Before the Beginning, some context
Once upon a time, there were two siblings who loved each other fiercely.
They had no parents, for their father had abandoned them when they were young and their mother had died when they were just five, and as is the way of those who have been left alone in the world, they turned to each other, clinging desperately to the only family they had left in the world.
It was not easy, staying together. Many times, they were almost separated, by people or Grimm or sickness. But the children endured, stealing food when they were starving and fleeing from the social services that wanted to put them into different homes. The twins taught themselves how to lie and to manipulate, and when they were old enough to realize that it was just them against the world, they taught themselves to fight. Fight against those who would separate them. Fight against fate, against destiny, against anything that would force the siblings to lose each other.
Then, when they were nine, the twins were found by the Branwen tribe, a clan of murderers and thieves that were seen as a plague upon society. The tribe took the siblings in, for the siblings were strong, and the clan was in need of strong members.
The siblings renamed themselves Raven and Qrow, and thus began their new life as part of the Branwen tribe.
Life in the tribe was not easy for the nine year olds, for the tribe was brutal and cruel, and the people within it were even crueler. But the twins knew how to be tough, for they had grown up alone in a world that destroyed weakness, and they knew how to protect each other, for that is what they had always done. And slowly, as the twins improved their fighting and defended each other fiercely against any threats they faced, they earned the tribe's respect.
And unbeknownst to them, they began to earn the tribe's loyalty.
Then, when the twins were ten, Grimm attacked the camp. This was not the first time something like that had happened, but never before had it been so many Grimm attacking. And in the chaos of blood and claws and screaming, the eldest of the twins made a mistake. Whilst attempting to escape from the wreckage the camp had become, she stumbled over an unseen obstacle, and let go of her brother's hand.
She immediately knew the mistake she had made when she allowed her hand to leave her brother's. As soon as she realized what she had done, she tried to find him again, but it was too late. In the chaos, Qrow had disappeared from her sight.
Despite fighting tooth and nail to search for her brother, the elders of the Branwen tribe would not allow Raven to risk herself by attacking the Grimm, claiming that as part of the future of the tribe, she had to stay safe. Thus, Raven was forced to leave the camp, dragged to a place of relative safety despite her best efforts to return to where she had last seen her brother.
It took five warriors pinning her to the ground to stop her from returning for her sibling, her twin, the other half of her soul. The warriors hated seeing the eldest twin so distraught, for over the years they had grown to care for the two siblings, but they also refused to allow Raven to kill herself trying to save her brother.
Not that it mattered much, in the end. For although the warriors were strong, fully grown men, there is nothing so savage and desperate as a soul that is trying to save its other half. And when half a soul feels its other half's pain, there is nothing in the world that can stop it from saving its other half.
In another life, in a life where she cared more for her tribe than her brother, Raven would have stayed out of the fighting as the elders told her to, although she would hate every second of it. In another life, Qrow would eventually stumble out of the forest with the other hunters, bloody and beaten and terrified. In another life, the bond between siblings that had once been so strong would have been broken irreparably by Qrow's knowledge that his sister would not save him when he needed it, even though he would burn the world down in a heartbeat for her.
But that was not this life.
In this life, when Raven felt her brother's pain, his terror, as a Grimm struck him down, she did not ignore it, because she was his sister, and she had sworn to protect him until there was no breath left in her body. In this life, Raven writhed out of the hands of the warriors who tried to hold her back and began to sprint towards the sound of screaming, praying that her brother would survive long enough for her to get there.
She would be too late, she knew it, she could feel her brother's terror fading into resignation, she could feel him giving up and welcoming death. But still she ran. She could not - would not - allow Qrow to die. If he died, she would follow soon after, because how could she not? He was her other half, her reason for fighting. He was everything to her.
She had to get to him. She had to ensure he survived.
That night, in her desperation to reach her twin before he was torn to pieces by Grimm, Raven unlocked her semblance. She'd created a portal, and stepped out of it just in time to kill the Beowolf that had been stalking her brother. She'd slung his arm over her shoulder and dragged him out of the smouldering ruins of the camp, patching up his wounds as best she could whilst thanking every deity she had ever heard of that he had survived. And then, she'd cried.
Everything changed after that night.
Traumatized by how close they had come to losing each other, the twins threw themselves into their training, reasoning that the better they were at fighting, the less chance they would have of dying. They got good; Qrow excelled in hand to hand, while Raven took to sword-fighting like she had been doing it her entire life. Soon, there was no one in the tribe who dared to challenge them.
