Chapter Text
“And James,” Ozpin says through the scroll, “now that Atlas is stable and recalibrated in the air, please make sure that the Relic gets back into the Vault as soon as possible.”
“…Of course,” Ironwood says surreptitiously. “I…I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
From his office, the view of the City of Atlas is almost stunning. Beneath the night sky, hundreds—no, thousands—of little streetlights and houselights sparkle and flow, while even further, just visible beyond the city’s edge, the fires of Mantle, far below, speak of a warmth and homeliness in the vast expanse of the tundra.
“Although…” Ironwood adds, “I may just need to make sure that nothing goes sideways with the city.”
Ozpin grumbles on the other end of the line. “Fine, but please, the moment that you are satisfied the city won’t fall or whatever else, put the Staff back in the Vault.”
And then hangs up, the hollow dial tone only sounding for a moment before it’s cut off, like a snapping spider’s web, by silence. The muted tick of his wall clock’s pendulum swing is the only thing that chops it up.
James flicks his eyes up, across the room, to where the Staff of Creation lies on his coffee table.
It’s so, so…annoyingly, irritably…selfish. But when he first met Ambrosius…
They just...clicked.
Almost.
Kind of.
With a sharp, soft motion, James shoves the scroll into his pocket, and, tentatively, walks over to the Staff.
After only thinking for a moment, in a moment of falling through his better nature, he grabs it. He turns his head away from the blue smoke that swims out of it, doing his absolute best to not pay attention to the way that the pendulum smooths out its motion, the tick becoming a low drone, and then nothing at all.
“Ahh, to flex my creative wiles once more!” Ambrosius booms with the words James almost dreaded to hear. “To whom do I owe the pleasure of enabling the wondrous act of creati—oh, you,” he says, voice flattening. “I already made all the adjustments to your little city that you wanted, what more do you want now?”
“That’s the thing,” James says, slowly turning to face Ambrosius. “I…I don’t know what I want.”
Ambrosius, floating in the air, seven feet tall with ethereal blue skin and hair to match and considerable, conspicuous and, well, attractive, muscles, crosses his arms and narrows his eyes. “Then what’s stopping me from leaving? You have nothing for me to create.” He rolls his eyes, but before he can whisk himself away—
“Please. Don’t go,” James says, voice hitching on every syllable, while he reaches a hand out, eyes shadowed with, perhaps, the faintest of fear. “We…we, well, you, could make—create—conversation, with, uh, me.”
Ambrosius leans in, raising an eyebrow. “…Go on,”
Ironwood pales, voice lost. What can he say? What could he say that wouldn’t be selfish, or worse, feel like a complete betrayal of Atlas, of Ozpin?
He holds to that thought for so painfully long.
“I…” he trails off, sheepish, ashamed, weak. “I wanted to talk to you again. To…see you, again.”
Ambrosius smirks. “How…interesting. Do you have any particular reason as to why?”
“No.” At least I don’t think so, he thinks.
Ambrosius chuckles. “Well, James—can I call you James?—I must say that you are quite the character. You fascinate me.”
James looks up at Ambrosius, speechless in the way of a small, entranced, and confused puppy dog. “I…I do?”
“Why of course! Such a mix and meld of creation! It’s wonderful—it’s you. I mean—the workmanship of your arm, your chest, your leg!”
“…What? Do…” James trails off, his expression softening, “Do you really think that?”
Ambrosius smiles, and comes in closer to James, and says softly, “Absolutely. I admire—adore, even—every workpiece wrought of human hands and minds and effort.” He floats down to hover right next to Ironwood. “I honestly wouldn’t mind having a closer look—if you’d be alright with that, that is.”
James’ breath flutters in his chest. With a hand that shudders ever so slightly, he takes off the glove of his right hand and rolls up his right sleeve. In the moonlight, the dull surface of his metal arm shimmering with quiet beauty.
“A masterpiece,” Ambrosius breathes, “if I do say so myself.”
Ironwood huffs. “It’s…it’s nothing. Just something made by the best scientists and engineers of Atlas.”
