Summary so far: Everybody makes it to Mistral, the truth somewhat comes out and bonds are broken dramatically. Full steam ahead to the end of the volume!

Lumi was home. Upstairs, Nocte and Ash were pressed shoulder to shoulder as they tried to knock each other over in a racing game. There were bottles of soda and bags of chips spread out along the floor. Thick pillows and thin blankets and the manic glee of overtaking the AI's characters to snag first place.

Here, downstairs, her dad was listening to soft music. There was barbeque pulled pork, already tenderized by a day of slow-cooking and ready to be dolloped onto sweet dinner rolls. Their heavy blue plates, the ones they'd owned since Lumi could tie her own shoes, were waiting in a neat stack; unbroken.

Here, on the couch, Oscar was asleep. Brownstone played on loop on the TV, Chevron's signature eyes flashing across the screen as they dissected the mystery of the week.

Lumi's Scroll chimed. She gently squeezed Oscar's shoulder and rocked him side to side. "Dear heart, your uncle's almost here. Wake up or I'll roll you out the door."

He groaned and snuggled further into the couch.

She sighed and slid her arms under him, picked him up as easy as Kuro. His head curled into the crook of her neck, skinny limbs bundled into a pile as he tried to make himself smaller. It was no use; they were basically the same height. Besides, she could heft a full-grown man just as easily thanks to aura. She carried him to the door and rolled her eyes when a second pair of arms appeared to carry him.

"Sorry uncle," she pitched her voice softly. "He just wouldn't get up."

"That's quite alright, my dear," Ozpin said with a grin, adjusted Oscar on one hip like he was much younger, and hugged her with his free arm. "I don't mind carrying him. Thank you for having him over. I didn't expect things to take quite so long."

She waved him off with a matching grin. "Anytime. Now be safe on the way back, okay? I don't need Qrow harassing me about letting an old man walk home alone."

Familiar, worn in banter. The door closed and- she blinked up at the ceiling. The sound of rain, or rather, of Rue in the garden. The too warm, twisted sheets around her. The empty, empty shadows.

Lumi sat up and pressed her feet to the floor. Morning again.

-[-]-

Rue bustled into the house with an armful of her best blooms. Elsewhere in the city Micah would be crawling out of her coffin to harass her apprentice and any soul unlucky enough to be caught in her clutches; Maidens help them all. However here, in this moment, she had fresh flowers and vibrant greens and a heavy heart made lighter by service. Here, in this moment, she had a full moon to prepare for and a school to make new by the blessing of Luna and a full service of Nightingales; including her close-lipped, wayward apprentice.

Lumi shuffled down the stairs with a yawn and stumbled her way across the kitchen to the coffee pot. Her hands moved on auto-pilot until a fully prepared mug appeared under her slim, scarred fingers.

"Good morning to you too," Rue drawled and snipped excess leaves from the fresh stems.

"Mornin' Rue," Lumi slurred through a yawn. She stared at the abundance of green then blinked owlishly. "I thought that was tonight?"

"It is," she gestured to the assortment of ribbons lining the island and pages of notes. "So finish that up and get to helping me."

She sighed but didn't argue- which was how Rue KNEW something else was bothering her. Even exhausted from finals, Lumi had tried to slither her way out of "extra" work. (Silly girl had yet to realize that all the "extra" work had a very specific purpose... making Rue's life easier!)

She waited for her quiet little student to return, dressed and caffeinated, before she brought it up. "Rough night?"

Lumi hesitated in reaching for an orange ribbon. "Yeah." She measured out an exact amount and clipped it at an angle. "Weird dreams, but I figured, with the anniversary coming up..."

She nodded, let the topic drop long enough to finish up one small bouquet. "Is that all?"

Her apprentice grimaced from the corner of her eye, baby's breath in hand.

"Nothing about your new son or husband? If I remember correctly, Qrow was at Beacon, wasn't he?"

"HOW D-" she cut herself off and pinched the bridge of her nose. The corners of the room reappeared. "Nightingale. Healer. Mentor. Right."

Exactly. Rue didn't like to abuse her status, but sometimes she needed to throw her weight around to see what sort of mess her student had gotten into while she was away. She had hoped it would be something easy to sweep away- a stumbled prayer, a misstep during a ceremonial dance- but from her little chat with Qrow, this wasn't something that would go away without serious accusations. Accusation that she sincerely doubted Lumi would support.

"No, nothing about them and Beacon," she tied a knot. "Just... still not used to not having Oscar here, I guess. Qrow took a while in coming to get him."

