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There was no one single moment when Raven decided to leave. It came to her like rain over the mountain, in the contours of the building clouds and the wind-bent hiding of the leaves and the toss of the swelling streams. Down and down it settled, into her bones without her noticing.
There was a piece of it that came every time Ozpin sent them on a mission: children, take my secrets, carry them forth and spill blood far from my sight and hands. Raven didn't mind that; what he had given them in return was beyond price. With every beat of her wings, every wheeling turn of the world below, she felt a joy that didn't belong to hands or weapons or words. He could buy a lot of death, for that kind of payment.
The problem came somewhere in the wider world she saw. The slow progress of Grimm in the wild spaces, going about their business without grudge or congress with humans. The grimy, predictable machinations of their human opposites, making deals and sowing discord. The realization that at the bottom, it was a struggle between two old wizards, the whole world turned into a bauble to be tugged between two ancient children who each wanted to be in charge. That was the order of things--the strong ruled, the weak served. But Ozpin wanted to paint a false face on it, wanted to be thought of as kindly and reasonable and different. A trusted authority figure, maybe even a father. Qrow yearned for that, or part of him did. Raven was repulsed.
The largest piece of leaving came with Yang.
Forget the months of being tied down to two legs, fussed over as if she had suddenly become fragile, treated like she no longer knew how to make decisions because someone was always worried it might hurt the baby. They would never know how close Raven came to ending that problem before it began. But she could set all that aside, and with it the dreams for the future that she saw glittering in Tai's eyes, the small secret looks Summer gave her, the beautiful fence of hopes and expectations that they constructed around her day by day.
Forget all that, because then Yang was born, and it was all wrong. Raven knew how to raise children strong. Not exactly as she and Qrow had come up, maybe, but hard truths lived in that past that the others didn't want to see. If you cuddled and fussed over babies all the time, you taught them to be clingy and fretful, and that was no way to meet the world. But every time she turned around, Tai was there bouncing his daughter in his arms, singing to her when she cried, giving her nonsense names and playing games and smothering her with attention. Summer was almost as bad, though she hung back a bit, like she was respecting a territorial urge in Raven that Raven only halfway felt herself.
They were doing it all wrong, but they looked at her like she was the problem. It cut deeper than it should have, and in rare moments it made her wonder if she was the crazy one after all, if every bit of hard-won strength she possessed was a lie.
Qrow knew something was wrong. When she left a room suddenly, the others might say something to her back, but he never did. He just watched, with that opaque expression he had learned so well, never giving any hint of disapproval or fear or mockery. But she knew he was watching, felt each of those silent judgments as a shallow cut on her heart.
"Tell me what's going on up here," Summer said one day, tapping Raven in the center of her forehead. They were out at the edge of the trees, behind the little house they all had scraped together to rent because Raven couldn't stand to live in the city.
It was dark, and the trees were tossing in the wind, and Raven felt part of herself trying to tear loose from her chest and flap away. She searched for an answer Summer deserved, grit her teeth, finally shook her head. "This isn't working," she said.
"Family can be hard," said Summer. She put her hands on Raven's shoulders, turned the taller woman to face her. "That doesn't mean it's not working. That just means it's complicated."
Raven twitched her shoulders, and Summer's hands dropped slowly to the sides, falling like leaves.
"How do you know when it's too hard?" Raven asked, and Summer didn't have an answer.
Some other things happened, raised voices, dangerous missions, all of it just shadows of clouds passing over the moon. The rain had set in, and Raven heard it sometimes when she woke in the night. Something was filling up, getting ready to flood over.
It was a good fight that brought the last moment of clarity, snapping it into place like the dazzle of sun that hits the water at just the right angle to turn a lake to fire. Her and Tai and Qrow, taking down a pair of King Taijitus that twisted and knotted together and always had another head free to strike at them from a new angle. They had to dodge faster, strike harder, be better than ever, and there was a village nearby that needed them to save it, but that wasn't the point. The point was that perfect fusion of will and action, three bodies united in a glistening hurricane.
Raven landed on one knee at the final stroke, breathing deeply of the cool ash that faded as it filled her lungs. There was always something elusive in that moment of chasing a Grimm's death, something she wanted to ask them but could never frame in words. She took the last breath as a gift, standing and tossing her hair back, barely caring about the wrench in one shoulder or the limp in one knee.
She turned and found Tai, who was rising from where he had rolled after his own final attack. Took his hand and pulled him to his feet faster, tugging him against her and twining her sword arm behind his neck to pull him in for a kiss. But even as she laughed into his mouth he was pushing her back, frowning.
"What are you doing?" he said. "That was reckless. Qrow?"
She stood there, smile fading, as he pulled away and went to Qrow. Who was staggering a bit himself, but he had landed his own hits cleanly. If Tai just trusted them both he would know that.
