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The holes in the rubble were tight, too small for a human but big enough for a bird. Qrow easily threaded the eye of the needle, darting in with calculated panic. He needed to know if people got out, needed to know if anyone didn't make it, especially considering the new danger of seawater flooding the city.
Qrow shifted back to a human as he landed smoothly on the platform, pausing to survey the area.
It was silent. Eerily silent. The eddying of water and dripping perhaps the only thing besides his breathing.
There was nothing in the vault.
Nothing.
No gate, like Oz had told him. No door. No relic. Just a walkway, one he was sure used to be Atlas-minimalism clean that was now cracked and strewn with rubble and chunks of the ceiling.
"Ruby?.. Yang?!....Penny?!" He called out, knowing there would be no response but hoping anyways. Qrow's yelling gained a few small rocks clattering down, but nothing else. Silence.
Qrow thought he saw something glint in the dim light and he darted over, hoping for.... He didn't know, but he was hoping. Something that wasn't rubble and-
"Oh...James" the words were out of his mouth before Qrow knew he said them.
The shiny object that had caught his eye was his General's left hand– Since when was that metal?
The knuckles shone silver still, scuffed to hell but silver all the same. It wasn't even a finished arm, Qrow noted, all the mechanics were there but the shell was missing. He'd have thought the fall had knocked it off, but not a single piece of white remaining had him thinking it'd never been attached in the first place.
"How much of a hurry were you in, James?" Qrow lamented. "How long? How did you lose this one too?" the sound echoed around them.
In the end James had lost more than just that, Qrow supposed. They all had, but James had lost more than everything.
The water around them had been ever so slowly rising, and Qrow noticed it pooling around his shoes. He needed to leave.
He needed to leave now, but he couldn't just leave like this.
A thought crossed his mind as he looked back at the lifeless body of his old ...friend, hand still wrapped around the hilt of his gun.
"Weapons are an extension of ourselves"
He'd told his nieces that countless times over the years, words he'd meant wholeheartedly.
What if...
Qrow gingerly loosened each finger on James' right hand, not sure if this was a courtesy or closer to desecrating a corpse and he decided it wasn't worth contemplating. His friend was dead, and he wanted to... Do something. The huntsman wasn't sure of what he wanted but knew he couldn't leave all of James here to be forgotten.
He should be thankful that rigor mortis didn't work on cybernetics, but did he have to find out this way? Had it even been long enough for that? Qrow couldn't even tell if the body was supposed to be warm, the cold of Solitas had crept into every corner. Was it disrespectful? He hoped not, as he tucked the white half of Due Process, the one James favored, into his vest. It was heavier than he remembered.
It wasn't a war trophy, he was... he was just taking a bit of James with him, that was all. That was all he could do.
The huntsman turned his gaze to James once more, burning the image into his brain.
The Atlesian could've been no more than a ball-jointed doll, twisted and bent and crushed beyond recognition beneath the city he tried so hard in vain to save. Qrow didn't know if it was for James or himself that he reached forward and gently closed the man's eyes. Eyes that were far more dull than he remembered, eyes that would never see again.
You can rest now, James. Qrow thought. You never did get enough sleep...
The water was still rising and he had to find his nieces. He could mourn later, he was good at doing that. He could mourn when no one would judge him for shedding tears over the General.
Qrow allowed himself one more moment before he shifted back with a flurry of feathers and left the vault and James behind.
He never did like the inclusion of red on the Atlas uniforms, always said it looked far too much like fresh blood.
Qrow hated he was right.