It seemed that I was plunged into some strange ragged dream.
And as it often happened with strange ragged dreams, there was some kind of plot... But it had not much sence in it. Once in one of those dreams I helped a huge spider to give birth, despite the fact that in reality I knew perfectly well that they lay eggs, and of course I didn't want a repeat of such dreams, but who'd ask me. This raggedness and delirium of images seemed to hint that shit's going to up the crazy and the scary if I couldn't wake up. There were also some red-eyed ink monsters, and they kept dancing as a background for the strangest duet. Glinda Goodwich was furiously waving a crop towards Salem, who dressed in a strict gray suit, and they both sang:
What is this feeling?
Fervid as a flame
Does it have a name?
Yes!
Loathing
Unadulterated loathing
For your face
Your voice
Your clothing
Let's just say, I loathe it all!
Every little trait, however small
Makes my very flesh begin to crawl
With simple utter loathing
There's a strange exhilaration
In such total detestation
It's so pure! So strong!
Though I do admit it came on fast
Still I do believe that it can last
And I will be loathing
Loathing you
My whole life long!
At this point, I remembered that this is the fragment from the musical Wicked, and not the real situation, then realized that I think I'm having a nightmare, and decided to try to wake up.
The rainbow ponies around the stage where all this was happening started to disappear. The Grimm in the background in the backup dance also rippled. Glinda and Salem stopped singing and passionately sucked each other faces in the middle of the stage, because yes, I always had my own vision about that musical.
The space around me lazily blinked and in a second turned from the Royal Atlas Hall into the room of some hotel, not in the slightest five stars. More like minus five stars, really.
I continued to be a simple observer of what was happening, but something changed still - the dream was too real, too vivid, as if I had entered into a memory. And not the subconscious decided to play jokes, as usual. And I wasn't me - because the hands I was staring at weren't mine... And most importantly, I was wearing a skirt!
I didn't even have a second to worry, and despite the fact that I tried to wake up again, I failed.
A palm, more delicate than mine, covered my tense fists - they were lying on my knees - and me-not-quite-me raised my face.
Across from me was Summer Rose, who caught my eye and smiled encouragingly. I didn't understand what was going on at all, and how do I know it's Summer Rose... Though obviously, dark red hair and silver eyes - who else could it be?
"Summer," my lips said in an unfamiliar voice, and a mixture of horror and helplessness filled my insides. "Summer, why are you so excited?"
"But of course, Raven!" Her expression was surprised, and her voice was similar to Ruby's, but the intonation was completely different. "We can give them a lot, right? How not to be excited, children are happiness!"
"I wouldn't say that, Summer," my body chuckled. "I don't think I'm ready for pregnancy right now, to be honest... With everything I'm doing for Ozpin, and with everything we've learned..."
My own fear strated to trickle in, adding to the one the body felt. What if I died in my sleep, and I got back to fuck knows where, only now in the body of an adult woman who just found out about her pregnancy? Could I leave, please, I'll do anything? And... Did she say Raven?
"Ray, I'm telling you, we can do it together..."
"We, Summer?" Raven interrupted her. I was somehow locked in the body of this Raven as the observer, apparently. "I will be giving birth, not you, so it's up to me to decide if I want this at all... Why did I tell you, even? What am I..."
"Wait," Summer shook her head, having quite a confused expression. "I thought you needed support, advice from your best friend, after all!" then her face seemed to blossom into a toothy, bratty smile. " Do you... maybe remember that bachelorette party three years ago? When our neighbor-team..."
"Yes. The accident was similar, but for some reason everybody were very happy" I felt that my face was frowning and blushing at the same time. "We then agreed that we would name our kids with reference to each other, our colors or something like that... And we were really drunk. I wasn't going to have children at that time, totally. Who with? And now... It's an accident. And we don't have time for kids, Summer."
"But things are going much better!" Summer grabbed me-not-me by both hands, pressed them to her solar plexus and peered into her eyes. "Ray, if you are afraid that something will happen to you, and there will be no one to look after them, I promise you..."
"Summer," Raven said with a kind of pent-up tired hope in her voice, not taking her gaze away from the silver eyes of her teammate. "Sum, do you understand exactly what you're proposing?"
"Of course I understand, Ray! Aren't you... Wouldn't you offer the same thing if I was..."
"I would," Raven said quickly, and squeezed Summer Rose's hands in return. "How will it be? How do... you want to do it?"
Summer blinked a little dumbfounded in response to an obvious question - it was important to understand how she wanted to formalize it, after all. Even I, in my strange position of silently watching, understood exactly what Raven was asking. It was clear that this Raven had no other partner, since she was discussing the issue of pregnancy with another woman, and it was clear from what I remembered about the kingdoms of Remnant that any child born in marriage would be the responsibility of both parents, no matter what gender they were. Indeed, the laws in different kingdoms were somewhat different, but not in this area.
