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Cody released his grip and Fox carefully pulled his right arm back towards himself, settling it into his lap in such a way that it subtly supported his injured wrist.
His batchmates were all staring at him, and Fox, despite the hazy half-there-ness that came with being awake for the past three rotations, knew that he did not want to be there right then, not with how the conversation seemed to have turned.
He also knew they weren’t going to let him leave without answers.
He shouldn’t have come, he should have curled up in a bunk next to Stone or Thire and slept for six hours instead of downing another cup of caff that had made him feel more jittery than actually awake and striding over to 79s, because he hadn’t seen his batchmates in months.
And now he was paying for it, because now they had questions.
Questions that he was certain he wouldn’t be able to answer.
He wasn’t quite sure what he had done exactly, but from the way everyone was looking at him, the way Cody had grabbed him, he knew he had done something wrong.
He also knew the old Fox would have snarled, would have shoved Cody away, but that was the old Fox. This Fox knew that fighting back rarely ended well, this Fox knew that if he pushed Cody away now, considering how little everyone thought of the Guard, this might be the last time any of them bothered with him again.
“What’s got into you?” Wolffe asked, to the point, as per usual.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean,” Fox replied on autopilot, before internally wincing; that was an answer you gave to a Senator, not a brother. That was not an answer that was going to make them think that there wasn’t anything wrong with him. “I’m fine, vod,” he amended, attempting a small smile. He was pretty sure it came out as more of a grimace.
“Well, that’s bullshit,” Bly said.
Fox glared at him, he was fine and he had been fine since he had first been stationed here. He had no other option but to be. Besides, it wasn’t as if his vode didn’t have problems too. Sure, General Secura seemed kind and competent, and Fox knew that she had to treat Bly okay, he wouldn’t have fallen for her otherwise. But at the same time Fox knew what General Krell and his ‘friends’ were like, and General Skywalker was the Chancellor’s protégée, and that didn’t paint a promising picture of the Jedi as a whole. Fox felt that, like him, his vode were probably having a worse time than they let on.
Still, that didn’t stop him from wanting nothing more than to be told that there had been a change of plan and the Corries were to be stationed in some Outer Rim siege that was due to last for months.
He often wondered how awful the imaginary assignment would have to be for him not to long for it. Would he still want to go if their supplies got cut off and they were left on half rations for months? Yes, Fox always thought, he’d seen the amount of rations the GAR got compared to the Guard (which, as the Chancellor had pointed out, was only fair, they were expending much more energy than the Guard was, if cuts had to be made it was only right that the Guard bore the brunt of them) and he thought they could easily survive off that much. Would he still want to go if he knew that the imaginary General would give bad orders that would get his men killed? Yes, because in the chaos of battle it was a lot easier to disregard orders, to claim they had been forced to improvise. Fox liked to imagine that he’d be able to save more of his men out there, with the lack of oversight that being in battle gave you.
But that’s all it was, a dream, and a stupid one at that. And he shouldn’t want to leave his post, because defending the heart of the galaxy was integral to the continuation of the Republic, and running would be cowardice, and Fox was not hut'uun.
It didn’t matter that he supposed that if you were on a star-destroyer there would be hundreds of clones to every nat-born, that Cody, Wolffe, Bly, Ponds and Gree probably had no trouble keeping their shinies out of harm's way.
It didn’t matter.
“We trained together for nine years, Fox, we can tell when something’s wrong with you,” Cody stated.
“Thanks, vod.” He made sure his tone was positively drowning in sarcasm.
Cody shot him his most unimpressed glare, it probably worked on shinies, it just made Fox feel nostalgic. “Your reactions are off. You’ve been jittery since you came in but you just zoned out when Bly moved too quickly. You can’t tell us that’s normal.”
Fox shrugged. “Look, I just haven’t had time to sleep in the last three rotations,” he deflected. “There’s been a lot to do.”
He folded his arms, internally cursing the fact that they’d noticed that. He knew it didn’t make him a good soldier, but he wasn’t sure what else he was meant to do about it.
