The fall hurt him more than he would like to admit.
He didn't know what happened to him, but it all went so fast… he went down too fast. It was a whirlwind of fire and brimstone, with him caught in the eye of the storm where there was no escape, both literally and figuratively.
First, he felt pain of which he had never experienced before, and then he heard the sound of plasma and smelled ozone in the air coming from the shattered cockpit glass. He realized, then, that was death knocking at his door.
Until it wasn't.
He felt the impact of his fighter hitting the ground, and then he only saw blackness.
The vulpine awoke to an incredibly sharp pain in his head and right arm, his eyes snapping open and voice trying to make a sound, but only ending in a choked scream. Fox scanned his surroundings quickly to find his arm crushed underneath a part of his cockpit, and noted light filtering in above him from the dense cover of foliage.
"…elp," he tried shouting to no avail, coughing up a few droplets of blood after he uttered the noise. Cursing himself mentally, Fox took a breath and scanned over the rest of his body.
The vulpine found that nothing else was hurt terribly, nothing that he could see anyway, but he couldn't move with the bulkhead of his Arwing caved in on itself. His fighter was completely totalled, and he couldn't exactly tell where he was, either.
Coughing and grunting in pain once more, Fox tried recalling what had led him here, but he couldn't piece together what had happened in the sky. Bits and pieces about a mission with his crew, and the word "attrition" kept flitting through his psyche like an annoying fly on his pelt. There wasn't much he could remember, but it probably wasn't a big deal.
Taking another moment to calm himself, the vulpine focused on his surroundings, and noted all of the massive trees that took up his entire line of sight. Judging by the intense background noise of bugs and other local wildlife, he could safely assume he was stranded somewhere on Fortuna with a destroyed fighter and a possibly shattered arm.
"…s' an' one there?" Fox tried asking again, his vocal cords a tad bit more responsive than his last try. He growled to himself internally, realizing how helpless he was in his situation.
The vulpine looked over his control panel to see if anything was in any sort of semblance of functioning, but it was all totalled. Fox could say with complete certainly that he was screwed.
He didn't know how long he lay there uselessly, staring up at the thick green cloud of leaves above him, but as he did, flashes of the color grey seemed to constantly float through his thought process, interrupting it every once in a while. Fox was frustrated that he couldn't even remember how he crashed, or anything before that.
The vulpine cleared his throat once more, hacking a few more flecks of blood up, and decided to try calling out again.
"I need some help, I'm stuck! Is… any-" he started coughing again, his throat feeling like the inside of a furnace.
"Hey, is someone there?" Fox heard a voice shout from what sounded like a distance away. He couldn't discern who it belonged to, but it was male.
"…ver 'ere!" The vulpine exclaimed, his throat protesting painfully as he tried raising his uninjured arm above the shattered cockpit window.
"I… I see you, I'm trying to get-" the disembodied voice cut off abruptly, making Fox worry that something happened to the other man, but then he heard rapid footsteps crunching on leaves and getting louder.
He waited in tense silence for another moment, and then breaking the veil of tension came a white muzzle appearing in Fox's direct line of sight, making his eyes readjust.
And then he realized who was in front of him, looking through the broken cockpit at the injured vulpine with a shocked expression. It was Wolf O'Donnell himself, sans eyepatch and part of his left ear cut open.
"You…" Fox croaked, fear clouding his mind as he struggled to escape the Arwing wreckage, but that only made his pain worsen, and he screamed in agony.
"Whoa, whoa, you need to calm down, pup! Don't you remember, we're working together?" The lupine murmured, his head cocked to the side in confusion.
A million questions flashed through the vulpine's head at that moment, the loudest one being Why is he lying to me like that? Fox didn't see any hint of dishonesty in Wolf's face, however, only concern and a small bit of anxiety.
He knew Wolf wasn't a complete monster thanks to the aparoid invasion all those months ago showing off a better side in him, but he was still unsure of who the canid really was.
"Wha… are you talkin' bout?" The vulpine rasped, trying to come up with any logical explanation as to how that could be true. The most obvious one is that something important occurred between the two in recent memory that he couldn't remember.
"We were both hired to do the same job. You should know this, what happened to you?" The lupine asked, ears pinned to the back of his head.
"Can't 'member. Crashed… hit 'ead. Help me firs'," Fox croaked, tears stinging his eyes from the immense amount of physical trauma he was in.
"Yeah, okay," Wolf answered, resting a palm on his head for a moment before he leaned down and over to where Fox's arm was crushed.
A primal part of the vulpine wanted to fight back at Wolf, but he smothered it, knowing the grey canid was just trying to be helpful, even if it made absolutely no sense to him.
After a few minutes and more than a few grunts of exertion from Wolf, the vulpine felt his arm being gingerly moved away from its original position, and he felt a flash of fire go through his body. He screamed loudly, clutching at the nearest thing to him with his working arm for support, which happened to be the lupine hovering over him.
"D-damn, that's a really strong grip, pup," he chuckled, trying to distract Fox from the pain.
Fox tried to grin, but he didn't have the heart to as he let the lupine go. He tried to move his legs, but he found that he couldn't. "I can't feel my legs," he whispered, finding that talking quietly didn't hurt him.
"Man, those Venomians really messed you up," Wolf remarked, carefully picking the vulpine up out of the Arwing wreckage. Fox froze, his mind not quite comprehending what he just heard.
"Did you just say Venomians?" He whispered in terror, staring up at the other canine with a pleading expression.
