Priest sets a steaming mug of something in front of him, then sits down across the table with his own drink, identical.
Faie has never seen this before. He’s not sure what he’s expected to do.
“It’s tea, dipshit. Drink.”
Ah.
“What’s tea?”
“Do you always have to ask so many questions? It’s a reward. Drink it.” Priest takes a gulp from his own cup, so Faie does the same. It’s very hot and so many different flavors at once that it might as well burn him twice. “Do you like it?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Faie takes another sip.
“Atta boy.”
For a few minutes, there are no words. Priest watches Faie. Faie drinks his slowly cooling tea and does not make any faces except the one he’s decided must be ‘neutral pleasure.’ This is some sort of test. Priest has that look on his face. There’s nothing to be done about it. Faie drinks his tea as best he can.
Finally, Priest picks up his mug again. He blows across it like Faie’s seen the Nulls do with their caf before taking a sip and suddenly Faie feels very, very stupid. Of course he wasn’t supposed to drink it yet. It wasn’t supposed to burn him. The look on Priest’s face says he agrees.
Priest looks down at Faie’s hands. The one not on the cup is on the table, fatter than usual and clumsily with the tape the Longnecks had wrapped his fingers in to keep them from moving. ‘To give the bacta time to work,’ they’d said. Faie doesn’t make those decisions. He’d just nodded.
“You know I don’t like having to do that, don’t you?” Priest asks, nodding at his broken fingers.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m just trying to teach you a lesson. Some days, you leave me no choice.” Priest’s right eyebrow has a little scar through it. It wriggles when he moves the eyebrow. Like a caterpillar.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
Priest nods again. “You did good, though. Didn’t cry. Didn’t even make a sound. I’m proud of you.”
That feels… good. That feels so good. Good enough to make up for the tea not being good. Good enough to make up for the throbbing fingers. He’s done something well and Priest is proud of him. “Thank you, sir.”
Priest narrows his eyes in a sort of smile. “You’re not soft, are you, Faie?”
Faie doesn’t know.
“No. Not soft at all. Not like some of those boys. Like ‘77. That’s why we get to do things like this, you know? Because you’re good at this, Faie.” Priest takes another sip of his tea
“Thank you, sir.”
Priest is silent for another long while, in which Faie finishes his tea. It’s a bit better when it’s not burning him. Still not great, though.
Priest tips his head back and drinks the rest of his tea in one long gulp. He sets the mug down and fixes his eyes right on Faie’s. Pinned.
“Tell me something, boy. You ever killed a man?”
“Sit down, son, let me get you something hot to drink,” the woman fusses, shooing him towards her kitchen table and setting his bucket on the shelf next to someone’s shoes and bag.
“Really, ma’am, I can’t—”
“Nonsense. You and your men have been through a trauma, and I won’t have you marching back off before I can do something about it.” She lights what must be a stove, though not like any Faie’s seen before, and begins pouring water into a kettle. The kettle gets put on the flame and several other things get rearranged, too fast for Faie to follow with the way everything is warping at the edges.
The rest of the men are camped outside, between and around Mrs. H’s flower gardens. Faie shouldn’t be in here, but Penchant’s down for the count, sleeping off a sedative and a litre of blood loss on Mrs. H’s couch, and he can’t leave his second alone in unfamiliar territory. The men will be alright for the night.
“Son, I said sit!”
Faie startles. Mrs. H is right in front of him now, herding him towards the pulled-out chair. It’s wood, he realizes, worn smooth from many occupants come and gone. Pinkish, like the wood of the trees that had blown up in Faie’s face when stray shots had hit them. He sits.
“There we go.” She goes back to bustling around the kitchen, putting things in containers and pouring water and Faie just lets it go by, runs his gloved fingers through the grooves of the tabletop. It’s pink wood, too. “What’s your name, dear?”
“Commander Faie, ma’am.”
She starts heading his way again, mug in hand. “You look terribly shocky, Faie,” she says, and she’s so much shorter than him that they’re looking eye to eye even though she’s standing. She pinches his cheeks and tsks. “Oh, dear boy. Let’s get some tea in you.”
Mrs. H circles around the table and sits across from him, silver hair shining in the warmth of the electric light. She pushes the mug towards him. “Drink!”
He takes a sip and drops the tea on the floor.
