Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She does not return to her tribe.

No, she cannot face them after what happened to Vernal. She let her take the fall, and she doubts that anyone will continue to follow her after all of this.

She flies west, leaving Yang to do whatever foolish things she feels she needs to.

Maybe she will rethink what she’s said. Maybe she’ll grow.

West beckons for her, west calls to her, west brings her to an old log cabin that seems bigger than she remembers.

The skies are blue. It is warm enough for the windows to be open, and she finds the same one open that Summer had left open as she waited for Qrow to return.

Even after all this time, he follows the same rituals as before.

She takes care to land on the kitchen table, cawing once.

She isn’t sure exactly what brings her back here, but he’s all she has left.

If he’ll have her.

She watches him care for the plants through the back door. She remembers him growing peppers and tomatoes, and it seems the tradition hasn’t failed him. He comes in holding a few tiny strawberries and little yellow peppers, and she caws again. His brows furrow, and he sets his measly harvest on the counter before rubbing his eyes. “How’d you get in here?” She caws again, almost calling him a moron. He should be able to tell that it’s her. “Do you need help getting out?”

She transforms back to her human form, and he jumps. “That’s no way to welcome me home,” she tells him, and he frowns.

“Do you need something?” He asks as he turns his back to her to gather his puny strawberries.

That hurts more than she thought it would. “I thought you might like an update on your daughters.” And, maybe he’d have a place for her.

He turns back to face her. “So she found you okay?”

“My stupid subordinate thought he could get the jump on her,” Raven tells him, uncrossing her legs and swinging her feet. “She certainly showed him up.”

Tai smiles, and it’s just as she remembers. She should not have come back to him; her heart is doing the fluttery thing it used to do when she was a child and he smiled at her. “Anything else to report, or do you just intend to use the dining table as a butt warmer?”

“Ruby is definitely her mother’s child,” she tells him. His smile comes back, unabashed pride leaking from it. “Though I think she’s just as much her father’s child as well.”

Tai hums. “I wouldn’t expect much else. Why are you really here, Raven? I can’t bring myself to believe that you’re just here for a social call after nearly twenty years.”

It hasn’t truly been that long, has it? “You’ve always been able to read me,” she admits, crossing her legs again. “You don’t know about Summer’s last mission, do you?”

Tai digs through some cupboards and pulls two mugs out. “Just that it was something she chose to do. Why dig up that ghost, of all of them?”

“Because it’s part of why I’ve left the tribe.”

He snaps his fingers to light the stove. He fills a kettle and sets it over the fire. “I'm listening. Still two sugars?”

“Yes. Yang is, well, everything that I expected her to turn into. Another one of Ozpin’s pawns.”

Tai leans against the island. “Please don’t tell me this is going to be more anti-Ozpin propaganda.”

She scowls. “You already know where I sit on that, so I won’t go into it.” She folds her hands in her lap. “They took the relic from the Haven vault, according to Oz’s instruction.”

The kettle whistles, and Tai turns to pull it from the burner. He blows out the fire and pours the water into the mugs, and doctors them exactly how they both take their tea. “How’d they get in?” He hands her the mug, and she blows on it, cooling it to her tastes. She flashes her eyes. Tai doesn’t react in any way. “You let them have it?”

“I wasn’t about to stick around and keep fighting,” she says over the lip of the mug. “Yang called me a coward.”

Tai hops up on the island, crossing his legs. “Bet that felt bad.”

“The worst thing is, I couldn’t find any point to argue against her. I said I was strong, and she laughed in my face, one-armed with all the fear in the world in her eyes.” She drums her fingers against the cup. “That’s why I ran: because I finally realized that I’ve been lying to myself all this time, because no one had the balls to call me a coward before.”

Tai sighs. “Is that why you’re here?”

