Chapter Text
It’s fitting, he thinks, that he should drown.
He’d always been afraid to, especially when it became a very real possibility for him when he was barely twenty-five. It had occurred to him not as he’d been lying in recovery after having so many pounds of metal grafted to his body, not while he was learning to walk again, but on his first flight over the water after fully recovering and being stuffed back into his uniform and handed back his weapons as if nothing had ever happened to him.
Now, as he lingers where he’s fallen on the bridge, listening to the rush of water as it rises up from the dark, bottomless chasm beneath him, he almost thinks he’d be… better off dragging himself to the edge of the bridge and letting himself fall off.
Maybe the water’s a far enough drop that the impact would kill him before he drowned.
It’s fitting, he thinks, as he descends the long elevator ride to the vault, that he and James would die polar opposites once again.
Fire and water. So similar and yet so different. Choking on heavy smoke while your body fights against instinct to survive. If the human body is deprived of oxygen for too long, it will inhale no matter the circumstance. Your lungs will burn what oxygen is left, and your body will suffer through the carbon dioxide remaining, and then you will be forced to inhale. Your lungs will fill with endless smoke, endless water. You will suffocate on your body’s feeble attempt to save you from death. You will choke to death before the fire even singes your eyebrows. You will suffocate before you even remember you’re in water.
The vault is filling slowly with ice cold water from the barely-above-freezing ocean that used to surround the kingdom. The temperature has dropped significantly, and it eases Arthur’s singed flesh. Every so often, his vision will flicker, the HUD built into his eyes failing from the melted wires and the overheating within. It’ll take longer than a few minutes in here to cool down enough to function properly again, even ignoring his other injuries.
Arthur can see, now that the elevator has actually entered the vault, that James is just where he’d predicted. The smoke stains, the puddles of ooze, the open and empty vault behind the golden stairs--Salem has already been here, and likely Cinder as well. The bitch. The general must have put up quite a fight judging by the damage surrounding him.
“Planning on dying alone?” Arthur’s voice echoes menacingly throughout the desolate vault, just barely loud enough to be heard over the roar of the water rushing in below them. It probably makes a difference that his voice modulator is damaged and he can’t control the volume anymore. “Drowning is a slow and painful death. I’d imagine it’s even worse when you’re too heavy to swim upward.”
The elevator stops with a mechanical thud, and Arthur limps along the catwalk toward James. He’s trailing white smoke behind him, which is emanating from the open side of his metal ribcage. His suit and skin have burned away to make a window into his glowing insides, all of which are working tirelessly to keep him running. The side of his face that had previously displayed scraped and exposed metal thanks to the general is partially melted, his hair singed and his metal teeth exposed. It also looks like his right arm is broken in some manner, as it hangs limp at his side, supported by Arthur’s smoke-stained left hand.
How either of them are alive is truly a miracle.
The gore--or, rather, the noteworthy absence of gore--is not shocking to him. He’d questioned the exposed metal hours ago, and had had… minimal time to come to terms with the reality that Penny was not the only artificial being he had ever known. Just enough, actually, before he needed to process the next catastrophe.
He shakes his head as Penny briefly crosses his mind: unwilling to think about the implications of everything that’s happened in the past several hours, the least of which being the cold blue flames igniting in Winter Schnee’s eyes, just as he’d intended for years, though he’d never expected those eyes to ever be capable of looking at him with such hatred .
“A swim might help you ,” he snaps, voice low and quiet, mostly from fatigue. “You smell like a house fire.”
“And you smell like wet dog.” Arthur retorts. Despite how badly he wants to continue this little pissing match, he’s silent as he shuffles closer to the steps where James is sitting. When he does make it, Arthur finally gives out with a defeated sigh, sinking to his knees with a heavy thud. Something inside his exposed ribs sparks, and the gentle flow of white smoke grows heavy. Even in the absence of lungs, he’s breathing as though he’d been running the whole time.
“...damn it…” he breathes, letting his head fall forward. “...I’ll take a guess. It was Cinder who found the Staff of Creation, wasn’t it?”
“It was gone when I got here. I think it might have been…” He swallows. “… Penny.”
He has questions that no one will ever be able to answer now. What had happened between Penny opening the vault and Winter… well.
“I don’t know when she did it. I’m… missing a bit of time.” He sighs, grits his teeth. And James actually spits his next words. “But it doesn’t matter who got it first, She has it now.”
Arthur grins, which looks frightening in his mouth’s current state. “Yes. Yes She does.” He laughs weakly, and his smile falters. “...and She left me behind.”