His hair catches on the mat, pulls. He’s got to cut it again. He takes ‘77 by the shoulders and yanks and he’s not expecting it (why isn’t he expecting it?) and the momentum carries him all the way over Faie and drives him into the ground. Faie follows, digs a knee into ‘77’s kidney and drops his forearm to his shoulders.
“Good, Faie,” Priest shouts. Shivers run through Faie like wind through an open-air observatory. “‘77, if this was a real fight, you’d be dead. Get up!”
‘77 bucks up, wriggles out from underneath Faie. It’s easy for him. He hasn’t been putting on weight like the rest of them. Neyo doesn’t put on weight, either. He breathes in rations like they’re air and stays rail thin and wiry. Priest has started giving him protein shakes.
Faie’s on his feet faster than ‘77 even though he started later, and there’s enough time to shake off the disorientation of the spinning strip lights and catch his balance. This training room has a door on one side and a ledge on the other, and if you can’t see either, you forget which way you came in. It’s sickening.
Faie even has enough time to watch the way ‘77’s skinny chest heaves before he throws a punch that lands on ‘77’s sternum. The bone’s right there under Faie’s hand. ‘77 makes a noise like the massifs before they throw up on Prime’s boots. He goes over easy when Faie hooks his ankles.
Faie is shorter than the others. It’s more noticeable now that they’re drawing toward the end of their sixth cycle. He’s heavier, too, stocky and muscular. He uses it to his advantage when he takes ‘77 to the ground.
“End it, Faie,” Priest says. “End the fight.”
“You ever killed a man?”
‘77 gasps as Faie’s forearm hits his throat.
“If this was a real fight, you’d be dead.”
Faie presses harder. ‘77’s voice box is harder than he thought it would be.
“End it, Faie.”
‘77 chokes. He scrabbles at Faie’s arm with blunted, torn fingernails. Faie’s are the same, worn down from days on the agility course.
“End the fight.”
Faie straddles ‘77, squeezing his hips with his knees and hooking his feet over his thrashing legs.
“Harder, Faie!”
Faie presses harder.
“Good, good! Just like that.”
‘77 is still fighting, but he’s getting weak. Weaker. His face flushes from red to purple. He’s looking right at Faie.
Somewhere off the mats, Awe starts yelling. Faie blinks, lets up just a fraction to focus on what Awe’s saying—
“Faie! What did I tell you? End it!”
Something in his head gives way. Pushing harder becomes easier than letting up. How could he stop? He can’t do anything right now. Action becomes nonaction.
Something hard, something important, snaps in ‘77’s throat. Faie keeps pressing.
His fingernails draw one last drop of blood from Faie’s arm and then go still.
His eyes roll back.
“Thatta boy, Faie!” Priest hits the alarm that ends the match.
Faie sits back and waits for ‘77 to follow him. He’s going to snark at him and then stand and offer him a hand, only to pull his away at the last moment and smack ‘77 upside the head. ‘77 has to sit up first, though.
Priest is coming over. “Come on, Faie, up. We’ve got more drills.” Then, over his shoulder, “Someone call a cleaning droid in here.”
Why? No one’s bleeding much. Faie wipes a hand under his nose. Is it bleeding? It does that sometimes, without him noticing.
He looks at his hand. It’s clean.
“Cadet, get up,” Priest snaps.
He looks at ‘77. He looks at Priest. “Why isn’t he…?” He gestures helplessly to ‘77’s limp, bruised body. He looks odd. Floppy. Faie grabs him by the hands and tries to pull him up, but he just sort of. Flops.
Priest snorts. “Funny, cadet, really. Get on your fucking feet.” He grabs Faie by the scruff of the neck and hauls him up. “Look at that, Faie.” He shoves Faie forward until he’s on his toes and completely at Priest’s mercy, staring down at ‘77. Who’s still not moving. Did Faie knock him out? “Look at what you did.” He shakes Faie. Like a lothcat, he thinks. Death shake. “That’s good, Faie. That’s what you have to do.”
Faie blinks. “He’s, I think he’s hurt. ‘77’s hurt.”
When Priest laughs, it’s not from the stomach or the lungs. It’s torn from his throat, rough and bloody. “You think?” He lets Faie go, lets him fall face-first onto ‘77’s unmoving body. It’s too still. Something’s wrong.
“‘77,” he calls, kneeling beside him and tapping his chest. “‘77, wake up.” Nothing. Faie straightens his head, makes sure his airway is unobstructed, and goes back to shaking him. “Wake up, come on. Drill’s over. Wake up.”
