Narrator: Hey Fox, hey Wolf, how've ya been?
Fox: GUY! *narrator gets tackled.*
Narrator: Haha, well, I've missed you too. Somehow when you get 5 years older you feel much older than you did five years ago.
Wolf: Funny how that works.
Narrator: I see you haven't missed me Wolf.
Wolf (under his breath): …a little.
Narrator: What?
Wolf: What?
Narrator: I could have sworn-
Wolf: I didn't say anything.
Narrator: But-
Wolf (Raising his voice): I didn't say anything!
Narrator: you… you're adorable.
Wolf: Shut up.
Anyway, here goes my rewrite of the story "I forgive you," now titled…
Forgiveness
"Are you sure, Fox? I can buy you… a new one!"
"I told you, its fine, Falco, don't worry about it—though my hip hurts a lot." Fox's blaster lay broken in two, the direct result of an accidental bump that caused the vulpine to fall right on top of it.
"But… that was the blaster you've had since we've known each other… It's your favorite!" Falco pressed. His guilt actually took Fox by surprise.
"Calm down. It's just a blaster, and I know you didn't mean to do it." Falco didn't seem convinced.
"In fact, I think it's cool that you even remember that I've had this blaster for so long." He continued. "So don't even worry about it. Decent models come cheap nowadays."
"But-" the avian began.
"Falco, will you not be satisfied until I get mad at you?" To this the avian had no response. Fox maintained his gentle smile.
"Just… just let me buy you a replacement, okay?" he pleaded.
"Next time we make a pit stop to Corneria, sure. I'd like that—Along with a meal or two at Lena's" Fox joked.
"Whoa, wait a minute, that's only the most high class restaurant in all of Corneria! People make reservations WEEKS in advance just to get a spot, how do you expect-"
"What happened to all of that 'bu-bu-but pleeaasee~ let me make it up to you!' from a few seconds ago?" Fox countered, mirroring Falco's vibrant hand gestures perfectly, to which the bird finally let out a chuckle.
"Oh buzz off! I do NOT sound like that!"
"Yeah yeah, you big baby. Anyway, it's getting late tonight, so I'm gonna head to bed tonight. See ya in the morning." Fox started walking towards his quarters on the great fox, and was about to turn the quarter until-
"Hold up!"
"What now?" Fox replied, the exasperation now beginning to show in his voice.
"Just so you know, if you broke my blaster, I'd be fucking pissed."
"Wolf- I… I" Leon stammered. His attempts to think of a phrase that could quickly relieve the situation were failing again and again as the enraged lupine approached him.
"How the do you expect me to use this now!? Are you trying to get me to kill myself!?" he pointed the tip of his bayonet on his gun at the chameleon—or at least, what could be considered the tip. The bayonet was smashed and bent upwards in such a way that the blade may as well be a bludgeon. The weight of Wolf's gaze was pressing ever harder on Leon.
"W…Well… you can still use the blaster, r-right?" he managed to sputter out.
"Oh, you THINK?" Wolf backed off and pointed the blaster at the opposite wall and fired. The plasma blast ricocheted off the steel of the blade bent up at a 60 degree angle, barely missing Wolf's ears and hit the ceiling, which withstood the blast with a surprising sturdiness. The lupine spared no time as he pointed the end of the blaster back at Leon.
"Look! I didn't… it was just… I… I said I'm sorry! Cut me some slack, will ya?" It was clear that the chameleon had no intention of damaging Wolf's blaster, his fear was proof enough, but Wolf didn't seem to care. If anything, he only became more pissed at what seemed to him like such a preposterous proposal.
"I'm SORRY? Cut you some SLACK? If apologies could solve all of our problems we wouldn't be the most wanted criminals in the Lylat system! And you want ME to forgive YOU for making the only blaster I have worthless?" And suddenly Wolf stopped. The small hotel room they were staying at was suddenly deathly silent with a tension so thick that one could be frightened by the quickening of their own breathing.
"Wolf…?" Leon uttered meekly, but they reverberated through the walls of the room, as if sharing Leon's fear.
"Get out." The words were soft spoken.
"But where will i—" Leon started.
"You do not want me to repeat myself." Those words rung in Leon's ear, and with a sad resignation, he walked to and open the door to leave, but not before turning around one last time.
