Oscar missed his family. That wasn't to say that he didn't love his aunt, but it wasn't the same. He missed his mother, and his father was such a distant memory that Oscar didn't feel he had a proper grasp on the man's existence.

Sometimes it didn't feel like he'd even existed at all.

His memory of the man was spotty, rough and incomplete. He remembered small details but never a complete picture. He didn't remember his father's face clearly, he didn't know his father's name. He didn't remember his father's warmth or touch. Not even his voice.

If Oscar's father was alive, Oscar was sure that he wouldn't be able to pick him out of a crowd.

And even then, he didn't know what he'd say to the man if that opportunity presented itself.

As far as Oscar was concerned, his father had passed away on a mission back when Oscar had been no more than a young child.

The first time that Ozpin got to see Oscar Pine's face in a mirror, he knew exactly who was hosting him. That knowledge had been enough to leave Ozpin feeling crushed.

It was all there, in the boy's dark skin and the flecks of hazel in his multi-colored eyes.

Eye color didn't mean much though, Ozpin reminded himself. Ozpin had hazel eyes, as did a lot of other people. Skin color didn't mean all that much either, or not even the colors that the boy wore. Lots of people wore green.

However, Ozpin couldn't ignore the resemblances between Oscar and the man that Ozpin suspected was his father.

As time passed, Ozpin learned more and more about Oscar. He was given more and more that was able to put the boy's life into a context which only served to confirm some of Ozpin's suspicions. They weren't things that he wanted to have confirmed in any way, but the truth was unavoidable in this case.

Namely, the truth was that an old friend, no, teammate of Ozpin's had apparently gone down the path of the deadbeat parent, and Ozpin was now trapped in the body of that man's son.

It was a sobering realization, in a lot of ways.

But Oscar's parentage was a difficult topic to broach without hurting the boy, Ozpin soon learned. Getting Oscar to talk about any family was difficult, but once it became apparent that the boy was an orphan, it made sense. The boy's mother had passed away, his father had been absent for most of his life. There was a reason that Oscar had ended up living with an aunt.

But Ozpin knew.

He always knew.

He'd known from the first good look at the boy, and the first time that he'd started working on actually training the child. There was something about his aura, something about the semblance that was still yet to unlock. Oscar didn't take after his father too much, and that was a relief in itself. Of course, Ozpin figured that a lot of that had to be contributed to the fact that the boy's father was an absentee.

It explained a lot about how Oscar had ended up as a farmhand at his aunt's house. The woman was his aunt on his mother's side, Ozpin knew that. When he'd known the boy's father, there had never been much mention of any family beyond his parents.

It also explained some of the bitterness that Oscar seemed to feel when they ended up in villages.

Ozpin felt his heart break just a little bit when they'd be in a village or wandering and would see some family, happy and together. One of the unfortunate consequences of Ozpin and Oscar's current arrangement was that their emotional state tended to be shared. If Oscar was upset, so was Ozpin, and if Ozpin was upset, the same was true for Oscar.

It wasn't a pleasant arrangement by any means.

It only made things much more difficult than they needed to be.

The knowledge of who Oscar's father was ended up being one of those things that nagged at Ozpin and made it impossible to rest. He was able to hide that knowledge from the boy, thank the gods, but he knew that it was affecting Oscar nonetheless. The boy worried more, the boy's mind went back to family more and more often. Oscar seemed to be brushing it off as homesickness, and that helped, but Ozpin still felt some guilt for it.

Ozpin got used to the flash of memories of a burning home in Mistral, and the feeling of a woman's soft hands on his, no, Oscar's shoulders as they watched the fire. Ozpin knew the hands too well- there was an old scar that ran down most of the length of the woman's ring finger on her right hand. Even without seeing her face, Ozpin knew her.

He knew her voice, and if he thought hard on it enough, he was sure that he could even remember the woman's scent. She'd always smelled like sea salt and flowers, back when they'd been teenagers.

But Oscar had been very young when the tragedy that was the fire had struck. As a result most of what happened there at that house in Mistral came out confused, missing details, or misremembered. It felt like narratives that had been crushed together based on a number of other things.

