The icy wind was bitter.
James took in a deep, sharp, almost sobering breath as he stood outside the dark and vacant bar. He knew all too well that alcohol was not what he needed in this uncertain and trying time, but after tonight's events, the thoughts just became too intrusive. The paranoia, the fear, the uncertainty- they all finally wore too heavy on his psyche, and the constant gnawing pain that wracked his body and that he did his best to blunt and ignore came avalanching at full force.
Well, at least it wasn't Jacques' liquor, Ironwood consoled himself as he began his unsteady and stilted stroll to nowhere in particular.
The black sky was swirled with murky clouds that rained down heavy, wet snow; and he could feel his hair start to frost over. The stabbing cold on his face and steel was really doing its very best to sober him up, and he would not allow it.
He stopped, not entirely sure where he was - not that he cared - and from his coat he pulled his well-loved flask. He took a long, indulgent drink and the sweet burn of cheap bourbon down his throat was so much more satisfying than anything Atlas' weather could ever hope to produce.
His flask still uncapped in-hand, Ironwood reluctantly refound his focus as a strange sight appeared before him - a ghostly, ethereal apparition of blue, purple, and white; the lithe, delicate silhouette illuminated in snow and streetlights, wobbling almost as much as he had been earlier. For a moment, Ironwood wondered if, maybe, finally, his sane mind had fully slipped away from him.
"...Miss Schnee?"
Weiss' glance shot up from the icy streets, and she froze in her tracks - her expression the definition of mortified upon the realization of just who it was standing in front of her. She clutched her suitcase with both hands, almost dropping Myrtenaster in the jumble.
Ironwood merely stared back at her in his, yet again, waning drunkenness; an awkward and indulgent silence shared in the increasingly volatile weather. The hollow sound of wind billowing against the towering concrete and steel structures around them suddenly seemed so much louder and more suffocating than it should. What a headache of a night.
"I-I can explain." She took a wobbly step back, her heels clacking softly against the cement of the sidewalk.
He stared more, mulling over the situation. Weiss was an Atlas native, well aware of the inclement weather and deathly temperatures that the night ushered in – and yet was walking the streets in what was essentially a party dress? He sighed a heavy sigh, and hung his head while he recapped and reconciled his flask. 'Combat skirts' were the worst student fad yet.
"Alright. How about we go somewhere not freezing first?"
Weiss was taken back by his words, her look of metamorphosing shock and surprise seeming almost cartoonish in the warmth of the distant fluorescents – finally, she gave him a fierce, defiant glare steeped in skepticism before the numbness and burning of the vicious cold on her body played her hand. She gave him a tiny nod.
Removing his heavy woolen coat, its exterior caked with a thin mosaicked layer of snow and ice, Ironwood closed the distance between them; he wasted no time in draping the garment around Weiss' shoulders, and it engulfed the entirety of her tiny body. She glanced up at him, blushing slightly from the strange feeling of his residual body heat surrounding her.
"…So. Where do you suggest we should go at this hour?" Her hot breath steamed and swirled in the cold, and she couldn't help but notice that the heady, spicy musk of Ironwood's familiar cologne was tainted with the stink of cigarettes and sweat.
"How about Atlas Academy." He paused, giving Weiss a strange, critical look. "Don't worry, I'm not trying to force your hand about enrolling. Like I mentioned earlier; it's vacant, now, so you... Can do whatever it is you're trying to do, for as long as you'd like."
Weiss puzzled, casting her gaze back down to the snowy streets. She didn't take 'we'll be back in session before you know it' to mean 'feel free to come to loiter at the academy while nobody's around', but she'd take it – for now.
Her internal focus was broken and she yelped as Ironwood suddenly slumped around her, wrapping his arms around her in a sloppy, uncoordinated embrace; his hands sliding and pressing gently against her sides, Weiss' blush deepened – and from his coat's pocket, Ironwood pulled out his scroll. Paying no mind to Weiss' reaction to his odd caress, he moved away, wasting no time in texting someone.
"It'll... Be a few minutes until the driver arrives. Hopefully! I'm not really sure where we are, and gave them latitude and longitude. With the CCT down, the local GPS has been a little dodgy." Ironwood laughed a strange, off-kilter laugh and Weiss winced.
"General, you're-" Weiss paused, gritting her teeth. She couldn't seem to meet his gaze, despite wanting to; so her eyes found themselves fixated on his chest. She watched his crimson tie billow in the winds, and the soft and shifting lights reflect off his imposing pistol, holstered in leather and pressed snug against his chest. "You're drunk, General Ironwood. Do you really... Want anyone to see you with me like this? At this hour?"
He scoffed in reply, the deeply bitter and emotional sound just as strange to Weiss' ears as his perverse laugh. "I'm long past caring."
A heavy, awkward silence hung in the air around them as they stood together – Weiss only occasionally eyeing Ironwood, who merely stared off into the distance. His hands were held behind him at parade rest, and his posture was rigid and impossibly straight; even as the vicious winds and snow and sleet assaulted his person. Weiss' mind absently wandered, and she mused that he looked as though he was guarding something.
After what felt like a horrible eternity, a discreet black car pulled up beside them.
