to feel the bones in his hand move around and he hisses slightly, the grimm’s head snapping to where they’re hidden.
It leaps at the bush and is suddenly slammed off course by an arrow that erupts into flame on contact, 4 more arrows hit the thing and then their mother is grabbing them by the shoulders and telling them to move.
They run until they can’t, then their mother picks them up and continues to run until her legs give out beneath her and she slams down on her knees, panting.
Qrow tries to help her sit comfortably, his hands shaking. “Mom? You’re bleeding.”
“Shh, pay no mind to that, little bird.” She whispers. “We need to get back to camp.”
Raven trembles and moves closer, grabbing her mothers hand between hers. “What happened? Where’s everyone else?”
Qrow sniffles and wipes at his eyes.
“The Grimm. Much larger than expected.” She brushes some loose hair behind Raven’s ear. “I need both of you to be brave, do you hear me, my birds?”
Raven nods. Confident in her ability to be brave.
Qrow’s hands curl into her shirt and he nods as well.
“Good, that’s good.” She says, putting pressure on the wound. “We need to keep walking towards camp and we need to be silent, okay?”
The twins agree in unison.
She nods and heaves herself up to her feet. “No matter what, little birds. Do not leave one another. You are stronger together.”
The twins look at each other and link hands.
They get back to the camp in one piece and their mother is whisked away to a healer. The twins are looked over but once they’re deemed in fine health, if a touch hungry they are ignored.
Qrow curls in on himself and cries into his knees in their tent.
Raven leans against him, her own eyes wet but staring blankly ahead.
Eventually she asks, “What did you see?”
“Dad. It was eating dad.”
Raven feels the nausea hit her and stares ahead blankly while her body decides whether or not it’s going to throw up her hard earned dinner or not.
“So he’s dead.” She says, tone flat and Qrow cries harder next to her.
Their mother is a fighter but her aura takes too long and the supplies have run short and she dies three days later. He’s able to get his mothers rings and Raven grabs their fathers knife when his body is retrieved.
Qrow isn’t certain how they cleaned up the hunting camp but his father and mother are burned together.
Raven is silent beside him the entire time and Qrow is too weary to continue crying.
~
One of their parents' friends takes them under her wing, she says it’s only as a favour, to pay a debt she owes their mother.
She’s not unkind but she’s certainly colder than their parents.
There’s a shift in the atmosphere around the camp and Raven works harder and takes on more to prove her worth to the people in charge.
Qrow lingers in the background and tries not to draw attention to himself. Which works until he’s checking on the chickens one night and he forgets to properly secure the coop.
The chickens are his responsibility and when he checks on them that morning only a few of the birds remain, he checks everywhere but the coop is outside of the walls and he ends up finding a few dead and only being able to get one back alive.
He drags the dead ones back with him, no use putting good meat to waste after all, but he can’t stop thinking about the door and the coop, how it was his responsibility to keep the chickens healthy and safe. They’ll know it’s his fault. He bites his lip, crouches and buries his face in the chicken’s back and screams. He’ll have to tell them. He tries to blink the tears away but he just ends up crying harder.
He gets back into the camp and shoves his traitor chicken back in the coop and sits and shakes until Raven finds him.
“Oh, what happened in here?” She asks, nose scrunched at the dead birds.
“I swear I closed and locked everything before I left them.” He whispers, throat sore.
“Oh, they’re gonna be really mad.” Raven says, looking over the dead birds. She crouches in front of him and rests her hands on his knees.
He shudders and presses his palms into his eyes, “I know.” He feels like throwing up.
“C’mon, what’s the worst that could happen?” Raven says, pulling him to his feet.
He could think of a few things.
In the end he’s yelled at and told to wait in his tent to await whatever punishment they elect for him.
Raven hugs him quickly and runs off to do her own chores.
Waiting is the hard part. He sits and tries to read but gives up when he finds himself re-reading the same paragraph and starts pacing instead. He bites his knuckle. He knows some of the bandits have had fingers taken. Or have been strung up by the arms. Or kept in a cage until they’re nothing but skin and bones. Or whipped or burned, or, or...
He closes his eyes and bites down harder, his aura sparking against his teeth.
“Qrow.”
He jumps and rips his finger from his mouth.
“Maggie.”
“You alright, kid?”
