Chapter Text
The migraine, as always, has enveloped him in a vice-like grip by the time he’s made it into the elevator. The doors slide shut with a pneumatic wheeze, and he sinks to the floor, tucking himself into the corner and letting his bucket rest against the wall. He’s more or less safe, for the moment. At this time of night, comparatively few sentients are in the Senate building, and even fewer deign to use this elevator route. It is, after all, for droids, who helpfully do not ask the Marshal Commander of the city’s guard why he’s curled up in a heap on the ground and are therefore infinitely preferable to the senators, who occasionally spit on him.
But he has a few minutes’ respite before he makes the trek to the barracks in the outskirts of the district. A few precious, precious minutes to rest and breathe shallowly through his teeth so he doesn’t throw up all over his internal HUD. This is a stupid idea, sitting down and resting even for this long, because there is a very real chance that he won't get up again - for the last few...days, maybe, the world has been swimming and his body has been floaty and unreal and the inevitable sucking need to sleep dragging him downward is as inexorable as gravity. Every time he stops for too long, he starts drifting away from his body, from his mind, reality dissolving around him. He hears entire conversations - usually between brothers - as though they are happening right next to him, as though he is really hearing them and his brain isn't conjuring them without his permission, and he drifts away from his body and his mind and reality dissolves around him quite seamlessly until he thinks he's really hearing those things being said, really in the surroundings his mind has plunged him into to. How long these...episodes last, he doesn't know. It could be seconds. It could be much more than that, but they feel minute and brief, snapshot-like, like falling through something endlessly. And then he will be violently jerked back into reality by nothing in particular and the world that he had been firmly, tangibly grounded in moments previous will evaporate entirely from his mind. Most of the time he can't even remember what the conversations had been about; it eludes him entirely. Everything hurts.
He has a few minutes to rest. They will be unpleasant. He has five hours left of his shift. They will be unpleasant.
The elevator begins its descent, and he screws his eyes shut tightly against the abhorrent flickering of the half-dead lights set around the ceiling vent. Five hours of his shift left. Five hours. Five hours. Just—just five more hours. His skull feels like it’s on fire, although he is reasonably (in this scenario, reasonably equals ninety-eight percent) sure this is not actually the case. A feeling of horrific sickness has sunk into every molecule of his being, in a way somehow worse even than those hellish weeks where he stays up for three, four, five days at a time; a sickness embedded deep in his nasal cavity and snaking down his throat, lodging itself in the roots of his teeth by way of detour.
(There are other aches, of course; the stinging laceration where the serrated tip of a Red Guard’s fancy vibroblade had caught him in the gap between his pauldron and his breastplate, the pins-and-needles burning all down his back — had they used the electrostaffs? He thinks they used the electrostaffs — the stabbing agony that comes with every breath, but the collective bruise that is his body pales in the face of the migraine.)
(Five hours. Five more hours. Two on the beat, three doing flimsiwork, and then he can rest. Five hours. It beats through his head in time with the pounding of pain and the stuttering rhythm of his pulse in his throat. Five hours. Five more hours. Five more hours. It may as well be a lifetime away.)
The elevator doors open.
That can’t be right. Why are the doors opening? It hasn’t been long enough. It hasn’t been long enough. He’s sure it hasn’t been long enough for the elevator to reach the first basement of the building. Oh, fuck, if he’s losing time again—at that, Fox forces his eyes to open. He cannot be losing time again. He will not stand for it. He will not. Fear intertwines itself with the migraine’s nauseous thumping, thick and lecherous like an oily smog, and it chokes him. More than anything, he will not lose time again-- His eyes are gummy with sweat and fatigue, and he has to blink several times before they stop threatening to slide shut again. When he registers what's in front of him, he has to blink again. A few metres away, standing in the doorway, are a pair of knee-high boots. This does not make sense. He blinks again and clenched his jaw to keep his eyes from slipping out of focus, just to be sure. The boots remain. This does not make sense. This is the droid elevator. Only the droids and Fox use it. Droids do not wear shoes. This is a given fact. Droids do not wear clothes. This is also a given fact.
And yet nonetheless, he is still staring at a pair of knee-high boots, a garishly blue pair of loose trousers tucked into them. What he knows to be true and what his mostly-trustworthy eyes tell him are in dispute. He cannot—he cannot begin to fathom it. He cannot begin to understand. But he has to. He has to. Complacency is not a luxury he can afford.
With an awful effort, he forces his head up and away from the support of the wall, and makes eye contact with Quinlan Fucking Vos, frozen in place just over the threshold of the tiny elevator, staring right back at him. Vos' locs have been replaced with thin, tight braids, woven through with strands of synth-fabric in the colours of what Fox vaguely recognises as belonging to one of the bigger gangs of the Origin Central sector. His tattoo is a light green instead of gold. It is unusual. It is different. None of it is what Fox expected, not when the doors first opened, not when he readjusted to the reality in front of him. He really needs to stop being surprised by this kind of thing, he thinks vaguely. If anything were to stray from the facts, from the set norm, it would be Vos. The only pattern of normalcy is the consistency with which he avoids such a thing. Fox finds his constant deviations at once admirable and fascinating and a beureaucratic pain in his shebs.
Vos says something in a language neither Fox nor his HUD knows. It sounds like he might be swearing. Fox wonders, suddenly, if he’s undercover. It would explain the hideous pants and the green tattoo and the sudden outbreak of gang affiliation in his hair. But undercover or not, he’s still a Jedi, still — technically — a General, still Fox’s superior, even if fourteen percent of their interactions to date have been Fox arresting Vos for various petty crimes ostensibly committed in the name of peace and the greater good of the Republic. And Fox is sitting curled on the floor. Heart hammering, shame already curdling unpleasantly at the sheer unfathomable hideousness of his indiscretion, he stands and salutes. Well. Stands and tries to salute, but his head is spinning like he’s been chucked in a low-grav simulation, and the world is turning sickeningly on its axis, and he’s falling, or maybe the elevator is falling, or maybe—
There is a brief, soft moment of fuzzily dark blankness where he isn’t at all sure what is happening, just the awful feeling of movement, everything shifting, and he hates it so fucking much, because he cannot for the life of him make sense of it, and ignorance is as good as death in his line of work. When it clears, when he manages to blink some of the lightning-spark motes out of his aching eyes and catch his footing and steady his trembling legs as best he can, he’s—being held.
