Chapter Text
Fox was awake and talking quietly with Cody when they got back from town. Davijaan had a hard time looking at him when Wolffe yanked him down onto the couch to join the conversation. Which was per usual, and went unremarked upon.
The four of them got through the rest of the day sitting around in the living room and comparing notes on how their lives had changed since the war ended— food and clothes and schedules and living conditions and work. When he could laugh and grumble about them with his brothers all those changes seemed less overwhelming.
***
The won’t-look-at-Fox thing carried over into the next day. It was Davijaan’s first ever paid day off from work, so Cody was being weird and made him pancakes for breakfast with the rest of Loren’s fruit spread stuff. It was actually pretty nice at first, but then Davijaan ignored Fox when he asked for someone to pass along the pancake plate, and Wolffe picked up on the fact that this wasn’t a normal won’t-look-at-Fox mood. Because of course he did. Because Davijaan wasn’t allowed to feel things about people without telling Wolffe, apparently.
So when Wolffe cornered him in the kitchen after breakfast— after Cody had gone downstairs and Fox had stepped outside— and shoved a finger in his face and demanded: “You need to be nice to Fox.” Davijaan felt a hot little burst of anger in his chest and had to breathe for a second to keep from yelling. And that made him more angry, because he used to have better control than this, and that made him forcibly shut down all of his loud emotional responses until he could deal with them in private.
“Fox has plenty of people being nice to him,” he said, smacking Wolffe’s hand away, flat and cold and ready to shoulder past him to the other side of the room. “I think what he needs is someone who actually responds to his shit appropriately.”
“Cody and I are—”
“Ignoring it. Do you think I've forgotten how you two just sat there and let him conduct his little interrogation the other day?”
“He had to get it out of his system.” Wolffe heaved a sigh. “Look, we were watching. If it had gotten out of hand we would have done something. And if she’s going to stick around she’ll have to learn how to put up with him. She did a pretty good job for her first time, in my opinion.”
“First of all, you have no idea if she’s going to stick around, so don’t even try to distract me with that,” he spat. “Second of all, she shouldn’t have to learn to put up with him! Just because Fox doesn’t trust civilians as far as he can throw them doesn’t give him the right to treat my friend like some kind of criminal!”
Wolffe’s eyes narrowed. “Working on Coruscant fucked him up.”
“More than he was already fucked up?”
“Davi—”
“No!” He took a deep breath and gripped the counter and lowered his voice. Control. He was in control. “I've known Fox just as long as you and Kote. Maybe I don’t voluntarily spend time with him, but I know him. I know what he's like. I know what he's capable of. Stop making excuses for him. Working on Coruscant had nothing to do with it, he would have been like this no matter where he was stationed. Because he’s always been like this.”
“People change.”
His grip tightened. “For the better, or for the worse?”
Wolffe just shook his head. Davijaan regarded him silently, mouth set in a thin line. “When we were cadets, whenever he hurt me, all you two ever did was check the both of us for blood, and then shrug it off. That hasn’t changed, apparently.”
“Fox never tried to hurt you.”
“I have the scars that say otherwise.”
Wolffe glared, and shoved his finger right back into Davijaan’s face. “You two never gave each other anything more than superficial cuts and bruises. You think you know so much about him, and you don’t even understand why he went after you so often.”
“He was just jealous—”
“No, you were jealous. Don’t even try to pretend otherwise. And you’re still jealous! Seven years, and you’re still jealous, and you can’t look past that for long enough to wonder why Fox was scared of you!”
Davijaan blinked. “What?”
“You heard me!”
He sputtered and threw his hands up, momentarily shocked out of his anger. “That doesn’t make any sense!”
Wolffe shoved him in the chest. “Go talk to him.”
“No!”
“Yes! I’m tired of having to mediate between you two. It’s exhausting, and it’s stupid.” Punctuating each word with a stabby finger, he snarled— “Go. Talk. To. Fox.”
Davijaan took a stumbling step back and towards the door. “What am I supposed to say!?”
“Hello, good morning, I’m sorry for being an ass to you for the last seven years.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Wolffe crossed his arms over his chest and planted his feet, firm and foreboding and furious. Davijaan gave up. He stalked over to the couch and grabbed his jacket, and slammed the door behind him.
Fox was standing at the porch railing, studying the white hills. He flinched when the door slammed. If Davijaan hadn’t been looking for a reaction he would have missed it.
“Odd Ball.”
“... Fox.”
He shrugged his jacket on and took a few cautious steps to stand even with the man, just out of arm’s reach. Fox didn’t so much as glance at him, but Davijaan snuck a proper look at his face for the first time in probably a full day.
