BRIIIiiiiirRIIiiingggggg went the clash of their blades.
Fencing foils weren't meant for locked holds. They were too thin, bending with the contact. Such as it was that Evelyn couldn't bear the brunt when Foxen attacked, her sword nearly flying from her hand. She slapped the other onto the grip just to keep hold, and all it managed was to allow him to push both her arms down as her rapier recoiled from side to side. The Nautolan kept coming though, bulldozing forward, and shoved, throwing her straight off her feet.
The Echani hybrid hit the ground by the shoulders with bruising force, a cry silenced by the air being shocked from her lungs. Still, even breathless, she rolled into the fall instinctually with her training, scrambling to get back to her feet, palms scraping the dirt, a jammed nail trailing blood from the cuticle.
"Sto--"
She didn't get to finish her order. Foxen was still coming, she'd dropped her saber, and he had drawn a machete in his dominant hand from his side holster. Evelyn gasped for breath and jerked back of a slash for her torso, imagining the thick, chopping blade lodging in her sternum like it was a log.
Surrender was not in her repertoire, and yet survival was stronger; the pilot stumbled back again and then backpedaled smoothly once she got her feet under her. Foxen's longer legs ate up the distance. Cursing, Evelyn's wide green eyes narrowed and she juked around and ran forward instead, twisting at the hips and snapping out an open hand to chop at the Nautolan as she darted past.
She aimed right for the spot where his pinkie had once been, feeling sick at it when she made contact with knucklebone.
A tiny hiss was all that escaped Foxen, but on him it was a screech. The CLANG of his own rapier dropping shouted for him, his fingers flying wide with the shock of pain that numbed his palm. Two rows of razor teeth bore at her as she twisted, skidded, reversed, and dove for the weapon the man had lost.
The woman swept the rapier up into her practiced grip just in time to keep a brutal chop from embedding in her arm. What it didn't do was stop the blade entirely, and the machete sliced viciously across her bicep as it screed over metal and down and off in a completed swing. Evelyn gasped, wavering, and was still reeling when Foxen reversed his hold and swung back up, slicing into her thigh.
With all her wherewithal, the duelist ignores the agony, dropped her saber and caught it in her other hand, thrusting her uninjured arm forward. There was hardly space between them, and so even with the weapon feeling unfit and alien in her offhand, she managed to stab right at Foxen.
But even with him cutting into her, her body couldn't shake what she believed; this was an ally. Someone she was meant to protect. This wasn't happening. It couldn't be.
Her thrust aimed off, up. Already made worse by her left hand, a true strike wouldn't have hit an organ but by luck, but she deliberately drew the tip upwards, more punching him in the chest with the hand guard than anything else. Foxen didn't budge an inch, and when his gaze fell to the impact and saw no blood, he made a disgusted noise.
The Nautolan's damaged hand lifted and batted hers aside, hard. The rapier flew from her fingers, pain numbing them, the blow spinning her about bodily. Another jab at her back sent her flat to the ground again, and then weight was there, pinning her briefly before he shoved her over onto her back. He shook her once. Her head spun as it knocked to concrete now, and she yelled with pain and defiance.
Those large hands pulled away, but it was only a reprieve from the physical violence. Through her screwed up eyes, she watched the Mandalorian start to yell.
G-E-T your shit TOGETHER, Foxen snapped, a snarl curling his lips back. Jax has L-O-S-T E-N-O-U-G-H A-L-R-E-A-D-Y. Doesn't N-E-E-D to L-O-S-E you too. You aren't A-L-L-O-W-E-D to DIE. Do B-E-T-T-E-R.
Do better?
"'Do better?!'" Evelyn hollered back at him. "Are you insane, Erinos?! I'm fine! Or I was before this sham! I'm not karking dead, now am I?"
You W-I-L-L B-E, L-I-K-E T-H-I-S.
"You are so bloody arrogant, it's a wonder you don't float the hell away," she scathed, trying to measure her breathing.
I'm R-I-G-H-T. L-O-O-K at yourself. L-O-O-K at your C-H-O-I-C-E-S. His hand lashed out, a girder around her arm, and he sunk his thumb into the open gash. She stifled a scream, and he was releasing her again before a second had even passed. Foxen stared down at her, looming. Look how many times I could have killed you, that glare said. He gestured again. L-O-O-K.
