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It had been a rough day. Fox and Thorn had had Senate duty, which meant another day of being spoken over, spoken down to, ignored, tolerated, and dismissed. Another day of existing where everyone could see them and very few people seemed to actually look.
The barracks were quiet and the lights had been dimmed to the lowest practical setting. Most of the bunks were empty, their occupants still on shift or out on escort duty or curled up elsewhere in the building with too much caf in their systems and too little sleep in their bones.
It was there that Thorn found Fox curled on his side facing the wall. His armor had been halfhazardly shucked off, and laid in pieces around his bunk. He wasn’t asleep, but he was still enough to pass for it. Had Thorn not known him as he did, perhaps he would have fallen for it.
As it was, Thorn paused in the doorway. Usually Fox would at least pretend to be busy. Usually he’d have reports open. Usually he’d be doing literally anything except lying motionless in the dark.
Thorn closed the door behind him quietly, but Fox didn’t move.
Thorn stripped off the last of his armor and crossed the room, to stop beside the bunk. He waited til Fox shifted, making just enough room for him on the bunk. Fox didn’t look at him and Thorn didn’t say anything, just climbed in beside him.
Fox immediately moved closer and tucked himself against Thorn’s side, his curls a dark spill against Thorn’s chest. Thorn wrapped an arm around him and let him settle. It was then that he was reminded yet again that Fox was smaller, slighter, than most of their brothers. Barely, but enough that Thorn had always felt this weird instinctive urge to stand slightly closer in crowds and half a step ahead in the more dangerous places in Coruscant.
Fox was staring ahead at nothing. Thorn could feel the tremor in him, despite the fact that it was barely there. Fox would have denied it if asked. He denied most things if asked. But Thorn knew his little brother too well for that.
He shifted carefully, just enough to settle more comfortably on the mattress, and let his chin rest on top of Fox’s curls. Fox made a small sound then, barely audible, and pressed back a little harder, like the contact had finally let him remember he was allowed to stop holding himself together for a second.
Thorn shut his eyes briefly. The events of the day flashed behind them. The Senator with a perfect smile and a lazy voice who had spent fifteen minutes explaining that the Guard should “trim unnecessary excess from its operations budget.” The another one who’d suggested the Guard was “overstaffed” while standing in a corridor lined with exhausted troopers on twenty-hour rotations. The one who had looked Fox dead in the eyes (or, rather, the helmet) and asked if clones were “really so fragile” that they needed medical leave.
Fragile.
Thorn had seethed into internal comms, but Fox had not said anything at the time, and that had almost been worse. He had only looked at the man and took it all, and Thorn had known the day would end badly. It had, eventually, in the same way days like this always did.
Fox’s voice broke the silence first, and when it came, it almost seemed too small for someone carrying a rank like his. “Why don’t they care, Thorn?”
Thorn didn’t answer immediately. He kept his chin resting on Fox’s hair and granted him the mercy of pretending not to hear the way the words wavered on the edges.
Fox swallowed, and, quieter, asked, “Why aren’t… why don’t—” He stopped, and did not finish.
Because how did you finish that sentence? Why don’t they care about us? Why aren’t we enough? Why do they look at us like this? Why do we keep giving everything and get treated like..?
Like what? Like property? Like tools? Like something that can be replaced if broken? There were too many answers and none of them did not hurt.
Thorn’s throat tightened. He stared at the dark barracks wall and felt the weight of every corridor, every office, every senate chamber they had walked through that day. Every place they had stood in red armor while natborns looked through them like they were transparent.
“I don’t know, vod’ika,” Thorn rumbled.
He could not give Fox false words of comfort. He could not lie to him. They had had so much stripped from them already. Thorn could not take the truth as well.
He didn’t know why they weren’t good enough for the Natborns. Didn’t know what they had done to deserve this kind of treatment, earn this Hell, other than the fact that they were born in tubes rather than from flesh.
Fox curled tighter into his side, and Thorn let him. He could not begrudge his little brother this one comfort in this place that wished for nothing more than to eradicate them.
Fox’s fingers clenched lightly in the fabric over Thorn’s side, and Thorn exhaled slowly. “I don’t know,” he repeated, softer.
Fox was silent after that, but Thorn could feel him listening anyway. Could feel the fragile, terrible hope in the silence that Thorn might somehow say something better if given time. He did not. There was nothing better. Only this. Only the truth. And that truth was cruel enough to make his stomach turn.
Thorn moved one hand and carefully settled it over Fox’s upper arm, thumb rubbing over the sleeve there in a small, steady motion.