Despite her hinting and digging, she still hadn't found out anything more in the almost week she'd been home. Granted, Lumi had left the day after dropping that particular little truth on her, but going over to lay down terms with Qrow should have netted her some more information. Though they'd given her similar enough stories, there was just enough missing that she knew they were hiding a deeper root to their split.

Despite how it rankled, she wasn't willing to push too much. Lumi clammed up the more she tried and the last thing Rue needed was for the girl to stop talking to her altogether. With the new school year a week away, she hoped the change would loosen her lips or at least give her something else to focus on.

This ceremony was supposed to be the start of that.

"You know, I catch myself looking for Roux when I hear you walking around," she admitted and leaned her head atop Lumi's when the girl came in for a hug, the tender-heart. "But it'll be alright. We're tough, the two of us, and we have shit to do."

"Right!" Lumi laughed and Rue wiped her misty eyes. "Speaking of things to do..."

-[-]-

Five Days Ago

For once, broken glass across the living room floor was a good thing (and not his fault).

Qrow let out a sigh of relief as his youngest niece babbled a mile a minute despite the very firm hold of both her sister and teammate, which would have crushed a lesser mortal's ribs. The rest of the kids had come to watch the show with bittersweet smiles and that was just too much sap for him.

"Alright, enough blubbering- I think the food's gettin' cold," he clapped twice to grab their attention then shooed them to the dining room. Ever responsible, Ren and Nora transferred all the food while Jaune grabbed the bowls and chopsticks so Ruby could continue to interrogate the remaining two-thirds of her team.

Which just left Oscar with his arms folded across his chest and staring into space with his lower lip between his teeth.

"You good, pipsqueak?" Qrow waved his hand in front of his face.

He blinked and dragged his eyes away from the kitchen. "Uh, yeah, sorry." He cleared his throat and uncrossed his arms to clasp his hands behind his back in a move that was a little too Ozpin. "How did your search go? Did you find any more Hunters?"

"More implies I found some," he snorted self-deprecatingly. "I didn't find anyone."

There was a clatter from the kitchen and a cry for Nora NOT to try and juggle the knife.

"But..." his brow furrowed.

"Yup," he popped the last letter. "Y'know, pro-hunters don't just bite it all at once like that..." He reached for his flask. "Not without a reason."

Oscar hummed, the lines of his face shifting ever so slightly to let him know Ozpin was in the driver's seat. "While that is worrying, I have no doubt that things are not as dire as you make them out to be."

He grunted around a mouthful of whiskey.

"Humanity is resilient," he said, firm without being obnoxious. "And I'm sure Leo is hard at work petitioning the council for aid even as we speak."

Yeah fat chance of that- it was dinner time- but he got what Oz meant. That didn't soothe his (justified!) worry that things were about to nosedive even worse than they had.

"Well whatever," Qrow shrugged off his worry. "We can talk more tomorrow, when we bring the rest of the brats up to speed. For now, Oscar needs to go join the lion's den and make nice."

Oz glared at him flatly. "Laugh it up while you can. With your posture Oscar will be taller than you in a year or less."

He laughed and ruffled the boy's hair. "You wish!"

-[-]-

Four Days Ago

"I'm sure pipsqueak here needs no introduction," Qrow drawled, one hand on the back of the armchair. "But this is-"

"Our new cousin," Yang nodded. "Ruby filled me in at dinner last night."

Oscar blinked at her then craned his neck to look at Qrow. The other man was staring hard at a quietly humming Ruby.

"Well, not exactly," Oscar cleared his throat and turned back around.

"Didn't Qrow adopt you though?" Nora chimed in.

"I mean, sort of, but-"

"So he's our adopted cousin," Ruby cut in with a rush. "But he's still totally our cousin! And he's younger than me so I'm not the baby anymore! HA!"

Yang rolled her eyes. "You'll always be the baby."

"Can we focus?" Qrow sounded like he was two steps away from chucking his nieces over the side of the training area. "Thanks. Now, like I was sayin', this is Oscar but he's also Ozpin."

Weiss raised a brow. "Do you have any way to prove that?"

Ozpin easily slid into place with a flash of gold over their hazel eyes. "Good morning, Miss Schnee." He grinned to set her at ease even as his voice echoed and layered with Oscar's higher pitch. "Miss Xiao Long."

Yang's hackles raised at that. "Uh, can you say something only Ozpin would know?"

He crossed his arms and placed a chin to his hand. "Hm... well, just before your first semester at Beacon I received reports of a fiery blonde at a nightcl-"

"GOT IT." Her leg twitched as she fought an impulse to launch herself.