By Quinlan Fucking Vos.
(If he were in a better headspace, he might have the energy to realise that he is, more accurately, being cradled. By Quinlan Fucking Vos.)
The world shifts again, goes dark again, and by the time he’s clawed his way back to awareness, he’s on the floor and his bucket has been removed. He shifts slightly, and realises that he is less on the floor and more sprawled in Vos’ lap and being held against his broad, firm chest. One hand is cupping the back of his head carefully, supporting it. It feels nice, Fox thinks, and then immediately dies of a hot and private shame.
“Sorry, sir,” he says. His tongue is thick and heavy in his mouth. His throat is dry; he tries to swallow, and briefly chokes instead. Now his mouth tastes of blood. Wonderful.
“Wow, you look like shit,” Vos says in lieu of something normal and reasonable like hello, because he’s an asshole. “When was the last time you slept?”
Fox thinks about this for several moments, looking over Vos’ shoulder at the elevator display as the floor numbers tick down, down, down. He hadn’t been aware they had begun moving again, hadn’t been aware the doors had even shut. Sleep has been fairly low on his list of priorities, as of late. He naps when he can in his horifically uncomfortable steel chair, in between meetings and shifts and flimsiwork. (His skull throbs dully. The nausea is getting worse.)
“Taungsday?” he says finally, more a question than anything else. A deeply judging silence greets this statement, which—really, he thinks, just isn’t fair.
“You haven’t slept for six days,” Vos says, voice flat, which is really very unfair, given the number of times Vos has been arrested in the middle of the night and early morning. He knows that Vos doesn't have a consistent sleep schedule. “Fox, what the fuck. That’s...Fox, what the fuck. I mean, impressive stamina or whatever, but what the fuck.”
Six days? It feels like more. It feels like less. It feels like he’s drowning, all the time, and his head still thumps, and thumps, and thumps. There are five hours left in his shift, and to even consider continuing right now seems like the most difficult thing he has ever faced in his wretched life. Impressive stamina. It's what he was bred for.
He does not say any of this to Vos. He can barely actualise it himself, much less find the words to express it. Instead, he falls back on his tried-and-true method of ending a conversation, injecting as much vitriol and contempt into his tone as he can muster.
“Fuck off. Fuck you.”
“I’d take you out to dinner first, sweetheart,” Vos says absently as he peers into Fox's eyes critically, like it’s more a reflex than anything else, and absolutely does not fall for his anti-conversation trap. Fox slumps slightly, and his face gets a little closer to the crook between Vos’ shoulder and neck, skin left bare by the fashionably low neck of his shirt. He smells good; minty, with an undertone that Fox imagines is what woodsmoke smells like.
Like this, Fox fucking cradled in the arms of Quinlan Fucking Vos as he is, their faces are very close. He turns his face away so he doesn’t have to look up into Vos’ dark eyes. “But seriously, are you alright? Apart from the whole collapsing thing...just...now...” he trails off, words dying away as he carefully shifts Fox into one arm and lifts his now-free hand, rubbing his fingers together. “Fox,” he says slowly, a strange note in his voice. Vos says his name a lot, like he’s going to vanish into thin air if he doesn’t keep reminding them both that Fox exists. Fox, bare head now resting against Vos' shoulder, can feel the vibrations of his voice rumbling through his chest. It's...soothing. “Fox, you’re bleeding.”
“Yeah,” Fox rasps, watching the floor numbers tick ever down on the dingy little elevator screen. They’re in the low nineties now; soon they’ll be on the basement level, and then—he doesn’t know what. There are five hours left on his shift. “’S fine.”
“You are bleeding,” Vos repeats, like there’s something about this situation that Fox wasn't already very, very aware of. His shoulder stings. His back hurts. So do his ribs. He is beginning to entertain the possibility that they are extremely broken. And above all, still, still, the fucking migraine. He would very much like to curl up into a little ball and perish, or go to sleep forever, or something. He is so tired. Vos makes an exceedingly comfortable pillow. Five hours left in his shift. Five hours left. Five hours left. “Fox, you’re bleeding a lot.”
“I know,” he snaps, turning back to glare up at the asshole tenderly holding him. Bile scratches its bitter way up his trachea in retribution for the sudden movement, bringing a wave of lightheadness with it.
--He doesn’t black out (he doesn’t think he blacks out), but it’s an exceptionally near thing, and his chin drops to his own chest, which presses his cheek flush against Vos’ left pectoral muscle as way of consequence. He’s exceedingly warm. Fox, on the other hand, is cold. Fox is, in fact, shaking. The tremors are minute, but—he’s shaking, and Vos has definitely noticed, if the way he shifts until Fox is settled more securely in the sure embrace of his arms is any indication. Fuck. Fuck.
(This kind of total vulnerability is a line that they've never crossed before, never had to cross. They've seen each other injured before, of course they have, but never—like this. Never has it been like this.)
He wonders what level they’re on. Seventy? Sixty? The ignorance is eating his insides like the acid a criminal threw at him ate the skin off his shoulder eight months ago, but he cannot summon the requisite strength to turn his head and shift his eyes and look. It is entirely beyond him now. So many things are entirely beyond him now. Everything feels off and his vision is blurred and wrong, too-bright and too-dull, filled with dancing flashes of white like tiny lightning strikes, like the crackle of the electrostaff charging up and he is so—he is so fucking tired. His body is as a stiffened and death-bloated corpse. He cannot move it. He does not think, now, that he could even speak.
“Fox,” Vos says somewhere above him. He seems very far away. There is a gloved hand cupping his cheek so, so gently, a thumb sweeping broad strokes back and forth along the arc of his cheekbone. Fox would cry at the unabashed tenderness of the gesture, if he could. Vos' voice is soft, coaxing. “Hey, sweetheart, don’t go passing out on me now. C’mon, darling.”
The world is cold. Fox is cold. Quinlan Vos is warm. And Fox has always, at heart, been an obstinate and contrary bastard, and he is so very tired. Unconsciousness really isn’t all that difficult to slip into, and he lets himself be swallowed by silken oblivion gladly.
He is, briefly, dragged back into awareness. Everything hurts. Everything hurts a lot. The world is filled with darkness and pain and—
—warmth. He has enough sense of his wretched, broken-down body to know he is folded up and tucked against something almost unbearably hot, and that he and the hot thing are moving. Each jolt rattles his teeth and scrapes unpleasantly at the entirety of his skull, and the nausea’s presence is so powerful that it overwhelms him entirely. Some noise is made, some bestial, animal whimper, and he wonders at it before realising that it was perhaps he who made it.
