Chapter Text

Tai hummed to himself as he sanded down the hammer handle he had been working on. He had had a fitting piece of hickory at hand, so when Yang had found his lost hammerhead from the woods while playing with Ruby, he had taken it as a sign. Bless those little twerps. He smiled and raised the handle and blew air on it, feeling the texture and trying to gauge if it was ready to go down in grit size.

Probably not, he decided after a while and resumed sanding it. He still remembered how Grandpa had used to smack him on the back of the head every time he thought Tai was trying to cut corners on craftsmanship. His sanding slowed down as he remembered his voice and his... presence. He had just been around for so long, constantly in the periphery of the usual life that it still felt empty at times now that he was gone. Would he have approved, seeing him now? A bittersweet smile grew on his face, and he flipped the handle around. He'd probably tell him to sit straight. Maybe ask why he still had only two grandkids. Or why Tai was still carrying Grandpa's old pocket watch with him when he had a perfectly good clock on his scroll already.

He gradually became aware of a thumping sound from somewhere in the woods, repeating a few times a minute. At first he thought it had been just a branch in the wind, but by the fifth time or so, the constant muted thuds roused his curiosity, and he peeked out of the window. A few moments of nothing, and then it sounded again.

He frowned, putting the handle down and getting up to look out of the door. He steeled his senses, just in case... Just in case. Aura shifted in his frame, ready for action as always, the feeling akin to cinderblocks turning under his skin until they rounded out to a solid bulwark. He leaned out of the door and scanned the treeline, seeing nothing but hearing another thud.

It was probably just nothing, but... just in case. He tried not to worry. The kids were playing around, and there was always a chance – a tiny, insignificant chance – that a lone Grimm could make it through the sensor perimeter. He hastened his steps into the woods, the thuds growing louder until he heard a tiny, grunted curse which made a weight lift off his shoulders.

In a small clearing near his shed, Yang had climbed onto a low branch of a tree and... she jumped off it. Flapping oddly in the air and hitting the poofy moss of the forest floor in a tangle of limbs, huffing and getting up, hair a wondrous mess with sticks and bits of deadfall sticking out of it. She met his eyes and froze like a deer in headlights.

"Yang...?" he asked, trying to keep his face straight when Yang puffed a strand of hair off her cheek.

"Um," she said, looking around as if confused how she got here in the first place. The look was almost identical to the one he distinctly remembered Ein pulling when he had been confronted in the middle of a living room with the dinner ham shredded all over the carpet.

"What are you doing?" Tai asked, taking a few steps closer and crouching in front of her, holding his hand towards her.

"Um," Yang said again, taking his hand and letting him pull her up. "I, uh, was practicing." She looked guilty and shuffled in place.

"Practicing... what, exactly?" Tai looked at the tree and the dip in the moss where Yang had apparently been repeatedly throwing herself into.

"...I want to be a huntress," she said after a moment. "I wanna fly like you did."

Tai pursed his lips, feeling the weight return as he remembered jumping off the roof a few days ago in front of Yang.

He also remembered the talk he had had about that with Summer soon after.

"Look I knew you said I couldn't do it but I thought if I jumped just a little bit and get better at it so I told Ruby to stay back so she wouldn't—" Yang blurted out, words pouring out until Tai just sighed and waved his hand, silencing her.

He wasn't going to talk her out of that, was he. He looked down at her, her hands in tiny fists, still holding onto his wrist with the messy twintails puffy from the jumping, and he could almost physically feel the last of his resistance crumbling before those insistent eyes.

He took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair. He'd have to talk about this at some point, and it might as well be now. "Alright. Alright. But jumping off a tree won't help you there," he said and led Yang to a large rock around the edge of the clearing, sitting down on it and patting the mossy stone next to him, prompting Yang to hop on it.

"How can I be a huntress?" Yang asked, sitting cross-legged and leaning forward, more intent than he had ever seen her.

He had a hundred negations ready to go, thousands of different ways he could've told her that he shouldn't be one. It was dangerous, it was terrible, she shouldn't put herself in a position like that, it was lethal. All of them died down under her stare, and it felt like he was staring into a mirror of himself from decades ago.

"It's..." he started, switching his tracks at the last moment. "It's complicated. Let's start from the very beginning." Yang nodded and he gathered his thoughts. How had Grandpa put it back then, again? Gods, it had been a long time. Tai looked around and leaned back, picking up an unremarkable rock from the ground. "Can you tell me what's the difference between this rock and that patch of moss?" he said, pointing at a lump of green sitting next to them.