The twins were grateful for this, when Qrow unlocked his semblance. For while Raven's semblance was useful, enabling her to appear at the side of those she cared about in a heartbeat, Qrow's semblance was not so profitable to the tribe. His semblance was bad luck, and although there were many in the tribe who had become loyal to the twins and the twins only, there were also those who hated his semblance, and hated him too, for having been born with a semblance such as that.
Had Qrow not been so good at fighting, had the twins not been so close that they defended each other against anyone foolish enough to attack them, the younger boy would likely not have made it to his teens. As it was, surviving was difficult, for Raven could not be with him at all times, and as good as he was at fighting, those who hated him were strong, and he could not kill all of them. Those who hated him made Qrow's life a living hell. He was beaten and starved, used as bait on Grimm attacks and left behind to draw the Grimm away from the rest of the tribe.
The rest of the tribe ached to intervene. But they knew they couldn't, for the Branwen twins had yet to learn of the loyalty most of the tribe owed them, and the siblings were not yet strong enough to take over the tribe. And so, the tribe was forced to watch as the youngest Branwen twin was hated for his semblance.
But as much as a few of those in the tribe tortured him, the youngest twin remained strong. He took everything that they gave him stoically, and did his best to keep his treatment from his sister, not wanting her to turn away from the only place of relative safety they had ever known just because of him. He knew that Raven liked living in the tribe, although she hated a few of the people within it, and he refused to be the one who took away her happiness.
Despite Qrow attempting to hide it from her, it didn't take Raven long to discover how some in the tribe were treating her brother. She knew that she couldn't do anything about it, short of running away with her brother and leaving the tribe forever, something that Qrow refused to let her do. But she also knew she couldn't let it continue.
So, she found a blacksmith, and bullied her twin into designing a weapon for the blacksmith to forge. A weapon worthy of a fighter as strong as Qrow. A weapon that would ensure no one in the tribe ever tried to kill him again.
Raven accomplished her goal. When those who hated the younger twin saw the sword-scythe that Qrow had designed, and saw how adept the younger twin was at using said weapon, they decided that beating up the boy was too much trouble. Qrow was still used as bait in Grimm attacks, and he was still insulted and spat at, but he could tolerate it.
He would tolerate it.
(Raven was not nearly so gracious about how minimally the hater's treatment had improved, but she grudgingly promised that she would not murder them for how they treated her younger brother. That did not stop her from planning unfortunate accidents she could use to get back at the tribe, should the opportunity ever arrive.)
The next seven years passed in relative peace. The siblings grew older, and they grew stronger, and as much as they bickered amongst themselves, their bond never wavered or faltered in the slightest.
Then, when they were sixteen, the twins were chosen for a mission. They were to go to Beacon Academy, and learn every weakness a huntsman could have. Then, they would go back to the tribe, and teach the tribe how to kill huntsmen.
And so it happened that the twins were accepted into Beacon Academy. And although they didn't know it at the time, but it was at Beacon that they would learn about friendship, and laughter, and love amongst people who were not related or similar. It was at Beacon that they would learn to accept differences and turns weaknesses into strengths.
It was at Beacon that they would become the leaders they were always meant to be, the leaders that the tribe had been waiting for.
On their first official day at the school, Qrow got pranked. His teammate told him that men in Vale wore kilts, and that to blend it, the younger Branwen should wear one as well. Qrow had known that the boy was lying, he had known that it was a trick, but he wore the skirt anyway, because he had never cared about gender clothing norms and the skirt was pretty.
Raven supported him, as she always did, because she herself preferred pants over dresses and did not believe in conforming to the idea of different genders wearing different clothes. (She also verbally destroyed anyone who dared say something cruel about Qrow, which was the first time the rest of the team suspected that the twins actually loved each other.)
As much as he had voluntarily done the prank, Qrow had decided that he couldn't be seen as easy pickings. Raven had agreed with him. And thus, a prank war had begun that lasted the rest of the first year, a prank war that simultaneously brought Team STRQ closer together and put them on the 'danger' list for every single teacher in the school.
Seeing as no team had ever before been put on the 'danger' list in their first year, it was an accomplishment. One that the entirety of Team STRQ was very proud of.
Their second and third year at Beacon passed peacefully, with Team STRQ becoming known as one of the best teams in the school. And Raven and Qrow, who had never expected to make friends with anyone outside the tribe, found themselves blindsided by their teammates.