The words start before she can even think about them. Tai is safe. “I have to tell someone. Summer left because she was given the spring maiden powers, and she couldn’t endanger the girls like that. And I pretended to be strong for her, but she asked me to kill her because she was dying from a Grimm attack, and—” She looks to the floor, the same floor that she’s swept with Tai a dozen times in a previous life. “Tai, I killed her, and it took any bravery I had left.”

She does not look up, does not dare to glance at him. She waits for the yelling, for him to shove her out the back door, and she feels like she’s fifteen again and was being berated for losing a brawl, or for not killing a villager, or—

Feet plop on the floor and Tai lifts her chin. “You were never very good at telling her no, you know.” His face is devoid of any anger, any disappointment. “And you kept her power safe.”

She sniffs. “Why aren’t you angry?”

“Because we can’t change it.” His thumb rubs over her cheek, and shamelessly she leans into his hand. “We all think we’re making the right decisions at the time, and maybe it turns out to be the right decision, and other times it isn’t.”

She nods. “I’ve made nothing but bad decisions,” she tells him. “Yang hates me, and Ruby sees me as the bad guy, and you probably hate me too.”

His voice is comforting. “Yang may hate you, and maybe Ruby doesn’t think too highly of you, but I don’t hate you. I know why you did what you did. I just wish you hadn’t.”

She feels like she’s back at Beacon again, and she’s telling him about her past for the first time, and she’d let him hold her as she realized how fucked up it had all been. And now she’s perpetuated it. “I wish I hadn’t either.”

“I should’ve let Yang hunt you down sooner if I’d known this is what would happen.”

She raises an eyebrow, and his smirk causes her heart to do somersaults. “You’re still such an ass,” she tells him, shoving him lightly. He laughs, and her heart feels lighter. “Can I stay?”

He nods. “We can go out for dinner. I haven’t bought groceries in a couple days.”

“Were you planning on eating those strawberries and peppers for dinner?” Raven gives him a look, and he shrugs. “Honestly. You’re a wreck.”

“I’m trying to get used to being an empty nester, okay? My girls are grown and off beating supernatural beasts. It’s been an adjustment. Yang was supposed to leave first, then Ruby, but they both left, and then they both came back, pretty beaten, and then they left again.”

“Empty nester whiplash.” She slides off the dining table and takes his hands. They are warm against her skin, almost like an anchor to this dream-like interaction. “We can snack on your peppers and strawberries and then go have a proper dinner.”

He’s staring at her like she’s the sun. “It’s like you never left,” he says softly. “I don’t think I really ever stopped loving you.”

She’d forgotten how earnest he is. She tries for her usual arrogance, but she can’t find it. “You’re so stupid,” she tells him, but she smiles because he’s always been her stupid brawler that never knew any better. “I never stopped loving you either.”

He moves in a particular way a way she knows like thee back of her hand, and she meets him halfway for a forehead kiss. “Can I take you on a date?”

“You’re telling me that dinner wasn’t supposed to be a date?” She asks.

“Oh. Duh. Yeah, okay, so I’m taking you out for dinner tonight. Don’t be late.” His goofy grin makes his eyes glitter, and it makes her forget all the bad decisions she’s made.

She feels like she’s twenty again, and maybe they’ll be okay. “I can’t be late if you’re taking me, moron.” He playfully pushes her, and they squabble like it’s been days, not decades, since they’ve seen each other.

If there’s one thing she’s done right in her life, it would be falling in love with him.

Chapter Text

Raven struggles to adapt to only working around one person as opposed to twenty. It’s much easier, she thinks, to traipse around Tai’s needs, which aren’t very many at all: give him space to grade papers and hold his online classes and help him with dinner. That’s all he asks of her, and it feels incredibly unbalanced, at least to her. She’s used to the giving and taking being half and half, with everyone being half-irritated about what was asked of them, and her being half-irritated that they weren’t doing more. No, instead of everyone being unhappy, their little household of two was always happy, or at the very least content. She did a lot without being asked: sweeping the house while he was tucked away in a spare bedroom doing his job, harvesting strawberries and peppers and small little lettuce leaves, organizing the shed.