Yang furrowed her brows. "The moss is green?"

Ah, she was growing up to be a smartass. Great. "Well, you're not wrong, but there are green rocks and grey moss out there. There's something deeper going on."

"The moss is alive. Rock isn't."

Tai nodded and tapped the rock on the stone they were sitting on. "Exactly. The moss is doing things. It might not look like it, but it's growing, spreading, moving and doing all sorts of things. Very slowly, but still." He fished out the pocket watch from his vest, dangling it in front of Yang. It was an old brass thing, mottled with patina, but it still ticked in the quiet of the clearing. "This is an ordinary watch I got from my grandfather. Now, what's the difference between this clock and that moss?"

Yang looked at him in confusion. "The moss is alive?" she repeated, somewhat hesitantly this time.

"It is, but why is that important?" Tai popped the cover of the watch open, letting Yang see how the arms of the clock slowly moved around. "This is moving, ticking and doing things too. I'd even say that it's doing more than that moss is, so why is the moss special and this isn't?"

Yang looked at the moss again. "Aura?" she said, seemingly lost and doing her best to guess. "I don't know."

"You're on the right track. You see, this clock isn't actually doing anything." He picked up the rock and let it fall down from his hand, resulting in a quiet thump as it bounced from the stone and fell into the shrubbery. "That rock isn't doing anything either. The only reason it's moving is because it's having things done to it. That's the important difference. It doesn't have a choice, and there isn't even a choice to make. There's nothing there guiding it. Only blind cause and effect, nothing more. It's just following the laws of physics, and I could drop it a billion billion times like that, and every time it would fall exactly the same." He swung the clock from side to side and clicked it shut. "This clock is just like that. It's following the same laws as the rock is, and we humans just figured out a clever way of making those laws tell us the time.

"This isn't the case with the moss. It might not react a lot, but if I were to tear it in two, the two halves would grow differently. Even if I had identical patches of moss and I tore them apart the exact same way, none of them would be the same. The difference between the moss and the rock is that there is more to the moss than just the fibers in it. And that's what we call a soul." He gestured around himself. "Everything that's alive has one. The soul a patch of moss has is muted and very simple in comparison to, say, yours or mine, but it's still there, and that means it's not just an empty husk. It can actively do things."

Tai gently poked Yang in the sternum. "And just like the soul lets it do things, so does the one in your body. It doesn't exist in the physical world like everything else does, and because of that, it sets you free from the material, cold logic that the rocks and clocks follow. It's what makes you you, and it's what gives you the ability to do things all by yourself. That choice is called 'free will,' and it's what sets things like us apart from the rest. Are you following?"

Yang frowned a bit. "I don't know..." she said, tilting her head, copying a tic he had seen Summer do countless times. "What do you mean 'choose'? Like... choose to do what?"

Tai hummed, gathering his thoughts for a moment. There had to be a simpler way... "Well, anything. That's the point." He drummed his fingers, trying to figure out another angle. "Think of your body like a car. A rock is a car with no driver in it. It just goes downhill, and on level ground it sits there until someone pushes it. A living thing is a car with a driver in it. The driver can choose to make the car go forward or backwards or off a cliff. Whatever she pleases."

Tai smiled as understanding dawned on Yang's face. "Ooh," she said after a short while, "so my Aura is the driver?"

"Well, your soul is. Aura is just the result of having a soul. Every living thing has one, except the Grimm."

Yang scratched her head, and Tai had to resist every urge he had not to hug the daylights out of her. "Grimm don't feel?" she eventually asked.

Tai shook his head and pocketed the watch, briefly remembering the hundreds of murderous red eyes he had stared down and snuffed out. "No, they don't. They're like this clock here. They might look and act like they're alive, but they're just machines. Dangerous and capable ones, but still just machines. They can't choose between doing something and not doing it. They just are."

"So it's not their fault?"

Tai shrugged. "Is a tornado at 'fault' for wrecking a city? It's just the way the world works. Blame doesn't matter there."

Yang pursed her lips, thinking for a moment. "So... how does that make you strong?"

Ah, this part. He had forgotten all about how Grandpa had put it. Time to wing it. "Well, you see," he started, buying himself a few moments. "It's like, hm, yeah, you know how we're warmer than the things around us, right?"

"Yeah?"

"That's because we're alive. Your body is working hard, constantly. Your heart is beating, lungs pumping, eyes moving, brain thinking, the whole works. Your body is using the energy from your breakfast to make itself move, and all that work means that some of the energy is turned to heat. If you really push yourself and, for example, run really fast, your body is working overtime and you get really hot and sweaty. We are very active when compared to moss or ants, so we also run much hotter than them because our bodies are working so much more."