Something changes. He is shifted. Words are said to him that he cannot comprehend. Something brushes against his forehead softly, light and cool, and that same soft voice keeps murmuring to him all the while.
He knows he is safe.
(He goes away again.)
“Commander Fox,” says the Chancellor, smiling his kindly smile. Fox stands very still and stares straight ahead, past Palpatine and through the great transparisteel window at the city below, skyline exploding in the brilliance of the sun’s final dying rays. The fanciful part of him that will one day be responsible for his death imagines that, if he’s just still enough, Palpatine will forget him entirely. It’s ridiculous, he knows, he knows, of course he knows, but he clings to it anyway, endeavours to move as little as possible, turns trying to hide even the slight rise and fall of his chest into some sort of test of how good his impression of being a block of stone is.
“Sir,” says Fox.
“Commander Fox,” Palpatine says again, still smiling that awful fucking smile, but sadder, now, mournful, bushy eyebrows doing something terrible and expressive. “You have disappointed me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I gave you a very simple directive, Commander, and still you failed.”
Fox is barely breathing now. Only a few klicks away, the spire of the Jedi Temple burns in a halo of pink-red, spearing through the cloud-strewn sky. It looks like one of the paintings hung in the Senate rotunda corridors, the ones that like as not cost more to procure than he did. His throat is dry. He tries to swallow. It sticks. It is likely he is dehydrated. There is a little light flashing on top of the spire, warning away in-atmo transports and low-flying starships. Orange-blue-green. Orange-blue-green. He stares at it, so he doesn’t have to look at Palpatine.
“Yes, sir.”
“Such inadequacy is, of course, unacceptable, Commander, as I’m sure you’re aware. I really had hoped it would not come to this, you understand.” Liar, Fox thinks. You love this. “But there is only one way to learn, and that is through experiencing consequences of your actions. Perhaps next time you will not take your sworn duty so lightly, hmm?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Draw your blaster, please, Commander.”
Fox blinks and, in his surprise, breaks his stillness to turn his head to face Palpatine properly.
“...Sir?”
“Must I repeat myself twice? Draw your blaster from your holster.” Slowly, Fox draws. He wonders if this is some sort of test, if he’s going to be punished further for making his weapon naked in front of the Supreme Chancellor of the entire fucking Republic.
(In the light of the dusk spilling through the window into the opulent office, Palpatine’s eyes seem almost gold. It is for but a brief moment, just the rays of the fat sun catching oddly, and then they return to that sharp, ice-chip grey like nothing at all happened.)
“Good,” says Palpatine, and smiles again. Like this, he looks like some natborn’s father’s father—grandfather, he believes the term is—all benevolent wrinkles and knowing looks. “Set it to kill.”
Fox sets it to kill. It is not a difficult thing. He is just as much a weapon as the blaster in his hands, well-oiled, clean, smooth. Efficient. He was designed for this. It is easier to follow orders mindlessly; his brain, like all their brains (except, perhaps, Kote’s, but Kote’s a little fucked up and is an outlier for everything else, anyway), is primed for command, made to obey. A perfect, thoughtless gun, with just enough ruthlessness and self-determination to set them apart from the CIS’ droids. That’s the idea, anyway. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time the Kaminoans have failed to meet their deliverables.
“Turn around, Commander,” Palpatine murmurs. The words are as soft and rich as the dense, silky fabric from his home planet that he has his clothes cut from; heavy, too, so heavy they smother him. In the gilded and stifling darkness of them, he gasps for air and chokes on velvet. “Turn around, and fire at will.”
Fox does not want to turn around.
Fox does not want to turn around.
Fox does not want to turn around.
(He turns around.)
Behind him is a lineup. They squint into the sun, partially blinded; Fox has the advantage, with his back to the window like this. They are each of them without their buckets—some are in their fatigues, some in their hard shells, all of them vod’e. The first before him, no more than a metre and half away from him, is a cadet. They can’t be more than four or five, nose still a little too big for their face, head shorn to regs, serial number emblazoned on their shoulder. CC-1010-0067. He stares at them. They stares back. Their chin is high, but it trembles ever so slightly with an as-yet uncontrolled fear.
Fox raises his blaster and fires.
(This, at least, he has no remorse about. Better he die like this, before Geonosis, before being re-stationed, before Coruscant, before this, better he die like this than anywhere else. It’s a kindness, really. He tells himself this as the too-small corpse crumples to the polished-wood floor. His hands do not shake; he has learnt to control his fear.)
The rest of the line-up is—
—is a good portion of his officers, on their knees and cuffed. Oh no. No. No, no, no, this can’t be happening. Fuck. Fuck. Himself, yes, yes, killing himself as a cadet, yes, sure, fine, but his officers, his officers as they are now, his soldiers, his vod’ika’e—
(His hands still do not shake.)
“You must learn your lesson, Commander,” Palpatine says behind him. There is no disguising the joy in his voice now, the amusement, the glee. No one will ever believe you, Fox thinks. He does not know what lesson he is meant to be learning. “I cannot have such a—hmm, let us say useful—such a useful asset distracted again. There must be consequences. How else shall you learn?” Fox says nothing. Liquid burbles into a glass. He does not have turn around to know Palpatine has just poured himself a chalice of bitter Nubian cherry wine, sweetened with beetle-honey made with the pollen from the very same vines that gave the fruit for what he now drinks. He takes a sip. There will, undoubtably, be a miniature umbrella topping it off, made with real paper and bamboo, a casually frivolous display of gross and almost unimaginable wealth. Fox hears him smack his lips in quiet satisfaction, and is repulsed. “Go on.”
He looks down the lineup. Next is Thorn, staring in horror at the limp cadaver of Cadet CC-1010-0067, sprawled so in hideous and too-kind death. Fox steps in front of him, and Thorn lifts his head.