The last one is hardest, since she sees touches of Yang in many of the things squirreled away there. The case of yellow and orange spray paint, with half of the cans seemingly empty. The gauntlet that she has no need for anymore. Abandoned design plans. Painted templates that Raven recalls seeing on her bike. There are pieces of Ruby, too, found in the black and red paint cans intermingled amongst Yang’s, the old blades of her scythe tucked into a corner. She’ll have to scold Tai for letting them clutter up the shed like this, but she leaves the pieces of the girls alone, because that’s not her mess to clean up. She has no right to meddle with their things, but she at least throws out the cans that no longer have any paint in them. She can at least save them that hassle.

She hefts a box of things that she things Tai should go through onto her hip and heads into the house, assuming that he’s about done with class. The door to his “office” is cracked, and she knocks gently before pushing the door open. “Figured you’d want to—”

He’s still on call with his students, their faces projected into the air from his scroll. They all turn their attention to her, immediately bombarding Tai with questions.

“I thought you were single, Mr. Xiao Long!”

“There’s a lady in your house and you didn’t let her join our call?”

“You never talk about your family!”

It’s a small class, maybe ten kids at most, but it’s enough chatter. “We’ve had too much to do for me to waste time to talk about my family, especially since most of them are off on adventures and can’t scold me about how I characterize them.” Tai gives her a look, but she shrugs in response; he’s the one that left the door open. “I guess you’ve done good work for today, so I guess Raven can join us, if she wants, and you don’t have other classes now.”

“I’ll get a chair from the kitchen.” She briefly disappears to grab a chair, but she can hear the whoops and hollers from the kids as she goes down the hallway. She knew Tai had a way with kids, or else she wouldn’t have left Yang with him, but there’s something about how they look at him, almost like another parent, that blows her away.

She settles the chair next to Tai, sitting backwards in it because she’s nothing if difficult. “Okay, fire away, kiddos.” She notes that about half the kids are gone, obviously having scurried off to other classes.

“Are you Mr. Xiao Long’s wife?” A girl with little brown pigtails asks, and Raven pins her as maybe a little younger than Ruby. She’s got guts, being straightforward like that, but she respects it.

She hadn’t shared it with Tai yet, but she pulls a thin chain from her neck and waves the silver ring that sits on the end of it. “Legally, yes, but we spent some time apart.” Easy dodge, not too deep into detail. Tai stares at her, obviously boggled.

“You’ve kept that, all this time?”

“Why, should I not have?” She smirks at him. “It’s a nice deterrent for men who don’t get the picture.”

He groans. “Next question.”

“Mr. Xiao Long, you have kids, don’t you?” A wiry little twig of a boy asks. “I think my sister had class with your daughter?”

“I’ve got two girls, yeah.” She asks him a silent question, why haven’t you shared that with them? And he sends her a later look. Even after so long, they still read each other so easily. “Yang Xiao Long and Ruby Rose.”

“Why does one not have your last name?” The girl with brown pigtails asks, and she can watch Tai deflate, as though he regrets this question session.

“I’ve got that one. They’ve got different moms, and Ruby’s got her mom’s name. Also, it just sounds better that way, don’t you think?” If there’s one thing she’s good at, it’s giving quick answers to hard questions.

“Yeah, it does,” the girl says, obviously content with the answer. “Miss Raven, how long have you known Mr. Xiao Long?”

She pretends to think on it. “Hmm, I think it’s been—”

“Over twenty years.” Tai finishes for her with a grateful smile. “We were partners at Beacon.”

It’s easy to relive those snapshots in her head. “I won the Vytal Festival for Beacon our second year, and that’s when we first kissed, right? The podium sunk down to the ground, and you literally climbed it, and—”

“And Summer started chanting kiss, kiss, kiss like we were fourteen.” Raven can’t help the smile that spreads over her face.

