Chapter 1: Nightmares

The shattered remains of the moon and the stars disappeared, leaving him in darkness. The forest was alive with it’s music dancing in the air. 

He walked in it with ease, it was as familiar to him as holding a blade. It weighed on him like one. He longed to drop the blade forced into his hand and to walk in the light. Life wasn’t that easy for him though.

He had been born into the world to kill and to steal. Shame always filled him at the thought of the harm he had done.

He wanted to stop.

It was then that the forest fell silent as if to accuse him of betraying his tribe. The darkness melted away as a giggle echoed through the forest. It was bright like the moon and the stars had once shined down on him.

It was then that Qrow saw her.

A little girl no older than ten stood there with a big smile on her face. She waved to him like they were old friends. His stomach twisted in dread and excitement. He loved this as much as he hated it. 

He just had to endure it as he found himself as a ten year old once more. He walked towards her. He was at war with himself as he walked, for he had this dream countless times. His mind plagued him with her image as if to condemn him for what his family had done.

For what he had done.

Her long black hair was hidden in her cape. The hood hid some of her yet those eyes and that smile could never be hidden. 

Nothing could hide them.

He knew that he would always find her no matter the darkness or the distance. “Hello.”

“Hi! I love your forest!” she said happily.

“It’s not my forest. Too many Grimm for it to be anyone’s forest,” he muttered when he noticed the comic in her hands. He had wanted to ignore it but his eyes turned to it.

He tried so hard, still his eyes stared at it. He had dreamed all of this so many times. He knew every part, every word that would happen by heart.

“I know, its great but terrible at the same time. It’s a land filled with man’s greatest enemy, waiting to be freed from them,” she whispered. Her words were like music that he longed to hear more of. 

“Humanity’s too weak to take it back.”

She pouted at that. “It is not!”

“It is,” he retorted.

“It is not!”

“It is.”

“It is not!”

“It is!”

“It is not! If it was weak then we would have never survived in the beginning,” she shouted. Her hands were on her hips and she stared him down with those beautiful eyes. “Humanity was strong enough and so will the people to come. We’re strong, right?”

“I know I am,” he told her before giving her a smirk. “Not so sure about you though. You’re too cute to be able to kill Grimm.”

“I won’t be cute for forever,” she said with a cheeky smile. She thrust the comic into his face. It was one that he had seen everyday for almost seven years. On it was the greatest huntress of the old generation. “One day, I’ll be just like the Grimm Reaper and I’ll save people.”

Her kamas in hand, she looked ready for battle with her face hidden away. The eyes of her skull mask was like looking at one’s future if they thought to fight her.

“You’ll have to grow taller if you want to do that.”

“I’m not that short and I’m only ten! I’ll grow in time.”

“Hopefully. If not then I’ll be sure to keep you safe in my pocket,” he told her.

She only pouted more and punched him with her free hand. “You’re so mean. Why do I hang out with you?”

It was coming, he knew it was. His mouth opened on it’s own to reply. “Because I saved your butt from the Grimm and I do make you laugh now and then.”

The smile faded and her eyes became haunted. Her expression mirrored the one that she had given him that day. “You didn’t make me laugh that day.”

He knew what she was about to say and dreaded the words. “What day is that?”

“The day you killed my father.”

He opened his eyes to stare at the tent above his head. His heart pounded to the point of pain as he did. He felt sick to his stomach, it had been the third time in that week that he had had that nightmare.

But he had lost count of how many times he had had that nightmare for the last seven years. 

It was a curse and a blessing rolled into one. He wanted so badly to undo his past actions, to be forgiven the sin of killing another. The Grimm did enough of it that he and his tribe had no reason to help. 

Still, his hands were stained with the blood of man. Her father had been the first of many.

He sat up when he felt his stomach could handle it. The comic fell into his lap; he had forgotten falling asleep with it.