Wolf sighed heavily, leaving the smoldering wreckage of the Arwing behind as he trotted off through the forest, injured vulpine in his arms. "You really don't remember anything, huh?" Fox shook his head. "All we know about them is that they just popped up out of nowhere, claiming to be 'heralding the return of their great savior' and started another war," he explained quickly.
Fox nodded, but he was still incredibly confused and frustrated. Oh, how he wished he could remember what happened!
"Did you crash too?" The vulpine murmured softly, looking down at his broken arm. It hung limply on his stomach, the bone protruding out of his skin.
"I did, but my Wolfen is still relatively intact. I've got first aid ready for you, pup," replied the other canine.
Wolf continued traveling as the two descended into a relatively uncomfortable silence, Fox trying to figure out if he could really be trusted or not. The lupine had every opportunity right now to lie to him about his memory loss, but it felt like he wasn't. At this point, he just had to wait and see.
With nothing else to do, the vulpine looked up at Wolf, studying his face without the eyepatch. The eye that was normally covered was now visible, and it had a large scar that looked like it came from a claw slashed over it, but it was open, revealing a milky white eye with a light grey iris barely visible. Fox wondered what tragedy could've caused such an awful wound.
"We're rivals. Why are you working with my team? Is your team with them?" Why are you helping me in particular?
"I'm working with them because I realized we need to put our differences aside for the greater good, and you did too," Wolf started. Fox hummed in response. He understood a little better now, and the situation must be very bad if the lupine was willing to work with Star Fox. "And it's just me and Panther now, by the way. Leon quite literally vanished a while back. He never was one to be a good guy, so he left."
"I see," the vulpine stated simply, thoughts in his head rolling around like ships in a vast and tumultuous ocean.
After a few more moments of the lupine stumbling through the jungle, the two came upon the Wolfen… or what was left of it anyway. It had crashed partway into a tree, and the left wing had crumpled down, but other than that, it looked relatively intact. Wolf set Fox down against that same tree by the ship and started to root through the cockpit for something.
"A few of the basic electronics systems were still functional after the crash, so I set up an SOS beacon so someone can find us," the grey canid explained as he dug through the cockpit. Fox nodded, glad that they had a way off of Fortuna.
"How long do you think it'll be until someone finds us?" The vulpine murmured as Wolf climbed back out of the fighter with a first aid kit.
"I'm not sure. We've been stuck here for a little while now, maybe a whole day. It could be soon, it could be a while away," he replied with a shrug, taking some alcohol and a cotton ball out of the kit.
He poured the alcohol on the ball and started applying it to Fox's wounds, making him hiss in pain. He knew it was to disinfect the wound, but that didn't mean it was comfortable. Wolf chuckled, putting bandages and gauze on the most present wounds. Fox knew there wasn't much he could do for the broken limb except set it, though.
"I'm going to see if I can set the bone, so we need a splint. While I'm doing that, try moving your legs. We need you walking if we're gonna survive, pup," Wolf pointed out after putting the last of the gauze on his injuries.
The vulpine grimaced, realizing what was about to happen. If he wanted the bone to grow back properly, Wolf was going to have to push the to halves back into place. He wasn't looking forward to that.
While Fox tried moving his feet and legs, which seemed to have a positive effect, as his toes started moving around, he took some time to reflect on Wolf's actions. He didn't understand why the lupine would be so kind to him, even if they had come to an agreement beforehand that he couldn't remember. The grey canid was being much gentler than Fox had ever seen before, and it was certainly a confusing sight. Fox sighed, a small part of his head still worried that Wolf was plotting to hurt or kill him.
"I'm gonna set the bone now," the lupine stated, ripping the vulpine from his thought process. He nodded, preparing himself for the worst.
With a crunching noise and a loud grunt, Wolf quickly shoved the protruding bone back into the place it should go, making Fox scream in agony, his arm erupting in pain. He clenched his teeth and grabbed onto one of the lupine's arms roughly when he finished, tears falling from his eyes.
"Damn it!" He shouted, panting heavily and letting go of the arm. He ended up coughing, his throat constricting painfully again. The vulpine tried to regulate his breathing while Wolf set about making a splint for the arm.
"I'm sorry you had to go through all of that pain," the lupine murmured, shocking Fox. Why was he apologizing to his greatest rival? What happened to him in that gap of memory?
"Wolf wouldn't be kind to me. Why are you like this? You should despise me and everything I stand for, yet you're helping me? Why are you doing all this?" The younger pilot asked, anger and confusion laden in his voice.
Wolf chuckled as he wrapped gauze around the splint on Fox's arm. "Again, it's in that gap of yours. I fucked up at one point during the briefing of this mission we were supposed to be on, and you shouted at me so much I realized how much of an asshole I was. We settled our differences," he explained with a shrug as if it wasn't a big deal.
The vulpine put a hand to the side of his head, more and more questions popping up in his head. "How big is this gap in my memory if I can't remember any of what you're saying?" He asked, dread spilling into his voice while he reached over and clutched even more fiercely than before at Wolf's forearm.
The lupine scratched his undamaged ear while he was thinking, a frown forming on his face. As those few seconds passed, his face descended into one of realization and fear.
"This mission we've been on, it's really long term. It's been over a month since we've been hired by Pepper, Fox," Wolf explained, worry etched onto his face.
Fox balked, his stomach climbing into his throat. He couldn't remember a month's worth of memory. How much had changed in that month? What had happened to the system?
What happened to him?
A/N: Been a while, hasn't it? I took a break from writing for a bit after finishing Heat, and after a bit, I'm back and ready to write another multi chapter fic. Hope you guys like what I'm doing so far.