“Does anyone care to tell me,” Prime drawls, one hand on Fox’s shoulder and the other resting half-tense at his hip, “exactly how Ten-Ten beat every single one of you in the intelligence assessments?”
Next to him, Cryo shifts uncomfortably. Wolffe doesn’t blame her. Prime is clearly driving at something, and Wolffe would very much like to know what.
The CCs stay silent.
“Well? Any volunteers?”
A cough. Someone farther down the line says, “Because he’s a cheating bastard.”
Prime raises an eyebrow. “Tell me, Eleven-Thirty-Eight, how exactly would you go about cheating on a test like that?” Bacara says nothing. “That’s what I thought.” Turning back to the group at large, he says, “How one beats an obstacle is of minimal importance. What matters is not whether or not Ten-Ten played fair when he beat you, it’s about the fact that he beat you. All of you.” Prime puts his free hand on Fox’s other shoulder and ushers him forward until he’s standing front and center on the mats, facing all of them under the bright white lights.
Fox doesn’t twitch. His eyes never waver from a spot just over Wolffe’s head.
“Someday,” Prime continues, “all of you will leave this facility and go on to lead your own battalions. Some of you will be commanders. Others will be marshall commanders. Most of you will die before any of that will matter.”
It’s so quiet Wolffe can hear the hum of the lights.
“Yesterday, Ten-Ten demonstrated his willingness to win at all costs. Today, he has the chance to do it again.”
They’re not CTs. This osik won’t work on them.
Will it?
“Thirty-Six-Thirty-Six. Twenty-Twelve. Set up.” Prime jerks his head towards the fighting ring outlined between Fox and the rest of the troopers. He releases Fox and nudges him to the far edge.
Wolffe doesn’t dare look back as he plants his feet on the white line. Cryo takes her place at the third mark. Wolffe clenches his fists, feeling the edges of his hand wraps dig into his palms. Fox looks him dead in the eye.
“Three minute fight, all the usual rules,” Prime instructs, stepping back and getting his stopwatch. “Every trooper for themself. Last one standing wins.”
Briefly, Wolffe closes his eyes. CC-3636 slips away, slinking back to that corner of his mind where he waits and watches his back while Wolffe is a wild animal. When he opens them, Fox and Cryo are snarling back, faces blank and eyes alight. Nothing is personal here, except for the fact that it’s life and death, which is perhaps the most personal one can get.
Behind him, a trooper sucks in a sharp breath. Cody, probably. Or maybe Bly. Bly’s too soft.
Prime’s whistle echoes through the training room and Wolffe surges forward, meeting Fox’s first punch with his open hand and turning to the side when Fox tries to follow through. Cryo takes advantage, kicking at his legs and knocking him over. Wolffe takes her along for the ride and they go to the ground brawling.
This will be the first stage. Fox is too small to try and wrestle with them: four months behind and of a different template. Wolffe and Cryo are the controllable products of a cross between the CC and Null codes, while Fox, Cody, and Ponds were made to be lighter and quicker on their feet.
Fox has never let his size slow him down.
Wolffe rolls out from under Cryo and knees her in the sternum, using the extra split-second to get to his feet. He forgets to account for Fox, though, and the sneaky bastard lunges, jumping onto his back as Wolffe straightens and wrapping his thighs around Wolffe’s head.
Wolffe growls, grabbing Fox’s wrist and sending him over his shoulder and into Cryo. She dodges and runs at Wolffe again, pulling one hand up to guard her face and sending the other straight into Wolffe’s kidney. She’s not ready for Wolffe’s roundhouse, though, and she crashes to the ground when his ankle connects with her hip.
Wolffe wastes no time, dropping down and pinning her at the waist before holding an imaginary knife to her throat.
“Out,” Prime calls, and Cryo rolls away from him and out of the circle just in time to miss Fox, who comes crashing into Wolffe with all the force of a runaway speeder. It’s just the two of them, now, and the ancient part of Wolffe whispers, competition. Hurt him. Put him down.
Fox must be thinking the same thing, because the bony knee that sinks into Wolffe’s shoulder knows no restraint. Before Wolffe can grab a hold of him, the skinny little shabuir is somersaulting over Wolffe’s head and to his feet. Wolffe follows.
Fox is smart. He won’t attack without a good reason, which is how Wolffe ends up stalking him in circles, dodging feeler fists and sending back tests of his own.
“Two minutes remaining.”
Sweat drips down Fox’s face, plastering his short curls to his forehead. His shoulder twitches and Wolffe reacts, ready when Fox tries to fake him out and go for Wolffe’s stomach. Wolffe grabs him under the arms and pins him to the ground, grinding Fox’s face into the mat and digging his knee into the back of Fox’s thigh.
