Chapter Text
Raven doesn't remember much about her mother in all likelihood due to her passing away when she was three. She and her brother Qrow have known their father Odyn and the rest of their tribe for the entirety of their lives. They never really stayed in one place too long due to Grimm and Hunters, her and Qrow were meant to be the future of their tribe, that was something drilled into their head since they could talk.
It's been almost six weeks since their eighth birthday, it was an important day for every member in the tribe because that's when they begin their training. The years prior to this they would be taught the basic needs of speech, how to write, foraging for food and tracking, but now they focused on survival and combat training. The training was brutal, they would be forced to stay awake for days on end without any rest, the only things they were allowed to eat is something they killed, as for water they only got a bottle between the two of them every week.
Most of the hunting fell to Raven due to Qrow barely being able to kill anything consistently. They would always conclude and begin the day with a sparring match with their father, most of the time that ended with them bloodied and bruised, ‘tough love’ he called it. She still remembers the end of the third week, it was directly after the end of day sparring match with Odyn. Qrow collapsed in their bed exhausted, Raven was about to join him when their father stopped her and pulled her aside.
“Come, I want you to see something.” He walked a few yards away before he noticed her hesitancy to follow. “Now!” she could only respond with a simple “Yes Sir” before following close behind him. By her count it took them over thirty minutes to get where they were going, it was a small cliff side over seeing a small clearing. She could see a herd of deer grazing on the grass that basked the clearing. Deer were a delicacy for the tribe due to the effort it took to hunt them. She could easily spot about a hundred of them just grazing in the clearing.
Odyn smacked her on the shoulder before pointing to the deer. “I want you to watch closely here Raven, you're about to witness the greatest lesson you'll ever learn.” She followed her father’s instructions and looked intently at the deer. That's when she noticed what had just prowled its way out of the woods, wolves, a pack of about 15 of them from what her eyes could see. They circled around the herd slowly, being careful not to alert a single one of them, then when it was quiet enough to hear the birds chirp from the trees, one of them lunged, piercing its fangs into the neck of one of the deer.
The deer was quick to throw the wolf off, alerting the rest of the herd and causing them to panic. They ran for their lives as the wolves seemed to be herding one of the slower ones away, and when the rest of the herd escaped leaving the slow one behind, the wolves stopped herding and started eating. They knocked the deer onto the ground and began to tear into it.
Raven tried to look away, but her father grabbed her forcefully by the chin and turned her head to the carnage. “Don’t you dare look away girl, this is valuable knowledge!” And so, she looked on in horror as the wolves tore the deer apart, its muscle fibers and tendons being torn asunder like the stitching on a doll. “This here girl is the most important lesson you can ever learn so listen closely daughter, The strong will always thrive, they will never starve, and the world is theirs to consume, theirs to conquer. While the weak are only stepping stones for the strong, only fit to be used as tools and food, the weak will always be prey in the eyes of the world.”
“Unfortunately, your brother belongs to the latter category.” Raven, still incredibly traumatized, could only look at her father questioningly by his meaning. “He’s the runt of the litter so to speak, I was going to kill him after he was born considering how frail he was, but your mother begged me to spare him, to let him live, so I did. And now? He's just as pathetic as I imagined, he’s a terrible fighter, he can’t hunt worth a damn, and every task he's assigned he fails. It's like he's bad luck incarnate. So, I'm going to do what I should have done and put him out of his misery.”
As he began to walk back to the camp, Raven grabbed her feather by the sleeve with tears in her eyes, still reeling from the horror she just witnessed, “Wait! No Please give him another chance!” her father looked down at her anger clearly in his eyes. “Excuse you? What gives you the right to demand that of me?” Raven did the only thing she could think to do in the situation, beg for her brother’s life. “Please father! I'll do anything just don't take my brother away from me! I’ll make him train five times harder, I'll make him a model tribesman just please……don't kill him.”
Raven doesn't know how she did it that night, but she managed to convince her father to spare her brother, but he gave her two conditions, if Qrow ever fell behind on his training, he would be killed, and raven had an additional sparring match with her father, alone. Every day since then, Raven would push her brother farther, doing her best to have him keep up and stay alive, as for her she would always end the day, bloodied, bruised and stronger.