[Losing someone in Deerington for real is an uniquely unsettling experience. Qrow is not among the contingent of his fellow Huntsmen to have lost limbs in the field, or he may compare it to such a thing. Instead, the closest analogy seems to be as though there were a step missing in the staircase that comprises his day to day routine, and even though he's aware of its absence, he keeps stepping as though it is still there...and needing to correct his gait before he goes tumbling down, again and again.
He'd thought the matter would be laid to rest once he checked Ozpin's place to determine if the wizard has simply been sent back to Remnant, but even then the wizard's shadow upon him doesn't fade. Not entirely. The oddest things seem to set him off. Qrow will walk by a cafe with outdoor seating and think of that day he kept watch on Ford and Oz's outing, after the wizard had returned to Deerington with broken ribs and too many other bruises. He'll hear a crackling fireplace and find his hand drifting to the burn scar on his abdomen from October, when Ozpin saved his life by burning his wound shut. He'll spot someone wearing glasses or an orange scarf and find his heart leap into his throat for a bare moment before he realizes their hair isn't a silvery white, or their laugh is wrong. He accidentally stares, sometimes, but never comes close enough to be asked what he's doing. Qrow was always an excellent spy, after all.
Qrow is no stranger to loss, or the way that everything is raw at the beginning, the live-wire electricity of shock and pain that wraps around your heart. The way you draw away from everything that can remind you of your grief while simultaneously sticking your finger in the metaphorical outlet just to reassure yourself that there is still something to feel, that there is something left of them you can reach for. He's lived with that feeling for more of his life than not, drowned it with liquor more than he cares to admit. But it's different in Deerington.
Occasionally, he'll check the network, and find Ozpin's Staggr and DeerlyBeloved still there. Sometimes, he succumbs to the urge to fly up to Ozpin's bedroom window and check if his things are still there. In Deerington, people aren't supposed to stay dead. Ozpin, in particular, is not supposed to stay dead. There's something about it that's wrong on a visceral, fundamental level. The immortal Ozpin, the infinite man was dead. On some level it should terrify him on a much more existential level; without Ozpin to hold the line of his endless stalemate with Salem, the planet was done for. They would likely not last out their lifetime. It does, in a way. He feared exactly these kinds of implications the moment he'd heard of the plan to force the doors between Deerington and all other universes open. He's feared the possibility of being forced to return for months now. But ultimately, it is not that anxiety that sets him wrongfooted when he walks by the window of the Bookstore where he shopped for a holiday present for Ozpin, when he sees a volume of fairytales in the window.
It is not that anxiety that compels him to buy it, or to wander out to the junkyard and lay it at the base of his statue like flowers on a grave.
It is not that anxiety that finally, ultimately, contracts the muscles in his chest and stomach into a strangled sob, that have his shoulders quivering in grief as he covers his face, heedless of the fact that nobody is here to see.
It is that in Deerington, there are second chances. He may not be able to keep all of his loved ones safe all or even most of the time, but when he fails to protect them, it doesn't have to be the end. But Ozpin has had literal thousands of chances, and he's grown weary of them. He can now be free, and Qrow will never see him again.
(Meeting you was the worst luck of my life. Words said in anger and resentment that Qrow has steadily lost the vehemence for, over time, until they stopped feeling true at all -- so slowly that even now he has not noticed it, heart too laden with grief to begin to process forgiveness as a concept)
His face is red and flushed when he rubs his eyes and looks up, intending to leave, to get some distance from the statue before he tears himself apart over another empty grave. He had intended to leave, that is, until shimmers of violet light gather and coalesce before him, rebuilding bones, then sinews and muscle and skin and Qrow can't help but remain on his knees, transfixed as Ozpin's body takes shape before him.
When it is all finished, the wizard's chest moves--up, then down--while Qrow's is still. Hazel-brown eyes flicker open, and suddenly Qrow understands exactly what Ozpin meant when he'd said that his gift of transformation magic was to release them from the burden of their bodies, because he absolutely does not bother with the fiasco of forcing his limbs to coordinate for standing or walking. He flutters over to Ozpin as a bird, ebony feathers soft against his chest as Qrow perches there a moment, feeling the rhythmic thump of the man's heart against his own, faster in this form than his typical body.