“Fuck you, motherfucker, let me go, I’ll fucking kill you,” Fox rambles, struggling in Wolffe’s hold. Try as he might, he can’t get out.
“Ten, nine, eight, seven,” Wolffe counts, loud enough for the room to hear.
“Are you going to give up, Ten-Ten?” Prime asks. “I thought you were the best. I thought you wanted to win.”
“Five, four-”
“Haar’chak!” Fox kicks up underneath him and there is nothing in the universe that could keep him down. Wolffe is rolled onto his back and it’s all he can do to get his hands up before Fox is beating him down.
Fox is crying, Wolffe realizes, tears streaking down his face as he lands punch after punch. He has no mercy, never has, not since he was a tubie wrestling Cody for the last of the good breakfast, and he doesn’t seem to feel pain. Wolffe’s vision dissolves into sparkles when Fox lands a particularly good one on his nose.
Something in Wolffe’s brain gives.
He plants his feet and shoves his hips up, dislodging Fox and bringing him with Wolffe as he surges upright, getting his hands underneath himself and forcing Fox to get to his feet.
This is when Fox makes the mistake.
Wolffe is leaning back on his hands and Fox is crouched over him, off-balance and struggling to recover his lead. He takes a step back. Wolffe kicks.
Fox falls before the pain registers. Wolffe knows this because, standing there looking down at his kih’vod, he sees the blank confusion on his face.
Fox screams bloody murder. Fox screams like a dying man and his face goes grey and Wolffe backs away from him, hands up. He begins to come back to himself when he sees the angle that Fox’s foot is pointing at, sharp and wrong and nauseating.
It’s moments like these when Wolffe swears he can feel his siblings’ pain. He feels the grind of bone against bone, two surfaces meeting where there should be none at all. He feels the tingling heat race up his leg and begin to eat away at his brain.
“Match,” Prime yells, stepping into the ring and stopping his watch. “Thirty-Six-Thirty-Six, good job. Four-Eleven, take Ten-Ten to the medbay.”
Across the room, one of the new troopers throws up in the waste chute. Thorn, Wolffe thinks his name is. He’s nearly a year younger than Fox, practically a cadet.
He’ll learn.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Cody underlines this statement with a punch to Wolffe’s mouth, strong enough to taste like iron. “What the fuck, you fucking shabuir?”
Wolffe wraps a towel around his waist and raises an eyebrow. Prodding his lip with his tongue, he dislodges it from his teeth before speaking. “It was a fight. I won.”
“Yeah, by being an asshole. Why the fuck did you kick him that hard?” Cody, ever the lost puppy, follows him out of the showers.
“What, would you rather I went easy on him?” Wolffe snaps. “You know that wouldn’t have been any better.”
Cody bristles. “Oh, get karked. You know you didn’t have to go that hard, you’re just an egotistical son of a bitch who can’t stand to lose.”
“‘Can’t stand to lose?’” Wolffe repeats, incredulous. “Prime baited us and you know it. There was no good way out of that for either of us. If I hadn’t done that, Fox would be getting his ass handed to him right now. Fuck off.”
Cody opens his mouth to respond, but someone bangs on the shower wall. “Hey! Can it, fuckers!”
Cody huffs and stalks off.
When Wolffe gets back to the barracks, there’s a tuft of curly hair sticking out from underneath his blanket. Wolffe nudges the Fox-shaped lump it’s attached to. “Shove over, will you?”
The lump obliges, giving Wolffe room to sit and toe his slides off. Wolffe, already stripped down to his blacks, gets under the covers and presses the button to retract his pod into the wall. Only once they’re sealed in does Fox move, pressing himself close to Wolffe and sitting up just enough for his face to be seen. “Hi.”
“Welcome back. They give you the good shit?” Fox’s pupils are tiny even in the bright pod lighting.
“‘Course. They had to pull out the bone-knitter, you know.” As if to prove it, Fox tangles his legs with Wolffe’s, letting him feel the rough weave of the soft splint around his ankle. “I’ll be walking by tomorrow morning.”
“Good.” Wolffe wraps an arm around Fox’s shoulders as he lays back down. A cold nose presses into his neck. Wolffe doesn’t mind. “I’m sorry.”
“Hmm,” Fox hums against his collarbone. “You owe me.”
“Like hell I do, di’kut. You should have been ready for that.”
“Fuck you.” Fox pinches Wolffe’s side. “I’m amazing.”
Wolffe pauses. “Prime certainly seems to think so.” Wolffe knows that Fox knows what sort of game Prime is playing, knows what Fox risks every time he lives up to his name. There is no place on Kamino for graceful losers.
“He does,” Fox says, and his voice is soft and slurred like a song. Wolffe closes his eyes.