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[thepunshow]

 

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[thepunshow]

[ ever since blake sat her down at the kitchen table a few days ago to peel back the layers of self-blame yang wrapped herself in, she's felt...well, "better" isn't quite right. "less devastated," maybe. her family is broken (again), but it's not up to her to fix it single-handedly (again). there's a support system now--oscar, ruby's one billion friends, blake, uncle clover, uncle qrow. she doesn't have to do this alone.

but in the quiet moments, when her mind wanders, she relives that moment in the hotel. qrow in the doorway of the hotel room, shaky and pale, haltingly explaining that they need a doctor now. ruby, looking small and young in his arms, a crimson blooming underneath the towel wrapped around her eye. herself, contentment curdling into a thick, suffocating horror in the pits of her stomach when the realization of what's happened slams into her.

the memory keeps yang awake or jerks her out of uneasy sleep. it's why she's taken to spending most of her time in the basement at night, the organized chaos of half-finished schematics and precarious stacks of dust crates a welcome respite.

and it's why yang is confused when she blearily staring around her bedroom. she was in the basement--no, the laundry room, moving a load of clothes from the dryer. she must have fallen asleep at some point, but that doesn't explain how she'd ended up in her own bed with the load of laundry and breakfast, besides. the answer appears and sits on her bed once she's finished devouring her eggs: qrow, all long legs and arms and anxiety. ]

Morning, [ she grumbles in between bites of toast. ] And don't knock tile floors 'til you try it.

[ grim jokes and dry humor is the universal language of huntsmen remnant-wide. it has to be that way when you don't typically live past 40. still, she hears the kinder, softer words that qrow can't bring himself to say. ]

...slept okay. Thanks for the breakfast, Uncle Qrow. And the clothes.

cw for alcoholism references

[bolstafir]

[Qrow can't actually remember the last time sleep came easily or comfortably. Maybe it never did. Safety was hardly a guarantee growing up in the tribe, where living outside of the kingdoms meant that Grimm could be upon them at any time of day or night, and those bloodsoaked raids still form hazy imprints at the edges of his consciousness. Adulthood and the shift to becoming a Huntsman brought with it new fears, new griefs, and new nightmares. Misfortune, betrayal, death. At the end of them, he is always alone.

He knows only too well what it is to want to avoid submitting to the wanderings of the mind in the silence. He's spent well over a decade drowning them in liquor, smoothing the jagged edges of pain and grief and anxiety until he forgot how to notice that things weren't getting easier or hurting less. Yang is in no danger of that, certainly, but his other crutch in those days had been the war, and productivity associated with it. There was never any shortage of things Oz needed done, after all.

In Deerington, where there is no war, the emptiness of that productivity is easier to notice from the outside. That's why he's resolved to saying something, but his own feelings are a gnarled knot of guilt and grief. It's difficult to find the words. He stalls--]

Oh, I've tried it. I'm kind of an expert in sleeping in weird places.

[Or perhaps more accurately, passing out drunk in weird places. But that's not a topic for now (or possibly ever), and he even offers her a corny fingerguns to go with his smirk at the quip.

That's the easy part. The rest...he almost backs out, almost gives in to the temptation to take the easier path and offer a distraction that will keep them afloat a few hours longer but do nothing about the water level rising.]

Yeah, no problem. I...[Deep breath. It's now or never.] haven't, really. Slept okay.

[Without the alcohol, there are more nights than he'd like to admit that he just doesn't sleep at all.]

....Back in July, when Ruby was...Neo warned me, in advance. Keep wondering how I missed something was wrong with Emerald, but even when I knew the danger, I was still too late.

[He shakes his head.]

It's--hard to feel like we can do anything that matters, here. Doing...more things doesn't help with that. I've tried.

[He will probably keep trying, because finding someone he can trust and not feel like an imposition on to confide in feels like a next-to-impossible task. But even if he's a hypocrite about it, maybe he can help her. That'd be worth something, at the very least.]

[thepunshow]

[ yang heaps the last of her eggs on the remaining piece of toast and pops them into her mouth, fondly rolling her eyes but offering no further commentary on the quip or fingerguns. well, duh, he can sleep in weird places. there are a few perks to being able to turn into a bird.

it's when qrow plunges into the deep end that panic washes over her. this is...unexpected. their family does their best to speak around their tragedies whenever they can. summer is mentioned rarely and never at all on her birthday, and raven--ha. as if they ever talk about raven. for qrow to lay bare even a fraction of his feelings means he's worried. very worried, and about her of all people.

she swallows her mouthful of food with difficulty and immediately reaches for the orange juice, chugging it all in one go. her throat still feels raw in spite of the drink. ]

Would you believe me if I said I was this was less? [ a humorless chuckle. ] Blake sat me down the other day and told me upfront that she was worried that I'm pushing myself too hard. She said there are other people who wanna help. I don't have to stop helping out. Just slow down.

She helped me realize what happened wasn't anyone's fault, too, especially mine. ...or yours, [ she adds as a gentle reminder from one hopeful savior of the world to another. ]

I've cutting back since then, but.... [ her voice falters as she grips the bedsheets in her left hand with a white-knuckle grip. ] She's my sister. I was supposed to protect her. And none of what I tried to do--none of it saved her.

[ it's not clear which sister she means. ]

[bolstafir]

[That gentle reminder sits uncomfortably beneath his ribs somewhere, but he pushes it aside to stay focused. He's glad to hear that Blake had talked to her, already. It makes sense; the two of them have been inseparable since their Beacon days, and--well, it's not as though Qrow and Yang don't share some of the same coping strategies. Blake can see with fresh eyes what feels normal and expected within their family.

Even so, there's only so much they can avoid how the air has changed. In Deerington, especially, the dangers come and go. There isn't a persistent threat like the Grimm that can serve as distraction, something to channel one's energy and emotions into. It's too quiet not to notice in each other that they're not alright. Especially...now that he keeps his mind clear.

He doesn't have much to say on that, only nodding his acknowledgment. Blake was right, on all those points. But it's never quite as simple as that, is it? Where Yang's voice falters, Qrow's picks up.]

But even if it's not your fault, you feel like you could've done more to stop it. Like there didn't need to be a fault at all because it didn't need to happen. And you don't know what to do now, because it's just another unfixable mess for the pile. That about right?

[He's intimately familiar with the feeling, what with a semblance like his. Even when fault was unknowable--when anything that went wrong could be his fault or simply the universe being random and cruel--there was this urge to compensate. To balance the scales of the bad thing you weren't able to prevent. It was overwhelming. When he hadn't been able to find Summer, he thought he'd drown in that feeling. He hadn't sought refuge in alcohol for nothing, after all.]