It's soothing. He doesn't know what to say, having only just begun to mourn. But like this, it can wait just a little bit longer. For this brief, ephemeral twilight, they can comfort each other without the oppressive weight of their words and their regrets--Ozpin is allowed these bare moments more to be just a man before he willingly steps back into his own shackles. Qrow need not be his soldier or his spy or his agent, need not bear the burden of their history or the weight of the bridges they've worked to rebuild. He can simply be, like this. And when it is needed, he will take Ozpin home, and then the time for words may come. But not yet.]
Edited 2021-02-14 16:55 (UTC)
(1/2) continuing cws for death, grief, suicidality
[ It is peaceful, in the place that came after death. It is not quite the same peace he'd once known, but the similarities cut deep enough that he sinks and sinks and sinks and does not want to climb back out. This is what he'd wanted.
This is, finally, an opportunity to make the choice again. He can choose to rest.
Ozpin sits beneath Cynthia's moon, at the base of a black stone tree planted by Qrow's calloused hands, and lets himself drift. There is little to do in this place but be, quiet and softly muted. The deer-creature asks nothing from him, but nor is it really company. It is simply a facet of the world, silent and unjudging, sitting with its blood-red apple still in hand.
Ozpin does not have to eat the apple. He knows this, and understands it: he could simply stay. He could let the peace swallow him until every thought has gently bled from his mind. With the passing hours— are they hours? days?— he feels himself coming unmoored, becoming less the cohesive whole of Ozpin and more the collection of all the men he has ever been. He is Oscar Pine; he is the last King of Vale; he—
He is Ozma.
And he does have a mission to uphold, still. His death will come, someday, but this is not how it will happen. He will not consign Remnant to an early grave. He can go a little while longer.
(He has thought as much often, in quiet, fervent tones: just a little while longer. There will always be something to make the next stretch bearable.)
(This time, it's the thought of Oscar and Qrow.) ]
I made a promise. [ He tells this to the deer-creature, which tips its masked head to regard him. Its antlers are not His antlers, and Ozpin finds that he has no fear of it. ] I assured someone that I would not run away.
[ He picks himself up out of the silvery grass, and wishes for his cane as he does. No matter. He'll just have to go and ask for it back. ]
I think it's time I returned to them. If I may?
[ The apple is precisely the color of fresh-spilled blood. In the end, he doesn't remember what it tastes like. ]
Ozpin exhales a weak, creaky sigh, and the urge to cough itches at his throat. He halts it only because— among the thick and heavy feeling in his head, among the all-over ache of the fever— he registers movement, and something light upon his chest.
Ozpin cracks his eyes open, and raises a clumsy hand. His fingers meet feathers. There is a crow upon his chest.
Qrow was waiting for him.
He swallows hard and painfully, gives a shaky exhale, and buries his fingertips in the fluff of Qrow's nape. He might be trembling, and it's hard to tell whether that is from sickness or from something he'd less like to admit. They can both pretend the tears in his eyes are brought by the fever, and not by the feeling of a little warm weight tucked against his heart.
Ozpin can stroke the bird's feathers, and breathe, and adjust to being alive again.
Eventually, he gives a deep, shaky inhale, and that breaks the moment— he has to jolt half-upright to cough. Even once it passes, he stays up on his elbows to regard the soft black corvid. Ozpin looks a wreck: eyes flushed with fever, sweat on his forehead, old blood in his hair. His voice is cracked with illness, but it's never been more genuine. ]
[It's a moment that stretches out into eternity, existing outside the reaches of time as this space shrinks to only Ozpin and the bird upon his chest. Qrow does not move, nor make any sound or reaction as the wizard reaches out to stroke his feathers. He is perfectly still, as though movement would shatter the spell and Oz would disappear beneath him like he had never been there.
