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You are Fox. From as long as you can remember, growing up on Kamino, everyone in authority looked for an opportunity to punish you, to decommission you, to erase you from being. For a fault you were born with, the cosmetic flaw of greying hair, you are defective; you must be the best of the best to survive. You try, but you are never the best of the best. That is Cody, effortless, golden, perfect. Glory. You would hate him if hate was not something you reserve for those in charge of you, who have the power of punishment and pain. (You envy him. You want to be him.)
["Kriff you, Fox."
"What do you have against Fox? He's top of his growth cycle, along with Cody. They're the best. You have to look up to him for that."
"Yeah. He *is* just as good as Cody. Cody just isn't as much of a dick about it."]
You have brothers, but you are not one of them. You are different. You are flawed, defective. You try too hard. You are outside their circle of warmth, looking in. (You see Cody adopt Rex, a mutant like yourself. This one is invited in. This one is special, is accepted, is Cody's. This one belongs. This one has the sun shining on him. You would hate him, but you hate yourself more. If his cosmetic defect is not enough to make him dar'vod, then it is not yours that makes you so. It is simply you.)
["He doesn't like me," Rex said unhappily. "It's because of my defect, isn't it."
"He doesn't like anyone," Wolffe scoffed. "Too good for the rest of us."
"I think he might be jealous," Ponds commented softly, unheard by anyone.]
You are not the best of the best, but you are the best of the rest. For your efforts, you are assigned to command the Coruscant Guard. For a moment, you have hope. You believe that there is someplace you can belong, somewhere you can make a difference.
From the moment you step inside the headquarters of the Coruscant Guard and see the conditions you will be working in, will be living in, you know you are wrong. (It is not you who are flawed, but there is no one who would tell you this. There is no one who will tell anyone in the Guard that they are anything but what they are, worthless meat droids. The Guard has no Jedi, no grateful civilian populaces, no respite from the unrelenting nightmare.)
When you take your first shift in the Senate, you know that the only difference you can make is in the number of your men you can save. You are more alone than you were on Kamino. You are responsible for the lives of your men in a meatgrinder no one acknowledges. You command them, but you have no place among them, no one to see Fox, to turn to, to seek comfort from. You are alone among many, shunned even by those like you, who face the same dangers you do. They are with you only when it is all of you versus all of the outside world. They have your back then, if only to shelter behind it. (Thorn calls them vod'ike. You call them your men; you already know they are not your brothers, they are not comrades -- and to think of them as *little* brothers, as the children they are, is to open a well of grief you would only drown in.)
As the war continues, as the Chancellor's demands become more unreasonable, the hours ever shorter and the flimsiwork ever greater, you do what you have always done. You survive. You know how to do this; you have always done this. Now it is not only you, but every man under your command. You become the best of the best at this as you were the best of the best at training to be a soldier. You learn different tactics, tactics that do not befit a battlefield, but which are required to survive the warfront that is Coruscant. You lie, you steal, you beg, you surrender, you do everything that is needed to keep your men alive. If you are alone, then perhaps it is best that you always have been, that it is the only thing you know how to be.
You learn begging is useless. That words alone are meaningless. (You beg the Jedi, you beg your batchmates, you beg the Chancellor, you beg every senator who will listen. Of these, only Organa and Amidala are of use, able to -- all too rarely -- smuggle one of your men off-world. Some of those who die do only do so as a number. When Thorn dies on Scipio, you blame Amidala, but it does not stop you from begging her the next time one of yours needs out. It is not enough; it is never enough. But it is all you can do.) Those you go to for aid offer platitudes or -- more often -- scorn. The Guard is a cushy posting. It is not part of the GAR. Real soldiers are dying. You are whining, you are acting out for attention, you are lying, you are wrong. (It is not you who is dar'vod, not you who is at fault, it is them. But they have numbers on their side and you are one man.)
[CC CHAT:
CC-1010: I need help.
CC-5052: A wild Fox appears!
CC-3636: The great Fox needs our help? Yeah, right. Since when?
CC-1010: This is important. It's life or death.
CT-7567: What's the problem? Too much nightlife? Can't hold your booze? Stuff yourself on too many leftovers from the Senate?