The girl has a soft smile on her face. “That’s very sweet. So, are you a huntress, Miss Raven?”

Another complicated question. “I was. I had a bad injury and had to lay low for a while, but now I think I’m just going to retire here in the countryside.” Again, not a lie, but not the whole truth. She was injured, but more in spirit than anything else.

A message pops up next to the video call, and Raven skims the content. “Dilly, you’ve got class with Ms. Gladiolus now.”

“I know, but I wanted to meet your lady!” Dilly is a fun name, Raven thinks. The girl waves and disconnects, leaving them with the other kids.

“I think Miss Raven will join us another time, so be sure to keep coming to class,” he tells the few other kids. “Homework is on page fifty-three. Don’t forget your essays are due Friday.” He waves goodbye to them, and she joins in the small smile and waving before Tai disconnects. “Sorry for not having the door closed all the way. I had to get some water, and I guess I forgot to close it all the way.”

Raven shakes her head. “No harm done. Little Dilly is a bit of a problem child, huh?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” he says with a laugh. “Nice improv.”

“Who said it was improv?” She readjusts herself in her chair and plops her legs on his. “You didn’t tell them about your pride and joys?”

Tai fidgets with a hangnail. “I don’t talk about Summer much, either.”

It clicks. “Gods, you think those girls are going to get themselves killed.”

“Can you blame me?” He says, a flash of anger lighting his body. She can’t really blame him, no. “They’re off fighting a war that has a nearly hundred percent mortality rate.”

She doesn’t want them fighting that war, either. They’d be safe under this log cabin roof, but Raven can’t see Ruby taking well to a sedentary life. No, she’s definitely her mother’s daughter, a true wanderer, off to fight the battles that must be fought, no matter where that may be. “You got out.”

“Oz didn’t want any more orphans on his conscious.” There’s a million words unsaid there; blue eyes obviously clouded with indecision.

What should he feel about how she left? She’ll redirect for now. “They’re stronger than you think. They fought Lionheart, though whether that speaks of him or of them is up in the air. And you know Qrow would rather die than let anyone hurt a single hair on their heads. And not just your girls.”

Tai’s brows furrow. He doesn’t like how she phrased that, but she has no claim to either of them. Not as a mother, not as an aunt, not as anyone other than someone that was once important and now no longer so. “I’m too young to be burying my children.”

“With any luck, they’ll be burying you,” she tells him, though that’s not how she wanted to phrase that. “Fuck, I—”

Tai laughs, something boisterous and completely unexpected. “No, you’re right. The huntsman lifespan isn’t playing in either of our favors anymore.”

“I’m at the peak of my youth, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She knows he’s right. They’re not old by any stretch of the imagination, but the cards are not in her favor that she’ll see fifty. She can feel a click in her shoulder when she moves sometimes, and if she doesn’t stretch before she fights, her hips ache for hours afterwards. She is no spring chicken.

“Wanna prove it?” Tai stands, dumping her legs to the floor. “Fight me.” His scroll rings, and he frowns. “Later. I guess I actually have to do my job, huh.”

“Probably.” She tucks her ring back into her shirt. “Catch you later. Go through this box of shit when you can.”

“Copy.”

She closes the door all the way as she leaves him to apparently get yelled at by someone, and she wanders a little deeper into the tree line to find the apple tree she swears was there the last time she was here. Baked apples would make a good dessert, and a good burst of energy before she kicks his ass.