Oz coughs, and the moment does shatter, but it's the sort of shattering that makes everything more real--the hazy dreamlike quality of Oz petting him with shaky fingers lost in favor of this: the immortal who was ever only a man greeting his friend. It's as real as anything can be in Deerington, even as Qrow has to flutter to the man's shoulder to keep his balance when Oz jerks upright. At the thank you, he lets out an answering caw, and perhaps it is Ozpin's imagination that a wingbeat brushes his cheek and the tears there before the bird takes off from his shoulder and is gone, and in its place is the man. Qrow has been many things to Oz--his pawn, his soldier, his trusted lieutenant, his best spy....his friend. His. Qrow, who was once his most loyal follower, and who has now become something else. Someone to stand at his side, perhaps, now that the pedestal that separated them is broken.
Someone who can understand what it is not to be a very good man, but to strive to be a better one, day by day.
Qrow is silent for a long moment before he can bring himself to look up, crimson eyes locking with soft russet-hazel and holding there despite the pressure that the lingering tears bring to his own chest. His own voice and shoulders tremble as he answers.]
[ Ozpin smiles tiredly at him. It's more watery than he would prefer to admit.
The weight of the world is already so much; he feels as though he's been violently wrenched out of that peaceful place. It dredges up old, old memories. He has to swallow against it and breathe until the shaking stops.
He almost says Good to be back. It would be, if not an outright lie, a very complicated half-truth. And, for the first time, Qrow... knows this. Qrow understands this. There is no accusation in the man, no blame. Only the relief of someone who didn't know whether this reunion would come.
Ozpin didn't, either, for a while there. He may come to regret the choice he made.
But he doesn't think he will. ]
Of course. [ His voice is raspy, but steady. ] I believe I made a promise.
[ No running away.
Gingerly, through his swimming head, he levers himself up to sitting. His clothing is a mess; there is a lot of blood, now dried; but he feels no acute pain. If what happened left any sort of mark, he will have to look for it later. For now, it's effort enough just to sit upright. ]
[Qrow remembers when Ozpin first made him that promise. He'd been reluctant to believe him at the time, still at the height of too much anger and hurt for the way the wizard had abandoned them in the snow that day. It's strange to hear the man call back to it now, to realize that it had been on his mind when he chose to return. There's a competing sense of warmth and ice in his veins simultaneously, a cocktail of emotions that sets him off balance more than any alcohol--it had been one thing to grapple with what had happened at the portals, before Oz died, to know that the same actions that saved his own life had doomed Oz to be trapped in that space as it crumbled around them. It's entirely another to process this implication. To fully realize that Oz, who had told him without the buffer of poetic, flowery words, that he wanted to stop, to rest....had sacrificed it thinking to at least some extent about about him. Qrow is not arrogant or naive enough to believe that he was the only consideration, or perhaps even a major one. But he was one, and it aches deep within his chest. He thought if he gave himself some time as a bird, he'd know what to say, but he feels even more lost for words than he did when Oz first opened his eyes.
Even so, Oz struggles to sit up, and while the silence continues to reign, instinct and muscle memory have Qrow shift naturally, without even thinking about it, such that his arm is supporting the wizard's back, allowing him to lean back against it while he gathers his stamina.
He just sits with him in silence like that for some time, he loses track of if it's only a few moments or much longer than that, and a fuzzy image comes to mind, of sitting with him like this once before, when the moon was red and the streets matched. Their history is such a tangled and confusing thing, and he is aware it only spans one human lifetime. All but meaningless in the face of eternity--and yet, these moments come for them again and again. He remembers Ozpin carrying him home when he was the one freshly revived. He remembers breaking down before him when Ruby lost her eye. He remembers a stag with antlers of Light calling out to him in desperation, shoving him bodily out of the portal to protect him.
When he speaks again, it is at the level of a bare whisper, like a secret held between only them.]
I don't know that I could've blamed you if you broke it.
