Pure thoughts are impossible to transcribe into speech. They’re the sort of things that come to one in images and impressions and scents and muscle memory, not meant to be spoken aloud. Pure thought is the reason for the creation of language, for the creation of, well, everything.
At least, that’s what Vos told Fox one night, tipsy and sixteen pages of notes deep in a flimsi book. Fox doesn’t have time to read that sort of thing, he reminded Vos then. Doesn’t have time to read it, doesn’t have use for the excess knowledge it contains. He can’t have it and he doesn’t need it. That’s the nature of being a slave, isn’t it? And though Fox isn’t sure of a great many things about himself these days, he does know one thing for certain: he is a slave.
So for the time being, the thought Fox has upon waking will have to suffer the injustice of being reduced to the written word. The thought is this: It’s tomorrow. Not tomorrow as in, ‘I went to sleep last night dreading Tomorrow, which has now come, and thus today is Tomorrow,’ but tomorrow as in, ‘I am as of this moment convinced that it is tomorrow, the day which follows today (the day I am currently in, though I am also in tomorrow).
See Fox’s issue? It’s a paradox, and paradoxes do not take kindly to being expressed aloud. Worse still, it is a paradox related to time, which is perhaps the largest and basest paradox of them all, so Fox was doomed from the start, really.
It’s not tomorrow, though it feels it for one disorienting moment, sort of like the moment a rope pulls tight around your ankles and you’re lifted into the air feet-first. Then, Fox’s mind catches up to him and reminds him that it is in fact today. Today as in right now, this moment, the only moment Fox can ever occupy, fast though it dissipates and leaves him for the next one.
Force fucking hells, he’s tired.
Temporal confusion put aside, Fox drags himself out of bed, taking care to avoid the kink in his shoulder and setting it off anyway. Pain shoots from his elbow down to his hip and back up again before settling somewhere behind his shoulder blade. Wonderful. He’s going to have a great day. He’s going to have a great day with no major catastrophes or fights or deaths or thoughts of death and he’s going to be just fine.
Good morning, Coruscant.
Two cups of caf and a ration bar later, Fox is tugging his helmet back on and heading for the main Senate chamber to oversee some vote or other.
One cup of caf later and he’s going to a meeting with the Secretary of Defense’s secretary’s aide, who gives him zir muffin-thing and tells him to have a great day. Fox eats the muffin-thing and tries to meditate away the pain in his shoulder. It works for Vos. Sometimes.
Three minor paperwork mishaps, two cups of caf, and a shouting match with Thire later, he drags himself up the lift and into Senator Brelle’s office for a meeting regarding her request for a redistribution of CG troops on the 56th level. It’s not a level Fox is familiar with and, he has to admit, it’s a good plan. A quick perusal of the data on the level shows that Brelle is likely right about the usefulness of Guard troops being hampered by Level police and increasing trooper presence in zones where police approval and median age was the lowest, moving the uncomfortably familiar citizens and Level police out of contact with each other. Still, agreeing with her leaves a bad taste in his mouth and he washes it out with a shot of whiskey before heading to the sixteenth and final hour of his shift.
Okay, two shots.
Three.
He had three shots, okay, and he didn’t remember to eat, so maybe his head’s spinning a little while he checks in with the Zone Sergeants and makes sure nothing’s out of place with the security footage. Maybe he trips over his own feet and tells a Corporal that she’s the only good thing in his entire day and that she should probably transfer to another planet. Maybe.
Still, considering where he ends up next, he feels vindicated in calling it pregaming. Yeah. Pregaming. Because he set out to go to 79s all along. With Cryo and Wolffe. Who he knew were on planet.
Fox has now had a glass of beer on top of the shots.
It’s okay, though, he thinks, because he’s off-duty for the next ten hours and Cryo and Wolffe are here with him. They won’t let anything happen to him, even if the way this night is going is trending steadily towards blackout.
Maybe once upon a time, Fox would have enjoyed a good night to forget at 79’s, especially with Cryo and Wolffe and who knows how many more CCs here. That was before everything, though, and now he’s just hoping to avoid a repeat of his last nine-drink night, the one made up of distorted memories of 501st blue and towering figures and waking up in medbay with gauze up his nose and fist-shaped bruises on his ribs and purple fingerprints on his arms.
Yeah.
He grabs another drink and makes his way back to Wolffe and Cryo. They’ve found friends, he sees. Bacara and a vod who must be Neyo, but it’s hard to tell with the way he’s wrapped around Bacara’s back like a shell, arms around his waist and face buried in his neck. How they’re fitting in the same chair is beyond Fox. It’s a typical Drunk Neyo move, though, so he feels safe enough assuming it’s him.
“...Now, this was something I’d reminded Vos of at least three times,” Cryo says as Fox sits down, throwing his legs over Wolffe’s lap and leaning against Cryo’s shoulder. If Neyo gets to cuddle, so does Fox. “But somehow none of that mattered as soon as we hit land. He walks up to the nearest local and says—”
“No,” Bacara laughs, horrified.
