[ accidental memoryshare ] un: harbinger

[bolstafir]

You are seventeen years old.

You are seventeen years old, and this is your first day at Beacon Academy. You’ve decided you already hate everyone here, with their bright perky smiles and their vain ideals of becoming heroes. You know better. You know that the world is a harsh and cruel place and only the strong survive. That’s why you’re here, after all. You need to learn how to become stronger than these huntsmen and huntresses, or failing that find the weaknesses in their strength so they can be taken down.

The students and teachers are annoying, but the worst is the headmaster. He smiles at everyone with a soft and knowing gaze, never raises his voice, and laughs off any teenage rebelliousness and disdain leveled his way. You really hate the sound of his laugh; it’s clear and crisp like a bell ringing out in the air, nothing like the sharp and discordant hoots and hollers of the tribe, the derision-filled hyena cackles. The sound is infuriatingly pleasant. You think he’s an arrogant bastard for thinking he can run this place when he’s barely a few years older than the graduating class, and all you think about for his entire welcome speech is how stupid he is to let you and your sister come here without vetting them, what a rude awakening he’s going to get when they learn enough to wreck the graduates he’s so proud of.

You are eighteen years old, and you and your sister consistently rank toward the top of the class in practical skills, though more than one teacher has threatened detention for your less than stellar efforts elsewhere. Even Headmaster Ozpin has taken notice of you and your team, enough so that you and Raven wonder if he’s getting suspicious. He never tips his hand one way or the other. Your classmates think you’re cool, and you even (despite yourself) get along with your other teammates, Summer and Taiyang. You’re still going to destroy them when you graduate, of course, but maybe not right away. There are plenty others who deserve it more, like the pissant who tried pulling one of those wire trip traps on you as a prank without realizing how paranoid you’ve been for years over anything that can be tripped over, knocked down, or broken. Ruining his fun was good enough for today, though. The murder can wait.

(You find yourself thinking like that more and more often. It’s embarrassing.)

But your luck was never meant to last long; the instructor of one of your combat classes says that the focus of the day’s lesson is semblances, and suddenly you feel like you can’t breathe. You distract your teammates with something you know they’re likely to argue about, and sneak out the moment the teacher’s back is turned.

Ozpin is the one that finds you. You know he doesn’t buy your excuses for a second but he pretends he does, and you wonder what game he’s playing. You wonder why he doesn’t drag you back to class or lecture you or anything and instead follows you to where the supposedly faulty weapons lockers are so he can take care of it himself. He’s infuriatingly patient with the whole thing.

Parts of the school have undergone recent renovations; a few of the ceiling tiles are loose. You have learned over the years not to doubt your intuition—you hear a strange shifting sound from up above and shout for Ozpin to watch out, and he neatly steps back just as a tile suddenly crashes and shatters on the ground. He does not get angry or yell at you. Instead, he thanks you for the warning, and you feel like you're going to be sick.

You avoid him for weeks after that.

When he tracks you down and asks for a moment to chat, you think that’s it. He’s going to realize what happened to him and you’ll be kicked out of the school and go back to the tribe a failure. Instead, he sits you down with cocoa in his office and asks you if there has been anything on your mind recently. But you cannot trust him to be genuinely curious. Remnant is a cruel place, and you cannot really trust anybody in this world. You have to take care of yourself. (The strong survive, the weak die.) He probably wants you to admit out loud what you did to him so it can be that much more humiliating when he kicks you out.

For an intense, blinding moment, you consider picking up your mug of hot cocoa and throwing it in Ozpin's face, because if you're going to get kicked out you might as well earn it. Pitifully, your hand shakes when you reach out for it. How embarrassing to realize you were starting to like it here when it's all over--

"I assure you, Mister Branwen, you are not in trouble."

You're not sure how such a warmly spoken statement can freeze over all of your insides. It pisses you off how gentle his voice is, the way he hasn't stopped smiling at you once. If he knew the truth, he wouldn't look at you like that. You hate him. You can't wait until the day you can wipe that patronizing kindness right off his face, when he regrets ever letting you step foot inside this school.

"I simply thought to let you know that my door is always open, should you wish to talk. Otherwise, you are free to return to class--"

He gestures with a hand, and accidentally tips over his own cocoa mug, soaking across a few books and papers set neatly nearby, and the guilt wrenches so sharply in your chest you can't take it anymore. You admit your cursed nature to him at last, that your existence draws misfortune to everyone around you like a magnet, and brace for judgment that doesn't really come. He has seen a great many dangerous Semblances, he says, and you wrinkle your nose like you always do when he acts like he's old, but listen intently. He is the first not to be angry. He is the first to tell you that there is more to your capability, your potential, than an unfortunate Semblance.