“I’m… fine.” He says. His finger has some deep imprints but is not bleeding.
“So, uh, the leaders wanted me to tell you that you’ll be on patrol.”
“That’s it?” Patrols weren’t so bad, some bandits even preferred to be on patrol. He thinks it’s ‘cause it’s easier to run out to the villages instead of actually doing anything.
“First offence and all that.” She waves her hand, “Don’t screw up again, yeah?” She looks him in the eye, “They won’t go easy on you a second time.”
He’s quiet for a while but eventually he nods.
“What do I do?”
“You’ll be with Alabaster. For three days.”
He feels like someone dropped a tonne of lead in his stomach. The world feels like it tilts and he can feel his heart pounding in his ears.
“No, no you can’t. They can’t. Alabaster hates me.” He surges forward and grabs at Maggie’s hand, “Maggie please .”
“You’ll live.” She says, pulling her hand away. “I got shit to do. You should pack, you head out in the morning.”
He swallows bile as she leaves and curls under his blanket and cries. Eventually he sits up and rubs his eyes. He’d rather lose a finger, he thinks bitterly.
Raven pokes her head in later, “Hey, you missed lunch.”
She tosses him an orange and drops a sandwich in his lap.
“Thanks.”
“So, what’re they doing with you?”
“Three days in the middle of nowhere with Alabaster.”
Raven winces and sits by his feet. “Good luck?”
Qrow winces. “I feel cursed.”
“Maybe. You should eat.” Raven says. “When do you leave?”
“Morning.”
She frowns and twists the blanket in her hands. “Three days is a long time.”
Qrow nods and picks at his orange, peeling it in tiny chunks.
Raven stares at him, “We’ve never been apart that long.”
Qrow nods again, “I know.” He says, blinking back against the tears that rise in his eyes.
He packs and tries not to feel like he’s walking to his grave. Raven hugs him tightly and they both cry a little before Alabaster scoffs and steers Qrow out of the camp and down the path.
~
Her semblance is a little disappointing. When she finally develops it but at least she thinks she got hers first.
It’s not a quick thing, it doesn’t snap into place like her aura did. At first it’s just an odd tugging, like a piece of string pulled taught, as she watches her brother leave with one of the worst people she knows. It starts with a severe desperation to keep an eye on him and not knowing how to do so. The feeling gets stronger as the days go on.
She adjusts to her brother not being by her side slowly but still counts the days down to when he should be back.
Something seems to give one night and she awakens feeling like something has smacked into her. She tugs a hand through her hair and blinks into the dark.
In the end she ignores it and manages to go back to sleep.
The weird feedback gets stronger, like someone is drip feeding her emotions and sensations that do not belong to her. She doesn’t exactly know what to make of it. Especially when they always seem so scared .
She asks Magenta about it later and gets a shrug and a half-assed explanation on semblances and how they can be anything. That she might’ve just been stressed due to the separation, but she’s never been stressed over being apart from her brother or her parents in the past. That was always Qrow. It is a lot longer than ever before, though and she often finds herself unable to sleep without her brother by her side.
The days seem to crawl. She has no one to really play with and sparring with other bandits is just frustrating. Like they’re humouring her instead of fighting her. She’s pretty sure she could kill any one of them in single combat.
Sometimes a shadow of an impression hits her and it takes her a second to realize it’s probably Qrow, the anxious tangle of emotion is easy enough to ignore now and she figures it will be better once he’s back.
When Qrow does get back he looks ragged, like he hasn’t slept or eaten. She runs to him and the relief on his face when they hug and the warmth that echoes across to her is enough to set her at ease.
He rubs at the back of his head, “I lived.”
“Did you? You look like roadkill.”
“I feel like roadkill.”
She grins, a little excited about her news and pokes him in the ribs. He winces and shakes his head, catching her wrist and moving it away.
“You alright?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“ Right . So what happened?”
“Nothing. Some grimm but they were killed at a distance. It was mostly boring. Like a hunting trip.”
He’s lying, she thinks. Or hiding something.
She shakes her head, “I think I got my semblance.”
His eyes light up, “Really? What is it?”
“I think it linked us? It’s a little lame but I can kinda feel you?”
He pales a little, eyes going wide, “You can?”
“Yeah, not very well though. I hope it gets better. Like… teleporting or something. That way if we get separated I can always visit you.”