“Fox—” Thorn begins. There’s a cut above his left brow. It weeps wetly, trickling into a smear that branches like lightning at his temple, staining his lashes dark and sticky, clumping them together. He’s in his fatigues, embroidery around the collar in white and red, a personal touch that Fox quietly made legal in his latest revision of the Regulations. His natborn supervisor in the GAR bureaucracy had signed it off without a second glance. “Fox, I—”
Fox kills him without a word, and ignores the way the blood stains the whitework of the collar until there’s nothing but red and sickly brown. Kills him, then Thire, then Stone, then Hound, then Shoehorn, then Jek, then Dogma, then Lamp, who’s only been in the Guard four months, has never been stationed anywhere else, has shot up through the ranks anyway, has wormed her way into Fox’s heart the way Rex has into Kote’s, then Bimi, then—then—then—
(Fox was the highest rank for marksmanship in his track, and maybe the best in his generation. What he he aims for, he does not miss. Ever. If someone were to conduct a post-humous examination on any one of these cooling corpses, they would find a single charred hole from the plasma-bolt, perfectly positioned between the eyes. Fox does not miss.)
“Good clone,” says Palpatine when he’s finished, and Fox can only stare at the fallen bodies of his brothers, can only stare at the way the fresh blood slicked across the shining teak is turned a brilliant Corrie Guard red by the sun’s final moments, can only stare at the faces identical to his own except all of theirs are slack with death and his own is still alive, can only stand there, entirely helpless, and hate.
Fox sits bolt-upright, chill to the bone and shaking like some sickly mongrel dog. He—fuck. His brothers are dead. His brothers are dead. His brothers are dead by his hand, every last one of them, every vod he worked so hard to save, to slip from the cruel chokehold of the fucked-up system, the sole reasons for his continued existence in this cursed fucking galaxy. And they’re gone. They’re all fucking gone, because he’s a coward. He hadn’t even tried to protest. He’d just done as he’d been told, no questions asked, no fucking hesitation—
He feels sick.
(Good soldiers follow orders.)
He looks down. Wherever he is, it’s almost entirely dark, and he’s sitting in something warm and wet that he cannot quite see. He looks down in the vain hope that, somehow, this will grant him night-vision. It, of course, does not. The warm-wet stuff is rising, he realises after several long moments. Slowly, yes, but rising nonetheless. He sits there. It rises. He sits there. It rises. He sits there. It is now up to his waist. It has not lost its slightly-unpleasant warmth. When he dabbles his fingers in it, it is sticky and viscous, and leaves a tackiness on his skin as it dries. He can feel it at the back of his neck, in his hair, crusting his back and his palms from when he was laying in it. It is disgusting. He is disgusted. The stench crawls into his sinuses and ferments there like some dying creature.
Overhead, a light flickers on, and Fox’s eyes water and burn under the sudden assault. But perhaps the light has always been on. Perhaps he simply imagined that initial pitch-blackness. Perhaps—
—no. He will not doubt his mind. He will not. He looks around. Apart from his little circle of artificial light, the rest of—wherever he is is tar-black. He has the sinking feeling that wherever entails somewhere very, very large. The darkness, after all, is endless enough.
(He does not want to look down.)
He looks down.
Oh.
It is blood.
He is sitting in a sea of blood, now lapping gently at the bottom of his breastplate, and he knows, somehow, that this is the blood of every single vod he has slain—not just the ones in Palpatine’s office, but those that died on his watch, those that despite everything he did got wiped or decommissioned anyway, those few that looked at the only real choice any of them had and took it. All of them.
It is not some kind of bravery that sends him fumbling for the vibroknife sheathed in his utility-belt. Fox isn’t brave. Fox is perhaps the opposite of brave. Thorn had been brave. Thire had been brave. Stone had been brave. Hound had been brave. And they’re all rotting in the Senate dome garbage chute, and he, the coward, is alive--for a short time, at least. That’s why he needs the vibroknife. It is something very easily fixed. He tests the edge with the pad of his thumb, and watches, dispassionate, as beads of red well up and fall into the blood below. Good enough. He reverses his grip on the hilt and lets it settle against the soft, bare skin of his throat, drags his other hand through the pool of blood, watches it trickle through his fingers.
The least he can do is add to it.
Fox doesn’t slip slowly into consciousness so much as he’s unceremoniously pushed into it all at once; one moment, he’s asleep, the next, he’s awake. He lies entirely motionless in—in whatever bed he’s in (which is odd and wrong, why the fuck is he in a bed), and, cautiously, opens his eyes.
He’s in the Guard HQ MedBay. He shouldn’t be, and he is. It’s gloomy—night-cycle—but not so dark that he cannot see anything at all. When he lifts his right hand in front of his face, he’s more or less able to make it out, stripped of his thick gloves, star-freckled and shrapnel-scarred.
There is no blood.
He turns it this way and that, a franticness creeping through him, because last time he saw his hand he had just slit his own throat and been clutching at it reflexively, and the blood from that and the blood of his vod’e he had submerged it in had coated his arm up the the elbow, except it’s gone now, except the slice on his thumb is still there, scabbing over, and he does not understand, he does not understand, he does not understand—
“Woah, hey, you’re awake,” says a voice with all the wrong inflections for it to belong to a vod. If Fox hadn’t been panicking before, then it has a chokehold on him now, and he thrashes trying to sit up, trying to wrest free from the lines and wires entangling him, because why the fuck is there a natborn here, why the fuck is there a natborn here— “Fox, Fox, hold on, it’s okay. It’s just me. It’s Quinlan. Fox, hey, sweetheart, can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“No,” Fox says wildly, choking on the word as he scrabbles at the tape securing the IV needle in the crook of his elbow, and fuck, fuck, he hates needles, “no, no, fuck, get it out of me, get it out of me, fuck, I need to—I need to—” finally, finally, he yanks it free, wipes roughly at the blood that follows, and starts to rip the leads off his chest, not caring when he digs too deep and his skin stings.
Fuck. Fuck. He killed them, he killed them, Thorn and Thire and Stone and Hound and Jek and Lamp and Bimi and all the rest, he fucking murdered near all the people he loves, and how come when he killed himself it didn’t fucking stick—
“Fox,” says the voice, closer, sounding alarmed, and Fox swallows a ragged sob and tries to work faster, hands shaking. “Fox, listen to me, you’re having a panic attack. I need you to breathe for me, alright? In through your nose, out through your mouth. You’re alright, Fox. You’re safe. Just breathe.”