CC-8826: What's a CT doing here? Cody, leash your pet.
CC-3636: Talk to me when you've lost your battalion, softshell.
CC-5052: Man, I wish I was on Coruscant.]
You hold and you hold and you hold. You take punishments for your men. (The chancellor is not the worst, just the most frequent.) You give up sleep, give up food and never had companionship to give up. Your job is thankless; your men are not grateful for their survival, but resentful of your ever more stringent rules that keep them alive -- and angry when they break those rules and die, blaming you for not saving them. (You can only save those who want to be saved and not even all of them.)
[A vod pile had formed in the barracks. Deece, CT-4333, had been decommissioned for the sin of removing his helmet on the request of a senator's aide and being found with a nose piercing. Togetherness was the only comfort they had against grief.
Sometime into the shift, Fox entered the room, immediately catching the attention of those on watch. A wave of whispers and prodding went through the pile until all but a few, too deep into their sleep or their grief, were alert.
"He died because he broke the rules." The intimidating full-armored marshall commander stared expressionlessly down at them where they were resting, piled together on the collected pads that passed for mattresses, mourning the death of Deece. An awkward silence spread through the room. Fox swept his gaze back and forth over the group and made a noise. "I'm sure that where he's marching on, those already there are slapping him upside the head even now." The awkwardness grew. Fox stared at them then finally about faced and left the room. Behind him, someone said incredulously, "Was he making a joke??"
Fox's back stiffened.]
You avoid Medical for your injuries; you are losing time, suddenly blinking awake somewhere other than where you last were, with wounds you cannot explain. You cannot be sent back to Kamino; your mental state would demand it and you will not see this haran forced upon Thire. You can take it a little longer. You are still alive.
[Lack of sleep has left Fox hallucinating and micro-napping, which are much the same thing. As the chip kicks in, he begins losing time. Because he's a stubborn bastard, he doesn't break and holds it together. He does what he does best. Survive. He allows schizophrenia to overcome him because it's the only way he can hold everything together -- keep his people alive while the pressures of survival and command keep him apart from them; deal with constant abuse and the pressure of being in charge, starved and deprived of sleep. He's been tortured repeatedly, sent on black-out missions and treated like a droid. What did they expect? By the end, he's nearly fully disassociated.]
When the end comes, it is not what you expected.
You do not die. There is no end to the war, no justice for the wrongs done to you and your men.
Instead, the Prime calls all of the brothers home to Mandalore. (You are not one of them, but you are in charge, and so you go, because it is your responsibility to get them there, your final task and then you can be free.)
You hold yourself together through the journey, projecting calm and confidence.
As each ship touches down, their occupants are dispersed among the crowd of Mandalorians who are apparently waiting to give each of your brothers homes. You do not go forward; there is no one waiting for you on Mandalore. Instead you watch as your men do not look back as they are accepted by families and adopted. (There are those who say goodbye, who say they want to keep in touch. You do not respond. They did not want you as one of them when it mattered; these are only more empty words to you.)
You would lay down to die if you could.
[Fox doesn't know it, but he's dying. He does lay down to die; he collapses after the landing on Mandalore. Once the imperative to see his men safe is complete, the relief from tension lays him out. His body has caught up with him; it is simply incapable of carrying on. His system is shutting down.]
But survival is engrained in your bones. You cannot bring yourself to do what so many others wanted to do to you and failed. You would sleep forever if you could. Your body will not let you. (You are forced to be awake, dead-eyed while people swarm around you dressed in white first badgering you then finally, finally leaving you alone to drift through life After without purpose, without connection.)
[Fox doesn't remember the interim between collapsing after landing on Mandalore and waking up in the hospital when he was in a coma. When he wakes up, he is unable to cope. The mind healers are at a loss; after his near-death experience, Fox is seriously disassociating at this point. He sleeps, then lies there like the dead before lurching upright and sitting there, staring at nothing or getting up to pace in circles, checking every corner, before going back to sitting, eyes twitching from side to side. He would only eat if food was put in his hands. For all intents and purposes, he's been shoved out of a cage into the middle of New York City and told to go get a job. No one understands this and when Fox is triggered, when he becomes violent, they give up on him, strapping him down and intubating him. When rumors rise, they lock him in, leaving a droid to change the bags.]