"Indeed," he suppressed a grin. "Now, I do believe you had some questions for me?"

The two newcomers glanced at each other then back at him. Weiss was the first to speak. "Yang's mom said..."

-[-]-

Two Days Ago

Lumi looked up at the many, many stairs leading out of the train station and sighed. She was grateful that her mission boots were so comfortable, but after two and a half days of non-stop Grimm attacks she wished the city was a little flatter. Her aura levels hadn't been this low since her team had accidentally snowed themselves in up north last winter and she'd been elected as space heater because she had the best control. Why they'd done that, she couldn't say for sure. She had some sneaking suspicions that her "I'm fine" routine had slipped more than she realized in those long winter months and it was a way to pull her out of her isolated shell.

Reminiscing and whining, however, wouldn't make her bed inch any closer so she shoved her mental monologue aside and climbed the many, many damned stairs to the fourth level. On the way she passed a small group of Sea Temple Sisters who failed to recognize her – thankfully. Lumi's sudden, scandalous abandoning of the Moon Temple while her master was away had the normal tranquil Sisters in a tizzy and without any Hunters in the city to tempt anyone else, she was the prime focus of gossip for the past two weeks.

(That Rue hadn't kicked her out and had defended her apprenticeship through the Nightingale Order was a relief, but also more fodder for rumors. Why would such a devout follower of Luna be okay with her student running off with an older man, unless it was all planned from the beginning? Rue was old enough to have known him after all and she could have easily introduced the two...

Lumi would like to introduce the source of such rumors to Polaris at point-blank range but Rue had already slipped something to one of the key gossipers. Said gossiper found herself throwing up for a few days and very quiet about Lumi's business afterwards. Such was life.)

She stumbled in and threw herself into bed, barely managing to kick her shoes off. When she awoke, Rue had a set of plates and a thick medical file ready for her. Unfortunately for her stomach, she also had a quick check-up planned so she had to sit at the table instead of the island where the food sat. She fell into place with a soft "oof."

"Did you really have to print the entire thing?" Lumi offered up her arm for a blood pressure reading and fought against her sleepy instincts to sit up straight.

"Somebody wanted to clear all of their scars, and that requires keeping a log," Rue said sharply but her hands were gentle. She scribbled down the pressure reading and removed the cuff. "Which reminds me, if I ever meet your mother, I'll bludgeon her with your records."

"I don't doubt that you would, but I doubt you'll ever get to," she informed the sour-faced woman with a weak grin. If her mother had an ounce of honor left in her she'd keep to the terms of their deal or she'd find herself with a thoroughly crushed ankle on top of her mangled hand.

She hummed and clipped her grey-red hair lower, just above the nape of her neck. "For her sake, I hope so."

Aww, her mentor really was just a softie inside, wasn't she? Lumi leaned her head against the other woman's arm and accepted the quick hug. It was hard not to flop against her entirely and melt into a boneless puddle. Rue smoothed her gross, sweat-gummed bangs away from her face with a quick pulse of aura and she nearly cooed at how comforting the motion was.

"Something nearly ripped your arm off," Rue quashed the moment with a blunt inventory of her injuries: bruises, down to the bone, a fracture just below her left knee, incredibly low aura stores... "Remind me again why I let you go on that shady mission?"

"It wasn't that shady," she protested and moved to the island, stumbling only once. "The information was good, but there's been a lot more Grimm lately. Everyone, and everything, made it out, which is the best we could ask for without a chaperone."

It was a little laughable that a fourth-year team would need any adult supervision, but even areas of relatively low activity had more, and more aggressive, Grimm swarming around lately. It'd been that way since Beacon so there was no point complaining about it, not unless they wanted to petition Lionheart personally for a mission. Considering that the first level was still locked, even to Rue, that had less of a chance of happening than pigs flying.

"Not much time left before the term starts back up," Rue said and cleared up the table. The files she took to her office and the cuff went into her medical bag, already packed for the morning. "I trust you'll keep your fool self out of danger until then?"

"I'd say yes but trouble has a way of finding me." Her fork scrapped across the plate and she laid it down. She hadn't eaten much but her eyes were heavier than her hunger. "See you in the morning for rounds?"

She waved her off. "Yes, yes, now to go bed before you crack your head open trying to climb the stairs."

Lumi huffed and shadow-stepped back to her room. A two-hour nap wasn't enough to do much of anything, but Rue wouldn't mind her clearing out the fridge in the middle of the night so she didn't fight her fatigue and laid back down. Maybe, with a little more rest, she could finally sit down and figure out what she was going to do about Oscar.

