Chapter Text
Once upon a time, there was a village near the edge of a wood.
The wood was not a normal wood, the village said. Cursed for hundreds of years, and the new inhabitant was only making it worse. They warned passerby of the witch who lived amongst the trees, who stole children in the night and did gods-knew-what with them in that dark and untamed wood. You were not to go into the wood past sunset, they said. The witch’s magic would swallow you whole, or curse you as well, and then where would you be? No, better to be rid of magic entirely. The village would have none of it. They would be better without it.
Utter horseshit, in Qrow’s opinion, but after a few decades of being neighbors, he wasn’t feeling terribly charitable. He also didn’t want an entire village on his doorstep, though, so he left them well enough alone in their squat little houses outside the wood.
His house was situated near the center of the wood, a simple but respectable cottage that looked to be about one room but actually had about ten so far. Qrow had had to do some interior remodeling in the past. It had been a huge expenditure of magic, but more than worth it. And he kept them because the extra enchantments seemed to put the woods more at ease with him. The trees seemed to close in less over his chimney these days. The day before, it had almost been sunny. Things were looking up.
Now if only the damn pantry would cooperate.
Qrow sighed. “We really gotta do this every day, huh. It’s breakfast. That means coffee beans.”
The pantry was unmoved. The bowl he’d placed within it continued to be full of dry kidney beans.
Qrow closed the doors of the pantry again. Fourth time’s the charm. “Coffee beans. Not black, not pinto, not kidney, and not lentils. How does Ren even do this? Uh, please?”
He opened the doors. The bowl was blessedly full of coffee beans. Qrow smirked. “See? Wasn’t so hard.” He grabbed the bowl and gently pushed the doors closed. They snapped shut with an air of annoyance.
Qrow rolled his eyes and continued with his morning ritual. He’d never really gotten along with the pantry, but it beat having to actually garden or keep livestock out here, or worse, having to go into the village for food. He was quite content out here alone. He sat down at the unnecessarily large kitchen table and sipped his coffee.
There was a knock at the door.
Qrow froze. No one came to the cottage unannounced, it was well hidden by the magic of the wood and Qrow’s own wards. Even heading towards the cottage from within the wood should make someone uneasy enough to turn back.
There was another knock.
Qrow walked to the door and grabbed an ornate dagger from its place on a nearby rack. With his free hand, he flung the door open.
General James Ironwood was on his doorstep. “Oh, Qrow,” he said in a perfect monotone. “You’re the mage?”
Qrow slammed the door in the face of Atlas’ last military dictator.
James knocked again. “Qrow. I can explain.”
There were levels to the panic that Qrow was feeling, so he stopped and dealt with them in order of importance. First, even though they weren’t exactly his responsibility anymore, he knew the kids were currently safe. They all knew how to contact him in an emergency. He twisted the double ring on his right hand, feeling the weight of the enchantment under his fingers, still calm, still untriggered. Right. One down.
Second, James was here. But he had no kingdom and no army anymore. No one was coming to destroy his home or burn him at the stake. At least, no more than usual. Two down.
Third, and least answerable, something was incredibly wrong with James. His eyes were still blue like the winter sky but they were flat and lifeless, and his voice… Qrow had seen death, probably more death than most people. That wasn’t quite death, but it was something close. That man was standing and breathing, and something inside him was dead.
“Qrow. Please open the door. We should talk.”
Qrow took a deep breath. For James. He would figure out what had happened, and make his decision then. He owed James that much.
But he owed General Ironwood jack shit, so he flung the door open again and swung Harbinger’s blade up, allowing it to shift form until he held a black wand no longer than his forearm, nearly buzzing with explosive runes. He pointed it directly at Ironwood’s heart. “I’m feeling generous, so you get a whole minute to explain why you’re here, and what you want.”
He didn’t so much as flinch. “I came to ask permission from the ‘witch of the wood’ to live here. I didn’t realize it would be you. I chose the wood because I heard no one else goes near it.”
“That’s because it’s cursed, it scares them all off. Even you should have been able to feel it.”