It is Alpha-17 who finds you. He calls himself Dah'lav now, but he is 17 to you. You do not know why he bothers. You are dar'vod. You are a dead man walking. (You welcome death. You know that you will not be marching on, know that you are not worthy of it, but you would like to rest. You would like to lay down and never have to get up again.)
He makes you eat. Makes you clean yourself, pushes you into the fresher. Takes you to the Prime.
[Dah'lav heard about Fox from his CCs. He's not one for gossip, but someone's got to keep them from the thermal detonators. What he hears troubles him. Fox lost it. Fox went insane. Fox is catatonic. Fox got the Guard massacred. The vod'e want him declared dar'vod and locked away for good. He's faking his condition to avoid execution.
Alpha class doesn't just mean a tank with legs. Dah'lav is more than his skills in battle. He knows who Fox's commanders were. He has a comm and access to the list of personnel who made it to Mandalore. He contacts them for more up-to-date information. He gets statistics. He solicits first-hand reports and builds a picture of the haran the Guard went through. He discovers that Thorn is alive, smuggled half-dead from Kamino to Naboo by Senator Amidala after he nearly died protecting her. Thire, Thorn and Stone know what's happened to Fox on a personal basis and they relay their perspective to Dah'lav.
Thire sighs heavily. "He was losing it toward the end, barely holding himself together. Every day I wondered if this was the day I was going to find out he was dead."
"He saved as many of us as he could," Thorn supplied. "On Scipio, the senator knew him by name."
"Faked decommissionings," Stone added.
"We did what we could," Thire said. "I never saw him in the bunks or out of his armor except the time I caught him bandaging a wound."
"He didn't eat," Thorn said soberly. "I'd sneak in when he was on Senate duty and hide halves of ration bars in his desk drawers. I saw him eating those. It was like he didn't notice that he wasn't the one to open them," he added bleakly. "He acted like he'd been the one to forget them there. I think he was losing time. Forgetting what he'd done and hadn't done. And it was okay to finish off something someone had already had their share of."
"He wasn't the only one blacking out and waking up somewhere other than where he remembered being," Thire concluded with a grim air. "We were all going to end up like that. We were living on borrowed time, time paid for by Fox."
Dah'lav goes straight to the hospital. He's seen torture. He's been through it. And he loves Fox, in his own way. He isn't going to let him suffer. He has an idea of what Fox needs, of what he's been through and how to help him. And if it doesn't work, he'll keep trying. Everything he's heard confirms what he knows of Fox, a stubborn bastard who stood up to the worst of what the galaxy has to offer and protected everyone he could. Kaysh atiniir'yc morut. His haven, his stronghold who endured under siege, past all hope.
When he finds Fox locked alone in a room, restrained, rocking back and forth and mumbling to himself, Dah'lav releases him.
After Dah'lav sweeps him up into his arms, Fox focuses on the alpha, coming back to himself for a moment.
"Seventeen?"
"Dah'lav now."
Tears come to Fox's eyes before he closes them and rests his head against Dah'lav's chest. "Wish you were real. Good dream. Best dream."
He holds Fox a little closer, rubs his chin across the crown of Fox's head, all he can do to comfort the broken man in his arms.
On his way out, he's stopped by one of the medics, a clone trooper.
"You can't take him," the CT says, standing in the way, as though he could stop an Alpha-class from doing anything he wanted. "He's delusional and a danger to himself and others. He should be in isolation."
Dah'lav shoulder-checks him, moving past without pause. "Not letting you torture him *more*", he snarls with the clear implication that anyone else even *voicing* an objection would be dead shortly thereafter.]
You sleepwalk through the interview with Prime; words were said, but none that applied to you. (All three are worried; Dah'lav, the Mand'alor and the Jedi. Of these, only 17 can get you to respond, and it is only to follow his directions. Words are beyond you. Words made no difference in what happened to you or your men; why would they matter now, at the end of all things?)
["This is Marshal Commander Fox. He needs help."