He had a collection of them. The one in his lap was his favorite though. She had given it to him before had happened. The faded image of the Grimm Reaper stared back at him. The empty sockets of her skull mask seemed to condemn him.

The Grimm Reaper was his hero. Someone that he had once dreamed to be like. It was her deeds and actions that had made him want to reach for the stars.

Dreams were meant to end, the stars always faded in the morning light. He was no longer a child that could have either. He may never have deserved them to begin with.

He looked at Raven, still asleep on her own pallet beside his own. They had slept beside each other since infancy. She was used to his sudden nightmares. He had learned long ago to wake up from them before the Grimm noticed. Raven had helped him with that in the beginning. 

He looked back at the comic. Those sockets continued to stare at him, to make him feel sick to his stomach. They reminded him that he was a killer, a monster no different than the Grimm. It would never matter that he just wanted to be a human.

This tribe would force him to be a monster until his last breath.

Beacon was his only hope of escape. She had told him that he could be what he wanted there.

That little girl had become his hero for wanting to help him live as a human. Or she had been until he was ordered to give the finishing blow to her father. The look in those silver eyes never left him.

Qrow hid the comic inside his pallet with the rest. If he left one out where anyone could see them then his father would burn it without another thought.

With a sigh, he got up and out of the tent that he shared with Raven. There was no way he was going to get anymore sleep.

No one was awake but those that were on guard duty. They saw him, it wasn’t an uncommon thing with him to be awake this early. They probably thought he was going to train in the forest like always.

He wasn’t.

He walked out of the gates to walk into the darkness of the forest. The stars had faded in the darkness and the trees hid the moon. It was quiet like Death had decided to walk at his side. Death may as well done so. His Semblance was poison that would kill everything.

Himself included.

Everyday, it felt like he was slowly dying with each misfortune he caused. Those in the tribe were wary of him because of it. Only Raven had never thought different of him for it. Their father almost seemed to hate him for it. Never mind that Qrow inherited it from the old man.

“Pain is your only reward for being near me,” he muttered aloud.

He should have told the girl the truth. It would have been better if she knew and had kept away.

Hatred for himself twisted his insides to the point that he found himself sick. The bile rose and filled his mouth, overflowing onto the earth at his feet. 

His insides only twisted all the tighter as he puked. His thoughts still filled with that girl and what he had done. They plagued him like rats plagued the dead. They nibbled and chewed on his mind, refusing to return to the darkness of his subconscious.

They were usually buried deep in his mind, hidden from everyone and him. Yet they refused to go back, to be buried once again.

It only sickened him more.

It was the snap of a twig that snapped his mind from his darkness, that forced a calm upon him. He knew what was there before they even appeared to him.

A growl ripped through the air. A warning for what was about to happen. He just wiped the puke from his mouth and stood.

Beowolves surrounded him on all sides, their red eyes glowed like his own. He growled at them as he took his broad sword from his back. This was nothing to him, he had been killing them since his first steps. 

They reacted as one, snapping their fangs at him as they ran. 

He moved without thought, killing one as he jumped onto the back of another. His body moved on it’s own as it slaughtered the beowolves one by one. 

“Is this all you have? So weak,” he mocked them.

Qrow beheaded two more when a shadow fell upon one from above. It had been so close and he hadn’t noticed it. He would have died if it wasn’t for that familiar shadow of his twin.

Her odachi sliced through the beowolf’s neck like a knife through butter. The red blade moved with ease as black dust danced off it.She growled at him as she moved to slice off a foreleg of another. “What the hell, Qrow? It’s too early for morning training!”

“Why are you here? You should still be asleep right now!” He shot a beowolf that got too close to Raven. She turned and cut it in half before killing another.

“I don’t always sleep through your nightmares, Qrow.” He saw her eyes filled with concern for him as he killed the last of the beowolves. “Dad would not be impressed with you right now. You’re too sloppy, look at that slash on your arm!”

He did then, he never felt it as it happened. But blood seeped from a deep slash that made from a beowolf’s claw. “I’m shocked that you think I give a shit, Raven.”

