Fox had a stressful job. Sometimes things were almost okay, but a few simple words could ruin it in an instant. Fox had a list of phrases that, should he hear them, he knew he was in for a bad time.
Right there at the top was "Commander, may I have a word?" Specifically, when it was spoken by the Chancellor. All that meant was a reprimand, probably torture, and budget cuts that they probably couldn't afford.
He hated when he was feeling particularly lonely and reached out to his brothers, and their answer was "Maybe later." They were annoyed with him for not staying in contact with them, but whenever he tried he was just shut down.
It was never a good sign when someone in the guard reported that there was "a situation." That could mean anything. Sometimes there was a riot in the streets. It could be a prison break. Sometimes it had meant that a sickness had broken out among the guard.
There was one thing that Fox hated hearing more than anything else. Two simple words said by just a single person could churn his stomach and make him feel like the world was about to fall apart.
"Something happened." Gamma, their head medic, said through the comms. Fox felt his blood run cold at the words. Gamma didn't normally report things to him directly. They had too many injuries for him to personally tell Fox about all of them. He would just make notes in the schedule, and Stone would double check it to make sure that nobody was assigned a shift that they were physically incapable of doing.
Gamma only reached out to Fox if something was truly wrong, and it was something he needed to deal with personally for one reason or another. It usually involved injuries that they couldn't really treat, or a death.
Gamma never gave him the information over the comms. He just reported that 'something happened', and then he would tell him the details when Fox got there.
He was supposed to be working for another seven hours, at the very least, but he had to get to the med bay. He was just glad that he wasn't in a meeting with the Chancellor. That was the only thing he would let delay him, and only because he had no choice.
"I'm on my way." Fox said. He looked to the three troopers that he'd been working with to find a weapons smuggler in the lower levels. He hated leaving them to face a potentially dangerous suspect, but he needed to go.
"Something happened." Fox said, and they knew how serious that was. "I'm heading back. Hound will be here soon to help with the search. Don't engage until he gets here."
"Yes, sir." His men saluted, and Fox hurried to make his way back to the barracks. It took him far too long to get there. He was just glad that he hadn't heard another word from Gamma. At this point, no news was good news, because Gamma would only comm again if the situation had escalated.
Finally he got to the barracks, and he ran straight to the med bay. Even before he opened the doors he could hear yelling.
"I told you, I'm fine. Slap some bacta on it and take care of him."
"And I told you, you're not fine. You can't even stand. If you want me to get to him, cooperate and let me take care of you."
Fox let himself in and he saw Thire trying to get up from a bed while Gamma pushed him down. The medic looked ready to climb onto the bed and straddle Thire to keep him still. Fox' gaze went to Thire's leg, which had a blaster wound at the side of his thigh. It was a painful injury, but one that probably wouldn't have lasting damage. But Gamma still needed to treat it, to keep the injury from getting agitated and much worse.
"What happened?" Fox asked tensely. It couldn't just be that Thire was shot.
"A Demonstration." Thire said through clenched teeth as Gamma forced his leg still and injected a syringe into it. They didn't have access to bacta here, but Gamma had been able to create some disinfectant that hurt intensely, and didn't always work, and sometimes caused infection itself. It was far from ideal, but in a tricky situation it was the best they had.
Thire grimaced and let out a pained cry as the disinfectant got into his system. His body was tense as he clutched at the cheap bedding. The disinfectant would sting for a bit, but unless it got infected then the worst was over. Fox approached Thire.
"Who do we need to add to the list?" Fox asked. The guards were cautious around everybody that wasn't one of them, but some people were far worse than others. He wanted his men to be as prepared as possible, to at least know if they were facing down a monster.
"A Jedi." Thire growled. "General Pong Krell." Fox was shocked at the words. He'd never considered the Jedi to be a threat to the guard, or any of the troopers. They were their generals, but they were almost as much servants of the Republic as the clones were. They just weren't slaves.
"And he shot you?" Fox was furious. What kind of a Demonstration was this? "Did he just want to show how well we deal with pain?"
"Fox, I wasn't the one he was testing." Thire lowered his voice. He looked at him, desperation and guilt in his eyes. "He was testing loyalty, and now…" Thire trailed off, his eyes darting to the old curtains that blocked off the part of the room that Gamma used as his office.
Fox felt a pang through his chest as he put the pieces together. Dogma had been with Thire in the senate. If Thire had been pulled aside by the General, Dogma would have immediately called Fox to let him know. Which meant that the Jedi had taken both of them. If Thire had just been a tool for the Demonstration, then Dogma had been the actual subject. His loyalty had been tested, and Thire had been shot. It was not a pretty picture, but Fox wasn't in the habit of going into denial just because something didn't sound nice.
Fox took off his helmet, because he couldn't be the Commander right now. The Commander was loyal to the Republic and made to serve the Jedi, and right now that was the last thing he wanted to be, because that would mean needing to serve under the demagolka that had hurt his men.
He didn't need to tell Gamma to keep an eye on Thire. The medic knew how to do his job well. While Fox hated seeing his vod in pain, he needed to give someone else his priority.