“They’re gone,” he snarls, abandoning the wires to run his hands through his hair, feeling for blood-clumped curls, dragging his hand across the nape of his neck and around to his throat where the gaping death-wound should be and finding nothing. “They’re gone, Vos, because I fucking killed them, and I don’t understand—I don’t understand, I—why did they stay dead and I didn’t? They were good and now they're dead and I'm not--" his voice wobbles, and breaks. "What fucking right do I have to—to be here and live—why must I always survive--” and he is crying wretchedly, and his whole body burns and he cannot take breath without an agonising stab in his ribs, and he is so tired, he is so fucking tired.
His hands are tangled in his hair again, pulling at it with abandon, trying to rip it all out if only to get some small sliver of reprieve. Everyone is gone. Everyone is dead, by his hand, by his hand. And yet always he survives, always, and it’s not fucking fair.
“Hey, sweetheart, no, you’ll hurt yourself,” Vos says, and Fox can only gasp out good, then long fingers are curling around his wrists, palms dry and warm against his fever-chill skin, squeezing tight and sure.
They vanish just as quickly, like the mere acting of touching him scalded, and Vos sucks in a breath, and makes a sound like he’s choking. Fox turns to look at him for the first time, and can only watch as Vos stumbles away, eyes wide, clutching at his throat. When he pulls his hands away to stare at them, they’re stained bright with blood.
“No,” Fox says. He tries, desperately, to push himself off the bed, to roll over the edge, but he is frozen in place, staring at Vos, who glares back accusingly even as he falls to his knees, shirt soaked through with red. “No, no, hang on, Vos, hang on—”
Something clatters off the bed and onto the ground. He and Vos look at it. It’s—
—his vibroknife, blade wet and bloody. Fox does not remember drawing it. He does not look up, even as Vos draws an awful, rattling breath, even as he gags on his own lifeblood, utterly transfixed with horror.
“A shame, I think,” says a voice from behind him. Fox does not turn. “Now, that wasn’t so difficult, was it, Commander?”
“No, my lord,” he answers, and, unwittingly, catches Vos’ gaze. The betrayal in it, the fear, is enough to make his stomach turn. He should look away. He cannot. He keeps on looking as Vos slumps, bowed over himself, face hidden by his knees and those long, thin braids. He jerks in spasm, just once, and then stills.
“You did very well, my dear boy,” Palpatine croons. “I always knew I could count on you.”
“Yes, my lord,” Fox says, and does not even flinch when Palpatine’s blade plunges through his back.
He wakes, then wishes, desperately, that he didn’t. He feels like—like shit, frankly, like every single centimetre of his body has been bruised and possibly pulverised in a meat grinder. Slowly, painfully, he forces his eyes to open, and stares blankly at the water-stain on the ceiling. He’s in the Guard headquarters MedBay. Again.
“Good morning, di’kut,” says a voice to his right. Something clenches with a painful hope in his chest, and he turns his head to see—Thorn. Who’s alive. “Sleep well?”
“Thorn,” he gasps, ignoring the awful ache in his ribs. “You’re alive. Thorn.” When the tears come, he doesn’t fight them, just lets them slip down his cheeks and soak into the terrible pillow. Thorn’s face softens fractionally, and he slips his hand into Fox’s, broad and callused and there.
“Yeah, ori’vod,” he murmurs. “I’m alive. We all are. Nothing's happened. Everyone’s okay—'cept for you. You got kind of messed up." They smile at him, a little tight around the edges and not quite reaching the eyes. "I thought Stone was going to have a conniption when Vos brought you in," he adds, and at that, something in Fox sharpens.
“Vos? Where is he? Is he—” is he dead? He wants to ask, feels the question rotting inside him, perforating and putrid with fear. Cannot quite bring himself to say it out loud. Did I kill him too? Thorn gives him a knowing look.
“He’s fine, Fox. You just missed him, actually. He left about thirty minutes ago, said he had to get to a rendezvous with an informant. He’ll be back at some point."
Unbidden, Fox thinks of Vos' slow fold downwards to the floor, the sound his knees had made when they hit the crete—the dark wet stain of blood blooming on his shirtfront, the wide-eyed look of betrayal, that single, final spasm. Thinks of fuck off, fuck you, and it's just me.
"Why," Fox says, bewildered, and is met with a thoroughly unimpressed expression.
rimacing at the taste of his own mouth, which is sticky and dry in the aftermath of too much sleep. Vos is alive. Thorn is alive. Nothing's happened. Against all odds and his own wishes and actions, Fox is alive.
"He usually is," Thorn says with a shrug, sounding very sure of himself.
and the lightness of it is still a little forced, but if it means that they're ignoring the
Thorn gives He wanted me to say hi to you for him if you woke up, so.” This time, he levels a flat stare at Fox, a mix of what might be resigned I'm-sick-of-your-shit and amusement and more of that knowing smugness that he does not even a little bit want to untangle. “Hi.”
Fox swallows. His mouth is sticky and dry in the aftermath of too much sleep. Vos is alive. Thorn is alive. Against all odds and his own wishes, Fox is alive.
“Thanks, vod.”
“Stone’s pissed at you, by the way,” he adds cheerfully. “Pissed. Incandescent, in fact.”
“Yes,” says Stone ominously, materialising at the doorway apparently out of thin air. Fox starts, and has to quash the urge to shimmy under the covers out of Stone's wrathful line of sight. “I am. You're fucking unbelievable. Why didn’t you call someone, Fox? Why is it that the first I knew something had happened to you was when the jetii dragged your unconscious ass into my MedBay?”
“I would’ve been fine.”
“Don’t try that shit with me. Even if you hadn’t been stabbed, you were severely dehydrated, electrocuted, three of your ribs are broken, and Vos said you told him you hadn’t slept since Taungsday." He takes a breath, sighs it out again, drags one hand down his face with a deep weariness. "You could’ve died, Fox.”
Fox says nothing.
“You’ve been out for four days, ori’vod,” Thorn adds. “People who are fine don’t stay passed out for four days.”
At that, something like fear spikes sharply in his gut. Stone, glowering over him, must see something in his face, something in the the way he glances back towards the door, because he crosses the space in three strides and shuts it meaningfully, then leans against it, arms folded across his chest. Fuck. Fuck. Four days—fuck. Somewhere, a machine beeps warningly. Fox doesn't care. He can't breathe all of a sudden, and he chokes when he tries to suck in crisp, sanitised air.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” he croaks. “I had—shit, I had another meeting with the Chancellor, I—”
“Thire went. No, stop trying to sit up, he’s fine, Fox. No one touched him. He said Palpatine was asking after you, said he seemed worried.”