He smiles but it’s shaky at the edges, “Yeah.”
“I wonder what yours is gonna be.”
Qrow shrugs and kicks at the ground, “Maybe my semblance is causing problems . That's all I seem to do.”
“Oh come on. It’s got to be better than that.”
Qrow shoots her a skeptical look.
~
Qrow’s quieter after that. He keeps his head down and he sticks closer to Raven than he had in years. It reminds Raven of when they were really little and he’d been prone to crying everytime he lost sight of their parents.
It’s a little irritating. The only time he really leaves her is when Alabaster is around and that’s only so he can be as far away from him as possible.
Raven likes to follow Magenta around, much to the older woman’s irritation, but she tolerates the attention so long as Raven is quiet and behaved and will usually talk her through what she’s doing; she will only ever run Raven or Qrow through something slowly once, after that they’re on their own. Raven likes the routine of the camp and is awaiting the day she’s given more responsibility with baited breath. Having Qrow on her heel is fine; Magenta teaches him as well but he seldom bothers to involve himself the way Raven does.
~
For the first time since their parents died, the twins are taken out on a hunting trip. Qrow spends the time leading up to it stressed and Raven does her best to distract him but eventually she gets bored and she has other things to do, anyways.
The hunting trip is planned to be four days long and the twins won’t be hunting for themselves so much as helping carry supplies for the others while they’re out. Apparently it’s so they can learn technique but Raven has her doubts. Especially when she’s forced to carry spare ammunition, bullets and arrows, as well as food for the day, and first aid, and anything else they could pile on her and Qrow.
She shares a long-suffering look with her brother and they both sigh. At least they’re together.
Later at night Qrow whispers that they probably didn’t want to deal with keeping an eye on them the way their parents did. She’s not entirely sure. She thinks if it was just her she’d be allowed to hunt for herself.
She knows her brother tries his best, but trouble does seem to follow him an awful lot.
Nothing on the hunting trip seems to go right. One of the bow’s snaps in half, the guns jam, and they lose the deer they were tracking entirely. It rains the entire time which makes a fire nearly impossible and Qrow falls into a pond and they lose some of their food and ammunition, another person twists their ankle in the mud. She loses track after a while.
On the way home Qrow sneezes and the next day comes down with a fever.
So at least they caught something other than a few rabbits.
Every hunt the twins are taken on goes wrong somehow until eventually they aren’t taken along any more. There’s a quiet voice in the back of her head that blames Qrow for that.
They’re left in charge of the traps and the chickens again. The traps are a nice change of pace, it’s easy and familiar. She helps Qrow with the chickens in the morning and double checks the locks when he asks; they’re always fine. He hasn’t made that mistake twice. Then they both eat breakfast and run off to check the traps.
It’s nice to just exist around Qrow again, he relaxes when it’s just the two of them and it reminds her of before their parents died.
He walks beside her and tells her about the chickens while she handles the traps.
“You know we’re gonna eat them eventually, right?”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I can’t name them.” He says, “‘sides, they’re for laying eggs so it won’t be for a while.”
“Just don’t cry when they’re dinner.”
“Ugh, I won’t.” He groans and kicks at the ground. “Now can I get back to how Miss Creant and associates absolutely destroyed a mouse? Or do you have something better to say?”
She sighs, bags the rabbit and hands it over to Qrow. “No. Go on. Tell me your chicken drama.” Raven looks at him askance and asks, “Why did you name a chicken miscreant?”
“It’s Miss Creant. Two words.” Qrow says, “Her full title is her Royal Highness Miss Flaxen Apricot Creant, third of her name and Queen of the Coop.”
“Do I dare ask the other’s names?”
“Lady Peach Cluckington the first and Suhenna.”
“Suhenna.”
Qrow nods and Raven grabs the back of his shirt as he trips over a root.
“Thanks.” He mumbles, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly before continuing on with more confidence, “I usually just call them Missy, Lady and Sue, though.”
Raven loops her arm through his and gives him a pointed look.
“Oh, um, what was I? Right, the mouse.” Qrow tucks himself slightly closer to her side, “So, Miss Creant and Lady Cluck spot the same mouse and they both run after it-”
~
They pack up camp during the fall and move to a new location, Qrow is told that if he wants to keep the chickens he will transport them himself or they’ll just kill the birds and get new ones later.