Fox slowly pushed aside the curtain. He saw Dogma sitting on the ground, curled up in a tight ball and looking more tense then Thire had been when Gamma had given him the disinfectant. The poor kid was breathing so harshly that it sounded like he'd nearly drowned and had just come up for air.
"Ad'ika." Fox knelt and put a hand on Dogma's leg. The kid stiffened even more and his breathing grew harsher. He didn't pull away from the touch, but he clearly didn't want it right now. Fox quickly withdrew his hand.
"Hey, it's okay." Fox said. "Thire's okay. He's not mad, and neither am I." He was furious at the General, but he would never blame Dogma. He was just as much a victim as Thire was. "You did what you had to, and you got you and Thire out of there alive. I can't ask for more."
Usually when Dogma got upset or second-guessed himself, some gentle words of encouragement and reassurances could bring him back. He thrived on physical touch from a brother. Right now though he was practically unresponsive. Fox sat in front of him, waiting patiently for a few minutes for him to calm down. Dogma didn't relax, or calm his breathing. He stayed just the same, and Fox realized that something was incredibly wrong.
Gamma hadn't called him because Thire had been shot. He hadn't called him about the Demonstration. This was about Dogma.
Fox reluctantly looked away from Dogma and turned back towards the others. "How long has he been like this?" He felt bad for talking about Dogma as though he wasn't there, but in a way he wasn't. He didn't think the kid really heard a word he said.
"More than an hour." Thire said. "The second the General and the investors were gone, he completely shut down. He won't talk. He won't react at all. I had to call backup to bring us home, and he needed more help getting here than I did."
That wasn't good. That wasn't good at all.
"How do we snap him out of it?" Fox asked.
"I don't think we can force it." Gamma said. "I hoped if he was in a safe place, or if he didn't see Thire right in front of him, then he'd come back, but it didn't work. I treated Thire while I tried to figure out where to go from here."
"We can't just leave him back there." Thire said loudly.
"We're not leaving him anywhere." Fox said. He looked at Gamma. "Do you have any ideas?"
"Some." Gamma said, though he didn't sound happy. "We put him to sleep. It should get his body to relax and help regulate his breathing. It's possible that when he wakes up he'll be back to himself."
"And what if he's not?" Fox asked. "What if he's still unresponsive?"
The look in Gamma's eyes told him that he'd considered the same thing. "We'll cross that bridge if we come to it. Right now my priority is making sure he doesn't hurt himself." It sounded like a pretty good goal to have, and Fox would do whatever was necessary.
"Let's get his armor off first." Fox said. In the end, Gamma was the one who got Dogma sorted. Fox tried, but when Dogma stiffened and shied away from his touch, he couldn't bring himself to force it, even though he knew it was for Dogma's own good. He couldn't make the kid uncomfortable. Gamma had been trained to have no such qualms. So while the medic took care of Dogma, Fox helped get Thire back to their bunks so he could rest his leg. Thire resisted him every step of the way.
"I can't just leave him." Thire said.
"There's nothing you can do." Fox said, even though he felt the same way. The second he got Thire sitting and under the watchful eye of Thorn, he was going right back to the med bay.
"I should have done more to stop it." Thire said. "I should have made him stay away the second I heard the General wanted to see me. The Jedi just wanted me. I should have been alone. Dogma wasn't even supposed to be there."
Fox looked at his vod. "You know Dogma's name?"
Thire snorted. "That Jedi made him tell him. I didn't get it at first, because it was obvious that the General was one of those people who refuse to use our names if they can help it. And I know this wasn't what the Demonstration was supposed to be. He changed it because he wanted to make Dogma feel bad about his own name and maybe stop using it. And if Dogma didn't obey him, then he would punish him for not just being disobedient, but also for lying. For claiming to be loyal when he really wasn't."
"We shouldn't make assumptions about our betters." Fox said automatically. Numbly.
"That Jedi is not my better." Thire growled.
"As far as the laws are concerned, he is." Fox said. "He's your superior, and he has the power to make you disappear, and the only people who have more authority than him don't give a damn about us" Fox hated that he had to be the stickler about these laws that were killing him and his brothers. He hated so many of these rules, but he had to know them, and he had to make sure they were followed, because if they weren't then they would all pay the price.
"Please, no more talk about the Jedi." Fox said. He didn't want to fight with Thire about this.
"Fine, I won't." Thire said as they reached the bunks and Fox helped him to sit. "Let's talk about Kamino instead. Did you know they do Demonstrations there? And Vod'ika's been involved with them since he was five?"
Just when Fox thought he couldn't be more horrified, he was proven wrong. "That's not possible."
"Considering he even knows what Demonstrations are, I think it is." Thire said. "He's not that young. We would have been on Kamino still when he was five. Why didn't we know about the Demonstrations?"
Fox didn't know. None of this made sense to him, and he didn't think Dogma had the first clue how weird his experience on Kamino had to have been. But why was it so different? What had happened?
"We'll address that another day." Fox said. Right now he just needed to make sure that Dogma was physically and mentally okay. The issues on Kamino could wait.
