QuinFox Week
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Day 5: Healing + Battle Couple
Track: 'Deep Water - Acoustic' - American Authors (Spotify / YouTube)
He woke up to the sound of a ship.
A low hum told him they were in hyperspace, that somehow he had gotten back. All he had were fleeting moments of clarity, starting with the jab of something sharp into his arm and the distinct voice of a clone swearing.
Fox.
He groaned trying to remember more, blinking blurry eyes and trying to sit up. He stopped startled when a hand on his shoulder stilled him.
“Don’t, Quinlan, just- just rest okay?”
Quinlan breathed deeply, trying to relax at the knowledge that he was with Fox and Fox wasn’t panicking, so surely they must be safe wherever they were.
“Fox?”
Vision clearing further he picked out that familiar profile, lined with worry and beautiful gray hair spreading from his temples.
“Yes, I’m still here Quinlan.”
“Where’s here?”
“Back on the ship, en route to Coruscant using the pre-made flight path you set.” Fox was speaking like he had already said the answer before, eyes locked on the data pad in his hand. “I’ve already forwarded the information we received and updated the Council on your condition. You don’t need to contact them again until you reach the temple in a few days.”
Quinlan slowly lolled his head to the side, carefully taking in Fox’s tense posture as he sat at the edge of the bunk by Quinlan's hip. He was only in his undersuit, the special regulating fabric hugging his lean and lethal form. Quinlan had always found that interesting about Fox, how he seemed almost sleeker than other clones. Minor differences that just spoke of how he had tapered himself to what he was skilled in, and, combined with how he swore Fox could be a Jedi shadow in a different life, really just fit that namesake so well.
Before he could say anything in response though, Fox had continued on, answering unasked questions. “Yes, it’s our ship, I wasn’t leaving my helmet behind. Yes, I have your lightsaber. And yes, I brought you back. I carried you, you aren’t misremembering. Yes, I know you think my hands are pretty, and finally, yes, I am very much okay. Only minor injuries.”
Quinlan felt a blush rise to his cheeks just as much as the smile that began to lift his cheeks. “I guess I was saying those things out loud then huh?”
Fox’s head snapped up, eyes turning to the Jedi. Finding whatever he required to recognize Quinlan truly had awoken, his brilliant first statement was “Quinlan?”
“Did I add the part about wanting to kiss your scar then?”
Fox’s nose crinkled, stubborn, and as adorable as usual, in Quinlan’s opinion, especially when he caught how there was now the smallest hint of a blush on those cheeks.
“Yes, yes you did. You weren’t exactly of a sound mind though, so I won’t hold it against you if-!”
At this, he tossed the data pad on the counter across from them, then turned fully to Quinlan with one accusing finger wagging at the bedridden man.
“If you never, ever, do that to me again, got it? I don’t care that it wasn’t GAR business, that was too close, and I refuse to have you collapse like that again.”
“I did it because it's you.”
Fox blinked, stilling.
Quinlan took it as his chance to continue, head still a bit unfocused and heart somehow untethered. “Yes, your hands are pretty. Yes, I would kiss the scar. No, I’m not joking. Yes, I’m coherent, I have done this enough times to know. So yes, it's because it is you, and you are brilliant, can even handle my lightsaber better than most Jedi I have seen, so I trust you. And as for GAR business, I understand, because it wasn’t GAR business, but… well…”
At this he smiled, eyes a tad heavy again and knuckles weakly brushing out against Fox’s leg. “It’s me, and it’s you. And though it wasn’t GAR business, I have definitely made myself your business, just like you’re mine.”
Fox’s hand fell slowly, landing on the bed just shy of Quinlan's forearm. He looked like he was debating something, and Quinlan figured it was a moment of truth. If Fox would deem him unwell and they would drop whatever was happening, or if he would give in and push forward.
Fox’s own worn knuckles gave the softest brush to Quinlan’s arm.