Fox had come out of the war paranoid, withdrawn, and untouched. Except for his hands, which had been a mess of scabs and scrapes since Davijaan had met him, and had only gotten worse with time. His knuckles were so scarred over they were the raw pink of flesh.
“So.” Fox brushed a hand over the railing, and a handful of glittering white drifted down. “This is snow.”
“That’s snow.”
“Hm.”
They stood in silence for… a while. Even with Wolffe’s blunt advice he had no idea what he was supposed to say. Fox certainly wasn’t in a hurry to make this easy for him.
He shuffled his feet. Sighed. Shoved his hands in his pockets. He chanced a glance over his shoulder and locked eyes with Wolffe, standing at the window shaking his fist. Davijaan whipped his head back around.
“He’s at the window, isn’t he?” Fox said.
Davijaan scowled and reached out to shove some more snow off the railing. It was very satisfying. “Snow’s annoying, but it’s pretty fun to play with.” A plan of attack forming, he scooped up a handful of the stuff and started shaping it the way Loren had shown him.
“Play with?” Fox eyed his hands with justified suspicion.
“Like this.”
Davijaan ducked forward and shoved the packed ball of snow into Fox’s face as hard as he could, and then without waiting to see the results turned on his heel and all but fell down the steps. He could hear Fox swearing and thundering after him. He had to hold in a few hysterical giggles as the adrenaline hit and he remembered just how much he didn’t like running from certain doom.
He tripped on the very last step and landed face first in about three feet of wet snow. He had two seconds to take a breath before Fox’s knees hit his ribs and drove all the air right back out. He coughed and tried not to inhale snow as Fox settled his weight over his shoulders and ground his face into the stuff. He flailed and yelled and kicked. Eventually the weight lessened, and finally Fox grabbed his collar and yanked him around and sat on his chest.
“Why did you do that,” he hissed, cheek rubbed red and raw from Davijaan’s not-very-thought-out handful of snow.
“Payback,” he wheezed. “And because for about three seconds I thought it would be funny.”
Fox’s eyes narrowed. He studied Davijaan’s face, suspicious, his hold on his collar gradually relaxing until he slid off his chest and stood. He hesitated, and then offered Davijaan a hand up.
Davijaan did the only thing he could reasonably be expected to, and took it. And then yanked Fox right back down. He managed to flip their positions, straddling Fox’s chest with his knees pinning his arms.
He wouldn’t say he was good at hand to hand, but he hadn’t been sparring with Kote for eleven years for nothing. He very firmly shut up the voice in his head telling him that the only reason he’d managed to catch Fox off guard long enough to pin him was because Fox didn’t read him as a threat.
“You bastard.” Fox squirmed. Davijaan leaned more weight on his arms. “This stuff’s cold!”
“I’m aware,” he said, wiping half-melted sludge off his face. “Payback, remember?”
Fox went suddenly and terribly still. Davijaan blinked at him for a few seconds and then carefully stood, walked a few feet away, and sat down.
Fox sat up abruptly, and started breathing again. Davijaan looked away and ran his hands through the snow in silence. It had been sort of trampled down here at the base of the steps, and also in front of the speeder shed, but for the most part the speeder only kicked up the top layer, so the whole rest of the yard and mountainside was smooth and untouched.
The other day at work he’d expressed his surprise over just how much damn snow there was, and Loren had burst out laughing, and told him to just wait. He’d found the whole interaction sort of terrifying.
“Hey.” He flicked snow in Fox’s general direction. “Why did you always pull your punches?”
Fox’s head snapped up, shocked. “What.”
“After that time you gave me a bloody nose. Whenever we fought, when we were cadets, you always pulled your punches. Still pisses me off thinking about it.”
There had been a pattern to their fights. Fox would bait and poke until Davijaan had had enough, and threw a punch. Then Fox would let him flail for a few seconds before efficiently shutting him down and inflicting pain in some way that wouldn’t do permanent damage.
It had always felt like being toyed with. Like a predator playing with it’s food. Davijaan’s nose had healed without a mark, but his arms were littered with little pale fingernail scars. They were dumb and petty and represented a kind of helplessness he did his best not to think about.
Fox looked away. Shrugged. “Kote got mad. Told me not to hurt you like that again. Wasn't sure what he would do to me if I didn’t listen.”
Davijaan raised an eyebrow. After the broken nose incident— not the first of their brawls, but one of the earliest— Kote had dragged him aside and yelled at him about getting into pointless fights and hurting each other for no reason.
“You’re not each other’s enemy,” he’d said. “So stop acting like it.”
