[He pauses, blinking a little at the absurdity of it. "His family", as though the ones he's thinking of specifically actually existed. Well, maybe in some realm they actually do. Remnant Regnards. After all, both his world and Ange's acknowledge that all of these universes are possible and probably tied together in some fashion. Break believes that's how Trench is able to pull people in from so many other worlds, too, though he doesn't bother to think about it much.]
...I only -- lived the one little bit, but...I knew my own story, you know? We were from there, and most all of us military. I imagine it's the closest thing the dream could sort out to my real family having produced knights for so many generations. I did not...thrive, in that setting, and...as a young man there was a certain incident wherein my involvement got a great many people killed. Less reprehensible than the truth of things, I suppose, but enough that I felt a need to leave Atlas entirely. And, of course, you know how Ozpin is about collecting listless strays.
[He gives no indication that he intends to elaborate on "the incident", but Qrow knows the real story, so there's no doubt he can detect the parallels anyway. A fighter brought up to do great and noble things from childhood, carrying on family tradition, only to bungle it all somehow and come out of the other side of things thoroughly fallen and with blood on his hands. But then, caught by someone who could give him a reason to keep going, and gave him a chance to accept it on his own terms.
It all checks out. And it's no surprise his story would manifest in such a way in this fake Remnant, really. He and Qrow have always been terribly alike in all the ways that matter most.]
[Break doesn't need to elaborate on details. Qrow can pretty much imagine the shape of it, based on everything they've talked about over the last year and change. The mention of Oz's tendency to collect listless strays brings him back to that conversation they'd had in this house, back when their friendship was new. They'd talked about so many things that night, from the mentors that believed in them to their personal apocalypses to family. It's nostalgic, and maybe it's because of that comfortable ease that he can share something a little more vulnerable.]
He always did know how to draw in the people who needed something to believe in the most. Back then, I used to think of him as someone who had all the answers, 'cause of that.
[If Break had met him a year prior to Trench, Qrow would've sounded a lot more bitter about that. Instead, he just sounds...solemn. Maybe a little sad. Ozpin was a safe harbor when he was a child, and though that pedestal needed to be broken to build a new foundation atop it, one never really forgets that feeling.]
I think the weirdest part of Deerington for me wasn't all the freaky dream logic, but realizing that he was so good with those people because he was one of them.
[That immortality had broken him so utterly that he kept himself going off the faith and hope of others, that if he could still inspire the lost and hurting to believe in something bigger than themselves, he could hold onto the will to keep fighting too. Qrow hadn't processed the weight of all those millennia until the dream made him experience his old mentor's memories -- until he realized that his own griefs had nearly shattered him, and he'd lived them for only a couple short decades.
To face the prospect of losing everyone you love, lifetime after lifetime for thousands of years with no relief on the horizon by your own choosing, all for the sake of others being able to live in peace just a little longer, a little longer, a little longer, forever .... no human being was meant to bear that gracefully. Understanding that was the first step to being able to forgive him.]
[This is one of those subjects where Break and Qrow are in tune enough to understand one another perfectly, but just different enough that they are distinctly their own people.]
I don't know that "something to believe in" is quite the way I would phrase it for myself. Rather, I'm the sort of person who needs a reason, if I'm to keep going. I can believe in all sorts of things, but if I can't find a purpose for my own existence, something I exist for, then...
[He shrugs. They've spoken before about how Qrow, at a loss after learning the truth behind the unwinnable war, devoted himself to the kids -- because even if he couldn't believe in what they were fighting for anymore, he could still protect the people he loved. Qrow knows, too, how it was Break's quest for White Alice that kept him going, and watched him use his devotion to his kids to find his feet in Trench. They both get it, even coming at the same thing from different angles. That's just how they are.]
Your Ozpin was very like my Rainsworths to me, in the dream. He had a job for me to do, saw to it that I was trained in how to do it, and set me loose to handle it as I saw fit. That I was able to come and go as it suited me, mm. That was why devoting myself to his cause with a whole heart was something I could do.
[He does get it--that was one of the earliest things they'd bonded over, after the kids they had to watch out for. They're both people who need to find somewhere they're needed and give themselves over to that. But the difference, perhaps, is that while the reasons Break has found to exist have changed throughout his life, he's always had one in some form or another.