Raven helps him pack them up, having grown oddly attached to the stupid hens. She doesn’t play with them or talk to them like Qrow does but she can appreciate that her brother likes them and that they seem to have a calming effect on him. She can usually find him with the chickens if he’s not by her side.
The chickens are loaded up into the truck with the other supplies and secured with very little fuss. Qrow double and triple checks on them until she snaps at him that they’ll be fine and that they need to grab the rest of their things before they’re left behind.
Magenta stops by their tent and tells them they’ll be stopping by a small village in a few days time. Raven perks up and Qrow busies himself with a tie on his bag.
“You mean a raid.” She says.
“Yes. Obviously, kid.” Magenta sighs and mutters something she can’t hear. “Anyways, you’ll be in charge of the shit. Which means just sit with it and hope the grimm don’t eat you.”
Qrow frowns and looks up at her, “Just us?”
“You and some of the others. Mostly the sick or injured. So don’t expect them to keep you safe.”
“I wasn’t counting on it.” Qrow snorts, tugging his bag onto his back.
“Good. Get this fucking tent down.”
~
“I was hoping we’d be taken along.”
“Why?” Qrow asks her incredulously.
“Because.” She says with a shrug.
“Because why? ”
“Because, none of your business?”
“You brought it up.” Qrow yanks a spike out of the ground and waves it at her. “Just tell me.”
“Tell me what’s bothering you and I’ll tell you.” She yanks the other spike out and slaps it against her palm for emphasis.
“Nothing’s bothering me!”
“Then I won’t tell you why!”
“Ugh! You’re so annoying. ” Qrow groans as he rips the third stake out.
“Not as annoying as you’re dumb face.” Raven says pulling the last one free.
“We have the same face, idiot .”
“Yeah well yours is worse somehow.” she sticks her tongue out at him.
“That doesn’t even make sense!”
“You don’t make sense!”
Qrow goes still and takes a deep breath before running his hands over his face. “How don’t I make sense?” He asks through grit teeth.
“You just don’t.” She growls back.
Qrow rears back and kicks the tent flap in frustration only for it to sway and collapse on top of them both.
They claw at the fabric and lift it so they can glare at each other.
“If I don’t make sense you definitely don’t make sense.” Qrow huffs, a hand rubbing at the side of his head.
“Whatever.” She mutters. “I think the main support broke.”
~
Qrow feels like his entire world screeches to a halt when he realizes what his semblance is.
At first he thinks it's a coincidence that the whispers and the jokes are just that, whispers and jokes. That all it is is the overactive imagination of a stupid crybaby and not something that’s meant to reflect who you are.
He tests it. Small at first. Leans into the hum at the back of his skull the twinge that always draws his eyes a second before something bad happens and presses.
The first time; he targets Alabaster. He narrows his focus and then Alabaster trips over a shoelace that was slowly working loose and loses his food to the dirt. Alabaster hears his stifled laughter and Qrow doesn’t try that again. Not unless he’s a good safe distance away.
The camp feels different when he leans into his semblance. It seems to grow and expand and pull his attention to every little thing that could go wrong. The stew boiling over on the fire, the weapon that wasn’t quite put away properly, the pack that was just waiting to be tripped over, and lastly, the crack in the main support of his and Raven’s tent.
The support he’s pretty sure he just broke.
He and Raven had been arguing and then the buzzing seemed to spike. Like someone had poured ice water over his head or kicked a hornets nest and… then he was covered in canvas and his head felt a little numb.
The crack hadn’t been that bad, he’d been keeping an eye on it since he’d noticed last week. It should not have broken.
The buzzing only ever seems to get worse the more he acknowledges it. The more he leans into it. It had been such a minor inconvenience when he was little that he hadn’t even bothered to ask anyone about it. He’d thought it was normal.
Now it was like it stopped being a quiet hum or a buzzing and was instead trying to drown out his other senses. Once, Maggie found him curled in the tent with his hands over his ears and she had fished out a bottle and pressed a pill into his palm, “for the pain, so you can get back to work.” She had whispered before leaving.
It does help, just a bit, but it helps. She doesn’t often give him the painkillers, she says they are only for really bad days. The days where everything is a bit too loud and bright and the static drowns out any and all sound.
Eventually he figures out how to control when his semblance starts draining his aura and the headaches become less common.