"Now, rest that leg." Fox said. He needed Thire back on his feet in the next few days. They were Commanders. They didn't have the luxury of recovering.
"Keep me updated on Dogma, or I'll march back to the med bay myself." Thire said, and Fox knew he was serious. He nodded and left the bunks. He ran back down the halls, uncaring how unprofessional and frantic he might look. His men weren't going to judge him for it.
By the time he returned to the med bay Dogma had been stripped down to his blacks and laid on the bed. He was already asleep and his breathing had evened out. Gamma was looking over his vitals.
"He's malnourished." Gamma said.
"He's been working in the barracks for the past week." Fox grabbed a chair and pulled it closer to the bed so he could sit closer to Dogma. "Today was his first day back on regular shift."
"Why did he get taken off?" Gamma asked. He frequently asked questions that Fox didn't think were related to any given situation, but he answered them anyway, because Gamma knew his stuff.
"He saw his brothers for the first time a week ago." Fox said. "He had a bit of a breakdown, but it wasn't as bad as this." At least Dogma had been talking then. At least he could move for himself. Fox had been scared to death of Dogma's comment about longing to be emotionless. Now he wondered if Dogma had meant something else. If what Fox was seeing in front of him was normal for Dogma, and if that was the emotionless state that he was talking about.
Fox didn't know. Dogma had only been with them for a little bit. Even the 501st may not know, because it wasn't as though he'd been with them for much longer, and they'd been far less attentive of him than the guard was.
Gamma made an unhappy sound and grabbed his datapad. "I hate the Kaminoan records. They sent me his medical records when he was transferred here, and they're useless. There's a note that says that he's prone to laziness, but if it was true laziness it wouldn't be in the medical record at all. But it's been impossible to interpret exactly what they meant. What the Kaminoans call laziness can mean depression, or a limp, or a slight speech impediment, or that he has issues sleeping. Or it could be talking about this whole situation here. This could be a reoccurring issue. I just don't know."
Gamma started pacing. "I'm tempted to contact the medic from the 501st. The files he sent said that Dogma was healthy, but that was just from the physical. He may know something else that he didn't think was relevant to add to the file."
It was possible, but Gamma's suggestion brought to mind another person who may know what was going on. Someone who had trained with Dogma on Kamino, and worked side-by-side with him in Torrent.
"Dogma has a vod in the 501st." Fox said slowly. "If anyone knows if this is normal, or what to do about it, it will be him."
Fox didn't want to call anybody from the 501st. Dogma was his soldier. His ad. But he didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to help the kid, and at this point he wasn't sure if Dogma knew how to help himself. And Fox wasn't going to let his pride be the reason why Dogma suffered.
"We'll wait for now." Fox said reluctantly. "When Dogma wakes up, we'll give it another hour. If he's not showing signs of improvement by then, we'll call Kix and Tup."
Gamma agreed to the suggestion, because he was just as in the dark as Fox was. They were both out of their depth, and just making it up as they went.
Gamma had more work that he needed to do. The med bay was running low on supplies again, and he needed to somehow procure some more. Fox never asked how he did it, because he thought that having plausible deniability was the safest for all of them at this point. Gamma left Fox to watch Dogma, with the message that should he sleep for less than five hours or more than ten, to call him, because that meant that something went wrong with the dosage of the sleep meds.
Fox was left alone with the kid. He tried to pretend that they were in his office, and Dogma had just dozed off while they did paperwork together. The last thing Fox wanted to do right now was work, but he knew that Dogma would be upset if he knew that Fox wasn't working just to sit by his side when it wasn't necessary.
So even though Fox felt sick to his stomach, he pulled out Dogma's datapad, and he pulled up the paperwork files on them. He would rather work with physical copies of paperwork, but he wasn't leaving here just to get his things from his office. Whether Dogma liked it or not, the kid needed him right now more than he needed to work.
Fox forced himself to get through the paperwork, even though it was the last thing he felt like doing. Like usual when he did this kind of work, time became a bit of a blur. It didn't speed past, and it didn't move at a crawl. One minute was just the same as the next. The only end to the monotony was when he glanced at Dogma, just to see how he was doing, and saw that his eyes were open.
Dogma wasn't looking at him. He hadn't made a movement since he'd woken up, whenever that had been. He lay still, and he looked straight ahead, staring blankly at the ceiling. Fox felt ill looking at him.
"Ad'ika?" Fox said. The kid didn't so much as blink. "Dogma?" Still nothing. Fox groaned and brought a hand to his forehead. He felt so useless right now. There was nothing he could do for Dogma. Not by himself.
He couldn't focus on his work after that. He couldn't even pretend. Instead he just waited, watching the time. He felt more and more ill with every minute that passed. Finally, after an hour of trying to get Dogma to respond, and seeing the kid just stare at the ceiling with blank eyes, he knew he couldn't avoid it anymore. Dogma needed help, and he needed far more than Fox himself could provide.
It was time to call the 501st and hope that, for once, they were able to do right by Dogma.