He had no desire to mention the fact that the natborns here tended to react badly if you flinched or dodged out of the way of their blows, and woe betide those who hadn’t been able to suppress their training and had fought back. Fox guessed that suppressing your instincts wasn’t a problem if you had a Jedi for a superior, they could just grab you with the force and keep you exactly where they wanted you if they felt inclined to correct your behaviour, just like General Krell did - but Fox wasn’t going to think about the time that General Krell had been on leave, he wasn’t, he couldn’t . A small part of Fox hoped that his batchmates didn’t have to worry about being corrected, they were highly competent, they probably didn’t make anywhere near the same amount of mistakes that Fox did, and maybe the natborns could take out their aggression on the separatists they fought?
Fox had no desire to bring it up, because he felt a hot flush of shame whenever he thought about it. He longed to fight back, to be able to fight back, he knew how much he was capable of, he hated feeling weak, helpless. It was different with the Guard, they understood. And maybe his batchmates would understand too, maybe they didn’t bring up what the Jedi did to them because they were ashamed too. But Fox didn’t want to be the one to point out the bantha in the room, the fact that they weren’t actually people with rights no matter how hard they pretended they were when they sat in 79s and laughed and drank like the natborns did.
“What do you mean you haven’t slept in three rotations?” Cody’s horrified tone cut through Fox’s musings and he refocused on his brother.
Fox tilted his head and frowned. “I mean I haven’t slept in over 72 hours?”
And why were they looking at him like that? Fox knew for a fact that they’d been on campaigns longer than that. Hell, learning how to function even through far more extreme sleep deprivation had been a crucial part of their training on Kamino.
“All vode who vote for dragging Fox back to his barracks and shoving him in a bunk say ‘lek,” said Ponds, his voice deadpan.
“‘Lek.”
“‘Lek.”
“‘Lek.”
“‘Lek.”
Fox bristled, and forgot the fact he’d wanted nothing more than an excuse to get out of their questioning not two minutes earlier. “Look, I made an effort to come here tonight because I wanted to see you all, you can’t just send me to my bunk like some tubie .”
Please don’t act like you don’t want me here, went unsaid.
“Sure we can,” Gree said, a grin on his face that reminded him of Hound when the sergeant was about to sic Grizzer on someone for ‘medicinal purposes’.
And with that he was manhandled to his feet by Bly and Cody, Fox initially putting up some token resistance but refraining once he realised that the two of them were being a significant help at keeping him from keeling over in exhaustion.
“So, what’s been going down on Triple Zero that’s so serious you haven’t bothered to take care of yourself?” Bly demanded.
Fox glared at him, but there wasn’t much heat in it, partly because he was grateful not one of his brothers added a comment about flimsiwork.
They hailed an air taxi - a luxury that Ponds could apparently afford. General Windu had supposedly chucked credit chips at him and told him that he and his batch would not be falling off high levels or attempting to drive speeders themselves after drinking at 79s because he was not losing his best commander to something as stupid as that (Ponds sounded annoyingly smug as he recounted this). Fox supposed that this reasoning almost made sense, sort of, but it surprised him anyway. He knew that the Guard received drinks at 79s in exchange for helping its owners with security and the like, but he’d never put much thought into where the GAR were getting credits for drinking. He’d assumed they were doing something illegal like looting from Seppie ships and had been hoping that their superiors wouldn’t figure it out, he hadn’t been expecting a Jedi General to just hand out credits.
“Oh yeah,” Wolffe added when he questioned it. “Plo’bui… General Plo managed to get us all a small stipend from the temple to spend whenever we are on Coruscant, the Jedi haven’t managed to convince the Senate to give us wages yet-” he scowled as he looked across the twinkling Coruscant skyline- “but as least the Jedi could stretch their budget to give us a few credits. You don’t get anything from the Temple?”
Fox shook his head, “Don’t have a Jedi.”
And he was starting to think that maybe he’d been wrong about what the Jedi were like, maybe most of them weren’t like General Krell, but that wasn’t a particularly hopeful thought, because it just made him long to leave this planet all the more.
And that wasn’t an option.
