Work Text:
Fox wakes because something stopped breathing for him.
The thought arrives before sight.
Before pain.
Before memory.
Something is missing from his throat. Air touches him differently now, cool beneath a mask pressed over his nose and mouth. His lungs rise without the machine forcing them, hesitate, then fall.
One.
He waits.
Two.
Another breath comes.
Three.
Fox counts because he doesn’t trust his lungs to continue without instruction. At six, the rhythm slips and panic tears through him. His chest tightens. Alarms change pitch somewhere beyond the fog.
Hands hold his shoulders down.
“Fox. Breathe.”
Scalper.
He knows her eyes above a surgical mask. Everyone around her is wrapped in white gowns, gloves, caps, protective glasses. Two Jedi healers stand nearby dressed exactly like medics, which is disturbing enough that Fox wonders whether he is hallucinating.
Something about infection risk.
Something reconstructed.
He can’t understand the rest.
He tries to speak.
Pain rips through his throat.
Scalper immediately puts a stylus into his left hand.
His writing crawls crookedly across the datapad.
Ri?
Scalper reads it.
“Alive.”
Fox closes his eye.
He writes again.
Palp?
“Dead.”
Good.
He reaches seven breaths before sleep takes him.
The next time Fox wakes, Riyo is beside him.
He knows her hand before he knows the room.
Her fingers are folded around his left hand, her thumb resting over his pulse. She wears a medical gown over her clothes, gloves, a cap that contains most of her lilac hair, and a mask hiding the gold arches across her nose.
Her green clan arches remain visible above it.
Fox counts.
One.
Two.
Three.
Riyo notices his eye open at four.
“Hi,” she whispers.
Five.
Her voice breaks.
Six.
He tries to turn toward her. His body doesn’t cooperate. His right side feels distant, not numb exactly, but delayed, as though every instruction must cross a damaged transmission line.
Riyo squeezes his hand.
“You don’t have to move.”
Fox counts to nine.
He wants to ask why she looks smaller.
He falls asleep at ten.
Lex is there the next time.
So is Riyo.
The gowns remain, but the protective glasses are gone. Lex examines Fox’s pupils while Riyo sits close enough that her knee touches the bed.
“Follow the light.”
Fox follows it with his left eye.
The right sees nothing.
Not darkness.
Nothing.
He knows the difference.
His throat feels flayed from the inside. When he attempts a sound, only a torn rasp emerges beneath the oxygen mask.
Lex stops him.
“No speaking.”
Fox raises his left hand and writes on the small board resting against his thigh.
Orders?
“Thorn has command,” Riyo says.
Fox writes:
Damage?
Lex reads it before Riyo can take the board.
“Extensive.”
Unhelpful.
Fox glares.
Lex looks entirely unimpressed.
“Your glare is less effective at half strength.”
Riyo’s shoulders shake with a quiet laugh.
Fox decides Lex may live.
He stays awake long enough to count 17 breaths.
Scalper removes the oxygen mask for seven minutes.
Fox dislikes all seven.
A thin nasal line replaces it, but air feels too loose without the mask. His lungs keep working anyway.
One.
Two.
Three.
Riyo sits beside him without gloves now. Her bare fingers trace careful circles over his knuckles.
Scalper checks the reconstruction beneath the dressings on the right side of his face. The touch registers as pressure and heat. No pain until she reaches his jaw.
Fox makes a sound. it sounded like metal dragged across stone.
Riyo immediately leans closer.
“I’m here.”
He knows. She has been there every time.
Fox writes with increasing control.
How long?
“23 days since the gala,” Riyo says.
He stares at her.
Nearly a month erased.
Her cheeks are thinner. There are shadows beneath her eyes. Her senatorial poise has worn down to something raw beneath the medical cap.
Fox writes:
Sleep?
Riyo looks offended.
Scalper makes a hoarse sound that is unmistakably laughter.
