real clones real problems

"I don't understand. Are you trying to make a joke?"

When Cody had finally caved and visited Fox for advice when the 212th cycled to Coruscant—Fox being the clever one, as he had insisted since decanting—he had anticipated the inevitable gauntlet of mocking he'd have to suffer through, but he hadn't anticipated the genuine puzzlement that now wrinkled Fox's nose. The little crinkle between his brows that meant the puzzlement wasn't feigned.

It's not that Cody missed the mocking, but he had never enjoyed his plans going awry.

"It's not a joke," Cody clarified, with what he felt to be top-tier patience.

Fox squinted and leaned forward. They were alone in Fox's office, with his desk and its scrapyard of datapads, caf mugs, and partially dissembled blasters forming administrative topography between them. Cody leaned forward in turn, trying to traverse the terrain.

"Show me again," Fox demanded.

Silently, Cody held up his left hand and stretched the bit of his brain that did The Thing. Immediately, ethereal golden flames ignited in an almost runic pattern beneath his skin before bursting into life and flickering from his palm and spread fingers like a two-credit holo manip, except they were actual flames on his actual hand. The side of Cody's face felt hot from proximity, though not as hot as if he were close to a genuine fire; in contrast to that heat, his hand felt cool, almost as if the fake(?) flames were generating a breeze with their dance.

Fox recoiled, as he had the first and second times Cody had performed The Trick for him. One of Fox's eyebrows had been sacrificed to the first experiment, leaving him looking more startled than the usual careful schooling of his face would betray.

Cody hadn't mentioned the eyebrow thing. If Fox made him do the trick a fourth time, he was planning on aiming for Fox's remaining eyebrow.

"Well." Fox folded his hands across his stomach and leaned back in his desk chair. "That's not something you see every rotation, is it?"

"No. No, it is not," Cody said, as he closed his fist and snuffed out the flames, though he'd been seeing the flames every rotation for the better part of a month. He carefully placed his hand on his thigh plate.

His flames hadn't melted plastoid.

Yet.

They hadn't done much of anything beyond inconvenience him, keeping their burn for things that were not-Cody, but—

Yet.

"And it happened… how?" Fox asked.

"Force nonsense."

Fox groaned and spun his chair around. Scuff marks on the wall behind him betrayed how often he'd repeated the motion. "Among the things I don't miss from the front, that's chief among them. I ever tell you how I lost—"

"My hand is on fire, Fox," Cody cut in, more sharply than he would've permitted himself with anyone else. Command meant speaking softly and carrying a rotary cannon, and never ever betraying how close one had come to filling one's flightsuit.

Fox, having endured the same training as Cody, seemed to realise he'd ambled down the 'if you're deflecting, no one knows you're panicking' track, and stopped his spin. Another scuff mark. He drummed his fingers on his desk as he returned to face Cody. Recalibrating.

"Right. Hand on fire. Anyone else affected? Do you still have the– What would it be, some kind of device?" Fox asked, as he reached for one of his datapads.

Cody shook his head. "Friendly fire incident." Waxer had been very apologetic about knocking the glowing rock thing off the shelf and onto Cody's head. He'd attempted to make up for the accident by shooting the rock to scrap. "Somewhat less friendly fire subsequently destroyed the item."

Fox grinned knowingly. "One of your boys shot it to bits?"

"That isn't what my report says."

"It never is." Fox scratched his jaw, his gaze returning to Cody's hand. "What about your general?"

"He's sent a query to the temple healers— Don't look like that. What else was he supposed to do?"

"Not that?"

"Fox."

"Never admit anything a superior officer doesn't already know. Thus spake Alpha-17."

Cody permitted himself an eyeroll. "General Kenobi was literally there when it happened."

"Hallucinations."

They would never agree on the Kenobi Approach so, as with myriad other things they'd never agree on, Cody chose to be the bigger clone and ignore Fox's incorrect opinion. He flexed his hands on his thighs.

"Are you going to help or not?" he asked. He tried not to sound desperate but, well. He was already in Fox's office, asking for advice. Desperation went as read.

Recognising the impasse re: Kenobi—he could be taught—Fox hummed thoughtfully. His gaze flickered from Cody's hand to Cody's face, to something over his shoulder, as if looking through the galaxy for a deeper truth. Bly had dubbed it Fox's dead-eyed villain stare when he got like that. Cody had usually rejoined that as long as he's on our side, we're okay, and, a war later, he stuck by the assessment. There was a reason he'd quietly requested R&R on Coruscant, after all. There wasn't a corner that Fox couldn't think around.

"I'm cogitating," Fox said, unnecessarily, and pulled one of his datapads close, beginning to scroll through something or other.

Cody settled back in his uncomfortable chair as best he could and wondered if he could nip out for a caf from the Coruscant Guard mess hall. Maybe he'd go if Fox started singing under his breath; that indicated they'd be in for a long cogitation.

He raised his hand—currently not alight—and looked at the palm that had become strange. It looked just like his hand had always looked. Like Fox's hand looked. He wiggled his fingers.