Fox laughs at that for a long, long time, hoarse and rasping and cracked. He doesn’t miss the glance Stone and Thorn share, full of worry and concern, even as the laughter turns to wracking sobs, even as the terror closes its vice-like grip around his uncut throat. He’s going to kill me, he thinks. This is it. He’s finally going to kill me.
“Fox?” Stone says quietly.
“What’s the point,” Fox gasps out between breaks in the awful sobbing laugh wrenching its way out of him. “Tell me, Stone, what is the fucking point of this all? Of us?”
There is a dreadful silence as Stone and Thorn share another glance, this time filled with something like horror. He is sick of the careful balancing act he must maintain at all times, of being fashioned with no other purpose except wreaking death and anguish, of the lies and the double-edged words waiting to cut him in every conversation with a natborn. He wonders if his batch feels the crushing weight of inadequacy as much as he does, before dismissing it out of hand. No one in his batch has failed like Fox has failed.
“What’s brought this on, vod? What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Then what’s fucked you up?”
“I don’t fucking know, Stone,” he snaps. “I don’t know. I—I just—I’m—I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Fuck this,” Thorn says suddenly, before the quiet can gape too wide and swallow them all. “C’mere, vod. Hug time. You too, Stone.”
His brothers are warm as they arrange themselves around him; clones, he knows, run hot, hotter even than Vos. Something about increased production in the thyroid, something about a faster metabolism. He’s not sure how it makes them better, and he finds, as he lets his head rest against Stone’s stomach, as he hides his face into Thorn’s shoulder, he doesn’t particularly care.
“I’m tired,” he says in a small voice. And, quieter still, “I’m scared.” In the silence of the MedBay, he can pretend he never said anything at all. His vod’e say nothing, but Stone tightens the hold of the arm wrapped around Fox just fractionally, and Fox knows they heard him. It’s better this way, he thinks. (This is as good as it’s going to get.) It’s better.
Fox gets out of the MedBay fourteen hours later. His head still hurts in that awful, sickly way, not quelled by his five days of involuntary rest. Stone had given back his vambrace three hours ago, finally sick of Fox’s nagging, and he checks the wrist-comm nearly every minute in a way that is perhaps—obsessive, waiting with his heart in his throat for the priority call summoning him to the Chancellor’s office. It does not come. It does not come. It does not come. Somehow, this does not settle the fear that’s taken root in his lungs like some malevolent and thorny plant, wending its biting way through every soft, fleshy crevice of his body.
Stone, because he’s a prick, has banned him (again) from partaking in any kind of stim—caf or deathstick or otherwise—or any kind of depressant (alcohol, mostly), because you’re killing yourself, Fox, and I’m serious, your liver and your kidneys are completely fucked, and your heart and your lungs are on their way to join them, and you’ll feel better for it in the long run, Fox, so Fox is in the process of combing every single nook and cranny of HQ in search of caf. His efforts are in vain, though, because Stone clearly learned from the mistake he made the last time he tried to get Fox to quit, and has somehow single-handedly managed to get the entire fucking Guard to dispose of their stims in an attempt to completely cut Fox off. What a colossal dick.
He storms down the corridor towards the MedBay in a hideous rage, intent on breaking into Stone’s secret cache of medical amphetamines, or, failing that, shaking the bastard until his head flies off his shoulders. He flicks perhaps-obsessively through his wrist-comm message history again as he rounds a sharp corner, and doesn’t register the person coming the other way until he collides with them bodily. He stumbles back against the wall with a curse, pressing a hand to his sharply-protesting ribs, and frowns up at—Vos.
“Oh,” says Vos, who’s clearly just as surprised to see Fox as Fox is to see him. He looks Fox up and down carefully, like if he glances at him too hard or for too long, Fox will shatter into a thousand glittering shards. He tries very hard not to think about how Vos was holding him the last time they were actually together, and so his attention falls to staring fixedly at the soft hollow of Vos’ throat, unscarred and devoid of that gaping and bloody hole. “Fox. Hi. Hi. You’re up. Are you—?”
Fox finally manages to drag his gaze from Vos’ neck and up to his warm, dark eyes, ignoring the concern painted across his face. He's dressed in his sleeveless jetii robes, instead of the knee-high boots and blue trousers and low-cut shirt he'd worn in the elevator; the narrow braids he'd been wearing have disappeared too, replaced with his customary locs, and his tattoo has returned to its usual gold. I remember stabbing you through the throat, Fox manfully does not say. I watched you die at my hand. I can’t trust my own mind anymore. I am not sure that I ever could.
“I’m fine,” he says, and then, because an expression of faint incredulity crosses Vos’ face in response, adds, “I heal quickly. I…” he trails off mid-sentence as a sudden thought sparks a lightning burst of delicious inspiration through his lethargic brain, and jerks forward, catching Vos by the elbow. “Vos. Listen to me. I need caf. I will—the things I will not do for you in repayment if you can get me some fucking caf are. They’re limited. Very limited. Please.”
Vos curls his gloved hand over Fox's, warm and firm and solid even through the leather, touching him like Fox hadn't viciously knifed him through the throat in that almost-dream. Strange sensations are occurring in Fox's chest; one of his broken ribs must have been jostled in the collision. Fox steadfastly ignores both the small, amused smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes sweetly as he extricates himself, and the tingling pins-and-needles feeling under his skin where Vos had touched it. He waits impatiently for an answer, looking hard into Vos' eyes
“If I could,” he says mournfully, and, although needlessly over-dramatic to the extreme, there is some small kernel of genuineness glimmering half-hidden beneath. “I would in a heartbeat, o radiant commander. I would extinguish stars and reignite nebulae for you if you but asked me.” He pauses for a delicate moment, enough time for Fox to give him his best unimpressed look, because he knows that's a quote from a shitty sappy romance serial. “However, the illustrious Commander Stone promised he would divest me of my skin with a blunt scalpel should I enable you in pursuit of stims. Unfortunately, I think he was being serious, and I’m very fond of my skin.”
