Archive of Our Own ^beta

Qrow grunted as the fist connected with his stomach, crumpling to his knees.  

The boot that collided with his head a second later shattered his aura, and dirt scraped his face as he slid along the sparing area.  

Stay awake.  

“Up!”  

He blinked sluggishly, dizzy and exhausted from the drain breaking aura put on his body.  

He had to stay awake.  

“Get Up!”  

His arms trembled as he pulled them underneath him, too weak to push his body off the ground.  

The boot collided with his ribs, and without aura to protect them, they crunched.  

This was punishment.  

It was training, and it was punishment.  

The Tribe believed relying on aura was weakness. People who put their energy into aura collapsed when it broke. People who relied on aura couldn’t take a punch without it. People who relied on aura couldn’t survive the real world, harsh and brutal as it was.  

People who needed aura were too weak to survive without it.  

The Tribe believed the strong lived and the weak died.  

His aura had been active as he was born into the world.  

The strong lived, the weak died.  

He had been born into this world with a weakness.  

He had to become strong.  

And this, this was the only way to do that.  

A hand grabbed his shirt and hauled him to his feet.  

A few months ago, when they’d started this, he’d collapsed every time his aura had broken. It had been his 10th birthday, and as Raven had celebrated, he’d had his aura broken. If he’d managed to stay awake, he could have joined the celebrations.  

He'd fought back, he’d tried so hard, but he’d woken up that evening in their tent. Raven had saved him half a honeycake.  

Every day since then, at least every day he hadn’t been on raids, he'd fought until it cracked, and then passed out. Some days he hadn’t fought back, just taken it until his aura broken, with the same effect.  

He didn’t pass out anymore, but it was a close thing.  

“Fight, Qrow!”  

He tried to raise his arms to block, but hit the dirt again.  

“Useless. Weak.”  

Weak.  

He was weak.  

Weakness was not tolerated.  

Relying on aura was not tolerated.  

He dragged himself to his feet, and raised his fists again.  

He wasn’t weak.  

The strong lived, the weak died.  

He couldn’t afford to be weak.  

.  

.  

.  

Qrow rolled with Raven’s punch as his aura misted around him, coming up fists raised.  

The grey spots lingered at the edge of his vision, the wave of dizziness washed over him, but he stood his ground, dodging her next punch and sweeping her leg.  

Raven's own aura crackled around the impact but did not break.  

She'd unlocked hers last year, and not long after discovered her semblance. Her useful semblance. Unlike his own.  

At fourteen, she was a little more durable for this training, repeatedly breaking her aura and forcing her to keep fighting anyway. Either it was age, or she was stronger than him, achieving in weeks what had taken him months.  

Still, what she had in natural strength, he made up for in experience.  

His next blow was to her ribs, and this time her aura did shatter. She stumbled, sagged, and he didn’t hesitate.  

Hesitation was weakness.  

She hit the floor hard, and didn’t get up, panting into the dirt, eyes fluttering as she fought to keep conscious.  

“Raven, you disappoint me.” mother’s head snapped from his sister on the floor up to him, “You too, Qrow. You pulled back, restrained your hits. The goal of this training is to break your sister's aura so she can survive its loss in real life, you know this, why do her the disservice of holding back.”  

He bowed his head.  

“I’m sorry, mother.”  

He supposed he understood where she was coming from. She had never held back with him, none of the people training him had. They'd broken his aura as many times as they needed to, as hard as they needed to.  

He didn’t want to hurt Raven.  

“Raven, get up!”  

He didn’t dare extend a hand to her, but she wouldn't have taken it anyway.  

She wasn’t weak.  

Back in a ready position, he could see her swaying slightly, the tenseness of exhaustion creeping into her muscles, her stance. He could probably push her over if he needed to, he hadn’t been that shaky after an aura break since he was eleven.  

Still, she came at him.  

He dodged the first two punches and delivered one of his own back.  

She stumbled back and hit the dirt again.  

Mother rolled her eyes.  

“You get five minutes, then I expect you to fight properly. Both of you.”  

He'd rarely been afforded a break; real life didn’t give you breaks. That had always been mother’s argument, if your aura breaks you must be able to keep fighting immediately, not after a few minutes to sort yourself out.  

Not that five minutes was very long.  

Still, when she raised her fists to fight again, his first blow hit her aura, not her body.  

He had no idea how she regenerated it so fast, but she always did. Maybe that was why mother gave her breaks, so it could regenerate and be broken again.  

He didn’t have his aura back, he just had to fight.  

.  

.  

.  

“There are two types of semblances, active and passive.” Professor Peach droned, “While most of you have active semblances, something you have to choose to turn on and off, a few of you may have passive ones instead, a constantly active ability.”  

Qrow perked up, flipping his pen between his fingers ready to take notes.  

This was a topic he’d been looking forward to since his parents first proposed the idea of sneaking him and Raven into this school. He wanted to know more, he wanted to know everything. Books on aura and semblance weren’t exactly easy to come by in the woods and he hadn’t ventured too deeply into the library at Beacon yet.  

Raven didn’t care quite as much, and had spent the lecture so far forcing herself to stay awake by doodling strategies. He somewhat understood, her semblance was an active one, something there was a lot more information on. Beyond that, she continued to hold their mother’s opinions that relying on aura and semblance was weakness, despite how useful her semblance was. Hers and so many others.  

Not his. His was misfortune, it was dangerous and frustrating and out of his control.  

His was passive, the much rarer manifestation of semblance.  

There was so little information on passive semblances out there.  

“Now, you may believe you already know what you need to about your aura and semblance, but no huntsman is an island. Even if you have a good grasp on your own abilities and limits, you have your partner, your teammates, and so many allies in the future you must be able to work alongside and watch out for.”  

Summer shot him a look from the side, accompanied by a grin, and he returned in kind.  

“Beyond that, semblances change over time, evolve. You may develop new skills, extensions of the one you have, and more control. You never stop learning, and we must all remember that.”  

He took a few notes as the professor explained active semblances, the way they didn’t draw on aura at all until used, where they would then drain it substantially. The bigger the semblance use, the stronger the drain. Explained how people with active semblances could train to improve their aura recovery times and warned them not to completely deplete their auras using their semblances.  

It was all fairly common knowledge, though he noted a few things he wanted to look into later. Professor Peach was right, he had three teammates with active semblances, it was worth knowing everything he needed to. For them, for Raven.    

“Passive semblances are much harder do control. They are a constant influence on a huntsman and/or their environment, often with fluctuations in activity. These fluctuations can be linked to emotions, or completely random. Huntsmen with passive semblances may be able to except some control over it, usually some amount of intention or direction, but they largely remain out of their wielders control.”  

That all lined up with his own experiences but he scrawled down every word anyway.  

“Passive semblances are very rare, maybe one in 10,000, and most notably influence fortune, a huntsman's senses or something of that nature. They are also a constant drain on a huntsman’s aura making it much slower to recover when hits are taken.”  

Slower to recover.   

His aura was slower to recover.  

He’d often guessed as much, but to have it confirmed...  

“However, use of their semblance has a much slower aura drain compared to the larger drawing of energy for active semblance usage. A huntsman with a passive semblance may have a resting aura of 95 as opposed to 100, but their aura will not be drained by their semblance and instead entirely available for other applications in combat allowing them to outlast opponents.”  

He hadn’t even told Summer or Tai about his semblance, or listed it on his application or anywhere on his records. It was listed as unknown, but gods he had so many questions.  

He was going to stay behind and ask Professor Peach every question he'd been holding in since he was four.  

He had so much he wanted to know.