"Catch," Fox suddenly said.

Startled, Cody jolted his head up and snatched the flung item that had been aimed for his face with his left hand. Glaring at Fox, Cody pulled his hand back, preparing to return it with force—

"Wait!" Fox yelped, holding both his hands in front of his face. "There's a reason!"

"To attempt to concuss me with— What is this?"

"A puzzle cube from Tiikae."

The 'puzzle cube' was approximately the size of a caf mug—a normal sized caf mug, not one of Fox's monstrosities—and made from what appeared to be some kind of finely carved wood. It was the manner of thing Cody would expect to see on a senator's desk; he wondered idly if that was where Fox had liberated it from. The grain of the wood slid smoothly beneath Cody's thumb as he admired the craftsmanship of the item.

"Not a projectile weapon then," he said, wryly.

"It's a toy," Fox said, either ignoring Cody's tone or oblivious to it. "You enter a phrase into—turn it around—into that bit, there, and a tune or holo plays when you unlock it. Sometimes they're used by syndicates to convey drop locations."

"Then this is a work-related toy?"

"Aren't we all," Fox muttered. Before Cody could begin to unpick that remark, Fox continued. "Do me a favour, dearest darlingest Cody, and flame on, would you?"

"We're not calling it that."

Fox smirked but conceded to the correction with an airy wave of his hand. Cody thought again about eyebrow sacrifice but reminded himself that he really had run out of options regarding The Thing; if the Jedi healers didn't have any ideas, then he'd be looking down the barrel of Kamino sooner or later. Only luck had kept him from igniting at an inopportune moment thus far. If and when the holos caught him, Cody was cooked. If Fox had an idea… Well. It was one more idea than Cody had.

He grimaced.

He flamed on and hoped that Fox's office had some kind of fire suppressant system should Cody set the cube alight.

Ethereal flames burst from Cody's hand and danced around the puzzle cube. Cody stretched his arm farther from his face—closer to Fox's—and braced for ignition, but all that happened was the puzzle cube gave a delicate chirrup of song and opened in his hand, the top part lifting away on a hidden hinge. Surprised, Cody snuffed the flames and blinked at the revealed contents.

Fox leaned up from his chair, braced on his desk, to peer within the cube. He reached inside and withdrew what appeared to be a wrapped sweet. The rustling as he unwrapped it seemed cacophonic in Cody's numb ears.

"Starblossom," Fox declared, as he popped the sweet into his mouth. He sat down again. "My favourite."

"Fox."

"Bail has been holding that box over me for—"

"Fox."

Hamstering the sweet into his cheek, Fox blinked at Cody. "What?"

Cody gestured with his right hand toward his left, where the open puzzle cube still sat on his palm. He felt wild-eyed. He didn't like feeling wild-eyed. The blasted Marshall Commander of the blasted Seventh Sky shouldn't feel wild-eyed about his own blasted hand!

Some of Cody's feeling might've escaped containment, as Fox had recoiled slightly into his desk chair. He crunched the sweet between his teeth and swallowed, then gently reached out to take the puzzle cube from Cody's palm, setting it on his desk out of Cody's reach.

Probably for the best.

Cody carefully resettled his hands on his thighs. He took a breath.

"You know something," he said.

"I have a guess," Fox amended, as he reached for another sweet, before seeming to think better of it.

"You're going to tell me your 'guess' or I'm going to tell Alpha-17 you're being recalcitrant."

They were grown clones. They shouldn't have to threaten one another with tattling to their trainer. And yet.

Fox tugged one of his datapads closer, flicked to a screen, and flicked again to display a holo for Cody to see. The image of a severed humanoid hand rotated between them, rendered in gory detail. Each digit had a single flame flickering from it, like the hand had been used as a candlestick. Cody wrinkled his nose.

"What's this?"

"I think it's a pun," Fox said, gazing at the holo.

"I'm not laughing."

"This sort of thing is a legend among the syndicates, and beings like them. The breaking and entering kind of beings, I mean. I heard about it from— It doesn't matter who from. Legends say that this thing, this hand, can unlock anything. Doors, safes—"

"Puzzle cubes?"

"So it would seem. Silly as it was, the story stuck in my mind because the name made me laugh." Fox rested his cheek on his fist, his elbow braced on his desk and glanced at Cody sidelong. "Do you know what this is called?"

Cody held onto his patience with both hands. "You know that I don't."

"A hand of glory."

It took Cody a moment. It had been so long since he'd been Named that he'd forgotten the impetus behind the syllables he'd softened. Kote. Mando'a for glory.

A hand of blasted glory.

"You're telling me… That the Force… Has inflicted me with this for a pun?" Cody bit out. His hand was beginning to smoulder on his thigh plate.

Shrugging, Fox just reached for another sweet. He waggled his lone eyebrow.

"Want to help me break into the Senate snack cupboard?" he asked.

Cody narrowed his eyes. Fox huffed, then pushed the puzzle cube toward him, as if a peace offering. With great dignity, Cody took a sweet.