Chapter Text
They had been on the road for 3 weeks now, and while the kids still had plenty of water purifying tablets, they were starting to run out of rations. No one had noticed yet, but he had gone snooping while they were asleep. Qrow figured it was probably Nora, but she was a growing girl and needed the food to keep up her energy, so he didn’t blame her. Its not like these kids were forced to traverse the wilderness with little more than their wits on a regular basis.
He had taken to slipping a few of his rations into their bags, so that there was some left, but he could only maintain that for so long until he ran out as well.
This developed into a pattern as he continued to tag along with the kids. He justified it to himself as keeping an eye on them, but in reality, he was being selfish. It was nice to have someone else to take the watch occasionally, and to have someone to talk to while walking.
Ruby adored the fact that she was out with her uncle. The things that led to it weren’t great (they were horrible), but she still had Nora, Ren, and Jaune, and then Qrow when he showed up. She smiled as she trudged through the days’ worth of mud, knowing she would have to clean out her boots at the end of the day, but content in the fact that she would be surrounded by friends while doing it. The corners of her mouth dipped as she noticed her uncle’s mood. He hadn’t been doing great, even takin into account, then ignoring the rampant alcoholism she was far too used to from him.
He was a constant in her life, even when he wasn’t physically around, and having him with her now was reassuring. He had been there for everything for her, right alongside her dad, and her dad was helping Yang right now.
Nora might look a bit ditzy, but every single person who discounted her had learned their lesson. She was used to being judged, for how much she talked, for all the pink she wore, for fighting with a brute force weapon, and she recognized it in Qrow. But she knew intellectually that he must be thought ill of by adults, but he was never anything other than gruffly kind, and caring towards her teammates, and that was what mattered to Nora.
Ren saw how Nora looked at Qrow as they were traveling and wondered what she was seeing. To him, Qrow was a rock, someone to look to when he wasn’t sure what to do. Okay, not the most obvious observation, but it held up. Qrow might whine and complain about the mud, but he was also the one who showed them how to clean the mud out of their boots so it wouldn’t harden in the tracks. He would always hand Nora a bigger portion of food than the rest, as if he could tell how her semblance burned up calories. He never offered any of them his flask, but if their water bottles were empty before the next stream he would hand them his. It was nice not to have to be the person to constantly say its time to eat, we need to take a bath in this stream, no really we need to put the fire out unless someone is staying up on watch with it.
As the group got bigger, Weiss joining them, then Blake and Sun, and finally Yang, his umbrella extended. Yang and Ruby didn’t see it, it was just how Uncle Qrow was. Ren, Nora and Jaune were used to it at that point, and Blake had so much going on she didn’t notice it, but Weiss. Weiss saw how he always had more food in his bag, and always portioned meals out for the team before taking the leftovers for himself. Weiss saw how he tried to catch Nora when she went sliding down a mud-slick embarkment and when she had a hard time getting back on the road, he slid down to meet her and gave her a piggy-back ride up the hill using Harbinger as a climbing hammer. Weiss saw him be rude to authority figures, openly mock people who they needed help from, and drink constantly. She also saw him not take a single sip from his flask if it was his turn to stay on watch that night and noticed some night’s he had bread for supper instead of the meal.
She saw him tear the hem of his shirt for a bandage for Ren’s scratched arm, and always settle down last so that the team could get the best places for sleeping.
Weiss frowned. She couldn’t say that she was comfortable with how much Qrow drank, but he never scared her like her father did. That alone meant a lot to her, and allowed her to trust him.