"Moss is hot?" Yang asked, pointing at the patch Tai had used as an example.

"Well, no. But it's just a tiny bit warmer than the rock below it. The moss has all these processes going on it needs to live, just like us, and it's just going through them much more slowly."

"Weird."

"Yeah, it is. It's just a plant so it doesn't do much—"

"Is moss a plant?"

Tai blinked once, almost responding. Was it? Had to be. Couldn't be a fungus. What about lichens, though? They didn't feel like they were plants. Were they related to mosses?

"I, er," he stammered, having lost his train of thought. "Yes, I think they are. But, anyway, it's just a plant. Or close enough. It doesn't do much, and even though it's alive, it can be hard to tell. We, however – we are different. We're doing so much more than it is, and so are our souls. Your mind," he said and pressed his index finger on Yang's forehead, "is powerful. We humans are special, and right now you're thinking more things than all of the forest around us combined. Compared to everything around us, your mind is a massive creative engine. It's constantly thinking, feeling and experiencing things, jumping from one thought to the next. It's doing an enormous amount of work every second. Now, if you run really fast, you get hot and sweaty, but what if you think really hard?"

Yang didn't look like she understood that there was a leading question to be answered, and she just looked at him curiously.

"Well, nothing," Tai continued. "You don't get hot. But all that work is still happening, so where does it go?"

Still no response. And here he had thought this was the perfect lead-up. "That's what we call an Aura. It's kind of like body heat of the soul. When our souls and minds do invisible work in us, they also bleed off that excess energy as Aura. It's the direct result of just being alive. The moss and the ants, they all have a bit of it, but we have so much more."

Yang shifted on her seat, turning her head. "Where's mine?"

"In you. Around you. It's always with you, every moment of your life, awake and asleep. It's so deeply with you that you can't even feel it. Can you see your nose?"

"Of course!" she said, but still furrowed her brows and crossed her eyes to prove it.

Tai tapped his temple with a finger. "Only because I made you pay attention to it. You can see it every moment your eyes are open, but you're just so used to it that you tune it out entirely without even thinking. It's the same thing with your Aura. It's so natural that you can't feel it any more than you can feel your liver."

Yang sat quietly for a second. "I don't get it."

"Few do. Aura and souls, they don't exist like other things do. You can't touch them, smell them, see them, or feel – well, you can sort of feel them, but not in a way that makes sense. It's very hard to become aware of something like that which doesn't interact with anything. If someone learns to do this, it's called 'unlocking.' Your mom and I are some of the people who can do that."

"Hunters!"

Tai smiled. "Yes and no. Hunter is just a job, but you can't have that job without knowing how to use your Aura." He leaned back and picked up another small rock, showing it to Yang. "Once you realize that it's there, you can make it do things." He started solidifying his Aura into his hands, causing subtle beige ripples to appear on his skin. "If you know how, you can make it interact with the world. You can make it harden on your skin, turning you bulletproof. You can even push it into your muscles, willing it to make them move." He breathed calmly and pressed the knuckles of his other hand onto the rock he was holding, increasing the pressure until a crumbling pop sounded in the clearing as the rock cracked. Yang looked at him wide-eyed as he opened his hand, a faint smell of sulfur rising from the pieces. "Just like that. If used properly, it makes us stronger and faster than any other thing in the world."

Yang looked at the pieces in awe, reaching over to poke at them. "You're so strong!"

Tai chuckled. "Yeah, Aura does that for you. If you have it unlocked, you can make it do things. But most importantly, when you learn to manipulate it, you can also use your Semblance."

"Semblance?"

"It means 'appearance,' essentially. It's the specific way your soul manifests itself. You see, every soul is unique, and all of them have their own ways of making themselves known. If you figure out what that is, you can use your Aura in a way no other person can."

"Ooh, like the mom's, um," Yang trailed off and started making wooshing noises to demonstrate.

Tai laughed. "No, that's just her being her. Her Semblance lets her make things blow up. If she hits a Grimm enough times, she can just make it go pop like a firework. Very scary."

"What's yours?"

Tai turned to her, and as easy as breathing let his Semblance loose. It felt like it was constantly grinding just barely under his skin, and now it eagerly materialized itself. His skin looked like it was boiling and turning gray as his Aura converted itself into metal, quickly covering his arms in thick armor plating with square spikes dotting the knuckles of his gauntlet.