[ Qrow's arm goes around his back, and for a moment he is back in the snow— not that day with Jinn, but here in Deerington, with a shivering little bird tucked against his throat and Glynda's coat in his bag. Staggering home half-slung over Qrow's shoulder, wheezing through broken ribs. Finding Qrow in the storm had been a rush of warm relief unlike anything he has felt in... years, perhaps.
Having Qrow's arm around him again now is the same.
He swallows carefully, trying to breathe away the tears in his eyes before they fall. Qrow will let him, he knows. Qrow will make no comment and hold none of it against him: he is not expected to be strong, just now. He has done enough by coming back. He cannot— will not— rest as that place would have offered him, but in another sense he can rest. He can let this quiet moment stretch out and be still in it.
Qrow whispers rough words back to him, and it feels like forgiveness. ]
Thank you.
[ It is murmured back just as low. His hand finds Qrow's arm to steady himself, and stays there. ]
But I find that...
[ He turns his head to meet Qrow's eye, and for all that Ozpin looks a wreck— tired, bloodied, flushed with fever, tears threatening to fall— he quirks a raw little smile, and the look in his eyes is purely genuine. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
2/22. revival. cw: death, grief, alcoholism mentions, post-death illness
He'd thought the matter would be laid to rest once he checked Ozpin's place to determine if the wizard has simply been sent back to Remnant, but even then the wizard's shadow upon him doesn't fade. Not entirely. The oddest things seem to set him off. Qrow will walk by a cafe with outdoor seating and think of that day he kept watch on Ford and Oz's outing, after the wizard had returned to Deerington with broken ribs and too many other bruises. He'll hear a crackling fireplace and find his hand drifting to the burn scar on his abdomen from October, when Ozpin saved his life by burning his wound shut. He'll spot someone wearing glasses or an orange scarf and find his heart leap into his throat for a bare moment before he realizes their hair isn't a silvery white, or their laugh is wrong. He accidentally stares, sometimes, but never comes close enough to be asked what he's doing. Qrow was always an excellent spy, after all.
Qrow is no stranger to loss, or the way that everything is raw at the beginning, the live-wire electricity of shock and pain that wraps around your heart. The way you draw away from everything that can remind you of your grief while simultaneously sticking your finger in the metaphorical outlet just to reassure yourself that there is still something to feel, that there is something left of them you can reach for. He's lived with that feeling for more of his life than not, drowned it with liquor more than he cares to admit. But it's different in Deerington.
Occasionally, he'll check the network, and find Ozpin's Staggr and DeerlyBeloved still there. Sometimes, he succumbs to the urge to fly up to Ozpin's bedroom window and check if his things are still there. In Deerington, people aren't supposed to stay dead. Ozpin, in particular, is not supposed to stay dead. There's something about it that's wrong on a visceral, fundamental level. The immortal Ozpin, the infinite man was dead. On some level it should terrify him on a much more existential level; without Ozpin to hold the line of his endless stalemate with Salem, the planet was done for. They would likely not last out their lifetime. It does, in a way. He feared exactly these kinds of implications the moment he'd heard of the plan to force the doors between Deerington and all other universes open. He's feared the possibility of being forced to return for months now. But ultimately, it is not that anxiety that sets him wrongfooted when he walks by the window of the Bookstore where he shopped for a holiday present for Ozpin, when he sees a volume of fairytales in the window.
It is not that anxiety that compels him to buy it, or to wander out to the junkyard and lay it at the base of his statue like flowers on a grave.
It is not that anxiety that finally, ultimately, contracts the muscles in his chest and stomach into a strangled sob, that have his shoulders quivering in grief as he covers his face, heedless of the fact that nobody is here to see.
It is that in Deerington, there are second chances. He may not be able to keep all of his loved ones safe all or even most of the time, but when he fails to protect them, it doesn't have to be the end. But Ozpin has had literal thousands of chances, and he's grown weary of them. He can now be free, and Qrow will never see him again.
