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Thire has seen Fox injured before.
He has seen Fox come back from patrol with blood dried beneath his armor, seen him walk through the medbay with cracked ribs because someone else needed the bed more, and watched Scalper pull shrapnel from his shoulder while Fox continued signing reports one-handed.
This is different.
Fox isn’t walking so much as being moved forward by habit.
One of his arms hangs across Thire’s shoulders, heavy and nearly useless. Thire keeps his own arm locked around Fox’s waist, taking most of his weight as they shuffle through the dim barracks corridor. Fox’s bare feet drag against the floor every few steps. Scalper had cut away the black undersuit where the electrical burns were worst, leaving his back and chest wrapped in loose medical gauze beneath an open fatigue shirt.
The smell of bacta doesn’t cover the burned skin.
Thire can still smell the Chancellor’s office on him.
Ozone. Hot metal. Expensive incense.
Fox’s head drops forward.
“Ori’vod.”
There’s no response.
Thire tightens his grip before Fox’s knees can fold. “Fox, stay with me.”
Fox makes a low sound. It might be acknowledgment. It might only be pain escaping through clenched teeth.
Scalper had cleared him to leave the medwing because keeping Fox there would have required restraints, sedatives, or both. Even half-conscious, he’d kept trying to stand whenever another injured Guardsman came through the doors.
She’d pressed an inhaler against the scarred ruin of her throat and rasped very clear orders at Thire.
Get him into bed.
Keep him warm.
Don’t let him work.
Call her if his heart rate changed, if he vomited, if he stopped responding, or if he attempted to leave.
Thire had asked how he was supposed to stop Fox from leaving.
Scalper had handed him a loaded sedative injector.
That answered that.
Fox stumbles again.
Thire catches him before his shoulder strikes the wall.
“Almost there.”
Fox’s gold eyes open beneath heavy lids. They don’t focus on Thire. His pupils are too wide, and his face has gone pale beneath the bruising around his jaw.
“Report,” Fox murmurs.
Thire’s throat closes.
“There’s no report.”
“Investigation.”
“No.”
“Failure.”
The word comes out scraped raw.
Thire nearly drops him.
Fox remembers.
Of course he remembers. He might not know where he is, but he remembers why the Chancellor called him upstairs.
Thire’s investigation had failed.
A data leak inside the Senate had compromised three Guard patrol routes and exposed an informant in the lower levels. Thire had traced the leak through four aides, two CorSec officers, and a senator’s private security contractor before the chain vanished into executive clearance he couldn’t penetrate.
He hadn’t identified the source in time.
The informant was dead.
The Chancellor had demanded someone answer for the failure.
Thire had stepped forward.
Fox had stepped in front of him.
Marshal Commander Fox was responsible for every operation conducted by the Coruscant Guard, he’d said. Any failure by Commander Thire was therefore a failure of command.
He’d spoken before Thire could object.
He’d ordered Thire to stand down.
Then the Chancellor had smiled.
Thire had been forced to watch.
Fox’s feet catch against the floor again. Thire drags him the final few meters to the command barracks and opens the door with his elbow.
Fox’s bunk is narrow, regulation-standard, and untouched except for a folded blanket. He spends so little time in it that dust has started collecting beneath the frame.
Thire turns carefully and lowers him onto the mattress.
Fox’s body goes rigid the instant his back touches the bed.
A strangled breath tears from his throat.
“Sorry.” Thire catches him beneath the shoulders, lifting him again. “Kriff, I’m sorry. Hold on.”
Fox’s head falls against Thire’s chest.
Thire stands frozen with one knee pressed against the bunk and Fox half-held in his arms.
For a moment, they’re twelve again.
Fox is the new brother in their batch, quiet and hollow-eyed after Dred Priest’s special training. He doesn’t remember how to sleep near people. He doesn’t know why Thorn hates the showers, why Stone wakes swinging, or why Thire counts everyone before he lets himself rest.
They teach each other.
Fox sits with Thorn outside the showers. Stone sleeps nearest the door. Thire counts four heads instead of three.
They become a batch because nobody else is going to protect them.
Now Fox is twenty-two, commands the Guard, and still takes every punishment before it can reach them.
Self-sacrificing di’kut.
Thire eases him onto his side so the burns don’t take his full weight. He arranges the pillow beneath Fox’s head and pulls the blanket over his legs.