Yang's mouth made a small O as she watched the process, and once it finished, she gingerly touched the metal. "So cool!" she said, rapping her fist on it.

"Well, I don't want to brag, but it kind of is. It lets me put on armor very quickly, and these things mean that I'm never unarmed." He cracked his knuckles together, causing a sharp bang in the clearing as metal met metal. "It's very good for keeping others out of harm's way."

"I want too! What's mine?"

Tai sighed deeply, willing the metal to start dissipating. He still had one trick up his sleeve to keep Yang safe, and this one even Summer had agreed on. "It's not that simple. You never know your Semblance before you find it out. There's also a catch."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you see, there are different ways of doing it. Unlocking your Aura is essentially a survival instinct. Back in the day before the Kingdoms and everything, the only way of unlocking your Aura was to almost die."

Yang clapped her hands together. "Like, like, um, the Viridian Man?" she said, sitting up and leaning forward. Gods, he had read that story to her what has to be over fifty times by now.

"In a way. When you're really terrified and driven into a corner where your options are just to fight or die, sometimes the sheer terror can make your Aura awaken. If the strength of the emotions you're feeling is powerful enough, that can make you aware of where those emotions stem from – your soul. That awareness is the key to it all, so being upset enough can make it happen." Tai paused for a moment. "Obviously, I am not going to let that happen to you."

Yang looked like she wanted to argue, but eventually chose to not complain about not being put into mortal danger. "What then?"

"The second way is different. When mankind started learning about ourselves and Aura, alternative methods were figured out because having your warriors almost die all the time to become powerful was not very sustainable. There are many different schools to it, but most of them boil down to self-awareness. If you know yourself, you can know your true self, and that gives you the ability to recognize your Aura. It's long, grueling work, and very very boring.

"The third way is the easiest, and also the most recent one. You aren't aware of your Aura, but it's still there, and I can interact with it. See, Auras don't like to mix, at all. So if I start pushing my Aura against yours, it will react. If I provoke it enough, that reaction will be enough to make you aware that there's something there."

"Pleeeeeeeease!" Yang drawled out giving him a doe-eyed look. He resolutely met it.

"That last one is also not going to happen, because it's a crutch. It's a quick and easy way to do it, and that is not a good thing. It's like putting someone on the driver's seat of a car and telling them which pedal is which before sending them off. Sure, they can move about, but they don't have any idea what they're doing. I am not going to unlock your Aura, and neither is your mother."

"Dad!" Yang said in a wounded tone, standing up.

"You're doing it yourself." Yang looked at him in confusion, and Tai patted the spot where she had sat. "I won't be giving you a crippling shortcut, so if you want to be a huntress, you're going to do it the right way. It won't be easy and it's not going to be fun, but the reward is going to be more than worth it."

Yang pursed her lips and sat down. "What do I need to do?"

Tai fixed his posture slightly. "I meant it when I said it's not going to be fun. It's going to be very, very boring, and for a long time."

"I don't care. I want to fly." She crossed her arms and stared him down, lips slightly pursed.

Tai sighed. He should've probably expected that doing it the hard way wouldn't dissuade her, but so be it. If she did manage to unlock it herself, he couldn't dispute the dedication. "Well. I can show you the basics right here."

"Cool!" Yang said and stood back up, moving her hands excitedly.

"Sit down for this one. Take a pose like this," he said and assumed the meditative stance he had been taught, crossing his legs and placing his hands on his knees. "It's not exact science. This is the traditional way, but don't worry about getting it wrong if it's uncomfortable. Whatever works for you." He watched as Yang sat down before continuing. "Now, it helps me to keep my hands like this," he said and put them palms-up on his knees, his middle fingers and thumbs forming small rings. "Keep your fingers just barely touching. Good. Now, the boring part."

Tai took a deep breath and closed his eyes, feeling his Aura pulse within. "Close your eyes for now. Keep your back straight. Then, slowly breathe in through your nose. Don't rush it, and hold your breath for a moment. Then, exhale through your mouth. Keep the cycle natural, so don't make it too fast or slow." Tai went through the cycle once before continuing. "In through your nose, out from the mouth. Try to focus on that. In, and out. The idea is to not quite empty your mind, but to not think of anything in particular."

In, hold, out. He settled into the old rhythm easily. "Your mind is a font of thought. You can't shut that off, but you can just... let it do its own thing. Focusing on the breathing helps. Or keeping your fingertips just barely touching. Distracting yourself by focusing on those things helps you let your thoughts move unimpeded. And then..."