Judgment is implied with every word spoken, with his stance, with his positioning behind Fox, hands on Fox's shoulders, holding him up. It is understood that Dah'lav is supporting Fox and that Dah'lav disagrees in every way with Fox's treatment to this point. That Dah'lav is assuming responsibility for him does not need to be said; both the Mand'alor and his Jedi are well-aware that Dah'lav takes his duty seriously, that his loyalty and determination are unshakeable and not easily won.
"You have something in mind to help him. What do you need?" Kenobi asks, ever the bleeding heart.
"Quarters. With an office attached. And meaningful work."
"Work?" Jango asks skeptically. "What kind of work do you expect him to be able to do? He's swaying on his feet."
"Or could ask of someone who's suffered so much already?" Kenobi added.
Jango nodded. "I've had petitions to censure him. I'm not saying that I've made a decision--"
"Or even seen all the evidence--"
"Or seen *any* evidence, given that I've refused to hear any complaints about someone still under the care of a mir'baar'ur," Jango smoothly took up where the Jedi left off, "But you can understand where there might be questions about his competence, mentally and otherwise."
Dah'lav had had enough. "You need proof of his capability? On record, he started the war with 36,864 personnel, was reinforced with 4,320 troops and suffered 75% losses -- the second highest of all war commands, after Krell. So he should have had a little over 10,000 troops left. Would you like to know how many arrived here? 30,889. There were 1,575 reported decommissionings. Of those, only twenty percent were actually decommissioned. He managed that with supplies for a command half the size of his official count. Half-dead and hallucinating, he was running the flimsiwork side of the war and succeeding. You don't have to start him off with writing a treaty with the Republic. But if you did, I guarantee you wouldn't find a better one, even with Kenobi's help."]
You are given an office and piled with flimsiwork. It is the same as before, as when you were Marshal Commander Fox and drowning under the combined paperwork of the Guard, the Chancellor and the GAR. But you do not have to see anyone but 17 and it gives you something to do, something to fill the endless hours until your body will allow you to sleep again. (It is not the same. You are in a bright, sunlit room, with a comfortable chair and your desk mysteriously refills itself with snacks whenever you run low. There are plants, green growing things, and no one hurts or abuses you. Your work is meaningful and well-appreciated.)
[Fox needs something to anchor to -- an activity to engage him -- and flimsiwork is familiar to him. He's amazing at it. He puts Kenobi to *shame*. The man is unstoppable in any matter that involves formal language and legal terms. He is a master of loopholes, doubletalk and every manner of verbal skulduggery. His paranoia when targeted at this? Let's just say you do not want to be an enemy of Mandalore right now.]
You have a room that you share with others and a stand for your armor. That is the same as before as well. (It is not the same. There are no barely padded bunks. There is a comfortable bed, big enough for two of the alpha class, kitted out with sheets and multiple blankets and large, fluffy pillows. The armor is beskar. And the only one who enters your room other than you is 17.)
[And Thorn. Dah'lav needs someone to take care of Fox when he can't be there. To watch over him, make sure he eats and takes care of himself. And to keep out everyone who thinks they have the right to bother Fox, including the entire mir'baar'ur cadre if necessary.
Thorn's interactions with Fox are heartbreaking. Fox believes Thorn is dead, that Thorn is a benevolent hallucination, a blessing from an uncaring galaxy that he does not deserve. When Fox first meets Thorn, he sinks to his knees and repeats "Ni ceta" over and over again until, in a panic, Thorn comms Dah'lav and the Alpha can come and retrieve Fox. Fox does not make it past the edge of the bed for three days. Although Dah'lav meant well, the meeting with Thorn is what finally breaks Fox. You don't go from hell to heaven without breakage. Especially not while Fox is still physically feeling the effects of his torture. Especially not after months of questioning his reality. Especially not while knowing that Thorn is dead.]
You do not wear the armor. You have never put it on. You wear a clean set of blacks because 17 stole your clothing after pushing you into the fresher and these were all that was there when you emerged. You feel naked all the time. You would wear plastoid if you had it; you would be more comfortable if you did after wearing armor all your life. But the only armor you have is the beskar and you are dar'manda, dar'vod. It is not yours to wear. You have never been Mandalorian; the trainers made that clear. You are the furthest thing from mandokarla, a mewling coward who has knelt to many in power and wept before them.
