#semblessed

Jaune tended to the small shrine his family kept to the goddess of wisdom. It was a humble shrine, and the freshly picked bouquet of flowers was a meagre offering, but it was the best Jaune and the Arc family could muster for their patron goddess. Times were lean after their ancestral home had been lost in a fire thanks to a terrible lightning storm. If Jaune couldn’t secure a patron in the capitol, then his family may not last the winter. They had enough money for shelter, or enough for food. Not both.

“Oh, Goddess,” Jaune began his prayer, kneeling before a humble shrine. “please guide me down the right path. I’m going to the Great Collegium, down in the capitol, and never been so far from home. Please, please, help me make my family proud. For once. Please, help me find a good patron and do well in my studies. My family needs me. I’ll do anything in return...”

Jaune ended his prayer by pressing his forehead to the ground. Finally he rose, gathering up his somewhat threadbare cloak and tattered pack. He looked down the road before him, not sure if he’d run into bandits, not sure if he could secure his family the funds they needed even if he managed to reach the capitol. He didn’t feel adequate to the task before him. But it was the only chance they had.

@SEMBLESSED.   MEME.   ACCEPTING.

“I suppose, the way we always have.” 

The children had lost faith in him, which didn’t surprise him. At the end of the day they were children still. This wasn’t their war to fight. They had a fraction of the training they needed, and enough nightmares to make most hardened warriors falter. He hadn’t wanted this for them and if things had been different he would have left them with Lionheart to finish their training. Then they could make a choice. 

Qrow was hurt. That was...less easy to swallow, and while Ozpin stood by the importance of some secrets, he couldn’t simply hide away when a man who he considered one of his dearest friends drank himself to death.  

Cane leaning the way, he moved towards the bar, the scent of alcohol making his stomach turn and his leg throbbing with a phantom pain from another life. 

“Betrayal is a terrible thing. Looking into someone’s eyes that you had the utmost faith in, and realizing that they’ve let you down is painful. Having someone you held in your heart consciously hurt you...it rots a little part of you away." As he struggled with his new height to sit on the stool, he wasn’t sure if he was referring to himself or Leo. “At it’s weakest, it makes you a little harder. A little colder. A little slower to trust. At it’s worst, the pain makes you feel as though you’ll die. That surely there’s no way you can go on past this.” 

If he closed his eyes he could still see her. See the woman he loved throw the first blast, not just at him, but their children. Their innocent little girls. 

qrow hateship. raven & vernal interactions. idk, i'm always coming up with crazy crackships. throw two characters together and you never know what can happen lol

//i’m not opposed to qrow hateship as long as its done right bc im a Trash Man

//and maaaybe adam?? but really like. thats about it lol

     silver  hues  lock  their  vision  upon  a  familiar  face ... a  smile  graces  a  porcelain  complexion,  but  she  remains  silent ... just  for  a  moment  or  two.      a  hand  extends  outwards  to  him ... as  if  to  greet  him ... feels  like  it’s  been  a  fair  while  since  she  was  reacquainted  with  those  she  held  close.

          “ i  hope  you’ve  been  behaving  yourself,  qrow.  i’d  hate  to  give  you  a  lecture  after  being  back  not  even  five  minutes. ”

When the dragon killer insisted he’d be hurt someday, Mercury was always quick to tell her that he trusted a cornered dragon far more than an unarmed human--and that the analogy included her, as well. Dragons were straightforward, honest creatures. They had no need for subterfuge, cared little for manipulation, and they remembered when one was kind to them. Although they wouldn’t hesitate to cause harm when it suited them, Mercury understood them.

Humans, on the other hand, were creatures of greed and spite. His assailants had ambushed him as he butchered a deer carcass for a newly released fledgling, scaring off the young dragon. Before he could even hope to defend himself his knife was stuck impotently in the dirt and he was overwhelmed by two far better prepared for this than he was.

Like it or not, Mercury was acutely aware of the fact that Emerald had inarguably saved his life. He spat a mouthful of blood on the grass, grimaced as she pulled him to his feet. A strangled groan hissed between his teeth when he struggled to get his legs under him. The freely bleeding slashes above his knees were the culprits, wicked rends in the muscle that refused to bear weight. One was far worse than the other, and the better one was not great either, but he managed to find a shuffling, one-legged gait with the aid of the last person he’d expect to show him this mercy.

“Not with me,” he ground out. The bulk of his energy was consumed by the simple act of moving forward, each lurching step a show of faith that Emerald wouldn’t let him fall. It was not so much that he truly trusted her, but the fact that he had no choice but to trust her. Distantly he thought he must know how the gravely injured wild dragons must feel when he first came upon them. He could do little else but hope that her intentions were genuine and mutter directions.

The going was slow, arduous, but in due time his home came into view. Nestled in a well-hidden valley, there was plenty of room for the roosting beasts that seemed to be everywhere. Horned heads rose one after the other as his return was noted--and with it, the intrusion of a human a few of them recognized. Vicious hisses accompanied a clamber for greater heights, a handful of the beasts seeking distance while one in particular opted for the opposite. She was of an impressive size, her age evident in the fact that she towered easily over the house by which she waited, solemnly guarding. Cobalt scales glinted nearly black underneath the night sky, the elegant anatomy of wings and tail suggesting great aerial dexterity. This was not a species meant for fighting, but if her wicked claws and teeth were any indication, she was far from helpless.

@semblessed

“...She won’t always be there for you.” 

Ozpin was waiting in Raven’s tent--he was trying, one last time, to reach her. And here was her newest lackey, Vernal--sent here likely to kill Ozpin if he tried anything. 

Instead, all he had to say was simply that. Raven wouldn’t always take care of her own--she took care of Raven, first and foremost. He thought he should at least try and tell this girl--who Raven was apparently having masquerade as Spring--what she was really getting into.