Another cycle. He was mildly impressed that Yang had been silent for so long, and when he opened his eyes for a moment, he saw that she was dutifully sitting in an approximation of the meditative stance, brow furrowed. "You allow your thoughts to just be. It's hard. It's really hard, but just try to not give them attention. If your mind wanders, that's fine. It's normal. Just stop yourself and move back to your breathing. Let the thoughts just come and go."

He took a deep breath, slowly making his Aura pulse through his entire body. "And just keep doing that. Focus on your breathing and fingertips. When the thoughts come, the goal is to just look at them like an outsider and let them float past. To put some distance between your mind and your thoughts. Don't worry if it doesn't make sense now."

It certainly hadn't made sense to him, but an hour a day under the threat of belt from Grandpa had made sure he had pushed through anyway. Not much else to do in an empty room. "And that distance is the core of it," he said, opening his eyes and taking his hands off his knees, looking at Yang. So small and determined. It would've been adorable if the idea of her marching to her death with an exotic weapon in tow didn't haunt the edges of his thoughts. "When you do that enough, you start to develop an awareness. And eventually it will click, and you will realize the full extent of yourself." He couldn't help himself, and he ruffled the top of Yang's head, making her make an annoyed noise and try to duck away. "You'll know when it happens."

Yang pushed his hand away and stayed in the stance, looking down and thinking. "Just that?"

"Just that. I told you, it's not exciting. But if you learn it naturally, the hard way, you're going to be so much better at using your Aura because you already know everything about it."

Yang scratched her head and looked at her hands, as if trying to see the Aura in them. "How long is it going to take?"

Tai shrugged. "Impossible to say. Months at least. Could be years."

"Years!?" Yang piped up, arms falling. For someone her age, a year was an impossibly long time, much less several. Well, it did make sense, given how a year was a significant part of her entire life span thus far.

Tai just nodded sternly. "It gets easier over time. An hour or a half per day is a good way of practicing."

Yang opened her mouth, already protesting, but much to Tai's surprise, she just sighed and pursed her lips. "Drat. Ruby's going to be all big by the time I learn it."

Tai stared at her in silence. She had just... taken it. Just like that. Not even an argument. Just agreed to sit still doing nothing for an hour a day until – from her point of view – forever, and it wasn't even a consideration. When was the last time she had voluntarily sat down for ten godsdamn minutes?

Tai shook herself out of the stupor. He'd believe it when he'd see it, but... Yang took the stance again, this time more experimentally and wiggled her fingers, trying out how touching different fingers felt.

"Um," she said, stopping suddenly. "What about animals? Do they have to do this?"

Tai shook his head. "No. They're too primitive for that. Just like plants. The human mind is exceptional." He reached forward, pulling a leaf from Yang's hair and tapping his finger against her scalp. "What's working in there is much, much more complex than anything else out there. Animals, even smart ones, don't—"

"Like Ein!" Yang piped up.

"—like Ein, yes, but even he doesn't have enough complexity to have that kind of understanding. He understands commands and gestures and food – most definitely food – but the kind of... abstract introspection needed to manipulate his Aura is something that just doesn't fit in a head that small. He doesn't understand existence on a level that's needed for that."

"...what's 'introspection'?"

"Navel-gazing." When Yang looked more confused, Tai continued, "Both mean thinking about yourself and your role in life. Dogs don't do that."

"Huh," Yang said, thinking about something deeply. They sat there like that for a few moments, just the sounds of the forest around them.

"We should probably go inside," he said eventually, looking up to the skies which had turned overcast at some point. "You could use a brushing."

Yang let out an embarrassed giggle, pulling at one of her ponytails and shaking her head to get her hair in order. "Maybe."

Tai smiled and got up, trying to help Yang off the rock, only for her to dive off it herself and manage a pretty good landing. Tai nodded in approval and took her hand, leading her towards the yard. "Just so you know..." Tai said, looking down at her. He almost said how dangerous being a huntress would be, but again he just couldn't bear to try to talk her over, so he just sighed and looked forward. "If you manage to unlock it, I'm going to be very proud of you."

Yang hummed and jumped over the bag of mulch leaning against the side of their house. "Promise I'll try every day!" she said as they rounded the corner, seeing Ruby sitting on the porch with Summer.

Tai let go of her hand as she shot forward towards them, making the kinds of noises excited children did, Ruby joining in as they got close. "I suppose you will," Tai said to himself, watching Yang drag Ruby up and run off with her.