Apparently Fox hadn’t gotten that part of the lecture.
“So why didn’t you?”
“Why didn’t I what?”
“Listen!”
Fox scoffed. “Didn’t break your nose again, did I?”
“Why couldn’t you ever leave me the fuck alone!” he shouted, lurching to his knees, flinging his arms wide, ignoring how good it felt to finally say this. “Even if you didn’t go all out and beat me to a pulp, it was like you had to prove that you could!”
Fox drew into himself, shoulders hunched and knees pulled to his chest. “I didn’t want you to hurt me.”
For the second time that morning Davijaan was shocked into silence. He gaped at Fox for a solid thirty seconds before he regained enough breath to rasp, “Hurt you!? Hurt you?”
“It was pretty obvious you didn’t like me. I got tired of waiting for you to do something.”
“What the hell were you expecting me to do!?”
“Turn Kote against me,” Fox answered without hesitation. “Convince him I was a liability, or out of control, or a waste of time. I spent a lot of time trying to make myself useful but it was always you who were indispensable. He needed you. But he didn’t need me. Didn’t think he’d let me stick around if he didn’t need me.” His voice dropped so low Davijaan almost missed him saying— “I wouldn’t have stuck around if I hadn’t needed him.”
He sucked in a breath and let it out slow. Settling back on his haunches, he tilted his face up to the clear blue sky and just breathed.
Finally he sighed and said, carefully even, “That’s fucked up.”
“So Wolffe tells me.”
Whatever Davijaan had needed from Cody didn’t exist anymore. Maybe whatever his brother had needed from him didn’t exist anymore, either. But he still wanted Cody in his life. And it wasn’t just because he didn’t know what his life would look like without the brother who’d always been there. He wondered if wanting counted as needing, in some cases. It felt like it should.
He thought about Loren, and about needing her— as a distraction, as a guide, as a friend— and he knew without having to think about it that even when he didn’t need her anymore he’d still want her.
When he looked back down to earth Fox was still sitting curled in the snow, and Wolffe was standing on the porch, arms crossed. Observing. Davijaan cupped his hands over his mouth and hollered, “We’re not going to kill each other! Go away!”
Wolf rolled his eyes so hard his head tilted, but went back inside.
“Actually, if you wanted to kill me this would be the perfect time and place,” Fox mused with a totally straight face. “Hide my body in the snow and nobody would find it for months. No body, no crime.”
“What. Is wrong with you.”
Fox shrugged. “Easy out.”
Davijaan sputtered. “For me or for you!?”
He didn’t respond to that, and Davijaan flopped onto his back and groaned. “Stars, enough with the wanting to be dead shit. I get enough of that from Cody.” He waved in the general direction of the house. “You realize he would die if you did.”
“He’s got Boost and Sinker.”
“You realize, he would die if you did, right?”
“... Right.”
He flung a handful of snow at Fox’s face. “You're not dead, asshole! Deal with it!”
Fox burst out laughing. “Everyone thinks you're so friendly and nice, but you are the rudest, pettiest fucker I know. Does Loren know this about you?”
“Maybe I don’t have a reason to be rude to Loren, ever think of that?” He surged to his feet and planted his hands on his hips. “They don't keep you around because you're useful. They like you. Stars know why.”
“Well I figured that out.” Fox rolled his eyes. “Still don't know why they like me.”
“My best guess is, you’re a pity case.”
“Probably.”
“I don't like you.”
“Oh don't worry,” Fox drawled. “I don't like you either.”
He dug his hands into the snow and ruffled it up. His clothes had to be soaking wet, just like Davijaan’s, but he seemed content to sit and study the stuff.
“So. Snow,” he said, smoothing down the patch he’d scuffed. “I kind of hate it.”
“So do I.”
“Wolffe thinks it's pretty.”
“So does Cody.”
“I hate that he's right.”
“Terrible feeling.”
Fox looked up at him, exasperated, and for once the exasperation was with him, not for him.
If they just had an honest moment of commiseration Davijaan might have to actually murderer the bastard.
With a groan, he hauled Fox to his feet by the collar of his sodden shirt. “Come on. Out of the cold. If you get sick Wolffe will never forgive me. There's this tea we have that Loren showed me how to make. It tastes like the tundra smells. Maybe you'll hate it.”
***
Later that day, at the spaceport, while Cody and Wolffe said their goodbyes Fox and Davijaan stood a little ways away and regarded each other evenly.
Fox offered him a nod. “Odd Ball.”
He rolled his eyes. “Just call me Davijaan, dumbass. At this point it’s weirder if you don’t.”