“I don’t know why we aren’t enough for them. I don’t know what we did to deserve this.” His jaw tightened. “I don’t know why they can look at us and see anything but people.”
Fox’s breathing was uneven against Thorn’s chest. “I don’t understand either.”
Thorn looked down at him.
“I know we’re clones. I know what we were made for. We fight. We die. I know that.” His mouth pulled tight. “Just…” he swallowed heavily, “Do you think they notice?”
Thorn frowned, but Fox kept staring at the wall. “When one of us dies, I mean?” The room seemed to get colder and the weight in Fox’s voice alone made him seem years older than he really was—than they all were. “Do you think they remember our names?”
Thorn didn’t answer immediately. The answer hurt. Some did. Some didn’t. Some tried. Some never thought twice about it. But the ones making decisions, the ones who mattered in the grand scheme of it all, didn’t.
Fox exhaled. “I know they don’t,” he answered himself, smiling a tired smile. “But I still…”His face tightened as he seemed to flounder for a moment to pick the right words. Thorn let him. “…I still wish they did,” Fox finally finished.
Thorn’s heart hurt. Fox wasn’t angry, and as much as it probably made him a horrible person, Thorn almost wished he was. It would’ve been easier. Thorn would’ve known what to do then. But no, Fox sounded embarrassed, like wanting to matter was something shameful.
Thorn tightened his arm around him. “They’re wrong.”Fox blinked, but Thorn looked straight ahead into the wall. “They’re wrong about us. You hear me?” Fox didn’t answer and Thorn’s voice went rough with emotion, “They’re wrong.”
Fox swallowed and Thorn inhaled slowly. “I don’t know why they don’t see it. But I know this.”
He looked down at Fox, at his little brother. His little brother who was too young for all this osik. Too tired from all of the decisions he’d been forced to make. Too good for this life.
“If they can look at us and not see people…” Thorn swallowed, and said the words that he himself wasn’t even sure he really believed, but had to because if he didn’t then what else was there for him? “…then there’s something wrong with them.” Thorn pressed his forehead briefly against the top of Fox’s head. “We’re not the problem.”
Fox made a small, broken sound then. It might have been a laugh if this had been any lighter of a conversation. It might have been a sob if he’d let it be. Instead he pressed the back of his head into Thorn’s chest and stayed there.
Thorn felt the rapid movement of Fox’s breathing and knew instinctively that Fox was trying very hard not to cry. He also knew that he was failing. Fox always failed. When he was tired enough or hurt enough or had had a particularly cruel realization, he got quiet, and then he hid, and then tears started.
Thorn hated it. Hated the galaxy for teaching him it. Hated even more that he was not surprised when it happened.
Fox’s fingers curled into the edge of Thorn’s undershirt. “Are we… are we just supposed to be fine with it?”
Thorn squeezed his eyes shut and felt his brow wrinkle. No. No, they were not. But they had no power to say that aloud where anyone else could hear it. And even here, in the barracks, with the door sealed and the corridor outside empty, the words still felt dangerous.
Only Thorn didn’t care. “No,” he said simply. “No, we’re not supposed to be fine with it.”
Fox’s shoulders shook. Thorn’s hand moved slowly up and down his arm, steady and grounding. “We just don’t get much choice,” he said.
It was not comforting. It was not meant to be. But it was true.
Fox was quiet for a long time after that, long enough that Thorn began to think he might have drifted off. Then, he said, very softly, “Do you think we’re worth less because they made us?”
Thorn’s eyes opened at once. Everything in him tensed. That question. Force, that question. He could hear the pain behind it so clearly it made his chest ache.
Fox was not asking about politics. He was asking about himself. About every moment of dismissal, every order barked at him like he was a machine, every report filed with “acceptable losses” and “replaceable assets” and “expenditures.”
He was asking whether any of that had any merit. Whether Thorn believed it too. Thorn pulled Fox closer without even thinking about it.
“No,” he said immediately and Fox went still. Thorn kept his chin resting on the curls, but his hand was firmer now on Fox’s arm. “No,” he repeated because Fox needed to hear it again. “No. Not for a second.”
His brother did not answer.
Thorn’s throat hurt from the emotions brewing in him that he could not afford to name. “They made us,” he said lowly. “They did not make us lesser.”
Fox’s breathing trembled. Thorn could feel how hard he was trying to keep himself from falling apart.
“We didn’t choose to be made. We didn’t choose Kamino. We didn’t choose any of this,” his hand moved against Fox’s sleeve, “But none of that means we’re not worth anything.”