For the first half of Qrow's life, though...he didn't.]
Yeah, I get it. If my family went back to the sea tomorrow, I'm not sure what I'd do with myself.
[Akechi had called him out on it, back in Deerington. If you were to be left alone, who would you live for? He didn't have an answer then. He still doesn't.]
...Back then, though, it was different. All I ever knew before Beacon was how to survive. When you've got nothing else, you think that's enough, you know?
[He shakes his head, letting out an almost wistful-sounding hum.]
Think teaching people like me how to live helped remind him that it all mattered. That there were still things in the world worth fighting for.
[Break lets out a hum that's a little more emotional than his usual agreements. He does know what he'd do with himself if everyone he's come to care for her returned to the sea tomorrow -- he'd stay exactly where he is, all alone, keeping things ready in case any of them ever returned like a lighthouse standing tall in the dark. Being a fool, he'd probably be falling all over again for a new gaggle of loved ones at the same time, constantly setting himself up for more of such feelings.
It's not a fate he wants even as he's accepted it as an inevitability if it's what this world decides to give him, and in fact the reminder of it causes a palpable surge of melancholy over the blood bond. He takes a long sip of his tea as he gets it under control, and the silence drags itself heavily across the moment.]
...I don't believe that my Remnant self had reached that point yet. [It's a soft admission.] I say as much because...it was my kids who taught this "real" me such, and -- late enough that I have not been able to fully embrace such until...arriving here. The difference between having a role in the story that one is content enough to play and...caring enough to try to write a different ending is...
[The burst of melancholy is met with a little electric charge of anxiety; it's undirected, in this case. Formless, shapeless. But there's still a weight to it, serrated teeth in its edges.]
Caring enough to try to earn the ending you want means opening yourself up to the possibility of failing.
[It means scraping your ass off the pavement of a bar and fighting alongside your kids in Atlas despite the impossible odds, seemingly finding a path to the next chapter and watching it all fall to ruin before you.
There is a good reason they chose to walk away from Remnant, as the dream crumbled.]
[That's a loaded statement, and Break is silent in the face of it for several moments. It's a desperation he's known intimately several times over. He cared enough to hurl himself straight into hell for the ending he wanted, once, and didn't get it. Then he signed on to his own ending without realizing he'd care about completely different things by the time he actually arrived there, and most of the few acceptable parts of it that were left were torn from his hands, too. About the only thing he can still say with any pride is that he did what only he was able to do back then, and while that certainly isn't anything small in the midst of the larger story, most days it's overshadowed by the bloody shrapnel he flung into his dearest people on his way out.
It takes a concentrated effort not to fall into his usual funk about that. Instead:]
That other me…I wonder if Trench conjured the notion of him up to entertain itself, or if that dream was a brief connection to a reality that truly exists. And, if it's the latter, I wonder what his ending will be.
[The notion of other versions of himself out there doesn't bother him much. He doesn't really want to meet any of them, mind, but the idea of their existence doesn't trouble him.]
I have an unpleasant hunch that he may not last much longer than I did.
[It's a strange idea, but not one without merit. After all, there were the January sheddings, and there'd been an implication along those lines when they'd started finding dying Wastes in the crumbling dream that were themselves Sleepers.
Qrow feels similarly about the whole situation. It's honestly somewhat comforting to him that there's some version out there to deal with the war so he himself can firmly leave Remnant in the past and focus on the new life he's been building here. Even so, he wouldn't really want to be confronted with alternate versions of him either.]
If that Remnant ran across the same lines as mine, it's probably not a good ending, no. Huntsmen don't tend to last that long out there in general, and then you bring Salem into the equation for those of us in Oz's inner circle...
[he shakes his head]
You know how it is. Fighting in apocalypse wars isn't exactly good for your health.
[He expects his own ending to be far from peaceful. Especially knowing the state of things as he left them, two years ago. Because unless they're mistaken about it all, a Qrow with nothing more to lose is one that is one that's liable to be exceptionally reckless.]
No. And, on top of the usual nonsense, my semblance was — well, breaking things, essentially. I was still using my old name, so perhaps that was a tribute of sorts to my present one. [Break finally smiles again, but it's self-deprecating, and a little mean.] With no lock able to keep me out of places I should not have been, I imagine that version's capacity for getting into trouble was near limitless.