(When the time comes, maybe you'll just leave any Beacon Huntsmen alone. The tribe operates more in Mistral than Vale anyway)

You are nineteen years old, and you would do anything for Ozpin. He tells you about the war with Salem and asks you to become his spy. He offers you real magic, and just like that, you become a bird. Flight is not as graceful or elegant as other birds make it look. You tumble down in an awkward heap of feathers more times than you can count, but Ozpin laughs good-naturedly and offers you cocoa as you return to being a boy. You love the sound of his laugh, these days. It makes you feel safe and warm, and for the first time in your life, you think you might actually belong somewhere. You think (hope) Raven might feel that way, too.

. . .

You are twenty-one years old, and you are no longer a bandit. You shake Ozpin's hand at graduation as he hands you your diploma and activates your Huntsman license.

The tribe taught you that the strong survive, that the weak die. Those were the rules. Ozpin, Taiyang, and Summer taught you that the rules were bullshit. You've never been more sure that this is where you belong. You're going spend the rest of your life with them, and you know you're so much stronger for it.

You're strong enough that you could die for Ozpin's cause without being afraid. You're invincible.

Comments

Text | un: mister_hatter | Private

[payingfordeliverance]

[Break has been well aware for months that it was Ozpin who gave Qrow the chance to make a life he could feel was worth something, and that it's a relationship that Qrow has gone out of his way to keep to this day. One of the first things they bonded over not long after Break arrived was how devoted you end up to the people who bother to show you that you can be better, and believe in your ability to take the first step so unfailingly that you just can't help but live up to their faith. Actually watching this wee baby Qrow unfurl from a small snarling thing into a confident young man is as heart-warming as it is charming, and of course it reminds him of how he himself unfolded years ago, too.

But there is something else. Break can't help but notice the goofy starry-eyed look at Ozpin's laugh, the graduation ceremony wherein Qrow is beaming like they are the only two people in the room. And he cannot resist. He has enough regard for Qrow that he sets his response to private and keeps it to text so Qrow can have the luxury of screaming into his hands unseen, but Xerxes Break simply cannot resist.]

I see! Someone has a lifelong taste for fancy white-haired cane-wielders with a thoroughly sensible taste for sugar. ❤

[bolstafir]

[See, here's the thing. Qrow is fully aware he had a puppy crush on Ozpin when he was a teenager. Qrow is aware that Ozpin knew he had a puppy crush on him, and had politely refrained from having said anything about it for twenty years until Deerington politely decided to throw that embarrassment in his face.

What he had not anticipated was that it would be obvious not only to Ozpin himself, who has had such a long history with him, but that it was obvious enough from these memories alone, perhaps to anyone at all.

Such it is that the flavor of entertainment Break gets is not an obviously transparent yelped denial full of exclamation points, and more like someone who has accidentally looked into the abyss and discovered it laughing back at him. He is so fuckt.]

oh gods the kids are gonna see this
remember me fondly xerx i'll never know peace again

[payingfordeliverance]

You can come live here with me, to escape them. I shall conjure a secret birdie castle for you. Perhaps I'll even learn to conjure weather, so you can have a miniature thunderstorm to brood in.




[Break gets away with this sort of heckling because honestly, they both know he would.]

Private text - UN: IceCream

[threelayers]

[Fuck. Man. Seriously? She was having trouble digesting literally all of that. On the one hand? She was right there with 17 year old Qrow, because fuck Ozpin? She didn't hate him. Nah, that went to Salem and Cinder, thanks, but he was just so fucking smug at times, like so many of the worst she'd seen in her own life.

She dragged her hand through her hair and breathed in and out. Did she just fucking ignore all of this? After all, it wasn't like she didn't know Qrow was the only sensible one in the lot who'd probably done some shit and seen some time. What she'd seen both surprised and didn't surprise her. She could just ignore this and ...]

If you can believe this, Qrow?
People used to think my semblance was a curse too.

Was that old bastard the first person to ever really tell you that?
That there was nothing wrong with who you were?
I might need to cut him a bit more slack.

Oh, and tomorrow?
I'm going to pretend like I never saw this.
And we never talked.

[bolstafir]

[Well, shit. He realizes that this has been broadcast to the whole network, of course, but Neo is one of the people he would perhaps least have liked to see it. Vulnerability is hard enough for him with people he actually feels close to.