“Then you are of no further use to me,” Fox grunts, any further comment stolen by how suddenly deeply aware he is of how close Vos is. His treacherous memory, unhelpfully, throws up recollections of how it’d felt to be held in Vos’ arms, and he pushes them away with a clenching of his jaw. (I remember stabbing you through the throat, I watched you die by my own hand—)
He’d meant for his words to be harsh, dismissive, but they lack any real bite or venom, and Vos’ smile stretches across his face into a full, wide grin, showing his white teeth. Like Fox, there’s a gap between his central incisors that, unlike Fox, lends a sort of innocent frankness to the expression, which he’s certain Vos uses to his full advantage. (He wonders how he never noticed it before. It’s alarmingly disarming.)
“Sugarlips, I’m the most useful guy you’ll ever meet.” Distressingly, he winks, and Fox wishes in that moment, as he feels a rush of heat to the tips of his ears, that he’d worn his buy’ce today. A comm chirps quietly, and Fox’s attention flies to his wrist as the moment vanishes and bile rises in its wake, but Vos says, “Sorry, I need to take this. It was nice seeing you, Fox.” And then he nods his head and walks away in the direction he’d been going in, chattering away to his comm in staccato Ryl. His accent is strange and unfamiliar, although he speaks the language far better than Fox does.
And without quite meaning to, he stands in that spot as though his boots have taken root, watching the long, lean figure of Vos stride through the corridors. He catches snippets of conversation like see the latest episode? and shore leave and commander and I’m not dead yet, Little Grass. It is with a start that he realises that what he translated as Little Grass is actually Aaylas’ecura, which then must mean that he’s talking with the General that Bly is hopelessly infatuated with. He did not think that they knew each other. It makes the back of his neck prickle, and all the strangely warm and nebulously uncertain feelings swirling inside of him vanish in an instant, replaced with dread.
He stares hard at the corner Vos disappeared around, blood rushing in his ears, as the constant, foreboding terror congests again under his breastbone. He hadn't realised it had dissipated. Then turns back to MedBay and pulls up his messages to Bly on his comm. (There are no new messages, but he only feels apprehension, not relief. He does not know why the Chancellor has not yet summoned him.)
19/1/3652 CSCY
1416h
Marshall Commander CC-1010, Coruscant Guard [CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him)], Brigadier Commander CC-5052, 327th Star Corps [(blyb (they/them)]
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): bly.
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): your jedi knows my jedi
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): they appear to be friends
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): based on intel i have acquired they are sharing the experience of watching a holovideo series together
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): very good friends. that is not something you would do with anyone you please. a strong emotional connection is required to share media.
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): they also speak to each other in ryl. It is my understanding your jedi is twi’lek. it is a difficult language to learn. he is not twi’lek.
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): i think he is involved in some sort of conspiracy. Possibly against me
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): why else would he know YOUR jedi and watch media with her and talk to her in Ryl
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): a very strange and unlikely coincidence
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): I do not understand much of his behaviour
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): his motives are unclear.
CC-1010 'Fox' (he/him): he is overly kind to me for no reason
CC-1010 'Fox' (he/him):
CC-1010 'Fox' (he/him): I do not know what to make of this. and why would he now reveal to me that he knows your jedi? does he want me to know?
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): it is baffling.
CC-1010 'Fox' (he/him): It is likely that this is some sort of tactic to distract me
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): I do not yet know what his machinations or intents are
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): this worries me.
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): can you confirm the timeline of their relationship?
[Brigadier Commander CC-5052, 327 th Star Corps [blyb (they/them)] is online.]
[Seen by Brigadier Commander CC-5052, 327 th Star Corps [blyb (they/them)] at 1420h.]
blyb (they/them): oh hey fox i thought you wer e dead
blyb (they/them): nice of you to finally show signs of life
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): funny.
blyb (they/them): now before I answer that
blyb (they/them): hang on. trying 2 read backlog. i am currently on the planet of Fuckass Nowhere and these messages are taking forever to load. wouild a paragraph kill u.
blyb (they/them): they loading in order of most recently sent its like im timetraveling
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): ‘ it’s’ has an apostrophe.
blyb (they/them): wow its wild how i didnt ask
blyb (they/them): anyway the virtues of galactic broadband are an unknown phenomenon here on Fuckass Nowhere
blyb (they/them): ok they’ve finished loading
blyb (they/them): i
blyb (they/them): wh
blyb (they/them): what the fuck
blyb (they/them): what the fuck ?
blyb (they/them): fox.
[Brigadier Commander CC-5052, 327 th Star Corps [blyb (they/them)] is typing…]
blyb (they/them): ok i have SEVERAL questions but first off what do you mean ‘’’’’’’’your jedi’’’’’’’’’’ HMMMMMMMMMMMMM
blyb (they/them): you have ????? a jedi????? Ori’vod ‘I think involving a restorative justice force not trained in any way for ongoing widespread conflict is actively harmful to the war effort grrrr’ fox has a jetii???????????????????
[Marshall Commander CC-1010, Coruscant Guard [CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him)] is typing…]
blyb (they/them): owo
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): never mind.
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): this was a mistake.
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): goodbye bly
blyb (they/them): HEY come back im not done talking to you yet
[Incoming call from Brigadier Commander CC-5052, 327 th Star Corps [blyb (they/them)]…]
[Marshall Commander CC-1010, Coruscant Guard [CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him)] has declined the call.]
[Incoming call from Brigadier Commander CC-5052, 327 th Star Corps [blyb (they/them)]…]
[Marshall Commander CC-1010, Coruscant Guard [CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him)] has declined the call.]
[Brigadier Commander CC-5052, 327 th Star Corps [blyb (they/them)] has updated their profile.]
[Incoming call from Brigadier Commander CC-5052, 327 th Star Corps [blyb (they/she)]…]
[Marshall Commander CC-1010, Coruscant Guard [CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him)] has declined the call.]
blyb (they/she): oh so suddenly you hate women???
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): that is a false and declarative statement.
blyb (they/she): ok if its not true then answer my call?????
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): no.
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): you have yet to provide me an answer to my question.
blyb (they/she): ????????? FOX. YOU actively shut down the conversation
blyb (they/she): make up your mind vod do you want to talk about this or not
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): do you think i would have asked you if i didn't.
blyb (they/she): i dont fucking know???????? youre not exactly making a lot of sense??????? im getting a lot of mixed signals from you right now???????????
