[ Oh boy. This letter is... a lot? Yeah, a lot. It's a lot, and Ford very strongly does consider following Qrow's advice and just burning the damn thing. It would certainly be more expedient and less agonizingly awkward than trying to respond. He should definitely burn it.
But... he doesn't. He sits on it instead, turning the words and the situation and the prospect of interacting with Ozpin normally again over in his head. He has to admit, there's something there in Qrow's words. He doesn't want there to be something there, but there is, and it gnaws away at him while he sits alone in his empty house, suddenly missing the sound of his family more fiercely than he has in months.
Qrow doesn't get a response to his letter for days. And then one day while he's out and about, be it as a crow or a human, he will hear a sharp whistle from maybe half a block away - and in case that's too easy to dismiss, it's followed up with: ]
Qrow!
[ And there's Ford Pines, looking like he's trying very hard to not look grim. ]
Qrow should've assumed this might happen. He could ignore the whistle, even the call -- he knows he can outfly Ford, from that period of time the man had tried to catch him back in Deerington -- but there wouldn't be much point in that, ultimately. It'd just be allowing the awkwardness to hang in the air, as it were.
Even so, he kind of hovers and flaps awkwardly in the air for a few beats, before he lets out a little warble that might be a bird equivalent to a sigh, and touches down as a man a few moments later.]
[ On some insane level, Ford is kind of hoping Qrow really will take off into the sky. The reignition of the Bird Rivalry would actually be a fantastic way of dealing with the mess churning in his thoughts right now.
But he knows that would be deeply unproductive, so when Qrow approaches Ford feels a strange mix of dread and relief. He pushes past it, though, and clears his throat when Qrow lands. ]
Are you busy? I'd like to talk, if you aren't.
[ He blatantly would not like to talk, be he's pretty sure he needs to. ]
[The one downside of embracing retirement and refusing to get a proper job in Trench is that he is, in fact, never particularly busy. He's not even busy enough to lie about things he could be busy with, considering that Ruby's married and moved out and his own partner is as retired as he is.
Knowing this, and with his resolution to not let this be unnecessarily weird, he rolls a shoulder in a casual shrug.]
Nah, not really. You wanna talk over some pizza or something?
[Please don't make him have this talk here where he has to be sober AND have no distractions easily on hand,,]
[ Ford agrees quickly because he, too, thinks he might evaporate if he doesn't have something to distract himself, and he's too aware of Qrow's aversion to alcohol to start pounding back whisky right in front of him.
There's a restaurant not too far away, fortunately, so they don't have to deal with the agony of companionable silence for very long. They show up, they sit down, they order. Ford takes a moment to collect his thoughts, carefully sorting through what he's saying an how to say it.
Then he opens his mouth and says something completely different. ]
You have another niece, don't you? Yang? Ruby's sister?
[This short circuits him. He'd been braced to talk about Oz, and what Qrow had mentioned in his letter, and maybe even the full story about what happened with the lamp back on the way to Atlas.
He had not, in any way, prepared for Ford to ask him about Yang. It takes him a moment to even adjust to the realization that Ford knows about Yang, because it would've probably only come up in conversation with Ruby in the first place.]
[ Ford, genuinely, was also not expecting to ask about Yang. He's never even met the girl, just heard about her secondhand from people from Remnant. But it's her absence that feels painfully relevant in this moment anyway. ]
You haven't seen her since before we came to Trench, right? How?
[ ... Well, that doesn't make much sense. Ford tries again. ]
I mean-- I felt like I was losing my mind when Stan was gone, even when the kids were still here, and that was only a matter of a few months.
[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.
[ Wow, that family dynamic sure is something. Ford would feel compelled to tell Qrow more about his own in the name of evening the score, except that he suspects Qrow would sooner dive out a window than be subjected to such an intimate conversation subject. It's something he'll be silently grateful for now and then, perhaps, address in more detail later.
Right now, the important thing is that Qrow's words help him orient his own thoughts. They don't exactly help, because Ford's problem is he doesn't have anyone that's even remotely as close to him as Stan and the kids were. ]
That was what we decided, too, when we left Deerington for Trench.
[ Ford takes a deep drink of his complimentary water before he continues. ]
Sorry. I asked because... I was on my own for thirty years. It didn't bother me at the time, and I thought I would be able to adjust after the kids went back to the sea, but...
[ He shakes his head, helpless. ]
Your letter made me realize I don't actually know how to be alone anymore.
[There is a moment, as Ford speaks, that Qrow thinks it's kind of funny they'd have quite a bit in common and not really find out for close to three years. Maybe because that's something else they share -- they are absolutely terrible at talking about themselves.]