A driver got out – a young man - and Ironwood gave him a lopsided smile, approaching him to place a hand on the youth's shoulder. "What a good navigator you are."
Weiss cringed, momentarily wondering if this was all an awful mistake; but still, she got into the back of the vehicle. Leaving her luggage for the driver, she clutched Ironwood's coat tightly around her and savored its supplemented warmth in the shelter of the car. She continued to eye Ironwood as he handed the driver several Lien notes; their denominations bigger and more generous than anything she'd ever tipped.
"We'd like our privacy, please." Ironwood joined Weiss, sloppily throwing too much of his weight into the mundane motion of sitting to her left. The fine leather seats of the vehicle were heated, and Ironwood shifted uncomfortably. "We have boring military jargon to discuss; boring, but sensitive. Thank you." With his polite and increasingly slurred words, the driver nodded, and a privacy screen went up between them.
"So, what is this." The warmth - and lack of coordination - in Ironwood's voice was gone. He removed his left glove, and ran his fingers through his hair; upsetting his side part and slicking it back, he scraped off some of the quickly melting snow. He stared at the water dripping down his hand; his expression dazed and vacant, he was clearly not sure what to do with it.
"I'm... Going to Mistral." Weiss stated, as she turned to face Ironwood, and finally meet his gaze. His soaked silken shirt, the fine and thin black fabric drenched with melted sleet and snow, was clinging tightly to his body and making him look monstrous. Each hard and jagged angle from his prosthetics made to look all the more unnatural with the shifting shadows and contrasts of the passing streetlights, Weiss swallowed out of nervous reflex, finding her mouth uncomfortably dry.
"I see." James exhaled through his nose, shutting his eyes. He didn't want to think about Mistral right now, and he let the disgusting gravity of her words fall deep and lost into his drunken haze. "What was your plan, exactly? You weren't planning on walking there, were you?"
Weiss' eyes narrowed at his snide, mocking comments. "No, of course not. I had… A plan. A plan that didn't involve you, which is why I locked-" Weiss stopped, covering her mouth before giving him a nervous glance. Ironwood quirked a brow, before narrowing his eyes to mirror hers.
"So it was you who locked the door?" Ironwood watched Weiss look down to her hands, grabbing and bunching the thick, coarse fabric of his coat as she began nervously kneading it between her fingers. Her fire was put out, he noted before he continued, hesitant; his words took more focus than he wanted to muster. "I'm having... Something of a rough time right now, I suppose you could say. Your actions weren't appreciated, Weiss."
He deeply lamented that his flask was now in a pocket that was tightly clutched against Weiss' chest.
"I know. And I'm sorry. But I just-"
"But you just didn't want to risk it? Risk me, seeing you? Reacting? Immediately turning around, and telling Jacques?" Ironwood scoffed again, his voice climbing in volume. "I would have helped you, you know. Even if for no other reason than it would have given me something more productive to do tonight. Something more focused and... Real. Immediate. Tangible."
Weiss began pulling the fabric taut between her hands. For as long as she had known General Ironwood - and it was a long time, that she had known General Ironwood - she had never seen him so... Emotional; so unhinged. Since the fall of Beacon, even while sober, every single one of his words was dripping in cynicism and frustration. It frightened her.
It frightened her; frightened her more than she could explain, or understand, and it made her feel so terribly raw.
"…Why didn't you arrest me at the party?"
Ironwood looked up at the roof of the car, raising his eyebrows. He scoffed again; but it was soft, and full of a disgusting pity. Helping.
The overwhelming urge to reclaim his flask from Weiss' desperate clutches had finally won over the final vestiges of his sane restraint; and so he turned to her, and reached out - but thankfully, they arrived at the academy.
"There's a flask in the left breast pocket of my coat." Ironwood licked his lips, finding his mouth unbearably parched. "Please give it to me."
Weiss gave him stern pause, staring him down. "No."
Her expression steely, plain, and unyielding, she got out of the car; and Ironwood went back to staring at the roof.
Weiss walked on ahead, her nose turned to the sky, leaving him to collect her luggage. She uncannily seemed to know exactly where she was going in the large complex, and Ironwood took his time in exiting the car; he still looked on even as the driver left Weiss' belongings beside him and departed, absently lamenting that the tails of his coat were being dragged along the salted concrete of the campus' courtyard as Weiss walked.
Another good, fine coat. Gone. Ruined.
Finally, James began to move; to catch up to her - but his right leg faltered, the servos in his thigh, knee, and ankle going limp and unresponsive - and he stumbled, his prosthetics completely collapsing under his weight. He fell to land hard on his right side, his shoulder gouging deep into the ground; dropping Weiss' suitcase, Myrtenaster rolled clunkily away from him.
It was so tempting to - maybe, finally - just stay down, Ironwood romanticized to himself, as he felt the billows of snow and sleet worm their way beneath his shirt; and he shuddered as the ice particles rolled and traveled down along the remaining flesh of his back.
Now it was another good, fine shirt that was gone - ruined - he mourned, but focusing, he regained control – and Ironwood pushed himself off the ground, and stood himself upright.
Weiss would just have to wait for him to collect her things, and unlock whatever door it was that she thought she was going to go through.