"…Please forgive me." He whimpered, his please falling on deaf ears. "O…okay then," he said as he shut the door behind him.
Wolf stood alone in the room for a while, unsure of what to do. He looked up at the ceiling which was clearly stained where the plasma shot had struck, and then back at his now dysfunctional gun. He sighed, and then gritted his teeth, and then sighed again, lapsing between frustration and guilt as he thought about the circumstances again and again. Finally he thought to himself, staring at the warped form of the bayonet:
"How do you even DO this to a blaster anyway?"
"The stars are pretty tonight, huh?"
"I guess, what's so special about a bunch of glowing white dots?"
"I don't know, but don't you just want to reach out and touch them?"
"We're training to be pilots… we'll be surrounded by them at all times."
"That just makes it all the more exciting!"
"If you say so, I guess—hey."
"Yeah?"
"If I ever hurt you, you'd forgive me, right?"
"Oh come on, what the hell are you talking about? You're a big wuss, you'd never hurt me!"
"You don't know that. A lot of things can change in the future. I.. I could grow up to be a cold, heartless badass, you know!"
"Well, as much as I doubt that will ever happen, we'll cross that bridge when we get there."
"Oh my god, I hate it when you use stupid clichés like that."
"That's why I use them."
"And that's why I hate you so much."
"Aw, you're just saying that, and anyway, why do you have to be such a pessimist all the time?"
"Fuck you, answer the question!"
"Dude, it's not going to happen!"
"…"
"But I guess… even… even if it did… I would understand. You would do the same for me, right?"
"..No, what the hell gave you that idea?"
"Oh fuck off! Making me get all sappy so you can give me crap. "
"Haha, you know you're too easy. And besides… you already know that I would."
"…"
"…"
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"For being my friend."
Fox was jolted awake by the sound of the door opening. It was fairly well into what could be considered the morning and he was slightly dazed trying to process the vivid dream he had just been having. He did not have time to dwell on the topic though because—
"FOX! Get your ass out of bed and into your arwing right now!" Shouted Falco.
"Wha—What? What's going on?" Fox asked.
"It's Star Wolf, they're picking another fight with us. We gotta go meet them before they take down the ship!" Fox immediately became alert with understanding as he threw himself out of the bed and geared up. Everyone save Peppy left on their arwings to take on the usual wolfen attack.
The dogfights were commonplace. Sometimes they were intense, and sometimes they were mundane. This was one of the times where it was mundane, Fox thought, expertly piloting his Arwing and outmaneuvering enemy fire as if by muscle memory. His thoughts began to wander.
"Damn it Fox! How do you keep beating me in combat training?"
"It's probably because I train harder than you."
"Grr… well you know I can train too!"
"Oh please, that's about as likely as Slippy talking to that one girl… or getting any girl, for that matter."
"Hey, that's just harsh."
"To you, or to Slippy?" Fox smirked.
"To me, of course! Why would you lump me in with him of all people?"
"Hey, he's a likeable guy at least!" Fox wasn't quite sure if he had meant that or not.
"You know what, fine, you win this time."
"I win every time, Wolf."
"Maybe now, but I swear I'll get good enough to beat you to a pulp, so don't get lazy!"
"I never do."
"Looks like someone's slackin' there, Star Fox!" Wolf shouted from the intercom, taking Fox by surprise as he felt his Arwing rock with the force of a plasma shot. Fox felt his engine failing, but maintained just enough control to fire a counterattack at the enemy Wolfen. The shots flew true, and the Wolfen took a direct hit. Both planes went spiraling down towards the nearby unnamed planet. Both teams shouted towards their captains but were too caught up with fighting each other to lend their assistance. And so the fighters continued to plummet.
Fox woke up after some time. Examining his surroundings, he noticed noticed he was lying against a wall. He appeared to be in a cave, but there was a fire lit in the central area. He could see the entrance of the cave where it was made apparent that night had fallen. As he tried to stand to further investigate and to search for his arwing, he was met with a sharp pain in his legs that left him paralyzed in his relatively uncomfortable sitting position.
"I don't recommend doing that, Fox." Replied a lupine a relatively short distance away from the fire. Fox was surprised he hadn't noticed him before, but that surprise quickly turned into anger. "I shot your legs."