[To Dah'lav, you are the essence of mandokarla. You and your people were taken to the edge of hell and you brought most of them back, despite incredible odds, despite everyone and everything trying to destroy you and them. You are what a mando'ad is meant to be and everyone who disagrees can kriff off.]
You *are* a clone, but you are not a vod. You are dar'vod, someone who was born a brother, but is not, not really, not anymore. (But the best moments of your new life are when 17 is there, when he lets you rest your forehead on his shoulder protector and does not push you away. When you can believe that you are Safe. That you are Accepted.)
[Fox is in love with 17, although it's more a romance with the living embodiment of Safety and Acceptance than an actual relationship with 17 himself. He is not in touch enough with reality yet for that.]
Sometimes when 17 lets you lean against him, you imagine that he curls his hand around the back of your neck. That he leans his forehead down to touch the top of your head. That he whispers words, impossible words because these have meaning, and you know that words are only sound. (You are not imagining. Or dreaming. Or deluding yourself with what you do not, could never, deserve.)
[Dah'lav never speaks a word he doesn't mean, never makes promises he doesn't intend to keep. Doesn't use words at all unless he can't get his point across without them. He is uniquely qualified to bring Fox back from the edge.]
You are alone other than the only person that matters. You are alive, even though you would rather be unconscious. You have something to do. No one yells at you.
[Despite how much he has helped Fox, Dah'lav isn't perfect. When Fox's batchmates -- who are also Dah'lav's ad'ike -- beg him for the chance to apologize to Fox, he allows it. Not without reservations. He doesn't believe in closure; Fox isn't well enough to believe Thorn is real, closure isn't something Fox can comprehend much less accept. But if his batchmates can establish a connection to him, he thinks, the more people to support Fox, the better. Despite Fox's inability to accept Thorn's survival, Fox is undeniably better for his presence, more there, more settled, happier.
Things don't go well. He raised a bunch of little assholes. He should have remembered that.]
(Wolffe: Fox? Fox! ::circles around him:: Are you ignoring me? You kriffing--
Dah'lav: …
Wolffe: ::slinks away::
Cody: ::takes Fox's cheeks in his hands, looking directly into Fox's eyes:: Fox. ::he touches his forehead to Fox's, then kneels:: Ni ceta. Ni ceta, Fox.)
[Fox registers his batchmates as little more than a disliked holodrama happening somewhere else in the room, somewhere far away from him. There is no recognition of an apology, of what is being apologized for or indeed even of who is apologizing.
Dah'lav still lays Wolffe out. The shebs'palon had it coming.]
You do not have to see anyone but 17 and it is enough.
[Thorn does not count. He is not real. He is a manifestation of Fox's delusions, a guilty pleasure Fox cannot bring himself to release, to stop allowing himself to experience.]
Sometimes when you finally admit that you cannot physically force yourself to remain in bed any longer, you remember dreaming that 17 shared the bed with you. These are the best dreams, whether the dream is of him waking you from a a nightmare, solid and comforting, or of getting to bury your face against his bicep, warm and oh so real. Either way, he is there, and that is the only thing that matters, the only dream that you need, that he wants you, wants to touch you and is always, always there. You do not want to wake up.
[Dah'lav is definitely more than fond of Fox. He is not attracted to him; Fox is sick mentally and physically and that is NOT sexy. But when Fox is well enough to accept that Dah'lav is real, Dah'lav will swear the riduurok with him. He has no intention of ever leaving Fox.
Fox is getting better. But no matter how much he becomes convinced that 17 is real, he will never be able to interact with those who hurt him in life. It's easier to accept that you've somehow been transported to your version of heaven than to take in something as not-perfect and too-real as the idea of other people. After all, no matter how much he becomes convinced that 17 is real -- if he *is* asleep? then he really really doesn't want to wake up. This is the best dream ever.
Someday Fox may be able to leave these rooms, to accept a reality where he is not still enmeshed in the war, in a fight for survival. When and if that happens, Dah'lav intends to find them someplace to live that has nothing to do with cities, with people. Someplace peaceful, somewhere Fox can finally rest, finally find something other than survival to live for.
But Fox already has something to live for, as long as he has 17 to lean on, as long as he is allowed to rest against him and feel his warmth, his unwavering, unceasing presence.]