#quinlanfox

Aayla’s commander is a hard man to read.

He’s pleasant enough. Polite and competent and professional. Nicer than Commander Cody, quieter than Commander Ponds. Not as charismatic as Skywalker’s captain.

Quinlan used to think the man didn’t like him. There was something in the way Bly watched him, always keeping his distance, his brown eyes lacking the warmth he looked at Aayla with. He kept himself hidden behind heavy shields, mind locked tight and disciplined, and smiled at Quinlan without opening his mouth.

He finally understands that day in the Senate building, Quinlan wearing proper Jedi robes for the first time in weeks and Commander Bly wearing his dress greys. They cross paths in one of the many hallways and corridors that bore through the Senate’s lower floors: Quinlan’s leaving, and Bly just got there, and Commander Fox is waiting next to the lifts, arms crossed and bucket on, bored and tired and impatiently waiting for Quinlan to get on with it, reluctant fondness threaded all over his Force signature like aurodium thread through silk.

Bly smiles when he sees his brother: it changes his face. He grins, his serious eyes go small and warm, his careful distance disintegrating. He crosses the corridor in three quick steps to stop in front of Fox, and Fox takes off his bucket, smiling back, and for a few, rushed seconds they’re in a world of their own, heads bent together, foreheads brushing against each other.

Quinlan blinks, and it’s like he can see them as they must have been not so long ago—young and more innocent, in that hellish water world where they were made.  

The memory isn’t anyone’s, but Quinlan doesn’t doubt for a second that it is a true one—it’s just them, flashing bright in the Force, jumping through time and space to fuck with Quinlan’s synapses. He shakes himself, dizzy and annoyed, and when Bly steps away and turns to look at him, his face once again the mask Quinlan’s used to, he smiles as wide and fake as he can make it.

At his brother’s back, Fox rolls his eyes; Quinlan’s smile twitches and he has to work to keep it from turning sincere. Fondness blooms and catches, like fire or some kind of tick, and Quinlan thought he was too old for this, too old and too bitter, but apparently he was wrong. 

Commander Bly blinks, glances back at Fox, and Fox—freezes. He puts his bucket back on, but they all know it’s too late. Bly’s smile changes. He raps on his brother’s pauldron with the backs of his knuckles and starts making his way to an open door at the end of the corridor, glancing now and then back at Fox over his shoulder with bright eyes.

Quinlan sighs. He stops in front of Fox, and for a beat he just—looks at him. Faceless and featureless in his red and white plastoid shell, but so alive. 

“You’re late,” Fox says after a beat, vocoder crackling. Quinlan tugs on his elbow, just once, and Fox starts walking, steps quick. Quinlan falls into step at his side, their arms brushing.

“I know and I’m sorry,” he says, a rare show of honesty that catches them both by surprise.

Fox says nothing for a long beat, but Quinlan can feel him staring, even with his helmet facing forward. 

“You’ll make it up to me,” Fox finally says.

Yes. Quinlan thinks he will.

Fox doesn’t like being in the Jedi Temple. It’s too clean, too empty. It’s huge: it was clearly designed with thousands of beings in mind, but every time Fox has to pay them a visit, his steps echo through never ending empty hallways that are full of golden light and dust motes and not much else. 

That’s a lie: he finds other clone troopers, sometimes, as out of place as Fox himself, or he crosses paths with bands of younglings, usually guided by knights too soft to be in the front lines or masters who have one step on the grave.

The kids always wave at him, their little faces innocent and perfectly ordinary, and Fox does his best to hide how uncomfortable he feels in the depths of his mind and answer their greetings with a nod, with a smile when he feels up to it.

Fox doesn’t like going to the Temple, but when he’s called he obeys. He fits the meetings into his schedule the best he can, and then he grabs a speeder and drives through Coruscant’s always jammed airways. In the past year and a half, he’s had to visit once or twice a month, and by now he knows the way by heart. 

That afternoon it’s raining, the sky dark grey and heavy, and Fox goes around the back after receiving permission to land and leaves his bike in the hangar he’s begun to find familiar.

He’s tired. His head always hurts when it rains like this, and he hasn’t been sleeping well, stress and the pain of a thousand little bruises that never seem to completely heal making the act of closing his eyes and slipping into unconsciousness seem almost impossible.

The technician in charge of the hangar is a very young padawan, Rodian and extremely serious. They must be barely over sixteen in nat-born years, and Fox waits impatiently while the teenager checks their datapad and logs in his name and designation.

The hangar is almost empty. There’re half a dozen starfighters in different degrees of disrepair waiting to be fixed in some of the bays, along with a very dusty ETA-class shuttle and a lartie with the worst portrait of General Secura Fox has ever seen in his life on the starboard side. Fox rolls his eyes under his helmet.

“That’s all, commander,” the little Rodian says. Fox turns back to them and nods. He takes off his bucket and puts it under his arm. The padawan’s eye stalks shudder, and suddenly Fox understands: they’re very anxious. “Thank you--thank you for your patience.”

Fox makes himself smile.

“It’s fine,” he says. “Thank you.”

The kid bows, awkward and too fast, and then hurries away. Fox sighs. 

“Good job. You didn’t make anyone cry this time.”

Fox closes his eyes. His hand twitches over his bucket, but he doesn’t put it back on--that would be admitting defeat. He turns to look at Vos over his shoulder and lets his impatience show on his face instead. 

“Sir,” Fox says. Vos waves a hand lazily from THE hull of one of the fighters. He looks--well. Vos looks as he always does. Disheveled and rough around the edges, as if he had just got there. 

Fox didn’t see him arrive. Then again, he never does. Vos is like a ghost--Fox’s yet to find a door that’ll keep him out. 

“Commander,” Vos replies, falsely serious. He drops from the starfighter and approaches him. Vos stops in front of Fox and knocks his knuckles against his pauldron. “Nice. New armour?”

Fox has to raise his chin to look the Jedi in the eye. 

“Yes,” he says. He checks the time--he has ten minutes to reach the conference room. “Do you have anything relevant to discuss with me, sir? Or are you here just to tell me that I look pretty?”

Vos blinks. Fox doesn’t let himself look away or swallow--he’s terrified, though. He can’t believe he just said that. Vos isn’t one of the bad ones, but he’s--they’re in the middle of the Jedi Temple. Fox cannot afford this kind of thing. He waits for a few seconds, his stomach in knots, his eyes tracking the minute changes in the expression on Vos’s face.

The Kiffar doesn’t look offended, though. He just looks--well. Baffled isn’t the word. Fox watches him open and close his mouth once--no words come out. 

Fox tilts his head.

His chrono beeps. Seven minutes and a half. He’ll have to hurry.