“Yes. He says, ‘Hi, we’re here with the GAR, where can we find your government buildings?’”
Wolffe snorts into his drink, banging his free hand against Fox’s boot. “Fuckin’ dumbass.”
“Of course, it all went downhill from there,” Cryo finishes, shrugging expansively. “I think he does it on purpose. He must, because he’s not stupid. He’s really smart, he just doesn’t, doesn’t, I don’t know, think, I guess!” She sets her drink down and threads her fingers through Fox’s hair, humming. “Welcome back, Foxy. Nice chick drink you got there.” She picks up his cocktail and takes a sip. “Feck! What is that, pure fucking tequila?”
Fox grabs his drink back, hugging it close and scrambling away from Cryo. “This is therapy in a cup, asshat. Don’t fucking judge me.” He throws it back in one go. “Feck!”
“You’re going to karking die,” Wolffe remarks.
“Gods, I hope so.”
Fox doesn’t know how many drinks deep he is. He lost count at five? Six? Fuck. The lights are nice, dimmer than before, he thinks, leaning back in his chair and sipping his beer. Something on the ceiling is throwing out little colored shapes along with the strobe light. He watches a triangle make its way across Bacara’s face, over Neyo’s head, and off onto the dance floor. He tries to follow it, but his brain is all fuzzy and he forgets whether it was a circle or a square.
Some of the Guard is here, he realizes. In the middle of the floor, dancing with a barely-clothed Tholothian, is one of Fox’s 501st adoptions. He can’t remember her name, only that her situation was monumentally shitty and Thire had been so proud when she made ARC. Now, she’s in just her bottoms, kama, and a strappy excuse for a sports bra, grinding against the Tholothian dude while the lights play with the tattoo on her face, like the broken-up vee is moving over her eye. Someone should tell the shinies not to run off with natborns.
“I don’t think she’s very shiny anymore,” Cryo says, bumping her head against his.
“What?” Fox shouts over the music.
“Nothing.”
Wolffe’s telling him a story, but Fox is having trouble focusing on the words. The lights are too loud and he’s tired and it’s just as nice to rest his head on his arms and listen to the idea of Wolffe talking.
Later, he responds with some Guard stories, but he can’t hear what he’s saying and just has to take it on blind (deaf?) faith that the words make sense. He’s not even sure what he’s trying to say. Bacara laughs, but Wolffe looks vaguely horrified.
“I’m cold,” Neyo says at some point during the night, unpeeling himself from Bacara’s shoulder just long enough to put back another drink and shift around until he’s in Bacara’s lap.
Bacara gives him a private little half-smile and hugs him closer, ignoring the odd looks the legendary Marine and the vicious Commander Neyo are getting from the other patrons. “Better?”
“No. Still cold.” He mumbles something else into Bacara’s neck, but Fox can’t hear it. Then, he shifts oddly. “He’s cold and you have to fix it.”
“Working on it, Ner’ad,” Bacara says.
Something pulls funny at Fox’s head, but he can’t think through what it is. Ner’ad. Ner’ad.
Neyo snaps something else, and Bacara frowns. He says something back and Neyo relaxes again, tucks his face into Bacara’s neck and hunkers down to sleep.
“Come on, Fox, time to go back to the barracks.”
“No, don’... They don’t want me there.”
“Who doesn’t want you there?”
“Any’any’anyone.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“Thire!”
“Hi, Foxy. Oh, you’re fuckin’ gone, aren’t you?” Thire’s armor is cool. Nice to press his face against. His face is warm. “Okay, okay, come on. There’s room for all of you in here.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah, Foxy, I’m sure.”
Oh, motherfucker. Motherfucking fucker.
It’s Tomorrow. Tomorrow, as in the day that comes after Yesterday, the one that’s now Today. It’s Tomorrow, and Fox is so fucking hungover he’s pretty sure he’s still drunk.
It’s Tomorrow and Fox is in his blacks and someone else’s (Vos’s? What the fuck.) sweater and he’s crammed in a bunk that isn’t his in barracks that aren’t the CC barracks and Wolffe’s in the bunk with him. Cryo’s on the bed that someone’s pushed up against not-his. So, coincidentally, is Thire. And Hound. For some fucking reason.
Across the narrow room, on another bed, Neyo and Bacara are still fast asleep, twined so close together as to be indistinguishable. Close enough, in fact, that it takes Fox a good ten seconds to realize that they’ve somehow gained four extra limbs. Faie. When did they collect Faie? He’s pretty sure Faie wasn’t with them last night.
It doesn’t matter. Faie’s also out cold, also in his blacks, and Fox can see even from here that his hair’s grown out since the last time he saw him. It must be nearly to his chin now. He looks exhausted. He looks like Fox feels.
Fox closes his eyes. Whatever time it is, no one’s alarm is going off yet. He’s okay to sleep a little longer.
Just as he’s starting to drift off, Wolffe starts snoring. Fox kicks him off the bed.