#ironwood's descent is marked by how he turns on his friends

[thesparringpanther]

One thing I can never figure out is why even a paranoid-ridden Ironwood would dedicate a secret hospital wing to keeping Fria alive. It's not like Fria's health took a turn for the worst after the Fall, Fria's been knocking on death's door for a long time now if Qrow jokes about it and Winter's 8 year career led up to becoming the Maiden. And it's not like Ironwood is above this either, Ironwood has always been a "The ends justify the means" character. He comes up with the options that no one else wants to voice and doesn't care. He even has a whole song dedicated to how much he doesn't care about people reacting to his morally dubious plans. So, if any character would have euthanized Fria, or at the very least zapped her powers away so the only thing keeping his Kingdom from being a giant crater isn't an old woman on life support, it'd be him and only him.

And that is not even counting the last time they kept a Maiden on life support Salem's forces attacked, took the power, and trashed the Kingdom on the way out.

What I'm rambling about is that for some reason Ironwood holds Fria in deep regards.

Ironwood is a contradiction. He wars with his humanity, believing and wanting to be emotionless in the name of efficiency while also pulling a complete 180 and will go above and beyond to protect his friends.

Let's look at Ironwood's job. He's the first, and hopefully, last, person in Remnant to hold a majority of the power on his Council.

But contrary as to what the show portrays, the General seat and the Headmaster seats are not the same seat. He would have had to either have been a Headmaster promoted to the General or vice versa.

Considering all the values Ironwood holds dear in his heart, the same values Qrow lambasts in World of Remnant, it's the latter.

Headmasters are either assumed by the Vice Headmaster if the current Headmaster dies (Glynda) or elected independently of their council's input, likely by the other Headmasters (Lionheart). Makes sense, considering they need to be briefed on the whole magic WMD in their basements thing, it's best that the common people don't vote others into this position.

Now, Ozpin detests the usage of armies and fleets. He knows it just causes more unrest and easier for Salem to manipulate, so Ironwood would have been on the bottom of his Atlas Headmaster list.

So I propose that Fria was the one that recommended/brought Ironwood into the Ozluminati. She saw something in him and trusted him to become a part of the bigger picture. And through that Ironwood earned the trust of Ozpin, enough for when the time came around it was easier to trust Ironwood as the Headmaster of Atlas and the Keeper of the Staff than getting another guy to do so.

And because of this that I think General Jimmy "Emotions Are Worthless" Ironwood prioritized Fria's comfort and was only willing to pull the plug when everything else failed.

Cuz if there's one thing Ironwood values, it's people believing in him.

[quiltipcanines]

Witch’s Ladder

There is a hill, somewhere dark and grey, sheltered by an immovable blanket of thunderheads. In the shade of the world, only three trees grew. A towering rowan with orange berries like snake’s eyes, an apple bent low with fruit still young and sour, and the third was long dead, with bark scraped clean and salt soaked deep in the wood. The roots of the trees were old, inseparable from the hill itself, and they were all covered in blood. A young coyote had been too cock sure when he stole into the chicken coop and he had left with a bullet in the breast instead of food in his belly. 

As the coyote lay on his side cradled in tree roots struggling to breathe, an audience was filling the auditorium of branches. The murder of crows had come first. They were alerted by the sound of the gunshot and if anything was needed when that bullet hit its mark, it was family. From the great grand matron, to a chick just old enough to fly, there were sixteen crows and they took up in the rowan tree. Shortly after a stellars jay arrived with the glint of the stars in its eye and the dew of dawn still glittering on its blue crest. It had seen the shot happen, and would not leave a dying creature in its last moments. It flew down to the lowest branch of the leaning apple tree and perched with one foot on a burgeoning fruit and the other on a branch still tipped in the last flowers so it straddled the point where there was no turning back. 

Blood had begun to spread in a halo around the coyote by the time the third and final bird arrived. It was a flicker, with black feathers spread upon its breast like the blood spattering the poor creature it perched above. It landed with a hollow thud in the tree that was long dead and the echo spread down through its roots and deep into the ground. The bright chirps of the flicker hid the last tolls of the coyote. 

Together they were eighteen, and they listened to heed the final words of their cousin. 

Before they could begin, a scrabble interrupted their silence. Heavy footfalls unearthing clods of dirt on that lonely hill preceded the arrival of the last mourner. It was a child, shot through beyond flesh and blood to the soul underneath. All they were was tatters and it was a miracle that they had held together for this long. They managed one shakey step at the top of the hill, then another, before collapsing next to the coyote. The last gleam in the coyotes eyes sparked as he met the child’s glassey gaze. 