“Must have been a really bad nightmare for you to be swearing like that and not caring about dad’s anger.”

“Again Raven…why are you here? I came out here for a reason.” A reason that he didn’t want to share with his twin sister. She wouldn’t understand his feelings.

“I’m worried, Qrow. This is the third time this week that you have woken up because of your nightmares.” Her expression told him of the concern she felt for him. They both knew it wasn’t normal for him. He couldn’t resist the poison that was hidden in his subconscious mind. Not like he had in the past.

“That doesn’t answer me, Raven. Why are you here? I wanted to be alone,” he told her.

“To do what? Die? Because that beowolf would have killed you if it wasn’t for me. You’re the heir to our tribe, you’re our future leader, you’re my BROTHER!” She hissed at him. “I don’t want to lose you but you keep pulling stupid shit like this then I am. I’m going to lose you and I don’t want that, Qrow.”

“You’re not going to lose me, Raven.” She glared at him like everything was his fault. It didn’t hide the truth from him.

She was scared.

She was scared for him and he wasn’t making it better. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” she hissed at him like a pissed off black cat.

“For being stupid and sloppy in a fight,” he lied. He never believed that he had been either, the beowolf had just gotten lucky. “I didn’t mean to scare-”

“I’m not scared and you know it. I just want you to be careful! Which you’re not,” she hissed at him.

“Okay, I’m sorry…tell me what I’m sorry for, please.”

“If I do that then you’ll never learn. Figure it out on your own,” she ordered. “Now tell me why you’re out here to begin with.”

“A nightmare, you know that.” He didn’t want to tell her about the girl. She would just tell him that he was being childish. Bandits shouldn’t feel anything about killing, their father had told them that countless times. 

Raven would likely quote their old man.

“It’s more than that. You usually just go back to sleep after a nightmare but every time this week, you just get up. You’re going to become weak at this rate,” she told him.

Gods, he hated that word. Weak, strong…who decided a person was either? Everyone had always thought of him as the weaker twin yet he was the heir.

“I don’t really care, Raven.”

Fear sparked to live in her eyes before anger masked it. “Don’t care? You’ll be left behind or worse if you’re weak, you know that!”

“So what? I should just keep being a monster? A killer? My hands are stained with blood like yours! Why should I care about surviving when this is all I have to look forward to?” He shouted at her. He wanted her to understand; an impossible task if he had ever taken one.

Her expression told him that he had failed just as he knew he would.

“There’s not just blood and you know that. There’s our family, the tribe…we have a bright future with them,” she said softly. “Where is this coming from, Qrow? Is this because of your nightmare?”

“It’s everything, Raven…I can’t get her out of my head,” he muttered as he turned away from her. He felt so tired in that moment, he just wanted to go home and sleep.

“Her? Who is her?”

He cursed himself inwardly for the slip. “Nothing, Raven. There’s no her.”

“Bullshit, Qrow. Tell me the truth now or I tell dad about this,” she told him.

There was no greater threat that either of them could give to the other. Their father wouldn’t think twice of punishing them harshly if he thought there was a threat to the tribe.

“You won’t,” he hissed at her.

“Try me, Qrow.” Her expression promised him hell.

“You can be such a bitch,” he snapped at her. He felt too tired to stand anymore and sat down. “You remember the girl with silver eyes?”

“That girl? What about her?” Raven asked as she sat down beside him. He noticed as she took out her little sewing kit, which meant pain. He didn’t want pain, he wanted to sleep. “She wasn’t anything special besides the eyes. You don’t see that color everyday.”

“I can’t get over the look she gave me,” he muttered as he felt the needle bite into his skin.

“What look?”

“This haunted and betrayed look,” he told her. “I have never been able to forget about it.”

“She was weak, her father was weak. The weak die, Qrow…you know that,” she told him.  There was a sad look in her eyes for a moment before it faded into indifference.