But he grudgingly appreciates the gesture, all the same. Enough so that he doesn't immediately shut down the conversation that definitely never happened.]

bit more literal in my case

[Now that she's seen this much, there's no real point in trying to do damage control about it. But it's...hard for him to feel sympathetic. He wasn't sure Robyn completely understood either, but at least hers had the same inescapable effect on others, living life as a walking lie detector.]

but yeah
he was the one who gave me a place in the world
without him i wouldn't have my family

[He would have nothing, been nobody at all.]

[threelayers]

[Yeah, even without knowing what was going through her head, she was assuming that she was in the bottom three on people he'd want to see this, one way or another. Either way, she was really more trying to commiserate a little, not seek sympathy, even if she was bad at it.

...

And then he said that last part. She doubted he was even thinking about it, but she realized in that moment what he'd just said and who he was talking to right now. Oz had given him his family, and she was someone who might have taken it away, and had certainly tried to do that. She was, right now, a literal reminder of one of the worst possible situations in his life while watching one of the most bittersweet moments.

She swallowed.]

I can just shut up now and give you space, if you'd rather.
I think I might just be the worst person in all Trench to talk to right now.

Voice; un: darkness

[survivalthroughhate]

[Maul watches with a thoughtful expression on his face. An interesting life led there. And one that has echoes for him from his own past.]

He gave you a chance. And you took it.

[Perhaps if anywhere along the line someone had given Maul one as well, his fate of becoming a Sith Lord might have been changed. But no one ever intervened, ever saw that Palpatine was turning him into a monster by breaking him down and molding him into what he wanted the young Zabrak to be. Not until it was too late and all Maul could think of was doing his master's will unthinkingly, being his faithful assassin.]

permatext

[bolstafir]

[If there's anyone he's less comfortable with having seen this than Neo, it would be Maul -- the one he views as more like a bandit than anyone else he knows in Trench. Someone who will see a vulnerability to file away for later, if he needs an upper hand over him.

He chooses to respond in text, because his voice risks too much emotion.]

yeah
making the effort to change my life was up to me but he was the first to show me the way

[A beat passes. Two.]

it's never too late, you know

[survivalthroughhate]

[Qrow's not wrong there. Maul is used to people seeing his vulnerabilities and using them against him and so he does the same to other people. Though he doesn't do it nearly as much anymore.]

Those who don't have someone like that never find their way out on their own.

[Maul certainly hadn't. Sidious' will being impressed upon a young, vulnerable child was just far too much for him to fight against all on his own.]

I know. Though sometimes it feels like it is.

[Maul still has doubts he can go down the path to become a better person but at least this time his efforts have definitely been more focused than before. It's been months now since he's deliberately tried to hurt or kill anyone.]

private - voice; un: ushiromiya

[entreats]

[ All of these memories feel the same. It's like looking straight into something that's just a little too personal - to a point where Ange intensely understands just how embarrassing it must be to have something like this put on display for everyone.

It makes ignoring this feel like the kinder option. On the other hand - wouldn't it also be wrong to pretend she never saw this? To not let Qrow know that she knows now?

Somehow it feels even more awkward when it's a memory from one of the resident adults.

Looking for a way to compromise, Ange does send a message, but is at least tactful enough to keep it private. It's got to already be embarrassing enough for Qrow. ]

.. looks like someone reached out to you at the right moment, huh.

[ It'd sure explain why Qrow and Ozpin seem so close. It's not even that Ange dislikes the latter - more just that she has no particularly strong feelings about him either way. But it's hard to not notice how close those two are anyway. ]

[bolstafir]

[Qrow is indeed pretty mortified by this whole situation -- not least because Break watched it and immediately caught onto Qrow's teenage puppy crush on Oz. But Ange isn't commenting on that, which is at least one saving grace to this moment. The other is that Ange has reached out to him in private as well, so he doesn't need to be embarassingly sentimental in public.]

...Yeah. If I'd never met Oz, I wouldn't have Ruby. Wouldn't have anything, really. I'd still be nothing but a murderous scumbag.

[entreats]

I think that's giving yourself too little credit.

[ It's still said a little more softly than the usual though. Rather than it being an attempt to argue with him about that, there's just care in her voice. She won't deny that Oz obviously means a lot to Qrow - she might be purposefully ignoring the puppy crush aspect here, because she's already done way more thinking about old men love in this place than she would've ever liked to in her life - and that he is the one who changed him, but.. ]

I mean.. It's not like he could've created something in you that was never there in the first place, you know? [ Or so Ange likes to think, anyway.

Or maybe it's just that she doesn't like to think of Qrow - the man who adopted her into his family without question - as just some murderous scumbag. ]

He just saw that potential that must've been there already.