“Yes, yes you are my business. You… you are my friend. So you should very well know by now I’d fight every droid the separatists have to get your ass out of trouble, you jerk. That I wasn’t going to let you make me go back to the Council alone. General Kenobi would be all sad too and Cody would be a blasted pain about it. So don’t ever go doing risky things without me. I’m not falling for the Jedi business line anymore, got it?”
Dark eyes locked on his, and despite his weariness, Quinlan was able to pick up the pain there and tried to prompt Fox further. “Don’t like me leaving you out of all the fun?”
“I don’t like hearing you say goodbye over a comm, Quinlan, damn it-“
Fox heaved a heavy breath, and for once Quinlan stayed silent. He let Fox work through what he needed and gave him the mercy of silence to make his decision on his next words.
“Who else is gonna actually challenge me in sabacc? Poke and prod at me every chance they get? Or even drag me out to do insane things, drink and bitch with me? Smuggle me in different and new foods, even if it’s late at night, just cause you're so excited for me to try it that even your tattoos look like they are smiling? Well, I’ll tell you what, it doesn’t matter who else, because none of them would be you.”
This time the back of Fox’s hand pressed against his forearm was clearly intentional, Fox’s gaze turning fully to Quinlan, who was feeling a dozen different things from within himself and in the Force surrounding Fox.
“They wouldn’t be you, and so it wouldn’t be the same. Because it’s you, Quinlan Vos. It’s all you, and I refuse to go on in this galaxy without… that, if I can help it.”
“And what is… that?”
Fox’s hand was flippant, gesturing in Quinlan’s general direction with a huff, and the blush was now very clearly there for a reason that Quinlan suspected he could finally piece together.
Softly, with a hint of their usual banter but enough heart to be clearly different, Quinlan spoke. “I think you’re gesturing to all of me.”
Eyes flickering up quickly, then away as Fox turned to try and hide the smile Quinlan could practically feel. “Yeah, all of… that.”
Quinlan snickered, quiet and childish. “Well, I think we make a great couple then.”
Before Fox’s mouth could finish whipping back around Quinlan cut in again. “Because I don’t want to face the galaxy without all of… that, either. Dream team, best battle couple, taking on the galaxy and all the idiots in it together.”
His eyes were slipping closed, but not fast enough to miss the rare soft gaze Fox gifted him and the gentlest murmur of “Yeah, a… great couple…” from those beautiful lips.
Quinlan fell back into the dark without a single ounce of fear.
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Radioactive Eldritch Jedi
Okay so when I say radioactive. The Force is primordial and eldritch and the jedi (and any other force users of a comparable level) resonate with the echoes of this primoridal of-the-world-and-yet-not-the-world energy like your body when you’re so close to a marching bacd you can feel the drums in your bones and they’re not the music or the instruments, they’re only the echo thereof, but the echo of something from the depths that bore the universe is still A Lot.
And when you look at them. There’s teeth that aren’t there the next minute, you could count them again and again for half an hour and never get the same number twice in a row. And that’s not mentioning when their teeth don’t fit in their mouth, don’t match each other, when there aren’t teeth in their mouths but claws...
That’s just one element of their face which is one element of their body.
You can smell them, even the species that don’t have particularly good senses of smell though it is far more distracting for them. Something fresh with light or rotting with dark, herby or sea salty or citrusy or floral and threaded with sweat or blood or sex to suit whatever they’ve been doing and it wouldn’t be remarkable except they smell simultaneously like their species and like something else entirely in a way that is clearly but indescribably not caused by soap or perfume or oil.
There’s a resonance in their voices. Something like there’s a drumbeat in their throat, like they’re speaking with the vibrations of a song you’ve always heard without knowing it, but always perfectly understandable. The sound of jedi singing in harmony with feeling has reduced cities to tears of joy or tears of pain, blood dripping from their ears in mirror of their tears.
Don’t get me started on their shadows, on the way they move in the dark
And they’d be leaking this strangeness 24/7 except they keep themselves so tightly shielded, not only hiding themselves so that they appear uncanny and not terrifyingly Other (they’ve been there time and time again and it is a problem. There are Consequences) but also keeping any of this force-energy-resonance leaking out into the world. Places where force sensitives have lived a long time thrum like a pulse, are touches with the energy of generations of force users relaxing enough to let their shields lower and their selves to leak and brush the walls and tables, etching their presences into the place like fire into wood, and when this touches people it changes them.
