Stargazing With Beilah

Frightened Qrow

The longer you live in a house, the more you learn and notice about it that you didn't upon first moving in. You notice that the lights subtly flicker for a moment when the lights go on in another room. You notice the bit of broken floorboard beneath the carpet of your bedroom. You notice that a family of blue jays always nest in the same tree by the far window and that wood bees always eat at the siding of the house closest to the grass. You notice that every night, at exactly ten PM, the house makes the smallest of creaking noises to remind you that it is alive. 

Humans are much the same. Over the years of getting to know them better and better, you notice the little things they think they can hide. You notice that, while you're lingering at the doorway, outside their view, that they speak in hushed tones and that their whispers drop off completely once you enter. You notice that they don't like you hold knives anymore, even if you're just trying to cut your food. You notice how they stare at you when you aren't looking their way but refuse to meet your eyes. You notice that they chose their words carefully around you. They look at you like you're sick. Like you're insane. 

And you wonder if, after all these years, they're right. 

And you wonder... had they ever really loved you?

Qrow knew he could never tell his parents what went on inside his head- he knew that their actions would only get worse as they had over the past few years. The moment he expressed his fears, they would give him that look- the look reserved for the emotionally unstable crackhead at the local 7/11 who Qrow can't help but fear because, in his parents' eyes, he's just as bad. He can't help but believe that his parents are right. There must be something wrong with him. Some irreparable illness that is going to rot his mind to nothingness. 

Qrow pushed these thoughts from his mind. They had been plaguing him for weeks, getting worse and worse as he noticed the "subtle" hints his parents had been dropping with increasing frequency throughout the years. He was terrified- not that that was anything new. His parents didn't look at him the same anymore and that forced him to ponder two equally horrifying possibilities. Either, they were trying to hurt him because he knew too much (they always seemed uneasy when he told them about the things he had learned and the theories he had concocted), they were ignorant and scared of him because of it, or he really was just going crazy. As much as that last option seemed to make sense to him, he couldn't help but think that it wasn't completely his fault that things were changing. After all, he had always been like this. 

Ever since he was a child, Qrow had had... issues. He had never been exactly normal, but his parents had never seemed to notice, especially in his youth. They thought he was a completely normal child- if a bit anxious and shy around new people. As far as they were concerned, though, that was completely normal behaviour for a child and they were confident that he would grow out of his silly anxiety complex once he was old enough to realize the immaturity behind it. 

As he grew older, his problems became more prominent. He had difficulty sleeping, every night he managed to fall asleep plagues by nightmarish dreams that tormented him in his waking life as well as his sleeping one. Some nights, pure paranoia and nerves kept him up for hours on end- sometimes even keeping him up until sunlight streamed in through his windows or his alarm clock screamed at him, signifying the coming of the morning hours. 

But even healthy and neurotypical people could have trouble sleeping- especially when they were kids having nightmares from reading and watching too much content involving horror and the unknown. None of them thought anything of it. 

 Then, Qrow began to psycho-analyze people a bit. His parents thought it was charming- their son was a little Sherlock Holmes, trying to learn things about people like his idol without even talking to them! 

At least, that's what they told themselves at first. Until they noticed that Qrow would sometimes completely avoid people after attempting to analyze them if he deemed them too intimidating or something of the sort. He seemed to cook up conspiracies about people and their intentions and, at school, tended to watch and listen more than socialize. Qrow took "stranger danger" very seriously... even if the people in question weren't truly strangers. He had to know about them before he was willing to know them. 

Months after he began to analyze people, Qrow brought something up to his parents. He asked if it was normal for him to feel so anxious so frequently- if it was normal for him to be scared of most people. He didn't know much about paranoia, but he knew that it plagued him and made him feel ill. He knew that it wouldn't go away. 

His parents weren't worried- what was there to worry about?

It took them years to put pieces together because, for so many years, they blatantly ignored the signs. They ignored the paranoia and the odd fixations and the anxieties he had. They pushed any thoughts of him being different away because, as far as they were concerned, these little ticks and habits didn't have any impact. He didn't act violently or even very strangely- he seemed normal in almost every sense of the word- and why wouldn't he? He was the son of two completely normal people, so why would Qrow be any different? How could he be? With genetics in his favour and no outward symptoms, his parents didn't think anything of the few oddities in his behaviour. 

Eventually, though things changed. It wasn't obvious- it was barely there as far as they knew (though Qrow could attest that it was there as it had been for several years beforehand, that the only thing that changed was the added stress that made things far more difficult to hide from his parents, as terrifying as that was). Little things were changing, though. Small things that didn't seem odd at first but became more and more strange. 

He would stare off into space but in a way completely different from what people do when zoning out. These were dead, calculating stares at things off in the distance- things that they couldn't see. He bit his nails until they bled. He became quieter and quieter and the few times he spoke, it was clear that he was worried about something. 

Of course, these things alone began to worry his parents. Their son had been completely normal ever since he was a child and, now, all of a sudden, he seemed to be under intense mental pressure. They pushed this away, though, as they had done to everything for so many years. They ignored every sign that something wasn't right. 

But it's difficult to ignore when the person you're trying to hide your suspicion from knows you're suspicious, and it's even more difficult when said person has a breakdown over it. 

One night, panicked and afraid and running on the little sleep he had been getting, Qrow finally snapped. He was broken and everyone knew it- no one would want him like this. Terrified sobs wracked his body because he knew he couldn't survive anywhere if he continued to be who he was and if he continued to feel what he felt. He couldn't live in fear and be happy at the same time and he knew it. He cried until his head hurt so much that he could no longer physically stay awake and he was forced to fall into a deep sleep. 

It was nothing to worry about, though, his parents assured themselves. Qrow was just stressed because of school! It was nothing to worry about.  

I know this is really all over the place but I was just kind of throwing thoughts down and I thought it worked with the theme since it's sort of about mental issues from the perspective of the person suffering from them as we as their parents if that makes sense? I wanted it to seem a little chaotic, but this is... really not good and doesn't really encapsulate what I wanted from their relationship. I had fun with this, though, so, there's that.