(Meeting you was the worst luck of my life. Words said in anger and resentment that Qrow has steadily lost the vehemence for, over time, until they stopped feeling true at all -- so slowly that even now he has not noticed it, heart too laden with grief to begin to process forgiveness as a concept)
His face is red and flushed when he rubs his eyes and looks up, intending to leave, to get some distance from the statue before he tears himself apart over another empty grave. He had intended to leave, that is, until shimmers of violet light gather and coalesce before him, rebuilding bones, then sinews and muscle and skin and Qrow can't help but remain on his knees, transfixed as Ozpin's body takes shape before him.
When it is all finished, the wizard's chest moves--up, then down--while Qrow's is still. Hazel-brown eyes flicker open, and suddenly Qrow understands exactly what Ozpin meant when he'd said that his gift of transformation magic was to release them from the burden of their bodies, because he absolutely does not bother with the fiasco of forcing his limbs to coordinate for standing or walking. He flutters over to Ozpin as a bird, ebony feathers soft against his chest as Qrow perches there a moment, feeling the rhythmic thump of the man's heart against his own, faster in this form than his typical body.
It's soothing. He doesn't know what to say, having only just begun to mourn. But like this, it can wait just a little bit longer. For this brief, ephemeral twilight, they can comfort each other without the oppressive weight of their words and their regrets--Ozpin is allowed these bare moments more to be just a man before he willingly steps back into his own shackles. Qrow need not be his soldier or his spy or his agent, need not bear the burden of their history or the weight of the bridges they've worked to rebuild. He can simply be, like this. And when it is needed, he will take Ozpin home, and then the time for words may come. But not yet.]
(1/2) continuing cws for death, grief, suicidality
This is, finally, an opportunity to make the choice again. He can choose to rest.
Ozpin sits beneath Cynthia's moon, at the base of a black stone tree planted by Qrow's calloused hands, and lets himself drift. There is little to do in this place but be, quiet and softly muted. The deer-creature asks nothing from him, but nor is it really company. It is simply a facet of the world, silent and unjudging, sitting with its blood-red apple still in hand.
Ozpin does not have to eat the apple. He knows this, and understands it: he could simply stay. He could let the peace swallow him until every thought has gently bled from his mind. With the passing hours— are they hours? days?— he feels himself coming unmoored, becoming less the cohesive whole of Ozpin and more the collection of all the men he has ever been. He is Oscar Pine; he is the last King of Vale; he—
He is Ozma.
And he does have a mission to uphold, still. His death will come, someday, but this is not how it will happen. He will not consign Remnant to an early grave. He can go a little while longer.
(He has thought as much often, in quiet, fervent tones: just a little while longer. There will always be something to make the next stretch bearable.)
(This time, it's the thought of Oscar and Qrow.) ]
I made a promise. [ He tells this to the deer-creature, which tips its masked head to regard him. Its antlers are not His antlers, and Ozpin finds that he has no fear of it. ] I assured someone that I would not run away.
[ He picks himself up out of the silvery grass, and wishes for his cane as he does. No matter. He'll just have to go and ask for it back. ]
I think it's time I returned to them. If I may?
[ The apple is precisely the color of fresh-spilled blood. In the end, he doesn't remember what it tastes like. ]
(2/2) and for illness
Ozpin exhales a weak, creaky sigh, and the urge to cough itches at his throat. He halts it only because— among the thick and heavy feeling in his head, among the all-over ache of the fever— he registers movement, and something light upon his chest.
Ozpin cracks his eyes open, and raises a clumsy hand. His fingers meet feathers. There is a crow upon his chest.
Qrow was waiting for him.
He swallows hard and painfully, gives a shaky exhale, and buries his fingertips in the fluff of Qrow's nape. He might be trembling, and it's hard to tell whether that is from sickness or from something he'd less like to admit. They can both pretend the tears in his eyes are brought by the fever, and not by the feeling of a little warm weight tucked against his heart.
Ozpin can stroke the bird's feathers, and breathe, and adjust to being alive again.
