Qrowin Week 2021: 6/21-Childhood Friends AU
Two little snowbirds sitting in a row
They met in the garden at one of her father’s lavish parties. She’d gone outside because little girls didn’t like being told to sit still and not talk nor do anything fun, so she decided she didn’t care if the dress daddy bought her got messy, she’d go outside and spend time in the hedge maze.
They’d gotten it installed, in the shape of the Schnee family crest no less, because the Marigolds had one in the shape of their family crest and daddy could be silly about when people had things he didn’t.
The white roses that grew from the foliage walls, fragrant and delicate, were always calming to her, especially on a cool and cloudless night like this when the moonlight was at its brightest.
For Winter, to get lost in its lush corridors and marble statuary, it’s hidden gardens and fountains would be enough to get the annoyance of her father’s party out of her mind.
Most of that went out of her head when she found a grungy boy in a cape stuffing his face with what looked like a rabbit.
He stared at her, like an animal in a vehicle’s headlights, bits of his meal hanging from his mouth.
He couldn’t be older than her, gaunt with gunsmoke-colored hair stuck up at odd angles and eyes like carbuncles.
The clothes he wore were grubby and layered and obviously used long before he’d begun wearing them, especially that tattered cape.
For a moment, neither spoke, merely staring at one another in the moonlight.
Finally, Winter broke the silence.
The boy dropped the rabbit from his mouth.
“Sorry if I’m not fancy enough for you, Miss Uppity.”
Winter felt her cheeks heat with indignation.
The boy threw back his head and laughed, a sound that reminded Winter of a pair of birds she’d once heard fighting in the yard.
“Is that all it takes to get under that pale skin!” he laughed, a sound which soon died in his throat when his stomach made a loud groan.
Winter huffed as he reached for the dead rabbit.
“Wait here and don’t touch that,” she said, turning on her heel.
She returned with two plates piled high with hors d'oeuvres.
“I didn’t know what you liked,” she said, handing him one, “so I got you one of everything.”
The boy said nothing, just shoveling food into his mouth in a way that probably promoted choking.
“You’re welcome,” Winter said, sitting down and spearing a piece of salmon on a toothpick to eat.
The boy coughed, pounding his chest.
“You shouldn’t eat so fast,” Winter said, “you’ll get sick.”
“Well, some of us don’t know when our next meal is gonna be,” he said.
His words brought back to Winter the memory of her father sending her to bed with no supper when he found she’d invited a faunus over to play, with threats of no breakfast if she didn’t break it off with the girl tomorrow.
“You might be surprised,” Winter said.
The boy said something through a mouthful of hummace.
“What was that?” Winter asked.
She saw him on days when it wasn’t raining or snowing after that. The family he lived with (his “Tribe” as he called them) were camped out in the woods behind their house, the ones nobody would let daddy cut down.
At night, he told her, they danced and played instruments and drank until the early hours of the morning.
Winter never really cared for people who drank (her mother’s growing dependence on liquor was a factor in this) but Qrow never really showed up smelling like wine, so she supposed associating with him was no trouble.
It was also refreshing that he never stood on ceremony.
He never rolled his eyes at her when she spoke of wanting to learn fencing or told her how things were supposed to be when she complained about how someone (usually daddy) was being unfair.
He also taught her new games that were much more fun than anything that the boys and girls daddy introduced her knew.
Kick the can, stickball, and he played hide and seek and tag with her. And he’d tell her all about the places he’d been. Mistral, Vacuo, Menagerie, his tribe had traveled all over Remnant.
And while he could be crass, she still remembered seeing the way he rescued a baby bird from a stray cat and returning it to its nest with the tenderest care.
Or how when she complained of how her father was so bossy and so dumb, that he listened. Didn’t judge, didn’t criticize, just listen.
And sometimes, it was enough to know that they’d meet once a week, at night, in the hedge maze.
She wasn’t what he expected.
Sure, she told him annoying things like “don’t slouch, eat slower, no burping, don’t pull up the flowers—no! I don’t need them, put them back!”
But she never called him weak. She never said he should practice more like his sister did.
Winter gave him food, and listened to his stories and ideas, and never asked if he wanted to fight. Sometimes, they would even just sit together.
She even taught him how to read; starting with big letters scratched in the dirt with a stick, before lending him books that they could read together.
Mr. Bruin is a Shoe-in was the first he read all by himself. And he was so happy when she let him keep it afterwards.
And she never told him to stop being so dumb, like his sister did.
And sometimes, it was enough to know that they’d meet once a week, at night, in the hedge maze.
Their shouts bring the servants running. All they saw was Winter on her knees, face in her hands as she wept piteously.
If only they’d come a few minutes earlier, then they could have seen the argument in all it’s glory. Voices rough from the volume and occasionally cracking, tears streaming down their faces, they weren’t that little boy and girl anymore.
He’d grown lanky and lean, she taller and with longer hair.
But they didn’t care right then.
She’d told him she was joining the military.
He said his tribe would be moving and asked if she wanted to join them instead of some stupid army.
She said it was a noble profession.
He said only for assholes.