She tried, for the tenth or the hundredth time, to find something to throw across the gap between them. As Tai looped his arm around Qrow's shoulders and spoke to him in phrases that ran together in her ears, her own words fell apart.
Two nights later, she sat awake until she had enough to write on a piece of paper. There wasn't a way to make it kind, or soft, so she didn't insult them by trying.
She kissed Yang on the forehead, and those tiny limbs stirred and those tiny lungs made a little murmur, but Raven wasn't the person to croon her awake and soothe it better. She never had been, and she shouldn't have tried.
She looked at Tai and Summer, until her heart filled up like clear water behind a crust of ice that formed over the cliffs, complicated and spiky but ultimately nothing you could grasp in your hands.
When it cut too deep to look any longer, she left.
She didn't see Qrow on the way, but that didn't mean anything. Like her, he needed to be gone now and then. It didn't even hurt the same way to leave him, because they were part of each other, it was inconceivable that they wouldn't find each other again. He would read the note with the others, and he would understand the thing she couldn't put into words, and sooner or later he would agree.
He must have seen her go, because he caught up fast, finding her where she had stopped on a remote cliff to watch the day break. He came down like a piece of shadow ripped out of the sky, landing on two legs and barely pausing to remember his arms before he smacked a hand against her chest, pinning the note there. "What the fuck do you think this is?"
She rocked back from the push but didn't retreat, and the paper fluttered to the ground between them. "I thought it was clear."
"It was bullshit. That's your family sleeping back there."
"Not mine. Yours," and Raven hadn't known the words until they were in her mouth, leaping off her tongue. "I made Yang out of my own body, and already she's not mine."
He stared at her. "She's not a--a craft project, she's a person. Who, if we're very very lucky, will be a little bit like all of us when she grows up. And if she's luckier still, she'll just get the good parts."
The crack of his voice was angry, but in the backs of his eyes there was a soft spot, a weak place she could slice for if she had the will. She didn't want to. Instead, she said, "She'll be like the three of you. Nothing fits. I don't fit."
Qrow's hands were at his sides, and they lifted briefly as if to reach out to her. Raven stepped back. The line of Qrow's mouth hardened. "You think I'm just going to let you leave?"
Raven settled a hand atop Omen, but she didn't draw it. "No," she said, because in the end, that wasn't really what she wanted.
Qrow's eyes dropped to her hand, narrowed, then flicked back to her face. Deliberately, he shrugged Harbinger off his back, let it fall out of the way. Raven's mouth curled in a smile and she set Omen aside.
She was straightening from placing it on the ground when Qrow's first kick hit her, and even as she half-caught it on her arms and rolled, she was proud of him. There was a time when he wouldn't have hit first. Yang was going to need that around.
The fight was messy, sharp technique and too much fuel, flaring out bright and ragged around the edges as they punched and kicked and wrestled. They came to the edge of the cliff and Qrow's luck turned, as it did, skittering a stone loose under his foot and sending him windmilling over the drop for a moment. Raven clasped one of her hands around his and their eyes met for a moment, too alike, before she jerked him back onto solid ground and snapped an elbow toward his face.
They knew each other's moves and they shared the same flaws, each willing to take a hit to deliver one. Enough rounds of that left them both spent, breath scraping in and out, blood running from split lips or eyebrow cuts that snaked red rivulets down their skin. Raven's ribs hurt and her right hand was a throbbing ball of pain, knuckles raw and something stabbing nauseous fire down her arm when she tried to clench her fist.
Qrow looked no better, one eye swelling shut and heavily favoring one knee. They stared at each other from where they had last broken off, then Raven dropped her hands and stepped toward him.
She didn't know what she was going to say, it was words again and those were useless, until her hand tangled in his hair and she rested her forehead against his with a twinge from the fresh bruises. "Come with me."
He leaned against her, breathing just as hard, his shoulders sagging and blood dripping down to spot his shirt. "No."
Part of her had known he was going to say it; part of her withered and died to hear it. She inhaled, letting air spread through her lungs and every fiber of her body like the first breath of the sun coming over the horizon.
There weren't any more words; she had spent them all. She leaned forward, pausing for a heartbeat with their lips a breath apart. He shivered but didn't pull back. She kissed him, their torn lips stinging, blood mingling in their mouths. Her hand was soft on his cheek as her lips moved, silently whispering years of things she had never known how to say.
Qrow closed his eyes and leaned into it, their bodies trembling with pain and exhaustion, as the red disk of the sun razored over the edge of the world.
Finally Raven leaned back, and she felt something wet running down her cheeks. Qrow's eyes were gleaming too, as bright as the blood that smeared his mouth.
He pulled in a shuddering breath. Let it out. Straightened. He looked at her and said, "Don't come back."
She left him there on the cliff, a dwindling scrap behind her, as she beat aching wings and tore up into the new morning air. The sun was a ball of possibilities and she chased it until she couldn't see anymore, hurtling forward into the new day and leaving something heavy behind.