But he answered Bly’s question and explained why he hadn’t slept in three rotations as they waited for the taxi and flew to the Guard HQ. He made sure to leave certain details out - there were some things that his batchmates didn’t need to know, and even more things that the unknown taxi driver definitely shouldn’t hear. Weirdly, Fox thought as he rested his head on Cody’s pauldron and stared out the window, trying to get his sluggish thoughts into some kind of logical order, none of them had ribbed him about the amount of flimsiwork he had to do at all, not even when he had mentioned the mounting pile from the Chancellor that would have dire consequences if not completed. Maybe, he thought hazily, he should start making the jokes himself, to make the environment more normal.
There was a part of him that felt concerned about the fact his batchmates seemed worried, but it wasn’t a big enough part to bother him right now. Fox could feel himself crashing as he always did after a period of stress when the caff wore off, and it was all he could do to allow himself to be pulled out the taxi and dragged towards the entrance of the HQ. He couldn’t even find it in himself to be overly bothered that his batchmates were going to leave him to enjoy themselves after they’d dropped him off.
Fox greeted the vode on duty at the entrance and prepared to say goodbye to his batch, but found himself pleasantly surprised when they insisted on accompanying him all the way to his bunk, with the extra few minutes with them that would bring. Not that he let this on, of course. “I’m not going to keel over,” he snapped, but he was pretty sure it lacked any venom. He could feel the eye-rolls of his brothers.
“Yeah, sure you aren’t,” Gree replied. “Left or right here?”
“Right,” Fox muttered.
They made their way down the bleak corridors until they reached Fox’s room. He signed to the others to keep it down before he pushed the door softly open. Thire and Stone weren’t in there. He wasn’t sure whether to be pleased about that or not - on the one hand he wasn’t risking waking them, on the other they needed sleep about as much as he did right now.
He glanced back at the others who were looking around his room with looks of distaste, which was… he got it, it wasn’t the best room, but they’d at least made an effort. They’d rigged up some string lights across the ceiling, the walls were dotted with Thorn’s sketches, and they’d even managed to acquire a fluffy blanket.
“Which one’s yours?” Ponds asked, and Fox gestured to the bottom right bunk, which was currently adorned with the said blanket - it was technically Thire’s turn with it, but he must have left it in Fox’s bunk earlier, a fact which made Fox feel warm inside. Ponds and Bly slumped down on it.
“Get your shebs off it,” Fox grumbled. “Have you seen the state of your armour? I don’t want it on my bunk.”
He decided not to mention the amount of times that he’d fallen into his bunk either bleeding or fully armoured, because that would have ruined the dramatic effect.
“Make us,” Bly replied with a shit-eating grin. But Fox had no energy for that, so he just rolled his eyes and started taking his armour off and placing it neatly on the floor at the foot of his bunk.
As he took off his vambrace, he started at a clunk coming from the direction of his armour pile and glanced around to see Cody placing his own beside it.
“What?”
“It’s freezing in here vod, I’m staying with you,” his tone brokered no room for argument. Still, Cody couldn’t actually want to, could he, now when he could still have a nice night out with the others? His expression seemed to signify that he was telling the truth however.
“It’s not freezing, it’s a perfectly normal temperature,” Fox shot back, continuing to stack his armour.
“Sure it is,” Ponds said. “When did you last have the heating on?”
“Due to budget restrictions, the heating is only used in the medbay,” he replied, yanking his left boot off with perhaps more force than necessary as he remembered that conversation with the Chancellor. It had been hard at first, especially because the dilapidated duracrete building seemed to suck the heat out of everything, but Fox was used to it now, and he couldn’t say it really bothered him. Technically, the medbay shouldn’t have been heated either, but they’d taken some heating units out of the trash at the Senate Dome and Sparks had fixed them, because Risk had drilled into them how important keeping patients warm was. Fox was always nervous that the wrong person would find out, but he knew at least that his batchmates weren’t going to go to the senate. “It’s better our heating gets cut than yours, right?” he added, pulling his other boot off and placing both of them neatly next to the rest of his armour. “You’re on the front lines, and you’ve got natborns on your ship.”
Ponds and Bly didn’t look like they agreed. Oh well, that wasn’t Fox’s problem.
