Chapter 9: Fox III

He stared at what was left of his Arwing. It was a collection of parts. Well. That's what it always was, just now all those parts were disassembled into a loosely connected pile, like so many puzzle pieces spilled out on the floor, "You did all of this in an hour?"

"It wasn't hard." She was buried in the Arwing's engine, only her legs and tail sticking out, "Half the parts were corroded or rotted through." She dug her head out of the engine and held out a new piece she'd managed to rip out, "You know your gravity fabric had six tears in it?"

"I patched them."

"Patches are only temporary. A quarter lifespan of the fabric itself. You had six beyond repair. Eight is considered a catastrophic failure. You must be noticing some heavy shaking when you hit air."

He sighed and said, in as detached a way as possible, "Yeah, I do."

"Well, those are the most likely culprits. Your air filter was black, I replaced it. Most likely all those trips to Eladard. You had some... thing growing in the engine. A lot of it was singed around the propulsion vent but..."

"Look, I don't need a whole diagnostic check. I just want to go."

"Look," she mocked, "I'm shocked you got anywhere in this thing, never mind flew around the Lylat System. So let me do my job and fix this thing so you don't literally fall out of the sky."

He didn't say anything. She wandered back over to the pile of parts and resumed working.

"When do you think you'll be done?"

"Try asking a painter when it's done. I'm an artist, Fox. It'll be done when it's done."

"You'd be terrible in a war."

"That's not what you said last time."

"Last time?"

"On Sauria. When you hid out in the village and I helped clean your weapons."

"Huh." He hadn't made the connection, "Well there's something a bit different from field stripping a weapon to rebuilding an Arwing."

She stuck her head out from behind the engine, "You don't remember me, do you?"

The look she gave him was a mixture of expectant pain and pity.

"I don't remember a lot. Don't take it personally."

"I'm really happy I got to watch you these past couple of days. It made you fall a little bit. In my eyes, at least." She removed herself and went back to the ship.

Fox said nothing. Just turned away and picked up a piece of his broken ship. He thought of Peppy: if you take everything out of the ship and put new pieces inside, is it still the same ship? He dropped it on the ground with a loud clang.

"Why don't you just enjoy your forced vacation while you don't have a choice?"

The conversation seemed over. He left the hangar and decided there was at least beer in the mess. When was the last time he had a vacation, so to speak? He walked down the spine of the Fox, finding the mess entirely empty but not at all how he remembered it. Bright sunlights on timers illuminated the large planters filled with growing vegetables.

He leaned close to one and touched a pepper plant with chillies not quite ready to harvest.

"I built it myself."

Fox turned. Lucy was standing in the doorway holding a tablet and a folder full of papers. She had deep dark circles under her eyes and – Fox noticed – large hacks taken out of her once beautiful, long ears.

"It's nice." As Fox said it, the lights dimmed simulating a sunset, "Pretty clever." Lucy set her things down at the table and moved into the kitchen, "I'm going to make some coffee. Want some?"

"No, thanks. Any beer?"

A glass tinkled out in answer. She handed it to him as he said, "Thanks." He watched her brew a cup of black stuff, "Should you really be drinking coffee? You look like you haven't slept since I last saw you."

"Yeah, that sounds about right," she smiled, "sleep's not comfortable any more. I prefer it this way."

Fox wasn't sure he wanted to know more. He took a long swig of beer. Instandtly, he recognized it as a fresh batch of Great Fox Gray. So Katt got the brewery working as well.

"Did you ever wonder about us?"

"Yes." He tried not to sound cold, "I'm sorry."

"I haven't even told you."

He couldn't bring himself to ask.

"Reeducation," she offered, "Six years. I don't like to sleep."

"I'm sorry," he repeated. This time dutifully. This time as if there was something he should be sorry about. "How'd you get out?"

"Gave them what they wanted. Went through so many patriotic sessions and Mandatory Film Reeducation that I just... yeah. I prefer to think I was just somewhere else for a while. The real me, I mean. The part of me that's left. Not the part they saw. That part got sacrificed so I could get out. Then I met Katt and we did..." she waved around them, "this."

Fox wished he didn't understand, but he knew the story all too well, "You have to sleep sometime."

"I do. About once a week I'm too exhausted to keep going. But Amanda has me on a vitamin regimen that keeps me healthy. Not the same, but as long as I spend at least nine or ten hours in low energy resting, I can function the rest of the time like normal."

"You've systematized insomnia."

"Down to a science."

He donned the beer in a single gulp, "How much of this stuff left?"

"Help yourself. I'm going to go read trashy romance novels in bed." She headed for the door."

Fox picked a new bottle out of the refrigerator, "Luce, I am sorry." He repeated.

But she was already gone.

He took two more bottles out of the fridge and walked out, finding the mess no longer tasteful. He walked up the Fox's neck to the observatory above the bridge. It was perhaps the cleanest room he'd seen in the Fox so far. The chairs sunken into the floor and tipped toward the starlight were looking like they were replaced or refurbished.

Fox jumped down and sat loudly in one of the seats.