[He may not be the most self-aware person around, but any menace worth his salt can spot a skill or item absolutely no one wants him to have from a mile away. And there's no way any version of himself wouldn't make reckless decisions with an ability like that. Remnant Break may well be one who manages to get himself murdered before anything else takes him out.]
I carried a terribly boring sword with no shotguns in it for that reason, I’m sorry to tell you. And, I never bothered to replace my eye permanently. The risks in being unable to control what was damaged if my semblance got away from me were simply too great.
[You know how sometimes, someone says something and you get a Thought stuck in your head that's frankly dumb but it will not leave without being entertained? Qrow perhaps might have lingered a bit more on that last part and how he can relate to it, if not for that. Break can probably tell, if not from the bond, then from the silly smirk that forms on his lover's face.]
I don't know, it sounds like it still counts if your soul was the gun.
[…yeah. That's dumb. But it's dumb in a way that has Break opening and closing his mouth a couple of times as he gathers up a baffled protest, dumbly.]
Wha. That's — my soul is not explosive and noisy! [ lol ] And it wasn't as though I was going about blowing holes in things. You couldn't follow my trail of destruction and think, "ah, yes, the perpetrator of this business definitely had a gun."
[He waves his hands around ineffectually as he says this. Boyfriend just called him a shotgun??? He cannot believe —]
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[He pauses, blinking a little at the absurdity of it. "His family", as though the ones he's thinking of specifically actually existed. Well, maybe in some realm they actually do. Remnant Regnards. After all, both his world and Ange's acknowledge that all of these universes are possible and probably tied together in some fashion. Break believes that's how Trench is able to pull people in from so many other worlds, too, though he doesn't bother to think about it much.]
...I only -- lived the one little bit, but...I knew my own story, you know? We were from there, and most all of us military. I imagine it's the closest thing the dream could sort out to my real family having produced knights for so many generations. I did not...thrive, in that setting, and...as a young man there was a certain incident wherein my involvement got a great many people killed. Less reprehensible than the truth of things, I suppose, but enough that I felt a need to leave Atlas entirely. And, of course, you know how Ozpin is about collecting listless strays.
[He gives no indication that he intends to elaborate on "the incident", but Qrow knows the real story, so there's no doubt he can detect the parallels anyway. A fighter brought up to do great and noble things from childhood, carrying on family tradition, only to bungle it all somehow and come out of the other side of things thoroughly fallen and with blood on his hands. But then, caught by someone who could give him a reason to keep going, and gave him a chance to accept it on his own terms.
It all checks out. And it's no surprise his story would manifest in such a way in this fake Remnant, really. He and Qrow have always been terribly alike in all the ways that matter most.]
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He always did know how to draw in the people who needed something to believe in the most. Back then, I used to think of him as someone who had all the answers, 'cause of that.
[If Break had met him a year prior to Trench, Qrow would've sounded a lot more bitter about that. Instead, he just sounds...solemn. Maybe a little sad. Ozpin was a safe harbor when he was a child, and though that pedestal needed to be broken to build a new foundation atop it, one never really forgets that feeling.]
I think the weirdest part of Deerington for me wasn't all the freaky dream logic, but realizing that he was so good with those people because he was one of them.
[That immortality had broken him so utterly that he kept himself going off the faith and hope of others, that if he could still inspire the lost and hurting to believe in something bigger than themselves, he could hold onto the will to keep fighting too. Qrow hadn't processed the weight of all those millennia until the dream made him experience his old mentor's memories -- until he realized that his own griefs had nearly shattered him, and he'd lived them for only a couple short decades.
To face the prospect of losing everyone you love, lifetime after lifetime for thousands of years with no relief on the horizon by your own choosing, all for the sake of others being able to live in peace just a little longer, a little longer, a little longer, forever .... no human being was meant to bear that gracefully. Understanding that was the first step to being able to forgive him.]
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I don't know that "something to believe in" is quite the way I would phrase it for myself. Rather, I'm the sort of person who needs a reason, if I'm to keep going. I can believe in all sorts of things, but if I can't find a purpose for my own existence, something I exist for, then...