Fox’s hand closes around Thire’s wrist.
The grip is weak but immediate.
“Thire.”
“I’m here.”
“Orders.”
“Scalper ordered you to sleep.”
“Not hers.”
Thire knows which orders he means.
The Chancellor’s voice still lives inside his skull.
Stand at attention, Commander.
Observe the consequences of operational failure.
Do not interfere.
Fox had been strapped upright to a metal chair. His armor had been removed, leaving him in the black body glove beneath it. Two executive guards had fastened contact leads against his chest, arms, and the side of his neck.
The Chancellor had asked Fox whether the Guard understood accountability.
Fox had said yes.
The first electrical current had arched through him hard enough to pull a scream from between his teeth.
Thire had moved.
Only half a step.
Fox had snapped his head toward him and shouted the order before the next current hit.
“Stand down, Commander.”
Thire had obeyed.
He had stood with his hands behind his back while Fox convulsed against the restraints.
He had watched Fox bite through his own lip.
He had watched smoke rise from the contact against his neck.
He had watched the Chancellor adjust the voltage with the distracted care of someone changing the temperature in a room.
The leak was Thire’s investigation.
The dead informant had trusted Thire.
The failure belonged to Thire.
Fox had no right to take it.
Thire’s breath begins coming too quickly.
“I should’ve found the source.”
Fox doesn’t answer.
“I was close. I had the contractor and the CorSec link. I should’ve pushed harder. I should’ve checked the executive access before I sent the informant back. I should’ve known someone was watching him.”
Fox’s fingers loosen around his wrist.
Thire catches the hand and holds it tighter.
“It was my investigation. My failure. He called me there because it was mine, but you stepped in. You always step in. You wouldn’t even let me speak.”
His voice rises.
Fox remains limp against the bunk.
“It was supposed to be me.”
The words feel wrong as soon as they leave him, but he can’t stop.
“I failed. I lost the source. I got him killed. I should’ve taken the punishment. I should’ve been in that chair. It was my fault. My fault, my fault, my fault, my fault, my fault, it was my fault and you wouldn’t let me fix it because you never let us take anything and one day he’s going to kill you because I wasn’t good enough, because I missed something, because I always miss something, because I should’ve seen it, I should’ve stopped it, I should’ve fought the guards, I should’ve ignored the order, I should’ve done something, I should’ve—
…
Good soldiers follow orders.
The thought lands smooth and empty.
Thire stops breathing hard.
His shoulders lower.
The panic disappears so completely that he can’t remember why his chest hurts.
He looks down at Fox.
His ori’vod needs rest.
Scalper gave Thire instructions.
Those are his orders now.
Thire releases Fox’s hand and arranges it on top of the blanket. His movements become precise. Pull the fabric to Fox’s shoulders. Check the medical monitor clipped to his finger. Verify pulse. Verify breathing.
Fox’s heart rate is still too fast, but within the limit Scalper wrote on the datapad.
Thire sits on the edge of the bunk.
Fox’s eyelids flutter.
“Thire?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Didn’t fail.”
Thire stares ahead.
Fox’s speech slurs around exhaustion and pain. “Blocked access. Chancellor’s office. Couldn’t... investigate.”
“It was my assignment.”
“Impossible assignment.”
Fox’s eyes open slightly. There’s nothing steady in them, but he still forces the words out.
“Not your fault.”
Something presses beneath the blankness in Thire’s head.
It doesn’t become emotion.
Not yet.
“You shouldn’t have taken the blame,” he says.
Fox’s mouth moves in what might have been a smile under other circumstances.
“Ori’vod.”
As if that explains everything.
It does.
Fox’s eyes close.
His grip returns around two of Thire’s fingers, too weak to hold more.
Thire watches the slow rise and fall of his chest.
He should leave. Fox needs sleep, and Thire has an investigation to reopen. There are files waiting in his office and a dead brother whose killer still has executive protection.
His orders are to get Fox into bed.
The order has been completed.
Thire remains seated anyway.
The room is dark except for the monitor’s faint blue light. It reflects off Fox’s face, catching the dried blood beneath his nose and the raw mark where the electrical contact had burned his neck.
Thire sits like a droid beside the bed.
Hands still. Back straight. Eyes forward.
Good soldiers follow orders.
Fox’s fingers remain wrapped around his.
Thire doesn’t move until morning.