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70.14% My Stash of completed fics / Chapter 1948: 178

Capítulo 1948: 178

"You know, we never did finish that talk back at Beacon before you ran off in a huff," Yang stated, staring down Raven in a clearing in the woods outside of their home on Patch, not too far from the barn that the woman used to live in a lifetime ago. "About why you ran away from me. From your home. About why you decided to be a piece of shit bandit that would have inevitably been killed by an opponent you couldn't intimidate into leaving. Hell, maybe Ruby would have killed you and your bandits without ever learning that you were her aunt. What the hell possessed you to do that?"

 

"Youthful stupidity and pride," Raven answered dryly, sitting down on a stump and staring up at the bright blue sky above. For all that their conversation felt like it was supposed to be a midnight rendezvous in secret, they were still just talking in an open clearing at noon-ish on the day after Wynterfest wrapped up and Ruby and Penny had filled Tai's fridge with so much food the man had needed to buy a second fridge and another chest freezer to contain it all. They'd be eating leftovers until the next term started at this rate. 

 

"What, is that all?" Yang snorted, rolling her eyes at Raven's clear deflection- she'd said the same thing before, but all of her answers were so frustratingly vague and meandering that Yang had walked out of that room knowing less than she did before. "That can't be it."

 

"I ran away the first time because I was terrified that I would be a terrible mother. Moved away to the barn, but the guilt overwhelmed me and I… they thought I ran back to Mistral instead," Raven sighed, shaking her head and staring down at her hands. She looked… remarkably small for a woman almost Yang's height- if only a few inches shorter. It was the lack of armor, Yang thought. The casual clothes. The unstyled hair that fell about her face in waves of ebony the same way her own used to like a cascade of gold. They weren't mirrors of each other anymore. Yang had moved on. "I wanted to watch over you, keep an eye on things. So… I… stayed. I watched. That raven you always pointed out at times was me, keeping an eye on you for the first few years of your life. I-"

 

"You should have said something. You should have done a lot of things," Yang hissed, standing over Raven with a clenched fist and her Aura flaring and wishing that she could just punch her issues out, take out all her problems on the woman who'd left her before she could even be a mother. "What I want to know is why you went back to being a bandit."

 

"Because Summer died."

 

The statement came- flat, empty, dry, dead. Raven's tone went from carefully measured to a dead, hollow whisper so full of grief that Yang couldn't help but stop as her indignation fizzled out and was immediately replaced with confusion and concern.

 

Raven… her eyes had taken on a dark cast- the woman hunching over and trembling as she clenched her fingers together and stared at the snow covered ground like she was seeing ghosts. "... there was one last mission. One last fight. Summer thought that she and I together would be strong enough by ourselves- we were, for a long time, the strongest on Team STRQ after all. I've… clearly become lesser over the years, but… at the time…"

 

She shook her head and winced, holding her chest and grimacing. "We thought we could beat Salem together. Our Maiden powers, her Silver Eyes, my skill with a sword. We-"

 

"You were- both of you were Maidens!?"

 

"... Yeah. Summer got hers not long after graduation. Turns out the old lady she always helped take care of back in her hometown was the previous Summer Maiden. When she died… Summer got the power. I-... I got the power after I left you. And… I'm not ashamed to say that I killed the previous Spring Maiden," Raven looked up, trying to inject some manner of that brash, angry, careless bandit leader back into her voice. "... It wasn't her fault. It was mine alone. I found her, about to die. She was young, scared, running away from things hunting her. She came to me asking to hide, to get rid of the power, to do anything. I…"

 

"You killed her."

 

"I stayed with her until she died. She was starving, injured… she'd lost too much blood besides. I tried to cut ties like that, tried to act like I'd murdered a girl in cold blood like I would have before I met Summer, but…" Raven grimaced and wrung her hands again, letting out a heavy sigh. "Summer saw through it. And then we went off together, two idiots against the greatest evil this world has ever seen. We thought we could win. The last time I saw Summer… she was falling into a pit of darkness and her powers weren't working. She told me to run. So I did. And then I spent the next decade and some running away from everything to the point that I couldn't even recognize myself anymore."

 

"... And that's why you came back. Some… misguided sense of responsibility to a dead woman?" Yang muttered, crossing her arms and still judging Raven heavily- after all, just because she'd maybe had good reasons to do what she did in her mind didn't mean that Raven hadn't royally fucked up over and over and over and over for over a decade and then some because of her own neuroses and issues that she never got away from. "A guilt complex? Why did you actually bother coming back at all if you thought you were content living in a fucking backwater dirt hole full of smelly assholes and mugging travelers for their stuff?"

 

"... Because Glynda beat the shit out of me, destroyed most of the camp beyond salvage, and sent my people scattering to the winds before dragging me back to Haven. Because she yelled at me so hard I couldn't do anything but realize how much of an awful person I was- how much of a terrible person I am still. And because… I still don't want Qrow to die," Raven answered slowly, shaking her head and dropping her face down into her hands so she could stare down at the snow more directly, trembling a little as her Aura lashed out and clashed against Yang's- making each of them well aware of how the other felt. Yang's annoyance and disbelief and anger and hurt, Raven's self recrimination and myriad of issues that roiled around constantly in her mind. "I came back here because I still care in my own stupid way and because I might as well be helpful for the first fucking time in my life. I'm… I did enough soul searching to know that I'm a bitter, stupid, angry, self righteous bitch of an old woman with more issues than the goddamn Beacon newspaper, but…"

 

"... Fine. You'd better make it through all of this, then. Might as well let Ruby have something resembling a mom that isn't me and Cinder," Yang scoffed, turning away and clenching her fists as she flared her Aura over both of them- warming the clearing and melting the snow as she burned from gold to blue, the heat causing bursts of steam to rise from the frozen ground as she activated her Semblance on a micro charge and just let it warm her bones. "Fuck, why couldn't it have been our actual mom that came back instead of you? I gave up looking for you ages ago, and only now…"

 

"... Because Summer is dead and I'm not. Even if… I still don't know where her powers have gone," Raven answered with a wry little huff. She stood up, then, shivering a little even as she stepped into the radius of Yang's aura and her body wisped with a thin fog of red mist. "For what it's worth- I wish you'd gotten Summer back instead of me. Even I know that she's better for all of this than I am. She was the hero, the leader. She… she was the strongest out of all of us and the best one and she never lost hope and-"

 

"... Raven were you fucking Summer? Because you're going on about my real mom like she's your dead wife."

 

".... Bold of you to assume was doing the fucking," Raven deadpanned. "There's a reason why Ruby was born so soon after ran away and it's not because Tai was good at rebounding."

 

"... I never did get a clear answer on that…" Yang muttered under her breath, glancing off to the side and narrowing her eyes. "So wait, that means-"

 

"There's a reason why her nickname in Beacon was Summer 'Entire Team' Rose. Let's leave it at that."

 

"So wait that means-"

 

"All four of us used to be romantically involved… except for Qrow and I. Because obviously."

 

"Right. And then you freaked out and ran away because your own pride and inability to confront your issues head on flared up and the idea of being a mother scared you more than anything else."

 

"Yes."

 

"... Uh huh…"

 

"Look, let's just go back inside already. I'm… I'm gonna stick around this time, I promise."

 

"... Fine. I'm not calling you mom though. Not until you earn it."

 

"... I deserve that."


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