[He shrugs. They've spoken before about how Qrow, at a loss after learning the truth behind the unwinnable war, devoted himself to the kids -- because even if he couldn't believe in what they were fighting for anymore, he could still protect the people he loved. Qrow knows, too, how it was Break's quest for White Alice that kept him going, and watched him use his devotion to his kids to find his feet in Trench. They both get it, even coming at the same thing from different angles. That's just how they are.]
Your Ozpin was very like my Rainsworths to me, in the dream. He had a job for me to do, saw to it that I was trained in how to do it, and set me loose to handle it as I saw fit. That I was able to come and go as it suited me, mm. That was why devoting myself to his cause with a whole heart was something I could do.
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For the first half of Qrow's life, though...he didn't.]
Yeah, I get it. If my family went back to the sea tomorrow, I'm not sure what I'd do with myself.
[Akechi had called him out on it, back in Deerington. If you were to be left alone, who would you live for? He didn't have an answer then. He still doesn't.]
...Back then, though, it was different. All I ever knew before Beacon was how to survive. When you've got nothing else, you think that's enough, you know?
[He shakes his head, letting out an almost wistful-sounding hum.]
Think teaching people like me how to live helped remind him that it all mattered. That there were still things in the world worth fighting for.
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It's not a fate he wants even as he's accepted it as an inevitability if it's what this world decides to give him, and in fact the reminder of it causes a palpable surge of melancholy over the blood bond. He takes a long sip of his tea as he gets it under control, and the silence drags itself heavily across the moment.]
...I don't believe that my Remnant self had reached that point yet. [It's a soft admission.] I say as much because...it was my kids who taught this "real" me such, and -- late enough that I have not been able to fully embrace such until...arriving here. The difference between having a role in the story that one is content enough to play and...caring enough to try to write a different ending is...
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[The burst of melancholy is met with a little electric charge of anxiety; it's undirected, in this case. Formless, shapeless. But there's still a weight to it, serrated teeth in its edges.]
Caring enough to try to earn the ending you want means opening yourself up to the possibility of failing.
[It means scraping your ass off the pavement of a bar and fighting alongside your kids in Atlas despite the impossible odds, seemingly finding a path to the next chapter and watching it all fall to ruin before you.
There is a good reason they chose to walk away from Remnant, as the dream crumbled.]
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It takes a concentrated effort not to fall into his usual funk about that. Instead:]
That other me…I wonder if Trench conjured the notion of him up to entertain itself, or if that dream was a brief connection to a reality that truly exists. And, if it's the latter, I wonder what his ending will be.
[The notion of other versions of himself out there doesn't bother him much. He doesn't really want to meet any of them, mind, but the idea of their existence doesn't trouble him.]
I have an unpleasant hunch that he may not last much longer than I did.
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Qrow feels similarly about the whole situation. It's honestly somewhat comforting to him that there's some version out there to deal with the war so he himself can firmly leave Remnant in the past and focus on the new life he's been building here. Even so, he wouldn't really want to be confronted with alternate versions of him either.]
If that Remnant ran across the same lines as mine, it's probably not a good ending, no. Huntsmen don't tend to last that long out there in general, and then you bring Salem into the equation for those of us in Oz's inner circle...
[he shakes his head]
You know how it is. Fighting in apocalypse wars isn't exactly good for your health.
[He expects his own ending to be far from peaceful. Especially knowing the state of things as he left them, two years ago. Because unless they're mistaken about it all, a Qrow with nothing more to lose is one that is one that's liable to be exceptionally reckless.]
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[He may not be the most self-aware person around, but any menace worth his salt can spot a skill or item absolutely no one wants him to have from a mile away. And there's no way any version of himself wouldn't make reckless decisions with an ability like that. Remnant Break may well be one who manages to get himself murdered before anything else takes him out.]
I carried a terribly boring sword with no shotguns in it for that reason, I’m sorry to tell you. And, I never bothered to replace my eye permanently. The risks in being unable to control what was damaged if my semblance got away from me were simply too great.
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I don't know, it sounds like it still counts if your soul was the gun.
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Wha. That's — my soul is not explosive and noisy! [ lol ] And it wasn't as though I was going about blowing holes in things. You couldn't follow my trail of destruction and think, "ah, yes, the perpetrator of this business definitely had a gun."
[He waves his hands around ineffectually as he says this. Boyfriend just called him a shotgun??? He cannot believe —]