"I'm not doing anything! I'm perfectly capable! This is-- Of course you savaged me, you're acting like an animal!"
The Nautolan flinched. That alone made her gape. Not once had she seen Foxen cringe. Not once in all their years.
He stood in a flash and retreated from her a solid two meters, shoulders lifting tight, a sharp, hissing exhale. He paced a moment, then pivoted around, and his face was more open and cracked with what she could only call shame than she had ever seen it. She hadn't thought him capable of the emotion.
I CHANGED, he said. SOMEONE. BROKE. Me. I'm fraked up. NOW I HAVE to FIX it. STILL FIXING it. SPARRING COMPROMISED. I am COMPROMISED. I W-E-N-T too F-A-R.
The anger she was feeling slowly drained out of her. Evelyn looked over at the Mandalorian with a grimace, then sighed.
"Well couldn't we have led with that?" she grumbled, wincing as she pushed herself onto her knees. Foxen set aside his blade, pointing at her.
You too he asserted again. You're D-I-F-F-E-R-R-N-T. You are B-R-O-K-E-N. It was matter of fact, no inflection in the way his hands moved nor his face, neither sympathy nor disdain. Is it B-E-C-A-U-S-E of Aketa?
For a moment -- just a moment -- she didn't recognize the sign. Then, snap-freeze, it came back to her: Aketa's name sign.
She hadn't seen it in five years, not since Foxen disappeared.
Not since--
Guilt welled first; how could she have forgotten that sign for even a second?! Her wife's name? Then a sudden and overflowing pain she struggled desperately to swallow down. Evelyn stiffened, a lump lodging in her throat.
"H-how-- who. Told you?"
Jax, the of course didn't need to be added, flippant as the name was. O-B-V-I-O-U-S T-H-O-U-G-H. Or she W-O-U-L-D be here.
She was already spent of tears, few as she had, and so all that was wrung out of her was a whimper and a nod.
"She would be," the pilot agreed.
For a little while, silence reigned, aside from her small grunts when the thread pulled. He moved to her leg, then her cheek, and she had to close one eye on the wince, but that one was small and thin; a layer of bacta would do now, and she would treat it fully later to assure not a single scar.
"Your hand. That's more recent, isn't it?"
Foxen stilled briefly, then nodded.
"But you're having difficulty sparring to practice?"
Another nod. Their conversation was forestalled as he checked his work and grunted in acceptance before responding.
Seven W-E-E-K-S. I N-E-E-D to G-E-T G-O-O-D A-G-A-I-N. Help me?
Evelyn could only snort. Just like Foxen, to ask that after abusing her like this. But that was how he was. And she knew his word was absolute.
"Of course," the woman sighed, and wiped at her eyes one more time. The salt water was making her cut cheek sting even with the bacta. She sniffed, jaw tightening a moment. "And maybe...you have a point. That wasn't a good showing. Maybe I have become…distracted."
G-E-T B-E-T-T-E-R, he repeated, advice, encouragement, and chastisement in one.
"Yes," Evelyn replied, and clasped his hand when he offered it to assist her in standing. The contact disappeared not a heartbeat later, a small cringe to his spine at it. Another scar. Another bit of broken. But they could be better, couldn't they? "Yes, let's."
Evelyn's eyes closed against welling tears. No, no, she would not cry. Not about this, not still, not here.
A snapping of fingers called for her attention. Her green gaze blinked back open, and she saw Foxen having gotten closer. He crouched down again to be on her level, and gestured.
I'm S-O-R-R-Y I wasn't here for you, he said, and those words, from him of all people, with that sincerity and gravity on him, broke the dam. A sob escaped her mouth, one she slapped a hand over, and her shoulders shook.
The Nautolan made no move to comfort of any kind. He just stared at her while she cried, unblinking red eyes watching the whole thing. Only when she was done trembling and wiping her face did he move, and that only to remove the medical kit from his lower back holster, opening it and beginning to sort materials out. He motioned for her, drawing up a needle of gut and thread and bacta doses.
The Echani hybrid didn't say anything either, didn't protest. She painfully shrugged out of her suit top and turned to offer Foxen the deepest slash on her arm, knuckles whitening in the fabric as she held still while he sewed her skin up like she would repair a button on his coat.