"Oh!" Amanda picked her head up and stared, shocked to even notice Fox there at all, "Hey, sorry, Amanda."

"It's all right."

"I didn't see you there."

"No worries. I thought you were Slippy for a second."

"Does... does he come up here?"

"Yes. I try to bring him up here. This is the only place where he acts normal: when he's here looking at the stars. He sounds like the old Slip."

"Does he... sleep?"

"Yeah. He'll get tired, lethargic, and we carry him to bed. But he has no real circadian rhythm. Well, it's there just irregular. So it's best to just let him do his thing. If he's hungry he wanders to the mess, but he's unable to cook or feed himself."

Fox offered her a beer.

"No, thanks." They sat in silence for a while and stared at the stars lazily passing, "Did you ever meet Croakella?"

"His old flame?" Yeah. Once. She visited Slip on the training facility on Papetoon."

"She's married now. Has a dozen kids."

He popped open a beer and took another long swig.

"I try and bring Slippy up here when he falls asleep. If I'm here when he wakes up, he'll often be the same toad I knew. It hurts, Fox. Watching someone you loved be someone else. Something else."

He stared at her harshly.

"I'm sorry."

"No. You're right. To be honest, you're the first person I've talked to that honestly knows what hurts."

She stood up and walked out. She passed a hand over Fox's shoulder and paused, "I know you're not planning on staying, but stay in touch? Katt doesn't talk about it and Lucy is... busy. But maybe we can..." she didn't finish, and just left.

Fox wanted to fly away. He imagined getting in his Arwing and flying as far away as possible. There were plenty of star systems out there. Maybe he'd find one where Lylat was just a dark spot in their star charts where he could live on some temperate mudball that's just barely discovering what life is. Or maybe to Sauria. There were plenty of tribes out there. He could find one in the mountains, far from Cornerian arms, away from any real political control. He could buy himself a farm. Find himself a woman. Have a family and a simple life...

"Mind if I sit here?"

She had a plate in her hand and a smile that asked to be let in.

"I'd prefer you were fixing my ship."

"A hungry mechanic is a silly mechanic." She sat down any way and held out the plate, "Sandwich?"

He looked over at the stale bread that was still steaming from the toaster, "What's on it?"

"Protein, cheese, and onion."

He took a sandwich half and handed her a beer. She took it without commentary and they ate together in silence.

"I didn't mean it as a bad thing, you know." She said out of nowhere.

He paused before drinking, "What do you mean?"

"When I said it made you fall. That's not a bad thing."

"How is it a good thing?"

"You were my hero for a long time. It was nice to see that we're not so different."

That wasn't a word he heard quite often, "I was your hero?" He looked over at her in disbelief. She looked away, "Why?"

"On Sauria. You'd come back with the warriors from a raid. I remembered how you looked. Brave. Intelligent. A lot of the warriors looked up to you. We used to have all kinds of foreigners come to our village. But none of them cared. None of them saw us as equals, or even people who could learn or teach. To everyone else, we were savages in the way. You fought for us. You tried to be one of us."

"No, I didn't."

And that's when their eyes locked.

"Emerald, I was a rebel without a cause. I was alone. Tired. And cut off from anything that made sense."

"So you came to Sauria?"

"Pretty much. If you're fighting for something, it makes the fighting that much more meaningful."

She was silent for a long while, "Do you know what happened after you left?"

"You went and learned engineering, clearly."

"Because I'm not Krazoa Strong like my sister. Because when our tribe finally consolidated power, she was the natural Queen. Not me."

And that's when he recognized her. Behind the cerulean colored fur, the white-sun marking, the typical mechanics cargo jacket, shorts with a half-dozen tools hanging off it, he recognized her as that pre-teen girl on Sauria. The one that happily cleaned his weapon and imagine herself as a gun-toting Cornerian sniper and not a girl in a backwater tribe who was supposed to learn medicine and childcare, "You taught a whole generation of us that we should be proud to be Cerinian. You don't realize how powerful that was."

She finished the beer and tapped it against the edge of the chair, "Whatever your end up doing after this, I hope you can find some peace or purpose. I know you're just toying to fly around until your Arwing falls out of the sky, but you mean a lot to a lot of people." She stood up and started to walk out. She let a hand rest on his shoulder for just a second, "Especially me."

Fox sat there for a minute longer and stared into the blackness. He stood and asn't quite sure what he was doing. He left the observatory and walked down the Fox's neck to Katt's room. After a brief pause, he knocked twice.

Katt opened the door. She looked defeated and tired. Fox probably woke her up from lying wide-eyed and sleepless in her bed, "What's up?" she asked, as if it was a normal day, and they lived all this time across the hall from each other.

"I was doing some thinking."

"Oh yeah?" she yawned.

"Yeah... I think I'm going to stay."

Her face lit up, the dark bags under her eyes dissipated, and she had a hint of a smile, "That's good."

"I'll let you get some rest."

"You should, too."

"Thanks, I will." She closed the door and Fox went down to the mess. He pulled out two more bottles of beer and stared out at the stars.