“If She thought you were dead, I doubt She would’ve spent any time looking for a body when we’re about to flood.” James finally curls in on himself, letting his head clank against his right knee. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“I couldn’t have guessed.” Arthur scoffs. “And Salem didn’t leave me behind. She never would. I’m… Her right hand. The arm with which She stretches across Remnant.” God, he sounds like he’s reciting a mantra. “The… the fingers that… that…” His eyes flicker, like a flashlight running out of battery. There’s a low hum within his chest that starts to slow. “...choke… damn it …”
Salem would never just abandon him like that. Even on this mission, where he knew he could die, She sent one of her most valued pawns to save him. He’d known from day one that he was more valuable to her Her than a maiden; all She needed to replace one was a girl, but She’d never find someone like him again. Someone so dedicated that he gave up his living vessel to serve Her.
Theoretically, he should be able to live forever. He exhales and something rattles dangerously in his throat.
“...I’m… going to die here…”
It’s… frightening, to hear Arthur so resigned. James swallows the lump in his throat, and sighs before he lifts his face off of his leg.
“… you won’t be alone, at least,” he states. Is it meant to be comforting? He isn’t sure. He should hate Arthur for this, for everything he’s done. For the fact that they’re both sitting here in the vault, waiting to die. He’d shot Jacques Schnee with no hesitation. He’d shot Sleet , at point blank almost, with no hesitation . Why can’t he bring himself to do the same to Arthur?
Or even himself?
“It wasn’t supposed to end like this…” Arthur mutters, letting go of his arm so he can inspect his injuries better. It quickly becomes clear how bad they are, because something in his right shoulder snaps and the arm itself falls out of his sleeve and clatters on the ground, which draws a sharp gasp from the man himself. The shoulder and the upper half of it are so battered that it looks like someone took a hammer to the metal. Or like Arthur had slammed it against a wall until it broke. “And I wasn’t supposed to be here… with you .”
There’s venom in his words, a growl in his throat, white smoke seeping through his grit teeth. He was supposed to kill James in the arena. Or… at the very least, James was supposed to have been heartless enough to drop him off the edge and watch him sink into the magma below.
Finally, Arthur lets out a dry laugh. “It’s… going to cost me so much time and lien… to fix all of this…”
James can’t help but laugh. It starts off quiet, a snort that he barely swallows, but before he can stop himself, it rips out of his throat. He can’t help himself, and he’s not… at all sure why . Maybe it’s all just gotten to be too much. Maybe he’s… finally snapped.
God, maybe he really has been crazy and unhinged and a lunatic this whole time, like Jacques Schnee and Marrow Amin and Sleet and so damn many others had been telling him. And for some reason, Arthur can’t help but laugh with him.
It’s soft, weak, hollow, but it’s laughter. After a few minutes of that, when it finally dies out and they’re left once again with the echoing sounds of rushing water, Arthur’s face falls again, and he slowly leans forward until his forehead is against the stone steps to the vault.
“ James… ” he whispers. “ What are we going to do…? ”
“I… I-I don’t know. I don’t know what we can do.” James sighs, and looks back toward the lift. The controls are still glowing, he notices. And… the lights are still lit.
Wait…
“… think the lift will still run?” he asks after a moment, narrowing his eyes.
If it does, there’s safety in height. Most of Atlas is significantly taller than the mountains surrounding Mantle, so all they need is a handful of working elevators and unblocked stairs. Arthur sits up and looks over his shoulder to the lift. “It… it seemed fine when I came down.” he says. “It didn’t even shudder.” If the lift will run, they can get back to the academy. The compound. The hangars. James’ command ship was destroyed in Vale, but other transports should still be docked in the secure hangars, and high enough to make it out.
But can he stand? There’s more and more warnings going off in his head, and the smoke from his chest can’t decide if it’s done pouring out yet or not. He only has so long before his internal power goes out; the longer he’s overheating, the faster it’ll drain. Pietro’s lab is on one of the upper floors, meaning if they make it there, his equipment will be intact and Arthur can hook himself up to Penny’s manual charging station. There might even be a self repair program in place. He just needs to stand up.
Arthur reaches for the furthest step he can manage and grabs it as tight as he can to push himself up. His legs shake and the motor in his chest makes an awful noise, but he manages to get to his feet--and then immediately topples forward, collapsing into James’ lap with a cry of pain.
James grunts when Arthur’s weight lands in his lap, though. Alright. Arthur isn’t making it out on his own.
Light blue aura shimmers over James’ body, and his shoulders roll back as his jaw sets and the light seems to leave those blue eyes. He doesn’t dump Arthur out of his lap, merely sets him down in order to pull himself up into a crouch in order to lift Arthur across his shoulders before he straightens. “… only one way to know for sure, then.”
Arthur makes a small noise of surprise as he’s picked up, though he can’t protest or fight much more than that even if he wanted to. “H-hang on--” He taps James’ back to get his attention. “My arm… You need to… b-bring it. I can fix it in Pietro’s lab…”
This is so pathetic. So badly injured that he can’t even stand, being carried off to a laboratory that isn’t even his by a man he wanted dead for almost twenty years. Arthur’s plan didn’t extend much further beyond getting here to gloat. Maybe, if he’s lucky, James won’t stop for the dropped piece and will simply toss him over the edge of the platform and into the freezing water below. He’s always wondered how one could drown without lungs, after all.