“I don’t understand why. The Grimm Reaper was known for saying that the strong help and protect the weak so that they too will be strong. Can I not be allowed to believe in that?” He questioned her.

The sad look return to Raven before she continued to stitch him up. “If we lived in a world without Grimm then I think we could believe that. We’re not that lucky though, Qrow and you know that.”

“So I’m going to die one day covered in another’s blood…good to know.” He closed his eyes for a moment as he felt the bite of the needle continue. He was so used to the pain of it.

“Why didn’t your aura protect you?”

“No clue,” he lied.

“Do you want me to poke at your wound?” 

“No.” He really didn’t want her to poke a finger into his wound. She would wiggle it around and only make it hurt even more, she was mean like that.

“Then stop lying to me…why is your aura not protecting you like it should? Why do you feel so bad about a girl that you killed seven years ago? It’s not like she was a part of the tribe.”

“I just haven’t been sleeping well or really eating much. It’s probably affecting my aura.” He had no intention of telling Raven the truth about the girl. She would be so angry with him for lying about that girl. See him weak for letting a child their age run away from death.

“I don’t know why, it just does.”

“Don’t let it. Her and her father’s death provided for the tribe,” Raven told him before cutting the thread. Then she abruptly changed the subject. “You hungry?”

“No.” It was the truth, eating felt like too much of a chore at the moment. The look on his sister’s face told him that she didn’t care and he would be eating.

“Don’t make me force feed you again, Qrow.” She stood and extended her hand for him to take it.

He took it and stood up with a cheeky smirk. It was the mask that he hid behind when he felt insecure. “Think tomorrow will be better, sis?”

“It is already tomorrow,” she informed him.

He didn’t understand and even told her so. “Run that by me again?”

“Today has become tomorrow and the world is waiting for us to take the next step forward.” She gave him a pretty smile, one that he hadn’t seen in years. 

He stared at her for a moment. Unsure of what to think of what she said. What could he say? She saw things in a different way from him; was a different person from him. Even if they had shared the womb, he would never be like his twin. 

“Did you quote that from someone?” He asked and she nodded.

“Yes, it’s from mother.”

He hadn’t expected that at all. “What?”

“Willow gave me a letter from mother yesterday and I just found those words stuck in my head.” They both knew that Raven had memorized every word of that letter.

It had been seventeen years since their mother had died, a fact that their old man never forgot about. Her semblance had been to see into the future and it had been uncontrollable. She had seen years, decades pass before her eyes as she went through her everyday life. 

She had been the leader of their tribe.

She had led the tribe with ease as her semblance showed her everything. She had been a fearless woman, doing all that she could for their people. Even after she had seen her own death.

Qrow wished that they had been given the chance to know her. “What else did it say?”

“I’ll show it to you when we get home. She wrote something in it for you. But I don’t really get it.”

“She wrote something for me?” Their mother had never left something for him before. Qrow was unsure what it meant yet he wanted to read what she left for him. 

“Yeah…I told you that she loved you as much as she did with me,” Raven muttered as they walked.

He glared at her for that. It was different for her, she had gotten the letters for years. He never had; he had never even gotten anything written in Raven’s letters before.

It made him nervous but happy as well. Like he was finally being told that a parent loved him. 

“What did she say?” He asked, too eager to wait.

“She told me that our plans for Beacon will be a success but added something weird for you.”

He frowned at his twin for the answer. “What did she write?”

“Your darkness will fall away when you see the starlight at beacon…I think.”

“You know that you suck, right sis?” he told her. How could their mother have known? He told his nightmares to no one yet she knew about the darkness and the stars.

Raven laughed at that like it was a funny joke instead of the insult it was. “Did you think I would memorize it, Qrow? I don’t even know what that means. It’s nonsense to me along with what else she wrote for you.”

“You still suck.”

She pouted at that. “Fine then. Next time, save your own useless ass.”

Your Eyes Are My Stars Chapters Chapter 2