Wherever these two are now, they may as well legitimize their friendship and then divorce. But something from the not-mine feeling now suggested that the offer was not entirely friendly. Such hope, though seasoned with fear - it couldn't be that simple?
"Ray... Why think about it right now?" Summer replied, and her tone was slightly confused, but a second later she let go of Raven's hands and reached for her stomach with one palm. "Better tell me what you'd like to call them!"
"If... If we follow that promise, then..." Raven placed her palm on top of Summer's, and even I felt a sudden warmth that flooded all the previous emotions of fear and uncertainty. "Gwen Branwen. Or Yen Branwen."
"Branwen?"
The surprise in Summer's voice made Raven shift her gaze to her teammate's face from the interlacement of their fingers on her stomach.
"Yes, sure," Raven grinned and reached out with her free palm to cup Summer's cheek. Summer nuzzled it with her already familiar bratty smile and then pressed even closer with her own hand, continuing to dazzle us with a smile. "Or did you want to give them your last name? I'm afraid you're going to carry this baby yourself for this kind of thing, Sum."
"Don't be silly," Summer laughed loudly, pushed our palm away from her cheek and reached for our stomach once more. "You're still too young to hear me, but know this. I, Summer Rose, will be your best aunt, my little raven."
Everything suddenly froze.
The image faded, and the surroundings began to burn away again, just like in the beginning of this dream... So it's, like, a sequel nightmare, or what? Wow, do I have the widest imagination...
I should've understood then that something was wrong with her proposal.
Someone else's thought appeared in my mind, and it was that Raven's voice, once again.
And then I remembered everything that preceded this dream.
***
The day didn't go well from the very beginning.
My body control didn't last long, until the very moment when Sora called out to us in the middle of the camp and asked how exactly we would be training. Raven grabbed the control lever, and I was thrown into the background. It was very annoying, but I was even beginning to see some advantages in it.
Ugh, what am I now? How can I see advantages in this?
Despite the migraine, Raven beat out all the extra shit outa Sora, then from Cryos, who was passing by. It was followed by the junior lieutenants of this diverse semi-mercenary tribe of hers. As a result, everyone got a beating, because the educational violence was passed down the chain of command and may have even reached the youngest. I was not impressed - I never saw the point in such semi-legal gangs. I always considered them somewhat hostile by default. Which generally seemed quite logical. After all, if the Schnee scion fell into their hands, I doubted that there would be no temptation to ask Father for a reward, even if they try not to get involved in the slave trade.
There weren't many faunus at the camp, and I didn't notice any hostility, although this time wasn't the most forgiving for the faunus. It was before Sienna Khan led White Fang. It means that faunus didn't gain that frightening quality yet, but rather some people were wary of them because of their otherness and some despised if the upbringing suggested it. I wonder if it will be possible to cross paths with the White Fang? Would that be even necessary?
"It's not the most important thing right now," Raven muttered, crouching down by the water basin inside our tent. We were alone again. "I won't have time to wash up completely now, so I'll just clean myself up a bit and go solve the issue with Ozpin. It bothers me that Taiyang wouldn't even let me talk to them. What do they even know about my mission? I understand that he is angry that I just left the divorce papers for him to sign, instead of personally handing them to him, but what else could I tell him? I've been telling him about it for months. In a row. That this is a mistake! He's surprisingly stubborn..."
And you did it right before your mission on Anima? And it doesn't even disturb you!
I simply wondered why it seemed to her that her fault in this misunderstanding was the smallest. This is not the smallest at all!
"Yes, what's the big deal? What he told me is just nonsense! I didn't leave Yang!"
While she was changing clothes and putting herself in relative order, I tried to somehow formulate everything that felt wrong with her worldview.
Raven, why do you think Yang is Yang Xiao Long in my future and not Yang Branwen? Maybe because...
"Xiao Long?" she stopped, as her hands shook, the towel plopped into the basin, and she grabbed for the place where the sword should have been. "If my memory serves me right, Taiyang was not on Patch when my child delivery took place. And I definitely spoke to the nurse who recorded the data, and I said to her, Weissey, with this fucking mouth," in her tone, although quiet, there was a causticness that could rust the bullhead, it seems to me. "That my girl will be called Yen Branwen. Why would..."
She aborted her angry speech, then she literally shuddered, and after then she jumped up. I felt the Aura twisting.
What? What did you get now? Raven? Get dressed! At least get dressed properly, Raven! Chill out! Chill the fuck out, I'm telling you! You'll scare everyone if you go like that! Take it easy!