Chapter Text

She’s found a rhythm, she supposes. She wakes from nightmares, like she does every night, and curls around a cup of coffee while sitting on the dining room table. When she hears Tai rustle, she makes him a coffee, with a dash of cream and a single cube of sugar. He groggily accepts it before sitting across from her on the island. They sit in silence together, curled in on themselves, fighting their own personal demons with a jolt of caffeine. Eventually Tai rubs her shoulder as he passes to return to his office/personal hell, and she’s left with reign of the house. It means nothing because there’s no one else there. She cleans, washes things that may or may not have been already washed, she buys paint and redecorates the guest room she’s staying in. Neither of them has brought it up, likely both terrified of the answer. If he won’t bring it up, neither will she. They share small touches, a kiss to the hair or forehead or cheek in passing, but not much more. She longs to wake up and have his arms around her, reassuring her that she’s okay, that she can’t possibly know the fate of her daughter—

Raven hums as she sweeps the hallway. She hears Tai laugh lightly in the guest room as she works her way back to the end of the hall, the one door that always stays closed continuing to be so. She’s just been pushing the dirt in that hallway under that door, resolving to deal with it later, but it’s later now, she supposes, and she sure as hell hasn’t cleaned that room, and it’s been untouched for months now.

Maybe even untouched since Yang left.

She holds her breath as she opens the door, unsure of what awaits her behind the door. She breathes out when she realizes it’s just a large bedroom, with two beds: one with a yellow comforter, one with a red one. It’s easy to see where the room splits between the two girls, despite both sides being equally messy. Yang has magazines tossed in a variety of places, posters of what Raven guesses is a boy band, some comic books that look relatively untouched. Ruby, on the other side of the room, has books stacked in every which corner, some tattered to the point of torn bindings. There’s a small TV with a video game console connected to it, games stacked haphazardly on top of it. There’s also a half-finished blueprint for her scythe, and Raven gingerly steps between book stacks to get a closer look. She has no idea what Ruby was trying to make here, and it’s definitely strange to see her not-niece’s scribbly handwriting showing different parts of her weapon along with new enhancements.

It’s almost a shrine, she thinks. A snapshot to remember them by, should Tai’s outlook come true.

But gods, it’s so fucking messy.

She could at least wash the linens. And she knows she will wash them again before they come home, probably, and maybe again and again until they’re threadbare—
Maybe she isn’t as settled as she thinks.

This is their home. What is she doing here, pretending that this is hers, that any of this belongs to her? This was only her home for a few short years before she left. This is not her home. She has no set home, no set place she can stay. Why has she spent so long here, tethering herself to a man who is living his life just as he did before she arrived? Why is she pretending that she is a domicile, someone who cooks and cleans and simply breathes domesticity? That is not who she is, but she has certainly enjoyed pretending. She supposes that’s the only thing she is pretending about, though: she really does love Tai, loves the security he brings her, the warmth of his smile and the way he looks at her.

Yang’s unblinking eyes replace Tai’s cool blue, and she gasps as she falls to the floor.

Gods, she’s really fucked this up.

She stares at a point in the wall where she can see both comforters. She decides that Yang’s is a more goldenrod yellow, primarily yellow but with orange and gold interwoven into the shade. It’s very pretty, definitely a color that Yang would pick. Ruby’s on the other hand is a darker red than Raven would’ve guessed she’d pick.
But who is she to make that call? She doesn’t know them. She’s only seen glimpses of their faces as she flies around, looking for answers, for solutions, for anything that will keep her safe.

Where has her search for safety taken her? Back to the home that she’d left so many years before, back to one of the only people she could call home, back to relying on others. Has she been a fool this whole time in only fighting for herself? Look at where it’s gotten her, sitting on her daughter’s bedroom floor, knees pulled to her chest, horrified by nightmares that keep cropping up whenever she closes her eyes. Certainly, it isn’t a maiden’s power, is it, to see the fate of her own child, the one person she wants to inherit the power, the only person she can imagine worthy of possessing it?

There’s a rap at the doorframe. “Rae? I heard you yell, but I couldn’t really step away—”

“Am I a bad person?” She asks, continuing to stare at the wall. “Do you think the Gods are punishing me for all my poor decisions?”

Look out for them, Rae. Please.

What kind of friend, what kind of sister was she, to refuse Summer’s dying wish?