“We are dying.” Said the child. In the moments before the child arrived the crows would have agreed, all from the oldest to the youngest. The jay would have agreed, for it had seen it, and the flicker would have agreed, for it felt it in its breast deeper than any other sorrow. The coyote, with the taste of defeat the only thing left on his lips, would have agreed too, but not now. 

“Which of our wounds is more permanent? Which is the most final?” the coyote said through long, bloody teeth. Blood bubbled up from his chest as it spoke, but the question was worth the cost. 

The child was empty, and so, so full. Nearly suffocated under the pressure of its confinement in its false body. The truth of themselves had become broken and twisted beyond what it had originally been. It had been so long since the child remembered the form they took, they way their body felt, that the truth of who they were was nearly as dead as they were. 

“I am lost. My family has forgotten me, and I have forgotten myself. I do not know the teeth in my skull or the way the wind would run along my body. All that’s left is the shadow of myself, a negative space where I used to be. What point is there in life for something like that?” the child spoke with a voice that was more akin to the third echo than the first speaking. 

“We remember.” said the crows. 

“As do I.” Said the jay. 

“The trees have seen you and we live among them. How could we not?” said the flicker. 

The coyote laughed, ignoring the way blood gurgled in its throat. “The trees remember you. They drink my blood now, and tell me all about your grand forgetting. “ The coyote could feel deaths’ arms swing wide, ready to catch it in its fall. With the molten spite and rage still pumping in its heart, the coyote reached out. “I refuse to die in failure, to die in loss. I will offer you a bargain, child. There is no stopping my descent into the grave, but if you have forgotten your teeth, take mine. Bite for me, tear into the flesh and blood of your enemies and give them no quarter. Bury me and eat for me. Taste richness I could never imagine and chew your food thoroughly.” 

With a low growl echoing in its throat, bubbling up through the blood filling its lungs, the coyote opened wide to display it pearly, jagged teeth. The child spared only a moment to look into the coyote’s eyes and see the grim determination and utter conviction of its offer. With a confident hand, they reached forward and pulled the teeth from the coyote’s mouth. The sharpness of the cainines sliced across their palm but they did not falter as they pried the teeth out one by one, and more of their blood began to mingle. The child’s palms were red as the petals of poppies by the time they began to slide the treasured teeth into their own mouth. For a moment it seemed like they would not all fit, that they would be too large and grand to fit their own purpose, but with each tooth added it became clear that they would have fit all along. 

“You have forgotten your wings, child. I can see the scars of where your feathers were plucked. They broke your hands to keep you from flying.” said the oldest crow if a hoarse croak. She peered down at the child, weak as they were like a new-born chick. 

“We shall be their wings then. I shall give you the deepest black of my feathers and so will my siblings until your shadow is cowed by their darkness and obeys. Nothing shall keep you from the skies ever again, and you will be as eminent and unstoppable as the night. For this favor you must always remember your family. Keep us fed and we shall keep you in kind.” In a great flurry of wings, the crows descended from the rowan tree and landed on the child’s arms and back. They began to pluck the feathers from their wings and lace them into their arms. Though the crows gave up their feathers, their own wings did not seem to diminish. They were spared in their sacrifice as spirits as free and generous as theirs would never be grounded. By the time they were done the child’s arms were transformed into broad, black wings that were deep as the void that swallows the horizon between land and sky. When the child spread them for the first time, they felt lighter than they knew possible. 

The child looked over their wings and held them close before looking up at the birds one more time. Muscles that had not been there previously were sore from disuse and ached to spring into action “My bones remember these, I can tell, but how am I to fly if I can’t see where I’m going? It has been so long I do not know how to recognize the landscape of my home.” 

“I will teach you to see, I can do that much.” said the Jay. It glided down before the child and brought its head back. There was a sharp burst of pain in the child’s forehead as the Jay pecked at it, and a trickle of blood traveled down the child’s brow. It fell into their eyes, casting their vision in red. As they tried to blink it away dark shapes began to form and the truth came with them. The cut widened as the Jay pecked on and on. Each drop of blood that fell into the child’s eyes brought the truth into focus. Finally the eye that had been grown over was free and its lids tore free of each other to blink ragged ends. “That eye was stuck, only looking on the inside- you know? How good were you at seeing the layers of yourself? With that eye open you can see all the layers of the world, but it takes time to find the edges. Sometimes things that should line up don’t, but that does not make it less worthy.” said the Jay though a crooked beak. 