“Fine, then. Goodbye, Davijaan. I guess I’ll probably see you again sometime.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately,” Fox agreed.
And then Wolffe descended on Davijaan to give him another perfect and suffocating hug, and he didn’t catch Cody and Fox’s goodbye but he thought Fox might have been smiling when he boarded the ship.
He and Cody watched it take off and disappear into the blue, and Davijaan gathered the courage to ask— “Do you think it was a mistake? Moving all the way out here?”
It took Cody a while to answer. “No,” he finally said, firm. “We’re just going to have to ask more people to visit.”
And Davijaan swallowed, and nodded, and kept his face turned up to the sky.
***
Davijaan went back to work the next day. The routine was nice, and having something to do was nice. He tried not to think about how much he missed Wolffe already, and instead messaged him to ask if they had their next job lined up yet.
He technically always had an hour’s break for midmeal, though he usually didn’t bother when he was flying the whole shift. Today, he was not flying the whole shift. He’d had two short deliveries in the morning and then his first passenger flight ever to look forward to in the afternoon, and as he waited around for his passengers to arrive Mr. Yang told him he’d better sit down and eat something.
He found a spot against Glimmer’s side and sat and pulled messily cloth wrapped lumps of bread and cheese out of his jacket pocket. Cody was getting better at baking with each new attempt, but now they had more bread than they could eat. Davijaan always grabbed a hunk for breakfast and a hunk for lunch, along with whatever fruit or cheese or meat they had to go with it. He unwrapped them and took a bite, and let his head and shoulders rest against Glimmer’s comfortingly icy side.
Mrs. Yang usually did the passenger flights. He’d never asked why, mostly because he didn’t think it mattered. But now he was getting sort of nervous at the idea of having people he didn’t know on his ship.
Before he could decide if he wanted to think about it or not, Loren came out of the main office, bag slung over her shoulder. She smiled when she saw him, and patted her bag. “May I join you?”
He nodded, and waved her over. He tried to hurry up and swallow so he could say a proper hello and ended up inhaling something he shouldn’t.
Loren plopped down beside him and dug around in her bottomless bag, patting his shoulder while he coughed, and then handed him her thermos. He took a drink and cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he rasped, handing it back.
“Oh, don’t apologize.” She set the thermos on the ground between them. “I’ve started to come prepared. You’re not a very cautious eater, are you?”
He shrugged and took another bite. “If you don’t eat fast you don’t eat.”
“Ah.”
She rattled her bag around some more and pulled out her own hunk of bread and a container of coagulated soup, which she proceeded to submerge the bread in, and eat cold soggy bite by cold soggy bite. Davijaan tried not to watch.
There was something to be said for ration bars, after all.
When they’d both finished eating she unearthed two more containers— and he really had to get a look inside that bag someday— and set them on the floor between them. One held little red pastries and the other held dried fruits.
Davijaan hesitated to reach his grimy hands in there and was handed two pastries and a slice of something pale and leathery for his trouble. He ate in careful bites and dared to watch her out of the corner of his eye, his conversation with Wolffe suddenly and annoying at the front of his mind.
Loren hummed as she ate. Nothing loud or obnoxious, just faint pleased little noises. She always nodded after swallowing her first bite, as if deciding the food was indeed worth eating. She gave eating the same total focus she gave everything else.
Thinking back, she had been giving him quite a bit of that focus in the last few months. It was terrifying, but also… amazing. And they didn’t spend time together just to spend time, they actually accomplished things. Talked about things. It wasn’t just Umbara and it wasn’t just an obligation to show the new person around. She’d said she’d hoped they could be friends, and then put in the effort to be his friend. More effort, in some areas, than he had.
Maybe that did mean something. Maybe Wolffe wasn't totally delusional. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt anything to… test the waters?
Then again, in his experience, when you were interested in someone but they weren’t interested in you, they usually brushed off flirting with a pitying smile or scorn. He couldn’t picture Loren looking at him with scorn, but he wasn’t sure he wanted her pity either.
Damn it, Wolffe. You don’t know that she’s sweet on me.
“So. Your brothers left yesterday?”
He blinked, and then shook those thoughts away to be thought another time. Because he had time, now. “They did. In the afternoon. And thank you. I would have been at work when they left if you hadn’t bullied me into taking the day off.”
She gasped in mock indignation. “I did no such thing! I made a gentle suggestion and you followed it because you knew it was for your own good.”
“Uhuh.” He rolled his eyes, but grinned. “Still. Thank you.”
“Did you have a good visit?”
“We did. Hopefully they’ll be able to come again soon.”