He turned around to see what Wolffe and Gree thought and felt his heart sink a little with the realisation that they were no longer there. He wondered when they had left, shab he was tired if he hadn’t noticed. But, he reasoned, it didn’t matter if they’d left without saying goodbye. He’d been expecting them all to abandon him at the entrance anyway, and Cody, Bly and Ponds were still near. It had been a far better evening than he could have hoped for. It was high time for him to succumb to the welcome oblivion of sleep in any case.
“Scoot,” he told Bly and Ponds, and they obligingly got off his bunk so he could collapse face first onto it.
“Shove over,” Cody said in turn, and pushed him gently into the wall so he could fit into the narrow bunk beside him. Fox didn’t mind too much about the lack of space, bracketed by the wall and his brother, his exhausted brain felt it might actually feel safe for once. “Kriff, what’s this thing filled with, gravel?” Cody demanded.
“You can go if it bothers you that much,” Fox mumbled.
“No thanks,” Cody replied. “Commanders get their own rooms in the GAR, it’s too quiet to sleep. Besides, I never get to spend time with you anymore.”
Fox wasn’t sure how true that was, but he felt himself smiling all the same. He snuggled into Cody and closed his eyes, letting the fogginess consume him. He floated there.
“Why don’t you flinch, vod?” Cody’s voice filtered through the soft contentment that was pulling him towards the much desired clutches of oblivion.
“Well, you see,” Fox replied muzzily, letting out a short, wry laugh, muffled by his pillow, “Triple Zero’s such a safe posting, worst thing you get is a flimsi-cut, you know?”
“Seriously, vod,” and there was a hand carding through his grey-flecked hair, gently scritching at his scalp in a way that Fox’s batch knew relaxed him. It’s lucky that today was a good day, he mused, Thorn had tried it once after Fox had told him he found it calming, but it had turned out not to be the case then, and he’d been assaulted by the memories of hands twisting in his hair, making sure he couldn’t get away from their blows. Yes, it was a good thing today was a good day. He knows he’s safe. He knows it’s Cody. So he tells Cody the truth, because Cody’s his brother.
"They don't like it when I flinch away from them, safer not to,” Fox murmured. Then a thought hit him. “Does your General mind when you flinch away?"
He was met with silence, and Cody had stilled, and through the mists of exhaustion Fox tensed. He must have said the wrong thing, but just as he was about to open his eyes and pull away, Cody spoke.
"He's never done anything that would make me want to."
And Fox feels like he can finally relax. "Good,” he said, “glad you're safe, vod."
SECURE LINE CREATED...
CC-1004/Gree - so, the corrie medic just refused to give us any bacta for fox’s face, said he didn’t have enough to spare for injuries that aren’t serious
CC-3636/Wolffe - said that fox wouldn’t want some anyway
CC-5052/Bly - the shab it’s not serious????? someone clearly took a vibroblade to his face
CC-3636/Wolffe - yh that’s what I said, he just told us to get out
CC-1004/Gree - to be fair, i’m pretty sure he was about to start stitching another corrie up without anaesthetic or bacta
Cody shifted slightly to avoid waking Fox and shared a significant look with Ponds and Bly, who had decided to sit on the opposite bunk until Wolffe and Gree returned from their unfortunately unsuccessful mission to find Fox some bacta. They were hoping that the guard commanders wouldn’t mind too much about them encroaching into their space.
He looked back down at Fox, too skinny Fox, with a half healed gash across his cheek and an injury to his arm, Fox who couldn’t flinch, who had to work so hard he barely slept, Fox, a marshall commander who shared a shabby bunkroom with his other commanders, in a base that was damp and freezing. He sighed, and pulled the torn blanket up so that it covered Fox’s shoulders properly, frowning as the light of his wrist comm illuminated what were probably old bloodstains marring the soft fabric.
“We’re telling the Jedi, right?” he murmured lowly, and Ponds nodded and gestured to his comlink, where Cody could now see that the other man had just left a similar message in the chat, a message that was swiftly followed by the agreement of the others.
Things were not alright here, they were further from alright than he could have possibly imagined, and he knew that Fox had been holding back, knew that they had only scratched the surface of everything that was wrong. Not that Fox seemed to think that things were particularly wrong.
But that was fine, because they were going to put things right.