The flicker was a timid friend of the child, but not so timid as to never look them in the eye. It watched what the child did for others and each act of kindness brought it closer. Now, sympathy bled black from its breast. “You have lost so much, your form, your sight, your knowledge, but you still have one thing now that you had then; yourself. You still bear the wellspring from which all parts of you spring. With enough strength of spirit and will no matter how many times you cut the branches from the tree they will grow again twice over. Grow your will into ironwood. Walk with the knowledge of Persephone that anything lost can be grown again.” The flicker flew down from the salt worn tree and the child caught the bird before pulling it to their chest. The sound of their heartbeats grew louder until it swallowed them both. “You have a primordial sea inside you. Each beat of your heart is the volcanic thrum of magma clashing with cold, nutritious water. This duality of your soul makes earth with all the riches of Hades. Even outside your original container, your seeds grow true. But you must be vigilant to weed out the smothering human lies that break you down into worm food. Tear them out, and if you can’t, embrace the fire as it washes you clean and their ashes feed you. Live with every inhale, and die with every exhale. Any imposter or false idea of you thrust upon you will wither under your harsh extremes. Show them the child your parents raised.” 

One last moment of silence clung to the flickers words before it brought its head back and struck its long beak against the child’s chest. Blood began to flow down the birds beak like sap from a tapped tree. With each strike the child’s heartbeat became a call and response thunder and waves crashing upon volcanic rock. Their veins turned green beneath their skin and blossomed where it split. As though they had been dipped in ink, the child’s hands began to change. The right became a shadow black, velvety soft like a stain of smoke wrapping around their arm, while the left became marble white with immaculate grace of bone china. The ink that stained their skin dripped from their fingers to form long, precise claws that glinted. The coyote could feel a sense of pride in them, for they were a tool of a predator of skill.  

It was odd for a funeral, but a rebirth could only truly come from a fresh death. The child was heavy with the gifts they had been granted and their sinews ached to sit up. Together, these gifts promised hope that the power of the past, or a power of the future, was within reach and that was the heaviest of all. Gently, they reached out and pulled the coyote onto their lap. Their claws did not cut, for this was to be a gentle goodbye. “I will not thank you with words. I’m not leaving you behind here either. I know you now like, well, like the teeth in my mouth. I will thank you every time I bite and tear and chew the gristle of prey and enemy alike. I can promise you that we will eat much nicer things than gristle. Every time I bite and snarl and howl at the moon you will too, right there with me. Part of you may die tonight, but a part of you has many steps to tread still and I will take them for you.” 

A heavy, sputtering huff escaped the coyote as his chest shuddered. All that had taken to bring him to this point was a moment of bad luck in an effort for survival, but the coyote knew a second chance. “It is a promise then. A promise from all of us. You have given your blood and body, and will give your time to satisfy us. As you tear yourself from this human body feed it to us and you shall be free. Feed your family, guard them, and walk them home. See the divinity within yourself and the more you recognize your own power the more it shall grow. Child, be voracious for yourself.” Blood leaked from the coyotes jaws as he gave his final proclamation. 

The child bent and softly wrapped their arms around the corpse. They could feel that the coyote was still with them. From above, the birds watched the embrace. “Pluck the bullet from its chest so its body can be pure.” The flicker said. 

“It has become a seed of transformation, a culmination of the magic here. Use it to guide you and enact your power.” The jay said. 

The child did not hesitate to follow the instruction of their elders. With steady fingers they reached into the wound that felled the beast. Their new claws slipped in with hardly any resistance. It only took a moment of maneuvering before they tapped against something hard and slick. Carefully, the child plucked it out of the wound. The bullet had indeed changed. The metal had turned into a smooth crystal, grey as a stormcloud. As the child shifted it in their claws, the crystal finally caught the light and it exploded a thunderstrike of color. 

“Now then, you have one last job to do. Take him home, child. Practice so you might better know the way. It is time for him to rest.” The matron crow called. 

Again without hesitation the child nodded and gathered the coyote in their arms.  Out of all they had forgotten, these were the only steps they knew. As long as they had that to hold on to, the child would keep walking that path, hopeful that it would lead them home too.