archived.

          just as quickly as li’s dragged back into the real world, qrow is too - nature shifting to insecure and unsure of himself as gaze searches the marketplace around them - reminding himself that they’re in the real world and not back when they were younger and seemingly had the whole world to themselves. he’s left to watch li with wide eyes, unable to tear his gaze away - still unable to process the idea that the person he has so many memories of, so many fuzzy yet important memories of just… doesn’t remember him. doesn’t remember anything at all. just as qrow’s beginning to figure out where he stands here, just as he’s about to pull himself together and tell li, no he wasn’t up to anything other than trying to find a drink on his off time. the other man says that and branwen’s mind grinds to a halt.

          “you… y’ what..?” he doesn’t move, can’t move an inch - left only to watch blankly as li moves further away with a wide eyed look. if i can’t remember anything else, i remember that. the thought won’t hit any deeper than that. won’t get any further than to just sit there in front of pink eyes that can’t tear themselves away from his… from his best friend. that swell in his chest is back, the one that makes it hard for qrow to breathe again. the one that makes his voice die in his throat and brings heat to his face from up his throat. the same one he remembers throughout his childhood. the constant want for more yet denying himself that simple idea because he’s him. no one wants qrow branwen. no one wants that curse on their lives. that curse doesn’t deserve anyone like li. doesn’t deserve anything in this life when all he brings is pain and suffering. 

           somehow, branwen manages to stumble after li - hand finding the other man’s shoulder in an attempt to stop him in his progress away from the corvid. he may be a huntsman, body marred and twisted from both his job and magic entwined with his very being - nothing at all like the boys they once were - but he’s still qrow. he’s still… still crow. li is something entirely of his own - something qrow had never allowed himself to think of as any more than a simple friend. yet here they are. “y’ mean–tha’ i… i was… yer best friend?” he doesn’t know what he expects, knows li’s situation, knows that the man probably doesn’t know much more than what he’s said. but he has to ask. busy market place be damned. his deadline until his next mission for ozpin can wait. 

          this is more important. this is… this is… qrow doesn’t know what it is but it’s important.

          “y’ mean that? i–i…” a pause, deep breath, pull yourself together - hand pulls back to fiddle with rings around his fingers instead. “i don’t. have anythin’ on, nah. jus’ tryin’ to find somewhere decent fer a drink ‘round here - let… lemme buy y’ somethin’ - ‘least i can do.”

strong brows furrowed at the question,   at qrow, because li was thinking the same thing. in their circumstances, of course the corvid had been his closest confidant. he’d felt unity in his assassin clan, a kind of sick and toxic bond to the people he considered brothers and sisters in arms, that was brainwashed into them from the second they were capable of coherent thought. his relationship with qrow was different from that. that was a bond forged by choice, created despite the fact that they should have been enemies. qrow might have been used to following li’s lead when they were kids, but li followed qrow’s lead out of that lifestyle   (   despite how difficult it had been to let him go initially   )   and found the happiness he’d always been seeking. he couldn’t remember all the details of his life after he left his clan, still can’t put everything in chronological order but the emotions are there, have always been there, he’s sure.   ‘   you’re not supposed to forget your first friend let alone your best.   i’m so sorry i did.   ’

there was a bar away from the main street in this district that li veered to. this had been the neighbourhood he’d returned to whenever his huntsman missions finished but it never felt like home. so long as he was void of memories, he didn’t know if he could build any more meaningful ones on top of that emptiness. he had no solid foundation, as well as a past fraught with enemies taking pleasure in li’s weakness. this was no way to build a life. he had no hope of establishing anything so long as this hole in his head remained. his ability to memorise things remarkably fast, including the layout of the city, was an irony in itself. already his mind had memorised qrow’s features, afraid that if he blinked everything might be wiped clean once more. he looked tired, the wear of the years settling into handsome features.