"Wolf, you bastard!" He shouted, reaching for his blaster before realizing it was missing from his holster.
"Sorry, I shot you with your own blaster. Mine's currently…" Wolf grimaced. "…indefinitely out of commission." Fox ignored the lupine's musings and continued struggling to stand, each attempt being met with a sharp burning sensation and the occasional cry of pain.
"By the way, this one looks different from the one you used to have—I thought you loved that piece of junk model you had before. Guess you finally decided to dump the old thing, huh?" Those words reached the vulpine, and not in a good way. In a guttural voice he yelled, "Fuck off! What do you want with me?" To which the wolf merely shrugged. He took a stick with a fish on it that was cooking next to the flame and passed it to Fox. "Eat it."
"I don't need your sympathy." Fox muttered, flicking his hand at the fish with his hands and knocking it to the ground.
"Eat it!" Wolf yelled, the sudden sternness of his voice stunning the weakened fox. The lupine grabbed the fallen fish-on-a-stick, cleaned it the best he could, and passed it back to Fox, who begrudgingly took it. He took a bite.
"It smells awful." He said.
"Yeah, it does." Wolf replied.
Despite the repulsive odor of the strange fish, it had a faintly addicting taste that was particularly appealing to him. After a few bites he was surprised to find that he had finished it so quickly.
"It... It's really good though." He reluctantly added.
"Yeah, it is." Wolf replied.
"So I suppose you want me to thank you?" Fox said, his tone of voice a 65/35 mixture of sarcasm and genuine appreciation. His question was met with a brief pause, just long enough to feel apprehensive.
"Nah. you don't have to do that." Wolf pulled out Fox's blaster and pointed it at him. "I just wanted you to enjoy your last meal." He said this all with a remarkably straight face. No hatred, no anger, no sympathy. Fox felt the reigns of panic taking over him and started to squirm, yielding the same results as his previous attempts to stand.
"Fox, I said calm down." Wolf maintained that unsettling composure in his voice, which only served to amplified Fox's fear.
"Like hel-FUCK- I'm going to stay calm! Why didn't you just kill me when I was passed out, huh? Did you want to feel the satisfaction of watching your helpless prey struggle as you end its life? Is that it?" As if to prove his point, Fox's continued fidgeting and yelps of pain echoed through the cave.
"Fox, I—"
"Well fine! I'm scared, okay? Now please just.. just let me go, okay!?" Fox cried.
"I just… just wanted to talk to you one last time." Wolf finally said, with a gentle resolution, putting down the gun. Fox maintained his angry expression for a moment before letting what Wolf had just said sink in. The way he said those words reminded him of the lupine he knew many years ago. After a moment of stale silence, Fox solemnly looked away.
"What does it matter, anyway? You're going to kill me, and get your reward. That's what this is all about, right? Andross is going to—" He didn't finish that thought. "Oh god… Falco, Peppy, Slippy…" The solemn expression on Fox's face changed from that of fear of his own life to fear of his friends.
"They're going to be okay. We captured them, but I ordered Panther and Leon not to kill them. You're the only one Andross wants dead." A brief pause. "The others were going to serve as blackmail for if you somehow managed to get away." Another pause.
"Well… that is… reassuring." Fox replied, wondering to himself how he still had the energy to make such a sarcastic quip. There was another silence. Wolf was just sitting there, looking down at the fire, its glow radiating against his fur. The image was somber, yet somehow enchanting. Fox remained leaning against the wall, waiting for some action from the Lupine, and in that time Fox began to carefully assess the situation in it's entirety. Given the state of his legs, even if he were to somehow take out Wolf, there would be no way for him to get out of the cave. Even if he could, he had no idea where his arwing was located; it was highly likely that Wolf had found Fox and moved him to a location far away from it. He had no choice but to accept that his life dangling in Wolf's hands, and that his death was most likely inevitable; Wolf wasn't one to back down on his orders and he knew that. That acceptance of his death carried with it a deep emptiness; the emptiness of knowing that everything he had would be lost in an instant- And if it were anybody else, it may have been terrifying, but in the company of Wolf, it felt somehow liberating and calming.