The problem is that something is always going to go wrong. It doesn’t matter if he activates it or not. It’s just easier to leave it up to chance because he doesn’t like that kind of control, it makes him feel guilty and wrong, especially if people are involved.
He brings it up when he and Raven are sitting on the hood of the truck, waiting for the rest of the bandits to return from the raid.
“If I tell you what’s bothering me will you keep it a secret?”
“Yeah,” she says, leaning closer, “Of course.”
He swallows thickly, and taps at the hood of the car, long since cooled and looks up at the stars. “I think my semblance is something bad.”
“What do you mean? Like what you said after you got back from the patrol?” She asks, brow furrowed.
“Yeah. I think it breaks things sometimes?” He leans back against the windshield. “I think I broke the support for our tent.”
“Oh. Don’t you control it? Or wait, is it like mine? Just kind of there unless you think about it?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
They’re silent for a while until Qrow squirms and sits back up. “Do you think you always had yours or was there a moment where you just knew for sure?”
Raven takes a deep breath and lets it out in a whoosh, “I don’t know. I think it started when you left. But I didn’t recognize what it was at first? It’s quieter when you’re nearby. So maybe it was always there?”
“I… don’t know when mine started. It just kind of was? Until it got worse? Like the second I acknowledged it, it just got… I don’t know.” Qrow sighs. “I feel like it’s been hanging over my head since forever .” He bites out, throwing a hand up in frustration.
“What does it feel like right now?”
“Um, I don’t know. Like a kind of quiet buzzing in the back of my head. If I pay too much attention to it It gets louder and it can kind of… draw my attention to stuff?”
“What do you mean stuff?” Raven asks and scrunches her nose up.
Qrow sighs and closes his eyes and lets the buzzing grow until it tugs at him, “Like how that box could fall if it’s bumped the wrong way.”
“It looks fine?” She says, doubtful.
“Just... watch.” Qrow leans into the buzzing, feels it trying to tug his attention towards the village and all of its noise and narrows his eyes on the box and with a little effort tugs.
The box unbalances and clatters to the ground.
“Oh, what? Did you just do that?”
Qrow nods and blinks the buzzing away before it becomes too much, counting down from ten.
“That’s way cooler than mine.”
“I don’t know.” Qrow says. “My head hurts if I try to use it. And if I don’t use it, it seems to just do whatever it wants.”
“Weird. Mine doesn’t hurt me at all.”
Qrow snorts, “Lucky.” He picks at his sleeve, “Like, it doesn’t hurt hurt? It’s just… a lot. All at once.”
Raven nudges her shoulder against his. “It’s still weird. Even when you’re like… freaked out it doesn’t feel like too much. It’s distant if anything.”
“You can tell when I’m…” Qrow trails off, a little freaked out.
“Yeah. So stop lying about it.”
Qrow pouts and kicks his feet out in front of him. “Are you going to tell me why you wanted to go on the raid?”
“I just thought it’d be cool.” Raven says with a shrug.
“That’s it?” He says, voice flat.
She grins, full of smug satisfaction, “Yup.” She pops the ‘p’ for good measure.
Qrow looks at her for a long second before he braces himself and shoves her off of the truck.
~
Maggie takes them into the town they settle nearby, nearby is a strong word for it, it’s more like a 3 hour drive, but it’s the closest the twins have come to a proper town in their lives; well, a proper alive town. They’ve seen plenty of lifeless husks.
Raven and Qrow sit and try to be quiet but they’re both too excited and in the end they both get snapped at for being too rambunctious by the camps healer.
The trip is technically a supply run. Mostly the stuff they couldn’t get from the raid or to replenish what they’ve used. It’s not the preferred method by far, not that the twins care.
The town itself is larger than the tribe by far and it immediately puts Qrow a little on edge and if the way Raven walks a little closer to him says anything? She doesn’t like it much either.
Maggie puts a hand on each of their backs and steers them into a shop.
The shop is bright and busy, a good half of it is dedicated to stack after stack of different fabrics and there’s a place where someone is being measured by a woman and another switching between writing things down next to the whole mess and flipping through a bunch of fabric samples and offering them to the customer.
Maggie leads them over to the side of the shop that contains clothes and grabs a few things, piling it on top of their arms.
