[Oh. That's...ah. He's not sure where he was expecting this to go, but it wasn't that. It's a sensitive question, honestly, and he's taking the excuse of a restaurant to nibble at some bread he definitely doesn't need while he sorts out some of his thoughts.]
...Did Ruby ever explain our ah, family situation?
[He rubs at his neck, awkwardly. Ford now knows he has a twin sister, which might give him a clue where he's going with this, but after a moment of hesitation, he decides to just continue without waiting for an answer. Talking about this is a bandaid that's better to rip off fast rather than slow.]
Ruby and Yang are half-sisters, technically. Raven was Yang's mother, but she left when Yang was still a baby. Our other teammate, Summer, stepped in for her, and Ruby was born a couple years later. But a few years after that...she disappeared. Went on a mission and never came back. In a world like ours...and knowing the war we were all part of ... eventually, we had to assume she was dead.
[He lets out a breath that's not quite a sigh, but there's a note of exhaustion in it. He has held this grief for so long now it's seeped into his very bones. He does not know who he would be without it. (Probably someone with more of his shit together, he thinks in his darker moments)]
It was a rough time for all of us. Tai and I...we didn't take it well. I spent--a lot of years soaked in booze, just trying to keep moving. And then Beacon fell. Yang lost her arm, the Fall Maiden's powers were lost ... Oz died, and I had to carry things forward in his absence. It was a lot of pressure--didn't always handle it that gracefully either. Hell, the kids had to save my ass a couple times. But no matter how hard it got, they never gave up. ...Even when I did, after we found out the truth about the war, and I was off getting trashed while they almost got killed.
[Another pause, though he mostly just turns the bread roll over in his hands instead of actually eating any more of it.]
That's a real long way of saying ... I've lost a lot of people in my life. Sometimes it was bad enough I didn't know how I could survive another day without 'em. I just hit a point where I realized I was so busy drowning in what was gone I was taking what I still had for granted, and how easily I could lose that too.
...So that's where I am now. I wish Yang was here, sure, and I still check the beach for her every month. But when the dream was crumbling, the rest of us decided to build a new life here together, and now -- I've got even more to protect in this life we've built than I did before.
no subject
...Did Ruby ever explain our ah, family situation?
[He rubs at his neck, awkwardly. Ford now knows he has a twin sister, which might give him a clue where he's going with this, but after a moment of hesitation, he decides to just continue without waiting for an answer. Talking about this is a bandaid that's better to rip off fast rather than slow.]
Ruby and Yang are half-sisters, technically. Raven was Yang's mother, but she left when Yang was still a baby. Our other teammate, Summer, stepped in for her, and Ruby was born a couple years later. But a few years after that...she disappeared. Went on a mission and never came back. In a world like ours...and knowing the war we were all part of ... eventually, we had to assume she was dead.
[He lets out a breath that's not quite a sigh, but there's a note of exhaustion in it. He has held this grief for so long now it's seeped into his very bones. He does not know who he would be without it. (Probably someone with more of his shit together, he thinks in his darker moments)]
It was a rough time for all of us. Tai and I...we didn't take it well. I spent--a lot of years soaked in booze, just trying to keep moving. And then Beacon fell. Yang lost her arm, the Fall Maiden's powers were lost ... Oz died, and I had to carry things forward in his absence. It was a lot of pressure--didn't always handle it that gracefully either. Hell, the kids had to save my ass a couple times. But no matter how hard it got, they never gave up. ...Even when I did, after we found out the truth about the war, and I was off getting trashed while they almost got killed.
[Another pause, though he mostly just turns the bread roll over in his hands instead of actually eating any more of it.]
That's a real long way of saying ... I've lost a lot of people in my life. Sometimes it was bad enough I didn't know how I could survive another day without 'em. I just hit a point where I realized I was so busy drowning in what was gone I was taking what I still had for granted, and how easily I could lose that too.
...So that's where I am now. I wish Yang was here, sure, and I still check the beach for her every month. But when the dream was crumbling, the rest of us decided to build a new life here together, and now -- I've got even more to protect in this life we've built than I did before.