The two remained that way for an immeasurable amount of time. It may have been minutes, it may have been hours. The only non-constant was the fire flickering in the room, which burned with an intensity that exceeded the two people combined.
but when the time had passed, it was Wolf who broke the silence.
"How did things end up like this, Fox?" he asked. The melancholy in his voice permeated the space around them. The fire, as if suffocated by the new-found tension, dimmed substantially.
"I don't know. What do you want me to say to you, Wolf?" Fox replied, a vacant expression in his eyes.
"I just… I just want us to talk to each other like normal people again. The way we used to be."
"It's too late for that now. We've grown up, shits happened, and now we're here." This time it was the vulpine's voice carrying the tone of meek firmness.
"Remember when we would watch the stars at night? And when you would go on and on about how we'd become great pilots and explore that big empty space?"
"I do."
"I would always say that…" He paused. Words were difficult. "…we might end up fighting each other out here, or that we'd grow apart, or that we'd just.. I don't know. And you'd say some stupid garbage like... what was it you always said?"
"We'll cross that bridge when we get there." Fox echoed. The words were fitting. Of course they were. Those dumb words were so fitting that both parties wanted to scream. But neither did. The flames continued to dance.
"I guess things just don't work out, huh." He said.
"That's what it means to be a mercenary, Wolf. You know that. I know that too. It's our job. It's what we were trained to do. It's all for the money in the end." Fox added.
"I do know that… I know I know that…" Wolf told himself, as if repeating the phrase enough times would convince him that they were true.
"Wolf, It's okay. You can go ahead and end my life." Fox said. Wolf held up his blaster and pointed it at the vulpine. Fox's expression was now calm, now immune to the harshness of the world around him. The lupine's grip on the blaster tightened as he stood arrested by his own fear.
"I don't want to kill you, Fox." Wolf said, his voice soft and weak, tears beginning to form around his eyes. It was the first time Fox had seen him like this, and for the first time since waking up that the vulpine let out a smile.
"It's fine. I understand, and I forgive you." He said.
"Fox…"
"I promised you that I would, remember? And you said that you would do the same for me, right?"
"I did, but that was—"
"Then it's fine, because you were my friend then, and because you're my friend now." Wolf looked at Fox carefully for the first time. At how helpless and pathetic and beautiful he was sitting there against the wall. He wished at this very moment, that if he could just deeply care about him, love him, fuck him, anything, that he would mean enough to him that he could stop himself from doing what he was about to do. But he couldn't do that. Both parties knew that that could never happen. Fox continued.
"It's funny, you finally got the best of me. You're not even badass, heh." Fox let out a chuckle; Wolf frowned.
"Surprised you can make such a snide remark on your death bed." He retorted, with an almost childlike attitude.
"Well, at least I wouldn't be getting all mushy over firing a gun." Fox said, still laughing, to which Wolf looked at the blaster, then at Fox, and began laughing with him. For just a moment, the gravity of the situation seemed to dissipate for what both people wished could have been an eternity. But a moment is just that—fleeting. At the end of the laughter, Wolf readied the gun with a new resolution and pointed it at Fox.
"Any last words?" Fox said, catching Wolf off guard, but he grinned a solemn grin.
"...Our lives are so pathetic." To which Fox smiled. That gentle smile which could lift the spirits of demons.
"Thanks. For everything."
"Goodbye."
And Wolf looked away.
And he fired.
Narrator: I don't know how much better this rendition is from the previous one, but I hope it's substantial.
Fox: I die again.
Narrator: you died in the last rendition of it too.
Fox: But I wanted it to be different this time!
Narrator: Well, sometimes things just are the way they are.
Wolf: I think it's much better.
Narrator: you're just saying that because you share my opinions and I want to believe it's better.
Wolf: Well, it's what I think, take it or leave it.
Narrator: *shrug* I guess you're right.
Fox: By the way, you don't have to go out of your way to rewrite these.
Narrator: I know, and i might not rewrite all of them (i probably won't), but looking back on a lot of these, i really did you guys an injustice, So i may as well try to atone for some of those sins. This is the first and hopefully not only.
Wolf: Well, i'm not looking forward to hearing back from you or anything, so whatever.
Narrator: I love you too, Wolf.
Wolf: Yeah, yeah.
...Also i don't own any of these characters, just thought i should put that out there.