Ironwood began to regain consciousness. Slowly, he blinked his eyes open and woke up from his long sleep.
Where….Am I dead?
He quickly deduced he was still alive. The feeling of sunlight warming his body. Soft grass beneath him. A cool wooden door. All of those together told him he hadn't passed on yet.
James took a look to gather his bearings. It was obvious to him that he'd made it to the Vault. He'd survived. That was a shock.
His memories of trying to make it were a bit of a blur. There was the familiar calming feeling of his aura that surrounded him. His aches were there, but dulled.
Was it… was it me or my semblance?...
He knew his aura had shattered earlier, but with a patchy memory of events perhaps it had returned, and with it, Mettle. The uncontrollable ability of his that pushed him onwards.
Ironwood kept leaning against the chamber doors. Did I save myself?
James Ironwood didn't know if he had been the one that determined his life was still worth fighting for or if it was just him dancing to the tune of his semblance. Am I… free?
His thoughts were interrupted by a voice.
"Oh good…. You're awake" Watts grunted from several feet away.
"Arthur…?" James asked in confusion. It came back to him. Watts had tried to shoot him. James looked for his gun, saw it and tried to weakly go for it.
Watts sighed. "Doesn't work. Dusts gone bad."
Ironwood paused and then slumped back down. It was too much of a hassle anyways. Even if Watts was lying, he would have already been dead.
He took a good look at his enemy. Watts was a rotten sight. The grass he was on was dried with blood. His face had wrappings on it, covering up a shredded and burned left side alongside his glass ridden eye. His clothes were covered in soot, blood and sweat. Much of it was torn off to serve as a tourniquet for his wounds and his face.
It's nothing less than he deserves. Arthur had countless lives on his hands and was one of the reasons he had lost everything. Ironwood's tightened his fist, the one on the arm he'd lost in the fight against Watts
He wondered why the man was half dead here. Was he left to rot by Salem? James didn't discount that possibility.
"Don't look so smug James. She played you too."
"Salem."
"Cinder" his foe spat out. "Decided to off me." Arthur sighed. He sounded defeated, though there was hate in his voice.
"Checkmate" she had said.
He grit his teeth. For some reason Cinder had decided to betray Watts but not Salem. That meant the two of them were burned by the same fire.
"So what now?" James snapped at him. It didn't look like Watts was overtly hostile for now. But Ironwood knew better than to trust someone like Arthur for even a second.
Watts gave a half shrug. "Seeing as neither of us are in any condition to fight…." his voice trailed off.
"A truce, then. Is that what you're asking for?"
Arthur nodded. James considered his options. Due Process was inoperable. Maybe he could use his sheer strength to kill him, but what would that accomplish? He was already barely able to stand. Where would that leave him if he expended energy in what would probably be a struggle to strangle one another.
Still, he had sworn to protect Atlas from all its enemies. Arthur was one of them. An enemy.
But Atlas is gone….
And his foe sounded like he shared a grudge against Cinder. Wounded as he was, James still could spot a weakness within his enemies ranks. Something caused a break in Salem's inner council. Something he could exploit. The fight was not yet over and with Team RWBY dead and Atlas fallen….
Beggars couldn't be choosers.
"Alright. Until we're out of here. Agreed?"
"Agreed…"
The two of them fell silent. Both were lost in their own thoughts. James was wracked with his own free will, if he had fought to live on his own accord or not. Watts was more concerned about how he'd get back at Cinder. There were other things too, but he wanted to keep them out of his mind for now.
James rested against the door. Just outside, the entire city of Atlas was beneath the waves. There was no way out of the vault now. Watts was thinking the same thing himself.
The two eventually found themselves thinking about their further survival.
Ironwood took a good rundown on his mechanical parts. His new arm seemed to be holding up without any serious damage. He was mostly impervious to water damage, or else he'd have been beaten a long time ago. Little repairs were needed and by instinct he moved a hand to one of his pouches only to find nothing inside.
Right… he thought with a sigh before his head thumped against the door in frustration. How was he going to fight Salem when he couldn't even fix a godsdamm circuit.
Arthur was examining his many wounds. They looked painful, but the doctor had enough aura to be quite the help. The rest he was trying to wrap up with torn pieces of his once expensive and dapper outfit.
James broke their uneasy silence.
"I didn't even know you had an aura until we had fought Arthur."
Watts looked up at him. Typically there would be an eye-roll involved, but Arthur found it painful. "Well, things don't always stay the same do they James? Salem thought it would be useful for me to have one. I happened to agree."
Curt and to the point. Truce or not, no one could call them friends. "I recall you adamantly against such a thing once."
Arthur scoffed. "Like you cared what I thought or not." Watts still remembered the many slights, real and imagined, that drove him down his path.
James furrowed his brow. "But no semblance."
"Like I'd want to be chained down by something like that. What if I was stuck with one like yours James?" Broken, bleeding and burned, Arthur Watts' verbal dagger was never sharper. "No thank you. I'll let my brain do my work for me."
James couldn't deny the point he had though. A semblance could be an incredible boon, most of the time it was, but sometimes you could be stuck with a semblance like Qrow's.
Or mine…
Ironwood had never thought horribly of his semblance. In battle, Mettle had served him well. It gave him the resolve needed to make hard choices. Like when fighting Watts.
But…
Were all those decisions that led them down to the abyss Mettle? Or… was it just himself? Was it merely an extension of everything he wanted?
It had to be it… he tried telling himself.
Arthur looked at James with that smug little look of his. His one good eye shining green. The two returned to their own thoughts and efforts for survival.
Ironwood's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of his stomach. What was left of the organ inside of him cried out for sustenance. Weakly, he searched the rest of his pouches. Destroyed dust cartridges were abundant. He nearly gave up until he found a soggy and damp set of rations. He forgot that they were standard issue, given out to the lowest private and the highest officer.
He gave a silent prayer of thanks for those regulations. Arthur must have been getting hungry too, with the way he was looking at him.
Ironwood wanted him to suffer. To starve and beg for a scrap of disgusting and wet food. They had a truce, yes, but that didn't mean he had to help him. Just not try to kill him.
In the end though, he tossed one over to him. With a gasp of pain caused by moving his arm, Arthur caught it. He looked surprised at the act.
We both want to kill her. That's enough for me right now.
The rations were as disgusting as ever, but even worse given they were doused with water that had collected in his combat pouches. Neither man complained and ate their food with ravenous hunger. There were a few more packages left, covering their food supply for a little while at least.
Of course, that didn't mean survival in the long run. If they were going to kill Cinder, they had to get out of here.
No way backwards. So that means forwards.
James looked at the horizon of the Atlas vault. Green grass as far as the eye could see.
He had to see if there was anything beyond that horizon. He couldn't just stay here forever.
A/N: More to come soon
Have roughly a few more chapters planned out before I have to actually start planning again.
Please leave a review.