Video | Clickclickbloom

[onekindsoul]

...You didn't mean destroy them in the same way the weird karate man wanted to "obliterate that twink", did you?

1/2

[bolstafir]

[Qrow has the deep, deep misfortune of having sat down with a soda when he gets this particular message. He does not even get the dignity of a spittake, instead choking on his halfway-swallowed sip of soda and the rest going all over his shirt front and dripping down to his pants as he gently hacks up a lung trying to recover from this.]

Wh-what?

[Oh god he is having flashbacks to that "twink" conversation in the group chat and Break has already called him on having a crush on Oz, who the weird karate guy is weirdly obsessed with, and his only hope is that Ruby does not catch on fully so he does not need to pitch himself from the nearest cliff out of embarrassment.]

[bolstafir]

I mean. [He thumps his chest once to get his lungs back in order. Get it together, Branwen!!] I did tell you kids Team STRQ had plenty of inappropriate stories about our time at Beacon, right? Hah.

[kill him now rip, the only other way to get out of this might actually be to get serious and talk about the bandit stuff. Blech.]

[onekindsoul]

[That was the exact response she was hoping for. She snorts and giggles as her uncle tries to pull himself together.]

Yeah, you did! But look- The last thing I want posted on the network is you, mom or dad.

Or about Professor Ozpin.

That's like- The grossest of the gross.

Voice | un: diggs | private

[justoscar]

Uhhhhh, Uncle Qrow?

[Oscar sounded-- torn. As much as he enjoyed having a glimpse into Qrow's mental space, he had a feeling that the huntsman would be mortified.

A warning, at least, seemed appropriate.]

You might wanna check your Omni to see what just got posted to the network. It's not bad! But I'm not sure you want that many people knowing that you're a softie under that rough attitude you've got.

[bolstafir]

[He cannot believe he is being called out like this. Betrayal. Betrayal from his own nephew!]

Hey, hey, who said anything about being a softie? I was a tough kid even back then!

[He is oNE HUNDRED PERCENT CERTIFIED BADASS, OK.]

[justoscar]

[That earned a giggle.]

Sometimes the toughest guys are hiding the softest centers. You're totally tough! But, it's okay to be soft, too.

voice; un: A.; private

[fabrications]

[ Ah. There it is.

Akechi recognizes Ozpin, of course, and he recognizes the desperate sort of affection that the much younger Qrow comes to regard him with. A lot of things click into place. ]

I suppose this is the one for whom meeting was 'the worst luck of your life'?

[bolstafir]

[Ah. He should've expected this one, really. Given what the young man had seen months ago, what Qrow had seen of him -- it makes sense. The reference to that terrible moment blindsides him all the same. It takes Qrow a bit to work up to answering.]

...It's not really like that, y'know. I regret saying it.

[fabrications]

[ He regrets it? There's a long pause from Akechi before he responds. ]

Why?

[ He's aiming for a more neutral sort of tone, but there's no keeping the mild thread of confusion-bordering-on-annoyance out of his tone. ]

text | un: ilikemeat

[velvet_teen]

[ Alice has a lot of feelings about how this tangled story makes her feel. She can't one to one relate but she sure did spend a while under the impression that she was a monster and that outsiders were to be manipulated and attacked. It makes Qrow seem a lot more of a mess inside now that she knows what's in there. Being an adult and having a cool weapon absolutely does not ever make you less of a mess, it seems, you just get better at fooling people. Just look at Alice's Raven for that one.

Thinking about Gilbert makes her feel charitable, and she elects to enact the love language of her people. ]

It took you eighteen years to make a friend?

Since you're a slow learner, I will teach you more if you have questions, since you've been teaching me all those cool fighting moves.

[bolstafir]

[That actually makes him laugh. She'd asked him, once, if he was just bad at friendship, and it had hurt his feelings then -- but something about this is just so earnest he can't help but be amused this time.]

i might've gotten a slow start, but i've had plenty of experience since then

[A lot of it riddled with betrayals and grief and pain such that he still tends to default to lone wolfery, but there's no need to revisit that here and now.]

far be it from me to turn down some wisdom from the great alice though

[He too is in a good enough mood to play along.]

[velvet_teen]

Telling people what you want and what you want them to do is good. Hardly anyone does enuff of it. I tell people what I want them to do all the time, because I am very good at friendship and easy to be friends with.

And then they listen to me or they don't but either way they know what I like because I tell them that.

Also, if you bite someone it should be someone you like a lot or don't like at all.

[ All of this wisdom is equally valid, clearly. Alice is not particularly thinking about her target audience here and now she is mostly eager to show off. She's just. Like this. ]