He sits down next to her, pressing his feet to the base of Yang’s bed. “No.” His hand settles on her knee. “You’re not a bad person, and I don’t think the Gods care that much about what you’ve done.”

Easy for him to say. “Yang keeps dying in my dreams. It feels eerily like someone trying to warn me of the future.”

His thumb rubs over her skin. “I told you to stop eating so many peppers.”

For some reason, it infuriates her. She moves to stand. “Are you even listening? I—”

He looks at her, blue eyes clouded with concern. “You haven’t given me much to work with, Rae. You kind of dropped on my doorstep, said you felt bad, and that was it. It’s not like we’re having heart-to-hearts over a glass of wine by the fire. You’ve never been that kind of person. I don’t know what, or even who I’m working with here.”

She sits back down, crossing her legs. “I don’t want them to die.”

He leans into her. “Me neither.”

“I want Yang to have the spring maiden powers.” She’d decided this after they’d met outside the vault. If Yang can stand up to her, one-armed and in tears, and still be the bigger man, she deserves it. “But I don’t want her to have them until the world is safe.”

“That’s a tall order.”

“I know.”

He nudges her knee with his. “Tell me more. What else are you feeling?”

“I don’t have feelings.”

“Wrong. Try again.”

“I don’t like my feelings.”

“Closer.”

“I’m a coward. Yang said it herself. I’m so afraid of everything, I hide behind other people. I’m hiding behind you. All because I hate who I’ve become, what I am. A murderer, a hurricane, a pawn.” She clenches her fist. “Have I ever been something that I want to be?”

“Once upon a time, you wanted to be a mother,” Tai tells her softly. “I don’t think that’s changed, despite how fucked up your concept of a mother is.”

She scoffs, but it rings true. She remembers finding out she was pregnant, how Summer had been afraid for her, as though she hadn’t wanted the child. No, of course she wanted to be a mother, of course she wanted to hold her own daughter and babble incoherently at her. She’d read enough books to understand what a mother should be, and she definitely fucked it up. She’d known that Summer would be infinitely better at it.

Or had she been afraid of what she thought she’d become? Had she been afraid of having a living thing depend on her, when she couldn’t even depend on herself?

Mothers protect their children. “Tai, I can’t stay here.”

Tai sighs a heavy breath. “You’ve been trying to wash my shirts to pieces. Of course you can’t stay.”

“I can’t beat you up every day.” She searches for his hand and tangles their fingers together. She rests her head on his shoulder. “I might not come back.”

“I know.”

“I love you.” She bites back tears, because this wasn’t what she’d imagined. She’d pictured growing old with him, living with him under this old wooden roof. She hadn’t earned that ending, she supposes, so she’ll go out in a blaze of glory. “I’ll make sure this gets back to you.” She thumbs the chain that the plain silver ring he’d given her all those years ago rests on.

“Stay tonight, please,” he almost begs. “Stay with me.”

“You should’ve asked sooner, moron,” she tells him as she leans in to kiss him.

**

She dresses silently the next morning, the dark of the night a good cover for her to start her journey. She’s killed enough time for them to finish whatever tomfoolery they were about to get into in Atlas, so she’ll keep her ear to the ground as she flies to Vacuo.

This time, she wakes him. “I’m heading out,” she says quietly, because she can’t bring herself to say goodbye. He blinks slowly, sadness heavy in those stormy blue eyes.

“Come home soon,” he says sleepily, and they meet halfway for a bittersweet kiss. He grabs her face and adds another kiss to her forehead, seemingly for good luck. She relishes the warmth of his hands against her cheeks. It's so much different than her own warmth.

He watches her as she climbs out the window, and she has to turn away from him or else she’ll stay forever. She takes a running start before transforming, taking to the air and watching the sun rise. She’s glad that birds can’t cry, or else she’d be a blubbery mess. She’ll take the time to cry later, when she can actually let herself feel it.