Qrow feels that tug again and he looks back to where the woman is having her measurements taken and one of the stacks of fabric wobbles and before he can say anything, falls. He flinches as the note taker tries to catch them, takes a step back and trips over something and falls directly into the customer sending both women to the ground in a heap of fabric, skirts, and pins.
He scurries up to stand near where Maggie had stopped and was looking over some shirts, she uses the distraction to slip out of the store unseen, her hands on the twins shoulders.
Raven looks at him and raises an eyebrow and he shakes his head, holding the clothes tighter to his chest as he’s steered out of the store.
“Okay. This should keep you brats clothed for at least the next few years. Don’t fuckin’ complain until they’re rags, got it?”
He brushes his thumb over the soft cotton, grateful he didn’t need to take clothes from a corpse or try to find a house with something wearable inside.
~
After they toss the bag into the truck Maggie sets them loose with a warning to be back in a few hours or they would be walking back to camp.
Raven loops her arm through his and tugs him through the streets, “Did you do that though? In the shop?”
“Not on purpose.”
“But it was you?”
Qrow nods, his shoulders coming up around his ears. Frowning at her when she grins at him.
“Cool.”
“It’s not.”
He ducks into a book shop, dragging Raven in behind him by the hand.
He freezes, the door clicking shut behind him with a jingle of a bell.
“There’s so many. Do you think they have every book ever?” He whispers to his sister.
Raven blinks, looking up and down the aisles as they walk, “They must. I’ve never seen this many.” She whispers back.
They wander the aisles picking books up at random and showing each other the ones with cool covers and reading each other the summaries on the backs when something is particularly eye-catching.
Eventually Qrow finds the comics.
He sits down and he reads them. Raven leaves him once she realizes he’s going to be stuck there for a while and continues searching through the books.
There’s a whole shelf of them, mostly about Huntsman and Huntresses, he frowns, his nose scrunching up in distaste. He flips through nearly all that they have until he settles on the ones about the Grimm Reaper, curious to see why the tribe hates them.
There are 4 volumes and he reads them all.
When he’s done he checks that no one is nearby and rolls one into a tube and slips the third volume into his sleeve. It’s by far his favourite of the four and the idea of leaving it behind is unthinkable.
He finds Raven a few aisles over.
“Ew, are you looking at the romance books?” He asks with a grin on his face.
“No!” She says, just a little too loud. “I’m not.” She hisses, quieter.
“Oh wow, you are.” He snickers and grabs one off of the shelf. He clears his throat, “A Night Of-”
Raven slaps the book out of his hands and storms off.
He picks the book back up and puts it back in its place before jogging after her.
They end up leaving shortly after and when they’re a good distance away he slips his comic out of his sleeve and carries it instead.
Raven frowns and then brings her own ill-gotten goods out.
“Is it a-”
“It’s not.” She snaps, holding it close to her chest. “It’s a murder mystery.” She says, holding her chin up defiantly.
Qrow blinks, “The one we looked at earlier? With the girl who dies every night?”
“Yeah, that one.” She shows him the cover, one of the plainer ones but eye-catching all the same.
“Cool. Can I read it after?”
“Yeah. I also got this.” She says, holding up a small book on Aura and Semblances.
~
The trip back is long and boring.
It’s even worse because one of the truck’s tires blows out and they need to stop to replace it.
The trip does give him and Raven time to pour over the book on Aura and Semblances. There’s a chapter on controlling one’s semblance that Qrow is particularly interested in but Raven’s reading the chapter on semblance evolution with rapt attention so he doesn’t even try until she’s done and just reads over her shoulder instead.
When the tire is fixed and they’re back on the road it’s getting too dark to read so Qrow sighs and tries to sleep until they’re back at the camp. He probably won’t have time till after dinner and he’s pretty sure it’s his turn to do the dishes, though he’s pretty sure Raven takes advantage of him not remembering the schedule to ditch dish washing. It’s fine, he doesn’t hate it, even if he does break a few dishes here and there.
Raven nudges him awake and jumps out of the back of the truck, they drop the clothing and books in their tent and head directly to get some food.
By the time he gets to curl up in the tent with the book it’s late and he’s practically falling asleep every other paragraph and he’s pretty sure he hasn’t retained any of what he has managed to read. So he gives up and turns the lantern off.
He’ll read later, after he checks on the hens.