“I’d love to see them again, if that’s alright. Even if 1010 was an ass.”
Davijaan groaned and buried his face in his hands. Loren had the gall to laugh.
“They’re terrible brothers.”
“It’s ok, really. He was just looking out for you.”
“Was he?”
“He was.” She patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll be prepared to get payback next time I see him, never fear. And I’ll be more prepared when I meet the rest of your family, now that I have a better idea of what to expect.”
“They’re not all like that! Wait, the rest of—” his head snapped up. “What?”
“Your family? Or is it just—” Her brow creased; she tilted her head. “You and Cody did say something about a batch, right?”
“Oh. Well.” He shrugged, not sure what he wanted to say about that. “We have other friends, and close brothers, but we’re not… not our batch. Haven’t seen each other for a few years.”
Seven years. They’d been apart for as long as they’d been together. He probably wouldn’t recognize them. Maybe Didja had learned to shut up. Maybe ‘38 had a name.
“Fell out of contact?” she asked, soft and sympathetic.
“Sort of.”
“It’s never too late to reach out again. I had several close school friends I dropped out of contact with when I moved, but I’ve been trying to reconnect. It’s hard, with how our lives have changed. Most of them are married, or working, or both. We don’t see eye to eye on everything the way we used to. But it’s nice to catch up, and at least know what happened to them.”
He didn’t want to know. He’d been telling himself for years that if he ever got a third star tattooed on his ankle it would be for Kote, and he didn’t know what he’d do if he searched a list of numbers and found he suddenly needed a constellation.
“Though,” she brightened, “there’s one friend I’d like you to meet. She lives in Kyurem, but she’ll be here for Tyan’s Night. I’ll introduce you then.”
“Tyan’s Night?” He raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
“Oh! She’s— the sun I suppose? The Lady of the bright sky? You’ve noticed the days getting shorter, right?”
He nodded. He’d been arriving at work in the dark and leaving work in the dark for the last few weeks, and it felt sort of like being in space again.
“On the longest night of the year— two weeks from yesterday— we celebrate the sun and the Lady of the sun, Tyan. It’s sort of an end of the year holiday. Usually people return to the sky they were born under, or at least go where most of their family is. There’s a ceremony at sunset, and then a village wide celebration until sunrise. You should come.”
“Oh.” He shifted on the duracrete. “Am… am I allowed? Is it a religious— thing?”
She burst out laughing. “Yes and no. It’s a religious thing for those who are religious, and it’s a family and friends thing for those who aren’t. You don’t have to go to the official ceremony, though you are welcome. I suppose me and my family are more on the religious side of it, but.” She nudged him in the arm. “The Lady won’t begrudge you enjoying yourself at her party, I promise. You’re a Pantoran pilot, after all. You fly under her eyes.”
A Pantoran pilot.
He hadn’t even lived there a year, but he supposed he was a Pantoran pilot. He was a Pantoran citizen, and he was a pilot. He wasn’t a soldier or a civilian or a human or a clone, or even an immigrant. He was a Pantoran pilot.
And, he'd never thought much about religion other than to wonder about the Jedi’s dedication to the Force, but the idea that some mysterious being was watching him and protecting him made him feel… Something. He didn’t think he believed it, but he thought he liked that Loren did.
“Alright, I’ll come. It’s been a while since I’ve been to any kind of party.” Since the end of the war. “I’ll see if I can drag Cody with me.”
“Fantastic! I think you’ll enjoy it.” She popped one last piece of fruit in her mouth and started closing up the containers and tucking them away in her bag. “In fact,” she continued, casually, “you two should have dinner with my family that day.”
“Um. I don’t know if—”
“I don’t know why Pa hasn’t dragged you both over kicking and screaming yet,” she continued, bowling over his flimsy attempt at an excuse with a shake of her head. “But it’s only a matter of time. So why not make this the time? Besides, family dinner before the ceremony is traditional, and you’re practically family.”
He stared at her wide eyed until he regained enough breath to croak, “What?”
She looked up from her packing, surprised. “You’re part of the business, it’s a family business, therefore you’re family.”
Suddenly, it hit him that Loren was not and had never been anticipating the inevitable end of their friendship at some nebulous point in the future, once they stopped needing it. That she was starting to see him as a constant.
Suddenly, he felt very silly.
“How do you just…” he shook his head, swallowed. “Say things like that. With a straight face.”
“Say things like what?”
“I’ll… I’ll see what Cody says.”
And she grinned, cheeks all scrunched up and eyes glowing, and it felt like a bit of the noon sun shone into the hangar.