“I did not.”
Qrow’s hand tightened on Harbinger. “Don’t lie to me. I’m not one of your minions, I’m not going to believe the shit you spread to scare people into submission. You have a heart, you get scared like the rest of us. Not that it excuses—”
“Had. I had a heart. Not anymore.” James’ face betrayed nothing. He looked completely blank, completely emotionless, like—
Dread crept up Qrow’s spine as the realization unfolded. “Jimmy, you didn’t.”
James was silent for a minute. “It was what had to be done.”
“How have you been, Qrow?”
“How the fuck do you think, Jimmy?” Qrow shot back from the kitchen, brewing another cup of coffee for himself.
Qrow sat down across from him. “Where do I even start with you. How did you even—” he gestured vaguely at James.
James seemed to absent-mindedly reach for his chest as he spoke. “It was a hypothetical we had researched extensively without running human trials, as the process is physical as well as arcane. Even when it succeeded it was imperfect. I still get flashes of what I had, but they’re manageable.”
Manageable. Gods, this was fucked. Only James could come up with something like this. Qrow eyed where James’ hand rested on his chest. Physical as well as arcane.
“Show me.”
James lifted his shirt. The damage to his right side was as it had always been, heavily scarred skin mixed with metal plating. All of that, Qrow had seen before. But there was a new one. Dead center in his chest was a plate the size of Qrow’s hand, absolutely covered in runes so small Qrow could barely read them. It would take days to untangle them all, but he got the gist of it.
“James,” Qrow said hoarsely. “When people called you the Heartless King, I thought they were being metaphorical.”
“The name came first.”
It made a gruesome kind of sense, as Qrow read through what was on the plate. Suppressing emotions would have run the risk of having them break through. So, he anchored them to something symbolic and removed them. The bastard had literally cut out his own heart. Qrow had been right. This was James’ body, with James’ memories. But a big part of James was missing. “How are you even alive?”
James lowered his shirt and smoothed it out. “The heart is a simple machine. A replacement was sufficient.”
Qrow was shaking. “James. We need to fix this. Where’s your heart?”
“Gone.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I gave it to someone I trusted and told them to destroy it.”
Qrow was stunned. “James, that’s…why did you do it?”
“Qrow,” James looked at him with those hollow eyes. “I knew what had to be done. I couldn’t have made the choices that would save Atlas if I was weighed down with—”
“Weighed down!?” Qrow was standing again, hands on the table. “You thought the best way to keep the kingdom you were supposed to protect safe was to stop being able to give a shit about it?”
“I didn’t give up my goals. Only my fear of failing them. The will to survive is not an emotion. Atlas would have fallen to Salem if I hadn’t.”
Qrow stared. James stared right back.
Qrow only spoke when he couldn’t take the silence. “So. You’re just gonna live here, until that body of yours drops dead?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” He didn’t want to ask this. But spite took hold of his voice and held firm. “You’ve finished your goal. Congratulations. Now you have nothing. What ‘goal’ do you further living here, huh?”
There was a flash of something behind James’ eyes, like the last ember of a fire being picked up by the wind. For a moment, Qrow saw James. His James.
“I don’t know what else to do.” There was a tremble to it, something other than the steady tone he’d had since he arrived.
Qrow cursed to himself. He was really gonna get involved in this again, huh. “James,” he said as he leaned over the table. “It might not be too late to fix this.”
“It is. I gave the order to have it destroyed.”
There were only a few people James would have trusted with that. Qrow sighed. “Well let’s hope your little special operatives have a bit of rebellion in them. Now, who has your heart?”
In the village, a rider stabled his horse.
“And how long will you be in town, Ser?” they asked him, eyeing his crisp white jacket and silver-green pin. Such strange visitors to the village this year.
The rider shrugged. “As long as it takes.” An unhelpful sort of answer from an unhelpful sort of person, to be sure, but his money was good, and they asked no more questions.
The rider set out alone. Over his shoulder was a simple pack. In his hands was a simple metal box with a latch. It beat against his fingers as he made his way to the edge of the wood.