I'll be honest, I have no idea what I'd do if I were in your shoes. Raven and I -- didn't exactly grow up in a standard way, let's put it like that. I didn't really know what it was like to ... have your life matter to people, and feel the same way in return, until I went to Beacon, met Oz.
[Until he became part of Team STRQ, his first family. His first real loss.]
I went on plenty of missions by myself, after we lost Summer, but there was always somewhere to come home to, you know? People to do it all for.
[Oz may have taught him to care for humanity at large, but the heart of it was always closer. It's always been about the people he loves and believes in -- whether it's keeping them safe or fighting to defend the ideals they cared about.]
I'd like to think if I was the last one standing in Remnant [a painfully possible if he tries desperately not to dwell on] or if the rest of them went back to the sea here, I could still carry on fighting for the things that mattered to us, but I dunno if I could keep from falling apart.
[If he had no obligations to keep him away from the bottle, would he be able to resist trying to drown that pain again? He doesn't know. It plagues his nightmares, at times.
There's an awkward sort of weight in the air that lingers after that, like he definitely has more to say but isn't sure if he should say it, before he finally speaks up again -- though he doesn't quite look Ford in the eye as he does it.]
...For what it's worth, even if you didn't -- get back with him, our families have been pretty well entangled since Deerington, and all, so. If you ever needed anything....
[Brothers, kill him now. He is not at all equipped to have this conversation properly and he isn't even cursed to keep going this time, he is absolutely screwing this up.]
[ Ozpin again, huh? He certainly is the sort to make an impression on people, and thinking about that helps Ford come around to the point that Qrow is making. It's not just his family that's important to Qrow - or maybe it's more like the people that are important to him weren't always his family. Some of them were strangers at first, people he might have never met if his life had gone even slightly differently.
Immediately, Ford knows he can't change his definition of 'family' to include people that aren't Stan, Dipper, and Mabel, and he knows that even if he could he wouldn't want to. But that doesn't mean the world has to be categorized into 'family' and 'everyone else' either. Already, Fiddleford is someone he'd consider more than merely a friend. He knows the Wendy and Soos are both similarly important to Stan, Dipper, and Mabel. And the people they've all come to know and care about here, too. Ruby, Willow, Oscar, Glitch, Ritsuka - and Qrow, of course. None of them family, but all of them something more than mere friends.
And he thinks it's probably the other way around, too. Certainly Qrow, at the very least, would not be subjecting himself to this horrendously awkward conversation if there wasn't some sort of critical connection between the Pines and the people of Remnant. It's annoyingly simple now that everything has fallen into place, and Ford can only sigh when he thinks about how thoroughly he missed the point prior to this. Mabel wouldn't be mad at him, but surely she'd pat him on the arm and give him that disappointed-but-sympathetic look. ]
At the very least, I know Ruby won't let it stand if she thinks someone she cares about is in trouble.
[ It's said like half a joke, because Ford desperately needs to get away from the emotionally raw and vulnerable parts of this conversation, and just as desperately needs Qrow to understand that Ford knows exactly what's being offered to him. ]
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cryptograms) wrote2021-09-04 07:34 pm
no subject
But... he doesn't. He sits on it instead, turning the words and the situation and the prospect of interacting with Ozpin normally again over in his head. He has to admit, there's something there in Qrow's words. He doesn't want there to be something there, but there is, and it gnaws away at him while he sits alone in his empty house, suddenly missing the sound of his family more fiercely than he has in months.
Qrow doesn't get a response to his letter for days. And then one day while he's out and about, be it as a crow or a human, he will hear a sharp whistle from maybe half a block away - and in case that's too easy to dismiss, it's followed up with: ]
Qrow!
[ And there's Ford Pines, looking like he's trying very hard to not look grim. ]
no subject
Qrow should've assumed this might happen. He could ignore the whistle, even the call -- he knows he can outfly Ford, from that period of time the man had tried to catch him back in Deerington -- but there wouldn't be much point in that, ultimately. It'd just be allowing the awkwardness to hang in the air, as it were.
Even so, he kind of hovers and flaps awkwardly in the air for a few beats, before he lets out a little warble that might be a bird equivalent to a sigh, and touches down as a man a few moments later.]
...Hey.
no subject
But he knows that would be deeply unproductive, so when Qrow approaches Ford feels a strange mix of dread and relief. He pushes past it, though, and clears his throat when Qrow lands. ]
Are you busy? I'd like to talk, if you aren't.