[Brigadier Commander CC-5052, 327 th Star Corps [blyb (they/she)] is typing...]
blyb (they/she): has anyone ever told you that you would benefit from psychiatric help
CC-1010 'Fox' (he/him): Bly. You are making an insinuation that I do not appreciate. please return to the matter at hand.
blyb (they/she): ok so obviously not
blyb (they/she): im not making an insinuation
blyb (they/she): i am telling you that I dont think youre well in the head
blyb (they/she): hang on
blyb (they/she): ghtp://gwh.netmedic.gar.cor.galrep/humanoid-paranoia/overview
blyb (they/she): ghtp://gwh.netmedic.gar.cor.galrep/psychosis-symptoms-in-humans-and-human-adjacents
blyb (they/she): it says a common trigger is sometimes stress but i don't know what you have to stress about on CORUSCANT so it’s probably an underlying def*ct or something
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): fuck off.
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): you have no idea what you’re talking about, so shut the fuck up and stay out of my business.
blyb (they/she): fucking hells. ok. no need to be rude
blyb (they/she): forgot what a fucking asshole you are
blyb (they/she): anyway aaylas on a call rn so i cant ask her but to my understanding from prev conversations we’ve had the jetii temple has mind healers and psychiatrists who are deemed GAR personnel even though they’re not deploiyed. which means they can treat anyone in the greater gar structure
blyb (they/she): which does in fact include you i've checked and everything
blyb (they/she): i really really think you should book an appointment with one of them.
[Marshall Commander CC-1010, Coruscant Guard [CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him)] is typing…]
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): I understand if you don’t want to continue this conversation but telling me to apply for a decommissioning is unnecessary and childish.
blyb (they/she): what
blyb (they/she): ????????? what are you talking about??????????????????
blyb (they/she): literally what.
blyb (they/she): ori’vod ??????? i suggested you seek help from qualified professionals because something is very clearly wrong with you right now?????
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): yes. you made your intention clear the first time bly.
blyb (they/she): what the fuck??????????
blyb (they/she): never mind im kriffing done with this shit
[Brigadier Commander CC-5052, 327 th Star Corps [blyb (they/she)] has screenshotted the conversation.]
[Brigadier Commander CC-5052, 327 th Star Corps [blyb (they/she)] has screenshotted the conversation.]
[Brigadier Commander CC-5052, 327 th Star Corps [blyb (they/she)] has screenshotted the conversation.]
[Brigadier Commander CC-5052, 327 th Star Corps [blyb (they/she)] has screenshotted the conversation.]
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): what the fuck are you doing.
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): Bly
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): don’t forget I outrank you.
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): if you don’t delete those images, I’ll have you demoted for inappropriate fraternisation with a superior officer and transferred to another systems army.
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): you would be unlikely to see your general again unless she died and you somehow got yourself invited to her funeral
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): think very carefully about what you’re doing kih’vod
CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him): is that really something you want to risk?
blyb (they/she): what in the name of EVERY SINGLE FUCKING GOD IN THE UNIVERSE IS WRONG WITH YOU
blyb (they/she): actually nevermind you don't answer that. i already know
blyb (they/she): you're paranoid and delusional. and the biggest cunt ive ever had the displeasure of speaking to
blyb (they/she): i love you ori’vod . so much . and i would die for you if it would keep you safe or help you tbh
blyb (they/she): but you can fuck right off
[Brigadier Commander CC-5052, 327 th Star Corps [blyb (they/she)] has blocked Marshall Commander CC-1010, Coruscant Guard [CC-1010 ‘Fox’ (he/him)].]
19/1/3652 CSCY
1439h
Brigadier Commander CC-5052, 327th Star Corps [blyb (they/them)], Marshall Commander CC-6454, 4th Systems Army [pomd (he/him)]
blyb (they/them): ponds i need your help
blyb (they/them): somethings wrong with fox
[Brigadier Commander CC-5052, 327th Star Corps [blyb (they/them)] has sent 4 images.]
pomd (he/him): oh
pomd (he/him): bad.
pomd (he/him): OH?
pomd (he/him): really bad really really bad
blyb (they/them): yes
pomd (he/him): approach to conversation not most optimal however
blyb (they/them): ? what doyou mean
pomd (he/him): coruscant remark very inflammatory
blyb (they/them): ok but its true you can't pretend its not
blyb (they/them): hes got the best job out of all of us by a long shot
blyb (they/them): you really think coruscant is even remotely as stressful as the front??
pomd (he/him): maybe stress of a different kind
blyb (they/them): hes a trumped up pet cop with all the guns and gear he could ever want
blyb (they/them): oh nooooo did someone make a bomb threat towards a senator? did he have to stand on guard at some socialites party for too long and get sore feet? boohoo. yesterday i watched a vod in my company step on a landmine and blow himself and a third of his squad into pieces. give me a fucking break.
[Marshall Commander CC-6454, 4th Systems Army [pomd (he/him) is typing...]
blyb (they/them): oh that reminds me
blyb (they/them): i wasnt able to screenshot it but after i took those screenshots he threatened to demote and transfer me
blyb (they/them): definitely threatened me and maybe threatened aayla???? im not sure
pomd (he/him): oh shit
pomd (he/him): really really REALLY bad
pomd (he/him): keeps getting more bad
pomd (he/him): worse
pomd (he/him): sending links also not good idea
pomd (he/him): suggestion: research into sensitive handling of situations before confrontations in future
blyb (they/them): yeah yeah yeah whatever
pomd (he/him): i'm serious bly
pomd (he/him): sure
blyb (they/them): i wish kote wasn’t on fait sol wherever the fuck
blyb (they/them): p sure he’d be able to fix this
pomd (he/him): agree
pomd (he/him): however consider: wolffe
pomd (he/him): medium level of wise
pomd (he/him): furry name bond w fox
pomd (he/him): acceptable kote replacement
pomd (he/him): making chat now
pomd (he/him): we'll figure something out
blyb (they/them): oh ok
blyb (they/them): thank you ponds :yellow_heart:
(Fox finds the secret cache of medical amphetamines. Unfortunately, while he accounts for the first two alarms Stone set to trigger upon proximity, he did not expect the third, which is how he ends up dragged out of the medicine storage room by the scruff of his neck and assigned two shinies to guard him from himself. He tries to punch Stone in the face. Stone catches his wrist and twists it behind his back, because Fox is still only fourteen hours out of MedBay, and now, on top of everything else, he has a sprained elbow. Stone is unrepentant. And Fox—by the end of it, Fox is not in a good fucking mood.)