Awe is crying now, he thinks. Stupid. He should be helping Faie, or maybe getting a meddroid.
“Wake up, ‘77. Come on, this isn’t funny.”
Someone grabs him again. It isn’t Priest, though. The hand’s too small. Neyo takes him by the shoulders and stares at him like he’s the one acting crazy. “He’s dead, Faie. He’s gone. You killed him.”
What? No. He tries to tell Neyo as much, but Neyo just shakes him like Priest. “Faie, come on, snap out of it. He’s dead, look.” He takes Faie’s hand and presses it to ‘77’s pulsepoint. Nothing.
Nothing.
“We have to, we have to do CPR. He’s, we have to do CPR,” Faie says, trying to pull away, but another vod is at his back now, wrapping arms around Faie’s chest and hauling him upright while Neyo keeps talking at his face.
“He’s dead, Faie,” Neyo says again, and Neyo is many awful things, but he’s not stupid and he tells Neyo so, but he just looks sadder and keeps saying the same stupid thing.
Priest is saying something to him now, but Faie’s ears are ringing like maybe he’s got to get them checked again, and he can’t answer. Priest backhands him across the face.
Neyo starts dragging him toward the door then, but Faie’s head clears enough to hear the last thing Priest says.
“We’ll have to try this again, Faie. Hopefully, you’ll perform better then.”
The mug hits the floor with a crash and tea, hot enough to burn like all hells, splashes over his legs.
“Shit, oh, fuck, ma’am, Mrs. H, I’m so sorry,” he stammers, nearly knocking the chair over with the way he tries to jump away from the burning. He reaches down to pick up the biggest pieces of the fucking ruined mug, but she gets there first, bony, wrinkled hands wrapping around his wrists. “Ma’am, I’m so sorry, let me,” he tries again, but she actually shushes him, dragging him back up by the wrists to face her.
He’s panting, he realizes. Shaking.
“Nonsense, dear, it’s alright.” She puts his hands back in his lap and pats them twice, like a blessing. “It’s just a mug.”
It’s not just a mug, though, and the look on ‘77’s face won’t leave Faie’s head. He didn’t even know–
He hasn’t thought about that in years. Had no idea a cup of fucking tea would bring it back.
He hadn’t even remembered until today.
He’s gone straight past panting and into hyperventilating. Mrs. H has found a towel and she’s handing it to him, saying, “Here, dry yourself off, child,” but he can’t, he can’t, he can’t—
“I. I have to go check on my sergeant. Ma’am.” He bolts into the bathroom and locks the door behind him.
It’s a long time before Faie is able to open the bathroom door again. The sun touches the horizon and lights everything up orange, then dips below the edge. The world turns blue. Faie splashes water on his face and goes out to check on Penchant, who’s fine. Asleep, pale, but fine.
Then, gingerly, reluctantly, he returns to the kitchen.
There’s no evidence of the broken mug or spilled tea. There’s just Mrs. H, sitting in one of the pinkish chairs and gazing out the window as she knits something that might be a striped sweater. The chair scrapes against the floor when Faie pulls it out.
“Ma’am,” he murmurs when Mrs. H turns around to look at him. “I apologize for my earlier behavior.”
She looks at him for a long, unblinking moment. Then, she sets her knitting down and folds her hands on the table. “You’re not the first soldier I’ve met, Commander Faie,” she says. “You don’t need to apologize to me. Like I said, it’s just a mug. They break, we find new ones. Nothing is irreplaceable in a kitchen.”
Faie looks away. “Still,” he says. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting to, to react like that.”
Mrs. H smiles in the smallest way, more in the eyebrows than the mouth. “I thought as much. It’s alright, dear boy.” She picks her knitting up again, glancing over his shoulder into the living room. “Is your sergeant alright?”
“Yes, ma’am. He’s recovering well.”
“Good,” she says. “I’m afraid I don’t have a spare bedroom, but you’re more than welcome to bed down in the living room. I’ve brought some more blankets and pillows out.”
Faie nods. He saw them when he checked on Penchant, all folded in a neat little stack by his feet. “Thank you, ma’am,” he says, much too tired to protest.
“You’re very welcome, Commander Faie. Now, go sleep. I’ll wake you boys when the sun comes up.”