She defended her position.
He reiterated his opinion.
She shouted at him, asking why couldn’t he be happy for her.
He shouted at her what would be wrong with going with him.
She said something about duty.
He told her to shut up, that he didn’t want to hear duty again in his whole life.
She told him that if he was going to act like a filthy little boy, then he could go off and sulk like one.
He said he wished he’d never met her and hoped she enjoyed killing people.
Arguments like that, they learned, ended with no winners.
That was the end of the time Qrow considered himself happy. Life seemed to plan for him a long drawn out death, bracketed with disappointments and tragedy’s.
It didn’t fix anything. It didn’t make him feel more human. But it kept the nightmares at bay. It kept him as a predictable disappointment rather than an out-of-the-blue-never-seen-that-kind-of-train-wreck-before disappointment.
But the worst part of the drink, thought, was that no matter how many shots he took, no matter how many chasers. Black liquor, brown liquor, red wine, white wine, it didn’t matter. Melancholy brought back visions of that girl from that time he had been happy.
First impressions had never come easy to Qrow. So really, it should be no surprise that impression number 15 the horrible sequel nobody wanted or needed.
But really, denying common sense by chucking an empty whisky bottle at James Ironwood’s head was not only pointless, it was utterly puerile. He was drunk. He was upset that his latest search for intel on Salem had turned up next to nothing, he was itching for a fight and if that pompous wannabe hero wanted to take it up with him, that was fine.
Except he hadn’t expected the woman by his side to turn out to be someone familiar. Someone he hadn’t seen since he was a dumb, romantic, fifteen-year-old kid.
Someone whose reappearance upset his stomach enough that he emptied it onto the general’s uniform and shoes. With enough force to make his eyes water.
The woman in the Atlesian uniform said she would take care of him and asked another girl, another white haired girl, where their room was.
As they walked towards Beacon, he thought he heard her say “Qrow Branwen, what has the world done to you?”
Qrow awoke to a cold rag on his forehead.
“Lie still,” she said, “I think you got a hold of some rockgut.”
“More like rockgut got a hold of me.”
Qrow’s attempt at humor was met with a scowl.
“And you became an alcoholic,” she said, wringing out the cloth into a nearby basin.
Qrow looked away from her and to the wall, as if a better retort than her’s existed there.
“It eases the pain,” he said.
“No it doesn’t,” Winter said. She threw the rag into the basin, causing the water to splash.
“Qrow, my mother is an alcoholic. It doesn’t fix anything! It just makes you want more of what’s essentially fermented grass!”
“You don’t think I know that!” Qrow snapped. Tears pricked at his eyes and his heart sank when he saw the hurt in her eyes from his tone, something he hadn’t seen there since their last meeting.
“There are nights when no matter how much I drink, I still can’t forget the loss of all the people around me and how--”
“How everyone is just one day going to leave me!”
Tears were starting to fall as all the regrets he’d kept at bay with drink and fighting and everythng else he could find came rushing back into him and coiling around his lungs.
“I’m bad luck, Winter,” he said, “I lost my sister, my tribe, I lost the people I care about, and every day, it’s missions, missions, and missions to find an enemy I don’t even know exists.”
His shoulders were shaking and he remembered his sister, back when they were little, telling him how ‘boys don’t cry.’
God, Winter must think he’s so pathetic.
Instead, she took him by the shoulders and gently brought him into her embrace.
“It’s alright,” she said, “just let it out. Get it all out.”
Not knowing what else to do, Qrow gripped the back of her uniform and sobbed into her shoulder, years’ worth of pain and loneliness deep inside him rising to the surface and finally escaping. And the pressure went with it.
At some point, they ended up lying together on the bed (wait, were they in a bunk bed?), still in each other’s arms.
“We all have regrets,” Winter said, “things we said. Things we wish we could take back.”
Her hand tightens on his shirt and his hand closes around it.
“But, if you really want to know, if I could do it over...”
Please say it, he wanted to think, but every time he had thoughts like that, life saw fit to swat him down again.
“I would go with you. Even if after the first day, I went back home, I think I would go with you.”
Qrow felt his heart swell and suddenly, he didn’t feel so sick anymore.
“And... if you wanted to start over... I would like that too.”
“I still have Mr. Bruin,” Qrow said.
He didn’t know why he said that. She never asked about the book, never said “Qrow, what kind of literature do you normally read?”
Whatever the reason, Winter looked up at him, shocked.
“Still? I thought you would’ve thrown that away.”
Qrow looked down at her, eyes glassy.
“I tried a few times. But I just couldn’t get rid of something that reminded me of you. It’s missing the page where Mr. Bruin loses his boot, but I tried to keep it safe.”
Winter’s hand rises to his cheek and Qrow leans into it, the human contact easing the hole in his soul he’s tried to fill with booze.
“I’m sorry I didn’t turn out as someone you could be proud of.”
“The fact that you kept that book tells me everything I need to know.”
Later that night, Winter’s sister and Qrow’s niece would get the shock of their lives when they enetered their room and saw the two of them sleeping on Weiss’s bed together.