Taiyang and Summer, the teammates the Branwen twins had never wanted, accepted them wholeheartedly. They laughed when the Branwen twins laughed, and smiled at the bickering which passed between the siblings. When Raven made a joke, they did not tell her to take things seriously, as the tribe always had. Instead, they joined in on the joking. And when Qrow stood up for a faunus who was being harassed, Taiyang and Summer did not teach him that protecting others was a weakness. No, they stood right next to him, furious and indignant and looking every bit as vengeful as the youngest Branwen twin felt.
Never before had Raven and Qrow felt so accepted. Never before had they felt so much like they had found a family.
Then, in their fourth year, the peaceful life that the Branwen twins had begun to build for themselves outside of the tribe was decimated by a single visit to the Headmaster of Beacon's office. When they were first called up, the twins had thought that they would get scolded, perhaps for the prank they had pulled on Taiyang earlier that week, and would be assigned a detention or two before being released to go back to class.
They were wrong.
That day, in that office, the Headmaster told them tales they had never dreamed of imagining before. He spun stories about gods and legends and magic, telling them about a war that he had been fighting for centuries against a witch who was the personification of darkness itself. He told them about the monsters she created, and the light that she sought to eradicate. He told them of how she wanted humanity's destruction, and how he wanted, needed, their help in fighting her. He said that he could gift them the ability to turn into birds at will, as a repayment for helping him.
(A gift had never sounded so much like a bribe. Like a debt that could never be repaid.)
The Headmaster spent hours telling the Branwen twins about impossible things. And as the day passed by, as morning became afternoon and afternoon faded into evening, the Branwen twins found themselves drowning in knowledge that they had never wanted, with no idea what they were going to do next.
They didn't want to fight for Ozpin, for their instincts told them that he was a manipulator, someone who saw them as pawns in a game and nothing more, and their instincts were never wrong. Nor did they want to step out of the fight completely, for if what the headmaster claimed was true, then it was in their best interest to destroy the witch before she killed them or, brothers forbid, killed Taiyang or Summer.
They wanted to fight. They didn't want to fight. They knew they couldn't trust Ozpin, but they weren't sure they could leave without him stopping them.
It seemed that they were in an impossible situation.
Calling upon their talents in manipulation, well-honed from their years spent on the streets when they were children, the Branwen twins donned masks of naivety and pretended that they believed every word the headmaster shared with them. They pretended that they looked up to him. They pretended that they needed some time to think Ozpin's offer over, all the while hinting that they would be more than happy to take him up on his offer to fight for him, to allow him to gift them the power of transforming into birds and agree to spy upon the witch for him.
Ozpin allowed them to have a week to consider his offer, fully believing that they would agree to fight in his war. Relieved at having bought some more time for themselves, the twins left the headmaster's office, knowing that they would never take Ozpin up on his offer, because their instincts screamed at them not to, but also not knowing how to escape the situation they had found themselves in.
If they said no, they would likely be killed, for Ozpin would not let them leave knowing all that they did. If they agreed to join the war, they would also more than likely die, at the hands of the witch or one of her minions.
"We need to leave." It was the first time either of the twins had spoken in the hour since they had returned to their dorm. When there was no immediate reply, Raven reached out, brushing the shoulder of her twin with an unsually gentle touch. In a voice barely louder than a whisper, she repeated the sentence. "We need to leave."
They both knew that it was the truth.
That night, Raven and Qrow Branwen disappeared from Beacon Academy, slipping from the window of their dorm room and vanishing into the city of Vale, hiding themselves in the darkness of the night as they stole aboard a cargo plane headed for Mistral, where they had left the tribe.
No one knew what had happened. Only that the previous day, the siblings had been called up to the Headmaster's office, and then had disappeared that night. Many people wondered why the twins had vanished - had they been expelled? Had they left willingly, or had they been kidnapped?
Many people wondered where the twins had gone, but no one wanted to know more than Summer and Taiyang, the remnants of what had once been Team STRQ. In the first few weeks after their teammates disappearance, the two friends were shattered, hoping against hope that Qrow and Raven would return, and growing more despondent with each day that the Branwen siblings were gone.
It took nearly two months for Summer and Taiyang to accept that the twins would not return.
With this acceptance, came anger, and with that anger, came a desperate need for answers. Why, exactly, had the twins left Beacon? What had caused them to flee? (Because Summer and Taiyang knew their teammates, they knew that they would never have left without saying goodbye, not unless they'd had no other choice.) What - or who - was responsible for their teammates disappearance?
It was a mystery that Summer and Taiyang were determined to solve.
And it is here, in the wake of this shattered team, with two friends searching for answers and two siblings taking control of the tribe that fate destined them to lead, that our story begins.