Chapter Text
The weak die. The strong live. Those are the rules.
Sparrow was strong. Really strong, as the case may be. It was the way she had to be, living in the Tribe. The world was mean, and only the strong survived in it. The soft weaklings huddled behind the Kingdom’s walls were deluded to think the world was any other way, that life could be anything but this struggle for survival, where everything you got was at someone else’s expense. Sparrow’s mother had told her all about the Kingdoms, and she prayed to the gods that she’d never end up like that. All it would take was one Grimm attack, and all those soft people would be torn apart.
Not Sparrow. She was strong, she had what it took, and between her Semblance and the sword on her hip, she could take anything the world could throw at her and dish it out twice as hard. Even in the tribe, Vernal was the only one who could match her in the sparring ring, and she was cheating, she had bullshit magic powers (and like a showoff, she only deigned to use them when Sparrow’s mother was watching. Jerk.) Sparrow was nothing but skill. She was good, and she knew it, and her mom knew it too.
Maybe too good, honestly. If she’d been second best, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten the special assignment from her mother.
“You want me to what?”
“You heard me, Sparrow.” Mom sipped her tea, Omen resting at her hip as always. “I want you to go to Beacon Academy.”
Sparrow tilted her head, eyebrows knit together. “But that’s in the Kingdoms. Why would you want me to go there?”
“Think.” Mom downed the rest of the cup, her eyes very deliberately sliding to the gash in the tent that had recently been stitched. “We can deal with the Grimm. We can deal with villagers. But what’s the one thing that can disrupt our raids and chase us down?”
Sparrow didn’t even have to think about that one. “Huntsmen. But you can take them easy.”
“I can, yes,” her mother continued, with the air of someone explaining a very simple concept to a five-year-old, “and I learned to do that at Beacon when I was your age. My brother and I went and learned how to kill Huntsmen, and now, I want you to do the same. I’m not going to be around forever, you know.”
Sparrow flushed. “I-I know that. But I’m plenty strong already. What would the Kingdoms have to teach me?”
Mom narrowed her eyes. “Don’t ever think you don’t have any more to learn, Sparrow. There’s always going to be someone out there who’s stronger than you, and you have to keep getting stronger so you can overpower them. There are no shortcuts to survival. You take any chance to get stronger, no matter what you have to do to get there. Anything less is stupidity of the highest order. Are you stupid, Sparrow?”
Sparrow gritted her teeth. She hated these sorts of questions, the ones where Mom already knew the answer, but wanted her to repeat it back to her anyway. “No, Mom. I’m not stupid. I’ll… I’ll go to Beacon.”
“That’s my girl.”
Sparrow didn’t move. She hadn’t been dismissed yet, and she didn’t want to make her mother any more disappointed in her. Mom nodded approvingly and pulled her helmet on. “One last thing. If you see a man in gray with bad hair and a scythe, or a blond man in cargo shorts with a tattoo on his arm, avoid them at all costs.”
“Why?”
She was silent for a long moment at that, her expression hidden behind the bone mask that marked the impenetrable barrier between Sparrow’s mother and the tribe’s leader.
“Just trust me,” Raven Branwen told her daughter. “You’re dismissed.”
Sparrow Branwen went.