[ He blatantly would not like to talk, be he's pretty sure he needs to. ]
no subject
Knowing this, and with his resolution to not let this be unnecessarily weird, he rolls a shoulder in a casual shrug.]
Nah, not really. You wanna talk over some pizza or something?
[Please don't make him have this talk here where he has to be sober AND have no distractions easily on hand,,]
no subject
[ Ford agrees quickly because he, too, thinks he might evaporate if he doesn't have something to distract himself, and he's too aware of Qrow's aversion to alcohol to start pounding back whisky right in front of him.
There's a restaurant not too far away, fortunately, so they don't have to deal with the agony of companionable silence for very long. They show up, they sit down, they order. Ford takes a moment to collect his thoughts, carefully sorting through what he's saying an how to say it.
Then he opens his mouth and says something completely different. ]
You have another niece, don't you? Yang? Ruby's sister?
no subject
He had not, in any way, prepared for Ford to ask him about Yang. It takes him a moment to even adjust to the realization that Ford knows about Yang, because it would've probably only come up in conversation with Ruby in the first place.]
Y...eah? What about her?
no subject
You haven't seen her since before we came to Trench, right? How?
[ ... Well, that doesn't make much sense. Ford tries again. ]
I mean-- I felt like I was losing my mind when Stan was gone, even when the kids were still here, and that was only a matter of a few months.
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.
no subject
Right now, the important thing is that Qrow's words help him orient his own thoughts. They don't exactly help, because Ford's problem is he doesn't have anyone that's even remotely as close to him as Stan and the kids were. ]
That was what we decided, too, when we left Deerington for Trench.
[ Ford takes a deep drink of his complimentary water before he continues. ]
Sorry. I asked because... I was on my own for thirty years. It didn't bother me at the time, and I thought I would be able to adjust after the kids went back to the sea, but...
[ He shakes his head, helpless. ]
Your letter made me realize I don't actually know how to be alone anymore.
no subject
I'll be honest, I have no idea what I'd do if I were in your shoes. Raven and I -- didn't exactly grow up in a standard way, let's put it like that. I didn't really know what it was like to ... have your life matter to people, and feel the same way in return, until I went to Beacon, met Oz.
[Until he became part of Team STRQ, his first family. His first real loss.]
I went on plenty of missions by myself, after we lost Summer, but there was always somewhere to come home to, you know? People to do it all for.
[Oz may have taught him to care for humanity at large, but the heart of it was always closer. It's always been about the people he loves and believes in -- whether it's keeping them safe or fighting to defend the ideals they cared about.]
I'd like to think if I was the last one standing in Remnant [a painfully possible if he tries desperately not to dwell on] or if the rest of them went back to the sea here, I could still carry on fighting for the things that mattered to us, but I dunno if I could keep from falling apart.
[If he had no obligations to keep him away from the bottle, would he be able to resist trying to drown that pain again? He doesn't know. It plagues his nightmares, at times.
There's an awkward sort of weight in the air that lingers after that, like he definitely has more to say but isn't sure if he should say it, before he finally speaks up again -- though he doesn't quite look Ford in the eye as he does it.]
...For what it's worth, even if you didn't -- get back with him, our families have been pretty well entangled since Deerington, and all, so. If you ever needed anything....
[Brothers, kill him now. He is not at all equipped to have this conversation properly and he isn't even cursed to keep going this time, he is absolutely screwing this up.]
no subject
Immediately, Ford knows he can't change his definition of 'family' to include people that aren't Stan, Dipper, and Mabel, and he knows that even if he could he wouldn't want to. But that doesn't mean the world has to be categorized into 'family' and 'everyone else' either. Already, Fiddleford is someone he'd consider more than merely a friend. He knows the Wendy and Soos are both similarly important to Stan, Dipper, and Mabel. And the people they've all come to know and care about here, too. Ruby, Willow, Oscar, Glitch, Ritsuka - and Qrow, of course. None of them family, but all of them something more than mere friends.
And he thinks it's probably the other way around, too. Certainly Qrow, at the very least, would not be subjecting himself to this horrendously awkward conversation if there wasn't some sort of critical connection between the Pines and the people of Remnant. It's annoyingly simple now that everything has fallen into place, and Ford can only sigh when he thinks about how thoroughly he missed the point prior to this. Mabel wouldn't be mad at him, but surely she'd pat him on the arm and give him that disappointed-but-sympathetic look. ]
At the very least, I know Ruby won't let it stand if she thinks someone she cares about is in trouble.
[ It's said like half a joke, because Ford desperately needs to get away from the emotionally raw and vulnerable parts of this conversation, and just as desperately needs Qrow to understand that Ford knows exactly what's being offered to him. ]