"How the fuck! I stopped even trying to do something different in your future! I've been studying all my life to make a difference in this camp," she hissed under her breath so that no one passing by the tent would hear the screams she clearly wanted to switch to. "I had a hope that it could be done. That it's important. Then Ozpin told us about Salem, and I still had a hope that I would not risk myself in vain. Then I found out that she couldn't be defeated, that Ozpin was lying about who she was, even though I didn't know that everything was that fucking bad. But you confirmed it to me, by the way. And my team hung onto his every fucking word, I just couldn't leave these idiots, and Summer, and then that happened... the accident."
You mean Yang happened. Or Yen. It sounds the same, in fact.
"Yes, Yang happened," she sighed and ruffled her bangs. "I wasn't going to have kids until I dealt with the Branwens. I wasn't going to play house with a man I didn't love. For fucks sake, even our marriage was just his desire to show that he could take responsibility. I told him back then that I didn't need his sacrifices. He thought I was questioning his love for the unborn child. Ugh... And so it's like that every time. I'm talking about myself and how I feel. Then he's trying to fix something on his side, although I just offered to simply fuck off. Ooh. What did I do wrong?"
Slept with a teammate who has a conscience, while not using protection? I assumed.
"Well, that's the point, I used it! And it was only once!" she almost moaned, and I just writhed with her at the same time because of that weird internal awkwardness. "I'm a healthy adult woman, Weiss. And protection never failed me! Qrow is probably to blame for everything in some way!"
As long as I'm here, no men, okay? it twisted me mentally even more than before. I hope those memories don't pop up randomly. Otherwise I'll get sick.
"That's why, Weissey, I don't date! I'm generally getting... sick of such relationships," Raven muttered, slamming her fist into her palm. "It's just physical!"
You're sick of life, especially for quite some time now, and even more so since this Yang's birthday you missed, and in many ways because we're still suffering from a hangover.
I'd roll my eyes if I could. But Summer doesn't make you sick, does she?
"Summer is my partner," Raven said. "And she doesn't love me. Not like that. It wasn't like you think. It's not easy to understand her. She's got her own mind, but she's bratty and does whatever she wants. At the same time, good and evil for her are not just nonsense from children's fairy tales, but applicable... moments. I'm not like that. But we surprisingly complement each other."
We went silent, but apparently somehow superficial thoughts still seep in, because she grumbled and shook her head.
"You misunderstood everything! Absolutely! I'm talking about combat qualities! Combat!"
Yeah, yeah, but you won't mind dating her, right? What did you feel when you looked at Taiyang, who was jumping around her, as you put it? Did you want to be in her place? Or his?
She frowned, spilled half of the basin while getting up, then kicked the empty bottle and sat down on the bed.
"I'm going to try to do something now..." She leaned back and closed her eyes. "And you will understand everything."
What are you going to do?
I tried to convey my curiosity in my thoughts, and I think I succeeded.
"I want to try and remember exactly the moment when I... when I realized that it wasn't quite destined."
There is no such thing as destined or not destined!
I just had to argue with it.
If I had been thinking like that, I would've been stopped by the fact that my Blakey couldn't stand me just because I was the Schnee, and wasn't going to apologize to the faunus for that. That would be ridiculous and stupid, wouldn't it?
"Hmm," she didn't open her eyes, and I was still not at the helm, so I had to contemplate the darkness of the eyelids. "As I understand it, your father actually uses slave labor in order to advance Atlesian technologies and get as much profit as possible. I'm not a staunch supporter of asking for forgiveness, but..."
You're the head of a bandit clan! It's not for you to talk about morality!
Her bullshit honestly blew me up.
It's the worst thing you can do in the world with such darlings as the Grimm, Raven!
"I'm trying to fix it," she tried to argue weakly, still not opening her eyes.
My rage twisted something, and hence we changed again - I felt that I was holding a wet towel in my hands and pressing it to my hot forehead.
"You didn't do it for yourself, not out of your altruistic desire, Raven," I clenched and unclenched my fingers experimentally, then opened my eyes. "That's why I'm telling you that you love Summer. Whatever else you want to prove, it's the only most accurate fact about you that I've learned. I learned from your emotions - I know how it feels. I won't confuse it with anything."
"That doesn't mean Summer feels anything like that at all," Raven retorted, taking the voice away from me again. "See and feel for yourself."
That's how she managed to plunge us first into a dream, and then, as I realized later, into her memory. And that's how I had an inkling that misunderstandings are the essence of most the drama that the STRQ team has been getting into for quite a long time.
Such a huge misunderstanding that was, but you have to be quite specifically talented at it to cause it, Summer Rose!