Oscar been taken and had fled with his mother back then, to a place where they couldn't be found. Based on Oscar's memories, the whole story was never given. Oscar had been told that home wasn't safe, and so they'd left.

How the boy's father fit into all of that wasn't quite clear. There was definitely information that had been withheld about the man.

But once in awhile, Oscar would think of his father. It was always in unclear terms. Always things that made too much sense to Ozpin despite all of that. Oscar remembered his father's voice, low and craggy, always like a growl. His scent, like earth and smoke and sweat. His father's hands always had calluses on the palms, and scars that covered them in places.

Ozpin was mostly just left to wonder what had made everything go so wrong.

This wasn't the man that he remembered. Oscar's mother was still the woman that he'd known back when he was younger, but the father was different.

Ozpin loathed the first time that his and Oscar's paths had crossed with Oscar's father.

It was a good thing that Oscar had his mother's surname, Ozpin thought as they hid and tried to suppress their entire existence in an attempt to hide things from Oscar. But Oscar only ended up afraid as all of the memories- both good and bad, of how the boy's father had been when they'd been young came swimming up.

Oscar didn't deserve to know everything that Ozpin did. He didn't deserve to be left thinking about things in terms of being the child of a murderer. He didn't need to know that the popular opinion for a long time had been that his father had killed both his wife and child. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that Ozpin was now stuck in young Oscar's head, he wouldn't have been thinking that way.

The fact that Oscar was alive was evidence enough to indicate that the boy's father had never touched his family.

Oscar Pine didn't deserve to know that he was the son to Hazel Rainart, who Ozpin knew to be one of the most dangerous people in all of Remnant.

Oscar Pine didn't deserve to know that his father was a murderer with a more than significant number of deaths to his name.

Oscar Pine didn't need to know that if his father found out that Ozpin was living in his head, he would have reported directly to Salem about the matter.

Oscar Pine didn't need to know that Ozpin didn't know whether or not Hazel would go as far as to kill the boy himself.

Ozpin certainly hoped that he wouldn't, if only for the sake of keeping Oscar safe. Of course, deep down there was a part of him that hoped that Hazel had some scrap of the man that he had once been in him. Mostly, Ozpin wanted to know that his old friend still had some semblance of himself left deep down.

But seeing Hazel in person was a shock. He moved as silently as he always had, almost like he was looking for something but always coming off as being either bored or irritated with something. The man had just walked by, and when he'd seen Oscar, Hazel had approached just as silently and stoically as he possibly could have. When Hazel performed some "percussive maintenance" as he would have called it back when he was younger, Ozpin couldn't be surprised.

The ticket had come out so easily, and Hazel had stopped to give some advice to Oscar that nobody had asked for.

Don't let such a small obstacle block your path.

The words were too familiar, so familiar that they would have shot shivers up Ozpin's spine if he had one of his own. He knew that Oscar ended up feeling the same thing, but didn't comment on it too much. It was just another thing that Oscar didn't need to know.

Oscar didn't need to know that it was old advice that had almost been used as a family motto, passed from father to son for generations.

Oscar didn't need to know that Hazel had once said such a thing to the boy's mother as a teasing comfort back when they'd been young. Or that when team ORNG had been formed back in the day (oh, how Ozpin still missed that team, despite all of the ways that they'd fallen apart over the years,) Hazel had said the same thing when they'd been attacked by Ursae.

The greatest relief that Ozpin could take comfort in was that Oscar didn't recognize his own father's face. Of course, the last time that the boy had seen the man, things had been different. Ozpin and Hazel would have both been younger, and the memories that Oscar had of the man didn't tend to feature his face much. When they did, age was less apparent on his features. His hair had been different. He hadn't worn any facial hair.

He still towered over Oscar, but not in the same way that he had back when the boy had still been just a young child.

If Ozpin had a heart of his own, he was sure that it would have broken in his chest. He would have felt so horrible that it would have ended up feeling like a too-heavy weight on his chest despite the fact that there was nothing there to weigh him down.

So when Oscar asked him about Hazel, Ozpin had to think fast and be careful. He couldn't give the boy any truths beyond what the boy needed to know. If Oscar truly needed to learn these things, he was sure that they would present themselves eventually. Ozpin could do what he could to protect the child from the horrible truth of his parentage.