-[-]-

One Day Ago

Oscar held his hands very still over Weiss' scraped knee and screwed his eyes shut. His aura dripped down his arms and over his palms- but no further. He sighed then breathed deeply and gathered more into his hands, the energy slowly spinning in place with a faint green glow.

Something snapped across the divide, a single thread of emerald jolted into Weiss' leg and her entire body lit up with pale blue aura.

She jerked back with a sharp "hey!" and he wished the ground would split open to swallow him whole.

"Sorry," he said and withdrew his hands. It looked so easy when Lumi did it- she barely needed to concentrate for such a light mark!

She rubbed at the previously scraped skin (which he'd disinfected) and waved him off. "It's alright, Oscar. That didn't hurt me at all."

He was grateful (and embarrassed) that she would spare his feelings like that. A failed Healing, or an intentional aura jab, stung like biting down on a lightning bolt. A small one to be sure, but the feeling was just as sharp.

"I really thought I had it that time."

She shrugged one shoulder with a smile. "I suppose this means we both just need to practice more."

"Yeah," he nodded and tugged on a glove- only to tug it off when Nora sent Yang flying through the dirt with a swing of her hammer. Their small tournament was fun to watch but every injury and subsequent failed Healing left his mood bleaker and bleaker. "At least I'll get plenty of it today."

Weiss patted his shoulder then rejoined the crowd. Jaune was shouting at Nora to go for the knees while Ruby was cheering on her sister in an equally violent but more varied manner. Ren shook his head and handed some lien to Qrow, who marked it down in a handheld notebook.

Well, someone was having fun. He cleaned up the small amount of mess and recounted the stash of supplies. That done, he let Oz slide to the forefront to watch the rest of the spars with a critical eye...

It wasn't strictly necessary for Oscar to keep up his attempts at healing. If anything, it was taking time away from his training, time that he wasn't totally sure he could spend. As nice as it was that Yang and Weiss had caught up and been okay with what they were doing (even if it was more to follow Ruby's lead than anything), that didn't erase the fact that Qrow still hadn't found any sympathetic Hunters.

They were hard to come by, especially so since the increase of attacks to the Mistral border. Even the Haven professors, who'd been at the periphery of Qrow's list, hadn't been back to the city long enough to hear them out before getting swarmed with a pile of missions. It was disheartening (because that meant they couldn't even ask) but also somewhat heartwarming (because they were so dedicated to protecting the kingdom).

He wasn't entirely sure how to feel, but that wasn't anything new.

Lionheart hadn't gotten back to them with any updates on the Council's deliberations, but Ozpin's memories of dealing with the Vale Council had him wincing in sympathy. It required a great deal of politicking to get anything done on a good day and requesting a team (or more) of an already precious resource was so troublesome that he wouldn't wish it on most of his enemies.

The small tournament wrapped up and they migrated inside for an early dinner. Unrelated to his Semblance, Qrow was a bit of a disaster in the kitchen so he and Ozpin settled in the living room with mugs of cocoa while the kids (Ren and Yang, mostly) cooked. They chatted some (Weiss definitely needed some extra practice; Jaune was coming along nicely) when Ruby strolled into the middle with nerves written clearly across her face.

Before she could get a word out, Qrow's Scroll hummed to life.

"Hey Leo..."

-[-]-

Three Hours Ago

Lumi slotted the fancy comb into place then stepped back to admire her handiwork. Rue looked almost unearthly in her ritual attire, eyes hidden by a painted mask and steps muffled to a whisper by soft silken flats. The layers of fine chiffon swayed with the slightest movement like a supernatural wind followed and if it hadn't been for the bowl of cheesy puffs in hand she would've made the perfect ghost.

"I thought you hated junk food?" She adjusted the veil that covered the other woman's hair from ears down.

"I do," Rue held the bowl tighter. "It's terrible for you and I won't try to justify that. HOWEVER, if I have to deal with Micah's horrid little voice for the rest of the night then I need something to get me through."

She didn't drink so this was a good a vice as any; Lumi shrugged. She would have rolled her eyes but the "wife" and "mother-wife" roles both required that their faces be covered by their veil so it wouldn't translate well.

"I'll take the flowers ahead and come ba-"

Rue shoved another handful of puffs in her mouth. "Just the flowers."

"Uh, right," her brows raised to her hairline. "Have fun with your heart attack."

She dodged the airborne puff and stepped through the shadows to Haven Academy. It looked like a masterpiece in the setting sun, but it would look even better decorated and in the light of the full moon.

A/N: Hope you lovely readers enjoyed!