Instead, James nods, crouches back down to snag the arm, and secures it in the hand attached to the arm supporting the bulk of Arthur’s weight. He makes sure that Arthur’s as secure as he’s going to get before he moves. Alright. It’s a straight line. He can manage a straight line.
And he takes off running. He’s not the fastest, he’s never been, but the quicker he gets them to the lift, the more time they have before the water reaches them.
Thankfully, the elevator is still functioning when they get there. All it takes is a few buttons and it hums to life and starts upward. Arthur knows that the scene above is going to upset James; scattered corpses, smoke and fire, rogue knights, dead students. He might even find some of the poor bastards Arthur shot on the way to the computer hubs. Maybe he won't have to explain. Maybe… maybe he won't even be conscious by then.
After all, the pale yellow light in his chest, which should be even brighter anyway, is fading fast. It's not death, but it could be if the general changes his mind. When Arthur's power finally runs dry, he could just drop the dead weight and run.
"Drop… the dead weight…" Arthur's voice is barely audible as the light in his chest starts to flicker. His voice distorts like a tape winding down. "... and run …"
He goes limp. The smoke finally slows its flow until it halts entirely. He's stopped breathing, or at least stopped pretending to breathe. If James didn't know any better, he might think he was holding a corpse.
James’ heart skips one of its mechanical beats in his chest. In fact, he swears it stops for a moment. But he shakes his head, ignores what he hears. Mettle is good for that, after all.
Mettle is also good for, at least, one other thing. The world around him literally dulls out. Not just sounds reducing to quiet buzzing, background noise. Not just pain, sensation, and texture fading until he doesn’t feel them anymore. But the most vital color leeches out of his surroundings, dulling the majority of possible distractions as he moves.
As he steps out of the lift, he can pretend, even for a moment, that the dark shapes on the walls and floors are char marks, not what he suspects them to really be.
Once he’s sure the path he needs is at least clear to begin with, he’s half-listening to Arthur: he runs again, his hold still tight even though in the back of his mind he… isn’t completely sure he’s carrying a living being. But he must be. He’s learned, after all, that it takes quite a bit to kill the fully artificial ones.
There's enough stairs and working lifts to get them to safety at the very least. The higher up they go, the less James sees of bodies and the signs of combat. Either the people who were left behind already fled, or they went through one of the portals. Pietro's office and the hall it resides in, hidden, are so calm and untouched that the only sign of any real danger is the red emergency lights.
Pictures on the desk and taped to the wall leave behind the question of whether Pietro made it out or not, and if he knew what happened to his daughter. Everything reeks of her presence, after all. Green accent lights on the machines, sticky note doodles left behind during long charging sessions. Perhaps it's not entirely a bad thing that James can't really process what he's seeing, and that Arthur isn't even conscious for any of it.
The charging station seems unharmed by the crash, and Arthur's skin has melted away just enough that finding the port on the back of his neck isn't difficult. James lays him gently on his stomach to hook him up to the machine, which whirs to life when it connects. After a few minutes, Arthur's practiced routine of breathing returns, though it's the only real indication of his well-being for the moment.
James stays long enough at Arthur’s side to make sure he’s… charging, not an entirely new action for him, just with a different artificial person. He settles in the chair that Pietro had always kept around for company, willing his aura to hold so he doesn’t lose focus on the objective: get Arthur functioning, and get out. From there… he doesn’t know. He has no plan. This wasn’t part of the plan. The plan had been so simple, and then--
He sighs, crumples forward and lets his elbows drop heavily onto his knees, supporting his head as his face drops into his hands and his aura flickers, flashes, and finally wears down, returning the world to full color, allowing him to hear the fluorescent lights and the hum of computers and machinery in the room, allowing him to hear his own damn breathing.
The vault hadn’t been quiet: this is quiet. It’s too quiet.
He raises his head for a moment, to check on Arthur, and a photo of Penny and Pietro tacked to the wall nearby catches his eye. He feels sick when he finds Penny’s little face. He… doesn’t even want to think about what she might look like now.
Would Penny dream? Dead or alive, wherever she may be, would she dream? Arthur does, though he isn’t sure if that’s because he used to be alive or not. Maybe when Penny closes her eyes and shuts down her body to charge for the night, she’s enveloped in peaceful, blissful darkness. Maybe it feels as though she blinks and arrives at the morning untouched. But for Arthur, memories flash past like a movie running at triple speed.
Flashes of faces long forgotten, voices he thought he’d heard the last of decades ago. A teacher he hated, a student who lent him a pencil, a meal he thought nothing of, a team he imagines are dead by now, Pietro, James, James, James, James.
Salem.
She was going to Vacuo next. With the Monstra destroyed, She, Cinder, and any of the other survivors would be taking ships directly from Atlas. If Neopolitan is with them, they won’t have any issue getting past the kingdom’s defenses. If not, it’s sure to be a bloodbath.
You deserve this, Arthur .