Fox feels vindicated until sleep takes him again.
Wolffe is sitting in Riyo’s chair when Fox wakes.
Riyo stands beside the bed, drinking something from a covered cup. She has no gown now, only a mask. Wolffe wears one too, though it does nothing to conceal the judgment in his remaining eye.
“You look terrible,” Wolffe says.
Fox lifts the writing board.
Still prettier.
Wolffe reads it.“Brain damage confirmed.”
Fox’s right arm is stronger today. Heavy, trembling, but it moves when he tells it to. He lifts his hand from the mattress, slowly extends one finger, and gives Wolffe the most medically difficult rude gesture of his life.
Wolffe stares at it.
Then he laughs so hard he has to brace himself against the chair.
Riyo covers her face.
Scalper appears in the doorway and looks from Fox’s hand to Wolffe’s expression.
She nods.
“Neurological function intact.”
Fox’s arm falls back to the bed.
Worth it.
The masks come off last.
Riyo removes hers while Fox is awake enough to watch.
The gold marriage arches across her nose appear first. Then her mouth, pressed tight as though she is holding back ten different emotions and trusts none of them near him.
Fox reaches for her face.
His right hand shakes halfway there.
Riyo catches it gently and presses his palm to her cheek.
Warm.
Alive.
His wife.
He remembered her in fragments while drifting. Riyo beneath moonlight. Riyo arguing over datapads. Riyo laughing against his mouth. Riyo in Guard red and black at the gala.
Lightning bending toward her.
Fox shoves the memory away before the monitors can betray him.
Riyo knows anyway.
“Palpatine’s dead,” she says quietly. “You saved me. You saved Master Windu. You don’t have to fight him again.”
Fox tries to answer.
The sound that emerges is barely a voice.
“Good.”
Riyo laughs and cries at the same time.
He counts 38 breaths before closing his eye.
The first time Fox remains awake for an hour, Scalper brings him a mirror.
He understands why she waited.
The right side of his face is no longer hidden beneath heavy dressings. Reconstructed skin crosses his cheek and jaw in pale, uneven sections. Metal begins at his temple, follows the damaged bone beneath his cheek, and encloses the empty socket where his eye used to be.
The cybernetic lens is installed but inactive.
A black circle surrounded by unfinished silver.
Fox turns his head slightly.
The man in the mirror follows.
He looks assembled.
Not healed.
Scalper stands behind him, one hand resting on the chair. Riyo sits on the edge of the bed. No gowns. No gloves. No masks. Only the people who have been waiting for him beneath all those layers.
Fox touches the metal with his right hand.
His fingers respond now, though they tremble from weakness.
Scalper rasps, “Nerves healed.”
Fox taps his chest.
“Lungs?”
The word shreds on the way out.
Scalper grimaces at him for speaking, then answers.
“Working.”
He touches his throat.
Her expression tightens.
“Voice may improve. Not full. Implant later.”
Fox looks back into the mirror.
His eye is gone.
His voice is damaged.
His muscles atrophied beneath weeks of immobility. Even sitting upright leaves his heart racing. Medical has already prepared a physical-therapy schedule that will begin with the humiliating task of standing up from the bed.
He is alive.
The distinction feels enormous.
Riyo takes the mirror from his hand and sets it aside.
“You’re still you.”
Fox looks at her.
She has thinned. He was right about that. Her clothes hang differently, and exhaustion has carved itself into every line of her posture.
He reaches for her.
Riyo moves immediately, settling beside him with one arm around his shoulders and her forehead against his temple, careful of the metal.
Fox breathes.
One.
Two.
Three.
He stops counting at four.
His lungs continue without him.
Riyo’s hand rests over his heart.
Fox lets his eye close, not because he is slipping away again, but because for the first time since waking, sleep feels like something he is choosing.
“Stay,” he rasps.
Riyo’s arms tighten around him.
“I’m not going anywhere.”