He could hide the fact that Ozpin had once called that man teammate.

He could hide the fact that Hazel would kill them both without any hesitation.

He could hide the man's name at the very least.

Oscar Pine had been raised as Oscar Pine- not Oscar Rainart. That was a relief in itself, small as it was.

So when Ozpin was asked about it, his answer had nothing to do with young Oscar. He identified Hazel only as someone from his past, and stopped himself from letting anything else about the matter out. And to Ozpin's luck, Oscar didn't question it.

Of course, they would have to avoid another run in with someone like Hazel in the future. The stakes were too high. Death was on the line if Salem heard so much as a whisper to suggest that Ozpin was still alive somewhere out there.

But when Ozpin got time alone to think, which was an exceedingly rare occurrence that had to be taken when Oscar was asleep most of the time, Ozpin couldn't help the distress.

He knew that it was giving the boy nightmares, and that Hazel was becoming a more and more common fixture in them.

There were a lot of things that Hazel's appearance had left Ozpin worrying about.

He couldn't help but wonder whether or not Hazel had recognized the boy or not. If Hazel did recognize Oscar, would he have said something or acted on it?

Or would he have just brushed it off and kept going? Would he have tried to think of it as a ghost of the past?

Ozpin didn't know, and that was the worst thing. He didn't know whether or not Oscar being the man's child would matter in the grand scheme of things. He didn't know whether or not that would be used as a bargaining chip to protect Oscar from Salem's grip. He didn't know whether or not that would mean that Hazel would ultimately have to follow through with one of the things that he'd been accused of doing for so many years.

It broke his heart, really.

Ozpin was only left to worry more and more about Oscar's nightmares as they got closer and closer to the truth.

But Oscar was good about some things. Even despite the fact that the two of them had their minds beginning to mesh together more and more, Oscar didn't question who dreams belonged to.

In Ozpin's opinion, it was just better if Oscar remembered things in pieces and didn't know who they came from. He would do his best to protect the boy from the truth. That said, he didn't know how long he was going to be able to continue that ruse.

Eventually things were going to come out as having some truth to them, Ozpin suspected.

He feared the day that Oscar finally realized that he'd had a run in with his longtime absentee father.

He feared the day that someone came on Salem's behalf to kill Oscar.

Most of all, Ozpin feared that person would be Hazel.

He hoped his old friend was above killing his family.

It was impossible, Hazel told himself as he walked away from the train depot. This was truly something that he couldn't ignore.

When he'd seen the boy struggling to purchase a train ticket, it had been something that Hazel had tried hard not to worry about. All that he'd needed to do was get a ticket for himself so that he could make passage to meet with Sienna Khan without getting caught in the rain any longer.

But then he'd seen the boy's eyes.

He'd recognized the shade of green so quickly that if he was a lesser man, he would have been struck dead by it.

Vibrant green, with splashes of hazel brown.

Seeing those eyes had been enough to leave him feeling like he might get sick.

It was impossible, Hazel told himself.

His family was dead, he told himself.

Deep down, he figured that there was a scrap of a possibility that he still had family out there. In theory, someone could have gotten away from the fire and survived but if they had, why had they gone missing on him?

Did they fear him?

Hazel knew that he hadn't been the best father back when he'd still had a family. He knew that he could have been around for his wife and little son more often, and that he could have done more to support them. They'd deserved better than a man who was always off taking jobs that were questionable in nature for less than respectable people.

But that was just one of the problems that came from being a Huntsman out in Mistral. Your odds of running into someone that was looking for good respectable work were about even with the odds that you'd end up working for someone looking for someone else to get their hands dirty.

Hazel had taken bad jobs.

His family had paid the price, and then his reputation had not long after.

Bitterness was something that surged and rested just under his skin, always there and always ready to drag him down.

There'd been a lot of things about the boy, and ultimately Hazel could only say that he was intrigued. Everything seemed to take a backseat to the silent what if that rang in the back of his head though.

In the end, Hazel decided to take the same advice that he'd given to the boy. He simply reminded himself not to let such a small obstacle block his path.

There was no use in dwelling on the dead, after all.