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Fox walks into the break room daydreaming about the ocean. Not because he misses it, but because he’s so tired all the blood has rushed to his head and is roaring distantly in his ears.
Stone takes one look at him and pushes off of the counter, moving towards the caf machine.
“That bad?” Fox asks, pulling off his bucket and collapsing into one of the flimsy metal chairs that surround a table they rescued from the senate trash compactor. The chair groans when he stretches his legs out — the sound echoes in his knees. He compulsively checks the chrono on the opposite wall, and grimaces when he sees it’s already late. Fox had hoped to get here before the refectory closed, but any chance of making late-meal is long gone now.
Perhaps, if he’s lucky, he’ll get to choke down a ration bar in the privacy of his office later.
“What the hell are you still doing here?” Stone demands, thumping the side of the machine until it sputters to life. “I thought your shift ended hours ago.”
Fox grunts, running a hand over his face and the day-old scruff growing there. His left temple throbs a steady beat, pain radiating outwards across his skull in strong, sickening starbursts. It serves him right for clenching his jaw during meetings, but sometimes, it’s the only thing that keeps him from saying something drastic.
He suspects the Senators of the Republic do not appreciate this self-restraint as much as they should. Every day it’s a little more tempting to just stop trying.
“Tell that to the Chancellor,” Fox says, scratching idly at his neck. “He called an emergency protocol meeting after the —”
There’s the sound of breaking ceramic across the room, and too late, Fox remembers the whispered conversation he caught between Stone and Thire the last time it had been morning in his office. Something about ‘ not enough sleep’ , about ‘ looking stressed’ , about ‘ thinking of ways Florrum could have gone differently’ . And then later, Thorn had come in under the pretext of dropping off more paperwork and given him an order dressed up as a suggestion. “ Stone could really use a debrief on that escort mission, boss” he’d said, and —
Fox looks at where Stone is white-knuckling the countertop and winces.
So much for addressing things tactfully. Thorn would never have been so inept, but then, Thorn hadn’t been decanted with one foot in his mouth. It’s why they work so well together: Thorn puts people at ease and Fox…doesn’t. For all their identical genes, clones really aren’t made equal, and charisma doesn’t come in a tube. More’s the pity.
No, Fox knows his strengths, and he’s always at his best with his bucket on and his mouth shut, which is thankfully how the Senate likes him. Still…if he was running on more than stims and spite he’d have caught himself before kicking the hornet’s nest like this. Stone always seems laid back on the surface, but he’s like a nightswan: serene on top, with performance anxiety kicking desperately underneath.
And Fox had been worried when the initial reports had come in and he’d seen that Stone had not only had to contend with the expected pirates, but also a shuttle crash, a dead senator and Senator Binks as his field commanding officer on top. He’d always meant to say something, but that intention had quickly been buried under the heady relief that Stone had come back , and the need to quickly manage the practical aspects of the mission’s resulting fallout. They’d had a chance to capture Count Dooku, and failed. The Senate rightfully had a lot of questions about why he wasn’t in custody, and why this chance to end the war had slipped through their fingers. Fox would be damned if the blame got laid at the Guard’s door.
Still, though. It’s not an excuse. If he’d looked past his bucket for five minutes he’d have seen how worked up Stone is about this.
“An emergency meeting about what, Fox?” Stone croaks, staring at the mug he’s just broken. Their cleaning droid whizzes out from under the counter with an angry series of beeps and starts scooping up the pieces. “My mission to Florrum?”
Fox is forced to nod, and watches Stone sag into himself. The caf maker clicks off, and for a moment Stone just stands there over the filled pot, his shoulders hunched. Fox tenses, getting ready to stand and do something — but at the resulting squeak of his chair legs, Stone startles. He prepares their caf with shaking hands before bringing the mugs to the table and collapsing into the chair opposite.
Fox half catches his drink and inhales the rising steam, the soft moisture soothing against his stinging eyelids. Out of the corner of his eye he watches Stone scrub his hands across his face, and rolls the words around in his mouth. There’s a reason he always left this sort of thing to Ponds when they were cadets; he can put together an argument for strategies and resources, no problem, but people need a lighter touch.
“You know what the Chancellor and his advisors are like,” Fox tries. “They’ll call a meeting over anything —”
“Just be straight with me,” Stone interrupts, his expression open and desperate. “How bad is it looking?”
Fox narrows his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Where are they demoting me to? I can handle it, I —I just want the rest of the boys to get away clean.”
Kriffing hell. He’s not awake enough for this. Fox pauses, digging his fingers into the bridge of his nose like it will help him excavate something coherent from the wasteland of his brain.
“Stone,” he says eventually, looking up into his brother’s worried face. “What happened to Kharrus wasn’t your fault.”
“A senator died under my escort, Fox. I should’ve —”
“What? Bullied a crashing ship back into atmosphere? Become a human crash mat for Kharrus?” Fox snorts. “If anyone could’ve done something differently it was maybe the pilots, and if they’d made it out of there I wouldn't have let them be court marshalled either.”
“ Court marshalled? They were going to —” Stone inhales sharply, the colour draining from his face.
Damn it all. Fox looks desperately towards the door, even though he knows for a fact Thorn and Thire are both spearheading this evening’s patrol rota and are not going to walk in to save him from his own big mouth.
“It’s a figure of speech.”
“Fox —”
“ Stone.” Fox sighs and takes a long, fortifying gulp of caf. “Mas Amedda might’ve run his mouth —a little. But only until I reminded him that he was the one that vetoed a larger escort. Said it wouldn’t be ‘cost effective.’ I suggested that next time he should value his colleagues more than his coffers.”