Fox let out a shaky breath that sounded almost like it hurt. Thorn looked down at the top of his head. “I know the Republic doesn’t see it,” he said. “I know natborns look at us like we’re disposable,” his jaw flexed in anger, but he somehow managed to keep his voice level, “I know they talk over us. Around us. At us.” A beat. “I know they don’t care.”
The admission sat between them, ugly and heavy.
“But we care,” he said roughly. Fox’s hand tightened abruptly in his shirt. “We care,” he repeated, quieter now. “Stone cares. Thire cares. I care. We care because you’re our vod’ika.” The word came out so naturally it almost hurt more. “We’re brothers, Fox.”
Fox made a small noise in the back of his throat. Thorn tipped his head a fraction and pressed his lips lightly against the top of Fox’s curls. “We didn’t survive Kamino and Coruscant just to decide any of us mean less than any lying Natborn in a pressed suit with more credits than anyone’ll ever know what to do with.”
Fox’s breathing hitched again and then, finally, he flipped over to face Thorn. The shadows under his eyes were so deep they looked almost bruised. He curled tighter into Thorn’s side, one arm threading around his waist like he was embarrassed by the need for it and desperate for it anyway.
Thorn let him. Of course he let him. He tightened his arm around Fox’s shoulders and held him there in the dark. Held him while the grief worked through him in silence. Held him even while his own anger settled into a low, ugly burn. Held him because this place would take anything it could from them if they let it.
And Thorn refused. He would not let Coruscant take this too.
Eventually Fox’s voice returned, muffled and small and rough around the edges. “I don’t understand them.”
Thorn exhaled slowly. “I know.”
“I keep thinking if I just…” Fox swallowed. “If I just work harder.”
Thorn’s hand stilled. There it was. That stupid, heartbreaking, familiar thing. The belief that if they could only be better—more efficient, more useful, more perfect—then maybe, maybe, someone would finally look at them and see people instead of equipment.
Thorn hated that the thought existed in Fox at all, and especially hated that it had been planted so deep.
His answer came out immediate, fierce, and utterly exhausted, “That won’t fix natborn greed, vod’ika.” Fox did not answer but Thorn continued anyway, voice low. “They will always want more. More work, more blood, more obedience. You could cut yourself open for them and they’d still ask why you weren’t giving more.”
Fox made a miserable sound that might have been agreement. Thorn only held him tighter. “But you don’t have to keep proving yourself to people who have already decided not to see you.”
Thorn lowered his mouth to Fox’s hair and spoke there, because it was easier than looking into his brother’s tear filled eyes. “You are enough,” he said. “Not for them.” The words held no softness at all, but Fox did not want them like that. He wanted the truth, and Thorn would give it to him. “That’s their failure.”
Thorn felt another tremor wrack through Fox. “But for us,” he added, “you’ve always been enough.”
There was a long silence. Then Fox’s voice, tiny and wrecked, asked, “…Even now?”
Thorn closed his eyes. Even now. Especially now. Most of all now.
“Yes,” he said.
Fox was quiet. Thorn could feel the tension in him slowly unspooling in little increments, like a knot being untied one thread at a time.
Outside the barracks, Coruscant kept being Coruscant. But in the dark between the bunks, with Fox tucked against Thorn’s side and breathing too fast while trying very hard not to fall apart completely, there was a smaller, more important truth. They had each other.
Fox shifted once, nestling deeper into Thorn’s side with the slow, reluctant trust of someone who had learned too many times that comfort was temporary.
Thorn’s chest ached at the motion. He never minded the weight of Fox against him. Never minded the way his younger brother’s body went loose for a few precious seconds when he finally stopped bracing for impact. If Coruscant wanted to strip everything else away, Thorn would at least keep this.
Fox’s voice came again after a while, a mere whisper now. “Do you think… they ever look at us and see us?”
Thorn looked down at his little brother’s dark curls and tired face half-hidden against his shirt, and because he had already sworn not to lie, answered honestly. “No.”
Fox’s eyes closed in recognition. Thorn went on, gentler this time, “But you and I both know that doesn’t make them right.”
That earned him the smallest exhale yet, and Fox burrowed his head even further into Thorn’s chest. It seemed the conversation was over. That was okay. Thorn would stay anyway.
The barracks light dimmed farther as the building shifted into the next quiet cycle. Thorn kept one arm around Fox until the younger commander finally gave in to sleep, but even then he did not let go. This place would take whatever it could, but Thorn would be damned if Coruscant got his vod’ika too.
Sure, tomorrow they would still have to go back, still have to earn every scrap of respect, still have to survive a city that treated them like tools until it needed heroes.
But tonight Fox was here, curled up against his brother, being held. Being mourned in advance and loved in the present. And for now that would have to be enough.