Eventually, he gives a deep, shaky inhale, and that breaks the moment— he has to jolt half-upright to cough. Even once it passes, he stays up on his elbows to regard the soft black corvid. Ozpin looks a wreck: eyes flushed with fever, sweat on his forehead, old blood in his hair. His voice is cracked with illness, but it's never been more genuine. ]
Thank you for the welcome.
no subject
Oz coughs, and the moment does shatter, but it's the sort of shattering that makes everything more real--the hazy dreamlike quality of Oz petting him with shaky fingers lost in favor of this: the immortal who was ever only a man greeting his friend. It's as real as anything can be in Deerington, even as Qrow has to flutter to the man's shoulder to keep his balance when Oz jerks upright. At the thank you, he lets out an answering caw, and perhaps it is Ozpin's imagination that a wingbeat brushes his cheek and the tears there before the bird takes off from his shoulder and is gone, and in its place is the man. Qrow has been many things to Oz--his pawn, his soldier, his trusted lieutenant, his best spy....his friend. His. Qrow, who was once his most loyal follower, and who has now become something else. Someone to stand at his side, perhaps, now that the pedestal that separated them is broken.
Someone who can understand what it is not to be a very good man, but to strive to be a better one, day by day.
Qrow is silent for a long moment before he can bring himself to look up, crimson eyes locking with soft russet-hazel and holding there despite the pressure that the lingering tears bring to his own chest. His own voice and shoulders tremble as he answers.]
Thanks for coming back.
no subject
The weight of the world is already so much; he feels as though he's been violently wrenched out of that peaceful place. It dredges up old, old memories. He has to swallow against it and breathe until the shaking stops.
He almost says Good to be back. It would be, if not an outright lie, a very complicated half-truth. And, for the first time, Qrow... knows this. Qrow understands this. There is no accusation in the man, no blame. Only the relief of someone who didn't know whether this reunion would come.
Ozpin didn't, either, for a while there. He may come to regret the choice he made.
But he doesn't think he will. ]
Of course. [ His voice is raspy, but steady. ] I believe I made a promise.
[ No running away.
Gingerly, through his swimming head, he levers himself up to sitting. His clothing is a mess; there is a lot of blood, now dried; but he feels no acute pain. If what happened left any sort of mark, he will have to look for it later. For now, it's effort enough just to sit upright. ]
no subject
Even so, Oz struggles to sit up, and while the silence continues to reign, instinct and muscle memory have Qrow shift naturally, without even thinking about it, such that his arm is supporting the wizard's back, allowing him to lean back against it while he gathers his stamina.
He just sits with him in silence like that for some time, he loses track of if it's only a few moments or much longer than that, and a fuzzy image comes to mind, of sitting with him like this once before, when the moon was red and the streets matched. Their history is such a tangled and confusing thing, and he is aware it only spans one human lifetime. All but meaningless in the face of eternity--and yet, these moments come for them again and again. He remembers Ozpin carrying him home when he was the one freshly revived. He remembers breaking down before him when Ruby lost her eye. He remembers a stag with antlers of Light calling out to him in desperation, shoving him bodily out of the portal to protect him.
When he speaks again, it is at the level of a bare whisper, like a secret held between only them.]
I don't know that I could've blamed you if you broke it.
no subject
Having Qrow's arm around him again now is the same.
He swallows carefully, trying to breathe away the tears in his eyes before they fall. Qrow will let him, he knows. Qrow will make no comment and hold none of it against him: he is not expected to be strong, just now. He has done enough by coming back. He cannot— will not— rest as that place would have offered him, but in another sense he can rest. He can let this quiet moment stretch out and be still in it.
Qrow whispers rough words back to him, and it feels like forgiveness. ]
Thank you.
[ It is murmured back just as low. His hand finds Qrow's arm to steady himself, and stays there. ]
But I find that...
[ He turns his head to meet Qrow's eye, and for all that Ozpin looks a wreck— tired, bloodied, flushed with fever, tears threatening to fall— he quirks a raw little smile, and the look in his eyes is purely genuine. ]
... I have people to keep it for.