“Still, it remains to be of exquisite quality and craftmanship nonetheless, in my opinion,”
“In your opinion,” James snaps back quietly. “It’s just…whatever, to me,”
Ambrosius breathes a downcast sigh. “Not to me. Not in the slightest,” he smiles. “Would you mind if you showed me more?”
James flushes. “Um, sure.”
Hesitating, he unbuttons his shirt, and with a roll of his shoulders, shucks it off. Almost shamefully, he looks away—doing a terrible job of ignoring the cold prosthetic half of his chest. He shuts his eyes, bracing for the inevitable worst, for the terrifying silence.
“James,” Ambrosius says, “it’s remarkable. Beautiful.”
“It’s a hunk of metal, Ambrosius, not an artwork.”
“And so what? Creations are only as much as are brought to them, enhanced by them; the personal effort and triumph of putting care and heart into making something. It’s made more by you, by being a part of you, of who you are. It does not own you—but you bring everything to it instead.”
“don’t go at me with that bull, Ambrosius,” ironwood says, “you’re just trying to make me feel better.”
“And so what if I am? Am I not allowed to try and make you feel better?”
“N-No, that’s not—" James says, clenching a fist, “I—I just…” he loosens it, watching his fingers unfurl from his palm. “I just feel like that’s not something you…should comment on.”
Ambrosius cocks a brow. “…Am I not allowed to have an opinion on you humans making things?”
James throws his hand against his face, “No, no,” he bites his lip, “You’re the Relic of Creation—of course you can have an opinion on people making things. Hell, you can have an opinion on something I make, for all I care.”
“Like this city, your people, your students?”
Ironwood inhales sharply. He’s silent as he puts his shirt back on, staring at the floor.
He flicks his eyes up to Ambrosius, and blinks.
“Can we talk about this another time,” Ironwood says. “I have to attend to several other matters.”
For a moment he could’ve sworn that Ambrosius looked almost disappointed.
“Fine,” Ambrosius says, bringing the inflection up at the end of the word. “Until next time, James.”
“My friends call me James, Ambrosius.” Ironwood says. “Farewell.”
Ambrosius starts dissipating into blue smoke, the Staff glowing—pulsing—brighter, before, almost on the back of a thought like a dog nipping at heels, he turns around.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Forgetting what, exactly?”
“You cleverly found a loophole, but I still created something,” Ambrosius says bluntly, nonchalantly miming an airship crashing through the sky.
The realisation strikes Ironwood like a leaf against concrete.
“So what do you care? Don’t you just love exploiting arbitrary explanation? What could possibly be in your interest to prevent the city from plummeting into the crater?”
“That’s…” Ambrosius replies slowly, “for me to know, and you to find out.”
“How cryptic.” Ironwood says, retrieving his scroll and pulling up the classified file of the city of Atlas, its mass, the weight to be cancelled out, and a dozen further details. “Do you need the complete blueprints again or do I just ask you?”
Ambrosius shrugs, a mischievous gleam behind a noncommittal countenance. “Whichever you want. But either way you can’t right now. Goodbye, James.”
In a wink, he’s gone, the weight punctuated by the tick of the clock.
Ironwood doesn’t dare risk waiting for the first tremor before grabbing hold of the Staff once more.
“Took you long enough,” Ambrosius snarks. “Whaddya need, General?”
Ironwood steels himself. “To keep the city of Atlas in the sky as specified by these blueprints,” he says, holding out his scroll at full arm’s reach.
“Easy enough,” Ambrosius sighs. He flexes his fingers, expression bored, and maps out a plan only visible to him and his mind of Atlas, floating above Mantle, traced in golden light and wound in blue smoke. With a snap of his fingers and a flourish of a hand, “Done,” he says with a bow.
Before he leaves again, James is certain he mouths, quickly and shallowly but there nonetheless, “You’re welcome,”
And suddenly as the clock springs back to life once more, the buzz of air traffic and the flicker of lights and shimmer of smoke starting up too, the night is annoyingly hollow.