the lighting was dark, the staff pleasant in their lazy, drawled greetings. li tended to sit at the bar whenever he did attend drinking establishments, but he believed their conversation might call for more privacy and had opted for a booth instead. he ordered another of whatever qrow did, knowing that he most likely wouldn’t be very focused on drinking it, not now that his memories were starting to return. he had his fingers laced in front of him, staring the drink down as is if it might bite him.   ‘   i think i stopped drinking after graduation.   ’   he didn’t say it after qrow just ordered it to be rude or ungrateful, but to recall what he could, what his current stimulus was providing for him.   ‘   i remember being too paranoid it would ruin my senses.   ’   a humourless laugh, something bitter and sad.   ‘   i bet my paranoia ruined a lot of other things too,   it’s definitely stopped me from moving on,   taken over a decade of my life from me.   ’

then again he must have found this comfortable space among his teammates. li had kept a cautious distance from raven, as he always had, but the two others were surprising, a contrasting presence in qrow’s life. the dragon had observed them from time to time, often amongst the ranks of his own team, especially the blond one ( most notably the way qrow behaved around him. ) the thought alone brought an unfamiliar tightness into his chest, one that made it harder to breath. he already knew what this meant personally, but he’d never really been interested in self evaluation. he was good at reading other people, it made him very good at his job. he had enough time to understand in the one week since they’d reunited that he’d been replaced. that was good, in retrospect. he wanted someone to combat qrow’s self depreciating humour if he couldn’t be there to do it. these new people had done it better than he could, by the looks of it. that hadn’t stopped the strained smile when qrow had pointed out his team, pointed out taiyang xiao long.

          being around li is an exercise in brainpower that even the branwen hadn’t been aware of, until a few weeks into their more regular meet ups and visits that ventured further and further into previously unknown territory (both physical and emotional) that crow really had never seen coming until this point. still, he runs, throws himself around tree trunks as they show up in his path, hops rabbit holes and ditches in easy strides of lean legs in an effort to keep up with li. with is friend. 

          even the concept alone is jarring to the crow, to the burden, the curse laid upon his tribe. but not so much in the bad way anymore. more so that he’s had to teach himself to just let this happen. let himself soften and work with li - let the other boy lead him while branwen follows at a safe distance. this, however was not that safe distance. this was the two of them gripping this opportunity with both hands and refusing to let it go even as breath fails their lungs and cold air burns their throats as it’s forced past chapped lips. he’s slight, built for speed more than anything else, known for being one of the fastest of his age - rivalling even his sister to the disdain of his father a peers as he picks up the art of fighting as if it were a dance. 

          branwen comes to a stop just behind li, lips parted as his chest heaves to catch up with his breath as pale hues take in the space before them. something in the back of his mind tells him not to go anywhere near that opening. that he’s a disaster waiting to happen if he gets too close - but the other side? the one that’s now completely fixated on the offer of holding the other boy’s hand? that side wants to be a child, wants to do what they’re supposed to do. wants to forget his curse and his father’s warnings. wants to go exploring and follow this figure into the darkness. features are flushed, from the run? or the offer of a hand as crow nods with equal determination offered toward li? he doesn’t care anymore as a step forward is taken, confidence in every inch of him for once. lips flattened into a thin line that threatened to shift to a smirk as he looks to his side to find li again. 

          “’s better be cool, ‘m takin’ yer word for it.”

there was merit to the saying “ the grass is greener on the other side. ” li hadn’t becoming fascinated with the lives of normal people lived until he’d been allowed to observe them. he might have been the rising star of the assassins in his age group but he wanted more. he wanted missions away from the reach of mistral, he wanted to explore without prerogative, he wanted to see new places, meet new people, learn more. li’s life had consisted of the same damn thing over and over again, constant conflict, no room for outside stimulus but crow - crow was his only break from that, his only solace from a suffocating lifestyle that, quite frankly, bored li to death. he never had as much fun fighting than he did sparring with crow, rarely talked ever outside of talking to crow, never smiled or laughed outside of crow. no one in his clan ever tried to the way crow did.

he didn’t actually hold out his hand until the light from the cave entrance was almost out of sight. his eyes already adjusted to the darkness, he paid more attention to the floor this time, watching for anything the other boy might accidentally trip over. ‘ i met someone on my last mission, a professor at a fancy school. not haven, but the mark went to one of those gifted academies, for people with prospects. this man, he teaches archeology. loves looking at ruins, and old stuff, and long dead things the same way i do. ’ he didn’t normally talk this much, not even during their regular encounters, but the cave’s darkness makes for an unnerving quiet, even if li could see. he might’ve been holding crow’s hand to know he was there, but he imagined it was probably more difficult for the other boy, especially with his penchant for believing himself a bad luck charm.