Stone shakes his head. “It can’t have been that simple.”
Fox slowly wipes his top lip with his thumb.
“No,” he admits grudgingly. “He asked what we were good for then, since the Republic is paying for us to be worth two men each. Two-faced bastard. He was practically writing Kharrus’ eulogy in there, even after the way he derided him for being part of the peace lobby. You’d think Amedda’s forgotten saying that Kharrus was the disgrace of the Senate.”
For the first time, Stone cracks the beginnings of a smile. “Wasn’t that just last week?”
Fox smiles back grimly. “Less than. But now Kharrus is neatly out of the way and can’t oppose Amedda’s legislation, so he’ll guiltlessly string him up as just another martyr to push his own agenda. Politicians are all the same.”
Stone’s smile hangs on for a few more seconds before it fades, and he goes back to staring into his mostly-full mug, like he might be able to read his future at the bottom of it. Fox drains his own, sighing in relief as the blinding edge gradually comes off his headache. He eyes the morose armoured lump that his brother makes on the other side of the table and sighs again, for a wholly different reason.
“They’re going for an internal review,” Fox offers, reluctant. “Might question you and the squad as part of it, but I made sure my initial concerns got into the minutes. Any recommended outcomes will come back to me, and the panel won’t have any disciplinary authority. I won’t let ‘em pin this one on you, vod .”
Stone clinks his fingers against the side of his mug. “You can’t promise that.”
Fox rolls his eyes. “Sure I can. Have I ever lied to you?”
Stone gives him a deeply sceptical look. “Oh yeah? When did you last eat?”
“A while ago,” he retorts, grimacing. “The point is —”
“See?” Stone exclaims, half-laughing.
“The point is,” Fox repeats, leaning over the table and getting as far into his brother’s space as he can. “I wouldn’t lie about this. They have to have me present as your commanding officer — and I’m not reassigning anyone. Their recommendations can go hang. I promise, Stone. You won’t be in there alone.”
He can’t explain the hot, tight feeling that seizes in his chest at the thought that Stone might not believe him. Sure, he’s not that personable, finds conversation a trap best left avoided and spends too much of his time deadlifting datapads. But he’s always hoped, at least, that he’s built a reputation of following through on his word. Of being someone his troops can trust to have their backs. If he can’t even convince Stone…
His brother stares blankly at him for seconds that stretch too long, before suddenly his expression cracks and he looks away with a big, hitching breath, towards the small, grimy window that looks out over a nearby generator plant. Fox catches the way he blinks rapidly, and tilts his head.
“How long have you been thinking about this?”
Stone makes a short, wet sound. “Pretty much since I got off the transport.”
Fox rolls his eyes and kicks his brother under the table. Then he grabs Stone’s vambrace and grasps him just below the elbow. He’s never really liked how stifling hugs feel, but he remembers Cody doing this for him sometimes when they were cadets, and how the gentle weight of someone else’s hand was a comfort.
“That was stupid, vod. If you’d just asked , I’d have told you there was no point worrying.”
Stone really does laugh now, a bright startled thing, and Fox sees the moment he starts to believe him when his hand squeezes back.
“Thanks, Fox,” he says, voice softening. “I mean it.”
Fox harrumphs, but allows himself a smile when Stone goes back to his caf, actually drinking it this time instead of just pushing it around. He feels like he’s just defused a particularly elaborate bomb, or like he’s scraped out of a blast zone and can just feel the shadow of heat on his back.
They lapse back into a more comfortable silence, savouring the quiet, the darkening sky outside and the hum of distant traffic lanes. Fox starts to nod in his seat, chin slipping down to rest on his chest plate. It doesn’t last, though. It never can. Eventually his comlink chimes, a horrible shrill sound that has him conditioned like an akk dog. He jolts and checks the notification: his next prison shift, this time in block Dorn, starting in the next half-hour.
“Kriff,” he mutters, shooting upwards and then groaning. He knuckles at his eyes, vision swimming sharply when he hefts himself back onto his feet. “Well, that’s me.”
Stone frowns up at him. “That’s you going to the barracks, right?”
Fox knows that he’s officially raced past exhaustion and seen it fade into the distance when the thought of his narrow, rock-solid bunk is enough to make his heart constrict with longing.
“Only in my dreams,” Fox says, smacking his comm as it chimes again. As he slips his helmet back on and the HUD wakes up, a stream of messages blazes in the left hand corner, priority lights flashing. He scans through them briefly, blinking away two, minimising another three for later and pulling up the most urgent for immediate action. “What do you think the odds are that there's another break-out attempt tonight?”
“I’ll be sure to let you know,” Stone says. “I’m taking your shift.”
“Stone —”
“ Fox.” Stone gets up and positions himself directly in Fox’s path to the door. “ Go to bed.”
“If you take this you’ll have to pull a double.”
Stone rolls his eyes. “No I won’t. I’ll bribe Thire, and then he’ll work a double. He owes me.”
Fox stills, rolling the idea around in his head. If he ditches the shift, he’ll have to comm Deadeye about the change, alter the clearances so Stone can get onto the prison floor, the inmate files he’s already behind on won’t be done and —
“Fox, you took care of me,” Stone interrupts, voice soft, much closer now than he had been. His expression is tight and worried as he looks Fox over, and ordinarily he would rise up against the cheek of it but — he’s so tired. “Let me do this for you?”
Fox wavers a moment longer, then sighs.
“...Fine,” he mutters, then adds gracelessly. “Thanks.”
Stone salutes with a cheeky grin, picks up his shock baton and pops his helmet on. It’s not until he’s out of the door that Fox realises he’s been left with the washing up, and swearing fondly, gets to it.