Not immediately. Not quickly. It can take months for anything to change and this is why jedi keep their shields maintained, because if you’re fully shielded nothing will happen, and this is part of why attachments are risky, because the emotion can affect the shields can change the one you love, because to say you love a jedi is not the same as accepting all that they are and being willing to change along with them because you can’t dodge that forever, and saying you’re willing to do this isn’t the same as being willing.
The changes aren’t quick, and not as Eldritch as the jedi, but they are permanent and definitely Other.
When shields crack or break, when a jedi lashes out with the force, it brushes an imprint on everything around them (those with any kind of vision skills can find this difficult or comforting to deal with, like a too-large gulp of hot tea) and a few times on the same thing doesn’t matter. Genuinely. Repeition is an entirely different matter.
War is hell.
War is hell, and the jedi are holding on to each other for support, clinging interlocking arms, but they’re scattered around the galaxy and it’s so hard to actually reach each other.
Sometimes to know you’re supported isn’t enough. Not when you can’t reach their shoulder to lean on, for just a moment.
And the clones are going through hell with them, are dying around them, and they reach out to support the jedi who are doing their best not only to help them survive but to help them live in a war that wants them dead for a senate that doesn’t care and the jedi recognizes them as people so they reach out and the jedi can’t help but reach back.
The clones catch them when they fall, love them in different ways each as sure as the tides, and the jedi relax into it without realizing. Their shields crack over and over again because war is hell, but they also find them relaxing them, instinctively and unconsciously, because so little is certain but the clones’ willingness to go to hell and back for them is one of them and they feel safe.
And the echoes of the force that resonate in the heartbeats-nervepulses-bloodflows of the jedi leaves imprints on the clones that rises like paint added layer by layer and it changes them.
The clones don’t have a childhood of familiarity to fall back on, much less the shielding techniques to keep them looking “normal.” What they have is legions of brothers willing to support each other come hell or high water or unending clankers and jedi who at first beg their forgiveness for changing them (because it wasn’t supposed to happen and because they like how they are but everyone already sees them as strange and to beg forgiveness for making them like them is many jedi’s first instinct) then teach them how to hide it when they need to and the comfort of singing together, their voices ringing through their ships in tune with the thrumming in their blood, bone-deep.
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Thinking about the significance of Quinlan leaving that message hand-etched in a wall, a surface he would have touched with care and purpose. He left a message of hope, yes, but to someone with his gift it would be so much more than that.
Only when the eyes are closed can you truly see the way.
The living force lights up every being and leaves footprints in the sands of the universe. It defies time and space, lighting up past, present and future. This saying tells you to follow the force with such conviction that you walk with eyes closed. From there it will show you the way.
Someone like Quinlan would understand this intimately, because he enacts this belief regularly in connection with the past. His psychometry allows him to close his eyes and feel the echos of past moments. He used this ability to become a master tracker and see the way to whoever he sought. In a very literal sense the force allows him to see beyond sight and find the way. From Quinlan that Jedi wisdom is so beautifully on the nose. But it doesn’t end there.
He would have also understood that the act of etching the message itself would leave an imprint in the force. He would know how it would light up his message like a beacon of life, immortalising a single moment of wistful connection. Even if no one else with his ability ever encountered it, still it would persist. A tracker like Quinlan would be keenly aware of every trace they leave, especially while on the run. He knew he was leaving a marker, a beacon, that went deeper than the etching in the wall.
Quinlan may have never dreamed that Obi-Wan’s path might cross with his again, or that the man would come to run his own hands over that very same wall. But how very fitting it is that - despite being unable to ‘see’ as Quinlan could - this reminder to follow the force beyond the reach of sight combined with the stark relief in recognising its author, would ripple through Obi-Wan with a power not unlike an echo in the force.
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