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“Did I wake you?” she asks.
Summer Rose is a depressing sight in torn clothes and a week of dirt, but still, in the dim light of his scroll, she shines.
“’Course not,” Qrow says. “I’m glad you called.”
The corner of her mouth lifts a little. “I know it’s three in the morning in Patch. I wish you’d get some sleep.” The video can’t keep up with her movement; the image tiles and freezes every few seconds. “But I’m kind of glad you’re up, too. I--”
The audio skips precariously. Qrow sits up, ready to find better reception if need be. “Sorry, you there?”
“Yeah. Can you hear me?” She leans in.
“Yeah, I--”
“I said I miss you,” she says. “I can’t wait to come home.”
Neither can I, he wants to say. Neither can Yang or Ruby or Tai. Neither can Ozpin, who stopped answering my calls last night because I kept trying to find out where you were; I know you’re probably on the edge of where the towers reach, and maybe this is the last time you’ll be able to call until after you kill that thing so you can come home to us.
I know you know that might not happen.
“Me too,” he says. “Tai and the girls do too, do you want me to wake them up?”
But Summer is already shaking her head. “No, please. I don’t want…” She pauses long enough for him to worry about the connection-- please don’t let an unfinished sentence be the last thing I hear-- but finally lifts a hand to her face and rakes the unruly wisps of hair into her hood. “I don’t want them to remember me like this.”
The kick takes all the air out of him. “Summer.”
“I know, I know. Positive thinking. I always say that.”
“I should have gone with you,” he says, and now he’s pacing; the scroll is an afterthought as his end of the connection is filled with pixelated, blurry movement. “I should have just gone. I shouldn’t have listened to Oz--”
“Qrow, stop--”
“What the fuck are we doing, letting you face this yourself. That’s not what we do, that’s not what team STRQ does, you told me that--”
“Qrow, can you just--”
“Just tell me where you are,” he says, “I’ll find you. I’m not gonna let you--”
“Qrow would you just shut up before you wake the kids.”
He stops still: quiet from upstairs. No one awake. Summer very close to her scroll, but blurrier every time he blinks. He wipes his eyes. Okay, fine. Okay.
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “I know you’re scared. I am too.” After he doesn’t immediately reply, she adds, “That’s why I called you.”
“If you need me out there,” he starts, but she shakes her head.
“No. I can do this on my own.” Unsaid: I have to do this on my own. “But I know you’re there for me and you believe in me… and I guess I really need that right now.”
He finds his way back to the couch, sitting heavily. “You’re gonna be fine, Summer,” he says. It doesn’t sound true, not to him and maybe not to her, but it feels right. “Tell me what to do.”
“Can you…” She licks her lips. “Can you just smile for me?”
For the first time, their leader looks brittle, cold and fragile and alone at the mouth of some unknowable evil. She’s the strongest person he’s ever known.
“You want me to smile?” he says past the knot in his throat. “Now?”
“Come on,” she says. “I like when you smile. You don’t do it enough.” Then, before he can address it, “Think about how fast Ruby’s going to run to the door when I get home.”
“She better not burn a hole in the floor again,” he says.
It sounds like she laughs, but it’s distorted. “No, that would be Yang. No more haircuts, right?”
“Yeah. No more haircuts.”
Summer wipes her other hand across her mouth. It might be the grainy image, or there might be blood drying on the back of her sleeve. Her eyes, wide with a familiar mix of exhaustion and adrenaline, search somewhere off-screen, fixated on nothing. He realizes he hasn’t asked when she last slept.
“Please,” she says. Her voice breaks. The audio is crystal clear. “I know you can’t tell me I don’t need to be scared. Or that I’m ever going to see my kids again…” She scrubs her eyes with the bloody sleeve. “Or Tai. Or you.”
Something in his scroll cracks under his grip, but the call miraculously stays.
“So I really need you to smile right now,” she says. “And maybe tell me all about what the kids did today, and the funniest thing Tai said since I left? And then just remind me about all the awesome things team STRQ ever did, and by then we should have a lot to smile about?”
She’s trying to make it to daylight without falling asleep-- good move, who knows what’s out there in the dark-- and he’s a world away, but they’re both terrified and exhausted and helpless and while she’s getting ready to walk into a fucking slaughter this is all she asks for.
He could never help but give her everything she wanted.
“Don’t tell Tai,” he says, “But you were always my favorite member of team STRQ.”
She laughs, and somehow he smiles; somehow the darkness lifts, despite everything. “Don’t tell Tai, but so were you.”