li wasn’t ready to have a child when an told him she was pregnant / with his background he has never believed he could be a good person / let alone a good father. an was one of the only people he confided in about his background as a former assassin, and he thought it was foolish to think someone like him could ever raise someone else. his past could always resurface and come to hurt them, especially if they ever eloped and left the security of the lie compound ( which they eventually did, waiting in kuroyuri while oniyuri finished building. )

li didn’t want to be a father, but he kept this a secret all throughout zhilan’s pregnancy until something awful happened. she had a miscarriage. he felt awful during that depressive period more for her, but he had also realised he was disappointed too. he had been mentally preparing himself for this, and all in one night the chance of a real family away from his awful upbringing took that away. an didn’t intend to try again, because the doctor said it was just naturally difficult for a woman with her biology. even still, ren was born on the spring equinox, a miracle baby.

li justified taking more and more dangerous missions while he was away and his son grew up without him as an excuse. he was earning a little cache so when they moved to oniyuri they wouldn’t have to worry about expenses. the truth was that fighting, in any form, is an ingrained part of who li is. he has been fighting so long, that he doesn’t know how to function well without it. it used to be people he tore apart, but grimm make a good substitute.

he also didn’t know how to be a good father. in the assassin clan he was raised in, all children raised in the same age bracket are brothers and sisters, no matter the blood relation. you never meet your mother or father, you look to the elders for guidance. li could have very well interacted with his mother or father while he was raised in the clan, and it became a sort of mission to distinguish who it could have been, but he never found out. you are not supposed to tell your child that you are their parent, to build up a sense of cult - like unity. he wasn’t given the kind of upbringing that ren deserved, so didn’t know how to provide.

he never liked leaving all their living expenses up to an, using the remains of an’s rich family money to survive. she had been disowned for running away with him after all, they couldn’t live like that forever. she was still a medical practitioner but she volunteered to stay home and take care of ren in that one year.

li couldn’t see ren all the time for the first few years of his life. ren was raised in zhilan’s family property until they moved to kuroyuri and zhilan’s father hated him. he definitely wouldn’t have let li stay if zhilan wasn’t his favourite daughter. this was one of the reasons he spent so much time away from ren, and all the more reason he felt guilty that ren still idolised him when he was away. even when li could see his son more often, he was always paranoid that the enemies he’d made in his past would come back to haunt him and harm his family. he’d never had a reason to protect anything before instead of killing.

li had a lot of issues he kept to himself even up to the point where he died on the canon timeline, where my version of li was heavily injured and lost his memories. an knew that he was of a former assassin clan, but he never told ren anything about himself. anything ren knew about li he had to figure out through observation ( li was a man of action, but didn’t say much at all. ) he was always good at hiding his emotions because there weren’t that many there to begin with, but those few precious slivers of non-apathy he reserved for people closest to him. he made friends, of course, but it was easy for him to grow apart from people, keep a distance, to the point where no one was there to recognise him after he lost his memories ( save for enemies. )

As Li pointed back to the stand, Ruby leaned to the side to get a better look. “Ooooh, yeah that would make sense. I did stop there for a quick snack! It looked so good that I probably didn’t put my wallet back right!” She laughed nervously, doing her best to make light of her own short comings. Tucking her wallet back into her pocket properly this time, she looked to the man with a smile.

“We actually just arrived yesterday! We sort of came to speak with the headmaster of Haven, and we did! But we have to do some waiting around now.” She crossed her arms, nodding in a matter of fact way “Since there’s plenty of time to kill, I decided to come and see the shops! It’s been a long time since my friends and I have been in a place like this! I wanted to do some shopping for Jaune, and Nora, and Ren. And then some things for my own team too! Say, you wouldn’t happen to know a good dust shop would you?”

‘ that’s understandable, they’re a favourite of mine too. ’ he’d all but familiarised himself with the cuisine the marketplace had to offer, living only a few minutes away. an endeared smile curled his lips as he regarded young huntress, a nonchalant shrug of his shoulder in response to her boisterous nature. quite honestly, there was something about her that was ringing a bell in the void that was his memory but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. something about her cape, her weapon. he furrowed his brow, but only for a moment, focusing on her question at hand.

‘ ah haven business. ’ the elder dragon nodded, curious and a tad bit perplexed this young girl was giving away so much information to a stranger. maybe he was right to warn her about the suspicious folk that traversed the city, still it worried her that she didn’t seem to suspect him as well, just because he’d aided her. the name “ ren ” gives him pause, but not an unreasonably long time. something does stir in the back of his mind though, a memory that he couldn’t quite grasp.